The Scent of Murder (17 page)

She gasped out her story, told him how Tristram had fallen from his horse while jumping a hedge. ‘After I left Tristram, I found Sir Desmond and his shooting party in a field near the woods, not too far away. They picked Tristram up in the cart and took him to the Hall,’ she gulped. ‘Sir Desmond was furious more than anything. He looked at the saddle, saw how the girth had worn through, and caused a terrible commotion back at the Hall stables — I thought he was going to murder the groom. One of the men from the shooting party stepped in, thank goodness, and prevented him from practically beating the old man to death. Someone suggested the police should be informed but Sir Desmond said it wasn’t necessary, that it had obviously been an accident caused by the groom’s negligence. I was still on Tristram’s horse when this was being discussed and galloped off to find you.’

‘But you told no one where you were going?’

‘I could have just been riding off to stem my grief, for all they knew. Part of me just had to get away from the place, and, besides, no one was letting me near Tristram. Pike, I felt so helpless seeing Tristram like that, unable to move, and not being able to do anything for him … it was a terrible—’

She broke off and began to weep anew. Pike squeezed her hand and tried to offer her comfort. ‘At least he has Dody there to care for him.’

‘But that’s the point, Pike! Dody’s not there. She left in the middle of the night and went home.’

‘Went home?’ Pike frowned. He had trouble comprehending what Florence had just said. What had happened to make Dody suddenly change her mind about meeting him tonight and go home?

The whistling kettle broke into his thoughts. He got up from the floor to make the tea, returned with two mugs and pulled up a chair next to Florence.

‘Why did she leave?’ he asked, continuing to rack his brains.

Florence did not answer immediately. ‘The bite. I think it became infected.’

Pike shook his head, baffled. He’d spotted the purple discolouration on her otherwise unblemished skin and she’d laughed when he’d attempted to kiss it better. While it had looked painful, it was surely not severe enough to cause her to up and leave. He looked carefully at Florence. She was hiding something; he could tell by the way her eyes shifted around the room, avoiding contact with his own.

‘You must go to her, Pike,’ Florence continued. ‘Tell her Tristram needs her. The local doctor is on leave. Tristram needs Dody. Please, Pike. I know she’ll look after him day and night.’

‘You want
me
to go to your family home?’ Pike got up from his chair and began to pace about the small room.

Her tea still untouched, Florence got up, snatched some paper from the type-writing machine and wrote down her parents’ address. ‘Someone has to, and I can’t leave Tristram. In fact, I should be getting back.’ She handed Pike the note. ‘Thank you, Pike, and I’m sorry for my blubbing. I feel much better now you have resolved to fetch Dody.’

‘But—’

‘Goodbye, God speed. You will be quickest if you take the train.’ She kissed his cheek and then she was gone.

Pike ran a hand through his hair. He felt torn in all directions. He needed to talk to the two officers he had dispatched to Piltdown to see how the search for guns was progressing, but he was also desperate to find out why Dody had left so suddenly, as well as to keep his word and fetch her to care for Tristram. Two reasons to go and one to stay. That settled it.

He glanced down at the written address in his hand. If he caught the next train to Tunbridge Wells, the nearest station to the McCleland family home, he reasoned that he and Dody could be back by early evening then he could return to his duties. Yes, that’s what I’ll do, he decided. He picked up a pen, snatched another sheet of paper from the type-writing machine and wrote Berry a note, leaving it with the constable at the desk.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She is in the tack room, Sir Desmond’s loathsome weight on top of her once more, pounding and tearing into her most intimate places, driving the air from her lungs. And then something moves at the corner of her vision; it is Pike, staring down at her through eyes of inconsolable sorrow. He shudders, shakes his head and turns away.

‘Matthew!’ she attempts, but the gag mutes her screams. He either does not hear her or chooses not to look back.

A light danced before her eyes.

‘Matthew!’ she shrieked, waking herself up with a heart-pounding jolt.

‘Dody, it’s all right. Hush, child, you’re having a nightmare.’ Dody’s mother, Louise, put her lamp on the bedside table and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘The sun is rising, my darling. You’ll feel much better when it’s light.’

At home. Of course. The weight had been the heavy bedding. Her father would not allow fires in the bedrooms on anything but the coldest of winter nights.

