Blood Ties

by Oliver Davies

  For now, though, I carried on driving, out of the village to the estate, pulling up outside the front steps, where Dennis the butler already waited. As we climbed out of the car, he didn’t move, waiting for us to climb the steps to the front door.

  “Lord Hocking is in his study,” he told us, leading us into the house.

  “Thank you,” I remarked. “We wondered if we might have a word with the groundskeeper while we were here?”

  Dennis looked surprised for a moment but understanding dawned on him quickly. “Certainly. He’ll be out in the garden.”

  “Would you mind showing sergeant Mills the way?” I asked. “I can make my own way to the study.”

  Dennis hesitated slightly, probably because I was throwing decorum out the window, but he nodded, and gestured for Mills to follow. The sergeant gave me a nod and pat his camera once more, trailing after the tall butler.

  I myself headed down the confusing layout of halls to the study, where the door was open. I spotted the Lord at his desk, bent over some paperwork and knocked on the door frame. His head lifted.

  “Ah, Inspector. Do come in.” He rose from the desk and indicated the chair opposite him.

  I shut the door behind me, then crossed the room, shook his hand, and sat down.

  “Lord Hocking,” I began carefully, “yesterday I went out and met with your brother, Richard Sandow.”

  His face blanched slightly, and he sat slowly down. He said nothing for a moment, and I didn’t push him.

  “He told you about Selene,” his voice croaked out after a while.

  “He did,” I confirmed. He nodded, and looked around the room, to the blank space on the wall and then out towards the gardens.

  “Might we walk, Inspector? Walls have ears, you know.” His eyes drifted upwards to the ceiling, and I wondered whose room we might find above.

  “Of course,” I allowed. He nodded and stood up, showing me the way back through the house, the door locked behind him. We went out through the breakfast room, into a garden occupied by rose beds and elegant little benches.

  “I always been ashamed of what I did then,” he said quietly. “I was a young man, you know. Young men make mistakes.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Richard,” he went on, “wanted so much to make things right. But it would have been bad for the family. These things mattered more back then, all that scandal and mystery. I couldn’t risk having a child with a woman who wasn’t my wife.”

  “You could have let Richard claim himself as the father,” I suggested carefully.

  “And watch him raise what could be my child?” He shook his head. “If indeed it was one of ours. She never did say. I thought it was for the best that she went, found herself a new home. When I heard that she died,” he shook his head remorsefully, hands trailing along the early buds of roses, “I made myself look at that painting every day.”

  “I heard it was she who admired it.”

  “Her favourite view of the summerhouse down by the lake. They don’t know.” He stopped walking and faced me, suddenly very serious, the face of a Lord. “My wife and children. They don’t know. The children about Selene at all, my wife knew about her of course. But not about…” He trailed off.

  “The possibility of a child.”

  “The repercussions it could have,” he started walking again, “for Henry especially.”

  I was surprised with how open he was being, how complacent with all my nosy questions.

  “Lord Hocking. Why did you not share any of this with me? Or even your brother? It’s all very useful for me to know.”

  “I didn’t think it was important,” he replied honestly. “I know that it was not Richard.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because despite the distance between us,” his voice dropped, “and despite the years, I know my brother. And he wouldn’t do this, especially to my wife and children. Being burgled, it gives one a tremendous feeling of unsafety, vulnerability. My wife has been triple checking the locked doors every night, and then Dennis does so again after her. For all Richard might blame me for Selene,” he sounded certain, “he would not do this.”

  “You have a lot of faith in your brother.”

  “He was always a good man. Always a better one than me. Sometimes, often, I used to wonder why it was me who was born first.”

  “Why not patch things up?”

  “Not enough fabric in the world, I fear.” He stopped walking again, something catching his eye across the garden and his face brightened suddenly, reaching up a hand to wave. I followed his gaze to a young girl making her way through the flower beds.

  “My daughter,” he told me as she approached, “Rose.”

