Ghosts of Mayfield Court

by Russell, Norman

  ‘And Inspector Jackson? Was he hiding in the house?’

  ‘Mr Jackson came to the front door, armed with warrants, and demanded entry. And that was the end of thirty years’ planning, and plotting, and murder.’

  We were driven no more than a quarter of a mile out of the village, along the darkened main road, when we turned left into a carriage drive. I looked out of the window and saw an array of lighted windows defining the front of a modern mock-Tudor house. Two gas globes glowed on either side of the front door.

  ‘Miss Paget,’ said Sergeant Bottomley, who was sitting beside me, ‘this is Meadowfield School, a very high-class place where people of quality send their daughters to be educated. It was the school to which the child who passed herself off as Helen Paget, your little ghost, was sent.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, she proved to be a first-rate pupil, and did very well. In the end, she married a prosperous gentleman who lives in Birmingham, and she has two children of her own, who both go to schools like this.’

  He was silent for a moment, and then added, ‘She came from the poorest of the poor, Miss Paget, and made a great success of her life. She was only eleven years old, too, when her adventure began, and I’m hoping to keep all mention of her out of the trial, when it takes place.’

  I don’t know why it was that I suddenly burst into uncontrollable tears at this point. Maybe it was all the talk of marriage and children, and lives fulfilled, and the sad knowledge that poor little Helen had never been given the chance to know these things herself.

  Or maybe it was because I knew now how very much alone I was in the world. Not many girls had been engaged to a man who had all along accepted the possibility of her being murdered by his own mother, with his connivance. It was vile. I would never contemplate marriage again. I would live comfortably in my London house, with my housekeeper and servants, until one day I would be known as ‘the old maiden lady who lives in Saxony Square’.

  The thought brought me little comfort, and I began a fresh bout of despairing tears. Mr Bottomley, throwing etiquette to the winds, put a brawny arm around my shoulders and patted me as though I were a baby. Which in some ways, of course, I was.

  The carriage stopped, and I was helped down by the police constable who had driven us from Providence Hall. A pleasant, grey-haired lady stepped forward from the porch to receive me. She was wearing a black evening dress, with a fine cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders.

  ‘Miss Paget?’ she asked. ‘I am Miss Jellicoe, Principal of Meadowfield School. My friend Mr Bottomley there wants you to stay with me until such time as you feel strong enough to return to London. Come inside out of the night air.’

  I stayed in Miss Jellicoe’s private quarters in the school for a week, after which time I felt able to return to London. I had very quickly determined not to make enquiry about this wretched Forshaw money that had led to so many deaths. I wanted none of it. My uncle’s legacy was sufficient.

  During my stay at the school, Mr Bottomley came and sat with me every day, and answered whatever questions came into my mind. He was a very kind, avuncular man – no, not avuncular: he was a fatherly man, with daughters of his own, who knew what a young woman would want to know. I asked him what would become of Lady Carteret.

  ‘Lady Carteret – she had so many names, miss,’ Mr Bottomley replied. ‘Arabella Bancroft, then Mrs Temperley…. We found out that she was married first to a decent farmer called Colin Temperley. She had two children by him, Michael, your fiancé, and his sister, Marguerite. Colin was a good man, but his children inherited their mother’s bad blood.

  ‘After that, she married your uncle’s brother, and became Mrs Hector Paget. Later, after he had died, she married Sir Leopold Carteret. Mr Jackson thinks that she rescued him from certain ruin, and that the Forshaw fortune finally ended up there, at Providence Hall, in Sir Leopold’s coffers. That’s what he thinks, but we don’t know for sure.’

  ‘And how is she?’ I persisted. ‘I suppose she denied everything.’

  ‘Oh, no, miss,’ said Mr Bottomley. ‘On the contrary, she can’t stop talking. She’s told us just about everything. Her poisons – she liked poisons – were latterly provided by her son Michael, Michael Temperley, to give him his real name. He really was a doctor, you know, his training paid for by Forshaw money, but not the type that I’d like to give me a bottle of medicine. Incidentally, it seems quite clear that Sir Leopold Carteret had no idea that Michael was his wife’s son by an earlier marriage. He knows more about her wicked ways than he admitted but he didn’t know that.’

