Murder Most Welcome

by Slade, Nicola

The silence, that was it. There was no noise at all; only the faintest sound of her needle piercing the lawn petticoat she was stitching, only the sound of her own breathing. Her own breathing….

  ‘Frampton?’

  She cast aside the folds of lawn and leapt to her feet, running to her husband’s bedside. He lay there looking quiet and peaceful – too peaceful. Instead of the hurried, uncertain gasps brought on by his fever there was silence, and not the near silence of a healthy slumber, just silence.

  Frampton Richmond was not breathing at all.

  The blood drained from Charlotte’s face as she stared down at the lifeless body of her husband and she surprised herself by dropping to her knees beside the bed.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Lord,’ she prayed earnestly. ‘Thank you for taking the decision out of my hands, thank you for letting him die so gently in his sleep. I hated him for what he planned to do but I doubt if I could really have harmed him. Thank you for this, Lord.’

  Unhurriedly she began to straighten out the body of the man with whom she had struck so strange a bargain. Perhaps only his mother could have loved him but he should be accorded every mark of devotion that she could muster. Her own humanity demanded it, rather than his.

  A knock at the door interrupted her train of thought.

  Heavens. She pressed her lips firmly together. The house is in upset enough, this need not be made public straight away. She sped to the door and opened it a crack.

  ‘If you please, Mrs Frampton.’ It was Hoxton. ‘Miss Agnes sent to say will a tray be sufficient for you for dinner tonight? Cook is having to cope with the scullery maid who is having the vapours in the kitchen because her grandfer was struck down just the same way as his reverence, and what with that, and looking after the Vicar, the house is at sixes and sevens. I regret that dinner will be much delayed.’

  ‘Of course.’ Charlotte was relieved. ‘I’ll spend the night in the major’s dressing-room, so a light meal will suit me excellently.’

  ‘How is he, Miss – Mrs Frampton, ma’am?’

  ‘Not well, Hoxton,’ she said deliberately. ‘I’m not optimistic about him at all.’

  Was it relief she read in the butler’s craggy face? She could not tell, nor did she really care, her own relief was all-enveloping. Just as she was about to close the door, Agnes galumphed along the landing.

  ‘Oh, Charlotte!’ She was looking important. ‘We’re all going to bed early, after dinner, everyone’s exhausted, but I just wanted to let you know that I will sit up with Uncle Henry tonight. Old Nurse is taken up with Lily.’

  ‘Lily? There’s nothing wrong, I hope?’

  ‘Oh no, Nurse and Mama both say there is not, it’s just that Lily felt rather faint.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ Charlotte gave a tired sigh. ‘Well, bed is the best place for her, and you are an angel to look after Uncle Henry. What about your mama? Can she manage without Nurse?’

  ‘Oh yes, Barnard will keep an eye on Lily while Nurse is helping Mama to bed and I shall be in dear Uncle’s room, just across the landing from her, and not far from you too, of course. Do not hesitate to call on me, dear Char.’

  Indeed I will not, Charlotte laughed to herself, in spite of the awkwardness of her situation. If I require a patient excited into a fit, medicine poured into an ear rather than down the throat, a gouty toe heavily trodden on, then to be sure I will call upon you, dear Agnes. A thought struck her – neither she nor Agnes had remembered Lady Frampton in all this – so she locked Frampton’s door behind her, thrusting the key into her pocket, and crept stealthily along the broad landing. I do not want to be interrogated about Frampton’s health at this moment, she thought.

  ‘Gran? I just looked in to say good night and to see how you are? But I need not ask. You are looking in excellent spirits.’

  ‘And feeling better too, me dear.’

  The old lady had regained her high colour and the twinkle was back in her eyes.

  ‘I wanted to say again that whatever ’appens I’ll not let young Frampton beat me down, nor you neither, Char,’ she announced. ‘I ’ear that young feller that ’e brought ’ome is quite out of favour with Fanny so maybe everything will turn out for the best. In any case, I’ve thought up a plan, so don’t you commence to worry.’

