A New Dawn Over Devon

by Michael Phillips

  Alas, young Geoffrey was only eight. It did not occur to him that he held in his chubby hand that which, had he known where to locate the secretary to which the key belonged, as well as where to insert it, would have uncovered exactly what his father lusted for.

  Therefore he trousered the keys, and neither he nor his father was any nearer the root of things when they left that day than when they came.

  And though the elder of the banker Rutherfords continued curious through the years about the missing family Bible, and set stealthy inquiries afoot to steal it out of the Hall, it continued to gather dust, safely out of sight where Orelia had stowed it.

  ————

  Amanda’s older brother George had been curious about the great Hall that was his home almost from the day he could walk. He inherited his father’s love for exploration, and for asking questions about how things worked and why. And whereas much of Charles’s innate curiosity was directed toward mechanisms and people, as a lad George turned his curiosity toward what lay under the floors, behind the walls, and above the ceilings of Heathersleigh Hall.

  He had discovered oddities in the garret at nine, and stumbled on yet more fragments of the past in 1904 as a curious sixteen-year-old.

  An old wooden chest first drew his attention as he rummaged about in a little-used storeroom on the second floor of the north wing. Opening it, George momentarily had his very hands on that which would have helped explain the riddle of the garret construction that had puzzled him as a boy. But he was not interested in papers and journals. He was more interested in what was to be found beneath the chest. Therefore, he tossed back two ships’ logs that had been taken from a cave on the coast 142 years before, and set about dragging the chest away from the wall. Written documents were not as fascinating as the hole in the floor he found beneath the loose boards the chest had been sitting on. Minutes later he was winding down a circular stone stairway into a labyrinth of concealed passages designed by his great-great-grandfather.

  He did not stop to ask what could be the motive behind these hidden places. At the moment he was too excited about the hidden invisible world of clandestine twistings and turnings he had found, which led him eventually through the wall on a swiveling bookcase, and unexpectedly into the library, where his astonished parents sat reading. It did not take George many more days to connect the passage with another that led to the tower, through the back side of the concealed doorway that had not been put to use since the night Orelia Moylan had stolen into the house, as well as another passage leading up steep, narrow wooden steps into the garret.

  In 1911 George again came close to learning more from that same chest when he brought his younger sister, Catharine, through the hidden passages to the same storeroom. At last the chest’s contents had drawn his interest, as he proceeded to explain to Catharine. But his attention was now on the ledgers revealing the construction progress of the Hall. But neither of the two young people noticed the log books. Thus the mystery of young Broughton Rutherford’s ill-fated adventure with Rufus Powell and its links with the Heathersleigh attic regions remained undetected in the midst of their other discoveries.

  Nor did Catharine realize that the missing family Bible her cousin Geoffrey’s father had been so intent to find, which had curiously disappeared from various of Heathersleigh’s portraits in the gallery, itself contained clues that would one day alter their family’s history. Had she known where to look, she might have discovered parallel clues that same afternoon from the smaller worn Bible in the cottage of bewildering transfer, the names of whose former owners she and Maggie pored over together in the midst of their needlework.

  The three Heathersleigh women walked the passage from library to tower upon Amanda’s return to England in 1915, and on that day first put to use the key to the disguised tower door they again possessed after Geoffrey returned the ring, sixteen years after he had taken it, at Charles’s funeral. The purpose of the large key was at last known. The smaller, however—though its twin had by now been found in the drawer in the cottage—remained on the tower ring, a riddle unsolved.

  Many had indeed brushed close to one or another of the secrets of Heathersleigh Hall, yet still much of the past remained cloaked in mystery.

  In the end, it would remain for Margaret Crawford McFee to bring that past further into the light.

  Maggie’s Revelations

  1914–1915

  Orelia Moylan’s granddaughter Margaret married Irishman Robert McFee in the early 1860s. The two inherited Heathersleigh Cottage at the death of Margaret’s mother, Grace Moylan Crawford, and came to be known to the community simply as Bobby and Maggie.

