Deadly Inheritance (27 page)

‘Mama does not like me to play cards; she says they are a path to per … per … perdition,’ he finally brought out on a note of triumph.

Ursula smiled. ‘I think we can play a game of snap without dangerous consequences, Harry.’ For an instant she remembered games of poker played in the mining camp; the high stakes, the tensions, the accusations of cheating, the spilling over of passions when fortunes changed hands, the shots that could be fired – but it was only for an instant, then she firmly closed a door on her memories.

For Ursula, card entertainment lay in speed and hilarity, and she forced the pace until Mrs Comfort almost collapsed in tears of laughter. She was first to lose her cards. Harry, though, even while laughing with them, demonstrated surprising powers of concentration and single-mindedness. Time and again his ‘snap’ came a split second before Ursula’s, and not because she had deliberately hung back.

‘I won! I won!’ he crowed, gathering up the last pile of cards.

‘You are a real champion,’ Ursula acknowledged. ‘I can see that your mama may well fear you turning into a gambler.’

‘Are you a gambler, Miss Grandison?’

She looked at the eager face. ‘No, Harry, I am not. I don’t mind losing a game but I hate losing large sums of money. I have known many gamblers, though,’ she added.

‘Do lots of them win?’

She shook her head. ‘Sometimes they have lucky streaks, then they play some more and lose it all. Sometimes they lose very, very large sums. I knew a man who shot himself because he had lost everything he owned – and more.’

‘How could he lose more than he owned?’

She sighed. ‘Because he lied and offered to bet something that wasn’t his.’

Harry looked up at her, his eyes huge. ‘And that’s why he shot himself?’

‘Yes. He had lost his honour as well as his possessions.’

‘Well, let that be a lesson to you, my lad,’ said Mrs Comfort. ‘No wonder her ladyship doesn’t want you playing cards.’

Harry’s soft little mouth pouted. ‘But I’m not going to lose anything.’

‘Not if you don’t play for money,’ Ursula said with a smile. ‘Play because you enjoy the game, not to win stakes.’

She stayed to have luncheon with him and Mrs Comfort in the nursery, enjoying much simpler fare than was served in the dining room, and entertaining both boy and nurse with tales of mining in the Sierra Nevada. Harry listened, open-mouthed, and had to be gently encouraged to eat his meal as Ursula told him of fights and the privations of living in a mining camp.

On her return downstairs, Ursula requested the loan of a walking stick. Abandoning her crutches, she tried to walk with only the aid of the stick. Her ankle was more painful than with the support of the crutches, but the feeling of freedom was worth the extra discomfort.

Ursula turned around at the end of the corridor, and saw the Colonel watching her.

‘Congratulations, Miss Grandison. I commend your courage.’

‘A short walk on friendly terrain hardly calls for bravery.’

‘I am sure you need to rest that ankle now,’ he waved a hand towards the library and Ursula was happy to enter.

‘Did your business go well?’

He shrugged. ‘It was nothing very important.’

‘I have spent a very pleasant time with Harry this morning,’ Ursula said brightly. ‘We played snap. He won,’ she added with a smile.

‘Harry’s a demon with the cards. I think he has an uncommonly bright intelligence.’

‘You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?’

‘He’s my nephew, the Mountstanton heir. But he’s a capital fellow; one can’t help liking him.’ His smile was endearingly natural.

‘I agree,’ she said softly. ‘I enjoyed his company so much I ate luncheon in the nursery.’

He sat down opposite her. ‘I’m afraid that your stay at Mountstanton is not offering you many opportunities for fun. I had hoped that perhaps, with the wretched inquest out of the way, I could suggest a diversion of some sort.’ He grinned at her. ‘You have, after all, promised to tell me about your Californian adventures.’ The smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. ‘But now I find I have to go up to town.’

‘Oh?’ Ursula tried to sound disinterested.

‘Business.’

‘Of course.’

Silence grew and deepened. Ursula wanted very badly to know how long he was going to be away and just what he was going to be doing in London, but could not bring herself to display such bad manners as to ask.

