Death Around the Bend (A Lady Hardcastle Mystery Book 3)

by T E Kinsey

  Lady Hardcastle paid for our two First Class tickets, and ‘Old’ Roberts led the way to the ‘down side’ platform, where we sat in the waiting room and awaited the local train to Bristol.

  ‘You know, Flo,’ said Lady Hardcastle, looking out of the window at Roberts as he carefully wrote our details on to tags and tied them to our baggage, ‘this journey would have been so much more straightforward if we’d sent our traps on ahead. I know they’re really rather organized, but I do worry that something will go missing with so many changes of train for them to deal with. If we’d sent them in advance, they’d have more time to find them and re-route them if they went astray, don’t you think?’

  I said nothing. I had made this very same point several days earlier, but my concerns had been pooh-poohed. With everything else I had to contend with, I had decided not to pursue it. Being proven right and finally getting Lady Hardcastle’s agreement was a hollow victory, though, so I decided not to pursue that either.

  Instead, I said, ‘Oh, we’ll be fine, my lady. Everything will be unloaded and waiting for us by the time we’ve put our books back in our pockets and stepped on to the platform. They deal with much more complicated consignments than this every day. And even if something does go astray, it’s all properly labelled. We’ll just get Lord Riddlethorpe to send a man to the station to pick it up when it finally arrives.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. Still, I should have listened to you when you suggested it.’

  My mouth was still hanging open in surprise as the train pulled up and we stepped out to board it.

  Chapter Two

  The journey was a long one. A hundred years earlier it would have been longer still, of course, but we weren’t travelling a hundred years ago. Viewed with the impatience and lack of perspective of the modern traveller, it took an absolute age. Our changes at Bristol Temple Meads (Brunel’s Tudor-style railway castle), Birmingham New Street (with its immense roof), and Leicester London Road (still feeling almost new) went without even the slightest hitch. We transferred from train to train with a clockwork efficiency that must be the envy of the world. Our baggage, too, managed to follow us with nary a problem.

  The problem, for there was bound to be one, was that, as I’ve already mentioned, the whole proceeding took an absolute age. There are only so many conversations two travellers can profitably have about whether cattle are frightened by the passing trains (and serve them right if they are – dreadful creatures), or about whether trains might one day be powered by electricity in the same way that trams are. Lady Hardcastle, who followed developments in the world of science and technology with great enthusiasm, insisted that they would. The gentleman who was sharing our compartment at the time snorted his derision, but was wise enough to say nothing.

  We read the newspaper. We read our books. We played word games. We devised fantastical biographies of the people we saw standing on the platforms of the stations we passed through. The handsome young man in the luridly striped blazer whom we saw somewhere just outside Birmingham, for instance, was a solicitor’s clerk called Raymond, who was on his way into the city to audition for a part in a musical. His sweetheart, a girl called Mildred, who had a squint, a wooden leg, and a heart of gold, had packed his lunch for him and sent him on his way with a loving kiss to pursue his dreams. The snorting gentleman left the compartment at this point and never found out what became of Raymond and Mildred.

  It was a relief when we finally disembarked at Riddlethorpe station to find not only that our baggage was all present and correct, but that Lord Riddlethorpe’s chauffeur was waiting for us with his lordship’s Rolls-Royce. Having so carefully planned the details of our expedition, we had been able to telegram Codrington Hall well in advance with our anticipated arrival time.

  Despite the length of the journey, I was in a cheerful mood as we alighted to be reunited with our baggage. Lady Hardcastle, too, was in ebullient form, and swished through the station, charming everyone as she went.

  Codrington Hall was a few miles from the small town of Riddlethorpe, and the drive gave us ample time to get to know Morgan, Lord Riddlethorpe’s young chauffeur.

  ‘Have you visited the house before, my lady?’ he said as we drove along the surprisingly flat road. There were slight bumps on the horizon, but nothing that would properly qualify as a hill, and with ditches lining the road instead of hedgerows, the effect was to make the sky seem far larger than I was used to.

  ‘No, we haven’t,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Is it a fun place?’

