Aunt Dimity: Snowbound Page 5

  “You never know,” I told him. “She was young and heart-broken. Maybe she needed to blame someone, and it didn’t much matter who. But we don’t have to guess. Catchpole will tell us.”

  “Are you sure you want him to?” said Jamie.

  “Positive.” I peered at him questioningly. “Don’t you?”

  “Of course.” Jamie straightened and regarded me steadily. “So long as he doesn’t upset you.”

  I was tempted to remind my chivalrous protector that he’d gone pale at the mention of Miss DeClerke’s homicidal ghost while I hadn’t turned a hair, and that if anyone needed reassurance, it was him, but I was so touched by his kindness that I smiled instead.

  “There’s no need to worry about me,” I said. “I’m tough as old boots. I have to be—my sons discovered slugs last summer.”

  Jamie laughed and was about to speak when Wendy and Catchpole emerged from the corridor carrying four tall, old-fashioned glass oil lamps. The lamps’ neatly trimmed wicks burned steadily, casting a golden glow over the old oak table and the bowls of glistening apricots, but shadows filled the corners of the room and crept along the ceiling’s vaulted ribs. It was comforting to move away from the frosty windows and into the warm circle of light.

  The compote was comforting, too, warm and sweet, with precisely the right amount of tartness. I dug into my share with pleasure while Catchpole carried on as if there’d been no interruption.

  “The first of the great bombing raids hit London in September,” he said. “My dad was called up then. He was in his forties, too old to be going to war, but England expected every man to do his duty, so off he went. And Mother and I went to Shropshire. She felt bad about leaving, Mother did, but with the able-bodied men gone from the farm, her family needed her. Miss DeClerke chose to stay on at the abbey. She was here when she got the news that her father had been killed.”

  “Killed?” Wendy said, her dessert spoon frozen in midair. “How?”

  “A bombing raid,” Catchpole replied. “He’d gone down to the London house, to take care of some trifling business. He was supposed to stay only the one night, but he never came back. It was a full-moon night, you see, the kind of night Adolph’s boys liked best. The London house was demolished, burnt to the ground, not a stone left standing. That was in October.”

  “I’d no idea,” Jamie murmured. “The October raids were brutal, but I’d no idea. . . .” He shook his head and looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. “Ladythorne seems so tranquil, so removed from the outside world, yet the war left its scars, even here.”

  “The war scarred all of us, sir, one way or another,” said Catchpole. “My dad came home safe, thank the Lord, but I lost two uncles and whole raft of cousins. Miss DeClerke, poor soul, lost everyone she held dear—her father and her fiancé. She had more money than she knew what to do with, but what good was it to her? She’d lost what she truly treasured.”

  “What did she do?” I asked. “Did she leave the abbey?”

  “You’d expect it of her, wouldn’t you, madam?” said Catchpole. “A young girl alone in this great rambling house, with only a handful of servants to keep her company, and them too old or daft to be of much use. You’d expect her to shut the place up and run away, wouldn’t you?”

  I reached for my cup of tea. “It would have been tempting.”

  “Not for her, it wasn’t.” Catchpole planted his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. “Miss DeClerke stayed put and fought back the only way she knew how. That young slip of a girl turned the abbey into a convalescent home, where officers could come to recover from their injuries. The army may have staffed the place, but she ran it, and she made sure her officers had the best of everything.”

  “Must’ve been difficult, with rationing,” Jamie commented.

  “Had a victory garden, didn’t she? Raised chickens and pigs, kept a few milk cows. Miss DeClerke never let rationing bother her.” A reminiscent smile played on the old man’s lips. “Her officers had the run of the house—billiards room, library, music room, long gallery. They sat out in the cloisters when the weather was fine, used the tennis courts if they were able, slept on linen sheets, ate off the finest china.”

  “She found a good use for her money,” I observed.

  “She found a good use for her heart,” Catchpole countered. He frowned down at the table before adding gruffly, “Every officer reminded her of her young man, you see. She couldn’t do enough for ’em.”

  I glanced at the shotgun lying on the dresser’s topmost shelf. The twin barrels gleamed softly in the lamplight. “Were they British officers?”

