A Killer Ball at Honeychurch Hall

by Hannah Dennison

“Slaughtering a few trees today, are we?” I said dryly. “I wish you’d at least try to use a computer.”

  “I’m perfectly happy with Daddy’s Olivetti, thank you. Besides, it’s brought me a lot of luck. Oh—” Mum gave a sigh. “I wonder what he would have made of all this. Do you think he would have been proud of me?”

  Given that Dad never knew about my mother’s secret writing life and all her undisclosed earnings that were being squirreled away in an offshore account, somehow I doubted it.

  Mum unearthed two coasters for our drinks in one of the pigeonholes.

  “How is the new book coming along?” I asked.

  “I’m still fiddling about with the story,” said Mum. “But thanks to Pandora—oh, don’t look like that—her discovery has given me a brilliant idea. In fact, it’s reminded me of something I’d forgotten about. Something I’d buried.”

  “Buried? Not a body, I hope.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m quite excited actually.”

  “What is it?”

  “Oh—I can’t tell you.” Mum beamed. “Now, pull up that stool, bring over the round table, put the peanuts down there and let’s take a look at my trees.”

  I did as I was told.

  “Wow!” I was impressed. “You’ve filled in a lot of blanks. You should get Rupert to pay you for your services!”

  Over the last few months, the branches of both family trees had been steadily spreading. As various details came to light, Mum added her Post-it Notes.

  “I can start the English Civil War now.” Mum passed me a notepad and a pen. “Seeing that Dobson oil painting was very helpful.”

  “The problem is, how do we know that whoever did Pandora in, lived or worked at the Hall?”

  “Because whoever put her into the double-hide had to have known where it was,” said Mum. “Maybe it was Edith’s brother? As the thirteenth Earl of Grenville, he must have known about the location.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But that’s no use to us now, is it, considering—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I wonder how the purse and book came to be left in the first hide,” I said. “When did Rupert say the Tudor wing was sealed off?”

  “Before he was born. That would be…” Mum traced her pencil down the line to Rupert’s square. “In 1963. Plenty of time for evidence to be planted.”

  Mum took a huge gulp of her gin and tonic. I snatched up a handful of peanuts.

  We fell into a comfortable silence as we both studied the family trees of both above and below stairs. Mum had given each family below stairs their own color. A series of interconnecting lines showed that there had been a lot of intermarrying going on.

  “Isn’t it illegal to marry first cousins?” I said.

  “Oh, it’s just to avoid birth defects,” said Mum airily. “Anyway, our queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are both great-great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria so they’re related. And Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins.”

  “Well, don’t go marrying Alfred,” I said.

  “Very funny. You should be a comedienne.”

  “You’ve done a really great job with these family trees—especially below stairs.” I pointed to a list in the margin labeled “Servant Hierarchy.”

  “Obviously they don’t have all those people below stairs now,” said Mum.

  I read:

  SERVED, BUT NOT CONSIDERED SERVANTS—CHAMBERLAIN, LAND STEWARD, HOUSE STEWARD; SENIOR SERVANTS—GOVERNESS, NURSE, COACHMAN, HEAD GARDENER, GAMEKEEPER; UPPER SERVANTS—BUTLER, HOUSEKEEPER, VALET, LADY’S MAID, COOK; LOWER SERVANTS—FOOTMAN (1ST AND 2ND), UNDER BUTLER, GROOM, STABLE BOY, BOOT BOY, HALL BOY, GROUNDSKEEPER, PARLORMAID, CHAMBERMAID, UPPER LAUNDRY MAID, STILL-ROOM MAID, MAIDS-OF-ALL-WORK (“BETWEEN MAIDS”), UNDER COOK, KITCHEN MAID, SCULLERY MAID; UNCLASSIFIED SERVANT—GATEKEEPER.

  Mum had begun to pencil in the positions held by each of the five main families—Pugsley, Banks, Stark, Cropper, Laney, and Jones—who served below stairs.

  “I’ve only gone as far back as the 1800s,” said Mum. “It’s very time consuming.”

  “You could save yourself a lot of trouble by using the Internet,” I pointed out.

  Mum ignored me. “Do you see how each family kept within its own station within the servant hierarchy?”

