by Tessa Arlen
It must be exhausting to walk with that twisted leg. And then she realized that Edgar Bray had not been told yet of the death of his brother. She looked across the room at the smiling Althea, enchanting in a simple silk evening dress in royal blue, and at her son, who had also risen to his feet and was looking across at her with concern. Harry knows that Captain Bray is dead, but Althea does not. Oh God, what a minefield this is going to be. Where on earth is Ralph?
“My husband, Lord Montfort, will be with us directly … we were detained at Haversham Hall Hospital this afternoon.” He didn’t seem to mind in the slightest that neither of them had been here to welcome him at teatime. “How long did it take you to drive over from Gloucestershire, Mr. Bray? You live near Cheltenham, don’t you?”
“I think it would have taken me about two hours, normally. But unfortunately I had a breakdown in my motor, so I was late to tea too.” He shook his head as Hollyoak came forward to refill his sherry glass.
“How unfortunate. And how long were you detained before your driver sorted out the problem?” Hollyoak offered her a glass of sherry, even though brandy would have been more gratefully accepted.
“I drove myself,” he said to her surprise. “My motorcar has been adapted so that I only need my good foot for the clutch and the accelerator; the brake is the old-fashioned type and I can operate it by hand.” He seemed to be quite unselfconscious about his leg and his acknowledging it made her feel less strained. What a delightful and unaffected manner he has, she thought as she beamed approval.
“I hope someone was able to come to your aid. How long were you stranded?” She sipped her sherry. I am certainly not going to be the one to tell him about the murder of his brother; why hasn’t Ralph already spoken to him?
“I had driven through Haversham village when my car conked out on … on Brook End Lane I believe it was. Not much I could do, the lane was completely empty—not a soul in sight. Just as I was giving up and thinking about sleeping the night there, as if by magic your daughter”—he turned to acknowledge Althea standing there in her pretty dress with her blue eyes shining in her sunny face—“came along and rescued me—such a competent mechanic.”
“There are two mechanics in the Talbot family; my brother, Lord Haversham, is a most accomplished engineer. I learned very simple mechanics when I joined the Women’s Land Army,” said Althea with commendable modesty.
“So you were over at Brook End Farm this afternoon, Althea?” Clementine asked her daughter, who blushed very prettily.
“For most of the afternoon, off and on.” Clementine caught Mr. Bray’s admiring glance at Althea. Being outside all day really agrees with her, she thought, she looks positively glossy these days.
“So you must have organized the farm detachment then.”
“Yes, I picked the officers up at Haversham Hall this morning and dropped two of them off at their farms. Lieutenant Carmichael and I were on our way to Brook End Farm when we came across Mr. Bray, sitting in a car that would not start.”
Mr. Bray laughed. “The lieutenant had simply no idea what to do,” he said with evident appreciation for his rescuer. “But Lady Althea had the bonnet up in a jiffy and spotted the problem in no time at all. Dirt in the carburetor wasn’t it?” Althea’s smile broadened and she said it was.
“Thank goodness help was at hand then,” was all Clementine could think of to say as she raised her glass to her lips. So if Althea wasn’t picking young men up and dropping them off all over the countryside, she was mending motorcars. Clementine realized she was feeling out of sorts and caught herself; I am being old-fashioned in my outlook—again. But the thought of her pretty daughter driving around the county unchaperoned, with young men she hardly knew, was something she should not ignore now that she had discovered that this was how Althea spent part of her day.
“How are our officers adapting to harvesting?” she asked, which was the only topic of interest that consumed the county at this time of year.
Althea glanced at her mother out of the corner of her eye as she replied, “Most of them come from families who own land and some of them even helped out with the harvest when they were boys—like we did.” She waved her hand to include her brother. “I just dot them around the local farms for the day and then pick them up and cart them off home. The Land Army girls are more than capable of directing them—some of them have even learned to use a scythe without actually injuring themselves.”
“So how are they doing over at Brook End—do they have all the wheat in?” Harry asked as Mr. Bray had fallen silent.
“Pretty nearly, should be done by tomorrow. Molly Anderson gave everyone a wonderful luncheon of rabbit pie, but we missed it as I was teaching Lieutenant Carmichael to plow—the old way, with a horse. Dolly can pull a single-furrow plow because the upper fields have such light soil.” She turned to Mr. Bray. “In heavier soils two horses are needed, one walking on the land and one in the furrow. Most of the Land girls learned how last winter, they are getting awfully good at it. We are thinking of doing a plowing competition in November, you know, between farmers and the Land Army girls. First prize goes to the team that can plow the straightest and tightest furrows!”
“No luncheon, you must be famished!” Clementine thought her words sounded a bit forced or, even worse, jolly.
“Not at all, Molly sent us out a picnic lunch of bread and cheese. It was delicious; she sent cider too.”
Us? Clementine felt the evening was slipping away from her. What on earth is going on? She couldn’t quite remember this Lieutenant Carmichael who had spent most of the day with her daughter. Mr. Bray was drinking in all this bucolic countryside fun with appreciative interest, and Harry, who had been smoking cigarettes one after the other, looked across at his mother and shook his head slightly in commiseration with her that someone was going to have to tell this most pleasant Mr. Bray that he would not, after all, be reunited with his brother.
