Even the most confirmed recluses hear rumors, and the right sort of gossip could lead you directly to Mikhail’s prison door.
“Frances doesn’t seem to pay too much attention to the rumor mill,” I said.
The poor woman. What a lonely life she must lead.
“She seems completely content with her life,” I countered. “And she pointed us toward a couple Madeleine Sturgess rates as the most frightful old gossips she’s ever met. They’ve lived in the neighborhood for a very long time, apparently, and they know everything about everyone. I plan to visit them tomorrow.”
You plan to visit them? On your own? Without Bree?
“According to Frances Wylton,” I said, “they have old-fashioned notions about young women who pierce their nostrils and dye their hair fire-engine red, so Bree has decided to lie low for the day.”
Who is this quaint couple?
“Lord and Lady Boghwell of Risingholme,” I said, rather grandly.
The boorish Boghwells? Good grief. Are they still alive? They must be a thousand years old by now.
“The boorish Boghwells?” I said. “Did you know them?”
Peripherally. We met from time to time at charitable events, but they were a bit too old-fashioned for my taste. They’re the sort who want to abolish the National Health Service and reinstate feudal law. We didn’t have much in common.
“I’m happy to hear it,” I stated firmly.
They could be useful, though, so heed Frances Wylton’s advice. Do not wear loud colors or trousers tomorrow, and make sure the hemline of your dress or skirt falls well below your knees. And for pity’s sake, don’t mispronounce “Boghwell”!
“Shall I tug my forelock when I meet them?” I teased. “Or will a deep curtsy suffice?”
Don’t be facetious, Lori. Lord and Lady Boghwell may be not be the brightest pennies in the piggy bank, but they’ll know if they’re being mocked. Simply treat them with the deference they feel they deserve. Sprinkle lots of “my lords” and “my ladies” into your speech. They’ll lap it up.
“Noted,” I said, “though I doubt I’ll have the opportunity to speak to them. People like the Boghwells tend to look askance at journalists. Their snooty butler will probably slam the door in my face.”
He probably will. I have great faith in your ability to pull the wool over people’s eyes, however, so we must hope for the best. By the way, I disagree with you on a point you made earlier.
“Which one?” I asked.
At the commencement of our conversation, you claimed you’d made no progress today. You were wrong. You may not have located Mikhail, but you eliminated Hayewood House from your inquiries and you learned where to go to commune with the neighborhood’s most experienced gossips. In addition, Bree had the chance encounter of a lifetime.
“When you put it that way,” I said, “I guess we did make some progress.” I paused before adding with a wry smile, “I must admit that I didn’t have Bree pegged as a romance fan.”
A well-written book is a well-written book, regardless of the label a publisher slaps on it, and Lark Landing happens to be an extremely well-written book.
“Frances gave Bree a signed first edition of Lark Landing before we left,” I said. “It revived some tough memories for her.”
Have you read Lark Landing?
“No,” I said.
You should. I read it when it was first published and it left an indelible impression on me. Its main character is the troubled daughter of an alcoholic reprobate.
I stared at Aunt Dimity’s words in stunned silence, then closed my eyes and released a heartfelt groan. “How stupid can I be, Dimity? Bree tried to tell me about Felix Chesterton’s writing, but I didn’t listen. I assumed he wrote sentimental stories for teenagers.”
Wrong again.
“I’ll find a copy of Lark Landing that isn’t a precious first edition,” I promised, “and I’ll read it.”
I’m glad Bree is staying at the cottage just now. It’s a good place to be when tough memories surface. Sleep well, my dear. And remember what I said about your hemline!
I watched the curving lines of royal-blue ink fade from the page, then closed the journal and looked up at Reginald, who peered down at me from the shadowy recesses of his special niche on the bookshelves.
“If Bree comes in here tomorrow, while I’m away,” I said, “do your best to make her feel loved, will you?”
My bunny made no reply. I smiled at my own foolishness and went up to bed, wondering what I would wear for my interview with the Boghwells.
Fourteen
I dressed in my most conservative outfit the following morning: black wool blazer and skirt, gray silk blouse, a single strand of black pearls, and a plain-Jane pair of black flats. Bree, after declaring gleefully that I looked like a door-to-door coffin saleswoman, insisted that I borrow her black trench coat.
