A Fatal Secret Read online

  ‘It’s all right, the squire has given us carte blanche to ask anything we want,’ Clement said.

  The old man nodded. He might not have understood the fancy French-sounding words, but he got the gist of it all right. He sighed heavily.

  ‘Ar, well… See, sir, it’s on account of something sort of odd the boy said to me once.’

  ‘When was this exactly?’ Clement asked sharply.

  ‘Oh, a week or so before Easter, I reckon it must have been. I caught him tearing across the kitchen garden, almost trampling some strawberry plants. Told him to keep off. There was no harm in him, sir, but he could run a bit wild and be careless like, like all kiddies when they’re playing “chase” and such.’

  ‘I’m sure he was a good lad,’ Clement said, trying to keep a check on his impatience. ‘But what was it he said that made you worry?’

  ‘Well, not to say I worried, as such,’ the gardener said cautiously. ‘I just didn’t understand what he meant, sir. He asked me if all grown-ups were rich.’

  Clement blinked. ‘Well, that sounds pretty normal to me. I suppose to most children, grown-ups always seem to have more money than they do!’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s more or less what I told him, an’ all.’ The old man grinned. ‘But then he looked up at me, all serious like, and said something like, “Yes, but are they usually mad when you find out?” Well, sir, that sort of stumped me a bit,’ the old gardener admitted.

  ‘So what did you say?’ Clement asked, intrigued.

  ‘I asked him if someone was mad at him, and he shrugged, and said he thought they might be.’

  ‘Did he say who?’

  ‘No, sir, he didn’t. At that point, young Miss Emily, who he was playing chase with, ran up and “tagged” him and the pair went haring off. ’Course, at the time, I just forgot about it.’ The old man scratched his nose and looked uneasily at the coroner. ‘But now… well, it just makes me wonder a bit, what he could have meant, like.’

  Clement nodded. He could well see how it might. A young boy hints that he’s got on the wrong side of somebody, and a week later, he’s found dead at the bottom of a well. He would wonder a bit too.

  ‘Well, I’m sure you have nothing to reproach yourself for, Mr Cricklade,’ he said heartily. ‘Children often say things that don’t amount to much.’

  ‘Thank ’ee, sir,’ the old man said, feeling at least better for having got things off his chest.

  They took their leave of the old man, who set off to check his new potatoes for black fly, and Trudy looked at the coroner sharply.

  ‘Do you really think the poor lad had made an enemy of somebody?’ she asked.

  ‘It certainly sounds possible,’ Clement agreed. ‘But whether or not anybody will actually admit to having had cross words with him is another matter.’

  ‘It’s beginning to feel more and more as if the accident might not have been such an accident after all, doesn’t it?’ she mused tentatively.

  Clement nodded. ‘It does, rather, doesn’t it?’ he agreed gravely.

  ‘Something tells me this investigation is going to be difficult though,’ she said dryly.

  Clement paused to light his pipe, took a few puffs, and then shrugged. ‘Well, so what if it is? It’s nice to be out and about in the springtime, isn’t it, instead of cooped up in our respective offices.’

  A blackbird, busy finding nesting material, chose that moment to burst into song, and with a smile, Trudy had to agree with him. Anything that got her out from under the watchful, disapproving eye of DI Jennings was all right in her book.

  ‘So, where next?’ she asked more cheerfully.

  Clement nodded towards the roof of the dower house. ‘Well, why not call in at the dower house and see if anybody there was more observant than our Mr Cricklade?’

  Chapter 10

  At the dower house they were again out of luck. Neither of the residents, it seemed, were at home.

  This time, at Trudy’s suggestion, they had gone around to the back and to the kitchen entrance, which meant that a maid admitted them to the house. She appeared to be a village girl born and bred, still feeling happy to have her first job with ‘the family’.

  Perhaps her relative inexperience led her to rashly inviting them into the kitchen, where the cook – a middle-aged, comfortably padded woman – looked on them with less enthusiasm.

  But the coroner soon had her eating out of his hand, and within a few minutes, both he and Trudy were seated at the cook’s well-scrubbed kitchen table, eating wonderful, still slightly warm scones with home-made plum jam, and sipping from large mugs of tea.

