The Thornthwaite Inheritance Page 9

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  THE LADY WITH THE FLOWERS

  On their way to the graveyard, Lorelli and Adam passed the village school. It was a small modern one-storey building, surrounded by a playground, with brightly coloured patterns on the concrete that would have been filled with children playing during term time.

  ‘What’s it like?’ asked Lorelli.

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve never been there,’ said Adam.

  ‘I mean, what’s it like going to school. I’ve only ever been taught at home?’

  ‘Oh that. It’s great fun. Saint Swivels is much bigger than this little school, of course. It’s got four football fields, eight basketball courts, twenty tennis courts, a science lab, a gym, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. It’s even got a working farm on site.’

  ‘You sound like a brochure,’ said Lorelli. ‘What I mean is, what’s it like having friends, going to classes, being away from home, having teachers you like and ones you don’t . . . things like that?’ She was thinking of the various books she had read about school life.

  ‘Oh, that’s all brilliant,’ said Adam with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘I’ve got loads of friends and all the teachers like me.’

  They approached the tall spire of the church. On the other side of the road from it was a flat-roofed building with a sign outside which said: PRINTING PRESS.

  Lorelli pointed to the large wooden doors at the front of the church. ‘You don’t think Father Whelan’s in there, do you?’ she said anxiously.

  ‘No. He walked off in the other direction,’ said Adam. ‘Where’s your parents’ grave?’

  ‘I don’t know. This is my first time here,’ admitted Lorelli.

  ‘It’ll be quicker to find it if we split up to look,’ said Adam brightly. ‘I’ll head this way around the church, you go that way.’

  Lorelli agreed. She wasn’t sure if she wanted Adam there when she found her parents’ grave, not knowing how she would feel when she saw it.

  Walking alone through the graveyard, Lorelli found it an oddly unemotional experience to read the names, dates and inscriptions of people she had never known. Then she saw a name she did recognise.

  Hedley Bagshaw

  Now part of the local history he loved so much

  Died aged 41, 1996

  ‘Here, my dear. Place this on his grave.’

  Lorelli turned to face the woman who had spoken. She had kind eyes, long unkempt hair and several layers of mismatched clothes as though she had been unsure what to put on that morning and so had worn everything. In her arms she carried a bunch of colourful flowers, one of which she was holding out for Lorelli.

  Lorelli took the flower and put it on the gravestone. ‘Did you know him?’ she asked.

  The woman read the name on the gravestone. ‘Hedley Bagshaw? No, but I come here to put flowers on the gravestones of those neglected by the living. Even the dead need caring for, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m looking for my parents,’ said Lorelli.

  ‘Where did you last see them?’

  ‘I mean, they’re dead. I’m looking for the gravestone.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ The woman smiled kindly. ‘What name, my love?’

  ‘Thornthwaite,’ replied Lorelli, nervous about revealing her name.

  She wondered whether the woman was checking her eye colour but all she said was, ‘Your ancestors are in the far corner. I’ll show you.’

  She followed her across the graveyard. ‘My name is Miss Wilde,’ said the woman. ‘I work in the village library. Do you read much?’

  ‘A fair amount.’ Lorelli felt a rush of excitement at the thought of a different library to explore.

  ‘You should come and join.’

  ‘Am I allowed? Mr Crutcher says there’s no point reading other books until I’ve read all the ones at home.’

  ‘Well, Mr Crutcher doesn’t know what he’s talking about, then. You should come to the library and have a look at our collection.’

  ‘I will,’ promised Lorelli, thinking about the possibility of finding another book by Imelda Gaunt.

  Miss Wilde led her to a part of the graveyard where the grass had grown long and dandelions and buttercups had been allowed to spread. The gravestones seemed much older and many had given way to subsidence. ‘This is where your family lies,’ she said.

