by Mary Daheim
Standing corrected, Judith considered the rest of the household twenty years ago: Petulia Ravenscroft; Chauncey and Hyacinth Ravenscroft; their widowed sister-in-law, Genevieve; Genevieve’s daughter, Fleur; and her husband, Viktor Karamzin.
“It was quite a group,” Judith noted. “Did George and Emily Ravenscroft come home very often in those days?”
Briefly, the two young women looked puzzled. Bridget faced Judith with a slight frown. “You mean the missionaries? Hardly ever. They sent Claire to school in England when she was in her teens. She went back to Africa later, but didn’t stay on. She’d gotten used to being here. And then she married Mr. Marchmont.”
“Yes,” Judith said, still reconstructing the former family circle. Aimee Ravenscroft would have been gone for twenty years. Chauncey, Hyacinth, and Genevieve died in the next decade. And the senior Karamzins had met their fate in a car crash at the beginning of the nineties. “Claire and Charles were married—when?”
Again, Bridget and Elena exchanged quizzical looks. “Twelve years ago in June, I think,” Bridget finally said. She seemed to have overcome her uneasiness at being with the cousins. “Yes, early June. It rained.”
Judith recalled when Charles married Claire Ravenscroft. Margaret Marchmont had described the wedding at length in a long letter. For the first time, Judith realized that Margaret had been very impressed by the match her brother had made. The subtleties of social class had been lost on Judith’s American mind. “Claire and Charles must have been married not long after Janet disappeared,” Judith noted in what she hoped was a casual tone.
Both young women seemed surprised. “That’s so,” Elena said in wonder. “Janet ran off during All Fools. The Marchmont wedding was two months later. Life’s like that—sad, happy, happy, sad—there’s no predicting which comes when.”
Renie had finished her eclair and wore a sated expression. “Was Walter Paget working at Ravenscroft House then?” she asked, brushing a few stray crumbs from her green linen shirt.
Bridget’s red eyebrows came together. “Walter Paget—the steward? Yes, I think so. He’s been there quite some time.”
“Local?” Renie pursued.
Elena shook her head. “Not him. He popped up, as it were. Hired through an ad, I’d guess. The old one—I don’t remember his name—died, didn’t he?” She turned to Bridget.
“They put him out to pasture, so to speak.” Bridget dimpled, amused by her own small joke. “Pettigrew, that was his name. He lives with a niece in Great Pauncefoot.”
Judith tried to show no more than mild interest. But a swift glance at her cousin showed that Renie also recognized the name of the elderly patient at Dr. Ramsey’s surgery.
“So,” Judith said after she’d swallowed the last lethal bite of cake, “neither of you ever guessed who Janet’s beau was?”
“Oh, we guessed! Precious good it did us!” Elena giggled, throwing her head back and revealing a swanlike neck above the beige lambswool sweater. “Robby! Devin! Miles! But they were all no more than nineteen, and Janet kept hinting that Mr. Utterly Fab was older. He may have been, too. He gave her presents, nice things, like Chloe perfume and a Monet bracelet.”
Renie appeared puzzled. “Yet you never saw them together? How long did this romance last?”
Again, the young women looked uncertain. Elena hazarded a guess “Three months? Janet never went with anybody for long.”
Bridget was still working her way through the query. “It was more like four. She got the bracelet for Christmas and the scent on St. Valentine’s Day. But in late November, she was still going with Eddie Clayton. I remember, because they were together at Mrs. Ravenscroft’s funeral. Mrs. Chauncey Ravenscroft, that is.”
It occurred to Judith that the ancient concept of the manor house still lingered. If life no longer revolved around the lord and lady, Ravenscroft House remained in the villagers’ marrow. Despite change, the family’s rites of passage were entwined with their neighbors. Ravenscroft weddings, funerals, and births were milestones in Little Pauncefoot, keynotes to other, more mundane events.
But Janet Tichborne’s disappearance hadn’t been mundane. Renie reiterated her question about how Janet and her suitor could have eluded the villagers.
Elena laughed again. “Frankly, we figured he lived somewhere else and had a wife. Why ever would Janet sneak about with him otherwise? Once she got over her first infatuation, whoever she was seeing didn’t have to be a secret anymore.”
