The Mystery at Falconbridge Hall

by Maggi Andersen

  THE MYSTERY AT FALCONBRIDGE HALL

  By

  Maggi Andersen

  The Mystery at Falconbridge Hall

  Smashwords Copy

  Copyright 2018 by Maggi Andersen

  Published by Maggi Andersen

  Cover Artist: Josephine Blake

  First published as The Folly at Falconbridge Hall in 2013 by Knox Robinson Publishing

  By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of copyright owner.

  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental and are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the author.

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  Prologue

  A full moon painted the gardens in a chiaroscuro of deep purple and pewter. She hurried along expecting sprites to emerge to dance amongst the trees on such a magical night. Would he be pleased? Her heart beat fast with the anticipation of seeing his handsome face. The lake was liquid silver, smooth and calm.

  The folly awaited. She began to quote from her favorite poem. “And by the moon the reaper weary, piling sheaves in uplands airy, listening, whispers, ‘’Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.’”

  A man appeared at the top of the steps. “What have you got there?”

  She held up her prize.

  Chapter One

  Vanessa Ashley planned to arrive at her destination cool and composed, but she felt like a wilting lily. She dabbed her handkerchief at the sweat trickling into her collar as heat gathered beneath her chip-straw bonnet. Clapham High Street Railway Station was a noisy and smelly hub of activity, luckily the residence that was to be her new home lay in the countryside.

  A short, bearded man approached her and politely touched his hat. “For Falconbridge Hall, miss?”

  “Yes, I’m Miss Ashley. Thank you… Mr.?”

  “They just call me Capstick, Miss Ashley. This way.” He led her to a trap. After he’d loaded her trunk and bicycle on board, they seated themselves. He slapped the reins and told the horse to walk on. “You’re the new governess?”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  “Another one,” he muttered and shook his head.

  Startled, Vanessa stared at him. “How many have there been?”

  “The last one didn’t stay long.”

  “But why?”

  Capstick declined to comment. He just grunted and shook his head.

  “Well, I intend to.” Vanessa straightened her shoulders. It was true she had never wished to be a governess. Even though she was still quite young, her wish for children of her own now seemed unlikely, and if this was to be her fate, she intended to make the best of it. A person without funds, indifferent looks, and a lack of grace had no other course open to them.

  “Good luck to yer, then.” Capstick grinned at her, revealing a large gap in his front teeth.

  With reassuring skill, he negotiated around a horse-drawn tram as they passed the bandstand on the common and then drove down tree-lined avenues. Villas were soon replaced by streets of gracious homes set amid beautiful gardens. The sign, Clapham Park Estate, appeared, followed by larger country houses on acreages.

  They passed the last of the houses and were out in the countryside now. Green fields crisscrossed by hedgerows stretched away to a line of forest in the distance. The trap followed the road a mile or so, then came to a high brick wall and a pair of impressive wrought iron gates with Falconbridge Hall emblazoned on them in gold lettering. Capstick drove through, and a house appeared above the trees. Many chimneys rose from the massive slate roof.

  Ahead of them, a stocky dark-haired man rode a magnificent bay horse across the lawn and vaulted a hedge. Vanessa had a glimpse of dark, gypsy eyes and a white smile beneath a black moustache. Before they drew level, he turned the animal and rode toward the woods.

  “Who was that?” she couldn’t help asking, watching him disappear into the trees.

  “The groom, Lovel, exercising the master’s horse.” Capstick shook his head. “The gardeners will not be pleased.”

  The gravel drive bordered by lime trees curved around through formal gardens to the front of the house where he left her, disappearing with her trunk and bicycle toward the rear entrance and, she presumed, the coach house and stables.

  The sprawling stone house had a tower at one end, its walls partly covered in ivy. It was older and far bigger than those they’d passed on their way from the station. The building had settled into its surroundings, and she had the feeling it had been here for a very long time while the urban sprawl of Clapham edged ever closer.

  Conscious that she looked rumpled and untidy, Vanessa smoothed the skirt of her olive green linen dress and straightened the limp white collar with travel-stained cotton gloves. She picked up her bag and stepped up to the paneled door flanked by stout white columns.

  Before she could knock, a maid wearing a mobcap and a white apron over her gray floral dress opened the door. “Miss Ashley? Please come in.”

  Surprised not to be met by a butler in such an establishment, Vanessa stepped into the wide entrance hall. One of those new inventions, the telephone sat on a table. A fine Persian carpet ran the length of the parquet floor, pale green satin papered the walls, and fringed and tasseled emerald velvet drapes hung from the windows. Potted ferns clustered in corners, and a gracious staircase led upward. Despite fractured light filtering down from a stained-glass window above the stair, the house was so gloomy inside dusk might have fallen.

  “The master’s in his study, miss. Please wait here while I announce you.”

  Vanessa sank gratefully onto the edge of a straight-backed chair. It had been hours since she’d had a drink, and she was horribly parched. Now her knees had developed a worrying tendency to tremble. To distract herself, she studied the remarkable flesh tones of a naked woman’s torso on the oil painting hanging on the opposite wall. A François Boucher if she was not mistaken. More flesh than was decent, surely.

