Murder Most Fair

by Anna Lee Huber

  She ignored me, leaning forward to answer something Mrs. Hardcastle had said as an aside.

  Isaac shrugged, his eyes twinkling. “There isn’t much else of interest to discuss. Surely you haven’t forgotten that?”

  I exhaled resignedly at his teasing. “No, I haven’t.” Village life could be slow. More often than not an ailing cow or a letter from a relative living far afield passed as newsworthy. I’m sure that had altered slightly during the war, but less than one might expect.

  “And you’ve brought your great-aunt with you.” His expression turned wry as he muttered under his breath, “That’s set the hens, and the roosters, to clucking.”

  “Yes, I must say I was distressed to hear of that,” Mrs. Hardcastle interjected, pressing a hand to her chest. “I was barely able to rise from bed yesterday, and so I missed services, but I was absolutely aghast to hear of there being Germans in our midst.” Her mouth screwed up in affront and distaste. “After all the young men we’ve lost to their savagery. It’s shocking.”

  My skin flushed with anger. I had suspected that some of the people of Hawes had discussed Tante Ilse, and Germans in general, in such a manner, but I hadn’t been prepared to actually hear it. I understood they were worn out by the war and that, having no definitive target on which to fix their anger and hatred, they’d directed it toward the entire German populace. But it still made me outraged on my great-aunt’s behalf that she should face such rancor simply because of her nationality.

  “Frau Vischering is my husband’s aunt,” Mother replied calmly, though her chin had lifted so that she spoke down her nose at the other woman. “She is old and frail, and she has nothing and no one left back in Germany. Besides, she is family. As a good Christian woman, I could hardly turn her away.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Mrs. Hardcastle relented, though I wasn’t certain that in my mother’s shoes she would have done the same. “And a woman of her age must be harmless. So long as there are no German men showing up, taking jobs when so many of our men are in need of the employment.” She nodded at Isaac, making me suspect this was a common topic of discussion in their household. Though I had to wonder how many Germans had actually shown up in the depths of Yorkshire seeking jobs. My guess was none.

  “I recall Mrs. Vischering from before the war,” Isaac said. “I always liked the old gal.”

  “Isaac, really,” his mother scolded. “Your language. You’ve been spending too much time at the Crown.” The local pub.

  He appeared to take her chiding in stride. “She always seemed like a kind and generous woman,” he amended. “And as Mrs. Townsend said, her being an old Christian woman in need of your care, no one should begrudge them that.”

  I couldn’t tell whether the last was directed at me or his mother. Either way, it didn’t sit well with me. My mother’s cool defense and appeal to people’s Christian duty had been bad enough, but hearing Isaac reiterate it in such a manner rubbed me raw.

  Unable to stomach another moment of the present company, I decided it was past time to make my escape. “If you’ll excuse me, I promised Miss Capshaw I would pay her a call this afternoon.”

  Mother turned to me in disapproval, but I pretended not to see. After all, I’d paid my respects, behaving with decorum all afternoon. But I’d danced on her puppet strings long enough. Duty done, I felt no qualms about departing now.

  “Lovely to see you,” I told Mrs. Hardcastle. “I’ll see you at home, Mother.”

  “But how will you . . . ?”

  “Violet will give me a ride,” I assured her, though I knew no such thing. However, I didn’t want Mother waiting around on me. I would find another way home if Violet wasn’t capable of taking me.

  “I’ll walk with you.” Isaac surprised me by offering, rising to his feet.

  Knowing I couldn’t decline without sounding churlish, I thanked him and passed through the door he held open out into the gloom of late afternoon. The clouds from earlier that day had not dispersed, so even an hour before sunset, a melancholy air hung over the countryside.

  The Capshaws lived a short distance from the Hardcastles, across the River Ure, but still within sight of their cottage. I directed my steps toward the road and the bridge over the pebble-strewn waterway. Now it trickled merrily over rocks and through shallow eddies, but I knew when the rains came it could turn into a gushing torrent, pouring through the valley.

