The Best British Mysteries III

Love-Lies-Bleeding by Barbara Cleverly

It had taken me two hours to get here. I swished my way, bouncing through the puddles in a haze of falling leaves up the long drive to Felthorpe Hall in north Norfolk. Now, Norfolk isn’t Suffolk, and that’s a fact. The skies are wider, the building flints are bigger, the distances greater, and the cry of the wheeling plover more forlorn. Only fifty miles from home, but Felthorpe Hall could never have been in Suffolk.

For the last half-hour of my journey through dripping lanes, the rain had eased off, the sun had come out, and the whole countryside had taken on a more cheerful cast. But it would still have to work a whole lot harder to please me, I thought resentfully. I drove carefully down the tree-lined carriage road to the Hall, eagerly awaiting my first sight of the ancient house, so praised in the architectural guide I had hastily referred to before I started out. I turned a corner and there it stood by the side of a dark, reed-fringed, and heron-haunted lake.

The front door was wide and welcoming, its brick dressings satisfyingly good-hearted, and the lowering sun, reflected from its many windows, spoke of ancient warmth, but as I got out of my car I paused and shivered.

‘Keep off! Go away!’ said the house to me.

‘Deus tute me spectas,’ said a stone inscription in the parapet. ‘Thou, Lord, see’st me.’

All too likely, I thought.

I didn’t want to be here. It wasn’t my job. I paused for a moment to curse my boss, Charles Hastings. The words ‘spoilt’ and ‘manipulative’ were as closely associated with his name in my mind as were ‘rosy’ and ‘fingered’ with dawn in Homer’s. I ought to have seen this coming. Well, the truth was – I had. So why had I gone along with it? For the joy of seeing a gem of a house I had never visited before and the satisfaction of arriving by myself and saying, ‘Hello, I’m the architect, Eleanor Hardwick.’ By myself, not scuttling in Charles’s wake carrying the files and the hard hats and answering to the name of ‘little Miss…er…’

We do a lot of work for the English Country Houses Trust. Of the grandees who run it, Charles appears to have been at school with the few to whom he is not related. And, as our region of East Anglia is thickly strewn with great houses, the practice is a busy one. It was one of the reasons – it was my main reason – for applying for the job of his architectural assistant. Charles calls his Trust work the office ‘bread and butter’. I would call it the ‘strawberry jam’. I’m mad about ancient buildings. I always have been. And if you’re lucky enough to get a job working for an expert in this field and you’re based between Cambridge and the North Sea, you’ve died and gone to heaven!

The lush, rolling countryside seamed with narrow overhung lanes is rich in ancient churches, cathedrals, and even a castle or two, as well as the old domestic buildings. Down one of the overhung lanes in the middle of the county of Suffolk is Charles’s house, a wing of which masquerades as his office. Latin Hall is a fine though eccentric showcase for Charles’s skills. For a start, it’s thatched, and to go on, it was built in the late thirteen hundreds. Yes, thirteen hundreds. There was still a Roman emperor on the throne when the foundations were being dug, Charles told me at my interview. A rather debased emperor, perhaps, and ruling out of Constantinople, but it made a good story for the clients. They were intended to draw the inference ‘If this bloke can keep this building standing, he might be able to do something for mine.’

My first autumn working at Latin Hall was miserable. The weather was exceptionally wet and the medieval house leaked badly. The rain-swollen doors stuck, the windows funnelled the icy draughts that knifed down from the Arctic. Charles laughed at my complaints. ‘Keep you healthy, Ellie,’ he’d said. ‘Nothing like a low temperature and a constant air circulation to kill off the bugs! Much better for you to inhale air straight from Siberia than that pre-breathed rubbish they fill your lungs with in London.’

Rain fell in torrents, torrents were followed by gales, tarpaulins blew off roofs, and water rose in cellars as it never had before. Every time I looked out of the window thinking that the rain could get no heavier, it redoubled its maniacal and mindless persistence. But there was one source of cheerful amusement for me in all this gloom. Charles had caught a very bad cold! I came in one morning to find him hunched over his desk, clutching a box of tissues.

‘For goodness’ sake, Charles,’ I said, ‘go home! You don’t have to stay here!’ I pointed to the wall chart. ‘You’ve got no meetings today or tomorrow and then it’s the weekend. Go home, have a bath, find a good book, and go to bed. I’ll man the main brace.’

He winced.

