Murder at Pellhurst Pond

Book 0: Stella and Lyndy Mystery

by Clara McKenna

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Mystery

Synopsis

Viscount “Lyndy” Lyndhurst and his American wife, heiress and equestrian Stella Kendrick—aka Lady Lyndhurst—dive in to investigate a body found in a pond on the estate of a man rumored to have killed his wife…

When a hot air balloon lands near Morrington Hall, it draws the attention of Stella and Lyndy as well as others, including Quentin Lockyear, son-in-law of Reuben Woodridge, a recluse who is suspected of murdering his wife. Quentin is keen to invest in aeronautic ships and automobiles, and invites Stella and Lyndy to Woodridge’s estate, Exbury Lodge.

Upon their arrival, they meet the mysterious patriarch, accompanied by his nurse, and his daughter, Enid. Reuben takes Stella and Lyndy on a tour of his stables and a large mill pond on the property, encouraging them to take his skiff out whenever they like. Returning the next day for a bird shoot, the couple go for a ride in the skiff only to discover a body in the pond.

The woman is dressed in expensive clothes but has no identification on her. An accidental drowning? Suicide? What is she doing on the property? When an autopsy reveals traces of poison, Stella and Lyndy attempt to discover who she was and who might have had a reason to do her harm. Rumors aside, what secrets are they hiding at Exbury Lodge?

Release date: October 27, 2026

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Usually when I plot out a book, I have a clear idea what the premise is. Not so with this one. All I knew was that it would be set in the New Forest in the autumn of 1906. So, I turned to one of my favorite, and invaluable, research resources—the British Newspaper Archive. Knowing the approximate dates, I began poring over the period newspapers. It wasn’t long before I started to see headlines reporting the Gordon Bennett Cup international balloon race. When balloons set off from Paris on September 30, 1906, it marked the first of its kind, an event that would grow to become the premier balloon race it is today. The aim of the first contest was simple—to fly the farthest from the launch site. Open to members of all National Aero Clubs in good standing with the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale), sixteen balloons started, with seven countries represented. Its sponsor was James Gordon Bennett Jr., the controversial millionaire owner of the New York Herald who loved his sports. By 1906, he’d won the first-ever transoceanic yacht race, introduced polo to the United States, and put his name on the trophy for French soccer champions, a yacht regatta, and a race car competition (he would go on to spur a race between airplanes as well). The winner of the first balloon race was American Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm, who crossed the English Channel to land near Flying Dales, Yorkshire.

Lt. Lahm isn’t a character in this book, but several other historical figures are. General Sir Charles Warren, a well-known British figure of the day, was one of the first, if not the first, to use war balloons. Vera Hedges Butler, a pioneering female motorist—the first British woman to pass a driving test—was a founding member of the Aero Club of the United Kingdom. The other founding members included the Hon. Charles S. Rolls of Rolls-Royce fame, who competed in the Gordon Bennett Cup, causing headlines by going temporarily missing (he would eventually die in an airplane crash only four years later); and Vera Hedges Butler’s father, Frank Hedges Butler, who not only competed in that race—landing on the French side of the Channel—but later went on to write a memoir, Fifty Years of Travel by Land, Water, and Air. Having only experienced hot air balloons, I relied heavily on his knowledge of gas balloons— even using his account of landing in a tree—to bring the earlier technology to life.

Although I make every effort to get my historical details right, occasionally I allow myself a little leeway. The intentional example in this book is the implementation of the Street Betting Act of 1906, which prohibited any off-course betting. Although the book is set in the first week in October, this law wasn’t enacted until December 21 of that year. Other laws existed discouraging the practice, but as this was an attempt at the toughest law to date, I decided to include it, albeit two months early.

