Prologue
Sir Hubert Tulking, a Justice of the Peace serving the village of Stubborn-as-an-Ox faithfully for many decades, had hardly had time to turn in his grave, before his son and heir had married an American actress and departed for the bright lights of Broadway. Now that he had the necessary capital, young Sir Allan hoped to embark on a career as a playwright. It was enough to turn a man's stomach, like a prisoner about to be flogged for poaching, complained Sir Hubert's ghost to a crow that liked to sit above the old lantern lighting the Tulking's mausoleum steps, for it could warm its wings on a cold day and find shelter from Oxtailshire's rougher weather.
An estate manager had been appointed to look after Tulking Hall, a man who was from common stock, his father a successful solicitor in Oxbridge, who'd been able to afford his offspring's proper schooling. An estate manager with a university degree, who'd have believed such a thing possible in Victoria's England! Sir Hubert wrinkled his nose in disgust at the change of values in society. Not in his society circles, mind! Trade...the very word made him want to pee his pants, like those men he'd seen hanging from the gallows for their thieving.
And Sir Hubert would know all about that! Had he not been responsible for bringing sinners to the attention of the judges presiding over Oxbridge High Court Circuit? Admittedly, as a direct consequence of Sir Hubert's meddling, several wrong-doers were dealt with far more harshly than they would have been otherwise by the Circuit's judges. Since most of them were Sir Hubert's cronies and eager to please the wealthy, influential man, they were most happy to oblige. And, if truth be told, who'd miss some miserable wretch whose neck got stretched in the zealous pursuit of justice? Just one less inmate to clutter up Oxtailshire's workhouses!
Indirectly, Sir Hubert could be held to account for dispatching more unfortunate wretches to the gallows than most. And if in the process of upholding the law he had managed to create quite a few widows and orphans, so be it! Justice had been served, that was all that mattered. Having secured the nickname String-em-up-Tulking during his lifetime, it seemed Sir Hubert's enthusiasm for metering out punishment had still not ebbed away now that he was dead. What else could possibly be tethering him to the world of the living? Had anyone asked the crows of Saint Bastian's graveyard, they would have reported that the spirit of Sir Hubert was already plotting to do something about his daughter-in-law, that shameless American fortune seeker who had seduced his son and lured him away to New York.
According to a newspaper article that had fluttered across Sir Hubert's path in the graveyard, she was a beauty with strawberry-blonde hair, a dazzling smile and a shapely figure that had allegedly beguiled stodgy Sir Conan Doyle, who was on a book tour in America. He'd apparently been moved to say in an interview with The New York Limelight that, confronted with such hair and dimples as Cremorna Browning possessed, even his illustrious consulting detective Sherlock Holmes would have ditched Dr Watson in exchange for the charms of female company.
Now Sir Hubert was faced with the very real prospect of having said actress become lady of the manor at Tulking Hall. He'd have had her thrown in irons, had he still been alive and able to frame her for something illegal. Ye-es, a charge of blackmail, that would bring her at least ten years hard labour in the colonies...no blast, she came from the colonies, she'd probably regard that as a sort of holiday! Or maybe a charge of theft...yes, that might work, some ancient heirloom that could be purloined in the neighbourhood and shoved into the lady's luggage, when she arrived to claim her place at Sir Allan Tulking's side as first lady of the county. Sir Hubert stared morosely at the cross that graced his mausoleum's domed roof. First lady indeed!
Sir Hubert groaned, and not because groaning was part of his ghostly duties. He could do squat about Cremorna, the new Lady Tulking. As a ghost, he was bound to a fairly small area that didn't include flitting across the Atlantic to give the scheming little gold digger a piece of his mind. All he could do was scowl at the crows in the churchyard of Saint Bastian's.
