by Evelyn James
“Jimmy. Charlie,” Samuel paused before them. “This is Miss Fitzgerald. She is staying with the family.”
The brothers turned, almost in unison. Close up they had a disturbing symmetry, as if they were one man duplicated. Neither spoke, but both stared at Clara with unveiled suspicion. She sensed they distrusted her. Perhaps they had heard about her and her investigations.
“Miss Fitzgerald is trying to lay to rest these foolish rumours about poor Master Harvey,” Samuel’s face became bleak. “I still can’t fathom why anyone would wish to spread such evil nonsense. I feel for his mother, she must be very distressed by it all.”
Neither under-gardener spoke. Samuel did not seem to notice the pointed silence they were projecting at him and Clara. He was too engrossed in his own thoughts. Finally, he shook his head, muttered under his breath and glanced at them.
“I’ve got work to do over by those beds Lady Howton wants filled with winter pansies. I’ll leave you to talk.”
Samuel turned and, giving another loud sigh, wandered off. Clara sensed a man as much in mourning for Harvey as any of the family. She turned to the two brothers who had still not said a word.
“As Samuel stated, I am trying to find who is behind the troubles at the hall. I suppose you have heard by now that each night someone appears at the window of the drawing room to disturb the family?”
The brothers still remained stony silent. Clara was becoming frustrated.
“That was a question,” she pointed out. “You were both present when Harvey drowned, I believe?”
Clara waited. She was about to get cross and remind them that she had just asked another question, when Jimmy opened his mouth.
“We were near the lake working,” he said.
Clara waited for more, but it failed to be forthcoming.
“How did you know Harvey was in trouble?” she asked.
Jimmy glanced at his brother. They seemed to be silently judging how much to say. Clara wondered why they were being so cautious. Was it because her suspicions that Harvey had never drowned were correct? If so, the brothers had to be complicit in the cover-up that followed. They were the only witnesses, it was their testimony that convinced the family Harvey had drowned and prevented further action being taken.
“We heard him shouting,” Jimmy said at last. “We weren’t sure at first what the noise was, then Charlie thought we ought to look.”
Clara turned her attention to Charlie. He shrugged his shoulders at her.
“Master Harvey was in some trouble. Weed had tangled round his leg and the more he struggled the more entangled he became,” Jimmy continued, he was getting into his stride now. “I swim, but Charlie doesn’t. Poor Master Harvey’s head was only just out of the water, he had to fight to keep his mouth and nose out. He started to flag and the weed pulled him down. I never got to him in time.”
Jimmy cast a sideways look at his brother. Charlie had his lips clamped shut, as if he dare not speak a word. Clara was more convinced than ever that the brothers were hiding something.
“What if I was to say I don’t believe you?” she said to them sternly. “I think Harvey left that lake alive and that you conspired with him to fake his death.”
Jimmy made a good job of looking shocked. His brother hung his head and concentrated on the ground.
“That is a terrible thing to say!” Jimmy declared.
Clara put her hands on her hips and glared into his eyes.
“I have photographs that prove the man at the window is likely Harvey Howton. If he is an imposter he is most remarkably similar to the late man. The family are convinced Harvey comes to their drawing room window at night and, since I do not believe in the supernatural or dead men rising from their graves, I am left to conclude that Harvey never died at all. That this is all some elaborate hoax, though I cannot see its purpose,” Clara took a pace towards Jimmy. “If all that is correct, it means you must be aware of the hoax. You must have known Harvey was alive when he left the lake and lied to the family.”
“I’m no doctor!” Jimmy said, almost jumping out of his skin. “How was I to know Harvey were actually still alive? He looked dead.”
“Leave us alone,” Charlie rumbled, at last finding his tongue. “We told what we saw and that’s that.”
Clara turned to face him.
“And what did you see?” she demanded of him.
“Master Harvey going under the water. He was still as still could be when Jimmy dragged him out. He looked dead to me.”
