The Rarest Rose

by I Beacham

  “Just so you know. I kissed you last night, at the pub, after fish and chips, in that hallway—because I love you. I want you to know that.”

  “Oh, Ele.” Kiernan knew she must be strong. She didn’t trust that Ele was able to move on, even if she thought she might be. It felt terrible not being able to respond to Ele. But if you were going to finish something, wasn’t it better to do it now? At the beginning—before it went any deeper? Before they really hurt each other.

  “Just think about it, Kier. Just do that for me, please.” Ele opened the door and had stepped through it before she poked her head back inside.

  “I nearly forgot. Dot Harding rang to say she’s home and has found some old photos her father took of the Staffords and of the house. I’ve arranged to go and see her tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. I would love you to join me, but I’ll understand if you can’t.”

  Ele then left, and Kiernan listened as her footsteps echoed down the stairs and into the distance. Kiernan heard a car start and drive away.

  She didn’t move. Now that Ele was gone, her home seemed empty. She breathed in deeply and slowly exhaled. She realized she’d been holding her breath all the time Ele had been here.

  Everything was surreal. Kiernan had felt detached as Ele had laid everything out in front of her. She had told her she loved her, for heaven’s sake! But she had not responded. She’d done nothing at all. What must that have felt like to Ele? Kiernan loathed herself for not behaving differently; for not acting like an adult. It was only now that she realized how much Chrissie had damaged her. She was still raw. Would she have been this cautious before her?

  The real question was whether she was strong enough to give Ele her second chance. Was she willing to take another risk so soon?

  Kiernan didn’t know the answer.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The next day, Kiernan parked outside Dorothy Harding’s house. She looked up at the sky. It was an intense blue this morning and the sun shone down on the overnight frost, but there was no heat to it. The frost would linger, unthreatened. A small memory cut across her mind of something her grandmother once told her. White, crisp frost that stays too long will be waiting for the snowfall. It didn’t look like snow, but then you could never tell with the whims of the British weather.

  Ele drew up and parked a few yards ahead of her. Her heart flipped as she recalled the last few days. She was struggling. One minute she was so damn sure she should walk away from Ele before either of them got hurt. Another, that she should put everything behind her and brave a chance of something wonderful with her—however that might turn out. She internally slapped herself. She’d accused Ele of blowing hot and cold, and here she was negotiating swings and roundabouts. Why couldn’t life be a little simpler? Was that too much to ask?

  Kiernan wasn’t sure what she wanted and she’d made no decision. No. That wasn’t quite true. She had made one decision. That was that she wouldn’t make a decision until some time had passed with her dilemma. She would put an air gap in to allow thoughts to cogitate more freely. She owed herself, and Ele, that. After Ele’s robust and heartfelt sharing yesterday, she could do no less. She wouldn’t let any decision she made be hasty and down to Chrissie’s influence. She hoped Ele wouldn’t want any answers right now for she had none to give.

  As they approached each other, Ele watched her intently, a strange unreadable expression on her face. Kiernan braced herself as she pressed her hand down flat on her stomach and breathed in deeply.

  “Good morning, Ele.” It seemed pointless to add surface conversation like what a nice day it was, had she had a good journey, and so on.

  Ele smiled, but Kiernan knew she was on edge. “I wasn’t sure you’d show.”

  Ele sounded calm enough as Kiernan tilted her head to the side. “I may have a few things to work out,” she said, “but letting you down in time of need is not one of them.”

  “We’re still friends, then?”

  “Yes, we are.” Kiernan wanted no doubt between them. “And I want to thank you for coming to see me yesterday, for sharing how you are feeling. For telling me that you love me. That means a lot.”

  “Is it enough?” Ele’s smile disappeared. Her question was earnest and important.

  Kiernan needed to be honest. “I don’t know yet, Ele. I’m thinking about it. Is that okay?”

  “Take your time, Kier. I think time is something we both need right now. At least we know we love each other. Any decisions made will be based on that understanding.”

