A Matter of Loyalty (A Very English Mystery Book 3) Read online

  ‘’Tisn’t good to speak lightly of the dead, Miss Freya,’ said Mrs Partridge from the scullery. Mrs Partridge was the other half of the staff, cook and housekeeper and witch of all work.

  ‘What dead?’ said Georgia, Hugo’s sister, coming down the passage from the front door with a blast of cold air, all shapeless uniform and long legs. She dumped a bag full of used games kit on Mrs Partridge’s meticulously scrubbed floor and looked around. ‘You’re procrastinating,’ said Georgia, taking in cat, book, and kitchen all at once.

  ‘I’m not procrastinating,’ said Freya. ‘I’m taking a break.’

  ‘You hadn’t even started that Margery Allingham this morning,’ Georgia said. ‘You were at the end of an Edmund Crispin. I noticed, because you said I could have it when you were done, and you weren’t. Now you’re nearly at the end of the next one. You haven’t done a jot of writing today. Or yesterday. You got through two then, and now you’ve moved on to Allinghams.’

  Georgia was, as usual, absolutely right. Freya gave her a quelling look, which had no effect whatsoever.

  Mrs Partridge, whose keenly honed sense for disturbance had brought her back into the kitchen, had better luck. ‘Take that bag off the floor, young lady. You can sort it out in the laundry room. Whites and colours separated, please, not in a messy pile like the last time.’

  ‘Why are you so late?’ Freya asked, looking at the big old kitchen clock.

  Georgia’s expression turned quite murderous. ‘Miss Harrison was lurking in the library passage. Said I ought to be at games, what was I doing sloping off like that. Horrible woman. I bet Judy Woodley put her on me, too. She never does games, but she’s forever lecturing the rest of us about it. Always some certificate to get her out of it, and she’s as strong as a horse. Looks like one, too.’

  ‘Off with you!’ said Mrs Partridge sternly.

  Georgia slung the bag back on to her shoulder with bad grace. ‘Have they caught that boffin yet? It’s the talk of the school. They say he’s gone off to Russia with his mistress. I thought all these Atom men were married to their work.’

  ‘Out!’ Freya said.

  This time Georgia went, giving a fair impression of Magnus’s I-meant-to-do-that look.

  ‘The laundry is to the right, young lady!’ Mrs Partridge called after her as Georgia headed off towards the stairs and her waiting French horn.

  ‘Fair handful, she is,’ said Ben, who had wisely refrained from taking any part in the conversation.

  ‘She’s a right hoyden, sometimes,’ said Mrs Partridge, ‘but it’s not right for a girl, being moved around all the time, and with different people. Maybe she’s settled now, but it was only a couple of months ago you were all expecting to be on your way, new Earl and all that.’

  Freya’s opinion was that Georgia would have been a handful no matter what happened to her, but there was a good deal of truth to Mrs Partridge’s words. Georgia had lost her first home and her mother in the Blitz, her father at sea. Her guardian, an aunt, had remarried and moved to Canada, which left only Hugo.

  Who might be fully in his element dealing with Russian colonels and suspicious policemen, but who found a gangly, devastatingly blunt thirteen-year-old a complete mystery.

  ‘Did that Atom scientist really have a mistress?’ Freya asked. If there was Selchester gossip Mrs Partridge didn’t know, it probably wasn’t worth knowing.

  ‘They’re not monks up at the Atomic, I shall say that,’ said Mrs Partridge.

  ‘Do tell,’ said Freya.

  ‘I think you’ll want to be about your writing before Miss Georgia comes down asking more awkward questions,’ said Mrs Partridge, with a witchy look. Freya was quite sure Mrs Partridge knew exactly what she was really up to, but her lips were – on this one subject – sealed.

  Freya tucked her Margery Allingham away on the little shelf behind her and slid off the bench, depositing Magnus on the warm patch she’d left behind. He gave her a distinctly baleful look. ‘I shall go for a ride,’ she announced.

  ‘Go for a ride indeed,’ said Mrs Partridge to Ben as the door closed behind her. ‘Miss Georgia is spot on. She’s not writing a word. She’s already late with this one, and then where will she be?’

