A Place of Secrets (42 page)

“The caravan is like yours, isn’t it?” Jude murmured to Euan, who studied it closely before passing the album to Claire.

“It is, isn’t it, but that really would be too much of a coincidence,” he said firmly.

Claire passed the album to Jon and then
Chantal, then stood up.

“Mrs. Wickham, would you mind showing me where Summer’s gone?” she asked, and the two women left the room. She didn’t like to be parted from Summer at the moment. Jon muttered something about checking on them and followed. Euan rose and quietly went over to the far window where he stood, hands in pockets, looking out over the park. Gran still sat silently turning her wedding
ring.

“What is it, Gran?” Jude asked softly.

Frank, probably thinking she was tired, started to make his excuses, but Gran motioned to him to stay. But still she said nothing, so Frank gave a sort of harrumphing noise and said, “Mrs. Catchpole, I know something bad happened to my ma. She was always a very private person, haunted by something, I’d say. My da told me as much, too. Somebody hurt
her badly, didn’t they?”

Gran looked at him and Jude was moved to see her eyes glistening with unshed tears.

“Seeing those photographs … Of course, it brings it all back. But, yes, that’s what happened. It was when she and I were fifteen.”

Gran was quiet again for a moment, then looked straight at Frank. “I’ve not talked about this for a very long time. I hope you’ll understand. It’s been a
burden to me all these years. If I’d told on him earlier it might have been stopped.

“Well, we went up to the woods one time by ourselves. We met some soldiers, three of them. I knew one of them from school, Frank. His name was Dicky Edwards. He’d always been a bit of a bully and we could tell right away they’d been drinking. Yeugh, the way they looked at us. Well, we were frightened, and it
turned out we were right to be.”

Jude could hardly bear to listen as Gran continued the story. The girls tried to run, but the men caught them. They’d struggled and Gran had been lucky enough to land a kick that made her captor let go and clutch himself in pain. “Leave her, we’ve got the gypo,” shouted Dicky, and young Jessie had staggered off in the direction of home, horrified at the thuds
and screams behind her. She’d reached home whooping for breath, hardly able to get out her story to her startled mother. Her father was called and the farmer, who both ran up to the woods, then somebody got the message up to the Hall and the police were summoned, but it was all too late for Tamsin. Jessie’s mother told her she’d stumbled back to the encampment, bloody and bruised. Mrs. Wickham had
fetched the doctor for her and a search was set up for the lads, who were caught as they got off a train. But when the sun rose next morning, Tamsin and her family had gone and for many years no gypsies came to Starbrough Woods.

“And when she didn’t come back I took her necklace,” Gran muttered. “I knew where she kept it and I took it. Jude, do you have it, dear?”

Jude took the box from her
handbag and gave it to Gran, who opened it.

“Frank,” she said, “this was your ma’s. I don’t know where she got it from, but when she vanished I left it in the hideaway in the tower for her, thinking she’d come back. Then when she didn’t I took it. I’ve kept it all these years. I’m sorry.”

What Frank made of this confusing account, Jude couldn’t guess, but he took the box from Jessie and looked
down at the lovely necklace, complete with the seventh star, which the museum had returned to Jude and the jeweler had, as a temporary measure, quickly cleaned and fitted back into its place. There was an expression of uncertainty and wonder in his face. “Is it real?” he asked.

“It most certainly is,” said Jude, smiling at Gran’s indignant expression. “They think it’s from 1760, or about then.
That’s what the jeweler said.”

“What would I do with it?”

“It’s a kind of family heirloom. I suppose you keep it and pass it down the family.”

“There’s just Jon.” Frank looked down at the necklace, then put it down on the table and passed a hand across his face. “All this,” he said. “I can’t take it in. It’s horrifying … what happened to my ma, I mean. Dreadful. No wonder Da never said much
about it.”

“I suppose it might have been seen as shameful back then.”

“I don’t know,” Frank said, “I don’t know. I expect he was wanting to protect her. He did that well.”

He sat sunk in thought for some time, then Gran said, “I could never forgive myself, you see. I should have told on Dicky before. And then I ran away and left her.”

“What could you have done, Gran? Maybe the same thing would
have happened to you.”

