by Tessa Arlen
Her ladyship didn’t like this information any more than Mrs. Jackson did. She bit her lip and stared into the fire. “Then we must check distances, Jackson. In those two hours Lieutenant Standish at Dodd Farm could have walked or ridden a bicycle up to the south gate of the kitchen garden, too. And since this appears to be a premeditated crime, Carmichael could have stowed a bicycle under the hedge of the horse pasture and ridden up to the kitchen garden and back again.” She paused, her brow wrinkled as she thought. “How long would it take on a bicycle, Jackson, to ride that distance—what is it, about three miles, perhaps a little more?”
“I can’t be sure, m’lady. It takes me six or seven minutes to bicycle from Haversham Hall over to Iyntwood and the drive is well maintained and quite flat; how far is that, I wonder?”
“Lord Haversham told me once it was a little over a mile and a half, so it would have taken Lieutenant Carmichael all of his twenty minutes just to get there and back, and then he would have had to get up to the spinney afterwards.”
Mrs. Jackson noticed that her ladyship’s glass was long empty. “May I pour you another glass, m’lady?” She held up the decanter.
“Thank you, Jackson, but I must be going. I think I am crossing Carmichael off our list—time is against him. So, back to Lieutenant Standish: he could have easily walked to the kitchen garden using the footpaths from Dodd Farm, couldn’t he? The quickest way to go would be the one to the footbridge across the river. But it is quite a distance even then.”
“Yes, he would have to go down Cryer’s Breach Lane to the top of Sir Winchell Meacham’s drive, m’lady, and then through the withy gate onto the bridle path and across the little wooden footbridge, then up along the other side of the river. It would take over an hour on foot one-way. Even with a bicycle it would be slow going, the paths are very overgrown by the river and it is often a bit boggy there. He would be gone from Dodd farm nearly two hours.” She put another log on the fire and they both watched the flames curl eagerly around it.
“We must check up on both Forbes and Standish and see if they left their work in the middle part of the day and if they did for how long. Oh my goodness, will you look at the time, I simply must go. You and I can easily check up on Lieutenant Forbes at the Home Farm, it is Dodd Farm that will be more of a problem; I can’t remember the last time I went over there.”
Mrs. Jackson couldn’t imagine how they would phrase such a question to Mr. Dodd, either; like most farmers, he was a silent individual and probably only enjoyed a gossip with old friends, farmers like himself, after an evening at the Goat and Fiddle. She walked over to the bell pull. “I am going to ask Corporal Budge to drive you back to the house in Major Andrews’s motorcar, m’lady. I don’t think you should be walking alone when it’s completely dark out.”
Chapter Fourteen
Really Mr. Bray is a most pleasantly mannered man, thought Clementine as she ate her fish and listened to him chatting away to Althea on his right, and Althea certainly finds his company enjoyable. She glanced at her son, seated farther down the table; he had barely forced a bite throughout what was after all quite a reasonable dinner. The chicken that followed their local trout was roasted to a delicious succulence and had been stuffed with wild mushrooms, as a substitute for truffles, giving the bird a pleasantly woodsy flavor. It is well worth the time walking on eggshells around Mrs. Thwaite in case she decides to desert us for the Banbury munitions factory.
Turning her attention back to the conversation at the dinner table, or rather to the monologue from Sir Winchell that had started with the fish and was still going strong, she realized that he was already steamed up about what he described as the impertinent behavior of “the lower orders,” an expression that made Clementine wince. She tilted her head to one side in a listening pose, a smile on her lips, and every so often she exclaimed, “Oh my goodness, how terribly upsetting,” or, “Good heavens above, who would have thought it?”
“… So that put the fool of a man straight; I think Londoners become more disrespectful every time I go up to town.” Sir Winchell lifted his fork to his mouth and Clementine said, “It certainly is—I mean, they certainly are.” She thought that no matter how many misfortunes Sir Winchell might have suffered and how sympathetic she felt toward him, he was still and always would be rather a swaggering and trivial man. She decided to make the conversation more productive.
