The Magic Chair Murder

by Diane Janes

  ‘That must have been quite lonely for her.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Mrs Roseby paused to look around the kitchen. ‘All these lovely things but no friends.’ She turned her gaze back on Fran. ‘So, what is it you’re doing here? A valuation of the estate, is it?’

  ‘I’m looking for some research notes which Mrs Dexter compiled – about the children’s author, Robert Barnaby.’

  Mrs Roseby looked blank. ‘Was that what she did – research? And there’s me thinking she didn’t have a job.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly a job – more of a hobby.’

  It took almost another half an hour to get rid of Mrs Roseby, who apparently knew very little about her long-term neighbour but a very great deal about various other residents of Ivegill, which she was only too eager to share. In the end, Fran became so desperate that she had to say pointedly, ‘I’m sorry, but I really do have to get on. Thank you so much for the tea. It was very thoughtful.’ She then stood up and headed purposefully back to the study, leaving the other woman to see herself out.

  Once back at the desk, she finally opened the box file and began to read.

  SEVENTEEN

  It was much later than she had intended when Fran finally left Langdale House, and by the time she had extricated herself from the errand of returning the keys to the garrulous Mrs Roseby, she only just made the last possible bus and then had to wait over an hour for one of the connections. The journey home seemed endless: each of the buses crawled and coughed up the inclines as if they would never make the top, and on the final leg, the thought of what had happened to Linda grew in her mind. It was horribly easy to imagine all sorts of things, travelling along darkened roads with passing images half glimpsed in the gathering darkness beyond the bus windows. There were only a handful of other travellers on the bus, and once she got down on to the road she was completely alone. She paused a moment or two as the bus trundled off in the direction of Ulverston, in order to let her eyes grow accustomed to the dark. After that, it was not difficult to negotiate the familiar unlit lane, though the combination of the clock and the horse’s head requested by Christina Harper, together with the notebooks and picture removed on her own initiative, weighed heavily in her basket.

  When the bulk of Bee Hive Cottage appeared at last, she saw that it was completely in darkness. Ada had of course departed at the usual hour, not thinking to leave a light burning in the sitting-room window, since she would probably have expected her employer to arrive home during the hours of daylight. Fran was therefore forced to negotiate the short distance up the path, which led from the lane to the front door, through a garden full of shadows. Then she fumbled the operation of unlocking the door, at one point almost dropping her key. Just the thought of that made her heart beat faster. She would never be able to see a key in the pool of blackness at her feet.

  You’re going to have to sell, said a voice in her head. You can’t go on like this, getting the wind up every time you have to come home after dark.

  As she had expected, Mrs Snegglington was in a haughty mood over the lateness of her supper and, once she had wolfed down her food, adopted a policy of non-fraternization. Fran left her sulking in the kitchen. Now that she had lit the oil lamps and done her duty by the cat, she could scarcely wait to telephone Tom, all the worries and the frustrations of the journey forgotten in her eagerness to pass on what she had found out. Then there seemed to be an interminable delay while the operator was connecting them, but at last she heard his voice on the line: ‘Hello? Is that you, Fran?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it’s me. I found Linda’s notes and a copy of her speech and I’ve read it all the way through. Believe me, The Magic Chair: Fact or Fiction is pure dynamite.’

  ‘Wait, hang on. Let me shut the door so I can hear you properly … Go on, what does it say?’

  ‘If Linda is right – and I suspect that she is – the magic chair in Furnival Towers is a complete fraud. In fact, the whole Furnival Towers connection is a sham. According to Linda’s presentation, she was rereading Hugh Allonby’s original Barnaby biography about six months ago when she realized that something didn’t quite fit, so she went to the Vester House Museum and checked Robert Barnaby’s diaries and there’s no record in them of him ever staying at Furnival Towers at all. In 1891 he stayed with an old friend who had a house on Longridge Fell, so he would certainly have seen Furnival Towers from the outside, but Linda couldn’t find any evidence at all that he’d ever actually set foot in the place. Then she went to the county archives and did some digging about Furnival Towers itself. Back when Barnaby began writing the Magic Chair books, it was still owned by the Furnival family, but they sold it to the Drydens back in 1910.’

