by I Beacham
“We were having a new bathroom put in, and Roger was here, the local builder,” Ele reminded Kiernan.
“He had just brought down the old bath, and it was outside at the front of the house. I don’t know why, but I was looking at it, all the stains and chips on the white enamel, its history.” She smiled. “I remember I was kneeling by it when Beth came out. She’d been in the kitchen preparing lunch—she loved to cook—she held a small cutting knife in her right hand.” Ele studied her own empty right hand.
“She was talking to me, but all the time her head was making this strange bobbing action, and at first I thought Beth was messing around. She had a warped sense of humor, but then I realized she wasn’t, and that she didn’t even seem to know she was doing it. I asked her if she was all right, and she looked down at me peculiarly and said she was fine. But I stood up and went over to her, put my arm around her shoulder, and asked again. This time she looked at me and said no. I remember seeing the shock in her eyes, like a frightened little girl who didn’t understand something huge, something alarming. One minute she was standing and the next, leaning into me, and I felt her weight.” A stab of pain shot through Ele as the memory grew in strength, becoming more vivid. She drew breath and closed her eyes for a second.
“I managed to get her to the bath, to let her sit on the side of it. She kept asking me not to let her fall backward, and although I had her by her arms and was looking into her face, I couldn’t reassure her.”
Ele looked at Kiernan who sat fixated, listening to her every word, empathy etched deep on her face.
“I became aware that what she was saying wasn’t coming out right, that she was slurring, and that her face, her beautiful face, seemed distorted.” Ele ran her hand slowly down the side of her own face. “Then Roger was there and he was phoning for an ambulance. It was all so quick.” Ele’s words dried and she fell silent. The memory was stuck in her mind, and she was there again, with Beth and Roger.
“Are you okay?” Kiernan had moved across and now had an arm around her.
“I’m sorry,” Ele said. “I don’t know where all that came from. I’ve never told anyone about this before…about how the stroke came on. Poor you.”
“No, not poor me,” Kiernan said quietly as she pulled Ele closer to her, wrapping her in her arms. “I feel rich in the knowing that you trust me enough to share something so personal, so private. Thank you.”
“Trust you?” Ele contemplated Kiernan’s few words. She hadn’t said much and yet those words were right. Being held in her arms also felt right. She knew it shouldn’t. She pulled back a little from the embrace. “Yes, I do trust you, you know.” She did. She remembered how much she had trusted Beth, too.
But Ele sought the comfort of Kiernan’s arms again. It had been so long. “It was why I stopped working. Beth seemed to recover. It was a mild stroke. A lucky warning, they said. And for a while, she took time off work and stayed here to recuperate. I looked after her, but eventually, she grew bored and wanted to go back to work. She taught physics at Oxford University. Although I told her it was too soon, the fool wouldn’t listen.” Ele drew back again and looked into Kiernan’s face. “Oh, Kiernan, I thought because she was on medication, and all the myriad of tests she was having, I thought they were sorting her out and that she’d be okay. But she wasn’t.” Ele fought the emotions that bubbled up. She didn’t want to cry again. She had done too much of that over the years. “A few months later, she had a massive stroke.”
Ele shook her head, fighting the tears. “She lasted a few days, but never regained consciousness and I lost the glue in my life, the person that gave it meaning. Everything I did, all my plans, they were all for her, and hers for me. We were childhood sweethearts who had known each other all the way through school. When she died, my whole life imploded, and I fell to bits. I suppose grief is the price we pay for love.”
Ele could no longer talk. Everything had been said that needed to. She was grateful that Kiernan allowed her the time, and silence, to pull herself back together. It didn’t take long, and Ele squeezed Kiernan’s arm as she disengaged herself. She walked over to the mantelpiece. “Now you know. I miss her so much, even now, after all the years.”
Ele watched as Kiernan returned to where she’d previously been seated. She took a deep breath. She needed to lighten the conversation. She would talk of ghost hunting.
“I’ve found some detail in the house deeds that I think is interesting.”
