Death at Wentwater Court

1
He'll come to a bad end, mark my words, and she won't lift a finger to stop him. It's the little ones I'm worried about." The stout lady heaved a sigh, her old-fashioned mantle, a hideous yellowish-green, billowing about her. "Four already and another due any day now."
Daisy Dalrymple was constantly amazed at the way total strangers insisted on regaling her with their life stories, their marital misfortunes, or their children's misdeeds. Not that she objected. One day she was going to write a novel, and then every hint of human experience might come in handy.
All the same, she wondered why people revealed to her their innermost secrets.
When the plump lady with the drunkard for a son-in-law left the train at Alton, Daisy had the 2nd Class Ladies Only compartment to herself. She knelt on the seat and peered at her face in the little mirror kindly provided by the L&SW Railway Company. It was a roundish, ordinary sort of face, pink-cheeked, not one calculated to inspire people to pour out their souls. A confidante, Daisy felt, ought to have dark, soulful eyes, not the cheerful blue that looked back at her.
Near one corner of a mouth of the generous, rather than rosebud, persuasion dwelt the small brown mole that was the bane of her existence. No quantity of face-powder ever hid it completely.
The scattering of freckles on her nose could be smothered, however. Taking her vanity case from her handbag, Daisy vigorously wielded her powder-puff. She touched up her lipstick and smiled at herself. On her way to her first big writing assignment for Town and Country, blase as she'd like to appear, she had to admit to herself she was excited--and a little nervous.
At twenty-five she ought to be sophisticated and self-confident, but the butterflies refused to be banished from her stomach. She had to succeed. The alternatives were altogether too blighting to contemplate.
Was the emerald green cloche hat from Selfridges Bargain Basement a trifle too gaudy for a professional woman? No, she decided, it brightened up her old dark green tweed coat just as intended. She straightened the grey fur tippet she had borrowed from Lucy. It was more elegant than a woollen muffler, if less practical on this icy January morning.
Sitting down again, she picked up the newspaper the woman had left. Daisy was no devotee of the latest news, and on this second day of January, 1923, the headlines she scanned looked very much like those of a week ago, or a fortnight: troubles in the Ruhr and in Ireland; Mussolini making speeches in Italy; German inflation raging out of control.
Opening the paper, she read a short piece describing the latest wonders unearthed from Tutankhamen's tomb, and then a headline caught her eye:
FLATFORD BURGLARY
Scotland Yard Called In
Daisy had been at school with Lord Flatford's daughter, though not in the same form. Shocking how the merest mention of an acquaintance was more interesting than the most serious news from abroad.
In the early hours of the New Year, thieves had walked off with theFlatfords' house-guests most valuable jewellery, not yet returned to his lordship's safe after a New Year's ball.
She had no time to read more, for the clickety-clack of the train over the rails began to slow again and the next station was Wentwater. Wrestling with the leather strap, Daisy lowered the breath-misted window. She shivered in the blast of frosty air, heavy with the distinctive smell of a coal-fired steam engine, and wondered whether a cold neck was not too high a price to pay for elegance.
At least the knot of honey brown hair low on her neck, out of the way of the hat, provided a spot of warmth. For once she was glad she had indulged her mother by not having her hair bobbed.
The train rattled and shuddered to a halt. Leaning out, Daisy waved and called, "Porter!"
The man who answered her summons appeared to have a wooden leg, doubtless having lost the original in the Great War. Nonetheless, he made good time along the platform, swept clear of snow. He touched his peaked cap to her as she stepped down, clutching Lucy's precious camera.
"Luggage, madam?"
"Yes, I'm afraid there's rather a lot," she said doubtfully.
"Not to worry, madam." He hopped nimbly up into the compartment and gathered from the rack her portmanteau, tripod, Gladstone bag, and the portable typewriter the editor had lent her. Laden, he somehow descended again. Setting everything down, he slammed the door and raised his arm. "Right away!" he shouted to the guard, who blew his whistle and waved his green flag.
As the train chugged into motion, Daisy crossed the footbridge to the opposite platform. She surveyed the scene. The station was no more than a halt, and she was the only person to have descended from the down-train. Signs over the two doors of the tiny building on the up-platform indicated that one end was for Left Luggage, the other serving as both Waiting-Room and Ticket Office.
