The Shrouded Path

by Sarah Ward

  ‘Me? Wasn’t me who put her in the chimney. I did my bit, which is more than anyone else.’

  ‘I’ve made a complete mess of things.’

  ‘Aye.’ He contemplated his garden. ‘Was it Emily who sent you up here?’

  ‘Yes, although I can’t imagine what she thinks of me.’

  ‘Emily’s not so bad. She was good friends with your mam before it all happened. I expect she was sorry to hear your mam died but no one to tell. That’s the trouble with up here. No one talks about anything but we know the ins and outs of lives. Go back and see her.’

  *

  Emily was waiting for her as she descended the hill, a stout figure still with the old-fashioned pinny tied at the waist, her shoulders stooped. Was the well-built girl with the high-necked cardigan buttoned at the top still discernible? Perhaps, by the way she held her head to one side.

  ‘I feel such a fool.’ Mina had reached Emily, who nodded.

  ‘We were all fools. Come inside.’

  Emily led Mina across to a room at the back, through a door marked ‘Private’.

  ‘My grandfather used to call it the parlour and the name’s stuck, although most people wouldn’t know what one was these days anyway.’

  The square room was simply furnished but the pieces were good quality and fresh flowers scented the room.

  Emily sat down heavily in the armchair and handed Mina a black and white photo. She looked tired, the landlady’s face finally showing her age. ‘I’ve been wanting to give this to you since we met but it never seemed the right moment. It’s from before. Before everything. It was taken on our first day in the fourth form.’

  Mina studied the photo. Two girls sitting at their desks. Hilary slightly behind a young Emily. Both were wearing a crisp white short-sleeved blouse and a checked skirt. Innocent eyed, their expressions held none of the hauteur of the following summer.

  ‘What happened?’

  Emily grimaced. ‘Adolescence. You just want to fit in, don’t you? You follow the crowd. Even your mum, though she was cleverer than all of us.’

  ‘What about Valerie? What did she do?’

  ‘She was part of the gang but she kept her distance. She wasn’t originally from around here. She came from much further up, the old village drowned by the Ladybower reservoir. Did you know?’

  Mina shook her head. ‘But I’ve been chasing after the wrong Valerie. I thought it was Valerie who lived up at Hallows Farm.’

  ‘Grace? She was one of us, all right. Her mother had ideas above her station despite living on that rackety old farm. She went by her second name.’

  ‘But my grandfather said that Valerie was dead. The timings would fit with Grace’s death.’

  ‘I think that was me. I sent your grandfather Grace’s death notice with a short note saying to let Hilary know. It announced the death of Valerie Grace Hallows. Hilary was away at university at the time. Your granddad must have told her that Valerie was dead and not shown her the actual notice.’

  ‘But Mum thought you’d killed her.’

  Emily looked down, twisting her hands in her apron. ‘After what we did to Valerie, she ended up getting hospitalised. I knew she wasn’t dead. I’d occasionally see her around Bampton. She’d avert her eyes, or I did, but I knew Valerie was still alive.’

  ‘Why didn’t Mum see her?’

  Emily made a face. ‘I don’t know. Hilary worked in the library and I certainly avoided the place. Maybe their paths never crossed either, although that would be strange. I think, perhaps, as your mother declined, her fears blurred into each other.’

  ‘What was she like? The real Valerie, I mean?’

  ‘She was different. More developed. We didn’t think anything of it until one day Ingrid saw her walking down one of the lanes holding hands with Mr Neale.’

  ‘Harry Neale?’

  Emily gave her a withering look. ‘Not Harry Neale. The girls’ father. Tom Neale. He spoilt the two girls rotten, Ingrid and Monica, and they adored him too. Ingrid couldn’t believe it. She could hardly speak when she came down to tell me. She stood there white as a sheet just out in the back yard and told me she’d seen Valerie holding hands with her own father.’

  ‘And it was true?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘You asked Valerie?’

  ‘What was the point? She would hardly have said yes, would she?’

  ‘Perhaps it was innocent.’

