The moment the little group had left the room, there was a deafening silence. Lord Lightbourne himself seemed too startled by his wife’s unexpected breakdown to pass comment. Judge Prendergast, who, of them all was perhaps most used to hearing screams of despair – as condemned folk were led raving from his court – sat by the fire, re-stuffed his pipe and began to smoke. A moment or two passed, then O’Calligan went out into the hall. On the grand stairway, he met Cedric coming down. Lady Foxworth and her maid were close behind.
“She’s resting now, sir,” the servant said. “She’s taken a sleeping-draught. I’m sure it’ll do her good.”
“Poor thing,” Lady Foxworth added. “Such a sensitive soul beneath all those corsets and starched petticoats.”
O’Calligan nodded, though once their hostess had swept back into the drawing-room, and the maid, Charlotte, had scurried off to the kitchens, he drew Cedric aside. “Lady Lightbourne’s room is now locked?” he asked quietly.
Cedric nodded. “She herself has the only key.”
“And you checked it was empty before leaving her in there? Under the bed, in the closet?”
Again Cedric nodded. “She is absolutely alone.”
O’Calligan patted the servant on the shoulder. “Then she at least should be safe.”
But she wasn’t.
It was shortly after luncheon, and what remained of the party were playing cards and smoking their pipes, while outside another of those early, ominously dark December evenings was creeping over the snow-laden moor, when the clanging of a bell suddenly sounded from the upper apartments.
The guests gazed at each other, puzzled. Then, O’Calligan leapt to his feet. “That’s an alarm call!” he shouted.
O’Calligan dashed from the room, followed closely by Lightbourne himself and then, more ponderously, Judge Prendergast. Cedric was in the passage outside, carrying a tray of sweetmeats. They almost bowled him aside in their efforts to get upstairs, at the top of which stood the door to the Lightbournes’ guest-chamber. As before, that door was locked. They hammered it to no avail – it was solid oak – and, once again, Cedric was summoned with tools. When at last they’d opened the room, a similar gruesome sight confronted them. Lady Lightbourne lay beside her bed amid disordered sheets, eyes closed but a ghoulish grimace on her face. Her throat had been torn from ear to ear, and a wide puddle of blood was congealing on the carpet.
Lord Lightbourne howled and roared when he saw this, and had to be forcibly restrained by O’Calligan and the judge. This time, he switched his accusations from the Irishman to Cedric. “It was him . . . him, the dog!” he bellowed. “He was the only one not present when we heard her ringing for help!”
“It couldn’t have been him,” the judge insisted. “He was outside the drawing-room, just about to serve us!”
But logic had fled the bereaved man. He wrenched himself free and threw himself down onto his wife’s corpse, sobbing bitterly. As he did, there was a gasp of shock from the doorway. O’Calligan turned and found Lady Foxworth there. Quickly, he led her out into the passage.
“How . . . is this possible?” she stammered, her face pale as ice. “That room was definitely locked. I heard Lady Lightbourne do it, herself.”
“You’re sure none of your domestics have a key?”
“I’m sure, but come and speak to them anyway.”
O’Calligan did, going straight down to the kitchens in company with his hostess. There, however, as he’d expected, he found the two maids, Charlotte, and her sister, Martha, huddled together, teary-eyed with fear. Likewise, there was no possibility that the cook, Agnes, was responsible: she was aged and obese, and shuffled about slowly on elephantine feet. After briefly interviewing the woman, O’Calligan – frustrated and dissatisfied – went back up to the room where the crime had occurred. Cedric was standing outside with a lighted candle. He warned the Irishman about going in, saying that Lightbourne had lost his mind. O’Calligan replied that he had no choice.
Inside, the new-made widower, now with sword drawn, was seated on the bed beside the body of his wife, which he’d clearly placed there himself. He’d pulled off his wig, and had gone white in the face.
