Читаем A Dangerous Fortune (1994) полностью

A police constable assigned to check London steamship offices reported that a man answering the description but calling himself M. R. Andrews had booked passage on the Aztec sailing from Southampton tonight. The Southampton police were instructed to have men at the railway station and at the dockside.

The detective sent to see Augusta came back to report there was no answer when he rang and knocked at the door of Whitehaven House.

"I have a key," Hugh said.

Magridge said: "She's probably out--and I want the sergeant to go to the Cordovan Ministry. Why don't you check Whitehaven House yourself?"

Glad of something to do, Hugh took a cab to Kensington Gore. He rang and knocked, but there was no answer. The last of the servants had left, obviously. He let himself in.

The house was cold. Hiding was not Augusta's style, but he decided to search the rooms anyway, just in case. The first floor was deserted. He went up to the second floor and checked her bedroom.

What he saw surprised him. The wardrobe doors were ajar, the drawers of the chest were open, and there were discarded clothes on the bed and chairs. This was not like Augusta: she was a tidy person with an ordered mind. At first he thought she had been robbed. Then another thought struck him.

He ran up two flights of stairs to the servants' floor. When he had lived here, seventeen years ago, the suitcases and trunks had been kept jam-packed in a big closet known as the box room.

He found the door open. The room contained a few suitcases and no steamer trunk.

Augusta had run away.

He quickly checked all the other rooms of the house. As he expected he saw no one. The servants' rooms and the guest bedrooms were already acquiring the musty air of disuse. When he looked into the room that had been Uncle Joseph's bedroom, he was surprised to see that it looked exactly as it always had, although the rest of the house had been redecorated several times. He was about to leave when his eye fell on the lacquered display cabinet that held Joseph's valuable collection of snuffboxes.

The cabinet was empty.

Hugh frowned. He knew the snuffboxes had not been lodged with the auctioneers: Augusta had so far prevented the removal of any of her possessions.

That meant she had taken them with her.

They were worth a hundred thousand pounds--she could live comfortably for the rest of her life on that money.

But they did not belong to her. They belonged to the syndicate.

He decided to go after her.