Deadly Inheritance

by Janet Laurence

  He had wanted it to be the Colonel he confronted with this evidence. Once again, he wondered what the relationship was between this suspicious woman and the Colonel. She seemed to have his confidence, but from the way he’d described her there seemed no chance of what Thomas thought of as a normal relationship a man would have with a woman.

  The box sat on a table between them. ‘I found it in Mr Snell’s house. It stuck out; not something that belonged, if you know what I mean. So I opened it and found this …’ He took off the lid, removed a note and held it out to her.

  Miss Grandison made no move to take it from him. ‘What were you doing in Mr Snell’s house?’

  ‘Ah, well, I heard it had just been left, see? Waiting for someone to claim the contents, so my landlord said. Didn’t sound as though Constable Roberts had searched the place so I reckoned there was a good chance of unfinished business there. Maybe evidence of some sort.’

  Her glance was keen. ‘If Mr Snell’s death had happened on your patch, Mr Jackman, would you have taken his house apart?’

  He nodded. ‘Indeed, Miss Grandison. So this afternoon I called on Constable Roberts and produced the letter of authority Colonel Stanhope had fixed me up with. He found the key to the place and we went in there together. When I found this box and said I needed to produce it to the Colonel, he had no objection.’

  There was the faintest flicker of amusement in Miss Grandison’s eyes. ‘You, I assume, Mr Jackman, in his place would have objected?’

  He nodded. ‘Against the law my taking it is. It should have been listed, see?’

  Then, at last, she took and looked at the piece of paper he offered.

  For a long moment she said nothing.

  Finally she waved him to a chair. ‘Please, take a seat Mr Jackman. The Colonel needs to see this without delay.’ She left the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Helen felt as if she had spent hours standing for dress fittings. At last the local seamstress finished discussing styles and wielding her measuring tape. Such a nuisance having to depend on this rustic woman, skilful as she was, for her immediate needs. A cable had already been sent to her usual London couturier. Tomorrow or the next day should see the arrival of a modiste to arrange a fashionable mourning wardrobe.

  When Helen’s father-in-law, the fifth Earl, had died, the end had been foreshadowed and there had been time for discreet arrangements to be made so that when the melancholy event actually took place, a suitable wardrobe was all ready.

  Helen had been taken aback by the calmly efficient way her mother-in-law had organised matters. ‘It’s as if she doesn’t care that your father is dying,’ she said to Richard.

  ‘She cares very much.’ He threw the morning’s Times irritably onto the breakfast table.

  ‘And isn’t making arrangements for a passing on before it’s happened taking on God? I think it’s asking for bad luck, gives me the shivers.’

  Richard poured himself more coffee and made no move to fill her cup.

  ‘I asked if I could sit with him yesterday, perhaps read to him; he has always liked my voice, he says it is low and gentle and that my accent is attractive. Mama said he was beyond hearing but how does she know? I think she wants to keep everyone but herself out of his room. She even refused you permission to visit him; I heard her tell you that it was bad for him to have people in there. Your own father! Why do you let her dictate to you like that?’

  ‘She’s my mother,’ he said softly, picking up the paper again.

  There was no talking to Richard when he was in that sort of mood. Helen had learnt during their marriage that any discussion of his relationship with his parents was forbidden territory. Never one to accept boundaries, she had tried various ways of trespassing, but it was always the same. Her husband retreated inside himself.

  At the time of the fifth Earl’s last illness, Helen had been in a ‘delicate condition’. She had been able to give the news to her father-in-law before the decline in his health had reached the point where the Countess banned visitors. Joy sprang into his eyes and he managed to lift himself up and grasp her hand tightly. Fighting for every breath he said, ‘That’s wonderful, darling girl.’ Still holding her hand, he looked across at Richard, standing just behind Helen, smiled and in a halting whisper got out, ‘Knew you could do it, my boy. Champagne, must drink to little feller’s birth. Beatrice …’ He collapsed back onto his pillows, his once handsome face gaunt and riven with pain.

