Death and the Singing Birds Read online

  ‘Are there any ghosts at Spitalfrith?’ Sir Gilbert asked, manfully doing his duty as a guest. ‘I haven’t seen any myself. Have you, my dear?’ he addressed his wife.

  As Lady Saddler remained silent, he continued hastily, ‘It’s a pity ghosts can’t be painted, eh, Lisette?’ He managed a weak grin, but his wife did not grin in return, Nell noted.

  Lady Saddler was indeed not a lady to cross, Nell decided, wondering what Robert, their chief footman who was waiting impassively to serve the duck, was making of all this. He wore his usual poker face, but no doubt the servants’ hall would hear all about it later.

  Lady Ansley clutched at this opening. ‘I do hope that you will find a great deal else to paint in Spitalfrith and Wychbourne, Sir Gilbert.’

  Full marks to Lady Ansley, Nell thought with relief. Back to safe ground.

  Sir Gilbert beamed. ‘The Clerries will.’

  Nell blinked. No safe ground yet. The what?

  ‘Who are they? My dear Gilbert, do tell us more,’ Lady Enid said somewhat frostily.

  ‘The Clerries – more formally the Artistes de Cler – owe their name to the great General Joseph Gustav Cler who was killed at the battle of Magenta between the Emperor Napoleon III and the Italians,’ Sir Gilbert obliged enthusiastically. ‘He was also an artist. The Clerries’ founder, Monsieur Pierre Christophe, is a great admirer of his gifts; he bases his own artistic aim on presenting truth.’

  ‘I trust that this is not one of those avant-garde movements?’ Lady Enid responded icily. ‘You are a prominent academician, Gilbert. Surely you cannot regard such movements as more than temporary interruptions to the true path of art.’

  To Nell’s amusement, Sir Gilbert turned as pink as a cooked prawn, but he did his best. ‘I experiment with the principles of the Clerries, because—’

  Lady Saddler’s bored voice stopped him immediately. ‘Truth. La vérité? There is no such thing as the truth in art.’

  ‘All art is truth,’ Lady Clarice offered eagerly. ‘I remember Adelaide, the ghost of—’

  Her mother waved this quickly aside. ‘Gilbert, kindly explain,’ she commanded. ‘Do you count yourself one of these Artistes de Cler?’

  ‘I do,’ he answered anxiously. ‘After the war ended, I visited Paris to find inspiration, recapture the vision that we artists had in the 1890s. It had since given way to so many art forms – cubism, fauvism, expressionism and now surrealism – that despite the life, the energy, the excitement of art today, I felt I had lost my way.’

  This sounded to Nell like a well-rehearsed speech, but then he brightened up. ‘And then I found it. At last I realized that by stripping away the dross to the skeleton one reaches the essential truth, whether it be of the body or a leaf or the imagination itself.’ Sir Gilbert looked round, clearly pleased at this explanation.

  Nell had a fleeting image of her kitchen reduced to its skeleton. What, she wondered, as she organized the arrival of the dessert dishes in the servery, was the essential truth of a trifle? Should one return to cream, custard and jelly or further still? Or was a trifle only skeletonized as it was being eaten? Take this seriously, she instructed herself. Was there more truth in a barren tree than a leafy one? Surely both were true? Or did one have to strip off the bark as well? On the whole, Nell decided, she’d stick to trifle, truthful or not.

  Bemused, she saw the Ansleys’ polite but blank faces, as Sir Gilbert might have done because he added hastily, ‘Our friends who are visiting us for our festival in two weeks’ time will explain the Artistes de Cler more clearly. And we are to hold an exhibition of their work next year at the Academy of Modern Art in London.’

  ‘That,’ contributed Lady Saddler smoothly, ‘is not yet certain.’

  She smiled, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that warmed the cockles of one’s heart. It was more the smile of a crocodile, Nell thought, then felt ashamed of herself for such a disparaging view of a war heroine. War changed people, it ruined lives. But what was all this about a festival?

  Sir Gilbert’s sudden burst of confidence seemed to drain away. ‘As my dear wife says, it is not yet certain,’ he said unhappily.

  Nell shivered. There was something strange about his ‘dear wife’, apart from her appearance.

  ‘You referred to a festival, Sir Gilbert. Might I ask what it is?’ Lord Ansley asked quickly, signalling to the chief footman Robert to serve the dessert.

