by Issy Brooke
A year! Adelia’s heart sank and she looked over at Theodore, who had arrived before her and had undoubtedly heard the story before. But he was nodding eagerly, apparently unconcerned by the amount of time that had elapsed since the death. She had assumed that the urgency with which they had been called for meant that the murder had been recent. How on earth could they solve a mystery that was already a year old?
“And what about the police?” she asked. “What did they say?”
“Buffoons!” blurted Theodore. And at the same time, speaking over Theodore, Bamfylde and Bernard both chortled, “Fools and the usual incompetents!”
Bernard said, “Indeed, fools. The police said the man had slipped, and impaled himself. It’s utterly preposterous. He was gouged through the neck with an eel spear. Have you seen the length of one of those things? It was down in the boathouse. We’ve all got moorings, you know. We’re ten miles from the coast but it’s a watery sort of place, this. No one slips and stabs themself on an eel spear, it simply does not happen. I even tried to do it to myself to prove it. I cut my face a little. But I certainly didn’t stab myself in the neck! Anyway, what was he doing down there in the boathouse at all?”
“Perhaps he was checking his boat?” Adelia said, a little alarmed that Bernard had apparently tried to impale himself in an experimental way. “You said that you all have moorings.”
“He never used his. And it was at night when it happened. You can’t tell me he was a secret night-poacher!”
“Do you get many poachers?” Bamfylde asked.
He was a good-looking young man and not at all the rake and libertine that Adelia and Theodore had once feared that he had become when they all lost touch for those lost years. He was the first-born of Theodore’s children, and only son, though his mother had died. Adelia, being Theodore’s second wife, had provided only daughters. For years, Bamfylde had led the life of a wealthy ne’er-do-well, but when they had finally caught up with him in London, they discovered he had a very strange secret indeed. He had become a painter, and hidden it from everyone for fear of bringing shame to the family – as if art was a matter of embarrassment, and not the whoring, gambling and drinking that he used to indulge in!
“Poachers?” Bernard said. “Oh, there are a few, though mostly they are poor men trying to fill out an empty pot on their family’s hearth and I, for one, turn a blind eye. This village is not what it ought to be. Empton, it’s a sad, poor place, hanging together by bare threads. The people are strange and inward-looking. They are not lazy, I would say, but they are almost indolent through lack of will and food and chances. I am not one of the major landowners. My family sold most of what they owned years ago; I’m a baron, certainly, but my influence is rather limited.”
Anne smiled at him sadly. “I know that you do what you can,” she murmured.
“Speaking of strange people,” Adelia said, seizing her chance at last. “There was a woman on the train. She helped us, actually, as we ended up on the wrong train at first. But I cannot really say if she were shy or downright rude.”
“What did she look like? Did she have the local accent?” Anne asked, suddenly alert.
“There was a hint of something in the way that she spoke,” Adelia said. “I cannot say for sure if it were local as I am not familiar yet with how people speak around here. She was of middling years, and well-dressed though out of fashion dreadfully. She was travelling in the same coach as ourselves so she was of some quality though she didn’t act with quite the courtesy of someone of the highest order. Perhaps a dash of grey in her hair, a very thin face, and large eyes…”
She was interrupted by Emily Johnson, who had to this point remained silent. She had a firm, rich voice, and spoke with authority.
“That, then, is Florence Spenning. And let me tell you one more thing, Lady Calaway. That woman, you may be assured, is the murderer of Walter Spenning. She did it for the money. There is your motive. They lived alone together. There is your opportunity. And she is much younger and fitter, giving her plenty of strength to do the dreadful deed. And I know, I know, that she absolutely cannot be trusted.”
Bernard laughed and Adelia watched how Emily Johnson’s eyes tightened. He said, “She could be a suspect, she certainly could! But we must examine all the options, dear Em.”
