Seth and I were silent for quite a while, but after a bit we did start to talk. Well, I say talk, but in fact we were soon embroiled in one of our more animated discussions over my suggestion that Derek could repair the lime mortar between the stone flags of the Great Hall floor.
‘Isn’t it enough that you keep borrowing two of my gardeners?’ he snapped. ‘Now you want Derek, too! And I suppose you’ll have them doing anything and everything but gardening, when the house opens to the public.’
‘Well, actually, I did think they might take it in turns to check up on the car park and perhaps both go down after everyone’s gone to pick up any litter and empty the bins. And what do you think about having the sole entrance for cars and coaches on the main road, where just the coaches come in now? It seems silly having separate entrances, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose so,’ he agreed grudgingly. ‘But we’d have to change the access details in the guidebook before it goes to press.’
‘Ottie’s sculpture will be off to be cast soon. We’ll have to make a base for it in the rose garden before it comes back, I suppose.’
‘Yes—another job for Derek,’ he said gloomily, helping me over a stile.
When I turned to see how far back the others were, I noticed that Mike now had his arm around Anya so that looked promising, anyway.
I skidded a bit on a frozen puddle and Seth took hold of my arm. I was starting to feel a bit Pride and Prejudice—and just my luck to be stuck with the tall gloomy one, who wasn’t about to declare his passion for anything other than knot gardens and was in love with the female version of Mr Wickham.
Jack left for London early on Boxing Day morning, so I presumed that, in financial straits or not, he still intended to take off for Barbados.
Without him, apart from Ottie and Hebe having one of their spats early in the day on an undisclosed subject, we were all a lot happier, including Alys, who made her presence known more often, in a friendly sort of way.
Lucy went back to Guy’s flat with him for a couple of days and Anya and I threw ourselves into sorting out the tearoom and gift shop before she left for New Year in the Highlands. I missed her, but she would soon be settling down nearby for good, which was a nice thought. Seth was again coming up most evenings, because we were finalising the arrangements for the opening day, but since it appears that Mel flew off to Barbados after all, I suppose he had nothing better to do. But he does seem remarkably cheerful about it. I don’t know if that is a good sign or not?
Jack phoned Hebe up several times from Barbados, and it turned out that he has persuaded her to sell enough of her stocks and shares to get his firm out of trouble. That’s what Ottie suspected and what made her so mad—and me too, when I found out about it, though sort of guilty as well.
How could he do that to her? Hebe said she didn’t need the money and he would pay her back anyway, so I hoped he would.
* * *
‘I’m told by an inside source that Jack will be featuring on a popular TV programme tonight,’ Ottie said, popping in as we were finishing breakfast on New Year’s Day. ‘It’s called Dodgy Dealings and I think we should all watch it. It’s at seven, Sophy. I’ll come over.’
‘Dodgy Dealings?’ I stared at her. ‘You mean, exposing something he’s done, like a rogue traders programme?’
‘Something like that, I think.’ Ottie, standing by the hotplate, helped herself to a roll and filled it with crisp bacon.
‘I’m sure your information is incorrect,’ Hebe said with conviction, ‘dear Jack wouldn’t do anything wrong.’
‘Wouldn’t he?’ said Ottie indistinctly, through a mouthful of food.
‘No—I mean, there may have been one or two little tiny misunderstandings in the past, but that is all.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Ottie.
We all foregathered in the library early that evening, including Seth, whom Ottie had insisted come over.
Lucy—now back from Guy’s—as though we were about to watch some blockbuster film, had made a huge bowl of popcorn in the kitchen and was passing it around and we each had a glass of sherry or whisky.
The programme started by explaining that they were there to expose people who hadn’t, strictly speaking, done anything illegal, but prospered by taking advantage of the elderly and/or desperate.
They had been contacted by someone who had signed over her house to Jack—an elderly lady, frail and pretty in pink cashmere and pearls. Aunt Hebe exchanged a look with her sister.
