“No mister about him,” said Green. “Strapping great fellow, ten years younger than she, some sort of cousin of hers, and no better than she.”
“And they had children?”
“She had a couple more by him. Boy and girl.”
“Who is the woman who keeps the pigs at the Inn now?” said Major Vernon.
“Old Betty, you mean?”
“I think so,” said Major Vernon. “She told me she could not remember who kept The Blue Bell.”
“Ha!” said Green and slapped his thigh. “She’s as thick with them as any. She’s a Diggory too, old Mother Waites’ cousin, and she has the whole run of the house now, and makes a pretty penny letting out her rooms to all those sorry folk who come looking for work in the brickfields up the canal there. Now, here’s a thing, sir, I heard it the other day, that those brickfields belong to George Bickley, their eldest boy that was. He were a few years younger than me, and I were only a strip of a lad when his parents got wed.”
“And the younger boy,” Major Vernon said, “the lad she had by Waites; what was his name?”
Green began to laugh and said,
“Now that’s a rum thing you should ask that, sir. She had him christened Merriam, after the old Squire. She said it was because he was the babe’s grandfather. It were a good thing they were both dead, her old ma and the Squire, for they’d have both beaten her black and blue for such a slander. But she believed it, went to the grave believing it. Gave herself airs, and all the children too.” He shook his head, laughing still. Then he sobered and said, “But who owns the Manor now? Her daughter and the brickfields all round – her son.”
“What happened to the younger children?” Major Vernon said. “Merriam and the girl? Was she called Anne?”
“Aye, sir, she was. That I cannot tell you. They were sent off to school or to learn a trade or something. Haven’t seen either of them in many a year. Merriam probably came to a bad end. He was that sort. Always picking a quarrel or taking advantage. Like his mother.” He gave a groan. “And my Lady up at the Manor! Well, I shall not be forced out, no matter what slanders she pours in the ear of Mr Mortlake, for I have been verger here, nigh on fifty years, and my father and grandfather before me. I shall walk to Northminster and tell the new Bishop himself that, if needs be. I will not be put out, I tell you sir, I will not!”
After that, Felix felt it was a great mercy to find that Miss Bickley was not at home. However, Major Vernon was disappointed.
“An interview with her would have rounded the picture out nicely, don’t you think?” he said.
“From what you have said about Bickley’s operations,” said Felix, “indeed from what I have seen of them, I think we are best keeping our distance.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Lady Blanchfort was at home, but was not at all gracious in her welcome.
She at last came into the room where they had been made to wait for some minutes, holding a paper in her hand.
“I received this yesterday from Lord Rothborough,” she said addressing Felix and waving the paper under his nose. “And now you are here! Why, pray?”
It took him a moment to gather his words.
“May I present my colleague, Major Vernon, ma’am? It was he who rescued your daughter from her accident.” Major Vernon made his bow but she scarcely acknowledged it. “You will be pleased to hear she is in no danger now.”
“I think she is in every danger,” said Lady Blanchfort, “as long as you and Rothborough have her in your sights.”
“I wonder if Miss Blanchfort would not be glad to see you at Holbroke now,” Major Vernon said. “An incident like this may have made her see a little more clearly about things. An illness is often cause to remind us where our affections lie.”
“And who are you, sir, to presume that?” said Lady Blanchfort. “An associate of Lord Rothborough, I don’t doubt.”
“Don’t you wish to see her?” Major Vernon said.
“Naturally,” she said. “But I must sacrifice my maternal feelings. That is what I have been driven into by Rothborough’s manoeuvring – such a painful sacrifice! But I shall not be drawn into his plots. I have a message for you, gentlemen, which I trust you will accurately convey to Lord Rothborough: my daughter will be returned to me here. I shall not go and beg for what is mine by rights. I will see her here and on my terms. She will come back to her own house and her mother.”
“Then you are lucky that the accident was not a serious one,” Felix exclaimed, “if you are going to take such a ridiculous position, ma’am! What if I had come here to tell you she was at death’s door, what would you do then?”
