The Attenbury Emeralds (25 page)

‘I’d rather stay with you,’ said Harriet firmly.

They had reached the door of the Dower House, and they hesitated there. ‘Hope Bunter is coming up on the morning train tomorrow to take photographs of the ruin for the insurance claim,’ Peter said. ‘Shall she bring your typewriter and manuscript folder?’

‘Perhaps she’d better,’ said Harriet. ‘And I’d better find a cubby-hole to work in.’

‘And in the meantime, come and say hello to Mary and Charles,’ he said.

Charles said, ‘So sorry, Peter. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

Peter said, ‘Not up your street, I think, Charles. The fire officer-in-chief thinks it was an electrical fault, and God knows when the place was last re-wired. All the old gaslight pipes were still there. But thank you.’

Lady Mary flung her arms round her brother and said, ‘Hard on you. I know I’d simply
hate
it.’

They were all avoiding the Hall. They could still smell it on the air; they could see the ragged, blackened, partly collapsed structure on the gentle rise out of all the windows, for the Dower House faced the Hall. But somehow nobody felt like walking across there to have a closer look. It was as if they were all waiting for each other. After lunch, when Peter has seen the undertaker, Harriet thought.

When they did set out, the family all came too. ‘You don’t have to do this just yet, Mother,’ Harriet said.

‘Better face it, dear,’ the Dowager Duchess replied.

‘Wrap up warm, then,’ Harriet said.

As the little group walked up the hill, Harriet fell back, and walked beside Charles, leaving Lady Mary to walk in step with Peter. Their childhood home, she was thinking. They were not alone when they reached the drive in front of the house. A solitary helmeted fireman remained.

‘You can’t go too near, sir, I’m afraid,’ he said to Peter. ‘The stone bit will be safe when everything has cooled down, in a day or two. And the part beyond it.’

‘The stone bit?’ said Peter. ‘It’s all a timber-framed Elizabethan house, behind the Jacobean frontage.’

‘The fire hit solid stone, sir, and stopped. You can see for yourself.’

And so they could. There was a blackened stone wall standing two storeys high. On one side of it all was a pile of scorched rubble. Beyond it the last stretch of the frontage stood almost unscathed. The blackened wall had a ground-floor arcade in it, and an upper storey of arched windows all filled with rubble. In the heat of the fire one of the blocked arches had disgorged its filling, and they could see that the wall was four feet thick. They could see also that the Jacobean frontage had been built in front of this stone building, simply sweeping past it left and right to make the immensely grand façade that until yesterday had been the glory of the house.

‘Good God!’ said Peter. ‘It looks Norman.’

‘Peter, do you remember that doorway that was like a little corridor, between the drawing-room and the green bedroom?’ Mary asked him. ‘It was all panelled in oak – and we thought it was too thick, and it must have had a priest’s hole in it? Do you remember?’

‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘We never found the priest’s hole. And now we seem to have found the original house; the one that Margaret Bredon brought into the family in the fourteenth century. Scorned and neglected, and covered over…and look what it has done for us now; it has saved the east wing, and, above all, the library.’

‘You awful Wimseys!’ said Helen. ‘All that fuss about pictures and books and the blasted library; and I’ll bet my socks that nobody has given even a passing thought to the jewellery.’

‘I’m afraid if you didn’t think of it yourself, Helen, probably not,’ said the Dowager Duchess.

‘Oh, I don’t mean my
own
jewels,’ said Helen. ‘I grabbed those as I left my bedroom. I mean the family jewels – all that Tudor stuff. Unwearable and worth a fortune.’

Harriet paid no heed to this exchange. She was seeing in her mind’s eye – and she had a very agile mind’s eye – a little stone house, gable end on to the old frontage. She saw that to the east of it a wing of the Elizabethan half-timbered house still stood. She imagined it all cleaned and made good. It would be very curious and unsymmetrical. And in the stumps of the walls of the ruined part of the house she could imagine a formal garden; a physic garden such as a medieval doctor might have planted. She stood there bemused, and in love, as she had once as a small girl been bemused by the odd, elaborate house called Talboys, that Peter had bought her for a wedding gift.

