The Dead of Haggard Hall

by Marie Treanor

  And now that I’d seen it, I was none the wiser. It seemed to be an artist’s studio. Several easels were set up, some of them covered, others revealing paintings on canvas—moorland scenes, still lives of flowers and fruit, one obviously Haggard Hall from the front lawn.

  “Me too,” Arthur said ruefully. “No one but me comes here. I use it as a studio. Painting is my hobby.”

  “Emily told me how good you were.” I walked from canvas to canvas. “And you are!”

  He shrugged that off. “In an amateur kind of way. But I enjoy it. Mostly. Don’t tell Emily, because it’s meant to be a surprise, but I’ve been trying to paint her.”

  He turned the nearest easel towards me. Emily gazed back at me. Except it wasn’t quite Emily. Her beautiful, golden hair tumbled around her bare shoulders, which displayed only a hint of a white gown with a single red rosebud attached. The dress, her hair, even her glowing skin, were beautifully done, deeply textured. But her expression wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t quite Emily’s smile.

  Arthur said, “It’s meant to be her on our wedding day, but I can’t get it right.”

  “It’s wonderfully close, though. Maybe Martin came up for a peek. Maybe all the servants do.”

  “I don’t lock the door,” he allowed.

  I paused by the open window. It wasn’t a usual sash casement but a tall, window almost from floor to ceiling, made up of square pains. One side of the window opened outwards. My stomach lurched unpleasantly as I contemplated the drop to the ground. I could see the blood. I turned hastily away then with a frown, dragged my gaze back to the windowsill. I bent and ran my finger along its dust-free surface.

  “Who cleans in here?” I asked.

  “The maid, Milly. She’s a careful girl. In fact, we used to play together as children, so I suppose I trust her most.”

  “Does Milly have a lover?”

  Arthur blushed. “I’m sure I don’t know. I—” He broke off, blinking at me. “Martin? You’re not suggesting Milly pushed Martin out of the window!”

  “Of course not. But if he was courting Milly, perhaps he sneaked up here to meet her. It would at least explain his presence here. I suppose if he was taken ill, he could have fallen quite easily.”

  “More easily than you imagine,” Arthur said ruefully. “I just found the window latch broken. It would have fallen open if anyone so much as leaned against it.”

  Arthur sank onto a grubby stool and dropped his head into his hands. “We should have put bars across this window after Rose’s death. I never imagined such a thing could happen twice.”

  “Did she not take her own life?” I said gently. I’d no idea how he regarded the dead lady.

  He dropped his hands and looked up. “I don’t know. It was called accidental death, which meant she could be decently buried. Patrick always maintained she’d never have done such a thing, but he was the only one. She was a…frail character.”

  And Patrick, I supposed, would not have wanted to believe, or have others believe, that he’d driven his wife to suicide. Of course, the other half of the population seemed to believe he’d murdered her…

  Arthur said, “There can’t be a connection between Rose’s death and Martin’s.”

  “It does seem unlikely,” I agreed. And yet it was the same window. “What was this room used for then?”

  “Nothing,” Arthur said. “Just storage. Old children’s toys and cots and ancient furniture.”

  So Rose had no real reason to be there. Unless she too had had a secret lover…

  I shivered. Rose was not my concern.

  “The constable is coming,” Arthur said, rising to his feet. “I suppose I had better go and speak to him.”

  I made my way down a little more slowly and continued my exploration in the public rooms on the ground and first floors. On the ground floor, I found two reception rooms near the breakfast parlour, and an unexpectedly magnificent ballroom which had been tagged onto the side of the house. Another room looked like a study or an office of some kind.

  I climbed back upstairs to the first floor, and the wide, long gallery lined as Emily had described by the busts of previous baronets, interspersed with some grumpy old portraits. There was no bust of Sir George, Arthur’s brother—presumably he’d died too early—but there was one of their father, Sir James, a fierce-looking old gentleman.

