The Ellie Hardwick Mysteries

by Barbara Cleverly

  THE ELLIE HARDWICK MYSTERIES

  THE ELLIE HARDWICK MYSTERIES

  Barbara Cleverly

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available

  This eBook edition published by AudioGO Ltd, Bath, 2012.

  Published by arrangement with the Author.

  Epub ISBN 9781471308574

  U.K. Hardcover ISBN 978 1 4458 2746 9

  U.K. Softcover ISBN 978 1 4458 2747 6

  This collection copyright © Barbara Cleverly 2012

  ‘Love-Lies Bleeding’ first published 2004 Ellery Queen’s

  Mystery Magazine; 2006 Mammoth Book of Best British Crime

  ‘Here Lies’ first published 2003 Ellery Queen’s Mystery

  Magazine

  ‘A Threatened Species’ first published 2005 Ellery Queen’s

  Mystery Magazine

  ‘A Black Tie Affair’ first published 2006 Woman’s Weekly;

  2008 Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  ‘Die Like a Maharajah’ first published 2004 Woman’s Weekly

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Jacket Illustration © iStockphoto.com

  LOVE-LIES BLEEDING

  An Architect Ellie Hardwick mystery.

  It had taken me two hours to get here. I swished my way, bouncing through the puddles in a haze of falling leaves up the long drive to Felthorpe Hall in north Norfolk. Now, Norfolk isn’t Suffolk and that’s a fact. The skies are wider, the building flints are bigger, the distances greater, and the cry of the wheeling plover more forlorn. Only fifty miles from home but Felthorpe Hall could never have been in Suffolk.

  For the last half hour of my journey through dripping lanes, the rain had eased off, the sun had come out and the whole countryside had taken on a more cheerful cast. But it would still have to work a whole lot harder to please me, I thought resentfully. I drove carefully down the tree-lined carriage road to the Hall, eagerly awaiting my first sight of the ancient house, so praised in the architectural guide I had hastily referred to before I started out. I turned a corner and there it stood by the side of a dark, reed-fringed and heron-haunted lake.

  The front door was wide and welcoming, its brick dressings satisfyingly good-hearted and the lowering sun, reflected from its many windows, spoke of ancient warmth. But as I got out of my car I paused and shivered.

  ‘Keep off! Go away!’ said the house to me.

  ‘Deus tute me spectas.’ Said a stone inscription in the parapet. ‘Thou, Lord, see’st me.’

  All too likely, I thought.

  I didn’t want to be here. It wasn’t my job. I paused for a moment to curse my boss Charles Hastings. The words ‘spoilt’ and ‘manipulative’ were as closely associated with his name in my mind as were ‘rosy’ and ‘fingered’ with dawn in Homer’s. I ought to have seen this coming. Well, the truth was—I had. So why had I gone along with it? For the joy of seeing a house I had never visited before and the satisfaction of arriving by myself and saying, ‘Hello, I’m the architect, Eleanor Hardwick.’ By myself, not scuttling in Charles’s wake carrying the files and the hard hats and answering to the name of ‘little Miss . . . er’.

  We do a lot of work for the English Country Houses Trust. Of the grandees who run it, Charles appears to have been at school with the few to whom he is not related. And, as our region of East Anglia is thickly strewn with great houses, the practice is a busy one. It was one of the reasons—it was my main reason—for applying for the job of his architectural assistant. Charles calls his Trust work the office ‘bread and butter’. I would call it the ‘strawberry jam’. I’m mad about ancient buildings. I always have been. And if you’re lucky enough to get a job working for an expert in this field and you’re based between Cambridge and the North Sea, you’ve died and gone to heaven!

  The lush, rolling countryside seamed with narrow overhung lanes is rich in ancient churches, cathedrals and even a castle or two as well as the old domestic buildings. Down one of the overhung lanes in the middle of the county of Suffolk is Charles’ house, a wing of which masquerades as his office. Latin Hall is a fine though eccentric showcase for Charles’ skills. For a start, it’s thatched, and to go on, it was built in the late thirteen hundreds. Yes, thirteen hundreds. There was still a Roman Emperor on the throne when the foundations were being dug, Charles told me at my interview. A rather debased Emperor perhaps and ruling out of Constantinople but it made a good story for the clients. They were intended to draw the inference—‘If this bloke can keep this building standing, he might be able to do something for mine.’