  He had looked at me then with grave concern.

  ‘Do you still love him?’ he asked. ‘Or did you only think you loved him, because he was the first young man you fell for?’

  ‘I don’t love him,’ I replied. ‘I was willing to venture all to be with him, and all the time he was quite willing to murder me, if his mother told him to! I tell you, I’ve done with men. Life is much safer without them.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bottomley, ‘you might be right, but I’m not quite sure about that. Yes, Lady Carteret has talked, and the more she talks the more the police surgeon is convinced that she is sane. Sane and wicked. The souls of her victims cry out for vengeance, and they shall have it. She will hang, Miss Paget, and so will her son, Michael. The daughter, Marguerite, is verging on the simple-minded. She won’t figure in our investigations.’

  Marguerite…. She had been my companion in our visits to spiritualists, and I had accounted her as a true friend. She had accompanied Michael and me to the theatre, chatting away like a little girl, too young for her age. Well, let her apply to Sir Leopold Carteret for charity, she would get none from me. She was lucky to have escaped with her life. I am thankful to say that I never saw her again.

  ‘Have you got a young lady friend who can be with you when you return to London?’ Mr Bottomley asked. ‘Go about with you, I mean? A girl with kindly parents who will keep an eye on you until, well, until you’ve decided how best you will be an old spinster for the rest of your life?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I have a nice, uncomplicated friend called Maisie Grossman. And as for becoming an old spinster, well—’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll like it,’ said Mr Bottomley, gravely. ‘You’ll enjoy meeting with other old women of twenty to gossip about the latest scandals. I’ll leave you now, but if ever you want help or advice, you have my card, and know where to find me.’

  I remained friends with Herbert Bottomley for many years, and still see him, occasionally. He never became an inspector, because of – well, he was, to use his own words, ‘too fond of the bottle’. But that didn’t stop him being, in my opinion, one of the best and kindest of nature’s gentlemen.

  16

  The End of Mayfield Court

  Sir Leopold Carteret, looking pale and strained, sat in his private study in Providence Hall, waiting for Inspector Jackson to finish his tale. It was a terrible story that he told, and it was essential to listen to it all with the necessary gravity. (He must tell Albert to wind up the clocks; two of them at least were minutes out.)

  ‘And that, Sir Leopold,’ Jackson concluded, ‘is the whole truth about this case, and about your wife. In the whole of my career, I have never investigated so appalling a catalogue of capital crimes.’

  ‘Appalling!’ Sir Leopold agreed. ‘I have been married to her for twenty years or more, and have known her only as a loving and dutiful wife. We were never blessed with children, but now you tell me that she had a son by a first marriage. And he, too, was a killer at heart. Will you believe me when I tell you that I knew nothing of all this?’

  Yes, Jackson thought, he knows that he has only to persist in that denial, and we can do nothing. His wife sent him up to London to get him out of the way so that he would not be implicated in the death of Miss Paget. In all her endless confession in her cell at Copton Vale Bridewell, she has said not one word that could implicate her husb
and. She’s devoted to him. I can’t touch him, and if he has control of the Forshaw inheritance, then it is going to stay with him.

  ‘Sir,’ said Jackson, leaving the baronet’s question unanswered, ‘why did you tell me that you had no knowledge of the Reverend Walter Hindle? He was your wife’s brother, and your own brother-in-law.’

  Sir Leopold contrived to blush. He shifted uneasily in his chair.

  ‘I admit that I was guilty of deception there, Inspector. It was family pride, you see. Walter was becoming senile, and I could never be sure what indiscretions he was going to commit. To my own shame, I decided to deny all knowledge of him. After all, he was back here, safe in the house; I never did believe your little fiction about him being part of one of your cases!’

  Sir Leopold gave Jackson a rueful smile. One up for me, I think.

