Murder at Morrington Hall

by Clara McKenna

  “I don’t relish speaking thus about the dead,” Papa said after dabbing his lips with his napkin, “but you are correct, Lord Hugh. If the situation were reversed, I suspect Reverend Bullmore would attend Derby Day.”

  Was there a more nefarious side to this man of the cloth? Until this moment, Lyndy had assumed the vicar had been killed for his money. How would his father know about any of it?

  Mr. Kendrick chuckled. The man was obscene.

  “William, you are not suggesting . . . ?” Mother said, despite her own rules about what was and was not appropriate to discuss at the table. “It would be unseemly.”

  “If our guests wish to attend the races, Frances, I don’t see why the death of our vicar should prevent them.”

  If Lyndy didn’t know better, his mother’s nostrils flared like a horse’s. She raised her chin and looked across the table at Papa through narrowed eyes.

  “If our guests wish to attend, I shall see to the arrangements.” Mother lifted her wineglass to her lips and took a deliberately slow sip. She wasn’t happy, and she wasn’t going to speak on the subject again.

  Another pall of silence hung over the gathering. The quiet clinking of silverware on china plates accompanied the rustling of fabric as one and then another shifted in their seats. Only Westwoode grinned as he nudged a bite of his mutton cutlet onto his fork with his knife.

  “Well, if you insist on going, Mr. Westwoode,” his wife said, “I must too. Forgive me, Lady Atherly, but someone has to keep an eye on him.” Hugh laughed, but Mrs. Westwoode’s half smile told the truth. She hadn’t been joking.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him for you, Mrs. Westwoode,” Lyndy said.

  Westwoode chuckled; his wife did not.

  “No, Lyndy,” Mother said. “I cannot allow you to go.”

  Lyndy balked at his mother’s declaration. “I’m going,” Lyndy said, raising his wineglass without taking his eyes from his mother’s.

  “I promised the girl she could go,” Mr. Kendrick said, cutting into his mutton cutlet with his fork in one hand and then laying down his knife and switching his fork to the other hand. “She’s been looking forward to it for some time. So, I say,

  ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.’”

  Mother’s lip curled. Was she incensed by the inelegant American custom of switching silverware from hand to hand or by Mr. Kendrick’s contradicting argument? Knowing Mother, both.

  “Then it’s settled,” Papa said before Mother could object again. “Lyndy will accompany all our guests who wish to attend, and will represent us in the box.”

  CHAPTER 10

  With the balconies of the towering multitiered white grandstand behind her and the bright green mile-and-a-half turf racetrack before her, Stella gazed out across the white rails on a sea of tents, their white roofs flapping in the gentle breeze; a scattering of painted covered refreshment wagons, their windows propped open to showcase their food and drink; and thousands of people dressed in their finest top hats and feathery, wide-brimmed creations as far as she could see. Stella had never seen so many people. Ever.

  Stella had heard about the Derby all her life. It was the most prestigious horse race in the world. She’d visited Churchill Downs in Louisville twice, when Daddy had a horse in the Kentucky Derby, but that hadn’t prepared her for the crowds, the noise, the excitement of Epsom. It was as if the entire nation had descended on Epsom Downs to take part in the festivities. She said as much.

  “Yes, quite the challenge, these crowds,” Mr. Westwoode said, sitting next to her, biting his upper lip. His top hat tipped precariously as he studied his racing form. His casual attitude belied his words; he was oblivious to the mass of people everywhere. The crush wasn’t as pronounced here in the “members’ enclosure,” as Lord Lyndhurst had called it, a protected space reserved for members of the Jockey Club, the governing body of British horse racing. Lord Atherly, as well as Lord Hugh’s father, the Duke of Tonnbridge, were members.

  “Thank goodness we don’t have to subject ourselves to the ruffians and pickpockets among them,” Mrs. Westwoode said, sitting across the table from Stella. “If they charged an entrance fee, one wouldn’t have every shopkeeper and his son to deal with.”

  Lady Atherly had arranged a lavish picnic for them. Enormous hampers filled with cold veal and ham pie, a joint of cold boiled beef, a variety of sandwiches, cucumbers, stewed fruit, fresh fruit, biscuits, strawberry tartlets, sponge cake, petit fours, champagne, silver, china, linens, and glasses had been loaded up and, along with the servants necessary to serve the picnic, transported with them from Morrington Hall and reassembled under the open sky.

  Stella dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin. If only they could have every meal outside.

