by Mina Carter
Becky stepped inside ‘her’ house for the first time. Despite the warmth of the day, inside was cool. The entrance hall was impressive, if dark. Wood panelled walls surrounded her, and old portraits hung on each of them. Becky had always vaguely known she came from a very old Dorset family, but it had never really seemed important. Now she was stood inside the home of her ancestors, she felt the weight of all that history weighing on her shoulders.
The Frippes had lived in this tiny hamlet in the parish of Hinton Parva, just outside the quaint market town of Wimborne Minster, for countless generations. Now Becky could see the faces of those generations all around her. She shivered.
“As you can see, the house hasn’t been altered much. This is just how it was when your grandmother grew up here. All the features are original.”
Thinking this could easily turn into a historical tour of the house, Becky made a move towards one of the closed doors of the entrance hall. She turned the large, tarnished brass handle and had to give the door a little shove to get it open.
The room looked like it was some kind of dayroom or parlour. But all the chintz furniture couldn’t dispel the depressing atmosphere. Heavy red damask curtains covered the window almost entirely. She immediately wanted to open them and let some light in, but she would wait until Mr Kennet had left.
“Of course, you know of the ghost?” he asked.
“Ghost?” Becky glanced up at him, amused.
“Of course. No house can reach the age of this one without collecting at least one ghost. She’s quite harmless though. If I remember the details correctly, she was your grandmother’s great-great aunt, Honoria Frippe. Spurned by her lover, she slit her own throat. It’s said she only appears to those who will be betrayed by their lover. Alice told me she saw Honoria just before her husband began to have an affair with one of the maids.”
“What happened, with Alice’s husband, I mean?”
“Once his dalliance became common knowledge, he left Alice. She was never quite the same after.”
“I’m not surprised,” Becky muttered. She’d been down that road herself. “Did you know Alice for a long time?”
“All my life, Ms Frippe. Her passing has left a large hole in my life no one else will ever be able to fill.” The way he said it made Becky wonder if there had been more between Mr Kennet and Alice than simply that of a solicitor/client relationship.
“You and Alice were close?” she ventured hesitantly.
“Her husband was my older brother, Ms Frippe. Roland always had a bit too much of an eye for the ladies. After he betrayed Alice, he was cast out of my family and I never saw him again.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how come Alice kept her maiden name? Shouldn’t she have been Alice Kennet?” She couldn’t tell how the man felt about the loss of his brother, so decided to back away from that particular subject.
“Roland took the name Frippe when they married. Alice’s parents didn’t want the family name lost. The Kennett’s are also an old family, but not from the same social sphere. Alice married beneath her.”
Becky frowned at the man’s dismissal of his family, not sure how to take his view of his ‘inferior’ status.
“Shall we continue?” Mr Kennet asked, indicating they should leave the room.
Allowing Mr Kennet to lead the way, Becky took in the details of the rooms she was shown around, though they did begin to merge into each other after a while. With five reception rooms and six bedrooms, four bathrooms, and all the cupboards that were large enough to be classed as single bedrooms in a modern house, there was a lot to take in. Maybe she should draw herself a map of the place so she didn’t get lost too often.
Last of all, Mr Kennet led the way to the attic. It was stuffed full of old furniture, most of which looked like it could be worth a small fortune once all the dust was cleaned off. The solicitor explained the attic had once been the servants’ quarters, but no one had lived in them for a good seventy years. He added that when he had come here as a child there had only been one housekeeper living-in and a couple of cleaners who had come in several days of the week. Becky could easily see the house would be a lot of work to keep clean and added that fact to her list of reasons to sell the place. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life a slave to dust.
Once they had been round all the rooms, Mr Kennet suggested they went to the library and settled up the paperwork. This, apparently, would include Becky hearing a reading of Alice Frippe’s will.
The library wasn’t all that large, but it was stuffed with books, and not all of them old ones. It looked like Alice had been an avid reader of fiction right up until the end. Along with Barbara Cartland and Phillipa Carr, Becky also spotted Ian Rankin and Bernard Cornwell on the shelves. It looked like she did have at least one thing in common with her ancient relative. Maybe she would scour the shelves for books she wanted to keep before she cleared the house out and sold it.
Mr Kennet took a seat in a worn, brown leather wing-backed chair and hitched his trousers up to cross his legs. Beside the chair, a briefcase was already waiting. Becky assumed the driver had brought it in.
“I won’t actually be dealing with you myself,” he began. “Alice was the only client whose interests I had continued to work on after I retired. In future, you will be dealing with my grandson. I’ll introduce you properly before we leave.”
“Mr Kennet, I’m a nurse, so my income isn’t exactly up to running a house like this. I was going to sell it.”
The solicitor shook his head, looking appalled. “Ms Frippe, that simply isn’t possible. This house is still entailed, meaning it cannot be sold as long as there is an heir to the property. After you, the only heirs are your children, and neither of them are of an age to take it on. There is an old clause in the entail that prevents it being owned by anyone under the age of twenty-one.”
