Anne Perry's Christmas Mysteries: Two Holiday Novels Read online

  “We always have,” Agnes answered, still no lift in her voice.

  Grandmama continued to probe, and finally drew a few more specific answers. In heaven’s name, it was hard work! Did Pitt always have such a struggle? It was worse than pulling out teeth. But she was determined. Justice might depend upon this.

  “I imagine you all did this together, when you were girls,” she said with what she knew was tactlessness. “Or perhaps you were courting? I can think of nothing more romantic.” Had she gone too far?

  “Zachary did, with Bedelia,” Agnes replied. “It was this season, and terribly cold. Several of the streams froze that year. I remember it.” She remained looking forward, her expression bleak as the wind pulled strands of her hair loose and whipped them across her face.

  Grandmama was momentarily lost. Zachary was Agnes’s husband. She would dearly like to let this go. She heard pain in Agnes’s voice, and old griefs were none of her affair. But Maude was dead. She could not feel the sting of salt in the air or see the wild flight of seabirds skittering down the wind and whirling back up again, high and wide, wheeling far out over the land.

  “Mrs. Harcourt is very beautiful, even now,” she tested the verbal knife. “She must have been quite breathtaking then. I have a distant relative who was like that.”

  “Yes.” Agnes’s hands were tight on the reins, the leather of her gloves strained. “Half the young men in the county were in love with her.”

  “And she chose Mr. Harcourt?” It was a stupid question, and probably entirely irrelevant to Maude’s death, but she had nothing better to pursue.

  “Yes.” For a moment it seemed as if Agnes was going to say no more. Then she drew in her breath, wanting to speak after all. “Although it was not so simple as that.”

  “Really? I suppose things seldom are,” Grandmama said sympathetically. “And even less often are they what they seem to be on the surface. People make very hasty judgments, sometimes.”

  “They are the easiest,” Agnes agreed. She negotiated a sharp turn in the lane and Grandmama saw the village of Snargate ahead. This was proving very difficult indeed. They were almost at the village green. The inn, the church with ancient yew trees and graveyard, and the lych-gate covered with the bare vines of honeysuckle lay beyond.

  They made their first delivery of Christmas fare, and the second, and then left Snargate and continued the short distance to Appledore.

  “I suppose there is always speculation where there are sisters, and one is as beautiful as Bedelia,” Grandmama said as soon as they were on their way again, blankets carefully tucked around shivering knees. The sky cleared a little and banners of blue appeared bright between the clouds.

  As if deliberately hurting herself, Agnes told the story. “Maude didn’t know about it, not really. She was away that Christmas. Aunt Josephine was ill and alone, and Maude went to look after her. Zachary was courting Bedelia. He was so in love with her. They went everywhere together, to the balls and the dinners and the theater in Dover, even through the snow. That was when the Queen was young and happy, and Prince Albert was so dashing. We saw drawings of them in the newspapers. It was before the Crimean War. I expect you remember?”

  “I do.” It had been a nightmare time. Her own husband had been alive, charming, persuasive, privately brutal, demanding things no decent woman ever imagined. She could still taste the wool of the carpet in her mouth and remember his weight on top of her, forcing her down. In public it had been all contentment, the glamour of endless crinoline skirts on a figure unrecognizable now in her too ample waist and hips. And at home a hell she could not think of without a hot shame making her feel sick. How could she, of all people, criticize anyone’s cowardice? It stirred in her rage and pity, and a hunger to avenge it so sharp she could feel it. The bitter wind was almost a comfort.

  But Agnes was lost in her own passions and did not even glance to see if her companion was with her mentally. “Then Arthur Harcourt arrived,” she went on. “I think it was early March. The beginning of spring. The days were getting longer and everything was coming into bud. Arthur was not only handsome but charming and funny and kind. He could make us all laugh so hard we were embarrassed to be caught at it. One did not enjoy things so openly then. It was thought to be unladylike. He didn’t care. And he could dance like an angel. Everything seemed worth doing when he was with us.”

  Grandmama thought she could guess the rest. Bedelia fell out of love with Zachary and in love with Arthur, who was a much better catch. A far better catch. Poor Zachary was cast aside, and in time took second best, the duller, plainer Agnes. And Agnes accepted.

