A Stab in the Dark

by Karen Chester

  She twisted the handle of the cabinet door. Locked. Hmm. She hadn’t anticipated that. The key was likely close by; that was the usual Winthrop strategy—in a house this big, keys could get lost for decades.

  Bending down, she felt under the base of the cabinet, her uneasiness growing as she sensed her long-dead ancestors gazing down at her in disapproval from their portraits on the walls.

  A loud ringtone shattered the silence. Araminta’s hand jerked, jarring painfully against the wooden edge of the cabinet. Biting off an expletive, she stood up and pulled her mobile phone from her handbag.

  Laura’s name flashed up on the screen.

  “Darling, where are you? Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? Seb’s cooking salmon. It’s delish, and of course we’ve got plenty of wine.” Laura’s voice flooded out of the phone, sounding even louder than usual in the hushed stillness of the Great Hall.

  “Sorry, Laura, I can’t tonight.”

  “Where are you? And why are you whispering?” Laura’s voice rose even louder. “Are you up to no good? Why didn’t you tell me? It’s not fair you’re leaving me out!”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, sweetie.”

  “But I—”

  “Talk to you later. Bye.”

  She ended the call, cutting her friend off in mid-stream.

  A cool voice spoke in her ear. “Araminta.”

  Araminta yelped in surprise as she spun around. “Fecking—Aunt Edwina! Sorry about that. You startled me.”

  “If you must swear, do use the Queen’s English. I always find it more satisfying.”

  Araminta pressed a hand to her chest. “Thanks for the tip. I wonder if the Queen does swear?”

  “Wouldn’t you, if you had to put up with what she has to?”

  The muted light cloaked her aunt’s face in shadows, though not enough to hide the exhaustion dragging at her features. She’d always been of slender build, but now there was a new brittleness about her, making her look like she’d snap in two at the slightest pressure.

  The enormity of what her uncle had revealed hit Araminta afresh. The idea of talking to Aunt Edwina about Uncle George’s infidelity, about Joel Taylor’s claims and all that entailed, was impossible. Aunt Edwina would be shattered.

  “Are you looking for the key to the cabinet?” Aunt Edwina said.

  “Er, yes.”

  “Isla or Hetty would know where it is. They made sure all these cabinets were locked before the tours began. Worried about the light-fingered public.” Aunt Edwina plucked distractedly at her cashmere cardigan. The buttons, though done up, were misaligned, a sin her aunt would usually never commit. But, of course, in the past two days, nothing was usual.

  “Was there something you wanted from here?” Aunt Edwina continued, still sounding vague.

  “I was just interested in one of the pieces,” Araminta replied after a brief hesitation. “That little teapot down there, the one with the squirrel handle.” She pointed to the object in question.

  “Oh, that. Sweet little thing, isn’t it? I think it came from one of George’s great-great-aunts back in the twenties.”

  “Is it part of a set? Did it have any matching cups?”

  “I’m not sure. Why? Is it important?”

  Aunt Edwina’s eyes, usually so clear and sharp, were cloudy, almost glazed over. Was she trying to block out the world? Because it was too much to bear, or because she was guilty of something?

  “Not really,” Araminta replied, thinking fast. “Just something to take my mind off things. I was chatting to a collector earlier, who said these silver sets could be valuable.”

  “It’s a moot point, my dear. We’ve sold off so much already. Your uncle has drawn a line in the sand. No more.”

  “Even though previous generations had no so such qualms?”

  Aunt Edwina shook her head. “He’s reached his limit,” she said on a sigh. “The open house, the tours, the tearoom, he had to grit his teeth to bear that. And now, with everything that’s happened, well, I don’t know...”

  Her voice trailed off. To Araminta’s horror she spied tears gathering in the corners of her aunt’s eyes. The world so familiar to Araminta seemed to be crashing to smithereens around her. First, her upright uncle admitting to infidelity, and now her indomitable aunt succumbing to tears.

  Aunt Edwina twisted her head away and lifted her chin. After a few moments, her shaking stopped, and when she finally turned back to Araminta, her eyes were dry and opaque again.

