The Claresby Collection: Twelve Mysteries

by Daphne Coleridge

  “I hope I didn’t keep you awake last night?” inquired Laura. “There didn’t seem to be any position in which I was comfortable and Humphrey will fidget and keep me awake.”

  “No, I was fine,” lied Rupert, who had been kept awake for much of the night by his wife.

  “Hmm,” said Laura, returning the milk to the fridge. “Well, if I can’t settle tonight, I may go into one of the spare rooms: there isn’t much sense in allowing our offspring to prevent both of us from sleeping – although I suppose there will be plenty of sleepless nights later on. Anyway, as it is raining today, I was hoping that you would drive me in to buy a few more items of baby clothes – you don’t mind, do you?”

  “Of course not. I’ll just check my emails and then take you into town.”

  “You are kind.” Laura gave him an affectionate kiss on the cheek.

  Sure enough Rupert allowed his wife to spend the morning musing over unbelievably cute outfits which seemed to him improbably tiny – he couldn’t believe than any child of his could be squeezed into such garments. However, after a few moments of sharing his wife’s raptures, Rupert proved himself to be human, and wandered off to look at laptops whilst Laura completed her shopping. Lunch at a restaurant was followed by a damp walk and an afternoon of reading and an early night. Laura, however, was still restless and after a while she sat up in the big four-poster they shared in the scarlet bedroom and said,

  “I’m sorry, Rupert, but I just can’t settle. I think I’ll take myself off into one of the other rooms; at least that way you can sleep.”

  “Where will you go?” inquired Rupert drowsily.

  “Not the green room; I still don’t fancy sleeping in there after poor Floyd died in that bed. I think I’ll go into the dowager’s room.”

  This suggestion made Rupert lift himself on one elbow and look curiously at his wife. In a large house like Claresby Manor you were spoilt for choice in the matter of bedrooms and of all the options this seemed the least appealing. The room was situated in the north corner of the house and was gloomy and damp. Amidst all the refurbishment of the last couple of years, this particular room had remained untouched: there was just something about it that had made them feel that it should not be subject to changes. The result was that it still held a centuries old tall bed surrounded by shabby, dusty hangings in elaborate brocade. Other than the bed, the room was sparsely furnished with heavy, dark Jacobean items which added to the rather sinister atmosphere. There was scarcely a more neglected corner of Claresby.

  “Will the bedding be clean and dry?” was what Rupert finally asked.

  “Probably,” said Laura, who was pulling on a light dressing gown. “I was just thinking about the room as I lay here, so I’ll go and take a look. If I’m not comfortable, I’ll come back.”

  “I’ll come and check on you in a little while,” said Rupert solicitously. In fact, once Laura had left Rupert descended into the first restful sleep he had enjoyed for a week and did not stir until the morning.

  Laura, meanwhile, made her way down the creaking corridor to the room which had unexpectedly filled her imagination. Opening the heavy door, the first thing that greeted her was a musty smell and a stirring of ancient dust. It so happened that the curtains were open and the moon full, so she could move about the darks shapes and shadows without turning on the light. The covers felt coarse but pleasing against her bare legs as she slid into the bed and snuggled down, trying to produce some warmth in the chill of the unused room. For a while she tossed and turned, until eventually falling into an uneasy slumber.

  Sometimes dreams and reality seem to merge together and it is only when a person is fully awake that they can sensibly disentangle them again. It was this state into which Laura had sunk that night in the dowager’s room. One minute she was looking open-eyed at the unfamiliar outline of the furniture lit as it was by the white moonlight, the next with her eyes closed but seeing with equal clarity the figure of a woman standing in the room. As can be the case with dreams, the details of what Laura witnessed were remarkable: she could see the woman’s elaborate dress with its tight bodice, her curled hair, the pearl necklace, her pale blue eyes and the hard line of her mouth. There was something remorseless about the progress the woman made towards Laura, sitting down on the bed beside her, the dress rustling, the bed dipping with her weight as she leaned forwards, cold breath on Laura’s cheek, icy fingers on her neck. Awaking with a frightened jump, Laura could still feel the chill on her skin where the fingers had touched and squeezed. Gently she touched her neck to feel the tender skin, and then fell back into a now dreamless sleep.

  When Laura awoke the next morning, a pale hint of daylight penetrating the curtains about the bed, the first thing that she noticed was the tingling sensation about her neck. Rising swiftly from bed she went to a small mirror, speckled with the effects of age, and examined herself in it. Sure enough, there was what appeared to be a red rash about her throat. She hastened back to her own bedroom to show Rupert. Her husband had obviously woken early and refreshed and was pulling on some clothes.

  “Oh, I was just coming to find you,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes and no,” said Laura. “I did sleep all night, but I was having vivid, rather unpleasant dreams. The odd thing is that I dreamed about a pale, cruel looking woman trying to strangle me – and when I woke up I found red marks on my neck. Is it a rash? Should I see the doctor?” Unspoken worries about any how any ailment might affect her unborn child were foremost in her mind. Rupert led her gently to the light of the window and studied her neck.

