Ghosts of Mayfield Court (5 page)

I decided to take Mr Bottomley's advice and tell Michael the whole story, but I had reservations about doing the same with Marguerite: she was, I knew, utterly incapable of keeping any kind of secret!

I left the kitchen and went into the living room. I glanced in the dim, fly-blown mirror above the fireplace, and considered the young woman looking out at me: even features, glossy black hair cut in the new shorter fashion made popular by Princess Mary of Teck, Duchess of York, wide blue eyes which revealed, perhaps, too much innocence – no, not innocence, it was credulity: I had always tended to believe whatever I was told. I had not dressed for the country, and was wearing a
businesslike
black crepe dress, relieved at cuffs and collar with trimmings of white lace. Of course, I had younger, more
fashionable 
clothes at home, including a number of dresses from Liberty's.

I suddenly wished that Michael was with me, here in Mayfield Court. I was weary of this decaying ruin, and horrified at what lay hidden from sight in the tangled garden. But that was not the case. Michael was in London, and knew nothing of this dismal place. But when I got back to Saxony Square, I would follow Sergeant Bottomley's advice. ‘Secrets of that kind are best shared with someone outside the family. Tell your Michael all about it.'

I turned from the mirror and set about finding Uncle Max. Wherever could he be? He had done little more than speak a few words to Sergeant Bottomley, and had apparently thought it of no consequence that the detective should leave Mayfield Court without having seen him.

Uncle was nowhere to be found in the house. A sudden fear gripped me. Maybe he had gone out into the garden after all when Mr Bottomley and I were safely out of the way on Piper's Hill, and perhaps he had fallen ill. He had suffered a slight stroke early in 1893 and, although he had made a full recovery, I was always anxious about his well-being. I hurried out into the garden.

Behind the old house there was a line of ruined stables and outhouses, mostly roofless, and beyond these, elevated some feet above the level of the garden, lay the road to Warwick. I
discovered
Uncle Max standing in front of one of the dilapidated outhouses, where a cast-iron incinerator stood amidst a hillock of old clotted ashes. I saw that he had lit a fire of dried wood and paper, and was standing, grimly silent, waiting for it to take hold. Beside him stood a wooden crate, piled high with the bundles of letters and papers that had so preoccupied him ever since our arrival at Mayfield Court. There was something so forbidding about his expression that I held back in the shadow of one of trees. What was he doing?

Once the fire was burning healthily, Uncle began to throw the
bundles of letters and papers on to it. The incinerator was raised from the ground on slender iron legs, so that the blaze soon took hold. A pall of smoke began to rise towards the tops of the
sheltering
trees. His features were twisted in what seemed to be an expression of ungovernable rage. His eyes glowed with anger, and I could hear his breath coming in harsh, stertorous bursts of sound. For a moment he stopped his work of destroying the pile of documents to glance up at the sky, and shake his fist defiantly.

And then, as he seized yet another time-stained bundle of letters to consign to the flames he gave a sudden shout of triumph, clutched it to his chest for a moment, and then thrust it into one of the pockets of his frock coat.

‘That's it! That's it!' he cried aloud, all trace of his terrifying anger having disappeared from his face and mien. ‘And to think I nearly burnt it with all the rubbish! The harpy will be pleased – maybe she will take her claws out of me once I have given her that elusive deed!'

My heart pounding with fear, I made my way cautiously back to the house. How long would we have to remain in this hateful, haunted place? What was the matter with Uncle Max, that he should behave like a man demented? As though in reply, I saw in my mind's eye the figure of little Hannah Price, mouthing the name ‘Helen', and solemnly holding a finger to her silent lips.

3

Fleshing Out the Bones

S
ergeant Bottomley sat on a fallen tree in the overgrown garden behind the old house. A few feet away from him was the ruined wall with its deep fissure in the brickwork that had constituted the tomb of an unknown child – unknown to the law, whatever stories may have been woven about a little girl called Helen. He pulled a dented silver watch from his waistcoat pocket, and opened the cover. Five past eleven.

