Deadly Inheritance (16 page)

‘You think it referred to Polly?’

She nodded. ‘I’m sure of it; the conversation dried right up as soon as they saw me. But later, a rather unpleasant-looking man, Mr Snell, I think his name was, referred to the hussy remark. He claimed the speaker had been right. He talked of “that strumpet from the big house”. There’s something else. Mr Snell said he’d seen Polly in the woods. ”Flaunting herself”, he said. When asked who with, he wouldn’t say, but hinted that it could cause trouble. I got the impression he loved making a mystery out of nothing very much. Miss Ranner, during our little chat in her house, said she knew Polly well; she’d taught her at the orphanage and thought she was very bright. She also said Polly was friendly with one of the footmen, John. Maybe that was who Mr Snell had seen her with.’

The Colonel was listening intently.

‘Miss Ranner liked Polly very much,’ Ursula added. ‘The girl apparently visited her when she came down to the village. Miss Ranner called her a little piece of sunshine. And she thought it strange that Polly hadn’t called to say goodbye before leaving. She did add, though, that Polly thought herself rather better than the other Mountstanton servants and Miss Ranner said there could have been some jealousy amongst them.’

There was silence.

‘Do you really think,’ Ursula said, ‘that Polly’s death was other than some sort of dreadful accident?’ A cold shiver ran down her spine.

He looked up, his expression serious. ‘What do
you
think?’

‘I? I know nothing about the matter.’

‘At this stage, I think you probably know rather more than anyone else.’

‘But that does not mean that I know enough to give an opinion. This is not something that should be judged lightly or without knowing a great deal more about who Polly was walking out with.’

‘You mean, who was the father of her child?’

Ursula nodded. ‘There is one other thing,’ she said reluctantly. ‘What happened to the hatbox Polly was said to have with her?’

‘Picked up by some passer-by?’ suggested the Colonel. ‘The very fact that she took it, though, suggests that she was not thinking of suicide.’

Ursula tried to shift her injured ankle into a more comfortable position and saw a horseman approaching them on a handsome pale gold palomino. ‘Isn’t that your brother?’ she said in surprise, wondering why the Earl was not eating luncheon at Mountstanton.

The Colonel rose. ‘Richard? I don’t think so,’ he said, his tone cold.

The horse came nearer and its rider raised a hand in greeting. ‘Charles, I heard that you had returned, good to see you again. And, Miss Grandison, is it not?’

Of course, the newcomer was Mr Russell.

‘You’ve met?’ The Colonel sounded surprised.

‘Helen was good enough to invite me to a dinner she gave for her sister and I had the pleasure of sitting next to Miss Grandison.’

Ursula smiled up at him. ‘You’ll forgive me for not rising, Mr Russell, I have hurt my ankle.’

‘I am very sorry to hear that.’ He swung himself down from his horse and held out his hand, first to her and then the Colonel, who seemed to hesitate a moment before taking it.

‘I regret very much hearing the poor news of your mother’s health, Max,’ he said rather stiffly. ‘How is she today?’

‘No better, but little worse either, which is a cause for relief. You have been picnicking, I see.’

‘Have you had lunch? There is plenty left over and we should be delighted to have you join us,’ said Ursula in a spirit of mischief. It was patently obvious that the Colonel was not happy with the encounter but she was delighted to meet Mr Russell again. She could not forget either what a stimulating conversationalist he had been or how he had managed to smooth over the unfortunate disappearance of Belle into the shrubbery with William Warburton.

‘I should warn you we have finished the wine,’ the Colonel said, his voice slightly less hostile.

‘Many thanks, but I need to return home. However, I hope I may have the pleasure of more conversation in the near future with you, Miss Grandison. I am seriously thinking of travelling to America after, well, when I no longer have ties here. I think it is somewhere I can make something of myself.’

‘I should be delighted, Mr Russell. I believe it has much to offer.’

He mounted his horse again and sat looking down at the two of them. ‘Miss Grandison, I am your servant. Charles, I understand you have resigned your commission. I wish you luck with whatever lies before you.’ He raised his whip in farewell then trotted away.

Ursula looked at the Colonel in an enquiring manner.

