The Asharton Manor Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1 - 4)

by Celina Grace

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Stanford,” the inspector said, quite unruffled. “I’m sure Mrs. Holt knows her own mind best. Perhaps a bit too much. Why on Earth didn’t you come straight to us, Mrs. Holt? Why go poking around after a murderer? You might have been killed.”

  “She nearly was,” said Joe, and I could feel him shiver a little against me.

  We were sat at the police station, in Inspector Clegg’s office. The sofa Joe and I were slumped on was surprisingly comfortable. Inspector Clegg leant against his desk, his arms folded, looking at me with a mixture of exasperation and, yes – I don’t think I was fooling myself - a little admiration.

  “I don’t know,” I said, after a momentary wince as my abused vocal chords made their protest known. “I really don’t know. I was just – I was a little mad, I think. I think everything had just poured on top of me, all of a sudden; Norman’s death and Sidney’s death, and finding Rose and even, perhaps, the war itself. It was just all too much all of a sudden and I just had to do something.”

  The inspector nodded, as if he understood. “What made you suspect Doctor Clift? Or Percy Willett, as I should perhaps call him.”

  “I was right, then?” I asked, tiredly.

  “Oh, I’m quite sure you were. We’re tracking down people who might have known him as Percy Willett; former soldiers, school friends and so forth. That’s probably why Norman Winter was so desperate to write his letter the night he died. He wanted corroboration, that he wasn’t mistaken.”

  “It had been years and years since he’d seen him,” I said. “But that very day, we’d been looking at the photograph of the three of them in the Great War. Imagine that, just looking at a photograph of someone you thought was long gone, and then looking up and seeing that same face, just older, coming towards you.”

  “He must have thought he was seeing things,” chipped in Joe. “Can you imagine? It must have been in his mind because of your conversation and him showing you the photograph, and then he hears the name of the new doctor and thinks ‘that’s funny, I used to know a bloke called that,’ and then he sees him but it isn’t him, but someone else he knew back then… it boggles the mind.”

  “Norman had had a dreadful shock that day,” I confirmed. “I’d never seen him so shaken. That was why, when I heard about his death the next day, I did think perhaps he might… he might have done it to himself. But then I knew Norman wouldn’t do that. He just wasn’t that sort of person. And when I found the photograph was missing… nothing was adding up right.”

  “But why Doctor Clift?” asked the inspector.

  I laughed and then winced at the pain in my throat. “It was the name. Norman always mentioned his friend as Chalky. I knew it was a nickname, it was the sort of thing that men do – call each other nicknames as an affectionate play on their real names. My husband’s friends used to do it too – Sidney ‘Bridge’ Holt, bridge as in Sydney Harbour Bridge, you see? A bit silly, really, but there was no harm in it. Joe was telling me a story about him and another lad swapping tags for luck and I looked at the wedding picture of Sidney and I against the white cliffs of Dover. Chalk cliffs…Chalky Clift. You see?”

  The inspector was shaking his head. “I appreciate your mental dexterity, Mrs. Holt, but that was such a little thing to go on. What did you think you were going to find in his office?”

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I truly don’t. I looked up Andrew Clift in Who’s Who and I saw that he was the last in a long line of very wealthy men. No family left to see through any attempt to impose on them, but a healthy inheritance to claim. They did actually look alike, as well, from what I remember from Norman’s photograph. Andrew and Doctor Clift, I mean. Andrew and Percy. Gosh, it gets confusing, doesn’t it?”

  “You were very foolish, to put yourself in such danger,” Inspector Clegg said sternly. “You have young Joe here to thank for your life. I hope you realise that?”

  “I was following you,” blurted Joe. He hung his head. “Again. But I just wanted to thank you for listening to me the night before. I saw you go in the doctor’s office and I saw him go in a few minutes later. The door closed. I don’t know – I just felt uneasy about it. So I got closer and then of course, I heard what you said and heard the scuffle…”

  He fell silent. I reached for his free hand and held it and he smiled down at me, bashful but pleased.

