After the goods dispute and an unscheduled crossroads stop to pick up some soldiers, Sebastian reached his destination almost an hour late. There was an address on the slip of paper that he’d been using as a bookmark. He took it out to check it now. He had a room reserved by telegram at the Sun Inn, Arnmouth.
Arnmouth was a resort that had been established close to an estuary, where the lack of a suitable bridging point had sent the railway line inland. Which meant that the station was more than a mile from the town, with a horse wagon service to carry passengers and their luggage over the final leg of the journey.
Sebastian had no luggage to speak of, just his usual leather Gladstone. While the other passengers were seeing their bags onto the station wagon, he watched the soldiers climbing into the back of a waiting motor truck. They were a squad of teenaged boys and a gray-headed sergeant. All had ridden the last few miles together in the baggage car. Their transport now was a petrol-driven three-tonner with cart wheels and a canvas cover, and an engine noise like spanners tumbling in a drum.
A young railwayman closed up the tailgate after the soldiers. He’d been blasted with soot at some point in his working day, so that when he turned around to the horse wagon his eyes were a startling blue in contrast to his blackened skin and shirt collar.
“Sorry for any delay, ladies and gentlemen,” he called up to the passengers as their horse shied and stamped.
“No apology required,” one of Sebastian’s fellow passengers called back. “We don’t argue with the King’s Own. Is it for the maneuvers?”
“A little local emergency they’re helping us out with,” the railwayman said. Sebastian felt his senses sharpen. But the young man was already walking away.
The final leg of Sebastian’s journey took about twenty minutes through country lanes. Arnmouth was a onetime fishing village that had grown for the summer crowds as far as its situation would allow. His first sight was of a clock tower and municipal welcome garden at the top of the main street. A dense bed of roadside flowers spelled out the town’s name on a sloping bank.
Their wagon made its way down the street, which wasn’t long. An observer could feasibly stand at one end of it and hail to a friend at the other. The street was lined with fancy shops, fine hotels, and tall houses made of the local stone.
Something was definitely amiss. Shopkeepers were outside their doors, exchanging words while their shops stood empty. A group of women had gathered on a corner. None of them paid the station wagon any attention as it went by.
The Sun Inn was at the end of the main street, where the street made a sharp turn down to the harbor. It was an old coaching inn, with an archway to its stables and a view out over dunes and the estuary strand.
Sebastian tipped the driver sixpence and climbed down with his bag. Then he glanced back up the street. The local women were too far off for him to do more than read their attitudes. Some stood with their arms folded. They glanced around as they talked.
The driver inspected the sixpence, sniffed wetly, and then pocketed the coin as he flicked the reins to move on.
THE TWO STEPS up from the pavement into the inn were edged with heavy iron. Once off the street, Sebastian found himself in a low-ceilinged and gloomy interior. Except for a few stuffed sea birds on a shelf above the mantel, he was alone. There was a mahogany bar counter with a backdrop of bottles, mirrors, and crystal. On one paneled wall was an engraved print of the barquentine Waterwitch, and on another a picture frame with samples of sailors’ knots behind glass.
He’d found solitude, but not silence. At the far end of the saloon bar was a partition. Beyond the partition was the snug, where the floor would be bare wood and the beer a halfpenny cheaper, and from which came the noise of a crowd of men. Sebastian paused for a moment to listen in case he could make out what was being discussed with so much enthusiasm, but he could not.
He reached over the bar to where a brass ship’s bell hung, and tweaked the clapper so it rang once.
All went quiet. Then a head popped around the bar side of the partition. It belonged to a large, unshaven man wearing-from what Sebastian could see-a parish constable’s uniform with a touch of the rummage-box in its fit and condition.
His expression was of one poised for abuse, but that changed at the sight of a gent.
“Just hold on,” he said, and disappeared again. A few moments later Sebastian heard the muffled shout of a name somewhere in the back of the inn. Moments after that, the noise in the snug returned to its previous level.
A woman in cook’s whites appeared, bringing with her a waft of warm kitchen air. She was short and broad and homely.
