Murder at Blackwater Bend

by Clara McKenna

  If only she and Lyndy could live here and not at Morrington Hall after they were married. Without her father in residence, that is. They could always build a proper stable.

  “Why were Lord Atherly and Professor Gridley at the barrows? ’ Miss Cosslett asked.

  “Looking for fossils, what else?” Stella plopped down on the couch. She hadn’t realized how tiring the walk had been. “But I found some wonderful things.”

  “It’s all over that Lord Fairbrother’s dead,” he grumbled, “and that you’re the one who found him.”

  “Is it true?” Miss Cosslett asked. The pair regarded her expectantly.

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “Jeepers, girl, what’s wrong with you? Here we are, having already started on the engagement announcement set to run in New York and Newport for you, and what do you do? Something that might threaten your chances that this wedding will ever happen.”

  Typical Daddy. A man was dead, and all he could think about was the potential inconvenience and a way to blame Stella for it.

  “We looked at lots of society announcements today, from London, Europe, New York.” He motioned toward the newspapers on the carpet. “Hopefully our efforts aren’t in vain. Read what we’ve got so far, Jane.”

  Miss Cosslett held up her notepad and read, “ ‘Daughter of world-renowned horse breeder to wed son of the Earl of Atherly. Engagement is announced. The Kendricks of Kentucky will now be connected with the principal noble families of England. The engagement—’ ”

  “Those will be the headlines,” Daddy said, interrupting. “Now read her the text.”

  Miss Cosslett continued. “‘The engagement between the young Viscount Lyndhurst, son of the Earl of Atherly, to Miss Stella Kendrick, daughter of Mr. Elijah Kendrick, was formally announced tonight at a party held in their honor at Pilley Manor, Hampshire, England.’ ”

  The party. Stella was already dreading it.

  “ ‘The wedding is to take place later this year,’ ” Miss Cosslett concluded.

  “But, I thought the wedding date had been moved up. So that the bishop could officiate.”

  When Stella had finally agreed to it, they’d set the wedding for October with Reverend Paine, the local pastor, presiding. But then, due to her father’s persistent requests and, in no small part, the promise of a foal sired by Orson, his champion thoroughbred stud, the bishop had finally capitulated, offering to officiate in mid-September. Stella didn’t care who presided over the wedding, but the sooner she and Lyndy got married, the sooner her social obligations would end, and the sooner Daddy would go back to Kentucky.

  “We’re still negotiating. That’s why we’ve left it vague.”

  “What do you think, Miss Kendrick?” Miss Cosslett smiled, but the glint in her eye was unnerving. Or maybe it was seeing her wearing Stella’s dress.

  “It doesn’t matter what she thinks,” Daddy said, crushing the stub of his cigar in a silver tray, flecks of tobacco fluttering onto the table beneath. “It’s what the likes of Mrs. Astor think.”

  Stella couldn’t care less about what the likes of Mrs. Astor thought.

  “And regarding the engagement dinner,” Daddy added, “Jane came up with some good ideas I want you to implement.”

  “The dinner’s only three days away,” Stella said, hoping he’d think that meant her plans were fixed. And they were, sort of, almost. She’d planned to do a final check with the housekeeper and Cook tomorrow and had no intention of bringing up “Jane Cosslett’s ideas.”

  “Look what I found,” Stella said, changing the subject. She pulled the dagger from the canvas bag Professor Gridley had given her and unwrapped it. Inside this cozy room, with the yellow glow of the fireplace glinting on the blade, the dagger seemed sinister somehow.

  “What is that?”

  The reporter reached over and, without permission, snatched the dagger from Stella’s hand. Miss Cosslett held it up to the light, admiring the superior craftsmanship.

  “It’s remarkable,” Daddy said, admiring it from afar. “Look at those figurines, that wire braiding on the handle. Could be made of bronze, perhaps, or even gold.” If nothing else, he had a keen appreciation for priceless treasures.

  “You have had a busy morning, haven’t you, Miss Kendrick?” Miss Cosslett said, not too kindly.

  “Yes, I have. So, if you don’t mind.” Stella held out her hand.

  “Give it here,” Daddy said. Without taking her eyes off Stella, Miss Cosslett placed the pommel and grip into his outstretched hand. He weighed the dagger in his palm. “My guess is bronze. Not heavy enough for gold. Where did you find it?”

