The Angel of Hever Castle: A City of Mystery Christmas Novella

by Kim Wright

  “The young women in this colony are being very badly used indeed,” he said. “My painting partner for this morning, the girl whose work you admired, was Dorinda Spencer herself. I witnessed her being boldly propositioned by a brute of a man named John Paul, who seemed to be under the impression she was an imbecile and I was deaf.” Rayley grimaced. “But Dorinda also appears to be somewhat in the thrall of LaRusse. She mixes his paints for him and refers to him as her ‘protector.’ It makes no sense, Welles, no sense at all. By her speech and her clothing, I am certain that Dorinda comes from a good family, just like Anne Arborton. What would possess such girls to take up with a pompous pretender like LaRusse?”

  “I can’t say,” Trevor answered, “but perhaps there’s a blessing in it. The longer I’m here, the more I’m convinced that Anne will be perfectly willing to go with us when the time comes for us to reveal our true identities.” He paused, looking down at the flower in his lapel – so innocent looking, but perhaps so treacherous. “I will ride into town tomorrow and send a telegram to Emma. See if she can learn of any other girls who might have caught the eye of LaRusse and get a bit more background on this Dorinda Spencer. She interests me. As she interests you too, I suspect.”

  “She said ‘fuck.’”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Dorinda Spencer spoke the word that no lady speaks. This morning, while we were painting.”

  “Your work is rather bad.”

  “Don’t joke, Welles, for I found it quite distressing. To be precise, she said that a liberal man was an eager to fuck as a conservative one.”

  “Well, she’s right, I suspect, but you’re right as well. It was a strange thing for the girl to say.” Trevor looked at his friend in sympathy. “She was likely just trying to shock you.”

  “She succeeded.”

  Trevor considered the picture before him on the easel. A bucolic farm scene, peopled by any number of characters, each at their work. “Do you think she is truly destined to be LaRusse’s next…muse?”

  “Possibly, although I find the idea repellent.”

  “And do you think Anne was right about something else too, that LaRusse’s drink has affected his judgment? It is indeed perplexing that a skilled artist might gaze upon the face of one person and yet paint another. And his behavior is erratic in other ways too. The grand speeches he made last night, the mood shifts I witnessed today, the fact he slapped the girl. It doesn’t add up to a stable personality.”

  “Dorinda claims that the lead content of white paint drives people mad,” Rayley said. “But of course LaRusse doesn’t mix paint – she does it for him when she mixes her own. And she takes great care with the stuff, for I watched her. We climbed to the top of the turret to make sure we had proper ventilation during the process.”

  “Strange,” Trevor said. “Poison in the paint and poison in the roses, alcohol – and a man whose behavior is notably erratic. Emotional young girls, their distraught families, and, I’d venture to say, more than one John Paul running about the place. You know, a younger man who resents LaRusse’s control over the group and his way with the ladies, who might be eager to dethrone him. Even after less than a day here at Hever, we’ve stumbled across any number of people who might want to destroy LaRusse, and any number of ways they might do it.”

  “Well, if he’s being poisoned, he isn’t likely getting it through the food,” Rayley said. “You saw the way they fell upon our offerings last night, even that single jug of dreadful ale. ‘To share and share alike’ is the motto of the colony and half the time they didn’t even use glasses or spoons. It would be very hard to administer a toxin to one diner in that room without taking the lot of them down.”

  “So if Anne is right, which she most likely is, LaRusse is drinking to excess,” said Trevor. “But I’ll wager it isn’t the local brew. If you’ll recall, he made a great show of eschewing the jug last night, passing it along to the fellow next to him with the upmost fastidiousness.” Trevor pushed to his feet. “I’d say he has his own bottle stashed away somewhere. That his philosophy is only to be applied to lesser mortals, and behind closed doors it’s to hell with ‘share and share alike.’ He has brought something fine with him from London, perhaps a few bottles of brandy, nicked from a middle-class home while he was likewise taking their daughter.”

