Jigsaw (10 page)

The old eyes regarded her uncertainly. Then she nodded. ‘There's no denying I have plenty of those, as has everyone my age. You'd think we'd learn from experience, wouldn't you, but we go on making the same mistakes.' She took a sip of coffee, glancing at the ring on Rona's finger. ‘As you'll have gathered, I never married, my dear. I used to regret that when I was young, but I fancy I saved myself a lot of heartache. Such an unsuitable young man – I never trusted him.'

Rona waited, unsure to whom she was referring. An erstwhile suitor from the distant past?

‘I warned her not to marry him, but I should have saved my breath.'

Someone else's suitor, then.

‘Do you believe in ghosts?' Miss Rosebury demanded abruptly. Startled, Rona hesitated, but she was already continuing. ‘Buckford's full of them, like any self-respecting town its age. Monks and white ladies, Roundheads and Cavaliers, and more recent ones, who don't yet realize they're dead. I can't think why people have such difficulty in accepting them. It stands to reason when you think about it; the human spirit is pure energy, and as any scientist will tell you, energy is indestructible.' She paused, gazing reflectively into her coffee cup. ‘I came across a little boy once, down Clement's Lane, crying for his mother. I bent down to comfort him, and my hand went straight through him. I knew then it was better not to interfere.'

Rona moistened her lips, unsure whether a comment was called for, but apparently not. Miss Rosebury was off at another tangent.

‘If it's history you're interested in, we had witch-ducking in the seventeenth century. If they drowned, they were innocent, if they floated they were guilty, and were hauled out to be burned at the stake. Not much of a choice. They still call it Witch's Pond. Behind the almshouses it is, but nowadays children feed the ducks there, which I suppose is as it should be.'

‘Nuala says you've lived here all your life,' Rona prompted, as she fell silent.

‘Indeed yes, in this very house. We were born in the front room upstairs, my three sisters and I. Florence – Nuala's mother – was the youngest and I the eldest – fifteen when she was born. But they're all dead and I'm still here. Odd, how life works out.'

She drank some more coffee, wiped the corners of her mouth with her handkerchief, and switched topics again.

‘I was a milliner, you know, with a nice little shop off Thackeray Street – where that monstrous mall is now. We made special hats for weddings and presentation at Court, but our bread and butter trade was everyday hats, in the days when people wore them. It all changed after the war. Still, my most satisfying work was teaching at Sunday School for thirty years, often several generations of the same family. All those children.' She shook her head. ‘For the most part they grew up to lead ordinary, blameless lives – or at least as blameless as any life can be. But you could tell, even at that age, the ones that would go to the bad. It might be politically incorrect to say so, but I was reading the other day that scientists have found some gene or chromosome or whatever that indicates how a person's character will develop. I could have told them years ago that it existed.'

Rona hoped fervently she wouldn't wander again; she'd be a goldmine of information if she could be kept on the right track.

‘You must have known quite a few vicars during your lifetime,' she prompted.

‘Over the road there? At least half a dozen, and there've been some shenanigans, I can tell you. Fights with the organist, the choir going on strike, the Mothers' Union up in arms. At least no blood was shed in my day, as it had been earlier. You know about the siege?'

‘I did hear, yes.'

‘Poor Charles; people blacken his name nowadays but I've always felt sorry for him. He and I nod to each other every day.'

For a moment Rona thought she was back among her ghosts, but Miss Rosebury jerked her head in the direction of the window, and she realized she was referring to the pub sign. She was planning her next question when Miss Rosebury said suddenly, ‘Would you excuse me? I'd like my nap now.'

Rona felt a spurt of frustration; after a shaky start, the interview had been going well and she was loath to abandon it.

‘Of course,' she said, since there was no help for it, and removed the cup and saucer from the old lady's hand as her eyelids started to droop. She carried the tray back to the kitchen, where she washed and dried the crockery and put it away. By the time she returned Miss Rosebury's head had fallen forward, which would doubtless result in a stiff neck. Gently, Rona propped a cushion behind her, and the old lady settled more comfortably, murmuring, ‘Maisie? Is that you?'

