Murder at Mondial Castle

by Issy Brooke

  “God’s sake! Shut up, will you? Shut up!”

  “Ah. The pain is affecting you.”

  “I’ll bloody well affect you. Save her. Save her.” Lord Mondial was sobbing now, his right arm hanging down, blood spreading through his sleeve and even dripping from his fingertips. Others were arriving, and they were surrounded by men and shouting and cursing and very little effective direction. The lord of the estate sat uselessly crying and no one dared look at him; certainly no one would approach him. It was one of those situations which would never be mentioned again.

  So Theodore got to his feet and took charge, assuming his most lordly air. He could not save Philippa; she was already dead. But he could preserve the crime scene, he thought. He could always find a way to be useful, he reminded himself. His father had taught him that.

  He ordered the most capable-looking gardener to organise a search of the entire area. “But you must go carefully and look before you place your feet anywhere; take the utmost care to not walk over tracks or trails that might indicate which way the miscreant went. Do not allow your lads to blunder mindlessly. Be like trackers. Be like poachers in the night; and I know that you know how to do that.”

  As the gardeners spread out on their task, he turned then to the injured Lord Mondial who was growing pale. The Marquis spat out some curses but Theodore shrugged them off. He knew that Lord Mondial was not going to die. He ordered two strong men in livery – the Marquis could afford to keep a bevy of male servants – to help the injured man to his feet.

  “What about her?” Lord Mondial said. “What about Miss Lamb?” His sobbing had stopped and been replaced by anger and pain. “She was here under my protection.”

  “That is why we must find the person who did it. Can you tell me exactly what happened? Speak now while it is fresh in your mind. It is of the utmost importance.”

  “What? Here, now? God’s sake, man, I need a drink. What’s done is done. Get me inside. Get her ... let her ... what does one do now?” he finished, weakly.

  They were now surrounded by all the staff of the house, though Theodore could see the housekeeper preventing Dido, Adelia and the other women from coming too close and seeing the horror. He said to a nearby lingering boy, “Go directly into town and ask for a policeman to come here immediately,” he said. “Can you ride?”

  He looked startled. One of the footmen holding Lord Mondial said, “I’ll go, my lord.”

  “No,” Lord Mondial said. “I’ll have no police here. Boy, you stay here.”

  “With respect, Mondial...”

  “This is my house!” the Marquis thundered. “No police!” And the effort of shouting and the blood loss made him finally pass out.

  LORD MONDIAL CAME BACK to consciousness in his own bedroom, attended to by Dido and Lord Calaway. Lord Mondial’s own valet, Tobias Taylor, had seen to his master’s clothing, whisking the worst of the soiled stuff away out of sight. He returned and helped Lord Mondial to be patched up. A doctor arrived with the police, within the hour, and was sent away immediately by Theodore who took umbrage at the idea that anyone else was needed. “The shot has gone clean through Lord Mondial’s upper arm,” he told the doctor, in plain earshot of everyone else including the Marquis himself. “It has ripped through tissue and muscle but it has missed the bone. Therefore all we need do is keep the wound clean and as long as infection does not set in, he will recover. His arm, however, will always remain weak.”

  The policeman that came with the doctor was an Inspector, a man of rough accent and carefully learned manners; like most of the police he was of a far lower class than the residents of the castle. He spoke with a confidence lent to him by his uniform not his birth. And Lord Mondial was having no truck with it at all.

  “Get him out of here. I told you all, no police. He’s trespassing. You, man. You’re trespassing. You’re not needed.”

  “A crime has been committed, sir.”

  “You may address me as my lord!”

  “As you wish, my lord,” said the Inspector, managing to make it sound as if he had just called Lord Mondial “Jack”. “There has been a murder. Thanks to this gentleman’s quick thinking, a thorough search has been undertaken of the grounds.”

  “And have you found anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then what was the point? I knew you were useless. Get out, I tell you.”

  “Mondial, listen,” Theodore said, coming to the bedside. “There’s a dangerous man about the place. He might strike again. You might not care you’ve been shot but what about justice for Miss Lamb? What about the safety of the other ladies here?”

  “Dangerous man? It was a chance robbery by a passing footpad that has gone terribly badly. Could have happened anywhere and he will be long gone.”

  “It was a murder.”

  The Inspector said, “Was anything taken, sir?” and at that, Lord Mondial hurled a jug of water towards him, wrenched with his uninjured left hand from the chair by the head of the bed. The Inspector took two quick steps backwards and it bounced harmlessly on the carpet, spilling the contents. The Inspector turned to Lord Calaway.

  “I’ll come back when he is more settled,” he said mildly. He let himself out of the bedroom. Dido sat on a chair by the other side of the bed and she had not moved even when her husband had thrown the jug. She bent her head and wrapped her arms around herself, and Adelia stood by her side, her hand on her shoulder.

  Outside, the careful, quiet men from the funeral parlour would be doing what they needed to do.

  Theodore picked up the jug from the floor and placed it carefully back on the chair. Taylor the valet came back in with a mop and began to tidy up silently. Lord Mondial sagged back on the pillows. His face was as pale as the bandages around his upper arm. “Where’s my damn brandy?” he snarled.

