The House (Armstrong House Series Book 1)

by A. O'Connor

  “Anyway, the house in Ireland is uninhabitable, isn’t it?”

  “It suffered a terrible fire, yes,” she said, as she thought about that dreadful night.

  “Well, I don’t want the responsibility of that, thank you very much.”

  James pointed up at the painting Clara had done of Armstrong House which hung on the wall and said, “It’s very sad. It used to be such a beautiful house.”

  Clara smiled as she looked at the painting of the house and said, “Maybe it will be again, some day.”

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  The House by A. O’Connor

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  The Secrets of Armstrong House

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  The Secrets of Armstrong

  House

  A. O’Connor

  Prologue

  Present Day

  The man came rushing out of the front door of Armstrong House into the winter’s night. Dressed in a black tailored Edwardian suit, his cape blew in the wind as he quickly made his way down the steps in front of the house and across the forecourt to his awaiting phaeton carriage. Getting in, he whipped the horse and took off at high speed. The carriage raced out of the forecourt and down the long winding driveway that led through parklands. The bare branches of the trees swayed in the wind and stretched out against the clear moonlit sky as he drove past. He continued his journey down the driveway which hugged the lakeshore until the large stone gateway came into view. As he approached it he slowed the carriage down. The horse slowed to a walk to go through the gateway.

  Suddenly from the shadows of the night a man stepped out in front of the horse, blocking the carriage’s journey. The horse drew to a halt. Dressed in shabby clothes and a peaked cap, the man on the road suddenly produced a shotgun and aimed it squarely at the carriage driver whose face twisted in panic.

  The man in the peaked cap pulled the trigger. The driver screamed in agony and fell back into the leather seating of the carriage. At the sound of the gunshot the horse plunged forward through the gate and bolted down the road.

  “Cut! Cut! Cut!” shouted the director in frustration.

  Kate Collins quickly made her way to him.

  “It’s no use, Kate!” he snapped, annoyed. “This can’t be the way the shooting happened!”

  “It is, Brian! I’ve checked and checked it with the inquiry and the newspaper articles at the time,” Kate defended herself. “Lord Charles Armstrong was just coming out of the main gates of the estate, exactly here, when he was ambushed and shot.”

  “But then he couldn’t have been found here as you insist! The horse would have been terrified by the gunshot and bolted down the road to somewhere else, as we’ve just seen.”

  “No! All the reports say Charles was found here at the gateway, shot in his carriage,” confirmed Kate. “Even his mother Lady Margaret testified at the inquiry that she was the first to arrive at the scene and found him at this exact spot.”

  Brian shook his head in despair. “Well, we’ve retaken this scene three times and each time the horse has bolted, and we’ve used two different horses!”

  Kate’s husband Nico stepped forward “Brian’s right, Kate. I’ve grown up with horses all my life and they don’t just hang around stationary after something like this.”

  Kate sighed in frustration. “Well, this is how it happened. Maybe Charles’s horse was tame and timid?”

  Both Brian and Nico looked at her sceptically.

  “Okay, I think we’ll call it a day, or a night!” said Brian and the film crew all heaved a sigh of relief. “It’s late and everyone’s tired and cold and wants to go home. We’ll film around this scene for now.”

  “Thank goodness for that!” said Nico who had feared they would have to re-shoot the scene again when all he wanted to do was get out of this freezing cold and back to the warmth of their home, Armstrong House.

  “Are you sure?” questioned Kate, ever the perfectionist. It had taken a long time to get the exact circumstances of a crime that had taken place over a century beforehand right and Kate didn’t mind in the least if everyone had to work through the night to get this crucial part of her docudrama correct.

  “Yes, Kate!” insisted Brian.

  The film crew were quickly dismantling their equipment and taking away the props.

  “What we’ll probably have to do is use a silent prop gun which won’t make a noise,” suggested Brian, “and we can dub the gunshot sound to it digitally later. Then we won’t frighten the horse.”

  “But the scene has to be as authentic as possible!” objected Kate.

  The actor who was playing Charles was trotting the horse and carriage back up the road after gaining control of the animal, and parked it at the gateway.

  As Kate was talking in depth with Brian about the next stage of filming, Nico walked around the carriage. He had to admit it all looked very authentic to him. The carriage, the long winding driveway behind it and the lights of Armstrong House in the distance. He imagined what he had just witnessed being acted looked very like the real crime back in 1903, the night this shooting actually took place. Nico got an eerie feeling. For the film crew it was just another day’s filming. Even though his wife Kate cared passionately about the history of Armstrong House, she was still an actress by profession and had that professional training to be able to look at the filming in purely objective terms. But for Nico it was different. At the end of the day they had just filmed the shooting of his great-grandfather, Lord Charles Armstrong. And he would have to be made of stone not to have somehow been affected by seeing his ancestor just being shot down in cold blood, albeit for a docudrama.

  It took an hour for all the props and film equipment to be taken away. Then Kate came over to him as he waited patiently for her in their Range Rover.

