Death at the Manor (The Asharton Manor Mysteries Book 1) (8 page)

Silence descended over the room like a grey cloak for a moment. The inspector’s eyebrows rose slowly again. “Now, that is a very serious allegation,” he said, quietly. “You do realise that Mr. Denford has not been charged with any sort of crime?”

Somehow, I got my voice to work. It came out a little croaky at first but soon strengthened. “Sir, I know this must seem ridiculous to you, coming from us. But you must believe us, sir, that we have good reason to believe that Mr. Denford – well, did this terrible thing.”

The inspector leant back in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “Mr. Denford was away from the manor on the night of his wife’s death. He was staying at his club, in London. Many, many irreproachable witnesses place him there for the entire night. How is it possible that he caused his wife’s death if he wasn’t even in the house?”

“Oh, he wasn’t working alone,” said Verity. “His lover was the one who actually killed her.”

“His lover?” The eyebrows went up again.

The room fell silent once more. I could hear the faint regular tick of the clock over on the far wall.

I could see the inspector thinking quickly. “His lover?” He repeated. “You don’t mean Miss Cleo Maddox…?”

I shook my head.

The inspector’s tone was scathing. “You’re not telling me that you suspect Mr. Denford of having an affair with his middle-aged
aunt
?”

“Of course not, sir,” said Verity. “We’re talking about his lover. Mr. John Manfield.”

There was another moment of silence, even longer than the first. It was broken only by the buzzing of a fly at the windowpane, a monotonous drone that seemed to fill the otherwise silent room.

The inspector was staring intently at both of us over the tops of his fingers. I think he was starting to wonder if we were both a little mad. We certainly sounded mad enough in our theories.

Before he could say anything else, I opened my bag for the evidence. “Mr. Manfield and Mr. Denford were friends out in Africa,” I said hurriedly. “Mr. Manfield actually introduced Mr. Denford to his sister. “

“I know this,” said the inspector, a note of disgust creeping into his voice. “So, why on Earth would you two young ladies make such sordid allegations against these two gentlemen?”

I said nothing but placed the photograph in my gloved hands on the table in front of him, face down as Verity had given it to me. He unsteepled his fingers, drew a spotless handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and, holding the photograph with cotton-covered fingers, turned it right side up.

They were wrong.  It turns out you
can
shock a policeman. He didn’t make much of a noise, just a sudden rushed intake of breath. He quickly turned the photograph face down on his desk.

“You girls should not be exposed to that sort of thing,” he said sternly. “Where on Earth did you get it?”

“Mr. Manfield’s room, sir,” Verity’s eyes had a little sparkle in them – I had the feeling she was slightly amused at the inspector’s reaction. You never could shock Verity. That was what being brought up with actors led to. “He’d hidden it well – extremely well – but I knew where to look.”

“You did?” asked the inspector, slightly feebly. “Why on Earth would you know?”

“I’m a housemaid, sir.” The sparkle in her eyes was more apparent now. “I know everybody’s secrets and where they hide them.”

“Indeed.” The inspector looked down at the blank back of the photograph again. “You shouldn’t have touched this,” he went on, his tone suddenly stern.

“We wore gloves, sir,” I said quickly. “We didn’t touch anything without gloves.”

“Even so—”

“And there’s this,” I blurted out, remembering what else we had found. I gave him the little hessian bag and he took it, frowning and looked within it.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me what these are?”

I looked at Verity and she nodded, taking over. She explained about the mistress’s illness, her symptoms, Tenganka, the seeds of the sickness tree and how Mr. Manfield had told me about the way people were ill-wished and died. The inspector didn’t say anything as she spoke, but he nodded at intervals. When she finally finished speaking, he was looking slightly winded.

A third silence fell. I was thinking hard. I had that one final bit of evidence to disclose, but to do so would mark me out as horribly immodest, even someone worse than that – a voyeur, a peeping Tom. But I had to say something, didn’t I? I thought of that verse from the Bible.
And the Truth shall set you free
…

I told the inspector of how I’d crept out at night and waited in hiding outside Mr. Denford’s door. I told him how I’d seen Mr. Manfield creep down the corridor like a shadow and enter Mr. Denford’s room. Then, my face fiery as if I were standing in front of a furnace, I told him what I’d heard.

