Ghosts of Mayfield Court (7 page)

Michael shouldered a passage for us through the crowd, and we made towards the door. The constable stepped forward, and held up his hand as though to bar our entry to the house.

‘Are you family?' he asked, and when Michael replied in the affirmative, he moved aside, and we entered the house.

As soon as we stepped into the hall, Milsom came running along the kitchen passage towards us. Her usually placid face was ravaged with tears, and she was wringing her hands in anguish.

‘Oh, Miss Catherine!' she cried. ‘Your uncle's dead – poisoned! That wicked woman – I wish I'd never let her into the house. She poisoned him! And it was such a lovely day!'

She poisoned him…. I suddenly recalled poor Uncle's words in the ruined garden, after he had rescued a packet of letters from destruction: ‘The harpy will be pleased – maybe she will take her claws out of me once I have given her that elusive deed!'

I clung tightly to Michael's arm. I was not surprised at the terrible news. My uncle had bade me farewell, as though he knew that he would not survive that day. Perhaps he had a premonition that the ‘harpy' would be the death of him. For a fleeting moment I saw him in my mind's eye, shaking his fist at the heavens while he burnt letters and papers on the bonfire in the garden of
Mayfield Court. I, too, had had a strong premonition of impending disaster.

‘What woman?' I asked, and was surprised at how strong my voice sounded.

‘The woman who came to tea, miss. She arrived not fifteen minutes after you and Mr Danvers had left for the theatre. She came in a private-hire carriage, and the driver came down from the box to open the door. Well, she was a recent widow, as far as I could make out, clothed entirely in black, and with a long mourning veil, which she didn't lift. She – she looked like an angel of death.'

‘What kind of woman was she, Mrs Milsom?' asked Michael. ‘Did she say anything?'

‘She spoke only to the carriage driver, telling him to wait for her. She was a lady, and I'd say she was about sixty years of age. I took her into the parlour, and poor Mr Paget rose to greet her. Then they both sat down to tea. I'd already brought the teapot in, and placed it on the table. And then I left. I came back again in less than half an hour, to see if they needed anything more, and found him – he was still alive, but gasping and shaking like a leaf. There was no sign of the woman. He looked at me, and there was terror in his eyes. And then he died! He gave a kind of muffled shriek, and fell back in his chair, dead—'

The door of the parlour opened, and a tall man in the uniform of an inspector came out into the hall. He had a red face, a fleshy neck, and thick silvery hair, but his quiet, thoughtful voice belied his truculent appearance.

‘Miss Paget?' he said. ‘I'm very sorry to tell you that your uncle, Mr Max Paget, has been murdered. Your housekeeper found him dead, and sent for the local constable. Very
commendable
. I am Inspector Blade, of “C” Division, at Little Vine Street Police Station.'

He turned to look at Michael.

‘And you are, sir?'

‘I am Michael Danvers, Miss Paget's friend. I am a doctor at St Thomas's Hospital.'

‘St Thomas's? Then perhaps you'll know our divisional police surgeon, Dr Whitney? He's in the parlour now, examining the body of the late unfortunate Mr Paget. I suggest you join him, sir. Meanwhile, Miss Paget, it would be a good idea if you took your housekeeper to some private room elsewhere, and listened to her story. I've already questioned her, and will ask for a written
statement
later.'

The two men watched as I led the weeping Mrs Milsom up the staircase. I heard the inspector say to Michael in low tones: ‘It's always a good idea to get the ladies out of the way at a time like this. A police hearse will arrive in a few minutes' time to take the body away to Horseferry Road mortuary, and I need the hall clear for that eventuality. Go in now, sir, and talk to Dr Whitney, if you like.'

He nodded towards the parlour, and left the house by the open front door.

I have my own sitting-room on the first floor, facing the long, well-tended rear garden of our house. I made Mrs Milsom sit down on a sofa, despite her protests that it ‘wasn't right'. The housekeeper had gained control of herself, though she was still very obviously shocked and bewildered.

