Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Heaven’s Gate by Judith Cutler

In July of 2003, the first of Judith Cutler’s novels to be published in the U.S., Power on Her Own, was released by St. Martin’s Press, followed this year by Staying Power. A Canterbury native, Ms. Cutler has, to date, penned six books in the series to which those novels belong, and she has another fifteen-book series in print through Hodder & Stoughton in the U.K., all garnering excellent reviews.

“All this building work at the Big House that Mrs. Pearce mentioned the other day, extensions and that,” Tom Withers, the landlord of the Straight Furrow, began, swabbing an imaginary spot on the bar, polished to a deep glow by generation upon generation of loving hands.

“With all respect to Mrs. Pearce,” George Hardy interrupted him, clearing his throat and taking a sip of ale, “I’ll believe it when I see it. Mr. Winspeare’s already splashed out more money than’s good for him on that great car of his.”

“True. But that might mean he’s got a lot to splash.”

“Not to mention his house parties with that French champagne.” George shook his head. “That type — money goes faster through their fingers than water.”

“Mrs. Pearce seemed pretty sure. It should do you a bit of good, George.”

George Hardy picked up the note of envy in his old friend’s voice. He couldn’t blame him. No one here in the village had any money to spare, and it was hard not to begrudge another man’s change of fortunes. No, in this home fit for heroes, no one could afford more than half a pint, nursed carefully all evening. Look at the men, hogging the feeble fire as they hunched over their dominoes and cribbage boards. Not that they were bad fellows. No, if the rebuilding came his way, he’d be proud to take a good half-dozen of them and set them to work. Not Frank, of course. What little the gas had left him for lungs wouldn’t cope with heaving bricks or mixing cement. And though he’d tried hard, Frank’d never made much of a fist of reading and writing. Poor devil, the most he’d get out of this new prosperity would be someone else standing rounds for everyone, like they used to do when the Old Squire had turned up trumps after a good win on those horses of his. Not that they’d come home very often. “Poor Sir Hubert,” he sighed aloud.

Tom snorted into his half. “Don’t you start feeling sorry for one of the gentry. Sir Hubert could have housed half the parish backstairs in that great pile of his, and never been troubled by bumping into one of us.”

“True. But to lose both your sons at the Front — you have to feel sorry for any man.”

“Happened to a lot, rich and poor.” There was no doubt with whom Tom’s sympathies lay.

“And then to lose that nevvy of his: The lad leads a charmed life all through the war and then he goes down with the influenza, just when Sir Hubert thought he was training him up nicely to take over the estate.”

“You’re right,” Tom conceded. “The old man seemed to give up then, didn’t he? He’d still ride round the village on that great bay of his, expecting the lads to tug their forelocks and the young maids to curtsey — but you could see his heart wasn’t in it.”

The two men sipped, but not deeply, shaking their heads sadly.

“Come on, George,” Tom said at last. “You’ll be all right. This new squire’ll turn things round. You’ll see if he won’t. I know he’s not really one of the Family, but he’s got money, no doubt of that, and you can’t deny we could do with a bit of it round here. It’s not just building work, and the lads you’ll need to take on. It’s all the below-stairs staff — they’ll need more than just Mr. Cobbold and Mrs. Pearce to run things — and decorators and gardeners and even a groundsman for the cricket pitch. You’ll soon be up to your old magic with the ball, George.”

“I’ll be too old,” George said doubtfully. “Like I was too old to fight for king and country.”

“You — too old to play cricket? No, never. It’ll be like old times again.” There was no jealousy in his voice now, just honest hope.

George nodded. He dug in his pocket and checked his few coins. Yes, there were just enough for another half all round. They raised their glasses. “To the new squire!”

As soon as he got home, George covered the big kitchen table with paper and his ruler and pencils, tiny in his hams of hands. For all Tom Withers had thought the Big House too much for one family, George knew that it wouldn’t be big enough for a man bent on entertaining his rich friends, as rumour said Mr. Winspeare meant to do. As Tom had said, Mr. Winspeare wasn’t one of the Family at all, just a rich nobody who’d made a mint out of the war and bought up the ailing estate. There’d always be some to cavil, wouldn’t there? But George wished the rumours weren’t quite so specific. He didn’t like the thought of working for a man who’d sent troops out to the trenches with cardboard, not leather, for the soles of their boots. The poor devils had been blown to pieces quick enough — it would have been better if they’d met their Maker with warm, dry feet.

