Ashgrove Park: A Jack and Bea Mystery, #1

By K.V. Martins

MAYBE SOME PHOTOGRAPHS SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN

December 1918

 

Lieutenant Jack Collingwood, haunted by the ghosts of war and his brother's death, recuperates at Ashgrove Park, a stately Sussex manor. Unsettling things have been happening there since relic hunter Lord Ashgrove returned from British New Guinea after having stolen a shaman's skull for his collection of curiosities.

 

An image Jack takes with his camera reveals the shocking extent of a curse unleashed on Lord Ashgrove's family, and Jack finds himself communicating with the shaman's spirit.

 

While Jack faces the secrets of his troubled past and doubts his sanity, he must solve a series of mysterious deaths and disappearances before Lady Beatrice Ashgrove–the woman he loves–is threatened.

 

Can he save her, or will he succumb to the powerful force that walks the halls of Ashgrove Park?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aroona Group Press
• Release date: Mar 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9780473560171

K.V. Martins

K.V. Martins is originally from Sydney, Australia but now lives in New Zealand. Her work has been featured in various literary journals and she has won writing and poetry competitions. She has a B.A. (Hons) in History.

Book preview

A DREADFUL TREMBLING

East Sussex, December 1918

It’s so cold. Someone help me.

My brother’s words were draining like blood into the soil, growing weaker by the second as he lay on his side in the rust-colored mud, his right leg bent at an odd angle.

The late afternoon light was thickening, shrapnel exploded around us in bright yellow flashes, and the air was filled with zinging sounds. Field guns roared, and it was as though the earth itself was being pummeled and the ash-gray sky would be torn apart.

I can’t feel my leg. Help me, please.

Thomas was weeping, gulping down his sobs in short, sharp breaths. He lay close to two soldiers who had fallen with him, their uniform tunics ripped by German rifles and caked in blood and dirt.

No-man’s-land, they call it—the space between the trenches riddled with barbed wire and craters large enough to swallow someone whole. They only needed to run twenty yards, make it to the other side, and raid the trench for documents, ammunition, or rifles. Anything useful. The Germans were defending their trenches with machine guns and mortars called minenwerfer, but our boys were giving them hell.

SORRY, I NEED TO STOP for a moment, I say, looking across at Dr. Miller, who is scribbling notes. Dr. H.N. Miller, Psychiatrist, was written in elegant script on the creamy scalloped card he handed me when I arrived at Ashgrove Park. I did not know what to tell him then—Lieutenant Jack Collingwood, sir, another soldier from the trenches with a war neurosis.

Dr. Miller raises those solemn hazel-flecked eyes I have come to know over the past month. Of course, Jack. Let’s take a break before we talk further about what happened that day.

I sink further into the oversized chair in the wood-paneled library, trying to find a more comfortable position for my back. The library is where we meet every Tuesday at 3.00 p.m., for one hour.

There are times I look forward to our session because I want to remember all the details of that day when my brother, Thomas, died. Yet, there are times when a profound weariness settles over me, and I want to curl up in my bed and speak with no one.

I am sure Dr. Miller notices that my right leg and hand are trembling slightly, and I still need to stop the annoying twitching by placing my left hand over my right and pressing down on the knee.

Shell shock, Dr. Miller told me during our first session together. Not something I will get over any time soon. It could take months or years of psychotherapy and rest, he said.

Ah, Mrs. Shaw. On the table, thank you.

A rounded woman in her fifties, wearing a starched white apron and cap, wheels in a tea trolley and places a china pot and two cups on the table between us. For some reason, the sight of bloodred roses sitting in a cut-glass vase at the center of the table sends tiny droplets of sweat trickling down my back.

May I offer you some tea? Dr. Miller says. His voice is low, and he enunciates every word with precision. Not a single strand of jet-black hair is ever out of place, and if I were to guess his age, I would say he was in his early forties.

