The Legacy of Halesham Hall

by Jenni Keer

Genres: Victorian Romance

Synopsis

Solve the house's puzzle. Claim the Bellingham inheritance . . . Uncover the truth behind the mysterious legacy of Halesham Hall in this heartfelt dual-time novel from the author The Secrets of Hawthorn Place.

........................................

A love that seems lost, may still yet be found, for real love always endures.

1890. One summer evening changes everything for Sidney and Leonard Bellingham when their beloved mother disappears from the family home, Halesham Hall. Left with their bitter father, they are taught to trust no one but themselves, with brother pitted against brother to see who is worthy of inheriting the Bellingham Board Games company. But the series of twisted games they are forced to play will have far reaching consequences.

1920. Phoebe Bellingham arrives at Halesham Hall determined to solve the puzzles that will allow her to claim back the Bellingham inheritance. But this legacy involves more than one secret, and soon Phoebe realises that the stakes are higher than she ever could have imagined.
........................................

Acclaim for Jenni Keer:

'Gorgeous! Exuberant writing, convincing, adorable characters' TRACY REES

'Exquisitely detailed and enchanting' HEIDI SWAIN

'Absolutely wonderful . . . kept me spellbound' CHRISTINA COURTENAY

'An intriguing dual timeline tale that weaves together interesting characters and history' BELLA OSBORNE

'An epic love story, mixed with gorgeous settings, a great deal of mystery and intrigue' KIM NASH

'Unforgettable and unique' CLARE MARCHANT

'A marvellous dual-time novel filled with mystery, fabulous detail and an enduring love story' MADDIE PLEASE

'Full of intrigue and romance' VICTORIA CONNELLY

'A beautifully written timeslip . . . Highly recommended. Five stars' ERIN GREEN

(P) 2022 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: September 15, 2022

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 432

Sample

Suffolk

Phoebe stood in front of Halesham Hall and frowned. Not only was it a lot bigger than she’d expected, but it was also unlike any house she’d ever come across in her life. The jumble of spires and towers, with decorative crenellations along the rooftops, and high, narrow windows, gave it the feel of a medieval castle. It reminded her of a house she’d once seen in an illustrated book of fairy tales. The steep pitched roofs and multiple chimneys were all squashed together and elongated, giving the place a sense of otherworldliness. It was almost as though a small boy had made it from his brick box, determined to use every single brick, balancing them as high as he dared, and giving his imagination free rein.

It wasn’t a house, it was a fantasy. And a slightly sinister one at that.

Despite the few brief details her parents had told her about the place, she’d failed to conjure up its sheer size or bewildering magnificence. The overall effect was enhanced by the brewing angry weather to the east, casting the Hall in moody and truculent light, with a thin strip of pale grey behind it, silhouetting its angles and spires. As she’d undertaken the two-mile walk from the centre of Halesham, the heavy, rain-laden clouds had appeared to her left and the gentle breeze had begun to whip itself up into a frenzy behind her. A storm was on its way – an ominous portent.

She swallowed hard. The Hall was in complete contrast to the tiny cottages she’d grown up in and made her feel even more insignificant than she usually did. Her life had hitherto been one of simple rural pleasures – unattended chickens wandering into the kitchen, and threadbare sheets cut into squares and hemmed for facecloths. If she wanted to go anywhere, she walked. The family meals came from the garden and were prepared and cooked by either her mother or herself. Before her now, however, was a world of servants and entitlement. The man she was here to see, the owner of Halesham Hall, had considerable wealth (if rather disturbing architectural taste) and a fearsome reputation. That knowledge alone made the knots in her stomach tighten and pull.

As she stood in front of the imposing gothic front door, with its pointed arch and height more than double its width, she noticed flakes of lilac paint on the neglected woodwork. Once upon a time, this door would have stood in purple splendour, perhaps to echo the multitude of lavender beds under the front windows. The blooms were long since over, but the borders well-tended, unlike the shabby exterior of the house.

The dull brass knocker was a slender hand reaching out from the engraved surround and the limp fingers curled around a solid ball. Phoebe reached for it, the cold and hard surface making her jolt. The way it hung in the air, so lifelike and so defeated, was unsettling. She’s trapped in there, Phoebe thought, looking at the hand. She’s trapped inside and wants someone to let her out.