Will and Rob thought I was going to a funeral.
Their comments were a bit depressing, as was my outfit, but they convinced me that I’d complied with Aunt Dimity’s dismal dress code. Satisfied, I left Bree at the cottage, drove the boys to school, consulted the map Bree had marked for me, and set out for Risingholme. Thirty minutes later I came to a halt, stymied by a pair of hefty wrought-iron gates set into sturdy stone pillars. Lord and Lady Boghwell, it seemed, did not encourage casual visits.
“I’ll never even reach the front door,” I grumbled to myself, but I climbed out of the Rover anyway and pressed a button on the intercom unit set into the stone pillar on my right. When no response came, I pressed the button again and said in a slightly raised voice, “Hello? Is this thing work—”
A blaring buzzer cut me off and the gates jerked open with an almighty creak. Hardly believing my luck, I ran back to the car, scrambled into the driver’s seat, and gunned the engine to speed past the gates before they could shut me out again. I slowed down at once, in part because I didn’t want the Boghwells to think I was a reckless driver, but mainly because the long, straight driveway was pitted with gargantuan potholes.
The grounds, too, looked sadly neglected. Broken branches dangled forlornly from the ancient beech trees lining the drive, and small forests of saplings encroached on the dank, overgrown meadows beyond. As I picked my way carefully around the potholes, I wondered if the Boghwells had elected to return their land to its natural state or if straitened finances had forced the decision on them.
Risingholme eventually hove into view, rising from a tangle of ivy at the end of the pitted drive. It was an imposing, four-story Jacobean edifice built of dingy gray and yellow Cotswold stone. The central block was made up of a series of projecting and receding bays pierced with an irregular pattern of grimy windows, surmounted by fussy triangular pediments, and flanked by a stumpy pair of crenellated towers. Though I admired Risingholme’s evident antiquity, I did not hesitate to declare it one of the ugliest buildings in England.
I parked the Rover at the bottom of a lichen-speckled stone staircase that appeared to lead straight into a wall. It was only when I reached the top step that I noticed a massive oak door set into the projecting bay on my left. As I turned toward the door, it was opened not by a snooty butler, but by a very large black woman. She wore a long-sleeved woolen tunic in muted jewel tones, a plum-colored turban, and a black calf-length skirt. She had kind eyes. I felt as though the only reason she looked down on me was because I was about a foot shorter than she.
“Selling Bibles?” she inquired in a jaunty Jamaican accent. “Raising money for orphans? Collecting for the church roof fund?”
“N-no,” I stammered, thrown off balance by her rapid-fire queries. “I’m . . . I’m a journalist with Country House Month—”
“A journalist?” The woman burst into a hearty peal of laughter. “Priceless!”
“I’m writing a story about country estates,” I went on, eyeing her uncertainly. “I wonder if I might have a word with Lord and Lady Boghwell? Unless you’re . . . ?”
&nb
sp; “Am I Lady Boghwell?” The woman laughed so hard her whole body quivered. “No, sweetie,” she replied, when she’d regained her composure. “I’m the maid and the cook and everything else below stairs, but I’m not milady.”
“May I please speak with your employers?” I asked timidly.
“Oh, they’ll love to meet you,” she said, grinning broadly and waving me inside. “Come on in, lamb. Make yourself at home.”
I stepped into a shadowy vestibule and began to unbutton Bree’s trench coat, but the maid shook her head.
“Best to keep it on,” she advised. “No central heating.”
“It is a bit chilly,” I conceded, watching my breath condense in the frigid indoor air. “Doesn’t it bother you?”
The maid patted her capacious midsection. “I’m naturally insulated, sweetie, and I spend most of my time in the kitchen. Come along now. The walk will keep you warm.”
I followed her through a bewildering succession of rooms perfumed with the musty scents of dry rot and decay. The rest of the house was as cold, if not colder, than the vestibule and if it was wired for electricity, I saw no evidence of it. Instead, daylight seeped through the grimy windows to illuminate threadbare carpets, moldering tapestries, dusty furniture, and the smoke-blackened portraits of lace-collared Cavaliers. The maid’s unhurried pace gave me ample time to wonder whether anything had changed at Risingholme since the reign of Charles I.