He stared absentmindedly after the crow, which had found a better perch on a tall elm nearby. With an indignant blink of its jet-black eyes, the bird flapped its wings, mocking Sir Hubert's stationary condition. A crow wasn't forced to spend eternity in the confines of this graveyard! A crow could go anywhere it liked! Sir Hubert scratched the few remaining strands of white hair on his rotting scalp. How far did his ghostly realm actually stretch? Sir Hubert, 7th Baronet, had never had occasion before to leave his comfortable mausoleum. He'd been able to terrify occasional passers-by from across the churchyard fence. Such people only had themselves to blame: they should have known better than to return home from the local tavern when decent folk were getting up to milk their cows!
When owls hooted, before swooping down to snatch mice out of the graveyard's overgrown borders, Sir Hubert would amuse himself with vandalising some of his contemporaries' family vaults. He liked to draw moustaches on the marble effigies of ladies lying in state on their sarcophagi and was generally tickled pink when he found an unlocked vault. It was particularly gratifying to know that the young vicar, the Reverend Cedric Bullock, would blame the choir boys for such an outrage the following day. However, the news about Sir Hubert's only son returning to England to present his new bride could not be ignored and required some careful thought. The daily hauntings would have to wait. He would do some research into his ghostly condition instead! That would give him at least an idea of what might be possible in the matter of vengeance. And where better to start than at his local church library?
To this end, on a chilly morning at the beginning of November, Sir Hubert floated across to the Church of Saint Bastian in the hope of discovering more about his actual , now that he was dead. He'd overheard two young poachers, who had stolen into the woods one night to check on their fathers' rabbit snares. Scared out of their wits by every noise they heard, the two boys had talked quietly about ghosts, the older of the two poachers telling the younger boy how ghosts could walk through walls. They could bend objects and sometimes even animals to their will and adopt a solid body, when the whim took them. Since then, Sir Hubert had been itching to get his hands on more information about ghosts.
The little Norman church that stood at the centre of Sir Hubert's realm had a fine library, thanks to its many benefactors and the village's patron saint, Saint Bastian, himself. He'd been a local busybody, a medieval knight who'd made himself so indispensible to the good citizens of Stubborn-as-an-Ox that they had petitioned the Pope in Rome to have him canonised. A canonised knight with a hovel one could hardly call a manor house and a mere three hides to call his own! It seemed hardly credible. What had that great big oaf ever done for the village, other than collect taxes, demand fealty and bed the local maidens before anybody else did?
Sir Hubert's ghost would have ground his teeth, if that hadn't resulted in the loss of whatever gnashers were left in his mouth. Instead, he considered the erstwhile knight's progress from lowly landowner and warrior serving King Edward III to Justice of the Peace to patron saint. Was there anything one could use, anything at all about law enforcement after death? While it was evident to Sir Hubert why he was still clinging to this earthly realm instead of taking his rightful place as an angel in heaven, he was less certain about how he should go about fulfilling his final task, before he could leave the world of the living and take his place among the dead.
Although Saint Bastian had been a knight and man of aristocratic blood, he'd operated a thriving armoury business on the side, supported by a blacksmith of some repute within the county. The fact that Saint Bastian had been honoured by the king didn't excuse him from the charge of being little more than a commoner and tradesman in Sir Hubert's eyes. So what if King Edward had made that miserable helmet-vendor a Justice of the Peace in 1361, one of the very first men to serve the country in that capacity? The only good aspect of the busybody knight, in Sir Hubert's opinion, was that Saint Bastian, among his many accomplishments, had been an avid believer in ghosts. He'd eventually compiled a great book on the subject in 1379, The Ghost Hunter's Handbook, and donated it to William of Wykeham's newly founded New College in Oxford with the request it should be returned to the village of Stubborn-as-an-Ox, in the event of the college not finding a place for it in its library. The newly founded college had clearly felt that there was no room for the occult in their curriculum and promptly sent the book back. It had been sitting on the shelves in Saint Bastian's church for centuries, before somebody decided it was priceless and should be locked away to be preserved for future generations.