  ‘Ah.’ After a quick glance at his wife, Sir Gilbert was only too happy to tell them. ‘In two weeks’ time, on Saturday the twenty-first of August, we shall be holding the very first Festival de Cler in the grounds of Spitalfrith Manor. Monsieur Christophe himself will be doing us the honour of attending it, as will other fellow Clerries. He has naturally chosen Africa as its theme and we artistes will be exhibiting our work.’

  Africa in Wychbourne? Nell struggled with that concept with one part of her mind, while the other watched the reception of her Coupe Melba. What did Sir Gilbert mean by ‘naturally’? What on earth would the Wychbourne villagers make of this Africa theme and the artists themselves? She tried to suppress a mental image of a group of unclad skeletons tramping round the village.

  ‘Will there be shamans present?’ Lady Clarice asked with excitement.

  Sir Gilbert looked blank. ‘I cannot be sure of that,’ he added less certainly, perhaps conscious of his wife’s cold lack of support or perhaps, like Nell, unsure what shamans were. ‘But Africa is certainly a cornerstone of the Clerries’ art.’

  ‘Why?’ Lady Clarice asked eagerly. ‘Is it because Josephine Baker is taking Paris by storm?’

  Trust Lady Clarice to ask what all of them were wondering but no one dared say, Nell thought.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sir Gilbert replied miserably. ‘Look at Gauguin’s work. Africa is untarnished by the complications of Western life. Nature in its rawest form, stripped of modern life’s fripperies.’

  From what Nell had seen in the newspapers, the word ‘stripped’ was all too applicable, given Josephine Baker’s scanty costumes. The American singer had indeed taken Paris by storm with her singing and dancing. Fortunately, however, Nell could see no call for stripping down her cuisine to bare bones. Nor, on reflection, did she see much point in the Clerries’ aims. Shouldn’t every artistic work reflect the truth?

  ‘Everyone in Wychbourne is invited to our festival,’ Sir Gilbert continued. ‘Including everyone here at the Court.’ He smiled nervously at his hosts. ‘High and low,’ he added. ‘From aristocrats to lowly servants.’

  Lowly servants? Nell managed to hold back a snort of laughter at the thought of what Robert would undoubtedly relay to the servants’ hall. Then she shivered again as she saw Lady Saddler’s expression. She was staring at her husband with what was surely pure disdain. Just what was going on at Spitalfrith?

  ‘Lowly servants, that’s what he called us,’ Robert declared indignantly later that day in the servants’ hall. ‘What tripe! Those days are over. That’s his blinking truth and I felt like telling the old geezer so.’

  Nell saw his point. Robert was a gentle giant of a man generally, and a patient one, so his annoyance was unusual. But he was right. Even in Wychbourne Court, the distinction, at least by name, between upper servants and lower was vanishing fast, although the same hierarchy remained, despite the fact that the interaction between the family and the servants was closer. The war had shown that everyone had a job to do, whatever their rank, because gas, bayonets and shells had made no distinctions.

  The upper servants used to eat separately in the butler’s room, but nowadays they frequently ate together in the servants’ hall. Before the war, meals had been taken in silence by the lower servants. Now everyone had a right to their say, and today they were making full use of it. The subject was still modern art, it appeared, when Nell joined them for their supper.

  ‘I saw a picture in a window in Sevenoaks last week,’ Kitty contributed. ‘It was called “Lady with Grapes” but it was only a lot of bulges and squares. Not like a lady at all.’

  ‘I’ve enough bulges of my own, thank you very much,’ Mrs Fielding, the housekeeper, commented in a rare jovial mood. It was everyone’s secret that she and Mr Peters were sweet on one another, even though it was not talked about publicly.

  ‘The artist was just experimenting, I expect,’ Nell contributed. ‘We’re all doing that nowadays in all sorts of ways. It makes life fun.’

  ‘What are those artists going to be experimenting on at Spitalfrith, though?’ Mrs Fielding returned to her usual snappiness.

  ‘Living after the war,’ Michel replied seriously. His father had died at Verdun and he had come to England with his mother at the age of fifteen.

  ‘Or, like Robert says, experimenting in skeletons,’ Kitty said brightly. ‘Perhaps there are some at Spitalfrith Manor.’

  ‘It’s a creepy old place,’ Mrs Fielding observed. ‘I’ve asked her ladyship if I can go to this festival, though.’

