by Sarah Rayne
Was there a way she could make sure he never told anyone?
It was about a week after that terrible evening that Ella’s mother showed her a piece in the newspaper – the Bramley Advertiser it was called. It had local news in it, photographs of people getting married and stories about people in the villages, and lists of babies born or people who had died.
On one of the pages was a smudgy photograph of a lady with a severe expression and a long elaborate gown, standing outside a house that Ella recognized at once. It was Cadence Manor, only it was not Cadence Manor as it was now, but years and years ago when it had been tidy and nice, with lots of people living there. The newspaper said the lady in the photo was Lady Cadence – Serena Cadence – shown in her heyday and in the heyday of the Cadence family. Ella looked up the word ‘heyday’ in her school dictionary and it meant a time of great success or happiness.
The paper also said Serena Cadence had died at the family home, where she had lived a retired life for many years because of suffering from a long and debilitating illness. The long illness must be the marks on her face; Ella shuddered, remembering them. What kind of illness gave you marks like that? She looked up the word ‘debilitating’ as well. It meant something that made you very weak. But Lady Cadence had not been so weak she could not scream and threaten people with her walking stick.
The newspaper said there would be a private funeral service but also a public memorial service at St Michael’s church, and told readers how Lady Cadence had been a lovely and gracious lady who had lived through stirring times and led a full and interesting life.
‘Did she do that?’ said Ella. ‘Live through stirring times?’
‘I suppose so,’ said her mother, her eyes on the smudgy photograph. ‘She lived through two world wars, although she did so in extreme comfort while the rest of us struggled and scraped to put food on the table.’ Ella heard the vicious note in her mother’s voice, and she was so worried that Mum’s face would take on the snarly look again that she mumbled it was very interesting and thank you for showing her the article.
The article had not told the truth, though. Ella knew that, and she supposed her mother knew it as well. But the newspaper people would not be able to write that Serena Cadence had been a vicious old woman who called people bad names and frightened them half to death.
The really strange thing, though, was that the newspaper said Lady Cadence had died from her long and debilitating illness. It did not say she had died because someone had dealt her a vicious blow and she had smashed her head against a marble fireplace.
Everyone at Ella’s school had to go to the memorial service at St Michael’s. The family deserved the community’s respect, said the teachers. There had been a time – not so very long ago, either – when the Cadences had brought considerable work and prosperity to the area.
Only a few of the Cadence family were at the service. Clem’s father said that was because the Cadences had almost all died out. Serena Cadence had not exactly been the last of her line, but there could not be many of them left. There were one or two distant cousins, he believed, but they were scattered around the world. Italy or Spain, so someone had told him.
Ella, seated near the back of the church, tried to get a good look at the members of the Cadence family, but it was impossible. They came in very quietly by the side door and sat at the front of the church, and all she could see was three or four dark-clad people. After the service the family went out through the same side door and were driven away in waiting cars. Ella wondered how she would feel if the man from St Anselm’s was there, but he did not seem to be. She had not really thought he would be – he didn’t seem like someone who’d be part of a crowd – and anyway he might not even be one of the family.
The school choir sang at the service and Derek Haywood had a small solo halfway through. Several of the congregation remarked on what a nice voice he had.
‘I thought he screeched a bit on the high notes,’ said Veronica afterwards, but she said it quietly because they had all been told to be solemn and quiet as a mark of respect to Lady Cadence.
‘I thought he screeched a whole lot,’ said Clem, who was still smarting at not being picked to play the prince, and not very inclined to admire anything Derek Haywood did. ‘I should think Lady Cadence would come back from her grave to haunt him for screeching like that at her funeral.’
‘People don’t come back from the grave,’ said Ella very sharply.
‘How do you know? My father said she was an old witch. I’ll bet she comes back to haunt Cadence Manor.’
The Present
Ella had not, of course, taken any notice of Clem’s words, not then and not since. Lady Cadence had not haunted the manor, nor had she haunted Ella herself.
It was the music that had haunted her. She had never been able to forget how the needle had stuck on the record that day, and how the music had played the same section over and over.
The Deserted Village. She had not known then what it was called, of course. What she had known was that it must have been the man from the church who had taunted her on that last morning when she and Clem and Veronica had walked through Priors Bramley. He had known Ella was there and he had deliberately played that piece in St Anselm’s for her to hear. Remember this, little girl, he had been saying. Remember the last time you and I heard this music . . .? In Cadence Manor, when your mother committed murder . . .?
Once or twice since that day Ella had wondered if she had been wrong, and if he had played it simply because he liked it. But she always pushed away this idea, because she did not want to ascribe to that sinister figure any of the softer qualities. When you have killed someone, you do not want to realize afterwards that they liked music.
What she had never been able to understand was how she could have heard the music on the day her mother went inside the poisoned village to find the lost wristwatch – the day the Geranos had burned her face. Because the man had been dead, he had been dead for a whole week. Ella had seen his body, broken and twisted at the bottom of the ruined chimney shaft, and her mother had seen it as well.
But on that afternoon someone had been playing his music in the deserted grounds of Cadence Manor.