  My first autumn working at Latin Hall was miserable. The weather was exceptionally wet and the medieval house leaked badly. The rain-swollen doors stuck, the windows funnelled the icy draughts that knifed down from the Arctic. Charles laughed at my complaints. ‘Keep you healthy, Ellie,’ he’d said. ‘Nothing like a low temperature and a constant air circulation to kill off the bugs! Much better for you to inhale air straight from Siberia than that pre-breathed rubbish they fill your lungs with in London.’

  Rain fell in torrents, torrents were followed by gales, tarpaulins blew off roofs and water rose in cellars as it never had before. Every time I looked out of the window thinking that the rain could get no heavier, it redoubled its maniacal and mindless persistence. But there was one source of cheerful amusement for me in all this gloom. Charles had caught a very bad cold. I came in one morning to find him hunched over his desk, clutching a box of tissues.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Charles,’ I said, ‘go home! You don’t have to stay here!’ I pointed to the wall chart. ‘You’ve got no meetings today or tomorrow and then it’s the weekend. Go home, have a bath, find a good book and go to bed. I’ll man the mainbrace,’ I finished just to irritate him.

  He winced.

  ‘Can’t,’ he said. ‘Just had a call from the Trust. Felthorpe Hall. Main staircase. There’s a problem. I’ve just been looking up my last quinquennial survey report.’ He paused and pretended to run a critical eye over it. ‘It’s rather good, I think. Listen to this, Ellie and mark the style.’ He began to read:

  ‘The condition of the main staircase has been mentioned in previous reports and its stability is now a matter of concern. A newel stair with four quarter space landings, its strength is dependent on the support each flight derives from the flight below. Provided tenons are sound . . .’ He droned on and I switched off. ‘. . . is due to more than shrinkage and old age.’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘I’d say you’d covered yourself pretty well, there Charles. All those provided that’s and suspicions of—’ I began to say but he interrupted.

  ‘It is always my concern, Ellie, to have a care for the building as well as my own neck. I go on:

  ‘I would suggest that where shrinkage gaps are to be seen, small hardwood wedges be lightly inserted and, if the distortion referred to increases, these wedges will fall. Should this happen, further structural investigation would appear imperative.’

  ‘Don’t tell me! Your wedges have fallen?’

  ‘They have. Luckily the house is closed to the public for end-of-season cleaning but they’ve got some sort of anniversary shindig coming up at Christmas. So they ring me. “Is this staircase safe?” they want to know. What can I say? “Leave it to me. I’ll come up and have a look.”’ He blew his nose dolefully once more, pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead and rubbed his reddened eyes.

  His partner was on holiday. There was only one thing I could say. ‘Look tell them you can’t come until next week or, if there’s a panic on, I’ll go for you. Why not? I don’t think you’ll make much sense in your presen
t condition.’

  Charles blinked and shivered theatrically for a moment, looked doubtful and then said as though my offer was all so unexpected, ‘Well, if you’re sure, Ellie, that would be a godsend . . . and it’s not as though you could do any real damage. I mean, I’ve laid on a carpenter—Johnny Bell will meet you there at half past two. He’s very experienced and . . .’

  ‘Just give me the file, Charles! But—Felthorpe Hall? Where is it incidentally?’

  ‘Er . . . North Norfolk,’ he had mumbled apologetically.

  * * *

  The house may not have welcomed me but the carpenter, Johnny Bell, greeted me warmly enough in the hallway from which a fine newel stair climbed its way to a dim upper floor. I needn’t have come, really. Mr. Bell was perfectly capable of taking up a few boards, dismantling a few stair treads and, indeed, diagnosing the problem and solving it. The architect is very often the third wheel on the bicycle. This was one of those occasions. He knew it and so did I. But with kindly East Anglian courtesy he explained the situation and even managed to make it appear he was hanging on my words.

