A Particular Circumstance Read Free Page A

was followed by a terrific crash and then an ominous silence.
    There was a muffled shriek and a distant scream and Mrs Palmer burst into the room without knocking, so great was her panic. She was followed closely by a distraught Phoebe, who held her apron over her head and promptly gave way to a bout of hysterics.
    Jane Grayson found this irritating. ‘Oh dear! What a tiresome girl. Stop that at once, Phoebe. Mrs Palmer, sal volatile , if you please. I have no time to spend cosseting silly girls. Come now, let us see what has happened. The noise seemed to come from the library.’
    They all trooped out of the drawing-room along the stone corridor and through the stair hall to the library. Mrs Palmer, afraid of missing something, set off in hot pursuit and Phoebe, finding herself alone and her hysterics ignored, threw down the sal volatile in disgust and hurried after them.
    There was another mighty crack and a rumble of falling masonry as a sizeable piece of the south front collapsed and slid noisily to the ground, destroying part of the fireplace wall in the library and leaving a heap of rubble in the stair hall, just outside the door. The dust rose up like a grey fog and obscured the extent of the damage for several minutes.
    Both the men had to put their shoulders to the library door, it being jammed by fallen bricks and splintered panelling, and held their handkerchiefs to their mouths because of the choking dust. When Adam and Matthew had opened it, the ladies lifted their skirts and held them close to their legs as they picked their way into the room.
    Adam Brown was the first to reach the old stone fireplace, which appeared to have caved in when the chimney collapsed. This also appeared to have unsettled the wall to the side of the fireplace and more than four feet of the beautifully carved oak panelling had been displaced.
    What was revealed behind the panelling was almost too gruesome to be looked on. As Adam bent over the gap in the wall, he exclaimed, ‘By all that’s holy! Askeleton, Matthew. A skeleton in a cupboard, no less!’
    Removing his immaculate handkerchief from his mouth, Matthew could only echo what his guide and mentor, Mr Brown, had said. ‘Yes. Good God! A skeleton, Mr Brown, sir. What … what on earth can have happened?’
    The three ladies were now also in the room and able to view what was revealed by the cracking open of the priest hole. Jane Grayson spoke first. ‘Mrs Palmer, please take Phoebe back to the kitchen and make her some tea. I shall come to see her directly, but this is not a sight for Phoebe’s young eyes. Charlotte, Kitty, I am persuaded that this is not something either of you would want to look at. Should you wish to return to the drawing-room you may do so now.’
    Both Charlotte and Kitty professed themselves desirous of staying where they were. Neither of them was willing to miss any of the excitement of finding an actual skeleton in the proverbial family cupboard.
    ‘Whoever he is, poor soul. He has obviously been here a long time,’ Adam Brown said at last.
    ‘He?’ Kitty questioned. ‘How do we know it is he ?’
    ‘Well, he has silver buttons on his coat and the remains of leather boots,’ Adam said gently. ‘Although, to be sure, the boots are crumbled almost into dust. I expect the rats have done their work over the years.
    ‘Perhaps he was a traveller, then,’ Charlotte surmised. ‘But where could he have been going and how did he meet his end?’
    ‘The answer to your last question is very violently,’ Adam said, still speaking quietly in the presence of what was, after all, a deceased person. ‘See, this large black stain which has spread all over the floor. That must be a blood stain, unless I am very much mistaken.’
    All the ladies shuddered, but Charlotte, steelier than the other two, said, ‘What manner of man do you think he was, then, Mr Brown? There are no papers, no jewels, no money; nothing to identify him.’
    ‘Only this,’ Adam