Murder at Keyhaven Castle

by Clara McKenna

  Lyndy yanked on the bottom of his jacket but reluctantly stepped aside. “Don’t for one moment think this ends here, Captain. I shall be taking this up with the Chief Coastguard. My father, the Earl of Atherly, and he are personal friends.”

  “Do what you must, my lord,” the captain said, tipping his head before returning to the wheelhouse.

  Of that, he could be certain.

  Lyndy would comb every inch of this vessel, and the moment the ferry headed back to Lymington, he’d be searching the waters for her. If he still couldn’t find her, he’d borrow a yacht if he had to. Lyndy would trace the length of the coast from Hengistbury Head to Calshot Castle. He’d find her. He had to. Her life, and his, depended on it.

  CHAPTER 23

  Brown hesitated to knock; black crape hung from the door. But why? Mr. Kendrick hadn’t been a relative, nor was he much liked by the earl and his family. Perhaps it was done out of consideration for Miss Kendrick, considering she’d temporarily taken up residence here again.

  That was the reason Brown had come. It had been a frustrating, fruitless two days. Jedidiah Kendrick, more comfortable in the cell than was natural, had persisted in declaring his innocence. The Southampton men had closed the case on Jesse Prescott’s death in all but name. And with the weather such as it was, Brown hadn’t a chance to interview Baron Branson-Hill. Brown had nothing more to convey to Miss Kendrick beyond the predicted outcome of the inquest, but she deserved to know he hadn’t given up.

  And he wouldn’t until he’d found her father’s murderer.

  Brown lifted the brass knocker and rapped it strongly, hearing the echo in the hall on the other side.

  Mr. Fulton, the butler, opened the door, a black band around his sleeve. “Inspector.”

  Brown asked after Miss Kendrick, expecting to be put off, as usual. The butler merely held the door and stepped aside. With such a somber air, if Brown didn’t know the man better, he’d think Mr. Fulton had lost a loved one. The impression didn’t stop there. The covered mirrors, the heavy silence as the butler escorted Brown toward the drawing room, their heels clicking on the highly polished parquet floor, all spoke of a house in mourning. All this for Miss Kendrick’s sake? Knowing Miss Kendrick, as he’d come to do, it didn’t sit right.

  Brown entered the now all-too-familiar drawing room, filled with looming portraits of Lord Atherly’s ancestors peering down on equally gloomy people. Mrs. Mitchell and Miss Luckett, Miss Kendrick’s two aunts, huddling together apart from the others quietly weeping, struck him as particularly wretched.

  “I’d like to speak to Miss Kendrick, if I may,” Brown said, slipping off his hat.

  “Oh, Lordy!” the elderly aunt wailed, seemingly unbidden.

  “You may not,” Lady Atherly said, with her typical civil disdain, carefully avoiding drawing any attention to the American women in the corner.

  “I understand Miss Kendrick’s in mourning, Lady Atherly, but—”

  “She’s dead.”

  Brown’s chest tightened as if the words sucked every wisp of air from the room. Brown took a slight step back to steady himself. “She’s what?”

  “No, she’s missing,” Mrs. Mitchell insisted vehemently. “She’s not dead.”

  “It is late September, Mrs. Mitchell,” Lady Atherly explained, as if to a child. “Do you really suppose she could’ve survived?” The patronizing tone pierced Brown’s distress.

  “I do. Like Mr. Swenson said, Stella’s an excellent swimmer.”

  “Then you have more faith than sense, I’m afraid, Mrs. Mitchell,” Mrs. Swenson said, not unkindly. “Poor orphaned child. Now she’s gone to meet her maker too.”

  “I think my wife’s right. After all this time, I think we must accept the truth.”

  “How can you say that, Mr. Swenson?” Mrs. Mitchell bolted from her seat. She wagged a finger at him. “You’re the one who said she’d be fine. You’re the one who gave me hope.”

  Mr. Swenson held his hands up in surrender. “I’m as sorry as you are that I was wrong.”

  “Right!” Brown interrupted. “Would someone please explain what happened?” Brown stared at Sir Owen, leaning against the mantel, swirling a glass of whiskey.

  Sir Owen took a sip and noted the direction of Brown’s focus over the rim of the glass. “Steady on! I wasn’t even there, Inspector.”

