The Ghosts of Greenwood

by Maggie MacKeever

  That was all well and good, but who, in this instance, was to stand his shot? Bow Street Runners were available to anyone rich enough to buy their services. Since Sir John had made no mention of a private inquiry, Crump assumed no one had offered to pay the customary charges, in this instance, a country case, the rate of a quinea a day plus fourteen shillings for expenses.

  In the event of murder, or any other atrocious offense against the public, an investigation was pursued without application to anyone for repayment. It was this circumstance that fretted Crump.

  Meanwhile, time was wasting. He removed his pipe from his mouth, fixed an expression of genial good will on his features, and strolled into the taproom. “The room is to your liking?” asked the innkeeper, as he poured a glass of stout.

  “Aye, guv’nor.” Crump settled down to a spot of interrogation. “Have a lot of travelers passing through here, do you?”

  “A fair amount, Mr. Crump.” Abel Bagshot nodded gravely. “A fair amount, indeed. This is a busy little village, when all’s said.”

  The taproom certainly was busy. Crump lit his pipe. In response to Mr. Bagshot’s none-too-subtle queries, he conveyed the impression that he was a traveling merchant who preferred to devote himself to beer and skittles rather than the pursuit of his trade. Before his host could inquire into the particulars of that trade, Crump turned the conversation to the season, and the festivities that would soon be underway.

  That topic carried them no small distance, covering festivities in the village and revels at the manse. “There’ll be no celebrating for the poor ladies at the Hall,” Mr. Bagshot finally pronounced. “At sixes and sevens they’re said to be, and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the solicitor. No one knows how the estate is to be divided, and her ladyship is in a fret. What a shocking business. Master Connor was game to the backbone, when all is said and done.”

  “Wait. Let’s step back a pace.” Crump performed certain esoteric rituals over his pipe, which had gone out. “I don’t mind admitting my curiosity’s been pricked. Who is this ‘Master Connor’? And what’s become of him?” He listened with keen interest as Abel regaled him with the popular version of Connor Halliday’s death, which concurred with Sir John’s account, though it contained several fanciful embellishments, the most startling a zestfully-related theory that the ghost of the victim’s brother had risen from his grave to commit the evil deed.

  “Ghost?” queried Crump.

  “ ‘Tis commonly believed that Connor Halliday murdered his own brother some years back,” the innkeeper explained.

  “Ah.” Crump gestured for his host to join him in another glass of stout. “A man like yourself knows what he knows, eh, Mr. Bagshot?”

  “I know that ghosts don’t move traps and carry dueling pistols,” said Abel. “And why did it take Master Connor’s horse so long to go back to its stable, I’d like to know, because the beast didn’t show up until late afternoon. But there! You won’t want your ear bent with our little mysteries.”

  On the contrary, Crump wanted that very thing. He looked around the room once more, at the long low ceiling, the granite fireplace and flagged floor, the local citizenry engaged in a game of quoits. His eye lingered on the Patent Warm-Air Stove. It was an oddly expensive item to find in a country inn.

  “ ‘Twas a gift from her ladyship,” explained Abel, after suitable compliments had been received. “Not her ladyship at the Hall, but the other one.” He launched into a garbled explanation of the local gentry, starting with ‘her ladyship at the Hall’, who was but recently widowed and behaving indiscreetly with a guest at the Castle who was generally, despite his current misconduct, held to be an officer and a gentleman. That ladyship, he further informed Crump, had been step-mama to the recently deceased Connor Halliday, with whom she had been on bad terms.

  “Hold fast!” Crump interrupted his host’s flow of words. “Mayhap, since there was bad feeling between them, she was involved in the man’s death. It makes better sense, guv’nor, than your tale of a ghost.”

  Once recovered from his shock, Abel burst into such merry laughter that the locals abandoned their game to inquire as to its inspiration. Between chuckles, Abel explained. Her ladyship at the Hall was, he said, a henwit who was incapable of hurting a flea. Furthermore, added one grizzled fellow, it was much more likely Connor Halliday would have murdered her, had not fate intervened. “Because everyone knew he wanted her to leave the Hall and was mad as hornets when she dug in her heels and stayed.”

