Phone for the Fish Knives

Book 2: Tode Hall

by Daisy Waugh

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; International Crime & Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

'Daisy Waugh's featherlight satires are as refreshing and uplifting as a glass of chilled vintage champagne. . . Imagine Agatha Christie on laughing gas' Times

The Todes are back, and they're taking on Hollywood . . .

When Hollywood wants to do a remake of the film that made Tode Hall famous, India and Egbert are delighted. They envisage a summer of free money and star-studded dinner parties ahead . . .

But the Hall is soon overrun by wardrobe trucks and catering tents, and lusty, insecure actors squabbling about nudity clauses. When the movie's producers threaten to sue over the exact colour of Tode Hall's rolling lawns, India and Egbert realise that having a film crew on their doorstep isn't such a breeze after all. With so many egos in one place things were bound to end badly, but no one would have predicted quite so literal a backstabbing . . .

'A glorious satire on aristocratic manners and mores, with a smidgeon of murder thrown in, Waugh's hilarious and entirely original twist on the country house murder mystery is 'a perfect antidote to all the real-life craziness going on' Daily Mail

Praise for the Todes

'Witty, well-written and determinedly entertaining . . . the perfect book for the staycation' Catholic Herald

'I couldn't put it down' Santa Montefiore

'A delightful treat' The Lady

'Deliciously entertaining' Andrew Wilson

'An irresistible champagne bubble of pleasure and laughter' Rachel Johnson

'A perfect antidote to wintry gloom' The Literary Review

'What a triumph!' Antonia Fraser

'A masterclass in how to write a rollicking good read' Sarah Vine

'A jolly farce that never takes itself too seriously' Red Magazine

'Fizzles, crackles and sparkles' Elizabeth Buchan

'A work of sublime silliness' Simon Brett

'An effervescent madcap whodunnit' Metro

'A marvellous rollicking read' Mary Killen

'She's skewered her targets brilliantly' Imogen Edwards-Jones

'This contemporary take on a golden age mystery is simply wonderful.' Belfast Telegraph

Release date: June 17, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

TUESDAY, 8.41 A.M.

The lawns that stretched around Tode Hall had turned to a drab mustard colour through the summer, making the pale stone of Britain’s seventh most recognisable, privately owned stately home appear a tiny bit grubby. But there was nothing to be done. It was mid August and the county of Yorkshire hadn’t seen a drop of rain in almost six weeks. On Britain’s social media platforms, concern for polar bears and world apocalypse had reached yet more feverish levels. In London, Manchester, Edinburgh – even in York – furious young people were chaining themselves to buses and demanding an end to life as we live it. And in the Old Stables gift shop at the end of the drive, also in the gift shop by the ticket office, and at all three Tode Hall restaurant-cafés, there had been an unprecedented run on individually wrapped frozen lollies. In fact, across the entirety of Tode Hall’s retail sector, only lemon-flavoured ice pops remained.

It had been an extraordinary summer: a wonderful summer for almost everyone, and a useful one for the climate-change campaigners. Nevertheless, this being England, everyone was complaining.

Fifty-two-year-old Sir Ecgbert Tode, 12th Baronet, for example, dressed in thick corduroy jacket, polo neck and long trousers, loping across parched lawn, keying security code into private entrance, swatting at imaginary flies, was at that very moment sounding off in a negative way about his body temperature.

‘It’s only eight-thirty in the morning, Trudy, and I’m already hot,’ he moaned. ‘I’m literally boiling. What is going on? Can you actually believe it?’

He was leaving a voicemail for Alice Liddell, whom he nicknamed ‘Trudy’ for reasons never entirely clear, also fifty-two years old, and currently employed as Tode Hall’s ‘Organisational Coordinator’, whatever that meant. Nobody seemed to know – least of all Alice, who’d been in the job for almost a year. But it was a nice job. Very low key. It came with a beautiful cottage, set behind a high hedge, in the heart of Tode Hall’s ancient Rose Garden, and a small car with broken seatbelts. Alice was a lifelong Londoner, but she’d spent much of her childhood on the estate staying with her late grandmother, the late Lady Tode’s lady’s maid. So in a way, the Hall felt a bit like home. Sir Ecgbert was calling her this morning because he loved her. But obviously he wasn’t going to tell her that.

