02 - Murder at Dareswick Hall Page 9

  Well, at least the household and guests had retired early. Even the baron and Lord Sneddon had not stayed up much later than the others chatting. Crabtree had already been around all the doors and windows ensuring that they were safely locked and barred. The house was ready for the night. He sighed, and poured himself another generous measure of whisky and settled back in his chair, savouring the taste of the golden liquid in his mouth. His final glass before he turned in for the night, the final…..

  He had just closed his eyes when his quiet contemplations were rudely interrupted by the shrill and persistent ringing of one of the servants’ bells in the servants’ hall. He leapt from his seat, almost spilling the contents of his glass, and hurried into the servants’ hall, afraid lest the noise should wake the whole house. He saw at once, from glancing at the servants’ bell board, that it was the library servants’ bell pull that was being pulled so vigorously. Who could be requiring the servants’ services at this hour? Had not the whole household retired to bed a good half an hour or so ago?

  He hurried to the library, rather regretting partaking of that last glass of whisky. He was ready for his bed, not to carry out some duty or other. He opened the library door and was greeted by the sight of Lord Sneddon, swaying slightly, an empty whisky decanter in his hand.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Crabtree, that’s your name isn’t it? I’ve been ringing and ringing on this damn bell pull. Thought nobody was coming, afraid everyone had gone to bed. Suppose you don’t keep late hours in the country, not like we do in town.’

  ‘What can I do for you, my lord?’ The whisky had taken the edge off the butler’s impeccable manners, a touch of exasperation clearly audible in his voice. But if Sneddon was aware of it he gave no indication, the alcohol he himself had consumed no doubt having dulled his senses.

  ‘There’s no more whisky in this decanter. Get me another one, will you.’

  Crabtree went and soon reappeared with a fresh decanter, inwardly fuming that his master’s fine single malt whisky should be wasted on such a man. It was this, and more probably the amount of whisky that he himself had consumed, that resulted in him being more outspoken in the conversation that followed with his lordship than he would otherwise have been, unruffled and sober.

  Sneddon grabbed the decanter from him and immediately poured himself a generous measure. He raised his glass. ‘To my betrothed’, he slurred, ‘the beautiful Miss Atherton; the Honourable Isabella Atherton, no less. What think you, Crabtree? Has she the makings of a duchess?’

  The butler remained silent.

  ‘Quite right, Crabtree, old man,’ said Sneddon, ‘ignore me, I would, I spoke disrespectfully of your betters, and that really will not do.’

  ‘If that’s all, your lordship’, Crabtree turned to leave.

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Sneddon hastily, seemingly sobering up somewhat, ‘before you go, can you tell me what’s happened to a housemaid that worked here. Is she still here?’

  ‘We have a number of housemaids in this establishment, my lord. To which one in particular are you referring?’

  ‘To one that was here when last I visited Dareswick. I think her name was Mavis or Mary, or something like that. It definitely began with an ‘M’.’

  ‘Ah, that would have been young Mabel, an under housemaid, my lord,’ said Crabtree. It was as if the world stood still. Could it be that she had meant so little to him that his lordship could not remember her name, this man that had ruined her? Aloud he said more gruffly than he had intended: ‘She doesn’t work here anymore, my lord.’

  There must have been something in the way he said the words that caught Sneddon’s attention, for he left off drinking his whisky and looked at the butler curiously.

  ‘Why not? Why doesn’t she work here anymore?’ There was fear in his voice, Crabtree felt sure, as well there might be. The whisky he had consumed would loosen his tongue, he knew even before he opened his mouth to respond. All those pent up months of guilt and anguish that he and Mrs Hodges had endured, wondering whether there was anything that they could have done differently to have prevented what had happened, that awful tragic and desperate act on a cold and bleak winter’s day.

  ‘She got into trouble. A young man who should have known better got her into trouble.’ The butler almost spat out the words as he glared at Sneddon. ‘A despicable, heartless young man who took advantage of her naivety. A young man who held a station in society high above her own and prayed on her innocence and kindly nature and the fact that she would be in awe of him. A young –.’

