Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (37 page)

“I knew you were coming to tea at Lady Fairhaven’s, and I thought you might recognise me. Without John present, I couldn’t—”

“My husband is going to be over the moon to see you, Anna. And then he’s going to have his hopes dashed. Do you have no idea where John’s gone?”

“No, none. I was going to say, Tom, that Morborne was already dead when I arrived. It was your voice I heard in the Labyrinth. I recognised it when I heard you speaking with Marguerite this morning.”

“I had been saying Morning Prayers,” Tom responded, troubled at her curt reply to Jane’s question. Could she really be so unattuned to her lover’s habits? “I thought I glimpsed someone with light-coloured hair in the faint light. What would bring you to the Labyrinth at such an early hour?”

“I followed him. Morborne. I thought he might lead me to John.”

“But …?”

“I thought John might be … dead.”

“But why?” Jane stared at her, aghast.

“And then when I found Morborne dead I thought …”

Tom glanced at Jane. He knew exactly what she was thinking, but he no more than she wanted to acknowledge the possibility. “When you and Sebastian—John—read the text on the tablet and realised its terrible implication, what did you decide to do?” he asked instead.

Anna looked away, as if reviewing the scene in her mind’s eye. “We didn’t speak, really. John seemed to freeze somehow, staring, unmoving. I’ve never seen him like that. It frightened me terribly. Then, suddenly he got up from the table and walked out. I haven’t seen him since.

“I thought perhaps he had gone straight to Eggescombe,
to root out his cousin, to show himself to you, Jane, and his brother, if that’s what was necessary. It was late afternoon, and the charity event was ending. I was supposed to be on compassionate leave, but I had asked to take a shift at the Pilgrims Inn. I needed badly to keep myself occupied and the pub was expecting people to stop by on their way back to Thornford. As the evening wore on I grew more anxious. I was expecting the police to arrive at any moment, for my world to cave in again.

“But nothing. Late in the evening, Morborne came into the Pilgrims with some other men, looking hardly bothered. It was sickening to be in his presence, but I felt helpless to do anything, not knowing what had become of John. Time was called at midnight, but Morborne stayed on chatting up the barmaids. I kept my distance. When I finished I waited outside in the road. I had no idea what I was going to say or do. But he came out with Janice Sclanders, one of the staff, and went to her parents’ cottage, whistling as though he hadn’t a worry in the world.

“I couldn’t sleep that night. John didn’t return, and I couldn’t contact him. He refuses to have a mobile, and it wasn’t until well into the morning before I saw that his rucksack and a few other things were missing. I was frightened for what might have happened to him or …” Anna’s voice dropped. “… for what he might be planning to do.

“Finally, at about five, sometime before the sun rose—I must have nodded off for a bit—I heard whistling coming down the lane beside our cottage. I expect I was fuzzy from sleep—I raced into the road in my pajamas and caught his
arm. I was insane with worry and grief by that time, accusing him of killing David and demanding to know what he had done with John. He brushed me off as a madwoman, pushing me away, brutally. I cut my hand on the side of our gate. I’m surprised our neighbours weren’t awoken. I dashed in, put on a plaster, got into some clothes, and found my torch. I’m not sure what I thought I was going to do. As I say, I was going out of my mind.”

“You might have been in danger.”

“I didn’t think. I didn’t care about the hour. I was going to rouse the whole household, if I had to, but … When I was past the Gatehouse and onto the grounds, I could see light flashing from the middle of the Labyrinth—a torchlight—and voices—”

“Did you recognise the voices?” Jane’s tone was urgent.

“No. Male voices certainly. I moved on a bit, then thought one of them must surely be Morborne’s. A certain haughty tone. I’d been listening to him hold court at the Pilgrims for several hours. He had only come this way perhaps ten or fifteen minutes before me. Who else would be on Eggescombe’s grounds at that hour? But the other voice was lower, indiscernible. In my panic and dread—you must remember how dark it still was—I became certain it was John’s. Somehow—in my imaginings—John had accosted his cousin and was …” Anna looked away.

