Murder Most Welcome Page 6

  ‘Here, wash your hands and tidy your hair while I tell you,’ Agnes urged, all her flutterings and indecision vanished for once. ‘That’s better, now let me borrow your hairbrush, thank you.’

  ‘Agnes, if you do not tell me, I’ll scream,’ threatened Charlotte in an agony of curiosity. ‘Is she a madwoman?’

  ‘No, that is, yes, in a way.’ Agnes evidently took note of Charlotte’s exasperated frown and hastened to explain. ‘She is Lady Walbury, widow of a local landowner. Her daughter, Emily, was about my age but we were never friends, she was always very modish, and of course they spent much of the year in London.’ She paused to fiddle with her cuff buttons, then resumed her story. ‘Last time Frampton was home on leave, about two years ago, was just after Lord Walbury had died and the family were down in the country. Mama likes to believe that Frampton never paid any attention to any young ladies and in general that was true but that last leave he did spend time talking to Emily and I think she believed he was courting her. I don’t think he was, though Lily says he was after Emily’s money, but she is such a spiteful little cat and in any case, she was scarcely betrothed to Barn, so what would she have known?’

  An over-enthusiastic twiddle resulted in a cuff button coming adrift in her hand. ‘Oh, bother! Anyway, Frampton returned to India and shortly afterward we heard first that Emily was ill, and then that she had – had drowned herself in the lake at Walbury!’

  Charlotte made a shocked sound and hugged the wretched Agnes.’Well, what had that to do with Frampton?’ she asked. ‘Believe me, Agnes, he had no … interest in young ladies. I mean—’ She improvized rapidly as Agnes gave her a startled look ‘I mean he was, er, very shy, yes, that’s it, much too shy, though he may well have been attracted to her money, much as I hate to agree with Lily. He was in a very expensive regiment.’

  Agnes nodded and wiped her eyes with the handkerchief Charlotte proffered.

  ‘That’s what we thought,’ she whispered. ‘But the day after the funeral Lady Walbury burst into our drawing-room. Poor Lady Walbury, she should have been prostrate with grief upon her bed but she made the most terrible scene, screaming in front of the whole roomful of morning callers that Frampton had led Emily on to expect marriage and that he had done wrong by her.’

  Agnes paused to tweak her handkerchief from her pocket and apply it to the inevitable tears streaking her face. ‘She said … Oh, it was terrible, she was frothing at the mouth and absolutely demented, shredding into tatters a bouquet of flowers that she actually plucked out of one of our vases, there and then. She said, right there in public, not caring who heard – and the bishop there, too – that Frampton had – that Emily was going to have a baby and that Frampton had callously abandoned her. And that’s why Emily had drowned herself.’

  The sobs burst out again and Charlotte could scarcely blame Agnes for her distress.

  ‘What a ghastly thing to happen,’ she said quietly. ‘But Agnes, I really do not believe, I cannot believe that Frampton … that he would have done such a thing. Truly I don’t. ‘No, she considered. He was callous and dissolute, he was a monster, he might even have been a – what did that poor demented soul call him? An abomination of desolation. But she did not think he got that girl with child.

  ‘Mama would be horrified if she knew I had mentioned it,’ cautioned Agnes. ‘She thinks I don’t understand but I do know that to – to have a baby without a husband is wicked. Besides, you’re a married woman so it’s all right to tell you.’

  Charlotte was relieved of the necessity of answering by a clamour from downstairs.

  ‘There’s the gong. Come along, Agnes. Here, splash some cold water on your face and compose yourself. I’ll think up some explanation if any is required. Just follow my lead.’

  ‘Ah, there you are, dear Charlotte.’ Mrs Richmond waved the two young women to the table, looking keenly at Agnes. ‘Have you been crying, Agnes?’

  ‘Agnes and I were at the church, Mrs Richmond.’ Charlotte’s voice was composed. ‘She showed me Frampton’s memorial tablet. We were both much moved.’

  And so we were, though not by the memorial, she thought complacently, especially as Mrs Richmond, with a sad smile of satisfaction, reached out to pat her hand.

  ‘There, there, dear Charlotte. I knew you must feel it just as you ought, indeed as I do, when you saw his name and that dread date carved in stone. The Richmond men have all died with honour, there has never been a coward amongst them. Why, I believe their very bones would cry out should that ever happen!’

