Ghosts of Mayfield Court (9 page)

Mr Bold, a serious, carefully spoken man in his late thirties, with black hair thinning at the crown, had never heard of the Reverend Walter Hindle.

‘I have never heard of the Reverend Walter Hindle,’ he said. ‘I can tell you confidently, Inspector, that there is no clergyman of that name living in these parts, and certainly not in this deanery. There’s me, and there’s Mr Lodge at St Peter’s, Abbot’s Sutton – he’s an elderly man, but not like the person that you have described. There are no Dissenters in this part of the shire, though there’s a Roman priest who keeps a chapel near Mill Ford. He’s a young man in his twenties.’ Mr Bold smiled, half to himself, and added, ‘None of us wears a straw hat with clerical dress.’

He reached up to a crowded shelf and took down a weighty volume with a fat gilded spine.

‘Crockford’s Clerical Directory, Jackson,’ he said, ‘a work which lists the names and details of all the clergy in the Church of England. Let us see….’

It took the rector only a few minutes to ascertain that no
clergyman
called Walter Hindle held office in the Church. He closed the book, and regarded Jackson critically for a moment. Then the ghost of a smile once more played around his lips.

‘You told me that you dozed off more than once, Mr Jackson,’ he said. ‘Is it possible that you could have dreamt this clergyman? A man in Holy Orders wearing a straw hat, of all things! Most unclerical, I should have thought. Going to sleep in a churchyard on a hot day could give rise to what I’d call ecclesiastical dreams! Have you thought of that?’

It was, thought Jackson, time to go. He was making himself look a complete fool over this silly business. The more he listened
to other people’s explanations of his experience, the more he was beginning to think that they were right. There were mysteries here at Upton Carteret waiting to be solved, but a straw-hatted clergyman was not one of them.

Leaving the rectory he made his way back to the quiet churchyard. It was shadier now, and he could hear the fussy chirping of sparrows among the tombs. The three sandstone monuments of the Forshaws seemed to draw him like a magnet. John Forshaw, aged 58, deeply regretted; Also Simon, son of the above…. Elizabeth Forshaw, died 4th April, 1798. And Gabriel, the young man who had perished at Bonny, in Africa, but who, in his waking dream, had been murdered. ‘It was murder, right enough.’

Jackson strode along an overgrown path that would bring him out further along the road to Monks’ Stretton. It was then that he saw, lying to one side of the path, a wide straw hat, that someone had attempted to conceal among the flanking weeds.

6

Helen Paget

H
erbert Bottomley stood at the garden gate of a detached 1850s’ villa in Aston Road, Erdington, a genteel suburb to the north of Birmingham. This was the address printed on the calling-card that Rose Potter had given them, the home of Helen Paget. In a few moments, if he was lucky, he would come face to face with the woman who, as a forlorn little girl, had arrived at Mayfield Court on a rainy night in the October of 1864.

It was evident from the state of the house and its gardens that Helen’s husband, who, the rate books had told Bottomley, was a certain Adrian Robinson, Esquire, Chartered Accountant, was very comfortably off. Bottomley’s knock on the door was answered by a trim maid in cap and apron, who asked him his business, and then conducted him into a sitting-room at the back of the house.

A dark-haired lady in her early forties, handsome, and elegantly dressed, rose from a sofa to greet him. She seemed nervous, but then, Bottomley mused, most people were, when brought into close proximity with a police officer.

‘Detective Sergeant Bottomley,’ she said, after he had presented his warrant card, ‘what can I do for you? My husband is in town at his offices. Perhaps it is Mr Robinson whom you wish to see?’

Helen Robinson, also known as Helen Paget, spoke with the cultured tones of an educated woman.

‘No, ma’am,’ said Bottomley, ‘it’s you I’ve come to see. I was able to obtain your address from a lady called Rose Potter. You remember her, perhaps?’

It was impossible for Helen to mask her start of surprise. At the same time, her nervousness was superseded by an air of alert wariness. What did this rough man in the yellow overcoat, clutching his battered brown bowler with both hands, want of her?

‘Rose Potter? Yes, I remember her well. Do sit down, Mr Bottomley. Rose was the housekeeper at a place called Mayfield Court, here in Warwickshire. She was a kind person, as I recall from my stay there. I met her again about ten years ago, and we talked about old times. But I fail to see—’

‘Well, ma’am,’ said Bottomley, ‘I’m involved in a criminal investigation that’s connected with the house you’ve just mentioned, and I’m checking up on some historical facts to do with Mayfield Court and its tenants. What I’d like you to do, if you’ll be so kind, ma’am, is to tell me something about your stay there in 1864. I know is a very long time ago—’

‘I remember it only too well, Sergeant. I was only eleven years old, and both my parents had died within days of each other in the August of 1864. My name then was Helen Walsh, but a lawyer, or guardian, or somebody of that kind – children have often no idea who these people are who take control of their lives when they’re orphaned – where was I? I’ve lost the thread of what I was saying.’

