Free Death at Bishop's Keep by Robin Paige Page A

in.
    â€œAh, our tea has arrived,” Aunt Sabrina said with some relief, as the cart was rolled into place at the end of the sideboard.
    Mudd—rather younger than Kate would have expected of a butler, and more dandified, with carefully trimmed side-whiskers and a modish tie—filled a bone china cup and brought it to Kate. When tea had been served, Mudd and Amelia retired to a corner of the room, where they stood invisibly at attention, blank as pie, fixed as furniture.
    They were not, however, invisible to Kate, and behind the curtain of their bland impassivity, she sensed a silent scrutiny, a furtive watching, tinged with—what? Kate was sure that some deep passion lay behind the hooded eyes of the brown-haired Amelia, when she handed the tea tray round again. And while Mudd’s face was immobile, the working of his mouth betrayed an intense emotion; what it was Kate could not tell. She sat back, intrigued.
    Such currents and crosscurrents of powerful feeling flowing between sister and sister! Such secret passions hidden behind the inscrutable faces of the servants! Beryl Bardwell would not have to leave this house for raw material—indeed, for the rawest, the deepest, the strongest of human emotions.
    Then suddenly, Kate felt cold. The muted violence, the envy, hatred, and malice that she sensed in this room was not the stuff of novels. It was quite real. And because it was real, it had the power to wound, to maim, even to kill.
    Kate shivered.

11
    â€œManners make the man, but manors make the nobleman.”
    -Punch, Jan. 27, 1894
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    S omewhat to his surprise, Charles was enjoying his visit to the Marsdens’ country manor. His intellect was entertained by Bradford’s dry wit; his curiosity was piqued by the dig at nearby Colchester, and especially by the morning’s discovery; and his throat was soothed by the clean air of the country, a welcome change from the irritating London fog, which was tar-flavored and thick as treacle. As well, he loved the Essex countryside, for as a lad he had spent summers with his mother’s family at East Bergholt, only three miles away across the River Stour. It was there he had taken to photography, capturing on photographic plate the same landscapes that his famous great-uncle, John Constable, had earlier captured on canvas.
    But evenings at Marsden Manor, Charles felt, were less to be enjoyed than endured. On this particular night, he itched to get to the temporary photographic laboratory he had installed in the scullery, which he had equipped with a Carbutt’s Dry Plate Kerosene Lantern that allowed him to develop photographs in the absence of gas or electric light. But he was prevented from satisfying his wish by the requirement to dress for dinner, to which, Lady Henrietta had informed him, guests were invited.
    Dressing was not Charles’s favorite activity, and he did not particularly enjoy social dinners with persons he did not know. For Charles, the social ritual of dining was rather a burden, requiring that he exert himself to be pleasant when he would have much preferred a cold bird and a glass of wine with Bradford, followed by a game of chess and an article in his latest scientific journal.
    But tonight’s dinner promised to be of some little interest, for the guests included Barfield Talbot, the village vicar, and the Marsdens’ nearest neighbors, Miss Sabrina Ardleigh, Mrs. Bernice Jaggers, and their newly arrived niece, Kathryn Ardleigh. So it was that Charles found himself, sherry in hand, seated on a chair in the drawing room, across from a sofa on which sat Miss Ardleigh, whose simple blue dress severely (but pleasantly, Charles thought) contrasted with the elaborate gowns of Eleanor and her younger sister, Patsy.
    â€œImagine my surprise and pleasure,” Eleanor told Charles excitedly, “when I learned that dear Kathryn and her aunts would be at dinner tonight.”
    â€œAnd mine,”