British Manor Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “Good thinking,” said Lucy.

  “You can’t believe everything people tell you,” said Bill.

  “Funny thing,” said Lucy, remembering DI Hennessy’s claim that he suspected people didn’t always tell him the truth. “I heard somebody else say that very same thing.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’ll be home soon,” said Bill. “I miss you.”

  “And I miss you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Robert and Sarah were sitting in the vicarage garden, drinking tea from large mugs, when Lucy and Sue arrived the next morning. It was unseasonably hot and the sun was very bright, but they had set up chairs in a shady spot.

  “Elevenses,” said Robert with a huge grin. “I can’t seem to break the habit of drinking tea even when it’s so warm, like today.”

  “Will you join us?” asked Sarah. “The water’s still hot.”

  “Thanks,” said Lucy, who would much rather have had a tall glass of iced tea.

  “I have lemonade,” said Sarah, sensing her hesitation.

  “That would be lovely,” cooed Sue.

  “Make that two,” said Lucy, fanning herself with her hands.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” said Sarah, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Lucy and Sue seated themselves carefully in the rickety deck chairs, which were nothing more than strips of rather old, faded striped canvas slung on folding wooden frames. Lucy wasn’t convinced the fabric was still strong enough to support her, and found it quite impossible to sit up straight as the chair’s design required one to adopt a semi-prone position. Sue, she noticed, was having the same problem. When Sarah arrived with the tall glasses of lemonade, she discovered that she had to stretch her neck like a turtle in order to drink.

  “I hope we’re not keeping you from your work,” said Sue.

  “No problem,” said Robert. “I was working on my sermon, but I wasn’t getting very far.”

  “It must be quite a challenge coming up with something new every week,” said Lucy.

  “Coming up with ideas isn’t the problem,” said Robert. “It’s trying to present them in ways that will be acceptable to the congregation.”

  “Folks around here are very old-fashioned,” said Sarah.

  “I suppose it’s quite a change from your church in London,” said Lucy, attempting to steer the conversation in that direction.

  “The thing I don’t understand,” said Robert, “is why so many people around here insist on voting for the Conservative candidate when it’s not in their best interest. Of course, the folks up at the manor want to keep taxes low and the Conservative line definitely benefits them. But when old Simpkins, who’s worked at the ironmongers since he was ten years old and never made more than fifty pounds a week says he’s going to vote Conservative, I just have to scratch my head.”

  “I was actually surprised to learn that Perry and Poppy are Conservatives,” said Sue, pausing to attempt the neck-stretching exercise necessary for taking a sip of lemonade. “They seem so modern and progressive.”

  “Progressive when it benefits them, like getting government grants to fix the roof on the manor, but quite resentful when the tax bill comes,” said Sarah.

  “I have noticed that when the manor is in need of some repair or other, it’s a valuable part of the nation’s heritage that belongs to all the people,” said Lucy, “but when something goes missing or a visitor wanders through the wrong door, it’s suddenly their family heritage that’s being threatened.”

  “Have there been incidents at the manor?” asked Sarah. “Has something been stolen?”

  Lucy suddenly feared she might have said too much and shook her head. “No. It was just something Poppy said . . . or maybe it was Flora. I’m not sure.”

  “And Lucy knows better than to gossip about her hosts,” said Sue with a meaningful glance.

  “I do. I’m ashamed of myself,” said Lucy.

  “If you are truly penitent and contrite, your sins will surely be forgiven,” said Robert with a twinkle in his eye.

  “I have to admit that we are terribly curious about Cyril and his mother, who doesn’t seem at all distressed by her son’s grisly end,” said Sue. “I understand you knew them in Hoxton?”

  “I never met Cyril’s mother,” confessed Robert, “but Hoxton was a very tough place and Cyril fit right in. It was rumored that his grandfather had links to the notorious Kray brothers. And his uncle—I understand his aunt and uncle brought him up, and, well, there’s really no way to say it nicely—his uncle was a small-time crook. I’m afraid that by the time I met him, Cyril was rather fixed in his ways. He ran a couple prostitutes and sold drugs. He even tried to get one of the boys in the church youth group to sell for him.”

