T Kinsey - In the Market for Murder (A Lady Hardcastle Mystery Book 2)

‘A cattle market?’ said Lady Hardcastle with no small amount of surprise. ‘No, I honestly can’t say I ever have.’

‘I pop over to Chipping on market day whenever I can. It really is quite the best day out. We’re selling a few head tomorrow and I thought I’d make one of my regular appearances, you know? Show the old face, what? Our estate manager will be doing all the real work, of course, but I do so love it. And we have lunch in The Hayrick with all the farmers and cattle brokers. It really is the most fun. And the language! My word, you’ve never heard the like. Oh, my dear, you really must come.’

Even if pressed, I’m not sure I could come up with a particularly long list of things I’d rather do less than attend a cattle market. Somehow, though, the girlish gleam in Lady Farley-Stroud’s blue-grey eyes made me wonder if even I might enjoy a day out at Chipping Bevington (the town’s slightly cumbersome full name) on market day.

Lady Hardcastle was clearly similarly affected. ‘Well, if you put it like that, Gertie dear, how could I possibly demur?’

‘Oh, my dear, how wonderful,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud with quite the hugest smile on her plump, lined face. ‘Please bring Armstrong, too. She’ll be company for Denton. We’ll make a day of it. I’ll send Bert over with the motor car at eight tomorrow morning. Oh, I’m so excited.’ And with another kiss on Lady Hardcastle’s cheek, off she went. I watched as she met her own lady’s maid, Maude Denton, coming out of Pantry’s Grocery. She was obviously telling her the good news, and Maude looked over and gave me a grin.

‘It seems,’ said Lady Hardcastle, taking my arm and leading the way inside the bakery, ‘that I have re-entered the social scene and that the two of us are committed to a day of smells, lowing and impossibly fast chatter.’

‘It does rather seem that way, my lady, yes. And a pub lunch. Do you think there will be pies?’

‘Oh, rather,’ she said. ‘I love a good pie.’

‘Then you have come to the right place, my lady,’ said Septimus Holman, the baker, from behind his counter. ‘Welcome back. It’s lovely to see you up and about. Now, what can I get you? Pie, was it?’

Market Day dawned with a clap of thunder and the sound of torrential rain clattering against the window panes.

With the car coming at eight, I had been up since before dawn to make sure that we were both dressed and breakfasted in plenty of time. But whereas it was usually the rising sun peeping through the kitchen window that signalled the true start to the day, this morning it was the apocalyptic deluge outside.

Edna and Miss Jones arrived shortly after I got up. Edna had set to work straight away, starting by lighting the fire in the morning room. Miss Jones got breakfast going.

Lady Hardcastle had originally planned to rent ‘a lovely little cottage, somewhere like, oh, I don’t know, Gloucestershire’, perhaps with ‘a thatched roof and roses growing round the door’. Instead, she had been lucky enough to secure the tenancy of a newly built house on the outskirts of the village of Littleton Cotterell. One of her old friends had had the place built for himself and his family, but when his business concerns had forced them to remain in India for another few years, he had cheerfully let the house to Lady Hardcastle so that she could look after it for him.

And so we two occupied a house built for a family of six and their household. I never really gave much thought to what advantages there might be in living in a modern house. Indeed, until Lady Hardcastle hired Edna, I had grumbled about how many rooms there were to dust and sweep. But on days like today, with the rain lashing against windows and walls, I was glad to be in something altogether more substantial than a quaint old cottage with straw for a roof. I could very well appreciate the wisdom of the third little pig as the fierce March winds threatened to huff and puff and blow even our house of bricks down.

At precisely eight o’clock, just as we were donning raincoats and galoshes in the hall, there was a ring at the doorbell. I opened it to see a damp and bedraggled Bert, with rain dripping from the peak of his cap.

‘Good morning, Miss Armstrong,’ he said. ‘Car’s here.’

‘Thank you, Bert,’ I said.

Lady Hardcastle poked her head round the door. ‘Bert!’ she said. ‘You’re getting drenched. Do come in for a moment, we shan’t be long.’

‘Very kind, my lady,’ he said. ‘But would you mind if I waited in the car?’

‘Of course not, of course not. We shall be but a few more moments. You get into the dry.’

‘Thank you, m’lady,’ he said. He beetled back to the safety and comfort of his driver’s seat.

‘Are we all set then?’ asked Lady Hardcastle as she checked her appearance in the glass.

‘As we’ll ever be,’ I said. ‘Do you have your vagabond-beating stick? We might need it today to fend off obstreperous cattle.’

‘Do you think that might become necessary?’

‘Well,’ I said hesitantly. ‘You know, my lady. Cows. Big beasts. Unruly. Dangerous.’

‘Florence Armstrong,’ she said gleefully, ‘I do believe I’ve finally found something you’re afraid of.’

‘Wary of, my lady.’

She laughed delightedly. ‘Fear not, tiny servant. I shall protect you with the Cow-Nobbling Stick of Doom.’ She brandished her walking cane.

‘You may very well mock, my lady,’ I said. ‘But—’

‘May I? Oh, you’re so sweet. I shall.’

I gave her my most disapproving stare.

‘But come,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘We must brave Nature’s drenching fury and hie us to market.’

We stepped out into the storm. Lady Hardcastle hurried down the path slightly more quickly than she had the day before. Bert leapt out and opened the rear door of the car for her and she bundled herself in to sit beside Lady Farley-Stroud. I wasn’t far behind and managed to squeeze into the front seat with Bert and Maude. We were off.

Lady Farley-Stroud was a nervous traveller at the best of times. This meant that with more rain lashing down onto the roads than I’d seen anywhere other than India during the monsoon season, Bert was compelled to drive frustratingly slowly and with exaggerated care. It would ordinarily have sent me insane with impatience were it not for the infectious jollity of Maude Denton, Lady Farley-Stroud’s lady’s maid.

She and I had met the previous summer. I found her ingenious efforts at avoiding almost all work absolutely infuriating but she was extremely good company.

Maude and I chatted in the front seat, with half an ear on the conversation of our employers in the back of the motor car. The journey passed quickly, with only one near-miss with a milkman’s cart to induce shrieks and earnest entreaties for caution from Lady Farley-Stroud in the back and barely suppressed giggles from Lady Hardcastle. We were soon drawing up at the top of the High Street.

Chipping Bevington is one of those little market towns that have been dotted around England since the Middle Ages, serving as the hub of local commerce. They usually have broad high streets or, in this case, a wide area at one end where market stalls magically appear on market days. Lady Farley-Stroud proudly told us that they had been hosting a cattle market on Thursdays since 1473.

There was no way through the High Street on market day so Bert let us out beside one of the small town’s seven pubs, where we watched as he reversed the car carefully back up the road in search of a parking place.

The rain hadn’t abated and the wind was too fierce for the umbrellas that Maude had taken from the car as we got out. With one last check that our hats were pinned firmly in place, we began to battle our way down the street.