Murder at Mullings Page 18

  She was seated on a bus one day when a frowsy elderly woman in an old black coat and battered hat sat down beside her, then turned for a stare.

  ‘Aren’t you Mrs Fritch, mother of him that’s got himself caught up with that Miss Bradley?’ It was asked in the despising tone of voice that appealed to Mrs Fritch’s mood of resenting Cyril’s defection, regardless of benefits.

  ‘Yes,’ she said with what she hoped was the right amount of frigidity. The woman’s statement would be unpardonable if it were not so interesting.

  ‘Asking for trouble, he is, and I’d watch my back too if I were you.’

  Mrs Fritch feigned suitable alarm. ‘What do you know against her?’

  ‘Nothing for gospel,’ the woman lowered her voice enticingly, ‘but she struck me from the start as a dark horse. Lots of them in the village feel sorry for her because of getting left standing at the altar before coming here, but none of them questioned why the man got cold feet all of a sudden.’

  Mrs Fritch pressed a hand to her forehead. ‘I hadn’t thought he could have his own side of the story.’

  ‘Just like everyone else – just took it as fact he was a cad and her a true Christian martyr. As for the Stodmarshes …’

  ‘Yes?’ This was getting better.

  ‘They’re not the pillars of salt they make out to be,’ the woman lowered her voice further to raspy whisper, ‘and I should know, having been nanny to the boy till he was around seven. I could tell from the start he wasn’t right in the head, I could. It comes down from his maternal grandmother, who’s been in and out of the loony bin. As for the rest, I wouldn’t trust a one of them farther than you can kick a piano. Stab you in the back soon as look at you.’

  ‘Oh, my poor Cyril!’ Mrs Fritch pressed her fingers to her forehead. ‘He’s been doing the bookkeeping at Mullings for insultingly low wages, so perhaps I shouldn’t be all that surprised by what you’re saying …’

  ‘Here’s my stop coming up. Best keep all this to your chest, particularly with your son, unless you have sufficient influence to persuade him to break the engagement – not all mothers do.’ The woman got up and started towards the front of the bus. Mrs Fritch heard a chuckle but did not connect it with her recent companion.

  She wouldn’t give one word of warning to Cyril. Wanted to make his own decisions, did he? Well, he’d just have to live with the results, however badly they turned out. The woman had looked a drinker. So what! That didn’t make her blind and deaf. What mattered was that Mrs Fritch would have it up her sleeve, and it would enable her to look down her nose on the Stodmarshes if they tried coming all superior over her. Never had she enjoyed a short bus ride more.

  Winter merged into spring. One fine Tuesday in early May, George left the Dog and Whistle at around nine in the morning to walk along to the newsagent’s three doors down to buy a paper. The weather being fine, he took it over to a bench on the green and sat down to enjoy a leisurely read. Miss Milligan, coming from the opposite side of the green with two of her dogs walking to heel, saw him crumple over.

  ‘What to make of that, chaps?’ she asked the boxers. ‘Odd time of day for a nap!’ On nearing the bench she bayed: ‘Rousie! Rousie!’ Taking this as an order, Hercules and Harold shifted sideways and plunged forward on their leads. ‘Sit!’ she bellowed, to instant effect, and to the consternation of Constable Trout pedaling down the road. Attempting to look as though he was intentionally getting off his bike instead of being bumped from it, he came over to investigate.

  ‘What’s to do?’ he inquired portentiously.

  ‘George Bird.’

  ‘Can see that for meself without need for spectacles, Miss Milligan. No mistaking a man of his size for anyone else, even with his head down. I expect he’s fainted, is all.’

  ‘That’s your sex for you! Don’t need the excuse of wearing tight corsets! I expect he did the silly and skipped breakfast.’

  Constable Trout did not approve of the word ‘sex’ in any context. He got the party on the bench, as referred to afterwards in his daily notebook, sitting upright and held him in place. George stirred, but neither opened his eyes nor attempted to speak. Mr Smith, the newsagent, came out of his shop, crossed the road, and stepped on to the green.

  ‘What’s to do, Constable?’ he called out.

  ‘It’s George Bird. Passed out, he has, but I think he’s beginning to come round. Hope it isn’t a heart attack.’