‘Can’t,’ he said. ‘Just had a call from the Trust. Felthorpe Hall. Main staircase. There’s a problem. I’ve just been looking up my last quinquennial survey report.’ He paused and pretended to run a critical eye over it. ‘It’s rather good, I think. Listen to this, Ellie, and mark the style.’ He began to read:

‘The condition of the main staircase has been mentioned in previous reports and its stability is now a matter of concern. A newel stair with four quarter-space landings, its strength is dependent on the support each flight derives from the flight below. Provided tenons are sound….’ He droned on and I switched off. ‘… is due to more than shrinking and old age.’

‘Well, what do you think?’

‘I’d say you’d covered yourself pretty well, there, Charles…all those provided-that’s and suspicions-ofs,’ I began to say, but he interrupted.

‘It is always my concern, Ellie, to have a care for the building as well as my own neck. I go on: I would suggest that where shrinkage gaps are to be seen, small hardwood wedges be lightly inserted, and if the distortion referred to increases, these wedges will fall. Should this happen, further structural investigation would appear imperative.’

‘Don’t tell me! Your wedges have fallen?’

‘They have. Luckily, the house is closed to the public for end-of-season cleaning, but they’ve got some sort of anniversary shindig coming up at Christmas. So they ring me. “Is this staircase safe?” they want to know. What can I say? “Leave it to me. I’ll come up and have a look.”‘ He blew his nose dolefully once more, pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead, and rubbed his reddened eyes.

His partner was on holiday. There was only one thing I could say. ‘Look, tell them you can’t come until next week, or if there’s a panic on, I’ll go for you. Why not? I don’t think you’ll make much sense in your present condition.’

Charles blinked and shivered theatrically for a moment, looked doubtful, and then said, as though my offer was all so unexpected, ‘Well, if you’re sure, Ellie, that would be a godsend…and it’s not as though you could do any real damage…I mean, I’ve laid on a carpenter – Johnny Bell will meet you there at half-past two. He’s very experienced and -’

‘Just give me the file, Charles! But – Felthorpe Hall? Where is it, incidentally?’

‘Er…north Norfolk,’ he had mumbled apologetically.

The house may not have welcomed me, but the carpenter, Johnny Bell, greeted me warmly enough in the hallway from which a fine newel stair climbed its way to a dim upper floor. I needn’t have come, really. Mr Bell was perfectly capable of taking up a few boards, dismantling a few stair treads, and, indeed, diagnosing the problem and solving it. The architect is very often the third wheel on the bicycle. This was one of those occasions. He knew it, and so did I. But with kindly East Anglian courtesy he explained the situation and even managed to make it appear he was hanging on my words.

‘Didn’t like to start until you got here, Miss Hardwick. Thought if we took up a couple of treads here and a floorboard on the landing and perhaps the riser off the step up into the pass door, we ought to see what we’re up to.’

I was about to say, ‘Nails must be cut and punched…’ but almost before I could speak he had slipped a hacksaw under the first stair tread and had started to cut the nails which held it in place, When he’d slipped the stair treads out of the strings, the risers followed with no more difficulty. We knelt together on the stairs and peered into the cavity we had created. I held the torch while Johnny Bell felt inside.

‘Carriage has gone,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be bird’s-mouthed under the trimmer and…’ feeling along the wall, ‘the wall string’s gone in the same place.’

I reached into the hole, broke off a section of timber, and brought it into the light.

‘Deathwatch beetle,’ I said.

‘How do you know?’ said a voice behind us.

I turned to confront a tall, stooping, birdlike figure peering over our shoulders. He reminded me of one of the bony herons I’d seen on arrival, hunched at the edge of the lake. This was Nicholas Wemyss, the curator, and introductions followed.

‘How do you know?’ he asked again.

‘If the exit holes are big enough to let you poke a match head into them, it’s deathwatch beetle. If they’re only big enough for a pin, it’s woodworm – furniture beetle, that is,’ I said, as I’d been taught.

‘Ah!’ said Nicholas, looking impressed. ‘Now I really appreciate a complicated technical explanation! But, Ellie, is this serious? Does it mean the stairs are unsafe?’

‘Well, it shouldn’t be left. Some of this bore dust,’ I held out a sample, ‘is quite fresh and, no, it probably isn’t quite safe.’ I looked at Johnny, who was nodding in agreement. ‘Let’s see if we can take up a board on the quarter landing. That’ll tell us more.’

Once more the hacksaw blade disappeared under the stair nosing, and one by one the ancient nails were snipped through. The first mighty board came loose. Loose for the first time since some ancient carpenter had tapped it into place over three hundred years before. Johnny waggled it to and fro, inserted the end of a nail bar, and prised it upwards. ‘Can’t move it!’ he said in surprise. ‘That’s stuck! There’s something under there!’

