Death on Lindisfarne

by Fay Sampson

  “There’s a bathroom and a toilet at the end of the corridor,” Mrs Batley told them. “There’ll be tea downstairs in five minutes.”

  Aidan thanked her.

  The skylights they had seen from the road lit the corridor. The bedrooms themselves had dormer windows looking out over the garden. He could see the row of newer bedrooms that opened on to it. Miss Grayson, who had briefly winked at Melangell, was standing outside one on the edge of the verandah, looking at the flower beds.

  He wondered whether he should have booked one of those larger en-suite family rooms for himself and Melangell. Would anyone have raised eyebrows at his sharing with his eight-year-old daughter? The question had never arisen when Jenny was alive.

  “Look! You can see the castle!”

  Melangell was bouncing on his bed on her knees. She leaned across to the windowsill.

  He raised his eyes to the longer view. She was right. Beyond the garden, colourful with the same spring flowers he had seen in the hall, stretched sheep-scattered fields and then that sentinel turret on its narrow rock. In the harbour before it, boats were beginning to rock on the incoming tide.

  “The water’s coming up over the causeway, isn’t it? If we hadn’t hurried, we’d have been swept out to sea or drowned.” She sounded excited rather than fearful. “It’s a good job you didn’t hang around taking photographs, like you usually do.”

  Photographs? Like the television adverts that tempt an addict to reach for a drink, Aidan’s hand strayed towards his camera bag. This was a high angle he hadn’t taken before, looking out over the grey slate rooftops of the village. It wasn’t usually possible on this low-lying island, except from the castle.

  He leaned further out and turned north to catch the tumble of sand dunes that skirted the coastal road, back towards the mainland they had left behind.

  For a while, he was busy with lenses and angles. He tried to close his mind to the voice that told him there would be no book of Jenny’s to illustrate this time.

  Yet, as he focused on the advancing line of grey water, he felt a surge of joy returning. There was always something special about being on an island towards the end of the day, when the tourists have gone, and only the residents and the longer-term visitors remain. It was all the more marked on Lindisfarne when the tide rose to cut off access.

  “It’s just us now, isn’t it?” Melangell said, catching his thought. “Once the tide comes in, no one else can come.”

  “I expect they have boats for emergencies.”

  She made a face. “Spoilsport.”

  Aidan was just turning away from the window when a movement below caught his eye. A man came striding into the garden, not from the house, but angling across the lawn. From above, Aidan couldn’t see his face to judge his age, just his thick crop of golden-waved hair and his brown bomber jacket.

  A woman sprang up from one of the garden seats. Aidan hadn’t noticed her before. In all the time he and Melangell had been looking out of the window, she must not have moved. She almost ran to meet the newcomer. A plump young woman, with long straight hair. She seized his arm.

  Even from here, without hearing what he said, it was plain to see the impatience with which the man shook her off. She stepped back, repulsed, but she was still talking to him. The man made as if to stride past her to his chalet. But then he checked. He turned back and put his arm around her shoulders. Aidan’s eye showed him, in imagination, the impatience in the man’s face turn to a cajoling smile. For a moment, he saw again that couple clasped together on the beach.

  The woman’s shoulders relaxed. She sidled against him as they went across the grass to one of the doors. Then, to Aidan’s surprise, he shut the door firmly on her. She was left standing on the verandah. She seemed to watch the closed door for a while, then turned for the main house.

  Aidan’s eyebrows rose. So, not a couple, then. Or not officially. But the golden-haired man in the brown jacket was not slumming in the servants’ bedrooms under the eaves. Did he have another partner, a friend? Or had he booked this spacious family room for himself?

  He sat down on the bed and began to review the photos he had taken. He came to that distant couple on the beach. The red top and the brown. The image was too small to see more. His thumb lingered over the delete button, but curiosity stayed his hand.

  A gong rang faintly downstairs.

  “Tea,” Aidan announced, turning from the window and stowing his camera away.

  “Yay!” Melangell leaped from his bed. “I’m starving.”

