Death at Bishop's Keep

by Robin Paige

  “I read Pudd’nhead Wilson,” Kate explained. “Mark Twain’s novel, published last year in Century Magazine. The murderer is convicted when the detective shows an enlarged drawing of a fingerprint to the jury.”

  “Astonishing,” Sir Charles murmured.

  “Absurd,” Mr. Marsden said. “Shows how far novels are from the real world. Convicting a man on the flimsy print of a finger!”

  “Nevertheless,” Kate said bravely, “at some time when you would care to explain more about fingerprints, Sir Charles, I would be interested in listening.” And she sat back, fearing that she had called too much attention to herself already, when attention was the last thing she wished. In order for Beryl Bardwell to conduct her clandestine observations, she must remain discreet and undiscovered behind the mask of Kathryn Ardleigh, docile, decorous secretary-companion. But how interesting to encounter a man (however arrogant he might be) who could teach her something more than she already knew about fingerprints—and to encounter a murder. Not just fictional murder, either, but murder most real!

  So, as Eleanor Marsden pointed out landmarks of interest along the way, Beryl Bardwell was devising a catalog of things she needed to discover. Who was the murdered man? From whence had he come? And, above all, who had done the deed and why? It was up to her to find answers, or, rather, to create them. When it came to thrillers, Beryl Bardwell was constrained neither by truth nor by fact.

  8

  The splendour falls on castle walls

  —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON The Princess

  To Charles Sheridan’s surprise, he found the drive to Bishop’s Keep rather interesting. Marsden was sitting like a stick, busy with his thoughts. Eleanor was no less feather-witted than usual. But Miss Ardleigh—

  Ah, yes, Miss Ardleigh. Charles occasionally amused himself by drawing conclusions about people’s characters and personal histories from appearance and odd bits of conversation. It was not difficult to conclude, from the plain cut and plainer fabric of her costume, that Miss Ardleigh was a poor relation. The woman was not particularly young, and not particularly beautiful. She lacked either the interest, the skill, or the funds—perhaps chiefly interest, since most women managed to pretty themselves no matter what their funds—to devote much attention to her appearance. The undisciplined mass of auburn hair, for instance, bespoke both a lack of concern for elegance and an unruly will, while the second finger of the right hand bore inky tribute to her acquaintance with the pen. That, and her age, indicated a type: the American spinster abroad, greedily consuming every delight of the excursive experience, and writing volumes about it in the form of letters home.

  But there seemed to be more to Miss Ardleigh than that, Charles acknowledged. The unruly hair was quite lovely and the forthright hazel eyes under straight dark brows unusually striking. She would photograph well. And more, she had intrigued him with her odd remark about Mark Twain’s use of fingerprints. It had betrayed an unusual interest. What sort of woman read detective stories?

  Three-quarters of an hour after leaving the station, the carriage with its four passengers turned off the road and onto a curving lane lined with mist-cloaked beeches. Miss Ardleigh seemed to be holding an excited expectation in stern check. “I suppose Bishop’s Keep is very medieval,” she said in an offhand way, glancing across the fog-wreathed landscape.

  “Medieval?” Eleanor asked in surprise. “Why, no. Why did you—Oh, of course. The Keep.”

  Charles suppressed a smile. Americans harbored endless misconceptions about England. All the fault of Byron and Wordsworth and those other soulful purveyors of the Romantic view. Caught up in a New World whirlwind of invention and innovation, Americans loved to take a holiday from progress to revel in the picturesque, the macabre, the mist. That’s what came of having virtually no history of their own, and no castles. And very little fog, either.

  “You have been reading thrillers,” Bradford remarked. “Towers and turrets and dead bodies in great chests, and bats in all the belfries.”

  Charles was distracted from his reflections on the American temperament. “Ah, bats,” he said energetically. “D’you know, there is a bat in this locality that is quite a rare little fellow, a—”

  Eleanor’s laugh was a melodious tinkle. “I am sure Kathryn will have more exciting things to do than spy out bats for you, Charles.”

  “Are you saying that Bishop’s Keep is not really a castle?” Miss Ardleigh asked, clearly disappointed but trying not to seem so.