“I spent such a pleasant morning away from household duties; I went over to Brook End Farm with Althea in her motorcar this morning and walked back along the Holly Farm footpath; they have not cut the wheat there yet and it was a particularly lovely morning.”
“My dear Lady Montfort,” he gave her a courteous little bow of the head, “you should have come by way of Meacham House; the footpath along the river is a far prettier walk to Iyntwood and I could have given you luncheon.” And Clementine realized how welcome any visitor would have been to interrupt his lonely hours.
“How kind of you, but I wouldn’t want to disturb your day,” she said.
“Not at all, not at all, you would have been most welcome,” he said. “I spent the better part of my day fishing on the river—didn’t get a bite but it was a pleasant way to waste the middle hours of a lovely day. I could see trout hiding under the bridge, but they were too clever for me.”
Clementine sat up and took notice. So he was fishing from the bridge at about the time Lieutenant Standish might have left Dodd Farm, but which bridge? There were four across the river in that area: the largest of them was Brook bridge, which connected the end of Brook End Lane with the beginning of Dodd Lane; the Iyntwood bridge, which spanned the river at the entrance to their north drive; and then the lake bridge outside their house, so she could eliminate that one, but there was the little wooden footbridge that she had been discussing with Mrs. Jackson earlier that evening. The bridge that Lieutenant Standish would have had to use!
“Harry and Ralph are always lucky when they fish from our lake bridge, Sir Winchell, something to do with the flag iris providing good cover for the trout as well as food for the hatch; you must have been fishing from the footbridge.”
He nodded in acknowledgment. “That’s right—I fished from there all morning and some of the afternoon.” Her heart beat a little faster—he had been in a perfect place to spot any comings and goings from Dodd Farm either along the lane or the footpath to the bridge.
“Do you fish, Lady Montfort?” he asked, and she remembered hours of aching boredom as first her husband and then her son had attempted to teach her to cast on the lawn. “No, but I do have to listen to a lot of talk about it.” She smiled, thinking of the earnest dinner conversations between father and son as to what the fish were biting and endless discussion on the tying of different flies. “Perhaps you were fishing in the middle part of the day? Ralph always says he avoids that bend in the river because the sun is too bright and it is quite busy along the footpath—on pretty days.” She was on a fishing expedition herself, eager to discover if Lieutenant Standish had left Dodd Farm between the hours of eleven and half past two because Sir Winchell would most certainly have spotted him.
“I was out quite early and the footbridge was in heavy shade then, but I packed it in at about three o’clock, didn’t see a soul all day.” Poor old boy, she thought, he must be awfully lonely. “But it is a pretty spot. I had an apple or two in my creel and a substantial game pie, so I spent some pleasant hours just wasting time. I am not much of a fisherman, as you know I prefer the hunt.”
Pleased with the information she had so effortlessly gathered, she ticked Standish off their list of suspects, and obliged their neighbor in a discussion popular in their area: foxhunting. “I think that one of the worst things about the beginning of the war was when our horses all went off to France; it nearly broke my heart when the Army Remount service came that day to take them. We only managed to hang on to Bruno because Althea told the War Office such a convincing story.” She had felt nothing but misery at the thought o
f their horses pressed into service in muddy Flanders, and then careful not to be too low-spirited she said, “We had such wonderful meets at Cryer’s Breach, didn’t we?”
Their talk of horses brought Harry out of his inner reverie to join their conversation. “I took Bruno out the other morning, it was misty in the hollows and there was a chill in the air. As I came back through the village toward the green the old boy’s ears came up and he started to look around. He thought for a wonderful moment that we were coming up to the green for a meet. And then Fred Golightly’s old hound spotted him and set up a fearsome yell and Bruno perked up and moved forward like a five-year-old.” He laughed down the table toward his father, whose stallion Bruno was as passionate about hunting as his rider.
