Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

just a little gray cells exercise, remember? What do you say we head for the village and have a traditional pub lunch?”

“I say you are a wise man, Sensei. Lead on.”

FIVE

We were approaching the hedge and wall that encircled the castle, on our way to the only road on the island, intending to follow it for the half mile down to the village and the pub, when we saw, about three or four hundred yards away, Bee, sitting on some of the wall’s fallen stones, looking out at the landscape. She was wearing a flimsy white summer dress and a large, white hat with a broad blue ribbon around it. She spotted us approaching and waved, and we made our way toward her. As we drew closer she waved again and called, “Halloo! Hallo, you two! What a glorious morning! Where have you been? I demand you tell me!”

She beamed at us and Dehan laughed. “We went to the stones. What are you doing out here?”

She rolled her eyes and raised her hands in mock despair. “Oh, I simply had to get out! I couldn’t take that woman for another moment!”

I didn’t ask because I didn’t really want to know. Dehan did because she did. “Which woman would that be, Bee?”

“Well, there is only one.”

“There were two last night.”

Bee raised a baleful eyebrow. “Oh, you mean that appalling Sally. No, she is not a guest at the castle, not, at least, in the conventional sense. I refer to Pamela.”

“You two not pals, huh?”

“My dear, you have a gift for understatement. I despise the woman and she has the cheek to despise me back.”

In spite of myself, I frowned and asked, “Isn’t that how it normally works?”

“Oh, my dear boy, how delightfully American of you. Give me a hand down, will you, I’ll walk you to the gate.”

I handed her down from the rock she was sitting on and she took my arm. We began to walk and Bee smiled at Dehan. “You chose well. My mother used to tell us, ‘Only marry a man if you feel safe on his arm, otherwise he’ll turn out to be queer or a sissy.’ That’s what they call ‘gay’ these days, and of course it’s all the rage. But when I was young, we wanted men to be men.”

I smiled and changed the subject. “You have a sister.”

She smiled up at me. “Had. She died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was many years ago. Oh…” She paused and looked up at the sky, calculating. A warm breeze moved her dress and her hair in a sudden gust, and suddenly I could feel the storm in the air. “Oh, it must be nearly forty years ago.” We started walking again. “She was engaged to Charles.”

Dehan came around and took Bee’s other arm. “Bee, do you mean that your sister was engaged to Charles Gordon Sr.?”

“Oh yes. Old Man Gordon was all for it, even though we weren’t clan, because they’d be marrying into the aristocracy, albeit minor aristocracy. Would have been the cherry on the cake for him. The title is hereditary, you see. We’ve held it since we backed the Tudors against Richard. It would have given him a legitimacy he could not have dreamt of otherwise.”

“So what happened?”

“Maggie, that was my sister, Lady Margaret Butterworth, went out to Boston during his last year at university. Then she came back and he followed after he’d graduated. She was terribly in love with him. He is, after all, a rather fascinating man, isn’t he?”

Dehan smiled noncommittally. “She was older than you.”

“I was a mere slip of a girl back then. Barely twelve years old when they met. But even then I was aware of his intensity, the sheer power of the man. He was like his father, but more so. His father could never control him, you know.” She sighed. “To Charles it was only ever a marriage of convenience. But to poor Maggie, he was the love of her life. She was besotted.”

We were approaching the end of the wall. Around the corner were the gate and the driveway. Dehan was frowning and there was almost a sense of urgency to her questions.

“So when did he meet Pamela?”

“Well!” She said it as though it were self explanatory. “Imagine! Accustomed to Boston and New York, moving to live on Gordon’s Soma, he was out of his mind with boredom. He spent some time in London, but his father wanted him by his side. He wanted to infuse him with the same insane passion that he felt for this godforsaken lump of rock.” She sighed again. “But Charles never felt it, and besides, he was a rebel at heart. I believe he would have done anything at all to defy his father. So he began to frequent the pub, where you are about to have lunch, and there he met Pam. She was the publican’s daughter. She was very different back then, I can tell you!”

We had reached the corner and Bee drew to a halt.

Dehan asked, “Different in what way?”

Bee burst out laughing. “Well, for a start she was amusing! She was a very, very naughty girl! She and Charles used to get up to all sorts of outrageous things. She was a hoot! I was really quite fond of her back then. She was just that bit older than me but quite anarchic and, honestly, my recollection of her was that she was always laughing. Always had this mischievous, outrageous twinkle in her eye. And then…” She spread her hands. “Then Charles, foolish, foolish Charles went and ruined everything by falling in love with her.”

I was intrigued in spite of my better judgment. “How did that ruin everything if he was in love with her, and she was in love with him?”

She looked