“And me!” Jimmy agreed.
“What happened when you pulled him onto the bank? Did you send for help?”
Jimmy looked to Charlie again. Clara wanted to shake him and stop the quick glances. Was he taking cues off Charlie? If so, she would be better to get them both alone.
“Well?” she snapped, her patience with them lost.
“We went for help,” Jimmy said, taking care over the words. “We fetched Mr Crawley.”
This was news to Clara. Was Crawley in on this drama too?”
“Then what happened?”
“Mr Crawley had us carry Master Harvey to the house. We laid him on his own bed. Everyone was most upset.”
Everyone not in on the subterfuge, Clara thought. How many of the servants had Harvey inveigled into his fraud? Perhaps not that many. The two under-gardeners would make excellent witnesses to his ‘death’ and the butler could have easily been the inside man. Clara needed to know what had gone on after Harvey was brought to the hall. Had there been no undertakers? Had a doctor not been called for the formality of a death certificate? All these hurdles could have produced potentially dangerous witnesses to the truth. How had Harvey circumvented them?
“I don’t see why it can’t be a ghost,” Jimmy filled the pause that had come after his last statement. He looked more confident now. “Ghosts are real. Our mam saw a ghost. It was her grandfather who had been dead three years. He appeared by her bed, did he not Charlie?”
“He did,” Charlie backed his brother.
“Looked as real as when he were alive, she said,” Jimmy continued. “Master Harvey may have had unfinished business.”
“Such as?” Clara asked.
Jimmy was caught out. He had said too much and he knew it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jimmy corrected himself. “When someone passes young there must be a lot of things they haven’t quite finished.”
Clara narrowed her eyes. She wanted to get cross with the brothers, but doubted that would achieve anything. Instead she decided to try a different approach. Clara thought carrots worked better than sticks in the majority of cases, and badgering the brothers was bringing her up against a brick wall. She acted as if she accepted what Jimmy had just told her.
“I was told you served with Harvey during the war?”
It was Charlie who now spoke, jumping in before Jimmy could open his mouth.
“We did. Harvey was our commanding officer.”
“Samuel told me he was a good officer.”
“He was,” Charlie said firmly and now Clara could see a strong streak of loyalty coming out. Charlie was devoted to Harvey. “He cared about his men, made sure we were treated right. Nearly all of us were from the estate and surrounding villages. We knew each other well. Harvey knew nearly all of us from before the war too. At least for a time. Then we started to lose men and others, strangers, joined our unit.”
Charlie winced and Clara realised that while the pain of losing friends was hard enough, the fact they were replaced with strangers hurt more. Charlie and Jimmy were like a lot of men who had grown up in the same village and worked on the same estate. They were insular and guarded with outsiders, even in times of war.
“Harvey joined later in the war?” Clara said.
“He wasn’t old enough at the start,” Charlie replied quickly, as if he thought Clara was implying Harvey had avoided serving. “Our unit had not seen a lot of action before he arrived, either. We had been serving in quieter se
ctions of the front and we were mostly all the same men as when we first signed up. It wasn’t long after Master Harvey arrived that we were finally thrown into the midst of everything. Then we lost people. Harvey took each death personally.”
That didn’t sound healthy to Clara’s way of thinking, but Charlie clearly thought this an indication of Harvey’s quality and loyalty to his men.
“He was good to you,” Clara said.
“Master Harvey was the finest of captains I served under,” Charlie said staunchly. “He saved my life once.”
“Really?” Now Clara was truly intrigued. “How?”
“During this one battle, I fell into a shell hole and couldn’t get out and it was filling up with water. I’d seen men drown in holes like that. It was horrid. I was shouting for help until I was hoarse and the night came on,” Charlie’s face hardened as he drifted back to that terrible time. “Jimmy was beside himself when I didn’t return after the battle.”
“I wanted to go out and search for him myself!” Jimmy said quickly.
