by Amy Myers
Chapter One
‘Ghosts!’ Peter grunted.
‘What ghosts?’ Georgia sighed. Her father was supposed to be checking The Wickenham Murders, so that she could return the proofs to its publisher on schedule. No ghost should dare to raise its head until that was done – if then, as she was deep in internet research for the next book and did not need frivolous interruptions. Even so, she had to admit that the word ghost held a certain attraction.
‘This poor girl,’ Peter waved a newspaper her. ‘Murdered on Easter Saturday in the middle of a ghost tour.’
The sheer incongruity of this made it all the more horrifying to contemplate, and Georgia instinctively recoiled. Ghosts conjured up the violence of the past, the unfinished business of long ago. A present-day murder in such a context became even more starkly real. It was police territory, not directly that of Marsh & Daughter. Theirs lay in the past, though preferably without ghosts.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘She was found stabbed at the place where the tour ends, apparently. Her boyfriend, Jake Baines, has already been charged.’
‘She was on the tour?’
‘No, I gather the tour ends with a reconstruction of the story of the murder of Lady Rosamund in a lonely tower, and Alice Winters, the murdered girl, was employed to re-enact Lady Rosamund.’
Georgia was confused. ‘She was murdered during the performance?’
‘Before, I think.’ Peter scanned the article quickly.
‘Where was this?’
‘In deepest Kent, of course. This,’ Peter waved the newspaper again, ‘is the Canterbury Express.’
‘But where?’
‘Not that far away in fact, as the crow flies. About ten miles to our west, way out on the downs. A village called Friday Street. Do you know it?’
She did. They both did. ‘That was the village we visited at Christmas,’ she said flatly. They had come across it by chance. Ten miles might seem a short distance – and so it was if one travelled on the main highways. For the Kentish North Downs, however, it could be a very long way indeed. There were villages and hamlets so remote, and lanes so twisting and tortuous, that one could be within a mile or two of one’s own front door and not realize it.
‘Gadzooks,’ Peter remarked. ‘So it was.’ He was as taken aback as she had been. His eyes met hers. ‘That tune – remember it?’
‘Of course.’ She would never forget it. A weird haunting melody that caught at the heart, played on a simple flute, by a lad in his late teens. There had been nothing unusual about him. Jeans, tee shirt, shock of light brown hair; fine-featured. He’d looked vulnerable, but perhaps that was only to her, because of his association with the tune.
Altogether it had been an odd experience. A village pub, miles from anywhere, that had obviously been forced to widen its horizons by serving food. It had a small, quite smart restaurant with about ten tables, although the bar area was still very firmly local. And that’s where she and Peter had sat, he in his wheelchair, she perched at the end of a bench where the local drinking fraternity had unwillingly made room for her. Georgia remembered the stillness as they sat drinking their beer. Had it been their presence or was it because of the lad playing the flute? He hadn’t played the tune for very long because the big burly man behind the bar had leaned over towards him, said a few words and the tune had promptly been switched to ‘Penny Lane’. That had brought a distinct sense of relaxation amongst the drinkers. Nevertheless the tune had lodged in Georgia’s memory, and every so often she was reminded of its haunting sound.
Haunting? Ghosts, she remembered. According to the Canterbury Express, this was a village that held ghost tours.
‘A sad place,’ Peter commented.
Georgia considered pouncing on this subjective verdict, but honesty forbade it. It had been a sad village, or at least a sad pub. Their shared nose for such things was what made their partnership thrive. They both had an instinctive feel for the atmosphere lingering in buildings or villages, or even parts of towns. The past, they knew, whether it be recent or long gone, laid the fingerprints of unfinished business on the present. If this translated itself for some people into ghosts, who were Marsh & Daughter to say they were wrong? Well, Peter for one. He’d always been vehemently opposed to the idea of headless horsemen or piteous wailing damsels. Something in this newspaper article, however, had caught his interest beyond the normal human reaction to a young life brutally ended.