Mrs. Shaw throws me a curious glance as she clatters out the door with the trolley. The tea is strong and hot, burning my tongue on the first sip.

Dr. Miller asks me whether I have had any further heart palpitations or dizziness. I lie and tell him that I have been feeling much better over the last few weeks.

I was certainly not going to admit seeing shadowy figures on the grounds of Ashgrove Park or that I saw Thomas the other day disappearing into the deep woods beyond the circular drive. Or at least I think I see these figures. They are always at the edge of my vision—there, but not there.

Dr. Miller reaches into his waistcoat pocket for a silver case, lights a cigarette, and watches the blueish coil of smoke snake its way toward the ceiling. The nurses tell me you don’t eat much at breakfast. But the food here is delicious. Porridge with milk and treacle, bacon, and fry. I had two helpings of everything this morning.

He pours another cup of tea for himself from the rose-patterned teapot. His long legs are crossed at the ankles, and there’s a peek of a gray woolen sock. He seems entirely at ease, waiting for me to regain my nerve and continue with our session.

I am in no rush to resume our conversation, though. Today, I want to slip into sleep and not be asked to riffle through my memories as though I have lost some dusty document in a filing cabinet.

Sometimes when I don’t wish to talk, I think about what Dr. Miller’s initials stand for—Harold Norman? Herbert Nathan? They should be H.F.N.—Hoping for Normality with patients.

The carriage clock on the mantelpiece over the fireplace strikes 3.30 p.m., its chimes as loud to me as booming field guns.

The gilded framed oil portrait on the wall to the right must be an ancestor of the estate’s owner—the eighth Lord Ashgrove. They share a similar salt and pepper mustache that twirls to a point at the ends.

I should not complain. Lord Ashgrove, a well-known banker in his sixties, has turned over his grand estate to the war effort, and here I am, along with five other officers, enjoying the quiet and fresh air of the English countryside.

Lord Ashgrove likes the classics, it seems. Homer, Voltaire, Thoreau, and de Tocqueville line the floor-to-ceiling shelves and vie for space with recent novels Lady Sybil Ashgrove or her daughter, Beatrice, might read. We have all been encouraged to borrow any book, sit, and read by the fire or in our room.

The officers have the run of the estate. I spend some mornings digging in the vegetable garden but prefer walking down the gravel drive to the entrance and back up to the fountain in the center of the drive.

There is something about the woods and maze that disturbs me, though. I do not go near them. It is the darkness, I suppose, or the feeling that I could be trapped, unable to find my way out. The maze is the centerpiece of the estate, with its tall vertical hedges of yew and hornbeam. I often see Old Tom, the estate’s gardener, balancing on a rickety ladder, leaning over, and pruning the hedges.

Yesterday, I saw Old Tom talking to himself as he was lopping off the heads of dead roses in the flower garden near the maze. When I reached the spot where I had seen him moments before, Old Tom was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Lady Beatrice emerged from the garden carrying a wicker basket filled to the brim with freshly cut geraniums and lavender stems. A wonderful combination of colorful silk flowers decorated her wide-brimmed hat, and she wore a green silk blouse and slim black skirt.

I have yet to become accustomed to the shorter skirts women wear these days, falling to just above the ankle and exposing a gap of creamy flesh.

Good afternoon, Lieutenant Collingwood, she said, tucking her pruning shears into the large pocket of her skirt. Coming back from your daily walk? Her smile was broad, and it was in her nature to be kind to the officers at Ashgrove Park.

Good afternoon, Lady Beatrice. I tipped my hat and stammered out the words. My nerves always get the better of me in her presence. There is something about her voice, the way she sounds so very well-bred, yet not in the slightest bit haughty. Did you...

Lady Beatrice stepped closer and there was the unmistakable scent of roses in the air. Did I what, Lieutenant Collingwood?

Old Tom. Was he here with you in the garden? I thought...