  Theodore nodded at Taylor who disappeared with his mop and bucket. While the valet was gone, Theodore said, “Do you really believe it was a chance robbery? Here on your grounds? Has this happened before?”

  “No.”

  Theodore said, “Has anyone been seen lingering in the gardens? Have there been reports of strangers acting oddly in the area?”

  “Again, no.”

  Dido raised her head and looked up at Adelia, who shushed her. Theodore thought that his wife looked very pale and made a mental note to administer her a tonic.

  Theodore carried on with his questions. “Was anything taken? If it were really a robbery, something must have been taken?”

  “Of course it was really a robbery! He shot my arm not my head. I’m not stupid. Yes, my pocket-watch has gone. He forced me to hand it over.”

  “And what did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

  But slowly enough to demand a watch, Theodore thought. “So he was a stranger to you?”

  “I suppose that he must have been.”

  “You would have recognised a friend at such close quarters.”

  “My arm is on fire. You have no idea how that feels. My wife’s friend is dead – shot in front of my very face – at the moment, I would not recognise my own father.”

  Taylor returned with a generous glass of brandy which Lord Mondial knocked back in one swift movement. He shoved the glass back at Taylor who was sent off again, this time to return with the bottle.

  “My lord...” said Dido warningly but he growled and she did not continue.

  “I don’t want that Inspector to come back,” he told Theodore. “The rural police can’t catch a pig thief and I won’t have them tramping all through my house. I’ll tell you what, if it makes you any happier, I’ll pay for some detectives of my own. I’ll send for someone from London. Someone who knows what they are doing. I know enough judges and magistrates to have the very best recommended to me. How about that? Will that shut you up?”

  Theodore nodded. “Yes. It would be for the best. I understand.”

  “There’s no guarantee anyone can come up. Or when
. It doesn’t matter. What’s more important is that she must have the best of funerals.”

  Adelia spoke up. “My lord, with respect, she’ll return to her family...”

  “Her doddery old grandfather, Hardy? If she must. Whatever must be done, let it be done. I shall pay, of course. No one will say I shirked any of my duty. Now, get out, the lot of you. Taylor; well done, today. Thank you. Leave me the bottle. I shall not be coming down to dinner. Dismiss all the guests.”

  Theodore glanced at Adelia, who shook her head. “I shall stay here with my daughter who needs me,” she said firmly.

  Theodore said, “Mondial, you’re right to agree to summon a detective but think on this: they will surely want everything to stay exactly as it is right now. You cannot dismiss anyone. The detective will need to speak to everyone. The guests must stay here.”

  Lord Mondial had knocked back his second glass of brandy. “Very well. This is all a damned inconvenience for the sake of a passing footpad.” He turned his head away, and they all shuffled out.

  Six

  Adelia felt as if she were going to explode with a mish-mash of boiling emotions. She was devastated, utterly destroyed with the death of Philippa Lamb. An inconvenience? She could have slammed the jug onto Lord Mondial’s head when he’d said that. She’d known the girl for so long, and she was so pretty, and popular, and full of life. She had done no harm to anyone. To meet her death in such a violent and senseless way was sickening. She imagined how it would be if one of her own daughters had died in such a way, and she felt ill. That illness turned to anger. Who could have done such a thing? Passing robbers attacked in the street, in alleys, in dark country lanes – not the serene gardens of an estate around a castle.

  And all mixed up in her anger and her grief was, strangely and almost unseemly, a flicker of pride at how well Theodore had managed the terrible situation. She sat in their suite that evening, dining off a tray on the table by the window, while her husband sat opposite her and tucked heartily into the food that she was only able to pick at.

  Of course, a large formal dinner was not going to happen on the same day as a brutal murder. Everyone who was still present was eating quietly in their rooms. Adelia had spoken to Miss Lamb’s companion and invited her to spend a few hours with them, but the distraught old nurse had been taken under the wing of the housekeeper.

  “You were marvellous today,” Adelia said eventually, unable to suppress her slightly tasteless pride in her husband. “You really were. You took charge in the most magnificent way.”

  Theodore looked up from the cold boiled beef. “I did what needed to be done, no more and no less.”

  “But you were so efficient. Lord Mondial doesn’t need to summon a detective from London. He really didn’t want one. You needn’t have persuaded him. He doesn’t need one while you’re here! I expect you can easily change his mind and he would be happier if he knew you were looking into things. It keeps it in the family.”

  “I am a doctor,” he said with a puff of a laugh.

  “You are an earl; it doesn’t stop you being other things too. That medical eye of yours might be very helpful.”

  “Medicine can help Mondial but it won’t do a thing for the girl.”

  “Poor Philippa.”

  “She wouldn’t have suffered,” he told her bluntly. “So that’s a good thing to remember.”

  “Thank you,” Adelia said, trying not to remember anything at all. “No, I simply mean that you have a good eye for details and you notice the connections between things. Those skills certainly make you a good doctor in many ways but they might also make you a good detective.”

  He tapped his fork idly on the edge of his plate. “Perhaps. But I have no stomach for that sort of thing. No drive for it, I mean. No desire to be a fancily-dressed titled version of a Bow Street Runner.”