“Good afternoon, sir,” she said.
“Sebastian Becker,” he said. “I’ve a reservation.”
“A reservation?”
“Sorry. A booking. I sent a telegram.”
She went behind the bar counter and reached down for a visitors’ book. “A reservation,” she said, as if it was a word that she didn’t hear too often. “You speak a little like an American gentleman, Mister Becker.”
“My wife’s American. I spent some years there. I often slip.”
He scratched his name in the book with the pen that she gave him.
As he was writing she said, with due apology, “I’m afraid there’s no one to take your bag upstairs.”
“I can manage that for myself,” Sebastian said. “What’s going on?”
“Two children are missing,” the cook said.
Sebastian abruptly laid down his pen.
“Tell me more,” he said.
“Oh, it’s probably something and nothing,” she said. “They didn’t come home for supper last night. It’s a family that takes Rose Villa every year. The girls run wild all summer and Mister Bell comes up at weekends. Everyone in town knows them. They’re always out and about.” And she blew on the ink of his signature to help dry it before closing up the book and returning it to its place under the counter. “You watch. They’ll appear. In tears and all sorry for the trouble they’ve caused.”
Sebastian said, “How long have they been gone?”
“Only since yesterday. My opinion is that they’re on an adventure. Stayed out all night and now they’re scared to come home.” She tried to give a little smile, but anxiety betrayed her.
“And in there?” He indicated the activity on the other side of the snug partition.
“They’ve sent us a county detective,” she said. “He’s organizing a search. Or trying to.”
With the guest book safely away, she took a room key from a hook board behind the bar. All the keys had wooden tags and all the tags bore the names of sea birds in handwritten script.
Sebastian said, “Tell me something. How do I get to Arnside Hall?”
“Sir Owain’s house?” the cook said.
“Sir Owain Lancaster, yes.”
“You won’t get there today. There’s no one to drive you.”
“Because everyone’s on the search.”
“They’ve even called in some soldiers.”
“Now I understand,” Sebastian said.
The woman had expressed hope. But knowing what he knew, Sebastian already feared the worst. Up in the Sandpiper Room, which was of a generous size and had an oak-framed bed and plain whitewashed walls, he laid out his soap and his razor on the washstand and placed Sir Owain Lancaster’s notorious book on the bedside table. Next to it he laid a handwritten list, and a typewritten letter.
He could hear voices from below. This room was directly above the snug. Every now and again, a phrase or a few words would come through. Someone was trying to organize the volunteers, and all the volunteers seemed to be arguing with their directions.
Sebastian moved to his window and looked out. His window overlooked the shore. From here he could see the river snaking out through a deep cut in the sand toward the distant sea. Beyond the river, fanning out toward the far horizon, stretched an enormous and probably treacherous tidal beach. Way out across the flats, so far off that they were but sketchy figures in a vast landscape, a dozen men with staffs had formed a line and were moving across the bay, checking pools and quicksands. The local police would be few in number, bolstered by volunteers, and none would have been trained for such an operation.
Sebastian looked back over his shoulder at the bedside table. Sir Owain’s book purported to be an account of an ill-fated expedition somewhere in the region of the Amazon basin, led by its author. Its publication had caused a scandal and the destruction of Sir Owain’s reputation, forcing him to abandon his town house in London and retreat out here to his country home. The implications for its author’s mental state were a significant part of the reason for Sebastian’s visit. His regular duties involved investigating the background and circumstances of persons of interest to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy.
In this instance, the list and the letter added a sinister dimension to his mission. The disappearance of children now added another.
The lock on the bedroom door was hardly substantial, and the board of keys behind the bar was far from secure. He went over to the table and gathered up the list and letter, slipping them inside the pages of Sir Owain’s book. Then he hid the book under the pillow bolster and remade the bed over it, tucking in the sheets, blankets, and coverlet to make them as ruthlessly taut as before.
Then he went downstairs and across the empty saloon and opened the door to pass through into the snug.
And to the sudden silence that greeted him, he said, “Who’s in charge?”