  Throughout the meal the Richmonds conversed in what Charlotte was coming to recognize as their characteristic manner. Mrs Richmond pronounced, Agnes fluttered, Lily sniped, Lady Frampton said not a word but smacked her lips over her victuals while Barnard carried on a sensible conversation with himself, a most satisfactory auditor, if none other offered. Just now, Charlotte pricked up her ears, he was talking about poor relief.

  ‘I’d like to set up some alms houses.’ He was gratified at her interest. ‘And some provision for orphans, as well as general relief. You will not be aware, Charlotte, that ten years ago the harvests failed year after year, sickness was rife, with famine in Ireland, and something not very far from it in this country too, besides revolution all across the Continent.’

  ‘Yes.’ Charlotte was intrigued by this glimpse of a different Barnard, not just the hearty John Bull he presented to public view. ‘We heard of it from the emigrants and of course my stepfather worked amongst them. One of the convicts, I understand, confessed to Mr Glover that he actually committed some petty crime in order to be transported, deeming that a preferable fate to starvation at home.’

  ‘Enough of political talk, if you please.’ Mrs Richmond looked displeased. ‘I trust your stepfather was not a radical, my dear Charlotte?’

  ‘Indeed not, ma’am,’ Charlotte returned meekly, and the elder lady nodded, well pleased. We had no time for political discussion, Charlotte reminisced silently. It was possible that Will Glover might have been called a radical, she thought with one of her inward smiles. Certainly he believed in the Robin Hood principle of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, but his identification of ‘the poor’ was elastic and, on many occasions, purely subjective.

  As if reading her thoughts, Agnes wondered diffidently what Christian works of charity Charlotte and her mother had undertaken. ‘Did you have much opportunity, dear?’ she mooed. ‘I do so like to help with visiting in the parish. We hold an annual bazaar for the poor – it’s in ten days or so.’

  ‘Agnes likes to hold the hands of the old people as they lie a-dying,’ remarked Lily with a tinkling laugh. ‘I’m afraid the cottagers find her a decided nuisance. And of course she simply loves visiting the new babies and showering their ungrateful parents with gifts.’

  Charlotte saw Agnes wince at the cruelty in Lily’s voice, but she replied with dignity, despite a heightened colour.

  ‘It is true, Lily dear, that I particularly enjoy the new babies. They are so very sweet. I do indeed love to knit and sew for them. They have little enough to look forward to, some of them, so it’s the least I can do.’

  ‘It wasn’t always possible to be consistent,’ Charlotte tried to explain as she deflected attention from the hapless Agnes, while seething inwardly at Lily’s downright unpleasantness. What was the matter with that wretched girl? Why must she constantly dig at Agnes? ‘My stepfather was always moving about from one parish to another, he was much in demand.’ (And that is certainly the truth, she thought, suppressing another inward chuckle). ‘Something like a bazaar would not have been easy to arrange, although we used to sew and knit when we could and Mama tried always to provide food for the very needy. Certainly Pa, Mr Glover, my step-papa, believed in charity.’ Yes, indeed, particularly that which began at home. That wasn’t strictly fair. Will would have given the shirt off his back to a man down on his luck, and frequently had. Dear Will, she sighed fondly, and Agnes clumsily changed the subject, clearly agha
st at causing her poor Charlotte to dwell on what she surely supposed to be tender memories.

  After luncheon Agnes contrived to speak to Charlotte alone. ‘I should have warned you, dear Charlotte,’ she hissed, her large, homely face aglow with kindly concern. ‘Don’t speak to Mama about that speculator I spoke of, the one who brought gas lighting to the village. She and Frampton were vociferous in their opposition to his schemes. It would only upset her to be reminded.’ She bit her lip. ‘There’s something else. Among the persons who lost money in his venture was Lord Walbury …’

  Charlotte began to detect a glimmer of motive in the mad widow’s accusations. ‘You mean that not only does Lady Walbury blame Frampton for her daughter’s disgrace and death, she also has reason to blame Mrs Richmond and Frampton for their opposition to the speculation? And for its failure and her husband’s losses?’

  ‘Precisely.’ Agnes seemed relieved to find Charlotte so acute. ‘I believe Lord Walbury had invested very heavily in the scheme and had his fingers badly burnt.’

