After Clare

By Marjorie Eccles

Will the remains of a soldier be the key that unlocks the secrets of Leysmorton Manor . . . ?

1922. Lady Emily Fitzallan has returned to the country house where she spent her childhood for a family wedding. Leysmorton Manor brings back many memories, especially of her elder sister Clare, who vanished one day after going for a walk, never to return. But the disturbing discovery of a soldier’s skeleton at the base of an ancient Yew tree brings the past shockingly into the present. Could the man’s untimely death have its roots in Clare’s disappearance, which occurred almost half a century ago . . .?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781780103068

Marjorie Eccles

Marjorie Eccles was born in Yorkshire and has since spent some time on the Northumbrian coast. Marjorie has written mainly crime novels, but also some romantic fiction. She is the author of the ‘Gill Mayo’ mystery series.

Book preview

Prologue

The Leysmorton yew still stood by the old wall on the boundary of the estate, its silhouette stark against the skyline, an ancient landmark for travellers, as it had stood for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, centuries before the house and its habitation. It could have arrived there as a seed on the wind, or been dropped by a bird, Anthony said. More likely, the first inhabitants of the village had planted it on one of the prehistoric ley lines, in a spot regarded as holy, in the belief that the properties of this sacred tree would ensure protection.

Do not disrespect the yew, he warned, aroused to unusual talkativeness. It is amazingly long-lived, a magical tree worshipped by the Druids for its mystical properties, for healing and as a means of communicating with the dead. It’s a tree of duality – tight-grained and tough, its wood was once highly valued for practical purposes, for wheels and cogs, bowls and spoons; long ago, our nation’s famous victory against the overwhelming forces of the French army at Agincourt was due to the use of the longbow, made from springy English yew. Its medicinal qualities are powerful, for those skilled enough to know how to employ its parts, all of which, however, are poisonous if used wrongly. Don’t play with the loose, scaly bark, children, or the needles. Never on any account eat its scarlet berries.

Was it all too fanciful then, to believe that the tree, keeping its secrets and its dark magic to itself, was, like the house and its garden, waiting? As they had waited for nigh on fifty years – through occupation by strangers and four devastating years of war, through loss and sorrow. Waiting for everyone to reassemble . . . for secrets to be revealed?

One

Now, 1922

Of course it was fanciful, ridiculous. She would not entertain the notion. All the same, the vibrations were so strong, so inimical, Emily almost turned and marched back the way she had come. It was a mistake, I should not have come home, she found herself thinking, chilled.

That in itself was an extraordinary admission, given that she had yearned for this moment for decades. She was not in the habit of doubting herself or her decisions – although this particular one had taken years to mature, and in the end had only been carried through on the back of her determination to return for the wedding; she alone knew how painfully brave that was. This self-doubt was new, as dismaying as that first glimpse of the beloved old garden.

How her father would have hated this! Anthony, that big, shambling figure in his baggy old pepper-and-salt Norfolk jacket, its pockets full of bits of string, seeds, clippers, notes to himself – though he rarely needed to be reminded of where every plant was situated, what jobs needed to be done.

Where once flagged paths and clipped box hedges had defined its proportions, where fountains had played and roses had flourished so lavishly abundant, where lawns had been kept immaculate by men with scythes or a Ransome mower, where she herself, almost as soon as she was old enough to wield a trowel, had helped her father to weed and dig, and had learnt how to plant out precious seedlings, now there was . . . not desolation, precisely, but rather abandonment to a rampant air of disorder, almost indecent in a way, as if Nature in reclaiming her own had tossed up her skirts, shamelessly taken charge of her own destiny, and put Man firmly in his place.

At that heretical thought Emily drew herself up to her full height, and though it was not very considerable, looked rather magnificent. She was Lady Fitzallan, and had no intention of being put in her place.

‘It’s certainly a pity,’ Hugh was saying, pacing alongside with his hands clasped behind his back like a royal consort, thin, correct and upright as ever, ‘but the Beresfords didn’t take much to gardening. Birds of passage. Liked the thought of a country house garden but hadn’t much idea how to go about it.’ He, too, looked glumly at the prospect before them. ‘At least they kept the house in some sort of order.’

