The Scent of Murder (12 page)

Tristram, she was sure, was thinking about the remains from the river bed. Dody’s revelation that the bones had been there ten years at most had affected him more than she could have imagined. But his disappointment over the bones’ age, or lack thereof, had been eclipsed by a deeper anxiety, she felt, one that he had so far failed to share with her. What a dark horse her beau was turning out to be.

‘Tristram, whom do you wish to call?’ Lady Fitzgibbon intoned.

Florence glanced at his face. His eyes were closed tightly, his expression one of grim concentration.

‘Close your eyes please, Florence,’ Lady Fitzgibbon reminded her.

Florence did as she was told. There seemed to be a shift in the air around them. A draught brushed her cheek and she fought the urge to peep again.

Tristram spoke. ‘I’m not sure of the name of the person I wish to call. I see someone in worn clothes, running in a panic near a river, being pursued by someone or something. Please. Tell me who you are.’

The draught became a strong breeze.

‘Are you in this room at the moment, spirit?’ Lady Fitzgibbon asked.

The window began to rattle. Florence heard a gentle rustle, felt the breath of the blowing curtain against her cheek.

Dody heard the steady stream of water as she entered her bedroom. Annie emerged from the bathroom wiping her damp hands on her apron. ‘I heard you’d returned, miss, and thought you might like a hot bath. It must have been cold shopping in Brighton.’

Dody’s jaw tightened. ‘I was not shopping. I had a business meeting.’

‘Anything you say, miss. And how is Mr Pike?’ Annie, having worked for Dody’s parents from a young age, shared the same attitude towards the police as most of Dody’s family and never bothered to hide her disapproval of Pike.

‘You mean
Chief Inspector
Pike, my work colleague.’ Dody spoke coolly.

‘If that’s what you choose to call him, miss.’

‘Whatever that remark is supposed to mean, I will forget I heard it. Where is my sister?’

‘In the library, Miss Dody.’

It was amazing how a day that had started with such promise could end so dismally. Dody made her way down the stairs and along angular corridors, barely noticing anything but the throb of her sore shoulder and the rising feeling of pressure in her head. She needed to talk to her sister and vent some of her frustrations. Florence would understand, and might even help her devise a scheme to meet up with Pike. Preoccupied with her own thoughts, Dody didn’t pay much attention to the closed library door. Forgetting her manners, she knocked and entered before permission had been granted.

She stopped in her tracks. The library was dark, aside from some flickering candles on a table eerily lighting up the face of her sister, who seemed to be alone in the gloom.

‘Florence, what on earth are you doing here in the dark?’ she asked.

‘Dody!’ Florence cried, slamming her palm upon the table and almost upsetting the candles.

Next to Florence a figure jumped to its feet and knocked over a chair. ‘I meant to lock the door, blast it.’ It was Tristram’s voice. He moved to a switch near Dody and turned the electric light on.

Dody noticed the veiled Lady Fitzgibbon and gasped. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, feeling her cheeks flame with embarrassment. ‘Please excuse my intrusion, Lady Fitzgibbon.’

Her Ladyship remained seated at the table. Slowly she moved her hands to her face and lifted her veil. Her skin, coated with enamel make-up, was even paler than usual, her deep-set eyes shadowed and blinking in the bright light. If Dody had been of a superstitious nature, she pondered, she might well have believed she was gazing into the face of a white witch.

‘May I see you upstairs, Florence, when you have completed your business?’ Dody turned hastily on her heel, only to find her departure halted by Florence’s hand on her arm.

‘Dody, it’s imperative that you don’t tell anyone about this.’

Dody shook her head. ‘Tell anyone about what? I don’t understand.’ Then it dawned on her. Her tension eased; she understood now. ‘Parlour games? I can’t see any harm myself, but whatever you wish. Again, my most sincere apologies, Lady Fitzgibbon.’

‘That’s quite all right, my dear. It was Tristram’s idea. He understands, don’t you, darling?’

Tristram may have understood the interruption, but he was not happy about it. He righted the upturned chair with a huffing sigh and moved over to the window, flinging back the curtains. With his hands clasped behind his back, he pretended to study the decorative tracery on the glass.

‘Dody, we need to talk.’ Florence glanced towards Tristram. ‘I think we should tell her, don’t you, Tristram? Is that all right, Lady Fitzgibbon? Dody won’t tell a soul, will you?’

