Empty Nest (16 page)

“But Isabel, I'm afraid,” he continued, “may see you as a threat. She has got it into her head that I'm shopping for a wife in order to have another child.”

“And take the estate out of Cecil's hands? But he's the true heir—he would be even if you did have another child.”

“Yes, well—Isabel would prefer that there was no doubt in the matter.”

The nerve, the absolute nerve of the woman. “It's none of her business if you want to marry again or if you wanted to have a dozen more children,” I said hotly. “Let her go off to the Azores with Sergei.”

Linus laughed as he stood to help me wash up.

Sunday morning, I dragged myself downstairs. I had spent a fitful night as I felt the Fotheringill walls closing in on me. Since mentioning my cottage, it was all I could think of—safe and cozy, putting out seeds and fat balls for the birds in the back garden, and drinking my tea as I watched their antics. I felt Michael by my side, even though he'd spent far too few days and nights there. I picked one June afternoon to recall when we sat quietly holding hands out on the tiny stone terrace watching the baby chaffinches fledge from their nest just beyond my garden wall.

When I reached the landing, I saw a sweep of stiff blond curls vanish into the small dining room, and I quickly made for the kitchen. As I walked in, Sheila leapt off a chair, her face red with guilt.

“I'm so sorry I didn't take your tea up, I had no idea of the time,” she began, the kettle noisy behind her.

“Stop this instant,” I said. “You are not obligated to wait on me, Sheila. You have far too many things to do in the Hall. I can certainly make my own tea.” The kettle came to a boil and switched off, and I busied myself at the counter, glancing at her over my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

She stuck her hands in her apron pockets and stared at the door for a moment. “She's never liked it that Adam and Master Cecil are such good friends,” Sheila said in a low voice, because, after all, you never knew when Isabel might appear. “She thinks it's beneath him as the Fotheringill heir.”

“I hope that Cecil doesn't listen to her.”

Sheila shook her head as if trying to fling the thought from her mind. “She wants the best for her son—don't we all? But those two have been fast friends since before Cecil could stand on his own and Adam was only able to cruise round the furniture.”

I popped a slice of bread in the toaster and stood drinking my tea. “What room is she staying in?” I asked, planning to give her a wide berth.

“Her old room in the south wing,” Sheila said. “His Lordship abandoned it after she left, and moved to the opposite end of the wing.”

Thorne backed in the kitchen carrying a tray of breakfast dishes.

“Was it all right?” Sheila asked him.

“Lady Fotheringill lamented the fact that we no longer buy wholemeal bread from the bakery in Lavenham,” he replied.

Sheila sighed. “Right, where's my shopping list?”

“It's odd,” Thorne said as he paused from clearing the tray. “A few nights ago, I had a dream that her Ladyship returned—and now here she is. I wonder if I'm becoming a seer.”

“Perhaps you've a new career in front of you,” Sheila said, laughing. “Julia, I managed to get all the tea stains from your blouse—I'll take it up to your room.”

“You won't—I'll take it when I finish my breakfast.” I had a renewed resistance to being waited on.

Sheila pressed her lips together and exhaled in a huff. “You ate so little of your dinner last night,” she said. “And there's a great deal of beef left—I'll make you up a sandwich that you can take into the TIC today.”

“Yes,” I said. “A sandwich would be lovely.”

Having settled on something she could do for me, she fetched my blouse, and I took it upstairs, carrying my half-eaten toast with me and making a return pass through the kitchen, where I collected the sandwich, which Sheila had left wrapped in the center of the table. The door down to the laundry room stood open, and I could hear the washer. I went down a few steps to thank Sheila, but saw that it was Isabel. I beat a hasty retreat, taking my toast out with me. I tore it up, scattered the bits on the ground at the bottom of the yew hedge that surrounded the courtyard, and stood back. A dozen sparrows fluttered to the ground and began to squabble over their sudden feast.

The day passed, but truly, I cannot say how. The world was cold and dull, and not a single person walked into the TIC. I couldn't concentrate, and the work I did accomplish was interspersed with bouts of sitting and staring at the blank screen of my phone.

No, wait—I do remember something. I rang my sister. I made a cup of tea and started in on the beef sandwich Sheila had made for me, but thought I should get a baby report.

My ten-year-old niece, Emelia, answered. After we exchanged greetings, I got to the point.

“Does the baby have a name, Emmy?” I asked. If I couldn't squeeze the secret out of my sister, perhaps I could get it out of her older daughter.

“Baby isn't here yet, Auntie Jools,” she said. “It can't have its name until it arrives.”
Your mother's taught you well,
I thought—keep us guessing.

