The Ghost of Fiddler's Hill: Corazon Books Vintage Romance

by Sheila Burns

  The tide had turned and was running out.

  It had not been a very high tide, and the rim which was marked along the sands where it had turned back again, was clearly to be seen. Now the moon, risen high, lit the firm sands with an amber glow. There was a path of vivid moonlight across the water, and here and there the dancing reflection of stars, whilst perhaps the music of the sea itself was the most exquisite crooning that this world can provide.

  They walked happily talking of the baby.

  Coming to the far headland, the tide running out all the while, they turned the promontory and saw her lying there. She lay near the high water mark on the sand, her face turned to it, but instantly Lindy recognised her dress.

  Simon said, ‘Wait! Don’t come with me, we have to remember the baby. Just wait,’ and he went on ahead of her and bent over the woman who lay face down on the sand. The grey hair was still untidy, but the beautiful eyes were closed as he turned her over. There was something peaceful about her, something which he was surprised to see there, something which he did not understand. God rest her soul, he said to himself.

  He went back to Lindy and they went in the direction of home.

  ‘We’ll ring up the coastguards, this is their business, not ours,’ and then after a moment, ‘I wonder why she did it. She had both our futures in her hands, whatever made her end it?’

  ‘It was that she loved children.’ Lindy said it in a half whisper. ‘When I told her about the new baby, that was the moment when Edna died! She died for the baby’s sake, I feel that.’ Her tears choked her for a moment, and his hand gripped hers closer. ‘There is so much good in the worst of us.’

  He drew her into his arms, and they walked quietly home along the firm moist sand, leaving footprints behind them. So much good in all of us, she was thinking, just so much good …

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  The Ghost of Fiddler’s Hill by Sheila Burns

  The Eyes of Dr Karl by Sheila Burns

  Doctor Called David by Sheila Burns

  Doctor and Debutante by Barbara Blackburn

  Her Australian Summer (novella) by Jean McConnell

  and many more coming very soon.

  Keep reading for a preview chapter of Doctor Called David, starting on the next page …

  Preview chapter: Doctor Called David by Sheila Burns

  If you enjoyed The Ghost of Fiddler’s Hill, we think you’ll love Doctor Called David by Sheila Burns. Read the first chapter here.

  Chapter One

  ‘Gentleman of the Jury, how find you the accused? Guilty or not guilty?’ The question rang like a bell, and the girl in the dock was not sure that there was not a real bell ringing in her head.

  ‘Not Guilty.’

  When she heard the words which she had dreamt of for weeks, maybe months, for she had lost touch with time, Valerie went down like a log. It almost seemed that she could have faced it better had it been guilty. The horrifying experience of being tried for her life had been too much, and even if they could not hang people today and the terror of the gallows had faded out, the clang of the prison door alarmed her. She had already discovered the horror of being a prisoner these weeks in Holloway Prison. They had been kind to her, of course, some of them had gone out of their way to be nice, but the loneliness had been gruelling, the cell so small and her realisation that it was possible for this to last for years if she got a ‘lifer’ (and although innocent, she could get it) had sent her cold.

  The thought of conviction had been a dark ghost beside her. Holloway was dark. It had a strange smell about it, she hated the grimness of the stone walls, the sound of clanging doors and eternal footsteps. The night silence broken by the wretched sound of some woman sobbing her heart out in an adjacent cell, or someone gone mad with solitary confinement and trying to break the place down. They had been kind, sometimes she felt that most of them believed that she was innocent, at others she trembled that they did not. Life had become so utterly extraordinary that she had become extraordinary with it.

  Two wardresses carried her below. A door clanged. She would never see the Central Criminal Court again, she knew that, for nothing would induce her to return to it. They took her to a waiting-room, somebody produced smelling salts, the chair was soft and comfortable, far softer than any chair she had had for a long time. She heard the two wardresses speaking.

  ‘Oh yes, yes, of course. Ask him to come in.’

  She became more conscious, the dizziness began slipping away from her, so that she could see people more clearly. Two wardresses, one murmuring something about ‘a nice cup of tea’, the other with the smelling salts. Then the door opened again and a man came in.

  She knew at once that it was David Graves. He had been goodness itself to her, since that first day when she had been taken to the local police station and he had seen her there. He was the doctor attached to the station, she knew, and it was his duty to see people, but he had been very kind.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  David was dark, tall, and he walked well, he came to her chair and stood there looking down at her.

  ‘I told you it would be all right.’

  ‘Nothing will ever be all right again after what I have been through,’ she whispered.

  ‘Time is a great healer.’

  ‘I suppose it has got to be.’

  He said. ‘Don’t think about anything now. Have you got anywhere to go?’

  ‘Nowhere, and I’m scared.’

  When her mother had died, somehow she had become alienated from her father who had remarried too quickly. Her mother had been a quiet gentle woman, tenderly kind and warmly generous, but the woman he had married had been a virago who answered back. Inwardly she was sure that Mr. Scott had regretted his hurried remarriage, but was a dogged man who would never have said so for a moment. She had given up going home. One year had been sufficient to change the whole of their relationship, and when the charge of murder had come to her, the one letter she had received in Holloway had been a biting letter from him, disowning her for ever.