“Good foxhunting country round here then?” Mr. Bray asked, turning away from an evidently fascinating conversation with Althea, who, Clementine noticed, was looking particularly alluring in ivory silk that dramatically emphasized her dark blue eyes and glossy bay-brown hair. “My estate sits right in the middle of some excellent hunting country. They used to hunt all through the season, never missed a day before the war.” But his face was somber as if the memory was not a pleasant one, and Clementine realized that he was being polite and that her preoccupation with Lieutenant Standish’s possible movements from Dodd Farm to the kitchen garden had distracted her from suitable dinner-table conversation. Why on earth are we talking about foxhunting of all things? Ralph had told her that Mr. Bray’s horse had gone down on its side, trapping his right leg underneath its heavy body, and that he had been lucky that the leg had been saved. She glanced down the table at her husband, who was staring at her aghast as Harry launched into a detailed monologue about the agility of the Irish sport horse as opposed to the more solidly built and temperamentally dependable English hunter. Oh, Harry, please stop, she sent a telepathic message to her son. Talk about aeroplanes, motorcars—anything but hunting. She glanced at Mr. Bray out of the corner of her eye: he was listening politely, his face impassive, and every so often he would nod his head, interjecting an opinion or two of his own on the best bloodlines for hunting. Evidently at one time Mr. Bray had been an active member of the North Cotswold Hunt because the points he made were well informed, but his courteous expression was becoming rather set and Clementine’s mind was darting hither and yon for another topic.
She cut across Harry’s rhapsodies about Bruno’s offspring and said to Sir Winchell, “Harry’s preferred method of transportation is mechanical, Sir Winchell. He fell in love with motorcars when he was about fourteen, and then when he was nineteen nothing fascinated him more than flying. He used to spend his summers with Tom Sopwith at his aeroplane manufactory in Kingston-on-Thames—my goodness, how we worried for his safety. And then the war came and it was inevitable that he join the Royal Navy Air Service—making us even more anxious…” She ground to a halt as she saw the frozen expression on the old man’s face.
Dear God, she thought, there is so much we must not talk about, I can’t help but put my foot in it. It was her fate to remember too late that Sir Winchell’s second son had been shot down over France as he was flying a reconnaissance mission. How long did that terrible news take to come through, was it just this summer? Clementine flushed with embarrassment. I wonder how many more gaffes I am going to make before this cumbersome evening is at an end. She looked across the table to her daughter, who evidently understood her dilemma.
Althea laid down her knife and fork. “Harry is quite wonderful with engines, Mr. Bray, it was he who taught me how to clean a clogged carburetor, otherwise you might have been stuck at Brook End Lane for hours. It is quite the emptiest road in the area.” Clementine’s sigh of relief was almost audible. Thank you, thank you, darling girl. She smiled grateful appreciation at her daughter.
Mr. Bray turned from his conversation with Harry. “But what about the farmhouse I could see from the lane? Is it deserted? It seemed very quiet. I tried waving and sounding the horn, hoping someone would walk down the hill and find me stranded there,” he smiled at his rescuer, “but I am quite delighted that it was you who saved me from spending the night in my motorcar, Lady Althea.” Althea took his compliment in her stride.
“The house you saw from your motor is Holly Farm, and the Howard family like to keep to themselves. But we are going there tomorrow to talk to Mr. Howard about helping him bring in his crop. Would you like to come along, Mr. Bray?” He earnestly said that he would love to.
And then to Clementine’s horror Althea said, “We are going to offer the Haversham Hall officers’ help at the farm tomorrow, they have all volunteered. You see, Mr. Howard has put his foot down about the Land girls—he says he won’t have city girls ruining his crops. So our officers at Haversham Hall Hospital are pitching in!”
Clementine felt her forehead go hot and then cold and clammy. She glanced at Sir Winchell out of the corner of her eye. The color was rising in his face, and his eyes flicked nervously around the table as if to seek confirmation that lunatics were to be set free in the wheat fields of Buckinghamshire armed with scythes. Someone, please say something! Talk about fishing, talk about gardening, talk about the wretched harvest festival.
