Deadly Desires at Honeychurch Hall

by Hannah Dennison

  “Yes, I’m going to the auction tomorrow,” I said.

  “I knew Binky Chillingford, of course.” Edith shook her head as if recalling a memory. “Frightful man with peculiar tastes. But perhaps you have friends you’d miss?”

  “Yes, I have friends.” But then wondered, did I? Edith’s comments had struck a chord.

  True, I did have a handful of friends but they were no longer close. I’d committed the awful faux pas of being so besotted with the man I was dating that I had slowly dropped most of them because David thought his friends and connections were more important—or rather they could advance my career in television.

  As my fame grew, I became increasingly wary of people’s interest in befriending me because of what they could get rather than who I was as a person. It had all happened so slowly I hadn’t really noticed—until now.

  “Friends come and go but in the end, it’s family that counts,” said Edith. “Why else do you think I agreed to this Alfred chappy, Iris’s stepbrother, working here? He’s family. William is still family, no matter what he did. I regard everyone who lives on the estate as part of the Honeychurch family.” Edith turned and gave me another shrewd look. “Yes. Even you.”

  I was touched and surprised at how conflicted Edith’s comments had made me feel.

  “In my grandfather’s day we owned the entire village of Little Dipperton,” she went on. “All the cottages belonged to the estate. As a child, we used to keep the Boxing Day tradition of delivering gifts of food and clothing to our tenants in the village. In the summer, we’d hold an annual faire at the Hall—which is how I originally came to know your mother as I’m sure you know.” Edith seemed to drift into a distant memory. “But now, there are only a handful of cottages left.”

  “Those with the blue-painted doors?” I ventured.

  “I’ve told Rupert we need to spruce them up. Get them rethatched. But we can hardly afford to keep the Hall up as it is. But one does what one can.”

  I sensed Edith’s despair and began to understand why both Rupert and Lavinia had decided not to tell her about Operation Bullet.

  We didn’t speak again until the Honeychurch Hall gatehouses came into view.

  “What about turning one of those into an office?” Edith suggested. “You could use the other as a showroom or shop?”

  “Are you being serious?” I’d always liked the eighteenth-century gatehouses with the Honeychurch family crest and motto: ad perseverate est ad triumphum—To Endure Is to Triumph. I often thought they could be done up and put to good use.

  “Naturally, you can’t live with your mother permanently,” Edith continued. “Jane’s Cottage is on the far side of the sunken garden. It’s been empty for decades and there’s no heating, awful plumbing, but if you’re interested, we could come to an arrangement—oh! You stupid girl!” Edith screeched. “Put that bag away!”

  Duchess stopped dead, snorting furiously. I saw flashes of fluorescent pink and heard the sound of flapping. Suddenly, she reared up. Instinctively, I leaned forward but caught my stomach on the upright pommel, pitching me sideways. The reins ripped through my fingers and the ground came toward me at lightning speed.

  There was a crack as my helmet struck a large boulder and my face and shoulder hit the dirt. I was in pain. For what seemed like minutes but was probably seconds, I lay still, severely winded and disoriented, as the sound of hooves receded in the distance.

  Dazed, I tried to focus.

  Angela’s face stared down at me. “Are you hurt?” She was practically in tears. “Oh mercy me! This is my fault. I’m so sorry.”

  “What happened?” I tried to sit up but my head was spinning and I felt nauseous. Then panic set in. “Where’s Duchess?”

  “Her ladyship has gone after it. It ran off toward the stables.” Angela waved a fluorescent-pink department store bag. “I think I frightened it with my bag.”

  She helped me up, studying my face anxiously. “Oh. You’ll have a nasty shiner in the morning. Shall I ask Mrs. Cropper for one of her remedies? Can you walk? Lean on me, please.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “At least let me help you back to the stable,” Angela said desperately. “Mrs. Cropper wanted more sloes and I thought there were some around here.” She showed me her iPhone. “I even took a photo of the ones you picked so I could tell what they looked like.”

  I let Angela ramble on but wished she’d stop talking. My head was pounding and I felt shaken up. Most of all I was worried about Duchess and only hoped she’d galloped back to the yard.