  “No, not generally,” she agreed. “But in this particular matter, there is no one who is better placed. I wonder if her family has been told yet? Dido might have seen to it but she might have been too overwrought.”

  “It’s just the old grandfather, isn’t it? I never did meet him.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Oh, did I? He made no impression on me, then. And wasn’t he away for most of the girl’s childhood?”

  “He was. He had gone to the colonies to work as a doctor and did not return while we had his granddaughter for those long holidays. Yet you do know him; and he has made every impression on you, my dear.” Adelia shook her head in exasperation. “You met him when you were a small boy. Was it not Doctor Hardy, as a young man, who had saved your own father’s life?”

  She watched him as the blood drained from his face. He went as white as Lord Mondial had been. He frowned as he struggled to make sense of what she’d said. “But he was not a grandfather when...”

  “Of course he wasn’t. He had just begun his practice and been wed to a nice young lady from Sussex. Their daughter was our dear Philippa’s mother. You are no longer young yourself, dear; the years have passed. You must have known this. I will have told you.” She told him many things about people and their connections. She knew he faded her out. But this?

  He blinked. “I did know it; I must have known it. But as you say, the years have passed. Other things have filled my head.”

  She was still sceptical. He looked like he was hearing the information for the first time. But then, he had lost some memories during the few years after the death of his first wife, when he had been left alone with a young son and nothing but endless money and fake friends for company. The excesses and indulgences of that time had eaten away some of his recollections. She wondered if it had also affected Bamfylde in ways they did not see clearly; it would explain Theodore’s son’s current situation.

  She pushed that out of her mind. Bamfylde was now in his thirties and he hated his stepmother with a passion usually reserved only for those characters in fairy tales.

  “Well, no matter,” she said mildly. “I will speak to Dido later and ensure that word has been sent to him. He is in poor health now, I understand.”

  “It does matter,” Theodore said suddenly and with an alarming fierceness. “I should go and see him and break the news to him in person. He deserves no less.”

  “My dear, that is very noble of you, but when was the last time you saw him?”

  “As you say, I must have been a child.”

  “Quite. It is well over fifty years ago, I’ll wager. Your father was but one of the thousands of men and women he will have treated over the years.”

  “Are you saying he won’t remember me?” Theodore said with a hurt and incredulous look on his face.

  “I am sorry, my dear, but he most likely won’t.”

  “He was the most important man to me, beside my father.”

  “I know.”

  “I ... don’t know what to do.” He sounded broken and helpless.

  “Stay here and use your powers to assist in solving this case.”

  “I have no powers and I know nothing. I suppose I could ask the staff some questions. Ask them what they saw and so on.”

  Adelia saw her mistake immediately. But it was too late.

  “Ah! No. No! Do not do anything like that to prejudice the case,” she said in a rush. If Theodore’s bedside manner was appalling, his personal investigative skills were going to be even worse. “No, I mean, you should look for clues and think about how they might fit together. Use your rational mind from a distance.”

  “That’s all meaningless without information. Information that comes from people.”

  She pushed her plate to one side. “Well, as to that,” she said. “You may leave the gathering of that information to me.”

  “To you?”

  “I know people, do I not? I am the best match-maker in the county. I know everyone and I know their secrets. I can speak to a maid as well as I can to a duchess. Let me winkle out the information and pass it on to you; you can put the puzzle together.”
>
  Theodore leaned over and took her half-empty plate. The sight of death clearly hadn’t affected his appetite at all. He polished off the remains of Adelia’s food while she politely looked out of the window. When he was done, he piled up the crockery on the tray and dabbed his mouth elegantly. He looked around as if he expected a servant to dive forward and remove the tray but of course they were alone. Smith was elsewhere, possibly eating in the servants’ hall or more likely in the place just called The Room where the upper servants dined, waited upon by the more junior staff. Theodore stared at the plates as if he weren’t sure what would happen to them now.

  Adelia smiled to herself. He might have been clever, but sometimes he wasn’t very bright. She said, “Let us go over what we already know.” She wanted to be active and do something. It wasn’t just that she thought Theodore would be good at putting the clues together; she herself could not stand the thought of sitting in her room while a murderer roamed around the area. She didn’t want to think about poor dead Philippa. So to stave off those feelings of loss, she resolved to be as busy as possible.

  “What do we know?” Theodore said. “It was a robbery but in the event, the robber discharged his weapon twice and ... no, wait a moment.”

  “What?”

  “Was the attacker one person, or two? I heard both the shots as they were fired. Either he was able to reload in ... let me see ... a matter of seconds, or he had two weapons, both ready loaded, or there were two people involved. One of those people shot Miss Lamb and the other shot Mondial.”

  “But Lord Mondial did not mention two people.”

  “He did not, but he himself admitted his judgement has been clouded. Still, I find it hard to believe that two robbers have set upon them; he would have noticed that unless one was hiding in the trees and shot at a distance.” He clicked his fingers. “Paper!”

  Adelia jumped up and fetched him some sheets of foolscap and a pencil that he swiftly sharpened with his pocket knife. He dropped the tray to the floor with a clatter and began to make notes.