  Without thinking, Grandmama reached across and put her hand on Agnes’s where it rested above the edge of the rug, holding the reins tightly. She did not say anything. It was a silent understanding, a pity without words.

  For a few moments they rode through the lanes toward Appledore in silence.

  Then suddenly Agnes spoke again. “Of course we thought then that Bedelia and Arthur would marry. It seemed inevitable.”

  “Yes, it would,” Grandmama agreed.

  “But Aunt Josephine died, and Maude came back home. Everything changed,” Agnes said.

  “Indeed?” Grandmama had almost forgotten about Maude. “How?”

  “Arthur and Maude just…” Agnes gave a tiny shrug. “Just seemed to…to fall so in love it was as if Bedelia ceased to exist. It didn’t seem like a flirtation. Bedelia was…unable to believe it at first. I mean Maude, of all people? Goodness knows what she told him!”

  “Told him?” Grandmama said before she could stop herself.

  “Well, she must have told him something terrible about Bedelia to have caused him to abandon her like that! And of course untrue. Jealousy is…a very unkind thing. It eats the heart out of you, if you allow it to.”

  “Oh, that is true,” Grandmama agreed sincerely. “It can be an instant passion, or a slow-growing one, but it is certainly deadly. But it seems as if Arthur saw through it, whatever it was.” She hated saying that because it blamed Maude, and she was far from prepared to do that, but she must keep Agnes telling the story.

  “Oh, yes,” Agnes agreed. “It lasted perhaps a month, then Arthur came to his senses. He realized that he truly loved Bedelia. He broke off the silly business with Maude, and asked Bedelia to marry him. Of course she forgave him, and accepted.”

  “I see.” She did not see at all.

  Three sisters, two men. Someone had to have lost. Grandmama resented that it should have been Maude. Or had it really been all of them, no one truly finding what they hungered for? “And Maude?” she said quietly.

  “Maude was heartbroken,” Agnes replied, her voice catching in her throat. She turned away as if there were something on the other side of the pony trap that required her attention, although there was nothing but the grasses and the sea wind and the marsh stretching out to the horizon. “She simply ran away. God knows where she went, but about a month later we received a postcard from Granada, in the south of Spain. There were only a few words on it. I remember. ‘Going to Africa. Will probably stay. Maude.’”

  And Bedelia had said she never wrote again. Was that true? “Until she returned a few days ago?” Grandmama asked aloud.

  “That’s right.”

  “Why did she come back, now, after all these years?”

  Agnes shook her head and rubbed her hand over her eyes. “Perhaps she knew she was dying? Maybe she wanted to be buried here. People do. Want to be buried in their own land, I mean, their own earth.”

  “Did she say anything like that?”

  “She did say something about death. I can’t recall exactly what it was. But she was sad, that much was clear. I…I wish I had listened. My mind was on Lord Woollard’s visit, and how anxious we all were that it should go well.” Guilt was heavy in her voice and the misery of her face. “Arthur really does deserve recognition, you know. And the amount of good he could do with it would be enormous.”

  “An
d you were concerned that Maude’s behavior would be inappropriate?”

  Agnes glanced at Grandmama then away again, a mixture of impatience and shame in her face. “She had been living in extraordinary places for the last forty years, Mrs. Ellison. Places where people eat with their fingers, have no running water, where women do things that…I would rather not even think of, let alone speak about.”

  “I thought women in the Middle East were rather more modest than we are here in England,” Grandmama said thoughtfully. “At least that was the impression I gained from Maude. They keep to their own apartments and don’t speak to men other than those in their own families. Their clothing is certainly most decorous.”

  Agnes was frowning. “But Maude went unaccompanied, wandering around like a…like a man!” she exclaimed. “Who knows what happened to her? Her taste is highly questionable. Even her virtue, I’m afraid.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Grandmama said in angry disbelief, then realized she had gone too far. She must find an escape very quickly. “I’m so sorry,” she apologized, the words all but choking her. “I felt so close to Maude because she confided in me, and I in her, that I am more offended than I have any right to be at the thought that someone who did not know her at all should question her virtue. It is quite unreasonable, and even impertinent of me. Please forgive me. She was your sister, not mine, and it is your right to defend her. I did not mean to presume.” She watched Agnes’s face intently, as if she were eager for pardon. She was actually extremely eager to see Agnes’s reaction.