  “There once was a castle,” Bradford said carelessly, “the country seat of some great churchman or another. But Cromwell pulled it down during the Civil War, and there is little left save the odd flint rubble wall. The present residence is less than seventy years old. Not as romantic as a castle, but a damned sight less drafty, I warrant.” A little of his flirtatious good humor seemed to be coming back, and he grinned. “If it’s romance you’re after, Miss Ardleigh, you must visit Marsden Manor. No ruin, but we have our own resident ghost.”

  At the word “ghost,” Charles noticed, Miss Ardleigh leaned slightly forward, her face eager. She was no doubt impressed by Bradford’s attention, as were most women. The brief sigh that escaped his lips as he turned away was largely unconscious.

  Sir Charles could not know, of course, that Kate was far less impressed by Mr. Marsden’s person and manner than by his last remark. “Is there truly a ghost?” she asked, trying to keep the hopeful note out of her voice.

  “Truly,” Bradford said solemnly.

  Eleanor patted her hand. “Do come and be introduced to him, Kathryn. Bradford will give you the life story of the wretched creature, and I shall show off my wedding dress.”

  Kate smiled. “I certainly shall,” she said. “I don’t imagine your ghost goes to weddings,” she said, hoping to prompt Mr. Marsden to say more.

  The corners of Bradford’s mouth twitched and his pale blue eyes were amused. “No, but he’s quite civil, all the same. If you will do us the honor of staying over the night, we can put you in the chamber which he frequents. In search of his missing head.”

  “His head!” Kate exclaimed. “You mean, he was murdered?”

  “Bradford!” Eleanor protested.

  “Ah,” Bradford said knowingly, and to Kate’s disappointment, lapsed into silence. Eleanor launched into a lengthy description of the gown she planned to wear to the next ball, while Kate feigned interest. Eleanor’s chatter seemed to plunge her brother further into gloom. Sir Charles sat quiet, thinking, perhaps, of his bats.

  Kate was half listening to Eleanor and watching the mist-draped groves on either side of the road when the carriage turned a sharp bend, a meadow opened, and Bishop’s Keep loomed through the silver fog. She suppressed a little “Oh!” and leaned forward eagerly.

  But what Kate saw before her was not the splendor of castle walls that Beryl Bardwell had conjured up in her novelistic imagination. It was instead a large and rather dull-looking Georgian residence built of gray brick and decorated only by monotonous rows of tall windows capped with white-painted pediments. A pair of stone lions, more like sour toads than royal beasts, flanked the slate steps that led down to the drive. Kate’s disappointment stuck in her throat like a bitter pill. Bishop’s Keep, despite its romantic name, was only an ordinary house. No doubt the life she would lead there would be equally ordinary, conventionally routine, and boring.

  Sir Charles glanced at her, the corners of his mouth amused. “Does Bishop’s Keep meet your expectation?” he asked mildly.

  Kate’s lips thinned. The man had seen through her. How intolerable!

  “In every detail,” she lied tartly. She gathered her skirts, accepted Bradford Marsden’s hand, and alighted from the carriage.

  The farewells took but a moment and, after a round of promises to exchange calls, Kate found her bags sitting beside one of the lions and herself standing on the lowest step, waving. The coachman’s whip cracked, the Marsden carriage disappeared into the mist, and Kate turned reluctantly to
face her fate. She stood looking for a moment, then stuck out her tongue at one of the lions and marched up the stairs and down the walk to the massive oak door. She lifted her hand to the brass knocker.

  Bishop’s Keep might not be a castle, but like it or not, she was here.

  9

  “The majority of servants would be judged criminal if their backgrounds and their actions were fully known. Many were previously discharged for lying or theft and have obtained their present places with forged credentials, while not a few supplement their honest wages by acting as paid informants for house-breakers. The careful mistress must beware of those who pretend to serve.”

  —The Practical Household, 1884

  “I continue to believe, Sabrina,” Bernice Jaggers said, feeling quite cross, “that you are making a most dreadful mistake. This young woman’s reputation is not personally known to you, and it is the utmost folly to trust the word of some Pinkerton person on the other side of the Atlantic. We must be vigilant. Persons hired into our household must be of the most trustworthy sort.”

