Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas)

by Benison, C. C.

  “You could, if you wanted.”

  “I can’t be seen to be throwing my weight about. Not now with the by-election so soon. The local force is adequate to the task. If they’re not, then … we’ll see.”

  “I hope I’m not intruding,” Tom said, hobbling into the breakfast room. He could hear Hector and Georgina contending with each other down the hall as he approached. It was less the anguish in Lady Fairhaven’s tone than the exasperation in her husband’s that caught his attention.

  “Not at all, Vicar.” Hector held Tom’s eyes momentarily, then turned to the newspaper in front of him, coffee cup in one hand. Jane and Jamie sat nearby, each worrying a bit of toast. “I’m afraid it’s catch as catch can.” Lord Fairhaven nodded to the elaborately carved sideboard, which supported several silver chafing dishes heated with spirit lamps and a brace of plates and cups, next to which Georgina stood, dressed with care, despite the very recent tragedy, in black trousers and a white shirt, her hair drawn back in a severe chignon. She glanced at Tom with surprise, as if she had forgotten he was a houseguest.

  “Lady Fairhaven, I’m so very sorry for your loss,” Tom said. Her expression was one of sullen grief, her eyes puffy.

  “Thank you. Hector tells me … tells me you found my brother.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry to say.”

  She stared at him as if trying to formulate a question. “How—?” she began, but Hector cut her off:

  “You really should eat something, darling.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Or have a lie-down.”

  “I only just got up, Hector! I’m not an invalid. I was going,” Georgina continued with some vehemence, eyes snapping at her husband, “to ask Mr. Christmas how Olly died, as none of you seems to know or wants to say. And if it wasn’t something natural like Daddy’s heart attack—”

  “Darling, do let’s leave all this to the police.”

  Tom could feel three sets of supplicating eyes from the table trained on him. “That’s probably wisest.” He addressed Lady Fairhaven though puzzled at the others’ circumspection.

  “You’re all conspiring against me!”

  “We’re not, darling. We don’t really know for certain, do we?” Hector dropped the paper he was halfheartedly reading and glanced around at the others. “And we want to spare you any—”

  “You want me to read about it in the newspapers? And why are you reading a newspaper at breakfast when my brother has died?”

  Hector blinked. “Darling, I always read the paper at breakfast.”

  Tom watched Jane move to put her hand on Hector’s. The two looked at each other, a certain intelligence seeming to pass between them.

  “Georgie,” Jane said. “Hector’s right. We don’t know for certain, but—” She paused and bit her lip. “—it appears as though Olly was … strangled.”

  Georgina staggered against the sideboard and released a short piercing animal cry. Jane pushed back her chair, as if to run to her, but Georgina raised one arm as if to ward off any attempts at comforting, her handsome immobile face resuming its mask of gentility. “I’m all right, I’m all right, really.” She looked unseeingly at the fare on the sideboard. “Who would want to do this thing?”

  Hector’s eyes slinked to his newspaper. Jane regarded him speculatively, then turned to her husband, as if prompting him.

  “Georgie, I’m sure whoever it was will be found out before very long,” Jamie offered. “Some stranger. Some …” He shrugged. “Perhaps Olly had an argument with someone in the village last night.”

  “But the Labyrinth … why …?” Lady Fairhaven trailed off, staring at Tom, seeming to see through him, then suddenly registering his presence. “Mr. Christmas, Tom, you must come and have something. I’m sure you must be hungry after your ordeal.”

  Her odd emphasis on the personal pronoun seemed to suggest that as a stranger he shared neither her nor her family’s absence of appetite over this tragedy. In truth, he was ravenous. It seemed a lifetime since he’d awoken.

  “There’s ham, bacon and sausage, and coddled eggs and scrambled, too, I think, porridge …” Georgina trailed off, reaching for a cup. “Hector enjoys kedgeree, so there’s that.” She pointed to one of the silver domed dishes. “Mrs. Gaunt has outdone herself, as usual.” She frowned, as if disapproving.

  “I’m wondering, Hector, if you shouldn’t consider hiring some private security,” he heard Jamie say behind his back as he took a plate and lifted the lid of the first dish.

  “Why?”