‘That’s Clara Cathcart!’ she exclaimed.
Clara explained how she had been widowed and found keeping up the family home very difficult on a reduced income, yet she had hated the thought of leaving it. When Jack Lewis came along, offering to buy the property for a good price and promising that, as part of the deal, she would be able to live out her days there rent free, it had seemed the answer to her prayers. She trusted him because he was the nephew of a friend of her late husband…
Mrs Cathcart had duly signed, but soon discovered that by not reading the small print of the contract, she was powerless to stop what happened next.
‘I was moved into an estate cottage while my house was “repaired”,’ she said. ‘But actually, instead it was divided up into luxury apartments. When I understood what was going on and protested, Mr Lewis explained that I would eventually be moving back into the house—into a flat on the ground floor, in what had once been the kitchen quarters,’ she said indignantly.
‘This fulfilled his contract to house me. Most of the contents of the house had gone into storage…I now had to sort and sell most of my belongings, which no longer fitted into my much reduced living space.’
‘What do you think of your current accommodation, Mrs Cathcart?’ asked the interviewer.
‘The flat is quite nice, but it is not at all what I bargained for. It would have been better to sell up in the first place and move away, rather than live in a small part of what was once my home, now full of strangers.’
I think the correct term for what happened next is a sting.
The production team had set up an elderly female actress as the supposed owner of a small stately mansion somewhere in Cheshire, who had answered one of Jack’s carefully worded advertisements.
We watched film clips of his original visit, where he exuded the sort of charm I already knew he possessed. Then it cut to his second visit, during which he clearly expected to clinch the deal, with the papers all drawn up ready to sign.
But this time the old lady was directed to insist on slowly reading every word of the small print and querying things, and you could see Jack start to get rattled.
‘It says here that you will move me out of the house while renovations take place?’
‘Of course. We wouldn’t want you breathing in all that dust or being disturbed by the noise. But you would return as soon as it was finished,’ he assured her.
‘That sounds all right,’ she said doubtfully.
‘You can trust me,’ he said, with one of his delightful smiles. ‘Now, if you’d just like to sign here and—’
This was the point where the TV team came in and the presenter said, ‘I’m Brent Collins of Dodgy Dealings, and I think perhaps you forgot to explain to this lady that when she moves back into her home, it will only be to a small flat in part of it.’
Jack looked initially appalled but soon attempted to talk his way out of it, saying he thought the lady understood his proposals and that he had many former customers very happy with their custom-made accommodation, in which they lived rent free. ‘And what I am doing is entirely legal!’
‘But you are misleading vulnerable people into signing documents that they don’t understand, with false promises,’ said the presenter. ‘But this is one property you won’t be getting. Perhaps you could explain—’
But Jack had had enough. ‘No comment,’ he said, pushing roughly past the TV team and the next shot showed him gunning away down the drive in his familiar sp
orts car.
There was a short, stunned silence around the TV. Then Ottie said brightly, ‘Well, that was interesting, wasn’t it? He’s going to find it very hard to persuade anyone to sell their house to him after that, and you can kiss your money goodbye, Hebe.’
‘I am sure Jack didn’t intend to deceive anyone,’ Hebe began indignantly. ‘It—’
‘Oh, come on, Hebe,’ Ottie said. ‘Of course he did! I’ve heard he’s borrowed on his expectations too. And there are one or two other strange rumours going round—I’ve asked friends to look into them.’
‘I’d heard about Clara Cathcart from Sir William,’ Seth admitted, with a worried sideways look at me. ‘I told Jack he was sailing a bit close to the wind—we argued about it. And if he’s a bit overstretched, then he’s going to find it even tougher now, isn’t he?’
‘This must be why he’s been so keen to close all those deals before Christmas. He must have known this programme would be on,’ I said. ‘He might have warned us—and no wonder he suddenly decamped to Barbados!’
