Countess Lucy And The Curse Of Coberley Hall

by Guy Sheppard

  ‘H’m, well, yeah. When people confuse facts with hearsay they soon arrive at an irrational explanation for the merely criminal. Curses and monsters are a misuse of our imagination, I’d say. Such credulity leads to an irrational fear of some very odd things, but it does no one any favours to treat the supernatural as real.’

  ‘Come now, Inspector, when you looked into a murderer’s eyes was it not some other malevolent power that you deplored? The desire to do evil to others is a universal force which we can barely grasp mentally or emotionally, only marvel at, with awe. Admit it, you’ve been amazed, too?’

  ‘Naturally, as a policeman, I’ve had to look into a killer’s eyes, have had to try to see what lies behind their malignant coldness. Yes, you can call it ‘evil’, be that biblical. You can resort to medieval ideas of sin and the Devil. No, honestly, you can’t. In the end it all boils down to selfish, petty desire.’

  ‘So what else do you call it?’

  ‘My fucking job,’ I said, smearing Prince’s muddy paw prints off my coat.

  ‘Really, Inspector? That it? Or did the Devil never come knocking at your door?’

  ‘Do you good not to read so much horror fiction.’

  ‘Who says all vice and passion die with the deceased, every mystery? Things get left behind that the dead want resolved. What will it take to persuade you to accept that there are more things to answer after we die than are ever told?’

  ‘I’m hardly a fit person to do anything any more.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be like your detractors, Inspector, I don’t mean to demonise you or to make you out to be a monster, I don’t want to think that small. Take that stone face mounted high on your gatehouse wall. Why do you think the builders of Coberley Hall chose to place it so prominently over the entrance?’

  I glanced up. What I had so far dismissed as a sleepy, clownish head today regarded me with a barbaric stare from which I instinctively recoiled. The face was sufficiently human to mimic my fears and emotions, it was a ludicrously and insulting version of my wildest self. In that respect, it harked back to ancient giants and club-wielding ogres. It had the frightening aspect of the biblical Gog and Magog, supporters of the Antichrist. This was the head from some naked Wild Man seen in heraldry and medieval Lord Mayor of London Parades years ago.

  ‘I see a hideous stony excrescence.’

  ‘A bogy man like that is the personification of a powerful idea, Inspector. In similar fashion, the roof gutters of Coberley Hall are lined with winged gargoyles. None is there because the house contains any evil, quite the opposite. They are there to keep evil out. They’re no whimsical folly but a rational way of fighting an itinerant, malevolent force that is consonant with religion.’

  I studied the deep furrows on the head’s intaglioed cheeks and it did appear to be a countenance that had been carved in somebody’s idea of a man-beast. The stiff coarse hairs about the mouth and nostrils were more like the vibrissae of a wild pig or other fierce animal that once ran free in the forest.

  ‘Yeah. Probably nonsense. But you have to admire people for choosing to fight demons with demons.’

  ‘Good morning to you, Mr Walker. We’ll talk again soon, I’m certain.’

  I smiled. I appreciated the offer of goodwill, but wanted none of the goodwill offered.

  *

  Dinner was yet another dubious olio of scrawny pheasant and carrots. I picked at the bones while I tried not to submit to the humiliation of eating alone in my very own great hall. I began seriously to consider that Peter Slater’s macabre admonition did, for the most part, account for my disinclination to eat much at all? In truth, my gloomy theosopher’s belief in demons did unnerve me a little, I who would specifically disprove the dead’s ability to dwell in the hereafter, I who took comfort in the fact that my nightly visitations by my deceased wife were only dreams’ psychical phenomena and therefore outside the domain of the physical. ‘Am I really to discount all my years of professional policing and allow someone else’s puerile fancies to take possession of my mind?’ I asked myself. ‘I think not.’

  That moment, my food lodged in my gullet. I went to vomit but could only choke, not regurgitate. In the beginning I thought it was a bone. Instead, I was in the grip of a sudden convulsive wrench or strain, could not release the invisible grip on my windpipe.

  My wheezing and whistling did not go unnoticed.

  ‘Are you quite well, sir,’ asked James, relighting the candles on the table with a spill from the fire.

