by Sarah Rayne
Half a grain did not sound very much to Vincent, but Mother seemed pleased. She read out how the amount might easily have been fatal to someone with low blood pressure and a kidney condition which was what the major had had. ‘They make the point that the dosage of digitalis has to be controlled very strictly,’ she said, and lowering the newspaper for a moment she looked directly at Vincent. ‘But none of this is anything to do with us and we must stick to the plan.’
They had stuck to the plan and they had not told anybody anything. No one asked them where they had been on the night the Bournemouth major died; there was no reason why anyone would do so.
Not many people attended the major’s funeral because not many people had known him very well. Shy, they said, reserved. Or simply downright aloof, depending on your point of view. Mother was asked by neighbours if she had gone to the service – she had known the major, hadn’t she? – but she said she had hardly known him at all. ‘Only to say good morning.’
When a man called from a solicitor’s office to tell Mother Major Thodden had left her all his money, she shed some tears into a lace handkerchief. Then she pulled herself together and gave a sad smile. ‘Poor man,’ she said, ‘he had no family and he was very lonely, you know. I’m glad if I gave him some companionship these last months, although I hadn’t actually seen him for two or three weeks before his death. How extremely generous of him to do such a thing. I don’t in fact need the money, of course, my husband was a prudent man and as you can see I am very well provided for.’ One hand indicated the house and its comfortable furniture. ‘I may decide to give most of Major Thodden’s bequest to a charity. Not all of it – that would be like rejecting his kindness – but a large portion of it. Perhaps you would advise me on suitable charities. Distressed army officers, something of that kind – he would like that, wouldn’t he? But I do wish I had been there with him when he died. A lonely death, it must have been.’
After a while they left Bournemouth and went to live in Chichester. A very cultured town, said Mother. There were theatre festivals there and a cathedral, and they would meet a very nice type of person. They had a bigger house in Chichester and a lady came in to clean three times a week and to prepare some of the meals. A man came twice a week to keep the garden in order because Mother found gardening exhausting. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t much stamina.’ She liked to sit beneath the apple tree with a book and to talk about My Roses. Vincent went to a new school where the uniform was very smart indeed. The only other difference to their lives was that Mother coloured her hair a much darker shade. ‘But we do not tell people that,’ she said. ‘It is still thought rather common to dye one’s hair. When I was a young girl, it was taken to mean that one was rather fast.’
They made a few friends – not too many because it was best not to give people the opportunity to know all your business. But there were one or two boys at Vincent’s school who might be invited to tea, and Mother joined a small gardening club and after a while found a new gentleman friend. ‘A very nice person,’ she said, pleased. ‘A bachelor. Not a very young man, but that does not matter. You see, Vincent, how important it is to work out a proper plan and to keep to it?’
A plan. A proper plan that you had worked out and kept to. Those words had stayed with Vincent ever since. Mother’s shining look when she came out of the dead major’s study stayed with him as well. He thought of it as a beacon, lighting up his life.
After he left the Caradoc House flat he spent an hour in the office downstairs, but his mind was not on the Society: it was still busy with the question of Georgina Grey. When you were going to get rid of someone you needed a weapon, just as his mother had used the digitalis as a weapon against the Bournemouth major. Neither of them had ever said this, of course, and it had not been until many years later Vincent had understood what had happened.
Had Vincent a weapon he could use against Georgina? He frowned, thinking hard, and then quite suddenly saw the answer. Calvary. Calvary was the weapon he would use to get rid of this prying great-granddaughter of Dr Walter Kane.
The more he thought about this the more he liked the symmetry of it. But how should it be done? At mid-day he walked along to his own house and while he made himself some lunch, he reviewed what he knew about the place. At the moment it was owned by H M Prisons, which was to say the government, and Huxley Small’s firm acted as agents, making sure it was not occupied by squatters or tramps, sending out a surveyor once a year to see it had not fallen down or been burned to a crisp. Managing the place, they called it. Keeping it secure. Vincent knew perfectly well that managing Calvary was a sinecure because there was nothing that really needed managing: even the surveyor only had to look out last year’s report, tweak a few phrases to make it seem newly written, and send it along with an invoice for a fat fee. Very nice too.
So, to practicalities. First, he hunted out the sketch plan he had managed to acquire some years ago of the gaol’s interior and spread it out on his dining table to study. It was a plan the indolent surveyor had drawn years earlier, and was very clear and exactly to scale. There were the cells and the communal rooms, the refectory, the governor’s office, the medical block, the chapel and the old burial yard. The mortuary with its brick tunnel beneath the execution chamber. And the condemned block, which was a little apartment on its own containing the cell for the man awaiting execution. The execution chamber itself with its grisly gallows trap . . . The lime store.
The lime store . . .
CHAPTER TWELVE
The more Vincent thought about his plan, the clearer it became and the better it looked. He put away the layout of Calvary’s interior, and felt able to return to Caradoc House. Once inside he paused at the foot of the stairs, wondering whether to go back up to see Georgina, but decided it was better not to do so. He would get the details of his plan sorted out properly in his mind before he saw her again.