His face worked in an odd way then he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Is there anything else in the basket? I’d hate to offend Chef.’

Ursula inspected the basket. ‘Fruitcake,’ she said, unwrapping a greaseproof paper packet. ‘What a pity there isn’t coffee to go with it.’

He suddenly grinned. ‘There speaks the American. An English girl would have expressed a desire for tea.’

‘After luncheon, surely not?’

‘Maybe you are right. But in South Africa I found I longed more often for a billy can of tea than coffee.’

‘In the Sierra Nevada there was always a pot of coffee on the stove. Tea was unknown.’ Ursula handed him a slice of cake.

‘No doubt you Americans gave it up after the Boston Tea Party.’

Ursula laughed as she watched the retreating figure of Max Russell. She wondered why the Colonel should show such tightly controlled animosity towards someone his brother and sister-in-law appeared to treat as a friend.

The picnic was packed up in near silence. Max Russell seemed to have left a strained atmosphere.

The Colonel called Honey to heel and announced he would give her a quick walk, ‘So long as you feel happy to be left on your own for a little, Miss Grandison?’

Ursula assured him she would very much like to sit quietly and contemplate the scenery. ‘It is very beautiful here, Colonel,’ she said, leaning against a wheel of the trap. ‘I think I could look at this scene forever. Does any of this land belong to your brother?’

‘All of it,’ he said curtly.

‘All of it?’

‘As far as you can see – on every side.’

‘How much land does he own?’

‘Ten thousand acres here, another five thousand in the north of England, one thousand in Scotland.’ He sounded stilted, as though these figures were embarrassing, then clicked his fingers at Honey and disappeared across the top of the meadows.

Ursula sat in awed contemplation of the fields and hills that rolled away from her and tried to imagine a total of sixteen thousand acres of Britain. This was such a small country compared with the seemingly unending expanses of America; to think of one family, one man, owning such a large portion of it was extraordinary. Then she wondered how much income the land represented.

‘Rents are down, I know that,’ Mr Seldon had said before she left with Belle. ‘Large estates require large sums to be spent in maintenance. Helen complains of the burden death duties have imposed on them. However, I don’t think that’s the answer. Helen would not allow her dowry to be spent propping up failing farms.’

Ursula thought over what she had seen of the relationship between Helen and her husband, the Earl of Mountstanton. It hardly seemed a marriage made in heaven. An image flashed into her mind of the drunken Earl being supported by Mr Warburton and the handsome young footman along the corridor from the billiard room. To Ursula’s eyes, Richard Stanhope seemed a cold and unsympathetic man. She remembered the passionate girl she had shared her schooling with. Had one unfortunate liaison made her settle for status rather than romance?

She could not help remembering Jack Dyke, the man both she and Helen had fallen in love with. She had been working in Chauncey Seldon’s office, earning her keep. Helen was preparing her society debut and moaning that she was not on either Mrs Astor’s or Mrs Vanderbilt’s list. ‘I won’t meet the right people if I’m not invited to their parties!’ But Helen was welcomed everywhere else. Where she met Jack Dyke, Ursula had no idea. She herself had met him when he came into the office selling typewriters. He was funny, charming, tall and handsome. And an excellent salesman. He’d won a contract from the Seldon company for ten typewriters and taken her out to lunch to celebrate. Later, he’d told Ursula the idea to approach the company had come from Helen.

Jack invited Ursula not only to lunch but to the theatre, dinner, Coney Island. He seemed to be flush with cash and swore he was going places. Then the typewriter company went bust, the Seldon company lost money and Jack didn’t dare show his face there again. ‘California,’ he said. ‘That’s the place for a man like me. I’ll be running my own show in no time. Come with me, darling girl. We’ll get married and have a wonderful life.’

So she’d run away with him. How was she to know Jack had been dating Helen as well? And when she did find out, she was ashamed to admit that she felt a sense of triumph that it was she who had captured his heart.

Down the meadow Ursula saw the Colonel throwing a stick for Honey to retrieve. Charles Stanhope was direct in his manner and stood no nonsense. Certainly not a romantic figure. He had, though, a warmth about him; look at the way he had taken care of her. No, he was not cold like his brother. To Ursula’s American eyes, the difference in status between the two brothers was extraordinary. Did the younger man envy the Earl his position? Marriage to Belle would bring him money but that did not seem important to him, any more than did the pomp and position that his brother and mother took for granted. Nor did he appear close to his sister-in-law. Ursula had not seen them exchange more than the odd word.