  I remained very still. All but one wick on the candelabrum had blown out in an instant. Emphatically, undeniably, I felt brush my cheek an empty stroke as of air. Caressingly, it stole by me, thief-like. A moment later a door slammed shut somewhere in the screen’s passage.

  That was the trouble with panic attacks, they left a man’s chest heaving for every last breath.

  ‘Oh no, it’s fine. Yeah, I’m good, totally,’ I replied. ‘Tell me, is that awful portrait above the fire really the current lord’s father?’

  ‘It is, sir,’ replied James, performing the roles of both pantler and scullion. ‘As you will be beware by now, sir, Joseph Jones loved to dress up as a royalist captain in the King’s dragoons in order to take part in re-enactments of English Civil War battles.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean we know what started his ridiculous obsession.’

  ‘Obsession, sir?’

  ‘Him, well, yes. Passion, then.’

  To the portrait’s blue eyes and face fixed in cold detestation there was added a slight grin.

  That was another thing, that hideous painting had to go.

  ‘It’s all on account of the chest that he found in the cellars, sir.’

  ‘Why? What was in it?’

  James posed for a moment like someone who could envisage events preserved forever in time, position and resemblance.

  ‘He found letters and possessions which sparked his interest in the countess.’

  ‘That would be Countess Lucy?’

  ‘There has never been another, sir.’

  ‘Please, can you remember what was in those letters?’

  James’s breathing quickened. Suddenly he was now a diplomatic plenipotentiary invested with full powers over Coberley Hall’s special history. At that moment he could have been as old as it was.

  ‘I would show them to you, sir, but Mr Jones made me burn every last one in the garden.’

  ‘I literally can’t think why he would do that unless he mistook them for rubbish.’

  ‘No, it was never that, sir. When I walked into the library one day I found his lordship very excited. He had broken out in a cold sweat and his hands were trembling. I was struck at once by his pallor.’

  ‘So, quickly, can you tell me what was written?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Might do, yeah.’

  My slightest movement, the chink of my spoon, the sliding of my tankard on the table, sparked in James a nervous reaction. I rather thought it was something akin to dread.

  ‘The thing is, sir, I only have the story from Mr Jones’s own lips.’

  ‘How does that make a difference?’

  ‘What I will say, sir, is that Mr Jones took past events and reconstructed them to give the countess back a semblance of life. In the absence of much official history, he gave her the best biography he could imagine.’

  ‘You mean he was more interested in her becoming his personal beloved re-enactment than the truth?’

  ‘Is not history what we choose to remember, sir?’

  ‘Surely you can tell me something more. Can you?’

  He gazed emptily at the floor like a man fearful of his own power of speech.

  ‘Quite possibly Royalist soldiers were billeted at Coberley Hall during the Civil War, sir. If so, that’s when Lady Lucy would have come face to face with Captain Digby. They would have lived cheek by jowl under the most extraordinary circumstances for several years.’

  ‘They came together to defend the ho
use?’

  ‘Desperately so.’

  ‘Er, was not her husband, you know, at her side?’

  ‘Oh no, sir. The 2nd Earl of Downe was away raising a troop of horse for the king in Oxford.’

  ‘From an account I read in the library, Lady Lucy was lucky to escape with her life.’

  ‘As I was told it, sir, in 1644 things weren’t going well for the Royalists. Littledean Hall in the forest of Dean had been taken and its garrison all murdered. By September 10th it was the turn of Coberley Hall. Colonel Massey, commander of the Roundheads and fresh from his successes in the forest, sent a messenger to beseech Lady Lucy to surrender her men and property, but she burnt his letter at the gate and told him ‘insolent rogue that he is’ that ‘he shall neither have men, chattels nor house.’ She vowed to set fire to everything and herself rather than surrender.’

  ‘A brave lady, indeed.’

  ‘Like the Countess of Derby who defended her Lancashire home of Lathom House for nearly two years, she was the sort of chatelaine who feared neither chain-shot nor cannon balls through her bedchamber window.’

  ‘Poor Digby was severely wounded, right?’

  James said nothing.

