The Case of the Frightened Friend (Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt Book 6) Read online

  The Case of the Frightened Friend

  Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt, Book Six

  Robert Newman

  For Dr. Albert Martins who put the rivet in Grandfather’s neck—with awe and gratitude—and for Annie, Grover and, of course, Brewster with gratitude and love.

  1

  The Appeal

  The four-wheeler drew up in front of a house that was very like all the other houses on the square except that it seemed to have fewer lights showing. It must have been the right one, however, for Cortland was opening the cab door. He had been even quieter than usual during the ride from Paddington, but now—abruptly and a little awkwardly—he said, “While you’re here in London, will you be seeing that Scotland Yard inspector you and Chadwick were talking about?”

  “Why, yes,” said Andrew, somewhat surprised. “As you probably gathered, he’s a friend. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” said Cortland, getting out. The cabby handed him his bag. “Thank you for the ride.”

  “Not at all,” said Andrew. “See you back at school.”

  “Yes,” said Cortland. He started to close the door, then pulled it open again. “If I don’t come back at the end of the holiday,” he said, leaning into the cab and speaking very quietly, “will you look into it?”

  “What?” asked Andrew. “What do you mean?”

  But, slamming the door, Cortland turned and started up the steps of the dark, quiet house, and the cab driver shook the reins and set the horse clip-clopping up the street toward Park Road and St. John’s Wood.

  Odd? Yes, it was, but no odder than everything else that had happened that day. The strangeness began early in the afternoon when the local doctor decided that the two boys from Andrew’s house who were in the infirmary had measles. He reported this to the headmaster, and since the spring vacation was to start in three days, the head decided to send all the other boys in the house home early rather than quarantine them. Delighted at this turn of events, they were taken to the railroad station and, at the last possible moment when the train was already in sight, one of the masters arrived with Cortland, whose full name was Benedict Cortland, III. He was not in Andrew’s or Chadwick’s house but, the master explained, the school had just received a telegram informing them of a serious illness in Cortland’s family and requesting that he be sent home immediately. Since he was a bit younger than Andrew and Chadwick, the master asked them if they’d keep an eye on him, and they said they’d be glad to and invited him into their compartment.

  Cortland was quiet during the ride down to London, which didn’t surprise Andrew. He didn’t know Cortland well, but he’d run into him a few times walking in the hills above the school, something that Andrew liked to do and apparently Cortland enjoyed also. He had found him very quiet then, during their walks, but also very knowledgeable about any birds they saw or wildflowers they came across, and Andrew liked him.

  Chadwick, however, was not quiet; and after some general conversation he began talking about something that Andrew had always found a little embarrassing; Andrew’s friendship with Inspector Wyatt of Scotland Yard, whom Chadwick had once met and about whom he never tired of talking. Andrew was finally able to get him off that particular subject and on to something more neutral, and the rest of the trip passed quite pleasantly.

  Chadwick, Andrew knew, lived in Belgravia, which was nowhere near where he was going. But when he discovered that Cortland lived on Sherburne Square, which was on his way home, he offered to drop him. Cortland accepted his offer gratefully, and this led to his very startling requests, one that Andrew could not decide whether he should or should not take seriously.

  He was still thinking about it when the four-wheeler turned into the driveway of the house on Rysdale Road and drew up under the porte-cochere. Matson had either been waiting or, with a good butler’s sixth sense, had known when Andrew would be arriving, for the cab had barely stopped before he opened the door of the house and came out.

  “Welcome home, Master Andrew,” he said, taking his bag.

  “Thank you, Matson. I gather you knew I was coming.”

  “Your telegram arrived late this afternoon. Fred gave it to your mother when he called for her at the theatre.”

  “Is she home?”

  “She’s in the drawing room. And so is Miss Sara.”

  “Oh, good.”

  He paid the cab driver and went into the house. Verna must have been waiting too, for Matson had not yet closed the door behind them when she came hurrying out of the drawing room.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  She embraced him and, unlike most of the boys at school who acted as if they would rather be boiled in oil than have any female—especially a mother or a sister—show them any sign of affection, Andrew didn’t mind at all. There was good reason for this, of course. Verna’s feelings for him and his for her were not only deep and genuine, but they were always displayed with discretion.

  His behavior toward Sara, however, who was closer to his own age and who had followed Verna out into the entrance hall, was necessarily different.

  “Good evening, Miss Wiggins,” he said with exaggerated formality, noticing that she was wearing a new dress and looking very pretty.

  “Good evening, Andrew,” she said, following his lead and dipping in a deep curtsey, then ruining the effect by grinning impishly at him.

  “I promised Sara I wouldn’t comment on how much you’ve grown—though of course you have,” said Verna. “Or how well or tired you looked after your train trip down. But, late as it is, she did give me permission to ask whether you’d had dinner.”

  “No, I haven’t. They gave us a kind of scrappy tea before we caught the train, but—”

  “Say no more,” said Verna. Then, as Mrs. Wiggins came bustling in, “Well, you were right, Mrs. Wiggins.”