  They were starting down the stairs when a young woman shot past them, running up towards the top floor they had just left. She was dressed entirely in black. A fall of dark hair, none too clean, swung aside as she turned her head to them. Aidan saw a flash of interest in her brown eyes. Her lips curved in a cheeky smile.

  Then the spark faded. The lank hair fell back, hiding her face. She turned at the top of the stairs and headed for one of the bedroom doors.

  Aidan grinned wryly. For a moment, there had been something provocative in those curving lips. But he was forty, ginger-haired. Nothing there to excite a sexually active teenager.

  The grin stiffened. Jenny hadn’t lived to see forty.

  There were voices coming from the sitting room. As they crossed the hall, Aidan’s eye was caught by a red jacket flung across a chair. It had swept a hyacinth from the bowl of flowers. Something about the cut of it told him it was a woman’s. It might have been dropped by someone coming through the front door, or the door from the garden, or even from upstairs.

  Peony red. The colour that had appeared briefly in that shot he had taken of the couple on the beach.

  The lounge, with its floral-upholstered sofas, seemed crowded. There was the curly haired minister Lucy, who had greeted them. She still looked athletic in sweatshirt and jogging pants. The oddly matched pair of older women who had stormed through reception were there. The golden-haired man Aidan had been watching from above had shed his jacket and now appeared in a high-necked Aran jersey. Close up, he was younger than Aidan and undeniably handsome and well built. As so often, Aidan wished that he himself was taller and did not have such flamboyantly ginger hair. He shot a glance of sympathy at the long-haired, overweight young woman standing just a little behind as this Adonis threw his dazzling smile around the other women.

  In a corner of the room he noticed, belatedly, an older couple he hadn’t seen before. Either they had been in their room when the Davisons had come, or they were late arrivals. The man was balding, in a crumpled brown linen suit. His grey-haired wife wore a baggy green cardigan over a ruffled white blouse. They stood retired from the rest, teacups in hand, making no attempt to engage strangers in conversation.

  Melangell wriggled deftly through the adult bodies to the table against the wall. It was set with teacups and plates of what looked like homemade cakes. She poured herself a cup of milk and piled her plate with a slice of carrot cake, an iced cupcake and a triangle of shortbread. She raised her eyebrows at Aidan, and took his grin as permission to add a piece of fruit cake to her hoard.

  “If you’d like to take a seat,” Lucy Pargeter was saying, “we’ll introduce ourselves, and I’ll tell you what I plan to do this week.”

  Melangell perched on the arm of Aidan’s sofa. The woman in the green cardigan smiled at him apologetically.

  “Is it all right if we come and join you?”

  Her bald-headed husband leaned across and beamed at Melangell. “Hello, young lady. I wasn’t expecting to find any children here. I hope you won’t be bored.”

  Aidan gritted his teeth. He was growing tired of the need to defend Melangell’s presence. It would sound too much like a doting parent to say that Melangell was not like other children, but it was true. It had been a bittersweet joy to think of bringing her here, the first real holiday they had had since Jenny died. She would be walking in her mother’s footsteps, reliving the stories of Northumbria’s past, which Jenny had revelled in. Many of
them Melangell knew already. He had not the slightest doubt about her capacity to keep up with the other participants.

  He was rescued from the need to reply. Lucy Pargeter was beginning the introductions.

  “It’s only fair to start with myself. I’m a Methodist minister from a small town in the middle of Devon, but I’ve got Northumbrian blood in me. Since I was a teenager I’ve been fascinated by the stories of Northumbrian kings and saints in what we used to call the Dark Ages, before we found out all the brilliant things that were going on then. A particular favourite of mine is Hilda of Whitby. Now there was a strong woman.” She shot a look across at Elspeth Haccombe, as though expecting the Oxford don to agree with her. But Dr Haccombe’s face was set in a sceptical frown, though her friend Valerie smiled.

  Lucy continued with undaunted enthusiasm. “Mother of one of the most famous abbeys of its time, with both men and women under her authority. I did think of holding this course at Whitby, but then it seemed better to come here, to Lindisfarne, where it all began. Anyone else ready to tell us who they are and why they’ve come? … Sue?”

