A Mansion and its Murder (4 page)

‘How you’ve grown. You’ll soon be a
full-sized
rabbit. I won’t be able to swing you up in my arms much longer.’

‘I shall be a young lady,’ I said roguishly, ‘and it won’t be proper for you to swing me up.’

‘How true. The dignity of young ladies must be preserved. Be glad you’re not a Chinese lady
who has to walk a respectful distance behind her menfolk.’

‘Does she
really
? I thought that was only in books. It can’t make for stimulating conversation. Anyway, I don’t have any menfolk.’

‘You have me. And I’ve never noticed you being particularly respectful of me.’

‘Would you want me to be?’

He laughed, throwing his head back. ‘You know, come to think of it, I don’t think I would like that at all.’

‘Be careful you don’t take cold, Sarah Jane,’ my governess said quietly from two steps above us. And the stair was rather chilly through my dress and light undergarments. Uncle Frank stood up and turned around.

‘How right you are, Miss – er, Roxby, isn’t it?’ He looked at her quizzically and appraisingly (I can see the expression now, and can analyse it, though I could not have done so then. He was wondering whether she was an ally or a foe). ‘I trust your charge has grown in knowledge and wisdom as much as she has grown in stature during my absence?’

I giggled. ‘She had increased her knowledge of Outer Mongolia quite prodigiously,’ said Miss Roxby gravely. ‘But I hope she has learnt a
lot of other useful things as well.’

‘I am delighted to hear it. Ah well, now for the difficult bit,’ said Uncle Frank, his shoulders shrugging underneath his magnificent travelling coat. ‘Pleasant things never last, do they? But one who has braved the present-day descendants of Ghengis Khan should not shrink from being taken back into the bosom of his family, should he?’

And he kissed me again, shook hands ceremoniously with Miss Roxby, and took himself off into the gloomy body of the house. I heard no whoops of joy at his return.

In the next few days I went to great lengths to find out what was
going on
– about my uncle Frank’s debts, his way of life, above all about his proposed marriage. This was not easy: Miss Roxby kept better surveillance over me than my earlier governesses, and the family did not have the aristocratic insouciance that would have allowed them to have family rows in front of the servants (of whom Miss Roxby was certainly one). This meant that my play times were spent in tracking down members of the family who might be consulting together about the Frank problem. Alas, in the daytime they never were, or if they were, it was in totally inaccessible or
unguessable parts of the house, which had many such. When I saw Uncle Frank with the family his manner was always nonchalant, uncowed. In fact, he almost seemed to be tormenting them.

‘What is a gay bachelor to do on a dull November day in the country?’ he would say to his mother. ‘I must teach one of the footmen to play billiards.’

His mother compressed her lips, sensible enough not to point out that if he did what the family wanted him to, he wouldn’t be a bachelor at all.

‘What you should do with me, you know, is lock me up in a small, obscure room in this rotten pile,’ I heard him say to my father, ‘and have the servants bring me some basic meals three times a day, and then you’d be rid of all the worry and expense of me. You could give it out I’d lost my reason. The mad brother in the attic – I have rather a fancy for the role. And the whole county would believe it. They would believe any rumour about me, provided it was bad enough. Maybe after a while I could get out, roam the house by the light of a candle and burn it down. Take more than a candle to do that, though, I would imagine.’

There was no reply to this from my father.
I think he was in two minds about the family’s determination to get Uncle Frank married. Quite apart from the prospect of my inheriting Blakemere, there was the possibility of Mama dying and of his marrying again and fathering a son (though on reflection I don’t think Papa was particularly philoprogenitive).

But the most memorable example of Frank’s teasing his family occurred one morning when Miss Roxby and I were proceeding downstairs (a major operation in itself) to go out for our walk, needing some fresh air between Arithmetic and French. We looked down, hearing voices, and we saw Frank encountering his father in the entrance hall. My uncle was smartly and rather formally dressed, the carriage drawn up outside the door.

‘Must pay my respects to the neighbours now I’m home again,’ he said cheerily. ‘They’ll expect to hear my account of remote parts.’

‘Splendid, splendid,’ said Grandpapa.

‘I’ve always been on excellent terms with the … Blacketts,’ said Uncle Frank over his shoulder as he made his exit to the waiting carriage.

