Death at the Wychbourne Follies

by Amy Myers

  Nell did her best, obediently following Mr Trotter and Lady Clarice as they led the group to the various haunting grounds of Calliope (who liked the west wing corridor), Adelaide (who liked one of the empty guest bedrooms), Violet – how could she have forgotten one of her favourite ghosts, dear, sweet Violet? Nell wondered. Ah well, too late to concentrate on her now.

  So far the group had been relatively well behaved, but a few giggles were hastily being stifled by the time the group returned to the Yellow Drawing Room.

  ‘And now, Mr Trotter,’ Lady Clarice declared, ‘we are ready for the Gaiety photograph.’

  Afraid she might give way to a grin, Nell tried to concentrate on the Gaiety, while Lady Ansley, Lady Kencroft, Mrs Reynolds, Miss Maxwell, the Jarretts, Mr Heydock and Mr Rocke solemnly assembled on and around one of the large sofas.

  ‘Gerald?’ Lady Clarice summoned her brother sharply.

  ‘Charles and I don’t count,’ Lord Ansley replied. ‘We were mere mashers at the Gaiety door.’

  ‘Do come, Gerald,’ Lady Ansley pleaded.

  She’s scared, Nell realized with alarm. And it wasn’t just Lady Ansley. Everyone here was on edge. Perhaps it was her imagination but in the gloom of the flickering lamps, with Mr Trotter endlessly fiddling with his camera amid total silence, it would be all too easy to believe that the spirits of the Gaiety were gathering.

  THREE

  And still the snow drifted relentlessly down. No good waiting any longer. It was Saturday morning, already ten o’clock and Nell had just returned from a discouraging word with Mr Fairweather about her planned celeriac niçoise for tonight. So that was off the menu. Ah well, she’d have to think of something else. Pommes de terre Anas with a dash of anchovy perhaps? Hardly surprisingly, the early morning deliveries of flowers and vegetables to the house had been badly affected by the weather, but a little persuasion had led to his yielding some chicory and asparagus from the heated forcing sheds.

  All she had to do was discuss the menu changes with Lady Ansley and that shouldn’t be difficult. Last night’s spirit photography session had gone unexpectedly smoothly, as had even that last session in the Yellow Drawing Room. No ghosts had appeared, but Mr Trotter had been convinced that the Gaiety spirits were around them. No one had contradicted him.

  The Follies this evening would present further challenges, though. Indeed, they had already begun. She had heard from Mr Peters that inconveniently the snow was not heavy enough to cancel the Follies, which meant that scenery, furniture and props were being conveyed to the Coach and Horses by Farmer Pearson’s wagons and the old governess cart as most of the motor cars (including her own) and vans were refusing to start.

  ‘At least horses don’t get snowbound,’ she’d commented.

  ‘Shooting’s been cancelled again,’ Mr Peters had told her gloomily.

  Another challenge. This one would lead once again to disgruntled gentlemen being baulked of their weekend pleasures, because there would be no shooting tomorrow either, as no shooting would take place on a Sunday.

  When Nell arrived in the Velvet Room, she was relieved to find Lady Ansley looking more cheerful than she had expected.

  ‘Were you happy with the rehearsal yesterday?’ Nell asked, once the menus for the high tea and the late supper were agreed. Nell hadn’t been sure that the soup and light buffet for supper would meet with approval – no leeks, no spinach, Mr Fairweather had informed her grimly.

  ‘Remarkably few hiccups, thankfully,’ Lady Ansley replied, passing Nell’s proposals without a murmur. ‘Richard seemed happy with it anyway, although judging by what is going on with the scenery removal this morning, Sophy seems to be taking charge.’

  From what Nell had seen of the rehearsal while serving the tea yesterday, the Follies would hardly qualify for the London Palladium, but it was certainly passable and she was looking forward to the evening ahead.

  ‘I’m glad to say,’ Lady Ansley continued, ‘that Mr Jarrett has now agreed to perform at the Coach and Horses, and Mrs Jarrett and I are much relieved. Miss Maxwell too is content – and that is a triumph. Mrs Reynolds was not pleased about appearing with Mr Heydock on stage but has now dropped her objections; Mr Heydock has professed himself delighted. I admit that’s surprising, but it suggests all will go smoothly.’

  Nevertheless, Nell didn’t miss the sudden anxious glance from Lady Ansley.

