I am an attorney and he is a simple gamekeeper, I sternly tried to remind myself. I have been sent here by Powell and Drakes, one of the best law firms in London, to work on a very important legal case! So stop acting like a foolish lovesick boy and start acting like a proper and sensible educated gentleman, for God’s sake!
But it was all in vain, because impossible and forbidden thoughts entered my head nonetheless, regardless of my thoroughly good and morally unflawed intentions, as I silently longed for the other man to reach out and pull me close.
“At which time would you like me to come tomorrow?” Morgan interrupted my thoughts as the carriage arrived to the inn. The old dog looked up from the back of the carriage as if it was wondering why it had stopped, and then promptly went back to sleep.
“Would eight o’clock be too early for you?” I asked as I climbed down from the high driver’s seat.
“Not at all,” he replied and reached down to hand over my briefcase.
Our fingers nearly touched, but not quite. His hand was tanned and strong, mine pale and slender in comparison, with black ink marks on some of the fingers.
“Excellent,” I said, a little bit distracted, and tried to remain composed.
“I look forward to seeing you tomorrow again,” he said with a smile that made my heart beat more rapidly, and I had to stifle the urge to smile back at him.
Instead I said goodbye to him politely, and I like to think that he seemed to be lingering longer than necessary before he left; however, it could have been my deranged imagination. It was beginning to get dark once he finally drove away along the country road. I stood there for a moment and watched the back of his broad shoulders before I shook my head at myself and went inside.
*
I went to my room, and after I had freshened myself up, I headed downstairs for something to eat. However, a group of workers had gathered in the common room. I assumed they were the local tin miners by the look of them. They were all men, aged from quite young to men in their forties, and they were dressed in the same type of grey working coats and loose trousers in thick canvas with leather patches on their knees, and sturdy mining leather boots. They talked and laughed loudly with the innkeeper as he pulled ales for everyone.
I was just about to turn around and return to my room, without anything to eat or drink, when I heard a voice behind me.
“Oh, you are back late, Mr Davidson,” the innkeeper’s wife, Martha, greeted me as she balanced a large pile of white enamel plates painted with blue forget-me-nots around the rim. “If you want to, sir, we have a small private room where you can eat, if you think the workers are… too loud for you to enjoy your meal in peace and quiet. It is Friday, so sometimes it gets a little bit rowdy down in the common room.”
I gratefully accepted her suggestion and was shown to a dining room upstairs, with a large oval table surrounded by six simple chairs and decorated with a pale yellow vase with dried flowers on top of a crocheted tablecloth. Storm lanterns lit up the windows and a small fire burnt in the fireplace.
“I will send Letty up with supper and a cider for you, if you want me to?” the innkeeper’s wife said.
“That sounds lovely, thank you, madam.”
I was quite hungry and had even felt a little bit light-headed earlier, and therefore I was not disappointed when Letty, a plain sort of girl in her early twenties with a short stub nose and her ash-blonde hair in a thick braid, came up with a large plate filled with roasted meat, golden-brown Yorkshire pudding, and boiled carrots and turnips at the side.
“How was your day, sir?” she asked politely in an even broader Devonshire accent than the innkeeper’s wife as she placed a mug of cider in front of me next to the plate of food. “Did you have a good day up at the Hall? It must be mighty dark and chilly up there at this time of year, with the Lord and Lady gone and no servants around.”
“My work went fine,” I said and added, “but Lydford Hall was quite cold and deserted, just as you can imagine, and not as warm and cosy as down here.”
“Yes. The Crown’s Inn is a nice place, is it not?” she said. “But I bet you are used to more fancy pubs and elegant restaurants in London?”
“On the contrary,” I told her, “London can be called many things, but it is never homely like this.”
I could see that she was warming up to my praise and did not seem overly keen to return to her work downstairs.
“Did you know there has always been a fire burning down in the common room at Crown’s Inn for more than one hundred years?” she said.
“Has it really?” I asked politely while I started to eat. I had a short inner moral debate with myself regarding if it really was acceptable to encourage gossip; however, apparently I had left my moral standards behind in London, because I said, “The roads to Lydford Hall are quite dreadful. And on the way, just before we left the main road, I could not help but notice that there was a small grave by the crossroads. An odd place for a grave, is it not?”
“That’s poor Sarah Barnes’s grave, that is,” Letty said.
“Yes, the gamekeeper told me that, and that apparently she had… killed herself.” I lowered my voice. “I do not mean to pry, but do you know what happened?”
“Well, sir,” Letty said and hesitated for a moment. Her already large brown almond eyes widened. “Have you not heard the whole story, sir?”
*
~ Chapter Eight ~
“I am afraid I do not know the full story,” I said. “I have just recently arrived, you see, so if you do not mind telling me what happened? It could help me with my work,” I added for good measure.
She seemed easily convinced and needed very little encouragement to continue. It was immediately clear to me that Letty was a natural good storyteller, but with a flair for the dramatic.
