The Tomb of the Honey Bee: A Posie Parker Mystery (The Posie Parker Mystery Series Book 2)

by L. B. Hathaway

  The onward train journey to Stowe-on-the-Middle-Wold took forty-five minutes and Posie was pleased to find she had a whole first-class carriage to herself. It was very hot on the train and she rolled down a window and pulled down the canvas blind for some shade. She slung her leather overnight bag in the holder overhead, forced herself not to think about Len, and instead curled up cosily to read her magazine. And then, with a rush of pleasant surprise, she recognised the woman looking up at her from the front cover!

  Lady Violet was staring out, her sharply-cropped hair immaculately arranged and her lovely face primped and powdered almost out of all recognition. She looked very different to the au naturel vision of yesterday in the worn trouser suit.

  Turning in some excitement to read the article within, about ‘Lady Violet – the Thinking Woman’s Very Own Crumpet’, Posie was unsurprised to read about Violet’s family and her difficulties in life generally, but she was surprised to discover that not only did Lady Violet profess a love of baking almost unheard of in one of her class, but that she revealed herself to be a cool and level-headed businesswoman in the making: declaring a desire to open a chain of tea-shops in London to rival the success of the famous Lyons Corner Houses. Lady Violet also spoke at length about her plans for her very own cookbook to be published just before Christmas.

  Mildly shocking pictures of Lady Violet posing in the kitchen at Boynton Hall followed, as did her recipe for her apparently famous Oxfordshire honey cake. The recipe was beautifully illustrated and sounded so tempting that Posie found she was almost drooling.

  Unsurprisingly, the limp lettuce and tomato salad sandwich which she had bought from the station shop at Oxford for her lunch seemed particularly unappetising in comparison, and tasted like sawdust in the mouth.

  ****

  Later, tearing along very fast in Lady Violet’s risky little two-seater, they negotiated wild country lanes and shady hedges at great speed, and Posie caught flashes of the scorched yellow country fields ripping past, rolling endlessly on under the ceaseless and surprising English heatwave.

  All of a sudden, around a bend and past huge iron gates, Posie caught her first glimpse of Boynton Hall at the end of a very long drive.

  She gaped. The house itself was breath-taking, a real country manor house made of glorious yellow Oxfordshire stone. Boynton Hall was English to the core. It was Tudor-built and turrety, with small mullioned leaded windows flashing in the sun like a thousand eyes. Pink roses scrambled up all over the front.

  As they drew up, the sun dappled the broad sweep of lawn running alongside the drive, and although the grass was badly in need of a manicure and the cedars of Lebanon and beeches which framed the house looked like they needed a good pruning, the overall effect was dream-like and romantic.

  ‘Here we are then,’ said Lady Violet, bringing the car to a sudden stop on the shingle outside the huge oak front door. A tall, sullen-looking young man in uniform was standing waiting on the broad stone steps, staring fixedly at Lady Violet. Posie disliked him on sight, and the unwelcoming brief look he threw at her. He took Posie’s overnight bag from the luggage rack at the back of the car without saying a word, disappearing into the house. Lady Violet tutted disapprovingly:

  ‘That was Codlington, the Valet. I told you about him yesterday, remember? Charming manner he has, doesn’t he? Jenks the Butler is very old, and is probably having a nap, so I’ll show you up to your room myself. I’m afraid you’ll find that Roderick is operating a skeleton staff here at Boynton to keep costs down, so at times it can feel rather unsatisfactory.’

  Lady Violet ripped off her leather driving helmet and goggles and leapt out over the driver’s door.

  ‘You can freshen up first, and then please do feel free to wander about the house and grounds as you wish. I’ve already told everyone you’re coming, so no-one will be surprised to see you. But you’ll find the house quiet; people tend to take to their rooms and sleep after lunch. You’ll meet everyone formally at afternoon tea. It will be served on the lawn behind the house at four o’clock.’