  “They were, at first.” Catchpole’s frown deepened. “But as the war was winding down, they started sending Americans. I don’t know why—you’d think they’d look after their own—but whatever the reason, they came. By the end of the war it was nothing but Yanks, but Miss DeClerke didn’t mind. She welcomed ’em with open arms, treated ’em the same as her British gentlemen—until they stabbed her in the back.”

  “What did they do?” I asked, on tenterhooks.

  “I don’t know.” Sparks of rage lit Catchpole’s eyes. “But whatever it was, it drove Miss DeClerke mad.”

  If anticlimaxes could kill, I would have been stretched out stone-cold on the black-and-white tiles. I felt as if I’d been stabbed in the back—I’d listened faithfully to an hour’s worth of buildup and I still didn’t know why Miss DeClerke hated Americans. I dug my spoon savagely into the remnants of my cooling compote while Wendy and Jamie exchanged looks of disbelief. Disappointment had rendered each of us momentarily speechless.

  “Y-you don’t know?” I managed. “You burst in here waving a gun and screaming insults about Yanks and you don’t know why? ”

  “I don’t know exactly what happened,” Catchpole admitted grudgingly. “I only know that Miss DeClerke reported it to the authorities, and they told her not to make a fuss. It was the end of the war, you see, and they didn’t want a scandal ruffling allied feathers. There was a big enough mess to clear up, they told her, without having an hysterical Englishwoman accusing American soldiers of misbehavior.”

  “But you don’t know what kind of misbehavior,” I said peevishly.

  Catchpole had the grace to look vaguely shamefaced. “Miss DeClerke never spoke of it, and the servants who were here when it happened were either dead of old age by the time Mother and Dad brought me back, or too daft to understand what the fuss had been about.”

  Wendy leaned her chin on her hand. “Did Miss DeClerke hire new servants?”

  “Yes, but they didn’t stay long. Miss DeClerke had gone a bit . . . peculiar . . . by then.” Catchpole cleared his throat uncomfortably. “She wouldn’t let Yanks set foot on her property, wouldn’t use anything American-made, sacked anyone who so much as mentioned your country in passing. She’d taken to spending a good deal of time in her room, too, writing letters and posting them off to America.”

  “To America?” I said, surprised. “Where in America? Was she writing to the military authorities?”

  “Not a clue.” Catchpole raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “The post came and went in a locked pouch, so we never saw the addresses.”

  I made a wry face. “If you never saw the addresses, then how did you know she was writing to America?”

  “I asked her one day, and she said”—Catchpole’s voice became sepulchral—“‘I’m sending a curse across the Atlantic, my lad, to damn those who betrayed me.’ ”

  The old man’s eyes gleamed menacingly in the lamplight, and I found myself shrinking away from him. He’d told us he believed in hatred, and at that moment I had no trouble believing him.

  Beside me, Jamie stirred. “Why did your parents stay on, Catchpole? It couldn’t have been pleasant for them to witness Miss DeClerke’s decline.”

  Catchpole settled back in his chair. “My dad had no great love for Yanks. They twiddled their thumbs, he said, while England got pounded into a
paste. They left the hard fighting to us, he said, then claimed they won the war.”

  “A lot of dead American soldiers would disagree with him,” Wendy pointed out acerbically.

  “I’m not saying Dad was right,” said Catchpole, “but that’s how he felt. Mother, she didn’t care about such things, but she had a soft spot for Miss DeClerke. She’d raised her from a girl, you see, and couldn’t leave her, not even when times got hard.”

  “I don’t understand.” I left my spoon in my empty bowl and gazed at Catchpole, perplexed. “Miss DeClerke was wealthy, wasn’t she? She was an only child, the last of the line, so she must have inherited everything. Not that money can buy happiness, but . . .”

  Wendy understood what I meant and asked bluntly: “How hard could times get for someone so rich?”

  “She’d spent thousands of pounds on her wounded officers,” Catchpole explained. “And with death duties and the income tax and the cost of running the abbey, her inheritance began to dry up. She sold off the London property and parcels of land around the valley, always to English buyers, but there came a time when she had to let the telephone go, then the electric. Twenty years ago she closed off most of the abbey and took to living in one set of rooms.”

