Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “Threat number two,” he began. “And already left in that bloody folder before the meeting, if you please.”

  “Extenuating circumstances sounds appropriate,” I muttered, taking care not to add my prints as I scanned that same message.

  DROP IT OR YOUR DEAD

  A WARNING

  “Come on, Johnny. What the Hell’s going on? You’re the detective.”

  “Was.”

  “Christ, is that all you can say?”

  “I just get the feeling you’re keeping something back. What is it that you’re supposed to drop?”

  “Wait.”

  I did, while he bent down and, shielding the safe lock with his gaunt body, opened its door and with trembling hands pulled out a National Portrait Gallery carrier bag. “Here. It’s hot stuff. All about Wombwell Farm in 1920 and highly incriminating if it ever got into the wrong hands. There’s a diary too, which I skimmed, and various photographs which don’t seem to have any names.” He then extracted an A4 black box file. No obvious label, and its corners worn to grey. His fingers still unsteady.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Something’s not quite connecting here. How did you come by this material? Was this originally left in your cycle’s saddle bag too?”

  “No. You won’t believe me, but...” He took a deep breath. “I found it in this safe on Thursday morning. It just appeared. almost as if it wanted me to see it D’you understand?”

  “Who apart from you knows the code?”

  He appeared not to have heard my question.

  “Greg Lake, by any chance?”

  A distracted nod. “But why? The Archive Department’s got their own secure safe.”

  “I could call him again. Maybe his answerphone’s working by now.”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  Stephen’s veins were raised and pulsing in his neck. “I said, no.”

  “Your brother-in-law, then,” I persevered, more than puzzled. “It’s a long shot, but interesting to find out if he’s ever been here. He could even have been that guy in the car park on Friday evening, snooping around.”

  “Stephen gripped my arm. Still strong after all those excavations in parched ground in faraway places, but with panic enlarging his eyes. “Listen,” he snapped. “I’ve just given the worst presentation of my whole fucking career. Colleagues were actually laughing. Can you believe it? People who’d applied and failed to get my Dean of Faculty post.” He loosened his grip and slumped in the desk’s swivel chair, causing it to turn this way and that. “I’ve not come this far to chuck everything away over some bloody letters from some provincial doctor and a fucking vicar. Some diary or other and a few photographs. Things that happened before I was even born…”

  “So, you’re giving up?”

  A nod.

  “And Catherine? What about her?”

  “She’ll be back. This isn’t the first time.”

  Great.

  “You never said.”

  “I couldn’t. We’re supposed to be sorted, as they say.”

  “The station master at Tidswell’s just phoned me,” I said, sensing a bottomless chasm looming. “And very interesting it was too.”

  “I don’t do riddles, Johnny. In what way interesting?”

  And when I’d recounted the conversation, he held his messed-up head in both hands.

  *

  “I’ve asked this already, but where’s your brother-in-law’s helper from?”

  “No idea. Never seen him.”

  “Fair-haired, black leathers? Eyes green as could be? I’m quoting the station master.”

  “Ah.”

  I waited.

  “Last March. He was waiting inside the Peugeot when Nicholas called here door on spec. I obviously wasn’t meant to see him. Quite pretty if you get my meaning.”

  “You mean, gay?”

  A shrug. “Hard to tell.”

  “Why did he call?”

  “About some book Catherine had apparently pinched off him years ago. She was in London at the time. I politely told him to piss off.”

  Just then, came an assertive knock on the door.

  “Greg Lake,” said Stephen, looking less than pleased at the interruption. “His trademark.”

  And sure enough, a well-built guy wearing tight, brown cords, a matching zipped jacket and jungle boots, strode in. Early thirties I guessed. Someone who’d had a life already. Hazel-coloured eyes darted from my old friend to me, like those of a guinea pig Carol and I had been allowed to keep after our parents died. Intense and

  busy.

  “John Lyon?” he said. “Hiya. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  I glanced at Stephen who still seemed less than comfortable. As if he’d been derailed.

