Dead on Dartmoor Page 3

‘Well, we have several farms on the estate. I’m more of a farm manager, really.’

  We were travelling with the woods of Holne Chase on our left. On the other side, the short grass and granite outcrops of open moorland spread to the horizon, black-faced sheep grazing amongst clumps of gorse still yellow with flowers. We passed a muddy track leading to a farm, and from then on were driving alongside a high stone wall enclosing cultivated woodland, majestic green crowns of mature oaks, beech and hornbeam rising above it. Suddenly the jeep swung between tall stone gateposts. I just glimpsed the legend carved into the stonework as we flashed by, a name I can’t remember now without a shudder: Moorworthy House.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The vast Victorian mansion, at which we arrived after driving through acres of rolling parkland, loomed above us like the setting for a Gothic horror movie: tall chimneys, steeply pitching roofs, gargoyles glaring down from high parapets, balconies with stone balustrades – all haphazard somehow and confusing to the eye.

  ‘Ghastly old pile, isn’t it?’ Jamie said cheerfully, as we gazed open-mouthed.

  ‘Is this house yours?’ Sophie breathed.

  ‘Afraid so.’ He grinned. ‘I ought to pay someone to set fire to it. Anyway, come in, ladies!’ We followed him through an arched doorway into a lofty hall. Oak-panelled walls bristled with antlers and the mounted heads of creatures with tusks and bared teeth. It wasn’t exactly welcoming.

  ‘Mrs Johnson!’ Jamie called out, striding on ahead of us, his voice echoing around the hall. ‘Mrs Johnson? Hello! Anyone at home?’

  We trailed behind him, gawping around like tourists in a stately home as portraits of ancient ancestors stared down at us with obvious disapproval. A wide staircase with heavily carved bannisters swept up to a landing overlooked by a tall stained-glass window letting in patterns of light in rose, green and gold. A brass candelabrum as wide as a wagon wheel hung down from above and a suit of armour lurked on the turn of the stairs.

  ‘Is this place haunted, d’you think?’ Sophie murmured.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t, it ought to be.’

  Just like a ghost a woman materialised quietly from somewhere: dark-haired, smart but workmanlike in a navy skirt and cream blouse.

  ‘Ah, Johnnie,’ Jamie called to her affectionately, ‘is my uncle or my sister at home?’

  ‘Miss Emma is down at the stables, sir,’ she responded quietly, ‘but I believe Mr Sandy is in the library.’

  ‘Ah, I’ll go and roust the old devil out! These poor ladies,’ he went on, indicating Sophie and me, ‘have been in an accident. Van caught fire. I wonder if you could come up with some tea in the drawing room?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ She turned to us with raised brows and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Come with me.’ I assumed she was a housekeeper or perhaps a secretary. I couldn’t quite place her. ‘Perhaps you’d like to visit the guest cloakroom first.’ She spoke in a tone that didn’t brook any argument. ‘And when you’ve finished, the drawing room is over there.’ She pointed down the hall, opening the door of the guest cloakroom for us and leaving us no option but to go inside.

  I think the guest cloakroom was larger than my flat. Dark panelling gave way to rose-coloured marble, covering the floor and walls and surrounding the washbasins that stood side by side, complete with oversized gold taps and heavily framed gilt mirrors.

  I often feel like shrieking at my reflection, but this time it wasn’t the mane of untameable red curls that was distressing. My face was black with sooty smudges except for two white tracks where tears had flowed from my red-rimmed eyes. It was no wonder Mrs Johnson didn’t want me in the drawing room.

  I passed EB over to Sophie whilst I filled the basin and washed my face with the fragrantly expensive hand soap provided. ‘My God, I smell like a kipper!’ I moaned as I splashed repeatedly.

  ‘You did get well smoked.’ Sophie was filling up the adjacent basin. I picked up a snowy-white towel from a pile folded in a basket and rubbed my face with it. It wasn’t snowy any longer. Meanwhile EB was enjoying a long, gulping drink from the basin Sophie had filled.

  ‘Poor little boy!’ I took him back when he’d finished, his whiskery chops dripping, his eyebrows twitching anxiously.

  I gazed at our reflections. Sophie and I are such contrasts. She, small and delicately boned with her neat, dark head: me, tall and − well, ‘statuesque’ is a word I have heard applied to myself. Standing next to Sophie always makes me feel like a bloody great Valkyrie. ‘Am I fit for the drawing room?’ I asked.

