A Place of Secrets (6 page)

Then there was the system of taxes and commission that was always disappointing for people new to the business to learn. Illogical though it might be, she, as the bearer
of bad news, usually felt guilty. “That’s ridiculous,” Inigo had sneered once when she’d foolishly confided in him about this. “They have to learn that it’s a business, not a treasure hunt.” She remembered Inigo’s call. She’d have to get back to him when she had a moment.

“What did you discover about the pheasants, Robert?” Chantal asked, moving from one difficult subject to another.

“Well,
unless the local foxes have acquired wire-cutters and heavy boots, it’s the work of human thieves. Fenton, who is, Jude, shall we say, traditional in his views, is sure it’s the gypsies. He was all for going up to the site to challenge them, but I calmed him down and persuaded him that it was a job for the police. We’re meeting an officer at the jail in an hour, so I’m afraid I’ll be leaving you by
yourselves again.”

“That’s fine,” Jude said mildly, and she and Chantal smiled at one another, comfortable in the shared knowledge that Robert would not be restful company for the task in hand.

“There’s trouble in the village over the travelers,” Chantal explained on the way back to the library. “They’ve always come to a site nearby which used to be our land, but the new landowner isn’t happy
about it. The council is trying to find somewhere else for them but of course nobody wants them in their backyard.”

The afternoon passed peacefully, Jude alone for some of it, because Chantal liked to take an afternoon rest. She worked her way through a couple of dozen more books, then, for variety, again picked up the first of Wickham’s observation diaries. She loved the feel and the smell of
the old leather binding, and the beautifully tooled spine. The script proved fairly easy to her practiced eye, even without the help of Chantal’s transcription. Each entry began with a general description of the sky before listing the detailed observations of each object viewed.

The entries continued much in this vein. As well as observing constellations, Wickham seemed interested in the planets,
especially Mars, to which he referred as “our nearest celestial brother.” Only rarely did his personality threaten to break through the dry objectivity of his notes: “Moon too bright again. A night wasted.” Or “Rings of Saturn wondrous bright, praise the hand of our Creator.”

There were seven or eight more notebooks like this, each covering two or three years, and she flipped through several
of them, admiring the occasional small diagram plotting the position of a newfound star or the patterns on the face of the moon. Sometimes the entries were in a different handwriting and this new hand gradually became more frequent. Halfway through the last book, which covered 1777 and early 1778, the new handwriting prevailed. It was puzzling. The recordings were still in the same clipped tones,
but they were definitely penned by someone else. Dictated by the original writer, perhaps. Curious. Jude considered the saleability of the journals. It was difficult to put a value on something like these without knowing more about their context. She would e-mail her friend Cecelia tonight, to ask if she’d have a look. She opened the final volume again, at random, and read with a little jolt of surprise
the following entry for 1 June 1777, written in the newer hand:

The new telescope installed at the folly. Some adjustment necessary. Twelve midnight. The stars in the long tail of Draco the Dragon immediately more clear. A crescent moon of ethereal beauty.

The folly. The same one Gran had mentioned, presumably. Jude put down the book and stepped over to the window to look out again at the distant
line of trees. She couldn’t see anything. Perhaps it was in the grounds at the back, where she hadn’t been, but Gran had talked about it being in a forest.

“Chantal,” she asked, when she came in with a tea tray, Miffy shuffling behind. “Is there still a folly on the estate? There’s a mention of it in one of the journals, you see.”

“There’s a tower, yes. You see where the trees begin? You can’t
usually see it from the house, but it’s up on top of the hill there.”

So Jude was right. She stared at where the wood sloped gently upward and scanned the skyline, but she still saw no tower.

“It’s hardly visited now. I’ve only been up it once; it’s considered dangerous and kept locked. Once, years ago, some hippies broke in and had a party, and someone had a dreadful accident. After that it
was fenced off. It’s a listed building, but we couldn’t afford to repair it. William sold the forest where it stands a few years before he died. It seemed sensible and we knew the person we were selling it to. He looked after the woods properly. Unfortunately he died soon after William, and his widow sold the land. We don’t know yet what the new landowner plans—apart from not wanting the poor old
gypsies.”