All things considered, admitted Sir Hubert begrudgingly, it was a brave thing to have published at a time when Pope Gregory XI was still on the war path against reformer John Wycliffe for asserting that priests should live in poverty like Christ's twelve disciples. Not only peeved about that, the Pope was even more aggrieved that the Vatican's staunch supporter, Catholic France, had just lost control of Brittany in the Hundred Year War, a defeat that many blamed on witchcraft rather than letting English archers take the blame for the slaughter of France's knights.
Local folklore had it that Saint Bastian had not been adverse to dabbling in a little magic himself, but nothing was ever proven by the priests who came to investigate. To Sir Hubert's mind it was therefore clear: Saint Bastian was the most likely source for information on ghostly powers.
Suddenly Sir Hubert's twilight world seemed far less depressing. He chuckled, entering the church as a wisp of smoke by way of the main door's keyhole. Songstress Cremorna Browning would soon sing to a different tune, one of Sir Hubert's making! First lady indeed!
Chapter 1
Since that fateful day on which Sir Hubert had taken a nosedive from his saddle during a foxhunt and broken his neck upon impact with a fox's skull, the county had resisted the urge to host any more hunts. Some regarded the fact that it was the fox that had survived the accident as a sign from God. Leave nature's less fortunate creatures be and not go after them with a blood-thirsty pack of hounds and call it sport, they'd said.
Others believed a man like Sir Hubert should be honoured even in the afterlife and a proper period of mourning should mark the respect the county held for such an illustrious gentleman and JP, controversial as he might have been in life. As a country gentleman with a large fortune and several generations of ancestors to his name, Sir Hubert had commanded respect just for who he was. As Justice of the Peace, however, he'd basked in the glory of serving his fellow man to the best of his abilities and do his bit to preserve peace, decency and prosperity among his fellow country dwellers. Some critics had knowingly risked his displeasure by arguing he was doing so at the expense of those far less fortunate than himself. Sir Hubert had countered any opposition to his harsh sentencing of the local riff-raff with the words of his family motto, which loosely translated to: Keep your cause just and the Lord will light your way. Deviate, and you'll sink back into the darkness from whence you came.
Had they bothered asking the lucky vixen that had escaped the collision with Sir Hubert, she'd told them to get stuffed and mounted in Tulking Hall's trophy cabinets, after digging the deepest hole imaginable for their former JP and throwing away the key to his mausoleum.
However, time had moved on and there is only so much genuine grief one village can muster at a local baronet's departure, no matter how popular or feared said baronet might have been. So when Roderick, the local Master of the Foxhounds, opened a telegram from Sir Hubert's heir that asked him to organise a hunt and ball on behalf of his childhood friend, it was quite a welcome surprise. The Master of the Foxhounds was, it had to be said, somewhat puzzled by the telegram's wording:
" TO RODERICK MARQUESS OF TUMBLEWEED STOP ARRIVING NOV. 5TH STOP PREPARE FOR HUNT STOP FORGET FOXES STOP WILL SUPPLY PREY STOP SIR ALLAN TULKING"
What did Sir Allan mean by will supply prey? All the way from America? Visions of buffalo tied to the side of a packet steamer from Liverpool rose up in the Master of the Foxhound's mind. Or would Sir Allan arrive with cages full of mountain lions? Casting a fearful glance at his pack of foxhounds, Roderick chewed on the fingernail of his thumb and wondered how he would manage a hunt with horses, hounds and buffalo, not to mention some of the county's elderly huntsmen- and women.
"That American female will have put him up to it, you mark my words," coughed old Farmer Peasmarsh later that day, when Roderick took himself off to the local inn for a restorative tankard of ale.
As his oldest farmer-tenant, Peasmarsh had known Roderick from when he was a boy. Now he eyed Young Master Tumbleweed, as he still thought of the tall, dark-haired man standing at the bar in the tap room of The Laughing Vixen, with a quizzical expression on his wrinkled face. How would Roderick, ten years older than Sir Allan Tulking, deal with the younger man and business partner in the Hunt Club? Not that Sir Allan would dream of wanting to be Master of the Hunt or Master of Foxhounds - he didn't have enough experience for that. However, old Sir Hubert had always been a very generous subscriber to the Hunt Club's finances and had therefore rather liked to throw his weight around on hunt days. Even though Roderick was in charge as Master of Foxhounds and Master of the Hunt, Farmer Peasmarsh mused. Would Sir Allan revert to type and carry on with the Tulking tradition of bossing everybody around?