  The Countess summoned a footman. ‘It is very good news,’ she said quietly as she returned to the bedside. ‘Congratulations to you both.’ She smiled at Helen, who thought she saw genuine affection in her face for the first time.

  Richard put his arm round her shoulders and pressed her against him. ‘We need you to get well, Papa, so you can hold your first grandchild.’

  ‘Grandson!’ For Richard’s father, there was no question over the embryonic child’s gender.

  Perhaps it was the news of a Mountstanton heir that gave him new life, for the Earl had rallied and lived to see his grandson, dying three weeks later.

  Now the sixth Earl had followed his father into the family mausoleum.

  The boudoir door closed behind the seamstress with her tape measure and collection of fashion plates, her expression worried, her lips silently moving as she no doubt counted up the various garments she was expected to produce without delay. She would be working far into the night to produce the first of the mourning gowns by the next day.

  Jenkins, Helen’s maid, fussed around her, talking too much and pressing offers of refreshment on her mistress. Helen waved helpless hands and told her to go away and not come back until sent for, then she collapsed into her favourite buttoned chair. Exhaustion made it difficult to think, and the horror of the previous night had that day been briefly eclipsed by the realisation that she faced two years of mourning. Nothing but black to be worn and, for the first year, seclusion. No balls, no parties, no theatres, no concerts, no entertaining. Visitors were not supposed to be received, nor visits paid. After the fifth Earl’s death, Helen’s mother-in-law, now transformed into a Dowager, had had her own apartment created in the west wing and retired there, to pass her two years of mourning seemingly without chafing at the restrictions. She surrounded herself with images of her dead husband: photographs, of which there were many; a bust that had been sculpted in his early twenties, and a portrait painted soon after they were married. Helen wondered how Richard had dissuaded her from adding to her collection the much larger portrait that hung in the picture gallery.

  Helen’s own year of mourning for her father-in-law had been restrictive but because she had just given birth, her social activities would in any case have been severely curtailed. At least it had meant time to enjoy Harry’s babyhood. From the moment her son was placed upon her breast and she had looked down into the wrinkled face – the pink rosebud mouth yawning, the blue eyes half closed – she had fallen in love. He was so tiny and so perfect.

  ‘He has the Mountstanton nose,’ had been Richard’s comment on first setting eyes on his heir. ‘And I am sure he has the finger as well.’

  ‘How can you tell? They look just like a nose and a finger to me,’ Helen had protested. It mattered not a jot to her. Harry was her son and a total delight. She instructed Mrs Comfort to bring him down to her bedroom every morning so they could spend a delicious hour together, laughing and playing. Even when the mourning period gradually lightened and social life began to resume, Helen kept on with the practice – until Harry was three, when Richard said that he needed to grow up. She had failed to persuade him otherwise and the morning romps in her bed had ceased.

  Helen lay back in the chair and closed her eyes, willing away the aches of exhaustion. Harry had been devastated at the news of his father’s death. ‘Why?’ he’d shouted at her. ‘Why has he gone to heaven? I want Papa here. I want Papa with me.’

  Suddenly grief overtook her. The full extent of her loss was a flood that satu
rated every corner of her mind and body. A long moan emerged spontaneously, then whatever dam that had been holding back the tears broke and they started pouring down her face. She could hear his voice, feel the touch of his hands, even remember his special smell when naked. She also remembered his coldness when she overstepped whatever mark it was he had laid down, the way he would retreat from her before passion was renewed, and how cruel he could be. There had been little closeness between them over the last few years but the memory of what they had once shared would never leave her.

  Gradually she choked back her sobs. There was so much that had to be done, so much that the Dowager would expect from her.

  A light tap came on the door. Helen ran her hands over her face, trying to obliterate the signs of her breakdown. ‘Yes?’

  Charles entered. He was carrying a piece of paper. Behind him was Ursula.

  Helen pulled her wrap a little closer around herself. ‘Yes?’ she said again coldly, glad to see that Ursula looked nervous.

