Tripletree

by Derek Wilson

Genres: Horror; Mystery

Synopsis

On a sultry summer night in the Cotswolds, Nathaniel and Katherine Gye are guests at a Civil War fancy-dress party. The theme of the occasion is apt because Tripletree, the Jacobean manor house where the event is being held, is steeped in history and enjoys a colourful past. But at the end of a glittering evening tragedy strikes when the body of a woman is dragged from the lake. As he tries to unravel the truth about the woman's death, Nathaniel Gye, paranormal investigator, finds himself drawn back to the 17th century and the time when the hill above Tripletree manor was the place where the gallows once stood...

Release date: November 30, 2012

Publisher: Sphere

Print pages: 265

Sample

The man was making a scene. The tall, solidly built, middle-aged man with the air of one unaccustomed to being thwarted stood in the arched entrance to Beaufort College, waving his arms and shouting.

‘I’m not interested in your pettifogging rules! And I’m not one of your undergraduates to be bullied. Just give me the address!’

But the visitor had chosen the wrong adversary. George Bramley, senior porter, long accustomed to dealing with the wiles and tantrums of generations of Cambridge gentlemen and – latterly – ladies, stood his ground beside the notice which announced that the college was closed to sightseers. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ He was the personification of polite officialdom. ‘Rules are rules. Private addresses of senior members are just that – private. We aren’t allowed to issue them to strangers.’

‘Strangers!’ The word acted like petrol on the fire of the caller’s anger. ‘Do I look like a debt collector or some other kind of working-class oik?’

Indeed he did not. Every inch of the man, from his MCC tie to his Lobb’s handmade shoes, announced that here was someone who could afford – and would afford – only the best. ‘The Vice Chancellor is a personal friend and if you don’t stop your insolent obstruction I’ll see that he hears about it.’

‘That’s your privilege, sir.’

The two protagonists glared at each other. Irresistible force and immovable object.

‘Like I said, sir, if you care to leave your name and a contact number I’ll see that Dr Gye gets it as soon as he comes into college.’ Bramley offered an imperturbable smile.

‘And when might that be?’ The visitor grudgingly stood aside for a research student who wheeled her bicycle out on to Trumpington Street.

‘He usually comes in two or three times a week during the long vac to collect his mail. More often if he has meetings.’

Suddenly the other man changed his approach. One hand went to an inside pocket of his immaculately cut jacket and emerged holding a slim wallet. ‘Look, my business with Dr Gye is extremely urgent. I should be uncommonly grateful …’ He opened the billfold and fingered a sheaf of banknotes.

The porter’s eyes narrowed and his nose wrinkled as though a dead cat had been wafted beneath it. He turned abruptly towards the entrance to his lodge. ‘Excuse me, sir, there goes my phone.’ He disappeared within, leaving the caller straining his ears to detect the non-existent ringing of a telephone bell.

The visitor took a step forward as if to follow the college official into his sanctum, thought better of it and was just turning back towards the street when Bramley’s head appeared round the door frame. ‘And, if I were you, sir, I’d move that vehicle.’ He nodded towards the gleaming blue BMW convertible parked directly in front of the college gateway. ‘The traffic wardens round here tend to be clamp happy.’

Had Nathaniel Gye, lecturer in Paranormal Psychology at the University of Cambridge, been anywhere else in the city or had he arrived seconds later, the chain reaction of violence, misery and death of which he was the catalyst would not have happened. Sheldon Myles QC would have slipped behind the wheel of his elegant motor car and driven angrily back to London to seek some other solution to his problem. George Bramley would have regaled the junior porters with the story of how he had sent the ‘toffee-nosed bastard off with a flea in his ear’. Dr Gye would have arrived, collected his messages and spent half an hour in his room sending off emails before walking to the University Library to collect some books. A criminal would have escaped justice and three people would still be alive.

But Nathaniel Gye was not elsewhere at the crucial moment. He emerged from Pembroke Street, cleaving a path through an ill-shepherded flock of Spanish tourists, dodged nimbly in front of an elderly cyclist, and with long, bouncing strides traced a diagonal path across the road towards Beaufort’s fifteenth-century gate tower – the only portion of the original structure to survive a modernizing patron in the reign of Good King Charles.