  They never had children, and many considered them odd. In earlier times, children in Milverscombe had feared the name McFee and, in the sort of curious mingling and distortion that occurs through the years, came to associate the peculiar couple with the scary rumors about old Lord Henry Rutherford, and would venture too close neither to Heathersleigh Hall nor its former gamekeeper’s cottage.

  Yet none could deny that the two were indispensable to the community. Bobby’s knowledge of animals was so vast that few could have managed without him. And his wife made herself useful to the villagers in a thousand ways. She knew much that was not commonly known, about medicine and weather, about herbs and other plants, and about humanity in general. The poor of the region considered her as an angel. The well-to-do didn’t know what to think of her, and cared even less.

  Those who took the trouble to acquaint themselves deeply with Maggie and Bobby knew them to be a simple man and woman of God. Their close affiliation with Charles and Jocelyn Rutherford, in particular, as the nineteenth century drew to a close, served in time to make the two aging McFees among everyone’s favorites, in no small measure due to the spiritual esteem in which they were held.

  It was prayer, and her childhood recollections of her grandmother’s favorite Scripture, that contributed to Maggie’s first subconscious stirrings in the direction of the mystery whose keys she had herself possessed for the better part of her life without knowing it.

  A visit to the cottage by nine-year-old Amanda Rutherford prompted a discussion between the girl and the odd couple, as she childishly judged them, containing more significance than any of them realized at the time. Maggie had taken a worn, old black leather Bible from the open desk of the curiously ornate oak secretary made by her great-grandfather, and opened it with reverence to the eleventh verse of the fourth chapter of Mark’s Gospel.

  “This is my mother’s Bible, Amanda,” she said, “and my grandmother’s before her. I can remember my grandmother telling me that if a body doesn’t begin early in life to see the mysteries of the kingdom, they become harder to see as one gets older. The high things of God take a lifetime to learn. That’s why you must point your eyes toward them as early as you can. The Lord will take anybody, anytime, and will do his best with them. But whoever’s got the chance ought to get their eyes open early so that the Almighty has time to let his mysteries get down deep into their character.

  “This was her favorite passage,” Maggie added.

  “‘Unto you is given,’” she read, “‘to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are on the outside, all these things are said in parables.’”

  Maggie paused, then glanced across the table toward the girl.

  “Do you hear, Amanda?” she said. “—Mystery. That is what the Lord calls life in the kingdom of God. It takes a special kind of eyes to see into it.”

  Maggie’s words continued to play on her own mind as the years went by even more than they did the girl’s for whom they were intended. When Amanda’s independent spirit drove her from home at the age of seventeen, Maggie McFee, along with Amanda’s family, was driven to renewed depths of prayer for the prodigal they all loved. And as is often the result of such communion with the divine will, as Maggie prayed that Amanda would come to understand the mystery of the kingdom, her prayers opened new channels in her own
understanding.

  That understanding exploded into light soon after the death of her beloved Bobby in 1914, just as the world was being plunged into war. Two weeks after his passing, as she sat slowly rocking and thinking of the dear husband with whom she had shared her life, his final words to Amanda came back to her. “Open yer eyes, lass,” Bobby had said. “Don’t wait too long. Ye got t’ discover yer heritage. ’Tis different than folks think, different than ye imagine. ’Tis a legacy ye’re given t’ discover, though it be hidden from yer eyes at present. A hidden legacy, lass, do ye hear me? Find it. Ye must find it!”

  Bobby’s words continued to haunt his wife. Later that same night, Maggie suddenly awoke out of a deep sleep as if an arrow of clarity had stabbed her brain, with Bobby’s words reverberating in her memory.

  A hidden legacy . . . different than folks think . . . ye must find it.

