Mortmain Hall

by Martin Edwards

  “Gastropods or bivalves?”

  He blinked. “I’m an amateur, not an expert.”

  “A rank beginner.” She checked her watch. “We’d better get moving. I’m curious to see Mortmain Hall.”

  “My fossil hunting is sure to take me that way soon,” he said breezily.

  Rachel shook her head. “Just make sure you don’t fall off a cliff.”

  *

  “Mortmain Hall.”

  Trueman steered the Phantom around the last bend, easing to a halt as the rutted lane reached a gateway flanked by two old stone pillars topped by crumbling pineapples. The long journey was almost over. They were approaching the tip of the peninsula, Mortmain Head.

  The approach to the Hall was an avenue of lime trees bent and twisted by a century of gales. The house loomed up ahead, the angles of roof and chimneys outlined against a brilliant blue sky. A Victorian extravaganza in Gothic, it was an eccentric confection of battlements, pinnacles, and turrets. Ivy crawled over the morose grey stone. Even in the sun, Mortmain Hall looked drab and melancholy.

  “Such an eerie place.” Hetty Trueman was in the front of the car, next to her husband. “Sends a shiver down my spine.”

  The Phantom followed a winding drive with views of the sea on either side of the promontory. They glimpsed a domed rotunda lurking beyond a clump of wych elms. There was a disused tennis court, choked with bracken, and a tall dovecote from which grubby paint peeled. As they drew closer to an unkempt gravelled parking area, the Hall cast a large, irregular shadow.

  “Journey’s end.” Rachel’s eyes shone as they stopped in front of a gabled porch. Blood-red begonias spilled out of large urns on either side of the entrance.

  “Excited, aren’t you?” Martha whispered as her brother and his wife clambered out of the car.

  “It is what I live for,” Rachel murmured.

  “The thrill of the chase?”

  “The relentless inevitability of the hunt.” She hummed a bar or two of “D’ye Ken John Peel?” “From a check to a find, from a find to a view. You know how it ends.”

  Martha looked at her. “From a view to a death…”

  *

  “I hope your room is satisfactory,” Leonora Dobell said to Rachel in the front hall of the old house.

  “The views are magnificent. We’re right on top of the sea.”

  Leonora eyed her curiously. “Does it remind you of the island where you grew up?”

  “On Gaunt there are no cliffs,” Rachel said. “Only slippery rocks surrounded by the treacherous currents of the sound. Except at low tide, it’s cut off from the mainland.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “After the Judge died,” Rachel said, “I was glad to get away.”

  Leonora took her on a tour of the main rooms. The library was large and well stocked, with rows of ancient leather-bound tomes, although the shelves also revealed Leonora’s influence. William Roughead’s complete works were present, together with a long run of Notable British Trials. Rachel plucked out a book about the Oscar Slater case, and flicked through the pages.

  “Murder always fascinated me,” Leonora said. “For obvious reasons.”

  “You didn’t write about murder until after the war.”

  “It took a long time for me to recover from the shock of losing my parents,” Leonora said. “I retreated into myself. I’d have loved to go to university, but it was impossible, so I educated myself.”

  Rachel returned the book to its place. Let the woman talk. The similarities between the two of them were uncanny, but what intrigued her more were their differences.

  “I found work as a teacher, but small children are best taken in small doses. I don’t have a maternal bone in my body, and I hated every minute.” Leonora closed her eyes, remembering. “I suffered from years of poor health, living hand to mouth. What happened to my father led to my fascination with miscarriages of justice, and I adopted the Slaterbeck name. After the war, when I was settled here with time on my hands, I was able to achieve a long-held ambition, and work on a book.”

  They walked back through the front hall and into a long gallery with a marble fireplace, well-worn chesterfields, and narrow windows of stained glass which let in very little light. The dark-green walls were covered with gilt-framed paintings.

  “We still have several of the finest Yorkshire landscapes in private hands,” Leonora said. “Despite sending a dozen to auction.”

  “Your husband must find that heartbreaking,” Rachel murmured.

