The Missing Bridegroom: A Charlotte Chase Mystery (The Charlotte Chase Mysteries Book 1)

by Georgia London

  THE TALE OF THE MISSING BRIDEGROOM

  By

  Georgia London

  A CHARLOTTE CHASE MYSTERY

  Book One

  Copyright © Georgia London 2016

  All rights reserved

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The journey to Cornwall didn’t take as long as Charlotte expected. She stopped a few times for the dogs to have a drink and a wee, but the traffic hadn’t been nearly as bad as it was the last time she was here. Of course that had been in the summer months, when the roads were clogged up with holiday makers. Now it was autumn and there was a chill in the air. The sleepy little Cornish town was now almost exclusively occupied by locals, struggling along on what they had made from the tourists during the summer.

  It was Charlotte’s favourite time here and had been Aunt Florrie’s, quiet except for the crashing waves hitting the beach from the Atlantic Ocean. This was to be the first day of the rest of her life and she felt sure she was going to love it!

  It had just got too much in London, with Peter thinking he could still tell her how she should live, still trying to turn her into something she was not. Her talent embarrassed him; that was the long and the short of it and it was not as though she hadn’t told him before they married. It had taken a long time for her to realise that he simply hadn’t believed her, though why he imagined she would make up a story like that she could never fathom.

  So after two years of his scoffing at the clients who came to her, of never wanting to know about her gift, of him being in denial, she had given up. Two things happened to push her into her final decision; firstly, he had a company dinner and dance which he didn’t tell her about. He pretended it was a work conference that kept him away overnight and she had to find out purely by coincidence when one of his colleagues asked a friend of Charlotte’s to the function.

  His excuse was he didn’t want her suddenly telling people their future or seeing ghosts everywhere and showing him up. As if she didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. His real motive was so he could sneak into the room of a woman he worked with, something he didn’t expect to get back to Charlotte.

  She was already considering her options when she’d been offered a television contract. She hadn’t really wanted to take it; she’d always preferred to keep things private as much as possible, but she thought it would serve Peter right if her face appeared on millions of television screens. He would have a hard time pretending his wife was no different from theirs after that, wouldn’t he?

  It was a pity; she had never believed in divorce and still didn’t, not really, but there was no other way. He had friends close by, he said, and he didn’t want them knowing about his wife and her strange ideas. What would they think? She could no longer struggle to pretend.

  That was a year ago and she hoped he might move away but his work was close by and his friends, the ones who would think his wife some sort of loony tunes and she could never afford to move. Until the house was sold, they were both stuck.

  She charged nothing for her services, only took donations and although they were often generous, she didn’t make much more than the cost of keeping her beautiful dogs.

  When Aunt Florrie died and left her house in Cornwall to Charlotte, no one could have been more surprised. Florrie had never married and had no children, but Charlotte didn’t expect her to leave the house to her. There was a few thousand pounds as well, which would come in handy.

  This house went back to the Tudor dynasty, Elizabeth I to be precise and had been built in the shape of an E in her honour, like a lot of the grand houses built during her reign. In the distance, at the end of what was now the garden, were the ruins of the castle after which the house had been named. It had originally been one of William the Conqueror’s castles, put here to guard the coast from invading fleets and pirates, but it had been ravaged by the salt sea waves crashing against the walls in bad weather and it had been deemed too expensive to repair. It had been allowed to decay and fall apart but there was still a spirit presence there, the castellan and his family.

  They were content there and Charlotte saw no reason to disturb them. She had seen them first when she was just a child, when she’d come here on holiday with her mother and had visited the ruined castle. The family were carrying on as though she wasn’t there, walking about, cooking their meals and eating them, sharpening their spears and polishing their shields.

  Even as a child, Charlotte was enthralled by their beautiful clothes, their fancy tunics and embroidered kirtles of the woman and her daughters. Even then, she accepted that they were a family in spirit, no longer of this world.

  It was quite fascinating to see them, to see the way they lived, the castellan and his wife and three children, still ensuring that the shores of England were safe.

  Charlotte had never told anyone about it. She didn’t want a hoard of tourists coming here trying to see the ghosts themselves and she didn’t want some busy body thinking they weren’t at rest and wanting to help them cross over. They seemed very happy to Charlotte.

  They could simply be shadows of their living selves, a sort of after impression as had been seen many times, like the Roman soldiers in York who marched some two feet below the ground and never saw the people in modern dress who watched them.

  A large part of Castle House was in disrepair and Charlotte hoped it didn’t cost too much to renovate and modernise. She still had a lot left from the television show and she could always renew that contract, as the production company wanted, if necessary.

