Enter Pale Death(98)

He’d wondered if he’d recognise the moment. Here it was: the moment when, charmed, distracted and trusting, he’d feel the saddle slap down across his back.

Still stunned and abstracted, his mind whirling, he answered the question Hunnyton fired at him as he left the room: “Where am I going? Oh, not far.” And, with a last rebellious kick of the heels: “I think it’s time to hear from Phoebe herself.”


HE REACHED THE grave as the church clock struck half past nine. His witness was already there in the remotest corner of the deserted churchyard, head down, occupied in tending the simple grave.

Joe came up and knelt down alongside. “White roses were her favourite flower, I take it?”

“Anything white, she loved. Summertime’s easy but it’s a bit difficult in the winter to come up with something. I usually manage with snowberries and ivy until the snowdrops come out and then there’s the paper-white narcissi. It’s a lonely site they found for her. I wouldn’t like her to think she’d been forgotten.”

She didn’t seem in the slightest way put out to see him there. “She was murdered, little Phoebe. I suppose you’ve worked that out.”

“I have and I know the name of the killer, Mrs. Bolton. I’m equally sure that you also know and have known for years. The puzzle for me is why you’ve chosen to keep silent and let a great injustice fester.”

She looked down at the grave in shame and anger, words failing her. This was not the accusation she had been prepared for.

“Nothing to say? Why don’t you give me Phoebe’s own words, Mrs. B.? It’s time we heard from her. Can you remember the last thing she confided to you?”

“She wasn’t in her right mind. Mad with the worry. I’d guessed her condition. She was directly in my charge. There wasn’t much about Phoebe I didn’t know. Even so—I hadn’t realised who’d got her into trouble. It could have been any of the footmen—they’re always first on the suspect list—but for me: I’d feared the ghastly Goodfellow, so firmly under Sir Sidney’s protection. It was unreasonable that. The old master just brushed any complaints aside. I think he probably put up with it because Goodfellow had something on him—something he’d done in his army years that he wouldn’t have wanted mistress Cecily to hear about.

“Goodfellow was always too interested in the maids. They had to walk miles to get around him. He was always tracking them about the place, leering out from the shrubbery. Phoebe was the one who really caught his eye. Pretty as a picture but soft and unresisting. She would never have given him a kick in the privates as the other maids did. As I directed them to do.

“But her last words to me? Full of sorrow. She talked of Adam. ‘He’s never going to come for me, is he, Enid? I’m going to throw myself off the roof and then he’ll be sorry.’

“I told her to hold on—Adam would be down from Cambridge any minute. He’d sort things out for her. He was a good lad, Adam, and he’d understand if anyone did. Only eighteen at the time but a big husky lad with a good head on him and a sense of … would ‘righteousness’ sound old-fashioned? He’d take whoever had wronged her and beat him to a pulp.”

“She wasn’t reassured?”

“No. I’d said the wrong thing, judging by her outburst. ‘No, he mustn’t! He couldn’t! We’d all of us suffer for it!’ She was genuinely aghast.”

“That’s when the penny dropped?”

“Yes. The only man who could make the whole staff suffer was: the master.”

“Sir Sidney up to his old tricks?”

“With his wife pregnant again, we wouldn’t have been surprised. I charged Phoebe with my suspicions. She denied it with such amazement and horror I could only believe she was telling the truth.”

“Tinkle, tinkle went the second penny?” Joe suggested.

Enid Bolton nodded. “James! He was such a lad! Firing off his pop gun and mooching about the place looking unhappy. All long limbs and spots. But then I thought: he’s actually nearly the same age as Phoebe. I asked her.”

“And she admitted it?”

“Yes. She hadn’t feared him or what he was capable of, you see. She did out his room in the morning, turned down his sheets at night … and there was I, juggling the duties, carefully distancing her from his father’s lair! She went out into the woods with him on her afternoon off, helping him with his traps. Playtime, I’m sure she thought was what was going on. She liked company her own age who could make her laugh. And James Truelove has always been able to make a girl laugh. His little sisters adored him—still do. I think Phoebe was genuinely fond of him. That’s always been his gift. From the day he was born, he’s expected to be loved.”