Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (13 page)

He moved to knock this time, but was arrested by a sudden dazzling burst of light. He blinked to see a woman in a navy button-front tunic with a white apron around her waist standing in the doorway to the tearoom, chairs upturned on tables behind her, stripped of their covering cloths, naked and ugly in bright overhead lamps. She was, ludicrously, brandishing a rolling pin.

“Oh! It’s you, Mr. Christmas.” Ellen Gaunt cast him a severe frown. She was a plump woman with a full, high bust, and a deportment that seemed almost military.

“Mrs. Gaunt, I’m sorry to startle you. I—”

“We had a stranger wander in here last week so—”

“A man?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Tom frowned. “You haven’t seen someone else here this morning? A woman, perhaps?”

“No, but I’ve been in the kitchen. I only came into the
tearoom to fetch one of the larger coffeemakers, when I thought I saw someone lurking in the passage.”

“How long have you been here, if I might ask?”

Ellen didn’t answer immediately. Small, sharp eyes seemed to assess him in some fashion. Then she turned to the watch on her wrist, affecting to study it. “Not more than an hour, I shouldn’t think.”

“That’s very early.”

Her lips formed into a thin line. “I like to make an early start. There’s breakfast, but I have a lunch to prepare, too.”

Tom couldn’t help his eyes darting to her sensible black shoes. It was impossible these footprints along the corridor belonged to her. The trail would have led to the kitchen, which the rooms at this end evidently were not. And unless she was lying about her time in the Big House, the footprints would have dried and vanished. But to reassure himself, he asked:

“And you arrived by way of …?”

“Along the drive from the Gatehouse.” She regarded him frostily and added, “Of course.”

“Of course.” Tom pinched his lips. “You didn’t see anyone on the grounds?”

Ellen seemed to hesitate. “Lord Fairhaven, I think. He often goes out for a run early mornings. The light was poor, though.”

“Which direction?”

“Well … in the other direction from me. There are many paths. Why—?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gaunt. You must be wondering why I’m asking these sorts of questions.” He drew a cleansing breath. “I’m afraid someone has died. Lord Morborne.”

Ellen responded with sharp breath.

“And it appears not to have been natural causes,” Tom continued. “I found him—”

He stopped, fascinated to see the rolling pin slip from her grasp along the fabric of her apron, hit the floor with a nasty crack, and clatter along the tiles in a crazy progress towards his feet.

“I found him …” He adjusted his crutch and stooped to retrieve the thing as it rolled by his foot. “… in the Labyrinth, and I wondered if perhaps on your way here you had seen—”

“An accident?” Ellen’s voice came to his ears as a croak, as if the words strained her voice.

Tom raised his head sharply and stared at her. A shadow had crossed her features. She seemed to struggle to maintain her composure.

“No, Mrs. Gaunt,” he replied cautiously. “Not an accident. Not an accident at all.”

T
om couldn’t help but pause in his worried thoughts to consider the comic spectacle of an individual tearing around the Labyrinth at top speed. Hector—he was certain it was Hector, though he was yet too distant to be absolutely sure—appeared as a disembodied head-and-shoulders going back and forth and back and forth, sometimes nearer, sometimes farther, rather like a marble on a marble run. So concentrated was Lord Fairhaven on reaching the centre, he didn’t appear to notice Tom as he struggled back up the slope nor hear him as he pushed—with some discomfort—his way through the breach in the hedge. By the time Tom climbed to his feet within the Labyrinth, Hector had rounded the final arc and was on the straight path to the Labyrinth’s heart. Tom hurried to catch him up, returned again to worry. Had someone been lurking behind one of the locked doors while he talked with Ellen Gaunt? They opened to Eggescombe’s estate offices, she
explained when he knocked on one of them and received no response; the former butler’s pantry and footmen’s room, she assumed, though this was her and her husband’s first stay at Eggescombe as staff.

Or had the damp leaf left by the wall been nothing more than the souvenir of someone removing her shoes and tiptoeing up the stairs at the end of the passage in stocking feet? Where did these stairs lead? To a corridor that linked to the great hall, Ellen answered, one of several sets connecting the disparate worlds of servant and master in an earlier age.

Tom stepped into the Labyrinth centre, his eyes flicking from the Madonna to a swathe of fluffy white brilliant against the shadow along the ground—Hector’s terry-cloth robe open and flared like a cape as Hector himself bent over Oliver’s body, in a pose almost of supplication but for the busy movements of his arms. At first, Tom’s mind refused to countenance what he was witnessing, and when it did, he snapped unthinkingly:

“Lord Fairhaven!”

The effect was to spur Hector into a final flurry of furtive motions before he scrambled off his knees and gathered his robe together. Damp-haired, he appeared to be a man who had recently stepped out of the shower. Naked, almost hairless, calves showed below the hem of the robe, but he was wearing a pair of crimson bedroom slippers.

“Ah, Vicar, where did you spring from?” Hector turned, gripping the folds of his robe around him like a vestal but not before Tom glimpsed purple bruising along the top of his chest. The man’s breath came hard and fast; the sun caught the planes of his broad face and high forehead, flaring them
the red of embarrassment, though his eyes regarded him coolly.

“It looked like you were—” Tom began indignantly, noting that the robe’s belt was missing before Hector interrupted him:

“I was looking for Oliver’s mobile, his iPhone. To call the police. I forgot to bring mine when I dashed from the house. Awful business this!”

“And did you find it?”

“What?”

“His mobile?”

“No … no. I … odd he didn’t have it. He would check the bloody thing every five minutes, it would seem. Oh, good, here’s Jane and James now. Did you ring through?” He shouted over the rows of hedge towards the two figures advancing into the Labyrinth. “I seem to have forgotten my mobile.”

