Peril at Somner House

by Joanna Challis

  Angela brought up the necessity of Sir Marcus supplying an heir as well.

  “Oh, done already. Sister. Nephew. No need for me to raise the flag.”

  “But a man like you needs a wife.”

  “Perhaps,” Sir Marcus considered. “I am fond of the shapely kind, like that saucy creature in the kitchen. What was her name, Daphne? You girls remember that sort of thing.”

  The kitchen maid…and Max. “Yes!” I stared at both of them. “Perhaps that’s it.”

  “Queer kind of name, ‘Yes!’” drawled Sir Marcus. “No, truly, the saucy wench’s name, Daphne?”

  But I was already exploring the idea of a connection. “There has to be a connection between the gardener and the maid with whom Max was having an affair.”

  “Jackson and the saucy kitchen wench? No, no, no, he’s old enough to be her grandsire! Truly, Daphne, I can see why you took so long to sniff out the culprit in the Padthaway affair—”

  My face reddened and I sent Angela a glare.

  “I didn’t tell secrets,” she promised, “just the facts.”

  “A fantastic debacle.” Sir Marcus’s commiserating tone failed to placate me. “And you and this Major fellow didn’t do too badly…for a pair of amateurs.”

  I was about to point out that the Major was certainly no amateur, but stopped just in time. I didn’t know whether Sir Marcus was teasing me or in earnest, but how dare Angela speak of my private life to strangers! I liked Sir Marcus. In fact, I liked him more than most relatives, but I protested when it came to my personal affairs. I certainly did not go around and dish out the details of Angela’s failed romances or her secret trips to the country.

  “I daresay it is time to take this ungainly body upstairs.” Yawning, Sir Marcus rolled off the divan to collect his shoes. “See you two birds in the morning where you can explain the gardener and maid theory.”

  Leaving Angela with another glare, I sauntered after him. Angela could stay there and repent. Is that why she wanted me at Somner? To use me as a spectacle for everyone’s dissection? To deflect attention off herself and to conceal her own secrets?

  That night, I dreamt of a tower. A lonely eyesore stranded in a barren, rocky land gazing out across a violet sea. Above, a dash of lightning illuminated the darkness, inflaming the landscape with molten hues of orange, plum, and scarlet reds.

  I described the strange dream to Sir Marcus at breakfast.

  “Violet sea, eh? I knew a Violet once.” He inspected his plate of eggs. “Surprising, the Hugo fellow can do a passable egg. What he simply cannot do is coffee. I suppose I shall have to train him for I won’t consume another cupful of that ghastly muck.”

  Arabella passed me the pepper and salt dish. Did I imagine the tiniest beginnings of a smile on her face? Assuredly, one could not fail to smile at Sir Marcus, for he was the sort of person everybody liked. He had a contagious charismatic personality and I intended to keep him as friend.

  “Has the coffee always been bad at Somner, Miss Woodford?” Sir Marcus went blithely on. “Always knew one of my favorite haunts had to have terrible coffee one of these days.”

  Angela asked how many times he’d been to Somner House.

  “Oh, a few, since the couple married. Knew Katie girl before, you see. Met in the art circles.”

  “You never said what kind of art you do, Sir Marcus,” Arabella piped from her corner.

  “Patronage,” he replied without any degree of modest hesitation. “I like to support talent when I see it.”

  I lowered my gaze to the table. The logical feasible reason why Sir Marcus came to Somner: as a patron of Kate Trevalyan.

  “Not of Kate. She’s a clever one. Secured her own patronage whilst singing at the club. Once a few paintings sold, she was in business. She didn’t need moi.”

  “And stopped painting once she married Max,” Bella added.

  “That’s not entirely true,” Angela begged to differ.

  “Apart from the odd piece,” Bella conceded, and thus intimidated, scurried away from the table like a frightened mouse.

  Sir Marcus noted as much. “I should take you two hunting, I dare say. You’d work better than my hounds.”

  Angela reared at the insult. “What else do you do than busybody with other people’s lives? Flit from place to place, feeding off them to satisfy an empty craving? I think you ought to get married, Sir Marcus, and raise a castle full of children!”

