The dagger before me, p.1
The Dagger Before Me, page 1
Contents
Cover
A Selection of Recent Titles by Jeanne M. Dams from Severn House
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter One
Some people called …
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
She was not …
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
A Selection of Recent Titles by Jeanne M. Dams from Severn House
The Dorothy Martin Mysteries
A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO
THE CORPSE OF ST JAMES’S
MURDER AT THE CASTLE
SHADOWS OF DEATH
DAY OF VENGEANCE
THE GENTLE ART OF MURDER
BLOOD WILL TELL
SMILE AND BE A VILLAIN
THE MISSING MASTERPIECE
CRISIS AT THE CATHEDRAL
A DAGGER BEFORE ME
A DAGGER BEFORE ME
Jeanne M. Dams
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.
This eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.
Copyright © 2019 by Jeanne M. Dams.
The right of Jeanne M. Dams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8870-9 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-995-5 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0208-6 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
‘Is this a dagger which I see before me …?’
William Shakespeare
Macbeth, Act II, Scene 1
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The inspiration for this book was the book Keepers of the Kingdom by Alastair Bruce, Julian Calder, and Mark Cator. I had forgotten I owned it, and when I came across it while cleaning out bookshelves I was immediately entranced. My copy was published in the United States in 1999; I’m sure there are more recent editions, and I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in Britain, her history and her traditions.
Many of my books are almost as much travelogue as mystery, and this one has perhaps more of that element than most. If you have no interest in eccentric English ceremonies, you can skip to chapter nine without missing too much of the plot.
The most recent State Opening of Parliament, as of this writing, involved less ceremonial than usual, because an unexpected election changed the date of the Opening and the Queen had insufficient time to rehearse. The date change also required the cancellation of the Garter Ceremony at Windsor Castle. In writing this book, I have made the assumption that all will proceed normally in my fictional time frame (which is somewhat altered from the likely real-life dates).
A note about settings: many of the ceremonies and incidents described in the book are real, and I have used the real settings. Otley Hall is real, and was really where that historic journey was planned, and the Beaumonts are as delightful as I have portrayed them. However, the Montcalm family of Suffolk is entirely fictitious, as are their home, the town of Grantham, and its inhabitants.
I owe thanks to several people: Pat and Roy Littlewood, who took me to Otley Hall years ago; Jaime Owen, who read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions; Thomas Gresik, who advised me about financial matters; and Edwina Kintner, who made sure I didn’t write something stupid concerning the profession of financier, about which I am as ignorant as any three-year-old.
PROLOGUE
At last! The match wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough for the purpose. The antiques dealer happily took the cash (about five times what the thing was worth, the purchaser thought bitterly) and handed the customer a well-wrapped parcel. ‘Mind you’re careful, now,’ he said. ‘I’ve used plenty of tissue, but it’s sharp, you know. Lovely little thing. Going to use it as a paper knife, I think you said?’
The customer coughed, nodded, and walked out the door.
ONE
Does everyone get wanderlust in the spring, or is it just me? When Browning wrote his poem swooning about April in England, he was in southern Italy, not exactly a desolate desert. Yet he was homesick for the remembered joys of an English spring.
Well, on an April day that would have made Browning swoon all over again, with a blue sky and puffy white clouds and green shoots poking through the sweet-smelling moist earth, I didn’t have to yearn to be in England. I was in England, in a lovely small city that was now home to this transplanted Hoosier.
My first husband and I, both avid Anglophiles, had planned to move to Sherebury, in the south-east county of Belleshire, as soon as he retired. When a heart attack felled him a few months before the planned move, I was too numb to change plans, so I came to the cathedral city that welcomed me and made me feel at home. I’ve lived here for so long now that I never want to move again. There’s the place, a lovely small city full of the kind of houses and shops that only England seems to possess. And then I’ve made good friends here, among them my neighbour Jane Langland, and the Endicotts, proprietors of the Rose and Crown, the old pub and inn in the Cathedral Close. And the Cathedral itself lives in my heart. These make up the essential fabric of my life.
And I wanted to be elsewhere. ‘Alan!’
‘Mmm?’
‘Let’s go someplace. I’ve got spring fever, or something. I’m going to jump out of my skin if I have to stay in this house one more minute. Just look at it out there!’
He looked at me instead, wresting his attention from the book in his lap. ‘You know, somehow I had an idea you were about to get restless. Happens every year around this time. Come sit down by me and look at this.’
‘I don’t want to look at a book. I want to be up and doing.’
‘Yes, dear. But indulge me for one moment.’
I love my husband. Having him turn up when I was newly widowed and wallowing in self-pity was the best thing that ever happened to me. Most of the time I remember that. At that particular moment I wanted to take that book, a large and heavy one, and throw it into the fire, to get him moving. But there was a tone in his voice that usually meant something pleasant, so in spite of the ‘yes, dear’ (a response I loathe), I shoved the cat out of my lap, pulled my feet from under the dog who was resting his considerable weight on them, and joined Alan on the couch.
‘I think you might find a number of places to go in here.’
The title of the book was Keepers of the Kingdom: The Ancient Offices of Britain, which didn’t raise any thrills. The cover photograph showed a man dressed in black, with lace at his throat and a fancy wig like the ones judges wear on this side of the pond. He was sitting against a background of huge black-and-white checks, and holding in one hand a beat-up horseshoe and in the other a clumsy-looking knife. I frowned.
Alan smiled. ‘I borrowed this from the Endicotts. They keep it in the lounge to amuse the tourists. Most Americans seem to find our titles and ceremonies highly entertaining. As several of the ceremonies take place in the spring, I thought you might enjoy doing a sort of tour of some of our more obscure traditions. There’s nothing special going on just now, though, so now why don’t we drive out to that tea shop in Little Wimsey, the one you like. And then this evening you can pore over the book to your heart’s content and we can plan an itinerary.’
Well, the drive to the tea shop was pleasant, and satisfie
Then there were the lambs. Something in me goes all soft and custardy at the sight of lambs, gambolling crazily over the pasture, then running back to their mothers for comfort and food. Okay, maybe they’re not the brightest animals in the world, but they’re sweet, and so very much a part of the English spring landscape that I would love them just for that, if nothing else.
By the time we reached the tea shop, I was stuffed so full of spring that I didn’t think I was hungry. Of course the smell of freshly-baked scones took care of that illusion. We’re a good long way, in the county of Belleshire, from the source of the West Country’s famous clotted cream, but this particular shop always had a plentiful supply, along with the best strawberry jam I’ve ever tasted. I proceeded to make a pig of myself, as usual. I could make all my meals tea for the rest of my life, I think, and die happy. And probably a lot sooner. There’s enough cholesterol in your average afternoon tea to clog every artery in the Western world.
Finally replete, I regretfully turned down yet another scone. ‘If I eat or drink one more molecule of anything, I’m going to pop like a balloon. I feel like Christmas afternoon, too sated to move. Why do I let myself eat so much?’
‘Because it tastes so good. Never mind. The new lettuce in our garden will be ready in a day or two; you can live on that for a while. Feeling better?’
‘Aside from thinking I ought to be served up with an apple in my mouth? Much, thank you. But I’ve still got the itch to go someplace interesting. When I can move again, that is.’
‘Right. As soon as we’re home we’ll plant ourselves in front of the fire and study the book. I promise you, you’ll find so many interesting places to go, we’ll need the next year or so to cover them all.’
Alan really is a dear. He’d treated me to an extravagant tea and was now prepared to spend hours working out a way to entertain me. After all the carbohydrates I’d just ingested, I was pretty sure that what I’d do in front of the fire was fall sound asleep, but I would try to show at least some interest in his ancient offices and ceremonies. He’s a Brit, after all, and these things are a part of his DNA. And he’s always polite when I wax nostalgic about the Fourth of July celebrations back home.
The book surprised me. After a page or two, I was learning more about English history than I’d known there was to learn. ‘But … but some of this goes back to the thirteenth century! Before Magna Carta, even.’
‘Oh, and much earlier than that. The Romans left in the early fifth century, and a few of the current practices date from the attempts to restore order among the warring factions. And then of course there’s Stonehenge, and the Druids.’
‘I thought the Druids had nothing to do with Stonehenge. I’m sure I read somewhere—’
‘Nor did they, according to most archaeologists. But Neo-Druids have claimed it. As with most really ancient monuments, the history is interesting because there’s so little of it.’
‘Mmm.’ I had gone on to accounts of more-recent Britain. ‘Oh, here’s the Archbishop of Canterbury. No, York. Hey, I know Canterbury goes back to the time of Becket. Twelfth century, he was, right?’
‘Right. But the office predates that unfortunate incident by many centuries. Read on, dear heart. I’m going to make us some coffee.’
He took his time about it, and by the time he got back I was awash in the more obscure backwaters of English history. ‘My head’s spinning,’ I complained. ‘I could only make sense of this if I knew about all the monarchs and all the battles and all the feuds, and having never learned more of English history than a few important dates, I’m completely at sea!’
‘Which dates?’ asked Alan, setting a tray down in front of me. ‘I’m curious about what bits of our vast chronicle American educators might think important.’
‘1066 and 1215,’ I responded promptly. ‘Oh, and 1588 – I think. Wasn’t that the defeat of the Spanish Armada?’
‘It was.’ Alan sounded a little surprised. ‘I expected the Norman Conquest and Magna Carta, but you’ve intrigued me about the Armada. Why did you have that one drilled into you?’
‘I didn’t. I learned that one by myself, because I boned up on Elizabeth. She’s always fascinated me: a strong, indeed headstrong woman in an age when women were chattels. Especially royal women, meant to be bartered off in marriage however it suited their lords and masters. Elizabeth never allowed that to happen.’
‘You intrigue me. All right, what comes next in your selective memory?’
‘Not much until the twentieth century. Oh, of course you know I’ve always been a fierce partisan of Richard the Third, but I’d have to look up his dates. And I remember the general outline of the civil war – yours, I mean – but again, not dates. Actually, I’ve never been great about dates, even in American history. I found history boring in school and studied enough only to pass the exams, and then deliberately forgot everything the next day.’
‘History boring!’ He had forgotten to sit down. ‘My dear woman, history is the record of human beings, their triumphs and failures, their virtues and vileness. How could you find that boring?’
‘I don’t anymore. Now that I don’t have to study it, I’ve become absolutely riveted by some aspects of history. But it was never taught, at least not where I went to school, as the story of people. We just had to memorize lists of events and dates. So, as I said, I crammed them into my head for the test and let them fly out as soon as I possibly could.’ I picked up a cup of coffee, ignoring the plate of chocolate biscuits. I was still stuffed full of scones and cream.
Alan ran one hand down the back of his neck. ‘But … but you’ve always said one thing you love about England is the way we preserve our history, our old buildings and our traditions and all that. I thought you loved history!’
‘I do love living history. When I can see the very gate at the Tower where Anne Boleyn was led to her execution; when I can walk on the stone floor of the Abbey where your kings and queens have been crowned for centuries, and where hundreds of your famous men and women are buried; when I can bask in the garden that Shakespeare’s wife loved – oh, then I can touch history and it’s real and gripping and I can feel a part of it. But reading about it in books is too much like school. It doesn’t, as they used to say back in the hippy era, hit me where I live.’
‘Then it’s high time you experienced more of it! Give me that book back, woman. I’ll choose some things to see and do that will have you so steeped in your “living history” that you’ll forget which century you actually live in.’
‘Yes, dear.’ I handed him the heavy tome. ‘And while you’re up, you could pour me a little bourbon. If I have any more caffeine I’ll never get to sleep tonight.’
I was just as happy to let Alan choose a few places to visit. For one thing, he would know how to get to wherever it was. I’ve learned to drive around our small city, though because of its medieval street pattern I still occasionally get lost. I can shift gears with the wrong hand, I almost never turn down the wrong side of a street anymore, and it’s been years since I tried to get into the driver’s seat from the left. But once away from Sherebury, I much prefer to let Alan drive, even if he needs me to read a map, and since we got satnav I seldom have to do that.
So he spent the time until supper reading the book and making notes, while I thought about places in America I wished I could show him. Not historic sites. Our history, stretching back a mere 400 years or so, wouldn’t impress him. No, I wanted him to see some quintessentially American sights. First on the list, of course, was the Grand Canyon. They no longer talk about the Seven Wonders of the World, but surely that was one of them – the top one in America, I think. Then I wanted to show him American farms, acres and acres of wheat, or corn, or soybeans, or even (in Kansas) sunflowers. Farms on a scale unimaginable in sweet, miniature England. And I wanted to take him to a county fair. Not one of the state fairs. They could be slick and professional, but I wanted him to see the heart of America: the 4-H kids proudly showing their animals, from rabbits up to prize cattle; the girls (and now some boys) displaying their sewing and baking skills; the honky-tonk of the midway, with rickety rides and every variety of unhealthy food known to man, from corn dogs and funnel cakes to deep-fried Snickers bars.