  Sabrina Ardleigh put down her pen and turned from the small rosewood desk in the withdrawing room. “I am not hiring a servant, Bernice. I am employing Brother Thomas’s daughter.”

  “I hardly see the difference.” Bernice sat down on a carved mahogany chair and twitched the skirt of her black bombazine, which she wore in mourning for her husband, Captain Reginald Jaggers, of whom in the last years of their marriage she had not been fond. He had fallen with General Gordon at Khartoum nearly a decade before, but like the Queen, Bernice lived daily with her husband’s memory. She drew her brows together severely. “She is an American. Worse yet, Irish.” Her mouth puckered on the word. “You have managed for years without knowing that Thomas had a daughter, and you have managed without a secretary as well. Why must you have one now? And why is Thomas’s daughter the only one who will do?”

  Sabrina rose from her chair and crossed the Turkish carpet to the window that gave a view of the sloping lawn. She spoke without turning. “We have discussed the matter fully, Bernice. You are always insisting on the virtues of Christian charity. It is scarcely Christian of you to reject an opportunity to assist a woman of our own blood—”

  “Christian!” Bernice shrilled. “You talk of Christianity, when you persist in consorting with those wretched spiritualists and taking part in shamefully immodest pagan rites at that horrid Temple of Morris—”

  “Temple of Horus,” Sabrina corrected her mildly. “Horus was the son of Isis, the most revered of Egyptian goddesses. And the rites to which you refer—”

  The mention of Egyptian deities added fuel to Bernice’s fire, for she was a strict Nonconformist who attended chapel three times a week and demanded that the servants do likewise. “Morris, Horus, it’s all one,” she snapped. “I simply do not understand Vicar Talbot, encouraging you to involve yourself in this Order of the Golden Fawn—”

  “Golden Dawn.” Sabrina turned. “Really, Bernice, you could at least learn to listen, even if you object to—”

  Bernice snorted. “Ever since then, you have been entirely lost to good sense. Seances, magic, fortunetelling cards. You might as well leave Bishop’s Keep and set up as a palm reader in Colchester.”

  “And leave the Ardleigh fortune to you, my dear sister?” Sabrina asked lightly, smiling a little.

  Bernice closed her eyes. “I am content,” she said piously. “You have been overgenerous to your poor sister, whom God in His infinite wisdom saw fit to leave with little.”

  But Sabrina had slipped, so to speak, a dagger into the dark heart of her sister’s discontent. In her youth, Bernice had been a carefree, willful young woman. After a tempestuous courtship, she had eloped with a military man of little family and no prospects. In stem consequence, her father had disinherited her. Meanwhile, Thomas, her brother and the Ardleigh heir, had quarreled with his father, renounced his fortune, and fled to America. Through attrition, then, the sizable Ardleigh estate, gained through shrewd dealings in the woolen industry, had fallen into Sabrina’s hands. It was only due to her assent—not freely given but coerced with a certain compelling piece of information—that Bernice had lived at Bishop’s Keep for the past four years. For the profligate Captain Jaggers, true to his father-in-law’s dire predictions, had upon his demise left his wife only a meager pension, scarcely enough to permit the purchase of a decent annual bonnet. For Bernice’s part, she bore her widow’s fate with perpetual resentment and never resigned herself to her dependency upon her sister. It was the grossest injustice that Sabrina alone had inherited what should have been shared between them!

  A moment’s silence followed Bernice’s outburst, and then the tentative clearing of a throat. Bernice opened her eyes to glare at Amelia, the parlor maid, a brown-haired, generously endowed wench whom Bernice suspected of having an eye for the coachman.

  How long had Amelia been standing there? How much had she overheard? Servants simply could not be trusted. They battened on family discord like vultures on carrion. One was at their mercy, just as poor Lord Russell had been at the mercy of his valet, who had been inspired to murder by reading a dreadful shilling-shocker. Or the tragic Mrs. Thomas, who had been hacked to pieces and parboiled by her savagely cunning maid-of-all-work, an Irishwoman. Yes, Irish! and named Kate! Bernice shuddered.

  The parlor maid took a step forward, hands folded over her starched white apron. Bernice noticed that her frilled white cap was crooked.

  “What is it, Amelia?” Sabrina asked.