  “My father’s box is over there, near the Royal Box,” Lord Hugh said, waving in a vague direction to the right. “His might be farther from the shopkeepers, but I much prefer the company in this one.” He lifted his champagne glass, as if in a toast.

  “Hear, hear,” Lord Lyndhurst and Mr. Westwoode said, raising their glasses in response.

  Bubbles tickled Stella’s nose as she took a sip of champagne. Stella had never seen the viscount in a jovial mood. He’d ridden beside her on the train. With the tension of the night before forgotten, he’d eagerly questioned Daddy about American horse races—the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, the Belmont Stakes, the Preakness Stakes, the Travers Stakes. He’d suggested Stella describe Kentucky and their farm. He’d listened attentively as she described the endless rolling hills of bluegrass, the stone fences she and Tully liked to jump, the mighty rivers, like the Ohio and the Mississippi, and the warm, humid days, which she missed most on this pleasant but cool last day of May. When he’d asked whether every man in Kentucky carried a holstered revolver out on “the range,” Aunt Rachel and Daddy had laughed at him. He’d joined in. His cheerfulness was unflappable.

  “We adore your company, as well, Lord Hugh, dear. Such a shame Elizabeth decided to stay behind and keep Lady Alice company.” Mrs. Westwoode took a dainty bite of her petit four. “Finished already, Miss Kendrick?”

  The tips of Stella’s ears burned. Why must the matron always comment on what was or wasn’t on Stella’s plate? What was so remarkable about a woman who enjoyed her meal? Other women picked at their food, taking a minuscule bite or two before their plate was whisked away. Stella wasn’t like that. She never overate, like Daddy was inclined to do, but if she liked a dish, she relished every bite. Was that so bad? Stella smoothed her dress’s buttery-yellow linen and Battenberg lace across her lap. A dressmaker had once advised her never to wear yellow; Stella’s complexion was too pale. She hadn’t listened to the dressmaker, and she wasn’t going to listen to Mrs. Westwoode either.

  “The tartlets were delicious, weren’t they?” Lord Hugh said. “Would anyone care for another?”

  “I think I might,” the viscount said, winking at Stella before popping an entire tartlet into his mouth.

  Lord Hugh laughed. Stella did too.

  Lord Lyndhurst smiled at her as he motioned for the footman to pour more champagne. In three days, she had been betrayed by her father, had been thrown in with this strange family, and had stumbled upon a murder. All morning Stella had been overwhelmed with emotions: guilt, confusion, anticipation, excitement, resentment, curiosity, consternation, hopefulness. A man was dead, and her life was in limbo. How could she be enjoying herself?

  But she was. She loved the boisterous crowds, the smell of the turf mingling with the scent of champagne, the glaring sun in a sky unblemished by a single cloud, the gleam in the viscount’s eye. And the race hadn’t started yet.

  “Where are you, O eminent one?” Daddy said, holding a spyglass to his eyes with one hand and raising the last slice of sponge cake to his mouth with the other. He had his eyes pinned on the paddock area.

  “He, Mr. Kendrick,” Lord Lyndhurst said, “is referred to as His Royal Majesty King Edward, and you won’t fin
d His Royal Majesty out there.”

  Daddy lowered the spyglass. “The King? I meant Cicero, the stallion. But for God’s sake, point the King out to me, will you?”

  “His Majesty’s up there, Mr. Kendrick,” Lord Hugh said, pointing and laughing. “If you see him, save me the trouble and wave to my father for me, will you? The Duke is never far from His Majesty’s side when a wager is involved.”

  Daddy focused his gaze in the direction Lord Hugh pointed, at a private balcony above and behind them. Stella, as intrigued by the famous royal as Daddy was, knew better than to ask to borrow his spyglass.

  “The horses are out in front, Mr. Kendrick,” Mrs. Westwoode sneered, even as she stole a glance back toward the Royal Box.

  “Already?” Daddy swiveled his spyglass toward the racetrack, then searched for the thoroughbreds. “They aren’t in the paddock yet.” He turned back around and continued spying on the King.

  A parade of people, as interesting as any king, passed by as the servants cleared away the picnic things. They were all shapes and sizes: tall men in top hats; buxom ladies in summery white cotton dresses, carrying parasols; gaunt farmers in their best suits; a wizened old fortune-teller in flowing black lace, bent over the palm of a pudgy gentleman with a pair of spectacles perched halfway down his nose. Stella looked down at her hand, the etched lines of her palm hidden beneath her glove.

