The Last Mrs. Summers Read online

  “We’ll be fine, Mrs. Holbrook,” I said. “All we really want is a cuppa and a chance to talk.”

  Mrs. Holbrook scurried off. “Queenie!” I heard her bellowing. “Get to work. We’ve got company.”

  Belinda looked at me suspiciously. “Did she say Queenie? Your former maid? Your absolutely dreadful former maid?”

  “The same.”

  “And she is now your cook? And you haven’t been poisoned yet and she hasn’t set the kitchen on fire?”

  “Once or twice,” I admitted, “but she’s actually proving to be rather a good cook. Only simple English food, I’m afraid, but she does bake well. And I am supposed to be looking for a proper chef de cuisine. It’s just that it seems a little intimidating.”

  I led Belinda through to the sitting room. She looked around. “You have made this so comfortable,” she said. “Those pretty loose covers on the chairs and that divine view over the lake.”

  “Yes, it is quite nice, isn’t it?” I agreed. “Mummy helped me while she was still here and she does have awfully good taste.”

  Belinda plopped into an armchair. “I can’t believe it. My friend Georgie who slept on my couch, who didn’t have two halfpennies to rub together, and now all this! Who would have thought that we’d both have fallen on our feet so nicely?”

  “We’ve both been through a lot,” I said. Her gaze held mine. We both knew what the lot was that she had been through. The betrayal. The baby she had been forced to give up. Mine had been nothing so dramatic—just the knowledge that I was not wanted in my family home and really hadn’t had any means of support until recently. “So tell me,” I went on, lifting the conversation out of this gloomy phase, “your grandmother’s will. You knew she’d left you money, didn’t you? But it was more than you expected?”

  “Oh yes. Absolutely oodles of it, darling,” Belinda said. “And not just money. Some rather extravagant jewelry, for one thing. Heavy Victorian stuff, nothing I’d wear but some really fine stones that can be reset or sold. Oh, and her house in Bath. A Georgian house in one of the crescents. Très, très elegant. And”—she paused, waving an excited finger at me—“a property in Cornwall.”

  “How amazing,” I said. “I thought you told me she had sold her house in Cornwall long ago.”

  “That’s right, so I did,” Belinda said. “She had a lovely property near the coast, called Trengilly Manor. I used to spend my summers there, after Daddy married the witch and I was no longer welcome in my own home. I was really despondent when Granny decided that Trengilly had become too much for her and she needed to be near good doctors, good theater and good food and moved to Bath. Then I was sent off to school in Switzerland so it didn’t matter awfully much, but I still miss that house. We had such good times there. . . .” Her face had grown quite wistful.

  “But now you find she owned another property in Cornwall?”

  Belinda nodded. “I was astounded, darling. Why hadn’t I known about it? I don’t think it’s anything impressive like Trengilly was, but it’s supposedly in the same part of the world as the old house and it’s called White Sails. It may be really nice to have a bolt-hole on a Cornish beach when I need to get away from the world.”

  She looked around. “So where is everybody? You said Darcy is off somewhere, but your mother and grandfather and Sir Hubert?”

  “All deserted me, I’m afraid,” I said. “Mummy went back to Max when he sent her a telegram saying he couldn’t live without her. That made Sir Hubert decide he needed to go and climb more mountains. And Granddad is whipping the boys of the East End into shape. Everyone has something to do except me. . . .”

  We broke off the conversation as Emily, another girl we had recruited from the village to train as a parlormaid, came in wheeling the tea trolley.

  “Queenie says she’s awful sorry, your ladyship,” Emily said, “but she don’t have much in the way of cake at the moment. She said she couldn’t whip cakes out of thin air.” She blushed crimson as she repeated the words.

  I looked at the tray that contained cucumber sandwiches, a few chocolate biscuits, some of which were broken, and a rather sad little slice of fruit cake.

  This was the part of being lady of the manor that I hated. I wasn’t very good at being stern and terrifying. “Would you ask Queenie to come here right away, Emily,” I said, trying to keep my face calm and composed.

