He slid into the space and walked back on himself along the parallel wall, but this time there were no stairs downwards. The corridor remained on the first floor of the house. He took one quiet step after another, testing the floorboards before resting his weight upon them. It wasn’t until he had taken several steps that he heard a voice. A woman’s voice. Tones that he hadn’t heard before.
“She married him? Never! I don’t believe you.” Astonishment laced with derision rang in the woman’s tones.
A man replied.
“I assure you, Gertrude, it is true. By special licence no less. I just spoke to Mrs. Grenfell. She was as surprised as you and I. Had no idea the man would act so fast. At least Lady Madeleine is now sure of her place here. Might be all right for her and the rest of you, but with the old earl gone, I have no job. Unless the new earl takes me on. He didn’t arrive with a valet of his own. Doesn’t look as though he ever had one. Did you see his cravat?” There was a haughty sniff. “It is painfully obvious that he has never had a true valet dress him. Makes me wonder if he really is our master’s true heir.”
So, the woman was speaking to the valet, the one who had seen the ghost. Ash didn’t blame the man for his scepticism. He often wondered about the validity of the inheritance himself. But not knowing his ancestors didn’t make the line of the entailment any less true. He listened again as the woman answered.
“Oh, he’s the heir all right. Just take one look at the portraits in the gallery. He’s the image of his great grandfather.”
“But he is the size of a giant! How can he possibly be related? The earl was but five feet eight.”
The woman let out a low laugh.
“Well, you are a foot taller than your father and three feet narrower. Perhaps you are not related either.”
Ash rammed his fist in his mouth as he tried not to laugh at the valet’s indignant huff.
“I’ll not try to answer that statement, but I will say that I can’t imagine anyone but my father wanting to lie with my mother. That wart on her nose is enough to put the most stalwart of lovers off!
Tears of stifled laughter ran down Ash’s cheeks. He drew out his handkerchief and wiped them away before listening as the valet spoke again.
“I don’t even know why I am hanging about here. I would like to stay until after the funeral of course, but I have no other reason for remaining. I am surprised that the new earl hasn’t given me my marching orders already, though if he assumes I am leaving without my pay to date he has another think coming.”
The woman responded.
“Who do you think did it? Leyman? He has not been found yet. It must have been him.”
Was that a stifled sob? There was some shuffling about. A click of a lock as the man replied.
“Here Gertrude, stop your crying and take my kerchief. If I am honest with you, I just can’t see him as the one to do it. He loved his job, the animals. He must have been desperate about the horse. A mere argument with the earl would have meant nothing to him.”
The woman sniffed again.
“Huh! You don’t know him like I did. Though I’ve not been here long, I could see that he was a conflicted man. Fancied himself in love with Lady Madeleine. Didn’t know that before last night though. I was beginning to wonder if he was one of them sort who prefers his own sex rather than that of a woman, but you should have seen his face when he heard the earl and his daughter arguing. It was clear that he thought he stood a chance before the earl dashed his hopes. When I offered to, er, to comfort him so to speak, he turned me down.” Her incredulous tones indicated that she hadn’t expected the man’s refusal.
There was a short silence and then the valet’s voice drifted through the panelling again.
“Well, without wishing to sound rude, Gertrude, I can hardly say I blame him.”
The responding gasp was almost instant, along with an obviously more violent reaction.
“Why! You rude, - whack! Miserable, - whack! Despicable louse! Do you think I can’t get any man I want?” – whack!
“Agh! Well clearly not Leyman, and you won’t get me either!” – whack – “Stop that this instant! The master’s still lying in his bed.” He was silenced by another whacking sound.
“Well, he isn’t going to say anything then!”
“Ouch! I’ll tell the mistress how disrespectful you are being.” It was hardly a threat as the woman came back at him instantly.
“You tell the mistress anything and I’ll tell everyone what I saw you doing last night. Falling to sleep while reading, my arse! I saw you creeping into the library with that empty bottle!”
The man suddenly found his voice.
