The Dr Benjamin Bones Omnibus

by Emma Jameson

  He hurried out the French doors, undaunted by the blast of cold air that greeted him. “Hello there!”

  The boy’s head jerked up guiltily. He looked about fifteen, with greasy hair, red cheeks, and prominent front teeth. “Sir?”

  “You’re the boot boy?”

  He nodded, eyes wide, as Ben reached him. “I’m Dr. Bones,” he said, sticking out his hand. The boot boy stared at it.

  “Shake?” Ben prompted, smiling.

  The boy put forth a gloved hand. The rawhide was caked with ash, but Ben shook it anyway.

  “What’s your name?” he asked in a friendly tone.

  “John.”

  “Do you know why I’m here, John?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Do you know a dead man was found below stairs?”

  “Yes, sir.” His voice shook.

  Ben put a hand on John’s shoulder. “Don’t be frightened. I’m not here to hurt anyone. I’m just sweeping up some loose ends.” He looked at the smoking heap in the wheelbarrow. “What’s all this then?”

  “I found it over there,” John said, pointing at a cluster of trees. “I think Mr. Collins made a mistake. When he burned the rug.”

  There was no rug in the wheelbarrow—no recognizable remnants of one, anyway. Instead, Ben saw a pile of scorched clothes and a handful of blackened metal objects. “May I have a look?”

  John didn’t answer. He probably wasn’t used to people asking his permission.

  “Why don’t I just check?” Ben poked gently at the first object, a metal cylinder. It was cool to the touch. The scorched clothes were damp. “Did you douse them with water?”

  “Yes, sir. When I came out of the privy, I saw smoke,” John said. “From where he burned the rug.”

  Ben removed the cylinder’s cap and studied the blackened residue inside. After a moment he pegged it as a tube of lipstick. “Where did the rug come from? Below stairs?”

  “No. Her ladyship’s room. I think,” John said without conviction.

  He’d make a dreadful witness, Ben thought. Let a barrister speak sharply, or tell him he’s got it wrong, and he’ll recant immediately, or say what he thinks they want him to say.

  “What about these other things?” There was a scorched compact, a pot of face cream with the label burned off, a broken hand mirror, and the remains of a brush, its bristles gone. Both the mirror and the brush were partly melted, which meant they were silver-plated rather than steel.

  “I reckon they were Mr. Archer’s. Like the clothes.”

  Ben poked gently at the wet, half-burned fabric. One large remnant had five buttons along a seam, and could be called men’s trousers. The rest were, objectively, nothing but rags. If they’d once smelled of blood, they now reeked of paraffin.

  “You knew Mr. Archer.”

  “Yeah.” John smiled. “Lemon sherbets.”

  “I like those. Did he?”

  “Yeah. He shared them when he came round. I used to open the gates for his lorry. He would say, ‘Thanks, mate.’ Like we was friends. Then he’d give me a lemon sherbet.”

  “Was this day or night?”

  “Night.”

  “How often?” Ben asked.

  John shrugged, again seeming markedly diffident. Ben had the impression if he pressed too hard, John would agree with anything he said. He had to be careful not to telegraph the expected answer.

  “I wonder what happened to Mr. Archer.”

  The boot boy looked at the ground.

  “It’s all right. I don’t want any trouble. I’m just curious. Some say he was killed.”

  John nodded emphatically.

  “I wonder if the person who killed him is someone important.”

  Another nod.

  “If you whisper the name to me, I promise not to tell anyone,” Ben said truthfully. It would be cruel and pointless to drag John into the investigation; a conviction would require something more substantial than the boot boy’s word. He leaned close to the boy, who smelled of sweat and worse. His clothes were stiff with grime, as if they hadn’t been washed in weeks.

  “Mrs. Tippett said….”

  “Yes?”

  “She said Father Rummage did it. On account of him being a right villain and likely to do anything.”

  “Dr. Bones! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Ben looked back at the house. In his haste to intercept John, he’d left the conservatory’s French doors ajar, signaling his egress to Mr. Collins. The butler ran toward them, just as he’d run after Ben’s car.

