Marsh Blood (The Endel Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  Marsh Blood

  Lucilla Andrews

  writing as

  Diana Gordon

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2019

  This edition first published 2019 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1980

  www.lucillaandrews.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images © Lance Bellers / irbis pictures (Shutterstock)

  Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd

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  Also by Lucilla Andrews

  from Wyndham Books

  The Print Petticoat

  The Secret Armour

  The Quiet Wards

  The First Year

  A Hospital Summer

  My Friend the Professor

  Nurse Errant

  Flowers from the Doctor

  The Young Doctors Downstairs

  The New Sister Theatre

  The Light in the Ward

  A House for Sister Mary

  Hospital Circles

  Highland Interlude

  The Healing Time

  Edinburgh Excursion

  Ring O’ Roses

  Silent Song

  In Storm and Calm

  Busman’s Holiday

  One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)

  A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)

  In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)

  A Few Days in Endel (writing as Diana Gordon)

  Wyndham Books is reissuing

  all of Lucilla Andrews’s novels.

  Be the first to know about the next reissue

  by signing up to our free newsletter.

  Go to www.lucillaandrews.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

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  Chapter One

  I sensed that I was persona non grata immediately I walked into the oak-panelled reception hall that afternoon and it wasn’t only because I wasn’t carrying a gun. It was over three years since I’d last had that sensation but in my brief marriage I’d experienced it often enough when meeting my late husband’s old friends and new creditors to recognize it instantly. That no one had ever given Charles credit twice was amongst the reasons why I seldom used his surname and the couple who owned and ran Harbour Inn hadn’t recognized it on the reservation my Mr Smith made for me last week when I was down with flu.

  Mr Smith was my elderly solicitor. Sue Denver, his daughter, and her husband, Francis, had just driven across the marsh with me. We’d come in convoy: Francis had driven me in his Audi; Sue had followed in my Allegro. They had not seen me in, as Sue couldn’t keep Mummy waiting. (On this occasion his name was Gordon.) ‘You don’t mind, Rose darling,’ she drawled, ‘but I did promise Mummy I’d be at Cliffhill Town Hall by three, it’s another thirty- three miles and it’s useless saying Francis’ll make it easily. What’s the good of a fast car on a road that twists every few yards?’ She hauled on a floppy-brimmed suede hat to protect her gold head from the thin rain and leapt into the passenger seat of the Audi before Francis had deposited my suitcase and sketching haversack in the reception hall. ‘Darling, do come on! Rose’ll be fine and anyway I’m seeing her at Mummy’s exhibition tomorrow afternoon and she can tell me then if it’s all too hideous. Don’t forget, Rose ‒ the opening’s at two ‒ byeee!’

  Francis removed his tweed cap, smoothed his dark-red hair and looked perturbed. ‘I wish we didn’t have to rush away, Rose. If you don’t like it here just give us a ring and I’ll come and collect you. Take it easy ‒ sure you don’t mind our vanishing like this?’

  ‘Of course not. Thanks a lot for bringing me over.’

  He had a delightful smile. ‘You always understand. See you. Coming, Susie ‒’ He hurried off.

  I understood Sue, if not always Francis, possibly as I saw so much less of him. His job as a consultant mining engineer regularly took him abroad for months at a time. Sue was her parents’ only child and had been born when they had about given up hope of having a family. It remained her mother’s pride that she had never been able to deny her daughter anything. Her father still treated her as if she were nine years old. At twenty-nine she was a tall sexy blonde with a lovely figure and after four years’ marriage Francis continued to give the impression that for him the honeymoon hadn’t ended. Of course, he was away so much. They lived just outside St Martin’s village, were my nearest neighbours and, as Sue never failed to inform strangers she considered socially acceptable, my greatest friends. That Sue and I knew she wouldn’t have bought a flag on her doorstep from me, had I not owned more good farming land than anyone else on our part of the marsh, worried neither of us. Sue never bothered what other women thought of her and I was a realist. For the first twenty-three years of my life I’d been poor; for the last three, rich. As has been said, rich was better.

  The owner-managers of Harbour Inn were a Mr and Mrs Evans-Williams. They surveyed me with the expressions the middle-aged, middle-class English reserve for those who threaten the established order. They were of the generation that regarded an unaccompanied young woman booking in at an English hotel as still in that category. I was rather sorry I’d never got round to buying a mink. Then they could’ve been sure I was on the game.

  ‘Just complete this form, please,’ Mrs Evans-Williams requested in well-modulated tones, flicking it across the carved black oak reception counter. She was a tallish thin woman with blue hair, slightly protruding grey eyes, a tight mouth and rows of beads. ‘When Mr Smith of Smith, Smith and Smith of Astead telephoned to cancel our previous booking for room five ‒ double room with private bath ‒ and thereupon booked it for your sole use for one week from this day, he merely gave us your name on that occasion, and in his letter of confirmation. Are we to understand your address remains care of his office?’

