[Lord and Lady Calaway 03] - A Murderous Inheritance

by Issy Brooke

  “The body is of Percy’s valet, a man called John Parker, who travels with Percy. Percy says that Parker had spent the night in Percy’s room – he has a small side room made up with a travelling cot. But Percy himself was not there.”

  Adelia looked at Felicia with fear growing in her heart. “Where was he?” Felicia whispered.

  Theodore snorted. “He claims that he cannot sleep in a house, in a bed, like a normal person, or at least, not for the first few weeks after returning from a long trip at sea or overland. He says that he feels confined and uneasy. He claims that he took his hammock out into the small coppice on the other side of the ice house, and spent the night sleeping there, out in the open.”

  “Do you believe him?” Adelia snapped.

  “I do. The state of his clothes, the dew on his shoes, the moisture pearling the wool of his tweed suit; all are consistent with what he’s described.”

  “What utter nonsense,” Adelia said.

  But Felicia shook her head. “It is true. It is not the first time he’s done it. I am used to it. I should have realised what had happened but I had had such bad dreams all night and when I saw the body ... I thought ...”

  “Of course you thought it was him. And so,” Theodore went on, “did the killer.”

  Adelia stifled her gasp. “Percy was the intended victim!”

  “So I certainly believe, yes. Percy is a little more unwilling to face that fact.”

  Felicia pulled the blanket more tightly around her shoulders and she was crying again, which was perfectly understandable. A murderer was on the loose, and no one was safe – that much was obvious. “How did he die?” Felicia asked.

  Adelia shook her head at Theodore and he nodded slightly in return. It would have been foolish and cruel to discuss the details in front of Felicia, and Adelia was pleased that her husband had realised that. He simply said, “We are waiting for the police to arrive.”

  “They will come for me, won’t they?”

  “No, we will keep you safe. You are not to be alone. In fact, Percy and I were talking about maybe the pair of you going away...”

  “No, no, no,” Felicia said, her voice rising as she spoke over him. “The police are coming for me, the police...”

  “The police are coming so that they can find the culprit,” Adelia said soothingly, trying not to use the words “killer” or “murderer”. “The police will make us all safe.”

  “But it’s me! I did it, didn’t I?” Felicia wailed. “I killed him!”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Adelia said.

  Theodore coughed. “Felicia, what do you mean?” he said sternly. “What did you do?”

  “Didn’t I do it? I must have done it. My dreams, my nightmares, were full of blood and screaming. My hands hurt. My legs hurt. They hurt, all the time! My head is pounding. I can’t see. I don’t know what I am doing. I don’t know where I am. I hated him, sometimes. I hated him! Why did he come home so that I could kill him?” She began to thrash around, throwing the blanket to the floor, and Adelia cried out. Theodore restrained her, holding her upper arms but Felicia kicked out, her voice becoming a scream as she fought back. She didn’t seem to know who was there any more.

  Someone knocked at the door and they ignored it, staying intent on preventing Felicia causing herself or anyone else any harm. “Get my bag,” Theodore hissed to Adelia and she knew what he wanted. She threw open the door as the person outside was about to knock again. It was Mrs Rush, looking strained, with Inspector Wilbred at her side.

  “Lord Calaway, a moment of your time, if you will,” the policeman said. His eyes rested on the struggling figure of Felicia, and he almost smiled.

  “Good God, man, can’t you wait?”

  “There has been a murder. Let the women deal with ... this. You are needed.”

  Felicia, panting with exertion, began to slump and Theodore stepped away. She shouted again, “I hated him! I wanted him dead!”

  Wilbred cocked his head.

  Theodore whirled around to face Wilbred. “And I will attend to you the moment I am able to. Stand aside,” he snapped, and pushed past Wilbred. Adelia took his place at Felicia’s chair but she was growing calmer, or at least, becoming exhausted. Wilbred tutted, a light in his eyes, something that looked very close to triumph.

  “Thank you, Mrs Rush,” Adelia said pointedly. Mrs Rush understood and she reached out to close the door on them. The inspector and his smug face were shut out.

