Gather the Bones

by Alison Stuart

  He heard a small gurgle of laughter.

  “Try and stop me.”

  “Up you go,” he said steadying her as she started to climb as if the hounds of hell were still behind her. He sighed with relief as her legs disappeared into the library.

  “Your turn, sir,” Pollard said.

  Ladders...trench ladders. Paul closed his eyes and took a deep breath. As he opened them, the small square of light above him brightened as if the sun had suddenly come out, illuminating the library.

  He put a hand to the first ring and began to climb. Hampered by the injury to his left shoulder, it took him longer to climb out then it had to climb down. Pulling himself out of the hole, he rolled over on his back and looked up at the ceiling before dragging himself up into a sitting position.

  Helen, bedraggled and shivering, wrapped in a blanket, with Sarah’s motherly arm around her sat on the edge of the table, dripping water on to the carpet.

  Paul managed a crooked smile. “What a pair,” he said.

  He hauled himself to his feet and swung the door closed. He stood looking at it for a moment before turning to Helen.

  “I have to admire your tenacity. After yesterday I had no intention of taking this any further.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why I took shameful advantage of your incapacity. I found her, Paul. I found Suzanna.” Her eyes widened. “I’d put her bones in a basket but I never had a chance to send it up to the Pollards. She’s gone. The water must have washed her away.”

  Paul glanced at the table, noticing a mildewed leather portmanteau beside Helen. “Where did that come from?”

  “That was with her.”

  He ran a hand over his eyes. “I think we’ve all had enough for one day. “Bring Helen up to my room, Sarah and find some dry clothes for her.”

  * * * *

  They gathered in Paul’s sitting room. After insisting Helen had a bath, Sarah had given her a pair of Paul’s old pajamas, and with his heavy woolen dressing gown swathing her slender form, she sat curled up in the armchair holding a cup of cocoa as if it was the elixir of life.

  Pollard, clearly uncomfortable at being in this part of the house, paced the room as Sarah cleaned the cuts on Paul’s face, clucking and tutting when he shrank from the stinging carbolic.

  “Some hero of Passchandaele you are,” she grumbled. “There, all done.” She applied a sticking plaster to the cut above his eye. “That should have been stitched. You’re going to have a real shiner tomorrow.”

  She sat down and picked up her own cocoa. “So what’s to be done with the library?”

  “Nothing tonight,” Paul said.

  “What if,” Pollard’s lips thinned at the memory. “What if that...thing...comes back?”

  “It won’t,” Sarah said with certainty.

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s gone.” When they all looked at her, Sarah added, “I can’t sense it anymore.”

  “What are you talking about, woman,” Pollard growled

  “I told you, old fool, that there was something evil in the house, getting stronger and stronger.” Sarah narrowed her eyes at her husband.

  “And I told you, you were a fanciful old witch.” Her husband glared at her. His expression softened. “What made it go?”

  Helen shook her head. “It was trying to prevent us from discovering its secret. Now we may have found what it was trying to hide, it’s gone.” She looked up, her eyes seeking out Paul. “But we haven’t solved the mystery, not completely. We still don’t know what happened. Was it murder or just an accident? Without her body, we’ll never know.” She sighed. “I wish I’d managed to get the bones out. I wanted to give her a proper burial. She deserved that.”

  Sarah rose to her feet and collected the mugs on a tray. “You two look done in.” She cast Paul a particularly concerned look. “Time for bed. We’ll see you in the morning. Come on, Pollard.”

  Helen waited until the sound of the Pollards’ footsteps and bickering had died away. She uncurled from the chair and stood up, thrusting her hands into the pockets of the ridiculously large dressing gown.

  “Paul, I don’t want to be alone, not tonight.”

