‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because I would like to go in.’
‘I’m not sure about that,’ the groundsman muttered. He screwed the cigarette round between his lips. ‘You want to go in, you’d best talk to Lady Pye.’
‘This is a police investigation,’ Fraser cut in. ‘We can go where we like and it might mean trouble for you if you don’t co-operate.’
Brent looked doubtful but he wasn’t prepared to argue. ‘I can take you up there now.’ He nodded his head at the roses. ‘But then I’ve got to get back to these.’
Pünd and Fraser followed Brent back to the stable from where he retrieved a key attached to a large piece of wood, then walked with him down the drive to the Lodge House that stood at the end, two storeys high with sloping roofs, a massive chimney, Georgian windows and a solid front door. This was where Mary Blakiston had lived while she was working as Sir Magnus Pye’s housekeeper. To begin with there had been a husband and two boys but one by one the family had left her until she was finally alone. Perhaps it was the position of the sun or the oaks and elms that surrounded the place but it seemed to be cast in permanent shadow. It was obviously empty. It looked and felt deserted.
Brent opened the front door with the key he had retrieved. ‘Do you want me to come in?’ he asked.
‘It would be helpful if you could remain a little longer,’ Pünd replied. ‘We will not take up too much more of your time.’
The three of them went into a small hallway with two doors, a corridor and a flight of stairs leading up. The wallpaper was old-fashioned, floral. The pictures were images of English birds and owls. There was an antique table, a coat stand and a full-length mirror. Everything looked as if it had been there for a long time.
‘What is it you want to see?’ Brent asked.
‘That, I cannot tell you,’ Pünd replied. ‘Not yet.’
The downstairs rooms had little to offer. The kitchen was basic, the living room dowdy, dominated by an old-fashioned grandfather clock. Fraser remembered how Joy Sanderling had described it, ticking away as she tried to make an impression on Robert’s mother. Everything was very clean, as if Mary’s ghost had just been in. Or perhaps it had never left. Someone had picked up the mail and piled it on the kitchen table but there was very little of it and nothing of interest.
They went upstairs. Mary’s bedroom was at the end of the corridor with a bathroom next door. She had slept in the same bed that she must have once shared with her husband: it was so heavy and cumbersome that it was hard to imagine anyone bringing it here after he had left. The bedroom looked out over the road. In fact none of the main rooms had a view back to Pye Hall as if the house had been purposefully designed so that the servant would never glance in the direction of her employers. Pünd passed two doors that opened into bedrooms. Nobody had slept in them for some time. The beds were stripped, the mattresses already showing signs of mould. A third door, opposite them, had been broken, the lock forced.
‘The police did that,’ Brent explained. He sounded unhappy about it. ‘They wanted to go in but they couldn’t find the key.’
‘Mrs Blakiston kept it locked?’
‘She never went in.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I already told you. I come here lots of times. I fixed the damp and laid the carpets downstairs and she was always calling me in. But not this room. She wouldn’t open the door. I’m not even sure she had the key. That’s why the police broke it down.’
They went inside. The room was disappointing: like the rest of the house, it was utterly stripped of life with a single bed, an empty wardrobe and a window cut into the eaves with a work table below. Pünd went over to it and looked out. There was a view through the trees and he could just glimpse the edge of the lake with the threatened woodland, Dingle Dell, beyond. He noticed a single drawer in the middle of the table and opened it. Inside, Fraser saw a strip of black leather forming a circle with a small disc attached. It was a dog collar. He reached forward and took it out.
‘Bella,’ he read. The name was in capital letters.
‘Bella was the dog,’ Brent said, unnecessarily. Fraser was a little annoyed. He might have guessed as much.
‘Whose dog?’ Pünd asked.
‘The younger kid. The one who died. He had a dog but it didn’t last long.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘It ran off. They lost it.’
Fraser put the collar back. It was so small – it must have belonged to a mere puppy. There was something inexpressibly sad about it, sitting in the empty drawer. ‘So this was Tom’s room,’ Fraser muttered.
‘It would seem possible, yes.’
‘I suppose it would explain why she locked the door. The poor woman couldn’t bear to come in here. I wonder why she didn’t move.’
‘She may not have had a choice.’
Both of them were speaking in low voices, as if they were afraid of disturbing ancient memories. Meanwhile, Brent was shuffling around, anxious to be on his way. But Pünd took his time leaving the house. Fraser knew that he was not so much searching for clues as sensing the atmosphere – he had often heard him talk about the memory of crime, the supernatural echoes left behind by sadness and violent death. There was even a chapter in that book of his. ‘Information and Intuition’ or something like that.
Only when they were outside did he speak. ‘Chubb will have removed anything of interest. I am keen to know what he found.’ He glanced at Brent who was already shuffling into the distance, making his way back towards the manor house. ‘And that one, also, he told us a great deal.’ He looked around him, at the trees pressing in. ‘I would not wish to live here,’ he said. ‘There is no view.’
‘It is rather oppressive,’ Fraser agreed.
‘We must find out from Mr Whitehead how much money he paid to Brent and for what reason. Also, we must speak again with the Reverend Osborne. He must have had a reason to come here on the night of the murder. And then there is the question of his wife …’
‘He said that Mrs Osborne was afraid.’
‘Yes. Afraid of what, I wonder.’ He took a last look back. ‘There is something about the atmosphere of this house, James. It tells me that there is a great deal to fear.’
5
Raymond Chubb did not like murder. He had become a policeman because he believed in order and he considered the county of Somerset, with its neat villages, hedgerows and ancient fields to be one of the most ordered and civilised parts of the country – if not the world. Murder changed everything. It broke the gentle rhythm of life. It turned neighbour against neighbour. Suddenly nobody was to be trusted and doors, which were usually left open at night, were locked. Murder was an act of vandalism, a brick thrown at a picture window and somehow it was his job to put together the pieces.