He was engaged in packing the Society’s files away: labelling and dating things as much as possible, and tying folders into neat bundles. It was dusty and unproductive work, but it had to be done and Vincent would not have trusted anyone else to do it. So far nobody had told him what was going to happen to all these files, which was very discourteous; you would have thought he was owed that after so many years. But he was going to leave everything in apple-pie order for Huxley Small and the accountants, so that when they did move in, they would remark on what a very meticulous secretary the Society had had in Vincent Meade and wonder why they had not realized it before. They might even consider employing him in some other capacity, although if they made any kind of offer it would give Vincent great pleasure to decline; he was not going to be at anyone’s beck and call, thank you very much!
In any case, he might have other fish to fry. A rather exciting project was starting to take shape in his mind: this was the creation of his own psychic society. It was quite an ambitious idea, but Vincent did not see why he could not make a success of it. He fancied he was rather well known in psychic circles, and people would recognize his name and be interested. ‘Is that the Vincent N. Meade of the Caradoc Society?’ they would say. ‘What an enterprising chap to be starting his own society. And he’ll know what he’s talking about after all these years. We must certainly see about joining that.’
This was a very promising prospect, and Vincent was nearly sure he was going to do it.
While he worked, he considered how he might get Georgina out to Calvary, because clearly this was the next stage of the plan. Mother had always believed in keeping such plans as simple as possible and Vincent was going to follow her precepts. He thought he could offer to show Georgina the place where her great-grandfather had worked. He tried out a little dialogue to himself.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he would say, ‘that you ought to see where your great-grandfather worked. So I’ve arranged to borrow the Calvary keys from Huxley Small. He took a bit of persuading, but he agreed in the end. I’ll drive you out there if you like.’
; Would she like? Vincent thought so; he had already seen how much Walter Kane intrigued her. If he implied that he had gone to some trouble to get the keys, she could not very well refuse. Yes, it ought to work very neatly.
At half past three he went home to change for the appointment with the accountant. He decided to be classy with a touch of flamboyance in a dark overcoat with an astrakhan collar. The coat was pleasingly similar to those favoured by the more ornate actors of the Edwardian era, and Vincent was considering buying a very wide-brimmed homburg to wear with it. He thought this would cut quite a dash, although he was having a little difficulty in finding such a hat because the local gentlemen’s outfitters did not deal much in flamboyance or dash.
He got out his car to drive the short distance to the accountant’s office. He did not actually drive very much and it was not really necessary for him to have a car at all – his house was just off Thornbeck’s main street in a little cul-de-sac. It took him exactly five minutes to walk to Caradoc House, and he bought all his groceries and provisions in Thornbeck and rarely went any further afield. But he had a car because Mother had thought it important. In her day it had been a mark of success and wealth. ‘I never learned to drive,’ she used to say. ‘Girls didn’t when I was young. They expected to be driven. And I should not understand the mechanics. But a car will show people that we are comfortably placed, and now you are seventeen we will see about driving lessons for you, Vincent, and ask about buying a little car – although not a Mini car, I don’t think. Undignified and unladylike. They will turn out to be nothing more than a fad, mark my words. But a car will be very useful. You could take me for little drives on the days when I am up to it.’ She had, in fact, quite often been up to it, and Vincent had become a very competent driver.
He was competent at the meeting with the accountant as well, although the accountant was a glum sort of person, who spread balance sheets all over the desk and said they did not make very happy reading, did they? Quite a bit of mismanagement had gone on, he fancied. This was said rather severely and anyone else might almost have thought the accountant was chastising Vincent himself. Vincent knew he was not, however, and so he settled himself cosily in the chair, put on the spectacles he always fancied made him look rather donnish, and frowned over the figures for several minutes, finally agreeing that, Oh my word yes, they were very depressing indeed, weren’t they?
Georgina had deliberately not told Vincent Meade she was going out to Calvary that afternoon in case he offered to accompany her. It would be a perfectly natural thing for him to do and it would be difficult to refuse, but Georgina did not want anyone with her the first time she saw the place where Walter had worked.
But Vincent had said he had a dull afternoon ahead of him with accountants, so at half past twelve Georgina made herself a sandwich and a cup of coffee, read a bit more of Dr Ingram’s Talismans of the Mind while she ate, and by half past one was driving out of Thornbeck. As she went past the King’s Head she remembered with pleasure the lunch she had arranged for Friday with Drusilla and Phin. She would enjoy that, and it would be interesting to hear about the proposed TV programme on Calvary.
Calvary . . .
She turned into the lane she had seen on her way into Thornbeck. It was narrow and winding, and although vehicle-passing places had been cut into the bank at intervals if another car came hurtling around one of the blind bends there could still be a head-on collision. Georgina slowed to a snail’s pace and hoped for the best. Walter must often have come along here, either going to Calvary or leaving it. Had the possibility of a prang worried him or had there not been very much traffic then? Or had he not driven a car anyway?
‘After all we went through together I should be devastated to lose you,’ Lewis Caradoc had written in 1940, and the words had burrowed into Georgina’s mind. Had something really big – really life-changing – happened, or was it just that the two had shared the stresses of having worked at Calvary?