If it was not such an unsuitable profession for women to become actresses, she should be on the stage, I thought. The crowds at West End would love her!
“Sir,” she began almost breathlessly, “it all happened back in September. It was a dark and stormy night, one of the first autumn storms of the season, and everyone in their sane minds stayed indoors. The local farmers worried over their sheep out on the moor and could only pray that the poor creatures managed to find shelter somewhere, or they would most likely be found dead in the morrow for sure. However, Lydford Hall was in for a different type of storm that night, which in the end would claim three person’s innocent lives.”
She paused before she continued, “I grew up together with a girl called Mary, we went to school together, and she used to work up at the manor as a housemaid. And this, this is the story that she told me:
“They dined somewhat late that evening, which they often did when Lord Lydford’s brother and his new wife–that is James and Lavinia Lydford–came to visit. They came rather frequently to dinner at the Hall, at least once a month, according to Mary, but it seemed more to do with practical business affairs than a jolly family gathering, although on occasion Lord Lydford and his brother would go out shooting together. Lord Lydford was involved in tin mining and the powder mill down here in Dartmoor, while his brother invested in mines up in the north, I think.
“The dinner was a dull affair, and none of the neighbours had been invited to join them. The ladies went through to the drawing room once the dessert, apple tart with lemon curd and exotic fruit in jelly, was finished, while Lord Lydford and his brother stayed behind, drinking cognac and smoking together. After some time, the gentlemen joined the ladies, and coffee was served. None of the ladies entertained by the grand piano, and Lady Lydford claimed that she had a headache and withdrew early. Mrs Lavinia Lydford is a quiet and bookish young woman, and she was tired from the journey and went to bed too. According to Mary, who attended her that evening, she seemed pale and tired and went to bed at nine o’clock together with a book. Half an hour later, when Mary walked by in the corridor, she saw that the light was out and assumed that by t
hen Lavinia Lydford must already have been sound asleep.
“Lord Lydford and his brother stayed in the drawing room for another hour or so and did not withdraw until around eleven o’clock to Lord Lydford’s library for a nightcap. By then, my friend Mary had gone to bed, but one of the footmen who was still in service later told her that he had heard loud voices from the library and it was clear that Lord Lydford and James Lydford had had a violent argument, because suddenly the brother stormed out of the room and stomped off to his room.
“At one o’clock in the middle of the night, Lavinia Lydford rang the servants’ bell desperately. Her husband was by then quite ill, and the gamekeeper was sent out immediately on horseback in the middle of the stormy night to get hold of Dr Van Brunt, who had been the family physician for years, as quickly as possible. However, the weather was terrible, and on top of everything else, the horse unfortunately threw a shoe on the way. The physician did not arrive to Lydford Hall until just before dawn; however, by then it was all too late. Dr Van Brunt says that he did everything he could, but that a rare brain fever had already taken its hold, and James Lydford died a couple of hours later.
“The whole house was in an uproar, of course, but this was only the beginning of the nightmare that would follow. Lord Lydford took his brother’s death stoically with a stiff upper lip, but his wife was shocked over what had happened, and Lavinia Lydford was distraught and nearly hysterical, according to Mary. In the end the physician was forced to give Lavinia Lydford a strong sleeping draught for her nerves. Before she went to sleep, Lavinia Lydford told Mary, who sat with her, that she had seen the most unusual and strange things that night.
Lavinia said that she had woken up in the middle of the night by the thunder outside. She had been alone and felt a little bit scared until she thought she heard footsteps approaching, and believing it to be James Lydford on his way back, she had opened the door and peered out. But there–instead of the familiar sight of her husband–she had seen, in a bright flash of lightning, a ghost wandering down the hallway! A woman in black, dressed from top to toe in a dark mourning dress in the thickest silk crêpe and with a heavy veil in front of her face, who had come as the very foreboding of Death himself.”
Letty paused and let the last sentence sink in, and although I did not believe in ghosts, I felt a small shiver slide down my back.
“What Lavinia Lydford did not know, since she was new to the Lydford family and only had been married to James Lydford for less than a quarter of a year, was that the ghost has been seen at Lydford Hall before! The ‘Black Widow’, as she is called, is believed to be the late Lady Catherine Lydford, who lived at the hall nearly a hundred years ago. She became a widow from the age of two-and-twenty and dressed in black for the rest of her life, just like Queen Victoria. But Lady Catherine Lydford was also a hard business woman and she laid the foundation for much of Lydford Hall’s wealth today. She ruled with an iron fist, and her locked rooms in the western wing are still kept exactly as when she lived in them. However, it is said that when she at last died in her late eighties, her spirit could not leave Lydford Hall, and she has on several occasions been seen wandering around the manor late at night.”
Letty lowered her voice slightly before she continued her story.