  Angela and I parted at the fork in the drive. “Please let me ask Mrs. Cropper for a remedy,” she said for the umpteenth time. “I’m sorry. Really, I am.”

  “It’s okay, Angela,” I said wearily as I left her there and walked away with her plaintive apologies continuing to ring in my ears.

  I found Edith inside Duchess’s stable removing her tack.

  “How embarrassing,” I said. “Is she alright?”

  “What a silly fool!” Edith exclaimed. “What on earth was Parks thinking, flapping that bag at poor Duchess.”

  “I didn’t see what happened,” I said. “It was so fast.”

  “Now run along home,” said Edith. “You’d better put something on that eye. I’ll take care of the horses. Off you go.”

  Back at the Carriage House I made a beeline for my bedroom. The last thing I wanted was for Mum to see me and start fussing.

  The house seemed unusually quiet but when I stepped onto the landing, I was surprised to find a wooden ladder propped against an open trapdoor that presumably led to a loft overhead. A loft hatch pole was laying on the floor.

  “Mum?” I called out. “Are you up there?”

  “Go away,” came the muffled response.

  There was a sound of an object being dragged overhead, a thud followed by a yelp of pain.

  “Do you want any help?” I started to climb the ladder.

  “I said go away!” Mum shouted again.

  I peered over the lip of the trapdoor. It was hard to see much in the gloom under the low eaves, mainly because Mum was kneeling down with her back to me and was blocking out the light.

  As she began to shuffle backward, I got a mouthful of dust.

  “Watch out for rats,” I teased.

  Mum reared up and hit her head with a smack. “Damn and blast!”

  “Sorry. I was joking.” I felt guilty. “That sounded like it hurt.”

  She eased around to look at me. Mum’s hair was covered in cobwebs and her face was smudged with dirt. As she crawled toward the exit I caught a flash of blue plastic wedged inside the top of her Marks & Spencer V-neck jumper.

  “What are you up to?”

  “Never you mind,” said Mum. “Get out of my way. I need the ladder.”

  But I didn’t budge. “What’s that tucked into your jumper? Are you taking drugs?”

  “Good heavens,” Mum cried. “What’s wrong with your face? Did someone punch you in the eye?”

  “You don’t exactly look fit to receive royalty yourself.”

  As Mum leaned in for a closer look, the blue object fell out and tumbled onto the landing.

  “Don’t touch it!” Mum shrieked.

  I scrambled down the ladder and inspected the book-size packet wrapped in blue transparent plastic. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It looked like bundles of hundred-pound notes.

  I looked up as Mum cautiously descended the ladder.

  “Don’t tell me. Let me guess,” I said. “You and Alfred robbed a bank.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “It’s my money and I earned it,” said Mum.

  “How much money is in there?” I demanded. “No, what I really should be asking is how much money is up there?” I pointed to the loft above.

  “You really are impossible, Katherine,” said Mum. “You’re worse than your father with all these questions and all your prying.”

  Mum looked defiant, an expression
I’d occasionally witnessed at home following an argument with Dad over how she spent her housekeeping allowance.

  “Haven’t you heard of a bank?” I said.

  “I can hardly pop to the Channel Islands when I want to withdraw some cash,” Mum retorted.

  I gasped. “You have an offshore account?”

  “My publisher pays my royalty checks into an account in Jersey—”

  “The Channel Islands!”

  “Yes. That’s where Jersey is,” said Mum. “I don’t see why the government should tax my hard-earned money. It’s perfectly legal.”

  I took in this new information with dismay. “I thought you had to be a multimillionaire to open an offshore account.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You just have to know the right people.”

  “And clearly, you do.” I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “Who are these right people?”

  “I have no idea.” Mum shrugged. “Alfred organized it.”

  “What!” I said. “I thought he’d only just made parole.”

  “He set it up ages ago,” said Mum airily. “I couldn’t risk your father finding out. I had no choice. It was Alfred’s idea.”

  “But—how did he do it?”

  “Well, he is very well connected, dear, both on the inside, and out.”

  “But—how do you access the money?”

  “By boat.”

  “How? When?”

