Lyn nodded. She sniffed. ‘I’ll get the young lord and master up from his rest. You go and put the kettle on.’
The packet from Mary Sutton was a large envelope. Lyn had left it on the kitchen table with the parish magazine, a flimsy pamphlet with a lurid purple cover. Eyeing the package Joss filled the kettle and put it on the hot plate. Only then did she allow herself to open it. It contained another notebook – by now Joss was familiar with her mother’s jottings; she must have bought a whole stack of them in a job lot somewhere – and a few more letters and some photographs. She glanced at the photos. Sammy and Georgie. She didn’t need the pencilled names on the back to identify them. They were black and white school photos, she guessed, both wearing the same school uniform in spite of the eight-year gap between them. Sammy was very dark – she could see the resemblance to herself – with a thin, intense face and round light coloured eyes, perhaps blue like her own. Georgie was fairer, chubbier, more mischievous. Both had been about six when the photos were taken. She stared down at them for a long time before she saw the note scribbled by Mary. ‘I thought you could have the photos of my boys. The other things I found the other day. You may as well have them too.’
The notebook was full of loosely scribbled writing. Poems, recipes, and again diary entries, seemingly carelessly and unchronologically scattered. Her mother, she was beginning to think, had a butterfly mind, leaping from here to there, from thought to thought, idea to idea, and from self-conscious musing to the need to confide somewhere, if only to an inanimate diary.
The two letters were addressed to Mary. Joss picked them up, touched that Mary should part with them. One was dated 1956.
Take care of my little one, Mary dear. Remember the doctor’s advice about his tummy aches. Kiss him for me and look after him. I’m so much happier to know he is there with you in your mother’s cottage.
Joss looked up. The letter was headed Belheddon Hall. Why had Laura thought it necessary for Georgie to go and stay with Mary in the village?
She smiled at Lyn and Tom as they appeared in the doorway. ‘Tea is nearly ready.’
Next morning, almost before they were up, David had appeared with an extra belated Christmas present for Tom – a furry, hideously green, hippopotamus with which the little boy fell instantly in love and christened for some obscure reason, Joseph. ‘Arimathea or Carpenter?’ David asked mischievously and the little boy answered solemnly, ‘Hittopomatus.’
In the laughter which followed David glanced at Joss. Pregnancy seemed to be agreeing with her. She seemed to be growing more attractive every time he saw her. Sternly he reined in his thoughts. ‘So, have you written enough for me to take to Bob?’
She nodded. ‘Two chapters, like you said. I printed them up yesterday.’
He grinned. ‘Great. Well, here’s your reward. More stuff about the house.’ He put a folder down on the table in front of her. ‘I’ve found out who Katherine is. Or was.’ He smiled. ‘Katherine de Vere was the eldest daughter of the Robert de Vere who lived here in the mid-fifteenth century. She was betrothed to the son of a local earl.
Handsome and light hearted, the young man rode to Belheddon daily and Katherine’s father laughed out loud in delight.
“We have a love match here,” he guffawed to all who would listen and when he saw the debonair Richard tuck his daughter’s favour in his cap he slapped him on the back and planned the wedding.
She had eyes for no one but this young neighbour. Whilst she curtseyed to the king and served him with wine she did not look up and see his face.
To her he was old.’
David turned the page in his folder and went on: ‘I’m not sure whether or not she actually married him. The records are a bit cryptic about that, I thought. Anyway only a year later in 1482 poor Katherine died, and she’s in the church as Katherine de Vere. She was only seventeen or eighteen. When her father died Belheddon Hall passed to an Edward, presumably her younger brother. He too died at the age of eighteen, but had time to marry and have a daughter. By that time we are in the reign of Henry VII. The strange thing is –’ he paused and looked round – ‘that already, by the end of the sixteenth century the house had a reputation for being haunted.’ He grinned at Joss. ‘Do you want to know this?’
‘No!’ ‘Yes!’ Luke and Joss spoke simultaneously.
David shrugged. He reached for a page out of the file. ‘“The beauteous house of Belheddon Hall, though well-favoured, did not boast many tenants. Men and dogs alike fled in terror from the wails of an apparition which inhabited its lofty chambers.”
‘That was written in the late seventeenth century by a diarist called James Cope who stayed here – only once.
‘“For more than a hundred years the house has been inhabited by this creature whose unhappiness is distressing to the ear and frightening to the eye.”’
David laughed. ‘He then adds:
‘“Though I stayed three nights it did not, to my sorrow appear and has not been seen these last forty years.”’
‘He doesn’t mention the devil, though, does he,’ Luke put in tartly. ‘That’s interesting. An old gossip like that would have put that snippet in if he had heard it.’