Rose Cottage (17 page)

‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine. Was there anything else?’

‘I don’t think so. I asked if I would tell the vicar and he said it didn’t matter.’

‘And he never said where he was from, or what his interest was in the grave? Did he say … Did he mention Rose Cottage, for instance?’

‘No, miss.’

‘And he was alone?’

‘Well, I didn’t see no one else, but I think there was someone in the car. He had a car outside the gate, and I thought I heard him talking to someone before it started up and drove away.’

I was silent for so long that she began to look worried as well as curious, but then the cockerel created a diversion by flying up to grab food from the bowl she was carrying, and in the ensuing scuffle I took a pull at myself and managed to say, easily enough, ‘Well, thanks very much, Lil. It’s certainly a bit odd and I’d love to know who the gentleman was, but he’ll probably be in touch again, and if he knows I’m at Rose Cottage he can come to see me there. No, I won’t come in. It doesn’t matter about Paterson’s, I’m sure their number’s on the letter Mr Pascoe gave me. I’ll not keep you, and thanks again. Goodbye.’

And, parrying the offer of a cup of tea, I managed to get away and head for the workshop next door.

* * *

It was a long room, which had been a hay loft in the days when the vicarage had owned and run its own farm. It was lighted mainly from windows let into the roof, but at one end there was a double door, used formerly for loading and unloading, and this was open, letting in air and light. The floor was carpeted with shavings and sawdust, and the place smelled deliciously of pine and cedar and other woods, with undertones of varnish and linseed oil.

Davey was there, busy with a plane over a long piece of timber gripped by the vices on the bench that ran down the centre of the loft.

He glanced up when my shadow crossed the light, but without checking the smooth run of the plane along the plank’s length. The sliver of wood, paper-thin and silvery, curled up and back, then floated down to join the sweet-smelling carpet on the floor. Davey straightened and turned.

‘Well, did you get what you wanted from the vicar?’

‘Yes. And something rather interesting from Lil at the vicarage.’

‘Oh?’ He laid the plane down. ‘What was that?’

I told him about Lil’s visitor, and he listened, head bent, while he ran a finger absently along the smooth surface of the planed wood. When I finished he gave a grunt and was silent for a few moments, then he said:

‘And someone else in the car, eh? The lady?’

‘Of course. And I am thinking what you’re thinking.’

‘Such as?’

‘Only that they went down to Rose Cottage and found it empty, and so they broke and entered. This
man saw Lil during Sunday evensong, she says. So later, when Miss Linsey paid her visit to the cemetery, they were there.’

‘Again.’

‘Again?’

‘Aye. They surely must have been at the grave earlier, before they came here to ask about the gravestone. Then they went back.’

‘Taking flowers for Aunt Betsy?’

‘There’s that, isn’t there?’ He turned and put the plane up on the tool rack that ran along one wall. ‘When your Mum was killed, was that gipsy with her?’

‘I believe so. All I ever heard about it was what Aunt Betsy told me. I do know she said he was going to marry her, but Gran never knew his name, except she called him Jamie. There’s nothing about the crash among the cuttings in her album.’

‘We could find out if we had to, I reckon. What I was thinking was, if he survived her, or if they’d parted before she died, then it’s likely he’d marry again. Do gipsies “talk funny”?’

‘I’ve no idea. But if this was Jamie, and he’d come back for whatever reason to Todhall – to show it to the new wife or to look in the safe that my mother had told him about, or whatever – why, again why, the flowers for Aunt Betsy? And why take the papers from the safe? Why not just rob it?’

‘From the sound of it, he’d not need to go stealing a few poundsworth from your Gran,’ said Davey. He reached his jacket down from its peg by the door. ‘We’ll get no further by chewing things over now.
Seems to me that what you need’s a bit of time to see what the vicar’s turned up for you, and then maybe start thinking about your Gran’s packing.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Whoever this chap is, if he’s really bothered about anything in Todhall, he’ll be back, and it would clear a whole lot of things up if you were there to talk to him … Prissy’s coming to see you tomorrow, isn’t she? Well, I’ll be along in the afternoon to give you a hand, so don’t try shifting anything, just get the small stuff sorted ready. Coming?’