  A day or so later when Charlotte dutifully visited Mrs Richmond’s bedside, her mother-in-law had a commission for her.

  ‘Ah, Charlotte. Hoxton tells me Mrs Knightley has been unwell again, so you and Agnes must call to enquire after her health. Pray see the gardener about some flowers.’

  Agnes evinced surprising resistance to this edict, though not in her mother’s hearing.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she complained with damp defiance. ‘I promised to look over the hassocks in church this morning; some of them are in urgent need of repair.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Charlotte consoled. ‘I’ll visit Mrs Knightley and you go to the church. Who knows, you might encounter Mr Benson there.’

  ‘Agnes and the curate?’ Elaine Knightley, newly risen from her sickbed, poured morning tea amid the flowers in the conservatory. ‘What a cliché. I suppose I’ve noticed them exchanging significant glances but thought little of it. And you say Mrs Richmond does not approve because the wretched Percy is merely the son of a bookseller? Sometimes I really think her passion for her illustrious family name topples over into mania.’

  ‘You may be right,’ sighed Charlotte, relaxing in the warmth of Elaine’s gracious hospitality. ‘Those illustrious ancestors who, without fear or favour, declined every offer of a title because nothing could be better than their sacred name. I was treated to a lecture only yesterday on the valour of Geoffroi de Richmond who went on not one but two crusades, and slaughtered countless unfortunate infidels. As far as I can tell that’s all the early Richmonds did, ransacking, pillaging and slaying.’

  Elaine laughed. ‘Most of the landed gentry in Europe did likewise, but their descendants don’t indulge their ancestor worship quite so assiduously as your mother-in-law. She once informed me that the Richmonds eschewed the vulgarity of a title: “Better a Richmond with honour, than the shame of strawberry leaves and ducal vainglory,” were her very words.’ After a moment’s hesitation she held out her hand, with a cajoling smile. ‘Shall we be friends? My life is so circumscribed that I’m greedy for new experiences. My neighbours are so kind and so dull, so predictable.’ She moved restlessly, frowning. ‘How ungrateful I am. They’re good creatures who never fail to ask after my health. And they never fail to ask me what I mean when I make a joke. How will you fare in that gloomy mausoleum, weighed down by the honour of the Richmonds?’

  Charlotte smiled slightly. ‘You won’t believe me when I say that in Finchbourne and the Richmonds I have found my heart’s desire.’ She shook her head as Elaine gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Oh yes, a quiet, dull, respectable life is exactly what I crave.’

  ‘Oh my dear.’ Elaine’s eyes softened. ‘You’re so young. Dull respectability? Not for long, Charlotte. You will surely marry again. I’m sure you’ll find love one day.’

  ‘No!’ Charlotte’s denial was harsh. ‘I beg your pardon, I should not be so abrupt. But marriage? I think not, my experience was not such as to encourage me to repeat the experiment. And as for love … I saw love in all its glory in Australia; one moment hearts and flowers and the next half-a-dozen children under five in a tin shack in the outback, the mother looking every day of seventy and the father taken to drink.’ She gave a cynical shrug. ‘Even my mother and stepfather … They loved each other dearly, madly even, but I’ll willingly forgo that passion without a moment’s regret if I can only have security and peace.’

  Elaine Knightley raised her eyebrows but made no further comment. After a moment she pressed home her plea for friendship with an even greater warmth. ‘Let me call you Charlotte – none of this formality for us – and you must call me Elaine.’

  ‘I should like that.’ Charlotte was rather moved by the offer. ‘I am a little lonely sometimes, though Agnes is always kind. A friend would be a new experience for me. “Don’t get too close, Char, you’ll drop your guard. Will’s words.” But my family always called me Char.’

  ‘With a hard “Ch”?’ queried Elaine. ‘Not soft, as in Charlotte?’

  ‘Short for Charlie,’ came the reply. ‘There were times – and places – when it was expedient for me to be a boy.’ Elaine exclaimed and Charlotte nodded, with a tight, reminiscent smile. ‘You can have no concept of the places I have visited, places where a young girl would have been no more than a lamb to the slaughter. Believe me, it was no mere masquerade when I dressed as Charlie and cut my hair short.’