After three sharp raps, she stood back and waited. There was a scurry of feet from the other side, a shout for ‘Ada’, and then disgruntled mutterings as the footsteps got closer. The door swung inwards to reveal a small, thin woman, with shrewd, emerald-green eyes and pinched-in cheeks. A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles was perched on the top of her head, threaded either side of her tight silver bun, and a bunch of keys hung from her skirts, indicating she was the housekeeper of this large household. She looked Phoebe up and down, perhaps deeming her more suitable for the back entrance, and narrowed her eyes.

‘And what can I do for you, lassie?’ The Scottish accent was thick and slightly intimidating.

‘I’m here to see Mr Bellingham.’ Phoebe managed to force the words from her rapidly constricting throat. It was too late now to abandon her plan – she had to see this through, whatever the outcome.

The older woman scrunched her wrinkled face into a frown, making each crease deeper. ‘Is he expecting you?’

Phoebe glanced into the hallway – large black and white tiles, each one over a yard square, covering the floor. A marble bust of some ancient Egyptian pharaoh stood in the far-right corner, and there was a small collection of mounted cannonballs at his feet. It appeared the interior of the house was as peculiar as the exterior.

‘Um, no, not exactly.’ She paused. ‘Not at all, in fact,’ she corrected. If Mr Bellingham was given a hundred guesses as to who might be calling on him that overcast September day, she imagined her name wouldn’t be among them. Did he even know her name?

‘I’m afraid he doesn’t usually see people without a prior appointment. May I ask what it’s concerning?’

‘It’s a personal matter, but I’m certain he’ll see me . . . Once he knows who I am.’

The housekeeper’s interest was piqued. She leaned forward to study the young visitor more closely and Phoebe could almost hear the cogs grinding and clicking into place. There was a moment of realisation as she studied Phoebe’s jet-black, wavy hair, tousled by the escalating breeze, her eyes so dark each iris was barely distinguishable from the pupil, and her delicate, almond-shaped face.

‘May I say who’s calling?’ she asked, but it was obvious this woman already knew the answer.

‘Phoebe Bellingham,’ she supplied. ‘His niece.’

There was, as it turned out, no time for the housekeeper to enquire whether Mr Bellingham would receive her. Within moments there was a pounding of feet descending the main staircase and a tall, darkly clothed figure with a neatly clipped moustache came striding across the wide, monochrome floor towards them.

‘Sir, there’s a wee lass—’

‘Good God.’ Mr Bellingham’s strident voice cut across the housekeeper as he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Phoebe. His initial flash of shock was quickly replaced with barely concealed distaste. He adjusted his face into a more neutral expression and narrowed his eyes. ‘I heard he’d had a daughter. You really are the spit of your mother.’

‘Mr Bellingham . . .’ she began. ‘Uncle.’ The word felt unfamiliar and awkward. ‘My father—’

‘Sent a girl to do his dirty work. After all these years, I can’t possibly think what he wants – unless it’s money, and he won’t get a penny from me.’

‘No, it’s not that.’ She could feel the emotion battling to come out, and her voice started to crack. ‘I’ve come to—’

‘For pity’s sake, spare me the amateur dramatics. If my brother wants to talk to me, he can do it himself. Sending a child, indeed. How utterly pathetic.’

Phoebe bristled at his remark. At twenty, she was hardly a child, even if legally she had another few months until she reached her majority. But she was small, slender and quiet, so was often mistaken for younger than her years.

‘I’m afraid he can’t do that.’ Phoebe kept her calm and spoke in a gentle voice, in total contrast to Mr Bellingham’s overbearing tones. She sucked in a deep breath. ‘Both my parents were killed recently in a boating accident.’

The housekeeper gasped and her bony hands flew to her chest. Mr Bellingham’s eyes flashed briefly wide, but he quickly repressed his shock. His eyes never left Phoebe’s face and there was no further indication that she’d delivered news to him any more distressing than the weather forecast.

He approached the door and peered over her shoulder.

‘How did you get here?’ he asked, searching for signs of a cart or a motor car.

‘I walked up from Halesham. I’m staying at the Bell.’

There was a low rumble as the threatening storm finally made its imminent presence known, and the light fell away sharply, as though blinds had been drawn closed in anticipation of the forthcoming spectacle.

‘Then I suggest you start your return immediately as there is a storm on its way. Thank you for the information, but I’m afraid you’re not welcome here.’ He stepped in front of the startled housekeeper, pushed the heavy front door to an abrupt close, and abandoned Phoebe on the doorstep.