‘Miss Catherine,' she said, ‘I've already told that police inspector all I know. The woman arrived here not long after you'd left for the theatre. From the way she spoke to the carriage driver I judge that she was a lady – an educated person, at least. When I showed her into the parlour Mr Paget rose to greet her—'

‘Did he show any signs of agitation?' I asked. ‘I'm sorry to have interrupted you.'

‘Not at all, miss. Mr Paget seemed quite at ease, in fact he took the lady's hand and bowed over it in that old-fashioned way he had. Oh dear! I can see him now, in my mind's eye. Whoever she
was, miss, Mr Paget knew her. After all, he was expecting the visit, and for all I know he may have asked her to the house himself. Who was she? And why did she commit such a wicked murder? I hope Inspector Blade hunts her down, and that she ends up on the gallows!'

For the last few minutes I had felt myself growing strong enough to cope with the horror of my uncle's violent death. I would grieve for him, but some inner recess of my mind bore a message of liberation from his life-long domination over me. I was my own woman now, free to make my own choices.

‘Now, Mrs Milsom,' I said, ‘I want you to tell me whether you heard any scraps of the conversation between my uncle and that woman. No, this is no time for niceties about eavesdropping. Did you hear anything?'

‘After I'd shown her in, miss,' said Milsom, ‘I left the room and closed the door. As I was doing so, I heard the woman say: “The old fool gets loose, and God only knows what he'll blab about unless we get him permanently under restraint.” I'll confess to you, Miss Catherine, that I stood outside the door for a while, wondering what those words could mean. The master seemed agitated, and he raised his voice, so that I heard him say
something
about “making away with him”. It was like a question, as though he was saying, “Shall we make away with him?” or “Are you going to make away with him?”

‘I began to get frightened then, miss, and hurried away into the kitchen passage, but not before I heard the woman's voice again. I don't know what she said, but I did hear the single word “Forshaw”. And that's all I can tell you, miss, because that's all I heard.'

Later that evening, before he left for his billet in St Thomas's, Michael told me what had occurred when he joined Dr Whitney in the parlour.

‘Whitney's a good fellow,' he said, ‘a lithe, restless kind of man
with a short spade beard. He pointed towards— Look, perhaps I'd better spare you the details—'

‘No!' I cried, surprised at my own vehemence. ‘I am tired of men trying to deprive me of information. Tell me what happened! Tell me what you saw!'

Part of me was horrified at my unbecoming forcefulness. I saw Michael suddenly look at me with something approaching awe.

‘Very well, Cath,' he said. ‘Your uncle was still sitting at the tea table, but he was quite dead. His head was thrown back, and his features convulsed in what had been a last, agonizing spasm. I have seen many dead bodies, of course, but I had never seen a victim of murder before. Your uncle sat there dead, clothed in his dark suit, with a lined silk waistcoat, his watch still ticking in his pocket, and his hands clenched so tight that his nails have drawn blood from the palms.'

I shuddered, but made no motion of protest.

‘“I know what you're thinking, Danvers”, said Whitney. “Or as good as know. You're still seeing him as the living, breathing man whom you knew. But he isn't that, anymore. He's a corpse, and can't speak for himself, to tell us what happened to him. We have to do that for him in the only way we can. Inspector Blade will bring in a detective, I've no doubt. But doctors – you and me – have to bring in the scalpel. So what do you think?”

‘I looked at the body, realizing how inexperienced I was. “There's no sign of a physical assault”, I said. “As far as I can see, he's not been stabbed, or shot, or bludgeoned. So I suppose he must have been poisoned.”

‘“He has indeed”, said Dr Whitney, rubbing his hands together in what seemed to be a gesture of satisfaction. “Poisoned by a substance put into that teacup you see there, now standing demurely on its saucer. I think he must have gulped down a good half of the tea before the cup jerked from his hand, and fell to the floor. You can see the stain, just
there
. Once he was dead, his
companion – the lady who was taking tea with him – put the cup back neatly on its saucer. Some killers, you know, have genteel ways.”

‘“Do you know what poison she used, Dr Whitney?” I asked. “Or is it too early for you to say?”

