Perhaps the events of today would help me move on.
I glanced at my bedside clock and sat up. Standing and opening the curtains, I was struck by the strange beauty of this normal, new day. It was cool and frosty once again. For the third morning in a row, I dwelled upon how the dead man would see no more mornings.
His wife would be here soon. A police officer would be accompanying her. After an initial deep sense of anxiety at the prospect, I had at last accepted to meet her. She was the one who mattered in this. The police had filled me in a little about her background, and the more I heard, the more I understood why this day must be so important to her. I might have been having strange dreams, but her waking hours had become a nightmare. If I hadn’t found her husband’s body, it might have been many days before his fate was discovered. Even weeks. Perhaps he might never have been found at all, hidden from the towpath as he was by a large holly bush and a couple of fallen trees. I was the person who had changed her life.
Jazz and I had changed everything.
I dressed and ate breakfast, then went about cleaning the house. I kept it in good condition anyway, but having a stranger visit gave me the impetus to vacuum and dust once more. Dog hair gets everywhere. But as I cleaned, I realised that I would not be letting the widow inside. Not after what had happened. Not after the dog had snuffled at her husband’s corpse.
There was no way that she could meet Jazz.
* * *
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Jenny asks. She’s sitting in the back of the police car, and the policewoman is turned around in the passenger seat, eyes wide.
“I only found out myself this morning,” she says. “And, really…” She shrugs. Does it matter?
Jenny frowns and looks at the hedgerows and fields flitting by. Did it matter? She wasn’t sure how it could, yet it did. If this were a TV series or a book, not real life, it would hint at a malevolent pattern, a twisted thread leading to more murder and mourning. In truth, it’s nothing but a sad coincidence. It is always a woman out for a jog or a man walking his dog, isn’t it? They are the people out early in the morning. They are the ones who find what the night leaves behind.
“How long ago?” Jenny asks without looking at the policewoman.
“Fourteen years.”
“Not the same dog, then.”
“Huh?”
It doesn’t matter. They swing from the main road onto a lane leading along the hillside, and across a couple of fields she can see the line of trees that marks the route of the canal, and the hump of an old stone bridge. They’re still three or four miles from where John was found, but the towpath that leads there is now very close by. From here, all routes lead to his lonely, sad death.
A tear rolls down her cheek. She leaves it to drip from her jaw. She has wiped away too many tears.
“I hope he won’t want to talk about it,” Jenny says. “The other body he found all those years ago, I mean.”
The policewoman doesn’t reply. Jenny suspects that he’s already had to talk about it enough with the police. She feels sorry for the man and hopes he’s not nervous.
They finish the journey in silence, parking across the road from a neat little cottage. It’s small but well kept, render-painted a pale yellow, its garden large and ordered. There’s a Ford in the driveway, and a curl of smoke rising from the chimney. Jenny realises that she doesn’t know a single thing about this man, other than what he found three days ago. She hasn’t asked his name, whether he’s married or alone, how old he is, what he does. She’s suddenly embarrassed by that. He’s been through a trauma too.
She wonders what he thinks about her wishing to meet him.
“Are you ready, Jenny?” the policewoman asks.
She nods. “Yes.”
The policewoman leaves the car and opens Jenny’s door for her, and as she does so the cottage’s front door opens and a man emerges. He’s tall and perhaps a decade older than her John, well dressed against the cold, and as he closes the door behind him and smiles, Jenny wonders, So, where’s the dog? He crosses the country lane and stands close to the back of the police car.
“I thought we might go for a walk,” he says.
* * *
He took the woman – the widow – and the policewoman along a track by his house and into a small woodland. They walked away from the canal, not towards it. The silence was awkward and heavy, punctuated only by the sound of their footsteps on the frozen ground, the crinkle of leaves beneath their shoes, the birdsong from the bare trees and bushes. He walked side by side with the woman, and if he glanced to the left and away from her he might have been alone.
He often came to these woods with Jazz. He knew the area well, and he led them to a place in the centre where several fallen trees provided somewhere to lean or sit.