Grandpapa’s face fell. He knew he was being played with, but he’d hoped that his son was
visiting the Coverdales. But I knew, and I knew because Miss Roxby knew, and Miss Roxby knew because her best friend was governess at the Blacketts, that Mary Coverdale’s best friend was Violet Blackett, and if she was to be found anywhere during the day away from her own home, it would be Matton Hall, the Blacketts’ country seat.

As the carriage drove away, as jaunty in its motion as Uncle Frank’s own walk, I felt a tear come into my eye at the thought that he had been defeated. Now, nearly sixty years later, he seems in my memory to have been walking to his doom.

I could barely contain my impatience for Uncle Frank’s return from his visit to the Blacketts’. I calculated the distance, the likely length of the visit, and I could only hope that his return would coincide with one of the free half-hours I was allowed during the day. For the rest of the time I gave what attention I could to the French pluperfect tense and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Alas, the mid-afternoon break passed without any sign of Uncle Frank, and so did the break at the end of the day’s lessons. I was reduced to asking Mr McKay if he had returned, to be told that he had not.

My nursery supper consisted of Irish stew
(very superior Irish stew, but I often wondered if the Irish ever ate anything else, because I never heard of any other dish originating in that country), and a very boring trifle. After it, I was at liberty for an hour, and normally I would have read, for I was developing a taste for novels that has never left me. However, I resisted the call of
Under Two Flags
or
A Study in Scarlet
, for there was a stronger pull on me. I went and stood inside the doorway of a little upstairs sitting room called the Peacock Room (nasty birds, nasty room). It was gaudy but never used, like so much of the house, and merely the dumping place for the less prestigious pictures, statuary, and furniture the family had accumulated.

It was cold there, but I stood steadfastly in the shadow as the family dinner hour approached, prepared to fade into the darkness if the footsteps along the corridor were my father’s, or my aunt Jane’s, or to slip out and pull him in if they were my uncle Frank’s.

When at last he came, hurrying because he was late, but looking wonderfully handsome in his evening clothes, I materialised before his surprised eyes in the corridor and pulled him into the dim shadows of the Peacock Room.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘Well what, little rabbit?’

‘You know very well, Uncle Frank, so please don’t play games.’

‘I know nothing at all of what you’re talking about, and I’m late for dinner.’

‘You never mind being late for dinner. Did you meet Mary Coverdale on your visit to the Blacketts?’

(You will perceive I was rather a bossy and peremptory child. I have had traces of these traits all my life, or so people tell me.)

‘Mary Coverdale … Mary Coverdale …’ Uncle Frank stroked his light-brown beard, his eyes twinkling. ‘Yes, now you mention it, I think there
was
someone of that name.’

I got quite annoyed, for once, at those eyes twinkling at me in the gloomy half-light.

‘Don’t play with me! What is she like?’

‘Ah – you tax my powers of description …’ Uncle Frank pretended it was hard to remember. ‘Quite tall, for a young lady … excellent figure, just the right balance between slim and full … dressed with taste – even I could see that …’

‘You haven’t mentioned her face.’

‘Have I not? Exquisite complexion, like fine
china, rosebud mouth, hazel eyes – quite the English rose.’ I considered.

‘I’m not sure I like the English rose type.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t,’ said Uncle Frank brutally, ‘not being the English rose type yourself.’

‘Oh? And what type am I?’

‘The rose of Sharon, I should say.’

And while I was considering what he could mean by this, he made his escape.

Later that evening, as the hour for bed approached, Miss Roxby noticed something about me and commented, ‘You seem very excited this evening, Sarah.’

‘Excited, Miss Roxby?’

‘Well, tense. As if there is something on your mind.’

‘I don’t know why that should be.’

I had all the stonewalling arts of a politician, you notice. I did not, at that stage in my young life, confide in Miss Roxby. But I did feel a debt of gratitude to her, and I did not like to snub her. Some minutes later, I said, ‘What is the rose of Sharon, Miss Roxby?’

‘“I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.” It’s the Bible, Sarah.’

I often wondered where Miss Roxby got her
knowledge of the Bible from, since she often confided in me that neither her papa nor her mama was religious. I conjectured an
affaire
with a student of theology.

‘I see. And what would that mean if someone compared you to a rose of Sharon?’

Her eyes twinkled. ‘Your Uncle Frank, I presume? Well, I suppose he means you are a Jewish sort of rose – more like your grandmama than some of the other members of your family.’

I considered the idea and felt pleased by it. I admired my grandmother. She wasn’t particularly kind to me in any way, paid me no special attention, but I knew instinctively that she was clever, and it pleased me to be thought clever, too. I did not think that English roses were clever.

