by Issy Brooke
Chapter Six
Cordelia’s upper body strength had not diminished since the active days of her girlhood. She had retained a keen interest in tending to her gardens, and enjoyed outdoor pursuits such as riding and carriage-driving. She did not tend towards the growing new fashion to lace one’s corset tighter and tighter; all the best doctors were warning against the practise, and she was inclined to agree. So she retained a degree of movement that meant she could continue being scandalously mobile.
After her marriage, she had plunged into an active role in managing the gardens and estates around her new home. To the constant consternation of her cook, Mrs Unsworth, she also gravitated to the kitchens where, against all convention, she would embark on unbecoming physical tasks such as kneading great loaves of bread or stripping down carcasses for the lard that nestled in white layers below the skin of animals. There was some strange release to be found in the activity of the body, Cordelia found. After the – unfortunate – death of her husband, when the world seemed to crowd in around her and press down upon her throat and mouth in layers of suffocating black crape, she had rebelled and sought solace in the pure act of simply moving. It reminded her that she was alive.
More alive than before.
She pushed the maudlin thoughts aside and concentrated on her task.
And the muscles gained through such misadventures served her well now. She hauled hard with her arms, ignoring the tearing of her bodice stitching, and swung her legs up to one side, caring not that her petticoats were now displayed. She had taken to wearing the new bloomers, for warmth, and it had become a habit even in summer. Now she was glad of it. With an effort, and an indelicate grunt, she hooked her right ankle on the top of the wall. Her left foot found purchase in a deep crevasse and she was able, then, to lever herself up. She had no time to gather her thoughts; with a cry she could not suppress, she found herself on a trajectory that sent her over the wall and tumbling down the other side, to land in a spiky mess of dry weeds, wilting grass and a few unwelcome nettles.
“Mistress! My lady! Lady Cornbrook!” Ruby screamed in panic.
Cordelia sat up and was, for once, grateful for the layers of clothing that was a woman’s lot in life to haul around. They had protected her from the worst ravages of the stone wall and the scrub in which she now sat. “Ruby, I am unharmed,” she called. She got to her feet and saw Ruby’s bonnet poking above the wall, her white-gloved hands scrabbling along the top edge.
To Cordelia’s delight and surprise, Ruby managed to scale the wall, her once-pale face now red and blotchy with effort. She got herself atop it, and sat, looking down. “Oh. Now I am stuck.”
“Jump,” Cordelia said, extending her hands.
Ruby closed her eyes and let herself fall forwards, landing in the flattened patch of nettles that Cordelia had just vacated. She shrieked and looked up. “I thought you were to catch me!”
“I did not say so, girl,” Cordelia replied with a shrug. “One ought not make assumptions. A lesson learned. Are you hurt?”
“No, my lady.”
“Good. Well, then. On your feet, girl.”
Ruby snatched up her bonnet and scowled crossly, another note to be added to Cordelia’s mental list of the maid’s less desirable qualities, diverting though they sometimes were. Cordelia studied the place they now found themselves in. Due to the slope of the land, it would be almost impossible to return to the yard the way they had come; they were lower this side than the level of the yard on the other side of the wall. They were on the bank of the river, a grassy patch about eight feet wide that faded from earth to reeds and then to water by unremarkable degrees.
She looked up and down but there was trampled vegetation in both directions; no doubt it was a cut-through from place to place that avoided the turnpikes, or perhaps fishermen came this way. At any rate, she could not tell which way the murderer might have escaped. Left and right looked the same. She had hoped clues would leap out at her. Nothing did.
“Come, Ruby, let us find our way back to the cottage.”
“Are we not going back to the manor? Breakfast, my lady…”
Well, at least the girl’s hangover had cleared. “In good time.”
* * *
They tramped through the grass and weeds, Cordelia occasionally stopping to point out a particularly interesting plant or flower to Ruby, who muttered under her breath and was no longer even pretending to be polite. In light of the unusual circumstances, Cordelia decided not to reprimand the girl. Ruby was a town-dweller, Cordelia understood, and from her stream of half-heard invectives, not used to the countryside and its smells, creatures, crawling things and stinging plants.
They came at last to a gap in the wall and followed the narrow passageway to a back street of the town. From there they could hear the sounds of carts and business, and soon they were on the same road by which they had approached earlier. Cordelia led the way, retracing her steps to the row of cottages. The crowd outside had diminished now, with most decent people having jobs to attend to. There were a handful of boys, daring one another to peep in through the window or open the door, but periodically the constable would poke his head out and roar at them to be gone.
When he saw Cordelia and Ruby approaching once more, his face fell and his tone quietened. He came out of the house fully, and pulled the door closed behind him. “Madam,” he said stiffly. “We await the coroner, as you yourself directed, and no one is to disturb the scene.”
“I left something within,” Cordelia lied quickly, smiling sweetly.
“Tell me what it is, and I shall fetch it for you. We hold the suspected murderer here, you see, and cannot be...”