  “Baron Branson-Hill invited us for luncheon at his estate on the Island, Inspector,” Lady Alice, a stack of magazines clutched to her chest, spoke up. “We were on the ferry when Miss Kendrick disappeared. After thoroughly searching the boat, we’ve assumed she fell overboard, and presumed drowned.”

  “Miss Kendrick was supposed to be in mourning,” Lady Atherly said, her irritation and anger uncharacteristically seeping into her words. “Foolish girl. If she’d listened to me and done what was expected of her . . .”

  “I told her as much,” Mrs. Swenson said. “But she was stubborn. Reminded me of you, Penny. What was so important she’d ignore your wishes, Lady Atherly?”

  “Stella always had to have her own way,” Miss Swenson sulked, her resentment tinged with melancholy and regret. “Now, look what’s happened.”

  Mr. Swenson noticed the subtle conflict behind his daughter’s pout. “Are you okay, Penelope, darling?”

  Miss Swenson, embarrassed by her father’s attention, took out her enameled silver compact and began powdering her nose. “Stella had to come with us, didn’t she? She just had to see the baron’s new horse.”

  Brown knew otherwise. Miss Kendrick hadn’t ignored convention to meet a horse, though it lent itself as the perfect excuse. She went to do what Brown hadn’t done—interview the baron about Jesse Prescott.

  Bloody hell! Brown cursed silently. “Where is Lord Lyndhurst?” The young viscount was conspicuously absent. Had something happened to him too?

  “Poor boy has gone out to search for her,” Lord Atherly said. “Refuses to accept she’s gone.” The earl sighed, absentmindedly caressing what looked to be one of his fossil bones. “And with her all of our hopes for a brighter future.”

  Was Lord Atherly referring to the gaiety, the generosity, the warmth Miss Kendrick brought to this otherwise dour family or was he strictly speaking of her inheritance that, if rumors were true, they so desperately needed? Brown couldn’t tell.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much on that account, Lord Atherly.” Mrs. Swenson knowingly glanced toward her daughter. “I reckon there are many suitable heiresses more than willing to console your dear son’s broken heart.”

  Lady Atherly visible stiffened. “Clearly, you don’t know my son.” The rebuke was unmistakable and surprising, perhaps even to the countess herself. Mrs. Swenson’s cheeks reddened as if she’d been slapped.

  “Frances is right,” Lord Atherly said. “Miss Kendrick is irreplaceable. We shall miss her dearly.”

  “That’s not what I said, William, but yes, Miss Kendrick will be missed.”

  “Mummy,” Lady Alice said, astonished endearment in her tone.

  Hardened policeman as he was, the sudden softening of Lady Atherly sought to undo him. They aren’t the only ones who will miss the young lady. Brown couldn’t excuse himself hastily enough.

  “Ahem.” Brown cleared his throat. “If you’ll excuse me then, Your Ladyship, Your Lordship. I have a murder investigation to attend to. Please convey my deepest sympathies to Lord Lyndhurst.”

  Miss Luckett, the old lady, sobbed none-too-quietly at the mention of the young viscount, who was supposed to be on his honeymoon, not fruitlessly searching for the body of his drowned fiancée.

  “Of course, Inspector,” Lady Atherly said, her gaze on her lap as she smoothed her skirt.

  Brown tipped his head briefly, slapped his hat on his head and, turning his back on the room, impatiently brushed a tear from his cheek.

  * * *

  Stella was so cold her weakened muscles ached, her heart was pounding, her breath was ragged, and she’d lost all sensation in her hands and f
eet. Her teeth chattered so hard her head and jaw hurt. But she did it. She’d gotten herself out of the water. Barely.

  When she’d hit the surface of the river, the shock of it had struck her breathless. The temperature in the sun had been pleasant; the river was bitter cold. She’d began breathing too fast, gasping for air. Fighting against her rising panic, she’d struggled against the current to the surface, and spurted out what she could of the water she’d swallowed. She’d treaded in place for a few moments, getting her breath back. But the leaden weight of her clothes and the cold were already sapping her strength. She didn’t have much time.

