by Issy Brooke
He was profoundly grateful, all over again, that his mother and his wife were close friends. Popular comedy would suggest that this was not usually the case. He had certain reservations, however, about the arrival of that Harriet Hobson. She was a woman that he suspected of ... well, he was never entirely sure of what he was suspecting her, but he suspected her nonetheless. She was, in general, a bad influence. But he could not express that thought aloud. A bishop’s wife, a bad influence? The suggestion was preposterous. She was a regular church-goer, a patron of umpteen charities, a visible beacon of hope to all the community. Everyone praised her. Yet he could not shake the nagging feeling that she was close to his wife in a way that excluded him. He knew, rationally, that was what female friendship was. He had no need to be jealous. It was a petty and unworthy emotion that had no place in his logical life.
Yet here it was.
He pressed his lips together and frowned to himself as he managed to find his way through some twisting corridors on the ground floor at the back of the house. He burst out into the gentle summery air, and breathed deeply, his frown clearing. He had to trust to his wife and his mother to resist Mrs Hobson’s vagaries.
Yet when all three women got together and alcohol was opened, he was forever being put in mind of Macbeth’s three witches, and that was an unworthy thought.
He glanced up at the tall walls of the castle, Macbeth still on his mind. Mondial Castle wasn’t one of those romantic crenelated structures that dotted the Scottish highlands. It was a blocky and plain sort of place, which actually harked back to the Norman Conquest in some parts, with tiny arrow-slit windows and sloping thick walls. But the bulk of the building was comparatively modern and had been built in the eighteenth century when the Haveringham family who held the Mondial titles and lands grew tired of large draughty halls and dark rooms. Since then, Mondial Castle had been continually improved with each new invention that came along. The kitchens were said to be a marvel of cooking technology and certainly Mondial had no problem in retaining staff – usually. Theodore recollected that the maid he had encountered in the breakfast room had said that “Maud has run off”. He wondered if she had come back.
He kept out of sight of the windows and headed into the cover of a shrubbery where he found a gardener at work trimming the edges of a neat square of hidden lawn. The man straightened up and regarded Theodore with a direct gaze. He was very old, and clearly had little time for forelock-tugging.
“You’re doing a fine job, man,” Theodore said. He appreciated a nice straight lawn.
“Thank you, my lord.”
“I want to ask you what you might have seen on the day of the attack.”
The gardener shook his head. “Nothing, my lord. I was on the front driveway, attending to the bedding plants around the fountain. Jem was with me, raking the gravel. He’ll vouch for me, if you like.”
“Oh, I am not accusing you of anything. I am simply trying to piece together everyone’s movements. Did you see Tobias Taylor, the valet, at all that day?”
The gardener narrowed his eyes. “It would be a rare thing to see him out here at all. The sunlight never touches that man’s skin.”
“So if he were out and about, then he would have been noticed and remarked upon,” Theodore mused, mostly to himself. He thanked the man vaguely and began to walk around the shrubbery towards the biggest rose garden, aiming to follow the route that Sir Henry had described to him. He needed to start at the patio where Sir Henry said he had left the castle. He glanced back and saw that the gardener had picked up his long-handled tool and was following at a respectful distance. Then the gardener stopped and squinted.
“Someone’s hurrying up to the house,” he said.
Theodore recognised his wife at once and he stepped out to intercept her. When she saw him she changed tack and rushed back across the lawn. She was almost out of breath as she said, “I was coming for you! Hurry, this way. We were walking in the gardens and we’ve found a clue!”
“A clue! You wonderful woman. Show me. You, there, will you come with us?”
The gardener nodded and Adelia said, “Yes, please come, Brody. You will be useful.”
“Brody?”
Theodore realised his wife was smiling at the gardener who was more than happy to follow them. How did she know everyone’s name? Women’s brains were smaller than men’s yet she seemed to hold so much more in hers. He couldn’t even say that his medical training meant there was less space in his head for domestic issues because some women were even training as doctors now, and were apparently doing rather well. It was a mystery, for sure.
His musings were put aside as they reached the out-of-the-way spot where Dido and his mother were waiting for them. His mother was looking smugly pleased with herself and she pointed her stick into a pile of leaves. Theodore spotted the partly-burned clothing immediately, and threw up his arm to prevent the gardener from blundering right into the pile and ruining all his evidence.
“Stay back, everyone! I want to look at every inch of this scene in careful detail!”
Everyone took three or four paces backwards and fell into utter silence.
This was it, Theodore told himself. Here was his first piece of potential physical evidence. He circled the pile of leaves. He spiralled in closer and closer, fixing each stage in his memory. Eventually he found himself on his knees, finally allowing himself to touch and move the leaves and the clothing. He sat back on his haunches and nodded to himself.
“Well?” his mother demanded, breaking the respectful silence with no regard to his concentration. “So who’s the murderer?”
“Mother, please! The investigation is in its very early stages. I will need to examine this clothing much more closely.” He gathered up the ragged thick fabric which seemed to have been a jacket, and the thinner scraps of pale linen which he guessed was a shirt. As he got to his feet, he noticed the crowd had grown a little larger. Standing next to Brody, the gardener, was a neat young woman in a black and white maid’s outfit, and she was standing close enough to Brody to suggest some association. Yes, Theodore thought; the nose is the same. She is his daughter or perhaps his niece.