“I should not take your word for it, sir,” she said.
“Then surely, ma’am,” Major Vernon said, “you do not trust it now, and ought to see for yourself that she is well.”
“I would send a physician of my choice to her. A reputable man I could trust. Not Rothborough’s bastard sawbones!” she added, with a fierce glance at Felix.
“I think your distress is getting the better of you ma’am,” said Major Vernon, placing a chair to allow her to sit. “You have set yourself up an impossible task. To resist seeing your only child when she is ill, on a point of principle? A brave stand, but in all honesty, ma’am, I beg you to reconsider.”
Felix, smarting from the blow of her words, could not help being impressed by Major Vernon’s gentle but firm tone.
“Won’t you sit down?” he went on, and to Felix’s astonishment she did. “I have no children,” Major Vernon went on, taking a chair and sitting down opposite her. Speaking quietly, he continued, “I can therefore only guess how hard this must be for you. And how hard it must be for your daughter to be without her mother at such a time. What we say and what we feel are often at odds. We wish to act according to reason but our hearts are sometimes crying to be heard.”
She sat there, apparently considering what he had said, folding and unfolding Lord Rothborough’s letter in her lap. She then turned and gave Felix a long appraising look, which made him feel most uncomfortable.
“Lord Rothborough has found a most eloquent advocate in you, Major Vernon,” she said turning back to the Major.
“That was not why we came, ma’am. We are not here to plead that cause. In fact I have come to interview some of your servants about Colonel Parham’s murder. I spoke because I saw you were in distress and I wished to help you. Please excuse any impertinence.”
“It is no impertinence,” she said after a long moment. “I am not used to kindness, that is all.” She stood up again. “My peculiar situation has made me –” She broke off, now looking at Felix again. There was something about her regard that made him straighten a little. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-five,” said Felix, somewhat astonished by the question.
“And you were brought up in Scotland by a clergyman and his wife?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He is a minister of the Scottish Kirk?”
“No, my father is an Episcopalian.”
She nodded and walked away down the room.
“And you wish to talk to my servants, Major Vernon?” she said.
“Only those that were working at Ardenthwaite,” said Major Vernon. “I understand that some of the women came here after Mrs Parham left the Colonel.”
“What a nest of scandal this neighbourhood is,” she said. “I had thought it would be a quiet country place!”
“We will not keep them from their work for long,” said Major Vernon.
“You must do what you need to do, I suppose,” she said, ringing the bell. “I shall have the housekeeper find them for you. But tell me, does it not trouble you to find yourself in such a disagreeable line of work?” She glanced again at Felix. “For a man of good family, as I am sure you are, Major Vernon, do you not feel any loss of caste? Forgive my frankness.”
“It is certainly not to everyone’s taste,” said Major Vernon. “But it needs to be don
e and done well. And I think, as with medicine, the quality of a profession is improved by the quality of men who take it up. Yes, Mr Carswell?”
Felix nodded.
“How things do change,” she said.
“If you ask me,” Felix said, “that will be one of the achievements of our era – skill and talent will come to define a man’s worth, not the circumstances of his birth. Any man may become Prime Minister, if he is good enough, or any woman, for that matter.”
“Now you are spinning fairy tales,” said Lady Blanchfort. “If a woman were to become Prime Minster, an idea which I find abhorrent, I must say, one may be certain that she would be very well connected, and that her husband would be a wealthy man. But really, what an extraordinary notion! You are as fanciful as my daughter, Mr Carswell.”
-o-
“And will she stir herself to go to Holbroke, I wonder?” Carswell said, as they waited in the estate office to speak to the servants. “Though I don’t suppose Miss Blanchfort will be very pleased to see her, whatever you might say about it. She is – they both are – well, what do you think?”