  That afternoon Agnes, refreshed by a clandestine meeting with her curate, suggested a visit to Winchester. They delivered various messages then Agnes dragged a willing Charlotte to see the Norman Great Hall with its much-vaunted Round Table, and down the steep High Street into the Cathedral Close.

  ‘You must visit the cathedral, Charlotte,’ Agnes insisted and, nothing loath, Charlotte followed her sister-in-law out of the sunlight into the sublime and shadowy perfection of the longest nave in Europe.

  ‘Oh!’ was all she said as she stood in awed wonder. And ‘Oh!’ was all she could muster as she stood in homage at the tomb of Jane Austen and dashed away a tear of regret that Molly, her lightsome, loving little mother, could not be there to join in her rapture.

  ‘I knew you would appreciate the cathedral.’ Agnes spoke with quiet satisfaction as she pointed out the ancient encaustic tiles, the tomb of St Swithun (the saintly weather forecaster) and a dozen other delights. She was just apologizing for the fact that they must leave a tour of the cathedral library till another day when she glimpsed an officer in scarlet uniform accompanied by a sedate lady. The soldier glanced at the two women, looked again with recognition and made as if to turn away. Too late. Agnes hailed him and the lady beside him with pleasure, dragging her reluctant companion towards them, gabbling an introduction that Charlotte, who was still in a dream of romance and history, did not hear, though she did manage to gather that the major and his wife were old acquaintances of Mrs Richmond.

  Polite commonplaces were exchanged and Charlotte was aware that the soldier was eyeing her in some surprise and his wife with something like pity. When Agnes made some half-sobbing reference to Frampton’s much lamented death, the puzzled expression on the major’s face altered to something like contempt and he murmured a comment which only Charlotte caught, and that imperfectly: ‘Whoever killed him deserves a medal.’

  As she hurried, a little late, into the drawing-room that evening, Charlotte was preoccupied with the major’s remark. Why had he said such a thing? What had Frampton done to deserve such censure? What kind of man had she married?

  ‘An Indian, Barnard!’ Lily’s voice was shrill with excitement and Charlotte broke off her musing to stare at her sister-in-law’s flushed and important face. ‘He was in the village, an Indian in a turban, asking about Frampton!’

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘What’s that you say?’ Barnard shook his head in exasperation at the female onslaught. ‘For God’s sake, Lily, stop squealing. Agnes, you’re bleating like one of my best ewes. Mama?’ He appealed to his mother for assistance. �
�Won’t you explain what they’re making such a to-do about?’

  Lily and Agnes seemed to have formed an unlikely alliance as they stood on either side of Mrs Richmond’s chair, talking at Barnard. Charlotte shivered. Having dropped Agnes at the manor gates (allegedly to speak to a parishioner, though a black cassock glimpsed in the distance suggested another quarry), Charlotte had relished the hour of solitary peace in her room, hoping to gain strength to endure an evening of Lily’s little trotters thumping away on the pianoforte, with Agnes reading aloud (badly) from whatever improving tome Mrs Richmond deemed suitable.

  ‘Certainly, my boy.’ Mrs Richmond’s porcelain complexion assumed a delicately complacent flush as she was thus appealed to, supplanting the claims of wife and sister. ‘But first … Ah, Charlotte, do come in and take a glass of sherry, won’t you, dear child?’

  Fond greetings over, Mrs Richmond continued her tale. ‘Hush, Agnes, do, Charlotte will be fretted to death by you. You’re looking pale, Charlotte, drink your wine. Well, my dears, we were just coming home from calling on some old friends in Hursley. Now, what was I … Oh yes, as the carriage drove up to the church we saw Agnes just emerging from the lych gate. You were speaking to the curate, Agnes. I hope he was not making a nuisance of himself?’

  ‘Mama, really!’ Agnes was scarlet and mortified, with downcast lashes. Lily was champing at the bit to get the story told.

  ‘No, Lily.’ Mrs Richmond spoke sharply. ‘Barnard asked me, if you recall. Anyway, as we stopped to pick up Agnes, a most singular figure came up to us. An Indian in a turban, would you believe?’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Barnard’s response was suitably astonished, as was Lady Frampton’s: ‘Well I never!’ Charlotte shivered again, horrified, and said nothing.