  ‘Didn’t like to start until you got here, Miss Hardwick. Thought if we took up a couple of treads here and a floor board on the landing and perhaps the riser off the step up into the pass door, we ought to see what we’re up to.’

  I was about to say, ‘Nails must be cut and punched . . .’ but, almost before I could speak, he had slipped a hacksaw under the first stair tread and had started to cut the nails which held it in place. When he’d slipped the stair-treads out of the strings, the risers followed with no more difficulty. We knelt together on the stairs and peered into the cavity which we had created. I held the torch while Johnny Bell felt inside.

  ‘Carriage has gone,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be birds-mouthed under the trimmer,’ and, feeling along the wall, ‘the wall string’s gone in the same place.’

  I reached into the hole, broke off a section of timber and brought it into the light.

  ‘Death watch beetle,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know?’ said a voice behind us.

  I turned to confront a tall, stooping, birdlike figure peering over our shoulders. He reminded me of one of the bony herons I’d seen on arrival, hunched at the edge of the lake. This was Nicholas Wemyss, the Curator, and introductions followed.

  ‘How do you know?’ he asked again.

  ‘If the flight holes are big enough to let you poke a match head into them, it’s death watch beetle. If they’re only big enough for a pin, it’s woodworm—furniture beetle, that is,’ I said, as I’d been taught.

  ‘Ah!’ said Nicholas, looking impressed. ‘Now I really appreciate a complicated technical explanation! But, Ellie, is this serious? Does it mean the stairs are unsafe?’

  ‘Well, it shouldn’t be left. Some of this bore dust,’ I held out a sample, ‘is quite fresh and, no, it probably isn’t quite safe.’ I looked at Johnny who was nodding in agreement. ‘Let’s see if we can take up a board on the quarter landing. That’ll tell us more.’

  Once more the hacksaw blade disappeared under the stair nosing and one by one the ancient nails were snipped through. The first mighty board came loose. Loose for the first time since some ancient carpenter had tapped it into place over three hundred years before. Johnny waggled it to and fro, inserted the end of a nail bar and prised it upwards. ‘Can’t move it! he said in surprise. ‘That’s stuck! There’s something under there!’

  He poked around with the end of a two foot rule. ‘Yes, bugger me—there’s something under there!’

  We watched in puzzlement as he took up a second board. With that obstruction gone the first board came out more easily. But it was unnaturally heavy. It was as much as the two of us could lift and, as it came from its ancient seating, ‘Corst blast!’ said Johnny ‘There’s a little old box fastened up to the bottom of that!’

  ‘Little old box, nothing!’ said Nicholas. ‘No. That’s a little old coffin!’

  * * *

  There was no mistaking it. The profile of a coffin lid is in some way branded on the memory. The eternal symbol of death and dissolution, an object of reasonless fear buried in the country memories of us all. It was tiny; not above two feet long. A whiff of profound grief and misery briefly embraced us all as the darkness deepened, the thunderous rain began to fall again and the damp chill of the day sharpened to an icy coldness.

  The carpenter ran a knowledgeable hand over the small structure. ‘Must have made hundreds of coffins in his time,’ I thought.

  ‘Oak boards. Nicely made,’ he said, absently caressing the joints with a craggy thumb. ‘That were tacked up from below.’ He slipped the point of a chisel under the rim of the coffin and pressed upwards against the covering board. ‘Lift it off, shall I?’

  ‘No! Wait!’ I heard my own voice call out. I didn’t want him to take off the lid. I didn’t want to see what the box held. ‘Perhaps we should call the police? Isn’t that what you do when you find a . . . er . . . come across a burial?’

  ‘If that’s what it is, it’s a very ancient burial,’ said Nicholas gently. ‘I don’t think the police will be interested in something so old. Because it is very old, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘It went in the same day as the staircase was put up,’ said Johnny Bell firmly. ‘The only way you could get it in with this construction.’

  ‘So we have a date then,’ said Nicholas. ‘Diana will know. My wife, Diana. She’s somewhere about . . .’