“I don’t know. Neither are in the common run of women, certainly.” Giles gazed about him at the neatly fitted-out office, with its many shelves and cupboards, many of them labelled with the names of the properties they represented. “The extent of this property must be considerable. She might use her intelligence by taking all this in hand, and then teaching her daughter to manage her own property. I wonder what went amiss.”
“My Lord made dark allusions,” said Carswell, “to some wrongdoing on her part. He would not tell me what, but it must be –” He sighed. “But why on earth did she start interrogating me?”
“She was sizing you up,” said Giles.
Carswell gave an exaggerated shudder.
“That’s what I thought, though it’s an odd way to go on after insulting me! I’m quite surprised she didn’t ask me if I subscribed to all the Thirty-nine Articles,” he said. “Oh Lord! Especially after what Miss Blanchfort said to me this morning –”
He broke off as the door opened and the housekeeper came in with the first of the servant girls.
“This is Grace Ellis,” the housekeeper said. “She works in the laundry here for us.”
“Sit down, won’t you, Grace?” said Giles.
Grace Ellis was a tall, well-formed young woman of about nineteen, with a clear complexion and handsome features. As she sat down, she struck Giles as being in command of herself. She looked at him levelly, with no hint of deference.
“Mr Mostyn?” she said, in answer to his enquiry. “I didn’t have much to do with him. And I’m not silly that way, not like some of them others.”
“Silly?” Giles said. “By which you mean they were involved with him in some way?”
“You’d have to ask them about it. I’m just saying he didn’t impress me.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“What was it about him that didn’t impress you?”
“Too full of himself,” she said. “Thinking he was better than he was. Giving out orders like he was the Colonel himself. I don’t care for that.”
“Was there a particular occasion when he treated you like this?” Giles said. “That made you angry?”
She shrugged.
“Not in particular. Just his way. I didn’t like it. That’s all. Can I go, sir? I don’t want to get behind.”
He let her go, a little reluctantly. He felt she might be concealing something else behind her firmly stated dislike.
The next girl was Agnes Taylor.
“Mrs Webb mentioned you to us, Agnes,” he said. “She told us that you had been unhappy at Ardenthwaite because of Mr Mostyn.”
“Aye, sir, that’s right.”
“What was your job at Ardenthwaite?”
“Chambermaid, sir. That was the trouble, sir, I couldn’t get away from him. He was one of those men, well, sir, I don’t like to say it, but you know –”
“Mrs Webb said he was a pest.”
Agnes closed her eyes and gave a sigh.
“Oh yes, sir, that’s it. Had to keep my wits about me. Lizzy too – that’s the other chambermaid. He was always at you – any excuse to be touching and kissing – and more – though I didn’t let it come to that, of course I didn’t – but then he’d act all offended and get you into trouble some other way.” She gave a slight shudder. “I’m glad to be away from that, I can tell you.”
“And you did not tell Mrs Parham about this?”
“She wasn’t that kind of mistress. Then she left and we were all turned out, which was a good thing after all, for we got our chance here, and this is a good place.”
“Did he bother Grace Ellis in the same way, out in the laundry?”
Agnes glanced at the door and leant forward.
“I saw you were speaking to her, sir,” she said, in a quieter voice than before. “She is sweet on him, that’s what we reckon, Lizzy and I. There was something going on between them, for certain, and I think she sees him still. She won’t ever hear a word said against him, and only the other night I saw her slipping out when she oughtn’t. She’s a fool to do it because this is a place worth keeping, and if she loses it, well – that’s her business, I suppose.”
“Why do you think she was going to see Mr Mostyn?”
“She had tricked herself out – and she has some fancy things – fancier than most of us can stretch to – and where would she get the money for that except from him? Because he was as flash as you like, sir, probably stealing from his master as well.”
She leant back now, as if exhausted by this burst of confidences. She then leant back in, resuming, in an even quieter tone: “You talk to Lizzy, sir. She saw them together, saw them at it.” The last two words she did not speak at all, but only mouthed.
“We certainly shall, Agnes,” said Giles and let her go.
