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In the end, Thor decided the men had won the competition and awarded them a bag of chocolate money.
“You’ll have to share the treasure between you,” he said, and gave me a sly look.
I groaned inwardly, said I needed to wash my hands which were liberally coated in sticky icing, and made my way upstairs still puzzling over Liz and Kathy’s behaviour.
Clean again, if no wiser, I reached the top of the staircase just as Liz stepped onto the landing.
“I say, Verity, have you heard that the children’s tutor—what’s his name? Ah, Cavendish I think, yes. Have you heard that he’s gone missing?”
“Yes. Tom told Jerry and I this morning.”
She clutched my arm. “Heavens, he’s not expecting you to find him, is he? You’re on holiday for goodness sake. Has he called the police?”
Her words reminded me that Tom hadn’t phoned when we were with him. Had he done so since?
“I don’t know,” I said. “It would be the sensible thing to do, as Jerry said.”
“Hmm.” She rubbed her fingers over her chin, just like my husband did. Perhaps it was a family trait. “You know, there are some rum goings on at Thornley Park.”
“Oh? How so?”
“Well, for a start, there’s that strange woman hanging around the place in the dead of night.”
“Have you seen the ghost? The Weeping Lady that Mr Cavendish talked about at breakfast yesterday?”
Liz seemed too sensible a woman to believe in ghosts or the supernatural. Paranormal activity makes for some great TV shows, but I doubted its existence outside an imaginative author or scriptwriter’s brain.
“No, no.” She waved a hand at me. “I’m talking about outside, last night at about half past ten.”
“It was probably just the cook, or one of her daughters.” I couldn’t understand Liz’s agitation. “They’d have been on their way home to Fenny Brayfield.”
“Then they were going the wrong way,” snapped Liz. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
She clamped a hand on my wrist and took me down the corridor to the room at the end. Similar in size to the one that Jerry and I had been given, its bright primary coloured linens and curtains gave it a very different feel. Much to my surprise, a large teddy bear sat on the pillows, the curve of its brown stitched lips giving it a jolly, smiling appearance.
“That’s Bertram.” Liz introduced us. “My constant travelling companion.”
“Hello, Bertram, nice to meet you.”
Quite why I was talking to the teddy bear was beyond me, but it seemed the right ... the polite thing to do.
“Okay, this woman.” Liz strode to the window and, for the first time, I noticed that there were two, a difference to our room explained by the fact that we were on the north-east corner.
I joined her there, and looked out.
“What about the woman?”
“She came from those sheds down there.”
“Oh!” I followed her pointing finger.
“Yes, odd don’t you think? Then —” She went to the second window and pointed again, “she came around the corner, heading for that path through the park. Can you see it? It runs into the trees and towards that church spire.”
A pale moon had risen as we left St Werburgh’s; it would have illuminated the same path and spire I’d noticed from Thor’s tree house. “Yes, I see it, but what of it?”
“Well, don’t you consider it odd, that a woman in a long dress and scarf was out and about at that time of night.”
I didn’t quite frankly, but Liz did and I wanted to understand why.
“Maybe,” I said. “She could have been going to a party.”
“Not at that time on Christmas Eve.” Dissatisfied, Liz shook her head.
“Well, coming back from one then. Are you sure it was a woman?”
“I thought so at the time, but that was because of the clothes. Men don’t wear long dresses.”
“It could have been a fancy-dress party,” I pointed out.
Liz tilted her head considering this. “Um.”
“You know, men generally have longer strides than women and their body shape means that they walk differently. How did they move, this person?”
“Heavens!” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know. I didn’t stand looking for all that long, before I closed the curtain.”
“Did Daniel see her?”
“No, he hadn’t come upstairs by then. Oh!” Finding a piece of dried icing on her skirt, she picked at it for a moment then, with a quick excuse, disappeared into the bathroom.
Was Liz’s sighting of an unknown woman of any significance? The Treasure had been taken hours earlier, but the two things might be connected. It was far more likely to have something to do with Cavendish, or it might just be a cock and bull story made up by Liz to throw me off the scent. I couldn’t discount that guilty look I’d surprised on her features.
“Why are you so worried about this, Liz?” I asked, when she came back. “What’s really bothering you?”
She slumped onto the bed. “Well, you see, I thought it might be Martha, and I thought ... I thought...”