The Hampshire countryside surrounding the station was hidden by a blanket of snow, sparkling in the sun. Frost glittered on skeletaltrees and hedges. The only signs of life were the train, now gathering speed, the uniformed man carrying her stuff across the line behind it, and a crow huddled on the station picket fence.
"Your ticket, please, madam."
She gave it to him to clip. "I'm staying at Wentwater Court," she said. "Is it far?"
"A mile or three."
"Oh, Lord!" Daisy looked in dismay at her luggage, and then down at her smart leather boots, high-heeled and laced up the front to the knee. They were definitely not intended for tramping along snowy country lanes, and the station was obviously too small to support a taxi service or even a fly.
"I shouldn't worry, madam. His lordship always sends the motor for his guests, but likely it's hard to start in this weather."
"The trouble is," Daisy confided, "I'm not exactly a guest. I'm going to write about Wentwater Court for a magazine."
The porter-cum-station master-cum-ticket collector looked properly impressed. "A writer, are you, madam? Very nice, too. Well, now, if you was to walk, I can get a boy from the village to bring your traps after on a handcart. Or I can telephone the garridge in Alton for a hired car to come pick you up."
Daisy contemplated these alternatives, one uncomfortable, the other expensive. Her expenses would be paid by the magazine, eventually, but she hadn't much cash in hand.
At that moment she heard the throb of a powerful motor engine. A dark green Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost pulled up in the station yard, the brass fittings on its long bonnet gleaming. A uniformed chauffeur jumped out.
"I reckon his lordship's counting you as a guest, madam," said the porter with vicarious satisfaction, picking up her baggage.
"Miss Dalrymple?" asked the chauffeur, approaching. "I'm Jones, from the Court. Sorry I'm late, miss. She were a tad slow starting this morning, which she ain't usually be it never so cold, or I'd've got going earlier."
"That's quite all right, Jones," said Daisy, giving him a sunny smile. God was in His Heaven after all, and all was right with the world.
He opened the car door for her, then went to help the porter stow her bags in the boot. Daisy leaned back on the soft leather seat. There were definite advantages to being the daughter of a viscount.
Of course, she'd never have got the assignment to write about stately homes were it not for her social connections. Though she didn't know the Earl of Wentwater, she was acquainted with his eldest son, James, Lord Beddowe; his daughter, Lady Marjorie; and his sister, Lady Josephine. Her editor had rightly expected that doors forever closed to any plebeian writer would swing wide to welcome the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple.
The Rolls purred out of the station yard, down the hill, round a bend, and through the village of Lower Wentwater. The duck pond on the village green was frozen. Shrieking with laughter, several small children in woollen leggings were sliding on the ice, nothing but bright eyes showing between striped mufflers and Balaclava helmets.
Beyond the little stone church, the lane wound up and down hills, past fields and farms and scattered copses. Here the snow on the roadway lay undisturbed except for two eight-inch-deep wheel ruts made by the earl's motor on its way to the station. Daisy was increasingly glad she had not had to hoof it.
In the middle of a wood, they came to a brick lodge guarding tall wrought-iron gates that stood open. As they drove through, Jones sounded the Rolls's horn. Daisy glanced back and saw the lodge-keeper come out to close the gates behind them. A moment later, they drove out of the trees.
Wentwater Court spread before them. On the opposite slope of a shallow valley stood the mansion. The crenellated and turreted central Tudor block, red brick dressed with stone, was flanked by wings added in Queen Anne's time. Virginia creeper, though now leafless, masked the transition from one style to another, and a pair of hugecedars softened the rectangularity of the wings. Closer, at the bottom of the valley, the gravel drive crossed an elaborate stonework bridge over an ornamental lake. The ice had been swept clear of snow, and skaters in red and green and blue skimmed its length or twirled in fanciful curlicues.
"Jones, stop, please," Daisy cried. "I must take some photographs."
The chauffeur retrieved the tripod from the boot for her. "Do you want me to wait, miss?"
"No, go ahead, I'll walk up." She set up her equipment on the edge of the drive and adjusted the camera. A frown creased her forehead.
