A Forgotten Place Page 10

  Just as the meal was ready, Hugh came in, looking more rested now. I had a good appetite. The dishes were plentiful if simple, and Rachel knew how to make the most of what was available out here.

  We talked about France and the war, and then in a lull in the conversation, I asked, “Who is Ellen?”

  “Ellen Marshall. Her father was from Cardiff. Ellen grew up there, but she adored her grandfather, and she would come to stay in the summers. His cottage is still here. After his death, she stopped coming regularly. And since the war, she only comes when she can.”

  Hugh said, “There’s a rumor the cottage is haunted. People usually avoid it.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I knew Ellen’s grandfather. He was a lovely old man. He had the longest beard I’d ever seen, with a lot of black still in it. And thin black rims to his glasses. He must have been ninety, at the very least. My father said he’d been a wild one, in his youth. My own grandfather claimed he’d killed someone, but my father didn’t believe that. Still, I can’t imagine him coming back as a ghost.”

  “From what I’ve heard, he’s not the ghost,” Hugh put in. “Tom claimed it was the murdered man.”

  “You’re a stranger here,” she teased. “People think you’re gullible. But there’s said to be a real ghost at the old rectory. Only it’s a coach that careers along the road that climbs the Down. People claim they can hear it on stormy nights. It had something to do with a shipwreck, centuries ago.”

  Wreckers along this coast? As there had been—so it was said—in Cornwall?

  “She ran aground in a terrible storm, and everyone on board drowned,” Rachel went on. “People here never mention her. It’s rather odd, to tell you the truth. But my mother always maintained that bringing in that many bodies, burying them in a common grave, had made people want to forget. There was no way to know who they were—they weren’t English—or where they’d come from, who might mourn for them.”

  Hugh started to comment, then stopped.

  Watching them, I thought how like a comfortable married couple they seemed to be. Companionable in their silences, and talking together as if they had known each other for a very long time. I didn’t think they were aware of it.

  We went up to bed early, and Rachel brought me a hot water bottle to put at my feet. And in spite of the howling wind, its probing fingers rattling the panes in my window and swooping around the corner of the house, I slept well.

  I woke to a very different morning.

  The sun came up in a great orange ball, sending shafts of golden light across the land. I could see the distant sea, a deep blue and much calmer than yesterday. And toward the land’s end, I could see a humped green island.

  It did look like a turtle from here.

  I rose quietly, dressed, and crept down the stairs so as not to wake anyone. The dogs looked up as I went into the kitchen for my coat, left there to dry overnight, but didn’t get up from their beds by the cooker.

  I let myself out the front door and walked over the road to the hedge by the Griffith cottage. I stood there, looking over the green Down out toward the bay. It too was calm today, and if there hadn’t been a battered boat with a broken mast pulled up beyond the tide’s reach, I’d have been hard-pressed to believe the tragedy I’d watched unfold yesterday.

  Cattle were everywhere, dotting the green hillside, taking advantage of the fairer weather. It was colder today, as it often is after a storm, but crisp, not that same penetrating damp. In the distance, I could see more cattle grazing as well. On this side of the hedge, there were fields for crops, long strips in an old system.

  I returned to the road and walked on past the line of Mr. Griffith’s cottage, part of it shuttered, as if he’d had a café or a shop there in better times. And then on toward the white bulk of the coast guard station farther down.

  And then I saw it. The Worm. Rising out of the sea, as green as could be, the head jutting out into the water, and then the large body behind it, the tail snaking away into the land behind that. It really did look like a dragon from here, hunched, waiting, protecting the headland. Daring any raiders to come close enough. Superstitious people could easily believe it was real, dangerous even, and turn away.

  To my right, I could look down into the width of the bay from a different vantage point, and I took in a breath of surprise and delight. From here, I could see the entire expanse of the sandy strand, crescent shaped. And the incoming sea, a deeper shade of blue farther out, became the loveliest light blue as it rolled into the shallows, then turned white and frothy as it reached the strand.

  I thought, It’s like a woman’s ball gown. Her shoulders the pale sand, the lace draping them, and the blue gown falling away toward the deeper blue of the sea. Someone could paint this scene, and no one would believe that it was what the artist had actually seen. It was that unusual.

  For several minutes I just stood there, admiring it, wishing I could share it with my mother. She had such a wonderful eye for color.

  It was then that I noticed the women.

  A dozen of them? Perhaps fifteen, all told. Several of them with children walking beside them.

  They were almost at the waterline, staying out of the frothy wavelets washing in, but close enough that I saw one of the children almost caught out by the water unexpectedly changing course. I thought I heard the little boy’s squeal of delight as his mother yanked him back in the nick of time, then bent over to scold him.

  Watching them for a moment, I noticed something else. They weren’t just strolling along the waterline as I’d first thought. There was a—a method in the way they worked, a pattern.

  The only thing I could think of was a search of the shoreline for anything that had come from the little craft. Anything useful that could be salvaged? But flotsam wasn’t hard to spot in such pretty water.

