Death and the Singing Birds Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Also by Amy Myers From Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Wychbourne Court

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Also by Amy Myers from Severn House

  The Nell Drury mysteries

  DANCING WITH DEATH

  DEATH AT THE WYCHBOURNE FOLLIES

  The Jack Colby, Car Detective, series

  CLASSIC IN THE BARN

  CLASSIC CALLS THE SHOTS

  CLASSIC IN THE CLOUDS

  CLASSIC MISTAKE

  CLASSIC IN THE PITS

  CLASSIC CASHES IN

  CLASSIC IN THE DOCK

  CLASSIC AT BAY

  The Marsh and Daughter mysteries

  THE WICKENHAM MURDERS

  MURDER IN FRIDAY STREET

  MURDER IN HELL’S CORNER

  MURDER AND THE GOLDEN GOBLET

  MURDER IN THE MIST

  MURDER TAKES THE STAGE

  MURDER ON THE OLD ROAD

  MURDER IN ABBOT’S FOLLY

  DEATH AND THE

  SINGING BIRDS

  Amy Myers

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2020

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2021 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2020 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2020 by Amy Myers.

  The right of Amy Myers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8994-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-730-9 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0451-6 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described

  for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are

  fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Kent is known for its splendid stately homes and the area in which the fictional Wychbourne Court is situated is blessed with, amongst others, the magnificent Knole Park, Ightham Mote, Sissinghurst Castle and Hever Castle. Wychbourne Court has its own history which dates back to Norman times and earlier. Nell Drury became its chef and resident detective thanks to my publisher Kate Lyall Grant of Severn House and my agent Sara Keane, and Death and the Singing Birds is Nell’s third case. The family and staff in this novel are almost unchanged, and the story features Mr Briggs, valet to Lord Ansley. For his existence I owe my thanks to Steve Finnis, volunteer at the Royal West Kent Museum in Maidstone, who at the beginning of this series provided such valuable information on the 10th Battalion in 1918 together with insights into what Mr Briggs might have endured as a result that Mr Briggs appeared, fully formed in my mind, to play his part in the story. Thank you, Steve. No novel should leap straight from paper or screen into print, and I am lucky enough to have Sara Porter as my editor, whose eager eyes, together with those of her excellent copyeditor, Katherine Laidler, polished the novel’s rough edges. Thanks to all the above, Wychbourne Court has become a second home to me (but fortunately I don’t have to rival Nell’s cuisine).

  WYCHBOURNE COURT

  Members of the Ansley family involved in Death and the Singing Birds

  Lord (Gerald) Ansley, 8th Marquess Ansley

  Lady (Gertrude) Ansley, Marchioness Ansley

  Lord Richard Ansley, one of their three sons

  Lady Enid, the Dowager Marchioness

  Lady Clarice, Lord Ansley’s sister

  The upper servants

  Nell Drury, chef

  Charles Briggs, Lord Ansley’s valet

  Florence Fielding, housekeeper

  Frederick Peters, butler

  Jenny Smith, Lady Ansley’s maid

  Guests, visitors and neighbours

  Sir Gilbert Saddler, artist and owner of Spitalfrith Manor

  Lady Saddler (Lisette Rennard), Sir Gilbert’s wife

  Petra Saddler, Sir Gilbert’s daughter

  Vincent Finch, artist

  Gert Radley, artist

  Pierre Christophe, artist

  Thora Huntley-Doran, poetess

  Lance Merryman, artist and designer

  Joe Carter, Spitalfrith’s gardener

  Freddie Carter, Joe’s son

  Robin Gurney, village constable

  Jean-Paul Girarde, magician

  and

  Detective Chief Inspector Alexander Melbray of Scotland Yard

  ONE

  Not again! Nell Drury groaned. Blithering bloaters, this was the third time at least she’d told Michel that the redcurrants still required more sweetening. Normally such a brilliant underchef, it was clear he had his mind on something other than preparing a summer luncheon for Lord and Lady Ansley’s guests at Wychbourne Court. More accurately, they were the guests of Lady Enid – his lordship’s mother, the dowager – who had, so Nell had been told, commanded that the luncheon be held here instead of at the nearby Dower House, her own home.

  ‘It’s for the new owners of Spitalfrith Manor,’ Lady Ansley had explained. ‘I do have misgivings about them,’ she had added impulsively.

  Nell had been intrigued. Rumours had been flying around Wychbourne village for some weeks, and finally a week ago, at the end of July, the new neighbours had arrived – which promptly sparked off another round of rumours. Even though this was 1926, eight years since the war had ended, villages the size of Wychbourne eyed the outside world cautiously. It amused her that she was still regarded as a newcomer even though she had been the chef at Wychbourne Court for nearly two years.

  ‘I regret, Miss Drury,’ Michel said anxiously, rushing to remedy the situation with the sugar tongs in hand.

