The Death of Lucy Kyte (43 page)

The days grew colder, and by Christmas Eve the trees around the cottage sparkled with a sharp, metallic crispness. Josephine took a pair of secateurs and a basket, and walked to Flaggy Pond to collect some greenery for the cottage. The air was exhilarating, the woods quiet and still, and she picked her way over winter-blackened brambles and pungent, dark leaf-mould, collecting armfuls of age-old scarlet. As she came out into the open fields again, her basket full of holly, she felt the ice on her face and marvelled at how the temperature had dropped, even in the short time she had been out. The sky was a sheet of pale greys and yellows, the surface of the pond frozen and expressionless. Sheep huddled against the fence, out of the cold, and she could hear the uneasy call of rooks overhead. The world was bracing itself for the weather to come, it seemed, and Josephine hurried back to the cottage to join it.

After lunch, she baked mince pies to take with her the next day, heavily laced with the brandy she thought she might need, then switched the wireless on and settled down in front of the fire to wrap some presents: a nice, ordinary book as her public gift to Marta; sherry, wine or whisky for the guests she knew less well; and a framed drawing of Ellen Terry as Juliet for Lydia – thoughtful, she hoped, but not extravagant enough to look like the product of a guilty conscience. The first few notes of ‘Once in Royal David's City' drifted across the room from the beautiful candlelit chapel in Cambridge, bringing a lump to her throat as they always did – not from any particular spiritual conviction, but from an emotional response to the words and music that she sometimes found easy to confuse with a belief in God. As she listened to the lessons and carols, she thought about the people closest to her and felt connected to them through this shared celebration – then laughed at her own sentimentality: Archie would still be at his desk in Scotland Yard; her father, who was staying with his middle daughter, was far more likely to be sharing a single malt with his son-in-law than listening to the wireless; and Marta – well, Marta would have left her shopping until the last possible moment and was probably still having things gift-wrapped in Selfridge's. But for Josephine, isolated from the world and spending her first Christmas Eve alone, the familiarity of the service held a warmth and a solace that she cherished.

The choir was halfway through ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing' when she noticed the snow, although it had obviously been falling for some time. She opened the front door and stood in the garden, just beyond the square of lamplight that followed her out from the house, and stared in wonder at the mournful, quiet beauty. Inside, the final notes of the organ died away, and she was left with the peculiar stillness of a silent land. The thatch was already swathed in a blanket of gleaming white, the bushes curled more sharply to the ground, and Josephine sensed that the sky was leaden with the weight of what was still to come. It would be a miracle if she could venture as far as the gate tomorrow, let alone the Essex borders, and she could not decide if she should bless or curse the prospect of a solitary Christmas. The snow was still falling at midnight, when she welcomed the day in and went up to bed. She blew out the lamp and drew the curtains back as wide as they would go. Outside, the landscape was a cacophony of blues, deep indigo for the sky and a pale, shimmering cyan where the moonlight hit the snow. Everything, it seemed, had been suspended, as though nature had deliberately chosen the most haunting and emotive night of the year to bring the world to a halt for a moment, to reflect on what really mattered.

When she woke on Christmas morning, the fields seemed to stretch for ever under the snow's gentle grace, a scene so different from the dramatic winter landscapes she was used to. The sun glistened on the ridges, the trees stood quiet under their burden of white and, in the distance, she could hear the peal of church bells, punctuated occasionally by the scraping of a shovel on tarmac or the chipping away of ice from the animals' water troughs. Josephine knew that she must try to let Marta and Lydia know that she was snowed in, so she dressed hurriedly and set out for the rectory to ask if she could use the telephone; if she went now, while the morning service was under way, she would not intrude on Hilary and Stephen's family Christmas, or be invited to stay and celebrate with them. The depth of the snow made for a punishing scramble to the top of the slope, and she looked back at her own footprints, struck by how – after delivering its initial blanket of concealment – snow stripped the earth of any right to secrecy; every movement of every creature was written on the fields and in the lanes, and they stood exposed and in sharp silhouette against an alien backcloth, robbed for the moment of their camouflage. When she reached the end of the track, at the junction with Marten's Lane, Josephine could see that even the short distance to the rectory was too ambitious: the roads were now rivers of snow, with drifts thrown like frozen waves against the hedgerows, and nothing in any direction looked passable. Reluctantly, she turned back, hoping that the snow would be widespread enough for Marta not to worry when she didn't arrive.