‘“I won't know for certain until I've opened the body up, which I'll do this evening. But I'm sure in my mind that he was poisoned with aconite, or wolfsbane, as it's called. I'll take away that teacup, and a section of the stained carpet, for chemical analysis. Yes,
Aconitum napellus
, or wolfsbane. It disrupts the balance in the cells of the heart muscle, and a lethal dose produces fatal arrhythmias, including ventricular tachycardia. That housekeeper's description of Paget's last moments suggest aconite poisoning – excessively rapid heart rate, et cetera.”

‘And that was it, Cath,' said Michael. ‘The poison brought on an immediate and fatal heart attack.'

‘Wolfsbane?'

‘Yes, Cath. The alkaloid, you know. I don't suppose our genteel killer came here with a bunch of lethal buttercups in her hand! Somehow, and somewhere, she knew how to obtain the pure alkaloid. But that's Inspector Blade's concern.'

It was time for me to confide the whole mystery of Mayfield Court – at least, all that I knew of the matter – to Michael. I told him of our stay in the old house, of the ‘ghost' that I had seen, and the story of Helen, the child wraith. I told him all the details of the skeleton, and of Sergeant Bottomley's investigation. Michael was particularly interested in Uncle's obsession with the bundles of letters and papers that he had spent most of his time examining.

‘Did he find anything of interest?' he asked.

‘Yes, one document, which he actually clutched to his chest when he discovered it. I've no idea what it was, or where it is now. Uncle Max may have sent it in the post to someone else.'

‘Another mystery,' said Michael. ‘Somehow, Cath, I don't
think the truth of this strange business will ever be brought out into the light of day.'

That night, I stood once more beside the cheval glass in my dressing room. I had sought out my darkest dress, which would serve the purpose until I went to a mourning warehouse tomorrow. There was much to do, particularly with respect to my uncle's funeral. When would the authorities release his body for burial?

Outside, the gaslights had been lit in Saxony Square, and all was quiet. I was now the mistress of this house. Why had Uncle had a premonition of his own death? The answer could only be that he knew the character of the deadly woman who had visited him….

There was something that I intended to do as a matter of urgency. I would write to the man who hadn't laughed at my belief in ghosts, and tell him all that had happened. I would tell him, too, the little scraps of conversation that Milsom had overheard. He had told me to confide in Michael about the sinister discovery at Mayfield Court. Well, I would return the confidence and tell him of my uncle's murder. I would look out his calling-card, write to him first thing in the morning, and send the letter to his home address, a farmhouse in the Warwickshire countryside.

I was conscious of a throbbing headache, and went to bed early, refusing dinner. I was surprised and relieved when I fell into a sound sleep almost immediately.

5

A Letter from Saxony Square

‘D
ad, there’s a postman coming across the yard. Whatever can
he
want?’

Herbert Bottomley paused in the act of eating his breakfast of fried gammon and eggs. The dim farmhouse kitchen, as always in the morning, resounded to the noise of his girls, vying with each other to help their mother get him ready for work and out of the house. The baby was crawling under the table. Judith, their eleven year old, was brushing his overcoat, and scolding him under her breath for his untidiness.

‘Well, Poppy,’ said Bottomley, ‘maybe he’s bringing us a letter.’

Poppy, a fair-haired girl of fourteen or so, looked doubtful.

‘Maybe he wants to buy some fresh vegetables,’ she offered, but at that moment she heard the flap of the letter-box raised, followed by the slap of something falling on to the flags of the front kitchen. With a shriek of delight Poppy dashed out of the room, and in a few moments had returned with a bulky letter, which she handed to her father.

‘What’s it say, Dad?’ she asked eagerly.

Bottomley had looked at the postmark: London W. Franked at Grosvenor Street Post Office, 10.00 a.m., 14 August. He thrust the envelope in his pocket.

‘I’ll not know what it says, Poppy, until I’ve read it. Now while I finish my breakfast you can rescue Baby from under the table.
She’s untying my boot laces again. Judith, that’s enough with the brush – there’ll be no coat left by the time you’ve finished.’