  And with that, she stormed out of the breakfast parlor.

  “I think I upset her,” Sir Marcus whispered incredulously to me, even though there was no occasion for him to whisper since we were alone.

  “Oh, no,” I sighed. “She’s always like that. Actresses often are. They act to the zenith for maximum impact.”

  “A very keen observation there, Daphne. You’ll make a fine novelist one day.”

  “Do you think so?” I scarcely believed it. Angela could sit down and write for hours whereas I contended with too many distractions to ever get published. Of course, in order to have a chance at publication, I knew I had to sit down and simply write.

  “‘To labor on, the struggle is worth the prize,’” Sir Marcus encouraged. “So what do you make of this gardener, Jackson, and the maid? Grandfather or father? Pretty girl? Max? Yes, I see the picture. As for the girl, I don’t think she’s a current installment. More a convenience for Maxie boy, if you forgive my brutality.”

  I told him I’d always forgive his brutality.

  “And whoever she was, the liaison probably happened some time ago. We shall have to investigate, Daphne D.”

  “Won’t we get in trouble?” I had to raise the question. “We are guests here…and the house is in mourning, remember?”

  “Well, if we’re turned out on our ears,” Sir Marcus said, patting my hand, “I promise I’ll look after you.”

  Chapter Seven

  “You. Paint?”

  Laughing uproariously, Angela ducked her head out of our bedroom door for the fifth time. “She’s still in there. Honestly, how long does it take to clean one’s teeth?”

  I was still piqued by her denouncing my painting before I even started.

  “I’m sorry, Daph,” she reneged. “Paint if you must but what you should really be doing is working on your novel. You’ll never be published otherwise. Books won’t write themselves.”

  She often liked to toss that jeer at me. She, the elder, the learned, the experienced sister.

  I read a little of her latest work. She had just composed a scene where two girls traverse through a creepy part of the woods together, guided by an owl. Upon encountering a wolf, the owl screeches a warning before flying off to leave the girls to face the wolf alone. There’s no knight to protect them and the odds look grim. “How does it end?” I asked, breathless, enthralled, and more than a little envious.

  “They kill the wolf, but I haven’t worked out that part yet. This one’s a short. Did you finish your short?”

  “Not yet.” I hurried over to my notebook but she reached it first and began flicking through, spilling open to the page where Max’s name was circled with a question mark. “What’s this?”

  “Random observations,” I replied, thrusting out my hand for the book’s prompt return.

  Ignoring me, she spun around, reading every scrap on the page from every angle. “Sir Marcus is a grown man but you ought to show a little restraint, you know. Yes, the murder concerns us all but there is a time when we must allow the proper authorities to conduct the case and leave it to their judgment. You two are heading into trouble.” The motherly scolding didn’t sound like Angela at all. “Mr. Fernald, I agree, is an underling, but we have no business poking our noses around. It might upset Kate. Have you or Sir Marcus thought of her amongst your random plans to pillage the place for the murderer?”

  No, I was loath to admit we hadn’t.

  “I know what you’re going to say next.” Angela waved her little finger. “You’re going to tell me Kate was h
aving an affair with Josh Lissot at the time and is glad Max is dead. But that isn’t so. She loved Max, in her own bizarre way. It’s why she stayed with him all those years.”

  I shook my head.

  “What’s your assessment, then?” Flicking back to where my short story loomed, half finished, the words scribbled across the pages in splendid disarray, she chuckled. “My, my, you do have a penchant for melodramatic overtures, don’t you?” Snapping the book shut, she tossed it back to me.

  I felt my face grow hot. It may not be as good as your story, but one day I will write something that even you will admire. “I haven’t reached an assessment yet, but I do think Max was murdered by someone close to him.”

  “Here at Somner? In the house?”

  “Or someone close to it, on the grounds.”

  Angela nodded, yet her face remained blank as if her thoughts strayed elsewhere. She soon disappeared to the bathroom while I went outside to sit on the balcony. I took my notebook with me, still hurt by Angela’s comments on my work. What was wrong with a melodramatic story? Was not Romeo and Juliet a melodramatic success?