  ‘Oh, I think it was innocent enough. The distance of time has given me that at least. Ingrid saw them holding hands and she and her sister spied on their father for a few days. That’s all they saw. A bit of kissing and hand holding.’ Emily paused. ‘That was enough.’

  ‘But if you say Mum just went along with it, who were the ringleaders?’

  Emily stared at her in astonishment. ‘Ingrid and Monica of course. Ingrid because she was the apple of her dad’s eye. Monica, well, Monica’s always been a bit different. Odd.’

  ‘Different? How do you mean?’

  Emily looked down. ‘I’m glad it’s all going to come out. I heard about the book and I was glad. I wouldn’t have minded. Ingrid would but she wasn’t around to say anything, was she? But Monica. Well, Monica is still here and she wouldn’t have liked the idea of the memoir at all.’

  70

  ‘Tom Neale. Such an innocuous name and, in many respects, an ordinary man. It could have been a footnote in our history except for those girls.’

  ‘Tom Neale was the father of Ingrid and Monica?’

  ‘He was a gentleman. A kind, ordinary person who was interested in the world around him. I was always a little bit different. I came from a different part of the Peaks and he was fascinated about the drowning of Derwent village. He asked me to come into his study and tell me all about it.’

  Camilla made a face. ‘It sounds a bit predatory to me.’

  Ginnie paled. Annoyed. ‘It wasn’t. After all these years, I still remember his kindness.’

  ‘You had an affair.’ Camilla went over to the sofa and sat next to her mother. ‘That’s not so terrible.’

  ‘No. It’s not so bad, is it? It was innocent and non-sexual. But jealousy is a terrible thing to behold. Have you ever seen it in its full force?’

  Camilla shook her head. Sadler, feeling his temples ache, nodded. His mother glanced across at him.

  ‘When did you realise the girls had discovered your relationship?’ asked Sadler.

  ‘I stopped being invited along to the group gatherings in the churchyard. I spied on one of the meetings and heard mention of a punishment but I thought it would be something mean and childish, not terrifying. I thought I’d die in the tunnel, walled up like some medieval bride. Somehow, though, I managed to get myself to the top of the shaft and a man found me.’ Ginnie looked like she wanted to say something and then changed her mind. ‘He took me back to my parents.’

  ‘What did you say to them?’ asked Sadler.

  ‘I didn’t speak for a month. They had no idea what happened to me. I was examined by our family doctor. They assumed I’d been attacked and he recommended a spell in the Margaret Drake.’

  Camilla looked in astonishment at her brother. ‘The ment … psychiatric hospital? I know the building. It’s derelict now, a huge stone pile with a clock tower in the middle of it.’

  ‘It looked grimmer outside than it actually was. Away from the acute ward, we were treated decently.’

  ‘The therapy worked?’

  ‘It wasn’t called therapy then. We were treated and it wasn’t nice. It did, however, get me speaking again.’

  ‘And you told them what happened?’

  ‘Never. I didn’t tell anyone at all.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone ask?’

  ‘Who’s to ask me? I was sent to the hospital because I wasn’t talking. They were focused on finding a cure for that. They knew it was a psychological problem and so they treated me for shock and depression. The tea dance was part of that.’

  ‘They ha
d tea dances! You mean with sandwiches and cake.’

  Ginnie threw her head back and laughed. ‘Yes. It sounds ridiculous now but there you have it. On a Friday, tea and cake and a foxtrot or whatever.’

  ‘You kept the leaflet?’

  ‘It was like an itch that I wanted to scratch every so often. Then I saw Hilary in hospital and I retrieved it from my shoebox where I keep my odds and ends. A reminder from the past. It’s so long ago. The sting does go from trauma. People don’t always tell you that but it doesn’t hurt forever.’

  ‘But you hid it in your bed.’

  ‘I had this nosebleed that wouldn’t stop and I had to hide it quickly. You found it?’

  Camilla nodded.

  ‘I shoved it under my sheets. I couldn’t get my nosebleed to stop, my heart began to race and the next thing I was in hospital.’

  ‘You had a CT scan, didn’t you?’ Sadler thought his mother looked tired but at peace. The past held no terrors for her. ‘To check the position of your pacemaker. I should have realised. That’s where you saw Hilary. She saw the adult Valerie and she recognised you.’