  With the ferry too far away to help, she swam for the nearest floating mat of marsh less than fifty yards away. Stella had learned to swim as a child. Afternoon picnics on the beaches of Newport with her mother, and then with nannies, were a favorite childhood memory. But this was not the gentle, wave-lapped seashore in July. Every foot Stella gained was a fight. The waves splashed her face, blurring her vision and gagging her. Her mourning dress, floating around her like spilled ink, dragged her down, the stays of her corset pressing into her ribs with every breath. But she couldn’t stop, even as her muscles weakened, her feet and hands grew numb, her lungs hurt with every inhale. When she’d reached the marsh bed, she hadn’t considered it might not hold her weight when she clawed her way up on to it, digging into the soft, grassy mat with her elbows and dragging herself out of the water. But the roots of the brownish-green grasses twisted and intertwined so thick they created a flat floating island strong enough. She’d laid there a few moments, her cheek pressed against the coarse, earthy-scented grass, gasping, searching the horizon, with blurred vision, out across the endless gray water to the ferry, chugging out smoke and growing smaller and smaller by the moment. Surveying her immediate surroundings, she found only a precariously narrow strip about ten or so feet at its widest and nothing more stable than grass to hold on to.

  Could she survive here long enough to wait for the ferry’s return?

  Suddenly, a head and pair of inquiring round eyes jutted up from the water on the opposite edge of her floating island. Someone else has fallen off! But she hadn’t fallen, she corrected herself. Someone had deliberately pushed her overboard. But why? After their heated conversation, only Penny came to mind. But did Penny hate her that much? Or was she as mean and irresponsible in anger now as when they were children? Was this the stone-throwing incident all over again?

  “Over here!” Stella shouted to the figure, but with her tongue thick, her face stinging from the cold, her voice was barely audible above the wind.

  The figure swam toward her. When it got close, Stella began to laugh nervously. This was not a fellow passenger. It was a seal, a mottled gray creature, curious who this black lump of a human was. It slid its sleek belly onto the grass bed and flopped comically over to her. She lay mesmerized, her new companion inching closer, until the steady, rhythmic slapping of oars nearby penetrated Stella’s rapt attention. A small dingy, rowed by two men, headed for one of the many yachts anchored in the mouth of the Lymington River.

  “Help!”

  Her call, enough to startle the seal back into the water, didn’t carry to the boatmen. She twisted and turned, using all the strength she had left, pushed up on one elbow, and waved her hand above her head, calling out, again and again, hoping to catch their attention. But to no avail. When the wind drowned out the receding splash of the oars of the dinghy, she collapsed, flopping onto her back, her view a few wispy clouds until her vision dimmed and even the bright, blue sky went black.

  CHAPTER 24

  “You’re a lucky one, you are, miss. If me brother, Dickie there, weren’t such a fool for them seals, we never would’ve spotted you.”

  Stella, her hands wrapped around the hot ceramic cup, nodded in agreement. From hearing them tell it: finding her drenched, stone-cold, and unconscious, she didn’t want to think about what might’ve happened if they hadn’t doubled back when they did.

  “Though I have to say, how you got yourself out of the water, it’s just like one of them seals.”

  The man who spoke, who’d introduced himself as Fred Boothroyd, lit his wooden pipe. Puffing a ring of sweet-smelling smoke into the air, he eased into the second of a pair of worn, faded green wing-backed chairs; Stella huddled in nothing more than her underthings and two gray, woolen blankets in the other. Like his brother, Dickie, who fiddled with the fire, jabbing the coals vigorously with an iron poker, Fred Boothroyd wore a heavy wool sweater and kept his graying reddish hair cropped short. Stella would’ve mistaken them for twins, with their kind green eyes, thick droopy mustaches, and brown weathered faces, if Fred didn’t exude the authority of an elder sibling.

  “The seals, they be fey,” Dickie said, in a deep baritone voice, ignoring the flashes of loose ember when they escaped the hearth and floated to the flagstone floor. He cast furtive sideways glances at Stella as if she too were supernatural. “Wouldn’t be wise to ignore them.”

  Stella remembered the seal but only vaguely recalled the men’s rough hands hauling her into the rowboat and nothing of the journey to their cottage on the coast. With their backs turned, the brothers had made sure she stripped out of her cold, soaked clothes and was comfortably wrapped up and ensconced in the chair before leaving her to doze off. They’d returned sometime later with a string of fish, which Dickie now cooked over the fire.

