The Lord the Manor and the Murders

By John Gardner

Lord Chessingham Harvey-Highmind, the product of a long line of murdering English nobles, wants a son and heir to protect the immense family fortune and continue the unsavoury family traditions. All he has managed so far is a shifty, illegitimate son, Chesney and an ugly duckling of a daughter.
Gorgeous Harriet Uddringham-Sprocket, by the unfortunate circumstance of her husband’s death during the coming out ball of Lord Chessingham’s daughter, Rebecca ‘Bex’ Harvey-Highmind, is cast out from village life. Detective Inspector Booking arrives to investigate the suspicious and unusual circumstances of Geoffrey Udderingham-Sprocket’s demise and as his investigation proceeds hidden evidence of a forgotten murder is put in his hands. This is not a happy situation as he is a man in no-man’s land, cut adrift from the Metropolitan police to rot in this damp little village.
His suspicions regarding the recent death centre on Chesney but Lord Chessingham clearly knows more than he is saying about the previous murder, but what?
As the placard waving crowds take over the village Lord Chessingham takes matters into his own hands by introducing his beloved Purdey to the crowds, this on the day when the woman who bore his rat-like son, Chesney decides to broadcast on live television that he, Lord High and Mighty Chessingham is the father of her moronic off-spring. It is all too much for Lord Chessingham and terror reigns.
The new village vicar has a special connection to Lord Chessingham and the murderous spree of Lord Chessingham catapults his family in an entirely unexpected direction. Wedding bells chime and the village life changes for the better.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Gardner
• Release date: Oct 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370349630

John Gardner

Writing is a passion, as are photography and music, they have defined much of my life.

Book preview

The LORD

the MANOR

and the

MURDERS

by

John Gardner

Copyright John Gardner 2016

Second edition 2024

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with a relly or your bestie please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. We are so used to getting things for free but… this is my work and I’m sure you value yours. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author whose cats, Fred and Ginger, helped tap out the odd word.

John Gardner reserves the moral right to be identified as the author of this Work.

Acknowledgements

No book is just the product of the writer’s imagination. Publishing houses have armies of specialists whose function is to help writers produce better books. I don’t have an army of specialists helping to correct my work and make it better. I have friends who act as my editors and proof readers all of whom helped reduce the number of boo-boos. But, even then, mistakes slip past. Hence this second edition, cleaned up and slightly expanded. To all those who lent a helping hand and the odd tapas, thank you all.

§

Lord Chessingham Harvey-Highmind, the product of a long line of murdering nobles, wants a son and heir to protect the enormous family fortune and continue the family’s murderous traditions. All he has managed so far is a shifty, illegitimate son and a dull, ugly duckling of a daughter. However, the centuries of greed and slaughter finally culminate in a series of terrible events that catapult the family in an entirely unexpected direction.

Table of Contents

Part One

Luscious Harriet

Silage

The Predatory Letch

The Family History

A Bun in the Oven

The Bastard Moron

The Rat-Faced Footman

Geoffrey and the Hosepipe

An Inspector Calls

Part Two

The Players

Favours

An Anonymous Call

A Village in Chaos

Part Three

Purdey Meets the People

The Posse Arrives

The New Broom

The Widow

The Righting of Wrongs

Part One

LUSCIOUS HARRIET

§

‘An invitation?’ Harriet asked, as her husband unzipped her dress. ‘My, how odd.’

Geoffrey handed her the gold embossed card, which she studied for a moment as he stepped out of his trousers. She handed it back then let her dress fall to the floor.

Harriet ‘Harri’ Udderingham-Sprocket had a problem. She was bright, which made her a threat to her peer group. While they were studying the intricacies of how to make the perfect spotted dick and the perfect dry Martini to hook a, good catch she was studying, with her usual open-minded try anything once spirit, for her Degree in Economics in which she gained a First from the London School of Economics. Not the done thing. A 2.1 from some pretentious red-brick institution in the midlands would have been barely tolerable but a First from the LSE branded her as a rebel. And as she effortlessly slotted into a high-flying job with an international investment bank, her peers were busy studying the intricacies of fondue parties and cheese dips. To make matters worse, she had been invited to join a Confederation of British Industry select panel to discuss the economic future of Europe, which, on a good day, could have been mistaken for a rusty sieve.

Had she chosen to join the vulturous legal profession that would have been socially acceptable but… economics? A man’s world.

