The Grave Tattoo (27 page)

Jane’s heart leapt at the thought that Jake had come back, and she hated that he still had the power to make her feel that way. ‘That’s hardly stalking me, Tenille,’ she said, trying to cover her emotional reaction.

‘I know that. But I saw him again yesterday, when I was trying to get here. I was on the path coming over from Grasmere. And I saw him. He was on the path above the farm, looking down through binoculars. Like he was watching for you.’

Jane’s brows knitted in puzzlement. ‘He was watching the farm? Why on earth would he do that?’

‘Like I would know. He’s a creep, Jane. You deserve better.’

‘You don’t know him,’ she said dismissively. ‘But I don’t understand why he’d be spying on me. Why not just come straight to the farm?’

Tenille shrugged. ‘Maybe he wanted to make sure there wasn’t anybody else in the picture. Or maybe he just gets his kicks from keeping tabs on you. Like I said, he’s a creep.’

‘Are you sure it was him? I mean, he must have had his back to you.’

Tenille tutted again. ‘Sure I’m sure. I saw him coming round to yours often enough. He’s stalking you, Jane.’

Unsettled by Tenille’s information, Jane shook her head. ‘I don’t get it.’ She shook her hair away from her face as if trying to clear her head. ‘I need to go. I’ve got work I need to get on with. You’ll be OK?’

‘Yeah. Don’t worry about me. I’m chill.’

‘You know you won’t be able to have the light on after dark? Only, we can see the lights from the house.’

Tenille nodded glumly. ‘I know. I guess I’ll just have to get used to sleeping, right?’

‘Right. Look, I’ll try to come back later this evening, but no promises. It might be tomorrow. But I’ll do my best.’ Jane reached out and patted Tenille’s hand, entirely oblivious to the echo of her own mother’s behaviour. ‘Try not to worry.’

Her own words sounded hollow in her ears as she made her way back to the house.
Try not to worry.
Yeah, right. Like that was an option. How long, she wondered far from idly, did they give you for harbouring a fugitive from justice? Matthew would love that. Not to mention that it would give him a free run at what she was starting to think of as her manuscript.

That thought spurred her back to the kitchen table and the records of births, marriages and deaths that she still had to plough through. She was almost finished when Judy returned from church. ‘How are you getting on?’ her mother asked after she’d checked the contents of the oven.

‘Better than I expected. And the best news is that, if I’ve worked it out right, the most likely person lives just up the road.’

‘That’s the Lakes for you. Small world. So who is it?’

‘Edith Clewlow.’ Jane searched for the relevant note she’d made.

‘Edith Clewlow?’ Judy echoed, her face dismayed.

‘You know, she lives up Langmere Stile. We used to play with her youngest grandson Jimmy.’ Jane looked up and caught her mother’s expression. ‘What’s wrong?’

Judy sat down heavily. ‘She died last night. Edith Clewlow died last night.’

27

Matthew stared unseeingly across the tables of bent heads in the classroom. The children were quiet, working on the arithmetic problems he’d set them. He always liked to start the week by setting a task that demanded concentration, to put a clear divide between whatever anarchy had filled their weekend and the discipline of school. He’d give them a while then work through the sums on the board before moving on to the genealogy project after the morning break.

He was still smarting from Jane’s accusation at lunch the day before. ‘When were you planning to tell me about Dorcas Mason?’ she’d demanded the moment he walked into the kitchen.

‘Today’ he said, conscious that he had the moral high ground here. ‘When you mentioned her name the other night, I thought it rang a bell but I didn’t want to give you false hope. So I went back home and checked through the kids’ worksheets. It was too late to call you, and I was out all day yesterday’

‘You’ve always got an answer, haven’t you?’ Jane said. ‘Why can’t you admit it, Matthew? You were going to try to find the manuscript yourself and claim the glory.’

‘I told you he’d been planning to tell you,’ Diane chipped in. ‘But you always think the worst of Matt.’

‘That’s because it’s usually the right thing to think,’ Jane said. ‘You showed no interest in my work until I mentioned Dorcas Mason’s name. All you’d done until then was take the piss. Then suddenly you wanted to know all about who she was, what her connection was to the manuscript, where she fitted in to my research. And not a word, not a hint that you might know something that would help.’

‘I told you: I didn’t want to raise your hopes only to dash them.’ Matthew leaned across her and poured himself a glass of wine.

‘Come on, Matthew. Tell the truth. You were planning to hijack my research and get the ultimate one over on me.’

‘Do you have any idea how paranoid you sound?’

Allan slapped his hand flat on the table with a sound like the crack of a rock breaking off from a cliff face. ‘Enough, the pair of you. If you’ve got a quarrel, take it somewhere else. You’re both far too old to behave like this.’