  This was a closer inspection, almost as if they were searching for edible shellfish stranded in the shallows by the retreating storm.

  Or for any identification from the dead man?

  I had no idea how early they’d come out here to look. But even as I watched, unseen, from the high cliffs above, they began to walk back to their cottages. Breaking off their search one by one, although two or three lingered, staring after the others, as if wondering how successful they’d been before weaving along the waterline again.

  And then the strand was empty, a few gulls taking possession almost at once.

  I turned back toward The Worm, scanning the rough land beyond the abandoned coast guard station for Ellen’s cottage, where the dead man had been taken. I wished for Hugh’s field glasses, to bring in the area. I had just spotted the rough outline of a roof when I noticed movement there. Was that the cottage? It must be. There was no other sign of habitation that I could make out.

  I thought wryly that Ellen might well have had an unpleasant surprise if she’d suddenly decided to come for a visit.

  Before I’d finished the thought, I realized that there were several people coming out of the cottage. It looked too small for guests . . .

  But those weren’t guests. I understood as the straggle of people formed up into a square, with someone in front of them and someone behind.

  I felt cold.

  They were bringing the body of the dead man back up to where I was standing. They’d almost reached what might euphemistically be called a road. It was in reality hardly more than a rough, overgrown track running from Ellen’s cottage past the coast guard station and all the way up to where the actual road began in front of Rachel’s house.

  It was only just a very little after dawn. No one was up and about except for the women who had been searching along the strand. But they had gone inside now. Yet the body was being moved. While everyone was still abed?

  Had someone gone for the police after all?

  All at once I had the feeling that I shouldn’t be seen, not out here, watching. I don’t know why, but the feeling was so strong I hurried back up the slight incline and got myself t
o Rachel’s house before the group of men had looked in my direction and seen me standing there watching them.

  I let myself in the door, slipped into the parlor, and stood waiting behind the lace curtains to see what was being done with the body.

  Small as the Corporal was, he still must have been a burden. But the little group moved faster than I’d thought possible. Working against the rising sun, which was now spilling light across the land not in swaths but in a broad sweep, these men were hurrying as much as they could. Hoping to reach their destination before anyone else was up and about to see how their land had fared after the storm.

  They came into view just as I was about to turn away. The fire hadn’t been lit here in the parlor, and it was icy by the window. But there they were, scarves around their faces against the cold, but their breath steaming all the same, little puffs coming through the knitting.

  Silent, except for their footsteps, they didn’t stop to catch their breath. Instead they came on, moving at a good pace. The ground was a little more level here, and they were making better time. I watched them pass the house and disappear up the road.

  Curious, I moved to the parlor’s other window, this one on the side of the house, and watched as the men reached the church and the churchyard that surrounded it.

  I couldn’t see any sign of a policeman waiting. Where were they taking the Corporal’s body? The church?

  But they hurried through the gate into the churchyard, walked some twenty paces toward the far wall, and then, to my astonishment, they lowered their burden, blanket and all, into what I realized was an open grave, already prepared.

  The men began to shovel earth in over the body as quickly as they could. When that was done, sod that had been taken up in strips was carefully laid into place over the freshly turned earth. And two men with shovels patted it down so that it would grow again.

  Before my eyes, they had buried the Corporal. Without the police or even, as far as I could tell, clergy standing in their way.

  As soon as it was done, the men walked briskly out of the churchyard, then scattered. I didn’t recognize any of them, but of course, bundled as they were against the cold, they could have been the men I’d dealt with yesterday when the body finally came ashore. And I wouldn’t have known.

  More than a little shocked—and disappointed too that there apparently would be no policeman to give me a lift to Swansea—I turned away from the window.

  And nearly bumped into Hugh Williams.

  I couldn’t believe how quietly he must have come down those stairs and into the room, stopping behind me. I gulped, then smiled uncertainly.

  How much had he seen?

  I said, into the silence, “I expect there will be no policeman called in. But I don’t understand why. There is a proper procedure in a death like the Corporal’s. A doctor, the police, an effort to identify him, an inquest. It’s the way things are done.”

  “Let it go, Bess,” he said harshly. “I’ve learned. These people follow their own ways. They’ve had to, for a very long time. There’s nothing you can do about it. To try would be—foolish.”

  I thought he had meant to say dangerous, but changed his mind at the last moment.

  “Will they accuse you of murder this time?” I asked, knowing that it was not possible for him to have killed the Corporal. And yet, rumors had made the rounds once, and they could begin again. I found myself thinking that in a place guarded by a great green Worm, where strangers were buried without ceremony when no one was looking, anything might happen.

  “I don’t know,” he answered, but under his breath, as if he truly didn’t know.

  Chapter 6

  Overhead, we could hear Rachel moving about in her room.

  Hugh glanced up at the ceiling, then looked at me. “Say nothing about this to her,” he told me softly but firmly. And then he was moving toward the kitchen and leaving me standing there in the middle of the parlor.

