Death in a Stately Home: Book Three in the Murder on Location series Read online

  “No, it’s fine. I like to walk.”

  “The drive is quite long.”

  “I know,” I said happily and set off along the road that twisted through a grove of oaks. The breeze ruffled the leaves at the tops of the trees, and a bird called sharply as I strode through the dappled sunlight and shade. One of my favorite things about Nether Woodsmoor was how easy it was to walk. Ancient trails crisscrossed the countryside. Exploring them, rambling as it was termed here, was always high on my list. The rainy spring with its constant deluges made me appreciate being outdoors even more than I normally would.

  As I left the shade of the trees, I paused to admire the view of Parkview Hall with its divided central staircase that curved up to towering double doors. Corinthian columns flanked the imposing doors and supported a portico. I knew from touring the house that two wings stretched out behind the central block of the house, creating a U-shape. From this angle I could only see the east wing and the front of the house. The bright sunlight beat down on the view. The stones caught the light, glowing their mellow golden hue, which contrasted sharply with the bright green of the lawns. In the distance behind the house on the gently rolling hills, sheep grazed. It was so picture-perfect, it could have been a landscape painting, something in the rococo style with its idealized landscapes and perfect tiny people in Georgian dress dotting the landscape.

  I trekked along the drive and bypassed the sign for tour parking that took visitors to an area conveniently hidden by a grove of trees. I paused at the sweep of the driveway in front of the stairs. I’d visited Parkview Hall as a tourist and had entered through a side entrance. A few other times, Beatrice had taken me inside to the kitchen through a corridor on the other side of the house near the old stables.

  But today I was a guest of the house party. The tour entrance was probably closed, and the kitchen didn’t seem like the way I should enter either. I should at least try the front door.

  I hauled my suitcase up the curving flight of stairs and stepped gratefully into the cool shade of the portico. Before I had time to search for a doorbell, one of the doors that had to be at least fifteen feet high swung open. A small man with wispy hair, wearing a black swallowtail coat over a black waistcoat and dark pants intoned, “Welcome, Miss Sharp.”

  I resisted the urge to look behind me for a more important personage. He sounded as if he should be announcing a prime minister, at the very least. Instead, I bumped my suitcase over the threshold and entered the lofty black and white tiled entry of Parkview Hall.

  I wished Beatrice had given me a quick primer on how to speak to a butler, but since she hadn’t I channeled all those Regency novels I was so fond of and said, “Thank you. You must be Waverly.”

  He inclined his head. “Lady Stone would like to speak to you. Would you like to retire to your room first?” His voice echoed up to the fresco on the ceiling. How did such a small man have such a carrying voice?

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Very good.” Waverly looked over my shoulder. “Thomas will show you to the Rose bedroom.”

  I turned and jumped. A young man in cream and pale blue livery with a powdered white wig had silently appeared behind me. He took my suitcase from me and began a stately—yet silent—progress across the checkerboard floor. At the foot of the marble staircase he paused and collapsed the suitcase’s extendable handle, then he picked it up by the handgrip and resumed his measured pace up the ornate runner patterned in red, blue, green, and yellow. The stairs branched at a landing into a gallery that wrapped around the entire entry hall.

  Thomas turned to the right, and I followed him, glancing up as I walked by a stuffed polar bear, claws poised in midair. I looked over the banister to the entry below. Waverly had disappeared, and I wondered how he had known I had arrived. Maybe the teen at the kiosk had called to inform the butler I was on the way, or perhaps there was modern technology at work. I wondered if Parkview was fitted out with cameras to monitor the grounds.

  My room was about halfway down the corridor that formed the east wing. I was wondering how I would distinguish exactly which room was mine and was thinking that I’d have to remember my door was to the right of a huge glass display cabinet filled with framed collections of butterflies, crystals, and seashells, but then I noticed a square metal frame about the size of a business card near the door Thomas had just entered. My name, written in calligraphy, was on a small white card inside the frame. I’d read about the country house parties that had been given when bed hopping was practically a sport among a certain set of the aristocracy. How handy to have names noted outside doors. I’m sure that prevented rather embarrassing mistakes, and, on the practical side, it would be helpful to the servants.

