Death Is the Cure Read online

  Death is the

  Cure

  Nicola Slade

  For the Slade, Forster and Barnes families, with love

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  By the same author

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  Thanks to Jeff Behary, of The Turn of the Century Electrotherapy Museum in Florida, who patiently answered all my questions about early medical electrical treatment: any errors are mine.

  Thanks also to Linda and Liv who read the manuscript and laughed in the right places and to Keri Thomas who designed my website and runs it so brilliantly.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  CHARLOTTE RICHMOND

  A thankful widow who needs to look over her shoulder while watching her step

  ELAINE KNIGHTLEY

  An invalid who does not enjoy poor health

  COUNT DE KERSAC

  An elderly Breton gentleman who believes in ghosts

  ARMEL DE KERSAC

  A younger Breton gentleman who believes in fairies

  MARIANNE DE KERSAC

  An echo from a distant past

  LADY BUCKWELL

  An echo from a different and more recent past

  MR JONAS TIBBINS

  If curiosity killed the cat, what did it do to Mr Tibbins?

  CAPTAIN HORATIO PENBURY

  A jolly tar suffering from trouble amidships

  SIMEON CHETTLE

  A neighbour with an unhealthy interest in dead things

  LETITIA MONTGOMERY

  A landlady with a lot of legacies

  DORA BENSON

  A fount of knowledge: a governess who is always right

  MELICENT DUNWOODY

  A fountain: a governess who is always wronged

  REVD DECIMUS ATTWELL

  A clergyman who is, no doubt, the father of his flock

  MEHITABEL ATTWELL

  An overprotective mother who takes her duties seriously

  JONATHAN RADNOR

  A medical man whose treatments are electrifying

  Other people in Bath and at home in Hampshire: assorted maids, butlers, footmen, nurses, police inspectors, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, grandmothers-in-law, husbands and a fat spaniel.

  CHAPTER 1

  ‘Oh my goodness, what on earth.…’ For a moment Charlotte Richmond assumed the man on the ground must be drunk but reason told her otherwise. At three o’clock in the afternoon? In a genteel city such as Bath? And in a respectable mews?

  Besides, the man was wearing good, sober clothes, smart clothes, in fact. He looked to be a gentleman and he looked to be extremely dead.

  A moment’s horrified intake of breath was followed by a second moment of blind panic. Charlotte’s life-long response to trouble was to run away unobserved, disappearing silently and swiftly in the opposite direction, but she stifled the impulse. Was he hurt? Was he indeed dead? Her unruly sense of the ridiculous ambushed her even at such a moment, fuelling a rising hysteria. Dead? Surely the horrid red stain spreading across his chest was evidence enough?

  She bit her lip, ignored her instinct to escape and made a rapid search for his pulse which revealed no sign of life and, as she hesitated, wondering what she should do, she realized she was not alone in the mews that led off the adjoining street.

  Summer 1858

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Lily.’ Charlotte Richmond reached out a hand and took the hairbrush from her brother-in-law’s wife. ‘Don’t dare to touch Agnes’s hair, it took me an age to pin it up.’

  She sighed as she surveyed the bride. Agnes Richmond, spinster of the parish of Finchbourne near Winchester, was never going to be a beautiful bride. Blushing, certainly; indeed Charlotte feared that her discreet application of rice powder would have no effect in disguising the unbecoming purplish crimson of Agnes’s hot, eager face.

  ‘I think you should brush it out and start again,’ declared Lily Richmond, pouting. ‘That wreath of white roses doesn’t suit her in the least; she looks so very like a startled horse.’

  Charlotte’s fingers itched to slap the complacent pink face so close at hand. Thank God Agnes had been fluttering at the attendant maid and had not heard her brother’s wife utter what Charlotte had to admit was a harsh but true description of the bride. Poor Agnes; nature had been prodigal with some gifts – her height and rampant good health, the heavy frame, the abundant dark hair and the expressive, slightly prominent dark eyes. Why had not Providence followed this with a less angular, less undeniably equine face, or a manner more suited to a well-bred young woman than Agnes’s galumphing bounce? And would it have been such a chore to have thrown in just a trace of feminine charm and grace, queried Charlotte, thinking poorly of Providence.