  “Yet you stayed on,” I said.

  “Had to.” Catchpole grunted. “After Dad and Mother died there was no one but me to look after Miss DeClerke. I had my cottage and I took on odd jobs in town to put food on the table. Miss DeClerke, though, she ended up in one room, living on tea and toast.”

  “Didn’t she have anyone to advise her?” Wendy asked. “A family friend or a lawyer?”

  “She wouldn’t listen.” Catchpole shook his head sadly. “National Trust came calling but she turned ’em down flat because they wouldn’t agree to bar American tourists from the abbey. Then Miss Gibbs came along.”

  “An English actress,” I murmured.

  Catchpole nodded. “Took her three years to negotiate the sale. Miss DeClerke knew she was dying by then, but she still made Miss Gibbs promise to keep Yanks out of the abbey before she’d sell. I don’t know if Miss Gibbs’ll keep her part of the bargain, but, well, Miss DeClerke’s been dead and gone these two years, so perhaps it doesn’t matter so much anymore.”

  “It seems to matter to you,” I said softly.

  “I served Miss DeClerke for more than fifty years, madam. Old habits die hard.” Catchpole laid his wrinkled hands flat on the table. “But Miss Gibbs is my mistress now, and I suppose I must learn to change with the times.” He pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll go up, now, and light the fires in your rooms, to take the chill off. I expect you’ll be wanting to turn in early after such a bothersome day.”

  “Wait,” said Jamie, rising. “I’ll come up with you.”

  “So will I,” said Wendy, and she went to the dresser to lift her backpack to her shoulders.

  As I rose to join them, I noticed that my bowl was the only empty one on the table. Neither Wendy nor Jamie had eaten more than a spoonful of Catchpole’s delectable dessert. Had the tragic tale of Miss DeClerke’s demise robbed them of their appetites, I wondered, or were they still fretting about the murderous ghost?

  I hesitated, then dragged my day pack toward me and resumed my seat. “If you don’t mind coming back for me, Catchpole, I think I’ll put in a call to my husband. I told him I’d phone at five and it’s nearly that now.”

  “As you wish, madam.” Catchpole raised a gnarled finger. “But don’t go wandering off on your own. I wouldn’t want you getting . . . lost.”

  He loaded the final word with such intimations of doom that I half expected Jamie to drop his backpack and stand guard over me. Jamie must have had faith in my self-described toughness, though, because he responded to my confident smile with a friendly nod and left with the others.

  I freely admit to suffering a brief nervous qualm as they shut the door behind them, leaving me alone in the vast kitchen with one flickering lamp and no matches, but it passed the moment I heard Bill’s voice.

  “Congratulations,” he said cheerfully. “It’s official. We’re experiencing the worst snowstorm in the past hundred years.”

  “Yay,” I said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  “Oh, come on, Lori,” he coaxed. “You have to admit that it’s pretty exciting. The whole country’s shut down, from the Orkneys to the Scillies. Heathrow’s closed to air traffic. Nothing’s moving, not even the Royal Mail.”

  I sighed. “I guess the cottage is pretty low on the plowing priority list, then, huh?”

  “We’re waiting for plows to dig out the plows,” Bill confirmed. “You’re not running short on food, are you? I assume you and Wendy are pooling your resources.”

  “We haven’t had to,” I said. “There’s plenty of food on hand. Your client keeps a full larder for her guests. Why didn’t you tell me Tessa Gibbs bought Ladythorne Abbey?”

  “It didn’t seem important at the time,” said Bill. “But I’m not surprised to hear about the bulging larder. Tessa likes to entertain.”

  “We won’t starve,” I agreed. “We may even put on weight. How are you and the boys holding up?”

  “We ran low on milk this morning,” Bill informed me, “but Emma and Derek skied over with a fresh supply.”

  “Why didn’t they use the sleigh?” I asked.

  “They can’t get the horses out of the stables,” Bill answered. “Will and Rob were so concerned about the horses that they made Emma promise to e-mail photographs of them as soon as she and Derek got home.”