  I felt another shift in the air as the fire in the grate suddenly roared and flickered. I could feel my bad lungs bubble as escaping, acrid smoke did its best to poison the atmosphere. Really, it had to be possible to do something about such a draughty chimney?

  ‘Did Lady Lucy discover what became of the captain afterwards?’ I asked.

  ‘Rumours reached Coberley Hall that he was still rotting in Gloucester prison a month later, sir. So Lady Lucy ran away to find him, only to return a few days later with nothing to show for it except a new ring on her finger.’

  ‘Yeah, no, I don’t know. Without the letters we can’t prove a thing.’

  I was being offered truth and lies in equal measure. The one had a few verifiable facts, the other an ingenious, theoretical proposition devised by a man I now knew to have been a zealous and fanciful devotee of romance. That is, a violent liar? Unfamiliar with such romanticism, I scarcely knew how to judge if he had been excessive or inspired. I could not correctly decide the force directing the enthusiasm.

  ‘So, please, can you tell me where the chest is now?’ I asked.

  ‘Miss Elizabeth’s mother had it put back in the cellars, sir, on account of the fact that she didn’t like Miss Lizzie dressing up in its clothes that were so old and fragile.’

  ‘Okay, okay, yeah. You’re saying my wife played with ghosts?’

  ‘Children can live in more than one world at once, can’t they, sir.’

  ‘For there to be a countess there should be a grave. Yet I don’t see hers in the churchyard. So where is she?’

  James broke me more bread from a trencher.

  ‘Many a plaque and headstone have gone missing over time, sir.’

  ‘We know anything factual about her, at all?’

  ‘We know her father forced her to marry Thomas Pope on 26th of November 1638, sir. The earl was only sixteen.’

  ‘And she? How old was she?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Not very, then. Nothing else?’

  ‘In Coberley Parish Records it states in faded brown ink that Lucy Countesse ofDowne was buried the 8th day of Aprill. 1656. Underneath, in another, blacker ink, someone has added: She fasted from eating or drinking before her death ten dayes.’

  ‘Not unlike my own wife, then?’

  ‘Exactly, sir.’

  ‘Except Lizzie’s stomach was so swollen that no food could physically pass through it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Lady Lucy’s starvation was in any way voluntary, either, sir.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you seem to be implying that Lucy and Lizzie have something else in common?’

  ‘When the present revisits the past so clearly, sir, people will draw parallels?’

  ‘Are you suggesting murder?’

  ‘Forgive me, sir, I’ve said too much already.’

  ‘Damn right you have. We’re talking about three hundred and fifty-eight years ago. How can one woman’s pain ever be another’s?’

  *

  I had spoken with unexpected and unwise confusion too full of emotion. I found it most alarming that such feelings could still rise to my throat. The realisation of that soft, cold touch to my cheek reoccurred. In hearing James’s reference to Lizzie’s former presence, it seemed to me that I was inviting mere words to endow her with flesh and blood, so vividly did they invoke her image.

  Turning my eyes hurriedly to the table, I bade him quickly scrape my leftovers into his voider dish and fetch my hot chocolate.

  ‘Tell me, what befell Lady Lucy’s husband after his wife passed on?’

  ‘Thomas Pope sold up and left Coberley Hall forever, sir, only to die in a coffee shop in Oxford a few years later.’

  ‘Really? Perhaps this gloomy old pile is destined to curse us all, after all?’

  ‘I’m sorry you see it that way, sir.’

  Our eyes exchanged looks to no avail.

  ‘And yet poor George becomes sicker and sicker?’

  ‘Perhaps your presence will revive him, sir.’

  *

  ‘Talking of revival,’ I said upon James’s return, ‘I plan to repaint this hall’s dreadful panelling in some bright colour.’

  ‘I trust you will be the soul of discretion, sir?’

  ‘You disapprove?’

  ‘His lordship wouldn’t want you to do anything too hasty.’

  ‘Honestly? This gloomy place? But whoever chose so much dark Jacobean wood anyway?’

  ‘Why, its chatelaine, naturally.’