  “It is curious,” he said, “the marks do almost have the pattern of fingers, with what looks like thumb marks in the middle of your throat. It seems a bit symmetrical for a rash, but that bed can’t be clean – there may have been some bugs in it or just an irritating dust. Or, of course, you may have just become entangled with a cover in your sleep if you were restless. I’m sure it’s nothing important, but I can ask Keith to drop in if you like?”

  Laura nodded. Keith Lowe was both the Claresby village doctor and a close friend and could be relied upon to drop in at short notice whenever his duties allowed. Sure enough, he found time to pop in at lunch time to share a sandwich and reassure Laura by checking her over.

  “They are curious marks,” he conceded, “but they do seem to be fading. Anyway, I am certain that they are of no significance and will not cause any harm. You are in perfect health, Laura, and the baby is moving well – definitely nothing to worry about. They do look faintly like finger marks – not been driving Rupert to the end of this tether?” he joked.

  “No; but I have been keeping him awake at nights because I am so restless. Thanks, Keith, I just wanted to check with you, I get a bit anxious at the moment; it’s not like me at all. And I have had some vivid dreams.”

  “All quite normal for an expectant mother,” said Keith, helping himself to another sandwich. “Take a rest in the afternoons if need be.”

  “I might even do that,” said Laura with a grateful smile.

  When Laura went to take her nap she told herself that the dowager’s room was a more sensible choice than her bedroom, because her own room got the full sun in the afternoon, whereas the north facing room was dim and restful. In the daylight it looked even more dismal and gloomy than the night before, the hangings and seat covers more threadbare and faded. Entering through the door was like stepping back in time to the seventeenth century when the room had originally been furnished. Undeterred, Laura pulled the curtains half shut and settled down on the bed and was very quickly asleep. Her dream began almost immediately. She was in the same room but as an invisible presence, looking at the bed which had the very brocade hangings they still possessed, the oak furniture, and the mirror she had looked in herself – but without the pockmarks of age which had disfigured it over the centuries. There were differences however. It was night time and the room was lit by candles and a small fire which was burning in the fireplace. The
woman of her earlier dream was also present: she sat by the small black walnut desk and was concentrating on what looked to Laura like a diary. After a while she finished her writing, shut the book and placed it in a narrow drawer. On this occasion Laura was able to look at the woman’s face more closely. She was aged perhaps in her late thirties with a face which might had been beautiful had it not been hardened by an expression both haughty and bitter, with tight lips and narrowed eyes under high curved brows. For a moment it seemed to Laura that the cold blue eyes of the lady looked unseeingly into her own, and she experienced a shudder of horror at their bleak depths. It was at that precise moment that she awoke with a little start. A glance at her watch told her that she had slept for just less than an hour, although the dream had seemed to last only moments.

  When Rupert found his wife she was staring distractedly at a painting which hung in the upper corridor of Claresby Manor. It was not a very distinguished painting – if it had been, it would have been sold by the Mortimer family in hard times. It was a rather dark picture which depicted a man standing with his hand on the shoulder of a younger man who was seated.

  “Did you have a nice rest?” asked Rupert, putting an arm around his wife and stooping to kiss her.

  “I think so,” said Laura. “I was dreaming again: the same woman that tried to strangle me!” She instinctively put her hand to her throat.

  Rupert increased the pressure of his arm about her. “Perhaps you shouldn’t sleep in that bedroom again.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Laura. “I’m beginning to feel that the pale lady haunts that room. In my dream she was writing in a diary. I woke up and looked where I had seen her place the diary and it was still there! I’ll show you in a minute. The diary was written in the late seventeenth century – the woman was a contemporary of Samuel Pepys – I think diaries must have been in fashion.”

  Rupert looked down at his wife’s white face with some alarm. “Come down into the kitchen and I’ll make you a cup of tea,” he coaxed.

  “All right,” agreed Laura, “but I’ll go and get the diary first.”

  Down in the lofty but comfortable kitchen of Claresby Manor, Laura sat at the large scrubbed table as Rupert handed her a mug of hot tea. The diary she had found was clasped in her hand and for a few moments she flicked through the pages whilst Rupert made some toast and buttered it thickly. He came and sat opposite Laura.

  “That looks old,” he observed.

  “It was written in the time of James II,” said Laura. “Judging by the opening page it was intended to be an account of God’s divine providence in the life of Eleanor Mortimer. Quite a bit of it tells me about the food they were eating at Claresby – goose pie, pigeons stuffed with gooseberries, that sort of thing.” She riffled through the ancient pages with little respect for their historical value.

  “Who was Eleanor Mortimer?”

  “The wife of Geoffrey Mortimer, according to this,” said Laura. “Which is interesting, because I didn’t know that Geoffrey Mortimer had a wife. That’s why I was looking at the portrait upstairs. I know from my father that Geoffrey Mortimer – the man in the picture – adopted his nephew as his heir. The young man seated in the picture is Bevis Mortimer, one of the few really successful and respected Mortimers: he was something of a thinker and a friend of Sir Robert Walpole’s. To my knowledge there is no record of Geoffrey having a wife – and I’m pretty familiar with our family history. So that leaves me wondering who Eleanor was, what else she wrote in her diary, and why she has suddenly decided to make a spectral appearance at Claresby after all this time.”

