A Place of Secrets (30 page)

“What have you got there?” Megan glanced at the cutting as she laid some shards of pot on the table and started to unwrap another package.

“It says, ‘Tradition has it that the area is haunted,’” Jude read out, “‘and locals advised Mallory not to dig there.’”

“Mallory?” Megan said to herself. “Charles
Mallory. Where’ve I heard of him?”

She resumed unpacking the contents of the box. A ring made of bone, some ancient coins, a couple of gun cartridges of more recent origin, all these she laid on the table. Then came a small, tightly wrapped parcel, which took ages to unroll.

“Wonder what this was off!”

Jude, seeing what Megan held out in the palm of her hand, drew a sharp breath. It was tiny—the
size of a 5p coin. The gold setting was twisted, and it needed a good clean, but there was no doubt in her mind. It was a star. A star studded with diamonds.

“Megan,” she gasped, “you’re not going to believe this, but I know what this comes from. It’s part of a necklace I’ve just handed over for valuation. My gran’s had it in her possession for years and years,” she quickly explained.

Megan
held up the little twisted star and said, “It would seem sensible for you to have it, though of course I can’t just give it to you. Look, you say the necklace is with a jeweler. When you’ve got it back, why don’t you bring it in for me to see? By then I’ll have found out the procedure. There must be forms and things in these cases.”

Jude said ruefully, “There always are.”

“But this necklace,”
Megan persisted. “You said it’s connected to the Wickham family? If you want to find more about this Esther, have you looked around the church in Starbrough? It would be a start. And the parish records will undoubtedly be in the archive at County Hall.”

* * *

On the way back to Starbrough Hall, Jude, still marveling that she’d found two clues about the necklace in quick succession—in Esther’s
account and in the box at the museum—returned to Starbrough Hall through the village, and decided to follow Megan’s advice. There wasn’t much to the village center: a huge church loomed over a half square of eighteenth-century cottages, and the green with the ancient oak and its encircling bench that she remembered seeing as a teenager. She parked the car by the church and opened the lych-gate
to the churchyard.

The church itself, fortunately unlocked, was light and airy. Its central point of interest was a huge medieval stone font at the beginning of the aisle, with a figure carved on one side. Jude stood back to view this properly. It was of a man with unkempt hair and a beard, brandishing a clublike weapon. A cardboard label resting on the lid of the font explained that it was a
woodwose—a wild man of the woods, its pagan-sounding purpose to chase away evil spirits. It seemed to be the oldest part of the church, she discovered as she wandered around. The choir stalls with their beautiful carved decoration were fifteenth century, according to another label, but most of the memorials around the walls dated from the eighteenth century onward. She was interested to see several
for members of the Wickham family—a Victorian magistrate named William, a Richard Wickham who’d died of his wounds in the Boer War. She could see nothing for Anthony or for anyone called Esther. Having looked at everything, she left the building, pulling the door closed behind her.

The oldest part of the graveyard was dominated by a large tomb ringed by iron palings on which faint details about
various Victorian Wickhams were recorded, but nothing further back than that, indeed there were not many eighteenth-century gravestones at all. There were no Esthers, not even Anthony’s mother, only a Stella, the wife of Hugh or Hugo someone, the dates too faint to read confidently, and an Essie George, who’d died in 1850. Around the other side of the church were the twentieth-century graves; she
supposed her Bennett great-grandparents, the gamekeeper and his wife, were among them. At the far side of the burial ground an old man in shirtsleeves was clipping a hedge and she made her way between the graves toward him. At her greeting he lowered his shears and took a moment or two to consider the question she asked.

“They’ll be somewhere over there,” he replied, pointing his shears at an
area she’d not searched very thoroughly. “My da passed away in 1957 and that’s where he got put. My ma, too, when she couldn’t stand being without him anymore.” He shuffled along the rows of graves, his shears swinging dangerously from one sinewy hand, and she followed at a safe distance. They found the grave quickly enough: the stone cross reading “James and Rose Bennett,” and giving their dates.
At the base was a memorial flower vase that had obviously housed nothing but spiders for years. Jude vowed to come back sometime with some cut flowers or a plant. It gave her an odd feeling standing here looking at the names that she had a special connection to the people buried in this place she’d never visited before, people she had never met but who still belonged to her.

