by Phil Rickman
Lisa nods, happier.
‘OK.’
‘What were they like, the Ansells? What was he like? I’m just recording this for myself – no one else will hear it.’
‘Well, he… I mean, you’re a woman, what would you call him? An “ex-hunk”?’
‘At my age, maybe not quite so “ex”.’
She’s had Harry Ansell pointed out to her. The Three Counties office is not far from the Cotsworld block where he works most days. Like the building, he’s stone-faced now, and you really wouldn’t want to invade his space. Harry Ansell, who used to be Harry Burgess. Not too many men take their wives’ names. Maybe it was about love, but it must also surely have been about business. And a kind of ownership. He was acquiring her fame.
‘He kept himself pretty fit,’ Lisa says. ‘They had a gym in the old stable block, and they used to ride, and he went out with the hunt for a while – she didn’t like that. Hunting. And yet she did in a way ’cos of the kind of people that were in it. That was the way she was, neither one thing nor the other. You remember Princess Diana? Royal but… not really. Before my time, but I’ve seen TV stuff. I expect you’d still be in America back in her day.’
‘Trust me, Lisa. We knew more about Princess Di in America than we knew about any other English person, ever. Trinity Ansell was… like that, how?’
‘Not to look at, obviously – she was dark. But sometimes she was this gracious lady, and you felt you had to curtsy if you met her on the stairs, whereas other times it was like she wanted to be your mate? Sometimes you thought she looked like… like she needed mates. You know? But when the house was full of titled people and celebs, you were just a servant again, and—’
‘But why… what I’m trying to get at, why open up her actual home to wealthy readers? Why not just live there? I guess it wasn’t about money.’
‘We used to talk about it a lot, down in the staff sitting room at night. It was the nearest thing you could get to the authentic old country-house scenario. The place full of servants, making sure the house was sparkling and the fires were always stacked up with logs. And the guests… I think she almost forgot they were paying to be there. It was as if she was dispensing… what’s the word…?’
‘Largesse?’
‘Probably. I think she saw them as like… retainers? Courtiers and ladies-in-waiting. Always kept just the right distance between her and them.’
Grayle smiles but Lisa’s serious. No, it wasn’t about money. This was about keeping Trinity happy. And these weekends must have paid all the staff wages twice over, which probably kept Harry Ansell happy, too. For a while.
‘She was pretty smart, actually,’ Lisa says. ‘She was at university when she first became a model, did you know that? Doing history. She supervised all the work at Knap Hall – like, “this looks right”, or “that’s out of period, get rid of it”. Not getting her hands dirty, obviously, don’t want to break a nail, do you? She’d drive down to the castle quite a lot, see what they’d done there.’
‘The castle?’
‘Sudeley. They call it the most romantic castle in England. Henry VIII stayed there with Anne Boleyn. And after he died… Katherine Parr?’
‘The sixth wife?’
‘Who survived. And then got married to Thomas Seymour who owned Sudeley Castle. And she moved there, and she died there. So that’s… two queens of England. Mrs Ansell – Trinity – she loved that. Being able to look down from the Hall, from their apartment upstairs, towards Sudeley Castle in all its lovely grounds. And after playing Katherine Parr in that film—’
‘I didn’t know that. Not that I get to see a lot of movies.’
‘It was called The King’s Evening. It was about Catherine Howard, the fifth wife, and Katherine Parr came in near the end, when the King had only a couple of years to live.’
‘But she felt a connection? With Katherine Parr and Sudeley?’
‘She went there lots. Out of opening hours, obviously, wouldn’t want to be hanging out with the trippers and the pensioners’ bus tours. Sometimes she took me with her, to remember things and write them down.’
‘Just you?’
‘Like I say, there were times when she was very friendly. The others were a bit… not jealous exactly, but you know… because I was the youngest. And just the scullery maid, and all that meant was being a bit of a gopher. Whereas the chefs and Mrs Stringer, the housekeeper…’
Mrs Stringer was the first of the former staff to put the phone down on Grayle. There was a chef, a sous-chef, part-time waitresses and cleaners and also a Mr Jeffrey Pruford, the manager and kind of a butler figure, who she hasn’t yet managed to locate.