  George was now mumbling about being all right and wanting to get back to the Dog and Whistle. Some colour had returned to his face. ‘Where’s my newspaper?’ He fumbled a hand across the bench.

  ‘In your lap, old boy,’ said Miss Milligan.

  Mr Smith handed it to her. ‘We’ll give it back to you, Birdie, when we get you home. First thing’s to get you perpendicular.’

  The two men heaved him up and each took hold of an arm in manoeuvring him back to the Dog and Whistle. Miss Milligan followed with the newspaper, which she handed over at the door, saying she wouldn’t come in because of the dogs. George tried to dissuade Constable Trout and Mr Smith from doing so either.

  ‘I’m feeling back to normal – no need to waste more of your time. Been feeling a little under the weather for the past couple of days, that’s all.’ It was no good. They insisted on at least seeing him into a chair. Constable Trout was all for fetching Doctor Chester, but George was adamant that he didn’t need him. Five minutes later they reluctantly departed, each having urged him to go back to bed. He had never before been so anxious to have the place to himself.

  A couple of hours later, Sir Winthrop and Lady Blake were seated in their library at The Manor, Large Middlington, utterly unprepared for a conversation with their daughter Lamorna that would turn the bright spring morning into darkest winter night. The library, with its walls of unread leather volumes, deep leather chairs, and ponderous oils of hunting scenes, could have been switched with one from any comparable country house without anyone being the wiser. Even the liver-and-white spaniel positioned just so on the Turkish carpet would be interchangeable, having been chosen to blend in perfectly with carpet and fabrics.

  Sir Winthrop was reading the newspaper, skipping the pages featuring political commentary in conflict with his own inclinations. As usual he muttered a running commentary, to which his wife, as usual, paid no heed.

  ‘What’s the world coming to with all the crime these days? Elderly woman stabbed to death whilst knitting near King’s Cross. Thank God we don’t go in for that sort of thing round here; it lets Britain down. Mark my words, Clarice, it could lead to our losing hold of the Empire. Never takes much for the French to gloat that we’re no more civilized at heart than savages in the jungles. They’re usually referring to our cooking. But damn it all, we don’t have to hand them opportunities to have a go at us!’

  Lady Blake was thinking about their son, Gideon, wondering why his focus had shifted from haircuts to growing a beard. This scene, which had replayed itself with minor variations for the past thirty years, was shattered to smithereens when their eighteen-year-old daughter, wearing the very latest vogue in tennis dresses, swept through the door and flung at them the defiant declaration that only the wickedest of the wicked would try to stopping her from marrying Ned Stodmarsh.

  People who saw Lamorna Blake for the first time were prone to wonder if the wondrous blue of her eyes outshone the glory of her golden hair, or whether it was the other way round. Nor was hers a beauty that paled with familiarity. Even her parents were frequently struck anew by her loveliness, but this morning their focus was not on her looks but on her horrifying announcement.

  She threw herself into a chair. ‘Ninnies! Don’t just sit there with your mouths open! You know I’ve been seeing a lot of Ned ever since I got released from finishing school. At first he didn’t seem to admire me at all, which has never happened with a boy before, and it was terribly exciting, but then he turned out to be so sweet. Felicity Giles is beside herself over him.’

  Si
r Winthrop recovered the power of speech ahead of his wife. ‘My dear child, you can’t marry a man because another girl wants him!’

  Lamorna closed her eyes, the exquisite little fans of dark lashes displayed to great advantage against her white-and-rose petal complexion. ‘God wouldn’t be so cruel as to let that happen. And it isn’t just tennis. He’s proved his devotion by taking up riding to please me. Who could deny that such dedication deserves the ultimate reward?’

  ‘Are you saying he’s proposed?’

  ‘Don’t be simple, Daddy. Of course he has, or we wouldn’t be talking about it, would we?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon at the Stafford-Reids’ picnic.’

  ‘And you said nothing last night?’

  ‘How could I? You’d gone to dinner and bridge with the Belchleys when I got home and weren’t back when I went to bed.’

  Sir Winthrop gazed helplessly at his wife. ‘Clarice?’

