A Killer Ball at Honeychurch Hall

by Hannah Dennison

  “And hello to you, too!” I said deliberately into the iPhone. “How are you, Ginny?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “You found out pretty quickly,” I said.

  Ginny grinned. “Any thoughts on who it might be?”

  “You should talk to the police about that.”

  “They won’t speak to me until they’ve notified the family,” said Ginny. “That means it must be recent. Not some old priest that has been rotting there for hundreds of years.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Kat,” said Ginny. “At least confirm it was a woman? At least give me that.”

  “Can’t. Sorry.” I gestured to her Peugeot. “Nice new car. Congratulations. You seem to be doing very well.”

  “Thanks. The Times definitely pays better than the Deal and sometimes my stories get picked up by nationals.” Ginny smiled. “You told me I could be anything I wanted to be, remember? You said the world was my oyster and you were right!”

  I did remember our conversation all those months ago and for a moment, I softened toward the young woman. I didn’t blame her ambition and an urge to escape the monotony of reporting dreary funerals and dog shows, but the new Ginny worried me.

  At one time I had begun to regard her as a younger sister. We occasionally met for coffee and talked about her love life and other things that women have to deal with these days. But as time passed, she became far more interested in my personal life and her questions became more intrusive. I began to avoid her phone calls and eventually, they petered out altogether. Mum said I was being paranoid, especially now I no longer had my TV show, but I had learned the hard way about having my private life dragged into the newspapers and how easy it was for an innocent comment to be taken out of context.

  “Please give me a quote,” said Ginny. “Just one. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “Honestly, I’d rather not.”

  “Why? Are you scared of what the old bag will say?”

  I was taken aback. “Old bag?”

  “The dowager countess,” said Ginny. “I know she freaks out at the first whiff of scandal.”

  I’d never heard Ginny be so disrespectful. In the past she had always spoken highly of Lady Edith Honeychurch.

  “Oh don’t look so shocked.” Ginny grinned. “Everyone knows the Honeychurches close ranks and hush stuff up. I’ll just focus on the double-hide in the sealed-off wing.”

  “I didn’t say anything about it being a double-hide,” I said sharply. “Nor about the wing being sealed off.”

  “Who saw the body first?” Ginny persisted. “You or Eric Pugsley?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” I knew that Eric would never talk to Ginny again.

  She gave a snort of disdain. “Yeah, right. He refuses to speak to me.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” Ginny’s article on the scam had left Eric practically shunned by the village. Although I still couldn’t understand why he had agreed to be the scapegoat in the first place.

  “Come on, Kat, give me something!” she pleaded. “It’s my first murder story.”

  “Who said anything about it being a murder?”

  “Don’t you wonder why the wing was sealed off?” said Ginny. I didn’t answer. “How about ‘Murder, Mischief and Mayhem at Honeychurch Hall.’ Pretty good headline, eh?”

  “There is a rare plasterwork ceiling in the King’s Parlor,” I said suddenly.

  “So?”

  “If you want a story, there it is. It was damaged when a water pipe burst on the floor above. How about that for an exclusive—the plight of the country house.”

  “So that’s where you found the body?” said Ginny. “In the King’s Parlor?”

  “No comment.”

  “I’ll find out one way or another,” she said.

  “I’m sure you will but it won’t be from me.” I smiled. “Good luck with your story.”

  “Thanks,” said Ginny. “I’ll be back!”

  I watched Ginny return to her car. She took off her high-heels and exchanged them for flats. Then she put the shoes into a cloth bag on the rear passenger seat before setting off. They were expensive shoes and reminded me of Eric’s wife, Vera, who had had a vast shoe collection. The Honeychurch family had managed to hush up that tragedy, too. Even the prison sentence imposed on William Bushman—the former stable manager—was barely mentioned in the Dipperton Deal and since the newspaper had used his real name of Ralph Jackson, there was no connection to Honeychurch Hall at all. Maybe Ginny had a point.

