The Egyptian Coffin (A Lord Ambrose Mystery) Read online

  “Well, Murdoch, I beg you,” said Mrs. Sandys, “do set aside some time for your own studies! It is so rare for us to be uninterrupted by demands for your attendance!”

  “Oh, I must leave you in peace, Mrs. Sandys! But one more question, if I may — do you happen to know what became of the groom at Westmorland Park? I understand he had a good reputation, and I myself am in need of another man — I have bought a pony from the Westmorland stables.”

  “Why, no, I have no idea what became of the fellow. I believe Mr. Overbury said Adams was greatly to blame for the young lady’s accident, and sent him off without a penny piece of his wages. His sister lives near Malfine, in the village, I believe. You might make enquiries there, I suppose, but to my knowledge the man has not been seen since.”

  “Yes,” put in Mrs. Sandys, “he has an unmarried sister; a very respectable personage, I understand, but there are just the two of them in the family — at least, so my maid tells me. She says that Miss Adams is a plain-speaking, ordinary sort of person, and not like to marry at her age ... oh, I do beg your pardon, I am running on somewhat with mere gossip!”

  I thought of the pock-faced man, Casterman, whom I had met in the stables. Had he been responsible for turning the groom away? I asked the Sandys if they knew aught of him, but they had not seen nor heard of him.

  “Though I would like to hear the history of his illness,” added Murdoch, “for it sounds as if he has been through a smallpox epidemic."

  Somehow I felt that Casterman would not welcome being questioned as to the terrible malady he had suffered, and who could blame him? It had left him bearing the mark of it for the rest of his life.

  “Well, it’s scarcely worth troubling further in the matter. Here’s an end of the story, it seems! The horse has been shot, the groom — Adams — has been sent packing, and the young lady will be off to Egypt! I think my idle curiosity can prevail no longer. I shall leave the business there, and I am sorry to have taken up your time, Dr. Sandys. Madam, my compliments. Pray, do not trouble yourself — oh, I see, I must make good the damage done to your roses!"

  FOUR

  On the following day, there was some business to be transacted at Callerton, and Belos went there on my behalf, so that it was fully forty-eight hours before I despatched him in the direction of Westmorland Park.

  “I’ve got a horse for you, Belos, but you’ll have to walk over to Westmorland Park, or get a lift with the carter, and then ride it back to Malfine. Aren’t you Shakespearean troopers always calling for a horse? ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse?’ You can ride a horse, I take it?”

  I suddenly realised I had never actually seen him on horseback.

  “Yes, my lord!” he said, with considerable scorn. “I had a splendid white stallion with a gilded bridle for Henry V. A magnificent beast. I rode through the streets of Bath at the head of the troupe and we were all in costume, to drum up custom for the theatre! They were fighting one another for tickets, after that! Oh, what a crush — and there was a glittering company in the boxes. It was a magnificent spectacle and the takings were the highest ever known! Ah, yes — now that horse was a steed!”

  A guilty expression must have stolen over my face as I thought of the stout dappled pony over at Westmorland Park. Belos fixed me with a suspicious eye. I hastily added, “Well, I am afraid this is not quite so splendid a creature — but on the other hand you will be glad this animal is nothing like Zaraband, for I know you mistrust her temperament — this is a calm, steady, reliable beast!”

  “Has the horse a name, my lord?”

  “Why ... I believe ...” I cleared my throat. “I believe it is called Dobbie.”

  “Dobbie!”

  Never have I heard such declamation, such clarion delivery, such utterly Thespian scorn concentrated upon the enunciation of a single word.

  Belos repeated the name on a rising inflection of pained outrage. “Dobbie, my lord?”

  “Of course, you can re-name the animal, Belos,” I added hastily. “You can call it anything you like ... call it Fancy ... or Thunderboots ...” I tailed off rather lamely, as Belos eyed me, suspecting some mockery.