  I nodded to my parents’ chauffeur as we passed the Rolls, but waved him back inside when he began to open the door. Leaves scattered before us as we strode up the drive, clattering over the dirt and grass, or, occasionally lofted by the wind, whirled away. One such leaf tangled in the hat of the cyclist on the road, her head bent low over the handlebars. She looked up as she passed the drive, and I realized it was Fräulein Bauer.

  “Isn’t that Mrs. Vischering’s maid?” Isaac asked, apparently also recognizing her.

  I opened my mouth to ask how he knew, but then realized the answer was obvious. After all, strangers never went unnoticed in a village like Hawes. Especially not foreigners.

  “Yes, she told me yesterday that she had some things to pick up from the chemist for my great-aunt,” I explained, and then felt angry at myself for doing so. As if I needed to make excuses for Bauer’s use of the bicycle and visit to the village.

  “Couldn’t your brother have taken care of it for her?”

  I had asked the very same thing because, after all, Freddy was a doctor, but resentment stirred in my breast at Isaac for doing so. “Things other than just medicine,” I replied a bit too sharply.

  Isaac flushed, perhaps reading more meaning into that statement than I intended, but in the end it worked to the same purpose—discouraging his questions. “I see,” he said, after clearing his throat. He’d neglected to put on a hat, and his pale hair was now riffled by the wind.

  We turned to silently stroll up the road, watching as Bauer’s form disappeared down the hill on the opposite side of the river. As we reached the bridge ourselves, I spotted her form again in the distance, pedaling intently onward, and it prodded at something in my brain. If Isaac had noticed Bauer so quickly, then undoubtedly he would have taken note of any other outsiders who had arrived in Hawes.

  “Your duties with the parish council must keep you busy,” I remarked.

  He shrugged. “To some extent.”

  “I imagine life was quite different here during the war.”

  “Not as much as you’d think.” He glanced sideways at me. “It seemed like our young men were always coming and going. Mostly going. And we had Land Girls coming in to help at the farms that were then short of labor. They caused a minor scandal a time or two, mainly because the local women objected to the trousers that were part of their uniform. But beyond that, it was much the same.”

  I contemplated this and how different London was, where the faces I’d glimpsed in the street altered every day of the year.

  “Any new faces in Hawes since I left?” I asked in an offhanded voice as we stepped around the muck left in the lane by a passing horse to cut across the lawn leading up toward the Capshaws’ house.

  “No.”

  “Not even holidaymakers?”

  “We did see the return of some of those this summer, but now that the weather has turned colder, and the most brilliant flush of autumn color has passed, they’ve disappeared again.” He tilted his head. “I’d say, it’s been a good three weeks since last I saw an unfamiliar face. Well, save Mr. Kent’s manservant and Mrs. Vischering’s maid.”

  I nodded, feeling less reassured by his answers than I’d hoped. If there’d been a new resident, or even a stranger seen about Hawes, then perhaps I could have at least tracked them down and discovered why they had seemed so familiar to me, and whether there was any reason to believe Tante Ilse’s assertion that she’d seen the second deserter was true. Now, I was faced with two alternatives. Either there was an unknown man skulking about whom Isaac had not heard of or seen yet, and who had ch
osen to lie low rather than draw attention to himself, which was worrying in and of itself, or the man I had seen at St. Margaret’s had been a child when I left town and had since grown up to look like someone familiar to me.

  Although the latter would be the preferred answer, instinctively I doubted it. For one, the man I’d seen had seemed older than twenty or twenty-one, which was the oldest I estimated he could be for him to have still been boyish in appearance five years prior. For another, I had sensed he was out of place in Hawes, and yet if he resembled a former or current resident, that shouldn’t be the case.

  The path we’d taken skirted the trees growing alongside the river. Here amid the shade of their boughs, the air was rife with the scent of the river and the earth that lined its banks. “It’s good to hear the holidaymakers have returned,” I said, trying to tamp down my own frustration.