  “Robert told him to get lost and the next day Robert was attacked by a couple thugs. That’s the way things were in Hoxton,” said Sarah.

  “Harrison told me she blamed her sister and her brother-in-law for turning Cyril to a life of crime,” said Lucy.

  “She definitely has a point,” said Robert, “but I find people do what they need to do to survive and in Hoxton, crime was one of the few viable options available to people.”

  “Harrison herself isn’t exactly honest,” said Lucy. “We’ve seen her steal bottles of wine.”

  Sue gave her another meaningful glance and hurried to explain. “It’s really kind of a joke. Everybody knows about it. She’s not fooling anyone.”

  “Maybe larceny is in the blood,” said Sarah, “and maybe she chose a life in service as a way to stay on the straight and narrow, a way to escape her criminal family.”

  “She is certainly very devoted to Lady Wickham,” said Lucy. “We even wondered if maybe Cyril was actually her ladyship’s child.”

  “Born on a long vacation in Switzerland and passed off to a childless couple?” suggested Sarah with a smile. “Like in a novel? And since the earl is childless, the poor outcast finds himself the lord of the manor?”

  “I know it sounds silly, but I imagine these things do happen,” said Lucy. “Especially when you consider how much morals have changed in recent years. When Lady Wickham was a girl an unwed mother was a social outcast.”

  “Don’t forget. It can work the other way around, you know,” said Robert after draining his mug. “We don’t know who Cyril’s father was. There’s a long tradition in this country of the young titled gentlemen interfering with the pretty little maids.”

  “Robert!” chided his wife with a smile. “Such thoughts! You ought to know better!”

  “You mean I ought to know my place,” he said, rising from his chair. “And I’m afraid that right now, the place I ought to be is at my desk working on my sermon.” He paused. “I’ve got to say, you ladies have given me much to think about, and I thank you.”

  “It’s we who should thank you,” said Sue, struggling to rise from the sling chair and finally getting a hand from Robert.

  “It’s been lovely,” said Lucy, also needing a hand to extract herself from the chair.

  “I keep telling Robert we need new chairs, but he says these remind him of his childhood,” said Sarah.

  “My da used to bring them when we went to Brighton. It was a summer ritual.”

  “It’s nice to have happy childhood memories,” said Lucy.

  “Indeed,” said Robert. “ I don’t think Cyril had a happy childhood.”

  “Not that an unhappy childhood excuses the bad choices he made,” said Sarah.

  “It doesn’t excuse them, but perhaps it helps us understand,” said Robert. “And to understand all is to forgive all.”

  “He’s hopeless,” said Sarah, watching as her husband walked across the lawn and back to the church. “Absolutely hopeless.”

  Lucy and Sue thanked Sarah for the tea and headed back to the manor, grateful for the trees that shaded the path.

  “You know,” began Lucy, “maybe we’ve got things wrong. We keep expecting Harrison to break down in grief over her
son’s death, but maybe she really is a cold-blooded monster. Maybe this faithful servant act is just that, an act.”

  “Lucy, you really do have a mind like a sewer,” said Sue, clucking her tongue.

  “I’m taking that as a compliment,” said Lucy. “It’s what makes me a good reporter, not accepting the first thing I hear as gospel truth.”

  “So you think Harrison is really some sort of Mrs. Danvers character who makes life a misery for her mistress?” She chuckled. “Somehow I don’t see Lady Wickham as a gullible Rebecca.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” said Lucy, carefully negotiating a stile. “Don’t you think it’s odd that Lady Wickham has been confined to her room for days? Maybe she’s a prisoner, and Harrison brings up these huge trays of food and eats them herself right in front of her. The poor old thing might be fading away, denied sustenance by her cruel servant.”

  “Well,” said Sue, after negotiating the stile herself, “since you’re writing a far-fetched romance, maybe someone in the family is trying to do away with Lady Wickham and has enlisted Harrison to help, promising her a nice pension and a seaside cottage.”

