A Dark and Stormy Night

by Jeanne M. Dams

  But the person who stepped out of the helicopter, who was helped out of the helicopter by a man with a microphone, hobbling on crutches and smiling broadly, was Michael Leonev, aka Mike Leonard.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It was still Mike.

  He struck a pose, using one crutch like a royal staff. ‘Hail the conquering hero comes!’ he shouted. ‘Or rather, not so terribly heroic, and not the conqueror of anything in particular – but definitely, my dear, I have arrived!’

  He snapped me out of my daze. I knew everyone in the house would be out here in seconds. I ran to him, faster than I knew I could move, and pulled his head down so I could make myself heard over the rotors and the clamour of the reporters.

  ‘Mike, listen! I’m terribly glad to see you, but all that has to wait. Can you keep everyone occupied for fifteen minutes, at least? Longer if possible, but fifteen minimum? And in the house! As far away from the kitchen, and from the back windows, as you can manage.’

  ‘Dear lady! Mine not to question why, mine but to . . . yes, my dears! This thy son was dead and is alive! Kill the fatted calf! But do let’s save felicitations until we’re inside and I can sit down, or better yet lie down. I confess to a trifling fatigue.’

  The women, being nearest, had arrived first and clustered around Mike, chattering and laughing and questioning – and being questioned by the eager media. I slipped away unnoticed and lay in wait for my quarry.

  As I had half-expected, he was the last out of the cloister, walking slowly, as if reluctant to leave the work even to welcome back one we had believed dead. I cut him off from the rest.

  ‘Mr Bates, there’s something urgent in the kitchen. Can you spare a moment?’

  He smiled at me, that movie-star smile, that heartbreaking smile so like the smile in the locket, and gestured for me to precede him.

  When we were safely inside, I saw the last of the house party vanish up the stairs in Mike’s wake. Two of the men were carrying him, to the accompaniment of great hilarity. Only then did I began to speak, very quietly, in case any policemen were within earshot.

  ‘John, I know all about it. I know the whole story, what you did and why, but I’m not going to tell anyone just yet. You must leave, you and Rose, you must leave now! Take your friend’s boat and go.’

  ‘Madam, what are you talking about?’ He clung to the Jeeves persona. I admired his nerve, but I could have shaken him.

  ‘Don’t waste time!’ I hissed. ‘There are still police in the house. They’ll figure it out soon, and then it will be too late for you. You have two options: stay and be arrested for the murder of Dave Harrison, or leave this place and save yourselves.’

  He had a third option, but I hoped he wouldn’t think of it. We were alone in that part of the house, and he still carried the hammer he had been using in the cloister. If he kept his nerve—

  But he didn’t. He saw the certainty in my face and broke.

  ‘I— it wasn’t murder! I swear it. I never meant— Rose, tell her!’

  We had arrived in the kitchen, where Rose was stirring a heavenly-smelling pot. She looked from one of us to the other, turned pale, and dropped the spoon. It clattered to the floor.

  She started to speak, but I held up a hand. ‘Rose, listen. I know everything. John’s family story, his love for this house, everything. And because I have a good deal of sympathy for both of you, I’m giving you this chance to get away. If you don’t take it, it means a long prison term for John, and maybe for you, too, if you’re convicted as an accessory. Please listen!’ I was near tears of desperation. ‘You only have a few minutes before everyone will come back downstairs, and they may come to the kitchen. You don’t have time to decide, or explain, or pack up. Just go!’

  John put his arm around Rose. She leaned close to him as he cleared his throat. ‘It’s very good of you, madam, but life away from this house would have little meaning for me. I will not leave.’ Jeeves was back in perfect command of himself. ‘But I cannot allow you to believe that I am a murderer. I must explain what happened. There is no great hurry. If you would come with me?’

  I followed him to the part of the kitchen wing I had never seen, the Bateses’ private quarters. The cozy sitting room had no fire in the fireplace – no dry wood, I remembered – but it was beautifully warm. On the mantel above the cold hearth were pictures, among them a large copy of the tiny photo I had seen in the locket.

