Black Heather

by Virginia Coffman

  She was right about the dour and dark Sir Nicholas. Anyone could see he had detested me from the first moment. But I fully returned his opinion. I could not like those overbearing, positively medieval males who refused to acknowledge any common humanity in a woman.

  “No, ma’am. I was saying I took shelter in an old house, which appeared to be haunted, and where—”

  Everything about Mrs. Sedley might be said to have suddenly ceased. She sat there perfectly still, staring, not at me, but at her knotted hands. I found this curious change in her far more upsetting than her overactive attempts to show me that she was every shred as feminine and ruffled as her beautiful granddaughter.

  I could not understand why she had seemed to take me in dislike so oddly after my adventure today. Months ago, it had been her insistent suggestion that Mama and Father send me to Maidenmoor to find an inexpensive situation for our projected young ladies’ academy, which in due time Miss Higsby, my former governess, was to superintend. What had brought about this curious reversal in Mrs. Sedley’s attitude toward me? Yet now, in her sudden stillness, I felt for the first time since I had returned with Sir Nicholas that she was as sincere as she had been upon my arrival this morning. I wondered why.

  “In any case,” I began again, a little hesitantly, “I thought it just possibly might suit. That is, if it’s inexpensive. You know, truly a bargain. It’s a bit remote, perhaps, but that’s all to the good. For the sake of the young ladies, I mean.”

  Mrs. Sedley dabbed a laced-edged handkerchief at her pursed and colorless lips. It was odd that I had not noticed before how very much older she was than Mama. It was hard to believe they had been in school together. Mama had not been young when I was born, but she had always seemed young to me.

  “For the sake of the—yes. Quite so. Where is this ... building?”

  “I don’t even know if it may be for sale. I thought at first Sir Nicholas was the owner, he behaved so oddly. But I think he just naturally likes to interfere.”

  She frowned as she rubbed her fingers, and I guessed they gave her pain. “Surely, child,” she said, “you cannot desire to purchase for delicate young ladies a building remote from civilization and inhabited by ghosts. It was ghosts, I think you said?”

  Although her objections were uttered sharply and to the point, for some reason I had a notion, perhaps from the curious gleam of interest in her eyes, that she would not be sorry if I did buy this “remote building.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe in ghosts. It was just some ridiculous sound. Mice, or—or rain. Anyway, that was what Sir Nicholas said.” I sat back and sipped the strong tea. I was beginning to grow used to it. As for Mrs. Sedley, she sat rubbing her fingers and wincing. It made me decidedly nervous. Hoping to terminate this self-torture of hers, I added, “It’s so ramshackle that I should think the owners would be happy to sell at any price, but I daresay they would play the highwaymen once they saw me. It’s my age, I’m afraid. They wouldn’t have the least notion whether I am competent or a mere bungling schoolgirl.”

  “I feel sure you are wrong, dear. The Hag’s Head has been for sale these eleven years and more. Very cheaply.”

  This was what came of my own silly boasting, for the simple reason that I had not suspected there was any likelihood of owning the Hag’s Head, and now it looked as though I might find my absurd offer taken up. I must stop Mrs. Sedley from saying anything further. Word of my offer would go all over the village, and in no time the owner might be hounding me. I evaded this by rather cowardly means.

  “I’m afraid the owners would never sell to me, because of my age. You see, no one in Yorkshire knows whether I have any capabilities at all, except you.”

  “Precisely. But Kathleen, dear child, the owner of the Hag’s Head Inn is myself.”

  I dropped my teaspoon with a dreadful clatter, smiling weakly under her gaze.

  “How ... fortunate! Has it been in your family for long?” An inane question, in the circumstances, but I had never felt so tongue-tied, and this question gave me a moment to recover.

  “In a manner of speaking. It has stood a long time, let us say. It was once the most important posting house between Heatherton and Maidenmoor.” She took a sip of tea, then murmured with distaste, “Cold. Stone cold! Where is that tiresome girl? Meg!”

