Page 9 of Beatrix

‘Damned lung fever.’ She answered his unspoken question before wiping her sleeve across her blood-spattered lips and pulling the cane towards her. Gripping the topper, she sneered at him and shook her head. ‘It’s no use you running away now, boy. You’re the one here, so you’ll have to do. Help me up.’

Fighting back an urge to cry, Billy stepped back towards her and held out his arm, almost collapsing as her dead weight pulled on him. Once upright, she nodded weakly towards a door across the hall. ‘Get me in there.’

It took a good ten minutes to help her into what turned out to be a large study, where she directed him towards a sagging wingback chair situated in front of a large fireplace. As she crumpled into it, Billy was filled with the sudden certain knowledge that Muriel Pemberton would die in that chair without ever getting back up again. He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat.

‘Where is everyone?’ he asked shakily, looking round. ‘Wot is this place? Ain’t there any orphans ‘ere? Does…’

Thumping her cane on the floor, Muriel cut him off. ‘Fatheaded little ratbag,’ she croaked. ‘You need to shut your bloody mouth and listen.’ Billy stopped instantly and gave a jerky nod.

‘There were only a couple of servants left here when I arrived. Aside from them, the place had been cleaned out. I told them both to get themselves down to Paignton and ask for Henry Shackleford. No idea how long it’ll take them to get there, or even if they’ll go. They didn’t have more than one deuced brain between them. Scared of their own bloody shadows.’ She held up a frail hand when Billy opened his mouth to interrupt.

‘They’re not why we’re here. This place has never been for the guttersnipes. It’s much bigger than that…’ She stopped to take a breath, which turned into a fit of coughing that left her gasping for air. Terrified, Billy stepped towards her, but she waved him back.

‘Everything I have is here,’ she wheezed at length, this time leaving the blood to trickle down onto her chin. ‘There wasn’t much worth taking from Pembroke, and I don’t reckon there’s anything in them likely to put a rope round Jacob’s neck - least from what I could see.’ She began coughing again, and this time a gout of blood spurted from her open mouth.

Panicked, Billy looked round for something, anything to stem the flow. In the end, he grabbed the embroidered cloth covering the arm of the chair and pushed it under her chin.

For a few seconds he thought she’d gone, but as he began to straighten, her bony hand grabbed his arm. ‘You’ve not got long. They’ll be coming back to check the place is clear. I hid everything I’ve got on him in the wall, it’s in…’ she stopped, gasping for breath, finally managing to croak, ‘Tell Henry Shackleford to go to Grainger and Holt in Exeter. Soon as he can. You got that, boy? Grainger and Holt. Say it.’

‘Grainger an’ ‘Olt,’ Billy obligingly whispered through tears he could no longer hold back.

Muriel Pemberton nodded, then closed her eyes. No more than a minute later she stopped breathing.

Just as Gladys and Arnold burst through the door.

* * *

To say Robert Noon’s unexpected arrival disrupted the growing malaise within Cliff House would be a gross understatement.

The previously absent Shacklefords were informed of their guest’s arrival as soon as they arrived home. Flo and Daisy were almost speechless with excitement – which had never to anybody’s knowledge happened before. And even Arabella, who’d had the mulligrubs since Castel-a-Mare, showed some enthusiasm when told that Finn Noon’s son had come all the way from Australia to see them. As they all dispersed to ready themselves to meet their guest over dinner, Bernice linked arms with her twin, instructing Beatrix to tell her everything.

To Bernie’s surprise, as soon as their bedchamber door was closed, Bea sat on the end of the bed and burst into tears.

Bernice looked at her sister in astonishment before plonking herself down and demanding to know whether she’d suddenly discovered she had the plague – or possibly something worse.

Beatrix stopped crying and turned to regard her twin with the exact same astonished expression. ‘Why would you think such an idiotic thing? Do I look like I’ve got the plague?’

‘Right now, you look like you’ve got something worse,’ Bernie answered. ‘I’ve never seen your face so blotchy.’ She paused before adding, ‘In truth I never realised you looked so terrible when you cry. No wonder you never turn on the waterworks.’

‘I don’t look that bad,’ Bea snapped, completely abandoning her tears and snatching up a mirror. After staring at herself critically for a second, she grimaced and plonked the mirror face down on the bed with a very Charlotte-like sniff.

‘Come on then, tell me why you’ve got the morbs,’ Bernie went on, completely unperturbed. ‘Is Robert Noon a dreadful bore? Ugly? Rude? Are we going to want to throw ourselves collectively off the cliff after he’s been here for a couple of days?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Beatrix snapped. ‘He’s not in the least bit ugly.’

‘So that’s the way of it,’ Bernice guessed triumphantly, ‘you like him.’ She ignored her twin’s glare and shook her head with a grin, adding, ‘My dearest twin who hitherto thought romance was for fopdoodles has actually been pierced by Cupid’s arrow herself. Who’d have thought it?’

‘You’re talking complete balderdash,’ Bea declared. ‘I’ve only spent half an hour with the gentleman. How could I possibly have formed an attachment in such a short time?’

‘Well, perhaps he really is someone special,’ Bernie answered dramatically, holding both hands over her heart. As she spoke, she regarded her sister’s face and finally realised what the problem was.

Beatrix was afraid that her twin would find their guest equally attractive.

For a second, Bernie was speechless. Such a thing had never happened before. They were not yet quite twenty, and marriage was something neither of them had ever really discussed – it had always seemed like something that might happen in some distant future. Papa had never pushed them towards wedlock, and neither had Aunt Charlotte, especially since they’d become wrapped up in Shackleford and Daughters. The most likely reason, Bernie guessed, was a secret belief that no man would be bacon-brained enough to take either of them on.

And while Bernie sometimes daydreamed about being swept off her feet, Bea was dismissive of the very idea of a romantic attachment. Neither of them had been particularly keen on the idea of being involved in a detective agency, but gradually their foot-dragging had become acceptance, if not enthusiasm.

The truth was, they were both too outspoken to be unleashed on unsuspecting clients, but of the two of them, Beatrix was by far the bluntest.