Stranger at the Manor by Mary Kingswood

23: Friends Old And New

Word spread through the village faster than a fire. When Peter and Phyllida entered the Gages’ saloon that evening for the card party, they were surrounded by acquaintances avid for the least little detail of the discovery. Phyllida and her surprising history were no longer the wonder of the hour, for there was a greater wonder to eclipse it, and Christian was the acknowledged hero of that tale.

Peter was happy that Phyllida had been accepted again as a member of the village in good standing, at least by most of the gentry. It had been a close-run thing, but Lady Saxby’s intervention had turned the tide, and the discovery of the murder had settled it. Miss Gage was not amongst the card players that evening, but the room was crowded, and Peter was rapidly scooped up by Captain Edgerton, Mr Willerton-Forbes and Mr Chandry, the village’s resident investigators of murders, mysteries and other oddities.

“Mr Winslade, do make up a four for whist with us, and you may tell us all the pertinent details,” Captain Edgerton said, his face alive with excitement. “A murder! What could be better!”

“Almost anything, I should think,” Peter murmured.

“Not to those of us who love to disentangle the threads of deceit that affect innocent lives,” Edgerton said seriously. “There is a murderer to be found, and no time to be lost! Who disliked Lord Saxby enough to kill him, do you suppose?”

“Captain, I have been in Shropshire for precisely six weeks,” Peter said. “You must hold me excused from any speculation on the question of possible murderers, if you please.”

Captain Edgerton merely grinned wolfishly, and the three spent the entire evening extracting every drop of information from Peter, and devising fanciful lists of Lord Saxby’s enemies.

The following day, they requisitioned Christian to explain his findings at the crash site. Naturally, his new friend Dan went along too. Peter trotted along behind them, having been shooed out of the house by Phyllida, who was engaged in domestic matters with Susannah. It was entertaining to watch Edgerton at work in his investigative guise, rather than the amusing dilettante he seemed to be at the card table. His attention to detail was formidable, and he managed to extract a short stretch of wire that had become embedded in the bark of one of the trees.

“It has to be pulled tight to be effective,” he said, “then the force of the horses snagging it will pull it even tighter. The murderer in his haste to be gone failed to check he had removed every piece.”

Then they went to the Hall to see the remains of the curricle in the coach house, where Edgerton examined it in minute detail, while another man, by the name of Neate, sketched it. It was depressing, Peter found, to see the wrecked curricle in its dismal state, untouched, knowing that it had caused the deaths of two people. No, not the curricle, he reminded himself. Some person with a length of wire was responsible for the tragedy.  This was no accident.

After that, the indefatigable Edgerton returned to the monument with Sam, the groom, to reconstruct in his mind the exact positions of the horses, the curricle and the two victims.

“You say Lord Saxby was here on the road when you came upon him?” Edgerton said.

“Aye, sir, just as I said.”

“I thought he fell upon a sharp branch?”

“Aye, sir, that ’e did. Right through ’is ’eart, it were.”

“And where did it come from, that is what I would like to know. It could not have fallen from one of those trees, for the distance is too great. There is no debris of that sort anywhere to be seen, not here, and certainly not on the road. That is just too convenient.”

“It could have fallen from a passing cart,” said Chandry. “Someone collecting firewood, maybe.”

Neate coughed discreetly. “Seemingly, young Master Miles in one of his lucid moments after the accident claimed to have seen someone drive a stake into Lord Saxby’s heart. Unfortunately, he said it was Victor Hutchison, the simple-minded boy who travels round sharpening knives, and Miss Cass Saxby proved that it couldn’t have been him. He was miles away at the time, even if he’d had cause to kill his lordship.”

“Aha!” Edgerton said. “But someone else might well have done it. He could easily have placed the wire and a suitable branch here in advance. Then, when he knows that Saxby will be passing by, and at a time when there is likely to be little other traffic, he springs his trap. What a great pity it is that we did not know of this earlier. Nine months wasted! How are we ever to determine what happened after such a time?”

“Nonsense, Captain,” Chandry said. “We identified the body in the Dower House cellar, after all, and that was from donkey’s years ago.”