  Inside, the house was dark but refreshingly cool. Lady Violet took Posie up a twisting dark wooden staircase hung with coats of arms and tapestries, and then along a heavily carpeted landing on which intimidating portraits of long-dead Boynton-Dales looked down in a none-too-friendly fashion. Posie felt like she was being watched: she almost imagined their eyes swivelling and following her along the dim corridor, and she checked herself sharply. She normally had such a cool, clear head, and was never one for melodrama, but it seemed somehow that Boynton Hall was the sort of place to give one strange flights of fancy.

  Fortunately the guest room which she was ushered into was very pleasant and welcoming, full of light and with a small four-poster bed and a writing desk tucked into a corner. A large bow-window overlooked the enormous back gardens, with a charming view of the church beyond. Lady Violet turned to go.

  ‘If you need me for anything please do come and grab me. I’m down in the kitchen, trying out a recipe for my new cookbook. Baking in the kitchen keeps my mind from wandering, stops me thinking about Alaric. And thank you, thank you for coming here. I know you’ll be a great help.’

  Left alone, Posie changed out of her dusty black town clothes and replaced them with the only other outfit she had brought with her, a broad straw hat and a loose-fitting cream day dress cut in the new style. She splashed her face with the cold water she found in a patterned Delft china pitcher on the dresser and flicked her lips with the new bright-pink lipstick which she had bought as a holiday present to herself in the Army & Navy Stores a couple of weeks back; the name of the lipstick alone, ‘Coral Dream’, had been enough to convince her that this was the very thing for the Cap d’Antibes and for her big reunion with Len. Posie laughed now at her own foolishness and quickly grabbed her carpet bag, setting off for an exploration of Boynton Hall.

  Lady Violet had been right: it was deathly quiet in the house, and Posie supposed that the other residents were either sleeping off a heavy lunch, or were taking advantage of the wonderful weather and were all outside sunbathing or swimming. There was no sign of the aged Butler, or the skeleton staff, or even of Codlington, the surly Valet.

  But as Posie walked through the vast entrance hall she had again that strange feeling of being watched, regardless of the apparent slumbering emptiness around her. That tell-tale prickling feeling at her back which she knew of old made her swing around several times, but there was never anyone there.

  Feeling like a first-class fool for getting so easily spooked, Posie decided that the heat was affecting her judgement, and that she would leave the oppressive house behind her and make a start outside, in the grounds. She let herself out the way she had come in, through the ancient front door, and wandering around the side of the house, she found herself in the back gardens, as empty and full of heavy silence as the house.

  If anything, the aspect of the house and grounds from the back was even lovelier than from the front. At the bottom of the undulating formal lawns flashed a gleam of the wide river, famous for its trout fishing. On the far right was the village church and you could just make out the village on the horizon, as if it were a smudge in the hazy distance. On the left, wide rolling fields tumbled away as far as the eye could see. There was a surprisingly large quantity of land. Posie remembered that in some of these fields fairly close to the house Alaric had kept his beehives.

  She decided to start by exploring the nearby fields and she walked briskly away from the formal back gardens in that direction, through cedar-hedges and past a silent swimming pool and an empty tennis court. She came to a small stile and climbed over, finding herself in a large overgrown vegetable garden, now running wild, with rabbits hopping around the place. There was a tumbledown red brick wall surrounding the garden, featuring an archway through which she could just see a field of blackened, stubbly earth on the other side. Posie strode through the archway and found herself in an enormous, flat, fire-scorched field.
She supposed this was where Alaric had kept the majority of his bees, but there was absolutely no trace now of any hives. No sign of any life at all, in fact.

  The fire had burnt away everything in its violent wake, even the trees and hedges which had grown on the sides of the field were burnt and shrivelled to blackened husks. A nasty chemical smell seemed to seep up from the earth itself, tar-like and suffocating. In a horrible flashback, it reminded Posie of the devastated fields of the Great War; the fields of Passchendale and Ypres after the end of the bloody battles, when Posie and her colleagues in the ambulance brigade had had to take advantage of ten minutes of ceasefire here and there to run in with stretchers and pick up the dead and dying. She shivered at the memory of those horrors, despite the hot sun.