‘By the way I’m at the house,’ he said instead. ‘And it’s like a frying pan, Trudy. An absolutely massive frying pan … ’ Ecgbert’s voice echoed as he entered the Great Hall. ‘In fact the entire country is like one massive frying pan, I’ve just realised. There’s no escape. I’m quite worried about the badgers in Brendan Wood. God knows how they’re coping. Are you awake? Will you come over for breakfast?’

Alice loved Sir Ecgbert as much as Sir Ecgbert loved Alice. But she couldn’t have told him that, even if she’d wanted to, because she didn’t yet know it herself. In any case, it was far too early for breakfast, especially after such a strange and disagreeable evening. She reached an arm from beneath her thin bed sheet and switched off the phone.



Sir Ecgbert, though its natural heir, didn’t live at the Hall, and nor, thankfully, was he responsible for its management. This was a good thing. The Tode estate constituted not only one of the grandest and most beautiful houses in the country, but over 10,000 acres of agricultural land, fifty or sixty small cottages, the aforementioned gift shops and restaurant-cafés, a farm shop, a grouse shoot, a luxury campsite, an exhibition centre, a nursery garden, an archery school, a shooting range … the list continues … It was a very large enterprise and an important local employer: definitely not something to be handed over to a man whom, in more than fifty years, had yet to complete a single day in paid employment. Sir Ecgbert, nicknamed ‘Mad Ecgbert’ by friends and family, would not have made a good manager.

The estate had long been cocooned in family trusts and clever tax-avoiding wheezes, so no single individual ever really ‘owned’ it anymore, in any case. But the right to reside in the Hall as king of the castle (not to mention draw an income from its considerable interests) was more fluid. That right would, by tradition, have been Ecgbert’s. But shortly before her shocking death, his widowed mother, Lady Tode, had decided to hand the reins to a Tode better suited to the job.

In fact Lady Tode had overlooked all three of her children. She turned instead to Sir Ecgbert’s young cousin Egbert (Mr Egbert. Also please note the lack of a ‘c’). It was generally agreed that Egbert(Mr), together with his beautiful, merry wife, India, were doing a splendid job. There had been a bit of spilled blood in the early months, admittedly, first with Lady Tode herself and then with the other fellow – but luckily no one in the family had been blamed for either death; and better still, ticket sales were up. In the year since young cousin Egbert(Mr) had taken over, visitor numbers to the Hall, already in six figures for the period, were up by 14 per cent. Astonishing. Excellent. Great news all round. Of course, the long hot summer had played its part. Ditto, the newspaper headlines, after all the bloodshed. But therein lies another story (available at all good bookshops).

So.

Ecgbert (Sir. Sir Ecgbert has a ‘c’) wandered around the house a little aimlessly, as was his wont at this time in the morning. He often arrived too early for breakfast. Since the death of his mother, almost ten months ago, he had grown in confidence and stature, and had moved from a luxury boarding house in the local town of Todeister, into a house of his own on the Tode estate. But as this was the first time he had ever lived alone, and it was early days, and he had yet to master the art of keeping food in the fridge, he tended to eat a lot of his meals at the Hall.

His good-natured cousin Egbert(Mr) would normally be returning to the house around now, mud-spattered and glowing, post twenty-mile pre-breakfast bike-a-thon. But on this Tuesday morning he had chosen to skip the bike ride and had joined his wife, India, in her luxurious daily lie-in.

Ecgbert(Sir) appeared to have the place to himself. The house was full of guests, as he well knew, having been present at the disagreeable dinner the previous night, but at 8.30 that morning, the place was disconcertingly quiet.