‘There were clauses in the lease about that,’ Emily reminded him, a shade crisply. Sharpness had not always come naturally to her. It was a habit she, like other expatriate women, had fallen into, with servants in India and other faraway places who expected to be spoken to in that way by English memsahibs, and if not, thought them soft and often found subtle ways of not obeying. ‘And for that matter, clauses that the garden should be maintained.’

‘And so it was, after a fashion. Not as it was in your father’s day, mind. Petunias in pots, I’m sorry to say. It only got like this when the soldiery came.’

By this he meant the time during the war when the house had been taken over as an army convalescent home. While Emily, longing for damp English summers, lush green grass and soft, clouded, changeable skies, for Leysmorton and its roses, had been far away in places where gardens of the only kind that could legitimately be considered gardens in her view were non-existent. Too much sun, of course. Paddy revelled in the heat, it suited his temperament, but it had wilted her. Yet she had endured without complaint. And now she was here, with the sight of it disconcerting enough to reduce her almost to tears. And there was still the house to face.

When the war came, the four men once employed to help her father in the garden had all joined the army on the same day, pals enlisting together, as men did, to fight the Germans, and they had all four perished together, in the midst of the slaughter that was the Battle of the Somme. Emily had been told there was an old man from the village who came in now, and no doubt did the best he could, but it would be quite unrealistic to expect him to cope alone with a garden of this size.

‘I dare say,’ Hugh said, picking up her thoughts and adroitly sidestepping the wicked thorns of an untamed berberis that threatened to clutch at his trousers, ‘I dare say I could get hold of more men for the garden if you wished, Emily. The state the country’s in, there’s plenty looking for employment, God knows.’

Emily was sure he could. Hugh Markham was a man who got things done while other people were still talking about it. Decisive and sensible, a man one relied on, as he always had been. For all of his working life he had been the lynch-pin of the Peregrine Press, having inherited – and improved upon – a flourishing family publishing business of nearly 200 years’ standing. Now he merely sat on the board, advising on occasions, an asset to his son, Gerald. Tall, spare, elegant, well brushed and spruce, his iron-grey hair precisely cut and his fingernails manicured. Urbane and ironic, age suited him.

‘I would take it as a great favour if you could, Hugh.’ She laid a brief touch on his sleeve. He nodded and said she could leave it with him.

Waves of scent rolled towards them as a turn of the path brought them to the Rose Walk. Roses had always been the beating heart of Leysmorton, its greatest attraction, and they were everywhere, here on the Walk most of all. Punctuating the neglected herbaceous planting in the long border were great mounds of the old-fashioned roses Anthony Vavasour loved all his life long: the Damasks and Bourbons, the Musks, the Old Velvet Mosses. At the back, exuberant climbers scrambled up the pink brick walls that buttressed the terrace above. Emily saw that since her father’s death – it could not conceivably have been before – many treasures had grown lax and undisciplined, some of them perhaps irrecoverable. Yet within their tangled framework, beauty and perfection might still lie. Roses, Anthony had taught her, were incredibly tough, and the lavish display all around provided ample evidence of it. Held in the warmth soaked up by the brick wall behind them, their combined scent had always been brought out by the hot sun. Today it was very nearly intoxicating.

‘I feel so guilty, Hugh. I should have come home before, not left it all to the agency people to manage.’

‘Only if you felt able to.’

Maybe he was right.

Here, at the flight of mossy steps which bisected the terrace wall, were the two recesses built either side of it, narrow domed apses, each with a stone seat roomy enough for three at the most. Sentry boxes, Clare had called them, too narrow in proportion to the wide steps. Emily should have been prepared for them, but was taken aback by a shaft of memory so keen it flashed through her like a knife. Her eyes closed in an involuntary reflex and she reached out for support to the pretty little dolphin fountain, now dry, its basin cracked, ridiculously situated in the centre of the flagged path for what reason no one had ever been able to work out. A piece of the dried, velvety moss encrusting it came off whole, and as she felt it crumble in her tightening hand, she blinked and forced herself back to her senses.