  What would the fortune-teller see in my palm?

  As the footmen folded up the table, a man with a jet-black mustache and a swagger approached the group. Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Hugh stood, then greeted the newcomer with handshakes. Mr. Westwoode frowned and reluctantly addressed him with a nod.

  “Harris,” he said, distaste evident in his tone.

  Mrs. Westwoode carefully kept her gaze elsewhere, as if her not seeing the newcomer would make him disappear. Mr. Westwoode returned his attention to his racing form.

  “Who is that?” Stella asked Mrs. Westwoode.

  Mrs. Westwoode waved her hand dismissively. “No one of any consequence,” she scoffed.

  The newcomer smiled and tipped his hat at them. Mrs. Westwoode rebuffed his attention, purposefully returning her attention to the track. Stella, uncertain how to react, smiled at the newcomer briefly before following Mrs. Westwoode’s gaze across the rails. The field was gathering for the first race of the day.

  “It’s starting!” Stella said, leaping up from her chair. She never tired of the thrill of anticipation when the starter shouted the preliminary warning. But all the men in their party, including Harris, the newcomer, had left their box. Stella scooted past Mrs. Westwoode and headed down the way the men had gone.

  “Miss Kendrick, you mustn’t go alone,” Mrs. Westwoode called.

  Aunt Rachel struggled to get past Mrs. Westwoode and then to navigate the crowd as she shuffled her way toward Stella. Why had Lady Atherly insisted the old lady join them? Wasn’t Mrs. Westwoode sufficient as a chaperone? The poor lady shouldn’t have to traipse around Epsom Downs. But her sympathy wasn’t enough to compel Stella to wait. She wanted to be next to the rails when the starting bell sounded.

  * * *

  “Brewster’s Lad, ten to one. Isoldash, thirty to one.”

  The rush and roar of a dozen horses’ feet pounding on the turf as they raced by Stella and across the finish line had barely faded when the hoarse cry of a bookmaker, already taking bets for the next race, lifted above the cheers and applause of the crowd.

  “Dutch Love, seven to one,” another shouted.

  The bookmakers, some perched on wooden stools, some standing next to tall poles with the next races’ odds tacked to them, all of them shouting, were clustered in the betting ring, a crowded area adjacent to the members’ enclosure. Gathered about a certain bookmaker, a man with a tan top hat, a thin blond mustache, and a large white carnation in the buttonhole of his tan jacket, were the men from Stella’s party. With Aunt Rachel finally at her side, Stella left the rails and headed toward them. Bits of conversation caught Stella’s attention as they made their way through the crowd.

  “If he starts fast and runs at a good clip . . .”

  “With last night’s rain, there’s bound to be cut in the ground.”

  “Pity their first-string has turned out to be a non-runner.”

  “Is that her?”

  Stella spied a woman, her pink parasol opened above her, whispering behind her hand. The woman’s companion, a stout matron with a flourish of tall gray feathers on her hat, nodded. The two women were staring straight at her. Caught gawking, the pair promptly focused their attention elsewhere.

  “What was that about?” Stella said.

  Aunt Rachel shrugged. “Who knows, girlie. Some people don’t have the sense God gave a bedbug.”

  Stella and her chaperone reached the bookmaker with the white carnation in time to see Lord Hugh hand the bookie three one-hundred-pound notes.

  “Not feeling lucky today, Lord Hugh?” Mr. Westwoode said, stepping up beside his future son-in-law.

  “I’m always feeling lucky, Mr. Westwoode,” Lord Hugh said, taking his ticket from the bookmaker’s clerk. “That was a bet to place on Commerce, the long shot. The horse is going at ninety-nine to one.”

  “Then five hundred on Commerce, each way,” Mr. Westwoode said, handing the bookmaker a white one thousand-pound note. The bookie’s clerk scribbled something down in his black book and tore off the ticket.

  Lord Hugh laughed. Lord Lyndhurst shook his head in bemusement. Daddy mumbled something about “good money after bad” as he walked past Stella and Aunt Rachel without a word of acknowledgment. Stella was stunned. She’d never seen such a cavalier attitude toward betting before. Daddy didn’t rise from his humble beginnings by taking foolish risks. He raised and sold racehorses; he seldom bet on one.

  “Bless your heart,” Aunt Rachel said. “You have no idea how betting works, do you, Mr. Westwoode?”

  “If Lord Hugh is feeling lucky,” Mr. Westwoode said in his defense, “then so am I.”

