Old Moorhen's Shredded Sporran

Book 0: The Belchester Chronicles

by Andrea Frazer

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Another tongue-in-cheek romp for our intrepid decrepit heroes

Release date: September 30, 2014

Publisher: Soundings

Print pages: 250

Sample

Chapter One

Monday

Beauchamp entered the drawing room with a tray of cocktails, his usual duty at this hour, but Lady Amanda was totally unaware of his presence until he spoke. ‘I thought an Old Moorhen’s Shredded Sporran might be in order, as we’ve managed to survive our Scottish trip without either being murdered, or dying of hypothermia,’ he announced.

‘Eh?’ she queried – rather commonly, Hugo thought.

‘Excellent idea, Beauchamp,’ agreed Hugo, giving the butler an ingratiating reply, hoping to make up for his friend’s lack of manners, an unusual occurrence indeed, for she was the very devil herself where manners were concerned.

Shaking her head like a dog emerging from water, she said, ‘Sorry, Beauchamp, old man. I was lost in a dream for a moment there. What is it you’ve brought us tonight?’

‘An Old Moorhen’s Shredded Sporran,’ he replied. He knew at once what she had been thinking about, and felt the blood flood up from his neck to his hairline. He had not long revealed the fact to her that he and her old friend, and sometimes too obliging slave, were betrothed, and would be married in the near future.

‘Well, at least we’re back from that uncivilised place in one piece,’ she replied, referring to the castle where they had been staying, rather than the country itself.

Beauchamp coughed delicately into his hand, indistinctly muttering ‘Beecham’ into his hand as he did so. This was a long-running saga with his employer, she insisting on the French pronunciation of his name, and he insisting that she should use the English pronunciation.

As he was the illegitimate son of Lady Amanda’s father, the situation was somewhat unusual. His French mother, ex-lady’s maid to Lady A’s mother, naturally pronounced her own name in the French way, but was so très snob about having given birth to the son of a genuine English ‘milord’ that she decided her son should have his surname pronounced in the English way to emphasize where he came from, regardless of on which side of the blanket this phenomenon had occurred. From such simple beginnings had the current disagreement on the name’s pronunciation developed.

The man himself had been unable to sleep the previous night, it taking him five whole minutes to slip into the arms of Morpheus, and during this dead time, he had devised the game of ‘Beecham Tennis’. The rules for this game were simple. Every time her ladyship addressed him as ‘Beauchamp’, he would find a pretext for correcting her, albeit in an underhand way. The first one to get to forty points won that particular game. At present, he saw the score as fifteen all.

This, however, was a mixed match, and at the moment, he hadn’t decided how many games and sets there should be to the match. He was not a fan of Wimbledon, and spent – or wasted, as he saw it – virtually no time watching the television. There was always something active to do, rather than just sitting in front of a box in a state of fugue, living life at second-hand

This time it was he who was roused from a brown study by an exclamation from his employer, followed by the words, ‘Good grief, Beauchamp; what do you put in these things?’

‘It has eight ingredients, your ladyship. Should you wish to know the recipe, I should be delighted to enlighten you, if you would care to walk down to the kitchens sometime.’

Lady Amanda had already switched off, though, and returned to her private gloomy thoughts. Beauchamp took advantage of the situation, and coughed discreetly ‘Beecham’ into his hand, and thought, thirty-all.

It was Hugo who brought her back to the here-and-now by asking her if she really minded him having a relative to stay. She replied in a lacklustre manner, ‘I must be honest and say that I don’t particularly like Tabitha; she was a bullying bitch at school and made my life a complete misery, but we’re all grown-ups now, and she must have mellowed over the years.

‘This is your home now, though, and you must treat it as such. Before you lived here, you’d never even have thought of telling her she couldn’t visit you, and I don’t expect you to turn her away and send her to an hotel now. She is welcome here; but if she starts misbehaving like she used to, I shall not hold my tongue. Is that clear?’

‘Perfectly clear and reasonable. I say, thanks, old thing,’ replied Hugo, having broached the subject and received what he considered to be a positive reaction.

At that moment, Lady A abandoned the subject of Tabitha’s imminent arrival, and raised the thought that had been troubling her severely. ‘What if Beauchamp buggers off to Enid’s little house in Plague Alley, and just leaves me to get on with things here on my own? What shall I do without him? How will I manage? I’ll – we’ll – have to move into a bungalow somewhere in ghastly suburbia. I don’t think I can face that. Oh, Hugo, what am I going to do? How am I going to manage without him?’