  Through the steam rising from her cup, Stella took in the room: the hand-hewed mantelpiece, the fishing poles, nets, and tackle stacked in a corner, the pewter tankards on the table, one dented as if hit by an ax blade, the portrait of King Edward in a thin, silver-plated frame on the plain, white plaster walls. Each item raised a different question: were the brothers married, if so, where were their wives, were they fishermen, as their equipment suggested, how long had they lived here? Considering the men hadn’t questioned Stella, not even to learn why she’d been floating on a marsh bed in mourning clothes, she suppressed her curiosity; Lady Atherly would’ve been proud.

  But Stella, having stared at the tall, round wall blocking the view out the window for who knew how long now, couldn’t help herself but ask, “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Fred followed her gaze to the window. “You mean the light?”

  “The light?” Stella didn’t understand. The two men regarded her as if her senses were still muddled. Maybe they were right.

  “The Keyhaven Light,” Dickie explained slowly. “Don’t you remember?”

  The lighthouse!

  Stella gathered the blankets more tightly around her, rose from the chair, and waddled over to the window. From the closer vantage point, she could peek straight up and see the whitewashed, tapered lighthouse stretch seventy or eighty feet into the sky. If this is the Keyhaven lighthouse, then . . . She crossed the room to the far window, ignoring the brothers’ exchange of concerned glances, and pushed back the yellowing cotton curtain. In full view stood Keyhaven Castle, about three hundred yards away. Further on, a lone horseman guided his mount down the thin peninsula. Lyndy said the castle was popular with sightseers.

  Would it be more so or less now that it was the site of a murder? She pulled the blanket up tighter around her chin.

  “You have quite the view from here,” she said with a mixture of pleasure and melancholy. “It must be wonderful from the top of the lighthouse.”

  “It is,” Dickie said proudly, wrapping a towel around the handle of the wrought iron pan and lifting the cooked fish from the fire.

  “Perhaps we can take you up there when you’re more proper-like,” Fred added, jabbing his pipe toward the tan, wool sack suit draped across the back of her chair.

  Dickie, being the smaller of the two brothers, had offered Stella, whose clothes were ruined (even Ethel wouldn’t be able to mend a waterlogged crape dress or the rents in her stockings), his Sunday best. It was unconventional but kind, like the brothers themselves.

  “I’d like that.”

 
She waddled back to the chair and snatched up the suit, the white shirt, a thick leather belt, and a borrowed pair of thin wool stockings. She found a spot in a back bedroom with enough privacy to change. Without a corset or fitted bodice, the baggy suit was as comfortable and as easy to dress herself in as a nightgown. She only had to roll up the pant legs to keep them from dragging on the ground. She stuffed her feet into her boots and winced; they were still damp.

  When Stella presented herself, Fred, puffing on his pipe with the air of a man who saw women wearing trousers every day, said, “That’ll do.”

  After the smoky, stuffy cottage, Stella welcomed the fresh air when they stepped outside. Rounding the vast base of the lighthouse, she caught sight of the castle again. The horse rider, the tails of his overcoat flying like pennants behind him, was getting closer.

  “Living here, you must’ve heard about what happened at the castle,” she said.

  “Aye,” Fred said. “Everyone knows what happened to the American chap. We gathered from the foreign lilt to your voice you might’ve known him.”

  “He was my father.”

  “Our condolences, miss,” Dickie said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Would it have been your uncle, then, who did it? At least that’s the talk at the pub.”

  “My uncle was arrested, yes, but for stealing, not murder. Uncle Jed claims he wasn’t even there when Daddy died, that he was out on the spit.”

  “Like that chap that’s braving the wind out there right now,” Fred said. The rider approached the castle and trotted across the drawing bridge boards.

  “Wait!” Stella said. “If Uncle Jed had been out there, you might’ve seen him.”

  Fred was already shaking his head. “No, couldn’t have. I was out fishing the marshes.”

  Stella let out a breath of frustration. She’d thought she’d found a way to prove whether Uncle Jed was lying or not.

  “I saw someone,” Dickie said, reaching for the heavy lighthouse door. “I was tending the light about that time. Watched him for a good bit of time, I did. The odd bloke was picking up stones and throwing them into the sea.”