  Being persona non grata I forbore to explain that Mr Smith’s ingrained objection to handing out g
ratuitous information to strangers included the weather. ‘No.’ I began on the form.

  Mr Evans-Williams tugged his neat moustache disapprovingly. He was a neat, straight-backed, grey little man with a military haircut, and the hot, angry eyes of a hard drinker. But from the steadiness of his hands he knew when to pocket the cellar keys. ‘Afraid you may find us rather dull, Mrs … Er as you don’t shoot. Height of the season. Best wild-duck shooting in the country on Harbour Marsh. We’ve only the five double rooms ‒ no room for more and frankly we aren’t sorry. We like the small homely atmosphere and it seems to suit our guests. Our present eight all came together last year and the year before. Keen as mustard and cracking good shots ‒ the two ladies included. But as they’re up early they like early nights so we don’t encourage non-residents in the shooting season. Need your sleep if you’re out after duck from dawn till dusk.’

  I returned the form. ‘Surely you only get duck at dawn and dusk when the flights come in. What do they go after in the intervals? Snipe?’

  ‘Know something of the marsh, eh?’ He glanced at the form and his wife did the same over his shoulder. I knew from their faces what was coming. It came. After three years it still had me torn between the desires to shout with laughter and throw up.

  ‘Oh, dear, we do apologize!’ Mrs Evans-Williams clutched her beads and had she possessed a bosom would have flung it out in welcome. ‘I’m afraid we just didn’t recognize your married name. We’ve always thought of you ‒ the whole marsh thinks of you ‒ as Rose Endel of Endel. And that beautiful old house! Tragic! Tragic! We’d just bought this place three years ago when we heard ‒ the whole marsh heard ‒ how that lovely old roof had fallen in and killed poor young Mr Endel and his dear wife and her young brother and so nearly killed you ‒ the last of the Endels. The last of that fine old marsh family ‒ just a girl ‒ a newly widowed girl with all that responsibility on her young shoulders. We were so distressed for you ‒ remember how distressed we were, Johnnie?’

  Johnnie remembered and grunted to prove it.

  ‘And you’ve come to us for a little holiday? Had flu? Come to rest in Harbour?’ Her cup was running over. ‘Naturally one understands why Mr Smith had to be careful. Solicitors are always so discreet and with such a young and charming client he won’t want to risk encouraging fortune hunters.’

  Johnnie Evans-Williams had recovered. ‘No chance of that here, ma’am. Just duck hunters, eh? But we mustn’t keep you standing around if you’ve been under the weather. Give young Trevor a shout, Helen, and we’ll take this good lady to her room ‒ or would you first care for a quick look round our humble hostelry, ma’am? Only this floor and one upper. You would? Splendid! Afraid it won’t be the scale you’re accustomed to.’

  ‘Endel’s not exactly Blenheim, Mr Evans-Williams.’

  From his shrug the only difference lay in the fact that Sir Winston Churchill had not been born in Endel House. ‘Much older than Blenheim, surely?’

  ‘Only a couple of centuries.’ I looked around. ‘I should say more or less the same age as this place.’

  Mrs Evans-Williams giggled girlishly. ‘That’s what I love about you marshfolk. You talk of hundreds of years back as if it were yesterday.’

  Her husband grinned boyishly. ‘Very right and proper. Continuity and stability ‒ those are the things that matter, eh?’

  Something about him struck a mental chord I couldn’t place and had no time to pursue as a fair-haired youth in a porter’s waistcoat had appeared through the swing door at the back of the hall. ‘Nip these bags up to five for madam, Trevor, then nip back and keep an eye here. Not,’ Mr Evans- Williams added to me, ‘that we’re likely to have any visitors this far off the map this afternoon. Bar’s just closing. We don’t do non-resident teas in the shooting season. Different in summer. Can’t see the marsh for visitors. Same your way, I expect. Just step this way, ma’am, and I trust you’ll approve our attempts to haul the old lady into the second half of the twentieth century without too much damaging her ancient charms.’

  Harbour Inn had been an inn on and off for some 400-odd years. In the off periods it had housed boats, nets, fishing tackle, fodder, sheep, chickens, fishermen, smugglers ‒ on the rare occasions when the two occupations were not synonymous ‒ musketeers waiting for Napoleon, and machine-gun crews waiting for Hitler. It was a low, sturdy, L-shaped little building that stood on a natural mound that was divided by a dyke from the solitary, narrow, built-up road that wound between dykes and over dyke bridges from the main coast road running along by the sea wall, to Harbour village three miles inland. The inn and its outhouses across the flagged yard were the only habitable buildings between the village that was due west, and the sea that was half a mile off due east, and four miles off north and south. The sea beyond the solid high concrete wall that edged the entire marsh coast was only visible from the upper windows of the inn as all the surrounding land was below sea-level. The sound of the sea was as constant as the salt in the clean marsh air and only on the calmest day was there no angry growl of the forbidden sea lashing the wall at high water.