  “At the barrow.”

  “Did you or the others find anything else at the barrow?” Miss Cosslett asked.

  But before Stella could answer, Daddy ran his thumb along the blade. “Damn it, girl,” he cursed, sucking the blood from the cut on his thumb. “If you found this at the barrow, why’s the blade so sharp?”

  “I have no idea.” Stella couldn’t believe it. Lord Atherly said it was medieval. A blade, hundreds of years old, would’ve dulled over time. Could it have been recently sharpened?

  “What an odd fish you are, Miss Kendrick. First, you find a dead body and then a dangerous knife.”

  “It’s a dagger,” Stella corrected.

  “Either way, it’s an astonishing coincidence, don’t you think?” The reporter smirked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you also find the body of the vicar who was supposed to marry you and Lord Lyndhurst? And wasn’t he stabbed with a knife?”

  “I did find the vicar,” Stella said, more somber than annoyed. “But no, Reverend Bullmore wasn’t stabbed.”

  Stella thought of Reverend Bullmore often. She hoped the pain, the guilt, the sadness of it all would fade over time. But for now, she prayed for him, and everyone else touched by his death, every Sunday and tried to get on with the business of fulfilling her duties as the future Lady Lyndhurst. Lord Fairbrother was different. Stella regretted being the one to find Lady Philippa’s husband and regretted insisting she be there when the widow was told, but Stella had no remorse over the verderer’s death. She hadn’t even particularly liked the man.

  “You never said if you or the others found anything else,” she said.

  “I also found a cinerary urn. It was quite miraculous. Thousands of years old and completely intact.”

  “An urn? Where people’s ashes are kept?” Miss Cosslett said, the tips of her fingers caressing her lace collar.

  When had Daddy given her Stella’s dress? Stella knew not to bother asking why. She knew what he’d say. “I bought it. I’ll give it to whomever I choose.”

  “My, Miss Kendrick, daggers, urns, dead bodies,” the reporter added. “You certainly don’t shy away from the most unsavory of things, do you?”

  Stella regretted ever mentioning the urn, the dagger, or the barrow in front of this woman. She’d only hoped to distract her father from talking about the engagement party. Stella wouldn’t make the same mistake again. If it didn’t pertain to the wedding, Jane Cosslett didn’t need to know.

  “Now, now, Jane,” Daddy said, unexpectedly coming to Stella’s defense. “You’re here to get the news out that Elijah Kendrick, the son of a coachman, is marrying his daughter off to the heir of an earldom. Not about the girl’s penchant for the macabre.”

  So much for coming to Stella’s defense.

  “Oh, Elijah,” Miss Cosslett simpered as Tims entered the room holding a silver tray with a folded piece of paper on it. “You know I don’t mean anything by it. I’m a journalist, after all. Can’t a girl be curious?”

  Daddy reached over and patted her cheek. “Of course you can.” Stella cringed.

  “I have some messages for you, Miss Kendrick,” Tims said, coming to Stella’s rescue.

  Stella plucked up the three notes before her father beat her to it. She glanced at the first one, shielding its contents from the reporter, who was craning
her neck around to see. A small giggle of relief escaped Stella’s lips. It was from Mr. Gates, the stable-master at Morrington Hall. Tully was well enough to ride. She relayed the happy news as she unfolded the second note.

  Fairbrother stabbed, not drowned, need to speak with you again. Will call around again soon. It was signed, Inspector Archibald Brown.

  Stella felt a rush of blood to her cheeks as the room lurched suddenly. She took a deep breath, and the room righted itself again as her eyes came to rest on the professor’s empty canvas sack. Had she found the weapon that killed Lord Fairbrother? No, it couldn’t be. She slipped the notes into the bag, including the third left unread. The correspondence from Lady Atherly would have to wait.

  “What did the note say?” Daddy asked.

  “Who’s it from?” Miss Cosslett said.

  Stella, ignoring their questions, reached over and snatched the dagger from Daddy’s startled grip, the newspaper teetering on his belly slipping to the floor.

  “How dare you!”

  Stella wrapped the dagger up again and shoved it out toward the butler. “Would you put this in the safe with the silver, please, Tims.”

