The Ely Testament (9 page)

Slowly, after the soldiers' departure, the house resumed its normal pattern for the day. Anne was left to her own devices, as usual. Mary had shut herself away with a book, which was her way of retreating. Anne felt on edge, apprehensive but also oddly excited. The afternoon was warm and fine, with high slow-moving clouds. She set off, intending to wander through the gardens and the outlying grounds. She stopped on hearing the familiar, unwelcome voice of Mr Martin behind her.

‘What are you doing, Anne?'

‘Nothing. Walking, that's all.'

‘It may not be safe.'

This seemed an odd thing to say and she could not think of a reply. She was old enough to ignore Mr Martin if she chose, so she turned her back on him and paced towards the point where she had watched the men emerge from the trees that morning.

The land was mostly low-lying marsh hereabouts, and Stilwell was protected from regular flooding only because it lay a few dozen feet above the rest of the neighbourhood. There were channels through the marshes known to the eel-catchers and the fowlers, and sometimes on her wanderings Anne would glimpse a boat in the reeds. If you crouched down, the water disappeared from sight altogether and you might think that the vessel was voyaging through tall grass and rushes.

Beyond the line of trees the ground slanted away until it became darker and more bog-like. Even in summer the earth here was never completely dry. The soldiers must have approached from the south where a narrow track was delineated by scattered willows. On the other, northerly side was a curious low bump or dome that, at first sight, looked almost natural. Only when you drew closer did it become apparent that the dome – like a large, upturned coracle – was some kind of hut, constructed out of pleated willow branches but constructed so long ago that it had become obscured by matted creepers and grass and mosses. On the east side, the one facing the marshes, was a crude door also made from willow and attached to the frame by fraying cords.

Anne did not know what the hut or shelter had been used for, or who had used it. She guessed it was where some hunter or fowler waited for his prey or stored it after capture. Or even where he lived for a time. Inside the tiny circular space, the ground had been beaten flat in a rudimentary way and in the centre was a ring of stones blackened and cracked by fire. She and Mary occasionally used the place for hiding in, but Mary was frightened by the damp and darkness of the interior, even on the sunniest days. From the inside, one could peer out through the interstices of the willow branches and the overhanging creepers and get a fairly clear view of the surrounding countryside and of the east side of Stilwell Manor.

Anne looked behind her. She feared Mr Martin was still watching her but could not see him. Yet when she approached the hide, she was conscious of being watched from inside by someone else. She sensed eyes squinting through the minute gaps in the meshed branches. She thought of the black gaze of the man, Trafford, who had searched her bedroom that morning. Her heart began to thud and her mouth was dry. For a moment she was tempted to turn back, to run off to the safety of her home, only a few hundred yards distant. But she did not run. Instead she took several more deliberate paces towards the willow hide before halting and saying in as steady a voice as she could produce, ‘You can come out now. They've gone.'

Incident at Liverpool Street Station

T
wo days after Alexander Lye's funeral, Tom and Helen Ansell set off for Cambridge and Ely. They went with different objectives and Helen's seemed more feasible and enjoyable than Tom's probably futile hunt for a missing will. Helen had obtained from Arthur Arnett, the editor of
The New Moon
magazine, a commission to write a piece about the old university city and perhaps Ely as well.

In his letter commissioning the article, Arnett expressed his approval of her choice, saying that Cambridgeshire was a county he knew well, and that he would be interested, most interested, to read her views on the region. Helen showed Tom the letter and, although he was pleased for her, he thought privately that the letter was a bit overblown, a bit fulsome. But then, he supposed, that was what these literary types were like, never quite knowing when to stop talking or rein things in. Several times Helen told her husband that the fee for the article would be modest but that the commission might lead to bigger and better things. Tom didn't mind about the fee and was glad to have her company.

