Mystery by the Sea: An utterly addictive English cozy mystery (A Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery Book 5)

by Verity Bright

  ‘That is on account of there being insufficient space, given the length of my legs.’

  She called out to the bulldog on the back seat, ‘That, and he’s worried you’ll crease his trousers terribly, Gladstone!’

  ‘Pheasants! Brake!’ Clifford said sharply as a procession of the stately birds stepped out of the hedgerow. She stamped on the brakes and grimaced as the car came to a juddering stop.

  He ran a gloved finger along his collar. ‘It seems those birds are doubly blessed. They have not only escaped the perils of the car but also the gun. The shooting season finished only four weeks ago.’

  She watched the birds step leisurely up the opposite bank and disappear into the tangled blackthorn hedge, the buds of its early white flowers brushing their long, striped tail feathers. ‘Buckinghamshire is such a beautiful county, Clifford. In its own way, it’s every bit as magical as some of the so-called exotic places I cycled through. Look at the Chilterns and Cotswolds so verdant, ever rising and falling, every skyline fringed with trees. And spring has such an exciting air about it, don’t you find?’

  Clifford turned in his seat to face her. ‘Indeed, my lady. However, the Rolls is still stopped at an angle in the middle of the road.’

  ‘Ah, so it is.’

  ‘Perhaps you might wish to swap seats?’

  Half an hour later Eleanor conceded that enjoying the picnic while Clifford drove was, in fact, a sound idea. With Gladstone’s front paws on her lap, his tail wagged ever more furiously with each waxed paper parcel she opened. ‘Gracious, Mrs Trotman has done us proud. Ham and egg pie, three types of sandwiches, those divine mini cheese-and-chive twists she makes and a Thermos of piping hot coffee.’

  Clifford reached behind the passenger seat and retrieved an oval leather case, which he held out to her.

  ‘Aha, and a small toast to kick the holiday off to a splendid start. Sherry, is it?’

  ‘A particularly fine Oloroso, my lady. His lordship’s favourite and his firm tradition on this very journey to the Grand Hotel, Brighton.’

  ‘Thank you, Clifford.’ She ran her finger along the little silver buckle of the case. ‘I wish he could be with us. Especially on my birthday.’

  ‘As do I, my lady. But he would heartily support your decision to take a rest at the seaside.’

  ‘A rest,’ she mused. ‘Now I do like the sound of that. No nasty business. No sleepless nights trying to work through a notebook’s worth of impossible clues. And definitely no heartache over a certain gentleman.’

  Clifford cleared his throat.

  ‘Over two certain gentlemen,’ she admitted, catching his eye and hastily looking away. ‘Anyway, I have decided I shall be a donkey ride and scandalous amounts of ice cream sort of girl for the duration of our little sojourn.’

  ‘That is heartening news, my lady.’

  They drove on in amiable silence save for Eleanor’s exclamations as she savoured yet another delicious mouthful and Gladstone’s soft whine for another titbit. Clifford peppered the journey with facts about the many sights they passed, her butler’s encyclopaedic knowledge never ceasing to amaze her.

  As the sleepy lanes of Buckinghamshire gave way to the more densely populated villages of Oxfordshire’s flint cottages, Eleanor delighted in imagining the families who inhabited them, their lives and loves. Then, in the outer reaches of Berkshire, Eleanor asked Clifford to slow as they came to a lane lined with giant rhododendrons, sporting pink, purple and deep-blue flowers.

  ‘Look at those, Clifford. They are so beautiful.’

  Clifford seemed unmoved by their beauty. ‘This lane borders Stratfield Saye House, my lady, once the home of His Grace, the Duke of Wellington.’

  ‘And he found time to organise his gardeners to create this wondrous display? Amazing.’

  ‘Perhaps you will find the next instalment of your sightseeing tour even more amazing, my lady.’ Clifford turned left onto a long, straight road lined on both sides with eighty-foot-high sequoia trees. ‘Planted as a memorial to His Grace.’

  ‘Wow!’ was all she could manage as she stared up at the hundred strong giant redwood trees. They reminded her of how much her late uncle had loved America, particularly the cowboys. He’d even gone so far as to ask Clifford to call him ‘Tex’ when it was just the two of them. She smiled. Uncle Byron really had been a proper English eccentric.