  Kiernan agreed.

  The awkward moment over, they turned in unison and walked up to Dot’s front door.

  Dot was expecting them this time and opened the door almost before the echo of the first knock disappeared. Settled inside, she took no time in showing them some old black-and-white photos.

  “My daughter dug these out while I was in Bewdley.” She scattered some dozen photos across the same table they had sat around on their last visit. “I knew we’d kept my father’s photo albums, but I’d forgotten we had these. He took them during the time the Staffords lived at your place. I think I told you he’d just bought his first camera and was obsessed with it.”

  They looked at the faded, sepia toned photos that were taken at the vicarage. They were outside shots of the main house, its garden, and some of the outbuildings. Most of them had people in them.

  Ele lifted a photo from the table and scrutinized it closely. She held the photo with care so as not to damage it. It was a shot of the front of the house showing a long flowerbed running all the way in front of it and a quaint trellis framework around the main door. All this was long gone and the gravel of the drive now went right up to the sides of the house.

  “My father helped Mr. Stafford put that trellis up,” Dot said. “Mrs. Stafford always wanted roses around the door, but I don’t think they ever grew.”

  She swapped the photo in favor of another that showed the old stable buildings.

  “They never had a horse,” Dot said as she held a photo showing a group of people standing in the garden on a well-manicured lawn. “This is my father.” She indicated a man in a Sunday suit with a starched collar and looking very formal. He stood next to a relaxed couple who were smiling into the camera. “Those are the Staffords.” Dot pointed them out. “I don’t know who took the photo, but I suppose it was Mother since she isn’t in it.”

  It was the first time Kiernan had seen a photo of Harriet Stafford, and she thought how like Ele she was, for she was tall and lean. Her dress and deportment were elegant and epitomized what a lady would have looked like in those days. She was pretty, and her dress fell to mid shin level. Her light colored hair was whipped up into a loose bun favored during those times, and her large dark eyes seemed to sparkle as her arm rested on John Stafford’s. His hand caressed hers with obvious affection.

  “That lawn’s gone now,” Ele said. “The garage is there.”

  Kiernan nodded. It was where a double garage now sat. She also recognized the gazebo in another photo and said so, but was corrected.

  “No, it’s not the same one. When we moved in, the original was still there, but in very bad condition. There was no way we could repair it so we replaced it with something as close to the original as we could. We loved it and kept it in the same spot.” Ele’s tone changed to amazement. “Good grief.” She picked up another photo. “I never realized it was that old. I thought it had been put there by more recent owners.”

  “What, dear?” Dot turned Ele’s hand so she could see.

  They all looked at a large garden seat cut out of something like Portland stone. The curved seat was about four and a half feet long, with fine scrolled seat supports and strong, study legs to hold the weight. Circling it was a small rose garden, located down from the stable block and in view of the kitchen.

  “It was their love seat,” Dot said. “Mother told me how they sat there on summer evenings and talked endlessly. They idolized each other and were so in love.�
�� Dot took the photo from Ele. Her eyes narrowed and then brightened as she remembered.

  “They had this pact,” she said. “They enjoyed this delightful habit of sitting outside most summer evenings and partaking of a glass of sherry. Mother thought it so endearing, she started the habit with my father, who I suspect would rather it had been a beer. Anyway, it’s a tradition I have carried on too. I always have a tipple of sherry at lunchtime.” Dot’s eyes glazed, lost in her memories.

  “What was the pact?” Kiernan asked.

  “When Mr. Stafford volunteered for the front, they had an understanding that at a certain time of the day, Mrs. Stafford would sit on that seat, regardless of the weather, and she would raise a glass of sherry and think of him, wishing him the Lord’s protection. No matter where he was or what he was doing, he would know that at that certain time of the day she was thinking only of him.”

  Kiernan’s eyes watered. It was the sadness of it all that drew her tears.