He picked up his pencil again. He must concentrate. It wasn’t just for himself he was doing this, but for all the families in the village that would benefit. It’d be a real challenge, trying to add wings to the Georgian house that had never been much more than a family home. But he’d seen pictures of other houses transformed into real grand affairs without losing the original proportions. Symmetry, that was the answer. Decent, simple symmetry.

Perhaps it was too ambitious to start planning the house extension. Perhaps he should limit himself to something less grand but just as necessary. Mr. Winspeare would want a gatehouse, wouldn’t he? A man with a huge estate like that would need a gatehouse. Nothing grand: just a neat cottage for the gatekeeper with a pair of elegant pillars to support — yes — wrought-iron gates. He was sure he’d seen pictures of just the thing in the books of architectural designs he’d picked up cheap at the auction over Marsh Burton way. When the family over there was selling up their old library to pay death duties, that was it.

But he mustn’t reach the books down now. The grandfather clock in the parlour was inexorably striking eleven, and that was his bedtime. None of this turning day and night on their head for him. In London, they might dance the night away and go to bed at dawn. But he knew that there was a time for rising and a time for sleeping, and if he was to be up and about by six, like his father before him, there was no getting fanciful ideas to set his head racing now.

None of his ideas were fanciful. George kept a grip on his imagination and saw to that. They were honest, decent plans, costed out brick by brick, beam by beam. He’d be able to tell Mr. Winspeare to the nearest florin how much his outlay would be — materials and men alike. So many days for skilled men here; so many hours for labourers there. It took him a matter of weeks — but then, he had time to spare. No one in the village had any money to spend on any but the most essential maintenance. Mrs. Fellows’s roof had succumbed yet again; the vicarage chimney would blow down if he didn’t tackle it now. But that was work he could do on his own, mostly. It didn’t put food into other mouths. With quiet determination he rolled up the wide sheets of paper and tied them neatly. Any day now he’d present them to Mr. Winspeare. As soon as he came back to the village.

In due course, Mr. Winspeare came, sleek and polished like his car. But he didn’t come alone. And he didn’t come quietly. He swept in, he and his friends, in a veritable procession. If the lads didn’t doff their caps or the girls drop their curtseys, it was because they didn’t have time, and in any case were too busy choking on the swirling dust and acrid exhaust fumes. Mr. Winspeare believed in big cars and he believed in driving them fast. George found one of Mrs. Fellows’s chickens fluttering round in a demented circle, a wing drooping and a leg clearly broken. As gently but as firmly as he could, he twisted its neck. There. He knew Mrs. Fellows wouldn’t want to eat it; it had been a family friend too long. But in these lean times, she’d have to swallow sentiment with her dinner.

Mr. Cobbold was red to the ears with shame and embarrassment, but he stood his ground on the steps of the Big House and repeated what he’d said. That was what butlers did, no matter how old and wise they were, or how young and foolish their masters: They carried out orders. “I’m sorry, George, but that’s what the new master says. He’s too busy. He’s seeing to his guests, George, that’s what.”

“But I’ve got to see him. He told me to come today — why, you brought the message yourself, Reg Cobbold.”

The old man shook his head sadly. “I know I did. But now he’s busy.”

“What about his land agent? His man of business?”

“A London man, George, who comes down as and when. Not one of us. Mr. Winspeare says you can leave your card and he’ll pass it on.”

“Card! What’s a man like me doing with a card?” George mimed a spit.

“It’s all he would say, George. And if you ask me, you want to get on to it quick.”

“Why don’t you give me the card of this man of his — and I’ll go straight up and talk to him.”

Reg Cobbold shook his head. “You should know better than to ask, George, and that’s a fact. Off you go, now — unless you’ve a mind to call round to the servants’ hall and take tea with Mrs. Pearce?”