He poked around with the end of a two-foot rule. ‘Yes, bugger me – there’s something under there!’

We watched in puzzlement as he took up a second board. With that obstruction gone, the first board came out more easily. But it was unnaturally heavy. It was as much as the two of us could lift and, as it came from its ancient seating, ‘Corst blast!’ said Johnny. ‘There’s a little old box fastened up to the bottom of that!’

‘Little old box, nothing!’ said Nicholas. ‘No…that’s a little old coffin!’

There was no mistaking it. The profile of a coffin lid is in some way branded on the memory. The eternal symbol of death and dissolution, an object of reasonless fear buried in the country memories of us all. It was tiny; not above two foot long. A whiff of profound grief and misery briefly embraced us all as the darkness deepened, the thunderous rain began to fall again, and the damp chill of the day sharpened to an icy coldness.

The carpenter ran a knowledgeable hand over the small structure. Must have made hundreds of coffins in his time, I thought.

‘Oak boards. Nicely made,’ he said, absently caressing the joints with a craggy thumb. ‘That were tacked up from below.’ He slipped the point of a chisel under the rim of the coffin and pressed upwards against the covering board. ‘Lift it off, shall I?’

‘No! Wait!’ I heard my own voice call out. I didn’t want him to take off the lid. I didn’t want to see what the box held. ‘Perhaps we should call the police? Isn’t that what you do when you find a…er…come across a burial?’

‘If that’s what it is, it’s a very ancient burial,’ said Nicholas gently. ‘I don’t think the police will be interested in something so old. Because it is very old, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It went in the same day as the staircase was put up,’ said Johnny Bell firmly. ‘The only way you could get it in with this construction.’

‘So we have a date, then,’ said Nicholas. ‘Diana will know. My wife, Diana. She’s somewhere about…’

‘Sixteen sixty-two. That’s the year it was put in.’ A low clear voice called down to us from the upper floor. Diana came to join us, taking in the strange scene at a glance. ‘Oh dear! How extraordinary! But how fascinating! Look, with the stairs in their present parlous state I think we should take whatever that is downstairs and put it on the big table in the yellow drawing room and decide what to do about it when we’re in no danger of disappearing through a hole. Eleanor, is it? Eleanor Hardwick? I’m Diana Wemyss. I was just making you a cup of tea. Perhaps that can wait for a few minutes?’

I smiled as Diana’s comforting presence chased away the chill foreboding. She couldn’t have been more different from her gaunt husband. Short and rounded, with merry brown eyes, she had the cheerful and confident charm of a robin. We all made our way back down the stairs and into the drawing room and gathered around the little box waiting for Diana to tell us what to do next.

‘We really have to open it,’ she said. ‘Too embarrassing if we hauled a busy constable all the way out from Norwich to witness us opening an empty container.’

Everyone nodded, and Johnny got to work again with his chisel. Hardly breathing, we all peered into the coffin as the lid rose.

‘Ah,’ said Diana in an unsteady voice. ‘Nicholas, perhaps you’d better inform the constabulary? Just to be on the safe side.’

Two hours later, an inspector had called and viewed the pathetic contents of the box, and had taken brief statements. He agreed that the burial had been clandestine and there’d probably been dirty work at the crossroads back in the seventeenth century but, really, this was one for Time Team, not the Norfolk constabulary He was quite happy to leave it, as he put it, ‘in the hands of the experts’. That was us. We were on our own.

On a scatter of almost-fresh sawdust in the bottom of the box lay the yellowed bones of a very small infant. It lay on its side in a foetal position and, as far as our appalled and fleeting glances could determine, there was no obvious cause of death. There was no tattered winding sheet, no identifying bracelet. The only other thing the box contained was a slip of parchment. It had been glued inside the lid and so remained unaffected by the decay within the box. On it a neat hand had written, ‘Deus tute eum spectas.’

‘Good heavens!’ said Diana. ‘What have we here? The lost heir of the Easton family?’

I remember even then, in the turmoil of mixed emotions I was feeling, that something was off-key. I felt sick and guilty that we had, however innocently, displaced and disturbed the little body after all those years. With uncomfortable sideways glances at each other, we had replaced the lid on the coffin, Johnny Bell solemnly making the sign of the cross before packing up his tools and leaving.