‘So when there was no one staying there you’d all just look after the house – and the Ansells?’
Lisa nods, and they talk some more about the good times. Which could not have lasted more than a year. This is where it might get difficult. But this is the reason Grayle’s here, to pick up stuff you can’t find on the Internet.
‘Lisa, when did you realize something at Knap Hall was… not right?’
‘Not right how?’
‘We’re looking to tell the whole story, Lisa.’
‘OK.’
‘When did you – or anyone – first get the feeling Mrs Ansell was… I don’t know… unhappy… unsettled?’
For the first time, Lisa looks a little stubborn, resistant.
‘She was good to me.’
‘I know.’
‘I don’t want to… I mean, I know what people are saying. About the house being… you know.’
‘Tell me about Trinity Ansell, first.’
‘I don’t know much about depression…’
‘I do,’ Grayle says. ‘I guess.’
3
Lights out, fires dying
OH GOD, LISA says, she’s thought about this a lot, and keeps coming back to the night of the dinner.
Always a dinner on the Saturday. The full works, nine courses. Lovely big fires and candles everywhere – hundreds of candles. And Trinity wearing this exquisite dress.
‘An awfully expensive Tudor kind of dress, deep ruby-red silk with gold braid. She had it on for the first time, this night, and there was like a hush when she came in? I was down in the kitchen, but you’d swear you could hear it. A real hush. I mean, all right, I know you can’t actually—’
‘I get what you’re saying.’
One of the chocolate labradors has his head on Grayle’s knee. Hard to get depressed, Grayle’s thinking, with a dog around. Apparently, there were no animals at Knap Hall.
‘Really something, that dress,’ Lisa says. ‘It was…’
Her lips tighten over the baby teeth. Evidently something here she’s not too sure she should be talking about.
‘I remember she had a problem sitting down at the table in it. And when she did manage to sit down she didn’t really eat anything. Not that she ever ate much, anyway. I mean, back in Henry VIII’s day, nobody seemed to make a connection between eating like a pig and ending up all gross. Mrs Ansell would always have these prearranged really small portions. But this night, even the small portions were coming back to the kitchen, hardly touched.’
‘She was sick?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice. Quite the reverse. I mean, she was always, as you know, a “hot babe”, as my boyfriend would say, but this night… I mean, the men literally couldn’t take their eyes off her. Nor the women, come to that. She was… electric. Glowing… What’s that word…?’
‘Incandescent?’
‘We all thought that, even Mrs Stringer. But Mr Pruford, the manager, he said she was nervous about something. Like all her nerves were on end, all lit up. But next day…’
Lisa’s looking uncomfortable, upset even, like she wishes she’d never let herself be led down this road.
‘… it was like a light had gone out. It was only September, but she wouldn’t leave the apartment. She was OK again after a couple of days, but…’
‘How long was this before she died?’
‘Not long. Weeks, maybe. I don’t really remember. I don’t like to think about it.’
‘She… she wasn’t normally – from what I’ve read – what you’d call a nervous person.’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘Socially, I mean.’
‘Not at all, no. I think she actually had been to dinner at Highgrove, with Charles and Camilla. Or somebody. No, not nervous in that way at all. Mr Pruford… he used to say it was the house. And Mr Ansell would be away for days at a time. He was a busy man.’
‘Harry Ansell wasn’t there that night?’
‘No, I think he was, actually. Very much in the background, though. As he would be with Trinity in that dress.’
‘So, um, what about the house? Mr Pruford…?’
‘Didn’t like the house, never made a secret of that. Used to say it was too old and set in its ways ever to change. No matter how many rich tapestries they hung, it would still be… like a hard place. Underneath. He said you could always feel that late at night, with the lights out, the fires dying, all the candles out. You could feel… he just called it the hardness? And he’d know about that sort of… He was in the army. And things would…’
Grayle waits, fondling the ears of the chocolate lab.