  “Of course, Miss Kendrick.” The butler nodded, despite her father’s sputtering protests.

  Stella didn’t believe in what Miss Cosslett called “an astonishing coincidence,” but just in case, she wasn’t taking any chances. “And no one is to remove it but me.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Not again,” Tom groaned.

  With the setting sun seeping around his edges, the bloke in the doorway was a mere silhouette. But Tom Heppenstall knew the shape of that cap anywhere. Tom shifted his weight off his aching ankle as the inspector removed his distinctive hat and sauntered up to the bar. Now what did he want?

  Sure, Tom had heard the tragic news. Who hadn’t? But it had nothing to do with him.

  Tom followed the inspector’s gaze to the game of darts on the other side of the room. A farmer in overalls and muddy boots, while drinking from his pint glass, threw the needle-like missile toward the circular board hanging on the wall. The dart missed its target and struck the nearby hand-strewn beam before dropping to the floor. Boisterous laughter followed.

  “Pint of Burton, pale,” the inspector ordered.

  Tom nodded, though the inspector’s attention was on the game. Tom slid a glass beneath the tap and allowed the frothy head to just reach the brim. He set the ale down on the bar. The inspector took a tentative sip.

  The pub was starting to fill up. Besides the dart players, customers occupied every table, as well as a few seats at the bar. Tom wasn’t surprised. As with any decent public house, the Knightwood Oak was rife with men needing to let go of the cares of the day. With the news of Lord Fairbrother’s death spreading, speculation had surpassed darts as the pub’s most popular sport. Every field hand and shopkeeper’s assistant had a theory: suicide by hanging, kicked in the head by his horse, drowning in Hatchet Pond, choked on a grape while eating afternoon tea. And every theory, each more outlandish than the next, brought in more trade. Who was Tom to discourage it?

  But when the boy began spreading a particularly scandalous rumor, that he claimed to have overheard the butcher’s wife tell the silversmith’s daughter what a kitchen maid had said, Tom had had enough. No one wanted to imagine Miss Kendrick catching a dead body with a fishing line. Whoever heard of a noblewoman fishing the Blackwater, anyway? But regardless of how it happened, that Lord Fairbrother was dead was a certainty. And the news of it, debated over chips, pie, and pints, filled Tom’s coffers all day. But that didn’t mean Tom wanted to talk to any police inspector about it.

  “Tuppence,” Tom said.

  “Inspector Brown,” the inspector said, fishing coins from his pocket. Tom remembered the fellow’s name. The only policeman Tom had ever seen step foot inside his pub. “I’m looking for Harvey Milkham.”

  “Haven’t seen him.” The last time Tom set eyes on the older man was two days before, when he’d almost emptied the pub with a snake.

  “Have you heard of anyone else seeing him?”

  From the chatter Tom had overheard, Harvey was another keen topic of conversation: his hut burning, threats he’d made at the fete, how he’d saved the American lady’s favorite horse. But no one knew what had become of the old snakecatcher.

  “Don’t think so,” Tom said.

  Leaving the policeman to his pint, Tom took an order for tonight’s special of kidney pie and mash and sent it back to the kitchen. His mouth watered at the smells that wafted through the kitchen door. Had the boy fetched this morning’s order of potatoes like Tom had told him to? If not, they might run out of mash before Tom got his supper.

  “What about George Parley?” The inspector, half-finished pint in hand, called down the bar. “I know he’s a regular here. Have you seen him lately?”

  Tom shook his head, scanning the room for any sign of that good for nothing boy. Several tables needed clearing already. Then he slid a pint of Guinness in front of Septimus the caretaker at St. Peter’s.

  With a hard face and broad, square shoulders, the caretaker looked like he was made of stone. But he wasn’t fooling anyone. When his interest was piqued, Septimus was like a sponge cake soaking up brandy. Come tomorrow morning Reverend Paine would be getting an earful of gossip.

  “Everyone’s certainly heard George lately,” Septimus said, before taking a sip and starting back toward the game of darts, foam still clinging to his upper lip.

  “What did he mean by that?” the inspector asked. Tom shrugged.

  The policeman pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he set his elbow on the bar and leaned in. “I’m here investigating a murder, Mr. Heppenstall. Have you seen George Parley since yesterday afternoon or not?”