  “Of course I was,” she said, hugging Andrew. Since she had known him even before she became the Tillett’s housekeeper, she was not at all self-conscious about showing her affection for him. “I am glad to see you. Now if you’ll come into the breakfast room, I had cook fix a little something for you.”

  The little something turned out to be everything that Andrew had hoped it might be, including cold beef and ending with his favorite apple tart. And though he had to stop several times to say hello to Annie, the downstairs maid, and Fred, the coachman, he did well enough to satisfy even Mrs. Simmonds, the cook, who took any food that was not finished as a personal affront.

  “All right,” said Andrew when Annie had cleared the table. “Now tell me what’s been going on down here.”

  “No. You tell us why you’re down from school so early,” said Verna. “Fred insists that you were sent down for something nefarious like setting up a horse-racing pool.”

  “He would think that. Didn’t the school’s telegram say?”

  “No. It just said that, due to unforeseen circumstances, you’d be coming home tonight instead of on Friday.”

  “Oh. Well, it was measles.”

  “Measles?”

  He explained, trying hard to show the proper amount of sympathy for the two boys in the infirmary and at least a sign of regret for the missed days at school.

  “That is too bad,” said Verna, repressing a smile.

  “Yes, is it. How’s the play going?”

  The play was an adaptation of Jane Eyre that Verna had done in New York to great acclaim and, because it had been such a success there, was doing again here in London.
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  “Oh, fine,” said Verna, exchanging a quick look with Sara. “We finally got a theatre—the Windsor on the Strand—and we just started rehearsals yesterday.”

  “What else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is something else—something you’re not telling me.” Then, when neither of them said anything, “How’s Peter? Have you seen him?”

  “Yes, late this afternoon,” said Sara. “He stopped by the theatre just as we were about to leave, and we told him you were coming home unexpectedly, and he said, if you wanted to, you could come to the Yard tomorrow and he’d take you out to lunch.”

  “Good-o! I was hoping I’d be able to see him and … Wait a minute. What were you doing at the theatre, Sara?”

  Again Verna and Sara exchanged glances.

  “You’re going to have to tell him sometime,” said Verna. “It might as well be now.”

  “I suppose so,” said Sara. “I was there because I may be in it. The play, I mean.”

  “In it?”

  “Yes. Playing Adele, Rochester’s ward. I was dying to play the part when we were in New York, and your mother said no. That she didn’t think my mum would like it. But I asked again when I heard that they were going to do the play here, and my mum said it would be all right if I kept on with school too; and your mother said she’d leave it to the director, and he liked me, so—”

  “But that’s wonderful!” said Andrew. “Why did you hesitate about telling me?”

  But he knew. She was afraid that he’d be hurt or angry that she was going to be busy and wouldn’t be able to spend time with him during the holiday as she usually did.

  “Well—” she began.

  “You think I haven’t got things to do by myself? There are dozens of things I can do, want to do and expect to do—starting with having lunch tomorrow with Peter Wyatt!”

  2

  Scotland Yard

  Because he was concerned—or at the very least puzzled—by what Cortland had said to him, Andrew would probably have done what he did sometime during his stay in London. But since it was more or less on his way to Scotland Yard, he did it the next morning.

  Leaving a bit early, he walked over to Wellington Road, continued on along Park Road and went west to the small and dignified square where he had dropped Cortland the night before. Like most of its neighbors, the house was of dark red brick with a railed off area way in front of it and an iron gate under the bridge of the front stairs for tradesmen. He went up the steps and tugged at the polished brass bell-pull. He heard it ring, but he had to wait several minutes before the door was opened by a rather unusual butler. For though his tailcoat and striped waistcoat fit him quite well, with his crooked nose, heavy shoulders and deep chest, he looked more like a member of the fancy—an ex-pugilist—than a colleague of Matson’s.

  “Yes?” he said in a voice that was, to say the least, unaccommodating.

  “My name’s Tillett,” said Andrew. “I’d like to see Benedict Cortland, Third.”

  “Not here,” said the butler.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said he’s not here. He’s at school.”

  “But he’s not,” said Andrew as the butler started to close the door. “I came down with him last night, and—”

  “Who is it, Hodge?” asked a female voice.

  “Someone for Master Benedict.”

  “Oh.” A rather attractive woman appeared. She was in her early thirties, blue-eyed and wore her blonde hair wound around her head in a coronet braid. “You’re a friend of Benedict’s?”

  “Yes. My name’s Tillett, and I came down from school with him yesterday. As a matter of fact, I dropped him off here on my way home. But your butler said—”

  “I heard what he said. What he meant is that Benedict is out at the moment. Your name’s Tillett?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Benedict’s stepmother.” She spoke with a slight accent that Andrew could not identify. “If you’re a friend—and I’m sure you are—Benedict will be sorry he missed you. But perhaps you can stop by again another time.”

  “If I may, I’d like to. Thank you, Mrs. Cortland.”

