Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “Look, it’s been a tough week for us both,” he said. “But once the inquests are over, why not take yourself off for some sun and sangria?”

  “We’ll keep in touch,” I said, almost automatically, seeing those sad figures dissipate under a slowly lightening sky which promised an almost sinful fine day.

  “We made a damned good team, John,” he grinned. But I couldn’t, because Catherine Vickers, just as Karen Fürst in the south of France, had had defied all my logic.

  Messed with my head. Also, just then, that same brown and yellow scarf had come into view, still trapped on that same thorny bush. Less of it than before, of course, and soon to be gone altogether.

  “I know now why Mollie Parminter wasn’t present,” I said, without thinking.

  “Where d’you mean?”

  “At that pit.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “You will.”

  And then we were back on the flat, straight Longstanton Road, passing the corner of Bakery Lane and its empty, unlit little cottage.

  EPILOGUE.

  Wednesday 23rd November. 1988. Midday.

  A relieved Connor Morris has been re-instated as Detective Sergeant following his wife’s departure and a hastily-convened police tribunal. Am I envious? No, yet my serious shortcomings in this case has made me consider finding redemption elsewhere.

  And Stephen Vickers has survived. Just.

  Although knowing the previously loyal Greg Lake had placed The Wombwell File in his office safe on Friday morning, Stephen had no idea that same, trusted technician had stolen it for George Chisholm. For this reason, I’d spared him a grilling. Not so his guilty conscience, which at Wombwell Farm had been compounded by a sustained beating and trussing up by the unoly trinity, led by his eager wife.

  Drugged and losing consciousness, he’d given Piotr and his mother useful time in which Piotr left Chisholm on guard while they’d driven in convoy to Catchwell Crossing with a similarly sedated Greg. Another hour with his head shoved down the ‘stank’ would have killed him.

  Under police questioning with a Legal Aid solicitor present, Piotr Polanyi, the murdering errand boy, admitted enticing Greg into a sexual realationship before searching for The Wombwell File at his house on the Thursday evening. Having learnt it was in Stephen Vicker’s office safe, he’d tried unsuccesfully to glean its code for Chisholm. Then, still under orders, had helped himself to his employer’s red Fiesta once he’d left for Aldeburgh on Tuesday morning.

  Luring the unsuspecting Archive Technician from his home in Stoney Linton, he’d gagged and sedated him before bleaching his hair, dressing him in identical clothes to his, before stowing him in the boot. Next, he’d picked Stephen up near Wombwell Lodge on his way back from Tidswell station then injected him with the same Midazolam/morphine combination he’d used on Greg. How he’d come by the drug and the syringe needed to administer it, was still a mystery, but Morris was working on it.

  Piotr Polanyi, hoping for bail and a reduced sentence, had confessed to Bishop Leslie Horncastle that at Catchwell Crossing, he’d trapped a semi-conscious Greg in the Fiesta’s driver’s seat, removed his gag and blindfold and placed his own crucifix around the victim’s neck. To save his soul. Or so he’d said.

  Three days ago, grainy CCTV film from the Norfolk&General Hospital’s morgue, showed Chisholm in disguise, hunting for that giveaway item without success. In the end, the threesome who’d all betrayed each other, were denied bail and due to stand trial for assault and premeditated murder in Norwich on Tuesday, January 12th next year. Stephen and myself being key prosecution witnesses. Perhaps the question of why Catherine Vickers’ name and phone number written in the dead man’s handwriting, had been found on his body, will soon be answered.

  As for her husband, he’s now recuperating with me at home in Lea Villa, while Wombwell Lodge has been boarded up prior to going on the market. His future plans don’t include his wife. Why should they? Hers hadn’t included him, and here he is, on the mend, nursing his bruises and his pride, sitting opposite me in my new conservatory warmed by an unseasonally bright sun. A week away from my next birthday.

  “No more apologies from you about the Tidswell Station event,” I say, topping up his sherry glass before I serve lunch. “You must have been under considerable strain. Besides, how were you to know all of Catherine’s secrets?”