  She made a face. ‘Have you got a comb?’

  ‘I can only get a comb through this lot when it’s wet.’

  She sighed. ‘You’ll have to do, then.’

  We found our way back to the drawing room after first opening the wrong door which revealed a long empty room with gilded mirrors and an acre of shiny floor: it could only have been a ballroom. ‘Bloody hell!’ Sophie squeaked in amazement.

  The drawing room was large and chintzy with three sofas grouped around a carved marble fireplace wide enough to drive a horse and cart through, a scattering of occasional chairs, a grand piano and long windows opening out onto a wide terrace. Flower arrangements and silver photo frames stood on various tables, porcelain figurines adorned the mantelpiece, oil paintings depicting classical subjects hung on the walls and there was no sign of a television anywhere.

  ‘Do you think we’ve fallen through a time warp?’ Sophie asked. ‘What decade are we in?’

  ‘I think we’re back in the Agatha Christies.’

  I wandered out onto the terrace. A balustrade separated it from the garden, marked every few feet by a heavy stone urn filled with trailing flowers. In front of me a wide lawn stretched away into the distance. Beyond it I could make out the rocky outline of a distant tor, but I couldn’t work out which one. We’d taken too many turns since leaving the main road; I had lost my bearings. I turned back to look at the house.

  It didn’t look so ugly from the back. Much of its granite walls were covered by an ancient wisteria, twisting stems as thick as ships’ cables testament to its extreme age. It reached almost to the third-storey windows and must have been a hundred years old. I wished I could have seen it back in May, hanging with clusters of flowers, with dripping waterfalls of blue.

  The soft click of the drawing-room door and the faint tinkle of teacups announced the arrival of Mrs Johnson with the tea. She set the tray down on a table by the fireplace.

  ‘Mr Jamie asks you to excuse him for the present,’ she said, as she straightened up, ‘but he’ll be with you before long.’

  I put EB down gently on the hearthrug, where he seemed happy to lie. I was afraid Mrs Johnson might feel it necessary to hang around but, to my relief, she headed for the door.

  ‘I think you have everything you need, ladies,’ she pointed to the laden tray, ‘but if there’s anything else you require, just ring.’ She indicated a bell push in the corner and went out.

  ‘Do you find her slightly scary?’ Sophie whispered when she’d gone.

  ‘Definitely,’ I nodded, surveying the silver teapot, dainty china cups and saucers, plate of biscuits and buttered tea-loaf that filled the tray. ‘She’s got a touch of the Mrs Danvers.’

  I turned over a delicate tea plate to look at the maker’s marks. ‘This is Spode,’ I told Sophie as I poured tea and passed her a cup, ‘for God’s sake don’t break anything.’ I slipped EB a biscuit. I’d already ruined his figure that morning with the flaky sausage roll, but I can testify to the reviving effect of a biscuit and, sure enough, he showed signs of perking up.

  Sophie and I fell on the buttered tea-loaf like a pair of starving gannets. Left to ourselves, we would have demolished the lot, but we were forced to restrain our uncouth behaviour when the door opened again and a jocular voice drifted in from the hall.

  ‘Now, now,’ it said, ‘I hear we have visitors, two lovely ladies.’

  The man who came in, dressed in a dark blazer and yel
low cravat, was in his sixties, his purple veined nose and raddled complexion evidence of considerable debauch. He sported a silver comb-over that ended in a tiny little flick above his left ear. He stopped and surveyed us from heavy-lidded eyes. ‘How delightful!’ He came forward to shake our hands, his own extended. ‘No, please don’t get up. I’m Jamie’s wicked Uncle Sandy,’ he informed us proudly, ‘how do you do?’ His hand was smooth and pale with manicured nails; not a farmer’s hand, obviously. He dutifully patted EB, who disgraced himself by growling.

  I was shocked, it was so unlike him. ‘EB! Mind your manners!’ But I didn’t blame him: he sensed something about the man I couldn’t put a name to, something vaguely unpleasant like the very faint odour of corruption.

  He sat down on a sofa. ‘Ebee?’ he repeated, brows raised faintly.

  ‘EB,’ I corrected, ‘his initials.’

  ‘What do they stand for?’

  ‘It’s a secret, you have to guess.’

  ‘Juno won’t tell,’ Sophie complained bitterly. ‘I’ve been trying to guess it for the last two years.’

  I changed the subject. ‘This is a most interesting house.’

