My pulse starts to pick up as I near the sign for Mackenzie’s Jewellery Shop. “What do you think?” I murmur to Merlin. “Has it worked?”
He barks and does something I’ve never seen him do before—a 360-degree spin. I laugh. “You’re as excited as me! Come on, then. Let’s see if James has worked his magic.”
I go into the shop, which jangles as the door opens. Nancy, his assistant, is showing a young couple a tray of diamond rings. But James is alone, and he looks up and smiles as I approach.
“Gwen! Lovely to see you, lassie. How are you?”
“Good, thank you.” My heart is beating so hard, I think it might leap out of my chest and bounce along the floor. “How did you get on with the ring?”
“It’s all done, and I have to say, the ruby is one of the most beautiful stones I’ve ever seen.” He goes out into his workshop, then returns with a small black velvet case. He pops the lid, and I get my first glimpse of Arthur’s ruby ring.
The red gem is nestled in a wide gold band with a deep line running around it. It’s simple and elegant.
“It’s perfect,” I say with delight. “Oh James, thank you so much.”
He puts the price into the card reader, and I swipe my credit card. “You’re very welcome, my dear. I know I shouldn’t be nosy, but I have to ask, what’s the name of the lucky young man for whom you’ve had this made?”
“His name’s Arthur,” I say softly, and blush.
Merlin barks, and James laughs. “Arthur, of course it is! It couldn’t be anyone else here in Glastonbury. Well, I hope he likes it, lassie. You take care of it now; it’s very precious.”
“I will.” I lean over the counter and kiss his cheek, and he laughs. “See you, James,” I say.
“See ya, lassie.”
I head out, my heart racing as we head back to the café. Now it’s time to see if the ring works. I wonder what’s going to happen?
Chapter Seventeen
I go back to the café, tell Merlin to wait outside, and then walk to the left to a large pair of double doors marking the entrance to the Adventure and go inside.
I enter the foyer and stand for a moment, looking around. The floor is covered with blue and white tiles forming a chequered pattern. Above my head is a sign that declares ‘Welcome to the Arthurian Adventure!’ Ahead of me on the wall is another of Beatrix’s murals—a picture of King Arthur, drawing Excalibur from the stone. To my right is the reception desk where visitors buy their tickets, and then they pass through the gate and line up to wait by the side of a set of tracks for a carriage that will take them through the Adventure.
The carriages seat two or three people and move slowly along the tracks through a series of rooms that tell the story of King Arthur. These include the tale of Uther Pendragon, who wanted Igraine as his queen and how Merlin demanded their firstborn son as the price for making it happen, a huge display of the Knights of the Round Table in front of a magnificent painting of the castle of Camelot, a series of exhibits that describe the hunt for the Holy Grail, and finally an amazing tableau that depicts Arthur’s death and his transportation to the Isle of Avalon.
At the end, visitors disembark from the carriages and enter an interactive museum where they can learn a little about the real Arthur, if they wish, as well as partake in a series of activities like trying to draw Excalibur from the stone, trying on a medieval helm and a chainmail shirt, firing a bow and lifting a real sword, and doing rubbings of the shields of the knights that appear on the round table in the centre of the room.
Somewhere in this building stands my suit of armour. I say mine—I know I don’t technically own it, but Francis Sullivan comes into the café most days and hasn’t mentioned it, and I’ve never had any other complaints.
There is a small queue of people waiting to get their tickets, so I stand to one side and wait for Helen Radford, one of the receptionists, to finish serving. She sees me and waves, finishes giving a young couple and their kids tickets, directs them to Gaby, who allocates visitors into the carriages, then comes over to me. Helen is in her mid-thirties, blonde and slender, fun and chatty. We have a coffee together sometimes.
“Morning, Gwen,” she says. “You need something?”
“I was looking for Sir Boss,” I reply. “I understand the council’s health and safety department have returned him to the Adventure somewhere.”
