Belinda felt the beginnings of a headache. Perhaps it was only a drifter, a burglar aunt Jane disturbed. He panicked, pushed her down the stairs and fled.
Or perhaps she really did just fall down the stairs.
‘But someone else has broken in and been looking for something,’ she reminded herself. ‘And there is her letter. It was posted after she died.’
The sense of foreboding engulfed Belinda again and the house seemed to suddenly chill, the air charged with obscure dread.
‘I’ll go mad talking to myself like this,’ she muttered. ‘If I could just discuss it with someone.’
Mark’s handsome features came into her mind.
‘Perhaps when he asks me to dinner, I can talk it over with him.’
It was not the ideal conversation for the dinner table but the need to lay the ghost of aunt Jane had taken precedence over everything else in Belinda’s life.
***
Eight
Rosemary ran down the hill with small dainty steps that seemed at odds with her bulky figure. She carried a basket of newly baked scones from which drifted a mist of steam. A worried expression clouded her normally cheerful features and she mouthed silent anxieties as she made her way to the front door of Belinda’s cottage.
Squirming from one foot to the other, she awaited an answer to her knock. Anxiously she peered through the window beside the door, willing Belinda to answer.
The door eventually swung open and Belinda stood wiping her hands on a linen tea towel that displayed faded illustrations of London tourist attractions.
‘My dear,’ grieved Rosemary, ‘Jacob has just told me about the intruders. Aren’t you terrified? It’s coming to something when your own home isn’t safe.’
Belinda held the door open and Rosemary, thrusting the scones unceremoniously into Belinda’s hands, entered nervously as though the intruders still lurked menacingly in every crevice.
‘How much damage …?’ The question hung in the air. Her eyes popped when she saw the state of the long room.
‘If you think that’s crook,’ smiled Belinda, amused at her neighbour’s response, ‘I’ll take you upstairs.’
This proved to be a mistake as it reduced Rosemary to tears. In aunt Jane’s bedroom she sank onto the bed and sobbed. ‘Thank God old Miss Lawrence didn’t live to see this.’
Belinda rather felt that all things considered, her aunt would have preferred to survive to witness it.
Rosemary stood up and began to inspect the destruction in detail. She paused at the heavy Victorian wardrobe that projected out at an angle.
‘Why, they even pulled the wardrobe away from the wall!’ She put her head into the space between it and the false wall and her voice became muffled. ‘Now why would they do that?’
Belinda flushed and gathered some nightgowns from the floor. ‘Who knows?’ she said hesitantly. She pulled Rosemary away from the cabinet.
‘Do you want me to do the cleaning tomorrow?’ She was eager to change the subject. Rosemary drew in her breath.
‘Oh, Belinda. How thoughtless of me. I’m so grateful to you, but no, I can do it tomorrow. My Uncle has a district nurse attending to him now. Much better, really.’ She glanced about the room, as though what she was about to say would offend the furniture. ‘Gentlemen’s problems. Prostrate.’
Belinda laughed inwardly.
‘And by way of thanks for your help,’ continued Rosemary, ‘I insist that you have dinner with us again tonight.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ said Belinda brightly, ‘but I have been invited to dinner tonight in Bath.’
‘Oh?’ breathed Rosemary, eyes widening and a million questions forming in her inventive brain.
As the two women descended the stairs Belinda asked in a forced casual way, ‘Rosemary? Did my aunt give you a letter to mail for her at any time?’ She reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to face Rosemary, who avoided her eye.
‘Never,’ she replied a little too hastily, her fingers plucking at the balustrade. ‘I told you. Your aunt kept to herself.’
‘Would she have asked Jacob to post a letter?’
Rosemary shook her head mutely.
‘But perhaps she did and he didn’t tell you,’ continued Belinda.
Rosemary shook her head again. ‘It’d be unusual if your aunt had asked anyone to do anything for her, in which case, I’m sure Jacob would have told me.’
Belinda picked up a fresh scone and took a bite. When she turned back, Rosemary was watching her nervously, an evasive look in her eye.
‘She’s not telling the truth,’ Belinda thought, ‘or at least, there’s something she’s not telling me.’
Having finally guided Rosemary to the front door, after she had deviated into almost every room in the house to commiserate over the damage done, Belinda eagerly climbed the stairs to her aunt’s room. She stood at the door and eyed the monstrous wardrobe. The intruders had done her a service. Not only had they moved the closet away from the false wall but also they had emptied the contents, making it lighter.
Belinda squeezed into the space between the rear of the wardrobe and the wall. Bracing her feet against the wall and her back to the cabinet, she slowly pushed the heavy object a further foot and a half away from the partition. She breathed deeply after her exertion and stood for a moment looking at the wallpaper.
‘1920s, I’d say’ she murmured, running a hand slowly over the wall-face.
There was no way of telling how many layers were underneath. Her hands slid searchingly over the smooth surface. The colours of the wallpaper were stronger behind the wardrobe, indicating that it had stood there for a long time.