  I studied the diagram again. “So from top to bottom in order of importance would be Laney, Cropper, Stark, Banks, Jones and then Pugsley?”

  Mum nodded.

  “Poor Eric Pugsley is at the bottom of the heap so when he married Vera, it was above his station,” I said. “Vera was Joan Stark’s daughter. Joan must have been around in the fifties, Mum.”

  “She was, but we may as well forget about her,” said Mum. “She’s got Alzheimer’s, remember?”

  I did remember. Joan Stark was living in a residential care home called Sunny Hill Lodge. “What about this thread—Land Steward. You’ve just written in Laney.”

  “He’s her ladyship’s land agent now,” said Mum. “That’s who I dealt with when I bought the Carriage House.”

  “What about his forebears? It’s just blank.”

  “I can’t trace everyone, Katherine,” Mum grumbled. “And really that job is obsolete. I mean, believe it or not there is no chamberlain or boot boy here at the Hall anymore, either.”

  “Laney—wait—you won’t believe this.” I told Mum about my visitor. “Bryan Laney told me he used to live around here. What’s more, he’s in his seventies. I bet he was in Little Dipperton in the fifties.”

  “Possibly,” said Mum slowly.

  “You should put his name on the board.”

  “I suppose I could.” Mum hesitated.

  “He has to be connected to the Hall. We should tell Shawn. Don’t you think it’s odd that he should suddenly turn up out of the blue?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “By the way Bryan is spelled with a y.”

  “You’re so bossy.” Mum duly wrote Bryan Laney on a Post-it and stuck it on the board. “And you say he’s going to do a bit of D-I-Y for you?”

  “Do a spot of tiling, hang a few mirrors and redo the shelves in the pantry—that kind of thing.”

  Mum’s eyes filled with tears. “I wish Daddy were alive. He would have loved to have hung your mirrors.”

  I reached over and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I know, Mum.”

  “Oh, this is hopeless!” Mum threw her pencil across the room. “Let the police do their job is what I say. I’ve got a book to write and you’ve got a business to run!”

  I reached for another handful of peanuts and shoveled them in.

  Mum regarded me with what looked like pity and gave a heavy sigh.

  “What?” I said.

  “Do be careful, darling,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “You don’t want to let yourself go.”

  “They’re just peanuts.”

  “You’ve put on a little bit of weight and you know what they say?”

  “No.”

  “A minute in your mouth and a month on your hips.”

  “I’m enjoying eating what I like if you don’t mind,” I said. “I’ve had to starve myself for years to compensate for those ten pounds everyone gains on camera.”

  “And you’ve stopped wearing makeup.”

  It was true. I had gotten lazy. “It’s because I’m with the horses a lot and I don’t think they care.”

  “Are you in mourning?”

  “For what?”

  “David.”

  “I’m over him, Mum.” It had been months since David and I had officially broken up. I’d come to realize that I wasn’t so much missing the man as missing the dream of what our future together would have been.

  “Good,” said Mum. “Well, I suppose you’ll find out sooner or later.”

  To my dismay, my stomach gave a lurch. “Find out what?”

  Mum stood up and retrieved a newspaper from behind a cushion on the wingback chair. It was the
dreaded Daily Post and was folded to Star Stalkers, a celebrity column written by David’s estranged wife and my nemesis, Trudy. A photo of Trudy accompanied her byline.

  “She really should do something about her hair,” said Mum. “She always looks like she’s going to kill off a few puppies.”

  I had to agree. With her sharp chin and black bob with a white streak, Trudy resembled the Disney character Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians.

  “I’m really not interested in what Trudy has to say, Mum.”

  “But you are over David,” Mum insisted.

  Despite my earlier protestations that I was, my heart began to hammer in my chest. “Is this about David?”

  So David had gotten divorced after all. Charming, sophisticated, wealthy, and as one of the world’s leading art investigators, I knew he wouldn’t remain single for long.

  Mum patted my knee as she passed me the newspaper. “I am so sorry, dear.”