  I checked my watch. It was time to pick up Harry from school.

  As I headed out of the main gates I realized Harry would have to be told something. The problem was that the Honeychurch clan seemed to use a code for anything “unpleasant.” Hence William Bushman aka Ralph Jackson was not serving time in prison but had merely gone on a climbing expedition to the Himalayas. I didn’t agree with lying to children even if it was to protect them.

  I resolved to stay out of it. After several escapes from the “prisoner-of-war camp,” as Harry referred to his former boarding school, I was already in the proverbial doghouse for planting the idea into Harry’s head about switching to the local primary school—an idea that had been met with horror for “breaking with tradition” and “mixing with the hoi polloi.” Unfortunately, my well-intentioned plan seemed to have backfired. Harry was teased about his “posh” accent and seemed even unhappier than before.

  I pulled up outside Little Dipperton Primary School, parked my Golf and went to join the throng of mothers hovering around the school gates with their strollers. Here, the children didn’t have to wear a school uniform. I had to admit that most looked very scruffy in their anoraks, jeans and trainers and nothing like the smart blazer, flannel trousers and cap that Harry had worn when he was boarding at Blundell’s.

  I used to feel a pang of envy seeing mothers with their children. With the end of my relationship with David came the end of my hopes of having a family with him, too. I knew I wasn’t quite past my biological sell-by date yet, but I would be forty in a few weeks and even if I met someone—which I wasn’t ready to do quite yet—and immediately fell pregnant, I’d be forty-one. That would make me nearly fifty picking up a seven-year old from the local school. Maybe I should just get a cat.

  “Kat?” a voice shouted, breaking my thoughts. I looked over to find a pretty young woman with her blond hair swept up into an untidy coil on top of her head. With her ankle-length raincoat, a mass of swirling scarves and Edwardian button-boots, she somehow managed to make disheveled look stylish.

  I waved to my new friend, Pippa Carmichael. At first, the other mothers had given me a wide berth as if I were an alien from another planet. I used to find that happened a lot when I was at the height of my so-called Fakes & Treasures fame. People seemed either too nervous to talk to me or felt they knew me intimately and offered the most astonishingly personal advice.

  I had found that making new friends in a new place was harder than I expected especially in a community like Little Dipperton. The brief friendship I’d known with a fellow antique dealer in Dartmouth ended when she returned to France with her husband. She’d warned me that it would take at least forty years to become accepted as a “local” and it would seem that she was right!

  Pippa had been different.

  For a start, she had lived in Putney—a stone’s throw from Tooting—where I’d been born. Just knowing someone who knew a familiar shop or a restaurant had helped a lot.

  Pippa had moved from London with her son Max following a nasty divorce and started a catering business. The two of us had struck up an easy rapport.

  Max and Harry had been “school holiday” friends, which was one of the reasons I thought sending Harry to Max’s school would have been so perfect. I had wrongly assumed their friendship would have continued.

  Far from greeting me with a smile, Pippa looked worried. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” She pulled me gently aside a
nd out of the earshot of the other women.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  She gave a heavy sigh. “I’ve tried to talk to Harry’s mother but she never gets out of that Range Rover when she comes to pick him up.” Pippa paused. “God. This is so awkward.”

  “Is this about Harry?” I asked.

  “I know it’s not your problem, but…” She hesitated. “Perhaps you would talk to him.”

  “Is something wrong?” I said, feeling a horrible tightness in my chest. “Has he done something?”

  Pippa paused again. “The thing is, Max says that Harry wants to hang out with him and his friends all the time.”

  “I thought they were friends.” I was surprised at the surge of protective feelings that suddenly consumed me.

  “I know, I know … but, school holiday friends aren’t real friends, are they?” Pippa looked miserable and I knew that she desperately wanted me to agree. “Harry needs to make his own friends.”

  My heart went out to poor Harry. “Maybe Max needs to tell him that.”