And then as if he had sensed her unease and recognized the need to come to her aid, the door to the drawing room opened and her husband walked into the room as if murdered bodies in his kitchen gardens occurred at Iyntwood every day of the week. And why not indeed? At least we are not related to this particular victim, thought Clementine.
“I am so sorry to have kept you all; I was with Colonel Valentine in my study.” And to his wife: “The colonel will not be joining us for dinner, simply doesn’t have the time.” So that’s where you have been, chatting away with Valentine—without me! She introduced their guest.
“Ralph, this is Mr. Edgar Bray. Mr. Bray, my husband Lord Montfort.”
Introductions and small talk over, Lord Montfort invited his guest to join him in his study, where he might be given the news of his brother’s tragic death in privacy. What a terrible thing to hear in some stranger’s house where he knows no one at all, Clementine thought as she watched Mr. Bray make his way across the drawing room to the door.
“Hollyoak, perhaps you would wait outside his lordship’s study and then arrange for Mr. Bray to take dinner in his room if he would prefer that to joining us. I am sure he will want to retire after he has spoken with his lordship.” There was no need for her to inform her butler of Captain Bray’s violent end as Hollyoak managed to acquaint himself with everything that happened in their lives. She was proved right by his response.
“I have asked Cook to stand by with a tray, m’lady, and I will be on hand to valet Mr. Bray. I have instructed our first housemaid Agnes to wait on you at dinner, if that will be all right.” Clementine was utterly grateful for the old butler’s foresight. Even with a depleted servants’ hall Hollyoak managed to keep things running smoothly. She half smiled as she remembered his embarrassment when he had had to train Agnes and Mary to wait on them in the dining room.
Women servants in waiting in the dining room, unmarried girls out driving young men their families barely knew around the countryside, and on top of it all the brutal murder in their kitchen garden. Clementine trudged
back across the room toward her very independent and, she reminded herself, adult children. I don’t seem to be as adaptable to change as I used to be, she thought as she sat her daughter down on the sofa and brought her up-to-date about the death of Captain Bray.
“Oh no, Mama, no!” Althea was so shocked by the news that she was halfway to her feet. “How absolutely awful. Poor Mr. Bray; he was so overjoyed that he was going to see his brother again. He talked of nothing else when we got back to the house.” Althea turned first to her mother and then to her brother. “Did you meet Captain Bray, Harry? He was such a nice, quiet man.”
“Well, yes, I suppose he was. I knew him briefly—before the war.” His mother noticed that he did not repeat his opinion of Captain Bray’s rather Casanova attitude to life before he’d gone off to France.
“What a shock it must have been for you, Mama. I expect it was suicide. Mr. Bray told me that he believed his brother would probably never regain his full memory, he was simply hoping that Captain Bray would recognize him when he saw him. How terrible it would be not to know who you were, or who your family was, to not remember anything about your life at all,” said Althea as Harry poured them all another glass of sherry.
“Althea, darling, we think—well, we know—that Captain Bray was murdered.”
More cries of disbelief from Althea. Despite a determination to be independent, Althea had a sunny disposition, skipping through life with the belief that everyone in her world was kindness itself and that no one bore a grudge, or harbored envy or malice. “But who would do such a thing? Oh, Mama, not one of the other officers surely?”
“I don’t know, Althea. But until we find out what happened, I don’t think it is a good idea to drive about alone—or with people we don’t know too well. They have orderlies at the hospital to drive the patients for you.” Had she finished the sherry in her glass already? We can’t all fall into drink because Captain Bray was murdered on the day he was to be reunited with his brother.
“I’ll drive with her,” said Harry, and to his sister: “No, Thea, you can do the driving, I’m just there for the look of the thing. You shouldn’t be unaccompanied anyway, especially with all this going on,” he added with brotherly severity. “Mama, what about the chaps in your hospital—I mean do their problems make them dangerous?”
“Harry, you make them sound like they are the insane. They are suffering from neurasthenia, for heaven’s sake, it is not a disease, it is a symptom of stress, of battle fatigue. And yes, I know some of them; I knew Captain Bray because his condition was a little more pronounced than the rest of our patients, and I know Captain Martin and the chief medical officers. But they come and go, you know, and in uniform it is sometimes hard to remember one from the other. I am quite sure I have never met Lieutenant Carmichael but I think I have seen him once or twice.” Her son was watching her with a particularly sympathetic expression on his face, as he no doubt recognized how much concern the self-reliant Althea always caused her. Ever since they were young it had been Althea who broke the rules, made up new ones, and often got away with behavior that their very proper and older sister, Verity, would have been thoroughly scolded for.
“If I go with her, Mama, will you be less anxious?”
Perhaps with something to do Harry would not drink quite so much, would stop fretting about being grounded. An active country life would help him relax and find himself again. But she said none of this, she merely patted his arm. “Thank you, darling, that sounds like a sensible idea, doesn’t it, Althea? It will give both of you a chance to spend time together, as you help the local farmers with the harvest.”