  ‘He’s in love,’ Kitty, his fellow underchef, whispered, giggling.

  ‘No one’s allowed time off for love in a kitchen,’ Nell said firmly. ‘So snap to it. Now.’ At least twenty-two-year-old Kitty and Michel we
ren’t in love with each other. Kitty was being courted by a village swain and was immune to Michel’s indefatigable zest for sudden romance – usually one-sided. Michel was roughly the same age as Kitty, and Nell had noticed several nocturnal absences (judging by his late arrivals or absences at breakfast in the servants’ hall).

  For a moment all was quiet, apart from the clatter of saucepans, frying pans and kettles, plus the whirling whisks and mincing machines as her staff concentrated on their tasks. Not for long.

  ‘I heard they’re artists up at Spitalfrith,’ burst out one of the kitchen maids.

  ‘Funny ones probably.’ Mrs Squires, Nell’s plain cook, snorted. ‘Not real artists. Just the sort that can’t even draw what’s in front of them properly. Anyway, the lady’s a model, so I heard.’

  ‘With no clothes on?’ Michel asked with interest.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Kitty said indignantly. ‘The gentleman coming to the lunch is a sir. Anyway, he’s a friend of Lady Enid’s, so he’d ask the lady to keep her clothes on.’

  ‘I bet he hasn’t painted Lady Enid without any clothes on.’ Someone giggled.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Nell commanded, suppressing a giggle of her own. ‘Luncheon! Turbot ready, please.’ The pace promptly quickened.

  That didn’t stop her wondering about the new neighbours, though. There was a splendid portrait of the dowager (or Lady Enid as she liked to be addressed) in the Great Hall, painted in 1894 by Sir Gilbert Saddler when he was a young man and she was the reigning marchioness. In that painting she was most certainly fully clad, resplendent in velvet and jewels.

  Sir Gilbert was the new owner of Spitalfrith Manor, which sat in the hamlet of a mere cluster of cottages that had grown up around it on the Sevenoaks road. It was on the outskirts of Wychbourne village and, compared with the vast Wychbourne Court, its estate was small. Spitalfrith had slumbered for many years under its former owner, a widower whose only son had died young. When he himself died a year ago, the estate had been sold, including its tied cottages. Life had changed greatly since the war, even in sleepy, rural Kent. All over the country, vast estates crippled by the loss of heirs or death duties were either being sold piecemeal for all sorts of purposes or shrunk to the point where they were no longer viable.

  The Ansley family, itself struggling to keep its estate viable, had watched anxiously to know the fate of Spitalfrith Manor. Would it become a school? A public building? A socialist headquarters (the great wish of Lady Sophy, the youngest of the Ansleys’ three children, who was dedicated to the cause of the Labour Party)? Or would it once more be a private house? And if the latter, who would come to live there? Until about two weeks ago, even Lord Ansley, the 8th Marquess Ansley and usually a fount of all knowledge through the House of Lords and his London clubs, had failed to produce an answer.

  Two weeks ago, the news had come, but the rumours had multiplied. It had not gone unnoticed by Mr Peters, the Wychbourne butler, that, against all the rules of etiquette, Sir Gilbert and his family had not replied to the calling cards politely left by the Ansleys on their arrival. And yet they were coming to luncheon. This, to Nell’s amusement though not surprise, was an outrage. How, Mr Peters had enquired grimly of his fellow upper servants, had this invitation been extended? Even he had not been informed before it was arranged.

  ‘Lady Enid’s doing, I’ll be bound,’ he had said darkly. ‘And that Lady Saddler’s a foreigner. French. Fancy not returning the call with her own cards. She doesn’t know what’s what.’

  Nell had managed to keep a straight face. Such breaches of convention were not the social crime they would have been before the war, but they still existed. At Wychbourne Court, the Ansleys did their utmost to adapt to the new times. Their son Lord Richard helped his father run the estate with a breezy friendliness that made him generally popular in the village, his elder sister Lady Helen added the dash of London glamour as a Bright Young Thing, and Lady Sophy, while regarded as ‘strange’ by the village, was accepted as harmless. Since the General Strike had collapsed in May, she had been remarkably quiet on the subject of socialism, however, with only a few impassioned outbursts about the reduction of the miners’ wages and unemployment.

  Now with the contentious luncheon only three-quarters of an hour away, Nell took a dose of her own medicine. Stir your stumps and get cracking, she told herself. The duckling needed checking, the broad beans cooking, the quails’ eggs preparing and artichoke bottoms stuffed. The head gardener, Mr Fairweather, had miraculously produced some late strawberries from the kitchen gardens and some raspberries were currently in the scullery for maggot removal.

  Nell allowed herself a cautious pat on the back. All was well in her department, but Lady Ansley’s doubts remained. As Lady Ansley was usually the most charitable of people, Nell took those doubts seriously. When she had taken the day’s menus to her for approval, Lady Ansley had asked if she would remain during luncheon in the servery, which overlooked the dining room. She only made such a request occasionally and this time she was very frank as to why.