They all looked their fill, and then quietly, one by one, turned back to the shelter of the Dower House, standing elegant and undamaged under the cool autumn sky.

‘Bunter, where is
The Times
?’ asked Peter the following morning. ‘Is the death notice in?’

‘It is, Your Grace,’ said Bunter. He produced a sheet of newsprint, and laid it carefully on a side table in the breakfast-room, alongside the usual display of copies of
Punch, Tatler
and
Country Life
. The birth, marriage and death notices were on the page.

Gerald Christian Wimsey, 16th Duke of Denver. Suddenly, on 31st of October…

Peter picked up the page. ‘Where is the rest of the paper?’ he asked.

‘I took the liberty, my lord, of withdrawing the rest of the issue…’

Just then Mary and Helen entered the room, and advanced to the breakfast table. Peter caught Bunter’s eye, and the two men left the room without a word spoken.

‘Is it very bad?’ Peter asked, when the door had closed behind them.

‘I’m afraid it is, Your Grace.’

‘I had better see it. Can you bring it to my room where we can look at it quietly?’

‘There are stories in all the papers, m’lord.’

‘Bring them all. We’d better know about it.’

Banner headlines. MURDER TRIAL DUKE DIES IN FIRE…The Duke of Denver has died during the evacuation of Bredon Hall, the family seat, which caught fire on the night of 31st October. Violence and sudden death are not new to the Duke and his family. He inherited the dukedom on his father’s death in a hunting accident in 1911. In 1924 he was tried for murder, and acquitted, being the only person in modern times to have been tried by a full session of the House of Lords, thus exercising the right of every British citizen to be tried by a jury of his peers. The Duke at first declined to defend himself, saying that it was on a point of honour. The trial was a sensation at the time, and brought the Duke worldwide notoriety. On his acquittal he retired to his family seat, Bredon Hall in Norfolk, and devoted himself to managing his estates. His experience in the House of Lords did not prevent him from frequently attending to speak on rural affairs. He was sixty-six. His only son, the Viscount St George, has predeceased him, killed while serving as a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain.

The title will devolve upon his brother, Lord Peter Wimsey, whose reputation as a private detective was enhanced by the evidence he gave in his brother’s trial, leading to the acquittal. The family name, however, will not be free of scandal, because the new Duchess, alias the novelist Harriet Vane, was also tried in 1929 for the murder of her lover, Philip Boyes. There was a hung jury, and by the time a second trial was convened Lord Peter Wimsey had assembled enough evidence against another suspect to secure her release without a stain on her character. Lord Peter now becomes the 17th Duke of Denver…Peter laid down the paper. ‘Are the rest of them like this?’ he asked Bunter.

‘The rest are far worse, I’m afraid, Your Grace,’ he said.

‘Do they all pick on Harriet?’

‘They all mention her, even the ones mostly interested in the House of Lords.’

Their voices must have been heard by Harriet, who walked through the communicating door and said, ‘What’s up, Peter?’

Helplessly he indicated the papers. ‘I would have spared you this,’ he said.

‘I would soon have heard,’ she said crisply. She picked up
The Times
, and read it. ‘Let me see the gutter press.’

Bunter said, ‘All here, my lady.’

Peter flinched as he saw her reading. ‘Why do they have to drag up all that stuff?’ he said.

‘Nature of the beast,’ she replied.

‘Horrible for you,’ he said.

‘Never mind me,’ she said, ‘what will it be like for the boys when all their classmates get wind of this? And do they even know they are the children of a murderess? Acquitted, of course. Have we ever told them?’

‘I suppose I was going to tell them some time. They must have heard rumours, but now it will be wildfire.’ Then, suddenly decisive he said, ‘Let’s get them out of there. They will have to be here for the funeral anyway. I’ll ring both the schools and get them to put the boys on trains. Is that the right decision, Harriet?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s the best we can do.’