“Where's Mummy? May I talk with her?”

The phone passed through several sets of hands—I heard both Enid and Emmet, plus Beryl—before, at last, my sister took control.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“I had a twinge this morning—this baby's playing with me.” The weariness in her voice overrode the lighthearted words.

“How is it with Beryl?”

“She's a jewel, really.” I waited through the pause. “I wish Mum were here,” Bianca added in a small voice.

We would always wish that, no matter how much we loved and appreciated Beryl and how happy she and Dad were together.

“And Dad arrived for his filming? How is he?”

“Don't you mean ‘How is Michael'?”

I sucked in my breath. “You met him?” Over the summer, I had been to Cornwall on a visit when Emelia starred as Nana in her school production of
Peter Pan,
but Michael had not been able to go, and Bee knew only what I told her.

“Mmm. Do you have something to tell me?”

I rubbed my head trying to wipe away the gray mist that had gathered. I needed to explain to my sister what I'd done, but a lethargy crept over me, and I found it difficult to think straight.

I struck out in a different direction. “What do you think, Bee—a matter of hours before little Erythrina arrives?”

Bee snorted. “God, where did you get that one?”

My sandwich sat on the table for the rest of the afternoon, reproaching me every time I passed. I had managed only a few bites. Guilt over Sheila's effort and my waste compelled me to get it out of sight. I wrapped it up and tossed it in the bin, then took the rubbish out for tomorrow's collection.

Most of what dragged me down, I knew, concerned Michael, but I also assigned a fair portion to the evening ahead. If I had thought recent dinners at the Hall unpleasant, what now, with Isabel?

I searched for an excuse to ring Linus and beg off. Could I say I wasn't feeling well and would prefer to have dinner in my room? No, he'd've seen through that in a second, and I didn't want him feeling worse than he already did.

I tried another excuse aloud: “I'm sorry to miss dinner with you, Linus, it's only that I see this evening as my chance to catch up with all the work I've neglected. What with the Christmas Market approaching so quickly, and after that the Boxing Day Bird Count—and I did want to sketch out next year's calendar. I'll stay here and get stuck in on these projects and have a bite to eat at the pub.” Yes, that should work.

The faces of the locals in the Royal Oak glowed blue as they watched the silent highlights of the Chelsea-Liverpool football match on the television above the bar. Louisa finished pulling a pint and waved me over when I walked in.

“Aren't they missing you at the Hall this evening, Julia?”

“I couldn't face it,” I said, and looked over my shoulder to make sure no one listened. “Lady Fotheringill…”

“Yeah, I heard she was about,” Louisa said, pulling me a half pint of cider.

“Have you met her?”

Louisa shook her head. “I know only what Cecil says. He loves her and all—she's his mum—but I'd say he wishes she'd occupy herself in some other way.”

“What's up between you and Cecil?” I asked, seeing no other way of getting to the matter.

Louisa laughed. “The eyes and ears of the Hall are on us, aren't they? It's business, Julia, nothing devious or unsavory. But it's something that Cecil prefers to keep quiet, and so I can't really say.”

“Does Adam know the secret you're keeping for Cecil?”

“Of course he does—why wouldn't he?”

“Yes, why indeed.” I'd dug my own hole there.

Normally, I enjoyed my days off, relishing the time for a longer morning walk, taking a second cup of tea into the library and sitting near the corner windows to catch the odd ray of sun. On this Monday, however, the heavy feeling from the day before remained. I pulled on old trousers and an even older pair of trainers—my others hadn't survived the outing with Gavin—and a thin shirt topped with the stretched-out navy cardigan that had been my mum's and—before that, my dad's—topping it off with my heavy coat.

On our brief bird outing, Thorne and I made our way through the formal garden, emerging into the native landscape. We stood, hands in the pockets of our coats, and watched redwings in the holly, feasting on the berries, and after that we walked down to the massive oak that stood at the corner of the near field and observed a handful of rooks acting as gleaners in the wheat stubble.

Returned to the Hall, I made my second cup of tea and headed for the corner chair in the library. The window faced south, and so this late in the year, the morning sun fell at a slant into the room and outdoors across the hedges, casting deep shadows as if they were drawn with pen and ink. No one came in the library in the morning—it was my secret space, a haven.

But today, my kingdom had been invaded.

I made a futile attempt to back out the door without Isabel seeing me, but she turned, coffee in hand, and said, “It's all right, Julia, you aren't disturbing me. Come sit.”