Kiernan appeared to accept the mood change with ease. “I’m listening.”
Ele leaned on the mantelpiece and tapped its top with her fingers. “As I thought, the deeds hold names and some information about past owners. There are two that stand out and might be associated with the time period we’re interested in. They are J. Stafford, Esquire, who lived here from nineteen twelve until nineteen twenty-one. The other is an E. W. Winterman from nineteen twenty-one until nineteen thirty-five. Beyond that, there’s not much else to go on. I’m hoping Edmond Riser might know more.”
“I think we should ring him,” Kiernan said. “But we’ll have to wait until the morning. It’s too late now.” Ele agreed. “Do you want to stay here tonight or come back to my place? I don’t have a ghost.”
Ele heard the dry, understated wit as she looked at Kiernan’s contagious smile.
“Whatever you decide, I’m with you tonight, Ele.”
Ele nodded her thanks. “Call me chicken, but I don’t fancy leaving this room tonight. When was the last time you slept in a chair?”
Kiernan didn’t answer. She shrugged as she stretched herself out on a sofa.
“Thank you again, Kiernan.”
“No problem. Just make sure that damn door is bolted well.”
Kiernan was joking, but Ele’s shiver was real.
Exhausted, they spent the remainder of the night sleeping in the sitting room.
Chapter Ten
Kiernan woke first and could not believe the aches and pains she felt. She glanced over at Ele who was beginning to rise, and who looked worse than she did.
Ele bent to put her shoes on. “Ouch.” She placed a hand on her back.
“One cannot underestimate the value of a good bed,” Kiernan said as she followed Ele without energy into the kitchen. It was still dark. She prayed that coffee would ease the crick in her neck, and stiffness of her back. She dropped onto a stool and lay across the breakfast bar.
“Tell me about it,” Ele said as she switched the kettle on. “We’re idiots. There are perfectly decent beds upstairs. We should have slept on them.”
“Now you tell me,” Kiernan bantered back. She had no idea what position she slept in last night, but it hadn’t been a good one. Her body felt as if she’d been hung, drawn, and quartered. “I’m only thankful I haven’t got an assignment today. I’m not sure I could lift the camera.”
Kiernan saw Ele cringe with guilt. “Hey, forget I said that. There was no way I was letting you spend the night here alone. Any problems I have with this body”―Kiernan dramatically swept her hands from shoulder to waist―“are all my own doing. Frankly, after my last romantic venture, and what I was forced to suffer in that, this is a picnic.”
There was an unexpected surge of energy from what, seconds ago, had been a sluggish Ele. Kiernan swore she felt a swift movement of air as Ele moved faster than a vortex to sit opposite her.
“Oh, intrigue. I love it. Elaborate.”
Kiernan eyeballed Ele who sat like a praying mantis, hungry for detail. Kiernan sighed and must have shown that she didn’t really want to discuss this topic right now, not while she felt like a contortionist. She didn’t think she ever wanted to talk about Chrissie to anyone again, regardless of her body distortion. Period. But she could see she’d opened Pandora’s box, and Ele wasn’t going to let her put the lid back on.
“I know nothing about you,” Ele said. “You now know far more about me. We need to balance.”
“Balance, is it?” Ele leaned forward
and placed her elbows on the table as she supported her face in her hands. Kiernan recognized there was no deflecting Ele’s curiosity, and it occurred to her that the latter might be fueled by a real interest in her. That nugget of revelation pleased her. A lot.
“Chrissie, my last, loved camping. She had this unnatural desire to commune with nature, and how better to do that than to mix with the wild, and sleep under canvas. Now you have to realize that she was a few years younger than me, and was a closeted Olympian athlete dying to emerge. Her idea of getting away for a break involved going to mountainous parts of this country, picking the steepest hill possible, and then climbing to its peak as fast as she could—with me gasping for air behind.”
Kiernan thought it was to Ele’s credit that she cringed in all the right places. She had the distinct impression that Ele was not of Chrissie’s vim and vigor desires. Another brownie point, she thought.
