Fifteen Sixteen Maids In The Kitchen: A Grasshopper Lawns whodunit Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements and thanks

  Author's note

  Prologue

  PART ONE Going to the glen

  Hidden room

  Lorna

  Kirsty

  Alec

  Kkkitty

  PART TWO Maids in the kitchen

  Arrivals

  Alec

  Last arrivals

  PART THREE The body in the library

  Debrief

  Triffid

  Wee small hours

  PART FOUR Lorna plays her part

  Alec

  A test for sociopaths

  The hidden room gives up its secrets

  PART FIVE Three days later

  Aftermath

  Other books you might enjoy

  Appendix - Kinloch Castle

  Glossary

  About the author

  FIFTEEN SIXTEEN

  MAIDS IN THE KITCHEN

  A Grasshopper Lawns whodunit

  by EJ Lamprey

  Acknowledgements and thanks

  Cover artwork by www.laceyoconnor.com

  Floorplans by Mapmaker with EJ Lamprey

  Independently edited by edit-my-book.com

  As always, grateful thanks to my pre-publication readers

  Photographs used are from author’s own collection

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents and settings are either fictitious or used fictitiously and not to be construed as real.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book can be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author.

  Copyright 2016

  Author’s note

  Scottish Heritage Foundation is a fictional organization, not to be confused with Scottish Natural Heritage (which owns Kinloch Castle, see appendix), the National Trust of Scotland, or any other of the excellent organizations dedicated to preserving and presenting the rich heritage of this beautiful country.

  No book set in Scotland could be without occasional moments of Scottish. Beyond the soft burr of the accents, which will have to wait for the audio version, it is very nearly a language on its own, descriptive and pungent. Some words shared with English are pronounced differently, and some meanings are unique to the country. In Scotland, you would chap on a poorly neighbour’s door and offer to get their messages (knock and offer to do their shopping). All Scots speak English, but few can resist the temptation to slide sideways into the joy of Scottish every now and then and my characters are no different.

  The general meaning should always be clear from the context—a brief glossary has been added at the end for easy reference. Definitely is pronounced deffi-NATE-ly in Scotland and has deliberately been spelled ‘definately’ in appropriate dialogue. The same applies to other spelling ‘errors’ spotted in dialogue (photies for photographs, polis for police, and so on). I have kept this to a minimum, to avoid puzzling non-Scottish readers, but hope you will enjoy the occasional reminder that you are north of the border.

  Prologue

  Lorna shivered and moved closer to the torchlight, glancing round fearfully as she hugged her elbows with her hands. Fitful moonlight dimly lit the big hall, suggesting the presence of furniture, and branched shapes protruded from the walls. Alec had gone through one of the arches, outlined by the thin lemon light of the torch, which supported the upstairs walkway.

  ‘Oh Alec, it’s horrible. Please let’s go, I changed my mind, I hate this.’ Her voice was breathy and babyish, unexpected in a lavishly curved woman in her early forties, and her slightly bulging pale blue eyes were heavy with mascara. Her makeup suggested an evening out: her well-filled tracksuit and trainers implied a more workmanlike event.

  ‘Ah, come now.’ His voice was a bit muffled as he concentrated on his search. The torch wobbled, and she gasped as the rows of eyes glinted, the stuffed heads seeming to take back life lost decades earlier.

  There was a click and dim yellowed overhead lights came on. The stags were revealed to be trophies gazing sightlessly into space, shabby and dusty.

  ‘Found the switch. That’s better. Isn’t it better, darling?’ Her companion emerged from the darkness under the walkway to grin at her toothily, the peak of his hat throwing his eyes into heavy shadow, the folds of his impeccably-shaven cheeks into deep relief. He was a little above average height, of spare build, and in the unflattering light he looked a decade her senior as he slid his arm around her substantial shoulders.

  She shivered again as he kissed her lingeringly, and pulled back to gaze myopically into his eyes. ‘You said the house could be dangerous. I dinnae see why we have to do this at night.’