  “Well, don’t wonder about it too much for now,” said Rupert. “We have been asked to take part in a quiz evening down at The Claresby Arms tonight. Two people have dropped out of the pub team with flu and Veronica phoned up to see if we would fill in. I said that I would check with you, but the answer was probably yes. The other team come from Sunley Church – Veronica has arranged it as Claresby Vicar with the Reverend Jones from Sunley, the proceeds going into the church funds. What do you think?”

  Laura thought that she would prefer to sit at home in Claresby Manor and unravel the secrets of Eleanor Mortimer’s diary, but it seemed churlish to refuse to help out Veronica, so she reluctantly agreed.

  When Rupert and Laura Latimer returned home that night, it was after an evening of entertainment which suited Rupert down to the ground. He had the kind of mind that retained an encyclopaedic knowledge of everything from films to physics and a wit that was readily sharpened by any challenge. Consequently the Claresby team had swept the board and Rupert had been well supplied with pints of beer from fellow team members and Claresby residents alike. The net result was that by the time they reached the imposing doors of the manor, he was a little the worse for wear. Laura steered him up to their bedroom and decanted him into the marital bed, removing only the shoes from his prone body. After eying him with a mixture of disapproval and concern, she decided that he would probably sleep off the ill effects of drink quite satisfactorily, but that she would rather not be in the same bed as him if he was unwell in the night. Picking up her nightdress from her pillow, she gently closed the door behind her and made her way back down to the dowager’s room.

  Before she and Rupert had gone out for the evening, Laura had placed the seventeenth century diary on the walnut desk, and it was from there that she picked it up after turning on a small bedside lamp which shed a dim light into the room. Laura changed into her night clothes, clambered into the big bed and opened up the book again. Despite her interest she found that she was tired and her eyelids already drooping. She flicked through a few pages and a couple of entries caught her eye. The first told her only that the family at Claresby Manor had been drinking syllabub – a sweet wine with cream. The second, more interestingly, detailed Eleanor’s bitter regrets about the fact that she had not been able to provide a child for her husband: “Why has God, in his wisdom, not so blessed us?” Eleanor questioned. More regretfully still, she spoke of how she felt that her barrenness had caused her husband’s affection for her to fade. Thus it was that Laura fell asleep again, the diary slipping from her hand, a vision of Eleanor’s sad face in her mind along with her sad regrets about the child she never had.

  Laura’s dream on her second night in the dowager’s room differed from her previous dreams in that she was no longer victim or observer: in this dream she was Eleanor Mortimer. It was a summer’s morning, a light mist still clinging to the ground on the north side of the house as Eleanor looked out of her bedroom window, but the clear blue of the sky and heat of the sun promising a beautiful day ahead. None of this touched Eleanor at all: her heart was bleak and cold and bitter. It was months now since her husband had come to her bedroom. Indeed, the removal of her to this room on the north of the house was an insult in itself. He had pleaded the need for the large room which had been hers for the use of his sister and her husband when they visited, but they had long since departed, and she was still banished here. They ate their meals together and he would pass a few instructions to her on the running of the house, but his eyes never lifted from his plate and cup to meet her own. When visitors came, she was no longer summoned from her room to meet them. She knew it was not uncommon for men to lose interest in their wives after a decade or more of marriage, but when she recalled how he had adored her in their first years together, and how the hope of sharing the joys of raising a family had filled their lives with a bright glow of expectation, she still felt tears start in her eyes. Eleanor dashed these tears away impatiently. She would cry no more. She would harden her heart.

  Eleanor could hear sounds of the house beginning to stir. She was no longer central to the life of the house, but the day when her husband started to lock the door to her room had not yet come, so Eleanor crept down the corridor in softly shod feet. A moment standing by her husband’s door brought to her ears the sound she both expected and feared – the sound of a woman’s happy laughter and her husband’s voice, ina
udible, but with the low, caressing tone he had once used when speaking to her. There was silence for a while, and Eleanor placed herself behind the half closed door of the room opposite. One of the servants went past but did not see her. Eleanor waited, silent as a statute. It was another half an hour before the door to her husband’s room opened. Eleanor, peering through the crack between door and door frame, saw a swish of blonde hair and the sweep of a grey dress. She knew, without seeing the face, that this was Flossie, one of the kitchen girls.

  For weeks Eleanor withdrew into herself, fired only by an obsessive need to watch for the times that her husband, Geoffrey, spent with Flossie. She might have been able to accept the fact that he was satisfying his carnal appetite by the use of a servant – such things happened. What she could not bear was the growing evidence that her husband actually loved this girl! She saw the way his eyes followed her when they were in the presence of others, saw him slip into the woods to walk with her hand in hand, listened to the warm soft confidential tones of their conversation as they lay in bed at nights whilst she stood outside the door, banished from the place by her husband’s side that was hers by God-given right as his lawfully wedded wife and social equal. From the ashes of Eleanor’s broken dreams rose the phoenix of a burning hatred.