I came.

He took me back through the park, and set me down by the bridge, refused the offer of tea – ‘I’ll get mine at half-six when I’ve done’ – and then drove off.

As soon as I was in the house with the door shut I sat down at the table and pulled the vicar’s envelope out of my pocket.

It was a meagre crop, though I supposed it was worth six and eightpence of the vicar’s time. The first was the copy of my grandparents’ marriage certificate: Henry Welland, gardener, to Mary Campbell, domestic servant, witnessed by Jeremiah Pascoe, carpenter, and Giles Brandon, farmer – ‘farmer’ being the accepted label for the owners of the land, the gentry. I had heard it all from Gran, of course, how Sir Giles had not only attended the ceremony, but had made a speech at the wedding breakfast in the village hall, and given the young couple the tenancy of Rose Cottage, which had ‘just been done up lovely’ after the death of its previous occupant.

Then, a decent year and a half later, the certificate of baptism of Lilias Mary, their daughter, with the godparents duly noted, Margaret and Jeremiah Pascoe.

Why I should have hoped for anything from the next slip of paper I do not know. It was some years now since I had drummed up my courage and written to Somerset House, and I had my own copy of my birth certificate, but I sat there staring at the vicar’s careful copperplate as if something might be written there between the lines. It was the certificate of baptism of Katherine Mary, daughter of Lilias Welland. Father unknown. And the godparents, friends to the third generation, James and Annie Pascoe, with Sybilla Lockwood, the vicar’s wife.

And that was all. I bestirred myself at length. I got up and went to lift the Unseen Guest down from the wall and push the papers into the safe.

I had barely readjusted the framed text when there was a knock at the door.

I suppose I stood there for a full ten seconds, my hands still on the frame, tightening till the knuckles showed white. My first thought was,
It’s the foreigner, the gipsy, he’s here already, the stranger who’s been asking questions about my family – now perhaps I’ll find out some of the things I want to know
. My second,
I wonder if I want to hear them after all?
And finally, as I pried my hands loose from the Unseen Guest and turned to the door,
And Davey’s back at home by now, and a good two miles away …

I opened the door.

It was no foreigner, though the woman who stood
there was something of a stranger. I had not seen her for some time, but she never seemed to change. The elder Miss Pope, Agatha. And behind her was Miss Mildred.

‘Well, how nice to see you, Miss Agatha!’ I said, and relief must have warmed my voice into such a delighted welcome that she looked surprised. ‘And Miss Mildred, too. How good of you to call! Do please come in.’

‘I know it’s not Friday,’ said Miss Mildred, following her sister into the room.

‘She means,’ said Miss Agatha, ‘that normally she only walks to meet my train on Friday. But we’ve been in Sunderland to the pictures, and Sister persuaded me to come here with her on our way home because she was worried, and wanted to talk to you.’

‘Oh?’ I said, at a loss. ‘Well, please sit down, won’t you? I’m sorry the place is a bit untidy, but I’ve been trying to sort things out for the movers. Would you like a cup of tea? It won’t take a minute, I was just going to put the kettle on anyway.’

‘No, thank you. We always have high tea when we’ve been into town, and it is all laid ready.’ She sat down, still holding her handbag firmly on her lap, as if ready to go at any moment. I took my place by the table again, and she fixed me, much as the Ancient Mariner fixed the Wedding Guest, with her glittering spectacles. Miss Mildred, perched on the edge of the rocking chair, made a little chirping sound like a nervous young bird. I began to feel a little nervous myself. Perhaps the strange foreigner would have been a little less alarming.

Miss Agatha spoke in her deep, rather pleasant voice.

‘My sister wanted me to come with her to tell you,’ she said, ‘though I have no idea what she is talking about. It’s very difficult, but I always say that when a thing is difficult or unpleasant one had better say it at once.’

I’ll bet you do, I thought, and said aloud: ‘Oh, dear. Well, you’re probably right. So what is it, please?’