“Oh yes, that’s right—Francis mentioned it this morning.” Her face fills with pity. “I’m so sorry. There wasn’t anything we could do about it.”
“I know. I understand why they did it, but I’m going to appeal later and see if I can get him returned. It’s weird without him there.”
“I bet.”
“So… where is he?” I’d been hoping to see him in the foyer, but there’s no sign of him.
“Nathan put him in the interactive museum at the end, with the other suits.” Nathan Wilkinson is the director of the Adventure.
My heart sinks. “Okay, thank you. Is it all right if I go the back way and see him?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.” I leave her to serve the next customer and go over to the door marked Staff Only. I push it open, enter the corridor, and let the door close behind me.
This is like going backstage at a theatre. The corridor leads to various passageways that run behind the exhibits, so staff can come and go without being seen. It enables them to be present quickly if a naughty visitor refuses to stay inside one of the carriages, if there’s a power cut, or if part of the exhibit needs fixing in an emergency. It also gives them access after the Adventure is shut, to clean up any rubbish and work on the displays.
I follow the corridor to the end and exit through the last door, letting it close quietly behind me. I’m now in the interactive museum. I’ve been here many times, and I walk around the edge of the room, smiling at the sight of children running around, pressing buttons on the displays, or sitting at the large round table, doing rubbings of the shields.
And then I see him, Sir Boss, lined up against the far wall along with two other suits of armour. His sword arm is chained to the wall so it can’t fall on anyone. Someone’s polished his armour, so he gleams as brightly as the other two knights. He looks rather splendid, actually.
I walk casually around the room and stop in front of him. I already know I’m not going to be able to free Arthur right now. There are too many people in the room and trying to get a man out of a suit of armour would definitely draw some attention. But at least I know where he is. I’ll have to come back after the Adventure closes and see if I can release him then.
I slide my hand into the pocket of my jeans and close my fingers around the ruby ring. Arthur told me he was growing more conscious; is he aware of me standing here, looking at his suit of armour? Can he ‘see’ it?
Sighing, I go out of the final double doors and walk around the block back to the café. There seem to be so many questions and so few answers.
Merlin’s waiting for me, and I fuss him up, then go in the café and through to the kitchen and decide to make something special to help prod my memory, as I’m sure I’m missing something. Allison and Joss are doing well with the lunch orders, so I pop in my earbuds, listen to some folk music, and leaf through one of my mother’s journals that I brought in with me this morning. It contains some unusual recipes, and I know I spotted one for remembrance. Yes, there it is. Chocolate peanut butter ginseng cookies.
Ginseng is a plant that grows in the mountains of Eastern Asia, and its roots are well known for aiding dementia and Alzheimer’s. I have it in powder form, and I make up a standard cookie mix, add chocolate chips and crunchy peanut butter for flavour as ginseng can be a little bitter, then add a teaspoon of the ginseng powder and mix it into a stiff dough.
At that point, making sure I wait until Allison and Joss are having a conversation on the other side of the kitchen, I say the spell in Alice’s Book of Shadows. “In the oven, cookies bake, Goddess, let my memories awake.�
�� Hmm, that seems simple. But I know the words are irrelevant. It’s all about intention, and so I close my eyes for a few seconds and picture my memory as a large library full of rooms that are gradually being unlocked.
Keeping that image in my mind, I roll the dough into balls, put them on a baking tray, and slide them into the oven.
I make a batch of muffins while I wait for the cookies to bake, then take out the tray and transfer them to a cooling rack.
Then I have a couple with a cup of tea in the break room.
After that, it’s lunchtime, and I’m busy in the café, serving customers and making coffee because Cooper’s at college this afternoon, and the time flies by. I don’t have time to think about Arthur or the cookies or anything else in fact, and it’s not until about two o’clock that the flow of customers slows down.
And it’s then that something comes to me.
It happens so suddenly that I stop in the process of walking across the café, a tray of cups and plates in my hands, and stare off into the distance.
Delia looks over at me and raises her eyebrows. “You okay?”