The moment had been too brief for Hugh to have noticed anything, she was sure. Then he said, ‘All right, m’dear?’, and the controlled note of concern in his voice told her that of course he had noticed.

‘Yes, thank you.’ She let the moss fall and rubbed the fingers of her cream kid gloves together. ‘I nearly missed my step, that’s all.’

‘It happens, sometimes.’ She was grateful that he did not add, at our age.

He, too, must remember that other June night – the heat, the drenching, swooning scent of roses as they sat close together on the stone seat in one of the apses, as she turned her face guiltily away and looked anywhere but at him, while outside the little fountain made its music in time with her thumping heart.

But she could not bear to remember just now. She turned away, and with her foot on the first of the steps to the terrace, paused.

And there was the old house, the Vavasours’ ancestral home. Her house now, its long lattice windows touched to gold by the late afternoon sun, warm and hospitable despite the tenacious cloak of Boston ivy which clung to its rosy bricks, frowned over the window lintels and threatened to engulf it entirely.

Leysmorton was very old. An ancient manor house, lowish and crooked, full of secret twists and turns, odd flights of steps, dim corners and small, extra windows here and there throwing light in unexpected places, its charm lay in the tranquillity the years had settled on it rather than any architectural felicities.

Her throat constricted with emotion. ‘Hugh . . . do you think, perhaps . . .?’

‘You would like to go in alone?’

Bless him for his understanding. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Of course not. I’ll see you at dinner, then. Shall I send the motor?’

He had already met her train at the station with the Daimler and brought her to the gates of Leysmorton, and when she had said she would like to walk up through the gardens, had sent the chauffeur round to the front of the house with her bags.

‘No, no, there’s no need for that. Thank you, Hugh, I’ll walk over with Dirk.’

His home, Steadings, where they were all to dine tonight, was only a few minutes’ walk away, if you took the path which generations of impatient Vavasours and Markhams had trampled out in order to avoid taking the marginally longer way round by the road, until eventually it had become the accepted route between the two houses.

‘I must see you alone,’ he said suddenly. ‘Properly alone, I mean, with time to talk.’

‘Hugh—’

‘We haven’t been alone,’ he reminded her, unnecessarily, ‘since Paris.’

‘My dear, would it be wise?’

‘Wise?’ Shaken out of his composure, he laughed shortly. ‘Wise? That’s one thing we no longer need to be, not now.’

Their eyes held, and with sudden surrender, she reached up – she had to rise on tiptoe – and kissed him very gently. ‘We will then, Hugh, we will. But not just yet, it’s too early to make decisions. Give me time to get my bearings.’

‘I can wait. I’ve learned how to, Lord knows.’

He watched her go. She had broken her journey in London on the way here and evidently done some expensive shopping. The young Emily he had known – eager, impressionable, loving, with a carnation flush to her cheeks and large, soft eyes that could still light up with mischief – had become a poised and elegant woman. The plump prettiness of her youth had gone, to be replaced by something more interesting. Her features had fined down and she had gained dignity and presence, despite the ragamuffin, vagabond existence he considered her life to have been.

From behind, the neat figure in cream silk poplin and matching straw hat could pass for the young woman he had once loved to the point where he had thought it might not be possible to carry on, after she had left him. But they had both gone on, survived for another, unbelievable, four – no, nearer five – decades. Unbelievable? Where Emily was concerned, nothing was unbelievable to Hugh, even this wholly unexpected return. There had always been an element of unpredictability about her, which was one of the things he had loved her for, and still did, despite the pain it had brought. But she had steadfastly coped with Paddy Fitzallan for more than half a lifetime – and that said all that needed to be said, as far as Hugh was concerned.

Halfway up the steps, he saw her falter and stop. Having no wish for her to turn round and see him still standing there, he moved away. She was here at last, he thought, as he walked back towards the trees that hid Steadings from view, feeling twenty years younger. She was here.