  There was the slightest edge of impatience in his voice. ‘I can’t get away during the day and neither can you. I did tell you, darling, there’s a fortune at stake. If we find it we can get you free of your husband. We can be together forever, just the two of us. You want that.’

  ‘Mmm.’ This time she let him kiss her, and even unfolded her arms to slide them round him. He lifted them away and stepped clear, smiling down at her.

  ‘Oh no, or I’ll forget why we’re here! We don’t have much time if you’re to get home by midnight. Take this metal ruler into the other rooms, and tap every piece of panelling. If it sounds the same as the others, mark it with this chalk so we know where you got to. If it sounds hollow, shout for me. Don’t risk opening anything yourself, the place is stuffed with booby-traps.’

  She leaned in for a final embrace before reluctantly walking away, glancing back over her shoulder as she wiggled her ample hips teasingly. He rounded his full lips into an ‘oh’ of appreciation and she giggled and pushed through the drawing room door.

  Left alone, he rolled his eyes, found the light switch that illuminated the half-enclosed passage under the walkway, and started tapping along the panelling, listening intently. The silence in the big house was almost complete. There was only his tapping and the faint scratching of the chalk, his hushed footfalls louder on the stone-flagged floor as he worked his way swiftly along the wall shared with the kitchen, then along the back towards the far side. The eyes in the portraits seem to flicker as he passed, and a potted plant gave him a bad moment by swivelling as though to watch him. He skirted it carefully and continued tapping panels. He was frowning as he finished the third wall and reached the front door. The drawing room was half the size of the big hall, what was keeping the silly woman so long?

  Not for the first time he wished fervently he could have got Jeanette’s help for the search instead, but she was languid, a lover of comfort and opulence. It was impossible to picture her creeping at night through the house of an eccentric prestidigitator who had packed it with tricks and special effects thirty years earlier. She’d laughed at the very idea and suggested using Lorna’s crush on him, if he needed what she mockingly called a magician’s assistant. He found it slightly unnerving that the two women communicated, even though Lorna had no idea of his feelings for Jeanette. Or had she? Women were so incredibly complex. He was a simple man with simple needs, and once he’d got over the shock that they were comparing notes and realized Jeanette didn’t mind him having a bit on the side, he found it best to let them get on with their conniving. Lorna was being a little odd tonight, but this house was enough to unsettle anyone. He’d always found the old man a little unnerving himself, and for all that he wasn’t fanciful, even he could practically feel disapproving eyes on his back. If Lorna knew the owner had died here in the house mere weeks ago, she’d have refused poin
t-blank to help.

  He walked briskly back down the passage, ignoring the grating sound as the big plant swivelled again, and opened the drawing room door. ‘Darling?’

  Nothing. The room was dimly lit, but she definitely wasn’t there. Frowning, he pulled the torch out of his pocket and danced the beam over the walls. There were chalk marks on nine panels and he tapped the ninth cautiously, then stretched forward, not moving his feet, to tap the tenth. No gaping hole opened in the floor, and the panel sounded exactly like the one before it. He turned his attention to the bulky shapes of dust-sheeted furniture, gingerly prodding each to be sure she wasn’t hiding under the draped covers, then looked around, baffled. For the first time he noticed one of the French doors was slightly ajar, and shook with a sudden spasm of rage. She’d cut and run? The bitch!

  He crossed the room hastily, pushed the door open and leaned out to call her name, without expecting a reply. Nothing. After a moment the false smile fell off his face and he pulled the door closed with a fretful slam, turning the key decisively. Bitch, bitch, bitch! Tears of temper shone in his eyes as he strode back across the room and he blinked them away to look at his watch. Nine thirty already. It would take much longer to search on his own, but, on the positive side, he wouldn’t have to leave as early to return Lorna to her indifferent husband. There should be time to do the dining room, then make a start at least on the library. He dashed away the angry tears and slammed the door to the drawing room shut behind him.

  ***

  The old apparatus had worked, but had never been designed for someone of her ample size. Lorna was firmly wedged in an unyielding funnel, barely able to breathe, her mew for help scarcely audible even to her own ears. He’d find her. He loved her to distraction, even Jeanette conceded that. He would pull the house apart with his bare hands to find her. . . She shut her eyes and whispered fervently, ‘Alec, Alec, Alec.’

  PART ONE

  Going to the glen

  ‘Couldn’t do this without four wheel drive, at a guess.’ Donald McDonald, sitting in the back seat, leaned forward to peer through the windscreen as William Robertson hastily reached for the knob on the dashboard to engage terrain response and his big Range Rover clambered slowly through the short tunnel under the railway line. The track was so neglected it had eroded into a gully, and the rain, which had been falling most of the night, had turned it into a waterway. The Range Rover groaned, wheels spinning, then took hold and they were through with a lurch that jolted Vivian Oliver’s handbag off her lap into the footwell of the passenger seat. ‘What did your uncle drive, a tractor? Or is there another access?’

  ‘No other access, and no-one else lives here, so he just organized a couple of tons of gravel put down every autumn to keep it accessible over winter. It’s not usually this bad, but then we’ve had a crappy summer.’

  ‘He was the only one living in the glen? At ninety?’ Edge Cameron, sitting with Donald in the back seat, was startled.

  Edge was an attractive mature woman, slim and nicely dressed, with a lively face and most of her red-blonde hair tucked up into a beret which exactly matched her green padded jacket. Her green eyes rounded with astonishment as they emerged into a rolling landscape which stretched as far as the eye could see, bright gorse against rough grass and occasional trees against the slopes of the surrounding hills. ‘Wow, did you inherit all this?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ William glanced at her slightly impatiently in the rear-view mirror. ‘The whole glen, bar the lodge itself, was sold on a hundred-year lease to a big syndicate. Their guys come in by tractor, so they don’t care what the road is like. There’s a team of cleaners that come through every month; they seem to manage. More gravel would sort the problem short-term but that’s another thing the Foundation wants properly fixed before they’ll consider taking the place off my hands. Imagine what that would cost?’

  The rain stopped, and the clouds parted to finally allow a few thin rays of late morning sunshine.

  ‘Deer!’ Edge pointed, delighted, and Vivian’s labrador Buster barked sharply from the back. Donald’s whippet reared on her dainty hind legs to sniff urgently at his opened window over his shoulder.

  ‘Aye, the syndicate farms free range red deer. Always been deer here, hence the shooting lodge. With serious delusions of grandeur.’ He turned off the track to rattle across an enormous cattle grid onto a weed-choked gravel driveway between banks of overgrown towering hedges, which widened to reveal a parking area around a dilapidated fountain.

  ‘That’s it, we’re here.’ He brought the Range Rover to a crunching halt and twisted round to look at Edge and Donald. ‘What do you think?’

  Donald craned his neck again to look through the front windscreen. ‘That’s big. That’s extremely big.’

  Edge opened her door to get out of the car and shaded her eyes against the watery sun to look up. ‘Heavens, William, it’s very baronial. When you said a shooting lodge, I pictured a cabin in the woods! And you never answered my earlier question, did he live here alone?’

  ‘Pretty much. For a while he had a male carer living in to cook and take care of him. That ended when Butler, the land agent, noticed the carer was helping himself to things, so he had to go. For the last few years the old man was paying way over the odds to have carers coming in morning and evening instead, and fiercely resisting being moved out. He solved the problem by dying peacefully in his bed, exactly the way he wanted to go. And aye, it’s huge. Ten bedrooms, four reception rooms. Only three bathrooms, but you could hold a party in each.’ He grinned at them, a sudden easing of his bad mood of recent weeks. ‘Has to be seen to be believed. Vivian nearly passed out when she saw the kitchen.’

  ‘Neither Edge nor I are kitchen experts.’ Donald creased his vivid blue eyes as he got out of the car to stare up at the sprawling mansion. Slim in dark jeans and a black leather jacket, deeply tanned with charcoal-coloured hair, he moved with unusual grace for a man nudging sixty and was very good-looking. ‘Not yet seeing why you asked us to join you. Are you thinking of doing it up, or just letting it collapse into a picturesque ruin?’

  ‘It’s a complete drain on my finances, and will get worse. I was thinking of hosting at least one murder weekend, though, as a bit of a fund-raiser. Wait until you see inside. My uncle was an illusionist, a good one, who became a special effects expert. He even spent a couple of years in Hollywood before the computer graphics revolution ended the demand for his services in the late seventies. He did horror, mainly, and this house includes every optical and mechanical effect he ever thought up. He never quite forgave his peers for refusing to recognize his contributions to prestidigitation because of the film side. This was his way of giving them the finger and preserving his genius. It’s pure nasty. I thought, hmm, who do I know who understands set design, who could draw out the final ounce of drama? Or for that matter, who could script a suitable plot? I couldn’t think of anyone.’ He looked slyly at them, and Edge laughed aloud.

  ‘I’m a sitcom scriptwriter,’ she protested. ‘I’ve never written a murder plot in my life! But actually that’s an inspired idea. All this place needs is a couple of ravens croaking from the roof, it shrieks dark deeds. How do we get in?’

  William heaved himself out of the driver seat and dug in his battered tweed jacket to produce a large ring of keys from one of his many pockets. He lumbered around to the back of the vehicle to let the dogs jump out, then went round to the passenger door to open it for Vivian, who was bent double repacking her substantial handbag which had landed upside-down when it fell. The dogs charged back down the driveway, then skidded to a cautious halt as one of the stags appeared on the far side of the cattle grid to stare curiously at the car. It lowered its well-antlered head to scrutinise them and Odette nervously danced sideways, poised to bolt if necessary. Buster stood his ground but didn’t bark. The animals studied each other, then the stag nodded gracefully on its way and Buster went to join Odette. William, who had been watching with his brows drawn together
, relaxed and turned back towards the car.

  ‘It is baronial, isn’t it? Suits me, I think. I like big places. Collected the keys from Butler yesterday. The dogs should be fine, I don’t think they’ll cross the cattle grid and there’s a six-foot steel fence in the hedges to keep the deer out, so they can explore where they want.’

  He offered an enormous hand to Vivian as she sat up, slightly pink from the bending. Tall and generously-rounded as she was, she looked small next to him as he helped her out, shooting one of her lovely smiles into his face as he did, and he smiled back involuntarily. From the time she entered her fifties and could no longer easily fit into the clothes offered on the high street, she had picked catalogue outfits for colour and comfort and wore them with the confidence of a woman who had turned heads all her life. She had trained for opera, at a time when opera singers were expected to be statuesque: her husband had adored her, no matter what her size, and William, who was very large and had much the same cavalier attitude to his wardrobe, applauded her choices. They made, at times, an eye-watering couple. Her purple velour jumpsuit, dotted with bright daisies which nearly matched her marigold t-shirt, clashed fairly horribly with his mustard corduroys.

  Edge and Donald exchanged the briefest of glances. Vivian had been her best friend since childhood, and her relationship with William had been a little strained lately. Edge’s glance said that’s better, and his was told you so.

  William, always alert to atmosphere, looked across but said only ‘Brace yourself for the main hall, it’s a Bambi graveyard. Just follow me and we’ll make a dash through to the library. Donald, pal, it’s largely up to you. Right now it is pure depressing. I want you to put your atmospheric hat on.’

  ‘I’ve never done a Gothic set.’ Donald’s eyes gleamed as he stared upwards at the sprawling house. ‘But aye, big man, worth the trip, just for the challenge.’