What saved her from complete social obscurity was her marvellously curvaceous body. She was one of those genuinely sexy women who could turn a woman’s fancy as well as a man’s. Many a straight-laced debutante had orgasms thinking of Harriet’s body. The face, however, was a round, flat and largely uninspiring creation resembling a squashed pumpkin, topped by a tangle of naturally blonde hair that always looked as if it were the worse for a bad storm. Hairdressers pretended to be fully booked when she rang for an appointment. Her mother had solved the problem when she was young by ordering a monthly shearing when her pony was being shorn but that did nothing to improve her thick mop of wayward folic disaster. Her mouth was large with a slight but noticeable overbite and her nose, broken as a child, was too long and sat between piercing blue eyes. The entire ensemble had terrified men since her early years of pubescent discovery. But not Geoffrey.

Geoffrey Sprocket was one of those very rare men who appreciated a strong-minded, intelligent woman. When he asked her father, Group Captain (retired) Willoughby ‘Will’ Genaise-Udderingham DFC and Bar for the hand in marriage of his only daughter a certain mistiness clouded the older man’s eyes and the champagne was produced faster than a magician could pull a rabbit out of a hat. His wife, listening outside the door of her husband’s study with crossed fingers, immediately burst into tears on hearing the words, ‘With pleasure my boy!’ then skipped merrily down the hall humming the bridal anthem.

But Geoffrey had a fault and it was a stinker. He was a man of quite extraordinary anal capability. He never farted in bed and when nature felt the need to release gas from the inner recesses of his thin, rakish body it was always in private and for a very good reason. He could blast the plaster ducks off a wall at ten paces, kill flowers and snuff out the very life of canaries. On those rare occasions when nature, oblivious to the danger of all other life around it, released its potent and frightfully awful stink, Geoffrey was always alone. A man bent over while nature rent the air with gaseous toxic waste. In all other matters he was a perfect gentleman, although his cadaverous countenance frightened young children and horses. But he was a friendly and passionate man with a particular character trait that did not sit at all well with many others: he was honest. His colleagues admired convicted American criminal Jordan Belfort, a cheat and liar, whereas he admired Steve Jobs; a man whose creative ideas brought fame and a legal fortune.

Geoffrey was the product of a happy middle-class home: an engineering father and a school teacher mother. He gained an obscure public-school education in a school he left with not a single qualification to his name. He preferred heavy metal music to science and, while not an academic beacon, he had a natural affinity with computers and an almost prophetic sense of commerce and could be found every Saturday manning a stall at the local market selling computer components and his own software. Although he was academically dull and odd looking he had an excellent business brain and knew how to make money, truck loads of the stuff. The market stall developed his commercial skills, sense of humour and kind nature, all of which appealed to Harriet. As did his enormous penis.

He took his business acumen and desire for money into the City but not as a trader. He made his fortune developing software no one else had even thought of and to those around him in Staunton-le-Champ (pronounced Stanton Lisham) where he lived he was, new money with city ideas and no family seat. He was wary of horses but generously supported various animal charities and was an active campaigner against the slaughter of wildlife in general and that made him an outsider.

Filthy rich but kind, honest and decent and, therefore, not really very welcome.

When the sense of elation finally died and the peal of the wedding bells faded Harriet’s mother had grave misgivings about any offspring they might produce. She loved her daughter dearly but she was not blessed with conventional good looks and her husband was a fright. There were nights spent tossing and turning, visions of the most horribly deformed children flooding her mind. On the one hand she prayed they would have no children but on the other she wanted grandchildren, normal looking, healthy grandchildren. Many a night she bit her lip and cried knowing full well the chances of such a miracle were on par with a politician telling the truth.

Harriet and Geoffrey made an ideal early-thirties but certainly odd-looking couple and, while not exactly shunned by their peers, their dance cards were quite noticeably empty. They were, it could be honestly stated, not on the top of the society invitee list despite their obvious wealth. So it was with some astonishment they both peered at the gold embossed invitation of Lord Chessingham Harvey-Highmind to his daughter’s coming-out ball. It was signed by the daughter, Most affectionately, Bex. They both stared at it as if would come to life and explain. It did not.

‘Most affectionately?’ muttered Harriet. ‘Mmm. When did we last see her?’

‘Oh I dunno… three years ago?’

‘Right!’

Geoffrey was tapping his thumb with the card. ‘Yeah a few spotty youths threw her in the pool and you jumped in, fully clothed, and hauled the poor girl out,’ he said stepping out of his boxer shorts.

‘Her eighteenth birthday party,’ said Harriet unhooking her bra.

‘Yep.’