  There was a moment of silence. Inspector Clegg regarded us with a look on his face that was half cynical, half indulgent.

  “Well,” he said, after a moment. “There are statements to take and paperwork to do, but I think those can wait until tomorrow. Joe, why don’t you take Mrs. Holt home? I think she needs to rest.”

  The sun was shining brightly as we left the station, glittering off the surfaces of the puddles that the morning’s rain had left behind. We walked slowly, Joe solicitously supporting me with an arm beneath mine. It felt odd to be walking in such close proximity to a man, after such a long time walking alone. But after a while, our steps fell into the same sort of rhythm and I was almost sorry when we reached my garden gate.

  “Well,” said Joe, “Here we are. Let me help you inside.”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Really. I can take care of myself.”

  He gave a great shout of laughter. “Oh, I know that. But why should you have to? Don’t you deserve a bit of care and support? Especially after all you’ve been through?”

  I stared up at him. I thought back to what Doctor Clift had said, almost the last thing I remembered hearing before the blackness began to bloom. I deserved that money. I earned it! That was my reward, that was what was due to me… That was what war did to some people, to us all perhaps; warped us and changed us and made us into different people. I wasn’t the Vivian who had married Sidney, that day we stood before the white cliffs, I was someone far different now. Just as the manor wasn’t the beautiful home that it had once been, and Joe wasn’t the young innocent boy he had once been. We were all different. I thought back to the past and how it had been, and knew that, finally, I had to leave it behind. It was the future that was important now. I had to leave the past behind.

  “You’re right,” I said to Joe. “Why don’t you come in and make me a cup of tea?”

  “Champion,” said Joe. He took my proffered arm and we walked up to my front door together.

  THE END

  The Asharton Manor Mysteries

  The Rhythm of Murder (1973)

  Celina Grace

  © Celina Grace 2014

  It was really weird, the way we ended up at the manor. We weren’t even supposed to have been in Midford. Janey and I had been making our way to Bristol, to a guy we knew there who was part of a commune in the one of the warehouses down by the docks. The driver who’d picked us up on the outskirts of Chippenham said he couldn’t take us any further than Midford. He was an uptight little man with a fussy moustache, the last person you’d have thought would have picked up two hippy hitch-hikers, but perhaps it was because we were both girls that he took pity on us and gave us a ride. He kept glancing at us in the rear view mirror with a half fascinated, half appalled look on his face; his eyes skittering over our hair and our beads and the flower I’d drawn on one cheek in eyeliner, as if we were the most exotic things he’d ever seen before in his life. It started to freak me out a bit, to be honest, and I was relieved when he dropped us off on the outskirts of the village. We clambered out of the Morris Minor and lugged our rucksacks, guitar and bags to the kerb. It was only when I saw the sign for Midford that I remembered something.

  “Hey, I’ve been here before,” I told Janey. “My Aunty Viv used to live here. Aunty Viv and Uncle Joe.”

  “No way,” said Janey.

  “Yeah,” I said, looking around. “I stayed here for a week, one summer. It was cool.”

  “It must be destiny, Eve,” said Janey, grinning. She heaved her guitar onto her back with a grunt. “You’ve been drawn back here for some purpose yet to be revealed.”

&nb
sp; “Yeah, well,” I retorted, pulling my rucksack straps over my shoulders, “I’m not going to find out what it is stuck here on this road, am I? Come on. Let’s walk.”

  We began to walk slowly towards the village, shuffling along the dusty strips of grass that lined the road in our sandals. It was hot; high summer, and the weather had been fantastic for several weeks. It was hard to imagine the winter up ahead, that there would ever be a time when the sun wouldn’t shine but that was what it was like to be young then; the future was one big, rosy blank and all that mattered was the shimmering present. I turned my face up to the sun, shutting my eyes and enjoying the red-tinged dazzle through my closed eyelids. Then I tripped over the hem of my skirt and nearly fell flat on my face, cursing and causing Janey to shriek with laughter.