Roderick respected the old rustic's views and often sought his counsel, being regularly astonished how the old man, who didn't get about a lot any more, could possibly know so much about things that went on in the county - and often be well informed about what happened beyond county borders, too. Peasmarsh was therefore a good source of information, one he'd readily buy a tankard of ale for to encourage the rustic's natural loquaciousness.
In his turn, Farmer Peasmarsh also respected the Marquess and held him in great affection. He had witnessed the Tumbleweed's family fortunes gradually decline over the decades. Poor estate management and an unfortunate gambling habit of Roderick's grandfather had wiped out most of the family fortune. Just like young Roderick, Farmer Peasmarsh been sad to see acre after acre of land sold off by Roderick's father to clear crippling debts. Thus, Peasmarsh had given his wholehearted approval, when Roderick came into what was left of his inheritance and had told the old farmer he'd decided to build up the finest pack of foxhounds in the county, and create a formal Oxtailshire Hunt Club as a means to earn an extra income for the estate. His grandfather had begun building up a credible pack of hounds, and Roderick was determined to continue with this tradition, despite the expense. It was natural to turn to his father's oldest friend, Sir Hubert, when Roderick's ready capital wasn't quite sufficient to cover all the expenses. The small loan had been paid off long ago. An achievement the young Marquess could be justly proud of, the old farmer thought, a smile spreading over the furrowed landscape of his face. And so the Oxtailshire Hunt Club was born to everybody's satisfaction and delight. Except possibly the county's foxes.
Although the construction of kennels, housing for the foxhound bitches and extra stables for the hunters had been ruinous at first, the formation of the Hunt Club had been Roderick's making. He'd opened an account at a reputable bank and kept the subscription money scrupulously separate from the initial set-up expenses. The subscription finances supported the meat, straw and bedding for hounds and oats for hunters, paid for the hunt ball and the staff needed for each hunting season as well as the permanent fixture of the kennel man. The various hunts Roderick had been asked to organise over the last decade had helped bring much needed money into the Tumbleweed treasury. His efficient, honest and conscientious financial dealings had increased his reputation and drawn subscribers from outside the county borders to join the Hunt Club. Over the years Sir Hubert had contributed in various ways, pushing to be a silent business partner in the venture rather than waiting to be asked.
Together, Roderick and Sir Hubert had provided the people who were interested in blood sports with a permanent base where they could hunt at leisure and in a vast area, namely across the two men's combined estates. Not all the landed gentry could afford their own packs of hounds and requisite number of hunters anymore. Nor could every country gent afford a subscription. That meant cap fees couldn't be too hefty, but were sufficient to leave plenty of capital at the end of the year to be divided between the Tulking and Tumbleweed estates. Betting on who got to the fox first was always a lucrative sideline of the hunt, as well as betting on how many braces of foxes were taken over the course of the hunting days.
Roderick's inspired idea had put the estate's future on a firm financial footing. The manor had been restored to its former splendour over the years; no more land was sold; the estate's management was being handled well. Sadly, so Peasmarsh reflected as he watched Roderick exchange a few pleasant words with the barmaid, the Marchioness of Tumbleweed had not lived to produce a son and heir for Tumbleweed. She had died very suddenly of a fever five years earlier. None of the landed gentry's daughters seemed to have caught the widower's eye since. Peasmarsh sighed. It was such a shame, for he was a good man, as well as a handsome and wealthy one. If Sir Allan turned out to be half as honourable and respected a man the Marquess of Tumbleweed, Sir Allan could truly call himself a gentleman. Peasmarsh wrinkled his nose and took another sip of his ale. When all was said and done, a baronet was still a commoner, no matter how many airs and graces Sir Hubert had given himself during his lifetime, whereas a Marquess was nobility proper, so there!
