There were two views from the conservatory. To the rear were massive greenhouses full of even larger tropical plants. Huge leaves pressed against the glass as if trying to escape from the dank humidity that prevailed inside. She’d gone in there once. Once was enough.
From the other end of the conservatory she could look over the drive and the wide steps that led up on to the parapet to the front door. She sighed. The drive was empty and she was lonely. Oh for a bit of red-blooded company.
She took a red leather address book from her handbag, opened it and ran her finger down the letters of the alphabet stopping at the letter ‘P’. With one well-manicured fingertip, she flicked the book open at that page and smiled at the entry. She kept the book open, picked up her phone and dialled. It rang for a while then was answered. The sound of his voice made her go weak at the knees.
‘Well hello,’ she purred. ‘And how is my favourite little pussycat? Due for some well-earned leave yet? Spain is still very warm you know.’
The response on the other end of the line was negative. Her smile stiffened. Expensive heels of exquisite shoes dug into the tiled floor and her smile faded.
‘You haven’t got time? For me you should make time.’ She gritted her teeth and her lips felt stretched and dry.
He said something about their time together being long past. She scowled at that and regretted phoning.
Her tone turned sour.
‘Don’t worry about it darling. After all, you’re just a number on my list – just as I am on yours. One of my older numbers of course. Adios, amigo!’
She snapped the phone shut then flung it as far as she could.
‘Damn you!’
It bounced off the back wall and disappeared into the greenery. The sound of car tyres crunching on gravel made her look towards the drive.
Chapter Nineteen
‘I smell money,’ said Honey.
Her eyes took in the fudge-coloured stone, the lead-paned windows set into stalwart mullions of stone. Elizabethan?
‘Old money,’ corrected Casper suddenly breaking his silence. ‘Enough of it to allow Sir Andrew to do more or less what he wanted in life. Started off conservatively enough – Eton, Cambridge, followed by the army, followed by some acting and then the writing of his memoirs.’
‘About his time wearing tights?’ asked Honey, determined to raise Casper’s spirits.
‘Don’t be facetious!’ He sighed. He ducked slightly so that his gaze could sweep unimpeded over the elegant façade. ‘Apparently the place was in danger of falling down back in the nineteen fifties. Annoyingly gorgeous now!’
Honey noticed that Casper kept his eyes averted from the clock draped like a beautiful woman on the back seat. Her car of course. He’d made perfectly relevant excuses as to why they couldn’t use his.
‘Darling, mine’s a two-seater. Isn’t yours one of those people-carrier contraptions?’
She’d told him that no, it was not, but owning up to a two-seater was no contest. Of course they’d have to use her car.
Casper slammed the car door as if banning the timepiece from his mind. She knew he would do his utmost not to look at it again.
Looking distinctly unhappy, Casper clumped up the mossy steps to the next level of gravel.
Italian terracotta pots lined each tread and terrace, containing a froth of straggling lobelia, nasturtiums and variegated ivy.
The front door opened as if by magic. Andrew Charlborough had white hair and strong features. The ruddiness of his complexion was indicative of a man who’d served in the army, climbed mountains, and tramped through the jungles of Borneo. Not too good on an actor perhaps, but his bone structure was good.
He wore a powder blue sweater and matching trousers. A crisp white shirt collar emphasised the colour of his complexion.
He glanced swiftly at his wrist. The gold strap of a very expensive wristwatch glistened.
‘You’re late.’
He addressed Casper, turning away once the words had been snapped.
Unfazed and mildly respectful of gentry, Casper replied. ‘Do accept my apologies, old boy, but due to circumstances beyond our control.’
‘The traffic was heavy,’ added Honey, suddenly irritated by Casper’s flowery words.
Charlborough barely glanced at her. Again he addressed Casper. ‘Have you brought it with you?’
‘Yes indeed, though the thought of returning such a wondrous object weighs heavy in my heart.’
It sounded like Shakespeare, but Casper had made it up himself. Honey raised her eyes heavenwards. Casper was doing everything to impress.
Charlborough was unmoved. ‘Bring it in here.’ He turned away. Casper looked as though he was about to blow a gasket.
‘I do not hump!’ he said, both hands resting on his silver-topped walking stick.
Honey looked down at her shoes in an effort to hide her grin. Did Casper realise what he’d just said?
‘My butler is not here today,’ said Charlborough, his expression unaltered. ‘I’ll see if someone else can give a hand. Perhaps you’d like some coffee while I arrange things?’
Casper grabbed the chance to have a nose round – just as Honey knew he would.
They stepped into a hall where the walls were lined with heavy oak panelling and the floor was thick with the rich colours of ancient Oriental rugs. There was a dark green tapestry along one wall where a hunter sat on a pale horse, his dogs and retainers around him. A falcon perched on his wrist. Against the tapestry and set on a long Jacobean table with barley twist legs was a display of eighteenth-century silver. It was an incredible collection, handed down rather than purchased.
Above a stone mantelpiece sat a skeleton clock, its workings suitably protected beneath a dome of Victorian glass.
‘Such exquisite items,’ breathed Casper, his eyes shining with delight. ‘Absolutely exquisite.’