  Two hours further on, Eleanor was feeling contented but stiff and fatigued from lack of movement as the steep hills of Surrey ceded into the chalk downs of Sussex. As the Rolls crested the last white-scarred escarpment, she slapped the dashboard. ‘I win!’

  Clifford pulled the Rolls to a stop to let her drink in the view. Despite the weakness of the March sunshine, the distant green-grey sea shimmered like mermaid’s scales.

  ‘Congratulations, my lady. You did indeed see the sea first.’

  ‘And now I’m overcome by the urge to run down to the sea waving a bucket and spade. How peculiar.’

  ‘Perhaps arriving in elegant style at the Grand Hotel might be more appropriate? I can discreetly secure you the requisite sandcastle-making equipment later if you wish?’

  She laughed. ‘Under the guise of there being a fictitious niece or nephew lurking in the offing, no doubt. You know, I shall reach the ripe old age of thirty this week and, until now, I have never spent a holiday at the English seaside.’

  ‘I know, and I hope this one will create an album’s worth of happy memories to make up for all those you missed. But that won’t happen if we do not actually reach our journey’s end. With your permission?’

  As they finished descending the long hill into the main town, Brighton’s four-mile parade didn’t disappoint Eleanor’s expectations. With the sea to their right and the long run of exquisitely built Regency townhouses to their left, she felt she had been transported back in time to the 1820s. Punctuated only by a few narrow roads joining the parade, the elegant line of crisp, pale-stuccoed buildings looked wonderfully regal. On each floor, decorative bay windows and doors gave on to intricate scrollwork balconies with commanding views of the sea. The architectural era’s signature columns rose beside each smartly painted black or red front door. Many of them were entwined in climbing plants that would soon burst forth in fragrant flower, albeit several weeks after Eleanor and her staff were due to be back home.

  ‘This is the Grand, my lady.’ Clifford swung the Rolls into the long horseshoe entrance of the ten-storey palatial building.

  She looked around and then up. Above her soared a towering monolith of cream stone, a row of ornate balconies gracing the floor-to-ceiling windows of each room. The columned arches of the elegantly imposing square tower at each end of the roofline added even more grandeur.

  ‘Perfectly beautiful.’ She clapped her hands in excitement. ‘Now I suddenly feel about nine years old.’

  He turned to peer at her. ‘Perhaps that feeling might be contained until you are safely ensconced alone in your suite?’

  ‘So I can burn up some of my excitement by jumping up and down on the bed, you mean? I seriously doubt it.’ She noticed a frown on his face as he alighted from the car and came round to open her door. ‘What’s wrong, Clifford?’

  He pursed his lips as she stepped out. ‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ She didn’t mind opening her own door. After all, she’d done everything for herself before inheriting her uncle’s fortune. However, even she knew at a hotel as, well, grand as the Grand, a doorman would normally do so.

  Clifford’s frown deepened as they climbed the entrance steps and reached the red-carpeted ornate glass porch that ran the full width of the hotel.

  ‘No concierge either?’ Eleanor tutted. ‘Not quite the service I expected.’

  ‘Nor one you will be left to accept, my lady,’ Clifford said with a sniff as he held the door open for her and followed her inside.

  In the lobby, Eleanor paused. A disconcerting hush permeated the building. Stepping past the grand piano adorned with a lavish floral display,
her heels made no sound as the thick mulberry design Wilton carpet made it seem as if she were walking on air. The cream walls and white ceiling roses shone with the soft golden glow from the many rococo chandeliers. She caught Clifford’s eye and whispered, ‘Something feels very odd.’

  ‘Indubitably, my lady!’ He slapped the palm of his hand on the top of the brass bell on the lobby desk. Scowling at the lack of response, he pursed his lips. Eleanor glanced around the lobby. Where on earth was the staff?

  In one corner, a wiry, suntanned man with stained teeth perused the display of newspapers. Halfway down the scrollwork staircase, a curvaceous woman in a demure black-and-silver beaded dress with the deepest blue eyes Eleanor had ever seen paused with her hand on the polished oak rail.