  “She may be a henwit,” put in another fellow, “but her ladyship has bottom.” His companions agreed. The game of quoits resumed, while Abel explained in greater detail the strained situation that existed between Lady Halliday and her husband’s family.

  “Even stranger are the goings-on of her ladyship at the Castle, to say nothing of his lordship.” Abel’s eye lingered on his new stove. “But to speak of them isn’t my place.” He moved on to a discussion of the culinary treats offered by his kitchen, which included such delights as chitterlings, stubble-geese and collard head. Nor was the quality of the inn’s cellars to be despised. Didn’t the local gentry often stop by his humble establishment to sample a bottle of his fine bishop or his stout? Just two days past one of the guests at the Castle had knocked him up at an unseasonable hour, being less interested in the pursuit of the fox than in the purchase of some fine old ale.

  Crump’s ears perked up. “You don’t follow the hounds, Mr. Bagshot?”

  “To do so would be incompatible with the sober conduct desirable in a tradesman,” his host replied primly and somewhat ironically, in light of the inroads he’d made on his own cellar. “There’s those as don’t agree. Half the village trails after the hounds, including a great many who’d be more gainfully occupied elsewhere. Poor Master Connor! It appears someone was occupied elsewhere.”

  “You’ve no notion of who that someone may have been?”

  “I didn’t say so, Mr. Crump.” Abel set down his empty mug. “I didn’t say so at all. A man in my position may draw certain conclusions. It seems to me that a person wanting to know more about who shot Connor Halliday should look among the tinkers. The sneaky thieving devils are in the habit of camping on Halliday ground, and Connor swore to run them off. Lady Halliday is softer-hearted. I’ll wager she has his man-traps taken up before many more days pass.”

  This was all most interesting; it might even prove useful; and it was no doubt highly colored by prejudice. Whereas Crump might agree in general with the innkeeper about tinkers, in this instance they made obvious scapegoats. “You said Lady Halliday had an admirer among the guests at Greenwood Castle.” Among those guests was no less than Crump’s own Chief Magistrate.

  “I did.” Abel busied himself polishing glasses. “The word is that he tumbled head-over-heels at first glance. And a good thing it was because it took the gentleman’s mind off the recent war, him having served in the Peninsular campaign, and as a result being damaged in the head. A terrible business that was. To my way of thinking, we have been a great deal too lenient with Bonaparte.”

  Crump didn’t care to discuss Bony. “There must be a large house party at the Castle.”

  “Not so large as has been.” Abel provided Crump with a list of guests: the sporting gentleman who’d stumbled on a corpse; the gentleman’s young son and his wife, who was increasing; a dandy of the first water, who had a fondness for fine ale; the dandy’s particular, who was rumored to have had a most colorful past; and a third gentleman recently revealed to be the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street. “Family, for the most part,” Abel concluded. “No great goings-on for the Baroness this year.”

  As Abel’s accounting had progressed, so had Crump’s suspicions grown. His host’s final words struck him with the force of a fist to the gut. “The Baroness,” he said.

  Abel eyed his guest, who was looking very much as if he had seen a ghost. “Greenwood Castle came into possession of the Bligh family centuries past.”

  Some Runne
r he was, thought Crump; not looking beyond the end of his own nose. He should have realized that Bow Street’s Chief Magistrate wasn’t a man to abandon his duties for something so trifling as a family house-party.

  Sir John hadn’t seen fit to inform Crump of the identity of his hostess. This omission wasn’t surprising, in light of the Runner’s previous encounters with Lady Bligh. He was familiar, though he would rather not have been, with the sporting gentleman and the dandy as well.

  The Runner glanced gloomily out the window. Coal-smoke billowed from the village chimneys and lent a grey cast to the cold day. He spotted another familiar figure, tripping daintily over the cobblestones toward the inn.

  Crump brightened. He had a fondness for Lady Dorset’s abigail. Quoits and conversation alike were abandoned as the red-haired, pug-nosed, freckled damsel entered. Aware of her effect, Mary strolled demurely across the room.

