The Dr Benjamin Bones Omnibus

by Emma Jameson

  He sat up for a long time, pondering the cane. When he finally switched off the light and closed his eyes, sleep was slow to return.

  Silk Purse and Sow’s Ear

  28 November 1939

  The infernal hammer never hit those double bells. Maybe Ben had turned off the alarm while half-asleep; maybe Lucy decided he needed extra rest. Either way, when he awoke, it was ten o’clock. Mortified, he shaved and dressed as fast as possible, then hurried downstairs.

  Lady Juliet and Mrs. Cobblepot were in the kitchen. Lady Juliet sat at the table, disconsolately chewing a piece of toast. Dark circles lurked under her eyes; her hair was still damp. Clearly she, too, had woken late and performed her morning ablutions in a rush.

  On the other hand, Mrs. Cobblepot was wide awake. She bustled about, opening cabinets, shutting cabinets, pulling out drawers and pushing them in again, apparently searching for something wrong to set right. Sixtyish and heavyset, with white hair and round spectacles, she usually managed her kitchen with calm mastery. Today she seemed on the verge of mania.

  “Good morning,” Ben said, or tried to.

  Mrs. Cobblepot pounced before he could get out the second word. “Doctor! Thank goodness you found the clean shirt I put out for you. If I let you go out wearing yesterday’s, people will tut.” She plucked what he suspected was an imaginary bit of lint off his jacket, straightened his already straight collar, and examined his immaculate tie for stains. He felt nine years old again.

  “How are the Archer twins?”

  “Still in the dark,” Mrs. Cobblepot replied. “I told them their mum was delayed in Barking, and it might have something to do with their dad. That gave them one last night of peaceful sleep, I reckon. But of course I daren’t send them to school. The baby birds sing in Birdswing! I said they could spend the day helping Father Cotterill bring Christmas decorations down from the church attic, then clean and polish them. With any luck, they’ll be in the dark till they’ve had their supper. Then—I don’t know. I may bring them back to church, to pray.”

  “Sounds like you have it very much under control,” Ben said, taking a seat.

  “I don’t know about that. And I do hope you aren’t cross because I didn’t wake you. When you didn’t come down at your usual time, I looked in on you but didn’t have the heart to wake you. It was the same with Lady Juliet.” Without pause for breath, Mrs. Cobblepot flitted to the next subject. “So lovely to have a guest! With you two still abed, I did take advantage of the extra time to pop round to Morton’s. Just to pick up some necessaries, mind you. In and out! No dilly-dallying. No time-wasting or tongue-wagging.”

  Lady Juliet met Ben’s gaze. He hoped she could see the humor in Mrs. Cobblepot’s position. Gossip was an essential part of village life; when there was nothing new to discuss, the collective mood turned grim. But in the space of a single day, a year’s worth of news had happened: Bobby was murdered, Helen was arrested, and Ethan had returned. This last was especially juicy, but out of respect for her guest and friend, Mrs. Cobblepot couldn’t broach the topic. Small wonder she was compulsively wiping down everything in sight.

  Lady Juliet looked away. Clearly, the humor eluded her.

  “Right.” Ben stood up. “Mrs. Cobblepot, if you’d be so kind as to pour our tea into a thermos, we’ll be on our way. Please don’t think us ungrateful. But I’m expected back at Fitchley Park, and I’m sure Lady Juliet would like to get home.”

  “Of course. Let me at least pack breakfast to go with your tea.”

  * * *

  “Thank you for rescuing me,” Lady Juliet said as they exited the cottage through Ben’s front garden. The day was chilly but bright, the sky a soft cloudless blue. “I know Agatha means well, but if I’d sat in that kitchen much longer, I don’t know what might have happened. As for last night….” Her eyes shone with gratitude. “It was very kind of you not to ask questions.”

  “You know you’re welcome to talk to me, but I won’t force a confidence,” Ben said.

  “Speaking of talk, you should know I used your telephone again this morning. Do send me the bill,” Lady Juliet said. “Poor Mother. Because she eschews vulgar language as a general rule, Ethan’s behavior renders her speechless. I mentioned his threat to turn up at the manor. He never sets about any activity before half-eleven, so she has sufficient warning. If she doesn’t answer the door, she may find him creeping through the garden or trying to pry open a window.”

