Ghosts of Mayfield Court (15 page)

We walked hand in hand back to the house, and I wondered why Michael should be trembling so. Had he for one moment thought that I would refuse him? Milsom had spotted us from an upstairs window, and came bustling out on to the back terrace to congratulate us. I had never seen her smile so broadly before.

It was Milsom who persuaded Michael to celebrate our betrothal by staying to dinner after all. At first he demurred, saying that he was still in his working clothes, but he was
overruled
. We dined alone, the two of us, sitting opposite each other at the long polished table in the dining room. Uncle's great chair still stood at the head of this table, and there were times while we were talking when I fancied he was still sitting there, a shadowy figure, come to attend his niece's betrothal feast.

It was after Milsom had served coffee that I looked across at Michael, and said, ‘Now that we are engaged, will you stop discussing me with your sister as though I were a recalcitrant child in need of chastisement?'

He had the grace to blush, and began to stammer an
ad hoc
explanation of his conduct, but when I started to laugh, he
immediately
regained his humour, and the matter passed off lightly. Nevertheless, I think my barbed words hit the mark.

There was brandy on the sideboard, and I proposed that we had a glass each, to complement our coffee. I watched him as he crossed to the sideboard, where the decanters had been set out. One day, if all went well, this would be his house, too.

The Married Women's Property Act, passed only last year, would give me full and entire control over my own property, and any further legacies that might fall my way. But I had always intended that ownership of my house in Saxony Square would be made over to Michael if we were to marry. I was old-fashioned enough not to want a husband who was daily made conscious of his dependency upon his wife for a roof over his head.

We sat in companionable silence at the table long after both
coffee and brandy had been consumed. The sun was fast fading, and shadows were gathering in the room.

I have mentioned before – have I not? – that I have always had a certain psychic awareness, an ability at times to sense things beyond our normal level of perception. Well, that evening, as we two sat there in the gloaming, I was suddenly conscious of a strong, agonized voice addressing me, pleading with me, admonishing….

I saw nothing, of course, and I heard nothing in the usual way of mortals; but I knew that a voice from beyond was straining to make contact with me. And then suddenly, the ‘voice' stopped. I mastered my response to this psychic intrusion so effectively that Michael did not even notice any change in my demeanour.

We went on to discuss days and dates, what church to go to, what guests to invite. And then, pleading a night-shift at St Thomas's, Michael made his departure. I was very happy that night, and went to bed in a sort of waking dream. But when my eyes finally closed, I found myself standing in the first-floor room at Mayfield Court, where a solemn little girl ghost mouthed the name ‘Helen', and immediately put a finger to her lips.

‘It's not often that we see you here, Mr Temperley,' said Dr Morrison. His words were more a reproach than a mere
statement
of fact. ‘How is your mother?'

Morrison thought: I know quite well how your mother is. She's dangerous to all life, and particularly those of her own clan. And you're no better, for all your good looks and your fine head of yellow hair.

‘My mother's well,' replied the man called Temperley, ‘well and flourishing, and will be even more so when you've handed the old man over to me.'

‘Where will you—?'

‘I've no time for explanations! I'm due elsewhere in a very short while. In any case, Dr Morrison, what you don't know, you can't fret over. When people come to ask where he is, you can tell them that he'd managed to slip away again. Be as vague as you like. It will be of no consequence. I'm wasting time. I want the old man now.'

Temperley went over to the window of Dr Morrison's study and cautiously parted the curtains.

‘There's a police constable watching the house from the other side of the road which is why I came in to see you from the back entry. I have a closed carriage at the end of the mews. Inspector Blade's posted that man there, and he'll just stand and look at the front door until he's relieved.'

Doctor Morrison said no more. In less than half an hour, the bemused and drugged Walter Hindle was brought out of the house in a wheeled chair, and taken across the garden to the rear gate, which gave on to a walled entry. Temperley and another man wheeled him to the waiting carriage. A few moments more, and they had gone.