  Adelia took hold of Felicia’s hands. “My dear, my poor dear, you must not say such things about Percy. You have had bad dreams, you know it; we all do.”

  Felicia moaned and shook her head.

  Theodore returned swiftly, with his medical bag in his hand, and Lady Agnes was following him with nothing but concern on her face. As soon as she entered the room, Felicia grew agitated again, kicking out and screaming hoarsely now, with spittle appearing at the corners of her mouth.

  “No, no, no, not her – not her!”

  Adelia jerked her head at Lady Agnes and mouthed, “Sorry!” Lady Agnes, white-faced, withdrew immediately and Felicia began to calm down. Theodore took a syringe from his bag, screening the preparation of the injection by turning his body away. Adelia patted Felicia’s hands. “It is all right.”

  “No, not her!” Felicia muttered again.

  “Why not? She’s a good friend to you, isn’t she?”

  “The curse. The curse! She knows and The Countess knows. They know, they know, they know everything!”

  “Keep still,” Theodore muttered, plunging the long thin needle under Felicia’s skin on her forearm.

  She was still crying, “They know!” as she slipped into a comatose and unrestful sleep.

  Seventeen

  The police swarmed over every inch of the castle and Adelia thought that Theodore was correct when he confessed to her that Inspector Wilbred had an unbecoming glee to his manner. Everyone was ordered to stay indoors and a policeman was stationed at every exit. Percy railed at that imposition in particular. “But this is my house,” he shouted angrily. “No one has the right to order an Englishman around in his own house!”

  “Hush!” Adelia urged. “Keep your voice down. Show some respect.”

  Percy paused his pacing around the drawing room and turned such a look on her that she felt quite abashed. He glared as he hissed, “Respect? I know very well that my valet, a man who was for long years at my right hand, is dead; and my wife, my true sun and moon to my life, the star to which I set my sails, is ill. It is the police that show no respect; send your barbs their way, not mine.”

  Adelia knew that he was correct. She apologised. Theodore sat in a window seat, and he too would have been pacing up and down if Percy hadn’t started his own perambulations first. Two men pacing in a small room would have become a ridiculous sort of dance.

  Adelia caught Theodore’s eye and they left the room in silence. Out in the corridor, she said, “I don’t like leaving Felicia on her own. I want to go and see her.”

  “She has a maid with her. She will be asleep and we must find out what is going on down here. And anyway, what can anyone do?”

  She grimaced. That was not what she wanted to hear from a medical man. “I am worried about her, Theodore.”

  “We all are – oh.” Theodore stopped talking as Percy joined them in the passage.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Theodore glanced at Adelia and she nodded encouragingly. He turned to Percy and said, “Felicia is gravely ill. I beg of you, if you value her life, send for a doctor at the very earliest opportunity.”

  Percy was already shaking his head. “But you are a doctor. And a supremely capable one at that, are you not?”

  “The symptoms range from physical to mental and I am not skilled in both areas. Furthermore, I am too close to her; too compromised with my emotions to see things clearly. There are things I cannot ask her as a father.”

  “I did not have you pegged as a man that
would be such a slave to his emotions.”

  In any other situation, Adelia would have laughed and agreed with Percy, although it was but a common joke and a misinterpretation at that; Theodore had as many emotions as anyone else. He simply struggled to recognise them in other people sometimes, and didn’t always know what he himself was feeling. But he always felt something. He was no clockwork automaton.

  Theodore replied to Percy, saying, “It is different when it is one’s own daughter; trust me when I say that rationality can fly out of the window. Do not ask me to do the impossible – have you no heart?”

  A strange sneer twisted Percy’s face, making his moustache bristle. “Have I no heart? Do I fail to understand the role of a father? You clearly think so, as I have no children.”

  Adelia clenched her fists. He did not add any blame against Felicia but Adelia heard it ring out in the silence after his words. She could not bear it, not this, not on top of all the worry that seemed to clamp around her. She spun around and stalked away. She didn’t say a word. She left with the sudden rudeness that Lady Agnes had done, all those days ago – it seemed like a lifetime now.