It was clear what she’d thought, and the guilt for thinking it lay written once again on her expressive face. “That she was on an assignation?”
She wrinkled her nose and then her brow. “Well, I did wonder.”
“Did it look like Martha?”
“I don’t know, it was too dark to see. I just can’t think who else it could have been.”
Martha was an unlikely candidate for the mysterious walker in the night. I hadn’t seen her go upstairs, but she had looked too exhausted to be leaving the house in search of sexual shenanigans. Whichever bed she’d sought last night, it would have been for sleep not cavorting with a lover.
“Well, you know your sister better than I do, but I doubt she’d have the energy for what you’re suggesting. It was probably a local woman taking a short cut through the park, rather than going the long way between the villages. I shouldn’t worry.”
I thought my calm logic would put her mind at rest, but not a bit of it.
“There’s something more going off though, isn’t there? I saw you and Jeremy heading into Tom’s office along with young Thornley, and you all looked worried.”
Maybe detecting ran in the family, for Liz obviously possessed the same quick and lively intelligence as Jerry. Tempting though it might be to tell her about the Tremayne Treasure, I couldn’t forget her husband’s behaviour in the church yesterday, when he had appeared to hand something over. Despite his story that the man in St Werburgh’s had been an old friend from University, I hadn’t totally rejected the possibility that Daniel was the thief. His explanation had been too glib, stretched coincidence too far, and he hadn’t met my gaze when I brought the subject up.
So, not wanting Liz to get wind of my suspicions, I said nothing of the theft. For all I knew, she was in on it with her husband and pumping me, trying to uncover what Jerry and I knew. At that moment it was precious little.
“What’s up?” she asked again.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Look, why are you telling me all this?”
She smiled. “Because you’re a woman, and because men never listen.”
Well, she was right about the first bit, and I’ve known some men who thought listening was overrated, but the same could not be said for Jerry.
“Let me guess, you told Daniel about the woman and he said you’d imagined the whole thing.”
Liz nodded. “I knew you’d understand, but whoever I saw was real. She wasn’t a figment of my imagination. I’ll swear she wasn’t.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I can make some discreet enquiries. Do you want me to tell Jerry?”
“Would you? That would certainly be a weight off my mind.”
But not mine. If she had something to hide then involving a detective seemed an odd thing to do, even if said detective was her own brother. Liz now radiated innocence like a three-bar fire and, despite my suspicions in the church, I wasn’t altogether sure I could believe Daniel guilty of wrong doing.
With a sinking feeling, I realised that if I crossed them both off my metaphorical list, there wasn’t a solitary name left on it. I was out of ideas.
***
I am never at my best in the morning. Only the addition of vast amounts of coffee swirling around my system makes me a fully functioning, card carrying member of the human race. My salvation lay downstairs in the dining room—Thornley Park was not a hotel and did not provide tea and coffee making facilities in the bedrooms—but salvation would have to wait until I’d conferred with Jerry.
I was already dressed. Blue trousers and a cream sweater today, comfortable apparel that, with the addition of a long silk scarf was dressy enough for Boxing Day. “So, what do you think about Liz’s story?” I asked him.
I’d passed on his younger sister’s sighting of a mysterious woman on Christmas Eve, but left out her worries over Martha. I wasn’t sure he’d want to know about any dalliance on the part of his eldest sister. He thought a lot of her.
“Pretty much the same as you,” he replied. “It sounds like a mare’s nest, but I suppose it won’t hurt to check it out.” He ran a comb through his unruly locks which I’d spent some time earlier that morning messing up. Whether he’d missed a haircut, or now that he was a Detective Chief Inspector he was allowed more leeway I didn’t know, but I liked him with longer hair. I loved the way it sprang up off the wide forehead and the way it curled around his ears and neck; most of all I loved running my hands through it. Mmm. I dragged my mind back to the conversation.
“I haven’t had a chance to speak to your nephew, yet. He’s buzzing with something, but Martha swept the children off to bed quite early.”
“Yes, they were both over-tired. Too much excitement, I suppose.”
What did the Farish family have against excitement? If a child can’t be thrilled and feverish at Christmas time, it’s a sad world in my view.
“I’ll see if I can get him on his own this morning, if only to tell him to calm down and be careful.”
“I’d like it, if you would. I doubt that Thor’s in any danger, but you never know.”
He opened the door for me and we strolled downstairs.