Emily’s voice lost its firmness and began to rise, a querulous note at the end of her words. “No, dear Bernard, I can assure you, I can assure you all, that there is no doubt that she did it. She is a sly, sneaking, loathsome worm of a woman…”
“Emily, please!” Anne said. “You must not exert yourself.”
“Must I not? Must I do this, and not that? Oh – I forget myself – do, please, carry on speaking and ignore everything I have said.” She slammed her fork down on her plate and pushed her chair back. “What would I know of such things?”
“Emily, sit back down!” Anne pleaded. “We will talk of other things.”
Bernard was less sympathetic. In a light-hearted tone, he said, “Yes, let us hear of the other murders that the celebrated Calaways have solved!”
It was not the right thing to say. Emily Johnson fled from the room, and Adelia saw how embarrassed her daughter felt.
And quite right, too. What must be simmering under that woman’s bosom to cause her to react so swiftly and strangely? Who on earth was this unpleasant spinster? The country seemed to be littered with them, and Adelia had encountered enough of them in previous cases to be highly suspicious of this one.
But Anne managed to corner Adelia later, after they had gathered in the drawing room for a few night-time drinks and some quiet conversation. Emily had not returned. Bernard was enthusiastically showing Theodore and Bamfylde some dusty old books with curious illustrations, and it gave Anne the chance to speak to Adelia.
She brought up Emily Johnson at once.
“You must forgive her, mamma, utterly and without question,” Anne said, sitting forward on her couch and resting her elbows on her knees. Her face had filled out since her angular youth, and there was a growing maternal cast to her cheeks which suited her very well. “Poor Emily is always like that. She will fly off the handle at absolutely nothing, but she has her reasons.”
“Who is she? A cousin of Bernard’s?”
Anne smiled and looked down. “No. She is the sister of … her. I mean she is the sister of Maria. Bernard’s first wife. You know that Emily is only thirty-one?”
“Good heavens! I thought that she must be ten years older than that. Goodness. So why does she live here? Has she no other family?”
Anne shook her head, and when she looked up, she was very serious. “She has not. She was betrothed to a man, who used to live locally, when Bernard and Maria were married. Bernard and Maria went off to Cambridge and he started his career. Then Maria died, and Bernard came back here for a short while, to mourn in the place he knew best, before he went back to the university. Emily was also here to help with arrangements, you know. Then Emily was – well, she was dreadfully unlucky in love and it wasn’t her fault but she was terribly let down. And she had no one else to turn to, so she moved into Bernard’s household. She looked after the house while he was away in Cambridge and she has stayed on since his second and final return.”
“Had she thought that she might…”
“Replace Maria? I doubt it! What a thought!” Anne smiled briefly. “She is so very much herself. From what I hear, she is unlike her sister was. And she hates everyone else. She loathes everyone without rhyme nor reason for it. If she takes against you, it isn’t personal. We all try to be accommodating, for she has suffered horribly. She is welcome here, in spite of it all. As is Bamfylde! Mamma, he is a fine young man.”
“Yes, he is. I think your papa is very proud of him.”
“It is awfully nice to meet a … brother,” Anne said, an awkward note creeping into her voice. “Though of course, siblings can be…”
She whipped her head around. The sibling in question was appro
aching, holding out a pamphlet covered in occult symbols.
“I say,” he said, “your husband is a collector of the oddest things. Doesn’t it scare you to have this sort of thing under the roof?”
“Oh, there are far scarier things than that in this house,” Bernard boomed, laughing as he came alongside Bamfylde. “Me, for example! Ha! Ha!”
They all laughed, and the chance for private conversation was lost. When Adelia went to bed much later, she was still wondering what else Anne was going to say about brothers and sisters.
2
Theodore rambled along the muddy lane and could not help puffing out his chest and jauntily swinging his cane. At his side was his son, his first-born son! And he was a famous artist! Well, not entirely famous – he exhibited under a pseudonym, Lord H – but even so, it counted as some kind of “fame”, surely! Theodore’s thoughts were littered with exclamations marks. He was so proud, and so full of love, and felt, at last, complete.