In Cambridge, they were to stay at the Devereux Hotel overlooking an open area known as Parker's Piece. Mr Ashley had arranged their stay and described the location of the hotel. During the day Helen planned to wander round Cambridge and capture the ‘very quintessence of the place', as Mr Arnett phrased it, while Tom made the short railway journey to Ely and Phoenix House as the Lyes' place was called. Helen had also been invited to visit by Mrs Lye, whose acquaintance she'd made at the funeral party.

Tom was curious to hear his wife's impressions of Mrs Lye. He had not talked to her himself. They were in a cab on their way to Liverpool Street Station. The journey was slow because the autumn weather, which that year alternated between clear skies and fog as regularly as a metronome, was today in its foggy phase. Through the glassed front of the cab, they saw the copper disc of the sun above the outline of the city's roofs.

‘She is a handsome woman,' said Helen, in answer to Tom's question about Mrs Lye.

‘Is she? I didn't notice.'

‘Yes you did.'

‘Well, I could not see much beneath all the apparatus of mourning.'

‘Men are quick to detect attraction even beneath a veil.'

‘The veil suited
you
, I must say.'

‘You're changing the subject, Tom.'

‘I only wanted to know what you made of Mrs Lye. Her background and character, not her looks.'

‘I am not sure what I made of her but I did glean a few things about her history. She is the daughter of a cleric in Cambridge. She considered the service for Mr Lye to be somewhat “plain and low” – those were her words – so from that I deduce that her father and his church must be high.'

‘Incense and bells and so on,' said Tom.

‘Yes. She has been married to Ernest for a few years now, I'm not sure how many. He is like the squire of the village where they live, a few miles outside Ely. It's called Upper Fen. I had the impression she found life there rather . . . rather confining. She was pleased to be in London even if it was to attend her brother-in-law's funeral. That is all I found out, I think.'

‘You found a lot.'

‘And her name is Lydia.'

‘Lydia Lye has a certain ring to it.'

At Liverpool Street Station they had to leave the cab at a slight distance from the entrance because the terminus was so new that the approaches were not quite finished. They stepped out of the hansom. After the enclosed cab, the air smelled dank and brassy. The driver handed down their cases. Tom paid him off and the generous tip caused him to touch his hand to his cap in an appreciative salute.

A couple of loungers came forward, offering to carry the cases inside the station but Tom waved them away. He preferred to keep his own eyes or hands on the bags until they might be entrusted to a porter. In between stowing his money securely – any railway terminus was fertile ground for pickpockets – and glances at the luggage where it sat on the pavement a few feet away, he failed to notice what was happening on the other side of him.

Helen was standing closer to the kerb. She was lifting the hem of her skirts clear of the dirt and debris on the pavement, and she was looking downwards, not out or around. It was the cab driver who saved her. He was about to urge his horse out to rejoin the stream of carriages and carts and omnibuses that flowed sluggishly along Bishopsgate. Looking over his shoulder into the murk, he shouted, ‘Miss! Look out, Miss!'

Both Tom and Helen turned round simultaneously. A horse and carriage had lurchingly mounted the pavement and were bearing down on her. Tom saw the flare of the horse's nostrils, the muffled face of the driver and his raised hand bearing a whip. Without conscious thought, he reached out, seized Helen about the waist and tugged her towards him. They half stepped, half stumbled out of the path of the horse and carriage. Tom's legs struck against one of the bags and he fell on his back, Helen on top of him.

The carriage rumbled past, the horse's hooves and the ironclad wheels thudding and grinding on the pavement. With a crash, it settled back on to the roadway and jostled its way past Tom and Helen's hansom and into the slow flow of vehicles. During the few seconds that had passed, the driver showed no awareness of having almost struck down a couple of foot-passengers.

Both Tom and Helen were too winded and shaken to react straightaway.

The loungers, whose offers of help Tom was rejecting a few moments earlier, now assisted them to their feet and were public-spirited enough not to attempt to make off with their bags. Perhaps this had something to do with the policeman who wandered over while the couple were brushing the dust and smuts off their coats with small, almost involuntary gestures. Tom began to explain what had occurred, and several bystanders threw in their accounts too. Tom's mouth was dry. Helen was white in the face. He feared she might faint but she shook her head when he asked if she wanted to sit down. Instead she gripped his arm hard.