  “Excuse me, my dear. I have a crashing headache. I think I’ll lie down for a while,” she said and started to walk away.

  “Call me if you need anything,” Araminta said after her.

  Aunt Edwina paused by a suit of armour. “Oh, by the way, you might want to check the butler’s pantry. You know, for that squirrel mug you’re looking for.” Without waiting for a reply, she turned and meandered out of the Great Hall.

  Araminta observed her aunt walk away. Despite the disconcerting tears, Aunt Edwina retained a steely determination. She would do anything to protect her husband, even killing Joel Taylor, Araminta had to admit. It was a sobering thought, but first she had to get to the bottom of this mysterious silver mug.

  She made her way to the green baize door that was discreetly tucked behind the main staircase. The door led down a flight of stairs to the servants’ quarters. The lower floor was a warren of corridors and rooms, each built for a specific function. Besides the kitchen, scullery, and larder, there was the servants’ dining hall, the still room, the vegetable room, the buttery, the laundry, and the gun room.

  As Araminta walked down the hall, a faint scuttling noise from the kitchen caught her attention.

  “Hetty?” she said as she paused at the doorway.

  With the lights off and the overcast sky, the kitchen was plunged in gloom. Nothing stirred. Then, in the shadowy recesses, a furtive movement.

  “Who’s there?” Araminta asked more sharply.

  “It’s just me.” A stocky figure emerged.

  “Cherise.” Araminta let out a sigh. Her nerves, she had to admit, were definitely on edge. “I heard from Garrick you’d taken a day off work. Are you all right?”

  Cherise shrugged her broad shoulders. “Yeah, sure. I mean, he did say I could take time off,” she added defensively. “So he can’t turn around and get narky about it.”

  “No one’s getting narky.” She inspected Cherise more closely. The emotional, overwrought woman from yesterday had gone. Now, dressed in jeans and trainers, hands shoved into the pockets of a grubby sweatshirt, she seemed dour and sullen, even hostile. “Did you come here to see Hetty?”

  “Huh? No. I came to...” Cherise shifted her feet. “I thought I’d left me purse here the other day, but it’s not here. I’ll be off, then.” She lumbered past Araminta.

  “Oh, by the way,” Araminta called after her. “I believe you had some sort of argument with Ollie the other day. Do you mind telling me what it was about?”

  Cherise halted. Her back, still turned to Araminta, stiffened. “Twas nothing. He’s a pillock, that’s all.” She trudged away and disappeared around a corner.

  Cherise’s emotions seemed to swing from one extreme to another. Was she hiding something? In fact, was she literally hiding something beneath that baggy sweatshirt?

  Araminta shrugged her shoulders. She would leave Cherise for another time; right now, she was focused on her hunt for silverware. Proceeding down the corridor, she headed for the butler’s pantry, situated next to the servants’ dining hall.

  The last butler had left Missenden Hall more than sixty years ago, but the butler’s pantry was still used for one of its original functions—storing the family’s silverware.

  Resting her hands on her hips, Araminta gazed around her. For such a cramped room it held a remarkable amount of storage space. Rows of cabinets lined every wall of the pantry. Unlike the fine walnut cabinets in the Great Hall, these were plain painted pine, functional rather than
decorative. Their sliding doors proved stiff and unyielding. Finally, she got the first one open to find rows of shelves jammed with all kinds of odds and sods, none of it silverware. There were ancient food mixers, ice cream-makers, blackened pots and dented pans, vast crystal punchbowls, wicker picnic hampers, brass oil lamps, enamel basins with matching water jugs.

  Opening another cabinet, she found stacks of magazines—Country Life, Punch, National Geographic, none of them less than five years old—dog-eared books and maps, broken whips and walking sticks, half-empty bottles of Pimm’s and bitters, mouldy leather-bound photo albums, embroidered cushions and moth-eaten woollen scarves, and a pile of manky tartan rugs. It seemed that when Hetty and Isla had cleared the clutter from the public rooms upstairs, they had simply shoved everything into these shelves.

