Death on Swift Wings (Gertrude Harrington Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  ‘Thank you, Auntie.’ Juliet smiled with pride, extending her hand to admire the way the sunshine sparkled off the facets of the solitaire. ‘It’s only a token diamond, but it’s all Herbert can afford on his wage.’

  Gertrude said nothing. She was no expert when it came to diamonds, but she could tell instinctively that the gemstone in Juliet’s engagement ring was far more than a mere token diamond. ‘Will Herbert be joining us today? I am most eager to meet the lucky young man who has so clearly swept you off your feet.’

  Juliet chuckled. ‘Of course he’ll be here. You don’t think I’d let him miss my birthday, do you? Sometimes you really do say the oddest things Aunt Gertie.’

  Gertrude sighed. After the things she had seen in the years since Mabel’s murder, nothing seemed odd to her any more. Her astute mind was turning things over, ruminating on the things that already didn’t add up regarding the young man she had still yet to meet.

  It was so lovely to see her niece happy for once that she didn’t want to upset her. After all of the unpleasantness that the family had endured, Gertrude hoped that her intuition was wrong. She had been wrong before, just not very often.

  ‘Mother doesn’t approve of Herbert. She thinks I’m too young to get engaged. I’m hoping once you’ve met him that you’ll be able to change her mind about him.’

  Gertrude realised her own mind had wandered, and she tried desperately to work out whether she’d missed much of Juliet’s conversation. ‘I’m sure she’s only being protective,’ she said, hoping to cover her tracks, ‘especially after what happened to Mabel.’ She glanced up at the ominously darkening sky. ‘Come on, let’s go inside and find your mother before it starts to rain. I have exciting news too.’

  *

  The cacophony of excited female chatter, which burst forth from within the village Tea Room as a red-haired woman opened the door, diminished to a hushed whisper as those within realised that they had been infiltrated by an outsider: visitors from outside of Clyst St James did not appear often.

  ‘Good morning, ladies,’ the stranger said in a clipped, polite tone. She rubbed her left leg as she entered; clearly it was causing her a little discomfort.

  Glenda Harrington stared up with keen interest at the striking woman who stood inside the doorway. There was something altogether too feminine about her: her red hair a tad too bright and curly; her face a shade too pale; her poise a little too elegant; her voice a fraction too clipped and gentle. Her over-made-up beauty seemed to be a mask for something altogether plainer. Glenda thought that if she closed her eyes and tried to recall what this stranger looked like, then she would be unable to do so.

  She stood, indicating the woman’s leg ‘Are you all right, my dear?’

  ‘It’s nothing. I stumbled on the step outside. I was just passing through your lovely little village on my way to Upper Castleford, and I seem to have lost my bearings.’

  ‘I have a sister who lives in Upper Castleford. I’d be very happy to show you the way. It’s only a couple of miles from here.’

  ‘I have old family friends in Upper Castleford, who I haven’t seen for a long while. Perhaps you know them – the Earl and Countess of Castleford?

  Glenda looked at the perfectly coiffed and immaculately attired woman. She could tell instantly that this redhead would not have Society friends. She had neither the poise and nor elegance of someone of that standing, and yet at the same time she had both poise and elegance. It was a conundrum that she felt she should bring to Gertrude’s attention. ‘I know of them, but haven’t had the pleasure of making their acquaintance. I don’t get to Upper Castleford very often.’

  ‘Really? But surely you just said it’s only a couple of miles from here, and that you have a sister who lives there?’

  ‘Would you care to join us for luncheon?’ said Glenda, changing the subject. ‘We’ve only just ordered. When we’re done I can direct you to Upper Castleford.’

  The woman sat beside Glenda, adjusting the high neckline of the brightly coloured, richly embroidered silk mandarin jacket she wore. She glanced at the man seated across from her, who blushed and averted his gaze. ‘That’s most kind my dear. My name is Clara Hendon. You may call me Clara.’

  ‘I’m Glenda Harrington, and this is my brother, Geoffrey. And these other lovely ladies are all from the village. Some of us get together each week to catch up with our news.’