  Seizing the chance to escape and form a reasonable way out of the dilemma I had so stupidly blundered into, I set my own tea aside and jumped up. “I’ll fetch you a fresh tray. And shall I bring more scones?”

  “If you like. For yourself. Mrs. Famblechook does a very tolerable scone.”

  “Tolerable! Oh, yes. Delicious.” They were even better than Mama’s currant scones. I would not at all object to having another.

  “Meg!” Mrs. Sedley called, raising her voice to a degree surprising in such a sugary, pink-cheeked woman.

  The obliging Meg bellowed back, “Ay, mum! More tea. And scones for young Miss?”

  “Ay,” I shouted, forgetting my governess’ careful teaching, and returned to my stool, thinking furiously.

  Mrs. Sedley seemed once more to be the bubbling creature I had known this morning upon my arrival.

  “Now then, it was at the Hag’s Head that you met Nicky.”

  For some odd reason that I did not care to pursue, the idea of referring to Sir Nicholas Everett as “Nicky” made me wince.

  “He was frightfully angry. Timothy and I were prowling about, trying to dry ourselves and hearing all manner of odd noises—”

  “A very common thing on the moors. You will scarcely find so much as a sheepman’s coteen without its share of odd sounds. All the same, my dear, the house is solidly built, an excellent investment.”

  “Forgive me,” I said impulsively, still puzzled that Mrs. Sedley was the Hag’s Head owner. “It seems terribly interesting to me.”

  She smiled, but I felt that it was not the facile smile of the pretentious, fluttering, self-satisfied woman who remembered her popularity with what she called in capitals “The Opposite Sex.” It was even a sad little smile, and though she made no gesture toward her hands or her lower back, I was suddenly conscious that life, to her, was a difficult project, that it was not easy for her even to sustain this smile.

  “You would say you cannot imagine my serving ale over a taprail or playing the parlormaid in that grim common room.”

  “I am persuaded you are joking, ma’am.”

  “Only a trifle. When my daughter and her husband came to me for the purchase money some sixteen years ago, I thought it highly unsuitable that a member of my family should own and actually give service in a public house. The Sedleys, it is true, were once yeomen, but always highly respectable. But Patrick persisted, and my daughter Megan yielded to keep peace in the family, as she often did. Patrick Kelleher was—is—my son-in-law and a celebrated charmer with the ladies. I expect he thought there would be rich opportunities for him among such custom as the Hag’s Head would attract.”

  At this inopportune point Meg Markham arrived, bubbling with the consciousness of having served her mistress upon the instant, and because I liked her, I was ashamed of my disappointment at her arrival.

  “Yes, but—excuse me—Miss Elspeth is not the daughter of these two? And all this you are telling me must have been before the fire,” I put in, as Meg served Mrs. Sedley more steaming tea, along with some odd white powders in a folded paper.

  Mrs. Sedley impatiently brushed the powders aside. “Later. Not now. And perhaps Miss Kathleen will wish a dose. They are most efficacious when one has difficulty sleeping.”

  I shook my head as politely as possible, for I had no trouble sleeping after any day of sufficient activity. I noticed, though, that my mention of the fire at Hag’s Head produced a decided, though furtive, interest in Meg Markham. When Mrs. Sedley did not answer me at once, but instead seemed to compose herself with sips of tea, Meg left the room, but slowly, with odd little side glances at me.

  When Mrs. Sedley spoke again, I looked behi
nd me at the open doorway and saw Meg’s shadow upon the further wall of the landing of the staircase.

  “Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Sedley, “I do think you might have done worse in your choice of a school. There are eight bedchambers, and with two young ladies to the room—and the very nominal price of Hag’s Head, Kathleen, child—you would be quite the richest young lady in these parts very shortly!”

  Though she spoke lightly, I could not mistake the anxiety behind her bantering encouragement. I felt awkward and sorry, supposing that she must be in financial straits. This might also be the explanation for her letters to my mother, urging me to seek my school in Yorkshire when Cornwall had proved impractical. Perhaps she had hoped to broach the subject of the Hag’s Head more slowly, with sufficient remarks upon its good qualities, and certainly no nonsense about ghosts and odd noises.

