Death and the Singing Birds

WYCHBOURNE COURT

Members of the Ansley family involved in Death and the Singing Birds

Lord (Gerald) Ansley, 8th Marquess Ansley

Lady (Gertrude) Ansley, Marchioness Ansley

Lord Richard Ansley, one of their three sons

Lady Enid, the Dowager Marchioness

Lady Clarice, Lord Ansley’s sister

The upper servants

Nell Drury, chef

Charles Briggs, Lord Ansley’s valet

Florence Fielding, housekeeper

Frederick Peters, butler

Jenny Smith, Lady Ansley’s maid

Guests, visitors and neighbours

Sir Gilbert Saddler, artist and owner of Spitalfrith Manor

Lady Saddler (Lisette Rennard), Sir Gilbert’s wife

Petra Saddler, Sir Gilbert’s daughter

Vincent Finch, artist

Gert Radley, artist

Pierre Christophe, artist

Thora Huntley-Doran, poetess

Lance Merryman, artist and designer

Joe Carter, Spitalfrith’s gardener

Freddie Carter, Joe’s son

Robin Gurney, village constable

Jean-Paul Girarde, magician

and

Detective Chief Inspector Alexander Melbray of Scotland Yard

ONE

Not again! Nell Drury groaned. Blithering bloaters, this was the third time at least she’d told Michel that the redcurrants still required more sweetening. Normally such a brilliant underchef, it was clear he had his mind on something other than preparing a summer luncheon for Lord and Lady Ansley’s guests at Wychbourne Court. More accurately, they were the guests of Lady Enid – his lordship’s mother, the dowager – who had, so Nell had been told, commanded that the luncheon be held here instead of at the nearby Dower House, her own home.

‘It’s for the new owners of Spitalfrith Manor,’ Lady Ansley had explained. ‘I do have misgivings about them,’ she had added impulsively.

Nell had been intrigued. Rumours had been flying around Wychbourne village for some weeks, and finally a week ago, at the end of July, the new neighbours had arrived – which promptly sparked off another round of rumours. Even though this was 1926, eight years since the war had ended, villages the size of Wychbourne eyed the outside world cautiously. It amused her that she was still regarded as a newcomer even though she had been the chef at Wychbourne Court for nearly two years.

‘I regret, Miss Drury,’ Michel said anxiously, rushing to remedy the situation with the sugar tongs in hand.

‘He’s in love,’ Kitty, his fellow underchef, whispered, giggling.

‘No one’s allowed time off for love in a kitchen,’ Nell said firmly. ‘So snap to it. Now.’ At least twenty-two-year-old Kitty and Michel weren’t in love with each other. Kitty was being courted by a village swain and was immune to Michel’s indefatigable zest for sudden romance – usually one-sided. Michel was roughly the same age as Kitty, and Nell had noticed several nocturnal absences (judging by his late arrivals or absences at breakfast in the servants’ hall).

For a moment all was quiet, apart from the clatter of saucepans, frying pans and kettles, plus the whirling whisks and mincing machines as her staff concentrated on their tasks. Not for long.

‘I heard they’re artists up at Spitalfrith,’ burst out one of the kitchen maids.

‘Funny ones probably.’ Mrs Squires, Nell’s plain cook, snorted. ‘Not real artists. Just the sort that can’t even draw what’s in front of them properly. Anyway, the lady’s a model, so I heard.’

‘With no clothes on?’ Michel asked with interest.

‘Nonsense,’ Kitty said indignantly. ‘The gentleman coming to the lunch is a sir. Anyway, he’s a friend of Lady Enid’s, so he’d ask the lady to keep her clothes on.’

‘I bet he hasn’t painted Lady Enid without any clothes on.’ Someone giggled.

‘That’s enough,’ Nell commanded, suppressing a giggle of her own. ‘Luncheon! Turbot ready, please.’ The pace promptly quickened.

That didn’t stop her wondering about the new neighbours, though. There was a splendid portrait of the dowager (or Lady Enid as she liked to be addressed) in the Great Hall, painted in 1894 by Sir Gilbert Saddler when he was a young man and she was the reigning marchioness. In that painting she was most certainly fully clad, resplendent in velvet and jewels.