  ‘I’m sure they’re used to writers’ ways up in London,’ said Ben, who knew as well as Mrs Partridge that Freya’s worthy and endlessly spun-out family history was nothing more than the convenient cover for a series of exceedingly successful Civil War bodice-rippers.

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ said Mrs Partridge darkly.

  Scene 4

  Saul looked around at his future abode and place of business.

  ‘It’s rather a wreck, I’m afraid,’ said Vivian.

  Wreck was an understatement. The old Selchester Gallery looked as though the Army had abandoned it during a retreat. The floors were bare, the walls tattered, and every imaginable variety of junk was piled in the corners. It hadn’t seemed this bad when he’d looked around it, but that had been on one of December’s rare fine days, with sun flooding through the grimy windows facing School Lane. Vivian, in her tailored two-piece and exquisitely draped fur, could hardly have looked more incongruous. Rather like a film star in a barracks, not that any of his units had ever received such a visit.

  Saul had signed the lease almost at once. Space in Selchester was hard to come by, and it was pure luck he’d been in town on the day when the protracted legal battle over the Gallery’s ownership had finally been resolved. The Gallery and the flat above were both free to let, and he had snapped both up. A place to live, a life to rebuild.

  ‘I’ve seen worse,’ said Saul, who had been in the Army and the Foreign Legion.

  ‘Of course you’d say that. It quite deadens the spirit. Now let me show you the important bits, hand you the keys, and then we can be out of here. Jamie is keeping my table at the Daffs.’

  It took longer than they’d expected. In the end, Vivian simply pressed the remaining keys into Saul’s hand. ‘You know what to do and where to find me,’ she said. ‘I’d never have agreed to look after the keys if I’d known there were this many.’

  By the time they reached the Daffodil Tearooms, Jamie was besieged. The café was packed, the windows steamed, the noise deafening.

  ‘Oh, thank God you’re here,’ he said, installing them by the window with indecent haste. ‘Half of Selchester has come to gossip, and when they see an empty table they’ll hardly take no for an answer. Your usual, Miss Witt, and for you, Mr Ingham?’

  ‘Why, whatever’s up now?’ said Vivian, scanning the room for a newspaper she could read the headlines from.

  ‘Such a to-do at the Atomic,’ said Jamie over the din. ‘One of their boffins missing for two days, and now it seems he must have taken himself off to Russia. Quite frightful. You wouldn’t catch me doing that, no matter how much I believed in the brotherhood of all men.’

  Vivian made a face. ‘So the whole place will be swarming with beastly reporters again.’

  ‘I had to evict two of them from your table,’ said Jamie, shaking his head. ‘They were quite rude. Richard had a word with them, though. Such a palaver.’

  Jamie was small, round, and a conscientious objector who had served as a medical orderly in the war. Richard, the other Daff, was tall, with a chef’s authority, and had been a naval gunner. Saul could imagine him making short work of two reporters.

  ‘Don’t they know you’re here?’ he asked, as Jamie bustled off with their order. Vivian was a film star, and Selchester her bolthole.

  ‘They do, but it’s a slog to get here, and everyone would give them the cold shoulder if they came just for me. If they’re here for something else, they’ll all be writing colour pieces on Selchester to fill the time. We’ve rehearsals to be going on with, too.’

  Vivian’s attention was much taken up with the Murder in the Cathedral rehearsals. It would be the climax of Selchester Cathedral’s thousandth anniversary celebrations, half the town involved and the rest wanting to be. She was directing it, not without a certain opposition from the stodgier local worthies.

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ she said. ‘There’s our newest committee member and honorary patron. Stanley twisted his arm last week.’ As chief of the Feoffees, Selchester’s arcane version of a City Council, Stanley Dillon was adept at twisting arms. Even when they belonged to earls.

  The tall figure of the new Lord Selchester was standing in the doorway, looking around for a space. Vivian waved him over, and Jamie pushed through the throng with an extra chair.

  Saul gave Gus a guarded but courteous greeting. It had only been a few weeks since he’d come up to the Castle in a whisky-sodden haze, with the intent of doing something to the Earl he’d almost certainly have regretted. Only later had he learned that the Earl he sought, a man who liked to have others in his power and wasn’t above blackmailing them to ensure it, had met his much-deserved end seven years before. The new Earl seemed to be animated by quite a different spirit, but it was still unsettling to be sitting at a table with him.

