The Secrets of Armstrong House

by A. O'Connor

  “What has you looking so happy? Other than the fact you’re to be a father again?” she asked as she kissed Nico. It was evening time and he had just returned home from a business trip to Dublin.

  “I’ve been doing some work for your film,” he said.

  “Oh?” She was curious.

  He led her to the couch, opened his briefcase and produced Mrs Fennell’s diary.

  “I took it to a friend of mine, who I was at university with, to take a look at it. He’s a scientist, working in forensic labs.”

  “What could he do with Mrs Fennell’s diary?” she asked, confused.

  “I wondered was there anything he could do about the page that’s missing,” he said.

  “What can he do about a page that’s been destroyed over a hundred years ago?”

  “Quite a lot as it happens. As Mrs Fennell didn’t write any more entries for the rest of the year after the fateful night, the page after was blank.”

  “And?”

  “And he managed to bring up the imprint of what she had written using something called electrostatic detection.”

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s a scientific device used mostly in criminal cases when they are trying to read any indentations on ransom or extortion notes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When a person is writing on a sheet of paper that is in a notebook or a diary such as this, the writing’s impression or identification transfers to the paper underneath. This impression on the underneath paper isn’t visible to the naked eye but electrostatic detection can pick up its imprint.”

  “I see,” said Kate. “So police use it in the case of kidnappers if they receive a ransom note to try to pick up any accidental evidence from who wrote the note. They’d want to be fairly shoddy kidnappers!”

  “You’d be surprised how effective this is. It can pick up imprints through several layers of paper.”

  “And did it work for us?” She sat up excitedly.

  He reached into his briefcase again and handed her a sheet of paper. “It’s a bit sketchy in parts. But the print on the page came up and it’s readable. It was a stroke of luck for us that Mrs Fennell used those large ledgers, as her entry for the 8th was a long one but fitted on one page.”

  “Oh Nico!” she said, grabbing him and kissing him.

  She could hardly concentrate she had become so excited. “What does it say?”

  “I haven’t read it yet – I thought you should be the first,” said Nico, smiling at her.

  She placed the paper on the coffee table and concentrated as she read.

  8th December 1903

  What a racket went on tonight. I was sitting starting to write the business of the day in my diary when Lord and Lady Armstrong began a screaming match downstairs. The ferocity of their fighting made it impossible for me to write tomorrow’s shopping list. Mr Fennell had gone to bed and as I sat at the desk here in our bedroom their screaming and shouting echoed through the whole house. Then I heard an engine outside and I went to our attic window and looked out and saw Mr Harrison’s wife, the American Victoria, arrive up in her motor car on her own, even though it was very late. Mr Fennell quickly got dressed and rushed out and down the stairs to let her in. I went down with him and as we came to the top of the stairs we heard her ladyship unlocking the door herself and greeting Mrs Armstrong with the words ‘Well, if it isn’t the whore herself!’ Myself and Mr Fennell remained hidden in the corridor upstairs as we saw the two ladies go into the drawing room where Lord Charles was.

  It was hard to hear what they were rowing about from where we were upstairs. But at the end I heard Lady A warn that if he left her she would kill herself. We heard Lord A and Mr Harrison’s wife leave the drawing room and he said he needed to get something from the library before they left. Afraid of being spotted, we went back to our room in the attic. We sat there fretting and I was looking out the window. A little while later Lord A and Mrs Victoria came out and rushed to her motor car. He took the keys from her and sat behind the steering wheel and they drove off at high speed. Worried about Her Ladyship, we went downstairs to check on her. We’ve checked everywhere, including her room, but she is missing.

  Kate read and re-read the entry.

  “So was Charles eloping with Victoria that night, or at least trying to before he was shot?” she wondered. “And the Fennells say Arabella was not in the house when the shooting took place, contrary to what she told the police.”

  “And she didn’t seem in a good state of mind at all,” said Nico.

  “But if Victoria was leaving with Charles,” said Kate, “and Harrison discovered that, he might have got there first. After all, we know from the police report he was present that night as he took Charles to the hospital.”

  “As was Emily, who was at Hunter’s Farm,” said Kate. “Not to mention Fitzroy in town.”

  “The family went to great lengths to maintain that Victoria was in no way connected to this. There is no mention of her in the statements to the police or inquiry, and as we now know she was in the thick of it.”

  Book five

  DECEMBER 1903

  chapter 73

  Fennell came into the library and handed Charles an envelope.

  “What’s this?” asked Charles, worried it might be a resignation letter from the Fennells, as half of the house staff had left by now.

  “It was delivered by a bellboy from the Castlewest Arms Hotel, your lordship,” explained Fennell.

  “Oh?” said Charles, quickly opening the envelope as Fennell left. Charles read the letter it contained and sat back in his chair thinking.

  Charles parked his motor car outside the Castlewest Arms and walked in.

  He went up to the reception and pressed the bell. A few seconds later a young woman came out.

  “Could you tell Mr Hugh Fitzroy that I’m here to see him,” said Charles.