  ‘She was my grandmother,’ said John, following my gaze. ‘You probably knew that. But do please sit down, Mrs Martin.’

  ‘I thought she must be. Did she die in childbirth?’

  ‘She died,’ said John with precision, ‘of childbirth, but not in the process. She killed herself when she realized the father of the child was not going to marry her, as he had promised.’

  ‘The father being Harry Upshawe.’

  John nodded.

  ‘But John, who raised the child, then? The child who became your mother?’

  ‘The child was a boy, who became my father. He was raised by the man who gave him his name, the man who should have been my grandfather, Samuel Bates.’

  And the last little piece clicked neatly into place. ‘They were engaged, then?’

  ‘They were before that devil from hell came along. Annie Watkins was parlourmaid here then. There was still lots of money, and they had a large staff. Not what it had been before the wars, but big enough. It provided a lot of employment hereabouts, did Branston Abbey. Annie lived here, and that was the death of her. She fell in love with “the young master”.’

  His tone of voice splashed the phrase with vitriol.

  ‘She was sure he would marry her. He was full of charm, so they say, and full of promises. But he wanted to make sure, he said, that the baby was a boy. He wanted an heir, and though the village was littered with his bastards, they all happened to be girls.

  ‘So Annie turned down Samuel Bates and waited for Prince Charming to walk her down the aisle.’

  ‘And instead he told her he was going to America,’ I said sadly.

  ‘He didn’t even have the courtesy to tell her. She found out from one of the other servants. And then, as my grandfather – as Samuel Bates told the story, she dressed herself in her best black, kissed her baby, and took a bottle of sleeping pills.’

  ‘And Samuel Bates went to have it out with Harry Upshawe. Samuel worked on the estate, too, I presume?’

  ‘Head gardener. He meant to beat Harry within an inch of his life, but . . .’

  ‘But he went that extra inch too far, and so Harry had to be buried under the oak tree. It would be easy for a gardener to disguise the digging. And your grandmother, a suicide, couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground, so Samuel walled her up in that bedroom – for spite, I suppose. But wasn’t there talk, in the village and on the estate? Questions about what had become of her body?’

  ‘There was. Samuel was a large, powerful man, and he had a temper when he’d taken a pint too much. Nobody much crossed him. And Samuel never told anyone what he had done, not even my father or me. He simply said he’d taken good care of Annie, and he hoped she’d haunt the Upshawes to the end of their days. That was why—’

  I heard voices and laughter. The hungry crowds were assembling for lunch. We had very little time.

  ‘And . . . Dave Harrison?’

  ‘Mr Harrison,’ said John, again in that cold, precise tone, ‘was an arrogant fool. He thought he could push ahead his scheme about some sort of holiday camp. It would never have happened – this is a Grade One listed building – but he was about to kill Laurence Upshawe to keep him from talking about Harry. I have no great love for Upshawes, but he was of the estate. My claim as heir is better than his. I am the son of Harry Upshawe’s only son. But the present Mr Upshawe did inherit, according to the law. I stopped Mr Upshawe being killed, but Harrison had already struck him with that stone. We struggled. Harrison slipped and fell in the river. He couldn’t swim. I reached out a branch to him, but it wa
s too short.’

  ‘And you led the searchers to Laurence, so he could be found and cared for.’

  ‘I should have taken them there sooner, but I was afraid everyone would think what you did think. I bear the guilt for that, if Mr Upshawe suffers any permanent damage. But Rose bears no blame. She knew nothing about it until yesterday. I thought it as well to tell her, with police in the house. She will carry on here until I can return.’ He kissed her, then straightened his back. ‘May I ask you to excuse me, madam? I must go to find a police officer.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘There was talk in the village, of course, even years later when I was old enough to understand.’ Pat held the floor as we sat in the drawing room over postprandial drinks. It was our last such gathering. With a mummy, a skeleton, a recent body, and a limping dancer to transport, not to mention various pieces of evidence and, of lesser importance, a good many house guests, the police had commandeered workers from every available source to clear the drive and put a temporary bridge in place. Tomorrow we could all go home.

