The Best British Mysteries 3 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  ‘Mary, Countess of Somersham. As she became on her husband’s accession to the title. We assume this was a wedding portrait - it was certainly done in the year of their marriage when Robert was the younger brother-in-waiting. Not much of a catch for a girl, you might think, but he was - for her. She was no aristocrat. Mary was the daughter of a Quaker shipbuilder, but very rich, so they both got what they wanted from the marriage. An unusual match, but it turned out well.’

  ‘And the cornucopia is a pointed reference to the wealth she was bringing to the Easton family?’

  ‘That’s right. After the lean years of the Commonwealth it was a miracle they had survived as a family at all, and they were certainly pleased to have her injection of cash. Bet if the truth were known she even paid for the staircase! She saved the whole dynasty. She was fruitful in other ways, too,’ he added, showing me a further picture.

  A charming portrait showed seven children gambolling in a landscape which was clearly Felthorpe Hall. Formally dressed miniatures of adults, they played with toys and small spaniels or clustered at the feet of their mother, an older and now matronly Mary. All here was sunshine striking satin, rounded pink cheeks, and laughing eyes. An idyllic scene. A perfect family I said as much to Nicholas.

  He grunted. ‘Unfortunately, not perfect. These little poppets had the most appalling uncle. They only inherited because William, Robert’s older brother, died an early death. A lethal combination of drink and the pox, it’s said. He died abroad and spent very little time here at Felthorpe, which was held together by the efforts of Robert and his trusty steward.’

  The light changed direction again and illuminated a third portrait.

  A harsh white face in a black periwig. A diamond ring on a thin white hand lightly holding a small purple flower, a bunch of lace, lidded eyes. A clever face. A voluptuous face. I shivered.

  ‘Wicked William Easton,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Not by Lely, this one,’ I said, peering more closely at the portrait. ‘But a similar style, surely?’

  ‘It’s unsigned, and we have no record of the painter. A pupil of Lely? Could be. Skillfully done, though. Taken during William’s youth, obviously, before he became dissolute.’

  I shuddered. ‘That man was born dissolute!’

  I looked again at the hooded eyes and tried to read their expression. Dark and scornful, but there was more - they gleamed with unconcealed invitation. The full lips twisted with a humourless certitude. This man knew he could have anyone he wanted. After more than three centuries, he still had the power to make me look away, blushing, repelled and overwhelmed by the force of his flaunting sexuality.

  Locking more doors, having first checked that all the rooms were empty, and turning off the last remaining lights, we returned to the landing.

  ‘Hang on! Wait a minute!’ I said. ‘There’s someone downstairs.’

  ‘Can’t be,’ said Nicholas comfortably. ‘There’s no one in the house but ourselves.’

  ‘Sorry. For a moment I thought I saw someone under the stairs. Where does that door lead to?’

  ‘Doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s been blocked for over a hundred years.’

  ‘Perhaps it was the moon?’

  ‘That would be a miracle! No moon through all this cloud.’

  We returned quickly to the cheerful, candlelit dining room under the roof.

  * * * *

  It was midnight before, equipped with a spare toothbrush and an old pair of Diana’s pyjamas, I was shown to a small spare room on the floor below.

  ‘Hope you’ll be all right in here. We’d better aim for eight o’clock breakfast. Suit you? Right then, sleep well!’

  It had been a long day, and I had hardly been able to keep my eyes open for the last hour, but as soon as I reached this little room I knew I was in for a sleepless night. My mind went into unwelcome overdrive. Schemes for the repair of the stairs were uppermost, but speculation as to the possible history of the little box and its pathetic contents followed close behind. I got out of bed, drew the curtains, and looked out across the park. The moon appeared briefly through a rent in the cloud, and a flight of mallards slipped swiftly across this luminous patch.

  ‘And there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.’

  I wasn’t so sure about that!

  I climbed back into bed and the unwelcome thought came to me that I needed to make a last dash to the bathroom. I made my reluctant way onto the landing trying to remember where on earth the bathroom was and thankful for the torch that Nicholas handed to me. On my return I was, still more reluctantly, drawn to peer down into the darkness below, prodded by a childish element of self-challenging bravado.

  A door opened and shut and a dim figure on the floor below slipped under the stairs and out of sight.

  ‘There is somebody down there! Somebody has got locked in. A cleaner perhaps? But surely the whole place is covered with movement detectors? Who the hell’s that?’

  My question was answered by a sigh from below and an indistinguishable gabble of words in a female voice. The words ended in a rack of sobbing and I was much afraid.

  A shaft of light broke from a suddenly opened door on the floor above and the Wemysses peered down over the balustrade.

  ‘Ellie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Yes. There’s somebody down there. I thought there was.’

  ‘Can’t be,’ said Nicholas. ‘Can’t be.”