  The woman looked at him disdainfully. Like everyone else in the town she was fully aware of who he was and the many stories about his cruel behaviour up at his estate.

  “Mr Fitzroy said you were to go on up to his room when you arrived. Room 25, third floor,” she said in a disrespectful tone.

  Charles nodded and walked to the staircase and to the top floor where he found the room and knocked.

  “Come in!” said the familiar voice of Hugh Fitzroy.

  Charles opened the door and went in and found Fitzroy seated on a couch in the room, drinking whiskey.

  Charles closed the door behind him.

  “You’ve a cheek to show your face around here,” said Charles, walking into the room.

  “Believe me it’s the last place on earth I want to be,” said Hugh. “Drink?”

  “No,” Charles declined and sat down on a chair opposite him. “What are you doing here, Fitzroy?”

  “I’ve come to get my wife, of course.”

  “Well, you won’t find her in the Castlewest Arms.”

  “I didn’t want to go up to the house unannounced.”

  “Wise.”

  “How is she?”

  “Not very happy at all, Fitzroy.”

  “She just upped and left London without even saying goodbye.”

  “Emily was always spontaneous, mostly to her own disadvantage.”

  Hugh sat forward. “I want her back, Charles.”

  “Well, there’s very little chance of that, from what I hear.”

  “She won’t leave me. She wouldn’t dare put herself or your family through the scandal.”

  “She’s already bandying the word divorce around so much that it’s lost its shock value around Armstrong House.”

  “What does your mother think of that?”

  “Lady Margaret appears to be not in the least opposed to you being out of her daughter’s life for good . . . in fact, there’s a new-found mother-daughter bond between them that is touching to witness.”

  “I can’t lose her, Charles.”

  “Y
es, it’s annoying when one of our toys goes missing, isn’t it?”

  Hugh stared at him. “You’ve got to help me get her back.”

  “I?” Charles said and roared with the laughter. “My dear man, I’ve no intention of helping you get anything ever again.”

  “But she’ll listen to you, she always has. You can convince her to come back to me.”

  “I’ve no doubt I could, but I won’t.”

  “If you get her to come back to me, I’ll pay you twenty thousand pounds,” said Hugh.

  Charles stared at him. “You think I’d sell my sister?”

  “Why not? You did it before!”

  “Yes, on a deal that you reneged on.”

  “I cancelled your gambling debt.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t pay off the mortgage on the house in London as you promised, the same house you now reside in!”

  Hugh said nothing as he looked at the floor. “I can understand how you mightn’t trust me.”

  “Trust you? You were nothing when I found you. A gangster from the East End. I established you, gave you connections, respectability and finally acceptance by allowing you to marry Emily. When you didn’t pay that mortgage debt off, I was disgraced in front of my family and my wife. You did irreparable damage. Anyway, I’ve no time for any of this. I suggest you get on the next train back to Dublin, because she won’t meet you, let alone go back to you.”

  “Nevertheless, I will pay you £20,000 if you get Emily to agree to come back with me.”

  Charles stared at him. “Why do you think I’d ever agree to anything of the sort with you?”

  “Because I know you.”

  They sat in silence for a long while.

  “I want no tricks this time like last time,” said Charles. “The £20,000 has to be put in my account before I even approach the subject with Emily.”

  “Give me your bank account details and I’ll have the money wired into your account.”

  Arabella had been lonesome when she returned after leaving Pierce at the school in England. The house seemed so much emptier without him.

  Emily often came up to visit from Hunter’s Farm. Arabella found the girl changed utterly. Gone was that rebellious stubborn young woman who defied everybody and did her own thing. Now Emily was more subdued, no longer doing the opposite of everything that was expected of her.

  Arabella was lying in bed one night, Charles sleeping beside her. She was lying on her back staring at the ceiling, thinking of everything that had happened over the years and wondering where the present situation Charles had led them into would end. Suddenly there was a crash through the window and she sat up with a scream.

  “What the fuck was that?” shouted Charles, jumping out of bed and racing across the room to turn on the gaslight.

  As the room lit up, Arabella saw a window had been broken and a rock was lying on the carpeted floor.

  Charles raced to the window and there was a sudden gush of light from a fire.

  “Fennell! Fennell!” Charles screamed as he threw on his dressing gown and went racing out of the room. Arabella got out of bed and went carefully over to the window, avoiding the broken glass on the floor. Looking out she saw Charles’ motor car was engulfed in flames. She started shivering with nerves as she left the room and quickly headed along the corridor and towards the stairs.

  “Mama – what’s happening?” asked Prudence, standing in the corridor in her nightdress.

  “Get back to bed!” ordered Arabella as she ran down the stairs and to the front door which was now open. She stood at the door in her dressing gown as she watched Charles and the menservants run to get buckets of water.

  “The bastards! They’ve burned my motor car!” shouted Charles.

  Arabella went storming down the steps and across the forecourt to her husband.

  “Is that all you can say? Is that all you can say?”she shrieked at him. “Your bloody motor car! When you’ve brought all this terror on our family, you bastard!”