“That’s what I told myself, but I still feel dreadful about it, dreadful.”

While they were speaking, Euan came over from his watch by the window and sat with them, turning the pages of the photograph album. When a silence fell, he said, “Do you know, Frank, I think this caravan of your mother’s might be the one in my garden. I said it was a coincidence, but, well, Jude,
look at this pattern. Then there’s the carving here and a chip out of the fretwork just here, can you see?”

“Where did you get your caravan from?” asked Frank.

“It’s not mine, only borrowed,” Euan told him. “My cousin has a farmhouse up near the coast at Sheringham, and he found it in one of the barns. Do you suppose your mother’s whole family settled in the end?”

“I don’t know,” said Frank,
“though perhaps I could find out. There are websites, I expect.”

“A whole other story,” Jude said, and Euan smiled, clearly pleased at the thought.

* * *

Robert and Alexia had laid out a big buffet tea in the musty old dining room for the occasion.

“I can’t thank you enough for doing all this,” Jude told them. “It’s so important to Gran.” They watched her holding court at one end of the
table, Frank and Chantal asking her about her childhood on the estate here. At one point Jude heard her ask Euan how he’d changed the cottage where she’d been brought up.

“It’s been very jolly having you all,” Alexia said, reaching to remove her son’s leftover pizza from the greedy gaze of one of the dogs. “I think it’s the first proper party we’ve had, isn’t it, Robert? Apart from the twins’
birthdays, of course.”

“Yes, I believe it is. And it’s most appropriate that it’s a celebration of what one might call the Wickham inheritance. Jude, you’ve done a most marvelous job of uncovering such an interesting episode from our past.”

“There are still a few gaps in the story, but I’m doing my best to try to fill them. Then I’ll be able to finish my piece.”

“This is the one for the Beecham’s
magazine?” Alexia asked vaguely.

“Yes, it should help a great deal to build interest in the sale.”

Jude was going home the following day; she was due in the office on Monday. Over the last couple of days she’d started drafting Bridget’s article. She’d finish it over the weekend, she hoped. The challenge was to keep to the word count. It was practically writing itself.

Now she looked around
the room. It would be awful to leave this place. There were those loose ends to tie up; she was looking forward to finishing her piece and preparing for the sale, but she’d miss being here, part of life at Starbrough, and Claire and Summer and Gran.

She’d uncovered a wonderful story, about a girl who’d found a father and helped him in his endeavors, who’d discovered something of shattering importance—another
planet—only to have everything snatched away from her. Jude believed most earnestly now, after Summer’s experiences, that Esther had escaped from the tower, but what had happened to her afterward was a mystery she had to try to solve. No one knew where Esther had come from—or where she went. Like a comet, there was just the brief bright glimpse of her life in her memoir, only for
her to disappear once more into shadow.

She went to speak to Frank, who was now standing on his own, sipping a glass of beer. “Frank, I hope it’s not cheeky of me to ask, but could I borrow that necklace for a short while to take back to London? I need to have it photographed properly, you see, for a piece I’m writing about this house.”

“That should be all right, yes, you take it. It’s not my
sort of thing really. I only accepted it because it was something of Ma’s. What I’d do with the thing I don’t know. Jon won’t want it, will he? I wish he’d find himself a young lady. About time he started a family, I reckon. Liz and I were married with him running around our feet when I was his age.”

Jude longed to tell him that he did have a grandchild, Summer, and they were watching her now,
not running around but looking after the twins, ordering them to finish their drinks and play hide-and-seek with her.

“Nice little girl, that one,” Frank remarked. “I remember meeting your sister once with Jon. She’s changed a lot, hasn’t she?”

“So’s your son,” Jude said feelingly.

“It’s good when they find what they’re meant to do in life,” he said. “But that little girl…” He let his words
trail off and Jude wondered if he’d guessed.

As if she’d heard him, Claire appeared at their sides. She said to Frank, “Gran’s so happy that she’s met you. I can’t believe the difference it’s made.”

“She’s a very interesting lady, she is,” Frank said. “We’ve been having a good old gossip, putting the world to rights. And she’s very proud of her granddaughters. You, Claire, she’s particularly
proud of you, she says, with your shop and such a lovely little girl.”