  She rose and sought the Bible that had been passed from her great-grandmother, Mrs. Webley Kyrkwode, to her grandmother Orelia, who had used it cryptically to record knowledge concerning which her tongue had been silenced. Now all at once, with the benefit of her grandmother’s scarcely legible marginal note, the double meaning of the passage struck her. Why had she never paid attention to the addition before?

  There were the words, faint now with the passing of years, added in the margin in her grandmother’s own hand—words as familiar to her as this Bible itself. She had seen the brief note most of her life, thinking it merely a reference to the importance of the verse. She had tried to impress that importance on young Amanda long ago in this very cottage whose origins and history were now on her mind.

  She read them again, puzzling over the strange handwritten annotation.

  There is a mystery, her grandmother had written, and the key is closer than you think. The key . . . find the key and unlock the mystery.

  Suddenly the words jumped out at her. How could she not have made the connection before now?

  A small, old, peculiar key had been kicking around all her life in the drawer of the secretary. No one knew what it was for.

  Could its purpose be connected to her grandmother’s words!

  Below the note had been added a reference to Genesis 25:31–33.

  Quickly she flipped back to the halfway point of the sacred volume’s first book and scanned down the page. What had her grandmother been trying to convey? Were her marginal notes meant as a message about this key . . . a mystery . . . a birthright?

  Again Maggie turned back to the Gospel of Mark—Find the key and unlock the mystery. . . .

  Suddenly her mind began to race—the key . . . the mystery . . . the sale of the birthright!

  Maggie rose, set her Bible aside, and walked to the ancient secretary. With trembling hand she lowered the lid. Above the desk was a small four-inch-wide drawer. Carefully she pulled it out. Her eyes fell on the key inside she had seen resting there all her life.

  She removed it and turned it over slowly in her fingers.

  What mystery was this key meant to unlock?

  She began snooping about the old cabinet, first pulling the small drawer above the desk all the way out. Key still clutched in her left hand, she sent the fingers of her right probing into the opening, investigating with the tips of her fingers.

  The back panel was loose!

  Jostling it, she managed to slide it half an inch to one side. She stuck a finger into the crack and soon had it sliding along grooves embedded in the wood. In the opening behind it her fingers felt a small metal apparatus. A brass lock was built into the hidden recess of the cabinet! With fingers trembling, she took the key and inserted it, and turned the key. From somewhere inside she heard the faint metallic sound of a lock releasing.

  Below the drawer, the back wall of the desk gave way and opened toward her. A hidden panel swiveled smoothly down on embedded pivots, revealing a faceless shelf. On it lay a single folded sheet of heavy paper.

  Maggie removed it, brought it out to the light, sat back down in her chair, and unfolded it.

  Some time later Maggie still sat, shaking her head in disbelief. To think it had been here all along—the key, the lock, the hidden drawer—in front of her very eyes—and the answer to the mystery that had given rise to so many stories and rumors for over half a century—how the cottage of the Heathersleigh estate had come into the hands of a poor local peasant family with hardly two shillings to rub together.

  In her hands, Maggie held the deed to Heathersleigh Cottage—this very cottage, sold, as was written on it, in the year 1849 from Henry Rutherford, Lord of the Manor of Heathersleigh Hall, to one Arthur Crompton.

  What could its significance be but that to which her grandmother was referring as the sale of the birthright of the Genesis passage? Further documentation seven years later, in the year 1856, apparently upon Crompton’s death, recorded the transfer of the deed to Orelia Crawford, Maggie’s own grandmother, to be passed to her descendents after her, or, absent heirs, to the Church of England. The stamp of the solicitors’ firm Crumholtz, Sutclyff, Stonehaugh, & Crumholtz attested to the legality of the 1856 transfer.

  She had discovered the legal origins to the long-concealed mystery . . . but still not the why.

  Gradually sleep returned. Maggie extinguished her light and went back to bed.

