“And he wouldn’t say why, I presume.”
Ellen shook her head miserably. “I felt so ashamed lying to the police. But as he’s my husband—”
“I understand, Mrs. Gaunt. I do. Your loyalty is not misplaced. But wouldn’t there be a question of your husband’s motive? Would he—would either of you—know Lord Morborne sufficiently well to want to …?” He pinched his lips over the dreaded word.
A shadow seemed to cross Ellen’s face. “Not well, no. We were, Mick and I, valet-butler and cook-housekeeper to Lord Morborne’s uncle, Lord Anthony fforde-Beckett, Dominic’s father. It was our first appointment together. But I’m sure you’ve been told about the great estrangement between the late Lord Morborne—Frederick, Lord Morborne, that is—and his brother. I believe both Mick and I met Oliver at Lord Anthony’s house in Ladbroke Square, perhaps once, but my memory of it isn’t strong.
“I was more aware of Lord Morborne when we were in service to the Arouzi family. He’d gone to school with their son, Kamran. They were great friends and he would come around to the Arouzi house in Lowndes Square. Young Mr. Arouzi later took his own life. He was a very troubled lad.”
“But more recently you’ve been in Lord and Lady Fairhaven’s employ? Georgina and Oliver are siblings, of course.”
“But we rarely saw Lord Morborne. He lived a different sort of life, didn’t he. And you know he and Lord Fairhaven cared little for each other.”
“Then why, if I may press the point, Mrs. Gaunt, would you think your husband had a particular … animus against Lord Morborne?”
Her cheeks flushed suddenly, splotchy in the unflattering light of the overhead lamp, stirred by anger or shame he could not determine. Her eyes glistened with incipient tears, and when she finally spoke, it was with a great weariness.
“You wouldn’t know this, or remember: It was in the papers, but it’s near thirty years ago now; you would have been a lad—but my sister, my younger sister, was raped—”
“Oh, Mrs. Gaunt …”
“—and murdered.”
“I’m so terribly sorry.” Tom shuddered. “I simply can’t imagine the horror of this. You must have been very young yourself.”
“I’m ten years older than my sister. She was fourteen when she was killed.”
Tom’s hand pushed reflexively into the coarse wicker. The girl’s tender age made the crime all the more repellent. Miranda would be fourteen in a mere four years, a spell of time so fleeting he couldn’t bear thinking about it.
“Her name was Kimberly. Her body was found by hikers in a hollow in a wooded area on The Wrekin. Police thought she had been lying there …” Ellen’s face hardened as if to suppress corrosive grief. “… two or three days. We had been frantic with worry, my gran and I. Our grandmother brought us up, you see. ‘Teenagers go missing all the time,’ the police told us when we went to make a missing persons report. ‘You watch. She’ll be along with some lad and a guilty grin before you can say Jack Robinson.’ But she wasn’t like that—boys, staying out late. She was a good girl.”
“I see,” Tom said, not quite seeing—despite the story’s piteousness—its relevance. “Was—?”
“The rapist was never found, Mr. Christmas.” She seemed to anticipate his question.
“But … these days … DNA analysis …” Tom stumbled over the words, recalling his own experience in the wake of his wife’s death—the taking of daubs, the swabbing of cheeks.
“Kimberly was killed before such a thing was common.”
“But sometimes—”
“Did the police keep something, some bit of clothing tucked in a back room, that might be useful now? I wondered that years after, Mr. Christmas. I don’t know. You …” She looked at her hands cradled in her lap. “You let yourself forget, don’t you. You have to, if you’re to go on.”
Tom studied her strained features in the cruel light, allowing a new and certain and very ugly and unwanted awareness to seep into his soul. He paused to take a cleansing breath before giving voice to his thoughts: “You’re going to tell me that Oliver fforde-Beckett—Lord Morborne—did this terrible thing. He—” The words felt like bile in his mouth. “—raped and murdered your sister.”
Her eyes returned to his, her mouth sagging. “My husband is certain.”
“Certain. But why—?”
“Because he was there.”
“What?” Tom jerked in his chair. “You can’t mean he was a participant! Mrs. Gaunt, that is …” He groped for an apt word—shattering, appalling, criminal—but she interrupted him before any fell from his lips.