“I’m so very sorry,” he said at last.
“Yes,” the woman said. She pressed her lips tight and a tear flowed down her cheek. It dripped to the forest floor, and he thought, I wonder if it will freeze there?
“I thought walking might be better, you know, fresh air and…”
“And you didn’t want me to meet your dog.”
He blinked, not sure what to say.
“I understand,” the woman said. “That’s very thoughtful of you.” She looked around. “It’s very lovely here.”
“Yes, it is,” he said. “You should see it in springtime. We walk here often, Jazz and I, most days in fact. Here and the… the canal.”
“Good companionship, I imagine. Maybe I should get a dog.”
“I couldn’t do without her,” he said.
“John and I used to walk,” she said. “He liked getting up into the hills, but lately my hip’s been getting worse and we’ve ended up finding flatter places to walk. Along the river, sometimes, you know? We always end up at a coffee shop somewhere. You feel like you’ve earned your cake after walking for several miles. John likes Victoria sponge, the bigger the better. He usually has two coffees.” She paused, looking over his shoulder. “Had two coffees. Liked Victoria sponge.” She was having trouble balancing the present and past, and he was not surprised. It was early days.
“Do you have a wife?” the woman asked. The question surprised him, and he took a few seconds to gather himself, moments in which memories danced and sang, and emotions made him their plaything.
“Not for a long time,” he said at last. The woman smiled in sympathy. He smiled back. And like that the ice was melted, the awkwardness between them broken, and they were just two lonely people in their autumn years taking a stroll in winter sunlight.
* * *
Later, he went for his usual afternoon walk with Jazz. He left the cottage and headed up the gentle slope to the canal, crossing the small bridge and descending three steps onto the towpath. It would be getting dark within half an hour, but that was still long enough to stretch his legs and let Jazz have a good sniff around to do her business. And after today, he needed a walk.
For the first couple of minutes, he was on his own. He whistled softly and uttered her name under his breath. “Jazz. Jazz.” He felt a faint tugging on the lead he was carrying. “Good girl,” he said. He looked down and saw a shimmer around the end of the lead. “You always come when I call you.”
It took his old dog a few more minutes to fully appear. And then he let her go and she was gone, darting along the canal to pick up the ghostly scents of other dogs, sniffing at forgotten dead things in the undergrowth, being with him as he had always been with her, and always would.
CAMEO
Laura Purcell
Stephen had never thought to see the old place again. Hoped not to, in all honesty. Five years later and it was just the same. That dreary stone terrace and the urns that decorated it, stretching towards the fringe of an oak forest. It was late September now. Acorns everywhere underfoot, dropping from the trees and narrowly avoiding Gwen’s head as she and Stephen made their way, trembling, towards the steps that led to the front
door.
Where was the sunshine they’d driven through this morning? Gone. Stonevale Hall sustained its own atmosphere. He wouldn’t be surprised to see a cloud hovering perpetually over the roof. Take the oaks, for example. In other parts of the country they blushed, a charming array of bronze and russet. Here they were dirt brown. As if they had skipped over the autumnal phase in a rush to die and be rid of the place.
He raised the polished knocker and let it fall against a shining, black door. Footsteps sounded in another part of the house. Gwen’s fingers gripped his coat sleeve. Poor old girl. The shame of knocking for admittance to her former home must be crushing. But if he was supposed to feel guilty for taking her away from this life, he didn’t. Already the return was making her look pinched and anxious, the grey stone walls throwing a pallor over her skin. What with the black dress, she hardly resembled his wife at all. No; setting her free from this house had been the best thing he’d ever done.
The door opened slightly to reveal the hawk of a butler, Jones. A beak nose and hooded eyes lurked beneath two bristling brows. “May I help you?”
A deliberate snub. As if he did not know Gwen, had not seen her grow from a child. On another occasion, Stephen would bloody the fellow’s nose, but that would hardly raise Gwen’s spirits now.