George gave him an old-fashioned look. He’d always been sweet on Jemima Pearce, back in the old days when she was Jemima Ford, and now she was a widow he admitted that he might still be. But if he expected to find her usual serene self, face becomingly flushed by the heat from the range, he was mistaken. Her hair — now more silver than gold — was flying from its ugly cap, and if she’d been anyone else he’d have thought her near to hysterics. And who could blame her, surrounded as she was by stacks of hampers as high as his shoulder, attended by three drooping young serving men.

“I thought I was the one who needed a cup of tea,” George said quietly. “Seems to me it’s you. Why don’t I make it and you take a tray through to your sitting room?”

“But George—”

“You do as I say, woman,” he said gently. “I’ve boiled a kettle just the odd once or twice.” And cooked all his own meals. He wouldn’t say that he’d pined for Jemima — but he would admit he’d never seen anyone as comely or with such ways with a raised pie.

“Now why don’t you tell me what’s going on here?” he began, setting the china pot at her elbow and taking a respectful seat on a high-backed chair the opposite side of the fire.

“What isn’t, George Hardy, what isn’t? They come up here in their big cars and expect aired bedrooms and lashings of hot water — and you know as well as I that the Old Squire never did have the system fixed and that every drop of hot water has to be carried up in kettles. And the Old Squire’s bed linen would disgrace a pauper. I offered to get girls in from the village — they’re used to hard work and now the soldiers have come back and taken their jobs they’ve time on their hands and more. Then I changed my mind.”

“He wouldn’t have them?”

She shook her head. More strands of hair came adrift, and to his amazement she stripped off the cap and slung it onto the floor. “It’s me. I wouldn’t want decent girls under the same roof as these — well, I know they call themselves flappers, but I like to call a spade a spade. They’re doxies!”

“Doxies?”

“You can tell me I’m old-fashioned, George Hardy, and I know the war’s changed everything. But there’s nothing wrong with decency. You tell me there is!”

George shook his head in silence.

“It’s all picnics! Well, you saw the hampers. Even in the house. No decent meals at all. Plenty of drink, mind you. So in my kitchen I’ve got those — those creatures, boys you can hardly tell from girls with their mincing ways and rouge and lipstick. Above stairs is worse! There it’s girls you can hardly tell from boys, with their shingled hair and cigarettes in holders this long and no... and no—”

He waited.

“And no underwear!” she concluded, as if infected by their rashness. “And it’s worse than cigarettes, George. Things that they smell and potions they take. And they drink — it’s cocktails here, cocktails there. I don’t suppose there’s a minute of the day when the whole lot are sober. They have to double up in the bedrooms, of course. But it’s always been young men sharing, pretending they don’t mind camp beds. Now when you take the morning tea you don’t know who’s going to be with — well, you don’t need to know the details.”

“You’ve got to remember the lads are back from soldiering, Jemima. They’re bound to have a few high spirits—”

She was so worked up she ignored his use of her name. “Soldiers! That lot, soldiers! No, they were all in ‘Manufacturing’ — manufacturing money for their own pockets, I have no doubt. Well, look at their cars. Rolls-Royces. Bentleys. Mr. Cobbold counted eighteen in the stable yard this morning. And they play that jazz music on their gramophones night and day. George, it’s not decent, the lives they lead. Oh, why did they ever sell him the place, when it could have been a hospital?”

“A hospital?” There’d been a rumour in the village but nothing as definite as this.

“Yes. For those poor lads with faces — you know — hurt by shells and such like. But now we’ve got him instead.”

When he got the contract for all the changes, he’d take her away from all this. But all he could do now was reach and press her hand briefly. Before she could fire up, he stood, gathering his roll of plans and telling her what he’d hoped. As he talked, she let him spread the plans on the table, commenting occasionally, “Now, you could get Harry Raven to do that,” or, “Even Frank might manage that.” They walked slowly to the yard together. Suddenly she gripped his arm. “That’s him! That’s Mr. Winspeare. What’s he doing here, in the servants’ quarters?”

Mr. Winspeare was as happy to ignore the conventions as his guests, it seemed. In his shirtsleeves and a cerise waistcoat, he was deep in discussion with his chauffeur, an outsider who rarely appeared in the village without the protection of his vehicle and whose uniform brought back uncomfortable memories to some of the men.