“No, no! Not as a … as a participant. As a—” She pulled a handkerchief from under her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. “Oh, Mr. Christmas, God has seen fit to turn my whole world upside down this weekend. I’ve learned the most horrible things. I’m not sure I can forget or forgive.”
“Take your time.”
Ellen twisted the handkerchief on her lap. “I met Mick in a graveyard.”
“Oh?”
“At All Saints Wellington, near Telford. It was perhaps a year after Kimberly’s death. I was working at a country hotel and taking care of my gran, who had taken a turn after Kim’s death. I would go as often as I could to bring flowers to her grave. One day, I fell into conversation with a young man, Michael—Mick—who was visiting his mother’s grave. She had died in childbirth.” Ellen looked away. “Before long, we were married. And we’ve been happily married, Mr. Christmas … until …”
“Until?”
“Until Mick insisted we leave the Arouzis’ employ last year and join Lord Fairhaven’s household. I couldn’t understand why he was so insistent. The Arouzis were very good employers. We were well established with them. I was always grateful for their kindnesses. As I said, before the Arouzis we were with Lord Anthony fforde-Beckett, Dominic’s father. Mick was very young to be butler-valet. I suppose I was young to be the cook-housekeeper, but it was a household in a wretched state. Lord Anthony couldn’t keep staff, and we were keen to establish ourselves.
“You may know of the … theft of Lord Anthony’s wife by his brother and the trouble it caused. I’m afraid Lord Anthony behaved very badly as well. He became alcoholic, neglected his son—terrible given that his mother had virtually abandoned him to chase after his uncle—then drowned in that foolish sailing adventure. We stayed on in Ladbroke Square for a time. Dominic was still in his teens. Someone to come home to on school holidays. We had learned earlier we wouldn’t be able to have children, so Dominic became …” She stopped, lifted an unsteady hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry, my mind has …”
“You were talking about how you met your husband,” Tom prompted.
“Yes.” She paused as if to gather her thoughts. “When I visited my sister’s grave in those months after she’d died, I’d often find blooms left, small bouquets, though no name attached. Friends or schoolmates, I thought. Perhaps some lad had … admired her or perhaps they came from others in town who felt sorry, as it did get attention and cause strong feeling.” Despair etched her features. “Mick left them, Mr. Christmas. He told me yesterday, in the kitchen garden. Kimberly had been … his lover. I didn’t know. It never crossed my mind.”
“How extraordinary. But surely someone else knew? Can you really successfully keep a relationship a secret?”
“Kim was fourteen, Mr. Christmas. Mick was nineteen.”
“Oh …” Tom groaned, sensing already the unfolding of events. The lovers stood each the other side of that sexual Rubicon: the age of consent.
“My grandmother wouldn’t have worn it, if she knew. She was a bit of a Tartar. And Mick’s father was worse. He was valet to Lord Rossell, proper as you would expect to His Lordship, but brutal to his son. He would beat Mick.”
“I am sorry,” Tom said, pausing to reconsider Ellen’s earlier testimony. “When you say your husband was there—at your sister’s death, you mean he was … witness in some fashion, but—what?—too frightened, too intimida
ted to say or do anything?”
“Not witness—”
“I think that would be unforgivable.”
“He says he and Kimberly had had a row about something—he can’t remember what now. It was autumn, they had been walking on The Wrekin. They went there because it was too easy to be seen in Telford or Shrewsbury or one of the villages. There are lots of secluded places in the woods along The Wrekin. Do you know it?”
“Only in name.”
“After the quarrel, Mick stalked off in a sulk, leaving my sister alone—he believed. He realised soon how stupid and immature he was being—darkness was beginning to set in. He had one of Lord Rossell’s motors—which he hadn’t been authorised to take and only added to his worries—and thought that if he didn’t drive her, she had a very long walk off The Wrekin back into town. So he turned back to find her, and saw her aways with two boys, which he says put him off, made him jealous.” She shuddered. “If only he had …”
“He walked away again.”
She nodded. “Then he drove a time before having another pang of conscience. He went back, but he couldn’t find her. He called, but nothing.”