The barrister had turned away from the college and was in the process of lowering himself into the driving seat of the BMW when he saw the tall figure in check shirt and shorts. ‘Gye! So there you are,’ he bellowed, in a tone that suggested that Nathaniel had been deliberately hiding from him.

‘Why, it’s Sheldon Myles, isn’t it? What brings you to our traffic-choked town?’ Gye held out a hand and had it perfunctorily shaken.

‘Looking for you – a task not made easier by your bloody-minded college lackey.’ Myles nodded towards the lodge.

Gye’s silence was eloquent. He surveyed the other man with a slightly raised eyebrow, and expertly read the signs. He took in the lightweight Savile Row suit and the Jermyn Street shirt. They spoke of tradition, ample means, self-assurance, a secure establishment figure. Myles’s face sent different signals. The dark eyes flickered, unable to hold a steady gaze. Between them lines furrowed into a deep V. This, Gye thought, is a worried man – a very worried man.

Discomfited by the wordless scrutiny, the barrister mumbled a half-apology. ‘Sorry, Gye, but officiousness riles me. I’ve got enough on my plate right now without … Look, Gye, what it is … I want to hire your services.’

‘Hire?’ Nathaniel was puzzled.

Myles hurried on. ‘Not for myself, you understand.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Still functioning OK in the top storey, thank God. No, it’s my wife, June. She’s terribly overwrought. That awful business last month …’ He stumbled for words. Embarrassing, Gye thought, for one of the country’s most eloquent courtroom performers. ‘She’s getting some strange ideas … Needs sorting out.’

Gye nodded with sudden understanding. ‘Oh. I see. You’re looking for an analyst. I’m afraid I’m not your man. I’m a psychologist; a theoretician. I have no licence to practise. But I can put you on to someone first rate. He’s –’

‘No!’ Myles shouted the word and a young woman manoeuvring a pushchair round them on the narrow pavement looked at him in alarm. ‘No, it’ll have to be you. June trusts you –’

‘Your wife hardly knows me.’

The barrister ignored the interruption. ‘And you can talk some sense into her. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise you. You can name your fee.’

‘That’s beside the point.’ Nathaniel glanced along the road in the direction of King’s Parade. Some fifty yards away a figure in black and yellow was moving purposefully through the crowds of shoppers and tourists. ‘Look, you’d better move this car if you don’t want a ticket. Give me a lift as far as the University Library and you can tell me the problem. But I warn you, I can’t do what you ask. I’m not qualified and, frankly, I don’t have the time.’

Moments later, Gye was sinking into the soft cream leather upholstery as the BMW eased out into the traffic.

Once the need for eye contact was removed, Myles found it easier to talk coherently. The star performer of the Old Bailey who imposed his will on juries was not accustomed to begging favours. ‘There are two reasons why you must not turn me down,’ he explained. ‘You were there. And if you don’t get June to see straight, she’ll go to the police and tell them she murdered that bloody woman.’

The journey started badly and went downhill from there. First there was the weather. The August hot spell, instead of dissipating itself in electrical storms, went gaspingly on. People with short memories said it was unprecedented and blamed global warming. Seaside resorts had their best season for a decade. Suburban householders ignored the hosepipe ban and rigged garden showers for their fractious kids. In the Cambridgeshire commuter village of Great Maddisham the leaves of the plane trees ringing the green hung limp and dust-covered as the Gyes’ five-year-old Mercedes passed them at a few minutes past four.

Then there was the timing. Kathryn Gye had got back from New York less than twenty-four hours before and was jet-lagged. She did not surface till noon and then moved sluggishly. But when Nathaniel suggested cancelling the trip and spending a quiet weekend at home with their two sons she would not hear of it. It was important to be at the Myleses’ party. Lots of the ‘right’ people would be there and, besides that, she had arranged to do a feature on the Myleses and their home. By the time their sons, Edmund and Jeremy, had been delivered to a friend’s house for their sleepover the sun was well past its zenith and Kathryn showed no sign of being ready.