  “But where would he keep it?” Rayley asked. “If we have hypothesized that LaRusse is drinking, and most likely in private, after less than a day in his company, there are doubtlessly others in the colony who suspect as much as well. And they may have concluded this private drinking is their best route to effectively poisoning the man. There’s a cellar, but that’s not the place.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because everyone in the colony knows about it and apparently wanders in and out at leisure. It’s the trysting space where John Paul tried to lure Dorinda. Oh, and there’s to be a party tonight, by the way. Bonfires and revelry, while we all dance about in costume worshipping the full moon or some Druid goddess or somesuch.”

  “In honor of the solstice?”

  “Quite. Good thinking, Welles, for I had forgotten entirely. But back to LaRusse and his secret bottle. The rooms in Hever Castle stand open all the time, affording no privacy at all, by his own edict. And with so many windows looking out in all directions, he is unlikely to have a hiding place outside, which leaves us with…”

  Rayley and Trevor looked at each other and said in unison “The gatehouse.”

  Chapter Five

  LaRusse Franklin Chapman greeted his subjects wearing a crown of brown leafy brambles, evidently garnered from one of the hops stacks in a nearby field. His frame - which Trevor was forced to admit was an impressive blend of muscle, height, and posture - was draped in a tapestry, which had been evidently pulled from one of the walls. It was perhaps an opening; a group of artists squatting within an abandoned property was one thing. Stealing tapestry from a wall which belonged to the Crown was something else. Whether or not such a theft was enough for Brown to prosecute Chapman and evict the others, it was hard to say. And now that Trevor consider it more seriously, it was even difficult to determine if eviction was a desired outcome. It was possible that the dissolution of the colony would drive girls like Anne and Dorinda home to their families, but he supposed it was equally possible they would simply follow LaRusse to his next location. And it was likely to be even farther from London, and thus civilization, than Hever Castle.

  He shivered, for they were outside and the evening was chilly. Darkness had begun falling at five, and although he could no longer see his watch, he would imagine it to be no more than six now. And yet the evening sky was utterly black. The promised bonfire was a sad affair, a small pile of sticks emitting little warmth and the promised full moon went in and out of clouds. At times, the castle and fields around it were beautiful, almost shimmering in a fairyland glow. But minutes later the moon might retreat, taking its silvery magic with it, and turning the scene into the bleak and joyless affair Trevor now beheld - twenty people huddled together for warmth around a smoky pit of embers.

  Not everyone was dressed in costume, so he and Rayley need not have worried about the fact they had none. Most of the group, in fact, wore the same ragtag clothes they worked in, including Dorinda Spencer, who was still in her gentlemen’s trousers. Trevor watched her from the corner of his eye has he held his tin cup of untouched ale. A recent visit to India had given him a new appreciation of women in trousers, and it was easy to see why Rayley had taken such a quick interest in the girl. While it would seem that men’s clothing would obscure the female form, the reality was that it often revealed far more than a dress, or at least trousers had the effect of highlighting different parts of the feminine anatomy. Dorinda turned toward him abruptly, as if she sensed she was being watched, and Trevor quickly dropped his eyes to his cup. It would not help his cause if he appeared to be nothing more than one more lascivious letch in a field full of letches.

&n
bsp; The fact that not everyone was in costume seemed to highlight the significance of those who were. Anne stood to LaRusse’s side, wearing a similar crown of brambles. John Paul and several of the other young painters had gone so far as to rub colors directly into their skins, giving them a fiendish glow, and Trevor noted that a few of them had used the potentially dangerous white paint. Perhaps Dorinda overstated the dangers in order to impress Rayley, Trevor mused. For surely no painter, who knew the dangers, would be foolish enough to rub a toxic mixture directly onto his skin. And however shall they get the paint off when the party has come to its close? Turpentine, splashed right to the face?