Brody saw they were under scrutiny and he nudged the girl. “Go on, tell him. He’s not like the other one so don’t be scared.”
She shuffled forward and said, “Sir, if it please my lord, sir, I wish to confess to telling an untruth and please don’t have me dismissed, sir, but I was following orders and it is hard to know which way is right!”
“I cannot and would not have you dismissed,” he reassured her. “It’s not my place. Only Mondial can do that.”
“And my lord certainly won’t tell your master,” Adelia said smoothly. Theodore thought that had been obvious but the girl looked relieved at his wife’s words anyway.
“My lord, when my master called us in to speak in front of you earlier, I am afraid we were not all as clear as we ought to have been, but it was hard to speak out.”
“Yes,” Theodore said. “His questions were, regrettably, all wrong. He’s a good chap, my son-in-law, but has no idea about people.”
Adelia stifled a cough. It probably meant something but he ignored her. He went on, saying, “So why don’t you tell me now, in total confidence, what you could not tell me before?”
“Taylor, the valet, he wasn’t in my lord’s rooms all day, sir, even though that’s where he says he was. He was running up the back stairs from the kitchens when I was going down with the sheets, and he ran past me. Then when I got to the laundry room, I was putting the sheets into bundles to be collected and the laundry woman who comes for them was just coming in saying she’d seen folks running and shouting. And so we both went outside and someone said there’d been shooting and there was an injury and I thought it was to do with hunting, but it wasn’t.”
Theodore tried to get the timeline straight in his head. He said, “Did you hear any shots?”
“No, my lord, but I was inside at the back at the
castle down the back stairs and you can’t hear a thing through those old walls.”
“Have you any idea how long had passed between the shots and when you saw Taylor?”
“No, sir. But the laundry woman said she heard nothing, neither, and it had taken her five minutes to come up the driveway in the cart and she had a boy driving it and he had heard nothing neither.”
“Oh, this is excellent. The shots must have been fired at least five minutes before Taylor was then seen running up the back stairs back to Mondial’s rooms. Do you know if anyone saw him outside?”
“I don’t, sir, but I’ll ask around if I can. Except I must be careful, sir, because some of the other servants will tell my lord everything and it’s not always easy to know who to trust.”
He heard his mother tut at that statement. “That is no way to run a household.”
“Grandmamma, I do my best!” Dido protested. “I had no idea that ...”
The poor maid went white. She had not seen her mistress standing in the background just behind the older Lady Calaway and she looked as if she wanted to crumple to the ground. “My lady, my lady, I should never have said a thing...”
“No, you have been right to speak up and you are very brave,” Dido said.
Still the girl quivered. Brody put his arm around her. “You’ll be all right. My lady will see to it.”
“I will,” Dido said fiercely. “Please let it be known that I am always available if there are any problems and ...” She tailed off.
Grace stepped in smoothly. “Just remember that the lord of the house doesn’t know half of what goes on and what it’s like to actually work the way that you do, so if you have a choice, my girl, you choose my lady here. She is my granddaughter and she will see you put right.”
The girl nodded. Brody began to turn her around, and they froze.
One more person was heading their way, and he had a look of frustration on his face as if he had been searching for them for some time.
Lord Mondial was on his way across the lawn.
“SO THIS IS WHERE ALL my guests are hiding!” Mondial announced as he reached them. He smiled but Theodore wasn’t sure that it quite looked genuine. There was something about his eyes, he thought. Something missing.
“What’s that you’ve got there, Calaway?” Mondial said.
Theodore could not hide the clothing in his arms. “Someone’s been burning something,” he said. “I don’t know if it was missed on the first search of the grounds, or whether it’s been done since then.” His money was on the latter.
“Good heavens. Brody? What’s the meaning of this?”
The gardener shook his head. “I cannot say, my lord.”
“I found it,” Theodore’s mother said, jabbing randomly with her stick. “No one knew it was here until I spotted it.”
“Someone did,” Mondial replied. “Whoever put it there knew it was there. Whose clothing is it?”
“I don’t know, but I am going to find out,” Theodore told him. “They have tried to burn it but being made of wool and linen, it hasn’t flared up and been destroyed as they might have wished. Leaves have been piled on which have burned out before the fabric could get going, and so I believe in the end, the perpetrator has simply piled more leaves on top and left it, hoping that it would stay hidden. Perhaps they intended to return and burn it again but the recent rains have prevented any of that.”
“We could hide in the bushes and apprehend them when they come back!” his mother said.
“I rather fear it is too late for such subterfuge,” he replied. “But there remains enough of the garments for me to perhaps discover who owned them.”
“But why?” Mondial said. “Do you honestly think that the attacker stripped himself of his clothes before fleeing? Is that what you are hoping? We should have surely heard reports of a man ... in that state ... running away from here.” He couldn’t say naked but Theodore heard his mother titter inappropriately anyway.