  Belinda shot me an amused look. “Quite a good cook, you said?”

  After a few minutes we heard thumping in the corridor outside and Queenie appeared, red-faced as if she’d been running. She adjusted her cap which had fallen over one ear, brushed down a dirty apron and said, “Wotcher, miss. We thought you’d gone off gallivanting in London or I’d have had something for your tea.”

  “Queenie, what happened to yesterday’s sponge cake?” I asked. “I seem to remember there was a big piece left.”

  Queenie had the grace to blush. “Oh well, seeing as how you’d gone off for a while, we finished it.”

  “You mean you finished it, I suspect.”

  She gave an embarrassed little smirk.

  I took a deep breath. “Queenie, this isn’t good enough,” I said. “A house like this should always have a good supply of homemade biscuits, not those odds and ends of chocolate fingers from the village shop. And there should always be some sort of cake in case visitors call unexpectedly. I’m afraid you are becoming rather lazy. Now that you only have one person to cook for apart from the staff let’s see a little more effort in the cake department, shall we?”

  “Right you are, miss,” she said.

  “Oh, and, Queenie, Miss Warburton-Stoke will be staying to dinner. I do hope you can rustle up something more appealing than a stodge of some sort.”

  “I’ve already made a meat pie,” she said.

  “That will do splendidly. Your pastry is very good,” I said. “Perhaps with a cauliflower au gratin?”

  She didn’t look too pleased. “Well, miss, you see that pie was supposed to be for our dinner. I’m not sure there’s enough to go around.”

  “Then you’ll have to be creative and come up with something else for the staff, won’t you?”

  “I don’t know what,” she said, aggressively now. “I ain’t some ruddy magician, you know. I can’t wave me wand and rustle meals out of thin air. We don’t keep a lot of meat in the house when you’re not here.”

  “Then it will have to be bread and dripping, won’t it?” I said, giving her a sweet smile. “You’ll think of something.”

  “Bread and dripping? I need to keep up me strength,” Queenie said. “It’s tiring work all on me tod in a big kitchen like this.”

  “Then maybe your worries are at an end,” I said. “I plan to have Miss Warburton-Stoke help me find a qualified chef.”

  “What’s wrong with my cooking, then?” she demanded.

  “Nothing, except it’s limited to the foods you know and we will have to start entertaining eventually when Mr. O’Mara comes home.”

  “You ain’t going to get another of them Spaniards, are you? Because if so I’m heading straight back to Darcy’s auntie in Ireland. They appreciated me, they did.”

  “I know that, and I do appreciate you too—most of the time. I just want you to do the job properly. And when we have hired a qualified chef, you should learn from him how to make more elaborate dishes.”

  “There ain’t much wrong with a good old toad-in-the-hole or bangers and mash in my opinion,” she muttered. “Will that be all, then?”

  “How about whipping us up a batch of scones, unless you’re also out of flour?”

  “Bob’s yer uncle, miss,” she said, quite happily now and off she went.

  Belinda gave me an exasperated look. “Georgie, she’s still utterly hopeless,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be the kindest thing to put her out of her misery right now?”

&
nbsp; I had to laugh. “Belinda! She’s not too bad most of the time. We’ve caught her off guard, and she’s probably feeling guilty.”

  Belinda had removed her chic driving cap and shook out her sleek black hair. “You’re going to have to get rid of her eventually, you know. You can’t have proper visitors here with a cook who talks to you like that.”

  I sighed. “The problem is that I’m fond of her in a way. And she has been awfully brave in difficult situations. She saved my life, you know. I have come to accept that she will never learn.”

  “She doesn’t want to learn, that’s quite obvious. She’s completely bolshie. But I must say I was impressed with the way you spoke to her. Quite like the lady of the manor. You’ve come a long way since you were shy and bumbling Georgie.”