  With a sigh she opened a third cabinet. Ah, at last, silverware, dull and tarnished. She began searching through a shelf jammed with soup tureens and fish platters. How much soup and fish could a generation of Winthrops eat? The next shelf held ice buckets, coffee pots, and boxes of cutlery, while the one below that held cloches, trays, and condiment sets.

  Crouching on her haunches, she surveyed the bottom shelf which was crowded with mugs, sugar bowls, and flagons. The single naked bulb hanging above her cast a meagre light, making it almost impossible to see into the nether regions. She should’ve brought a torch. Then she remembered she had a phone.

  She kneeled down and, using the light of her phone, began to rummage through the shelf, peering at each mug to check if it had a squirrel handle. It wasn’t until she reached right to the back of the shelf that she was finally rewarded.

  “Ah-ha,” she muttered as she examined a tarnished little mug in her dusty hands. The mug was fat-bellied, like the teapot upstairs in the grand saloon, with a handle fashioned in the shape of a squirrel running up a tree branch. It was a dear little thing, sized for hands smaller than an adult’s. Together with the teapot in the upstairs cabinet it would have made a charming tea set for a child. But tea sets like these were meant to be shared and so generally came with more than one mug.

  She set the mug on the floor and tucked her phone into the back pocket of her jeans. Bending down again, she pawed through the shelf once more, searching for another matching mug. She was on her knees, her right arm outstretched, her head level with the shelf, when she heard a faint sound behind her.

  “Cherise?” She huffed out a breath to blow the strands of hair that had fallen annoyingly over her eyes.

  The shuffling sound came again, then stopped.

  “Hetty, is that you?”

  No answer. The prickling in her spine was too strong to ignore. She wasn’t alone in the butler’s pantry. Pulling her arm free, she shot to her feet.

  Ollie Saunders loomed over her, his hulking figure blocking the narrow exit. His head must have knocked the low-hanging lightbulb; it rocked drunkenly from side to side, casting jumping shadows across his raw-boned face.

  Pins and needles stung the back of her calves. As she flexed her legs, her feet hit something which fell over with a clang. Ollie glanced down. His eyes met hers and widened, his broad shoulders stiffening.

  Belatedly, she realised he was clutching something to his chest. His hands, rough and chapped, loosened a little, enough for her to see the gleaming object in his grasp. A small silver mug, with a squirrel handle. The exact twin to the one lying at her feet.

  13. Alarm Bells

  IN ONE SWIFT MOTION, Araminta bent and scooped up the squirrel mug that she’d knocked over.

  Ollie let out a stuttering gasp. “Oh...”

  Araminta held up her mug. “Seems we have a match.”

  The gardener compressed his thin lips. The frown that habitually hovered on his forehead intensified. “How did you...?”

  “Did you polish that one?” She tilted her head towards the mug he was holding.

  His large, blunt fingers closed over the mug, pulled it closer to his chest. His mouth hung open; he looked completely baffled, as if she’d pulled off a magician’s trick.

  “I heard you were having trouble offloading yours,” Araminta said.

  Alarm bells were going off in the back of her head. Ollie Saunders had a history of violence, they were alone down here in this cramped room, and he was blocking the exit. A tricky situation. She wasn’t sure how to get past him but staying on the front foot was her best defence.

  “One thing I’ve learned about selling antiques,” she said, “is that a pair of objects is generally more valuable than two single items. Much rarer, you see. Pairs have a habit of being separated; one of them gets broken or lost or whatever. I don’t know how much one of these is worth.” She held up her mug. “But I’m sure two of them would fetch far more.”

  “It’s not what you think!” he burst out angrily.

  His outburst made her flinch. She had to get out of here. Her phone, she realised, was still in her back pocket. Could she use it to call for help without him noticing? If she could distract Ollie for a while...

  “Okay, so what are you doing here?” she asked, hoping to placate him.

  “I was—I’m trying to put it back.”

  “The mug?”

  He scowled at her. “Yeah, that’s right. I know you don’t believe me, but that’s why I’m here. I don’t want it no more. This thing—” he waggled the mug in her face, almost hitting her “—has been nothing but trouble. I don’t need that, ’specially not now that—”

  He broke off and hunched his shoulders, his gaze flicking away from hers.

