by Val McDermid
‘And you too, Jonathan. Now, off you go, enjoy what’s left of break.’ Matthew watched them leave. It was hard to see any common genes between those two, he thought. He hoped it was Sam who took after Dorcas. It would be heartbreaking to think of Wordsworth’s great epic being used for firelighters. But in Cumbria, where men prided themselves on calling no man their master, anything was possible.
Jane had discussed their plan of action with her mother. Judy had told her that Gibson’s from Keswick had already taken Edith off to the funeral parlour but that she would be returned to lie in state at the home of her granddaughter Alice. ‘Do you remember Alice?’ Judy had asked.
‘Not really, she was quite a bit older than us.’
‘She never married. Went off to college to be a librarian. She worked in Kendal for a few years, but now she’s back in Keswick. Head librarian she is now. Lives up on that new estate on the Braithwaite road. She’s got more room for the wake than the rest of them.’
‘How do you think she’d take it if I asked whether her gran had any old papers?’
Judy gave her daughter an amused glance. ‘Well, I hope you’ll dress it up in prettier clothes than that.’
‘I’ll be diplomatic, Mum. But do you think Alice would know if Edith had any family documents?’
‘Probably. But Frank’s the one you need to ask. He was devoted to his gran. Went up there every morning to deliver her milk and paper and make sure she was all right. It was Frank that found her on Sunday morning; he was supposed to be picking her up for church. But she was lying dead in her chair in the living room, peaceful as if she’d just nodded off.’
‘It’s a pity it wasn’t Jimmy who was the devoted one. I could always wind him round my little finger.’ Jane smiled, remembering Jimmy’s cheeky grin and his easy temperament. She’d almost had a crush on him; she’d let herself be talked out of it by her best friend who said he looked like a monkey, especially when he was hunched over his drum kit, arms flailing.
Judy pursed her lips. ‘Jimmy Clewlow…I doubt he’ll even come back for the funeral. He’s hardly been seen round here since he dropped out of university to join that pop group.’
‘It’s not a pop group, Mum, it’s a contemporary jazz quintet. And they’re quite highly thought of. I’ve seen their CDs reviewed a couple of times.’
‘Maybe so, but it’s not a proper job, is it?’
‘It’s as much a proper job as what I do. And he probably makes rather more money than me.’ The conversation had drifted off into memories of school days and talk of what her friends were doing now. But Judy hadn’t told her not to go, so now they were heading off for Thistlethwaite Court and a close encounter of the Clewlow kind.
Jane was relieved to see Dan had made a full recovery from his bout of food poisoning. When she’d picked him up at the cottage, he’d been his usual self, eyes alert, head and jaw freshly shaved. ‘I had an email from Anthony Catto,’ she said as they drove down to the main road. ‘He’s dug up an interesting Wordsworth quote about fugitives from justice hiding out in the Lake District. I emailed him back and told him how we’d cracked the family tree. You never know with Anthony–he’s got great resources. He might come up with something.’
‘We can use all the help we can get,’ Dan said. ‘Now, tell me about the Clewlows.’
Childhood reminiscence preoccupied Jane on the drive to Keswick. But even if she had noticed the silver Audi that had picked up her tail at the end of the Fellhead road, she would likely have thought nothing of it. There are so few roads in the Lakes and so few passing places that it would be possible to be tailed for some time before the circumstances registered as suspicious.
Alice’s house sat halfway up a cul-de-sac of identical houses which aimed for a traditional look with timber framing and stucco over half a dozen courses of grey stone. They looked marginally less out of place in the landscape than the dark red-brick executive homes that had sprung up elsewhere locally. There were three cars jammed nose to tail in the driveway and several more parked half on the kerb on either side. Jane pulled up in front of the furthest and they walked back, Jane clutching the home-baked apple cinnamon cake her mother had thrust upon her. ‘You can’t turn up empty-handed,’ she insisted.
Jane rang the doorbell and waited. A male voice called, ‘I’ll get it,’ and the door swung open. She could hardly believe her luck. Standing on the threshold, looking exactly as she remembered him, Jimmy Clewlow pantomimed astonishment. ‘Jane Gresham,’ he exclaimed. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times as he tried to find the right register for this encounter.
‘I was sorry to hear about your gran,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to pay my respects.’
‘Sure, yeah. Right, come in,’ he gabbled. ‘Half Fellhead’s here already. But hey, I’m just…touched, I guess. At you. Coming like this.’
Jane nodded. ‘My mum couldn’t make it. She asked me to bring this.’ She thrust the cake at him. ‘And this is my colleague, Dan Seabourne. He’s visiting at the moment.’
Jimmy’s attention shifted from Jane to Dan. His expression shifted too, from confusion to sharp interest. Jimmy shook Dan’s hand. Dan covered the handshake with his other hand and met Jimmy’s eyes with a compassionate look. ‘Sorry for your loss.’
Jimmy nodded. ‘Thanks. Come on through. Everybody’s in the living room. Except Gran, of course, she’s in the sun room at the back. Did you want to…you know?’ he asked Jane.
