Murder on Bonfire Night

by Addison, Margaret

  ‘It’s very kind of you, my lord, I’m sure,’ mumbled Major Spittlehouse. But he did not lift his gaze; his eyes remained resolutely focused on the dead servant whom, even in the weak glow from Cedric’s lamp, resembled now little more than a dark shape.

  ‘I’ve asked some of my servants to bring some more lamps; the police will require more than the light from the bonfire and I don’t know how long the oil in this lamp will hold out.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  A silence filled the space between them, heavy and uncomfortable, a mixture of sorrow and bewilderment. Cedric shuffled his feet and, without really intending to, loosened his grip on the lamp, allowing its glow to waver and drop, so that its light fell on the grass. He tightened his hold, but the lamp still hung from his hand in rather a precarious manner.

  ‘It’s a rum old business,’ he said at last, quite at a loss what to say, but resenting the awkward silence that had sprung up between them, and which only emphasised the fact that they were standing alone in an abandoned field in near darkness. If he were a fanciful man, he might have imagined that the ghosts of tortured souls roamed the earth about them or, perhaps more likely and worrying, that the murderer was close at hand, observing their every move.

  ‘It is that,’ agreed the major. ‘But you needn’t worry that I’ll go to pieces. I’ve seen plenty a sight on the battlefield that would make your hair curl.’ He glanced away and stared instead at the bonfire which, still ablaze, was burning brightly, spitting and crackling in the night air. The major grunted; when next he spoke it was rather gruffly. ‘Not that I’m not upset by all this, because of course I am. We’d been through a lot together, Masters and me. Through thick and thin, you might say. He was my batman during the war and, well …. he was more a friend to me than a servant, least that’s how I thought of him. Don’t know what he thought about me. If it hadn’t been for him … well, I’m not sure that I’d be standing here with you today, and that’s a fact.’

  Traces of emotion had revealed themselves in the latter end of the major’s speech and Cedric, considerably moved, stood looking on helplessly. There was a part of him that wished he had said nothing and let the silence endure. But another part of him recognised that perhaps after all it had been right to encourage the major to talk. For in public the man usually kept his emotions closely in check. Perhaps Masters had been his confidant, or at the very least, a man who had shared his experiences of the war, and all the horror associated with it, which still haunted and tainted the lives of those who had survived. And now the manservant was dead, and murdered at that, left hidden among the effigies on a piece of waste field at a time when the village had come together to rejoice and celebrate …

  ‘We’ll find out who did this, old chap,’ said Cedric, patting Major Spittlehouse’s shoulder. ‘I give you my word.’ It occurred to him then how much better his father would have been at all this, for he had been both a contemporary and a friend of the man’s. Did he imagine it, or was there a look of fear in the major’s eyes; true it had been fleeting, but he could have sworn it had been there. Why, Cedric wondered, should the major be frightened? It made no sense. He must want the murderer found as much as the next man, more so in fact.

  It was only then that an uncomfortable thought struck him and, as it did so, he realised that it had always been there, from the moment when they had first discovered the body of the murdered man. It had been lurking there at the back of his mind, refusing to be acknowledged; only now did he give it voice. With clumsy fingers, he caught hold of the major’s sleeve, pulling at the fabric so that the man was obliged to turn and look up at him, the glow from the lamp highlighting something of a surprised look upon his face.

  ‘He was wearing your jacket,’ Cedric said. ‘Masters was wearing your jacket.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  It seemed to Rose that they had been waiting a very long time indeed for Cedric and Major Spittlehouse. It was, therefore, a surprise when she glanced at her wristwatch and found that only two and a half hours had passed since she had first arrived at the bonfire festivities. She sighed inwardly, resenting the enforced waiting game she was obliged to play. It would not have been so bad if she had not been stuck with a companion with whom she had very little in common. She gave a surreptitious glance over at Daphne, who appeared to be now in rather a listless mood, slumped in an armchair, her eyes glazed. Only her fingers remained active, as if they were not quite a part of her, tapping a monotonous beat on the arm of the chair. Rose watched the flickering fingers out of the corner of her eye, anticipating each tap before it was made. She was very tempted to ask Daphne to stop, but she had little inclination to rouse the woman from her thoughts. To do so would invite conversation, and she welcomed the silence as an opportunity to gather her own thoughts.