“Master Harvey insisted on organising a search party, not just for me but for any men of the platoon who might be out there alive but injured. It was dangerous because we were under enemy scrutiny and his superiors were uncertain it was wise until they could get word from the Germans that rescue parties would not be fired upon, but Master Harvey would not wait,” Charlie said proudly. “Master Harvey was not one to tarry. He said he would go out alone if needs be, but there were plenty of volunteers to go with him. He set out and he found me. Just in the nick of time too. It had been raining and I was up to my neck in muddy water.”
“You almost drowned then?” Clara said, thinking of the irony of the situation.
Charlie did not appear to notice. He was standing very upright now.
“All you need to know about Master Harvey, is that he was a noble and honourable man,” he said, his tone suggesting he would not tolerate any argument on the subject.
Clara smiled at them. They had told her more than they realised, mainly that they had a very good reason for owing Harvey a favour. Their loyalty to him would have made them perfect accomplices to his scheme. The question remained, however, why had Harvey gone to such trouble? Clara doubted she would get that answer from the brothers, they probably did not even know Harvey’s motives. Clara suspected she had learned all she could.
She thanked the brothers for speaking to her and wandered back across the garden. She wanted to find Mr Crawley and hear his side of the story. Someone within the house had been helping Harvey and now she knew who that person was.
Chapter Sixteen
Clara had hardly walked into the house when there was a shriek. She ran into the great hall and found Betty in hysterics; a stuffed fox head had just departed company with the wall and fallen down near her. She was shaking as Clara grabbed her shoulders and moved her out of the macabre hall of dead animals and into the lighter front hall.
The moment of terror had passed. Betty began to calm down and her sobbing became less dramatic and more self-pitying.
“It just flew off the wall at me,” Betty groaned. “It was like a demon lunging down at me. This damn house is haunted!”
Clara made her sit down in a chair.
“The house isn’t haunted,” she told Betty. “But it is old, and it creaks and things fall apart…”
“You can’t tell me I didn’t see my husband last night at that window!” Betty growled and the ferocity of her tone quite took Clara by surprise. “That was Harvey, as I live and breathe!”
“I don’t doubt that,” Clara responded.
Betty looked at her suspiciously.
“Then how can you say the house ain’t haunted?”
“Because I don’t think Harvey is actually dead.”
Betty stared at Clara blankly for a moment, then she burst out into bitter laughter.
“And you think me believing in ghosts is fanciful?” she looked at Clara incredulously. “If Harvey wasn’t dead, why didn’t he contact me?”
“He was clearly working on some scheme…” Clara began.
“Scheme?” Betty became even angrier. “You don’t know Harvey or what he was like. He would have contacted me. He would have! There was no reason not to as his family knew nothing about me. If this was some… some hoax, then he could have still played it out while letting me know he was ok. Instead, I heard nothing!”
Betty suddenly shrank back in her chair and mournfully rocked herself back and forth.
“He wouldn’t have abandoned me,” she insisted. “He had to be terribly ill, or… or… When I decided to come here I knew that must be the case. He wouldn’t have left me with no word.”
Betty closed her eyes and hugged her arms about herself.
“I can’t stay here,” she said abruptly. “This place scares the living daylights out of me. It is so full of dead people.”
Betty reached out and grabbed Clara’s hand.
“You should see my room. It’s all laid out like something from my grandma’s day. There is all this personal stuff left behind by someone else, someone now dead. I keep thinking they are going to walk back in, in the middle of the night. I can’t stand it.”
“I know what you mean,” Clara sympathised. “The house is like a museum.”
She paused as an idea came to her.
“Have you seen Harvey’s room?”
Betty shook her head.
