Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery Part 18

"She may have the same idea," Jane remarked, gesturing with her head towards the boundary line where Marguerite was pushing herself out of her chair. But the dowager countess instead walked over to Gaunt and the drinks trolley to return an empty gla.s.s.

"And what of the Gaunts? Dissembling?" Tom asked as Max bungled his shot, stamped his feet, and shouted, "Oh, applesauce!"

"I don't know them well enough and they seem good at blending into the woodwork. Your housekeeper is more readable, but of course she can't have anything to do with this. And then there's you, of course." Jane cast him an enigmatic glance. "Women can read body language better than men, I think."

"I'm not sure I-"

"Marve, are you joining us?" Jane interrupted.

"Tom," Marguerite said, "you looked so uncomfortable, I thought I'd give you the chance to be spectator."

Phrased that way, Tom felt he had no choice but to retreat from the field of battle and settle into one of the wicker chairs on the sideline. The advantage was that non-players-with the evident exception of Lucinda-were invited to a drink by Gaunt. Tom's eyes lingered over Lucinda as she moved across the dappled greensward and pondered Jane's words. He felt vaguely caught out.

"Thank you," he responded vaguely as a silver tray entered his field of vision. He lifted the gla.s.s fizzing with fresh tonic and glanced at Gaunt as the tray disappeared to the man's side. He found himself curious about the man. It was true that he, Tom, had in Mrs. Prowse, his housekeeper, staff of sorts, but it was more in name than in reality. Madrun had her own income, derived from a considerable inheritance from a previous inc.u.mbent in the vicarage, occupied the entire top floor of the vicarage, and managed the household down to menu choices, with little reference to him. She did everything without a hint of deference-not that he expected any. "Mrs. Danvers with a Hoover," his sister-in-law Julia, who had once lived in Thornford, had quipped. That was in a moment of pique-Madrun was nothing so formidable-but some small grain of truth held. There were times when Tom felt a little like the second Mrs. de Winter, never quite getting the hang of life at Manderley, convinced he'd violated some local custom or expression. Certainly Madrun never hovered with an expression of proper, impersonal charm, the way Gaunt was doing now, as if balancing his own dignity with the readiness to oblige was a skill learned long ago. You most often knew what Madrun was thinking, particularly when something engaged her lively curiosity.

"Where did you train, if I might ask," he said conversationally. "A school in London?"

"My father was butler to the Earl of Rossell," Gaunt replied.

"Then you more or less learned at your father's knee," Tom commented when the man failed to elaborate. "I didn't think those opportunities existed much anymore."

"They are few," Gaunt allowed. "Most of my colleagues train in schools in London, as you say, or near; a few abroad."

"I a.s.sociate the Earls of Rossell with Shropshire, I think. Or is it Staffordshire? One of them was a botanist, an early champion of Darwin in the nineteenth century, if I remember my school lessons correctly."

"Shropshire."

"You grew up on Lord Rossell's estate, I presume."

"Longwood, yes."

Tom sipped his gin. The conversation was getting a bit teeth-pull-y. He searched his mind for some sparkling badinage, but came up empty. He smiled weakly at Gaunt, who took this as a signal to withdraw.

"May I be of any other service?" he asked.

"Thank you, no."

Gaunt slipped down to the drinks trolley. Tom returned his eye to the croquet court, to the figures moving about on the sun-streaked lawn like errant chess pieces, to the pleasant clicking sound of wooden b.a.l.l.s kissing, and considered as the first of the gin entered his veins how elysian this would be in any circ.u.mstances but those of the last twelve hours. His mind flickered with images of those he knew who had died unkind deaths, but, sharpening as they were, he couldn't stop his eyelids sinking-I am tired!-and sensing himself sailing through calm waters towards the sweet sh.o.r.es of the land of Nod.

But for a sudden shout of dismay.