And to his shame, he could not possibly share these feelings with Adelia. For would this joy at the return of his son make it seem as if he valued his seven daughters less? Would Adelia not feel as if she had somehow failed in not providing him with the requisite male heirs? She had not failed but society, he knew, judged her anyway.
She would not understand his current state of mind, for he hardly understood it himself. His love for his daughters had not dimmed, but his heart had expanded even further to include his son, and Bamfylde filled a hole that Theodore had long denied even existed. Bamfylde was not a replacement. He was an addition. A completion. Theodore was, finally, achieving a kind of peace.
Or he would have been at peace, but Bernard Blaisdell-Smith was keeping up a constant commentary as the three of them strode together along the narrow, twisting lane.
“Do you see that spire up ahead? It’s on a hill, that church,” Bernard said.
Bamfylde laughed. “That’s not a hill, that’s a slight dimple. A mole made it.”
“This is Norfolk, lad! Now, when you get a church on a hill, you may be assured that once there was a site of pagan interest there. It will be dedicated to the Archangel Michael, I can promise you. The early church builders here knew what to do, you see, they knew to build their new temples on the places where the people were already accustomed to come and worship. So we know that the site is an ancient one. Oh, older than Christianity, and harbouring strange powers.”
Bernard veered off, suddenly, to the left, along a lane even more narrow than the last. Oak trees ranged along both sides and it was like descending into a tunnel. The spring light was soon shut out.
“Are we not going to the church?” Theodore said in confusion.
“Not at all! We have no business there, and anyway, if the vicar there is anything like the vicar in our own place, I’d rather avoid him. Reverend Thubron is still on at me about tithes or some nonsense. I’d rather avoid him. He does go on. No. I want to show you much more interesting things. There’s an old boundary stone here – look! Boundaries are so interesting. And when we get further up, we’ll find a sacred well. Truly sacred! And then you’ll see.”
He bounded on, burbling about ley-lines and old tracks and how everything was joined up in the landscape, citing the wisdom of the ancient Britons and occasionally mentioning Druids as if they were still around, and lurking behind the next oak tree with their sickles and their robes.
They all gathered around the well and tasted the water, which was remarkably fresh and clear. Then Bernard stopped in the middle of his flow about stone circles – none of which were to be found in Norfolk anyway – and changed the subject.
“But you want to know about Spenning, don’t you! That’s why we came out here – you must stop me when I start on about my antiquarian stuff, you know. Just throw a clod of earth at my head, you really must. Bounce it off my dense skull, I shan’t be offended. My students used to have to forcibly prevent me from speaking. Otherwise I shall bore you all till teatime, and then where shall we be? Hungry! Hey? Right, then! Come along! To the village! I must warn you,” he added. “It’s a horrible place, Empton. Just horrible. It ought not to be, and maybe once it was a fine place, but now…”
Theodore and Bamfylde had to scamper to keep up. Bernard, for all his years, was driven by some unstoppable force of energy, clambering over fences for short-cuts, flailing his arms at bulls as he invaded their fields, and generally striding along at a great pace. He had a knack of crossing boggy ground by bouncing from hummock to hummock. Theodore kept plunging his foot into brown, cloying mud. His socks were soaked. Bernard seemed to stay dry.
Bamfylde, being younger and fitter, kept up alongside Bernard but Theodore had to drop back and take his time. He reflected on what he knew about the case so far and tried to ignore the squishing feeling in his boots. He had seen Adelia’s face the previous night, when she had heard the case was already a year old. He, too, had some misgivings about the same thing, but he was enjoying spending time with his son and his son-in-law, and was happy to take the investigation on as a bit of a diversion.
Bernard hadn’t put any pressure on him to solve it. “I know it’s an old case,” he had said. “And I know there’s hardly any chance of you finding out what really happened. It’s just been preying on my mind for so long, and I have been following your new career with great interest. After your last success, I thought to myself, you know, this chap might be just the ticket.”
