Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (32 page)

“And were you?” Tom asked.

She glanced at him. A shadow crossed her face. “For a time.” She slipped from his attentions, towards the back door, as if she regretted her candour.

“Perhaps it’s best,” Marguerite murmured to him as she ran her boots over the scraper, “not to mention seeing Anna here when you’re back at the Hall. We wouldn’t,” she added with a conspiratorial glance, “want the police to know their
cordon sanitaire
has been broken.

“Do step in a minute.” Her normal timbre resumed. “I want you to take some eggs up to the Hall. I’ll get you a box.”

Together the three passed from the sunny yard into the cool of the mudroom, Marguerite handing her basket of eggs to Tom while she removed her boots. Following her into the kitchen, Tom placed the eggs on the counter and studied Anna as she crossed past a bright window to a selection of aprons on hooks along the wall. Something half remembered teased at him.
What was it?
But the sensation vanished as
quickly as it arrived. He wanted to probe Anna’s remark about “rough justice,” but a more urgent concern pressed upon him:

“Lady Kirkbride was very excited to read that you shared your cottage with a man named John. She can’t help wondering if it might be her brother-in-law, John Allan, who’s had no communication with his family for years.”

“No.” Anna’s hand hesitated over a green apron. “My man’s John Phillips.”

“Oh,” Tom responded, disappointed, wishing she’d turn so he could read her eyes. “Jane thought because you’re unmarried and share the same last name …”

“A happenchance, Mr. Christmas, that’s all.”

“Tom, please. I also wonder—” He stopped, his ears pricked suddenly to a rumble of male voices deeper in the house’s interior.

“Do you have company?”

Marguerite was washing her hands over the kitchen sink. She half turned. “No, why do you ask?”

“Voices, coming from your front rooms, I think.”

She turned off the taps. “Yes, I hear it now.” She glanced at Anna who, arrested in tying her pinny, seemed to shrink against the wall. Wiping her hands on a towel, she moved quickly across the tiles and pushed through the door into the corridor before Tom could caution her.

“Marguerite,” he called, following swiftly, his mind cringing with images of intruders. “You don’t know who it might be.”

Tom entered the drawing room in time to see Bliss and Blessing, who had apparently been lounging on a chintz-covered settee, snap to their feet.

“I believe you’re to have some sort of warrant to enter my home,” Marguerite said in a deliberate, almost regal drawl, regarding the two men as though they were something crawling up her garden wall. “Am I not correct?”

“You are, Your Ladyship.” Blessing spoke first. “But Mr. Sica asked us to wait for him here while he … cleaned himself up.”

“With a view to doing what, exactly?”

“To coming with us to Totnes station to help us with our enquiries.”

“I know what that means.” The dowager countess’s face hardened. “And it’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly believe—”

“Marguerite, it’s all right.” Roberto had slipped quietly into the room, his dark hair damp, wearing fresh khakis, buttoning his cuffs. “I’m going voluntarily. I don’t expect to be very long.”

“Roberto, you have no idea how long you’ll be. You don’t know what these two have planned. You’ll need a solicitor. I have a man in Totnes. I’ll ring him and he’ll join you there.”

“You’re certainly within your rights to do so.” Bliss spoke this time. To Tom’s ears, the suggestion sounded ominous. Evidently it did, too, to Marguerite, for she said, again in her imperious voice:

“I have told you, Inspector, that Roberto has an alibi for Sunday morning. Me.”

Bliss favoured her with a feeble smile before flicking a glance at Tom that struck him—to his dismay and confusion—as conspiratorial. He felt Roberto’s eyes fall upon him.

“Your Ladyship,” Bliss continued, “I can only repeat that Mr. Sica is helping us with our enquiries. There’s nothing
more I can tell you, I’m afraid. I’m sure you understand Sergeant Blessing and I—” He nodded to his partner as the three men moved into the vestibule. “—are only doing our job.”

“Marguerite, don’t worry,” Roberto called over his shoulder as she moved to follow, “I’m innocent of this. I’ll be back before long. Stay with the vicar.”