Gratefully I accepted Diana’s invitation, in view of the late hour and the filthy weather, to stay the night in one of the guest rooms. While she put together a supper in their small flat on the second floor, Nicholas invited me to come round the house with him as he ‘put it to bed’. I watched him set alarms and lock doors, the whole process taking about half an hour. As we wandered down through the dark house, our progress was much delayed by Nicholas’s discursions as we passed one beautiful thing after another.

Pausing finally in the gallery which encircled the staircase at first-floor level, he drew my attention to a run of portraits. ‘I’d like to haul this lot in for interrogation, Ellie,’ he said. ‘I bet one of them could tell us more about the contents of that box. The Easton family. They were all here the year the staircase was put in. They came up from their London home for the jollifications in sixteen sixty-two. The celebrations covered the restoration of the monarchy two years earlier, but also the marriage of the younger brother of the earl.’

He lifted the shade of a table lamp and held it upwards. ‘Here he is, with his wife alongside. This is the chap whose anniversary we’re celebrating this Christmas. Father of the dynasty. His descendants still live hereabouts – they gave the house to the Trust thirty years ago. Robert Easton. Took over when his elder brother died childless in sixteen seventy-two.’

I looked up at the handsome florid features of Robert Easton, Earl of Somersham. An impressive man in a shoulder-length curling brown wig, he wore a coat of dark-blue velvet with gold frogging over a ruched shirt of finest white linen, a lace jabot at his throat. The painter had conveyed his subject’s confidence and pride by the seemingly casual placing of one elegant hand on his hip.

Nicholas for a moment dipped the lamp to illuminate the left-hand corner of the painting. I was impressed but not surprised to read: ‘P Lely pinxit’.

‘A Peter Lely!’

Nicholas smiled. ‘Yes, the Dutchman who painted all those sumptuous portraits of Charles Stuart’s mistresses. The Windsor beauties. All white bosoms, floating draperies, and slanting invitation in their sloe-black eyes. Hmmm…’

We looked together at the lady in this painting. She was young and fair and quite lovely, but here were no sloping shoulders, no flirtatious glance at the artist. Her gown was of chestnut silk, draped and shimmering, and the luscious autumnal colouring was all that you could have hoped for from Lely but worn with an unusual modesty, her only jewellery a simple pearl necklace. In her lap rested a basket overflowing with autumn fruits and flowers – a cornucopia. In the background leaves drifted down from stately parkland trees.

‘Mary, Countess of Somersham. As she became on her husband’s accession to the title. We assume this was a wedding portrait – it was certainly done in the year of their marriage when Robert was the younger brother-in-waiting. Not much of a catch for a girl, you might think, but he was – for her. She was no aristocrat. Mary was the daughter of a Quaker shipbuilder, but very rich, so they both got what they wanted from the marriage. An unusual match, but it turned out well.’

‘And the cornucopia is a pointed reference to the wealth she was bringing to the Easton family?’

‘That’s right. After the lean years of the Commonwealth it was a miracle they had survived as a family at all, and they were certainly pleased to have her injection of cash. Bet if the truth were known she even paid for the staircase! She saved the whole dynasty. She was fruitful in other ways, too,’ he added, showing me a further picture.

A charming portrait showed seven children gambolling in a landscape which was clearly Felthorpe Hall. Formally dressed miniatures of adults, they played with toys and small spaniels or clustered at the feet of their mother, an older and now matronly Mary. All here was sunshine striking satin, rounded pink cheeks, and laughing eyes. An idyllic scene. A perfect family I said as much to Nicholas.

He grunted. ‘Unfortunately, not perfect. These little poppets had the most appalling uncle. They only inherited because William, Robert’s older brother, died an early death. A lethal combination of drink and the pox, it’s said. He died abroad and spent very little time here at Felthorpe, which was held together by the efforts of Robert and his trusty steward.’

The light changed direction again and illuminated a third portrait.

A harsh white face in a black periwig. A diamond ring on a thin white hand lightly holding a small purple flower, a bunch of lace, lidded eyes. A clever face. A voluptuous face. I shivered.

‘Wicked William Easton,’ said Nicholas.

‘Not by Lely, this one,’ I said, peering more closely at the portrait. ‘But a similar style, surely?’

‘It’s unsigned, and we have no record of the painter. A pupil of Lely? Could be. Skillfully done, though. Taken during William’s youth, obviously, before he became dissolute.’

I shuddered. ‘That man was born dissolute!’