  “Ahoy!”

  Blinking as a pebble whished past my head to hit the window beside me, I detected a grinning Sir Marcus below.

  “Do I do a good Romeo?”

  I leaned over the balcony. “You could have hit my head, you know.”

  He shrugged. “The occupation has its hazards. What do you think of my outfit?”

  He twirled around, clad in a full cape and painter’s cap.

  “Very nice. Where did you get those?” I pointed to the palette hooked under his arm.

  “Katie girl. She says we can use a room over there for our painting endeavors. I don’t know about you, but I intend to paint a masterpiece.”

  Chuckling at his absurdity, I joined him downstairs.

  “It’s this room here,” Sir Marcus guided.

  Off to the left of the study, this room required a key that Sir Marcus promptly pulled out of his pocket.

  “What of the other locked rooms?” I murmured, looking around for a looming Roderick.

  Tapping his nose, Sir Marcus spurred me into the room.

  “Now Daphne, that’s our code for silence—the nose tap. We may be overheard. This place has ears.”

  I felt it, too. Mentioning Bella’s ongoing bathroom antics and Angela’s dislike of her, I inspected the array of painter’s tools. The room, though small, possessed good light and lay relatively spare but for three easels, brushes, palettes, wiping cloths, little paint tins, two lamps, and a lonely paint-blotted stool.

  “You can have the stool,” Sir Marcus said, ever the gracious gentleman. “And here’s your cape. Sorry, could find no feathery cap for you. You’ll just have to imagine one.”

  I laughed. He truly was a ridiculous man. “Kate said we can use this room exclusively?”

  “Yes. Katie girl understands the need for secrecy when we are to embark upon something great. But for us, painting is purely a façade.”

  He began setting up the canvases while I asked how Kate fared.

  “Saw her looking at breakfast. She ate nothing and looks positively dreadful. No sign of Lissot. Or Rod. Perhaps they’ve all gone fishing?”

  Glancing hopefully out of the window, a boyish glumness appeared in the downturn of his lips for if they had gone fishing, they had not invited him.

  I seriously doubted a fishing adventure accounted for the absences. “Josh Lissot is maintaining his distance considering he has the strongest motivation for murder; Kate, too, realizes this; she is afraid, afraid of the future and for Josh, and I think she knows something or suspects something. Whether or not she is party to her husband’s death remains to be seen. As for Lord Roderick, he is not entirely exempt, since he inherits what is left. He was the preserver of the family fortune before his madcap brother disintegrated the last of it, sending them all to a speedy ruin.”

  “My, my, a fine hypothesis.” Whistling, Sir Marcus waved his white-tipped paintbrush over two canvases. “Undercoat. Once it’s dried, you may begin.”

  “What are you doing and why, may I ask, is our painting a façade?”

  Slipping out the frequency radio from his jacket, he switched the top button and adjusted the aerial.

  I gasped. “Where did you get that?”

  “Dabbled in the toy department during the war. I was useless, needless to say, but my money helped buy a few of these beauties and I got to keep souvenirs.”

  “So Angela was right. You do like to spy on people.”

  He shrugged, his thickened lips smacking with amusement. “There are worse pastimes. Take our Max chap, for instance. Or Katie girl. Katie and Josh are the subjects for today. They’re in the room above.”

  I didn’t want to ask how he’d come by this information, and watching him adjust the dials on his instrument, I shook my head.

  “No prudish reprimand from you, Miss Daphne,” he warned, “for I’ve heard all about you and your quest for adventure.”

  “From whom, may I ask?”

  “From a particular friend of yours.” Winking, Sir Marcus propped the radio on the sill of his easel. “Now we can listen while we paint. Think of it as a…radio reading. We’ve merely tuned into episode three.”

  After a brief crackle here and there, two voices became increasingly clear.

  “Who? The Major? Major Browning?” I pestered Sir Marcus, but he shoved a hand over my mouth, drawing me to the unmistakable nuances of Kate Trevalyan.

  “…we can’t be sure they won’t find out. Fernald’s not clever, but he’s not stupid, either.”