  Murder? That would undoubtedly feed the rumor mill.

  “You bet George was in last night,” Old Joe, perched in his customary place at the end of the bar, declared, his usual broadsheets spread out in front of him taking up valuable bar space. “Don’t you remember, Tom? You couldn’t get him to shut up.”

  The policeman regarded Tom with disappointment. Tom shrugged again. “He hasn’t been in yet tonight, though.”

  “What was Mr. Parley going on about, then?” the inspector asked.

  “Lord Fairbrother, who else?” Old Joe said. “The fellow is always going on about the official verderer. Ain’t that so, Tom?” Tom ignored him.

  “Everything is unfair; everything’s stacked against George Parley, if you listen to him talk,” Old Joe went on. “And whether it was his Cecil Pony Challenge second-place finish or the court’s ruling on some enclosure boundary line, he blamed Lord Fairbrother if it didn’t go George’s way.”

  “Thank you, Mr. . . . ?” the inspector said.

  “Just call me Joe.”

  “Thank you, Joe.” The inspector, his back to the bar, shouted above the din of the pub. “If any one of you happens to see George Parley or Harvey Milkham, tell them—”

  Whoosh! Clank. Wooooooooo!

  A deep, reverberating roar resounded across the room, cutting off every half-spoken word in the pub. The whack of a dart as it hit the board, thrown seconds before, pierced the silence it left behind.

  Clink. Clank. Wooooooooo!

  Oh, no, not again. Tom sighed.

  “What, may I ask, was that?” the inspector said.

  “The ghost,” the boy uttered quietly, appearing out of nowhere beside the inspector, his cheeks the color of champagne. As if he were the ghost himself. Where had that boy been?

  “The what?”

  “The ghost, of Old Bertie. It haunts the pub,” the boy said, moistening his lips.

  Every pub in England had some tall tale of a ghost haunting its rafters; the Knightwood Oak was no exception. In 1748 the pub’s landlord, Bertie Roberts, was murdered with an ax by a jealous husband. The tale, as Tom had heard it told, claimed the publican didn’t even know the killer’s wife. Unjustly cut down in his prime, th
e ghost was said to haunt the pub, moaning for all eternity about the unpunished wrong. When Tom bought the place, he’d dismissed the occasional grumblings rising from the basement over the years. “The ghost” had been more active than usual the past couple of days, and since the death of Lord Fairbrother, the knocking, the scraping, and the clanging had some renaming the poltergeist from Old Bertie to Lord Fairbrother.

  As if the lord would haunt a pub of all places. Outwick House, maybe, but the Knightwood Oak? Never.

  But Tom couldn’t explain the noises. Yesterday he’d combed every inch of the place, top to bottom, with witnesses, and his only reward was a renewed throbbing in his ankle. He could only hope “the ghost,” whatever be his name, wouldn’t be bad for business.

  “Right.” To Tom’s relief, the inspector gulped down the last of his beer and set the glass on the bar. “You’ll inform me if you see or hear anything, I trust? I’ve no concern for a ghost, mind,” the inspector said, settling his hat on his head. “It’s Harvey Milkham and George Parley I’m interested in.”

  The inspector paused a moment before strolling away. Tom had said nothing. As the policeman navigated a crowd of newcomers arriving through the door, Tom was only too glad to see the back of him.

  * * *

  Just a few more feet.

  George Parley bent his knees and leaned back. With his arms wrapped on the wooden post, he hauled it slowly toward the new hole he had dug. His muscles ached, and a sinuous vein bulged in his neck as he strained against the formidable weight. Despite the cool breeze blowing off the Solent, his forehead beaded with sweat.

  He was too old to be doing this kind of work.

  But who could he get to do it? Not Gerald or Edgar; his sons were too lazy. Not any of the farm hands; he couldn’t trust the lot of them to keep their mouths shut. No, George would have to do this himself. He yanked harder, feeling a sharp tug in his back as he dragged the fencing the last few inches. He dropped the post into the hole. He stretched his shoulders and rubbed the spot on his back before filling in the empty gaps around the post with dirt and moss. Then he retraced the trail the post had dragged through the soil and smoothed it out with his boot. He stepped back to admire his handiwork.