We climbed a sweeping but unswept staircase, crossed a landing, and paused before a ponderous oak door. I expected the maid to knock, but instead she winked at me.
“Ready to meet the great and glorious Boghwells, sweetie?” she asked.
“Uh, yes,” I replied, smoothing the lapels of Bree’s trench coat. “I guess so.”
She pushed the door open and ushered me into a great room that made the one in the converted barn seem like a linen closet. The walls were lined with dark oak paneling, the ceiling was a veritable garden of ornate plasterwork, and the massive chimneypiece dwarfed the elderly couple sitting rigidly in wing chairs before the meager coal fire burning in the cavernous hearth.
A pole lamp fitted with a low-watt electric bulb sat beside each wing chair, casting a dim pool of light on the woman, who was doing crewelwork, and the man, who was reading The Daily Telegraph. The man’s bald pate gleamed in the lamplight and the woman’s pink scalp showed through her tightly curled white hair, but otherwise they looked very much alike. Both had prominent noses, receding chins, long, scrawny necks, and the alabaster complexions I associated with advanced, but cosseted, old age. They were bundled in copious shawls and lap rugs, and each wore a pair of fingerless wool mittens, presumably to ward off the chill the skimpy fire could do little to diminish.
The prominent noses turned toward the oak door as the maid and I entered the room.
“That’s them,” the maid said to me, jutting her chin at the pair.
“Right,” I said nervously.
“Got a visitor for you, milord and lady,” she called to the couple. “Don’t know what her name is, but I’m sure she does.” Chuckling merrily, she turned on her heel and left the great room, closing the oak door behind her.
“Shanice? Shanice! Come back here at once, you stupid girl!” Lord Boghwell cried angrily. “What the devil does she think she’s playing at, letting strangers into the house? Stupid, stupid girl! We could be murdered in our beds!”
As His Lordship’s rant exploded, I began to suspect Shanice of using me to get her own back on an employer who referred to her too often as a “stupid girl.”
“But we’re not in our beds, dear,” Lady Boghwell pointed out tranquilly, bending over her needlework. “And I very much doubt that our visitor intends to murder us.”
“There’s no telling, these day,” Lord Boghwell grumbled. He eyed me irritably and barked, “Who are you and what do you want?”
“M-my name is Lori Shepherd, my lord,” I replied and threw in a deep curtsy for good measure.
“American accent,” murmured Lady Boghwell, without looking up from her embroidery, “but a fine Anglo-Saxon name. Are you related to the Shepherds of Spalding?”
“I doubt it, my lady,” I said.
“I hope not,” Lady Boghwell said serenely. “It’s not a family with which one would wish to be connected. Labor Party stalwarts, I’m afraid.”
“What do you want?” Lord Boghwell repeated loudly, shaking his newspaper at me.
I thought he might burst a blood vessel if I confessed to being a journalist, so I told him the truth and hoped for the best.
“Frances Wylton sent me,” I said.
“Who the devil is Frances Wylton?” Lord Boghwell thundered.
“You remember Frances Wylton, dear,” said Lady Boghwell, pulling a long strand of wool taut. “She and her husband were the Hayewoods’ tenants before the Hayewoods were forced to sell Hayewood House.”
“When old Hayewood’s bank went belly-up,” Lord Boghwell said with a nasty chuckle.
“That’s right, dear,” said Lady Boghwell placidly, stabbing the needle forcefully into the fabric. “Frances Wylton and her husband still live in the converted barn. She paints, he writes, no children. She’s distantly related to the Ffyfes.”
“Dresses like a scarecrow?” her husband said vaguely. “Smells like a pot of turpentine?”
“Yes, dear,” said Lady Boghwell.
Lord Boghwell lowered his newspaper to his lap, folded his gnarled hands on top of it, and eyed me shrewdly.
“Frances Wylton sent an American to us, did she?” he said. “With a film company, are you?”
I couldn’t imagine what had prompted the question, but since Lord Boghwell hadn’t shouted it at me, I decided to go with the flow.
“Yes, my lord,” I replied firmly. “I’m with a film company.”