Aware that he was being watched coldly, O’Calligan went first to the bell in the corner. It was similar to his own in that it hung just below the ceiling. If the poor woman had indeed reached up and rung it, it would have been quite a stretch for her, especially considering that she was at that moment under attack. Next, he contemplated the walls themselves, which, aside from a timber skirting-board, were of bare stone blocks and hung with tapestries. He checked behind the tapestries, but found nothing unusual. After this, it was the window: outside it he saw another unbroken strip of snow on the ledge. Clearly, no-one had entered or departed this way, though the top panel, he now noticed, was open, admitting an icy breeze.
O’Calligan turned to Lightbourne. “Forgive me for asking, my lord, but did you or your wife open this casement?”
There was a chilling silence, before Lightbourne replied: “My wife did. Last night. She always found a stuffy room intolerable.”
O’Calligan now noted that the hearth was cold. “Is that why you had no fire?”
For a moment Lightbourne couldn’t reply. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips taut and grey and visibly trembling, and for the first time it struck the Irishman that there was more to this arrogant, posturing peacock than he’d first though. Lord Randolph Lightbourne was one of that very rare breed: a rakish squire, a gambling man and a drinker, but, all the same, a fellow who genuinely cared for his wife. “We . . . we made our own warmth together,” he finally mumbled, starting to weep again, softly.
There was another moment, then O’Calligan added: “You shouldn’t remain in here. Why torture yourself?”
At which the country gent suddenly seem to wake up to the reality of the situation. He snatched at the hilt of his sword. “I’ll take no advice from you . . . you bog-dwelling Irish ruffian! Leave me alone!”
“This villain seeks to murder us all,” O’Calligan said calmly. “We should stay together.”
“Did you not hear me, sirrah? Get out of here!”
O’Calligan did as he was bidden. There seemed little point in exacerbating an already difficult situation. In the drawing-room, he found Lady Foxworth assisting Cedric as he removed the remnants of their afternoon repast, and Judge Prendergast, standing beside the window, stuffing his pipe with more Brazilian tobacco.
“This is a confounded mystery,” the judge said, as the soldier approached him.
“I don’t understand it,” O’Calligan confessed. “We were all of us together when we heard the alarm.”
“All of us except the manservant chap.”
O’Calligan shook his head. “Cedric was only in the passage. You said that, yourself . . . how could he have attacked Lady Lightbourne, dragged her away from the bell, finished her off, locked the room, then come all the way downstairs and gathered a tray of sweetmeats in time to meet us outside that door? It’s not feasible.”
“Little about this business is.”
“There has to be someone else on these premises,” the Irishman said.
Prendergast blew out a stream of fragrant smoke. “We’ve looked. There’s no trace.”
“If only we could get to Minehead.”
“One of us may need to try.”
But O’Calligan was less sure about that. Outside, night had now fallen on the snow-deep tundra. Flakes swirled on a newly risen wind, which would cut anyone stranded in it to the very bones. Even in the unlikely event that one of them decided he and his horse were strong enough to risk such a venture, the chances were that he’d be lucky to find his way off the moor, let alone to the coast and the nearest town.
Despite this, however, someone did test the elements that night, and managed, just before the stroke of twelve, to arrive grunting and puffing at the doors of Silvercombe Hall.
With the exception of Lord Lightbourne, who hadn’t
yet come down from his bed-chamber, the remainder of the household were together in the drawing-room, dozing under quilts, when they heard the banging at the front door.
There was initial astonishment, then O’Calligan, Cedric and Judge Prendergast went to answer it, all three armed. Only after demanding identification through the door, did they admit the callers: two men, both in cloaks and tricornes, thickly caked in snow. Lady Foxworth arrived in the hall as the newcomers stripped off their outer garments. Her handsome face broke into a relieved smile when she saw that one of them – a youthful fellow, with long fair curls and wearing the buff uniform of the Dutch Royal Navy – was her younger brother, Rupert. The second chap also wore Dutch naval garb, though he was larger, burlier, and had a brown, scarred face.
“I expected you over a week ago,” she said, clasping arms around her sibling.
