The Castle Mystery

by Faith Martin

  ‘But that’s silly,’ Gayle chimed in with a small, nervous laugh. ‘Why should they do that? Elsie had no reason to kill Miss Simmons.’ She reached for the sugar bowl and spooned in a level teaspoon, her hands shaking slightly.

  So they know who her father is, Jenny thought accurately. They’d always known.

  ‘No, perhaps not. But she seemed to think someone else at the castle might have reason to, well . . . disapprove of Miss Simmons,’ she continued, watching them both carefully.

  She had not forgotten Miss Bingham’s quickly cut-off hint that the Meechams themselves might have a skeleton of their own in their closet that they’d be anxious to keep concealed.

  Meecham swallowed and glanced across at his daughter. Gayle was staring at the cook with a level, assessing glance that made Jenny want to shift uncomfortably in her seat. She did no such thing, of course, but gazed back equally coolly.

  ‘You have been busy, haven’t you, Miss Starling?’ Gayle said finally. But there was no malice in her voice, just the hard, heavy ring of reality. ‘I’ve been doing my homework too, as it happens. I thought the police were treating you a little differently from all the rest of us. And it couldn’t only have been because you were so new here.’

  ‘Gayle!’ Meecham said, aghast.

  ‘So I went into town myself this morning,’ Gayle continued, ignoring her father’s reproof, ‘and went to the newspaper office. I asked around, made a phone call or two to a reporter friend of mine, and guess what? Your name rang a bell. In fact, it rang several bells.’

  ‘Gayle, what are you saying?’ Meecham asked, looking at the cook in some alarm.

  Jenny took a sip of tea, and placidly let Gayle get on with it.

  ‘It seems, Father, that Miss Starling is something of an amateur detective. In fact, you have quite a few solved murders to your credit, don’t you, Miss Starling?’

  Jenny sighed and nodded. ‘I have been able to help the police on the odd occasion,’ she agreed modestly.

  ‘And you’re helping them now, aren’t you?’ Gayle continued, still in the same flat monotone. ‘I daresay Lady Vee wants some eyes and ears below stairs.’

  ‘Now that’s enough,’ Meecham said. ‘You won’t speak about her ladyship in that way.’

  Gayle reached across and patted her father’s hand reassuringly. It was almost, Jenny thought, as if she were the parent and Meecham the child. ‘No, Father. But Miss Starling has been busy. You know about Elsie, don’t you?’

  Jenny nodded. There was no point in denying it.

  ‘And you won’t stop digging until you know everything about us, will you?’ she added fatalistically.

  ‘Gayle, I really don’t think . . .’ Meecham began nervously, but Gayle again patted his hand, effectively silencing him.

  ‘It’s better if it comes from us, Father,’ Gayle said with a sigh. ‘Besides, the police are bound to find out sooner or later. You see, Miss Starling, we weren’t always tour guides, or even butler and maid. My father and mother once owned a farm. Oh, it was a small farm, and not very prosperous, but it was theirs. They owned the land, they farmed it, and were well respected by their peers. This was to the west of here. Near the Gloucestershire border. I lived on the farm until I was eight.’

  Gayle paused to glance at her father, who was staring down at his uneaten cake, his face a picture of misery.

  ‘We had a bad winter one year. Lost too many sheep. We had to take out a bank loan.’

  Even when she was eight, Jenny thought astutely, it was ‘we.’ Not ‘Mum and Dad’ but ‘we.’ Gayle must have had to grow up very quickly, the cook surmised, bracing herself for the tale of woe to come. And there must be one to come. Farmers and landowners didn’t become servants by choice.

  ‘For a while, it looked as if things would pick up. But then there was a second bad winter.’ Gayle sighed, obviously remembering it all very well indeed. ‘My mother was the daughter of a local factory owner. It wasn’t a big factory, not a nationally known one or anything like that, but it had done all right in the past. My grandfather gave my parents a painting as a wedding present. Oh, it wasn’t by Turner or Constable, like they have around here, but one of the minor Victorians. It was a pretty picture of a girl with long blonde curly hair cuddling a Red Setter dog. Very pretty. Very popular.’