The policeman, realizing he was dealing with a lady and a gent, was all attention and concern but in truth there was nothing to be done. The murky air was swallowing up the traffic within a hundred yards in either direction along Bishopsgate, obscuring all traces of the runaway carriage. Tom had seen nothing of the driver apart from a slice of face between his muffler and his cap. The interior of the carriage was occupied, though. As he was dragging Helen out of the way, Tom was aware of a face momentarily pressed against the window. Like the driver, the passenger apparently did not care enough to give the order to halt or even to slow down.

Tom cut short anything more he might have said to the policeman. He wanted to get Helen inside the station, into the comfort and shelter of the buffet where they might recover, and fortify themselves with something warm and liquid before boarding the train. He nodded at the policeman's comments about carriage drivers who should know better and the danger of untrained horses, and indicated to a couple of the station loungers that they might, after all, carry the luggage inside. The Ansells entered the new concourse of Liverpool Street, Helen still holding tight to his arm and Tom suddenly conscious that he had injured his shoulder when he fell to the ground. Still, that was so little compared to what might have happened!

A little more than an hour later, and calmer and more at ease after a pot of tea (Helen) and a measure of brandy (Tom) in the station buffet, they boarded the Great Eastern train for Cambridge. Tom had already suggested they might abandon their journey for the day and go back home but Helen wouldn't hear of it. Instead she insisted they purchase their tickets. In the buffet, Tom tried again.

‘Nonsense, Tom. It was an unfortunate accident – or nearly an accident. If it hadn't been for you . . .'

Her voice trailed off and Tom put a reassuring hand on her arm. She gave a little smile and said, ‘Anyway, I am quite recovered now.'

Her bloodless complexion and the way she concentrated on her movements as she lifted the teacup to her lips told a slightly different story. But Tom did not want to contradict her. Also he thought that a train journey might distract her.

He said nothing to his wife but he was not so certain that their near-miss was an accident. The carriage driver's face had been well wrapped up, because of the foggy cold or perhaps because he wanted to conceal himself. The driver made no attempt to restrain his horse – indeed, the raised whip seemed to show he was urging the animal on – nor did he slow to see if any harm was done. There seemed something deliberate, something very non-accidental, about the way in which the horse and carriage mounted the pavement as if aiming at the very place where Helen and he were standing.

They walked to the platform where their train was waiting. The upper reaches of the glass canopy were obscured by fog and smoke. Down below a train, hissing and clanking, was pulling into a neighbouring platform. Through the gloom, its lights showed a dirty yellow and white. Tom thought of the face he'd seen pressed against the window of the carriage that almost ran them down. The face was familiar. He had only a half-second's glimpse but something about its wrinkled curiosity, its toothy mouth, reminded him of the man from the Abney Park undertakers Willow & Son. Reminded him of Mr Eric Fort.

The Spy

T
om said nothing to Helen about his suspicion that the face at the carriage window belonged to the undertaker's man, Eric Fort. During the hour-long railway journey to Cambridge he tried to put the pale apparition out of his mind and concentrated instead on distracting Helen who, from her rather stiff gestures and silence, was still recovering from the shock. But there was little to distract her. Not much to look at in the flattish countryside that unfurled outside the window, nor any fellow passengers who looked interesting enough to speculate about.

They took a cab from Cambridge railway station to the Devereux Hotel, where they were staying. The hotel was on the edge of the older part of town and overlooked a large grassy area which seemed to have been caught up in the spread of new housing. While the outside porter was bringing in their bags, Helen and Tom gazed round the spacious lobby. Several individuals were lounging there, either hiding behind newspapers or staring with interest at any new arrivals. One of these loungers, a rotund little man, lifted himself out of an armchair and bowled himself in their direction. He came to a stop in front of them. He was shorter than both Tom and Helen.