Gather the Bones

by Alison Stuart

She looked up at his face and saw the pain of desire in his eyes as he bent his head to kiss her. His lips found hers in a clumsy kiss.

  For a moment, Helen was too startled to react. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away. She took a step backward, staring at him, appalled that he had misinterpreted their relationship.

  “I must go,” she mumbled. Turning on her heel, she looped Hector’s reins around her arm and started to walk toward the stable.

  “Helen,” Tony put a restraining hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...I shouldn’t...”

  Helen recoiled. “No. You shouldn’t have...but it didn’t happen,” she said, conscious that her face burned with embarrassment. “Forget it.”

  She reached the stableyard with her heart pounding. Without daring to look back to see if Tony had gone, she left Hector with Sam and ran up the stairs to her bedroom. Still dressed in her riding clothes she flung herself full length on the bed and buried her face in her pillows. As she sobbed into the feathers, she felt the touch of a hand on her shoulder.

  Her heart stopped, feeling the cold fingers even through the thickness of her jacket and shirt.

  “The wrong man,” a woman’s voice whispered in her ear.

  Helen gave a yelp, muffled by the pillow and rolled off the bed, looking around the room with wild eyes. She was alone, quite alone.

  Chapter 16

  On Monday, a letter came from Aunt Philomena. Helen took the papers upstairs to her room to read.

  Dear Mrs. Morrow, Aunt Philomena began. I had a most enjoyable day delving into the household records of Wellmore. Oh, my dear, the parties! What a wonderful world to have lived in. As I predicted, the household records of the period 1810 - 1815 are quite complete and include the guest registers of the time. A ball was held to celebrate the New Year on Dec 31 1811. Among the guests recorded staying at the house are several Naval officers, including a Captain Stephenson. I feel strongly that Captain Stephenson is your man as his name appears quite frequently in the guest registers over the next few months. The last entry recording his name is September 12. The date tallies with the disappearance of the scandalous Suzanna. My thought was confirmed when I came across a letter to then Viscountess written by Lady Morrow. I enclose a transcript. I do hope that is of some help with your investigations. Hon. Ph. Scar.

  Helen turned to the transcript of the letter from Lady Cecilia Morrow.

  Holdston September 20, 1812 My dear Lady Hartfield, your letter of 19 inst is to my hand and I thank you for your sympathy in this our darkest hour. Robert has suffered a serious relapse and we fear greatly for his health. The children of course are quite distracted and the baby bawls continually for her mother. However I cannot, in all justice, absolve of you of blame in this matter. If it were not for you, my lamented daughter in law would not have fallen into the company of such a scoundrel as Captain James Stephenson. His reputation is notorious and I am appalled that you have allowed him your hospitality and the freedom to seduce my son’s wife, even as her husband lay close to death. The blackguard, when confronted by my man of business had the audacity to deny any knowledge of Suzanna’s whereabouts. He admits to having indeed plotted with her to abscond from Holdston but denies the plot was ever carried through. He says he waited in the churchyard for three hours but she never came. He has the audacity to claim to be brokenhearted at what he perceives as her desertion and is to quit England for the colony of Port Jackson. England is well rid of him and indeed of her, if she is, as I am certain, with him. I need not tell you how deeply this will affect us and my grandchildren will forever bear the stain of their mother’s disgrace. As far as I am concerned, her name will never be mentioned in our presence again. I remain yrs Cecilia, Lady Morrow.

  Helen felt the breath stop in her throat as she read Cecilia’s bitter, angry words. ‘S’ had a name. James Stephenson.

  She carefully folded the letters and put them in the folder where she kept the transcripts of the diary that Paul gave her. A knock on her bedroom door made her jump and without bidding, Evelyn Morrow entered the room.

  Helen managed a smile. “Good morning. I was just considering a walk.”

  The smile on her lips died as she saw the anger in Evelyn’s eyes. “Helen, I must talk to you on a serious matter,” she said.

  Helen stared blankly at her mother-in-law.

  “I have been wrestling with my conscience for the last two days and I cannot let the matter pass without saying something.”

