Pale as the Dead

by Fiona Mountain

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Be careful what you wish for, it might come true. Was it the same with prayers?

  The whole concept of luck was superstitious, irreligious. But there was no doubt luck played a part in genealogy. Sometimes it took years to track a person down, but with others she stumbled upon the crucial leads right away.

  That was what she needed to happen with Bethany. So she prayed for a little luck. Might as well cover both options.

  There was something else she prayed for, something she couldn’t quite put into words. That things could be put right between herself and Marcus. God literally knew how. ‘If you do, let me in on it, will you?’

  She almost believed she heard the answer. Church folk were quick to tell you that God always answers prayers. It’s just that sometimes the answer was ‘no’. Very convenient.

  She looked up at the rays of light that filtered like a broken rainbow through the blue, green and red glass of the east-facing windows, dipicting Mary Magdalene, the Crucifixion and Ascension. Her glance fell on the plaque she’d read many times before, detailing the individual members of one of Snowshill’s most prominent families to whom the windows were dedicated. Marshall.

  John Marshall, died 1 July 1864.

  Not the same John Marshall or course. Six degrees of separation. Everyone in the world is supposedly connected to everyone else through a chain of no more than six mutual acquaintances or relations. Were the Snowshill Marshalls linked to Bethany’s ancestors? There were dozens of qualified genealogists listed with the Association of Genealogists and Record Agents, hundreds advertising their services in the back of family history magazines. Natasha wondered why Bethany had chosen her, if it might have something to do with the Snowshill connection. She couldn’t help beginning to wish Adam had found someone else’s details in the front of the diary.

  Thank you, God. Thanks very much for dumping this on my plate right now. It’s just what I needed.

  She turned and walked outside into the bright sunshine, leant against the stone which was strangely warm to the touch.

  Say no goodbye,

  I am gone to the Unknown Land,

  Where at last you will be mine.

  It was just seeing Bethany acting the part of Ophelia that had made her think it was a suicide note, surely. Autosuggestion or whatever it was called.

  The worst thing was that it did explain why Bethany had left behind her most treasured possession. Why would she do that? Unless she no longer had a need for it. Or wanted Adam think that was so.

  Adam said Bethany hadn’t left a note. Unless the verse was her parting message to him.

  Maybe it was just a threat, a cry for help or attention, as suicide notes were often said to be. Natasha’s conversation with Bethany echoed inside her head. Could it have been something she had said? Oh, why had she gone on about inherited fate and the curse of secrets?

  Maybe Bethany had left the diary and the note because she wanted more commitment and reassurance from Adam, wanted to force him to make the effort to find her and win her back, and was waiting to see if he’d bother.

  Bethany had asked Natasha: How long would it take? Natasha had said you could trace back as far as great-great-grandparents in a month. Her standard reply. Great-great-grandparents, four generations back, which, generally speaking, took you to the mid 1800s. So going forward from that time, the time when J.M. was probably writing her diary, would take you to now, to living descendants. If Bethany did intend for Adam to find her using the diary, is that how long she’d give him? A month? A month from now. No. She’d gone a few days after Natasha had met her. The middle of December. A month from then was mid January. And there was nothing much Natasha could do until the New Year.

  Of course, the message could have a perfectly innocent explanation. A kind of private in-joke or reference. Which Adam would be able to explain if she could get hold of him. She’d left a message on the studio answering machine but he hadn’t returned her call. Maybe he didn’t bother to check for messages regularly over the holidays. Natasha had said she wouldn’t be calling him until the New Year. In which case should she go to the police? That seemed extreme.

