Chapter 35
The rest of the week passed without incident or drama. Marnie didn’t see Herv to talk to, he was working away from the manor, mending windows, fixing tiles on Dr Court’s roof, doing general maintenance around the village. She spotted him at the top of a ladder when she was strolling back to Little Raspberries on the Wednesday. He turned, saw her – or so she thought – she waved, but he turned back, so she presumed he couldn’t have. She thought nothing more of it than that he needed to concentrate on not falling and breaking his neck.
Letters were either pushed through her own letterbox or were waiting for her at the manor from the villagers all accepting the new agreements. Una’s arrived with a hole in the paper at the end of her signature as if she had stabbed it hatefully with her pen. Herv’s hadn’t come yet, but she knew it would. Nor had Titus’s, not surprisingly. By Marnie’s latest calculations – and she was sure there was more she had to still uncover – he owed the estate well over a million pounds. Mr Wemyss had since found out that Mr Helliwell at the farm had been paying his due after all – and had a rent book to prove it. The monies had been going directly into a mysterious company bank account, it seemed, and the farmer hadn’t had sight nor sound of any loyalty payments.
Titus drove past her in his E-Type on the Thursday morning as she was walking up to the manor, and deliberately swerved to hit a puddle and drench her. She gave a throttled scream and shook her fist at the car hoping he would see her in his rear-view mirror. She was swearing a bouquet of profanities when Lionel caught her up.
‘I saw that,’ he said. ‘What an odious man.’
‘Sorry about the language, Lionel.’
‘I would have said the same,’ he replied, though Marnie doubted it. She twisted her shirt to squeeze out some water. Her whole right side was soaked.
‘Marnie, I wanted to say I thought you were magnificent at the meeting the other night,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long time coming. And I know that Lilian gave me a small stipend from the estate but—’
‘But nothing,’ Marnie broke in. ‘That will continue. Lilian would rise up and lynch me if stopped that.’
‘Marnie, that’s exceptionally kind of you.’
‘I might have to start coming to church to save my damned soul,’ she said and Lionel laughed then and said, ‘You are very welcome to call and see me if ever you need any spiritual guidance.’
‘I don’t think you’d know where to start.’
‘If Lilian Dearman liked you, I’m pretty sure you haven’t strayed too much from the path of righteousness.’
Marnie sighed, suddenly emotional. ‘I’ve made so many cock-ups in my life, Lionel.’
‘You wouldn’t be human if you were perfect, Marnie,’ he replied.
‘Oh I’m about as far from perfect as you can possibly get.’ She could feel rainwater dripping down her back from her hair. She must look like the woman from The Ring. ‘I was just off up to the manor house. I’ll have to go home and change now.’
‘Let me walk with you,’ said Lionel, and they fell into a step together, a companiable silence between them until Lionel spoke again.
‘Have you noticed Lilian’s collection of ceramics?’
‘The broken pots and plates?’
Lionel smiled. ‘Those are the ones. I’m presuming then that you haven’t heard of the ancient art of Kintsugi?’
‘Nope. I’m guessing it’s Japanese though,’ Marnie answered, given the exaggerated accent which Lionel had used to say the word.
‘Indeed. It’s the art of repairing pottery with gold in the understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Marnie, not really understanding why they’d moved from her soggy appearance and damned soul to an art lesson.
‘Take a good look at them when you go up to the manor because they’re very valuable, Marnie. More valuable now than they ever were in their original perfect state.’
She still wasn’t sure where Lionel was going with this.
‘Lilian was completely smashed by life and it was love that built her up and made her more beautiful and whole than she ever was before. Love is the gold that can mend a broken heart and make it stronger than ever.’
Ah, now she got it.
‘Are you talking about George Purcell?’ Marnie asked and saw Lionel shoot her a look as if he was shocked that she knew about that affair. ‘Lilian told me all about how he’d broken her heart. I didn’t realise there was someone after him who . . . mended her.’
‘Yes, there was. Not only mended but recreated her into the Lilian you adored.’ He moved the subject on. ‘By the way, you have quite a few well-wishers in the village. Derek Price for one thinks you should be canonised.’