I skirted the room and approached her. She sat low in the chair with her legs crossed, and clasped her coffee to her chest, a ray of sun setting her hair aglow. She wore a pumpkin-colored high-neck sweater, earth-toned leather trousers, and deep brown boots up to her knees—the picture of the well-dressed countrywoman.

“I used to come in here every morning,” she said.

“Yes, it's lovely,” I said, lowering myself onto a bench up against the wall, as it was the only other seat available near her.

“Don't stay too long, Julia.”

“Sorry?” Was she turfing me out a moment after inviting me in?

“This place—Hoggin Hall—it's depressing and cold. It will suck the life out of you.”

She continued to gaze out the window as I thought back past the unpleasantness of the last fortnight to the first few weeks after I'd moved into the Hall. The cozy kitchen talks with Thorne and Sheila. The dinners when Linus had insisted we ask Vesta and Akash—and I had asked Michael, too, when he wasn't off with Rupert and the production crew. We'd had game nights, and even Thorne, Sheila, and Nuala had been persuaded to join us. Those happy moments came back to me as I watched Isabel and realized that some people carry this life-sucking ability about with them wherever they go. I wondered was she ever happy.

She continued to gaze out the window. “I remember sitting here, watching Cecil and Adam play spies in the hedge. Such energy those boys had. They would stalk Thorne as he walked through the garden on his way to the orchard. I watched you and Thorne out there earlier.”

“We often go for a morning walk.”

“You're quite close to the staff at the Hall, aren't you?”

“Yes, and why not? As you pointed out, I am one of them.”

She responded with barely a flicker of an eyelid. “No matter what Linus said to you—what he may have promised you—he and I agree that the well-being of our son is of the utmost importance. Cecil will be the Earl Fotheringill.”

“Of course he will,” I said. “That's a given, isn't it?”

The slow look she gave me out of the corner of her eye seemed to name me a key figure in the conspiracy to oust Cecil and replace him with some future spare Fotheringill heir. “Someone,” she said, “has gone to a great deal of trouble to make Cecil look bad over this business here at the Hall.”

“This business? You mean Freddy Peacock being murdered—because you know that's what happened, don't you? He was poisoned. Shortsighted of Freddy, wasn't it? He should've considered what that would do to Cecil's reputation.”

“This young man's death is a tragedy, of course.” Isabel set down her coffee and turned to me. I could see tears in her eyes and her forehead wrinkled into a frown, something I hadn't thought possible. “But his death shouldn't drag others down with it—you wouldn't let that happen, would you, Julia? Even if it meant someone close to you were responsible?”

I couldn't speak, I was so shocked. I knew what she meant. She was pointing the finger at Linus—accusing him of killing Freddy to eliminate the blackmailer.

And now lounging round the Hall on my day off had been taken away from me. I took my cup back to the kitchen and told Sheila I was going out—a long walk round the estate to clear my fusty head.

“And your breakfast?” she asked, knowing I'd had none.

“I'll eat a good lunch.”

“You'll take a sandwich—we've ham. I'll leave it for you here.”

I took longer than I thought upstairs, as I received a text from Beryl: “Contractions started and stopped.” I rang and talked with Bee for a moment as she paced her bedroom.

When I stopped by the kitchen for my sandwich, Sheila had her arms full of linens. She sighed. “I hope we won't need to begin scheduling the laundry—Lady Fotheringill beat me there again today. She seems to spend her days in the shower or washing clothes—it's an odd fetish to come on her so late in life.”

“How long do you think she'll stay?” I asked in a whisper, looking over my shoulder to the door.

Sheila shrugged an answer and left.

Tucking the sandwich and my field glasses into my bag, I walked out into the chill sunshine. Just outside the yew arch that marked the bottom of the formal garden, I paused and considered where to go. But my feet had already decided, and I struck out on the footpath that led through the wood and across the field to Adam Bugg's orchard.

No smoke rose from Addleton's chimney—I could see the red door of the gamekeeper's lodge between tree trunks as I stayed on the footpath through the wood. I suppose it should be called the agent's lodge now. Not far out of the wood, I reached the spot where I'd found the dead sparrow hawks. I looked back; Addleton lived quite close. He had said he'd been out on the estate the day before—most likely when the poisoned bait had been laid out—and he'd seen nothing.

More than a week after I'd found the dead birds, I saw no sign of my discovery in the brown grass. Dad told me that after they'd removed the birds and the bait, the area had been flushed with water—if it were the pesticide he suspected, it broke down quickly in soil and so would do no harm. It had done quite enough harm already, hadn't it?

At the orchard, I walked down a row of young, vigorous trees to find Adam up a ladder in the middle of lichen-encrusted branches on a tree so gnarled and twisted I expected it to come to life like in a fairy tale.