  With the overhanging trees it was darker than the rest of the graveyard. Many of the gravestones were carved into elaborate shapes to signify her ancestors’ passions in life. A carved globe stood on Lord Orinoco Thornthwaite’s grave; on Lord Royston’s was a stone boxing glove; and Lord Elroy Thornthwaite’s bore a heart engraved with his wife’s name. However, years of neglect had taken their toll on these things. The globe was cracked, the boxing glove was chipped, and the stone heart lay broken in two.

  In the far corner Lorelli found a newer-looking gravestone, black with white writing. She took a deep breath and read the words.

  Here Lie

  Lord Mycroft Thornthwaite

  Died 1996, aged 43

  And his beloved wife,

  Lady Martha Thornthwaite

  Died 1996, aged 35

  May both their souls rest easy

  Lorelli was surprised to see that a bunch of flowers was lying in front of the grave. ‘Who laid these?’ she asked.

  ‘I did,’ replied Miss Wilde.

  Lorelli felt a surge of guilt and terrible sadness. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, dropping to her knees. Agonising grief tore through her heart and tears ran down her face. It was the first time she had cried for her parents. Mr Crutcher had always taught her and Ovid that grief should be quiet and respectful, not open and gushing. It felt overwhelming and scary to allow emotion to take control of her body. She didn’t know how long she knelt there, lost in the trauma of her self-pity, before she heard Adam speak.

  ‘There you are,’ he said.

  Lorelli wiped her face and stood up. ‘Where’s she gone?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The woman with the flowers.’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone,’ said Adam. ‘Oh, I see you’ve found your parents’ grave.’ He knelt down to look at it and Lorelli noticed his expression darken. ‘1996, the same year my mum died,’ he said.

  .

  BAGSHAW’S END

  Lorelli and Adam left the graveyard through a nearby gate and found themselves in a small winding lane. They walked down it and came to a tiny thatched cottage, surrounded by a densely overgrown garden. Creeping vines and ivy covered the building, as though the wild garden was slowly devouring the cottage.

  ‘Do you think someone lives there?’ said Lorelli, stopping to look at it.

  ‘If they do they need a gardener,’ replied Adam.

  Lorelli read the name etched into the wooden sign on the front gate. ‘Bagshaw’s End,’ she read aloud. ‘This was where Mrs Bagshaw and her husband lived before she moved to Thornthwaite Manor.’ She lifted the latch and opened the gate.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Adam.

  ‘I’m going to take a closer look.’ She made her way along the path, stepping over roots and branches, being careful to avoid the tall stinging nettles.

  ‘Isn’t this trespassing?’

  ‘The house is part of our estate. You can’t trespass on your own property. Besides, look at this garden, no one’s been here in years.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’ said Adam, noticing a low hum from the back of the garden.

  ‘It sounds like a generator,’ replied Lorelli, trying the door. After what the priest had said, and then finding Hedley Bagshaw’s grave, she felt an overwhelming urge to look inside. ‘This one’s locked. Let’s try the back.’

  Walking around the cottage, they tried to see inside but all the windows were
brown with dirt.

  ‘I still don’t feel right about this,’ said Adam.

  ‘Stay out here, then,’ said Lorelli. Adam was starting to get on her nerves. She tried the back door and, to her surprise, found it was unlocked. She stepped into a small grubby kitchen and had a vision of what it would have looked like when Mrs Bagshaw lived there, with flowers on the windowsill, pots and pans so clean you could see your reflection in them, and enticing smells wafting from the oven. It was a stark contrast to the grimy, disused kitchen she was in now.

  Adam followed her in. He ran a finger across a filthy counter. ‘Disgusting, isn’t it?’

  Lorelli walked into the hallway and then into the front room, where the foliage had found its way inside through gaps in the window frame and spread its long green tentacles along the walls.

  ‘This place must have been deserted for years,’ said Adam.

  Lorelli wiped a window to let more light in and saw, in the corner of the room, a pile of newspapers. She picked one up and read the front page. It was an old copy of the Hexford Express, filled with stories of minor incidents and local concerns. Her eyes were drawn to an article at the bottom of the front page.