“I think you do not,” Cordelia said. “If you mean Mrs Hurrell, I suggest that you are mistaken.”
There were the sounds of altercation from inside the cottage. Cordelia could hear Mrs Hurrell begin to shout, “Is that the authorities? Tell them I am innocent and I am being held against my will! Mrs Kale, I shall–”
Then there was the sound of Mrs Kale, gruffly answering with a foul word and an instruction to sit down. The constable spun around and opened the door, shouting for them both to return to their places. Cordelia took her chance and pushed in alongside the constable, who was so afraid of being seen to harm a woman of some status that he shrank away from her rather than push her back into the street.
“It is not the authorities, not I,” Cordelia said. “But I do believe that the murderer escaped out of the back of the cottage.”
“I have looked,” the constable said, his body deferent but his voice betraying his annoyance. “There is nothing but a yard out there, and no means of exit.”
“But as you can see,” Cordelia said, “both my maid and I did escape that way, and so did the murderer. If we can do it, so might anyone. There is a wooden box which has been dragged from its usual position, and used as a step to facilitate his flight over the wall. He had fled by the banks of the river. Have you more men at your disposal? I would suggest a search in both directions.”
“I have no men,” the constable said, “and no authority to call any, myself. And it is likely that any search would be too late now. In any case, we have the perpetrator here before us. It is as plain as day. Her reactions switch from hysteria to panic to a strange calm from moment to moment. And then she calls up dire threats of violence such as a woman ought not to utter. She is not of a sound mind.”
“Good heavens, man. Upon discovering the body of your dead lodger, do you not think your own reactions would be deranged? In my experience–” She stopped herself abruptly. This was not the time to talk of her own experiences. They were not pleasant.
The constable paid no heed, though she knew Ruby would have filed the slip of phrase away.
In the short silence that followed, Mrs Hurrell said loudly, “All murderers must have a motive, do they not? So, then, why would I kill him? What would be my motive? My own lodger, who paid me rent? I would not kill him. He is of far more us
e to me alive than dead.”
Mrs Kale was still standing by, looking like a person employed to keep the peace at a public rally. She put her hands on her hips and tutted. “Oh, do not seek to pull the wool over the eyes of these good people, you old trout,” she said, with venom. “These walls are not so thick as you might suppose. I know that he did not pay you as much rent as you thought you could obtain by letting the room out to others. You wanted rid of him, so that you could have three or four railwaymen sleeping there, and charge each one what you got from Thomas alone.”
“That is a lie,” Mrs Hurrell said, and Cordelia saw a flash of anger in her red-rimmed eyes. Yes, the woman had a strength in her, though from what past Cordelia could not guess.
“There is much about you that is not the truth,” Mrs Kale hissed.
Mrs Hurrell opened and closed her mouth, stared around the room in a sudden frenzy, and then burst into a fresh fit of angry tears. Mrs Kale made no move to comfort her. Cordelia wanted to go to her, lay a hand on her shoulder, and assure her that everything would work out and justice would inevitably prevail.
Then Mrs Hurrell plunged a hand into the folded, greasy depths of her gown, and withdrew a yellowed handkerchief. She blew her nose, noisily, and with a start Cordelia realised that she was using her left hand this time, not the right hand that she had drunk her tea with.
Was she truly the innocent party, and sunken deep in distraught shock, or was she indeed a clever woman simply playing a part, and – in fact – the cause of all the current dismay?
Chapter Seven
Ewatt Carter-Hall was a loud, middle-aged man of means, with a laugh so rich that it couldn’t help but force a smile onto the face of anyone who heard it. He called at Wallerton Manor around mid-afternoon, and discovered Cordelia sitting quietly under a parasol on a terrace overlooking the lawns. He was pursued by an aging butler who had three brown teeth in his unsmiling head. The skeletal butler was protesting with restrained outrage that the master of the house, Hugo Hawke, was called away on business for a few hours. He was not at home.
“Why would I want to come and see that old dog anyway?” Ewatt boomed, clapping the butler on the shoulder so hard that the bony man’s knees dipped and quivered, and he nearly fell. “I spy a far more enticing prospect. There you are! My good Lady Cornbrook! And what a vision you are. I fear I should not have partaken of dessert earlier for now I am quite overwhelmed with the sensation of sweetness.”
“Mr Carter-Hall.” She waved a gloved hand at him merrily. They had previously been introduced at the dinner Hugo had held for her arrival, and she knew him to be the local banker and all-round successful businessman. He had chattered to her most amiably that night.
“Call me Ewatt,” he said, taking two strides across the terrace towards her.
“How frightfully modern, and I shall do no such thing,” she said.
“But then I cannot call you Cordelia,” he protested. He planted himself opposite to her, and bowed low.
“No, you may not. But do sit.” She nodded at the spare ironwork chair. “I can ring for tea.”
“You can ask for wine,” he said. “I know Hugo has an immense cellar and this is my chance to sample some of the stuff he so jealously guards.”