The waitress returned, bearing Bridget and Elena’s entrees, as well as the cousins’ bill. Judith waited to speak until their companions had been served. “Mrs. Tichborne said her daughter wasn’t really boy-crazy. But that doesn’t sound quite accurate.”
Elena shook her head. “Janet wasn’t. Not in that sense. She never chased boys. She let them chase her. It was the conquest that mattered. She had to be loved and admired. After they succumbed to her charms, she moved on to the next. Isn’t that so, Bridie?”
Bridget nodded. “It wasn’t sex with Janet—it was power.”
Judith picked up the bill, trying to figure a proper tip. “What do you think happened to Janet?”
Elena buttered the roll that had come with her lunch. “Janet was keen on feathering her nest. She’s living in one of those swank London condos on the Thames with a famous rocker.”
But Bridget didn’t agree. Carefully, she set her teacup down in its saucer. “I wish I could think it. But I can’t.” Bridget lowered her eyes. “Holy Mother help me, I think she’s dead.”
FIFTEEN
UNDER A FITFUL sun, Judith and Renie were standing at the edge of the village green. Several old folks provided a stately counterpoint to the sprightly melody of mothers with their children. The figures moved and shifted beneath the trees and along the stone walk. Gossip, slow-paced and hopeful of comment, fell on half-deaf ears among the oldsters. The mothers called out in reproach or encouragement. In the borders and the small circular plots, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, lilies, and crocuses dazzled the eye. Judith allowed herself to be charmed, though she couldn’t completely fight off the distractions that tugged at her mind.
“What smells?” Renie’s pug nose was wrinkled in dismay. “That’s really disgusting.”
Annoyed at having her reverie broken, Judith made a face at her cousin. “I was feeling like Wordsworth. You know—‘I wander’d lonely as a cloud…’”
“Whatever it is, it reeks,” Renie interrupted. “Let’s cut across the green.”
Not only did Renie’s complaint sink in, but so did her words. Judith stopped in her tracks. “You’re right. Something smells really vile.” She waved at the border of bright spring flowers that was interspersed with large clumps of greenery. “It’s this green stuff. Why would they plant something that smelled so bad along with all the bulbs and shrubs?”
Still wrinkling her nose, Renie approached one of the offending plants. “Gack! You’re right, that’s what it is. But look, it’s got buds. The flowers must be pretty or nobody’d go to the trouble.”
Backpedaling, Judith frowned. An avid gardener, she recognized all but the most exotic flora. “I’d like to know what that smelly green stuff is. It makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“About what? The decomposing leftovers in our mothers’ refrigerators?” In her haste to escape, Renie almost tripped over a child’s plastic cricket bat.
Moving down the walk toward the Dunk Monument, Judith shook her head. “No. I’m talking plants. I asked the same question earlier, after we—” She stopped, staring at the coat-of-arms etched in stone. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
Renie regarded Judith with a peeved expression. “What is this, Twenty Questions? It’s a coat-of-arms, vertical band showing impalement, three court jester symbols dexter, three money bags sinister, and three lions rampant in the middle, which is no doubt called something else in heraldic terms, but I forget. So what?”
Judith was looking smug. “Okay, Ms. College of Arms, what d
oes it mean?”
A couple of adventurous four-year-old boys were trying to figure out how to climb the monument. An absence of footholds and a lack of height daunted the pair, who took one look at the cousins and fled to the safety of their chattering mothers.
Renie had been about to offer Judith a snappish retort, but changed her mind. “Okay,” she sighed, “I guess you’re serious. Impalement refers to dividing the shield between two families. Quartering is when they go for four, obviously. In this case, we’re looking at the court jesters on our left, which is probably Sir Lionel Dunk in his Master of the Revels role. On our right are the money bags, which usually represent wealth, often from banking. The lions in the center show courage and nobility and all those other traits that the rich and wellborn brag about.”
Judith nodded eagerly. “That’s what I thought.”
“Then why ask?” Renie was growing vexed again.