  Leonora’s mouth tightened. “Felix’s grandfather died at the turn of the century, and his father at the end of the war. Two sets of death duties were levied within a generation. This country confiscates landowners’ capital with a Communist zeal. Felix has been a home bird ever since he was wounded. He wants to stay at Mortmain for the rest of his life, and so do I. But one must be practical. We economise as much as we can on the servants, as will be evident during your stay. It isn’t enough. We have no choice but to realise the family assets.”

  “And your husband accepts the need to sell?”

  “Each time he complains, I remind him that Alaric, his grandfather, was a spendthrift who sold off large parcels of land. Oswyn, his father, was no better. At one time, all the local farmers were tenants of the Dobells. The estate has shrunk to a fraction of its original size. I’m simply carrying on an old family tradition.”

  Rachel stopped before a painting of Mortmain Hall at twilight. The artist had captured the eeriness of the architecture and the remoteness of the house’s clifftop setting. There was no mistaking the combination of masterly detail and vivid hues.

  “Holman Hunt.”

  “He stayed here as a guest of Alaric Dobell, and painted him in return for his hospitality while he explored the Yorkshire coast.”

  Leonora indicated a portrait of a tall, beaky-nosed man in a frock coat. His bearing was distinguished, but there was an oddly absent look in his brown eyes.

  “Alaric’s mind gave way in later years. There’s a family history of instability. This picture hints at his decline, long before it became apparent to others.”

  “Diagnosis by artist,” Rachel murmured. “Ingenious.”

  Leonora gave a faint smile. “When Millais came, he painted Felix’s father.”

  Oswyn Dobell’s portrait hung opposite the fireplace. Rachel saw a middle-aged man with fair hair and the family eyes and nose, leaning forward in his chair. The artist had captured a sense of suppressed energy. A glint of mischief in his eyes suggested he was about to rebuke Millais for making him sit still for so long.

  “You met Felix’s father?”

  “When I came here, Oswyn was old and plagued by arthritis. But for a Victorian, he was remarkably broad-minded. I felt as if we had something in common.”

  “Namely Felix?”

  “That wasn’t what I had in mind,” Leonora said drily. “No, Oswyn and I shared a contempt for convention. We judged people on their behaviour, not their birth.”

  “You sound bitter.”

  “Who wouldn’t be?” Colour rose in Leonora’s pallid cheeks. “Many a time, I said to myself that I’d have been no worse off if my father had killed my mother rather than being another victim. Until I changed my name, I felt like an outcast. People talked about me behind my back. Sometimes they gossiped within earshot. I didn’t know what to do with my life. And then the war came. I’d never dreamed of nursing, but it gave me a purpose.”

  “Here at Mortmain Hall,” Rachel said.

  “With thousands of men wounded in France, the ordinary hospitals were overwhelmed. Country houses like Mortmain were pressed into service. I lived in the North Riding, and joined the local VAD. I was sent here to help out. Felix’s wife was matron. She was a martinet; it ran in the family. Oswyn was infirm, and his sons were in France. What we went through was nothing compared to life in the trenches, but things were utterly chaotic. Nobody at Mortmain was a medical expert, apart from one old doctor who
was going senile, but I found myself caring for men who were suffering terribly. Even more than I had done. And eventually…”

  “Felix became your patient?”

  Leonora grunted. “Like Oswyn, I don’t care much about what other people think. I’m an outsider, the people in the village have always been suspicious of me. If you believe the local muckrakers, I married Felix for the Dobell fortune, or what was left of it. Why else would a woman marry an older man who was hopelessly crippled?”

  She put her hands on her hips and stared defiantly at Rachel. “I’ve never been a misty-eyed romantic.”

  Rachel returned her gaze. “I’m sure you’re not.”

  “I can’t deny craving comfort and respectability.” It was as if she were talking to herself. “When I accepted Felix’s proposal, it was because I had to look forward, not back. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Rachel said quietly. “I understand perfectly.”

  Leonora turned away from her. “In case you’re wondering, I haven’t forgotten that your father did mine a grievous wrong. The Judge’s summing-up was wicked. But it is clear to me that you are very different from him.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said again. “I am.”