  Just as I turned away to explore the rooms off the gallery, my eye was caught by a portrait I recognised. A younger, slightly alarmed Susan in blue silk gazed at me from the canvas. And beside her, a florid man with a sneer and mean little eyes. Perhaps his pose was meant to emphasise his superiority, but to me he just looked arrogant and a bit stupid. I began to feel a little more sympathy with Susan.

  Abandoning the paintings, I found the dining room, with its magnificent mahogany table, a large, formal drawing room with a smaller one next to it. On the other side of the gallery, I opened a door onto a rather beautiful library, where an extraordinarily handsome young man in obviously old and darned clothes sat writing at one of the fine inlaid tables.

  He looked up as I entered, and rose to his feet with alacrity, bowing with great courtesy. “Madam,” he said politely. “Bela Hiranyi at your service.”

  “Barbara Darke,” I returned with an equally grave curtsey.

  “Ah.” His eyes lit up. “You must be young Lady Haggard’s friend. Then we must be friends also, for I am young Sir Arthur’s friend!”

  He spoke with an unusual European accent I wouldn’t have been able to place without the name, which sounded distinctly Hungarian. There had been a lot of Hungarian names in the newspapers recently since the late revolution was put down and so many gallant refugees had been received in Britain.

  “I am pleased to meet you, of course,” I said. We shook hands, and I had to withdraw mine when he hung on to it too long. He was, I gathered, an incorrigible flirt, which could be fun in the right circumstances. I doubted we had those.

  “Everyone is preoccupied today,” he observed. “Because of the accident.”

  “A terrible thing,” I said. “Did you know Martin?”

  Rather to my surprise, he hesitated. “I knew who he was. But we never spoke. How did he come to fall out of the window?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Are you a refugee from the late troubles in Hungary, Mr. Hiranyi?”

  “Prince Hiranyi,” Emily corrected from the doorway, with such mischief that I gathered the two were old friends. I suspected he might just be a dangerous friend. “I’m so glad you’ve met each other! The prince is a fiery radical who had to flee before the Austrian army.”

  “And now I am in need of an occupation. Lady Haggard said you would know of any vacancies in the school you just left?”

  “I don’t think you’re quite cut out for a girls’ school,” I said faintly. “Frankly, sir, you would cause havoc.”

  “I would behave with the utmost honour,” he assured me with just enough anxiety to convince me of his genuine desperation for work.

  “It wouldn’t matter, Bela,” Emily said. “The girls would swoon over you.” She turned to me. “The boys’ schools all turn him down because of his revolutionary credentials.”

  “There are charity schools,” I pointed out. “And industrial schools, if you are set on teaching. Although I’m not sure they look any more favourably upon revolutionaries.”

  The prince looked thoughtful. Emily took my arm. “And talking of schools, Barbara, we’re having tea in the schoolroom with my niece and Miss Salton.”

  * * * * *

  The schoolroom was inconveniently situated in the opposite wing from Miss Salton’s bedroom. I felt sorry for her, with a compassion born of my own stiff bones from yesterday’s awful journey. And my sympathy was compounded by the powerful emotions I could feel swirling around this part of the house. Of course, some of them came from
Emily herself, who seemed rather tense, her eyes darting from side to side as we walked. Occasionally, she even looked back over her shoulder.

  “Don’t you think there are ghosts here?” she whispered as we trailed down a long passage.

  “There are ghosts everywhere,” I said calmly. “Why do these ones trouble you?”

  “I hear them whispering,” Emily murmured, glancing over her shoulder.

  “In this part of the house?”

  “All over at night; even in my room.”

  I paused to cut out the rustling of my dress, and Emily stood still beside me. But although, briefly, I opened myself to feel everything, all I could hear was the distant murmur of very human voices.

  “Can you hear it now?” I asked.

  Emily shook her head and walked on. “Also…” She paused, and swallowed. “When we first came here and Arthur was showing me around the house, as we walked along this passage, something fell, missing us by mere inches.”

