The Emerald Comb (17 page)

Georgia sniffed. ‘Polly does the job well enough but Agnes, well, she is more like a friend than a servant.’

Bartholomew pressed his lips together for a moment and returned to his seat. ‘My dear, it does no good to become so attached to a servant. What if she decided not to return to us? What if she found herself a job elsewhere? Or found herself a husband? She’s only a maid. A good one, I grant you, but only a servant.’ And it would do you good to remember that yourself, he told himself.

The door opened and Polly came in with the pudding. It was a jam sponge, with a jug of custard. She placed it on the sideboard and cleared away the dinner plates. Bartholomew and Georgia watched her in silence, Georgia sniffing slightly and dabbing at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief.

When Polly had served their pudding and left the room, Bartholomew smiled at his wife. ‘Now then, this looks good, doesn’t it? Please try to eat a little. You must keep your strength up, for the sake of the baby. And we’ll have no more talk of Agnes. She might return or she might not, but I don’t want you to fret about it. You have Polly to see to your needs and me as your friend.’

Georgia smiled weakly at him and picked up her spoon. He was pleased. With Agnes out of the way and a baby coming, perhaps their marriage would become stronger and maybe he’d begin to love her the way he felt a husband should.

It was a long cold winter. Georgia was sick for a couple of months and then, as her condition started to show, the sickness subsided. During the middle months of her pregnancy she glowed with health – her cheeks were plump and pink, her hair glossy. It suited her. Bartholomew found himself more and more attracted to her. He began spending many more nights in her room, and took pleasure in her swelling body. Georgia seemed to enjoy making love with him more than she had done before, and their increased intimacy made them both happy. They stopped going out or having visitors, and settled into a comfortable routine of sitting beside the fire in the evenings, reading to each other or playing cards, before going up to spend the night in Georgia’s room.

It was late February when the black-edged envelope arrived, brought in by Mrs Simmonds while Bartholomew and Georgia were lingering over their coffee in the breakfast room.

Georgia put down her cup with a clatter. ‘Oh, no, my uncle? Has he…?’

‘I think not. Such news would have been hand-delivered. This has come by the mail-coach.’ Bartholomew picked up a letter knife and slid it under the seal. He quickly read the letter.

It was his father. Though they had not been close for many years, Bartholomew still felt a pang of pain at the news of his passing. The letter had been written by his father’s solicitor, Frederick Fitzwilliam. Mr St Clair had apparently been out riding when he’d had a seizure, and had fallen from his horse. He’d probably been dead by the time he hit the ground, so said the doctor who’d inspected the body after he’d been brought back to his house.

‘Who, dear?’ Georgia gazed at him with wide, worried eyes.

‘My father.’

‘Oh, love, I am so sorry!’ She heaved herself to her feet and hurried around the table to stand behind him, her swollen belly pressed against the back of his head. Her hand was on his shoulder, and Bartholomew reached up to hold it.

‘We were not close, as you must be aware. He chose not to attend our wedding.’

‘I know, but still. He was your father.’

Bartholomew nodded. ‘Yes, and I was his only son. And his heir.’

‘Do you inherit?’

‘His Hampshire estate. It is small, but pleasantly situated, on the edge of a village north of Winchester. It is where I grew up. I shall sell it, of course.’

‘But why? Could we not live there?’ asked Georgia. ‘Maybe just for part of each year? You know I always preferred the country life. I grew up in the wide open spaces of the Lincolnshire fens. Hampshire has always sounded to me like such a pretty county. And I’ve always thought the country is the best place in which to bring up a child.’ She took his hand and placed it on her belly, where Bartholomew felt the baby kick as though in agreement with its mother.

Bartholomew rubbed his chin. He’d never considered returning to Hampshire. But she was right: now that they were to become a family, a small country estate might be a more suitable home than a seaside apartment or London townhouse. The house would need work, of course, but he could afford it if he used some of Georgia’s inheritance and gave up the lease on the Brighton apartment.

‘Well, my dear, if it’s what you want. I will need to go there this week for my father’s funeral and to sort out his affairs. Perhaps after the baby is born we could…’

‘Why not before? I could come with you to the funeral, to support you.’

‘Surely you should not travel in your condition, my love?’

