The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [33]
“What about Lady Shelburne?” Monk affected innocence.
“Go and see her. Try to be civil, Monk—make an effort! Evan can chase after Yeats, and tell you whatever he finds when you get back. Take the train. You’ll be in Shelburne a day or two. Her Ladyship won’t be surprised to see you, after the rumpus she’s raised. She demanded a report on progress, in person. You can put up at the inn. Well, off you go then. Don’t stand there like an ornament, man!”
Monk took the train on the Great Northern line from the King’s Cross Station. He ran across the platform and jumped in, slamming the carriage door just as the engine belched forth a cloud of steam, gave a piercing shriek and jolted forward. It was an exciting sensation, a surge of power, immense, controlled noise, and then gathering speed as they emerged from the cavern of the station buildings out into the sharp late-afternoon sunlight.
Monk settled himself into a vacant seat opposite a large woman in black bombazine with a fur tippet around her neck (in spite of the season) and a black hat on at a fierce angle. She had a packet of sandwiches, which she opened immediately and began to eat. A little man with large spectacles eyed them hopefully, but said nothing. Another man in striped trousers studiously read his Times.
They roared and hissed their way past tenements, houses and factories, hospitals, churches, public halls and offices, gradually thinning, more interspersed with stretches of green, until at last the city fell away and Monk stared with genuine pleasure at the beauty of soft countryside spread wide in the lushness of full summer. Huge boughs clouded green over fields heavy with ripening crops and thick hedgerows starred with late wild roses. Coppices of trees huddled in folds of the slow hills, and villages were easily marked by the tapering spires of churches, or the occasional squarer Norman tower.
Shelburne came too quickly, while he was still drinking in the loveliness of it. He grabbed his valise off the rack and opened the door hastily, excusing himself past the fat woman in the bombazine and incurring her silent displeasure. On the platform he inquired of the lone attendant where Shelburne Hall lay, and was told it was less than a mile. The man waved his arm to indicate the direction, then sniffed and added, “But the village be two mile in t’opposite way, and doubtless that be w’ere you’re a-goin’.”
“No thank you,” Monk replied. “I have business at the hall.”
The man shrugged. “If’n you say so, sir. Then you’d best take the road left an’ keep walking.”
Monk thanked him again and set out.
It took him only fifteen minutes to walk from the station entrance to the drive gates. It was a truly magnificent estate, an early Georgian mansion three stories high, with a handsome frontage, now covered in places by vines and creepers, and approached by a sweeping carriageway under beech trees and cedars that dotted a parkland which seemed to stretch towards distant fields, and presumably the home farm.
Monk stood in the gateway and looked for several minutes. The grace of proportion, the way it ornamented rather than intruded upon the landscape, were all not only extremely pleasing but also perhaps indicative of something in the nature of the people who had been born here and grown up in such a place.
Finally he began walking up the considerable distance to the house itself, a further third of a mile, and went around past the outhouses and stables to the servants’ entrance. He was received by a rather impatient footman.
“We don’t buy at the door,” he said coldly, looking at Monk’s case.
“I don’t sell,” Monk replied with more tartness than he had intended. “I am from the Metropolitan Police. Lady Shelburne wished a report on the progress we have made in investigating the death of Major Grey. I have come to give that report.”
The footman’s eyebrows went up.
“Indeed? That would be the Dowager Lady Shelburne. Is she expecting you?”
“Not that I know of. Perhaps you would tell her I am here.”
“I suppose you’d better come in.” He opened the door somewhat