  I stared at the headline in disbelief:

  RENEWING OUR VOWS UNDER THE HAWAIIAN SUN

  A color photograph showed David and Trudy standing arm in arm on a sandy beach with the ocean crashing behind them. They were wreathed in flower garlands. Trudy wore a sheer white dress and David was in white shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. On either side of them stood their two teenagers—Chloe and Sam—also dressed in white. They were one big happy family.

  I was so shocked I couldn’t say a word. After all the years of promising his heart to me, he had stayed with Trudy, after all. It was a double blow.

  “I do think his legs aren’t his strong point,” said Mum. “They’re like a chicken’s.”

  I handed the newspaper back in silence, went over to the window and stared blindly out.

  Mum joined me and put her arm around my shoulders.

  “I’m fine,” I whispered. And in a strange way, I was. Whatever feelings I had left for him had died right there. For good. Forever.

  “I know you are,” she said gently.

  We stood looking out at Cromwell Meadows where frost glittered under an inky night sky full of stars—something I never saw in London. To my left a roped-off square marked the entrance to the underground tunnel; to my right stood Eric’s scrapyard. A pyramid of tires and discarded pieces of farm machinery joined the many “end-of-life” vehicles that littered the field, coated in crystals. The car crusher machine, a forklift truck and a stack of pulverized cars stood next to the battered caravan that Eric called his “office.”

  A light shone in the window. Eric’s Massey Ferguson tractor, his old Land Rover and an unfamiliar green-and-white VW camper van were parked outside nose to nose.

  “What on earth is Eric doing working so late?” said Mum. “Looks like he has company.”

  “I think I’m going to go and talk to him,” I said suddenly.

  “Whatever for?” Mum exclaimed. “You won’t make David jealous now by throwing yourself at those eyebrows.”

  “You don’t think so?” I smiled. “No, I just want to ask him something.”

  “Maybe he’s entertaining a lady friend.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll knock before I enter.”

  “But why do you want to talk to him?” Mum persisted.

  I wracked my brain. “I’m just curious about his mother-in-law and her Alzheimer’s. You never know. Maybe Joan might remember something.”

  “I doubt it,” said Mum.

  “But isn’t it true that sometimes people who suffer from the disease remember the past far more clearly than the present?”

  “Maybe.” My mother gave a mock sigh. “So I assume that means I’ll be cooking tonight?”

  “Yes. Love you, Mum.” I kissed her cheek and left the room.

  Chapter Seven

  I pulled on a warm coat, woolen hat and gloves and grabbed a flashlight. Of course I hadn’t wanted to talk to Eric. I just needed to be alone with my thoughts. I knew the day would come when David would meet another woman but never in my wildest imaginings did I think he would reconcile with Trudy.

  I cut across the courtyard and dragged open the corrugated iron gate to Eric’s scrapyard. The warning TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED: POACHERS WILL BE SHOT flared in the beam of my flashlight. I wondered when was the last time someone was shot for poaching a rabbit.

  As I strode across the crisp grass I turned back to see if Mum was still at the window. If she wasn’t, I planned to take a walk through the woods and circle back to the Carriage House. Unfortunately, I saw her silhouette watching me. She waved. I waved back. Now I’d have to visit Eric.

  I knew she was worried about me. I knew that she tried hard to distract me by making silly jokes or asking for my help with her stories. She was happy here and I knew I would be, too. Eventually.

  Despite Mum insisting she could read the tea leaves, she always said that no one knew what was around the corner. If someone had told me a year ago that I would be living in the middle of nowhere without David or the paparazzi, dressed in jodhpurs with my hair crushed under a hairnet, I would have laughed.

  Yet, Honeychurch Hall meant something to my mother. For a childhood spent on the road, it was the one place that remained constant and now she was back for good. I imagined how her summers must have been. Magical, I suspected, as all summers are when looked back through rose-tinted spectacles.

  I reached Eric’s old caravan and heard the murmur of male voices. At least Eric wasn’t “entertaining.”

  For a moment I hesitated, then rapped smartly on the caravan door.

  The talking ceased immediately, then, “Were you expecting someone?” I heard a voice say.

  “No.” There was a twitch from a grubby net curtain and Eric’s face pressed against the glass. To my surprise he smiled. “It’s Kat. I forgot she was coming over tonight.”

  It was obviously untrue but definitely piqued my curiosity.