Most of her photographic experience had been in Lucy's studio. Peering through the viewfinder, she tried to picture the scene before her shrunk to half a magazine page. The skaters on the lake would be mere dots, she decided.
Nonetheless, she took a couple of shots of the entire scene before directing the camera at the mansion alone to take several more. Then she picked up the whole apparatus and trudged down to the lakeside to get close-ups of the skaters and the pretty arched bridge.
The skaters had already seen her, and one or two had waved. As she approached, all five gathered at the nearer foot of the bridge.
"Hullo, Daisy," called Marjorie. "We thought it must be you." Her fashionably boyish figure was emphasized by a tailored cherry red sports coat and matching skirt. Daisy knew that the white woollen hat concealed bobbed hair set in Marcel waves. Her Cupid's-bow lipstick matched her coat, her eyebrows were plucked and darkened, and her eyelashes were heavily blacked. At twenty-one, Lady Marjorie Beddowe was a quintessential flapper.
"Welcome to Wentwater, Miss Dalrymple." Her brother James, a stocky young man some three years older than his sister, wore plus-fours and a Fair Isle pullover patterned in yellow and blue. His face, heavy jaw at odds with an aristocratically narrow nose, was pink from exercise; he had discarded coat, cap, and muffler on the heap piled on a bench on the far side of the lake. "You know Fenella, don't you?"
"Yes, very well. We're from the same part of Worcestershire." Daisy smiled at the shy girl whose engagement to James had recently been announced in the Morning Post. "And Phillip is an old friend, too, of course."
"What-ho, old thing, haven't seen you in an age." Fenella's brother, a tall, fair, loose-limbed young man, grinned at her. Good-looking in a bland sort of way, Phillip Petrie had been Daisy's brother's best chum until Gervaise was killed in the trenches. "Taken up photography, have you?" he asked.
"In a way."
He seemed to be ignorant of the reason for her arrival. She would have explained further, but Marjorie broke in eagerly to introduce the fifth skater.
"Daisy, this is Lord Stephen Astwick." She gazed with patent adoration at the older man. "You haven't met, have you?"
"I've not had that pleasure," he said suavely. "How do you do, Miss Dalrymple." At about forty, Lord Stephen was an elegant figure in a leather Norfolk-style jacket, his black hair pomaded back from his handsome face.
"Lord Stephen." Daisy inclined her head in acknowledgement. She didn't care for the way his cold grey eyes appraised her. "Don't let me interrupt your sport. I want to take some pictures from a bit farther along the bank."
"Let me carry that apparatus for you," Phillip offered, stepping forward. "It looks dashed heavy."
"No, do go on skating, Phil. The more people in the photographs, the merrier."
A flagged path around the lake had been cleared and sanded. As she started along it, Daisy noticed Marjorie taking Lord Stephen's arm in a proprietorial grip.
"Show me that figure again," she said to him with an artificial titter. "I will get it right this time, I swear it."
"If you insist, Lady Marjorie," he acquiesced, with a slight grimace of distaste. Daisy's instant dislike of the man was confirmed. Marjoriemight be a bit of a blister, but Lord Stephen had no call to show his contempt so plainly.
Finding the perfect position on a short jetty beside a wooden boathouse, Daisy set up her camera. She took several shots of the skaters, with the bridge in the background. Obligingly, they all stayed at the near end of the lake, though she had seen them whizzing under the bridge earlier. It was a pity that colour photography was so complicated and unsatisfactory a process, for the bright colours of their clothes were part of the charm of the scene.
Daisy finished the roll of film. The other rolls were in her Gladstone bag, so she packed up, detaching the camera from the tripod and carefully closing its accordion nose. As soon as she stopped concentrating on her work, she became aware of the biting chill nibbling at her toes and cheeks.
The folded tripod tucked awkwardly under one arm, the camera case slung by its strap over her shoulder, she trudged on around the lake. A path of sanded, well-trodden snow led up from the bench towards the house. Before she reached it, Phillip skated over to her.
"Finished? I'll give you a hand up to the house if you'll hold on half a tick while I take off my skates."
"Thanks, that would be a help."