  Her eyes found not the handsome male figure in the armchair opposite her, but the plainer, more self-effacing woman on a less comfortable chair beside him. Sue’s plump face, behind the glasses, looked startled.

  “Me?… I’m Sue English, from Huddersfield True Gospel Church. But I’m only James’s assistant. I help with the admin and stuff. He’s the one you should be asking.” She shot him a sidelong smile of encouragement.

  Her companion was already leaning forward on the edge of his seat, only too eager to take centre stage. But Lucy held up an authoritative hand. “All in good time, Sue. I want to know what brought you here.”

  Sue looked flustered by the question. Aidan suspected that what she wanted did not figure largely in the relationship.

  “I… that is… Well, it was the title, ‘Mission to Northumbria’. I mean, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? To spread the Lord’s word? I didn’t… I mean…” She looked nervously at James. “I didn’t think it was all going to be historical.”

  James rounded on her. “You mean you’ve dragged me all the way up here for a bunch of thousand-year-old superstitions! A workshop on mission, you told me. New fields of evangelism in the north.”

  It looked as though he was going to strike her. Aidan was halfway out of the sofa. Lucy gave a sharp cry and moved forward.

  Elspeth Haccombe harrumphed loudly from the far side of the room. “Speak for yourself! If I’d thought this was going to be some sort of charismatic crusade, I’d have taken myself somewhere else. Valerie assured me nobody would try to convert me.”

  “It’s OK,” Lucy tried to reassure her. Her cheeks looked pale and she was breathing fast. “We’ve all come with our own agenda. That’s the richness of this place. There’s something here for everyone. We don’t need to take away the same things from it.”

  She turned back to James, who settled back into his seat defiantly. She lifted her eyebrows enquiringly. James seized his opportunity, a little too forcefully for Aidan’s liking.

  “James Denholme. It sounds as though I’ve been brought here on false pretences. I’m not living in the past. Like Sue says, if you want to know about Huddersfield True Gospel Church, I’m the one you ought to be asking. I’m not just the pastor there. I set it up. And the Lord is doing wonderful work through me. People are streaming through the doors. I can assure our sister over there…”

  “That’s great, James.” Aidan’s estimation of Lucy grew as she cut in deftly to stem the flow. That moment of fear he had sensed in her had passed. “But all the details of this week were on the website and in the brochure. How did you think this course could meet your needs?”

  “I took Sue’s word for it.” He glared at her. “I don’t believe in all this stuff about Catholic saints and miracles.”

  “Celtic saints,” growled the formidable Elspeth. “Not Roman. At least, to begin with.”

  “Whatever. And Lucy, I have to tell you you’re wrong that women like your Hilda should have authority over men. All the twelve apostles were male. And didn’t St Paul say women should keep silent in church? No, I’m here because there’s a tide of paganism sweeping over England these days. It breaks my heart to look at the sinful world around us. Fool that I was, I thought you would have some ideas for doing something about that.”

  His blue eyes went challengingly round the room, as though the respectable array of people there were the epitome of drink, drugs and violence.

  “It’s true that I take my inspiration from the saints of the past,” Lucy countered. “But the last session will bring us up to date on what that means today.”

  The door behind her opened suddenly. A teenage girl with long, lank hair stood there. Acne marred her sallow face. Her brown eyes looked frightened.

  It was the same girl who had passed Aidan and Melangell on the stairs. And yet she was not the same.

  The provocative smile had gone. As she looked around the room full of people from under hooded lids, she flinched like a startled animal. She turned for the door as if about to bolt.

  Lucy was swiftly on her feet. Her hand went out to stay the girl.

  “This is Rachel,” she said to the others. “Rachel Ince. She’s a friend of mine. We came up together in my car from Devon. Rachel’s here because… well, mainly because she needs a holiday.”

  She spoke in a lower voice to the girl. “Are you all right? I missed you.”

  The girl nodded silently and tugged the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands. She let Lucy lead her to a chair beside her own and sat down. Aidan was close enough to see that she was trembling.