All the clocks stated it was two thirty-five.
Honey checked her watch. They were quite correct.
Casper gave it one last try. ‘I came here to see if we could not come to some understanding. I’m willing to offer more than your wife was paid for the clock.’
Charlborough paused and eyed him as though he were considering the depth of Casper’s pockets. His eyes narrowed, their greyness only a shade darker than his hair. His jaw was strong, his features chiselled – like a Roman general or emperor.
‘Haven’t I seen you at Sotheby’s?’ Andrew Charlborough directed his question at Casper. So far he’d hardly glanced at Honey.
Casper visibly grimaced. ‘We’ve bid against each other on a number of occasions.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘In that case I’ll ring for refreshments,’ said Charlborough.
Honey asked if she could use the bathroom.
Charlborough hardly looked up as he indicated a corridor of panelled wood and more tapestries running off the main hall.
‘Take that passage, turn right then left at the end. It’s on the right.’
She cursed the elderflower concoction her mother had foisted on her at lunchtime.
‘The ginseng will put a spring in your step,’ her mother had told her.
It didn’t, unless you count having to move smartly in the direction of the nearest loo!
She heard Charlborough tell Casper that they would talk in the study.
After ogling and using the Delft-tiled bathroom, it was time to play hunt the study. It has to be off the reception hall, she told herself and began trying a few doorknobs. Some were locked.
‘Can I help you?’
She started. The thick carpets had smothered the sound of his footfall. He looked pleasant enough, around thirty. He was carrying a tea-tray.
She smiled. ‘I’m looking for the study.’
He smiled back. ‘Follow me. Andrew asked me to bring you tea.’
She wondered at his familiarity, calling Sir Andrew by his first name.
‘Are you a memb
er of the family?’
‘I’ve been here for some time,’ he said, which didn’t really answer anything. ‘I suppose you could say I was. But I get paid for being here.’
His smile was disarming.
‘In here.’ He indicated a door. She opened it.
The study was as impressive as the rest of the house. Rich spines of old books lined packed shelves; there was a white marble fireplace of a later age than the house and an over mantel above it of later age still. The clock was of black marble, round and nestled on a mock carriage of gold ormolu and decorated each side with fat bottomed puttees.
Bunches of carved grapes wound in fertile splendour up and around the huge mirror hanging above the mantelpiece. Honey mentally assessed its height at around eight feet and it was about the same across.
There were a few pictures on the wall; black and white snaps and one or two coloured; family shots, a wife, a child. And later, just a young man, the child grown up perhaps? But no wife. No woman at all.
Sir Andrew did not acknowledge the young man who’d brought the tea. He left with as much deference as he’d entered.
‘Would you like to pour?’
Honey realised Sir Andrew was directing the question at her.
Her first inclination was to say no, but she changed her mind, aware that Sir Andrew was eyeing her.
There were only two cups on the tray.
‘No tea for me,’ said Charlborough, and got to his feet. Three decanters sat on a silver tray on the sideboard. He pulled out the stopper and began to pour himself a drink.
Casper and Honey exchanged contemptuous looks. Tea for them, brandy for him.
‘I admit to being disappointed,’ said Casper as Sir Andrew seated himself behind a desk that was almost big enough to be a dinner table. ‘I bought the clock in good faith.’
‘I apologise,’ said Charlborough. ‘My wife had no business selling the clock.’
‘But would you reconsider …?’
Honey was surprised. She’d never known Casper wheedle to anyone. He was certainly wheedling now.
There was an awkward silence during which she allowed her gaze to drift. Even once conversation resumed, she was not included.
Out of boredom as much as anything else, she got up and paced the perimeter of the room.
Charlborough was spouting his personal history.
Latching on to the subject, Honey interrupted.
‘Had quite a career in the army, sir?’ She nodded at a line of photographs that covered a good footage of panelling. They were black and white, unmistakably in foreign parts and full of smiling soldierly faces. Most of those pictured looked boyish. Charlborough, who she just about recognised, looked more head boyish and a touch superior.
He seemed pleased that she’d noticed, his voice booming.
‘Indeed yes. Great days. Great boys.’ Charlborough’s jowls drooped with nostalgic sadness.
He was on his second glass from the decanter.
‘Do you know Jeremiah Poughty?’ She adopted her sweetest voice. ‘West Indian parents, born in Gloucester, now runs a spice stall in the Guildhall Market.’
If Charlborough was taken by surprise, he didn’t show it.
‘I’ve never heard of the man.’ His voice was even.
‘He deals in spices and plants. You invited him here to talk about plants, I think.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I did. I don’t recall the name.’
‘You might recall what he looked like. He’s very …’ she paused for the right word. There was only one. ‘Colourful! Both in skin tone and clothes. A bit of a peacock you could say.’
Charlborough remained as cool as his powder blue sweater. ‘Oh yes. The plants. I don’t handle the domestic side of running this place. Anyway, what’s that got to do with my clock?’
‘Nothing really, except that the sacks …’
Uneasy with the line of questioning, Casper got to his feet. ‘Look I’m sorry about this, we really have taken up too much of your time, but if you should ever reconsider …’
‘The clock is not for sale – at any price! And now …’ The glass was slapped down.