  ‘Oh, Gran.’ Charlotte knelt beside the bluff old woman and hugged as much of the vast bulk as she could encircle with her slim arms. ‘I wish you were really my grandmother. We could have had such fun in Australia, you and I and Ma and Will. Do you know how much I love you?’

  ‘Get on with you!’ Lady Frampton gave her a little push but her eyes were brighter than ever. ‘If it comes to talking about loving … well, I reckon you know ’ow I feel, me girl. Now, be off with you and get to bed early tonight. You need your rest.’

  Charlotte was just letting herself back into Frampton’s room when her belated supper arrived. She took it from the footman with a smile and nodded to him to leave.

  ‘I’ll put the tray on the table outside,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want Major Richmond disturbed again tonight.’

  The presence of the dead Frampton did not in any way impair her appetite. Indeed, she considered, tucking in to soup, a plate of cold meat and bread and butter and a custard, I feel hungrier tonight than for what seems like weeks. She looked across at the still figure in the bed and sighed. I’m sorry, Frampton, she thought, a man should have a better epitaph than that his wife should regain her appetite upon his death.

  Her supper finished, she slipped the tray on to the table outside the door and turned the key in the lock once more, then she returned, reluctantly, to the man in the bed. The footman had also presented her with a copper can of hot water so she poured a little into a basin and prepared to wash her dead husband.

  As she wiped his face she hesitated, struck by something odd. She bent to look more closely and delicately reached a finger to Frampton’s nose. Yes, there was something there, a strand of black thread, and another, and another, this time, surprisingly, in bright rose pink. She satisfied herself that there was nothing more to be found then she sat back on her chair, catching her breath as she stared at the fragments between her fingers.

  Almost involuntarily her head swivelled towards the sofa beside the fireplace. On it lay her mother’s shawl, the black silk patterned with large pink cabbage roses, one of her few mementoes of Molly Glover. She had caught it up in her own bedroom the evening before when the air had begun to strike chill and she must have left it here in Frampton’s room when she made her escape earlier today.

  Stiffly she rose and picked up the shawl. Pink silk in the roses, pink silk strands in her hand. A perfect match. And here, as she examined the shawl by the light of a candle, was a place where the threads were torn. A long shudder ran through her entire body, a shudder of horror mingled with relief and a dreadful gratitude. All very well to convince myself I could kill him, she thought dully, recovering her wits, but it’s a very different matter to find that someone else has actually done it for me.

  A sudden wave of exhaustion overtook her and she sat down hastily in the nearest chair, thinking longingly of her bed. I cannot put it off any longer, she told herself, I must call somebody. Instead, abandoning the idea of bed, she steeled herself to continue the task of laying out her unlamented husband’s body, working methodically and calmly as was her custom.

  ‘What on earth?’ Released from its indelicate and unlikely hiding place something surprising had come to light, something that immediately brought to mind Frampton’s fevered mumblings as he searched frantically under his pillow.

  ‘Really, Frampton!’

  Charlotte took the object between a reluctant forefinger and thumb and immersed it in water, drying it thoroughly on a soft linen towel.

  It was a large, very beautiful, heart-shaped ruby.

  CHAPTER 8

  I must call Barnard, she thought. He must be told about this. Even as she made the decision she realized that her hand, of its own volition,
was determinedly tucking the ruby into her pocket and covering it with a handkerchief. A moment later she swept back the covers on Frampton’s bed and made a meticulous search of every inch of it, then, setting aside her revulsion, she further searched the dead man’s body.

  Nothing. She straightened the bed and sat down for a moment’s reflection. Was this what Frampton had been so frantically seeking? There must be more, she thought. He cannot have survived without money, but where did this come from? Not the officers’ mess, that’s for certain, but is this what the Indian gentleman was after? I can understand why Frampton would hide it, but really, in such a place! Rapidly she quartered the room, rifling through the drawers, poking under the bed and in the wardrobe, running a hand under the feather mattress. Still nothing.

  As she crawled backwards out from under the big old bed she spotted something odd on the floor. It looked for all the world like the scattered petals of some flower. But Frampton refused to have flowers in his room, she thought distractedly. Where had they come from? She was still not sufficiently familiar with English flowers to recognize a few isolated pink petals but … wait. There was something about pink flowers. Who? That was it, Lily had mentioned something about pinks – a singularly unoriginal name for a flower – when she spoke about Lady Walbury!