Tom suddenly felt a sting of misgiving as he watched Marguerite lift the curtain of the front window. He could see over her shoulder past the rhododendrons to the unhappy scene of the two detectives and two uniformed officers hovering near Roberto as he bent into a police car.

“Lady Fairhaven,” Tom began. Addressing her as Marguerite seemed suddenly presumptuous. “I may bear some responsibility for this, and I’m very sorry.”

Distracted by the detectives returning to their Astra and the whole convoy moving down the drive, Marguerite took a moment to respond. When she did, turning from the window, her expression suggested neither consternation nor anger. Rather it was worry and distraction that clouded her eyes. “What were you saying?”

“My daughter woke in the night and thought she saw a ghost on the lawn in a flash of lightning. Of course, she didn’t see a ghost. She saw a man. The police may have interpreted it to be Mr. Sica.”

“I see.”

“I’m very sorry,” Tom said again.

“Don’t be. Tom, I haven’t been wholly truthful—to the police. Roberto was with me for some hours Saturday night, Sunday morning, but I know he left me at some time. I’m not sure when. It’s not unusual for him to go to his studio or …”

“I’m so very sorry.”

Marguerite made a vague dismissive gesture. “I’m not sure it’s what your daughter saw that has excited them—Bliss and Blessing.”

“What would it be?”

“Something more tangible, surely.”

“Yes, most likely.”

“When they were interviewing me here yesterday evening—well, in the kitchen—they took an interest in a certain piece of clothing, and they asked to take it for examination. I couldn’t say no, of course.”

“What was it?”

“A red jacket. A hoodie, as they call them these days.”

“ ‘
E
xploring,’ I believe Maximilian said.” Ellen Gaunt seemed to search her mind. She brushed absently at the front of her pristine apron as if flour had fallen on it. “He was wearing his pith helmet. I think he was going to show your daughter the priest’s room, Mr. Christmas.”

“Oh.” Tom hoped the disappointment didn’t sound in his voice. He’d been hoping for such an opportunity himself, but it seemed ill mannered in the circumstances to expect his host to supply a tour, as though he were some day-tripper. Eggescombe’s priest’s room and priest hole weren’t listed in the brochure as being on offer anyway.

“Let’s go up and see if we can find them, if you think your foot can handle it,” Jane suggested. “I think I remember how to access the priest hole. Hector showed me on an earlier visit. We’ll need a torch or two, though.”

“You’ll find extras in that drawer, Your Ladyship.” Mrs.
Gaunt gestured to a large cupboard by the kitchen door. Tom noted her darkly shrouded eyes and pallid skin. She looked like a woman who’d slept poorly.

Jane reached in a drawer and handed him a torch. “I think Jamie’s in the estate office. I’ll let him know what we’re doing.” She popped out of the kitchen. Tom could make out the timbre of a male voice down the passage, the rumble and pause of a man on the telephone.

“Another wonderful meal, Mrs. Gaunt,” Tom said, groping for conversation as Ellen stood stiffly in attendance. “The chilled cucumber soup was splendid. You and Mrs. Prowse could have your own cookery program on TV.”

“Thank you, Mr. Christmas.” Ellen’s throat caught on his name. Her distress passed through him like an invisible wave and he felt the helplessness of the bystander, able to offer only the inoffensive words,

“I’m sure this incident will be resolved soon.”

She nodded but said nothing. He sensed her composing herself at considerable cost and was relieved when Jane fetched him forthwith.

“Mrs. Gaunt seems troubled,” Tom remarked when the two of them were out of earshot along the passage leading into the interior of the Hall.

Jane flicked him a glance as they passed through a recessed door in the wall that opened onto the grand staircase. “Yes, I thought so, too. I guess we’re all being affected one way or another, aren’t we? Georgie having her lunch on a tray in her room isn’t a good sign, for one.”

The news that Roberto Sica had been removed to Totnes was the midday meal’s chief diversion. It was Jane herself who
had seen the car with the Battenberg markings drive past while she was out walking and recognised the head in the backseat. By the time Tom returned to the Hall from the dower house and could confirm events, speculation had grown invidious.