Mrs Carfizzi ought to have been in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for everyone. Ecgbert sniffed the air, hoping for bacon.

Nothing.

He pricked his ears, hoping for sizzling sounds.

Nothing.

He made his way to the kitchen. But there was no sign of life in there. Last night, at the disagreeable dinner, India had mentioned how oddly the Carfizzis were behaving. And it was true, dinner had been an unusually hotchpotch affair. Mrs Carfizzi (the cook) barely put in an appearance all evening and what food she eventually presented definitely wasn’t up to scratch. Her husband Mr Carfizzi (the butler) hadn’t been much more visible, and he normally adored throwing his weight around when the Hall put on grand dinners.

Uncertainty shimmied and fizzed through the 12th Baronet’s long body. What was going on? Had Mrs Carfizzi, born and raised in Calabria, melted in the English heat? It seemed unlikely. But then what had become of her? Ecgbert loved Mrs Carfizzi better than he had loved his own, dead mother. Since he could be bothered to remember, she had always been there, sizzling bacon in the kitchen. Breakfast and Mrs Carfizzi were (or so Sir Ecgbert felt at that instant) the only true constants in his life. And yet … here he was. He breathed deeply. His therapist had provided him with techniques for dealing with exactly these types of situations. He tried to remember how they went:

The Being of ‘Now’: Six Steps for Feeling OK When Life Deals

You Surprises:

Breathe deeply.

Don’t panic!

Remember, you are beautiful.

Bear in mind that Mrs Carfizzi is probably fine.

Perhaps Mrs Carfizzi’s alarm clock has broken?

(Something like that.)

Anyway, it occurred to Ecgbert he might need to forage for his own breakfast this morning. And that was fine. An adventure, almost. It reminded him that at the end of the unsatisfactory dinner last night, India had advised guests who were still feeling peckish to help themselves from the large larder beyond the pantry, where there was ‘food galore’. Chocolate cake, she said. He didn’t feel like chocolate cake for breakfast. He hoped to find Mrs Carfizzi in there, and some bacon sizzling in a pan.

He wandered through the back of the kitchen, past the boot room (for boots), the gun room (for guns), the stick room (for fishing rods, long bows, cricket bats and croquet mallets), the coat room, the overnight safe, the pantry – and so on. He’d not been back here for years, and yet it still smelled the same! He used to spend hours back here as a child, stealing food, swinging off the shelves, making a nuisance of himself. Perhaps he would fry himself an egg? It couldn’t be that hard. Or some sausages? God – wouldn’t it be marvellous if he found sausages?

He was deep in thought as he pulled back the larder door, lost in breakfast imaginings, eyes down, shoulders a little stooped, according to habit. If all else failed it probably wouldn’t be the end of the world to eat the cake for breakfast, anyway. Might even be delicious. Seriously. When you thought about it, what was so wrong with eating cake at breakfast?

It was a smallish room. Perhaps fourteen by fourteen feet, with deep shelves from floor to ceiling on every wall, and in the middle of the room, from the ceiling, a line of large metal hooks for hanging game. As he turned on the light, the bulb popped, but he hardly noticed. He knew the room so well.

In the half-light, his head banged softly against something bulky, swinging from the hooks. A massive pheasant, perhaps. A goose. A wild boar. Hanging low. A massive, low-hanging wild boar. Wholly unlikely, of course. But he was hungry and upset about Mrs Carfizzi. His mind was on chocolate cake and sausages, and he thought he might see them both on the shelf behind the … the bulky object, which swung gently this way and then back, obscuring his view. Irritably, he pushed it aside. The back of his hand brushed against fabric.

He noticed shoes swinging somewhere round his hips. And then he noticed legs, and a torso, and a dark jacket hoiked awkwardly over a drooping head, and between the shoulder blades, embedded deep enough to hold the bodyweight, a rusty meat hook normally used for hanging pheasant.

A horror show.

