Murder at Newstead Abbey (3 page)

Luten, a slave to the Whig party, had some work he wanted to do and suggested that Prance or Coffen accompany her and Byron.

“I planned to have a look around the place. P’raps I’ll spot a ghost,” Coffen said.

“You’ll not see ghosts in the day time,” said Corinne.

“I know, but I mean check out the cloisters and all that, so I’ll know where to look tonight. I believe I spotted some sort of a ruin in the lake as well.”

“Two, actually, in the upper lake,” Byron said. “You might want to have a look at the larger one. It has no reputation of being haunted but I wouldn’t want to go there alone after dark. The fifth baron built a fortress on the island there, reputedly for the purpose of holding orgies. I’ll have one of the footmen row you over. It’s not far.”

“Thankee kindly. I’ll give her a try,” Coffen said, and squaring his elbows, he lit into his food.

The two maids returned to perform some largely imaginary chores at the sideboard. The blond kept darting coy smiles at the table, but it was the black-haired one who caught the interest of two of the gentlemen. Prance studied her sweet, pale face and realized he had found the heroine for his gothic novel. He could always write better when he had a real character to base his imaginary ones on. That, he thought, was half the trouble with his
Rondeaux.
He had no clear image of Arthur,
dux bellorum.
He would befriend the maid and learn her little mannerisms, to lend authenticity to his tale. The Countess Chamaude, alas, grew dim in memory.

Coffen also found the maid pretty. He liked the dainty, ladylike way she moved about, not brass-faced like the other one. He was frightened of bold girls, but a shy one like the raven-haired beauty would just suit him. He cocked an ear and heard her called Grace. A nice name, it suited her. All this watching and planning in no way interfered with his breakfast, though it was responsible for the smear of egg yoke on his cravat. Byron was careful to ignore the two beauties and concealed his pleasure that Luten would not be accompanying his fiancée on the outing.

The three riders set out immediately after breakfast. The weather was cool and crisp, with a clear blue sky overhead. Corinne had been hoping for a good hard ride in the country. That was something she missed in London. She had been raised on a farm in Ireland, where she had been discovered at seventeen years of age by Lord deCoventry, who was exactly three times her age. He bought her from her papa for five thousand pounds, took her home to London, decked her out in finery, polished up her country manners and made her the belle of the season. His hope was to secure an heir, but in this one respect his young bride failed him. In all other ways, the four years of their marriage were successful. DeCoventry died when she was twenty-one. She was now a widow of twenty-four, the Dowager Countess deCoventry, a quarter of a century younger than the new countess.

Prance claimed an interest in visiting Nottingham to see some of the sights of Byron’s youth, which did indeed have some interest for him, but he also wanted to go on the strut to show off his new jacket to the provincials. As Nottingham was some eleven miles away, it looked like being a long ride, whatever about a fast one. They set a good pace, however, and as the roads weren’t busy, they made good time.

“You’ll want to visit the shops,” he said as a sop to Corinne. “No need to worry about walking alone in the provinces, eh?”

“I do need a new shawl,” she said, with a memory of last evening’s chill.

“I suggest a woolen one,” Byron said with an apologetic smile. “Contrary to popular belief, God does not temper the wind to the shorn lamb at the abbey.”

While Byron took Prance on a tour to show him Griddlesmith Gate on Pelham Street where he had lived briefly with his mother, and St. James Street where he stayed in a dusty red brick building close to the hospital where he was receiving treatment from a quack for his club foot, Corinne dismounted and visited a few shops in search of a shawl to ward off the arctic drafts of the abbey.

She found none ready-made but discovered a beautiful length of fine mauve wool and a matching silk fringe. The fringe could be sewed on with little trouble to dress the wool up as a stylish shawl. She bought enough for herself and Mrs. Ballard, and rather regretted that she hadn’t bought a few ells for a suit while she was at it. The price was half what she would pay in London.

Lady deCoventry’s pockets were not so deep as her friends’, as her late husband could not leave her his entailed estates. He had bought her the little house on Berkeley Square, a cottage in the country and left twenty-five thousand pounds, the interest on which provided her enough to live comfortably, if she watched her pennies.

