The Claresby Collection: Twelve Mysteries Read online

  The situation of the hills in the East with just a small space between them meant that any dawn light would first penetrate that gap. As it did so, they both saw the sun first strike the house at an angle, where the window had been put in the painting. In response, Rupert leapt up and marked the angle at which the sun hit the house.

  “Now it is a case of geometry,” he said, happily. “We need a map to Claresby Manor and its grounds. I hope the boundaries haven’t changed over the centuries. I’m going to follow the angle and continue the line through the house, out the back and to the furthest reach on the shadow side of the house!”

  Laura obligingly provided map, ruler and pencil and even went to the cellar to find a couple of spades. She was not the smallest bit excited by Rupert’s discovery; indeed she had long since given up any hope of rescuing Claresby Manor. Despite her reluctance, she was soon to be seen walking through the dewy damp of the grass, into the woods and to the mixture of broken down wall and wire fence that made up the boundary of Claresby. It was a pleasant, soft light now and the sun even bestowed a modicum of warmth to the air. Rupert had located the spot he wanted, but looked about him as if for some kind of confirmation. The mature beauty of the house could be seen through the trees and up a rise, and they were indeed where the sun did not currently reach. The ground was uneven and pieces of wall and fallen stone gathered in rough hollows. At last Rupert found a place that pleased him.

  “It has all pretty much returned to nature and Gerald must have meant any hiding place to blend in with the landscape, but I still think that you can imagine that there is a slight rise in the ground and a dip where an entrance might be – a bit like where the ice house is over the other side.”

  “Well, I’m inclined to be sceptical,” replied Laura, “but, yes, I guess there could be. Do we have to dig?”

  “Of course.”

  Laura sighed but picked up her shovel. If she was reluctant to begin with, her reluctance soon faded. In all the time she thought about buried treasure being in or around Claresby she had imagined a chest buried in the ground. It was soon clear that they were uncovering something quite different. Rupert was correct; there was an underground structure, rather like an ice house. By the time they had uncovered the few steps down and the rotted wooden door the two of them might have been exhausted, but they were driven by adrenalin. Laura had gone back to the house for a flask of coffee and sandwiches to sustain them and had also brought out a couple of powerful torches. Once the earth was cleared from the entrance, Rupert was able to pull the damp wood of the door away with his bare hands and force it open on its rusty hinges, the lock itself having virtually fallen away. What met their eyes in the torch light was a beautifully constructed set of steps leading to a room below. Roots had broken through the stonework in places and hung eerily down, but other than that the space was remarkable dry and undisturbed with only a few earth falls.

  “It looks sound,” ventured Rupert cautiously. “I think it is safe for us to go down.”

  “Well, I’m not going to go away and leave it unexplored now!” exclaimed Laura, her cheeks flushed with excitement and anticipation.

  “Let me go first – and step carefully.”

  The space below was just enough for two adults to stand up in. There was certainly treasure – two big chests and a shelf carefully stocked with gold and silver plate. But there was something else. Slumped in one corner was a skeleton, readily identified by the round helmet still on the skull as one of Cromwell’s roundhead soldiers.

  “Well,” sighed Laura. “It looks like we’ve solved one mystery and found another!”

  Pickled Toad with Diamonds

  Rupert Latimer stared at the object with disgust barely concealed on his large, rather ugly face.

  “What is it?” he ventured finally.

  “What does it look like?” countered Laura Mortimer, rather irritably, as if she had expected a more enthusiastic response.

  “Well,” proceeded Rupert cautiously, “it looks like a pickled toad with diamond eyes.”

  “There!” said Laura, in a rather patronising tone, “you retain your reputation as a solver of puzzles. It is a work by Sebastian Fullmarks entitled “Pickled Toad with Diamonds”. Apparently a toad traditionally represents evil or a demon and diamonds the opposite; purity and light. Hence the whole work is deemed to express the fundamental spiritual dichotomy of life itself: the choice between light and dark, good and evil – or a dangerous symbiosis of them both!”

  “Oh,” replied Rupert, clearly underwhelmed. “It’s rather ugly: did it cost much?”

  “I refuse to answer,” replied Laura with dignity. “It is a work of art and therefore price is not important.” A statement such as this is always euphemistic for a price tag that would pay the national debt of a small third world country and, indeed, there had been seven figures on the label when Laura had first laid eyes upon it.

  “Is it an investment?” questioned Rupert, trying to extract some logic from Laura’s actions in purchasing the obnoxious item.

  “Yes; exactly. Since we found the Claresby treasure I have all this money sloshing about and I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. There is no point in putting all the money in the bank in these days of credit crunch and fiscal meltdown. I thought I’d put some into object d’art so that if the world’s banks collapse, I still have something.”

  “You might just as well have left the treasure where Gerald put it,” commented Rupert.

