‘Willa said she didn’t want marriage. I told her I didn’t, either. All she wanted was delight.’
‘Delight?’
‘To feel what it was like to have good sex.’
‘And did you?’
‘Better than good.’
Another burst of laughter had Phillip standing to speak.
‘I’ll go across to London and try to work out a plan to clear her name. After that I will go and find her.’
‘We. We can find her and bring her back. You can’t do this by yourself, Phillip, and I am here to help.’
Before they went back to London, Phillip and Oliver journeyed across to Belton Park the following morning.
Belton Hall was bigger than Phillip had expected it to be but every bit as ugly. It was made of a dark pitted stone and was disproportionately high, giving an instant first impression of the facade almost falling over against a moving sky.
When they knocked at the door a woman who introduced herself as Mrs Heron the housekeeper answered. She said that Mr Simon St Claire had not called in to Belton Park for a month or more now and she was not expecting him back.
Her tone implied she did not think much of the man, and so Phillip took his chance to find out more.
‘We are here because we are friends of Mrs Wilhelmina St Claire, and she is in trouble.’
Her demeanour changed instantly as she looked around and gestured them in, closing the door straight away behind them and taking them through to a small salon off the main entrance.
‘I have heard talk of the Park’s ownership being changed. But my guess is that Mr Simon St Claire threatened Mrs St Claire and she gave in, her being a woman on her own and scared. The former master’s wife was an angel, and none of the St Claires ever deserved the likes of her, is what I also think. Her husband was a mean man and his cousin is of exactly the same ilk, and now I am hearing stories of Mrs St Claire being missing and ideas spun around the why of it, too.’
‘She has been accused of murder.’ Phillip brought the worst charge up first. ‘It is said in the legal document that Mr Simon St Claire has presented that his brother was pushed to his death off an upstairs balcony by his wife.’
‘Poppycock. Who was it that said that?’
‘The gardener, I think.’ Oliver spoke now. ‘He was the one who signed his name on the accusation.’
‘Trevor Dell, then, a man who can neither read nor write. He is here outside so I shall call him in to ask of it. He has not been himself of late and I can now well understand the reason why.’
A moment later a thin old man in rough clothes stood before them all. He had doffed his hat and held it tightly, looking very scared as he did so.
‘Mr Dell. These men here are friends of Mrs St Claire’s and they are trying to help her. They said you signed a sheet of paper that accused her of pushing her husband to his death.’
Tears began to trickle from his old rheumy eyes and Trevor Dell wiped them away with a dirty sleeve. ‘I did not know what I was supposed to do. Mr Simon St Claire said I’d lose my job here if I didn’t sign it at the bottom and so I did. I wrote my few letters and he was gone away. Later I heard that Mrs St Claire were in trouble and it seemed the letter I signed were a big part of it. Mr Kerrick at the village pub read the article out to me about Mrs St Claire that said I saw her push her husband.’
‘So you did not see Mrs St Claire push her husband?’
‘I did, but not like how the paper says it. He’d grabbed her special book that she writes in and she tried to get it back and over he went. It were a trip more than a push, I would say. An accident that were brought on by his actions more than anything else.’
Phillip nodded and softened his voice. ‘If I wrote up a report of what you have just told us, would you sign this new letter? Mrs Heron and my brother will sign the bottom, too, just to put things right. If Simon St Claire is still in a mind of taking away any of your jobs because of this I can promise you all better ones at my estate, Elmsworth, about fifty miles from here.’
The old man’s eyes began to fill with tears as he nodded.
In the afternoon Philip and Oliver found Mr MacDonald in the legal firm of Fox and Pringle halfway down the main street of Winchester. He was a handsome, youngish man who looked nothing like Phillip had expected him to.
When he heard why they were there he blushed roundly and showed them into his small office.
‘I think I know why you are here. It is because of Wilhelmina, is it not?’
The familiarity of his address irritated Phillip.
