Countess Lucy And The Curse Of Coberley Hall

by Guy Sheppard

  ‘We’ve been over this a thousand times. Marigold has indulged you to manipulate you ever since you threw her out of Coberley Hall. How can anyone guarantee that you and Philip can be together? Would he know who you are?’

  I could not rightly explain how I felt. But my blood was up and I believed I detected in Rebecca a dangerous intent to malign all attempts to revive the dead. In my fury I scratched and clawed at the stone tower beside me with my fingernails until they broke. From there, however, I took not a step. Not yet. I growled.

  Lord Hart did the same.

  ‘You know what I’m thinking? I should never have told her that I believed in her. Oh, why the devil did I do it? Of what treachery have I been guilty? At Coberley Hall she only wants to be chatelaine again. What good did she ever do me?’

  ‘Consider it a warning. The dead can’t love the dead or the living.’

  ‘It’s not me she’s rash enough to turn to now, it’s someone else.’

  ‘Who else is there?”

  ‘Colin Walker.’

  My forceful host dismissed Rebecca’s look of concern, but left her to fill the awful silence.

  ‘So, please, tell me, where does that leave Marigold, in your mind?’

  ‘Since it seems that neither of us can have what we want she can go to hell for all I care.’

  *

  I had uttered but two or three silent profanities when a sudden clarity of intention gripped me. I almost shouted out with rage. I walked up to Lord Hart. It made me sick to hear of his lying scheming.

  ‘What hell is that, exactly?’ I cried and clenched my fingers upon his shoulder.

  My astonished host wriggled beneath the weight of my hand. I gazed down at him with the same vehement hope with which he had first welcomed me into his home. Only the truly cursed had that stare.

  ‘It is what the living are sometimes pleased to dismiss as loneliness, the devil it is,’ he declared with a single, damning smile.

  There came a sudden weakness in my legs as if my blood felt somehow deficient. Sensing my hold on him lessen, Lord Hart had Rebecca push him back to the house. He fled before I could ask what he meant by his obscene duplicity.

  *

  Later, I unfolded the letter that George had sent me six weeks ago – it could have been a lifetime – before I could guess what truly lay in store afterwards. If not a warning, it was definitely an admonishment. It was totally uncalled for, absurd, intrusive. The advice ill-suited the advisor. Likewise, only a complete fool could accept that the mere mention of his name was so pertinent and relevant to recent events that something other than his wife’s death could draw him against his will to such a place as Coberley Hall.

  The missive was a mass of black, serpentine squiggles. They writhed like snakes from a quill at my fingertips, but it was the postscript that really aroused my disgust with its hateful, bitter spitefulness:

  ‘We can never live in peace with those we’ve loved and lost, Colin, we shouldn’t even try.’

  35

  Not even the most consummate liar would try to fool someone like me with his show of penance and passion, yet daily George began to behave in a way which was beyond my comprehension. This was frequent visits to Coberley Church. The more he brooded and plotted against me, the harder it became to predict his malevolent intentions. The wilder the desperate petitions that he made to the dead, the more unpredictable grew the outcome of his actions.

  I literally could not bear to linger any longer out of sight among the graves. Suddenly I heard the squeal of his wheelchair’s wheels roll down the path towards me. His face paled until his features were bloodless, ashen and drawn. Frustration and disappointment showed in his staring eyes and slack jaw. Despair was still more evident. His lips leaked drool which suggested someone at the end of his tether.

  Had he been an animal I would have chained him like a dog – a rabid one.

  At once I left the cover of my tomb and undertook to follow him quietly into the church, with every intention of overtaking him down the aisle. The moment both doors swung shut on their elaborate wrought iron hinges, a chill wind blew in a few dead leaves behind me. Worse, on the shelf of the nearest pew hymn books flipped their pages in frantic applause as if an invisible hand flicked through them in passing.