The sh.o.r.eline vanished. Something red and streaking met his startled eyes. It was a ball speeding over the lawn towards him. Reflexively, Tom leaned over his chair and caught the ball neatly in his hand. The others continued to play as Miranda trudged over, hair flopping against her shoulders, to retrieve her ball.

"Rough go, darling?" he said, running his hands over the smooth surface.

"I'm okay," she replied, though her voice belied a little uncertainty.

"You're sure? It would be nice if we were on our way to London. I'm sure this will all be resolved soon enough."

He realised he was repeating the a.s.surances of midmorning when he'd had a few moments alone with Miranda, before Maximilian and Jane a.s.sembled and they'd walked to the dower house. He had been disturbed in the breakfast room by Miranda's blunt response to Lord Morborne's death-"Was he murdered?"-worried that his little girl, whom he had removed to bucolic Devon from big bad Bristol after her mother's slaying, was becoming inured to sudden and inexplicable death in close circ.u.mstances, as if such things were a fact of her new life. But she had evinced more curiosity than qualm over Lord Morborne's death then, and now she seemed to be silently ruminating over something. But what? Miranda leaned toward him and whispered: "Max says one of us strangled his uncle."

He had his answer. The words jolted nonetheless. "Not you or me," Tom protested. "Nor Mrs. Prowse, of course. And of course not Maximilian. Or Lady Kirkbride. Or Lord Kirkbride, I'm certain." But his failure to tick others off the list with equal alacrity seemed only to cement the boy's hypothesis. Miranda regarded him with solemn eyes.

"I'm sure there's some other explanation."

"Oh, Daddy!" she said witheringly.

"Que dirait Alice Roy?" Tom tried his feeble French.

"Qu'il n'y a pas d'autre explication, bien sur."

Alice Roy was the detective-heroine of a series of gallicised Nancy Drew novels, to which Miranda was devoted and to which Tom felt a sudden disaffection. d.a.m.n Alice Roy! It sprang to his lips to ask Miranda if she felt safe at Egges...o...b.., but to ask was to acknowledge malevolence behind the n.o.ble facade and plant a seed of doubt. He felt a sudden yearning to get his daughter away from here, to home, safe and sound, or to Gravesend, safe and sound with Dosh and Kate. How odd it was to watch the tableaux vivants before him, of figures in modern costume, moving about a greensward as if nothing weighed heavy upon the day. He reached out and hugged his daughter in silent collaboration.

"Daddy," she said, pulling away slightly, "why do ghosts wear clothes?"

Tom rolled the croquet ball around in his hands. It wasn't a matter that had ever entered his mind. "What a very good question. Why do ghosts wear clothes? They can hardly be suffering chill. Let's see, ghosts are supposedly manifestations of human spirit energy or the like, yes? But their clothes can't be, can they? Of course not. Cloth has no soul. Therefore I conclude that ghosts are figments of people's imaginations and they prefer their figments in costume. Does this concern the ghost you said you saw?"

"Max says I saw the ghost of Sir Edward Strickland. He showed me a picture of him that hangs in the Long Gallery. In the picture he's wearing a collar that looks like a plate-"

"A ruff."

"-and puffy pants-"

"Breeches. Outerwear, really. An Elizabethan fellow. One of Lord Fairhaven's ancestors presumably."

"But I couldn't have seen Sir Edward's ghost, Daddy, even though Max says I'm the lucky one to see him. I don't think the ghost I saw was wearing very much."

"Very much?" Tom asked, suddenly alert.

Miranda squirmed. "Pas beaucoup."

"Trousers? Short trousers, perhaps?"

"Peut-etre."

"Pants?"

"Peut-etre."

"Nothing?"

Miranda squirmed again.

"A robe of some nature?" Tom persisted. "A dressing gown?"

Miranda shrugged. "Pas de ruff ou breeches. Blanc. Tout blanc."

Tom bit his lip. "Darling, you don't really believe in ghosts, do you?"

"Max says they exist."

"But what do you believe?"