And that had been the end of it as far as words were concerned. But both siblings were seething, Matthew the more so since his rare generous impulse had been so thoroughly misunderstood. He burned under Jane’s contemptuous gaze and decided that, if he was going to get the kicking, he might as well commit the sin. Jane might have the academic credentials, but he had the contacts. He was the local man. He was the headmaster and people deferred to him.

Small stirrings in the classroom brought Matthew’s attention back to the present. Several of the children had finished their work; the usual suspects, Matthew thought. ‘OK. You’ve had long enough. Pencils down. Question one–who’s going to give me an answer?’ Sam’s hand inevitably shot up in the air. ‘Yes, Sam?’

‘Five hundred and seventy-six, sir.’

‘That’s right. Anybody not get that right?’ Two hands crept into the air. ‘OK, Sam, come up to the board and show us your workings.’ Matthew took the class through the list of problems, finishing with perfect calculation just as the bell rang for morning break. As the children scrambled to their feet and made for the door, he said, ‘Sam, Jonathan? Can you stay behind for a minute.’

They drifted towards his desk, Sam trying to hide his interest and Jonathan his trepidation. Matthew laid their family trees in front of them. ‘Over the weekend, I learned something very interesting. Your ancestor Dorcas Mason worked for a very important person here in Cumbria. Can you think who that might be?’

Jonathan stared mute as a heifer. But Sam was willing to hazard a guess. ‘Was it Beatrix Potter?’ he said.

‘Your timing’s a bit off there, Sam. This was when Dorcas was very young, before she married Arnold.’

Sam poked his finger in his ear while he thought. ‘Was it Wordsworth, then?’ he asked.

‘That’s right. Dorcas Mason was a maid at Dove Cottage for a few years when she was a girl. What do you think of that?’

‘Cool. We can fill that in on our family trees, that she was William Wordsworth’s maid,’ Sam said.

Jonathan fidgeted his feet. ‘Does that mean she was famous?’ he mumbled.

For once, Matthew found an intervention of Jonathan’s of some value. ‘Well, no, not really. But she probably met some people who were very famous in their time. And that’s why I was wondering if either of you have ever heard about any family papers going back to Dorcas’s time. She might have kept a diary, or letters to do with her work at Dove Cottage. She might even have kept some of the papers William Wordsworth threw away–early versions of poems, or notes he didn’t need to keep. Have either of you ever heard of anything like that?’

Jonathan looked blank and shook his head. Matthew was glad that there was rather less chance of the manuscript having passed down to the Bramleys. They’d probably have used it for shopping lists. But Sam’s family were much more on the ball. Sam himself looked disappointed. ‘I don’t remember anybody ever talking about stuff like that,’ he said.

‘Well, maybe you could both ask when you go home tonight?’ Matthew suggested gently. ‘If there was anything, we could make it part of the display. That would be good, wouldn’t it? Connecting our project to Cumbria’s greatest son?’

Sam nodded enthusiastically. ‘That would be so cool. I’ll ask my dad tonight.’ Then his face clouded over. ‘But maybe it’s not a good time.’ His lower lip quivered and he clamped his mouth tightly shut.

‘His great-gran died on Saturday,’ Jonathan volunteered. ‘So mebbe his dad won’t want to talk about the family, like.’

Matthew hid the quick flare of irritation. ‘Or maybe he would understand that if there were some papers from Dorcas among her things, it would be a sort of tribute to her if we included them in the project. You can ask, can’t you, Sam?’

The boy nodded bravely. ‘I’ll ask.’

‘And you too, Jonathan. Now, off you go, enjoy what’s left of break.’ Matthew watched them leave. It was hard to see any common genes between those two, he thought. He hoped it was Sam who took after Dorcas. It would be heartbreaking to think of Wordsworth’s great epic being used for firelighters. But in Cumbria, where men prided themselves on calling no man their master, anything was possible.

Jane had discussed their plan of action with her mother. Judy had told her that Gibson’s from Keswick had already taken Edith off to the funeral parlour but that she would be returned to lie in state at the home of her granddaughter Alice. ‘Do you remember Alice?’ Judy had asked.

‘Not really, she was quite a bit older than us.’

‘She never married. Went off to college to be a librarian. She worked in Kendal for a few years, but now she’s back in Keswick. Head librarian she is now. Lives up on that new estate on the Braithwaite road. She’s got more room for the wake than the rest of them.’

‘How do you think she’d take it if I asked whether her gran had any old papers?’

Judy gave her daughter an amused glance. ‘Well, I hope you’ll dress it up in prettier clothes than that.’