  He did not once look back to observe the disturbance, appeared oblivious to my intrusion upon his ridiculous devotions. Stopped at the carved Jacobean pulpit, he tapped his dragon cane on the little diamond-shaped graves that were set into the floor of the chancel. I had heard his pathetic cries before but not what he cried exactly. Today would be different.

  ‘Search us out, O God, and know our hearts;

  try us and examine our thoughts.

  See if there is any way of wickedness in us

  And lead us in the way everlasting.’

  That he was almost at the point when I could call him deranged, I did not doubt. He was terrified and had only God to turn to. Inside that creaseless, bone-white suit, his upright body suddenly sat very still. Clearly, on detecting his hypocrisy detected, he could no longer suspend his wily dissembling in my presence.

  ‘You ready to pray with me yet, Colin? You’ve been trailing me here for days.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m okay, yeah. I’m fine. Definitely. Lizzie was the religious one, not me.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t trust in the afterlife?’

  ‘Are we talking heaven or hell?’

  ‘You know what I mean, old chap. This is the place where it should have all ended. This is where Lady Lucy was buried after eighteen years of marriage to the 2nd Earl of Downe when there was ‘no liking’ between them. Did she not lose her heart to Captain Digby only to be left broken-hearted? She ate her heart out to die of heart-ache. In an age when scientific reason had only just established how the heart pumped blood round the body, she can be forgiven for thinking that a loving heart is responsible for our very existence.’

  I fixed my eyes on the brown tiles at my toes and I was standing on an inscription to the Reverend Robert Rowden, Rector of Coberley from 1651-1672. I could grind my heel on the remains of the man who had first tried to commit my countess to the ground for ever.

  Already I was trembling with anger, but tried to stay rational. It was obvious, for all his apparent obligingness that, in resisting this devil, mere contempt gained me no advantage.

  ‘I’ve seen the Ouija-board, George. Damn it, man! Are you not afraid to lose the dead to a few cheap tricks? Would you have me fooled, too? Only, I’ve proved too strong for you, I’ve turned the tables.’

  Lord Hart rose stiffly from his wheelchair and struck matches to light various candles.

  ‘Since your arrival, Colin, I’ve come to realise that you have the same excessive belief or superstition that I have. The Germans have a wonderful word for it – aberglaube. At first Marigold and I feared that we had done the wrong thing, that your credulity regarding the supernatural might drive you wild before you chose to leave. Our fear of the unknown and mysterious is not irrational, old chap, and neither is our reverence misdirected. We can learn to live in peace with those we’ve lost, if never with them. Did I not say so in my letter?’

  ‘Not too disbelieving, then?’

  ‘Should not you and I help each other to give grief a purpose? I speak as a friend.’

  The fickle wicks of candles burst into flame. They lit not only a depiction of the Crucifixion near the altar but the knight in armour whose freestone effigy lay next to his wife in the South Chapel. For a moment it was possible to feel that I was the victim of some terrible fraud, that it was I who would soon lie over there on the slab for centuries.

  A moment later, Lord Hart seized my arm like a brother.

  ‘As one bereaved man to another, let us learn how to profit from our sorrow, Colin. Has not Marigold shown us that the dead cannot love us back, but will resist all our ferocious exacting and bargaining? Has she not given physical forms to our own doubts and longings only in so far that we m
ight invent them? We see the dead as still living, we think we pass them in the street or expect the next text or phone call to be theirs long after they’ve been buried. Yet these are the sad tricks we play on ourselves, which prove quite fake in the end?’

  The logic of his weasel words made me shake and perspire. I did my best to free myself and focus my mind by summoning fresh thoughts of my lost wife, but I was filled with a chilling sensation of someone else’s presence, a presence I both feared yet craved to acknowledge.

  I shook and wavered the same way the candle-light did.

  Lord Hart noticed it, too.

  ‘Is someone here now, Colin?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘But she can’t see or hear us?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Over there by the tomb.’

  ‘How is it you can see her and I can’t?’

  ‘Maybe it’s her way of saying that I now mean more to her than you do?’

