The Ellie Hardwick Mysteries (3 page)

‘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 pages of notes and several leather bound and ancient books. With barely suppressed excitement Diana went straight into the result of her researches. ‘This is 1661,' 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 1662. 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 engagement 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 these 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. Cavalier 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 still-born? 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?'

‘Did she fall or was she pushed?'

‘I'm sure Stillingfleet knew but he's not saying. Loyalty to the family. It was only a servant involved, I know, but this was an isolated community where a scandal would have torn through the county and don't forget that most people up here were still rigidly puritan in their outlook. William would have had a bad time of it if it had come out.'

‘At any rate, there was no Christian burial for Jayne's child, no baptism even
and
this would have been a horrifying thing for the mother. The child would have been condemned to eternal perdition.'

‘And this is when the nightly wailing starts?'

‘Yes. But Stillingfleet knows what to do. He makes a little coffin. He places the body inside with a copy of the words from the family motto.'

‘Wait a minute though—It's not quite the right wording, is it? Look at the third word. The motto is, “
Deus tute me spectas”
. It should say “me”. “Thou God see'st me” but this says “eum”. “Him”. God sees him. Who?'

‘I thought it might mean—“God watch over him”—the child, that is.'

‘No. “
Spectas.
” It doesn't mean look out for in the sense of watching over, it means—see, look at.'

‘Well, I think this is as close as he dares get to an identification, a direct link with the Eastons. And one night, as the staircase is nearly finished, he fixes it up under a floorboard, replaces the floorboard and says a burial service over it. It was the best he could do.'

‘Any more from the diary?'

‘Only this, but significantly—“Under the hand of God, I pray, I finish my work and, all praise to Him, a quiet night at last.” '

We sat for a moment in silence. ‘I bet that was it, or something very like that,' I said. ‘All quiet until I came along with a nail bar. What
do
we do now?'

‘I've been thinking about this,' said Diana. ‘Look, Johnny is still here working on the stairs. Do you think we could just put it back again? Say a few words perhaps?'

‘Yes, I'm sure we could do that,' I said.

We laid it back in its place and Johnny tapped nails back into position through the rim the thoughtful Hugo Stillingfleet had left for this purpose. The new nails sank in easily. We stood back and looked at each other uncertainly.

‘May he rest in peace and light perpetual shine upon him,' said Diana quietly and clearly.

* * *

But something was worrying me. We had worked out a solution of sorts to an intriguing puzzle but I hadn't heard that satisfying click as the last piece of the jigsaw falls into place. We had heard the truth, I was sure, from Stillingfleet but had we heard the whole truth? I didn't think so.

I went to look again at the Easton portraits. I remembered Nicholas had said he would like to interrogate them. Well, why not? I thought I knew the right questions to ask and I thought Peter Lely and his unknown pupil had given their subjects a voice which could still be heard over the years. I had released something which
had
lain dormant but only just contained through the years and now I believed it was calling out for resolution and justice. The Norfolk Police weren't interested in knowing who had committed infanticide and possibly a second murder all those years ago but I was.

I managed to evade the hypnotic stare of Wicked William and concentrated first on the sunny opulence of the wedding portrait. Robert and Mary. Even the names were reassuringly solid. Following the painter's clues, I knew that this couple had married in the autumn, their betrothal according to Stillingfleet had been in the summer of 1662 and presumably Robert had been pursuing this heiress during the previous London season. At the very time Jayne Marston had been sent away to the country. Had he known the sorry story of his sister Comfort's maid? It was a family with a reputation for large-heartedness in its dealings with its retainers. Yes, he would have known. He would have been concerned. But concerned perhaps for another reason.

Mary's fortune had saved the family and guaranteed his position in society. Robert would not have welcomed any breath of scandal to do with the family his golden goose was about to marry into. ‘Of Quaker stock' Nicholas had said. I looked again at the heart-shaped face, framed by wispy golden tendrils, the modest dress, the tightly pursed lips and I wondered about Mary.

‘Was
it to avoid offending
you
?' I murmured, ‘that Jayne and her child were done away with? Too inconvenient, too vocal, a servant, yes, but so intertwined with the family she had forgotten her place and was making herself a nuisance? Would it have ruined Robert's schemes if you'd discovered that his brother had seduced a family maid?'

I couldn't believe that.

‘And why did you flee?' I asked turning at last to William. ‘Why didn't you just tough it out?' An Earldom, the King's supporters back in power again—the future looked good for William Easton. What was he really fleeing? Not a family scandal—there must have been something more.

The dark eyes taunted, enticed, seduced. I speculated again about the identity of the unknown painter and was struck by a devastating thought. A thought so obvious and yet so shocking I groped my way to a Chippendale chair and, against all the house rules, sat down on it. The painter's message now screamed out at me. How could I not have seen it before?

I heard Nicholas leaving the library and called out to him.

‘Ellie? You ok?' He hurried to join me.

‘We've got it all wrong, Nicholas!' I said. ‘Come and have a look again at Wicked William. He's been wrongly accused! It couldn't have been him!'

I
positioned Nicholas in front of the portrait. ‘Now, imagine you're the painter. And that, of course, in the 1660s, means you're a
man.
The sitter is reacting to you. What do you see?'

‘Oh, my God!' said Nicholas. ‘I see it! And to think that all these years women have been blushing and averting their eyes thinking he was trying to seduce them. He wasn't at all, was he?'

‘No. He was flirting with the young apprentice who was painting him. And, judging by the resulting image, the interest was reciprocated. I'm not sure they had a word for it in Cavalier England but this chap was gay and proud of it, you'd say.'

‘I'm certain they didn't have a word for it in north Norfolk! And it was a capital offence at the time. ‘‘Death without mercy'' according to the Articles passed by parliament in 1661. He could, technically have been executed if discovered.'