  ‘Perhaps Mr Peters would like to go, too,’ Robert remarked innocently. ‘Anyway, we can all go. That’s what the old chap said,’ he pointed out.

  To Nell’s surprise, Mr Briggs, Lord Ansley’s valet, seemed to be listening. Mr Briggs must be about thirty and suffered from war damage, living in a war of his own. He only rarely paid any attention to what was going on around him. This time he dealt with it in his now familiar way.

  He pushed his chair back, stood up and saluted. ‘Corporal G/26420, sir,’ he snapped out.

  Then he sat down again. That was rare after such outbursts, so Jenny Smith went round to him, picking up his napkin and gently persuading him to continue eating his cake. Jenny had brought a gust of fresh air when she arrived at Wychbourne as lady’s maid to Lady Ansley earlier that year from London. As she was as at
tractive and as bubbly as Mary Pickford in the Hollywood pictures, Lord Richard had rapidly had his eye on her – and she had equally rapidly removed it, although she still seemed on good terms with him.

  ‘How can we all go to this festival at Spitalfrith?’ Muriel, one of the scullery maids, piped up. ‘We’ve work to do.’

  ‘Lady Ansley says we can all have permission to go,’ Mrs Fielding said importantly. ‘Those of you who want to visit this festival can do so, provided their job’s covered.’

  Mrs Fielding in an obliging mood? Wonders would never cease, Nell thought. It must be because Mr Peters was present.

  ‘What’s this art festival about, though?’ Jenny (as Nell realized she was now thinking of her) said.

  ‘Lady Ansley told me,’ Mrs Fielding announced with an air that conveyed she was in her ladyship’s confidence, ‘that artists will be talking about their work as well as showing it off.’

  ‘What’s the point of talking about it if we can see it?’ Kitty asked politely.

  ‘Because it won’t mean anything to any of us.’ Jenny laughed. ‘It’s going to be all shapes and sizes and bright colours.’

  ‘Very narrow shapes and sizes if everything’s a skeleton,’ Nell contributed.

  Kitty was still worried. ‘But what’s the point of our looking at it if it doesn’t mean nothing? I saw a print of a nice picture of Knole Park with a field and sheep in it by Sir Gilbert in my auntie’s house, and that meant something to me because I went there once.’

  ‘That was painted when Sir Gilbert was younger, I expect,’ Jenny explained. ‘Now he wants to be avant-garde and move with the times to keep up with Picasso and Matisse.’

  Nell glanced at her. Jenny was certainly proving a lady’s maid with a difference. Not only had she succeeded in attracting Lord Richard’s attention, but she was proving knowledgeable on modern art. Despite having worked with her for over six months now, Nell knew little about her, save that she had been employed through a London agency. Even in sleepy Wychbourne, the days when domestic servants were drawn from the local village were fast fading.

  ‘It is la vérité,’ Robert intoned solemnly. ‘The skeleton of a body, of a leaf. Wonder if they ever draw kippers! They’ve got a lot of bones.’

  ‘True enough,’ Jenny agreed, as scullery maid Muriel giggled. ‘But I don’t think we’ll find too many kippers being sketched in Paris, and that’s where all the new kinds of art are being dreamed up. You ever been to Paris, Miss Drury?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Nell said cheerfully. ‘That’s where the Clerries are based, though.’

  ‘Paris’ brought back an uncomfortable, if happy, memory for her. Someday, she and Alex Melbray had agreed, they’d stroll down the Champs-Élysées and along the Seine riverbank together – a metaphor, she was acutely aware, for a closer relationship. Her doubts arose because she couldn’t resolve the tug of war within her. Leave her job, as she would have to do as Alex was a detective chief inspector at Scotland Yard? Or give up Alex? If, of course, he hadn’t given up on her first. ‘But,’ she hurried on, ‘Paris is where Sir Gilbert met his new wife.’

  ‘Poor old fellow. I’m sorry for him, I am,’ Robert said in heartfelt tones.

  ‘Sir Gilbert spent some years there after the war apparently,’ Nell continued. ‘She was a model, so perhaps she modelled for him.’

  ‘Is she one of these Clerries, too?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. But that might just be my impression,’ Nell added hastily, belatedly aware that Mr Briggs was now crooning to himself, one of his signs of distress.

  ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous …’

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Briggs. You’re safe here,’ Jenny said soothingly, as he continued with the same two lines over and over again.