  “Well, I’m at a loss as to why the original horse didn’t bolt away after Charles was shot back in 1903!” she said in exasperation as he started the engine and drove back up the driveway to Armstrong House.

  He pulled up in the forecourt.

  She saw his unhappy expression. “Don’t you find it all fascinating?” she asked as they stepped out of the car.

  “Well, it’s fascinating all right . . . but just remind me why we’re making this programme again?” He looked at her cynically as they walked up the steps to the front door.

  “For the money, honey,” she said. “This house is costing a lot to upkeep, and we need the money.”

  Both of them knew that was not strictly true. Ever since he had known Kate she had been fascinated with the history of Armstrong House and Nico’s family who had lived there for generations. They had only been married a couple of months when she had come up with the idea of a documentary about life at the Irish ‘Big House’ during its golden age of the late Victorian and early Edwardian period. She had discussed the idea with film-producer friends of hers and managed to get the project agreed to. Kate had always known it would be harder to convince her husband to agree to it than the film producers. Nico disliked the idea of their home and his family history being held up to public scrutiny. However, with acting roles thin on the ground for her lately and his architect’s practice struggling, she had used the financial rewards offered by the film as the lever to get him to give the go-ahead.

  “I just didn’t realise when we started all this we’d be concentrating so much on the shooting of Charles,” he said as they walked into the drawing room. “I thought it was all going to be about the social life at the house.”

  “Of course we have to include the crime – that’s the hook for the whole film!” she said, pouring them each a glass of wine. “Audiences love to hear about a glorious crime!” She stretched out on the couch beside him.

  “It’s easy for you to be so clinical about it – it’s not your great-grandfather being shown in such a bad light.”

  “No, my great-grandfather was probabl
y one of the peasant farmers who cheered when he was shot!” she laughed. Although Kate had mostly been brought up in New York, her family originally came from the area.

  “It’s not funny, Kate. I feel I’m betraying my heritage with all this. I mean, I’m not saying Charles was a saint –”

  “Far from it!”

  “But I’m just saying we shouldn’t be concentrating on all his bad points.”

  “Oh come on, Nico, everyone would love an aristocratic cad in their family’s past. You should be proud!”

  “Well, it’s too late to back out now, I suppose,” he said, drinking his wine.

  “Yes, it is! And I’ve put too much work and time into this for you even to say such a thing, Nico. I need your support on this!” She looked hurt.

  He had to admit she had been working round the clock on it. He knew his wife and when she decided to do something she gave it everything. She had dug up a copy of the inquiry into Charles’s shooting and meticulously studied it so she could get the filming of it perfect. She was painstakingly going through every old journal so she could find the details of what life was like back then at their house. She had sent away for police reports on the incident and had spent hours going through old newspapers readings concerning not just the shooting of Charles, but the terrible land war he had engaged in with his tenant farmers.

  He smiled over to her. “I’m sorry, of course I support you, and if I’m proud of anyone it’s you, for working so tirelessly on what you believe in.”

  “Thanks, Nico,” she smiled at him. “Let’s go to bed – we’ve an early start with more filming tomorrow.

  Kate walked through the ballroom at Armstrong House, speaking as the camera filmed her.

  “The ballroom here at Armstrong House witnessed many extravagant receptions. The Armstrong family were known as being generous and hospitable hosts and, as one of the great gentry families in Ireland, would have considerable wealth to fund their lifestyle. The source of their wealth was the several thousand acres in the vicinity rented to tenant farmers whose own lifestyle was in stark contrast to the one led here. It was the relationship between these tenant farmers and Lord Charles that erupted into a land war which ultimately led to the attack on Charles. At the inquiry, there were numerous accounts of the increasing animosity and aggression displayed on both sides. Chief witness at that inquiry was Charles’s mother, Lady Margaret Armstrong. Lady Margaret at the time lived at Hunter’s Farm, a dowager house down the road from the main entrance to Armstrong House. Lady Margaret testified that on the night of December 8th 1903 she heard a gunshot. Concerned, she went to her front door and said she saw what she described as a peasant man race past her house from the scene of the crime holding a shotgun. Suspicion then fell on a tenant farmer called Joe McGrath. McGrath had recently been evicted from the estate. With a history of violence and known to the police, McGrath had threatened to kill Charles in retaliation for his ruthless eviction. Lady Margaret later identified the man she saw running with the gun as McGrath. Police made extensive searches for McGrath, but he had fled from Ireland to America before he could be apprehended and interviewed, where it is presumed he disappeared into one of the teaming ghettos of New York or Boston, never to be found.”

  “Cut! Great, Kate!” said the director as the filming stopped.

  Kate was glad when the filming was done for the day. The police report on Charles’s shooting, which she had been searching for, had taken months to be located but she had managed to finally track it down through police archives. Kate had been handed the file by her researcher that morning. She was looking forward to spending the evening reading through it to try to get to the bottom of the mystery of why Charles’s horse hadn’t bolted, as everyone was suggesting must have happened.