  He laughed. ‘Fun enough,’ he said. ‘Especially if you’re interested in motor cars. But presumably you know his lordship well enough to know that.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve only met him a few times, and that was years ago when we were up at Cambridge. He’s a friend of my brother’s, Harry Featherstonhaugh.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Well, Mr Featherstonhaugh arrived last night, and he and his lordship seem to be very good friends indeed. There was much merriment in the billiards room, by all accounts.’

  ‘Good-o,’ she said. ‘Are there any other guests?’

  ‘Not yet, my lady. But we’re ’spectin’ quite a few. His lordship’s got two more comin’, and Lady Lavinia will be arrivin’ tomorrow with a couple of friends of her own.’

  ‘Lady Lavinia? Lord Riddlethorpe’s wife? His daughter?’

  ‘Sister, my lady. Lord Riddlethorpe never married.’

  ‘A sister? All these years and I never knew he had a sister. Well, it’ll be a houseful, then.’

  Morgan laughed again. ‘It’ll be busy, my lady, but I dare say they’d need a good many more guests to actually fill the house.’

  Lady Hardcastle smiled. ‘Have you worked there long?’

  ‘’Bout a year. His lordship saw me tinkering with a motor car at m’dad’s forge, and offered me a job there and then. Dad’s a blacksmith, see? He wanted me to follow him into it, and I’ve learned a lot, but I don’t reckon there’s much future in it. I reckon motor cars are the future, but he don’t see it.’

  ‘So you do more than just drive for Lord Riddlethorpe?’

  ‘Oh-ah, my lady. I’m his mechanic. I look after his racin’ cars. You know about his racin’ team?’

  ‘Not in detail, no. Harry said that’s what the party was for, but nothing further. He said his lordship has a racing circuit at the house, which sounds like fun. But I confess I don’t know quite what to expect.’

  ‘Thought it was a rich man’s fancy?’

  She looked thoughtful, as though surprised by this perceptive young man. ‘As a matter of fact, I did,’ she said. ‘Have you read Kenneth Grahame’s book, The Wind in the Willows?’

  ‘Can’t say I have, my lady.’

  ‘It’s a children’s book, but it really is rather splendid. There’s a character in it called Mr Toad. But no matter.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to hunt it out,’ he said. ‘And what of you, miss? What did you expect of your week away?’

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘Oh, I don’t know. A break from the drudgery of serving such a demanding mistress, perhaps?’

  ‘Tough one, is she?’ he said with a wink.

  ‘The worst,’ I said. ‘But she hides it when we’re in company, so no one knows how I suffer.’

  He laughed as Lady Hardcastle huffed and rolled her eyes.

  ‘If you ever need to escape,’ said Morgan, ‘just you come down to the coach house. I’m always there, and I’d be happy to make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But won’t you be busy with the racing?’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that. I’ve always got time for the oppressed masses.’

  ‘Oppressed, my hat,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘And she’ll be too busy racing to be taking tea in the garage, I’m afraid. We both shall.’

  ‘You’ll be racin’, my lady?’ he said with evident surprise.

  ‘I shall be most disappointed if we don’t,’ she replied. ‘Can’t come all this way to a house with a racing
track and not have a go.’

  ‘Well I never,’ he said slowly.

  ‘To be honest with you, dear boy,’ she said, ‘we never did, either. But I’ve just recently bought a motor car of my own, and I have to say I’m really rather taken with this driving lark.’

  ‘A motor car of your own, eh?’ he said, apparently delighted to be able to talk about his passion. ‘What did you get?’

  ‘On the advice of my friend’s chauffeur, I bought a Rover 6.’

  ‘The Rover, eh? Not a bad little motor, that. Nice little two-seater. Little bit underpowered for what we get up to up at the house, but a good place to start.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m pleased you approve.’

  ‘And you drive it yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘We take it in turns. It’s such fun that I can’t leave it all to Armstrong.’

  He looked at me for confirmation, and I smiled and nodded.

  ‘Well I never,’ he said again. ‘Well I never did.’

  He spent the rest of the journey enthusiastically detailing all the things we might do to improve the performance of the little Rover, and from the gleam in Lady Hardcastle’s eye, I could tell that we’d be outfitting a workshop of our own as soon as we got home.