  “I still hate doing it,” I said. “I’m not naturally bossy.” I picked up the teapot and poured two cups. “Anyway, back to Cornwall,” I said. “This new property. What do you know about it?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Belinda said. “So I thought I ought to go down and take a look for myself. And I wondered if you’d like to come with me. A girl’s outing. And adventure. Just like old times, what?”

  “Oh rather,” I said.

  Chapter 3

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15

  On the way to Cornwall. Holding on to my hat. Belinda drives awfully fast! Golly, I hope we get there in one piece.

  We set off at first light the next day. The journey did not start too auspiciously as Queenie overslept (no doubt as a result of that large piece of sponge cake and the remains of the jam roly-poly she made for dinner) and did not wake us with the customary cup of tea.

  When she found out we were about to depart that morning she looked hurt. “You’re buggering off, without me?” she said. “I might be the cook now but I’m also your maid, ain’t I? It’s not right that you go off without a maid. Who else is going to take care of you?”

  I found this rather touching. She had been the worst maid in the history of service but, as I told Belinda, she had also been awfully brave at times. I found myself smiling. “That’s very kind of you, Queenie. But we are going in Miss Belinda’s little sports car and frankly you wouldn’t fit inside. Besides, it’s not as if we are attending a house party where a maid would be in order. We are just going to look at a piece of property.”

  “Bob’s yer uncle, then,” she said. “But if you’re buggering off, there ain’t no point in my making them cakes you wanted, is there?” And she went back to her kitchen before I could reply.

  When we went to retrieve the motorcar from the stables we found that yesterday’s glorious weather had turned into a more normal October day of blustery rain that peppered windows and swirled up dead leaves. Belinda and Phipps had to wrestle to put up the roof of the sports car and we discovered that it wasn’t exactly wind- and rainproof. We set off, both of us feeling a little grumpy.

  “We could wait for better weather, I suppose,” Belinda had said.

  “It could rain for the whole rest of the month,” I pointed out.

  She nodded agreement. “Perhaps it will be better in Cornwall. I always remember such glorious weather during my summer holidays there.”

  “It’s all right. I’m used to rain,” I said. “Up at Castle Rannoch in Scotland this kind of weather was the norm. All summer too. So depressing. My brother, Binky, is the only one who manages to remain cheerful. I’m so glad I’m far away.”

  “From your frightful sister-in-law, Fig, you mean?”

  “I do. The last time she wrote she suggested it might be fun for them to come down to us for Christmas, since I have now inherited such a large house. Can you imagine Christmas with Fig? Father Christmas would take one look and not come down the chimney.”

  Belinda laughed. I stopped talking hurriedly and grabbed on to the door as we skidded around a corner. “Perhaps you should slow down a little on these wet roads,” I suggested.

  “We want to make it by nightfall, don’t we?” Belinda said. “There’s precious few places to spend the night along the way, not until we get to the coast. And night on Bodmin Moor is not what I’d recommend.”

  She put her foot down again and we slithered around the next corner, coming dangerously close to the bank. Things improved a little when we picked up the main road to the West Country, except that Belinda felt she had to overtake every lorry she met. We had a few close calls, making me wonder if this trip was such a good idea after all. Then we struck out cross-country again, speeding through Winchester, Salisbury, then into Somerset and finally Devon. Luckily the inclement weather meant that there was not too much traffic, as we were still going awfully fast. We passed through one pretty Devon town after another, with Belinda impatiently negotiating narrow streets. At last she was brought to a halt in Honiton where it was market day and we had to wait while farmers drove herds of sheep or led cows through the streets. We stopped for a late lunch in Exeter, eating a rather good roast lamb in the shadow of Exeter Cathedral. We filled the tank with petrol and set off again. As Belinda had predicted, the rain had lifted a little. It was now a fine drizzle rather than the more dangerous bluster we had endured previously.

  Then we forged into bleaker country, skirting the northern edge of Dartmoor with scant signs of civilization.