  *

  “And this is my husband, Felix.”

  The heir to Mortmain Hall was hunched in a bath chair, propped up by pillows, with a plaid rug over his solitary knee, wearing a tartan dressing gown which had seen better days. A nurse in white cap and pinafore stood behind him. He was frail and wrinkled, with straggly grey hair and painfully thin arms poking out of striped pyjama sleeves. His face was a map of lines and his fingernails were bitten to the quick. Little was left of the playboy who had once left Mortmain for the bright lights of London.

  As Rachel shook his claw-like hand, she noticed its tremor. How long did the man have left to live? He’d been in his thirties when that German shell changed his life forever. To look at him today, you’d think he was seventy.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Mr Dobell.”

  “Do call me Felix.” The feeble hand flapped. Vestiges of charm lingered in the thin, reedy voice. “Daughter of a judge, hey? Got the same bug about murder as my beloved wife?”

  “I plead guilty and hope for mercy,” Rachel said. “Thank you for putting up with me. The Hall has such a wonderful situation, perched above the sea.”

  “Ha! We lost a corner of the garden when I was a boy. A stretch of lawn where my brother used to march me up and down, pretending we were soldiers.”

  His high-pitched laugh turned into a coughing fit. He blew his beaky nose and the nurse patted him on the back.

  “There, don’t go getting overexcited.” She glanced in the direction of his missing leg. “You did enough soldiering in your time. All right now?”

  “Yes, yes,” the invalid said. “This is my nurse, Bernice Cope. And heaven knows how she manages to cope with me, hey?”

  He cackled, a wild, irrational noise. The nurse, unflustered, took no notice.

  “How do you do, Miss Savernake.”

  They shook hands. Bernice Cope was dark-haired, heavily built, in her mid-thirties. Her features were plain, her expression severe, her fingers ringless. So far, she hadn’t spared Leonora Dobell a single glance.

  “It’s a lovely afternoon, Felix,” his wife said. “Why don’t you go out for a walk?”

  Felix’s eyelids twitched. The nurse gripped the bath chair, and answered for him. “We had a quarter of an hour on the cliff, didn’t we, Felix? But it was too hot. Come on, time for your afternoon nap.”

  Without more ado, she wheeled him away. Leonora watched her retreating back with undisguised hostility.

  “Treats him like a child, and pushes him around to suit herself,” she muttered. “Well, this sunshine won’t last forever. Thunderstorms are heading this way. Let’s take a turn around the grounds.”

  Without waiting for a reply, she headed through the door, shading her eyes from the sun’s harsh glare. Rachel followed her out, fishing out of her bag a pair of tinted glasses with pearl frames and leather blinders.

  “You don’t care for Nurse Cope?”

  Leonora sniffed. “Six months she has been here, and it seems like a lifetime. Felix dotes on her, and she struts around as though she owns the place. No respect. You heard her call my husband by his first name? As for her ideas about nursing, they are ridiculous.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Quite apart from lacking one leg, my husband suffers from an assortment of maladies. The palsy, a weak heart, depression. His health has deteriorated steadily, and his mind is failing, but he’s stubborn, won’t give up without a fight. I’m sure he’s capable of lasting a little longer with the right care.”

  “Don’t you think Bernice Cope cares for him?”

  “Oh, she cares for him, all right. After a fashion.” She pointed to their left. “This way, Rachel, we’ll take a circular tour.”

  “You suspect Felix of being sweet on her?” Rachel asked.

  “My husband always had a roving eye. He adores all his nurses, and this woman is no exception, but it’s a long time since he was a debonair man-about-town. He can’t do anything more than ogle.” Her smile was sardonic. “Felix has married one nurse, and that’s plenty, don’t you think?”

  They followed a path leading to a walled garden. The door to the garden was shut, and the handle rusty. The wall was lichen-stained, the mortar flaking.

  “It can’t be easy for you,” Rachel said.