After breakfast, and feeling considerably more human, I wandered into the kitchen with the intention of speaking to the redoubtable Mrs Oadby. Martha had departed upstairs to see to the children, leaving me free to wander where I might not be wanted.
It is a brave man, or woman, who would interrupt a busy cook at work in her own kitchen. Then again, I’m the intrepid—some would say foolish—sort, prepared to take the risk. Even the sight of a rolling pin in Mrs Oadby’s hands did not deter me. Her helpers stood side by side at a worktop, peeling potatoes and beating eggs.
The most delicious and savoury smells, that might once have come from a cauldron hanging from a hook in the enormous fireplace, now issued from a large pan on the stove.
“Good morning. What are you making?”
Cook paused in her rolling, looked up, and smiled. “Individual game pies for lunch. We have our own deer on the estate and the master’s very partial to it.”
“Me too. It smells wonderful. If it’s as good as the meals we had yesterday, then we are in for a treat.”
My praise was genuine, the food we’d been served so far at Thornley Park had been excellent. Mrs Oadby preened a little, as if my words were no more than her due, and accepted my presence in the heart of her domain.
“Thank you, ma’am. Very kind of you to say so. The ingredients is all first class, though I’ll admit it’s mainly plain fare. I can’t be doing with swirly bits. Swirls is all right in their place, but that ain’t Thornley Park is what I say.”
I suppressed a smile. “I can live without swirls, Mrs Oadby, and jus. Give me gravy any day.”
“Indeed, ma’am.”
She beamed at me, and now that I had presented my credentials, as it were, I got down to business.
“You must be up early with this many mouths to feed.”
“Yes, I’m usually the first one up and about.”
Wanting to know if she or her daughters had been the mystery woman Liz had claimed to have seen, I feigned ignorance of Mrs Oadby’s situation. “Do you have far to come?”
“Oh, no, thank goodness. The position of cook includes board and lodgings. Sir Tom and Lady Tremayne provide me with a comfortable room here.”
She seemed inclined to chat, so I pressed on. “What about your daughters? It was good of them to give up their Christmas just to feed the Farish clan.” Smiling, I turned to include them.
“Well, Margaret’s saving up to get married next year, so Sir Tom’s offer of well-paid employment was welcome. She would have been at her sister Tricia’s for Christmas Day anyway.”
“I keep saying you should take the time off and come to us for Christmas, Mum. I’m sure Lady Tremayne can spare you for one year.”
I assumed the mousey blonde woman who’d spoken was Tricia. Both she and her sister looked tired. Too many late nights, perhaps? Well, perhaps, but I doubted they were spent walking around Thornley Park.
“That’s as maybe, gal.” Mrs Oadby replied to her daughter. “It wasn’t likely to be this year, though, when my lady has a houseful, now was it?”
I stepped in before their conversation became an argument.
“Yesterday must have been an awfully long day for you all.” I turned to the younger women. “What time did you get home?”
“ We left here around eight o’clock,” said Margaret. “It’s only a short walk across the park.”
Yes, no more than a half hour to Fenny Brayfield; I’d done it myself on Christmas Eve. I couldn’t see either of them coming back two and a half hours later just to parade under Liz’s window.
“Martha’s very worried about Mr Cavendish,” I said. “How odd for him to just up and disappear like that. Did he say anything before he went?”
Mrs Oadby stopped rolling pastry and rubbed the back of a floured hand over her forehead. For a moment, I thought I’d overstepped the mark until she took a palette knife and lifted the paste from the board, folded it carefully and popped it into a plastic bag.
“Right. I’ll let that rest for ten minutes.” She put the bag into one of two huge upright fridges against the wall before answering my question. “No, but he’s a quiet man, anyway. He had his dinner here with us on Christmas Eve—”
“What time was that?”
“Late, after you had yours, so about seven o’clock. Then he thanked me, as he always does, and went out.”
“Out?”
“Well, back upstairs, I should say. He has a room on the same staff landing as meself and Miss Tillett.”
“And you didn’t see him after that?”
“No more, I did. I don’t know whether she saw him.”
“She? You mean Miss Tillett?”
“Aye, the governess.”
I detected a distinct lack of warmth in the cook’s tone when she talked about Miss Tillett, but ignored it. Personality clashes happen everywhere and it was doubtful that bad feeling between the two women had any bearing on the tutor’s disappearance.