If some of the wagging tongues among the local lords and ladies had accused Roderick of earning a living like a common tradesman with his hunting club activities, that was their business. Pure envy, that's what it was! Peasmarsh raised one wrinkled hand and waved to his landlord and master. Roderick of Tumbleweed had done the right thing by his tenants, his family and all those villagers who depended on his trade. Old Peasmarsh would set anybody straight on that point, should they dare to speak ill of his master.
Ordering a pint for himself and one for the ancient, Roderick carried their beverages over to where Peasmarsh held court. He was sitting at a table by a lusty fire their considerate landlord had lit for his patrons. Seeing Roderick coming their way with a tankard in each hand, the elderly tenant-farmers who'd been chatting to Peasmarsh scurried off, lifting their hats in passing by way of a greeting. Roderick muttered a greeting to them all and dropped into a vacant chair opposite the old farmer. Peasmarsh stretched his legs towards the log fire, smacking his lips appreciatively at the sight of the tankard Roderick was about to put before him. Although still pleasantly mild during the day, autumn chill had settled on the village as soon as the sun had set. In fact, everybody stepping across the threshold that evening had complained about how unseasonably cold it was that month. A chill wind rattled the ancient inn's window frames and blew in a smattering of leaves with every new patron entering the tap room that night.
Roderick drew his chair a little closer to the fire. "So you think the new Lady Tulking is behind this mysterious request for a fox-less hunt, to be hosted nearly a year to the day, when we lost Sir Hubert?"
"Maybe Her Ladyship wants to hunt for ermine instead? I hear they have them in places like Canada and Alaska." Peasmarsh chuckled. "Not that I've ever seen one of them creatures in these parts."
"You could well have a point there, old-timer," agreed Roderick readily, sliding the tankard of ale over to the man. "What I don't understand is what he means by forget foxes. How can I, when the devils have raided our chicken coops again and are mocking our farm hands at every turn? I'm Master of the Foxhounds, I organise foxhunts, not hunts for mountain lions...or ermine! I say, why ermine? You don't think she's got pretentions for Sir Allan to be elevated to the peerage, do you?" Roderick's worried expression showed the old farmer his suggestion had hit a sore spot.
Peasmarsh snorted dismissively. "Nah, nothing against our Sir Allan, but he hasn't got it in him to make his mark and rise in the ranks. No, she probably fancies a fur coat, don't she? With a nice muff for her little pinkies and a furry hat to match. Will nag and nag Sir Allan until he imports mink, wolves, grizzly bears and what have you, you'll see. Local foxes are clearly not good enough for the likes of Cremorna Browning, a fashionable little minx from what I could tell," he said, his blue eyes twinkling at the surprise on Roderick's face.
"You've seen her?" Roderick blinked. "How in the name of Dickens -?"
Farmer Peasmarsh tapped the side of his purple nose with his wrinkly, work-worn index finger. "I'm not the yokel you youngsters make me out to be. I've been to the Big Smoke, I've seen music hall shows and such like. Sir Allan's caught himself a fine looking woman, with a voice like an angel, there's no denying that. Flighty like all them stage-struck creatures, I'll be bound, but a fine filly nonetheless." Peasmarsh took a deep draught from his tankard, before continuing.
"Saw her in the West End in some nonsense called Be My Baby Tonight that she'd brought over from America. Jolly good songs and all that, although not quite top drawer, if you take my meaning. Show closed after a month. That's where Sir Allan met her. In London."
Lord Roderick nodded thoughtfully. Yes, now he recalled reading about the show. There'd been some scandal, it had been in all the newspapers. An investor withdrew his support quite suddenly and the show had closed due to lack of funds.
"It's all coming back to me now! So that's whom Allan married!" Roderick leant forward and said quietly into the old farmer's ear: "If I'm not mistaken, the lady threw over her admirer for the hand in marriage to our Sir Allan. That's why the show closed. Her jilted admirer withdrew his capital. The wealthy Mr Burton didn't like it one bit when the lady switched her allegiance. Not one bit, according to The Daily Huntsman's society pages anyhow." Roderick coloured slightly, having just admitted that he occasionally read the society pages, which were little more than gossip columns. "It's useful to keep abreast of developments and discover who might like to switch to a different Hunt Club and could thus be approached," he added hastily, when he noticed an amused glint in Farmer Peasmarsh's eye.
