Death at Bishops Keep scs-1

by Robin Paige

  Kate nodded, glancing from one to the other. She could read in their faces the concealed truth of the relationship: that Aunt Jaggers hated her sister and that Aunt Sabrina both disliked and feared Aunt Jaggers. It was an obviously complex and painful situation in which the two women found themselves entangled, Kate thought, and then stopped herself, with an unexpected flash of consternation.

  Whatever the source of Aunt Jaggers's malice, she was now entangled in it too, and blindly, for she did not understand it. She would have to be on her guard not to offend- something to which she was not temperamentally inclined! And she would have to take special care to safeguard the secret of Beryl Bardwell's existence. Kate could imagine the fracas should Aunt Jaggers learn that not only did she read novels, she wrote penny-dreadfuls-and the most luridly sensational kind!

  Aunt Sabrina glanced up as a butler in a dark morning coat and formal trousers sailed into the room at the helm of a large, heavily laden tea cart, a gleaming silver urn like a figurehead at its prow. He was followed by the brown-haired, brown-eyed maid who had shown Kate in.

  "Ah, our tea has arrived," Aunt Sabrina said with some

  relief, as the cart was rolled into place at the end of the sideboard.

  Mudd-rather younger than Kate would have expected of a butler, and more dandified, with carefully trimmed side-whiskers and a modish tie-filled a bone china cup and brought it to Kate. When tea had been served, Mudd and Amelia retired to a corner of the room, where they stood invisibly at attention, blank as pie, fixed as furniture.

  They were not, however, invisible to Kate, and behind the curtain of their bland impassivity, she sensed a silent scrutiny, a furtive watching, tinged with-what? Kate was sure that some deep passion lay behind the hooded eyes of the brown-haired Amelia, when she handed the tea tray round again. And while Mudd's face was immobile, the working of his mouth betrayed an intense emotion; what it was Kate could not tell. She sat back, intrigued.

  Such currents and crosscurrents of powerful feeling flowing between sister and sister! Such secret passions hidden behind the inscrutable faces of the servants! Beryl Bardwell would not have to leave this house for raw material-indeed, for the rawest, the deepest, the strongest of human emotions.

  Then suddenly, Kate felt cold. The muted violence, the envy, hatred, and malice that she sensed in this room was not the stuff of novels. It was quite real. And because it was real, it had the power to wound, to maim, even to kill.

  Kate shivered.

  11

  "Manners make the man, tut manors make me nobleman."

  — Punck,Jan.27, 1894

  Somewhat to his surprise, Charles was enjoying his visit to the Marsdens' country manor. His intellect was entertained by Bradford's dry wit; his curiosity was piqued by the dig at nearby Colchester, and especially by the morning's discovery; and his throat was soothed by the clean air of the country, a welcome change from the irritating London fog, which was tar-flavored and thick as treacle. As well, he loved the Essex countryside, for as a lad he had spent summers with his mother's family at East Bergholt, only three miles away across the River Stour. It was there he had taken to photography, capturing on photographic plate the same landscapes that his famous great-uncle, John Constable, had earlier captured on canvas.

  But evenings at Marsden Manor, Charles felt, were less to be enjoyed than endured. On this particular night, he itched to get to the temporary photographic laboratory he had installed in the scullery, which he had equipped with a Carbutt's Dry Plate Kerosene Lantern that allowed him to develop photographs in the absence of gas or electric light. But he was prevented from satisfying his wish by the requirement to dress for dinner, to which, Lady Henrietta had informed him, guests were invited.

  Dressing was not Charles's favorite activity, and he did not

  particularly enjoy social dinners with persons he did not know. For Charles, the social ritual of dining was rather a burden, requiring that he exert himself to be pleasant when he would have much preferred a cold bird and a glass of wine with Bradford, followed by a game of chess and an article in his latest scientific journal.

  But tonight's dinner promised to be of some little interest, for the guests included Barfield Talbot, the village vicar, and the Marsdens' nearest neighbors, Miss Sabrina Ardleigh, Mrs. Bernice Jaggers, and their newly arrived niece, Kathryn Ardleigh. So it was that Charles found himself, sherry in hand, seated on a chair in the drawing room, across from a sofa on which sat Miss Ardleigh, whose simple blue dress severely (but pleasantly, Charles thought) contrasted with the elaborate gowns of Eleanor and her younger sister, Patsy.