He heard the sound of a carriage coming to a halt on the raised road behind the house and, after a little while, Detective Inspector Jackson and Dr James Venner, who was carrying a Gladstone bag, appeared on the path leading into the garden. Bottomley watched them.

The guvnor was dressed in his usual brown serge suit, with its ample waistcoat displaying a gold watch-chain and medals. Today he’d chosen to wear his dark-brown overcoat and
tall-crowned
blocker, so that to the uninitiated he looked like a gamekeeper in his Sunday best, or a coroner’s officer dressed to call at the house of a circuit judge.

Doctor Venner had once said that Jackson did not look a bit like a detective. Well, that was all to the guvnor’s advantage: one crafty embezzler, who had thought that Jackson was a marine chandler, had passed him a dud note, and had paid for his mistake with eight years’ hard labour. Another wretch, convinced that Inspector Jackson was a wholesale corn factor, had tried to
recruit him into an eclectic gang of assassins, and had ended up on the gallows.

Doctor Venner was a distinguished, grey-headed gentleman in his early sixties, for many years physician to some of the leading families in the county. Rubbing shoulders with the gentry may have given him his penchant for meticulously elegant attire: today, he was wearing a black frock coat with striped trousers, and a tall silk hat worn ever so slightly rakishly, its brim tilted over his left eye. He was sporting the lilac gloves that he favoured for day wear.

To Bottomley’s way of thinking, Dandy Jim was one of the most elegantly foppish men that he had ever seen. He was also a brilliant police surgeon, with an immense knowledge of forensic medicine. The three men had worked together for many years.

‘So, Bottomley,’ said Dr Venner, ‘what have you got for me this time?’

He deposited his Gladstone bag on a clear patch of grass near the wall and, unfastening the five ‘doctor’s buttons’ on the sleeves of his frock coat, turned back the cuffs. He placed his silk hat carefully on a section of the ruined wall, and deposited his gloves inside it.

‘I’m not quite sure yet, sir,’ Bottomley replied, ‘but I’m inclined to think it’s murder most foul – and the foulest of all, in my book: child-murder.’

‘Hmm…. Well, it’s a fine, dry day, so we can examine the remains out here in the garden, where we can be reasonably private. Can you find a bed sheet, or a horse blanket – something that I can use to place the bones upon? Then, Jackson, perhaps you’ll assist me in removing the skeleton from the cavity?’

The bones of the skeleton lay gleaming white under the August sun. They had been removed piecemeal from the cavity in the wall, and Jackson had been obliged to grope around in a mulch of dried leaves and soil in order to retrieve the leg bones.

Sergeant Bottomley had withdrawn a few feet from the spot, and Jackson joined him. Together, the two policemen watched their colleague go to work.

Dr Venner spent a long time articulating the skeleton, carefully arranging the bones in their correct order. Then he removed a magnifying glass from his bag, and knelt down on the edge of the linen sheet that Bottomley had procured from the house. He examined every bone, and lifted the skull, so that he could scrutinize it before putting it back in its place. Then he selected three small bones from the mournful pile, and laid them out carefully on the grass.

‘There, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you can see the ilium, the ischium, and the pubis. After puberty, these three bones are fused into one, which we call the innominate bone, but in the child they are the three separate bones that you can see here. This is the skeleton of a child, and the contour of the pelvis shows it to have been a female child.’

Venner rose to his feet, and dusted the knees of his trousers carefully with a handkerchief. ‘It was a little girl, you understand, aged ten or eleven. There is no way of ascertaining the cause of death. If she died by violence, then whatever force was used was not sufficient to break or damage any of her bones.’

He looked away from the two officers, as though suddenly ashamed of what he was about to say. ‘All the bones have been gnawed by rats, and it is conceivable that the body was consumed by rodents over a period of some months after entombment. She has lain there about thirty years. Twenty-five to thirty years.’