“It’s not my fault! Not that I drink a lot, but I can’t sleep without a little something to help me, especially after seeing that ghost.” There was a sudden silence before the man continued in a far more confident tone. “But hang on! I hid that bottle in the middle of the night! If you saw me, it means you were not where you claimed to be either!”
But it seemed the woman wasn’t listening.
“Ghost? What ghost? I haven’t seen any ghosts.”
The man lowered his voice and Ash had to press his ear to the wall to hear Phillip’s words.
“I tell you I saw a ghost. It came out of the wall right there in the master’s bedroom, about the time you began working here. All white and floaty. Ugly as sin too with horrible ratty hair all over its face.”
Another gasp.
“What happened when you saw it? Did you know who it was?” The woman was clearly all agog.
Phillips snorted.
“Of course I don’t know who it was. I don’t know any dead people! Well, excepting the master, but he wasn’t dead then, of course. And no, I don’t know what happened to it either. I clear fainted away. The next thing I knew the master had smelling salts beneath my nose and a cold cloth wrapped around the bruise on my head.”
The woman didn’t sound sympathetic to the man’s plight.
“How come I wasn’t told about the incident? I think I have a right to know if I might have to confront a ghost.” Her indignation was plain.
Phillips spoke again.
“I was asked to keep quiet about it. Flack didn’t want me upsetting his Lordship, with him being ill and all.”
“His Lordship was ill?”
Ash almost felt rather than heard the man’s unhappy sigh drift through the wall.
“Didn’t have long. He told me he was going to give me references but some idiot killed him before he could write the letters. I don’t know if anything from Lady Madeleine will hold the same weight.”
There was the sound of something scraping across the floor. Phillips spoke again.
“Well, that’s all his Lordship’s clothes packed in trunks. I’m not sure I’m happy doing this until after he is safe in his grave. Seems a little untimely.”
The woman’s voice grew fainter as if she had done what she needed to and would now like to get out.
“Stop worrying. The mistress asked us to do it, and we have. It’s not as if his Lordship is going to wear any of them again.” There was a short pause. “You kept out something for him to wear at his... well, when he is in his coffin?”
A gasp of indignation followed her remark.
“Of course I did. What sort of a valet do you think I am? The master will look splendid on his final journey.”
The voices faded and the door catch clicked closed. Ash strained to hear anything more but was met with the thick sound of silence. It was if there wasn’t a room next door to the wall at all. He shifted back in the tight space and tried to gauge exactly where in the house he might be. On the first floor west wing on the opposite side of the corridor to Madeleine’s own room which had faced the front of the house. Was he right next door to the master suite? Had Phillips and Gertrude been in some kind of dressing room? They had talked about the earl lying in his bed as if meaning close by. Ash pushed on the panel. It moved fractionally, but resisted
the pressure he put on it. Ash took another look. There was nothing obvious so he pushed again. Harder. Another movement. He leaned his shoulder against the panel, pressed his feet against the opposite wall, and shoved forcefully with powerful legs.
The panel instantly gave way and burst open. Ash’s weight and momentum carried him forwards until his knees hit a very large packing case. Pain shot through him as his lower legs stopped dead, but his upper body kept going, his arms flailing in the air as the other end of the dressing room came closer by the second.
Chapter Eight
Felines and Footsteps
Madeleine squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. Though it was late morning and the sun was now higher in the sky, her father’s scrawl had not become any clearer. She could make out several words and some names, and had matched those to the figures on the pile of invoices, but it was slow going.
She lifted the ledger and tilted it into the light streaming in the open window. Was the bill from Mr. Thatcher the blacksmith for fitting a shoe to a hoof, or for a tenant’s repair to their roof from Mr. Hedges the thatcher? She gave up trying to decipher it, lifted a box from the drawer, and began leafing through invoices, hoping to find the answer by working through the papers from the other direction.
Someone knocked on the door, but she didn’t raise her eyes.
