A Forgotten Place

by Charles Todd

  Rachel was working in the kitchen and Hugh was upstairs, and so I volunteered to answer it, my thoughts still occupied by Jenny.

  But it wasn’t her mother at the door, it was Ellen Marshall. She looked tired, drained of that arrogance that seemed to be such a part of her. Behind her, her motorcar was standing in the road, its great headlamps piercing the gloom almost as far as the churchyard.

  “Hallo, Sister Crawford. I’m leaving for Swansea. Oliver isn’t doing well, and I’m taking your advice about seeing a doctor. If you can be ready quickly enough, I can take you up with me as far as Swansea.”

  I wasn’t sure whether she was making this offer because I could reassure her about her friend, or whether she was actually being kind. Then I realized her face was tight with tension.

  “Yes—yes, that would be lovely. I’ll only be a moment—would you like to wait in the parlor?”

  “I’ll stay with the motorcar.” She cast a glance over her shoulder. “But hurry. I can’t stop here for very long.”

  There wasn’t time to dwell on why she was in such a rush. I could ask her as we drove away. I turned and hurried back to the kitchen, where the aprons I’d ironed were waiting to be carried upstairs.

  “Rachel—it’s Ellen Marshall at the door. She’s returning to Swansea, the motorcar is already out there, waiting for me.”

  “Oh—oh, I know you’re pleased. Go on up and pack your kit, I’ll bring these.”

  She went to take down the aprons while I hurried back down the passage, almost running up the stairs, calling to Hugh as I went.

  He came out his door, and I told him that Ellen was here to take me up, and then went into my room, tossing everything into my kit as quickly as I could. Time enough to sort it all out in Swansea.

  Rachel was right behind me with the aprons, laying them out on the bed and hastily folding them.

  She was talking all the while, telling me how glad she was that I’d come, and how pleased she was that I wouldn’t be in too much trouble over my late arrival at the clinic. “For it won’t take you long to find a train to Cardiff or even Bristol.”

  Hugh said, from the doorway, “I’m grateful, Bess. Thank you for caring enough to do what you could for me and my men.”

  I closed up my kit, smiling at them. “I’m so glad I came. I wouldn’t have got to know Rachel if I hadn’t. And thank you both for putting me up. Will you keep in touch? I’d like that.”

  “Yes, of course,” Rachel said, and gave me a warm hug before taking up my kit and my coat. Hugh, hesitating, also embraced me.

  “I must give you the direction of the clinic—”

  “I have it,” he said, releasing me, and then swinging around to follow me down the stairs. I went ahead of them, still thanking them for their hospitality, and was halfway to the door.

  Rachel exclaimed, “Wait!” and disappeared into her room, catching us up as I reached the hall. “I want you to have this.”

  It was one of her lovely scarves, and she tucked it under my arm.

  “Remember us when you wear it,” she said, and I promised as I opened the outer door.

  There was a man standing just below the steps now, and beyond him, I saw Ellen’s motorcar begin to move, gathering speed, pulling away from what must have been a half-dozen shadowy figures ringing it.

  “No—wait! Ellen,” I cried, starting down the steps, my free hand waving madly toward the motorcar.

  Hugh shouted, “Bess, stop.”

  The man standing between me and the road swung around and caught my arm in a grip that was bruising, holding me back. The lovely scarf fell to the ground, and I cried out again as the motorcar inexorably gathered speed.

  Ellen never looked back, never hesitated.

  And after a moment, there was only the red dot of her rear lamp in the distance, before that too disappeared.

  Chapter 13

  I was suddenly so angry I could hardly breathe, and I rounded on the man who was still clutching my arm.

  “Take your hands off me,” I said in a voice I myself hardly recognized. And he dropped my arm as if it had burned his fingers.

  I recognized him then. Jenny’s father.

  “How dare you,” I began, almost shaking in my fury. “After what I’d done for your daughter—”

  Hugh was there, between me and the man, and Rachel had come down the steps to take my kit from me and retrieve the lovely scarf.

  “Inside, Bess.” Hugh put a hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off.

  “Bess—please?” Rachel said, pleading.

  The other men in the road were watching us. And up the way, nearer the churchyard, almost invisible in his black clothing, Mr. Wilson was shaking his head. I could see his hat moving.

  I stood there, my disappointment mixing with my anger. I was breathing hard, as if I’d run after the motorcar. Part of my mind was trying to make sense of what had happened, while the other could only think about Ellen abandoning me.

  But I knew, deep down, that she’d been given no choice.

  They had let her leave, because she was one of them and could be trusted to keep her mouth shut—which meant that she and her family had benefited somehow from the silver washing ashore.

  While I, the stranger in their midst, an unknown quantity, couldn’t be trusted at all. Especially after this morning. Someone had spread the news that I’d watched from the hedge.

  But how could they keep me here—and for how long?

  I began to realize then that quite a bit of silver must have washed onto the strand during last night’s storm. Enough that these people were not going to risk losing it by letting me leave.

  Enough silver to make quite a difference in their lives . . .

  And by extension, enough to make my own future rather bleak.

  They were waiting for me to make a decision—Jenny’s father, the watchers in the road, the rector—Rachel and Hugh.

