Death at Gallows Green (2 page)

Lawrence straightened and turned, grim. “‘Ee's not goin' t' see us,” he said. “Not nobody else, neither.”

Amelia took a step backward, wondering at the look on Lawrence's face. “Why not?”

“'Cause 'ee's dead,” Lawrence said. “Poor bugger,” he added with feeling.

The poor bugger was Sergeant Arthur Oliver of the Essex constabulary, late constable of the hamlet of Gallows Green. He had been shot in the chest at very close range.

“
B
other.”

Kate Ardleigh was annoyed. She had wetted her last pair of dry shoes. She paused beside a tall hedgehog holly and glanced through its variegated leaves at the puddled path around the fish pond, up at the gloomy, pewter-coloured sky, and across the park at several lavishly costumed women playing a desultory game of croquet on the lawn before Melford Hall. Sighing, Kate elected to walk round the pond, however muddy the path or drizzly the afternoon. Her shoes were already soaked through, and walking was preferable to the trivial pursuit of a croquet ball or the even more trivial conversation of the players. She started off down the path.

Her walk was interrupted, however, by a rustling scramble in the underbrush, the crackle of twigs, and a duet of shrill squeals and cross mutters. Kate turned, startled.

“Who's there?” she called.

A short, round young woman in a plain green merino dress and sensible boots backed out of the shrubbery, her straw hat knocked askew. An instant later, she was followed by a fat white rabbit, which darted around her skirt and down the path. Quick as thought, Kate reached down and scooped it up. It struggled briefly, scratching and squealing, but she held it, firm, in both hands.

“Is this . . . yours?” Kate asked.

“Indeed he is,” said the young woman. She came forward and took the rabbit. Her round face was flushed with exertion, and her brown hair escaped untidily from under her hat. “Peter, you wretched thing,” she scolded. “You have disgraced both of us.” She tucked the rabbit under one arm with a practiced gesture.

“I'm glad he's been recovered,” Kate said, and then wasn't sure what else to say. It was a bit disconcerting to encounter a woman with a rabbit.

“He wanted a walk out, you see,” the young woman said. “Only when I put him down, he fancied a bit of fresh cress by the lake. And then he insisted on having it in the very densest part of the shrubbery.” She stroked the pink ears. “Rabbits are creatures of very warm temperament,” she added. “At one instant Peter is quite amiable, and the next he's a regular demon, kicking and scratching and spluttering. But if I can lay hold of him without being bitten, in half a minute he's licking my hands, utterly contented to be held.”

“He seems quite contented now,” Kate said, eyeing the rabbit for signs of his becoming demonic. She was intrigued by this plainly dressed, shy-looking woman with soft brown hair and prominent brows, curving like parentheses over the corners of her deep blue eyes. On closer inspection, though, she seemed not as young as Kate had thought, close to Kate's twenty-seven, probably, and also unmarried, for she wore no ring. At that age, and with her demeanour, she was probably the nanny of young William, Lady Hyde-Parker's little boy, and the rabbit belonged to her young charge. But nanny or governess, she was by far the most interesting person Kate had met on this visit.

The house party was Kate's first since arriving in England from America the year before. Her first ever, actually. Before she came to live with her Aunt Sabrina Ardleigh and Aunt Beatrice Jaggers at Bishop's Keep, she had lived in New York, where she had supported herself as a writer of sensational fiction. Under the pseudonym of Beryl Bardwell, her penny dreadfuls (with such titles as
Missing Pearl
and
The Rosicrucian's Ruby
) had attracted quite a following of loyal readers
in Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly.

But since coming to England as her aunt's secretary seven months ago, Kate had finished only one story,
The Conspiracy of the Golden Scarab
. It was in part a record of the tragic poisonings of both her aunts. Upon their deaths, Kate had inherited Bishop's Keep, which included a holding of several hundred acres, a substantial Georgian house, and a coterie of servants. Since then, her new role as mistress of the manor had left her little time for writing and less time for house parties, even if she had not been in mourning.