Every muscle in Dody’s body danced and shivered. She reached for her own wrist and took her galloping pulse.

Her mother looked on, attempting to hide her concern with a smile. ‘Who is Matthew?’ Without waiting for an answer, she felt Dody’s forehead. ‘You seem to have a fever.’

Dody kicked at the sheet with her sticky feet, pushing them into the chill air. ‘I don’t know who Matthew is,’ she murmured, flushed. ‘I think I’m hot from the bad dream, not fever — that dreadful horse.’

She closed her eyes and allowed her mother to smooth her hair and tickle her cheek, something Louise had not done since Dody was a child. The dream vision of Pike’s face returned.

Louise McCleland parted the hair on Dody’s crown, stiff with dried blood. ‘And the ghastly creature kicked you too? Thank goodness it missed your face. Are you sure the wound doesn’t require a stitch?’

‘I took care of it myself last night, Mother, after you had gone back to bed.’

It had not been as grim as it sounded. Numb with cold, she’d hardly felt the needle pierce her flesh. Her greatest concern had been the persistent tremor of her fingers.

Now she heaved herself up in bed, asked her mother to pass her the hand mirror from her dressing table and pointed out the two neat stitches pricking the wound line. They would be well disguised by her hair once she had washed the blood from it. Not a bad job, she thought, even if she did say so herself.

‘Are you sure you have no fever?’ Louise asked.

‘I’m sure. My shoulder is feeling much better now that I’m home. The infection is already subsiding.’

‘You don’t want me to look at it?’

‘I have tended to it myself. I used the mirror — it’s fine. More than anything I was homesick. I just wanted to get away from that awful place.’ She shivered.

The lines deepened between her mother’s eyes. ‘But what of Florence? Will she be all right at the Hall by herself?’

Dody forced a smiled. ‘I have never seen Florence so happy.’

‘Because of Tristram?’

Dody nodded.

‘That is good news. Your father and I like Tristram very much.’

‘I’d like to stay in bed for the day, Mother. Can you please explain to Poppa? I’d hate him to think I was shirking whatever chores he has in mind for me today.’

‘When he heard you were home, he was hoping you might join him in the woods for a bird-watching session.’

Dody groaned. ‘At least
you
understand why I left home as soon as you bought the townhouse.’

‘You don’t have to explain to me. Sometimes I have to feign a meeting with my writers in London just so I can have a break from the rigours of this place.’ Louise kissed Dody’s cheek. ‘I’d better go now, dear. I promised Cook I’d help her this morning — she’s new and has no idea how to work the coarse flour for our black Russian bread.’

‘And has she got used to calling you by your Christian name, Mother?’

‘Oh, with servants that always takes a while.’

Dody pondered, not for the first time, how the servants, when out with their friends, must feel if they let slip their employers’ Christian names or mentioned they all travelled to church in the same carriage and dined at the same table. Surely they would be accused of acting above their station, subjected to ridicule, even ostracised from their kind. Mr and Mrs McCleland were Fabians, moneyed socialists, who, whenever possible, practised the ‘simple’ way of life. There were occasions, however, when the simple way of life became absurdly complicated.

No matter how commendable her parents’ views might be, and no matter how many opportunities their liberalism had provided for their daughters, there were times when they seemed naively blinded by their ideals. Having spent many of her early years in an English boarding school while her parents were living in their Russian utopia, Dody liked to think her views were more firmly grounded in reality. Any naivety on her part had been crushed as soon as she’d commenced her medical career, during which she’d witnessed the depravity of human beings from every walk of life. Poverty was no exoneration and neither was wealth — as her own recent terror at Sir Desmond’s hands had proved.

She tried to will away the thumping of her head. She should have expected him to have been lurking around the stables; he had complained about the thefts when they had driven back from Brighton together. If only she had taken the long way through the rain to the Hall’s back door.

‘Don’t bite your nails, dear.’ Louise’s voice broke into Dody’s thoughts.

With a start Dody removed her finger from her mouth. Lord, what has he done to me? she thought. It was a mistake to allow her mind to wander back to that horrific incident. Depression hovered like a dank fog and she attempted to shrug it off. She would not allow herself to become one of those who dwelled so much on the past that they could not live in the present. Fortunately, all she had suffered as a result of the incident was humiliation and a sore head, and neither was irreparable. Compared with many women, she had got off lightly.