Bunter’s ruse with the papers did not work for long. The papers were asked for.

‘Carrion crows!’ said the elder Duchess in disgust. ‘Carrion crows is what they are.’

Helen said, ‘It’s no good wringing your hands over the newspapers. Peter’s ludicrous occupation and ludicrous marriage lay us open to all this. Touch pitch and be defiled.’

White as a sheet, Peter stalked out of the room. The Dowager Duchess said, ‘Would you rather, Helen, that there had been nobody to help Gerald save his life?’

Helen said, ‘I would rather he had not got himself into such a demeaning situation.’

While this conversation was going on Charles looked at the paper. ‘They’ll be besieging the gates by now,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can drum up a bit of support from the local constabulary to keep them at bay. But then I’ll have to go back to London.’

A phone call from Bredon’s housemaster. ‘I have young Peter Bunter in my office, Lady Peter. He tells me that he is part of the family, and asks if he may accompany your son to Denver. Shall I send him with Bredon, or keep him at school?’

‘Send him,’ said Harriet.

‘How very gentlemanly of young Peter,’ Harriet said to Bunter.

‘Presumptuous of him,’ said Bunter stiffly.

‘No, Bunter,’ said Harriet. ‘Just accurate. Of course he is part of the family.’

Paul and Roger arrived from their prep school by lunchtime. The boys from Eton arrived in the early evening. They looked both solemn and uneasy. Bunter immediately divided them, sending young Peter to help his mother with the photography, and taking the Wimsey boys to their father in the Dower House.

‘Ask Harriet to join us, would you, Bunter?’ said Peter.

Harriet arrived, and hugged her sons in turn. They permitted this unresponsively with the lordly condescension of the young.

‘Sit down, boys,’ Peter said. ‘Your mother and I need to talk to you. Have you seen the newspapers this morning?’

Bredon blushed scarlet, and Paul looked down at his hands. Answer enough.

‘It is not your uncle’s history that we need to talk about,’ said Peter. ‘That can wait. It is the part of the news reports that concern your mother.’

Paul looked up, and said brightly, ‘Were you really tried for murder, Mother? I knew Dad had got you out of some scrape, but…’

‘He did indeed,’ said Harriet. ‘He got me out of the hangman’s noose.’

The misery in the room was almost tangible. ‘Your mother and I would like to tell you about it now, very fully, so that you know the truth and will be defended against the sort of thing in the papers this morning. I think you must know that your parents are very happy together. What you now see is that the past can jump up and upset things at a moment’s notice. Now shall I do the telling, Harriet, or will you?’

‘You, I think, Peter.’

Peter began by telling them how he had first seen their mother in the dock at the Old Bailey, on trial for murdering her lover, and how he had at once been unshakeably convinced of her innocence. Quietly and carefully, he explained that some of the jury had disbelieved her account. They had not been able to understand why she had left Philip when he offered to marry her, if she had been willing to live with him while he declared that on principle he didn’t believe in marriage. He explained why she had bought arsenic. Being well used to their mother’s research for her detective stories, they would find that perfectly credible?

The boys nodded. Peter continued to tell them how the jury had not been able to agree, and there had been a retrial. That had given him the time he needed to solve the crime. He went through all the stages of the detection, to how he had found the real culprit, and entrapped him. How Harriet had been told that she left the court without a stain on her character. Six years later Harriet had accepted his proposal of marriage. Did they have any questions?

Bredon said to Harriet, ‘Why did it take you such a long time to marry Father? Couldn’t you see he’d make a jolly sort of husband?’

‘It was very stupid of me,’ Harriet said, ‘but after the trial it took me a while to clear my head.’

‘It must have been so awful for you, Mother!’ said Paul. He had tears in his eyes.

‘It was perfectly dreadful while it lasted,’ Harriet said. ‘But I don’t regret it. If it hadn’t happened I would never have been brought together with your father. I would not now be married to him, and I would not, could not, have you, my dear sons.’