But six months had passed since the deaths of Kate's aunts and she was beginning to feel comfortable in her new duties. Her friend and neighbour Eleanor Marsden, recently married to Mr. Ernest Fairley, had insisted that she be out and about and see something of England. At Eleanor's suggestion, Lady Hyde-Parker of Melford Hall had invited Kate to spend a week at the Hyde-Parker estate near Sudbury, in Suffolk. Kate had accepted the invitation gladly, not only because she looked forward to a week's refreshing respite in a lovely English country house, but also because she wanted to be writing again. (“Please, dear lady,” the editor of
Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly
had pleaded in his last letter, “do,
do
oblige your readers with another tale of Death and Passion.”) Kate had hoped that Melford Hall might be the place to collect ideas for Beryl Bardwell's next thrilling narrative.

But sadly, Kate had discovered that the most sensational events at Medford Hall had taken place several hundred years before. The mid-Tudor residence was grandly constructed of two wings of mellow red brick enclosing a grassy courtyard, with matching octagonal turrets fore and aft. Melford's builder had been William Cordell, Speaker of the House of Commons and Master of the Rolls under Elizabeth I, and in 1578, Cordell entertained his queen and two thousand of her retainers in the Great Hall. From the Cordells the estate passed to the family of Lord Rivers, a Catholic Royalist. In 1642 the rabble sacked the house, destroyed its furnishings, and made off with all the deer in the park. Lady Rivers was remanded to debtors' prison and died within the month.

Contemporary Melford bore little visible trace of its dramatic history. There was the stained glass portrait of Elizabeth, dressed in blue and gold for the Service of Thanksgiving that commemorated her victory over the Spanish Armada, and a rather nondescript oil of the ill-fated Lady Rivers, both located in the East Gallery. But Melford's present owners, the Hyde-Parkers, seemed serenely unconnected to the cataclysms of past centuries. The grand old house, impressive as it was, did not even harbour a ghost, although Kate had heard rumours of a medieval vaulted chamber beneath the Banquet Hall, which she had hoped to visit until she learned that it was walled up after the house was built.

There was very little of the sensational about the guest list, either, since the socially ambitious still lingered in London, taking advantage of the last month of the season. The Hyde-Parkers, however, were secure enough in the social elite not to care about missing a few last parties, and Lady Hyde-Parker, who loved to garden, always indulged herself with long stays in the country even at the height of the season. Her guests for the week included several Hyde-Parker relatives and their children, mostly kept out of sight on the nursery floor or in the back garden; two young women who had not gotten husbands in the requisite three seasons since being “out” and were hence considered failures; one dour dowager swathed in black shawls; and a white-haired military gentleman who kept putting snuff up his nose. Kate's days had been spent in dressing for and then sitting down to breakfast, lunch, and tea, with croquet and a ramble around the pond as a respite. Her evenings were filled with dressing for dinner, then dining and playing whist as the conversation revolved around people and events of which Kate knew nothing. She was unutterably bored.

But the weekend promised improvement. Eleanor Marsden Fairley and her husband were due to arrive shortly from London. And here was this odd little governess or nanny, or whatever she was, pressing a white rabbit to her neat green bosom and offering a lecture on the creature's life-habits.

“Thank you for snatching him up so quickly,” the odd person said. “Most wouldn't, you know. They don't much care for rabbits, except in rabbit pie.” She shuddered.

Kate smiled. “But you do care?”

“Oh, yes, particularly about Peter, and Benjamin too, of course.” She gathered her skirts with her free hand. “Well, now that I've got him again, I expect I'd better go. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle has to be let out, and there's no end of unpacking.”

Kate wondered who Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was and why she might be confined. Was she some incompetent relative, some
mad
person, perhaps? Kate had read of many such tragic women, who upon exhibiting symptoms of madness (or perhaps merely the wish to choose the course of their lives for themselves) were kept close confined for years upon end, able to see no one. Kate's human sympathy—and Beryl Bardwell's authorial interest—suddenly were invoked. But there was a limit to what one might decently ask. The standards of politeness did not permit her to probe the state of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle's mental health.