  The media had come again, and gone again. The police had gone, taking John Bates with them. They promised to release Julie in the morning and bring her back here. I didn’t envy Jim and Joyce having to deal with her.

  ‘No one knew for certain what had become of Annie Watkins,’ Pat went on. ‘Some said old Samuel had disposed of her body in the convenient river. Some doubted she was dead at all, said she’d fled to cousins in Canada.’

  ‘Not to her parents?’ asked Lynn.

  ‘She was an orphan. That’s one reason she lived at the Abbey.’

  ‘And Samuel never told anyone?’ Alan asked.

  ‘Old Samuel could be an offensive fellow in his cups. John Bates holds him in high esteem, as well he might, but the villagers didn’t like him much. There were even those who said he’d walled Annie up in the Abbey alive.’

  ‘Not so very far from the truth,’ I said with a shudder.

  Pat nodded. ‘At any rate, I gather there began to be an odd feeling about the Abbey in the sixties, talk of ghosts and so on.’

  ‘Was that why it was so hard to sell? I’m a bit surprised Laurence stuck it out as long as he did.’

  ‘Perhaps there were other attractions in the neighbourhood,’ I said, for her ears only.

  She took a long pull at her drink and said nothing.

  ‘What I don’t see, Dorothy, is how you figured it all out.’ That was Lynn again.

  ‘It was the mummy, really, the mummy and Mr Bates’s reaction to it. He’s not a fainting man. Annie wasn’t a pleasant sight, but neither was the skeleton, and Mr Bates dealt with it with his usual aplomb. So when he fainted at the sight of Annie, I thought it must be because he knew who she was, and had some association with her. He was far too young to have put her there, and anyway he would scarcely have showed her to us if he knew she was there. So I went about working out what the relationship might be, and . . . Bob’s your uncle.’

  ‘What will happen to him, Alan?’ asked Joyce.

  ‘It depends on whether the jury believes his story. The injury to Dave’s back doesn’t jibe with what Bates told Dorothy, but that could have been caused accidentally. It’s a pity there were no witnesses to the thing. If I were guessing, I’d say there will be a conviction for manslaughter, voluntary or involuntary, depending on the jury’s reaction. If he gets a lenient judge, he may be let off with a relatively short sentence.’

  ‘I sure hope so!’ Jim set down his glass with a thump. ‘Just thinking about running this place without him gives me a backache.’

  ‘I hope . . . that is, are you going to have unpleasant associations with the house, now?’ I couldn’t help feeling that if I’d left well enough alone, some of that unpleasantness might never have come to light.

  ‘I thought about trying to sell,’ Jim said frankly, ‘but Joyce talked me out of it.’

  ‘It was Rose, really,’ said Joyce. ‘She came to me in tears, begging us to stay on. She plans to organize a team of John’s friends to do his work while he is . . . away . . . and said we would be put to no trouble.’

  ‘She could get a far better job elsewhere,’ said Tom. ‘Even tonight, upset as she was, she prepared food fit for the angels.’

  ‘I told her that,’ said Joyce, fighting tears, ‘and she said, “John would die in prison if he didn’t know he had this house to come back to.”’

  It was time to change the subject. I looked across the room at our dancer, who was sitting in a chair by the fire, his foot propped up on a cushion. ‘Mike, we managed to spoil your homecoming, didn’t we? Or rather I did. The others have heard your story, I suppose, but I haven’t.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind telling it again. The stripped-down story, this time. I did rather embroider it earlier, I’m afraid.’

  ‘All right, you don’t need to spare my feelings. I did ask you to spin it out as long as possible, and you performed nobly. It’s not your fault if it did turn out not to be necessary. Go ahead and give us the penny-plain version.’

  ‘Well, I jumped across the river, as you knew I was going to. And all would have been well if the opposite bank hadn’t been so littered with leaves. I slipped on landing, and near as nothing ended up in the river. However, I managed to hang on to various bits of vegetation – what sort, I have no idea, not being a countryman. When I got to my feet I realized I’d damaged myself, twisted an ankle or something of the sort.’