As she left the drapery shop, she spotted a dressmaker’s sign in a window on the corner and took the material there to have it hemmed and the fringe added, to save the bother of sewing it herself. Mrs. Addams told her she would have it ready the next day but she couldn’t deliver.

“For I’ve no gig, you see, and to hire one would cost as much as the work’s worth.”

“If I can’t get back myself, I’ll send a footman for it,” Corinne said, and left, happy with her bargain.

She met up with the gentlemen as she came out of the dressmaker’s shop. The visit had taken so long that they feared they’d be late home for luncheon.

“We can take a short cut, if you don’t mind rough riding,” Byron suggested.

“I’d like a good country run,” Corinne said at once, before Reg could suggest they stop and eat at an inn to show off his new country finery. When Byron expressed enthusiasm for the ride, Prance held his peace.

They were nearly home, actually on Byron’s property, when it happened. Byron led the way through a spinney that cut a few miles off the trip. It would be a lovely spot in spring. Even in late autumn, with only a few yellowed leaves clinging to the branches, it had some beauty. There were enough evergreens and densely-limbed shrubs to give that air of rustic solitude that is half the charm of a spinney. Sunlight filtering through the trees dappled their shoulders with dancing sequins of light. The rustle of vegetation spoke of woodland creatures gathering provisions for the coming winter. Birds perched on branches, looking down on them. In the distance, a stream gurgled. The scent of pine and mold and decay took her back to Ardmore, her home in Ireland.

The calm was shattered by a loud blast, and a bullet whined in the air. It lifted Byron’s hat from his head. After an instant’s stunned silence, Byron bellowed, “Don’t shoot, you fool! You nearly killed me!” He peered off into the direction from which the shot had come. It was impossible to get a horse into such dense vegetation, but he dismounted and pushed a few yards forward on foot, shouting as he went. In the distance, the rustle of dried bushes and snap of branches told him his attacker was too far ahead to bother giving chase.

He came back, scowling. “Poachers, and in broad daylight,” he grumbled. “Damme I don’t mind if they help themselves to an occasional rabbit or pheasant, but to be so careless. He might have killed us.”

“You don’t look like either a rabbit or pheasant to me,” Prance said, with a meaningful lift of an eyebrow.

“Oh I hardly think he’d go that far,” Byron said, and remounted.

“Who are you talking about?” Corinne asked. “Do you think someone was shooting at your deliberately, Byron?”

Byron shot a commanding look at Prance. “No, of course not. Prance was referring to an irate neighbor I mentioned to him,” he said, and quickly led them off again. As they were going single file, further conversation was impossible, but Corinne had seen that look, and knew she didn’t have the whole story. Surely no one was trying to
kill
Byron! No, it was an accident, a poacher who didn’t look where he was shooting.

But as she considered it, she knew perfectly well there had been no bird nor wild game anywhere near them. A bird would be in the air or in a tree, and a rabbit would be on the ground. Of course the gun could have gone off by accident if the poacher tripped. Naturally he would take to his heels to avoid being chewed out and possibly have a charge laid against him by Byron. That was surely the explanation.

It was Coffen who discovered the real murder that morning, on the island in the lake.

Coffen felt chilled to the bone on the lake despite the sun. He had to keep one hand on his hat or that nasty, raw wind would have made off with it. The water leaking into the old boat and soaking his boots didn’t help either. He wouldn’t have minded taking the oars himself to warm up, but the young footman who was rowing him seemed to know what he was about, and Coffen had never rowed a boat in his life. Very likely there was some trick to it. He put the time to use by quizzing the tall, gawky young fellow with red hair and freckles about Grace.

From Stanley he learned, “She’s the youngest and best looking of the Hyslop girls. Her pa’s dead and her ma raises rabbits. You can buy them live or dead and skinned. She sells the pelts as well. Grace hasn’t got a fellow. Not that she couldn’t have her pick but she’s too perticuler. She ain’t a regular maid, his lordship just hired her for the visit.”