“You have recently arrived, then?” Kate inquired.

“Oh, yes, just,” the woman said eagerly. “On the railroad. I came alone.” In her voice Kate heard an unmistakable note of triumphant delight. Why should anyone take such satisfaction in traveling on the railway, which to Kate seemed a noisy, dirty business? That she had traveled alone seemed to suggest that Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was already here, perhaps
lived
here, was perhaps some mad relation of Kate's host and hostess. Beryl Bardwell immediately imagined the poor lady in the garret, let out only when someone was available for close supervision. Perhaps the rabbit belonged to the mad woman.

“I'm sorry,” Kate said. “I don't believe I quite got your name. Mine is Kate Ardleigh.”

“You're an American, aren't you?”

Kate smiled. “I suppose my speech gives it away.”

“How interesting you Americans are,” the other woman remarked, “announcing your given name straight away, without bothering with misses and misters and all that stuff and nonsense.”

“I suppose we do,” Kate said, warming to the woman's candour. “It seems easier that way, and friendlier. What's your name?”

“Bea,” the woman said shyly, almost as if she were experimenting with it.

“Will I see you at tea?” Kate asked, and then regretted her thoughtless question. Bea would no doubt be busy with her ward. Anyway, staff did not come to tea. “Or perhaps we could walk together,” she added hurriedly. “At your convenience, of course.”

“I'd like that,” Bea said happily.

“Tomorrow afternoon at this same time, then?” And as Bea nodded, Beryl Bardwell felt a surge of anticipation. The mysterious Bea was an interesting character in her own right. And perhaps through her, Beryl could meet the madwoman in the attic!

P
olice Constable Edward Laken stood at the foot of McGregor's garden, his hands in his pockets, staring bleakly down at the cold, still form of his friend and colleague, Sergeant Arthur Oliver.

“Dead,” said Lawrence, the footman at Marsden Manor, who had discovered the body and summoned Edward. “Shot, it happears,” he added unnecessarily.

It did indeed appear that Arthur Oliver had been shot, and a great grief welled up in Edward Laken. He and Artie had been boys together, fishing in the River Stour, padding the dusty lanes in search of birds' nests and berry bushes, skating on the thin ice of Bailey's Pond and once, even, falling through. He might have drowned that winter afternoon if Artie had not crawled out and pulled him to safety with a willow branch. A passage from
Hamlet
came into his mind, a passage he had once got by heart, playing Hamlet to Artie's Laertes in a parish theatrical. And now Artie lay on his side in a bramble thicket, eyes open, staring upward in the sleep of death, dreaming who knew what dreams, the navy serge of his uniform jacket thickly matted with cold dark blood.

With an effort, Edward pulled his gaze from the dead eyes and looked up. McGregor, whose garden this was, served as an assistant gamekeeper on the Marsden estate. His cottage was some distance away, beyond the apple trees. The garden was deep, and backed up to Lamb's Lane. He looked back at the footman. “How was it that you happened to come here?”

Lawrence spoke carelessly, but avoided Edward's eyes. “T‘were a young lady, sir. We come 'ere fer a bit o' privacy, you might say. Through th' gap in th' ‘edge.” He became defiant. “I'll take my affidavy it's th' truth.”

Edward pulled out his notebook. “The young lady's name?”

Lawrence looked up, eyes wide, and his tone suddenly changed. “Oh, no, sir, please, sir. I promised. Mrs. Pratt ‘ud be most ferocious to 'er.” He stopped, conscious that he had said too much.

Edward knew the servants at Bishop's Keep, for he had interviewed them all six months before, upon the deaths of the elder Miss Ardleigh and her sister Mrs. Jaggers. He had been there several times since, and he knew Mrs. Pratt. He did not need to wonder which of the servants had been the object of Lawrence's attention and his accessory in this discovery.