“Come in,”
Mrs. Grenfell walked in with a tray of tea. She made a tutting noise as she cast her eyes about trying to find a place to put it.
“Are you sure his Lordship wanted you to do this? I don’t recall your father making such a mess when he did the monthly accounts.” She shifted the brandy decanters along the drinks cabinet to make space for the tea tray.
Madeleine wiped her hand across her brow as she glanced at all the papers strewn across the desk. Asher had only been gone two days. She had time to sort things out. She hoped.
“My father could probably read his own handwriting! Makes me wonder if he disliked doing the accounts intensely, such is the scrawl. He never wrote this untidily in any other correspondence I have seen.” She concentrated again on the contents of the box.
Mrs. Grenfel gave a soft, tearful smile and dabbed at her cheek as she sighed.
“A lovely hand, he had. Words flowed from his pen so beautifully.”
Madeleine looked up in surprise at the words. Mrs. Grenfell’s eyes were trained on Madeleine, but she was clearly seeing someone else sitting in the chair.
“Really? I didn’t know you had watched him so closely.”
The housekeepers eyelashes flickered and she gave a sudden shiver before glancing at the open window.
“I just meant that he seemed to find writing easy. I never saw him hesitate when he wrote... Are you not chilled in here?” As if answering for her, a sudden breeze wafted in and lifted several papers from the desk. The woman flapped about to stop them floating to the floor. She glanced at the letters and sniffed dismissively before handing the sheets back to Madeleine. They were clearly not in the earl’s hand.
Madeleine placed them back on the stack of notes sitting on one corner of the desk.
“Thank you. I am not cold but I could do without the wind making my task any more difficult. Everything is in a muddle. Letters mixed in with bills, bills amongst old and long forgotten invitations.” She held up a small card as if to prove a point. “I didn’t know that we had been invited to Bramston Hall last spring. I might have liked to see Constance. I will have to write and apologise.” She tore the unanswered invitation through the centre and threw it in a bin at her feet with a deep pang of regret.
Mrs. Grenfell sniffed again.
“Your father wasn’t ever one for house parties. Your mother’s death gave him an excuse to socialize even less. And it is not as if you could go alone.” The woman drew in a long breath and shook her head as she glanced around the room. “This is ridiculous if you ask me. The lady of the house doing the accounts. I never heard such a thing before. It is a man’s job, not a woman’s. This new earl is not at all what I expected. I am not sure he has been brought up quiet right.”
Madeleine’s locket swung forwards as she bent to pick up another pile of paperwork. A gentle smile came to her lips as the memory of his insistence that she wear it warmed her heart.
“He has been brought up differently, of that there is no doubt. But that is not his fault. And I was not brought up in the same way as others of my station either. Perhaps we will get along better than I initially thought.”
Mrs. Grenfell merely huffed and glanced about the room once more. She picked up an empty brandy bottle.
“More brandy! There was another empty bottle in the library the other morning. Mary discovered it behind a drape. You might want to look up the invoices for the consumption of alcohol in this house. If his Lordship drinks as much as others I will refrain from mentioning, he might need you to take on this chore permanently. He won’t be capable of doing it.”
Madeleine kept her eyes on her work.
“I’ll speak to Phillips about it. He does appear to be consuming rather more than one would think is healthy. And hiding the evidence is not a good thing either. Did he really think that it would not be discovered? Besides I do not know my new husband’s thoughts on the staff drinking his supplies. He might not turn a blind eye as father did at the added expense.”
Mrs. Grenfell neared the desk.
“Well, whatever his thoughts on alcohol consumption, if he wants you to continue with the accounts, I hope he doesn’t mind a wife with ink all over her fingers!” She raised her eyebrows in a clear sign of disapproval.
Madeleine glanced at her stained fingertips before ignoring them and looking back at the book in front of her.
“If my father hadn’t lied to my husband and told him that I practically ran the estate he probably wouldn’t have assumed so much and I wouldn’t be in this mess now. It’s not as if I don’t have enough to do. Reverend Green sent a message this morning asking if I had decided on the hymns and reading for the funeral. And I have constable Mathews calling again later today. He needs to ask some further questions.”