  Mrs Jones, the cook, had nothing but sympathy for the Proctors.

  ‘That poor little lad,’ she said, seeming pleased that her jam was going down well with her handsome, silver-haired visitor. ‘To think of him falling down that well. It don’t bear thinking about.’ She shuddered theatrically, and gave a mournful sigh. ‘Poor Miss Emily was distraught, I heard Mr Oliver say the other day. And I don’t wonder at it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you saw anything odd that morning, Mrs Jones, did you?’ Trudy asked, surreptitiously licking her sticky fingers and hoping that nobody else had noticed. Was it only her who couldn’t seem to eat jam and scones without making a mess of it?

  ‘No, lovey, I wasn’t here,’ the cook said quickly. ‘On account of Mrs Sylvia being in London with her aunt and uncle, and Mr Oliver insisting I take the Easter weekend off, like.’

  ‘They sound like thoughtful employers,’ Trudy encouraged gently.

  ‘Oh they are. Mrs Sylvia’s no trouble, and lives real quiet here. Mind you, I suppose she feels it a little bit. Being here at Mr Martin’s grace and favour as it were.’

  The cook said this blandly enough, but Clement knew when bait was being cast under his nose, and smoothly reached out for another scone. ‘Hope you don’t mind, but these are really delicious!’

  The cook flushed with pleasure, and he said casually, ‘I suppose Mrs Sylvia is regarded as being a bit of a poor relation then? Not a very enviable role to have to play, I’ve always thought,’ he said mildly.

  ‘Well, she has her husband’s war pension,’ the cook said judiciously, ‘and her son, Mr Oliver, he’s very well thought of in the government. A very clever man, he is,’ she said, with obvious pride. ‘One of them dons at Oxford. And he has an important job in London, as an Adviser.’

  She said the last word with an obvious capital letter, and a slightly hushed tone of reverence.

  ‘Ahh,’ Clement said, matching her hushed tone with a conspiratorial smile of his own. ‘Well, things don’t sound too bad for them then. I suppose the house belongs to the head of the family though?’ he added, glancing around casually.

  ‘Oh yes. But the old lady, Vivienne – her what’s been dead for the past ten years or so – she insisted Clive have this house when he brought his bride home. And when he died in the war, there was never no question that Mrs Sylvia and Oliver would continue to live on here. Mind you, recently… well, that’s nothing and least said, soonest mended,’ she suddenly veered off, as if realising that she was on the verge of becoming truly indiscreet.

  And Trudy, not wanting her to start feeling uncomfortable, quickly steered the conversation back to the matter in hand.

  ‘It must have come as a terrible shock when you heard about poor Eddie,’ she said. ‘I take it you know the Proctors well?’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, as well as I know all the farmworkers,’ she qualified quickly. ‘You see them around, like, and have a nice chat. And come harvest time, when it’s all hands on deck, me and Mrs Verney – she’s cook up at the Hall – we get our heads together and bake up a storm for harvest festival, and all the workers and their families come to the service and attend the picnic when the gathering’s all done.’

  ‘Were you surprised to hear about the accident?’ Clement asked curiously. ‘I mean, was Eddie the sort of boy you might expect to do something dangerous?’

  ‘I du
nno about that, sir,’ the cook said uncertainly. ‘I’d have said Eddie was a clever boy, rather than a tearaway, like. But then, kiddies do some silly things, don’t they. But oh, his poor mother…’

  For the next ten minutes they made small talk, but nothing of use was learned, and eventually the young maid, who’d been listening silent but wide-eyed throughout it all, showed them back to the door.

  ‘You know, sir, if you don’t mind my saying,’ she said tentatively, when she’d opened the kitchen door for them, and had stood to one side for them to pass, ‘I couldn’t come to think how Eddie fell in that well either. He was friends with my little brother, sir, and he always struck me as a lad with a good head on his shoulders.’

  But after this promising opening, they learned little of use from her. It wasn’t until they’d all but begun to walk away, that they learned one little titbit of family gossip that, though interesting from a purely prurient point of view, probably wouldn’t prove to be relevant.