Judith ignored her cousin’s pique. “The money bags would be the Ravenscrofts, right? Aunt Pet’s father, Sir Henry, made his money in The City. So the two families depicted on this shield are the Dunks and the Ravenscrofts.” She paused fractionally, decided not to test Renie with another query, and continued: “Which means that this isn’t the original monument. It was erected long after Sir Lionel’s death, probably in this century. Or maybe just a few years ago. Didn’t Charles or Claire mention that Aunt Pet paid to have the thing restored?”
Now Renie was looking thoughtful. “Yes, you’re right. That may be when they added the Ravenscroft arms to the Dunks’. Maybe Sir Lionel’s original shield showed him wearing pantyhose.”
Gazing up at Sir Lionel’s statue, Judith grinned. “Well, men did wear hose in those days. In fact, the old boy had good legs.” Slowly, the grin faded. Judith was still staring up, but now her eyes drifted beyond the monument to the mellow stone walls of Ravenscroft House. Through a break in the plane trees, she could see the turret room where Aunt Pet had sat in her armchair and watched the village comings and goings. “She was lucky to have such a good view. Your mother gets rear-end collisions on Heraldsgate Avenue. Mine has the birdbath.”
Wryly, Renie nodded. “But they do other things. Sometimes. It sounds to me as if Aunt Pet didn’t do much except look out the window. And annoy her relatives.”
The cousins strolled back down the path, circumventing a little girl pushing her dolly in a tiny pram. “I’m getting a picture of the family over the years,” Judith said as they turned by the soldiers’ monolith. “And some of the village, too.”
“So?” Renie nodded at two gray-haired women who eyed the cousins with frank curiosity. Clearly, strangers were rare in Little Pauncefoot. “How does that help solve the mystery of who poisoned Aunt Pet?”
“It doesn’t. Yet.” Judith held her breath as they left the green and passed by the foul-smelling plants. “But there’s a pattern emerging. Aunt Pet was a control freak. She used her wealth to run the lives of her relatives. Threatening them with money—or the lack of it—is pretty evil. Not that I condone laziness or greed. But it’s wrong to make people feel like puppets, dancing to a financial tune. I see Petulia Ravenscroft pulling strings. Maybe she was always that way, but certainly as she got older—and physically impaired—she took advantage of their fear.” At the arch under the gatehouse, Judith stopped abruptly. “Yes, fear. Fear of not inheriting anything, fear of having to go to work, fear of being poor. And fear of what else? What did Aimee fear that made her run off with her young man? Did Janet Tichborne fear something that drove her out of Ravenscroft House? Or get herself killed, as Bridget believes? What kept Colonel Chelmsford away for forty years and then brought him back with a box of men’s toiletries? Was that fear?” Judith paced the expanse under the gatehouse, absorbed in her questions.
Renie proved sympathetic. “Don’t forget Nats and Walter Paget. It’s one thing for Claire—who isn’t my idea of a man-eating tigress—to tell Nats she can’t marry Walter. It’s something else for Nats to go along with it. This morning Nats acted like somebody who’s run up the white flag. She was sulky, she’d lost her fire. And why was Walter excluded from the will? It not only bothers me, it makes me feel guilty.” To prove her point, Renie scanned the amber walls of the gatehouse. “This shouldn’t be ours, it should be his. Heck, we’ve never even been inside.”
Judith followed Renie’s gaze. “Let’s fix that right now,” she said, marching up to the solid oak door with its small stained-glass window. “Maybe Walter is receiving guests.”
Somewhat to her surprise, he was. At least he was in, opening the door to the cousins and looking surprised. Judith was taken aback. Her excuse for calling on the steward stumbled on her tongue:
“Mr. Paget! We were…ah…just now getting back from the inquest and thought we’d…um…ask about the horses.”
“What you thought,” Walter said coldly, “was that you’d inventory your inheritance.” He stepped aside and made a stiff bow. “By all means, look about. You can occupy the place immediately.”
Judith started to protest, then went dumb as she saw the neatly packed boxes in the middle of the living room. While the furniture remained, it appeared that all personal effects had been removed. In spite of the bare spots, the room exuded a masculine aura. Judith regarded Walter with shock.
“You’re moving out? How come?”
