by T E Kinsey
We retired well after midnight, but not before I had discreetly let the boys know that it was now Lady Hardcastle’s birthday.
‘You should have told us sooner,’ said Barty. ‘We could have got her something.’
‘I could,’ I said. ‘But I had no idea you were both going to pitch up on our doorstep tonight, now did I?’
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to think of something.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Your good wishes will be more than sufficient. I just wanted to make sure you knew why we were making a fuss of her in the morning, that’s all.’
I left them to ‘kip down in the best doss-house in the West’.
Breakfast in bed was most definitely called for on birthdays. I let the old girl sleep in (she was forty-two now, after all, and needed her rest, the poor thing) but by half-past eight I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. With Miss Jones’s help I put a pre-breakfast tray together, with soft-boiled eggs, buttered toast, coffee, more toast, and a pot of jam.
I knocked on the bedroom door and entered without waiting for a reply.
‘Happy birthday,’ I said excitedly as she stirred beneath the covers. A tangled cloud of dark hair emerged from the blanket cocoon she’d been nested in.
‘Good morning,’ she mumbled. ‘Is that coffee I smell?’
‘Birthday coffee for the birthday girl,’ I said. I set the tray on the bed and threw open the curtains with a flourish, whose exuberance the thin wintry light dribbling in through the window entirely failed to live up to.
‘Presents?’ she said as she sat up.
‘On the tray,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said with the tiniest trace of a pout. ‘An envelope. You shouldn’t have.’
‘Just open it, you miserable old biddy,’ I said.
She lifted the flap and pulled out the contents. She set several pieces of paper aside and read the letter.
‘“Dear Sis”,’ she said. ‘Oh, it’s from Harry, how lovely. “Dear Sis, Lavinia and I have been driven almost barmy by the ceaseless bickering between various branches of her illustrious family and have decided to give the old cathedral-and-baronial-hall-nosebag a miss. Instead, we plan to elope, and to the devil with the lot of them. Please find enclosed two tickets to Gretna Green. Strong-arm has all the details. Happy birthday, old girl. Love, as always, Harry.” What a lovely treat. When is it?’
‘We leave first thing tomorrow,’ I said.
‘“First thing”?’ she said warily.
‘The train leaves Chipping Bevington at nine-fifteen in the morning.’
She groaned.
‘Buck up,’ I said. ‘It’s the start of an adventure. We travel to Gretna Green, where we meet Harry and Lady Lavinia. Once they’ve done whatever it is they do in the blacksmith’s shop at Gretna Green, we leave the happy couple to their honeymoon and we’re off on another train to Edinburgh. We’ll be staying at the North British Hotel, courtesy of the groom, who is also treating us to dinner in lieu of a posh wedding breakfast.’
‘Actually, that does sound rather lovely,’ she said.
‘There’s lots to do in Edinburgh,’ I said. ‘And we need a break.’
‘We do. You’re right.’ She cracked her egg. ‘But what did you get me?’
I reached into the pocket of my apron and produced a small box.
‘I had this made for you,’ I said.
She opened the box to find a brooch in the shape of two mice, one in a top hat and morning coat, the other in flat cap and tweeds.
By the time Lady Hardcastle made her way downstairs, the boys were up and doing . . . something or other in the morning room.
‘I’m not sure we should let houseguests hide themselves away in the morning room any more,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Who knows what they might be getting up to in there. We’ll probably wake up tomorrow to find that they’ve been murdering local musicians in some sort of plot to become Gloucestershire’s only ragtime rhythm section.’
‘I think it’s a good deal more innocent than that,’ I said. ‘I’ll just check whether it’s all right to go in there yet.’
‘Have you two nearly finished?’ I asked as I popped my head around the door.
‘All done,’ said Barty.
‘You can send her in,’ said Skins.
I stood aside and held the door open. ‘Please, my lady, do go in. I’ll get Edna to bring breakfast through.’
By the time I rejoined them, they were sitting around the table. Lady Hardcastle had yet more paper in front of her.
‘It’s a day for treats,’ she said. ‘They’ve not only made me this enchanting birthday card . . .’ – she held up a piece of folded foolscap; they had drawn a caricature sketch of themselves with the caption Happy Birthday to a regular ragtime gal – ‘. . . but they’ve also given me this suspiciously unofficial-looking handwritten invitation to the Rag-a-Muffin club at a time of my choosing. There’s even a promise of complimentary cocktails.’
‘We know the management,’ said Skins.
‘It’s all completely above board,’ said Barty.
‘It’s a splendid gift,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Thank you very much, boys.’
Edna arrived with yet more food.
I got Miss Jones to make the musicians some sandwiches for the train. I also managed to find a couple of bottles of beer in the larder, though I was glad I wasn’t going to be around when they opened them – heaven alone knows when we bought them.