  ‘Charlotte?’ Agnes lifted a plaintive face to her friend and sister-in-law. ‘What was Lily saying about my wreath of roses? Do you think they will do?’

  ‘Of course they will, you goose. Ignore Lily, she’s just fretful because it’s so hot and sticky.’ Charlotte forestalled a protest from Lily by addressing her with guile. ‘Lily, dear, why don’t you go and sit downstairs in the drawing room where it’s cool? In your condition we dare not take any risks and it’s so hot upstairs. I’m persuaded Barnard would wish it, dear.’

  Mollified by the attention paid her and the suggestion that at five months pregnant with the heir to the ancient manor of Finchbourne she was far more important than the bride, Lily consented to take herself off downstairs where she proceeded to torment her large, bovine husband, Barnard, by hinting at her delicacy. Splendidly resistant to imagination or nervous strain, Lily had taken in her stride the catalogue of obstetrical disasters sketched out by Old Nurse, the resident prophet of doom. Her husband, however, was of a more squeamish nature and had developed a tendency to recall urgent estate matters at such recitals.

  ‘Thank God, that’s got rid of her,’ Charlotte let out a soundless, unladylike whistle. ‘No, Agnes, I won’t apologize for being unkind, Lily can be a complete pest sometimes. Now …’ She beckoned the bride. ‘Stand up and let me take a good look at you, my dear.’

  Agnes Richmond, the only daughter of the manor, lumbered to her feet and stood in an awkward pose in front of the long cheval glass, her face purpling with embarrassment as she looked at her reflection.

  ‘I look so large,’ she lamented, then she brightened as she surveyed her sister-in-law. ‘Now you, dear, you look delightful in that bronze silk shot with emerald; it brings out the green in your eyes and that little wisp of a bonnet is charming with your hair smoothly plaited up like that.’

  ‘You could be right,’ agreed Charlotte, staring with frank curiosity at herself in the looking-glass. ‘I really don’t look quite so brown-complexioned as usual, do I? For once I look quite passable.’

  Agnes cried out at this and received a fond pat on the shoulder. ‘Enough of singing my praises, I want to take a look at the bride. You look lovely,’ pronounced Charlotte, gilding the lily out of kindness. ‘That very dark amber silk is perfect, just the right colour for you and ideal for the half-mourning we eventually decided on.’

  ‘Oh, Charlotte.…’ Agnes was reminded of the reason for the half-mourning. ‘I sometimes forget how you must be suffering, dearest. I’m so selfish in my own happiness that it is sometimes hard to remember poor Frampton’s death. How dreadful of me – for s
o young a widow, you’re such an example of courage to us all.’

  Charlotte gently disengaged the now moistly clinging Agnes and pushed her down on to her chair again.

  ‘Now, Agnes, you know we have agreed to put all that behind us. Frampton would not have wanted to spoil your day and I – I have my own memories of your brother that I will endeavour to set aside.’

  And so I shall, she thought grimly. I will bury my memories of my late husband as surely as he lies buried in the churchyard and when I pass his grave on the way into church later today I am quite certain that my only emotion will be one of intense relief that he can never clamber out of it again.

  Two hours later Charlotte stood in a pew beside the grandmother of the bride, affectionately watching Agnes marry the object of her heart’s desire, The Reverend Percy Benson, newly appointed vicar of the parish. Charlotte considered the groom objectively; he was scarcely the hero of most young women’s daydreams. His puny frame, his thinning hair, the bobbing Adam’s apple, all contributed to a less than ideal picture, but Percy had a kind heart and most important of all, he adored his lumpen bride.