  Suddenly her hands started flailing and she was pounding his chest. He grabbed her arms and restrained her as the motor car continued to burn. Suddenly Arabella burst out crying. Charles looked at her as she fell to her knees sobbing. He had never seen her cry or break down before. Arabella desperately tried to stop the tears as she remembered the promise she’d made herself that Charles must never see that he had upset her. But try as she might, the tears kept flowing.

  That night Arabella and Charles slept in separate bedrooms.

  With his usual efficiency Fennell had the broken window pane in their bedroom replaced the next day and Arabella moved back into their bedroom. But Charles didn’t and remained in the Blue Room. He steadfastly avoided her, not coming into the dining room for breakfast or lunch. In the evenings she would sit at the giant dining table eating on her own. She knew she had broken her number one rule, never to let Charles see he had broken her, the advice her mother had given to her on her wedding day forgotten in the drama of that night. They might have argued and shouted and screamed at each other over the years, but she had never broken down in front of him before and now she felt terribly exposed, her position weakened.

  “Where’s Lady Armstrong?” asked Charles, coming through the front door.

  “She went out for a walk, my lord,” said Fennell.

  Charles nodded and walked into the drawing room, knowing it was safe from her. He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to be in her company. The rock through the window and the car set alight had shaken him. But nearly worse was seeing his wife collapse into a sobbing mess in front of him and the servants.

  He heard a noise and, looking out the window, he saw Victoria drive up and park.

  He smiled at seeing her and couldn’t wait to be alone with her. The room had an aroma of cigar and turf smoke. Damned Arabella, refusing to allow the windows downstairs to be left open to air the rooms, he thought. He quickly walked over to the French windows and opened them to allow some fresh air in before Victoria came.

  Fennell showed her into the drawing room.

  “Charles!” she said, coming over and giving him a kiss. “What an awful shock for you! I was just down at Hunter’s Farm and Lady Margaret told me all about the motor car. And the rock through the window! It’s amazing nobody was hurt.”

  “They don’t care if anybody was hurt, Victoria.”

  “And the police have no idea who’s responsible?”

  “No – do they ever? These culprits appear to glide through the night, unleash their terrible acts, and then disappear back into the night without anyone seeing them. But Fennell said he saw that thug McGrath loitering around the house earlier that day. He was one of the peasants I had evicted and he has no right to be on the estate. Fennell told him to clear off. McGrath’s a violent man, you know. I reported what Fennel saw to the police, of course, and they said they will question McGrath about the matter.”

  “So what are you going to do, Charles? You have to do something before somebody gets hurt.”

  Charles sat pensively. “Are you aware of this new Wyndham Land Act the government brought in?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve been advised to avail of it and sell the estate.”

  “I see!” said Victoria, shocked but realising the logic in it.

  “The tenants get to buy their land with money from the government and they get rid of me at the same time.”

  Victoria was concerned. “But you’d never sell the Armstrong estate, would you?”

  “I’m beginning to think why not? We haven’t had an income in months, we’ve run into severe financial difficulty. If I sold the land all my problems would be gone and I wouldn’t have to deal with these bastards any more.”

  “You have to think very carefully about what you’re contemplating, Charles. The Armstrong estate has been in your family for centuries. And what about Prudence and Pierce?”

  “I’d keep the house obviously and the land around it, spend more time in
London.”

  “What does Arabella think of all this?”

  “I haven’t discussed it with her. The only person I’ve said it to is you.”

  “Charles – don’t you think you should? It’s her decision too.”

  “I don’t think it is, Victoria, not any more.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “I think Arabella and I are finished.”

  “Charles!”

  “I don’t think either of us can stand the other any more.”

  “Has she any idea?”

  “No. I’ve said nothing. But we’re in separate bedrooms and hardly communicate recently.”

  “I knew you had been having problems, but many married couples do.”

  “Except you and Harrison?” he looked at her quizzically.

  “I wouldn’t say that! We have many differences of opinions.”

  “Really?” he said, interested.

  “Of course. We’ve had one huge difference of opinion recently and I’ve had to give in to him, because I know it’s what he really wants. We’re moving back to America, Charles.”

  Her words knocked him for six.

  “When?”

  “Quite soon. Harrison is already making the arrangements. It’s strange, you’d think I would be the one wanting to move back home, but it’s Harrison. I sometimes think he’s more of an American than I am.” She smiled lightly.

  “Victoria, you can’t go!” he blurted out suddenly.

  “I’m afraid we are going, back to Newport.”

  “But – but what’ll I do if you go?” he said, looking panicked.

  She managed to smile at him. “I’m sure you’ll manage perfectly fine.”

  “But you don’t understand!”

  Arabella was walking back from the gardens when she spotted the French windows to the drawing room open. She cursed the staff. How many times had she insisted that no downstairs doors or windows were to be left open? She quickly made her way across the lawns to the patio and climbed up the steps at the back of them and through the stone balustrade surrounds. She walked to the open windows and was about to slam them shut when she heard voices. She stopped and listened and recognised the voices as Charles and Victoria’s. She leaned against the wall beside the open glass doors and listened.