  “Now that Joel Taylor is dead, and the police are poking about?” Araminta said. Sliding a hand behind her, she eased the phone out of her pocket, but with no way of seeing what she was doing, it was next to impossible to operate.

  Ollie twisted the little mug in his big, rough hands. “I shouldn’t’ve believed him. What’s that saying? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...well, I was a bloody eejit, all right. He said it was a present from his dad. Worth one thousand pounds, at least, he said. Huh!” A snort of disgust. “Too good to be true. Mam always said I was too trusting. When I showed it to the dealer in Dorchester, he gave me a funny look and said he had too much of that stuff already. I tried a couple other places, but no luck. No one legit would take it ‘cos I had no proof it was mine.”

  “So you tried a local fence,” she said as she continued to fumble with the phone behind her back, her fingers sliding uselessly over its smooth surface.

  Ollie’s head jerked up. “What’ve you been hearing? Someone been spreading rumours? I bet it’s that tosser, McVeigh. He makes a big show of going straight, but he doesn’t mind cutting a few corners when he can. Bloody McVeigh!”

  “But he was the one who told you the mug came from Missenden Hall, right?”

  The gardener huffed. “He couldn’t say for sure, but it made sense. He told me after the tour. I didn’t believe him at first. Thought he was just trying to wind me up. But afterwards I realised he was probably right. It made me right mad. I’d never’ve taken the mug if I knew it were Lord Winthrop’s, honest to God.”

  “And who gave you the mug in the first place?”

  “Joel.” He spat the name out. “Bloody Joel Taylor.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “Because he owed me. Owed me thousands of pounds, not just one. I lost my business because of him.”

  “Oh, right. He was a financial planner.”

  “He was a grifter, is what he was. He had the gift of the gab. He spun me all these lies about how he could double my investment in three months. So I gave him everything I had plus the overdraft on my business account. Ten thousand pounds all up. But after a few months the interest on my overdraft was killing me, and the bank started hounding me. I needed cash for the business. I asked Joel to sell my investment, give me my money, but he made all kinds of excuses, strung me along, avoided my calls. Finally, one day he turned up and handed me the silver mug. A goodwill gesture he called it.
Well, it wasn’t no goodwill gesture, was it? More like a nasty prank. Just like him. Nasty, tricky bastard!”

  The phone slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

  “Oi, what’s that?” For a large, lumbering man, Ollie moved with remarkable speed.

  He stooped down at the same time as Araminta. Their heads cracked together. Shards of pain burst through her forehead as she staggered back.

  “Is that why you killed Joel?” She blinked to clear her vision.

  “Huh?” Ollie gawped, her phone clenched in his hand.

  “You were seen arguing with him the day he was killed. What was that about? The money he still owed you, or the fact that he’d fobbed you off with a stolen mug and gotten you into more trouble?”

  “I didn’t—that’s not—” Ollie spluttered, spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth.

  “I can understand. You’re right about Joel. He was nasty and tricky. He probably needled you, provoked you into lashing out.”

  As she retreated another step, her back hit one of the cabinets. Behind her something wobbled. Angling an arm around her back, she found what felt like a candlestick and quickly seized it; at least she had a weapon of sorts.

  “I didn’t kill no one!” Ollie bellowed.

  Araminta schooled herself not to flinch, determined to hide any fear.

  Ollie shook his head. With his rumpled hair and hulking build, he looked like a wild and angry bear.

  “Yes, I had words with Joel! About this!” He shook the silver mug fiercely. “I told him to put it back in the Hall. It belongs to his lordship. I can’t steal from him. He’s the only one what gave me a job. He might come across as a nob, but he’s not half bad once you get to know him.”

  “And what did Joel say to that?” Araminta asked.

  “He just laughed in my face and walked away.”

  “And you did nothing? Simply turned the other cheek and went back to your work?”

  He huffed out a breath. “Yeah.”

  “And you didn’t see or hear anything until the police arrived?”