  “She had to punish me for not accepting Piotr as our son. Wanting me demoted, even made redundant because of my perceived lack of research into my current project. That particular farm and its mysterious past.”

  He leans forward, wincing. “How the Hell did I know Chisholm’s sticky fingers had already been on the Wombwell File since his Kings College, London days, and he had to get it back? Greg told me nothing.”

  “Protecting you, most likely. At least the police team here are liasing with the Met to find out exactly where Chisholm was on 20th July 1985. That should be interesting.”

  “To think my wife fell for him. Worst of all is she helped Greg to die like that. It’s still too much for me to take in. All my bloody fault.”

  “Rubbish. Nothing warranted what they did.” I get up to retrieve the cursed black box file from the lounge. “Not even this.”

  *

  A security firm is due to collect it this very afternoon, and by the end of the day, will be restored to its rightful place in London. This time, given its significance, probably in a bomb-proof safe. All except that special photograph. My secret, till my last breath. I pray neither Stephen nor anyone else will notice it missing.

  As I hand him the file, which although bearing a sleek, new label still has scratches and ingrained dust from the farm, I ask him to finally share its contents with me, because I’ve not yet managed a proper look. As for the solid, little leather-coated diary with its rusted clasp, something has held me back from intruding.

  Meanwhile, time too, for me to show some remorse.

  “If I’d known what Catherine’s game was, d’you think I’d have handed this over to her after you’d gone missing?”

  “Course not. We’ve all been duped. And as for her so-called abduction to Aldeburgh. What a bloody farce. Piotr’s her chauffeur there and Chisholm plays the Good Samaritan by taking her back to his place.”

  I remember the diesel smell on her clothes in Stephen’s study. How she’d manipulated me into an embrace…

  “Mind you,” he continues. “I’m not surprised Nicholas wanted to be shot of her, and actually I felt sorry for him at his cremation yesterday. Beleagured by this and that. What a nest of vipers. And poor Olive Thompson caught in the middle of it all. At least she’s safe now. And you.” He looks at me. “I should never have asked you to get involved.”

  “You’re never to say that again. Got it?”

  *

  He finally opens the box file and gestures to me to sit alongside him on the settee. The welcome sun falls on various old photographs whose provenance is still unclear. Some labelled and dated in faded lettering underneath. Others not.

  The first, with KCL 1980 almost scratched off on the back, shows a mean-eyed, bare-chested young man squinting into the sun in front of an impressive Dutch barn housing a shadowy multitude of black-faced sheep. I half-recognise him from among the dead gathered around that treacherous pool of foul water.

  1900.

  “Who’s that?” I ask.

  “Stanley Bulling, only child of Ann and Walter Bulling who owned Wombwell Farm. He’s a mystery, but according to Sarah Parminter’s brief notes in her diary, she was convinced he’d helped spread the leprosy - perhaps deliberately, who knows? He was also a suspected triple killer, disappearing to Holland for four months until mid-December 1920. Oh, and this one’s of Sarah herself, with her children, Mollie and Buck. Odd she never mentioned having it taken.”

  My God.

  My eyes begin to sting at how this very same young woman as in my photograph protectively clasps their hands. How she looks down at them with ten
derness. Like my own mother Sandra Lyon had done with us. As for that sturdy little girl, with the defiant stance, I can’t meet her fierce gaze. Still recognisable, despite the many intervening years. The absentee from my ghostly vision last week.

  During the next ten minutes, until tiredness takes over, Stephen reads out the diary excerpts written from the day Sarah’s family arrived at Wombwell Farm until Tuesday December 14th. From a heatwave to a hard winter when caring Doctor Lovell took her and her son to Vesper House for treatment and ‘a particular procedure’ after her own secret and desperate attempts at abortion had failed. This beautiful, young mother, so full of self-loathing, had only wanted the best outcome for her family, justice for Stanley Bulling’s victims and her nemesis, Matthew Crane.

  Her last five lines of shaky writing say it all, before it was hidden behind a cupboard in Vesper House.

  This time, the KCL 1980 stamped on its back cover has been covered by an oil-based paint. Chisholm again, no doubt, and I wonder out loud how, given it was originally hidden in Vesper House, which was later demolished, how it came to light.