  ‘Alright, alright,’ interrupted Sneddon abruptly, averting his gaze to study the floor, ‘I get the picture about the young man. But what happened to her? I take it she was dismissed because of her condition. Where is she now? With family? In the workhouse, although those are being abolished are they not, thank God. But there’s still poor relief, isn’t there?’ He swung around suddenly, as an awful thought suddenly struck him. ‘Tell me she’s not on the streets, tell me….’ His voice trailed off until it came to a complete and awkward stop.

  ‘None of those fates befell her,’ answered Crabtree, speaking slowly. ‘As I said, she was an innocent girl before she was ruined. She had a shy and trusting nature but few friends and no family to turn to, having grown up in the local orphanage. Her parentage was uncertain. Before she came to Dareswick she had been in service as maid to an old woman who had died. She hadn’t been here long, six months at most. She was still learning the ways of being in service in a great house like this. I daresay Mrs Hodges and I were a little hard on her. We have to be, you see, with new servants to ensure that they know their place. Anyway, she was a quiet girl, diligent in her work. But I realise now she probably felt daunted and lonely. So it was easy for the first cad that showed a bit of interest in her to take advantage of her.’ Whether it was the whisky or his memories, or a mixture of the two, the butler was close to tears.

  ‘What happened to her?’ Sneddon asked quietly, clutching his glass so tightly in his hand that there was a very real possibility that it would break. The butler looked on unmoved. He wanted the glass to shatter. He wanted the man before him to feel some pain.

  ‘She was in awe of us, Mrs Hodges and myself, too afraid of us to tell us the truth. And she was ashamed of what she’d done. She knew she would bring shame on the household. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know who to turn to. She should have turned to us, of course, Mrs Hodges and me. We would have helped her, made sure that she and the babe didn’t stave. She should have known that our bark was worse than our bite, she should have –.’

  ‘Damn it, man, just tell me what happened to her!’ Sneddon almost shouted the words in his impatience. His face was now a ghastly shade of white and he was perspiring profusely, as if he had a fever. He turned and looked beseechingly at the butler and lowered his voice to just above a whisper. ‘Please, just tell me what happened to her.’

  ‘She took the only course of action that lay open to her, as she saw it, my lord,’ Crabtree said slowly. ‘One morning early this year, a cold and frosty morning if I recollect, she got up at dawn and stole out of the house. She went down to the lake, filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Sneddon let out a cry and began to sob. ‘But I didn’t know, I didn’t know. If only she’d come to me for help.’

  ‘And what would you have done, my lord, if she had?’ demanded Crabtree, giving full vent to his fury. ‘Would you have helped her or sent her packing? If it hadn’t been for you she could have been happy here. Who knows, she may have risen to the station of housekeeper here one day. Or she might have had a chance of marriage. That young footman who spilt the soup on you, and has lost his position as a consequence, he was sweet on the girl but painfully shy. He’d have made her a good husband, he’d have done right by her.’

  ‘Is that why Hallam hates me so? Because of the girl? I thought it was because of Josephine, I thought…’

  ‘Mabel’
s death brought scandal to this house. We all knew, the servants I should say, who’d done her wrong, but inevitably there was gossip in the village and the general view held was that Mr Hallam had got Mabel into trouble. We tried to put them straight, the other servants and I, but to no avail. Mud sticks as they say. No smoke without fire. Young Mr Hallam, he’s had an awful time of it. And Mrs Hodges and I, we are that upset by what has happened and always will be. We see it that we let her down, you see. We will always feel that we could have done more to help the girl if only she had felt that she could confide in us.’

  ‘I want to be left alone now, please,’ Sneddon said, pouring himself another glass of whisky, his eyes still filled with tears.