October 1, 1906

Hampshire, England

In the face of yet another betrayal, Reuben Woodridge squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the bedclothes to his chin, the ribboned edge of his eiderdown quilt silky and cool against his bristly skin. This room—once the lodge’s grand drawing room with its tall windows and elevated foundation—had been his bedchamber since stairs became an adversary. Though on the ground floor, the room sat a good six feet above the sloping gardens and had once offered a commanding view of the millpond he’d built himself. Now, having let the garden go, branches from the untrimmed silver birch blocked most of the view. Part of him knew the apparition that hovered outside his window was a figment of his imagination. But only a part of him.

What had happened to the steely resolve that made business magnates cower and the world bend to his will? He’d like to think it had been chipped away by time, by his endless overcoming of adversity, eroded like a granite hill beneath a trickling waterfall. But he knew better. The mask that had made him impermeable to fear and frustration had been ripped away in one fateful moment.

Ah, Mary. Who knew how weak I was without you?

Yet once it was off, he was vulnerable to the onslaught, to the endless string of disappointments and betrayals.

As if in defiance, to prove himself wrong, Reuben slowly raised one eyelid. The thick timbered beams stretching across the ceiling were unremarkable, familiar. He’d gazed at them countless times in the decades he slept beneath their unwavering strength. Reassured, he turned his gaze to the window not yet brightened by the coming dawn. Nothing but the shadowy outline of the tree’s branches filled the pane. He was seeing things. So why didn’t he feel any better?

Craving a bit of his favorite tipple, Reuben rolled to his side, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. Forgoing the filled water glass on the bedside table, he pulled the table drawer open, blindly seeking the flask among the bits and bobs with his aching fingers. But the flask wasn’t there.

Damn! Was he to be denied even this small pleasure?

He yanked it free and let it crash to the floor, anticipating the satisfyingly loud clatter but the handkerchiefs in the drawer and thick Brussels carpet wouldn’t oblige, doing their best to muffle the noise.

Was there no end to the treachery?

It began with the villagers, whispering and spreading their nasty rumors after Mary died. Reuben vowed he’d never step one foot into Pellhurst again. A vow he’d stubbornly upheld, not even on a Sunday. The vicar came to him. And then, holed up in his grief and misery, he’d failed to foretell how his own body would betray him. First, it was his legs, wobbly like branches in a gale. Even if he had a mind to take his constitutional through the village as he was wont to do, he could no longer manage it alone. Then his hands, stiff and ineffective, making something as essential as holding a pen or the reins of his favorite pony a challenge. Of late, it was his cramping stomach and now his mind, if his nightly vision was to be considered.

And of course, his treasonous family.

At the soft, slow, drawn-out sound of wood scratching against wood, Reuben dropped back into the cradle of his pillows to listen, every unreliable muscle in his body taut. What was that? Reuben imagined every desk drawer in his study, every bookcase and cabinet door was opening and closing itself. But who would do such a thing at this early hour? Guy, with his gambling and good nature? His grandson was visiting friends in Dibden. Enid, with her constant, not so subtle reminders that he couldn’t take care of himself? What did she expect, for him to move in with her? Quentin, with his condescending hints that Reuben didn’t know a good investment when it stared him in the face? As if Reuben wasn’t building a fortune long before that ingrate was born. It couldn’t be. His daughter and her husband had taken up residence in the opposite wing upstairs and never invaded his private study. Reuben liked to believe it was a consolation for their abrupt and unwanted invasion of his home when they should have stayed put in London, but he knew better. Mary had died in his study. The young people had no use for ghosts.

The ghostly noises next door stopped. For several long moments, Reuben held his breath, wondering if his family was right, that he was losing his mind. Had he imagined it? Then, as he began to both relax and curse his duplicitous senses, faint footsteps echoed in the hall as if the Grim Reaper was tiptoeing toward his door. Once, he would’ve been certain a more earthly creature, a chambermaid up and about her duties, was responsible. But since the night he awoke to find Mary, not as the angel she was but as she was in life, standing mute by his bedside, Reuben didn’t know what to believe.

“Hello?” His throat dry, he croaked like a misplayed bassoon. “Have you come for me as well?”