“I can hardly offer my host’s goods to all and sundry. He will be annoyed with me.”
“I am not all and sundry. And anyway, I shall defend you with my life,” Carter-Hall promised, sweeping his coat-tails up as he took a seat, his pudgy legs splayed apart and his eyes twinkling.
“I need no defending,” she countered.
“Ah, and now who is being frightfully modern? Tell me, Lady Cornbrook, do you ride?”
“I do.” She looked at his stocky frame with some doubt. “But do you?”
He roared with laughter at her open insinuation, and leaped suddenly to his feet. “Let us go!”
“You have barely sat down.”
“I am a man of action,” he declared, “though I see from your face that you are sceptical and need proof. Let not my rotundity deceive you. It is merely the unfortunate cut of my jacket, I promise. Come! My horse has just been taken around to the stables; and I am sure that Hugo will allow you the pick of his.”
“There is a mare that he has apportioned for my use while I stay,” she said. The banker’s energy was infectious, and she stood up with a sense of excitement in her belly. “But you must excuse me while I change. You may as well be seated again, for this is not a swift process.”
“Wine, then! And I shall see you in the stables anon.” He grinned, his bristling moustache spreading wide over his face. She read all manner of intentions in his joviality, and knew that not all of them were decent.
She remembered the elegant, giggling wife that he had also brought to the dinner, but pushed the memory aside. She was only going for a ride, and what harm could a well-bred widow and a respectably married man really get up to?
* * *
Within an hour, they were trotting briskly down a track that ran in a straight, flat line between fields of ripening crops. The harvest was being gathered in, and the farmland was a patchwork of activity. They would pass one field where every member of the farmer’s family was engaged there in tasks from reaping to gleaning, and the next field would be bare, and the next one again full of golden corn or wheat awaiting attention.
At first they spoke of local matters; how every inch of Britain was coming under the creeping thrall of the railways, as the tracks spread like tendrils into town and country. Carter-Hall told her of a suspension bridge, not too distant at Great Yarmouth on the coast, which had collapsed but three months past.
“Seventy-nine souls were lost,” he said. “And a deal of money more, too.”
“How awful. Are you a railway investor, sir?” she asked. She had taken shares in a number of companies, and was pleased with the results. She pulled the chestnut mare to a more sedate walk, and let her cool down. Carter-Hall rode his dark horse in an enthusiastic circle around them, twice, before matching her pace and coming alongside her.
“No, such mania is not for me,” he said. “I will confess I was tempted but on both a personal and a professional level, I considered it initially a risk and then … oh, well, my business has been leading in other directions. Ah! It is a dull thing, being in banking, and if I were to tell you more, you’d fall from your horse in a catatonic state. This is why I ride, Lady Cornbrook, for if I did not, I should one day be discovered at my desk quite melted away, nothing remaining of me but an insensible blob of jelly, dissolved into inert matter by the sheer tedium of working with numbers.”
She laughed. “You are remarkably good with words for someone whose vocation is numerical,” she said. “Are you following the right profession?”
“The tasks may be tedious but the rewards are potentially great,” he said, and kicked at his mount’s flanks. “Enough dull talk. Let us canter. Follow me!”
He led her off the track onto a broad green meadow and she fell easily into her mare’s rocking rhythm, the broad side saddle comfortable. Cantering was certainly a more pleasurable experience than the harsh thump-thump of trotting, and she was grinning as they pulled up at the far side of the meadow. Carter-Hall dismounted. He was not as athletic as he would lead her to believe, she thought as he landed with a heavy thump, stifling a groan as his knees clicked audibly. She had leaped down with rather more grace before he was able to offer to assist her. Seeing her independence, he simply smiled and winked cheekily.
“Very good, my lady,” he intoned like a spurned butler.
She allowed him to tend to the horses. She took a few steps back, retreating to the shade of a tree while he loosened their girths and led them to a trough in the corner of the field. It was only a quarter full, but it would not have been good for the hot animals to have drunk their fill too quickly. He seemed an expert horseman –if no gymnast – and was well used to knowing his beast’s needs.
“And now for our refreshment,” he sa
id, pulling out a flattened flask from within his coat as he approached her. He held it out and she gratefully accepted. A nip of brandy was hardly thirst-quenching nor appropriate for mid-summer, but she didn’t think he would be carrying a barrel of cider around with him.
It was fiery but energy-giving. She passed it back with a nod. “Thank you. Now, have you heard the biggest news of the day?”
His face became serious, the corners of his moustache drooping. “I believe you mean the murder of young Bains?”
“I do indeed.”
“A sorry tale. And I heard that you were part of it,” he said, tipping his head at an angle as he regarded her along his nose. His eyes had narrowed and she could not see much humour there. “It was a strange place for a woman such as yourself to be. People have been talking.”
“Such as myself,” she repeated. “Ah, as a widow I ought to be at home, closeted and praying? I did that for a number of years after the death of my husband. It has grown … trying. Now, things must change.”