  ‘I’d like to know what you make of them, Nell,’ she had said. ‘It’s wrong to prejudge people just from gossip, and Lady Enid speaks very highly of Sir Gilbert, although she has not met his new wife. A French model, I gather, who was a wartime heroine as a spy rebelling against the Germans in occupied Lille. I’m told she isn’t popular with our local villagers so far, but perhaps that’s as a result of the war. Perhaps it makes her wary of new faces.’

  Nell was about to leave when Lady Ansley had added in a rush, ‘Spitalfrith Manor has always seemed a strange place, as if it’s not part of Wychbourne village at all. Some of the villagers say that Spitalfrith attracts bad luck, even evil, but surely that’s just superstition? I do agree that the last owner, whom you won’t remember, lived a sad life, as did the owner before him, but that wasn’t their fault, nor that of Spitalfrith. Nevertheless, with all these rumours about Lady Saddler percolating, I can’t help but be somewhat anxious.’

  So this was Lady Saddler. Nell gazed at her in fascination through the servery hatch as her ladyship entered the dining room with Lord Ansley. In her earlier career at London’s Carlton Hotel, Nell had seen and worked with people of all nations and was well used to stylish French fashions, but never had she seen a lady quite as strange as this. Sleek and sinuous, her fashionable silk day dress clung to her figure like a snakeskin – an apt comparison given the way Lady Saddler seemed to shimmy into the room. Her dark hair was drawn back tightly into a chignon. Her painted face was like a doll’s – no, not a doll’s, Nell decided; it was motionless, almost like a mask, the eyes heavily kohled and almost hooded, the mouth vividly painted. Not a gentle face and yet one that fascinated her. Nell could not take her eyes off her. She said very little, sat very still and yet managed to be the centre of attention.

  Lady Saddler was in her early thirties, Nell guessed, but Sir Gilbert was much older, probably well into his fifties. He seemed somewhat out of his depth, as though wondering how to compete with his striking spouse, who was a stark contrast to this plump, seemingly affable man, who looked rather like Lewis Carroll’s Father William. Sir Gilbert, Nell had heard, had a daughter, Petra, by his first marriage, but she was not present, as she lived in London.

  First impressions of the new neighbours? No doubt about it, Nell thought. War heroine or not, Lady Saddler looked a very determined cuckoo in the Saddler nest. No mercy would be shown to fledglings here. Perhaps that was why Miss Petra Saddler preferred to stay in London.

  Lady Ansley was struggling with the conversation, and with no response at all from Lady Saddler, it was left to Sir Gilbert to cope. ‘Splendid place you have here,’ he remarked in the middle of an awkward silence.

  Lord Ansley’s mouth twitched at this unconvincing comment. ‘Thank you,’ he replied gravely.

  Lady Saddler did rouse herself at this point. ‘Versailles est plus grand,’ she commented dismissively.

  Let battle begin, Lady Enid, Nell thought, w
illing her on. You can deal with that.

  Lady Enid did. She treated her guest to the expression that had quelled generations of shopkeepers and family alike. ‘Versailles is a splendid building, but, alas, no longer a family home like Wychbourne.’

  This broadside had no effect on Lady Saddler. She ignored it. Not a good omen, Nell thought, torn between dismay and an urge to applaud.

  Oblivious to the atmosphere, Lord Ansley’s sister, Lady Clarice, blundered eagerly into the danger zone. ‘We have more ghosts at Wychbourne Court than Versailles. I believe Versailles only boasts poor Queen Marie Antoinette – beheaded, of course, but her ghost and those of her court still haunt Le Petit Trianon. Do allow me to take you on a tour of the Wychbourne phantoms. And indeed your own – I have reason to believe that at Spitalfrith—’

  Nell froze. This was hardly the most tactful way to forge a friendly atmosphere. Lady Clarice’s addiction to ghosts was tacitly tolerated by everyone at Wychbourne, but they were not an interest that everybody shared.

  ‘My dear Clarice,’ Lady Enid firmly restrained her daughter, ‘no doubt Sir Gilbert and Lady Saddler would be most interested in our phantoms and indeed their own, but do permit them time to appreciate their new home before indulging in its spectral history.’

  ‘Of course, Mama,’ Lady Clarice murmured, downcast at this rebuff. Nell was fond of Lady Clarice. Now in her early fifties, she lived at Wychbourne Court as she had never married owing to the death of her fiancé in the Boer War. The ghosts of Wychbourne were her great passion, often to the exclusion of all else, and her thin, determined figure anxiously in search of the latest phantom was a familiar sight in the many corridors of Wychbourne Court. This was the first Nell had heard about ghosts at Spitalfrith, though.