  Her Ladyship kept a grip on her composure. ‘He should not have dreamed of approaching you until he had spoken with your father.’

  Lamorna raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Don’t be so frightfully old-fashioned, Mummy. It isn’t Daddy he wants to marry.’

  ‘I should hope not!’ Sir Winthrop occasionally attempted a joking manner. Her Ladyship’s look informed him she was in no mood for frivolity.

  ‘Anyway, Ned just blurted it out. I nearly tripped on a loose stone on the path when we were walking around. He put his arms round me to prevent my scraping a knee or worse and then said the sweetest thing in the loveliest husky voice about wanting to keep holding me for the rest of our lives. And I asked him to tell me exactly what he meant, and he said …’

  Lady Blake stopped listening. Such a frightfully awkward situation in which to be put! Just a few years ago a refusal to listen to such foolishness would have been automatic, an alliance with the Stodmarshes – that family of most frightful bores – unthinkable, to be avoided like the Great Plague and the Fire of London combined. But that was before Mullings had become a place to which people would kill to be invited. They were all desperate to have the chance to tramp through its woods, in hope of catching one teensy glimpse of a tangle-haired, long-bearded figure in sackcloth slipping to or from his grotto.

  ‘We barely discussed the ring, if that makes you feel better about the proprieties, Mummy; only that I want it to be a sapphire to match my eyes, with a diamond on each side. There’s so much less fun in getting engaged if ones friends aren’t green with envy.’

  ‘Better an emerald, then,’ said her father.

  Lamorna let this pass. ‘Ned’s fearfully sweet!’

  ‘Is he?’ Lady Blake feigned interest.

  ‘And incredibly amusing.’

  Her Ladyship wished her daughter back at finishing school. To forbid the marriage might sit so ill with that witch Regina Stodmarsh that all social intercourse between the two families would be severed. The prospect was too utterly humiliating! Anyone who was anyone was to be encountered at Mullings these days, on weekend or overnight visits. Initially, Regina had played the role of a woman not given to entertaining lavishly, claiming to have lived a quiet, almost reclusive life in Northumbria. That had all changed after Edward Stodmarsh was lowered into the ground.

  Reaching for her bottle of smelling salts, Lady Blake begged her husband and daughter to give her a few moments. How to face the smirks of those toadies the Stafford-Reids and Palfretts with their insufferable delight in declaring themselves intimates of Regina Stodmarsh, if they, the Blakes, were ostracized by her! But for her prestige as a hostess, she was a ghastly creature – arrogant, needling, and so diabolically clever.

  It had been a brilliant stroke on her part to reveal that story of her seventeen-year-old daughter running off with the groom years ago, denying anyone else the pleasure of doing so behind her back. Not a woman to willingly risk making one’s enemy. Oh, that Edward Stodmarsh’s lachrymose first wife had not petulantly succumbed to what with another woman might have been a trifling cold! Lady Blake was tempted to pass over the smelling salts and slap her daughter’s face instead. Never had she more devoutly wished that Mullings was located two hundred rather than twelve miles from her gates. Why God could not think of the Blakes above all others she had always deemed the most mysterious of His ways. It was so very tiresome of Him, but that was the male species for you! Let Him not expect to see her in church on Sunday morning! Meanwhile, she must make an attempt at reasoning with Lamorna.

  Her daughter’s voice broke in on her thoughts. ‘Have you died, Mother?’

  Lady Blake was tempted to respond that she hadn’t the emotional energy to do anything so taxing. She smiled. ‘Darling, I’m sure Ned Stodmarsh is a fine young man, but at twenty, rather too young, one would think, to be contemplating matrimony.’

  ‘That’s silly, he’s frightfully mature! You should just see him on the tennis court. Felicity Giles nearly swoons every time he serves.’

  ‘The girl should see a doctor,’ said Sir Winthrop.

  Lamorna ignored this callousness. ‘Ned never lets that rotten cheat Miles Palfrett get under his skin. Playing doubles with Ned for always and forever is my every dream come true. Last month I thought it would be scratching Elizabeth Palfrett’s eyes out for having the nerve to wear the same gown that I wore at the hunt ball, along with the Palfrett diamonds to give her all the sparkle she doesn’t have. But since then I’ve grown up and am quite content to go on despising her in a perfectly friendly way, just like every other girl in our crowd.’