The old man was walking
slowly back to his work, when she thought to ask something. “’Scuse me.” He turned, with an inquiring look. “Do you know of any travelers, any gypsies buried here? There’s one in particular I want to find, Tamsin Lovall. I don’t suppose that name means anything to you?”

He thought for a long moment, then said, “Not Tamsin Lovall, no, but there’s maybe another Lovall. Come with me.”

He led her
through a gate in the hedge and out onto the green.

The wooden seat around the ancient oak tree was made up of different sections bolted together, some newish, others with broken arms or missing slats, silver with age so they appeared almost part of the tree itself. Some of the seat backs bore small metal memorial plates in varying states of legibility.

“See if you can make out that one,” said
the old man, pointing to a mottled plaque on one of the older sections.

“Ted Lova…”

“Could be Lovall, d’you think? There was a Ted Lovall.”

“Could be,” Jude said uncertainly. She walked around the tree, looking for other names. There was only one that really interested her.

“Marty Walters,” Jude read aloud, “1950 to 1970. Only twenty.”

“Summer of 1970, it happened,” the old man said. “Nearly
the whole village put in something for the seat. They were sorry for his family, you see. Terrible accident, terrible.”

“He was the boy who died at that party,” Jude said, with a sudden sense of shock. “Where did his family live?”

“Now you’ve got me. Up Sheringham way, I believe. Somewhere on the coast, anyhow. But he died at the folly.”

* * *

The church hadn’t, after all, told her anything
about Esther. There were still the parish records, she supposed, but she didn’t have any definite dates to help her there.

Back at the Hall, there was nobody about, so she went to the library where she’d left her laptop. She paced the room restlessly for a while, looking out of the window to the point where the folly must be, trying to link up all the connections in her head. It was no good.
Sitting down at the desk she took a piece of paper and wrote down what she knew:

Esther, daughter of Anthony Wickham. Had necklace when found in 1765.

Befriends gypsy girl in forest c. 1775?

Gran meets Tamsin Lovall c. 1933.

Takes necklace from her (how did Tamsin’s family get necklace and how did necklace get broken?)

2008—Gran gives me necklace.

How on earth had the necklace (assuming
it
was
the same one) gone from Esther’s possession to Tamsin’s a century and a half later? Were the two gypsy girls from the same family line? It was difficult to imagine how a valuable necklace could have been transferred safely down the generations when the temptation must have been to sell it. Where would you keep a necklace in a wagon? She started to doodle a picture of a caravan, drawing
patterns on the roof like on the one Euan slept in, but she wasn’t much of an artist and the perspective was all wrong.

She sighed and pushed the paper away. She needed to think what to do next, but she had other things to be getting on with. And she was collecting Summer from school that afternoon.

She logged on to her laptop and resumed work on the synopsis for her article. Half an hour later
she e-mailed it to Bridget McLoughlin, the editor of Beecham’s magazine, saying she knew she had further research to do, but that she thought the story should be the personal one—about the pair of stargazers, father and daughter. What did Bridget think? At the last moment, before she pressed “send,” she added her boss, Klaus, as a recipient. Best to be on the safe side.

The doodle of Euan’s caravan
again caught her eye. Where would he have got a gypsy caravan? He’d told her he’d borrowed it from someone—his cousin, she thought he’d said.

* * *

“How did your cousin get to have your caravan in his barn?” she asked Euan that afternoon when she dropped by with Summer. They had found him asleep in the caravan but he insisted he didn’t mind Summer calling him awake.

“It was there when he
bought the farm,” he replied, as they walked across the field to the cottage. “The people who sold it to him had Romany connections, I gather.”

“I don’t suppose you could find out what their name was, could you? I don’t know where we can track down these Lovall people.”

“I’ll try, but there are other ways, you know.”

“Tell me,” she said, immediately interested.

“All right, why don’t we go
and meet the travelers here, on the edge of the forest? They might know something. They’ve probably been coming here for generations. They used to camp up Foxhole Lane, as you know, but that blasted John Farrell moved them on to a site on the other side of the forest, right by the main road.”