‘This is a stupid game,’ I said, hot, overtired and grumpy, throwing my little metal game piece across the room in disgust and kicking out at the table. Cook had spent all week cursing the flies and Murray had spent all week cursing the maids. Everyone’s tempers were frayed and there was an unsettledness about the house that I felt keenly but couldn’t understand.

My world revolved entirely around myself and I never gave the wishes or worries of others much thought. I wanted to spend more time with Mother but was not always allowed to do so. I wanted the best toys to play with and the sweetest foods from the kitchen – these I had in moderation. I desperately yearned for a companion of my own age to share my adventures, but Leonard was just over ten years older than me, and so my childhood was a lonely one.

I wanted my father simply to remember my name.

My brother had no desire to be cooped up in the nursery with me any more than I wanted him there. He longed to be outside, haring around the fields and meadows on his bicycle or climbing the old oak down by the river, but he’d been ordered to amuse me by Father as a summer storm had descended and put paid to any plans of outdoor adventures for either of us that day. Everyone hoped that the arrival of rain might end the week of suffocating temperatures and sticky nights, but I was most put out that it fell during the day, instead of stealthily and unobtrusively at night. As it was, it did little to clear the air.

‘It’s not my favourite pastime either – you know I’m not a game player – but it would please Father if he saw us,’ Leonard said, picking up my horse from the rug and placing it firmly back on the seventh square. We were playing Newmarket, one of Bellingham Board Games’s biggest sellers. My horse had fallen at the second hurdle, whilst his had raced ahead. ‘These games pay for your governess, my schooling and this large house, Sidney. The least we can do is play them. Besides, I’ve missed you. School can be so tedious and there’s nothing like being home for the holidays.’

Even at that young age, I knew I was being patronised. What was the point in having a brother if he was so much older? He was absent for the long school terms, having boarded since he was nine, and had little in common with me when he returned. My life was invariably disrupted the moment he descended on Halesham Hall – everyone bustling around after him and asking what he’d been up to, even what he might like for supper. He demanded a share of our mother’s attention, talking to her about bookish things I didn’t understand, and loitered in the kitchens, engaging in easy chatter with Cook, as though she were his friend, when in reality, she was mine. But most frustratingly of all, he reminded me that I was the second son, the spare, the baby. And I didn’t like it.

It should have pleased me to have another male in the household, as we were sorely outnumbered. Mrs Murray, our housekeeper, was in charge of a staff of nine women, whereas Burton, the butler, oversaw only three men. And it was the female members of staff that I spent most of my time in the company of. When I wasn’t attending lessons with my governess, I whiled away my idle hours trailing behind the chatty under housemaid, Daisy, or at the large refectory table in the kitchens, listening to Cook grumble about anything and everything, and sneaking cakes and gingerbread from the cooling racks when her back was turned. I didn’t want to be stuck in the nursery playing, and losing, a silly horse-racing game with Leonard.

‘Darlings.’ Mother sauntered into the nursery with her hands outstretched. ‘I’ve been looking for you both. May I sit and watch you play?’

She squeezed our hands affectionately, kissed our foreheads and then settled herself in the rocking chair, content to watch silently rather than participate. Generally a quiet woman, she didn’t shout and complain like Cook, or jump up and down excitedly, like Daisy. She rarely left the Hall and only occasionally attended events with Father. When they held dinner-parties, which they did from time to time (my father’s position dictating a certain amount of entertaining), she lurked in the background, and I wondered why he never pushed her to be bolder. But he adored his wife, I could see it in his eyes, and indulged her completely.

Daisy entered and placed a small sewing basket on Mother’s knees. I was more interested in her needlework than my game, and watched her snip and pin, realising she was cutting up one of her old day dresses. Pale pink roses were scattered across the fabric, and it made me think of the rose beds that surrounded the knot garden, and how she would spend hours out there, pruning, gathering petals or dead-heading – depending on the season.

Sewing and gardening were Mother’s two great passions. Father had thoughtfully turned the west tower into a space for her to indulge the former of these loves. I often found her up there alone, turning the handle of her sewing machine, when the only sound was the steady rhythm of the needle bobbing in and out of the fabric as she stared through the narrow windows at the gardens below.

‘Why are you breaking up your lovely dress?’ I asked, studying her face. She was physically present but somehow mentally absent, and often reminded me of the white porcelain figurine in the morning room – some classical figure draped in a flowing tunic, with a lost look about her face. She stood alone on the mantel shelf, staring across the room, beautiful but untouched, and never a part of what was going on before her.

‘It’s old and rather worn. I’m using it to make patches.’