No answer. He hadn’t expected one.

The hushed footfalls drew closer. Reuben reached out to the empty side of his bed, smoothing the cold bedsheets beneath his gnarled hand. Even after all this time, her scent hadn’t left the room. Perhaps his lonely wait was at its end. He snatched the photograph of his wife from the bed stand and clutched it to his chest. When the deathly sound faded and the hall grew quiet again, Reuben sighed, more relieved than he was willing to admit. Yet the taste of another betrayal, like the bitterness of his medicine, lingered on his tongue. Even the Angel of Death wasn’t to be trusted.

A quiet cacophony of chirps and twittering in the hedges below heralded the dawn. Yet Stella lifted her heavy eyelids to a room as dark as it had been when she’d gone to bed. She and Lyndy had had a long day in the saddle yesterday helping with a drift. Stella was the only woman participating in the annual rounding up of New Forest ponies for the purpose of checking the free-ranging animals’ health. Riding Tully, her beloved Thoroughbred, across the length of the Forest, Stella discovered pockets of her adopted home she’d never seen before— bogs, fairy shrimp pools, and the Rufus Stone, a three-sided iron monument marking where King William II fell to a ricocheting arrow during a royal hunt. She’d been equally rewarded for her efforts when they’d located Moorington and Rufus, their New Forest ponies, and their new veterinarian pronounced them to be in perfect condition. But they’d returned exhausted, opting for a minimal late supper before drop ping gratefully into bed.

What had woken her? It wasn’t the birds.

Stella swallowed away the stale taste in her mouth and closed her eyes again, trying to snuggle back in the foggy, fuzzy embrace of sleep. But it was elusive. The nagging question forced her fully awake. As her eyes adjusted, shadows became shapes became the four posts of the bed, the night table, the irregular patterns of the crazy quilt draped across the bed, the thick, gathered folds of fabric cascading to the floor on either side of the windows. Had Bridget woken her when she’d opened the curtains? Since returning from Montana, Lyndy had insisted on being woken by the sunrise—whatever time that turned out to be—regardless of how late they’d retired to bed. So the chambermaid crept silently into their bedroom every morning in the darkness. But Bridget had been doing so for two months and hadn’t woken Stella up yet.

Was it the radiator rattling and hissing as it let off steam to heat the room? Stella doubted it. She was so used to the sound, she hardly noticed it.

Lyndy, with his adorable dimpled chin, his tousled hair, spiking here and there like a partially denuded hedgehog, rolled onto his side to face her, reaching to pull her into his embrace even in sleep. Had he woken her? He occasionally snored when his nose was stopped up, but he’d finally shaken the head cold everyone caught and suffered from last month. Everyone except Stella. She’d had a day or two of sniffles, but Lady Atherly still suffered, continuing to need to wipe her eyes and mop her dripping nose. At her worst, Stella’s mother-in-law had been confined to her bed for a week. Only yesterday had she been strong enough to attend her gardens. But if not Lyndy’s snores, then what?

“What is it, my love?”

Lyndy’s whispered question startled her. Despite looking right at him, she didn’t know he was awake.

“I’m not sure.” How did she describe her irrational apprehension? “I thought I heard something—unusual.”

They lay in silence, listening. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Neither do I. Now.” Had she dreamed it?

“Well …” Lyndy’s breathing grew soft and heavy as he inched closer until his body cradled hers. “Now that we are up?” He kissed behind her earlobe, then below. Tingles shot down Stella’s neck into the small of her back. She giggled.

Muttering and exclaiming voices down the hall froze the progression of Lyndy’s kisses. The floor, and with it the bed, trembled under the weight of several pairs of running feet.

“What on earth?” Lyndy glared at the bedroom door as if expecting an intrusion at any moment.

Stella wasn’t going to wait. She threw back the covers and sat up as Lyndy rolled to his side of the bed. She shivered—the lacy cambric nightgown too thin to ward off the sudden chill—and had one slender arm in her dressing gown, the other reaching for the doorknob, before Lyndy’s feet hit the carpet.