“Let me show you,” Clara wasn’t sure why she offered the suggestion, she wasn’t even sure if seeing Harvey’s room would help Betty, but she felt his wife should see his private space and perhaps feel a last pang of connection with him. Clara had no idea what Harvey’s intentions towards his wife were, but she suspected he had lost interest in Betty. She was right, after all, that he had nothing to lose if he had informed her he was alive and well. She need never know anything was wrong if he kept up his letter writing. In fact, it would have made better sense, as then she would not have turned up unexpectedly at the hall looking for him.
Clara guessed Harvey had been swept up in his other schemes and had simply neglected his wife. He had forgotten to write letters, or never found the time, and had become careless. He would not be the first nobleman to lose interest in his secret lover and to discard her callously.
That Betty had proved a little more determined than Harvey had expected was obvious. He had clearly been surprised when she confronted him in the drawing room. If Clara had needed proof that the man at the window was alive, it was abundantly plain when he became startled at the sight of his forgotten wife.
Betty followed Clara upstairs and along the cold passages until they came to Harvey’s room. It was the same as when Clara had last looked in it. No one had bothered to lock the door, why would they? The room still held a faint hint of aroma, some sort of cologne perhaps that Harvey liked to wear. Betty walked inside and gazed about as if seeing a room full of treasure. Her eyes were wide with a genuine look of wonder. She reached out a hand and caressed Harvey’s old cricket bat as if it was some precious antique.
“I feel like he is still here,” she said, her eyes straying to the school trophies. “I knew so little about him.”
Betty sat down on Harvey’s bed. She had lost her look of wonder.
“Would he ever have brought me here?” she asked the room.
Clara said nothing, she didn’t feel it was her place.
“It seemed so exciting at first, being his secret, being special. Now I am not so sure. Was I a secret because he was ashamed of me? Because he didn’t want his family to know about me?” Betty shut her eyes tight and fought back tears. “He said he loved me, he wanted me. I said, no matter if I was a poor girl, I weren’t no tart and I weren’t giving myself to him for free.”
“Good for you,” Clara said gently.
“He said ‘what if we were married?’ and I said everything would be alright then. So, he obtained a special license and we were wed with no one knowing, not even my mum,” B
etty was grimacing now. “I thought I was being canny. I thought once we were wed he could not be rid of me easily, like. I didn’t want to be one of them girls who plays around with a gentleman only to be cast aside with nothing but their clothes to their name.”
Betty rose restlessly. She went to the writing desk and opened it. Her fingers ran over the leather of the writing surface.
“He wrote some of those letters to me here,” she said, and her voice softened again. A smile crept onto her lips. “I can picture him sitting here, thinking what to say, and all the time laughing to himself that no one else knew about us.”
Betty opened drawers and took out a fountain pen. She turned it over and over in her hands, smiling at the workmanship, then she replaced it. Next, she started looking through the drawers that contained Harvey’s latest correspondence.
“I wrote back, but never to this address. It would have been too risky. I used to address my letters to the local Post Office and Harvey would collect them from there,” she pulled out letters and glanced at the handwriting, as she pulled out a selection so a postcard fell from among them. It flopped onto the writing shelf. Betty picked it up and casually flicked it over to read the back, then her smile vanished.
Betty started to sway on her feet. Clara thought she might faint, so she came up behind her and tried to move her to the bed, but the woman wouldn’t budge.
“He lied to me,” she whispered.
Clara took the postcard from her unresisting hands. The front showed a picture of the hills of Scotland, on the back in an elegant and clearly feminine hand was scrawled a message;
My Sweetest Harvey, what a wonderful time we had! I have told father about your proposal and he is happy to give his consent! I accept, dear Harvey, I would be delighted to marry you! I shall not whisper a word until all is ready, as I promised. Write soon, dearest. Your ever loving, Elizabeth.
The date on the postcard was from earlier in the year. Since there had been no announcement and the family had made no mention of a fiancé it would seem the engagement was still a secret, or had fallen through. Whatever the case, it was plain Harvey was courting other women, even proposing marriage to them, when he already had a wife.
