The Mystery at Fig Tree Hall

by Prudence Ambergast

  The Major, caught wildly off-guard, used every fibre of his being to fight the bitter realisation that Cecelia appeared to be alive and well. And now that annoying Constable is asking difficult questions . . . For the first time in his life, the Major stuttered whilst delivering a line.

  “I-I was told there was no urgency, given the time that has elapsed. It might be a few days before we hear anything while the case is referred to the county police rather than the local plods.” He showed no reticence in using the derogatory term.

  “But that isn’t what we were told earlier!” Lily accused, fully confident that she had the backing of Peter, Diane and Cecelia on this.

  They nodded in confirmation.

  “Ah, pure semantics. The message is the same, despite the details having changed.” The coldly-delivered comment from Simeon Bailey made Lily uneasy as she pieced together events, realising they’d probably been told a string of lies from the very beginning.

  “Why did you shut me in that secret chamber?” Cecelia asked angrily.

  Again, Simeon took the opportunity to fend her off. “The panel closing was accidental, we didn’t realise you were in there. We were under the impression you were in your room with a bad headache, explaining your absence at lunch.”

  “Who told you that? It doesn’t excuse why you conveniently shut the door when I just happened to be in the Major’s study, trying to solve a clue you both specifically wanted me to tackle alone. Didn’t you wonder why the panel had slid open?”

  “Good point,” said Diane in another remarkable show of solidarity. “After discovering the Professor’s body, everyone was tired and wanted to rest. We weren’t even going in your study because it’s practically been out of bounds for most of the weekend. What if we hadn’t found her?” Diane pointed a stubby finger tipped with a raggedly broken nail at Cecelia to highlight her argument.

  The Major looked panicked.

  “I’ll answer both questions as simply as possible,” Simeon replied, running his right palm down the left lapel of his well-tailored charcoal jacket, the region where his heart would have been, had he possessed one.

  “Do go on.” Peter fixed both men with an interested glare.

  “We knew your friend here would be in the study because the clue led her there. We were about to see if Cecelia had become trapped in the chamber when you decided to continue your search for her in the study, thus resulting in you finding her there.”

  “Amazing,” said Lily. “A simple reply answering none of the questions raised – you really should consider a career in politics.”

  Diane emitted a substantial guffaw, lowering the tone.

  “So, what do we do now?” Cecelia asked pointedly. I still have power in all this, she mused, because the Major, Simeon Bailey and Lady Felicity still believe I’m the remaining child of Thaddeus Ambrose. She was keen to move things along.

  “I suppose,” the Major said, sighing like a deflating barrage balloon, “you could continue with the mystery to fill the time.” He glanced at the ornate drawing room clock. “I said you needn’t bother, but there’s still a part that remains unsolved.”

  “I don’t believe this!” Cecelia yelled, slamming her fist down on an occasional table and making Lily jump. “After trying to suffocate me because I’m an inconvenience, do you really think giving us half a clue to solve is the answer?”

  “Can’t have a murder mystery weekend without a murder,” Diane blurted unhelpfully.

  Cecelia fixed the Major with an intense green stare, deliberately baiting him. “Why are you so intent on these damn clues when you already have the answer?” It’s risky to push it, but I’m getting desperate . . .

  “What answer? What are you talking about?” Lily cried, turning in her seat to face Cecelia, her puzzled brow furrowed. Did I miss something, somehow?

  Shaking her blonde head, knowing she’d gone too far, Cecelia glared at the Major. “Go on then, let’s get it over with.”

  Lily glanced around the room, unable to pick up on the secret vibe, wanting to determine its meaning. Peter caught her worried blue eyes on him, shrugging his shoulders in response.

  “Well,” the Major continued shakily, his confidence now deserting him, “you thought you’d solved the former clue – so I hear – because Mrs Pargitter found an old photograph under the sideboard.”

  Diane nodded, realising with little embarrassment that the photograph must have accidentally fallen from one of the albums during her inquisitive night-time rummage in the sideboard drawers. “That’s right,” she said with false conviction, “I’ve got it here, in my pocket–”

  “Why a photograph?” Lily interrupted. “I thought the clue was all to do with the heart-shaped escutcheon mouldings on the library fireplace, or possibly a book of love poetry.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, waiting to be proved right.

  In a flurry of aqua-blue skirt, Lady Felicity entered the room, heading purposefully to a seat on the right of her husband. She sat facing the group like a guilty convict viewing a knowing jury.

  “I’m afraid,” said the Major, addressing Lily Green directly, “that you’re wrong. The photograph that Mrs Pargitter has is the key to understanding this. The clue concerns the subject of that photograph and her right to this Hall, in the absence of a male heir.”

  Lady Felicity stared at her husband as if he’d gone stark staring mad. Sharing family secrets with the likes of these people was not a wise move . . .

  Diane pulled the photograph from the pocket of her wool skirt, attempting to un-crease it using a balled fist braced against one of her hefty knees. Lily could see that the picture was a tinted image of a young girl sitting at a large, ornate desk. The girl was happily drawing a picture when the snapshot was taken.