  ‘Not mine, my dear,’ he answered, puffing out his cheeks. ‘It was my elder brother who was the squire. Jamie is the heir − not that I envy him − a crumbling pile of death duties and dry rot, that’s what this place is.’ He chuckled. ‘I used to tell his father he should have sold the lot to the National Trust years ago, but he wouldn’t listen. But Jamie’s a sensible lad,’ he added, laying a finger against his nose, ‘he’s marrying the money!’

  I exchanged a glance with Sophie. Neither of us knew if this was a joke. Meanwhile, Uncle Sandy had begun leafing through the portfolio that Sophie had dropped onto the sofa. ‘I say,’ he remarked, studying the reproductions of her paintings, ‘this is lovely work.’ He glanced at me. ‘Is this yours?’

  I pointed at Sophie. ‘Really?’ He looked surprised. ‘Did you do all these by yourself?’

  I have to say that Sophie replied with admirable composure, used, as she is, to being taken for a minor.

  ‘Well, well!’ he exclaimed at the portrait of EB and pointed to him on the hearthrug. ‘It’s this little fella to the life!’

  Just then, a young woman strode in from the terrace. For a moment I wondered if she might be the ‘money’ Jamie was marrying, but the resemblance to her brother was too strong.

  ‘Emma!’ Uncle Sandy hailed her breezily. ‘How went the dressage?’

  ‘Foul!’ she flung back without looking at him, tossing a riding hat onto a chair as she passed. She headed for a table on which stood decanters and began to pour herself what I guessed was gin. A little early in the day, I thought. ‘Digby behaved like a fucking brute!’

  Ah! Perhaps we weren’t in the Agatha Christies, after all.

  Emma was stunning: slim with straight, gleaming blonde hair drawn back into an elegant chignon. She wore thigh-hugging breeches, a fitting black coat, and a white stock tight around her swan-like neck. She turned, glass in hand, and for the first time registered our presence. She stared at Sophie and me as if we’d come in on the sole of her riding boot. Her uncle hastily introduced us and explained why we were there. She neither spoke nor smiled, clearly resenting our presence. ‘Look, Em, look at this,’ he went on, showing her the photo of EB’s portrait. ‘It’s that little fella there. Hasn’t little Sophie captured him to the life?’

  She glanced at it over his shoulder. ‘It’s quite a good likeness, I suppose,’ she admitted grudgingly, then turned her back on all of us and stood, gin in hand, pacing in front of the windows, staring moodily out onto the terrace, as edgy and highly strung as a thoroughbred racehorse.

  ‘Well, I wish Old Thunderer was still alive,’ Sandy prattled on, oblivious of her bad manners. ‘I’d have loved to have had his portrait.’

  Before we could ask who ‘Old Thunderer’ was, Jamie came into the room accompanied by the vet, who got down on the hearthrug next to EB, listened to his heartbeat and pronounced him perfectly fit. ‘He’s got a few blisters on his paws,’ he said to me, ‘best not to walk him for a day or two.’ No danger of that, I thought miserably, wondering how I was going to exercise the Tribe next morning with no van to pick them up in.

  Shortly after this, we left, Uncle Sandy expressing the hope that he’d see us again, Emma ignoring us, pouring another gin and striding out onto the terrace. ‘We’ve got a garden fete on next week,’ he told us, ‘why don’t you girls come along? Bit of fun, eh?’

  We lied through our teeth and promised him we’d think about it. As we followed Jamie back out to the waiting Cherokee, Sophie whispered, ‘He’s gorgeous isn’t he, Jamie?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s no good looking at him,’ I murmured, ‘he’s “marrying the money”.’

  ‘I wonder who she is.’

  ‘And does the poor girl know she’s the money?’

  ‘She may not be only the money,’ Sophie pointed out, in an effort to be generous. ‘Anyway, it makes no difference,’ she sighed. ‘The only men who are interested in me are perverts.’

  ‘There’s Gavin,’ I reminded her, and she gave me a dark look.

  On the ride home I suggested that she sit in the front with Jamie so that EB and I had more room in the back. ‘Your garden goes on for ever,’ she observed as we drove through the grounds. ‘That lawn must be a mile long.’

  He grinned. ‘It’s a trick of perspective. You have to watch out for the ha-ha.’

  ‘Ha-ha?’

  ‘It’s a sunken wall,’ he explained. ‘You can’t see it until you’re on the edge of it. By then it’s too late. The Victorians were fond of putting them in gardens to help open up their views. They called them “ha-has” because they thought it was so bloody funny when people fell off ’em. Odd what some people find amusing.’

