The Thornthwaite Inheritance Read online

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  For Alex, Molly, Archie and Esme

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  CONTENTS

  ACT ONE

  The Truce

  The Sudden Deaths of Lord & Lady Thornthwaite

  The Will

  The Lawyer

  The Lawyer’s Son

  The Butler

  The Alliance

  Avernus Lake

  The Rescue

  Little Fledgling

  The Inventory

  The Nurse

  The Library

  The Cook

  At Least One Weakness

  Pride and Joy

  The Swarm of Bees

  The Gardener

  The Hothouse

  The Boxing Room

  The Seven Dances of Franciska Toth

  The Old Oak Tree

  A Booby-Trapped Tree

  The End of the Truce

  ACT TWO

  A Different Kind of Game

  A Loose Wheel

  What to do if Faced with a Large Brown Bear

  How to Serve

  The Haunting Melody

  Where There’s Blame

  Doctor Scragg

  Father Whelan

  Their Parents’ Room

  A Train Pulls In

  Martha Thornthwaite’s Melody

  The Lady with the Flowers

  Bagshaw’s End

  The Hammer and the Hive

  A Movement in the Window

  Accusations and Denials

  An Inspector Calls

  ACT THREE

  The All-Sky Jigsaw

  Skinner’s Investigation

  A Good Lunch

  A Free Bus Ride

  Little Fledgling Library

  Imelda Gaunt

  Conversation in the Station

  Skinner’s Rendezvous

  The Bagshaw Connection

  The Kitchen

  The Portrait

  Adam Farthing’s Ambition

  Skinner’s Discovery

  Mrs Bagshaw’s Confession

  Nurse Griddle’s Confession

  A Bear in the Picture

  A Lawnmower and a Bottle of Chloroform

  A Number of Questions

  The Meaning of the Music

  The Endgame

  The Final Moves

  Fire and Rain

  A Shell of Hope

  Also by Gareth P. Jones

  Imprint

  Act One

  .

  THE TRUCE

  Lorelli and Ovid Thornthwaite had been trying to kill each other for so long that neither twin could remember which act of attempted murder came first. Was it Lorelli’s cunning scheme to put on a play about the French Revolution, casting Ovid in the role of an aristocrat to be executed using a working guillotine? Or could it have been that long hot summer when Ovid managed to produce an ice lolly containing a small but deadly explosive, triggered by the surrounding ice reaching melting point?

  Whoever had struck first, trying to take each other’s life was now simply something the Thornthwaite twins did, in the same way that other brothers and sisters might play together, enjoy watching cartoons or squabble over the remote control. Except that compared to playing, watching cartoons or squabbling, trying to kill your twin is much harder work, not to mention illegal, which was why on their thirteenth birthday, having clocked up over two hundred murder attempts between them, Ovid suggested they call a truce.

  ‘I no longer want to kill you,’ he announced, his bottle-green eyes meeting his sister’s across the table. Two slices of birthday cake sat in front of them. Neither had been touched.

  ‘I have never wanted to kill you,’ replied Lorelli, ‘I have only ever acted out of self-defence.’

  Ovid smiled. ‘Whereas self-preservation has always been my motivation,’ he said, ‘and, as you were the last one to attack, I propose we call it quits.’

  ‘I wasn’t the last one to attack,’ stated Lorelli, pushing her straight black hair from her face.

  ‘What about the flesh-eating piranha in my bath?’

  ‘That was on Sunday. You booby-trapped my bed on Monday.’

  ‘I’d been working on that for months. I couldn’t let all that planning go to waste.’ Ovid remembered with pride how he had set up a device in his sister’s bedroom that was designed to fling the first thing to sit on the bed out of the window. Lorelli’s bedroom was at the top of the central spire of Thornthwaite Manor.

  ‘Poor Cowell had the fright of her life,’ said Lorelli.

  Ovid had forgotten that the cat liked to jump on her bed for a snooze sometimes.

  ‘Cats have nine lives,’ he said. ‘We only have one. It doesn’t matter who started it if we both agree to stop now.’

  Lorelli eyed him suspiciously. She didn’t trust her brother for one second. He had tried this tactic before, waiting for her to lower her guard before unleashing the next lethal scheme.

  ‘I mean it this time,’ he said, wearing an expression of deepest sincerity.

  ‘OK,’ she said finally, deciding she would go along with the ceasefire while remaining sensibly cautious. ‘Truce.’

  ‘Truce,’ repeated her brother, grinning.

  They leant forward and shook on it before sealing the deal with two slices of birthday cake, which they switched fourteen times before eating, ensuring that neither piece had been tampered with.

  .

  THE SUDDEN DEATHS OF LORD & LADY THORNTHWAITE

  The twins’ truce came thirteen years after the untimely demise of both their parents. When they were old enough to understand, it was the head servant, Mr Crutcher, who had explained to Lorelli and Ovid the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

  Lord Mycroft Thornthwaite had died first very suddenly one Tuesday night after a sumptuous four-course meal with his wife, Lady Martha Thornthwaite, the twins’ mother.

  The investigating officer was DI Lionel Skinner, who, having spent his career failing to get a promotion in the big city had recently moved to Hexford County Police in order to become a detective inspector. Following the discovery of a slice of melon meringue wedged in the corpse’s throat, Skinner concluded that Lord Thornthwaite had choked to death.

  Lady Thornthwaite’s story supported this conclusion. She claimed to have left the room during dessert to visit the lavatory only to find, upon her return, her husband dead. She said she had heard him coughing from the hallway but assumed that he must have lit one of his stinky cigars. They always made him cough, she said. She had no idea he was choking to death.

  ‘I loved my husband, Inspector Skinner,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe he’s gone.’

  The story seemed perfectly plausible until the blood tests came back from the post-mortem of the dead body, finding poison in his bloodstream. Further tests revealed traces of the same poison on the dirty dishes upon which the caviar had been served as a starter.

  After questioning all the staff, Inspector Skinner learnt that Lady Thornthwaite had given them all the night off, even Mrs Bagshaw, the cook, saying she wanted to prepare the meal herself. When asked by the detective, Mr Crutcher was forced to admit that she had access to all the ingredients that made up the poison that had killed Lord Thornthwaite.

  ‘Why did our mother kill our father?’ Lorelli and Ovid had wanted to know.

>   ‘Greed can make people do terrible things,’ Mr Crutcher had replied before continuing with his story.

  It was a wild winter’s evening when Mr Crutcher answered the door to DI Skinner and led him to the great hall, where Lady Thornthwaite was waiting, looking every bit the beautiful widow, draped entirely in black.

  ‘Would you care for a sherry, Inspector?’ she asked.

  ‘No thank you, ma’am,’ he replied.

  ‘You don’t mind if I do, do you?’ she said, pouring herself a glass of sweet sherry from the decanter.

  ‘Not at all, but I’m sorry to say this is not a social visit.’

  Watching her take a sip from the glass, Skinner blurted out, ‘I have evidence to suggest that you murdered your husband.’

  Before Lady Thornthwaite could respond the phone began to ring.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, do you mind if I get that?’ she said.

  Outside, the rain pounded on the long windows. Forks of lightning cut across the dark grey sky and thunder growled ominously, growing nearer each time.

  Looking back on it, Mr Crutcher would reflect how Lady Thornthwaite had no idea she was about to utter her last words, or else she might have said something more profound. As it was, the last thing Lady Thornthwaite ever said was, ‘I simply can’t stand to leave a ringing phone unanswered.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ said Inspector Skinner, noting how calm she was for someone who had just been accused of murdering her husband.

  She placed her glass of sherry on the mantelshelf above the fireplace and stooped to pick up the earpiece of the old-fashioned phone.

  A clap of thunder sounded above, shaking the old manor to its foundations. The room went bright white as lightning struck, creating an image of Lady Thornthwaite that would haunt Inspector Skinner for the rest of his life, burnt into his mind like an overdeveloped photograph.

  Immediately afterwards the power went dead and the room was thrown into darkness.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, ma’am,’ said the inspector. ‘I carry a torch for just such occasions.’

  He pulled a torch from his belt, switched it on and pointed it to where Lady Thornthwaite had been standing.

  She wasn’t there.

  He lowered the beam of light and discovered her lying on the ground, dead, still clutching the telephone earpiece.

  This time the forensic tests were conclusive. The twins’ mother was killed by a bolt of lightning striking the telephone mast outside, sending one billion volts through the wire, frying the telephone and cooking Lady Thornthwaite’s insides.

  Inspector Skinner checked the phone records and found that the person who made the call had been trying to get through to his wife to warn her about the storm. He hadn’t even known the Thornthwaites.

  In other words, Lady Thornthwaite was killed by a wrong number.

  .

  THE WILL

  The tragic deaths of Lord and Lady Thornthwaite were felt heavily in Thornthwaite Manor. Mr Crutcher decreed that as a sign of respect, only black would be worn and the only music played would be sombre. He commanded Mrs Bagshaw only to cook bland food and he ensured that no light bulb was brighter than 40 watts in order to create a suitably respectful atmosphere. He disconnected the phone and sold the television set so that the household could be pure in its grief, without intrusion from the outside world. The flag, which flew on a flagpole at the highest point of Thornthwaite Manor, above Lorelli’s bedroom, was lowered to half mast.

  Thirteen years later little had changed. Without television programmes or computer games the twins made do with long games of chess and the books in the library for entertainment. In fact the only change was that, after a prolonged campaign by Mrs Bagshaw, 60-watt bulbs were allowed in the kitchen, where good lighting was required for food preparation.

  The twins had grown up in the dark, eating flavourless food, with Ovid playing music in minor keys on the grand piano in the drawing room.

  An old family superstition held that it was bad luck for a Thornthwaite to have their photo taken, so the only picture the twins had of their parents was the painting that hung above the fireplace among the other portraits of their ancestors. When the other wasn’t looking, each twin would enter the portrait room and sit staring at the painting, searching their mother’s face as though it might reveal why she had killed their father.

  For centuries each generation had produced only one child, always a boy, all sporting identical jet-black hair and bottle-green eyes, so when Lord Mycroft Thornthwaite, the twins’ father, heard Nurse Griddle shout, ‘It’s a boy,’ he had smiled and Mr Crutcher lit his standard celebratory cigar. But before Lord Thornthwaite could take the heavy smoke into his mouth, the nurse cried, ‘And a girl!’

  Lorelli was the first girl to inherit the distinctive Thornthwaite look, and while all the men, including Ovid, had been cursed with a somewhat startling appearance, his sister was undeniably beautiful.

  Ovid finished off his slice of Mrs Bagshaw’s ‘one spoon’ cake, named after the single teaspoon of sugar used to make it, and smiled. ‘To a new era of peace and harmony,’ he said, raising a glass of bitter lemonade. ‘And to the Easter holidays. Two weeks without lessons.’

  Although the twins didn’t attend school, their teachers, Mr Crutcher and Nurse Griddle, maintained the same school terms and holidays as the outside world.

  ‘I’d like to make it formal this time,’ said Lorelli.

  ‘What do you mean by formal?’ Ovid replied.

  ‘Put it in the will. So if either of us dies before the age of sixteen the other forfeits their half of the inheritance. That way neither of us has anything to gain from the other’s death.’

  The late Lord Thornthwaite’s will stated that in the event of his and his wife’s death the entire fortune be split equally between his two children on their sixteenth birthday. Prior to that, the estate was left under the guardianship of his most trusted employee, Mr Crutcher.

  ‘Who would the inheritance go to if forfeited?’ said Ovid.

  ‘Who cares? It can stay in Alfred’s hands,’ replied Lorelli. ‘The point is that, neither of us will get it.’

  Ovid paused before looking Lorelli directly in the eyes and replying, ‘My dear sister, can’t we trust one another?’

  ‘I’d like something in writing this time,’ she said simply.

  Mr Crutcher, who was standing in the corner of the room waiting on them, stepped forward. ‘I can have the family lawyer come round tomorrow and draw up a legal document.’

  ‘I didn’t know we had a lawyer,’ said Lorelli.

  ‘Oh yes. Mr Farthing,’ said Mr Crutcher.

  Ovid turned to Lorelli and said, ‘Do we really want to get lawyers involved?’

  ‘I’ll trust you once I can read it in black and white,’ replied Lorelli.

  The twins were both bright from an early age but while Ovid favoured maths, history and the sciences taught by Mr Crutcher, Lorelli’s heart lay with literature, art and languages, taught by Nurse Griddle. In short, Lorelli believed in things that were written down.

  ‘All right, if it will make you happy, we’ll call the lawyer,’ relented Ovid.

  ‘Then it’s settled,’ said Mr Crutcher. ‘I’ll contact Mr Farthing immediately.’

  For Lorelli and Ovid, Thornthwaite Manor had been a dangerous place to grow up in. The twins had come away remarkably unscathed from all the electrocutions, explosions, fires, flying kitchen knives, and even the occasional gun shot. Now, finally, they could put it all behind them.

  .

  THE LAWYER

  Mr Farthing, the family lawyer, was a small man in every way other than his size; he had a quiet voice, an unassuming manner and a nervous disposition, and he towered above everyone he met. His large facial features were emp
hasised by a small pair of round spectacles resting on his huge nose. His faded grey suit was several sizes too small for him, the cuffs barely reaching his wrists, the trousers revealing his mismatched socks. All in all he looked like someone who had woken up that morning to discover that he had suddenly grown tall and was still getting used to it.

  Mr Crutcher opened the door to Mr Farthing, took his coat and led him through the hall.

  ‘It’s been a long time since your last visit, Bernard,’ said the head servant.

  ‘Thirteen years,’ mumbled Mr Farthing, looking around at the gloomy hallway. ‘I last came here after Lord and Lady Thornthwaite passed away. My dear wife had her . . . accident shortly after . . .’ He stopped to sniff.

  ‘They were tragic times for all of us,’ said Mr Crutcher, opening the door to the drawing room. ‘The twins are through here.’

  Mr Farthing paused to judge how much he would have to stoop to avoid banging his head. ‘How are they?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘They’re still dreadfully affected by their parents’ deaths. We all are,’ said Mr Crutcher, solemnly.

  ‘Of course.’ Mr Farthing stepped into the room, banging his head on the door frame.

  Lorelli and Ovid looked up from the chessboard.

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt. Please finish your game,’ said Mr Farthing apologetically.

  ‘I don’t think you want to wait that long,’ said Ovid, smiling. ‘To date this game of chess has lasted one year, two months, fourteen days and one hour. And judging by the current status it’s unlikely to conclude any time soon.’

  Like everything the Thornthwaite twins did, every chess move was carefully calculated, every repercussion considered, every aspect of the game mulled over.

  ‘It’s been Lorelli’s turn for several weeks,’ continued Ovid.

  Every so often during those weeks, Lorelli’s hand would waver over a piece, her green eyes glancing at her brother. Then, seeing the tiny curl of a smile appear at the corner of his mouth, she would pull back her hand, leaving the piece untouched.

  ‘I’ll defeat him in the end,’ said Lorelli. She picked up a bishop and moved it forward. ‘It’s merely a matter of time.’