Nat paced the ground floor of their open-plan, architect-designed house, his own case packed and standing by the front door. This was the Friday of the bank holiday weekend, he repeated. Had Kathryn totally failed to grasp the significance of that? The roads would be jam-packed. His wife, her long, dark hair hanging down loose over her white bathrobe, wandered barefoot from the kitchen area with a bowl of muesli in one hand and a spoon in the other. She shrugged. That was no problem; they would take a nook-and-cranny route. Nat groaned. In the five years that they had been living in England his Pittsburgh-born wife had not lost her fascination with the bucolic and picturesque. A ‘nook-and-cranny’ route meant a cross-country journey that was more byways than highways.

‘That’ll take us hours,’ he protested. ‘You’re the one who’s dead set on going to this pretentious, fancy dress affair. I assume you’d like us to get there before it’s half over.’ He flung his scrawny six foot one into an armchair. ‘Or are we planning to make the grand entrance – “TV Celebrity Psychologist and International Journalist”? You know I hate that sort of thing.’

Kathryn leaned over and planted a kiss on top of his head. ‘Do you know you’re getting a bald patch? I’ve looked at the map. It’s only a couple of hours to the Cotswolds.’ She drifted back to the kitchen end and put her bowl in the dishwasher. ‘I can be ready in a twink.’ She crossed to the open staircase that swirled round one corner of the living space. ‘Anyway, we’ll need a bit of time. There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

That ‘something’ was the third factor in Nat’s ruined day. As they meandered through the unprepossessing brick villages of Bedfordshire, Kathryn announced in her usual direct way, ‘Greg offered me the New York office.’

Nat braked sharply as he came round a bend and found himself suddenly behind a tractor and trailer. ‘Why?’ It was all he could think of to say.

‘Presumably because the board think I’m the best person for the job.’

‘You’ve only been running the London end for a couple of years.’

Kathryn Gye was the British editor of an upmarket transatlantic magazine. Panache, as its masthead brazenly announced, was written ‘for people there or getting there’. Founded in the Reagan-Thatcher era, it teetered on the fence between celebration of upper-crust life and gentle satire and had immediately caught the mood of yuppies, fat cats and other worshippers at the shrine of Mammon. By the time the policy of sanctified greed had plunged the Western world into recession the magazine had become something of a cult publication with a steadily growing circulation. Kathryn’s rapid rise to the top London job had meant that she could work partly from the Mayfair office and partly from home, with occasional flits across the ocean to confer with her American superiors. It fitted in well with Nat’s university activities and their lives had fallen into a workable routine.

‘It seems I’ve impressed them.’

Nat glared at the wisps of straw that were blowing out of the trailer on to the car windscreen. ‘How long has he given you to think it over?’ he asked.

Kathryn stared out of the side window at the untidy, dusty farmyard into which the tractor was now turning. She took a deep breath. ‘I have thought it over, Nat, and given him my answer.’

‘The hell you have!’ Nat shouted, turning to glare at his wife. ‘Don’t I count for anything in the decision-making process?’

She stared back with frank, unblinking green eyes. ‘I knew this was going to be difficult. Nat, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Just hear me out before you press the panic button. It won’t mean moving to the States – at least, not immediately.’

‘Well now, that’s comforting!’

‘Nat, please! Greg got them to agree a fantastic package. We get a Manhattan apartment and two free flights a month to London. And the salary is positively indecent.’

‘We’re not exactly living in penury now.’

‘Sure, but this means realizing all those dreams we’ve always had. We’ll be able to do anything we want to do.’

‘Except, apparently, live together. But that, I suppose, is a mere bagatelle.’

There was a sharp blast on a car horn. Nat looked in the driving mirror and saw that he was blocking the narrow lane. He transferred his foot to the accelerator and threw the Mercedes into the sinuous bends ahead at a speed that was rather less than safe.

‘What about the boys? Have you thought how they’d feel having a mother living three and a half thousand miles away?’

‘It’ll be very exciting for them to have two very different homes.’

‘Nonsense! Children have to have stability. They want their parents to be there for them when they need them, not when it suits their business convenience to be available.’

