The Frozen Shroud (2 page)

‘You don’t suppose Miriam was frightened of being attacked as she walked home?’ Shenagh asked, an hour later. ‘Is that why Robin came, to keep her company?’

‘Miriam is perfectly capable of looking after herself, on Hallowe’en or any other day. Besides, who would want to murder her?’

‘Oh, I dunno. A homicidal ghost, thirsting for vengeance because of the wrong done to her?’

Breathing hard, Palladino shifted his position in the bed. The sudden movement of his crumbling joints caused a spasm of pain to cross his face. ‘Miriam doesn’t have an enemy in the world. She deserved better than a good-for-nothing husband, let alone that idle lad of hers. Calls himself a musician, but does nothing except take advantage of her good nature.’

In fact, the idle lad was thirty-plus, and Francis’s distaste stemmed from the way Shenagh let him flirt with
her. Not that either she or Robin meant anything by it. He wasn’t into commitment, frustrating Miriam’s dream of surrounding herself with grandchildren she could spoil. The old lady had even tried a bit of unsubtle matchmaking between the pair of them. But although Miriam would be the ideal mother-in-law, she was wasting her time. As far as Shenagh was concerned, Robin’s role in her life was to divert attention from her latest bit of fun. Like Mom, she’d never been a fan of monogamy. Francis didn’t have a clue about what she was up to, thank God. Anyway, it was harmless enough. No way would this latest dalliance interfere with her plans for the future.

She nibbled Francis’s dry lips. He was such a well-dressed man that it always came as a shock when he shed his clothes to reveal this scrawny body. His flesh felt like pudding pie, and the wonky vertebrae cramped his style as a lover. Massage helped, but it couldn’t make him young again. Not that she was complaining. Long ago, she’d learnt you can’t have everything, though it didn’t stop her trying.

Over his shoulder, she stuck her tongue out at a photograph in an ornate ironwork frame standing on the bedside cabinet. Esme, again. In this black-and-white, head-and-shoulders portrait, she was in her thirties, hair in a bun, wearing her irritable schoolmarm face. The mirthless smile betrayed impatience, as if she wanted to scold the photographer for being so slow to take the picture. It amused Shenagh that Esme was gazing at her, in bed with her husband. Sort of a turn-on, having a dead wife as a voyeur.

‘Miriam won’t come to any harm.’

‘Hope not. She’s petrified of ghosts.’

‘So was Esme. But only when she was four sheets to the wind. Claimed she saw Gertrude Smith at Ravenbank Corner one Hallowe’en, and managed to convince Miriam it wasn’t a hallucination. She’s extraordinarily credulous, for such a tough old boot.’

The tough old boot was younger and fitter than Francis, but Shenagh kept her mouth zipped. She’d learnt not to tease him about his age.

Her hand sneaked between his legs, but when he didn’t respond, she murmured, ‘Hey, it’s Hallowe’en. A night when all sorts may happen.’

‘A feeble excuse for shops making money, and children making a nuisance of themselves.’ He’d lapsed into grumpy old man mode. ‘I blame the Americans. Thank God we don’t have trick-or-treating in an out of the way place like this.’

‘I’m still glad Robin walked Miriam back to her cottage, made sure she’s all right. She’d have a seizure if she caught a glimpse of the Faceless Woman.’

‘Superstitious claptrap, that’s the top and bottom of it.’

Sure was, but Francis needed contradicting, every now and then. If he couldn’t handle contrariness, he should’ve signed up for the senior citizens’ tea dance down the road in Penrith, not started shagging a red-headed westie from Penrith Valley on the other side of the world.

‘Several people have seen Gertrude’s ghost over the years. Jeffrey Burgoyne told me so.’

‘When were you talking to Jeffrey Burgoyne?’

He sounded disgruntled, but surely not even Francis could be jealous of Jeffrey? ‘Must have been back when we first met. He asked if I knew about the legend.’

Francis snorted. ‘Pay no attention to Jeffrey. Fellow’s an actor, spends too much of his time prancing around like a poor man’s Ian McKellen. And he’s a dreadful gossip.’

Was there a touch of homophobia there? Probably, but Shenagh didn’t intend to make an issue of it. She knew something about Jeffrey that Francis would never guess, but she wasn’t in the mood for gossip. The last thing she wanted was to start a conversation about Jeffrey Burgoyne and his partner.

‘Sweetheart, this is Ravenbank. What else is there for people to do? That’s why I want to escape.’