  I could see the resemblance to her brothers. She had the same ruddy curls as Rupert, the same coloured eyes as her father too, round cheeks and an upturned nose. She was smiling as she neared, her cheeks dimpled.

  “Morning, dad,” she said breathlessly as she came to a stop before us. Her boots were muddied, her hands stuffed into the pockets of a thick tweed coat, her face pink.

  “Nice walk, darling?” Lord Hocking asked, giving her a swift kiss on the cheek.

  “Very nice. Lovely to be home,” she replied, her eyes falling on me. “Who’s this?”

  “Ah, Rosie, this is Detective Inspector Thatcher. He’s the one on our case. Inspector, my daughter, Rose.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  She nodded back. “Where’s Rupert?” she asked her father.

  “Still asleep.” His voice was disapproving. She rolled her eyes and nodded to something behind us.

  “I think Dennis wants you,” she said to him. Lord Hocking glanced back over his shoulder, as did I, to the butler who stood in the glass doorway, hands tucked apologetically behind his back.

  “I shall be back in a moment, Inspector,” Lord Hocking told me. “Rose, stay with him.” He clapped me on the shoulder and darted off the doors. I turned back to Rose, who was studying me strangely.

  “Since when do Inspectors handle robberies?”

  “Since it’s a very important case.”

  She sniffed, “I see.”

  “I understand you weren’t at the party the other night?”

  “No. Sort of my own doing really,” she told me conspiratorially. “I hate parties.”

  My eyebrows rose. “You stayed away on purpose?”

  “There’s something about having your home invaded by a bunch of your parents and brother’s friends, loaded up on gin, that just doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather stay at school for a few extra days. But I was sorry not to be here,” she looked behind me to her father, “it might have been useful to have a sober person around. Or at least in the study.”

  She caught sight of my confused expression. “I used to hide in there when I couldn’t stand the party anymore. Dad gave me the key, and I’d go and squirrel myself away, read a few books until everyone went home.”

  “Why not go to your room?”

  “Study’s quieter.”

  “You often went in there then?”

  “Every year,” she replied.

  That was interesting. I wonder how many of the guests were aware of that, and who exactly would have known she wasn’t at the party, that for once, the study would have been empty.

  “Are you close with your family, Miss Hocking?” I asked her.

  She frowned, surprised. “Yes. Dad mostly, and Henry. Rupert annoys me more than anything, but you have to love him. Mum and I argue.” She sighed. “She thinks I should be more like her.”

  “How so?”

  “Lady of the house,” Rose said in an exaggerated clipped voice, “rather than scuffing about in the early house of the day. Not that it matters. It’s not like I’m the one inheriting the place.” She stared at the house, a slight disapproving curl to her mouth. I got the feeling that if she were here, she’d have stuck up for the staff who shouldered most of the blame, that was the closest thing to
a voice of reason in the place. Less noble, more normal.

  “What about your extended family?”

  “Mum was an only child,” she said, “and her father died when she was young. We visit grandmother sometimes; she lives in the Cotswolds now. Dad’s parents are both dead and I’ve never met Uncle Richard.”

  “You never tried to get in touch?”

  Rose shook her head, her expression turning angry. “He just left dad here. With all this,” she gestured to the estate, “to deal with alone. They were going to do it together before he left. And now he doesn’t even associate with us. Not even a card at Christmas.”

  “Did your father ever tell you why?”

  “No. And lesson one of being a Hocking is that you don’t ask,” she said dryly.

  “Inspector!” Lord Hocking shouted from the doorway.

  I turned around, finding his panicked face coming closer as he jogged down the path.

  “What’s wrong, dad?” Rose inquired.

  “We’ve received something of a threatening note,” he panted.

  Fourteen

  Thatcher

  I followed Lord Hocking back up to the house, Rose behind us. The butler led the way back through the room to the main entrance of the house where Lady Hocking had slumped onto a chair, one hand pressed to her chest. Rupert had emerged, padding around the tiled floor in a dressing gown and bare feet.