“Yes, well,” Claire said, coloring slightly, but Frank had said just the right thing for she looked happier and more confident as she said, “I haven’t always been lucky really. But they say it’s what you make of what happens to you in life, don’t they?”

Jude smiled to herself at hearing Gran’s old saying, and moved on, leaving
them talking. There was plenty to talk about.

Just at that moment, Alexia walked in holding Jude’s handbag, which she had left in the hall. “I could hear your phone ringing,” she said. “But I just missed it.”

“Oh,” Jude said, searching for the handset.

She stepped out of the room, read the display with some surprise, pressed a button to return the call and when it answered said, “Hello, Mum,
how are you?”

“Well, fine, dear, but we wondered where everybody is. Your gran isn’t home, Claire’s phone goes straight onto answer and you left me such an odd message. Is everything all right? Where are you?”

“Norfolk,” she said. “Don’t worry about the message. Panic over. Claire and Gran are with me. How is everything out there?”

“Dear, we’re not in Spain anymore, we came home. I couldn’t
cope at all. The heat, water shortages … it was simply dreadful. No, we got a flight back this morning. I did e-mail you about meeting us at the airport but you clearly didn’t get it.”

“No, I’m afraid not.” Jude couldn’t help laughing at her mother’s assumption that the world orbited around herself. “So you’re at home now?”

“Just having a cup of tea then we must pop out and buy something for
supper.”

“Hold on a moment,” Jude told her. She searched quickly for Alexia and found her in the kitchen and explained. “I wonder if you’d mind if they came for a short while. Everyone’s together, you see, and it’s a real opportunity. Douglas’s home is only five or six miles north of here.”

“Why not?” Alexia said. “The more the merrier.” But Jude thought for once she looked just a tiny bit weary,
and was sorry. But this was too good a chance to miss.

“Mum,” she said down the phone, “finish your cup of tea and bring yourself and Doug over. You know where Starbrough Hall is, don’t you? You’re going to get a bit of a surprise.”

“Starbrough Hall?” her mother said, sounding doubtful, and Jude remembered suddenly what Claire had said once about her mother knowing about the folly. “I suppose
so.” Jude heard her confer briefly with Douglas then say, “We’ll pop in quickly, if you think nobody would mind.”

After tea came the tour of the house. Chantal led a party that included Frank, Jon and Claire, Euan and Summer. Gran said she’d rather stay sitting, and Jude wanted to show her the library. “If I was young I’d have a good go round,” she told Jude. “I never saw much but the kitchens
before, but once there was a party in the garden and I peeped inside that big living room when no one was looking.”

Later, they all crowded into the library, too. Gran was in the big chair by the fireplace, surveying everyone.

Frank hovered by the orrery, fascinated as Chantal explained how it worked. Claire said she loved the ceiling best, with the personifications of different constellations.
Euan pointed out to Summer who they all were and she repeated, “Gemini, Aquarius, Aries,” to herself like a mantra. Max and his sister ran about or crawled over the furniture, Robert crossly nervous that they’d break something.

“Why are there only six planets, then?” Frank was asking, and Chantal explained that these were all that had been discovered at the time it was constructed. “This is why
Esther is important. It was she and her father who first discovered a seventh, but they themselves never recognized what they had found, and, anyway, it was never made public.”

“Ah,” said Frank.

“Chantal, when it gets darker, perhaps we could try using a light source in it?” Euan put in.

“What a good idea,” she replied.

Jude in the meantime was showing the journal to Claire, then took the
memoir out of the cupboard. “Esther wrote this when she was imprisoned in the tower,” she explained, showing her. “It’s bits out of this that Summer seemed to know.” But Claire regarded it nervously, as though it might convey some horrid curse if she touched it.

“I’m still not sure that can be true,” Claire said, glancing at Summer, who was with Frank, looking at the orrery. “All I know is that,
for the last couple of nights, since she … she went missing, she hasn’t had any nightmares. I’m crossing my fingers…”

So whatever it was might have gone, Jude said to herself. She didn’t dare voice this out loud in case it alarmed Claire. The idea that there might have been … well, something. Maybe a psychologist could explain it neatly away. Jude certainly couldn’t.