Morrison, standing at the window of an upstairs room, quietly cursed the day when he had become involved with Temperley and his murderous mother. His practice had been built up on the
principles
of discretion and confidentiality. A client brought him an
ailing patient, and that patient was looked after and treated until he or she died. It was tacitly understood that his ‘guests', as he liked to call them, would never leave the premises except in a hearse. They were free to write letters, but those letters were always passed, unopened, to the client.

But the Temperleys were drenched in the blood of innocent victims, and he should never have agreed to look after the Reverend Walter Hindle. From time to time he would wander off, and a search-party had to be sent out to find him. Inevitably, he forgot that he had ever been there, and thought he had just been brought for the first time. True, he had, from time to time, been collected and taken off for holidays – there was some remnant of conscience, apparently, because the old man had been close to some family member. When he was returned, they had to go through the rigmarole of pretending that he had just arrived for the first time. It was a tiring business altogether. Now that the vicious son had arrived to take charge of him, Morrison held out little hope of his survival.

Well, he had nothing personal with which to reproach himself. He didn't know where young Temperley was taking the old man, so it was no longer any affair of his.

The door opened, and the stern nurse came into the room.

‘Doctor Morrison,' she said, ‘here is a letter from Mr Joel Gernsheim, the banker. He would like to place an aged relative of his in our care.'

The doctor's face broke into a smile.

‘Mr Gernsheim? Well, let us see to the matter at once. Perhaps we could increase our fees a little? A banker, you know, has access to a lot of money!'

The doctor laughed heartily at his little joke, and together he and his co-conspirator descended the stairs and made their way to the office.

The carriage stopped at a dismal house in a secluded court on the Guildhall side of Moorgate, as it prepares to cross London Wall. It was a blank, dark brick house, with square windows hidden by shutters. Its only neighbours were a livery stable and a public house. A tarnished brass plate beside the door read:

In answer to their knock, the door was opened by the doctor himself, an austere, bearded man, dressed impeccably in a black suit. Most of his wide, Slavic face was covered by a massive black beard.

The Reverend Walter Hindle was helped into the house, and taken in charge by a silent orderly, who was wearing an
ankle-length
white coat. The two men, patient and keeper, disappeared into a back room. The man who had helped Temperley opened the front door, and left the house without a word.

‘So you have come to me at last,' said Zhdanov. ‘What is it you want?'

‘I want to hear of the sad fate of an aged clergyman, his mind wandering, who escaped from Dr Morrison's nursing home in Barbary Court, despite all the measures that had been taken to secure him. And then—'

‘This man, this Hindle, is your own uncle. Are you quite sure that you wish to avail yourself of my services? For once I put my hand to the plough, I do not turn back.'

‘He has become too dangerous to contain. If he blabs any more to strangers, we shall all end up on the gallows – Mother, my sister, and myself. A detective sergeant from Warwickshire is at this very moment asking dangerous questions at Saxony Square. The police are getting too close for comfort. An event has to take place.'

In spite of himself, Temperley blushed, and found himself unable to meet Zhdanov's grave, cold eyes.

‘You will… you will see that he is unconscious?'

‘When do you want the event to happen?' asked Zhdanov, ignoring the question.

‘It's the twenty-ninth today. Let it be this coming Friday, which sees the month out.'

‘You know that I do not arrange these things on credit, and that I do not, for very obvious reasons, accept cheques. You must give me, now, five hundred pounds.'

Temperley had brought a heavy valise with him. He opened it, and produced ten paper rolls, each containing fifty sovereigns. Dr Zhdanov nodded his satisfaction.

‘The event will take place on Friday,' he said. ‘Look in the evening papers, and you will see what happened. Please give my kindest regards to your mother.'

Temperley said nothing. He glanced with something like anguish towards the door through which the Reverend Walter Hindle had passed, and then hurriedly left the house of the consultant physician.

12

Three Dead Men

T
he sun, a great orange disc, was beginning to slide down behind the horizon, bathing the dim woods and fields of Warwickshire in its dying glow. Before long, thought Jackson, the men would need to light the tarred wicks in the iron torches which earlier had been placed among the ivy-clad ruins of Waterloo House. The men had been digging for hours, but so far nothing sinister had been found.

What had once been a great mansion was now a collection of irregular tumuli, all trace of brick or stone hidden for decades by conquering ivy and bramble.

Across the road from the village of Upton Carteret, and beyond the old churchyard, now in dark shadow, where Jackson had first met the Reverend Walter Hindle, the gracious old mansion, Providence Hall, could still be seen. Well, thought Jackson, the smooth and shifty Sir Leopold Carteret, and his murderous lady, will have been told what’s going forward here.

He and Sergeant Bottomley were virtually certain that the baronet’s wife was the Fury who had attacked and annihilated the Forshaw family, and murdered Maximilian Paget, but it was still too premature to move against her. But this excavation of the ruins would get her rattled; and when folk were rattled, they could do foolish and imprudent things.

Earlier, he had visited his old acquaintance the landlord of the
Carteret Arms, who had rummaged about in a drawer under the bar and produced an old faded daguerreotype of Waterloo House taken in the 1850s. It showed a substantial four-square dwelling, neither beautiful nor ugly, with a coffered entrance and an array of rectangular windows. You could see the pathway, too, neat and well tended in those days, but now almost invisible under the depredations of Nature. Three men, a gentleman and two farmhands, stood on the path, looking with grave dignity at the camera. House, path, and men – all had gone long ago.

The landlord had told him that the house had burned down in 1869, or thereabouts. It was thought that a lamp had been knocked over, and there was no reason to seek other, more sinister, explanations. Men with buckets and hoses had done their best, but were no match for the engulfing flames. No one had lived there except the housekeeper: the last owner, Mr Gabriel Forshaw, had gone out to Africa and perished there. Nothing remained.

The sun went down, and darkness rushed across the sky. The men went round the ruins, lighting the tar-wicks. Across the fields, Jackson could see the sudden eruption of candlelight in the rooms of Providence Hall.

She was safe – safe, here, with her husband and her household. She had been lady of the manor for what seemed a lifetime. What could this fellow do to harm her? She had said to Leopold earlier: ‘That was the bumpkin fellow who called here when I was away, was it not? What harm can he do? What can he possibly know about our affairs?’ And her husband, calm and smiling as always, had replied: ‘That’s the man who tracked down the killer of Sir Nicholas Waldegrave and his son last year at Langley Court.
1
A very astute fellow. I only found that out after he’d called here. But don’t worry: we have rank and social position on our side. Just

deny everything. If we do that convincingly enough, my dear, they’ll begin to think that they’ve made a ghastly mistake. I’ll invite the chief constable to dinner. Don’t worry.’

What were they doing? They’d lit bonfires or something of the kind, so they intended to dig there all night. Gabriel Forshaw…. A silly, callow youth, who yearned for travel in savage lands. What use would he have made of that fortune? Why should he, brought up in luxury and educated at Rugby, live to dissipate the Forshaw inheritance on harebrained schemes of philanthropy?

He’d called upon them once, at Mayfield Court, very early in the sixties, and told them that he intended to establish a boarding-school for the children of serving officers. He could live quite well, he said, on his army pay, and he hoped that he would be remembered for the school that he intended to found.

Hector had been very clever. Poor, dear Hector! Weak, addicted to opiates, his moral integrity crumbling with every day that passed, she had loved him for his loyalty to her, and had fought tooth and nail to wrest him from his addiction. But it had all been in vain. He had died, hardly knowing her, and calling on God for mercy.

But Hector had been very clever. ‘You can’t very well have boys and girls together in the one school,’ he’d said. ‘Officers do have daughters, you know! What about them?’ And Gabriel had replied that he would endow a second school for girls. When he had left, Hector had looked at her, and said: ‘Well, that’s it, then.’ And so the silly fool’s fate was sealed. Her sister Cecily had died suddenly, and it had been a simple affair to send her second husband, John Walsh, speedily after her.

The way was then clear to remove the would-be philanthropist Gabriel from this world, followed by his newly orphaned little heiress, Helen. Gabriel had been Hector’s affair, because he could not face the prospect of silencing a child, but she had had no qualms in the matter.

Lady Carteret moved away from the window, and retreated into the as yet unlighted upper chambers of Providence Hall. At once, she passed into that dark other world where she knew herself for what she was: an outcast and an abomination. She was afraid of these old Tudor rooms, with their dark, oppressive panelling. What noises were those? The scuttling of rats behind the wainscot. How her head ached!

What room was this? Ancient, and smelling of rot, with faded, moth-eaten tapestries hanging on the walls. There was a man sitting at a small table, seemingly reading a book. Her heart pounding with fear, she drew closer, and realized that it was Hector. She looked down, and saw that he was reading the Bible. It was the Book of Psalms, and Hector’s finger was pointing to a particular verse:
The wicked shall be turned into Hell
. He turned to look at her, but his face was the face of a skeleton.

Another room. But this was a low-ceilinged, comfortable place, with a cheerful fire burning in the grate. Where was she? Yes! It was her old home in the cottage at Newham Ford, and there, sitting beside the fire was Colin Temperley – Colin, her first husband, cheerful and kindly, the father of her son and daughter. He raised the clay pipe that he was smoking in greeting, and motioned to her to join him at the fire.

But that could not be. He was long dead, killed when a horse had bolted, and thrown him, leaving her a widow with two young children. The horse had stood beside his dead body, nonchalantly cropping the grass. She had fetched Colin’s gun, and shot the beast herself.

From far off, a voice was calling her. What horror was she to face now?

‘Bella, Bella! Where are you, my dear, dinner’s about to come in.’

The dark dreams receded, and she found herself standing at the top of the stairs, looking down upon Sir Leopold Carteret, his hand extended to take her in to dinner. She gasped in sheer relief,
and left the ghosts of the past in order to join her noble husband in the dining room.

Nothing must happen to him. She had told him that if the truth ever came to light, he was to deny all knowledge of past deeds. Of her children, a son as ruthless as herself, and a half-imbecile daughter, he knew nothing. They had been brought up in London, where her great wealth had secured them the best of care and education. They had their parts to play in her schemes, but they would never be a threat to her husband, who knew nothing of their existence. Nothing could ever be traced to him. He must remain what he was, squire of Upton Carteret, baronet, and wealthy aristocrat. If she went to the gallows – or the madhouse – then Leopold was to be her legacy.

‘Master!’

The labourer’s voice came urgently to Jackson from
somewhere
deep in the day’s excavations. He looked down into one of the dark pits that the digging had created, and saw the man, his face shining in the torch-light as he looked up at him. He
scrambled
down the precarious slope into the floor of the pit.

‘Master, this stone tank that my spade’s uncovered lay in the foundation of this part of the house. I think it may have been an ice pit. But now it’s a coffin, as you can see. Take a look.’

It had been a good idea to recruit these twelve farm labourers, thought Jackson. Some of them had been laid off, and were glad of the money that he offered them. All were used to the cruel hard work associated with arable farming. They had started to dig just after nine that morning; it was now after seven in the evening.

The labourer had revealed the remains of a body, partly preserved, so that Jackson could see the wizened, mummified face and the shock of hair. He noticed a long slab of granite, which the labourer had dragged off the stone tank: this body, unlike that of little Helen, had not suffered the depredations of hungry rats.

The digger stood resting on his spade, looking down at the remains.

‘He’s still got his clothes on, master,’ he said, ‘so they must have been in a hurry to get him safely buried. They’re old-
fashioned
clothes, like my old father wore. What will you do with him?’

‘We’ll raise him just after dawn, and take him to the police mortuary in Copton Vale. But there’s a gentleman waiting in the police van who’ll come down now, and have a preliminary look at him. What’s your name? I forgot to ask.’

‘Samuel Vokes, master. My old father used to tell me about this house, and the Forshaws who lived here. Fine folk they were, too, though not gentry. So you reckon this here body was one of them?’

Jackson smiled, and shook his head. This was no time for sharing confidences.

‘That remains to be seen, Mr Vokes,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you to stand guard, while I go to fetch the gentleman who’ll cast an expert’s eyes over those remains.’

Doctor Venner was wearing a long overcoat and a kind of cap fastened with straps beneath his chin. Evidently he had come prepared for a certain amount of dirt, and the unexpected chills of a summer’s night.

He slid down into the pit, and produced a dark lantern from the valise that he carried. Placing it open on an exposed piece of brick footing, he bent down close to the remains, and slid both hands behind the head. They saw him prise open the jaws, and peer inside the mouth. Then he slid, rather like a serpent, the length of the body, and felt the legs, still clothed in trousers. They heard him utter a little grunt of satisfaction, and Jackson
proffered
a hand to help the police surgeon out of the pit.

‘What do you think, sir?’ asked Jackson, drawing Venner aside out of earshot. ‘Can I assume that we have uncovered the murdered remains of Gabriel Forshaw?’

‘How old was this Gabriel when he died?’

‘Twenty-four, sir.’

‘Then no, Jackson. This dead man is not your Gabriel Forshaw. He was a man approaching fifty, with only a few teeth remaining. I can’t say more than that until I’ve opened him up, which I’ll do tomorrow, if you can get him to Copton Vale before midday.’

Doctor Venner picked up his dark lantern, blew out the candle, and returned it to his valise.

‘I’ll not stay any longer, Jackson,’ he said. ‘It’s time I took myself home. If you find any other bodies, send them along tomorrow, too. Oh, and by the way: that man in the pit had his head cloved in with a spade. Good evening.’

‘You’re looking radiant tonight, my dear! You are the brightest, lightest thing in this room. Indeed, I’d go as far as to say that you’re the light of this entire house.’

Lady Carteret looked across the dining table at her husband. There were three people in the world whom she loved: Sir Leopold, and her two children by her first husband. Of the three, it was her husband she loved the best.

That compliment that he had just turned – he meant, and, of course, she
had
retained her good looks into late middle age. Yes, he meant it. He was a slight man, by no stretch of the
imagination
a heroic figure; but he was an aristocrat to his fingertips, enormously respected in the county. He knew all her secret
plottings
, and pretended that none of them existed. Whenever she was with him, she felt safe. He had an almost uncanny power of denial, as though he really believed his various untruths. Whatever came to pass, he must not be harmed.

The meal, superbly presented by their Belgian chef, and served with all the skills of well-trained footmen, began to bring a welcome calm to her nerves, and she relaxed. What did that policeman hope to find? And if he
did
find anything, how could he link it to her? It had all happened a lifetime ago.

The wines seem to have been particularly well selected that night. She felt disinclined to withdraw and leave her husband to his port and cigar. She looked across the table at him, and he immediately interpreted her unspoken wish. He said a few words to the head footman, and coffee was served at the table, together with a sweet dessert wine.

It has all been worth the danger and the anguish. She had rescued this dear man from what would have been a scandalous crash involving social and financial ruin, and he had repaid that with utter love and loyalty. He had given her the social
cachet
that she had hitherto lacked. Her title, and her position in the county, were a kind of impregnable armour. Yes, she was safe with Leopold, and with their factor, Mr Lucas, a man who had the knack of making things happen. Lady Carteret relaxed in her chair, and sipped the sweet dessert wine.