Alice's Secret

by Lynne Francis

  Richard was dead. Rawson, her jailer, had delivered the news bluntly, unaware of its devastating effect on Alice. He took her silence to be despair over the failure of her murderous plan. Williams lived, rescued from the mill flames by Albert while Richard, who’d been out ‘walking his dog,’ as Rawson said, had perished.

  Alice shut down completely then, all fight gone, huddled into the corner of her cell, refusing all food. She didn’t know the manner of Richard’s death but, in her imagination, she saw him passing along the route he once would have taken to meet her. She saw his silhouetted figure striding along the moonlit path, Lucy trotting at his side, imagined him stopping, puzzled, as he saw the glow of the fire at the mill down below in the valley. Perhaps at that point it was in its early stages? Just a flicker of flame every now and then, seen and then gone, leaving Richard to wonder whether it was real or imagined. Then he would have realised, and started to run along the path to where it forked down to the mill, skidding on loose stones, Lucy joyful, bounding at his side, enjoying the game, then picking up the scent of smoke on the wind, sensing Richard’s agitation, starting to whimper even as she ran. They would have struggled to keep their footing at speed in the dark down the path, Richard’s face whipped by low branches he couldn’t avoid, having to slow for the steps hewn out of the rocks, ever closer but now seeing the flames leaping higher, roaring as they were fed by the cotton, fanned by the evening breeze. What hope had one man, even two or three, of extinguishing the fire consuming the whole building? Had they even tried – or had they stood there, helpless, watching the catastrophe unfold before them? Had Albert raised the alarm? Had Williams run back and forth from the river with buckets, in a fruitless attempt to throw water over the flames until help arrived from the village? Had Richard tried to get into the office, to retrieve papers – a senseless risk that he thought his father would expect of him? Had Lucy turned tail and fled back up the path alone, arriving back at the big house shaking, traumatised, paws torn, just as word arrived there of the unfolding disaster? Was it at this moment that Alice had paused in her herb collecting and looked up, scenting smoke and seeing a distant glow?

  Her head was a fog of grief from which she barely surfaced, day drifting into night and back into day as she trod and re-trod the paths of the life she’d once planned with Richard, her daydreams of a cottage somewhere nearby, children playing in the garden, he a music master, she a herbalist like her mother and grandmother before her, living a poor life but a happy one. Dreams long ago turned to ashes, and leaving what in their place?

  Alice could find nothing to lift her from her despair, nothing to bring any glimmer of hope for the future. Sarah begged and begged to be allowed to see her daughter, to bring her some comfort, some news of baby Elisabeth, to bring her a bottle of the heart tonic that she needed to take every day. Rawson was firm, though it grieved him, as he had known Sarah all his life. Mr Weatherall held more than a little sway with the local magistrate, and word had been sent: ‘No visitors for Alice Bancroft. No news, nothing from the outside. Solitary confinement until the trial.’

  It was perhaps as well that Alice did not know of the growing mutterings against her and her family in the village. With the mill gone, many of the local people found themselves unemployed. The more able-bodied trudged the extra miles to mills further up the valley, in desperate search of a few hours’ work here and there. The less able were left with time on their hands, no income, and a growing sense of anger towards Alice, presumed to be the perpetrator of this deed, and the cause of their misfortune. James Weatherall was grief-stricken at the death of his firstborn and, rumour had it – once again carried by Louisa the scullery maid – that he had no plans to rebuild the mill, but would sell the land and leave the area.

  Alice seemed unaware of raised voices outside the lock-up, of demands to: ‘Let us in. If it’s justice you’re wanting, we can sort that out. Yon lass must have visited wi’ the Devil to do such things.’ The lock-up door was sturdy oak, studded and barred, and remained firmly shut in their faces, until the crowd left, muttering, spoiling for trouble. They headed for the inn to further fuel their discontent with ale, wasting what little money they had on the impotent arguments of befuddled brains.