Chapter 15
The Present
Gran had seemed pretty fed up since Amy played The Deserted Village CD last night, although Amy thought she was trying to hide it.
She wondered if she ought to ask Gramps if there was anything wrong. Dad would never forgive her if she did not keep him in the loop about Gran’s health; he did not get emotional or embarrassing about her, but once or twice he said she had given him a really good, really secure childhood, which was something children did not seem to get so much these days.
Gramps was rehearsing tonight. He had gone out after supper, and Amy had been intending to go down to the Red Lion who were having a quiz night. One or two people from the library would be there, and Clem Poulter had suggested Amy join them. But Gran was looking white and pinched, and it seemed mean to leave her on her own, so Amy suggested she came along to the quiz too. It would mean Amy could not chat up any likely men, of course, though she was not sure she was yet back in a chatting-up frame of mind, even if there had been anyone around worth chatting up, which there was not.
But Gran said she would stay at home. She was not much of a one for quizzes. ‘You go, though, dear. What time does it start?’
‘Eight.’
‘It’s half-past seven already. You’d better go up to change.’
Amy was wearing her favourite scarlet cheesecloth shirt and jeans, and it had not occurred to her that she needed to change just for a couple of hours in a pub. But she brushed her hair and added a bit of lipgloss.
When she got to the Red Lion there were quite a lot of people there. Clem Poulter waved to Amy and beckoned her over to join his table. He made vague introductions to the people he was with, most of whose names Amy did not hear.
‘I’m so glad to see you,’ said Clem
. ‘I tried to get a couple of the local teachers to come along, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t. I tried to get Dr Malik as well, but a snowball in hell would have more chance. I don’t think he’s even heard of pub quizzes.’
‘Who?’
‘Didn’t you say you spoke to him at that music lecture?’ said Clem. ‘He’s staying here, so you’d have thought he could have been bothered to just walk downstairs and sit at a table, wouldn’t you? He’d have been brilliant, and we’d like to win this quiz, wouldn’t we, chaps?’
There was a rather half-hearted assent from the people round the table.
Amy said, ‘Oh, him. I thought he was just somebody who wandered in out of the rain.’
‘Eccentric academic,’ said somebody on the other side of the table. ‘He’s some sort of expert on early church music or something.’
‘You know my definition of an expert,’ said Clem. ‘Somebody who lives more than thirty miles away.’
‘No, really, he’s supposed to be very distinguished and knowledgeable.’
‘What’s he doing in Upper Bramley, then?’ asked someone else, cynically.
‘He’s here to study St Anselm’s musical history now that it’s accessible again,’ said Clem impatiently. ‘I told you. Amy, what are you drinking? Oh, and we’ve ordered food for later.’
The quiz was fairly predictable, and Clem’s table managed to scrape second place, although Amy never found out what the prizes were. She had gone up to the bar to ask where their food was, when she caught sight of Dr Malik coming out of the pub’s tiny dining room. He was carrying a book and a sheaf of papers, and Amy had a sudden image of him eating his dinner with the book propped up against the salt cellar, oblivious to his surroundings. She watched him walk across to the stairs and wondered if she should try to catch his eye. She would like to tell him she had listened to the music they had discussed. Perhaps he would not want to know, though.
As if suddenly aware of being watched, he looked round. Amy smiled and Dr Malik hesitated as if unsure who she was. Then he seemed to remember, and smiled back. He appeared to consider what to do next, then instead of going upstairs, presumably to his room, he came across to the edge of the bar.
‘Hello,’ said Amy. ‘We met at the lecture the other night.’
‘I know. Second year, Durham University, yes?’ His voice was as nice as she remembered.
‘Yes. You told me about a piece of music based on a Goldsmith poem.’
‘The Deserted Village. Yes, of course.’
‘Well, I was interested because I’ve been helping with an exhibition of Old Bramley and I managed to find the recording in the library. It’s a bit scratchy and bumpy, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a very old recording,’ he said, as if wanting to defend the music.
‘It sounded it. I liked it,’ said Amy, ‘although it isn’t the kind of thing I normally listen to.’
For some reason this made him smile, and his face stopped being serious and became much younger and slightly mischievous. ‘I can believe that,’ he said. ‘But I’d be interested in your reactions – specially if you’re delving into Priors Bramley’s past.’
‘I am, a bit.’ Was he going to ask her to have a drink? If so Amy might as well take him up on it.
He said, ‘I expect you’re here with somebody, but if you’ve got ten minutes to talk about the village and the music . . .’ He looked round the bar vaguely. ‘We could go into the other room where it’s quieter.’
It had not occurred to Amy that it was particularly noisy in the bar, but she said, ‘I was with the pub quiz – I mean, I was with somebody’s table.’ This sounded so garbly she was annoyed with herself, and she said firmly. ‘OK, thanks. I’ll just tell them to hurry up with the food, then I’ll be out.’
‘I’ll get you a drink. What do you have?’ He said this a bit warily as if he thought she might ask for vodka laced with E.
‘House red?’ said Amy, and saw the flicker of relief.
His name was Jan Malik, and the book, which he propped on the edge of their table, was a hefty volume about early church music.