  Charlotte rocked back on her heels and stared again at the wilted pink scraps. Lady Walbury? She could not possibly have slipped into Frampton’s room, murdered him, shredded a few flowers and made her escape quite unnoticed. Could she?

  It was nonsense. Charlotte tucked away the problem to the back of her mind along with the rest and returned to even more pressing matters. If Frampton has been concealing money in this room, she determined, I am going to find it, yes and keep it too, unless I find someone else with a more legitimate claim upon it.

  Immediately in front of her was the fireplace, empty in such glorious weather as they had enjoyed of late, and there on the hearth was a slight sprinkle of soot. She reached a tentative arm up the chimney and encountered a ledge; upon the ledge was something hard and square.

  A box, a square wooden box. She had seen similar boxes in India, intricately carved in rosewood and inlaid, as this was, with ivory or mother-of-pearl.

  Breathing hard, she dusted off the soot and opened the lid to disclose a heap of banknotes, a scattering of precious stones – emeralds, pearls and sapphires – and some gold sovereigns, almost £700 in all.

  ‘Good gracious, Frampton.’ She chewed her lower lip and stared at the hoard before her eyes. ‘What on earth did you do? Where did this come from?’

  Her long training stood her in good stead. Swiftly she thrust the contents of the wooden box into the pocket which hung under her skirt from her waistband. A few moments later the box was safely despatched back to its hiding place in the chimney and the hearth swept clean. She gazed down once more at her late, unlamented husband.

  ‘Well, well, Frampton.’ She spoke in a satirical voice that masked her anxiety. ‘Here you are, dead again, I see! I wonder what is to become of me now?’

  There was no time for contemplation. A last glance round the room to make sure that there was nothing else unusual – no further distressed floral tributes, no diamonds draped around the marble clock on the mantel, no sooty footprints on the floor – and she slipped out of the room, locking the door behind her. In the Queen Anne wing she hesitated at the door of Lily and Barnard’s bedroom. No, Old Nurse was sure to be ensconced by Lily’s bedside, ready to dispense tales of disaster and gore that had befallen every expectant mother of her acquaintance.

  For the first time Charlotte was struck by the similarities between Nurse’s enjoyment of her woes and portents of doom and Mrs Richmond’s throbbing appropriation of any passing drama. Small wonder, I suppose, she thought, grinning faintly. Nurse brought her up, after all.

  No sense in rousing Lily or Nurse. She guessed that Barnard would have retreated to the spartan simplicity of his dressing-room, stifled by the aura of fecund femininity. She rapped her knuckles gently but firmly on his door and waited. Sure enough she heard movements within almost at once.

  ‘Charlotte?’ Barnard thrust a tousled head round the door and gawped at her. ‘Wha…?’

  ‘Please come,’ she whispered, her finger to her lips. She turned back the way she had come, leaving him no choice but to catch up his dressing gown and follow her, stealthily closing his door behind him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Barnard.’ She drew him into Frampton’s room and shut that door behind him too. ‘It’s bad news. I know you had your differences but he was still your brother.’

  She led him to the still figure in the bed.

  He gasped, turned to her in shock then bent to take a closer look. As he straightened his back, she saw that his face was pale and his eyes suddenly shadowed. He looked at her again.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he stammered. ‘As you say, he was my brother, but he …’

  He sat down heavily on a nearby chair and thrust a hand through his dark curls.

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She told him the truth, then disguised it with a further half-truth. ‘Your mother said he was asleep about the time Uncle Henry had his seizure, that was around teatime. Then I was quite a while working with Agnes to settle your uncle – we had our own tea in his room – and when I came back here I thought I should not disturb Frampton’s rest.’

  She brushed a weary hand across her brow.

  ‘Agnes sent me up a tray in here because of all the upset in the house and I was going to bed in the dressing-room. I know it’s quite early still. What time is it now? I thought I should fetch you at once, but I did not want to raise the alarm. It could do no good, after all.’

  He glanced at the clock.

