The Judge's Daughter

by Ruth Hamilton

  The volume increased. It was a pity that folk didn’t own wireless knobs, because they needed to be turned down a bit when a bloke was trying to do a job of work. The judge was yelling about his retirement and his intention to spend time at sea. His daughter was urging him to stay at sea, as he would not be welcome here. She was also advising him to leave all lifebelts at the moorings – she had quite a temper, it seemed.

  If he varnished the tiny door handles, the brass would stay bright. Fred wrote that in his notebook. He was still waiting for a pair of lions couchant to arrive for the top of the front steps. He had explained on television that he had been let down by a maker of miniatures – he wasn’t having folk think he did half a job. There were sets of moulds he might buy – rubber contraptions into which plaster of Paris could be poured – perhaps he could make his own garden ornaments? Trees were easy – train set manufacturers made good trees and hedges.

  ‘This is my house!’

  The old bugger was in danger of blowing a fuse, Fred thought. Like a pressure cooker, Zachary Spencer could do with a valve on the top of his head for the letting off of steam.

  ‘You’re not wanted here.’

  Perhaps his daughter might benefit from similar equipment – she was more like her dad than she chose to believe.

  ‘I shall do as I please.’

  It happened then. As clear as any church bell, Helen Spencer’s voice travelled through the hall to Fred’s ears. ‘You have three daughters. Me, you ignored to the point of neglect. Agnes was raised by grandparents and Millie will be raised by me.’

  ‘Better if I had her adopted,’ shouted the judge.

  ‘No! Millie will stay with me.’

  Fred stood as still as one of the stone lions. He blinked stupidly, then leaned for support on the huge table that bore the weight of his model. Agnes. Eileen. Sadie, God rest her. Spencer, bloody Spencer. Dear Lord, let this be a lie.

  ‘Agnes knows,’ Helen was saying now. ‘She knows everything.’

  Fred pulled himself together and left the house by the front door. He would not have another stroke; he would not weaken to the point of illness. Had anyone asked him about the walk from Skirlaugh Rise to Skirlaugh Fall that day, he would not have had anything to say. Seeing and hearing little, he simply placed one foot in front of the other, all senses dulled by shock.

  Without knocking, he walked into his granddaughter’s cottage.

  Denis, who had taken the day off to think about Helen’s famous letters, stood up as soon as Fred came in. There was no need for the old man to speak, because the whole mess showed in his face. ‘Fred?’

  ‘Where’s our Agnes?’

  ‘Hanging nappies on the line.’

  Fred, whose legs were threatening to buckle, dropped onto the sofa. ‘How long has she known that yon bugger’s her dad?’

  Denis swallowed. ‘Long enough.’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ snarled Fred. ‘I might be old and weak, but I can wait till he’s asleep and—’

  ‘Stop it, Pop.’ Agnes, washing basket balanced on a hip, stood in the doorway between living room and kitchen. ‘Don’t make things worse than they already are,’ she said. ‘There’s more to it – a lot more. He’s given us this house and Helen will make sure we are OK.’

  ‘OK?’ yelled Fred. ‘OK? Your mam wasn’t OK when she bled to death, was she? Three dead women – that’s some track record for a judge, eh? And what’s this house worth – a couple of hundred quid? What about your shoes and your clothes when you were growing, eh? What about the times when my Sadie had to do magic with a few bob a week?’

  ‘Stop this, or you’ll be in hospital again,’ advised Denis calmly. ‘Take my word – there’s stuff you don’t know, stuff you’re better off not knowing.’

  ‘I know what he did to my daughter, and that’s enough.’ Fred stood up and walked out of the house. In Eva’s fleshy arms, he wept until he felt weak, weary and dry to the core. ‘Bastard,’ he cursed.

  ‘You’ll make yourself ill, love.’

  He pulled away from his wife. ‘Nay, I won’t. Ill’s stuck in a trench with your best mate’s blood on your face.’ He pulled from a pocket Macker’s stolen lighter. ‘Ill’s not knowing what you’re doing, or having no control over what happens. Ill’s cursing your officers for sending you up front, then finding the same officers as dead as the rank and file. I’m thinking, Eva. I’m thinking and I’m grieving and yes, I’m bloody furious. But I’ll do nowt till I’ve thought on it. This time, I’m in charge. It’s my bloody turn now.’