  “Not at all. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.” And bowing, he turned and went down the steps.

  As he walked over toward Baker Street where he planned to pick up an omnibus, he was even more puzzled—and more concerned—than he had been before. He was convinced that if Mrs. Cortland had not intervened, the butler would have shut the door in his face, insisting that Cortland was not there. That made it look as if they didn’t want him to see Cortland, which in turn made it look as if Cortland had had good reason to be anxious and act the way he had.

  He got off the bus at Westminster Bridge and walked up the Embankment to the Yard. He stood there for a moment, looking up at the steep-roofed, turreted building that was the most famous police headquarters in the world. Then he went through the gate, crossed the courtyard and gave his name to the sergeant at the desk inside, saying he wanted to see Inspector Wyatt. The sergeant gave a note to a constable, who went upstairs and came down a few moments later, nodding to the sergeant who asked Andrew if he knew where the inspector’s office was. Andrew said he did, climbed two flights of stairs and knocked at the familiar door.

  Wyatt, sitting at his desk in the small and crowded office, looked up when he came in.

  “So what the jungle drums told me was true,” he said. “Were you rusticated for bashing a master or possibly an old boy?”

  “Fred thought I’d been sent down because I’d set up a horse-racing pool, but it was nothing so imaginative or heroic. It was because of measles.”

  “Measles?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope you’re not contagious,” he said when Andrew explained.

  “I don’t think I am. I didn’t mention it, but I think I had measles a few years ago, and I don’t think you can get it again.”

  “We’ll pretend that’s so anyway. Outside of that, how are you?”

  “Fine.”

  The door opened, and Sergeant Tucker came in. Well over six feet tall and proportionately broad, he immediately made the office seem too small.

  “Well, well,” he said. “‘The school-boy with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school.’”

  “What’s this?” Andrew asked Wyatt.

  “It’s known as secondary education,” said Wyatt.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “His daughter’s studying As You Like It in school, and when he helps her memorize an assignment, some of it sticks.”

  “Does one have to be a varsity graduate or go to an expensive public school to be able to appreciate Shakespeare?” asked Tucker with wounded dignity.

  “Heaven forbid!” said Wyatt. “I think the groundlings at the Globe Theatre probably appreciated him more than a good many of the nobs in the boxes.”

  “Is that what I am, a groundling?”

  “What you would have been. But that’s enough of that. What news on the Rialto?”

  “Is that Shakespeare, too?”

  “Merchant of Venice. Well?”

  “Three more last night,” said Tucker, handing him a report.

  “That’s nice,” said Wyatt dryly.

  “Nice as a pennysworth of silver spoons,” agreed Tucker.

  “Three what?” asked Andrew.

  “Never mind!” said Wyatt. “I’ve had enough of your getting involved in our cases.” He finished reading the report. “All right,” he said to Tucker. “I’ll stop by again later and see if I can come up with any new ideas.” Then to Andrew, “Ready for lunch?”

  “If you are.”

  “You’ll hold down the fort, Tucker?”

  “Sir!” said Tucker with a heel-clicking, exaggerated salute.

  They walked up Whitehall to a pub near Charing Cross where Andrew established his claim to a table while Wyatt collected sandwiches, beer and ginger
beer for their lunch.

  “Well,” said Wyatt while they were eating, “what news on your Rialto?”

  “Nothing very much at school besides the measles. And you probably know more about what’s going on here than I do.”

  “The play, you mean. And the fact that Sara’s going to be in it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “She seemed to be worried about that, too. Why on earth should I mind? She’s mad about the theatre, would love to be an actress and was dying to play that particular part when the play was on in New York. So I think it’s wonderful.”

  “So do I. It’s like your mother to be giving her this chance. Not that she would have if she didn’t think she was good. Nothing else?”

  “No,” said Andrew. Then, after a pause. “Well, maybe there is. Something I’d like to ask your advice about, anyway.”

  When Wyatt nodded, he told him about Cortland: first, the little he knew about him personally, then what he had said when Andrew had dropped him off the night before and finally what had just happened with the butler.

  Wyatt sat quietly for a moment, making overlapping rings on the scrubbed wooden table with the wet bottom of his beer mug.

  “I know you don’t know him well, but … Does this seem like him? Would he be likely to say what he did to you just to be melodramatic, make himself important?

  “No. It’s very unlike him. I heard from one of the chaps in his house that he’s an orphan. But he never said so. He never talks about himself at all.”

  “And you, of course, wouldn’t blow it all up, make a mountain out of a molehill, just to give yourself something interesting to do over the holiday, would you?”

  Andrew looked at him without saying anything, and Wyatt nodded.

  “All right. I apologize, but the point had to be made. And there’s another one I should make. Or at least mention. If you remember your fairy tales, you’ll recall that stepmothers are not very popular figures. As a matter of fact, they’re usually the villain of the piece. And for reasons that go quite deep.”

  “I know. You think that Cortland wanted to build up a case against her?”