Dody attempted her most sincere expression and shook her head. She was still not completely sure what Florence was talking about, nor what was worrying her so much.

‘You do what you think is best, my dear. It’s not much of a secret, really. I’m sure your sister knows exactly what we have been doing, anyway. Do you agree, Tristram?’

Tristram shrugged his broad shoulders and turned from the window. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Look, I really think I should leave,’ Dody said, feeling more uncomfortable by the second.

‘No, it is I who should leave,’ Tristram insisted. ‘I’ll go for a ride, get some wind in my hair. I’ll see you at dinner, ladies, Aunt Airlie.’

‘And I must go also and dress for dinner.’ Lady Fitzgibbon rose from her chair and blew out the candles. Nodding to the sisters, she glided from the library on her nephew’s arm.

Florence flopped back into her chair and folded her arms. ‘Parlour games?’ She echoed Dody’s earlier words with incredulity.

‘I’m sorry, Florence, but that’s what it looked like to me.’

‘Lady Fitzgibbon is a spiritualist. She takes her gift very seriously, and Tristram does too. You reacted just as I thought you would, which is why I avoided telling you what we had planned. In truth, you are back earlier than I expected. I had hoped you would be none the wiser.’

Dody dropped into the chair vacated by Lady Fitzgibbon. Something hard and uncomfortable pressed into her back. She reached behind a cushion and removed a small tambourine, giving it a jingle.

Florence put a hand up to her face. ‘Oh!’ she said with some hesitation. ‘I expect that helps her to summon up the spirits.’

Dody raised sceptical eyebrows and tossed the tambourine back onto the chair. For the first time since entering the room she took proper note of her surroundings. Bookshelves, filled with leather-bound volumes, extended up two of the walls to the high ceiling, the shelves divided by a banistered walkway reached via a handsome wooden staircase. Dark wainscoting covered those walls bereft of books, punctured by alcoves and decorative nooks. From these, the glass eyes of stuffed specimens stared at her from transparent domes and cases.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Dody said. ‘The books came with the house but the animals were collected by Sir Desmond.’

Florence’s worried face softened with a flicker of amusement.

Dody congratulated herself. It was a wise move to make no comment on the tambourine.

She turned her gaze towards a stuffed bear standing in the corner of the library. It bore an uncanny resemblance to Sir Desmond. Had Lady Fitzgibbon stumbled upon an ingenious way of controlling her brute of a husband? Dody wondered. And how long had she been playing this game? Was he frightened of his wife because of her perceived powers? He
was
deeply superstitious; Dody had seen that for herself. Fear might well explain his deference to his wife, his patronage of the girls’ sewing school and the other charities of which he was a benefactor — actions that seemed somewhat out of character for him. It might also explain why he had sponsored Lady Fitzgibbon’s bid to become a workhouse guardian. Secrets and fear. What an unfortunate way to conduct a marriage.

‘Lady Fitzgibbon belongs to the Society for Psychical Research — the same society that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle belongs to,’ Florence explained.

‘I am aware of the Society. Mother talks about it on occasion. She says it’s nothing but hocus-pocus.’ Dody paused. ‘I’m sorry my appearance upset Tristram. I will apologise again to him later.’

‘Oh, Dody,’ Florence sighed, ‘he’s been so caught up in these wretched bones; I’m afraid he took the news that they were not ancient very badly. He wanted his aunt to use her powers to make contact with their owner.’

‘And did she?’

‘No. She was about to when you came in.’

Dody frowned. ‘I’m sorry, but perhaps it was just as well. That kind of preoccupation is not healthy.’

‘I’m sure it’s not, but he and his aunt swear that when a life is snapped, something of the vitality and energy of that person is left behind. It makes sense to me. Tristram is simply desperate to find the owner of those bones.’

‘I think he should leave that to the police.’

‘At least it has diverted him from his other preoccupation — that of proving that the Piltdown bones are not as old as they are claimed to be, and that he could find something older.’ Florence paused and took a deep breath. ‘Uncle Peter spoke to me, Dody, I’m sure of it. We were riding through the forest together. I even heard sleigh bells.’

Dody glanced at the tambourine and tried not to scoff. Florence’s next remark took her by surprise.