  The coroner had just said that he hoped their visit hadn’t disrupted their morning routine, and that he was afraid that some of his questions, especially those concerning the set-up at the dower house, might have upset the cook. ‘I rather thought, at one point, that Mrs Jones had been about to say something about the family, before changing her mind. I only hope we didn’t come across as being too nosy about family affairs,’ Clement finished cannily.

  ‘Oh don’t be frettin’ yourself about that, sir,’ the maid said with a smile. ‘Cook be fond enough of Sylvia, ma’am, but she don’t like to think that she and Mr Oliver might be running into difficulties with Mr Martin.’

  ‘Oh?’ Clement said encouragingly.

  The maid shrugged helplessly. ‘It’s on account of the American lady, sir,’ she said, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she did so. ‘Cook’s worried, I can tell. She thinks Mr Martin might ask Mr Oliver to leave. But I don’t believe it’ll ever come to that, sir. Mr Martin might be on the outs with his cousin, but he won’t chuck Mrs Sylvia out onto the streets,’ she said judiciously, shaking her head. ‘It’ll never happen, sir, mark my words. The village wouldn’t like it. They remember Mr Clive with too much affection for that to happen. They won’t stand for his widow being treated shabbily, no matter how much he and Mr Oliver argue. And Mr Martin, he always does what’s expected of him, sir.’

  Trudy and Clement exchanged baffled looks. ‘Mr Martin and his cousin Oliver have begun arguing have they?’ Clement asked casually. ‘Well, well, even the best of families will quarrel,’ he agreed blandly. ‘And over a lady you say? Well, again, these things do happen.’

  The maid gave a slightly cunning smile, which suddenly belied her tender years. ‘The American lady is rich they say, sir,’ she said archly.

  Clement blinked at this blatant bit of cynicism, but then had to smile. Trust the village grapevine not to mince matters.

  ‘And both… ah, Mr Martin and Mr Oliver have shown an interest in this lady, I take it?’ he fished carefully.

  ‘Yes, sir. She lives in the city, sir. One of these American ladies who come over to study at the university they say,’ she added a shade darkly, clearly having her suspicions about academic females.

  ‘And all this has happened just recently?’

  ‘Within the last six months or so, sir,’ she confirmed easily. ‘Anyways, I best get back to Cook. You can see yourself out, sir, can’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Clement agreed. ‘Much obliged, miss.’

  The maid smiled, and stepped back inside.

  Trudy waited until the door was shut behind them, and they had started to walk away, before glancing across at her friend. ‘Rather interested in the de Laceys’ domestic life, aren’t you?’

  Clement shrugged, unwilling to be drawn.

  ‘Well, I can’t see what their tangled love lives have to do with Eddie Proctor’s death,’ she said, then flushed a little, wishing that she hadn’t sound quite so prim.

  But the coroner didn’t seem to notice. Instead he paused to open the garden gate to let her through, and then looked out across the meadow opposite, where several large horse chestnut trees were just beginning to form their distinctive white-and-pink ‘candles’.

  ‘You never know what might prove relevant and what won’t,’ he advised her. ‘When you’re groping about in the dark, any fact has to be worth uncovering.’

  And with that, Trudy had to be content.

  Chapter 11

  Up on the top floor of Briar’s Hall, Emily de Lacey stared out over her family’s fiefdom through a small dormer window. From here, she could almost see all of it – the rolling, productive farmlands, the encompassing small wood, and some of the rooftops of the village itself. She knew, vaguely, that her family owned all the cottages in the village, as well as the pub. She’d once heard her father say to someone at a family party that the only thing the de Laceys didn’t own was the church.

  And for some reason, that had pleased her.

  Now, though, nothing much pleased her at all.

  She rubbed her eyes, which felt sore, and which any mirror would have told her were red from her constant crying. Her ribs also ached from all the sobbing that she’d done that morning, just after she’d woken up.