  Chapter Three

  ‘I hope you have known kindness.’ Alice thought back to her mother’s words as she huddled in the cold, dank cell. Indeed, she had. She had known cruelty too, but she had mentioned nothing of this to Richard. Nothing of the humiliating tussles that took place when Williams lay in wait for her as she left work, or cornered her in some storeroom, where he had sent her on some pretext or another, right in the middle of the working day.

  She had told Richard none of this because she hoped the fact of his existence would help her erase it from her mind. That first night as she had made her way home from the deer pool, part of her in a desperate hurry because she feared that she had lost track of time; and part of her lost, suffused in a glow that both energised her and reduced her to inertia, it was then that she had thought that there might be some happiness to look forward to in her life.

  Richard’s marriage had almost done for her. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel such pain. Such confusion, such abandonment. Amidst this madness, she still didn’t know why she had thought it a sensible plan to marry Williams. A belief that he was the one man in the area capable of giving her security for Elisabeth, she supposed. Nothing could be further from the truth. She shuddered. Williams’s basic nature was so dark, so damaged, it was hard to see how she could have ever believed he would protect another man’s child.

  She felt sure that Richard had loved her, and wondered whether, given time, he would have broken the news to Caroline, and to his family, told them of his child and of his wish to be with Alice. God hadn’t seen fit to grant him that time, and Alice feared that time had run out for her, too. She closed her eyes, trying to conjure up the faces of those that she loved the best, the faces of Sarah, of Elisabeth, of Richard, of Ella, Thomas, Annie and Beattie, of Albert.

  With her last remaining strength, she fought to hold fast to memories of her mother and her daughter and to wish them a future together, a future with as much happiness as her imagination could conjure out of her desperate situation. Her fingers sought the locket, still secure on its chain around her neck. She’d removed Richard’s photograph when he married so it was empty now, the case bent and damaged when she had been manhandled into the cart on the night of the fire. But it was Richard’s gift to her, the one thing of his she had apart from Elisabeth and she held it tightly, feeling him close as her breath faded and her thoughts pulled her back down the dark avenue of time, to her days in the mill, to the bustle and chatter and the noise of the machines as the thread spooled back and forth across the width of the cloth, the threads pulled taut, warp and weft, ever-growing, ever-changing.

  Part Nine

  Chapter One

  The day dawned bright and chilly, the sky a clear, pale blue as if thoroughly washed by the storm of the night before. Alys had been startled when the alarm woke her. She’d actually slept well, far better than she’d expected, despite all the unanswered questions hanging over her when she had gone to bed.

  As she headed downstairs, one question was answered, though. Moira hadn’t come home. Alys smiled to herself, seeing humour in the reversal of roles between aunt and niece. She’d be able to tease her later in the café. It was a shame that Moira refused to have a mobile, or she could have started the teasing now, by text.

  She had further reason to wish Moira had a mobile when, by ten in the morning, she still hadn’t shown up at the café, and Alys was eager to get off to Nortonstall. Her new assistants, Dee and Sandy, would have opened up the café when she hadn’t appeared, but Alys had appointments booked in to discuss the work to be done to the flat. She fought down a sense of rising irritation – Moira was never unreliable. In fact, now she came to think of it, perhaps she should be worried, simply because this was so out of character?
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  The door opened and Alys looked up, expecting the first customer of what looked like being a very quiet day.

  ‘Morning,’ said Rob cheerfully. ‘Just thought I’d let you know in case you hadn’t heard? We’re marooned here at the moment. The storm brought down trees on both the top and bottom roads. Until they send out cutting equipment from Nortonstall, we can’t go out and no one can get in.’

  Alys felt a sense of relief. ‘At least that explains what’s happened to Moira. I’d better give them a ring over at Nortonstall to let them know I’ll be even later than I thought.’

  ‘Can’t do that either, I’m afraid,’ said Rob. ‘The landlines are down too – the exchange was flooded. I think you’re in for a quiet day. You’ll only be seeing walkers for a while yet, and then only from the valley. And from what I hear, with the river in spate after the storm, it’s not easy walking either. Well, better get off now – I’ve got a few trees down to deal with myself.’ And with that, he was gone.

