‘I see.’ David felt deflated. His shoulders slumped. He hadn’t realised just how much he had been looking forward to seeing Joss again. ‘And Lyn and the children? Are they still here?’
Jimbo shook his head. ‘They’ve taken the cats with them and gone off to stay with Mr and Mrs Grant. Somewhere near Oxford, I heard.’
‘That’s a bit of a blow. I was hoping to stay a couple of days.’
‘I’ve got the keys if you want. Don’t s’pose they’d mind if you use the house.’ Jimbo turned to the work bench which ran down the side of the coach house and rummaged amongst his tools. He produced a bunch of keys. ‘Wouldn’t do no harm for the place to have some heat on. They asked me to keep an eye on things, but I haven’t been in.’ He folded his arms with a gesture of finality.
‘I see.’ David hesitated. ‘You don’t have a phone number for them, I suppose?’
Jimbo shrugged. ‘I was told if there was a problem to get in touch with Mr Goodyear at the farm.’
‘Right.’ David glanced over his shoulder towards the back door. He felt strangely reluctant to go in on his own. ‘Supposing I have a brew up. Would you like to come in and get some coffee?’
Jimbo shook his head. ‘I’d as soon stay out here.’
‘Right,’ David said again. ‘Fair enough. ‘I’ll go in and have a look round then.’
He put his hand out for the keys. As he turned towards the back door he felt Jimbo’s eyes following him. The young man’s expression was far from reassuring.
The kitchen was ice cold. The range was out and the room was unusually tidy. He flicked on all the lights, wondering if they had an electric kettle. If they didn’t he would have to fire up the stove and wait while the heavy iron kettle boiled. He scowled. The weekend was not turning out quite as he had hoped.
By the time he had made the coffee and carried a mug out to the coach house Jimbo had gone. He stared at the padlocked doors in disbelief then reluctantly he turned back towards the house.
He established a base camp in Joss’s study, clearing her notes and manuscript into meticulously arranged piles on the floor under the table, well out of the way and spreading out his own material in its place. He had had only a brief struggle with his conscience about whether he ought to stay in the house uninvited as he was. But he had been given the keys by Jimbo who was, it seemed, in charge, however unlikely that appeared to be, and he was after all Ned’s godfather which made him almost a relation, and he was certain had Joss been there that he would have been made welcome. Whether Luke would have been quite so welcoming he did not consider quite so closely.
He sat down at Joss’s desk and began to read through his notes. First thing in the morning he was planning to visit the church. There were several things he wanted to check against the brasses and plaques, but until then he wanted to get a feel of the house.
He glanced up at the fire which had been left ready laid. It was crackling merrily, already throwing warmth into the room. His researches seemed to prove that the original house had been built on the site of a Roman villa; the building as it stood was certainly a substantial manor house in its own right by the early fifteenth century, probably a hundred years before that. It was the fifteenth century he was interested in, however. And in particular the reign of King Edward IV.
He ran through the dates again in his head. Three times, Edward had come to East Anglia in 1482. On two of those occasions Belheddon was mentioned by name and on the third by implication. David had made a chart of the king’s movements. It was exactly nine months after his last visit that Katherine de Vere had died. For two weeks in the month of her death he had visited Castle Hedingham. In the previous year he had spent several weeks at Belheddon and in the year before that two visits of a week each. Katherine’s marriage he was prepared to bet had been arranged by the king’s command to give the king’s bastard a father. The poor young man had not lived to enjoy his rather dubious honour; within months he had died. Of natural causes, or at the hand of a jealous man who could not bear to see his mistress as another man’s wife? Probably they would never know.
David sat for a moment, staring out of the window. All those facts were, near enough, just that: fact. He had guessed perhaps at motive, and he had certainly guessed that the child that had killed Katherine was the king’s but the rest was the stuff of record. The remainder of his researches had moved well beyond the realms of what was acceptable to a serious historian. He found himself smiling, alone as he was, in something like embarrassment. This was the matter of Margaret de Vere and her witchcraft. That she was accused was fact. That she had been arrested twice was fact. That she and the women accused with her were guilty as charged was something dismissed as rubbish by historians. The women had been framed by the supporters of Edward’s brother, Richard. But. He ran over the facts again. The first time Margaret was arrested, it was by Edward’s orders, shortly after a visit by him, to Belheddon Hall. There was no question then of her being framed by anyone – unless it was by Edward himself and why would he want to frame (and by implication get rid of) his hostess, the mother of the young woman he loved? Unless she opposed him. But surely it made no sense at all to oppose a match, even one on the wrong side of the blanket, with the king himself? No ambitious woman of the period would do that if she were in her right mind.
Unless she really was a witch.