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

by T E Kinsey

  Chapter Eight

  Next morning, Betty and I arose together and bimbled about, good-naturedly getting in each other’s way as we washed and dressed.

  ‘Did you see the body?’ she asked as she brushed her hair. ‘Poor Mr Dawkins, I mean?’

  ‘Not closely,’ I lied.

  ‘I bet you’ve seen loads of bodies, though, haven’t you? I mean, laid out all neat and tidy in a coffin is one thing, but out there in the world, all mangled and broken . . . It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  For all that it didn’t bear thinking about, she seemed to have given the matter considerable thought.

  ‘I’ve seen my fair share,’ I said. ‘And it’s never very pleasant.’ I decided not to mention that a fair proportion of those whose bodies I had seen had died at my, or Lady Hardcastle’s, hand.

  She sighed. ‘I’ve never done anything exciting,’ she said sadly. ‘Don’t suppose I ever will, working for Mrs Beddows. She gets her fun from spreading gossip and being catty to her husband, which doesn’t leave much for me to get involved in. You’ve been around the world.’

  ‘If you hate it so much,’ I said as kindly as I could, ‘why not leave and find something else?’

  ‘I probably should, shouldn’t I? But it’s always hard to take that first step, isn’t it? Talking of which, I ought to take my first steps towards the kitchen. There’ll be hell to pay if I’m not there with her tea a few seconds before she wakes up. You should have seen her yesterday morning.’

  She sighed again, and with a final brush at her uniform to remove a stray thread, she set off to start her day.

  I wasn’t far behind, and we sat and chatted a little longer at the staff table, Betty hurriedly scoffing down a few mouthfuls of her own breakfast, while Patty prepared our trays.

  ‘When you were little, what did you want to grow up to be?’ I asked, sipping at some lukewarm tea.

  ‘Rich,’ she said.

  ‘And how did you hope to achieve these riches?’

  ‘I didn’t want to become rich,’ she said, spearing a sausage with her fork. ‘I wanted to be rich. You see?’

  ‘Not entirely, no.’

  ‘I wasn’t interested in getting money; I just wanted to have it. And I only wanted to have it so I didn’t have to think about it no more. Money wasn’t the important thing; it was never having to worry about it that I wanted. My ma and pa worked every hour, and we just about scraped by. They always quite liked what they did – she was a seamstress and he was a bricklayer – but they had to do it. They never had no time to call their own. They sold all their waking hours to someone else in return for a few bob to pay for a roof over our heads and food on the table. And they had to watch every farthing as it went out, ’less it run out on them. I dreamed of being able to do what I wanted with my time and never have to even think about where the next penny was coming from.’

  ‘Isn’t that what everyone wants?’ I asked.

  ‘Most folk, yeah,’ she said. ‘’Cept the really rich ones. ’Less they inherited it, they must have spent all their days trying to work out how to get more money. They wasn’t interested in having money; they was interested in getting money. See what I mean?’

  ‘Almost,’ I said. ‘And what would you do with your time if you weren’t selling it to someone else?’

  ‘Not sure, really. That was always the problem. It’s not that I don’t want to work. It’s not even that I don’t want to work in service. I just . . . you know . . . sometimes . . .’ She aggressively speared another sausage.

  ‘Sometimes, yes,’ I said.

  ‘But you, you have a great life. You’re busy; you’ve got an employer who respects you. You go places, do things. I heard you even took brandy with the guests last night.’

  I laughed. ‘News travels fast. Yes, the ladies invited me to sit with them while they idealized our exploits.’

  ‘At least you have exploits to idealize. I’m not sure I’ve ever had an exploit. I got locked in a tool shed once by mistake, but the gardener let me out ten minutes later when he realized what he’d done. Not really the sort of story that gets you invited to sit down and take brandy with the ladies, is it?’

  I laughed again. ‘Come on, Nora-Never-Done-Nothing,’ I said, standing up. ‘Let’s see what’s keeping Patty with those trays, then we can get off and have some exploits.’

  ‘Maybe you can . . .’ she said glumly.

  To my immense surprise, Lady Hardcastle was once again already awake and sitting up in bed when I entered her room with the fully laden breakfast tray.