  “So you’re not bothered by reporters, and there’s bound to be rubberneckers come along. Am I right, Tom? You had something in your village.”

  “There was a tragic death about a year and a half ago in Thornford, which I’m sorry to say did seem to attract unhealthy interest. The victim was a young woman whose father had a certain celebrity at one time—well, in roughly the same business as Lord Morborne—music. Colm Parry, if you remember the name. He’s St. Nicholas’s music director now. Lord Morborne visited Colm only last week, in fact,” he added as an afterthought. “To coax him out of retirement for some concert in London next year.” He glanced at Lady Fairhaven, who responded hollowly,

  “Yes, something at the O2 Arena. He was often on his mobile about it. He—”

  “We can close the gate at the Gatehouse.” Hector interrupted his wife with an annoyed frown. “I’ll put Gaunt on guard.”

  “Hector, Eggescombe Park is hardly inaccessible.” Jamie looked over his coffee cup. “There are lanes to the farms, off the moor, footpaths … You had the trespasser only last week.”

  “Damn Oliver!” Hector exploded. “This is not the sort of attention I want or need. It’s going to turn into a bloody media circus.”

  “My, who’s a grumpy bear this morning?” Lucinda came sleepily into the breakfast room. “I hope you’ll forgive me for coming down in my dressing gown, Georgie. Good morning, everyone.” She cast them a radiant smile, gripped the top of the nearest chair, and did an allongé, extending her fetching legs behind her, first one then the other. Tom’s eyes went helplessly to her décolletage accentuated by the embroidered material at the bust and felt a rush of panic that she might single him out with a sudden suggestive word or gesture. He turned back to the offerings on the sideboard.

  “You needn’t stop talking because I’m in the room,” Lucinda added with a sudden touch of pique, frowning and stepping towards the sideboard near Tom. “Did you sleep well, Vicar?” Her eyes didn’t meet his. Heart racing, he managed to match her unaffected tone with a simple “Yes, thank you,” as she lifted the silver domes one by one to examine their contents. “Kedgeree, heavenly. And Hector didn’t eat it all! I’m starved.”

  Lucinda glanced over her shoulder as she reached for one of the breakfast plates. “Whatever is the matter?” she enquired, running her eyes over everyone at the table, as if counting heads. “No Oliver this morning?”

  It was the invitation to break the ghastly silence. Tom’s eyes went to Hector, the host, the paterfamilias, the oldest man in the room. So did everyone else’s. The room seemed to lie in waiting as Hector rubbed his hands absently in an agitated gesture. Finally, as Lucinda pivoted back to the sideboard with a sigh of boredom and dipped a serving spoon into the kedgeree, Hector cleared his throat and said,

  “No Oliver, Lucy, I’m afraid. Oliver is dead.”

  His tone was gruff, uncompromising, as if it were a fact unworthy of embellishment. Lucinda paused almost imperceptibly in her movements, then resumed the rhythm of spooning onto her plate the rice, egg, and fish concoction. Returning the dome to the dish with a metallic scrape, she turned to the others, catching Tom’s eye as she did. In hers, he thought he saw a distasteful admixture of triumph and sly satisfaction. Everyone seemed to be waiting breathlessly for her response, and when it came, it sent a tremor through the room:

  “I’m surprised someone didn’t kill him earlier.”

  Over Georgina’s gasp, Jane asked:
“What makes you think Olly was killed?”

  “Well, wasn’t he?”

  “Seems a leap in logic, Lucy.” Jamie’s voice was stern.

  “Not really. He was a complete bastard to me, to my mother, to …” She paused. “He’s a bastard in business—ask anyone whose worked for him. God knows what else he’s got up to in his sordid life. His lifestyle”—she laced the word with sarcasm—“wouldn’t kill him. Unlike Daddy, he’s the sort who can drink and smoke and take drugs and whore around and live forever, so presuming that someone killed him, Jamie, is not a leap in logic.”

  Their stunned silence was their assent.

  “Besides,” Lucinda said, her tone lightening, almost amused, “I happened to glance out the window when I was coming downstairs and spied a little man off in the Labyrinth who looked a lot like a policeman. So when you told me Oliver was dead, I made a link in logic—not, I might add, a leap.”