  John made a frightened noise. He probably wasn’t used to seeing the butler moving at such speed.

  “Never fear. He’s cross with me, not you.” Ben leaned over the wheelbarrow to pat John’s shoulder. At the same time, he seized the scorched compact, slipping it into his jacket pocket. “Chin up, John. I’m game for his worst.”

  “Dr. Bones,” Mr. Collins gasped. Running apparently wasn’t his forte, not even downhill. “Lady Maggart,” he puffed, “only gave you leave,” he gasped, “to search the house….”

  Ankle turning, he slipped on the grass and lost his footing altogether. Ben darted right, John darted left, and Mr. Collins collided with the wheelbarrow. It flipped over as he hit the ground, its wet, blackened contents slithering out. He crawled aside before they could make contact with his suit’s fine fabric.

  “You’re quite right, Mr. Collins,” Ben agreed cheerfully. “I’m out of bounds. Entirely my fault. May I give you a hand up?”

  No doubt desperate to preserve his suit, Mr. Collins accepted that hand. But once upright, he rounded on John. “Idiot! What the devil are you up to?”

  “He was at work clearing up rubbish,” Ben declared firmly. “Once again, the fault is mine. I interrupted to ask a few questions. But John said he doesn’t know anything. Isn’t that right, John?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said fervently.

  “As a matter of fact, he referred me back to you,” Ben said. “Wasn’t that what you said, John? That only Mr. Collins could answer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The butler still looked faintly suspicious, so Ben pretended to discover the blackened mess at their feet. “What is this?” He poked at it with the toe of his shoe.

  “Heaven knows. John will dispose of it.” Mr. Collins snapped his fingers at the boot boy. “As for you, Dr. Bones, it’s too cold to linger out here, wouldn’t you agree?”

  They returned to the house. Once inside the solarium, the butler withdrew his keyring, locked the French doors, and drew the curtains. His bearing suggested he’d regained his confidence, and felt certain he’d blocked a devastating discovery.

  “Now that you’ve completed your examination of the house, may I show you out?”

  “I’ve finished this floor,” Ben said. “Now I’m heading upstairs.”

  “I see. I would never insinuate that you’re using these circumstances as an excuse to pry,” Mr. Collins insinuated, “but are you quite sure further intrusion is necessary, Dr. Bones? I took the liberty of making inquiries and discovered you report to Dr. Kidd at Plymouth City Hospital. No doubt he’ll want an account of how you use your time, just as Birdswing’s council will expect justification for how you use your petrol.”

  “That’s true,” Ben said, as if such considerations had never occurred to him. “But as the physician for Barking, as well as Birdswing, I feel a responsibility to Fitchley Park. Mrs. Archer has confessed, but she may yet implicate others in this household,” he added, watching the butler’s face. “Probably just out of malice. But suppose she claims, for example, that poor John opened the gate for her? Or that someone—even you—abetted her in another way, such as turning a blind eye or disposing of evidence?”

  Mr. Collins’s chin dropped a notch. He seemed to be trying to decide if Ben had accidentally hit two key points or if he’d issued a deliberate warning.

  “So far I’ve found nothing,” Ben said, deciding not to reveal the scorched compact
in his pocket just yet. “When I’m called to give evidence, as I surely will be, I can swear that Fitchley House’s ground floor is clear. If I could only double-check upstairs….”

  “As you wish,” Mr. Collins said politely, but the fear didn’t leave his eyes.

  Above Stairs

  Lady Juliet may be right about a conspiracy, Ben thought as he climbed the stairs. Mr. Collins is in up to his eyebrows. How could he have failed to notice that the body was moved? Then there’s the spot on the stairs. It might have been blood, or it might have been wine, but thanks to him, we’ll never know. He burned a rug, according to John. He burned clothes, probably Bobby’s, and a handful of women’s things. Did he do it for himself, or on Lady Maggart’s orders?

  Halfway up the stairs, Ben stopped to rest his knee, which had predictably started to throb after his brief time in the cold. Lucy, never far from his thoughts, returned to the forefront again, as she frequently did when he was in pain. He didn’t know why. Perhaps because he’d arrived at Fenton House in a wheelchair, unable to walk or stand without assistance, the ache in his bones had somehow become associated with Lucy.

