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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Devon Mysteries
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
On the day Juno Browne's van goes up in flames and nearly cooks a dog, Juno meets James Westershall, owner of Moorworthy Chase, a large family estate. She is invited, along with her friends from Old Nick's, to bring along their goods for sale to an upcoming garden fete. Included in the invitation is the newest and most irritating member of the Old Nick's team, Gavin. During the fete Gavin wanders off and is later discovered dead in nearby woods, apparently the victim of a bizarre accident. A police investigation ensues, but results are inconclusive and Juno has a theory of her own. As she begins to investigate, she discovers that Gavin's is not the only strange death to have occurred at Moorworthy Chase, including that of an expert, researching colonies of rare bats in caves on the Moorworthy Estate. It soon becomes clear to Juno that there is something very wrong at Moorworthy and the caves contain a dark and dangerous secret.
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Dead on Dartmoor
STEPHANIE AUSTIN
For Dad, who would have loved this
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The town of Ashburton is real, and people living there will recognise streets, shops, pubs, cafes and other places of good cheer mentioned in this book, but there are a few foggy areas around the town where fact and my imagination merge, places that will not be found on any map. For taking these liberties, I apologise.
CHAPTER ONE
A week before the murder, my van went up in flames.
It seemed fine in the morning, when I took the dogs out. I only had three to walk that day and I collected them in the van as usual, before their owners left for work, and drove them to the woods beyond the edge of town where they could romp around unfettered.
They raced ahead of me in the cool shade beneath the trees, sniffing at trails left by night-time creatures, snuffling at prints in the soft, dark mud. As I followed, they dashed off through the undergrowth, bursting from beneath the shadows onto sunlit grass and sending strutting black crows flapping into the air. Here, in open pasture, I could launch balls for them to chase. I could see up the valley, fields sweeping upward to the moor, green grass fading to tawny yellow and the granite knuckle of a distant tor. It was going to be another fine day.
Later I deposited two of the dogs back at their homes, using spare keys to let myself in.
I don’t have a spare key for EB, because his mum is always waiting for him at home. But as we approached her front door, I could see a scrawled note taped to the wood. Juno, it read, Alan taken to hospital with chest pain. I’ve gone with him in ambulance. Can you hang on to EB until I get back? I will ring you. Sorry. Elaine x
EB waited patiently by my feet as I read the message, his overarching eyebrows twitching in confusion. He didn’t seem to mind getting back into the van. I let him sit on the front seat with me instead of putting him in the back behind the wire grille where the dogs normally ride. He leant the weight of his warm little body against mine and I turned back to Ashburton, meandering between hedgerows in full green flourish.
It had been a long, hot summer that seemed as if it would never end, sunshine and blue skies lasting through September. But the swallows had flown, and although the sunny weather continued, the green treetops were brushed with bronze and gold; the leaves were on the turn.
I was forced to brake suddenly. A woman was in the road, standing perfectly still, a few inches of floral nightdress hanging down beneath her long blue dressing gown. Her hair was a silver halo but flattened at the back of her skull, as if it had not been brushed since her head left the pillow that morning. I pulled on the handbrake and climbed out, shutting the door on the muzzle of a curious EB. Despite the noise of the van’s approach she seemed oblivious of my presence, staring up at the flickering light through the trees above her, at the shifting shadows, and murmuring quietly to herself.
‘Hello,’ I called out. ‘Are you all right?’ She turned at the sound of my voice, not by twisting her head, but by a series of tiny, rocking steps, until she had manoeuvred herself around to face me. Her eyes were blue, her skin rose petals crushed into a thousand tiny wrinkles. She would have been pretty once.
‘Can I help you?’ I asked.
She scowled at me, didn’t answer. A few hundred yards further along the road was Oakdene, a care home for patients with dementia, and I reckoned I was looking at an escapee. ‘Only, if you’re going for a walk,’ I went on reasonably, ‘I think you’ll need your slippers.’