“What, Jones, grown forgetful in your dotage, have you? Or is it your eyesight that’s gone?” Unintimidated, Stephen pushed at the door, forced it open wider. “It’s Mr and Mrs Fletcher here for the reading of the will, just like everyone else.”
The old man’s mouth quirked. “So it is. I did not recognise Miss Gwendoline.”
“Mrs Fletcher.”
“Yes… Marriage has altered her.” Jones pressed on the word like a bruise. His eyes ranged over Gwen’s unfashionable dress, the black shoes that had seen better days, and the hair she could not afford to keep styled.
She blushed, but the anger seemed to ginger her up a bit. “Just let us in, Jones. It’s going to rain.”
It was darker inside. The windows only admitted a depressing, grainy sort of light. There was no glint on the heavy gold frames around the paintings, no shine from the glass in the grandfather clock. Everything was matt and dull.
“This way, if you please.”
Stephen followed reluctantly through the mahogany-panelled hallways, wrinkling his nose at the hunting trophies that snarled from the walls. Gwen huffed, slowing her pace to keep behind the butler.
How had this starched place ever been a home to her? The woman he knew was warm and sweet. Not simply an attentive mother, but a fun one too. Such qualities did not take root inside Stonevale Hall. They were smothered beneath the perfume of dried flowers and waxed wood. God, it made him feel like all the life was being slowly choked out of him. The sooner they got this blasted will over and done with, the better.
Jones came to a halt and opened the door to the drawing room. At this proximity, Stephen could see flakes of dandruff on the shoulders of his coat. The old man was crumbling like some decayed relic of a bygone age.
“Mr and Mrs Fletcher,” Jones announced with cool disdain. Voices murmured; a spot of red burned in each of Gwen’s cheeks.
Seizing her hand, Stephen marched in and pulled her after him. He hadn’t fought in a war to be cowed by snobbish parasites, thank you very much. And there they were, the old crowd, vapid as ever. Men with oiled hair, the young women flat-chested in their unflattering gowns. Gwen’s sisters now sported locks cropped to their jaws. It made them look strangely androgynous.
“Good day,” Stephen said, with a touch more force than he intended.
No response. He hadn’t expected one.
Two Wedgwood chairs were left vacant next to the General, one of those moustachioed buffoons who had sent so many good men to their death. Gritting his teeth, Stephen sat down beside him. Gwen perched on the edge of her seat, hands bunched in her lap.
Anger flared in his chest, but he stifled it. Christ, what wouldn’t be stifled in that drawing room? It was worse than the hallways: papered the red of a corked wine, an unnecessary fire smoking beneath the grey marble mantelpiece. Above it, the old Tartar herself glared down over them in oil paints, more vivid and alive than she had ever appeared in the flesh.
Lady Strange’s painted expression was precisely the one she had bestowed upon Stephen the last time they had met. He remembered the cloud of powder that fell from that nest of carefully coiffured white hair, and the thin top lip, set in its habitual sneer. “You might have possessed the impudence to marry her, but she will never be yours. Never. She is my daughter, and I will take her back.”
He waggled his eyebrows at the portrait. Bad luck, your ladyship.
A suited, spectacled man who must be the lawyer stood with a sheaf of papers tucked under his arm. He cleared his throat. “I believe that everyone concerned is now present. If I might begin.”
A creak as the black-clad family shifted in their seats, leant forward with gleaming eyes. Carrion birds.
Stephen lolled back and let the lawyer’s voice drone over him. There would be nothing for Gwen. Lady Strange had stipulated that her youngest daughter attend the reading of the will, but he wouldn’t put it past her to do that out of spite. To make Gwen bear the shame of her disinheritance in public. He was only sorry they’d been foolish enough to come at the dead woman’s bidding.
But there you had it. Gwen loved her mother. Why was a question he was never able to answer, but he wasn’t a brute. If she wanted to visit Stonevale Hall one last time, he wasn’t the one to begrudge her. She’d given up everything for him.