  “But you’ve removed the evidence, darling. And so what? You slipped a little extra laudanum in his tea that day…to calm him, yes?”

  I imagined Kate nodding.

  “He went out on a wild rampage. How is that your fault?”

  “But the drugs! The mix…it sent him wild. You know how he gets when he’s in that state. He’s unstoppable. Perhaps someone else had no choice but to restrain him, and when that failed…what kind of weapon would do that to a face?”

  “Something long and blunt,” Sir Marcus whispered.

  “It’s terrible…I can’t live with myself thinking I am in some way responsible. Yes, I wanted him dead but not like this….”

  The voices muffled.

  “Oh, darn!” Cursing, Sir Marcus tried to rescue the frequency, to no avail.

  We spent a good hour or two afterward painting and surmising. Sir Marcus refused to acknowledge or answer my questions about the Major. His aptitude for vexing me led him to deny me any information, promising to “illuminate me” at another time.

  Sketching my dream tower scene on canvas, I was amazed to see that Sir Marcus could in fact paint. Dabbing colors here and there, a landscape began to emerge and I recognized the old pergola as the central focus.

  We were both immersed in our creations when Kate entered the room. Her warm smile gave no evidence of her secret lover’s assignation upstairs or of her fears regarding her husband’s death. The whisper of a shadow, however, hovered over a face too uncertain and fraught with worry. Eager to dismiss any attention on herself, she studied each of our works.

  “Very good!” she said to Sir Marcus, and listening to them babble on, I understood they shared a great friendship as well as a love of the arts. Wisely, Sir Marcus mentioned nothing about Mr. Fernald or the investigation, but she soon relaxed and confided a little of the matter on her mind.

  “I think they’ll blame Josh, but he didn’t do it!”

  “They cannot charge him without evidence,” Sir Marcus assured, adopting his best aristocratic demeanor.

  A guttural, almost embittered laugh escaped her lips. “Oh, but they’ve found evidence…a leg of my painting easel. It has Max’s blood on it and Josh’s fingerprints.”

  “So sayeth Fernald. I don’t mean to be rude, Katie girl, but the man is somewhat lacking in procedural intelligence. I’d truly like to see how he can pr
ove it’s Max’s blood and Mr. Lissot’s fingerprints.”

  Kate laughed again, this time, a very nervous laugh. “Oh, the fingerprints will match b-because…”

  You and Josh had made love before it…the passionate embrace sending the easel and the couple crashing to the floor, where the easel leg rolled to the door.

  Later, the unwanted husband strides into the room. He attacks. Seizing the leg, Josh protects Kate and together, they drag the body out to the beach—

  “Daphne,” Sir Marcus prodded, “give our Kate your reading of the situation.”

  Entirely lost in my own world, my paintbrush crashed to the floor and rolled to the door. Watching it, I exuded an uneasy swallow to face the grieving, distressed, and perhaps murderous widow.

  “What of the gardener? Could he have attacked your husband?”

  “Y-yes, I suppose so. He, er”—she stopped short, reluctant to betray the following—“has a daughter, Rachael. She works in the village pub but used to help out here.”

  “And she and Lord Max had an affair and produced a child,” Sir Marcus finished for her.

  Lady Kate looked bemused. “Why, yes, but I never told you—”

  “I deduced it.” A kindly, sympathetic hand brushed her upper arm. “Maybe this gardening fellow sought to ask ol’ Max for a few more bucks and our boy responded. Showing steely strength, the gardener picks up the first thing he sees…”

  “But that’s the problem,” Kate wailed, “the leg was in the room and Josh did use it.”

  So I had been correct in my painting of the lover’s scene. Max had charged in and the two men had fought over Kate, a woman who exuded womanly charm and confidence on every level. Except she didn’t look so confident as she started to cry.

  “There, there,” Sir Marcus, assuming the comforter’s role, invited her into his arms. “You’re among friends and we’re here to help. But now is the time for complete honesty, Katie. If Josh killed Max, we need to know now.”

  My eyes flew wide open. He hadn’t included me in this duplicity, had he? I had offered no such support, concealing a murderer, who, though he may have killed to defend a woman, should still stand trial.