  I hooted with laughter. “Little did Emma know what she’d be asked to do when she introduced the boys to riding.”

  “By the way,” Bill continued, “she says you’re right about the long distance trails. There aren’t any near Ladythorne Abbey, but”—he repeated the word for emphasis—“but the valley’s riddled with connecting trails. Emma thinks Wendy Walker must have been crossing from the Monarch Way to the Cotswolds Way or vice versa when the storm caught up with her. Aren’t you pleased? You read the map correctly. Well done.”

  “Thanks,” I said dryly, “but I’ve got a new puzzle for you. Remember Wendy’s pry bar? The one she uses to split wood? Tell me, Mr. Smarty-pants: Why would she need to split wood if she’s staying at hotels?”

  “Has she been staying at hotels?” Bill asked.

  “So she says,” I replied.

  “Maybe she plans to camp out later in the trip,” Bill suggested.

  I wrinkled my nose at the phone. Bill’s solution to the puzzle was so maddeningly obvious that I wanted to bang my head—or possibly his—against the table. It took a fair amount of self-discipline for me simply to change the subject. “Do you know anything about the DeClerke family? They owned the abbey before Tessa.”

  “I recognize the name from Tessa’s contracts,” said Bill, “but I never dealt with the family directly. Why?”

  “Just curious,” I replied. “There’s a crazy old caretaker here who’s been telling us stories about the DeClerkes. I wondered if any of them were true.”

  Bill paused before asking carefully, “How crazy is the caretaker, Lori?”

  I looked up at the shotgun and asked myself if I really wanted a Special Forces arctic unit storming the abbey and taking Catchpole into custody.

  “He’s a little eccentric,” I said lightly, “but he’s been tremendously helpful. He cooked a scrumptious meal for us and he’s upstairs now, lighting fires in our rooms.”

  “You may be stuck with this helpful crackpot for several days,” Bill pointed out. “Are you sure you can cope with him?”

  “He’s a pussycat,” I said, reasoning that even the fiercest lion had started out as a cub. “But I’d like to know more about the family he used to work for.”

  “The DeClerkes?” said Bill. “No problem. I’ll make a few calls, see what I can find out. In the meantime, keep an eye on the caretaker.”

  “Will do,” I promised, but as I glanced up from the phone, I sa
w that I’d already broken my promise.

  Catchpole was standing in the doorway.

  Six

  I said good night to Bill and stood to face the caretaker.

  “Hi,” I said, wondering how long he’d been lurking in the doorway. “Fires lit?”

  “They are,” Catchpole said. “I’ve stoked the boiler as well, so you should have hot water by morning. If you’re ready to go up . . .” He motioned for me to precede him into the corridor.

  I donned my jacket, slung my day pack over my shoulders, picked up my oil lamp, and set it down again. With a boldness that surprised even me, I pushed a chair over to the white dresser, climbed onto it, and removed the shotgun from its high perch.

  “Jamie asked me to bring the gun upstairs,” I lied. I returned to the table to retrieve the lamp and headed for the corridor, carrying the shotgun in the crook of my arm. “I think he’s a little nervous about firearms.”

  “Doesn’t think I’m a pussycat, eh?” Catchpole growled.

  I winced guiltily. “You heard that, did you? Sorry. I meant no disrespect, but you know how husbands are. They worry about the silliest things. I didn’t want Bill to—”

  “I’m grateful, madam.” Catchpole stopped short and said earnestly, “I’m grateful to you for not telling him about the gun. Miss Gibbs would dismiss me if she knew I’d been such a nuisance to her attorney’s wife, and it wouldn’t be easy for me to find a new position at my age. I don’t mind if your husband thinks I’m harmless. It’s better than getting the sack.”

  If my hands hadn’t been full, I would have mopped my brow. I’d expected Catchpole to bite my head off for branding him with such a condescending label, and I was greatly relieved that he’d taken it so well. At the same time, I felt a bit sorry for him. He was the kind of man who choked on swallowed pride, but he was clearly more afraid of losing his job than his dignity.

  “Tessa won’t sack you,” I said encouragingly. “If she gets a taste of your risotto, Rhadu may be the one searching for a new position.”