  Without another word, I turned and walked straight back into the house, and slammed the door behind me.

  It was a moment before Rachel and Hugh got it open again and came in after me.

  I hadn’t heard a word spoken by any of those men out there. I also couldn’t have recognized any of them, except Jenny’s father.

  Walking on toward the kitchen, pulling out the nearest chair and sitting down in it, I tried to stop shaking. But my fury and my disappointment went too deep. I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to calm down, but to no avail.

  I heard Hugh come down the passage and stop in the doorway. And at the same time, I heard Rachel’s footsteps going up the stairs. Taking my things back to my room.

  And all the while, I was realizing that I was now a prisoner in this house. There would always be someone on watch, to make sure I never left here.

  My one hope, the only hope I had now, was that Ellen would send the police back to rescue me.

  But she was one of these people. And even as I raised that hope, I knew it was false. She wouldn’t betray them. For all I knew, she was carrying silver she herself had found down along the strand.

  I don’t remember much about dinner that night. Rachel and Hugh were kind, they tried their best to make up for what their neighbors had done. Rachel even opened a jar of her spiced plums to finish the meal.

  Finally pushing my plate aside, I said, “What am I to do?”

  It was Hugh who answered. “Let them think you’re not going to fight them. Lull them into believing you’ve accepted what they’ve decided. And then I’ll help you start walking one night. By the time they realize that you’ve gone, it will be too late.”

  He was offering me hope. But I wasn’t really certain it would work.

  “And what will happen to you and Rachel, when they find out?”

  He shrugged. “What can they do?”

  But I thought they could do a great deal.

  “You’re safe here,” Rachel said. “That’s what matters.”

  Those men hadn’t hurt me. How could they have, with Rac
hel and Hugh and Mr. Wilson as witnesses? And for all I knew, Mr. Griffith, who watched everything from the windows of his house, had seen what had happened.

  But would I have a convenient accident if I wandered too far afield? Or if they decided that watching me was too much of an effort, and that perhaps I ought never to leave?

  “People will come looking for me,” I said with more assurance than I felt. Even Simon and my parents would be hard-pressed to track me all the way out here. I did know they wouldn’t stop looking—but it would be in all the wrong places. “What then?”

  Hugh shook his head. “They’ll have no choice but to let you go.”

  Or see to it that I never went at all. Long before rescue arrived. That was beginning to worry me as I calmed down.

  What would Rachel and Hugh do, if that happened? They’d be in danger then as well.

  But that was beginning to sink in as the reality of my situation. I wasn’t overdramatizing it, I was merely looking at what was best for the villagers who were threatened by my presence here. And that would be my disappearance . . .

  I’d have to be very careful. And I’d have to be certain that Rachel and Hugh didn’t suffer on my account.

  In the end, I told myself, the cavalry would arrive. Which meant that my task must be to stay alive until it got here.

  Rallying myself, I said brightly, “Well. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Let me help with the washing up. I need to stay busy to keep my spirits up.”

  They tried to hide their relief at the way I’d accepted what had happened. But of course they were worried, it would be strange if they weren’t.

  And so my first step was to reassure my friends.

  Over the next two days I didn’t venture out of the house at all. I didn’t even stand in the doorway or approach a window. If there were watchers, I was no threat to anyone.

  On the third day, gloriously sunny and warm, I helped Rachel in her garden, clearing away the winter’s debris and preparing it for the horse to come and turn over the compacted soil.

  If anyone was looking, I worked hard, and made no attempt to worry the watchers.

  When the horse came, I stayed out of its way. Rachel greeted it like an old friend, giving it an apple from her fruit cellar, scratching the blaze on its forehead. I made no effort to befriend it. I didn’t want anyone to think I might consider riding it to Swansea. It was too important to Rachel and the woman who stabled it.

  When it had plowed up the kitchen garden, I went inside while Rachel unharnessed it, rubbed it down, and walked it back to its stall.

  On the fourth day, I helped her again, this time as the horse plowed orderly rows for the sowing in a long strip of land beyond her sheds. And once more I went indoors before she returned the horse.

  The days were lengthening, and before the sun went down, I walked as far as the overlook. The coast guard station was a warm pink as the sun began to set, and down on the strand, the waves moved in with a little hiss. Two young girls walked along the surf, heads together, talking. A line of four or five milk cows made their way toward their barn, and a woman stood in the doorway of her cottage, staring out at the sky as the low-lying clouds turned from gold to pink to lavender far out in the Channel.

  No one would have guessed that only a handful of days earlier, that lovely frothy ebb and flow of the tide had brought with it anything more than a few broken shells.

  I could feel eyes on me, and I knew it must be Mr. Griffith, watching me from his cottage. I wondered who else had made it his business to keep an eye on me. But no one tried to stop me from enjoying the sunset, although I made a point of walking back to the house before the lavender sky turned to a deep purple and shadows began to fall.

  The next morning, after I’d helped Rachel wash and hang the sheets out to dry in the ever-present wind, I went for another walk.

  This time I went as far as the coast guard station. For if there was any chance that I might indeed walk toward Swansea, I’d need the stamina and the wind to keep up a fast, steady pace.