‘Only that Miss Linsey is insisting now that she saw your mother here in Todhall last Sunday night. In the graveyard,’ said Miss Agatha, and shut her lips tight on the word.

A twitter from Miss Mildred, then I said, ‘But I know that. She told me herself.’

‘My sister was afraid—’ began Miss Agatha, but Miss Mildred rushed in, the blue eyes filling with tears, the kindly face flushed.

‘Poor Bella. Her dreams, it’s those wretched – I mean those dreams of hers she thinks are visions. She lets them upset her so … Well, you remember I told you that I thought there had been someone here, at Rose Cottage, with a light, on Monday night?’

‘Yes, of course I remember.’

‘Well, I wasn’t thinking, and I told Bella what Bob Crawley had said, about someone digging there near the toolshed, and I said, “Perhaps it was your ghosts, Bella,” quite without thinking, and she looked so queer, and said, you know the way she does, “A warning. It could be a warning. Sometimes even the unenlightened are used to warn of a death,” and she just put her cup
down and went without another word. She was having tea with me at the time.’

‘When was she not?’ said Miss Agatha, under her breath.

Miss Mildred swept on without pausing. I thought I could acquit her of wanting to pass on disturbing news, but if it had to be done, then she would get it over as quickly as possible. ‘I’m afraid I put it out of my mind, because, well, you know Bella, but it kept coming back to worry me, so I told Sister, and she said it was far better to tell you ourselves than for Bella perhaps to come down here frightening you with her tales.’

‘As a matter of fact—’ I began.

‘Go on. If you’re going to tell her, tell her,’ said Miss Agatha firmly, with a brave disregard for both her sister’s feelings and mine.

Miss Mildred gulped, then said distressfully, ‘It’s just that I had this feeling’ – she waved a hand somewhere near what I was sure she would have called her bosom – ‘that it was all my fault that Bella got the idea that someone was here digging a grave, as if it wasn’t bad enough for you to have to listen to all the other’ – a pause – ‘the other
stuff
about your poor mother in the cemetery.’

For Miss Mildred, the word was an expletive. And with it she had apparently shot her bolt. She sat back, dabbing at her eyes. I gave her a smile which she didn’t see, but Miss Agatha looked suddenly interested.

‘You knew this already.’ She made it a statement, not a question.

‘Yes. Thank you for coming to tell me, it was kind of
you, but actually Miss Linsey did come here last night, and we had a talk. We – well, we got her dream sorted out, I think.’

‘Well, really!’ Miss Agatha’s deep voice went deeper. She added, rather unfairly, ‘If that isn’t just like her! Anything to get something frightening off her chest and onto yours! I never did hold with all that nonsense of Bella’s. She’ll be breathing ectoplasm next.’

‘I don’t think one actually – that is, never mind, but look, Miss Agatha,’ I said hurriedly, ‘whatever Miss Linsey thought it might mean, or whatever Bob Crawley said about the digging, there’s nothing to it, really. I went and took a look myself yesterday. It’s true that someone has been digging there recently, over by the toolshed, but—’

Another tiny sound from Miss Mildred, and a deep, ‘Really?’ from her sister.

‘Yes, but it’s not a grave, nothing like one, it’s just a small patch that’s been dug over. Nothing there. I told Miss Linsey that, and she seemed quite ready to dismiss it. Dismiss it, I mean, as not being anything to do with her vision, or dream, or whatever you like to call it …’ I turned a hand over. ‘But not, I’m beginning to think, not nonsense, Miss Agatha.’

‘Indeed? Well?’

I leaned forward in my chair. ‘Look, let’s get one thing clear. It’s obvious that whatever these dreams of Miss Linsey’s may mean, it’s nothing to do with my mother or with me here and now. She died years ago. And it’s even longer since she was here in Todhall. Even if she were still alive, and came back here, would
anyone recognise her straight away like that, and in the dark, too?’ I drew a breath. ‘Listen. There’s something I think I ought to tell you, but for the present, please may we keep it between ourselves till I find out more about it? I heard today that a man called here recently, at the vicarage, asking about my grandfather’s gravestone, and he had a friend with him.’