‘Do you like Tristram, Dody? It’s important that I know how you feel about him.’

‘I do, actually. I wasn’t sure at first, but now I am. Just as long as he doesn’t fill your mind with too much nonsense.’

‘I’m glad, because I think I’m in love with him.’

Dody reached for her sister’s hand. ‘I suspected as much.’

‘He’s not the man you think he is when you first meet him,’ Flo rushed on. ‘There’s a lot more to Tristram than meets the eye. I mean, you saw how he was just now. There’s some kind of pain inside him that he won’t let me reach. I think it has something to do with his background. I don’t know what to do about it, how to help him.’

‘I expect he will tell you, when he’s ready to.’ Dody searched her sister’s face and saw the shadow of things left unsaid, but resisted the urge to probe. ‘It seems that both of us are faced with complications.’

‘How rude of me; I should have asked. How is Pike?’

‘We had so little time together I can hardly say.’ She explained how their assignation ended prematurely when she was obliged to return to the Hall with Sir Desmond.

‘But he is staying at the Green Witch?’

Dody looked at the fob pinned to her blouse, the despondency in her face reflected back at her from the scratched glass. ‘He should be there by now.’

‘Well then, you must go to him.’

Dody turned her face away from Florence, lest her sister read the frustration and desperation in it. Dody was the rational one, the one who always kept her emotions under control.

‘Yes, Florence, but how?’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dody slipped Philips a generous number of coins from her purse and struggled down from the cart, her movements hampered by her sodden skirt and petticoats. The earlier drizzle had turned into a violent rain squall and she’d sat huddled under her umbrella for most of the journey to the Green Witch, absorbing water up from the toes, like a wick. Philips accepted the bribe willingly, but he was unimpressed by the rain, and showed it by whipping the pony into a sudden canter as soon as Dody alighted from the cart, showering her with watery mud. She’d told him she would make her own way back to the Hall.

Umbrellas bloomed from the sheltered porch and she put her own among them to dry before pushing her way through the heavy door into the stone-flagged entrance. Drunken voices spilled from the bar area to the jangle of an off-key piano.

‘On a tree by a river a little tom-tit,’ sang a familiar tenor.

‘Sang, “Willow, tit-willow, tit-willow”,’ joined the drunken rabble.

Pulling her dry scarf out from under her coat, Dody wrapped it around her head like a hood and pressed her way through the room. Tendrils of smoke curled from crowded tables to produce a low-hanging fug. The smell of wet clothing, hops and unwashed bodies almost made her retch. She shuffled across the sawdust-scattered floorboards, and passed a table of men playing dominoes and another occupied by a group deep in heated debate over the latest sheep sales. An unoccupied bench in an inglenook near the piano caught her eye and she headed towards it.

And I said to him, ‘Dicky-bird why do you sit

Singing, “Willow, tit-willow, tit-willow”?’

Pike’s eyes met hers and he smiled, increasing the tempo of the song.

‘Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?’ I cried,

‘Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?’

With a shake of his poor little head, he replied,

‘Oh, willow, tit-willow, tit-willow!’

Pike snapped the piano lid closed. The crowd booed and hissed. They’d only just found their voices, they complained. Some growled aggressively and cursed him for spoiling their fun. Dody was conscious of several men in farm labourers’ smocks following Pike with bleary eyes as he made his way over to her. As if sensing trouble, the barman called for silence then announced that the skittle alley was now vacant and ready for new players. The room immediately lost half of its occupants.

Pike was wearing a collarless shirt and patched tweed trousers held up by knotted braces. If Dody had not known him so well, she might not have recognised him as the dapper gentleman she had met only that afternoon in Brighton. One of the few indications that this was the same man was the slight favouring of his right leg. He lowered himself onto the curved stone bench next to her and took her hand.

‘You’re freezing.’

‘I’ll thaw out.’ Indeed, her clothes had already begun to steam. The light from the fire danced around the inglenook and spread to the larger room, winking off horse-brasses, pans and copper kettles hanging on the walls and standing on shelves.

Pike fetched them both a tankard of hot spiced mead from the bar and ordered bread, cheese and fruit to share. Dody broke the warm loaf into manageable portions and told him how she had managed to slip away from the Hall, then recounted her meeting with the local police. While she talked he pulled the bullet from his pocket and tossed it from one hand to the other.