  “Lucinda, you’re behaving abominably.” Lady Fairhaven seemed to recover some spirit.

  “Georgie, Oliver and I did not get on, never have, so I’m not going to parade great sadness.”

  “You might try parading a little decorum, Lucy,” Hector snapped.

  “You didn’t care for him any more than I did, Hector, so don’t play the grieving brother-in-law for my benefit. I arrived in time yesterday to see your little exchange of blows high in the sky. What was that all about?”

  “It was nothing, and anyway it’s entirely private, Lucinda, and has nothing to do with you or with anybody … or anything.”

  Lucinda snorted. “If Oliver was murdered, Hector, I expect the police won’t think it so private.”

  “Why don’t you sit down,” Hector snapped again. “Your food’s getting cold.”

  Lucinda glanced at her plate, then at the others. She lifted an eyebrow. “How …” She drew out the word. “… how did Oliver die?”

  Tom watched the others exchange another round of cautious glances, sensing a subtext known only to the family. Finally, Jamie spoke:

  “It appears, Lucy, that Olly was strangled.”

  Sundry emotions flicked in Lady Lucinda’s lovely face, none of them horror: surprise, curiosity, acceptance. Finally, her attention shifted to Georgina, evincing for her half sister at least a bit of pity. “Oh,” she said, as if conceding a point. “I am sorry.” She paused, took a few steps towards the table, tilted her head. “Might we know what he was strangled with?”

  “Really, Lucinda, does it matter?” Lord Fairhaven’s drawl was dismissive. He darted a glance at his wife.

  “Nothing appears to be in evidence.” Jane seemed to choose her words with care.

  Lucinda’s finely plucked eyebrows went up a notch, but her expression turned hooded. She hovered by the breakfast table holding her plate as if expecting someone to pull a chair out for her, and Tom, in gentlemanly knee-jerk reaction, twisted painfully in a move to do so, but he could see her attention had shifted to something or someone out of his sight line.

  “Ah,” she said, leaning over the back of the chair and dropping the plate on the table. She almost skipped to the door of the breakfast room, outside of which a voice, a light baritone, Dominic’s, could be heard brightly hailing her,

  “Good morning, Lucy, darling.”

  Tom watched with astonishment as Lucy dropped into a curtsy of balletic grace and athleticism and responded in a tone silvery with laughter,

  “Good morning, my lord.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Georgina lost a child to strangulation, you see,” Jane explained to Tom once the children had moved from earshot.

  They were on foot along the curving gravel path west of Eggescombe Hall, the dower house, Eggescombe Lodge, their destination. Max and Miranda had scrambled on ahead, Max eager to show Miranda something.

  “It was … a freak accident, though the word freak seems so …”

  “Indecent?” Tom supplied.

  “Yes, indecent. And unfair. Max was born a twin, you see. He had a sister, Arabella, who choked on—of all things—the border of a baby shawl when she was not many months old. The border had become detached and twisted in some fashion.”

  “How absolutely devastating.”

  “The shawl was an old thing that Hector had been swaddled in, and his father before that, I think. Amazing a baby blanket could last for so long. There was no one to blame, really, though poor Georgie did blame herself—and Hector, too, I suppose: I think she does in some way hold Hector responsible because it was his family heirloom. The nanny had the afternoon off, so they couldn’t find fault with her.”

  “Faultfinding should come with a sell-by date,” Tom murmured, watching as the children veered off the main path.

  “I agree.” Jane followed his eyes. “Where are those two off to? Marve’s is over … oh, I know. Let’s follow them. Is it too much with the crutch? Marve wasn’t expecting you—or us—at any particular time and we’re not even sure if she’s at home.”

  Roberto had answered the telephone in the dower house when Hector had called earlier from Eggescombe Hall’s morning room, where some of the adults had repaired after breakfast, entering, though hardly aware of it, that strange suspended state of agonised waiting that follows a family death. Hector’s call was intended to inform his mother of Oliver’s death and to say he was sending the children over to remove them for the time being from the disturbing atmosphere. Tom had watched His Lordship’s face pucker with disapproval during the brief conversation; he’d dropped the phone into its cradle with barely disguised contempt.