  ‘It’s not eleven yet,’ he said, rubbing his eyes and looking suddenly exhausted. ‘I don’t know how my mother will …’ He sighed, then he looked at her with that frank honesty that was his chief attraction. ‘I wish I could say that I’m sorry this has happened,’ he confessed, then threw out his hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘But how can I? It makes everything so much – easier.’

  Apart from Mrs Richmond, who was reported to be prostrate upon her bed and no wonder, the entire family gathered at breakfast the next morning. The air of relief was palpable, so too was the air of desperate guilt brought about by this very easing of their troubles.

  Agnes, dressed once more in her most unbecoming black, presided over the tea and coffee cups, working her way so rapidly through a succession of dainty, black-bordered handkerchiefs that Charlotte eventually leaned across the table and thrust a large linen table napkin at her.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Agnes, mop yourself up with this!’

  As Agnes looked set to indulge in another extravagant outburst Charlotte relieved her own feelings by aiming a kick under the table. The gasp and wince that greeted this action halted Agnes in mid-wail and Charlotte took the opportunity to hiss at her:

  ‘Agnes, hush, you’re upsetting Lily, and Grandmama too. You must control your feelings, there’s too much to be done.’

  ‘Quite right, Charlotte.’ Barnard spoke with quiet authority. He was looking pale and stern but the tension that had hunched his broad shoulders for days was gone entirely. With no pretence as to great grief, he held himself with an air of grave competence, and looked, Charlotte considered, the worthy squire he was born to be.

  Lily, too, was pale after her fright of the day before but a night’s rest, undisturbed by any of Old Nurse’s worst forebodings, had done much to restore her balance. She, like Charlotte herself, was making no pretence of sorrow, though unlike Charlotte, Lily was hard put to conceal her actual delight in Frampton’s death.

  I wonder. Charlotte watched her revived sister-in-law truffling away at a plateful of pork chops. (How appropriate she thought, looking at the serene but undeniably piggy, pink face across the table.) Did she do it? Could she have done it? Agnes said that she and Lil
y were having tea when Uncle Henry collapsed; no, Mrs Richmond said Frampton was asleep then. Just when was Lily taken ill? she wondered. Was she ill at all? Perhaps she slipped into Frampton’s room when Agnes and Charlotte were otherwise occupied and – what? Smothered him with Molly Glover’s shawl?

  It was absurd.

  With narrowed eyes, Charlotte considered the rest of the family. Lady Frampton? She had certainly feared and disliked Frampton but the excitement of thinking up ideas for her own and Charlotte’s escape had put new life into her. The old lady had talked of an adventurous solution, of setting up house with Charlotte. A pipe dream or would she really have done it? Why should she kill him? As far as the old lady had been aware, the adventure, if it had come off, would have offered the added spice of seriously annoying Mrs Richmond, something Lady Frampton would have relished. Not knowing anything of Frampton’s attempt to blackmail Charlotte by blackening her name, his grandmother would have seen no obstacle in their path, least of all the grandson she had come so heartily to dislike.

  Barnard? Nonsense. Her mind instantly refuted the notion. Bluff, upright, God-fearing, law-abiding Barnard would never have done such a thing. Charlotte could, with difficulty, picture him killing someone in a fight, an angry brawl, or even, were they still legal in England, a duel. But to smother a man as he lay helpless in his bed? Never.

  A loud sniff followed by a hearty blow drew her attention back to Agnes and a reluctant little smile touched her lips. Oh no, not Agnes. If Agnes had murdered her brother his pillow would have been wringing wet with her tears where she had wailed and wept over him at the course she was forced to take and he would have been drowned instead. It was quite, quite ludicrous. Besides, Charlotte recollected, she and Agnes had been together in Uncle Henry’s room all the time. Agnes had no opportunity at all.

  A sudden idea flashed into her mind.

  ‘Uncle Henry!’ she exclaimed out loud.

  ‘Oh, Charlotte, dearest,’ mooed Agnes. ‘How like you to be so concerned in the midst of everything. Our poor uncle is just the same, unable to speak or move, but I’m glad to report that he took a little beef tea earlier this morning.’