The Case of the Dotty Dowager Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Cathy Ace

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  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

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Recent Titles by Cathy Ace

  The Cait Morgan Mysteries

  THE CORPSE WITH THE SILVER TONGUE

  THE CORPSE WITH THE GOLDEN NOSE

  THE CORPSE WITH THE EMERALD THUMB

  THE CORPSE WITH THE PLATINUM HAIR

  THE CORPSE WITH THE SAPPHIRE EYES

  The WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries

  THE CASE OF THE DOTTY DOWAGER *

  * available from Severn House

  THE CASE OF THE DOTTY DOWAGER

  Cathy Ace

  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 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published 2015 in Great

  Britain and the USA by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 by Cathy Ace.

  The right of Cathy Ace 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

  Ace, Cathy, 1960–author.

  The case of the dotty dowager.

  1. Women private investigators–Fiction. 2. Wales–

  Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8495-4 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-591-9 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-641-0 (e-book)

  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 living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For my family in Wales, with love and thanks

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My thanks to my mother and late father for encouraging my inquisitiveness and for teaching me what it means to work hard and stick at it, and to Mum and Sue for being my first, and very patient, readers.

  To the entire team at Severn House Publishers for allowing the Women of the WISE Enquiries Agency to live in these pages, and to Priya Doraswamy for bringing them to their attention in the first place. To every formatter, printer, distributor, reviewer, blogger, librarian and bookseller who has helped you, dear reader, to find this book. And thanks to you for sharing your most important resource, your time, with me and my creations.

  Finally, I would like to thank my husband; without his love, patience, support and encouragement I wouldn’t be writing at all.

  ONE

  Henry Devereaux Twyst, eighteenth Duke of Chellingworth, was terribly worried about his mother. He wondered if the Dowager Duchess had finally lost her grip on reality and gone completely batty. Given the way his father had acted for the last decade of his life, he supposed she’d done rather well to make it to almost eighty with her faculties pretty much intact. But now?

  For a few months he’d been catching snippets from the staff at Chellingworth Hall which alluded to her mental capacity. He’d even overheard, ‘… a few sandwiches short of a picnic …’ being muttered on several occasions. But now he feared the worst; this might be the beginning of the end. If it was, it would be a dreadful pity. A brilliant woman in her time, everyone agreed that Althea, Dowager Duchess of Chellingworth, was all but the human equivalent of the Jack Russell dogs she’d bred and doted upon for decades; compact, strong, full of energy, and never one to let go of a cause or an argument.

  But, Henry reasoned, for her to telephone him from the Dower House in the middle of the night claiming she’d found a corpse on the floor of her dining room – well, it beggared belief.

  Henry hadn’t phoned the police, for obvious reasons; he didn’t want his failing mother to be gossiped about in the village. Having no doubt she’d imagined the whole thing, he felt he’d acted quite correctly by urging her to go back to her bedroom, shut her door and push a chair against the handle, or something like it. In that moment he cursed the fact that there had never seemed to be a requirement for locks on the bedroom doors; he’d always assumed they’d merely serve to hinder servants from gaining entry. He’d promised to rush right over, and she’d assured him that McFli would keep her safe. Henry had to agree that, despite the fact that her one remaining canine companion was almost a dozen years old, he could probably manage to keep his mistress safe – from a non-existent corpse. Henry hadn’t even alerted any of the staff at the hall. No one other than he himself needed to become aware of his mother’s diminishing capacity to differentiate between reality and imaginings.

  Clutching an old torch, Henry tramped across the bottom pasture toward the lower copse, and thence to the Dower House itself. All the vehicles had been shut away for the night, and he didn’t want to wake anyone with the noise he’d make if he revved up an engine. Besides, he hated driving himself.

  The night was black. Clouds obscured the moon completely, but Henry’s eyes adjusted as he walked. He had silent conversations with himself as his wellington boots made tracks upon the wet, yielding grass.

  He was certain he’d find his mother tucked safely into her bed, completely unaware she’d woken him and sent him into a panic. When he’d asked her on the telephone why she was poking about in her dining room at such an ungodly hour, she’d retorted that McFli had woken her, she’d heard a noise and had gone to investigate.