I looked again at the hooded eyes and tried to read their expression. Dark and scornful, but there was more – they gleamed with unconcealed invitation. The full lips twisted with a humourless certitude. This man knew he could have anyone he wanted. After more than three centuries, he still had the power to make me look away, blushing, repelled and overwhelmed by the force of his flaunting sexuality.

Locking more doors, having first checked that all the rooms were empty, and turning off the last remaining lights, we returned to the landing.

‘Hang on! Wait a minute!’ I said. ‘There’s someone downstairs.’

‘Can’t be,’ said Nicholas comfortably. ‘There’s no one in the house but ourselves.’

‘Sorry. For a moment I thought I saw someone under the stairs. Where does that door lead to?’

‘Doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s been blocked for over a hundred years.’

‘Perhaps it was the moon?’

‘That would be a miracle! No moon through all this cloud.’

We returned quickly to the cheerful, candlelit dining room under the roof.

It was midnight before, equipped with a spare toothbrush and an old pair of Diana’s pyjamas, I was shown to a small spare room on the floor below.

‘Hope you’ll be all right in here. We’d better aim for eight o’clock breakfast. Suit you? Right then, sleep well!’

It had been a long day, and I had hardly been able to keep my eyes open for the last hour, but as soon as I reached this little room I knew I was in for a sleepless night. My mind went into unwelcome overdrive. Schemes for the repair of the stairs were uppermost, but speculation as to the possible history of the little box and its pathetic contents followed close behind. I got out of bed, drew the curtains, and looked out across the park. The moon appeared briefly through a rent in the cloud, and a flight of mallards slipped swiftly across this luminous patch.

‘And there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.’

I wasn’t so sure about that!

I climbed back into bed and the unwelcome thought came to me that I needed to make a last dash to the bathroom. I made my reluctant way onto the landing trying to remember where on earth the bathroom was and thankful for the torch that Nicholas handed to me. On my return I was, still more reluctantly, drawn to peer down into the darkness below, prodded by a childish element of self-challenging bravado.

A door opened and shut and a dim figure on the floor below slipped under the stairs and out of sight.

‘There is somebody down there! Somebody has got locked in. A cleaner perhaps? But surely the whole place is covered with movement detectors? Who the hell’s that?’

My question was answered by a sigh from below and an indistinguishable gabble of words in a female voice. The words ended in a rack of sobbing and I was much afraid.

A shaft of light broke from a suddenly opened door on the floor above and the Wemysses peered down over the balustrade.

‘Ellie?’

‘Yes?’

‘Did you hear that?’

‘Yes. There’s somebody down there. I thought there was.’

‘Can’t be,’ said Nicholas. ‘Can’t be.”

They hurried down and joined me. I was very glad of their nearness. The house was desperately cold.

‘We heard someone on the stairs,’ said Diana.

‘That was me going to the loo.’

‘No, before that. Did it wake you up?’

‘No, I wasn’t asleep. But I saw someone just now… And there – look there!’

The tail of a shaft of passing moonlight seemed again to illuminate a dim figure and once again we heard that mutter of pathetic sobbing.

‘Come on, Ellie,’ said Nicholas. ‘Let’s go and look at this.’

‘You’re not leaving me up here by myself,’ said Diana.

There was a hiss, a whirr, and a metallic click, and, after a moment of aged hesitation, an ancient clock struck one.

‘If I might make rather a folksy suggestion,’ I said, ‘would we all like a cup of tea?’

‘Now that’s what I really appreciate,’ said Nicholas. ‘The sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets, and the architect calls for a cup of tea!’

‘What did Johnny Bell say?’ asked Diana when we sat down in the kitchen, fragrant mugs of Earl Grey clutched in shaking hands. ‘That the coffin must have been put in when the staircase was constructed? Sixteen sixty-two. Then perhaps Mr Stillingfleet can help us.’

‘Mr Stillingfleet?’ I asked. ‘Who’s he?’

‘Was. Hugo Benedict Stillingfleet. Tutor to the little Easton boys.’

‘Wicked Easton?’

‘Yes, William and his brother Robert. He was also chaplain and finally steward. He lived here for about fifty years and kept the most wonderful account books – more like a diary, really. Every farthing that got spent, he recorded it. Everyone who was in the employ of the family and what they earned…family journeys, who came to stay and practically what they had for breakfast! If anything funny happened when the staircase was being installed, I bet Stillingfleet has recorded it. Nick, go and get Stillingfleet!’

‘I’m not getting Stillingfleet at this time of night! Weighs about a ton and I’m not going down there to unlock the library! It’ll keep until morning.’