  ‘I am sorry to disturb you.’

  Helen could see that Charles was in his soldierly mode. There was something he felt should be done and he was here to do it. Was this something connected with the funeral arrangements? Somehow she did not think so. A tiny trickle of unease ran down her spine.

  ‘A letter has come to light.’ Charles raised the piece of paper he was holding. ‘We think you should see it.’

  Helen noted the ‘we’. Were he and Ursula in some kind of partnership? Surely after all they had been through together she could still count on Charles’s support? But ever since Polly’s body had been discovered, he had been behaving in a most peculiar way. She took the letter.

  At first the words did not make any sense, yet they were plain enough. She read it again:

  My dear Polly,

  I am certain you are a Mountstanton. Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to demand due recognition for both you and your child. I hope to discuss this matter with you in the very near future. Meantime, in haste,

  Yours

  A.G.

  ‘We think,’ said Charles, ‘we think that “A.G.” stands for Adam Gray.’

  ‘We?’

  He dropped his gaze for the briefest of moments. ‘Miss Grandison and I.’

  Helen looked at Ursula and received back a direct look that she recognised.

  Charles said, ‘Did Richard mention any of this to you?’

  Another shiver of unease, colder and stronger. ‘I hardly think that he would mention some bastard child to me, would you?’

  ‘Do you mean, would I mention a bastard child to you or do I think Richard would?’

  ‘Please, Charles. We all know there is nothing you would not talk about if you felt it necessary.’

  He gave a short, exasperated sigh. ‘Helen, we are dealing with murder here. Richard’s murder.’

  ‘Richard was not murdered. Mama says he had an accident. She says he was shooting pigeons. The gardeners have been complaining what a nuisance they are.’ She looked down at the letter she held. ‘In any case, this could have nothing to do with his death.’

  Ursula knelt beside her chair and placed a hand on her arm. ‘Please, Helen. I know it’s a terrible thing to have to face, but it does seem that Richard was killed by someone who came to him in the belvedere last night. It must have happened when the fireworks were set off. That’s why no one heard the shot.’

  ‘Why should anyone want to kill him? And with his own gun?’ Helen asked obstinately.

  Ursula glanced up at Charles.

  ‘The house was open,’ he said, ‘anyone could have gone to the gun room and helped themselves to a shotgun. Gray has said to me in the past that the key to the case should not be hung behind the door. But maybe Mama is right, that Richard did decide to shoot some rabbits, then had the gun wrested from him by whoever he met in the belvedere.’

  Helen looked directly at him. ‘Either suggestion is ridiculous.’

  His gaze did not flicker. ‘Murder may sound ridiculous but the fact remains that the evidence shows Richard did not kill himself. You should be relieved that there will not be the ignominy and shame of suicide.’

  Unable to hold that steady look any longer, Helen bowed her head. ‘Murder is nonsense,’ she managed weakly.

  Ursula’s hand increased its pressure. ‘Helen, forget about Richard’s death for a moment. What about Polly’s condition? Have you really no idea who she could have been seeing; who might be the father?’

  ‘She was a silly girl. Mrs Palmer had spoken to her about her flirtatious ways. It was only because Harry was so fond of her that she had not been turned off. The father could have been any available male.’

  ‘Someone in this house?’

  Helen knew they would not let the matter rest; she forced herself to speak calmly. ‘Before that wretched inquest, Richard and I asked Mrs Palmer if she knew of any liaison between Polly and a Mountstanton servant.’

  ‘And did she?’

  Helen shook her head. ‘We put the same question to Benson and got the same answer.’ She raised the letter. ‘This should be burned. It is nothing but tittle-tattle.’

  Charles quickly took the piece of paper from her.

  Helen snatched it back and reread its few lines. ‘Anybody could have written this,’ she said dismissively. ‘Perhaps it was Gray, but does he say he’s got proof for what he claims? No.’ She gave Charles a look full of challenge. ‘Where was this found? And by whom? What is their connection to all this?’