  “ ‘Have them come anyway.’ ” Hector reported Roberto’s response with a sceptical rise of the eyebrow. “Mummy’s probably still out riding somewhere.” He had glanced at his watch, as if the time—it was past nine thirty—proved she couldn’t possibly be out on a horse. “Shall I try her mobile? Perhaps she’s still at the stables.” The question was rhetorical. He dialed but received no response, and left no message. Hector, Tom noted, omitted any word of Oliver’s murder to Roberto.

  “Anyway,” Jane continued, as they turned down a fresh path through a phalanx of topiary bushes past a sign that read ALICE’S GARDEN, “Hector and Georgina were here in Devon at the time when Arabella died. In August, as it happens, which explains in part why Georgie seems to only endure these two weeks she and Hector are in residence here in the summer. But Hector insists—it is his ancestral home and country seat. And Max”—she flashed a smile at Tom—“loves it down here. Well, kids do. There’s so much to explore. Even if one of them is dressed in a suit.”

  They both looked ahead to see Max leading Miranda past a pair of stone gates. Earlier, when the family had been at breakfast, he had come in with Miranda (who had eschewed her overalls for a light summer dress) to the breakfast room wearing a sort of Jazz Age summer suit, beige with white stripes, and white shoes, and carrying a boater, looking for all the world like he had stepped out of a musical comedy. They had already breakfasted in the kitchens, with the Gaunts, which struck Tom as odd: the formally dressed boy eschewing the formal surroundings of the breakfast room.

  “I say, Pater, there’s a policeman in the garden,” Maximilian said airily.

  “You’ve been outdoors then.” Hector had cast his son a weary glance.

  “Miranda saw the ghost of Sir Edward on the south lawn last night. We went to look.”

  “I can’t think ghosts leave evidence of their presence.” Dominic looked up from his plate.

  “Well, no.” Max’s aplomb faltered a moment. “Anyway, I escorted Miranda up into the tree house—”

  “I see,” Hector murmured, his eyes returned to his newspaper.

  “—and we saw a man wrapping tape around the Labyrinth.”

  “Wrapping tape?” Hector rose from his chair and moved to the window, almost stumbling over Bonzo. He pulled aside the sheers and craned his neck in the direction of the Labyrinth.

  “POLICE. DO NOT CROSS, it said. We offered to help, but he didn’t have enou
gh tape to go around. He wouldn’t tell us why he was wrapping the Labyrinth, though. However—” Max paused and looked about the room in a bid to capture everyone’s attention. “—Miranda and I have a theory, don’t we, Miranda?”

  Miranda nodded, exchanging a knowing glance with Tom, who gave a passing thought to Mrs. Gaunt saying nothing to the children of the morning’s tragedy.

  “We think—” Max began grandly with a sweeping gesture of one hand.

  “Maximilian, come here,” Hector commanded, not unkindly.

  “Don’t you want to hear what we think?” Max moved obediently down the room.

  “Max, there’s been a death.”

  “That’s what we thought!” Max squealed excitedly.

  “Your uncle Oliver has died.”

  “Oh.” The carapace cracked. Max appeared doubtful for a moment, his lower lip slipping forward in the same pout his father affected. “Is this true, Mater?” He turned to the stricken Georgina.

  “It’s true, Max.” Hector answered for his wife. “In the Labyrinth, as it happens.”

  As the room fell into an uncomfortable silence, Max looked to Miranda, who seemed to take a cue. In a bright voice, she asked, “Was he murdered?”

  There was a perceptible intake of breath around the table, followed by a short, sharp laugh—Lucinda’s—quelled by a warning glare from Hector. Coming as it did from a child and voiced for the first time, the word murdered seemed to fall like cold rain upon the adults of the room. Tom saw Hector glance at Miranda with a flicker of contempt, which sent him hurtling to her defence.

  “We don’t know,” Tom had lied, inviting her with a protective arm to be hugged.

  “How interesting!” Max had enthused.

  “Max!” Georgina spoke sharply.

  “How?” Max ignored her. “How was Uncle Olly murdered?”

  “Never mind!” Hector’s volume evoked a regimental sergeant major’s. “You’re upsetting your mother!”

  Max flinched, his eyes widened, but he held his ground. He looked around the table, very much the cynosure of everyone’s attention now.