He skated along to the bench to change his footwear. As she strolled to join him, Daisy wondered if he was about to take up his inconstant pursuit of her. Ever since she had emerged from her bottle green school uniform like a butterfly from its chrysalis, the Honourable Phillip Petrie, third son of Baron Petrie, had intermittently courted her. More for Gervaise's sake than her own, she sometimes thought.
She smiled at him as he relieved her of her burdens. Though she steadfastly refused his periodic proposals, she was fond of her childhood friend and erstwhile pigtail-puller.
"Did you bring skates?" he asked, shortening his long strides to match hers up the hill, slippery despite the sand.
"No, I didn't think to."
"I expect you can borrow some. We could come straight down again. It's a pity to waste such a topping day."
"Yes, but I'm not here as a guest, or at least, not for pleasure. I'm going to be busy."
He looked startled. "What on earth do you mean?"
"I have a commission to write about Wentwater Court for Town and Country," she told him with pride.
"You and your bally writing," he groaned. "Dash it, Daisy, it shouldn't take more than an hour or so to put together a bit of tomfoolery for the gossip column. You can scribble it off later."
"Not a paragraph or two, a long article. With photos. This is serious, Phillip. They are paying me pots of money to write a monthly series about some of the more interesting of the lesser known country seats."
"Money!" He frowned. "Hang it all, my dear old girl, you surely don't need to earn your own living. Gervaise would be fearfully pipped."
"Gervaise never tried to tell me what to do," she said with considerable asperity, "and he'd have understood that I simply can't live with Mother, let alone with Cousin Edgar. He couldn't stand Edgar and Geraldine any more than I can."
"Maybe, but all the same he must be turning in his grave. His sister working for her living!"
"At least writing is a whole lot better than that ghastly secretarial work I was doing. I did enjoy helping Lucy in her studio, but she doesn't really have enough work to justify paying me."
"It was Lucy Fotheringay put you up to this independence tommy rot in the first place. Are you still sharing that Bayswater flat with her?"
"Not the flat." Daisy seized the opportunity to avoid the subject of her employment, though she knew she'd not escape his ragging for ever. "We have a perfectly sweet little house in Chelsea, quite near the river."
She went on to describe it in excruciating detail, which Phillip wastoo well-brought-up to interrupt. Before her narrative reached the attics, they reached the front door. Phillip being laden with skates, tripod and camera, Daisy rang the bell.
A footman in plum-coloured livery opened one half of the massive, iron-bound, oak double doors. Stepping in, Daisy handed him her card and glanced around.
"Oh, I can't wait to photograph it!" The early Tudor Great Hall was everything she had heard. Linenfold wainscoting rose to a carved frieze of Tudor roses, bulrushes, and stylized rippling water. Above, the walls were whitewashed and hung with tapestries of hunting and jousting scenes, alternating with crossed pikes, halberds, and banners. The vaulted hammerbeam ceiling was high overhead.
Daisy despaired of ever doing the vast room justice with her camera.
She shivered. A blazing fire in the huge fireplace opposite her did little to disperse the winter chill rising from the flagged floor. A cold draught blew from the arched stone staircase at one end of the hall. The footman hurriedly closed the front door behind Phillip.
"You'll be the writing lady, miss?"
"Yes, that's right." She had ordered new cards with her profession proudly emblazoned beneath her name, but she hadn't yet received them.
Obviously unsure what to do with her, the footman turned with relief to the stately, black-clad butler who now appeared through a green baize door at the back of the hall. "It's Miss Dalrymple, Mr. Drew." He handed over the card.
"If you'll please to come this way, miss, his lordship will receive you in his study."
"Thank you." She put out her hand as Phillip made to go with her. The last thing she needed was his censorious presence hovering at her elbow when she discussed her work with Lord Wentwater. "Don't wait about, Phil. Go back to your skating in case there's a thaw tonight. I'll see you later."
Quickly powdering her red nose as she followed the butler, sherealized that her nerves had vanished. She had never found it difficult to charm elderly gentlemen, and she had no reason to suppose that the earl would be an exception. Half the battle was already won, since he had given her permission to write the article and invited her to Wentwater. Having seen the magnificent Great Hall, she had no doubt that she'd find plenty to write about.
The butler led the way from the Tudor part of the house into the east wing. Here he tapped on a door, opened it, and announced her. As Daisy entered with a friendly smile, Lord Wentwater rose and came round his leather-topped desk to meet her.