  Paul looked up at her slight figure, backlit by the fire Pollard had lit in the grate. He didn’t want her to be alone either. He wanted her in his arms–in his bed. He rose to his feet and took her by the arms, holding her away from him. He closed his eyes for a brief moment. She smelled of soap and something else, something sweet and lovely. She leaned her head against his chest and his arms slid around her. As he held her, an image of Tony’s honest, trusting face intruded into his conscience. He sighed, about to make the hardest decision in his life. He gently disengaged her and pushed her away.

  “You can take my bed. I’ll sleep out here.”

  She looked up at him and her brow creased. Her lips parted and he knew he only had to touch her again and she would be his for the night…forever.

  “You’re engaged to Tony Scarvell, Helen,” he said, quelling the protest that rose within him. “And you’re exhausted. Go to bed and we can talk in the morning. I’ll be here if you need me.”

  Paul watched her stumble into the bedroom, throw back the covers of the bed and crawl under them as if the mere act of staying upright was beyond her. When he slipped past the bed to reach the bathroom, she had fallen asleep. He leaned over and tucked back a lock of fair hair, still damp from the bath, behind her ear.

  It would be so easy to slip in beside her and curl himself around her. His own body, battered bruised and aching, responded to that thought and he stepped away from the bed, pausing only to grab a pillow and the bed cover. A night on the day bed would cure any desire he might feel for his best friend’s fiancée.

  Chapter 28

  Helen woke to bright sunshine, streaming in through the casement windows. She lay looking up at the unfamiliar bed hangings. It took her a moment to remember why she was in Paul Morrow’s bed.

  The memory of the previous day came flooding back. Not the nightmare in the library, but those few moments with Paul. She screwed up her face as she remembered, she had practically thrown herself at him and he had pushed her away.

  “You’re engaged to Tony Scarvell, Helen.”

  Helen rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. She took a deep breath smelling a warm, male scent. Sighing, she sat up. The day had to be faced–Paul had to be faced.

  She wandered into his sitting room, tying the belt on his dressing gown around her waist. For a moment she thought the room was empty but a shadow moved by the window and Paul turned to look at her.

  She looked down at her bare feet and the enveloping dressing gown.

  “I’m sorry, I must look a sight,” she said.

  “I’m not exactly a ravishing beauty myself.” He gave her a rueful smile, touching the sticking plaster on his temple. As Sarah had rightly predicted he had the makings of a splendid black eye.

  She flinched in sympathy. “Where did you sleep? Not on the day bed?” She glanced at the folded coverlet and pillow on the horsehair sofa that served as a daybed.

  Paul gave the day bed a wry look. “I’ve slept on worse.”.

  Helen ran a hand through her uncombed hair and shook her head. “It all seems unreal now, like some awful nightmare. Terrible while I was going through it, but gone in the daylight.” She shrugged and smiled at him. “I’ll go and have a bath and get dressed and then what do we do?”

  “We’ll start with breakfast. Can you face the library again?”

  She nodded but didn’t move. Their eyes met. The library would be easy, there was so much else that needed to be said. “Paul, we have to talk about…about…”

  He visibly stiffened, interrupting her. “If there’s there anything I might have said, or done, over the last few days...? If I’ve upset you in anyway…? Anything I said in that damn tunnel?”

  She shook her head. “No, that’s not it. Paul, I’ve buried Charlie, I can let him go no
w. My questions are answered. I know now, he died in your arms and not alone but what happened that night is between you and him. I just want the answer to one last question. If Charlie had got back to the British lines that night, would he have lived?”

  Paul shook his head. “No.”

  She held up her hand. “Thank you. That’s all I need to know.”

  He looked into her eyes for a moment as he said. “And thank you for understanding that there will be some things I can never talk about. I have learned to live with those years, Helen. While I saw things no man should ever see, I’m no different from any of the thousands of men who fought in the trenches. We just have different ways of dealing with what happened and I prefer to think about what is ahead, not what has been.”

  She nodded and smiled. “I understand that. I suppose it depends what is ahead–for both of us.”

  He paused for a moment before responding and, turned back to the window as he said, “The answer to that is quite simple. You’re going to marry a good and honorable man and I’m going back to an archaeological dig in Mesopotamia.”