Thanking the ladies, and again praising their cooking, I said goodbye, then went and fetched my coat, and let myself out by the back door. The air about my ears was on the frigid side of crisp, and I wished I had thought to bring my hat. Frost lay thick on the ground and my breath made a misty cloud in front of me as I crunched over the grass. In the absence of gloves as well as headgear, I dug my hands into my pockets, a small blue dot in an otherwise monochrome world. I was searching for a shed, so of course I found two.
Although I did not know Tom or Martha well, neither of them had struck me as being without sense and, once Cavendish’s disappearance had been noted and the hue and cry raised, the outhouses would surely have been included in the search. I was probably wasting my time going over them again, but Liz’s story of a woman seen coming from the direction of the shed, had set my curiosity gland twitching and I needed to check it out. Besides, this was more in my line, not skulking around eavesdropping and trying to find a thief among my in-laws.
Both the outhouses were in good repair and both were locked. I cursed for not thinking of that and asking Mrs Oadby for a key. I peered through a side window. Through the layer of grime and cobwebs that coated the glass, I thought I could make out the shadowy outline of a bench. Neat stacks of plant pots and a small trowel and fork lay on the top and beyond them a bicycle, or possibly two cartwheels. No, a closer look revealed a helmet, so my first guess was probably the right one.
From this angle, it was impossible to see the floor where, for all I knew, the tutor might lie crumpled and bleeding. Or worse.
Reining in my rampant imagination I went to investigate the second shed, but that had no window. Defeated, I was about to return to the kitchen to ask for the key when I realised that the cook’s realm would not include what was clearly a potting shed cum bicycle store. For that I needed the gardener.
In search of Joshua Morgan’s cottage, I followed the path along the rear of the house and at the corner turned left and went on. Into the woods.
On my own.
***
After the previous day’s parlour games, I almost expected to find the gardener’s cottage made of gingerbread. In fact, it was a sturdy, brick built affair on the far side of the small copse, with a picket fence and a neat front garden. Mr Morgan answered the door and, when I asked him for the keys to the sheds, gave me a puzzled stare.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but what would you be wanting them for?”
A good question, and one I’d entirely failed to anticipate. What reason could I give him, other than the truth?
“One of my sisters-in-law saw a mysterious woman coming from the sheds late on Christmas Eve. I just wondered what you kept in there.”
If the woman in question had been his wife going about her lawful business, then that would have been the time to say so, but if anything, he looked more puzzled than ever.
“A mysterious woman. I can’t think who that might have been.”
“I know, but that’s what she said.”
Taking a step backwards, he reached for a thick woollen jacket hanging from a peg by the door.
“Come on, then, ma’am. Let’s go and have a look.”
I had to do something to make the staff stop addressing me as if I were royalty. “My name is Verity,” I said. “Verity Farish.”
He shrugged the jacket on and pulled the door closed behind him. “Right you are, then, Mrs Farish.”
He strode out so quickly down the path I’d just travelled that I almost had to run to keep up. By the time we reached the windowless shed, I panted for breath, but at least the brisk walk had warmed me up. With a deft twist, he unlocked the door and pulled it wide.
“Can’t think what you want to see in ‘ere for,” he muttered.
I wasn’t too sure myself, now that I’d stepped inside the ten by eight feet space. Various garden implements, brooms and terracotta pots were stacked neatly against the walls, and a wooden pigeon-holed arrangement holding packets of seeds, balls of twine and other garden sundries took up half of the end wall, right next to a tall metal locker. Compared to the grime and cobwebs I’d seen in the second shed, it was also remarkably clean, though I doubted that an absence of windows and a locked door kept the spiders out. They certainly don’t in my home.
I inched my way towards the locker, careful not to disturb the stacks and piles at either side, and stretched out a hand.
“Nowt in there.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin at the gardener’s voice and wrenched at the handle. If I expected to see Mr Cavendish crammed inside, or have his trussed-up frame tumble to the floor at my feet, then it was not to be. The locker contained nothing but a coat hanger suspended from the hanging bar.
“Told ya,” said Mr Morgan.
So he had, but my eagle eye had spotted something and I stepped closer. Caught in the twisted metal of the hanger was a single, silken thread. I removed it carefully and laid it across my palm before gripping it tightly and thrusting it into my pocket.