“What the bloody hell is that?” Still in his bare feet and flannel pajamas, Lyndy leaned into the window, one hand on the glass, his nose nearly touching. From her vantage point in the doorway, Stella saw nothing unusual—the silhouettes of purplish clouds reflecting the glowing orange hint of sunrise along the horizon and the shadowy line of oaks that marked the edge of Morrington Hall’s paddocks.

She returned her attention to the commotion inside the manor. The hall was empty, but with the door now open, the voices had grown louder. An exclamation, a called question, and chiding shushes echoed up from downstairs. Torn between needing to know what was going on downstairs—the beginning rumblings of which were what she assumed had woken her up— and what had captivated Lyndy so much, Stella paused, one slippered foot on either side of the threshold.

Without turning, Lyndy motioned her back across the room. “Come look at this.”

A few miles away, sailing across the ever brightening sky, was what appeared to be a giant inflated rubber ball. Stella recognized it immediately. She’d seen one at the St. Louis World’s Fair. But that had been tethered. She’d never seen one so high, at least three times as high as the tallest oak, gliding on the wind like a buzzard. No wonder the entire household was awake. It was a spectacular sight.

“It’s a gas balloon.”

“Like those participating in the race Papa has been reading about?” Stella nodded, unable to tear her attention away from the balloon. “Are you telling me that one of the competitors for the Gordon Bennett Cup is flying past our window?”

“Who else could it be?”

Lord Atherly had been fascinated by the aeronautical race, the first of its kind, following the reports and stories leading up to the launch yesterday from Paris. He could talk of nothing else at dinner last night. Lyndy had been less enthusiastic. Stella’s husband’s interest in races extended to anything having to do with horses—and that was it. And yet the wonderment gleaming from his face when he finally pulled his gaze from the window spoke volumes.

“Won’t Papa be thrilled?”

As if he’d been summoned, Lord Atherly suddenly appeared in their doorway. Unlike his son, of whom he was normally an older spitting image, he was already groomed and shaved. He wore his dressing gown, cinched with a velvet belt around his waist, his striped pajama bottoms showing around his ankles. His lorgnette dangled from his fist.

“I came to tell you what all the excitement was about, but it seems you have seen it. Isn’t it wonderful? A miracle of modern technology.” He joined them at the window, raising his lorgnette to his eyes. “How disappointing. It’s descending already.”

“Which means it’s going to land nearby.” Stella grabbed each man by the hand and squeezed. “Come on. Let’s go track it down. I’ll drive.”

With her husband and father-in-law staying easily in step behind her, she skipped past the servants, clustered in twos and threes around the largest windows, stopping only to fetch her driving gear before heading out the door. Pausing to stuff her braided hair into her hat, Stella turned at the sound of a sneeze to see Lady Atherly leaning against the balustrade at the top of the stairs, hugging her fringed, dark blue velvet shawl around her lavender and gray pleated silk dressing gown. The rich, clashing colors emphasized the paleness of her face, and, even from this distance, the raw, red skin under her mother-in-law’s nose and upper lip betrayed her distress.

“We won’t be long,” Stella called, cutting off the objections Lady Atherly began spouting between coughs, as she and the two men stepped into the crisp early morning air.

Once at the stables, the scent of hay and leather beckoned Stella to ride. But time was of the essence. They passed the horses, unharnessed and warm in their stalls, and instead, yanked open the carriage house door and leaped into Stella’s automobile. Ensuring Lord Atherly was safely ensconced in the back—his face alight with anticipation—Stella revved up the engine and with the balloon drifting out of sight, shot off down the drive to follow it.

