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

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Text copyright © 2016 by T E Kinsey

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

www.apub.com

ISBN-13: 9781503938267

ISBN-10: 1503938263

Cover design by Lisa Horton

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

About the Author

1

‘Good heavens!’ said Lady Hardcastle as we stepped down from the dog cart. ‘This is rather larger than I had expected.’

The driver of the faintly dilapidated cart handed me Lady Hardcastle’s Gladstone while she fished in her purse for her customarily generous tip. With an astonished ‘Thank you, m’lady’, he flicked his whip. The cart clattered off, back towards the station in Chipping Bevington where it had picked us up.

I stood beside her in the bright summer sunshine and looked at our new home. She was right, it was rather large.

‘When you suggested we move to the country, my lady,’ I began slowly, ‘I confess that my imagination conjured up images of a rose-covered cottage, perhaps with a small kitchen garden and an apple tree. It was quaint and old-fashioned, with low doors that you could bump your head on while I passed through unharmed. “Charming” is, I believe, the word people use.’

‘This has charm, Flo,’ she said. ‘And it’s new, and clean, and excitingly modern. And it has all the space we’ll ever need.’

I couldn’t argue with her there. It was all of those things and more; it’s just that it wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Built from red brick, it looked nothing like the houses we had passed on the road from the railway station to the village of Littleton Cotterell. The good folk of Gloucestershire favoured stone for their housebuilding – fat, rustic stones with contrasting quoins and jambs. We hadn’t passed anything like this imposing family home with its red bricks, its gabled porch and its symmetrical bay windows.

The house was set back from the lane that led back to the village, and its boundary was marked by a low wall of similar red brick. Entrance to the neat front garden was through an ornate, wrought-iron gate, painted green to match the sturdy-looking front door of the house. The gate creaked as I opened it.

‘We might have to find a chap from the village to grease the hinges,’ said Lady Hardcastle as we walked up the path. ‘Having that thing creaking every time someone comes to the door will drive us barmy.’

‘“Barmy” isn’t a frightfully long drive for you, my lady,’ I said. ‘But shall we be endlessly beset by visitors? You don’t know anyone. I thought your plan was for a quiet life in the country.’

‘Oh, it is, but we’re certain to have visitors. At least I hope so. I want a quiet life, not a cloistered one.’

She tried the door handle and found the door unlocked. We walked in.

Our footsteps on the wooden floor echoed as we drank in our new surroundings. The hall was panelled in dark wood and the hall table and hatstand from the London flat didn’t look at all out of place.

‘This will do very nicely,’ she said. ‘Very nicely indeed.’

‘We’ll not be living in squalor, that’s for certain,’ I said with a smile. ‘If I get the range lit, it can be warming up while we explore, then we can have a nice cup of tea before we settle ourselves.’

‘A sterling plan, Flo. I’d like to check that the removal men followed my instructions. You know how these chaps can be. They promise to put everything in its place, but then you move in and find that they’ve put the aspidistra in the bedroom and the piano in the kitchen.’

‘You’ve never had an aspidistra,’ I called from the kitchen.

‘Good thing too,’ she said, ‘if that’s the way removal men treat them.’

There was a stack of wood beside the range and I had it lit in no time.

‘I thought we’d left the piano behind,’ I said as I came out of the kitchen. She was nowhere to be seen, so I tried the door to the right of the hallway. It was the drawing room and she was fussing with the placement of the chairs and the small table between them.

‘What was that, dear?’ she said.

‘I said I thought we’d left the piano behind.’

‘We did,’ she said, a puzzled frown crinkling her brow.

‘You were saying you were expecting to find it in the kitchen,’ I persisted.

‘Was I? It certainly sounds like the sort of thing I might say, but we definitely left it. I never liked it – horrible tone. I’ve ordered a new one.’

‘Right you are, my lady.’

‘So far, so good,’ she said, indicating her old chairs and occasional table, which entirely failed to fill the spacious room. ‘They even managed to put the books on the shelves.’ She looked closer. ‘I’m not sure I’d have put Charles Dickens next to Isaac Newton except at a dinner party, and then only if Nellie Melba hadn’t turned up, but they’ve done their best.’

‘What happened to the lovely comfy armchairs?’ I said.

‘They should be in the sitting room.’

‘Gracious, we have a sitting room, too? How very decadent.’

‘And a morning room. Jasper and his wife have four children so they’ll need plenty of room if they ever get back from India.’

‘Did he say when that might be?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He was a bit vague about it all, to be honest. “Business, blah, blah, have to stay out here for a while, blah, blah, rotten luck, blah, blah, don’t suppose you want to rent a house in the country, old girl?” You know the sort of thing.’

We moved across the hall and through the opposite door, which led to the dining room. The walnut dining table could seat eight and had always seemed a little large in the flat, but here in this spacious, high-ceilinged room it was much more at home. Lady Hardcastle cast about the room to make sure that everything was in its proper place.

‘They’ve done a much better job than I had feared,’ she said, opening one of the doors on the sideboard. ‘Look, they’ve even managed to remember to put the dinner service away.’

Before I could look as instructed, she had breezed out and was heading towards the back of the house and the kitchen. Instead of turning left, though, as I had done to find and light the range, she turned right into a small square room. There, we found her desk, which had been positioned so that it looked out of the window onto the spacious walled garden and the fields and hills beyond.

‘This will do very nicely indeed,’ she said again, resting her hand on the back of her chair. ‘We might need to redecorate at some point – I do rather find these pale colours a little insipid – but it shall do for now. Upstairs next, I think.’

‘Just one thing, my lady,’ I said as we completed our survey of the upper floors and headed for the kitchen.

‘Just one?’ she said.

‘For now. You are planning to hire some more staff, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘I’ll not be able to look after this place on my own. The apartments in London were simple enough, especially with being able to send the laundry out, but here . . .’