‘I’m sure and certain he doesn’t want to leave his position here. Why don’t you have a discreet word with him and ask him if he would like quarters for the two of them in the Towers? It would be easy enough to create a cosy little apartment for them, and Enid could then be your official dogsbody – sorry, maid – and you could actually pay her for all the things she does for you.’

‘Hugo, you’re a genius. And then she could sell that little box of a house of hers, and they could have some nice outings and, maybe, with the proceeds, she could buy herself a new coat. That old one of hers is getting to be an absolute disgrace.’

She put down her glass and headed for the door, calling, ‘Beauchamp! Beauchamp!’ but for once, he didn’t appear at her elbow and frighten seven shades of shit out of her.

She had just left the drawing room, unexpectedly en route for the domestic quarters, when a cry from that direction froze her in position, as if she were involved in one of those so long-ago games of musical statues, and the music had just stopped.

‘Zut alors!’ she heard, and even her heart was frozen. For all the French-ness of Beauchamp’s early upbringing, she had never heard him utter a word of the Gallic language, and she was chilled by the experience, her own mind following the same track and coming up with an expletive, ‘Sacre bleu!’ Whatever could have happened?

Trotting as fast as she could, considering her somewhat bulky construction, she called out in alarm, ‘Beauchamp, Beauchamp, whatever is the matter? Beauchamp! Is everything all right, Beauchamp?’

She found the manservant furtively muttering ‘Beecham’ into a hand rolled as if to receive a cough, finishing with, ‘Damn and blast, I’ve lost count of the score now.’

‘What the devil’s happened to so disarrange you?’ she asked, in a breathless manner, her mind still caught up in French vocabulary.

‘I was just getting out the plate to give it a polish before we use it tomorrow night for Miss Tabitha’s arrival, when I discovered that we seem to have been victims of a robbery at Belchester Towers. It’s gone; every last piece of it – not even a pepperette left carelessly behind,’ the man finished, having lost complete control of his syntax.

‘What do you mean, gone? How can we have been robbed? Everything was left locked, wasn’t it? No one else has keys except us four!

‘There were plenty of members of staff around in the grounds, involved in the winter clear-up, for security not to be breached. They’d have seen off any shady characters.’

‘Maybe, your ladyship, it was one of our paid helpers who was into a little helping him- or herself.’

‘I find that very unlikely. We take up references on everyone, and no one’s been here less than a year. Somehow, someone has got into the place, and I think it must have been done under cover of darkness, when no one was on duty. We didn’t appoint any security staff; it’s never been necessary in the past.’

‘Well, it might be advisable, in the future, not to leave the place totally unattended again.’ Beauchamp’s face was white with shock. He could not believe someone had been riffling through his pantry in his absence, and he felt almost as if he’d been indecently assaulted, or at least had his underwear drawer disarranged by strange hands.

‘Sit down, man, before you fall down.’ Enid Tweedie had now arrived, having been attracted by the hoarse French curse, and recognising her fiancé’s voice. ‘Whatever has happened, to reduce you to a state like this?’

‘We’ve been robbed, Enid. Someone’s got in and stolen all the plate I wanted to buff up to use tomorrow evening. All the good stuff’s gone.’

‘You spoke that last phrase as if there’s some not-so-good stuff around the place, somewhere.’

‘Well, of course there is, woman. There’s a load of old plate up in the attics that we stopped using when the household invested in the lot that’s been taken.’

‘Why can’t you use that, then?’ asked Enid pragmatically.

‘Because it’s old. Some of the plate has actually worn off, and some of the pieces have suffered disfiguring accidents and are dented.’

‘And will that really be noticed, when it’s all covered in food, the main light is candlelight, and all the diners are involved in earnest conversation, not having seen each other for several years?’

Beauchamp answered this last question with a short period of silence, and one of his old-fashioned looks, while Lady Amanda, not so trusting, was muttering, ‘It’s Tabitha. Of course she’ll notice.’ Clearing her throat as she came to a decision, the Lady of the House suddenly announced, ‘Get thee to the attics, Beauchamp, and seek out the second-best plate. Cinderella shall go to the ball, although she’ll have to put up with a used ballgown.’