“What about the gamekeeper’s cottage?” Jude remembered. “Where Gran was brought up. Is that still standing?”

“Yes, it’s up the road to the right, but that too is no longer ours. It went with the farmland back in the sixties. We don’t really know the man who lives there now.”

“Not your George Fenton?”

“No, no, he’s not a real gamekeeper. George is more of an odd-job man and works
for different people. He lives in the village.”

“It is
such
a coincidence for me to have family connections here.”

“Isn’t it?” said Chantal, smiling. “That Robert should have found you and invited you here is amazing.”

“He might have got my colleague Inigo,” Jude recalled. “But it was me who answered the phone.”

“These things are meant to be,” Chantal said, turning up her palms. “Perhaps there’s
some purpose in your visit we don’t yet know about. I do believe in fate, destiny, whatever you like to call it. Don’t you?”

Jude glanced up at the ceiling, at the zodiac signs. “Standing under these, it’s tempting to agree. My sister would; she’s always reading horoscopes. I used to think that things were, as you say, meant to be.” She thought of Mark. “But now it seems to me that they’re chaotic,
random. That’s why I like rummaging about in the past, I suppose. You’re safe with history. It’s all happened and there waiting if you look for it.”

“But sometimes even the past has the power to surprise you,” Chantal said softly and Jude felt a feather’s touch of fear.

* * *

At four o’clock, Robert reappeared. His presence in the oval library was irritating, for he wouldn’t sit quietly
and let Jude get on with the job in the way that his mother did. He paced up and down, looking over her shoulder and generally ruining her concentration.

“What makes a book valuable?’ he asked at one point, and Jude patiently described matters of rarity and printing history, the condition of the volume and the realities of the market—whether collectors were currently interested in the author
or the subject matter.

“And you think this collection really will be in demand?”

“I do. The history of science is a popular area at the moment, and you’ve some particularly well-preserved examples of some quite rare—”

“But you can’t put a price on them now?” he interrupted.

“I’m getting there,” Jude said gently. “It’s—”

“Yes, of course, you’ve explained. It’s impossible to tell what they’ll
actually fetch. But that ballpark figure…?”

“Robert, stop bullying the poor girl,” Chantal ordered. “She’s worked so hard today—”

“I didn’t say she hadn’t,” Robert said quickly. “You’ll stay to dinner tonight, Jude, I hope? Would that be all right, Mother?”

“Actually, no, thank you anyway,” Jude broke in. “I promised I’d eat at my sister’s. In fact, if you don’t mind, this seems a good point
to finish for the day. I’ll be back in the morning, of course.”

* * *

Leaving the formal confines of the house and getting into her car wrenched Jude back to the modern world. Turning on her BlackBerry and checking her messages underlined that. There were two missed calls and four e-mails from Inigo, each one terser than the last. The final e-mail told her he was desperate to talk to her
about something, would she please respond
asap
? There were several other messages; she hoped there would be one from Caspar, but there wasn’t. With a sigh she dialed Inigo’s office number, praying that he wouldn’t answer. He did, after the second ring.

“About time. I’ve been trying to get you all day,” he whined down the line. “Lord Madingsfield’s taken his collection to Sotheby’s. It’s a bloody
disaster. Klaus thinks I wasn’t proactive enough, but you know how long I’ve spent charming the old fox. You must speak to Klaus and remind him. He’s furious. Oh and Suri can’t find those blasted figures for Monday on your computer. Are you sure they’re there?”

“Yes. The folder’s clearly labeled and the file must be something like ‘Valuations.’ I’m sorry about Lord Madingsfield, Inigo, and I’ll
certainly talk to Klaus on Monday, if you honestly think it would help.”

“It turns out Madingsfield has a cousin at Sotheby’s, can you believe. He was obviously using us as a stalking horse all the time to up his cousin’s offer.”

“Really? How can that be your fault? Have you explained to Klaus?”

“Yes, of course I have.”

“I expect he’ll calm down once he’s thought about it. It sounds like he’s
under pressure from upstairs. And on that subject, who else is going to be at this meeting on Monday?”

