Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery by Benedict Brown (romantic novels in english .txt) 📗

don’t get up,” he commanded, but every last person put their cutlery down and sat up straight out of courtesy. “Somewhere on the property is a young man with curly red hair and a nasty demeanour. The police are after him, but I’d rather that one of you found him first.”

Driscoll, the gardener, cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Milord.” Without looking up from the table – as if he were addressing a communion wafer rather than another human – he said his piece. “I think I might’a seen the fella in the gamekeeper’s hut this mornin. He were bedded down there overnight but I chased him off.”

His employer folded his lips into his mouth before replying. “Oh, well, it’s a sighting at least. I should have realised last night that the boy wouldn’t have been able to get far without a car of his own. Please keep an eye peeled and bring him straight to me if he appears.”

As the unofficial head of the household staff in Fellowes’s absence, it was down to Cook to respond. “We were all terribly sorry to hear the news, Milord. And I just wanted to say…” The bold woman, who had bossed me about and kept me in line ever since I was tiny, was suddenly unsure of herself. “Well, whatever we can do to help, you know that we will.”

My grandfather placed his hands on the back of Fellowes’s empty chair. “Thank you, Henrietta.” He gazed at his staff with thanks and affection. I was surprised he even knew her name. I’d never heard her addressed as anything but Cook before. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you saying that.”

He bowed his head respectfully and left the room. I didn’t follow him. I just stood there with my tummy rumbling, staring at the food. The meal Cook had prepared looked comparatively edible and I would have loved to sit down for a bowl of leek and cabbage soup with thick crunchy bread and salty butter. Sadly, my grandfather had other ideas and poked his head back into the kitchen to admonish me.

“Don’t dawdle, Christopher. You’re as bad as Delilah sometimes.”

To be honest, I was jealous of the dog who had already returned to her basket with a healthy chunk of lamb between her teeth. But it was Alice’s sympathetic expression that my eyes lingered over as I reluctantly trundled from the room. It was almost as if she could sense how hungry I was.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Next stop: Reginald Fellowes,” Grandfather explained as he shot along the corridor away from me.

The doctor had been and gone, but whatever he had administered at least meant that the poor man could sleep. When we got to the butler’s room, Cora was sitting in a chair at his bedside and he appeared to have regained a little of his natural colour, though the scent of sickness hadn’t left the dark, featureless space.

“I spoke to the police,” she told us without prompting. “That Blunt fellow is… well a little odd, but I got the impression that he’s not the type to gossip. He took my statement without the other officers being present and he seemed satisfied that Reginald wasn’t involved.”

Her great-uncle came to place a hand on her shoulder. “That’s good news. And, for all his faults, Inspector Blunt is nothing if not professional. I’ll have a word with his superiors to see if he’s moved the investigation on. He’s a real hound, that one. Doesn’t like to give up on his theories until there’s incontrovertible proof otherwise.”

Cora looked down at the man who most people in the family couldn’t stand but she was apparently in love with. “Thank you.” She stopped speaking and I thought that was all she would manage but then she flicked her gaze back to us. “Thank you for accepting what I told you and not being horrified. I don’t think there are many other people who would have.”

Grandfather nodded and squeezed her shoulder a little tighter.

Once we were back outside, I had a question for him and it might not have been entirely selfless. “Do you think they’ll be all right?”

He was already striding off down the corridor, his long coat flapping in his wake. He didn’t answer until we were back upstairs in the main wing of the house. “I think it will be difficult for them. It’s difficult for any two people from different backgrounds. Cora is a woman of some wealth and Fellowes has a far darker past than many of the men I’ve locked up for life.”

I hadn’t had the opportunity to ask about this until now. “So why did you give him a job in your house? Why do you trust him so deeply?”

He stopped beside the door to the armoury. “That’s not something which he would want me talking about. But I’ll tell you this, the man saved my life once and anything I can do to pay him back is worth it.”

I tried to make sense of this revelation. Fellowes couldn’t be more than thirty-five years old and my Grandfather retired in his sixties which means that Fellowes must have been around my age when he was convicted of whatever offences Blunt had dug up on him. As I processed this new information, I realised that I wouldn’t want anyone to judge me for the rest of my life on the actions I had undertaken up to now. I couldn’t say what sort of criminal activity he had engaged in, but it only seemed right that Fellowes had been given a second chance.

“Come along, boy.” He turned the amber glass handle of the thick oaken door. “I have a question for you.”

Inside the armoury, little had changed but there were signs of police activity. Iron filings had been spilt on the floor and, though I’d seen no footprints when I’d inspected the room, a number of large, dusty treads were now visible on the carpet.

Grandfather looked around the scene meticulously. His quick, inquisitive eyes