“Do you know them?”

“Of course. I’ve often met them on my wanderings.”

“Well that would be great. When
could we go?”

“This afternoon, if you like,” said Euan, yawning. “Can you let me have a quick shower and a cup of coffee first?”

“What about Summer?” They watched the little girl outside talking to the owls.

“She could come. Why not?”

“I don’t know.” She felt very protective of the little girl at the moment, that was all. “Oh, why not?” If they were friends of Euan’s they’d be all right.

* * *

The encampment on the edge of the forest numbered only three caravans, modern ones, not the painted wagons like Euan’s, and a couple of the cars that pulled them were parked untidily on the nearby verge. An elderly woman hanging up washing on a line stretched between two of the vans watched the
gorgios
approach, then, recognizing Euan, nodded to him and rapped on the nearest vehicle
calling, “Barney!” then something incomprehensible. After a moment a dark, lean man of thirty-five or forty emerged, pulling on a jacket over a T-shirt and jeans. Euan had got to know Barney, he’d explained, the last time the Romanies had passed through. Steve Gunn usually made a point of giving him work, and Euan, seeing him constructing bird coops, had got him to do some cages.

“Euan,” he cried,
with a white flash of a smile, and he came forward to grasp the other man’s hand. “Good to see you. And you have brought your family?” His expression was of amused puzzlement.

“No,” said Euan, with a delighted laugh. “But I wish they were.”

“We’re friends of Euan’s. I’m Jude,” Jude said, stepping forward and offering her hand, “and this is my niece, Summer.” But Summer stayed close to Jude,
holding her hand, and would only take shy peeks at Barney. She tugged at Jude’s blouse and Jude bent down to listen to the girl whisper.

“Summer would like to know about the caravans,” Jude said gravely. “I think she was expecting them to be more … well, colorful and horse-drawn.”

“Like Euan’s,” Summer was brave enough to say.

“Ah,” said Barney, his face regretful. “Euan’s is beautiful. Liza
here—” the woman pegged a bright cotton shirt to the line and came over to listen “—she lived in a
vardo
as a child, but these are much easier to look after, eh, Liza? And it was a hard life for the horses. The busy roads and often nowhere to graze. The children liked the horses. I’m sorry my two are not home yet for you to play with, Summer.”

“Are they at school?” Summer asked, forgetting her
shyness.

“They go to school in Starbrough, yes,” Barney said. “Is that your school, too?”

Summer shook her head.

“Summer and her mother live a few miles away in Felbarton,” Jude explained, “but it’s interesting that your children are at Starbrough.” She looked at Euan, who nodded encouragement. “Euan says your family have been coming here for many years, and I wondered if you had heard of a
girl—well, she’d be a very old lady now if she were still alive—who knew my grandmother when she went to school in Starbrough back in the 1930s. Her name was Tamsin Lovall.”

Barney looked doubtful and turned to Liza, speaking to her in a mixture of English and that strange, harsh language. Jude wondered if the old lady was his grandmother and how old she might be; her skin was wrinkled like a
raisin, but she was still quite agile.

The old lady nodded slowly and said to Jude, “I know a Lovall but not your Tamsin. My father’s sister. Her man was a Lovall, Ted Lovall.” She said something else Jude didn’t catch.

“There’s a bench in Starbrough with his name on,” she told Euan.

“Is there?” Euan said.

“Yes, I’ve seen that,” Barney said. “Perhaps he was well known hereabouts—was he, Liza?”

“I believe so,” Liza replied, with a chuckle. “Especially at the Red Lion. He gave up traveling right at the end of his life,” she told Jude, “and he liked to earn a pint or two telling his stories.”

“There was some bad feeling, further back, I think,” Barney said. “Some of the family—maybe your Tamsin was one—chose to settle during the war. There was work locally and those were difficult times
for Romanies; there was such suspicion of anyone foreign-looking moving around.” He spread his hands. “Inevitably there were harsh words said about betrayal of family and the traditional way of life. Me? I like the life, but I have sympathy for those who give up. It’s very hard and there is so much hostility to us.”