  “Mother would often see her do this. It was something Mrs. Stafford kept doing even after they told her he was dead. She never believed them. It upset Mother to the end of her days. It still upsets me. Of course, I never knew them, and yet I feel I did because of everything I was told. Mother was so very fond of them, and they were wonderful employers. She said she never worked for people as nice as them again. It was all very sad.”

  “And Harriett always knew he was alive, but never saw him again,” Ele whispered.

  “Oh, that influenza, as if the war hadn’t done enough.” Dot rubbed her hands. “My father was very worried for my mother. When Mrs. Stafford became ill, he feared she might contract it. She refused to stay away from the house and insisted on continuing to work there, even though the doctor warned her it was unwise. But she never fell ill and carried on working for Mrs. Stafford right up to the day her family came and took her home to die. They kept Mother on afterward to look after the house. Not so many hours of course, but then, when Captain Stafford returned, she resumed her full duties and was glad of it. Work was difficult to find in a small village like Pegmire. Neither she nor Father had a vehicle. Couldn’t afford one.”

  “Did I tell you that I found out they were buried together?” Ele said. Dot looked shocked. “I found out that John Stafford was buried in Pegmire churchyard, and that later, Harriet’s family exhumed her body and brought it here to rest with her husband.”

  “Oh, how marvelous!” Dot was overjoyed. “I’ve often thought how sad it was that they were never reunited in life. I hope Mother knew that they were buried together, though she never said. You see, what happened to Captain Stafford on his return haunted my mother to her dying day.”

  It was the word haunted that drew Ele’s and Kiernan’s immediate attention. They both looked eagerly at Dot.

  “What happened?” Ele asked. “I thought he died of complications from his war wounds?”

  Dot scoffed. “That would have been the coroner’s conclusions. My mother’s were entirely different. She found him, you know.”

  Kiernan’s hungry anticipation was matched by Ele’s. Both leaned in closer to Dot, waiting.

  “I’ll never forget what Mother told me. Every time she talked of it, my blood froze and I had nightmares. I’m not too keen thinking of it now, and I hope it won’t upset you, dear,” she said to Ele as she leaned back in the chair and patted her hands on the table.

  “My mother said that John Stafford returned home a very sick man. He’d been blown up while in the Somme trenches, and while he’d not died, I think they’d been unable to identify who he was until his condition improved and he was able to tell them himself.

  “As you know, by the time he returned home, his beloved Harriett had died. Mother always said he was a broken man. She caught him crying occasionally. I know it upset her dreadfully. Every morning, she would go up to the house and set the fire in the sitting room in time for when he arose and came downstairs. She would then prepare his breakfast as she always had for them both. Sometimes, if my father wasn’t working, he would go and sit with Captain Stafford for an afternoon, just to give him companionship.

  “It was into nineteen nineteen, and one particularly brutal winter’s morning, my mother went up to the house, lit the fire, and then went into the kitchen to prepare breakfast. There, she happened to look outside the window across the yard. That’s where she found him. Dead. He was on the stone seat they had called their love seat, and he was frozen to death. Beside him was a half-empty glass of sherry. Mother reckoned he had been out there all night. He was stiff and covered white with frost. She said his eyes were still open, and he had the most pitiful, sad look on his face.

  “My mother never believed he died of his wounds. She said he died of a broken heart, and she thought he chose to die on that seat because that was where he felt closest to his wife after she had gone. It held such special memories, you see.”

  Kiernan did see. The tale of the Staffords was even more tragic than she’d first imagined. It was a touching, distressing story of two lovers lost, and it chilled her to the bone. She looked across at Ele to see if she was as affected as she was, but what she saw surprised her.

  Ele didn’t seem upset. Instead, she was frowning, and there was a quizzical look on her face as if something curious crossed her mind. Something was worrying her.

  “I think that’s all I know, girls,” Dot said. “Has any of it helped you?” She placed a bony hand on top of Ele’s. Ele placed her other hand, with affection, on top of Dot’s.

  “Perhaps.” Ele’s voice was soft before she spoke with more gusto. “Would you mind if I borrowed a few of your photos for just a day or so? I promise to let you have them back.”

