Murder at Merisham Lodge: Miss Hart and Miss Hunter Investigate: Book 1

by Grace, Celina

  “I’ll make us some tea,” I said, putting aside a half peeled potato and getting up.

  Just as I was filling the kettle, there was a knock at the kitchen door. Wiping my hands on my apron, I went to open it.

  There was a man outside, a stranger. He was rather smartly dressed for a tradesman and carried his hat in his hand. He was young, probably not more than twenty-five or so, and rather brown.

  I raised my eyebrow interrogatively. “May I help you?”

  The man shifted from foot to foot. By this time, Verity had looked up from her mending and when she saw who it was, she jumped up with an exclamation.

  “Good morning, sir,” she said, rushing up to stand beside me at the door. “How may we help?”

  So, he merited a ‘sir’, did he? I let Verity push forward a little.

  “Hello, Verity,” said the man. “I’m just here to see the mater. She’s not expecting me.” For a moment, he looked almost shifty. “You couldn’t show me up to my room and let the old girl know I’ve arrived, could you?”

  Verity bobbed a curtsey. “Of course, sir. Do come with me.”

  I watched her whisk the man through the kitchen and out to the passageway beyond. After a moment, I heard what was probably their feet walking overhead as they made for the main staircase.

  I sat back down at the table again, frowning. Who on Earth had that been? Clearly he was some part of the gentry – perhaps even part of the family. So why in the world had he come to the servants’ entrance and not rung the doorbell of the main house, as anyone else of that status would? It was a puzzle that I turned over in my head as I picked up my peeler and slowly began to divest the potatoes of their jackets.

  I’d almost finished by the time Verity came back again.

  “Who was that?” I asked as soon as she’d sat back down.

  She rolled her eyes. “That was Lady Eveline’s son, Peter Drew. He’s the son of her first husband. Dorothy’s brother.”

  “I haven’t seen him before,” I commented, beginning to slice the peeled potatoes.

  “No, well, he’s not often here. He and his mum don’t get along brilliantly. She thinks he’s a – well, a wastrel. He only turns up here when he needs some money.”

  “And Lady Eveline gives it to him?”

  Verity smiled cynically. “Not without a screaming row, normally.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Is he married?”

  “No. Bit of a scoundrel, I think, judging from some of Dorothy’s remarks.” Verity bit off the thread she was holding. “Sounds like he takes after his father.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, he was a bit of a rogue, by all accounts. Dalliances with actresses and so forth.” I raised my eyebrows again and Verity grinned. Her family was connected with the theatre and she knew quite well what some people thought of those in the acting profession. “As it was,” she went on, “He got drunk and fell in front of an omnibus one night and that was that. Of course, it was sad for Dorothy and Peter. I mean, he was their father.”

  I tipped the sliced potatoes in a bowl of cold water and shook the salt cellar over it. “So Duncan Cartwright isn’t Lady Eveline’s son?”

  Verity rolled her eyes. “No, Joanie, you know that. Remember? Lord Cartwright was married before and his wife died, about a year before he married Lady E.”

  It was true Verity probably had told me that before but, to be honest, I had little time to worry about remembering the ins and outs of the family. It wasn’t as if I came into contact with them much (thankfully), unlike Verity. I suppose she had to know who was who and what was what.

  Verity began neatly folding the mended clothing. She had a very steady hand and could make tiny, neat stitches, something I’d never managed to master. She’d trained herself in mending lace, a useful skill for a lady’s maid to have, but then Verity was a fiend for self-improvement. “I’m a lifelong student,” she told me once, when I caught her poring over an encyclopaedia in the library at Asharton Manor.

  Asharton Manor. I caught myself in an involuntary shudder, something that often happened when I remembered the accursed place. It had been cursed, I was sure of it. I wasn’t just being fanciful. I remembered the clearing in the forest and the haunted feel of the woods surrounding the house. I remembered, too, the pale shape of the body in the bed, the greyish tinge to her skin, as if she’d walked through a room full of cobwebs.

  Verity looked up sharply. “Joan? Are you all right?”