‘We don’t know Friday Street is sad,’ Georgia argued. It was part of her job to put a stopper in the bottle when needed, to prevent Peter’s enthusiastic genie from bubbling out. ‘We didn’t even explore the village afterwards. What we witnessed at Christmas might simply have been a bad hair day for the pub.’
‘Alice Winters, the girl who was stabbed, was a farmer’s daughter in her gap year. She was also part-time barmaid at the pub.’
That silenced her. Georgia fought an inner battle of logic versus instinct. One couldn’t base too much on half an hour’s experience, and yet the coincidence of place could not be entirely ignored. Nevertheless, logic informed her sternly, it proved nothing.
‘The problem is,’ Peter continued loftily when she made no comeback, ‘that a positive is easier to prove than a negative.’
Georgia agreed. Marsh & Daughter’s true-crime series linked past to present. If they failed to find a positive connection between today’s ‘fingerprints’ on a location and violence or trouble in the past, that didn’t necessarily prove there wasn’t one. But how far did one delve back before admitting defeat?
‘Back to Bronze Age burials?’ she asked, half seriously.
‘Why not?’ Peter countered, very seriously. ‘There’s a lot in these parts.’
‘Surely living memory has some part to play in finger-prints on time?’
‘Don’t forget living legend. Former generations handing the story down.’
‘I’m not digging back to Bronze Age,’ Georgia said firmly. ‘Luke wouldn’t approve.’
Luke was their publisher, and also her lover, thought of in that order since she was currently in the office. He was more lover than partner, since he worked and lived at South Malling on the other side of Maidstone, but he was very much present in both their business and private lives. The Wickenham Murders would be their sixth book for him, each centred on a case, or cases, in which unfinished business from the past had laid its shadow over the present, and in most instances Marsh & Daughter, their trading name, had found a satisfactory solution. Usually it fell to Georgia to do most of the legwork, and Peter, less mobile than she (at least in theory) after his police career had ended when he had been shot and paralysed, spent more time at the computer, in administration and doing most of the writing. Luke had his own ideas on what this should be. He liked archaeology, but not on his true-crime list. Archaeology was local history, and from that he would not budge.
‘He won’t have to. We’ve nothing on Friday Street at all, except a funny tune.’
‘And the village’s name,’ Georgia admitted reluctantly. ‘I did look up its origins at Christmas.’
‘Why?’ It was Peter’s turn to pounce.
Georgia was trapped. ‘The tune, I suppose, and the way the locals still cling together as a community.’ The atmosphere in the Montash Arms (even the name had stuck in her memory) had been heavier than the usual clannishness in a village community.
‘And what came out of your investigation?’
‘There are, or were, a lot of small hamlets called Friday Street in England, mostly in the south; Friday used to be thought of as an unlucky day. Still is sometimes. In fishing communities—’
‘Is this a lecture?’ Peter interrupted.
‘Yes,’ Georgia replied with dignity. ‘Like the one you gave me on the EU last night.’
‘Point accepted,’ he admitted graciously.
‘Fishermen avoided going to sea on a Friday.’
‘I don’t imagine there are many fishermen on
the North Downs.’
‘And,’ Georgia continued doggedly, ‘some authorities think that the name might have developed because it was the road leading to the local gallows.’
Peter glowed. ‘Could it be, I wonder, that—’
‘The gallows atmosphere lingers?’ she finished for him. ‘Possibly, since our Friday Street seems to have swallowed the village next to it rather than the other way round. I remember it as a distinct community with several streets spreading out from a crossroads, but when I looked at our old maps of Kent, the village was called Pucken up to the eighteenth century, and Friday Street was an adjacent hamlet. Pucken, incidentally, means evil spirits.’
‘I’m amazed we survived our half pint of bitter there.’
‘But nothing I’ve said means Alice Winters’ death has anything to do with the village’s unlucky past – if it had any,’ Georgia said quickly. Even as she spoke, she found herself wondering about the story of Lady Rosamund. And also why there were apparently so many ghosts in Friday Street that they deserved a tour.
‘No.’ Peter smiled angelically at her.