  “I believe you’ve some useful information about last Friday evening here,” I said, having ended the pleasantries.

  “May I?” The Archive Technician indicated the only free chair in front of the desk.

  Stephen nodded, smoothed back his hair and straightened his tie. “And remember, anything you say won’t go any further than these four walls.”

  The guy glanced upwards as if checking for surveillance. “Better not.” He crossed what could only have been gym-toned legs and hunted in a side pocket as if for a lighter and cigarettes. “Because I now know who it was snooping around here and I’m telling you, he’s not someone to cross.” He glanced at Stephen before continuing. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “A man of the cloth, by any chance?” I ventured before he could answer.

  “Ha. Pull the other one.”

  “Who, then?” Stephen clearly not in the mood for even the smallest joke.

  “Don’t expect me to rattle off all the letters after his name, but it was ‘King George.’ You know, Chisholm.”

  Stephen sat forwards, frowning.

  “Our Vice-Chancellor?” He said in a strange voice. “Are you bloody sure?”

  “Couldn’t be more so. His black hearse, as I call it, happened to be tucked away in the darkest corner of the car park.” The lighter and cigarettes were forgotten as Greg Lake moved into top gear. “And get this, when I dared challenge why he was trying to get into the Archive Department after almost everyone had gone home, he did this.” His forefinger drew a swift, curved line across his throat, and in the seconds that followed, I felt as if that stuffy office dedicated to academia, had suddenly become a morgue.

  “Why not tell Mr. Lake about those two identical death threats you’ve had,” I said.to Stephen. “I think he ought to know in case he can suggest who sent them.”

  The young man’s features tightened while my friend passed him the blank envelope containing the paper.

  “I was hoping to keep it all private,” he said. “Or rather, just between John and myself, until…”

  “Holy shit.” Greg Lake handed it back and stood up. “This is bad. Look, Professor Vickers, leave it to me. OK?” Then his gaze fell on the black box file, half in, half out of its distinctive carrier bag. I was just about to ask if he knew who’d put it in Stephen’s safe, when he brushed past my chair. “Best shift my butt,” he said, and with that, was gone, slamming the door behind him, leaving the distinct whiff of Lynx and fear in his wake.

  19. STANLEY.

  Tuesday 27th July 1920. 10.20 a.m.

  As if me situation weren’t bad enough, those two old beetles I shud call me parents barely said a word to me no more. All I got were their eyes boring into me as if that wud get me swollen leg better or me head to stop burning inside. There were also the question of food and drink. Small rations once a day as if I were in the Norfolk bloody Regiment out on the Somme.

  I had the bed pan on Saturday as promised - summat at least. In and out were Doctor Lovell like some jack rabbit being chased by a dog. Which reminded me his pest were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps it had died in the heat. I hoped so.

  *

  Ssshhh.

  Voices coming up the stairs. Pa�
��s and someone else’s I didn’t recognise. Louder, posher than I were used to. First, I thought of that other doctor who was supposed to be coming to give another opinion on me leg, but the moment me door opened, I knew no doctor would smell like that nor wear a dress with a gold cross hanging from his neck.

  “It’s Mr. Beecham come to see you,” Pa began, letting a well-fed giant into my room. A giant with no eyelids and a fat face shining with sweat. “The vicar over at Longstanton Church…”

  “St John the Martyr, to be precise,” the stranger interrupted, keeping his distance. “And my correct title is The Reverend Henry Beecham.” He started to offer his hand, then withdrew it sharpish. His nose had wrinkled up like a walnut. “Your parents have asked me a favour which, as a Christian and God’s representative on earth, I cannot ignore.”

  “What favour?” I tried to sit up but couldn’t.

  The intruder kept his distance, and his hand kept straying to cover his nose and mouth. “We, that is, the Church of England, run a small - how shall I say - nursing home not far from here. Vesper House. Church funds have kept it going since 1786 and I intend to uphold its tradition of care.”

  “Nursing home?” I looked at Pa who were letting Ma into me room before slipping out. “I’m no bloody woman.”