The Colonel drew a quick breath. ‘I’m hoping to stand for parliament in the next election. At the moment an election doesn’t look likely. I should have abandoned the war in 1900, as my comrade Winston Churchill did. There was an election the following year but I wasn’t a famous war correspondent and I doubt I would have won a seat.’

‘You want to be a politician? Is that why you have resigned your commission?’

He looked down at his hands. ‘I’ve experienced the splendid way the ordinary soldier can conduct himself. His class gets a raw deal out of life and I’d like to help change that.’

Ursula wished she knew how the English political system operated.

The Colonel gave her a contrite smile. ‘This isn’t the time to talk about such matters. I should not, perhaps, have mentioned it. Only Richard thinks I’m a fool and Mama refuses to discuss the matter with me.’

‘And Helen?’

‘Oh, Helen says she’ll never understand politics and not to bore her with such matters.’

‘I would be interested to hear about your aims and the party you hope to join.’

‘It’d take too long now. I have a train to catch.’

Was he really to disappear up to London? ‘What about your investigations into Polly’s death?’

‘I haven’t forgotten her, Miss Grandison.’

‘And Mr Snell?’

His gaze shifted to his beautifully polished shoes. ‘Apparently the post-mortem examination has enabled the death certificate to be signed. Heart attack, plain and simple.’

Ursula felt deeply uneasy. Could it be that simple?

‘I have to consider Richard,’ he said awkwardly, fiddling with his gold watch chain. ‘He’s terrified of Mama and she’s determined that the whole matter should be quietly wrapped up. No scandal must attach itself to the Mountstanton name.’ He sounded bitter.

‘You are surely not terrified of your mother?’

‘I’d rather face a brigade of Boers than Mama in full cry, but there are times when I can summon sufficient courage to do my duty rather than hers.’

Was this the man Ursula had been certain would fight to a standstill to redress the wrong he saw being inflicted on Polly’s memory?

He rose and held out his hand. ‘I must say farewell for the moment, Miss Grandison. But I shall return shortly and then I hope we may be able to spend some time together.’

She inclined her head. ‘I shall look forward to that, Colonel Stanhope.’

It was, she thought, a polite exchange of social niceties that meant nothing very much.

What had happened to the rapport she thought had been established between them?

* * *

Ursula was surprised at how empty the enormous house seemed without the Colonel. She told herself to banish such nonsense from her head. When she and Belle had arrived at Mountstanton, the place had seemed overflowing with people and the absence of someone who had not even been present then could not,
would
not, make a difference.

She made determined efforts to practise walking with the stick rather than the crutches, played more cards with Harry and accompanied him to the stables to watch him ride his pony. She watched his face flush with triumph as he jumped the two low arrangements of rails cleanly. ‘Won’t Papa be pleased?’ he cried to Ursula as he dismounted.

Days passed and then two weeks with no sign of the Colonel. When Helen had asked in a desultory way over dinner if they could expect to see him in the near future, the Earl had said, ‘You know Charles, he does what he wants when he wants.’

Deprived of the Colonel’s stimulating presence, Ursula tried to apply herself to the task Mr Seldon had entrusted to her: the discovery of why Helen was not spending her dowry on restoring Mountstanton. Ursula made friends with Mrs Parsons. She learned a great deal about running a mansion such as Mountstanton and soon realised that the housekeeper was as puzzled as she was about the lack of funds being spent on the house. Gradually the housekeeper become more and more forthcoming until finally one day she said, ‘Forgive me for saying so, Miss Grandison, but we does wonder about her ladyship’s dowry. It’s not as if we’ve heard of sums being laid out on other areas of the estate.’

Ursula murmured something soothing about there possibly being some difficulty with stocks and shares, at which Mrs Parsons had looked so horror-stricken that Ursula gave up any further discussion of the subject.

She tried subtle approaches to Helen, though the Countess either failed to respond in any meaningful way, or she became waspish: ‘If it’s that my father has failed to supply you with sufficient funds, please ask straight out, Ursula. I hate the mention of money but I suppose occasionally one has to deal with the filthy stuff.’

