by Mira Stables
He picked his time carefully. Bea had been dispatched in charge of one of the abigails to call upon her godmother. Miss Ashley had taken the two younger children for a ramble in the home wood and his lordship had invited Mr Read to give his opinion on a new pony that he had just bought for Adam. Benedict was also invited to be of this party, but he could look at Adam’s pony any time. Such an opportunity for mischief might not occur again. It took only a few minutes to purloin the glue pot from the carpenter’s shop, spread a thin film of glue on the chair that Miss Ashley always occupied at the head of the table and return the pot to its proper place. His only fear was that the little party might loiter over their ramble so that the glue would have time to harden before they arrived. But all went well. He had just time to settle himself in the window-seat with a book – in itself an occupation likely to arouse the deepest suspicion in a wary soul – when he heard sounds of arrival.
Graine would have fallen into the trap if it had not been for the butterfly. The room was empty, Benedict having decided that he had time to make good his escape. It was wiser not to linger on the scene of one’s crimes, however great the temptation to watch the success of one’s scheming. Having sent the children to wash their hands for tea and tidied her own person, she was strolling lazily across to her usual chair when she noticed the hapless insect, a large cabbage white, perched on the seat of her chair and struggling ineffectually to rise. It was easy enough to see what had happened. No doubt some constituent of the glue had attracted the wretched creature to its doom. Graine did not hesitate. She killed it with one sharp blow and dropped the frail dust that remained out of the open window. She was not sentimental about such matters, save to decide that this time Master Benedict should not escape scot-free. A tongue lashing at least he deserved for his heedlessness. But first to establish a superior tactical position. Swiftly she disposed herself in Benedict’s usual seat and thanked the gods of chance when Adam and Bridget, sharp-set after their excursion, came racing in demanding sustenance. Placidly she poured milk, passed bread and butter and cake and drew attention to the special treat of a dish of hot muffins which were great favourites.
She greeted Benedict’s belated arrival with a light apology for having usurped his usual chair. “But it is cooler here, you see, and I was so hot after our exertions. You will not mind sitting at the head of the table for once.”
Benedict minded very much. He said that he was not hungry – which was a downright lie, with the delicious scent of those muffins making his mouth water – and wandered about the room in a disconsolate fashion which afforded Miss Ashley considerable satisfaction. She waited until Adam and Bridget had finished their meal and gone off to watch the feeding of a litter of puppies at the gardener’s cottage. Uncle Ross had rashly promised that they should have one for themselves, and they were still earnestly debating the choice. As the door closed behind them she said directly, “I am waiting for your apology, Benedict. You will scarcely deny your responsibility. None of the others had the opportunity.”
He was unprepared for the swiftness of the attack. She had always seemed so mild, even timid. His chin went up defiantly and he sounded almost comically like his uncle as he said, “I am not in the habit of permitting others to take the blame for my misdeeds. Yes, I am responsible. And I will say I am sorry, but not for putting glue on the chair. Only for the miscarriage of my plan.”
Graine eyed him steadily. “That is insolence,” she said quietly. “You would be well served if I reported you to Mr Read. I shall not do so, however. I will ask you rather to consider the results of your infantile prank if it had succeeded. You would have made me look foolish for a moment or two, until I realised what had happened. Very amusing, I make no doubt. But I do not think you are really heartless or cruel. If you had sat on that chair, your parents or your uncle would have bought you a new pair of breeches and the whole thing would have been forgotten in a week. A governess in my position can afford perhaps one new gown in a year. The one I am wearing is almost new, and I would expect it to last me three or four years at least. It would have been ruined beyond repair. Is that what you intended?”
He flushed and looked down, drawing patterns on the carpet with one toe and muttering something to the effect that he had not thought about that. Then he fell silent for a moment, trying to comprehend the feelings of someone who had to count the cost of spoiled clothing. Eventually he looked up at Graine with the smile that had endeared him even to his victims.
“If I didn’t say I was sorry, I can at least say that I am truly glad your gown was not spoiled. And it was an infantile prank.” His normal mischievous grin dawned. “I’ll think of something much better next time,” he promised cheerfully, “and it’s decent of you not to report me to Mr Read. His idea of a punishment is to make me learn miles and miles of Latin verse, and in this weather it’s downright sinful to be stewing indoors over stuffy books. Thank you.”
So the battle was not quite won. Probably that reference to an infantile prank had stung rather more than she had intended. But she reckoned she was making good progress, and wondered, with amused interest, what form the next trial of strength would take.
It proved to be another hoary relic – the haunted gallery. But this time she could at least admire the artistry with which it was performed. The actor-manager showed no impatience. He was getting his adversary’s measure, realising that she was not to be stampeded into panic without good cause. If he could only get the better of her once, she thought, he would probably be satisfied, for in the ordinary way relations between them were cordial enough. More than ready for school, she grimaced. An active body and a fertile brain and no outlet for his excess energies. At the moment she was his chosen target, and since their last encounter she was quite prepared to believe that there was no malice in his dealings. It was simply that she presented a problem that he wanted to solve.