“We only left Windsor a couple of days back,” he laughed. “We’d have come sooner, but there was a bit of skirmishing with James’s Irish militia before an armistice could be reached. I wasn’t sure we’d even get here today. This blizzard is the worst I’ve seen. Edouard here didn’t know we got such snow in England. Oh, by the way, may I introduce First Lieutenant Edouard Van Brooner, my most capable officer?”
The Dutchman bowed. “Madame.”
“You’re most welcome, Edouard.”
“It’s my pleasure to attend you.” His English, though accented, was fluent.
“Well, this is a quiet house for Christmas Day,” the younger Foxworth said. “Late though the hour is, for which I heartily apologize.” He turned to his compatriot. “I told you I’d come home again, didn’t I, Edouard? By damn, no bunch of papists were keeping me from the family nest.”
“Rupert,” his sister said, now more solemnly. “Come into the drawing-room. There’s something I should tell you.”
Five minutes later, the entire tragedy had been explained to the new arrivals, who greeted the news at first with slow bewilderment, then finally with outrage and anger.
“We must search the premises!” Rupert shouted at the top of his voice.
“We’ve already searched,” his sister replied, seated by the fire. “Several times. There’s no-one here but ourselves.”
“What about him?” Lieutenant Van Brooner asked, with a glowering nod towards O’Calligan. “Isn’t it likely that he’s responsible?”
“How so?” Lady Foxworth enquired.
Her brother was also now staring at the Irishman. “Well, for one thing, he’s James’s man,” he said. “In fact, we came here specifically to free you from his clutches. His world has ended. He’s nothing but a powerless, penniless immigrant. He has plenty reason to strike out.”
“That’s scarcely proof, gentlemen,” Judge Prendergast put in,
“By the same token, can he prove he didn’t do it?” Lieutenant Van Brooner wondered.
“Can you prove you didn’t?” O’Calligan replied. “You say you’ve ridden all the way from Windsor. A hundred miles or more, in this weather. Personally I find that doubtful.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?” Rupert demanded.
O’Calligan remained calm. “Surmising rather than suggesting, but it’s not beyond the realms of credibility that two felons might secrete themselves somewhere nearby to carry out hit-and-run raids on the house. And perhaps tonight the cold simply became too much for them.”
Before either Rupert or Van Brooner could reply, however, there came a series of shrieks from the outer passage. A moment later, the maid Martha had stumbled in and collapsed. For a second there was complete confusion, then the girl jabbered out that she’d been upstairs, making up a new pair of rooms, as ordered by her mistress, when she’d heard the sounds “of chokes” from Lord Lightbourne’s room. “Fearful chokes, ma-am. The sound o’murder, and no mistake!”
The scene was now a familiar one, though in this case there were several differences.
To begin with, Lightbourne had put up a fight. Slash-marks on the drapery around his bed revealed that he’d struck out with his sword. In addition, his throat, though again rent from ear to ear, was not the only wound on him. His shirt had been torn open, and there were gashes on his chest and shoulder, and, higher up, on one of his cheeks.
“This is demonic!” Rupert bellowed.
“This, gentlemen, is the horror that has afflicted us all through the Yuletide feast,” Judge Prendergast remarked soberly.
“Does anyone know who’s responsible?” Lieutenant Van Brooner asked.
O’Calligan glanced round at him. “Do you think we’d be standing here like cherries waiting to be plucked, if we did?”
The big Dutchman scowled at him. “You may have been downstairs with us at the time, but I still haven’t discounted you from this business.”
“Nor I you,” O’Calligan replied.
There was a tense moment, then Van Brooner’s scowl became a cruel sneer. “I killed some of your countrymen at Reading. What do you think about that?”
“If I was you, Dutchie, I’d watch my bloody lip,” came the Irishman’s taut reply.
“Enough of this!” Rupert interrupted. “We must search the upper floor. All of us!” And he raced from the room, pushing his lieutenant in front of him.
Judge Prendergast followed, and Cedric was about to leave too when O’Calligan stopped him: “Is there something different in here?” the Irishman wondered.
Cedric glanced around, blank-faced. “I don’t see it.”
“The fire is lit. It wasn’t earlier.”