  ‘Good morning to you both,’ said Gus in his soft New England accent. ‘I see the town’s in quite a frenzy. Already had two of those reporters ask me for an opinion.’

  ‘Did they know who you were?’

  ‘I think so,’ Gus said. He couldn’t be comfortable with that yet, Vivian thought. He had enjoyed a certain distinction in his old life, but the fame which came from making a first-rate translation of the Iliad and Odyssey wasn’t much preparation for this.

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘I told them it was a matter for the authorities. They kept wanting more, but I didn’t see what else there was to say.’

  ‘Oh, my,’ said Vivian, with a wicked laugh. ‘They’ll have loved that.’

 
‘I was hoping I’d find you,’ said Lord Selchester. ‘Dinah tells me your next rehearsal is tomorrow. Stanley said I ought to make an appearance, see what I’ve got myself into.’

  Vivian’s eyes betrayed a flicker of amusement. Dinah, chatelaine of the Selchester Bookshop, would be involved in the production, probably backstage, but she didn’t think that was the reason Gus was popping into the bookshop every day.

  ‘Three until six. There was some muttering about rehearsing on Sunday, but it can’t be helped. Next weekend I’ve all the professionals down except Sir Desmond himself: we’ll be at it Sunday afternoon again and half of Saturday, too.’

  Sir Desmond Winthrop was a friend of Vivian’s, a theatrical knight with a Selchester connection who’d agreed to play Becket.

  Selchester nodded gravely, and turned his attention to Saul for a moment. ‘Are you involved?’

  Saul shook his head. ‘Too much to do at the Gallery. It’ll be a month’s work just to make it ready, never mind filling it.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll end up being dragged in,’ said Vivian, with a ruthlessness which spoke of using every asset at her disposal, willing or otherwise. She’d have made a formidable partisan. ‘Now, closer to the time, I was wondering whether you might come to one or two things in London . . .’

  The door banged again, and one of Mrs Partridge’s witchy cronies – was it Martha Radley? – sat herself down at the table behind Saul. Her voice was quite penetrating.

  ‘Such a thing I saw in the tea leaves,’ she said. ‘This Dr Rothesay, terrible business. I see a watery death for him.’

  There were low shrieks of horror.

  ‘You think he’s drowned on the way to Russia?’ said another witch.

  ‘I don’t think he ever left these shores,’ said Martha. ‘There’s water aplenty in the Sel, isn’t there?’

  Unnoticed by the others, Saul went quite still for an instant.

  ‘Would you excuse me for a moment?’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I turned the gas tap all the way off. Don’t want to blow the place up on my first day, not unless I can take some of the reporters, too. I shall be back before you’re done with the schedule.’

  Vivian and Gus were deep in plans, and waved him away. It was a while later, after the third time she’d fended off an excuse to seize his empty chair, that Vivian wondered what was keeping him.

  ‘It’s too bad of him,’ said Vivian. ‘I keep trying to involve him, but he will be a cat who walks by himself.’

  ‘I can’t say I know him well enough,’ said Gus. ‘He does put me in mind of Ajax, though.’

  ‘Is that the big Ajax or the little one?’ said Vivian, who’d been in her share of classical tragedies.

  ‘Ajax, son of Telamon, who went mad after he lost the fight with Odysseus.’

  ‘Killed all the Greeks’ sheep then fell on his sword, didn’t he? An odd character. Capable on the surface, but angry underneath. Wouldn’t you be, in his shoes?’

  ‘I can’t imagine the things Saul went through,’ said Gus, thinking of Saul’s wife and daughter on the far side of the world, resolutely refusing to have anything to do with him. The trial and condemnation, seven years in the Foreign Legion, and all for a crime he hadn’t even committed. ‘All because my father needed a scapegoat. God forbid I should ever end up like that.’

  Vivian shuddered at some buried memory. ‘You couldn’t. That kind of evil takes a lifetime of practice.’

  Scene 5

  It was a weary Hugo who limped into the kitchen that evening, an hour late and thoroughly out of sorts.