  “What have I done?” Helen asked.

  Evelyn’s hands twisted together. “I thought I had myself quite clear on the subject of your unfortunate habit of flirting–”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have just returned from taking tea with Lady Hartfield and she is appalled by your behavior. She tells me Tony is quite besotted by you and is talking of asking you to marry him.”

  Helen’s mouth fell open. “I assure you, I have not given him any–”

  Evelyn’s head came up and she fixed Helen with hard, cold eyes. “I saw you kissing him on Saturday so don’t pretend ignorance of the subject.”

  “Kissing him? He kissed me. I assure you, I gave him no encouragement–”

  But Evelyn was in full flight now. “I said to Gerald when Charlie married you that you would turn out to be a common little piece, after money and a title. And I was right. Charlie would have made you the wife of a baronet, but you want more. You want to be a Viscountess.”

  Helen felt the white heat of anger in her face. “How dare you accuse me of things of which you know nothing! I loved Charlie for who he was, not what he was. I didn’t even know about the baronetcy until our wedding. To me he was plain Charlie Morrow. Unlike you, I do not judge people by how they speak or where they stand in the social order.” She paused, her breath coming in short, tight gasps. “I came to England at your invitation, Lady Morrow, and as I am now unwelcome in this house, Alice and I will be gone in the morning.”

  Evelyn stared at her, her jaw set in a rigid line. Even as Helen watched the woman’s mouth began to tremble.

  “Helen, I–”

  “No, you have said your piece, Lady Morrow. I am an embarrassment to you so I think it is better I leave.”

  Evelyn looked away.

  “I am deeply hurt that you should think so little of me,” Helen continued. “I can only give you my word that I have done nothing to encourage Tony’s feelings for me. I regard him as a friend, nothing more. Please do me the courtesy of assuring Lady Hartfield of that fact. Now if you’ll excuse me I had better see to my packing.”

  Turning on her heel, Evelyn left the room without another word, shutting the door behind her.

  Helen sat down on the edge of the bed and closed her eyes against the tears that welled up inside her. The humiliation of being labeled a flirt and a ‘common piece’ mingled with her own conflicted emotions about the men in her life. She did love Tony but not in the way Tony would have liked. He brought light and laughter back into her world but Paul...enigmatic and withdrawn. She had felt a connection to him she had not sensed in a long time. It went deeper than their mutual love of Charlie. She felt safe around him and his absence from the house left her feeling cold and empty.

  “I can’t go,” she whispered.

  An unearthly moan filled the room. Helen froze, her breath stopping in her throat as the whispering started. Helen put her hands over ears.

  “Stop it!” she said to the insubstantial presence. “I know–we were so close. I’m sorry, I’ve failed you.”

  The room fell silent. Helen fell back on the bed and stared up at the crooked beams of the ceiling, too shocked to even weep.

  * * * *

  Dressed in her hat and coat, her suitcase at her feet, Helen sat at the desk in her bedroom and penned a last note to Paul Morrow.

  Dear Paul, I regret circumstances have required me to leave Holdston. The enclosed came from Philomena Scarvell this morning. I am now utterly convinced that Suzanna never l
eft Holdston but met with an accident or foul play. That is the mystery she wants answered. I hope you are able to resolve it. There seems little point in my further involvement. Best wishes, Helen.

  She bit her lip and reread the stiff, formal little note. There was so much she wanted to say but there seemed little point. Paul had enough information now to solve the mystery, if indeed there was one, on his own. Beyond that, there were not the words to say what was in her heart.

  Picking up her suitcase she walked out of the green bedroom for the last time and finding Paul’s door unlocked, slipped inside. She looked around the empty sitting room, missing his presence with a palpable sense of regret.

  Leaving the folder with her research on Suzanna under Paul’s copy of the Iliad, she stood holding the note in her hand. If she left it in an obvious place, she had no doubt Evelyn could find it and may destroy it as she had destroyed his mother’s letters. In Paul’s bedroom, she slipped the envelope under the pillows of the bed, restoring the covers to pristine order.