  My once more lugubrious butler turned to go. Meanwhile the white greyhound sat down by me like my acolyte. I placed my hand on its head to encourage it to acknowledge me, but the spiteful ingrate bit me instead. It raked my hand with its teeth while its eye grew wicked and luminous.

  Of my pain I was quick to complain. I beat a retreat to the fire to lick my gashes. This was the spot on which Lady Lucy had once stood warming her palms on a cold winter’s day, she would have poked the logs with the same black wrought iron tongs I did, between savouring her hot chocolate. The aromatized, sickly syrup excited my heart with its delicious but very sweet old cordial as drops of blood seeped one by one between my fingers.

  ‘Did you really starve to death when your beloved dragoon failed to rescue you? Is that why you forever pray, wait and hope, here? I don’t think so. I don’t believe you’d hang around that long. Would you?’

  For a moment she was less fanciful revenant restored to life by some fanatical English Civil War enthusiast than my very own familiar.

  After all, she knew Lizzie.

  18

  ‘Damn it, Colin, you’re the spitting image of my brother, the devil you are,’ cried Lord Hart, admiring my borrowed jacket and breeks. ‘Who cares about a bit of snow on the ground when you can dress the part so well? I told you it was worth staying on one more day.’

  ‘You don’t think me a fraud, George?’

  He watched as other men gathered in front of Slack’s Cottage and his eyes grew moist for a moment. In his blue irises there burned that unsightly passion born of regret and loss that I was beginning to think suited him so well. It was beaters’ day and my task was to help drive birds out of the wood for the guns to shoot.

  ‘What is this existence but a dress rehearsal? Taedium vitae, Colin. Our days are numbered in this life, but it’s what comes after that counts. Aren’t you glad you decided to join us?’

  ‘No, well, I don’t know. Glad I pass muster,’ I replied, hastily fastening a button at my throat.

  His eyes drifted towards the woods, somewhat nervously.

  ‘Really, old chap, you could be Philip.’

  Revenant I was not and most certainly did I not revel in it. In fact, my plus-fours were a little too tight for me. Also, whenever I flexed my arms I smelt alarmingly of mothballs. St
amping my cold feet on the icy ground, I was a mannequin who modelled the costume that he had exhumed for me from his dead twin’s lovingly preserved wardrobe.

  *

  Eight guns, a few pickers and I walked up the lane with the dogs padding along happily beside us. Each gun paid for the bird he shot, every kill to be recorded on his game-card. Anyone lucky enough to have a loader to pass him his weapon could shoot twice as fast which was, of course, better business for the farm. George brought up the rear in Adrian’s shabby green Toyota.

  ‘Merlin! Heel!’ cried Patrick McGuinness, when his retriever suddenly ran into a field.

  ‘Keep that bloody dog under control,’ ordered Lord Hart as he rode by. ‘Or I’ll shoot him myself.’

  ‘Sorry m’lord. He’s young.’

  A short, rotund man in a wax jacket, Patrick was the village electrician who had helped carry the coffin at Sullivan O’Leary’s funeral. Frankly, it amazed me how people with perfectly reasonable but hardly spectacular jobs felt obliged to elevate themselves to the status of VIPs. But that, for some, was what beaters’ day was all about.

  ‘You been bothered by Peter Slater lately?’ said Lord Hart to me from his seat in the truck. ‘I heard you and he had a bit of a chat?’

  ‘Yeah. Do me good to shoot some clays at his school. I need the practice.’

  ‘That it? What else did the friggin’ bastard tell you?’

  ‘Oh, this and that.’

  ‘He didn’t talk about me, did he?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Take my advice, Colin. Men in our position should never be seen to listen to the tittle-tattle of those who can’t be trusted not to gossip.’ He toyed with the dragon head on his cane, gave its neck a sharp, lethal twist. ‘Drive on!’

  I was left to feel that to go behind his back was to expect some particular bad luck or universal misfortune. I understood the hint, but not everything hinted. Behind me walked a badly shaven individual called Matt. Apparently he sold Ferraris for a living and was deep in debate about the current emergency.

  ‘They say it could be weeks before the floods go down in the valley. More soldiers are on standby with sandbags at the electricity substation next to the Severn.’