  ‘Good heavens!’ I said.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked in some alarm, looking up from her journal.

  ‘You’re awake, my lady.’

  ‘Of course I’m awake, silly. It’s . . . It’s . . .’

  ‘It’s almost eight o’clock,’ I said as I set the tray down on the writing desk.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, more surprised now than alarmed. ‘Now I understand your consternation. It’s not like me to be awake before eight at all. I wonder what it can be. The invigorating country air, perhaps?’

  ‘We live in the country,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm, you have me there. In that case, I am at a loss,’ she said, capping her pen and closing her journal. ‘But wait. If you expected me to be still safely wrapped in the warm and loving arms of Morpheus, why are you here bearing such a substantial array of jentacular comestibles?’

  ‘Ah . . . well . . . now . . . you see . . .’ I began awkwardly. ‘Wait a moment, my lady. “Jentacular comestibles”? Really? I despair sometimes.’

  ‘Not bad, eh? But don’t change the subject. What brings you here with breakfast nosh if I’m supposed to be asleep?’

  ‘I wanted you to be awake. I thought we ought to confer before our day of investigation. If we were at home, we’d be sitting at the kitchen table together, planning and strategizing. I’m not sure the natives could cope with having me sitting at the breakfast table, so I brought its contents up to you.’

  ‘Quite right – best not discomfit the natives,’ she said. ‘And we’ll be wanting to talk about them anyway, so it’s doubly important that they not be within earshot.’ She indicated the tray. ‘I take it some of that’s for you?’

  ‘That was the original plan, my lady,’ I said, extending the tray’s legs and placing it over her lap. ‘But I know how you toffs like to gorge. It’s all the rage nowadays. I’m beginning to wonder if I brought enough.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, tucking in. ‘I’m sure we’ll manage.’

  I sat on the monstrosity of a bed, and did my bit to reduce the mountain of food.

  ‘What are your thoughts, then, my lady?’ I said after a while. ‘Who do you fancy for the sabotage?’

  She thought for a moment, then reached for her journal.

  ‘In the absence of my beloved and much-derided crime board,’ she said, ‘I’ve been reduced to writing things in my journal like some sort of medieval peasant.’

  She opened the book and leafed through it, trying to find the relevant page. Meanwhile, I tried not to point out how few medieval peasants would have had a leather-bound journal in which to record their musings. I had moved on to not reminding her how few medieval peasants would have been able to read and write in the first place, when she arrived at the notes she’d been seeking.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘I’ve started from the assumption that it’s someone among the household and their guests. If it should chance that none of them is involved, then we shall have to widen our search to the rest of the party guests. Although, actually, if we reach that point, then only a miracle would reveal the killer to us. There were dozens of people at the party, and by the time we’ve included coachmen, chauffeurs, and cabbies, there will be dozens more. If it’s no one from the house, we’re scuppered.’

  ‘Sunk without trace,’ I said.

  ‘Quite. So I’ve made a list of everyone here. We begin with our host, Fishy.’

  ‘I can’t see
it, my lady. It wouldn’t make sense for Lord Riddlethorpe to sabotage one of his own motor cars. What would he gain from it?’

  ‘That’s what I thought, too,’ she said. ‘So we shall put a cross by Fishy’s name for now. Then we have Jake. I can’t see that she has any more motive than her brother.’

  ‘Agreed,’ I said.

  ‘Roz? She’s a startlingly unpleasant woman, but she strikes me as the sort who would have a great many imaginatively vicious ideas for settling scores before she resorted to something as crude as mechanical sabotage.’

  ‘Possibly, my lady, but remember what Uncle Algy said: Mr Dawkins did say something “lewd” and “suggestive” to her at the party. If he offended her enough, she might have decided to take him down a peg or two by sabotaging his car.’

  ‘Very well, we’ll leave her as a possible. How about Helen?’

  ‘“Titmouse”?’ I said with a laugh. ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Sorry, dear, but if I can’t drop Roz, you can’t drop Helen. You know what they say about the quiet ones, and it strikes me she’s probably got a lifetime’s worth of bottled-up rage and resentment just waiting to burst out.’