  In stark contrast to the woman’s current languid condition, Rose was reminded of the moment Daphne had burst, uninvited, into her mother’s house and demanded their immediate attention. She had put her own interests paramount, with little regard for anyone else. It had not bothered her that Rose had just returned from honeymoon or that Mrs Dobson had made it perfectly clear that her presence at such a time would not be welcome. And tonight, when it would have been perfectly understandable if she had shown some emotion at the brutal death of a longstanding servant, she had displayed very little. It had slipped her mind even that the poor fellow had a wife yet to be informed of her husband’s death. Rose sighed. It didn’t do to dwell on such things, for she of all people knew how murder affected people in different ways. Some were overly demonstrative of their emotions, crying and screaming and tearing their hair out, while others retreated within themselves, hardly daring to breathe, much less to converse with another living being.

  Rose allowed her gaze to fall on Daphne again and deemed that it would hardly matter to the woman if her hostess were there with her or not. And Rose did not want to be there, marooned in this room, awaiting the arrival of others to bring news. The amateur sleuth in her was impatient, pawing at the ground and pulling at the bit to get going.

  ‘Miss Spittlehouse, would you mind awfully if I left you for a little while?’ Rose came forward and placed a hand on Daphne’s arm. The woman turned and stared at her with eyes that were initially blank and unseeing, as if she had just awoken from a dream and was still not quite all there. ‘I feel I should show my face, so to speak,’ continued Rose. ‘Downstairs in the servants’ hall and outside by the lake, I mean. It sounds as if the fireworks have stopped, doesn’t it? Everyone will be going home in a minute and I feel I ought to say goodbye and thank them all for coming.’

  ‘No … I don’t mind, not at all,’ Daphne mumbled and looked away. ‘It doesn’t seem quite real, somehow. It’s all like a bad dream. I keep thinking that I’ll wake up in a moment and find this is all make believe; Masters dead and even my being here with you now, waiting for Linus.’ She clasped Rose’s arm, her fingernails jabbing into the girl’s skin as she did so, her eyes suddenly filled with emotion. ‘That’s why I forgot about Mrs Masters. It wasn’t because I didn’t care, it was because it didn’t feel real somehow, what had happened, I mean. You do believe me, don’t you; please say you do?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose, trying to keep the doubt from her voice. What Daphne was saying now seemed to be at variance to what she had said before. Had she not expressed a particular dislike for her brother’s servant? She thought it better, however, to agree with the woman. ‘I shall only be gone a short while,’ she said, making for the door. ‘If you require anything, you have only to ring the bell.’

  Outside on the landing the house seemed oddly deserted, though muffled sounds came to Rose’s ears from behind the green baize doors. She heard shouts and cries of excitement accompanied by the sound of hurrying footsteps on the servants’ staircases. It appeared to her that the children were making quite a game of running up and down the many stairs that descended from the attics above to the basement below. She walked into one of the rooms w
hose window overlooked the grounds at the back of the house encompassing the lakes. She felt that she knew Sedgwick’s grounds by heart now, though it was pitch black and in reality she could make out very little, save for a few lanterns in the distance, held up and carried at shoulder height. The fireworks had come to an end and the villagers were obviously making their way back from the display, in something of a winding procession to judge by the way the lights from the lanterns waved and lurched in the inky darkness. She could judge their progress across the grounds as they wound their way along the gravel paths between the tight box hedges and well-manicured lawns. It would not be very long now before they reached the top terrace and then the house itself; she must make haste.