  I followed Thomas into my room, which was bigger than my whole cottage. “The Rose bedroom, miss,” Thomas said.

  A thick pale pink and gold carpet covered the floorboards. The same shade of pink was echoed in a pattern of roses on the silk of the canopied bed and on a set of chairs situated on either side of a white-mantled fireplace, which had a relief of delicate swirls and loops decorating it. A dressing table was positioned on one side of the bed, a desk stood near the window, and a dresser topped with a pitcher and bowl stood in one corner near a screen covered in rose silk.

  Bowls of pink and white roses were scattered around the room, their scent filling the air. Light streamed in through two sets of floor-to-ceiling glass doors. “A balcony. How lovely.” A hook and eye door latch held the doors closed. I flipped the hook out of the metal circle and pushed the door open. The balcony was several feet deep and contained a round iron table and two chairs. At either end of the balcony near the thick stone balusters stood two conical boxwood plants in planters.

  Thomas said, “In this wing, only this suite and the room next door, the Mahogany bedroom, have balconies. It is the same across the courtyard, the Versailles and the Oriental bedrooms have balconies.”

  The balcony overlooked a spacious paved courtyard dotted with more tubs of boxwoods interspersed with benches. At the center of the courtyard, a fountain burbled. The west wing enclosed the far side of the courtyard. The central front block of the house made the south side of the courtyard while another, lower, block of rooms ran along the north, completing the enclosure. It was a lovely view. I’d have to make sure I spent a little time out there during the weekend so I could enjoy it.

  As I stepped back into the room, Thomas was putting my suitcase on top of a trunk near the screen, and I wondered if I should tip him. But when I reached for my purse, he gave a small shake of his head while keeping his face otherwise impassive. “Shall I leave the key here?” He set the gold skeleton key with a pink tassel on the writing desk.

  “Yes, please.”

  He bowed and exited, sliding quietly out the door as a young woman with red hair in a braid under a white cap entered and curtsied. She wore a dark cotton dress with a white apron over it. I could just see the tips of her black boots poking out from the hem.

  “I’m Ella, miss. I will unpack for you.” She was already moving toward my suitcase.

  “Um, that’s not necessary.” The thought of someone else hanging up my clothes or putting my underwear in drawers gave me a distinctly odd feeling. It was beginning to dawn on me that being waited on hand and foot meant a huge loss of privacy. “It’s not much. I’ll take care of it. Thank you, though.”

  “Shall I help you change?” She moved to one wall of the room, which had been fitted with cabinets from the floor to ceiling. They looked like a more modern addition to the room than everything else, but I bet that they were still at least fifty years old. She opened one of the doors, revealing a closet area with several full-length dresses hanging from a rod. Shoes, everything from delicate slippers to heavy boots with long laces, filled the lower part of the closet.

  I moved across the room and pushed the hangers along the rack. The clothes were all Regency style with high Empire waists. The material ranged from a sturdy patterned muslin t
o delicate silk. Bonnets lined the shelf above the dresses. “Oh my,” I said. Clothing provided, that’s what Elise had said, but the thought of wearing these exquisite gowns with their fine fabric and ornate trim was a bit intimidating. “Are all the guests changing into period clothing?”

  “No, miss, not so far. Most are keeping their modern clothes, at least until tonight at dinner. You have to dress for dinner. Did you bring an evening gown?” Ella glanced doubtfully at my small rolling suitcase.

  “No.” Well, I would cross that bridge when I came to it. I would have to have help getting into these clothes, that was a given, I thought, running my gaze down the row of tiny buttons at the back of one of the gowns. So privacy and modesty were out the window, at least where your maid was concerned. I squared my shoulders. Since I had been given the part of a lady—with a lady’s maid to boot—I better start acting it. “I will change later,” I said. “Now, Bea—er, Lady Stone, is expecting me. Can you show me where her office is?”