  I shook myself back to reality. “Fine. I’m fine.” It wasn’t like me to brood, but sometimes the memories caught me unawares. “Fancy another cup of tea?”

  “Ooh, yes. That would be lovely.”

  I put the kettle on the hob and lit the gas. “How was Dorothy’s head this morning?”

  Verity chuckled. She had a lovely, gurgling laugh that always made you want to join in. “Sore! I had to fetch her aspirin by the pound.” She finished folding the clothes and began to stack them in a pile. “I think she’s got a new beau. She had a card from a Simon Snailer in her handbag and she never keeps cards, normally.”

  “’Simon Snailer!’” I poured out the tea for us both. “She won’t want to marry him. Imagine being Mrs Dorothy Snailer.”

  We both laughed at that. “What’s he like?” I asked, curious despite myself.

  “No idea. I haven’t accompanied her out for a bit, I don’t know who she’s been seeing lately.” She picked up the stack of clothing. “Anyway, I’d better get these back upstairs and put away.”

  “Have your tea first.”

  “Of course. You do look after me well, Joanie.”

  “Someone’s got to.” We smiled at each other. Verity and I had met when we were both small girls, in the orphanage where we both grew up. She was from a high-born family fallen on hard times; I most definitely was not. We had liked each other from the start and now she was my oldest and dearest friend.

  I drained my cup and washed it up. Verity said goodbye and went out with the pile of clothing. I began to prepare the soup for the evening meal, quite a complicated one with white fish and various vegetables and herbs. I think I was quite content then, thinking about nothing more than the work I had to do but knowing that it was all under control so far. It was a sunny day and beams of light poured through the large windows, such a pleasant change to some of the kitchens I’d worked in. Mrs Watling came in from her trip to the village and nodded approval at seeing me well employed.

  Once the soup was well underway, I stood back and stretched a little, easing my aching back. It was then I noticed a white object over on the floor by the door. Verity had dropped one of Dorothy’s chemises as she left the room.

  “I’m just going to take this up to Verity,” I told Mrs Watling, who nodded again.

  “You’ll need to make the stuffing for the duck, but that can wait until you get back,” she said, whisking in and out of the pantry with her hands full of tins and jars.

  I took the servants’ stairs, of course. Dorothy’s room was on the second floor, so at least it wasn’t too much of a climb, unlike at the end of the day when I had to trudge up to the attic floor on tired legs. The servants’ door to the second floor was one of those concealed ones, right at the end of the corridor. I closed it behind me quietly and made my way down the hallway.

  Raised voices behind one of the doors made me pause. I realised they were coming from Lady Eveline’s room – it was her talking, loud and hard, and a man’s voice too. I didn’t recognise it for a moment and then I realised it was her son, the one who’d arrived this morning, Peter Drew.

  “You’re just like your father,” Lady Eveline said. There was a sneer in her voice, apparent even to me on the other side of the door. “Lazy, useless, and grasping. If you think I’m going to bail you out yet again, you’ve got another think coming.”

  Peter spoke then. “I know you’ve never had much opinion of me, Mother. Not that I can’t say the feeling’s mutual—”

  “How dare y
ou speak to me like that?”

  “How dare I? Oh, I dare, all right, mother. And if you’re not going to help me, I can think of a few people who might be very interested to hear one or two things about you—”

  I was holding my breath and the blood thumped in my ears. I was dying to hear what Peter would say next but I never got the chance. I heard a door opening down the corridor and nearly jumped out of my skin. Hurrying past the door, I swerved into the next room, which was Dorothy’s.

  Verity was there, folding clothes into the chest of drawers by the adjoining wall. She gave me a wry glance as I panted into the room.

  “Going at it hammer and tongs, aren’t they?” She inclined her head towards the wall, where the hard angry voices of Lady Cartwright and Peter were still audible. “Told you it always happens when he turns up.”

  I held out the chemise. “I brought this up for you, you dropped it in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, thank you, Joanie. I mustn’t lose that one, it’s French silk.” She took it from me and placed it neatly in the top drawer. I sat down on Dorothy’s bed. Her room was so lovely: white and feminine and stuffed full of beautiful furniture and paintings and clothes. I got up and went to the wardrobe to gaze hungrily at her lovely dresses.