Marnie cringed visibly. ‘Is he all right in his new abode?’
‘Happy as the proverbial pig in muck,’ Lionel chuckled. ‘As I said to Una, no one forced him to go. He was given the option and he took it. Lilian did consider letting him have Little Raspberries after Jessie died, but something held her back. Then she asked me if I thought it was wise to let him have Autumn Leaves and I said I wasn’t sure, so I presumed she’d changed her mind.’
‘Autumn Leaves?’ She had a sudden vision of Derek living in a huge pile of brown leaves. And still looking happier than when he resided with Una.
‘The old name for the gravedigger’s house, although no one ever calls it anything but the gravedigger’s house. That’s why Lilian didn’t bother to rename it when she did all the others, at least the habitable ones. She hated Wychwell, and who could blame her, so I suggested that it might help endear the place to her. I think it worked, in part.’
‘I saw the Pink Lady on Monday,’ said Marnie.
‘Did you now?’
‘For the second time. I’m not convinced it’s a ghost, Lionel.’
‘I have never seen her, so I couldn’t comment.’ They were at Marnie’s door. ‘And now I have escorted you safely, I must take my leave because I have an appointment with Griff and a chessboard. I’ve been practising my opening gambits.’
‘Right-o,’ said Marnie.
‘Hasta la Vista, as Mr Schwarzenegger might say. And thank you again.’
‘Pleasure,’ said Marnie.
Lionel made a courteous half-bow. ‘Remember that word: Kintsugi.’ Then he was off.
Marnie went inside to change. For such a relatively short conversation Lionel had given her a lot to think about there: broken valuables and mended people and something else that had piqued her interest. Something to do with the gravedigger’s house. And, unless she was very much mistaken, Lionel didn’t seem half as surprised as she would have expected to hear that the Pink Lady might not be a ghost at all.
The manor was silent that afternoon. Herv and Johnny were out buying building materials and Cilla and Zoe finished at lunchtime. Marnie unfolded a huge blueprint of the estate plans which she had found in the box containing the ledgers. She studied it for clues, but she couldn’t find anything of interest, then she sat down with the History of Wychwell, a coffee and a plate of biscuits.
The Gravedigger’s House, is a one-bedroomed property on the edge of the church gardens. The cottage is the smallest property on the estate and was built c1790. It was originally a single storey building, a second floor was built approximately one hundred years later.
The house was originally called Autumn Leaves, inspired by the banks of leaves that always drift against it from the churchyard trees in Autumn, yet the name was never used. The last inhabitant of the cottage died in 2012, ninety-year-old Diggory ‘Ox’ Hoyle who had to be forced into retirement at eighty-five years old. Diggory’s father Seth was also . . .
There followed a long list of names and dates but nothing more about the house itself. Her moment of enlightenment, like Lilian’s, had flittered away before she’d had the chance to get her net out and catch it.
In all honesty, filling her head with a whodunit was preferable to leaving it empty so that Justin Fox could take up residence in it. She had no idea why she had agreed to meet him. What if his wife turned up with a machete? She permitted herself to think about snogging him in the car. He’d been a good kisser, or so she’d thought then: urgent and passionate and lip-bruising. It had seemed exciting, naughty, thrilling having sex on the back seat, snatching illicit moments with him, outlawed by Laurence and cocking a snook at his controlling wife. Looking back it was tacky, tawdry and bloody uncomfortable and she felt sickened. Herv Gunnarsen’s kiss had set a new standard, as brief as it was. And his big hands holding her face so carefully had done more to fire up her sexual hormones than Justin Fox and his hasty, blind-dart-player, way-off-the-bullseye fumbling had ever done. It hadn’t mattered at the time because she knew that the more they got to know each other, the more they’d get into each other’s rhythm. She’d taken care to read his satisfied ums and ahs but, thinking about it, he hadn’t really changed his technique to suit what she wanted. Maybe he was too attuned to what he did with his wife. Wham, bam and thank you, ma’am.
Why the farts did she say yes she would see him?
Because I want that apology, her inner self said. Because I want to have the last word. Because I want to show him that I don’t care.
She just hoped that when she saw him the following day, she really didn’t care.