by Mary Stewart
When I let myself in through the south door, there was no sign of the vicar. A woman was there, below the pulpit, with a bucket full of flowers and branches beside her, and a couple of big brass vases on the floor waiting to be filled. I recognised the massive vases that stood to either side of the chancel arch. On festival days my grandfather used to bring boughs of blossom or leaves from the Hall grounds. For ordinary Sundays the vases usually had to stand empty.
The church, the eternal centre of the village, was unchanged, not shrunken like Rose Cottage and the vicarage. The same yesterday, today and for ever. Just as it should be. I supposed – fleetingly, as I slipped into a back pew to say the brief prayer that was one’s civil greeting to the church’s owner – that the timelessness was the quality all churches shared; a matter admittedly, to some extent, of shadows and carvings and high groined ceilings and dim religious light, but also of the years of use, the words, the thoughts, the griefs and joys of countless people through the years. Here in Todhall there had been some nine centuries of them.
I got to my feet and approached the flower-arranger. She had not looked round as I entered the church, but now she stood up and greeted me. She was tall, thin rather than slender, with brown hair that showed a hint of grey tucked back uncaringly under a felt hat. She looked to be somewhere in her sixties, and wore an elderly skirt topped by a cardigan over a white shirt blouse. She greeted me with a poise verging on condescension. Her voice was educated.
‘Good morning. A lovely day, isn’t it? Are you interested in our church?’
‘Good morning. You must be Mrs Winton Smith?’
‘Yes?’
It was a question, and she waited for an answer. I said: ‘I’m Kate Herrick, Mrs Herrick. I called at the vicarage earlier, but the vicar was out. There’s something I’m rather anxious to ask him about, and I thought I might catch him here. I was over there in the shop just now and saw him come across the green. I suppose he’s come in by the vestry door? Do you think I might go in there and have a word with him?’
‘I didn’t hear the door, but he may be there, he did say something about looking out some papers this morning, and I do know that he is very busy. But’ – she was gracious – ‘perhaps there is something I can do for you? You’re a stranger to the village, aren’t you? If it’s the church you’re interested in, there’s a very good booklet written by the last vicar. It’s down there on the bench by the font. I’m afraid we charge threepence, but churches do have expenses.’
She must be practised, I thought, at defending her husband against time-wasters. I had to find some way through the defences. I looked down at the bucketful of flowers. ‘What lovely flowers. Do you grow them yourself?’
‘Yes. They’re all from the vicarage garden. Are you a gardener, Mrs Herrick?’
I smiled. ‘In a way. I work for a nursery firm in Richmond.’
‘Are you visiting friends here?’
‘I’m just here for a day or two. Staying at Rose Cottage. You must know it, it’s down—’
‘Oh yes, I know it.’ She had stooped over a vase again, and now looked up. ‘But surely you’re not there alone? Aren’t you nervous?’
‘Not a bit. You’re the second person today who’s asked me that. Why should I be?’
‘All I know is, when my grandchildren came to stay for their half-term, they wouldn’t go near the place. Someone had told them it was haunted.’
‘Haunted?’
‘Yes. I don’t know who by, something to do with gipsies. They used to camp there, I believe, and they were something to do with the people at Rose Cottage, some dreadful family that lived there, and some scandalous goings-on. Before our time, of course, the scandal, that is. Welland, that was the name. Welland.’
A conversation-stopper if ever there was one. And that was the moment when the vicar chose to come bustling out through the vestry door. In sharp, and rather unkind, contrast to his wife he was a chubby, kindly-looking man with a thick mop of white hair and bright blue eyes peering over a pair of half-moon spectacles with gold rims, which had slid almost to the end of his nose.
He pushed them up absently, and they slid down again. ‘Ah, Muriel. I thought I heard voices,’ he said, and then to me: ‘Good morning. A beautiful day, isn’t it? A beautiful day.’