  It didn’t take us long to walk to the centre of Midford. It was just a long street lined with pretty old cottages, a couple of shops and a tiny café with a bleached and faded awning that sheltered a single table and two chairs. Janey and I hesitated for a second outside the café but then we noticed the pub further up ahead and continued our journey. We passed the neatly tended village green next to the church, which was larger than you would have expected in such a little village. I remembered, vaguely, playing on the green with my cousins – there were a couple of battered swings and a rusty climbing frame was situated on one side of the main area of grass. We passed what had once been the police station, now closed up with the windows boarded over, before we got to the pub. Janey looked up at the sign, which depicted a woman with long flowing hair, dressed in what was probably supposed to be a toga but looked like a badly wound bedsheet.

  “’The Goddess’,” Jamie read from the sign. Then she frowned. “Weird name for a pub.”

  ”They clearly renamed it in my honour when they knew I was coming,” I said, and Janey snorted and poked me in the back. Snickering, I pushed open the door of the pub. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dimness but then I became aware of a line of people, mostly men, at the bar, giving us disapproving looks.

  ”Ooh, getting looks,” I murmured to Janey. She dropped her smile and her eyes; she was always a bit more sensitive to public opinion than I was. Putting my chin up, I sauntered boldly up to the bar and asked for a gin and tonic.

  The barmaid was one of those buxom wenches who would have looked better in a seventeenth century off-the-shoulder gown, rather than the strained blouse and mini-skirt that she was actually wearing. She looked at me rather nervously but she did at least serve us. I could feel waves of disapproval buffeting me from either side from the two old men perched on the bar stools next to me. I flashed them a broad smile – not returned, how surprising – and took our drinks back to Janey, who was still standing by the door.

  ”Beer garden,” I instructed, indicating with an inclination of my head that she was to follow me.

  It was actually a pretty nice beer garden for a small country pub: full of tubs of brightly coloured flowers and a few wooden tables with striped parasols, now rather bleached and faded from the sun. Janey and I took our drinks to a suitable table. Despite the lovely day, we were the only people out in the garden, apart from a young bloke sat right at the back. He had long dark hair, a scrub of beard and wore aviator sunglasses. Despite their disguise, for a moment I thought there was something familiar about him. I looked again more closely, through the cover of lighting my cigarette. The familiarity that I’d noticed wavered and faded. Just coincidence, then.

  Janey was saying something about catching the train to Bristol and whether we might still make the commune by the end of the day.

  “Train?” I said, exhaling a long blue ribbon of smoke. “No trains here, chick. Doctor Beeching did for the station here a long time ago. I guess we might be able to get a bus – or more likely three buses.”

  “Yeah, that might work,” Janey said unenthusiastically. I could tell what she was thinking – hours of travelling on a hot and stinky bus. Not something that I was looking forward to either. I was quite content just to sit here in this sunny little garden, getting slowly tipsy and enjoying the sun on my back.

  We stopped talking for a moment. Janey took her novel out of her beaded and fringed leather bag. I unfolded my copy of New Musical Express. Both of us were supposed to be doing some holiday reading for our university courses and, of course, neither of us could be bothered. I turned the pages of my paper idly – I’d already read most of it. My eye was caught by a photograph of Blue Turner, lead singer of Dirty Rumours; a paparazzi shot of him leaving a restaurant in Chelsea Road, the tiny girl on his arm almost cloaked by her long hair, the other band members around him. Another man was in the background. I drew in my breath and looked again at the man sat on the other side of the garden. Could it be…?

  I looked down at the photograph, at the man on the edge of the picture. Long dark hair, scrub of beard. No aviator shades in the photograph, but slightly slanted dark eyes with thick black brows. When I looked up at the man across the garden again, he was staring back at me.

  Quickly I dropped my eyes, heart speeding up a little. Janey was oblivious, still buried in Valley of the Dolls. I stared down at the paper, aware from the corner of my eye that the man was getting up from his table and making his way over to us. Perhaps he was totally uncool with being stared at. Perhaps… but by then, he’d arrived at the side of our table. I looked up and saw with relief that he was smiling.