Coffen stored all this up for future cogitation. He liked rabbits himself. A young rabbit in onion sauce was a toothsome ragout. His more immediate interest was centered on the island, which was fast drawing nearer. The larger fortress, when he got there, was a dandy one, of old stone like the Abbey, and with those cut out squares along the roof-line like a real fort, or some old castle. It looked old as the hills, but he knew it couldn’t be that old as Byron had mentioned the fifth baron built it. It was built to look old, like Walpole’s gothic heap called Strawberry Hill, which was a funny name for a gothicy place. Too cheerful by half. Mrs. Radcliffe would have done better.

The fortress was big for a folly and small for a fortress. It was pretty well gone to ruin inside. If there had ever been furniture there, it was gone now. A whole flock of pigeons were roosting in the rafters, making that cooing sound and leaving generous reminders of their presence below. Some small bird had either built a nest on the ground or it had fallen from the roof. Probably fallen. Even a bird wouldn’t be bird-brained enough to build on the ground. The place might be scary at night but in broad daylight it was just another old ruin, of which he’d seen enough to last a lifetime that year Prance was interested in them. He was always interested in something weird. His ruins phase wasn’t as bad as his Japanese phase, when he’d destroyed a part of his garden and made them drink awful tasting tea in a cold shack, without even a chair to sit on.

Coffen took a last look around and decided to leave before the pigeons splattered him. Outside the fort there was a pile of uneven earth, likely left when the foundation for the fort was dug. Wild grass had grown over it, along with nettles and some bushes. And just at the edge of the mess, one nice yellow flower grew in a depression where the earth was damp and soft. Coffen wasn’t much for the names of flowers but he’d seen this one before in real gardens. He reached over to pick it but the stem was thick and the earth was soft so that the whole thing came out, root and all. He stood a moment staring into the hole, wondering if he should shove the root back in and try to save the flower.

He pulled a bit of the earth away with his fingers and was about to stuff the root into the hole when he saw what looked like a decaying thumb. He stared, thinking it must be a grub. Except grubs didn’t have fingernails. He pulled more earth away and found some moldy old cloth, all turned gray. It fell apart in his fingers, revealing a human hand. The flesh was rotting away on it, but it was a human hand all right, with four fingers curling inward and the thumb sticking out through a hole in the cloth. It was a small hand, maybe a youngster’s, or at least a woman’s. Certainly not a man’s hand.

He stared at it a moment in disbelief, with his breakfast churning uncomfortably inside him. Then he pulled away more of the soft earth and cloth and saw the hand was attached to an arm. Stanley sat on a rock by the boat, sunning himself and chewing on a straw. Coffen called him and he came running.

“Yessir, can I help you, sir?” he said.

“What do you know about this?” Coffen asked in a hollow voice, pointing at the hand.

Stanley looked, gasped and turned pale. “Crikey, it’s a
skeliting,”
he said, in a voice pitched high in disbelief.

“This place ain’t used as a burial ground, is it?” He looked around but saw no sign of tombstones. And in any case, the body would be in a coffin.

“Good lord, no. Who can it be?”

“Any unexplained disappearances hereabouts the last few years?”

Stanley applied his hand to his chin and rubbed, all the while staring at the little hand. “Old Ned Harper took off, leaving his wife and six kids behind, but we heard he run off to Birmingham, living with another woman. It don’t look like a man’s hand.”

“No, more like a youngster’s, or a small woman’s. The nails are well cared for. Filed, I mean, not cut off rough.”

Stanley looked up at the sky and thought some more. “There was some talk of Lady Richardson’s maid disappearing, but she was never really here.”

“Eh?”

“She was to come here, but never made it. She disappeared in London. She might of come here and got herself kilt. We’d ought to speak to his lordship about this.”

Coffen couldn’t bear to leave till he found out more about this hand, and who it was attached to. “We will, but before we go, do the Richardsons live near here?”

“Aye, at Redley Hall, north towards Mansfield. They’re a branch of the Redley family, from Jamaica. They come here about four years ago when Sir John Redley stuck his fork in the wall, and his niece — that’s Lady Richardson — inherited the Hall. She has the money and her husband has the title, but it seems like a love match right enough. Sir William was a neighbor in Jamaica. He took over running her da’s sugar plantation when the old boy fell sick. They got married, and stayed on in Jamaica when the old geezer turned up his toes. Then when she inherited Redley Hall, they come here and stayed. They say Sir William wants their lad raised in England.”