‘This is Mrs Herrick,’ said his wife. ‘She is visiting the village, and is interested in the church, and I think she wanted to talk to you about it, but I told her that this was a busy day for you, Wednesday, with the evening service to prepare for, and—’
She was interrupted. The vicar came hurrying down the chancel steps with his hand out in greeting. ‘Mrs Herrick? Mrs Herrick, is it? How do you do? How do you do? I was speaking with Lady Brandon on the telephone only yesterday, and she mentioned that you were coming to visit your old haunts. Indeed, indeed. So, you wish to talk to me? Of course, a pleasure. If you like to come over to the vicarage now we can talk there.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Mrs Herrick, my dear, must know this church better than either you or I. Her folk have lived here for a very long time. She was a Welland before her marriage. Kathy Welland, wasn’t it, from Rose Cottage?’
I said nothing. Mrs Winton Smith said nothing. The vicar said: ‘Shall we go?’ which seemed an excellent suggestion. We went.
10
The vicar’s study was much as I remembered it, a small room to the right of the front door, with a bow window from which, sitting at his desk, he could see who was approaching the house. Beyond the ivied wall of the front garden the church tower seemed very near.
There was a fire laid, but not lighted, in the grate. Above the mantelpiece hung a large engraving of an Oxford college, and on the mantelpiece itself were two silver cups and a college crest mounted on a wooden base. The other walls were lined with bookcases. It would have served nicely, I thought, for a stage set of ‘clergyman’s study’. It looked, in fact, exactly the same as it had in his predecessor’s time, save that Prissy’s father had been to Cambridge, and there had been an oar hung above one of the bookcases. There were even the same two baggy leather armchairs. Mr Winton Smith gestured me to one, himself taking the swivel chair at the desk, whirling it so that he faced into the room. Probably a practised manoeuvre; it put him with his back to the window, and on a higher level than his visitor. Understandable; this room must have seen quite a few difficult or delicate interviews.
But I didn’t see that this would be one of them. Nor, apparently, did he. He picked up a box of cigarettes, offered me one, and when I shook my head said, ‘Wise girl,’ smiled, and took one himself.
I opened the batting. ‘You said you had spoken with Lady Brandon, vicar, and that she told you I was coming here to Todhall?’
‘That is so. Yes. I understood from her that you were to stay at Rose Cottage, and that she had asked Mrs Pascoe to open it up for you. I trust all is well there? It has been empty a long time.’
‘It’s fine, thank you. I don’t – that is, I didn’t – expect to be here more than a couple of days.’
‘Indeed, indeed?’ A look, disconcertingly quick, over the top of his glasses. ‘Does that mean that you plan now to stay longer?’
‘I may have to. There’s something – that’s why I came to see you. Did Lady Brandon tell you what I was here for?’
‘Certainly. She said that your grandmother had decided to stay in Scotland and make her home there, and had asked you to come here to clear the cottage and arrange for the rest of her furniture to be sent north. I must say, Mrs Herrick, that I was sorry to hear it. Your grandmother was a great character, a great character, and I always enjoyed my visits there.’
‘She wasn’t a very great churchgoer – at least I don’t remember it.’ I smiled. ‘She used to pack me off, though, regular as clockwork, church, Sunday School, the lot, but she hardly ever went with me. Aunt Betsy did, though, sometimes.’
‘Ah. Yes. A worthy lady,’ said the vicar cautiously.
His expression of reserve was so marked that
I laughed. ‘Don’t say you didn’t know that she used to sit outside in the churchyard till the service was over, in case the true faith – hers, that is – was contaminated? Surely someone would tell you – in fact I’ll bet she told you herself!’
‘And you would win. She, ah, she tended to make her opinions very clear. But at least you say she brought you, and fairly regularly, too.’
‘Only because she wanted to make sure I didn’t have any fun – that is, get into mischief.’
Another of those shrewd glimmers from above the half-moon glasses. ‘Indeed, indeed. The sins of children. Well, you were going to tell me why you were planning to stay longer. I hope there’s nothing wrong? I believe you said that all was well at the cottage?’