  “What?” I asked, without much interest. Emily, clearly, had too little to do here. Her imagination was running riot.

  “A marble bust of the second baronet. He was an ugly old devil, and when the uneven number of busts made the gallery look untidy, his was moved to stand out of the way of discerning eyes on its plinth just there.” She pointed to the corner of the passage where a set of stairs led upwards to the bedroom floors, and indeed I could see the round mark left on the wooden floor by a stone plinth. “It fell just as we passed. It could have killed Arthur.”

  Perhaps it was the genuine fear in her voice, or the profound affection that went with it, but I felt myself soften.

  “You’re afraid of losing him,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Don’t fear it so much that you forget to enjoy the moment.”

  All the same, I walked across the floor where the plinth had stood, and there was something extra there, something beyond the general atmosphere of the house. An echo of panic, perhaps, although it was difficult to distinguish. I looked around me. Someone could have stood on the stairs, reached over the banister, and pushed the heavy marble, though surely Emily and Arthur would have seen them.

  On the other side of the passage from the stairs was a door.

  “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “The old nursery. It isn’t used now.” Emily walked on once more to the next door in the passage. “And this is the schoolroom.”

  “Emily!” shrieked a being within as soon as the door opened, and a small hurricane launched itself from unseen depths into Emily’s arms. It seemed she had at least one uncritical admirer in the house. I warmed to the unpleasant Susan’s child at once, and turned with a smile to greet her mentor.

  I was surprised to find a woman not so many years older than myself, thin and ramrod straight, although she seemed to flutter constantly as she walked. She had an air of fluster, intelligence, and depth, and something about her seemed very familiar,

  “Oh dear, Irene, try for decorum! You must say Aunt Emily, and hurling yourself at people will not do. Come, sit back at the table and show Lady Haggard the best of your manners.”

  A table at the front of the schoolroom had been set with a cloth and four places. Tea and lemonade, bread and butter and scones were to be our feast.

  “I see you have your hands full,” I said lightly to Miss Salton, whose words were not heeded beyond the child’s tugging of Emily towards the table. I meant merely to show fellow feeling for a teacher charged with the care of an over-lively pupil. Unfortunately, Miss Salton bridled, taking it as criticism.

  “Not in the slightest. Miss Irene is encouraged to show affection.”

  “Miss Salton,” Emily said, digging in her heels so that Irene could drag her no further. “This is my friend, Mrs. Darke.”

  “Have we met before Miss Salton?” I asked.

  “Oh no. I’d remember you,” she replied, in a manner than suggested she was glad not to. I would still have shaken hands with her, but the governess merely nodded in a quick, nervous kind of a way and effaced herself. Or so it seemed, but it might just have been that Irene once again distracted attention by bouncing back to face me, as if she hadn’t registered my presence before.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Darke! Were you Emily’s teacher, then?” She must have been about eleven or twelve years old, for under her childish clothes, her body was beginning to show signs of womanhood. But her small frame as well as her manners made her seem younger.

  “Yes, I was,” I said gravely. “Why, what has she been saying about me? That I was a monster who forced her to write until her hand hurt?”

  “No, but she said you made her think until her head hurt, which I don’t think is quite so bad.”

  I laughed.

  “Trust me, Irene, it’s worse,” Emily said. “Oh look, you have jam with your scones. I’m glad you saved us some.”

  It turned out to be a surprisingly fun half hour, with Irene, bright and lively, chattering away. I could see she doted on Emily and was intrigued by me, but remembering, and indeed feeling the waiting storm of emotion centred on this part of the house, I suspected hidden depths. Her affection for Emily may have developed from her mother’s neglect, and of course she had recently lost her father. She was shut away with the self-effacing, fluttering Miss Salton, in a part of the house used by no one else. I wondered how often anyone troubled even to take tea with her.

  Not that she looked like a neglected or suffering child. She was well-dressed and sociable, and, in her own way, polite. I just couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her. I didn’t care for the schoolroom or its atmosphere. Over the present childish chatter, I sensed old turbulence, violence. This room hadn’t always been so innocuous.