  ‘Listen to this,’ she said, reading it out. ‘Not to be missed in next week’s paper, local historian Hedley Bagshaw delves into another fascinating family tree, uncovering details of how we used to live through personal stories of local families. In the next instalment of this popular series, Mr Bagshaw will be unravelling the history of local nobility, the Thornthwaite family.’

  The paper was dated October 1996.

  ‘That was the same year he died,’ said Lorelli, remembering the date on the gravestone. She picked up the following week’s paper and searched for the article. ‘It’s not in here.’

  ‘Check all the pages. Maybe they moved where it was in the paper,’ suggested Adam.

  Lorelli systematically turned every page of the old, yellowed newspaper.

  ‘There it is. That’s his name, at the bottom of that page,’ said Adam.

  ‘This isn’t the article,’ said Lorelli. ‘It’s the obituaries.’

  They read.

  Hedley Bagshaw, local historian and printer of this newspaper, died tragically yesterday when he fell into the printing press while producing this edition of the newspaper. A highly valued member of the team and regular contributor to the paper, he leaves behind him a wife and a recently adopted baby girl, Hazel. Our thoughts are with them at this sad time.

  Next to the article was a picture of a smiling man with kind eyes. Lorelli thought again about Father Whelan’s accusation that Hedley had been killed by her father. Adam, who had been reading over Lorelli’s shoulder, said, ‘I’m going back to the manor.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This is all wrong, creeping around someone else’s house. I should never have followed you in.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No,’ said Adam firmly. ‘I’d rather go alone. Here, use this to pay for your bus.’ He threw her a pound coin and stormed out of the room.

  Lorelli sat down. She turned the coin over in her hand, feeling confused by Adam’s sudden change of tone and hurt by his decision to leave without her. He had brought her to the village and abandoned her there.

  On the dusty coffee table in front of her was a pile of paper. She picked up the top piece. Realising what it was, she grabbed the whole pile and looked through, unable to believe what she was seeing. Each had a line-drawn design on it. One was of a tree, with a line running from a branch down to a small circle labelled in capital letters, TRIGGER. It was a design for the attack at the old oak tree. Another had a picture of a horse, with an arrow pointing to the underside of the saddle, with the word POLLEN beneath.

  ‘Ovid,’ said Lorelli to herself. She had often wondered where Ovid kept his designs. Now she knew.

  .

  THE HAMMER AND THE HIVE

  Lorelli looked through the pages of diagrams and plans. She was in no doubt that they were Ovid’s. Some of them she recognised. Some she didn’t. They didn’t all make sense to her, like the bike tube filled with honey, but they all had the hallmark of her brother’s technically brilliant and murderous mind. She looked at one showing a hammer attached to a pole, next to a wooden box. Her eyes were drawn to the words next to it.

  KILLER BEES’ HIVE

  Reading these words, Lorelli became aware that she could still hear the low hum coming from the back garden. She had dismissed the noise as some kind of generator. She had stopped listening, but tuning in again she realised what it was. It was the buzzing of bees.

  Lorelli followed the sound out of the house, into the overgrown garden. She rounded a hedge and came to a sudden halt when she saw what was behind it. In front of her was a large rectangular box, alive with noise and activity as a constant stream of bees flew in and out of holes in the side.

  Just like in the line drawing, the hive was balanced on top of a stool, which was carefully placed on a metal grate. Next to this was a vertical metal pole, with a spring running up it. Another pole was attached horizontally at the top, at the end of which was a hammer.

  Lorelli gazed at it, wondering about its purpose. She took a step forward to get a closer look. Then another. Then one more.

  She was getting uncomfortably close now but before she could turn back she felt the ground beneath her feet give way. She screamed as she slipped down into a hole and threw her arms out, but she couldn’t get a grip. The hole wasn’t very deep but it sloped at an angle. She felt her feet slip and she slid on her back, further underground. It all happened so quickly that before she knew what was going on, she was lying flat, looking up through a grate, directly underneath the hive.