  ‘Mike! Were you badly hurt? Will you be able to dance again?’

  ‘All in good time, dear lady. I was in some pain, but a dancer learns to work through that, so I started walking. I had no choice, really. I could sit there on the ground and howl till the cows came home, and no one would come to pick baby up and carry him home to mummy. Oops, sorry, poor choice of words.’

  Someone snickered.

  ‘Fortunately the road was more-or-less clear of traffic. Because I had just reached it when I stepped on something that gave way under me, and that’s all I remember until I woke up in hospital in – is it Shepherdsford? That just-bigger-than-a-village place not far from here?’

  The vicar nodded. He looked very tired, I thought.

  ‘And there was a beautiful doctor’s face looking into mine. Unfortunately he was only checking my eyes for the proper response, to make sure I wasn’t dead or something. I’d been unconscious for quite some time, I gathered. Some kind person had found me by the side of the road and brought me in, and I gather all the doctors were horrified, I do mean horrified, my dears, when I told them how far I’d walked on what turned out to be a broken ankle.’

  ‘Mike, enough,’ I said, interrupting. ‘Tell me this minute, will you dance again?’

  ‘They say there’s no reason why not, if I’m a good little boy and do as I’m told. It seems a good clean break heals much better than torn muscle tissue. In fact that ankle may end up being stronger than the other.’

  He had dropped his affectations for a moment. This was a serious matter. ‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ I said in great relief. ‘I’m waiting to see you dance Siegfried. But go on.’

  ‘Well, that was Saturday. I was more or less non compos mentis for a day or so, raving like a loony, they told me, and then they eased off those lovely pain meds, and I remembered why I came, but there was no way they could notify anyone here, because the phones were still out. I wanted them to go and rescue poor Laurence, but they couldn’t do that, either, not without a helicopter, and there was actually none available. You have no idea, my dears, what the world looks like out there. One would swear a bomb had been dropped, and along with all the visible damage, the villages are positively littered with the halt and the lame. They pushed me out of hospital the first minute they could, because they needed the bed, what with the injured pouring in from every part of the county.

  ‘Well, I was feeling very much the fool. All those would-be-heroics, and no one could help Laurence after all. And then he turned up, not doing so badly, and told me all that
had happened in my absence, and I saw what a splendid opportunity I had been given for publicity, so of course I notified the media – and here I am, like the proverbial bad penny.’

  ‘And speaking on behalf of all lovers of the dance, I say, here’s to your prompt recovery.’ Pat raised her glass and we all followed suit.

  Later Alan and I were getting ready for bed and doing all but the last-minute packing. We had managed a better connection with Jane and learned that the ‘disaster’ she had mentioned was our predicament at Branston Abbey, not some awful damage to our house. So I was trying to tie up the last loose ends of the Abbey problem.

  I said, ‘The one thing I didn’t work out is what Julie was so afraid of.’

  ‘Bates, obviously. She followed Dave and saw what happened, but not very clearly. She thought Bates pushed Dave into the river.’

  ‘She said she didn’t follow them.’

  ‘She lied, love. She didn’t want anyone to know what she knew. But while she was still suffering from hypothermia and somewhat confused, she said enough to the vicar to make him very uneasy. He came to me after Julie was “arrested” to tell me he didn’t think she could have done it.’

  ‘So you knew all along what happened!’

  ‘Not “all along”, only since her arrest. And I didn’t “know” anything, only what a confused woman thought she had seen when under the influence of considerable alcohol.’

  ‘But if you’d told me, I wouldn’t have been so worried about helping John and Rose!’

  ‘And if you’d told me what you were going to do, I’d have been able to fend you off.’ He yawned and turned out the light. ‘I think we’re square. Anyway, if I’d told you, you wouldn’t have been able to go home and tell everyone how you figured out that the butler did it.’

  I threw my pillow at him.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  The Dorothy Martin Mysteries from Jeanne M. Dams

  A Dark and Stormy Night

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters