Medi-Evil 3 (5 page)

 
“You’ll now be wondering if Randolph and I have ever consorted
together?
” Lady
Foxworth
added.

 
O’Calligan
pondered this. Hannah
Foxworth’s
scandalous
behaviour
and frequent affairs were a difficult matter to discount when it came to potential motives for crime. “The question had crossed my mind,” he admitted.

 
She sat back in her chair, and fanned herself. Despite the snow, the house was closed up and with every fire roaring becoming uncomfortably hot. “I’m not sure I should answer so impertinent an enquiry from the man once charged with imprisoning me. But the situation has sufficient seriousness to perhaps put privacy aside. The answer is ‘no’, we haven’t. But even if we had, why should that spell death for Lord and Lady
Chillerton
?”

 
O’Calligan
mused. “Maybe they knew about it? They were blackmailing you?
Or
him
.
More likely
him
.”

 
“Why more likely him?” she wondered.

 
“Well, with all respect, my lady, he’d have more to lose, his spouse still being alive.”

 
Lady
Foxworth
smiled tiredly. “The point is taken. Not that it resolves the main problem.
Namely that the murders were committed inside a locked room.
You’ve checked for secret entrances?”

 
“I have.
As has Cedric.”

 
“Well, if Cedric found nothing there
is
nothing. He’s been at
Silvercombe
since I was knee-high. He’s almost part of the furniture here.” She smiled wistfully. “My mother died when I was still a child and my brother, Rupert, a baby. As a result Rupert was sent to live with relatives in East
Anglia,
and, with my father away at sea all the time, it fell to Cedric to raise me.
Which of course you already know, having been my keeper for so long.”

 
O’Calligan
nodded.

 
“He’s looked after me ever since,” she added. “A more loyal servant, one could not find.”

 
Again the Irishman considered what he knew about the
Foxworth
family. Much of it was a tragic tale, especially for Lady Hannah herself. As well as losing her mother at a very early age, her father died when she was sixteen, and her husband expired from influenza when she was seventeen, during only the second year of their marriage. Four years later, in fact on the eve of her twenty-first birthday, she received news that her elder brother had drowned in Hudson Bay when his ship struck an ice-floe. More recently, during Monmouth’s abortive uprising, two of her close cousins were killed at Sedgemoor and another two hanged afterwards. Of course, as was often the way with these old baronial families, guile and fortitude had turned disaster into triumph; catastrophe had only made them stronger. On her husband’s death, Lady
Foxworth
had returned to her family home and re-adopted her maiden name. On her elder brother’s death, she’d taken over the running of all family businesses, and had made them even more profitable than before. Though a staunch Protestant and parliamentarian, she’d continued the family tradition of currying
favour
with the anti-
Cromwellian
court of Charles II by bestowing on it an endless succession of exotic gifts brought back from the East Indies: silks, spices, fabulous beasts as pets or as specimens for the royal zoological gardens. Even during her three years of house-arrest, Lady
Foxworth
had run her affairs admirably. The family’s mercantile empire had blossomed. They now owned considerable shares in the East India Company, a business that was booming on a world-wide scale. Now that King James himself had gone, nothing, it seemed, could prevent their rising to unprecedented prominence.

 
Except, perhaps, for this hideous and inexplicable double-murder.

 
O’Calligan
wondered briefly if the outrage might actually have been directed at the
Foxworth
family rather than their ill-fated guests; an attempt to indelibly besmirch their name maybe. If this had been the case, Lady
Foxworth
wasn’t considering the possibility. In fact, she now seemed determined to put the terrible event aside until it could be dealt with by the authorities.

 
“Let’s not dwell on unpleasantness,” she said, suddenly standing and clapping her hands for attention. “It is Christmas Day. We owe it to Our Lord to celebrate his birthday. All gather round, if you please. I have an assortment of presents for you.”

 
The guests assembled uncertainly, not quite sure whether this was seemly under the circumstances. But Lady
Foxworth
would not be deterred. On her instruction, Cedric and Charlotte brought in several gaily-wrapped packages, and one by one they were distributed. To his astonishment, Captain
O’Calligan
received one as well.

 
“You may open them now,” Lady
Foxworth
decreed. “I understand that it’s against tradition so early in the season, but by sad circumstance we now may have to part sooner than normal this year, and I can’t neglect my duty to my guests.”

 
For Judge Prendergast there was a tub of excellent Brazilian tobacco, of which he approved heartily; for Lord
Lightbourne
, a fine silken chemise. Ordinarily, Lady
Lightbourne
would have scowled at so personal a gift to her husband from another woman, especially when that other woman brazenly commented: “I hope it fits, Randolph, I had to guess your proportions.” But the mistress of
Lightbourne
Manor was by this stage too drunk to notice. She was too drunk to even offer thanks for her own present, a scented pomander, which their hostess took care to tie to her wrist with a ribbon.
O’Calligan
was the last one to unwrap his gift, and was amazed to receive a handsome fighting-knife, with a stout, curved blade and a hilt fashioned from ebony and inlaid with gems.

 
“It was taken from a Moorish pirate,” Lady
Foxworth
explained. “What better item, I thought, for a man whose life is … how did Lord Randolph put it,
clandestine
warfare?”