“She could be going to see anyone,” Carswell pointed out, when they were alone again.
“Yes,” said Giles. “But there was something about her disdain that seemed very studied, don’t you think? Let us see what Lizzy has to say.”
“Yes, sir,” said Lizzy, who was entirely unable to look Giles in the face. “I did see them together. In the linen cupboard. I only went up there to get some towels, and –”
“Yes?”
“I shouldn’t have said so much,” she said. “I shouldn’t have told Aggie and she shouldn’t have told you. She’ll kill me if she finds out that –”
“Grace?”
“She’s a hard one,” she said. “And he said –” She broke off again, and then at last looked up at Giles. “They say you think he murdered the Colonel.”
“That is just gossip at present,” said Giles.
“I think he did,” she said. “He could kill a man. He were that angry wi’ me. I wish I’d never gone in there, and I wish I’d never seen them.” She screwed up her face.
“Agnes seemed to think that Grace is still seeing him.”
“She’s right. He’s hereabouts, I’m certain of it. When we were coming back from evening service last Sunday, I swear I saw him. There’s a lane going down – I don’t know where it goes, but we walk past the end of it and I swear I saw him standing there as if he were watching us. He was leaning on a wall, smoking and staring. I swear it was him, and then Grace goes off in her velvet bonnet, and Agnes and I wondered if – is this what you want, sir?”
“I want the truth, as well as you can remember it.”
“I’m sure it was him. I was thinking it was me just being afraid of him and then seeing someone and thinking it was him, but it was him, I swear it.”
-o-
“It’s impossible to say how much of this is truth and how much speculation,” said Major Vernon as they rode away from the house.
“Should you not talk to Grace Ellis again?” asked Felix.
“I don’t want to alarm her unduly,” said Major Vernon.
“If she was lying and she is Mostyn’s lover, then I want her to think she has got away with her lie. She will want to warn him of our interest, though, and that will be our opportunity. If he is still here, that is.”
They were proceeding down the neat main street of the village.
“That might be too much to hope for,” said Felix.
“Grace is a beautiful young woman. That can make the most calculating man behave irrationally.”
“Yes,” said Felix, thinking of Eleanor. “That tendency is a dangerous flaw in our design.”
“And he has his stash to retrieve from the forest,” Major Vernon said. “It will not do any harm to ask about the village if a man meeting his description has been seen. After an early dinner, yes?”
“Excellent. I am faint with hunger.”
The principal inn of the village was called The Blanchfort Arms. The landlord at once recognised Felix from Sir Richard’s funeral.
“Standing by his Lordship, you were, sir. And someone did say to me you were with Sir Richard at the last.”
“I was.”
“A shame he never got back here in time. He grew up in this village and when my Lady and Miss Blanchfort came back, we had hopes that he would too – but God’s will is God’s will. What can I get you for dinner, sir? Roast lamb? A sweeter bit of meat you won’t find anywhere in the county.”
The lamb was as delicious as promised, and they ate sitting by the window of a private parlour which overlooked the village street, and then beyond to the long, tree-lined forecourt of Hawksby Hall. In the warm spring sunshine, after a glass or two of claret, while Major Vernon made his notes, Felix fell into idle musing on the nature of desire, and what the consequences of his most recent bout of that affliction might mean.
Major Vernon startled him slightly by pushing his open notebook across the table and saying, “A family tree. Stepbrothers.”
Felix glanced down and the names and connections Major Vernon had sketched out.
“Stepbrothers?”
“Merriam Hickman Waites and George Bickley.”
“I see.”
“Is that the cause of it? The quarrel? Does it reach this far back? An ancient rivalry? Both in the same business. Now both in the same town. Bickley has his gin palaces and other enterprises. Waites alias Hickman opens his. Who knows what other turf he may be encroaching upon. He has certainly done well for himself in Swalecliffe. Perhaps he intends to do the same in Northminster.”
The Ghosts of Ardenthwaite (The Northminster Mysteries Book 5) Page 25