  Eric threw open the caravan door. “Come on in.”

  I stepped up into the living area of the cramped office and was instantly assaulted by the smell of stale cigarettes and alcohol along with the usual musty aroma that was peculiar to caravans.

  “Rapunzel!” Bryan waved from one of the two red banquettes. He raised a plastic tumbler in a toast. “We meet again.”

  “Bryan!”

  “You know each other?” Eric sounded confused. “How?”

  “We met earlier,” I said. “Do you know each other?”

  “We do now,” said Bryan smoothly. “Give the girl a drink, Eric, Where are your manners?” He gestured to a bottle of Captain Morgan rum on the bay window ledge.

  “Not for me, thanks,” I said.

  “Go on,” said Bryan jovially. “Just one.” By the color of his red nose I suspected he had definitely had more than one, and even Eric had the glassy-eyed look of someone who was three-sheets to the wind.

  “Go on, Kat, please.” Eric sounded unusually desperate.

  “Just one,” I said. “But small.”

  “Take a seat,” said Bryan magnanimously.

  I perched on the edge of the stained banquette opposite. As Eric poured me a glass I looked around his so-called office. I’d never been invited inside before. It was a typical six-berth layout with the two banquettes that Bryan and I were sitting on that could be converted into beds. Next to the door was a kitchen sink and primer stove. Opposite that was an island table that could fold away to allow for a Murphy bed to pull down from the rear wall.

  Engine parts were spread over sheets of newspaper on every available surface and everything seemed smudged with axle grease.

  At the far end I caught a glimpse of what would have been the main bedroom but looked as if Eric used it as his office.

  “Bryan here was telling me all about his life in the Navy.”

  “Really?” I made a mental note for Mum’s family tree.

  “Joined up at eighteen. Traveled the world,” said Bryan. “I was just telling Eric that it’s time to put down roots in my old age.”

  “He’s look
ing for work,” said Eric.

  “She knows.” Bryan nodded at me. “We’re meeting tomorrow up at Jane’s, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.” And then I remembered I hadn’t actually mentioned Jane’s Cottage. “Are you related to Laney—I’m afraid I don’t know his first name—the dowager countess’s land agent?”

  Bryan seemed startled but then smiled. “He’s a distant cousin.”

  “Maybe he can help you find a job in the area?”

  “Yeah. Maybe he might.” Bryan took a large draught of rum.

  “So, you must have lived around here in the fifties?” I said.

  “Yep,” he said. “Right in the village. Not like Eric here whose folks got one of the estate cottages—or Joan.”

  “You know Joan Stark?”

  “She was Banks back then,” said Bryan. “I was sorry to hear about her Alzheimer’s. Bloody shame that. She grew up at Jane’s Cottage, you know. Damn good with a twelve-bore. Joan was a crack shot.”

  I made a mental note to tell Mum that, too.

  “I’ve got good memories of Honeychurch back then,” Bryan went on. “Those were the days.”

  “Do you remember Bushman’s Fair and Traveling Boxing Emporium?” I said suddenly.

  “Sure I do. I boxed a bit myself.” Bryan cricked his neck and flexed his knuckles. I wondered why men always felt compelled to do that. “Did a fair bit of boxing in the Navy as well.”

  Eric stirred. “Yeah well, Kat’s mother—”

  “There was this one girl who fair broke my heart, she did,” Bryan said. “Always ready for a romp in the hay. She was the one who got away.” He paused for a moment, brows furrowed. “Iris—that was her name, Iris.”

  I practically choked as the rum shot up my nose and even Eric spluttered.

  “Are you alright?” said Bryan.

  “Fine!” I muttered as I tried to compose myself. “The rum…”

  “She was a stunner,” said Bryan. “Electra! The Twenty-seven-thousand Volts Girl!”

  “She was … what?” I remembered the flyer. “Iris was Electra?”

  Eric laughed. “Bloody hell!”

  “Iris had long dark hair and deep violet eyes. She reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor. All the local lads were in love with Iris.” Bryan grinned. “Let me see, how did it go, ‘Expect shocks, sparks and an electric atmosphere … but don’t get too close!’ That’s how she was introduced and I got far too close. I’ll never forget her.”