“Yes, but what about Dilys Hughes? Dilys Hughes will be the death of me, I swear it. Traced to Shrewsbury and then… gone! Vanished off the face of the earth.”

“Who was Dilys Hughes?” Peter said, amused by his vehemence.

“A housemaid at the Hall almost thirty years ago who got into a spot of bother and— I wonder now if that might not be another one to set at Lord Saxby’s door. He does seem to have made a habit of it. I shall add her name to the list of possible murderers, which is likely to be a long one. He must have made enemies a-plenty over the years.”

“It pains me to dent your enthusiasm, but might it not be better to leave it to the magistrate?” Peter said. “The squire knows everybody, after all. He would know who might have held a grudge against Lord Saxby.”

“True, and we shall talk to him, certainly, but I am tolerably confident that Lady Saxby or his lordship’s executors will authorise us to act in this matter, under the circumstances.”

“Under what circumstances?”

Edgerton looked grave. “You will appreciate, I am sure, the importance of ensuring that the investigation is undertaken with the utmost impartiality. It would be very awkward for the squire to investigate members of his own family, for instance.”

“There is no question of that… is there?”

“Mr Winslade, at this precise moment, I can think of only one person who was sufficiently harmed by Lord Saxby as to suggest a motive for murder, and that is your wife.”

Peter gaped at him. Then he burst out laughing. “Oh, very amusing, Captain!”

Edgerton laughed too. “I thought so, yes. Naturally, no one suspects Mrs Winslade, but as an excuse for us to step into the breach and take charge of the investigation, it will do as well as any other, do you not think?”

They were all still laughing when they reached the village again. Edgerton and Chandry made their way back to the Dower House to compile their drawings and notes. Neate had disappeared on business of his own. Peter looked at Christian, Dan and Sam, head tilted to one side.

“Thirsty work, this investigating. What do you say to a jug of something at the Boar’s Head?”

This was not an offer the three young men could refuse, so they found a table in the common room and ordered ale. Their presence attracted no little attention from the old men playing dominoes, and soon others began to drift in from the tap room or the yard outside.

“A fine accent you have there,” said one young man to Christian. “You must be the Harrogate man. I’m an exile, too.” He held out his hand. “John Spencer, born in Wetherby, lately of County Durham and currently groom to the finest horse in Shropshire.”

“And devoted slave to the incomparable Diana,” called out one of the others, causing general laughter.

“Pity she’ll not have him,” said another.

“She’s better sense than to wed a savage northerner,” cried a third.

“She’ll have me, right enough,” Spencer said with a grin, not in the least put out by the ribbing. “She’s just making me work for it, that’s all. She’ll never have any of you soft southerners.”

After that, a raucous verbal battle commenced, with much good-humoured rivalry between Spencer and the Shropshire men. Feeling that Christian could safely be left to make friends, Peter ordered ale all round and quietly departed.

On his way out, he met Beth Brownsmith, the innkeeper’s wife. “Who is this Diana that has young Spencer so het up?” he said.

She chuckled. “New chambermaid, but she’ll not ’ave him, for all ’e courts her like a man besotted. Been ’ere since May, she ’as, and they’ve all tried their chance with ’er, but she’ll have none of ’em. Keeps to ’erself, she does. If you ask me, she’s got some other mark in mind, cos I’ve seen ’er any number of times slippin’ out at night. So I think John Spencer’s wasting ’is time.” She chuckled again. “Do ’im good to be taken down a peg or two, that one. ’e’s too full of ’imself altogether.”

A door opened, releasing clouds of smoke that billowed through the short passageway. A small head peeped out. “Ma! Ma! The mutton’s afire!”

“All right, all right! Keep your hair on. I’m coming.”

Laughing, Peter left her to deal with the culinary crisis and walked home to Whitfield Villa.

“Where is Mrs Winslade?” he asked Thomas, as he divested himself of hat, gloves and cane. Oh, the joy of those words — Mrs Winslade! How glorious that sounded.

“In the parlour, sir.”

As soon as he opened the door, Peter wished he had enquired further. The room was full of chattering females, the noise assaulting his ears like a rookery. As one, they turned and gazed at him, the words dying on their lips. He found Phyllida’s amused face in the throng and raised his hands in appeal. “I shall not disturb your guests,” he murmured, and turned for the door.