  I’d known the seaside had been swamped during July and August, as everyone was eager to return to some semblance of normal after four and a half terrible years. But I admitted I’d given little thought to the impact that might have had in Hawes.

  “Yes, well, fortunately our town doesn’t rely on tourism. Though we anticipate that changing in the coming years.”

  “Oh?” I replied, listening with half an ear as he expounded on his research and plans to bolster the town’s economy and revenues. From the sounds of it, he took his new duties on the parish council quite seriously. His enthusiasm and creativity could be just what the town needed, but convincing the other aging councilmen would not be easy. Not when they tended to think that the way things had always been done was the way things should continue to be done. I wished him luck.

  Violet must have seen us coming up the lawn, for she came out onto her portico to greet us, a thick woolen cardigan swaddling her frame. Her dark bobbed hair was tucked behind her ears and a mischievous smile lit her eyes. “Made your escape before she could bring up her piles, didn’t you?”

  Isaac’s already-flush cheeks reddened further, and his mouth curled in a resigned smile, clearly accustomed to her teasing. “I was in no danger of that, for Mother knows full well that Mrs. Townsend would never let her burble on about her hemorrhoids.” He cut a sideways glance at me. “She saves that for Dr. Townsend.”

  I groaned on my brother’s behalf and then laughed.

  “Poor Freddy,” Violet agreed. “But after all, he did choose to become a country doctor, so I suppose that goes with the territory.”

  She was right. Freddy could have joined the staff at a number of hospitals about the country as a surgeon, and they would have welcomed him with his distinguished war service. But instead he’d chosen to return to Hawes and take over Dr. Paley’s practice. I knew part of the reason was that he would wind up here eventually anyway when he inherited Brock House, but I suspected there was more to it than that.

  I thanked Isaac for his escort, and then followed Violet into the house. A vase filled with seasonal flowers graced the table in the entry, just as it always had when Mrs. Capshaw was still alive. In fact, I discovered very little of the house had changed since her death two years prior, and I wondered if that was by Violet’s choice or because of her father’s dictates. After all, Mr. Capshaw had never been the most congenial of men, though he did seem to hold a soft spot where his only child was concerned.

  “Father is at the Crown playing backgammon, as he does every Monday afternoon,” she explained as we entered the drawing room, where a tray had already been prepared with glasses, gin, sparkling water, sliced limes, and a bucket of ice. “So we can enjoy a proper hobnob without him interrupting,” she declared with arched brows before lifting the tray and leading me out into the solar overlooking the gardens. After all, she had promised me something stronger than tea.

  It was a lovely room decorated in bright white and sunny yellow, and quite the cheeriest space in the house, if not all of Hawes, even on an overcast day. While Violet set the tray on the sideboard and prepared our cocktails, I settled in a wicker chair and turned to gaze out over the gardens, admiring the neat beds and late-blooming flowers. Violet had certainly inherited her mother’s green thumb, and I knew her mother would be proud of the way she’d kept things up.

  “Didn’t you at one time have plans to offer your services to design other people’s gardens?” I asked as she handed me a gin rickey.

  She nodded before taking a sip of her own drink. “Mrs. Phelps wanted to hire me to arrange the gardens at her new husband’s home.”

  “Mr. Metcalfe’s daughter?” I asked, impressed by the connection.

  “Yes. But then the war dragged on, and Norman was killed.” She sighed. “And there just didn’t seem to be any point to it anymore.”

  I nodded, understanding exactly what she meant. My gaze strayed to the autumn garden once again. “Well . . . some years have passed now. Maybe you feel differently?” When she didn’t balk at the question, I pressed on. “You should contact her. Find out if she’s still interested.”

  Her gaze wandered over the pretty vegetation beyond the window, as if caressing each leaf as she gave the matter some consideration. “Perhaps I will.”

  I smiled encouragingly at her, and she suddenly leaned forward.

  “Now, tell me. What’s it like having a man like that hound you?”