‘You were telling me that your name then was Helen Walsh, ma’am.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Well, this lawyer told me that I was to take the name of my only surviving relatives, which was Paget. And so I became Helen Paget from that day until I married Mr Robinson.’

Helen glanced at a framed photograph standing on the mantelpiece. It showed her with a sternly bewhiskered gentleman and two attractive young children, a boy and a girl.

‘We married in 1876, when I was twenty-three. We have two children, Albert and Alexandra, who are both at
boarding-school
.’

Bottomley could see that Helen seemed more at ease as she talked about her family, but the wariness, he noticed, had not left her.

‘And is it true, ma’am, that you were only at Mayfield Court for a day, and that you were taken away in the night in a coach to go to school?’

‘It is quite true. And let me tell you at once, Mr Bottomley, that it was the best thing that ever happened to me! Rose Potter was a kindly soul, but my aunt, if she
was
my aunt – I never knew for certain – was a domineering, frightening woman. There was a husband, too, an ineffectual sort of man. Mayfield was a dilapidated place, cold and forbidding. My new life began when I was taken in the darkness across the county to Meadowfield School.’

‘And you were happy there, ma’am?’

‘I was. Very happy. I never saw that aunt and uncle again, but the fees were paid faithfully until I left the school at sixteen, in 1871, and went to Homerton College in Cambridge, to train as a teacher. I taught at a local school there for a year, and then I met Mr Robinson.’

This lady, thought Bottomley, is very obliging to tell me all this about her life. Almost
too
obliging…. But it was rapidly becoming clear that the legend of the coach carrying off little Helen in the night was true. Solomon Williams, the old gypsy man on Piper’s Hill must have been mistaken.

‘And this school, ma’am,’ said Bottomley, rummaging in a capacious pocket for his notebook and a stub of pencil, ‘would you tell me where it is?’

‘Why, certainly, Mr Bottomley. Meadowfield School for Girls is at a place called Upton Cross, here in Warwickshire. Are you going to visit them?’

‘I am, Mrs Robinson. Just to tie up a few loose ends. Thank you very much for seeing me today. I’ll be off, now, ma’am.’

Mrs Robinson rose from the sofa, and pulled a bell beside the fireplace.

‘My maid will see you out, Sergeant. I must say that I am intrigued about the crime that you are investigating, and my role in the affair. What exactly are you engaged upon? Or must I not ask?’

‘Oh, it’s no secret, ma’am,’ said Bottomley, pocketing his note book. ‘We – the police, I mean – have just uncovered the skeleton of an eleven-year-old girl hidden in the grounds of Mayfield Court—’

‘Oh, God!’

Helen Robinson,
née
Walsh, also known as Helen Paget, uttered a shriek of anguish and fainted away just as the startled maid entered the sitting room.

‘Meadowfield School, Mr Bottomley, is well known to discerning families. Old girls will send their daughters here, and those daughters, ultimately, send us their offspring. We have a long waiting-list. We were established in 1802.’

Helen Paget’s old school occupied a very fine mock-Tudor house, set in extensive grounds. Miss Jellicoe, the principal, strolled with Bottomley along a shale path that cut across the front lawn. A number of senior girls were playing a rather listless game of tennis on a hard court.

‘I’m nearer seventy than is decent,’ said Miss Jellicoe with an engaging smile, ‘and I suppose I should retire. But somehow, that prospect appals me.’

This school-marm, thought Bottomley, isn’t a bit like some of the vinegary old parties he’d met in the course of his life. He recalled Miss Fitt, (aptly so named), who had hated boys, and had a habit of hauling them around the classroom by the short hairs of their sideburns when she was in angry mood.

‘And so you’ll remember Helen Paget, ma’am? I saw her yesterday, and she told me how much she’d enjoyed being here.’

‘She was a good pupil,’ said Miss Jellicoe. ‘She was
unceremoniously
dumped on us, you know, arriving very early one October morning in a closed carriage. She fitted in immediately, was good at her studies, and at games, and went on to become a teacher herself for a short time. Then she fell, smitten by Cupid’s arrows.’

Miss Jellicoe laughed.

‘And did you ever see her guardians – her aunt and uncle?’

‘Never. All we ever knew was that she had come to us from a place called Mayfield Court on the other side of the county. Her fees were paid faithfully, and stopped when she left.’

‘Was she very shy when she came to you?’

‘Shy? No, not particularly. She was quiet and polite. This is a Froebel school, Mr Bottomley – do you know what that means?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Well, Froebel was a German educationist, who invented kindergartens – schools for little children. He also introduced the rewards system, where children are given little gifts to mark their progress. Helen Paget responded very well to this. She was in every way a model pupil. Shy? No, I don’t think so. Do you have daughters of your own?’