She left a short pause, then asked as casually as she could, ‘Who runs these tours?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’ Peter, now serious again, read on. ‘It seems it’s the local manor, still called Pucken, incidentally. The tours have helpful re-enactments throughout of the grisly deeds that have taken place over the centuries and no doubt – before you challenge me, Georgia – all this concentration on the past could well suggest why we felt it such a sad place. Anyway, in all probability this has nothing to do with Alice Winters, I agree. All the same, Georgia, it’s beginning to interest me.’
‘Not before you’ve checked those proofs.’ Finishing them to schedule was essential if Luke was to speak to her again.
‘She was found stabbed in a remote corner of the village.’
‘How old was she?’ Georgia asked abruptly.
‘Eighteen.’
That was the trouble with their job, Georgia thought wryly. It wasn’t like a police investigation, which had a duty to remain objective and start from the facts. Marsh & Daughter began with a choice as to whether they investigated or not. However much their investigation worked on factual evidence thereafter, its birth began as ‘fingerprints’. That meant that, although their cases were usually in the past, the constant risk of upsetting present-day family or friends remained. Sometimes they would be digging up sad memories without a case emerging to justify doing so. Alice Winters’ death was an exception, however.
‘It’s backwards, isn’t it?’ she continued, as though Peter could read her mind. They worked together so closely that often he seemed to, and she his. ‘Usually we try to unearth the problem in the past. If we take a present-day case such as that of Alice Winters to be our starting point, we’d be working from a very dodgy hypothesis, because we’d subconsciously be looking at the past to see if it provided an answer to the present. And in any case it seems the police already have the answer. Anyway, it’s a police matter. Not for us.’
Silence fell. Georgia listened to the drumming of Peter’s fingers on the table until she could stand it no longer.
‘Why don’t you give Mike a ring?’ she asked with resignation.
The drumming stopped immediately. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. Even though,’ he added, ‘I’d have done it anyway.’
‘Of course.’
DI Mike Gilroy had been Peter’s sergeant in his police career days, and though Mike was steadily rising through the ranks in Kent Police, Stour area, and looked set to rise further, Peter still treated him as his personal sergeant.
‘Just in case there’s any doubt about this Jake Baines being guilty. Not that Mike would talk about it if he’s already charged him. Still, you never know. Might pick up a few vibes from what he says.’
*
Haden Shaw, where they lived, was a somewhat larger village than Friday Street, but a quiet one. Georgia could see from the atlas that Friday Street was on a through road, if one could so term a succession of what were now minor lanes from the A20 leading to Ospringe and Faversham. Haden Shaw, on the other hand, was effectively a dead end, since the lane leading to it from the Canterbury road then doubled back on itself in a loop to rejoin the main road.
‘It took one look at Haden Shaw, changed its mind and went back, thank heavens,’ Georgia had once observed to a cross and lost motorist who complained bitterly that the road led nowhere and for no purpose. Obviously he hadn’t seen their jolly pub.
Peter and Georgia’s adjoining terrace houses pandered to their desire for independence and to their need to be together for work purposes, the office being on the ground floor of Peter’s home. The arrangement suited Georgia splendidly after her divorce from conman Zac Taylor, and changing it for the spaciousness of Luke’s home was a decision she kept delaying. Not that the house was the key factor. Her independence was.
When she let herself into Peter’s home the next morning, she followed her usual practice of checking out the situation with Margaret, who was far more than just Peter’s carer. She was strong enough to stand up to his moods, knowing when to walk away and when to stay; she was an amazingly good cook, and she had his interests firmly lodged in her heart, which was just as well since Peter’s bad turns were unpredictable.
Margaret was in the office, clearing away his so-called breakfast, which was coffee and an apple, with the former taking precedence. Georgia lifted an eyebrow, their silent code, as Margaret came out with the tray, and was relieved when she nodded.
‘Ah, Georgia.’ Peter spun round in the wheelchair, beaming. ‘About that Friday Street murder. I’ve had a word with Mike.’
‘Was he pleased to hear from you?’