Mrs Bottomley, busy at the kitchen range, looked at her husband. He’d not been his usual cheerful self since he’d come back from finding a little skeleton at Mayfield. Any crime involving children sat heavily upon him.

‘Herbert,’ she said, ‘that letter – is it police business?’

‘It is, Esther. It bears a London postmark, which tells me who it was that sent it. I’ll take it out to the barn and read it before I saddle the horse.’

Bottomley finished a cup of strong tea that had accompanied his breakfast, and embarked upon the ritual kissing of his
daughters
before donning coat and hat and leaving the house. Behind the farmhouse, and across a narrow lane, there stretched a smallholding of about an acre, well tilled, and planted with a range of vegetables.

At the far end of the large field was a barn. Bottomley went in, and sat down on a bench. From an overcoat pocket he produced a pair of wire spectacles, and tore open the letter.

He had realized at once that it had come from Miss Catherine Paget, but had not anticipated the devastating news that it contained.

‘But they do to me, my dear,’ Bottomley muttered. He recalled the fragment that he had discovered in the burnt remnants of letters in the incinerator at Mayfield.
Gabriel Forshaw tells
everybody
that he will go to Africa
. He continued to read Catherine’s letter.

To Saul Jackson, Barrack Street Police Office in his native town of Warwick was a kind of home-from-home. No matter how far afield his investigations took him, the familiar surroundings of Barrack Street helped him to think more clearly. Or so he thought. The front of the premises was occupied by Sergeant Hathaway and his three uniformed constables, but the back room, with its scrubbed and sanded floorboards, was the undisputed territory of himself and Detective Sergeant Bottomley. A laconic notice, pinned on the door, read:
Detectives. Knock and Enter
.

Sergeant Bottomley sat in the window seat, waiting for his guvnor to finish reading Miss Paget’s letter. So it was two murders, now. Little Helen Paget out here in Warwickshire, and Mr Maximilian Paget up in London. And both murders, it would seem, committed by a woman.

‘I’m thinking of what Rose Potter told us, sir,’ said Bottomley when Jackson had put the letter down on his desk, ‘about overhearing that conversation between Hector Paget and his wife. It was all about a monument to a man called Gabriel Forshaw. It’s just a name to us, but maybe we could flesh it out with a few facts.’

‘And then there’s Miss Helen, Sergeant,’ said Jackson, ‘your little ghost. Rose Potter says she’s still alive. What do you think? Maybe she’s telling lies. Or maybe she’s telling the truth. Because
if the lady she claims to have met is not Helen, then the skeleton almost certainly is. It’s time we made a move. I’ll contact this Inspector Blade in London, to let him know that we’re
investigating
a linked crime here in Warwickshire.

‘Meanwhile, I want you to go after this “Miss Helen” that Rose says she met. It’s vital that you establish the identity of your skeleton as soon as possible.’

‘And what will you do, sir?’

‘Me? I’ll go to this place Upton Carteret, and see what I can find out there. Whoever Gabriel Forshaw was, he seems to have a monument of sorts at Upton Carteret. The only way for me to find out is to go there.’

It had been a hot, tiresome train journey from Warwick, involving a change at Copton Vale Central, where Jackson had caught a little single-carriage train that had skirted the old town of Coventry before plunging into a belt of seemingly
impenetrable
woodland. Saul Jackson was a Warwickshire man born, but this part of the county was completely unknown to him.

Finally the train had drawn up to a wooden platform, where a sign-board informed the inspector that he had reached Monks’ Stretton. The man in the ticket office at Copton Vale had told him to get off here – ‘alight’ was the word he used. You always
alighted
from a train, apparently. The sign-board also told him that the little exit gate would take him on to the public footpath to Upton Carteret.

The footpath bordered a seemingly endless array of ploughed fields, sheltered by tracts of woodland. The dark-blue sky was cloudless, and there was not a soul in sight. It was on hot August days such as this one that Saul Jackson began to feel his age. His clothes seemed to hang heavy about him, and his boots pinched more cruelly than usual. The trouble was that he was becoming stout, and stout men could never abide hot weather. Perhaps he would exercise more in future.