  Alys felt a mounting sense of frustration, then sighed. There was nothing to be done about it. She called Dee on her mobile to check how things were in Nortonstall, reassured by her new assistant’s calm and capable manner. Dee was big, blonde and motherly while Sandy, young enough to be Dee’s daughter, was slender and petite with cropped dark hair, huge eyes and a preference for goth-style fashion. They made an odd contrast behind the café counter but the customers loved them. She knew she could trust them to get on with the daily routine so she settled herself at the counter with a cup of coffee, then let her thoughts drift back to the night before. Could she solve the puzzle and unravel the mystery behind Alice’s death?

  When Julie called in to the café a little later, she found Alys frowning fiercely and gazing at the ceiling while she chewed the end of a pencil.

  ‘Tough crossword?’ asked Julie.

  ‘Nothing as simple as that,’ said Alys, with some feeling, and she explained the events, and her discovery of the night before, to Julie, and how difficult it was to make any sense of it, with so little to go on.

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Julie, once she’d absorbed the information. ‘There’s an awful lot of speculation going on here. But there’s a bit of research you could do that might cast some light on one aspect of it.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Alys sounded hopeful. ‘I haven’t been able to think of anything.’

  ‘Elisabeth’s birth certificate,’ said Julie. ‘That should tell you who her father was.’

  ‘Of course!’ exclaimed Alys. ‘I’m an idiot! Why didn’t I think of that? But how do I find it?’

  ‘Easy,’ said Julie. ‘Like everything these days – you can do it online. I can give you a hand, if you like?’

  Chapter Two

  Nearly a week had passed before Alys found time to meet up again with Julie. Once the road to Nortonstall had been cleared, and Moira had made it back to Northwaite, Alys had been able to head back over to the café, where the demands of the new business and trying to sort out her flat kept her fully occupied. But one evening in the first week of November, she and Julie settled down with a laptop, Alys feeling a mix of apprehension and excitement.

  ‘So, where do we start?’ asked Alys.

  ‘Here,’ said Julie, typing in an Internet address. ‘It’s a free site, and quick and easy to do some basic research.’ She showed Alys where to type in the information she had – Elisabeth’s name and surname, her mother’s maiden name and the area where her birth would have been registered.

  As Alys pressed ‘Find’, she could hardly believe how excited she felt. She watched the wheel spin briefly as the search progressed, then the screen changed. Her heart leapt and she scanned the on-screen page. There was an Alice – but not an Elisabeth – Bancroft, born in the West Riding of Yorkshire. But the date was 1911 and the town was wrong.

  ‘Oh,’ Alys exhaled in disappointment. ‘It’s not her.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Julie, already busily typing. ‘I thought we’d try that site first because it’s free. But not all the records have been transcribed and uploaded yet. We’ll try another site – there’ll be a small charge, but you’ll be able to look at other details, censuses and the like.’

  Half an hour later, even Julie’s optimism had faded and Alys was beginning to wonder whether her ancestors did, in fact, belong in some dream world and not in reality. They hadn’t been able to find any evidence of Elisabeth’s birth, or of Sarah’s family, in the census records of 1891, or of Sarah, Elisabeth and the children in the records of 1901.

  Alys frowned. ‘There’s something odd here. It’s almost as though they didn’t want to be found.’

  ‘Maybe Alice never got around to registering Elisabeth’s birth?’ suggested Julie. ‘She died when Elisabeth was still very young? And although not wanting to be found wouldn’t have been so odd under the circumstances, remember we do have evidence of Sarah on the cottage’s title deeds, don’t we?’

  She saw the disappointment on Alys’s face. She’d thought she was about to come one step closer to solving a family mystery but frustratingly it felt as though they had taken a couple of steps back instead.

