Sinister Stranger at St Bride's

Debbie Young

Description

For anyone who loved St Trinian’s – old or new – or loves a cozy mystery on a grand estate filled with rather ‘interesting’ characters.

When an American stranger turns up claiming to be the rightful owner of the school’s magnificent country estate it could spell trouble for everyone at St Bride’s . . .

No one can believe it when the headmistress, Hairnet, instantly accepts the stranger’s claim, not:

• the put-upon Bursar, ousted from his cosy estate cottage by the stranger

• the enigmatic Max Security, raring to engage in a spot of espionage

• the sensible Judith Gosling, who knows more about Lord Bunting than she’s letting on

• the irrepressible Gemma Lamb, determined to keep the school open

Only fickle maths teacher Oriana Bliss isn’t suspicious of the stranger, after all she can just marry him and secure St Bride’s future forever. That's if inventive pranks by the girls - and the school cat - don't drive him away first.

Who will nab the stranger first? Oriana with the parson’s noose? Gemma with sinister secrets? Or could this be the end of St Bride’s?

Previously published by Debbie Young as Stranger at St Bride's.

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Parentalité et Éducation des Enfants
• Women Sleuths
• Amateur Sleuth
• Women
• Friendship
• Workplace
• Cozy
• Romantic Comedy
• General officer
• Detective
• Woman
• The Women
• Mystery
• General
• Romance
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 11 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781804830345
• Langue: English

Extrait

SINISTER STRANGER AT ST BRIDE’S


DEBBIE YOUNG
CONTENTS



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43


More from Debbie Young

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Debbie Young

Poison & Pens

About Boldwood Books
For the archivists who preserve and unlock secrets, including:

my late cousin Frances Willmoth,
archivist, historian and biographer

and Bridget Bomford,
former librarian at Westonbirt School
The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.
ANDREW MARVELL


Better to know the truth than fear what it might be.

MISS HARNETT,
HEADMISTRESS OF ST BRIDE’S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
1
GEMMA MEETS A GHOST

‘Miss Lamb, Miss Lamb, there’s a ghost outside the front door!’
At St Bride’s School for Girls, I never quite knew what to expect when I opened the staffroom door to deal with a girl’s enquiry, but Imogen’s announcement before the first lesson of the day was unprecedented.
‘Foolish child,’ muttered Mavis Brook, the geography teacher, from behind me, closing the exercise book she was marking. ‘I blame that Halloween nonsense for putting such silly ideas into her head. Most unhealthy.’
The terror on Imogen’s face made me loath to dismiss her claim as a prank, although that seemed more likely than her having seen a real ghost. I tried to make light of the situation to calm her down.
‘Anyone’s ghost in particular? Are you sure it’s not just one of your friends in a white sheet?’
Imogen shook her head vigorously.
‘Oh no, miss, it’s a real ghost all right. You should see it. It’s far too tall to be any of my friends. And it’s a man.’
Imogen, aged eleven, came up only as far as my shoulder, but there were some very tall girls in the top class of seventeen- to eighteen-year-olds. Might one of those have tried such a stunt?
‘Okay, Imogen, wait a moment and I’ll have a look out the staffroom window to see whether it’s still there.’
I closed the door – school policy is to keep the staffroom private from the girls – and crossed to the big bay window that gave on to the forecourt. As I peered round to view the front porch, the doorbell rang for the second time in the last few minutes, and a tall, thin, dark-haired man with a wide clipped moustache stepped back to look around for signs of life.
Near me on the window seat, Oriana Bliss, head of maths, looked up from a stationery catalogue she had been browsing through and followed my gaze.
‘He looks like flesh and blood to me.’
‘Well, you’re the expert,’ said PE teacher Joe Spryke, unzipping his pink tracksuit top. Joe was a former competitive cyclist on the run from hostile journalists who unfairly blamed him for an international sports scandal. During term-time, Joe disguised himself as a woman to escape detection.
I narrowed my eyes to focus better on the stranger. I had to agree with Oriana.
‘He looks familiar, but I don’t think he’s one of the girls’ fathers, is he?’
Oriana laid her catalogue on the seat beside her.
‘Not unless the bursar’s signed up a new pupil during the half-term holiday. And speaking of the bursar, where is he? Why isn’t he answering that pesky doorbell?’
In the absence of a budget that would stretch to a receptionist, answering the door fell to the bursar. When I first arrived, I assumed Max, as security officer, might assume this duty, but Max was like St Bride’s own Scarlet Pimpernel. You never knew where he might pop up next, and it was often in the place you least expected. The bursar was far more visible, an overt equivalent to Max’s undercover agent – a kind of bouncer, perhaps. The Bouncing Bursar. I smiled. Perhaps he wasn’t so bad after all, now I’d got used to him.
The bell rang for the third time. Oriana glanced at the wall clock above the door, then at me. There were just a few minutes left before lessons began for the day. I took her hint.
‘I suppose I can let him in myself,’ I sighed.
Imogen, still waiting outside the staffroom door, skipped alongside me as I strode down the corridor to the entrance hall.
‘Oh miss, you are brave! Do you want me to get a gang of girls to rescue you in case it’s the dangerous kind of ghost?’
I tried not to hurt her dignity by laughing. She meant well.
‘I’m sure I’ll be fine, thank you. I don’t think much harm can come to me answering the front door in broad daylight.’
‘Ooh, yes, thank goodness it’s daylight. That means he can’t be a vampire. But I’ll hide nearby, just in case. If you need me, shout the code word. What should our code word be?’
After spending half term with my parents, I hadn’t yet retuned to the girls’ mindset.
‘How about “help”?’
Imogen frowned.
‘I don’t think you’re really trying, miss.’
When we reached the vast entrance hall that had so intimidated me on my arrival at the school back in September, Imogen took cover behind one of the broad marble pillars supporting the ornate painted ceiling. I marched across the tiled floor, heels clicking, and heaved open the front door.
‘Good morning,’ I said, blinking against the pale November sunshine. ‘How can I help you, sir?’
The stranger stepped forward, assuming I’d let him in. We did an awkward shuffle as I tried to stall him until I’d established his credentials. We were very hot on child protection at St Bride’s.
‘Why, good morning to you, ma’am.’ The stranger spoke with a leisurely US drawl. With his dark moustache, black suit, brocade waistcoat, and string tie, he reminded me of Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind . Scarlett O’Hara would have felt right at home at St Bride’s, with its ostentatious historic house and gardens, although our English weather couldn’t compete with the southern sunshine at Tara, her family plantation estate.
If the stranger was a belated trick or treater, his choice of costume was unusual. I kept my hand on the doorknob. I wasn’t going to let him in without good reason.
‘Do you have an appointment, please?’
‘Why, thank you, ma’am, I surely do.’
He gave a slight bow. Was he mocking me with his elaborate Southern charm?
‘And with whom might your appointment be, sir?’
I’m not the kind of English teacher who is a stickler for ‘whom’ in general conversation, but his formal speech was rubbing off on me.
‘With Miss Caroline Harnett, your headmistress, if you please. I believe I am right on time.’
He patted the pocket in his waistcoat, from which hung a silver watch chain, fastened at the other end to a button. Holding the door open to allow him in, I pointed to the signing-in book on the table beside the sofa.
‘If you would be so kind as to write your name in our visitors’ book, I’ll give you a security badge and tell Miss Harnett you’re here.’
The stranger bent his head in acknowledgement and produced from his inside jacket pocket an engraved gold fountain pen. He signed his name in copperplate of such a size that it spilled over the edges of the signature box, yet the loops were so tightly closed that I couldn’t make out what he’d written.
‘Whom shall I say is here for her? I mean, who?’
He added an ornate swirl of self-importance beneath his signature, then gazed up at me in feigned surprise, as if he were a celebrity recognised wherever he went. He straightened up, capped his pen and returned it to its pocket.
‘My name is Bunting, Earl Bunting, and what a delight it is to be in my ancestral home at last.’
The gasp that issued from behind the pillar echoed my own surprise. Lord Bunting was the school’s Victorian founder. According to the school prospectus, over a hundred years before, he’d died without issue and decreed his house and grounds should be turned into a boarding school for girls.
I was unsure how to address the stranger. My Lord? Your Excellency? Your Worship? The school library’s copy of Debrett’s Peerage would tell me. We had plenty of titled girls on the roll, but it was school policy not to use those titles in daily life, so I’d never needed to swot up on the etiquette before. For now, I took the easy option.
‘Please have a seat, sir, and I’ll tell Miss Harnett you’re here.’
As I marched off to the headmistress’s study, Imogen came pattering after me.
‘Now do you believe me, miss? It’s the ghost of Lord Bunting, isn’t it? Didn’t you recognise him?’
The life-size oil painting of the school’s founder on the wall of the assembly hall had made him a familiar figure to us all.
Imogen skipped to overtake me, then turned and began walking backwards to face the way we’d come.
‘I’m going to the hall now to see if the picture’s still there. Lord Bunting might have stepped down from it and turned real. That’s the sort of thing that happens at Halloween. I’ve seen it before.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, in a play my grandma took me to see in the summer holidays. There were lots of songs in it and all the paintings came to life.’
‘That’ll be Ruddigore ,’ came a voice behind us – Louisa Humber, the music teacher, was on her way to her classroom. ‘It’s an operetta, Imogen, not a play, by Gilbert and Sullivan.’
Imogen shrugged. ‘Anyhoo, my point is, there’s probably now a big empty hole in the painting where Lord Bunting used to be.’
Louisa flashed a conspiratorial smile at me.
‘Let me know if your ghost bursts into song,’ she said, amused, then walked on.
‘Off you go then, Imogen,’ I encouraged her. I hoped that when she found the painting intact she would feel reassured. ‘But be as quick as