  A curl of smoke rising up from one of the red velvet wingback chairs by the enormous fireplace caught Eleanor’s eye. With one impeccably tailored trouser leg slung casually over the other, a strong-jawed athletic man in a cream silk shirt and indigo tie held her gaze with a disconcerting un-English intensity.

  At the glass display cases of jewellery and silver giftware, an incongruous pair in belted overcoats seemed deep in a whispered argument. One towered over the other, scowling hard enough to make the other step back a few paces, revealing a pronounced limp.

  She shook her head. They were obviously all guests, not staff. Feeling decidedly uneasy, she looked down the corridor, only for her unease to increase. Four policemen were marching in her direction, two of them carrying something she couldn’t quite make out but that made her feel even more unsettled.

  Her attention was distracted as a rotund man in a striped suit flustered out of the door marked ‘Manager’s Office’. Clifford buttonholed him and told him in clipped tones what he thought of the lack of staff at their arrival.

  The manager apologised profusely. ‘The staff have been, er, detained unexpectedly to answer… to, er, attend to an unexpected matter. I will fetch…’

  Who, or what, the manager was going to fetch was lost on Eleanor as the four policemen drew level with her. With a start she recognised what two of them were carrying: a stretcher. And on the stretcher lay a body covered with a white sheet.

  A cold wash of sadness swept over her as she remembered attending to so many men during her time as a nurse during the war. Looking at the nearest policeman, she blanched at the green hue to his far too young face.

  As the leading stretcher-bearer passed her, he stumbled, causing the sheet to slip off the body.

  Eleanor automatically went to replace the sheet, but stopped in horror at the cold, dead eyes staring back at her. Light-headed, she tried to fight a rising tide of nausea. A strange buzzing filled her ears.

  And then she knew no more.

  Three

  ‘Cold. So very cold,’ Eleanor heard a disembodied voice mutter. It took a second to realise it had come from her own lips.

  She became aware of thick soft wool being tucked round her shoulders. Forcing her eyelids to open, she blinked repeatedly in the hope that everything would stop revolving. Distracted by another wave of nausea, she shuffled into a more upright position. She looked down at the thickly padded scrolling arm of a settee. Someone must have picked you up when you fainted and carried you here, Ellie.

  Thankfully, she could also make out the welcome sight of her butler standing at the other end, looking very concerned, and her bulldog curled up asleep by her feet.

  ‘Clifford, where am I?’ She drew her knees up to her chin and hung her head over them.

  ‘In one of the private sitting rooms at the hotel, my lady. You had a most perturbing and regrettable experience.’

  She felt her heart begin to pound and another icy wave engulfed her. She sat motionless, unable to process what her brain was telling her she’d seen.

  ‘A warm brandy, my lady.’ Clifford was immediately at her side and pressed a glass into her hand.

  Numb, she felt the hardness of the glass against her chattering teeth as she took a sip. As the fiery warmth trickled down her throat, she became aware of a man perched on the edge of a deeply buttoned mulberry armchair. He wore a nondescript grey suit, his bald crown illuminated by the ornate cream wall sconce above his head. With beady eyes set under heavy brows, his pencil moustache added to his already deeply mistrusting air.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, thinking he didn’t look like the fleeting glimpse she’d caught of the hotel’s manager.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a badge, which he flashed at her. ‘Detective Inspector Grimsdale, Brighton Criminal Investigation Division.’

  Eleanor felt a frisson of dread run up her spine.

  ‘Something in your manner is suggesting you are not here to check on my wellbeing.’

  He held up a small leather notebook. ‘Lady Swift, I have some questions for you relating to our enquiries. Are you feeling sufficiently recovered to answer questions regarding your involvement?’

  She sat up straighter, confusion in her eyes. ‘Involvement? I haven’t done anything other than arrive for a much-needed holiday only to receive the shock of my life. What do you mean “involvement”?’

  The inspector studied her face closely. ‘Just before you fainted, one of my constables distinctly heard you say…’ He looked down at his notebook. ‘“Hilary. It can’t be you!”’ He looked up sharply. ‘What did you mean by this? Who is this Hilary?’

  She stared at him. ‘Why, the… dead man, of course!’