  “He did strike me as persistent.”

  “Like a dog with a bone. He’s run out of money,” she replied. “Depend upon it. When Ethan starts bleating about love and reconciliation, his debts have barred him from the best casinos. At any rate, after I called Mother, I rang up Angus Foss and told him I ought to shear his sheep.”

  “Why?”

  “For renting Ethan a room. When he does a runner, as he must, that Scottish skinflint will expect me to cover the bill. Last but not least, I rang my solicitor. He urged me not to take matters into my own hands, as the Crown takes a dim view of dismemberment. Even the kind male farm animals routinely survive,” she added darkly.

  Ben winced. It was time to change the subject. He checked his watch. “I’d better be off. Gaston agreed to meet me at the Cow Hole at eleven o’clock, so I’m already late. I hope he didn’t ring Plymouth CID to collect Mrs. Archer yet. I want another crack at convincing him it’s premature. Give my regards to Lady Victoria.”

  “What? I’m not going home,” Lady Juliet said. “You can’t imagine I’d desert you in your time of need.”

  “But—”

  “If I go home, Ethan will take that as a sign of weakening. He’ll think he’s getting through to me. No,” she said firmly, lifting her chin. “The best way to handle him is to remain elusive. If he needs the money badly enough, he’ll meet my terms and sign the papers. I’ll gladly give him a farewell gift.”

  “We English do have a long and storied history of paying people we don’t like to stay away,” Ben said. “And yes, your insight on the Archer case would be helpful. But are you sure you’re up to another run-in with Lady Maggart?”

  “Of course. I know I must look like the dog’s breakfast,” she said, buttoning her horrid woolly coat to hide the previous day’s ensemble, which had been bad enough the first time around. “But I’m not vain enough to let that stop me.”

  * * *

  This time Ben drove, since the Council had been kind enough to give him a petrol allowance. Suspecting Lady Maggart might decline to offer them refreshments, and aware that Barking had no restaurants, they ate along the way. Mrs. Cobblepot had transformed their breakfast—toast, fried eggs, and bacon—into two soggy but surprisingly delicious sandwiches. Despite the thermos, their tea had gone tepid, but they drank it anyway.

  “Oh!” Lady Juliet cried as a bump in the road caused her to splash her trousers. “This is entirely uncivilized.”

  “Sorry. The Austin has developed something of a bounce,” Ben said. “I blame Cornwall. All these uneven country lanes.”

  “Do you miss London?”

  “Sometimes.” He thought about that. “Not really. I took it for granted, growing up. I suppose I still take it for granted, that it will always be there when I’m ready to go back.”

  “Every time the Home Service mentions projected bombing targets in London, I turn off the wireless,” Lady Juliet said. “Otherwise I get nightmares. Once I dreamed St. Paul’s Cathedral took a direct hit and burned to the ground. All that lovely wood. I fear it’s indefensible, and I’ll never walk through it again.”

  “You’ve been to London?” Ben asked.

  “Once. Which reminds me. You said something remarkably chivalrous yesterday. About how I must have been persuaded to marry Ethan against my own good judgment.” She sighed. “I apologize for not correcting you at once. Ethan is a misery I brought entirely upon myself.”

  “What happened?”

  “Perhaps I should start with why it happened. No doubt it hasn’t esca
ped your trained eye that I am the sole heir to Belsham Manor. I had three elder brothers, but all died shortly after birth. Mother had a very difficult time with me. She consulted a Harley Street specialist, who told her there would be no more babies. Thereafter, the hopes of both sides of the family—the Lintons and Mother’s people, the Ellissons—were pinned on me.”

  “When you say ‘pinned,’ I see a moth on a specimen card,” Ben said.

  “Not without reason,” Lady Juliet said with a smile. “They were seriously discussing marriage before I knew what the word meant. When I was sixteen, I said I couldn’t bear the idea of the debutante’s ball. Grandmother Ellisson knew that would probably be a disaster, so instead she proposed taking me abroad for a year. Showing me around to all the younger sons and impoverished viscounts—anyone willing to trade connections for a wealthy wife. I didn’t want to go. I had a grudge against my grandmother over something childish.”