  Laura quelled him with a look and, as a semi-permanent guest in her house, Rupert was in no position to level any criticism at her life-choices. The two had met in their first term at Cambridge when both were struggling with homesickness and the shock of actually being expected to work for their grades. Rupert was in Gonvilles and Caius (which Laura dismissed, rather crudely, as sounding like a venereal disease) whilst Laura was very nearly of Newnham College studying History of Art. In fact she had dropped out after her first term and returned to her beloved Claresby Manor, whilst Rupert had gamely stuck out his three years of Archaeology and Anthropology. The friendship had endured and when, as a first class honours graduate in Arch and Anth, Rupert had inevitably found himself making an inadequate living selling crosswords over the internet, Laura had invited him to share her very large and rather lonely house. Everybody naturally assumed that they were lovers and, as Laura was vivacious and pretty with a halo of auburn hair, Rupert rather hoped that they would eventually be proved right. In the meantime he was left pointing out to those inclined to disparage his occupation given his excellent qualifications, that it takes a genius to format crosswords for Kindle.

  “At least it will give us something to talk about over the weekend,” mused Laura. “I’m beginning to doubt my wisdom in inviting Delilah Hawkes alongside Samantha Pearson; Samantha is an art critic – I think I showed you her blog “Sublime Art”. She is an outspoken adversary of everything modern, particularly installation art and anything she considers a gimmick. Delilah, on the other hand, loves anything controversial and hates what she calls “fusty” art or anything representational.”

  “At least,” intervened Rupert, “they should agree in disliking your toad; it may be a gimmick, but it undoubtedly represents, well, a toad.”

  “Of course,” continued Laura, pushing her hair behind her ears and ignoring him, “Floyd Bailey will argue with anyone after he’s had a few drinks – and he has always had a few drinks, even at eleven o’ clock in the morning. I do respect his constitution.”

  “He is a brilliant portraitist,” conceded Rupert. “If you ever consider adding a portrait of yourself to your remaining ancestors in the gallery, he’s the man for the job: I don’t know anyone else who stands a chance of capturing the beauty of your colouring and the delicacy of your features.”

  Rupert’s comment was made in a matter-of-fact tone, but it still brought a pink tinge to the porcelain skin of Laura’s pretty, oval face.

  “Anyway,” she persevered, des
pite her mild embarrassment, “it shouldn’t be dull. I’ve asked Simon Forrest along as a make-weight and because he always rather gets on with Delilah’s husband, Conran. They were at school together and neither of them has ever grown up in any meaningful sense. Also, I feel a bit sorry for Simon as he has just lost his job.”

  “I didn’t think that lawyers could lose their jobs,” said Rupert, with an uncharacteristically bitter undertone. As one of those men unlikely ever to land a conventional job, he was inclined to be slighting of those who looked like they had successfully manoeuvred themselves into a job for life.

  “Well, he was a conveyancing lawyer and a downturn in the property market has hit the firm he worked for quite badly.”

  “Poor chap.” Rupert shrugged his large, angular shoulders dismissively. “I feel so sorry for estate agents too.”

  “Well, be nice to him, anyway.”

  Rupert turned his mild, light blue eyes on Laura. “I’m always nice to everybody.”

  “I suppose you are,” she smiled at him fondly. “Don’t mind me; I’m just out of the habit of houseguests. It is only because I’ve got all this money now that I have no excuse to not return a few favours. I thought I might as well ask everyone I owe an invitation to at once and get it over and done with. At least Claresby Manor is big enough to swallow them all up. I’ll give them rooms in all four corners of the house so that they can avoid each other if need be.”

  In fact it was the first time in years that Claresby Manor had been heated throughout come November. The boiler had been installed in Laura’s grandfather’s time but still worked very well owing, she speculated, to the fact that they had never been able to afford to run it. Admittedly the long picture gallery and grand oak staircase would always be hopelessly draughty, but she could manage to make the Great Hall quite tolerable if there was a good fire going in the fireplace as well. She hadn’t had a chance to really spruce up any of the rooms, but the faded grandeur of Claresby was sufficient to impress now that it didn’t require the guest to dress in three layers of clothing at all times just to survive. The fact that hot water came out of the taps now, albeit chokingly, she regarded as some sort of miracle.

  Laura had delighted in ordering the food over the internet and she and Rupert collected it on the Friday afternoon and companionably stowed it away into the fridges in the rambling kitchen. There were sandwiches, canapés and sushi; also mini jellies, cheesecakes and cupcakes as well as lobsters, shellfish platters and a rather delicious looking salmon and lemon mascarpone terrine. Rupert was alternately popping strawberry and chocolate cupcakes into his mouth as he helped. His long, rangy and rather lopsided physique could accommodate any amounts of food without him ever showing the smallest sign of any real flesh on his body.

  “How can you?” Laura wrinkled her delicate nose. “Doesn’t that make you feel sicky and gooey after a while?”

  “Yes, but not yet,” came the muffled reply.

  “Well, I’ve got two of the girls from the village to come in and cook a full scale roast lunch tomorrow; you should enjoy that. Apart from that, there’s plenty of bacon and eggs, so I can manage the breakfasts myself. Hopefully, after breakfast on Sunday everyone will pull themselves together and push off again. Then it will be just you and me again, thank goodness.”