  Clara smiled, her bright red lips creating a garish slit in her refined yet angular pale features. ‘You meet for a gossip – how perfectly naughty. I like a good gossip, too.’

  An elderly waitress came over to take her order. ‘I’ll just have a cup of tea, if I may. I shall be taking lunch with the Countess of Castleford at Castleford Manor later.’

  ‘Very good, Madam,’ said the waitress in a vaguely bored voice, and disappeared.

  Clara turned to Glenda, wide-eyed and breathless with excitement. ‘So, do tell me – is there much gossip in your little village? Do exciting things happen hereabouts? Are there any scandals you’d like to share? I know I’m a stranger, but I’m the soul of discretion.’

  When Clara finally paused to catch her breath, Geoffrey chuckled. ‘You don’t get out much, do you?’

  Clara shook her head. ‘I guess I live vicariously on the gossip of others. My own life is so dull.’ She appraised Geoffrey almost solicitously. ‘What’s your story? I’m sure I’m not alone in noting that you’re the only man here. Are you a gossip too?’

  Glenda smirked. ‘Geoffrey is the worst one here for gossip-mongering!’

  ‘I am not!’ squeaked Geoffrey indignantly. ‘This is my first time joining my sister for lunch here.’

  ‘Really?’ Clara leant on the table, staring Geoffrey in the eye. ‘Would you care to let me in on some of the gossip you have heard here today?’

  Geoffrey averted his gaze. ‘I prefer to listen to gossip rather than spread it.’

  Clara nodded approvingly. ‘I am most pleased to hear that.’ She returned her attention to Glenda. ‘And what about you, my dear?’

  ‘I believe in listening. We know the harm that spreading gossip can do.’ Glenda looked across at her brother, sadness in her eyes. ‘We know the harm only too well.’

  Clara glanced at the pair, clearly desperate for more information, but true to her belief, Glenda said nothing. ‘All right, so what about Upper Castleford? That place must be rife with gossip? Perhaps things I might not know about my friends? I’ve not seen them in so long, maybe there are things I ought to know?’

  Glenda shrugged. ‘We really don’t know much about gossip in other villages. If the Earl and Countess of Castleford have any skeletons in their closet, then I’m afraid it’ll be you who has to find them.’

  This news seemed oddly to please Clara. ‘Perhaps something about the staff there then? Are any of them trying to take advantage of my friends?’

  ‘We really don’t know anything, Clara.’

  Clara glanced at the clock on the church tower through the window as it began to chime. ‘Goodness, is it really that time? I must go.’ She stood, offering a silk gloved hand to Glenda. ‘It was really rather nice meeting you.’ She turned to Geoffrey. ‘Both of you. Perhaps we shall meet again when I have more free time?’

  ‘You’re not going to drink your tea?’ asked Glenda as the waitress approached carrying a cup and saucer.

  ‘I haven’t the time.’ Clara reached into her bag and withdrew her purse, from which she extracted a neatly folded Five-Pound note. She pressed it into Glenda’s hand. ‘Allow me to pay for your luncheon. Forgive me, I really must go.’

  ‘That’s far too much money.’ Glenda tried to pass the note back to Clara, who waved it away.

  ‘Think nothing of it.’ Clara turned and left the Tea Room, slamming the door behind her.

  Glenda and Geoffrey stared at one another. ‘What a peculiar woman,’ said Glenda, to which her brother concurred with a mute nod. ‘I get the feeling that she wasn’t actually lost at all.�
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  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Geoffrey. He leaned to one side, peering through the window as if in hope of catching a final glimpse of the departed stranger. Clara, however, seemed to have vanished from sight. ‘It was almost as though she knew we met here to catch up with the local gossip –’

  ‘– and was fishing for information about the Earl and Countess for some reason.’

  ‘What do we know about them?’ said Geoffrey in a hushed tone.

  ‘I know that the Earl breeds pigeons.’

  Geoffrey was somewhat surprised by this. ‘Isn’t that rather… I don’t know… lower class?’

  ‘Probably, but I recall that his first pigeons once carried messages into Occupied France during the war. I suppose he carried on breeding them. Lord knows what he does with them now. They could be racing pigeons, or carrier pigeons.’

