Chapter Ten
I woke on Sunday to the sound of gulls. Devonshire herring gulls are the size of small sheep and spend most of their waking hours shouting at each other at the top of their great sea-air-filled lungs.
They are no respecters of human traditions like the Sunday Morning Lie-In and will make any amount of noise they like outside your window while you’re trying to sleep.
They’re a menace once you’re awake, too, and many a trip to the seaside has been spoiled by aggressive gulls pinching holidaymakers’ chips while they’re strolling along the prom.
I would never wish a fellow creature dead, but I did wish they’d bugger off and give me a few more minutes’ peace before the day began.
Ordinarily I’d be full of up-and-at-’em spirit on a weekend away, but this one had stopped being fun as soon as we saw Everett’s murdered body and, like our fellow guests, I was very much ready to go home.
But unlike all but one of the others, I knew it was murder – which meant that Lady Hardcastle and I couldn’t just mope about and wait for the boat to come.
We had to solve the murder.
But why did we? Why did we have to spend our time asking questions and verifying alibis?
Why did we have to hunt for clues and try to imagine motives?
Despite the fevered fantasies of hundreds of mystery authors scribbling away in their garrets, there was no such thing as an amateur detective, so why weren’t we relaxing and taking it easy with our fellow weekend guests while we waited for the rozzers to arrive?
Because we were the famous Emily, Lady Hardcastle, and her redoubtable sidekick Florence Armstrong, that’s why.
Of course I was going to get up and get washed and dressed so I could shake Herself from her pit.
Of course we were going to dig and delve into the lives of our fellow guests.
Of course we were going to solve the murder.
Of course the local rozzers would be condescending and doubt our word.
Of course we would travel home and pretend we’d had a lovely weekend away when our friends in the village asked us what we’d been up to.
I leapt out of bed with renewed enthusiasm and stubbed my toe on the corner of the chest of drawers as I went to throw open the curtain. I swore loud and long in Welsh, because Lady Hardcastle said that swearing helped in those sorts of circumstances.
I was still limping a little as I hobbled along the corridor to Lady Hardcastle’s room and knocked on the door.
‘Who is it?’ came the sing-song reply from within.
‘It’s the RSPCA, madam. We’ve had reports that there’s an old bat in this room, though we might have misunderstood.’
‘Just bloody well come in, you idiot.’
‘The door’s locked.’
I could hear her harrumph from outside as she got out of bed and stumbled across the room. A long stream of colourful expletives suggested that she, too, had found something to stub her toe on.
The door opened.
‘Get in. I’ve hurt my foot because of you.’
‘I didn’t lock your door.’
‘I was worried about prowlers.’
‘You didn’t warn me about prowlers and tell me to lock my door.’
‘You can look after yourself, dear. As I keep saying: I’d not back anyone here in a straight fight with my Flossie. But I am but a frail and delicate flower. I need the protection of a locked door.’
I entered. ‘Have you been burgled?’ I indicated the mess of clothes, shoes and books strewn across her floor.
‘Very droll. Can you help me find something to wear? I’m starving and I want to get to breakfast immediately if not sooner.’
The dining room was crowded by the time we arrived, but to our surprise, obvious lines had been drawn between the groups.
The Sidwell-Plants, though still not on especially good terms with each other, were very pointedly nowhere near the Bridgewaters.
For their part, the Bridgewaters seemed to be keeping their distance from JB as they chatted to Clarice.
Wilson and Lily, though, to JB’s evident pleasure, were getting on like the proverbial house on fire and seemed oblivious to the tension around them.
‘Good morning, one and all,’ said Lady Hardcastle, breezily, as she began to investigate the warming dishes on the sideboard.
The assembled breakfasters tried to balance the competing desires to warmly welcome us and to not appear too friendly towards anyone else.
It was going to be a long day.
Hunger and a delicious spread saw us through the awkwardness of breakfast, but as soon as we could we beetled downstairs to the library.
I plucked a random volume from the shelves – an account of an eighteenth-century gentleman’s attempt to sail across the Atlantic in a three-masted schooner of his own design – and we settled in two of the comfortable wingback chairs with the cups of coffee we’d brought with us from the dining room.
‘Well, that was simply lovely,’ I said. ‘What’s up with everybody this morning?’
Lady Hardcastle sipped her coffee. ‘I’d thought things were brightening up after the croquet match yesterday, but it seems the circumstances really are getting to people. And under pressure, they fall back on old alliances and enmities.’