  Helen put her hand to her throat, focusing on his broad, straight back and willing him to turn and face her but he remained quite still, staring out at the Morrow inheritance. She resisted the urge to hit him.

  * * * *

  The devastation in the library was worse than they had imagined. All the library books that had been taken from the new bookshelf lay scattered on the floor, pages torn, spines broken, amidst broken china and shattered paintings. Those books still in the old bookcase were untouched, as were Pollard’s tools and the portmanteau.

  “It looks like a battlefield. Do you suppose we won?” Helen observed.

  “Lucky for me whatever it was didn’t touch the actual weapons.” Paul indicated Pollard’s tools.

  She looked up at his bruised face. Or we could both be dead, she thought.

  They stood at the table looking at the portmanteau. Helen viewed the object with revulsion. Just seeing it brought back the terror of the previous day.

  Paul picked up a screwdriver from where Pollard had left it and forced the locks. They gave without too much effort and he pulled the bag open.

  He looked into the bag and shrugged. “It’s only what I’d expect. Clothes.”

  Helen took the bag from him and began to lay the contents out on the table. The ephemera of Suzanna’s life appeared to be in a good state of preservation, despite the damp tomb where the bag had lain.

  “But this doesn’t make sense. This bag hasn’t been properly packed. Things have just been thrust in here without any order. For instance, why is her cloak in here?” Helen pulled out a sturdy blue wool cloak. “Wouldn’t she have been wearing it? And this?” She produced a squashed bonnet of matching blue velvet. “No lady, even one running away with her lover, would pack her bonnet in a valise. From what I could tell from the skeleton, she wore only a light dress and house shoes.”

  She carefully emptied the bag of its several petticoats, a couple of dresses, walking boots, stockings, hairbrushes, a purse with some gold coins in it and, chillingly, a poker wrapped in a shawl.

  They both stared at the last object. Paul picked it up and looked at it closely.

  “Look at this, Helen.”

  Helen’s eyes widened as he indicated a dark stain on the head of the poker. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “There is hair imbedded in it. I am fairly certain that is blood,” Paul confirmed.

  Helen took a step back from the table, her hand over her mouth.

  “Are you all right?” Paul turned to her as she subsided into one of the chairs by the fireplace.

  “Her skull had been smashed. I thought maybe she had slipped on the wall and fallen, hitting her head on the ledge, but that...thing...” she pointed at the poker, “that is a murder weapon.” Her eyes widened. “Paul, someone beat her to death with that poker.”

  He walked over to the wall and swung the entrance open. He took one last look at the poker and threw it into the hole. Helen heard it hit the ledge and then a splash as it rolled off into the water.

  “Why did you do that?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t need it.”

  Helen forced herself to return to the contents of the portmanteau spread across the table.

  “Something puzzles me. If she were leaving, she should have been wearing boots and her cloak? It would have been cold in September.” Helen spread her hands over the blue cloak. “And why did she risk going by the tunnel again? She could have just walked out of the door with no one to stop her.”

  Paul shrugged. “What are you thinking, Helen?”

  She looked up at him. “I don’t think she was going to leave.” Helen said, running her hands over the contents of the portmanteau. “There’s something missing but I can’t think what it is.”

  Paul picked up the blue velvet bonnet. “If you’re right and she was murdered, do you have any ideas about the murderer?”

  “It has to be Robert,” Helen said. “He’d hit her once and if he found out about her affair, he could have turned violent again.” She paused and looked up at Paul. “There’s only one clue left, we haven’t explored. Those last entries in the diary. Paul, you must finish the diary.”

  Paul set the bonnet down and glanced at his watch. “The diary will have to wait, Helen. I must go and see Evelyn. I haven’t been for days.”

  “I went yesterday.”

  He looked at her, one eyebrow lifted in surprise. “Did you indeed?”

  “Despite everything she is still my mother-in-law, and she deserves a better daughter than I have been.”