  “I’ve established a modus vivendi. Nowadays, I spend a good deal of my time in London. Of course these surroundings are beautiful. Each evening without fail I take a turn around the grounds before the sun sets. Simply taking in the wild loveliness of the place. Unfortunately, my husband is querulous and increasingly irrational. I don’t blame him. The war tore him apart, quite literally. It’s a wonder he has kept going so long, but it hasn’t been easy. In time, each of his nurses becomes frustrated and bored. With Felix and with Mortmain Hall.”

  “Bernice Cope doesn’t seem bored.”

  “I’d like to think that she’ll be gone soon enough. She brags to the other servants about her handsome beau, though they’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him.” Leonora’s lip curled. “Unfortunately, the way she makes a mystery about her lover convinces me that he is a figment of her overheated imagination.”

  Beyond the walled garden, on the tip of the promontory, there were no trees. The land narrowed to a point. They could hear and smell the sea before they saw the azure water stretching out on either side below them.

  “Breathtaking,” Rachel said.

  “Gorgeous on a fine day,” Leonora said. “When it’s foggy and freezing, when the wind lashes the waves against the rocks, Mortmain Head is as welcoming as the North Pole. You see that scar?”

  She pointed to a jagged edge of the grounds. “Years ago, during a storm, there was a landslip. A quarter of an acre was lost. The bays on either side of us aren’t sandy enough for day trippers, the currents are too dangerous for swimmers. We see an occasional hiker, or birdwatcher, or amateur geologist. Apart from that, we’re never disturbed. The crowds who flock to Scarborough and Bridlington give us a wide berth. A colony of seals used to come ashore to pup. Now even they have abandoned Mortmain.”

  “Peace and quiet. How heavenly in these troubled times.”

  “There are disadvantages to being off the beaten track. Finding capable staff is next to impossible. It’s even harder to keep them after they’ve tasted an east-coast winter. With so many men out of work, you’d expect employers to have the whip hand, but no. I can only pay a pittance. Good servants can do better in the big houses in Scarborough or Whitby. So can good nurses.”

  “And Nurse Cope?”

  Leonora exhaled. “The local quack indulges her, but he’s a fool. So Felix is regularly dosed with heaven knows what. Opium, Indian hemp, henbane.”

  Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Unorthodox.”

  “She claims they
alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “When I was in the Voluntary Aid Detachment, I worked in a pharmacy for a few months before I was sent to Mortmain. I can assure you, Miss Savernake, I know a thing or two about lethal medicines.”

  Rachel nodded, knowing that there was more to come.

  Leonora took a breath. “If you ask me, she’s poisoning him.”

  22

  Rachel and Leonora walked to the crest of Mortmain Head in a silence broken only by the screams of the seagulls above them and the splash of waves below. The heat was unrelenting. Even on this most exposed point of the peninsula, Rachel felt only the faintest breath of breeze. She looked over the cliff’s ragged edge. The drop to the sea was dizzying.

  Turning to face Leonora, she said, “You suspect Nurse Cope of doing your husband harm?”

  Leonora sighed. “Her kind of treatment is more dangerous than the disease. Felix should be good for a year or two yet, but that woman might easily kill him off sooner.”

  Resuming their journey around the headland, they descended the slope in the direction of the Hall, skipping through thick brambles and nettle patches. At one point, they passed a rocky and forbidding trail which followed a precarious route along the vertiginous cliff face before disappearing out of sight.

  “This is an ancient landscape,” Leonora said. “Folk say you can find dinosaur footprints on ancient blocks of sandstone. The cliffs are riddled with caves, and that path takes you to them. But you need a head for heights.”

  “Did smugglers hide contraband in caves?”

  “Robin Hood’s Bay to the north was the smugglers’ haven. The village streets are a maze, with endless places to hide from the excise men. Mortmain’s caves had more romantic associations, if the folk tales are to be believed.”

  “Really?”

  “To this day, the traditions are kept alive. I heard a malicious rumour that Nurse Cope took a blanket out with her so that she could cavort with her young man in the quiet of a rocky chamber.”

  “Mortmain is full of stories,” Rachel murmured.