Death at Wentwater Court

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Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: Death at Wentwater Court
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To Mum, who remembers Liberty bodices
and woolly combies
M
idnight at Ciro's. The strains of the Charleston died away amid applause for the coloured band. As a babble of talk and laughter arose, the young man led his partner from the dance floor. The older man watching him noted that his well-cut evening togs were slightly rumpled, his face too red even for the aftermath of the vigorous dance. The youthful tart hanging on his arm didn't seem to care, though an excess of face-paint made it difficult to be sure.
Her spangled, low -waisted frock was short, in defiance of fashion, which this season had sunk hems back to near the ankle. With her shingled hair and the dangling bead necklace, she might be either a chorus-girl or a “bright young thing.”
With a contemptuous sneer, the watcher approached and accosted her partner. “A word with you, old chap.”
The young man regarded him with sullen dislike. “Hang it all, can't it wait?” His words were slurred.
“I have just learned that you are going down to Hampshire tomorrow.”
“Yes. The gov'nor insists on all the family turning up for Christmas, but I'll be back in town in a fortnight. What's the hurry?”
“I've taken a fancy to see your ancestral acres. Invite me.”
“Dash it, I can't do that! Here, Gloria, you go on back to our
table.” He gave the girl a light swat on her rear end, clad in pink artificial silk—a chorus-girl, then. Carmine lips pouting, she obeyed, but glanced back as she went and gave the older man the come-hither look of a would-be vamp.
“I suppose my sister put you up to this,” her escort continued sulkily.
“You may suppose what you please. I want an invitation.”
“The pater'll think it deuced odd.”
“‘The pater' will think it something more than deuced odd if he should happen to get wind of a certain transaction.” The note of menace in his smooth voice made the other's face pale. “I've no ambition to join your family's Christmas celebrations. Boxing Day or the day after will do, and I'll stay to see in 1923—a year of great promise, I feel sure.”
“Oh, very well.” Now the young man sounded merely petulant. “Consider yourself invited.”
He turned away, pushed through the noisy crowd to his table, and ordered cocktails. Five minutes later, as the band struck up again, he took his giggling chorus-girl back to the dance floor to shimmy away his troubles.
By then, the source of his discomfiture had already left the nightclub. He gave the chauffeur his orders and leaned back in the Lanchester, a cold smile of anticipation curving his thin lips.
H
e'll come to a bad end, mark my words, and she won't lift a finger to stop him. It's the little ones I'm worried about.” The stout lady heaved a sigh, her old-fashioned mantle, a hideous yellowish-green, billowing about her. “Four already and another due any day now.”
Daisy Dalrymple was constantly amazed at the way total strangers insisted on regaling her with their life stories, their marital misfortunes, or their children's misdeeds. Not that she objected. One day she was going to write a novel, and then every hint of human experience might come in handy.
All the same, she wondered why people revealed to her their innermost secrets.
When the plump lady with the drunkard for a son-in-law left the train at Alton, Daisy had the 2nd Class Ladies Only compartment to herself. She knelt on the seat and peered at her face in the little mirror kindly provided by the L&SW Railway Company. It was a roundish, ordinary sort of face, pink-cheeked, not one calculated to inspire people to pour out their souls. A confidante, Daisy felt, ought to have dark, soulful eyes, not the cheerful blue that looked back at her.
Near one corner of a mouth of the generous, rather than rosebud, persuasion dwelt the small brown mole that was the bane of her existence. No quantity of face-powder ever hid it completely.
The
scattering of freckles on her nose could be smothered, however. Taking her vanity case from her handbag, Daisy vigorously wielded her powder-puff. She touched up her lipstick and smiled at herself. On her way to her first big writing assignment for
Town and Country,
blase as she'd like to appear, she had to admit to herself she was excited—and a little nervous.
At twenty-five she ought to be sophisticated and self-confident, but the butterflies refused to be banished from her stomach. She had to succeed. The alternatives were altogether too blighting to contemplate.
Was the emerald green cloche hat from Selfridges Bargain Basement a trifle too gaudy for a professional woman? No, she decided, it brightened up her old dark green tweed coat just as intended. She straightened the grey fur tippet she had borrowed from Lucy. It was more elegant than a woollen muffler, if less practical on this icy January morning.
Sitting down again, she picked up the newspaper the woman had left. Daisy was no devotee of the latest news, and on this second day of January, 1923, the headlines she scanned looked very much like those of a week ago, or a fortnight: troubles in the Ruhr and in Ireland; Mussolini making speeches in Italy; German inflation raging out of control.