She gazed down at feet wrapped in woolly bedsocks and wriggled her toes experimentally before returning her gaze to my face. It was an untroubled gaze, full of childlike innocence, as if all care, all stress, had been gently washed away. She reached out. For a moment I thought she was going to slap me, but instead she grabbed a handful of my curls, squeezing lightly with her fingers. ‘All curly,’ she breathed in delight, ‘all red.’
All curly, all red − she’d just about summed up my hair.
‘You’re not Samantha,’ she told me, although she didn’t sound sure.
‘No, I’m Juno. What’s your name?’
‘Marianne,’ she declared after a moment’s thought. ‘Are we going in the little bus?’
I glanced back at the van. It was yellow with black writing on the sides. I suppose it didn’t look unlike a small bus, except for EB frowning at us from behind the steering wheel.
‘Why don’t we?’
She allowed me to lead her to the passenger door and sit her in the seat, despite being hampered by EB, who’d decided that any friend of mine must be a friend of his. Fortunately, Marianne didn’t seem to mind an enthusiastic face licking, and responded with cries of rapture and much patting. In spite of the two of them, I managed to get her seat belt done up and headed for Oakdene, hoping to God that was where Marianne had come from. If she hadn’t, I didn’t have a clue where to take her next, and somehow I had the feeling that she wouldn’t know either.
Thankfully, the next bend revealed two ladies in blue uniforms peering anxiously into the hedgerows as they scurried along, as if hoping to find something hidden amongst the brambles and blackberries. I stopped, flashed my lights and tooted at them. At the sight of my passenger one cried out in relief. ‘Oh, thank God! Judith!’
Judith? What happened to Marianne?
The woman approaching on my side began talking as I wound the window down. The name badge pinned to her ample bosom identified her as Barbara. She was a comfy, little body and was slightly out of breath. ‘Thank you so much! Where did you find her?’
‘Not far,’ I answered as Judith-Marianne climbed out with the help of her colleague, who was younger and taller, her hair scraped back to reveal a large, pale forehead. ‘Has she gone walkabout before?’
‘All the time, bless her! She keeps trying to find her way to her old home … Oxford,’ she added in a whisper.
I’m not sure how many miles away Oxford is, but it’s a long way from Ashburton.
I watched her depart without a backward glance to me or EB, her arm linked companionably with that of the care assistant, the two of them chatting amiably. ‘She seems happy enough.’
‘Oh, she’s a sweetheart,’ Barbara informed me. ‘Anyway, thank you so much … um …’
‘Juno.’
‘Juno,’ she repeated. She hesitated a moment, brows drawn together in a worried frown, her lips compressed in a line. ‘I wonder … our boss doesn’t know she’s got out again. We don’t want to see her locked in her room. I wonder if …’
‘Your secret’s safe with me.’ I didn’t know the boss of Oakdene and I certainly wasn’t about to go round there causing trouble.
‘Thank you,’ she breathed and then hurried off after Judith-Marianne and her colleague.
‘Life is full of strange little happenings,’ I informed a mystified EB, watching them go, and we set off once again towards the town.
I was half an hour late arriving at Old Nick’s because I’d driven home on the way to check my answering machine for any message from Elaine. She might not have been able to contact me on my mobile: the signal is dodgy on Dartmoor, to say the least.
There was no message. I wondered if EB had been fed before we went walkies this morning, or whether he was still awaiting his breakfast, so I stopped at the baker’s in West Street and bought him a jumbo sausage roll.
Old Nick’s has only been open for two months. The shop belonged to an elderly client of mine, Mr Nikolai, who lived in the flat above. He was an antiques dealer. Unfortunately, Nick was a bit criminal around the edges and got himself murdered as a consequence. Why he decided to leave the entire property to me is still a mystery. I suppose he felt I’d earned it; a feeling not shared by members of his family.
Whatever, it is no longer the shabby, run-down old junk shop it once was, but is now freshly painted in pale green, its windows glossy, and Old Nick’s, picked out in gold, swinging on the sign above the door. Each time I draw up outside it I cannot resist a tiny stab of pride and offer up a silent prayer of gratitude to cousin Brian, my one remaining relative, who’d come up with the cash for the makeover.
Unfortunately, no amount of cash could magically transport Old Nick’s from Shadow Lane to North Street or East Street, where it needed to be to bring in the required customers. The little town of Ashburton is one of the four stannary towns on Dartmoor, where locally mined tin used to be stamped and assayed, and the townspeople are proud of its history. It also had a reputation for drunkenness. Nowadays it’s a real tourist trap, with more antique shops than taverns; but Old Nick’s is obstinately stuck around the corner from the scene of all the action. The only other businesses in Shadow Lane are a launderette and an undertaker, so there’s not a lot of footfall. Generally, people who don’t own washing machines are not in the market for the art, crafts and antiques which we sell, and those who need the services of an undertaker have lost interest in buying things altogether. I’ve placed a hopeful cafe board at the corner of the lane, pointing the way for customers. Old Nick’s: Art, Crafts, Books, Antiques and Collectibles.
Another problem is that when Nick died and left me the shop, I already had a business of my own. Not exactly thriving, but it kept body and soul together. Juno Browne, Domestic Goddess – Housework, Gardening, Home Help, Domestic Care, House-sitting, Pet-sitting, Dog walking. No job too small. The legend is still proudly proclaimed on the sides of my van. I don’t want, and can’t afford, to give my business up: I’m too attached to some of my clients, and until there’s sufficient income from the shop I can’t even consider it – and that day, I fear, is a long way off. The stuff I sell is mostly bric-a-brac and the profits so far amount to pocket money, whilst the overheads for the shop are draining money I rely on to live.
One sensible move I could make, apart from just selling the property and pocketing the cash, would be to give up the flat I currently rent from Adam and Kate and move myself into the empty rooms above the shop. But I can’t bring myself to do that. I’m not of a nervous disposition, but I just don’t fancy living in the room where Nick was murdered. Not yet, anyway, not unless I have to.
The lights were on inside the shop when I arrived, and I could see Pat arranging her display of craft items on one of the wide windowsills. She gave me a little wave. I let EB trot into the shop ahead of me. He pattered over to her and began an exhaustive inspection of her trainers. She and her sister and brother-in-law run a sanctuary for abandoned pets and farm animals and her shoes are covered in information of great interest to the canine mind.
I was surprised to see her, though. ‘I thought Sophie was opening up today.’
‘It was her turn,’ Pat stooped to stroke EB as he snuffled around her shoelaces, ‘but she got offered a shift at The Dartmoor Lodge so I said I’d swop with her. I don’t mind.’
Sophie and Pat man the shop on alternate days, instead of paying me rent. They get free space to sell the lovely things they make, and I get the time to keep my business going. The downside is that I don’t get any money.
I’ve divided the shop into several rental units, hoping to attract a variety of sellers under one roof. Sophie and Pat take up the front of the shop, with two other units behind theirs. My own unit is at the back, in what was once the old storeroom. A sign in the corridor points to it: This way for bric-a-brac, antiques and collectibles − an optimistic way of describing a few sticks of junk furniture and an assortment of cheap knick-knacks.
As yet, the only other unit that is taken, and the only one paying me rent, belongs to Gavin, who sailed past the window on his bike at that moment, clad in pointy helmet and full racing gear, like a Lycra-covered stick insect on wheels. I don’t know why he dresses up as if he’s riding in the Tour de France, he only lives five minutes’ ride away. What, I ask, is wrong with cycle clips?
Pat rolled her eyes at the sight of him. ‘He’s driving Sophie up the wall,’ she whispered.
Gavin would be chaining up his bike in the alleyway at the side of the building and would not appear for at least five minutes; even so, I whispered. ‘Is he?’
‘He’s got … you know … a thing about her,’ she mouthed. ‘He won’t leave her alone, always hovering, looking over her shoulder when she’s working.’
Sophie didn’t really like painting in the shop as customers tended to watch her working, which she found unsettling. She was prepared to put up with it if it might lead to a sale, but wasn’t keen on people who hung around too long, stood too close, or chattered too much. She got all three with Gavin.
I could understand why she attracted him. Sophie was twenty-five but could pass for seventeen without make-up − and carried an air of childlike vulnerability. An orphaned seal pup abandoned on an ice floe could not melt your heart more easily than Sophie Child when she turned her big brown eyes on you. They even worked on me, for God’s sake, so what chance did a poor sap like Gavin stand? Gavin, nineteen, but with all the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old, was no match for her at all.
I looked down at the artwork that currently occupied Sophie’s desk, the thick watercolour paper pinned at the corners. It was one of her hedgerow paintings: a drystone wall, its rough, mossy stones seen through a delicate tracery of wild flowers, some, as yet, white and unpainted.
Gavin appeared in the doorway, tall and bespectacled, carrying his silly helmet. EB let out a little yip and he scowled. I don’t think Gavin liked dogs. ‘Where’s Sophie?’ was his first question.
‘Good morning, Gavin, and how are you?’ I asked pleasantly.
‘Isn’t she coming in today?’ Poor boy, his disappointment was obvious.
‘She’ll be in later. She’s waitressing on breakfasts at The Dartmoor Lodge.’
‘I don’t know why she wants to bother with that,’ he sneered loftily, ‘wasting her talent.’
‘She’s gotta live, Gavin,’ Pat told him flatly. ‘We can’t all go to the bank of Mum and Dad.’
He grunted, colouring slightly, and hurried through the door at the back of the shop and up the stairs, to change. There was a bathroom on the landing, once part of Nick’s flat, and we used his old kitchen for making refreshments.
‘Now he’ll be half an hour changing,’ Pat complained, ‘and then he’ll come down with a cup of coffee, you’ll see. Never offers to make one for anyone else.’
I couldn’t hang around to find out; I had clients to get to. ‘Look, Pat, I don’t want to leave EB in the van, can I dump him with you? I can put him up in the kitchen if you’d rather.’ But EB had already settled down by her chair and I handed her the slightly greasy paper bag containing his breakfast.
The Brownlows were a husband and wife team of GPs with three teenage children and a breezy, devil-may-care attitude to safety and hygiene in the home that I fervently hoped did not extend into their professional lives. I spent half of my allotted two hours washing dishes – the dishwasher was already full − before I could reach the kitchen surfaces I was paid to clean. But after I’d scraped brown gloop out of a gravy boat and cleared up spattered globules of pink icing after someone who’d made a cake, I attacked the waiting worktops and the floor, and left the kitchen looking sparkling; temporarily, at least. I just had time to call in on Maisie, check her agency carer had arrived to help her bathe and dress, change her bedclothes and stuff them in the laundry basket, before I headed out again. I did an hour’s ironing for Simon the accountant who likes the collars of his shirts just so, and made it back to Old Nick’s a little before midday.
Sophie had obviously arrived, her jacket and bag hanging on her chair; but there was no sign of her. Gavin was sitting at the table of his unit, hidden behind one of his graphic novels, and Pat was concentrating ferociously on counting stitches on her knitting needle. Neither of them spoke. There was, to say the least of it, an atmosphere.
EB skipped over to greet me, his claws clicking on the wooden floor.
‘Where’s Sophie?’ I asked.
‘Upstairs.’ Pat directed a fierce glance at Gavin. ‘Trying to rescue her painting.’
I flicked another look at Gavin, whose ears were suspiciously pink, and climbed the stairs to the kitchen. Sophie was by the sink, her painting laid out on one of the worktops, dabbing at it carefully with a sponge.
‘What happened?’
‘Bloody Gavin,’ she responded, not looking up. ‘He would bring me a cup of coffee. I told him I didn’t want one. Then he put it down on my table and knocked it over with his sleeve.’
‘Has he ruined it?’
‘I’d already covered these with masking fluid,’ she said, pointing at the white, unpainted stalks of cow parsley, ‘so they were protected. But some of this background will need repainting.’
‘Oh, Soph, it’s taken you ages! What did you say to him?’
‘Not much. I didn’t need to.’ She chuckled. ‘Pat gave him a real ear-bashing.’ She pushed her big red-framed specs up the bridge of her tiny nose. ‘Well, you know what she’s like.’
Pat was one of most generous and kind people I knew, but she seemed to have it in for Gavin. ‘I hope she doesn’t piss him off too much, I don’t want him to leave. I need his rent money.’
‘It’s one of those days, I suppose.’ Sophie blotted a tiny flower with a corner of paper towel. ‘I was supposed to be taking some stuff to that new arts centre near Dartmeet. I got it all packed up, ready to go.’ She turned her dark eyes on me mournfully. ‘But I’ll have to cancel, I can’t get there now.’
‘Why not?’
‘Mum’s had to work and has taken the car.’
‘I’ll take you.’ I heard the words come out of my mouth before I’d even thought about it.
Sophie continued to gaze at me soulfully. ‘Don’t you have to work this afternoon?’
‘I said I’d help Ricky and Morris, but they won’t mind. I can put some time in for them later. I’ll give them a call.’
I’d kept Nick’s old phone in his living room, sitting on the floor. Like the bedroom, it was empty, cleared of his furniture, walls painted, floorboards sanded down and varnished, new spotlights in the ceiling: just waiting to be rented by traders or to be moved into by me. Pat was of the opinion that the rooms were haunted; at least that’s what she told Gavin to wind him up. I’m not sure I believe in ghosts, but I still couldn’t walk into those rooms without thinking of Nick, hearing his chuckle, seeing his wicked blue eyes. My call made, I went back down into the shop.
‘Gavin,’ Pat called out when I appeared, ‘what have you got to remember to tell Juno?’
He looked up from his reading, returning to the real world after a definite pause. ‘What?’
‘What happened yesterday?’ Pat insisted.
‘Oh … yes,’ he responded, peering vaguely through his specs as if struggling to remember. ‘Some woman came in, enquiring about a unit.’
‘Great!’ I was instantly cheered at the possibility of more rent. ‘What does she do?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I told her she’d have to come back when you were here.’
‘Well, did you take her number?’
‘No … sorry,’ he added, in the voice of someone who really couldn’t give a shit and tried to return to his reading.
‘Well, if she comes in again, or if anyone else comes in enquiring, will you be sure to take their details, please? I need to fill these units.’
‘Oh? Yes, of course.’
‘And by the way,’ I added, addressing the room in general, ‘I had eighteen pounds extra in my cash box last night. Someone must have taken a sale for me yesterday. Does anyone know what it was?’
‘That was me.’ Gavin was beginning to look sheepish. ‘You sold a silver thing … a rounded knife, bone handle … um … bit like an apple corer.’
‘That would have been the stilton scoop,’ I told him, ‘it would have been written on the label.’ I was trying not to lecture him but failing miserably. ‘That’s why we all label everything, Gavin, so we can keep track of sales. Next time, please write the details in the book on the counter. That’s what it’s for.’ It was a simple enough system if we all followed it. Poor Gavin; if I’d had any idea what terrible things were about to happen, I like to think I’d have been more patient with him, more understanding of his complete lack of interest, his callow lack of charm – but probably not.
Once we’d loaded Sophie’s paintings, we put EB in the back of the van. He wanted to ride in the front, but dogs tend to make Sophie wheeze, although EB’s mum would have pointed out indignantly that Miniature Schnauzers’ coats never shed hair. But I made Sophie check she had her inhaler with her before we left, I know what she’s like. We weren’t taking any of her big hedgerow pictures, but some of her miniatures: charming studies of birds, bees, dragonflies and amphibians. We took boxes of these together with a portfolio containing prints of her larger works. She had, after a great deal of nagging from me, begun to paint pet portraits, but so far EB was her sole commission.
We took the road to Buckland. No sooner had we climbed the wooded hill towards the church and farmland opened out beneath a wide blue sky, than an irritating ping from my bag announced my mobile phone had returned to the land of the living, and a fuzzy buzzing noise told me that a call was coming in. ‘I bet that’s Elaine. Have a look, will you?’
By the time Sophie had dug the phone out of my bag, it had switched to voicemail. She listened as I pulled into a gateway to let a farm vehicle pass in the narrow road, a huge machine with spiky arms folded up in front of the cab like the claws of a praying mantis, something to do with hay cutting, probably: the long, dry spell meant that many farmers locally had managed a second cut.
‘Alan’s fine,’ she reported, phone to her ear, as the deeply cut treads of the machine’s giant tyres rolled past my window, bending my wing mirror out of position. ‘He’s had a stent fitted and he’s staying in hospital for a couple of nights. Elaine’s home and you can take EB back whenever you like.’
‘Would you text her and say I’ll be an hour or two?’
She nodded and got busy with her thumbs.
After we’d left Sophie at the collection of old stone farm buildings, which had been converted into the new gallery and arts centre, I took EB for another walk. At the end of the lane we sat on a drystone wall and gazed over fields of stubble scattered with golden rolls of hay. A second crop had been harvested here. In the distance, a machine was lifting the rolled bales into a pile, wrapping them in black plastic ready for silage, an activity we didn’t usually see in September.
Back to the arts centre, where we waited for Sophie in the shiny new cafe and tested their crumbly apple cake. She appeared after another twenty minutes, grinning broadly and empty-handed except for her portfolio.
‘They’re taking all my paintings,’ she announced happily, ‘sale or return.’
I offered tea and cake in celebration but she declined, and we decided to get going. I put EB into the back of the van, but Sophie decided to hang on to her portfolio and we started off for home.
‘This is going to deplete your stock at the shop,’ I said, after we’d rattled over a cattle grid and turned onto the road that led home across the moor. The rough grass on either side was parched after the drying winds of summer, the leaves of stunted hawthorn bushes already withering and yellow. ‘You’re going to have to get busy with that paintbrush.’
‘Actually,’ she admitted after a sly, sideways glance at me, ‘they asked for some local scenes.’
I groaned. ‘Isn’t that what I’m always telling you?’ I took my hand off the wheel to wave an arm at the rolling grandeur of the moor around us, a ragged granite tor like a ruined castle snagging the horizon. ‘Local scenes sell!’
She ignored this completely and switched on the radio.
‘Honestly, Soph, what’s wrong with painting Buckland Church or Hound Tor?’
‘Everybody does it!’ she said dismissively. This was an argument we’d had before. ‘Can you smell burning?’
‘Don’t change the subject. What about some paintings of Ashburton? I’ve got lovely photos of St Andrew’s churchyard in the snow … Yes I can!’ There was a definite whiff of burning and a blue haze was rapidly filling the cab. ‘I’m going to pull over.’ I’d barely made it to the verge before tiny bright flames began licking their way up from under the dashboard. Sophie dabbed at them ineffectually with her fingers.
‘Out!’ I ordered her, switching off the engine. ‘Get out now!’
She already had the passenger door open, her portfolio clutched to her chest. Smoke was pouring from under the dashboard, hot and black. I had just the time to rescue my bag from the footwell. I held my breath and grabbed the vehicle’s paperwork from the glove compartment. ‘Ring the fire brigade!’ I yelled, coughing. ‘I’ll get EB out of the back.’
CHAPTER TWO
I count that moment when I tried the handle on the back door of the van and it refused to turn as one of the worst of my life so far. It had never stuck before. I jiggled it. It wouldn’t budge. I pressed down hard. Inside the van EB was barking, trying to tell me how wrong things were.
‘It’s OK, EB!’ I called. But it wasn’t. I yanked on the handle, bracing one foot on the adjoining door to give myself extra pulling power. The smoke from the engine was blowing back towards me, rolling over the roof of the van, stinging my eyes, making me cough. It must be filling up inside. I looked around me desperately for a stick, anything I could use for leverage. Behind me I could hear Sophie screaming down the phone.
There was a fist-sized lump of granite lying in the ditch and I picked it up, raised it in both hands and clobbered the handle with it. No good. I could hear EB scrabbling at the door with his claws, whimpering to be let out. I rushed to the front of the van. Could I get back inside and rip out the grille behind the driver’s seat, get him out that way? But I couldn’t get near it. Choking black smoke belched from the open doors; it would be impossible to see, let alone breathe. Orange flames were shooting up from under the bonnet, the air above quivering with heat, with a suffocating smell of boiling oil and melting plastic, of engine fluids sizzling, getting way too hot. How long before the fire brigade could get here? There was a retained service at Ashburton, but by the time they were mustered it would be too late for poor EB. There was a bang from the engine, the bonnet burst open, flames and sparks spiralling into the sky. Those sparks could set the dry countryside alight. I didn’t care. All I cared about was EB.
I tried the stone again, raising it above my head. I could hear the terrible sounds of EB choking. Don’t let him burn, I whispered to whatever god might be listening, please, don’t let him burn. I brought the stone crashing down, feeling the shockwave up my arms. Sophie was running about in the road, screeching. I tried the rock again. Dimly I heard a voice ordering me to stand back. It barely registered before I was thrust aside and a fist with a lump hammer in it struck a mighty blow at the lock. The door burst open and smoke poured from inside as EB’s inert little body was hauled out and carried to the side of the road. I followed, dazed.
A Cherokee Jeep was parked a few yards behind us, its doors wide open. Sophie must have flagged it down. Its driver was laying EB down on the grassy verge. An older man, in baggy tweed jacket and a flat cap, was approaching my blazing van with a car fire extinguisher.
‘He’s not dead?’ I knelt down next to EB.
His rescuer was rubbing EB’s furry chest. ‘Come on, little fella,’ he kept saying encouragingly. ‘Come on.’ But EB didn’t move.
‘EB, please!’ I begged stupidly.
Sirens in the distance announced the fact that the fire brigade was coming. A few moments later it arrived, blue lights flashing, air brakes hissing as the engine drew to a halt. Suddenly the road was full of men in yellow helmets and big boots, and hoses unreeling; all too late for my van.
‘Got a casualty, have we?’ A young fireman squatted down by the roadside and then yelled over his shoulder. ‘Ed! Bring out the MARS, will you?’
The MARS turned out to be a resuscitation machine about the size of a diver’s air tank. The fireman fitted a plastic mask over EB’s muzzle and turned on the oxygen. After a few heart-stopping moments, EB’s head jerked, and he snuffled and coughed his way back to life.
‘Oh, thank God!’ I cried, as he raised his head. The fireman gave EB a few more deep breaths of oxygen before he removed the mask, by which time his patient was already trying to scrabble it off his nose with his front paws.
‘He’ll be fine,’ he assured me, picking up his machine. I drew EB onto my lap and cuddled him hard, rubbing my face into his smoky-smelling fur.
‘And the next!’ the fireman called out cheerfully. It was only then I looked around for Sophie. She was sitting in a heap on the grass verge, white-faced and in serious danger of overdosing on her inhaler.
‘Oh, Soph!’ I hurried over, clutching EB in my arms like a baby. ‘Are you all right?’
‘The petrol tank won’t explode, will it?’ she gasped nervously as the van gave vent to a belch of black smoke.
‘Contrary to what they’d have you believe in films,’ the fireman replied a little severely, as he fitted the mask over her face, ‘petrol tanks rarely explode.’
I looked around for our rescuer, but he was standing by his jeep, barking orders into his mobile phone. His companion, the old guy with the flat cap and fire extinguisher, hovered deferentially at his elbow, an air of subservience about him; the younger man was obviously the boss.
So I sat by the roadside, and watched the fire brigade’s finest having a wonderful time hosing down the smoking, blackened hulk that had once been my van. Steam rose hissing and fizzing, and shiny rivulets of water ran off the tarmac into the grass.
‘I hope you’re insured!’ one of the fire crew called to me jovially.
Of course I was insured: third party, fire and theft. Trouble was, my insurance company was not going to pay out megabucks for a clapped-out old Astra. It was worth next to nothing. The paint job on the sides had cost more than the vehicle; the paint job that was now just a leprous rash of blisters on scorched and buckled metal.
The fireman with the MARS machine, whose name, he told us, was Andy, had finished with Sophie.
‘Will she need to go to hospital?’
‘I’m all right,’ she assured me wheezily. ‘And I’m not going to sit around in casualty for hours just to be told to go home and rest.’
Andy gestured with his mask towards me.
‘I don’t need it.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he insisted.
‘Juno, you do look dreadful,’ Sophie added solemnly.
It was only as I breathed in cool, clear oxygen that I realised how sore my chest and throat felt from inhaling scorching smoke. I began to cough. Andy told me to relax and breathe deeply. Whilst I sat there, breathing obediently, he went away and came back with a can with which he sprayed the pads of EB’s feet. ‘Floor of that van would have been hot,’ he remarked in a mastery of understatement. ‘This will cool his paws down.’
Sophie put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. ‘I’m so sorry about your van. What are you going to do?’
I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. I didn’t even know how I was going to get us home. The firemen had obviously done all they could. They were rolling up their hoses.
‘Well, it could have been worse,’ I coughed. ‘If this had happened on the way there instead of on the way back, we might have lost all your lovely paintings as well.’
‘We got EB out.’ Sophie smiled, rubbing his head. ‘That’s the main thing.’
‘Well, someone did.’ EB was huddled in my lap, very subdued, very frightened. He licked my hand.
‘Ah, ladies!’ cried a cheerful voice and we all looked up. The tall figure of EB’s saviour was standing in the road in front of us. ‘Is everyone OK?’
‘Thanks to you,’ I told him. ‘I can’t thank you enough. I—’
He dismissed my thanks with a wave of his hand. ‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘damsels in distress and all that!’
He squatted by us and stroked EB’s head. ‘How is the little fellow?’ This was the first time I had looked at him properly. He was younger than I’d thought, about my age. Beneath short blonde hair he had lively blue eyes and an engaging smile. He was pretty bloody gorgeous, as a matter of fact.
‘Now, what’s going to happen is this,’ he began, as if he were an army officer addressing chaps about to go on a mission, ‘I’ve phoned a break-down firm and they’re sending out a lorry to haul away your van. Well, what’s left of it,’ he added, grinning. ‘It can stay at your local garage until your insurance assessor arrives. Moss,’ he indicated the old chap in the flat cap, ‘will stand by here until the break-down lorry arrives.’
Moss did not look thrilled, but he was obviously under orders. ‘Sir,’ he muttered.
‘Meantime,’ our hero continued, ‘I will drive you ladies home.’
‘We live in Ashburton.’
‘No trouble at all,’ he assured me.
‘Well, thank you, Mr …’
‘Jamie.’ He held out a large hand. ‘Jamie Westershall.’
We shook hands and introduced ourselves. We all stood up. I was still carrying EB, who whimpered when I tried to put him down.
‘I’m afraid I shall have to call in at home on the way,’ Jamie warned us, as we clambered into the back of the jeep. ‘I hope that’s not inconvenient.’
The fire brigade were climbing back into their engine and slamming doors. As we pulled away, we left Moss standing gloomily in the road, next to the smouldering, blackened hulk that had once been my pride and joy.
‘Um, how will Moss get home?’ Sophie asked, turning back to look at him.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Jamie responded breezily. ‘He’ll think of something.’ He pulled out his phone as he drove along, obviously unconcerned about the rule of law. ‘Danny!’ he called loudly after a few seconds. ‘James here. You still at Home Farm? About to pack up? Excellent! How did we do? All clear! No reactors at all? Well, that’s fantastic news. Listen, you couldn’t come up to the house when you’re done, could you? I’ve got a little casualty I’d like you to run your eye over. You can? Splendid!’ He disconnected. ‘My vet,’ he explained, thrusting his phone back into his pocket, ‘he’s just been checking the herd for TB.’
‘You’re a farmer?’ Sophie asked.
‘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 yellow 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?’