The path began a steep climb through a grove of young birch trees, and suddenly Jackson found himself on the crest of a hill, from which he could look down at the village of Upton Carteret. It was just after ten o’clock on Friday, 17 August.

Upton Carteret had a wide main street of beaten earth, with cottages and shops on either side. At the end of the street, nearer the foot of the hill, stood an alehouse, a single-storey
whitewashed
building, with a small shady garden furnished with a few rustic tables. A sign painted below the gable-end told Jackson that this was the Carteret Arms.

Opposite the alehouse was an ancient church. Here, perhaps, he would find some kind of monument or inscription relating to Gabriel Forshaw, ‘the man of the fragment’. Jackson descended the hill path, and made his way into the churchyard, where he sat down thankfully on a stone bench set beneath the grateful shade of a sturdy old oak.

How quiet it was! Even the birds, Jackson mused, had been defeated by the heat of the August day, though a few bluebottles managed to buzz and drone among the gravestones. Jackson recalled the words found on the charred fragment of paper that he and Bottomley had found in the ravaged garden: …
inscription on their monument in Upton Car
…. Presently, after he had rested, he would examine some of the gravestones, and then quench his growing thirst at the Carteret Arms.

Facing the bench where he sat, and half hidden by tall rank grass and weeds, was a row of three tombs, which seemed in his fancy to be huddling together for company. They were built of soft sandstone, which had proved no match for the clinging ivy that was twining its way across the deeply-incised inscriptions. Jackson drew in his breath. Surely Providence had led him to this secluded spot? There in front of him he saw the name that the veiled woman had uttered before she had murdered Maximilian Paget.

All three monuments, it seemed, provided last resting places for a family called Forshaw.

Forshaws…. John Forshaw, gent, died 3rd March, 1798, aged 58, a benefactor of the poor, deeply regretted by Monica, his wife…. Edward Forshaw, died 15 December, 1853. Also Laura, beloved wife of the above, died 7 March, 1861, and buried at Leatherhead…. Also Henry Forshaw, brother of the above John, unfortunately killed, 14 September, 1862.

These were some of the names that Arabella Paget, the dominating wife of Hector Paget, had been talking about when Rose Potter had lingered in the passage to hear what they were saying. Forshaws….

It was too hot even to think, today. It was very peaceful in this secluded spot – no wonder his eyes were shutting! This was an old, closed churchyard: there’d be no more burials here, and probably hadn’t been for years. His eyelids drooped, and for a few minutes he yielded himself to the pleasurable sleep of a man fatigued.

He jerked awake as a lusty bluebottle droned past his ear. He saw it alight on one of the three adjacent tombs, where it began an erratic progress across an incised epitaph, added near the bottom of the third tomb. Yes! There he was!

He recalled another of the rescued fragments of burnt paper: …
Gabriel Forshaw tells everybody that he will go to Af
… Well, it was true. Whoever Gabriel was, he had suited his action to his words, and had gone out to Africa, never to return. Could he safely conclude that poor Gabriel had nothing to do with the business in hand? Perhaps. But that black-garbed murderess had uttered the name ‘Forshaw’. It was too early to dismiss anything from his mind as irrelevant.

‘Bonny?’ said Jackson aloud. ‘It wasn’t so bonny for that
young fellow of twenty-four, who died there thirty years ago.’ Gabriel…. He’d have been fifty-four, now, perhaps with a wife and grown children of his own, had not the fever claimed him in far-off Africa.

Suddenly, Jackson realized that he was not alone in the
churchyard
. He became aware of an old clergyman sitting on another stone bench placed in the shadow of the church. The figure seemed to emerge from the dim shade of a clump of over-hanging beeches like a photographic image slowly appearing on a glass slide.

Why had he not seen the old man? Probably because he was sitting so very still, almost motionless. He looked cheerful enough, but very frail and wraithlike. His hands rested on a stout walking-stick. He wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, and was rather carelessly dressed in a rusty old black frock coat which contrasted with the starched whiteness of a Roman collar. Perhaps he was the rector?