  The buzzing was even louder here and the sky was obscured by thousands of bees. She could hear a ticking noise and saw that the horizontal bar with the hammer on the end was moving back.

  Tick-tick-tick, it went.

  As it moved, it tightened the spring.

  Tick-tick-tick.

  Too late, Lorelli understood the design. Her fall had triggered the movement of the hammer. Once the maximum pressure had been reached the hammer would spring back and fly into the side of the beehive, knocking it off its stool and smashing it on to the grate, sending thousands of angry bees out. Scared and confused, the swarm would be ready to sting the first thing they came across. The whole thing was an elaborate trap designed to catch anyone who got too close to the beehive.

  Tick-tick-tick.

  Lorelli tried to climb out of the hole but her feet were wedged in. She clawed at the dirt with her fingernails but still couldn’t move. Ovid had designed the trap well.

  Tick-tick-tick.

  She tried pushing the grate but realised that moving it would tip the stool and knock the hive on top of her. ‘Help!’ she shouted. ‘I’m stuck. Help.’

  No reply came.

  She was alone.

  The spring looked like it couldn’t take much more. It was vibrating with the pressure. The hammer was about to swing.

  Tick-tick . . . CLICK.

  The spring reached its point of full tension and the hammer swung towards the hive.

  With the knowledge that a hive of killer bees was about to descend on her, Lorelli could have been forgiven for crying, but her green eyes watched unflinchingly as the hammer crashed into the side of the hive, sending an army of bees gushing out like troops called to battle.

  This is it, she thought, this is how I die.

  Honey dripped down from the broken hive, landing on her upper lip, sticky, sweet and spicy. She wondered if it would be the last thing she tasted before she was stung to death.

  .

  A MOVEMENT IN THE WINDOW

  Lying in the trap, awaiting her painful death, Lorelli suddenly fel
t two strong hands grab her shoulders and haul her out of the hole. She opened her eyes and saw the hive crash into the grate, sending a mushroom cloud of bees into the air. Gloved hands carried her away. Her saviour’s face was obscured by a beekeeper’s hood.

  They reached the front of the cottage and Lorelli saw a tractor parked there. Her rescuer pulled off his hood.

  ‘Have you been stung, Miss Lorelli?’ said Tom Paine.

  ‘Tom,’ said Lorelli.

  ‘Hello Miss Lorelli. Have you been stung?’ he repeated.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Good, because you’d know about it if you had been. Now, you stay here and I’ll go and sort out them bees.’ With which he lifted Lorelli up on to the tractor seat and headed back around the side of the house.

  ‘Were they killer bees?’ asked Lorelli, when he returned.

  ‘Oh aye. Nasty little blighters too. I’ve been trying to track them down since we last saw them.’

  ‘How do you track a bee?’

  ‘Same as tracking any animal, with lots of patience and attention to detail.’

  ‘What did you do to them?’

  ‘I killed them.’

  ‘Killed them?’

  ‘Yes. You see they’re illegal in this country and they don’t get on with our domestic bees. So I sprayed them with insecticide and put them all to sleep. Shame in a way. I had to spray all the honey too. I’d love to know what it tastes like. What were you doing here anyway?’

  ‘I saw the name on the gate,’ said Lorelli. ‘And after what the priest said . . .’

  ‘Father Whelan?’ interrupted Tom. ‘Let me guess, he told you that your father had something to do with Hedley Bagshaw’s death?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lorelli, surprised that Tom already knew this.

  ‘Well, you don’t want to be taking heed of anything that old drunkard in a dress says. At the time he would tell anyone that would listen that he saw Lord Mycroft coming out of the printer’s on the night Hedley died, but there’s no truth in it. Firstly, that church is a good distance from the printer’s and at the time the trees would have been covered in leaves. You try looking to see how clearly you can see across the road. Secondly, old Whelan always had it in for your father on account of having to pay rent for the vicarage. Thirdly, your mum and dad were in Venice at the time on honeymoon, so there’s no way he had anything to do with it. That old priest is just a drunken troublemaker.’