She then executed an abrupt about-turn and beetled off to telephone the police to report the theft that had taken place in their absence. She only hoped they could get out to them today, so that the place was not swarming with representatives of law and order when Tabitha arrived on the morrow.

They couldn’t, damn and blast it

Meanwhile, Enid smirked in triumph while her fiancé left the room, discreetly coughing ‘Beecham’ into his hand more than once, to put him ahead on points, even if it was cheating.

Chapter Two

Tuesday

Lady Amanda’s telephone conversation with the police station had been with the duty sergeant and had, therefore, been polite and civilised, the sergeant expressing genuine sympathy with her plight.

It was a different story the next day, when Detective Inspector Moody and the newly promoted Detective Sergeant Glenister turned up on her doorstep. ‘Only the very best for the gentry,’ announced Moody sarcastically, as she bade them enter.

‘Good morning, Lady Amanda,’ the sergeant greeted her, with a friendly smile. While Moody treated Lady Amanda and her cronies as enemies, Glenister had always got on with them well, and become a staunch ally, helping out when he could with snippets of otherwise unavailable information, thus aiding the enemy and undermining his superior.

Glenister had also been transferred to plain clothes, and looked as if he had just walked out of a fashion shoot for the trendy section of a buy-it-on-tick catalogue.

‘As you may have noticed and will have to forgive,’ began Moody in his lugubrious voice, ‘I have not dressed up in my Sunday best for the occasion of visiting the local title.’

‘I had noticed that Sgt Glenister was looking particularly sharp, while you are your usual rumpled self. Well, never mind; it shouldn’t affect your ability to detect, should you have managed to develop one.’

Moody scowled at what felt like a slur, and shot a glower at his junior officer. How come his little witticism had fallen so flat? The woman obviously had no sense of humour. He’d waste no more of his gems on her.

She showed the two men into the morning room: so sunny at this time of day and, in fact, chosen for this particular reason to be the room it had become. The carpet was a shade of light blue, while the upholstery and curtains were a cheery butter yellow, adding much to it bright aspect.

‘Do take a seat, gentlemen,’ invited Lady A, although surveying Inspector Moody with a jaundiced eye as she uttered the last word. ‘I shall summon my butler, who will be able to give you more information than I, the particular items stolen being more in his territory than mine.’

As she trotted out of the room, Moody commented, ‘Stuck-up bitch!’

‘Oh, that’s unfair, sir. What did she say to warrant that?’

‘It was the way that she looked at me, Sergeant; the way that she speared me with her eye.’

No sooner had he made this remark than there was a discreet knock on the door, and Beauchamp entered, his footsteps making no noise whatsoever on the fine quality carpeting.

A sliding, slopping noise behind him declared that he had not arrived alone, and Hugo slithered in behind him in his slippers – after all, it was the morning, and in the morning, they used the morning room. In one hand he held a copy of the Daily Telegraph, in the others, his reading glasses. They could get on with things, as far as he was concerned; he wasn’t going to have his routine disturbed for anyone.

As the second pair of men took their seats in the morning room, the doorbell rang, and the shrill voice of Enid Tweedie called out that she would see to it.

She eased open the huge front door slowly, to reveal a woman dressed in a leopard-print faux fur coat, and carrying two wicker baskets. Behind her stood a tall man in uniform, with a number of suitcases grouped round his feet.

‘I wonder if you would be good enough to inform Mr Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump that his sister has arrived for her visit,’ she intoned, in the most excruciatingly posh accent. If she spoke like that all the time, thought Enid, it would be enough to make the Queen sound common.

‘Do come in,’ she requested as gracefully as she could, ‘and I’ll take you to Mr Hugo. At this time of day he should be in the morning room with his paper. Perhaps your man would like to wait in the hall with the luggage, and I’ll come back to give him instructions as to where to put your cases, and where to find his own quarters.’

Good grief! She’d brought a man with her, but no lady’s maid. Surely she didn’t allow the man to dress her for dinner? It seemed absolutely scandalous to Enid, until she remembered that it was Beauchamp who ‘did’ Lady Amanda’s roots for her, in the appropriate shade of blonde, on a roughly six-weekly basis. Provided the man never saw her in anything less than a petticoat, it was acceptable, though only just.

She led off Tabitha Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump, for this is whom Enid correctly identified the lady as, although she had not b. . .