  “He’s tried.” Pippa stole a look at three women who were standing in a cluster next to her white Vauxhall Astra. I caught encouraging nods and guessed that she had been coerced into being the spokeswoman for all of them.

  “Pippa, I can’t do that,” I said. “If Max won’t tell Harry then you have to talk to Lavinia.”

  “She’s such a cold fish,” said Pippa with unexpected feeling. “How Rupert ever married her is beyond me.”

  “Then talk to Rupert.”

  Pippa reddened. “I … I don’t know why I said that. I hardly know him.”

  “And you’re wrong about Lavinia,” I said. “She’s just shy.”

  Pippa looked over to the women again. “Our kids have all been friends since nursery school. They don’t like newcomers.”

  “Well, I can definitely identify with that feeling!” I said wryly. “And I suspect you can, too.”

  An awkward silence fell between us as we both tried to find something to say. I genuinely liked Pippa and suspected she was being forced to do this.

  “Okay, I’ll phone Lavinia,” Pippa said grudgingly. “Do I have to call her your ladyship?”

  “Yes. You’ll get Cropper, the butler,” I said. “And he will summon her to the phone.”

  “Seems funny in this day and age.” Pippa laughed. “When are you starting your antique business?”

  “I’m almost set up at the gatehouses for Kat’s Collectibles. I’ll be offering a mobile valuation service as well,” I said, “but I’ve still got no central heating at Jane’s Cottage. I’m also looking for someone who is good at D-I-Y.”

  “You should put an ad in the post office,” said Pippa.

  “I did.”

  “A good handyman is hard to find.” Pippa gestured to her white Vauxhall that had a huge dent in the rear passenger door. “I’m still trying to find someone to repair that without paying a fortune.”

  The clang of the school bell stopped all further conversation and moments later the playground was filled with the chatter of schoolchildren released from captivity for the day.

  I recognized towheaded Max sauntering across the playground with four friends, all laughing and playing the fool. Harry trailed behind them, a solitary figure in new jeans, black lace-up shoes and a child’s navy Barbour that immediately set him apart. He seemed so different from the confident young boy I’d first met dressed as Squadron Leader James Bigglesworth in his World War I flying helmet, goggles and white scarf.

  “How was your day?” I asked him as we got into my car.

  “Okay, I suppose.” Harry dumped his rucksack onto the passenger side floor and gave a heavy sigh. I caught him giving a longing glance at Max as Pippa herded the boys into her car.

  “Do you have much homework?” I asked.

  “A bit.”

  “Well, at least it’s the weekend,” I said.

  “Max, Jed, Emerson, Ronan and Callum are going to see Exeter City play Portsmouth tomorrow,” he said glumly.

  “I thought we were going riding together tomorrow.”

  Harry bit his lip. “I asked Max if I could go with them,” he went on, “but Max said there weren’t any tickets left but then Callum came up and asked if he could go and Max said yes.”

  I felt my heart contract with pain for Harry. “I thought you didn’t like soccer,” I said lightly.

  “Yes I do!” Harry shouted. “I love it. But Father doesn’t. He says soccer is full of hooligans and that rugby is a gentleman’s sport—and cricket, of course.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “And then they’re all going back to Jed’s place and having pizza and playing with his Xbox.”

  “I think Squadron Leader Bigglesworth should have them court-martialed for unsporting behavior,” I said, attempting a joke.

  “Biggles doesn’t exist,” Harry said angrily. “He never did!”

  “Of course he did.”

  “Max says it’s all made up.”

  “Didn’t you tell him that you’d been to the RAF Museum in London and actually saw his combat report?”

  Harry’s eyes widened with delight. “No! I didn’t!”

  “There you are then,” I said. “You can tell Max on Monday.” I reached over to ruffle his hair.

  “Ouch.” Harry winced. To my alarm I saw the faint mark of a purple bruise on his temple.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I fell over,” he mumbled.