Unusually flustered, Ursula told her she had no need of financial assistance. ‘I suppose it’s that I wonder why you have not put in hand any restoration of the house,’ she said, coming right out with it.

To her surprise, Helen did not at once fly at her. She sat in her boudoir with red patches flaring in her cheeks for several minutes. Then she said, ‘I wonder at you, Ursula. I would have thought you had been here a sufficient time to understand that Mountstanton follows tradition. If I transformed the whole place the way I have done this room, there would be outrage. We Americans cherish the new, the English the old. Now, I would be grateful if you could leave me to finish my correspondence.’

Ursula retreated. The story of Mountstanton and tradition was patent nonsense. Look at the way the Dowager had transformed her apartment, no doubt with her own funds. So what was Helen doing with hers? She wrote to Mr Seldon the story of her failure but told him she would continue digging.

Belle had developed an unaccustomed pallor; worried, Ursula persuaded her to come riding, a decision that was rewarded by the girl coming back with pink cheeks and high spirits.

Ever since the Colonel had left for London, simmering at the back of Ursula’s mind had been the unanswered questions over Polly’s death. Almost three weeks after the girl’s funeral, Ursula sat with her knitting and forced herself to face certain conclusions that her examination of various facts had produced.

First, following the arguments produced by the Colonel, was the belief that the girl had definitely not committed suicide. Even if Polly had gone against her nature and decided the shame of carrying a bastard child was too much for her to bear, she would have chosen a more certain way to kill herself.

Second, although accident on the face of it was a possibility, it was surely unlikely. Her personal experience was that no one would tackle that slope without real reason and there was no evidence to suggest that there was anything that could have meant Polly would have voluntarily tackled that climb. All right, she herself had been crazy enough to try it but Polly would have been better acquainted with its dangers.

If she accepted these conclusions, the only viable possibility left was that someone had killed Polly. But why? The most obvious reason was that the girl insisted that her lover should take her away and either marry her or set her up with a home in which she could bring up their child. He had been unwilling to consider either arrangement and did not want her to name him as the father.

It was a most unpleasant conclusion and Ursula was sure the reason why it had taken her so long to face it was because the next question had to be: who was the father?

There were a number of possibilities but no actual evidence against any of them. If she waited, would something emerge that would point to one or another? For a moment she wished passionately that the Colonel was available to discuss the question. In his absence she was horribly aware that she might be living alongside a murderer.

The one bright spot that Ursula could see at present was that the Countess was at last involving Belle with the arrangements for her coming out ball. There were lunches and dinners, both at Mountstanton and with neighbours, establishing friendships with girls who were also making their debut that season, together with a number of eligible young men.

Helen had also arranged for a small dance one evening with some sixteen couples, mainly young, who Belle had been introduced to in the surrounding neighbourhood. The drawing room carpet was lifted and the floor polished. Ursula was happy to play for dancing while parents and guardians were offered cards in an adjacent reception room. A buffet supper was served and the evening was a great success, with Belle behaving delightfully. Ursula’s one disappointment was that the charming Mr Russell was not among the guests. She supposed, perhaps, that being a contemporary of the Earl’s, he was a little old for such entertainment.

The day after Ursula had faced the possibility Mountstanton was harbouring a murderer, news came of the death of Lady Frances. The Earl insisted he would attend the funeral and would cable his brother, asking him to come home so he could also attend. The Colonel, however, did not return.

Nor had Mr Warburton returned and Belle was prone to sulks and depressions. One evening some four weeks after the inquest, following dinner with just the family, Belle gave up trying to render a simple piece on the piano. ‘It’s no good, I’ll never be able to play properly,’ she said despairingly.

‘Practise, that’s what you need, my girl,’ said the Dowager tartly. ‘You’ll never get anywhere in this world without effort. You’re a scatterhead, that’s your trouble.’ She closed her book, rose and clicked her fingers at Honey. ‘I shall say goodnight.’ The Dowager sailed magisterially out of the room and Belle stuck her tongue out at her departing back.

The Earl had removed himself to his study after dinner and Helen had already retired to her boudoir, so if anyone was to admonish Belle it would have to be Ursula.