  He sat in the same chair for the rest of the day, stirring only when food and drink were carried to him. Eva watched, waited, said nothing. Agnes called, but was told by her grandfather to go home. He loved her and he told her that, but he was busy thinking. The sun began its descent and Fred walked to the bathroom. He completed his toilet with a shave; then, when dusk thickened, he left the house.

  Eva ran as quickly as she could to Agnes’s cottage. ‘He’s got the big axe,’ she mumbled through tears. ‘And his dander’s up. I know he’s a noisy old bugger, but this time it’s different, because he’s quiet. I’ve never known him like this.’

  ‘Silent?’ Agnes asked.

  Eva nodded.

  Silent was dangerous. Agnes pushed her husband out of the house. ‘Be quick,’ she said. ‘He’ll kill him. Make sure Helen and the baby are all right, too.’

  Eva and Agnes stared at one another for what seemed like hours. The clock was on a go-slow, its hands moving reluctantly to mark each passing moment. Eva sobbed quietly; Agnes trapped nervous hands between her knees and prayed. Pop was lethal when truly angry. He had almost belted a teacher for giving Agnes the cane, and he had been very subdued and menacing on that occasion, too. ‘Mark our Agnes again,’ he had said softly, ‘and I’ll have you skinned at yon Walker’s Tannery – your hide’s thick enough.’ Oh, God, please don’t let him kill anyone, Agnes pleaded inwardly.

  ‘How long now?’ asked Eva.

  ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  Agnes nodded. Denis would catch him and stop him – wouldn’t he?

  Fuelled by anger, Fred Grimshaw took the short cut across the fields. Denis would be hot on his heels, but nothing could stop Fred now. He remembered Macker, remembered also the lads who had fought in the second half, as he termed the later war. A country fit for heroes? A country in which a barrister, soon to become a High Court judge, could impregnate an innocent girl and get away with it? ‘We didn’t lay down our lives for this,’ he told his inanimate companion, a weighty axe that was suddenly as light as a feather.

  Denis was there before him. He was hanging around at the front of the house, so Fred took a detour through the copse and entered the building by a rear door. The place was as quiet as a graveyard. With no one to impede his progress, Fred walked through the mansion until he reached the hall. ‘Sorry, Millie,’ he said before delivering the first blow.

  Now, the axe was suddenly heavy, but he dragged it over his shoulder and into the model until the table below, too, began to buckle.

  Denis ran in and tried to stop the destruction, but Fred ignored him. Yet he saw the judge plainly enough, mouth opened wide, feet planted halfway down the stairs, hand gripping the banister rail. ‘Stop this foolishness,’ Zachary Spencer called, but Fred was beyond retrieval.

  When his work was completely destroyed, the grandfather of Agnes Makepeace paused for breath. Then he raised the weapon once more and addressed the man on the stairs. ‘This should have been planted in your head.’ He nodded at the blade. ‘Agnes’s father? You? Our lovely Eileen made dirty by a man who was never a man? Missed the second war, didn’t you? You sat at home and kept the legal wheels turning, soft job, soft chair, soft life.’

  ‘Be quiet, man,’ spat the judge.

  Fred took from his pocket a handful of coins. Macker had died for this creep and for governments who still failed to make sense. Macker, twice the man that Spencer would ever be, was
just a cigarette case, a lighter and a remembered smile. ‘You big shit,’ said Fred, his voice unnaturally low. ‘Here you are, Iscariot – count them.’ He cast the coins into the debris that had been the model of Lambert House. ‘Judas,’ he spat before walking out of the house, thirty shillings left behind for the traitor’s pay.

  Denis said nothing. He simply followed his grandfather-in-law down the hill to Skirlaugh Fall, made sure that he went into Bamber Cottage, then turned to go home to Agnes. Eva, who had fastened herself to Agnes’s window, left and pursued her husband homeward. It was going to be a difficult night, but Eva would cope, because Eva loved her husband.