  “Not when your father was alive, obviously,” said Mum. “I was quite surprised to find I had a lot more money than I realized. I just take the ferry from Weymouth. It only takes four hours both ways so I am back in time for tea. It’s very civilized.”

  I tried to take in yet another detail of my mother’s secret life. “And you bring the money back—how?”

  “In my suitcase.”

  I looked at Mum in horror. “You’re smuggling!”

  “Rubbish,” she cried. “I can bring in ten thousand pounds every time and not declare it. I know my rights! It’s all aboveboard.”

  “But it’s not aboveboard,” I protested. “Otherwise you would have the money in a bank account here. You know as well as I do that there are strict tax laws about keeping money in the Channel Islands. It was one of Dad’s pet projects.”

  Mum didn’t answer.

  “And where do the bank statements get sent?”

  “I don’t get them sent. I signed up for online banking.”

  “You don’t have a computer, let alone the Internet.”

  “Why would I need either?”

  “Because that’s what online banking is,” I said, exasperated.

  Mum shrugged again. “I keep my own records. I have a little cashbook. What does it matter to you anyway? It’s my life.”

  And the truth was, it shouldn’t matter but it did. I wasn’t clear how Mum’s arrangement worked but it sounded very dodgy.

  “You’re right. It is your life,” I said wearily.

  “Good. Now that we’re clear, shall we go downstairs and have a spot of lunch?”

  Mum breezed on by and I followed her down the stairs and headed for the kitchen.

  “Just help me understand,” I said. “You bought this place for cash.”

  “Correct.”

  “And I know you spent a lot of money putting in a new bathroom.”

  “Correct.”

  “So you had to have smuggled in more than ten thousand pounds. Something doesn’t add up here—” I pushed open the kitchen door. “Oh! Hello, boy.” Mr. Chips was dancing around the kitchen table and seemed more excited than usual. “What are you—?”

  “Angela!” Mum shot me a horrified look that had “did she hear us” written all over her face.

  “Hello. What’s happened?” she said. “You both look as if you’ve been in the wars.”

  “You could say that.” We must have looked a sight. I was sure my cheek was swelling nicely and Mum’s foray into the filthy loft had coated her clothes with cobwebs.

  “Oh! Is that a spider?” Angela pointed to Mum’s hair.

  “It’s only a money spider,” I said and gently removed it.

  “How apt,” Mum said dryly.

  “You’ve got to kill it!” Angela exclaimed.

  “It’s bad luck to kill a money spider,” said Mum.

  “Bad luck?” Angela shrieked. “But … there were hundreds of them when I cleared out the larders. I … I swept them away with my broom.”

  “I heard you sat in Sir Maurice’s chair, too, so you’d better watch out then, hadn’t you?” said Mum rather unkindly.

  “What’s wrong with Mr. Chips?” I asked.

  The Jack Russell was frothing at the mouth and scrabbling the table leg. Loops of drool dripped onto the floor.

  “He can smell the meat.” Angela pointed to the brown paper bag on the kitchen table. “Mrs. Cropper gave me a raw steak for your eye.”

  “A packet of peas will do just as well,” I said. “But thanks.”

  “Is that what you’ve got there?” Angela stared intensely at the blue packet in Mum’s hand. Even I could see the imprint of a banknote through the transparent plastic.

  Angela stepped closer. “Is that money? Did you rob a bank?”

  “Money? Money! What a silly thing to say. These are peas,” said Mum hastily. “Kat was just putting them back into the freezer. Here, Kat—catch!”

  Mum tossed the packet. Badly. I fumbled. It fell to the floor. Angela made a lunge for it but was foiled when Mum inexplicably kicked the packet away. It skittered across the floor where—to our shock—Mr. Chips snatched it up and tore out of the kitchen at high speed.

  “Oh! The dog! The dog!” shrieked Mum. “Quickly, Kat. Hurry.”

  “Excuse me.” I raced after him leaving Angela standing with her mouth open.

  To my dismay, the front door had been left ajar. I ran outside just in time to see Mr. Chips squeeze through the hedge and into Eric’s scrapyard next door.

  “Mr. Chips!” I yelled out. “Here, boy! Here!”