  In that instant, the chapel appeared very different. Its beauty grew, enhanced by the candles whose flames lit up knight and lady as though they were lying in state in their very own chapell ardente.

  Lord Hart retreated in horror from the glow.

  ‘You’re not real,’ he shouted at the flicker of torches. ‘You’re only a figment of some spirit-rapper’s conjuring and trickery.’

  ‘Careful, George, she will hear you.’

  My fractious host swung his cane across the aisle to bar the way. With mischievous intentions he stood guard and looked all round him. I could not say that the ghastly twist that took hold of his lips was not a smile, but it was also a gasp of indefinable dread and malice.

  ‘The countess comes to mock the monuments to Coberley Hall’s previous owners,’ he said quickly.

  I watched the candles light up the walls and did think for a moment that I saw a woman standing between light and darkness. It wasn’t Marigold. Today she was clothed in a brown dress and stood with arms held down her sides as if aping someone forever robbed of her coffin. She kept vigil silently and attentively and would brook no distraction, only remind herself of what the living did with the dead.

  ‘Why haunt a place where no ghost can belong?’ I asked.

  After which George’s gaze drew my attention not to the effigy of the knight on top of his tomb but to someone else’s oval portrait that was carved on the wall of the sanctuary. A chevalier in armour filled a pillared recess, I noted. It was not an image of peace exactly, yet I could not peer at him but a peacefulness settled on me. All paint had long since faded from his arms and legs and his face was an unappealing, almost featureless mask of white limestone as he clasped a casket firmly to his chest.

  ‘She would lay claim to all those who have gone before and come after her,’ explained Lord Hart, nervously.

  ‘Lay claim?’

  ‘To all but Sir Giles de Berkeley. When he died in 1295 he had his heart laid to rest in this chancel wall while his bones were buried miles away in Little Malvern.’

  ‘Honestly, this is a grave?’

  ‘By placing his heart in a box in the wall it is neither inside nor outside the church to foil the Devil. That’s the miracle. That’s why it eludes her.’

  Whereupon, the brass oil lamps that dangled from the rafters began to sway slightly on their long black chains. Their ugly metal brackets grew restless, twisted and groaned above the pews, while a shadow darkened each white ceramic shade in the grip of someone’s agitated fingers. Had I not shut the church door properly?

  ‘Take care, Colin. Marigold is jealous of the dead and will use them against us.’

  ‘It’s thanks to her that I can still see Lizzie.’

  *

  Back in his wheelchair, George clutched his blanket high up his chest and began to shiver. Then he wheeled himself away down the aisle at some speed. I had to chase after him to catch up.

  ‘The thing is, George, Coberley Hall was where Lizzie was born. The end is indeed in the beginning. I promised her on her deathbed that I’d keep her safe in the grave.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘She was particularly insistent that I didn’t bury her anywhere where she could be exhumed afterwards.’

  ‘Did she really think that disposing of her remains so would save her soul?’ asked Lord Hart over his shoulder.

  ‘Not hers. Mine.’

  I alarmed and surprised him not simply by what I said but by the context in which I said it.

  He spun his wheelchair to a stop at the font.

  ‘You wouldn’t set so much store by this place if you knew the whole truth, Colin.’

  ‘How is that in any way relevant?’

  He rapped the stone floor with his cane again and listened. Detecting no objection, he went on.

  ‘My stepfather was a very selfish man, the devil he was. Joseph Jones lured Lizzie’s mother to his new house on Wistley Hill. He intended to start over at ‘The Firs’ with his mistress. When Philip found out that JJ had all but persuaded Esti to move in with him, he decided to confront him. We all did.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘Me, Philip and Peter Slater. One night in 1982 we crept up to ‘The Firs’ where we found JJ in bed with his loaded shotgun clutched to his chest. No one had reckoned on finding Esti soundly asleep beside him. Both must have dozed off just before our arrival. JJ had his finger on the gun’s trigger as if he were expecting the Devil himself to visit, so my brother went to pick it up to avert any trouble. Too late, Esti woke with a scream. That’s when it happened.’