“Yes, yes. Fine.” I continue walking, but my heart’s racing, and thoughts are whirling around my head.
I take the tray into the kitchen, then go into the break room and sit there for a moment.
I’ve remembered something. Christian told me and Imogen that on the night of the murder, he knocked over the vase standing by the front door of the library, and it rolled onto the floor. That was around five o’clock.
When I went in, at nearly six o’clock, the vase was on the table, and it held a bunch of roses.
I hadn’t remembered it before, but now I recall placing my wet umbrella by the door and glancing at the roses before I proceeded through the bookstacks toward the reading room.
My head spins with everything that implies. Facts race through my head—things I’ve seen or heard over the past few days. And gradually, like a game of Tetris, pieces begin to slot into their rightful places.
But there are still a whole lot of things that don’t make sense. Standing, I retrieve my jacket and go into the café. “Are you okay to hold the fort for a while?” I ask Delia. “I’ve got a few errands to run.”
“Of course,” she says, busy wiping down a table. “Take your time. We’re all good here.”
On impulse, I go over and give her a hug. “You know how much I appreciate you, don’t you?” I tell her.
She laughs and hugs me back. “You’re such a sweetie, Gwen Young. Off with you—go and get some fresh air.”
I leave the café, collect Merlin from where he’s sitting out the front, being petted and fed bits of biscuit by an elderly couple, and head down to the archaeological field unit on the other side of the library.
Leaving Merlin outside, I go into the office. I’d always hoped I’d work here one day, but it wasn’t meant to be. I still enjoy coming here, though. The main room houses four desks and a large worktable in the middle. Storage rooms off to the side contain boxes of finds waiting to be cleaned and catalogued, as well as maps and documents that will eventually find their way into the library.
At the moment, Duncan and Una Richards, another of the archaeologists, are seated at the worktable, sorting through a box of what looks like a mixture of bones and pieces of wood. The box bears the words Glastonbury Lake Village, which is an Iron Age settlement on the Somerset Levels.
“Hello, Gwen,” they both say as I walk up.
“Hi,” I reply. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering whether I could take another look at the scrapbook you brought in this morning, Duncan?”
“Sure,” he says with surprise. Dusting off his hands, he rises, goes over to his desk, and returns with the book. “Here you go.”
I place it on the table just down from them and flick through the pages until I reach the photo of Henry Billingham, holding hands with the little blonde girl. I turn it to show Duncan. “Do you know this guy?” I ask.
Duncan peers at it, then checks out the name. “No, not personally. I’ve heard his name at the fishing club, but that’s all.”
Disappointed, I show it to Una. “What about you, Una. Do you know him?”
She looks at it. “Henry? Yes. Well, knew. He’s dead now.”
“Oh? When did he die?”
“About… um… a year ago, I guess,” she says. “Heart attack, I think.”
I tap the little girl in the photo. “Is this his daughter?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like Mary. She’s got dark hair, but then I guess lots of children have blonde hair when they’re born but it goes darker later.”
“Mary?” I ask her, my pulse racing.
“Yes, Mary Paxton. She’s his daughter. He was married to Katherine. They divorced a long time ago though, maybe twenty-five years? Katherine went back to her maiden name, Paxton, and Mary took it, too.”
I stare at the photo. Una’s right, some children’s hair colour does change. But I can see nothing of Mary in this little girl. And the description says Henry won this competition in 1994. Mary would have been about thirteen, so she’s too old, as well.
And then I realize what has been niggling at me since I saw the photo this morning. The girl in the photo has a pendant around her neck. It’s a Tudor rose.
Oh. My. Goddess.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “I have to be going now.” I close the scrapbook. “Duncan, would it be possible for me to borrow this for a while?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks. See you later.”
Duncan and Una wave goodbye, and I go out, collect Merlin, then head quickly to my car.