She looked embarrassed. ‘It’s all right…I’m not really into that sort of thing.’ They followed him up the hall and into a low-ceilinged room that stretched the length of the house. Jimmy hadn’t been exaggerating. Half of Fellhead was here, and most of them were eyeing her and Dan with curiosity.
Alice spotted a new arrival and extricated herself from the woman who ran the gift shop in Fellhead. Alice had changed surprisingly little over the years. Her spiky brown hair was threaded with silver at the temples, but the few lines carved on her face were testament to laughter rather than dissatisfaction. She wore a simple black trouser suit and large silver earrings in the shape of a crescent moon. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said automatically, her wide mouth breaking into an easy smile.
‘I’m sorry for your loss. I was very fond of your gran,’ Jane said truthfully.
Alice frowned slightly, as if trying to place her. ‘This is Jane Gresham and her friend Dan Seabourne,’ Jimmy interjected helpfully. ‘You remember Jane, don’t you, Alice? From Fellhead? I used to play with her and her brother Matthew up at Langmere Stile.’ He held the cake up. ‘She’s brought a cake.’
Alice tilted her head back in acknowledgement. ‘Thank you. Of course I remember you. You’re in London now, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right. I’m back for a couple of weeks to follow up on some research with Dan. Mum told me the news yesterday and I wanted to drop by and say how sorry I am.’
‘That’s nice that you come back home. Some people need a death in the family before they’ll grace us with their presence,’ she added pointedly.
Jimmy sighed with the air of a man who has heard it all before but knows better than to argue.
Jane smiled at Alice. ‘Actually, we were hoping to see your gran this week.’
Alice looked puzzled. ‘I didn’t know you visited her. She never mentioned it.’
‘No, I hadn’t been yet. But I thought she might possibly be able to help us with our research.’
‘Gran?’ Alice sounded incredulous.
‘Cool,’ Jimmy said. ‘What are you doing, some kind of oral history thing? Gran had a great memory, loads of stories. She’d have been just the person to talk to about that stuff.’
‘You two didn’t come from London to hear my gran’s life story,’ Alice said baldly, her expression challenging.
‘No, I didn’t.’ Their faces were expectant, Alice’s markedly less friendly. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not but, six generations back, a member of your family worked for the Wordsw
orth family at Dove Cottage. She was a maid. Dorcas Mason was her name. She went on to marry your great-great-great-great-grandfather,’ Jane said, ticking off the generations on her fingers.
‘And you thought my gran might know something about this Dorcas woman?’ Alice sounded sceptical.
‘Actually, I hoped she might be able to tell me if there were any papers that had been handed down from that time. Diaries, letters, maybe even some drafts of poems that William had discarded.’ Jane gave what she hoped was a propitiating smile.
Now Alice looked positively hostile. ‘What is it with your family? First your brother rings her up wanting to know whether she’s got any old family papers, then you show up pretending to be offering condolences but actually sniffing around to see if my gran left anything worth pawing over.’
‘My brother?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. I expect you got him to make the first approach because he’s the headmaster, he teaches our Sam and she’d trust him. And when that failed, you turn up here like a vulture, trying to see if we’ve got anything worth conning us out of.’
Jane shook her head, bewildered. Aware of the eyes turning towards her, she stuttered as she spoke. ‘I’ve no intention of conning anyone. I’m an academic, a scholar. I’m not some con artist. All I want is to look. And I had no idea my brother had spoken to Mrs Clewlow.’
Alice snorted. ‘You must think we’re country bumpkins up here. Well, before you go hounding the rest of my family, here’s the bottom line. My gran had nothing of value. No old papers, no valuable jewellery, no stocks and bonds. So you might as well leave now, because there’s nothing for you here. Go and take your London graverobbing ways with you.’
By now, a hush had fallen on the room and all eyes were on them. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, Ms Clewlow,’ Dan said, his voice conciliatory. ‘We don’t want to take anything from you or your family.’
‘And I don’t believe you. So it’s just as well there’s nothing to take, isn’t it? Now, I’d like you both to leave my house.’
Jimmy looked stricken, but he put out a hand and touched Jane’s elbow. ‘Come on,’ he said softly, leading them from the room.
Jane felt the deep shock of unjust accusation. She could barely trust herself to speak. ‘We’re really not trying to pull a fast one,’ she said as they reached the front door.
‘I know that. Alice is just upset. She really loved Gran. She’ll be mortified tomorrow.’
‘I can’t believe she got me so wrong.’
‘It’s like Jimmy said, she’s upset. People behave oddly when they’re bereaved,’ Dan said.
Jimmy nodded eagerly. ‘Don’t worry about it. Listen, are you guys around for a while? Only, I’ll be here till the funeral. I’ll go spare if I have to listen to this lot till then. Do you fancy meeting up for a drink?’
Jane felt dizzy with the constant change of direction of her visit. ‘OK, yeah. Call me at my parents’. They’re in the book.’
Dan smiled at Jimmy. ‘Great idea. Listen, I know this isn’t the time or the place…but I really like your music’
Jimmy looked surprised. ‘Thanks. I don’t often hear that up here.’
