Murder at Keyhaven Castle

by Clara McKenna

  “And you think murdering Mr. Kendrick helps my chances of finding a husband? Admit it, Dad. You’ve never done anything just for me in your life.”

  “You ungrateful child!” Mrs. Swenson exclaimed.

  “Penny?” Stella said. “All this time you knew?” No wonder she was willing to let Sir Owen take the blame. Stella had assumed it was to avoid embarrassment over the indiscretion. She had no idea how much Penny was hiding.

  “What was I supposed to do? Turn in my father?”

  Stella was mortified. But then again, how many times had she covered for her father’s multitude of misdeeds.

  “Besides, crying out isn’t a crime. It wasn’t my fault y’all thought it was Mr. Kendrick who’d done it. I never thought it meant my dad killed yours.”

  “Aunt Ivy was right, wasn’t she, Mr. Swenson?” Stella said, facing her father’s killer. “Daddy died because he caught you disgracing the one thing he believed in and threatened to expose you.”

  Mr. Swenson shook his head solemnly, like he couldn’t believe what was happening. “The pigheaded son of a coachman wouldn’t listen. He’d turned a blind eye to my involvement in the Woodhaven Downs scandal. He understood what it cost me when the race results were overturned after the scandal broke. So why couldn’t he understand how much I needed the cash now? When he saw Charmer switched for Challacombe, he knew what I’d done, that I’d teamed up with Pistol Prescott. But this time, Elijah refused to ignore it. At the castle, he warned me he was going to inform the Jockey Club right after the wedding. I couldn’t get him to see reason. What harm was I doing? The baron wasn’t ever going to race the horse. But dang it! Turns out, your father valued the sport more than our friendship.”

  More than he valued me, Stella thought.

  “And Jesse Prescott?” Stella asked.

  “Our plan was simple. Challacombe was running the St. Leger Stakes, and I had the horse’s dead ringer. As Challacombe, Charmer would bring in much needed cash, whether Challacombe won his race or not. It worked in Kentucky, so why not here? So, we shipped Charmer over and passed him off as Challacombe to some unsuspecting Brit.” Theo Swenson shrugged at Baron Branson-Hill, who, pale and stricken with grief, slumped in his chair. “I was to meet Pistol at the fruit sellers by the wharf when I arrived from New York, pay him, and part ways. Like Elijah, if Pistol could’ve just kept from shooting his mouth off . . .”

  “And Stella?” Lyndy said coldly, his hands clutching his jacket lapels. “You could’ve killed her!”

  Stella held her breath, expecting Mr. Swenson to deny it, expecting Penny to fess up to an impulsive bout of anger and jealousy. But Penny, like everyone else, waited expectantly for the answer.

  “Dad?”

  “How was I supposed to know the water would be so cold? Besides, she was in mourning. Who knew she’d throw all convention to the wind and come with us?”

  “Anyone who knows her,” Lady Atherly scoffed.

  “You must believe I never intended for you to drown, Stella, darling,” Mr. Swenson pleaded. “I knew you were a good swimmer. I never planned for any of this to happen.”

  She’d assumed someone had pushed her overboard to prevent her from talking to the baron. That was her mistake. It hadn’t been the baron Mr. Swenson hadn’t wanted her to see.

  “But you couldn’t risk me seeing the baron’s Challacombe,” Stella said. Charmer, though rarely finishing in the money, had been a favorite of Stella’s. He and Tully had been born on the same day. “At least not until you’d left the country. Like my father, I would’ve recognized Charmer the moment I saw him.”

  Theo Swenson didn’t deny it.

  “Take him away, will you, Waterman,” Inspector Brown said. “If you’ll excuse us then,” Inspector Brown said, with a curt nod before slapping his hat on his head and following Mr. Swenson and the constable through the door.

  As Mrs. Swenson gathered up all the dignity she could before following her husband, Penny turned on Stella. “This is all your fault, Stella Kendrick.” She raised her handbag and whipped it at Stella’s face.

  As Stella dodged out of the way, Lyndy snatched it in midair, yanking it from Penny’s grip. He flung it back at Penny’s feet. With the compact inside, it hit with a loud clang.

  “Fulton!” Lady Atherly snapped. The butler promptly appeared. “Mrs. Swenson and her daughter were just leaving. Be sure to show them the way out.”

