by S M Hardy
Afterwards I felt like I’d lost all strength in my limbs and the short stagger across the hall to the bedroom could have been a marathon. When I got there, I didn’t undress but flopped down face first onto the bed, mind and body exhausted, and almost immediately fell asleep. I didn’t wake until morning.
When I came to, it took me a few moments to work out why I was lying on top of the covers, fully dressed. I was sure I hadn’t had that much to drink. Then I remembered and I could feel my face heat up with embarrassment. What must Emma think? Not to mention Jed and George. Oh God, George must think I’m a right prick the way I ran out of there with no word of thanks or farewell.
I showered, shaved and dressed while wondering whether there was anywhere in the village I could buy some flowers to take around to Emma’s to at least try and make amends for my rudeness. Jed I wasn’t too bothered about, but George … I’d have to pop in the pub later and make some excuse like a dicky belly, which as it turned out wasn’t so far from the truth. I’d certainly puked my guts up.
I made myself some toast and leant back against the kitchen sink as I munched my way through a couple of slices, washed down with a mug of tea.
As I dropped the plate into the sink there was a scratching sound at the back door.
‘What the …?’ I wiped my hands on the dishcloth and took a step towards the door. There it was again, a scrabbling noise like a dog pawing the bottom of the door. The memory of the red dog’s lead hanging at the back of the cupboard skittered through my head.
Nah – not possible, the dog had gone missing two years ago.
Another rapid scrabbling of claws against wood. I strode across the kitchen and wrenched the door open.
Nothing.
And yet I’d heard scratching. I stepped out into the garden and looked around.
Nothing.
I pulled the door to and crouched down to examine the woodwork. It had been repainted but beneath the gloss I could see the scars. Yes, once a dog had pawed the door begging to be let in, but not recently. Not a few minutes ago. I went back into the kitchen. Sir Peter’s Christmas gift of twenty-year malt was sitting on the worktop next to the microwave and beside it was a glass. It hadn’t been there earlier. I was sure it hadn’t. I kept the whisky in a cabinet in the lounge. Along with six whisky glasses, one of which was now in the kitchen.
I picked the bottle and the glass up and carried them back to where they belonged, but God help me as I opened the cabinet for a brief moment it crossed my mind that I could do with a drink and would one little snifter hurt? Yes, it would. I’d been to that dark place before, albeit briefly, and I didn’t want to go there again. I shoved the bottle to the back of the cabinet. Shut the door and turned the key in the lock.
I went straight through to the front door, snagged my jacket off the banisters where I’d dropped it the night before as I’d charged up the stairs to be sick, picked up my keys from the hallstand and left, deadlocking the door behind me.
When I turned towards the gate it was to find Emma standing there waiting, and it crossed my mind that she was doing just that – waiting.
‘That’s lucky,’ she said. ‘I almost missed you.’
I gave her what I hoped was an apologetic smile. ‘Actually, I was coming to see you. To apologise.’
‘What for?’
‘Last night. Running off like that. It was rude.’
She flapped a hand at me. ‘No offence taken. It’s I who should apologise. I was taking you somewhere you didn’t want to go. Sometimes I get carried away with it all.’
‘Do you want to come in for a coffee or something?’
She looked past me towards the house and a strange expression fleetingly clouded her face. ‘Not now, not today.’
I frowned at her.
‘I know,’ she said, forcing herself to smile. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ She hooked an arm through mine and started guiding me down the lane. ‘I can show you all the sights.’
‘Not a very long walk, then,’ I remarked.
She laughed and patted me on the arm. ‘We’ll walk very slowly.’
She chattered away, telling me who lived in each property we passed and a little about each of the residents.
‘How did you get to know Jed?’ I asked when there was a lull in the conversation, just as we came to the church.
‘Jed was an old friend of Reggie’s and it just so happened he looked after the garden for the people who owned The Grange before we moved in. It seemed sensible for him to carry on doing it for us.’