Emily mounted the last few steps. It was only an upstairs curtain that had twitched, although for a heart-lurching moment she had almost imagined it was Clare at the window. But whoever had moved that curtain, it wasn’t Clare.

She stood for another moment, uncharacteristically hesitant, before the solid, venerable door that was grainy and weathered to a silvery grey, this door to the garden side of the house which had rarely ever been closed. Then, even as she hesitated, it opened and there was Dirk.

‘Welcome home, Cousin Emily.’

Two

‘What makes you think I’ve changed my mind?’ Poppy asked. ‘Naturally I shall go – and so will you, of course, Val.’

Valentine shoved his hands into his pockets and raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s no of course about it. Dee Markham isn’t my best friend, Sis.’

‘She isn’t mine at the moment, either, ducky, if it comes to that, but the invitation includes you. She couldn’t not invite either of us, really, since we’re almost family, and it’s going to be such a splash.’

He thought ‘almost family’ was stretching it a bit. The Drummonds and the Markhams were cousins at least twice, if not three times removed, but the wedding invitation, embossed gold on thick cream card, certainly held both their names. It stood prominent amongst the other announcements on the mantelpiece – notices of exhibitions by unknown artists in obscure galleries, a gaudy postcard from Antibes, an invitation to the opening of a new nightclub of the sort that Poppy considered it smart to frequent – all propped against the pewter vase that held a single, vibrant purple iris.

He watched her as she took a comb from the brocade vanity bag on her wrist and turned her head sideways to examine her hair in the mirror over the mantel, though her smooth, square-cut black bob with the ends curving towards her face needed no attention. Val moved to stand behind her, a little to one side so that he could see her face in the mirror as he spoke, and saw his own as well. The same sweep of the eyebrows, the Drummond chin, but there the resemblance ended. He was an untidy, windswept young man with stormy grey eyes, he forgot to get his hair cut, and he wore a corduroy jacket that Poppy deplored.

It was she who spoke first, the jacket no doubt reminding her. ‘You’ll have to wear proper togs for the wedding.’

He laughed shortly. ‘Apart from my demob suit, what do you suggest? The one bought when I left school? Since when my measurements have altered considerably.’ Which was true enough. Although he was not tall, his shoulders were broad, and in the last few years he had become muscular and athletic.

She began to apply more lipstick to her already vivid mouth, as poppy-red as her name, startling against her white skin and black hair. She was dressed for the evening in a narrow, waistless number in sea-green and silver, her skirt short enough to show several inches of leg above the ankle, silver shoes with a double strap and a three-inch Louis heel, shiny nude stockings and a silver slave bangle set with glassy green stones high on her bare, rounded upper arm, others circling the opposite wrist. It was a get-up altogether too studied and sharp, too contrived, Val considered, remembering the warm, spontaneous little sister she had been not so long ago.

‘Well?’ She turned and he let his hand fall from her shoulder. He threw himself down on the sofa and put his feet on the canary-yellow lacquered coffee table.

‘Weddings are not my forte. Especially big ones, like this.’

‘Not so very big. It’s only a country wedding, after all.’

‘Big enough.’

‘Archie Elphinstone’s going to be best man. He’ll give us a lift down there, and as for a morning suit . . .’ Calculation sharpened her features as she thought about ways one might be obtained for him at this last minute. She had not told him that she had already sent an acceptance for both of them.

He chose not to answer, but lifted his eyebrows and squinted at the invitation again: Diana Margaret (Dee) Markham, daughter of Mr & Mrs Gerald Markham . . . to Hamish Erskine, son of Sir Trumpington and Lady Erskine of Kinmoray, Scotland . . . St Phillip’s church, Netherley, Hertfordshire . . . June seventeenth . . .

‘I wouldn’t have thought Gerald could afford such a do. The Markhams must be as hard up as all the rest of us nowadays.’

‘Maybe, but he can’t let it be seen that he isn’t up to providing the necessary for his daughter’s wedding to old Trump’s son either, darling. Besides, Hugh will be doing most of the paying, I dare say. He’s very fond of his granddaughters.’ She laughed in the tinkling way she had adopted lately, then said, with stubborn intent, ‘I really want to go, Val.’