“Not so fast, Peter,” said one of the ladies, jumping up and grabbing his arm, as if to forcibly prevent him from leaving. “As the most recent village bridegroom, you must be properly congratulated. Oh, look at the poor bewildered fellow! You have no idea who I am, have you, Peter?”

He scoured his mind and eventually dredged up a name. “Selena? Selena Gage?”

“Mrs Pibworth now, and Ursula is Mrs Malling. Viola sent the most unintelligible letter — really, it was barely legible, but it sounded as if there had been some catastrophe of monumental proportions here. An invasion by Bonaparte, perhaps, or a plague of locusts, or a volcanic eruption, at the very least, possibly all three. William had the carriage on the road within the hour, fearing the worst, as you may imagine, and Ursula and John had the very same idea. And now we find that it is nothing but that Phyllida fell off the path of righteousness momentarily twenty-two years ago, and honestly, who but Viola would make a fuss about that?”

“Mrs Anderson, for one,” Phyllida said. “She came to the Tuesday card party and left as soon as she realised I was there. Also Mrs Drinkwater and Mrs Whittel, that I know of. And Mr Whiteway sent me a very stiff note asking me to settle my account and would I mind not patronising his shop in future because he has his daughters to consider.”

The ladies roared with laughter. “Well, no one cares what a haberdasher thinks, and Jane Anderson is a two-faced, poisonous arch-wife,” Selena said. “Good heavens, it was years ago, and no one could accuse you of veering from the path of virtue by so much as an inch since then.”

“And she is married now,” Ursula said comfortably. “Marriage washes away all stains. Sit down and have some tea, Peter, and prepare to be thoroughly congratulated. I always hoped that someone would appreciate what a treasure Phyllida is. I cannot tell you how glad I am that someone has at last. I wish you both the utmost joy.”

There were only five women in the room, Mrs Gage and Lucy Cokely being the remaining two, but even though the noise level had dropped, Peter still felt uncomfortably like an intruder and was relieved when the callers rose to take their leave.

“Whatever were you talking about when I arrived that got everyone so excited?” he said, pulling Phyllida down to sit beside him on the sofa, and sliding an arm around her waist.

“Oh, female things,” she said vaguely. “Remembering our youth. We were such friends then — Viola, Selena and Ursula, Lucy and me. I was the youngest, and the last to move here, so they were a bit protective of me.”

“Female things… clothes? Oh, you were talking about men, I suppose.”

“Yes! Selena and Ursula liked the brothers who lived at Wellwood Park in those days. And Viola would have married Lord Saxby in a second if he had ever looked in her direction, but of course he never did. We could all see that it was a hopeless case, but how she used to sigh over him! Poor Viola. She has never had much luck with men. She was supposed to marry John Malling, but Ursula got him instead. Now Lucy, she was sweet on your cousin John, which was quite understandable, because he was very dashing then, you know. He is still dashing, do you not think? He dresses well and has not gone to seed, as so many men do. He seemed quite attached to Lucy for a while. He used to call her ‘Jackdaw’ because she went into mourning for a week for every parishioner who died, and she was always collecting things. ‘It might be useful one day,’ she would say. I did think they might make a match of it, for he kissed her once and she got quite fluttery about it, but Jane Kellick got her claws into him and that was that.”

“He could have married her later, when his wife died. He could marry her now,” Peter said.

Phyllida laughed. “He likes his wives young, and Lucy is not young any longer.”

“True. What about you? Did you pine for some unattainable young man, too?”

“I would not call it pining, precisely, but I was always rather drawn to Laurence Gage. Malcolm was the handsome, charming brother, of course, who always attracted the ladies, although he was too young for any of us, but Laurence was far more to my taste then. Very steady and reliable.” She gave a little laugh. “Just as well I never had my wish, for he is not a man with an adventurous spirit, not like you. I should have had a dull old time of it.”

He could think of no way to answer this except by kissing her rather warmly, which occupied them for quite some time. When they drew apart, he said, “Phyllida, you and your friends know everyone in the parish and quite a few beyond it. Who would have had reason to murder Lord Saxby? Apart from you, that is.”