  Geoffrey shook his head. ‘I reckon Lord Castleford breeds them so that they can be shot for sport.’

  Glenda merely nodded as the waitress brought over their luncheon; the speciality of the house – pigeon pie.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Brigadier Barrington-Smythe smoothed his neatly trimmed white moustache and admired his appearance in the cheval mirror in the corner of his bedroom. The stiffly starched collar of his pale green shirt beneath his Harris Tweed blazer was immaculately crisp, as were the sharp creases in his trousers. Just because he was retired from the Army was no excuse to let standards slip, sciatica not-withstanding.

  Fetching his trusty Hunter boots from the bottom of his armoire he completed his regimented dressing routine and left the room, leaning heavily on his cane. He paused at the top of the stairs to steal a further glance in another mirror. Army life had done little to eradicate the sense of self-importance that had been instilled within him by his strict parents. Vanity was without doubt the worst of his vices, but one with which he felt at ease. He liked to look good sartorially to make up for the fact that he looked a good decade older than his sixty years.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Grainger,’ he said as he passed the housekeeper on the stairs.

  Mrs Grainger was as slim as the Brigadier was portly, her silver hair pinned up in a severe bun. ‘Good morning, Brigadier,’ she replied, narrowing her eyes as she appraised her employer’s apparel. ‘Are you off hunting again?’

  The Brigadier chuckled beneath his breath. His housekeeper had made little secret of her distaste for his favourite pastime. What she singularly failed to comprehend, no matter how many times he explained it to her, was that the hunting was necessary to keep down the numbers of wild animals on the various nearby estates. Having no natural predators to speak of, they would breed out of control if left un-checked. The gun was the chosen method of natural selection. Besides which, shooting game was good sporting fun.

  ‘Yes. We’re all meeting at the pub before heading up to the High Meadow and Partridge Woods. Hopefully the rain will hold off long enough for me to get at least one kill.’

  ‘How’s the sciatica this morning?’

  The Brigadier banged his legs ruefully. ‘A little stiff, admittedly, but not too bad.’

  ‘Well, if you will go on these wretched hunts, don’t come home moaning about the pain!’

  The Brigadier carried on down the stairs ignoring Mrs Grainger as she continued mumbling her dissatisfaction about his continued dismissal of her opinions. ‘Like they count,’ he murmured softly as he made his way to the gun cabinet in the rear hallway. He looked with pride at his small array of weapons: a Lee-Metford rifle with bayonet and an Enfield rifle, his trusty Enfield and Webley handguns, all of which he had kept from his army days, and four shotguns for recreational shooting.

  In several rooms of the house were a variety of other weapons on display in their locked cabinets: African spears; Oriental daggers; Middle Eastern scimitars; South American blowpipes. All were ornamental in nature. He didn’t know for sure if any of them had actually been used for their intended purpose.

  His prized possessions, however, were his guns. He knew each one intimately, some having been used to save his life or take the life of another; firstly, in the Boer War at the turn of the Century, then during the Great War, and more recently in the Second World War. He had fought in all three to help preserve peace in the free world.

  He reached on top of the case, retrieving the key. Mrs Grainger had informed him imperiously on more than one occasion that she felt it was not the best place to keep the key, but the Brigadier reasoned that if he needed to gain access to his precious guns in a hurry then the key should be permanently within easy reach.

  And besides, other than Mrs Grainger and himself, who else knew of the key’s location?

  Only Mr Grainger, the gardener.

  As he inserted the key into the lock and opened the case, the Brigadier frowned. The two handguns were not in their correct holders.

  Since his intense Victorian childhood with so many years spent in the charge of various nannies, followed by years of strict boarding schools and an adult life spent in the Army, Brigadier Barrington-Smythe had developed a meticulous regimen of neatness and a fastidious nature of making certain everything that had a home was kept in that home when not in use. One of the things he was most fastidious about was the cleaning of his guns after every use, and storing them correctly.

  The Enfield and the Webley were not in their apposite holders, and had clearly also been recently fired and replaced without being cleaned.

  The Brigadier was certain that age hadn’t started to affect his faculties, which meant that someone else had used the guns.