She was about to interrupt her daughter when there was a respectful cough on her left as Hollyoak presented her with a chocolate soufflé. Murmuring something about serving spoons, the butler bent forward, and Clementine watched with paralyzed horror as the serving dish started to slide on his silver tray. “Hollyoak!” Clementine finally managed to get out as the dish gathered momentum. “The soufflé!” she cried as it hit the edge of the tray.
“M’lady!” The butler’s horror echoed hers as the soufflé miraculously kept its shape as it flew undished through the air. “What have I done?” The butler’s anguished question was answered for him as his lordship’s favorite pudding filled his wife’s lap.
Contrary to its light and airy appearance, it settled into the sagging cradle of Clementine’s skirt in a most unpleasantly wet and weighty way. She heard her own shocked gasp followed by another from her butler. “M’lady, I will never forgive myself.” Hollyoak closed his eyes, perhaps praying that when he opened them again the soufflé would be back in its dish on his tray.
Well, I was praying for a distraction and here it is—I never particularly liked this dress anyway. And she set about soothing her butler’s distress at his clumsiness and beckoned to her daughter for help.
Althea with the aid of two serving spoons deftly served the soufflé back into its dish so that Hollyoak, his face set and his ear tips flame red, might make his escape to lick his wounds in the privacy of his pantry and then go and nag the cook about the instability of her serving dish.
Led by her husband and her son, there was a ripple of laughter around the table that gradually grew in strength as Hollyoak closed the door after him. Well, I suppose a lap full of pudding is a small price to pay for such a thoroughly effective interruption.
“Darling,” her husband wiped his eyes with his napkin, “your face expressed the three stages of panic quite perfectly: mild surprise, changing to slight alarm, and from there to pure horror. I wish you could have seen it.” And then: “It wasn’t hot, was it?”
No, she assured him, it had not been hot, just rather an unpleasant sensation.
Mr. Bray had lifted his napkin to his mouth to cover his laughter, but Sir Winchell was frowning either because there would be no soufflé or perhaps because the lower orders were unreliable, but Clementine simply didn’t care. This disastrous evening was nearly over.
“I like the way Althea put it back in its place,” said Harry finishing the wine in his glass. “Do you think Hollyoak will survive the embarrassment? He would have had his footmen’s guts for garters if they had done anything as clumsy.”
“Poor old Hollyoak! Perhaps it is a good thing our footmen are not here, they would be giggling away for weeks. He insists on waiting without any help when we have company; the thought of either of our housemaid
s in waiting in the dining room is sacrilege to him when we have guests for dinner.” And smiling serenely around the table: “Althea and I will join you in the drawing room when you have finished your port.” She modestly draped her daughter’s napkin across the stain in the front of her dress and left the dining room with her.
* * *
“I thought for one moment you had done it on purpose,” Althea said, buttoning the back of her mother’s dress. “What a terrible evening. First of all we talked about hunting, and I have to say that Mr. Bray was pretty decent about that considering how much he loved to hunt before his accident, and then we dropped that in favor of the dangers of flying. Harry wasn’t offended but poor old Sir Winch was.”
Clementine leaned forward to her looking glass and patted her hair into place. “Sir Winch, as you call him—and be warned, one day you will say it to his face—is offended by everything. An evening spent with that man is a minefield of hurt feelings and opportunities to fuss. But I feel quite terrible that we have neglected him these past months. It was wrong of us when he has no one.” She sat down next to her daughter on the sofa. “Let’s just wait here for a moment for them to finish their port and then we can go down and join them in the red room for our coffee. It will give Hollyoak a moment to recover. Besides, we need to have a little talk.” And she began the business of explaining to her daughter how important it was that she did not go out in public alone in the company of young men.
“But, Mama, the world has changed since 1914, quite a lot in fact. No one in London even thinks about chaperones anymore.”
“You are not a ‘no one’ though, are you? You are your father’s daughter. And apart from that, someone was murdered in our kitchen garden, which means, Althea, that it is not safe to be alone outside of the house.”