  Gayle picked up a spoon and began to stir her tea. ‘We decided to sell it in order to pay off the bank and keep the farm. We took it to an art dealer we knew. He’d just opened a gallery in Bicester. We’d seen it written up in the newspapers.’

  Jenny felt her spine tingle. ‘This art dealer . . . ?’ she prompted, her voice bland, but she already knew the answer.

  Gayle nodded. ‘Basil Simmons. He told us that the painting wasn’t worth much. This was before the Victorians became so popular. He said nobody wanted ‘chocolate-box’ pictures much. Said the painting wasn’t even that well painted, and that it wasn’t by a very well-known artist. But he said he’d buy it, if we were really desperate.’

  ‘And of course, we were,’ Meecham spoke for the first time, his voice bleak with remembrance.

  ‘My mother managed to get the price up high enough to pay off the bank. Just. So we sold it to him.’

  ‘But we didn’t have enough money to buy more sheep to cover those we’d lost. Also, the cost of feed and grain had soared,’ Meecham added, sounding for the first time like the farmer he had once been.

  ‘You lost the farm,’ Jenny said flatly, with some effort managing to keep her heartfelt pity out of her voice.

  ‘Yes,’ Meecham echoed sadly. ‘We lost the farm. We moved to Banbury, into a poky little flat. I got a job in a hardware store. My wife had to take on any odd job she could find. Working part-time, for a pittance. By then, her own father had died and her brother had inherited the factory. He had seven children of his own; he couldn’t help us. The heart just seemed to go right out of Judith,’ Meecham said, his voice trembling as he remembered. ‘Within a year we’d lost her.’

  And so Gayle had taken her mother’s place, Jenny thought shrewdly. At, what? Ten, eleven years old? Cooking, cleaning and probably taking over the family finances.

  ‘I finally took on a more permanent job as butler to one of the local families,’ Meecham continued. ‘The old man who’d been the butler there for years and years taught me all he knew about the job before he left, and I found I was good at it. Then I came here about, oh, eight years ago. And since then we’ve been really happy, haven’t we, Gayle?’ he asked anxiously.

  Gayle nodded quickly. ‘Oh yes, Father. I love it here,’ she assured him. ‘I took over as her ladyship’s maid when the old one left. Not many girls can say they are maids to a real lady these days,’ she said, her voice deliberately excited. ‘Lady Diana made all that seem so glam.’

  But was she really happy here? Jenny wondered. Or was it all a sham, to help reassure her father that he was not a failure?

  ‘Yes, but I still don’t quite understand why Miss Bingham should think you might have a reason to come under suspicion,’ Jenny said, putting it as delicately as she could.

  Opposite her, Gayle’s lips twisted. ‘Oh, but she was right,’ she said, her voice hardening. ‘You see, about three years after we’d sold the painting to Mr Simmons, we were passing his shop and saw our painting in the window. It had a sold sticker on it, and the price was still on the frame. It was, well, let’s just say it was for a whole lot more than he paid us for it. A whole lot more.’

  Jenny could well imagine. She was beginning to build up a good, solid picture of Basil Simmons from various sources, and it was not pretty.

  ‘When I tackled him about it,’ Meecham said heavily, anger at last creeping into his voice, ‘he said that he’d deliberately held it back until people had started wanting Victoriana again. He said it went in waves. That art was like clothes — things came into fashion and went out. He said that now people wanted pretty paintings. And that the painting had turned out to be by quite a well-known artist a
fter all.’

  Meecham swallowed, his face becoming pinched with resentment. ‘I threatened to call in the police, but he just laughed. He said that I had agreed to sell it, and that was that. Said it was a case of seller beware.’

  Meecham’s hands clenched into fists, turning his knuckles white. Wordlessly, Gayle reached across and the two held hands tightly. ‘I became really angry. I told him he couldn’t get away with cheating people. I said that I had a good case for fraud. But he just laughed, and asked me if I could afford a lawyer, and to be tied up in the court system for months. Then he said that everyone would think me a fool for being taken in and would laugh behind my back. And what would my employer think about that? And he was right, of course, on all counts. I couldn’t afford a court case, but he was doing well by then. His shop was making a lot of money. And no employer wants a butler who’s in the public eye. By our very nature, we have to be discreet. We have to be unobtrusive.’