And Theodore thought no, they didn’t run away in the nude, but they might have got changed in the stables and run back into the house to pretend they had been in your rooms all along. But he kept his supposition to himself, at least for the moment. It wasn’t that he suspected Mondial in particular, he told himself, but he knew that the relationship between a man and his valet was a two-way movement of trust and loyalty. Mondial might be protecting Taylor for all sorts of reasons, although if he really thought his own valet had tried to kill him, surely he would act? But Mondial would not believe such an accusation unless Theodore could provide irrefutable evidence. Nor would Mondial’s friend the judge. Theodore had to have undisputable proof.
Perhaps now, with the clothing, that would be possible.
He had to make his case before Taylor tried again. Before he was successful in the act of murder.
“I am not sure what happened here,” he told Mondial, “but it is strange and I want to get to the bottom of it.”
Mondial painted on a false, tight-lipped smile. “Brody, and you, girl; get back to work. My dear ladies, will you step inside? Or can I escort you on your walk if you wish to continue? It is a delightful day.”
“One moment, if you will so indulge us,” Theodore said, and he cast a glance towards his wife. He hoped she would lend her powers of persuasion to the request he was about to make. “I am curious as to how the unfortunate situation played out here, and I wonder if you might aid my imagination by stepping through the actual events. We have enough people here to make a little play out of it.”
Mondial’s eyes widened in shock. “You cannot think I would be comfortable in going over those terrible things!”
“Indeed, I expect it to be a dreadfully uncomfortable experience but I hope to appeal to your strong-mindedness and sense of justice.”
It was a clumsy attempt at flattery and he noticed that Adelia winced. She said, “It might even do you some good to replay it. Sometimes we can find peace by facing what is difficult.”
“It would be unseemly. There are ladies present.”
Theodore’s mother weighed in. “I don’t know about that, but I do think it’s a jolly good idea. I am dreadfully interested in all of this. Dido, dear, you might want to turn away. Perhaps the girl will take you back to the house. But yes, you, John, and Theodore, let’s have you run through your paces. John, where were you standing?”
“Over there by the fishpond.”
“Come along!” Theodore’s mother ordered, turning and stamping off across the lawn with her stick jabbing holes in the grass. “Everyone come along with me. What japes! Let’s be Shakespeare!”
Fourteen
Adelia found herself pressed into service with the role of poor Philippa Lamb, which made her profoundly uncomfortable. She was glad that Dido had been led away to the house. Theodore did not notice why it might have bothered her, and she was keen to help him in his investigations, so she did not speak up. She girded her loins, metaphorically, and let herself be positioned by a yew tree. And this was an ideal opportunity, she realised, to finally ask Lord Mondial why Philippa had been there with him in the first place. At any other time, such a query would have sounded as if it were insinuating something. Here, it was natural, if she could phrase it correctly. And it was easier now his wife had left.
“Was Miss Lamb standing still or did she come walking up to you?” Adelia asked.
“What was –” her husband started to ask, but he was immediately jabbed by his mother, who understood just as clearly as Adelia that he had to be quiet and not influence things.
Lord Mondial rubbed his thumb along his jawline. He looked as if he were recollecting the events of the day, although as Adelia also held him in some suspicion, he could just as easily have taken the time to make up some lie. Still, he sounded convincing as he said, “I was walking along this path, heading for the ponds. There’s been some nasty blue algae in them so I decided, as I was out and about, to check on whether the gardeners had got on top of the problem yet
. Killed a spaniel, you know, a few weeks ago. Dreadful stuff. As I came along here, I saw Miss Lamb come around the corner from the far end of the yew tree walk, and I hailed her. She came up to me around here, and I invited her to walk with me to the ponds and then back up to the house. I am always happy for my guests to walk in the grounds but when a young lady is alone, one worries.”
That was all fair enough, Adelia thought. He carried on, now asking Adelia to walk alongside him in her role as Philippa. “So Miss Lamb and I continued along this branch of the path and suddenly a man came out from behind that tree there.”
Theodore scurried into position. “This one?”
The Dowager Countess mewed in disappointment. “Oh, that’s not fair. I wanted to be the murderer.”
“Mother, please,” Theodore muttered in disapproval. Sometimes Adelia thought that the older Lady Calaway deliberately challenged convention, safe in the knowledge that no one was ever going to dare censure her. Lady Calaway laughed and let them continue with the reconstruction.
The scenario ploughed on exactly as Lord Mondial had described previously. Theodore, pretending to be a rather stiff and formal assailant, leaped out from behind the broad-trunked yew tree and pointed his hand at Lord Mondial, who said, “No, he waved it towards the young lady first.” Adelia wiggled her eyebrows at her husband but he ignored her and remained serious.
“From this distance?”
“Exactly so. He shot at her, and she fell and I caught her. I was shouting but also trying to help her and I cannot recollect exactly how it next played out except that there was another shot and the most curious pain, almost delayed, in my upper arm. It is strange but it was as if my vision went to a very narrow point. My ears were thundering, like I was underwater. I tried to get a grip of myself. And I was aware that Miss Lamb was ... I am sorry. I shall not continue with this in front of the ladies. All I can say is that I assisted her to no avail, and the attacker fled.”