“Poor Marve,” Lucinda reacted with a hint of
schadenfreude
as she poured herself a second vermouth from the drawing room’s drinks table. “I’m sure she’ll miss him terribly.”

“He hasn’t been arrested or charged,” Tom insisted as Gaunt poured him a whisky. “Helping the police with their enquiries is not tantamount to guilt.”

“Tom is correct, of course.” Jamie glared over his gin at Lucinda, who made a rude noise at him over her drink. “I doubt he’ll be detained for very long.”

Jane frowned into her mineral water, saying nothing. Dominic, with a dry sherry, retreated to the French windows to look out over the terrace, as if he wished to distance himself from his half sister. Hector flicked uninterpretable glances at Tom between sips of sherry. Had, Tom wondered, Lord Fairhaven met with Bliss and Blessing while he had visited the dowager countess? And what had been disclosed?

“It’s that brooding quality they have,” Lucinda continued when they were seated for luncheon.

“Who is
they
?” Jamie unfolded a napkin on his lap.

“Italians.”

“If you’re referring to Roberto, I understood he was born in London.”

“Doesn’t matter. They
brood
,” Lucinda drew out the word, then grazed the air with a kiss. “Ever so sexy, don’t you think, Dominic, darling?”

“Shut up, Lucy. You’ve had too much to drink.”

“And then they
explode
!” she continued, ignoring him. “Boom! And they find their hands are around someone’s neck and—”

“Lucy! Gaunt, remove the wine,” Hector barked to his butler.

“Oh, Hector, I’m simply trying to—”

“For heaven’s sake, Lucy,” Jane cut in, “you can’t attribute this to a Mediterranean temperament. It’s ridiculous. From what little I’ve seen, Roberto’s been a gentleman. Has anyone seen an instance of temper? Hector? You come down to Eggescombe during the year and stay with Marve. Have you …?”

“Well, he’s only been Mother’s guest a little over a year and he keeps out of my way when I’m down, but …” Hector’s tone conveyed regret more than concurrence. “No, he doesn’t seem particularly … murderous.”

“ ‘Countess’s Toyboy in Killing Spree.’ ” Lucinda’s arm shot out in illustration of an imaginary tabloid headline, almost hitting Gaunt in the process of taking the wine carafe from the table. “Gaunt, don’t you dare touch that wine.”

“Lucy,” Hector thundered, “if the police hadn’t supplanted me as master of my own house, I would ask you to leave. At once!”

“Hector, don’t be such a bore!”

“And now you’ve spilled wine on yourself, you stupid girl. And a single individual does not constitute a ‘spree’!”

Luncheon—in addition to chilled cucumber soup, a crab salad with lemon and caper, and crusty French bread, with a raspberry soufflé for afters—had continued in a similarly
fraught vein until Hector, evidently disgusted, excused himself for some work in the estate office, with an invitation to Jamie to join him in due course. Lucy opted for another afternoon by the pool, as did Dominic. Tom, still concerned for Miranda’s welfare, followed in the same direction shortly after, his destination the kitchen where the children were ensconced. Jane joined him. Her idea was that they should take Miranda and Max on a nature walk but, of course, they were too late.

Now, as they stepped off the grand staircase and into the bright, mullion-windowed Long Gallery, which ran the length of the house, Jane said, “When I was out walking before lunch, I saw one of Hector’s private security hustle Andrew Macgreevy away off the property. Do you remember him?”

“Yes,” Tom murmured. He was distracted by the plaster vaulted ceiling carved in coils of honeysuckle and the rankings of family portraits along panelling that glowed like silk in the afternoon sun. “He was that reporter snooping around Thornford after Colm Parry’s daughter was found murdered last year. He was very interested in your brother-in-law Sebastian … John, I mean. Did he see you?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t suppose it matters. He’s just doing his job. But he has sort of got in the way at other critical times in my life.” Jane stopped at a door past a large hanging tapestry presenting the Fall of Man. “Jamie says he’s my nemesis.”