Brownsword took up the story here. He recalled how he too had joined the throng, delayed as he was by the fact that he insisted upon dressing fully before appearing in front of the Master and the lower staff members – Brownsword has very definite ideas about what is done and not done!
He was the one who suggested that the doctor out to be sent for, but Toby Hallam interrupted, almost hysterical, “There’s no point in bringing the doctor to her, you fool! I tell you there’s no help for her!” Brownsword was not at all pleased to be called a fool by one of the outdoor servants and his dignity was deeply affronted. He addressed himself to Sir Henry in frosty tones, explaining that the doctor must be sent for anyway. The coroner would expect it to be done. Sir Henry seemed confused and agitated and turned aggressively on them all, “For God’s sake, let a man think, can’t you?” He started downstairs, then turned back and spoke to Brownsword, “Fetch a bottle of brandy to the library – and don’t let anyone do anything until I give you word! Do you understand?” Naturally no one argued with him. His hands were shaking and his face had lost all its usual high colour. Mrs. Gregg said she thought he looked on the verge of collapse. He went into the library, taking Maria in with him, and did not come out for nearly an hour. He had drunk most of the brandy, but it didn’t have the normal effect on him. He seemed quite sober, and still deathly pale. Maria looked ghastly and almost fainted when she came out of the room. Mrs. Gregg said the Master had given her all the gory details, had spared her nothing, and she was terribly shocked and distressed. When the doctor finally came, he had to see her and give her something to help her sleep, she was in such a state. Apparently he told Sir Henry what he thought of him for thrusting such awful knowledge on his most sensitive child, “If you had to tell someone,” he was heard to roar, “why did you not confide in that brutal little lout of a son? He has the stomach for death and mutilation – sees it all the time on the hunting field!” Sir Henry was furious and growled at Dr. Herbert to mind his own damned business!”
There ended Verity’s report and Mr. Underwood’s face was grave as he finally laid the papers down. There was something strangely evocative about it, knowing, as he did now, most of the characters mentioned. He could picture each one, see their probable reaction to the stunning news that there was a murdered girl, lying mutilated beyond recognition, within the walls of the estate. He was glad Charlotte had not been the one to hear her drunken father’s description of the body, but he was also furious to learn that the magistrate had forced the knowledge onto Maria. Damn the man, he had no soul! Instinctively he applied a Latin tag to Sir Henry and his son, “Arcades ambo” – two of a kind.
He carefully refolded the notes along their original creases and returned them to his pocket. It would never do for his carefully garnered information to fall into Pollock’s reckless possession. It would be completely beyond the boy’s capabilities to keep anything a secret. It was becoming more and more vital that this remained confidential, and not just for Gil’s sake. Mr. Underwood was beginning to feel there might be a great deal more to this little mystery than had at first been apparent.
Suddenly feeling the need to talk to his brother, he went in search of the vicar, but was unlucky initially. The study was empty, as was the parlour and it began to look as though the entire vicarage was deserted. Mrs. Selby was the only living soul he encountered, and he even had to go out into the garden to find her. She informed him that she rather thought the vicar was in the church.
Mr. Underwood was loath to pursue his brother and disturb him when he was presumably at prayer, but he was also single-minded when the mood came upon him, so he swiftly overcame his scruples and followed the reverend gentleman across the churchyard.
Gil was indeed kneeling at the altar, so Underwood slipped into a convenient pew and waited patiently. It occurred to him that Gil would have been intensely disappointed that he did not follow the good example offered by the vicar and fall to his own knees, turning his thoughts to higher things, but Mr. Underwood had his own reasons for doubting the existence of a just and loving God – and he had no intention of debating the point with his younger brother. Instead he stared unseeing at the coloured patterns cast upon the floor by the sunlight through the stained glass window, and cogitated upon the story contained in the missive handed to him by Miss Chapell.
Presently the vicar rose and was startled to see his brother sitting in a pew, evidently deep in thought.
“Chuffy?” His tone reflected his surprise at the other’s presence, but Underwood was unmoved by the implied criticism in the added, “Is there something amiss?” He sensed the unspoken, “there must be or you wouldn’t be in here”, but ignored it.
“Not at all,” he replied evenly, “I merely wanted a private word with you, and the church was the only place I could be sure of avoiding Mr. Pollock!”
“But he is a clergyman,” protested the vicar faintly.
“A very unsuitable one, if I may say so! Do you think he is aware of the constraints of his calling?” asked Mr. Underwood, displaying a degree of cynicism which was most unbecoming.
Rev. Underwood made no attempt to dispute this unkind comment, but he did feel that Underwood was unnecessarily hard upon the unfortunate Pollock. He had no difficulty in finding something to criticize in all that the poor young man said or did. However, he did recognize that though his brother denied the suggestion, his health was not at its best, and he had taken a Sabbatical with the express purpose of avoiding contact with his boys for a considerable period. It must be a severe trial to him to find Pollock – one of his least favourite and most annoying charges, installed under the same roof as himself for an unspecified amount of time.