  ‘Sir,’ said Jackson, ‘Lady Carteret will face trial at the Warwick Assizes, and I must advise you that her case is hopeless. You must prepare for the worst. Her son, too, must face trial as an accessory to murder, for it was he who furnished his mother with the poison she used to end the life of Mr Maximilian Paget. And for him also there can be no hope.’

  Sir Leopold was silent for a moment. He shaded his face with his hand, as though Jackson’s terrible words had proved too much for him.

  ‘It is all too monstrous to contemplate,’ he said at last. ‘I hope I am putting on a brave face here, Inspector, because that’s what a gentleman must do. But I am devastated. Desolate. What can I do? My house, my private papers, are all at your disposal. And I will co-operate fully in any subsequent investigation you wish to make. I can do no more. Perhaps you will leave me, now? I must write to Sir William Orpington, QC, so that my wife can have the best counsel available for her coming ordeal. Poor, dear, Bella! Perhaps she was tainted by insanity?’

  Saul Jackson made no reply. He bowed perfunctorily to the baronet, and quitted the room, leaving Sir Leopold to his own thoughts. As he left the house, he saw the hostile stares of the butler and the two footmen. Already the lord of the manor and his dependants were coming together as a unified force. Nothing could be done to dislodge this soulless hypocrite from his position of wealth and privilege.

  He found Sergeant Bottomley waiting for him in the churchyard. Together they crossed the grass to the Forshaw monuments, and Jackson showed his sergeant the inscription that Hector Paget had composed to cover the murder of Gabriel Forshaw at Waterloo House.

  Also Gabriel Forshaw, beloved son of the above Henry, perished of a fever at Bonny, in Nigeria, 7 August, 1865, aged 24 years, and buried there.

  ‘I expect Sir Leopold will have that inscription effaced, and replaced by another,’ he said. ‘But of course, the Forshaws are no kin of his, so perhaps he’ll leave it there, to commemorate a wicked lie, and an equally wicked murder.’

  ‘A telegraph message came through at ten o’clock, sir,’ said Bottomley. ‘It’s from Inspector Blade in London. Doctor Morrison will get three months’ hard labour in the House of Correction, and his licence to practise medicine will be revoked.’

  ‘And Doctor Zhdanov? Anything about him?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Mr Blade and his posse went round to his house with an arrest warrant. Zhdanov pretended to yield himself up to them, but suddenly tore away and ran upstairs. He entered a room there, and bolted the door before they could reach it. They were preparing to make a rush and knock it off its hinges when they heard a shot. Zhdanov had chosen suicide rather than the gallows.’

  Jackson looked round the old churchyard.

  ‘We’re finished here, Sergeant, and there’s a lot of work to do before that woman’s trial. It’s time for us to make our way back to Warwick.’

  He opened the gate that gave out on to the public road, and they walked together through the sunlit village of Upton Carteret until they reached the Carteret Arms, where Mr Hardacre had a hired trap waiting to convey them to Monks’ Stretton Halt.

  Sir Leopold was thinking of his future. He had better stay at the Hall until poor Bella’s trial was over, and then he would go to the South of France for the winter. Cannes was always pleasant, with lots of interesting company.

  He would take Lucas with him, and possibly leave him there. It seemed that the police had not connected his steward with the abduction of poor Walter, and the ultimate solution of his particular problem. It would be safer for all concerned if he lived abroad. Meanwhile, he could lose himself in London for a few months.

  It would take a year at least for the scandal to die down. He would give all his dependants a rise in wages, and the cottars six months’ relief from rents. That would ensure their loyalty. And then he would ride across the county to Beauville Castle, and call upon the Honourable Adelaide de Bolter, whom he had known in his younger days. A widow now, with two children of impeccable pedigree, he would try his best to lure her to Providence Hall as his wife. An alliance with the de Bolters would be to both families’ advantage. He didn’t care to be wifeless, and Adelaide would do very nicely….

  He was roused from his reverie by Albert, the senior footman, who had come into the room unbidden. The lad’s eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Can I get you anything, sir?’ he asked. ‘Some coffee?’