‘What part of the Bible does that come from, Miss Roxby?’

‘
The Song of Solomon
.’

‘Can we read it together?’

‘When you are older, Sarah.’

I digested this piece of information, too, but with difficulty. This was the first time I had had any intimation that there are parts of the Bible that one does not read until one is older. I knew that was true of novels such as
Jane Eyre
and
Tom Jones
, but – the Bible? It made me intensely curious as to what Solomon was singing about.

After that day, Uncle Frank’s courtship proceeded – but it would be wrong to suggest that it proceeded ‘apace’, or smoothly, or in any other of the ordinary ways that would be expected from a dull, everyday young man. Uncle Frank enjoyed tormenting his family too much to behave conventionally. Days would pass without his taking a step in the direction of the Coverdales’ manor house, Tillyards. Or he would disappear for a whole day, and when he caught an expectant eye on him on his return, reveal that he had been over to a friend’s for a spot of shooting. Or he would make derogatory remarks about Mary Coverdale – her literary tastes, her frocks, even her person (‘her shoulders are like a brewery drayman’s’ he said once, and even I was shocked).

‘Don’t you
like
Miss Coverdale?’ I asked, unable probably to keep the hopefulness out of my voice.

‘She is Mary Coverdale,’ he said, prevaricating, and puffing a great cloud of cigar smoke in my direction. ‘Her elder sister is Miss Coverdale.’

I waited, but there was no continuation. ‘Don’t you like Mary Coverdale,’ I was forced to
ask. ‘Oh, I’ve no doubt she’ll do well enough,’ he replied. ‘And that’s all the reply you’re getting, little rabbit.’

‘I’m too old to be called “little rabbit”,’ I objected.

He gave me a long look.

‘I rather think you are right,’ he said.

But in spite of that long look, he took himself over to the Coverdales’ next day.

Eventually, in spite of the lackadaisical nature of my uncle Frank’s wooing, things inevitably started working toward an understanding between the two families. I heard of the next stage from Beatrice, my best friend in the house.

‘A visit is to be paid,’ she said significantly.

I considered the matter.

‘By us or by them?’

‘By them. Her father, mother, brother, and her younger sister.’

‘And her.’

‘Of course and her. On Saturday week.’

‘What will they do, Bea?’ I wondered. ‘Family visits are all very well in summer, but in the middle of February?’

‘A dinner would be easier,’ agreed Beatrice. ‘But this is going to be an all-day visit.’

‘Will they bring their servants?’

‘Some,’ said Beatrice. She felt my eyes on her. ‘And curiosity killed the cat, Sarah Jane.’

I knew that Tom, the coachman at Tillyards, the Coverdale manor house, was ‘sweet’ on Beatrice. At that date, the lower orders, when moving toward marriage, were always said to be ‘sweet’ on each other. I didn’t get the impression that Tom was in any way sweet – his appeal to Beatrice was that of a manly man with decisive ways. He was also some years older than she was.

My doubts about Blakemere as a setting for a family visit were beyond my years, but perfectly natural. Though it was the sleeping and eating place of so many of the Fearings, it did not have the feel of a family home. It was more a sort of mansion branch of Fearing’s Bank, a financial rather than a familial centre. Its marbled, over-decorated immensity could never in any circumstance comprise the intimacy which is a part of the general understanding of the word ‘home.’ There are royal palaces which are cosier.

Blakemere was not a place where adults amused themselves either, but it did have the capacity for amusement. There was more than one billiard room, for example, and in the Green Drawing Room there was a quite remarkably ugly
ormolu chess set, which normally functioned as an occasional table, but the top of which could be swung over, to reveal a checkered board and a collection of aggressive figures like malignant dwarfs, of which the Queen was quite the most hideous.

I was not, of course, part of the preparations for the Coverdale visit, but I was to be part of the event, and lessons were to be suspended for the day. The Coverdales had had three girls, the eldest of whom was now married to a minor functionary in the Diplomatic Service and was currently with him in St Petersburg. They had then had a boy, and decided to call it a day. Two boys would have been more prudent. Peter, the son, joined the Army and was killed in the early months of the Great War. Tillyards, a beautiful Elizabethan manor house, became a school when Peter’s father died, and is now little better than a ruin.

‘You, Sarah Jane, go to the end of the line with Miss Roxby behind you,’ said my grandfather, gesturing.