  ‘And that’s when it was converted into a hotel.’

  ‘Exactly. But the thing is, the Drydens only bought the house – not the contents. Apparently the original sale bills and advertising still survive and the sale particulars are absolutely clear on that point. The original contents had been sold about eighteen months before the house was auctioned off, and there’s more. According to Linda, there are some old photographs in Country Life showing the interior of Furnival Towers before the big sell-off, and there’s absolutely no sign of the magic chair.’

  ‘So when the hotel brochure says that it stands in the entrance hall, as it has done for generations …’

  ‘It’s basically a lot of drivel. Linda couldn’t find any reference to the chair being there until Hugh Allonby mentioned it in an article he wrote for a magazine not long after Robert Barnaby died.’

  ‘But that wasn’t until 1915?’

  ‘Quite. It sounds as if the magic chair wasn’t based on a real chair at all. It just came out of Robert Barnaby’s imagination, and the house in the stories probably isn’t Furnival Towers either. Barnaby himself never said it was. It just happens to be similar in one or two respects, and I suppose an awful lot of other large country houses would fit the bill just as well. The Drydens must have acquired a suitable chair at some point and painted it up.’

  ‘The Barnaby connection is a huge selling point for the hotel,’ Tom said. ‘In fact, it’s their main selling point. It won’t do Marcus Dryden’s business any good if news gets out that essentially there is no Barnaby connection.’

  ‘It won’t do Hugh Allonby any good either. He’s built a reputation as the Robert Barnaby expert, but his research can’t have been up to much if he just accepted a story the Drydens told him and has helped to peddle the myth ever since.’

  ‘Do you suppose Linda’s right?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose she could have made it up – maybe it’s a spoof?’

  ‘We can always check it ourselves,’ Tom said. ‘Has she given details of all her sources?’

  ‘Yes. Unlike Hugh’s books, which always have gushy acknowledgements about the generous help and advice he’s received from the Dryden family and Mrs Ingoldsby at the Vester House Museum, but no actual document references, Linda actually numbers her sources and gives chapter and verse on absolutely everything. I’ve still a couple of notebooks to look at yet. I’m going to finish going through them this evening.’

  ‘Then I’ll let you get on,’ said Tom. ‘You’re doing brilliantly.’

  Fran spent the next four hours poring over Linda’s copious notes. In her determination to ferret out the truth, she had forgotten how hungry she ought to be and made do with occasional pots of tea. Linda’s methodical approach made things easy for her. Inside the notebook labelled ‘RB/Magic Chair’, Linda had not only transcribed the relevant information but had also included the reference numbers by which she had called up the original documents. As she read page after page of Linda’s neat, upright handwriting, Fran became ever more convinced that Linda had not made anything up.

  Robert Barnaby wasn’t the only author Linda had interested herself in, but so far as Fran could see there was nothing else contentious in the files. Linda’s interests had lain in biographical detail, sources and inspiration. She
had not been routinely digging dirt, Fran thought – she had merely opened up a book one day and been hit in the eye with something inconsistent.

  It was only when she finally looked up from her labours that her eye fell on the trio of irregular bundles, wrapped in old newspaper, which had travelled in her shopping bag alongside the notebooks and papers. The first two were the items which Christina Harper had asked her to collect. She suspected that their value was to be reckoned more in monetary worth than sentiment. Whereas Mrs Harper had coveted a clock and a drawing-room ornament, Fran guessed that the thing Linda had prized above all else in the house was her collection of books, which was now destined to be hauled off to a sale room and dispersed to the four winds. She hoped their new owners would cherish them as much as Linda clearly had.