  “I could do with a cup of tea and to stretch my legs, couldn’t you?” I suggested after we had been driving through wild and deserted countryside with only a hint of an occasional tin mine or clay digging to tell us that other humans were not too far away.

  “Good luck with that,” Belinda said. “We haven’t passed a house for at least half an hour. Where are we, anyway?”

  I had been assigned the job of navigator with a map on my knees. I peered down at it. “We must be close to Bodmin Moor.”

  “Why does that not cheer me up?” Belinda said. “About the most desolate spot on the planet. Oh, and look, the mist is coming down, right on cue.”

  And it was. As the road entered a countryside of desolate upland, the light rain turned to mist. We could hardly see the road ahead.

  “One of the old smuggling routes.” Belinda attempted to sound cheerful. “We’ll be fine as long as we don’t come across four and twenty ponies trotting through the dark. Remember that poem?”

  I nodded. “‘Watch the wall, my darling, as the gentlemen go by.’” I chuckled. “They don’t still go in for smuggling in Cornwall, do they?”

  “Oh, I should think so. It’s in the blood. They probably have stopped deliberately wrecking ships by luring them onto the rocks and then plundering them, but who knows? They are a wild bunch down here, you know. Mad Celts.”

  “Aren’t you one of them?” I gave her a challenging glance.

  “Not really. My grandfather bought the house in Cornwall when they returned from India when my mother was a child. We’re not a Cornish family. So I’m actually perfectly civilized.”

  “Most of the time,” I added.

  I think we were keeping up the banter to keep our spirits cheerful. It really was a most dreary place. Occasionally a wheelhouse of a tin mine would rear through the mist like a strange creature, but then we’d be driving through nothingness again, the cold damp mist swirling around us.

  “Just how big is this moor?” I asked. “It’s not the one with the hound of the Baskervilles, is it?”

  “No, that’s Dartmoor. We’ve already done that.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “I think a giant slavering hound might be the last straw right now in making me want to spend a penny.”

  “We could stop and you could go beside the road,” Belinda suggested.

  “Belinda, I certainly couldn’t do that.”

  “There is nobody else for miles, Georgie.” She put her foot on the brake and pulled to the side of the road. “There. A bush for you.”

  Reluctantly I got out and was
instantly enveloped in moist, sticky mist. I picked my way over tufts of rough grass.

  “Watch out for bogs,” Belinda called after me. “Bodmin Moor is famous for its bogs.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I called back. “I had an encounter with a bog on Dartmoor once and I have no wish to repeat it.”

  “You got stuck in one?”

  “No, I watched somebody disappear in one. It was horrid.”

  “You’ve lived an interesting life,” she called after me. Her voice echoed strangely through the mist. Although I was only a few paces from the motor it was hard to say in which direction it was. I took care of the most urgent matter as quickly as I could and was thankful to find the road again. I got in, brushing moisture from my face. “It’s truly miserable out there. I hope all of Cornwall isn’t going to be like this?”

  “Oh no. Just the moor. You’ll see, when we reach the town of Bodmin, we’ll be on the other side and all will be fine again. Cornwall is noted for its good weather, remember. The English Riviera.”

  “Really.” I peered into the gloom.

  At last the uplands came to an end and we encountered our first house. We stopped for a cup of tea and a bun in the town of Bodmin and then on again.

  “Not far now,” Belinda said, and true to her word the mist had vanished, leaving that fine rain again. The road passed through small mining towns, each with streets of faceless gray stone houses. I began to wonder what Belinda thought was so magical about this place, but I kept my thoughts to myself. After all, I was with my best friend on an adventure which was certainly better than sitting alone at Eynsleigh and wondering what Queenie would serve for dinner.

  We had left any semblance of towns behind. The road had now turned into a lane with stone walls on either side, so narrow that I don’t know what we’d have done if we met another car. Even Belinda had to slow down at this point. Over high hedges I just had occasional glimpses of fields. And in the fields were tall chunks of granite.