  There was no sign of Evelyn in the hall but Sarah Pollard stood by the door with a doleful Alice beside her.

  “You go and tell Pollard that your ma is ready to go,” Sarah said to Alice. The girl hefted a tragic sigh and obeyed.

  “I just wanted to say that I’m so sorry, Helen.” Sarah twisted her handkerchief in her hand.

  “Sorry for what?”

  Sarah looked around the Great Hall. “She doesn’t understand what’s been happening in this house.”

  Helen looked at the woman. “What do you mean, Sarah?”

  Sarah nodded. “You and the Major have stirred the spirits. There’s been two I’ve not noticed before.”

  Helen forced herself to speak. “Paul and I...we’ve both seen them. We think we know who they are. Suzanna and Robert Morrow.”

  Sarah nodded. “Ah, I thought you had seen something when we talked about the Holdston ghosts, but it’s not just them, there’s another one just come lately, like it’s been roused from somewhere bad. There’s evil in the house where there weren’t none before.”

  Helen swallowed. “Evil?” She touched her wrist where the hand had grasped her. She could still recall the icy touch of those invisible fingers and the overwhelming terror that had accompanied the sensation. She had not experienced the same sense of fear when Suzanna communicated with her. Maybe it hadn’t been Suzanna?

  Sarah nodded. “There’s anger here, Helen, old, unresolved anger and I fear only you and he together can stop it.”

  Helen forced a smile and put a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “You’re being melodramatic, Sarah. I’m sure once I am gone everything will return to normal.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. It’ll never be what it was before.”

  “Mummy.” Alice appeared at the door. “Sam’s waiting for us. Do we have to go?”

  “Yes we do, Alice! We have a train to catch. We’re going to visit my mother’s cousin, Ann, in Cumbria and then we are going explore Paris and Rome together.”

  “But I don’t want to go,” Alice whined. “When are we coming back?”

  Helen looked down at her daughter. “One day.” She hated lying to her daughter but the affairs of adults were not a matter for the child.

  “Where do I send any mail?” Sarah asked.

  “For the moment, forward any mail care of the Post office in Haymere, Cumbria,” Helen replied. “I’ll give Ann any other forwarding addresses after we leave.”

  “And what do I tell him?”

  Helen caught Sarah’s eye and smiled. “Tell Paul I’ll send a postcard.”

  Sarah forced a smile. “Well, God bless and a safe journey, Mrs. Morrow and you, young Alice.”

  She gave Alice a hug and Helen a quick peck on the cheek and strode away toward the kitchen.

  Helen walked out of Holdston without a backward glance.

  Chapter 17

  In the drab Belfast hotel room Paul lay awake finishing a cigarette and staring up at the ceiling.

  Devlin’s wife had been expecting him and had wasted no time showing Paul upstairs to the little room where Devlin lay dying. The man lying propped up high on the pillows had the familiar waxen pallor of a man facing death, his face a skull’s head over which the skin stretched like parchment. Only his bright eyes, fixed on Paul’s face still danced with life.

  He tried to raise himself but the effort caused him to cough. His wife wiped the blood from his lips and resettled him on the pillows.

  “I’ll leave you. Don’t keep him talking too long, Major Morrow,” she said and slipped from the room.

  Paul pulled up a chair close to the bed. “Devlin” he said. “I’m sorry to see you like this.”

  “They got me in the end, sorr. But it does my heart good to see you hale again.”

  “A little battered but I’ll do,” Paul said.

  They made polite conversation, exchanging news of their lives since the war. As Devlin’s breathing grew more ragged, Paul put a hand over the other man’s, clasping the fingers lightly in his own.

  “You’re tired, Pat. I should go.”

  The other man shook his head. “Bide a while longer, sir. I never got a chance to tell you that I was sorry about the Captain.”

  “So am I. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think of him,” Paul said with a frankness he would not normally display. “Pat, perhaps you can do something for me?”

  Pat Devlin’s mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. “Whatever’s in me power.”

  “That night...I can only remember bits and pieces. Can you tell me what you saw and heard?”