  Crabtree withdrew, closing the door quietly behind him. Suddenly he felt quite sober as he made his way back to the servants’ quarters. He had overstepped the mark, he knew. He had berated Lord Sneddon as if he had been a delinquent junior servant in his charge, not a guest and a member of the British aristocracy at that. He had little doubt that in the morning, in the cold light of day, Lord Sneddon would see things differently. He would look back and consider the butler’s behaviour towards him as having been impertinent. He would be vindictive, Crabtree felt sure, particularly as the butler had seen him at his worst, blubbering like a child. Would he insist that the butler be dismissed from his position? Would he make it a prerequisite to his marrying Miss Isabella? The baron, he knew, would acquiesce however reluctantly, for he was desperate that at least one of his daughters marry well. And he could do no better than have his daughter marry a man destined to become a duke.

  Crabtree trembled. He had let his emotions get the better of him. If only he had not drunk that last glass of whisky. If only Lord Sneddon had retired to bed at the same time as the others. It might be the last night, he thought, that he lay beneath the roof of Dareswick Hall in the employ of his master. What would he do? He had nowhere else to go, this was his home. Things could not get much worse than this. He must take matters into his own hands. He must go and speak to Lord Sneddon first thing in the morning, apologise for his outburst. With that last thought, he turned over in his bed and fell into a fitful sleep.

  Had he but known that things were to get very much worse, he would not have slept. But he was not to know that the bright light of day was to take the thought of apologising completely from his mind and that instead he would be faced with something altogether more shocking. Dareswick Hall had had its share of scandal and been the subject of much gossip. But it had never before had a murder in its midst.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rose slept for a couple of hours at most before she woke up with a start. Why exactly she had woken she did not know, but she knew, even without turning restlessly in her bed, plumping up her pillow and pulling the bedclothes up to her neck, that she would not be able to go back to sleep again. Despite this knowledge, she spent fifteen minutes or so sighing and tossing and turning but sleep alluded her. She switched on her bedside light and her wristwatch showed her that it was only just gone midnight. She thought of the long hours that stretched out before her until the morning. If she did not go back to sleep now she would be tired and irritable tomorrow and it would spoil the precious time she had to spend with Cedric. There was only one thing to do. She must find something that would send her to sleep. She had no sleeping powders with her, but she had always found that reading in bed made her drowsy, particularly if the book was not very engaging. She would go down to the library and choose a book.

  A dressing gown thrown on and tied hurriedly around her, she stole out of her room, across the landing, and groped her way down the stairs in the darkness, afraid that turning a light on might awaken the whole house. She opened the library door and was surprised to find that, although empty, the room was not in darkness. A lamp burned brightly on a table near one of the wing chairs by the fireplace and embers from the dying fire still glowed. She went over to the nearest bookcase and quickly scanned the titles on the spines. She must find something vaguely interesting, but not too absorbing that it would prevent her from drifting off to sleep….

  A noise in the room stopped her in her tracks, her hand hovering over a book. She looked around anxiously. A great form was emerging from the wing chair. In the half light of the room it took on an almost ghostly presence as if it were not human. Rose’s hand went instinctively to her heart and she could not prevent herself from emitting a stifled scream.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, Miss Simpson.’

  ‘Lord Sneddon, you startled me. I just came in for a book,’ Rose said hurriedly, grabbing the first book that came to hand. ‘And now I must go, goodnight.’

  In what seemed to Rose no more than one bound, Sneddon was beside her and had taken the book from her grasp.

  ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ read Sneddon. ‘I say, Miss Simpson, that’s hardly light reading for last thing at night. Although I have to say it may well send you to sleep. But don’t go, please, I should like to talk to you. I should like to ask your advice.’

  Memories of her last encounter with Sneddon on the stairs at Ashgrove came back to her. This moment here at Dareswick, shut in a library a distance away from any other living soul, she felt more vulnerable still. There was no chance of escape, Sneddon had seen to that because he was now standing between her and the door.

  ‘Please….’