  What was she thinking? was what he’d wanted to ask. Why hadn’t sh
e woken her staff? was what he’d ended up saying instead. Why should she? she’d replied huffily and hung up.

  As he walked determinedly into the copse, along paths he’d known for a lifetime, Henry Twyst kept telling himself that everything would all be all right when he got there. He just had to keep the whole thing quiet and no one would be any the wiser.

  It was the middle of September, almost the end of the Open Season. That was how they referred to it at Chellingworth Hall. The six months of the year when the masses traipsed through the venerable pile which Henry, like so many generations of his gilded ancestors before him, called home. He hated the whole process of opening the doors of Chellingworth Hall to the public, but it had to be done. The upkeep of the hall was exorbitantly high and it was an obvious way to make some money. At least the Twysts hadn’t descended to the point where they had to accept PGs. Paying Guests marked the low point for any family. It smacked of putting oneself on display in the same way animals were paraded about at a circus, performing tricks that amazed the viewing crowds – like using the correct cutlery. The Twysts, not the animals. Henry would have none of it. He’d accepted the necessary influx of public visitors for limited hours each day, but had not gone as far as allowing overnight guests, nor catered events like weddings.

  His mother also hated the daily invasion. She hid inside the Dower House, an architectural delight that had been built in 1669 to provide a home for all the Chellingworth dowagers since that time, as bulging family cars and garish coaches crunched along the sweeping pea-gravel drive toward the hall. Althea Twyst had even been known to close all the curtains on many a perfectly beautiful August day just in order to be absolutely sure that no wayward members of the public would have the opportunity to attempt to peer into her sanctuary.

  Henry cursed aloud as he stumbled on a protruding root. He wasn’t cursing the root, but the countless feet which were widening the natural pathways as day-trippers jostled through his once peaceful and idyllic woodlands. He played the beam of light from his torch onto the ground and steered himself toward safer footing. The night was fresh, almost sharp, and there was a promise of autumn in the atmosphere. The earliest of the leaves to drop from their branches rustled beneath his tread, even though they were damp. Light showers had stopped after tea time. At least they’d cleared the unseasonable humidity of the morning, thought Henry. Beginning to pant a little, he noticed that, for the first time since the spring, his breath looked like little puffs of steam in the cool night air.

  As he emerged from the ragged fringes of the copse, Henry could see the dark shape of the Dower House glowering down on him from the higher ground ahead. Some architectural scholars claimed the building was a square version of Wren’s famous circular Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. He’d never been clear about how, exactly, one building was related to the other. He saw them with the eye of an artist, albeit a frustrated one. He’d never grappled with the concept of the bones beneath the flesh and skin of a building. Granted, the edifices were certainly similar in terms of their honey-colored stone, upon which the evening sun would always linger, and their style of decoration, which he’d always thought of as elegant rather than showy. But, beyond this general impression, Henry was unsure about other similarities. As far as he could tell, the breed known as architects had their very own language and used it in the presence of others as a way to exclude the uninitiated from any possible comprehension of their conversations.

  At the thought of architects, Henry’s shoulders sagged. He’d met so many of them in the decade since his father’s death. They each had their opinions about how he should schedule the constant upkeep and renovation of the hall, but none of them seemed to agree with each other. It had dawned upon Henry in short order that owning a Grade I listed home meant one was simply a guardian of a building for posterity. Something that had never occurred to him during his father’s lifetime, when Chellingworth Hall had merely been his home. Since the day his father had died, and Henry became the eighteenth duke, it had become an all-consuming responsibility. Sometimes Henry thought he’d simply like to pack a small duffel bag and slip away somewhere. Somewhere he could indulge in his love of art. Where he could paint his watercolors and dream of beautiful trees, enjoying nature in all its glories. Somewhere where there weren’t dozens of people all working at different tasks in his home every day, as well as hundreds of complete strangers shuffling through it oh-ing and ah-ing at every little thing for months on end.

  But he knew that was unrealistic. He had a job for life. He was the Duke of Chellingworth and Chellingworth Hall, set in the glorious Welsh county of Powys, was his to nurture, repair and run – as far as possible – as a paying business. It would be his legacy to his son. Should he ever manage to find himself a wife to bear one.