The only Patch I knew was the gamekeeper’s dog – an excitable terrier with a black patch of fur across one eye.

‘For the dog?’ I was confused. Animals didn’t wear dresses, unless they were in picture books. Leonard snorted and I glared at him.

‘No, my darling, my happy accident, my baby boy.’ She gave me one of her elusive smiles then. They were rare but they were beautiful, and they lit up her whole face and everything around her. ‘A square of fabric can repair a hole in something. But sometimes,’ she said, giving me a strange look, ‘they don’t hide holes, they hide secrets.’

I didn’t really understand. A secret was whispered. You cupped your hand and put it to the ear of someone else, telling them the thing that wasn’t to be spoken aloud. You couldn’t pin down whispered words and hide them under pieces of cut-up day dress.

‘Remember that, won’t you?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said earnestly. ‘Patches hide secrets.’

She smiled and patted my head, her slender fingers ruffling my dark curls, and then returned to her work. I liked it when she touched me. Father never did. Few people did, if I was honest.

Thrashing me soundly at the game, and far more gracious in victory than I would have been, Leonard took to the window seat and started flicking through a Boy’s Own Annual, so I decided to set out my soldiers along the hearth. The rain continued to run down the panes, the clock ticked steadily on the mantel, and there was a companionship in our togetherness, even though we were all engaged in separate activities.

Rolling around on my back, looking at the magnificent ranks of my red-coated men from a variety of angles, I suddenly realised my mother was staring at me with tears in her eyes.

‘Why are you crying?’ I asked her.

She shook her head and I didn’t think she was going to answer me at first.

‘I’m crying for love – reminded that life can be a complicated blend of love lost, love found and love that endures – and you, my darling boys, will always be a love that endures.’

It sounded like one of the riddles that Father so often quoted. He enjoyed tongue twisters and word games, although they generally made me feel inadequate and stupid. I laughed and pretended to understand when Father supplied the answer to ‘When is a door not a door?’, but it was Cook who kindly explained later that ‘a jar’ could mean slightly open, as well as a glass pot brimming with tasty jam.

‘You sentimental old bean,’ Leonard said, hopping down from his seat and giving our mother a kiss.

There was a knock at the nursery door and Murray entered.

‘The master is home,’ she said, and Mother immediately jumped to her feet – always desperate to be with our father. We were the poor second choice when he wasn’t around. The love that bound my parents together did so to the exclusion of all else, and I was jealous. I knew she wanted to be with us – just not as much as she wanted to be with him. She had been ours for a short afternoon and now we were being abandoned so she could be his once more.

As the door closed behind her, I looked across at my regimented men, arrayed in a neat rectangle – a solitary officer standing at the front, inspecting his troops. I swept my hand over their stupid black, shiny, painted heads and they tumbled like dead men on a battlefield.

‘Come on, Squirt,’ Leonard said, closing his book. ‘Let’s have another game of Newmarket and see if your little pony can make it off the starting line this time.’

I glared at him, noticing his smug smile as he anticipated another easy victory, and hated him then. I’d spent my short lifetime aware that simply through the order of our birth, Leonard would inherit everything about me that was familiar, even the house itself. He was destined to walk in my father’s footsteps and become the owner of Halesham Hall and I would one day be forced to make a life elsewhere. He always had the upper hand, the leading role, whatever way I looked at our situations. Even my tin soldiers had originally been his until he’d tired of them. Was my life destined to be one of cast-offs and condescension? It was easy to understand how Mother got so overwhelmed by her emotions that they spilled out when she least expected them to. I picked up the board, carefully balancing the tiny wooden hurdles, metal playing pieces and ivory dice as I lifted it high into the air.

And then I smashed the whole lot against the nursery wall and burst into tears.

Shadows danced across my bedroom wall as the warm breeze shifted the curtains through the open gap in the window. The clouds of earlier had drifted across to the west but the rain had merely given temporary respite and the heat still hung over us – smothering and heavy. My quilt was too thick to sleep under, and my nightshirt clung to my body as I tossed and turned in restless frustration, more unsettled than usual because I had misplaced my bedtime rabbit toy. There was the sickly sweet smell of summer blooms in the night air, mingled with a less fragrant humid dampness.