  “But yer ill.” She said, half the size of this Black Dress, but harder than stone. “It’s too much for us to take on. We need new blood to help us here, while you mend.”

  “And mend you will,” said the stranger batting away a fly. “God willing. I’m also inviting you to our Office at the Seclusion of a Leper on Sunday at ten o’clock.”

  “Office? Seclusion? What’s them?”

  Black Dress sighed.

  “A Mediaeval term for a burial service for those with leprosy.”

  “Burial?” Said Ma.

  “In the metaphysical sense.”

  I didn’t understand that word but thought immediately of the pit. This time I did manage to raise mesen up in the bed, but me hands cud barely hold me weight.

  “So, this bed will soon be someone’ else’s?”

  Needs must, son.” And with, that God’s representative nudged her towards the door.

  “It’s for the best, Stanley,” said Ma. “And then, before long and God willing, you’ll be right as rain.”

  Her sharp, mean voice faded and me door closed behind them, leaving me to strain me ears as to where the Wombwell money might be. Although me flesh were still weak, me spirit certainly weren’t, and as soon as I were up and about again, I’d find it.

  *

  Even with me curtains drawn tight together, the room were an oven and I were just a useless piece of meat left to stew in me own juices until what? Another prison?

  Then and there I decided that the Nursing Home in Tidswell wouln’t be seein’ me. Never.

  Hadn’t I just managed to get downstairs and cross Parson’s Field? So, I cud do it again.

  And just as I began to roll mesen sideways, me door were pushed open. I cud smell ‘im afore I saw ‘im. Black Dress agin. Bigger than the last time, it seemed, ‘is forehead crinkled up with frowns. He were making for me bed.

  “Susan Deakins,” he said all of a sudden. “She’s been on my mind for quite a while, poor child. I had to mention it before leaving.”

  “Mention what?”

  I thought of my little memento tucked under me mattress. Mebbe it were time to find somewhere safer…

  “Did you know her mother’s still suffering badly from a broken heart, so Doctor Lovell says, and I can believe it. She stopped attending Communion shortly after the disappearance. Gave up on God, she told me. And that’s a terrible thing for anyone to do. My spiritual counselling was called into question at the time, but that’s of minor importance compared to her suffering.”

  If I’d been able-bodied, I’d have grabbed his fat neck with both hands. As it were, I had to be careful.

  “What’s her daughter to do with me? Yes, I saw her going back and fore to school, but so did everyone else in Hecklers Green, and I told the cops that. But I were busy turning the soil at the time she went missing. I got witnesses. Ma and Pa for a start.”

  But truth be told, they’d said fecking nothing.

  I’d given too much, like I always did, but his face stayed the same. “Susan was almost ready for Confirmation. A devout girl who’d already spoken to me about becoming a nun.”

  A nun?

  I kept a check on me laugh. Never mind a kiss, she liked a bit of finger up her fanny. And that weren’t all…

  “And I mention her, because there’s still doubt hanging in the air.”

  “What doubt?”

  “Just come to Vesper House, Stanley. That’s the main issue now.”

  He really shouldn’t have smiled.

  Me curtains moved on the faintest of breezes, and even in that heat, I shivered. I could see where this was going. I’d only heard the word ‘blackmail’ once when Pa won Best Suckling Sow with Bessie at the Tidswell Show last summer, and someone - unknown to this day - claimed he’d stuck ‘er titties on with glue. There was notices pinned to our gate. ‘Walter Bulling is a fraud who should repay his winnings.’

  “And you know what leprosy is, don’t you?” The Dress interrupted me memory. “A disease that kills the carrier in the cruellest way, and those with whom they contaminate with spittle, mucus and semen… It’s a curse, Stanley. The work of Satan.”

  “Leprosy? I’ve never got that!” I clenched me fists. “I’d rather kill mesen first.”

  “I have to listen to Dr Lovell’s opinion, and in the eyes of the law, if he’s correct, we have no choice.”