  ‘They didn’t have television in those days,’ I pointed out.

  Jamie laughed. He chatted on, happy to regale us with how extensive the Westershall estate was, how many hectares of land, how many farms it contained, mostly, it seemed, worked by tenants. The grounds of the house were edged on one side by thick woodland, the mature oaks and beeches that we had glimpsed earlier, a long ribbon of woodland walled off from the road. ‘This will be a beautiful walk in a week or so,’ I said, ‘when the leaves have properly turned.’

  ‘There is a footpath through a small section, but most of the woods are fenced off, I’m afraid. Site of Special Scientific Interest,’ Jamie explained. ‘Rare bats – we can’t have the public wandering about, disturbing them. I don’t know much about bats, myself.’ He gave a slight shudder. ‘I stay well away. But the woods are full of old mine workings, disused shafts. That’s another reason we can’t have people wandering about − it’s dangerous.’

  We had driven through the gates by now and were back on the road, although still, Jamie assured us, surrounded by Westershall land. We hadn’t gone far when he suddenly brought the jeep to an abrupt halt, cursing. ‘Will you look at that!’ he cried out in disgust. ‘Will you bloody look at that?’

  What we were being asked to bloody look at was a narrow track leading off into a farmer’s field. The earthen trackway was strewn with rubbish – plastic packing material spilling out of broken cardboard boxes, scraps of paper flung into the hedge and scattered on the ground like dirty confetti. Further off, a torn sofa bursting with foam stuffing lay on its side amongst piles of shattered timber and oil drums. ‘These damn fly-tippers!’ Jamie slammed out of the car, ordering us to stay put while he went for a closer look. He came back, shaking his head. ‘Does it happen a lot round here?’ I asked. Things were often dumped on the tiny patch of waste ground at the end of my lane, usually just an old microwave or a shopping trolley, nothing on this scale.

  ‘It’s gets worse every year,’ Jamie started up the car again. ‘Bastards! They’d get what for if I caught them.’

  ‘Don’t the police do anything?’

  He gave a grim laugh. ‘We’
ll report it, of course. But there’s so much of it going on. The police don’t have the resources.’ He was clearly angry and for a few minutes we travelled in silence.

  ‘I wish they wouldn’t wrap hay bales in black plastic,’ Sophie remarked idly as we passed a pile of them stacked on the edge of a field. ‘They look awful.’

  ‘They’re silage.’ Jamie still sounded on edge. ‘I suppose you’re one of those people who want the countryside to look romantic.’

  ‘People who buy my paintings do,’ she answered honestly. ‘They don’t want rolls of black plastic. They want old-fashioned haystacks and wooden wagons piled high with rosy-cheeked children riding on top.’

  ‘Tell me, would a combine harvester be allowed in one of your paintings?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘What about an old tractor,’ he asked, ‘a vintage John Deere, for example?’

  Sophie considered for a moment. ‘Only if it’s rusty,’ she decided.

  Jamie threw his head back and laughed. They were getting on well, these two, I thought. And he was marrying the money; shame.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘What sort of bleedin’ time do you call this to turn up?’ Ricky demanded acidly. ‘You’re a day and a half late.’

  ‘My van caught fire and nearly cooked a dog.’

  Just for a moment he hesitated, blue eyes narrowed, not sure if I was serious, then he grabbed my arm, pulled me inside, propelling me across the patterned marble floor of the hallway, past piles of cardboard boxes, towards the breakfast room.

  ‘Maurice!’ he bellowed up the stairs. ‘Get your arse down here! You’ll want to hear this! I’m putting the kettle on. Sit,’ he pushed me down into a chair at the breakfast table, ‘and don’t say another word until Morris gets here!’

  I did as I was told, sitting mutely, lusting after Morris’s teapot collection proudly displayed on the Welsh dresser and wishing I had at least one of them for sale in my shop.

  Ricky and Morris live in a lovely Georgian house, not on the scale of Moorworthy, but large enough to house them both and their stock of several thousand theatrical costumes. They run a costume hire business. The cardboard boxes in the hallway were stuffed with World War I uniforms, which they were selling to a film company. They were always moaning about retiring, reducing their vast stock of costumes. At least in selling the uniforms they were making a start, and that was why I was supposed to have been with them the day before: I was meant to be helping with the packing.