A Place of Confinement: The Investigations of Miss Dido Kent (Dido Kent Mysteries)

by Dean, Anna

  ‘I am sorry, I do not quite understand you.’

  ‘My brother, Mr Sutherland, he’s not been to the manor for thirty years. Not since Miss Francine Fenstanton died. So it will be no good you asking him to visit, because he won’t.’

  ‘I see, but … why?’

  ‘The why is his business not mine,’ was the brisk answer. ‘I am just telling you he don’t go there. Now, if you want another way home, that’s easy enough.’ She stepped out into the dusty little garden and pointed. ‘If you just go up behind the inn there you’ll find a track that will lead you straight over the downs to the manor and that’ll take a good half mile off your walk.’

  ‘Thank you. That will be a great help to me. But is there some trouble between Mr Sutherland and Mr Fenstanton?’

  ‘No.’ The woman retreated within her door. ‘No trouble. Angus just don’t go there.’

  The door closed abruptly.

  Dido walked on slowly up the slope, feeling Tom’s gaze upon her back at every step – and wondering about this remarkable doctor who contrived to know of Miss Verney’s disappearance although he had not set foot in the manor for thirty years …

  As she approached the new hotel she noticed a little bustle about the place – one or two folk hurrying about, exchanging eager words and meaningful looks; but the daily coach from Plymouth was drawn up on the gravel before the door and she supposed it all to be no more than the usual business of arrival.

  She mounted the steps and, under the pillared porch, met the little pockmarked lad she had seen in the churchyard, with such a very long white apron tied about him that he seemed in momentary danger of tripping over it. Her enquiry after Mr Sutherland produced a round-eyed stare. ‘Is he still engaged with his patient?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh no, he’s done with poor Mr Brodie. He’s in the parlour now – if you’d like to come with me, miss, I’ll take you to him.’

  ‘Mr Brodie? Is that the name of the gentleman Mr Sutherland has been attending upon?’

  But the boy was off and Dido had no choice but to hurry after his retreating back into a sunny apartment which was very different from the usual sort of inn parlour – for it had not an inch of dark panelling in it, nor even a low beam. In fact it was so new it smelt still of plaster; Venetian windows cut almost to the ground displayed a view of the sea to great advantage; all was light and airy and, though the tables and chairs were a little sturdier than those required for family use, they would not have appeared entirely out of place in a gentleman’s drawing room.

  Three ladies – coach passengers perhaps – were gathered about the fireplace drinking a hasty dish of tea. And, standing close beside them, was a tall, lean man with a shock of white hair, who could be no other than the town’s medical man, for he was gently haranguing one of the ladies upon the subject of her health, as he bent over the hearth with a poker in his hand.

  ‘… Aye, madam,’ he was saying in the warm, comfortable growl of a Scotch man, ‘I can cure you. I can cure you. If you will but remain with us here in Charcombe for a month or two – and submit yourself to my infallible system of cure – I will guarantee to rid you of all your nervous complaints. The sea air, a little bathing, combined with my new system…’ He straightened himself as he saw the boy approaching and laid down the poker with great care, as if it were particularly important that it should lie exactly in parallel with the fender.

  ‘If you please, Mr Sutherland,’ ventured the pot boy, ‘there’s a lady here wishes to speak with you.’

  ‘Is there, is there?’ Mr Sutherland turned to Dido – revealing the narrow, bony face of a robust man of sixty or more, thick black eyebrows which were rather startling beneath a white head of hair, and a pair of sharp blue eyes which were even more alarming. ‘And how may I be of service to you, madam?’ he asked, bowing attentively and contriving somehow to suggest an invisible queue of applicants for his attention.

  Dido hastily introduced herself and brought forward the subject of brown medicine, describing its usual effects and the symptoms it relieved. ‘My aunt, Mrs Manners, is most anxious—’

  ‘Mrs Manners?’ The doctor’s black brows gathered like storm clouds over the sharp blue eyes. ‘Mr George Fenstanton’s sister? She is here in Charcombe?’

  ‘Yes – she has come on a visit to the manor.’

  ‘Och! Has she indeed!’ The man turned away and began fastidiously to sweep up a tiny amount of ash which his recent attentions had shaken from the fire. Recalling his sister’s objections, Dido suspected reluctance. He seemed about to refuse his help.