Concern flicked across her face as she rearranged some lavender stems in the basket. Every muscle and vein in my body was on fire, for I knew what she was about to say.

No, I was alone in the garden. Perhaps you should discuss this with Dr. Miller. It’s not the first time you’ve said you see Old Tom around the estate.

What did she mean? Why would I want to talk with Dr. Miller about Old Tom?

There was a change in the light, and it was as though a heavy mist had descended. I felt pressure inside my skull as though it was being slowly crushed, and birds in the surrounding trees had stopped singing.

Here, let me help you.

Lady Beatrice was gripping my left elbow, her other hand pressing on my chest, trying to stop me from falling as I stumbled forward. Her basket lay on the ground, and the geraniums and lavender had spilled out.

Blood rushed into my ears, and the pressure was gone as suddenly as it had arrived. The mist had dissipated, and the light was as bright as Lady Beatrice’s eyes.

Excuse me, Lady Beatrice. What did you say?

I said you look tired, Lieutenant. Perhaps you walked too far today. You should go and rest in your room. I’ll walk back with you to the house.

My cheeks flushed from embarrassment or shame; I’m not sure which. I felt as weak as a child with a fever. Lady Beatrice linked her arm with mine and started telling me the story of how her family had acquired Ashgrove Park.

When I glanced over my shoulder, I am sure I saw Old Tom standing at the entrance to the maze, looking in our direction, and a dreadful trembling took hold of me.

HE HAD NO FEAR

S hall we begin again , Jack? We only have half an hour of your session left. Tell me more about that day in the trenches.

The tinkling of a spoon being stirred in the teacup by Dr. Miller jolts me from my thoughts about Old Tom, and I drain the rest of my tea.

I have relived the moment of my brother’s death over and over in my sessions with Dr. Miller. It plays like an endless loop, and I cannot shake the feeling that Dr. Miller thinks there is a nagging, unanswered question buried deep in my mind.

Pemberton, the estate’s somewhat overweight black cat, weaves around my ankles before purring his way to his customary position in front of the fireplace.

He often finds his way into my room, and when I return from a walk or after playing cards with the other men, he is curled on my pillow, fast asleep. I never have the heart to chase him out, despite my dislike of cats.

Don’t worry, Dr. Miller says. Pemberton won’t leap onto your lap. He is very fussy about who he spends his time with. You were saying that Thomas was lying in no-man’s-land...

I gather myself and continue –

"Thomas had no fear. He had always been foolhardy and was the first to jump into a murky lake or crawl into a confined space. He was nineteen when war broke out. Couldn’t wait to board the troopship in Wellington. He spent his twentieth birthday in a stinking trench near Ypres.

We found ourselves in the same battle at Amiens. The Germans had three lines of trenches, and there was a heavy mist in no-man’s-land that day.

It was raining, and the ground was so boggy it could suck the boots right off a man trying to cross. But Thomas had his orders from the infantry commander, and he set off with two men and a broad smile on his face. Said he’d drag back a German if he could. Drag him through the mud of no-man’s-land and up over the Allied parapet.

I had been in the trenches for three days, living with rats the size of small cats and men who stank worse than me. It was quiet for a moment, the massive guns had stopped, and dozens of swallows and larks were flying overhead, oblivious to the noises of the battlefield.

No one seemed to find this extraordinary—that amid such appalling loss of life, with the earth so churned by shells not a single blade of grass was growing, birds were pecking around the trenches for insects to feed their young or find a place to nest.

Thomas scrambled over the sandbags on the parapet and started ducking and weaving. Heavy artillery bombardment resumed, jolting my bones and rattling my teeth.

It’s strange what you think about when shells explode all around you, showering you with pieces of earth and flesh. I was thinking about how to get the lice out of the seams of my uniform when I should have been worrying about a sniper’s bullet.

The Germans were strong, throwing everything at us, pushing us back toward the village we were defending. Flares blazed so brightly over no-man’s-land it was like looking at the midday sun.