‘It’s
Sarah
,’ I muttered, under my breath. It sounded much more grown up, but so far I had persuaded only Miss Roxby and Uncle Frank to adopt the shorter version.

We were all standing on the magnificent low steps at the main entrance to Blakemere Manor, looking as if we were posing for a photographer in the manner we chose to send down to posterity. It was not the way I would want to be welcomed to a house, I thought. Once we were in position there was little we could do but wait. Collectively we had very little conversation. The servants, standing to the side of the steps (out of camera range, so to speak), had duties assigned to them when the Coverdales arrived, so they were more natural. We shifted uneasily from foot to foot. Eventually two carriages were sighted, a mile away down the endless drive, and we watched in silence as the two spectres gradually assumed recognizable shapes and finally drew up before the grand entrance to Blakemere. In the first carriage were Sir Thomas and Lady Coverdale, with a maid and a man; in the second, the three members of the younger generation, with a maid for the girls. There was no doubting the friendliness with which my grandparents and my papa greeted the senior Coverdales, but I was interested only in the second coach, and only in the girls therein. They were both well-grown, attractive young women, and one could not tell who was the youngest
from their looks alone. But one was kissed by my grandfather as a valued neighbour, the other was kissed as a future member of the family.

‘Mary!’ he said. ‘It does my heart good to see you here.’

It didn’t do my heart good, but I did look at her as dispassionately as possible. The initial, fleeting impression was much as Uncle Frank had suggested: flawless complexion, beautiful auburn hair, rosebud mouth with a little bow top to it, charmingly simple dress under her handsome coat with the fur collar.

Then Uncle Frank came forward, shook hands with her coolly, and they started together into the house.

‘Sarah Jane, I’m sure Peter would like to see the grounds,’ said my grandmother.

I looked up at Peter Coverdale’s face. He was fifteen, and probably bitterly resented being entrusted to the care of a twelve-year-old girl. But he shrugged a sort of agreement, and we began the long trek round to the side of our monstrous pile, then on to the formal gardens at the back, with their close-clipped hedges, their graded terraces filled with regimented shrubs, and beyond that, the (artificial) meadows that sloped down to the river. As we mooched around
the top terrace, speechless, Peter stopped at one point and turned to look at the house.

‘I say, isn’t it horrid!’ he said.

‘Hideous!’ I agreed. We both laughed. It was a defining moment, a sort of liberation for me. None of the gardeners’ children would have said that. From then on, Peter and I got on quite well, in spite of that terrible three-year age gap. ‘I’m sure Tillyards is much nicer,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘It’s not bad. I’m going into the Army.’

This suggested a new idea to me.

‘You mean you don’t want to inherit it?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Could you refuse it?’

‘More or less. I could just let it out to someone. Plenty of rich Jews wanting country houses.’

I tactfully did not point out our Jewish connections. ‘If Uncle Frank doesn’t have a son, this will be mine.’

‘Yours? But you’re a girl.’

I nodded, unrebelliously. ‘But that’s what grandpapa’s will says. We only have quite distant cousins who are boys – apart from Aunt Clare’s, and she married beneath her.’

Peter Coverdale looked at the pile again, and whistled. ‘Well, if I were you I’d emigrate to
Patagonia before I took on responsibility for a dump like that.’

‘I think you’re probably quite right,’ I said.

But I enjoyed greatly showing him round, and hearing his derogatory comments on everything. If my grandmother’s aim was to get us interested in each other, she certainly failed (he was not Uncle Frank, or even like him in temperament), but I came to like him a lot, was always interested in his career, and wept at his death. We sat together at lunch, and he whispered to me about the massed battalions of servants, the assertively beflowered china, and the hideous, twisted silverware: ‘like two elderly wrestlers grappling with each other’ was how he rather daringly described a fruit stand with myriad bowls of pineapples, apricots, and grapes from the hothouse.

But my main interest at lunch was his sister Mary, of course. She was sitting five places down on the other side of the table, next to Uncle Frank, naturally. He was paying her an attention that was a long way short of assiduous but rather more than casual. He could do that sort of thing with an off-hand charm that was part of his nature. She was accepting it coolly for what it was, though with the occasional flirtatious
gesture that showed she knew what the marriage game was, and perhaps had played it before. There was a confidence about her, about her way of looking around the Dining Room as if she already had a part stake in it that repelled me. But then, I was very ready to be repelled.