  “I shall call the horse Barbary,” he said, with great dignity. “That was the name of the King’s stallion in Richard II.”

  “Barbary! Now there’s a magnificent name. Yes, Barbary,” I heard him saying under his breath as he took his leave. He tried it over again on his tongue, and went off in the direction of Westmorland Park with his head held high. In kingly fashion, perhaps.

  I strolled in the direction of the village that lies just outside the Malfine grounds. We have but one street here — and that you can hardly call a street, merely a muddy track, with two rows of tumbledown cottages, cob-built, out of the very earth itself. An ale-house at the end of the street is our one concession to social merriment, and Belos from time to time slips in there for a mug of porter; I suspect him of a taste for low life, though he insists that we keep up standards at Malfine, eating off plates and such mincing manners. But seriously, the truth is that he has a need for company from time to time, which I myself do not share. It is hard, after all, to have been an actor performing night after night in a crowded theatre, always to have been amongst jostling fellows and lively theatricals, and then to be buried in the depths of the countryside. His devotion to me entails sacrificing some aspects of his own nature. “Belos,” I have said to him, “my wounds are healed — if the life here makes you discontent, I beg you to leave and join a troupe of your Thespian comrades — why, I will ensure that you have sufficient means to set up as a — what d’you call it — an actor-manager, and then you can spout Shakespeare to your heart’s content.”

  But he will not leave me. Once, I saved his life, and now he bears the burden of that.

  At any rate, on this occasion I did not purpose to take myself near the ale-house, for I did not wish to embarrass Belos who might have stopped there for some refreshment on his way to Westmorland Park. I walked therefore through the fields on the outskirts; there was a slight touch of frost in the air this morning. An urchin was idly throwing stones at a cat.

  “Leave that off!”

  The child dropped the pebble in his fist. The cat disappeared into the distance.

  “Do you know where Miss Adams lives? Her brother was a groom over at Westmorland Park?”

  The child gawped, recovered some of his wits, and pointed to the end of the row of cottages. There was one slightly larger than the rest, with a porch in which were signs of habitation such as a wet and muddy pair of pattens, but when I knocked on the door there was no response and after I had called and waited for a few minutes, I suspected that Miss Adams, if she were there, was not going to open her door.

  The urchin had come running after me.

  “He’s gone away, mister. Ain’t no one seen neither of them these two days.’’

  I gave it up.

  *

  A few days later the weather changed. An afternoon came that was cold and damp and there was an autumn mist swirling unpleasantly over the lake at Malfine. I was relieved that my charge, the boy Edmund, had left for his school in Hampshire before this saddest and gloomiest time of the year. And, though I grieved for myself that Elisabeth would be leaving shortly for her parents’ house in Bristol, I pictured her and the boy both, safe and warm in their separate settings, with companions around them, and all that affection and friendship that Malfine, for all its splendour, never promised.

  It must have been about three o’clock when I saw a horse and rider through the grey wisps of fog that had settled in the hedges and along the driveway. Belos, with his new charge. They had been out for a ride that afternoon.

  Both of them were puffed and panting, hastening along as fast as the old grey could manage.

  “My lord — oh curse this animal, I could not get him to go any faster — my lord, you are asked to come directly to Doctor Sandys!”

  “Belos, what is it? Surely it is usually the othe
r way around — Dr. Sandys is sent for in great haste when the sick and suffering have need of him, but is he now summoning his patients? A novel way of drumming up business!”

  “Do not jest, sir! There has been a dreadful tragedy. A young girl has been murdered and the body found near the lodge at Westmorland Park. Dr. Sandys has been called to the spot, and desired me to make all the haste I could to fetch you over.”

  The humour that the sight of Belos and his puffing Barbary had evoked vanished in a second. “What girl, Belos? Tell me who it was.”

  “My lord, I do not know — I did not see the body, which I understand was found just outside the gates of the Park. Dr. Sandys chanced to meet me in the stables and sent me over to fetch you with all haste.”