One of the exterior doors to the Hall opened and closed, possibly the door from the kitchens, and the accompanying vibrations travelled up the walls. The sound wasn’t loud, but in the still of the night, and with my sash window open, I heard it. I didn’t have a clock in my room but knew it was late because the house was barely breathing. Gone was the heartbeat that pulsated steadily throughout the day: the bustle of Daisy up and down the stairs, the quick tapping footsteps of Mrs Murray prowling the corridors to scold idle staff, and the clanging of pans from Cook, especially when Father changed his dinner plans at the last minute. Instead there was only the whisper of hot shifting air playing with the curtains and the sounds of my own breathing.

I slid from under the sheet and wondered who could be entering, or possibly leaving, the house at this time? Was Daisy sneaking out to see the young man from Halesham that Cook said she was sweet on? Or were we being robbed? Some gypsy traveller making off with our silver? Perhaps the gardening hand Father had dismissed so angrily a few weeks ago was back for revenge? I crept to the window and peered out, but didn’t have a clear view of the kitchen door as it was beneath me. I could hear shuffling, so I scampered next door to the nursery, which jutted further forward as part of the L shape of the house, to investigate.

The boxed Bellingham games had been returned to the ceiling-height cupboard after my temper that afternoon, but the floor was still strewn with my toys. Streams of moonlight gave the palest touch of colour to the objects about the room, and I carefully picked my way through them as I headed towards the window and clambered on to the brick box beneath it. My eyes, already accustomed to the gloom, fell upon a figure wrestling with a large bundle below. Was it one of the servants, doing something they ought not to be? It was certainly a woman, small and slight.

But in my desperation to see better, I tipped forward and fell with a crash towards the windowsill. The figure beneath, alerted by the noise, cast a desperate glance upwards, before scuttling across the courtyard and into the shadows of the trees that edged the gardens.

My heart began pounding so loudly I thought it might burst from my chest, and I gripped hard at the windowsill to calm my panicky breaths. I could not make sense of what I’d just seen.

Because the pale, frightened face that had looked up to the nursery had been that of my mother.

Petrified that the crashing bricks would wake up other members of the household and I’d be discovered out of bed, I froze. There was the noise of a door being flung open from down the corridor, followed by the heavy footsteps of a man. I’d woken Father. I moved from the window and cowered by the wall. Tiny beads of perspiration formed on my brow, but not from the cloying temperatures. Conversely, my blood ran cold.

‘Sylvia?’ A door further down the hallway, possibly Mother’s room, was pushed open, and Father’s voice got louder. ‘Sylvia?’

There was a moment of stillness, followed by a rising shout of ‘No!’. More crashing and banging, then my father’s pounding feet as he flung open every door along the way, until finally the nursery door was pushed inwards with such force it bounced off the wall and he stood in the doorway, a crumpled sheet of cream paper hanging loosely in his hand.

‘Sidney.’ He rarely used my name, so it sounded odd to me. I was always ‘the boy’ or ‘the child’, or occasionally ‘Toad’. ‘Where the hell is your mother?’

I couldn’t stop my eyes darting to the window before constructing my futile lie – the deceptive skills of a child always lacking. ‘I don’t know, sir. I couldn’t sleep and it was cooler in here.’

But my father was no fool. He saw the scattered bricks and strode over to the window, noticing that the curtains were pulled back, before returning to tower over me, his face contorted into an angry scowl. There were barely six inches between my nose and his as he took both my shoulders and pinned me to the wall.

‘What do you know? What did she say to you?’

I was trembling and frightened, not sure how to answer. Instead, I focused on the blob of spittle forming at the corner of his lips, and the sensation of his large fingers digging into my flesh, pulling my nightshirt tight across my neck. That he should only ever be this close to me, that the only physical contact I had with my father was when he was angry, was a sad thing indeed.

‘Tell me, boy. Tell me what you know.’

Mrs Murray appeared in the hall in a long white nightgown, her hair in a plait over her shoulder. She held an oil lamp aloft – an orange circle of light in the black.

‘What on earth is all the commotion about, sir?’

‘She’s gone,’ he shouted, turning his head but not releasing his grip. ‘Damn well absconded like a criminal.’ He waved the sheet of paper. ‘This was left for me on her night stand. I wouldn’t have found it until morning had I not been woken by the child, creeping around out of bed and knocking over the bricks.’

‘Och, I can’t believe the scheming wee minx was up to something so devious. I never for one minute imagined she’d dare do something like this,’ Mrs Murray said, shaking her head.

