Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

‘What did Johnny Bell say?’ asked Diana when we sat down in the kitchen, fragrant mugs of Earl Grey clutched in shaking hands. ‘That the coffin must have been put in when the staircase was constructed? Sixteen sixty-two. Then perhaps Mr Stillingfleet can help us.’

‘Mr Stillingfleet?’ I asked. ‘Who’s he?’

‘Was. Hugo Benedict Stillingfleet. Tutor to the little Easton boys.’

‘Wicked Easton?’

‘Yes, William and his brother Robert. He was also chaplain and finally steward. He lived here for about fifty years and kept the most wonderful account books – more like a diary, really. Every farthing that got spent, he recorded it. Everyone who was in the employ of the family and what they earned…family journeys, who came to stay and practically what they had for breakfast! If anything funny happened when the staircase was being installed, I bet Stillingfleet has recorded it. Nick, go and get Stillingfleet!’

‘I’m not getting Stillingfleet at this time of night! Weighs about a ton and I’m not going down there to unlock the library! It’ll keep until morning.’

‘That coffin,’ I said drowsily. ‘That secret little box. Did we release something? Something very small. Something very sad. Did we call back somebody? Somebody who is distressed by the disturbance?’

‘We’ll ask Stillingfleet in the morning,’ said Diana, and we finally went to bed.

It was a week before I could return to Felthorpe Hall. Johnny Bell was doing a beautiful job on the stairs, and it was nearing completion. The little box still stood safely on the table in the drawing room.

Diana and Nicholas were very subdued. ‘We’ve had terrible nights,’ they said. ‘The same mutterings and sobbings every night since we disturbed that box! Haven’t slept for a week. We don’t know what to do. But we’ve a lot to tell you!’

They led me into the library where the central table was covered in page of notes and several leather-bound and ancient books. With barely suppressed excitement Diana went straight into the result of her researches. ‘This is sixteen sixty-one,’ she said, one finger on her notes and turning the ponderous pages of the Stillingfleet papers with the other hand. ‘Here’s the boss telling him to get estimates for “Ye newe westerne stair”. And here’s “Jas. Holbrooke, Master Carpenter”, riding out from Norwich to give his estimate – £482.9.2d. Expensive!

‘And here we are in sixteen sixty-two. A lot of comings and goings. The family were here for nearly all that year. Lots of company. Ate them out of house and home. Bills for barrels of oysters, anchovies, game birds by the dozen brace, cakes and sweetmeats, sacks of coffee… John Fox and his brother Will taken up for pilfering at the Lammas Fair and the good Stillingfleet goes over to the assizes to plead for them. Successfully, obviously, because they were back on the payroll the next month. And here’s one Jayne Marston.’

Diana paused.

‘Is she important?’

‘Oh yes, we think so,’ said Nicholas.

‘Jayne Marston – “Miss Comfort’s abigail”.’

‘Abigail? A lady’s maid, you mean?’

‘Yes, quite posh. Comes down from London and – note this -without her mistress. And that’s odd. This was January. Season still in full swing in the capital. Miss Comfort wouldn’t have sent her abigail down to the country for no good reason.’

‘Does Stillingfleet give us a clue?’

‘Sort of. He refers to her quite often and affectionately.’ She quoted, “‘Ye sorrowful Jayne…that forlorn wretch… That sweet slut in her sorrow…” Something wrong there, don’t you think? And then the staircase gets under way. And in April they start getting ready for a party. Seems to be a belated celebration of the restoration of Charles the Second – the Eastons were all stout monarchists. Economically, they are planning to run it with the celebrations for Robert’s engagements to Mary Chandler. Then, in June, two or three things happen – “Did wait on his Lordship under God’s guidance and besought him to remember his Creator in the days of his youth, when the evil days come not.’“

‘That would be William he was beseeching. And did he remember his Creator? Did he do what Stillingfleet wanted?’

‘It doesn’t say, but one rather infers not. And then – dismay and disaster – on the fifteenth of June – “To me at dawn this day comes the swanward early. Jayne Marston, God receive her, found drowned in ye lake.”‘

Diana turned to me, wide-eyed. ‘And she’s not in the burial register! She’s not buried in the churchyard!’

‘Suicide, then? Denied a Christian burial.’

‘Looks like it. And then William disappears.’

‘Disappears?’

‘Yes – “…raging to London”, leaving poor old Stillingfleet to unscramble the party. Sounds as though there was the most almighty family row going on.’

‘And the staircase?’

‘Finished. Here – “Thanks be to God!” Then – and this is where the fun starts – “‘Twas as though the Devil himself wailed about the house this night and these seven days past. God bless us all.’“

‘Is that what it’s been like for you?’

‘Yes. Sobs rather than wails, perhaps, but going on and on. Just the same for Stillingfleet. At the end of every day he wrote just two words – “No change” – until we get to: “All day working in pursuit of my resolve.”‘

‘Working! Working at what, I wonder?’

‘Well, in addition to his other accomplishments, Mr Stillingfleet was a carpenter and turner, and he made tables and chairs, and he was a bit of a scientist, too. He had a workshop. We think it was the little room at the end of the stillroom passage.’

‘What do you think he was working at? The coffin?’

‘Yes, that’s what we think. A secret burial for a tiny child. A child who must have been illegitimate, inconvenient, disposable. Infanticide was sadly common in those days, and the rubbish heaps of London, certainly, were where the bodies ended up in large numbers, but this child was different. He was special to someone. Someone who was determined to grant him as decent a burial as was possible in adverse circumstances.’

‘It’s a long shot, and we’ll never know for certain,’ said Diana, ‘but listen – Jayne Marston is sent down to the country estate from London without her mistress. Pregnant?’

‘If this is her baby, and it was born in June,’ I said, hurriedly calculating, ‘she would have been three months gone in January and just beginning to show… Yes, the right moment to send her into obscurity. But is this consistent? Is that what the family would have done? Wouldn’t they have just turned her out of the house?’

‘I don’t think so – not then. This wasn’t the Protectorate, this was the Restoration. Gavalier politics and Cavalier morality. Cavalier kindness, if you like. And all the evidence from Stillingfleet is that the Eastons treated their servants with consideration. He was himself almost part of the family. They couldn’t have functioned without him. But suppose I’m right. Suppose Jayne comes down to Norfolk because she’s pregnant. Suppose Wicked William is the father. Suppose he comes down for the party and takes no notice of her, or spurns her, and perhaps that was what Stillingfleet was begging him to remember, begging him to do something for the wretched girl. Then the baby is born and is stillborn? Or dies, perhaps?’

‘Dies? How? And where?’

‘We’ll never know,’ said Diana slowly. ‘Let’s just say the baby dies. The body must have been hidden away. There is no recorded death of an infant at that time. Perhaps Jayne, at the death of her child, goes demented and throws herself into the lake?’