  Agnes’s hands froze on the reins and she stared ahead, even though they were now very close to the village of Appledore and she should have been slowing the pony.

  “It is not presumptuous,” she said, her face scarlet. Then she stopped again, still uncertain. “I’m sure you meant it only kindly. Perhaps we live too much in the past. Imagine too much.”

  “About Maude?” Grandmama had to ask. She was overwhelmingly aware of the misery in Agnes, and the knowledge that she would always be second choice. She was sorry for it—she even understood it—but it did not excuse lies, or answer justice now. They were passing the village church and she saw the festive wreaths on doors and a group of children ran past them shouting Greetings! What happens to people that they become bitter, and why do we not turn to each other, and help? We all walk a common path from cradle to grave, just stumble over different stones in it, trip in different holes, or drown in different puddles.

  Agnes had not answered her.

  “I understand,” Grandmama said impulsively. “You had old memories of Maude once taking Arthur’s affection, and you were afraid she would say or do something outrageous now. Perhaps even spoil his chances of receiving the peerage. So you made sure she could not be in the house when Lord Woollard was here. And now that she has died, you feel guilty, and of course it is too late to do anything about it.”

  Agnes turned to face her, eyes wide and hurt. She said nothing, but acknowledgment was as clear in her as if she had admitted it in so many words.

  They delivered the jams and chutneys in Appledore and went on to the Isle of Oxney. The rising wind was cruelly cold. The horizon was blurred with gathering clouds and there was a smell of snow in the air. Perhaps it would not be necessary to feign a chill after all? Although how deep the snow would have to be to make travel inadvisable she did not know. St. Mary in the Marsh was only five miles away, not even an hour’s journey. Maybe a few sneezes and a complaint of a sore throat would be better? She had barely scratched the surface of what there was to detect. There were emotions, old loves and jealousies, old wrongs, but what had caused them to erupt now? Pitt had said that there was always a reason why violence occurred at a particular time, some event that had sparked the final act.

  Why had Maude come home? Why not before, in all the forty years of her exile? Or next year? Why at Christmas, not summer, when the weather would be infinitely more agreeable? Whose death was it that she had been referring to? Surely not her own?

  On the ride back to Snave, she deliberately spoke only of Christmas arrangements. What to eat? Goose, naturally, and plenty of vegetables—roasted, boiled, baked, and with added sauces. After there would be a Christmas pudding rich with dried fruit and covered with brandied butter, and flamed at the time of serving. And covered with cream.

  But before that there were literally dozens of other things to think of and prepare: cakes, pastries, mince pies, sweets, gingerbread, and all manner of drinks, both with and without alcohol. And naturally a wealth of decoration: wreaths and boughs, garlands, golden angels, colored bows, flowers made of silk and ribbon, pine cones painted with gold, little dolls to be given afterward to the poor of the village. There were presents to be made: skittles painted as wooden soldiers, pincushions, ornaments handmade and decorated with lace and beads and colored braid. The hours of work could hardly be counted. They spoke of them together, and remembered about their own childhood Christmases, before the advent of cards and trees and such modern ideas that so much added to the general happiness.

  After luncheon Grandmama took a brief walk in the garden. She needed time alone to think. Detection required order in the mind. There were facts to be considered and weighed.

  There was little to see beyond a well-tended neatness and very obvious architectural grace and skill. There were arbors, gravel walks, herbaceous borders carefully weeded, perennials cleared of dead foliage, a flight of steps that curved up to a pergola covered with the skeletons of roses, and finally a less formal woodland overlooking the open marsh.

  It was very wet underfoot, and rather muddy. The long grasses soaked the hem of her skirt, but it was inevitable. In spring this would be beautiful with flowers: snowdrops, primroses in all likelihood, wood anemones, certainly bluebells, wild daisies, campion. Perhaps narcissi with their piercingly sweet scent. She saw two or three crowns of foxglove leaves. She loved their elegant spires in purples or white. One of them looked a little ragged, as if an animal had cropped it. Except that no animal would eat foxglove—it was poisonous. Creatures always seemed to know. It slowed the heart. It was used by doctors for people whose hearts raced. Digitalis. She froze. Raced…slowed. Stopped!