  *

  Those four last words of his beat like a drum inside me head as I fell to the floor, tipping up me full bed pan. The mess immediately soaked me vest and underpants, turning them the colour of the River Howse after a storm. Soil and cattle dung all mixed up.

  I heard his car grind away down our track towards the Longstanton road, and that were the sign I needed.

  Not long now, I told mesen even though this time, the stairs down to the old dairy seemed twice as many. The cold steps a welcome change from me hot bed and by pretending I were a lizard, managed to reach the bottom.

  Feckit.

  *

  Ma and Pa stood by the open door to the morning’s heat. Stooped black agin the light. Voices hushed like the nearly dead, while I had to find mesen a hiding place yet be within earshot. And what reached me ears from behind a stack of old milk churns from when we’d kept Friesians, made me blood turn to ice.

  “You know the groundsman over at The Grange?” Said Pa.

  “Dennis Chubb? So, what? Thinks far too much of himself, that I do know…”

  “Just seen him, and the Devil’s handiwork. Right shaken up, he was.”

  “So that’s why you’ve turned so pale.”

  “You would too, wife. He had the Mauritian’s head stuck under his arm. Found it stickin’ out of the river bank. Lord Helvin’s side it was. Half-eaten by corpse flies, mind. But I’d have recognised those black curls anywhere…”

  20. SARAH.

  Tuesday 27th July 1920. 11a.m.

  There was no hiding place from the cruel sun rising higher in the cloudless sky, draining that flat, alien land of any colour, yet with each minute that passed, the children’s skin became redder. Their hair lighter. The tension between us all crackling like a new fire.

  “I’m so thirsty,” complained Buck.

  “Baby,” sneered Mollie.

  Our willing traitor.

  “We won’t be long,” I said, trying to sound optimistic even though my own tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, while tears for poor Silver, who’d been shot between the ears, had dried to salt on my cheeks. “Try not to speak. Save your spit.”

  “In Gallipoli, we’d no water for a week and I lived.” Will added, and the silence which followed, was solid as rock. None of us could look at our dear cob in the ditch, covered over with two
rugs and already attracting flies. Nor at our trap still overturned and damaged beyond repair, taking up most of our side of the road. For almost an hour, we tried to stop what little traffic had come along, but despite curious stares, were ignored.

  “No-one trusts us, do they?” Mollie observed, after yet another vehicle had passsed by. “It’s because of the war, isn’t it? Like we’re still the enemy.”

  “Who’d trust you?” Buck wheezed, trying to shove her off balance. “You betrayed us. Now we’re poor.”

  He was right.

  “Stop it!” Will yelled. “What’s done is done, but I’m telling you, I’ll see both those hang.”

  Another silent wait followed. For what? God to show us one small mercy? For the rest of us to wonder why Will hadn’t used his gun. If he had, Silver might still have been alive, taking us well away from this cursed spot. I wished I’d snatched it from him. Been less of a feeble woman afraid to upset the man whom I sometimes didn’t recognize, and without saying a word, I pulled the small key for our leather money box from my pocket and flung it as far as I could into the long, dry grass.

  No-one said a word, and once I’d made makeshift caps out of handkerchiefs for the children and told them to sit in the thin shadows cast by the trap’s upturned wheels, I moved along the verge for a clearer view of the road. Silver was beginning to smell, and the ground hotting up beneath my feet.

  Please God, send us a miracle…

  Then I heard it before I saw it. An oncoming car slowing down and pulling over beside me. Another Wolseley, but this time, not so new.

  “Look!” I cried out, seeing Will, black against the sun, leave his post just as a young, clean-shaven man wearing a white shirt, and pale grey trousers emerged from the driver’s side.

  “Who are you?” Will spoke first, this time, gun at the ready.

  “No need for that, sir,” said the stranger with a London accent who’d already taken in the scene behind us. “Put that down, please. And first and foremost, I need to see your licence. Constable Lambert from the Diss Constabulary, it is. Off duty, as it happens.”