Murder at Newstead Abbey Read Online Free PDF Page A

a hollow voice, pointing at the hand.
    Stanley looked, gasped and turned pale. “Crikey, it’s a skeliting,” he said, in a voice pitched high in disbelief.
    “This place ain’t used as a burial ground, is it?” He looked around but saw no sign of tombstones. And in any case, the body would be in a coffin.
    “Good lord, no. Who can it be?”
    “Any unexplained disappearances hereabouts the last few years?”
    Stanley applied his hand to his chin and rubbed, all the while staring at the little hand. “Old Ned Harper took off, leaving his wife and six kids behind, but we heard he run off to Birmingham, living with another woman. It don’t look like a man’s hand.”
    “No, more like a youngster’s, or a small woman’s. The nails are well cared for. Filed, I mean, not cut off rough.”
    Stanley looked up at the sky and thought some more. “There was some talk of Lady Richardson’s maid disappearing, but she was never really here.”
    “Eh?”
    “She was to come here, but never made it. She disappeared in London. She might of come here and got herself kilt. We’d ought to speak to his lordship about this.”
    Coffen couldn’t bear to leave till he found out more about this hand, and who it was attached to. “We will, but before we go, do the Richardsons live near here?”
    “Aye, at Redley Hall, north towards Mansfield. They’re a branch of the Redley family, from Jamaica. They come here about four years ago when Sir John Redley stuck his fork in the wall, and his niece — that’s Lady Richardson — inherited the Hall. She has the money and her husband has the title, but it seems like a love match right enough. Sir William was a neighbor in Jamaica. He took over running her da’s sugar plantation when the old boy fell sick. They got married, and stayed on in Jamaica when the old geezer turned up his toes. Then when she inherited Redley Hall, they come here and stayed. They say Sir William wants their lad raised in England.”
    “What’s all this got to do with the maid?” Coffen asked, pointing to the hand sticking out of the earth.
    “Well, Lady Richardson didn’t bring no maid with her. It seemed odd like that she’d travel without one, her being such a grand lady. Anyhow, what folks say is that she did bring her maid from Jamaica and the girl took off on her in London without so much as a by your leave. But unless the maid found her way here, it ain’t likely her. We’d best be getting back to the Abbey.”
    “Hold your horses. Do many people come here, to this island?” Coffen asked. “Is it used by locals for picnics or what not?”
    “Nay. I doubt anyone’s been here since his lordship’s house party three or four years ago. They say he brought a bunch of lads over, had a wild orgy here, but I wouldn’t know. I was over to Nottingham working in my uncle’s wagon shop at the time.”
    Coffen felt a chill ripple up his spine. Just last night Byron had been speaking about the madness in his family. In fact, he boasted about that ancestor called Mad Jack killing a neighbor. Had his orgy got out of control, and one of the girls ended up here, buried under this mud pile?
    “No girls disappeared around that time?” he asked.
    Stanley studied the rippling lake a moment to aid thinking, then said, “Now that you mention it, it must’ve been about that time that Vulch’s wife took off on him. Minnie was famous for her round heels,” he finished, with a knowing leer.
    “Might she have been at Byron’s orgy, then?”
    “I doubt it. She’s not what you’d call a looker. Beef to the heels like a Muenster heifer, and squint-eyed along with it. We always figured she’d took off with another fellow, and who would blame her? Vulch is a bad lot.”
    “Who and what is this Vulch?”
    Stanley hunched his narrow shoulders. “Just a fellow what does a bit of everything and not much of nothing. That’s Vulch. He used to be a pretty good rat catcher but then he took a fancy to Minnie Whyte