  And she thought about Lady Agnes, and let her angry march take her to the quarters where the lady shared her life with her mother, The Countess.

  She was ready to be angry with someone, and it might as well be them.

  LADY AGNES AND THE Countess were sitting opposite one another at a small round table. Both were dressed in sombre grey and black, and there were half-drunk cups of tea in amongst the decks of cards, books, samplers, threads and pamphlets that littered the small space. The windows of the ground-floor room were thrown open but the dark red curtains were drawn, making the space seem dim and oddly close-feeling. They looked up alertly as Adelia entered, and sagged as soon as they saw who it was. It was an inauspicious welcome.

  “Any news?” Lady Agnes asked dully.

  “No. The police continue to poke at everything which makes them look busy but I am sure they have no routine or purpose to their poking. We are all still forbidden to leave. Inspector Wilbred says the murderer is here among us.”

  “He might be,” said The Countess.

  “He?”

  “Yes, it was obviously a he. I heard how the man died. Bludgeoned to death from behind. That’s not a woman’s crime. Which surprises me. I suppose it’s not her, then. Do you know what weapon did it?”

  “I have no idea. They are not saying.” Adelia knew, now, that The Countess despised Felicia. Her comments were spiteful and Adelia choose not to rise to them.

  “It would be something heavy,” The Countess said.

  “Hush, mother, are you a policeman now?”

  “As much as they are, by the sounds of it.”

  Adelia crossed to the window and peeked out through the curtains. From here, she had a direct view of the gatehouse and she wondered if Lady Katharine and Oscar Brodie were similarly confined to their house. She wanted to point it out to Inspector Wilbred, but another part of her didn’t actually want to help him in any way. She couldn’t help seeing him as an interloper into the investigation that her husband ought to be conducting. But then, Commissioner Rhodes’ letter of authority probably didn’t extend to cover Theodore investigating additional murders.

  She sighed heavily. “Lady Agnes, earlier, when Felicia saw you, she began to scream. Have you any idea why?”

  Lady Agnes sniffed haughtily. “She is – and I am sorry to speak so harshly – she is deeply disturbed and unwell.”

  The Countess snorted with derision.

  Lady Agnes frowned at her mother. She spoke with a little more sympathy as she went on. “She screams at random events, hallucinations, thoughts, fancies and dreams. I long for only the best for her, but I am dreadfully afraid for her future.”

  “Are you, indeed?” Adelia searched Lady Agnes’s face for any hint of duplicity. Could Lady Agnes secretly wish ill to Felicia? Did she feel usurped in the household pecking order? Did she resent Felicia’s presence, and was even now conducting some kind of campaign against her? Could she have sent that letter to Percy when he was travelling, hinting at the depths of Felicia’s madness? Could she be acting on behalf of her mother?

  Could she somehow be causing the madness?

  Adelia had read books, lurid Gothic novels for the most part, where a female protagonist, invariably young and beautiful and naïve, had been sent mad by other persons in the crumbling castle where they all seemed to live. And Tavy Castle was very much a crumbling castle in the same vein. Could enemies be running around in the night, making strange noises and flapping at bedsheets, to trick poor Felicia into losing her mind?

  Then Adelia tried to picture Lady Agnes as a fraudulent ghost painted with phosphorus like a trickster at a séance, and failed. It was a silly notion.

  And yet there was something in it, perhaps. Adelia felt frustrations and fears building up in her and if she did not let them out, she’d burst. So she let them out. She crossed her hands in front of her, interlacing her fingers, drawing strength from the pressure of her wedding ring. She said, very sternly and with a hint of weariness, “Something has happened here. Something in the past. You two know it and you are keeping secrets, and this causes great harm – you must see that.”

  The Countess’s thin lips disappeared completely in a pucker of disapproval. Lady Agnes’s knuckles were white and she said, “What are you accusing us of? Murder? Get out of here. I will forgive your accusation and put it down to extreme nervous exhaustion but you must never speak of this again.”