“However, that was not the end of the troubled times, because the following night Lord Lydford died suddenly. No one knows exactly how or why, but he was found the following morning, dead and already cold by the desk in his library. Again the physician was called for, although this time there was no urgency. Dr Van Brunt declared that Lord Lydford must have died of heart failure, possibly as a result of the sudden shock of the death of his younger brother. Both Lord Lydford and James Lydford were laid out on mourning parade for three days before they were buried at the family grave at the cemetery by Postbridge.
“However, Death was not finished collecting souls at Lydford Hall, and two days after James Lydford was found dead, Sarah Barnes hanged herself in the stable. She was one of the housemaids and had worked at Lydford’s for about two years. Mary said she was nice and she was well liked. She was pretty; I met her once at the Widecombe Fair last year. Perhaps she was not the most hard-working kind of girl, but she had other qualities and had been to household school and previously worked as a governess. No one knew why she killed herself, but according to Mary, she had been awfully distressed by the death of Lord Lydford and his brother, and perhaps it brought up other, older and darker memories too. I guess we will never know…”
Letty finished her story, and I will admit she left me quite spellbound.
“That is… quite a story,” I said slowly and cleared my throat. “Thank you for telling me what happened.”
“Well,” she said and added in a lighter tone, “it is the only interesting thing that has happened around here since one of the workhouses blew up down at Cherrybrook Farm a couple of years ago.”
“At the powder mill?” I asked as I remembered the name of the gunpowder factory from Lord Lydford’s documents.
“Yes,” she said. “It was an accident; one of the workers had been careless and the house blew up, leaving nothing but the stone foundation behind! No one got hurt seriously, though, but the sound could be heard all the way from there to here!”
“That is quite a distance,” I agreed. “Well, thank you once again for telling me the whole story about Lydford Hall, you have a good knack for telling stories.”
I rose from the table.
“Thank you, sir,” she said and bobbed a somewhat clumsy curtsy. “If I had had proper education, I would have liked to become a writer.”
“Well, it is never too late,” I replied encouragingly.
After all, striving to become an author was a much more suitable profession for a woman than wishing to be on stage, I thought.
“The country school here is only for the younger children,” she said and began to gather the empty plate and cutlery from the table. “I know how to read and write, but I think I need a little bit more education to become an author.”
“Or perhaps just more practise?” I suggested, and following an impulse, I added, “As a matter of fact, I have several sheets of good-quality writing paper with me that got a little bit damp on my journey here. I cannot use them for my work, but if you want, you could have them for your writing?”
“Do you mean that?” Letty asked. Her face lit up. “Thank you, sir!”
I said to her that I did not mind, and she smiled broadly at me once she left the room.
See? I told my bruised moral sense. Encouraging gossip is not always bad.
And in addition I knew quite a bit about how Lord Lydford, his brother, and the poor housemaid had died. The final question was, of course, had it really been a row of pure unfortunate accidents, or was there something else behind the strange events at Lydford Hall? I pondered thoughtfully as I returned to my room, the Grey Rabbit.
*
~ Chapter Nine ~
As I turned a corner, I nearly walked straight into another servant girl, who without even giving me a second glance, walked straight past me, carrying a pile of towels.
“Excuse me,” I said, rather annoyed with her somewhat rude behaviour.
However, she did not seem to notice me at all and simply continued walking down the corridor towards the rooms at the other end of the inn.
I straightened my back, ready to call out after her again, when I realised that it was the same young servant girl whom I had seen the previous evening when I was searching for someone who could provide me with extra blankets. Then, I had assumed that she was a little bit deaf, but now I changed my opinion of her.
Clearly she is both deaf and daft, I thought and scoffed. But then again, she might just be an unfortunate relative that the innkeeper and his wife employed more out of charity than out of necessity, I added to myself, mollified by my own thoughts. It is not that they really need more servant girls with so few guests staying at t
he inn.
A fire was burning in the fireplace, and the room was not as cold as it had been the previous night, I was pleased to notice when I entered my room. After walking back and forth with my hands behind my back for a while, I sat down at the small writing desk and read through Lord Lydford’s second will.
Had Lord Lydford really died of heart failure? I thought with a frown. According to Letty’s story, he had not been overly close to his brother and he had seemed composed over his death, but then again, some people are better at hiding their emotions than others–I knew all about that.
Had a sudden rare brain fever truly claimed James Lydford’s life? I mused and tapped my fingertips lightly together in front of me while I rested my elbows against the desk. He had been five-and-thirty, significantly younger than Lord and Lady Lydford, according to my notes. Brain fevers could be dangerous and contagious; however, was it not odd that only James Lydford had been affected and no one else until several weeks later when it had affected the two attorneys from London?
But was there really a link between the previous three deaths at Lydford Hall and what happened to the two attorneys who visited the manor significantly later, when everyone had left and the house was closed up? I wondered, without finding any clear answers.
The Mystery of the Black Widow ~ A Gay Victorian Romance and Erotic Novella Page 5