Chapter Eighteen
I drive the short distance to the house that Liza shared with Luke. I haven’t been inside, but she lost no time in telling me about it when she first bought it with him. It’s much newer than mine, one of the large, expensive, detached houses on the edge of town. I don’t really want to go in, especially after what Matthew Hopkins revealed on Saturday night. I’d rather have rung, but I don’t want to quiz Luke about his dead wife over the phone.
I pull up outside, and get out, Merlin at my heels. I go up to the front door and ring the bell, waiting with butterflies in my stomach, both from seeing Luke and the knowledge that this is where he lived with Liza. After about thirty seconds, he answers the door.
“Oh.” He looks confused. “You’re the last person I thought I’d see.”
“Sorry,” I tell him. “I was wondering whether I could have a quick word? I won’t keep you long.”
“Okay.” He steps back to let me in.
I hesitate, wondering whether to stay on the doorstep, then decide that would be rude and go into the house. I stop and ask, “Would you rather Merlin stay outside?”
“No, he can come in.” Luke bends and ruffles the hair between the dog’s ears. “Hello, boy.”
Merlin doesn’t growl at him, but he doesn’t go starry eyed the way he does when other people scratch him, either. Although the two of them haven’t met much, Merlin does seem to understand how I feel about Luke.
We walk through to the living room. Dirty plates and beer bottles rest on the coffee table. A pair of his work boots have left mud on the carpet. He sees me looking at it and shrugs. “Doesn’t seem to matter now.”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I say softly. “But I need to ask you a question. Can you tell me—who are Liza’s parents?”
“Brenda and Colin Banks,” he says without falter. “Nice enough. Gone to pieces now, obviously.”
I feel a swell of confusion and disappointment. I must have been wrong. That’s thrown all my assumptions into the wind.
But then he adds, “Well, adoptive parents, obviously.”
I stare at him. “She was adopted?”
He nods. “Her mother died when she was four.”
“What was her name?”
“Anne. She was born out of wedlock. Anne was an orphan, so when she died, Liza had
nobody else to bring her up. Brenda and Colin Banks adopted her. They were very good to her, gave her everything, but they didn’t know who her birth father was.”
“I never knew,” I murmur.
“She loved Brenda and Colin,” Luke says, “but she was always very insecure about the fact that her father didn’t want anything to do with her.”
Liza, insecure? I would never have known. Maybe that accounts for her confidence—it was a front she conjured up to cover her insecurity.
“She was always jealous of you,” Luke says softly.
“Me?” I’m astounded. “Why on earth would she be jealous of me?”
“You were always so self-assured, Gwen, even as a teen. That’s why I fell for you. You might not have been the coolest girl in the school, or the prettiest, but you had this inner poise and determination that most people never achieve.”
My face burns at his backhanded compliment, but I don’t react. Against my hip, I’m sure I can feel the ruby ring also burning as if Arthur’s expressing his indignation. Merlin sits up and glares at Luke, who doesn’t notice.
“So Liza never discovered who her birth father was?” I ask, wanting to turn the conversation away from talking about us.
“Well, funny you should ask that. Just six months ago, she contacted one of those agencies who help you to find your birth parents,” Luke says. “She got an email from them the day she died.”
“What did it say?” My heart is in my mouth.
“I don’t know. She sent me a text. She was going to tell me all about it that evening, but, well, you know what happened…” He looks sad.
“Did you tell the police all this?”
“Yes. Imogen was very interested and asked lots of questions.” He frowns. “What’s this about?”
I get to my feet. He’s told me everything I need to know. I don’t want to stay here any longer, with Luke’s grief hanging in the air so thick and heavy it’s palpable. There are signs of Liza all around me—her magazines still on the coffee table, her hairbrush on the mantelpiece, a pot of nail varnish on the small table beside the sofa where she must have sat in the evenings. My own grief—for Liza, despite the fact that I didn’t like her much; for Luke, because I loved him once and it hurts to see him in pain; for the girl I once was who had so many hopes and dreams; for all the losses I’ve endured—is suddenly almost too much to bear.
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