A gentleman’s estate, then, and rather a good one, by the sound of it. But what of the family she had married into? What of Roseacre?
‘This large edifice is of considerable antiquity, having been much improved and extended by many generations of the family into its present imposing condition, and now comprises several wings, each in its own way as beautiful as another. The hall is a noble room, having in its windows and walls the arms of all the matches in the family, with many other apartments of splendid decoration. The house stands on an eminence from which the views are extensive and beautiful. The large park includes woodland with magnificent stands of pine and birch, and pleasure grounds recently subject to much replanting and additions, so that they are now acclaimed as some of the finest in the country.’
At the top, in neat print, were the words that made him laugh out loud in delight. ‘Roseacre, co Durham, seat of Lord Mountsea’ A baron! And Mrs Middlehope had married the eldest son — the heir. He had died before his father, and the younger brother had inherited, yet if the gentleman had but hung on a little longer, then the widow would now be Lady Mountsea, and Viola would not be talking about her lack of breeding, of that he could be sure. It was a sad fact, but his sister was too high in the instep by half.
~~~~~
The following morning, Laurence optimistically exercised the dogs on the Glebe, but for the second day Mrs Middlehope did not come. After breakfast, he took a gun out and then, having dropped off the dogs at the Grove, he selected some of his haul, plus a capon from the kitchen, and walked down the drive and across the road to the Dower House.
It was pleasant, he thought, to see the place alive again. A maid was polishing one of the upper windows and in the garden the Timpson twins were hard at work, scything and raking the unkempt grass that had once been lawn. Round at the side of the house, he could see activity in the stable block, where he discovered Cass Saxby, her groom and the widow’s footman busily disposing a gig, pony and quantities of hay and feed about the place.
“Miss Saxby. How are you?” he said, making her a bow.
“I am well, as you see, Mr Gage. Have you brought those for Mrs Middlehope? There is a game store just through that door there. William will take them from you.”
“Is your mistress in, William?” he said as he handed over his burden.
“Aye, sir. In the… in the room at the front, the… the study!” He grinned in triumph at remembering the name, before disappearing.
Laurence left Miss Saxby in the stables and walked towards the house. There was no point going to the front door, since the manservant was not there to answer it, so he entered the house through the basement door to the kitchens. No one was about, but he heard low voices not far away. Beasley, he thought.
Following the sound to the butler’s room, he peered through the open door. Beasley and Squire Winslade, huddled over an assortment of bones spread out on the table, looked up at him.
“Come in, come in, Gage,” Beasley said, waving his hands excitedly. “This is fascinating. Do have a look.”
“Thank you, but you may give me a summary later,” Laurence said with a laugh.
Upstairs, there was still no one about. There were four doors, but only one was slightly open and when he peeped in, there she was, sitting at her desk with her back to him, head down as she wrote steadily. Beneath a frothy little lace cap, loose fronds of hair curled onto her bare neck in pleasing disarray. Then he wondered why he found it pleasing, he who had so loved his wife’s neatness, with never a hair out of place. It was not like him, and yet it amused him, too. How long was it since he had admired a woman’s feminine charms? There was life in him yet, even a dull old dog such as he was.
She must have heard a sound, or sensed his presence, for she half turned her head, and said, “Yes, William, what is it?”
“Not William, I am afraid. It is only I.”
She turned fully round, her face alight with amusement. “Why, Mr Gage! What a pleasant surprise. But oh dear! After mistaking you for a gamekeeper on our first meeting, now I am confusing you with the manservant. How dreadful. But do come in. There is Madeira on the sideboard there, so please help yourself. It is from your own cellar, after all.”
He laughed, saying, “Shall I pour for you, too?”
“Why not? Do sit down, Mr Gage. I told William I was not at home today, but you are always welcome, even without gifts.”
“Ah, but I do indeed bear gifts,” he said, rather pleased to be singled out as an exception. Although perhaps she would say as much to anyone. “There are several pigeons and rabbits hanging in your game store at this moment, and a capon, too. I might take myself down to the river this afternoon and see if I can catch something for you.”
“This is generosity indeed,” she cried. “How very kind you are, but you must not deprive your own table on my account, especially as I have no cook to take advantage of fresh fish. I am not confident that my makeshift arrangements would do it justice. I am very glad of the game, however. But please, do sit down and then we may be comfortable. Pray excuse the disorder, but my footman has been diverted by the arrival of the gig.”
The room looked as if it was in the middle of a rearrangement. A chaise longue was seemingly abandoned in the middle of the room, and two pairs of stacked chairs stood beside it. A matched pair of armchairs stood back to back on one side of the fire. She spun them round and pushed them here and there until they were positioned one either side of the fire.
“There, that is better,” she said, settling into one of them and taking her glass of Madeira from him. “Please, sit. As you see, I am in the process of making this room a little more comfortable. I shall likely spend my mornings in here, so it will suit me to receive callers here as well. That way I need not light the fire in the drawing room until the evening. It is not an easy thing, I find, to arrange a house to suit one. I have always previously lived in houses where the proper room for each purpose had been determined three generations ago at least, and therefore no consideration need be given to the matter.”