  “I had a grudge against my Uncle Billy, growing up,” Ben said. “Whenever he saw me, he always said something like, ‘Reading will ruin your eyes,’ or ‘Put down the book and pick up a ball.’” He laughed. “If Uncle Billy turned up tomorrow with hat in hand, I’m not sure I’d receive him. We never forget the slights of childhood.”

  “No. Even when I was sixteen, and too old for such things, I was still quite the outdoorswoman. Mother allowed me to wear practical clothes as much as possible, which Grandmother Ellisson found appalling. One day I overheard her tell Mother no man would ever have me. She said I needed a wardrobe heavy on lace, ribbons, and soft colors. I heard her say, ‘You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, but you can make a sow’s ear look like a silk purse, at least in a certain light.’

  “No young girl wants to hear herself described as a sow’s ear,” Lady Juliet continued. “Especially one who already feels gawkish and overgrown. I was mortified. Mother, bless her, told me she saw nothing wrong with my mode of dress.”

  “Lady Victoria has a kind heart,” he said.

  “And an eye for fashion. She pays close heed to the seasonal edicts from Paris but never presses me to follow her lead.”

  “Don’t be offended, but given your intellect, I’m surprised she didn’t consider sending you to university. Even if it’s a touch unorthodox.”

  “I wanted to,” Lady Juliet said. “In fact, I assumed I would. But then my parents took ill—first Father, then Mother. It was a dreadful time. Old Doc Egan actually lived at Belsham Manor for ten days, never leaving them except to sleep. In the end, Father died, and Mother was never the same.”

  “Heart failure.”

  “Yes. For months it was touch and go. She would rally, relapse, and rally again,” Lady Juliet said. “Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away, not even to university. By the time Mother recovered, at least as much as she ever will, Grandmother Ellisson insisted I attend Clarion Academy in Switzerland.”

  “Penny was at one of those places,” Ben said, meaning a finishing school. “She made it sound like prison. Uniforms. Lights out at nine o’clock. Locked in her dorm at night.”

  “That’s exactly what I used to imagine. Prison.”

  “She did say the food was good. Apparently they held a mock dinner party twice a week. Authentic down to the oysters and the bubbly. The teachers acted the part of distinguished guests, like Leslie Howard or the Prince of Wales. If a student was rude or clumsy, she got a demerit.”

  Lady Juliet shuddered. “Positively hair-raising. I would have been sent down inside a week.”

  “Penny told me when she flubbed a title—called someone ‘Duchess’ instead of ‘Dowager Duchess’—they made her copy modes of address out of Debrett’s for three hours.”

  “Sounds as if Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here should have been written above the door. A phrase I learned by studying Dante myself, thank you very much,” she added proudly. “While nursing Mother, I devised my own syllabus. Literature on Mondays. History on Tuesdays. Art on Wednesdays, geography on Thursdays, and philosophy on Fridays.”

  Ben stopped to allow a sheep to amble halfway across the road, stare at the Austin, and slowly amble back. “What about science? Or maths?”

  “Science is always reversing its opinion on this and that. If one has a question, it’s best to consult the experts,” she said airily. “As for numbers, I mastered arithmetic at an early age.”

  “What about algebra?”

  “I’m of the opinion you men made all that nonsense up. At any rate, I was pleased with my personal course of study and violently opposed to being packed off to Switzerland. I asked Mother to let me spend the tuition money on a holiday in London.

  “Think of it,” she continued. “Me, alone in London, when I’d never even been alone in Plymouth. I was terrified she would say no, and even more terrified when she said yes. But fear can be invigorating. I viewed the Magna Carta in the British Library. I spent a morning in the National Portrait Gallery, gazing at faces long dead. I roamed the Victoria and Albert Museum from end to end. It was glorious. There was more than I could learn in a lifetime.” She stopped. “But instead of staying the course, I steered my life off a cliff.”

  “How did you meet Ethan?”

  “Our eyes locked across a crowded ballroom.”

  Ben glanced at her, surprised.

  “Of course not,” she laughed. “It was at the V & A. Mind you, I fancied myself worldly and sophisticated, so I was already on guard against tricksters. I thought if I dressed modestly and kept my head down, no one would pay the slightest attention. I didn’t realize my choice of hotel, my habit of dining alone, and ability to haunt historic spots in the middle of the day marked me as a tourist with means. Ethan’s never admitted it, but I think he picked me out in the hotel, asked the concierge for details, and watched me for a time. His opening gambit was nothing I’d expected.”