“I ran through the maze, ran like a crazed woman. There was no light anymore from the centre, and no voices, which somehow seemed even more frightening. But when I arrived at the centre of the Labyrinth—nothing. The sky was beginning
to lighten but I could see no shadow of anyone, no silhouette. I must have stood there some little time, stunned. I thought perhaps my poor brain had imagined the whole episode. Then I heard a thrashing noise of someone or something pushing through the shrubs at the edge of the Labyrinth. I tried to call out, but I think fright seized my throat. I could hear nothing but the faint sound of someone running over grass.”

“Which way, which way?” Tom couldn’t stop the urgency in his voice. “Did the sound seem to move towards the Hall or towards the village?”

“Towards the village. That calmed me a little. I thought, if it were John, then nothing terrible had happened, and he’d gone back to the village, to home. I turned to leave and my torchlight caught something lying on the grass in front of one of the benches. It was Morborne. The hat, the jacket …

“I don’t know how long I stared at him. I knew he was dead.” Anna stepped first into the yard. “My light caught his staring lifeless eye. Somehow I thought: Someone has killed him, someone with a powerful motive has killed him, and who would that be, other than John, who had every reason in the world to do away with this bastard, but who would be tried and convicted and spend a lifetime—another lifetime—in prison. I could feel myself about to pass out. I sank to my knees and—”

The door hinge across the yard squealed again, louder now, as Tom followed the women from the shadow of the tack room onto the warm cobbles of the stable yard. The horses set up a shuffling in the nearby stalls, as if the metallic rasp pained
them. Shielding his eyes against the blaze of sunlight on the brick opposite, he glimpsed Marguerite in an awkward slumping posture—so uncharacteristic—against the door, her back to them as if she were lost in some peculiar meditation. Something, he sensed, was awry, but Max, with Miranda, burst from the shadow of the horse stalls at the moment, forestalling his concern.

“Grandmama,” Max sang out.

Marguerite started, seemed to stiffen. She turned as they approached, pushing her hand through her hair and pushing her mouth into a smile that fell far short of her eyes.

“Hello, poppets,” she replied with a gaiety that couldn’t quite disguise her ragged breathing. “Have you come for your tea?”

“Yes, Grannie,” Max enthused, then canted his head. “Are you all right? You look peaky.”

“It’s nothing. I was having … a little spell. The heat, you know.”

“It’s Mater who has spells,” Max responded with some asperity.

“Yes, well …” Marguerite’s eyes lifted from the children to the adults, and in them Tom could see a disturbance that made him catch his breath. Before he could respond, Marguerite said with a lightness of tone, but with eyes telegraphing urgency, “Jane, Anna, would you take Max and Miranda back to my cottage?”

“Of course,” Jane responded quickly.

“You can help Jane and Anna with the tea things,” Marguerite said to the children. “It’ll be fun.”

Both Max and Miranda frowned at her.
They’re really too old
, Tom thought,
for this sort of pandering
.

“Why aren’t you coming with us?” Max asked in a sulky tone.

“I’m detaining Mr. Christmas for a few moments. You won’t mind, Maxie darling. I need him to help me with something.”

“What? Can’t I help you?”

“You can’t. I need someone … tall. To reach, you see. Tom is taller than the rest of us.”

Marguerite was improvising and not doing it awfully well. As Max opened his mouth for further protest, Jane interjected hastily, “Come on, you two. I’ll race you to Marve’s.”

“One”—Max drew himself up to his full height, gliding off in the direction of the stable’s arched entrance—“prefers not to engage in frivolous athletic activity. Come along, Miss Christmas.”

“No,
you
come along,” Miranda countered.

“Oh! All right. We’ll both come along. Apparently we have tea to ready.”

Tom sensed Marguerite sagging as they waited for the little party to turn out of the stable block onto the path to the dower house.

“What on earth’s happened?” He turned back to her with not a little dread, noting her pallor.

She released a short breath and said, “Roberto’s dead.”

“Oh, God.” Tom felt shock along his spine, and then the urgent, hopeful, hopeless question sprang from his lips. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“But … how? It seems impossible. He’s so … fit … young.”

“I don’t know how. But one knows when someone is dead. I’m afraid, Tom, I only saw what I saw for a moment, then dashed out. I suddenly needed sun and air.” She passed a hand over her brow. “Unforgivable of me.”