“What did you wish to discuss?” Gil asked, as he joined his brother in the pew, neatly closing the little door which divided the seat from the aisle. He prepared himself to hear something unpleasant – merely on the basis that he always seemed to hear something unpleasant from his sibling.
Strangely, having gone to such extremes to search out his brother, then wait so patiently for him, Underwood now appeared to be reluctant to put his thoughts into words. He toyed nervously with one of the signet rings he wore on each of his little fingers – one deeply engraved with his initials, the other a plain gold band, like a woman’s wedding ring. In fact that was precisely what it was – the ring his betrothed would have worn had their wedding ever taken place. It was this ring he twisted and though the vicar noticed it, he said nothing, simply waiting with infinite patience and sympathy for the words to come.
“Gil, what do you know of Miss Wynter’s character?”
“Charlotte?” He managed to inject just the right degree of surprise into his tone, but in truth he was not as astonished as he wanted to appear. It was a conversation he had been hourly expecting, but he knew Underwood would abhor the very idea that he had been in any way transparent.
“You must understand that though I have been here for nearly a year, I cannot say I know her well, and can only give you my personal opinion.”
“There is no man whose opinion I value more, Gil. Pray give it.”
“Well, she is a little … spoiled,” he began diffidently.
“She is horribly spoiled,” stated Underwood brutally, “But will she grow out of it?”
“I expect she might well do so,” Gil could not repress a smile. Now he knew his brother was smitten. He would have noticed nothing about Charlotte at all, had his interest not been very firmly engaged, “She is essentially a pleasant, bright, vivacious girl.”
“You sound as though you were giving an end of term report,” complained the love-lorn Underwood.
“What else do you expect me to say? You can see for yourself that she is beautiful.”
“That is a vastly over-used word.”
“So is love,” suggested Gil with a grin, “Are you disputing that it could be applied to Charlotte?”
“Beauty? I did not say so,” Underwood sounded testy and his next comment told his brother why, �
��But if I can see her beauty, so can every other young buck in the County! Harry intimated that she has no shortage of heart-broken swains dying for love of her – is she a flirt, Gil? Or worse still, a jilt?”
Gilbert considered this question carefully before answering, “I have noticed no particular evidence of it, but it would be a girl of unusually high standards who did not allow her popularity to go to her head a little!”
Mr. Underwood waved his hand impatiently, “That is not what I mean. Dash it all! I don’t mind her enjoying her loveliness. Who am I to stop her? She can trample on the heart of every man she meets, if it pleases her – but the question which plagues me is this; does she mean to trample on mine too?”
“How can I possibly answer you? I have no idea how she feels about you. Love is about taking a risk, Chuffy.”
Underwood returned his attention to his ring. He twisted it on his finger and for a moment Gil thought he was about to wrench it off his hand. He almost reached out to prevent such an action, knowing it had never been removed since the day it had been placed there.
“I can’t do it, Gil. I can’t risk my heart again; I have to be sure.”
Now Gil did reach out his hand, but it was only to place it briefly on top of his brother’s, “Then you will have to stop now, my dear fellow. There are no guarantees in life and certainly not in love affairs! You will have to decide whether or not you can trust Charlotte, and then take the consequences.”
Underwood drew in a deep breath, “Of course you are right, Gil. Thank you.”
Rev. Underwood rose to his feet, “It’s getting late. Shall we have some tea?” he asked rousingly. His brother managed to summon a smile to his solemn countenance, “Only if you make it.”
*
As they trod the path which led to the vicarage, Mr. Underwood spoke again, but on an entirely different subject, “Gil, what do you know of the circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs. Hazelhurst?”
“Now, Chuffy,” Gil stopped and turned to confront his brother, “Hazelhurst was tried and acquitted by a Court of Law. You cannot mean to go dragging all that up again too?”
“Calm yourself, Gil. Why must you always place the worst possible complexion upon everything I say or do? I know Hazelhurst was found not guilty and it never occurred to me that he would have any connection with our other little problem, but his name was mentioned and I should like to know what happened.”
The vicar looked unconvinced, but he fell back into step beside his brother,
“There is a steep, craggy outcrop of rock near the Hazelhurst farm and Mrs. Hazelhurst apparently fell over it and broke her neck. Her husband found her. It was one of those occasions when truth was obscured by gossip and conjecture. Unfortunately for Hazelhurst, it was well known that he and his wife did not get on, so to speak. In the absence of any witnesses, there were three possible conclusions; one that it was a genuine accident and the woman had fallen – but in that case, what was she doing up there? She had never shown any interest in walking before, and certainly not to Boar’s Hollow! Two, that her husband, or another, unknown, person had pushed or thrown her to her death, either there, or elsewhere, such as the stairs in her own home, then moved the body – but then you have the problem of how she was lured to her death. Thirdly that she had gone to the cliff with the express intention of throwing herself onto the rocks below. Hazelhurst swore he knew nothing about it, and was convinced himself that it was an unfortunate accident. Sir Henry, as local magistrate, believed him innocent and had the case against him dismissed. Since there was no proof she had committed suicide, I was able to prevent those who wished to have her body buried at the crossroads from having their request fulfilled.”