"I don't believe in ghosts, Daddy. Alice wouldn't. Les fantomes ne sont pas autorises dans les romans policiers."

"Or allowed in life, either," Tom added. "Except in fun."

"This isn't fun, is it?"

"No, it isn't," Tom agreed. "And what will you say to Max? About ghosts?"

"What I said to you."

"Good. You mustn't hide your light under a bushel, you know, my darling girl."

"What does that mean?"

"It's a parable from Matthew's Gospel. It may be interpreted several ways, but in your instance it means you shouldn't conceal your talents or abilities. Who is the best croquet player in Thornford Regis?"

"Me?"

"Of course you. Now here's your ball, and it's your turn again. Listen to Daddy, regardes-moi: Don't hide your light under a bushel."

Egges...o...b.. Hall 8 AUGUST.

Dear Mum, I hope your sleep was better than mine. I had the worst nightmare. In the one I can remember, I was being chased around and around a l.a.b.i.a labyrinth in my nightie only there weren't the nice bordering hedges they have here-it was all twisting chimney pots and towers and turrets instead, like the ones on the roof of Egges...o...b.. Hall, looming and lurching towards me and trying to block me, which they didn't do, though as much as I ran I never got to the centre. I only kept running and running in a panic! I couldn't see who was chasing me either as it was nearly dark, but I sensed who it was, the way you do in dreams. It was DS Blessing, who I've mentioned before. I went to school with his older sister Sandra. He was nearly upon me like some great awful dog (not like b.u.mble) when I seemed to burst out of the dream and found myself in my bed in the Gatehouse, heart pounding, quite relieved, but very vexed with DS Blessing. I couldn't think why he was being so disagreeable. His sister was always perfectly nice to me. I can't think what the dream means, Mum. I'd ask Mr. Christmas, but at breakfast in the past when I've told him about a haunting dream, he always looks at me very seriously and says it means Thornford Regis shall have 7 years of plenty and 7 years of famine which is silly. Joseph told that to Faroh Phar the king of Egypt in the Bible, of course, but at least there were 7 things in the king's dream so it was easy-peasy for Joseph to work out. I have said before to Mr. C. that in the Bible, G.o.d likes to use dreams when He fancies a natter with one of His creation, but Mr. C. says as far as he knows G.o.d's rather gone off that practice now, which I suppose is true, as anyone whom who whom G.o.d talks to in his dreams these days is usually thought completely daft. Anyway, the bad dreams and poor sleep are probably because there's a bit of an atmosphere here at Egges...o...b.., including at the Gatehouse. You wouldn't credit it, what with all the sun we've been having, but a kind of woe has settled over the place. At least the children don't seem to be too bothered, which I suppose is good all right. Miranda and Maximilian, Lord Boothby, are having a grand time doing their own investigation. Maximilian even has a deerstalker hat, though it doesn't fit properly. Mum, you wouldn't believe how many times a day he changes clothes! He is a bit of a show-off. The only thing that doesn't seem to be in his wardrobe at the minute is an Inverness cape, but I expect that's coming now that he and Miranda are "on the case," so to speak. We see a fair amount of the two of them "below stairs" as it were. Ellen and Mick have been staff to Lord and Lady Fairhaven less than a year, but Maximilian seems to have very much taken to them. Poor lad is shunted off to boarding school most of the year, of course. His father is gruff with him and Lady Fairhaven as distant as a stone. Ellen's gone a bit stern and stout, as I've said, but she does pay mind to the lad's witterings, and Mick goes all soft for children. He's quite the proper butler-valet to the household, but below stairs he can be quite the comedian, really. It's almost as if he and Maximilian are in a conspiracy together. Perhaps Maximilian reminds Mick of Dominic fforde-Beckett when he was a boy. They're a bit alike. (I think I told you Ellen and Mick worked for the Anthony fforde-Becketts. I'm including a rough family tree with this letter. Should help.) Anyway, I'm writing all this in aid of what's happened since yesterday afternoon's letter-which by the way I was able to post, as the nice PC let me out the gate. (Some journo ran up to me and asked what I could tell them about Lord Morborne's murder. "No comment," I said, smart as you please.) As I said, it's all gone a bit gloomy here. The police a.s.smembled a.s.sembled the household at teatime yesterday and asked some very pointed questions about what we'd all been up to in the wee hours of Sunday morning, which made me think that THEY think that one of us had something to do with Lord Morborne's death. Anyway, it's put everyone off their feed AND their good manners. Supper was cold beef, a sorrel, leek, and mushroom tart, and a