  ‘And the spirit photographs?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘Mr Trotter will have them ready late this afternoon. He is busy developing and printing them now. I do hope …’ Lady Ansley paused. ‘I have to confess, Nell, that I don’t know what to hope. Should I hope that the photographs will reveal Wychbourne ghosts hovering over us, which will delight Lady Clarice but scare the more sceptical among us who have hitherto believed them to be mere legend? Or should I hope that no such ghosts will appear, in which case I fear Lady Clarice will be bitterly disappointed?’

  Another pause, and then she added: ‘And what if these photographs do reveal the Guv’nor or worse?’

  Careful, Nell, she warned herself. The shadow of Mary Ann Darling might be hovering. ‘We could hope for a few murky shadows that would please both,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘You could perhaps put a name to such shadows, if need be.’ Lady Ansley managed a laugh.

  ‘An excellent idea,’ Nell said gravely, hoping that had been a joke, as she wouldn’t be present when they were looking at the photographs.

  ‘And of course you must be present when Mr Trotter shows us the results this afternoon,’ Lady Ansley said with a straight face.

  Nell inwardly groaned. The less she saw of Mr Trotter the better. He seemed to be popping up everywhere, but at least he was a diversion, perhaps providing a calm before the storm. The sort of calm before the milk boils over? she wondered.

  Back to her own domain, though. All seemed calm enough in the kitchen.

  She and the other upper servants (to use the old parlance though they rarely used it nowadays) quite often took their lunch in the servants’ hall together with the rest of the staff, instead of dining by themselves in the butler’s pantry. Today there was a new member among them, Miss Jenny Smith, lady’s maid for Lady Ansley (and Lady Helen on request). She had not appeared at breakfast or last evening, so Nell had been curious to meet her.

  Miss Smith was from one of the London agencies, and proved an entirely different kettle of fish from her predecessor, Miss Checkham; she was lively, pretty and seemed to have an all too obvious mind of her own, judging by her domination of the scene when Nell arrived.

  There was only one topic of conversation among the twenty or so gathered in the servants’ hall: the Follies. The staff had been offered tickets for a shilling to their delight. Little wonder, Nell thought, as it was a chance to see the family for whom they worked – whom some of the servants never saw and the rest rarely. To see them cavorting on the stage was something not to be missed.

  Mrs Squires was quietly gloating because as she had the evening off, she could easily attend. Kitty was not so fortunate as she and Michel would be responsible for the late supper. Kitty had been especially cross as not only would she miss hearing Neville Heydock sing but she now had a boyfriend in the village and he was going.

  ‘Everyone’s going but me,’ she complained.

  ‘What about you, Mr Briggs?’ Mrs Fielding asked, but he shook his head vigorously.

  ‘Don’t you approve of such naughty goings-on?’ Miss Smith giggled.

  Nell was annoyed that no one had warned Miss Smith about Mr Briggs. As Lord Ansley’s valet, he took his job very conscientiously, but that was the limit of his powers. He paid little attention to the world of today because it troubled him. His evening excursions to listen to the night-singing birds in the grounds and the far-off woods were the limit of his understanding.

  He looked blank at Miss Smith’s question, then crooned, ‘Mademoiselle from Armenteers, parley-vous’ over and over again.

  Nell knew he w
as temporarily back on the Western Front; his head would still be full of the noise of guns and shells, side by side with the songs the troops sang on the march or at estaminets when the battalion was on relief.

  ‘It’s a sell-out tonight,’ Nell intervened quickly, as he quietly continued, sometimes humming, sometimes singing. ‘That means lots of money for the war charities.’

  ‘Still doesn’t seem right to me,’ Mr Peters said. ‘Every Tom, Dick and Harry coming to gawp at the family.’

  ‘So what if it’s a good show?’ Nell replied.

  ‘Lord Richard will have his work cut out,’ he commented darkly. ‘There’s that Mary Ann Darling they’re all upset about.’

  Nell was taken aback. It wasn’t like Mr Peters to pass on gossip from the main house. Times were changing, but not that fast. Bringing such a subject up now showed how shaken Mr Peters must have been by the uproar on Thursday.

  Mrs Squires looked up from her apple crumble. She was a splendid plain cook but was never satisfied with her own work, although no breadcrumb would dare stroll out of place under her eagle eye.