  “Very good, my lady.”

  “Who would want to stay a moment longer in this dingy old place, anyway?” Mrs. Swenson scoffed.

  Lady Atherly, her back as straight as a hat pin, ignored the fuming Mrs. Swenson and smoothed her skirts as if brushing the memory of the woman from her mind before she’d even left the room. Frustrated at not getting a bigger reaction, Mrs. Swenson grabbed her daughter’s arm and jerked Penny along as the heels of their shoes marked their steady retreat.

  Stella almost felt sorry for her childhood friend. Surrounding Stella were people who cared for her, even loved her. Even the ancestral portraits on the walls seemed to have circled the room in her defense. Penny faced a bleaker future.

  Lyndy came to stand beside Stella, gently curling his arm protectively around her shoulder. “It’s over now,” he whispered in her ear when the room grew quiet. He eased them both down onto the settee opposite his mother. Stella sighed, relaxing into Lyndy’s embrace, relieved. He was right. She’d found the answers and the justice she’d been seeking. They could finally get on with their lives.

  As if reading her mind, Lyndy added, “What say you to marrying me, Miss Stella Kendrick? Tomorrow, if not sooner.”

  Stella turned to face him. He tried to feign boredom, fiddling with the silver cuff links on his sleeve, but a smile played on his lips.

  “And throw convention to the wind?” she said teasingly, catching Lady Atherly’s grimace and the expectant joy in her aunts’ faces. “I don’t mind if I do.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Stella and her future father-in-law stood on the stone threshold of the ancient Norman church, her wedding dress shimmering in the late afternoon sun as if radiating her happiness. The towering yew beside the door, lovingly planted over a thousand years ago, bore silent witness to the happy day. Behind them, dozens of not-so-silent villagers, the breeze ruffling their Sunday best, mingled in the churchyard, their voices a din of conjecture, laughter, and gossip, giving the occasion the appropriate festive air. To no one’s surprise, Stella had stopped to greet every merchant, maid, clerk, and field hand as she and Lord Atherly made their way through the crowd. She’d accepted their well-wishes, token nosegays, and the occasional bow with grace and gratitude. She’d shaken their hands, including Mr. Heppenstall, the owner of the Knightwood Oak, who promised to toast to her and Lyndy’s happiness in the pub after the ceremony. But now, the solemn hush of the ancient church beckoned.

  Lord Atherly patted her hand. “Are you ready, my dear?”

  Tully neighed as if to answer for Stella. Stella beamed back at her beloved horse, with Mr. Gates just beyond the stone wall. The mare wasn’t allowed inside the church, but Stella had made it clear she wasn’t going to get married without Tully present.

  “I think that would be a yes,” Stella laughed.

  “As I said before, dear girl, I am honored to be giving you away, but I do wish your father could’ve been here to do it. He so wanted to see you wed.”

  Despite the mixed emotions Stella held about her father, she couldn’t help being grateful he’d brought about this moment.

  “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  With such short notice, and in acknowledgment of Stella’s mourning status, they’d all agreed to the same small, quiet affair they’d first planned in June. Back then, she’d been blindsided by her father into an arranged engagement. How things have changed. When she and Lord Atherly stepped into the cool, almost chilly hollow of the vestibule, she remembered how these squat, gray, ancient stone walls once cast shadows of uncertainty over her future. Now, with he
r heart racing with the thrill, the anticipation of beginning her new life, she couldn’t imagine marrying anywhere else.

  The tiny church, fragrant with the fresh flowers arranged by Lady Atherly and matching the ones in Stella’s hand: cream, pink and peach dahlias, deep green ivy, and delicate Queen Anne’s lace, was more than half empty. Seated in the pews on the groom’s side were Lady Atherly, Lady Alice, Sir Alfred, and the full staff from Morrington Hall. On the opposite side of the aisle, her father and Uncle Jed, still in jail for robbing Jesse Prescott, were conspicuously missing. But Aunt Ivy with Sammy, in a new suit, waited with eager faces from the front pew. Behind them, to Stella’s delight, were the Baron and Baroness Branson-Hill. Despite the baron’s humiliation at the hands of her father’s friend, the baron’s choice of pew signaled to everyone he’d forgiven Stella her association with the Swensons and that she retained his friendship. The news would spread through the Forest like a fire. Lady Atherly, when she’d learned of the baron’s intention, had been visibly pleased.