  It was madness, and as the beer jug made one round after another through the circle, Trevor furthermore noted that the young men seemed to be getting far drunker than he might have predicted. Swallows of beer, spaced several minutes apart, should not bring about the swift inebriation that he was witnessing before him now. Perhaps it was just that they were all underfed. With no food in the belly to impede its progress, he supposed even a mouthful of homegrown spirits could reach the brain within minutes. Anne did not participate in the passing of the jug, nor did Dorinda, although two of the other female colonists were joining the men in their debauchery, their shrill giggles piercing the night air. Rayley also drank, and freely, evidently as part of his efforts to fit in with the group and preserve his disguise.

  As the darkness grew, LaRusse banged on the bottom of a kettle to get everyone’s attention, and then launched into a long and winding speech about the solstice, and druids, and priests of the forests and how they would have none of that dreadful man-made Christianity here at Hever, none of that nonsense with virgins and stars and mangers, no, by God, they would not. It was the pagan celebrations for them, he said, which set up a ruffled roar of agreement among his drunken flock. And then, to cap off his pledge, he shucked his tapestry wrap and ran bare-breasted around the fire, quickly joined by a handful of the other men, and with this the mood of the celebrants became even more fevered and bizarre. The fire was so diminished by neglect that Trevor had to strain to follow the action, but he could have sworn at one point the he saw a man dancing with a sheep.

  “They are all quite preoccupied,” said Rayley, who had come up beside him unnoticed. “It is a good time to go.”

  “Was there anything wrong with the beer?”

  “What do you mean? You don’t imagine that I actually drank it, do you? I merely raised the jug to my mouth in a gesture of solidarity,” Rayley said.

  “They seem to have gotten drunk awfully fast.”

  “All the better for us,” Rayley said. “To the gatehouse.”

  ****

  As they walked, the moon reasserted itself from behind a bank of filmy clouds and the fields around them became illuminated. Trevor did not think that anyone had taken note of their leaving, but he nonetheless waited until they had walked some distance before lighting his pipe. After taking a deep, soothing drag he considered his friend, whose face was startlingly visible in the moonlight.

  “So what do you think of the setting, Abrams?”

  “You’re asking what do I think about all these sheep? It’s hard to believe so many people are content to gnaw away in hunger whilst surrounded by mutton.”

  Trevor chuckled in agreement. “True, but it’s just like Emma’s song, is it not? At least when you get away from the castle. All is calm, all is bright.”

  “Bright, perhaps,” Rayley said. “But I believe the calm is deceptive. Granted, half the colony will be snoring away in a drunken stupor within the hour, with the other half likely to follow. Yet I suspect that Hever is full of secret activities which take place only under the cover of darkness.”

  “You are doubtless right, but I find the scene before us now a full pleasure. It reminds me of my boyhood, when I would often slip from my room while the rest of my family slept and walk the meadows around our farm. My first ambition, believe it or not, was to be a shepherd.”

  Rayley snorted.

  “No,” Trevor said. “I assure you it was true, the fantasy largely fueled by evenings just like this one, and the Biblical notion of keeping watch over one’s flock by night. You see, in the Christmas story –“

  “I know the Christmas story well enough,” Rayley said. “Jew or not, one could scarcely have been raised in London without full exposure to your romantic holiday tales. Do you think we shall witness a virgin birth on this exalted evening?”

  “Somehow I suspect virgins are running rather scarce in the district,” Trevor said. “But we are well out of earshot and not being followed, so let us discuss the facts before us now. Shall I begin?”

  “Fire away,” said Rayley. This was a stratagem they used back in London, when meeting with the Thursday Night Murder Games Club. Each person would take turns simply stating the facts of the case as he or she saw them, and it was curious how often this simple activity would shed new light on an investigation. Often an innocuous seeming remark by one person would spark an insight in the mind of another. Trevor liked to call these discussions “our shared mind,” and Rayley supposed that tonight he must take the roles of Geraldine, Tom, Davy, and Emma as well as himself.

  “We have a painter,” said Trevor. “A man possessed of considerable charisma, with enough talent to talk his way into the homes of London families as a portrait artist and enough charm to then seduce the daughters of those houses. Anne Arborton is certainly not the first girl he has dallied with, but do you think she is the first who has followed him here to Hever?”