‘The bones seem unusually clean,’ said Jackson. ‘I’d have thought that they would have become discoloured after so many years unburied.’

‘It’s a very dry location, and the skeleton had been gradually covered by leaves and other desiccated vegetable debris. I think that accounts for the pristine state of the bones – that, and the gnawing by rats.’

Venner treated Jackson to a wry smile. ‘I know that neither of you likes my playing detective,’ he said, ‘but I would see this as the illegal concealment of a dead body – a felony at law – following a natural death, or, as you have suggested, Bottomley, the coming to light after a lifetime of a wicked murder, probably for gain.’

Venner carefully adjusted his silk hat to the rakish angle that he favoured, and picked up his Gladstone bag.

‘I’ll go back to Warwick now, Jackson,’ he said, ‘and arrange for a closed van to come here to remove these remains to the police mortuary. It’s a sad business, when I am called to view the mortal relics of a child. So much lost, so much potential unfulfilled. I’ll send you a written report, but there’s not much that I can say.’

As soon as Venner had gone, Jackson knelt down in front of the fissure and began to rake out the mulch of vegetation that had enshrouded the skeleton. He did not end his task until the cavity in the wall was completely empty. Bottomley watched him as he sifted through the dense mass of leaves and stems. He was searching for clues, but he’d find precious little of interest in that tinder-dry accumulation of withered plants.

‘There’s another skeleton here,’ said Jackson, ‘but it’s only a rat. And there’s this piece of cloth – a strip of something – some kind of cotton fabric. You can see fine cords on its surface, made of raised threads.’

He handed the piece of fabric to Bottomley.

‘It looks like dimity to me, sir,’ he said. ‘This bit may have been coloured at one time, to judge from that little pinkish patch at the top. It’s used for bed upholstery – and nightgowns. So maybe that little one was still wearing her nightgown when she was placed in that makeshift tomb. Poisoned, or smothered, or strangled in her bed, and carried out here in the night….’

Bottomley walked away into the trees, and Jackson saw him fish in the ample pockets of his overcoat until he found his
battered silver flask. A swig of gin will restore his spirits, he thought. Herbert Bottomley had eight daughters, all living. Two were married, two were in service, and the four younger ones were still at home. One of them Judith, was a little girl of ten. Maybe she, too, wore a dimity nightgown….

It was time to confront the elusive man who was staying in the tumbledown house. Bottomley had met him, but had only exchanged a few words with him before he had flitted away. Maximilian Paget and his niece Catherine must be kin of the child called Helen Paget who had stayed for one night in that house thirty years ago. Why did he show no interest in the discovery of a skeleton in the garden of the house that he had apparently inherited?

‘They’ve gone, sir!’

Mrs Doake, besom in hand, paused in her task of sweeping the kitchen floor to answer Inspector Jackson’s question.

‘They left just after twilight yesterday, the two of them, and their luggage, sitting in the back of a cart from the village. Not what you’d expect gentlefolk to do, but he was in a tearing hurry to get away. Mr Paget, I mean. He looked very pale, and didn’t say much, but he seemed to be inwardly excited, if you get my meaning. It was that sweet girl who had to see to the house, and tell me what to do as regards shutting the place up. It was Miss Catherine who paid me my due, and gave me a half-sovereign to show her appreciation, which was very generous—’

‘And where did they go, Mrs Doake?’ Jackson interrupted.

‘They went back to London, sir. I’ve got the address over here, written on this bit of paper, because, of course, the gentleman wrote to me before he came down here. Here it is. “M. Paget Esquire, 11 Saxony Square, London, W.” A bad-tempered, surly gentleman, very abrupt with his niece, especially when she fancied she’d seen the little ghost, and all the time it was a living gypsy child! There he was, out in the garden, throwing papers on
to a bonfire, and shaking his fists at the heavens, which isn’t right, and tempting Providence…. I saw him, you know, but he didn’t see me! Now where was I? Oh, yes, they upped sticks and went yesterday at dusk. Sam Miller took them in his cart to the Volunteer at Thornton Heath, where they caught the evening coach to Warwick. So there you are, sir, they’ve gone.’

