Property of a Lady(35)

But some perversity made her say to Michael, ‘Did you see anyone on your way back?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I thought Inspector Brent said something about sending his forensic people in to see if Beth had been taken inside the church.’

‘I shouldn’t think they’d come here in all this rain,’ said Michael. ‘Are you alright to look at the grave? I mean, it isn’t going to upset you?’

‘I’m tougher than that. Let’s do it before one of us gets pneumonia.’

‘Well, stay under the umbrella.’


They went as quickly as possible towards the old gravestones. The umbrella was a large golfing one, but it was still necessary to huddle quite close together. It brought back the rainy afternoons when Nell and Brad used to take long walks on the heath, their arms round one another under an umbrella, and how they would come back to the tall, old house where Brad would wrap her in a huge bath towel and make love to her in front of the fire while her hair was still wet . . .

The headstone Michael indicated was very weathered. Moss and lichen covered parts of it, but most of the lettering was legible. Michael read it out: ‘“Elizabeth Lee, wife of William Lee. Tragically taken from the world in October 1888.”’

‘William Lee,’ said Nell, staring down at it. ‘Charect House again. That’s a curious coincidence.’

‘Yes.’ Michael knelt down, heedless of the sodden bracken piled around the grave, and began to scrape the moss from the lower part of the stone. ‘Look,’ he said, and something in his voice sent Nell’s nerve-endings shivering again. Brushing off the moss had uncovered the rest of the lettering. Beneath the wording about Elizabeth Lee, wife of William, was another line.

Dearly loved mother of Elvira.

Elvira.

Michael sat back on his heels, staring at the carved words. ‘Elvira,’ he said softly, and the name seemed to hiss through the trees.

Elvira . . .

Nell found she was gripping the umbrella handle so tightly that it was scoring marks into her palms. Elvira, the name that had haunted Ellie Harper’s nightmares. Elvira, for whom Beth believed the eyeless man searched.

Michael stood up, brushing the wet bracken from his cords. Half to himself, he said, ‘So she existed. And she must have lived at Charect House – grown up there. That’s extraordinary. D’you know, I didn’t believe in her until now.’

Nell had not believed in Elvira either. She had thought Elvira was a nightmare figure, a phantom of a child’s imagination. But she was real, she had been the daughter of William Lee, the man who, according to Alice Wilson’s journal, was said to be still seen in Marston Lacy, seventy years after his death.

‘I suppose,’ said Michael slowly, ‘it would be possible to trace Elvira. Probably, it would be fairly easy, in fact.’

‘I’m not sure if I want to trace her.’

‘I’m not sure if I want to, either.’

They looked at one another. ‘But,’ said Nell, at last, ‘we must. It might lay the ghost for Beth and Ellie.’

‘Yes.’ He looked back at the headstone. ‘Does anything strike you about this grave?’

‘I don’t think so— Oh,’ said Nell. ‘Oh yes, it does. In those days, they’d have buried husband and wife together, wouldn’t they? Or at the very least side by side in adjoining graves.’

‘Exactly. And there’s plenty of room in this part of the churchyard. But William isn’t here.’

‘No. So where,’ said Nell, ‘is his grave?’

‘There might be any number of quite ordinary explanations,’ said Michael as they drove away.

‘He might have left the area after Elizabeth died,’ said Nell. ‘He could have gone to live anywhere in the world, couldn’t he? Or he might simply have been travelling and died abroad. Or been killed in the Great War – no, he’d have been a bit too old, wouldn’t he?’

‘There were other wars,’ said Michael. ‘But somehow I don’t see him as a soldier, do you?’

‘No. And there’s the legend that he’s still sometimes seen in Marston Lacy,’ said Nell. ‘That doesn’t quite square with a peaceful death in Biarritz or a heroic one in the Dardanelles, does it?’

‘No.’ Michael turned the car into the main street and drew up outside Nell’s shop. The rain was stopping at last, and a thin shaft of sunlight was breaking through the greyness. Nell thought it was nice that Beth would be coming home in sunshine.

‘Let me know about Beth,’ said Michael.

‘Of course I will.’ Nell thought: do I ask him to call at the flat later? She glanced at him and saw he had the hesitant look again, as if he, too, was not sure what to say. Before she could think too much about it, she said, ‘If you want to bring the laptop back later, we could check if there’s another email from Jack Harper.’

He looked pleased. ‘We ought to do that, oughtn’t we?’ he said at once. ‘This afternoon I’ll go out to Charect House to see how the work’s getting on. It’d be ironic if I’ve told Jack it won’t be ready for Christmas, then find the roof’s fallen in or something. Would around five be a good time?’

‘You can have a cup of tea and tell Beth some more about Wilberforce,’ said Nell.