They’d thought ahead and had instructed the chap with the dog cart who plied his trade at Chipping Bevington station to pick them up at noon. We waved them off at the door and they loaded themselves on to the cart. I was about to close the door when I saw Skins trotting back down the path.
‘Did you forget something?’ I said.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you see . . . the thing is . . . well . . . what I mean to say . . .’
I smiled and raised my eyebrows, encouraging him to go on.
‘I . . . umm . . . was sort of wondering . . .’
Barty was clearly growing impatient. ‘Hurry up, Skins!’ he shouted. ‘We’ll miss the bleedin’ train.’
‘Yes . . . well . . . you see . . .’ Skins mumbled.
‘Seriously, mate,’ shouted Barty. ‘We’ve got a job tonight.’
‘Er . . . yes . . . well, I’d better go, then,’ said Skins, and ran back down the path to the waiting dog cart.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Lady Hardcastle when I’d shut the door.
‘I’m not entirely certain,’ I said. ‘I think I might have been paid court. To. Or however you might like to say it.’
‘But you’re not certain.’
‘It was very hard to tell.’
‘I’m sure we’ll see them again.’
‘I’m sure we will, my lady,’ I said. ‘But for now I have to pack for Scotland.’
Author’s Note
In the early days of moving pictures, it was common for filmmakers or actors to stand to the side of the screen and narrate the action. By 1909 this had fallen out of fashion but I felt it would have been exactly the sort of thing Nolan Cheetham would have done, and I’m assured by my tame expert that it wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows in a small village like the fictional Littleton Cotterell.
Similarly, the practice of filming local folk during the day and showing them the results for a fee in the evening had fallen out of fashion by 1905, but it would still have been possible to amuse villagers in this way, especially if the film were being shot by one of their own (in this case, Lady Hardcastle).
Speaking of Lady Hardcastle, she’s quite the innovator. Stop-motion animation techniques had been around for quite a while, but they were far from commonplace, even in 1909. I thought it would be fun to have her as an amateur pioneer.
In case you were wondering, there is no Bishop of Rochdale.
On 4 November 1909, the moon was in its final quarter and didn’t rise over the west of England until after 10 p.m. I
know because I looked it up. Nevertheless, I needed a full moon to make the events of that evening visible so I wrote one and had it high in the sky by 7 p.m. I hope you don’t mind.
Despite the way it’s repeatedly used in fiction, tetrodotoxin (pufferfish venom) can’t be used to fake death, it can only be used to kill you. Nevertheless, it persists in stories of voodoo rituals and there is some evidence that Haitian zombie powder contains small amounts of pufferfish venom; it is still suggested that it might account for the stories of people returning from apparent death.
Hamlet the Great Dane’s appearance in the story is by way of being an affectionate nod to the memory of my mother’s cousin Beryl, who died while I was writing the book. She played a strong and loving part in my childhood and I miss her. Almost as much, I miss one of her dogs, a ‘blue’ Great Dane who genuinely did rejoice in the name of Hamlet. He was boisterous, wilful, and clumsy (a congenital defect meant that the inner bones of his forelegs – the radius – grew faster than the outer – the ulna – leaving his front paws splayed out and difficult to control). One of his favourite pastimes was to stand with his wonky front legs on a high retaining wall at the end of the front garden and loom over passers-by, at whom he would joyously bark. He never – to my knowledge, at least – knocked down a small crowd of people, but I’m sure he would have loved to, had he ever had the opportunity.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Dr Peter Walsh for sharing his extensive expert knowledge of turn-of-the-twentieth-century British cinema. I probably owe him at least one more lunch.
I am also inordinately grateful to Jo Webster-Green, whose painstaking cataloguing of Lady Hardcastle’s previous exploits has saved me from making many a mistake with characters and their histories.
And of course, a massive, heartfelt ‘thank you’ to the team at Thomas & Mercer. I’m most especially grateful to my two (count ’em, two) wonderful editors, Jane Snelgrove and Victoria Pepe, without whose professional and personal support during a trying year none of this would have been possible. And I can’t leave out Hatty Stiles, either, because that would just be rude.
About the Author
Photo © 2018 Clifton Photographic Company
T E Kinsey grew up in London and read history at Bristol University. He worked for a number of years as a magazine features writer before falling into the glamorous world of the Internet, where he edited content for a very famous entertainment website for quite a few years more. After helping to raise three children, learning to scuba dive and to play the drums and the mandolin (though never, disappointingly, all at the same time), he decided the time was right to get back to writing. A Picture of Murder is the fourth novel in a series of mysteries starring Lady Hardcastle. There is also a short story, ‘Christmas at The Grange’. His website is at tekinsey.uk and you can follow him on Twitter – @tekinsey – as well as on Facebook: www.facebook.com/tekinsey.