  Adam had said the police wouldn’t do anything anyway, because he and Bethany had had an argument; she was perfectly within her rights to walk out on him. But a suicide note, if that’s what it was, would change all that. Natasha had checked on the internet, font of all knowledge, and found a paper on the Home Office website outlining police procedure for missing persons. Adults who disappeared of their own accord were described as non-vulnerable. Children and the elderly were vulnerable. But threats of suicide or risk of mental instability made adults vulernable too, highest priority. Hospitals would be contacted, detailed investigations carried out amongst friends and family. They’d want to talk to Adam, would track him down wherever he was spending Christmas, ask questions. There was no way Natasha could initiate that without talking to him first. The note didn’t say enough. What could Adam tell the police anyway? He didn’t even know Bethany’s real name!

  The police would of course dig around, maybe find the reason she didn’t use her real name. Natasha wasn’t sure she had the right to stir all that up either. Not without knowing Bethany’s reasons.

  No. She’d just have to wait until Adam called back. Try not to think about it until then. Easier said than done.

  When she got home, she couldn’t resist skimming another few pages of the diary whilst she dried her hair after her shower.

  She gave a whoop when she found what she was looking for. A mention of a visit to see relatives in Ely. Sundays are quiet here and no mistake. The people so small (not just in stature) and narrow.

  It was confirmation that J.M.’s father was the John Marshall she’d found on the internet, whose family came from Ely and who was buried there.

  Eight

  THERE WAS A knock at the door. The diary still in her hand, Natasha went to answer.

  It was Mary, holding a beautifully gift wrapped bottle of Smirnoff and an engraved silver goblet to go with it. ‘Just came to wish you a Merry Christmas.’

  ‘Time for a coffee?’

  ‘No, but I’ll have one anyway.’

  Mary swiped the diary from Natasha’s hand as she passed her in the hall. ‘What’s this? Not work surely? Don’t you ever stop?’

  ‘Remember that guy, Adam, who called when I was having dinner at your place? He’s asked me to use it to trace his girlfriend who’s gone missing. It belonged to one of her ancestors.’

  Natasha discussed most of her cases with Mary, did not see giving her the bare bones as any breach of confidentiality, since Mary, who usually ended up helping with the investigation, was always a good sounding board.

  Mary insisted that she was ‘no good’ at school, had left at sixteen with one O-Level in home economics. Her dad, a carpenter and fanatical sports fan, didn’t have time for academic pursuits, always told her it was more important to be good with your hands and with a ball. Something Mary had gone along with for a few years, playing netball for Gloucestershire, training to be a hairdresser and experimenting in the kitchen in her spare time.

  Then she met and married James and they took over the Snowshill Arms. Mary loved running the place, supervising the catering and the B&B business, but had become hooked on the challenges of genealogical research, due primarily to the fact that the inn stood on the site of an old monastery and was reputed to be haunted by a hooded monk who also prowled the lane outside the Manor. Since moving there, Mary had been ‘privileged’ to see him half a dozen times and it was this, she claimed, that had instilled in her a profound interest in history.

  Natasha thought that it was more likely to make a person want to sell up and move. She herself had developed a rather pragmatic approach to ghosts over the years. She believed in them as firmly as she believed in God, which seemed a sensible comparison since she’d never seen either, despite the numbers of graveyards and vaults and supposedly haunted houses
she’d visited. She wasn’t sure how she’d cope with her job if she was as sensitive to these things as Mary, who could walk into a room and sense or feel if there was anyone there ‘from the other side’.

  Mary’s interest in history had been nurtured and stimulated by her friendship with Natasha, who had found that Mary had an appetite for learning similar to a child’s as well as a keen nose for the kind of detective work needed in genealogy. She often came up with a fresh slant on things, her viewpoint uncluttered by academic indoctrination.

  ‘Modern day missing person,’ Mary said now. ‘Isn’t that something for the police to deal with?’

  ‘She’s not really missing, just walked out on her boyfriend. I don’t think the police would want to get involved every time that happened.’

  ‘Sounds interesting, though. If there’s anything I can do to help…’

  ‘I’d counted you out for the next few months.’

  ‘Don’t you dare. There’s only so many bootees and bonnets a girl can knit.’