She had expected to see the prison from the lane because she had assumed it would be set on high ground – Calvary, the place of execution on the hill – but the lane’s left-hand bank was high, and even at this time of year the hedges were so thick it was impossible to see over them. It was only when she rounded a curve that the bank fell away and without warning she could see it across the fields.
She slowed down and then stopped altogether, staring across the countryside. Calvary did indeed stand on a hill – a small hill as hills went in this part of the world, but a hill for all that.
The building was four-square and constructed from what Georgina supposed was local stone – grey and bleak-looking. It was a bit smaller than she had expected but it was unpleasantly easy to visualize a jolting cart going up the steep track, pausing in front of the massive central doors while they were unlocked, and then going inside. Had the prisoners in those carts been handcuffed? Manacled?
After a moment she drove on. Was it possible to get up to the place from here? Yes, there was a narrow track, not much more than a footpath, but wide enough to take a car. She would not, of course, be able to get inside, even if she had wanted to, but she would like to take a closer look.
The car struggled up the hillside in second gear, its erratic suspension complaining loudly at the uneven terrain. Halfway up, the fold of the land caused the prison to vanish behind some trees and suddenly reappear, much nearer. Georgina was annoyed to feel a lurch of nervousness at this.
The track stopped abruptly in front of the impressive entrance and she switched off the engine and got out. It was very cold and very quiet. The doors reared up above her. How must it have felt to see them swing open, and then to hear them close as you were taken through in a windowless van or a cart? What would lie beyond? There was a small door inset on one side which must have been for gaolers and visitors, and there was the remnant of a thick old bell-pull near to it. Georgina had to resist a sudden desire to pull it to see what happened.
She walked cautiously around the side of the building. There was a paved path of sorts, but most of the slabs had cracked and weeds and rank grass made it necessary to walk close to the walls. Even so, Georgina almost missed the door halfway round. It was deeply set into the stonework, almost entirely hidden by moss and some kind of grubby creeper, and for a moment it looked so utterly unreal – so like something out of a child’s storybook – that she was not immediately sure if it was just a pattern of cracks in the stones. But cracks did not form themselves into a hefty-looking latch, nor did they have hinges. She put out a tentative hand, causing the mat of leaves to rustle drily and rather eerily. Like the fingernails of murderers scratching against a prison-cell door, trying to get out . . .
If David were here he would laugh at that and say, Too much imagination, George, and suggest they walk briskly back to civilization. Georgina was glad David was not here because she did not want to walk briskly back to anywhere; she wanted to see if this door would open, and she wanted to find out as much as she could about this place that had been such a part of her enigmatic great-grandfather’s life.
She glanced about her, but nothing stirred anywhere and her car was comfortingly within sprinting distance. If she saw anything she did not like she could be back at the car in a couple of minutes.
The door resisted slightly, but more of the ivy mat fell away and with a groan of disused hinges it yielded. Georgina hesitated, then went inside.
The door opened onto a courtyard which was enclosed on three sides by Calvary’s bulk, and on the fourth by the outer wall through which Georgina had just come. It was dark and was not a place where sunlight ever penetrated. The stone flags were cracked and weeds pushed up everywhere, but at one time it must have been some kind of garden because there were patches of dried-out soil. Georgina stared about her, aware of a feeling of infinite loneliness.
Quite suddenly she understood where she was. She was in Calvary’s burial yard. The patches of dried-out soil were not the remains of a garden: they were burial plots
. The graves of murderers who had been hanged here. She took a tentative step nearer. Yes, there were tiny squares of stone marking each of the oblong plots, each printed with a name and date. The letters were faded, but they were still just about readable. She was standing by one that said, ‘NICHOLAS O’KANE. NOVEMBER 1917’. What had Nicholas O’Kane done to be hanged in a year when most men were away fighting a war?
She moved along the row, reading the names as she went. None of them meant anything to her until she came to the one nearest the door. It was exactly the same as the others, and bore the legend, ‘NEVILLE FREMLIN. OCTOBER 1938’.
Neville Fremlin. Calvary’s isolation seemed to close down on Georgina and she glanced uneasily over her shoulder, because if ever a place was likely to be haunted . . . What would she do if Fremlin’s ghost suddenly entered the walled courtyard, smiling the legendary charismatic smile and inviting her to step into the private rooms behind his chemist’s shop. Waste of time, Neville; I haven’t got nearly enough money to interest you, in fact I haven’t got any money at all.
She went quickly out through the creaking door, closing it on the sad eerie courtyard, and half ran around the sides of Calvary Gaol to her car.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Extract from Talismans of the Mind by C. R. Ingram.
It can probably be argued that the downfall of Violette and Bartlam Partridge was inevitable. A cynic might have said that if Violette had even a small part of the psychic powers she claimed, she ought to have seen it coming and taken steps to avoid it.
The source for the facts is an unusual one: it’s the archives of the Fidelity & Trust Insurance Company. (Motto: You can have perfect faith and complete trust in us.) Bartlam apparently possessed the Victorian/Edwardian respect for Property – the conviction that a house, once acquired, must be suitably looked after. Having paid his premiums to the Fidelity & Trust people, he saw no reason why he should not claim his pound of flesh from them when disaster struck.