“The type of tent you could stand up in was not for her. She said it stank of modernity and ruined the real sense of adventure. So we camped far too often, in all weathers and always the Bohemian way. She said it made her feel invigorated and alive. It made me feel exhausted and bad tempered. I hated every damp blade of grass we camped on, and you can stuff the dawn chorus of bird song at three in the morning. I’ve put up with moles coming up in the tent overnight, and have shared a sleeping bag with earwigs. I don’t see that as an adventure. It did nothing for me, other than bring on early arthritis and hay fever.”
“I take it you don’t enjoy camping.” Kiernan didn’t miss the understated humor in Ele’s dour tone.
“Be nice to me; you have a ghost,” she said. “But you take it right. My idea of camping is in a four star hotel.”
“Your Chrissie sounds an interesting woman. I’d love to hear more about her.”
Kiernan wasn’t an inexperienced teen, and recognized that Ele’s interest was more than a passing conversation point. She began to hope. Maybe there was mutual emotional investment beginning here, and Ele’s attention might hint at more. While she longed for the intimacy that could bring—the sharing of life’s guarded and innermost experiences—did she want to dredge up how her relationship with Chrissie had gone wrong? No.
“I’d rather not talk about her if you don’t mind. Chrissie is part of my past now, and that’s where I’d like to keep her.” She tried to sound as upbeat and normal as possible, but she failed because Ele reached out and put a soft hand over hers. It was an innocent gesture, but Kiernan felt her face warm.
“I understand.”
She wondered if Ele really did. “Let’s get cracking and find Edmond Riser.”
*
White-haired Edmond Riser was a dapper gentleman dressed in smart gray trousers, a fresh laundered check shirt, polished brown shoes, and a well worn tweed jacket. On the latter, Ele could see the leather patched elbows, sewn on to hide wear. She reasoned it was a much loved item, for everything around her spoke of a comfortable existence, and if Riser wanted a new jacket, she was sure he could afford it. But she did wonder, in a very non politically correct way, who sewed for him. He seemed to live alone, a widower. He was not a man she envisaged with a needle and thread. Maybe he had a caring daughter somewhere?
Although he was elderly, he possessed a youthful, lean face with sparkling brown eyes that held genuine delight and interest in his two unannounced visitors. She had a feeling that, though very much the gent, he loved the ladies and their company.
He recognized her, more as a local neighbor than some celebrity, and welcomed her and Kiernan into his small, cluttered cottage full of books and sports memorabilia. She noticed an aged cricket bat hanging on a wall and endorsed with many signatures. Her late father had a bat on a wall too, something her mother always moaned about, although she had secretly loved it. He and Riser would have had much to talk about.
“I tried to call you last night, and again this morning, but my phone is playing up,” Ele said.
“No, no,” he was quick to say, in his clipped 1940s voice. “All the lines are down at the moment. British Telecom has been working on the fault all morning. My landline has been clicking away like mad.”
Ele and Kiernan exchanged a glance. So the ghost was not trying to communicate over a landline? It was a relief. It was a frightening prospect to think some spectral spirit was trying to find her dialing code. Phone calls and open doors made her tense, but thankfully, so far, he seemed content to remain an outside ghost.
Ele got straight to the point, telling him just enough detail that was healthy. “I’ve always been interested in history, Mr. Riser. I’m quite keen to find out whatever information I can of all the people who have lived in my house. There are some names on the house deeds, but that’s all they are―names. Hugh Latimer at the historical society thought you might be able to fill in some details?”
“I know Hugh,” Edmond said. “Strange sort of chap.”
Ele thought he sounded dismissive of Latimer. She caught Kiernan’s eyes. She looked smug.
“Anyway, the names I have are J. Stafford, Esquire, nineteen twelve to nineteen twenty-one. Also E. W. Winterman, nineteen twenty-one to nineteen thirty-five. Can you help?”