  They hurried down and joined me. I was very glad of their nearness. The house was desperately cold.

  ‘We heard someone on the stairs,’ said Diana.

  ‘That was me going to the loo.’

  ‘No, before that. Did it wake you up?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t asleep. But I saw someone just now... And there - look there!’

  The tail of a shaft of passing moonlight seemed again to illuminate a dim figure and once again we heard that mutter of pathetic sobbing.

  ‘Come on, Ellie,’ said Nicholas. ‘Let’s go and look at this.’

  ‘You’re not leaving me up here by myself,’ said Diana.

  There was a hiss, a whirr, and a metallic click, and, after a moment of aged hesitation, an ancient clock struck one.

  ‘If I might make rather a folksy suggestion,’ I said, ‘would we all like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Now that’s what I really appreciate,’ said Nicholas. ‘The sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets, and the architect calls for a cup of tea!’

  * * * *

  ‘What did Johnny Bell say?’ asked Diana when we sat down in the kitchen, fragrant mugs of Earl Grey clutched in shaking hands. ‘That the coffin must have been put in when the staircase was constructed? Sixteen sixty-two. Then perhaps Mr Stillingfleet can help us.’

  ‘Mr Stillingfleet?’ I asked. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Was. Hugo Benedict Stillingfleet. Tutor to the little Easton boys.’

  ‘Wicked Easton?’

  ‘Yes, William and his brother Robert. He was also chaplain and finally steward. He lived here for about fifty years and kept the most wonderful account books - more like a diary, really. Every farthing that got spent, he recorded it. Everyone who was in the employ of the family and what they earned...family journeys, who came to stay and practically what they had for breakfast! If anything funny happened when the staircase was being installed, I bet Stillingfleet has recorded it. Nick, go and get Stillingfleet!’

  ‘I’m not getting Stillingfleet at this time of night! Weighs about a ton and I’m not going down there to unlock the library! It’ll keep until morning.’

  ‘That coffin,’ I said drowsily. ‘That secret little box. Did we release something? Something very small. Something very sad. Did we call back somebody? Somebody who is distressed by the disturbance?’

  ‘We’ll ask Stillingfleet in the morning,’ said Diana, and we finally went to bed.

  * * * *

  It was a week before I could return t
o Felthorpe Hall. Johnny Bell was doing a beautiful job on the stairs, and it was nearing completion. The little box still stood safely on the table in the drawing room.

  Diana and Nicholas were very subdued. ‘We’ve had terrible nights,’ they said. ‘The same mutterings and sobbings every night since we disturbed that box! Haven’t slept for a week. We don’t know what to do. But we’ve a lot to tell you!’

  They led me into the library where the central table was covered in page of notes and several leather-bound and ancient books. With barely suppressed excitement Diana went straight into the result of her researches. ‘This is sixteen sixty-one,’ she said, one finger on her notes and turning the ponderous pages of the Stillingfleet papers with the other hand. ‘Here’s the boss telling him to get estimates for “Ye newe westerne stair”. And here’s “Jas. Holbrooke, Master Carpenter”, riding out from Norwich to give his estimate - £482.9.2d. Expensive!

  ‘And here we are in sixteen sixty-two. A lot of comings and goings. The family were here for nearly all that year. Lots of company. Ate them out of house and home. Bills for barrels of oysters, anchovies, game birds by the dozen brace, cakes and sweetmeats, sacks of coffee... John Fox and his brother Will taken up for pilfering at the Lammas Fair and the good Stillingfleet goes over to the assizes to plead for them. Successfully, obviously, because they were back on the payroll the next month. And here’s one Jayne Marston.’

  Diana paused.

  ‘Is she important?’

  ‘Oh yes, we think so,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Jayne Marston - “Miss Comfort’s abigail”.’

  ‘Abigail? A lady’s maid, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, quite posh. Comes down from London and - note this -without her mistress. And that’s odd. This was January. Season still in full swing in the capital. Miss Comfort wouldn’t have sent her abigail down to the country for no good reason.’

  ‘Does Stillingfleet give us a clue?’

  ‘Sort of. He refers to her quite often and affectionately.’ She quoted, “‘Ye sorrowful Jayne...that forlorn wretch... That sweet slut in her sorrow...” Something wrong there, don’t you think? And then the staircase gets under way. And in April they start getting ready for a party. Seems to be a belated celebration of the restoration of Charles the Second - the Eastons were all stout monarchists. Economically, they are planning to run it with the celebrations for Robert’s engagements to Mary Chandler. Then, in June, two or three things happen - “Did wait on his Lordship under God’s guidance and besought him to remember his Creator in the days of his youth, when the evil days come not.’“

  ‘That would be William he was beseeching. And did he remember his Creator? Did he do what Stillingfleet wanted?’