  Belatedly realizing that she was ravenous, she went into the kitchen and cut some doorsteps of bread, which she used to make navvy-like cheese and pickle sandwiches that would have horrified her mother, who always had all the crusts cut off. As she chomped her way through her improvised supper, Fran reflected that it looked as if Tom’s million-to-one shot had come in after all. Linda Dexter had been silenced for the sake of a research paper which challenged the provenance of a piece of old furniture. The police obviously hadn’t envisaged anything like that, otherwise they would surely have taken away all the relevant papers themselves.

  It was only then that she thought about explaining their theory to the police and realized how thin it would sound. Did one paper at an obscure conference really matter that much? Even if Linda had delivered her lecture, wouldn’t Hugh Allonby have simply pooh-poohed the whole thing? If he had politely dismissed Linda’s discoveries – saying that she was confused or mistaken – he would probably have received unquestioning support from the vast majority of the society’s membership, most of whom believed him to be an infallible source on all things Barnaby. The more she thought about it, the greater became her certainty that when the chips were down, many of the members would not have wanted to believe Linda. The chair was almost sacred to them, representing one of the few tangible links to their favourite author. Would it really have mattered all that much to Hugh Allonby and Marcus Dryden if Linda’s paper had been delivered? Wasn’t this whole thing the very thinnest of motives for murder? But if that was so, then there must be something else …

  From nowhere in particular, a vision of Stephen-with-a-ph-Latchford drifted into her mind. She had seen and heard nothing of him since her refusal to admit him to the house a few days before and, with a bit of luck, he would take the hint and not come back. Even so, there was this odd coincidence that Stephen-with-a-ph had until recently lived not far from Linda Dexter. Well, so what? That didn’t prove anything.

  EIGHTEEN

  Fran had arranged to convey the clock and the horse’s head to Christina Harper’s house the following morning. The man who sat in front of her on the bus had a newspaper and Fran could see the headline over his shoulder: No Clear Victory In Election – Count Continues. She thought of the pitiful queue outside the Labour Exchange and sighed. Mr Lloyd George’s message had evidently fallen on deaf ears. She had rewrapped the items requested by Mrs Harper in brown paper and string and, taking a leaf out of Mrs Roseby’s book, made no attempt to extract them from the confines of her bag when she presented herself on the doorstep, an act of cheek which was rewarded with admission to the house and the offer of another cup of tea.

  ‘Did you find what you wanted?’ Mrs Harper asked when they were seated again in the front parlour, a teapot under a cosy standing on the table and the two objects of the errand safely handed over.

  ‘Yes, thank you. I’ve got the notebooks and things with me, just in case you wanted to see what I’ve taken.’

  Christina Harper waved the idea away like someone discouraging a gnat. ‘It’s all the same to me. I don’t suppose it would interest anyone outside your society.’

  ‘Probably not,’ Fran said, while attempting to banish the image of a large policeman from her mind.

  ‘I can’t remember if you take sugar,’ her hostess said as she proffered a bowl which did not match the teacups.

  Declining the sugar and putting the imaginary policeman firmly to one side, Fran embarked upon the other topic towards which she intended to steer her hostess, saying casually, ‘Mrs Roseby mentioned that Linda had lived in that house for quite a long time.’

  ‘That’s right. Let’s see now, it would have been about 1919 … That’s right. It was the year me and Mr Harper got married. Ironic, really. I was getting into one marriage while she was getting out of another.’

  ‘She couldn’t have been married very long.’ Fran adopted a sympathetic look, which she hoped would encourage confidences.

  ‘Hardly any time at all. It was a funny business altogether, if you ask me.’ When Fran smiled encouragingly, Christina Harper continued, ‘I never understood why they got married in the first place. I’ll be honest with you – they got married in such a rush, our mam thought at first that David Dexter must have got our Lindy into the family way. She was old fashioned, see, our mam; she wouldn’t have asked how things stood outright. Well, they didn’t in those days, did they?’