“That was my proof,” I said, tremulously. The inspector looked as though he didn’t know whether to clap me on the shoulder to congratulate me for my quick thinking or arrest me for deviance. I could feel Verity beside me give me a quick, friendly nudge with her elbow; a kind of ‘I’m here for you’ nudge. I straightened my back and spoke more firmly. “But you see, sir, I couldn’t come to you with just that. Verity and I knew that we had to have concrete proof, either of the method of poisoning or of their – their affection.”

I stopped speaking. I could hear the fly buzzing again, and saw it moving in slow, looping circles, over by the light on the wall.

“Well,” said the inspector. “Seeing as you girls seem to know everything about the case, perhaps you’ll tell me why you think the two men did this?”

Verity and I exchanged a glance. We knew, that he knew, that we knew he knew full well why the murder had taken place. But – and I think we both realised this – it was his way of saying thank you. It was his tribute to our hard work.

“Money,” I said. “The will benefits Mr. Denford directly. He and his – Mr. Manfield – get to share the proceeds, which wouldn’t have happened if Mrs. Denford had divorced him. I think she found out about their – their affair. I came across her, just before she died, and she’d had a dreadful shock. I think she’d found out about them. She said ‘I don’t know what to do’ and, very soon after that, she died. I think they couldn’t risk her talking or making any kind of scandal. So to be sure of the money, they had to kill her.”

“Money,” said the inspector. “That’s at the root of most crimes, it’s true.”

“And love,” Verity said suddenly. The inspector and I both looked at her. “They did it for love.”

I said nothing. The inspector shook his head a little, as if to clear her words from his ears. That look of disgust was back on his face.

“Yes,” I said, considering. “Perhaps for love, too.”

We were offered a lift back from the station but refused it. Verity had to catch a train back to London and I wanted to see her off. We had to wait on the platform for a bit and found a bench to sit on. I felt strangely flat after all the excitement, as if the curtain had come down on a rather unsatisfying play.

“Why don’t you come back to London with me, Joanie?” Verity asked impulsively.

I hesitated. I wanted to, so much, despite not having any of my possessions with me. Just jump on a train back to the Smoke and hang the consequences. But no – after a sudden blazing desire to do just that, reality intruded and I shook my head regretfully.

“I can’t, V. I’ve got to work my notice out, you know that. I won’t get a decent reference otherwise and without that, how can I work?”

“Yes, I know,” said Verity with a sigh. “So you’re definitely going to hand in your notice?”

“Yes. I’ve had enough of this place. It’s time to come back to London.”

“Well, that
is
good news.” Her train had puffed into the station, steaming like a kettle. I helped her into her third class compartment and she slid the window in the door down and reached her hand out to me. “Good work, Joanie. Don’t you think? Wasn’t it exciting?”

I laughed. “It certainly was. Better than cooking, that’s for sure!”

We clasped hands and then, as the train hooted, let go. I watched her move away from me as the train left the platform, her frantically waving hand the last thing I could see before the clouds of steam and smoke swallowed her up. My own hand dropped back to my side.

I walked back to the manor. I had lost all track of time but the sun was low in the sky, shining on the windows of the huge house as I rounded the corner of the footpath, so that they glittered and shone as if a fire burned behind the thousands of panes of glass. I was fifty yards away when I saw the cars come down the driveway, three of them. I stopped dead, level with the edge of the lawns. From my vantage point. I could see the inspector and three uniformed officers walk up the long sweep of steps to the front door. They weren’t hurrying but they had a grim, unrelenting rhythm to their stride that made me realise that they weren’t going to leave unaccompanied.

I stayed where I was for five long minutes, my hand clutching at the rough bark of the tree next to me. I could hear my heart thrumming, a thunder of blood in my ears. When the policeman reappeared, they had both Mr. Denford and Mr. Manfield with them. Both had their hands cuffed in front of them. Miss Cleo stood to one side, clasping her arms across her body. I thought of how she’d always seemed to dislike Mr. Manfield. Could she have known what he was, and what he was doing to his sister? Surely not the latter, or wouldn’t she have said something? Perhaps she’d known, or sensed what he really was.