A slight dent in the otherwise flat surface caused Belinda’s fingers to hesitate in their exploration. She ran her hand back over the indentation, faint though it was. It ran upwards from the floor for three or four feet then crossed at a sharp horizontal angle.
‘A door,’ cried Belinda excitedly.
The faint groove then turned down suddenly and confirmed her suspicions. Belinda leant back against the wardrobe, a satisfied smile on her face.
She used a variety of appliances to cut through the layers of wallpaper – a nail file, a letter opener, a can opener and, lastly, a large carving knife from the kitchen. The knife, following the slight gap between door and wall, finally sawed through the brittle membrane.
Belinda, breathing heavily from her toil, wiped dust and perspiration from her brow and stood back to admire her handiwork. Now that the moment to open the secret door was upon her she felt a tremor of apprehension.
How long had it been there?
What did it conceal?
She had read of people discovering human skeletons bricked into walls and with a house dating back to the thirteenth century and considering the history it had … well!
But having gone this far there was nothing else to do but proceed.
She pushed gently against the panel.
It remained rigidly in place.
She pushed again, harder this time but the door, apart from emitting a faint squeak, stood firm.
Drawing in a deep breath and bracing herself against the wardrobe she thrust the weight of her body onto the unyielding partition. This time she was rewarded by a louder squeak and the door dislodged itself from its rigid surroundings.
Pausing for breath, she renewed her attack and with a great shriek of rusted metal and tortured wood the small door finally gave way. Belinda pushed it open.
A dusty, mouldy draft made her recoil.
The door unexpectedly jammed hard and Belinda gave a gasp of pain as her leg slipped and she skinned her ankle on the rough edge of the cut wallpaper.
Rubbing her injured foot she dropped down to her knees to peer into the mysterious cavity.
She could see nothing in the jet black of the secret room.
She lit the candle that had stood by her aunt’s bed. Bending low, summoning all her courage, she struggled into the menacing space. Her heart bea
t loudly in her ears as her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. Standing erect she took a tentative step forward. Her shoe crunched down on something brittle and a cold chill engulfed her as she glanced quickly down.
Her foot rested on a pile of bones.
Then she gave a relieved, if nervous, laugh as she realised they were the skeletons of a family of rats.
Holding the candle higher she saw that the room was empty but for a small desk in the corner. As she made her way towards it a veil of cobweb skimmed over her face. In a moment of irrational panic, her flesh crept and she clawed at the web as it clung stickily to her body. She shivered and wiped the despicable substance from her hands.
The desk was a small writing table dating, she thought, from the eighteenth century. A number of dust-covered documents rested on the desktop. Belinda gingerly took them in her hand and blew the dust away. They appeared to be household accounts from an earlier age.
Separate from the others was a scroll of heavy paper tied with a perished red ribbon that disintegrated as Belinda picked it up. She placed the candle on the desktop and slowly, with great care, unrolled the scroll.
What met her eye was more surprising than anything she could have imagined.
The spritzig in the Australian Chardonnay recalled the southern summer sun as Belinda enjoyed her wine and observed soggy Bath residents scurrying to shelter from the unexpected rain. Outside in Queen Square the drizzle increased in density but in the ornate dinning room of the Francis Hotel all was warm and comfortable.
Across the rim of her glass Belinda inspected her companion.
Mark was scrutinising the menu, finally ordering his choice in an authoritative manner that was a match for the waiter’s haughtiness. Dismissing the subordinate he returned his interest to Belinda.
‘As I was saying,’ he said, idly playing with his glass, ‘this place was originally a row of private houses.’ He took a swig of his wine. ‘Georgian. John Wood the Elder, 1728 or thereabout.’
‘It’s been well preserved,’ Belinda said, gazing around the warmly lit room.
‘Restored.’
Belinda looked at him quizzically.
‘The war. Bombed. Rather badly, actually.’
His clipped public school accent amused her. She leant back in her chair and listened as he chattered on about the history of the hotel. As handsome as he was, she felt vaguely uneasy in his company, but she had to admit that when he had called at the cottage the previous evening with his dinner invitation, she had accepted readily.
‘And Mary Godwin who later wrote Frankenstein lived here. Number six, I believe,’ his brow wrinkling as he momentarily questioned his own authority. ‘Shelley was hanging about at the same time,’ he added confidently, as the waiter placed smoked salmon mousse before them.
‘You know a good deal of history,’ observed Belinda.
Mark shrugged. ‘As a real estate agent you get to know the history of the area.’
He glanced across at Belinda. She thought she detected a wary expression in his look.
‘For instance, what do you know of the history of your house?’ His voice had a curious edge to it.
Belinda swallowed a mouthful of mousse and dabbed at her lips with her napkin. ‘Not much. But I do know that it dates back to the thirteenth century and later it was a religious community.’
Mark waved at the waiter and indicated the need for some more wine.
‘Part of the house is thirteenth century,’ he corrected her. ‘The long room at the back was originally a cobbler’s cottage. The window is where he sat, met his customers and carried on his trade.’
‘Oh, really,’ said Belinda sardonically under her breath, as the waiter refilled her glass. She had a feeling that she was about to receive a lecture on events connected with the cottage.