‘You didn’t get this from me,’ Lisa says. ‘I’d never talk about this.’
‘Sure.’
‘Things would get messed about. Wall hangings falling down for no reason. Ash from the hearth in heaps on the furniture. Things would get dirty, very quickly – the windows. Mrs Stringer was blaming us, and then she stopped doing that and just had it cleaned up each time it happened.’
‘It happened often?’
‘We did a lot of cleaning. And like sometimes you’d find stuff that shouldn’t really be there? Like soil… earth? Little heaps of soil on chairs and tables. Well that was just… not possible.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘You know what I’m saying. Only I’m not. OK?’
‘What did Mr Pruford say?’
‘That it— He used to say it was full of bad… bad vibes. That nobody had ever been happy there.’
‘How did he know that?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose he did. It was just how he felt.’
‘Were the Ansells told?’
‘God, no. Not by us. We didn’t want to— We wanted them to go on loving the place. We wanted them to stay. Like I say, it was a brilliant job. We thought Mrs Ansell was turning the place round. Just by being there. She was one of the most famous people on the planet. Well, in this country anyway. And bringing in all the other famous faces. You could see the paying guests doing like a double-take? Like, is it really?’
Her eyes are glassy. She’s erecting barricades and scattering glitter over the darkness.
‘Look, nobody talked about the other things, OK? We weren’t the kind to. We only got the jobs through connections. We were trusted.’
‘But do you think—?’
‘I hated clearing the… the debris. I just brushed it on to the dustpan. We weren’t allowed to use vacuum cleaners when there were guests in the house. Not in-period. I’d just brush it up quickly and empty it into a binsack and get it out of the house quickly. Once there was a dead rat…’
‘In the house?’
‘On a table. Like a cat might’ve left it, but there weren’t any cats. Horrible. But you got it out of the way and didn’t let it spoil your day.’
‘Did anybody have any ideas what it might be? What was causing it? I suppose a hole in the roof… that wouldn’t be likely after what they’d spent.’
‘Is it important?’ Lisa sniffs dismissively. ‘I don’t think it’s important. Lots of old houses have something. I thought this was supposed to be about Trinity’s life. Dwelling on the bad things, it just gives the wrong impression.’
‘I think the producer will need to show that it wasn’t all idyllic. That renovating a very old house isn’t easy. That sometimes you have to fight the history you’re trying to evoke.’
Lisa stares out of the bay window at the greyness of Cleeve Hill. Grayle decides it’s time to move up to the next stage.
‘And she was susceptible to… the otherworldy? There was some history. She was known to have consulted… not mediums… tarot-readers and like that.’
‘I don’t remember anybody like that coming to Knap Hall. Well, a woman once. A middle-aged woman who was looking around and had one of those… a stone or something on a string.’
‘Pendulum?’
‘Look, maybe you should talk to Jordan.’
‘I’m sorry, who?’
‘Jordan the gardener. At first I thought he was just trying to frighten me. He was like, did I know the stories about Knap Hall? Well, I didn’t, but that didn’t mean anything, ’cos I don’t like stories like that. Not when I’m working there. He’s more local than me. He said people used to think they were being followed in the passages, and they’d turn round and there’d be, like, a shadow? He said he’d had the story from his dad. Someone like that.’
‘And Jordan will speak to me?’
‘He might. Don’t say I told you, he’d get embarrassed, but if he knows you’ve got Mr Ansell’s permission… Jordan’s kept on, part time, to stop the grounds from turning to jungle before they sell the place. Goes about once a week, I think. I wouldn’t. It’s not the same. I don’t want to go near. Got more bad memories now, hasn’t it? Gone darker, like the windows— why do we have to talk about this?’
‘What about the windows?’