Riveted by the gas balloon, more delightfully giant up close than floating a mile away, Lyndy hadn’t prepared for Stella to slam on the brakes. With one hand on the windscreen and the other clutching the padded metal armrest, Lyndy braced for the motorcar to stop. He was thrust forward as the large woven basket attached to the giant balloon touched down. It landed so close Lyndy could see the lines of concentration etched on the pilot’s features. Amid sharp, acrid exhaust fumes and coal gas, the motorcar and the balloon basket both came to rest on the grazing lawn which stretched across Lyndy’s ancestral land toward the village of Rosehurst. Several ponies, who’d continued grazing despite the roaring approach of the motorcar, now skittered away at the sight of the slowly deflating behemoth.

The moment she cut the engine, she divested herself of her veil, tossing it into the back seat and forcing Papa to dodge out of the way. Light wisps of silky brown hair escaped from under her hat. As she scrambled out of the motorcar, her duster coat swirled about her as if she too was about to take flight. “Look at that thing!”

Lyndy followed his wife to meet the man who’d crossed the Channel with a bit of wicker, fabric, and coal gas. Papa, who’d begun a rigorous physical regimen since returning from America, strode past both Lyndy and Stella—despite still wearing his slippers—his hand out before the balloon’s pilot could disembark.

“I say, I must congratulate you, sir. You have made it to the New Forest. Sailing across the Channel all the way from Paris. It is quite remarkable.”

With a quick glance up at the deflating balloon, shriveling like a grape drying into a raisin, the pilot pulled his goggles down, allowing them to rest around his neck. He was a few years older than Lyndy, with a strong jawline and an easy air about him. He tugged off his gloves before accepting Papa’s hand. Muscular, callused, and strong, his hands resembled those of a prizefighter.

“My thanks. The journey was trying but extraordinary. If I’m not mistaken, I’ve made it almost to Rosehurst, haven’t I?”

Papa beamed at the man’s local knowledge as if he could take some credit for his incredible accomplishment. “You have indeed. To be precise, you have landed on my estate, Morrington Hall. Are you alone? Most competitors set off in pairs or trios, I believe.”

“I’m as you see me. Would you mind taking hold of that, sir?” Addressing Lyndy as Papa muttered, “Most impressive,” the pilot pointed to a thick rope that trailed along the ground near Lyndy’s feet. Following its length, Lyndy saw the rope was attached to the man’s strange conveyance.

From a distance, the balloon appeared quilted with diamond-shaped stitches. Up close, however, Lyndy could differentiate a mesh netting that encased the balloon from its crown down to where it attached to the supporting metal ring a few feet above the pilot’s head.

“And walk it over there?” Again, the pilot pointed, but to a spot several yards out. Lyndy obliged, but on impulse fashioned the rope’s end into a loop, swung it above his head like a lasso, and released it toward the designated spot. It landed exactly where the pilot had indicated.

“Most impressive,” the pilot said, echoing Papa’s words.

With little gas left, the balloon elongated until it dropped straight toward the ground with a whoosh, collapsing like a small pool of white fabric on the lawn. Only then did the pilot kick his long legs over the edge of the basket and, after perching on the rim on his backside, launch himself free. With his hands on his hips, he flexed, stretching his back. He had to be six feet tall.

“Morrington Hall? Am I right in assuming I have the honor of addressing Lord Atherly, then?”

“You assume correctly. And this is my son and daughter-in-law, Lord and Lady Lyndhurst.”

How was it the pilot knew of Papa? Lyndy stomped his feet, damp and cold in his slippers. “And you are?”

“Henry Hartnett.” He offered Lyndy his hand. “I’m originally from Norleywood. Though I spend most of the year in London, I still have a cottage nearby.” He indicated the grounded balloon. “Hence I named her The Beaulieu.”

“That’s incredible, Mr. Hartnett,” Stella remarked. “It makes the world feel small.”

“After spending sixteen hours in a gas balloon, I’d argue, my lady, that the world seems terribly big to me.” Hartnett laughed, removing his cap and brushing back his flaxen hair from his forehead with his fingers.

“Why, that is slower by a third if one traveled by train and steamer,” Papa remarked. “News, on the other hand, travels fastest of all.”