  Gently Ursula extracted the letter from Helen’s fingers, folded and handed it back to Charles. ‘Your questions are all pertinent and they deserve an answer. Colonel, tell her how it was discovered.’

  Helen watched as he carefully slipped the paper into his pocket. Always safeguarding something, that was her brother-in-law.

  ‘Polly’s hatbox was found in Snell’s house. You remember he was found dead at the time of the inquest? And that his death was considered suspicious – for a time?’

  Helen remembered acutely how a furious Richard had called the doctor up to the house. She had not needed to be present to know just how insistent her husband would have been. Certainly after their meeting, the doctor had announced he must have been misled by the lack of light in the room and that closer examination had shown the man had died in his sleep.

  ‘Well,’ said Charles, ‘Snell must have found the box after Polly ended up in the river. The letter was inside and, no doubt, that was why he was going around making veiled accusations against the Stanhopes.’

  ‘Perhaps he was responsible for pushing her down that hill,’ Helen suggested slowly, watching for his reaction.

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ he acknowledged. ‘However, there does not seem to be a motive.’

  ‘So who found the hatbox in his house?’

  ‘An investigator I hired.’

  ‘You hired an investigator?’ She was deeply shocked. ‘How dare you!’

  ‘There are circumstances surrounding Polly’s death that have to be looked at, Helen.’ He hesitated briefly, then added, ‘Just as Richard’s death needs investigating.’

  A mixture of rage and panic surged through Helen. She rose. ‘You are despicable. You too, Ursula. But you at least are not a Mountstanton. If Mama were here, she would tell you, her sole surviving son, Charles, exactly what a disgrace you are to the family name.’

  The Colonel looked incredibly weary, like a soldier surveying a lost battlefield.

  His expression suddenly softened. ‘My dear Helen, you must be overcome with grief and I am a fool to have burdened you with this. Forgive us for this intrusion.’

  He dipped his head but did not try to take her hand, merely turned and left the room.

  Ursula had stood up. ‘You need rest, Helen. Have you had anything to eat today? Can I arrange for some refreshment to be brought to you?’

  The Countess shook her head violently; her need to have this woman who knew so much about her leave the room was
intense. ‘I wish to be alone.’

  ‘Of course.’ Ursula followed Charles out.

  Left at last on her own, Helen went to the window and stood, her hands pressed against her forehead, looking out and seeing nothing. She tried to think rationally and calmly.

  It was impossible. She walked around the room, wild thoughts chasing themselves around her mind.

  For once, Helen was on the side of her mother-in-law. The Mountstanton name must be protected. Harry must be spared a tainted heritage. Why couldn’t Charles understand that? Why had he returned here? If he had to leave the army, why couldn’t he have gone somewhere else? Everything that was happening was his fault. How could he behave so irresponsibly?

  ‘Investigator’, the word hammered in her head. What sort of investigation was taking place?

  Helen stopped her pacing and took two deep breaths. There was no need to panic. This was not an official investigation. Whatever fly-by-night rogue Charles had managed to get hold of – probably someone who had served with him, no doubt drummed out of the army in disgrace – well, whoever he was, he could have no standing in the eyes of the law.

  Helen went into the corridor and glided gracefully towards the hall. All the window blinds were down. Benson was there. He seemed to have shrunk since yesterday.

  ‘I shall take dinner in my boudoir, Benson.’

  ‘Very well, my lady, I will see to it myself. I … I have arranged the mourning ornaments on the front door, my lady.’ He waved a hand in a way that suggested she might like to inspect them. Helen shuddered.

  ‘Thank you, Benson. Please see that I am not disturbed by anyone.’

  ‘Of course, my lady.’

  She continued on to Richard’s study, the flimsy skirts of her robe floating out as she went.

  The study seemed to be holding its breath. Richard’s desk and the tables that stood against the walls were stacked with the usual untidy piles of paper; some sheets had fallen to the floor, more looked in danger of following. William had not managed to reduce anything to order. Had he tried? Had Richard prevented him?