‘Damage? Couple of chairs knocked over, couple of glasses broke. But come with me, m’lady. Let me show you the strangest thing.’
He led us through the public bar to the skittle alley. The scores were kept on a small chalkboard screwed to the wall which he indicted with the flourish of a stage magician revealing his latest illusion. Written in chalk in a shaky hand were the words “NELSON MURDERED ME”. It was signed in an equally shaky hand with what looked like “Mummy Bear”, but I couldn’t be sure.
‘Who’s Nelson?’ I said. ‘Anyone we know?’
‘Mr Snelson what bought the old Cooper house up the way,’ said Joe.
‘A sloppy ghost, then,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘Beg pardon, m’lady?’ he said.
‘Missing off the S.’
‘Oh, I get you. No, it’s his first name, i’n’t it.’
‘Oh how precious,’ she said, delightedly. ‘Nelson Snelson. That’s altogether too wonderful. Flo, dear, can we change your surname to Lawrence? You shall be Florence Lawrence.’
‘Only if you agree to be Emily Demerly, my lady,’ I said with a frown.
She laughed, still tickled by the whimsical mischief exhibited by Mr Snelson’s parents. ‘But who is this Bear? Whose mummy is she? And what’s this about murder?’ she said.
‘Don’t know nothing about it, m’lady,’ he said. ‘But Daisy said as how that ghost you saw last night had accused him o’ murder – I reckon it must be he.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Lady Hardcastle dubiously.
But it made perfect sense to me. ‘Ghosts are unquiet spirits,’ I said. ‘They most often have something on this side that they need to finish. Seeing his murderer brought to justice would fit the bill.’
‘But “Mummy Bear”?’ she said, still unconvinced. ‘The “ghost” we saw was a man.’
‘It’s not an especially clear signature,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it’s not Mummy Bear at all.’
‘Hmmm,’ she said again. ‘Perhaps.’
I decided a change of subject was in order. ‘It’s quiet in here this morning, Joe. We were expecting you to be busier.’
‘They all be clearin’ up after the storm, miss,’ he said. ‘They’ll be in later I reckons.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘We brought some cakes and pastries.’ I offered him the basket that I had packed with some of the surplus from our kitchen.
‘That’s very kind of you, miss,’ he said, looking a little nonplussed.
‘Perhaps we might buy a pot of tea?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.
This seemed to amuse Joe. ‘Tea, m’lady?’ he said with a grin. ‘In a pub? Whatever next?’
‘Well we don’t have a tea room and despite my frequent protestations it sometimes can be too early for brandy, so I thought a nice pot of tea and a bun in convivial surroundings might be pleasant. You have a kitchen, you have tables and chairs; I thought it might be a nice little money-spinner for you.’
He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then made up his mind. ‘You know,’ he said with another toothless grin, ‘I reckons you might be right at that. I’ll fetch Our Ma’s teapot and you can have your elevenses here in the snug.’
He shambled off in the direction of the stairs.
‘Do you have a scientific explanation for all this, my lady?’ I asked once he was out of earshot.
‘Not yet, no,’ she said, looking around. ‘There don’t seem to be any signs of a burglary, and all the residents were apparently in bed – Joe had to get up to see what the matter was, Madame Eugénie had to be roused from her slumbers and Mrs Arnold has, to my knowledge, never ventured from their private rooms. And yet there’s a small amount of mess and a message on a black board. It’s a mystery, Flo dear. A mystery.’
‘Or it’s the ghost of Mummy Bear,’ I said.
‘Getting up to make porridge? It’s a starting point, I suppose.’
We could hear Joe in the pub’s kitchen clattering about with what I hoped wasn’t “Our Ma’s” best china – it would be returning to her dresser in pieces if it were.
After a little more clattering and at least one extremely colourful toothless oath, Joe emerged from the kitchen with a tea tray.
‘Blow me, but ’t is harder work than pourin’ a pint or makin’ a round of sandwiches,’ he said. ‘I might have to talk to Daisy about makin’ the tea when she gets in.’
We thanked him and he shambled off again to make good the ghost’s mess.
‘I say, Mr Arnold,’ said Lady Hardcastle as he picked up a chair. ‘What do you know about this Mr Nelson Snelson?’ She seemed to be taking great pleasure in the poor man’s name.
‘Not so much, m’lady,’ he said, sweeping up a few fragments of broken glass with a dustpan and brush. ‘He bought the old Cooper house last November time while you was away. Come from Gloucester, they say, had a company up there. Timber, I think they said. Sold up and come down here for a quiet life in the country is what I heard.’
‘There’s a lot of that about,’ she said. ‘No rumours that he was a murderer?’
Joe laughed. ‘No, m’lady, nothin’ like that. But seems as there should have been, eh?’
‘If the ghost of Mummy Bear is to be believed, then perhaps there should,’ she said. ‘Perhaps she was seeking revenge from the timber merchants for chopping down her forest home.’
She was clearly determined to mock the ghost idea so I decided not to remind her yet again that the ghost had been a man.
‘When are you expecting Daisy?’ she said after munching a slice of lemon cake.
‘Not till lunchtime, m’lady,’ said Joe. ‘She helps her dad in the mornings, then comes over here for the lunchtime rush.’
Daisy’s father was the local butcher.
‘I’m keen to find out more about the mysterious Madam Eugénie, you see,’ she said. ‘I thought she might be able to tell me a little more about her.’
‘Reckon she’d be the one to ask, yes,’ said Joe, setting the last table straight. ‘There we goes. Fit for a king now. Can I get you ladies anything else?’
‘Would you be a poppet and refresh the pot, please, Mr Arnold,’ said Lady Hardcastle with a smile. ‘We’ll have a little more tea and then we’ll biff off and see what adventures the day holds in store.’
‘Right you are, m’lady,’ said Joe, picking up the teapot. ‘I’ll have to look into getting some crockery for the bar. You reckon this’ll catch on?’
‘Bound to,’ she said. ‘People love a cup of tea and a gossip in the morning. Think of the extra trade.’
He shambled off.
Having finished our tea and cakes, I retrieved the now empty basket from Joe and we went out into the weak sunshine. We did a little shopping which took far longer than usual with everyone still very keen to talk to Lady Hardcastle, first to enquire after her health, and then to press her for details of the séance, news of which had already spread. We told them what we knew, which always prompted a flood of additional questions for which we had no adequate answers. What they most wanted to know was what Mr Snelson had said in response to the accusation, but we had to relay that he had left without saying a word.