‘They’d go dim, that’s all. Almost so you couldn’t see through them. Some of the glass was old, hundreds of years old. It’d be greasy. On the inside. And flies. Dead flies, in the grease. Probably some fungal thing… bacteria, I don’t know.’
Lisa shaking her head violently, as if the flies are in her hair. Grayle nods limply, saying nothing. This is what she’s looking for. But don’t make that obvious. Move on.
‘Were you here when the word came through, about Mrs Ansell’s death?’
‘No. When she went to stay with her parents, we thought it was because her mother was ill. We didn’t know… anything. There was no need for a full staff, so I took my holiday, but my boyfriend couldn’t get the week off so I was at home. First I knew was seeing it on the TV news. And then I got a phone call saying don’t come in on Monday.’
Long silence. Lisa looks like a little girl who’s fallen in the street, picked herself up and only then noticed the blood.
‘All over. For ever. I was so shattered I was just like crying all day? I’m sorry… I mean, there’s nothing else I can say. And I don’t want to talk about any of that on TV, thank you. I’d just break down.’
They’d love that, Grayle’s thinking. They so love it when people break down on camera.
‘You’d have to film me here. I won’t even drive past the end of the lane. People, you know what people are like, they’re always— I’m sorry, it’s sick! I hate them!’
‘What are they saying?’
But Lisa’s lips are tight and she’s shaking her head. The second labrador jumps up at her and she buries her face in the dog’s fur.
‘Did Trinity Ansell ever say anything to you – about anything being wrong? Like when you went to Sudeley together?’
‘Not really. Just about fabrics and clothes and the grounds and how she wanted a proper knot garden. She was usually quite carefree when we went to Sudeley. I think she liked being with me because I was young. Mr Ansell could be… he was a bit heavy, you know? I liked it when we went to the castle. She’d tell me the day before, so I could come in normal clothes. Mr Pruford used to say he wished Sudeley would come on the market again – not that that’s ever likely to happen, the same family’s been there over a century.’
‘Could the Ansells actually have afforded Sudeley Castle?’
‘I don’t know. Probably, when the magazine was selling millions worldwide.
Mr Pruford used to say he’d rather be working at Sudeley. Better class of ghost – he said that once.’
‘Anne Boleyn?’
‘KP. Katherine Parr. She used to put her initial after her signature. KP – kind of cool. She’s buried in the chapel in the grounds, but she’s supposed to haunt the castle itself. I expect the owners are quite proud of that. We went to her funeral.’
‘I’m sorry…?’
‘She’s buried in the chapel, in the castle grounds. In a tomb. And they – they had the funeral all over again?’
‘What?’
‘It was five hundred years since she was born. So they had a public recreation of the funeral to commemorate it. I know that doesn’t make total sense, but that’s what they did. I expect it was because she was born somewhere else but died there, and perhaps the original funeral was, like, underplayed? Not this time. Everyone was in costume. It was beautiful.’
‘And you were there?’
‘Mr Ansell was in New York or somewhere – I think they were opening a Cotsworld office there. So Trinity asked me to go with her. It was all… beautiful. You don’t think a funeral could be beautiful. They made a video of it for the tourists.’
‘How long was this before Trinity died?’
‘Few months. I suppose you want me to say I felt a deep sense of foreboding or something. But I didn’t. I was just… we were both quite excited. It felt like a historical moment.’
‘Why? Why a deep sense of foreboding?’
‘Because she… KP was thirty-six.’
Grayle’s holding on to the lab’s ears.
‘Same age as Trinity, right?’
‘Mmm.’
‘How did she die? Katherine Parr.’
Lisa looks momentarily wary then sits up.
‘A fever. Puer— Puer-something. When childbirth goes wrong.’
Puerperal fever. An infection, often fatal in those days. Grayle starts to tingle. It’s a familiar feeling when you know you’re getting close to the story, the essence, the energy source. And when no one else has it. Is it possible no-one else has this? She’s certainly not read it anywhere.