  Damn and blast. I was wearing my house moccasins so I gingerly picked my way around the puddles to the makeshift corrugated iron gate. Ignoring the spray-painted crimson warning of TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED & POACHERS WILL BE SHOT, I spent ages trying to unhook the elaborate chain contraption that Eric used to keep the gate standing upright. Dragging the wretched thing open, I peeped into the scrapyard. My worst fears had been realized.

  Mr. Chips had vanished.

  Damn and blast, I muttered again, looking down at my feet. My moccasins were already splattered with mud and if I ran back to the Carriage House to get my Wellies, I’d never catch up with him.

  I hesitated for a moment. I hated going through Eric’s yard but, given that his Land Rover wasn’t outside the old caravan, he was obviously not around.

  Slipping through the gate, I manhandled it back into place, hastily rehooked the chain, and squelched my way through Eric’s scrapyard.

  Surely, once Mr. Chips realized that there was no juicy steak in the packet he’d drop it. No, wait. He wouldn’t do that. He’d most likely bury it.

  Oh God. How infuriating! I felt a spot of rain and, looking skyward, saw a blanket of dark clouds overheard. Typical. I hadn’t thought to take a coat, either.

  “Mr. Chips!” I yelled as I caught a glimpse of tan and white pushing through the undergrowth on the far side of Eric’s scrapyard.

  Damn and blast! I muttered for the umpteenth time and set off after him at a jog, sticking to the hedge boundaries and keeping an eye open for burying locations like badger setts and rabbit burrows.

  Two fields later there was no sign of Mr. Chips or the blue packet.

  My feet were wet and I was cold. I was extremely hungry, having run off on this wild-goose chase before lunch. I was also irrationally angry with my mother for not just keeping the money in the house in the first place but for reacting the way she did with Angela.

  When I clambered over the stile and stepped down into Cavalier C
opse, I was about to give up and trek home when I saw something laying in the grass that made my blood run cold.

  It was Valentine’s ox bone walking cane with the distinctive French bulldog handle.

  Looking up the valley, I was suddenly gripped by a terrible sense of foreboding.

  Valentine’s SUV was still visible, parked by the five-bar gate.

  A wind picked up and a chill swept through me. Something felt horribly wrong.

  Retrieving the ox bone cane I headed up the hill to his car—Mr. Chips and Mum now forgotten.

  As I expected, Valentine’s SUV was locked. I peered through each window but other than a pair of brown leather gloves and the sale catalog for Chillingford Court, the car was empty. I tried calling Valentine’s phone again. It clicked straight into a generic greeting that announced his voice mailbox was full.

  I was in a dilemma. My first reaction was to call the police. I knew that my inquiry would sound lame and would run along these lines—”How well did you know Valentine Prince-Avery?” Less than twenty-four hours. “When was the last time you saw him?” Yesterday. When he ran out of a protest meeting. “Why do you feel he is missing?” He left me a strange message and then didn’t return my phone calls. I found his walking cane in a field and his car is still parked on the top road. “Where is he staying and have you tried contacting him there?” The Hare & Hounds, and no, I have not.

  Perhaps I was overreacting. Valentine had been drinking heavily the night before and he did drive off somewhere in his car. Maybe he’d decided he was over the limit and just abandoned his car and walked back to the pub. It wasn’t far. But surely he wouldn’t have left his great-grandfather’s ox bone cane lying in a field.

  Since I was already halfway to the village of Little Dipperton, I decided to walk on to the pub regardless of my moccasin-clad feet. At this point I’d given up caring.

  And then, just as I was walking past Bridge Cottage, it began to rain.

  Perhaps I could borrow an umbrella from Patty—she might even lend me a pair of Wellies.

  I knocked on the front door but there was no reply so I went around to the rear of the cottage where a raised vegetable plot, abandoned and strewn with weeds, shared the tiny strip of land that passed for a garden. A concrete coal bunker stood next to a tiled outhouse that I suspected still incorporated an old loo. The cottage had a catslide roof built on at a later date. Underneath the broken guttering was a moldy-looking mattress and rusting coil-spring bed. It was as if someone had just opened a top window and pushed the whole thing out.