‘That coffin,’ I said drowsily. ‘That secret little box. Did we release something? Something very small. Something very sad. Did we call back somebody? Somebody who is distressed by the disturbance?’

‘We’ll ask Stillingfleet in the morning,’ said Diana, and we finally went to bed.

It was a week before I could return to Felthorpe Hall. Johnny Bell was doing a beautiful job on the stairs, and it was nearing completion. The little box still stood safely on the table in the drawing room.

Diana and Nicholas were very subdued. ‘We’ve had terrible nights,’ they said. ‘The same mutterings and sobbings every night since we disturbed that box! Haven’t slept for a week. We don’t know what to do. But we’ve a lot to tell you!’

They led me into the library where the central table was covered in page of notes and several leather-bound and ancient books. With barely suppressed excitement Diana went straight into the result of her researches. ‘This is sixteen sixty-one,’ she said, one finger on her notes and turning the ponderous pages of the Stillingfleet papers with the other hand. ‘Here’s the boss telling him to get estimates for “Ye newe westerne stair”. And here’s “Jas. Holbrooke, Master Carpenter”, riding out from Norwich to give his estimate – £482.9.2d. Expensive!

‘And here we are in sixteen sixty-two. A lot of comings and goings. The family were here for nearly all that year. Lots of company. Ate them out of house and home. Bills for barrels of oysters, anchovies, game birds by the dozen brace, cakes and sweetmeats, sacks of coffee… John Fox and his brother Will taken up for pilfering at the Lammas Fair and the good Stillingfleet goes over to the assizes to plead for them. Successfully, obviously, because they were back on the payroll the next month. And here’s one Jayne Marston.’

Diana paused.

‘Is she important?’

‘Oh yes, we think so,’ said Nicholas.

‘Jayne Marston – “Miss Comfort’s abigail”.’

‘Abigail? A lady’s maid, you mean?’

‘Yes, quite posh. Comes down from London and – note this -without her mistress. And that’s odd. This was January. Season still in full swing in the capital. Miss Comfort wouldn’t have sent her abigail down to the country for no good reason.’

‘Does Stillingfleet give us a clue?’

‘Sort of. He refers to her quite often and affectionately.’ She quoted, “‘Ye sorrowful Jayne…that forlorn wretch… That sweet slut in her sorrow…” Something wrong there, don’t you think? And then the staircase gets under way. And in April they start getting ready for a party. Seems to be a belated celebration of the restoration of Charles the Second – the Eastons were all stout monarchists. Economically, they are planning to run it with the celebrations for Robert’s engagements to Mary Chandler. Then, in June, two or three things happen – “Did wait on his Lordship under God’s guidance and besought him to remember his Creator in the days of his youth, when the evil days come not.’“

‘That would be William he was beseeching. And did he remember his Creator? Did he do what Stillingfleet wanted?’

‘It doesn’t say, but one rather infers not. And then – dismay and disaster – on the fifteenth of June – “To me at dawn this day comes the swanward early. Jayne Marston, God receive her, found drowned in ye lake.”‘

Diana turned to me, wide-eyed. ‘And she’s not in the burial register! She’s not buried in the churchyard!’

‘Suicide, then? Denied a Christian burial.’

‘Looks like it. And then William disappears.’

‘Disappears?’

‘Yes – “…raging to London”, leaving poor old Stillingfleet to unscramble the party. Sounds as though there was the most almighty family row going on.’

‘And the staircase?’

‘Finished. Here – “Thanks be to God!” Then – and this is where the fun starts – “‘Twas as though the Devil himself wailed about the house this night and these seven days past. God bless us all.’“

‘Is that what it’s been like for you?’

‘Yes. Sobs rather than wails, perhaps, but going on and on. Just the same for Stillingfleet. At the end of every day he wrote just two words – “No change” – until we get to: “All day working in pursuit of my resolve.”‘

‘Working! Working at what, I wonder?’

‘Well, in addition to his other accomplishments, Mr Stillingfleet was a carpenter and turner, and he made tables and chairs, and he was a bit of a scientist, too. He had a workshop. We think it was the little room at the end of the stillroom passage.’

‘What do you think he was working at? The coffin?’

‘Yes, that’s what we think. A secret burial for a tiny child. A child who must have been illegitimate, inconvenient, disposable. Infanticide was sadly common in those days, and the rubbish heaps of London, certainly, were where the bodies ended up in large numbers, but this child was different. He was special to someone. Someone who was determined to grant him as decent a burial as was possible in adverse circumstances.’