  Ginnie nodded. ‘I knew she worked in the library, which is why I avoided the place. I saw her a couple of times over the years. Once in the supermarket so I hurried away. Another time at the old baths. I was swimming and she passed me in the pool.’

  ‘She didn’t recognise you those times?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I had long hair as a teenager. Long and fair, my mother used to call me Rapunzel. I cut it short when I left the hospital and then I was grey by the time I was thirty. I changed and I wasn’t sorry, either.’

  ‘How did she recognise you in hospital?’ asked Camilla.

  ‘Our glances met and I saw the look of recognition in her eyes. I was in a wheelchair and I looked across at a patient lying on a bed. She was obviously very ill. Our eyes met and, well, we knew each other. It was as simple as that.’

  It was the question Sadler had wanted to ask from the beginning. ‘Did Dad know about the attack?’

  Ginnie shook her head. ‘No one except my mum and dad.’

  ‘And Tom Neale?’ asked Camilla. ‘Did you see him again?’

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ Ginnie looked angry. ‘I saw no one else again. I went away to boarding school after leaving hospital and didn’t come back until I’d finished university. We never went near Cold Eaton.’

  Sadler sighed and stood up. ‘I think I need to make us some tea.’

  As he listened to the kettle boil, Sadler could hear the murmur of voices from the living room. Camilla had always been closer to their mother than he and it seemed that this revelation wouldn’t dent that intimacy. A movement behind him and Camilla was standing in the doorway.

  ‘I don’t blame her for not telling us. It doesn’t matter, does it?’

  ‘No.’ Sadler poured the water into the pot.

  ‘That woman you arrested, Monica. Was Mum in danger from her?’

  ‘Monica was desperate to protect her family’s reputation and for the act of violence to remain secret. It was only Nell and, to a certain extent, Hilary’s daughter Mina who were interested in revealing what had happened in 1957. Everyone else was happy to let it lie. Mum was never any threat to Monica.’

  ‘So what about what I just saw up at the Cutting?’

  ‘Mum saw Mina in the garden and heard about the exhumation of Nell Colley through one of her friends. It’s all anyone’s been talking about in Bampton. She got in touch with Monica to see what was going on. It was a stupid idea. Monica is prepared to defend her family honour and the part she played in the attack on Mum to the bitter end.’

  Camilla grimaced. ‘You know what? I may not have as many friends as Mum but I think if that’s the form female friendship takes, I’ll stick with my books.’

  71

  In Emily’s parlour, the lit fire warmed the room. The building was silent, centuries of secrets absorbed into its walls. Tomorrow it would be filled with farmers fresh from the fields, stopping in for a quick half before returning to their tractors. For the moment, it was just the two of them. Emily was studying the note left on Mina’s van at the Cutting. The writing was now barely legible, the ink smudged from being carried around in Mina’s rucksack, its soft edges seeping into the still damp paper.

  ‘It’s not Monica’s handwriting. She writes like me, the old-fashioned way. You found it on your van?’

  Mina nodded. ‘It was tucked under the wiper. I saw someone watching me from the bridge but I couldn’t make out who it was. Not tall, though, someone around my height.’

  Emily looked at the fire that glowed in the grate. Malcolm’s wood was drying out, it seemed, a strong flame emitting welcome heat. ‘Shall I?’

  Mina nodded and Emily threw the note onto the flames. ‘We look after ourselves here in the village.’

  ‘Is that why you lied to me when I first showed you the photo? You said you didn’t recognise it.’

  ‘I never thought … I never realised the extent of the damage. I just saw a girl wafting a photo around that dredged up all these memories. You looked like your mum and you knew our ways. Did you know it was my father who told your mum that logs needed to be stacked in a circle to keep them dry?’

  Mina shook her head. ‘I thought it was common knowledge.’

  ‘It was the way you said it. It could have been my father speaking. I thought you’d come to rake up the past and, instead, the past had already come to us.’

  ‘Who was it who came up with the punishment for Valerie?’