  Even through the cake, Rupert picked up the unintentional compliment of the fact that he was accepted as part of her home and life, despite her oft-mentioned dislike of any outsider. He knew better than to remark about this out loud, even if he had been capable of doing so with a full mouth.

  After that, they arranged the Great Hall in a welcoming fashion: baskets of logs ready by the fireplace, the long oak table polished and set with crockery and fairy lights strung around the gargoyles and gryphons of the musicians’ gallery above. Personally, Rupert thought the gargoyles that cropped up both inside and outside the house rather ugly and best left in darkened recesses; but Laura had named them individually as a child and was fond of them. Indeed, one of her favourites bore an uncanny resemblance to Rupert.

  The assorted guests started to arrive at about seven. Dishevelled and damp from the stormy weather outside, they stamped their feet and flattened their hair as they entered, lifting their eyes to examining the splendour of the oak panelling and plasterwork ceiling.

  “Darling; it’s the devil out there!” exclaimed Delilah Hawkes, shaking her wet coat as she took it off, so that everyone else was rendered wetter than she was. Her husband, Conran, a head smaller and looking dark and grumpy followed in her wake. In fact Laura knew him to be a good-hearted, amiable fellow whose only fault was his inexplicable adoration of his demanding and selfish wife. The Hawkes’ were quickly followed by Samantha Pearson, tall, elegant and confidently un-fashionable in her favourite Burberry: a grey chambray trouser suit with a regency blue check cashmere scarf. She cast a disparaging glance in Delilah’s wake and kissed Laura politely on the cheek. Floyd Bailey and Simon Forrest followed concomitantly, Simon blond and dapper and Floyd in a loose linen suit and cashmere scarf not dissimilar to Samantha’s. Suddenly the Great Hall was filled with chatter to the high plastered ceiling with its geometrical patterns and arcaded frieze. True to character, Floyd had made a beeline to the drinks table and poured his spirits neat whilst Simon and Conran fell into easy conversation. Samantha and Delilah, finding themselves thrust together, conversed in slightly frosty tones. The very educated, old-money Samantha rather despised the parvenu Delilah, and Delilah, in her turn, thought the elegant but plain faced Samantha not worth her time – mainly because she had an unfortunate tendency to rate people in accordance with how much they could do for her, and she knew that Samantha would go out of her way to avoid doing her a favour. Laura, with the training if not the instincts of a good hostess, slowly made her way around to all her guests and inquired after their well-being and current traumas, whilst Rupert took care to see that everyone’s glass was kept filled whilst Floyd was kept as far away from the open bottle of Aberfeldy 21 as was humanly possible.

  It wasn’t long before conversation became general. Laura knew her guests well enough to anticipate that tempers would at some point become frayed as strong personalities mixed with alcohol and clashed. It was for this reason she was keeping the toad up her sleeve, figuratively speaking. She thought that, at the opportune moment, it would serve as a distraction. As it was, Simon’s mind was fixed on his own redundancy, so employment and un-employment – always an issue to touch raw nerves – became the subject of discourse.

  “It’s all right for you,” said Simon, rather resentfully, addressing Laura. “You inherited this place and enough money for several lifetimes.”

  “Yes, in the end I did – but if you remember, it wasn’t long ago that I was surviving on vegetables from the garden and expecting to have to sell the place to pay my family’s debts. I agree I was incredibly lucky in the end, but I don’t see why I should apologise for the fact. Anyway, when you are finally destitute, you know you can come and stay in one of the rooms for as long as you need.”

  “Can I join you in your bedroom?” asked Simon with a wink.

  Rupert bristled visibly but Laura just replied, amiably, “No; I bet you snore and grumble. You can have the blue room – or the stable if you prove to be a nuisance.”

  Simon chuckled. “That’s a deal – but I think I’ve got something else lined up. I’m going to specialize in family law – well, divorces. There’s going to be plenty of business in that arena, recession or no recession.”

  “So you are willing to batten off the misery of others?” queried Floyd, giving up on the bottle of Aberfeldy 21 which Rupert had placed just out of reach and settling for the Bowmore Darkest.

  “I’m a lawyer,” replied Simon succinctly.

  “We all struggle from time to time,” Conran commented comfortingly to Simon. They all had reason to know that this was the case. Delilah was a high maintenance wife, not least because her love of the modern art world had led to radical cha
nges in the style of her husband’s formerly quietly prosperous gallery. He was too much of a gentleman to complain about his troubles, but Delilah intervened.

  “Conran hasn’t been able to make the Hawkes Gallery pay recently,” she said bluntly. “But, as you will have heard, we are offering the inaugural “Hawkes Prize” for the most challenging work of modern art in 2011! And,” she said with some pride, “we will be out-classing both the Man Booker Prize and the Turner Prize in terms of the value of the award. The winner of the Hawkes Prize will receive one hundred thousand pounds! That is more than twice what the Turner Prize gives their winner.”

  “How will you fund that?” queried Samantha, disingenuously. “Also, the value of winning the Man Booker or the Turner Prize comes mainly from the prestige and subsequent publicity. Can you offer those things?”