T Kinsey - A Quiet Life in the Country (A Lady Hardcastle Mystery Book 1)

Thanks to the mischievous whim of whatever malevolent gods are responsible for the security of bags of flour, one had split just as I was transferring its contents to the flour jar. I was still covered in the stuff when the doorbell rang. Wiping my hands on my pinafore and trying to brush the worst of the mess away, I went through to open the door to find a man in overalls and cap.

‘Begging your pardon, miss. Is this the right house for . . .’ he said, consulting the scrap of paper in his hand, ‘Lady Hardcastle?’

‘It is,’ I replied.

‘Bloomin’ ’eck – begging your pardon, miss – but you’re hard to find. We’ve got a delivery for you.’

‘A delivery of what?’

‘A piano and a blackboard, miss. You starting a school?’

‘Starting a school?’ I said, incredulously. ‘Why on earth . . . We’re expecting a piano, but—’

‘It’s all right, Armstrong, it’s for me.’ Lady Hardcastle had appeared silently behind me. ‘Bring them in, would you. I want the piano against the back wall in the drawing room and the blackboard by the fireplace in the dining room. Would you care for some tea? And there’s cake. I should expect delivering things is quite thirsty work.’

‘Tea would be most welcome, madam, yes. Thank you. I’ll get my lad to start shifting a few things around in here if you don’t mind – give us a bit more room to get the piano in.’

I looked outside and parked in the lane was a large wagon, pulled by quite the most enormous horse. A young boy of about fourteen sat on the wagon’s driving seat. On the bed of the wagon, covered by an oiled tarpaulin, was – I presumed – Lady Hardcastle’s new piano.

I went back to the kitchen and set Miss Jones to work making tea while the delivery man and his ‘lad’ began shifting furniture in the drawing room to make way for the new upright piano. Lady Hardcastle joined me. ‘I’m so glad it’s here. I’ve been missing having a piano in the house terribly.’

‘I know, my lady. It’ll be nice to have some music in the house again. But was I dreaming or did he also say something about a blackboard?’

‘Ah, yes, that was an idea I had yesterday. After I’d finished talking to the constable I prevailed upon him to let me use his telephone to contact the music shop to complain about the absence of my new piano. The nice man told me it was just being loaded onto a train bound for Bristol and that he’d arrange for it to be delivered today. I explained that I’d been in my new home for over a week without it, despite the fact that I’d placed the order more than a month ago. He apologized profusely and asked if there was anything he could do to make things right. I said that if he managed to get a large blackboard and easel onto the train with the piano, we’d say no more about it.’

‘You made him go out and buy you a blackboard?’

‘No, silly, they sell them. For music teachers. I bought it, but I made it clear that my goodwill and continued custom were contingent entirely upon the safe arrival today of both piano and blackboard.’

‘And so now you have a blackboard.’

‘And a piano.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s for making exquisite music. Obviously.’

‘No, my lady, the blackboard. Why do you have a blackboard?’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Well, you see, I rather got used to using a blackboard for working things out when I was at Girton. Helps me to think, d’you see? So I thought perhaps if I had a blackboard, it might help me to think about this murder business.’

‘The murder.’

‘Quite so. I thought if I could make notes, draw diagrams, perhaps even pin up little sketches of the people involved, it might help me to make sense of all the information about the murder and maybe find a solution.’

‘And so for this one case, you now own a blackboard.’

‘And chalk. And a duster. And a box of tacks.’

‘Tacks?’

‘Thumbtacks. For pinning things to the blackboard.’

‘Won’t that make holes in it?’

‘Oh, Flo, you do worry about the most inconsequential things. Take the tea out to our horny-handed sons of toil and rejoice that we finally have a piano.’

‘You have a piano, my lady. I play the banjo, as you very well know. You also have a blackboard.’

‘Yes. Yes, I do. Now feed and water the nice men who own the cart that brought it.’

We dined early and sat at the table afterwards sipping some of Lady Hardcastle’s excellent cognac – one of her few vices.

‘Tell me again exactly what you’re going to do with the blackboard,’ I said, gesturing towards it with my snifter.

‘I have christened it the “crime board”,’ she said. ‘Let me show you.’ She stood and collected a sheaf of papers from the sideboard before crossing to the blackboard.

‘Good mor-ning, Lady Hard-castle,’ I chanted, as I had been taught to on one of my few days at school. My twin sister and I had attended many schools on our travels, but only for a week at a time so we found many of the rituals a little baffling. Being taught on the road by our extended circus family was a much more satisfying experience.

‘Do you want to know, dear, or are you just going to chaff me?’

‘Can I not do both?’

She sighed. ‘So here we have our victim, Frank Pickering.’ She pinned a sketch at the centre of the board. ‘We know that he was a clerk of some sort at the offices of Seddon, Seddon and Seddon.’ She riffled through the stack of papers to find another sketch, which she also pinned to the board.

‘What’s that, my lady?’ I asked.

‘Those are the offices of Seddon, Seddon and Seddon, silly,’ she said.

‘It looks like a school.’

‘No, it’s a shipping office.’

‘It has a clock.’

‘Yes, I thought a shipping office might have a clock,’ she said testily. ‘I shall revise the sketch should we ever happen to see the office.’ She drew a chalk line from Mr Pickering to the ‘office’. ‘And this is Mr Seddon.’ She pinned a sketch of a gentleman dressed in a frock coat and top hat next to the building.

‘I say, you’ve dressed him rather smartly,’ I said.

‘He’s an important fellow. Runs a shipping business, don’tcha know.’

‘Good likeness, though.’

‘Thank you, dear. Now Pickering was also a member of the cricket club.’ A picture of a cricket pavilion appeared from the pile. ‘And he had argued with Arthur Tressle and William Lovell on the night he died.’

‘They look more like Oscar Wilde and W. G. Grace,’ I said.

‘That’s because they are Oscar Wilde and W. G. Grace. I’ve not met either of them yet so I had to give them someone else’s face.’

‘W. G. Grace I understand, but why Oscar Wilde? Was he known for his cricketing prowess?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ she said. ‘But I can’t remember what Jack Hobbs looks like.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘New chap. Played for England against Australia. Everyone was talking about him earlier this year.’

‘Right you are,’ I said.

She continued to pin up sketches and make notes on the board as she talked. ‘We know they were all at the Dog and Duck with the rest of the cricket team. “Old” Joe Arnold runs the pub, and Daisy, the butcher’s daughter, is his barmaid.’

‘William Gladstone and Nellie Melba.’

‘I’d visit a pub run by William Gladstone and Nellie Melba, wouldn’t you?’

‘I dare say I would. You’ll be disappointed when you meet the real Joe and Daisy, though.’

‘Perhaps. But anyway. We know that Frank Pickering was found hanging from an oak tree in Combe Woods. We suspect that he was already dead when he was put there. There were wheel tracks in the clearing from some sort of cart, and a handcart was taken from the pub around midnight.’ She pinned up one of the sketches she had made at the scene as well as a drawing of a handcart of the sort that a market pedlar might use.