  “It’s a lovely thought,” said Lucy, plucking a long piece of grass and pulling off the seed heads one by one, “but Poppy and Perry seemed truly upset about the old woman’s situation. Why would they want to get rid of her?”

  “Maybe it’s not either of them. Maybe it’s Desi or Flora or Gerald.”

  “But you still haven’t come up with a motive. What would any of them possibly gain by knocking off the old bird?”

  “She must know something!” exclaimed Sue, seizing on the idea. “A terrible secret that will ruin everything. Like the old earl got Harrison pregnant and Cyril was his love child, who will inherit the title and the whole caboodle.”

  They stepped out of the shade and onto the huge lawn that surrounded the manor. It stood on a slight rise, dominating the landscape with its three pointy towers piercing the sky. As they looked, a dark cloud passed in front of the sun, casting the ancient castle in shadow, and it suddenly seemed quite a forbidding, even menacing, place.

  “You know, there’s supposed to be an oubliette in the basement somewhere,” said Sue. “Perry told me. It’s a hole in the ground where you lock up somebody you want to forget and leave them to die.”

  “I know what an oubliette is,” said Lucy, shuddering at the idea. “I suppose there’s been a lot of strife and bloodshed through the years, considering the family’s long history. I took a course in English history in college and I can tell you, it wasn’t pretty.”

  “I watched The Tudors,” said Sue as they began the long march across the lawn.

  They trudged along under the hot sun, discovering that while the lawn looked to be a smooth expanse, it actually undulated and contained a few surprises, including a hidden copse of trees.

  “Let’s go that way,” suggested Lucy. “It will get us out of the sun for a little bit, anyway.”

  “I could use a bit of a rest,” admitted Sue. “These are new sandals and they’re not quite broken in.”

  Lucy glanced down at the bejeweled flip-flops Sue was wearing and contrasted them with her sensible athletic shoes. “There’s nothing to them. How can they hurt?”

  “It’s the part that goes between my toes,” said Sue.

  “Well, perhaps there’s a bench in among those trees and we can sit a bit,” said Lucy.

  When they reached the wooded area, they discovered it held an ancient walled garden. They pushed open the gate. The garden was largely given over to weeds but did contain a lichen-stained stone bench.

  “It’s just like The Secret Garden,” said Lucy, sitting down beside Sue. “I loved that book when I was a girl.”

  “Maybe Flora will restore it,” said Sue, who had removed one of the sandals and was rubbing the space between her big toe and its neighbor. “It would give her something to think about besides not eating.”

  “We can suggest it when we get back,” said Lucy, watching as Sue began working on the other foot. “Do you have blisters?”

  “Not yet, but I’m working on them,” said Sue, waving away a mosquito.

  “We’ll be eaten alive if we stay here,” said Lucy, slapping at one of the bloodsuckers that had landed on her arm. “Can you walk?”

  “I’ll go barefoot,” said Sue, slipping her fingers through the straps of her sandals and standing up. “I don’t think they have snakes here, do they?”

  “Just watch where you step,” advised Lucy, pulling open the gate and discovering Gerald on the other side.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You startled me!”

  “What in damnation are you doing here?” he demanded, blocking the opening in the wall.

  Looking over his shoulder, Lucy saw Vickie walking across the lawn toward the house.

  “We were just resting a moment,” said Sue, holding up her sandals. “My feet were killing me.”

  “Serves you right,” declared Gerald, “wearing foolish things like that.”

  “We were just leaving,” said Lucy, hoping that Gerald would take the hint and move aside so they could leave the walled garden.

  “Leaving, that’s what women are good at,” said Gerald. “She’s leaving, too.” He cocked his head in Vickie’s direction. “All your sort care about is money. No contracts, no Vickie. That’s what she told me.” He fumed and shook his walking stick right in front of Sue’s face. “Can you believe it? After . . . well, everything I did for her. Damned ungrateful. No notion of fair play whatsoever.” He humphed. “And they call yours the fair sex. Nothing fair about any of you!”