  Were there? For a second Natasha thought how she’d be quite contented to sit by the fire, with a baby growing inside her and a devoted husband making her cups of tea. The thought gave her a shock. Get a grip.

  ‘Who is he then?’ Mary asked. ‘A broken-hearted one night stand?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Have a row did they?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Better be careful then.’

  ‘He’s nothing I can’t handle, don’t you worry.’ Natasha wrapped her fingers more tightly around her cup. ‘What do you mean anyway? What’s likely to happen?’

  ‘You’ve obviously not watched enough television detective shows. With missing persons or unexplained deaths, suspicion falls heaviest on the person who raises the alarm.’

  To her dismay, Natasha found she couldn’t entirely laugh that off. She felt a tug of unease. She’d not tried as hard as she might to confront Adam with the note, was putting off revealing it to him. Because she didn’t entirely trust him.

  ‘So what’s he like then?’

  ‘Artistic. Interesting. Cute, if you’re into still-waters-run-deep kinda guys. But not my type,’ she added.

  ‘Artistic, interesting and a complete flake no doubt. Sounds exactly your type to me.’

  * * *

  Nearly ten o’clock. If she didn’t get a move on she’d be late for Christmas lunch with her parents and Abby.

  She dressed quickly. Long, black velvet skirt, black laced boots, a boned, dark red bodice. Impatiently, she raked a brush through her unruly hair and fastened it at the nape of her neck with a silver clasp. Ringlets sprung loose around her face and impatiently she smoothed them back.

  Boris streaked to the door, leaving pale strands of copper fur glimmering against the black of Natasha’s skirt as he brushed by.

  ‘Oh, I suppose you can come too.’ She unlocked the Alpine and let him scramble up onto the passenger seat. He wouldn’t be allowed into the hotel but he was used to waiting in the car when he went with her on research trips.

  In any weather and at any time of the day or year, Chipping Campden looked welcoming, with its broad, curved high street and almost unbroken terrace of gabled shops and cottages and grand wool merchants’ houses. Natasha agreed with those who said it was the most beautiful high street in Britain. Stately and imposing, but not at all aloof.

  It was late morning but the town was deserted. There was no snow at all here, just ribbons of frost edging the pavements.

  The hotel was a noisy contrast. Ann’s choice. Natasha knew Steven would rather stay beneath the ancient beams of the Lygon Arms in Broadway, but Ann preferred the Cotswold House Hotel, with its impressive main entrance, airy Regency architecture and famous winding staircase.

  She felt a rush of happiness as she saw Steven. Head and shoulders taller than everyone around him, he looked fit and tanned, dressed in slightly crumpled chinos and a dark shirt, incongruous amongst the pale English-winter faces and formal attire. He enfolded her in a bear-hug. ‘Merry Christmas, honey.’ People turned to look. Steven had a presence that made him dominate a room. And a voice that carried, which he never made any effort to suppress. Natasha inhaled his earthy, outdoors smell, mingled with aftershave, beer and bitter coffee. It always took her back to being a little girl, swept high into his arms as she ran to meet him when he returned from one of his trips.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ Natasha said. As a form of protest which she now saw as cruel, she’d stopped calling him Dad when she’d discovered the truth about her past. She found that she couldn’t slip back into using it without it seeming awkward. She was certain he wouldn’t mind if she called him by his Christian name. He used it himself now in letters and on cards. ‘With all my love always, Steven.’

  ‘Ann and Abby will be down in a while, when they’ve finished tarting themselves up.’ He looked her up and down. ‘You look ravishing as always.’

  She felt a warm glow of pleasure. But it always gave her a peculiar feeling to think how he’d watched her grow, knowing all the time that she was an interloper, not a part of him at all. Now, when he complimented her or said he loved her, she didn’t know quite how to take it.

  He glanced towards the cocktail menu, tossed it aside. ‘Whisky’ll do me. You won’t say no to a V and T?’

  She grinned. ‘I won’t.’