  As this, his greatest shortcoming, flitted through his mind, Henry almost stopped walking. His mother never tired of reminding him that, at fifty-five years of age, he was fast running out of time in which to procreate. He felt the weight of this other responsibility more personally, because he had always promised himself he would marry for love. But, to date, that particular emotion was still alien to him.

  Pressing on in anger and frustration, the walk up the steep incline to the Dower House took it out of Henry, and his breath began to resemble the output of a steam engine. While his mother might have been likened to a small, active dog, he admitted to himself that he was probably more akin to a less frantic creature. Not a sloth – he wasn’t that inactive – but he was certainly not a nippy little terrier. Maybe a koala? He smiled as he pictured the rotund little creatures with their comical features, which he supposed were not very unlike his own, and he recalled something about their liking for eucalyptus leaves, which meant they were usually half-sozzled – a state with which he was far from unfamiliar. He found that a few brandies after dinner took the edge off his worries about balance sheets and creditors during the evening and allowed him to sleep more soundly at night. Which was why he was especially cross at being hailed from the comfort of his bed at such an hour.

  Just as Henry arrived at the Dower House, the light of the half-moon pierced the ragged-edged clouds above him. A light showed in what he knew was the window of his mother’s bedroom. So she really was awake, after all. He wondered if she’d woken Jennifer yet. If she had, he was sure that whatever emergency might have occurred would be halfway to a peaceful solution. Jennifer was a very competent young woman. Somewhat plain, but competent.

  He couldn’t help but smile to himself as he recalled how Jennifer Newbury insisted upon being referred to as Lady Althea’s ‘aide’. A lady’s aide, rather than a lady’s maid. He understood why, in the twenty-first century, a professional woman in her thirties would prefer one title over the other, but it amused him to hear his mother frequently refer to her as a ‘maid’, only to have Jennifer equally frequently – and always politely – reply with, ‘You mean aide, ma’am,’ to which his mother’s invariable response was, ‘Do I?’

  It was like a little battle his mother always enjoyed. He wondered why Jennifer bothered to participate. Maybe she thought she’d eventually win, one day. She clearly didn’t know his mother very well. But she’d only been in residence for six months or so. They usually lasted about a year, he recalled with a sigh. It was a shame. Jennifer was an efficient young woman, and he had begun to believe that her presence was helping his mother. Maybe he’d been too optimistic. Too hopeful.

  Henry pulled a set of keys from his pocket and let himself into the Dower House. As he pushed open the front door the beeping of the alarm began and he punched his code numbers into the panel which glowed in the entryway. He sighed with relief. His mother had imagined it all. The front door had been locked and the alarm was in working order. It was all a wild goose chase. He supposed that was better than there being an actual dead body on the premises. But the implications regarding his mother’s mental acuity depressed him.

  Flicking the switch that illuminated the chandeliers in the
portrait-bedecked hallway, his first thought was to make his way upstairs to check in on his mother. He didn’t call out to announce his arrival. Jennifer, Cook and Ian would have heard the beeping of the alarm upon his entry, and know there was someone about. He expected their imminent arrival. They’d all want to find out what was going on at such an hour. Knowing he’d need to be able to answer their inevitable questions, he walked directly to the dining room. Moments later, with chandeliers flooding the oak-paneling and brocade drapery with light, it was clear to Henry that the room was devoid of any human presence, dead or alive. Relief and sadness washed over him in equal measure. Poor Mother.

  No one having arrived to welcome him, or seek out a possible intruder, Henry climbed the sweeping staircase toward his mother’s room with a weariness borne of dread. He was deeply concerned about her state of mind. Knocking loudly on her door – where was everybody? – he waited for a reply.

  ‘Come,’ called his mother’s voice. He was heartened to hear that she sounded quite like her usual self.

  Striding into the room, he found his mother wrapped in an embroidered blue silk dressing gown that swamped her small frame. He could recall a time when it had fitted her well; had she diminished that much? Her hair was bound up in a vibrant purple scarf of some sort which trailed down her back. She was sitting on the edge of her bed looking quite alert, brandishing a brass poker above her head, and gripping McFli’s squirming body, which Henry suspected was the only reason he hadn’t already been attacked by the eager little creature.