In the Sierra Nevada she had suffered serious bruising and several cracked ribs, but nothing that had hampered her movements the way this sprained ankle did.

Soon after they’d arrived in San Francisco, Jack declared all his savings had been exhausted. It had taken less time for Ursula to lose her illusions about the man she had so hastily married in front of a drunken Bronx cleric. They’d travelled to St Louis by rail, then joined a covered wagon train. During the long, difficult journey over the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, Ursula came to realise she had married a drinker and a gambler, and a man who found his greatest enjoyment in arguing, both with words and his fists. They’d been expelled from one wagon train and had to wait at a trading post for another, when Jack’s charm had rescued them. For the remainder of the journey he had tried, with some success, to curb his worst instincts. In San Francisco he seemed to make no attempt to find employment, spending most of his time in various bars. Then he declared a drinking buddy had made him a partner in a silver mine claim that would make their fortune. Ursula hoped that, away from the temptations of a large city, he would once again be the charming man she had fallen in love with. It was not to be.

Ursula brought her mind back to Helen. How would she have dealt with Jack? Would her father have cut her off if she had married him? Maybe Jack realised that was how it would have been. But he knew that Ursula had no money; he must have loved her.

Was it after losing Jack that Helen had learned to control her passions? She seemed to show very little emotion these days. She was as cool with her husband as with her brother-in-law. The only people Ursula had seen her show genuine warmth towards had been Max Russell and William Warburton. Ursula realised Mr Russell had much of Jack’s charm: less mercurial, perhaps. He was certainly more sophisticated and he had not shown any particular love for alcohol at the dinner table.

Ursula shivered. Dark clouds now obscured the sun and a chill wind was blowing up across the meadow.

The Colonel strode up the hill with the dog. ‘It’s going to rain, we should be going,’ he said and started to harness the horse to the trap.

Ursula hauled herself to her feet. Putting any weight on her foot was still extremely painful; she wondered how long it was going to take to heal; she hated not being able to move easily.

Buckling the last of the straps, the Colonel checked that all was secure. He stowed away the basket Ursula had repacked, then helped her up on to the front seat.

‘With luck we’ll get back before the worst of the weather.’

‘It was such a lovely day and the sun seemed so set this morning.’

‘That’s the English climate for you; we can get four seasons in a day.’ The Colonel handed up Honey and Ursula settled her on the seat between them.

On the way back the Colonel concentrated on his driving. The easy relationship that had developed between them seemed to have vanished.

A fine drizzle started as they reached Hinton Parva. The Colonel slowed their speed. Then he gave an exclamation and brought the horse to a halt.

Outside the village store a girl was trying to pull away from a man who held her by the wrist. Ursula recognised Mr Snell, the unpleasant fellow she had seen earlier inside the shop. The girl looked to be in her middle twenties, with a plain face and brown hair dragged back beneath a simple bonnet. Her neat figure was dressed in an ill-fitting grey skirt and coat. She looked very distressed. No one else was in the street; any villagers had disappeared inside to escape the rain.

The Colonel thrust the reins into Ursula’s hands and jumped down.

‘Maggie, good to see you again. Do you need a lift up to the house?’ He looked at the man. ‘Mr Snell, do you have some business with Miss Hodgkiss?’

The man dropped the girl’s hand. ‘So the Honourable Charles Stanhope is returned from the wars. A fine mess you’ve found at home.’

‘Maggie, where is your luggage?’

She dipped a little curtsey. ‘I’ve left it with Mr Partridge, sir. I was going to walk back through the wood.’

‘Run and ask him to bring it here.’

She disappeared into the shop.

The Colonel turned back to Mr Snell. ‘I would ask you not to accost Mountstanton staff, sir. Please ensure there is no repetition of what I have seen this afternoon.’

The man flushed a deep crimson. ‘Your family lords it over everyone but you have no right to speak to me like that. I will consort with whom I choose.’