‘Clem – that’s Clem Poulter from the library, I think you met him – told me you were here because of St Anselm’s,’ said Amy, seeing the book.
‘Yes, mostly. But I’m also interested in music and literature echoing its surroundings,’ he said.
‘Priors Bramley and The Deserted Village.’
‘Yes. Not necessarily serious or obscure music, though. Modern stuff sometimes has a remarkable way of conveying a sense of place. Heavy metal often does it.’
Amy was so fascinated to hear someone who looked like a Pre-Raphaelite poet talk about heavy metal, she forgot to drink her wine.
‘And St Anselm’s is interesting on its own account anyway,’ said Jan. ‘It’s an ancient church and it has quite an unusual history of music.’
‘How old is ancient?’
‘Well, there’re a couple of mentions in one or two early monkish chronicles dating its origins to the early seventh century,’ said Jan. ‘And the church apparently had Ambrosian plainchant as part of the services until the late 1800s, which is why I’m curious about it. It’s rare to find Ambrosian chant used so recently – it’s virtually forgotten, except in Milan and parts of Lombardy. Occasionally I’ve taken postgraduate students to Italy to study it.’
Hell’s boots, thought Amy, another university don. Only this one wouldn’t quote Shelley, he would play music. She sent him a sideways glance and thought that despite his appearance, he would not be likely to lose his wallet when it came to paying for drinks or leave her to find her own way home in a taxi. Not that there were going to be any drinks bills or late-night taxis, of course. In any case he probably had a nice wife who taught Renaissance history or something, at an adjoining college.
Jan drank some of his wine, and said, ‘Sorry, Amy, I’m getting carried away with my own subject. Tell me what you thought of The Deserted Village.’
‘I liked it,’ said Amy. ‘I don’t know any of the technical stuff, and I haven’t read the poem it’s based on, but it dredged up images really well. At the start I could see Priors Bramley, with people living ordinary lives, farms and shops and church, all like an Agatha Christie book, or Cranford. And then,’ she said, warming to the theme, ‘there’s the bit where the music changes and starts to be quite menacing. I thought that’d be the feudal overlord stomping in, all droit de seigneur, grabbing village maidens and crunching up cottages. And the happy-milkmaid, kindly-shepherd rustic merriment dissolves, and in its place you get Edgar Allan Poe. Bats flitting through ruins and whatnot, and everything mouldering and decaying. The Fall of the House of Cadence.’
‘Like Priors Bramley,’ said Jan.
‘Yes. My gran can just remember everyone being booted out of the cottages and shops, and Clem Poulter had a great-aunt who’d lived there all her life. I know there’d have been compensation and rehousing,’ said Amy, ‘but it’s still anger-making, isn’t it?’
‘I’d like to talk to your grandmother to see what she remembers,’ said Jan Malik. ‘But it sounds as if it all mirrors Goldsmith’s poem. That was written as a kind of a reaction to the Enclosure Act. In a lot of areas Enclosure forced a mass emigration of the poorer farming families into the cities. In the poem, only one person is left in the village of Auburn – an old widow, forced to gather watercress for food and brushwood to keep warm, but the one person left who knows its history and could pass on the tales.’
‘That’s seriously sad,’ said Amy, after a moment. ‘Good thing it’s only fiction.’
‘Is it, though?’ said Jan softly. ‘They found a body in Priors Bramley, didn’t they?’
Amy stared at him, and for a moment something cold and unpleasant seemed to brush the back of her neck. ‘But that was just someone who got stuck there – a tramp who passed out in a drunken stupor and wasn’t noticed because nobody knew about him.’
‘I wonder if that’s all he was,’ said Jan.
‘What if he was “the sad historian of the pensive plain”?’
‘Listen, if you’re going to quote at me – because I suppose that was a quote – I’d better get another drink,’ said Amy very firmly, because she was not sure she could cope with sad souls who scraped their sustenance from watercress (watercress, for pity’s sake!) or ancient historians dying in crumbling manor houses.
She got two more glasses of wine and carried them back to the table. Jan lifted his with a half-salute that might have been apology or merely thanks.
Amy said, ‘I found photos of Priors Bramley before they infected it with Geranos. There’s a really good one of St Anselm’s and some of Cadence Manor.’
He appeared to accept the change of mood. ‘Can I see the photos sometime?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And,’ he said, ‘after that masterly precis you gave me of the music and the village, I’ve got to ask what you’re reading at Durham.’
‘Well, um, archaeology and anthropology.’
‘Good subjects. Why are you so defensive about them?’
‘Was I? I suppose it’s because when you say archaeology and anthropology, people mostly say, “But what will you actually do with it?” Or they think you’re going to disinter Egyptian mummies and fall victim to a curse.’
‘But there are masses of interesting possibilities, surely? Even without field work and digs, there’s museum curatorships, research of all sorts, even TV – all those Time Team-type programmes. They’d need advisers and researchers on board for those. And the two subjects go hand in hand, don’t they? The history and the study of buildings and the human race.’
‘I love buildings,’ said Amy, gratefully. ‘Is St Anselm’s really seventh century?’