‘It would be a real privilege to buy you a drink,’ Dan added.
‘I’ll look forward to it.’ Jimmy opened the door and stood there as they set off towards her car. ‘Jane,’ he called when she was only a few yards away. ‘There are no papers. Honest.’
She looked over her shoulder at his anxious smile and knew he was telling the truth. ‘Back to square one,’ she muttered.
Dan glanced back at Jimmy. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that was entirely wasted. He’s very cute.’
Jane rolled her eyes. ‘He’s straight. And you have a boyfriend.’
Dan opened the car door. ‘Whatever. I think Jimmy could be very useful to us. We need to get him on our side and keep him there.’
Sharon Cole sat huddled into herself in Donna Blair’s office. As soon as she’d fished the postcard out of her pocket and handed it over to the detective, Donna had taken off, holding the card by its edges, telling Sharon to sit tight till she got back. That had been almost twenty minutes ago, and Sharon was wishing she’d never bothered. She was going to be late for work at this rate, and for what? Tenille wasn’t stupid. She just wanted Sharon to know she was OK. She’d assume Sharon would show it to the police. If she’d posted that card in Oxford, as sure as God made little green apples, she was planning to be out of there on the next bus or train. It wasn’t going to take the cops one inch forward in their search for Tenille, and it was buggering up her day royally.
Another ten minutes passed before Donna returned. ‘Thanks for bringing that in, Sharon,’ she said, like they were old mates or something. ‘Makes me more inclined to believe you when you say all this was nothing to do with you. And you’re sure that’s Tenille’s handwriting?’
Sharon nodded. ‘She always puts them funny little circles over her i’s.’
‘I’ll be checking, you know. She must have done the occasional piece of written work at school.’ She paused for a reaction but got none. ‘As far as you’re aware, does she know anybody who lives in or near Oxford?’
Sharon gave Donna an ‘Are you crazy?’ look. ‘How would she know anybody from there? She’s hardly ever been out of London, never mind to Oxford.’
‘Maybe a schoolfriend who moved away?’ Donna tried.
‘Not that I ever heard about. I told you, she didn’t have many friends. Anyway, she couldn’t run to a schoolfriend. How would they hide her? They’d have family, and even crap families notice when there’s another kid in the house.’
‘I have to check out all the possibilities. So you don’t think she’d make Oxford her destination?’
Sharon snorted. ‘I doubt she even knows where Oxford is.’
Donna crossed her office and stared at her crammed shelves. She pulled something out, almost causing an avalanche of paper in the process. She slapped the road atlas on her desk and opened it up to the route planner spread. ‘I know where Oxford is,’ she said. ‘And I know where it’s on the way to.’ She stabbed a finger at the map.
Sharon frowned. ‘Where’s that, then?’ she said, looking blankly at the names of towns she’d never heard before.
‘It’s the Lake District, Sharon. Where Jane Gresham comes from.’
For two months, we tacked through the cold south-easterly winds & unfriendly seas of the Pacific, well south of the more hospitable waters round Otaheite & Toobouai. We were chilled to the bone, exhausted by the work of manning so great a ship with so few hands. The screaming of the wind in the rigging drove us all near to madness with its pitch and constancy. Bounty was in poor fettle by then, her deck. Timbers shrunk. & leaking, her hull in need of caulking, her sails sadly depleted & in poor order. By the time the new year came, around, we were in desperate need of landfall. At last we arrived at the place where, according to the Admiralty chart, Pitcairn was to be found. But there was no sign of land,. All we could see in every direction was water.
28
Jane drove back into the centre of Keswick, wondering how she was going to distract Dan so she could shop for Tenille. ‘I’ve got a few errands to run. And we need to get current addresses for the names on the list,’ she said.
‘I could do that if you drop me off at the library,’ Dan said. ‘Normally I’m good at that sort of thing,’ he added ruefully.
‘It helps if you have the right spelling. Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘No. And you can do me a favour–if you’re anywhere near a supermarket, could you get me some ground coffee?’
‘No problem. I’ve got some things to get for home.’ They arranged to meet in a café in the town centre, then Jane escaped to the supermarket to stock up on supplies for Tenille. Luckily, it was Monday, and Judy had a regular arrangement for lunch and an afternoon of whist at a friend’s house in the village. From noon, the coast would be clear for her to deliver her purchases. If
her dad was around the yard, she could just leave the shopping in the car till he went back up on the fell.
In the middle of the morning, the café was crowded with women taking a break from shopping and tourists fortifying themselves for the fells. She managed to find a table right at the back by the kitchen door and ordered a mug of hot chocolate and a teacake. Comfort food, that was what she needed. Something that would still the noise in her head. So much going on, so little that made sense.
At Sunday lunch, she’d almost let herself believe that Matthew was telling the truth. Even after a lifetime of bad experiences at his hands, she still couldn’t help wanting to believe he was capable of change. But when Alice Clewlow had revealed Matthew’s call to Edith, Jane had been forced to accept that she was right. Matthew was her enemy in this quest. His self-righteous claim to be on her side was nothing more than another of his expedient lies designed to get him off the hook while making her look petty and paranoid.