  Nell was worried. Mr Briggs’s reaction to what was going on was unusual because, as a rule, he attended meals only in body, not in mind. Was it the talk of France that upset him?

  Mr Briggs took no notice of Jenny or anyone else for a while. Then he abruptly stopped, stood up, saluted again and left the table.

  ‘He hasn’t finished his pudding yet.’ Muriel looked worried. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘I’ll make sure he is,’ Nell volunteered. ‘He’s probably just setting off on his usual nightly walk to listen to the nightingales.’

  But tonight proved different. There was no sign of Mr Briggs outside the rear entrance to the servants’ wing which opened on to the eastern side of the gardens, and so Nell went around to the tradesmen’s entrance which led on to the kitchen yard.

  No sign of Mr Briggs. She was about to go back inside when she saw him wheeling his bicycle through the yard – that was very strange at this time of night. Although he frequently went out at night, he usually walked. Concerned, Nell hurried towards him, but she was too late. He was on the bicycle, cycling away into the still of the night. Running around to the front of the house, she could see him cycling down the main drive towards the village and all she heard, wafted back by the breeze, were a few words spoken perhaps to her, perhaps to himself: ‘The birds that sing … the singing birds …’

  Nothing was wrong, she thought thankfully, as she returned to the servants’ hall. Mr Briggs must simply be bicycling to the estate woodland where he would listen to the nightingales. Although it was unusual to hear him singing and for him to take a bicycle there, it must just have taken his fancy to do so. That was all.

  TWO

  ‘There’s coconuts and all sorts of funny things being delivered to Spitalfrith Manor,’ Kitty reported excitedly. ‘That’s what Mr Fairweather told me. The old gardener there wanted to pinch some pineapples from him.’ Kitty’s current boyfriend was now one of Wychbourne’s assistant gardeners, and Kitty’s interest in negotiating with Mr Fairweather by visiting the vegetable garden had markedly increased.

  There were only two days to go now before the great day when the Artistes de Cler would reveal their paintings amid their African glory. In the words of Alice in Wonderland, curiouser and curiouser, Nell thought. Even Alice might have been taken aback at the Clerries, though, if their paintings followed the lines she had heard about.

  ‘I hope he didn’t part with any,’ she said, alarmed. Pineapples and the pits in which Mr Fairweather wintered them were highly prized. The fruit would probably be cheaper to buy at market, but he clung to his old pits and tended them carefully. Result? Excellence.

  Kitty giggled. ‘’Course not. You know what he’s like.’

  Nell did. It was as much as she could do to get him to part with any of his produce in the kitchen gardens. For Mr Fairweather, it had to be perfect before he would allow a single bean to leave his domain, but the trouble was that nothing was ever perfect to his eyes and nose.

  ‘I heard there were monkeys going into the manor. Live ones, like you see at the pictures,’ Kitty added.

  ‘Perhaps Father Christmas will drop in, too,’ retorted Nell. How did monkeys fit in with the Clerries? What would arrive next? Perhaps a gorilla or two might turn up. Or an elephant the size of the famous Jumbo. First things first, though. ‘How about tackling the quince compote for tonight’s pork?’ she suggested meaningfully. ‘Interested?’

  The kitchen picked up speed and began to hum, like the new mains electricity installed at long last. Thankfully, the old generator was no more, save for emergencies, and the electric ranges were a delight, despite Nell’s own devotion to her old coal stoves.

  It was hardly surprising that the Spitalfrith festival was causing such a furore in the kitchen, as the whole village was humming with excitement, and even the Ansley family had become caught up in the drama.

  ‘What the dickens is going on, Nell?’ Lady Ansley had asked in exasperation only this morning when Nell had presented the day’s menus to her. ‘I feel I ought to offer more support to Sir Gilbert and Lady Saddler, and yet something keeps holding me back. My husband, for example,’ she added ruefully. ‘He hasn’t taken to our new neighbours, I’m afraid, and I don’t blame him. Nor have I.’

  That hadn’t surprised Nell. Lady Ansley had been a Gaiety Girl in the 1890s and had adapted to her new role as marchioness perfectly, so this had been a rare moment of outspokenness on such matters. But Nell shared her unease. There was certainly something odd about Spitalfrith. Its earlier drab reputation had suddenly transmuted into something darker over which this festival lay superficially like a layer of icing sugar. She was well aware, however, that Lord Ansley would be quietly judging the situation before committing Wychbourne Court to a situation they might regret.