‘I think what he did to those elderly people was ethically totally evil,’ Lucy said. ‘I hope he goes bust.’
‘Lucy!’ said Aunt Hebe, shocked.
‘Well, I bet he’d have done the same to Winter’s End, if Mum had been spineless enough to sign it over to him.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t—and Jack is terribly fond of Sophy!’
‘It’s in much safer hands with Mum, take it from me,’ Lucy assured her, but although the programme might have shaken Hebe’s faith, she continued to defend him.
Next day the announcement of my engagement to Jack appeared in The Times (I had entirely forgotten that he’d said he’d sent it) and I had phone call from a tabloid, though Mr Yatton fielded that one.
I wrested Jack’s number in Barbados away from Aunt Hebe and phoned him, telling him we had seen the TV programme and also that he’d forgotten to cancel the engagement announcement.
He sounded relaxed and amused. ‘The programme was a big deal about nothing. They can’t touch me, I haven’t done anything illegal. In fact, I made very nice little apartments for the owners, all mod cons. And I didn’t cancel the announcement because I thought it would get my debtors off my back until things are sorted out, if they think I’m about to marry you. Look, just play along with it for a couple of weeks, OK?’
‘Not OK! Absolutely not!’ I said, and slammed down the phone.
I sent an announcement to The Times, unengaging myself, despite Hebe’s pleadings.
Chapter Thirty-four: Revelations
Joan promises to teach the child well, to give her the key to the coffer when she should be of an age to value its contents and to make known to her the truth.
From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1582
‘It’s nice to be just us two again, isn’t it?’ Lucy said a week or so later. She was curled up on the parlour sofa with a book and I was sewing my patchwork. Charlie was lying on my feet, which had gone numb, though I hadn’t got the heart to move him.
‘Yes, it doesn’t often happen now, what with Hebe and Ottie constantly around, not to mention Guy turning up at the weekends. And you spend every morning with Mr Yatton.’
‘I’m as likely to find you arguing with Seth in here every evening, or even vanished down to the pub,’ she retaliated. ‘And at least my mornings with Mr Yatton are productive. The Winter’s End visitor website is up and running and we’ve successfully bid on eBay for a chiller cabinet for the tearoom, and a couple of display cabinets.’
‘My arguments with Seth are productive too,’ I protested. ‘Well, they are if I win them…He is so stubborn, sometimes there’s just nothing doing with him. But that’s head gardeners for you.’
She cast me an unfathomable look. ‘Aunt Hebe said that rose he gave you at Christmas was significant.’
‘I don’t know what she means by that, but it was certainly a surprise. I didn’t think I rated one of his precious roses.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he thinks you’re worth a rose. Mum, while we are alone, do you think I could look at Alys’s book again? It’s ages since I’ve seen it.’
‘You’re not going to start treasure-hunting like Jack, are you?’
‘No, I just want to refresh my memory, and I’m curious to see the box too.’
‘All right,’ I agreed, but I still made sure the shutters were closed over the windows and locked the doors before I opened the corner cabinet.
I lifted Alys’s household book onto the table, while Lucy admired the way the inside of the chest was carved, and the compartments and false drawer fronts.
‘This is really cute,’ she said. ‘What are these little stones?’
‘Some sort of runes, I think, but I’m not sure. Put these cotton gloves on if you are going to touch the book. I keep some in here specially.’
She sighed, but did as I asked and then opened the book at the flyleaf, thoughtfully reading the inscriptions.
‘I’ll go and make us some coffee,’ I said. ‘Do you want gingerbread? Mrs Lark said she was making it earlier.’
‘Mmm…’ she said, engrossed.
When I came back she had gone back to examining the box, and had not only entirely pulled out the little drawers but was carefully studying the interior, her fair head bent low.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, setting the tray down a safe distance away from the chest. ‘I know the inside is interesting, but not that interesting!’