  Or can she sense pain? Is that why she put out my cane for me?

  At the top of the stairs, he paused again, feeling in his jacket’s inner pocket for a pencil stub and his leather-bound notebook. Flipping to a blank page, he wrote:

  Mr. Collins—no motive yet to kill Bobby, but might move heaven and earth for the sake of Fitchley P.

  Rev. Rummage—often here, staff seems to dislike him; per John, Mrs. Tippet said he killed Bobby on account of her ladyship

  Kitty—pretty, apparently left-handed, might have been Bobby’s future wife

  Lady Maggart—seems genuinely afraid of supernatural killer but could be an act

  Lord Maggart—physically weak but volatile, muddled

  He started to tuck the notebook away, then reopened it and added after Lord Maggart’s name:

  Carries a cane

  He’d come to the oldest section of the house, which contained the family rooms. Judging by the arrangement, all of them offered Fitchley Park’s best view: Lady Maggart’s garden, with its remnant of an ancient wall and the dark, thick woods beyond. From left to right, there were four doors. He tried the first. Locked.

  Bobby and Helen have been separated for years. Now, suddenly, he asks for a divorce. Helen said he called his new love a proper lady, like Penny.

  Ben tried the next door. Also locked.

  I took “proper lady” to mean she didn’t earn her living in her knickers. But what if he literally meant lady? As in Odette Maggart?

  Annoyed by his limp, which was growing more pronounced, Ben stumped to the third door. As expected, it was locked.

  That photograph he’d glimpsed in the Cow Hole returned to him: Fitchley Park’s staff assembled solemnly in front of the house as Lady Maggart smiled beside the handsome gamekeeper. Father Rummage had access to the house and a clear monopoly on her attention, but Ben found it difficult to imagine them carrying on. The rector seemed at least reasonably dedicated to his higher calling, and because Lady Maggart resembled an older version of Penny, Ben was inclined to view her as such. Thus it was far easier for him to picture her having an affair with fit, handsome Bobby than a plump little man who might burst into giggles after every kiss.

  Conducting an affair in a house her husband rarely left would be incredibly bold, but given Lady Maggart’s position as a local celebrity, meeting Bobby in Barking or Birdswing would have been nearly impossible. Before the war, they might have had rendezvouses in Plymouth, but the blackout and the petrol ration made that problematic. By contrast, Lord Maggart’s diminished faculties meant his wife might get away with slipping Bobby into the house, as long as her servants were loyal.

  But there are flaws to the theory, Ben thought, reaching the last door in the hall. Starting with Mrs. Archer’s confession.

  He gave the brass handle a perfunctory twist. To his surprise, the door opened, revealing a gold-and-peach suite.

  The suite’s outer room looked like something out of a Hollywood film. The sofa of crushed velvet was unabashedly feminine, as was the delicate glass coffee table and matching drinks trolley. Near the door, two umbrellas and a Baroque brass cane stood inside a cloisonné urn. In pride of place sat a giltwood vanity, its mirror framed in round white lightbulbs.

  “Is that you, Mrs. Grundy?” Odette called from the suite’s inner room. “I didn’t ring the bell.”

  Ben cleared his throat. “Er, no, Lady Maggart, it’s me. Dr. Bones. Forgive the intrusion, I was told you weren’t at home.”

  He expected her to order him out, but instead she issued a tinkling laugh, the sort Penny had learned at finishing school.

  “You’re quite right, Ben. I’m not at home, in the social sense. Do come through.” She laughed again. “Said the spider to the fly.”

  He hesitated, searching for an excuse that would give no offense. He’d heard of scenarios like this. They emanated almost exclusively from blokes in the pub, usually half in the bag. They claimed to have been innocently going about their business when they stumbled into a boudoir like this, inhabited by a welcoming female. The voluptuous interludes that followed had always struck Ben as outright lies. Now, after years of scoffing at such tales of opportunistic lust, he seemed to have wandered into one.