  Rose had told Daphne that she ought to bid farewell to the villagers. It was, however, the children that she particularly wished to seek out. Being closeted in the room with her guest as she had been, with little to do but think, she had taken the opportunity to plan the first tentative steps of her inquiry into the manservant’s death. Not for a moment had it crossed her mind not to probe into Masters’ death. She could no more leave it to the police to do than she could forsake her new husband and Sedgwick. She felt, as she had often felt before, that she had an obligation to try and solve the crime. Murder seemed to follow her wherever she went of late; the very least she could do was to try and solve each case to the best of her ability.

  And on reflection, as she had sat bored and impatient in the boudoir, eager to be gainfully employed in the investigation, it had occurred to Rose that her first task must be to consult the children, in particular those children who had brought their guys to the festivities and positioned them in line for the judging. This of course threw up the question of how best she might go about the task. The sound of running feet, muted by an encasement of wood drew her attention again to the servants’ staircase, which was located at the end of the landing. The staircase itself was enclosed behind an innocuous wooden door, and consequently hidden from view. While there was nothing in theory to prevent her from opening the door and going down the steps to the basement below, she thought that her servants might take a dim view of such an action on her part. Certainly she would feel awkward, as if she were a trespasser, venturing unbidden into her staff’s private domain. If nothing else, her presence would be an inconvenience, adding to their already heavy burden of having to control a host of unruly infants.

  As she stood dithering, a movement in the great entrance hall below attracted her attention. Peering over the banisters, she spied one of the footmen crossing the hall to undertake some mission or other.

  ‘Charlie, is that you?’ Rose said, hurrying down the grand staircase, afraid lest the footman should disappear. ‘I know you all have a great deal on your hands, but would you be so good as to gather the children together for me? I mean the ones who made the guys. I should like to have a word with them. Perhaps you could have them come out into the hall to see me?’

  ‘As you wish, m’lady,’ said the footman, at considerable pains to keep both his face and his voice void of expression. The feat, however, appeared to be beyond him, for a moment later he added rather apologetically: ‘Begging your pardon, m’lady … I hope I’m not speaking out of turn if I say they’re little ruffians, they are. Mrs Farrier’s near tearing her hair out in the servants’ hall trying to keep them in line, Mr Manning too. If it hadn’t been for Mrs Dobson coming like she did … well, Mr Manning, he was all for going to get Mr Torridge, he was, threatened to do so just to put the fear of God in them, like. Mr Torridge wouldn’t stand for any of their nonsense. Running around the table they were and bumped into the dresser. Five plates and two cups, that’s what they’ve broken, china everywhere, and the racket ...’ He moved a step or two towards Rose. ‘I wouldn’t want to bring them into the hall, m’lady. Who knows what damage the little blighters … that’s to say, the children … begging your pardon, m’lady … would cause? And happen as not, some of them are light fingered. Mr Manning told Jack and me to keep a close eye on the spoons –’

  ‘Very well, Charlie,’ said Rose quickly, keen to put an end to the footman’s grumbling lest the police should arrive before she had carried out her task, ‘I’ll see them in the housekeeper’s sitting room, that’s if Mrs Farrier has no objection of course.’

  Rose waited in the hall while Charlie scurried off to round up the children as best he could. She knew that he would take the opportunity to warn the other servants of their mistress’ imminent arrival in the servants’ quarters and that they had better be on their best behaviour or else. A few minutes elapsed. She imagined that a flurry of maids had been dispatched to dust and tidy the housekeeper’s sitting room and that attempts were also being made to straighten the other rooms and corridors that had suffered as a result of the children’s excitement and over exuberance. She was not unduly surprised to find that it was the housekeeper herself who came to fetch her.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Farrier, how very good of you,’ Rose said, addressing the thin, pale woman, who was dressed all in black, save for white lace cuffs and a small lace collar. ‘I do hope you don’t mind my using your sitting room? I just wanted a word with the children. I understand from Charlie that they have kept you all very busy.’