Peasmarsh whistled softly, tamping down tobacco in his pipe, his ruddy complexion belying his age, which was rumoured to be 84 or thereabouts. Nobody, not even Peasmarsh himself, knew his exact date of birth. He finally lit his pipe with an expression of bliss. "Now there's a fine conundrum," the rustic said at last between puffs of fragrant tobacco. "I should say Sir Charles Burton, as he's now after Her Majesty Queen Victoria, may God protect her, has honoured him with a baronetcy, intends to cause mischief."
Peasmarch noted with pleasure that the Marquees hang on his every word. He took another sip from his tankard, before continuing his tale in a confidential tone of voice. "He's just bought the neighbouring estate to Tulking Hall, did you know that, your lordship? Local tongues have been wagging ever since his man of business collected the deeds: Sir Charles plans to hold his own hunts in the grand old tradition, with huge numbers of hounds and equal number of hunters to match. Shipping must be a lucrative business, if he can afford hunts on that scale. He's been recruiting servants from all over the county, I heard. A small army of of them is beavering away at this very moment to get Boefbourg Hall ready for Sir Charles's arrival." Sending a cloud of spicy tobacco smoke up into the air, Old Peasmarsh licked his lips and shot a longing glance in the direction of the landlord.
Roderick understood a heavy hint when he saw one. He heaved himself out of his comfortable seat by the fire and trotted obediently back to the bar, where the landlord was only too happy to pull two more tankards of ale, plus a half pint of lager for himself, in exchange for further information about Sir Charles Burton and the sale of the Boefbourg estate. Deep in thought and with an uneasy feeling, a sort of foreboding, Roderick headed home later that evening. Passing by the Church of Saint Bastian, he genuflected quite openly, knowing that only crows and owls, or maybe a few bats, would see him make this popish gesture. Behind the church, where lichen-encrusted gravestones loomed large out of the evening mist, a solitary lantern burned outside Sir Hubert's mausoleum.
Roderick shook his head in disapproval. He'd respected the man, but he hadn't liked him. Mostly on the grounds of Sir Hubert's ungodly views. Even on the morning of the fateful hunt day, Sir Hubert had joked that, should he be accidentally shot by an over-zealous hunt participant, he had made provisions in his last will and testament. A lantern should always light the entrance to his mausoleum and for this purpose he'd made certain arrangements, leaving a substantial amount of money to Saint Bastian's in his will. He'd always hated the dark and wasn't going to put up with it after his demise, he'd chuckled. Why should he stumble and trip over the steps to his final resting place, he'd quipped, when a specially made little lantern could guide him to the afterlife and Saint Peter's heavenly gates?
How well Roderick remembered that fateful day! Roaring with laughter at the dismay his presumptuous words had caused all round, Sir Hubert had given his fiery black field hunter a taste of his spurs and galloped off into the forest. An hour later his horse had stumbled and tripped in a dark part of the pine forest and pitched Sir Hubert unceremoniously head first into a ditch, where a vixen had tried to escape the hunt's pack of hounds by diving into an old drainage pipe. Not only had the vixen survived the impact with 150 pounds of solid Tulking huntsman, she had recovered remarkably quickly and gone to ground, before the first foxhounds had ever made it to the scene of the accident. None of the huntsmen- and women felt right to send terriers after her into the ground, given the circumstances. She got away to the secret delight of the Earl of Basketcase, who'd bet £50 on the fox making a get-away only that morning.