  ‘Your father is alive?’ he said.

  ‘He would not have me back after this.’

  ‘But you are acquitted.’

  ‘He ‒ he wouldn’t have me back.’

  He paused a moment, his brows knitted and his eyes apprehensive. ‘There’s nothing to be scared about now,’ he said after a moment. Then, when he saw the tragedy in her grey eyes and the helpless drooping of her mouth, he said. ‘I know, I realise how you feel. There will be reporters waiting outside for you wanting your life story, cameramen, all that racket.’ Then as she said nothing, ‘My mother and I live at Streatham, it’s a small house, homely, not ostentatious at all, and you could rest there. Nobody would know that you were with us, I think it would be quite the best thing for you to do.’

  Valerie was in the mood to say ‘yes’ to everything. She felt to be only half awake, deathly tired as though she had gone through some tremendous ordeal which now had left her limp. She was in the mood when others had to think for her, for she could no longer decide for herself.

  ‘Thank you,’ was all she said, and goodness only knew, she had meant to say much more than this, for she was deeply grateful.

  The wardresses brought her brandy, and some hot coffee. The doctor, called David Graves, had ordered some sandwiches for her, but when they came somehow she could not eat them, she had been through too much. A couple of hours later, when the court was closed and the Old Bailey settling down to ordinariness for the night, he told her she must come. He took her arm.

  They went down unending passag
es together, one of the wardresses showing the way. The place was like a prison itself she thought, with that faint stale prisonish scent about it. The wardress went on ahead, and opened the street door for them. Beyond was a very usual London street with traffic coming and going (she realised it must be the rush hour), until now time had not seemed to matter any more.

  Valerie lifted her head and drew in a deep draught of the fresh air. I’ve been tried for my life, and I am free, she thought. Free to go her own way and to start her life all over again! Somewhere different, of course. But would anyone want her? She was supposed to have killed the woman who had been her patient. Would other patients risk it? Yet she wanted a job, for she honestly believed that only in a job could she pull herself together again. She was twenty-four. She had years ahead to live, and at the moment she did not believe that she could live them, but life is remorseless and one has to live. Life goes on.

  Her legs wobbled and she found that she was waving in the air, so that the doctor called David, in the end lifted her into his arms, and carried her to the small car which waited for both of them.

  ‘It won’t take long to get to Streatham,’ he said, as she hid her face.

  For now she could not bear to look the world in the eyes, not because she was guilty, but almost because she was free. She sank back in the corner of the car still hiding her face. She thought of all those insulting anonymous letters that she had received when she was waiting in Holloway Prison. She thought of the abuse in newspapers, veiled so that one could not silence them, but suggesting this and that.

  She remembered her solicitor, a man she could never like, in spite of all that he had done for her, and her counsel, an austere man, a man remote from her, and far away. She supposed that these people must have hearts, though it had never seemed like it at any time to the girl who was accused of killing the patient who had left her money.

  ‘Undoubtedly she wanted the money,’ said the counsel for the crown. He was a man with a bitter mouth, the corners of it drooped down like the prongs of a fork, and instinctively Valerie had disliked him.

  She had needed money all her life. Although her father was comfortably off he had been mean over an allowance and her mother had not had a penny to leave her. It had been a grind buying the nursing books that she required to pass her exams, and although on paper, hospitals supply everything, it is a very different story when you come to live in one of them. Valerie had discovered this.

  A nurse’s pay is for ever a grind. Will the stockings last out? She simply must get new shoes, those wards ate the soles off them, and the mending bills were sufficient in themselves, goodness only knew. There was the eternal going short to get essentials, and in private practice it had not been eased up. As Miss Jackson’s nurse in that dreadful house which now had become a nightmare to her, she had been very short indeed, for Miss Jackson entertained, and she liked her nurse to wear a lot of private clothes, and always look nice.

  ‘Maybe you find me fussy?’ she had said one day, peering at Valerie through those heavy glasses of hers, for she was short-sighted.

  ‘No, no, of course not, why should I? You’re most kind. It is just that I must be very bad at making money go the rounds. I am always short.’

  ‘I don’t pay you sufficiently?’ and Miss Jackson had stared at her almost accusingly.

  ‘Oh no, no, it isn’t that at all. You pay me wonderfully and I am very grateful to you, it is just that I run short because I am so stupid.’

  ‘You bought me flowers the other day?’

  Valerie coloured. ‘Yes, I know, it was your birthday and I did not want it to pass forgotten.’

  ‘That was nice of you. My nephew did forget it.’

  ‘Yes.’ Valerie knew better than to say more, for there had been row enough about the forgotten birthday. Derek Andrews was her sister’s child; the sister had made a stupid marriage which had broken on her, and she had gone to Australia. There she had been most unhappy, had eventually returned with her son, and had died soon after. Derek was a man who had never kept a job. He nursed grievances, declaring that people were always against him, he did not know why or how, but they disliked him on sight.