‘You’re married?’
‘Widowed.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘A long time ago,’ she said, patting my arm again. ‘It wasn’t long after Reggie died that Jed and I found we had something in common.’
‘Being psychic?’
She gave me a sideways look. ‘I know you’re not a believer so let’s just agree to disagree.’
‘Had Jed told you about me before we met?’ I asked.
‘Only that there was a new resident at the Morgans’.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘When I’d last spoken to him he hadn’t met you. He was on his way to introduce himself.’
We walked in silence for a few yards. ‘Is it always so misty in the morning?’ I asked. ‘I haven’t woken up to a clear day since I’ve been here.’
‘It’s the time of year. When it’s wet but warm the mist comes off the fields. It usually burns away by mid morning.’
‘It makes the churchyard look like something out of a horror movie.’
She glanced towards the church. ‘It does look a bit creepy,’ she said with a smile. ‘It’d help if they had someone go in and keep the place tidy, but it’s gradually going to rack and ruin.’
‘I’m surprised the reverend doesn’t have Jed go in and do a bit.’
She gave a sniff. ‘Jed used to keep it tidy, but he and the vicar before last had a falling-out and he’s not been in there since.’
‘I’d have thought Reverend Davies would’ve made peace with him rather than let the place get into a state.’
Emma abruptly stopped and looked across at me. ‘Reverend Davies?’
‘I met him yesterday. He seemed like a nice chap.’
‘You met Peter Davies yesterday?’
‘I was—’ I suddenly wished I hadn’t said anything as I’d now have to explain why I was wandering around the graveyard first thing in the morning. ‘I decided to investigate the strip of woodland at the bottom of the garden,’ I said, thinking quickly of a way to not make it sound like I was losing my mind, ‘and when I came out the other side I saw the church. He found me looking at some of the old gravestones.’ She studied my face for so long I could feel my cheeks beginning to flush red. ‘I know it seems a bit odd, wandering around …’
‘Did he speak to you?’
I frowned at her. ‘Of course he spoke to me. He introduced himself and invited me in for a cup of tea. I felt a bit sorry for him, actually. If the grounds are a mess you should see inside the rectory.’
‘You went inside the rectory?’
‘He made me tea.’
She squeezed my arm and we began to walk again. ‘What did you talk about?’
I was beginning to feel a little uneasy. It was almost as though I’d been caught out doing something I shouldn’t. ‘This and that.’ Then I remembered something I thought she might be interested in. ‘He was of the same opinion as you and Jed that there was something not right about Krystal Morgan’s death.’
‘He said that?’
‘He said her body was found at the top of the stairs, which didn’t fit with her having fallen from the loft. Also, that it was unlikely that she was searching for Christmas presents as it was months before.’
She stopped again, head bowed, shoulders slumped, and then with a sigh she drew herself up straight and looked me in the eyes. ‘I think you’d better come back to The Grange.’
‘Why?’
&nb
sp; ‘Because Jed’s there working on my garden and I think the three of us need to have a talk.’
She turned back the way we’d come and I reluctantly went with her. I wasn’t at all sure I felt like having to deal with Jed this morning.
Maybe it was my imagination, but I could have sworn Emma speeded up a tad as we passed the church and didn’t really slow down until we passed the end of the lane to the cottage. The Grange was about a hundred yards further on.
Huge double gates marked the entrance to a long tarmac drive flanked by manicured lawns, which swooped around to a house the size of a small mansion. She led me past the side of the house and out back to more lawns and what could have been a walled garden.
Jed was sitting on steps leading to a stone-paved patio area fiddling with some sort of mechanical device. He glanced up as he heard us approaching.
‘Tea?’ Emma asked Jed.
‘Please.’
‘Jim?’
‘Coffee if you have some.’
‘Coffee it is. Sit down and make yourself comfortable,’ she said, gesturing towards a white wrought-iron table and four chairs on the patio as she passed Jed on the steps.