His story of the haunted gallery – she checked it in the library records – was the purest fabrication. It concerned the Countess of Queen Elizabeth’s day whose husband, following the pattern of so many of that sovereign’s subjects, had gone sea-faring. Unfortunately he had died at sea of some pestilent fever. According to Benedict’s version of the legend, his wife been instantly aware of her husband’s decease, even though the actual news had not reached her for the better part of a year. She had donned widow’s garb and mourned him as dead from that day. Now, on the anniversary of his death, she walked up and down the long gallery, wailing and wringing her hands. She would, of course, thought Graine, hiding her amusement behind a mask of respectful attention. So far as she could judge the two younger children were not in the plot. Their awed fascination as they listened was unfeigned. But there was a certain conscious look in Beatrice’s eyes. Was she destined to play the part of the unhappy Countess, wondered her duenna? She was just young enough, just sufficiently a scapegrace still, to succumb to such a temptation.
A whole week passed and nothing further transpired. Referring casually to the legend, Graine was informed by its originator that on certain occasions the Tudor Earl also haunted his former home. Presumably he was permitted to do so in an attempt to console his unhappy wife, for the pair were heard in conversation. But at this point Benedict’s invention failed him sadly. Perhaps it was asking too much of a lad not yet in his teens to devise a convincing conversation for the reunited pair. The Earl, he reported, when pressed for further details, had been heard to enquire after his favourite horse, and for someone called Rollo, who was thought to be one of his hounds.
“Not for his children?” asked Graine, sounding much shocked.
Benedict hastily disposed of the offspring of his mythical pair. “They had no children,” he told her triumphantly. “That was what made it so sad, you see. Because of the succession,” he added largely.
Graine accepted this with due sympathy but could not resist probing just a little further. “And the Countess?” she urged. “Does she answer him?”
“Well I
expect she tells him about the horse and the dog, but you can’t really tell what she says because her voice is all weepy,” decided the harassed inventor. But here he caught a meaning glance from his Cousin Beatrice which clearly threatened the withdrawal of her support if she were not given a proper speaking part in this dramatic piece. He forced himself to a final creative effort.
“Oh yes! She asks him what he has brought her back from the Spanish Main,” he concluded thankfully.
Graine made the excuse of seeing that Bridget and Adam were safely in bed and the candles out, and escaped from the room before her giggles overcame her. She felt that she could hardly wait for the opening night of this historic drama, and wished that she was on sufficiently intimate terms with Mr Read or even with his lordship to be able to share the joke. But Mr Read was a sober-minded young man, upright and conscientious but sadly deficient in sense of humour, while his lordship, though always pleasant and courteous when they chanced to meet, was too far removed from her humble orbit.
The site for the haunting had been well chosen, since Graine’s rooms opened on to the long gallery. The wailing noise that signalled the rise of the curtain was certainly emitted by a remarkably healthy ghost. Graine shook her head sadly. Evidently Beatrice was not gifted with dramatic sensitivity. But perhaps she should be forgiven, since she was also charged with the task of attracting the required audience. Dutifully Graine picked up her candle and went out into the gallery.
The lamp which normally illuminated the far end of the gallery had been extinguished, in itself an unusual circumstance. But perhaps the Valminster ghosts did not like bright lights. It was really rather a pity, because they were beautifully dressed in the costume of Elizabeth’s day, the lady in wide-spreading farthingale, the gentleman in doublet and padded breeches. A purist might have suggested that the gentleman should not have been wearing a mask, while the floating veil that covered the lady’s head and face was equally out of keeping, though she made great play with it, crushing it between her fingers and almost rending it apart in her anguish. The conversation between the pair closely followed the lines that Benedict had laid down, but there was one surprise. When asked by his wife what pretty gauds he had brought for her, the gentleman favoured her with a courtly bow, offered her his arm and invited her to come with him and see for herself. Unfortunately Graine sneezed at that very moment, though luckily the candle flame only flickered and did not go out. But by the time it steadied again, the ghostly pair had vanished.
For a moment she could not believe her eyes. Certainly they had not passed her, and there could not have been time for them to have reached the other end of the gallery. There must be some concealed doorway with which the children were probably familiar. It was not a thought that she cared for. Practical jokes were all very well and certainly she had got a good deal of amusement out of this one, but the thought of a concealed entrance by which any one could gain access to the gallery was a different matter. However she did not propose to lose sleep over it. No harm had befallen her during the weeks she had spent at the castle. It was unlikely to do so tonight. She would take the added precaution of locking her bedroom door and she would speak to Bosworth about it in the morning.
She dispatched the schoolroom maid with a message for that dignitary as soon as the children’s breakfast had been served. “Ask him if he will wait upon me at some convenient time,” she said. “The matter is not urgent.”
Beatrice and Benedict exchanged glances and applied themselves to their breakfasts with unusual single-mindedness. The summons to Bosworth might have nothing to do with last night’s little escapade, but they could not be wholly at ease. They had been waiting for Miss Ashley to make some reference to the visitation that she had observed last night, half anxious, half wishing that she would. Actually the whole thing had fallen rather flat. Miss Ashley had neither screamed nor run. Instead she had advanced towards them steadily, candle in hand. They had been quite thankful for that fortuitous sneeze that had given them time to slip into the priest’s hole and lie hid until they heard her bedroom door close.