‘I remember that. Ruined my hair.’ Geoffrey cast her a glance. ‘Her mother had the most awful stutter, poor woman, and her father was a most dreadful man. I had to take poor Rebecca to her room and get her changed.’ Her voice tailed off as she remembered that day. ‘Yes… well.’ She brightened up. ‘Oh well, nice to be invited.’

She stepped out of her cami knickers, looked at her husband’s enormous penis, took a deep breath and pushed him onto the bed. There followed a long passionate kiss then she mounted him slowly, sliding down his enormous shaft, a huge grin fixed on her face.

The following Saturday Harriet drove up to London to choose her outfit for the ball. The sum of money that changed hands was obscene but she was determined to look stunning.

SILAGE

§

Rebecca ‘Bex’ Harvey-Highmind was among that bevy of spoiled, rich young women of strong character, stubby fingers and a face that bore more than a passing resemblance to a squashed melon. Women of her class tended to have faces that either looked like a squashed something or other or a horse. Undoubtedly the previous generations of inbreeding were to blame but it was she, poor thing, who had to live with the physical consequences. Her bum was too big, what her mother called, a well-padded seat; her tits were too small, which her friends referred to as her fried eggs and her legs were a little too short and on the dumpy side, which her friends referred to as her stumps. All in all, an unfortunate combination. Nothing, except an enormous amount of money spent on some serious plastic surgery, was going to improve the poor girl’s looks. And, despite her expensive education, like most of her contemporaries she was neither bright nor sharp-witted.

The vicar, normally a very kind though absent-minded man, had been overheard to remark, after one too many Christmas eggnogs, that, aged fifteen, she was about as attractive as silage. An opinion held by many, including her father who was beside himself with grief and anger at the, ‘Good Lord’s fucking joke!’ Matters were made worse by his wife’s revelation that their teenage daughter was a woman who walked in comfortable shoes.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he flustered as he downed a liver annihilating quantity of scotch.

‘Our daughter is a lesbian,’ she said calmly.

‘A what?’ he roared.

‘Your daughter prefers c...c...c...c.... cunt to c...c...c...c cock. Simple.’ This took her several seconds to say and her husband, a man whose temper was notoriously shorter than a pigmy’s pecker, was on his way to retrieve his Purdey to end her misery when she finally got it out.

‘How in God’s name do you know that?’ he thundered.

‘Have you seen any pictures of young men hanging on her b…b…b…b…bedroom wall? Have you?’ she finally managed.

He almost choked at the thought. The very idea of going into his daughter’s bedroom implied a familial intimacy he most certainly did not feel, or want.

Another marathon of stuttering and garbled consonants ensued. ‘No! C…c…c…c…c…certain young women r…r... r... r… r…. rock stars and older film act… act… actresses whom everyone knows p… p… p… p… p… prefer b… b… b… b… b… beaver to b… b… b… b… b… balls!’

‘Dear God!’ he roared throwing back another liver obliterating scotch while at the same time managing, with no small degree of irony, a tirade about there being far too many deviants on the planet and something should be done to stem the tide of filth that was lapping at the very shores of the Empire.

The old vicar, a man with a web of veins on the end of his bulbous nose, had popped in to discuss the parlous state of the church roof and tried to console Lord Chessingham, as he himself had had the very same thoughts. He tried very hard, while propping up a doorframe, to focus, unsuccessfully, on Lord Chessingham whom he chided for his uncharitable heart. Lord Chessingham, as he liked to be called feeling, incorrectly, that the informality would somehow make him more likeable, stared at the old man while making a mental note not to serve the old coot any more large glasses of his sixteen-year old malt. He then suggested, with a voice that sounded like a Rottweiler growling at a defenceless infant, that the vicar might like to take a flying fuck.

Thereafter Lord Chessingham could be heard frequently muttering about King Herod and the raison d'être of black plastic bin bags. His wife tutted, which she found considerably easier to do than speak.

Next day Lord Chessingham sent the vicar a box of lemons with a note that read, Suck on these, they might improve your sermons! The vicar was confused by the message then remembered he was dealing with one of the Good Lord’s mental midgets and smiled. The following day he received his first copy of Gay News with a note that read, Now bugger off!

That night the vicar, dressed in a multi-coloured, flowing robe; silk cami knickers and a large, floppy, purple hat out of which protruded feathers of several different types of bird, performed a pagan ritual against Lord Chessingham. The ritual, quite apart from the weird mode of dress, involved an array of rune stones, bits of ancient wood, small animal bones and chanting. A log fire was doing its best to burn efficiently but failed miserably