  "Imagine my surprise and pleasure," Eleanor told Charles excitedly, "when I learned that dear Kathryn and her aunts would be at dinner tonight."

  "And mine," the vicar put in. He was a stooped, wiry man in his late sixties, with a lion's mane of silver hair and a droopy white mustache. His smile at Miss Ardleigh lighted pale blue eyes. "Your aunt has told me how glad she is that you were able to come to England. She has for some time felt the need to be closer to her only niece."

  Miss Ardleigh met the vicar's smile with an inquiring look. Charles thought she was about to ask a question, but after a brief hesitation, she only said, "I am glad to be here."

  The vicar turned to Charles. "And I am delighted to meet you, Sir Charles. I understand that you are assisting Fairfax with the Colchester dig. I must confess to being something of an antiquarian myself. The Colchester site has long held a great fascination for me."

  Eleanor's eyes were sparkling. "Then you may be interested to hear, Vicar, of Sir Charles's latest find." Her voice took on a tone of muted excitement. ' 'He discovered a dead man in the dig this morning!"

  There was a horrified gasp from Miss Ardleigh's two aunts, seated across the room with Lady Henrietta. "Eleanor!" Lady Henrietta exclaimed.

  "But it's true, Mother," Eleanor protested. "He'd been murdered!"

  "How perfectly appalling!" Patsy Marsden cried in a coquettish fright, clapping her hands.

  "Indeed it is appalling," Lady Henrietta said sternly. "Not at all a fit subject. Shall we speak of something else?"

  "Murdered, was he, Charles?" Lord Marsden asked from his chair beside the columned and pedimented mantelpiece. The baron was a balding gentleman of immaculate white waistcoat and imposing stomach, testimony to a long-standing devotion to saddle of Dartmoor mutton and excellent port.

  "You're in for it now, Charles," Bradford said, helping himself to the sherry decanter on the sideboard. "You'll have to tell the whole thing."

  Charles looked at Lady Henrietta.

  "Oh, very well," she said. But Charles could hear, beneath the grudging reluctance of her tone, an unacknowledged curiosity, so he gave an abridged and slightly sanitized account of the discovery of the dead man and the activities of the police. His attention, however, was focused less on the story than on Miss Ardleigh, whose interest in the narrative was intense, but nothing like the self-dramatized horror exhibited by Eleanor and Patsy.

  "A foreign gentleman, you say?" the vicar asked, knitting bushy white brows.

  "Continental," Charles replied, "from the cut of the clothes. He was wearing a scarab ring that suggested travel in Egypt, or at the least, Egyptian interests."

  "A scarab?" Miss Ardleigh asked quickly. Her glance went to her aunts. The elder aunt, who sat on the sofa with an easy grace that was very different from the frowning abruptness of her sister, colored slightly and turned her head.

  "What is a scarab?" Patsy asked.

  "A dung beetle," Bradford said. His mother made a noise in her throat.

  "An Egyptian magical amulet," the vicar said quickly.

  "The beetle is associated with the transit of the sun," Charles explained, "and hence the resurrection."

  The fussy aunt sniffed. "Egyptian magic," she said in a

  tone that suggested hellfire and perdition. "No wonder he was murdered."

  The vicar shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. "My de
ar Mrs. Jaggers," he began, but was interrupted by Lord Marsden.

  "Robbery, to be sure," the baron said gruffly. "Country's gone to the dogs. Nobody's safe since we've ceased giving riffraff the boat. Damned anarchists can plant their bombs anywhere, blast it all. That Frenchie who blew himself up at Greenwich, for instance. If the bloody bomb hadn't gone off in his hands, it would've taken out the Royal Observat'ry." He scowled at his elder daughter. "That's why women must not go about unescorted, Eleanor. Never know when you might be blown up."

  "Yes, Papa," Eleanor said, meekness itself. She cast her glance sideways at Charles. "Sir Charles has photographs of the dead man," she added with a certain coyness.