Bosworth had taken a liking to Miss Ashley. She might not be much to look at but she had a pleasant way with her. The message that she had sent proved his point. She had not sent for him. She had asked him to wait upon her. Therefore, as he explained to his crony, Mrs Palmer, he would not keep her waiting in order to establish his own importance in the hierarchy, but would do so at once.
“And while you’re about it you might ask her what those children have been up to in the attics,” snorted Mrs Palmer. “Maria was up there this morning and she says it looks like a rag fair. They’ve been into all the old chests, dragging out finery that’s been stored away for generations. Playing at dressing up, I suppose, and harmless enough compared with some of the games that Master Benedict puts them up to. But what I says is that they should put things away orderly when they’ve done with them. There’s silks and velvets and such-like laid away up there, some of them sewn with jewels, too. They should be taught to value them, not just toss them aside when they weary of playing with them. Let alone the maids have plenty enough to do without running around waiting on careless children. They seem to mind Miss Ashley pretty well. Get her to have a word with them.”
Bosworth nodded majestic assent to these views and departed to the schoolroom. Miss Ashley gave him a polite good morning and thanked him for attending to her request so promptly.
“It is probably nothing,” she said apologetically, “but I thought you were the proper person to advise me. Last night some unusual noise disturbed me. I went out into the gallery to investigate. The lamp had gone out, but by the light of my candle I thought I saw someone or something disappear through the panelling. Pray accept my assurance that I am not a fanciful person, and tell me, is there any concealed doorway or secret room in that part of the gallery?”
“Yes, miss, there is,” returned Bosworth readily. “There’s the priest’s hole. I thought you would know of it. Master Benedict can show you the trick. It’s simple enough. It’s just a tiny room behind the panelling where they used to hide the priests in the bad old days when to be a Roman Catholic might take you to Smithfield to be burned at the stake. But there’s only the one way in. Nobody could get into the house from outside by using it. What sort of noises did you hear?”
“It’s difficult to say,” said Graine, with some degree of truth. “Footsteps. Voices. You know how it is when you are awakened from sleep. You can never be sure what roused you. But now that I know there is no danger of housebreakers I shall not give the matter another thought.”
Bosworth looked unconvinced, and his glance flickered in a speculative way to Benedict, but that young man preserved an innocent front. The butler accepted defeat. “Then if I may make so bold, miss, Mrs Palmer asks if you would have a word with the young ladies and gentlemen about the state of the attics. Seems they’d been looking through some of the things that were stored away up there and had left them in a fine old state.”
That solved one little bit of puzzle, decided Miss Ashley, as she assured Bosworth that all should be put in order and asked him to give her apologies to Mrs Palmer. She had wondered how they had contrived those costumes.
She poured herself another cup of coffee while she meditated the best way of intimating to the culprits that she was perfectly well aware of their identities. Young Bridget intervened.
“Weren’t you frightened, Miss Ashley? When you heard noises in the night? I’m sure I would never be brave enough to get up and go to see who it was. I should put my head under the bedclothes and hope it would go away.”
“Didn’t you think that perhaps it was ghosts?” demanded Benedict boldly. “It might have been the Tudor Earl and his Countess.”
“They would not frighten me nearly so much as housebreakers,” Graine told him. “As a child I spent long holidays with an aunt who occupied a Grace and Favour apartment at Hampton Court. The Silver Stick Gallery, it was called. And at Hampton C
ourt, you must know, there are so many ghosts that one grows quite accustomed. The ghost of Queen Jane Seymour walks in the Clock Court. She carries a lighted candle with a flame that never flickers. And there is the ghost of Queen Katharine Howard, of course, as well as that of Dame Sybil Penn who was foster mother to the little King Edward. But I never heard of them doing any one any harm, whereas a housebreaker might behave very violently indeed if interrupted in his nefarious ways. The voices that I heard last night could well have been Valminster voices. They had a very familiar ring. But I had no cause to be afraid of them. If they were ghost voices they were family ghosts going about their own business. If the noises were made by humans, then I can only hope that they don’t choose the long gallery to play their tricks on another occasion. To have one’s sleep disturbed for no good reason is apt to make one very cross.”
Benedict looked her straight in the eye. “You knew all the time that it was us. Don’t be too cross with Bea. I talked her into it, and she only agreed because she loves dressing up. It was my idea. Bea said all along that you wouldn’t be taken in, but I thought that with the lamp out –”
At which singularly inauspicious moment there came a tap at the door and the Earl walked in.
He bade the little group good morning, wondering what had caused the guilty expressions worn by the three senior members of the party, for Graine was quite as much taken aback as the two sinners, and said easily, “And what sort of a report does Miss Ashely give of her pupils this morning? Mr Read assures me that Benedict has been quite impossibly virtuous for three whole days. It seemed to me that such unprecedented behaviour should be suitably rewarded. There is a fair in the village this week. Beatrice is a little old for such rustic joys, but perhaps for once she can forget her advanced age. What do you say, Miss Ashley? If you are ready to give these pestiferous brats a clean bill, I am willing to lend my escort.”