  Behind the Branson-Hills sat Inspector Brown and behind him, the staff of Pilley Manor: Mr. Tims, Mrs. Robertson, her nephew, Robbie McEwan—who had positively identified Theo Swenson—Mrs. Downie, and Ethel. It was right they should be there. Stella, in her way, had come to think of them too as family. She’d make sure they always had a place in her home if they wanted it. Gertie, her flower girl, squirming with excitement in green silk ribbons and a new lace pinafore, and Aunt Rachel, “tickled as pink as a pig” when Stella had asked her chaperone to be her maid of honor, waited with her in the vestibule.

  On the altar, Reverend Paine, dour and taking his responsibility seriously, waited in his ceremonial robes. Before the vicar stood Lyndy, handsome in his long coattails, his face wearing the same stoic expression as the day they’d met. He was intently listening to something Sir Owen, his best man, was saying. Her throat tightened when a surge of adoration for her groom caught her off guard.

  Suddenly, as if on cue, the stones hummed with the power of the organ as Dowland’s “The King of Denmark’s Gaillard” rang out. Aunt Rachel shooed Gertie ahead. She winked at Stella before hobbling down the aisle behind the flower girl, a small bouquet in one hand, her cane in the other.

  The wedding guests rose, every pair of eyes following Stella as Lord Atherly escorted her down the center aisle. She glided toward the altar, never feeling so light or so merry. She stifled a giggle at Lyndy’s sudden slack jaw when he first caught sight of her.

  After Lord Atherly relinquished her into Lyndy’s care, taking his seat beside Lady Atherly, Stella wholeheartedly beamed at her groom. For the first time since she’d known him, he couldn’t keep that characteristically thin, crooked grin off his face. She longed to reach for him, kiss him, whisper to him but turned dutifully toward the vicar instead.

  With the last strains of music still echoing in her ears, Reverend Paine announced, “We have come together in the sight of God for the joining in marriage of this man, Edwin Henry Searlwyn, the Right Honorable Viscount Lyndhurst, to this woman, Stella Eleanor Kendrick.”

  The service moved on, sweeping Stella away with it. Overwhelmed with emotion, Stella heard little of Reverend Paine’s address to the congregation until he declared, “If anyone can show why they may not lawfully be joined in marriage, speak now, or hereafter remain in silence.” She, like everyone else, turned when the outside door opened, and the rush of wind stirred up dried leaves that littered the churchyard.

  A middle-aged woman in a high-necked gown of lavender silk and lace and a wide-brimmed hat, hesitated at the end of the aisle. Aunt Ivy, smiling, nodded to the woman in acknowledgment.

  Beside Stella, Aunt Rachel exclaimed softly, “As I live and breathe.”

  Stella glanced at her aunt questioningly, but Aunt Rachel avoided her gaze. Who was this woman both her aunts seem to know?

  Reverend Paine waited as if the stranger had come to prevent the wedding, but the woman, hiding her face with the tilt of her hat, said nothing, taking a seat alone near the back. The rustling of silk against the wooden pews, a few stifled coughs, and the congregation turned to face the altar again. The vicar continued with the service, and before Stella knew it, he announced the speaking of the vows. Lyndy, with calm authority, recited his. Stella, her heart nearly bursting, paused once or twice, as she said hers. That satisfactorily done, Lyndy took her hand and slipped the gold wedding band on her finger.

  With a hint of a mischievous smirk at the corner of his mouth, he said, “With this ring, I thee wed, with my body, I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  When the vicar pronounced them man and wife, Lyndy wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, several gasps, giggles, and claps encouraging him. He smelled of a new musky cologne when he kissed her, briefly but hard, his lips hinting of all the passion yet to come. They too quickly parted, leaving her slightly breathless and unbearably happy.

  They turned to applause and passed down the aisle, arm in arm, husband and wife, accepting well-wishes as the organ pumped out Henry Purcell’s “Trumpet Tune and Air.” Lyndy shook every man’s hand; Stella had a smile for everyone.

  When they reached Aunt Ivy, she said excitedly, “There’s someone I want you to meet, Stella.” Waving the late arrival forward, she added, “Oh, how I’ve prayed this day would come.”