Opening the paper, she read a short piece describing the latest wonders unearthed from Tutankhamen's tomb, and then a headline caught her eye:
FLATFORD BURGLARY
Scotland Yard Called In
Daisy had been at school with Lord Flatford's daughter, though not in the same form. Shocking how the merest mention of an acquaintance was more interesting than the most serious news from abroad.
In the early hours of the New Year, thieves had walked off with the
Flatfords' house-guests most valuable jewellery, not yet returned to his lordship's safe after a New Year's ball.
She had no time to read more, for the clickety-clack of the train over the rails began to slow again and the next station was Wentwater. Wrestling with the leather strap, Daisy lowered the breath-misted window. She shivered in the blast of frosty air, heavy with the distinctive smell of a coal-fired steam engine, and wondered whether a cold neck was not too high a price to pay for elegance.
At least the knot of honey brown hair low on her neck, out of the way of the hat, provided a spot of warmth. For once she was glad she had indulged her mother by not having her hair bobbed.
The train rattled and shuddered to a halt. Leaning out, Daisy waved and called, “Porter!”
The man who answered her summons appeared to have a wooden leg, doubtless having lost the original in the Great War. Nonetheless, he made good time along the platform, swept clear of snow. He touched his peaked cap to her as she stepped down, clutching Lucy's precious camera.
“Luggage, madam?”
“Yes, I'm afraid there's rather a lot,” she said doubtfully.
“Not to worry, madam.” He hopped nimbly up into the compartment and gathered from the rack her portmanteau, tripod, Gladstone bag, and the portable typewriter the editor had lent her. Laden, he somehow descended again. Setting everything down, he slammed the door and raised his arm. “Right away!” he shouted to the guard, who blew his whistle and waved his green flag.
As the train chugged into motion, Daisy crossed the footbridge to the opposite platform. She surveyed the scene. The station was no more than a halt, and she was the only person to have descended from the down-train. Signs over the two doors of the tiny building on the up-platform indicated that one end was for Left Luggage, the other serving as both Waiting-Room and Ticket Office.
The Hampshire countryside surrounding the station was hidden by a blanket of snow, sparkling in the sun. Frost glittered on skeletal
trees and hedges. The only signs of life were the train, now gathering speed, the uniformed man carrying her stuff across the line behind it, and a crow huddled on the station picket fence.
“Your ticket, please, madam.”
She gave it to him to clip. “I'm staying at Wentwater Court,” she said. “Is it far?”
“A mile or three.”
“Oh, Lord!” Daisy looked in dismay at her luggage, and then down at her smart leather boots, high-heeled and laced up the front to the knee. They were definitely not intended for tramping along snowy country lanes, and the station was obviously too small to support a taxi service or even a fly.
“I shouldn't worry, madam. His lordship always sends the motor for his guests, but likely it's hard to start in this weather.”
“The trouble is,” Daisy confided, “I'm not exactly a guest. I'm going to write about Wentwater Court for a magazine.”
The porter-cum-station master-cum-ticket collector looked properly impressed. “A writer, are you, madam? Very nice, too. Well, now, if you was to walk, I can get a boy from the village to bring your traps after on a handcart. Or I can telephone the garridge in Alton for a hired car to come pick you up.”
Daisy contemplated these alternatives, one uncomfortable, the other expensive. Her expenses would be paid by the magazine, eventually, but she hadn't much cash in hand.
At that moment she heard the throb of a powerful motor engine. A dark green Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost pulled up in the station yard, the brass fittings on its long bonnet gleaming. A uniformed chauffeur jumped out.
“I reckon his lordship's counting you as a guest, madam,” said the porter with vicarious satisfaction, picking up her baggage.
“Miss Dalrymple?” asked the chauffeur, approaching. “I'm Jones, from the Court. Sorry I'm late, miss. She were a tad slow starting this morning, which she ain't usually be it never so cold, or I'd've got going earlier.”
“That's quite all right, Jones,” said Daisy, giving him a sunny smile. God was in His Heaven after all, and all was right with the world.
He opened the car door for her, then went to help the porter stow her bags in the boot. Daisy leaned back on the soft leather seat. There were definite advantages to being the daughter of a viscount.
Of course, she'd never have got the assignment to write about stately homes were it not for her social connections. Though she didn't know the Earl of Wentwater, she was acquainted with his eldest son, James, Lord Beddowe; his daughter, Lady Marjorie; and his sister, Lady Josephine. Her editor had rightly expected that doors forever closed to any plebeian writer would swing wide to welcome the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple.
The Rolls purred out of the station yard, down the hill, round a bend, and through the village of Lower Wentwater. The duck pond on the village green was frozen. Shrieking with laughter, several small children in woollen leggings were sliding on the ice, nothing but bright eyes showing between striped mufflers and Balaclava helmets.