“Good morning,” I called up to him.

“Hiya, Julia. Your day off?”

“It is—and you?”

“No, I'm on in the library for the afternoon. I like the schedule—gives me mornings out here.”

“This tree's been around for a while,” I said, patting its cold, mossy trunk.

“Sweet Alford,” Adam replied as he climbed down and pulled off a red knit cap, shaking bits of dried leaves and twigs off it before stuffing it in his jacket pocket. His black eye had aged to the shade of a green woodpecker. “From Devon, eighteenth century. This one was planted about a hundred years ago, I'd say, but it still bears. It's worth keeping, even if it does get a bit of scab. I'll need to work on it this winter.”

“How did you get interested in apples?” I asked.

“Thorne used to work this orchard—at least part-time. Thirty years ago, when Linus inherited, he took on a load of debt and the entire estate had to tighten its belt. Thorne doubled up—for years he worked as butler and kept the orchard going. He'd bring me along, so I as much as grew up here.”

“And Cecil, too, before Linus and Isabel divorced?”

“Yeah, when she'd let him,” Adam said as he tucked secateurs in his belt and picked up a pair of loppers. “It's never a good idea to be friends with the hired help, according to Lady Fotheringill. At least not after the age of five.”

I walked down the row toward the shed with him, dodging low-hanging branches and avoiding a few rotting fallen apples. “Did you know about Freddy blackmailing Cecil?”

He stopped. “You want to know if I think Cecil could've killed Freddy—no, he couldn't. We grew up together, Julia—he's like my brother.”

This didn't exactly allay my fears that either or both had been involved in Freddy's death. Families stick together, after all. “You and Cecil were arguing,” I said, and blushed at the revelation of my spying. “I saw you outside the Hall a few days ago—on my way into the village.”

He nodded. “We had a disagreement—he never should've given in to Peacock's demands. He knows that now, of course.”

“You didn't care much for Freddy, did you?”

“No, I didn't,” Adam replied, as he paused to lop a broken stem off a branch. “He was a leech, feeding off others. He took advantage of people's weaknesses.”

“And he had taken a fancy to Louisa.” My heart thumped at my audacity.

Adam's eyes burned. He ran his hand through his cropped hair. “So now you think I'm the one who topped him?”

“I never said that.”

“You didn't need to say it—I can see it's what you're thinking.” He jerked his head, pointing the way. “Come on, then.” He took my wrist and dragged me along. In a panic, I realized I'd told no one where I was going. I had half a mind to break and run, but knew I wouldn't get far if he wanted to overtake me. And running would make it look as if I was scared of him. And I wasn't. Not much.

When we reached the shed, he opened the door and released my arm. I stepped back and he shook his head and walked in ahead of me. I peered in, dim light filtering through windows thick with dirt. Sacks and bags, bottles and jugs—all coated with grime and attached to each other by years of cobwebs—lined the filthy shelves. In the corner, long-handled tools, some half rotted away, stood in a tangled, upright heap.

“I've been meaning to clean this out since I started here five years ago. But I haven't yet—I only reach in for what I need and shut the door. I wouldn't use any of that rubbish in any case,” he said, nodding to the chemicals. “Not for birds or for people.”

“I wasn't accusing you,” I said. “But the poison must've come from somewhere—and why not an abandoned shed where all this”—I gestured to the shelves—“has been forgotten?”

We stood in silence for a moment. I searched for a way to ease his mind—and mine, too. “Do you see much of Mr. Addleton?” I asked. “He doesn't live all that far away. He helped on Cider Day, didn't he?”

“Yeah. He had come out the day before, too, for a look round—counting trees, asking me questions, poking his head into the cider house and the shed. Getting to know the tenants, he said. Wanted me to clean out the shed so we were in line with all the new EU regulations for chemicals.”

He hung the loppers from a peg, and when he turned, he caught me peering closely at the shelves. I blushed and looked away.

“You go on and look,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I really only came out for a walk and thought I'd stop.”

“Well, you don't mind if I keep working?”

“Not at all.”

Adam headed for the cider house, but I stayed in the shed. Lots of people had the opportunity to nip into the shed on Cider Day and make off with the poison that killed Freddy. But the sparrow hawks were already dead that morning, so it must've been someone who'd come by another day.

I pulled out my key ring and switched on the tiny torch I carried—a gift from Rupert, who didn't want me stuck in a dark place—and began scanning the shelves. Product names weren't the same as the actual chemical name, and so I floundered searching for something that might contain the chemical Dad had mentioned: mevinphos.

“Looking for something?”