‘I’ll be diplomatic, Mum. But do you think Alice would know if Edith had any family documents?’

‘Probably. But Frank’s the one you need to ask. He was devoted to his gran. Went up there every morning to deliver her milk and paper and make sure she was all right. It was Frank that found her on Sunday morning; he was supposed to be picking her up for church. But she was lying dead in her chair in the living room, peaceful as if she’d just nodded off.’

‘It’s a pity it wasn’t Jimmy who was the devoted one. I could always wind him round my little finger.’ Jane smiled, remembering Jimmy’s cheeky grin and his easy temperament. She’d almost had a crush on him; she’d let herself be talked out of it by her best friend who said he looked like a monkey, especially when he was hunched over his drum kit, arms flailing.

Judy pursed her lips. ‘Jimmy Clewlow…I doubt he’ll even come back for the funeral. He’s hardly been seen round here since he dropped out of university to join that pop group.’

‘It’s not a pop group, Mum, it’s a contemporary jazz quintet. And they’re quite highly thought of. I’ve seen their CDs reviewed a couple of times.’

‘Maybe so, but it’s not a proper job, is it?’

‘It’s as much a proper job as what I do. And he probably makes rather more money than me.’ The conversation had drifted off into memories of school days and talk of what her friends were doing now. But Judy hadn’t told her not to go, so now they were heading off for Thistlethwaite Court and a close encounter of the Clewlow kind.

Jane was relieved to see Dan had made a full recovery from his bout of food poisoning. When she’d picked him up at the cottage, he’d been his usual self, eyes alert, head and jaw freshly shaved. ‘I had an email from Anthony Catto,’ she said as they drove down to the main road. ‘He’s dug up an interesting Wordsworth quote about fugitives from justice hiding out in the Lake District. I emailed him back and told him how we’d cracked the family tree. You never know with Anthony–he’s got great resources. He might come up with something.’

‘We can use all the help we can get,’ Dan said. ‘Now, tell me about the Clewlows.’

Childhood reminiscence preoccupied Jane on the drive to Keswick. But even if she had noticed the silver Audi that had picked up her tail at the end of the Fellhead road, she would likely have thought nothing of it. There are so few roads in the Lakes and so few passing places that it would be possible to be tailed for some time before the circumstances registered as suspicious.

Alice’s house sat halfway up a cul-de-sac of identical houses which aimed for a traditional look with timber framing and stucco over half a dozen courses of grey stone. They looked marginally less out of place in the landscape than the dark red-brick executive homes that had sprung up elsewhere locally. There were three cars jammed nose to tail in the driveway and several more parked half on the kerb on either side. Jane pulled up in front of the furthest and they walked back, Jane clutching the home-baked apple cinnamon cake her mother had thrust upon her. ‘You can’t turn up empty-handed,’ she insisted.

Jane rang the doorbell and waited. A male voice called, ‘I’ll get it,’ and the door swung open. She could hardly believe her luck. Standing on the threshold, looking exactly as she remembered him, Jimmy Clewlow pantomimed astonishment. ‘Jane Gresham,’ he exclaimed. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times as he tried to find the right register for this encounter.

‘I was sorry to hear about your gran,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to pay my respects.’

‘Sure, yeah. Right, come in,’ he gabbled. ‘Half Fellhead’s here already. But hey, I’m just…touched, I guess. At you. Coming like this.’

Jane nodded. ‘My mum couldn’t make it. She asked me to bring this.’ She thrust the cake at him. ‘And this is my colleague, Dan Seabourne. He’s visiting at the moment.’

Jimmy’s attention shifted from Jane to Dan. His expression shifted too, from confusion to sharp interest. Jimmy shook Dan’s hand. Dan covered the handshake with his other hand and met Jimmy’s eyes with a compassionate look. ‘Sorry for your loss.’

Jimmy nodded. ‘Thanks. Come on through. Everybody’s in the living room. Except Gran, of course, she’s in the sun room at the back. Did you want to…you know?’ he asked Jane.

She looked embarrassed. ‘It’s all right…I’m not really into that sort of thing.’ They followed him up the hall and into a low-ceilinged room that stretched the length of the house. Jimmy hadn’t been exaggerating. Half of Fellhead was here, and most of them were eyeing her and Dan with curiosity.

Alice spotted a new arrival and extricated herself from the woman who ran the gift shop in Fellhead. Alice had changed surprisingly little over the years. Her spiky brown hair was threaded with silver at the temples, but the few lines carved on her face were testament to laughter rather than dissatisfaction. She wore a simple black trouser suit and large silver earrings in the shape of a crescent moon. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said automatically, her wide mouth breaking into an easy smile.