‘I have eight daughters, ma’am,’ said Bottomley, with what sounded like a stifled sigh. ‘Eight daughters, all living. Two are married, two are in service, and the rest are at home with the wife and me.’

‘Good heavens! So you have a ready-made girls’ school of your own. How do you cope?’

‘Well, ma’am, I follow the same system as that German chap you mentioned. What I can’t achieve by looking stern I achieve through bribery.’

Miss Jellicoe laughed again, and motioned towards the house.

‘Come, Sergeant,’ she said, ‘it’s a hot day. Let us go indoors and partake of some refreshment. I have tea, or I can send for
beer if you’d prefer that. It’s time for you and me to compare notes on the education of children!’

On the following Tuesday, Jackson and Bottomley, each fresh from his own investigation talked together for over an hour, sitting in the back room at Barrack Street.

‘So that’s that,’ said Jackson. ‘Helen Paget was indeed whisked off to school on that night in October 1864, and the old gypsy man was wrong. But I wasn’t dreaming when I spoke to that old clergyman. I found his straw hat half-hidden in the graveyard, suggesting that he had been discovered and hustled away for some reason. He said that this Gabriel Forshaw had been murdered.’

‘It looks as though he’s the “silly old fool” the murderous lady talked about,’ said Bottomley. ‘I wonder how
he
fits in?’

‘And another thing,’ said Jackson. ‘I don’t trust that blandly helpful baronet, Sir Leopold Carteret. Too obliging by far, he was. He saw me politely off at the door of his house, and sent me to the rector, who clearly thought that I’d dozed off and imagined the Reverend Walter Hindle.’

Jackson glanced at the tall railway clock fixed high on the wall of the office.

‘It’s nearing twelve,’ he said. ‘I think you and I should stroll up to the cottage and partake of some refreshment. Then we can go over a few things again in peace and comfort.’

A steep walk uphill from Barrack Street Police Office took Jackson and Bottomley very quickly into the green countryside. The cobbled road changed into an unmade winding track, along which several hundred years’ worth of sparse buildings had
sinuously
arranged themselves into a hamlet. The summer sun flooded the quiet enclave of Meadow Cross Lane, as the winding track from Warwick was called, bathing the walls of the cottages in golden light.

It was cool inside Jackson’s cottage, because the back door on to the orchard was open, secured with an iron weight in the form of a goblin. Jackson motioned to Bottomley to take a seat and, after he had divested himself of hat and coat, he went into the kitchen, where a jug of mild ale stood in an earthenware bowl of cold water. He filled two pewter tankards, and returned to the living room.

‘There you are, Sergeant,’ he said, and sat down gratefully in his old wicker chair by the empty grate. ‘Mrs Jackson’s talking to the tenants she got for Brown’s Croft after we married. She’ll be coming back across the orchard soon.’

Herbert Bottomley had chosen an upright chair near the front door, which meant that he was uncomfortably near an old
grandfather
clock that stood in the corner. He had retained his yellow overcoat, but had placed his battered bowler carefully on the floor. He took the tankard from Jackson, and drained half its contents in a single avid gulp.

‘So what it amounts to, sir,’ he said, ‘is this. Rose Potter says that Helen was carried off in a carriage from Mayfield Court on such a night, at such a time, etcetera. I interviewed Helen in Birmingham, the other day, and she confirmed that that had been the case. Helen Robinson she is, now, and she told me how much she’d hated that house and its owners, or lessees, or whatever they were, and how much she’d enjoyed being at school.’

‘That’s what she told you,’ said Jackson, ‘but your gypsy, Solomon Williams, says that Helen never left that house in a coach – in fact, she never left it at all. If your gypsy is right, then your Helen Robinson is telling fibs. Down there in the office, I believed what “Helen” told you. But now, I’m not so sure. As you know, Sergeant, in our profession it’s not a good idea to believe everything that we’re told.’

‘But sir,’ said Bottomley, after refreshing himself by draining his tankard, ‘after I visited Helen, I paid a call on her old school. The headmistress, a lady called Miss Jellicoe, confirmed that
Helen had arrived on that very date at Meadowfield School for Girls, early in the morning in a carriage, and that she had stayed there happily until the age of sixteen. Her fees were regularly paid, and she proved to be a very happy and successful pupil. All of which, sir, gives the lie to our old gypsy.’

‘Which leaves us with our little skeleton, Sergeant. She can’t be ignored, or left out of the equation. Dr Venner told us that it was the skeleton of a girl child of eleven, whose body had been concealed in that garden for thirty years. How far do we stretch coincidence?’

Sergeant Bottomley looked into his empty tankard, and Jackson got up to replenish it. When he returned from the kitchen, Bottomley was ready with a question.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘that place where you saw the old clergyman in the churchyard – Upton Carteret. Meadowfield School was at a place called Upton Cross.’