tomato, corn, and avocado salad, which Ellen put out on the sideboard in the dining room for self-service, but half of everybody took their food off to their rooms or somewhere else in the Hall with some excuse, but really so as not to have to talk to one another. Maximilian brought Miranda with him to eat with us in the kitchen, the warm heart of a home, I always say, even at grand Egges...o...b.., but the kitchen wasn't last evening. Mum, something dreadful has happened between Ellen and Mick but I haven't a clue what. After we'd cleared the tea things, Ellen said she was going to the kitchen garden to gather some tomatoes only she was gone a very long time and then stumbled into the kitchen where I was making the pastry for the tart looking like her world had collapsed. "Madrun," she said, "I've learned something awful." Oh, my heart went out to her, but she wouldn't tell me a blessed thing! Thank heaven it was a simple supper we were preparing as I don't think she could have got through anything fussy. When her back was turned into the fridge I saw Mick across the corridor nip into the wash-house-which still serves as a laundry room-so I went to have some words with him as it is usually husbands that make wives unhappy but I could tell instantly that he was in a state, too. White as a sheet he was, had the big iron out, his jacket off, and had started into cleaning and pressing His Lordship's shirt, trousers, tie, and handkerchiefs, etc. etc. in advance of some Conservative a.s.sociation meeting next weekend, which seemed a bit far-off, but I expect he finds work calming as I do. He wouldn't tell me anything either, used quite strong language in fact that I won't record here, and so as you might imagine, Mum, supper with the Gaunts and the children was a bit strained, to say the least, but I got them, the kids at least, onto the details of their croquet game, which Miranda's team won by a squeak. She's awfully good. The rest of the evening went a bit flat, really. Ellen and I were to walk around the grounds, as the weather is so pleasant, but she begged off, and so I went on my own, and nearly jumped out of my skin when a large man in a dark suit jumped out from behind a tree. Well, I'm done for, I thought-here's Lord Morborne's murderer. But it seems Lord Fairhaven has already put a few private security in place to keep out all the nosy folk, including the media, although I think he's hired them mostly to appease his wife. I can't think how successful that will be. It's not as if there's a wall topped with razor wire around Egges...o...b.. Park, and there's lots of secret paths, according to Max. When I returned to the Gatehouse, Mick was nowhere about and Ellen had already gone to bed. I know it's silly, but my bedroom door doesn't lock, so I put a chair up against the k.n.o.b. You mustn't worry, Mum. I'm quite safe here really. There's police about and private security, as I said and if one of the weekend guests really is a murderer, he won't be after little me! Anyway, I was going to say when I started this letter that when I woke from my nightmare, I could hear Ellen and Mick's voices raised in the sitting room downstairs, but as the chair was against the door as I was tucked up in bed I thought better of opening the door a hair to see if I could hear anything. I'm so worried. I'm very worried about them. I can't imagine what the day will bring. Poor Mr. Christmas. It's his 40th birthday today and he was meant to be in Gravesend with his family, and then there's his poor ankle. I thought to suggest to Ellen yesterday afternoon that we bake a cake, but then it seemed not the best idea in the circ.u.mstances. I'm sure he'll soldier on. He always seems to. Which reminds me-our Mr. C.'s eyes have been roving once too often in Lady Lucinda fforde-Beckett's dreiction direction, if you ask me, especially when the CID were grilling interviewing us in the great hall. I can't think what he's thinking. She's been married and divorced twice. "Manifold sins and wickedness" there as the BCP would say, I venture, though now I'm sounding a bit like Ellen! Anyway, it makes me think that we in the village must find him a wife soon, as who knows what he might get up to. It won't do! Not in his instance. I've just looked out the window, Mum. There's more light now, and I can see one of those television vans with one of those big dishes on the roof parked in the forecourt. ITV West Country News, I can read on the side. Surely Lord Fairhaven can have it removed. I thought Abbotswick was part of the Egges...o...b.. estate, but perhaps I'm wrong. I must sign off, Mum. I could murder a cup of tea. If only I had my trusty Teasmade with me, but I'll have to go down to the kitchen and put the kettle on if I'm to be refreshed. I do hope Ellen and Mick have patched things up, otherwise I shall have to put up with an "atmosphere." It makes me wonder if I shouldn't ask Mr. C. to talk with them, as he is so good at consilly pouring oil on troubled waters.