Thomas stumbled over a body the stretcher-bearers hadn’t been able to retrieve, and then he collapsed in a hail of bullets.

I flattened myself against the sandbags, calling out to Thomas as we received the order to retreat. More overhead flares lit up the area, and shells seemed to burst inside my ears. My skull was throbbing."

‘Come on. We’re retreating. Move!’

"Who said these words to me I don’t know but machine-gun fire spun the man’s body in the air, flinging him onto the duckboards where a young lad, no more than fifteen years old, was crouched with his back pressed against the trench wall, hands covering his ears, tears coursing down his face.

Thomas was lying rigid about ten yards away; his face turned toward me. Something was unsettling about the expression on his face.

Was it surprise at how fast the German bullets had found him or the certainty of knowing his life was seeping into the soil of a foreign land?

My mouth was so dry it felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool. I couldn’t tell if it was rain or sweat trickling down my temples and back.

Men were running this way and that, shouting, hauling each other by the armpits out of the mud, while the Germans sniped at bodies strewn over the sandbags of the parapet. A minister ran along the duckboards, closing the eyes of those fallen and saying quick prayers.

Thomas was begging for someone to help him, but he couldn’t hear me calling out to him. There was a loud ringing in my ears, and my brother’s groans faded in and out. I knew there was little time left. The regiment was retreating through the smoke and mist, and I—"

No. I don’t want to go on. I do not wish to remember. A part of me feels resentful at being asked to share Thomas’s final moments. What good is all this talking and remembering? Thomas is gone.

It is always at this point in the session that the trembling in my leg and hand starts up. Sometimes, there’s a sharp pain in my chest or the unsettling feeling my blood is rushing through my veins and will burst through them at any moment.

There’s a powerful smell of damp and mud in the library. Pemberton raises his head, sniffs the air as though something distasteful has floated in, and looks toward the French doors that lead out to the patio.

A fierce wind tosses tree branches back and forth, scratching the doors’ glass panes, and a darkening sky is banked with rain clouds.

I follow Pemberton’s gaze, and pressing against the glass of the left-hand door is a face as familiar to me as the constellations in the heavens. It can’t be.

Thomas—

Dr. Miller leans forward. I know you can finish the story, Jack. What is it that’s holding you back?

Tears sting my eyes. To see his face again after so many months, blessed with the youthful looks and healthy color he had when we embarked on the troopship.

His mouth is moving as though he’s trying to speak to me, and his eyes are as robin egg blue as my own.

Can you see—

Yes, I can see, Dr. Miller says. I can see it’s difficult for you. But I believe you need to tell the whole story. And tell it today. Because if you don’t, it will slow your recovery.

The index finger on my left hand is throbbing. You’ve been twisting a cotton thread from your shirt cuff, Dr. Miller says. You’ll draw blood if you don’t stop.

He pulls his chair closer and unravels the cotton thread. A bead of blood blooms and I take a handkerchief from my trouser pocket and wrap it around my finger.

The back of my shirt is damp, and I have the unnerving feeling that Dr. Miller hasn’t seen a thing, and when I glance toward the French doors again, I wonder if I did see anything—because Thomas is no longer there, and the sky is a bright blue. Pemberton is sleeping by the fire, swishing his thick tail with pleasure at whatever feline dream he is having.

I doubt my sanity and fear that Dr. Miller will call for a straitjacket, but he picks up his fountain pen and says, You’ve had an anxiety attack. I want to believe him so badly that the thought of anything else cannot be entertained, so I flex my index finger a few times and start my story again –

"For God’s sake, what are you doing, Collingwood? We’re retreating. We can’t hold on any longer. Fall back, man. Fall back!

Major Sullivan was shouting and waving his arms at me, but without hesitation, I jumped over the parapet, expecting a bullet to the head or chest.