Sir Gilbert was the new owner of Spitalfrith Manor, which sat in the hamlet of a mere cluster of cottages that had grown up around it on the Sevenoaks road. It was on the outskirts of Wychbourne village and, compared with the vast Wychbourne Court, its estate was small. Spitalfrith had slumbered for many years under its former owner, a widower whose only son had died young. When he himself died a year ago, the estate had been sold, including its tied cottages. Life had changed greatly since the war, even in sleepy, rural Kent. All over the country, vast estates crippled by the loss of heirs or death duties were either being sold piecemeal for all sorts of purposes or shrunk to the point where they were no longer viable.

The Ansley family, itself struggling to keep its estate viable, had watched anxiously to know the fate of Spitalfrith Manor. Would it become a school? A public building? A socialist headquarters (the great wish of Lady Sophy, the youngest of the Ansleys’ three children, who was dedicated to the cause of the Labour Party)? Or would it once more be a private house? And if the latter, who would come to live there? Until about two weeks ago, even Lord Ansley, the 8th Marquess Ansley and usually a fount of all knowledge through the House of Lords and his London clubs, had failed to produce an answer.

Two weeks ago, the news had come, but the rumours had multiplied. It had not gone unnoticed by Mr Peters, the Wychbourne butler, that, against all the rules of etiquette, Sir Gilbert and his family had not replied to the calling cards politely left by the Ansleys on their arrival. And yet they were coming to luncheon. This, to Nell’s amusement though not surprise, was an outrage. How, Mr Peters had enquired grimly of his fellow upper servants, had this invitation been extended? Even he had not been informed before it was arranged.

‘Lady Enid’s doing, I’ll be bound,’ he had said darkly. ‘And that Lady Saddler’s a foreigner. French. Fancy not returning the call with her own cards. She doesn’t know what’s what.’

Nell had managed to keep a straight face. Such breaches of convention were not the social crime they would have been before the war, but they still existed. At Wychbourne Court, the Ansleys did their utmost to adapt to the new times. Their son Lord Richard helped his father run the estate with a breezy friendliness that made him generally popular in the village, his elder sister Lady Helen added the dash of London glamour as a Bright Young Thing, and Lady Sophy, while regarded as ‘strange’ by the village, was accepted as harmless. Since the General Strike had collapsed in May, she had been remarkably quiet on the subject of socialism, however, with only a few impassioned outbursts about the reduction of the miners’ wages and unemployment.

Now with the contentious luncheon only three-quarters of an hour away, Nell took a dose of her own medicine. Stir your stumps and get cracking, she told herself. The duckling needed checking, the broad beans cooking, the quails’ eggs preparing and artichoke bottoms stuffed. The head gardener, Mr Fairweather, had miraculously produced some late strawberries from the kitchen gardens and some raspberries were currently in the scullery for maggot removal.

Nell allowed herself a cautious pat on the back. All was well in her department, but Lady Ansley’s doubts remained. As Lady Ansley was usually the most charitable of people, Nell took those doubts seriously. When she had taken the day’s menus to her for approval, Lady Ansley had asked if she would remain during luncheon in the servery, which overlooked the dining room. She only made such a request occasionally and this time she was very frank as to why.

‘I’d like to know what you make of them, Nell,’ she had said. ‘It’s wrong to prejudge people just from gossip, and Lady Enid speaks very highly of Sir Gilbert, although she has not met his new wife. A French model, I gather, who was a wartime heroine as a spy rebelling against the Germans in occupied Lille. I’m told she isn’t popular with our local villagers so far, but perhaps that’s as a result of the war. Perhaps it makes her wary of new faces.’

Nell was about to leave when Lady Ansley had added in a rush, ‘Spitalfrith Manor has always seemed a strange place, as if it’s not part of Wychbourne village at all. Some of the villagers say that Spitalfrith attracts bad luck, even evil, but surely that’s just superstition? I do agree that the last owner, whom you won’t remember, lived a sad life, as did the owner before him, but that wasn’t their fault, nor that of Spitalfrith. Nevertheless, with all these rumours about Lady Saddler percolating, I can’t help but be somewhat anxious.’