She stamped the snow off her boots in the porch and removed her outdoor clothes. Inside, the cottage was warm and welcoming, and she paused at the door, delighted by the image that greeted her, by the holly pinned to the beams and the presents piled expectantly onto the table. It wasn't quite the Christmas she had planned, but she was by her own fireside and determined to make the best of it. She stoked up the range, took a hammer to the water butt outside the back door, filling the air with a sound like breaking china, and prepared a pheasant to roast for lunch, along with bread sauce and all the trimmings. Before long, the cottage was filled with steam and with all the familiar smells and textures of past Christmases, evoked as a substitute for the company she would dearly have preferred. She switched the wireless on while she ate her lunch, hoping that the battery would outlast the snow, and listened as a strange, hesitant voice delivered his first seasonal message; how many of his subjects, Josephine wondered, would raise their glass to the King's health this Christmas, still thinking of the man who was now overseas?

Darkness came early, and with it the dancing of new snow against old. Her adventurous spirit faded a little more as she looked out of the window and saw the charcoal branches disappearing once again behind a soft gauze of white. She could only guess at how long her enforced solitude would last, and the evening brought with it a melancholy curiosity about the people she loved and what they might be doing; in her mind's eye, she watched them all without her, visiting each home with a Marleyesque knowing, and when she got to the fireside at Lydia's cottage, she knew she needed a distraction more compelling than an anonymous voice over the airwaves. She finished her drink and took a selection of candles and lamps upstairs, then went back to fetch the sturdiest knife she could find and the hammer she had used to break the ice. The room could be forgiven for its chill on a night like this, and she shivered as she looked at the trunk in the corner and the sheet that had slipped down to the floor. Shadows from the candlelight flickered playfully across the discarded window seat, bringing the words to life again in a shifting, staccato dance of regret, and Josephine hesitated, wondering if venturing up here really was the best way of entertaining herself when there was a whole bookshelf downstairs. But curiosity spurred her on – curiosity and, if she were honest, guilt: she still felt that she had failed Hester by not securing any form of justice for her death, and she was tired of loose ends; if the trunk offered the smallest insight into the rest of Lucy's life – the life Hester had so badly wanted to bring out into the open – something at least would have been achieved.

She slid the blade of her knife behind the rusted clasp and struck the handle hard with the hammer, surprised when the whole fitting came away in a single blow. The padlock clattered to the floor, absurdly loud in the silence of the room, and the now defenceless chest seemed to dare Josephine to violate it still further. She put her hand on the lid and raised it a few inches, and a stale, musty smell rose up to greet her, the scent of mould and damp and years of neglect. It was easy to see why: the trunk seemed to be packed with rotted clothes and linen that had failed the test of time, but her initial disappointment gave way to excitement when she saw what was resting on the very top of the pile. The book was a leather-bound journal, purpose-made and far grander than the makeshift volumes in which Lucy had recorded her earlier years, but filled with the same familiar handwriting. The pages were stained and fragile, but still legible, and Josephine felt a rush of excitement when she turned to the beginning and saw that it picked up again not long after the last diary had ended, at Lucy's Boxing Day wedding. There might be more books inside, but this would do for now and she took it downstairs, clutching it as tightly as a child with a favourite present.

She put a log on the fire, unwrapped the wine meant for Dodie and stood the bottle to warm, then settled down with the diary, just as she had a couple of months earlier.

Josephine smiled to herself when she remembered her own pleasure at decorating the rooms, and the pride she had felt in how beautiful everywhere looked; it might be a century later, but life at Red Barn Cottage didn't seem to have changed very much, and the sense of tradition and continuity was satisfying. She moved on to the next entry, noticing that this was not a regular diary like its predecessors, but a more occasional record of a busy and happy life; as Samuel had said – a book for recording special days.

As far as Josephine could remember, Lucy's needlework skills left a lot to be desired, but it was a moving gesture and, having learned in the churchyard that neither Samuel nor Molly were long-lived, she was glad to know that family life had been happy for Lucy while it lasted. She looked at Molly's drawing, saddened to think that she had died so young, and wondered how Lucy had borne the sorrow of it all.

So the journal was not to be simply for special days, Josephine thought; even now, although Lucy's life was so different, the memory of Maria obviously threatened her relationship with Samuel. She remembered the cherry trees and the rose; it must have been hard for a husband to live in the shadow of that murder, to know that – whatever he did – he could never entirely dispel his wife's grief, or fill the hole left by the loss of her closest friend.

Josephine didn't doubt that anyone living so close to the scene of a notorious murder would tire of the constant attention, but how much worse it must have been for someone who had loved Maria, who still missed her so desperately. The agricultural unrest that had led to the burning of the barn – while difficult for a farmer like Samuel – was surely a blessing for Lucy.