  ‘Why, Albert, how very considerate of you! Yes, please, I would like a pot of coffee, and some of those little biscuits that we usually have. And perhaps you could wind up the clocks some time today?’

  Charm will do it, thought Sir Leopold, when the footman had gone. In a year’s time all will be as it was. There had been Carterets at Providence Hall for centuries, and it looked as though they were going to be there far, far into the future.

  Catherine’s Narrative Concluded

  The trials of Lady Carteret and Michael Temperley took place at Warwick Assizes in March, 1894. With an eminent QC appearing for the defence, and an almost rabid Press eager to report every detail, the trial was a sensation. Lady Carteret’s plea of insanity, entered by Sir William Orpington, QC, was discredited by expert medical evidence produced by the Crown. Michael attempted a grovelling defence of undue influence, which was effortlessly proved to be a sham. Much sympathy was expressed for the plight of Sir Leopold Carteret, who was seen as a grossly injured party. They were, of course, found guilty, and condemned to death. They suffered the supreme penalty in April of that year.

  In the early autumn of 1894 I went to stay with an old school-friend of mine, who after leaving the upper form with a special scholarship, went up to Lady Margaret Hall, the college for women at Oxford, established in the 1870s. A brilliant girl, she had been elected a junior fellow of the college, and was in residence when I went to stay with her. I was still only twenty, but my experiences had made me feel much older and wiser: I had experienced things that very few people would have to endure in a whole lifetime.

  I will not tell my reader the girl’s name, but if you heard it, you would immediately recognize it, for it is a household word now, in the 1900s. Well, it was on this autumn vacation that I met a young man who was studying medicine at Magdalen College. He was my friend’s cousin, and such was our mutual attraction, that in the spring of 1895 I married him! My dream of genteel spinsterhood was very effectively shattered.

  NOTE. I hope you won’t object to appearing in my narrative, dear Robert. If you do, and I really turn this account into a novel, I’ll change your name, or even leave you out altogether. But I hope you’ll agree to remain. We have now been married ten years, and have two dear children, and your medical practice, with rooms in Harley Street, is thriving. I think we both know that we will always live in the house in Saxony Square, which we both love. One of the things that attracted me to you, Robert, was the fact that you had visible parents, readily available for inspection, and that they were eminently respectable academics! But there, I must go back into the last century to bring my narrative to a conclusion. I thought a long time about the title, and have decided that, if it is published as a novel, it will be called The Ghosts of May
field Court.

  Catherine Paget, 1905.

  Soon after my marriage, I made arrangements to sell Mayfield Court to a charitable body who wished to demolish it, and replace it with a small cottage hospital. I could think of no better use for the site, and readily accepted the £450 that they offered me for it. I went down in midsummer to examine the work in progress.

  The house was already half demolished, with only the ground floor rooms remaining, and the garden had been cleared of some of its outbuildings and half of it ploughed up, ready for the laying of the foundations for the new hospital. But the lower end, where the remains of little Helen Paget had been concealed, was still a wilderness of overgrown, rank vegetation.

  I walked slowly along the path, where the smell of brick-dust seemed to have replaced the perfumes of the unkempt blooms of yesterday. When I reached the ruins of the washhouse, I vividly recalled the little gypsy girl, pointing mutely to the skeleton that she had discovered, and putting her finger to her lips.

  But on that day there was no sign of Hannah Price. True, I did find myself looking across the weeds to the far wall of the wilderness, where I saw another girl child standing. She was wearing a dark, olive-green dress, with lace at the collars and cuff, and I remember thinking that it was a very formal dress for a child wandering in a ruined garden. The little girl looked at me, and a brilliant smile transformed her face into something welcoming and attractive. I turned away for a moment, and when I looked back, the little girl had disappeared.

  By the Same Author

  The Dried-Up Man

  The Dark Kingdom

  The Devereaux Inheritance

  The Haunted Governess

  The Advocate’s Wife

  The Hansa Protocol