The bequests fell out in the order he expected. Stonevale Hall to Winifred, the eldest. Daphne got a chunk of money, and the General received an amount so similar it must have been the portion originally allotted to Gwen. Well, the old butcher was Lady Strange’s brother; he deserved it. But it chafed one to think of what might have been. Little Camilla would be off to a much better school with that sort of cash. But perhaps it was healthier for the child to make her own way in the world and not be trapped in the clutches of these people, as her mother had been.
Pensions for servants. Gifts to cousins, worth more than Stephen earned in a year. The list went on, the relations becoming more obscure. He uncrossed his legs, crossed them the other way. Gwen sank lower in her seat with every name read.
But then suddenly, “To Gwendoline Abigail Fletcher, my antique cameo brooch.”
Heads swivelled in their direction. Gwen raised her chin, eyes sparkling with tears. She had something. The wording of the will did not even acknowledge her as Lady Strange’s child – yet still, she had something. She had not quite been forgotten.
It clearly meant the world to her.
* * *
Gwen waited until they were inside the parked car before she ventured to untie the ribbon on the black velvet box. They huddled together in expectation, almost like a couple on Christmas Day. Rather less jolly, though. Gwen’s fingers trembled.
“I never saw my mother wear a cameo brooch,” she observed. “I didn’t realise she owned one.”
“Well, women have so many gimcracks,” he reasoned. “It must have been something from the old days, before you were born.”
“But my sisters and I knew every item in Mamma’s jewellery box, Stephen.”
They hadn’t been able to discuss their inheritance with the superior sisters. Winifred and Daphne had stood in a cluster with their own, wealthy husbands who had gone to public school and not the local grammar, like Stephen. They even had the audacity to sneer at his motorcar, saying real gentlemen would never need such a contraption. Bloody idiots. Antiques, just like the thing in Gwen’s box.
He sensed her reluctance to pull up the lid, a superstitious dread, as if she held a coffin in the palm of her hand and not a simple item of jewellery.
“Maybe you will remember the brooch when you see it?”
“Maybe.” She did not look convinced. Squaring her shoulders, she took a deep breath and pr
ised open the clasp.
The lid creaked on its hinges. Inside, the box was lined with dark satin. A jet oval scalloped with gold filigree nestled amongst it. A cameo, as the will had said. The profile depicted was that of a young lady, hair piled on her head, one loose curl springing free at the nape of her neck.
She looked ghostly amidst all that black, ephemeral. A little wisp of a nose, a pointed chin. Not true to life. The brooch must date from a time before the method was refined. Stephen did not like the way the artist had indicated her eye by shadowing the socket. There was no pupil, only a dead, white eyeball gazing blankly to the side.
“Oh.” Gwen ran her fingertips over the jet. “It’s… quite beautiful.”
Stephen nudged her. “How much do you think it will fetch?”
His jest did the trick, broke the spell. Gwen laughed, batting him playfully on the arm. “Beast.”
How good it was to hear her laugh again. The last week or so had been an awful trial for her, what with the grief, which tended to strike even when one hated one’s parents, and the odious family in contact again. He raised a hand to her cheek.
“You know, I think you were tremendously brave in there, darling. I’ve never been prouder of you.”
Her lower lip trembled. She cast her eyes down, back at the brooch. “I’m glad there was something. At the end. She didn’t go hating me.”
“No. Of course not.” He turned from her, put his hands on the wheel. Talking to Gwen about her mother was a bit like conversing with Camilla. One had to be careful, to guard her from certain truths.
“It was a gesture of forgiveness,” she insisted.
“Yes, dear.”
A piece of broken jewellery, at the end of the will. Even a fool could decipher Lady Strange’s true message.
* * *
By the time they returned to Sussex the gloom was gone, the day honey-glazed once more as the sun sank behind the hills. Their home might not be Stonevale Hall, but it was a damn sight more welcoming with the small lake twinkling at them and the warm, red hue of the bricks. Before the car had stopped, the front door flew open. Camilla rushed out with poor distracted Nanny hot on her heels.
Phantoms Page 8