  “Yes, miss.” She curtsied. “She’ll be in the estate office. If you’ll follow me?”

  As she turned away, I frowned. “Wait. Aren’t you—” I studied her face. Under the drooping flounce of the cap, she did look familiar. “Ella. You’re Ella from the pub.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, miss.”

  “You work for Louise at the White Duck. I’m in there all the time.”

  She shot a quick guilty look at the open door, then lowered her voice. “We’re not supposed to break character.”

  I matched her soft tone. “Oh, I see.”

  “I’m off from the pub this weekend, and the immersive experience is wonderful practice.”

  “Practice?”

  “For acting. I have my application in for a drama school in London.”

  “How exciting. I didn’t know.”

  Her face lit up as she grinned from ear to ear. “Only Louise knows. I haven’t told anyone else.”

  “Well, in that case, I’ll try to stay in character as well. How should I address you?”

  “A lady calls her maid by her last name. Mine is Tewkesbury,” she said half apologetically, but a smile lurked at the corners of her mouth.

  “Very well,” I said, thinking of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice, who had referred to her maid as Dawson. If Lady Catherine’s maid had the misfortune to be named Tewkesbury I’m sure Lady Catherine would have changed it to “Smith” immediately.

  “Lead on, Tewkesbury,” I said. I shoved the key, tassel and all, into my pocket.

  She curtsied and took me unerringly along the corridors lined with paintings, tapestries, and statues, then down a set of stairs and into the other wing of the house. It seemed these rooms had been made into the headquarters of the business side of Parkview. We passed a sturdy metal door, which looked out of place, compared to the elaborate wainscoting and the other doors along the hallway, which were made of rich wood and deeply paneled. I caught a peek inside the narrow glass window set into the metal door. Banks of computer monitors, each displaying a different image filled the wall. A man in a navy blazer sat in front of the monitors, a huge control panel and computer situated in front of him. Ella noticed my interest. “That’s the monitoring room.” She lowered her voice. “Eyes are always on you here.”

  “Are they?” I guess that answered my question about how the staff had known I’d arrived.

  Ella kept her voice low. “You can’t blame them. The house is full of valuables—paintings, silver, old books, and artifacts brought back from other countries. They have to keep watch, I suppose. It does give me the shivers when I think about it…that someone could watch me on the monitors, tracing every step I take throughout the house.”

  “It’s that extensive?” I asked, surprised.

  “Oh yes. One maid was let go when she tried to steal a little jade figurine from a cabinet in the west hallway. She figured no one would see her, but they knew,” Ella said, throwing a glance back at the metal door. “They stopped her on the way down the stairs.”

  We approached the end of the hallway, and Ella must have suddenly remembered that she wasn’t in character. She straightened her shoulders and made her face properly blank as she guided me into a suite of rooms with several desks in an outer office, which were empty at the moment. The room was less grand than the other parts of the house, but despite being filled with desks, swivel chairs, and computer monitors, the tall windows framed with heavy drapes and the chandelier overhead made the room swankier than any office I’d ever worked in.

  “Impressive. Not one wrong turn.”

  “Thank you. There was a test,” she said in an undertone then looked stricken, I suppose because she’d broken character again.

  I heard Beatrice’s voice through a door that opened off the main room. Ella—I couldn’t think of her as Tewkesbury—walked ahead of me to the open door. “Miss Kate, your ladyship.” A sudden chorus of high-pitched barks followed Ella’s announcement, and two little white fur balls made a beeline for me.

  I had met Beatrice’s dogs before. Despite their rather territorial reaction, they were harmless. I scratched their ears and let them lick my hand with their scratchy tongues then Beatrice called them back to their cushion behind her desk where they settled down, heads on their paws, bright eyes on Beatrice.

  Ella had backed out of the doorway and let me enter, but I realized she was hovering uncertainly in the outer office.

  I remembered my role of Regency lady. I discreetly wiped the dog slobber off the back of my hands onto the legs of my jeans as I said, “That will be all, —er, Tewkesbury.”