The housekeeper sniffed indignantly.
“Questions about what? It is obvious who the culprit is here. What can Mathews want with the rest of us? He is wasting valuable time by coming back here and upsetting everyone over again.”
Madeleine rolled her stiff shoulders before answering.
“There have been no sightings of Mr. Leyman at all. Not one. The man took no horse, no clothes, and none of his personal belongings. Aiden says that everything is in Mr. Leyman’s room just as he left it. There is clearly something wrong here. I am worried and have told Mathews that he would not have killed my father, that he wouldn’t have simply upped and left the household. I feel sure that some harm has come to Thomas.”
Mrs. Grenfell poured the tea and handed Madeleine a cup.
“Here, I made a strong brew... But what do you mean by harm? What sort of harm could come to a man like him? He is as strong as an ox and twice as surly.” She paused before carrying on. “And, if it’s not Mr. Leyman, who could it be? Gertrude says that the study window was open when she found Phillips with your father. Who would have sneaked in during the night and done for the man, but then didn’t bother robbing the place?”
Madeleine bit her lip to keep the tears at bay. She refused to dissolve into a sobbing ninny in front of the staff and took a sip of the tea to cover any sign of weakness. Mrs. Grenfell hadn’t lied about the strength of the brew. Madeleine shuddered as the bitter beverage hit her tongue and quickly put the cup down before answering the woman.
“I have no clue, Mrs. Grenfell. Perhaps the perpetrator was disturbed before he managed to steal anything.”
Mrs. Grenfell’s eyes darted about the room as if someone might spring from the shadows.
“I suppose an intruder is preferable to any alternative. I don’t like to think it could be any of the staff. None of us would do such a thing. We have all b
een here a long while, well everyone except Gertrude, and we all admired your father greatly.”
Madeleine snorted gently as she glanced back at the paperwork.
“You don’t have to say things like that simply for my benefit. I know that he could be a cantankerous old fool and that his temper was only becoming shorter. Ah ha!” She pounced on a slip of paper. “Mr. Thatcher, the blacksmith it is!” She began counting out some money from a small metal box and laid it upon the bill before ticking the entry in the ledger book and writing in the date beside it. She smiled triumphantly. “I don’t know why men think women can’t do this sort of thing. Why, if everything was filed properly, this would only take a few minutes. My father’s system is chaotic at best and downright impossible to follow at worst. Typical of a man to make things difficult.” She discounted the fact that Asher had made everything so easy for her, and looked up at her housekeeper hopefully. “Now, do you know anyone called Mr. Lion Brains? We apparently owe him five shillings and sixpence for something called an ‘onion lump’.”
Mrs. Grenfell blinked and was clearly about to say that she had never heard of the man or anything called an onion lump, when she had second thoughts and adjusted her spectacles while she leaned over the desk. Her finger followed the entry to which Madeleine alluded.
“You mean Liam B. Rains and the onion lamp your father ordered. Something from a ship apparently, but it caught your father’s eye in the shop in town. You know, the curiosity shop that recently opened in the high street. I have heard that Mr. Rains stocks items for a certain type of discerning clientele, your father clearly among them. Perhaps he thought it would be something the new earl would appreciate, seeing that he has a shipping business.”
Madeleine wondered how her housekeeper knew this kind of information when she didn’t, but kept her thoughts to herself. It wasn’t as if she had ever felt like being involved before. She had preferred to leave things to her father. A worm of guilt threaded through her as she realized how she had relied on the man to run the household so that she could live her life as she chose. So much for independence. She hadn’t been independent at all. More like over indulged, spoiled, and a greater burden than she knew. Difficult though it might be, she had to change. She nodded at her housekeeper, while wondering how the woman kept up with all the goings on at Claiborne.
An Unexpected Title (Suspicious Circumstance Book 1) Page 12