I had hitherto been relatively indifferent to our housekeeper, a woman whose small, booted feet scuttled over the floorboards, usually hidden by the long, black dresses she wore. Her ability to appear without warning and catch the tardy maid or lazy hall boy shirking their work made her unpopular with the staff. Thin of face and diminutive of stature, she said very little but ran the house incredibly efficiently. Mother liked her well enough and for that reason alone, I’d never felt any ill will towards her. But now, the shock of her words hit me hard.

‘This little toad knows something, I’m sure of it. Why else would he be at the window?’ My father’s grip remained strong and his face hovered uncomfortably close.

‘I doubt it.’ The housekeeper lowered her voice. ‘Don’t forget, she trusts me, sir, and if she was going to tell anyone, it would have been me. She wouldn’t have confided any plans to the bairn.’

A nauseous feeling circled my stomach as I stared open-mouthed at the woman I had previously believed to be a friend of Mother’s, and she had the grace to let her eyes fall from my glare. Even at six, I recognised a duplicity about her words, and wondered if she had been in league with my father the whole time; if any friendship shown to Mother had been a trick, like the games Father was so fond of; if all the time she had been reporting back to him and telling tales.

‘Let the boy go,’ she said. ‘He clearly knows nothing.’ She stepped forward and dared to briefly rest her hand on my father’s arm. His grip loosened and I clawed at my throat to release the fabric that dug so painfully into my neck.

‘Where is she, Murray? Where has she gone?’ I’d never heard my father sound so desperate before. Although given to frequent outbursts of temper, he was fearsome and formidable. Yet for that one instant, he sounded afraid.

‘She’s fooled us all, sir. Appearing so sweet and innocent but secretly planning such a wicked thing. I blame myself. I saw no sign of this.’ She shook her head. ‘No sign at all.’

Father turned to me again, with a fire in his eyes that burned through to my core.

‘What did you see at the window, boy? And don’t you dare lie to me a second time, or there will be consequences.’

I swallowed hard. Father’s consequences were meted out with the aid of his hickory cane – the tiger-eye knob gripped tightly in his hand, and the full force of swift repeated blows.

‘Someone ran from the house. Perhaps it was a thief?’ I offered lamely. ‘Someone stealing our things?’

A low, guttural growl came from my father’s throat and his nostrils flared wide. ‘Get my coat, Murray, and see if you can raise one of the stable hands to saddle me a horse. I’m going after her. If what the boy says is true, she can’t have got far.’

The pair of them left me alone in the nursery as I slid my body down to the floor and finally succumbed to the tears I’d been holding in since I’d been pushed into the wall. Father said they were a sign of weakness and should only ever be seen in women, but there was no one to witness my unhappiness, so I let them tumble down my cheeks.

I cried for many things that night – the loss of my innocence as I battled with the dishonesty of adults, the fear that my father would return to dish out punishment, the bewildering behaviour of my mother, and my guilt for admitting I’d seen a figure cross the courtyard. But in the drama of the night, I was forgotten about. A small boy, sobbing softly for things he didn’t understand, alone in the dark of a nursery. When the tears finally ran dry and my lungs hurt from my strangulated gasps, I curled up on the hard wooden floor and fell asleep.

Sometime later I was woken by noises from below and stumbled out to the corridor, hopeful that Mother was returned and everything would go back to as it was before.

I crept towards the banisters of the main staircase, confident I wouldn’t be spotted in the shadows, and strained to hear the conversation.

‘Did you find her, sir?’ Mrs Murray’s anxious voice drifted up the stairs, as the glow from her lamp advanced.

My father didn’t answer the question directly. ‘That damn garden hand I dismissed weeks ago was behind all this. I was right to be suspicious of her hours in the grounds. The landlord of the Bell said he’s absconded, leaving debts and broken hearts far and wide.’

‘Och, the wickedness of it all. I had no idea.’

‘It’s not your fault. She was more conniving than we gave her credit for. At least we know where she got the courage from. The timid creature could never have pulled something like this off on her own.’

‘What will you do?’

‘There is nothing further to be done. She’ll not be coming back – I can assure you of that.’

His voice was measured and calm. Too calm, I thought, for the situation. I knew he loved Mother as much as I did. Whilst my world was in jagged shards about my feet, he appeared to have accepted she was gone, even though his anger still bubbled below the surface.

‘I do, however, need a brandy, Murray. A large one.’

‘Of course, sir. I’ll see to it immediately.’ And she scurried off towards the main body of the house, a circle of deep orange disappearing with her down the long hallway.

Father moved to the hall table so that he was now directly below me. The glow from the remaining lamp cast him in an eerie pool of light and, as he removed his hat, I could see where his hair wa