three years ago and since then has done her best to ignore them.
There used to be children, she remembers, loud teenagers who played music into the early hours and tramped over the Saltmarsh with surfboards and inflatable boats. There are no children in evidence on this visit.
'Ed and I… we're having a little New Year's party. Just some friends who are coming up from London. Very casual, just kitchen sups. We wondered if you'd like to come.'
Ruth can't believe her ears. It's been years since she's been invited to a New Year's party and now she has two invitations to refuse. It's a conspiracy.
'Thank you very much,' she says, 'But my head of department's having a party and I might have to…'
'Oh, I do understand.' Sammy, like Ruth's parents, seems to have no difficulty in understanding that Ruth might want to go to a party from motives of duty alone.
'You work at the university, don't you?'
'Yes. I teach archaeology.'
'Archaeology! Ed would love that. He never misses Time Team. I thought you might have changed jobs.'
Ruth looks at her blankly, though she has a good idea what is coming.
Sammy laughs gaily. 'The police car! This morning.'
'Oh, that,' says Ruth. 'I'm just helping the police with their enquiries.'
And with that, she thinks grimly, Sammy will have to be content.
That night, in bed, Ruth finishes the Lucy Downey letters.
She was halfway through the letter dated March 1996, with its surprising mention of cursuses and the causeways.
A cursus is a fairly obscure archaeological term meaning a shallow ditch. There is a cursus at Stonehenge, older even than the stones.
… Look at the cursuses and the causeways. We crawl on the surface of the earth but we do not know its ways, or divine its intent.
In peace.
April 1998
Dear Harry,
Happy Easter. I do not think of you as a Christian somehow. You seem to belong to the older ways.
At Easter, Christians believe Christ died on the cross for their sins but did not Odin do this before him, sacrificing himself on the Tree of All Knowledge? Like Nelson.
Odin had only one eye. How many eyes do you have Detective Inspector? A thousand, like Argus?
Lucy is buried deep now. But she will flower again.
In peace.
Now come the two handwritten letters. They are undated but someone (Nelson?) has scribbled the date they were received:
Received 21 June 1998 Dear Harry, Greetings of the summer solstice be with you. Happy Litha time. Hail to the Sun God.
Beware the water spirits and light bonfires on the beach. Beware the wicker man.
Now the sun turns southwards and evil spirits walk abroad. Follow the will o'the wisps, the spirits of the dead children. Who knows where they will lead you?
In peace.
Received 23 June 1998 Dear Harry, Compliments of St John's Day. Sankt Hans Aften. Herbs picked on St John's Eve have special healing powers.
Did you know that? I have so much to teach you.
You are no nearer to Lucy and that makes me sad. But do not weep for her. I have rescued her and raised her up. I have saved her from a life of the mundane, a life spent worshipping false Gods. I have made her the perfect sacrifice.
Weep rather for yourself and for your children and your children's children.
In peace.
Now the letters revert to typewriting and the tone changes.
No longer is there the half affectionate teasing, the assumption that Nelson and the writer are 'old friends' and share a special bond. Now the writer seems angry, resentful.
There is a gap of four months before the next letter and the date is predictable:
31st October 1998
Dear Detective Inspector Nelson, Now is the time when the dead walk. Graves have yawned and yielded up their dead. Beware the living and the dead. Beware the living dead. We who were living are now dying.
You have disappointed me, Detective Inspector. I have shared my wisdom with you and still you are no nearer to me or to Lucy. You are, after all, a man bound to the earth and to The Mundane. I had hoped for better things of you.
Tomorrow is the Feast of All Saints. Will you find St Lucy there in all the holy pantheon? Or is she, too, bound to the earth?
In sadness.
25th November 1998
Dear Detective Inspector Nelson, It is now a year since Lucy Downey vanished. The world has turned full circle and what have you to show for it? Truly you have feet of clay.
A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on the things of flesh, whose heart turns from the Lord. He is like dry scrub in the wastelands, if good comes, he has no eyes for it.
In sadness.
December 1998
Dear Detective Inspector Nelson, I nearly did not write to wish you compliments of the season but then I thought that you would miss me.
But, in truth, I am deeply disappointed in you.
A girl, a young girl, an innocent soul, vanishes but you do not read the signs. A seer, a shaman, offers you the hand of friendship and you decline it. Look into your own heart, Detective Inspector. Truly it must be a dark place, full of bitterness and regret.
Yet Lucy is in light. That I promise you.
In sadness.
The last letter is dated January 2007: Dear Detective Inspector Nelson, Had you forgotten me? But with each New Year I think of you. Are you any nearer to the right path? Or have your feet strayed into the way of despair and lamentation?
I saw your picture in the paper last week. What sadness and loneliness is etched in those lines! Even though you have betrayed me, still I ache with pity for you.
You have daughters. Do you watch them? Do you keep them close at all times?
I hope so for the night is full of voices and my ways are very dark. Perhaps I will call to you again one day?
In peace.
What did Nelson think, wonders Ruth, when he read that open threat to his own children? Her own hair is standing on end and she is nervously checking the curtains for signs of lurking bodies. How did Nelson feel about receiving these letters, over months and years, with their implication that he and the writer are in some way bound together, accomplices, even friends?
Ruth looks at the date on the last letter. Ten months later Scarlet Henderson vanishes. Is this man responsible? Is he even responsible for Lucy Downey? There is nothing concrete in these letters, only a web of allusion, quotation and superstition. She shakes her head, trying to clear it.
She recognises the Bible and Shakespeare, of course, but she wishes she had Shoria for some of the other references.
She is sure there is some T.S. Eliot in there somewhere.
What interests her more are the Norse allusions: Odin, the Tree of all Knowledge, the water spirits. And, even more than that, the signs of some archaeological knowledge. No layman, surely, would use the word 'cursuses'. She lies in bed, rereading, wondering…