“I do remember the Wintermans. There were Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Winterman and their three children. He was an accountant. They were a nice family. Colin, their youngest, was my age, and while they lived here, he was my best friend, although we went to different schools. The family had an account with my father who owned the butcher’s shop here before I took over. I ran the shop until I retired twenty years ago and sold the business.”
Ele remembered the shop closing about seven years ago when a big supermarket moved into the area. The village fought to keep their butcher shop open, but failed.
“The Wintermans immigrated to Australia,” Riser said, “just before the war.”
“All of them?” Kiernan asked.
“Yes. Colin wrote to me for a while, but then stopped as these things do.”
“Do you remember a J. Stafford, Esquire?” Ele asked.
“No. But the dates you’ve given, nineteen twelve to nineteen twenty-one, I wasn’t born then. My father probably would have known him or his family. The locals all used his shop, but I don’t have any records now so there’s no way of knowing. It’s a shame because I kept them all and the ledgers from the business, including Father’s, until a few years ago. It seemed pointless hanging on to them so I destroyed the lot. They held the names of all his customers.”
Ele knew her disappointment showed. After yesterday’s fright, she was pinning her hopes on Riser, hoping he might know something, but it seemed he didn’t. A gloomy feeling swept over her as her imagination bolted. Thoughts of an undiscovered body buried in her grounds, a spirit disturbed by the builders, rose up. Something had been awoken, and unless she could find out more, she had no idea how to put it back to sleep. She heard Kiernan talking.
“Pegmire’s a beautiful village, Mr. Riser. You’ve lived here all your life? Never wanted to move?”
Riser shrugged. “I worked for my father and then inherited the business. The thought of leaving never crossed my mind, and I married Jeanne, a local girl who was more than happy to stay here. The only time I left home was during the war. World War II,” he clarified. “I joined the Royal Air Force and served in Cyprus for a while. Frankly, I was glad to get back here.”
Kiernan turned jocular. “I expect you could write a book about Pegmire and all its goings on.”
Riser laughed. “That I could. It’s amazing what a butcher knows. Who’s living with who, who’s left who, who is eating more meat than for just one person, if you get my meaning.” He winked.
Kiernan responded to his subtle introduction of intrigue. “Anything exciting ever happened here? Any murders? Any ghosts?” Her laughter hinted at conspiracy.
“No, none of that. We did have an enemy plane come down a few miles away. It was heading for the Midlands to bomb the industrial areas, but our guns got it. Th
e crew parachuted out and ended up prisoners of war in a camp near Oxford.” Edmond Riser’s mind was still focused on the war. He looked at them and smiled. “We could have done with a few murders round here, brightened things up a bit. Pegmire’s always been a dozy place―apart from domestic goings on.”
Ele started to thank him for his time and was rising to leave when he said, “Beatrice Lavish worked at the vicarage for years, and she’d know more.”
Her heart expanded like heated metal at the chance of a lead.
“But of course she’s dead now,” he added.
Her heart sank.
“She had a daughter,” he continued.
“Is she dead, too?” Kiernan asked blankly.
“No. Dorothy Harding is as fit as a fiddle, and she lives nearby in Chadlington, on the Chipping Norton road. I went to school with her and have her phone number here somewhere.” He crossed to a bureau and seconds later announced, “Got it.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a cell phone, which he waved victoriously in the air. “My grandson got me this for Christmas. Who needs a landline? Shall I give her a call and see if she knows anything?”
Dorothy Harding answered the call immediately, and Edmond Riser chatted away to her like the old friends they obviously were. He told her of Ele’s search, and it sounded as if his old school friend would see them. Ele felt awash with relief, and Edmond’s kindness of an introduction removed the cold call that many elderly didn’t trust these days.
He would glance at her while talking to Dorothy, repeating things that needed Ele’s answer. Did they want to see her today about four o’clock, or wait for a week? Ele agreed to the afternoon meeting. Though it would be getting dark, she was desperate to find out more of her uninvited guest.