Much love, Madrun P.S. For a while yesterday we thought Lord Morborne's murder solved! DI Bliss was called away when everyone was helping him with his enquiries in the great hall. A man who last week had been found wandering the grounds and frightening Ellen in the kitchens confessed to the crime! Poor man was barmy, of course. DI Bliss was not best pleased!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"I didn't mean to wake you," Tom said to Lord Fairhaven, feeling the pew's silky wood beneath his fingers. It was a lie, but not an extravagant one. He was a little surprised to find Hector in slumber, and in Egges...o...b..'s chapel, of all places. It wasn't yet midmorning. But on second reckoning he suspected His Lordship had suffered a disturbed sleep.

As had he.

The evening before, an uneasiness seemed to settle over the great mansion as the August sun sank below the low hills and evening shadows stole across the lawns to stain Egges...o...b..'s red brick black and swallow the great pile into the night. The library, where Tom had retreated with a few of the other guests, took on a fortress glow, a sanctuary, in which they affected to keep up an appearance of Sunday-evening languor, though the air simmered with tension and unspoken thoughts. Tom partnered with Jane against her husband and Dominic in a near-wordless hand of bridge while Max and Miranda grappled on the library table, out of earshot, with a Ouija board. Lord and Lady Fairhaven had each found an excuse-paperwork in the estate office, a migraine, respectively-to absent themselves. Lucinda, after flipping through a magazine, retreated through doors to the adjacent music room, bringing Tom a modic.u.m of relief, for he found her presence unsettling. Moments later the melancholy throb of the piano sounded through the half-opened door-Rachmaninoff's "Vocalise," Tom realised as his mind drifted towards the languid tempo, drawn to its tinge of regret. Her rendering of the familiar piece seemed skilled and heartfelt, and he found himself mellowing in his harsher a.s.sessment of her-and himself-until the Rachmaninoff tipped into Chopin's Funeral March interpreted as a frenzied boogie-woogie.

"She's remarkably good, isn't she," Dominic had murmured over his hand of cards.

"She's in remarkably poor taste," Jamie snapped, slapping his cards to the baize and pushing his chair back. But he was stopped in his movements at the sound of a piano lid crashing and the clacking retreat of shoes along the floor. The outburst did nothing so much as acknowledge their cheerlessness. The children were shooed to bed. Shortly after, the card game ended, none keen for another rubber-or any other diversion.

Tom had told Miranda to take her night things to his room. He didn't think himself an unduly cautious parent-he wasn't fond of the fashion for a helicoptering involvement in a child's life-but the unease the day had wrought had been inflamed for him by his troubling conversation with Miranda about ghosts. Most adults would dismiss a child's witterings about a paranormal sighting, but some certain adult, one among those at Egges...o...b.. this weekend, who possessed a terrible secret, who listened attentively to her description of the ghost-wearing pas beaucoup or tout blanc-might have reason to be fearful. Who wore pas beaucoup? Who wore tout blanc? Who might shine with ghostly sheen in a burst of lightning or pa.s.sing through a motion-sensor light? Roberto stripped and wreathed in marble dust? Pallid Dominic in cream trousers and shirt? Perhaps Hector in his terry-cloth robe, witnessed too (perhaps) by Jane Allan. Or that maligned intruder who had made a false confession? What might he wear at night? Too late Tom realised he had sent Miranda back onto the croquet court armed with a counterargument to Maximilian's a.s.sertion that the manifestation on the lawn was of Sir Edward Strickland. Would it spread? Would someone seek to do her harm?

