Property of a Lady

So there were these photos – good-looking guy he was, warm smile, absolute tragedy he died like that. And books. A lot of books. I should think they’re worth a bit – we might send Nell West an inventory to see if she’d know of a market for them. Terrific old tales of legends and ancient British folklore, and even some on magic. Plus a really battered book called The Ingoldsby Legends. (What, or where, is an Ingoldsby?) I did glance at a couple of pages of that one, and trust me, it’s a chiller in places, although I think a fair amount might be what you lot call black humor. The humor we aren’t supposed to get.

We all sat on the porch after the funeral, remembering her, telling anecdotes about her, as you do when somebody’s died. I haven’t pieced her life together completely, because everyone had a different memory, so it’s like putting a jigsaw together. I dare say there are a lot of pieces still missing.

But as far as I can make out, she worked with various societies for psychic research in England – I know it sounds off-the-wall, but she was that kind of lady. She’d have taken huge delight in debunking fraudsters and scams, but secretly she’d have loved it if she came across anything that smacked of the real thing. Not that I think there is a real thing. No ghosts, no pack drill.

Here’s the amazing thing. She went to Charect House. She actually went there, sometime in the sixties. I don’t know why or how, or if it was a psychic investigation, or what it was. Because around that time she got ill – no one here knows the details, but some kind of nervous exhaustion from overwork is the popular view. That’s when she came to live in New Jersey, to be near Joel’s people. She looked on them as family, and they looked on her as the daughter-in-law or sister-in-law she should have been. She was an adopted aunt to half a dozen of the kids, as well as godmother to Liz and one or two more.

But this is the explanation for Ellie’s nightmares. Ellie used to stay with these cousins for weekends, and she was there this summer for almost a month. Alice was there as well, and Ellie took to her. You know how it is with kids and old people – they often have a remarkable affinity.

We’ve talked to Ellie as much as we dare – not wanting to revive the nightmares which, thank the lord, have been quiescent for the last week – and she says, in that unconcerned way, that yes, Aunty Alice did used to tell really great tales. An old house in England, and a man who used to sing and knew spells for putting people to sleep. “Sleeping Beauty stuff,” she said. “I don’t believe all that, of course. It isn’t cool to believe fairy stories.”

We asked what kind of a man Aunty Alice talked about, and Ellie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He had black eyes.’


I don’t know about you, Michael, but it seems clear to me that Alice had talked to Ellie about some of the psychic investigations she did – not spookily or frighteningly, because beneath the crusty exterior she had a heart of gold and she loved kids. But she’d tell stories they might find fascinating – stories they wouldn’t have come across before. And she was a world-class raconteur when she got going, I’ll say that for her.

So there you have it. The explanation for Ellie’s nightmares, we’re absolutely certain of it. Happy ending. And we’re setting off for JFK tonight – there’s a stopover in Paris, and Liz says we should make it a three-day stay at the very least. I dare say I can be made bankrupt as easily on the Left Bank as I can anywhere else. Then it’ll be London on or about the 22nd. OK for you?

Liz and Ellie send you their love. I send whatever’s appropriate and manly!

Jack.

‘Is it the explanation?’ said Nell, after a long pause.

‘It could be for Ellie. But it doesn’t explain what I saw,’ said Michael. ‘Or what happened to Beth.’

‘Or what I saw and heard in the old churchyard where we found Beth. Or,’ said Nell, ‘what Alice saw for herself forty years ago.’

‘Harriet saw it as well, thirty-odd years before Alice,’ said Michael.

‘There are two things I could bear knowing more about,’ said Nell, thoughtfully. ‘The first’s William Lee himself. There didn’t seem to be a grave for him in the churchyard, if you remember? And Alice mentions a local legend—’