There was no time to worry about disobeying my commanding officer’s orders as the Germans began firing at once, their bullets shredding the air. I dropped to my knees and started crawling through the water-filled holes like a bee struggling in honey.

At the lip of one hole, the head of a dead rat poked out, its whiskers caked with mud. Death surrounded me, but I kept calling out, hoping Thomas could hear me and take comfort in knowing I was coming for him. The stinking mud mingled with the stench of rotting flesh was almost too much to bear. I didn’t know if..."

Dr. Miller looks up from his notebook. For the first time, I notice he has a small mole near his mouth, and he says in a deep, calm voice, Didn’t know what, Jack?

Was it the light playing tricks on me or some atmospheric phenomenon? I say. Emerging through the blueish mist and smoke, I could have sworn I saw Thomas sprinting toward the parapets, shouting to the other two soldiers that they must follow and throw themselves over the sandbags and into the safety of the trenches before it was too late.

He leaped over me and landed in a shell hole so large I feared he would drown in the tea-colored water pooled in it. There was a lightness to his body I’d never seen before. He was as lithe as a cat. THOMAS! THOMAS! He sprang out of the shell hole and vanished into the rolling mist, but then I heard his voice a few yards in front of me, still pleading for help. I would know that voice anywhere.

Is that the moment I started losing my mind, Dr. Miller? For how could my brother be alive and moving when, at the same moment, his very life was leaving his body?

The mind is a curious thing, Jack, Dr. Miller says. We don’t entirely understand it yet. Sometimes, it can deceive us. Especially in times of great stress and confusion.

I didn’t know how to reply to this. There’s nothing about the mind I understand except that it can haunt you with memories and keep you awake night after night.

What does Dr. Miller say in those notes he keeps of our sessions? The patient is delusional, imagining his brother to be alive when he was killed on the battlefield. He believed he saw his brother in retreat but cannot explain why he was no longer with us.

Dr. Miller flips a page in his notebook. His fountain pen is leaking black dots, splattering them across the paper like tiny beads of blood.

One moment, he says and reaches for another pen from the desk to his right, where the spine of a red leather-bound book is visible—The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.

In our first session together, Dr. Miller had told me he’d studied in Vienna under Freud, and he’s always interested to hear about my dreams—something about the unconscious mind.

We have a few minutes left. You’re nearly there. Why not see if you can finish the story? Dr. Miller says.

The rain was incessant, I continue. "I was wet from head to toe, my fingers were cold, and I cannot remember ever being so tired. I don’t think I’d slept properly for days, always with my back against a trench wall dripping with water, or I was scratching, thanks to the lice crawling in my clothes.

There were no more painful groans or cries for help from my brother. My body was sinking deeper into the filth and mire, and I imagined one day in the future, someone finding my bones buried beneath mud layers, never knowing how close I was to reaching Thomas and holding him in my arms.

What I wanted most was for Thomas to hear my voice and know I was coming for him. Anything to help him hold on, so I said, ‘Thomas, do you remember the day you fell off the roof? You were pretending to be Orville Wright in his flying machine. I don’t know how you thought that bicycle of yours was going to take off and soar into the air.

My voice wavered as I remembered our mother rushing out of the house on hearing his screams, her face and hands covered with flour. ‘How could you let him climb up there, Jack?’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to be looking after him.’ Thomas was always the favored son.

"Father’s friend, Dr. Puddicombe, took some linens, soaked them in plaster of Paris, and wrapped them around Thomas’s broken arm. All my brother could do was complain about the heaviness of the cast and the itching.

Father gave me six of the best across my hands after I refused to admit I had done anything wrong. Less than two weeks later, Thomas was back up on the roof, and I was once again in my father’s study.

Shells and mortars arced overhead. Thomas wasn’t moving. His outstretched arm was flung across the body of one of the other men, and the signet ring Father had given him on his eighteenth birthday was golden against the dark khaki of the man’s tunic.

I scrambled up from the mud and ran to him, slipping on God-knows-what and covering my nose from the stench of blood and feces.