  “Then we’ll go together,” he said.

  * * * *

  Pollard drove them to the hospital in Birmingham. Evelyn had been moved to a private room and impulsively Helen bent over to kiss the alabaster flesh of her mother-in-law’s temple, appalled at how frail and old she looked.

  The nurse picked up the chart at the end of the bed and flicked through it. “There’s been a big improvement, sir,” she said, addressing Paul. “She’s opened her eyes and seems more restless. I’ll leave you in peace. Visiting hours finish in thirty minutes.”

  Paul crossed to the bed and picked up Evelyn’s hand. Helen drew up a chair and sat down.

  “When I think of the hours she spent with me when I was in hospital,” Paul said more to himself than Helen. “She came every week without fail, even when I was in no condition to acknowledge her.”

  “How long were you in hospital?”

  He thought for a moment. “Hospital, rehabilitation, back to hospital again for more operations. Evelyn made sure I had the best doctors but it was nearly two years before I came back to Holdston. By then my uncle was dead, the war was over and Holdston had become my problem.”

  “And she came every week?”

  “Except for the month when my uncle died.”

  “For someone who seemed not to care much for you, that seems strange,” Helen said.

  “I always thought she saw it as her duty.” He shrugged. “But then my relationship with Evelyn has always been complicated.”

  “I suppose she is your only living relative.”

  He looked up at her. “Evelyn and I are only related by marriage. I have only one living blood relative, your daughter, Alice. But you’re right. Despite everything, she is my responsibility as much as she saw me as hers and she will fight for those she loves. You know the story of my engagement?”

  Helen nodded.

  “Fi came to the hospital to tell me she was breaking off the engagement. It happened to be during one of Evelyn’s visits and she went for Fi in a fury. I’ve no idea what she said but it reduced Fi to tears.”

  “Did you mind?”

  “About Fi? No. She did write me a letter eventually. Quite a nice letter. Truth was she didn’t want to marry me, any more than I wanted to marry her. We only got engaged because it seemed the thing to do at the time. The war had just started and we w
ere young. I was only twenty-one and she was seventeen.” He set his aunt’s frail hand back on the bedcovers and looked across at Helen. “There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s go home.”

  * * * *

  On their way, they stopped at the vicarage. They found Alice playing cribbage with Lucy in the drawing room and seemed quite happy to remain at the vicarage. To Helen’s relief, neither the vicar nor his wife asked about their battered appearances.

  With a promise to collect Alice the following morning, Paul and Helen returned to the hall, where Sarah had supper ready. They all ate in the kitchen seated around the kitchen table.

  “Poor soul,” Sarah said, pouring the tea. “Do you suppose she’s at peace now?” Helen asked.

  Paul looked at Sarah. “Well, Sarah?”

  “Why are you looking at me?” Sarah asked, bridling. “Do you want to know if I can still sense her?”

  Helen nodded.

  Sarah closed her eyes. “I can’t feel anything, but this is the wrong part of the house. I’ve never sensed ‘em down here.”

  Helen looked up at the ceiling. “I think they’re gone. Although I feel we still have to find her murderer.”

  Sarah shivered. “Imagine that poor thing down there all those years and no one knowing and the whole world saying she’d run off with another man. That’s the scandal, in my book.”

  “I agree, Sarah,” Helen thought about the dreadful things that Lady Cecilia Morrow had written about her missing daughter-in-law.

  “Do you want me to close off the ‘ole in the library again?” Pollard asked.

  “I suppose so.” Paul picked up a piece of Sarah’s cherry cake. “Mind you, all that water can’t be doing the foundations any good. I should get it sealed.” He sighed. “God knows what that will cost.”

  “I’ll have a good look tomorrow,” Pollard glanced at his wife. “You don’t think it will come back, do you?”

  Paul shook his head. “Whatever it was, it was trying to stop us finding Suzanna.” He rose to his feet. “I’m going to have a look at that last diary entry. Helen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you want to join me?”