‘It’s a long shot, and we’ll never know for certain,’ said Diana, ‘but listen – Jayne Marston is sent down to the country estate from London without her mistress. Pregnant?’

‘If this is her baby, and it was born in June,’ I said, hurriedly calculating, ‘she would have been three months gone in January and just beginning to show… Yes, the right moment to send her into obscurity. But is this consistent? Is that what the family would have done? Wouldn’t they have just turned her out of the house?’

‘I don’t think so – not then. This wasn’t the Protectorate, this was the Restoration. Gavalier politics and Cavalier morality. Cavalier kindness, if you like. And all the evidence from Stillingfleet is that the Eastons treated their servants with consideration. He was himself almost part of the family. They couldn’t have functioned without him. But suppose I’m right. Suppose Jayne comes down to Norfolk because she’s pregnant. Suppose Wicked William is the father. Suppose he comes down for the party and takes no notice of her, or spurns her, and perhaps that was what Stillingfleet was begging him to remember, begging him to do something for the wretched girl. Then the baby is born and is stillborn? Or dies, perhaps?’

‘Dies? How? And where?’

‘We’ll never know,’ said Diana slowly. ‘Let’s just say the baby dies. The body must have been hidden away. There is no recorded death of an infant at that time. Perhaps Jayne, at the death of her child, goes demented and throws herself into the lake?’

‘Did she fall or was she pushed?’

‘I’m sure Stillingfleet knew, but he’s not saying. Loyalty to the family. It was only a servant involved, I know, but this was an isolated community where a scandal would have torn through the county, and don’t forget that most people up here were still rigidly puritan in their outlook. William would have had a bad time of it if it had come out.’

‘At any rate, there was no Christian burial for Jayne’s child, no baptism even, and this would have been a horrifying thing for the mother. The child would have been condemned to eternal perdition.’

‘And this is when the nightly wailing starts?’

‘Yes. But Stillingfleet knows what to do. He makes a little coffin. He places the body inside with a copy of the words from the family motto…’

‘Wait a minute, though – it’s not quite the right wording, is it? Look at the third word. The motto is Deus tute me spectas. It should say “me”. “Thou, Lord, see’st me”, but this says “eum”. “Him”. God sees him. Who?’

‘I thought it might mean “God watch over him” – the child, that is.’

‘No. Spectas. It doesn’t mean look out for in the sense of watching over, it means see, look at.’

‘Well, I think this is as close as he dares get to an identification, a direct link with the Eastons. And one night, as the staircase is nearly finished, he fixes it up under a floorboard, replaces the floorboard, and says a burial service over it. It was the best he could do.’

‘Any more from the diary?’

‘Only this, but significantly – “Under the hand of God, I pray, I finish my work, and, all praise to Him, a quiet night at last.’“

We sat for a moment in silence. ‘I bet that was it, or something very like that,’ I said. ‘All quiet until I came along with a nail bar. What do we do now?’

‘I’ve been thinking about this,’ said Diana. ‘Look, Johnny is still here working on the stairs…do you think we could just put it back again? Say a few words, perhaps?’

‘Yes, I’m sure we could do that,’ I said.

We laid it back in its place and Johnny tapped nails back into position through the rim the thoughtful Hugo Stillingfleet had left for this purpose. The new nails sank in easily. We stood back and looked at each other uncertainly.

‘May he rest in peace and light perpetual shine upon him,’ said Diana quietly and clearly.

But something was worrying me. We had worked out a solution of sorts to an intriguing puzzle, but I hadn’t heard that satisfying click as the last piece of the jigsaw falls into place. We had heard the truth, I was sure, from Stillingfleet, but had we heard the whole truth? I didn’t think so.

I went to look again at the Easton portraits. I remembered Nicholas had said he would like to interrogate them. Well, why not? I thought I knew the right questions to ask, and I thought Peter Lely and his unknown pupil had given their subjects a voice which could still be heard over the years. I had released something which had lain dormant but only just contained through the years, and now I believed it was calling out for resolution and justice. The Norfolk police weren’t interested in knowing who had committed infanticide and possibly a second murder all those years ago, but I was.

I managed to evade the hypnotic stare of Wicked William and concentrated first on the sunny opulence of the wedding portrait. Robert and Mary Even the names were reassuringly solid. Following the painter’s clues, I knew that this couple had married in the autumn; their betrothal, according to Stillingfleet, had been in the summer of 1662, and presumably Robert had been pursuing this heiress during the previous London season. At the very time Jayne Marston had been sent away to the country. Had he known the sorry story of his sister Comfort’s maid? It was a family with a reputation for large-heartedness in its dealings with its retainers. Yes, he would have known. He would have been concerned. But concerned, perhaps, for another reason.