“Yes, Hector, I said I would,” Jane called back. “Apparently a police constable lives in the village. He’ll be along shortly.”

“Widger. He’s a bit dim,” Hector muttered not unhappily, running a hand through his crimped, damp hair. “You were up early, Vicar,” he added. The conversational gambit seemed absurd with the enormity of the horror sprawled at their feet.

“Yes, well, I …” Caught off guard, Tom groped for an excuse. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“The ankle? Thunder and lightning woke me at some point. It appears we didn’t get any rain, though.”

Lord Fairhaven eyed the landscape vaguely. Tom looked again at Oliver’s corpse, flinched, then looked away. “I’m so very sorry for your loss,” he said to Hector, aware the words were anodyne, but unable to conjure a suitable phrasing. The
last twenty-four hours had suggested little love lost between the brothers-in-law.

Hector regarded him uncertainly, his fleshy lower lip pushed forwards. A quick, hard smile followed. “Thank you, Vicar. It will be a great shock to my wife. No, she doesn’t know,” he added when Tom opened his mouth to interject. “I thought it best not to wake her until … until we were certain.”

Of what? Tom thought. Did Lord Fairhaven think neither he nor Jane could ascertain the absence of life in a man’s body?

Jamie reached the other side of the hedge in advance of his wife. He looked like he had been ripped from slumber, his fair hair shambolic, his normally bright blue eyes opaque. “This is absolutely shocking. Jane’s given me the details.” He turned to his wife and took her hand as she stepped up beside him. “Where’s Olly been all night? Apparently his bed’s not been slept in.”

“I thought I’d look in his room,” Jane explained.

“He’s wearing what he wore yesterday,” Tom added, noting again the embroidered shirt.

“Perhaps he spent the night at the Pilgrims Inn,” Hector offered.

“So he wouldn’t have to look at you across the breakfast table, I daresay.”

“Jamie!” Jane’s tone was cautionary.

“I’m sorry, Hector, I’ve been knocked for six. But you will allow the two of you have been at each other for days.”

Hector’s face was thunder. “Are you suggesting I had something to do with this, this …?” He gestured impatiently to the body.

“Of course not. Really, Hector, I am sorry. I was asleep two minutes ago.”

“… the last time I saw Oliver was when he went off to the village with the others last night. I
fully
expected to see him at breakfast, along with the rest of my wife’s bloody family. I don’t mean you, James. Or Jane,” Lord Fairhaven hastened to add. “Someone’s come down off the moor or in from the village and done this, of course. Mrs. Gaunt said there’d been an intruder the other day, didn’t she. There you go then.”

“If it were this intruder, Hector, he would have to be insane, don’t you think?” Jamie craned his head in an effort to see over the hedge. “Otherwise, why would he kill Olly?”

“Then … he wasn’t a stranger, at least to Oliver. You can’t say Oliver didn’t put people off, can you?” Hector shot Jamie a quelling glance. Jamie opened his mouth to respond, then winced. Tom noticed Jane squeeze her husband’s hand.

“Didn’t Mrs. Gaunt talk to the police about the intruder?” she interjected.

“I don’t think so.” Hector frowned.

“But there was a policeman here. We passed one when we were driving up from the Gatehouse, didn’t we, Jamie, when we arrived on Thursday? He gave us a little salute. This PC from the village perhaps? I’d meant to ask you, Hector, but forgot.”

“Oh, it was just someone from the local constabulary wondering about a police presence at next week’s nomination meeting, nothing dire.” Hector shrugged and tightened his robe around his chest. “If Mrs. Gaunt did report anything to the authorities, I’m sure Gaunt would have told me.”

“Look, is there anything one can do?” Jamie looked beseechingly at Tom.

Tom shook his head. “There’s nothing any of us can do. Not in these circumstances. I might suggest that I stay behind and meet with PC Widger as I was the one who found Lord Morborne’s body.”

“And the rest of us go?” Jamie grimaced.

“I think that’s a good idea.” Hector glanced at his apparel as if seeing it for the first time. “Thank you, Vicar. I do need to change into something decent. And,” he added, his lips forming an unhappy slit, “I do need to tell Georgie.”

“Yes, Tom’s right. Let’s go, Jamie. There really shouldn’t be a crowd.” Jane cast Tom a meaningful glance. “We might be making things more difficult for the authorities if we stand around … contaminating the scene.”

“Say a prayer for my cousin, will you, Tom?” Jamie added, his face very pale.

“Of course.”

Tom glanced at his wrist where a watch would be if he had thought to put it on earlier. Really, the police response time was rather slow. Apparently being a peer of the realm buttered no parsnips with the local constabulary, which, on the other hand, was perhaps a good thing: We’re all as one in the great democracy of poor service.

It had to be well more than an hour since he had risen that morning, before five thirty, twenty minutes since Hector, Jane,
and Jamie had returned to the house. He had had sufficient time to pray for Oliver and for all who would be affected by this tragedy before his mind moved, as minds do, to matters more mundane: For instance, he was not, he thought now, going to be able to make a swift and gracious exit from Eggescombe anytime soon. There would be police questions, an investigation; likely no one would be allowed to leave the estate for some little time. (What a good thing he and Miranda had packed for a week.) So much for spending his birthday in Gravesend with his mothers. And he would find himself yet more in the company of the alluring and troubling Lady Lucinda fforde-Beckett. Could she possibly be the woman the back of whose head he thought he glimpsed in this very centre of the Labyrinth? She wasn’t in his bed when he woke up. A sordid and outrageous notion emerged into his consciousness: She had perpetrated this appalling act. Had she not run her half brother to ground at Eggescombe with a festering grievance? Was this its awful climax? Lord knows, he had witnessed her efficient passion in another arena.