  “Her ladyship,” she explained to Abel, “is wishful of some of that ale you served Master Hubert two days past. Things being topsy-turvy at the Castle, I came for it myself.” Abel murmured his appreciation of her enterprise, and Mary cast around for further conquests. Her brown eyes lit upon the Runner. “Mercy! If it isn’t Mr. Crump.”

  Crump doffed his hat. “So it is. A rare treat it is to see you again, lass.”

  Mary beamed at him. “Likewise. What brings you to Greenwood, sir? Surely you haven’t trailed some desperate criminal here? I know! You’ve come about the murder? Oh, shouldn’t I have said?”

  So thick was the silence that Crump could have sliced it with a knife. He was torn between vexation at this abrupt unmasking, and a wish to ease Mary’s obvious embarrassment. “What’s this?” Abel Bagshot inquired suspiciously. “Just who are you, then?”

  There was nothing for it but to flourish his identity card. “Crump of Bow Street, here in discharge of the law.” Sensing no further information was likely to be offered from that quarter, he turned to Mary. “Mayhap I can assist you with the transport of that ale.”

  She curtseyed, prettily. “I thank you kindly, sir.”

  Crump accompanied Mary out the door. Since she clearly expected him to scold her, he merely teased and flattered until she was chattering easily. Crump was not averse to a spot of flirtation with a lively lass. There was, after all, more than one efficient method by which to pluck the feathers from a goose.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The entire village of Greenwood turned out for Connor Halliday’s funeral. Livvy, who was also present, found the pious expressions of her fellow mourners hypocritical indeed. Few enough kind words had been spoken about Connor Halliday while he was alive. But, with the simple act of murder, old resentments had been set aside, or otherwise hushed up, lest they come to Bow Street’s ears.

  She was grateful when the service ended, and a little melancholy. A man should have someone to regret his passing. Connor Halliday, it seemed, did not. This didn’t surprise her. Livvy recalled his cavalier treatment of herself.

  Recollections of cavalier treatment reminded Livvy of her spouse. What a fool she’d been, to think that with their marriage Dickon would drop connections of a less proper sort. In all fairness, he had dropped them, but now showed every sign of wishing to pick up where he’d left off.

  Livvy would never forget the horror she’d felt when Sir John returned to the Castle wearing blood-stained clothing and announced that someone had been shot. But the victim hadn’t been Dickon, and she’d gone from fearing he’d been injured to wishing she might shoot him herself.

  She wouldn’t, at least not yet. First, per Dulcie’s instructions, she accompanied the other mourners to the Hall.

  “Dear Lavender!” cried Amanda, and limped forward to embrace her. “I’m so glad you’re here. I swear I shall become quite hysterical if I can’t speak frankly to someone. It is all so dreadful, and Rosamond holds me responsible for everything, including Connor’s brother’s disappearance. I don’t know what I could have had to do with that, since Cade vanished long before I arrived in Greenwood, and furthermore I couldn’t have been more than five years of age at the time! And when Rosamond isn’t holding me responsible, she’s predicting that I’ll be the next victim of the ghost. She is to be exempted, you understand, because she’s not a Halliday.”

  Livvy envied Amanda her animation. She felt weary to her bones. “Shouldn’t you be resting your ankle?” she asked.

  “I have been resting it.” Amanda clasped Livvy’s arm and guided her to a couch. “The doctor said that it is healing nicely. Rosamond insisted that he take a look. She was annoyed to discover that I wasn’t shamming it, though I’ve no notion why she believed I should.”

  Livvy studied the painting hung above the fireplace, portrait of a dark-haired grey-eyed youth, austere of feature, clad in a scarlet hunting jacket, breeches, and tall boots. “Is that Sir Wesley? I didn’t notice the portrait on my previous visit.”

  Amanda, too, surveyed the likeness of her deceased spouse, “I don’t know how you could have, since it wasn’t there. Rosamond had the painting brought down from the upper hall. I suspect she means the sight of Sir Wesley to inspire me with guilt, for what, I cannot say.”

  Livvy couldn’t find it in herself to dislike this pretty ninnyhammer, much as she wished she could. “Connor didn’t resemble his father,” she observed.