  There were no crops on Harbour Marsh. The soil was too salty. From autumn to late spring there were no sheep as the land was too often flooded. The flat fields were lacerated by the deep dykes up which the sea ran at spring tides and pointed hungry green fingers at the inn. That land had been the tranquil home for thousands of birds, a resting place for migrants and a bird-watchers’ paradise, until the guns arrived. The Evans-Williamses, possibly because they were incomers, had had the acumen to recognize the inn’s potential for duck hunters and, when they bought it, acquired the local shooting rights. According to local gossip, and as I now saw for myself, they had transformed, with the kind of impeccable taste that costs a great deal of money, what had degenerated into a run-down bed-and-breakfast boozer into one of the most comfortable and exclusive private sporting hotels on the south-east coast.

  When first built, the inn had stood on one arm of a small, natural, prosperous fishing harbour and catered for travellers on the cross-Channel packets. It had been about forty years old when one of the week-long storms that had ravaged that part of the English coast at varying intervals while the Plantagenets and Tudors occupied the throne had flung up enough silt, pebbles and sand to ruin the harbour permanently, and leave a new high-water line half a mile further out than the old. The fisherfolk had waited for a few more years in the hope that another storm would return their lost harbour. Eventually they lost patience and brick by brick, removed their church and homes three miles inland, on to land that when drained would be more suitable for crops and grazing. The then incumbent innkeeper had refused to move, so they left him and his inn. On their new site they dug more dykes, built a high mound for their church, smaller mounds for their homes, and rebuilt their bricks. They named their village Harbour, the isthmus Harbour Marsh and the new stretch they added to the sea wall, the Harbour Wall. This last still confused visiting foreigners who expected to find a harbour on the other side. ‘Foreigners’ in this context covered all nationalities including the English born on the mainland fifty miles inland who had not at least one marsh-born parent.

  ‘Geography clear, ma’am? Residents only off this side of the hall. Lounge, television room, gun room, and residents’ public telephones through that last door. We’ve put a public box for non-residents between the bar and dining room over the other side and raised a door or two there. We didn’t want to spoil these so we’ve let ’em be and shoved up notices warning all over five foot nine to mind their heads. Not that you have to worry, eh?’

  ‘No, indeed,’ cooed Mrs Evans-Williams. ‘So petite! Such a typical black-haired, black-eyed little marshwoman!’

  ‘We’re also reputed to have yellow bellies and webbed feet.’

  They must have heard that ad nauseam. It didn’t dim their joy. ‘How about the cellars? Care to take a look at the special cold store we’ve had put in to take the bags?’

  ‘Thanks, but no. I’
m not all that keen on looking at dead birds.’

  Their renewed guffaws reminded me of something Mr Smith once said, ‘It is a strange fact of life, my dear Rose, that people seldom believe the truth when they hear it.’

  A new natural-pine staircase ran up from the hall to the guest rooms on the first floor. A very narrow, uneven-floored passage covered by a thick, dark-blue wall-to-wall bisected the two double rooms that lay off either side of the long arm of the L, and had new fire doors at both ends. Johnnie said, ‘We’ve left in the old twisting stairs that run up to the attics. God forbid you should need to know this, but if you should ‒ just through those doors at the far end. Young Trevor, our cook, and his missus have rooms in the attics, the rest of our staff come out daily from Harbour. Through here’ ‒ he opened the fire doors at the angle of the L ‘five on your left, six right. Six we call Johnnie’s suite. Johnnie being your humble servant.’ He opened the door of a neat, small, plainly furnished single room with a minute bathroom visible through an open door beyond. ‘I use this when we’ve a full house ‒ as now. Only fair to our guests to have one of us on tap at night. We’ve our own snug little billet over the garages. And this’ ‒ he bowed me into room 5 ‒ ‘yours, ma’am. We trust it suits.’

  I looked around the clean, warm, attractively furnished double room and smiled. ‘Admirably, thanks. How lovely. No phone and no telly.’

  ‘May lose us the odd stars but never lost us a customer yet. Come to Harbour Inn and discover lost civilization, that’s our motto,’ declared Johnnie. ‘Nothing to offer but good food, good beds, clean air, quiet, splendid views and splendid shooting.’ He noticed my haversack. ‘Got an easel in there?’

  ‘Yes.’ I walked over to the only one of the low, leaded windows that directly overlooked the marsh to conceal my reaction to his including shooting in his idea of civilization. The two others overlooked the yard. I watched a black and white cloud of lapwing settle on the greenish-grey land. ‘I like drawing birds and I’ve heard you’ve still a greater variety here than we have on Midstreet Marsh.’ Their silence made me look round. ‘Don’t worry about my getting in your guns’ light. I’ll check with you first where it’s safe to go.’