  Dot did not object and produced a small brown envelope to place them in.

  Kiernan waited until they stood outside and Dot had closed the door. “What’s wrong?”

  Ele looked at her in the strangest manner. “I don’t know. It may be nothing; it may be everything, but I have this feeling…”

  Intrigue gripped her, and she grabbed Ele by the arm, almost pushing her to her car. That Ele didn’t object only implied how absorbed she was by something and Kiernan longed to find out what that was. There was no whisper of the personal issues that rested between them as she sat in the passenger seat of Ele’s car and asked her to explain.

  Still engrossed in thought, Ele opened the envelope containing the photos and pulled out two that showed the stone seat. For a few very long seconds she just stared at them, her eyes full of confusion, before she placed them on her knees so Kiernan could see.

  “I may be wrong,” she said slowly.

  “It’s something to do with the stone seat?” Kiernan studied the two photos.

  “I think so.” Ele was introducing a new piece of evidence into her calculations, like some evolving murder mystery.

  “It was still at the house when you bought it?” Kiernan was impatient to discover what was going through Ele’s mind. They had waited so long for the answer to the haunting. Had Ele solved the riddle?

  She heard a whispered “yes,” and she swore she could hear the cogs turning in Ele’s brain.

  “What happened to it?” It isn’t there now.

  “I had it moved.”

  “Moved?” Kiernan’s mind searched the grounds at Ele’s. Had the seat been placed elsewhere? She couldn’t recall seeing it.

  “It was in the wrong place.” Ele’s attention remained fixated on the photos. “The stables were being converted, and I wanted to open up all of the area down past the kitchen toward the front of the house, get it all cobbled. I could then drive up to the kitchen, unload shopping, wash the car, way more convenient.” She raised a hand to her chin. “I had the seat moved.”

  “You said that.” Kiernan couldn’t hide her exasperation. Normally, Ele cut to the chase, but now, was she ever going to say what was bothering her? Something clicked in her mind and a disturbing thought materialized. “Where did you move it to?” Something in the way
she asked made Ele swivel and look at her, her eyes wide.

  “I never liked the seat and wanted it gone, so I gave it away.”

  “Who did you give it too?” Kiernan knew the answer.

  “I gave it to Roger.” Ele was ashen. “As a gift for—”

  “Joan,” they said in unison. A bolt of cold fear ran through Kiernan’s body like an iceberg shaft landing on the deck of the Titanic.

  “Joan often admired it, so I told Roger to give it to her as a gift from me. I wanted to give it a good home.” Ele brought her hands to her face. “Oh, God, Kier. How could I have missed it? Joan’s feelings of being watched—her paranoia. It’s been staring me in the face.”

  Kiernan couldn’t move. She watched Ele mentally kick herself, but it was so easy to see the obvious once it was presented. She thought back to everything Ele told her at the pub, of how ill Joan was. The thought that the haunting extended beyond the vicarage was almost too chilling to contemplate. She’d be careful buying antiques in the future. Who knew what unexpected surprises might come with them?

  “Kier, Joan’s illness, her terrible nightmares…is it because of that seat? It can’t be this simple. Can it? I moved John and Harriett’s love seat and I shouldn’t have?”

  “Let me see those.” Kiernan reached out and took the photos from Ele’s lap, studying them closely. “Stafford is pointing in the area of the seat.”

  “Yes, and that day when the leaves went mad and I thought I saw a face in the wind…” Ele didn’t have to finish. Kiernan knew. “And Feathers, he sits on the cobblestones where the stone seat once was.” Her face drained as she begged the question. “What have I done?” Her hands went to her face and covered her mouth.

  Kiernan leaned across and wrapped Ele in her arms. She wasn’t sure who was comforting whom, for she was trembling. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  It took Ele’s mind a few seconds to spring into action as she pulled back. “I want to get copies of those photos and return the originals to Dot. Then I need to go and talk to Roger again. I’ve got questions that need answering.”