  Mornings were the worst, Emily had decided. Because in that one fleeting moment when you first woke up, before you had time to remember things, Eddie wasn’t dead. For a just a tiny amount of time, it was possible that she could get up, gobble her breakfast, and then race out of the house to meet Eddie by their secret place, and decide what to play.

  But then she would remember. And cry.

  And now, here she was, standing by the window, looking out on a sunny but breezy day, and wondering what she could possibly do with herself. Because she was bored, as well as everything else. Her family wouldn’t let her leave the house just yet, although she knew of two ways that she could sneak out of if she really wanted to. But who was there to play with her if she did? Everyone she knew was back at school now. Normally, she wouldn’t mind not having to go to school, but the trouble was, she couldn’t seem to settle down to anything here on her own. Normally, on the rare occasions when she had to ‘play quietly’ by herself, she could play clock patience, or do a jigsaw puzzle, or read. She had a lot of books and had been halfway through Treasure Island when…

  Easter Sunday.

  Emily felt another sob rack her thin body and tried to think of something else.

  She knew she should brush her hair, for instance, since Mrs Roper always said tidy hair indicated a tidy mind. But in a mutinous moment of defiance, Emily ran her hands through her long, brown locks and mussed them up even more.

  But it was no use. Nothing would take her mind off things, and once again she let her mind drift back in time.

  She’d been excited about the Easter egg hunt – everyone at school was. Even Eddie, who wasn’t that much fussed about chocolate, was eager to get started, and they were among the first to congregate at the entrance to the kitchen gardens.

  Of course, they’d all been warned not to trample through the vegetables and fruit, and had been told very firmly by Miss Reason, the indomitable leader of the Briar’s-in-the-Wold branch of the WI, that none of the eggs were hidden in the vegetable plots. Instead, they were to stick to the grass paths, the walls, the potting sheds and outhouses.

  And at ten o’clock they’d been allowed in – all of her friends giggling and laughing and splitting up, all bragging they’d find the most, whilst the adults looked on, and reprimanded anyone forgetting the warnings to keep out of old Crickie’s vegetable patches or the flowerbeds.

  But try as she might, she couldn’t remember when Eddie had sneaked off and gone about his own business without her. Because he must have deliberately sneaked off, Emily had decided. They’d started the hunt together and had promised to share out their finds later, and usually Eddie kept his word. But when she’d been hunting around the water butt, sure that some of the stones around it must have hollows
between them where an egg could be hidden, she’d looked up to say something to him, and he wasn’t there.

  She’d looked around but couldn’t see him anywhere. She’d felt a little cross about it, but had gone on hunting for eggs on her own. After all, what did it matter to her if he’d gone off? He was probably trying to find more eggs so that he could give them to his brothers and sister, before ‘sharing’ whatever was left with her. Or so she’d reasoned at the time.

  But now she wondered. Why had he gone into the old orchard at all? It wasn’t as if it was the time of year to find any fruit there. (Lallie always let them scrump the fruit whenever they wanted, without even pretending to chase them!) So there was no reason why Eddie would have even gone there. He knew there wouldn’t be any eggs there, because Miss Reason had said so. It just didn’t make sense.

  Emily shifted in front of the window, surprised to see two strangers come out of the arch to the kitchen garden, pause to talk for a moment, and then make their way over towards her Uncle Oliver’s house.

  She craned her thin neck a little better to watch their progress, but from this distance and height it was a little hard to make out much detail about the interlopers. She could see, from his thatch of white hair, that one of them was an old man. And the other was a girl, but she was wearing some odd-looking dark clothes. And her hat didn’t look like any hat that she’d seen Mrs Roper wear, either.

  But then they disappeared from sight and, her momentary distraction gone, she sank back into thinking about Eddie.

  She felt another tear run down her face, and brushed it away. What was the use of crying, she told herself angrily? It wouldn’t bring her friend back.

  She sniffed hard and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, then reached impatiently for her hankie. Ladies, Mrs Roper said, always used handkerchiefs. It had made Eddie laugh, for he’d never possessed such an object.

  Emily wiped the back of her hand hard with the small square of linen and lace, then lost interest in it, and stuffed it unceremoniously back up her sleeve.