“Good God! Do they still do that?” Underwood was slightly shocked and his brother smiled slightly, “Not in my Parish. But I fear it has not been easy to wean country people away from some of the age-old superstitions they have lived by for centuries. Those who live by the soil tend to have a rather primitive outlook on occasion.”
“Gil, this conversation has given me a worrying notion,”
The vicar’s smile slid swiftly into a frown, “What do you mean?”
“Perhaps I have been entirely wrong about the reason for the girl’s murder.”
“In what way?”
“Fool that I am, I was so sure I was right, I had not left my mind open to other possibilities. I have been assuming the head was removed to prevent identification – but what if there were quite a different reason?”
“Such as? I do not see what other reason there could be – aside from my own theory that it was the work of a madman.”
“You used the word yourself – Superstition! Was she killed as some sort of a sacrifice? Did the ancients not believe that the soil had to be fed with human blood?”
Gil hesitated for a few moments, before shaking his head in firm denial; “You have been too long steeped in the lore of ancient Greece and Rome. No! I refuse to believe any such nonsense.”
“Why?”
That was a question the cleric in Gil found very hard to answer. He looked into his brother’s eyes, his own clouded with worry, “Chuffy, if I had to imagine something like that could happen in my parish, could be carried out by people I know and respect, I would have to leave the ministry.”
This was not quite the reaction Underwood had been expecting, for in his own excitement at finding an alternative motive, he had been blinded to his brother’s very different approach to life. His own expression became very troubled as he watched a suddenly stoop-shouldered Gil walk away from him.
*
Even Septimus Pollock’s famed good humour was wearing a little thin by the time the irrepressible Underwood had dragged him unwillingly around the entire village. The older man refused to rest until every home had visited and Pollock was awash with tea, his head buzzing with the accumulated gossip of the parish. He began to wonder what the devil was driving Underwood, for he could see nothing remotely interesting in anything which had been said or done, but Underwood was evidently riveted, his evening spent poring over complicated diagrams and maps of the surrounding district, making copious notes in his neat writing and generally being infernally secretive.
Unknown to Pollock, Underwood had gleaned almost as little information as his companion, but he tried his best to discover what he could and to draw the most tenuous of connections between the village and the girl.
He came up with nothing. No one admitted to knowing her, no one admitted to having seen her and, not entirely unexpectedly, no one admitted to having murdered her. Either the villagers knew everything and were protecting their own, or they knew nothing and were genuinely as puzzled as himself. It seemed it had been a rainy evening early on, though the skies had cleared later, and as a result, no one was out in the street, except, it would seem, the girl herself and her killer.
His greatest hope had lain with Toby Hallam and Abney – the gamekeeper who had found the body, and the groom who had told Verity Chapell that he had passed the spot where she had been found only hours before and had seen nothing.
Toby Hallam seemed exceptionally embarrassed to have to admit he had discovered the body, and rather to Underwood’s disappointment he had a perfectly valid reason for being in the woods at five thirty in the morning. Underwood, who was largely ignorant of country ways, was astounded to learn that a gamekeeper was a stranger to regular hours. Poachers kept odd hours and therefore so did the man whose job it was to catch them. This dedication to duty was a revelation to Underwood, who would not dream of wandering about in the dead of night in the service of anyone but himself – and then under duress!
Hallam was not a squeamish man – no one who trapped and culled could be, but he did not scruple to tell Underwood that he had been physically sick when he had seen the mutilation inflicted upon the corpse. Very clumsily done, was his verdict. Underwood, who was a squeamish man, found himself feeling decidedly nauseated and hastily changed the subject.
&nbs
p; Abney was even less use. He had been in the Wynter Arms until eleven thirty, having had angry words exchanged with his wife, and had taken rather more than was good for him. Yes, he had passed the place, and no there had been no body, nor sign of anyone about. He had failed to notice the presence, or indeed absence, of any vehicle which might have contained the body. He had, in short, failed to notice anything at all, including the ditch into which he had fallen head first, and out of which he had sheepishly dragged himself, giggling inanely and hoping he had not been seen to fall.
Soon there was only the Dame school, run by the two Misses Dadd, left to visit, and at this point Underwood took pity not only on the long-suffering Pollock, but, he felt, also upon the two Misses Dadd. He understood from his brother that they had already met Pollock and had been inexpressibly shocked by his candid and emphatic mode of might be able to confide, Underwood decided to grant himself a short rest from his labours and visit them at some later date.
All that remained now was to sift the interviews and decide which, if any, of the villagers warranted a second, and more pressing, questioning.
*
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
(“In Partibus Infidelium” - In heathen places)
Ellen Herbert scanned the letter in her hand with incredulous delight. It would seem that her plan was working beautifully. Verity could not keep her appointment for tea on Saturday afternoon because she was studying Latin with Mr. Underwood.
“Francis, my dear, what do you think of this?” she asked as she handed the missive to him across the breakfast table and was surprised when he seemed to be quite unmoved by the contents, “Did I not tell you that Mr. Underwood and Verity are made for each other?”
Dr. Herbert tossed the piece of paper disdainfully into the centre of the table,
A Noble Pair of Brothers (The Underwood Mysteries Book 1) Page 17