  ‘Looks a poor fing, don’t ’e?’ The cockney whisper sounded loud in her ear as Lady Frampton, widow of a wealthy merchant knight and paternal grandmother also of both Charlotte’s late husband as well as Barnard, the squire, leaned her ponderous bulk sideways. ‘A rasher of wind, my dear, late ’usband would have called him and no mistake. Still,’ – she gave a gusty sigh – ‘he’ll do for Agnes, poor soul, she’s no oil painting and she’ll never catch a better one. I suppose ’e does ’is best.’

  In accordance with the Richmond family tradition, Lady Frampton’s only son had taken his wife’s surname on marriage to the heiress of Finchbourne. His wife, Charlotte’s mother-in-law, now travelling on the Continent, had graciously allowed her husband to bestow his family name on his firstborn son, Frampton Richmond.

  The cool peace of the twelfth-century church always brought Charlotte comfort and ease and now she took a cautious look around. As befitted a quiet wedding where the family was in mourning, there were few guests and the pews were less than a quarter full. As the visiting clergyman, the bishop’s own chaplain – dispatched to perform the ceremony as a personal favour to the influential and wealthy Richmond family – reedily intoned a prayer, Charlotte ticked off the guests according to her remembered list.

  The family, of course: Barnard and Lily, now firmly ensconced as lord and lady of the manor. Lily was resplendent in a virulent purple silk crinoline of alarming proportions which just about disguised her increasing girth while Barnard looking, as ever, benign and bull-like, was the perfect squire, so unlike his late and unlamented elder brother. Lady Frampton, a proud grandmother and dear friend to Charlotte, armour-plated in her black brocade upholstery, topped with a heavy flared cloak in silk plush and lined with a surah silk, wheezed her way cheerfully through the singularly inappropriate hymn, Victim divine, which Percy had rather defiantly pronounced to be his favourite.

  Charlotte pursed her lips at the lines in the second verse:

  Thou standest in the holiest place, As now for guilty sinners slain;

  Thy blood of sprinkling speaks, and prays,

  All-prevalent for helpless man…

  I can identify Percy as the ‘helpless man’, Charlotte mused with an inner smile, but I can hardly imagine that he sees himself as a victim.

  Very well, who else was present? A strident soprano voice clanged at her from across the aisle and she heaved a despondent sigh. Oh yes, Percy’s elder sister, the estimable Miss Dora Benson, arrived only a day earlier and already looking alarmingly settled in the draughty barn of Finchbourne Vicarage. A covert glance at Agnes’s brand new sister-in-law made Charlotte’s heart sink. Oh Lord, poor Agnes. Dora showed every indication of wanting to remove permanently to Finchbourne and where better to take up residence than in the ten-bedroomed home of her younger brother? Agnes could hardly plead shortage of space, so was the bride, just lately released from bondage by her overbearing mother’s departure to take the cure at a spa on the Continent, to fall under the thumb of yet another strong-minded older woman? Dora had looked askance at Lily Richmond’s clashing splendour while she smoothed down her own dove-coloured silk poplin with an air of complacency, her skirt a modest bell rather than the monstrous metal cage which supported Lily’s purple flounces. Like Agnes and Charlotte herself Dora was a tall woman, fair haired and built on sturdy lines and looking altogether larger and more imposing than her unimpressive clerical brother.

  If I have to listen to many more of Dora’s improving lectures on every topic under the sun, Charlotte vowed, I might have to develop a migraine now and then. She continued her surreptitious review of the congregation and again her brow furrowed as she remarked on the wispy figure drooping two rows behind her. Like Dora Benson, this woman was a governess, but there the resemblance halted. Melicent Dunwoody had none of Dora’s splendidly impervious self-possession. Indeed she wilted if anyone so much as glanced at her. Where Dora spoke up loudly and confidently, knowing her every pronouncement to be correct, and not merely correct but positively welcome, Miss Dunwoody whispered on a half sob, qualifying every statement with a watery: ‘Well, perhaps I could be mistaken.…’

  And she cried, oh lord how she cried; Charlotte felt damp at the memory.