  “Darling!” Lord Hocking raced over and knelt beside his wife, whose skin had turned pale and she trembled as she snatched his hand in hers.

  “What’s happened?” I asked Dennis.

  “I’m not sure, Inspector,” he replied. “I heard Lady Hocking cry out, and I came running at once. She found this.”

  He led me to the front door and out onto the steps. A photograph had been left on the stone, an image of what I took to be our missing painting, of a circular sunroom beside a lake. It had been struck through the middle with a small knife, red liquid pooling down and staining the image. The same liquid has been used to write a word on the stone wall, a crude scrawling of the word vindicta.

  “Has anyone touched this?” I demanded at once.

  “No,” Dennis assured me. “I took the Lady inside and came straight for Lord Hocking and yourself.”

  I nodded, pulling my phone from my pocket and called Mills.

  “Sir?” he answered quickly, voice breathless as he walked.

  “Something’s happened,” I told him. “Get back to the house quickly. Call Dr Crowe, we’ll need her and get some uniforms in the area, now.”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied. I hung up and gestured for the butler to return into the house, ensuring all the family were in the hall before shutting the door.

  “Security camera?” I asked Dennis.

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Stay for now,” I ordered him. The tape could tarry a moment.

  Lord Hocking now stood behind his wife, his hands resting on her shoulders. Rose sat on the floor at her feet, holding her hand and Rupert continued to pace around the floor. He paused when Dennis and I returned,

  “Don’t suppose you can get me a coffee, Dennis?”

  “I’m afraid coffee will have to wait,” I snapped in quickly. “I have a team on the way in,” I assured them, knowing Mills would have made the calls by now. “We’ll sweep the area, see if whoever left that outside is still here. Did any of you see anything?”

  Lord Hocking and Rose had been with me, though where she’d been before joining us in the rose garden, I didn’t know. Rupert looked as if he’d rolled straight out of bed and Lady Hocking looked ready to faint. None of them, butler included, had any red stains on their hands or clothes.

  “We were with you, Inspector,” Lord Hocking put in, looking at his daughter.

  I gave him a stern nod. “Where are Henry and his wife?”

  “They took the children out for the day,” Lady Hocking informed me. “Thank goodness, I’d hate to think one of the little ones might have seen that.”

  “It’s probably just paint, mother,” Rupert sighed, collapsing into a chair, pushing his hair back from his face. “And they’re one, they wouldn't know.” His sister glared at him but didn’t make any move to correct him.

  “Where has everyone been for the last hour or so, since I arrived?” I demanded, growing impatient.

  “I was in my study,” Lord Hocking started us off, carefully and patiently, “my morning tea and paper, as usual. Got some work done for the estate as I waited for your good self to arrive.”

  I nodded. “Lady Hocking?”

  She looked over at me, flustered. “Oh, here and there, Inspector. I had breakfast with Henry and the children then sorted out tonight’s dinner with the cook. I was heading outside to cut some fresh flowers for Rosie’s room,” she squeezed her daughter’s hand, “and it was just there!”

  “Dennis?” I spun around to where he stood at the foot of the staircase, his hands entwined before him, looking almost nauseous as his eyes flickered from me to the door.

  He cleared his throat. “I began my day as usual. Brought Lord Hocking his tea and paper and took tea to rest of the family. Awaited your arrival, led your sergeant out to meet the groundskeeper, and I had just got back and was starting on the brass polishing,” he indicated the little apron he wore, “when I heard her Ladyship cry out. I came at once.”

  “Rupert?” I wasted no time in picking over too many details.

  The young lad looked up at me from where his head was bent into his hands and grimaced. “I woke up, oh, five minutes ago. Heard mother scream and came a running,” he said jauntily.

  “Rose?”

  “Rose was with us, Inspector,” Lord Hocking quickly argued.

  I ignored him, fixing my gaze on her. “Rose only just joined us, Lord Hocking,” I reminded him. “She was somewhere before she joined us.”