She forced a smile as her mother got up to leave the room. But when the door closed, she rolled onto her side, wishing she could weep her feelings away and succumb to the welcome mists of sleep. Yet neither tears nor sleep would come.

Her bedroom remained much as it had been before she left home for the townhouse: bookshelves stacked with classics, her school hat lying next to Florence’s discarded one-eyed dolly, whose misery Dody had compounded with an above-the-elbow amputation. Ten-year-old Florence had not spoken to her for weeks after that. Several cross-stitched samplers of cloying verse hung on the wall, sewn under sufferance and following threats from her needlework teacher. She had excelled at the few academic subjects offered by her school, but did not seem to have the right brain circuitry for the manifold domestic tasks that students were required to master, such as cooking, singing, needlework and, most dismal of all, playing the pianoforte. How she had hated being so far away from her family. As if in the picture theatre, disconnected images flicked through her mind — midnight feasts, tuck-boxes, hockey matches and endless deportment and etiquette lessons: ‘Sit up straight and be on time.’

Her old teacher’s words were the last thing she recalled before she fell, at last, into a dreamless sleep.

In the afternoon, Dody left her bed and ventured downstairs, slipping into the kitchen just as her father swore in Russian and slammed his empty mug onto the knotted kitchen table.

At Fitzgibbon Hall she’d felt as if she had travelled back in time, but here at Tretawn Farm time seemed to have stood still. Any place her parents occupied seemed to take on a contradictory appearance of modern versus timeless values. It had been the same in Moscow, where their liberal views had been looked at with suspicion not only by the authorities, but also by the poor whom they had been so set on helping. Governed by such opposing forces, life was never dull at Tretawn Farm.

Unless they had house guests, Dody’s parents dined in the kitchen with the servants. The two laundry girls, who had also been taking their tea there, muttered excuses and took their leave. The yardman, George, had already gone, as had the parlour maid. The scullery maid was in the scullery sloshing at the pots and pans and Cook was having her afternoon nap. Nial McCleland had no notion of how his presence in the kitchen upset the staff; of how much happier they were when they had a full house and could carry out their downstairs duties undisturbed.

‘God damn it, Louise, did you not hear a word I said?’ Nial exclaimed.

‘I was more interested in our elder daughter,’ Louise said calmly, nodding in Dody’s direction, ‘who is waiting for you to settle down before she dares enter the kitchen.’

‘My dear, I did not see you there. I do apologise.’ Nial McCleland pushed back his chair and held out his arms to Dody. ‘Come to Poppa!’

He pulled her to his chest, his untidy grey beard tickling her cheek, assailing her nostrils with the sharp scent of pine. This was a safe feeling, a non-threatening smell. If only she had never been to Fitzgibbon Hall, never even heard of the vile place, never agreed to chaperone Florence.

A calloused hand lifted her chin and Nial inspected her face. ‘You have been in the wars. Your mother told me about the altercation with the horse. A bruised ego more than body, if I know my Dorothy. What a way to spend your precious holiday, hmm? Never mind now, there’s plenty of work to be done here. Good honest work, to cleanse the soul and prepare you once more for that cesspit of a place they call London.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Nial, the girl needs rest,’ Louise exclaimed.

‘Rest? She’s slept half the day away already.’

‘I’ll stay tonight and return to London tomorrow. I need to catch up on some study before I go back to work,’ Dody said.

Her father’s face fell. ‘Is that confounded Spilsbury still treating you like a glorified secretary?’

‘Yes. And no. Now that I am the sole autopsy assistant at the Paddington Mortuary, I do get out and about a bit more, assisting him at crime scenes—’

‘Taking his notes, you mean.’

‘But I do have more responsibility now, Poppa.’ Dody’s head pounded more than ever; she could not summon the energy she needed to justify her position to her father. Usually she enjoyed his support, was touched when he took umbrage at the restrictions of her situation. Nial McCleland saw himself as a stauncher feminist than all his female relatives combined. But the prospect of any kind of debate with him now was an exhausting one, and, for the sake of her sanity, to be avoided at all costs.