“Well that’s settled then,” said Harry and laughed at the mutinous look on his sister’s face.
Chapter Seven
At half past ten the following morning, Mrs. Jackson finished her interview with Inspector Savor and, putting on her uniform straw boater, went out into a cloudless morning. She pulled her old boneshaker out from under the scullery-porch roof and pedaled off down the drive to Iyntwood. As she bowled along the dusty lane that connected the two houses she unclenched her jaw, which had become set with indignation during her interview with Inspector Savor. She lifted her face to the sun, relieved to have escaped from her encounter with the inspector with a mere bruising.
What was the term Corporal Budge used in the servants’ hall last night after his bullying session with the police inspector? She smiled as she remembered it: That’s it, it was “a parade ground bully,” another army expression, and a good one. The inspector used his position of authority to browbeat people, something he clearly enjoyed doing.
“How did your interview go with the inspector, Corporal?” She had been able to ask her question quite directly as the corporal was the sort of man who was so unaffectedly open with everyone that it was easy to be straightforward with him.
“Is that what he was doing, Mrs. Jackson, interviewing us? Could have fooled me!”
“Oh dear.” Her worst suspicions were confirmed. How on earth would the shattered Lieutenant Phipps fare with this man’s methods of interrogation?
“‘Oh dear’ is roight.” His West Country accent became thicker with his disgust. “The accusations were flying through the air like shrapnel. He asked me where everyone was by name, like, and I answered best I could and then whammo he laced into me—thought I was up for a rogue’s salute. In the end I just got down in me crump hole and waited it out. Anyway he says he don’t have time for you tonight, Mrs. Jackson. You’re up first thing tomorrow.” Mrs. Jackson’s face was grim as she pedaled down the drive. Her own experience might not have been so ferocious but it had been unpleasant and insinuating.
“Where were you between the hours of eleven o’clock in the morning and half past two in the afternoon yesterday?” Inspector Savor had asked her when she had stepped into the garden room for her interview, unfortunately before luncheon and the soothing effect of Major Andrews’s cunningly planned steak-and-kidney pudding. It was a question the inspector had been right to ask, but there had been no preliminary greeting. He had fired these words at her when she had been halfway through the door. His back, she noticed, was toward the pretty flower beds just outside the window. The world’s simple delights held no pleasure for the likes of Inspector Savor, Mrs. Jackson had realized as she offered up two densely filled foolscap pages pinned neatly to a board. “As the schedule says…”
“I am asking you, not the schedule, Miss Jackson.” She decided not to correct him, as he clearly did not understand that the title of Mrs. was one given out of respect to single women who ran the grand houses, or the hospitals, of the aristocracy.
“At eleven o’clock I was in my office, working on the hospital accounts.”
“Alone?”
“Why yes, I was alone. At noon I made my rounds of the hospital.”
He put a cigarette in his mouth and slapped his pockets for matches. When she had come into the room he had given her an appraising once-over, and since then had not so much as glanced at her when he asked his questions. Every movement he made was abrupt and impatient, and so was his tone.
“After checking that VADs Fuller and Ellis had tidied the officers’ mess on the ground floor, I went down to the kitchen to check that luncheon was on schedule for one o’clock, that would have been about twelve-thirty.”
“Who was in the kitchen when you got there?” He gave up on his coat and trouser pockets and picked up his overcoat and started to go through its pockets in his quest for matches.
“VADs Fuller and Ellis, the cook, and the scullery maid; I spent a few minutes with them and then I walked back up to the officers’ mess with VAD Ellis and we set the table together. At one o’clock all the officers who were not away from the hospital that day helping out at our local farms, which would be Captain Martin, Lieutenants Phipps, and Fielding, came into the mess and were joined there by our medical officers Captain Pike, Major Andrews, and Sister Carter. I made sure they had everything they needed and then I le
ft to eat my luncheon.”
Now he deigned to look at the schedule. “What does this mean? It says here Farm Detachment.” He pointed with a nicotine-stained forefinger.
“Farm detachment refers to the patient-officers from the hospital who volunteer to help the local farmers. For the past week we have been very busy with the harvest. As you see,” she pointed to the list, “Lieutenant Carmichael was working at Brook End Farm, Lieutenant Standish at Dodd Farm, and Lieutenant Forbes at the Home Farm. Officers on farm detachment leave the house after breakfast and return just before sunset.”
“What about Captain Bray, you don’t mention him coming in to lunch.” He threw down his overcoat and irritably returned to his jacket pockets.
She patiently answered a question that he had asked yesterday in the drawing room. “When Captain Bray worked in the kitchen garden, someone took a sandwich out to him.” Really this ferreting about in pockets is most distracting, she clenched her teeth together to stop herself from betraying irritation.
“Ah yes, that’s right.” He tapped his finger on the schedule. “Special treatment, aye? Is that because he is a baronet and not just an officer?” He sneered and she ignored the question. “And what about you, where did you eat your noonday meal?”
“I took my luncheon with the staff downstairs and then came back up to my office and continued to work on my accounts until I was interrupted with the news that Captain Bray’s body had been found in the kitchen garden.”
“Who told you?”