  “Mollie Parminter. Say no more. And I’ve discovered that as Lyall Stokes never used minions to help him, he probably came poking round Bakery Lane after dark where she’d used Myrtle Villa to hide everything.”

  “Whatever,” it’s one Hell of a record,” murmurs Stephen. “And Hell’s the word. Now then,” he relieves me of the diary and closes the box file before picking up the resurrected green folder. “Are you ready for this? All forgeries. The begging letters from Doctor Lovell. The Reverend’s uncharitable responses. My God,” he seems about to cry. “What a total bloody diot I’ve been. And,” he pauses. “Nicholas is dead.”

  And Greg.

  “Look, we’ve all been fooled at some point or another,” I say. But forgeries? How come?”

  “In a minute. Look at this. From Henry Beecham. Written not long after the murders. If only Nicholas had known it existed, he’d have had less to worry about. Might not have taken his own life.”

  *

  A tense silence follows as he hands me a twice-folded page of paper, thicker, browner around the edges, smelling more of old damp than anything I’ve seen so far.

  Attached to it by a rusty paper clip is something more delicate, decorated - if that’s the right word - by a silhouetted priest holding a bell.

  I began with the letter. Pity and remorse seeping from every syllable…

  The Vicarage. Tidswell. Norfolk. December 30th 1920

  Reflections. Ante-Mortem

  Before my Maker banishes me to eternal torment for colluding in a heinous and preventable event that stained the west Norfolk countryside and so many human hearts, I must make clean my conscience.

  Since my appointment as vicar of St. John the Martyr in the Diocese of Longstanton, I have strived to be a worthy representative of God on Earth, but sixteen days ago, my conscience deserted me. I could have saved the Bullings and the Parminters from their dreadful fate in the water pit by reporting Constable Drummond and Doctor Vincent Lovell to the Authorities for their part in multiple murder. But what did I do? I put my shoulder to their evil plough, and in doing so, forfeited any right to Heaven.

  Since the Middle Ages when the separation of lepers from the rest of the populace, became Church Law, it has been the responsibility of God’s representatives on this Earth to uphold it. Not only for the greater good but also for those so brutally afflicted. As I write this, my pen becomes unsteady, because I have always felt the Office at the Seclusion of a Leper (the manner of casting out or separating those who are sick with leprosy from the whole) to be cruel and heartless. However, this is what Doctor Lovell first of all, urged me to to do. Instead of punishment, I’d hoped to use Vesper House (formerly known as The Leper House) for its proper purpose. The relief of suffering. However, at the start of that terrible December, no Church money was forthcoming until God instructed me to withdraw my own savings. However, Doctor Lovell, a ruthless bigot, diseased in mind, but never in his body, had threatened myself and my wife with our lives unless I not only colluded with him and PC Drummond - formerly Matthew Crane from Swayhurst - in not only the killing of Sarah Parminter and her young son, but also those of Wombwell Farm.

  Lovell forced me to watch as her thirteen-year-old daughter Mollie, dragged her own wounded mother to her watery grave. Blackmailed by PC Drummond over his killing of Constable Lambert, Stanley Bulling who’d snatched young Buck Parminter from Vesper House, had later tried to save him, to no avail. God forgive him his earlier heartless crimes and myself for for my part in this abduction and for standing by, locked in the doctor’s car.

  Drummond then gave Mollie Parminter a gun to shoot his old parents, her step-father, then Stanley Bulling himself. Once the pit had received its dead and still-living alike, this devilish doctor vanished from Myrtle Villa and remains unfound. As does Constable Drummond who’d persuaded the police and everyone locally that the dead had been taken by gypsies. I am still too frightened to report what really happened, not even to my dear wife who I fear is also not long for this world.

  As for Drummond’s wicked daughter, Mollie, wherever she is, I can offer her no forgiveness.

  Signed in guilty sorrow,

  The Levite.