  And nor do they now, so far as I’m aware, thought Fran, who was surprised and somewhat embarrassed at being the recipient of such indelicate information from a relative stranger.

  ‘Well, anyway, there wasn’t a baby on the way. They moved up to Carlisle – that’s where he came from originally – and we didn’t see much of them after that. Seemed like no time at all they were going their separate ways again. I used to say to Mr Harper, if you had to explain a marriage the way you had to explain a murder, our Lindy would have said that she married David Dexter while temporarily of unsound mind.’ She chuckled to herself and Fran joined in politely.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, it was in that year or two just after her father died, and to be honest, she was never the same person after that.’

  ‘Her father?’ Fran prompted politely.

  ‘That’s right. We were only half-sisters – didn’t I tell you that? Same mother, different fathers. Lindy’s father left my mother for another woman. Just walked out on her, he did. Mam only found out after he was gone that she was carrying our Lindy. She wanted him to stand by her but he wouldn’t, and in the end she agreed to divorce him. He had the money, you see, and could make it worth her while. Mind you, he didn’t give her much by comparison with what he should have, not by a long way. But he was a clever one, you see. Self-made man, he was, and I daresay he could afford clever solicitors and all, whereas our mam was just ordinary and didn’t have anything behind her. Anyway, after a short time Mam got married again. He was a grand fellow, my dad. He always treated our Lindy like she was his own, made no difference between the two of us at all. Although Lindy knew our dad wasn’t her real father, she called him Dad and everything. She never saw her real father back then, not when we was little; he was still busy making his fortune down south and he was never talked of. It didn’t seem to matter to Lindy – not then. She was always a happy little kiddie, Mam said – though she generally had her nose in a book, but some little ’uns are like that, aren’t they?’

  Fran nodded in confirmation and Christina continued. ‘Of course, when she started growing up a bit, well – you know what girls can be like. Whenever our dad told her off about something she’d start going on about how he wasn’t her real Dad and how she had a right to know who her father was, all that sort of thing. A lot of chaps would have given her a good hiding and told her to pipe down, but as I’ve said, my father was a gentle sort of man and eventually he and Mam said that if Lindy really wanted to meet her other Dad, maybe it could be arranged, and perhaps that would put her mind at rest and she’d stop going on about it. So then Mam wrote to Lindy’s father and it was all fixed up for them to meet.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Fran. ‘What a peculiar situation. How old was Linda by this time?’

 
; ‘She was about fifteen or sixteen, I think. I don’t really remember much about it, but of course it was talked about later on, when I was older. Anyway, they met and he made a great big fuss of her. What Mam and Dad hadn’t realized was that by that time he’d had this great big place built on the edge of Windermere, where he came every summer, and all the while we’d been living in a two-up two-down in Kendal.

  ‘Of course, Lindy went off to see him, all got up in her Sunday frock, and came back full of it. Talking about his fancy house and his boat on the lake. Our house wasn’t good enough for her after that. Instead of making things better, it made things worse. “The Little Princess”, my mam used to call her. Talk about big ideas. Why couldn’t we have nice new clothes and why didn’t we have any maids? Then her own father started taking her about in his ruddy motorcar and buying her presents: expensive stuff. All those years that he’d never bothered with her, never so much as sent her a birthday card, and suddenly all this.’ Mrs Harper spread her arms wide, as if to encompass the whole world.

  ‘Did she ever say that she wanted to go and live with him?’

  Linda’s stepsister gave a hollow laugh. ‘There was a fly in that pot of ointment. His second wife was still alive then and for all that she pretended to be nice to Lindy and make her welcome, she didn’t want some cuckoo coming into the nest, queering the pitch for her Penelope.’

  ‘Penelope?’

  ‘Aye, Penelope. Lindy’s father took up with this other woman down south and once he wasn’t tied to Mam, he married her and had another daughter. So our Lindy had a stepsister on both sides – me from Mam and Penelope from her dad.’