  I had a sudden frightful vision: the body of Lilian Westmorland trailing in the dirt, and all that dark-red hair bedabbled with mud to a rusty, blood-coloured tangle, wet, dirty, matted with slimy greenery, as I had once seen the head of her father. As I had last seen the head of her father, before it finally disappeared beneath the waters of the river.

  *

  The failing light of an autumn evening was settling over the countryside when I arrived. Murdoch Sandys was standing over a dark shape huddled up on the ground, near the railings that surrounded Westmorland Park.

  He had been summoned to this spot by the lodge-keeper, an old fellow who was in a high state of excitement. He was a village ancient who had kept the gates of Westmorland Park for many a year, and had been allowed to stay on by Micah Overbury after the death of Mrs. Westmorland.

  The old man’s aching joints would not let him sleep at night, so he did not stay quietly within the rather dour, grey lodge, but roamed around at night, walking for miles while the rest of the world was in bed, and no doubt pondering on the negligence of gardeners and landowners as he passed along the heaps of leaves piling up round the railings at Westmorland Park.

  He had a dog, a well-trained animal, normally obedient

  to his masters slow pace. This animal, yapping with a frantic excitement, had suddenly began to pull the old fellow closer to the railings. Between the railings, the dog got hold of something with his teeth which he was dragging and chewing with a slavering anxiety that seemed in itself to have been disturbing to behold. Said the old fellow to Murdoch Sandys: “’Twere more like a wild animal snatching at a piece of carrion that a tame critter on the end of a leash.”

  Something, Murdoch conjectured, had been aroused in the dog, some deep instinct which humans fear to see surfacing from under the obedience which we enforce on other species.

  “I told the beast to leave off,” said the lodge-keeper, “but he had his teeth fast. ‘Stop worriting at it! Leave it alone!’ That’s what I were telling him, but the damn dog took no notice.”

  The old man had been cruel, no doubt with frightened anticipation, and said he had struck the creature across the muzzle with his stick, but the creature would not let go of the thing it had in its jaws, which the old man still could not properly see, because it was hidden beneath a pile of leaves.

  It seemed that the tugging movements of the dog had brought something into view, the first thing that the old man saw.

  It was a hand. The dog had its teeth sunk into the wrist.

  The hand was dabbled with something dark that might have been mud or blood. As the owner of the dog stared in a dawning realisation, a face came sideways into view from under the heap of leaves, jerking horribly, the dead eyes rolling as the dog tugged and an arm was pulled sideways.

  Yet this was not the strangest nor the most horrible thing about this death.

  *

  In case this document may be read by eyes who are not familiar with the persons and places I describe, I should explain that Westmorland Park has tall iron gates with handsome curlicues, and iron railings surround the expanse of its grounds, sweeping along to demarcate Westmorland territory and curving in a long swoop that leads towards the gates. It was just there, near a patch of shrubbery close to the lodge, that the body lay. Outside the railing leaves had piled up, blown by the west winds of autumn, unnoticed and untended by any gardeners. Indeed, I think that there were no more gardeners kept on, for I believe that horticulture was one of the expenses which Micah Overbury intended to cut down on. Here it was, outside the main gates, that the old man had come upon the body.

  As I bent over this wretched victim and gently lifted the head a little the bonnet slipped to one side; I could see immediately that this was not Lilian Westmorland, even before I saw the face, for I had observed Lilian’s hair had been cut short because of her fever whereas this girl had long locks that tumbled down as her bonnet tilted.

  On this occasion, I confess that my immediate reaction, cruel though it may be thought, was relief, in so far as the death of a comparative stranger would inevitably mean less to me than that of the daughter of my boyhood friend, Sam Westmorland.

  I did recognise this girl, however, though I had seen her on one occasion only.

  “It is the housemaid from the Park,” I said to Sandys. “I do not know her name, but she opened the door to me when I called on Lilian Westmorland.”