  Suddenly the vivid blue of the sky on the horizon was broken by the silhouette of a huge black hunting horse. A blur of scarlet from atop the horse made Posie wonder if this was someone who was taking part in a hunt. But surely it was too hot for such activities today. And was she imagining things, or was the rider staring at her, observing her with a great deal of interest?

  Posie squinted, trying to stare back. She shielded her eyes under her hat, but she couldn’t make out whether the horse was being ridden by a man or a woman. Then, as quickly as the horse and rider had appeared, they vanished over a ridge. Posie sighed and turned back, kicking the burnt clods of earth at her feet as she walked. There seemed little to gain from standing out here, frying in the sun, breathing in the fumes. It all seemed exactly as Lady Violet had described it – a horrible, sad, twisted mess of a place – the ruin of so much hard work and passion.

  Turning back towards the overgrown vegetable garden, she wandered through the long grass, making sure not to step on any of the broken glass which was lying around, the detritus of long-disused, smashed-up glasshouses from a bygone age; from before the Great War when the house had probably supported a full crew of gardeners to tend the vegetables and lawns, as well as a huge staff of household servants for its domestic affairs.

  Looking up, she suddenly saw a long, low, red-bricked, single-storey building ahead of her, half-hidden by the boughs of an ancient apple tree. At first she thought it was an old storage shed, perhaps for those long-gone ghostly gardeners, but closer inspection revealed that this small place was well-cared for. The windows were intact, the roof tiles were immaculate, the wooden window-frames and the front door were all painted neatly in a carefully applied duck-egg blue. Realisation dawned: this was the annexe which presumably Alaric lived in when he was here at Boynton Hall.

  Stepping ahead with a feeling of great excitement, Posie reached the front door. Here at last she felt she might find some evidence of the man himself. The door swung ajar on its hinges, as if beckoning her in. Posie knocked anyway, feeling slightly ridiculous, remembering Lady Violet’s words to ‘…feel free to wander about the house and grounds as you wish…’

  Posie stepped across the stone threshold of the annexe. Inside it was pleasantly cool, a welcome relief from the heat outside. The heavy linen curtains were drawn at the windows and Posie went over to them, opening them, allowing light to flood the small space. She gulped in surprise: the place was in total chaos. Papers, maps and expensive-looking books were tipped haphazardly all over the flagstone floor and strewn carelessly across the small pine trestle table which obviously served as a desk. At first sight it looked as if the room had been subjected to a burglary.

  Or perhaps Alaric Boynton-Dale was just very messy in his daily life? But somehow, Posie felt, that wasn’t very likely. Something was amiss here. She observed the space carefully, looking for clues as to its owner’s personality lurking beneath the disorder.

  The room, about the same size as her own bedsit in London, was obviously usually tended to by a scrupulous person who liked minimal fuss and detail. She noticed how across the longest wall of the annexe a series of six elaborately-carved African masks were placed with exactly the right amount of space between each to show them off to their best advantage. An ancient-looking map of the world hung neatly above a small clean sink in the corner and a gorgeously-coloured oriental rug had been hung with great care on the wall above a single bed.

  Padding over to the far corner, and feeling like a terrible sneak, Posie opened the single chest of drawers. Here, she found her suspicions were correct. Alaric was obviously a man who was near obsessional in ordering his own belongings. Linen drawer-boxes contained the carefully-folded clothes and possessions of a seasoned explorer: silk travelling scarves; travel-sized boxes of unopened Pears soap; a tiny travelling shaving kit and a new Swiss army knife. A canvas holdall was propped against the chest and revealed what looked like a tent inside, together with a travelling sleeping-bag, a small first-aid kit, a blanket and a flask for storing water in. There was also a stash of dry biscuits and even some Fry’s peppermint cream chocolate wrapped in silver foil.