‘She found you, then,’ Jed said with a nod of hello and he went back to threading some nylon cord onto a strimmer.
‘I was on my way to try and find her.’ He glanced up. ‘To apologise.’
‘She was worried about you.’
‘Why?’
He climbed to his feet and gestured that I follow him. ‘It’s the sort of person she is.’
He led me across the patio to the table and chairs and we both sat. ‘You look after all of this on your own?’ I asked, looking around what could have been acres of lawn.
‘Mostly.’
‘It must take some doing.’
‘She’s got one of those sit-on mower things, so it doesn’t take me long. I only come over once a week, twice if she’s having guests.’
‘It’s a lovely garden.’
‘The house isn’t bad either,’ Jed said and then jumped up and hurried to meet Emma, taking the tray from her. ‘Here, let me help you with that.’
Jed dumped the tray on the table and they both sat as Emma handed out the cups and saucers. Once she’d finished acting the hostess she leant back in her chair, her expression serious.
‘I think you need to tell Jim about Peter Davies,’ she said.
Jed gave her a strange look, then glanced my way. ‘The Reverend Peter Davies?’
‘The very same.’
‘Why, may I ask?’
‘Jim needs to hear it from you.’
Jed ran a hand through his shaggy hair and blew out through pursed lips. ‘There’s not much to tell really. Peter Davies took over as reverend from Donald Pugh, a sanctimonious ass of a man.’
‘Emma said you had a falling-out.’
He gave a snort. ‘Bloody man.’
‘He accused Jed of being a charlatan and con artist,’ Emma said, and she wasn’t smiling.
I very sensibly kept quiet.
‘Anyway, he and Slyford St James parted company when he started having health problems about four years ago and that’s when Peter Davies came to the village.’
Jed took a sip of his tea and began to stroke his beard, his eyes focused somewhere over my right shoulder.
‘After my dealings with the Reverend Pugh I kept my distance for a while, but then he came to me asking if I could do a few jobs at the vicarage for him. Pugh had left it in a bit of a state.’
I heard the cry of a peacock in the distance and when I glanced out across the lawn, I could see the mist had almost totally cleared and feel the warmth of the sun upon my face. Freshly cut grass scented the air as a soft breeze ruffled my hair. It was a beautiful spot and I could think of nothing more typically English than drinking tea and coffee on this terrace on a sunny autumn morning.
‘Peter was a nice bloke; too nice, really.’ Jed took another swig of tea. ‘There’d been some sort of trouble at his last parish, that’s what the rumourmongers said, and he had a bit of a problem with the …’ Jed lifted his hand and made a motion like he was knocking back a snifter.
Despite the warmth of the sun I shivered. ‘You’re talking about him in the past tense.’
Jed frowned at me, then at Emma.
‘Jim told me that he met Peter Davies yesterday morning and had tea with him at the rectory.’
Jed’s eyes jerked to hers and then to me. ‘You spoke to Peter Davies?’
‘I met him in the graveyard, and he invited me in for a cup of tea,’ I said, crossing my arms and leaning back in the chair.
‘My, oh my,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘I knew you had the sight, but this … this is something else altogether.’
I stared at him as the realisation of what he was saying began to dawn on me. ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘No, it’s impossible. We shook hands. He made me tea. We talked for twenty minutes or more.’
Jed slowly shook his head. ‘Peter Davies died eighteen months ago,’ he said. ‘I should know – I found his body.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
I jumped to my feet, sending my chair clattering back onto the paving stones. ‘He can’t be! I spoke to him.’
Emma stood up and took hold of my arm, as Jed righted my chair, and guided me back down onto it.
‘Someone must have been winding me up,’ I said, grasping at anything that might make sense of it all. ‘Pretending that they were him.’
‘Why would anyone do that?’ Emma asked.
‘People do not have conversations with dead people.’
‘Seems you have,’ Jed said, helping himself to more tea. ‘What were you doing in the graveyard, anyway?’