Becky’s knowledge on entails didn’t extend beyond Pride and Prejudice and the Bennet home being inherited by Mr Collins.
“But I can’t afford a house like this!” she exclaimed in alarm.
“Ms Frippe, you do not need to concern yourself. Alice lived very frugally and the family fortune is still intact. Even after paying all the relevant taxes, you will still have a more than adequate income to keep Frippe House in a good state of repair.”
“Oh.” Becky was stumped. No one had mentioned a family fortune before. Though it calmed her most immediate worries about the financial side of things, she still didn’t think she actually wanted to live in this mausoleum.
“Would you like the will read in full, or should I paraphrase?”
“Just give me the gist of it,” Becky said with a sigh, still processing the fact she was lumbered with this huge house she didn’t want. At least the money side of it was sorted though. But she still didn’t want to live here. She was going to have to give her life a serious rethink. A house like this would need checking over to make sure there was no structural problems or neglected maintenance.
A few years ago, Becky would have just asked her builder husband to do all that. Now she would have to get someone in. Jeff had buggered off with a girl barely out of her teens, leaving his wife and children to get by on less than half the income they’d previously had, meaning they’d had to sell the house and buy somewhere barely big enough for them all. Becky had been bitter and bent on finding a way to get her revenge for a long time, but she was over it now. She’d been out on a few dates, though nothing serious. Her focus was all about moving on, particularly as the kids were getting older.
It occurred to Becky that there seemed to be rather a lot of errant husbands in her family. Both her own father and her grandfather had cleared off. She’d thought she and Jeff would be different, but low and behold, his midlife crisis had hit and off he’d gone with a tart more plastic than person, complete with blond hair extensions and fake tits. Jeff was a walking cliché.
Becky knew she was going to have to scour local companies, check references, and get lo
ts of quotes before she knew if the house was going to spring any nasty surprises on her.
On the bright side, at least she wouldn’t be seeing the ghost when she’d already been betrayed in love. Becky almost snorted at that thought, but controlled it when Mr Kennet cleared his throat to start telling her exactly what the millstone suddenly thrown around her neck involved.
As he began to drone his way through all the endless legalese, Becky found her mind wandering. She wondered if any of the portraits were of the ill-fated Honoria. Also, she couldn’t help speculating what odd little nick-nacks she might come across when she began sorting things out. Everything in the house was hers, including all of its secrets. Or it would all be hers in a few days.
“Ms Frippe?” Mr Kennet was looking at her with a puzzled expression on his austere face. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she told him with a smile. “A bit overwhelmed.”
“Of course. You have a lot to think over. Our offices are just in Wimborne, so feel free to call in any time. It’s a lovely little town with some quite large events on through the year. We have the Folk Festival, the Food Festival and the Literary Festival. The Minster is definitely worth a look round, and the Priest’s House Museum has the most beautiful little garden leading down to the river.” He was starting to sound like he worked for the local tourist board. Maybe he should be getting a commission from them.
Mr Kennet finished up his visit by handing Becky copies of all the paperwork and getting her signature on several documents, then introducing her to his grandson, also named Alexander, though he told her he preferred to be called Xander to distinguish him from his grandfather.
Feeling very odd about it, Becky showed her visitors out of her new house, assuring them she wouldn’t hesitate to call if she had any questions. No doubt she would be calling them a lot to start with.
Closing the door behind them, she immediately pulled out her mobile phone and called her mother.
“What’s the house like?” Brenda asked before Becky could even say hello.
“Huge, a bit creepy. I’m going to go into the local town and get my bearings a bit, then I guess I’ll figure out which of the six bedrooms I’ll use while I’m here.”
“How many?!”
“Six. It’s got four bloody bathrooms! There’s more though. The solicitor said there’s a load of money too.”
“Really? Are you going to move there?”
“I don’t think so, but I can’t sell it either. Maybe I can rent it out. I’m going to have to look into that.”
As her mother wasn’t a direct heir, being Howard Frippe’s wife, she hadn’t been in line to inherit. Becky’s father Howard had gone off when Becky was only seven. He’d suddenly decided one day he didn’t like England anymore and buggered off to Kenya where he’d caught something nasty and died only a few months later, making Becky the heir to an old house, a fortune she had no idea about the value of, and a family history she knew next to nothing about.
“Will you be alright there on your own until the weekend, love?” her mother asked a little worriedly.
“I’ll be fine, Mum. I’m sure you’ll all love the house when you get here. By then, I’ll have my bearings a bit more. I think I’m going to spend the next couple of days getting lost. The first thing I need to do is get some food in.”
“I’ve been looking at that little town near there online. It looks very pretty.”
“I’ll find out shortly. I’m heading there in a few.”
“Go careful, honey. Take your time on the roads you don’t know.”
Becky sighed. “Mum, I’ve been driving for over twenty years. Listen, I’ll call you later. I really need a coffee and something to eat.”