A tall, lean gentleman of some fifty years, he did not return her smile but shook the hand she offered, greeting her with a grave courtesy. He had James's straight, narrow, aristocratic nose, and the greying hair and moustache gave him an air of distinction. Daisy thought him most attractive despite his age and the rather Victorian formality of his manners.
The Victorian impression was heightened by the heavy mahogany furniture in the study and the dark red Turkey carpet. A Landseer painting of two black retrievers, one with a dead mallard in its mouth, hung above a superb Adam fireplace.
Still chilled, Daisy gravitated automatically towards the fireplace, pulling off her gloves and holding out her hands to the flames.
"Won't you sit down, Miss Dalrymple?" The earl indicated a maroon-leather wing chair by the fire. Taking the similar chair opposite her, he said, "I knew your father, of course. A sad loss to the House of Lords. That wretched influenza decimated our ranks, and so soon after the War slaughtered the next generation. Your brother, I believe?"
"Yes, Gervaise died in Flanders."
"Allow me to offer my condolences, somewhat belated, I fear." To her relief, he dropped the unhappy subject and went on in a dry, slightly interrogative tone. "I am flattered that you have chosen my home to write about."
"I'd heard how splendid the interior is, Lord Wentwater, and formy January article I couldn't count on being able to photograph outdoors."
"Ah, yes, your editor's letter mentioned that you would be bringing a photographer with you."
Daisy willed herself not to blush. "Unfortunately, Mr. Carswell has come down with 'flu, so I'll be taking my own pictures." She hurried on before he could express his sympathy for the non-existent Carswell. "It would be most frightfully helpful if you have a small windowless space I could use as a darkroom. A boxroom, or storeroom, or scullery, perhaps? As I'm no expert, I'd like to be able to see how well my photos have come out before I leave, in case I need to take more."
That brought a faint smile to his lips. "We can do better than that. My brother Sydney--he's in the Colonial Service--was a bit of a photography enthusiast in his youth, and had a darkroom set up."
"Oh, topping!"
"The equipment has never been cleared out, though you may find it rather old-fashioned. Is there anything else I can do to facilitate your work?"
"I've read a bit about the history of the house, but if there are any interesting anecdotes not generally known ... ?"
"My sister's the one you need to talk to. She knows all there is to be known about Wentwater and the Beddowes."
"Lady Josephine is here? Spiffing!"
Again the fugitive smile crossed the earl's face. Lady Josephine Menton was as loquacious as she was sociable, a noted hostess and a noted gossip. No one could have better suited Daisy's purpose.
"I'm sure I can trust your discretion, and your editor's," said Lord Wentworth, standing up. "Come, I'll take you to her and introduce you to my wife. They are usually to be found in the morning-room at this hour."
They crossed the passage and he ushered her into a sunny sitting-room furnished, with an eye to comfort rather than style, in sage green, cream, and peach. As they entered, a grey-muzzled black spanielon the hearthrug raised his head in brief curiosity, twitched his stumpy tail, then went back to sleep. One of the two women sitting by the fire looked up, startled, a hint of alarm in her expression.
"Annabel, my dear, here is Miss Dalrymple. I know you will see that she is comfortable."
"Of course, Henry." Lady Wentwater's musical voice was quiet, almost subdued. She rose gracefully and came towards them. "How do you do, Miss Dalrymple."
Daisy was stunned. She had read in the Post that the earl had recently remarried, but she'd had no idea his second wife was so young. Annabel, Countess of Wentwater, was no more than a year or two older than James, her eldest stepson. And she was beautiful.
A warm, heather-mixture tweed skirt and bulky thigh-length cardigan did nothing to disguise a tall, slender figure, somewhat more rounded than was strictly fashionable. Her pale face was a perfect oval with high cheekbones and delicate features, her coiled hair dark and lustrous. Dark, wide-set eyes smiled tentatively at Daisy.
"I leave you in good hands, Miss Dalrymple," said the earl, and turned to depart.
His wife's gaze followed him. In it, Daisy read desperate unhappiness.
DEATH AT WENTWATER COURT. Copyright @ 1994 by Carola Dunn. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.