  “How?” I demanded.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Harry turned away from me and stared out of the window. We continued the rest of the journey in silence whilst I agonized over what had happened. Had Harry really fallen over or were Max and his friends bullying him? I just had to speak to Lavinia.

  We turned into the grand main entrance to Honeychurch Hall and passed the eighteenth-century gatehouses that were now the new home for Kat’s Collectibles. With the scaffolding up—I was in the process of repairing the gutters—the place looked dilapidated.

  “Why do we have to live in a house that falls down?” Harry suddenly cried. “Why can’t we live in a normal house like my friends where all their houses are the same? Why can’t I be like everyone else?”

  “Ah,” I said. “But I bet your friends don’t have secret rooms and stories of hidden treasure.”

  “Treasure?” Harry gasped. “Secret rooms? What treasure? What secret rooms?”

  I probably should have let his parents tell him, but the words just came out. I wanted desperately to distract him and it had worked.

  As I filled Harry in on the day’s discoveries—making sure not to mention the corpse—he almost seemed back to his old self.

  “But you didn’t exactly find any treasure,” said Harry.

  “No, but there was definitely evidence that the coins had been made at the Hall.”

  “Wicked!” he said.

  “So if you hadn’t heard the pipes explode in the night—”

  “Surely you mean the minenwerfer, Stanford,” said Harry, returning to his alter ego.

  “Of course, sir. So if wasn’t for that, no one would have ever found the double-hide.”

  “Can we go and see it now?”

  “I’m sure your father would want to show you himself,” I said hastily. “Obviously the double-hide is of great historical importance so experts will need to look at it first.”

  “Maybe we can find the treasure by next week and then Father can bring it to show-and-tell at school,” he said hopefully. “Ronan’s grandfather is letting him take his glass eye. When he was born, the doctor poked the real one out by accident with a fork.”

  “I think you meant forceps,” I said. “But that’s a horrible story.”

  “Ronan says he likes to frighten his grandmother. He told me that whenever she says, ‘Keep an eye on this for me, will you, luv?’ he pops it out and leaves it on the table.”

  “Oh dear!”

  “And Callum sa
ys he’s going to bring in a live snake. A python. He says it’s so big it could eat a horse—oh! Look, there’s Roxy!”

  Roxy’s panda car slowed down to let us pass by. She opened her window.

  “Afternoon, Master Harry,” she said, giving him a big smile. “How was school?”

  “I hate school.” Harry scowled and then brightened. “But Kat’s told me all about nearly finding the treasure in the secret chamber.”

  “Yes, isn’t it exciting?” said Roxy. “And perhaps tomorrow you’ll be able to go in there.”

  “Wicked!”

  “I was just on my way to see Iris actually,” said Roxy. “Is she home?”

  “She should be. Why?”

  I glanced over to her passenger seat and saw a telltale plastic shopping bag with very little inside. A peculiar feeling swept over me—and one I was becoming quite familiar with whenever I saw such a bag with a police officer. I knew from experience that whatever was in it was never good news.

  “Just a few questions,” said Roxy.

  “I’ll be ten minutes,” I said. “Why don’t you wait for me and we can see her together?”

  “Why?” said Roxy slyly. “Does Iris need someone to hold her hand?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll be only too happy to make you a cup of tea.”

  “Somehow,” said Roxy cryptically, “I doubt it.”

  Chapter Five

  There was silence in the kitchen when I walked in. Roxy stood with her back to the oak dresser that was full of Mum’s coronation china. She was clasping the plastic shopping bag to her chest. Mum feigned boredom but I could tell she was worried by the way she kept sighing. “Shall we have some tea?” I suggested.

  “Not for me, thanks,” said Roxy. “I don’t drink on duty.”

  “We’re waiting for Shawn,” Mum said. “Apparently.”

  “He took the twins to the dentist and now he’s dropping them off with his grandmother.”

  “Mrs. Cropper?” Mum seemed surprised.

  “No, Helen’s mum,” said Roxy. “She helps Shawn out after school.”