  ‘1662. That’s the year it was put in.’ A low clear voice called down to us from the upper floor. Diana came to join us, taking in the strange scene at a glance. ‘Oh, dear! How extraordinary! But how fascinating! Look, with the stairs in their present parlous state I think we should take whatever that is downstairs and put it on the big table in the yellow drawing room and decide what to do about it when we’re in no danger of disappearing through a hole. Eleanor is it? Eleanor Hardwick? I’m Diana Wemyss. I was just making you a cup of tea. Perhaps that can wait for a few minutes?’

  I smiled as Diana’s comforting presence chased away the chill forebodings. She couldn’t have been more different from her gaunt husband. Short and rounded with merry brown eyes, she had the cheerful and confident charm of a robin. We all made our way backwards down the stairs and into the drawing room and gathered around the little box waiting for Diana to tell us what to do next.

  ‘We really have to open it,’ she said. ‘Too embarrassing if we hauled a busy constable all the way out from Norwich to witness us opening an empty container.’

  Everyone nodded and Johnny got to work again with his chisel. Hardly breathing, we all peered into the coffin as the lid rose.

  ‘Ah,’ said Diana in an unsteady voice. ‘Nicholas, perhaps you’d better inform the constabulary? Just to be on the safe side.’

  * * *

  Two hours later, an Inspector had called and viewed the pathetic contents of the box, and had taken brief statements. He agreed that the burial had been clandestine and there’d probably been dirty work at the cross-roads back in the 17th century but, really, this was one for ‘Time Team’ not the Norfolk Constabulary. He was quite happy to leave it, as he put it, ‘in the hands of the experts’. That was us. We were on our own.

  On a scatter of almost-fresh sawdust in the bottom of the box lay the yellowed bones of a very small infant. It lay on its side in a foetal position and, as far as our appalled and fleeting glances could determine, there was no obvious cause of death. There was no tattered winding sheet, no identifying bracelet. The only other thing the box contained was a slip of parchment. It had been glued inside the lid and so remained unaffected by the decay within the box. On it a neat hand had written, ‘Deus tute eum spectas’.

  ‘Good heavens!’ said Diana. ‘What have we here? The lost heir of the Easton family?’

  I remember even then in the turmoil of mixed emotions I was feeling that something was off key. I felt sick and guilty that we had, however innocently, displaced a
nd disturbed the little body after all those years. With uncomfortable sideways glances at each other, we had replaced the lid on the coffin, Johnny Bell solemnly making the sign of the cross before packing up his tools and leaving.

  Gratefully I accepted Diana’s invitation, in view of the late hour and the filthy weather, to stay the night in one of the guest rooms. While she put together a supper in their small flat on the second floor Nicholas invited me to come round the house with him as he ‘put it to bed’. I watched him set alarms and lock doors, the whole process taking about half an hour. As we wandered down through the dark house our progress was much delayed by Nicholas’s discursions as we passed one beautiful thing after another.

  Pausing finally in the gallery which encircled the staircase at first floor level he drew my attention to a run of portraits. ‘I’d like to haul this lot in for interrogation, Ellie,’ he said. ‘I bet one of them could tell us more about the contents of that box. The Easton family. They were all here the year the staircase was put in. They came up from their London home for the jollifications in 1662. The celebrations covered the restoration of the monarchy two years earlier but also the marriage of the younger brother of the Earl.’

  He lifted the shade of a table lamp and held it upwards. ‘Here he is, with his wife alongside. This is the chap whose anniversary we’re celebrating this Christmas. Father of the dynasty. His descendants still live hereabouts—they gave the house to the Trust thirty years ago. Robert Easton took over when his elder brother died childless in 1672.’

  I looked up at the handsome florid features of Robert Easton, Earl of Somersham. An impressive man in a curling brown wig to his shoulders, he wore a coat of dark blue velvet with gold frogging over a ruched shirt of finest white linen, a lace jabot at his throat. The painter had conveyed his subject’s confidence and pride by the seemingly casual placing of one elegant hand on his hip.

  Nicholas for a moment dipped the lamp to illuminate the left hand corner of the painting. I was impressed but not surprised to read: ‘P. Lely pinxit.’