  In the afternoon, I walked as far as Ellen’s cottage.

  It was shut up, as I’d expected. Curtains drawn across the windows, and the door latched. I didn’t think she was planning on coming back for quite some time. Even before she was encouraged to leave here without me.

  Walking up to the path, I saw that the drapes hadn’t quite been pulled together in one window.

  I went over to it, and cupping my hands around my eyes, I tried to peer inside.

  This was the dining room—I could glimpse a long table with chairs and part of a glass-fronted cabinet holding pieces of china.

  But what interested me was not the furnishings—the paneling had been pulled from the wall, exposing the latticework of wood and fill behind it.

  Had Oliver been brought down here to help her with changes she wanted to make to the cottage? It looked more like searching than renovating.

  I made my way around the cottage, looking for another window that wasn’t quite covered. The one I found was a bedroom, for I could see a part of the bed, made up with a white comforter, and part of a tall chest that had been pushed aside. Behind it, the wall had been taken down and left to one side.

  This wasn’t vandalism, and it wasn’t repairs. How much of the rest of the house looked like this? And what was she searching for, if these panels had been taken down on purpose?

  I remembered what Hugh had said, that it was thought that her grandfather had robbed the coach fleeing to Swansea, and killed the owner.

  Had she come down here to search for whatever was left of that missing fortune?

  But surely if the cottage had been empty for so many years, others had tried their luck at finding the silver. There had been no compunction when it came to putting the body of the man in the little boat in her house. It meant that others had been there before.

  Of course they could hardly tear the house apart. Still I wouldn’t put it past any of them to try their luck.

  Ellen dressed elegantly. But I remembered too that she’d opened a lodging house down near the docks, for soldiers and seaman looking for a safe place to stay.

  Was she perhaps living beyond her means—and hoping to find her grandfather’s hoard of silver?

  It seemed rather absurd, but I could see the evidence of my own eyes, the sections of paneling pulled down and left. Because Oliver had been beaten too badly to help put the cottage back together? Or hadn’t it mattered?

  I could hear something moving about in the bushes just beyond the kitchen garden, and I realized that I was well out of sight of the road and anyone watching. Had someone come down to see what I was doing?

  Or even seen an opportunity to make me disappear? Had I let my curiosity lead me into danger?

  And then a bird flew out of the tangle of limbs and old vines, disturbed by my presence. I took a deep breath.

  Still, this was a warning to take to heart, and I quickly retraced my steps to the front of the cottage and walked out to the track that passed for the road this far down. To my left, The Worm hunched at the edge of the sea. In the open once more, I started back the way I’d come.

  I was halfway to the abandoned coast guard station when I saw Mr. Griffith at the overlook, but he wasn’t staring out at the scene in the bay. He was looking for me.

  By the time I’d passed the coast guard station, he’d turned and gone back to his cottage, disappearing inside.

  I didn’t hurry. Taking my time, stopping at the overlook myself, before climbing the last stretch to the house.

  Looking up, I saw Mr. Wilson standing in the churchyard. He turned away as soon as I’d spotted him there, a hand shading his eyes as he scanned the church tower, as if searching for storm damage to the fabric.

  I went into the house.

  Would they have watchers keeping an eye on this house during the night? In the event I should take it into my head to walk away?

  Upstairs there was the sound of singing. I realized that Hu
gh, thinking he was alone, was singing in Welsh. As soon as I shut the door, it stopped.

  That night I stood by the window in the parlor, hidden behind the lace curtains, but it was too dark outside to tell whether there was someone in the churchyard or down by the hedge or even at Mr. Griffith’s window, taking his or her turn to watch.

  Deciding to test the waters, as it were, I opened the door and stepped out into the night.

  Overhead the stars were a brilliant canopy, as they can only be in very dark places. They’d often been hard to see at the Front, with the constant flashes of artillery fire or flares. I made a point to look for a few familiar constellations, and then the North Star. I’d just found it when Hugh came to the door and quietly called my name. I turned.

  “I just needed a breath of air,” I said, not lowering my voice to match his, as if I didn’t care who heard me. “The stars are beautiful tonight. I hadn’t realized how close they seem.”

  As I turned back toward the house, out of the corner of my eye I saw someone in the shadows by the church. Whoever it was had moved a little when Hugh came to the door, and with my eyes accustomed to the night, I’d caught that slight shift in the shadows.

  I went back inside, and Hugh said, “Be careful, Bess. Don’t test them.”

  “I just felt—smothered,” I said, shutting the door behind me.

  “I’m sorry,” he replied, and I realized that he felt helpless to protect me. And that it was weighing on him.

  “It isn’t your fault. Or Rachel’s,” I told him.

  “Your family. Surely they’re looking for you.”

  “I expect they are. But in the wrong places. London, possibly. They’d expect me to go there for a few days, if I didn’t choose to spend all my leave in Somerset. By the time they discovered I wasn’t in London at all, and I hadn’t been, they’ll go back to the clinic and start asking questions.”

  With a smile I didn’t feel I added, “But I’m not giving my mother and father or Simon enough credit.”

  “Who is Simon?” he asked with interest.