Dead Man’s Jest: A Lady Lucy Theatreland Mystery by HK Berwick

Author:HK Berwick [Berwick, HK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24 - THE MANOR

Peregrinehurst Manor, on the Hove side of Brighton, was an imposing gothic monstrosity surrounded by walled gardens. The growing city of Brighton had yet to reach this area, a half a mile back from the coast, so the Manor was approached by rural roads, overhung on all sides by ancient woodland waiting to be cleared.

It was a gloomy wet November afternoon, with night descending early, when an impressive black Britzscha carriage pulled in through the wrought iron gates. The stone gateposts were surmounted by two large carved birds that Amy Dundersly couldn’t immediately distinguish.

“They don’t look like eagles,” she said, craning up at them as they passed.

“That would be because they’re not,” said Lady Lucy St John Deere. “This is Peregrinehurst Manor, remember. So - ”

“So that’s what Peregrines look like?” said Henry Foswell. “You learn something new every day.”

The carriage pulled up and the trio disembarked. A hoarse voice called from the coachman’s seat, mounted above them. “Shall I offload your baggage, your Ladyship?”

“Not yet Stan,” said Lucy. “We might not be staying.”

“Righty ho,” said Stan. Though only in his fifties, he had been aged a great deal by his time in the Crimean war, a look he enhanced by the growing of a large grey moustache, and a veritable mane of grey hair that burst from beneath his top hat.

“And for god’s sake,” said Lucy, “get yourself down into the cabin and keep warm. I hate to see you shivering up there.”

“Very good ma’am,” said Stan, finding his way down cautiously from his high perch, going as quickly as his shrapnel-filled left leg would allow.

Since Lady Lucy had taken him on, poaching him from his Stage Door job at Her Majesty’s, Stan had been getting used to doing the cushier jobs for her. Riding in the freezing rain to the arse end of nowhere was rather than the exception. Though he had to admit, having the reins of a posh carriage like a Britzscha to ride around town in, a vehicle her Ladyship had inherited from a wrong’un she’d helped arrest not long back, made him the envy of most other coachmen he passed.

As he wrung out his scarf and huddled under a horse blanket in the carriage, he doubted anyone was envying him today.

“Knock knock knock”

Henry Foswell wielded the lion’s head door knocker with some skill, the resulting noise being loud enough to be heard in Brighton itself. The doors of Peregrinehurst Manor loomed over them, so tall they went beyond the bounds of the gas lamp that illuminated the lower half of the porch.

“Were gothic buildings made just to scare people?” asked Lucy, “or does this architecture serve any functional purpose?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Foswell, “Foswell Court’s mostly the old 15th century pile. Don’t think they’d invented Gothic then, had they?”

“Well strictly speaking,” said Amy, glad to be getting onto one of her pet topics, “Gothic architectures dates back to the 12th century, in some parts of - ”

“Creeeeeeaaaak!”

Sadly her history lesson on the origins of pointy buildings was interrupted by the noisy opening of the vast front door.

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