The late Lord Fitzhenry, aged 48, is survived by a nine-year-old son, Francis Fitzhenry, and his second wife, Celia ‘Cricket’ Fitzhenry, nee Applegate, daughter of Sir Winston Applegate, proprietor of theEvening Record. The Fitzhenry family endured a previous tragedy in December 1972, with the sudden death of Lady Adeline Fitzhenry, first wife of the late Lord Fitzhenry, when she suffered a fatal fall inside the manor’s historic seventeenth-century walls.
Dorothea Stewart, aged 29, is described as standing approximately five feet in height, with slight build, large brown eyes and long dark hair.
Miss Stewart’s background also attracts attention. She is the youngest child of the late Beatrice Stewart, nee Montgomery, who was reported to be estranged from her family after her father, Lord William Montgomery, the Sixth Earl of Soster, refused to attend her wedding to a Scottish horse-racing personality whom he reportedly called an ‘unworthy miscreant’.
The Cambridgeshire Constabulary have asked members of the public to come forward without delay if they have any information about the death of Lord Fitzhenry, or the whereabouts of Dorothea Stewart.
Roddy looks up from the article, feeling vaguely faint. He stares out the shop window. Across the road sits a small stone church—Saint Luke’s—the grass around it is brown and brittle from the summer heat. He has an urge to enter it and sit on a pew and ask unanswerable questions to some higher authority; someone who might be across the detail. If this sorry taleispart of Phyllida’s background, it doesn’t bode well.
And it’s tragic. The boy, Francis, clearly had a crappy childhood; losing his mother in a fall, then his father to a shotgun wound.
‘I wonder how his mother fell to her death,’ asks Roddy.
Lottie shrugs. ‘Maybe she slipped getting out of the bath.’
Sienna is tapping on her phone. ‘I can see an article from a few years later that Dorothea Stewart was never found, and that she was still wanted in connection with the murder.’
Roddy asks her for his new login details forThe London Standardnews archives. He finds another article with details about the crime. ‘She must have remained under suspicion for the murder, because she’s still listed as a wanted person, years later.’
‘Nineteen seventy-five was like, ages ago,’ says Sienna. ‘Old mate Dorothea’s been a legend at evading the cops.’
‘You can’t call this Dorotheaold mate,’ says Roddy irritably. ‘She was the granddaughter of an earl.’
‘Bro, what’s your problem?’ Sienna screws up her face at him. ‘Also why are you defining her by her grandad? That’s so misogynistic.’
Roddy sighs.
‘Anyway,’ says Sienna. ‘Don’t we need to focus on the kid? Francis? That’s who Phyllida must have meant. He’d be, like, sixty by now. We can get private detectives who can do interviews and surveillance and stuff. I can email one for you.’ She hasn’t bothered to look up from her phone as she speaks. Her fingers are flying over the screen.
‘What are you doing? Don’t contact a private detective! You need to get off your phone,’ splutters Roddy.
‘Can’t. Doing my streaks.’
What on earth did thatmean? She is taking selfies, making different faces each time at a rate of approximately one every three seconds. He looks across at Lottie for help.
‘She’s answering her friends’ Snapchats,’ says Lottie, looking back at the article on her laptop. She is tapping her fingernail on the desk repeatedly, a woodpecker into Roddy’s tired brain.
‘Is it lunchtime?’ he asks. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Sure. I brought stuff in. You’re on sandwich duty.’ Lottie grins.
He heads into the kitchen, puts together some sandwiches and boils the kettle again, trying to quell the rising unease he is feeling about what they are digging into. When he takes the lunch tray out, Sienna looks up.
‘I found a true crime podcast about cold cases,’ she says. ‘Lottie and I were about to listen. It’s got two episodes on the murder of the old Lord Fitzhenry.’
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Help yourselves.’ He puts the sandwiches on the table.
‘Any Vegemite ones?’
‘Sorry. Ham or cheese.’
Sienna makes a dismissive face and looks back at her phone. ‘In episode two it says here they interview a midwife who reckons she delivered a baby at Bleddesley House the month before the murder, and that the birth must have been covered up. Want to listen to that bit first?’
‘Yes! How intriguing,’ says Lottie.
‘It’s from four years ago. The episodes are calledMurder at the Manor. Not very original.’
Roddy brings the office chair across as Sienna turns on the recording.