  If Alaric had left the annexe of his own accord then he had left all of his usual travelling kit behind, which seemed a bit fishy. It was beginning to look horribly like Lady Violet’s suspicions might be well-founded: that Alaric had somehow been forced away, perhaps against his will.

  Bemused, Posie turned back to look at Alaric’s mess of a desk. She cleared the chair of its heap of paperwork and sat down. She flicked on the desk lamp and it illuminated a cork-board carefully pinned with Alaric’s bee-keeping information: a neat map of the surrounding fields and the exact location of the many beehives. The only personal touch was a photograph pinned at the very bottom of the cork-board. It showed two men standing together next to a bi-plane. Posie recognised at once the angular, familiar features of a laughing Alaric Boynton-Dale, his lanky form propped up companionably against a much bigger man. But just who exactly the second man was in the snapshot was unclear: his face had been carefully destroyed, burnt away with what looked like a cigarette. Posie took the photo from the board and stared at it.

  Lost in the world of the photo, Posie suddenly realised that all the light in the room had been obliterated in an instant. Turning, she saw a flash of a scarlet red jacket. A huge man was blocking the doorway, his face in total shadow. He was holding a liver-coloured pointer dog which was straining tightly on a lead. The dog had its sharp-looking teeth bared and was emitting a rather frightening growling sound. The whole attitude emanating from the doorway was one of total hostility.

  ‘Who the very devil are you?’ snarled an angry, aristocratic voice from the depths of the red jacket. ‘And what on earth are you doing in here, might I ask? This is private property. You’re trespassing.’

  Posie stood up as calmly as possible. She rummaged in her bag and found one of her business cards, and advanced with it outstretched on the palm of her hand, like a talisman. She avoided the dog carefully, pressing the card into the one free hand of the big man. She explained in as few words as possible what she was doing, who had invited her and why.

  She watched the man visibly deflate, and step inside the annexe.

  ‘Forgive me, my dear,’ he muttered politely.

  ‘I live across the meadows, and I thought I saw a stranger hanging around the place. Turns out it was you. I’ve made it my business to watch over this place these last few days, ever since Alaric disappeared. I dress up like I’m out with the hunt and then it makes it seem more believable somehow, that I’m roaming around these quarters with a real purpose. Strange things have been happening here. Well, you can see for yourself, can’t you? Alaric kept this place like a clean new pin. Now look what’s happened! Someone, or some people have been all over it, grubbing around looking for something in the paperwork. Goodness only knows what they thought they’d find!’

  The man sat down on the single bed, which wheezed uncomfortably beneath his weight. At ease, the pointer sat companionably at his feet, tongue drooling with thirst. The sunlight shone briefly on the man, illuminating him for the first time. He was around forty, a heavily built, slow-moving man with what must have once been a handsome, ch
erubic round face. But the skin across half of his face was now puckered and raw, burnt badly away, and he was wearing a black eye-patch where the fire in his aeroplane at the end of the war had seared away his eye. His breathing was shallow and asthmatic, the result of burnt, irreparably-damaged lungs. No question about it, despite the lack of introduction, this was undoubtedly Major Hugo Marchpane. The man who had been friends with Alaric Boynton-Dale and was now his bitter enemy.

  Posie crossed the room to the sink and fetched a bowl of water for the dog. She placed it gingerly at his feet, trying not to think about the huge teeth which had previously been on display. She filled two glasses of water for herself and Major Marchpane, and he drank thirstily. She settled herself down again at the desk chair in the ensuing silence. How best to approach this rather delicate situation? A man like Major Marchpane would probably appreciate directness.

  ‘So, Major Marchpane, I take it you have no idea where Alaric could be?’

  Major Marchpane shook his head, draining the last of his glass. He wiped his lips brusquely. ‘No. Wish I did though. It doesn’t feel right, any of this. Alaric wouldn’t just take off with no warning. Someone or something must have got at him.’