  Was that it? The answer she was searching for? She bent and looked at the leaves again. There was no earthly way of proving it, but she was perfectly sure someone had picked two or three leaves. The broken ends were visible.

  She stood up again slowly. How could she find out who? It must have been the day Maude was here. Had it been wet or dry? Never dry in winter in this wood, but if freezing then the ice would prevent anyone getting as wet as she was now, or as muddy.

  Four days before, Joshua had received Bedelia’s letter. Think! Windy, the noise of it howling in the eaves was clear in her mind. It had irritated her unbearably. And relatively mild. Who had come in with muddy boots, a dress soaked at the hems? A ladies’ maid would know. But how to ask her?

  She turned and walked briskly back into the house and went to find Mrs. Ward.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologized profusely; startled that she meant it without any pretense at all. “I went walking in the garden and became distracted with the beauty of it.”

  “It is lovely, isn’t it,” Mrs. Ward agreed. “That’s Mrs. Harcourt’s skill. Mrs. Sullivan can paint a picture of a flower that’s both lovely and correct, but it’s Mrs. Harcourt who plans the garden itself.”

  “What a gift,” Grandmama said. “And one from which we all benefit. But I am afraid that I have thoroughly muddied both my boots, and the hem of your dress. It was deeply careless of me, and I regret it now.”

  “Oh, don’t worry! It happens all the time!” Mrs. Ward dismissed it. “Your own dress is quite clean and dry, and Nora can clean this again in no time.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t happen to everybody,” Grandmama told her. “I cannot imagine Mrs. Harcourt being so inelegant, or so thoughtless. You cannot name me the last time she did this!”

  Mrs. Ward
smiled. “Certainly I can! The very day Miss Maude came home. Went looking for some nice branches to add to the flowers in the hall. Woodland branches can be most graceful in a vase. Please don’t think of it, Mrs. Ellison.”

  “Really?” Grandmama’s heart was racing. So it was Bedelia. But she should be certain. “I expect she and Clara were in quite a state, with Lord Woollard expected as well.”

  “Certainly. She also went out on an errand and came back as muddy as you like. Poor Nora was beside herself. Then Mrs. Sullivan the day after. At least I think it was. I’ll find Nora and send her up to you.”

  “Thank you. You are most considerate.” Grandmama left with her mind whirling. So who had boiled up the leaves? Where? How could she find that out? Perhaps they were simply crushed and steeped, as one makes a cup of tea! That could have been any of them. She must think more—pay attention. And be careful!

  In the afternoon Grandmama offered to help Bedelia in some of the last-minute preparations. Of course Cook would see to the meal itself, and most of the other things that required the use of the kitchen. But there was still much sewing to be done, lavender bags that were not finished, ornamental roses to be made, and definitely more decorations for the great tree in the hall.

  “I could have sworn that we had more than this last year!” Bedelia said, looking at it with dismay. “It seems almost bare, don’t you think, Mrs. Ellison?”

  Grandmama regarded the huge tree, its dark green needles still fresh and scented with earth and pine. It was liberally decorated with ribbons and ornaments, and there was a handsome pile of parcels beneath, and smaller ones with lace and flowers hanging from the branches. It was far from bare, but certainly there were places where more could be hung. It was important that she make herself necessary.

  “It is very handsome,” she answered judiciously. “But you are quite right, of course. There are still one or two places to be filled in. I am sure it would not be difficult to find the materials to make a couple of dozen more ornaments. One needs only a child’s ball, perhaps two of different sizes would be even better, paste, and as many different colors of paper as possible, beads, dried flowers, ribbon, lace, whatever else can be spared that is pretty. Sometimes an old gown can provide an amazing variety of bits and pieces. It’s not difficult to make tiny dolls, or angels.” She had rather run away with herself, but it was all in the growingly desperate cause of detection. Very definite ideas were crystallizing in her mind, but she needed more time!