“Not at all. We never know how we’re going to react in such circumstances.” Tom glanced at the heavy door to the studio, closed now against the horror. He had a ghastly presentiment, born of past experience. The winter before, in Thornford Regis, a man older than Roberto, but like him still in the prime of life, had been found unaccountably dead, sending the village into a frenzy of speculation. Men with youth and vigor don’t drop dead for no good reason. And there had been no good reason. The cause had not been natural.

“I’m all right now.” Marguerite’s hand went to the door.

“You’re not. You’ve had a frightful shock. What are you doing? Marguerite, it’s a police matter now. Don’t go in.”

“I must. I can’t live with the memory of me running out. I live in the country, close to nature, I see all sorts of unpleasant things—”

“The difference, Lady Fairhaven, is love.”

Marguerite glanced at him, her eyes suddenly hardened. “An even better reason, then, for respect. Are you coming with me or not? I’ll be wanting your prayers.”

The studio interior appeared little different in arrangement than it had been on his visit the morning before, though with floodlights switched off, shape and shadow prevailed. The only light came in shafts from the open door and from a high window over the sink by the far wall—Dowager Lady
Fairhaven’s destination as she picked her way past the equipment and tables and around the unfinished statue of Dionysus and Ariadne along the stone floor, which, Tom half noted, following, lacked Sunday’s carpet of fine marble dust just as the air lacked that morning’s scrim of floating particles. Different, too, was the quiet, now turned ominous. Only their footfalls sounded against the floor—and then, as Tom drew nearer to where Marguerite had stopped, the soft gurgle and splash of running water, as if a merry brook were running by the stables.

“Oh, my,” he blurted, his attention drawn swiftly to the crumpled, near-naked figure. Marguerite was correct: One would know instantly Roberto wasn’t merely asleep, though sleeping on a cold floor, in this posture, his head half under one of the long tables, was too unlikely to be credited. The artist’s eyes were open, staring up, fixed and opaque, yet they more than any other aspect of him caught the little light the room had to offer; they seemed to gleam balefully. Tom bent awkwardly and tentatively felt Roberto’s cheek. Cooled, but not so much so. Marguerite struggled to her knees as if she had suddenly felt the weight of her years.

“I don’t understand …” Her voice came in an agonised whisper.

Nor did he. Tom surveyed the body but, other than the bruising noted on the chest the day before, it offered up no clues as to cause of death—no evident cuts, no new bruising, no red markings such as those on Lord Morborne that had led him to a swift conclusion about cause of death. And then, as his eyes adjusted to the thin light, he saw what hadn’t been apparent before: blood, glistening blackly, pooled on the floor,
half hidden behind Roberto’s ear and a tumble of dark hair. His heart sank at the notion that some foolish misstep brought about this death, a slip, a trip, an awkward twist. He glanced at the tabletop above the dead man’s head. The clay models that had been present the day before were tipped over. One had smashed onto the floor. Roberto fell backward? Hit the back of his head? It was possible, but the consequence—death, not injury—seemed outrageous, infuriating.

“Oh, no,” Marguerite moaned when Tom gestured to the blood.

But how?
he thought, rising. What had Roberto been doing when this happened? Nearby, on the arm of a battered old chair, he could see, untidily piled, the blue shirt and dark trousers Roberto had been wearing when the police had taken him from the dower house, crowned by a pair of black socks and white regulation underpants. It appeared Roberto was readying himself to resume work by returning to his uniform: shoes and chapeau and nothing in between. But his work shoes, the dust-covered trainers, sat by a pair of dress Oxfords tucked beside the old chair. Roberto’s feet looked wet; they were bare, as was his head. His headdress, the white rugby shorts of the day before, was worn where rugby shorts ought to be worn, around his midsection.

“Did you know he had returned to Eggescombe?” Tom asked, his mind half occupied with the oddity of Roberto’s dress.

“He called from the village, from Abbotswick.” Marguerite rose shakily. “He had the police leave him there. He wanted to walk the rest of the way. I expect he couldn’t bear their company, though he didn’t say so.”

“Then what brought you to—?”

“Here, to the stables? He wasn’t answering his mobile. And I know he had it with him, because we talked while he was walking through the village,” she said. “I … I’d forgotten to ask him if he’d like to join us for tea. I wasn’t worried he didn’t answer,” she added, preempting Tom’s next question. “Often some machine here is making a terrific racket, so I came over and …”