“What do you keep in here, Mr Morgan?”
I pushed the door closed and turned around.
“Me? Nothing. It’s empty, as you see.”
He put his head down, as though inspecting his boots, but he didn’t fool me.
“All right. What is usually kept in here?”
He shrugged and, my temper rising, I snapped at him. “Mr Cavendish uses it, doesn’t he? What does he store in here?”
“That’s not for me to say, ma’am.”
He made a gesture for me to come out and I obeyed. I’d finished in there and the man looked so uncomfortable that I took pity on him.
“I’m sorry, Mr Morgan, you must think me very nosy, but as I’m sure you are aware, the tutor is missing and we are all rather worried about him. Do you know where he is or what may have happened to him?”
“No, that I don’t.”
I stepped over the threshold and out of his way and he locked the door.
“But —” I laid a hand on his arm, detaining him as he turned to move off to the other shed.
“See here, Mrs Farish, apart from the cook—and me and Betty have known each other since we were kids—I don’t have a lot to do with them indoors. I take my orders from Lord and Lady Tremayne, and there’s an end to it.”
He moved away and opened the other shed.
Pretty much as I’d suspected, the second outhouse held nothing more than a few rusting implements, an old lawn mower and the bike. Nowhere near as clean or orderly as the first, it had, over time become a spider’s graveyard. I shivered. Better that than have them scuttling over my feet. I didn’t need to go inside, one look from the doorway was enough to show that nothing here had been disturbed in eons.
“All right, thank you, Mr Morgan. You may lock up again, now.”
“Right you are, ma’am.”
His chin jutted up and he stared at me, stony faced. So, I stared right back. This man knew something, but short of getting Tom or Martha out here and using their authority over him, I had no way of making him talk.
“Yet you have some idea what’s happened to Cavendish,” I insisted. “Why won’t you tell me?”
He pursed his mouth and worked his jaw and then, as if coming to a decision, nodded his head.
“All as I’m prepared to say, is that Sir Tom is a modern man through and through. He don’t like the old ways. No doubt the tutor will return when he’s good and ready.”
With that he turned and strode off back towards his house. Speechless, I stood and watched him go, then I too spun on my heel and retraced my steps.
Deep in thought and with no wish for company, I walked past the back door and the kitchens, and on to the tower at the corner. Here, I turned to my left and, halfway to the front of the house, stopped and leaned back against the bole of a conveniently placed tree.
As a child, because my brother wanted to be an architect when he grew up, I’d been dragged around an unforgettable number of stately homes. It had turned out to be just a phase he was going through, but in the meantime, I’d seen houses by Nash, Adam, Vanbrugh and more. Thornley Park had had no single overall architect—it had mushroomed at the whim of its multitude of owners into a style very much of it’s own.
I stared at the wall in front of me and wondered who’d built it. Oh, not the very first Tremayne, he probably never picked up a brick in his life, but the man or men who did. What sort of life did a sixteenth century bricklayer have? What did he eat, what sort of house, what was his pay? How was he entertained and what did he believe in? And had he, or a later builder, on the orders of his master, installed a secret room within that rambling maze of walls?
I shook my head and shifted my position, so that my gaze now followed the path through the trees, to the tall spire beyond, and I wondered, yes, I wondered.
It was only the beginnings of a suspicion but I thought I knew the identity of Liz’s mystery woman now. I fingered the silken thread in my pocket. The gardener had given me a clue, and then tried to brush it away with flim-flam and distraction, but thanks to him I had an inkling of where Mr Cavendish had gone, though what had happened to him after that was anyone’s guess.
It was time to stop dilly-dallying about and go inside and find the proof. I turned the corner of the house and stopped in my tracks as Kathy, wearing a camel coloured coat, came out of the front door, cast a furtive glance to left and right and hurried away to the far side of the building. With my nosiness-meter by-passing amber and red and going straight to purple alert, I dogged her footsteps.
When I reached the opposite end of the house I stayed back, and peered around the corner just in time to see her standing by the entrance to the maze.
What on earth was she up to? Perhaps she just needed a break from the confines of the house—and the Farish family—and had come out for some air. Then why the apprehensive backwards glances that, even now, she kept throwing over her shoulder. Whatever she was doing she did not appear to want company, so I waited until she’d gone into the vast, dense mass of greenery before taking a deep breath and following her in.