And she was right.
For the next ten minutes the history of the village was expounded and, interesting as it was, Belinda found her attention wandering.
Mark continued confidently: ‘And then the village became a Cistercian community until the dissolution of the monasteries.’
Belinda nodded knowingly. ‘When Henry VIII sold off religious communities to private ownership, and pocketed the profits. Then it became a girls’ school,’ she concluded smugly.
‘Oh, that didn’t happen until late Victorian times,’ responded Mark, inspecting the roast beef as it was placed before him.
‘Really?’ Belinda was now curious to hear a further history of the cottage.
‘After the dissolution by King Henry, the community broke up and the land, as you say, fell into private hands. In the eighteenth century, when Bath became a fashionable spa again, the properties were split up and your cottage was extended. An uncle of John Wood – you remember Wood built this place and the rest of Queen Square,’ Mark nodded out the window, ‘well, his uncle bought the cottage, expanded it as I said, and purchased some of the surrounding land, which is why you have such a large garden today.’
He turned his attention to the beef.
In the brief silence that followed Belinda digested not only her food but also Mark’s history of the estate. She placed her fork on the plate and gave her attention to Mark.
‘May I ask you a question?’
‘By all means,’ said Mark, through a mouth full of the Roast Beef of Old England.
‘Does the name “Lancelot” mean anything to you?’
There was the slightest of hesitations as Mark cut through a parsnip. He popped a piece into his mouth and looked directly at Belinda. His eyes, alert once more, had a cold enquiring glint.
‘Should it?’ he asked flatly.
Belinda sipped her wine to calm herself. ‘Perhaps not,’ she replied with false indifference.
They ate in silence for a moment during which Mark watched her continuously. She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze and sought to change the subject.
‘The most amazing coincidence,’ she began overbrightly.
He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
‘Yesterday, while I was cleaning your house, I happened to see a picture, an illustration in a magazine, of a landscape design for a garden in the eighteenth century.’ She glanced across at him with a sudden feeling of inexplicable nervousness. His eyes narrowed imperceptibly. In her uneasiness she began to babble.
‘And the funny thing is that just today, quite by accident, I found a similar one at the cottage. Not a magazine. I mean a real plan. A plan for landscaping a garden.’ She paused for breath and glanced at him. ‘And I’m sure it’s quite old.’
Mark’s expression changed from intense alertness to one of sudden relaxation. A loose smile played around his lips and he sipped his wine.
‘That’s an interesting story,’ he said offhandedly.
But his voice was tight and he looked at her with new interest, as though something he suspected had just been confirmed.
The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. After a stroll around the square under bright stars that had replaced the misty rain clouds, Mark drove Belinda home.
The evening had not turned out to be as pleasant as Belinda had hoped and she felt uncomfortable. The prospect of introducing the possibility of her aunt’s murder as a topic of conversation simply did not arise. Several times she caught Mark watching her thoughtfully and her unease in his presence increased.
As he walked her to the front door he suggested that they see each other the following weekend.
‘Perhaps,’ replied Belinda indifferently, ‘but I do have rather a lot of work to do here.’
‘Are you intent on staying in the cottage?’ Mark asked.
‘I’m still not sure.’
Belinda avoided his look. Her uneasiness grew so that she was relieved when he finally bade her goodnight and she heard his car leave. She watched the headlights light up the country lane as he slowly drove away.
When he reached the bottom of the hill the car stopped and she could hear the engine idling in the stil
l night air. Ten minutes passed before the car sprang to life again and roared away in the direction of Bath.
‘Now why would he stop in the middle of a country lane, in the middle of the night?’ Belinda asked herself, as she kindled the fire. ‘Except that he stopped at the boundary of my property.’
Another unpleasant thought struck her. Mark had known the history of the long room. How would he know of its existence unless he had been in it?
She shivered in spite of the fire’s heat and imagined that unwelcome eyes were watching her. She hastily closed the shutters and was suddenly aware of the almost palpable silence. For the first time Belinda felt thoroughly insecure in the house and double-checked all the door and window locks.
From the kitchen drawer she took an ice pick and carried it with her to the long room. She was uncertain just what use it would be to her as a means of defence but its ugly hard spike was reassuring and she felt more at ease with it at her side.
Pouring a glass of port, she took the scroll from a cupboard and gently unfolded the plans for the garden.
It consisted of a roughly drawn design for a rural garden, not very large according to the measurements that Belinda could see, and included a rock waterfall. The outline of a house stood to one side and a hand-written list of plants accompanied the proposal.
Some writing in faded ink at the bottom caught her attention and she took up her aunt’s magnifying glass from the chair-side table.
Even with this strong glass it was difficult to decipher the faint handwriting. She began to spell out the letters as she recognised them.
All at once her heart leapt and the words became crystal clear.
She pronounced the name loudly in a triumphant voice.
‘Lancelot Brown.’
***
Nine
The name ran around and around Belinda’s brain the next morning as she washed her few breakfast dishes and made desultory attempts at sorting the contents of the kitchen cupboards.
Lancelot Brown.
Capable of Murder Page 9