CHAPTER ONE
Beatrice Northolt placed the morning newspaper back onto the table and stared despondently at the room around her. The austere dining room was huge, and furnished with heavy brocade drapes which lined the tall windows at the front of the house a little too well, and stopped nearly all of the daylight from reaching the huge oak dining table in the centre of the room. She studied the glossy surface of the table before her, which could quite comfortably seat twenty people, and shook her head at the waste. Even when her Uncle Matthew had been alive they had never used all of the seating because they had never entertained anyone. Now that she was all alone, it didn’t seem necessary to have such a huge table in the house. It was hardly as though she entertained large numbers of people herself and, when her friends did call around to see her, they usually shared tea in the sitting room.
The silence within the room was broken only by the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the mantle, and the chink of her tea cup when she put it back into its saucer. It was so quiet that she could almost hear herself breathing, and it was most disconcerting. Even Mrs Partridge, Maud, had stopped clattering the pots and pans in the kitchen, and had inadvertently added to the Beatrice’s sense of isolation.
Since her Uncle Matthew had passed away several months ago, Beatrice had rattled around the house with nothing to do but while away the hours until it was time to go to bed again. Even with the house now her own, and more money in the bank than she knew how to spend, there seemed to be nothing to fulfil her existence. There was nothing to look forward to; nowhere to go, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do to change that. She didn’t want to travel. She had everything she needed. What else was there?
The walls of Brantley Manor seemed to close in on her with each day that passed, and she knew that she was going to go quietly mad if her circumstances didn’t start to change soon, but how could they change when she didn’t know what she wanted? What could she do with her life?
“I have to get out of here,” she muttered and pushed out of her chair. She threw her napkin onto the table and hurried out of the room.
It was a relief to be able to get outside, into the fresh air. She took a deep breath of the crisp summertime air and savoured the sunlight on her face while she listened to the birds chirping happily in the trees at the end of the garden. The beautiful lawns that surrounded her were festooned with a vast array of flora and fauna; the tantalising aroma of which scented the air sweetly with a gentle hint of floral elegance.
She took a moment to wander around in a vague circle but, unlike other occasions when she had sought sanctuary in the garden to ease her troubled thoughts, this time her mind wouldn’t settle. In spite of the opulent grandeur of her surroundings, the feeling of discontent that weighed so heavily on her shoulders didn’t lift. She turned to look back at the house but could find no pride or contentment in the fact that the huge manor house was hers. Indeed, the thought of going back inside filled her with a sense of foreboding that brought a frown to her beautiful face.
She wasn’t sure if the restless need to get out of the house, and into the morning sunshine, had anything to do with the recent murders of two members of the now defunct Psychic Circle, or the fact that she had recently witnessed her best friend, Harriett, marry the man of her dreams. One thing she did know was that seeing Harriett so happy, and adored by her husband, had made Beatrice realise just how much she was missing out on herself.
You are just missing Uncle Matthew, that’s all, Beatrice thought sensibly, and blocked out the small voice that warned her that wasn’t the cause of her current problem either.
She sighed listlessly and looked around her at the brilliant myriad colours that littered the borders. She then looked down at her rather plain dress, and sighed in disgust. If she was honest, she felt so uninteresting and boring that she knew it was going to take a miracle to find any man who would look twice at someone as insipid as her.
Putting the issue of her rather uninspiring clothing aside, she turned her attention with the true course of her malady. She was bored; totally, completely, and unutterably bored, with everything; bored with having nothing to do with her life; bored at living all by herself; bored with doing the same thing day after day after day. Bored. Bored. Bored.
To put it frankly, she was fed up with her life and wanted something new; something exciting, to happen to her so she could throw off the shackles of responsibility and just enjoy herself for a change.
“Oh Lord, not again,” she whispered when the sudden peel of church bells in the distance shattered the silence. She lifted her skirts so she could hurry to the house just that little bit quicker, and cursed her folly for not having kept a closer eye on the time.
“Beatrice!” Maud called.
“Coming,” Beatrice replied breathlessly as she swept through the back door and slammed it behind her. She didn’t stop though, and hurried through the kitchen with the sound of the bolts sliding across the door echoing in her ears.
In the front hallway she hurriedly drew her shawl around her shoulders and picked up her hymn book before she turned to the housekeeper.
“I’m ready,” she gasped.
“It’s only one morning dear,” Maud reminded her gently when she saw the dread Beatrice couldn’t hide.
“I know it is. I don’t know why I bother going to church at all really. I mean, I spend so much time avoiding the pointed stares of the old battle-axes that I completely forget to listen to the service, and merely count the minutes until I can get out of there,” Beatrice sighed and led the way out of the door. “I only got into the habit of going because Uncle Matthew insisted on it,” she added as they made their way down the driveway.
“Well, we should just be in time for service, if we hurry a little, so don’t you fret. It will be over soon and then you can get on with your day,” Maud replied quietly.
“But I do fret, Maud. The last time we were late, the vicar made a pointed reference to tardiness in his sermon and I felt the acrimonious gazes of half the congregation for the entire time we were there.”
“You exaggerate,” Maud replied, although lengthened her stride a little, just in case. She wouldn’t say as much to Beatrice, but that particular Sunday service stood out in her memory too, and wasn’t something she wanted to repeat either.
Beatrice merely looked at her and lifted her brows. She only wished it was an exaggeration, but they both knew that it wasn’t. She would never say so to Maud, but it wasn’t just the condescension of the congreg
ation that bothered her. It was the rather stern gaze of one particular person who, for reasons only known to himself, seemed to have taken a keen dislike to her.
Benedict Addison.
She had no idea what his problem was but it had become something of a weekly routine whereby they seemed to spend the Sunday service trying to ignore each other’s presence, only to fail miserably.
The journey to church was over far too quickly as far as Beatrice was concerned and, although they weren’t late, they both noticed the vicar look rather pointedly at his fob-watch as they approached the front door. Neither of them stopped to speak to the man, and instead kept their gazes averted while they hurried inside.
As they made their way down the aisle toward the family pew, Beatrice struggled to keep her gaze on the floor, and away from him, but she knew he was there; watching as usual. Benedict Addison: the only person in Tipton Hollow who really seemed to dislike her.