  “Hi, girls. How you doing?”

  Janey looked up, startled. The man looked at her and there was a flicker of some emotion that crossed his face. I couldn’t have put my finger on exactly what it was. Some tiny sharpening of expression. A momentary focus.

  “Oh, hi,” said Janey. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

  “Got a smoke you can spare?”

  “Sure.” I held out my packet and, a moment later, my lighter. His fingers lightly touched mine and I noticed his little finger nail was much longer than any of his other nails; long and lightly curved.

  “Hey, thanks.”

  “Want to join us?” I asked and he nodded and smiled easily, sliding onto the bench next to me.

  The NME still lay open on the table before us. I put my elbow casually over the picture of Blue Turner as I twisted a little to face our new friend.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Race.”

  “Race?” I wanted to give Janey a kick under the table, to make her giggle. “That your first name?”

  “Yeah,” said Race. He had a drawl to his voice, an undercurrent of some accent that I couldn’t quite place.

  “Far out. I’m Eve, and this is Janey.”

  We all sipped our drinks and a slightly awkward silence fell. I decided to throw caution to the winds.

  “Is this you?” I pointed, indicating the photograph. Race’s smile grew. The dark beard surrounding his mouth made the grin into something rather wolfish.

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “You know Blue Turner?” asked Janey incredulously. “From Dirty Rumours?”

  “Know him? I’m his tour manager, doll. You two girls fans?”

  Janey and I looked at each other over the table and burst out laughing.

  “Only since about birth,” I said, still giggling. “You’re seriously the tour manager for Dirty Rumours? That is far out, man.”

  “Want to meet him?”

  Janey and I froze for a second. Had he said what we thought he’d said?

  “Meet him?” whispered Janey. “Really – really meet him?”

  Race was still grinning. “Oh, yeah. He lives just near here. He loves to meet the fans.” His grin grew wider and I thought for a second that he winked, just a flicker behind the opaqueness of his sunglasses. “Especially fans who look like you do.”

  His youth and his handsomeness somehow robbed his remark of anything creepy. Janey looked down, almost blushing. I felt a slow burn of something in my stomach – it was probably the gin but it could equally have bee
n excitement.

  “Yeah, we’d love to meet him,” I said, as casually as I could.

  “Let’s go then, girls.” Race jumped up even as he said it.

  “But, our drinks—“ Janey clearly remembered just what we’d paid for them.

  “Hey, take it from me, you won’t go short of a drink at the manor,” said Race, gesturing towards the beer garden gate.

  That was the first mention of the manor. I didn’t think any more of it at first, I thought Race was just making a kind of joke, like calling your girlfriend ‘my old lady’ or something like that. I wasn’t actually expecting to go to an actual manor house. We were walking down the street by now, towards the car that Race had indicated was parked at the bottom of the street. As we got closer to it, both Janey and I stopped dead.

  “Ladies, after you,” said Race, digging in his pocket for what I presumed were the keys.

  “That’s a—“ Words failed me for a second. “That’s a hearse.”

  “Yeah, doll. That a problem?”

  “Um…” What could I have said? As Janey took a tiny step closer to me, I remembered reading something about this in the music papers. All the band members drove hearses, and Blue himself drove an ancient morgue van. It was their thing, sticking two fingers up at convention and perhaps at death itself.

  I pulled myself together. The last thing I considered myself to be was conventional.

  “It’s cool,” I said and began to saunter towards it. Janey followed, a little more slowly. Race smiled and retrieved the thing he’d been searching for from his pocket – not keys, but a couple of freshly rolled joints. Now things were looking up.

  Riding in a hearse was actually pretty comfortable, especially when stoned. The grass that Race gave us was strong; smooth and powerful, just like Dirty Rumours’ music. Or so I thought, giggling to myself, as the large black vehicle left the main road and began to follow an overgrown drive that wound seemingly for years through woods and forests; beech trees and pine trees and through dappled spears of light that seemed to strike through the windows of the car and refract into glittering fireworks.