I knew he was dead, but I spoke to him as I had on the day he fell from the roof. ‘Everything will be all right, Thomas. Stop crying, or Father will tell you to man up.

The rain was washing the blood from a gaping wound in his neck, and as I cushioned his head in my lap and stroked his hair, he looked to be at peace. We had both fought in this blasted war only for one of us to die in foreign mud, and the other incapable of imagining life without the brother who was like his shadow."

Dr. Miller had not taken his eyes from me, and his words were unexpected.

Are you sure that’s what happened, Jack?

A CHANGE IN THE AIR

Iwake in a tangle of bedsheets, clawing for breath and with a tight feeling in my chest. Someone was calling my name. The whirring and chiming of the grandfather clock in the hallway outside my bedroom door are so loud it pulses through me. Four chimes. 4.00 a.m.

Every night has been restless since arriving at Ashgrove Park. I wake at the slightest sound, and the chill and dampness of this room have seeped into my bones.

Pale moonlight filters through the curtains, casting a silvery sheen over the bedroom’s mahogany paneling and dark furniture. There is a sound—very faint—coming from the corner of the room, where an overstuffed armchair is positioned below a window. Tap, tap, tap.

Must be that blasted raven pecking at the glass again. The woods around Ashgrove Park are full of blackbirds with long beaks. They like nothing more than collecting shiny objects and leaving them on windowsills and doorsteps.

The sweetish scent of decay mingled with cigarette smoke is unmistakable. I am not alone. It’s happening again.

Is someone here? Of course, it is foolish to be peering into the darkness, clutching bedsheets as though I am some frightened child, and the only answer to my question is the singing of a solitary bird high in a rowan tree.

Something brushes against my hand as I fumble to light an oil lamp, almost knocking the lamp over.

There’s no one in this room other than you. You’re imagining things. Get yourself together, Jack.

The light from the lamp gives shape to the carved arms and floral-patterned covering of the armchair. Lemon-painted walls, Georgian ceiling rose, white linen sheets on my bed—nothing is out of place, and no one else is in the room.

What was I expecting to see? My brother relaxing in the armchair, tapping one of his beloved Woodbine cigarettes against the tobacco tin? Tap. Tap. Tap.

Dr. Miller would call this a neurological disturbance, and he’d say to me, You’ve been ill for some months, Jack. What you think you see is merely your subconscious trying to communicate with you. The images, smells, and sounds are not real.

Sleep is beyond me now, and my arm’s aching from gripping the lamp and sweeping it around the room. On the bedside table is a journal I kept while at the front, its well-thumbed pages speckled with mud.

From time to time, I read it, and it is like walking through fire all over again—the sudden bright flash of illuminating flares, the thunderous boom of guns that shot like electricity through my body and into my skull, the cries and pleas of wounded or gassed men. It takes more time than I would ever have thought for a man to die.

I never wish to experience another war, but the journal entries confirm the man I used to be—someone who volunteered to fight for king and country, not the trembling man who’s fallen into the dark recesses of an unsound mind. Not the man who feels like a trapped fox.

I wrap the bed quilt around my shoulders as the grandfather clock chimes five times. It’s hard to believe I’ve spent the last hour huddled over an oil lamp, imagining things that don’t exist or being skittish over what is no doubt the scurrying of mice.

The pipes and plumbing in this house must be so old any creaking and groaning, although unsettling, is to be expected.

Dr. Miller’s right. My mind is still affected by shell shock. Two officers at Ashgrove Park have lost the power of speech and hearing because of shell shock, and another man has a mysterious facial tic and stuttering.

A shell that exploded overhead in no-man’s-land as I was making my way to Thomas seemed to burst inside my skull and rattle my brain.

Who knows what damage that’s done to my mind, although I’m sure my father will call it emotional weakness and hope that no one ever finds out his eldest son was sent to a convalescent home