  ‘I give you my word that you have no reason to be frightened, Rose,’ Sneddon said gently, seeing the fear in her eyes. ‘Look I am going to go back to the chair by the fireplace and turn it around so that I am facing you. You can remain standing by the door if you so wish, so that you can leave whenever you want to, I won’t stop you. Although, of course, I’d prefer it if you pulled up the other wing chair and sat with me beside the fire, you’ll catch your death in that attire.’

  Rose looked at him apprehensively. He held an empty glass in his hand and that, together with a part empty decanter of whisky on the table by his chair, indicated that he may well be in drink, and yet the way he held her gaze suggested that he was quite sober. She longed to go and sit in the other wing chair by the dying fire and enjoy the last moments of its warmth, for her feet were quite frozen. But she did not trust him so instead stood with the closed door behind her back, the door knob clutched awkwardly in her clenched hand, ready to make a quick escape should the circumstances so dictate.

  Sneddon shrugged his shoulders and walked over to the fireplace, turned his chair around so that it was facing her, and sat down heavily.

  ‘Thank you. Can I at least offer you a drink?’

  ‘No, and I think you have probably had enough.’

  ‘Ha! You are quite right, Miss Simpson, but I’m afraid I shall require another glass if I am to bare my soul to you and ask for your advice.’

  ‘I don‘t know why you would. What advice could I possibly give you and why would you want to take it?’

  ‘Because I like you.’ Sneddon held up a hand as she was about to protest. ‘I know you don’t like me and, believe me, I do not blame you. Why would someone like you, so honest and good, see anything but the bad in me? I have behaved in the most appalling way towards you in the past, and yet I ask you to overlook that and hear me out. Will you do that for me, Rose?’

  Rose looked at him keenly for signs that he was mocking her. But he was in all seriousness she suddenly had no doubt. There was no sign of his habitual arrogance about him, instead he looked in earnest. Indeed, now that she looked at him more closely, she wondered if he were ill. Despite his good looks, he looked haggard. He was pale and his eyes were red and swollen as if he had recently been weeping.

  ‘Please help me, Rose,’ he implored. ‘You must tell me what I can do to put it right. Will you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, after a slight hesitation, ‘if I can.’ He was clearly in a desperate and pathetic state. Despite her reservations she moved forward slightly, as if to give substance to her words. For a moment she even wished
that the old self-assured and patronising Lord Sneddon would return and replace the broken man before her. She moved further into the room, she was no longer afraid.

  ‘Bless you. I have done so many dreadful things, Rose, hurt so many people. I don’t really care about the likes of Isabella and Lavinia, of course, they can look after themselves. It’s the others that I hurt that I can’t live with. And it’s all too late,’ his shoulders drooped and he buried his head in his hands. ‘I’ve only just realised how very much I cared for them, and now it’s too late. It’s too late to do anything about it.’

  ‘Is there really nothing you can do?’ asked Rose, alarmed by his anguish.

  ‘I suppose you don’t know, well, why would you? There was a young housemaid here last time I came to stay. A pretty, timid little thing, wouldn’t say boo to a goose. A friendless orphan who nobody cared very much about. I remember she was so desperate to believe my attentions towards her meant something. I swear I didn’t know that I had ruined her. But the awful thing is that, even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have done anything to help her….’

  ‘Yes, Josephine told me something of it. The villagers thought Hallam was to blame.’ Rose now looked at him contemptuously, her heart hardening somewhat towards him.

  ‘But that isn’t the half of it, Rose. She was so ashamed and friendless. She felt she had no one to turn to for help. So she drowned herself in the lake here at Dareswick. One cold winter morning, she filled her pockets with stones and walked out into the lake.’

  Rose gasped with horror as what he was saying sunk in. It was the only sound in the room besides the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. In her mind’s eye a vision of the girl rose up before her, young and desperate, tripping and stumbling towards the lake, half blinded by tears as she made her way on her last journey to her awful fate. Rose looked at the pathetic creature before her, crumbled and bent over with remorse. She could not bring herself to feel pity towards him, did not want to even, for such feelings would be misplaced.