‘It's all right,' Rona said softly. ‘Go to sleep now.'

And moving almost on tiptoe, she let herself out of the house.

The meeting left Rona with a feeling of unease. According to Nuala, Miss Rosebury had been alert and on top of everything until recently; now it seemed her alertness was only spasmodic.
I thought you'd died
, she'd said. Rona, walking in the hot sunshine, repressed a shiver. She didn't, however, feel it sufficiently urgent to phone Nuala at work; time enough to report back this evening.

She was impatient to replay the cassette, analyse it, and as the privacy of her room was denied her, her first priority must be to establish a base in which to work between appointments. The library was the obvious choice.

She and Max had passed it last week, but for a moment she couldn't recall its whereabouts. Then she remembered it stood on the site of the defunct St Stephen's Church, in Market Square. Retracing the steps they'd taken, she made her way along narrow Clement's Lane – keeping a weather eye open for ghostly little boys – past the town hall and the Counting House to the square with the cross in its centre.

Directly opposite her, the buildings of St Stephen's Primary occupied the entire side of the square, and to her left, as she'd remembered, stone steps topped with an ornate balustrade led up to the public library. She was about to approach it when she was distracted by the irresistible aroma of roasting coffee, which, turning instead to her right, she traced to the door and bow window of St Stephen's Coffee Shop. Without hesitation Rona went inside, selected a window table and sat back with a sigh of relief. At Miss Rosebury's, she'd had to chip stale instant coffee out of its jar, and it had left a disagreeable taste in her mouth. She ordered a cappuccino and, spoiling herself, a Danish pastry. Then she took out a notebook and began an aide mémoire.

Almost immediately, voices from the counter reached her and she looked up. The woman standing there had her back to her, but Rona noted enviously the cut of her green silk dress – designer, for sure – and the height of her elegant heels. ‘I'll try the Blue Mountain again,' she was saying in a high, well-educated voice, ‘but I hope it's better than the last batch, which had no flavour at all.'

‘I'm sorry, Madam.' The assistant sounded flustered. ‘It was from our usual supplier, but if you have any more trouble, please don't hesitate to return the packets and we'll look into it.'

The customer nodded and turned from the counter, slipping her purchases into her shopping bag, and Rona, interested to see her from the front, was not disappointed. A cloud of auburn hair surrounded an oval face, with a full mouth and finely delineated eyebrows. As the woman looked up, eyes of an unusually dark blue met and briefly held Rona's. Then she was out of the door and tapping quickly away down the pavement, leaving Rona, feeling like a schoolgirl in her cotton dress, to return to her notes.

The approach of the waitress was a further interruption, and as her coffee and pastry were set down, Rona heard continuing voices from behind the counter.

‘She's always complaining,' the assistant was saying in a low voice. ‘Perhaps she thinks we'll knock something off her next purchase if she makes enough fuss. Well, hard luck. I always tell her to bring it back if she's not satisfied, but she never does.'

Her colleague laughed. ‘Thinks she can browbeat the peasants, does she?'

One of the girls, suddenly aware of Rona within earshot, nudged the other and they moved to the back of the shop. Not good policy to criticize your customers, she reflected, particularly when others were present. Magda would have sacked them on the spot, and briskly overridden claims of unfair dismissal.

A couple of young men in suits came in and sat at a table near her, discussing a business appointment, and when the waitress came to serve them, Rona asked for her bill. As she waited for it she glanced through the lunch menu, deciding to return later. It was convenient for the library and the menu looked appetising.

At the library she made her way to the reference section, selected a table at the far end and took out her laptop, recorder and earpiece. The morning wore on as she transcribed verbatim all the interviews she'd done so far, with the heads of the various schools yesterday and, finally, with Edna Rosebury. Out of context, and without the old lady sitting opposite, her opening words sounded even more bizarre. Rona would have given a lot to know what she'd decided to keep quiet about, and so, from what she'd said, might the police. How long since she had seen those illicit lovers? From the way she'd jumped from one century to another, it could have been either last week or twenty years ago. Yet Nuala had mentioned a
recent
scandal. Was it that which was preying on Miss Rosebury's subconscious?