  ‘Don’t go,’ Agnes begged the next morning.

  Denis shook his head. ‘Sorry, love. The judge will be like a tiger on fire – I can’t leave Helen and the baby to his tender mercies.’

  ‘There’ll be repercussions. You’re related to Pop by marriage. The man’s a killer, Denis.’

  But he would not be persuaded. He left the house by the front door, turned and waved to his wife and child.

  Agnes felt a chill in her spine. She wanted to run after him, to plead with him to stay at home, but she knew he had made up his mind. She watched as he moved towards the big house, her heart filled by fear, her mind scarcely working.

  In years to come, she would speak sometimes of the dread she felt that day. After Denis had disappeared into Skirlaugh Rise, Agnes never saw him again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  2004

  Ian Harte stepped out of his car and locked the door. The house known as Briarswood, formerly Lambert House, was still on the books, but a keen client had emerged and it had fallen to the surveyor to discover, as cheaply as possible, why the house conformed to no law of architecture, gravity or simple common sense. The front of the building should sag, but it did not, so an explanation had become flavour of the moment. Alterations to the cellars were the probable cause of the dilemma, but proof was needed in order to furnish the prospective purchaser with a proper report.

  A Mrs Agnes Makepeace was caretaker and key-holder, so he sought to discuss the matter with her, but no one responded to repeated knocking at the door of her cottage. After a couple of fruitless minutes, he moved to the house next door. A young woman answered. She was done up like someone preparing to have tea with the queen, but that was normal these days, because the long-ago weavers’ homes had become the bijou residences of the up-and-coming. ‘Yes?’ she asked.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Do you know where Mrs Makepeace is?’

  ‘Morecambe,’ she replied. ‘She goes once a year to remember.’ The woman looked over her visitor, deciding that he seemed of decent enough professional standing before allowing him into her overstated home. The windows were dressed in knickers, as Ian Harte had come to name foolish looping draperies with lace and broderie anglaise trimming their edges. Dried flowers in terracotta cones hung each side of the fireplace, while the mandatory pot pourri acted as centre piece on a coffee table.

  After an invitation to be seated, he placed himself in a cream leather chair. The room was stuffy and over-perfumed. Imitation antiques lined the walls – a bureau, a chesterfield, some deliberately distressed bookshelves that housed, among others, Barbara Cartland, Mills & Boon and, to add a little class to the establishment, a few tomes in imitation leather. Lancashire Life and Ideal Home flanked the pot pourri with a set of silver-plated coasters completing the piece. This was the stage on which actors acted day-to-day parts in their make-believe lives. The setting was a much-loved disaster, its owner proud to show it off. ‘Morecambe?’ he asked. ‘Would you care for a cup of tea or coffee?’ He saw the desperation in her face, recognized loneliness, opted for coffee. While she made the drinks, he sat feeling sad. Why? Because this village, once bustling with life and a sense of community, had become a waiting room for the ambitious young who clung by the skin of their teeth to the first rung of the property ladder. Gardens had been replaced by slabs on which cars could be parked, while almost every house boasted a burglar alarm colourful enough to catch the eye of any would-be thief. The residents of Skirlaugh Fall were in hiding, each holding on desperately to possessions and position, every man for himself, lottery ticket in a drawer, the pub continuing to serve chicken in a basket and Black Forest gateau, post office gone, new dormer bungalows in hideous pink or yellow brick hiding in dips behind the original stone-built dwellings.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’ he asked. Had she not heard that minimalism was now in vogue, that dado rails were no longer the fashion?

  ‘A few months. We stand to make a killing and move on pretty soon. This house isn’t big enough for a family, and I am expecting our first. You were looking for Mrs Makepeace?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She poured coffee from a steel-and-glass jug, said she hoped he liked Kenya blend, offered him a bourbon cream. ‘She’ll be in Morecambe. That’s where he died, you see.’

  ‘Oh?’ He swallowed a mouthful of biscuit. ‘Who died?’

  ‘Her husband. It must be going on forty years ago now, but my mother remembers it. They died at sea.’

  ‘They?’