“No response?”
“The Wrekin seemed deserted. It was a school night, supper hour for many, not warm. Finally, he retraced his route to their ‘secret place’—it was sheltered, he wondered if she was hiding there, making him come to her to punish him.” She regarded him bleakly. “He found her there.”
“Oh, my.”
“Then he left her there. I don’t know if I can forgive him for that, though I know the Lord says I must.”
“I wonder if he can forgive himself, Mrs. Gaunt.”
Her face hardened. Tom considered the agonies of being young and in love and in being terrorised by a disapproving parent. And then he had another thought:
“Why,” he asked, “does your husband think Lord Morborne—well, the boy who would become the Marquess of Morborne—would be the perpetrator of this appalling crime? Could he identify him?”
Ellen shook her head. “He couldn’t. Neither of them. He only glimpsed two young lads in dark clothing—but then the light was fading, wasn’t it. He thought one of them might be coloured.”
“Coloured? You mean … African or Asian?”
“Mick wasn’t certain. It was growing dark.”
“Then what—”
“It was the whistling, Mr. Christmas. Lord Morborne’s queer whistling. Mick heard him on The Wrekin that day. And he never forgot it.”
is dead! Mum, I’ve just spent the last little while at the dower house where Ellen is with Mr. Christmas. When I heard Roberto was dead, I dropped my pen and ran downstairs and I must have shocked Ellen and Mick with my presence. But they shocked me! Mick looked very peculiar indeed and Ellen had gone as white as a sheet! Roberto had somehow got himself electraocuted. An accident, they seemed to think, but it wasn’t! Lady Kirkbride told me after Ellen went to talk to Mr. C. that the electriocution was no accident! Which made me wonder about Ellen and Mick. They were in such an awful state here at the Gatehouse—or at least Ellen was. Mick set about making tea, calm as you please! I knew something was terribly wrong—something besides Roberto’s death—but Ellen wouldn’t say. Finally, I said I was late to Mr. C.’s birthday tea, at which point Ellen took up my earlier suggestion to talk with Mr. C. as he is so good with folk who have troubles. Of course, I’m disappointed they’re talking in private. Of course, they’re talking in private, as is proper in these situations, so I can’t tell you, Mum, what’s happened. I only tarried a moment. The dower house is lovely, more cosy, not so immense as the Hall, and I had a bit of the gateau (baked by Lady Fairhaven herself! Fancy!), but everybody’s spirits were v. low, as you can imagine (Poor Mr. C.! Not the most cheerful of birthdays!) so I thought I might be of better use here at the Gatehouse getting Mick to tell me seeing to Mick. Oddest thing, Mum! Do you remember our old verger, Sebastian, who went walkabout over a year ago? Well, as I was approaching the Gatehouse, I thought I glimpsed him come out the door to the private apartments and turn into the trees by the road. But as the afternoon had turned a bit grey and I was down the road aways, I couldn’t be sure, and of course it seemed so peculiar, even though I know Venice Daintrey insists she once saw him on the moor near here. But anyway, to make sure, I opened the big gate a crack to see if PC Widger was still on duty, forgetting, of course, about reporters and such. Well, Mum, by the time you get this you might see a picture of muggins here poking her head through looking not her best. Once they realised I had nothing I was going to tell the likes of them, they went back to smoking and hanging about uselessly. Anyway, PC Widger was on duty, so I asked him if he had let in anyone of Sebastian’s description. No, he said. He sounded a bit offended, so I slipped through the gate to see if all was well, as he had been quite friendly and chatty before. Apparently he’d got something of a wigging from the higher-ups for saying things that have fetched up in the papers. Anyway, on the q.t., he told me what with Roberto passed on unexpectedly, poor man, the police will be taking an interest in Lord Fairhaven. Never, I said, shocked at first, as he is a peer of the realm, but of course, Mum, he and Lord Morborne had been at each other, hadn’t they—up in the sky, no less, so it stands to reason. That’s what PC Widger said, as their fight on Saturday has been broadcast everywhere. I wonder if I shall feel safe up at the Hall. We talked on a bit, PC Widger and I. Turns out his mother-in-law is a cousin once removed of Tilly Springett’s late husband who used to farm near Thornford, you remember. Anyway, his mother-in-law is a lady golf ball diver (ret’d). She would dive into the water traps at the golf courses all over the West Country and sell the balls she found! So nice to have a chat with someone about something normal! This really has been quite the oddest weekend I’ve ever spent, I think. Now here I am, back at the Gatehouse, at this lovely little writing desk in my room. When I got back inside there was no one here at all. I can only think Mick’s gone back to the Hall, which I shall do too immanen eminen in a minute. At least I can be of use with the meals. I know what tonight’s menu is, so I can make a start if Ellen is long with Mr. C. PC Widger has promised to post this for me. Make sure you read them in the right order!