  I fumbled nervously, hating myself for my objections. “Yes, but the fire. I daresay it did no harm above the cellars?”

  “None—above the cellars,” she said flatly, with no inflection whatever.

  “That was my understanding from Sir Nicholas.”

  She looked up, plainly surprised.

  “Did he speak of the fire?”

  “No; not at all. Just that the fire caused the peculiar odor of burned wood. Have your daughter and her husband been back since the fire? Do they notice the odd ... things about the place?” I saw that I had disturbed her again and added quickly, “I mean, if the inn were opened and aired, I’m sure they could resume business there. It just needs an inducement such as the return of the coaching post house. Something of that sort. These things are easily arranged.”

  In Cornwall, I knew that the importance of post houses was forever changing as certain high roads became popular, then forsaken, then rounded the circle to popularity again. I suspected the payment of a sum of guineas into the right breeches pockets answered the matter in Cornwall, and I did not think Yorkshire was so very different.

  When Mrs. Sedley did not reply immediately, I glanced at her and realized I had blundered somewhere. She was excessively pale, and her mouth twitched while she said in a kind of hoarse monotone, as if willing herself to remove all feeling from the words, “They cannot go back. Not my Megan. You see, she was murdered that night. The night Patrick set the fire and ran away.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In the awful silence that followed my stupid blunder, I told myself I had known all along that there was something terribly wrong about the Hag’s Head Inn and that in some strange way the mystery concerned Mrs. Sedley herself.

  I opened my mouth after what seemed an age, but I felt too dreadful to think of any of the usual apologies.

  She spoke before I could, and greatly to my relief. “Dear, dear, that was a dozen years ago. We must not dwell upon it. I am daily thankful for my lovely Elspeth. She is so like her Aunt Megan, but only in her good looks. I am determined she shall not make the same mistake in marriage. Elspeth’s parents, my son and his wife, died very shortly after her birth, of a typhus, and Elspeth has been mine since.”

  “You have had many tragedies, ma’am,” I murmured softly, wishing I might have been more skilled in the right words of comfort. Now, I began to understand Mama’s friendship with the lady. There must have been, and must still be, many things about Mrs. Sedley that Mama found congenial. And perhaps before the tragedies of her two children’s death, she might have been less the gossip, less inclined to boast about young Elspeth, and even concerned about others than her own family.

  She had recovered her volatile self though, and she felt around for her mirrored fan and fluttered it briskly, studying then her small, neat teeth in their reflection.

  “What mournful thoughts! Do not refine upon them, I beg you. Candidly, child, does not there seem a resemblance between my granddaughter’s countenance and mine? Only in the bone, of course. I make no claim, at my age, to more.”

  “I have not had the pleasure of meeting her yet, but from the miniature you sent Mama, I should say you are quite right.” It was a small enough lie after the pain of my blundering questions.

  “How sweet of you, dear Kathleen! You will be meeting Elspeth very shortly. She has been at the church, placing heather for the Sunday service.” She seemed greatly satisfied and peered long into the mirrored fan. I did not pursue the matter of Hag’s Head further that evening and hoped she would forget her notion that I should purchase the poor sad ruin with its unhappy past.

  I took her tea tray below, wondering at the curious, resilient nature of human beings. Fortunate, indeed, were those who could shut away sorrows and perhaps dreams of vengeance, or cries against the injustices of God, while still, if I could believe Sir Nicholas, enjoying the spread of village gossip. At any rate, I thought that if she was a gossip, she was an interesting one and must have her counterpart over the length and breadth of England.

  In the kitchen I found Meg Markham eating an early supper at an uncovered rough wooden table and rolling her large blue eyes at me to indicate that something was wrong with the crinkly-haired little cook. I imagined it must be some personal feud between them, and I set the tea tray out of Mrs. Famblechook’s way. But by one of the perversities of fate, the little woman made an exaggeratedly wide gesture in fetching over a pan. Down came the tea tray, crashing to the floor with all its fittings. Thereupon, Mrs. Famblechook turned, faced the damaged crockery amid the rivulets of tea, and put one finger to her lips, enjoining silence.