“Make sure you do call,” Becky’s mother told her firmly before they said their goodbyes.
With the oversized keys weighing her handbag down, Becky got into her car and headed along the driveway to the main road. The exit wasn’t great for road visibility and Becky made a mental note to come and cut the vegetation back before her family arrived at the end of the week. She doubted that would be the only job she would have to find the time for before her mum, son and daughter arrived to check out this ancient seeming monument to a way of life that no longer existed. She would probably be up to her eyes in cleaning and clearing over the following days. All she hoped was that she wouldn’t be stuck with the hefty workload involved in a house like this until the day she dropped dead.
CHAPTER TWO
WIMBORNE MINSTER WASN’T a large town, not by any means. It only took her an hour to amble slowly around the extent of the centre, and that included popping into a few shops. She finished up in a café on one side of the town square, where she ordered a large fry-up and the largest coffee size they did. She’d passed a bookshop called Gullivers which she intended to investigate further another day. As it was a small, independent shop, it might have some interesting local history books.
Sat at a table in the back of the café, Becky looked at the leaflets she had picked up in the tourist information centre beside the museum Mr Kennet had mentioned, browsing over what the area had on offer to do and getting an idea of the region. There was some kind of farm shop along the road between Wimborne and Hinton Parva she planned to check out as it was so close to the house. There wasn’t a vast amount in the region, but it was essentially a farming area. All the places to go seemed to be based around outdoorsy things or local history.
Once she had pigged out on her meal, Becky headed to the Priest’s House Museum, wondering if she could find out more of her family history there. She was pointed in the direction of a volunteer who looked to be in her nineties, though she wasn’t lacking in mental faculties.
“Hello, I was wondering if you know much about the local area and its old families,” she began.
“You’re a Frippe,” the old woman said, smiling.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“You all have the same eyes. Not quite one colour or another.”
Becky had been in receipt of comments about her eyes all her life. They were just like her grandmother’s, not really blue or green or grey, but an indistinct mixture of all three colours. They looked like someone hadn’t been able to make up their mind about the right shade for them.
“I haven’t been in the area before, and I don’t know much about my family history.”
“Agatha?” the woman asked, her eyebrows rising a little.
“She was my grandmother. Her sister passed away recently and apparently I’m the only heir. I’m staying at Frippe House for a short while.”
The woman nodded and invited Becky to follow her to the back of the museum. She pointed to a small collection of photos of local houses. One of them Becky knew instantly had been taken outside Frippe House. It looked like a family group, all dressed in Victorian clothes.
“Do you know the story of Honoria?”
“Yes, I was told about it earlier.”
“That’s her.” The woman pointed to a young woman just to the left of the centre of the group. “This picture was taken to mark her engagement. A month later, she had killed herself. Poor thing. That’s the chap who jilted her.”
Looking closer at the man pointed out, Becky frowned. If it hadn’t been a Victorian photo, she would swear it was her son Dan standing there. Honoria herself looked rather like Imy too.
“Dacre Fripp was from a distant branch of the family that died out with him. His and Honoria’s marriage was arranged by their parents, but she was more than happy to marry him. He, on the other hand, was not so enthusiastic. Before he left her, he actually tried to poison Honoria. He slipped some arsenic into her drink. She only had a small sip of it, then the glass was knocked from her hand accidentally. It made her ill, but that was all. Seeing that didn’t work, he upped and vanished. She never accepted that he’d left, insisting he’d been taken. That was until she received a letter from him saying he was in France with the woman he loved. She was dead
the day after the letter came.”
“You know a lot about it,” Becky commented.
“Alice and I were friends from childhood. I knew Agatha, but I was closer to Alice. She grew increasingly isolated over the last few years though. I hadn’t seen her for about eight months when Alexander came and told me she’d passed away.”
“What was Alice like? I never met her.”
“She could be a bit difficult at times. She never liked to be proved wrong about anything. When Roland left her, she took it as an insult, as if he was telling the whole world she couldn’t get being a wife right.
“You don’t want to be hearing all my gossip about this though.”
“Actually, I’m very interested. My grandmother never really spoke about Alice.”
“Well, she wouldn’t, would she?”
Becky frowned. “Why not?”
“Because of what went on between Roland and Alice. They had an affair, dear. Alice was only fourteen when it happened. No one knew about it at the time. It wasn’t until the scandal about the maid that it all came out. Alice took her husband leaving hard, so Agatha told her he’d never been trustworthy, explaining about what had gone on between her and Roland. Well, Alice was furious about that. These days, Roland would have been blamed because Agatha was so young, but back then she was blamed too. That’s why she left and never came back.”
Becky had no idea what to say to that. Her grandmother had been seduced by Alice’s husband at the age of fourteen? These days that would be classed as rape, but things had been different seventy odd years ago.
“Thank you for telling me all this. I never knew what caused the rift between them. My grandmother wouldn’t talk about it. I’ve never been sure if she even liked Alice. Any time her name was mentioned, my grandmother got very . . . prickly.”