  There were some of the original Elizabethan fittings still in the house, which were well worth preserving. If things got dire, she might even be able to open it out to the public. That was something she had discussed often with Aunt Florrie, but she always resisted the idea and Charlotte agreed with her. Sometimes, though, she felt a little selfish that they were keeping this beautiful house all to themselves.

  Interested people had always been able to make an appointment to come and look around, local historians and the like and Aunt Florrie had once allowed the local history society to hold a meeting here. That had gone down very well with the locals; they loved it.

  Still, the thought of crowds of tourists traipsing all over Aunt Florrie’s precious house was not one she wanted to contemplate. It would be a last resort; she would rather go back to the television.

  She had to keep stopping as she drove through the winding streets of the town. There were a lot of people who seemed to be hanging about, waiting for something and Charlotte wondered if her arrival had clashed with a carnival or fete. But when she passed the church she saw it was a wedding that was holding her up and all these people were waiting to see the bride and bridesmaids.

  Charlotte only hoped it turned out better for them than it had for her, but then perhaps he was more concerned with her happiness than his own image.

  She pulled over to the side to make room for another car coming towards her, and while she waited, she glanced out of the window at the colourful costumes of the guests. They looked expensive, every one of them. The six shivering bridesmaids who waited in the church porch were dressed in pure silk, each one a different colour, from pale lemon to cora
l to mint green. And each held a bouquet of white roses.

  The cars parked along the narrow street were what car dealers would all ‘prestige’ – Rolls Royces, Aston Martins, BMWs, Mercedes and the like. Not a single old banger amongst them, not even something ordinary and a few years old.

  Whoever this wedding was for, the cost of it would feed the starving of the world for years to come. Still, good luck to her; why not spend what you could afford? She did wonder what was taking so long though, but then the road cleared and she edged forward slowly to safely negotiate the parked cars.

  At the end of the street she came to a crossroads and shivered. Although it wasn’t recorded anywhere, Charlotte knew from experience that a suicide victim was buried at this crossroads, had been buried here at about the same time as Castle House was built. She’d always wanted to find out more about her, but had never stayed long enough. Now perhaps she would have time to discover something of the woman’s history.

  She slowed the enormous people carrier she drove as the road fell steeply towards the beach. It was a quiet beach, one the tourists mostly left alone because no car park had ever been provided there. Space was scarce and the land belonged to Aunt Florrie, belonged to Charlotte now. Florrie wouldn’t sell any of it and neither would her niece.

  People could walk down there if they wanted, there was nothing to stop them, but there would be no car park.

  She turned the final bend and at last the enormous old house came into view. Charlotte slowed down to admire it. She had always loved this house, although it was full of ghosts. Still, they were mostly harmless, just souls who had lived here in the past, been happy here and didn’t want to leave. Charlotte had no problem with them and neither had Aunt Florrie.

  It was the ones who wanted something who caused Charlotte so much aggravation, who caused Peter to decide she would have to pretend she didn’t see them. She was coming up to thirty on her next birthday and she felt she had wasted five years of her life on him. This was her new start, her second chance; God bless Aunt Florrie!

  She steered the vehicle around the curving driveway, bumped over a few cracks in the tarmac and pulled to a stop outside the front porch with its twin pillars either side of the carved oak door.

  Charlotte jumped down and opened the sliding doors of the massive people carrier to release the two Newfoundland dogs who accompanied her everywhere. They both leapt out and headed straight for the nearest trees and walls to relieve themselves after the long journey, then returned to Charlotte to sit and stare at her in anticipation, no doubt wondering where they were and what was going to happen next.

  Water, that’s what. They needed water before anything else and she reached inside the vehicle to pull out her handbag and find the keys, a thick bunch of them given to her that morning by Aunt Florrie’s solicitor. She also collected the dogs’ water bowls and the milk and tea she had bought in the supermarket on the way. It seemed unlikely there would be anywhere in this remote part of the world where she could buy actual loose tea leaves and not those awful tea bags.

  Inside she headed straight for the kitchen at the back of the house, tried the tap to discover which one was cold since the coloured bands had long since worn away, then filled the bowls with water and set them on the black tiled floor for the dogs.

  She straightened up to see that, unusually, they were not following her but had stopped in the wide hallway. She went out, saw that both dogs were staring up the staircase to the half landing and knew that once again, they had seen something or someone who shouldn’t be there. She sighed heavily.

  “Couldn’t you at least have waited until I got the kettle on?” Charlotte said to the phantom on the stairs.

  She wouldn’t look closely at it, not yet. She knew it was a woman but that was all she wanted to know right now. It would still be there when she had made a pot of tea and put her feet up for five minutes. She called the dogs to the kitchen for their water, where she filled and plugged in the electric kettle, thankful that no one had thought to turn off the supply and she was spared the need to rummage about in cupboards for the mains switch.