  “I wouldn’t want to disturb you,” he called. “I’m only doing as we discussed—checking the house for blood or anything pertinent to my written account of Bobby Archer’s demise.”

  “Why, Dr. Bones. Should I take your reluctance to inspect my bedroom as proof you consider me above suspicion?”

  He coughed, which was his standard way of acknowledging a question he had no intention of answering. He couldn’t turn down her invitation. Not after forming a plausible scenario in which Lady Maggart and Bobby had been lovers.

  The suite’s inner room proved just as conspicuously feminine, all giltwood and flowing lines. The changing screen was upholstered in peach satin; the bedclothes were made from the same fabric. No man would accept such an arrangement, so it was clear that the baroness and her husband maintained to the old fashioned tradition of separate bedrooms.

  “My husband’s poor health makes it difficult for him to climb the stairs. His room is on the ground floor,” Lady Maggart said, as if reading his mind. She sat beside the hearth, which was fitted with a three-bar electric fire. Dressed in a peach silk robe, her blonde hair loose around her shoulders, she looked relaxed and happy. A book with a familiar dust jacket lay in her lap.

  “Rebecca,” he said. “I’m reading it, too, on my housekeeper’s recommendation.”

  “What do you think of the second Mrs. De Winter? Such a nonentity,” Lady Maggart said. Though not yet dressed, she was fully made up, including those fanlike black lashes Lady Juliet had called glued-on. Her high-heeled mules were accented by puffs of white rabbit fur.

  “I do envy Rebecca, though,” she continued, putting the book aside and rising. “She had life arranged to her satisfaction. And Maxim—oh, Maxim. If only I had such a man in my life.” She slipped her fingers under his lapels, fondling the material as she stared into his eyes.

  “My wife,” Ben said, letting those words hang in the air as he gently disengaged her hands, “died not long ago. Your husband is still alive, and may even rally for a time, if we can convince him to accept treatment.” He took a step back, smiling to lessen the sting of his rejection.

  “My husband. Yes. Of course.” Lady Maggart sighed. “But as I told you, his experience at Craiglockhart makes it impossible for me to do anything but give him his head. He hasn’t been a husband to me in twenty years. I owe him nothing but kindness and a calming influence.”

  “Calming? Is he violent?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. He was branded a coward in the war. Do you think he’s grown courageous in his waning days?” Turning away, Lady Maggart crossed to the window and pulled back the curtains. As she st
ared down at her garden, the sunlight highlighted a downward slash along the side of her mouth. “Dudley didn’t kill that wretched man. I already gave you my opinion on what did.”

  “You said Fitchley Park was haunted. I know my ghost’s history. What about yours?”

  “Not mine. Though I freely admit it was almost certainly my own sins that opened the door to this torment. Dudley told me he grew up hearing stories about a lady in black. She wears a heavy mantle, like a Victorian lady, with a hood falling over her face. From midnight till dawn, she walks the halls of Fitchley Park, listening to whispers and punishing evildoers.”

  “Especially naughty children, I’ll bet,” Ben said. “It seems very human to me, this belief that something all-seeing and malevolent lies in wait. I’m certainly not immune to it. But I’ve heard it said that humans also create their own strife and wickedness. Perhaps when it’s too painful to accuse ourselves, we like to imagine something else at work. A cruel person who won’t die, instead of a cruel truth.”

  “I’ve seen her,” Lady Maggart said, turning away from the window and looking him in the eye.

  “What? When?”

  “In the summer. A crash woke me in the middle of the night,” she said. “I sat straight up in bed. My vanity used to sit just there.” She pointed at a space occupied by a chest of drawers. “The crash was the mirror, shattering into a thousand pieces.”

  “The vanity in the outer room?”

  “Yes. With the replacement mirror I ordered from New York City to cheer myself up. Bit of glamor, you know. Dudley wasn’t too happy. I thought, given the funds the barony conserved by sacking poor Charlie….” She broke off.

  “This lady in black,” Ben prompted. It was clear to him that Lady Maggart could hardly bring herself to finish the story. Her distress made him inclined to believe her, or at least to believe she believed.