  Without our actually discussing the matter, I realised why Sandys had sent for me, rather than for Sir Anderton Revers, who was actually the nearest magistrate. It was because I, Ambrose Malfine, am no respecter of the station of persons. As Sandys sensed from the many conversations we had held during those visits he had paid to me when I was his patient, I may be regarded by my neighbours as an eccentric, and many would say that the most eccentric belief of all is this: I hold that one man, under all the flummery of wealth and titles, is no better than another — a view which is considered sedition even to utter in this besmirched country of ours — and therefore that one mans daughter is as good as another, and that this death of some wretched starveling skivvy did indeed merit investigation. Upon this point the stubbornly upright Scots doctor and the eccentric aristocratic recluse were in agreement.

  “I’d like to take her back to Lute House,” said the doctor. It’s too dark to see anything here, and the old man says he can’t get an answer at Westmorland Park. I have my laboratory at Lute House, where I can try to find out what has happened to her.”

  So I gave instructions. The body of the girl, little more than a child, was taken up and put on a rough-and-ready stretcher made out of a plank fetched from the Lodge and, covered by a blanket, carried to Lute House by two men called out from the village.

  Sandys and I turned to walk behind, like a pair of mourners in a sad little funeral procession, and he said in a low voice, when the stretcher had gone a little way ahead so that the men carrying it could not overhear. “There was something else. Something that means this is certainly murder — and perhaps after the most terrible sufferings.”

  He was quite right to keep his voice low. If the country folk had known what he was about to tell me, they would have been all and every one in a cold sweat of fear.

  Sandys told me what had happened when the lodge-keeper summoned him from Lute House. “I touched her cheek, doctor,” the old fellow said, when they arrived at the spot where the body lay. “But it were cold. It were terrible cold.”

  Murdoch had taken charge temporarily. He brushed aside a sweep of dry leaves, and uncovered part of a skirt, and then gently, little by little, the body of a young woman.

  But this was not what proved to be most shocking.

  Murdoch Sandys has practised medicine in the roughest areas of the city of Edinburgh, and in those narrow teeming tenements he has, I believe, seen every kind of injury that one human creature may inflict on another. No, it was not the poor child’s dead body that horrified a seasoned medical man such as Murdoch.

  It was something else altogether.

  The cold chink of steel that slid onto the ground as her lifeless body was taken up. Murdoch stooped and took the metal in his hand.

  Now, as we walked along side by side in the dusk, Murdoch held up something
which glinted in the fast-fading light.

  Two gleaming interlocked circles, like crude bracelets, but sharp-edged, and joined with a length of chain.

  Manacles.

  *

  “Somebody has used the poor child grievously ill,” commented Sandys, “and I care not whether she is a duke’s daughter or a kitchen maid, I want to take some trouble to discover what has happened to her.”

  With this, I concurred.

  “The Park seems all shut up — there is a woman from the village there, a Mrs. Martin, who says that Miss Lilian, her maid Jennet, and the steward — or whatever he calls himself — the man Casterman — have departed for Southampton, where they are to take ship to Egypt! Micah Overbury has taken them to Southampton docks. The Martin woman was brought in only to spread the dustsheets on the furniture.”

  “Good God, man!” I exclaimed. “Have they left so soon?”

  “Aye, apparently the Great London departs at six o’clock tonight with the evening tide — a vessel with both steam and sail; you know, there is a General Steam Navigation Company now which commissions passenger vessels for long journeys and I believe this is one of their ships. My wife heard that special rates were offered to encourage passengers to travel by steam, so I daresay that is why Overbury has decided his niece should travel by such a new-fangled means of transport! But I confess, I do not care for the idea of Lilian Westmorland travelling with that scar-faced fellow, Casterman, though I try to think that we must be generous and not allow ourselves to be prejudiced by the man’s face. I wish she had someone to protect her — someone we could trust. Too late now, I fear!”