When he got to his room, Miranda had been already tucked up on one side of the four-poster, eyes drooping with sleep, head nodding over her copy of Alice au manoir hante. The door he could only leave as he had found it, unsecured-there was a lock, but he had been given no key. He craved a cool breeze in the room, but he lowered and locked the window instead. Miranda perked up as he readied himself for bed. Striving for light conversation he solicited the wisdom of the Ouija board.

"We asked who strangled Max's uncle." Miranda yawned and readjusted the book on her lap.

"Really, darling, I don't want to harp on this but there is something very serious and sobering about a man's death-any human being's death."

"I know, Daddy. But it was Max who wanted to ask Ouija the question." She rubbed her eyes and yawned again.

Tom undressed behind a Chinese screen in silence, but he could feel the question rising in his mind like a bubble. Finally, despite his best intentions, he couldn't help himself: "Well, what did it say, then? The Ouija."

"It spelled LUCY."

Occult twaddle! "Max was pushing the whatsit, the planchette, wasn't he," Tom said as he removed his cast boot. "The way Grannie Kate does when you play in Gravesend."

"No."

"Well, it's nonsense anyway."

"Why couldn't it be her?"

"Lady Lucinda fforde-Beckett? Well, because ..." Tom could feel a blush rising from his neck, which he fought to suppress. Because she had been disporting with your shameful father on this very bed. "Because ... she's a woman."

"That's not a reason."

"What I mean is, I don't think she would be strong enough to ... you know."

"I'm going to be strong when I grow up." Miranda affected a biceps pose. "I'll beat any boy. You said not to hide my light under a bushel, Daddy. And I didn't. I won at croquet. Max didn't really mind, though."

"Well done, you."

"All us girls in Year Four think women should be able to do anything men do."

Tom decided for the pajamas Gaunt had left out the night before. "But is it really an advance for women if they behave as badly as men-who can behave very badly indeed."

"Shouldn't women have the right to have the chance to?"

Clever child. "Yes, you're right, of course," he sighed, tying the string of the pajama bottoms. "But Ouija boards aren't ... right, I mean. They're silly."

Very silly, he'd thought as Miranda fell quickly into sleep and his mind instead roiled over the day's events. The moon followed much the same path as the night before, silvering the bedspread, reminding him of his weakness, though his thoughts were not unalloyed with memory of the pleasure. A near hour of sleeplessness later, he had stooped to the strategy of sliding a chair under the doork.n.o.b, to stop intruders or at least wake him if an attempt were made. Was he being paranoid, he thought, and what sort of intruder was he barring? A strangler or a scarlet woman? The jabber of anxious dreams, trans.m.u.ted vicarishly, punctuated his restless sleep when he finally tumbled into it: He had prepared no sermon, he was late to church, he was in the pulpit with no underpants. When he awoke, the sun was in his room. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, looked around. His heart lurched.

No Miranda.

The chair was returned to its place, the door open a crack. His mind raced over labyrinthine Egges...o...b.. Hall, its myriad rooms, staircases, corridors, and crannies, almost all of them unexplored by him, alarmed as to where she might be. He flung back the bedspread and s.n.a.t.c.hed up his dressing gown from the bedside chair. One arm into one sleeve later and Miranda's head was poking through the door.

"Daddy, go back to bed."

"Why?" he replied, suppressing a gasp of relief, wrapping the gown around himself.