  As we left, I tried one more time to befriend the diffident governess by complimenting her on the courtesy and knowledge of her charge.

  “Miss Irene does very well,” was all I got back, along with a fluttering of hands as she piled the used plates together on the table.

  “She’ll come round,” Emily whispered as we left. “I think she’s afraid you’re here to take her position. I should never have mentioned you were a teacher.”

  Well, I thought ruefully, there goes my best chance of an ally in the house.

  As we returned to the main part of the building, maids and footmen bustled in and out of the ballroom I’d found earlier.

  “Every spare moment, they’re preparing it for Saturday’s ball,” Emily said. “I’m afraid the house will fill with family, the great and the good, and the neighbours will come from miles around.”

  “Ah. That is the part of your new life that I would find daunting. But you thrive on it, don’t you, my social butterfly?”

  “Everyone loves a party,” Emily said firmly. “Apart from you, old fuddy-duddy.”

  “I don’t suppose I’ll be excused?”

  “Certainly not. I’m hoping you’ll find a rich husband among my guests.”

  “Unlikely,” I said dryly, stroking my serviceable, dull old dress.

  “I will find you something to wear. Trust me, you will shine.”

  “You should hope I don’t,” I muttered, since the ways I tended to shine were neither attractive nor desirable at a respectable society ball.

  “Oh and don’t fall in love with Prince Hiranyi. He’s a charmer and I like him excessively, but he hasn’t a bean to his name. I doubt he ever did, even in Hungary.”

  “Prince Hiranyi is safe from my wiles,” I said distractedly, for my mind was working on other matters. “Emily, which of the maids is Milly?”

  “Milly? Um…” She looked at the maid hurrying in her direction carrying a feather duster, then back over her shoulder. “That one,” she said, pointing behind her.

  I had a glimpse of a red head under a white cap disappearing inside the ballroom. I stored the information for later.
<
br />   Chapter Four

  By dinnertime, the weather had turned filthy once more, hurling rain at the windows and turning the sky prematurely black. Draughts found new ways into the house that seemed to surprise even the Haggards.

  After a brief internal fight, I changed for dinner so that I wouldn’t let Emily down. I wore my pale lilac gown with the black lace overdress my mother had given me, tidied my hair into a neater knot behind my head, and sallied forth to the fray.

  Dinner was a difficult meal, largely because I had been placed beside Miss Salton, who conversed, when forced, in monosyllables. I gave up and instead allowed myself to be drawn into amusing conversation with Mr. Faversham and Prince Bela, who were having a disagreement over revolutionary principles and the rule of law.

  Old Lady Haggard scowled at me from the other end of the table. We’d been introduced just before we sat down, and it was clear she didn’t like me. But then, she didn’t seem to like anyone very much. I suspected she was a little over sixty years old, although she behaved as if she were ninety, hunched inside a hundred shawls with her knuckles white and papery as they clutched a stick with enough force to wring a chicken’s neck. She snapped indiscriminately at Susan and Emily, appeared to merely tolerate Arthur, and more or less ignored everyone else. Except Henry Faversham, at whom she’d actually smiled.

  As the ladies left the gentlemen to their port and repaired to the small drawing room, the first thunderclap split my ears. Emily squeaked and clutched my arm, and I remembered she’d been frightened of storms when she was at school.

  “Still?” I asked her.

  She nodded with a quick, self-deprecating grin. “I am a poor creature.”

  Miss Salton poured the tea for us. I carried the first cup to old Lady Haggard, who took it from me without a word. Her hands were steady as rocks. With her tea duties done, Miss Salton said good night and escaped. Susan and old Lady Haggard stared at me as if they expected me to follow. I, however, was employed by Emily, who seemed to want me for just such moments as these.

  Which led to another thought. “Has Miss Salton gone to Irene?” I murmured to Emily.