He squeezed her right breast. Hooray! His fingers were cold, but at least there was life in the old dog yet.

‘Can’t wait,’ he said in a throaty whisper.

The eight-day mahogany mantle clock was an heirloom. A wedding present to Francis Palladino’s great-grandfather, with floral decorations and brass bun feet, and topped by a gilded cockerel perched on two books. Shenagh loathed its extravagant ugliness.

The clock struck each hour on a gong; at one in the morning, it woke him. They’d shared a couple of bottles of claret over dinner; Shenagh had waved away Miriam’s offer to do the cooking, and Francis found that fine wine always helped compensate for his lover’s lack of culinary expertise. The combination of the alcohol, the fire, and their exertions in bed had made him drowsy, so he hadn’t accompanied her when she said she would take Hippo for a walk.

‘With any luck, I’ll come face to face with Gertrude’s ghost.’ She giggled. ‘Hey, I guess that’s a contradiction in terms if the ghost doesn’t actually have a …’

‘Don’t stay out too long,’ he muttered. Within five minutes, he was snoring.

One o’clock? She must be back by now. After locking up, she’d gone straight up to bed. Might she be waiting to offer him her own special version of trick or treat? He levered his protesting body out of his armchair, switched off the light, and stumbled upstairs.

The bedroom was empty. No sign of her in the bathroom, either.

‘Shenagh?’

He called her name twice more. She didn’t answer.

Puffing and grunting, he made his way back down the steep staircase. Hippo’s basket was empty. Surely Shenagh hadn’t had an accident while taking him out? She was young, fit, and fearless. Yet a lifetime in medicine had taught him that nobody was invulnerable. Disaster often struck out of a clear blue sky. Or out of a dark, starless sky.

What could have gone wrong? Hippo – properly, Hippocrates – was an Irish Setter, five years old and full of energy. Too boisterous for his owner’s taste, but he had been a present for Esme after she fell ill, and after her death, Miriam, ever the sentimentalist, begged him not to let the dog go.

Shenagh loved Hippo too, a case of one tactile extrovert bonding with another. She used to say she enjoyed nothing better than being licked by a wild, panting animal. When, in the damp of autumn, Francis’s arthritic back started playing up, she’d volunteered to take Hippo for walks by herself. Ravenbank was an ideal place for a dog to roam, whether on the muddy track by the lake shore, or along the secluded lanes and overgrown pathways criss-crossing between the scattered houses.

No choice but to go and look for her. Shuddering with dismay, he pulled on his Barbour coat and thickest lambswool scarf, and shoved his age-spotted hands into leather gloves. Before grabbing his torch, he donned the garish woollen hat Shenagh had bought as a birthday present. He’d avoided wearing it until now, because it made him look foolish; at least nobody else would be out there to see it.

He knew better than to panic. Thirty-five years as a stroke physician had accustomed him to distress. From student days, he’d cultivated a cool fatalism. Speculation was the enemy of medicine. Doctors traded in facts, unlike patients who made themselves sick and unhappy by allowing their thoughts to roam. Imagination ranked with superstition and religion. A rational man could have no time for any of them.

The moment he stepped outside, the cold sank its teeth into his cheeks. Ravenbank was a small and isolated peninsula jutting out into Ullswater, at the mercy of gales roaring down from Helvellyn. The rain had slackened to a malicious drizzle, but swirls of fog kept blowing in from the lake, and the wind howled through the trees like a creature in pain.

He headed for the path to the ruined boathouse. To his left lay the grave of the woman who had once lived here. The jealous wife who had battered Gertrude Smith to death. This part of the estate had become a wilderness, the old lichen-covered tombstone invisible beneath a tangle of dripping ferns, serpentine brambles, and stinging nettles. What had possessed Clifford Hodgkinson to bury the rotting remains of his disgraced spouse in the grounds
of the Hall? Morbid sentimentality, that was the top and bottom of it.

‘Shenagh!’ he called.

No answer. What the hell was she playing at? Once or twice he’d wondered about her new-found enthusiasm for taking Hippo for a walk late at night. It wasn’t the form of exercise she usually favoured. Francis had warned her to be careful. Craig Meek knew where she lived, and a crude thug like that was capable of anything. But Shenagh was stubborn, and insisted she’d never let Meek mess her about again. She refused to become a prisoner in her own home through fear of anything he might try to do.