  She bristled slightly at my implication, sitting up straight to meet my gaze stonily. “I got up and had breakfast down in the kitchen,” she told me haughtily, “then I got dressed and went out for my walk.”

  “Where did you walk?” I asked her, just as Mills came jogging through the front door. I met his eye questioningly and gave me a brief nod, they were on their way. He slowed down, strolling towards me and stood at my side. I gave Rose a nod to continue.

  “I went out through the breakfast room,” she said, “through the garden and down to the woods.”

  “She likes the bluebells,” Lady Hocking added, “when they bloom.”

  “And you saw nothing?” I asked. “No stranger on the property? No one coming to and from the house?”

  “No,” she replied surely.

  “Well, someone came.” I was aware that I was practically snarling at the family, but this was beginning to feel ridiculous. “Someone managed to get all the way up to the house, outside your front door long enough to leave that and paint a word on your wall before leaving again. And you’re telling me that nobody saw?”

  “What about the staff?” Mills asked. “The maids?”

  “Where are they?” I asked.

  “The kitchens,” Dennis told me quickly. “I sent them all there on my way to you.”

  “Go and fetch them please, Dennis.”

  He gave me a smart nod and walked away with a speed that was likely required for getting around this house on a daily basis. I took Mills’s elbow and turned him away from the family.

  “None of them saw anything,” I hissed to him.

  “Where are the others? Henry and Eloise?”

  “Out for the day with the children,” I told him.

  Mills rose an eyebrow. “Good timing?”

  “Maybe. Did you get a look at it?” I asked, giving a minute nod in the direction of the door.

  “I did.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’m guessing that’s our painting.”

  “Guessing so.”

  “And vindicta? Hardly a common choice of word.”

  “Tell me you speak Latin
.”

  “Some,” he admitted sheepishly, “from my dad. It means revenge. Loosely.”

  “Revenge?”

  I thought about Selene and Richard, the mystery child, and it seemed Mills shared my thought because he added, “I can call Sharp again, see if we can’t speed up the process of finding a name for the child?”

  “Later. For now, I want to know how someone snuck up the front door of a busy house without being seen. It’s a person, not a ghost,” I added disgruntledly.

  “You think it’s blood?” Mills asked me in a much-lowered voice.

  “Looks it,” I said. But it remained to be seen whose blood it was, I was counting on Crowe for that. Not technically her job but she had a weird interest in it all that made her faster than any other lab. Mills’s phone dinged, and he pulled it from his pocket.

  “Crowe,” he told me, “ETA ten minutes.”

  I nodded, and we turned back to the family as Dennis reappeared, three women in tow. They all were simple black dresses, like caricatures of Victorian maids, but that was where any similarity ended.

  “Inspector Thatcher,” Dennis ushered them forward, “Maud, Daria and Lara.”

  Maud was clearly the eldest. Her hair, a bright silver was swept into an impeccably tidy bun, her dress pristine, her shoes polished. Not a hair or button out of place. She gave me a tight nod, her mouth pressed into her line and her eyes turned motherly towards Rupert and Rose.

  The next one, Daria, gave Mills and I a polite if reserved smile and then faced her shoes. Her dark hair was in a style like Maud’s, her dress as equally clean and her shoes as equally shiny. She toyed with a bracelet on her wrist, her fingers flashing with the gold of a wedding ring.

  And then Lara, the youngest of them easily, around the age of Rupert and Rose I would guess. I recalled what Mills had scribbled in his notebook, suspecting some attachment between the young ginger maid and the middle Hocking child. She didn’t spare him a glance though; she was looking at Mills and myself curiously. Her hair, a much lighter red than Jeannie’s fell in a long plait down her back, her pale skin smudged with charcoal and flour, her dress wrinkled and a bit dusty and her shoes scuffed. A pair of colourful, frilly socks peeked out over the tops and a tattoo was just about visible beneath her sleeve as she tugged it surreptitiously down towards her wrist, under the watchful eye of Dennis.