‘Are these our new guests you’re showing round? Where’s that fool Gerald gone now?’ he demanded. ‘That’s his job.’
Presumably Gerald was the absent manager, I thought, as Harry frowned and the rest of the old man emerged, a bit the worse for wear, unshaven and exuding an unpleasantly strong odour of sweat and alcohol. But this was the voice of authority and I was conscious that Sadie had moved from my side into the shadows, that servant’s hat pulled well down.
Harry was shuffling his feet, looking unhappy. He wasn’t pleased at this sudden apparition.
‘My Uncle Wilfred,’ he murmured to us and to the old man, rather loudly, speaking the words clearly as if he was also deaf, ‘Just showing our guests to their rooms.’ His uncle did not move but remained staring at us, and Harry obviously feeling an introduction was necessary said loudly: ‘This is Mrs Macmerry from Edinburgh and her maid.’ I was conscious of Sadie melting closer into the shadows.
Uncle Godwin took both of us in in one long stare. He wasn’t impressed and said to Harry, ‘Tell our guests how lucky they are not to be working-class folk who made up the bulk of holidaymakers when I was young.’
Harry smiled uncomfortably and seemed about to say something when Uncle Godwin brushed him aside and stood in front of me, a captive audience. ‘In my day, whole families crowded into single rooms in a tenement, often all that was on offer they were glad to take it. Landladies could pick and choose and they filled their houses to bursting point. During the Glasgow fair fortnight, it was not unknown for desperate families to arrive on the island and on finding no rooms left they would sleep outdoors in the Skeoch Woods. Not missing much, since some of the accommodation was just chalk marks on the floor showing the area they were to sleep in.’
He paused, grinning, and the whisky odour increased volubly. ‘Aye, as more folk rolled in, the marks were rubbed out and packed closer together. The lucky ones who could afford to negotiate with private houses often included the owner giving attendance. The beginnings of the normal bed and breakfast ritual—’
It was quite an alcohol-induced speech as an introduction to the hotel.
As his uncle paused for breath, staggering somewhat, Harry seized the opportunity to escape and hustled us down the corridor murmuring, ‘Sorry about that.’ Deprived of his audience, Uncle Godwin’s door banged shut behind us, and Harry’s smile was one of relief.
‘He doesn’t appear in public much these days, getting rather frail, losing the place a bit, but he still likes to keep an eye on things so we let him pretend he is still in charge. That keeps him content.’
We had reached our rooms. He opened the door and ushered us inside, his hand on Sadie’s arm. ‘I hope you will be happy with your stay with us. You’ll meet Gerald later.’ And pointing to the bay window, ‘Best view in town,’ he added proudly.
Setting down our indifferent luggage he turned to me: ‘Madam, Sadie’s—I mean, your maid’s room is through there.’ A bow. ‘I expect you are weary after the journey so I have arranged to have afternoon tea sent to you.’
As the door closed, Sadie took off the hat and flung it on a chair.
‘Phew. That was close! When old Godwin looked out, I thought he recognised me again. I had to keep out of sight, but I think it was his drunken state I have to thank. That saved me.’ She sighed and looked worried. ‘This is going to be a problem.’
‘After twenty years, surely not?’
She shrugged. ‘I thought he would be dead by now.’
‘Well, he is an old man, and probably his eyesight isn’t all that good, either,’ I said consolingly. ‘And you were just a servant, after all, one maid among many,’ I reminded her, ‘so what are you worried about?’
‘Nothing,’ she frowned. ‘Just thinking out loud.’
By the time we had unpacked and hung our clothes into the depths of adequate wardrobes, a tap on the door heralded the maid with afternoon tea, delicious scones and cakes. If that was an example of the standard of food we might expect, I prepared to relax and relish every moment of staying in such luxurious surroundings.
Sadie replaced her second cup of tea on the tray, pushed aside the tempting biscuits with a sigh and said:
‘I have something to tell you, Rose. Something I think you should know.’ She frowned. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I told Harry that you were a famous authoress writing a book about the island. If word gets around that you are a lady detective, and I am sure it might, then everyone will be dying to tell you about Rothesay’s still most talked about crime. Although it’s twenty years ago, old Godwin will certainly remember it.’ She paused, sighed again. ‘Harry would just be a youngster, he’s quite a bit younger than me – I can’t even remember him.’