Once or twice, Francis had asked himself if walking the dog was a subterfuge, an excuse for getting out of the house so that she could meet someone in secret. Namely, that conceited lecher, Oz Knight. But he’d dismissed the idea out of hand. Knight was history as far as Shenagh was concerned; besides, he’d never be able to explain any nocturnal absences to that wife of his. Francis knew better than to give in to paranoia. Shenagh was a lovely woman, and any red-blooded male was bound to lust after her, but she knew which side her bread was buttered on. He was confident of that.

The worst case scenario was that Shenagh or Hippo had finished up in the water. He’d start by eliminating this possibility; a reassuringly scientific approach. Shenagh was sure-footed, and a strong swimmer. Her early years had been tough; he’d never pried into details, but she’d developed an instinct for self-preservation. Much as she cared for the dog, if it got into difficulties, she’d not risk
her life on a rescue. The lake was deep and excruciatingly cold. Nobody could survive its icy embrace for long.

Rain spat in his face as he limped along the muddy track. On the far side of Ullswater, lights glimmered behind curtained windows as Hallowe’en parties staggered to an end. Headlamps flickered as vehicles on the main road to Glenridding passed between the trees on the west bank. The east side of the lake was silent but for the melancholy hooting of an owl, and the muffled scrabbling of an invisible fox. His torch beam picked out the way ahead. The rest was blackness.

The air smelt of damp leaves and wet earth. The lakeside path was bumpy, and he needed to watch where he put his feet. It didn’t help that the gale was making his eyes water, and his vision was blurred. How easy to trip over a tree root, and snap his Achilles, especially when he was hampered by this damnable pain in his back and knees. Gritting his teeth, he followed the path’s curve around the promontory. No sign of Shenagh or Hippo.

Reaching a gap in the mass of trees, he began to climb towards the heart of Ravenbank. The downpour had made the ground treacherous, and his boots kept sliding as he struggled up the slope, but he pressed on. He knew this place like the back of his hand, and since Esme’s death he’d found comfort in the familiar, yet Shenagh was right. He was too set in his ways. If he didn’t change them now, he never would. She had opened his eyes to fresh horizons that he was desperate to explore, before it was too late.

Where the hell was she?

His boots pinched, and he could feel blisters forming on his heels. The wind blew a thin, spiky branch into his face, almost taking out his eyes. He brushed it out of his face,
and carried on until he reached the spot where a stony lane petered out into a rough track.

‘Hippo! Hippocrates!’ He whistled twice before he called again. ‘Are you there, boy? Shenagh, where have you got to?’

The fog clutched at his throat as he approached the Corner House. Wheezing noisily, he stopped to rest his aching back against the For Sale sign. In case Shenagh had taken shelter inside the empty cottage, he peered through the cobwebbed windows, but saw nothing. Taking a deep, rasping breath, he limped on down Water Lane. His torch beam picked out Watendlath, the whitewashed home of that pansy Jeffrey Burgoyne and his boyfriend. Francis didn’t care for the boyfriend, or the way he looked at Shenagh when he thought nobody else could see. Was he wondering what it would be like with a woman? People nowadays hadn’t the faintest idea of how to behave.

A tall hawthorn hedge marked the boundary of the Hall’s grounds. He decided to retrace his steps, and follow one of the paths that led through the wooded area. Near to the beck, not far from where the two lanes crossed at Ravenbank Corner, Gertrude Smith’s corpse had been discovered. And this was where Esme insisted she’d seen Gertrude’s ghost, a shimmering white phantom with a bloodied, unrecognisable face.

Absolute bunkum. Esme had downed too much gin while he was at the hospital, that long ago Hallowe’en.

‘Hippo!’

At last his patience was rewarded. His tired eyes detected a movement in the distance, moments before a familiar bark ripped apart the silence of the night. Within seconds his torch fastened on the big, awkward dog, bounding
towards him. Relief washed through him as he bent down, and patted Hippo. The fur was sodden.

‘So what have you done with Shenagh, old fellow?’

Hippo whimpered.

‘Is she hurt? Don’t tell me she’s taken a tumble, and fractured her ankle?’

The dog pulled away from him, and loped over the grass towards a clump of silver birch trees. Francis hurried after him, stumbling in his efforts to keep up. Somehow he managed not to lose his balance, but his heart was thudding and the throbbing of his back made every movement a test of will.

Suddenly, the narrow beam of light from his torch caught a huddled shape on the ground.