  I slipped quietly up the stairs and divested myself of coat and scarf and gloves, then made sufficient noise to announce that I was also up and dressing. Then I went on down to the kitchen, where Hugh had fed the embers in the cooker and already put the kettle on.

  “Good morning,” he said, turning to greet me.

  “Good morning,” I answered, as if this were the first time we’d met. I could hear Rachel coming down the stairs.

  She wished us good morning in her turn, saying ruefully, “I don’t know when I’ve slept so deeply. I expect it was because the storm had moved on and the house was quiet.”

  And so the day began.

  I didn’t feel comfortable asking about leaving. Not after what I’d just seen. I needed time to think. About this place. The people out here. Instead, I asked Rachel if there was anything I might do to help her, since it appeared that I was to be their guest for the foreseeable future, but she smiled and shook her head.

  “I’m so used to getting done whatever it is I need to do. But I’m grateful for the offer of help,” she said

  I too was accustomed to being busy from early morning to late into the evening, and with time on my hands and nothing to do, I felt rather at loose ends as they prepared for their day.

  I would have given much to go over to the churchyard and see what had been done to mark the Corporal’s grave. But I had a feeling that it would be very unwise to show open interest in that grave.

  Instead, once I was certain that Rachel and Hugh would be busy and away from the house for a time, I went up to Hugh’s room and borrowed his field glasses, then went into Rachel’s room—pretty and looking as if it had been hers before she was married—to see what I could from the vantage point of her window.

  But neither hers nor Hugh’s looked toward the churchyard. Only the parlor window.

  Was that why these men had felt safe to dig that grave in the middle of the night, to be ready at first light for its occupant? They had decided what to do about the thorny problem of a corpse, and acted at once.

  But what about the boat?

  I was about to shut Rachel’s door and return the field glasses to their place by Hugh’s window when I noticed something on the shelf above the small table that held her lamp.

  It was an odd piece to find in the middle of a Welsh peninsula. I went back to look at it, then decided I must be wrong.

  I’d been in the palaces of Indian princes, I’d seen treasures that were beyond the dreams or even the imagination of ordinary people. Gemstones, pearls, gold, silver, in every conceivable combination.

  What had caught my eye looked like a cabochon ruby set in a small but elegant silver cross lying on that shelf.

  But when I took a quick second glance, I was sure it must be something from a fair, the sort of thing that looked pretty and sold well but had no real value.

  Shutting Rachel’s door, I hurried into Hugh’s room to return the glasses, then went to my own for my coat and my woolen hat. By the time I had reached the bottom of the stairs I had buttoned my coat, and then I was out the door, slowing to walk sedately across the road and out to the hedge.

  It had been there, on the high ground, away from the draw of the tide, when I’d gone out at first light. Now the little craft was a shadow of itself. The mast had been cut away, the sail as well, and the hull was being cut into what appeared to be firewood.

  With no body, and soon enough, no boat, it was as if the entire incident had never happened.

  Was this what had been done to the other body as well? The one that rumor had named Tom Williams, Rachel’s missing husband?

  I turned away, afraid to be caught gawking. If they were so eager to erase any sign of the previous day’s disaster, those men would begin to wonder about me, if I wasn’t careful. I didn’t live here. With any luck, I’d soon leave.

  And carry with me a tale of a wrecked boat and a dead man? Bringing the police and even perhaps the Army down on this hamlet above the sea? After all, I held the rank of an officer in the British Army. All the QAIMNS Sisters
did. It gave us standing in the wards. And with it came a certain responsibility . . .

  Would they actually try to stop me from leaving? I shuddered to think what lengths they might go to if I showed too much interest in things best forgotten.

  I was just turning away when I noticed the man Griffith watching me from the window of his cottage. I really hadn’t got a good look at him the night I’d arrived in the motorcar from Swansea. But I didn’t recall seeing him there on the strand when I’d been asked to have a look at the dead Corporal.

  I considered knocking at the door and questioning him about Mr. Morgan’s abrupt departure, but before I could make a move in that direction, the face vanished. And I had a feeling that even if I did knock, he wouldn’t answer.

  Yet oddly enough, I could feel his eyes on me all the way to the door of Rachel’s house. As if he moved from one window to the next, to make certain where I’d gone.

  I stayed out of sight for the rest of the day. Rachel had said that she needed no help, but I could see for myself that she was barely able to keep house, prepare meals, do the washing and ironing—and still tend to her sheep. It was far more than one woman could physically manage. And so I looked in the kitchen cupboards, found what I needed, and set to work.

  There was a large feather duster that made short work of the windows and the wooden furniture. I found an old rag from the kitchen cupboard to clean the smaller, more fragile treasures. On the mantelpiece were several bits of porcelain and china, two of the shepherdesses with chipped fingers, and a basket of Coalport flowers in perfect condition. On the table between the windows was a bell jar with what appeared to be wax wedding flowers preserved inside the glass carapace. Her mother’s, I thought, judging from the style.