Seems Papa was right. Considering the commotion it had stirred in their household, Lyndy should not have been surprised to see what appeared to be the entire village of Rosehurst and its surrounding farms descending on the spot. A festive crowd of closed carriages, dogcarts, market wagons, riders on horseback, even families on foot paraded across the grazing lawn as if it were Derby Day.

“If only we could harness it as we do the wind,” Mr. Hartnett quipped.

“How right you are, Mr. Hartnett.” Papa laughed. “It seems an earthquake will not raise more attention than a landing of a balloon.” Hartnett heartily agreed.

A husband, wife, and four children—including one bouncing on his mother’s hip—were the first to arrive on foot. Hatless, all four boys had the same telltale sign of a recent head cold as Mother—red, chafed skin under their noses from too much wiping. As more children arrived, dancing and skipping along the edges of the puddled fabric, Stella’s gaze seemed no longer captivated by the balloon. Outwardly, she granted the playful scene a gracious smile, but Lyndy knew her too well. Her normal radiance was dulled, her demeanor, so joyful and mischievous not moments before, subdued. Her alabaster cheeks flushed unnaturally.

And how well he knew the cause. They had been married over a year and had yet to conceive a child. The pain of it, no matter her attempts at distraction, no matter his reassurances, was beginning to have its effect.

And Lyndy’s powerlessness to ease her suffering was almost more than he could bear.

Lyndy tossed the rope to the ground to take his wife’s arm. Per usual, tendrils of her silky, light brown hair had escaped their pins. He tucked the longest strand behind her ear. She squeezed his arm and laid her chin on his shoulder briefly in response. There was no need for words between them.

“We will step aside, Mr. Hartnett,” Papa was saying, “as I see others are as eager to congratulate you as I was. Yet I would be most pleased if you would join us for luncheon at Morrington Hall. You could regale us with your tales of the adventure.”

“That’s a kind invitation, Lord Atherly, but unfortunately, I’m due in London by noon.” Mr. Hartnett pointed to his balloon being touched and its edges lifted by the curious crowd. “After I disassemble the netting, pack all of the silk covering into the basket, put it on a cart, and convey it to the railway station, I must report my landing before catching the earliest possible train. However, if it’s a standing invitation, I would enjoy lunching with you the moment my calendar allows.”

“Of course. Any time.”

Following Papa’s lead, Lyndy took Stella’s hand and stepped away, as more well-wishers and admirers crowded Hartnett and his basket, shaking his hand or patting the pilot on the back. From the questions they bombarded him with, Lyndy surmised that some knew of his accomplishment, his participation in the first international aeronautical race, and took pride when they learned Hartnett was one of their own. Most, however, had been simply drawn by the singular appearance of the balloon. Unwilling to withdraw completely, Papa was soon recognized by Gerald Lascelles, Deputy Surveyor of the New Forest, who inquired after Papa and Mother’s health. Soon Lewis, their neighbor to the north, joined in. Then merchants from the village and tenant farmers nearby—even Reverend Paine, the local vicar—approached to engage either Papa, Lyndy, or Stella in conversation. It was livelier than one of Mother’s musical nights. The publican, Heppenstall, a casual acquaintance of Lyndy’s and owner of the Knightwood Oak, was the first to imply Lyndy and his family had a new distinction—they owned the land where The Beaulieu had landed. Caught up in arguing it was not to their credit, Lyndy didn’t notice at first the earnest conversation between Hartnett and a middle-aged man wearing a monocle and sporting a tidy, ginger mustache twisted on each end. Lyndy knew everyone within a five-mile radius. Yet this man was unknown to him. Curious, Lyndy excused himself from Heppenstall, whispered to Stella his intention, and then strolled through the crowd to make this new acquaintance.

“Ah, Lord Lyndhurst, have you met Mr. Quentin Lockyear?” Hartnett glanced at his pocket watch while gesturing toward Lockyear, and the two men shook hands. “He and I are mutual members of the Aero Club of th. . .