  The lodge gate of Codrington Hall was on the other side of Riddlethorpe from the station and we seemed to reach it in mere moments.

  The drive from the lodge house at the gate to the vast expanse of gravel in front of the house, on the other hand, took an absolute age. We seemed to travel for miles along a winding, wooded drive, past sheep, one or two curious deer, and a long-horned, shaggy-coated Highland cow that looked very much as though it wished it were somewhere much less flat and altogether more Scottish.

  There were occasional tantalizing glimpses of the roof and chimneys of the house in the distance, but the drive had clearly been designed to hide it from view for as long as possible, building the anticipation. When we rounded the final bend and the house was revealed in all its glory, it was every bit as impressive as its architect had planned. A dish brought to the table is just another dish of food if it can be seen as the footman carries it across the room. But when the dish is covered by a magnificent silver cloche and the footman sets it down, still covered, before whisking away the cover with a flourish and a billow of steam, even the most pedestrian of dishes can seem like a culinary masterpiece.

  Not that Codrington Hall was in any way pedestrian. At some point in the early eighteenth century, the Earl of Riddlethorpe had clearly had a bob or two, and had spent a goodly portion of his fortune on tearing down his crumbling ancestral pile and replacing it with an enormous new home, a magnificent monument to his family’s wealth and prestige. Though many thought it old-fashioned and still preferred the Victorian frippery and folderol of the neo-Gothic, I was always impressed by the elegant symmetry of Georgian architecture. Codrington Hall was a stunning example of the beautiful simplicity of that period. Its only adornment was an ostentatiously pillared portico, sheltering vast, black painted doors, from which a gangling man in overalls was apparently coming to greet us, accompanied by two boisterous, almost exactly matching Dalmatians.

  ‘What ho!’ he called loudly over the excited barking of the dogs. Lady Hardcastle waved in acknowledgement while she waited for Morgan to trot round and open the door for her.

  ‘What ho,’ said the man again as she stepped out. ‘Wonderful to see you again, Emily, old girl.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Edmond, darling,’ she said, kissing his cheek.

  ‘“Edmond”,’ he said. ‘You know it was only ever you and Mater that called me that.’

  ‘Yes, darling, but I never could bring myself to call you Fishy.’

  He let out a short bark of a laugh, which caught the attention of the dogs, who gave up their wagging investigation of the cases and trunks that Morgan was unloading from the motor car and came over to resume their own chorus of barking. Lord Riddlethorpe ruffled their ears fondly and pointed towards the front door.

  ‘Off you go, girls,’ he said. ‘Back to the house.’

  To my astonishment, the two dogs immediately obeyed, bounding off towards the house with ears flapping and tails still wagging wildly.

  Lord Riddlethorpe took Lady Hardcastle by the arm and steered her towards the house. ‘I’m so delighted you’ve come,’ he said. ‘Harry was a bit reluctant to ask, I think, but I said, “Nonsense, Fanners, bring Little Sis along and we can relive the old days.” It’ll be like being back up at Cambridge, what?’

  ‘Well, I’m glad he thought of me. It’s just the sort of break we need, isn’t it, Armstrong?’

  He stopped in his tracks and turned towards me. ‘My word,’ he said. ‘So this is the famous Miss Armstrong. How do you do?’

  ‘How do you do, my lord?’ I said cautiously, not quite knowing whether being ‘the famous Miss Armstrong’ was a good thing or bad.

  He beamed at me. ‘Don’t panic, old thing,’ he said. ‘Fanners has been singing your praises. He’s frightfully proud of his little sister, but he speaks so highly of you that a chap might think Emily here were your assistant, instead of the other way round.’

  ‘Gracious,’ I blurted.

  ‘Gracious, indeed,’ he laughed. ‘For my sins, I am Edmond Codrington, ninth Earl of Riddlethorpe. But you must call me Fishy – everyone does, you know.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord,’ I said.

  He laughed again and turned to resume his walk to the house. ‘Morgan will show you to the servants’ hall, Miss Armstrong. We’ll make sure they look after you.’