‘All’s well with me, certainly. But a worrying thing has happened. There were a few small things that Gran had put away in a private hidey-hole, and they’ve gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Disappeared. Been taken. Things she specially asked me to take back to her.’
‘Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that. How very disturbing. I take it you’ve had a thorough search?’
‘Not yet, no. But they should still have been where she’d hidden them, and there’s no sign of them.’
‘Your grandmother couldn’t have been mistaken? Forgotten just where they were?’
‘It’s not very likely. This was a secure, locked cupboard, built into the wall, and papered over, and she’d hidden the key away somewhere. She had forgotten where that was, and I haven’t had time yet to look for it, but when I saw the cupboard last night it had been uncovered. Someone had cut back the wallpaper and the plaster to clear the door, and the cupboard was empty.’
‘Dear me. This is bad, very bad. Does it mean – do you think that the thieves had found the key?’
‘They must have done. They had certainly used a key. They’d taken everything, and locked the cupboard again.’
‘It was locked? But if you yourself had no key –?’
‘I broke it open. At least Davey did. Davey Pascoe. He was with me. Finding the wall stripped like that, we had to see if Gran’s goods were still there, and it was the only way.’
‘Yes. Yes, I see. Well, I really am sorry to hear this, Mrs Herrick.’ A pause, while he swivelled his chair to face the window, then swung back to me. ‘The missing items. How valuable are they?’
‘Intrinsically, not very. Things like medals and a ring or two and a brooch, small value, but the sort of thing you don’t want to lose. I suppose the most valuable item was five gold sovereigns. Apart from that it was mostly family papers, you know, birth certificates, marriage lines, all the things one keeps.’
‘I see. Yes, I see. How very upsetting. Have you any – well, suspicions as to what may have happened?’
‘None. The only people with any right of access to the cottage are the Pascoes, and they’re hardly suspects. The family, too, of course – the Brandons, I mean – but you could say the same for them, and anyway they’re not here.’
‘Hm.’ He stubbed his cigarette out, frowned down at the ash for a moment, then turned back to me. ‘I take it there’s something you want me to do? If I can help you, of course I will, though I don’t quite see how.’
‘I was going to ask you if you’d heard of anyone who’d been seen hanging around the cottage, a tramp, perhaps, or some other stranger. But you’d have told me already if you had. So all I can do for the moment is ask if you would – oh, there is one thing, have the gipsies ever been back? They used to camp in the lonnen not far from the house, but for years before I left they’d never been there. Has there been any sign of them?’
‘None. I know the lane, and it’s been overgrown ever since I came here. But you were going to let me know what I can do for you?’
‘Yes, please. I wondered if you would let me look at the parish registers? All the family records must be there in the church, mustn’t they?’
‘Some of them, certainly. Not the records of birth, of course. Those – and the deaths – would be at Somerset House. They would supply copies of the certificates if you wanted them. I can give you the address to write to.’
‘Thank you, I already have it. But you’ll have records of the baptisms and funerals and marriages – one does get a certificate of baptism, doesn’t one?’
‘Why, certainly,’ he said, and from the gentleness of his tone it was apparent that he, like his wife, had heard all there was to hear about the dreadful Welland family. But his reaction was different, and not, I thought, a purely professional one. ‘Of course you may look at the books. But we can do more than that. I can make copies for you of all the entries relating to your family. Those losses need not worry you. I’ll do it with pleasure.’
‘Can you really? I didn’t know. Thank you very much.’
‘I wish I could do more. Regarding the other items, the brooches and so on – your neighbours, I would have thought, would be the ones to talk to. The Misses Pope’ – the suspicion of a smile ‘– don’t miss many of the village comings and goings. They may have seen something.’
‘Yes, I’d thought of them. I’ll call in today.’ I returned the smile. ‘And perhaps Miss Linsey may be guided for me.’
‘Indeed, indeed.’ His favourite exclamation was obviously a cover for thought. Once more he swivelled the chair half round and back again to face me. ‘What I might suggest, under the circumstances … Would you like me to have a word with Bob Crawley?’
