In an effort to avoid ghosts of Christmas’ past, we’d decided to stay on at Checkley until the new year and in the process hopefully earn ourselves some brownie points from the uncle. I’d had the perfect excuse to curtail involvement with the book club and Charlie was relieved of the obligation to produce an ideologically unsound Tea.
But our mutual preoccupations travelled with us and Checkley is an excellent place to ruminate. It being mid-winter I took the opportunity to be brutal in my pruning of the vines. Charlie had her own concerns in the woods, but helped me in the walled garden off and on, particularly in the collecting and tying up of the pruned branches, which if allowed to dry in the barn would burn very rapidly and hot, excellent for barbeques and getting big wood fires underway.
‘I’ve been thinking about Kenneth, when did it start, this thing with Elisabeth?’
‘A year or two after she became a widow, I think.’
‘You said he told you that she’d told him about the circumstances of your parent’s death.’
‘Correct. But alas, that doesn’t help, or appear to help. The reason everyone took the official explanation at face value is that their car, although it went over the edge, didn’t catch on fire. The only passports found by the authorities were the British ones. They showed they’d left Switzerland that day, entered from Italy a week before. It looks like their deaths had nothing to do with anything.’
‘Has adding everyone’s passports to your chart helped?’
‘No not really, not yet. It shows two things so far, one my folks were fans of motoring tours of Europe, and two they never mixed travel on different passports. They were always one thing, or the other.’
‘What next?’
‘Add in data from father’s diaries and daybooks I suppose.’
‘Maybe Ken put himself alongside your aunt because he had the passports?’
‘Capital mistake to theorise without facts, Watson!’
But in truth I was still processing the cascade of news and gossip I’d been hit with at the Christmas lunch. Prudence seemed to have given up not just on Rory but the rest of us. Was that a good or bad thing? But perhaps I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of Rory? That he’d been able to apply his mind to anything, must be a good thing. Perhaps I should do the same, write my own novel. Now what would make a good subject, the way we live now, something from the past, or both? It would need to be positive though, on when the going was good, rather than like most modern writing which seems so, well, downtrodden and doom laden. And so much wishful thinking, rather than trying to get closer to the truth of something. But what about subject? I seem to, of necessity, acquired a mountain of knowledge, albeit a bit superficial, about railways of late. But that was a turn-off for most readers unless it contained the romance of travel with steam locomotives. And even then, thrillers on trains were as well-worn as a Rory Flotterton plot.
That Walpole should have become so territorial about his new home county was rather nice in a way. And fully committed to the railway, though it still wasn’t clear whether Helene welcomed him getting out from under her feet, or not. Was I wrong to be pragmatic with the elder Sparkwell, Walpole was outraged by the man on Charlie’s behalf, should I be the same? Well, it’s action that counts and it would be beyond arrogant to claim an understanding of her experience.
Junior Jack was clearly getting above himself, but that was fine, he’d already showed signs of new learning over the past few years. Charlie was right to seize the opportunity to help him out. The question now, was would the atmosphere of the club and maybe the history of the house, lead him to undo the modernisation of his hotel in order to match what was coming with the railway? At least he had some old photos on the walls of reception I’d noticed, upon which to contemplate.
The real Jack had already embraced respectability; it was just a question of no backsliding. Wainwright? I must find out if she planned to stick around the area, and do what? As for the cabal, the young Turks...
‘Ta-dah! Hey there you two.’
‘Who the devil?’ I mumbled as I looking up from my reverie. There, striking a pose in the entrance to the walled garden, stood Melisa. ‘Where did you spring from.’ I said more audibly.
‘We’re on a Christmas tour, of Tim’s relatives. There are bloody hundreds of them! This is day four, I think.’
‘Well, well, well.’ I replied.
‘How long are you stopping?’ Asked Charlie.
‘Arrived in time for lunch, staying overnight, then off to God knows where tomorrow. Still, Tim says these Gregsons are the really important ones. Can't think why, they’re hardly his closest relatives.’
‘How was lunch?’ I asked.
‘Bit heavy for me, Tim wolfed it down though, all the time hanging on Mr Gregson's words. I was surprised, he was telling him, basically, he should be grateful to you for all you’re doing for him and do whatever you tell him.’
‘Ah, yes that would sort of make sense.’
‘Then Tim asked him if there was any chance, he could take time off today to show him the whole estate and would his lordship and you mind? Then this Gregson said; “Just you leave his lordship to me boy”, and “I’m sure young Missy here could head-off Mr Anthony at the pass”. Then he told me where you’d be, and here I am.’
‘So Mel, you know Tim better than any of us, what does he want, career wise, what does he aspire to?’
‘Well, he doesn’t think that far ahead really; he’s fixed to go to the Park for his first placement, wants your garden centre to be the second, says there is some mystery about it he hasn’t discovered yet.’
‘Really.’
‘But when we entered the grounds this morning, he said how would I like to spend my summers here?’
‘And what do you think of that?’ asked Charlie.
‘Well, it’s all a bit samey, I mean, when you’ve seen one field, you’ve seen them all, haven’t you.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Tim did the garden for you before we left, I left him for a couple of hours with a thermos.’
‘I know, I get notified of any activity on security.’
‘What, pictures?’
‘Sure, anything around the back gate, back door, front door.’
‘Right.’
‘I’ve always thought he’s a bit of a voyeur on the quite.’ Charlie butted in.
‘So says the greatest exhibitionist I’ve ever met.’ I shot back.
‘Is it true what they say at the club, about there being a sextape online of you two?’
‘I wouldn’t dignify it with the title, Sextape, more like badly edited scraps from the Park’s old static security cameras back in the day. So bad, it’s not easy to work out who is doing what to whom.’
‘The stuff we’ve accidental recorded at home is much better!’ Charlie proudly announced.
‘How could it be accidental, if the cameras are by the entrances?’
‘You must have noticed the ones in the treatment room, put there to intimidate private clients.’ I asserted.
‘Oh, right.’
‘Hardly surprising if you think about it, a professional masseuse fetishizing the materials of her trade.’
‘Ha! Says the man who always joins in with enthusiasm.’
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