  There was the emphatic slam of the bedroom door in the room next to us and then the sound of footsteps stamping away. Verity and I looked at one another and I bit down on the smile that wanted to show.

  Dorothy’s own door opened and I leapt away from the wardrobe, expecting it to be Lady Cartwright. But it was Dorothy herself, wrapped in a white satin dressing gown with large embroidered poppies on the lapels.

  “Oh, hullo, Joan,” she said amiably. I’ll say that for Dorothy, there wasn’t any side to her. She always greeted the servants by their preferred name and even though normally she would be expected to call Verity by her surname, she never did. “A hunter is what I ride, not what I call my maid,” I’d overheard her say, once.

  If she was hungover, you would never have known. As usual, she was plastered in make-up and her hair hung in two precise curtains of smooth golden silk on either side of her face. Dorothy’s looks reminded me a little of an illustration I’d seen once in an old story book of Snow White, that of the wicked queen. Beautiful but a little bit frightening too. But then, appearances could be deceptive. Dorothy was mostly kind, if a little bit careless, and, like I said before, never made you feel the vast gap that yawned between ‘them’ and ‘us’.

  “God, my head,” she groaned, flinging herself down on the bed and reaching for her onyx and silver cigarette case. “I’m going to have to tell Dickie not to let me near the champagne cocktails again. I can’t be trusted.” She lit her cigarette and tossed the lighter onto her bedside table. “Was that my brother doing all the shouting just now?”

  “Afraid so,” said Verity. “He and your mother were having a bit of a row about money.”

  Dorothy laughed cynically. “So what’s new? He’s such a bore. You know, he has a perfectly adequate allowance?” Of course, we didn’t know this, or I didn’t, though I didn’t confess my ignorance. Dorothy went on. “I mean, if I can’t get through it in a month, I can’t believe Peter can. What’s he spending it on? I simply can’t imagine.”

  I couldn’t imagine it either. Imagine having that much money that you couldn’t spend it all in a month, despite all the cocktails, cigarettes, new dresses, handbags and trips to the theatre that you paid for. For a moment, I had to struggle not to let my envy show on my face.

  I had to get back to the kitchen, anyway, so I murmured to Verity that I would see her later, bobbed a little curtsey to Dorothy and hurried back down the stairs.

  The full family contingent sat down to dinner that night. One of the parlourmaids, Nora, was ill and in bed with a bad stomach, so it fell to me to wait the table. Not something I enjoyed – I was always sure I was going to spill something hot onto someone, or let the potatoes bounce off the serving platter and all over the floor. I remembered Verity telling me once about how she’d seen one of the parlourmaids in her previous place spill a load of hot peas down the cleavage of one of the guests, and then have the excruciating task of trying to help the screaming guest retrieve them. It had made me laugh a lot at the time, but now I cursed the memory and prayed that my hands wouldn’t shake and do anything like that.

  As it turned out, it was fine. I handed the last dish of vegetables around and then stepped back to my place in the corner of the room, next to Mister Fenwick, the butler. It was quite dark in the room. The ground floor and first floor of the house were wired for electricity and there were adequate wall lights in the dining room, but Lady Eveline always demanded candlelight for the dinner table. “Wonderfully flattering for the complexion, candlelight,” Dorothy had said once and that was probably why her Ladyship insisted on that particular form of light. I felt pleasantly invisible over in my dim corner. If it wasn’t for the ache in my feet, I would have felt quite content.

  I watched Lord Cartwright as he ate. He always cut his meat as if attacking it, with short jabs of his knife and fork, and swilled it down with wine. If he hadn’t been quite so wealthy and titled, I had the suspicion that at least some of the guests who’d eaten here on occasion might have thought him just a little bit uncouth. He wasn’t an attractive man – with his drooping moustache and ruddy complexion, he reminded me of nothing so much as a sunburnt walrus.