Ecgbert reacted instinctively. The hook lodged between the shoulder blades looked agonising, and he felt compelled to do something to relieve it. The body was already stiff and cool, but he lifted it with both arms, held it tight, and jiggled hard. The hook stayed put – not embedded in flesh, Ecgbert realised, so much as entangled in cloth. He clambered up onto the shelves, just as he had as a child, and tried again. He leaned in, reached for the hook with one arm and yanked. A ripping sound. The hook came free. Ecgbert lost his footing, the body slipped from his grasp and, together, they tumbled to the floor.

This was all very unexpected.



MONDAY, 8.41 A.M.

Rewind twenty-four hours and the vibe at Tode Hall had been nothing, if not cheerful.

It was a Monday morning. India didn’t normally surface before ten o’clock on weekday mornings, but at 8.41 on that Monday morning, she was up and dressed and smelling of roses, and already en route to the Gardener’s House, where fiftytwo-year-old Organisational Coordinator, Alice Liddell, was drinking hot chocolate in her dressing gown. Alice didn’t tend to start her organisational coordinating until later in the day. But today was an important one, and India (34 yrs) was impatient. She squinted in the morning sunlight as she ambled out across the thirsty lawn, and sighed with merry contentment.

‘I believe I can fly,’ she sang, ‘ … I believe I can touch the sky … ’

The Estate Offices courtyard and the grounds beyond the East Wing were already a thrilling mass of prop trucks and catering trucks, and Winnebagos and generators. The novelty would wear off soon, no doubt, but for the moment they represented nothing, to India, but excitement and glamour. For the next three weeks Tode Hall was to be taken over by a vast film crew: the house was to be used, once again, as the location for a remake of Frances Piece’s famous novel, Prance to the Music in Time.

This new screen version was to be even more glamorous and extravagant than the last two screen versions put together: a mega-budget six-part TV series, starring two Oscar winners and, more confusingly, a newcomer spotted by chance while the director, Noah Thistlestrupp, was doing his location recce at the Hall a few months back.

Oliver Mellors, Yorkshire’s handsomest gamekeeper, third generation Tode Hall employee, had been spotted on his tractor, and immediately summoned to London for a screen test where, according to Noah Thistlestrupp, he had ‘burned the place up with his sex appeal’. Apparently, staff at the production office hadn’t been able to sit still for hours afterwards. So – Mellors, much loved estate employee, had been given a month-long sabbatical from his job as head gamekeeper, and he was being paid more for that month of acting than the estate paid him in a year, tending to pheasants. If all went well, Noah Thistlestrupp had informed him, Mellors would never have to tend to pheasants, ever again. And his children, should he ever have any, would be able to attend the sorts of school that taught lacrosse and Mandarin.

But today wasn’t about Mellors. Not for India. Today, the two Oscar winners, the series’ director (Thistlestrupp), and series’ most senior executive producer, Alyster Crowley, were due to stay at Tode Hall as her guests. For complicated, contractual reasons, they were also expecting the ludicrously named Rapunzel Piece, seventy-seven-year-old daughter and copyright heir to Frances Piece, who wrote the famous book, who would be accompanied by her middle-aged son, Norman.

On India’s insistence they would all be staying at the house for one night of pre-shoot merrymaking, and she had organised a grand and glamorous dinner to welcome them. The VIPs would be moving into a luxury hotel nearby when filming began the following day. Rapunzel and her son would be returning whence they came, and a few days later, India, Egbert(Mr) and their two young children would be escaping the mayhem for a long holiday on the island of Paxos.

There was much to organise. Or at least, to talk about. Altogether there were to be twelve guests at the dinner tonight, including Mellors, which India’s husband Egbert(Mr) worried might be a bit awkward.

Should the men (India worried) be asked to wear dinner jackets? Would Mellors even have a dinner jacket? Almost certainly not. And if not, might the film crew costume people be able to lend him one for the night? … Also, Mrs Carfizzi didn’t understand about offering alternative menus for people with weird dietary habits, and movie stars always had weird dietary habits. Or so India had read. Should they be offering a gluten-free menu to the Oscar winners? And if so, how to explain this to Mrs Carfizzi, whom – despite having worked at Tode Hall since the early 1980s – still seemed incapable of speaking or understanding English?