  She bobbed again, and I thought that besides all the actual work of being a maid, her legs must be exhausted, just from the curtsying alone.

  “Kate, so glad you’re here.” Behind her expansive desk, which was covered in reams of paper, Beatrice removed a set of glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose with one hand as she waved me into her office with the other. “Come in. Close the door, if you don’t mind.”

  Like everything else in Parkview Hall, the door was oversized, at least eight feet tall. I gripped the worn gold handle and pulled the ornately paneled door closed then dropped into the seat of a modern club chair across from Beatrice.

  “How is your room? Everything acceptable?”

  “It’s gorgeous. I love it. I’m not sure about the Regency aspect, though. I didn’t brush up on my protocol.”

  “You’ll be fine. That’s why we don’t usually stand on ceremony here. Standing on ceremony is quite tiring. We only do it now because the house party guests expect it. Our first Regency house party weekend was two weeks ago. Everyone loves the clothes and the idea of returning to an earlier time, but after a day or so, the romance of it wears off.”

  “Still, I’ll probably call someone by the wrong name—or won’t even remember their name.” In polite society it would have been much harder to hide a bad memory for names than in our modern world where “girl” and “dude” were acceptable forms of address.

  “You’ll get a welcome packet with all the guest names and a short bio on each one, an effort on our part to make the house party seem more like a real party. Some of the guests would have known each other at these types of events. To replicate that atmosphere, we mailed packets with guest bios and information about Parkview last week to all our attendees. We’ll have place cards tonight at dinner, too. That will help,” Beatrice said then smiled suddenly. “And you can also blame it on being an American.”

  “Yes, that covers a multitude of sins, especially etiquette sins.” I relaxed back in the chair. Despite being the lady of the manor, Beatrice was incredibly easy to talk to. She didn’t put on airs and was as unpretentious as you could get. “Still, I’ll probably use the wrong fork at dinner.”

  “You can use whatever fork you want, of course. The secret is to do it with panache. Panache covers a multitude of sins as well.”

  “Hmm. Must work on my panache quotient, then.”


  Beatrice tapped her glasses against a wobbly pile of papers, her face turning serious. “I’m so glad you’re here. I asked you for an entirely selfish reason.” She paused as if reluctant to go on then said, “I hope you can help me with…well, I suppose if this were a few years ago, I’d call them poison pen letters, but they’re not letters. It is the modern equivalent, though, showing up every three days.” She turned a key in a lock on a desk drawer and removed a file then handed it across to me. “I printed those out before Holly deleted them.”

  I looked through the first pages, recognizing the familiar layouts of social media sites. The printed pages were screen shots of Parkview Hall’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds. I knew Parkview Hall had a website. I’d done some photography work for them, but I wasn’t aware that the estate also had these accounts, but it made sense business-wise. It paid to have an online presence, no matter what business you were in. The stately home touring business was like any other enterprise. People would search for information about estate tours online, and Parkview Hall could promote its events through social media.

  I skimmed down the first page and stopped, surprised to see a comment on Parkview Hall’s Facebook page that read, “These people are greedy and evil. Horrible.”

  I flicked through the next pages, which contained more of the same caustic tone repeated in slightly different forms. Grasping and mercenary. Don’t waste your time.

  “So angry,” I said. “Do you know why? There aren’t any details.”

  Beatrice put her glasses down, and a pile of papers slithered toward the floor. She shoved them back. “At first, I thought it was a coincidence. You know, a few people had bad experiences and vented. Some of the tourists do become quite unreasonable over the smallest things. One woman threw a fit because we don’t let anyone enter the library to take photographs. She demanded a refund on her entrance fee.”

  “Wow.”

  Beatrice shrugged a shoulder. “It happens. I’ve always known that you can’t please everyone, but working with the public day in and day out makes that fact crystal clear. I know that a small portion of people who tour Parkview Hall go away disgruntled. But this is more than that. Keep reading.”