  ‘That they have, m’lady, and no mistake,’ said the housekeeper rather grimly through pursed lips. ‘Up to mischief, that’s what they’ve been, not that we can’t manage them, because we can. Give Mrs Dobson and me a few more hours with the mites and we’d have had them as meek as lambs, so we would, and so well behaved that even their own mothers wouldn’t recognise them. ’Twas a pity Mrs Dobson had to leave sudden like she did. Now, this way if you will, m’lady.’

  The housekeeper led Rose through the green baize door into a long and winding passage, off which were located a number of rooms. Some of the doors were open and Rose took the opportunity to glance into them briefly as she passed, trying to guess their particular function. A washroom, a housemaid’s closet, a brushing room, a boot room … the names floated through her mind. Those were the minor rooms. Some were populated with servants who bowed and curtsied to her. There were more important rooms, she knew, such as the kitchen, the scullery, the stillroom, the butler’s pantry, and of course the servants’ hall which lay at the very heart of the servants’ quarters. It was this room that dominated the servants’ lives with its bell board; the one communal area where they might gather together to eat their meals and chat and gossip in their few idle hours.

  ‘I’ll ask that you’d please excuse the mess that there is on account of the children, m’lady,’ Mrs Farrier was saying. ‘Spotless, it usually is, I can assure you. I pride myself on it, Mr Manning and me both and Mr Torridge before him. I always says how we keeps a neat and tidy ship, most particular we are about it, I can tell you.’

  ‘I am sure you are.’

  They stopped abruptly outside a door. Rose had been so busy looking about her that it was all she could do to stop herself from walking in to the housekeeper. She found she had a sudden, childish urge to giggle, and bit her lip. The events of the evening must be catching up with her to put her in such a strange mood. It was only to be expected. She had bent forward to take a closer look at a guy she was supposedly to judge only to discover it was a murdered corpse.

  Her first impression of Mrs Farrier’s sitting room was that it was very similar to the housekeeper’s sitting room at Crossing Manor. There was the same genteel shabbiness about it for, while it contained a few very good pieces of furniture, they were rather worn and faded. The overall effect, however, was not unpleasing, for there was something comfortable and homely about the room which, Rose realised with a sudden stab of longing, was lacking in the grand drawing room upstairs. This sitting room reminded her of the mean little house she had shared with her mother. She remembered how they had refused to part with one or two pieces of furniture that had had particular sentimental value to them. The pieces had not been worn or faded, but they had still looked very out of pla
ce, dwarfing the small room in which they had been crammed both by their size and grandeur …

  There was a noise in the passage outside and, before Rose could quite gather her thoughts, the children shuffled into the room, their caps clutched in hands that were sticky from toffee, their faces smeared black from the smoke and habitual dirt. They were rather a motley group of children of various ages and differing heights, mostly boys, with ill-fitting clothes that they had either outgrown or would be growing into, and shoes that were quite down at heel. They blinked up at her with dark, suspicious eyes, their faces solemn.

  ‘Hallo. I cannot tell you how very pleased I am to see you all,’ began Rose kindly, smiling brightly and attempting to put them at their ease. ‘I do hope you have had enough to eat?’

  One or two of the children nodded, the others stared up at her, their eyes large and apprehensive; all remained resolutely silent, although one small boy with a rather runny nose sniffed audibly.

  ‘I wanted to see you all,’ Rose continued, not discouraged by their silence, fully aware that they were probably overawed by their surroundings, ‘because I wanted to congratulate you on your splendid guys. I could tell that a great deal of work had gone in to making them. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to decide on an eventual winner. If I could have done, I should have given a hamper to each of you.’

  ‘Tom shouldn’t have won,’ mumbled one brave soul. ‘My guy was much better than his.’

  The child in question received a sharp jab in the ribs from the elbow of the tallest boy there, accompanied by a hissed instruction that he keep quiet or else. The smaller boy shrank back and glared at him. Judging by their appearance, they were siblings. The older boy turned and addressed Rose with an air of composure beyond his years.

  ‘Very kind of you, I’m sure, your ladyship.’