  Lady Henrietta pulled herself up. ' 'I simply do not understand,' ' she remarked acidly, ' 'the current attraction of crime, particularly murder, among younger people." She gave Eleanor and Patsy a severe look down the length of her rather horsey nose. ' 'No lady concerns herself with such vulgar matters." She turned the same severity upon Charles, but indulgently relaxed, as if to say that his transgression, for transgression it was, was understood and forgiven. Men were expected to interest themselves in vulgar matters, while women were expected not to notice.

  Charles bowed. "Your pardon, Lady Henrietta. I do agree. Murder is hardly a drawing room matter."

  Lord Marsden cleared his throat. "Bought another mare from Peel today," he announced to no one in particular. "Aim to breed her to Farleydale."

  A look that might have been of misgiving crossed Bradford's face. "From Peel?" he asked. In a low voice, he added, "With respect, sir, I thought we had agreed not to-"

  The baron's thick neck reddened fiercely. "A beauty, my boy. Excellent bloodline. High spirits. Grand bargain."

  Bradford subsided, although Charles thought his friend looked uneasy, and he wondered again what was troubling

  him. From horses, the baron's passion, the subject turned to hunting, and from hunting to balls, and from balls, inevitably, to weddings-specifically, to the wedding of Eleanor to Mr. Ernest Fairley, which would take place in three months' time. Precisely at nine, dinner was announced, and the company removed to the large dining hall.

  Kate was pleased when she found herself seated next to Sir Charles at dinner, for she meant to ask him a question. They sat upon heavy gilt chairs with rose damask seats, under a cut glass chandelier filled with lighted candles. The light radiated over the long rosewood table, casting shadowy glimmers over the frowning likenesses of Marsden ancestors hung along the paneled wall. The candlelight also illuminated the fine china, delicate crystal, and ornate silver that gave the table an air of almost unimaginable magnificence.

  Or so it seemed to Kate, who had never before sat down to such an elegant table, in such elegant company, a knight of the realm on one side of her, and a lord and lady at opposite ends of the table. But she did not feel overwhelmed by the elegance; instead, she was entertained, and intrigued. It was as if she were a spectator at a play in which the characters (some of them anyway) thought they were real, while she knew differently. Perhaps it was because she was an American, she thought, seeing the British gentry through alien eyes.

  The dinner, regrettably, did not live up to the distinction of the table. The menu proceeded from a thin oyster soup to a gluey fricassee of chicken, and thence to a saddle of mutton with caper sauce and vegetables and after that a Tewkesbury ham, climaxing in a quivery blancmange that Kate thought notable only for its near total lack of taste. Throughout most of the dinner, the conversation consisted only of polite exchanges of appreciation for the food (feigned, on Kate's part), exchanges of local gossip, and various bits of fashion news from London, primarily pertaining to bridal finery. But when the blancmange was served, Kate turned to Sir Charles and asked the question she had had on her mind for most of the evening, ever since he had mentioned the dead man's scarab ring.

  "If it was robbery," she said without preamble, "why did the thief not take the gold scarab ring?''

  Sir Charles put down his spoon. His brown eyes fastened on hers. "GoWring?" he asked. "I do not believe I said-"

  "To be sure," Kate said, irritated at herself for jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. Just because Aunt Sabrina's scarab was gold didn't mean-"I have assumed too much. The scarab was made of a gemstone, then?"

  "No," he admitted, "it was gold. And I do agree-robbery hardly seems consistent with the facts of this case." He paused. "Why do you ask?"

  Kate allowed her glass to be refilled with champagne for the third time. "I am merely curious," she said lightly. "One does not encounter a murder very often-outside of fiction, that is. Particularly a murder that is documented with photographs."

  ' 'And do you often encounter murder in fiction as well?'' Sir Charles asked. "Documented or otherwise?"

  His words sounded like a challenge, and Kate knew what he was thinking. Women did not read stories with murders in them. Ordinarily, Kate might have answered his question with an evasion, but the champagne emboldened her. She answered his challenge with one of her own. "It is a pity, don't you think, that women and men lead such different lives?"

  Sir Charles took a sip of his champagne, put down the glass, and parried with another question. "You do not agree that our differences make life interesting?''