At twelve thirty Rona packed up her belongings and returned to the coffee shop, considerably more crowded now, where she enjoyed hot chicken salad and a spritzer. She'd an afternoon appointment at Buckford College, and needed to keep a clear head. As suggested by Mrs Bishop, she had phoned the school secretary, who, having established she wasn't a prospective parent, had agreed to allocate her an hour of her time, to include a quick tour of the school. When, however, Rona tentatively enquired about meeting the headmaster, she had received short shrift. Apparently Mr Maddox did not speak to journalists.

Having collected her car from Parsonage Place, she drove out of town and along the road that led to the college. This time she could legitimately turn into the gateway, and she made her way up the winding drive and round the back of the buildings, following the signs to the car park.

The building itself, large and handsome in red brick, looked to be Victorian. It was surrounded by green lawns and flowerbeds, but from behind a screen of trees came the unmistakable sound of leather on willow, and in the distance white-clad figures could be seen on tennis courts. It seemed that afternoons were devoted to sport.

Her ring was answered by a neatly dressed young woman, who conducted her to Miss Morton's study. The school secretary, efficiently bespectacled, came forward to meet her.

‘Miss Parish? Joan Morton. How do you do?'

‘I'm so grateful you could spare me the time,' Rona said, taking the hand she held out. ‘It would be impossible to write an account of Buckford without mentioning the college, and there's no substitute for seeing it yourself.'

‘I must warn you that its history has already been well chronicled,' Miss Morton said, waving Rona to a chair and reseating herself behind her desk. ‘It might be hard to find a new angle.'

‘I realize that. In fact, I was wondering if it would be possible to see the account Mrs Bishop did a few years ago?'

Miss Morton frowned. ‘I'm not sure I could lay my hands on it. In any case, it was little more than a scrapbook. You'd do better to study more authenticated versions.'

‘But it's the anecdotal material I'm after.' Rona held up her recorder with a raised eyebrow and Miss Morton nodded. ‘As you say,' she continued, switching it on, ‘there are plenty of other sources for the factual history. I'm aiming for more general interest – famous pupils, school ghosts, anything of that nature. For instance, when a friend of mine was here, the headmaster kept parrots.'

Miss Morton allowed herself a small smile. ‘That would be Mr Rillington. Admittedly he was a little – colourful – but I'm afraid you'll find most of them have been earnest academics.'

‘What about the present one?' Rona asked bluntly. ‘Mr – Maddox, is it?'

‘Definitely one of the latter. Eton and Cambridge, double first.'

‘No exotic pets?'

‘I'm afraid not.'

‘How long has he been here?'

‘Eight years; he succeeded Mr Palfrey.'

‘Has he any family?'

Miss Morton stirred. ‘I can't really see—'

‘Surely his CV appears in the prospectus? Parents must want to know—'

‘As you say, it's no secret.' Miss Morton's voice was clipped. ‘Mr Maddox has two sons from his first marriage. And no, he was not divorced; his wife was killed in a car crash twelve years ago.'

‘But he'd remarried by the time he came here?'

‘Yes; married headmasters are a requisite. And before you ask, there are no further children. You mentioned ghosts,' Miss Morton continued smoothly, steering the conversation away from the personal. ‘Allegedly the science block is haunted. The boys amuse themselves by hiding there at Hallowe'en.'

‘Who's the ghost?'

‘A boy in the nineteenth century, who quite literally blew himself up while carrying out an experiment. All nonsense, of course, but the imagination plays strange tricks. And there's also the wounded soldier.'

Rona raised an enquiring eyebrow.

‘During the First World War the building was used as a convalescent home for the troops. One of them committed suicide by throwing himself out of a window. The sound of his stick is heard tapping along the top-floor corridor.' She permitted herself another smile. ‘Or so it's said. The window is still referred to as Perkins' Drop.'

‘That's great!' Rona exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘Just what I was after! Thank you.'