“Thought so,” he said, with a self-satisfied smirk. “Americans usually are. Come to recce the place for a shoot?”
“Pardon me, my lord?” I said, mystified.
“Are you a location scout?” he clarified impatiently. “Good God, woman, if I have the patois down, you should.”
“Perhaps she isn’t a location scout,” his wife suggested.
“If she isn’t, she should say so,” Lord Boghwell snapped. “And if she is, she should say so. I don’t mind her looking the place over, but I can’t abide mealymouthed time wasters.”
If I’d thought for one moment that the Boghwells were capable of committing a physically demanding criminal act, I would have proclaimed myself a location scout and run off to search for Mikhail. But the mere idea of the doddering duo kidnapping, robbing, and imprisoning anything larger than a gerbil was so patently absurd that I stuck with my original agenda and pressed them for a morsel of useful gossip.
“I’m not a location scout, my lord,” I said. “I’m an assistant director doing research for a new movie about . . . um . . . immigrants. Frances Wylton thought you might be able to help me.”
“What the deuce would we know about immigrants?” Lord Boghwell bellowed querulously. “Shanice is the only foreigner with whom we’re acquainted and why she was allowed into the country, I’ll never know.”
“Frances seems to think that Shanice isn’t the only foreigner in the area,” I said.
“She’s quite right,” said Lady Boghwell.
“Is she?” said Lord Boghwell, looking flabbergasted.
“The Tereschchenkos,” said Lady Boghwell.
“Oh,” said her husband, his lip curling into a sneer. “Them.”
“Who are the Tereschchenkos?” I asked.
“Who knows?” said Lady Boghwell, with a tiny shrug. “One knows nothing of their antecedents. The Tereschchenkos changed their name to Thames because, quite naturally, they wished to sound English, but for all we know they could be Bulgarian or Polish or Ukrainian, for that matter.”
“Or Russian,” I said under my breath. More loudly, I asked, “Do you know where the Tereschchenkos live, my lady?”
<
br /> “They call it Shangri-la,” Lady Boghwell replied, with a heavy sigh.
The Boghwells seemed to fade into the shadows as I recalled Bree’s list of Amanda Pickering’s workplaces. I was sure Shangri-la was on it. Bree had looked it up online, but she’d failed to spot the Russian connection because Shangri-la’s current owner had, according to the Boghwells, changed his surname from Tereschchenko to Thames. Whether the Thames-Tereschchenkos had a dungeon in their basement remained to be seen, but one thing was certain: I would be visiting Shangri-la in the very near future.
“Shangri-la, here I come,” I murmured and the great room came back into focus.
“Shangri-la, my foot,” Lord Boghwell growled. “I’ve never heard of anything so preposterous.”
“It’s been Whiting Hall from time out of mind,” Lady Boghwell went on, unperturbed by her husband’s choler, “but Whiting Hall must have seemed too plain, too down-to-earth, too Anglo-Saxon, perhaps, for the Tereschchenkos because they renamed it”—she heaved another heavy sigh—“Shangri-la.”
“Airy-fairy twaddle,” Lord Boghwell grumbled.
“When did the Tereschchenkos buy Whiting Hall, my lady?” I asked.
“Years ago,” Lady Boghwell replied. “I really didn’t take much notice. It’s not as if we would ever have anything to do with them.”
“Blasted foreigners!” Lord Boghwell roared. “They actually had the audacity to invite us to a cocktail party. An out-of-doors cocktail party! Around their swimming pool!”
“They dug up the rose garden,” Lady Boghwell murmured sadly, “to make room for a swimming pool.”
“I’ve no doubt it would have enhanced their reputation to parade us in front of their drunken, half-naked cronies,” said Lord Boghwell, “but we dampened their pretensions with a chilly refusal. Haven’t heard from them since. Don’t wish to hear from them!”
“They’re really not our sort,” murmured Lady Boghwell.
“My people built Risingholme!” Lord Boghwell thundered. “We’ve lived here for more than four hundred years! The Tereschchenkos can change their family name to Windsor, if they so choose, but they’ll still be the Tereschchenkos and they’ll never be our sort!”
Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince Page 11