  The men placed their bets for the stakes race.

  Stella, wanting nothing to do with their recklessness, faced the crowd. So many people! Nearby a weathered man in a checkered waistcoat missing two buttons solemnly parted with half a crown, handing it to another bookmaker. A woman in a dark, tattered shawl, a decades-old straw hat, and stained gloves tucked a ticket into her boot. Several boys in suspenders and caps raced back and forth, imitating the last race. A white-haired gentleman in a gray frock coat and top hat, with a paunch bigger than Daddy’s, slapped another on the shoulder, laughing. A short, round-faced man wearing a straw boater with a wide brown ribbon nodded appreciatively at his companion’s remark. His companion had a jet-black mustache. It was Mr. Harris.

  Stella spotted Mrs. Westwoode in the crowd as the matron slipped behind a bearded gentleman leaning on a distinctly topped rabbit-headed cane.

  “Dutch Love, nine to two!”

  The bearded gentleman turned his head at the shout. The wide brim of Mrs. Westwoode’s hat caught the man square in the face. He threw up his hand to brush it away, entangled his fingers in the festoon of pink silk cabbage roses adorning the brim, and pulled the hat partly from her head. Mrs. Westwoode, drawn forward, tripped on his cane and dropped her handbag. The gentleman bent to retrieve it. Mrs. Westwoode, her face flush with embarrassment, yanked the bag from his hand. With a silk cabbage rose loose and flopping about on her hat, she stomped away and headed directly for Mr. Harris.

  Hadn’t Mrs. Westwoode shunned Mr. Harris? A man of no consequence, indeed!

  Mr. Harris’s companion stepped aside as Mrs. Westwoode approached, and engaged his attention with a lady with a white ostrich-feather boa draped around her neck. Mrs. Westwoode spared little time in conversation, slipping an envelope out of her bag and into Mr. Harris’s outstretched hand. He tucked the envelope into his waistcoat pocket before retrieving a small black book from the opposite pocket. Mrs. Westwoode didn’t wait. She navigated her way to another b
ookie on the far end of the ring. After a moment’s discussion, Mrs. Westwoode continued to the next bookie and spoke to him. To this bookmaker, she handed several banknotes. Stella couldn’t tell how many.

  “Make a bet, miss?” said the bookmaker with the white carnation, drawing her attention back to Lord Lyndhurst and the other men.

  Until that moment Stella had had no intention of betting. But if Mrs. Westwoode could do it, why couldn’t she?

  “Yes. I’d like Dutch Love, across the board, for five pounds, and Cicero, in the Derby Stakes, on the nose for five pounds.” Stella pulled a ten-pound note from her handbag.

  “That’s the spirit,” Lord Lyndhurst said, smiling.

  “From your lips to God’s ears, Miss Kendrick,” Lord Hugh said as the bookmaker’s clerk took her banknote and wrote up the ticket. Seeing how much Lord Hugh had bet on a long shot, she could imagine how much he had wagered on the favorite.

  Mr. Westwoode and Lord Hugh strolled away, laughing, toward the members’ enclosure.

  “Kendrick?” the bookie said as he handed Stella her ticket. “As in Elijah Kendrick, the American horse breeder?”

  “The same,” Stella said.

  “Good luck, Miss Kendrick!” the bookie called as the viscount offered his arm and led them back toward their seats. “I’ve got the odds on you.”

  Stella glanced over her shoulder at the bookmaker and caught sight of the fortune-teller again, bent over the palm of a woman who openly wept as her fortune was read.

  What did he mean by that?

  CHAPTER 11

  The crowd in the betting ring swelled as the post time of the next race approached. Stella held tightly to Lord Lyndhurst’s arm as he deftly dodged the punters focused on getting their wager in before the bell. He regaled her with details of the pedigree of Dutch Love, the horse she’d bet on. It was a direct descendant of Augustine, the champion filly that belonged to the viscount’s grandfather, the seventh Earl of Atherly. As he spoke of this cherished horse, his face lit up as she’d never seen it. Smiling, animated, and waving his free hand about as he talked, he recounted his first attempt to ride the filly as a boy, and his subsequent broken ribs. He fondly recalled how he’d sneak into the stables at night to spoil the filly with treats he’d taken, unbeknownst to Mrs. Cole from the kitchen. He was delighted, he said, that Stella had the acumen to bet on Augustine’s progeny. Stella didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d made the bet on a whim.