  “You went back for him, sorr.”

  “I remember that. It’s what happened out there in no man’s land that–” He shrugged helplessly. “We were lagging behind the rest of the men and I remember an explosion and then, nothing.”

  “All I can tell you is that those of us that could, got back to the trenches under heavy fire. I looked back and saw you with the Captain and then a bloody mortar lobbed in front of ye and that was the last I saw.” His thin chest heaved as he struggled for breath. “They made us pay, sorr–kept up the bombardment all day and night. Nothin’ we could do but keep our heads down. They let up in the morning and that’s when young Evans saw you crawlin’ in through the mud. Couldn’t believe our eyes. Trouble was the Huns seen you too and thought you’d make some fine target practice. Tha’s when I thought it best to go and bring ye in meself.”

  The selfless act of going out into no-man’s land went beyond words. Paul’s fingers tightened on Devlin’s and he hoped the simple gesture conveyed his understanding of what the man had done for him.

  Devlin fought his breath and said so softly that Paul had to bend to hear him.

  “There were whispers, sorr. After...that you may have ‘elped him, if you know what I mean...but no truth to that...Brewer said he thought the Capn’ was on his way out even before you went back for him.”

  Paul’s mouth tightened. “He wasn’t dead, Pat, and I wasn’t going to leave him. I owed it to him to bring him back. I allowed him to go out there to take the pill box out with the grenades before the attack.” He drew a heavy, shuddering breath.

  “If you hadn’t let him go? How many others would’ve died that day?” Devlin frowned. “It weren’t the attack that killed ‘im, it were the retreat. Nearly killed you too, so are ye going to spend your whole life blaming yourself, sorr?”

  Paul slowly shook his head. “No. I’ve learned to live with my decision, Devlin, but it can be an uncomfortable companion at times.”

  “Aye, it would.”

  Devlin nodded and began to cough again. Paul saw to him with the tenderness of a father for a child and laid the wasted body back on the pillow.

  The war had taken another casualty. Pat Devlin died in the dark hours of the night with his family, six children of varying ages, their eyes large and fearful in pale faces, his wife and her mother and Paul Morrow by his bedside.

  Slowly the fr
agments of his memory were coming together. Devlin had saved his life and Devlin had given him a few more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. Paul stubbed out the cigarette and closed his eyes. Remembrance came at a cost.

  * * * *

  Passchandaele September 17, 1917.

  Paul’s first thought as he felt the rain on his face, was one of despair. The cold, unrelenting wetness meant only one thing. He wasn’t dead. He opened his eyes and looked up into the dark sky and wondered what time it was. Midnight? Past midnight? He parted his lips and let the wetness relieve his raging thirst. It tasted of blood, everything tasted or smelt of blood and worse.

  He dared not move. Movement would attract the unwanted attention of the snipers in the German trenches and, he thought grimly, start his wounds bleeding again. He would die here in this shell hole, already up to his knees in the fetid water beneath him. It would take days to die, a long, slow agonizing death. God knew in the last few years he had seen such deaths often enough.

  He tentatively moved his right hand, just enough to seek out his holster. Finding it empty, he closed his eyes and grimaced in impotent despair as memory flooded back. He raised his aching head to look down into the dark, evil water below him. Nothing disturbed its surface except the spattering rain drops. It was as if the earth itself had swallowed Charlie and now tried to suck him down too.

  The persistent rain sent icy splinters of cold through his soaked tunic into his bones. If the wounds didn’t kill him, exposure might speed the process. He lay for a long time in the cold and the dark summoning up the courage to move.

  A shell burst close by, spattering him with mud and filthy water. Paul shut his eyes, his body responding instinctively, despite his protesting injuries, by curling up protectively. When the ground stopped vibrating, he wiped the mud from his eyes with his good hand and lay quite still, gathering his strength and mentally plotting the one hundred yards that stood between him and the British lines.

  Another shell burst and taking advantage of the confusion in the air, Paul rolled on to his right side, crying aloud at the pain. It would be a long, slow crawl back to safety.