I doubted if Harry would have been born then, but said: ‘Don’t worry, I am only concerned with domestic crimes in Edinburgh, and well used to dealing with these kinds of encounters.’ However, I was rather worried about this false identity and being passed off as an authoress. That was an unknown territory, the additional famous category would be a considerable embarrassment, especially if asked about the books I had written.
Regarding my real profession, however, Sadie’s concern was unnecessary. I reassured her that I frequently met such people in Edinburgh, the more genteel curious to know what had led me to choose such a strange and outlandish profession for a lady, and how I discovered clues that led to a criminal’s apprehension, while the bolder were eager to know if I had solved any particularly gruesome murders and were eager for an eyewitness account I might have of hangings.
‘I’m only concerned with the present,’ I told her, ‘but I’ll be ready to listen politely to yesterday’s crimes.’
Sadie frowned but she didn’t look happy and after a moment’s hesitation she shook her head and said: ‘This case was twenty years ago.’
This must be the case that Jack had mentioned as she continued: ‘It drew more than the usual rather morbid interest because the main suspect was a sixteen-year-old girl, Sarah, Lady Vantry’s step-daughter, who it was alleged but never proved had pushed the only son and next laird down the stairs at Vantry – to his death.’
She paused and I nodded. ‘Murder has to have a motive, Sadie, and rivalries between siblings are not all that rare. You just have to look at the history books. Kings and princes were at it all the time—’
She held up a hand. ‘Do you know who it was, this Sarah Vantry?’
I shook my head. ‘I never read anything about it. Twenty years ago I was in America and we didn’t have the luxury of newspapers where we lived in Arizona and they certainly wouldn’t have reported a murder in Bute.’ I smiled at her. ‘Go ahead, I am quite intrigued.’
Sadie was staring at the window, biting her lip, hesitating as if searching for the right words and sighing, she drew a deep breath, turned and looked at me.
‘That girl, Sarah Vantry. It was me.’
CHAPTER SIX
I stared at her in open-mouthed astonishment, unable to take in what I was hearing. Sadie Brook was telling me about a murder in which she had been personally involved, the accused was none other than herself, my companion and new friend who had suggested this holiday in Bute.
Sadie Brook, better known in Rothesay by her baptismal name Sarah Vantry.
She was shaking her head, trembling, her eyes tearful. ‘I know it is awful for you, a bit of a shock.’
The revelation was more than a shock, it was horrifying. I could find no words.
I looked at her, wide-eyed, speechless, as she went on: ‘I decided you had better be told right away. After all, there might be someone we meet in Rothesay who remembers me. I can tell you, I was really scared when the first person we met happened to be Harry’s uncle. I’m sure he remembered me, that’s why I tried to keep out of sight.’
I had been holding my hand to my mouth with shock. I tried to return to normality and looked at her intently and with a vestige of calm, trying to see this thirty-six-year-old woman as a sixteen-ye
ar-old girl and potential murderess.
Another shock wave, one for immediate consideration. I knew for a fact that where local murders are concerned, residents in small communities have particularly long memories, even though the facts become somewhat more lurid and subject to exaggeration over the years – what Jack calls subject to conversational embroidery.
I blinked rapidly, wondering if I would ever recover from the shock of this moment. The woman sitting beside me at the window was related to Mrs Brook, Pa’s highly respectable housekeeper at Sheridan Place, a well-beloved substitute-mother for my sister Emily and me when he was called away on official duties during our Edinburgh holidays.
I was prepared to bet that Mrs Brook had never known or dwelt on the fact that she had a most remarkable niece. Sarah Vantry, a girl whose name in Bute was synonymous with murder. She had kept that secret very dark indeed. Small wonder that this niece Sadie was so competent and such an excellent housekeeper, having started off earning her livelihood as a servant at fourteen years old, and she probably owed her social accomplishments to the big house at Wemyss Bay and its wealthy, cultured inhabitants.