  Jenny nodded. And Meecham liked being unobtrusive; this she understood instinctively. Life had dealt him some very hard knocks, and he didn’t possess the kind of character to withstand them easily.

  No wonder he clung on possessively to his life here in the castle. His lordship was a good and kind employer. His life was ordered, and he was well taken care of. He no longer had to worry about providing for his family, or that life was going to knock him down again. And then Ava Simmons had come to the castle, reminding him of the small fortune he had lost. Reminding him that if it weren’t for her father all but robbing him blind, he might still have owned his own farm — that his wife might have still been alive.

  Jenny sighed heavily and glanced at Gayle. ‘Did Ava know? About her father and the painting, I mean?’

  Gayle shook her head. ‘We don’t think so. I don’t think she could have spoken to us, acted like nothing was amiss, if she’d had any idea.’

  Jenny nodded thoughtfully. ‘I can see why Miss Bingham knew you had no love for the Simmonses. I suppose she kept track of Basil. That’s how she knew about it.’

  Gayle nodded. ‘Not much gets past the old lady, or Elsie for that matter.’

  No, Jenny thought. I don’t suppose it does. ‘But that only gives you a motive for killing Basil Simmons,’ she said bluntly. ‘Not for killing his daughter, surely?’

  Meecham suddenly withdrew his hand from his daughter’s strong grip and stood up. ‘Of course not,’ he said stiffly. ‘Why, we had nothing against the girl. Did we, Gayle?’ he asked, and looked at his daughter for help.

  Didn’t he always, Jenny thought, with a sudden mixture of anger and pity.

  ‘No,’ Gayle said staunchly. ‘Of course we had nothing against her.’

  She’s lying, Jenny thought instantly. For Gayle’s eyes had dropped, unable to meet the cook’s own. And Meecham’s sudden show of bravado was as false as his words. They were hiding something. They had resented Ava Simmons. Bitterly. Even if she hadn’t been aware of it, she had grown up and flourished partly on the proceeds of the Meecham family painting. She had lived a good, easy life in her father’s house. A house paid for by Basil Simmons’s treachery. They must have resented her. They wouldn’t be human if they hadn’t.

  But did they kill her?

  Jenny sighed again and shook her head. ‘And to think only yesterday I was mourning the fact that nobody had any motive for killing Ava.’ She spoke her thoughts out loud. ‘Now, everyone does. Roberta and Malcolm could have resented her meddling, although that’s a motive so weak I think we can discount it altogether. Elsie could have been jealous. And now you, too, have a good reason to want revenge.’ She shook her head. It was all too much. ‘Well, at least Janice is out of it all,’ she consoled herself, and saw Meecham suddenly jerk, as if someone had just pulled an invisible string.

  She glanced up quickly. ‘Isn’t she?’ she demanded sharply.

  Meecham stared back at her, then jumped again as Gayle said, equally sharply, ‘Father?’

  Meecham collapsed back into his chair, unable to withstand the onslaught of two feminine demands. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything . . .’ he began, then sighed. ‘It may not mean . . .’ he trailed off, obviously battling with his conscience.

  ‘I think you’d better tell us,’ Jenny said gently, whilst wondering despairingly, now what?

  Meecham nodded. ‘I suppose it’s for the best. That afternoon, when his lordship asked me to search the house, after we saw the dagger, I went to Ava’s room, like I said. But I didn’t just knock, I opened the door. And I saw . . .’

  He paused, getting the memory straight in his mind. ‘There’s a mirror, facing the door, as you go in. And in it, I saw the reflection of myself holding the door open, and also someone hiding behind it. Hiding behind the door, I mean.’

  ‘Janice?’ Jenny asked glumly.

  Meecham nodded. ‘Janice,’ he confirmed quietly.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jenny reached for a jar of the old cook’s preserved pears and opened the lid. She sniffed suspiciously. She supposed they would be all right. But she was now habitually wary of anybody else’s preserves ever since that very tragic incident involving a sultan and his pampered Persian cat.

  She drained the large, juicy pears, silently congratulating the gardener on his skill, and washed and diced them. Next, she laid them out in a huge baking dish with some greengages and a good sprinkling of sultanas. Adding sugar and a dash of brandy, she put it to one side and set about making the shortcrust pastry to go on top.