‘Bob Crawley? I don’t think – who’s he?’
‘Since your time. Our policeman. Old Mr Bainbridge retired two years ago. He went to live with his daughter at Ferryhill. Bob Crawley has his house now, you’ll know the one, the police house up at Lane Ends. If it would make it easier for you –?’ He paused on a question mark.
‘Oh, yes, thank you. Thank you very much. If you would? Now I’ve taken up enough of your time, and I know how busy you are – I gather that you still have a service on Wednesday evenings – you do? Then thank you again for seeing me. About the copies of the certificates – when would it be convenient for me to come back?’
He got to his feet as I rose. ‘The easiest thing would be if you could make a list, with dates, of the papers you think have disappeared. Can you ask your grandmother? No, I can see that you don’t want to have to trouble her before you’ve had time to find out more about this business. Well, then, just the records that you know would be held here in the church, weddings and funerals and yes, we do record baptisms. If you can let me have the dates of those, it will save a lot of searching. Where do you suppose they start?’
‘I’m not sure. I suppose with Gran’s wedding, and I can’t remember just what year – oh, I’ve had an idea. If it’s still there, she had an old photo album, and the dates might be in that. If I look tonight – is there a time tomorrow when I could let you have them?’
‘If you send the list up with the milk cart, then I can have the pages found if you come to see me later on. I’ve a christening at’ – he glanced down at a diary on the desk – ‘yes, at four o’clock. So, half past three, say, at the church?’
‘Thank you, that’ll be great. I’ll see you get the list first thing.’
As I crossed to the door I glanced out of the window just in time to see the front gate open, and Mrs Winton Smith, back from the church with her empty trug, letting herself into the garden. I braced myself to meet her, but she managed, with perfect dignity, to vanish round the side of the house just as her husband ushered me out of the front door.
Two faces saved. But I wondered, as I let myself out through the gate into the sunny roadway, why I cared, and for whom I was doing the caring. Lilias? Aunt Betsy? Gran? Myself?
Lilias, from all I knew or had heard of her, would not have cared a rap. Besides, she was dead. Aunt Betsy had certainly cared, quite terribly, but she was dead, too. Gran had lived with the slur of ‘shame’ all too long, and was now a long way away. Which left me. I had cared as a child, when people had
let slip in my hearing remarks about my mother, or had too openly pitied my fatherless state. At school I had had to bear the thoughtless questions of the other children, and sometimes teasing, but this had come to an end on the day when Billy Comstock, the ten-year-old bully from Lane Ends, had found a new word, ‘bastard’, and tried it out in school playtime, until Davey, aged nine, had flown at him and fought him till he yelled for help, and the two of them, streaming with blood, had to be pulled apart by the teacher. I was never teased again.
But that was a long time ago, and I had, perforce, worked out my own philosophy of living. It had to be what you were, not who you were, that mattered. I had taken life as it was dealt me, loved my home, and been happy. Would be happy again. So the person to be sorry for here was Mrs Winton Smith, a snob who had dropped a social brick, and who, being what she was, would obviously care very much about that.
Muffin was sitting by the pond again, but I doubted if he would be there for very long. The geese were on their way back from Scurr’s yard, and the gander did not suffer dogs or children gladly. I would have liked to linger to watch the confrontation, but there was a lot to do. I turned for home.
11
The younger Miss Pope, Miss Mildred, was busy in her garden when I got to Witches’ Corner. She was almost always busy in her garden, which was immaculately kept and extremely pretty, though Miss Mildred knew little or nothing about gardening methods, or even about plants. I had heard my grandfather talking often enough about her – ‘a real green thumb, that one has, and not knowing what on earth to do with it.’ The comment had stemmed from the time when he had stopped at her gate to ask her about some plant, a rareish species, which was growing rampant on her garden wall, and her reply, full of enthusiasm, had been, ‘That pink thing? What did you say it was? I’ve always called it my dear little rockery plant.’