  “So?” Diane challenged, “What does this tell us?”

  Lily came to stand behind Diane who, she decided, had been remarkably selfish with the photograph, ignoring the need to pass it around. She got out her trusty little notebook and flicked to the last clue, piecing it together as best she could as she read: “DRAWN IN THIS ROOM A PICTURE FINE, REVEALS A

  SECRET OF HEARTS ENTWINED.”

  Lily gazed intently at the photograph. “All I can see is a little girl drawing a picture at a desk.”

  “That’s the fancy desk in the room behind the library fireplace!” Diane squealed in recognition. “It has all these little interesting figures as keys sticking out of the drawers.” She rose up out of her seat to thrust the picture under Peter’s nose before Lily could even blink. “You’re the only one who’s seen it, apart from me,” she said proudly. “That’s definitely the same desk, isn’t it?”

  Peter nodded. Indisputably, the desk is that of Professor Thaddeus Ambrose.

  “What does that prove?” said Cecelia, shrugging her slim shoulders with indifference.

  The two residents of the Hall and Simeon Bailey watched with baited breath as Lily’s deductive powers unfolded before their eyes.

  “The little girl must be Professor Ambrose’s daughter – the one who might inherit the Hall if she can be found!” Lily blurted, regretting the words as soon as they were out of her mouth as the atmosphere grew stormy.

  Lady Felicity’s face clouded with anger, her body stiff as she gripped the arms of her chair tightly, ready to jump up at any moment and leave the room to free herself of the terrible charade.

  “What else can you see?” Peter asked Diane. “There might be a clue in the rest of the photograph.”

  With forensic precision, Diane scanned the picture fully, shaking her head as nothing obvious jumped out. “All I can see is a pretty little girl sitting at that desk and she’s holding a pencil in her left hand to do her drawing.” Diane suddenly put a hand to her chest, overcome with a wave of empathy. “Oh look – she’s left-handed, just like me!”

  Lady Felicity was across the room in a flash, snatching the girl’s image from Diane, crumpling it further. “Let me see that!” She surveyed the evidence in
front of her own eyes for a long moment and something suddenly fell into place.

  Turning on Cecelia viciously, Lady Felicity hissed, “You devious, lying bitch!” She took several deep breaths before continuing her tirade. “You came here to deliberately deceive and steal from us – you’re no more Dorcas Ambrose than I am!”

  The room fell into stunned silence as Cecelia, stung from the brutal attack, considered her options. “How can you be so sure?” she replied evenly, hoping her lack of emotion might pass as a cool assurance that she was the only remaining child of the former owner.

  “Don’t lie to me!” Lady Felicity raised a hand as if to strike Cecelia, then thought better of it as Peter gave her a warning look.

  “Would someone like to explain what on earth is happening here?” Lily said carefully, curiosity and fear mingling inside her.

  “This person,” Lady Felicity pointed an unwavering forefinger at Cecelia with an expression of disgust, “has been trying to pass herself off as the rightful owner of the Hall. She led me to believe that she’s Dorcas Ambrose and her presence here was for the purpose of assessing what’s rightfully hers.”

  Diane looked confused. “But surely, the Hall belongs to you anyway, as you purchased it? I know that magazine article said different, but that was just to stir things up, wasn’t it?”

  “It certainly managed to do that!” Lady Felicity spat as her husband and Simeon looked on. She glared at Cecelia. “This creature thought, because she bears a striking resemblance to Dorcas Ambrose with her blonde hair and green eyes, she’d try to become her to feather her own nest. If that article hadn’t put the idea in her head, she would never have known that Dorcas was still alive!”

  “Hold on,” said Lily, trying to piece the evidence together, “surely you both had to agree to the article being written in the first place?”

  “Alas not,” replied Lady Felicity, calming a little, although her eyes were still hot with rage. “It was written without our consent, with just a photograph of the exterior of the Hall taken. There was no consultation. The man who wrote it evidently also did some digging into the background of Thaddeus Ambrose and his family, as there’s always been the unsolved mystery of his disappearance, up until now. That sort of thing grabs the public interest.”

  Lily nodded, only too aware of the constant demand for true crime novels at the library.

  “What I don’t understand,” Diane chimed, “is why you had that reaction when I said I was left-handed, the same as the girl in the picture.”

  Lady Felicity looked from Cecelia to Diane, waiting for the former to come clean in what she considered was a more than generous opportunity. Because this didn’t happen, Lady Felicity took charge.

  “Your colleague here maintains she’s Dorcas Ambrose, beloved child of Thaddeus and Evelyn and potential heiress, as the Hall was obtained by us in difficult circumstances. There were huge debts left by Ezra Ambrose, the Professor’s brother. The legal stance is that, as there was a remaining child at the time Thaddeus disappeared – albeit a female child who couldn’t be traced before we obtained the Hall – then she would actually still have an entitlement, should she come forward.”

  “Yes, we already get all that,” said Diane rudely, still aggrieved over the lack of a substantial lunch.