  ‘Admirable.’ Sir Winthrop judiciously refrained from pointing out that Elizabeth Palfrett, despite the scorn heaped upon her by competing eligible females, had just become engaged to young Viscount Briarwood. ‘But where would you be, Lamorna, if Ned Stodmarsh should injure his knees or otherwise be forced to stop playing tennis three days after the wedding? I can’t see such a situation being grounds for an annulment.’

  Lamorna pouted, fully aware that it made her look even more heartbreakingly beautiful. Rising from the sofa, she gracefully threw out her arms in despair. ‘I suppose, Daddy, that what you and Mummy really want is to make me wait until I’m as ancient as his cousin Madge Bradley before getting engaged.’

  ‘The woman’s hardly old, can’t be more than forty.’ Sir Winthrop had a kindly streak, which he must have come upon accidentally, because it wasn’t an inherited trait, and his nanny had instilled in him that soft-hearted little boys didn’t grow up into manly men.

  ‘She’s had to settle for a bookkeeper, of all creepy things.’

  Lady Blake agreed this was indeed scraping the bottom of the trough.

  ‘Those ink-stained fingers!’

  ‘Honest work,’ said Sir Winthrop, ‘unless there’s some fiddling of accounts, of course. More of that sort of thing going on these days than when I was a boy.’

  Every attempt must be made, decided Her Ladyship, to persuade their daughter to step back from the brink of incredible folly. ‘I’ll concede Ned Stodmarsh is not a bad-looking boy; but, oh, my dear, that ginger hair! Think of your children! Especially if it should show up in a daughter!’ She hoped she had made this sound as ominous as an offspring encumbered with two heads. ‘What is marginally acceptable in a man is not so with females.’

  ‘Queen Elizabeth had red hair and it did not keep her off the throne,’ Sir Winthrop felt obliged to interpolate when Lamorna cast him a glance that threatened a torrent of tears.

  ‘Indeed so,’ his wife’s tone made clear he would be well advised to remain seen but unheard. ‘I’ve no doubt being called ginger-nob as a girl was what made her so irritable – cutting off people’s heads all over the place. Such an unsanitary practice, I’ve always thought. Also,’ Her Ladyship saw nothing amiss in turning the thumbscrew, ‘let us not forget she died an old maid.’

  A dreamy expression entered Lamorna’s astonishingly lovely blue eyes, fringed by those incredible lashes. ‘I wish someone would behead Regina Stodm
arsh. As even you two innocents must have guessed, the wicked old thing is determined to ruin everything for Ned and me.’

  Lady Blake assumed a sympathetic mien, contrary to the relief that flooded through her. Praise be to a forgiven Almighty! Here might be the way out of what had seemed for several shuddery minutes an insoluble dilemma. How utterly charming of Regina to accord herself the role of villainess! ‘Tell Daddy and Mummy all about it, my dearest darling!’

  Lamorna glided over to the French windows before returning to recline artistically on the sofa. ‘The problem is with the Stodmarsh money. I know it’s a horribly vulgar word, that you’ve taught me never to say out loud, but there’s no bearing it! Regina has full control over it for years to come, because of that stupid thing old Lord Stodmarsh set up after he married her.’

  ‘Called a trust,’ answered her father knowledgeably.

  ‘You’re right, as always, Winthrop,’ his wife congratulated him in her excess of revived good spirits.

  ‘Is that what it is?’ Lamorna converted a yawn into a sigh. ‘Ned tried to explain the bitter facts to me, and what it comes down to, when you leave out all the fussy stuff, is that he has nothing but a quarterly allowance from the interest on the estate until he is twenty-seven, or she does the considerate thing and dies in the meantime. Ned, being so sweet, doesn’t blame his grandfather for setting things up that way, but I think it was wicked of him. Anyway, Ned told me when I rang him up before coming in here that he’d spoken to her about us last night and she refused to withdraw a penny so we can buy a flat in London. Honestly, I could tear my hair out.’ Untrue – Lamorna’s golden tresses were one of her main reasons for climbing out of bed in the morning and staying up most of the night, but this declaration achieved the desired result.