  But in a moment he laid down the hearth brush in exact parallel with the poker, and straightened himself smiling broadly.

  ‘Your aunt,’ he said, ‘is an old acquaintance and I believe I had better wait upon her directly.’

  ‘Oh no,’ cried Dido much surprised and rather alarmed, for she doubted Mrs Manners would welcome an unsolicited visit. She pressed instead for the immediate supply of medicine and succeeded at last in carrying her point.

  He agreed that she should return with him to his house where he could provide the physic; but he hoped she would have the goodness to carry his card to her aunt, to give her his compliments – his warmest compliments – and impress upon her the extreme desirability of having proper medical attendance during her stay at Charcombe.

  When the matter was thus far settled, and the tea-drinking lady had also been supplied with a card, the pot boy was dispatched to fetch Mr Sutherland’s bag and hat. And, as they left the inn together, Dido felt entitled to turn her mind to Mr Brodie.

  ‘May I ask if the gentleman you have been attending is recovered?’ she said as they stepped out of the inn porch into the sunshine and salt breeze. ‘For I know that Mr Fenstanton is expecting to see him at the manor today – and perhaps, if he is to be delayed, I might carry a message for him.’

  Mr Sutherland stopped upon the steps, his black brows gathering again over the brilliant eyes. ‘Mr Brodie was to visit Mr Lancelot Fenstanton? Do you know why?’

  ‘No … That is…’ Dido recollected herself and continued more cautiously. ‘I do not know. I only know that Mr Brodie had written to announce his arrival. It was a matter of business, I suppose.’

  ‘What manner of business?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  The doctor looked troubled for a moment. Then: ‘Och! Well,’ he cried, ‘it’s business that won’t be transacted now!’

  ‘Oh?’ said Dido, stopping short as she detected in the finality of his tone a whole new meaning of taken sudden. ‘Do you mean…? That is, I hope poor Mr Brodie is not … dead?’

  ‘Aye, lassie, he’s dead. For that’s generally the case, you know, when the illness is a bullet through the heart.’

  Dido looked so alarmed that Mr Sutherland immediately detected nervousness and opened his bag in search of a restorative (a new and particularly efficacious concoction of his own). ‘Mr Brodie was murdered?’ she cried. ‘But how? Why? Was he set upon by robbers?’

  ‘No, no. There were certainly no robbers, for there were banknotes and a watch still in his pockets when he was found.’

  ‘Then how was he killed? And when?’

  ‘Well, it would seem to have happened last night,’ said Sutherland, still peering into his bag. ‘Sometime after eleven o’clock, for certain, for I was with Mr Brodie myself until about that time. I was here in the parlour playing cards with him and another gentleman.’

  ‘Oh! And do you know how he might…?’

  Mr Sutherland sighed as he continued to search systematically for his remedy among the neat rows of phials and bottles in his bag. ‘I regret it is all too clear, what happened, Miss Kent. The folk here at the inn say that my two companions continued with the game after I left – and a disagreement started. The two gentlemen left the inn together about midnight, and…’ he shrugged up his shoulders ‘… Mr Brodie never returned.’

  ‘And so, everybody is quite sure that this…’ Dido hesitated. A terrible
suspicion was laying hold of her. ‘Everybody is quite sure that this other gentleman is to blame?’

  ‘Aye,’ said the apothecary comfortably. He drew a small phial from the bag. ‘The constables have been sent off to find him.’

  Dido began immediately to run away from the inn, down the green slope and out onto the terrace, her heart jarring fearfully at every step. Raising her hand against the sun which was glaring under the brim of her bonnet, she gazed anxiously along the straight walk, past strolling gentry and dusty workmen. Two dark, sturdy figures were striding briskly towards the bench upon which Tom Lomax still lounged.

  When they were about fifty yards from him, Tom looked up and saw them approaching. He jumped immediately to his feet, stumbled against the pile of stones that the builders had left beside the bench, and half fell. The constables, seeing that he was attempting escape, began to run. Tom recovered himself and seemed to recognise that flight was impossible. He remained where he was; when the men reached him and laid their hands upon his shoulders, he was nonchalantly replacing the scattered stones, as if he had not a care in the world.

  ‘Och! That’s a shocking sight,’ said a voice close beside Dido. Mr Sutherland was now approaching, shaking his head solemnly. ‘It’s a very shocking sight to see a young fellow of decent family taken for such a crime!’