The servant shrugged. “Lord Lightbourne must’ve got cold. There’s coal, a tinder-box. He could easily have lit it himself.”
“Yes,” O’Calligan said, “but the window is still open. If he’d got cold, wouldn’t he have closed the window as well?”
“I don’t follow.”
The Irishman shook his head. “There must be a reason why he lit that fire.”
Cedric crossed the room, took a poker and thrust it around amid the glowing coals. Aside from a few scraps of kindling, the only other thing in there was an edging of paper, gold-trimmed. Cedric scraped it out onto the floor. It was all that remained of a burnt sheet of notepaper; the gold-trim revealed that it was household notepaper, of the sought used by Lady Foxworth in her regular correspondence.
“This doesn’t really tell us anything,” Cedric observed.
“No,” O’Calligan agreed. “It could be perfectly innocent.”
He turned to Lady Lightbourne’s body, now a grisly sight; sickly-white and visibly stiffening. The blood, a black congealed blanket of it, lay down her entire front. “There’s something different about her ladyship too,” he said. “I thought so earlier, but couldn’t place it. Is something missing, Cedric?”
Cedric looked the body over. The rings still glittered on the dead woman’s fingers; the string of pearls hung intact across her ravaged throat. Before they could speak on it further, however, Judge Prendergast reappeared at the bedroom door. “O’Calligan,” he said urgently. “Master Rupert and his shipmate are dead-set against you as it is. You must help us search, or they’ll be doubly suspicious.”
The Irishman nodded, and left the room, leaving Cedric to dignify this latest corpse.
Feeling more confident with the two naval men present, the search-party this time split up into smaller groups and scoured every inch of the property, even the attics and the crawlspaces under the roof. Lady Foxworth was too distraught to partake, however, and repaired to her own quarters, supplied by her brother with a fully charged pistol.
It was now past one o’clock, and that “graveyard” hour of the night when one feels most marooned from the rest of human society. Outside, the wintry wind moaned around the ancient walls; there were creaks and bangs, windows rattled loosely in their frames. It was in the west wing, however, on a stretch of corridor attached only to empty rooms, that O’Calligan heard something distinctly different. He was alone at the time, and so paused and listened. For a moment he
fancied he was hearing voices behind the wainscoting: muffled voices, engaged in some heated debate. He approached the wall in question and put his ear to the woodwork, finding it aged and worm-eaten.
“My God,” a man was mumbling. “How could you do this to us? And when everything was looking so fine?”
A woman then replied: “I needed to secure what at the time looked a perilous future.”
“Good God, woman!” The man’s voice rose. “And the Irishman? I suppose you took him to your bed as well. Or was that just his master?”
O’Calligan would have listened to more, but the voices now faded, as though the persons having the dispute had moved away. He considered for a moment. Without any doubt, it had been Lady Foxworth and her brother Rupert, and though, from that brief snatch of conversation, it was difficult to ascertain what they’d been talking about, the fact that they were in collusion about something – a collusion that had now turned acrimonious – put a different complexion on events. More mysterious still, where had they actually been just then? As far as the Irishman knew, the west wing of the house was not used; he’d already searched it several times, and had found nothing. This suggested there were regions of this building still known only to the Foxworth family, even in the light of recent events.
Bewildered, but strangely content – as though he was finally making some ground – O’Calligan rejoined the others a few minutes later, and said nothing of his discovery. He wasn’t exactly sure who he could trust here anyway, and it was his intention to return to that disused stretch of passage when everyone was asleep, and force his way through the wainscoting.
The men held a further moot in the drawing-room, where it was decided that, as Lady Foxworth had now withdrawn to her own chamber, they might as well each do the same. Rupert – who seemed a little flustered, O’Calligan thought – insisted that anyone facing an intruder fire a shot immediately: even if they missed their intended target, they would certainly alert the rest of the house. There was general agreement at this. A series of final checks were made: the cook and her two maids had barricaded themselves into the scullery, while Cedric had his own small room off the kitchen, which he could easily defend. After this, they said their goodnights.
The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits Page 55