Much love,
Madrun
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Tom lifted the map left open on a low table in the Gatehouse sitting room. It was a detailed but—judging by the frayed folds—not a new Ordnance Survey map of Dartmoor, the bottom half expanded to set out the demarcations of the southern fringes of the moor, with web-like clusters of lines for Abbotswick and variegated squares for Eggescombe Park. Someone had spilled tea, recently it appeared—liquid pooled in a saucer by the map; the cup sat apart on a tray in its own ring of wet—leaving a damp golden splash, but marked with a whitish puckered trench as if Gaunt had forcefully traced a path through the paper with his finger along a footpath from Eggescombe up into the moor around Hryre Tor.
Tom lowered the map and looked towards Ellen, who had returned from the Gatehouse kitchen, mobile in hand. They had hurried from the dower house moments before, deflecting curiosity and concern, and now he was regretting letting himself to be drawn into such a charged matter. You must go to the police with this—it had been on his lips in the dower house conservatory, but Ellen sussed his reluctance and repelled it. She had sought him out because he was a priest, a counsellor, an intercessor, because the authority of his office would lead her husband down the path of righteousness, to make his confession to the police. Tom understood her suffering. She did not want to be a wife who betrayed her husband, no matter what his crime.
“You must come with me and talk to him.” She had leaned towards him, her eyes beseeching. “You must. I can’t … I can’t bear to have my husband snatched away from me in front of His Lordship and pushed into a car.”
And now they were in the Gatehouse and there was no Gaunt to be had. Ellen stared at him numbly from across the room; he found himself once again prepared to summon the authorit
ies. The phone in Ellen’s hand rang, piercing the tense atmosphere. “His Lordship!” She released a cry of dismay glancing at the screen. She let the instrument exhaust itself, then pressed fluttering fingers along the keys.
“He’s called several times in the last hour.” Surprise contended with concern on her plump features.
“Is Lord Fairhaven normally so … insistent?”
She gave him a sharp glance. “My husband is practised in anticipating every need.”
“Surely Lord Fairhaven has your phone number, too?”
“He does.” She reached into the pocket of her dark skirt. “But he hasn’t called me.” She looked from her mobile to Tom. “What can be so urgent?”
They were again jolted by Gaunt’s phone ringing.
“Give it to me.” Tom reached for the phone, his mind struggling with a new and frightening possibility. “Hector,” he said without preliminaries, steadying his voice for the falsehood to come. “This is Tom Christmas. I’m sorry to say that Gaunt has taken ill quite suddenly. I’m with Mrs. Gaunt at the moment. How may we—”
Hector, whose surprise at Tom’s answering seemed to seep through the ether for a few seconds, cut him off with a fit of pique. Where was Gaunt? He was expecting him shortly to prepare preprandial drinks. And did Gaunt have the key to the wine cellar? Or Mrs. Gaunt? He had been looking for his copy of it earlier, intending to distract Dominic with a tour of his grandfather’s collection of vintage claret. Most vexing. As Ellen nodded agreement, Tom told him that Mrs. Gaunt would ascertain the location of the wine-cellar key, substitute for Gaunt with the drinks trolley, and follow, in due course, with the serving of supper. Hector rang off abruptly. Tom stared at the mobile. He ought to feel aghast. He would say Lord Fairhaven was pigheaded, if he were pressed on the subject, but this fulmination over domestic minutiae seemed outlandish, a contrivance, almost a ploy.
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