It was Bottomley’s turn to ask a question. He looked at the garrulous Mrs Doake with his amiable, lopsided smile.

‘Have you ever heard the name Rose Potter? She was a servant in this house all those years ago, when little Miss Helen came to stay for the night, in the October of 1864.’

‘Rose Potter? No, Mr Bottomley, I don’t recall any such name. We came to Mayfield twenty-two years ago, so we never knew any of the folk connected with that mystery of Miss Helen. I suppose that poor little skeleton was hers, wasn’t it? Whoever could have done such a thing? Rose Potter? Why don’t you go and have a talk with old Mrs Protheroe? She’ll know, I expect. You’ll find her in the almshouse at Overton Hollow. There’s not much Agnes Protheroe doesn’t know about things that went on in these parts.’

‘Well, thanks very much, ma’am,’ said Bottomley, ‘we’ll certainly have a word with this Mrs Protheroe. We can walk from here to Overton Hollow, it’s not above half a mile. But first, I think we’d like to have a look at this bonfire that Mr Paget kindled. Very interesting, that sounds, to my way of thinking.’

They had come to the line of ruined stables and outhouses, mostly roofless, in front of which stood the cast-iron incinerator on its mound of ashes. It was full to the brim with burnt and charred papers, and nearby was a wooden crate containing a few old grocery bills and a tattered almanac for 1884.

Bottomley threw the incinerator on to its side and scraped the contents out on to the ground. Maximilian Paget had done a good job of destruction, but a mass of paper never burns in it’s
entirety: there are always scraps of unburnt paper to be found if you searched diligently enough. Eventually, Bottomley found three pieces of charred paper that contained a few coherent sequences of words. He and Jackson studied them together.

‘Gabriel Forshaw’, said Jackson. ‘Whoever he is or was, our Mr Paget evidently thought him worthy of being burnt up in this incinerator. He went around telling people that he was going to – Africa? Or Afghanistan?’

‘Maybe he went to Affpuddle, in Dorset,’ offered Bottomley. ‘I had a cousin who went to live there after she married.’

‘Well, Sergeant, if this Gabriel Forshaw went to Affpuddle, maybe you could go down there and find out what he did when he got there. You could stay with your cousin while you were investigating. Affpuddle indeed! Dear me!’

Bottomley smiled, but said nothing. Jackson considered the second fragment.

‘“Upton Car …” is clear enough,’ he said. ‘That’ll be Upton Carteret. It’s a village on the other side of the county, miles from here. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been. Evidently there’s a monument of some sort there. It might be an idea to visit Upton Carteret, and nose around, as they say.

‘Now, let’s consider this third fragment. “WH was not one of us. He became a missionary, and went….” Perhaps WH was a clergyman. He was “not one of us” – meaning, I suppose, not one of the family. Well, we’ll find out in the end.’

Jackson produced a fat notebook tied with string from his overcoat pocket, and carefully stowed the three fragments of paper in it.

‘Now, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘it’s time we set off on foot to visit that old lady at Overton Hollow. What was her name? Protheroe. Mrs Agnes Protheroe.’

‘Well, well,’ said old Mrs Protheroe, ‘so you’re trying to find Rose Potter? It must be thirty years since I last saw her, climbing up on to the Warwick coach at the Volunteer on Thornton Heath. She was a cheerful soul, for all that she’d been a school mistress. That’s how she put up with Mrs Sourpuss and her precious husband for so long. By being cheerful, I mean. Mind you, she was a born gossip. Not that I minded, because in these out-
of-the
-way places a bit of scandal’s always well received.’