Her jaw dropped. “Me? Oh, you are joking… I think. But apart from me…” She frowned. “We were talking about that… before we got onto the subject of men, that is. He was not at all well liked, but we could not think of anyone who might have disliked him enough to kill him. That is a whole new level of disliking, is it not? One does not kill a man just because he increased the rent on one’s farm, or won rather more money at cards with his friends than is polite.”

“Did he cheat?”

“Oh no! He would have considered that beneath him. He had some sense of honour, even if it did not quite stretch to rescuing women he had seduced.”

She spoke lightly, but he said, “You should be bitter about it. Sometimes I think you are too saintly, my dear.”

That made her laugh. “Hardly a saint! There is very solid proof of that, after all, about six feet tall. But what is the point of bitterness? There is no turning back the clock, is there? We make our choices, and we have to live with them. We can make a fuss or we can accept our fate quietly. Would Lucy have been happier if she had fought harder for the squire? Would Viola have been happier if she had pushed Ursula aside? Would I have been happier if I had made a fuss about Thomas Saxby? But we are none of us the sort of people who make a fuss, about anything. We just pick ourselves up and carry on.”

This necessitated another long kiss, which he would have continued for some time, except that Phyllida broke away. “It is the strangest thing, which I could never have imagined, but the one thing I feared above all — the exposure of my sin — has set me free. Oh, a few people will cut me, or not sell me buttons, but I find that is not such a terrible thing any more. You said to me once that I am no longer the woman whom Thomas Saxby seduced, and there is wisdom in your words. I have changed a great deal, and it was all so long ago now. We are none of us the people we once were. Life has swept us up and carried us to some new place where the past cannot hurt us any more. We are not defined by what we were, but by what we are now — what we do now, and what I choose to do is to hold my head high and be proud of myself.”

“Well said! Mousy Miss Beasley is truly gone for ever,” he said. “And you have your revenge on Lord Saxby after all, for no one liked him very much, and someone disliked him so much that he murdered him. Are you sure he did not cheat at cards?”

“It was very odd, the way he won so much at cards,” she said thoughtfully. “He was not a bad card player, although nothing like as good as you, but against some people he just won a great deal of money. The squire used to comment on it, for they were very thick, always, but he used to laugh about it. ‘Saxby draws money like a magnet draws iron,’ he used to say, and wish he could do the same.”

“He has a knack with money, it is very true,” Peter said. “This brothel and gaming hell of his in Market Clunbury, for instance — it was extraordinarily profitable, to the tune of three thousand a year.”

“Good heavens! What an astonishing thing! But he was very good with money.”

“He was. What was his income supposed to be?”

“Supposed to be?” Phyllida said.

“Yes, from his rents and so forth.”

“It was four thousand a year, there was no ‘supposed to be’ about it. It was well known.”

“Ah, but it was considerably more than that,” Peter said. “He had the income from Miss Saxby’s seventy thousand pounds, for one thing. That is three thousand a year, plus another three thousand from the brothel. If he had four thousand from his tenants and other holdings then—”

“Ten thousand a year!” Phyllida gasped. “But he was always grumbling at the expense of this and that, and telling everyone that he never managed to save since Lady Saxby spent every penny of his income. ‘You would think that four thousand a year would be enough for any lady, would you not?’ he used to say. But perhaps he had obligations of which we know nothing.”

Peter agreed to it, but he wondered what obligation was so important as to cost a man six thousand pounds a year. A mistress, perhaps? A gambling habit?

“Well, I daresay the new Lord Saxby will find it all out,” he said in the end. “He is a bank clerk, after all, so he will be able to trawl through the files and find out what was coming in and going out. If there are proper records, of course.”

He recalled Smith, the man from the so-called gentlemen’s club in Market Clunbury with his neat account books that showed nothing at all untoward. He did not envy the new Lord Saxby if his predecessor had been as secretive as that.

“Is it too early to go up to change for dinner?” Phyllida said brightly.

“About two hours too early,” Peter said with a smile.

“We could change very, very slowly,” she said, turning her head to gaze into his eyes. “I am sure we can find something to occupy the time.”

Peter chuckled. “That sounds like a very pleasant way to pass the afternoon.”