  “Sh!” she commanded. “Will ye be waking the mistress now?”

  The shambles on the floor very wisely made no reply, and while Mrs. Famblechook looked around for cleaning rags in a confused but happy way, as though the kitchen were a total stranger to her, I began to pick up the broken pieces of china.

  I was still puzzling over the cook’s odd behavior when Mrs. Sedley called down to us in a resigned voice, “Meg? What is broken?”

  “Fambles has been at the bottle again!” yelled Meg at the top of her lungs, adding in extenuation, “It be but the second-best china.”

  “Fambles!” cried Mrs. Sedley. “Put by that Madeira and get on with your work.”

  “Ay, mum. Put by it is,” said Mrs. Famblechook cheerfully. “Will ye favor me now, there’s a love?” she went on, and as I was busy putting aside the broken china, I did not notice the direction of her remark.

  “She’s meanin’ you, Miss,” Meg informed me between bites of cold sliced beef. She herself had not raised a finger to deal with our kitchen crisis. I assumed it was a matter of caste, and as a lady’s maid and a parlormaid, she could not demean herself to do a scullery maid’s work.

  I looked up, just in time to see Mrs. Famblechook gather up in her apron all the broken crockery I had collected and empty the apron into the fire on the open hearth with a second awful clatter.

  “Ay, mum,” the cook agreed with a toothy grin. “Out in stillroom there’s proper fresh cream for a wee dram in the moogin I be baking for tomorrow. If ye’ll be so good as to fetch it in, I’ll just wipe up the spilled mess here.”

  I was relieved to get out of the kitchen, since the cook was under the influence of strong spirits, although I had seen a Cornish neighbor of ours at such times and knew the aftermath would be even worse, what with aching head and cross temper. When I went to the kitchen door, however, I saw that it opened upon a path cheek by jowl with the graveyard of the church down the steep little street. The graveyard and the path to the stillroom were separated only by a low wall of time-darkened York stone, which I might have stepped over with ease.

  There was a lamp burning near an open side door of the church beyond, and I assumed Mrs. Sedley’s granddaughter, Elspeth, and her friends were still decorating the church with armfuls of late-blooming heather. It was a comforting thought, for the evening of the North Country seemed exceedingly dark to me, in spite of the first glinting rays of moonlight, and the way to the stillroom was not at all a comfortable one to follow when the queer old gravestones cast their long sh
adows across the path.

  I was standing outside the kitchen door debating whether it was worth fetching a storm light for the short distance to the stillroom, when Mrs. Famblechook handed me a small lighted lantern and pointed out my destination at the farther end of the little fading garden of Sedley House. I thanked her and proceeded on my way, gradually discovering, however, that the darkness beyond my lantern’s rays was even deeper by contrast. I covered the distance from the house to the stillroom with a speed that surprised me, reflecting all the while on the curious fact that the familiar starry or stormy Cornish night, though every bit as dark as it was here in the North, seemed so much less sinister.

  I hung the lantern on the latch of the stillroom door after looking inside and spying what I imagined must be the small crock of cream. The little stone storage room was cold enough, I thought, to keep food fresh indefinitely. I had been almost as addled as the cook, forgetting to bring a wrap of any kind. Shivering, I pulled the cream crock off the shelf, looked into it, and, being satisfied it was what I had been sent for, reached for the lantern. Before touching it, however, I paused. Had that sudden crunching sound, like a heavy step on the gravel path, come from Mrs. Sedley’s garden?

  But there was no gravel on Mrs. Sedley’s side of the stone wall. On the other hand, there was a great deal of ground-up rock scattered among the gravestones. Impatient with my own imaginings, I raised the lantern high and peered out at the night scene. I was considerably relieved to see a straight path to the kitchen door unimpeded by anything more than the long, grotesque shadows of the neighboring gravestones. Clutching the lantern in one hand and the little cream crock in the other, I set my foot firmly upon the path.