  The next day, at the earliest possible hour, she was bound for the parish church in the village. The ancient journals and parish records were produced for her examination. It did not take Maggie long to locate what she wanted—the connection between the deed she had discovered and the fateful night of Eliza’s death.

  Not only was Arthur Crompton at the Hall that night, her grandmother, the only midwife in the region, must have been too. That was the connection between vicar and midwife. Whatever secret had been hatched that night, they had clearly shared it.

  But as Maggie left the church to make her way home, a feeling of unease began growing within her. She had nothing against the Church, but it seemed the Cottage ought to belong to those for whom it rightfully had been intended.

  She would consult the solicitors’ firm whose name was on the deed. She could not undo what had been done years before. But she could at least, if it lay in her power legally to do so, put her home back into the hands of the true heirs of the Heathersleigh birthright.

  And she must write down what she had discovered and leave new clues and information explaining it. She also must make a will.

  To that end, on the very next day, she boarded the train in Milverscombe, to the amazement of the entire village, and traveled to Exeter to visit the offices of Crumholtz, Sutclyff, Stonehaugh, & Crumholtz, where she concluded her business and left the necessary documents in the hands of Bradbury Crumholtz, senior partner of the firm.

  Several months later, after Charles’s death and funeral and Amanda’s return, and sensing that her own remaining years could be few, Maggie explained to Jocelyn, Amanda, and Catharine what she had learned, telling them how the cottage had come into the hands of her family, and that she had drawn up a will that would give it back to them when she went to join her Bobby.

  At last the mystery of Heathersleigh Cottage appeared to have been solved. Temporarily the four women all felt a great sense of relief.

  But in time the two younger girls, who had, like their brother, been given curious, thoughtful, and inquisitive mentalities by their father, realized that the family Bible was still missing.

  And that the older mystery of the Hall and its garret yet remained.

  1

  A Time to Remember

  An attractive young woman, by appearance in her midtwenties, stood at the window of a thick stone wall gazing out upon a serene English countryside.

  A calm radiated from her posture and bearing which, had an observer been present, might have seemed almost too peaceful for her years. Full waves of light brown hair flowed down onto her shoulders.

  Was she what the world would term beautiful? From the look in her eyes at this moment, it wo
uld have been difficult to say. It was a compelling face, not because of the attractiveness of its features, but for what lay beneath the surface . . . an expression hinting at mystery.

  Who was she? How had she come to be here?

  In partial answer to such inquiries, a closer look would have revealed that the eyes bore an aspect of pain, a good deal of it recent. Their expressiveness explained much of what was to be known about her personal history that had come before, as well as what yet lay ahead in the story being written on the pages of her life.

  The colors of the rolling terrain of meadows of the Devonshire downs, broken here and there by clumps of trees, were muted by the subdued oranges and pinks of the late afternoon’s sun. It was a landscape she had been intimately familiar with since earliest childhood.

  It meant more to her now than she would have thought possible at an earlier season of her life. She once gazed out this same window with far different eyes. But that time was now long past. At last she had begun to apprehend the heritage that was truly hers, and had been all along.

  The tower in which she stood rose from the northeast corner of a great country house too old to be called a mansion yet not quite so austere and grey to be comfortable with the term castle. For as long as anyone could remember the place had been known as Heathersleigh Hall. It was an estate of ancient date, whose walls contained many secrets—some of which yet lay awaiting discovery.

  Her eyes now fell on the small village of Milverscombe two or three miles in the distance. The thatch and slate roofs were all she could make out from this vantage point of the forty or fifty cottages and homes which housed its population. Several larger buildings rose above the level of these roofs, most visibly the old stone church, and a modern train station.

  She now looked toward a small wooded area to the west of the village situated about a third of the way toward it from the Hall. Nothing stood out as so remarkable about the collection of birch and pine trees enclosing a small dell between the slopes of two adjoining hillsides. There were a thousand such places in the southwest of England. But this one was special, and not only because it lay just across the boundary of the estate.