Kathryn held her breath as the Mercedes sped past an oncoming milk tanker with inches to spare. ‘I guess you’d prefer them to be orphans!’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘The way you’re driving you’re going to get us both killed.’

‘If you’d been ready in time there’d be no need to hurry,’ Nat retorted but he eased his foot off the accelerator. He glanced sideways and saw that, though Kathryn’s jaw was thrust defiantly forward, her eyes were moist.

After a long silence she said, ‘Of course I care about Ed and Jerry – passionately. This is a once in a lifetime chance to give them everything they could possibly want. Think of the great holidays we can have together, the places all over the world we can take them to see.’

‘Everything they could possibly want,’ Nat echoed. ‘When I was tucking Jerry in the other night he asked me for two things for his birthday. Shall I tell you what they were?’

‘Sure.’

‘A puppy and a baby sister. On mature reflection he said he realized that asking for both might be pushing his luck, but could we please get him one or the other? Looks as though it’s going to have to be the pup.’

Kathryn hammered her fists on the facia. ‘Oh, you … That is emotional blackmail!’

‘T-junction,’ Nat announced, slowing the car down. ‘Which way?’

Kathryn grabbed up the Ordnance Survey map and peered at it blankly. Angrily she brushed away a tear that fell on to the paper. ‘Oh, how the hell should I know! Left!’

After another long pause Nat tried a different approach. ‘Had it occurred to you that this is a pre-emptive strike on Greg’s part?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Everyone in the journalistic world knows what you’ve done for Panache. It’s only a matter of time before the headhunters start closing in. Greg’s simply getting his bid in first.’

She looked thoughtful. ‘No, that’s … Anyway, I couldn’t leave …’

‘Couldn’t leave the magazine but you could leave your family. That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?’

Kathryn flared up at that. ‘Are you accusing me of being selfish?’

Nat did not answer.

‘Things aren’t tidily black and white. I suppose you don’t think there’s anything selfish in your expecting me to turn my back on something which I’ll find fulfilling so that I can go on being a decorative wife in your dreary university social scene.’

‘I’d no idea you found our life so uncongenial. I’m sorry.’

‘Nat, I didn’t mean … Oh hell!’ She slumped in her seat and stared unseeing out of the side window.

Two minutes later Nat said, ‘We’ve been travelling due east for about five miles. That can’t be right and it’s now 6.16. We’ve about an hour and a half to find the hotel, change into our absurd costumes and get to Coln St Ippolyts. Perhaps we ought to concentrate for the time being on working that little miracle.’ He pulled the car into the side and together he and Kathryn consulted the map. ‘We’ll have to cut through here to the M40,’ he said. ‘We’ve no choice.’

That was how they came to join the procession of impatient families in overpacked cars and caravans, snailing away from the torrid streets of the city and the suburbs, enduring the miseries of the motorway to spend a few hours in some rural Shangri-La, before embarking on a bad-tempered return journey. Inevitably, a couple of the holiday-bound vehicles had shunted into each other and the whole convoy came to a halt between the Lewknor and Wheatley interchanges. By the time the Gyes had escaped the melee, reached Burford, turned off its steep main street to head into the Windrush valley and located Parsifal Country House Hotel they were already late.

Twenty sweating minutes later they were back in the car. Nat was now dressed in the sombre black and white of a Bible-loving Puritan while his wife had opted for something more flamboyant. Nat looked at the stunning woman beside him, radiant in a revealing gown of pale blue satin that made her dark colouring appear even more dramatic. He reflected that the character he was representing would have branded Kathryn as a shameless hussy. He also realized that he could never face the thought of losing her. He thrust the Mercedes forward in a spurt of gravel.

Nat knew little about the elaborate housewarming for which they were headed or the couple who were hosting it. Sheldon and Juniper Myles were only acquaintances of Kathryn’s. Both of them were London barristers who had, apparently, amassed a fortune between them, invested most of it in rescuing a Jacobean manor house and were now intent on displaying their impressive home to the haut monde. According to Kathryn it was a celebrity-feste, a bid to make an impact on society by bringing together as many as possible of the great and the good all togged up as Cavaliers and Roundheads.