All this, India needed to discuss with her friend and employee, Organisational Coordinator, Alice Liddell. Alice, India felt certain, would have the answers. Or if she didn’t, would at least make the questions go away.

India didn’t know the next line of the song. But the sun was still shining.

‘I believe I can fly oh why … I can fly in the sky so high … ’

At the edge of the parched lawn, by the archway in the wall that led to the Rose Garden, India spotted a shirtless man, chubby, with shoulder-length grey locks, dressed in short running pants and open leather waistcoat. He was peering at the mustard-coloured grass, and something about the angle of his stout, leather-clad trunk made her sense, right away, that he was angry.

House and gardens had been closed to the public since the film crew arrived last week, and would remain closed for the length of the shoot. India assumed therefore, quite rightly, that he was part of the film crew. Even so, it was disconcerting to spot him there. She called out.

‘Hello, sir! Hello there – can I help you?’

She noticed he was muttering to himself. She thought that perhaps he was a madman after all, and wondered, briefly, if she ought to keep away. But such caution was never a part of her character. She continued her approach, which was en route to the Garden House in any case, and drew up beside him.

‘Excuse me – what are you doing?’

He glanced at her, an expression of liverish irritation on his face.

‘Oh!’ said India. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s – it’s … ’ But then she couldn’t remember his name. He was the finance man. Executive Director? Chief Financial Producer? Executive Chief of Finance Production? There were so many titles. In any case, he was American, with Irish connections. She remembered that much. India had met him briefly a week or so ago, when he and a gang of them had turned up with clipboards and spent hours roaming around the house and grounds, muttering to each other in boring monotones. This one, she remembered, had seemed to be the one everyone was sucking up to. ‘It’s you!’ she said. ‘Sorry! I wondered who it was … Is everything all right?’

India was easier to place, of course. Not only was she young and blonde and beautiful, she was his hostess: the owner of this outrageously expensive location. Definitely someone he wanted to please. So the liverish scowl was replaced with a broad smile. In his youth, before he got so fat and spoiled and corrupt and unhappy, Alyster Crowley had been an attractive fellow. Charming, too. Not now. Not that he much cared, either way, anymore.

He said: ‘Top of the mornin’ to you, Mrs Tode!’ in an implausible Irish accent. She wasn’t sure if it was meant to be funny. ‘On this beautiful day.’

Distantly, from the field beyond the nursery garden, where the film people had put what they called their Unit Base, she could hear his helicopter winding down. Was it legal, she wondered, to land a helicopter in someone’s field unannounced? In any case it was landed now. Maybe he might let her have a ride in it one day? India had only been in a helicopter once, when she broke her shin, on the mountainside in Zermatt. It had been a source of regret to her ever since, that she’d been in too much pain to look out the window.

‘Everything’s top-notch,’ Alyster Crowley was saying. ‘And I thank you for asking. And may I thank you again, dear lady, for being so generous as to allow us into your beautiful home and garden. We are blessed. Truly blessed … ’

She didn’t say it. But it sat there, between them, and the tuk-tuk-tuk of the helicopter winding down, and the bright morning sun: there was nothing generous about the arrangement at all. Egbert(Mr), in his former life a Wandsworth estate agent, had managed to negotiate a phenomenal £400,000 in exchange for allowing the filmmakers into his beautiful home and garden for three weeks. In addition to which his wife got to have dinner with two movie stars. It was a win–win for the Todes and for Tode Hall.

India said: ‘Oh my goodness, don’t even think about that, Brethren … [No, that wasn’t it. What was his name?] It’s so exciting for us! Absolutely our pleasure. And I hope you’re looking forward to dinner tonight? I know we are! Also, by the way. . .