THE POLICE VISITED ON WEDNESDAY MORNING to hear Molly’s account of the accident in the museum. Luckily, her reputation for clumsiness and nosiness meant that nobody suspected her of deliberate wrongdoing. But the police stayed a long time, and so Molly’s first opportunity to try to escape the Excelsior came later that afternoon, when Mum had gone upstairs to have a bath.
Mr Banderfrith was on duty in the lobby, but Molly found him asleep, his mouth gaping as though he was undergoing dental work, snoring so loudly that the rippling airwaves set the glass chandelier above him shimmering. It was the perfect opportunity for Molly to make a run for it.
Molly wafted her hand in front of Mr Banderfrith’s face to see if he’d wake, and he didn’t. She lowered a finger into the cavern of his mouth and withdrew it unscathed. She took off his wig and turned it back to front.
“I’d say he’s asleep,” she whispered to herself.
Then she slipped towards the door, tripped over the rug and crashed into the pamphlet stand beside the coat racks, dragging the brochures and flyers on top of herself.
“Halt, or there’ll be hell to pay!” warbled Mr Banderfrith, sitting upright and instinctively flinging the first thing he could find at Molly, which happened to be his wig. It landed on Molly’s upturned face. She screamed and hurled it away. The hairpiece landed on the white telephone beside the guest book, where it sat looking oddly mischievous.
“Don’t you dare leave this house, wicked child!” Mr Banderfrith quivered, feeling down the side of the armchair for a large brass bell as Molly climbed to her feet. “If I ring this bell, that mother of yours will eat you alive. Now fetch me my hair.”
Grumbling, Molly headed to the desk. But as she was lifting the toupee, she spied an unfamiliar pencil – the bat-shaped eraser at one end suggested it was from Wetherill’s Weaponry Store – lying next to the guest book.
“My hair, scoundrel!”
“Won’t be a minute,” she mumbled. She opened the guest book to the most recently written-on page and found the following words in light pencil:
LM?
Molly frowned. Of course! Loonchance Manor!
The note must have been from Carl!
He’d visited!
He was still alive!
And Gabriel was protecting him!
Molly felt, and suppressed, a strong urge to dance.
“Oi!” rasped Mr Banderfrith. “Give me my blasted wig, you vile child!”
“All right, keep your hair on,” Molly muttered, rubbing out Carl’s writing with the bat-shaped eraser and shutting the book. She scooped up the wig and turned. “Here, catch.”
Mr Banderfrith’s eyes widened as the wig flew.
So the front door, apparently, wasn’t an option. At least not for the time being. But Molly wasn’t out of ideas yet.
There was a small room at the back of the guesthouse, originally a boot room, which had its own patio door leading to a small outdoor seating area with a single wrought-iron table and two rusty chairs. Nobody ever went out there. It was to this door that Molly headed. She checked the lock, which bore the maker’s inscription: CRUXTON.
Then she headed upstairs to steal a key.
It was a risky move, hiding in the broom cupboard down the corridor from Mum’s bedroom, waiting for Mum to emerge after her bath. At one point the housekeeper walked past, and Molly was certain that she was going to be discovered. But the housekeeper strolled by.
Suddenly Mum emerged from her room, humming a tuneless tune. She shut the door but didn’t lock it.
Eyeball to the keyhole, Molly watched Mum stride down the corridor.
When Mum had gone, Molly stumbled from her hiding place and headed for Mum’s bedroom. Mum only ever left her door unlocked when she knew she’d be back within a few minutes. So there wasn’t much time for Molly to find the…
“Keys, keys, keys…”
Maintaining this muttered mantra, Molly stole into Mum’s gaudy bedroom with its rows of shoes and scarves everywhere and the hanging rugs and the giant potted cactus named Louis. The ash blanket box painted light green. The tallboy, snow-white with seven drawers. The white oak dressing table by the window with the long oval mirror.
“Drawers, drawers, keys, keys…”
With fumbling fingers she dislodged every drawer and dug her hands into whatever lay inside, ploughing up papers, underwear, handkerchiefs, jewellery. Her ears were tuned to catch the slightest sound of footsteps. She’d decided she would scoot under the bed if Mum returned. That always seemed to work in films.
Bah! Nothing in the drawers. Where else could the dratted key be? The pockets of the jackets hanging on the back of the door? No. The pockets of trousers? No. Inside the decorative wooden bowls on the bookshelves? No, no, no…
Just as she was beginning to give up, Molly thought she heard a familiar sound from outside.
Meow!
She dashed to the window.
“Gabriel?”
Her gaze swept left, right, trying to take in every outdoor detail at once – the lane, the forecourt, the trees, the parked cars. She put her hands on the dressing table, leaned forward and put her face to the glass.
There was no sign of him. Her mind must have been tricking her.
Suddenly she became aware of a distinctive sensation in her right palm. She lifted her hand and there, on top of a shabby book of short stories by Poe, was a set of keys.
Molly gasped.
“OK, which one of you keys is named Cruxton?”
Jangling her way around the loop, she found two keys bearing the Cruxton moniker. She decided to take both and was attempting to remove them from the keyring without snapping her fingernail when she heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside.