The Murders at Fleat House

The Murders at
Fleat House

LUCINDA RILEY

Contents

Glossary of terms

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

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

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

THE SEVEN SISTERS SERIES

THE SEVEN SISTERS

1

ATLAS: THE STORY OF PA SALT

This novel is dedicated to all those who dream.
Never give up and never give in – Lucinda didn’t.

—Lucinda’s family

Glossary of terms

Foreword

Dear reader,

I hope you are as excited as I am to be turning the pages of a brand-new Lucinda Riley novel. Perhaps you are an avid fan of The Seven Sisters series, and are eagerly waiting for Lucinda to transport you to a new and vivid realm. Maybe, though, you are new to her writing, intrigued by the promise of this fresh and compelling crime novel. In this case, very sadly, I must start at the end, to contextualise the pages you are about to devour. For those not aware, Lucinda – Mum – died on 11 June 2021, following an oesophageal cancer diagnosis in 2017. I am Lucinda’s eldest son and co-author (not of this project, I hasten to add). Together, we created the Guardian Angels series for children, and I am tasked with fulfilling her enormous literary legacy by completing the eighth and final novel in The Seven Sisters series.

For this reason, I wish to tell you how The Murders at Fleat House came to be. Firstly, although it has never seen the light of day, it was written in 2006. Once her youngest children had started school, Lucinda penned three novels without a publisher, two of which have subsequently been released to great acclaim – The Olive Tree (also called Helena’s Secret) and The Butterfly Room. It was always her plan to publish the third of these novels, which you currently hold in your hands, after the conclusion of The Seven Sisters series.

In the case of The Olive Tree and The Butterfly Room, Lucinda undertook extensive rewrites (as any author revisiting a project after a decade would wish to). Mum has not had that opportunity in the case of The Murders at Fleat House. As such, I faced a quandary when taking the decision to release this book. Was it my responsibility to edit, adapt and update the text, as she would have wished to? After much contemplation, I felt that preserving Mum’s voice should take precedence. With this in mind, only the bare minimum editorial work has been undertaken.

All that you will read, therefore, is Lucinda’s work from 2006.

Mum was hugely proud of this project. It is the only crime novel she ever wrote, but loyal readers will instantly recognise her unrivalled ability to capture a sense of place. I’m sure it will interest you to know that, at the time of writing, my family lived in the vast, mysterious landscape in which the story is set. What’s more, the Norfolk school featured in the book was heavily inspired by the one which we, her own children, attended. Thankfully, I can confirm that nothing so dramatic actually took place in the corridors of the boarding houses.

As you might expect, hidden secrets from the past strongly influence present-day events, and we are treated to some typically superb characterisation in the form of DI Jazz Hunter, who I’m sure you’ll agree has the potential to anchor a series of her own.

Perhaps she would have, in another life.

Harry Whittaker, 2021

Prologue

St Stephen’s School, Norfolk
January 2005

As the figure took the stairs leading to the sixth-form corridor – a maze of shoebox-sized studies, one per boy – the only sounds were the clanking and stirring coming from the antiquated radiators, inefficient cast-iron sentinels that had struggled to warm Fleat House and the boys within it for the past fifty years.

One of the eight boarding houses that made up St Stephen’s School, Fleat House had taken its name from the headmaster at the time it was built a hundred and fifty years ago. Known as ‘Fleapit’ by its current inhabitants, the ugly red-brick Victorian building had been converted into student accommodation just after the war.

It was also the last house to benefit from much-needed refurbishments. Within six months, the corridors, stairs, dormitories and common rooms would be stripped bare of the torn, black linoleum that covered the floors; the yellowing walls would be re-papered and freshened with magnolia and the archaic shower blocks would be re-equipped with glistening stainless-steel fitments and glossy white tiles. This, to appease today’s demanding parents who insisted their children live and learn in comfort akin to a hotel, not a hovel.

Outside Study Number Seven, the figure paused for a moment, listening. Being a Friday, the eight boys on this floor would have signed out and walked to the pub in the nearby market town of Foltesham, but it was as well to be sure. Hearing nothing, the figure turned the handle and went in.

Closing the door quietly and switching on the light, the figure was aware almost immediately of the ingrained, musty smell of teenager: a mixture of unwashed socks, sweat and raging hormones which had, over the years, permeated every nook and cranny of Fleat House.

Shuddering, the smell triggering painful memories, the figure nearly stumbled on a pile of underwear thrown carelessly onto the floor. Then, reaching for the two white tablets placed on the boy’s locker every night and replacing them with identical ones, the figure turned, switched off the light and left the room.

On the nearby staircase, a small figure in pyjamas froze as he heard approaching footsteps. In a panic, he dived into the small alcove under the stairs on the landing below, merging with the shadows. Being caught out of bed at ten o’clock would get him punished and he couldn’t take any more of that tonight.

Rigid in the darkness, his heart hammering, eyes squeezed tightly shut as if this would somehow help, he listened, breathless, as the footsteps climbed the stairs inches above his head, passed him, then mercifully retreated into the distance. Shaking with relief, he crept out from his hiding place and hurried along the corridor to his dormitory. Climbing into bed and checking the time on his alarm clock, knowing there was an hour before he could allow himself the sanctuary of sleep, he pulled the blankets up over his head and, finally, let the tears come.

Approximately one hour later, Charlie Cavendish entered Study Number Seven and flung himself onto his bed.

Eighteen years old, eleven o’clock on a Friday night and he was gated like a child in this crap-heap of a rabbit hutch.

And he had to be up for bloody chapel at seven tomorrow. He’d missed it twice so far this term and couldn’t afford to do so again. He’d already been hauled into Jones’s office over that stupid thing with Millar. Jones had made noises about expulsion if he didn’t mend his ways but it galled Charlie to have to keep his nose clean. His father had made it clear he wouldn’t fund his gap year without a decent set of A level results and a school report to match.

Which would be a goddamned bloody disaster.

His father didn’t approve of a gap year in any case. Hedonism was anathema to him and the thought of his son lolling on some Thai beach, probably high on drugs, was not what he had in mind, especially if he was the one paying for it.

They’d had an almighty row about Charlie’s future just before the beginning of term. His father, William Cavendish, was a high-flying barrister in London and it had always been assumed that Charlie would follow in his footsteps. Growing up, Charlie had never given it much thought.

Then, as he headed into his late teens, it had slowly dawned on him what was expected, seemingly without regard for his own wishes.

Charlie was a wheeler-dealer, an adrenalin merchant; that’s how he saw himself. He enjoyed living on the edge. The thought of a life stuck in the hierarchical, stuffy atmosphere of Inner Temple turned his stomach.

Besides, his father’s idea of ‘getting on’ was completely outdated. It was all different these days; you could do what you wanted. All that respectability bollocks belonged to his parents’ generation.

Charlie wanted to be a DJ and watch beautiful, half-naked women prancing around a dance floor in Ibiza. Yeah. That was more like it! And . . . you could make loads being a DJ.

Not that money was ever going to be a serious issue. Unless his unmarried, fifty-seven-year-old uncle suddenly decided to start having kids, Charlie was going to inherit the family estate with thousands of acres of farmland.

He had plans for that too. All he had to do was sell off a few acres with planning permission to a developer and he’d make a bloody fortune!

No, it wasn’t his future finances; it was the fact that his tight-arsed father held fiscal dominion over him now.

He was young. He wanted to have some fun.

These were the thoughts cascading through Charlie Cavendish’s mind as, absent-mindedly, he reached for the two tablets he had taken every night since the age of five and picked up the glass of water left there for him by Matron.

Placing the tablets on his tongue, he took a generous swig of water to wash them down before replacing the glass on his bedside locker.

For a full minute, nothing happened and Charlie, sighing, continued to ruminate on the unfairness of his situation. But then, almost imperceptibly, he felt his body begin to shake.

‘What the hell . . .?!’

The shaking intensified, becoming uncontrollable, and suddenly Charlie felt his throat constricting. Panicking now, uncomprehending and gasping for breath, he managed to stagger the few steps to the door. He grasped the handle but in his increasing terror, he fumbled with it, unable to turn it before collapsing semi-conscious, one hand at his throat, his mouth foaming. Deprived of oxygen, the lethal toxins coursing through him, his vital organs gradually shut down. Then his bowels relaxed and, little by little, the young man who had once been Charlie Cavendish simply ceased to exist.

Chapter One

Robert Jones, headmaster of St Stephen’s School, stood with his hands in his pockets – a habit he constantly chastised his charges for – and stared out of his study window.

Below him, he saw pupils crossing Chapel Lawn on their way to and from lessons. His hands were damp with sweat, his heart still racing from the adrenalin, as it had done constantly since the accident.

He left the window and went to sit behind his desk. There was a mounting pile of paperwork that remained untouched and a list of telephone messages he had yet to reply to.

Taking out his handkerchief, he wiped the top of his bald head, then sighed heavily.

There were any number of potentially nightmarish situations facing a headmaster in charge of hundreds of teenage boys and girls: drugs, bullies and, in these days of mixed-gender boarding schools, the unstoppable phantom that was sex.

During his fourteen years as headmaster of St Stephen’s, Robert had dealt, to some degree, with them all.

But all these crises had paled in comparison to what had happened last Friday. This was the ultimate head’s nightmare: the death of a pupil in his care.

If there was a way to leave a school’s reputation in tatters, this was it. The details of how the boy had died were almost irrelevant. Robert could visualise hordes of parents currently shopping for boarding schools crossing St Stephen’s off their lists.

Yet, Robert sought comfort in the fact that the school had survived for more than four hundred years – and looking through the records, he saw this kind of tragedy had occurred before. Perhaps the numbers would fall short term, but as time passed, surely what had happened last Friday would eventually be forgotten.

The last schoolboy death had been back in 1979. A boy had been found dead in the trunk room in the cellar. He’d hanged himself with a piece of cord tied to a hook on the ceiling. The incident had become part of school folklore. The kids loved to perpetrate the myth that the boy’s spirit haunted Fleat House.

Young Rory Millar had looked like a ghost himself when he’d been found hammering on the door, having spent the night locked in there.

Charlie Cavendish, without question the perpetrator, had denied everything as usual and, worse, found it funny . . . Robert Jones shivered uncomfortably, wishing he could find it in him to mourn the loss of his young life and finding he couldn’t.

That boy had been trouble from the moment he’d set foot in the school. And, thanks to his death, Robert’s future was now in question. At fifty-six years of age, he’d been looking forward to retiring in four years on a full pension. If he was forced to resign, there would be little hope of getting a position elsewhere.

At the emergency meeting of the board of governors last night, he’d offered his resignation. The governors, however, had stood by their headmaster.

Cavendish’s death was an accident . . . natural causes. He’d died of an epileptic fit.

This was Robert’s one ray of hope. As long as the coroner returned a verdict of death by natural causes and media coverage was kept to a minimum, it was possible the damage could be limited.

But until this was confirmed, his reputation and future were hanging by a tenuous thread. They had promised to call this morning.

The telephone rang shrilly on his desk. He pressed the speakerphone. ‘Yes, Jenny?’

‘It’s the coroner’s office for you.’

‘Put them through.’

‘Mr Jones?’

‘Yes, speaking.’

‘It’s Malcolm Glenister here, the local coroner. I wanted to discuss the results of the post-mortem conducted yesterday on Charlie Cavendish.’

Robert swallowed hard. ‘Of course. Fire away.’

‘The pathologist has concluded that Charlie did not die of an epileptic fit. He died of anaphylactic shock.’

‘I see.’ Robert swallowed again, trying to clear his throat. ‘And . . . what was the cause?’

‘Well, as you must know, his medical records show he was violently allergic to aspirin. Six hundred milligrams of it were found in his bloodstream, which would correspond to two over-the-counter tablets.’

Robert couldn’t reply, his throat now too dry to speak.

‘Other than traces of the drug Epilim, which Charlie took every day to control his epilepsy, and minimal alcohol levels, the pathologist found nothing else. He was perfectly healthy.’

Robert found his voice. ‘If he’d been found sooner, might he have survived?’