  “It must be getting on to cocktail time,” said Sue, glancing at her watch.

  “Rather early, isn’t it?” said Lucy, who knew it was only lunchtime.

  Gerald was having none of that. “Must be five o’clock somewhere,” he said, turning abruptly and marching off.

  Lucy collapsed against the gateway. “Good thinking,” she said, congratulating Sue. “I thought he was going to start whacking us with that stick of his.”

  “What do you suppose Vickie did?” mused Sue in a low voice as they followed him across the lawn.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious,” replied Lucy. “I think he thought she was interested in him, but she was really only interested in closing some sort of sponsorship deal.”

  “Poppy was dead set against that, wasn’t she?”

  “So Poppy nixed his chances with Vickie,” concluded Lucy. “I see rough waters ahead. How many more days till we go home?”

  “Three, sweetie. Only three.”

  Lucy sighed. “Well, I’ve got to say, life here among the blue bloods isn’t at all what I expected.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  As Lucy and Sue drew closer to the manor, they heard the wail of a siren and quickened their pace, fearing some sort of accident or perhaps a fire. When they reached the drive, they saw an ambulance arrive with its siren blaring and lights flashing.

  “Probably one of the visitors fell ill,” said Sue. When the ambulance continued past the visitor’s entrance where a handful of people turned to watch as it turned into the gate to the private stable yard, she changed her mind. “Do you think it’s Lady Wickham? Maybe she isn’t faking like we thought and is really sick. She could have had a heart attack or stroke.”

  “I have no idea,” said Lucy, quickening her pace. “Accidents can happen to anyone. I hope it’s not serious.”

  When they entered the private yard, however, they saw the EMTs were already carrying someone out on a stretcher and loading the blanket-covered person into the ambulance. Poppy was a step or two behind, clutching a sweater and her purse as she hurried to accompany the victim in the ambulance. In a matter of moments, the doors were slammed shut and the ambulance took off, slowly at first but picking up speed as soon as it cleared the gate in the stable yard wall.

  Perry was standing in the doorway, watching anxiously as the ambulance departed. They hurried up t
o him.

  “What happened?” asked Sue.

  “Flora overdosed,” he said, his face white.

  Lucy was shocked, but not surprised. Realizing that Flora’s addiction to drugs explained a lot about the girl’s condition—and perhaps about Cyril’s presence at the manor.

  “How awful,” said Sue.

  “Will she be all right?” asked Lucy.

  “I think it’s really bad,” said Perry. “Desi found her. He’s pretty shaken up.”

  They followed Perry into the great room where Desi was slumped over the sink, filling a glass with water.

  “Thank heaven you found her,” Perry told him, wrapping his arm around his nephew’s shoulders.

  Desi carefully set the glass down on the counter and embraced Perry; the two men clung together for a long moment.

  Desi pulled away, shaking his head. “Thank God she’s into vinyl. She got this old turntable. Unearthed it from the attic, I think. She insisted the sound was better, richer. She was really into it. When the record stuck and Nina Simone was singing the same phrase over and over, I went in her room to see what was going on and there she was, lying on the floor.” He paused. “I’ve been around drugs enough to recognize an overdose. I only hope I was in time. I shouldn’t have waited so long before checking on her.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” said Lucy. “You did the right thing.”

  “I was so mad at her. I kept thinking she should get off her butt and fix the damn thing. It was driving me crazy,” he said, staring at the glass of water.

  “How long do you think she was out?” asked Perry.

  “The LP was about halfway through when it stuck,” answered Desi, finally picking up the glass and taking a long drink.

  “So maybe fifteen minutes at the most?” said Sue, estimating the time.

  “She might have started the record and then shot up afterwards,” said Lucy. “It may have been only a few minutes.”

  “However long it was, it was too long,” said Desi

  Full of bluster, his father came into the room.

  “What’s this? Quimby tells me Flora’s overdosed? They took her in an ambulance and Poppy went, too.”