Remembering Sir Hubert's final words as if he'd heard them a day ago, Roderick hurried past Saint Bastian's church. However, casting a casual glance in the direction of the graveyard, Roderick was startled to see the lantern outside the old man's mausoleum burning much more brightly than usual. The flickering light made the mausoleum appear like a tawdry theatre. Its domed roof and Italianate entrance, guarded by two voluptuous angels carved from the finest pink marble, were far too ostentatious for a village churchyard in Roderick's view. And the excessive lighting was surely more suited to London Highgate cemetery than Stubborn-as-an-Ox's churchyard!
Roderick stopped dead in his tracks. Now that he came to think of it, was the churchyard usually this brightly lit? And what was that peculiar mist hailing from the branches of that ancient oak tree? Peering into the darkness, Roderick discovered that a thin column of greenish smoke rose from the flickering light in the lantern. He sniffed the air. It reeked of sulphur and something that reminded him vaguely of yeast. It conveyed the impression that this wasn't a mausoleum, but a baking house. What had the Reverend Bullock done? Hung up an oil-filled lamp instead of the usual beeswax candle in strange lantern Sir Hubert had insisted on? Maybe one of the choir boys was responsible for this outrage, playing a prank on the Reverend and anyone who chanced to pass by after nightfall?
Roderick loathed entering the churchyard at night, but he couldn't allow Sir Hubert's memory to be mocked in this manner. Tulking Senior had been a bully and had rather basked in the glory of being called England's most feared Justice of the Peace, but he'd still been Roderick's neighbour and business partner, not to mention his father's life-long friend. The old man deserved a modicum of respect, no matter what his shortcomings had been. Striding purposefully through the lych-gate and hurried up the flagstone path that ran past the church, Roderick entered the graveyard moments later, slightly out of breath and filled with a sense of dread he couldn't quite explain. He stared up at the lantern, which was swinging gently in the night breeze. It was the first time he'd seen it from up close, not having taken any particular notice of it before. At first he couldn't make out what its odd shape reminded him off, but upon closer inspection, and turning it this way and that in his hand, he realised it was fashioned from a medieval helmet, the type knights wore when competing in tournaments or going into battle. The visor served as a little door; inside the helmet, a skilled blacksmith or other artisan had closed the hole for the knight's neck with a plate of metal, sealing the helmet completely that way and effectively turning it into a bucket with a small entry hatch. A series of small holes had been drilled into the top of the skull plate to allow light to penetrate the helmet and streak off into all directions.
Odd choice, Roderick muttered under his breath, opening the visor to inspect the wick. He could find nothing wrong with wick or candle. Now that he stood right under it, there was no smoke at all. And yet...the air was filled with an odour that was neither beeswax nor goose fat, nor any other type of fuel Roderick could think of for the burning in lanterns. He chided himself. You're imagining it, Roddy, my lad.
Rubbing his nose fiercely, as if he could rub away the odour all around him, he closed the lantern's hatch and turned on his heels. Time he went to bed, tomorrow would be a long and arduous day. He had a hunt and impromptu ball to organise. Yawning wide, he adjusted the hat on his head, stuffed his hands deep into his coat pockets and walked back to the front of the church. He was whistling softly to himself and casting his mind back once more to the peculiar wording of Sir Allan's telegram. "Forget foxes! Will organise prey. Utterly ridiculous," Roderick snorted, stepping over a fat snail that was making for the lych-gate just as he was.
At the very moment his hand reached out for the wooden gate that marked the churchyard's exit towards the forest and Tumbleweed Manor, a disembodied voice cried after him: "I'll have my little vixen, you'll see, Roddy! I'll have her and stretch her pretty neck."
Chapter 2
Roderick nearly jumped three feet into the air, so startled was he by that voice. For it had sounded just like Sir Hubert as he'd lived and breathed! More running now than striding, the Master of the Foxhunt hurried home, not caring if low-hanging branches and thorny twigs scratched his face or tried to
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Texte: Maria Thermann
Bildmaterialien: Maria Thermann
Lektorat: Maria Thermann
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 30.01.2016
ISBN: 978-3-7396-3465-4
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Widmung:
To my writer friend Michelle Barber, who is working on a Victorian whodunit and loves traditional storytelling as much as I do.