So this was Lady Saddler. Nell gazed at her in fascination through the servery hatch as her ladyship entered the dining room with Lord Ansley. In her earlier career at London’s Carlton Hotel, Nell had seen and worked with people of all nations and was well used to stylish French fashions, but never had she seen a lady quite as strange as this. Sleek and sinuous, her fashionable silk day dress clung to her figure like a snakeskin – an apt comparison given the way Lady Saddler seemed to shimmy into the room. Her dark hair was drawn back tightly into a chignon. Her painted face was like a doll’s – no, not a doll’s, Nell decided; it was motionless, almost like a mask, the eyes heavily kohled and almost hooded, the mouth vividly painted. Not a gentle face and yet one that fascinated her. Nell could not take her eyes off her. She said very little, sat very still and yet managed to be the centre of attention.

Lady Saddler was in her early thirties, Nell guessed, but Sir Gilbert was much older, probably well into his fifties. He seemed somewhat out of his depth, as though wondering how to compete with his striking spouse, who was a stark contrast to this plump, seemingly affable man, who looked rather like Lewis Carroll’s Father William. Sir Gilbert, Nell had heard, had a daughter, Petra, by his first marriage, but she was not present, as she lived in London.

First impressions of the new neighbours? No doubt about it, Nell thought. War heroine or not, Lady Saddler looked a very determined cuckoo in the Saddler nest. No mercy would be shown to fledglings here. Perhaps that was why Miss Petra Saddler preferred to stay in London.

Lady Ansley was struggling with the conversation, and with no response at all from Lady Saddler, it was left to Sir Gilbert to cope. ‘Splendid place you have here,’ he remarked in the middle of an awkward silence.

Lord Ansley’s mouth twitched at this unconvincing comment. ‘Thank you,’ he replied gravely.

Lady Saddler did rouse herself at this point. ‘Versailles est plus grand,’ she commented dismissively.

Let battle begin, Lady Enid, Nell thought, willing her on. You can deal with that.

Lady Enid did. She treated her guest to the expression that had quelled generations of shopkeepers and family alike. ‘Versailles is a splendid building, but, alas, no longer a family home like Wychbourne.’

This broadside had no effect on Lady Saddler. She ignored it. Not a good omen, Nell thought, torn between dismay and an urge to applaud.

Oblivious to the atmosphere, Lord Ansley’s sister, Lady Clarice, blundered eagerly into the danger zone. ‘We have more ghosts at Wychbourne Court than Versailles. I believe Versailles only boasts poor Queen Marie Antoinette – beheaded, of course, but her ghost and those of her court still haunt Le Petit Trianon. Do allow me to take you on a tour of the Wychbourne phantoms. And indeed your own – I have reason to believe that at Spitalfrith—’

Nell froze. This was hardly the most tactful way to forge a friendly atmosphere. Lady Clarice’s addiction to ghosts was tacitly tolerated by everyone at Wychbourne, but they were not an interest that everybody shared.

‘My dear Clarice,’ Lady Enid firmly restrained her daughter, ‘no doubt Sir Gilbert and Lady Saddler would be most interested in our phantoms and indeed their own, but do permit them time to appreciate their new home before indulging in its spectral history.’

‘Of course, Mama,’ Lady Clarice murmured, downcast at this rebuff. Nell was fond of Lady Clarice. Now in her early fifties, she lived at Wychbourne Court as she had never married owing to the death of her fiancé in the Boer War. The ghosts of Wychbourne were her great passion, often to the exclusion of all else, and her thin, determined figure anxiously in search of the latest phantom was a familiar sight in the many corridors of Wychbourne Court. This was the first Nell had heard about ghosts at Spitalfrith, though.

‘Are there any ghosts at Spitalfrith?’ Sir Gilbert asked, manfully doing his duty as a guest. ‘I haven’t seen any myself. Have you, my dear?’ he addressed his wife.

As Lady Saddler remained silent, he continued hastily, ‘It’s a pity ghosts can’t be painted, eh, Lisette?’ He managed a weak grin, but his wife did not grin in return, Nell noted.

Lady Saddler was indeed not a lady to cross, Nell decided, wondering what Robert, their chief footman who was waiting impassively to serve the duck, was making of all this. He wore his usual poker face, but no doubt the servants’ hall would hear all about it later.

Lady Ansley clutched at this opening. ‘I do hope that you will find a great deal else to paint in Spitalfrith and Wychbourne, Sir Gilbert.’

Full marks to Lady Ansley, Nell thought with relief. Back to safe ground.

Sir Gilbert beamed. ‘The Clerries will.’

Nell blinked. No safe ground yet. The what?

‘Who are they? My dear Gilbert, do tell us more,’ Lady Enid said somewhat frostily.

‘The Clerries – more formally the Artistes de Cler – owe their name to the great General Joseph Gustav Cler who was killed at the battle of Magenta between the Emperor Napoleon III and the Italians,’ Sir Gilbert obliged enthusiastically. ‘He was also an artist. The Clerries’ founder, Monsieur Pierre Christophe, is a great admirer of his gifts; he bases his own artistic aim on presenting truth.’

‘I trust that this is not one of those avant-garde movements?’ Lady Enid responded icily. ‘You are a prominent academician, Gilbert. Surely you cannot regard such movements as more than temporary interruptions to the true path of art.’

To Nell’s amusement, Sir Gilbert turned as pink as a cooked prawn, but he did his best. ‘I experiment with the principles of the Clerries, because—’

Lady Saddler’s bored voice stopped him immediately. ‘Truth. La vérité? There is no such thing as the truth in art.’

‘All art is truth,’ Lady Clarice offered eagerly. ‘I remember Adelaide, the ghost of—’

Her mother waved this quickly aside. ‘Gilbert, kindly explain,’ she commanded. ‘Do you count yourself one of these Artistes de Cler?’

‘I do,’ he answered anxiously. ‘After the war ended, I visited Paris to find inspiration, recapture the vision that we artists had in the 1890s. It had since given way to so many art forms – cubism, fauvism, expressionism and now surrealism – that despite the life, the energy, the excitement of art today, I felt I had lost my way.’

This sounded to Nell like a well-rehearsed speech, but then he brightened up. ‘And then I found it. At last I realized that by stripping away the dross to the skeleton one reaches the essential truth, whether it be of the body or a leaf or the imagination itself.’ Sir Gilbert looked round, clearly pleased at this explanation.

Nell had a fleeting image of her kitchen reduced to its skeleton. What, she wondered, as she organized the arrival of the dessert dishes in the servery, was the essential truth of a trifle? Should one return to cream, custard and jelly or further still? Or was a trifle only skeletonized as it was being eaten? Take this seriously, she instructed herself. Was there more truth in a barren tree than a leafy one? Surely both were true? Or did one have to strip off the bark as well? On the whole, Nell decided, she’d stick to trifle, truthful or not.

Bemused, she saw the Ansleys’ polite but blank faces, as Sir Gilbert might have done because he added hastily, ‘Our friends who are visiting us for our festival in two weeks’ time will explain the Artistes de Cler more clearly. And we are to hold an exhibition of their work next year at the Academy of Modern Art in London.’

‘That,’ contributed Lady Saddler smoothly, ‘is not yet certain.’

She smiled, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that warmed the cockles of one’s heart. It was more the smile of a crocodile, Nell thought, then felt ashamed of herself for such a disparaging view of a war heroine. War changed people, it ruined lives. But what was all this about a festival?

Sir Gilbert’s sudden burst of confidence seemed to drain away. ‘As my dear wife says, it is not yet certain,’ he said unhappily.

Nell shivered. There was something strange about his ‘dear wife’, apart from her appearance.

‘You referred to a festival, Sir Gilbert. Might I ask what it is?’ Lord Ansley asked quickly, signalling to the chief footman Robert to serve the dessert.

‘Ah.’ After a quick glance at his wife, Sir Gilbert was only too happy to tell them. ‘In two weeks’ time, on Saturday the twenty-first of August, we shall be holding the very first Festival de Cler in the grounds of Spitalfrith Manor. Monsieur Christophe himself will be doing us the honour of attending it, as will other fellow Clerries. He has naturally chosen Africa as its theme and we artistes will be exhibiting our work.’

Africa in Wychbourne? Nell struggled with that concept with one part of her mind, while the other watched the reception of her Coupe Melba. What did Sir Gilbert mean by ‘naturally’? What on earth would the Wychbourne villagers make of this Africa theme and the artists themselves? She tried to suppress a mental image of a group of unclad skeletons tramping round the village.

‘Will there be shamans present?’ Lady Clarice asked with excitement.

Sir Gilbert looked blank. ‘I cannot be sure of that,’ he added less certainly, perhaps conscious of his wife’s cold lack of support or perhaps, like Nell, unsure what shamans were. ‘But Africa is certainly a cornerstone of the Clerries’ art.’

‘Why?’ Lady Clarice asked eagerly. ‘Is it because Josephine Baker is taking Paris by storm?’

Trust Lady Clarice to ask what all of them were wondering but no one dared say, Nell thought.

‘Perhaps,’ Sir Gilbert replied miserably. ‘Look at Gauguin’s work. Africa is untarnished by the complications of Western life. Nature in its rawest form, stripped of modern life’s fripperies.’

From what Nell had seen in the newspapers, the word ‘stripped’ was all too applicable, given Josephine Baker’s scanty costumes. The American singer had indeed taken Paris by storm with her singing and dancing. Fortunately, however, Nell could see no call for stripping down her cuisine to bare bones. Nor, on reflection, did she see much point in the Clerries’ aims. Shouldn’t every artistic work reflect the truth?

‘Everyone in Wychbourne is invited to our festival,’ Sir Gilbert continued. ‘Including everyone here at the Court.’ He smiled nervously at his hosts. ‘High and low,’ he added. ‘From aristocrats to lowly servants.’

Lowly servants? Nell managed to hold back a snort of laughter at the thought of what Robert would undoubtedly relay to the servants’ hall. Then she shivered again as she saw Lady Saddler’s expression. She was staring at her husband with what was surely pure disdain. Just what was going on at Spitalfrith?

‘Lowly servants, that’s what he called us,’ Robert declared indignantly later that day in the servants’ hall. ‘What tripe! Those days are over. That’s his blinking truth and I felt like telling the old geezer so.’

Nell saw his point. Robert was a gentle giant of a man generally, and a patient one, so his annoyance was unusual. But he was right. Even in Wychbourne Court, the distinction, at least by name, between upper servants and lower was vanishing fast, although the same hierarchy remained, despite the fact that the interaction between the family and the servants was closer. The war had shown that everyone had a job to do, whatever their rank, because gas, bayonets and shells had made no distinctions.

The upper servants used to eat separately in the butler’s room, but nowadays they frequently ate together in the servants’ hall. Before the war, meals had been taken in silence by the lower servants. Now everyone had a right to their say, and today they were making full use of it. The subject was still modern art, it appeared, when Nell joined them for their supper.

‘I saw a picture in a window in Sevenoaks last week,’ Kitty contributed. ‘It was called Lady with Grapes but it was only a lot of bulges and squares. Not like a lady at all.’

‘I’ve enough bulges of my own, thank you very much,’ Mrs Fielding, the housekeeper, commented in a rare jovial mood. It was everyone’s secret that she and Mr Peters were sweet on one another, even though it was not talked about publicly.

‘The artist was just experimenting, I expect,’ Nell contributed. ‘We’re all doing that nowadays in all sorts of ways. It makes life fun.’

‘What are those artists going to be experimenting on at Spitalfrith, though?’ Mrs Fielding returned to her usual snappiness.

‘Living after the war,’ Michel replied seriously. His father had died at Verdun and he had come to England with his mother at the age of fifteen.

‘Or, like Robert says, experimenting in skeletons,’ Kitty said brightly. ‘Perhaps there are some at Spitalfrith Manor.’

‘It’s a creepy old place,’ Mrs Fielding observed. ‘I’ve asked her ladyship if I can go to this festival, though.’

‘Perhaps Mr Peters would like to go, too,’ Robert remarked innocently. ‘Anyway, we can all go. That’s what the old chap said,’ he pointed out.

To Nell’s surprise, Mr Briggs, Lord Ansley’s valet, seemed to be listening. Mr Briggs must be about thirty and suffered from war damage, living in a war of his own. He only rarely paid any attention to what was going on around him. This time he dealt with it in his now familiar way.

He pushed his chair back, stood up and saluted. ‘Corporal G/26420, sir,’ he snapped out.

Then he sat down again. That was rare after such outbursts, so Jenny Smith went round to him, picking up his napkin and gently persuading him to continue eating his cake. Jenny had brought a gust of fresh air when she arrived at Wychbourne as lady’s maid to Lady Ansley earlier that year from London. As she was as attractive and as bubbly as Mary Pickford in the Hollywood pictures, Lord Richard had rapidly had his eye on her – and