Fourteen? There were still two years to be accounted for in which she had returned to Rothesay, stopped being a servant and become a potential murderess. This would take some explaining and accepting when I got back home. I could hear myself telling Jack this extraordinary story. He would be astonished, that’s for sure, and to put it mildly, shocked that a woman once tried for murder had been in charge of his precious little daughter, Meg.
Sadie was watching me, biting her lip, awaiting my reactions. She shrugged and having cast aside the navy-blue hat, her maid’s disguise, she looked more like the Sadie Brook I knew. ‘I had to tell you because … well, as I said, what if someone remembered me?’
I shook my head. ‘That is most unlikely, you are worrying about that quite unnecessarily. A sixteen-year-old girl can change a lot in twenty years. That’s a long time, Sadie,’ I insisted.
She looked very doubtful and not at all consoled but I believed the possibility of recognition was remote indeed, that the physical appearance of even quite striking sixteen-year-old girls will be obliterated by the passage of time, forgotten and changed beyond recognition at thirty-six. Although I could not tactfully say so, she certainly did not fit into that category.
She was shaking her head, insisting: ‘You never can tell. And when I saw old Godwin out there, I was sure he recognised me, despite the hat.’ She gulped. ‘You see, he was rather fond of me, wanted to make something of it and tried to seduce me, got me into a corner on more than one occasion. I had to fight him off – once when we were alone in the kitchen, I used the frying pan.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I wonder if he still has the scar?’ A pause. ‘Oh, Rose,’ she said desperately, ‘don’t you see? I just had to tell you, it would be terrible if you had heard the story from someone else. What on earth would you have thought of me then?’
I shook my head, still trying to work out what I thought of her now, feeling that discovering this version of Sadie was going to be like peeling the layers off an onion.
‘You had better tell me the whole story,’ I said, trying to sound businesslike, for those were the words I used to calm prospective clients.
‘All of it. Right from the beginning,’ I added, pouring a cup of now lukewarm tea remaining in the pot, wishing for something more fortifying while trying to persuade my mind not to be distracted by longing for the peace, recently offered but now utterly shattered, of the magnificent view across the bay.
Right from the beginning, I thought, wondering how much of her glowing reference from Mrs Brook by which she had been introduced into Solomon’s Tower as our housekeeper was true. Surely Mrs Brook must have known?
Sadie sighed. ‘My father was a younger son of the Vantrys, not in line to inherit the title. The usual procedure. The heir, the first one out, gets that, the second goes into the army or navy, the third takes what is left over. In this case tragedy struck and the two elder sons died in childhood, one in a riding accident and the other of the sweating fever. So it was left to my father, who was a bit of a lad; he got married, not for love but one of those dynastic arrangements with property and dowries involved.’
She paused. ‘Are you still with me? When he died, Lady Adeline didn’t want to appear like the wicked stepmother, she didn’t immediately send me off to an orphanage, that would have ruined her popularity in her role as lady of the manor. Even her husband’s illegitimate small girl had her uses. Anyway, I had a fairly miserable time: I don’t remember much about my childhood except – except trying to keep out of her beloved son Oswald’s way.’
‘Your half-brother?’
She smiled wryly. ‘There was some doubt about that, about Oswald’s paternity, I mean. He was older than me and I learnt from an old serving woman who used to attend to my bruises that Lady Adeline had had an affair. Oswald was the result, my father found out, met my mother and had me on the side and that was why the marriage finally ended. When he fell ill and was dying, the result of a chill from a sailing accident, he said that as the only surviving Vantry, it should come to me. I gathered that there was quite a scandal but Lady Adeline’s adultery could not be proved. I was illegitimate and my poor father couldn’t even produce my mother, who had abandoned me, gone off and married someone else. So I was out of the running.’
She was silent, biting her lip and I said: ‘Tell me about Oswald.’
She sighed. ‘Oswald had always hated me, he was cruel, used his hands and feet. One day he went too far, thought he had killed me, ran to her screaming. I was lying still and bleeding on the ground. He had hit me too hard.