  Her father had preferred the sea and boats as his subjects. Initially, he’d considered the naked body to be soft pornography and not fine art, but he’d altered his opinion after nudes became an important asset to any wealthy man’s collection and began to fetch high prices. More than once, Vanessa had come across nude models posing in his studio, barely covered by drapery and, sometimes, wearing nothing at all.

  The thought of her father and their home in Cornwall, brought on a wave of homesickness. She had never envisaged such a drastic change in fortune. She swallowed and focused her mind on the letter and the offer that had brought her here.

  In his fine script, the viscount had been brief, and to the point. He was a widower with a young daughter in need of tutoring. An associate of her uncles had approached him on her behalf. She’d read his words with disquiet. He sounded so business-like and… unsympathetic.

  He had been informed that her mother and father died from the influenza, but his few words of condolence failed to make her more confident of what lay ahead.

  The maid’s head appeared over the banister rail. “
The master will see you now.”

  Vanessa walked up the wide oak stair. The maid waited outside a door. She bobbed and left her. A deep voice answered Vanessa’s knock. She turned the knob thinking how she would have liked to wash before meeting her new employer; it was difficult to appear cool and in control when so hot.

  The room she entered was also steeped in gloom. A gas lamp glowed where a man sat in shirtsleeves and braces, his dark head bent over a desk. She took two uncertain steps and paused in the middle of a crimson Persian rug. Vanessa clasped her hands together and inspected the room. Shelves of leather-bound books lined one wall. Heavy bronze velvet drapes, pulled halfway across the small-paned windows, framed a narrow but magnificent view of parkland where broad graveled walks trailed away through well-grown trees. She suffered a sudden urge to walk across, pull the curtains back and throw open a window.

  Lord Falconbridge put down the butterfly under-glass he had been examining and pushed back his leather chair, rising to his feet. As she edged closer, he donned his coat and came to shake her hand. “Miss Ashley.”

  “How do you do, Lord Falconbridge.”

  He motioned her to sit then sat himself.

  He would be in his mid-thirties, she guessed. His good looks made her feel even more untidy. His dark hair swept off a wide brow, a deep cleft in his strong chin. He removed his glasses, and his eyes were like the bright blue of the butterfly. Dark brows met in an absent-minded frown as if she was an unwelcome distraction. “Welcome to Falconbridge Hall. I hope you had a good journey?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “You’ve come quite a long way. You must be tired.”

  “I broke my journey with an aunt in Taunton, my lord.” Her aunt was quite elderly, and Vanessa had slept on the sofa, but she didn’t feel at all tired. She expected fatigue would strike once the initial rush of excitement had faded.

  “My sympathies for your loss, Miss Ashley.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You have had no experience as a governess, I understand.”

  “No.”

  “Do you like children?”

  “Very much, my lord.”

  “Then you have had some involvement with them.”

  “Yes, I was very fond of my neighbors’ children. I minded them quite often as their parents were both in business.”

  “You had no opportunity to marry in Cornwall?”

  “I had one offer, my lord.” The widowed vicar, Harold Ponsonby, had offered, in an attempt to rescue her from the heathenish den of iniquity in which he found her.

  He eyed her. “And you refused him?”

  Might he think her imprudent? “Yes. He was very kind, but I did.”

  “Do you have a particular skill, Miss Ashley, which you can impart to my daughter?”

  “No, my lord.” She drew in a breath. She had not expected such a question. “Sadly, I did not inherit my father’s artistic talent, but I have my mother’s inquiring mind and her interest in history and politics.”

  “Politics?” He stared at her rather long, and she wished again that she’d had time to tidy herself. “The rest of the day is your own. We will discuss your duties in the library tomorrow at ten. Mrs. Royce, my housekeeper, will show you to your room.” With an abstracted glance at his desk, he rose and went to pull the bell.

  The mahogany desktop was completely covered with pens and papers, a microscope, a probe of some kind, a set of long-handled tweezers, a large magnifying glass and a small hand-held one, tomes stacked one on top of the other in danger of toppling, and the butterfly in its glass prison, its beautiful wings pinned down, never to soar again. Caught by its beauty and premature death, Keats’s poem Ode to a Grecian Urn, rushed into her head. “Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought… As doth eternity.”

  The viscount swiveled, and his eyebrows shot up. “Pardon?”

  Vanessa jumped to her feet as heat flooded her cheeks. She’d said the words aloud. She must have had too much sun. “Keats, my lord.”

  “Are you a devotee of the Romantics?”

  “Not especially.” Annoyed with herself and, irrationally, with him for pursuing it, she said, “Forgive me, it was a random thought.”

  He folded his arms and studied her. “You are given to spouting random philosophical thoughts?”

  She tugged at her damp collar. “Not as a rule. I’m a little tired, and it’s been so hot.”

  Hastening to change the subject, she stepped over to the wall covered in framed butterflies of all sizes and colors. One particular specimen caught her eye. “Exquisite.”

  She felt his presence disturbingly close behind her. “Which?”

  She pointed. “This one, with patches of crimson and deep blue on its wings.”