“I had never thought of that,” he said, sipping his Madeira. “I should have supposed that each new mistress would make changes.”
Her face clouded momentarily. “Perhaps some do. I certainly never did at Roseacre, but then, even after my husband’s mother had died, his father was still alive, and liked everything just as it always was.”
“That would be Lord Mountsea.”
Her eyes crinkled in amusement. “Now, how did you know that? I have not mentioned it to anyone here.”
“I looked up Roseacre in Paterson’s Roads. Is it a secret? I shall not mention it to anyone, if so.”
“Not a secret, exactly, for it is easy enough to find it out, as you have discovered, but the connection is hardly relevant to me now. My husband is dead, and my rôle in his family is over. It is in my past, and I do not wish to drag it with me wherever I may go.”
“Like a millstone around your neck… yes, I can see that it might be a burden,” he said thoughtfully. “Yet your husband was the heir. Had matters fallen out otherwise, you would have been Lady Mountsea now, and your place in the family would be unavoidable.”
She gave a burst of laughter. “Yes, and I thank God for my narrow escape! Three months, that was how close it came! Poor Ned, he was so cross about it, when he realised that he would not outlive his father and could not, after all, bestow the title upon me. ‘I promised I would make you a lady,’ he said, ‘and you have waited so patiently and now she will have it and not you.’ By ‘she’ he meant his brother’s wife, of course, but we had known for years that there would be no son and that Pamela would one day displace me. I was quite accepting of it, and it was entirely my fault, after all. I had but one duty — to provide my husband with an heir, and preferably two or three. Unfortunately, I failed dismally, whereas Pamela, bless her, has presented her husband with four sons and three daughters, so she quite deserves her title and frankly, she is welcome to it.”
“Even if you never much cared about the title, it must have irked you to surrender the house to your sister-in-law, and yield to her wishes in every matter.”
“Oh no, if she had had any wishes, that would have been easier to bear. The trouble was, she had no idea what she wanted. She would ask my advice on a matter, and then she would ask the housekeeper, and then she would ask me again, and then she would ask her husband, and then she would ask me yet again, and all the while the cook or the butler or the coachman, whoever was waiting for a decision, was kept hanging about not able to proceed. And then she would decide, and everyone would breathe a sigh of relief and set about doing whatever she had ordered and at the very last moment—”
“She changed her mind!”
“Yes!” she said, laughing. “The poor servants never knew what they were supposed to be doing. Sometimes she would send all the footmen off on one errand or another, and wonder why no one came when she rang. And then—” She stopped, and drained her glass. “Well, that is neither here nor there. Changes happen, one must accept that.”
Silently, he rose, took her glass to the sideboard and refilled it. Resuming his seat, he said gently, “Tell me. I am the soul of discretion.”
She sighed. “For twelve years, Roseacre was a place of calmness and tranquillity. Then Tom and Pamela arrived with their seven children, and suddenly the house was filled with bustle and running feet and squealing children. They brought friends, too, and a multitude of Pamela’s relations. Her father practically lives there now. It was uncomfortable for me, frankly. I had grown very accustomed to my quiet life, and I very much hope to rediscover it here, with no husband, no relations, just myself.”
A quiet life… that was interesting. “The father would be Mr Walter Pritchard of Hartlepool, I think. Debrett’s was rather reticent about him. Not even an esquire after his name. Not a gentleman?”
She raised her shapely eyebrows. “I am not quite sure what he was. A merchant of some kind… a dealer. He never explained about his ‘endeavours’, as he called them. He was always dashing here and there to see about ‘one of my endeavours, Mrs M’, as he would say. He was seldom at Hartlepool, and Pamela used to go with him, as often as not. A restless pair, the two of them. Tom and Mrs P stayed at the Hartlepool house with the children. He always called his wife Mrs P, I was Mrs M and Pamela was Mrs Tom. He was a bit rough, but I rather liked him. I often stayed with them at Hartlepool for a week or two.”
“What is Hartlepool like?” he said, mindful of his discussion with Henrietta.
“Oh, a tiny little place, barely bigger than a fishing village, and very bracing, owing to its position on the German Ocean. A spa town, but a pale imitation of the more famous ones, and the waters are particularly nasty. There is some nervousness there in anticipation of an invasion from France, but Mr Pritchard says that Bonaparte has more sense than to come to Hartlepool and if he does, the locals will invite him to drink the waters and he will immediately turn round and go home.”
“Is that its strongest claim to infamy, the nastiest spa waters in England?” Laurence said, chuckling.
“No, indeed, for there was a murder there last year,” she said triumphantly. “It was deliciously shocking. One of Pamela’s aunts, in fact.”
“Was murdered or did the murdering?” he said innocently.
She half choked on her Madeira. “How wicked you are, Mr Gage! She was the victim, of course — money stolen, too. It was a great mystery until some people came from London and realised that she had owed her milliner a great deal of money, and when they examined the body carefully, they found the tiniest pin prick above her heart. Killed by a hat pin, you see. The milliner was hanged.”