  They went up to the bar and ordered. ‘Get that down you,’ Steven said, clinking her glass. ‘If we’re quick about it we can squeeze in another one before we have to behave ourselves.’

  ‘When have you ever?’

  ‘All the time. It’s you who leads me astray. You’re a bad influence.’

  ‘Must’ve learnt my wicked ways from someone.’

  ‘Glad I taught you something useful.’

  She watched his large hand on the glass. It was rough and calloused, the nails cracked. She could never quite bring herself to trust men with soft, manicured, computer tapping fingers.

  Abby came bounding in, looking tanned and fit. ‘Hi.’ She gave Natasha a squeeze, handed over a card and present. She stripped off the wrapping paper to find a book on the aboriginal Dreamtime.

  ‘That’s great, thanks.’ Natasha kissed her cheek.

  ‘Thought it’d be your kind of thing.’ Natasha opened the card and Abby added, ‘It’s from Australia as well.’ It had a cartoon of Santa Claus and his sleigh careering along a sunny, sandy beach. How much harder it must be to convince Australian children he existed when he wore clothes and travelled in a vehicle so inappropriate to their climate.

  Ann appeared by Steven’s side, looking serene and lovely as always, dressed in a figure-hugging, navy blue dress with chiffon across the shoulders and a thick belt at her slender waist, her ash blonde hair tied back with a sapphire scarf. With her boots in need of a polish, Natasha felt untidy by comparison. No change there then.

  When she’d once invited her parents to stay at Orchard End, Ann’s evangelistic dusting and scrubbing and vacuuming had driven her mad, as it had done when she was growing up. Natasha and Abigail were never allowed to be seen with even so much as a smudge of chocolate or paint or mud on their fingers or faces. That wasn’t to say Ann was overly strict. She was always ready with hugs and bedtime stories and help with homework. The perfect mum. Which is just how she wanted everything to be.

  With a perfect marriage to match. Which was probably, Natasha had decided, why Ann had turned a blind eye to Steven’s affairs, and never complained when he came home from a six-week trip and went straight out drinking. Maybe it was that she’d got what she wanted. Or just that she loved him. Steven attracted people to him like a magnet, by the sheer force of his personality. And once you were drawn into his sphere, it was hard to leave it.

  You grow up thinking your parents are totally normal. Until you see other families and think yours is the odd one. Then you come to the conclusion that your family is normal because it’s odd. Something of which Natasha, in her profession, had daily proof. />
  Ann and Steven were suited to each other as only those who appear completely ill matched could be. Steven liked clever, educated women, but there was also something old fashioned about him, a confusing double standard that made him champion Natasha’s career but jokingly say he could never be married to someone like her. Ann had read history, studied to be an interior designer, then done a stint as a museum curator. She had a string of letters after her name, but her own mother, dead for fifteen years now, delighted in telling Natasha that ever since Ann could talk her only ambition had been to have a husband and a house with a big kitchen and garden. And lots of babies. Something that had jabbed in Natasha’s memory like a thom. Ever since Abigail’s successful conception, she sensed she was exactly that to Ann. A reminder of a time when she believed she’d failed as a woman.

  ‘Tell me about Italy,’ Natasha said to Steven, as they sat down at a small table in the corner of the drawing room. He’d been away for two months.

  ‘You’d have been fascinated. We found evidence of a temple with a mass grave.’

  Steven paused whilst the waiter distributed menus in dark green leather covers.

  ‘Will you be going back?’ she asked.

  He glanced at Ann. She never appeared to mind how long he spent away. Natasha had the impression that he was grateful to her for that, but also disappointed. ‘Why, thinking of coming too?’

  Natasha had always been interested in Steven’s work. As young as she could remember she’d begged him to take her on archaeological trips. She preferred to spend her summer holidays not digging on a beach, but with a trowel or sieve, knee deep in a muddy hole, or clambering round the crumbling walls of a castle.

  ‘Too busy.’

  ‘So, whose cupboards have you been finding skeletons in lately?’ he asked.