“Go on — now’s your chance!” Jemima whispered. “Go and talk to him.” She pushed him so hard he almost staggered.

“Mr. Winspeare! Mr. Winspeare!”

At last Winspeare turned. And, spluttering an explanation, George could see reflected in his cold clear eyes exactly what Winspeare saw — an old buffoon of a man, red-faced with embarrassment and passion, scattering badly rolled tubes of paper.

“Plans? Well, you can leave them if you like, old fellow. I’ll see what my chappie has to say.” He seized them so roughly that he crumpled them, and chucked them into the back of the car.

Months passed. The village ignored the Big House, as far as it was able, and the Big House certainly ignored the village, apart from one or two young women, one of whom shortly implored her intended to marry her out of hand, the other disappearing to London, but not before the results of her activities had started to show. Less frequently, sometimes not for weeks at a time, guests surged up the still-ungated drive, hampers of food and drink jostling for space. Perhaps Winspeare’s sins would have been easier to forgive if he’d shopped locally, but no, names like Fortnum and Mason and Harrods bedecked all the provisions. Jemima Pearce’s attempts to bring the house to order were as vain as the villagers’ hopes that the cricket field might be reinstated.

Then, one day, a miracle seemed to be in progress. Men with measuring tapes were seen down by the drive. George went to look himself. Yes, a team of navvies — Irish to a man, by the sound of them — was digging deep. They were ready to build foundations. He didn’t know whether to weep with delight that the hours and days of planning and drawing had not been fruitless, or to knock the head off the man who’d used his ideas without paying for them and without using his men.

Jemima counselled his previous approach. “It paid off last time, didn’t it? You just want to catch him on his own and have a quiet word. Quiet, mind, George. I mean, Mr. Hardy.”

George was walking home after Evensong one Sunday, trying desperately how he could save the church tower without bankrupting either himself or the church. There was Mr. Winspeare, flash in boater and white flannels, standing by his parked car, staring into the footings of the new gateposts. They were much bigger than those on his drawings — George could see that, even though mist was beginning to swirl up the valley.

“Your drawings?” Winspeare looked completely blank. “Oh, I talked to some London wallah. Your design was...” He scuffed at a stone.

“Plain, like. Very plain. In keeping with the house, sir.”

“Plain? Oh, old hat, old boy. These days you’ve got Art Nouveau or Arts and Crafts and all sorts of things to choose from. I fancy something a bit classier, myself. No, you oicks from the sticks wouldn’t understand.”

“I could have built whatever you wanted, sir.”

“Something like this?”

“Something like what?”

Winspeare raised his eyes heavenwards, then managed a smile that might in anyone else have been apologetic. “Of course, you haven’t seen the drawings, have you? Well, my man, present yourself sometime tomorrow, and if I have a moment, I might show them to you — then you can see the difference between provincial sketches and real architecture.”

“I wouldn’t want to interrupt you when you’re with all your friends,” George protested.

“Living the bachelor life at the moment. Mind you, I’m off tomorrow evening — motoring down to join them at the coast. Spot of tootling round the Continent, don’t you know.”

The slang sounded odd coming from a man George realised wasn’t quite as young as he made himself out to be.

“That’ll be nice, sir. So what time shall I come — about four?”

“Why not?” Winspeare waved an idle hand and got back into his car, which purred away like a well-trained animal. Not the sort of noises that were coming, these days, from George’s lorry.

It being a fine afternoon, George gently walked up to the Big House. No point in hurrying. Whatever time he arrived, he was sure Winspeare would keep him waiting. And there was no work in the village, none that would pay, anyway. On his way up, he passed a dismal Reg Cobbold shrugging on a coat. “Being sent on errands at my age,” he was grumbling. “Why doesn’t the man keep proper staff? He says he’s going to when the place is finished, of course.”

“That’s good news,” George said.

“Hmph,” Reg replied. “He’ll get them through some London register office, you mark my words. He’ll turn his nose up at any of us, same as he did your plans — you see if he doesn’t.” Off he stomped.

George knocked at the back door, hoping to be admitted by Jemima. But there was no response, so he let himself in, calling softly as he did so. No Jemima; no Reg — how could he find Winspeare? He couldn’t go round yelling and throwing open doors, could he?