  “Oh, really?” Ben thought about it. “If you were in the V & A, I expect he asked you to help him make sense of some exhibit.”

  “My goodness.” Lady Juliet stared at him. “How on earth did you guess?”

  “If I wanted to chat you up, that’s how I’d start.”

  “Because I’m an insufferable know-it-all?”

  “Because you can never say no to a person who needs help.” Ben glanced over a second time and was pleased to see her smile.

  The Austin jostled along the lane. Hedgerows stood tall on either side, gray stone peeking through a lattice of bare vines. Pastureland stretched for miles, the grass brittle but still alive. Copses of oaks and mulberry trees dotted the fields, leafless but cloaked in English ivy, which was green year-round. On a hillside, black-and-white milk cows reclined, and in the distance, St. Gwinnodock’s Gothic spires appeared.

  “You’ve put your finger on Ethan’s strategy,” Juliet said. “He asked me questions, and he listened to my answers, starting with my extemporaneous lecture in the Egyptian room, explaining the pre-Ptolemaic dynasties he pretended not to know about. The truth is he’s too clever by half.”

  “He did strike me as decently educated,” Ben said grudgingly.

  “He turned up the next day, and the next, and soon we were meeting in the evenings as well,” Juliet said. “I should have wondered why he never expressed curiosity about the Linton name or asked about my family home. This was because he already knew he had an heiress on the line. So he played the besotted suitor, bringing me sweets, reciting sonnets, showing me the Elfin Oak at Kensington Gardens. One afternoon in Greenwich Park, we climbed a hill and watched the sky change from pink to purple. It was the happiest moment of my life. That night, he took me to dinner at the Connaught and asked me to marry him. I said yes before he finished speaking.”

  “Did he ask for money right away?”

  “Only a little. Otherwise, everything was perfect until I turned up in Birdswing with a surprise fiancé. Mother was charmed, but Grandmother Ellisson prophesied doom. She urged me not to marry in haste, to give her a few weeks to dig up the truth with the he
lp of a private detective. I wasn’t an idiot. The wedding bells started sounding like alarm bells,” Lady Juliet said. “But I couldn’t hear the truth from Grandmother Ellisson. Perhaps if she hadn’t called me a sow’s ear, I could’ve swallowed my pride and taken her advice. Instead, I ran crying to Ethan and said they were all against us.”

  “I’ll bet he said you should elope.”

  “Yes, of course, just like Lydia and Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. I should have thought harder about the analogy. Oh, there’s the Cow Hole—just there.” She pointed. “Three weeks later, when I returned home a married woman, Mother forgave me at once but insisted Ethan wait outside. Then she handed me the report from Grandmother Ellisson’s detective.

  “There it was in black and white,” Lady Juliet continued. “The man I married wasn’t the heir to an industrialist’s fortune. He was the second son of a haberdasher. He had nothing but a little schooling, some natural charm, and fifty thousand pounds of debt. His story of serving in the Army was false. And his claim of being related to T.E. Lawrence? More ‘Lawrence of Stoke-on-Trent’ than Arabia.”

  Ben drove onto the verge, trundling toward the Cow Hole, a heap of ancient stone with a cap-like roof.

  “Well. Aren’t you going to laugh at me?” Lady Juliet demanded. “I spent an hour last night rehearsing my confession. Every time I imagined it, you laughed at me for being foolish enough to believe the lie about Lawrence of Arabia.”

  “Will anyone object to me parking here?”

  “Park up a tree for all anyone cares. Why aren’t you laughing?”

  The Cow Hole’s door opened, and Special Constable Gaston emerged. It wouldn’t take him long to close the distance.

  Ben knew what he wanted to say. He needed to do it swiftly, in a minimum of words. “Penny didn’t marry me because she loved me. She needed a husband because she was in trouble,” he said, looking Lady Juliet in the eye. “The baby’s father did a legger. Penny reckoned I was too thick and lovesick to do the math when she started to show, but I was a physician. When I confronted her, and she told me the truth, part of me died.” He cleared his throat. “Just died.”