Walter’s aplomb was ruffled, but he didn’t seem to care. “What difference does it make? The gatehouse is yours, you scarcely know me, and nobody else gives a bloody rap.”
Renie’s temper, which had been simmering for some time, now erupted: “Hey, we don’t want this gatehouse! We can’t keep it up and we’d have to sell it, which will bring the IRS down on our necks. Maybe the Inland Revenue, too. So screw off before I torch the place and collect the insurance and put it all on the roulette wheel in Reno. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll sign a quitclaim deed or whatever and let you have it free and clear.” As an afterthought, Renie glanced at Judith. “We will, won’t we, coz?”
Judith caught herself swallowing hard. She and Renie had no moral right to the property. Aunt Pet had misconstrued the facts about the cousins’ English ancestors and acted on a whim. And yet Judith hated to let the gatehouse go. After eighteen years of living from pillar to post with Dan McMonigle and finally returning to her family home, the lure of the gatehouse was tempting.
But the family home was now Hillside Manor; legally, it belonged to Judith. Gertrude, Aunt Deb, and the other surviving members of the older generation had signed it over so that she could take out the remodeling loan. Judith loved the house. She loved living there with Joe. Yet with guests usually occupying the second floor and sometimes the downstairs as well, she often felt as if she had no place of her own. Indeed, there were times when she seemed to be a guest, too, living in the third-floor family quarters on the approval of her senior relatives.
“We should talk to a lawyer,” Judith temporized. “We’d want it done properly.” She could stall. She should discuss it with Joe. She mustn’t be rushed into a decision.
Renie was eyeing her cousin with mild dismay. “Well—okay. Maybe Arthur Tinsley can advise us.” Renie’s anger had fled. She turned back to Walter, who still looked glacial. “Don’t move out on our account. You’re not really quitting your job, are you?”
Walter gazed at Renie as if she had the IQ of a penguin. “Certainly I am! How can I stay here…now?”
Judith had gathered her wandering wits. “You mean your broken engagement?” she said boldly.
To the cousins’ astonishment, Walter burst out laughing. It was not a happy sound. “Engagement! What a bloody farce! There was no engagement. Natasha lives in a fantasy world. It’s a good place for her.” He had now turned grim, crossing his arms and watching the cousins with impatience.
“I guess,” Judith said in as pleasant a voice as she could muster, “we’ll be leaving.”
Walter said nothing. The cousins left.
“You want the damned gatehouse.
” Renie’s voice conveyed disgust and disbelief.
Judith sighed. “I don’t, really. But we shouldn’t act impulsively. That’s what Aunt Pet did, and that’s how we got into this mess in the first place.”
Renie didn’t seem entirely convinced but she let the matter drop. “So why are we headed back to the village instead of the main house?”
“Huh?” Judith seemed surprised at the direction they were taking down Farriers Lane. “Oh—I suppose that subconsciously I was thinking about seeing Arthur Tinsley. Shall we?”
Renie shrugged. “I’d just as soon have this gatehouse thing straightened out now. It’ll only get more cumbersome once we’re home.”
“I suppose.” Judith’s tone lacked enthusiasm. The cousins retraced their footsteps past the green. The sky had clouded over again. “Walter is immune to Nats’s charms,” Judith said after a long silence. “Why? No chemistry?”
“There was for Nats,” Renie replied. “Somewhere along the line, Walter must have led her on. Or at least not discouraged her. I don’t buy that part about Nats living in a fantasy world. She strikes me as hardheaded.”
“Me, too.” Judith and Renie rounded the corner by The Old Grey Mare. Across the road, the golden stones of St. Edith’s had lost their luster under the darkening clouds. Judith stopped, her eyes scanning the church and its adjacent graveyard. “Maybe Nats was using Walter, just to get at her trust fund. He seemed available, and she’s a good four years away from reaching thirty, which is the other stipulation for getting hold of the money.”
“If that’s the case,” Renie said, waiting for Judith to uproot herself from the cobbles, “Nats didn’t love Walter anyway. So why is she suffering from terminal pique? With her looks and inheritance, another sucker shouldn’t be hard to find.”
“True,” Judith agreed. “Nats gave in too easily. Claire’s not intimidating. What went on between those two when they had their little chat?”