Beyond the little stone church, the lane wound up and down hills, past fields and farms and scattered copses. Here the snow on the roadway lay undisturbed except for two eight-inch-deep wheel ruts made by the earl's motor on its way to the station. Daisy was increasingly glad she had not had to hoof it.
In the middle of a wood, they came to a brick lodge guarding tall wrought-iron gates that stood open. As they drove through, Jones sounded the Rolls's horn. Daisy glanced back and saw the lodge-keeper come out to close the gates behind them. A moment later, they drove out of the trees.
Wentwater Court spread before them. On the opposite slope of a shallow valley stood the mansion. The crenellated and turreted central Tudor block, red brick dressed with stone, was flanked by wings added in Queen Anne's time. Virginia creeper, though now leafless, masked the transition from one style to another, and a pair of huge
cedars softened the rectangularity of the wings. Closer, at the bottom of the valley, the gravel drive crossed an elaborate stonework bridge over an ornamental lake. The ice had been swept clear of snow, and skaters in red and green and blue skimmed its length or twirled in fanciful curlicues.
“Jones, stop, please,” Daisy cried. “I must take some photographs.”
The chauffeur retrieved the tripod from the boot for her. “Do you want me to wait, miss?”
“No, go ahead, I'll walk up.” She set up her equipment on the edge of the drive and adjusted the camera. A frown creased her forehead.
Most of her photographic experience had been in Lucy's studio. Peering through the viewfinder, she tried to picture the scene before her shrunk to half a magazine page. The skaters on the lake would be mere dots, she decided.
Nonetheless, she took a couple of shots of the entire scene before directing the camera at the mansion alone to take several more. Then she picked up the whole apparatus and trudged down to the lakeside to get close-ups of the skaters and the pretty arched bridge.
The skaters had already seen her, and one or two had waved. As she approached, all five gathered at the nearer foot of the bridge.
“Hullo, Daisy,” called Marjorie. “We thought it must be you.” Her fashionably boyish figure was emphasized by a tailored cherry red sports coat and matching skirt. Daisy knew that the white woollen hat concealed bobbed hair set in Marcel waves. Her Cupid's-bow lipstick matched her coat, her eyebrows were plucked and darkened, and her eyelashes were heavily blacked. At twenty-one, Lady Marjorie Beddowe was a quintessential flapper.
“Welcome to Wentwater, Miss Dalrymple.” Her brother James, a stocky young man some three years older than his sister, wore plus-fours and a Fair Isle pullover patterned in yellow and blue. His face, heavy jaw at odds with an aristocratically narrow nose, was pink from exercise; he had discarded coat, cap, and muffler on the heap piled on a bench on the far side of the lake. “You know Fenella, don't you?”
“Yes, very well. We're from the same part of Worcestershire.” Daisy smiled at the shy girl whose engagement to James had recently been announced in the
Morning Post.
“And Phillip is an old friend, too, of course.”
“What-ho, old thing, haven't seen you in an age.” Fenella's brother, a tall, fair, loose-limbed young man, grinned at her. Good-looking in a bland sort of way, Phillip Petrie had been Daisy's brother's best chum until Gervaise was killed in the trenches. “Taken up photography, have you?” he asked.
“In a way.”
He seemed to be ignorant of the reason for her arrival. She would have explained further, but Marjorie broke in eagerly to introduce the fifth skater.
“Daisy, this is Lord Stephen Astwick.” She gazed with patent adoration at the older man. “You haven't met, have you?”
“I've not had that pleasure,” he said suavely. “How do you do, Miss Dalrymple.” At about forty, Lord Stephen was an elegant figure in a leather Norfolk-style jacket, his black hair pomaded back from his handsome face.
“Lord Stephen.” Daisy inclined her head in acknowledgement. She didn't care for the way his cold grey eyes appraised her. “Don't let me interrupt your sport. I want to take some pictures from a bit farther along the bank.”
“Let me carry that apparatus for you,” Phillip offered, stepping forward. “It looks dashed heavy.”
“No, do go on skating, Phil. The more people in the photographs, the merrier.”
A flagged path around the lake had been cleared and sanded. As she started along it, Daisy noticed Marjorie taking Lord Stephen's arm in a proprietorial grip.
“Show me that figure again,” she said to him with an artificial titter. “I
will
get it right this time, I swear it.”
“If you insist, Lady Marjorie,” he acquiesced, with a slight grimace of distaste. Daisy's instant dislike of the man was confirmed. Marjorie
might be a bit of a blister, but Lord Stephen had no call to show his contempt so plainly.

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