‘I think she was scared, perhaps she was sorry for me or maybe it was only the family scandal if I had died and Oswald had killed me that worried her. Anyway, I was sent away, to foster parents on the other side of the island, a farm down at St Blane’s. They were kind enough and a little girl was useful, as I discovered, an unpaid servant …’
(Wait a moment. Kind enough? This was a different story to the one she had always hinted, about being abused by her foster father.)
She went on: ‘I was strong enough to work, milking cows and looking after the hens. I even learnt how to wring their necks when required for the pot.’ She shuddered. ‘My other advantage was that I could read and …’ pausing, she stretched out long-fingered, elegant hands and regarded them approvingly, ‘I could write a very good letter, which was also useful.’ She sighed and looked out across the bay. ‘I suppose I was happy, we were fairly isolated and the only visitor I remember was a woman – I think they called her Doris – who visited quite often. She always brought a wee present and used to cry over me. She was kind but I found it a bit embarrassing.
‘I never thought about the future until the day the farm burnt down four years later, the family decided farming was over for them, they sold the stock and decided they would start again in Glasgow. They were tired of island life. Lady Adeline had heard of the tragedy, of course, and asked me if I wanted to go with them. If not, I could come back to Vantry with her.’
‘Did you ever see this woman Doris again?’
She shook her head ‘No.’
‘You never knew anything more about her? She never got in touch with you?’
‘No. I wasn’t really all that interested, remembering those tears and the soggy hugs.’
I was well ahead of her, having already decided that Doris was most probably her disgraced mother. Her ladyship had also realised Sadie’s potential, as she continued:
‘Lady Adeline had a reputation to keep up. She was still a Rothesay worthy, on all the committees, her beloved only child Oswald was at public school and perhaps she was lonely anyway, and I would be useful. As well as my neat handwriting I was good at sewing, and she liked me to read to her in the evenings, she had a taste for romantic stories. I suppose I was happy enough.’
Pausing, a frown darkened her face. ‘All this ended when Oswald cam
e back. He was a big, strong lad, bigger than me, and when his mother was absent he was back at his old tricks again, which he was careful to keep from her. However, after a couple of years I had had enough of Oswald and being isolated at Vantry. One of their friends came on a weekend visit, he was very rich and had just taken a house in Wemyss Bay. He seemed to like me and as a promised governess had taken ill and had to return to Glasgow he asked Lady Adeline if I could be spared to come back with them and help to look after their children.’
She stopped, looked at me and sighed. ‘You know that part. I stayed with them until I heard that Adeline was ill. She had been in hospital and asked if I would come back to Vantry and look after her while she got her strength back. What I didn’t know, and no one told me, was that she was having some sort of mental breakdown – a failed second marriage and that sort of thing.’
A weary shake of her head, remembering. ‘That was a fatal mistake. Oswald hated me, now he had me at his mercy, with a sick mother who couldn’t intervene. Then one day, he decided to finish me for good. We had a fight and he tried to push me down the stairs. I wriggled free and he missed his footing, down he went … broke his neck.’
She looked at me, stretched out her hands dramatically. ‘It was a big, sweeping staircase, even grander than the one in the hotel here, but something like it, with steeper steps and a marble floor below. As you might imagine, his mother was out of her mind, she just screamed and screamed, claimed that it was no accident. Her nephew was there. They had heard us quarrelling and me shouting I hated Oswald and wished he was dead.’
She shook her head. ‘That was true. I couldn’t deny it. You must know yourself, Rose, children do that all the time and don’t really mean it. I did mean it and I shouted those words every time he came near me but Adeline said I had deliberately murdered her poor boy. By this time, she had this further axe to grind. She had remarried while I was with the foster parents, a remote Vantry cousin living in the south of England, and although he had left her long before my arrival, their marriage was still valid – he was a philanderer and she had thrown him out, but she reckoned that as I would probably go to prison or hang for murder, legally Vantry would come to him. He had kept in touch and through the years constantly begged to be forgiven. That all fitted with her sighs when I read romances to her and I guessed that she still wanted him.’
Murder Lies Waiting Page 4