  She waved off Brian and the rest of the film crew for the day, then she walked through the hall and down the stairs to the kitchen where Nico had made them dinner.

  They sat up at the island in the kitchen eating spaghetti carbonara as they discussed the day’s filming.

  “Well, I haven’t managed to do a jot of work all day with all those strangers in the house filming,” complained Nico. “So I’ll try to catch up this evening when I have some peace!”

  “I’ll leave you to your architect’s board then!” she said as she stacked the dishwasher.

  “And I’ll leave you to your police report!”

  Nico went into the library and Kate went into the drawing room where she poured herself a glass of wine and put on some music. She took the police folder from the sideboard and settled back on the couch to read through it. She started to decipher all the handwritten reports and then stopped when she found a black and white photograph. She picked up the photo. Along the top was written ‘Morning of 9th of December 1903 – Crime scene, shooting of Lord Charles Armstrong.’

  Wonderful! She had found an actual visual of the crime scene! Now they could compare it to how they had filmed the event. She studied the photo and her face creased in bewilderment.

  The photograph plainly showed the entrance gateway to the estate which was cordoned off by the police. Two policemen were standing by the scene. In the centre of the photograph was a vintage car stationed with what looked like a bullet hole through the passenger’s side of the windscreen.

  Kate couldn’t believe her eyes.

  “There was no horse and carriage!” she exclaimed.

  She quickly got up and raced from the room and down the hall and into the library.

  Nico looked up, startled.

  “We got the filming wrong!” she exclaimed. “We’ve filmed the whole thing incorrectly!”

  “Sorry?”

  “The horse didn’t bolt because there was no horse! Charles was driving a car that night.” She slammed the photo down on the desk in front of him. “I can’t believe it! We filmed Charles being shot in a carriage and he was shot in a car!”

  Nico examined the photograph carefully.

  “Brian is going to go mad!” she wailed. “We’ll have to find a replica car and re-film the whole thing! That footage we shot is useless. I can’t believe I made such a mistake! Why didn’t I research it better?”

  Nico looked at his stressed wife. He knew the amount of preparation and research she had put in, which she had shared with him as she went along.

  “But why were you so sure it was a horse and carriage, other than the fact automobiles were extremely rare and a novelty at the time?” he asked.

  “Because, as I kept saying, it’s in the official enquiry report!” she said, racing to a shelf in the library and retrieving it. She sat down beside him as she opened the report and went through it. “See, it plainly describes that Lord Charles was in a phaeton two-seated black carriage when he was shot.”

  “Well, he obviously wasn’t! This photograph says otherwise!” Nico said.

  Kate looked through the inquiry file.

  “But look at this! It’s the testimony from Lady Margaret, Charles’s Mother. . . She states she was the first to arrive at the crime scene and found her son shot, slumped back in the phaeton carriage. She makes no mention of a motor car either!”

  Nico was still looking at the police photograph. “I’m afraid you’ve got another detail wrong, my dear.”

  “What?”

  “A shotgun couldn’t have been used in the attack. When a shotgun fires the pellets spread . . . and would have shattered the car windscreen as opposed to this one single bullet hole, as can be seen from the photo.”

  “Great! I can see my documentary falling apart before me!” Kate pointed to the inquiry report. “But the inquest distinctly says that the shot was fired from a shotgun, the type – and I quote – ‘generally used by farmers for hunting’.”

  “Well, this bullet hole was made by a hand-held revolver, I would say.”

  Nico found another photograph buried in the police file. It was again of the crime scene and showed a side view of the car with the door open. Inside the car was a woman’s hig
h-heeled shoe and a fur coat. He showed it to Kate.

  “There must have been someone else in the car with him,” said Kate. “A woman.”

  “Those items might have been left in the car previously, by his wife presumably?”

  “Not a single high-heeled shoe! No woman is going to leave that behind, or an expensive-looking fur like that. They must have been abandoned in a hurry.” She pointed to the photo. “And look what side of the car windscreen the gunshot hole is on. It’s through the passenger’s side. Charles must have been sitting on the passenger’s side of the car, and so somebody else must have been driving.”

  “Presumably the woman who owned this shoe and coat . . . There’s no mention in the inquiry or papers of anyone else being with him?”

  “Of course not!” said Kate. “Do you think I’d miss something crucial like that? So who was she? And why is there no report of her at the time?”

  Chapter 1

  1888

  The ball was due to commence at ten that night as the shadows of the evening descended on Armstrong House. A continual procession of carriages delivered guests to the front door. Inside the house was a flurry of activity as the finishing touches for Gwyneth’s debutante ball were being administered by the staff and overseen by Gwyneth’s Mother, Lady Margaret. Charles Armstrong had made the journey from London to Dublin the previous day to attend his sister’s ball. He had then got the train from Dublin down to the local town Castlewest where a carriage met him and brought him the several miles to his family home. As the carriage pulled up outside the house, he stepped out and looked up at the magnificent manor house where all the windows were lit up that evening. He walked up the steps and was met at the door by the butler Barton.