  ‘The lady that disappeared?’ she queried. ‘My friend Ethel knew her, the one that’s coming with me tonight. She’s Gentle John’s wife, the one who does the tree felling on the estate. They live in one of his lordship’s cottages in Mill Lane. Ethel was the lady’s dresser at the old Gaiety long before she married John; she said Miss Darling was lovely. She’d float on to the stage like a princess in a fairy tale. And nice offstage too. You don’t often find that, Ethel told me. All the gentlemen were after Miss Darling. Ethel was ever so upset when she disappeared; she left the Gaiety then and never saw Miss Darling again. No one did.’

  ‘Perhaps a wicked witch got her, if she was a princess,’ one of the scullery maids said sombrely.

  Some of these girls still half believed in witches and magic spells, Nell thought. Superstition was still rife in the village.

  ‘More likely a loony,’ Mrs Fielding commented. ‘Wicked witches indeed.’

  ‘Ethel told me once,’ Mrs Squires continued doggedly, ‘that Miss Darling hadn’t been her usual self for some time.’

  ‘Was she upset that evening?’ Nell asked. Even though someone had told Arthur she had behaved normally, a reliable opinion such as Ethel’s could be interesting.

  ‘Oh, yes. She said she was going out to dinner when she changed after the performance. Lovely she looked that night for all she was so troubled, Ethel said. But excited too in a way.’

  ‘Does your friend have any ideas about what happened to her?’ Mrs Fielding asked.

  Mrs Squires hesitated. ‘Ethel always reckoned she was murdered,’ she whispered.

  Murdered? Nell looked at the faces round about her, some shocked, some just curious, some avid for the next juicy titbit. But she had to ask. ‘Why was that, Mrs Squires?’

  ‘Ethel says Miss Darling was a kind lady and she would have dropped a hint to somebody if she was going away of her own accord. Not a whisper from her though, so she must have been murdered.’

  Nell had to force herself back to priorities. Even if Mary Ann’s disappearance was important, it had nothing to do with the Wychbourne Follies. This was 1926, over thirty years since she had vanished. Mary Ann must wait.

  ‘Will it be all right, Katie? I wish I’d never agreed to Richard’s crazy suggestion,’ Gertrude wailed. ‘I don’t feel in the least like climbing into that Pierrot costume and parading in front of everybody.’ Faced with the approaching event, her earlier confidence was fading fast.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Katie Kencroft said firmly. ‘Firstly, we’ve got rid of those awful short frilly frocks that female Pierrots often wear in favour of the costume the men wear and that’s been adapted so we can just slip them over the top of our dresses. Secondly, it went well last night at the rehearsal. You said so yourself. And Charles said it was a screamer, and if my husband says that it really must be good.’

  ‘That was with only us watching. Now we have to perform in front of an audience. A public one.’

  ‘Which is there to enjoy what we’re doing,’ Katie pointed out. ‘It will be a corker, especially with that clever pantomime your son has written. Your song will be the pièce de résistance – you still sing so splendidly. And Tobias agrees with me.’

  ‘I don’t believe either of you.’

  ‘Tobias is a good judge. Don’t you remember that time we were going to change the tempo of that song in the first act of The Flower Shop Girl, “Roses in the Snow” and we didn’t listen to him? Tobias was right. It didn’t work and Mr Edwardes was furious.’

  Gertrude sighed. ‘You’re right, Katie.’ She hesitated. Should she put her real fear into words? Katie was such a good friend once but that was a long time ago. Katie had married Charles Kencroft and she Gerald, and now they lived separate lives. She had only met her once or twice since. She had seen Katie in Country Life and Lynette in Play Pictorial but they were only photographs, not the girls she had known. Katie lived in the north of England now and although Gerald sometimes mentioned bumping into Lord Kencroft at Boodles, there had been no news of Katie. Now the petite, bouncing, beautiful Katie she remembered had grown into a comfortably gracious woman, but how had she changed in other ways?

  Gertrude decided to speak out. What had she to lose? ‘It’s this Mary Ann Darling mystery that’s worrying me.’

  Katie grimaced. ‘You made a blob there, Gertie, but how could you have known? It’s a delicate subject, which is why we didn’t talk about it at the time.’

  ‘Why is it delicate?’ Gertrude plunged on, determined to get to the bottom of this puzzle.