  ‘I’ll grant you that. If I were her, I’d have bludgeoned Mrs Beddows to a gory death years ago, but why would that make her attack Mr Dawkins? Why would she sabotage his car?’

  ‘Perhaps he rebuffed an advance from her just as Roz rebuffed him. Hell hath no fury, and all that. After a day of being belittled by her old “friend”, perhaps he was the straw that passed through the eye of the camel’s needle.’

  ‘Perhaps, my lady,’ I conceded. ‘No cross for her, then. Next?’

  ‘We move on to Fishy’s friends now. Harry?’

  ‘I think we can cross off your own brother.’

  ‘It might have been a jape that went wrong,’ she said. ‘He’s not a terribly practical fellow, after all. He might not have realized quite how dangerous his little trick was.’

  ‘Possibly, but I should say that his ignorance of mechanical matters also makes it rather unlikely that he would have managed to work out how to sabotage the brakes in the first place.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘To be truthful, I think he would have owned up by now if it were a joke that went wrong. Another cross for Harry, then. Monty?’

  ‘Again, what would Mr Waterford have to gain from sabotaging one of his own racing team’s motor cars and endangering the life of his main driver?’

  ‘What if Number 3 were a prototype?’ she said. ‘What if it were one of Fishy’s designs? Perhaps Monty wished to undermine it to promote his own design.’

  ‘An intriguing possibility, my lady,’ I said. ‘Mr Waterford remains on the list, then.’

  ‘And then there’s Viktor Kovacs.’

  ‘The evil Hungarian.’

  ‘Well, quite,’ she said. ‘It does seem a trifle clichéd, doesn’t it? Still, there’s a reason that clichés become clichés.’

  ‘He was talking to Lord Riddlethorpe at dinner last night, and it sounded as though he was offering to buy the racing team.’

  ‘Really? I was down at the other end of the table listening to Jake trying to keep her Uncle Algy under control.’

  ‘A losing battle, that one,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear the whole conversation, but Herr Kovacs mentioned an offer “in light of recent events”, and that he’d be prepared to discuss something or other. I’m afraid that’s the point at which Uncle Algy stepped over whatever line Lady Lavinia had drawn for him, and got a telling off. I couldn’t hear the rest.’

  ‘So you think Viktor might have sabotaged the motor car to destabilize his rival and make him ripe for a takeover? And if that didn’t work, he’d eliminated the team’s best driver.’

  ‘Best driver?’ I said. ‘Wasn’t Mr Dawkins in third place as they passed us?’

  ‘My word, you’re right. But everyone said he was an excellent driver. Perhaps there was something else wrong with the motor car after all.’

  ‘Or perhaps it wasn’t the new prototype?’

  ‘Oh, lord, I don’t know,’ said Lady Hardcastle with no little exasperation. ‘Cliché or not, I don’t think we can take Viktor out of the running.’

  ‘I take it we’re not even going to consider Uncle Algy.’

  ‘If the sabotage had been devised to make someone’s trousers fall down or their skirts blow up, I would have that old rogue as my principal suspect,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘But I think he gets an automatic cross.’

  I laughed. ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘Though if I find out that any housemaids have been fondled, he should be top of the list. So that’s everyone from above stairs?’

  ‘I believe so, yes,’ she said, putting her pen on to the tray. ‘Below stairs . . . Well, I’m afraid that’s rather within your purview. I’m embarrassed to say that I’m not at all certain who the runners and riders are within our host’s household.’

  ‘I can list the main ones for you, if you’d care to add them to your list.’

  She picked up her pen once more. ‘Say on, tiny one,’ she said.

  ‘There’s Mr Spinney the butler. He’s unusually affable and easy-going for a butler.’

  ‘A little too perfect, you think? Something to hide?’

  ‘No idea, my lady. Then there’s the housekeeper, Mrs McLelland. I can’t fathom her out at all. Polite and friendly, and yet at the same time oddly cold and distant. I’d like to know more about her.’

  ‘Righto,’ she said, making a note.

  ‘The cook is the delightful Mrs Ruddle, and her maid is Patience, who prefers to be known as Patty. Lovely women. You’d think they were mother and daughter, the way they get along.’