  Dido nodded, too overcome for speech. For her mind was ahead of him in anticipating the suffering of that ‘decent family’ – and of one dear man in particular whose heart would surely be broken if his son was convicted of murder …

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I cannot believe it,’ said Dido; but her voice shook as she spoke. She tried again, willing herself to be firm, to convey that certainty which she was quite determined to feel. ‘I will not believe it. I know that Mr Tom Lomax is indolent and selfish and yet I cannot believe him capable of murder.’

  There was a kind of comfort to be found in stating her conviction – even though Mr Lancelot Fenstanton and Mr Parry were both looking at her very doubtfully and showing no sign of sharing her opinion. She felt still inside her the heavy blow which had fallen as she saw the constables take Tom. A jarring chord of shock was yet vibrating somewhere within her and she quite ached to be alone; but that was a privilege which was many hours distant.

  On her return from Charcombe she had found Mr Parry already arrived with news of the murder and everyone in the house eager to hear her account. She had only escaped to hurriedly change her dress as the dinner hour approached. Now everyone was gathering in the hall – and Mr Lancelot had drawn her away into the seat beneath the great window, to talk the business over again before Mr Parry.

  Charles Parry, it seemed, was in the Commission of the Peace and it had fallen upon him to make enquiries into Mr Brodie’s death. He listened courteously to Dido’s protests, but continued to look very grave. Though perhaps little could be imputed to this, for gravity was the gentleman’s common expression. Indeed his face was so heavily folded and lined that one could no more imagine him smiling than a bloodhound.

  ‘It is a very terrible thing to be forced to acknowledge that any acquaintance is capable of murder, Miss Kent,’ he said with dignified concern. ‘And I am sorry, very sorry indeed, that you should have had it forced upon you.’ He folded his hands behind his back and took a ponderous little turn about the bay of the window. ‘Upon my word, I should not like any daughter of mine to find herself acquainted with a murderer.’

  He stopped and looked down upon Dido regretfully. ‘But there can be little doubt of young Lomax’s guilt. The folk at the inn heard him quarrelling with the gentleman that is dead. And,’ with a look towards Mr Lancelot, ‘my friend here has now told me all about the disappearance of Miss Verney – and the note which he received yesterday from Mr Brodie.’

  ‘Oh!’ Dido’s hands were trembling in her lap so that she was obliged to still them by wrapping a corner of her shawl about them. She had been thinking of nothing but Tom’s danger since she had first detected it in Mr Sutherland’s words, and yet it was a shock to hear it on another’s lips. ‘You believe that Mr Lomax killed Mr Brodie in order to prevent him reaching Charcombe Manor with his information about Miss Verney.’ She stated the worst of it as calmly as she could; but she could hear the tremor in her own voice and could not prevent her fingernails driving into her palms under cover of the shawl. ‘You believe that he has abducted the young lady and has now committed murder in order to hide his crime?’ She raised her eyes and looked from Parry to Fenstanton, desperately hoping – all but pleading – that they would contradict.

  The gentlemen exchanged looks of compassion.

  ‘It is the most reasonable conclusion,’ said Mr Parry, his words slow and precise as the ringing of a death knell.

  ‘Oh, but there are a great many reasons for its being a false conclusion!’ she cried, even as her distraught mind sought out those reasons. For his father’s sake she would not believe Tom guilty. There must be arguments for his innocence. ‘We are by no means certain that Mr Tom Lomax is responsible for Miss Verney’s disappearance. If only we could discover what has become of the young lady – then we would know whether or not the young man had any motive for murder. Remember that he strongly denies any knowledge of her whereabouts.’

  ‘But that is entirely of a piece with his being guilty,’ put in Mr Lancelot. ‘I don’t doubt the damned fellow has got the girl hidden away somewhere.’

  ‘But why has he not devised a better excuse?’ Dido turned eagerly from her host to the magistrate. ‘Mr Tom Lomax is a clever man,’ she said. ‘Cunning, perhaps you would rather call him; but in this case cunning and cleverness must count for the same thing. And, throughout this whole business he has not behaved as a guilty and cunning man might be expected to behave.’ She thought for a moment and found she liked the argument. ‘He must have known that he had been heard exchanging heated words with Mr Brodie. I cannot think that he would have been so foolhardy as to shoot that gentleman immediately afterwards and not a quarter of a mile away.’