  “Welcome back, Rachel!” James Denholme was looking across the room at her intently.

  She hung her head and did not meet his eyes.

  Chapter Five

  “ELSPETH HACCOMBE. DOCTOR. Senior lecturer in history, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.” She bent a condescending smile on the rest of the group.

  Then her keen eyes went back to Lucy. “Don’t look so alarmed, padre. I’m a medievalist: thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I shan’t be trampling on your toes. I’m not a specialist in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. And in case you’re wondering what I’m doing on a church-based holiday, Valerie likes this kind of thing. She’s got a soft spot for your Celtic saints. Sentimentalism, if you ask me.”

  Lucy forced a smile, trying to keep the sharpness out of her voice. “You’re right there, Elspeth. There is a lot of sentimentality about the Celtic Church. That’s just what I’m hoping to lift the lid on this week. It wasn’t all attuning to nature and talking to the birds. There were bitter disputes that tore the community apart. We’ll be looking at those too. And by the way, I’m Lucy. There’s no need to stand on ceremony.”

  She could feel the disturbing undercurrents in the room. For a moment, James had frightened her, when he raised his fist to Sue. It had brought back terrifying memories. He obviously thought that Lucy had no right to wear a dog collar. He certainly thought he could run this course better than she would.

  And Dr Haccombe regarded her with barely disguised contempt. She may be right, Lucy thought ruefully. I’m no scholar. I just want to share my enthusiasm for this special place.

  She had missed Valerie Grayson’s soft-spoken introduction: “… assistant bookshop manager. And yes, Elspeth’s right. I’ve always loved the stories of the Northumbrian saints. The Venerable Bede’s history. I’m looking forward to you telling us more.”

  She has a lovely smile, Lucy reflected. I can see why even someone as prickly as Elspeth Haccombe loves her – if that’s the right word. She makes me feel she knows I’m feeling a bit bruised, that she’s on my side.

  She gave Valerie an answering smile of gratitude.

  “Aidan?”

  She saw the red-headed man start. He had been sitting on a sofa in the corner, his foxy face watching everyone else. Suddenly he found the spotlight of her attention
turned on him. She watched him struggle to come back from wherever his thoughts had taken him.

  “Aidan Davison.” He answered more curtly than she had expected. “Photographer.”

  He stopped, as though unwilling to go on.

  “And you’ve come here because…?”

  His eyes levelled on hers, almost with dislike. He swallowed. “I had… happy memories of this place. I wanted to show Melangell.”

  The gruffness of his voice discouraged further questions. There was something more here. Would a week be long enough for him to trust her, to tell her more?

  “Right. That leaves you.” She turned her smile on the couple sharing the sofa with Aidan.

  Melangell’s hand shot up. “Please, Miss Pargeter… Sorry! Lucy. You forgot about me.”

  I’ve done it again! Lucy cursed herself. Acted as though an eight-year-old child couldn’t speak for herself.

  “Oh, Melangell! I’m so sorry. What did you want to tell us?”

  “I’m Melangell Davison. Melangell after a Welsh saint. I’m eight years old and I go to St Nicholas Primary School. And I really, really wanted to come on your holiday, because I’ve got loads of books about St Aidan and St Cuthbert and St Chad, and all the rest of them. My mother wrote them.”

  The girl was sitting so close to her father on the arm of the sofa that Lucy could not help seeing the shock that stiffened him.

  He really hadn’t wanted Melangell to say that. I guess it must have been a painful marriage break-up. Yet why come back here to awaken those memories?

  “Thank you, Melangell. If you’ve got any of those books with you, I’d love to see them.”

  Now there really was only the elderly couple on the sofa.

  The bald-headed man beamed round at all of them. “David Cavendish. Retired. A gentleman of leisure now. To tell you the truth, we didn’t set out looking for this sort of holiday. But we’ve always loved the north-east: Robin Hood’s Bay, Scarborough, Alnwick Castle. And when we looked up on the internet to see where we could stay, this came up. And we thought, well, that sounds a bit different. Let’s give it a go.” He turned to his wife. “Isn’t that right, Fran?”