  “You have a good eye. That’s a Nymphalidae from Peru. Do you know much about butterflies?” She looked at him, finding his blue eyes had brightened.

  “Very little, I’m afraid,” she said, afraid her contribution to this discussion would prove disappointing. “We get many orange ones with black spots in Cornwall.”

  “Dark green Fritillary.” The interested light in his eyes faded.

  “That can’t be. They’re orange,” she said.

  “That is their name, dark green Fritillary.”

  “Why would they call it dark green when…?” Her voice died away at his poorly disguised impatience.

  “That species is common and of little interest.” He studied her. “Unless you took notice of some interesting aspect of their habitats?”

  “No, not precisely, my lord… uh, they seemed to gather in trees and grasses….” She nipped at her lip with her teeth as he nodded and turned away. Would a governess be required to know much about butterflies or botany? Beyond Cornwall, her knowledge of flora and fauna was barely worthy of comment.

  A woman entered the room, her neat figure garbed in black bombazine, with a lacy cap over her brown hair and a watch pinned to her breast. A chatelaine with a bunch of keys hung from her belt. Vanessa thought her to be in her early forties. Her pointed nose and sharp eyes made her appear as if she would miss very little.

  “Ah. Mrs. Royce, this is the new governess, Miss Ashley. Please give her a tour of the day nursery and school room and introduce my daughter to her before you take her to her quarters.”

  “Yes, milord.”

  “Miss Ashley.” His lordship nodded. “I shall see you here again at ten o’clock tomorrow. We’ll discuss your plans for teaching my daughter. I’m extremely keen that she becomes proficient in mathematics, the French language, and botany.”

  “Botany, my lord?” Vanessa’s fears were realized. Completely unprepared, she looked around wildly at the books lining his shelves. Might she have time to bone up on it? She read some knowledge of her discomfort in his eyes and lifted her chin. “Surely English and history are equally important?”

  “That goes without saying.” He turned back to his desk. “Tomorrow at ten.”

  Summarily dismissed, Vanessa followed the housekeeper along the corridor. Did she catch a satisfied gleam in his eye before he turned away? Her mind filled with questions. Was it going to be difficult to work for him? Might it be why governesses did not stay long here?

  Mrs. Royce glanced at Vanessa’s wrinkled gown and scuffed shoes. “You’ll be suffering from the heat, I expect. We’ve had the devil of a summer.” Without waiting for a reply, she opened the day nursery door as a young maid jumped up. She dropped her sewing as she bobbed.

  “This is the nursery maid. Agnes.”

  Vanessa greeted the maid as Mrs. Royce approached the child who hadn’t acknowledged their presence. “Miss Blythe, this is Miss Ashley, your new governess.”

  Blythe looked up from where she knelt beside a doll’s house with the distant expression of someone woken suddenly. A rag doll with a china face lay in a tumbled heap beside her.

  Slender brows frowned at the intrusion, reminding Vanessa of her father. She climbed to her feet.

  �
�Please to meet you, Miss Blythe.” Vanessa smiled and stretched out her hand. “I’ve so looked forward to this moment.”

  “How do you do?” Blythe said politely. She slipped her small hand into Vanessa’s and, after the merest touch, withdrew it. She had inherited her father’s black hair and blue eyes, and his height; at ten, Blythe almost reached Mrs. Royce’s shoulder.

  “It’s almost time for afternoon tea,” Mrs. Royce said. “I’ll take you to your room, Miss Ashley.”

  The housekeeper shut the nursery door and led Vanessa down the corridor.

  Her new charge seemed unnaturally subdued for a ten-year-old. Vanessa wondered if she spent too much time shut up in the day nursery with the maid. She planned to change that immediately. A child should be outside in the fresh air in the cooler part of the day. Vanessa had spied a lovely shady folly through the trees, like some ancient relic from the past. She hurried to catch Mrs. Royce, who was walking briskly along the corridor.

  They climbed up a narrow stairway.

  “How many on the staff here?” Vanessa asked to break what she felt was an awkward silence.

  “Twenty house staff. Dorcas is the head maid. The butler is away at present.”

  “No footman?”

  Mrs. Royce firmed her lips. “No.” She stopped and threw open a door. “This is the schoolroom.”

  It was a good-sized attic room with comfortable chairs, a table, a child’s desk, and a slate blackboard on a stand. “Excellent,” Vanessa said with satisfaction.

  At the end of the corridor was Vanessa’s bedroom, the sloping walls covered in a daisy-patterned paper and hung with pressed flowers in frames. The white-painted iron bed had a floral coverlet, and a writing desk stood beside it. An upholstered chair was placed near the fireplace. The shelf above the mantel was perfect for Vanessa to put the things she’d brought with her. A rug covered the floorboards. The small room looked cheerful and snug. Surprised at her good fortune, Vanessa said, “How nice. I shall feel very much at home here.” The curtains were closed, and the room stuffy. She crossed to the window and drew them back, looking down over verdant lawns and trees to the picturesque folly. Its circular roof was supported by decorative round columns, and it overlooked an ornamental lake.