  Forgetting their interest in the phantom on the stairs, the dogs were now slurping away at the water, spilling it all over the floor. They raised their heads and ribbons of drool hung off their jaws. Charlotte got out of the way before they shook their heads, decorating the walls with little swirls which she would wipe away later, when she’d recovered from the journey.

  Right now her back was stiff from sitting in one position for so long and she needed a couple of Nurofen and a hot drink. She found Aunt Florrie’s teapot in the cupboard and rinsed it out. It would be a bit stale, as it was six months since Florrie passed and no one had been here since, except the gardener and the daily cleaner who were both still being paid out of the estate.

  Even with the Will naming Charlotte as beneficiary, it had taken all this time for her to be given possession. It was something to do with it being a listed building.

  She looked down just in time to see Fritz put his huge front paw in the water bowl and made a mental note to bring the bowl stands in next. One reason she always had their water up high was because they could never resist paddling in it.

  She went outside to collect the sack of dog food and return to the kitchen with it, only to find the dogs back in the hallway and staring at the staircase again. She would worry about that later, when she had made herself a cup of tea and explored her new home, when she had pulled herself together and pushed Peter and his new love interest to the back of her mind.

  Even after she appeared in her own TV show, he didn’t want to admit that the marriage was over. Even when she challenged him about the woman he had been seeing behind her back he tried to talk his way out of it. How did he imagine he could hide anything from her?

  He didn’t seem to understand at all that he had driven her away with his insistence on trying to mould her into his own idea of what she should be, instead of accepting her for who she was.

  They had to stay together in the house until it was sold. They divided it up and shared the kitchen and bathroom, but he continued to behave as though they were still together. Charlotte knew he had told none of his work colleagues about the separation, not even the woman he had found to replace her.

  He assured Charlotte there was nothing going on, nothing real at any rate. It had been a whole year since the divorce so why he thought he had to pretend for Charlotte, she could not imagine. He seemed to think they were still a couple, that she still cared what he did and who he did it with. She didn’t.

  “It’s just sex,” he told her. “She means nothing to me.”

  Why did people say that? Why did they imagine that made it any better, as though sex is something completely separate from love and loyalty? Not for Charlotte, that was for certain, and he should have known that.

  Thank goodness Aunt Florrie had waited to breathe her last until the divorce was final and Charlotte knew she had made that last Will after she got her Decree Absolute. She didn’t want any part of her estate to go to Peter.

  When she told him she was moving to Cornwall, that Aunt Florrie had left Castle House to her, he actually thought he was entitled to a part of it. He thought she was inviting him to go with her. She would always remember his first reaction to the news. There were no words of condolence, despite knowing that Charlotte was more than fond of the old lady. His first thought had been the best way to liquidate the estate.

  “That sort of place will fetch a fortune,” he had said at once. “Some rich American will lap up the history and it’s right on the coast. It would make a great hotel.”

  “I am not selling it,” she answered.

  She had packed everything she could into her vehicle and now all that remained was a small bag containing her immediate essentials. She had waited deliberately until he arrived home to tell him in person that he could have the house to himself until it sold, but he didn’t seem to take the hint.

  “What do you
mean, you’re not selling?” He said. “I tell you what, Charlotte, this is fate. It is like a gift. We have been looking for something to bring us together and this is it. We could turn it into a fancy hotel. With all that history, we will be sold out.”

  “We?”

  “Well, yes, we. You can’t do it on your own.”

  She sighed heavily, picked up the last of the bags and slung the handle over her shoulder.

  “Peter, listen carefully. We are divorced. We are no longer a couple, no longer legally tied together and the only reason we still share this house is because we cannot afford to do otherwise until it sells. Now you can either buy me out of my half, or stay until it does sell, but the sooner you are out of my life for good, the better.”

  “Charlotte,” he argued. “We can start again, give it another go. You loved me once and I still love you.”

  Yes, she had loved him once, although memories of that time, of those feelings, were blurred. She couldn’t recall feeling anything for him but contempt. He was attractive to look at, with his blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, but since their marriage he had let himself go to some extent. She had definitely fancied him, but she couldn’t drag up any memory of actually loving him.

  At last she answered.

  “No you don’t and I don’t think you ever did. Ever since we met you have tried to turn me into something else, some image of what you think I should be. I wish you luck in finding that woman, but if you are looking for her in me, you are looking in the wrong place.”

  “After everything I have put up with, you are not going to give me another chance?”

  “What, precisely, do you think you have put up with?”

  He gestured toward the two dogs who sat, patiently following the conversation as though they understood every word. Charlotte would say they did and she really believed that, but now was not the time to argue the point.

  “Those two great, hairy, drooling beasts,” Peter replied. “Do you know how many times I have found their hair all over my suit?”