  “I can’t say,” Rayley said. “Dorinda might know. As might John Paul.”

  “Try and find out in the morning,” Trevor said. “His cast aside girls don’t simply dematerialize, as much as they might wish to. They have to go somewhere. Who knows, some of them still may be here, among the flock.”

  “Do you think LaRusse is truly going mad?” Rayley asked, pausing to shake sheep dung from one boot. “It might serve his purposes to appear to be a bit mad, you know. Charismatic types often rant and rave and laugh and dance – the sheer display of emotion convinces their followers they are privy to a deeper truth, that they see things which the rest of us can’t fathom.”

  “Impossible to know at this juncture,” Trevor answered. “And if he is mad, it is equally difficult to know if it is the paint or the drink or the Christmas Roses or even if his bizarre behavior is simply the result of his natural disposition. We are at a disadvantage in that we don’t know the man’s past. Perhaps Emma’s work back in London will shed some light on his history. Otherwise, we can’t determine if he is going mad, which would imply some sort of shift in personality and possible foul play, or if he has been mad all along.”

  “And then we have Anne Arborton herself,” Rayley continued. “Based on what you overheard today, she is already beginning to doubt that LaRusse is truly her shining knight on horseback. But do you think she will –“

  “That thought must wait, for here’s the gatehouse,” Trevor interrupted. “Did you bring matches?”

  Rayley had, and they fashioned a pair of torches out of some obliging hops branches, the plant seeming to lend itself to any number of impromptu uses. As they stepped across the threshold of the small gate house, Rayley’s nostrils were hit with a strong smell. Chemical, almost medicinal, and he froze in his tracks.

  “Leave the door open, Welles,” he said. “I smell paint.”

  “Of course you do,” Trevor muttered. “It’s an artist’s studio.” But he propped the door open, nonetheless.

  “No, it’s fresh paint, exactly the smell I encountered when I was in the garret watching Dorinda mix them. The toxicity is much stronger in wet paint than dry, which is why artists go mad and art-lovers do not.”

  “Perhaps LaRusse left a jar open,” Trevor said, advancing cautiously with his torch. “He was working right here, in this corner.” He picked his way through the room, one hand outstretched until finally his fingertips found the canvas propped on the eas
el. They immediately met with a cold stickiness, and Trevor jerked his hand back.

  “See here, Abrams, you’re right. The canvas is wet.”

  “How can that be? No one has been here for hours,” Rayley murmured, inching toward the sound of Trevor’s voice. “I counted heads at the bonfire and everyone in the colony was present.”

  “How long does it take paint to dry?”

  “I can’t say. My canvas was still flowing like a river when I left it, but I’m sure I mixed the paint too thin.”

  “I suppose LaRusse could have come back in the afternoon to work alone,” Trevor said, “but for now we should continue with the search. And let us be quick about it.” Even with the door open, the fumes in the gatehouse were overpowering, and he was beginning to worry about the effect an open flame might have on whatever chemical was in the room. Just as troubling, the hops brambles were proving to burn quickly and already his torch was low. “If LaRusse truly has a stash of fine liquor then he must –“

  “Welles, look at this.”

  Rayley was still standing at the easel with his torch raised so that he might see the painting there. “Is this the portrait you saw today?” he asked urgently. “The one that caused the row between Anne and LaRusse?”

  “I didn’t see much of the picture,” Trevor said, hastily scanning the room’s few possible hiding places before joining him. “I was cowered outside beneath the window, remember? I only heard them discuss it.” He made his way to Rayley and peered at the canvas before them. A young and half-naked girl, just as expected from the sketch they had seen at Geraldine’s house. A robe across one shoulder, trailing across her stomach and finally curling in her lap. Hever Castle in the background, looking like a child’s image of a castle. A look of sadness on the girl’s face and – here was the surprise – she was holding something in her arms.