  And with that, they were gone, leaving Morgan and me standing on the drive surrounded by luggage.

  ‘Which one’s yours, Miss Armstrong?’ he said, gesturing to the pile of cases.

  I pointed to my case, and he hauled it out and set off towards the right-hand side of the enormous house.

  ‘We’ll get you introduced,’ he said, ‘then one of the boys can carry your bag up to your room – I think they’ve put you in with Mrs Beddows’s maid, but she’s not here till tomorrow, so you should have the place to yourself tonight, at least.’

  ‘Mrs Beddows?’ I said.

  ‘One of Lady Lavinia’s friends. She’s a bit quiet, but you’ll like her, I’m sure.’

  ‘Mrs Beddows?’ I said, again.

  He laughed. ‘No, her maid. Mrs Beddows is a right cow.’

  It was my turn to laugh.

  He conducted me down the side of the house to a flight of stone steps that led down to the servants’ entrance, where he let himself in, gesturing me to follow him. ‘Labyrinthine’ is a word much overused. Actually, it probably isn’t overused, now I come to think of it, but it’s certainly a word that has lost some of its power by being used to describe any vaguely twisty route, and now no longer seems adequate to describe the system of passages beneath Codrington Hall. I quickly gave up trying to remember landmarks and turns, and instead devoted all my attention to following my guide. Theseus would long since have run out of thread before we finally reached the servants’ hall, and poor old Ariadne would have died an old maid, ravaged by regret that her lover was lost forever for want of a bigger ball of thread. A much bigger ball of thread.

  Eventually, we reached the spacious servants’ hall where the staff would congregate and eat. A footman sat at the long table with newspaper spread in front of him, polishing a large silver dish. He looked up as we walked in.

  ‘How do, Evan?’ said Morgan cheerfully.

  The footman nodded.

  ‘This is Miss Armstrong, Lady Hardcastle’s maid. You couldn’t do us a favour and run her case up to the spare room next to Lily and Rose’s, could you? She’s sharin’ it with Mrs Beddows’s maid when they get here.’

  ‘I got this polishin’ to do,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘Go on, it’ll only take you a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Why can’t you do it?’ said the footman in the same resentful tone.

  ‘I’ve got to put the motor awa
y, ’aven’t I? Go on, you lazy beggar. You could have done it in the time it’s taken you to sit there tellin’ me how busy you are.’

  ‘Mr Spinney won’t like it if he finds out I’ve been galivantin’ about the house while I’m s’posed to be doin’ this.’

  ‘Mr Spinney would be delighted that you’d helped a guest feel welcome and comfortable in his lordship’s home,’ persisted Morgan.

  ‘Mr Spinney would indeed,’ said a deep voice from the doorway to our right. ‘Up off your backside and do as you’re asked, Evan Gudger. This instant.’

  A tall man with thinning dark hair entered the room and inclined his head towards me. ‘How do you do, Miss Armstrong? My name is Spinney, his lordship’s butler. I trust you had a pleasant journey.’

  ‘How do you do, Mr Spinney? Yes, thank you, it was long, but comfortable.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said the butler. ‘Welcome to Codrington Hall. One of the housemaids will show you to your mistress’s room while Evan here takes your case up for you, and we can get you settled into your own room later. Dinner is at eight, and his lordship prefers to dress informally. You’re welcome to dine with us, or we can have a tray sent up to your room, as you prefer.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Spinney,’ I said with a smile. ‘I’m sure I shall be all in by the time I’ve finished my day’s work, so a tray would be most welcome. You’re very kind.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said warmly. ‘I always feel that his lordship’s guests have come to relax, so it’s our duty to try to give their servants a break, too. Of course, should you desire some company, we’re a friendly enough crowd, but I know I relish a few moments on my own once in a while. Now then, boys, off you go. Let’s get our guests settled.’

  I nodded my thanks, and followed the maid out of the hall, along more labyrinthine passages to the servants’ stairs, and eventually to Lady Hardcastle’s room.

  Lady Hardcastle was sitting at a small desk by the window, writing in what appeared to be her journal, and while I made a start on the unpacking, she continued with her writing.