Georgia raised her chin in a determined little gesture that Bartholomew knew all too well. It usually meant that she’d made up her mind and would do all that she could in her own sweet way, to get what she wanted.

‘I’m perfectly able to travel. Dr Stockett says the baby won’t come for another three or four weeks. It’s not too far to Hampshire, in any case. We could get there in a day.’ She smiled at him, and draped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Besides, I would very much like our baby to be born in the country. I do believe village midwives are better than town ones. And think of all that fresh, country air! It would do me so much good. Brighton is so busy these days, it is becoming quite polluted and will soon be as bad as London.’

‘Well, if you’re determined, love. I shall write to the housekeeper there immediately and let her know we are coming. We’ll leave the day after tomorrow. But I shall go alone to the funeral – the stress would not be good for you.’

She bent down to kiss him, clearly pleased with this arrangement. He pulled her onto his lap, and wrapped his arms around her and the baby. He would become a country gentleman, spending his days riding and shooting. And soon he would become a father.

Chapter Twelve: Hampshire, May 2013

It was hard to explain to the police, when I phoned them. Bones in the garden. Buried beneath a tree that had fallen in the storm. The policewoman I spoke to asked why I was certain the bones were human. I told her about the femur. She was tapping away on a keyboard as I spoke, and told me a police car would be with me within an hour.

As I put the phone down, I realised Lewis was at the kitchen door. His eyes were wide.

‘Wow, Mum, who do you reckon it is? Maybe a Roman legionary soldier? Or a Saxon king? Or maybe someone who used to live in this house before us?’

‘We’ve no idea how old the bones are. Or even if they are human.’

‘You said on the phone they were definitely human.’

‘Well, that was to get the police to come and look. We don’t really know. Maybe it’s a deer?’

At that moment Ted tapped on the back door and put his head inside. ‘Better come and look at this, Mrs Smith.’

I followed him outside, pushed Lewis back in and shut the door. Jamie was sitting on a garden chair staring in horror at the crater. Ted pointed into it.

‘I went back down to scrabble around a bit more. Definitely human.’

It was a skull. Roots grew through the eye sockets and the back of it had broken away, but it was recognisably a skull. I felt sick and yet fascinated at the same time.

‘The police are coming in an hour or so. I think we’d better not disturb it any more.’ I nodded towards Jamie. ‘We’d better take him inside. Looks like he needs a good strong cup of sweet tea.’

‘Aye. Come on, lad. Tea’s on offer.’

While they drank their tea, Ted told Lewis, who simply would
not
go and watch Disney while a real life adventure was unfolding in his own back garden, all the gory details. I called Simon and filled him in on what had happened. He said he’d get home as soon as he could. No late meetings today, then. It clearly took a crisis to get him home at a reasonable hour.

The police, when they arrived, consisted of a middle-aged sergeant with a beer-gut, and a lanky youthful constable who looked as if he could be Jamie’s twin. Both yawned as they walked through the house and I felt like apologising for keeping them up.

Their attitude changed as soon as they saw the skull.

‘Bloody hell, missus,’ said the older one. ‘We thought it would be animal bones. That’s definitely human. Gonna have to call in CID.’

‘I did say on the phone they were human bones,’ I protested.

He didn’t answer that but went out to his police car to radio the detectives. Meanwhile, lanky constable pulled a reel of tape from a pocket and began cordoning off our garden.

I called Simon again. The phone went straight to voicemail. ‘I hope you’re on your way home,’ I told him. ‘Half our garden is now being treated as a crime scene.’

‘Do you carry a gun?’ Lewis asked the constable.

‘Ha, no!’

‘Not even sometimes? When there’s a murder going on, and the murderer has got all the rest of the family trapped inside a house as hostages and won’t let anyone come in or out? Don’t you have to hide in the bushes in the garden and stake him out till he gets nervous and either comes out or shoots himself?’’

‘Kid, you’ve been watching too much TV.’

‘Lewis, leave the policeman to do his job.’ I ushered him back inside for the hundredth time that day. Lauren and Thomas had given up on the DVD and were standing in the hallway, wide-eyed and silent.

‘Mum, what’s happening?’ asked Lauren, her eyes sparkling with tears.

I decided to come clean. Better they should know and understand there would be no harm come to them, than have them scare themselves with their overactive imaginations.