  Adelia was tired of Lady Agnes’s high-handed manner and sudden mood changes. “I am accusing you of harbouring secrets. The content of those secrets might be entirely harmless. The act of concealment itself, however, leads to suspicions and rumours and it is those which are causing harm.”

  “There is absolutely nothing–” Lady Agnes began to spit out, but The Countess put her withered hand on her daughter’s arm.

  “Enough. Hush.”

  Adelia waited as calmly as she could while The Countess appeared to order her thoughts. Eventually the older lady said, “Your husband has been in the ice house many times, has he not? He is a clever man, with his books and his scientific instruments. Has he seen that it’s all fake yet?”

  Adelia nodded carefully. She hadn’t expected this particular revelation but she tried not to look surprised. “Yes, he has. There is not a scrap of real lapis lazuli in there. But what we can’t work out is why it’s still there, and why it’s a secret, and what’s the significance of it all? Surely there is something else in the ice house, or there has been, even if it’s gone now. Knight might have been hiding something illicit there which led to his death.”

  The Countess said, “I can tell you the truth. There has not been anything else in that ice house. No secret stores, no hidden hoard of something precious. Only fake rocks, fake pigments, fake gems.”

  “I don’t understand. Did Hartley Knight know that?”

  “Know that it was all fake? Yes, he did. He knew some things, at least. He knew that.”

  Adelia felt now as if she were trapped in a game. The Countess was unlikely to give her any information – Adelia would have to ask the right questions. Two people were dead, and this ancient matriarch was enjoying the show. Adelia realised that she did not like The Countess very much at all, and she felt bad about that, as one was supposed to honour one’s elders. No wonder Lady Agnes had flashes of bad temper, and some unpleasant traits – it was a wonder she had turned out as well as she had done. Adelia said, “Did anyone else know it was all fake? Did – does – Percy know?”

  The Countess puffed out her cheeks slightly. “I doubt it.” She looked at Lady Agnes. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think that anyone else knew, no. Knight and you. It was always your secret.”

  “Our secret.”

  “Mostly yours,” Lady Agnes said, and a note of bitterness in her voice made Adelia feel yet another flash of sympat
hy for the woman. She was glad she was arranging a match for her. Lady Agnes needed to escape this place and this influence. Adelia hoped that it was not too late for her to find happiness in her life – and she hoped that there was nothing more to these secrets than what she was hearing. If, after all this, Lady Agnes was somehow involved in the murder or murders, it would be impossible to bear.

  Adelia would willingly drive The Countess to the gallows herself, however.

  “I don’t see why this secret was so important,” Adelia said.

  The Countess smiled very thinly. She was definitely enjoying having the power in the conversation. It was probably the only power she really got to wield. “The market collapsed, back in the thirties. We lost all our money. We lost everything. The Seeley-Wood family, the Earls of Buckshaw, were ruined.”

  “But it’s not lost – you’re not ruined,” Adelia said. Her confusion was mounting. What on earth was she missing?

  “Oh, we worked very hard and made some clever marriages,” The Countess said. She sighed and looked away, her shoulders beginning to sag. She was tired, and trying to hide it. “In spite of the curse, we regained what we had lost.”

  “In the space of three generations?”

  “Yes. Agnes, my chest is tight...”

  “Mother...” Lady Agnes sprang up and shot a look towards Adelia, warning her to stop her line of questioning.

  It was a highly convenient attack, if it were true, Adelia thought. “I still don’t see why it all had to be a secret. Is that the curse? The curse is that you lost all the money? I don’t understand.”

  “The world is full of things we don’t see.” Her breath really was coming in rasps. She began to cough. Adelia watched but she was ignored now, a mere piece of furniture, useless as the daughter fussed around her elderly mother in long-practised movements. Adelia eventually slipped out of the room, leaving unseen and unacknowledged.

  She was burning with questions.

  What was the point of keeping a secret that no one cared about?