  I placed my hand on his shoulder to steady him, but still felt him tremble.

  ‘What happened, George? Tell me what you won’t tell God.’

  ‘Esti’s shout woke JJ who refused to let go of his gun. Next minute he had his brains blown out. He died in an instant.’

  ‘Honestly? Philip killed Joseph Jones?’

  ‘Except he didn’t pull the trigger, Colin.’

  ‘If he didn’t pull the trigger he can’t have done any harm.’

  ‘It was me. I did it. I rushed to help Philip wrest the shotgun from the old man’s grasp. In so doing I put my finger on his and squeezed it for him. After that we hurried Esti back to Coberley Hall before the police could find out that she had been anywhere near that awful room. As far as the world was concerned Joseph Jones blew his brains out because he could no longer live with his bad lungs. Two days later his cancer test results came back positive.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Esti wanted to know why the three of us had been in JJ’s room that night. She knew in her heart of hearts that we had gone there to do him great harm. As years went by, she found it harder and harder to live with the probability that her scream had caused the gun to go off, she had to drink heavily to keep the secret. A sense of her own guilt grew like a choking weed inside her. Because she had been prepared to sleep with JJ to gain her own ends she somehow thought of herself as complicit in our crime.’

  ‘What you’re really saying is that she became dangerously depressed with some sort of post traumatic shock?’

  He assented.

  ‘When Peter showed me Joseph Jones’s diaries a few days ago, I realised that Lizzie was my stepsister after all. Why else do you think I burnt them? She was the child that should never have happened. Now, since prayers don’t appeal to you, old chap, please push me back to the house where I belong. I feel very tired.’

  Once in the churchyard I glared at the grave of the man who had died so violently, wondered if prayers alone could ever intercede with one for another as I plucked up the courage to do as George asked. If he expected me to hate his murderous ways he could have done no better than to offer me such risible explanations and excuses.

  Not an hour passed that I did not feel observed more closely. Next day, I was acutely aware that it was my turn to be pursued with malice aforethought. After all, had not George told me his secret? ‘His curse is now mine. He might murder me, too, at any moment?’ I said
aloud to the house. This was intolerable and dangerous. I would not be the victim of a madman.

  But the best method of defence was not to show offence, nor to let him know that I knew what he intended.

  ‘The devil!’ I said, trying not to feel trapped within my own walls. ‘Must I, who until recently was the representative of the rule of law, live in fear of someone who has no sense of moral order, I, who also was not afraid to kill – must I, then, accept another man’s fervent fear that the dead might never walk again in daylight?’

  Such lies were unworthy of the liar.

  *

  The first chance I had, I sought out Rebecca by the frozen lake. She saw me coming but said nothing, only let fly with a stone at a swan. She sent her missile bouncing across the icy surface all the way to the medieval fishpond’s pretty little man-made island edged with dead bulrushes.

  My heart skipped with it.

  ‘So, please, tell me this. What kind of person lies about his stepfather’s death for over thirty years?’

  Dressed in her drab blue uniform Rebecca exuded the authority of one paid to take care of the sick and yet she struck me as more advocate than nurse. She behaved like someone who had power of attorney over person or property, or both. She could be less guardian angel than custodian.

  ‘Someone who finds it impossible to live with the truth, Colin.’

  ‘Really? You knew?’

  Rebecca juggled another stone from hand to hand like some obstinate, unfeeling body. Then she hurled that too, far away into the distance.

  ‘I take it we are talking about George?’

  ‘He’s as good as told me he murdered him.’

  ‘I hardly think now is the time to resurrect that particular confusion, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Joseph Jones shot himself, Inspector. No one in Coberley will tell you anything else.’

  ‘H’m, well, yeah, I know different. George should be certified, at least.’

  ‘As time goes by and more symptoms manifest themselves it becomes less and less productive to confront him about the difference between what really did happen and what didn’t.’