  "Hardly!" Kate exclaimed. "At least, not from a woman's point of view. Women are hedged about with rules of what is right and proper. No one evidences surprise when men read-or write-a book with a violent crime in it. But a woman cannot." She frowned and pushed her champagne glass back. She was saying too much.

  But Sir Charles seemed to have taken her remark seriously. "I fear," he said, "that you are right. Women's lives are far more circumscribed than men's, although that seems to be changing as women venture into the world." He turned his stemmed glass in his fingers. "But do you see it as useful to

  them to develop an interest in crime? How have you profited from its study, Miss Ardleigh?"

  Kate perceived that her impulsiveness had nearly landed her in a trap. A pace or two more, and Beryl Bardwell might find herself in peril of discovery. She flushed, wondering how to extricate herself. "Well, I-"

  She was saved by her hostess, who rose at the end of the table to signal that it was time for the ladies to withdraw.

  "Perhaps crime is of general interest to you," Sir Charles persisted. "Or perhaps it is this crime dial fascinates you."

  "Charles," Eleanor said, "if you wish your port and cigar, you must allow Kathryn to leave with the ladies. We cannot abandon her here."

  Kate rose with great relief.

  12

  "The chief part of me organization of every living creature is due to inheritance; ana consequently, though each Being assuredly is well fitted for its place in nature, many structures have now no very close and direct relations to present hahits of life."

  — CHARLES DARWIN, The Origin of Species

  When the ladies had gone, Bradford motioned to the but ler to bring the port and offered a cigar to the vicar.

  He did not offer one to Charles, who was getting out his pipe,

  nor to his father, who had fallen asleep over the blancmange

  and was now sprawled in his chair, bald head fallen forward, mouth open, snorting in his sleep like a Yorkshire pig. Bradford looked at him, anger thick at the back of his throat. How much had he paid Peel for the damned mare? Too much, no doubt.

  But then, any amount would have been too much, according to the family solicitors and accountants, who were becoming positively tiresome about the condition of the Marsden accounts. Damn it, Bradford thought ferociously, why couldn't his father listen to them? The anger settled into a heaviness that lay on his chest like a pleurisy.

  But he could understand-a little. After all, his father had come of age when the old queen was young, when landed fortunes seemed solid as Essex earth and eternal as the sun, which never set upon the far-flung Empire. But Victoria was past her fifty-fifth year on the throne, the Empire was in a half-dozen tight patch
es, and the agricultural economy had been blighted by the repeal of the Corn Laws almost fifty years ago, allowing cheap foreign grain to flood the home market. There was no money any longer in horses, especially when one's judgments about bloodlines were as- Yes, let it be said! As feeble and faulty as his father's.

  From the music room came the sound of the piano. Patsy, playing a Schumann song, passably well. Eleanor's soprano, untrained but acceptable, and a contralto-Miss Ardleigh's, he assumed. Bradford sipped his port, thinking unexpectedly of the American-part Irish, from the look of her. Not pretty, certainly, but rather handsome, when one actually looked at her. And one did look at her, for her calm self-assurance, her composure, was such a contrast to the stylish, self-conscious flourishes of the women around her, including his sisters.

  Miss Ardleigh. Kathryn. Bradford frowned. Nothing could come of it except a little harmless flirtation, of course, for although she was the niece of a neighbor and primly enough dressed, she was Irish, and American. But of course, such a combination offered certain advantages. One might guess from looking at that wonderfully unruly mop of hair what a willful creature she mustHe set down his glass of port hard. No. No, this would not

  do. What he required was not a mistress to bed but an heiress to wed, and the sooner the better. He was beginning to feel desperate enough to acknowledge that the woman's other qualifications-appearance, demeanor, temperament-did not matter, as long as she was sufficiently rich. If the solicitors were right, he might soon have to resort to such a stratagem.

  Bradford stared at the candles gleaming in their silver candelabra down the center of the long table. It was unkind to blame his father's faulty judgment for their situation. He had simply continued to live in the old manner, which was no longer suited to the times. And in any case, Bradford himself was not blameless, far from it. He had taken matters into his own hands in a way that, as he thought about it now, quite appalled him. He had poured a substantial amount of money-truth be told, much more than he could afford-into a venture he knew little about, on the word of a man of uncertain reputation. He had bargained with the devil, and if he had to pay the price, the fault was only his own.