Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (18 page)

“I take your point, Hector, but
how
did he die? He certainly looked hale yesterday. Liver failure? Sorry, Georgie, I didn’t mean to sound cavalier.”

“No, Oliver’s been killed—well, murdered, I suppose.” Hector glanced at Miranda.

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

“Somebody else tell him.”

“It’s true, Dominic.” Jamie spoke. “Oliver’s body is in the Labyrinth. We’re waiting for the police, well, more police.”

“Good God.”

It fell to Hector to explain the events of the morning, which he did briefly and gracelessly—in a growing bad temper.

“It’s unbelievable,” Dominic said, turning to his cousin. “Really, Georgie, I am so very sorry.” He addressed her with further expressions of condolence, yet, somehow, to Tom’s ears, the words were formulaic and the tone practised—more a facsimile of sympathy than sympathy itself—though he knew from his pastoral work how oddly shock could shape words and affect people.

“Inheriting the marquessate and all wasn’t alluded to again,” Tom said to Marguerite now, his thoughts returned to the present. “So no, I couldn’t really tell you what Dominic’s feelings might be.”

“Not that there’s much left in the kitty, I shouldn’t think.”
Marguerite looked over the table. “There’s still the house in Eaton Square. At least now Charlotte and Lucinda won’t be homeless, not that Charlotte’s much in London, I’m given to understand. Oh, Jane, you don’t have a spoon.” She rose quickly.

“Marve, it doesn’t matter,” Jane called after her.

But Marve, having reached the counter, held up a warning finger, her other hand adjusting the knob of the radio so the familiar strains of BBC Radio Devon’s news summary filled the room. Belinda Dixon’s practised voice followed:

Marguerite snapped the radio off. Tom could see the rise, then the fall, of Marguerite’s bosom under the shirt she wore as she released a deep sigh. She turned to them, her face somber.

“Why,” she asked, as a burst of childish laughter, perversely timed, came from down the hall, “does hearing it on the radio make it seem that much more
real
?”

“
M
y plan … or rather,
the
plan,” Marguerite said, as if it were necessary to make the distinction, “is to convert much of the stable block into artists’ studios—or studio and accommodation, in some instances. One of them is finished, for display.” She gestured to the back of the large central yard. “And I’ll still keep a few horses—there.” Her hand moved to the left from whence came a scuff of hooves and the thump of great weight against a stall, the animals’ response to their mistress’s voice. “So it can be put to good use.”

“Pater thinks it’s a rum idea. I heard him tell Mater.”

“And what do you think, poppet?” Marguerite smiled at Maximilian indulgently.

“I think it’s wizard. When I’m earl I shall do all sorts.”

“Good boy. Eggescombe needs single-minded attention and lots of imagination, if it’s going to survive.”

Tom and Jane exchanged glances. Poor Hector, Tom
thought: damned all but in name. In a battle of wills, he suspected the dowager countess would easily vanquish her son.

“The notion”—Marguerite shielded her eyes against the high sun beaming into the central courtyard—“is that the artists can display and sell their wares, in this courtyard, in good weather, or in a shop that will be over there.” She indicated a complex of arched door wells at the far end of the stable block. “Once we remove the old box stalls, of course. And there’ll be a tearoom next to it for light refreshments. There’s an old kitchen and scullery in that corner, so the conversion shouldn’t be too, too difficult.

“An all-season attraction, I explained to Hector.” Marguerite glanced down. A hefty white cat had darted from seemingly nowhere and curled around her legs. “Visitors don’t want to tramp around the Labyrinth—or Alice’s Garden when it’s finished—in wet weather. So they can come here in February. People can watch the painters and sculptors and potters at work. We’ll have exhibits and openings and the like. Event planning, they call it.”

“Great larks, Grandmama. Here, puss.”

“One of the village cats, I think, but it’s become quite attached to Roberto.” Marguerite pushed it gently away with her foot. “It will mean some extra winter employment for the village. There’ll be more people rattling around here than just me and the estate manager and his wife, so Eggescombe Park won’t seem such a museum. It will promote artists from the southwest, or London, or wherever. There’ll be increased revenues … eventually, of course. I think it’s a winner. And,” she added
sotto voce
, as Max and Miranda wandered towards the
source of horse noises, “the other directors of Eggescombe Enterprises agreed with me. Ha!

“Come, you two.” Marguerite amplified her voice. “Let’s see what Mr. Sica is up to this morning. How’s the cast boot, Tom?”

“Splendid.”

It was. Quite the contraption, the boot hugged most of his lower leg and foot in a shell of plastic held together by a fiesta of Velcro straps. He had tried it out as the five of them had walked from the dower house towards the stable block, down a private path, marvelling at the relative comfort, grateful that he could—almost literally—throw away his crutches. (He left them in the dower house mudroom instead.) Intermittent birdsong and whispering trees slowly gave precedence to a steady manufactured rhythm as they drew closer to the stables, the whir and whine of a machine, more evident still where the path joined the drive and they passed through the arched entrance beneath the clock tower. “Georgian,” Marguerite had remarked apropos of very little as Tom glanced about, noting the classical detailing. “Built nearly two centuries after the house and my little cottage. Catholics couldn’t own more than one horse at one time. They were weapons of war during the Reformation. Rather like owning a tank today.”

Now the mechanical sound from within the stables seemed to stall and start as they approached the pair of great wooden doors, one of which rested on its hinge, open a crack and allowing the cat egress. Tom could feel the courtyard bricks below the naked toes of his right foot radiate with the day’s growing heat and he felt sweat bloom under his arms.