  ‘Mrs Grainger!’

  The Brigadier was used to barking orders at soldiers under his command, as he was also used to requesting of the housekeeper or gardener a specific chore, but he was not accustomed to shouting for either one of them. Raising his voice in such a manner to request the presence of a woman did not sit well with him.

  But, damn it, someone had been at his pride and joy. The Webley was the one he’d used to kill a German Commandant in the last war. His finest hour. That one single shot had saved eight people from the firing squad. No one messed with his pride and joy. That was sacrilege, and someone would pay.

  ‘Mrs Grainger!’

  He turned at the sound of running feet. The housekeeper was scurrying towards him as fast as her old legs could manage.

  ‘What is it, Brigadier? What’s the matter?’

  The Brigadier couldn’t keep the fury from his voice as he gesticulated wildly at the gun case. ‘Who’s been meddling with my guns?’

  Catching her breath, Mrs Grainger peered at the cabinet. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Brigadier. Are they not all present and correct?’

  ‘They may be present, Mrs Grainger, but they most certainly are not correct.’ The Brigadier indicated the two handguns. ‘Someone has used these recently and then put them back in the wrong place, and not only that, but they didn’t clean them either.’

  The housekeeper nodded. She knew better than to question her employer. He was never wrong when it came to things being out of place in the house. She had once put several photo frames back in the wrong order on top of the Steinway in the drawing room and had suffered a mild war of polite words. He hadn’t been angry about the photo frames, but he had known they were not in their correct positions.

  She knew he must be right about the guns, and she could understand his fury. If someone had taken and used them without asking, and then replaced them without anyone knowing, then they had done so for a bad reason.

  ‘Who’s been here?’

  Mrs Grainger shrugged. ‘No-one, to my knowledge.’

  ‘Well, quite clearly someone has. The only other person who knows where the key to the gun case is kept is your husband.’

  The housekeeper was quite indignant at the insinuation that her husband should be implicated in something nefarious. ‘Now then, Brigadier, don’t you go bringing my Jack into this. He’s been on the straight and narrow since you nearly sacked
him last year for… well, the Christmas incident.’

  ‘That’s true enough, but somebody has been tampering with the guns and I’m quite certain it wasn’t the boy who caused Mr Grainger’s outburst. I’m very lucky that Lord and Lady Castleford still speak to me. Anyway, I want you to gather together the rest of the staff and find out who it was. In the meantime, I’m going off on the shoot. I’ll be back by five o’clock, and I want a result. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly clear, Brigadier. If I find out who the culprit is, I shall string them up personally.’

  ‘Not if, Mrs Grainger – when!’

  The fury in the Brigadier’s tone was clear enough. The housekeeper knew that if she didn’t find the perpetrator then she would be out of a job. She wasn’t about to let that happen over something that wasn’t her fault. In the decade she’d worked for him, she had come to consider the Brigadier to be a friend and confidante as well as her employer. To think that she might have let him down in some way was inconceivable.

  Brigadier Barrington-Smythe took a shotgun and a box of cartridges, and then locked the gun cabinet, pocketing the key. He left the house without another word, closely followed by his faithful dog, Jasper.

  *

  Jack Grainger had heard the Brigadier shouting from out in the garden where he was busy pruning back the hydrangea. Now autumn had arrived he would be busy pruning the many shrubs around the grounds of the Barrington-Smythe estate for some weeks. Out of his own wages he paid Herbert Carter to help him. His pride in keeping up with the Brigadier’s own high standards would not allow him to let the garden fall into ruin by becoming overgrown, no matter how much his weak heart affected him.

  Herbert helped out on a couple of the estates in the area. Although the lad was a hard worker he was un-educated, and Grainger knew Herbert probably wouldn’t amount to much. That hadn’t held him back. He was just as un-educated as the lad, and had started out much like Herbert by helping others with their gardens during his youth. He had discovered his knack for gardening early on, and wanted to help Herbert achieve what he himself had. If he could teach the lad enough about horticulture then he saw Herbert as his natural successor, and planned on putting in a good word for him with the Brigadier if he continued his hard work.