  Felicity glared at her. “The girl in the photograph, clearly Dorcas seated at her father’s desk, is obviously left-handed as demonstrated by the fact she’s holding the pencil in her left hand as she draws.” I will not, she decided, thank the Pargitter female, giving her the satisfaction of having pointed this detail out.

  “Right, as I just said,” Diane confirmed, unable to suppress the need to show-off.

  “Thank you, Mrs Pargitter,” the Major said gruffly from under his moustache.

  “As we all know,” continued Lady Felicity, “Cecelia here is right-handed. I’ve seen her show this most clearly – she doesn’t reposition her cutlery at the dining table in the way that you do, Mrs Pargitter.”

  “I prefer my dessert spoon to be on the left, rather than the right,” Diane supplied, for the benefit of the room.

  Cecelia spoke for the first time. “It is true that some left-handed people use their cutlery with their dominant hand in the opposite way to a right-handed person, but others choose not to make a fuss.”

  “And scissors!” Diane squawked like a demented parrot, feeling it necessary to provide as much evidence as possible, being the token leftie in the group.

  “Seems to me the only true way we can determine this is by getting Cecelia to write something,” Peter suggested, slipping easily into police mode as the evidence of Cecelia’s deception rapidly grew. “Fraud is a very serious charge, Lady Manners-Gore.”

  The comment rolled easily off Felicity’s back, so sure was she of her conviction. Steepling her fingers together she continued her glaring stance, unwilling to let the imposter off the hook. As Simeon crossed the room holding a newspaper, Lady Felicity wondered if he was about to perform some unusual act of hypnotism with the periodical, forcing the cheat to tell the truth.

  Lily shot Peter a look, realising that everything Cecelia had said and done over the weekend led to this disclosure.

  “Complete a section of today’s cryptic crossword, if you will. I’ll call out a clue and we’ll all try to come up with the answer for you to fill in – with your left hand, of course,” Simeon instructed.

  Cecelia inwardly cursed the fact that, when she had broken her right wrist at the age of thirteen, she hadn’t mastered the skill of writing with her left hand as her mother had encouraged. With practise, I would have been ambidextrous, so this shower of nobody’s couldn’t catch me out . . .

  “Three across: ‘Did something frightening just appear much larger?’ Eight letters,” Simeon announced, thrusting the newspaper towards Cecelia.

  “For heaven’s sake,” she muttered, “this is ridiculous.”

  Keen to show she was no slouch when it came to crosswords, Diane attempted the clue. “It’s ‘greater’, obviously,” she said, beaming at her own cleverness.

  “How is that frightening, exactly? And it’s only seven letters,” Lily muttered to Peter. But he didn’t like to mock too much as the crossword clue had stumped him.

  “Well, ‘startling’ then,” Diane provided, unwilling to give up on the challenge.

  “That’s actually nine letters,” said Lily politely, trying not to imply she knew any better.

  “Look,” Cecelia sighed in desperation, knowing full-well she couldn’t effectively continue the deception, “the answer’s ‘gruesome’. I’ll fill it in as requested.” Gripping the pen Simeon handed her in her left hand, she awkwardly attempted to write the answer in.

  “There’s no way she’s left-handed,” shrieked Diane, pointing an accusing finger and grinning widely. Lady Felicity nodded her agreement while Lily and Peter exchanged glances at the lengths Cecelia had clearly gone to in order to deceive.

  “The game’s up, I’m afraid,” said Peter, his expression full of pity.

  Cecelia gave a sneer of disgust. “Don’t tell me,” she shouted, throwing the newspaper to the floor, “any of you wouldn’t attempt the same trick if you had the looks for it.” A sea of blank faces made her feel stupid, irritated and small. “OK then,” she challenged, “what are you going to do about it now you’ve found me out?”

  Peter shrugged, “Technically there’s nothing that can be done, as you haven’t actually succeeded in your goal. If it had gone any further though and you’d obtained property or money by deception, the Major and Lady F would be perfectly within their rights to have you prosecuted for fraud.”

  “So, you malicious little nobody,” Lady Felicity said with a snarl, “there’s absolutely no need to hang around here any longer. I can assure you, your presence is not required.”

  Cecelia shrugged, the level of her deception being such, she could no longer redeem herself. “Oh, I think I’ll hang around

  until the end, i
f it’s all the same to you.”

  “I’ve got that pheasant out of the larder as there isn’t enough steak and kidney,” Nella called after Kitty, who was rapidly disappearing down the garden path with a basket of wet kitchen cloths to peg out. “Have to feed them one more time before they go,” she muttered to herself.

  Red-faced, Seb arrived to report what he’d overheard at the drawing room door. To his delight, the posh-looking woman with the beautiful green eyes had tried to pretend she was the daughter of the former owner so she could get her hands on the Hall. Knowing Nella wanted to be informed of any developments, Seb imparted the precious information in a rush before Kitty could return and ask questions.

  Cook raised her eyebrows high, unable to believe the bare-faced cheek of some people. “I knew it’d all end in tears,” she said stoically, examining the pheasant’s bald, pale body distractedly. “They’ve always been a bit shaky about owning this place, knowing someone else has a better claim than they do.”