  The woman shyly approached, slowly lifting the rim of her hat back from her face. Stella gasped. Despite telltale signs of aging, Stella would know that lovely, heartbreaking face anywhere.

  But it’s impossible! Her mind was playing tricks on her again.

  “Lord Lyndhurst, Lady Lyndhurst,” Aunt Ivy said, the first to use Stella’s new title, “may I introduce Mrs. Eugene Smith.”

  Mrs. Eugene Smith? Stella had heard the name once before, as someone Inspector Brown was making inquiries about. She couldn’t be who Stella had mistaken her for.

  Could she?

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Smith,” Lyndy was saying. Stella couldn’t bring herself to talk. “And how do you know Mrs. Mitchell?”

  “I’m her sister.”

  “But that would mean you and my wife are also related.”

  Lyndy’s quizzical expression nearly made Stella laugh as confusion, longing, and hope sought to overwhelm her.

  “You are correct, Lord Lyndhurst,” Mrs. Smith said, observing Stella’s reaction with eyes that could be Stella’s reflection staring back at her. Mrs. Smith smiled, with a joy intimately entangled with a sadness only Stella understood.

  “So that would make you my wife’s . . . ?” Lyndy said, his confusion written on his face.

  With a weight on her chest making it hard to breathe, Stella forced out the word she never thought she’d utter to this woman again, “Mama.”

  Mrs. Smith, once known as Katherine Tully Kendrick, opened her arms and Stella, without hesitation, flew into them.

  CHAPTER 28

  Stella, seated at her dressing table, regarded Ethel’s reflection remove the orange blossom tiara and veil from Stella’s hair. The soft strains of music wafted up from the grand saloon below. The toasts had been made, the cakes had been cut, and Stella was soon to leave for her honeymoon. As Ethel attacked the buttons down the back of Stella’s wedding dress, a quiet tap on the door preceded Aunt Ivy and Mama as they joined Stella and her maid in the bedroom. Stella beamed at her mother through the mirror. She still couldn’t believe this wasn’t a dream. And yet, a hint of melancholy tainted the sight of her mother standing there.

  “Oh, how lovely you are,” Mama said, smiling back but with a restraint in her posture that evoked the unspoken awkwardness still between them. “I still can’t believe what a bright, vivacious, courageous, beautiful woman you’ve become.” Sadness, perhaps at years lost, tinted her voice.

  “We know you are heading off soon and wanted to say our good-byes in private,” Aunt Ivy said, congenially, seemingly unaware
of the war of emotions bouncing between mother and daughter.

  During the reception, Stella had learned from Aunt Ivy how she’d kept in touch with her sister, even after she’d supposedly died. She explained that they’d traveled to England together (That had been Mama Stella saw in Southampton!) and had corresponded daily since arriving (hence Aunt Ivy’s deception). From her mother, Stella had learned of her life in Montana with Eugene Smith, her second husband, and young son (Stella had a half brother.). Yet Stella was plagued by questions. She’d stifled them, not wanting to dispel the magic of her mother’s return. But, knowing of her imminent departure, couldn’t hold her tongue a moment longer.

  With Ethel finished unbuttoning her, Stella slipped her arms out, stood, and stepped out of her dress. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what, sugar?” Mama said, instinctually bending over to help Ethel pick up the dress. The term of endearment brought back a rush of tender memories.

  “That you were still alive?”

  “I couldn’t. If I did, Elijah would’ve disinherited you, disowned you. I couldn’t risk it. Besides, I’d remarried,” Mama added. “If Elijah found out, he’d have me arrested for bigamy. I managed to tell Ivy though, without Elijah knowing, and made her promise to stay as close to you as she could.”

  “Then one day, Elijah found a letter I’d written to your mother, and he sent me away too,” Aunt Ivy interjected, explaining why she had left Stella’s life abruptly.

  “Are you saying Daddy knew you were alive and purposely staying away?”

  “Knew? He insisted on it.”

  Could this be true? Yet Stella knew her father. How could she doubt it? Look at the lengths he’d gone to force her into this marriage.

  “But why? I thought he loved you.”

  “He did, once.” Mama’s face saddened, her voice dropping to a whisper. “But not enough to forgive what I did.”

  “What did you do, Mama?” Stella asked as Ethel helped her into her traveling dress.