  “Sir Wesley’s sons looked like their mother, or so I’m told. Although that may be more of Rosamond’s nonsense, because there is a portrait of Lady Margaret in the upper hallway, and one can see even beneath her powder that she didn’t have red hair.” Amanda crumpled up the delicate square of lace that she clutched in one hand. “You must think me a poor sort of creature, and I can’t blame you for it, but anyone would be in a pucker if Rosamond was forever ringing peals over her, and calling her a perfect block.”

  “I think nothing of the sort,” protested Livvy, feeling mildly guilty, because she thought that very thing. “Do try and compose yourself. I doubt you wish to give Miss Fellowes the satisfaction of seeing you overset.”

  “I wish the ghost would haunt her,” Amanda said bitterly. “I can’t escape the horrid woman, no matter how I try.”

  Livvy wondered if Rosamond sought to curtail Amanda’s indiscretions, or if she was by nature spiteful and mean. Thanks to the village gossips, most of the people in the drawing room were probably aware that Amanda was in the habit of stealing away from the Hall. Livvy had heard it from Mary, who’d struck up a friendship with the gardener’s lad. Instructed by his superiors to give Lady Margaret’s Garden a wide berth, the boy had naturally been curious, and had jumped halfway out of his skin when he interrupted not a ghost but what appeared to be a lovers’ tryst.

  Amanda misinterpreted her silence. “Rosamond accused me of casting out lures, and I suppose that’s how it must have seemed, but truly I did not mean— And now Ned is playing least-in-sight. Oh, why must I have such wretched ill-luck?”

  Livvy hadn’t the energy to try and answer that question. “Let us have the word with no bark on it. You have a tendre for Ned?”

  Amanda looked indignant. “How can you think otherwise? I may be flighty, but I am not loose!”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that you were.” Livvy’s head began to throb. “This is a storm in a teacup, surely. You were, er, with Ned a mere two days past.”

  “I was?”

  “On the morning of Connor’s accident.” Livvy raised a brow. “That is, Ned told us he had been out riding, and so we assumed— But I’ll understand if you do not care to speak of it, and you must know your own business best. If Ned is avoiding you, it will be because he realizes the delicacy of your situation and won’t wish to make matters worse. You must strive for patience. I’m sure he is acting as he believes best.”

  Amanda sighed. “I have never been a patient person. It seems as if a great deal more time has passed. Poor Connor! I should be ashamed to be going on about myself when he is dead.”

  Livvy reflected that she should be as
hamed to be prying for information from the recently bereaved. And so she was. Not sufficiently ashamed as to cease prying, however. “Have you discovered any more? About who might profit for Connor’s death?”

  “Rosamond would like to blame me for that, too,” Amanda muttered. “She accused me of being absent from the Hall on the morning of Connor’s death, right in front of that Bow Street Runner — he was here, asking all manner of questions, earlier today. Have you met Mr. Crump? Although I don’t know why you should have. And how Rosamond knew I wasn’t in the house has me in a puzzle, since she claims to have spent the morning in bed. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was absent from the Hall herself. Everyone knows about her early morning rides.”

  “At any rate, you needn’t worry,” soothed Livvy. “Since you were with Ned.”

  Amanda nibbled at her lip. “Yes, but I didn’t know if Ned would want me to speak of it, since for us to have been together was highly improper. I don’t care a rush for what people may say, but Ned does, which is to his credit, poor boy. So I didn’t speak of it and now I can’t begin to imagine what that Runner must think. Rosamond says it is also my fault the Hallidays have come to the attention of Bow Street, which they had never done in the past hundred years. Not that there was a Bow Street a hundred years ago. Was there? In any event, Mr. Crump was all that is polite, so there is no reason for anyone to fuss.”

  Livvy, having in the past experienced Crump’s deceptive geniality, was not so certain. “What sort of questions did he ask?”

  “He wanted to know about horses, of all things. What time of day it was when Connor’s horse returned to the stable, and what condition it was in. You look surprised. I was myself. Mr. Crump also wanted to know if any of the Halliday horses are in the habit of throwing a shoe.”