  I found the trick to observing someone was to watch them for just long enough, but no longer. Stare intently at someone for too long, and, sooner or later, they look up and catch your eye. Try it, I assure you it’s true. So I watched Lord Cartwright for just long enough and then swapped my gaze to his wife. True to her class, she was barely touching her food, pushing it disinterestedly around the plate. I knew full well that she’d have a tray sent up later – I imagined that she’d absolutely gorge herself then, eating with both hands, with no dining etiquette to stop her. The sight of Lady Cartwright rejecting my lovingly made food began to anger me so I looked further down the table to where Peter Drew was eating, in a sort of stiff, unhappy way. He didn’t look like a man who was enjoying himself. Dorothy was seated next to him but she wasn’t eating either, just resting her sleek head on one hand, a cigarette held unlit in her long fingers. I couldn’t imagine either Lord or Lady Cartwright allowing her to actually smoke at the table. In that, I agreed with them.

  Duncan Cartwright and Rosalind Makepeace were seated next to one another but weren’t talking. It may have been my fancy, but they seemed to be slightly turned away from one another, as if they were holding the side of their bodies closest to the other stiff. It made me remember that time I’d had to sit at the servants’ table at the position I’d had before Asharton – I’d had to sit next to the valet, who was a horrible man, and every dinner time it was the same; I hadn’t been able to let the side next to him relax at all.

  I’d noticed that before, the slight tension that always seemed to be between Rosalind and Duncan. I made a mental note to ask Verity why she thought that was and then pulled myself together with a jump as I realised they’d finished their main course, and I was now expected to help the footmen clear the table.

  After dinner came the inevitable washing up and the preparation of breakfast for tomorrow. At least Maggie, the scullery maid, was the one who had to do most of the scrubbing. Mrs Watling and I sat at the table to go through the supplies and plans for what we had to do tomorrow.

  Verity came in after a few minutes, yawning. “Can I make up a milky drink, Mrs Watling?”

  “Of course, love. Is it for Dorothy?”

  Verity nodded, sitting down at the table. “She’s having an early night tonight, thank the Lord. I’m just about ready to drop.”

  “Miss Dorothy won’t be wanting anything else to eat?”

  Verity shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t have thought so.”

  As she spoke, we could see one of the bells start jangling. “That’ll be Madam,” said Mrs
Watling with a sigh. “She’ll be wanting her tray.”

  “I’ll take it up,” I offered. I could see Lady Cartwright was in the library by the name on the bouncing bell, and I never missed an opportunity to visit the library. I love books. I love reading and writing, even if I barely get the chance to do either. The library at Merisham Lodge was large and square and filled with literally hundreds of books. I might even have a chance to sneak myself a new novel to read if I was sly about it.

  “Good girl. Well, Joan, once you’ve taken that tray up you can turn in for the night. There’s nothing more to do here.”

  Verity made the hot milk drink, yawning all the while, and carried it out the door, flapping a vague hand at me in goodbye. I went through to the pantry where the tray for Lady Cartwright was neatly laid out, covered in a white cloth, and picked it up with a grunt. At least the library was on the ground floor of the lodge, only one flight of stairs to climb.

  There was no answer to my careful knock at the library door. I hesitated, knocked again and when there was silence, opened the door, picked up the tray from where I’d put it down on the floor, and edged inside.

  I thought for a moment that the room was empty, but a second glance showed me Lady Cartwright over by the window, staring out at the dark garden. I could see her face reflected in the glass of the window and she looked deep in thought, almost, one might say, worried. Fearful, even? But of what?

  “Your tray, Madam,” I murmured.

  She seemed to come back to life then and turned. “Oh, yes,” she said, disinterestedly. “Put it there.”

  I placed the tray on the table she’d indicated and straightened up. I knew a ‘thank you’ would not be forthcoming. “Will that be all, Madam?”

  She didn’t bother to answer. She’d turned back to stare out of the window again, almost as though I wasn’t there at all. I thought about asking her whether she wanted me to draw the curtains, but decided against it. Instead, I bobbed a curtesy and saw myself out, thoughts of stealing a book forgotten.