  Jenny worked automatically, for her thoughts were very much elsewhere. On Meecham, to be exact, and what he had just told her.

  Gayle had left to see to Lady Vee, and Meecham, no doubt wanting to be alone with his thoughts, had skulked off somewhere, leaving her free to digest this latest revelation.

  Would losing the family fortune, so to speak, drive him to kill a relatively innocent party? There was no reason to suspect that Ava Simmons even knew of her father’s perfidy, let alone condoned it. And she would have been a child herself at the time of the sale of the Meecham family painting.

  No, it just didn’t ring true. Now if Basil Simmons had turned up stabbed to death by a dagger, then yes. But Ava?

  Jenny rolled out the pastry with a marble rolling pin — she never used a wooden one; pastry needed the cold strength of marble behind it — and sighed. And what was all this about Janice? She could think of no good reason why the parlour maid should have been lurking about in the governess’s room, unless on some errand of skullduggery. Could Meecham have been lying? Trying to throw the spotlight onto somebody else? But Jenny really didn’t think so. He wasn’t that spiteful. She pulled a dish towards her without really seeing it and laid the pastry on top. Her fingers began to crimp the edges automatically.

  She remembered now the way that Meecham had stiffened whenever Janice had said that she had not returned to the castle the afternoon of the murder. So she probably had gone to the governess’s room. But why?

  She looked down at her pie, admiring the dome shape and bulky dimensions. She liked her fruit pies to be fruit pies. Not all air and pastry pies. But, as she stared down at the pleasing domed top of the pie and the anaemic-looking, uncooked pastry, a small frown furrowed her brow. For a second she couldn’t think what was wrong. But her brain was sending out urgent signals that something definitely was. Then it hit her. The pie was only supposed to rise like that after it had been cooked.

  She spotted the pear-and plum filled bowl still sitting in the centre of the table, and staring down in consternation at the pastry-covered dome, she sighed.

  Carefully uncrimping the pastry from around the sides she lifted it off Henry, who stared up at her, his small, bulging eyes twinkling. He’d managed to grab a piece of the pastry before it had all been lifted fully off him, and now proceeded to chew it with an expression of complete distaste on his reptilian face.

  With a long-suffering sigh, the cook hoisted the pastry-munching tortoise off the table and onto the floor and watched
it slowly head for a sunny corner. But she didn’t have any high hopes of it staying there. One day, she was sure, his lordship and Lady Vee were going to tuck into a dish and find a nicely baked Henry underneath. And protesting her innocence wouldn’t—

  Just then Janice returned, cleaning cloths in her hand, her face flushed with sweat and hard work. ‘That’s the hall floor done. Phew! It takes me and the dailies who come in hours to do it, but it looks so nice when it’s waxed and polished. Of course, the tourists will only dirty it again.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine so,’ Jenny said neutrally, washing her hands and then setting about making some fresh pastry. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Oh yes please. Everybody else is going through his or her movements on the day . . . you know . . . with that policeman. He’s cornered poor Lady Roberta and Malcolm. Next he’s got Meecham and Gayle lined up. He wants them to do exactly as they did on that afternoon. I don’t know what he thinks it’ll all prove,’ Janice continued chattily. ‘That sergeant of his is hanging around with a stopwatch, and scribbling away in that notebook of his. It fair gives me the creeps. Course, Lady Roberta loves it. A bit of a lark for her, I suppose. No, that isn’t altogether fair,’ Janice corrected herself studiously. ‘She’s very determined to help the police catch whoever it was.’

  ‘Yes, Lady Roberta has a very keen sense of justice,’ Jenny agreed, pouring out some tea for the maid and looking for an opening. ‘Youngsters usually do. It’s only when they get older that they get more cynical. Teenagers just feel things more, I suppose.’ Which, Jenny thought grimly, was both a good and a bad thing.

  ‘Ah well. I suppose the police have to do their job. I’m just glad I’m well out of it, I can tell you,’ Janice said, sitting down and pushing her corn-coloured locks off her forehead in an unconsciously sexy gesture that would have had any man watching drooling in pleasure.

  ‘Yes. Well, I’m not quite sure that’s the case, are you, Janice?’ Jenny said, ever so mildly. ‘I mean, Meecham did see you in Ava’s room shortly after she was murdered.’