  ‘I don’t even remember. Ingrid, I think. Monica, possibly. It was she who discovered the ventilation tunnel. She knew how to prise open the door just a fraction so that no one would notice that it was ajar.’

  ‘Monica.’ Mina gazed into the flames, thinking.

  ‘We were all culpable, though. Remember the figure of the Guy?’

  ‘Of course. I could hardly forget.’

  ‘You said it was like a voodoo doll. I modelled it on Tom Neale. Showed it to the girls, except Valerie of course, and they loved it. Even your mum.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘We were young and I’ve come to my own peace with the past. I’m sorry your mum’s last moments prevented her from doing so.’

  ‘She asked me to find Valerie and I’ve at least done that.’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  Mina shrugged. ‘Go back to the house or maybe the boat. I can see why Mum liked living there.

  ‘Go back to the boat, then, and carry on. That’s all you can do.’

  Mina studied Emily. ‘The detective, Sadler, he took the photo. He recognised the real Valerie.’

  Emily looked up. ‘What’s he like?’

  Mina, embarrassed, shifted in her seat. ‘Tall, good looking, intelligent, cool.’

  Emily snorted. ‘You might as well be describing Valerie.’

  ‘He’ll talk to her. The truth will come out.’

  Emily nodded. ‘Good.’

  72

  ‘So we never had a Shipman in our midst.’ Llewellyn sat back in the chair he’d dragged from the Detective Room into Sadler’s office. He stretched out his long legs, wincing in pain as the muscles relaxed. ‘For a moment I thought Bampton would earn its place in history for the wrong reasons.’

  ‘We’ve had our fair share of horrible crimes.’ A new case had already landed on Sadler’s desk. A tip-off about drugs being sold out of one of the houses on the new estate to the east of Bampton. Something to get his teeth into. Nothing to do with his family.

  ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong. We’re no different from any other small town. It’s just a Shipman-style murderer would have brought us the prurient and the macabre. I’d rather people came here for the puddings and scenic walks.’

  ‘The press have hardly shown any interest at all. The comms team have had a quiet two weeks even if we haven’t.’

  ‘I didn’t like the exhumation.’ Llewellyn massaged his calf. ‘I’m getting old. I
feel old. The only consolation is that it served its purpose. Toxicology identified raised levels of morphine in Nell Colley’s liver.’

  ‘We also have a confession. Monica Neale has admitted administering an injection to Nell during a visit to her house to prevent her writing her memoirs. Nell made a fatal mistake when she met Monica during her trip out to Cold Eaton and told her of her plans.’

  ‘Why didn’t she just write the bloody thing?’ Tiredness had made Llewellyn irritable.

  ‘She’d started it, even if it was merely rough notes on an envelope. I think Nell had been prevaricating about writing the book for years. Ingrid Neale’s death cleared her mind. Now was the time for the truth to come out. Our histories take time to unknot. It’s not simply a case of putting pen to paper.’

  ‘An affair with a married man long dead. A childish prank gone wrong. It was all history. Who would have cared?’

  ‘Monica cared. She’s been charged, of course, but she’s been sent to a secure psychiatric unit pending a mental health assessment. It will be for the courts to decide her culpability in the killings.’

  Llewellyn sighed and stood up. ‘Catherine Hallows is still in a coma and it’s not looking good. If she recovers, she’ll be charged with the killing of Hilary Kemp.’

  ‘Incited by Monica, but still … What does Catherine’s mother say about everything?’

  ‘Lorna is adamant Catherine didn’t have access to her drugs but I’m not so sure. The team are going through Lorna’s prescriptions and drug stocks at the moment. The paperwork hasn’t really been kept up to date so I suspect we’re going to discover that this is how Catherine accessed the diamorphine.’

  ‘Then Lorna may well be looking at charges too. Have you updated Hilary Kemp’s daughter?’

  ‘I’m going there now.’ Sadler hoped that the flush that he could feel forming under his skin wasn’t visible. Llewellyn, however, was no fool.

  ‘She’s an attractive woman.’ He looked under his eyebrows at Sadler. ‘You know the rules, though. No fraternising with witnesses. Say your bit and leave.’