  ‘Regrettably,’ said Parry, ‘murder is not always a rational act. But I beg you will cease to trouble yourself, Miss Kent—’

  ‘Ha!’ cried Fenstanton, striking his hand against the stone frame of the window. ‘I see it now! What I think happened was young Tom tried to dissuade Brodie from coming to me and, when he failed, he became desperate: ceased to think quite sensibly. Do you see? I daresay he had had a little too much to drink – the fellow at the inn says he was pretty free with his calling for whisky. And so he shot Brodie – almost in a moment of madness.’

  Mr Parry nodded solemnly.

  And Dido herself could not help but admit that it was all horribly plausible. But she persisted. ‘Was there a weapon in Mr Lomax’s possession when the constables seized him?’

  ‘No,’ said Parry.

  ‘But a pistol is very easy got rid of,’ added Mr Lancelot. ‘Tossed out into the sea, most likely.’

  That was true enough – and she remembered that Tom had been very near the cliff top when she met him. But, as she recalled that meeting, the desperate hope of innocence revived – and with it the spirit of argument.

  ‘When I spoke with Mr Lomax this morning,’ she said, ‘he seemed so very much at ease. He was, of course, concerned about Miss Verney’s disappearance. But, for all that, he seemed easy – not at all like a man who had recently committed murder and left the body lying close by.’

  ‘Now then, my dear, are you qualified to make that judgement?’ asked Mr Lancelot with a gentle smile. ‘I mean, are you much in the habit of talking to murderers?’

  ‘I will not be teased out of my opinion!’

  ‘Forgive me.’ He sat down on the window seat beside her. ‘I do not mean to tease, my dear Miss Kent, I only wish to say how very strong the evidence appears against the young fellow.’

  She began upon another protest, but it was cut short by the approach of Mr George Fenstanton, who was looking more than usually red about the
face and pink about the scalp. He addressed himself to the gentlemen, seeming not to notice Dido at all and making no apology to her for his interruption. But his words drove even her own arguments from her head.

  ‘Now then, Lance, my boy,’ he said speaking again to his nephew in the authoritative tone which had ceased to be appropriate more than twenty years ago. ‘What’s this you were saying about Parry here wanting us all to look at the dead body at the inn? I don’t think we can allow any such thing.’

  ‘Ha!’ cried Mr Lancelot. ‘I regret that I must allow it. And I mean to speak to everyone about it after dinner.’ But, looking around, he found that his uncle had left him no opportunity of delay. Dido was not the only person waiting for an explanation. Every head was now turned in his direction.

  Martha Gibbs was positively staring, and the ball of yarn which she had been rolling had escaped from her fingers to unravel a long pink strand across the grey flags of the hall floor. Mrs Bailey, meanwhile, was clasping her hands to her breast as if posing for a tableau entitled ‘Innocence Surprised’. Even Aunt Manners had roused herself from her doze in the place of honour beside the fire; and Miss Fenstanton – who was just returning from one of her many visits to the library – had paused in crossing the hall and had gone so far as to lift her eyes from the book in her hand, though one finger still rested at her place on the page.

  ‘Well then,’ said Mr Parry, clasping his hands firmly behind him, leaning his long body forward and pacing out into the room. ‘I had better explain.’ The company waited in silence. ‘And first I must apologise, especially to the ladies, for being the cause of such an unpleasant inconvenience. Upon my word, I would not wish any daughter of mine to look upon a murdered man.’

  There was a little pause as he gathered his thoughts – during which, unfortunately, the whole company heard Aunt Manners mutter, ‘The old fool hasn’t got a daughter.’ Miss Gibbs giggled.

  ‘Well now,’ said Mr Parry loudly, his folded cheeks blushing red. ‘As you may imagine, there is a great deal of business to be settled over Mr Brodie’s death. For, besides bringing a case against the young man who killed him…’ He caught Dido’s eye and bowed courteously. ‘The young man who seems to have killed him,’ he amended. ‘Besides all that, we must find out just who Mr Brodie was. His friends must be found and informed of his death. And there is…’ he cleared his throat with a great show of delicacy ‘… there is the little matter of the funeral costs to be settled.’