  He had small eyes, curious eyes, so Valerie thought. He gave the idea of being cunning, sly on the side, though outwardly he could be charming. One would have thought that he would remember poor Miss Jackson’s birthday for she was goodness itself to him, but he deliberately forgot. Too late he rushed out and brought her flowers and fruit (she had never been particularly fond of fruit, as she told Valerie), a book he knew she wanted, and some chocolates.

  ‘I shall only get too fat,’ she murmured, and Valerie knew that she was disappointed.

  Miss Jackson had gone to bed early that night, and afterwards Valerie sat talking to Derek in the sitting-room. He had had enough to drink, he was a man who had bouts of restraint, then other bouts on what he called ‘going a bust’.

  ‘This has been a vile day,’ he said.

  ‘Your aunt was upset.’

  ‘I never had a head for dates. William the First 1066 stuff, and it leaves me cold.’

  ‘Make a note of it in your diary for next year?’ she suggested.

  ‘I don’t keep a diary, could be too damning.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ and he sneered slightly. He was one of those men who have a sneer by nature. His lip curled. Then perhaps he felt that he had said too much, and he warmed to his subject and told her about himself. His mother had not been devoted, she felt that the son reminded her too closely of the husband who had made her most unhappy. She wanted Derek to grow up and pass exams brilliantly, and go into the church. ‘You can’t see me in the church,’ he told Valerie.

  She couldn’t, but she hardly liked to say so.

  He was good at chemistry but the thought of her son in a chemist’s shop had scandalised his mother, and she had put down her foot. Valerie gathered that there was very little love lost between the two of them, and could understand his mother’s reactions to it all. Derek had gone from one job to the next. He never settled.

  ‘Why don’t you make up your mind to take a new job and grow old with it?’ she asked him.

  ‘To tell you the truth my aunt stands in the way. She’s rich, she has a nice little packet put by, and she leaves the lot to me. She says so. I am sitting on the hedge waiting for her death, not a very romantic situation for a man who would like to be up and doing well, but there you are.’

  ‘Couldn’t you put that out of your mind,’ she suggested.

  He couldn’t.

  Money he admitted, and he spoke of riches, had always been his god, and he abided by that god. He disliked hard work, and loathed being bossed about; he was content to live on his aunt, and what he called ‘put up with her tantrums’ until she died and he became a wealthy man himself. Then he would buy a bungalow in Mentone, he would travel widely, he would give up this silly house, have a flat in the West End, and a country home by the sea. He had got everything planned, with a surprising efficiency.

  All the time his eyes narrowed, and he had that sneer of a smile on his face, something which Valerie loathed to see. This man is dangerous, she told herself, yet did not know how the danger came nor what it could do. She did not think that Miss Jackson was anywhere near dying. She had no real illness. She was a victim of her own nerves, her boredom, and her general dislike of life. She might have been quite a different woman if she had married, she said so herself.

  That evening when they had talked together. Valerie had formed an entirely new opinion of the nephew of her employer. She distrusted him. She could not blame Miss Jackson for being alarmed by him. Private nursing was far harder work than she had ever thought that it could be, and matron had warned her, but she liked being with Miss Jackson. The small town was interesting in its own conventional way, and the home was pleasant, for it was completely modern. Miss Jackson was sixty-ish, nobody ever quite knew her age, plump, and fostering the idea th
at she was always ill. The doctor, James Harris, was sick of her.

  ‘I get sick of her eternal illnesses,’ he explained, ‘and that nephew of hers. He is one of those men I have never liked.’

  Valerie understood this. Derek had an unpleasant personality, and Miss Jackson herself did not care for him that much.

  Suddenly Miss Jackson developed a strange pain in her right side. Dr. Harris was inclined to dismiss it.

  ‘After all,’ said he, ‘the good old-fashioned tummy-ache is something we all get at some time.’

  He declared that Miss Jackson took no exercise, and ate too much. That was why she was so fat! But this illness turned out to be more than tummy-ache; her temperature shot up, and Valerie appealed again to Dr. Harris on the telephone.

  ‘Why worry him?’ Derek asked her.

  ‘Your aunt is pretty rotten. That’s why.’

  ‘He won’t be pleased.’

  ‘It’s his job,’ she reminded him, almost sternly.

  When Dr. Harris did arrive, protesting all the time, he had to admit that Valerie had done right in sending for him, for this was no malade imaginaire. It was appendicitis. They got her into the cottage hospital only just in time. Miss Jackson knew that it had been Valerie’s ability and foresight which had got her through and when the op. was over, and that maddening pain had gone, she turned more than ever to her nurse.

  At home Valerie had the feeling that Derek Andrews was angry with her. He was sheepish. Those small eyes watched her as if annoyed with her.

  ‘She’ll be all right now,’ Valerie said, ‘we have got her through it.’

  ‘You did it.’

  ‘That’s what a nurse is here for.’

  Derek nodded. ‘It all happened at an awkward time for me, I wasn’t at my best. To tell you the truth I’m having troubles, my usual ones, financial. I’m in a hell of a lot of debt! Aunt Sheila and I had a busting row the other day and she said she would turn me out for two pins. You can imagine how I felt about that, after all I have done for her.’