They were on their third, or possibly fourth, glass of Madeira when Beasley and Squire Winslade emerged from below stairs, grinning with satisfaction.
“Most interesting!” Beasley said. “A most intriguing case. Never dealt with anything of the kind before, so most grateful, Mrs Middlehope, most grateful. A young lady, we cannot be sure as to age, but perhaps twenty-five or thirty, something of the sort. No wedding ring, and yet — she was with child! What do you think of that.”
“Aha!” Laurence said before he could stop himself. “Then her lover murdered her! How fascinating!”
Beasley’s face fell. “That would indeed be fascinating, but unfortunately the story is sadder than that. No doubt there was a lover, but clearly she had no hope of aid from that direction. You see, we found this in her clothing.” He pulled a small object from his waistcoat pocket, and handed it to Mrs Middlehope. A key. “The poor girl was so distressed that she locked herself in the wine cellar to die.”
“But how did she die?” Laurence said. “Did you find a knife with the body? An empty poison bottle? Rope to hang herself?”
“As to that, nothing was found, so we cannot say precisely how she died,” Beasley said uncomfortably.
“No doubt she took poison before she entered the wine cellar,” Squire Winslade said. “It is of no consequence. We will try to find out who she is, but I do not think we need look too far for a reason for her death.”
“You have it all worked out,” Laurence said. “I suppose it makes sense.”
“Of course it does. Such things happen all too often, unfortunately,” Beasley said. “Let us restrict ourselves to the ordinary world, Mr Gage, and not stray into the fanciful realm of murder.”
6: Worthy Of Notice
Louisa listened to the discussion in silence. She was not convinced for one moment by the argument for suicide, for who, in such distress, would take the trouble to lock themselves in? Nor did Mr Gage look convinced, either, for although he put forward no further arguments, there was a frown on his face that gradually deepened.
Before long, Dr Beasley and Squire Winslade rose to arrange to transport the remains to the squire’s ice house, to preserve it for further examination later, although it was hard to see what there was left to preserve.
“I shall see you this evening, Mrs Middlehope,” Dr Beasley said, as he made his way to the door.
“Will you?” Louisa said, rather startled. “How so?”
“Why, you are joining us for dinner and staying for cards afterwards, I trust. It is all settled. We are all to take care of you until your cook arrives.”
“Oh. I understood there was some… difficulty with the arrangements.”
“Take no notice of that. We dine early, so come round at half past four.”
“You are very kind, but I do not believe Miss Beasley is expecting me, sir. You may wish to check with her.”
He grunted, and departed with the squire. Louisa was left with Mr Gage. Silently, she rose, took both their glasses to the sideboard to be refilled, and returned to her chair.
“I daresay my sister will ring a peal over me when I return home in my cups again,” he said cheerfully, raising his glass to her in a toast.
That made her laugh. “Do you care about that?”
“Not a great deal, but—”
“But you do not like to distress her.”
“I do not,” he said. “Viola has a certain way of looking at the world, and she likes it better if I conform to her ideas, and mostly I do so. However, it is a pleasant thing, I find, to enjoy a fine wine with someone who also appreciates it.”
“As I suspected,” she said, chuckling. “I am a bad influence on you, leading you into bad habits. Admit it, for I know Miss Gage disapproves of me mightily. Not at first, to be sure… she was very welcoming at first, but now—”
“She believed you to be connected to Lord Middleton,” he said, eyes twinkling. “When she discovered her mistake, and not knowing how close you came to a real title, she decided you were not to be encouraged. It is not you personally of whom she
disapproves, you must understand, it is all beautiful young widows, whom she supposes to be predatory creatures on the prowl for a second husband. Naturally, she fears that I shall fall into your toils.”
Beautiful! A casual compliment, but it was a promising sign. “Of course she does! But pray tell her, if you please, that I am not looking for a husband. I have been a daughter and a wife, and chafed just a little under the restrictions of both. I look forward to a long and very happy widowhood, with no one to please but myself. Besides, I should not marry you if you were the last man alive, for your first wife was perfect and who could compete with that?”
For a moment, she wondered if her levity had carried her too far, for she saw surprise written on his features. But then he burst out laughing, shaking his head. “Indeed, it is a good point, one which poor Viola can never understand. It is an odd thing, but she has been telling me for ever that I should marry again, if only for the sake of the children, yet when a highly suitable lady appears, she sets her face against it. I wonder why that should be?”
A sharp knock on the open door was followed immediately by Miss Saxby’s smiling face. “May I come in? Goodness, you two look cosy! I had hoped to catch Dr Beasley and the squire.”
“They have just this minute left.”
“No matter. I shall send a message. I have a name for them — Dilys Hughes, a junior housemaid at the Hall years ago. She got into a spot of bother and was given notice, and supposedly sent home. She did not get far, did she? The pony is settled in your stable now, Mrs Middlehope, and I have explained to your man how to care for him, but he seems very competent and Goronwy likes him.”
“Goronwy! Strange name,” Louisa said.
She laughed. “He is Welsh. I must go. Good bye!”
Stranger at the Dower House (Strangers Book 1) Page 6