“Roberto’s been a bit the canary in the coal mine in this venture. But having him here at Eggescombe has proved that resident artists can work well. Roberto,” she called, tugging at the heavy door and peeking in, “I hope we’re not intruding. Roberto?”

The hinge squealed in protest as Marguerite pushed and Tom, awkwardly, pulled. The sun sent an angle of honey-yellow light spilling several feet into the dark interior, scintillating the mote-heavy air into a blurring scrim. But it was his nose, not his impaired eyes, that was first assailed by the peculiarities of the studio. A washhouse dampness pervaded, a stale smell of wet clay, yet, oddly, blunted by a kind of dust, so desiccating that Tom’s eyes watered as he fought to prevent a sneeze. Through his teeming eyes, he glimpsed a cavernous room, the full two storeys of the stable block, lying in half shadow, a jumble of vague shapes obscuring its perimeters. The spill of sunshine surrendered to the blue-white brilliance of two floodlights on stands directed towards a cleared space near the centre of the room where more fine powder fanned out in silky plumes, whitening the air. The person wielding the machine—some sort of sander, Tom presumed—was obscured by the artwork’s massing, but the sound of grit upon stone was not. An almost satisfying shrill, it filled the space. Tom sneezed loudly, then sneezed again with greater force, but his echoing blasts (to Tom’s ears) provoked no reaction. Wiping his eyes, he glimpsed, through a curving limb in the statuary, a frightening mask with gleaming eyes and a snout like a metal pig’s, then another glimpse, this of a flowing headdress, like the white keffiyeh of an Arab. No one watching
moved. Tom sensed them all transfixed by the artist in the act of creation, and when Roberto backed around the statue with the sander, a figure streaked with white, no one, at least not Tom, noticed for a moment that he wore nothing below his neck save for dust-covered trainers and gardening gloves. Jolted, feeling as if he were intruding on a very private act, Tom glanced away, then glanced at Miranda, who was staring with open-eyed surprise.

“Roberto!” Marguerite shouted, moving towards the man, who seemed now to sense that he was no longer alone in the room. A flick of the hand and the mechanical noise died away; a murmuring radio in the background filled the void. Roberto twisted his torso around. Tom glimpsed a gladiator reimagined in a filter mask and powder armour, and his hands went unthinkingly to shield Miranda’s eyes, feeling as he completed the act silly and prudish.

“Roberto,” Marguerite began again, in an exasperated tone, “put something on, would you? You have guests.”

Obediently, Roberto placed the sander on a nearby bench and peeled back the filter mask and goggles, handing them to Marguerite. The head covering he tugged off, revealed as a pair of old white rugby shorts, which he stepped into, snapping the band against his slim waist. Roberto regarded them with faint hostility, as if he had been pulled from a sound sleep. He offered no apology for his dishabille, but Tom realised, as Miranda pushed away his hands, that it was they who had intruded upon his realm. He sensed a new tension in the atmosphere.

“I thought I would show Tom and his daughter the stable
conversion.” Marguerite dropped the mask on a nearby table and fetched what looked like a strip of linen. “You met last evening.”

“Yes. I remember.” Roberto flicked him a disinterested glance and took the cloth from Marguerite, wiping the perspiration first from his forehead and around his eyes, then in long, firm strokes across his torso, pushing the layer of fine white powder to the dusty brick. Tom noted the powerful sinews of his forearms rippling beneath the skin and tautness of the pectorals—the benefit of labouring over a lump of stone with a cold chisel—but he noted, too, bruising and cuts, fresh-looking ones, in the same areas—the result, he presumed, of labouring over stone with no protective clothing, though the sanding looked harmless to bare skin.

“What are you working on?” Jane asked with forced cheer, stepping into the penumbra of light.

“The commission for Delix Fennis I mentioned last evening.” Roberto’s eyes ranged over his work, his mouth turned down with a hint of critical dissatisfaction.

Joining them, Tom’s eyes were at first dazzled by the ethereal, luminous quality of the marble, as if the moon shone from within its compressed form. Two figures emerged from the stone, limbs entwined, as if struggling for release, he thought for a second, before realising the figures were male and female locked together in an embrace, their naked forms writhing and twisting. His eyes darted to the faces, to their frozen features modelling passion—or perhaps pain—as if it were suddenly imperative to find in the finely wrought details the living models. Absurdly—he was conscious he was driven
by pure guilt—he looked for his own face and for Lucinda’s, as if Roberto had been witness to their tryst and had rushed to replicate it in marble. He could feel himself blush with relief that it was not. The faces of the man and woman, unlike the face of Mary in the Labyrinth, were idealised, as beautiful as the statues of the gods of antiquity. A little troubled at the mature theme of the sculpture, he glanced at the children. Max’s face wore the studied frown of an art connoisseur at a gallery. Disturbingly, Miranda’s attention fell to the artist, not the art. She seemed to be studying him in a way that pierced a father’s heart. He followed her gaze. The sculptor himself would offer a worthy subject: the high forehead, the deeply set eyes, the sensitive mouth, a Cupid’s bow, but Tom didn’t give a damn. He shuffled forward to block Miranda’s view, saying the first banal thing that came to his head:

“Remarkable.”

“Yes,” Jane and Marguerite murmured as one as if mesmerised by the artwork’s erotic power, but not daring voice it.

“Dionysus I’m guessing from the vines and grape clusters.” Jane gestured to the renderings ornamenting the male figure. “But who is the female?”

“Ariadne.” Roberto dropped the cloth on the bench.

Jane frowned.

“One of Dionysus’s consorts,” Marguerite responded.

“I would hope so!” Jane laughed. “But she’s not familiar to me. I associate Dionysus with Aphrodite.”