‘Or on new ones,’ I said. ‘I thought they all got on, but the Sidwell-Plants and the Bridgewaters definitely don’t seem to be pals at the moment. That would make sense if our hypothesis is true: that Sidwell-Plant believes Bridgewater is the one having an affair with Patience. But—’
‘But it was very obviously the Bridgewaters who were shunning the Sidwell-Plants and not the other way round.’
‘Exactly. And I’m still struggling with the idea that Patience and Bridgewater make anything even vaguely like a perfect couple, your prurient speculation about his amorous prowess notwithstanding.’
She laughed. ‘Me, too, to be honest. Which means the Bs have some other reason to be cross with the S-Ps.’
‘And whatever it is, it’s brought the S-Ps together.’
‘It’s all very peculiar. I wonder—’
‘Hello, ladies,’ said Wilson from the doorway. ‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I? I was looking for somewhere quiet to sit, away from . . . from—’
‘Away from the poisonous atmosphere between the accountant and the solicitor?’ I suggested.
‘You noticed it, too, then.’
‘We couldn’t miss it, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Come and join us; we’re atmosphere-free. Although Florence does seem to have a dreary-looking book with which she might attempt to bore us in due course.’
I held it up. ‘A Schooner to Nova Scotia, the gripping tale of a Regency idiot and his attempt to sail the wrong ocean at the wrong time of year in the wrong type of boat. It has all the hallmarks of a bestseller.’
Wilson grinned. ‘Does he make it?’
‘I’ve not read it yet, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say no.
I rather think we’d know more about Aloicius Fitzroy-Denman if he’d accomplished something so extraordinary.
We’d talk of nothing but the Fitzroy-Denman Shipping Company and its world-beating range of ocean-going schooners.
’ I quickly riffled through the book. ‘Ah, here we are. “Chapter 24, in which my beloved Sea Spirit sinks off the Scilly Isles”. That’s a shame.
Still, it’s nice for a person to have a hobby. ’
He laughed. ‘It is. Do you have any hobbies, Miss Armstrong?’
‘I’m not sure whether I do,’ I said. ‘I can always fill my spare time with something, but I’m not sure I have any passions.’
‘I see. What about you, Lady Hardcastle? Do you have any passions?’
Lady Hardcastle smiled. ‘One or two. You’ve seen one already: I love to play the piano. And I share one with your new paramour: photography. Although my interest there is in moving pictures. I make animated films.’
‘Animated?’
‘I make small models – usually animals – with a wire armature so I can pose them. If one shoots a series of still images with the models moving slightly between each shot, it gives the appearance of motion. It makes it look as though the tiny models are alive and moving of their own volition. It’s great fun. ’
Wilson’s mouth was open in surprise. ‘Really? You can really do that?’
‘I really can. It takes forever, though, and it needs good light, a commodity we often lack in Gloucestershire. I wish we had electricity so I could have some consistent lighting.’
‘You should speak to JB – he has his own generator in an adapted outbuilding. It wasn’t too much of a monster to install and it runs on diesel oil.
It needed a reinforced floor, but a decent structural engineer could sort that out for you.
You could generate enough electricity to run your whole house if you wanted. ’
‘I shall definitely look into it,’ said Lady Hardcastle with a smile. ‘Florence often talks about how convenient life would be with electricity.’
‘I do, it’s true. But what about you, Mr Wilson? Do you have any hobbies?’
‘I’m most fortunate in that my hobby is also my living. I don’t have the money to collect the wonderful old objects my clients buy, but at least I get a chance to see them, to handle them, before they go to their new homes.’
‘And sometimes you get the chance to see them in their new homes as well,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
He smiled. ‘Actually, that’s true, yes.’
‘With added matchmaking,’ I said with a wink.
He groaned. ‘Don’t keep reminding me. Although I must say that it’s been something of a relief to have an ally during all the frostiness.
While the Montagues and Capulets are drawing daggers against each other it’s pleasant to have someone to talk to who isn’t part of all the ancient grudges and new mutinies. ’
‘And, as you said yesterday, she is delightful.’
‘And very easy on the eye,’ he said with a smile. ‘Perhaps I need to rethink my irritation with JB’s meddling.’
‘A man doesn’t have the sort of business success JB’s had without knowing a thing or two about people,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
Wilson laughed. ‘Curse him.’
‘Or wonder at his perspicacity. Perhaps you should just give in to it and try to get to know her.’