“I hope that I am,” Theodore had replied. “Do you have any personal connection with the deceased?”
“Absolutely none. Barely met the fellow. I wouldn’t have wanted to. He kept himself to himself, just him and his little wife, gathering up money and spending not a shilling. Now, if I had a shilling to spend, I would! I don’t let coins gather dust in my purse.”
“So your interest is purely …”
Bernard had shrugged. “Idle. Yes, idle is the best word for it. I have an idle, passing interest in it. Oh yes, on a moral level, I can bleat on about justice and so on. I could dress it all up in fancy posturing and talk about how a murderer has walked free. But if I am honest, I am simply curious. And you know, I think that’s enough reason, don’t you?”
Theodore’s remembrances came to an end as he finally caught up with the other two men. They were standing at the gates to a large grand house encircled by a high and well-maintained wall. It was set a little apart from the village, with a small wood of hawthorns opposite the main gates.
“Is this where Spenning lived?” Theodore asked.
“No, no, not at all! This place has been looked after. It’s the only decent house in Empton and I am including my own in that, you know; I know our Litton is falling down around our ears, at least at the edges – you haven’t see the worst of it yet, not in daylight – but it can’t be helped. No, no, the man who lives here is a rather interesting one.”
“For the investigation?”
“For the investigation, indeed. The gentleman of this residence is called Edwin Calcraft and he’s … well, I think that you ought to meet him. Let us pay him a call!”
“How is he connected?” Theodore insisted as the irrepressible Bernard made for the imposing main doors.
Bernard slowed just a little, and said in a slightly less booming tone, “They were once in business together, this Calcraft and that Spenning – long ago!”
Ahh, thought Theodore. Now that is certainly relevant.
The dark blue double doors swung open and a small, portly manservant greeted them with a warm formality. He knew Bernard by sight, and invited them all to wait by the fire in the large hall while he sought out the master of the house. No mention was made of a mistress, and as Theodore gazed around at the curiously-furnished room, he thought that Edwin Calcraft was surely a bachelor. He whispered as much to Bernard, who laughed as quietly as he could.
“A widow, in fact, but widowed for so long that you might as well call him a lifelong bachelor and have done with it. Like the way he’s done th
e place, do you?”
“I am not entirely sure. Why…”
But Theodore’s question was cut off by the arrival of a dapper man who walked like a soldier but who was dressed like the very theatrical stereotype of a man from far-flung China. He had a neatly clipped moustache and whiskers on his cheeks, and his boots clip-clopped across the tiled floor as if he were on a parade ground. But above his boots skimmed a bright red embroidered robe, adorned with dragons and swirling clouds, and his head was topped off with a strange red cap.
Bamfylde cleared his throat. Theodore slid his gaze sideways but he was pleased to see his son was keeping a straight face. Theodore himself was struggling to remain composed.
Bernard didn’t appear to be remotely surprised by the vision before them. “Calcraft, my old man! How are you keeping these days? Are you well? Do you need any more of that chutney yet?”
“Your good lady wife’s chutney is to die for, and I am grateful for every jar that comes my way. I should eat it with a spoon, straight out of the jar, if I could. And these gentlemen are…?”
“My father-in-law has come to stay! This is Theodore Caxton, the Earl of Calaway. Gentlemen, if I may present Colonel Edwin Calcraft.”
Bernard seemed to have forgotten to introduce Bamfylde but before Theodore could rectify it, Calcraft spoke.
“Retired. You can ignore the Colonel. It is an affectation to insist upon the rank and I shall not do so. Call me plain Mr Calcraft, if you please. You are all most welcome.”
There was an awkward pause. All four men stood in the hall. Theodore thought that they might be invited into a smoking room perhaps, or a parlour and given refreshments, but the way that Calcraft was dressed suggested he was having an very informal day – in which case, he ought not have come out to greet them.
But widowers did get strange if left to their own devices in a remote Norfolk house, perhaps.