Green was not a colour she should wear; her eyes, grey like his but paler and cool, had taken on a greenish cast from the dress. They narrowed like a cat’s as she watched him.

‘One of life’s hard-earned lessons, my dear, is that we don’t always get what we want.’

‘I don’t know about that. I generally manage it, don’t I?’

It wasn’t always as true as she might like to think but, courageous and daring, she’d always had a knack of manoeuvring things her way. Yet how happy was she when she’d achieved her aim? Like all her friends, Poppy projected a relentless brightness and glitter – but happiness?

He lit a cigarette and leaned his head back on the sofa, more comfortable than the lumpy one in his own seedy bedsit, to which he must presently repair. They each had their own place; there was no room for two in this tiny, one-bedroom flat, and their lifestyles were too dissimilar, anyway, for either of them to want to share. For the moment, however, Val was happy enough to loll back on her sofa, feet up, head back against the cushions.

Through half-closed eyes he noticed that where the palest of grey walls met the ceiling of the same shade, Poppy, who was clever and artistic, had recently stencilled a geometric border in mauve and purple, with the same motif repeated around the grey-tiled fireplace, the colours echoed in the curtains. The paintwork was smart navy blue and there were touches of canary yellow here and there. She and a woman called Xanthe Tripp ran a little interior decorating shop in Knightsbridge, to Val pretentiously and incomprehensibly named XP et Cie (X for Xanthe, P for Poppy and Cie for Company) – ‘so French, so chic!’, said Mrs Tripp.

They were not, however, making much money. Their clients were mostly friends, or friends of friends, and paying bills was not high on the list of their priorities, especially when they came as high as Mrs Tripp’s bills did. She was a divorcée in her forties with a racy lifestyle, and was consumed by the necessity to get enough money for its upkeep. Valentine had met Xanthe Tripp only once or twice and had no desire whatsoever to meet her again, and although Poppy seemed happy enough with the set-up for the time being, he gave it another six months at the most and was not unduly perturbed at the prospect of its demise. Poppy might be upset at the failure of yet another venture, but not unduly, he hoped. Where once it had all been ‘Xanthe this, Xanthe that’, now when her name was mentioned it was sometimes followed by a slight pause or a frown.

Although at the moment he devoutly wished her way of life different, Val did not like the idea of Poppy being unhappy. They were alone in the world, poor as church mice, and he felt responsible for her. As for himself, he didn’t see how anyone who had spent two years in that hellish show over the Channel could have a right to expect true happiness ever again. A company officer leading his men over the top, a young sprig straight out of school, by the skin of his teeth he had missed being killed, or even injured, not once but several times. He had gained a reputation for bravery, when he knew it was sheer luck – and plain fear of being seen to be in a funk. Luck had followed him most of his life – apart from the disaster that was their parents. Lucky Val Drummond: scraping through his exams, batting the winning innings at the inter public school cricket match in his last year; lucky to be the brother of Poppy Drummond, many of his acquaintances would no doubt say.

Lately, however, that luck seemed to have deserted him. He was recently down from Oxford, where he had gone straight from the trenches because he couldn’t think what else to do in the sombre hiatus, the anticlimax after the last dark, adrenalin-fuelled years, when all the world had teetered on the edge of catastrophe. He had easily obtained one of the many places available – all those young hopefuls gone west – and in the same haphazard way had chosen to read English. He hadn’t yet lost the wild air of the undergraduate, and was apt to wear a college scarf wound around his neck, even when it was not strictly necessary.

This train of thought brought him back to the wedding. Oh, God! Bad enough being seen as the poor relations, but there was another, even more cogent reason he did not feel inclined to go. Reading English had given Valentine literary aspirations, but no one, it seemed, wanted to publish, much less read, the kind of novel he had recently surprised even himself by producing: angry, declamatory, accusing. They said everyone had had enough of that kind of angst; amusement was what the world wanted now, this fast and light-hearted world