  ‘It doesn’t say, but one rather infers not. And then - dismay and disaster - on the fifteenth of June - “To me at dawn this day comes the swanward early. Jayne Marston, God receive her, found drowned in ye lake.”‘

  Diana turned to me, wide-eyed. ‘And she’s not in the burial register! She’s not buried in the churchyard!’

  ‘Suicide, then? Denied a Christian burial.’

  ‘Looks like it. And then William disappears.’

  ‘Disappears?’

  ‘Yes - “...raging to London”, leaving poor old Stillingfleet to unscramble the party. Sounds as though there was the most almighty family row going on.’

  ‘And the staircase?’

  ‘Finished. Here - “Thanks be to God!” Then - and this is where the fun starts - “‘Twas as though the Devil himself wailed about the house this night and these seven days past. God bless us all.’“

  ‘Is that what it’s been likefor you?’

  ‘Yes. Sobs rather than wails, perhaps, but going on and on. Just the same for Stillingfleet. At the end of every day he wrote just two words - “No change” - until we get to: “All day working in pursuit of my resolve.”‘

  ‘Working! Working at what, I wonder?’

  ‘Well, in addition to his other accomplishments, Mr Stillingfleet was a carpenter and turner, and he made tables and chairs, and he was a bit of a scientist, too. He had a workshop. We think it was the little room at the end of the stillroom passage.’

  ‘What do you think he was working at? The coffin?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what we think. A secret burial for a tiny child. A child who must have been illegitimate, inconvenient, disposable. Infanticide was sadly common in those days, and the rubbish heaps of London, certainly, were where the bodies ended up in large numbers, but this child was different. He was special to someone. Someone who was determined to grant him as decent a burial as was possible in adverse circumstances.’

  ‘It’s a long shot, and we’ll never know for certain,’ said Diana, ‘but listen - Jayne Marston is sent down to the country estate from London without her mistress. Pregnant?’

  ‘If this is her baby, and it was born in June,’ I said, hurriedly calculating, ‘she would have been three months gone in January and just beginning to show... Yes, the right moment to send her into obscurity. But is this consistent? Is that what the family would have done? Wouldn’t they have just turned her out of the house?’

  ‘I don’t think so - not then. This wasn’t the Protectorate, this was the Restoration. Gavalier politics and Cavalier morality. Cavalier kindness, if you like. And all the evidence from Stillingfleet is that the Eastons treated their servants with consideration. He was himself almost part of the family. They couldn’t have functioned without him. But suppose I’m right. Suppose Jayne comes down to Norfolk because she’s pregnant. Suppose Wicked William is the father. Suppose he comes down for the party and takes no notice of her, or spurns her, and perhaps that was what Stillingfleet was begging him to remember, begging him to do something for the wretched girl. Then the baby is born and is stillborn? Or dies, perhaps?’

  ‘Dies? How? And where?’

  ‘We’ll never know,’ said Diana slowly. ‘Let’s just say the baby dies. The body must have been hidden away. There is no recorded death of an infant at that time. Perhaps Jayne, at the death of her child, goes demented and throws herself into the lake?’

  ‘Did she fall or was she pushed?’

  ‘I’m sure Stillingfleet knew, but he’s not saying. Loyalty to the family. It was only a servant involved, I know, but this was an isolated community where a scandal would have torn through the county, and don’t forget that most people up here were still rigidly puritan in their outlook. William would have had a bad time of it if it had come out.’

  ‘At any rate, there was no Christian burial for Jayne’s child, no baptism even, and this would have been a horrifying thing for the mother. The child would have been condemned to eternal perdition.’

  ‘And this is when the nightly wailing starts?’

  ‘Yes. But Stillingfleet knows what to do. He makes a little coffin. He places the body inside with a copy of the words from the family motto...’

  ‘Wait a minute, though - it’s not quite the right wording, is it? Look at the third word. The motto is Deus tute me spectas. It should say “me”. “Thou, Lord, see’st me”, but this says “eum”. “Him”. God sees him. Who?’

  ‘I thought it might mean “God watch over him” - the child, that is.’

  ‘No. Spectas. It doesn’t mean look out for in the sense of watching over, it means see, look at.’

  ‘Well, I think this is as close as he dares get to an identification, a direct link with the Eastons. And one night, as the staircase is nearly finished, he fixes it up under a floorboard, replaces the floorboard, and says a burial service over it. It was the best he could do.’

  ‘Any more from the diary?’

  ‘Only this, but significantly - “Under the hand of God, I pray, I finish my work, and, all praise to Him, a quiet night at last.’“

  We sat for a moment in silence. ‘I bet that was it, or something very like that,’ I said. ‘All quiet until I came along with a nail bar. What do we do now?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking ab
out this,’ said Diana. ‘Look, Johnny is still here working on the stairs...do you think we could just put it back again? Say a few words, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure we could do that,’ I said.