  ‘Perhaps they are,’ suggested Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘One never knows,’ I said. ‘Oh, Morgan the chauffeur – we can’t forget him.’

  ‘Well, no, we can’t. But he was the one who pointed out the sabotage. Wouldn’t he have tried to hide the deliberateness of it?’

  ‘Perhaps, my lady. But it might be a cunning double-bluff.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, making more notes. ‘We’ll keep him in mind, but I have my doubts.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I’ve not met many of the others.’

  ‘What about your pal Betty?’

  ‘Oh, of course, yes. But she was in the room with me all night.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘As certain as I can be, my lady,’ I said. ‘I’d been at the champagne and might have slept peacefully on if she’d got up in the night, but she’d been supping enthusiastically, too. I doubt she’d have been in a fit state to find her way to the stables, let alone track down a pair of wire cutters and find precisely the right place to employ them.’

  ‘Good enough for me,’ she said. ‘Didn’t they have a driver?’

  ‘They did,’ I said. ‘Finlay. But he just dropped the ladies off and went back to London, so he wasn’t even here.’

  ‘Unless he sneaked back at dead of night and did the dirty deed. He’d know one end of a spanner from the other.’

  ‘A weak point, badly made, my lady. Finlay Duggan shall remain unlisted.’

  We sat a moment in thought.

  ‘What was the name of that chap you said was a rum ’un?’ said Lady Hardcastle after a while. ‘You said he was “a handful”, as I recall.’

  ‘Oh, Evan Gudger,’ I said. ‘Footman of this parish, currently serving as guests’ valet.’

  ‘That’s the chap. On the list?’

  ‘Mischievous, rebellious, like as not a bit reckless. I’d say he was listworthy, yes, my lady.’

  ‘Goodness,’ she said as she wrote. ‘It’s quite a list, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is. And we’ve not covered half the staff.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, capping her pen and tapping it against her teeth. ‘Well, we’ll find out nothing more sitting here picking through the remnants of breakfast. Time to dress and start poking our noses into things, I think.’

  ‘Righto, my l
ady,’ I said, and stood to remove the tray from her lap.

  As we passed the open door of the library on our way to the front door, we saw Miss Titmus hunched over something at the large writing desk by one of the windows.

  ‘What ho, Helen,’ called Lady Hardcastle.

  Miss Titmus looked round, slightly alarmed.

  ‘Sorry, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. We’re off for a stroll round the grounds. Care to join us?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Miss Titmus. ‘Oh, yes. Thank you. That would be super. Just let me . . .’

  She turned back to the desk, and I could see that she had been fiddling with her camera. She closed it with a snap, and brought the reassembled instrument with her as she joined us in the passage.

  ‘You don’t mind if I bring this?’ she said, indicating the camera.

  ‘Why on earth would we mind?’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure, but it does vex Roz so. She gets frightfully cross with me for carrying it about.’

  ‘Well, neither of us is Roz, and I think it’s a splendid little thing. I remember when cameras were great wooden boxes that arrived on the back of a cart with a team of six or seven men to operate them.’

  Miss Titmus laughed. ‘Oh, Emily, you do make me chuckle.’

  ‘Glad to hear it, old thing,’ said Lady Hardcastle. Taking Miss Titmus by the arm, she led us all out into the September sunshine.

  We strolled around the formal garden that we’d seen from the terrace at the rear of the house. Despite having no practical gardening skills whatsoever, Lady Hardcastle’s theoretical knowledge of flowers, herbs, shrubs, trees, bushes, mosses, weeds, lichens, and fungi seemed, to me at least, to be encyclopaedic. Such was her passion for matters botanical, she would occasionally break off mid-sentence to point out a plant, excitedly describing its origins, usually with plenty of references to the Latin names of its floral relatives. I was delighted to see that Miss Titmus was as nonplussed as I. Another town girl, clearly. But she made up for her lack of technical knowledge with an extraordinary enthusiasm for shape and colour. The pair of them made for very entertaining garden companions, even for someone like me who could barely tell a Passiflora from a park bench.