I ran a hand across my face; this was crazy. ‘I was chasing after a kid that’d been playing in my garden.’
They exchanged another look.
‘Don’t start,’ I told them, ‘it was just some kid.’
‘Boy or girl?’ Jed asked.
I hesitated. ‘A girl, I think.’
‘What did she look like?’ Emma asked.
‘I only caught a glimpse of her.’
‘Then what did this glimpse you saw look like?’
‘Red cardigan, grey skirt, braided fair hair.’
‘Sounds a bit more of a look than a glimpse,’ Jed said with a wry smile.
‘She led me to—’ Then I stopped. This was all getting too weird.
You’re staying at the Morgans’, the apparently long-dead Reverend Peter Davies had said. It was at their daughter’s grave where I found you.
‘What was it you were about to say?’ Emma asked.
‘Nothing. Nothing really, just that I followed her through the woodland and when I reached the church I decided to take a look around.’
Neither of them appeared convinced, but they didn’t say as much. I guess they thought I’d already heard enough.
‘More coffee?’ Emma asked me.
‘No. No, thanks.’
‘Have you seen or heard anything more since yesterday?’ Jed said.
I shook my head, telling myself if I didn’t say the word ‘no’ I wouldn’t exactly be lying. It was a trick I used on Kat, though in the end she knew when I was keeping things from her. It was a game we both had been playing in the lead-up to her death. Stupid, stupid games. We were both at fault.
I got to my feet. ‘I’d better be off.’
‘I’m having a few people around tonight for drinks,’ Emma said. ‘Would you care to join us? You’ll get to meet some of the locals.’
‘Thanks, that’d be good.’
‘Here at eight-thirty,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘I’ll see you out.’
I said goodbye to Jed, and Emma saw me around to the front of the house and down the drive. When we got to the front gates she kissed me on both cheeks.
‘We’ll see you later.’
‘I wouldn’t miss it,’ I said, lying through my teeth and with a wave started back down the l
ane towards home.
My head was spinning. The man I’d spoken to in the rectory was flesh and blood like me. I replayed our meeting and conversation over in my head. He had shaken my hand. He’d said mine was cold and that’s why he’d invited me in for tea; tea with rancid milk, which he had drunk, appearing not to notice.
Then I remembered the state of the place. The musty smell and chill in the hallway and office, the unlived-in feeling, the sense of neglect.
No. No, it couldn’t be. When I reached the end of my lane I carried on walking. I was going to the church. I was going to the rectory.
I strode along, a man with a purpose, until I came to the beginning of the church’s low stone wall. I faltered, slowed and stopped. If I proved Emma and Jed right, if the man to whom I believed I’d been speaking was a dead man, then I must truly be going mad. Dead was dead.
What about the child? What about the dog? What about the face in the attic?
I put my hand on the wall to steady myself. Mad; I was going insane. I took a deep breath and another. He’d been so real.
I pulled myself up straight and set off again towards the rectory. I’d prove it to myself one way or another. Either I was cracking up big time or someone was trying to make a fool of me. Maybe it was some kind of joke the villagers played on newcomers. That’s it, a way of scaring the ‘grockles’ away. Wasn’t that the derogatory term they used for newcomers and visitors to the West Country?
The gate to the rectory hung open, although I remembered closing it. The lawns to either side of the path were overgrown and the flower beds were already being overrun with brambles.
I remembered the paintwork on the windows and front door as being faded and peeling, but I hadn’t noticed that one of the windowpanes was cracked and the net curtain inside was hanging in grimy, yellowing tatters. Did they say he had been dead eighteen months? It could have been eighteen years from the state of the place.
No – he’d been here. I’d seen him. I’d shaken his hand and walked with him from the cemetery. We’d spoken for ten or fifteen minutes, maybe more.
I walked along the path and to the door. I raised my hand, fist clenched to rap upon the paintwork. The door swung open, leaving me staring into the dingy passageway and slightly breathless.
