Property of a Lady

Despite all this, the ancient beliefs still linger. They’ve come down to us from a time when the world was young, and when strange things still lingered in its crevasses and chasms and in the lairs of mountains and subterranean caverns. And for the prepared or the curious mind, there are signposts pointing them out.

For me, the first signpost appeared when I found a book on my father’s shelves called The Ingoldsby Legends, collected by the Reverend Richard Barham, purportedly written by one Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor. I suppose my father acquired it because he thought anything written by a minister of the church was suitable and praiseworthy. But although I’m not a betting man (too cautious!) I’d lay any money that he never read it. In fact, Thomas Ingoldsby was Barham’s pen-name. The legends he’s plundered are parodies or pastiches, but they are based on genuine old myths and beliefs.

Living quietly in this small corner of the English countryside, making a modestly prosperous living, I have begun to trace some of those beliefs. It’s a curious experience – like picking up a black and bloodied string and feeling your way along until you reach its core. I’m not entirely sure I ought to be doing this, but that dark string, once picked up, is impossible to put down. I shall go just a little further along.

At times, emerging from reading of old tracts and ancient chronicles, I am uneasily aware of something seeping into my mind, like a thin trickle of brackish water. Is that how madness starts? No, I won’t believe that, I won’t . . .

I shall go on with my research – I want to find the genesis of those legends.

June 1885

My studies over these past months have been innocent enough, although – I shall be frank – they have not been studies I should want my neighbours to know about. That fine line between legend and something more dangerous, again. That trickle of brackish water . . . But it has stopped now, I know it has. I am entirely sane.

I have reread that last sentence and am shocked to see how deeply my pen scored into the page when I wrote that I was sane. I think I shall not write in this diary again. It sometimes frightens me.





TWENTY-FOUR



January 1886

I am coming to the conclusion that my books must be stored somewhere less visible. As the collection grows, they become more noticeable to visitors to the house, and some of the titles on the spine are – well, I’ll use the word dubious.

Over the last few years I’ve made a number of trips outside Marston Lacy to scour second-hand bookshops – that despised railway has proved its value after all, for travel is now very easy indeed! Sometimes private libraries are broken up and sold when the owner dies. I’ve attended several of those; in fact, I believe I’ve become known as a collector of curios. ‘Ah, Mr Crutchley,’ a book dealer said to me last month at a library sale near Chirk. ‘We wondered if you might be along. Now there’s a little volume here you might fine interesting.’ And twice I’ve been sent an invitation to such sales. That pleases me greatly.