By the time Jude ended the call, the peace of her day was in shreds. When she’d entered the world of antiquarian books ten years before, following her PhD, she’d believed it would be a quiet and civilized job, dealing with cultured, civilized people. But the atmosphere at Beecham’s was anything
but that. The senior management and the American owners, she’d long concluded, were a cutthroat crew with their eye on the bottom line. It was a business like any other, she supposed, stuffing the phone back into her bag and turning the key in the ignition.

Instead of returning the way she’d come that morning, she turned right out of the park toward Felbarton—the village a couple of miles away, where Claire and Summer lived.

The calm beauty of the countryside, bathed in late-afternoon summer sunshine, eased her inner turmoil slightly. She kept half an eye out for the gamekeeper’s cottage, but must have missed it, then the route took her
on through a tunnel of trees, the beginning of the woodland she’d seen from the library window.

She stopped the car in a layby and looked at her watch. Five o’clock. Claire wouldn’t leave the shop before half-past, and then would need to collect Summer from a friend’s house, so the earliest Jude need turn up at Blacksmith’s Cottage was six. She dug a pair of sneakers out of her weekend bag, pondered
and rejected the embarrassing idea of struggling into her jeans by the roadside. She’d only be a moment. She hid her handbag under a seat and locked the car. Crossing the road to face any oncoming traffic, she set off up the lane, looking for the footpath. The woodland was so thick with ivy and brambles, it would be foolhardy to try to force another way through.

She almost missed the track when
it came. It wasn’t labeled as a public footpath. Instead there was a newish-looking sign that read “Private Land” nailed to a tree. It had looked like a public right of way on the admittedly sketchy map. She’d go a little distance along and see where it led.

The path, at first clear, soon became arduous and she wished she’d put on the jeans. Brambles snagged her tights, nettles stung her bare
skin. She brandished a dead branch to forge her way through.

Just as she was ready to turn back, the landscape began to change. The scrawny sycamore and hazel poking up from dense, scrubby undergrowth gave way to big, more widely spaced trees—beech and oak and sweet chestnut—whose thick canopy excluded much of the light so that beneath it little grew, save patches of ivy and bright dots of woodland
flowers. The walking became easier.

Sometimes the trees petered out altogether into patches of grass, littered with brushwood. There was little sign of human influence on this wilderness. Why had she come here? No one knew where she was. She could trip, break her ankle, and lie here all night until someone raised the alarm and then it might be hours before they found her car … Her thoughts ran
on crazily.

Suddenly the world exploded with a series of loud cracks. Gunfire. And close by, too. Was she the target? She couldn’t tell. She gazed around wildly. Run. She’d read that somewhere. She staggered into a trot, ahead, uphill, away from the sounds. But the shots seemed to be following her.

The path took her through denser woodland. She pushed and tripped her way, her breath coming in
heavy, sobbing pants. Finally, exhausted, she slumped against a tree. The shots were moving away now. Relief gave way to rage. How dare they? Didn’t they know people might be there? She remembered the “Private” sign. Still, children might wander in. She crouched in the loam, the smell of rotting leaves immediately overwhelming. She should go back, but she was fearful of walking into the gunfire
again. She tried to think calmly.

It was then she saw it. The most horrible thing. A rotting tree trunk festooned with dead animals in varying degrees of decomposition: a fox cub; a couple of rats; a mess of black-and-white feathers, all that remained of a magpie. It must be a gamekeeper’s gibbet, the corpses a warning to the scurrying scavengers of the forest: keep away or this will happen to
you! She crept past the gibbet, her gorge rising, and hurried on.

She should be near the top of the hill now, and it might be possible to get her bearings. She walked toward the light.

Emerging into the clearing, she blinked at the brightness. After a moment she saw the tower.

At first, dazzled and confused, she thought it the trunk of some huge tree, then she grasped that the column was made
of brick. Shielding her eyes, she looked up to see it looming high above her, up in the forest canopy, as tall as the tallest tree. It was dizzying. She took a step toward it and felt something claw at her leg. She looked down, gasping with pain. The sun glinted off the coil of barbed wire digging into her flesh. She crouched to unhook it, then cried out as blood quickly surged from the cut.