  ‘I never knew. It was just a taboo subject, perhaps because we felt guilty that she seemed to have been in distress and we either didn’t notice or did nothing about it. It was certainly an upsetting time for us with the police coming around and all the questions. We were all upset – Lynette partly because Neville wasn’t with her that last evening and told the police he saw Mary Ann. Alice was beside herself when Mary Ann disappeared because they were good friends, Constance was cross because Hubert was mooning over Mary Ann and left Constance alone at Romano’s, and Tobias went off his trolley when she vanished.’

  ‘And you, Katie?’ Gertrude dared to ask.

  Katie hesitated. ‘I’d always liked her, Gertie. But when you came, I was so glad. It broke the spell we all seemed to have been under since Mary Ann’s disappearance and even for a while before that. And it wasn’t a pleasant spell. But you were an outsider and brought a breath of fresh air. It meant I didn’t have to think about Mary Ann.’

  Gertrude was still mystified. ‘Didn’t you talk about her among yourselves? You must have known at least whom she dined with.’

  ‘If so, I don’t remember.’ Katie glanced at her and obviously realized that she wasn’t convinced. ‘Tobias probably knows more about it,’ she added defensively. ‘He if anyone would have known any secret she had.’

  ‘But if so he would have told the police. Mary Ann disappeared.’

  ‘You’re right. My guess is that Tobias kept his mouth shut – typical of him.’

  ‘Even if she was murdered?’

  ‘If the police had thought that we would all have been under suspicion, but I don’t remember there being any suggestion of murder when they questioned us. But, Gertie,’ she added, ‘firstly, it’s time we went to applaud that quaint Mr Trotter’s photographic skills, and, secondly, we have to forget Mary Ann. We don’t know where it might lead.’

  ‘You’re right, Katie,’ Gertrude said. But what she was thinking was: where might it lead? Gerald had known the Gaiety before he met her.

  Nell disciplined herself to take Mr Trotter seriously, but it was hard, with Lady Clarice beaming at his side and Mr Trotter preening himself like a film star. The photographs were spread out on a table in the Great Hall, developed and printed from the glass plates and each one snugly sitting in a cardboard frame. By the time Nell arrived not only Lady Ansley and Lady Kencroft
were there, but the other guests too, save for Mr Jarrett. Nor, she realized, was there any sign of Lord Ansley.

  ‘How many spirits turned up, Trotter?’ Mr Heydock asked – with scepticism written all over his face, Nell noted.

  Lady Clarice gave Mr Trotter no time to answer for himself. ‘Such magnificent results. Do look, Mr Heydock. There is no doubt everyone here agrees that we had the privilege of being visited by Adelaide last evening. That poor woman, married to the fourth marquess. Such a shame she lost her mind and thought she was Florence Nightingale. She became so insistent on curing the servants despite their not being ill. And the most peculiar remedies. I pondered on her sad story while the photograph was taken, and she heard me.’

  Nell peered at the photograph Lady Clarice had been waving excitedly in the air. In it, Lady Clarice was sitting in one of the empty guest bedrooms with hands clasped in her lap. Behind her was the definite shape of a lady in mid-Victorian dress and hat. Not, as far as Nell could see, a nurse’s uniform.

  ‘I was not so fortunate.’ Neville Heydock shook his head ruefully. ‘Clearly Calliope’s ghost took exception to my being in her presence, as I am a rival in her singing career.’

  ‘I didn’t strike lucky either,’ Tobias Rocke said cheerfully. ‘It’s too bad. I popped down to the cellars hoping Jeremiah the smuggler would appear and offer me a slug of whisky.’

  Lady Clarice looked at him disapprovingly, and then turned to Nell. ‘I do believe we have you to thank, Miss Drury, with your special psychic gifts. The Gaiety photograph is a triumph. Do look.’

  Take this seriously and live up to your apparent reputation for having an affinity with the supernatural, Nell told herself, as she obediently studied the photograph. It was, she agreed, very good. Sure enough in the top right-hand corner was an image of a young woman’s face gazing down towards the group, a face that looked slightly familiar.

  ‘We are honoured indeed,’ Lady Clarice continued. ‘I did not know her, but Lady Kencroft and Miss Maxwell have confirmed my hopes. That, Miss Drury, is the spirit of Mary Ann Darling.’