Mary’s fortune had saved the family and guaranteed his position in society. Robert would not have welcomed any breath of scandal to do with the family his golden goose was about to marry into. ‘Of Quaker stock,’ Nicholas had said. I looked again at the heart-shaped face, framed by wispy golden tendrils, the modest dress, the tightly pursed lips, and I wondered about Mary.

‘Was it to avoid offending you?’ I murmured, ‘That Jayne and her child were done away with? Too inconvenient, too vocal. A servant, yes, but so intertwined with the family she had forgotten her place and was making herself a nuisance? Would it have ruined Robert’s schemes if you’d discovered that his brother had seduced a family maid?’

I couldn’t believe that.

‘And why did you flee?’ I asked, turning at last to William, ‘Why didn’t you just tough it out?’ An earldom, the king’s supporters back in power again – the future looked good for William Easton. What was he fleeing? Not a family scandal – there must have been something more.

The dark eyes taunted, enticed, seduced. I speculated again about the identity of the unknown painter and was struck by a devastating thought. A thought so obvious and yet so shocking I groped my way to a Chippendale chair and, against all the house rules, sat down on it. The painter’s message now screamed out at me. How could I not have seen it before?

I heard Nicholas leaving the library and called out to him.

‘Ellie? You OK?’ He hurried to join me.

‘We’ve got it all wrong, Nicholas!’ I said. ‘Come and have a look again at Wicked William. He’s been wrongly accused! It couldn’t have been him!’

I positioned Nicholas in front of the portrait. ‘Now, imagine you’re the painter. And that, of course, in the sixteen sixties, means you’re a man. The sitter is reacting to you. What do you see?’

‘Oh my God!’ said Nicholas. ‘I see it! And to think that all these years women have been averting their eyes thinking he was trying to seduce them. He wasn’t at all, was he?’

‘No. I’m not sure they had a word for it in Cavalier England, but this chap was gay and proud of it, as you’d say.’

‘I’m certain they didn’t have a word for it in north Norfolk! And it was a capital offence at the time. “Death without mercy”, according to the Articles passed by Parliament in sixteen sixty-one. He could, technically, have been executed if discovered.’

‘What if he were discovered?’ I speculated. ‘Caught in flagrante with a handsome young painter, let’s say?’

‘He’d have had to flee to somewhere more worldly – to France…to Italy… Poor old Stillingfleet, holding all this together! But this is just guesswork, Ellie.’

‘Oh yes. But look at his hand, Nick! Do you see the flower he’s holding?’

Nicholas peered at the tiny purple face.

‘Always assumed it was a violet, but it’s not, you know! It’s heartsease. Common little English flower. It’s got a lot of names – love-lies-bleeding, love-in-idleness, la pensée in French, wild pansy.’

‘Exactly! Pansy! A badge. The seventeenth-century equivalent of a pink ribbon. That’s what you’d call flaunting it! So how likely is it that he’d be spending time in London undoing a lady’s maid? Possible, I suppose – but I can’t see it! No. I think we’ve got to look elsewhere for the father of that little scrap in the coffin.’

Our eyes turned on Robert’s handsome countenance. I waved a hand at his line of progeny. ‘It’s pretty obvious in which direction his preferences lay!’ I said with more than a touch of bitterness. ‘And he had such a lot to lose if his puritan bride-to-be were to catch him with his hand up a maid’s skirt! Mary doesn’t look the understanding kind to me!’

I looked at the pair in disgust. Their faces had taken on a cast of smug respectability. Their innocent children, healthy and happy, had thrived perhaps at the expense of that other unwanted child.

Suddenly I found myself playing the role of judge in this case that would never come to court and I knew what was required of me. I knew the formula that would ensure undisturbed nights for Diana and Nicholas.

I spoke aloud to the portrait and to anyone else who was listening on the stairs. ‘Robert Easton, I find you guilty of infanticide,’ I said simply. ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’

‘Deus tute eum spectas,’ said Diana, who had come silently to join us. ‘God has seen him. God knows what he has done.’

A week later Charles waved a postcard at me.

‘Not much in the post. It’s for you from some boyfriend of yours in Norfolk. A picture of a bloke in a periwig and it says, “Thank God! At last a quiet night! Eternally grateful, love, Nicholas.” What did you get up to in Norfolk, Ellie?’