The two men were taken to the vehicles. I was too far away to see properly but it looked as though they reached out to one another, before they were roughly dragged away and put in separate cars. Absurd tears sprang to my eyes. I scrubbed them away with my sleeve, looking up and away, my gaze resting on the pine forest behind the house. From this viewpoint, it encircled the manor like the black, shaggy paws of a giant beast. I thought of Mr. Manfield, of meeting him in the forest and how he’d always been kind to me. But he was a murderer, who’d cold-bloodedly poisoned his own sister, giving her the sickness seeds in his own mug of hot milk. He was the one who’d washed the cups and hung them back up; I realised that now. That would be something else to tell the inspector. I remembered what he’d said in the woods.
Human sacrifice
. Had that given him and the master the idea? Was it Astarte, working through them, wanting her pound of flesh, wanting their souls?
Are you satisfied now
? I asked her silently and then I shivered, because a small, superstitious part of me knew that you didn’t rouse the attention of the goddess. Not if you knew what was good for you.

I would write about this, one day, I realised. I thought of the silly play Verity and I had seen,
Death at the Manor
, and thought, no, I will write the
real
play, the one it should have been. I knew I could do it. I had it in me.

The sun had disappeared behind grey clouds and it was beginning to rain. I tore my eyes from Astarte’s forest and began to walk back to the manor, for the last time.

THE END

Enjoyed this book? An honest review left at Amazon, Goodreads, Shelfari and LibraryThing is always welcome and
really
important for indie authors. The more reviews an independently published book has, the easier it is to market it and find new readers.

You can leave a review at
Amazon UK here
or at
Amazon US here
.

Want some more of Celina Grace’s work for free? Subscribers to her mailing list get a free digital copy of
Requiem (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 2)
, a free digital copy of
A Prescription for Death (The Asharton Manor Mysteries Book 2)
and
a free PDF copy of her short story collection
A Blessing From The Obeah Man.

Requiem (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 2)

When the body of troubled teenager Elodie Duncan is pulled from the river in Abbeyford, the case is at first assumed to be a straightforward suicide. Detective Sergeant Kate Redman is shocked to discover that she’d met the victim the night before her death, introduced by Kate’s younger brother Jay. As the case develops, it becomes clear that Elodie was murdered. A talented young musician, Elodie had been keeping some strange company and was hiding her own dark secrets. 
As the list of suspects begin to grow, so do the questions. What is the significance of the painting Elodie modelled for? Who is the man who was seen with her on the night of her death? Is there any connection with another student’s death at the exclusive musical college that Elodie attended? 
As Kate and her partner Detective Sergeant Mark Olbeck attempt to unravel the mystery, the dark undercurrents of the case threaten those whom Kate holds most dear…

A Prescription for Death (The Asharton Manor Mysteries: Book 2) – a novella

“I had a surge of kinship the first time I saw the manor, perhaps because we’d both seen better days.” 
It is 1947. Asharton Manor, once one of the most beautiful stately homes in the West Country, is now a convalescent home for former soldiers. Escaping the devastation of post-war London is Vivian Holt, who moves to the nearby village and begins to volunteer as a nurse’s aide at the manor. Mourning the death of her soldier husband, Vivian finds solace in her new friendship with one of the older patients, Norman Winter, someone who has served his country in both world wars. Slowly, Vivian’s heart begins to heal, only to be torn apart when she arrives for work one day to be told that Norman is dead. 
It seems a straightforward death, but is it? Why did a particular photograph disappear from Norman’s possessions after his death? Who is the sinister figure who keeps following Vivian? Suspicion and doubts begin to grow and when another death occurs, Vivian begins to realise that the war may be over but the real battle is just beginning… 

A Blessing From The Obeah Man

Dare you read on? Horrifying, scary, sad and thought-provoking, this short story collection will take you on a macabre journey. In the titular story, a honeymooning couple take a wrong turn on their trip around Barbados. The Mourning After brings you a shiversome story from a suicidal teenager. In Freedom Fighter, an unhappy middle-aged man chooses the wrong day to make a bid for freedom, whereas Little Drops of Happiness and Wave Goodbye are tales of darkness from sunny Down Under. Strapping Lass and The Club are for those who prefer, shall we say, a little meat to the story…

Just go to Celina’s
blog on writing and self-publishing
to sign up. It’s quick, easy and free. Be the first to be informed of promotions, giveaways, new releases and subscriber-only benefits by subscribing to her (occasional) newsletter.

http://www.celinagrace.com

Twitter: @celina__grace

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/authorcelinagrace