‘Under the tree, the workmen found some bones. They’re probably very old, but we think they might be human.’

‘Or chimpanzee,’ said Lewis. ‘Their skeleton is just like ours.’

‘Well, OK, or chimpanzee. In any case, because they might be human, we had to tell the police, so they can investigate.’

Lauren frowned. ‘Someone got buried in our garden under the tree?’

‘Looks that way.’

‘How did they get buried
under
the tree?’

‘Perhaps they were buried before the tree was planted. I said they were old.’

Thomas slipped his little hand into mine. ‘Are skeletons the same as ghosts?’

‘No, sweetie. There are no ghosts here. Just a few old bones.’ I glared at Lewis as I answered Thomas, before he got any bright ideas about scaring his brother.

‘Whoever it was,’ said Lewis, ‘they were murdered.’

‘Well, no, we don’t know that it was a murder…’

‘’Cos why else would the body be buried in the garden? Has to be a murder, doesn’t it, Mum? Someone who lived here killed a visitor or a servant or something, and then hid the body so they wouldn’t get caught and have to be hanged.’ Lewis looked triumphant.

Lauren stared up at me. ‘Is he right, Mum? Was it a murder? If you get murdered you become a ghost, so’s you can avenge your death!’

‘No ghost!’ Thomas wailed. I scooped him up and he began sobbing on my shoulder.

‘Right, kids, that’s quite enough. There’s no such thing as ghosts and even if there was, there are none here. So, I don’t want to hear any more mention of them. All right?’

‘Sorry, Mum. Sorry, Thomas.’ Lauren stroked Thomas’s arm. He kicked out at her, and carried on sobbing.

‘Come on, how about you all go back to that DVD while I talk to the policemen. Off you go, now. Lewis, get everyone a chocolate biscuit.’

‘Yay!’ Lewis punched the air and scampered off to the kitchen for the biscuits. Sometimes children are so easy to please. I put Thomas down, and Lauren put her arm around him and led him back into the sitting room. She was clearly feeling guilty about scaring him so much.

I sat in the kitchen and considered what Lewis had said. If it was murder, perpetrated by someone who’d lived here, then it was quite possibly something to do with my ancestors. I shuddered. This wasn’t quite the kind of family history you really want to find.

The detective arrived five minutes later, and introduced himself as DI Bradley. He was tall and wiry, with close-cropped red hair. He shook my hand with a firm grip and I instantly liked him.

‘So, Mrs Smith, you’ve dug up a skeleton in your flower bed, I hear?’

‘Something like that,’ I laughed nervously. ‘Come and see.’

The sergeant showed him the findings. A photographer had come along with DI Bradley. She took several photos of the tree, its root ball, the bones Ted and Jamie had pulled out and the ones still in the hole. When she was finished, DI Bradley pulled on a pair of latex gloves and knelt down beside the pile of bones on the edge of the hole.

‘Human.’

The fat sergeant rolled his eyes.

‘Yes, sir. Which is why we called you in.’

‘Old.’

‘I’d say so, yes.’

DI Bradley stood up. ‘We’ll get the bones carbon-dated by forensics. We can also look at dendrochronology, to determine the age of the tree, which will tell us the minimum age for the bones.’ He smiled, and regarded the remains of the trunk. ‘But I reckon we’re looking at something at least a hundred years old. No danger of you being implicated in any way. Nonetheless, we have to check it out.’

‘Of course. We only moved in about a month ago.’

‘If you have contact details for the previous owners I may need to talk to them.’

I nodded. ‘But if the skeleton is a hundred years old it goes back before their time too.’

Back to Barty St Clair’s time, I thought. Suddenly, I remembered what Vera had said about the eccentric Barty. Did he have something to do with it? Had he buried the body, and was that why he never let anyone into the house? Somehow, finding the skeleton was bringing the past into the present. Those people from my family tree research, who had only been names on census returns and birth, marriage or death certificates till now, were taking shape, and in a rather alarming way.

‘Are you all right, Mrs Smith? You look a little pale.’ DI Bradley put his hand on my arm. I realised I was shaking slightly.

‘I’m fine. It’s just a bit of a shock, that’s all. Even though it’s clearly very old.’ I opened my mouth to say something more, something about my ancestors having lived here, then thought better of it. I still hadn’t told Simon what I knew of the house’s history.