Perhaps Jemima was resting in her room — an unlikely situation, knowing Jemima, but worth checking. No. No sign of her.

He was just scratching his head over the whole business when he heard a scream and a crash. Then another scream.

He ran blindly till he found the source of the commotion. Winspeare’s library, by the looks of it. Unrolled on the table were two sets of architectural drawings. But Winspeare wasn’t looking at either of them. He was lying facedown, his blood and what George knew must be his brains oozing from his temple. Beside him lay a paperweight. Shuddering and screaming, alternately staring at her bloodstained hands and wringing them, stood Jemima, a foot from him. Her bodice was torn to the waist: No need to guess what Winspeare had been doing.

He removed his jacket and wrapped it gently round her. Then he touched — as he knew he should, but knew was pointless — the side of Winspeare’s neck. No. No pulse.

“Where does he keep the keys to his car?” he asked quietly.

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Get rid of him, of course.”

“You don’t think — the police?”

“Do you?” He held her gaze.

She shook her head. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t quite know yet. Give me a moment to think. You go and get yourself cleaned up, my girl. And then make yourself a cup of tea. Well, both of us a cup, I should think.” As an afterthought, he added, “What time’s Reg Cobbold likely to be back?”

“Not till after ten. Mr. — ” she stopped as she glanced at the body — “he sent him down to the village to post some letters — the sort of job a stableboy should do! It’s Reg’s free evening: He said he’d go straight on down to his nephew’s for a bite of tea and a look at his early broad beans.”

“Good. Now, off you go and leave me to think.”

Well, he’d accomplished it. He’d welcome a good bowl of porridge and maybe a rasher or two of Jemima’s bacon to follow. He’d never known himself so tired and hungry, not even after a lifetime of hard work. The body was safely under several feet of rubble and concrete under the foundations already started for the house extensions. The car was on a cliff-top near the coast, Winspeare’s valise left carelessly on the backseat. That had been Jemima’s idea, and he’d thought it a good touch. Then he’d had to walk back across country, arriving only minutes before Len the postman brought a batch of serious-looking letters in thick brown envelopes.

“Bills, I shouldn’t wonder,” Jemima whispered, as she laid them on the study desk.

She’d tidied the room beautifully, cleaning unmentionable brown spots from the carpet and curtains. She’d left the drawings where they were, George’s and the London architect’s, side by side, George’s lines plain and strong against a tangle of curlicues and gargoyles and turrets and flying buttresses and goodness knows what else. George shook his head in disbelief. Hadn’t the man learnt anything over the last forty years?

“He said he wanted to make it a dream castle,” Jemima observed.

“Nightmare, more like,” George muttered. “Look, there’s blood spattered on it: I think we should burn it, don’t you?”

No one seemed surprised that Winspeare had left without trace. When his car was found, everyone agreed he’d done a runner. His debtors sold off the Big House lock, stock, and barrel, as quickly as they could, so the hospital for disfigured ex-servicemen came to the village after all. Since the plans for extensions were still lying in the dusty study, the trustees assumed that that was what was in progress, and simply engaged a local builder — the navvies, unpaid, having vanished, leaving no more than the first few rows of bricks in the gothic gateway that Winspeare had flaunted.

Tom Withers pulled a fluffy-headed pint, admiring the light through the tawny brew as it settled. Frank coughed his thanks and joined the circle of drinkers on the bench in the warm sun, listening to the creak of the new signboard in the lazy wind.

“Have one yourself,” George said.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Tom said. “So everything’s worked out all right in the end. Plenty of work for everyone. Lads building and maintaining the place; wenches training up as pretty little nurses. Though I hear there won’t be a job for Mrs. Pearce, on account of hospitals don’t need housekeepers.” There might have been a twinkle in his eye.

“I know someone as might,” George said.

“Funny business all round — Winspeare doing a flit and leaving all those debts. But you never could trust a man who wanted a gatehouse that looked less like a decent man’s than Hell’s Gate.”

George didn’t reply. The way he felt now, it was more like Heaven’s Gate. He supped his pint, and smiled quietly.