  CHAPTER 15

  It took me a moment to realize she was speaking of Sidney. From her flashing eyes and eager grin, I knew she could mean no one else, even if I felt the verb to be more appropriate to the hovering specter of Lord Ardmore or the second deserter. She couldn’t possibly know of either of them.

  “He hardly hounds me,” I finally managed to reply with a breathy laugh.

  “Well, of course. If I had a husband like that, he wouldn’t need to hound me for anything either. But he does seem rather . . . intense.” She sat back, a puckish smile lurking at the corners of her lips. “It just made me wonder what it would be like to have so much intensity focused solely on me.”

  I had never been one to blush. Not about such topics. But her words made the tips of my ears redden. “Is this what you talked about with the other girls in your FANY unit?”

  “That and other things.” Her gaze dipped to her glass, and she lifted a finger to run it around the rim. “Anything that would help us forget whatever we’d seen on that night’s run.”

  Though it was spoken lightheartedly, I could imagine the terror of those ambulance runs. Particularly in the darkness over pocked and rutted roads, desperately trying to peer just a little bit farther than your eyes were capable of, knowing one false turn could send the vehicle careening through the mud into a water-filled shell hole. And all the while hearing and smelling the pain and horror of your injured passengers—the blood, sweat, and vomit.

  After all, I’d seen the roads and experienced the conditions they were forced to drive in. I’d ridden in one of those ambulances after the shelling outside Bailleul, France, had ended, when I’d been injured after Brigadier General Bishop’s temporary headquarters had been blown up.

  Keen not to have our discussion descend into such morbid ponderings, I decided to answer her question, albeit rather vaguely. The details of my and Sidney’s physical relationship were no one’s business but our own. “It’s flattering, and wonderful. And truthfully at times a little overwhelming.”

  She grinned. “In the best sort of way.”

  I couldn’t halt a rather self-satisfied smirk from curling my lips. “Yes. But, what of you?” I asked after taking a drink. “Any chap catch your fancy?”

  “In these parts?” She scoffed. “I’m afraid the pickings are rather slim on the ground.”

  As they were in many parts of Britain.

  A devilish glint lit her eyes. “Though your brother Tim is quite easy on the eyes.”

  “And four years younger.”

  “Well, that’s not going to stop me.”

  I couldn’t tell whether she was being serious or merely teasing, and then I decided it didn’t matter. They w
ere both adults, and entirely capable of conducting their own relationships. Whatever I thought about it was of no consequence.

  I took another sip of my gin rickey, allowing my gaze to stray toward the river and the cottage in the distance. The Rolls-Royce no longer sat in the drive, so presumably Mother had gone home. “You must see a lot of Isaac.”

  Violet gave a shout of laughter. “Well, don’t go lumping us together. Isaac is all well and good, but he’s not the most competent of chaps. And his mother is a bitter pill to swallow.”

  “That’s not what I meant. But, I am curious. What do you mean he’s not the most competent? Are we talking romantically?”

  She recoiled.

  I shook my head at her antics. “Or in general? He was elected to the parish council after all.”

  “Because no one ran against him.”

  “You mean . . .”

  “They felt sorry for him.” She gestured with her glass toward town, presumably indicating the older gentlemen in our community, the likes of her father and mine. “They wanted to give him something to do since he couldn’t serve, on account of his health, so they got him elected to the parish council.”

  I sat back in slightly sickened astonishment.

  “They meant well,” Violet continued, her own fervor dampening. “His mother practically keeps him chained to her side because of her poor health, playing on his duty to her as well as his own ailments. You remember how rarely he was allowed to play with us all. And when he was, how he more often than not made a hash of it by repeating his mother’s criticisms. He’s not gotten any better about that.”

  I grimaced. “Which I’m sure goes over well with the council.”

  “Like a load of bricks.” She sighed. “In truth, I feel sorry for him. He’s a nice enough chap. If only he could escape his mother. The war might have helped him there . . .”

  “But his body betrayed him,” I finished for her.

  She nodded.

  Poor Isaac, I thought, and then immediately cringed. Everyone, it seemed, pitied him. Including me.