There was no risk of any of the Myleses’ guests getting lost; signposts to Coln St Ippolyts Manor were placed at every junction and fork, even the most minor, and when Nat swung the Mercedes round the last bend in the road he was confronted by tall iron gates flanked by blazing torcheres. A man in a full-bottomed wig and a long coat gushing lace at neck and cuffs stepped forward, carrying a very twentieth-century ultraviolet scanner. This he passed over the invitation Nat handed to him. For good measure he checked the Gyes’ names on a list before waving them on with the assurance that if they drove straight up to the house a colleague would take care of their car.

‘Rather unnecessary security,’ Nat commented as he put the preselector lever in ‘drive’. ‘There can’t be many gatecrashers prepared to get togged up in all this gear just to swill Sheldon Myles’s best Krug.’

Kathryn grimaced at her image in the vanity mirror on the back of the sun visor. ‘It’s not that kind of uninvited guest they’re worried about. Sheldon’s made quite a few enemies in his years at the bar.’

‘I thought he specialized in commercial law. Surely disappointed takeover rivals don’t hire assassins to get rid of the opposition’s legal brains.’

‘You’d be surprised what men will do when megabucks are at stake. Anyway, Shelley only switched to the commercial sector a few years ago. Before that he was a leading criminal prosecutor.’

‘You’ve done your homework thoroughly, as usual.’

‘Not difficult. He was involved in quite a few high profile cases. Remember the Forbes brothers?’

‘No, I don’t think …’

‘You must do. They went down for slaughtering their aged parents in order to lay their hands on the family fortune.’

Nat nodded. ‘Yes, of course. Weren’t they the ones who got out on appeal last year?’

‘That’s right. The leading prosecution witness was discredited.’

‘And it was Myles who headed up the Crown case?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Kathryn muttered through pursed lips as she pouted to herself in the mirror.

‘I suppose if I’d spent several years in the Scrubs for a crime I didn’t commit I might think seriously about settling old scores. Well, here we are. Let battle commence.’

They had reached the end of a straight drive along which more flaming torches were set. Coln Manor stood before them, making the most of its modest splendour. The south front which faced them was symmetrical and of three storeys, beneath an undulation of Dutch gables. The entire facade was pierced by ranks of large mullioned windows, every one of which was ablaze with inner light. Low evening sunlight gilded the stonework. The effect was breathtaking.

Nat eased the Mercedes to a halt before a shallow flight of wide steps and immediately two period-costumed flunkeys darted forward to open the doors. Nat entrusted the vehicle to one of them and received a numbered disc in return. Then, Kathryn hooked her arm through his and for a moment they stood staring up at the Jacobean mansion and listening to the strains of lute and viol music coming from within.

Kathryn suddenly shivered. ‘I’m cold! Quick, let’s go in.’

Nat looked at her in mild surprise. The stones were still pulsing with the heat of the day and the motionless air was decidedly balmy. ‘This way, then, milady,’ he said and sedately they mounted the steps to the open front door.

Another liveried servant was on hand to guide them to the focal point of the festivities although they needed no help in finding their way. As they walked down a narrow screens passage the sounds of music, laughter and conversation were almost deafening. A turn to the right through an arched doorway admitted them to the Great Hall where dinner was in full swing.

‘Hollywood meets Sir Walter Scott,’ Nat muttered, taking in the lively scene at a glance. The room was not large as such impressive chambers went but it comfortably accommodated three long tables studded with flickering candles leading from the screens to the raised dais at the far end. These tables were filled with guests all obediently dressed in the garb of three and a half centuries before and some of them visibly sweating. Despite the large space beneath the ornately plastered ceiling and the open windows which pierced the upper part of the wainscotted walls, the atmosphere was stifling. The spaces between the windows were decorated with geometrical arrangements of shields, swords and pikes obviously inspired by displays in the Tower armouries or some medieval edifice where their context lent them more credibility. Straight ahead, however, the panelling behind and above the high table bore a row of painted portraits, stiff, flat copies of elegant originals by Mytens and Lely. Nat’s gaze moved down to the top table. Seated centrally behind it were reincarnations of C. . .