  His eyebrows rose. ‘And how would you know the dead man’s name? Your butler here’ – he nodded in Clifford’s direction – ‘told me that you only just arrived at the hotel, and that you know no one here.’

  Eleanor swallowed hard. ‘That’s true… and yet… it would appear not.’ She shook her head in confusion.

  The inspector snorted in exasperation. ‘Lady Swift, do you know the deceased or not?’

  She caught Clifford looking at her with a puzzled expression. Of course, he doesn’t know either, Ellie. She sighed deeply. ‘Yes, I do. His name is Hilary Montgomery Eden. He is… was… my husband.’

  The look of surprise on her butler’s normally inscrutable face would have made her laugh in any other circumstances. Laughing, however, was the last thing on her mind. It seemed the inspector felt the same way as he looked up from his notebook. ‘Eden?’

  ‘Yes. Eden. Why is that surprising?’

  ‘Because the man my men will have now removed from the hotel while we have been talking was a Mr Geoffrey Painshill.’

  Eleanor shook her head vehemently. ‘That was Hilary. You can’t imagine for a moment I would be confused in recognising my husband?’

  ‘As you wish, but it might interest you to know that his passport matched the identity under which he checked in. So, obviously you are either wrong, or he had a fake passport. Perhaps you would like to reconsider your statement that he was your husband? I can arrange another viewing of the body?’

  ‘No, thank you. I would not like to reconsider, nor’ – she shuddered – ‘to see him again.’

  The inspector grunted. ‘So if he was your husband, his surname was, according to you, Eden. Why then do you go under another name, Lady Swift? Am I to deduce you were estranged?’

  ‘Very estranged.’ She shook her head in disbelief. This must be a nightmare, Ellie. You’ll wake up soon.

  The inspector’s voice cut into her thoughts. ‘And yet, I am supposed to believe it pure coincidence that you both arrived at this hotel within forty-eight hours of each other?’ He pulled a grey handkerchief from his jacket pocket and blew his nose. ‘Call me cynical but I am not a great believer of coincidences, Lady Swift. And, in this case, I find it improbable in the extreme.’

  Eleanor leaned forward. ‘Then you might not believe this either. But the reason I was so shocked to see Hilary’s… body…’ Aware of the wobble in her voice and the pounding in her chest, she accepted the small brandy top up Clifford held out to her.

  The inspector looked up f
rom his notebook. ‘I’m listening, Lady Swift.’

  She took a sip of brandy, closed her eyes and swallowed. Opening her eyes, she fixed them on the inspector. ‘The reason I was so shocked to see his body is because my husband died six years ago.’

  He held her gaze as he slowly put down his notebook and folded his arms. ‘I think you’d better start from the beginning, if you would be so kind? When, and where, did you first meet Mr Eden?’ His tone made it clear this was not optional.

  She took a long breath and swung her legs over the settee so that she was sitting up fully and facing the inspector. ‘I met him in South Africa, in Cape Town. I was working for Mr Thomas Walker at the time.’

  He nodded. Everyone had heard of Thomas Walker and his pioneering agency that arranged tours to exotic places for the rich and adventurous.

  ‘And this was when?’

  ‘1914, a few months before war broke out. He told me he was an officer in the South African Army. And… well, suffice to say we enjoyed a whirlwind romance and married shortly afterwards.’

  ‘And then?’

  Eleanor rubbed her hands over her cheeks at the recollection of that awful day. ‘He disappeared. Only a few weeks later.’ She bit her lip. ‘My husband turned out not to be an officer at all, but someone the South African Military Police were interested in… speaking to.’

  ‘Really? And what makes you think he died six years ago?’

  She took a sip of her brandy and swallowed hard. ‘Because he was arrested and shot for selling arms to the enemy shortly afterwards.’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘And yet the dead man I myself examined in room 204 less than an hour ago, you still claim to be your husband?’

  She nodded wearily. ‘I cannot even begin to account for that. It’s like living out an inexplicable nightmare.’

  He picked up his notebook and wrote for a moment. Without looking up, he addressed her. ‘So, there you were in South Africa, having received the news that your husband was a traitor—’

  ‘Inspector!’ Clifford stepped forward.