  ‘Why does Miss Dunwoody weep so?’ She had questioned Agnes, in a discreet whisper, on the previous afternoon, following her introduction to the lady.

  ‘Because she is so sensitive.’ Agnes had also succumbed to her handkerchief after fondly embracing her former governess. ‘She feels it greatly that I wished her to be at my wedding. I’m afraid, by her own account, that many of her late pupils have slighted her, so our attention is particularly gratifying.’

  ‘Really?’ Charlotte had shot a sceptical look at the frail figure draped in rusty black. ‘If she cries like that all the time I shall be inclined to slight her myself. Will she cheer up, do you imagine, or shall we be inundated for the next couple of days?’

  ‘Oh.’ Agnes stared at her sister-in-law. ‘Did I not I tell you, dearest Charlotte? No, of course, there’s been no time. Dear Barnard has told Miss Dunwoody that she must make a good long stay at Finchbourne and not even to think of seeking a new situation until she is quite rested. You must have heard her say that her most recent employer treated her scandalously by refusing to believe that her husband was making eyes at poor, dear Melicent. Such nonsense, as if she would make up such a thing. Why, the poor soul has an artificial leg!’

  In the church, watching with benevolent affection as Agnes, with a blush of royal purple, became Mrs Percy Benson, Charlotte’s lips twisted in a smile as she recalled the conversation.

  ‘Why on earth should that make any difference?’ she had demanded. ‘He could still have made sheep’s eyes at her, though I can’t see why anyone would wish to do so, she is hardly a beauty. But are you sure, Agnes? An artificial leg? Has she always had it, even when she was living here?’

  ‘Oh no, dear, such a tragedy.’ Agnes was only too happy to drip tears at Charlotte once she had checked that the subject of her conversation was safely out of earshot and being fussed over by the hospitable Barnard. ‘It was about a year after she left here, about twelve years ago; she was injured very terribly in a carriage accident and the doctors were unable to save her leg. Poor Melicent almost died and although her then employers paid all the medical bills and gave her a small endowment, she felt they treated her very shabbily. I believe they blamed her in some part for the accident as they said she had encouraged their son – a rather dashing Oxford man – to drive too fast. Melicent said it was no such thing, of course, rather that the son had become too fond of her and was reciting poetry at the time and so did not realize how quickly he was driving.’ Agnes had issued a gusty sigh. ‘Poor Melicent. I fear she has all too frequently been the focus of attention from gentlemen acquainted with her employers, sometimes indeed, from gentlemen within thei
r households. Dear Melicent is always at a loss as to how it is. She is such a dear soul, you know, and so helpful, she positively burns to be of assistance, but somehow her employers never seem to appreciate her and her delicate feelings are always lacerated.’

  Regarding under her lashes the drooping Miss Dunwoody, Charlotte took leave to doubt that so many gentlemen had made unsolicited advances to her. Apparently Melicent’s first charge as governess had been to the five-year old Agnes, with the additional chore during the school holidays of supervising the thirteen-year-old Frampton and his brother, who was a few years younger. And a thankless task that must have been, shuddered Charlotte. I imagine Barnard as a noisy, lumbering, grubby little boy trailing in the wake of his brother who, even then, was probably a monster. I wonder less, though, that Agnes is such a watering pot now that I have encountered her governess; the woman is a positive fountain.

  Suppose Melicent to be eighteen at least when she took up her post at Finchbourne twenty-five years ago, Charlotte gave her fingers a surreptitious shake as she counted; she must now be at least forty-three. Another sidelong glance confirmed her earliest impression: Melicent was even plainer than Agnes but with none of the latter’s awkward, affectionate ways. Short, skinny, rabbit-toothed and pasty-faced, Providence had bestowed no favours at all on Melicent Dunwoody; small wonder she had invented some feminine charms for herself. Oh well, Charlotte thought, with a tolerant sigh, she can practise her wiles on the neighbourhood; she won’t trouble me. Gran and I will be moving to our own house in the village soon.