  She nodded. ‘Him – Mr Makepeace – and a judge who used to live at Briarswood – they were the only two on board. No crew that night, my mother said. It was all over the papers. Anyway, Mrs Makepeace never remarried. She must be sixty now, but she’s still pretty.’

  ‘So is her garden.’ The Makepeace house was one of the few to have survived the invasion.

  ‘She does it all herself. Not that I know her, you understand. We keep ourselves to ourselves. Anyway, the yacht exploded and both men died. They’d been putting some sort of fuel in the kitchen – the galley – and something went wrong. Mrs Makepeace was left with a small baby and no husband. Very sad.’

  ‘Terrible. When will she be back?’

  The woman raised her shoulders. ‘No idea. I believe she rents a house for a few weeks, but, like I said, we don’t mix.’

  Nobody mixed any more, because there was nowhere to go. The pubs in towns were crammed with kids, the bulk of whom appeared to be below the age of reason. Cars disappeared with monotonous regularity, many burned and exploded in an effort to destroy all evidence when petrol tanks ran dry. Life was lived these days in secure units that had once been proper homes. Keeping people out was the main aim in life as man entered the twenty-first century.

  The town centre was dying, its murderers sitting in municipal offices to plan the rerouting of a river, the destruction of beautiful commercial properties, the reduction of Bolton to a town like any other, building societies, fast food, fast shopping, layered car parks. Social life was arranged these days around fortresses occupied by friends – so it was dinner parties, bridge, garden barbecues. No one borrowed a cup of sugar any more; no one took sugar any more, he thought as he dropped a sweetener into his cup.

  ‘If you leave a card, I’ll get Mrs Makepeace to phone you when she gets back.’

  ‘No need,’ he answered. ‘I shall put a note through the door. Thank you for your help.’ He took a last sip of coffee and decided that he didn’t like Kenya blend.

  Outside once more, he unlocked his car, climbed into the passenger seat and sat for a few moments outside the Makepeace house. He now knew the recent history of Briarswood and was coming close to believing in ghosts. Over several decades, the building had been rented out to various people, but no one had stayed beyond a few months. As for the construction, there was an extra wall in the cellar – that was the only explanation for the anomaly. To investigate, he needed the permission of the current owners. The owners were Helen Spencer, Millicent Spencer and Agnes Makepeace.

  Briarswood was supposed to be haunted, and Ian Harte understood why tenants had quit. It was a very odd place. He remembered his last visit and had no desire to return to the house, but, as the one elected to get a builder to sort out the footings, he was forced to become involved. Because Briarswood, once Lambert House, was to become a health farm
. ‘Another slide into bloody stupidity,’ he muttered. The country was going to the dogs and he was forced to play a part in the sin.

  It would be a simple case of taking out a few bricks to ensure that the building was stable, but permission was required. He sighed, wrote his note for Mrs Makepeace, delivered it and returned to his vehicle. As he turned the key in the ignition and pulled away, he found himself wishing that someone else could take charge of this job. Briarswood was crazy, and he wanted nothing more to do with it.

  Agnes gazed out to sea, her eyes fixed on the area in which her beloved husband had last drawn breath. There had been no funerals, because the yacht, reduced to matchsticks, had taken with it two people whose bodies had never been found. She recalled the inquest, remembered a man from the Lifeboat Association stating baldly that any persons on board would have ended up as fish food.

  For at least two years after the accident, Agnes had been a robot. She had functioned, had fed and clothed her child, had scarcely noticed when Helen had left with Millie, Mags and Harry to live in the south of England. ‘Just me and Lucy now,’ she breathed. George had lasted longer than poor Denis, but a single coronary occlusion had eventually taken him away from his wife and children.

  She said her goodbye to the grey water, picked up the handle of her wheeled suitcase and dragged it towards the station. Home. She was going home to an existence that held few pleasures now that David was gone. She was proud of her son. He was a consultant who specialized in childhood cancers at Great Ormond Street hospital. He was married, Agnes was a grandmother, and she lived for infrequent visits. Everyone was so busy these days, seeming to live at the speed of light, with no time for anyone or anything.