Honey recognised the sign for goodbye. Sir Andrew had had enough.
He pressed a buzzer fixed to his desk. ‘Mark will show you out.’
The young man who’d brought the tea quickly appeared looking as though he’d swapped the kitchen for the garage.
Honey eyed the black T-shirt, the tight-fitting jeans. He smelled slightly of oil.
‘Ah! The butler.’
‘Hardly,’ he said with a smile as he accompanied them to the door. ‘It’s Trevor’s day off, although he’s probably around somewhere. I’m the back-room boy. I take care of anything mechanical.’
Casper pouted all the way down the steps to the car. As he walked he swung his silver-topped walking cane.
‘Careful,’ cried Honey, ducking to one side. ‘You look as though you’re going to bash someone with it.’
‘That man! Why couldn’t he indulge his wife a little, let her sell the clock and spend the money at will? I could swear, I really could!’
He slumped in the front seat and slammed the door.
Honey got behind the driving wheel and turned the key. ‘Don’t do that, Casper. We’re off to see the vicar next.’
Chapter Twenty
A downcast Casper opted to stay in the car.
‘Walk it off,’ Honey said to him.
He glowered.
She persisted. ‘A bit of fresh air will do you good.’
‘I don’t want to be done good! I want that clock!’
‘Children,’ she breathed quietly and headed for the arched and ancient entrance to the parish church.
The interior was very dim by virtue of its narrow Saxon windows. The walls were whitewashed but looked ice blue as the light diffused through the stained glass.
A woman arranging flowers told her where she could find the vicar.
‘Through the chancel and down the steps to the crypt.’ She pointed a skeletal finger tipped with bright pink nail varnish. ‘He’s got an archive down there.’
Apart from her painted fingernails, the woman seemed a sensible sort. She wore a flowered dress and lace-up shoes. Her eyes darted over Honey as swiftly as her fingers did over the flowers.
‘You could do with wearing something warmer. Cold as death it is down them steps – though only to be expected I suppose. It’s only a skip and a spit from the crypt where they’re all cold and bones.’
‘Charming. What better way to spend a warm spring day?’
Stone steps led down into the chancel. Cold air met her at the bottom and she shivered.
The Reverend Reece Mellors was bending over what could only be a parish register. It was huge, big enough to make a tabletop – a coffee table at least.
‘Reverend Mellors?’
He looked up.
She beamed warmly. ‘I’m Hannah Driver. I rang you.’
‘Well good afternoon!’
His deep baritone ricocheted off the cold walls and coffins. His hand swallowed hers.
The Reverend Mellors was something of a surprise. She’d expected a pasty-faced vicar with horn-rimmed spectacles and a vague look in his eyes. Instead she was confronted with a tall man who had to stoop beneath the vaulted roof. Black was the best way to describe him; black hair, black eyes, black bushy eyebrows, and dressed in black. The blackness contrasted eerily with his pale complexion. Like Count Dracula, she thought, and found her gaze fixing on his mouth when he spoke. No sign of fangs though – and that name was vaguely familiar.
‘I spoke to you about an American tourist, a Mr Elmer Weinstock, though he may have used the name Maxted.’
The vicar’s smile lifted his saturnine features. ‘Ah yes. Interesting chap. Couldn’t quite get out of the habit of using a pseudonym I think. He told me both names and that he had his reasons. He also swore me to secrecy as to his real name. I had no problem with that. In my opinion I
think he liked the excitement of having two names. I can’t think of any other reason for him doing so unless he didn’t like the one he was given. Still, we can’t help the names we’re given, can we?’
Honey conceded that vicar could be right. It was just the habit of a detective’s profession.
‘Were you of any help in his quest?’
‘Oh, I think so, although he had done quite a bit of groundwork himself.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought either of those names would be very common around Bath.’
‘They’re not. He wasn’t tracing his own kin. He was tracing his wife’s, and even then only by marriage. His wife’s cousin married Sir Andrew Charlborough in this very church.’
‘Is that so?’
Now this was interesting.
‘That is so.’ His finger traced a relatively late entry in the parish register.
‘She died about twenty years ago.’
Honey recalled the photographs: black and white of Charlborough and his lady and a child, then a later one of a young man, presumably the child grown into manhood.
‘And the son? Is his name and birth date listed?’
The Reverend Mellors slammed the book shut. ‘Not in this one.’ He reached for another hard-covered book. ‘His baptism would be in here.’
She watched as he rustled through the pages.
‘Ah! Here it is. Lance Charlborough was baptised eighteen years ago.’
Honey’s thoughts returned to the photographs of the handsome young man. Some had been fairly recent. And his mother had died twenty years ago. She was just about to point this out, but Mellors beat her to it.
‘Not his birth date, you understand,’ said the vicar having noted the expression on her face. ‘That would be in that book,’ he said, patting the former epic tome he’d been perusing.
‘Aren’t baptisms or christenings usually done within a few weeks or months of birth?’ she asked him.
Something in the Blood (A Honey Driver Murder Mystery) Page 12