‘Exuberant. And there is nothing about Alice Winters’ death that suggests anything other than a lovers’ tiff that went wrong.’
‘So why are you beaming?’ Only a tiff? Some tiff, to end in murder, Georgia thought.
‘Just this and that.’
She was going to have to work for it, that was obvious. ‘Do you mean open and shut, as Mike sees it? In other words the evidence points towards the story behind it, the story behind it points to the culprit, which in this case is Jake Baines.’
‘Precisely. He was found with the body at the ruined tower where they re-enact the medieval legend of Lady Rosamund. Alice played Lady Rosamund’s ghost. Jake was – well, I’ll save the details.’
Georgia decided not to rise to the bait. ‘Who conducts the ghost tours at the manor? The owner?’
‘Yes. He’s a dedicated ghost buff, or, if one is being unkind, a dedicated eccentric in the interests of maintaining an old pile of stones. That’s Mike’s description of the manor. This buff, Toby Beamish, takes groups of tourists around, caters for the children by giving them divining rods—’
‘Stop right there. For water? Damp through the roof?’
‘Divining rods,’ Peter repeated patiently, ‘for ghosts. And before you ask me, I don’t know how or why. That’s just what Mike told me.’
‘Exactly how many ghosts are there?’ Georgia demanded. ‘I thought Pluckley claims to be the most haunted village in Kent.’
‘Probably it is. Maybe the ghosts go on holiday to Pucken Manor once in a while. Anyway, the ruined tower where Alice was found is half a mile away, and known locally as Rosamund’s Tower, based on an old medieval legend. Toby Beamish has some kind of theatre he’s converted or built at one side, where the tourists are taken by bus from the manor for a real live ghost show.’
‘Solid flesh ghosts?’
‘No, Georgia, actual ghosts.’
‘You don’t mean,’ Georgia was intrigued now, ‘a fully fledged Pepper’s Ghost arrangement with ghostly apparitions floating across the stage recounting their woes?’
‘Precisely. What a learned daughter I have. In fact they only play out the most well known story, and that’s the one of Lady Rosamund, the hero and the big bad villain.’
>
‘All ghosts?’
‘Two of them, I gather. Alice and Jake. Toby Beamish plays the villain and is solid flesh.’
Georgia became so side-tracked imagining this spectacle that she returned to the stark facts guiltily. ‘Who found the body if it was discovered before the show?’
‘Jake Baines. He claims she was dead when he arrived. They had to be there first to be in position, and Toby came along a little later with the punters. All he had to do was don his top hat and black cloak.’
‘Somewhat out of period for this medieval legend,’ Georgia commented. ‘Any forensic evidence to go on?’
‘Mike refused to come clean. Jake Baines claims he moved her in case she wasn’t dead, and might have touched the dagger while he did so. It was still in the wound.’
‘He doesn’t admit to killing her then?’
‘He strongly denies it. He admits they had a row the previous evening, but says she told him to come later because she had to meet someone first. He couldn’t say who, and it all sounded very weak.’
‘The row could have been after he got there.’ Georgia stated the obvious. Always a good plan since it was all too easy to discount it. ‘Where was she found? In the pit or wherever they worked the illusion from?’
‘No. On the stage itself. She was already in costume; there’s a cubby hole on one side where she changed clothes.’
‘These ghost tours,’ Georgia frowned, trying to set this in context. ‘Who are they for? Just tourists?’
‘I gather aficionados come from time to time. And there are the historical buffs too.’
‘Can ghosts be historical?’
‘The tours are packed full of historical detail as well. And what’s more, Beamish runs a museum, and you can’t get to see it without doing the tour.’
‘A museum on ghosts? Limited, isn’t it?’
‘It’s on deodands.’ Peter paused for effect – which he achieved. What on earth were they? Georgia wondered, racking her brains in vain. Peter looked smug. ‘Where’s your grasp of medieval law?’
‘The same place as yours, deeply buried.’
‘They’re something to do with death caused by violence. Again, the details will no doubt wait.’