  Mrs Partridge bustled over to the stove, where Hugo’s dinner had been keeping warm. Hugo eased himself on to a bench and winced as Magnus took the opportunity for a spot of kneading.

  ‘No luck?’ said Freya. They’d heard nothing new on the six o’clock news.

  Hugo shook his head. By no stretch of the imagination could two hours closeted with Jarrett constitute luck. The Special Branch man had turned the file upside down and inside out looking for Communist sympathies, but there wasn’t a thing there which didn’t apply to every physicist old enough to have been working in the thirties.

  ‘They aren’t making you go in again tomorrow, are they?’

  ‘Small mercies,’ said Hugo. ‘The Foxley administrator won’t hear of calling his staff back on a Sunday.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought they set much store by the Sabbath.’

  ‘He doesn’t. He’s just looking out for his people. If Dr Rothesay has defected, he’ll be on the far side of the Iron Curtain by now, and there’s not a thing we can do. No point hauling everyone in so Jarrett can rake them over the coals.’

  Freya started. ‘Jarrett, you said? Jarrett of Special Branch?’

  ‘Yes. London have sent him down to put the fear of God into everyone. He asked about you.’

  ‘I suppose he would,’ said Freya. ‘He was Roddy’s best man.’

  Freya had ditched Roddy Halstrop quite literally at the altar, running down the aisle and jumping into a taxi. Her parents had been horrified, her uncle, Lord Selchester, coldly furious. It was the one time she’d tasted the edge of his temper, aside from the argument they’d had on the last evening of his life.

  She’d never regretted the decision. Roddy was safely married to someone else now, thank God, but she had his measure. Jarrett was quite another matter. She’d never known how to deal with him. If Hugo was a Renaissance courtier, smooth and silent, Jarrett was one of Cromwell’s major-generals, a starched zealot in a three-barred helmet. An involuntary shudder ran down her back at the idea of him loose in Selchester.

  Hugo didn’t see the shudder, but he caught the sudden tightness in her face. This is someone who scares her, he thought. She had been at ease when he came in, pleased and solicitous. Now she was wary, her eyes distant.

  ‘Did he cause you trouble?’ said Hugo sharply.

  She pulled herself together. He would be here for a couple of days, tearing Foxley apart, then back to London and a different world.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘Is there anything I should know about him?’ Hugo asked, as Mrs Partridge carried his plate over.

  ‘If you’ve met him, you know him.’ Another comparison came to her, from a world full of black doublets and ruffs, silken words and ready treachery. ‘Think of those men who tore country houses apart looking for priests in priest holes.’

  Hugo rather doubted this Jarrett would be gone as quickly as Sir Bernard hoped.

  Sunday

  The rehearsals were held at the Feoffees’ Hall, being Selchester’s equivalent of a town hall. When he first arrived, Gus had admired its fine classical frontage, tall windows looking out over the market square, but he hadn’t been inside. There was a rather splendid Jacobean staircase, but the main hall at the top was less impressive.

  ‘It’s like Spode china inside,’ Freya had said, on the steps. She was curious to see some of the rehearsals, and suspected Gus would appreciate a familiar face. ‘All blue and white.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if you like it much.’

  ‘I can’t say I do. It’s rather sentimental.’

  Looking around, Gus was forced to agree. Not the neoclassical at its finest, and rather too pale and cold for a room in this climate. The sky outside was a dark, louring grey.

  Mrs Partridge had been positively aglow with doom and gloom before he left. ‘Storm coming up-Channel, so they say. Gale-force winds on the Cornish coast, and a ship in trouble off the Lizard. We’re in for a right bucketing here, and no mistake. There’ll be chimneys down, and the river right up. It was into the town this time last year.’

  Bucketing was the word in older parts of the Castle, apparently. There was a store of buckets in a downstairs cupboard, and more in the attics, to catch leaks at their source. Six years of war and seven of legal limbo had taken their toll on the Castle. Ben had his work cut out just making temporary repairs.

  Dinah waved as they came in. The hall was full of a cheerful medley of cast members, plus a few who didn’t really seem to have any business aside from curiosity.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be needed so early,’ said Freya.

  ‘I like to see how they’re getting on,’ said Dinah.

  Or else she’d heard Gus was coming, and decided to put in an appearance.