  *

  “Henry Beecham and his wife died within a week of each other, six months later,” adds Stephen, retrieving both items and returning them to the black file, while I sit in a state of shock, thinking of that thirteen -year-old girl with the fearsome, blue eyes who became the old woman with wrinkled stockings guarding a terrible secret. But hasn’t all my working life and beyond been punctured by lies and cruelty? And then another long-ago Sunday School chant returns to haunt me.

  ‘Surely, He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteem Him as a Leper, smitten of God and afflicted…’

  “Is this letter the real thing, after all?” I ask, still numb.

  “Johnny, I’m telling you, it is. I do know.”

  “Left in your cycle saddle bag as well?” I feel cold, despite the warm sunlight. “Just like the other version and those supposedly from Doctor Lovell?”

  “No. At the bottom of our dustbin. It’s always emptied every Friday morning. I mean, was.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Snodbury.”

  “And the messenger?”

  “That old girl we saw on Monday afternoon in Bakery Lane. The one who threw herself in the River Howse.”

  ‘I used to be a nifty bridge player and my motto still is ‘never show your hand too soon…’

  “I still can’t say her name,” his voice dies.

  “Mollie Parminter,” I urge him. “Go on…”

  “She phoned later telling me where to look. After her real father had stolen it from Henry Beecham’s study, she’d hidden away with the diary behind bricks in a wall at Myrtle Villa just before Nicholas arrived on Monday evening. The single, most important item which another mysterious visitor failed to find when he’d turned up in a Daimler eight years ago.”

  KLC 1980 immediately comes to mind.

  “Lyall Stokes?”

  “Good guess. Her description matched what I remember of him on TV. But what she really wanted to say was that Henry Beecham’s letter was her confession as well. How her previous ‘offerings’ purportedly from both doctor and vicar had been her own warped lies.”

  I look him squarely in the eye. “You’re a crafty one.” Yet I shiver again, seeing that old woman’s body in the swirling river water. Her miserable cottage and Myrtle Villa, where last Tuesday I’d found not a shred of anything useful. Just the remains of a small fire full of blackened paper fragments. “So, it took Mollie Parminter sixty-eight years to provide the truth.”

  “Better late then never.” Stephen passes me the green file. “You can chuck this lot in your dustbin. And good riddance.”

  “That’s why I saw all those sorrowful ghosts, save one in that field,” I muse, aware of sizz
ling sounds from my oven.

  “What an odd thing to say.”

  “It was nothing. Just a few seconds,” I lie, not wanting to over-burden him. Aware too, of that roasting beef beginning to burn. “And no news yet of her body being found. Only her doll, in the River Waveney, near Bungay.”

  Stephen shakes his head of what just hen, in the sun, seems even whiter hair. “They’ll have to dredge the North Sea to find them all. Poor buggers.” He slides the letter into his shirt’s top pocket beneath his jumper and finishes his sherry, while a trio of hungry blue tits start demolishing the remains of our breakfast toast on the bird table.

  “As for the duplicitous Doctor Lovell who’d said he’d loved Sarah Parminter,” I continue.“While you were still in hospital, I looked him up in as many North Yorkshire parish records as I could find, and according to to those in St. Andrew’s church in Skipton, he died there aged almost one hundred, in 1979.”

  “You should have been an historian, not me,” Stephen says bitterly.

  “No thanks. And as for police records claiming he’d disappeared near to Christmas in 1920, while out walking, I did some digging there too. Guess who’d signed them at the time? PC Alfred Drummond. Another fake. Aka Matthew Crane. Incredibly, still a misper.”

  “Good God.”

  A loaded silence follows.

  “We’ll have to invent a new word for fake. It’s becoming wearisome.”

  But neither of us smile as that sun now lower in the sky behind the roofs of the houses at the end of my garden, make the room suddenly cooler. My thoughts as bleak as winter to come.

  *

  My late father’s clock tells us it’s time to eat, although I confess I don’t much feel like it.

  Just then, my cell phone rings.

  “Don’t answer,” Stephen says, limping the way I used to do, towards the dining room. “You never know.”

  “Exactly.” Nevertheless, I pick it up from the sideboard to listen.

  “Is that you, Mr. Lyon?” begins a bright, female voice.