  Amelia sketched a curtsy. “A lady t’ see ye, mum.”

  “Where is her card?” Bernice asked testily. “Have I not instructed you how a guest is to be admitted? You are to receive the card on a silver tray. If from a footman, present it unaltered. If from the lady herself, turn up the right corner.” She pursed her mouth. “And straighten your cap.”

  There was an unmistakable flash of defiance in Amelia’s brown eyes before she obediently raised her hands to the back of her head. “Th’ lady don’t have no card, mum.”

  Bernice chose to ignore the look. “No card? What lady would come calling without a card?”

  “It is Miss Kathryn Ardleigh, mum. Wot was expected tomorrow. I showed her to th’ mornin’ room.”

  “Miss Ardleigh!” Sabrina exclaimed. “Kathryn!”

  “What did I tell you, sister?” Bernice said, with meager satisfaction. “The Irishwoman has scarcely set foot in the door, and already she makes herself a bother.”

  “Nonsense,” Sabrina replied, lifting her chin. “Amelia, we will have tea for three, please. Tell Mudd to prepare the best silver service.”

  With a disdainful harrumph, Bernice followed her sister out of the room. Had she noticed Amelia’s glance, shadowed by some darkly unfathomable emotion, she might have been less inclined to fret about her niece and more inclined to distrust the parlor maid.

  10

  “From all blindness of heart; from pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy, from envy hatred, and malice, and from all uncharitable-ness, Good Lord, deliver us.”

  —The Prayer Book, 1662

  The exterior of the house might be dull and rather ugly, Kate thought, but the morning room was quite lovely, done in silver-green bamboo wallpaper, with pale green velvet drapes at the windows and a carpet of deeper green. On one table was a blue bowl filled with lemons, on another a collection of framed photographs, one of which Kate recognized with a start as her father as a boy of sixteen or so, stiff and solemn in a frock coat and an absurdly elegant top hat. Somehow the sight of the photograph made her connection to Bishop’s Keep seem very real, and she realized with a start that until that moment the place had seemed imaginary, make-believe, like the setting in one of Beryl Bardwell’s stories.

  She stared at the photograph for a moment, feeling a wave of loss and grief for the father she had never had a chance to love. What had he been like as a boy? As a young man? How different might her life have been if he had lived to bring his wife an
d daughter home to England?

  Home—the word had an odd ring to it, and she lifted her head to look around. Her father had grown up here, had run and played and laughed and cried in these rooms, on the lawns, in the woods. This place had been her father’s home. Was it now to be hers?

  “My dear niece Kathryn!” a huskily melodic voice exclaimed behind her. Kate turned. “How good it is to see you—and a full day early!”

  The handsome older woman who seized both Kate’s hands had warm gray eyes under heavy brows. A gracious smile lighted a face marked by intelligence and individuality, with fine lines of age etched about the eyes and mouth. She was dressed in a loose, lace-trimmed mauve gown with fluid sleeves. The color highlighted the silvery streaks in the soft wings of hair on her forehead, the loose coils on top of her head. She wore no jewelry except for an intriguing golden pendant in the shape of an Egyptian scarab.

  “Hello, Miss Ardleigh,” Kate said, liking her at once. “I hope it is no bother that I have come early. The ship docked sooner than expected.”

  With a last squeeze, the woman dropped Kate’s hands. “Of course it is no bother. And please, call me Aunt Sabrina.” She turned to the woman standing behind her. “This is my sister and also your aunt, Mrs. Bernice Jaggers.”

  Bernice Jaggers stood stolidly fastened to the floor, a lady of late middle age, her plump white hands clasped over her full black skirt, a sour, pinched look on her round face. She acknowledged Kate’s greeting with a brief inclination of the head and the chilly instruction to address her as “Aunt Jaggers.”

  Smiling, Aunt Sabrina led Kate to a green damask settee. “Bernice and I are delighted that you have come.”

  Hardly, Kate thought, seeing the twist of Aunt Jaggers’s narrow, thinly compressed lips. From the look of it, the woman bitterly resented either Kate or her sister’s inviting their niece to Bishop’s Keep—or life in general. Apprehensively wondering which it was and how her attitude would color their relations, Kate sat down.