Lucy, a look of concentration on her face, removed an apostle coffee spoon from a saucer and applied the tip of the handle gently downwards…There was a small sound: ‘There!’ she said triumphantly.
‘What is it? You haven’t damaged it, have you?’
‘No, I just had a hunch. There was only one rose carved among all those leaves and flowers, right down inside the central part of the chest where the household book was, so since Alys said the secret lay at the heart of the rose, I wondered if something might happen if I pressed it—and it has. See?’
I leaned over and she demonstrated. ‘This bit of wood that looks like part of the carved design slides out at the front and there’s a cavity underneath.’
Something lay within. ‘It’s another book—and hidden right under the first! I wonder what this one is. It’s a tight fit,’ I added, manoeuvring with the end of the apostle spoon.
‘I was thinking the other day, when I read in the new guidebook about how Alys came here in her mother’s place to try and heal the heir of Winter’s End, that maybe she would have brought some recipes for the remedies she would need, written down. So I bet it’s Alys’s own household book.’
‘Let’s see if you’re right,’ I said, opening the slender volume with great care. On the first page was written, in faded ink and a difficult-to-read hand, ‘This is Alys Blezzard’s book, in her tenth year.’
‘You seem to be right—except she began it long before she came to Winter’s End.’
Side by side we sat, trying to make out the entries on each page. Most were lists of herbs and plants, with their uses, and recipes, some more esoteric than others. Gently leafing through, eventually we came to an upside-down page. A couple of scraps of loose parchment fell out, one inscribed with the pre-Christian symbol of good fortune called a Chi-rho cross, the other a line or two of verse. I picked it up, read it through, then stared at the scrawled initials on the bottom.
‘A poem?’ Lucy said, peering at it. ‘The ink is more faded than that in the book, isn’t it?’
I held it, my heart beating fast, remembering how I had laughed when Ottie had told me the family secret.
But Lucy was more interested in why the middle page of the book was upside down. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, turning the whole thing over, ‘she wrote something else, starting from the back. It looks like a sort of diary, though there are no dates, just years.’
I tore myself from the scrap of parchment, but not before gently laying it down in the centre of the table, as though i
t would shiver into dust at the lightest touch.
Lucy was right, it was Alys’s journal of sorts, her thoughts from the day she was told she was to come to Winter’s End in her mother’s place and, though the handwriting was difficult to make out, we deciphered most of it.
It took us ages and at some point I heard Jonah try the door on his rounds of locking the house up, pause, and then go on. But we couldn’t stop reading until we got to the end, and I know my face was wet with tears when I finished it—it was so sad. Lucy was sniffling, too.
Where it abruptly ended, another hand had added:
Some say they see the ghost of my mother, dressed in grey, beckoning the priest from the house and others say they have seen her shade dance like one abandoned in the oak glade. I feel her presence sometimes when I am in the little parlour where she spent much of her time, or walking in the fine knot garden; and sometimes there is a scent of roses where none blooms. She did betray her husband, yet the Wynters in their turn betrayed her. But I feel she is now at peace, believing her actions were preordained and would one day be of use to her descendants here, in the place she loved. Until that day comes, if come it does, her inmost secrets were best concealed from curious eyes. Anne Wynter
‘So Anne knew about this book too. But she only passed on Alys’s secret orally; she didn’t tell anyone else about the existence of a second manuscript…’ I said slowly. ‘Or the little verse.’
‘This maid that’s mentioned in Alys’s journal must have told her how to find it.’ Lucy turned a page or two and said, ‘Here’s where she says that her lover sent her a “line or two of verse, to her dark beauty”. Do you think that’s the one on the parchment?’
She reached over to pick it up and I said quickly, ‘Be careful—I think it may be rather valuable.’
‘WS?’ she mused, studying the initials.
But I’d spotted another addition on the back of it, in Anne’s bolder hand. I read out hollowly, ‘“These lines were penned by my true father, who was afterwards one of Lord Strange’s men and made a name for himself in London with playwriting…”’
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