  ‘Look, I met someone who is an experienced genealogy researcher when I was working on our family tree and she helped me out a few times when I was stuck. She’s always very busy but she’s also very curious, which is why she’s such a great researcher. She loves a challenge, so if we send her as many details as we can, I’m sure she’ll have a go at sorting it out. You’ll have to be patient, though.’

  And so it proved. After a couple of weeks, Julie’s friend Tina asked for a few more details, including the names of any men who could possibly be Elisabeth’s father, but warned that, in cases where the man didn’t want to be named, this section could very easily be left blank on the birth certificate. Alys sent off all the details she had for Richard, which were very few. As an afterthought, she also included Albert. He was an unlikely candidate, but his wish to care for Elisabeth, Sarah and the family kept him in the picture.

  Chapter Three

  November and December had been the busiest months of Alys’s life so far. She and Moira had been keen to have The Cake Company Café established by the Christmas period, to take advantage of festive spending by locals and visitors alike. With the Nortonstall café interior fully kitted out, Alys could devote her attention to what turned out to be literally window dressing. She’d called in to see Claire at her antique shop early in November and asked her to keep her eyes open for any vintage Christmas decorations, expecting that at the most she might be able to find the odd bauble or two. At the end of November, just as Alys realised that she would need to start putting up decorations within the week, Claire popped into The Cake Company Café.

  ‘Come over to the shop as soon as you can,’ she said, sipping the cappuccino that Alys had made for her. ‘I’ve got something that I think you will be very pleased to see.’ Alys could tell by the smile on Claire’s lips and the sparkle in her eyes that she had found something that she was excited about, but she refused to be drawn on what it might be and so Alys had to remain patient until mid-afternoon when she managed to slip away from the café with a promise to be back as soon as possible.

  A lovely warm glow spilled out from Claire’s shop, lighting up the gloomy winter afternoon, and Alys felt a sense of anticipation as she pushed open the door. Claire was talking to a customer on the phone but she smiled at Alys and gestured to her to wait. Drawn as ever to the china section at the back of the shop, Alys picked up a coffee cup and saucer which she guessed belonged to the Art Deco era. The rim featured a geometric pattern of peach and pale-blue bars outlined in gold, with a scattering of gold-and-white blossom below it. It was too small to use in the Northwaite café but Alys was just persuading herself that she could squeeze it in somewhere on the display shelves when Claire appeared at her elbow and made her start so that she almost dropped it.

  ‘Now put that down and come and see what I’ve found.’ Claire was looking
very pleased with herself and Alys followed her back through to the counter, where three rather scruffy boxes, their lids loosely secured with fine cotton cord, were set out. The pale, card exteriors offered no clues to their contents, but Alys was intrigued to see straw hanging over the edges of one of the boxes and tissue paper in different colours peeping out of the others. She looked at Claire expectantly.

  ‘Go on – open them up. But be careful, the contents are fragile.’

  Alys drew a box towards her and tugged one end of the cord, which fell away, allowing her to lift off the lid. She drew her breath in sharply as she took in what lay inside. The box was divided into twelve compartments by intersecting strips of card. Each compartment contained a nest of crumpled tissue paper and on each one rested a bauble, but baubles unlike anything Alys had ever seen. Some were bright pink or electric blue, shiny and decorated with bold white brushstrokes creating loose approximations of leaves or flowers. Others were pale in colour, mostly silver or gold and moulded or embossed to look like hanging bunches of grapes, cars or animals.

  ‘They’re beautiful!’ Alys hardly dared to touch them.

  ‘They’re made of glass. I think they’re mostly 1920s and 1930s, judging by the cars and by the painted designs.’ Claire was beaming at Alys’s reaction.

  ‘How on earth have they managed to survive so long? And where did you find them?’

  ‘They’re from a house clearance. An elderly lady who had lived in the same house all her adult life. They were packed away in the loft. Luckily, after you’d asked me for vintage ornaments, I’d asked around and Reg, a contact of mine in Leeds, phoned me when he came across them.’