 
O’Calligan
shook his head. “I’m
honoured
, ma-am. But I’m also shamed. I have nothing to give you in return.”

 
“I’m your hostess, captain. It is not required that you give me anything. I’d also provided for Lord and Lady
Chillerton
.” She sighed. “Sadly, those goods must now be passed on to their estate … along with their bodies.”

 
At which point, with astonishing suddenness, Lady
Lightbourne
began to weep hysterically. Everyone was transfixed with shock. The next thing, the normally staid countrywoman was down on her knees, beating her breast, tearing at her carefully-coiffed locks.

 
“Those poor people!” she wailed.
“Slain in their beds!
Who could do such a thing? What vile monster roams these passages?”

 
Clearly, the false good cheer of that morning had put Lady
Lightbourne
under intolerable strain. She was a rector’s daughter,
O’Calligan
remembered; she’d known wealth and breeding, had been raised exclusively in a world where domestic chores and prim conversation were the highlights of the day, and suddenly
this
– two close
neighbours
butchered, their blood left drenching the bedroom walls. Little wonder she’d taken so readily to drink that morning.

 
There was a bustle of activity in response. Lady
Foxworth
and her maid, Charlotte, hurried to assist the casualty to an armchair. But no amount of consoling, no number of whiffs from a jar of restorative would bring the distraught woman round. Eventually she was taken up to her bedroom, where, after more histrionics, she finally consented to lie down. Lady
Foxworth
took charge of the procedure, with Charlotte and Cedric’s assistance.

 
After the little group had left the room there was a deafening silence. Lord
Lightbourne
himself seemed too startled by his wife’s unexpected breakdown to pass comment. Judge Prendergast, who, of them all was perhaps most used to hearing screams of despair – as condemned folk were led raving from his court – sat by the fire, re-stuffed his pipe and smoked. A moment or two passed, and then
O’Calligan
went out into the hall. On the grand stairway, he met Cedric coming down. Lady
Foxworth
and her maid were close behind.

 
“She’s resting now, sir,” the servant said. “She’s taken a sleeping-draught. I’m sure it’ll do her good.”

 
“Poor thing,” Lady
Foxworth
added.
“Such a sensitive soul beneath all those corsets and starched petticoats.”

 
O’Calligan
nodded, though once their hostess had swept back into the drawing room, and the maid, Charlotte, had scurried off to the kitchens, he drew Cedric aside. “Lady
Lightbourne’s
room is now locked?” he asked quietly.

 
Cedric nodded. “She herself has the only key.”

 
“And you checked it was empty before leaving her in there?
Under the bed, in the closet?”

 
Again Cedric nodded. “She is absolutely alone.”

 
O’Calligan
patted the servant on the shoulder. “Then she at least should be safe.”

 
But she wasn’t.

 
It was shortly after luncheon, and what remained of the party were playing cards and smoking their pipes, while outside another of those early, ominously dark December evenings was creeping over the snow-laden moor, when the
clanging
of a bell suddenly sounded from the upper apartments.

 
The guests exchanged glances, puzzled.
O’Calligan
leapt to his feet. “That’s an alarm call!” he shouted.

*

O’Calligan
dashed from the room, followed closely by
Lightbourne
and then, more ponderously, Judge Prendergast. Cedric was in the passage outside, carrying a tray of sweetmeats. They almost bowled him aside in their efforts to get upstairs, at the top of which stood the door to the
Lightbournes
’ guest-chamber. As before, that door was locked. They hammered it to no avail – it was solid oak – and, once again, Cedric was summoned with tools. When at last they’d opened the room, a similar gruesome sight confronted them. Lady
Lightbourne
lay beside her bed amid disordered sheets, eyes closed but a ghoulish grimace on her face. Her throat had been torn from ear to ear, and a wide puddle of blood was congealing on the carpet.

 
Lord
Lightbourne
howled and roared when he saw this, and had to be forcibly restrained by
O’Calligan
and the judge. This time, he switched his accusations from the Irishman to Cedric. “It was him … him, the dog!” he bellowed. “He was the only one not present when we heard her ringing for help!”

 
“It couldn’t have been him,” the judge insisted. “He was outside the drawing room, just about to serve us!”

 
But logic had fled the bereaved man. He wrenched himself free and threw himself down onto his wife’s corpse, sobbing bitterly. As he did, there was a gasp of shock from the doorway.
O’Calligan
turned and found Lady
Foxworth
there. Quickly, he led her out into the passage.

 
“How … is this possible?” she stammered, her face pale as ice. “That room was definitely locked. I heard Lady
Lightbourne
do it, herself.”

 
“You’re sure none of your domestics have a key?”

 
“I’m sure, but come and speak to them anyway.”

 
O’Calligan
did, going straight down to the kitchens in company with his hostess. There, as he’d expected, he found the two maids, Charlotte and Martha, huddled together, teary-eyed with fear. Likewise, there was no possibility that the cook, Agnes, was responsible: she was aged and obese, and shuffled about slowly on elephantine feet. After briefly interviewing the woman,
O’Calligan
– frustrated and dissatisfied – went back up to the room where the crime had occurred. Cedric was standing outside with a lighted candle. He warned the Irishman about going in, saying that
Lightbourne
had lost his mind.
O’Calligan
replied that he had no choice.