‘So what did Campbell have to say?’ asked Fran. ‘You still haven’t told me.’
Libby told her everything Campbell had said. ‘So now perhaps we ought to look it up backwards, if you know what I mean,’ she finished. ‘Although I really don’t know why all this history didn’t come up before when we were researching it.’
‘What we still don’t know,’ said Fran, staring thoughtfully into the empty fireplace, ‘is who owned it in the fifties.’
‘No.’ Libby frowned. ‘And that’s the most puzzling bit of all. We know it was a merchant’s house, then a workhouse, then a TB sanatorium, but we don’t know what happened after that, and who was excavating. Who dug up the body? And Campbell said it was someone who worked there who put around the story of the ghost.’
‘But far more puzzling,’ said Fran, ‘is who is clearing the grave and laying flowers now?’
‘Well, I said to Campbell, it surely wouldn’t be a relative of the person who’s buried there. It would be too long ago.’
‘Fifties? A child? We’re talking between forty and fifty years ago. It could easily be a relative. A younger sibling. An older one, even. It could even be a parent.’
‘I suppose so, but not a parent. They’d be too old to clear the grave.’
‘It still doesn’t seem right to me.’ Fran put her mug down on the hearth. ‘Why, if there are graves from that long ago, is someone trying to scare us off?’
‘Not just us,’ said Libby, ‘everybody. That music plays for the police, too.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘ANDREW’S GONE THROUGH THE records he can find and apparently Ian’s demanded Land Registry information,’ said Fran on the phone the following morning.
‘And?’
‘I don’t know. Andrew thinks he’s got something, but he isn’t sure what.’
‘Can anybody look up previous ownership of houses?’ Libby was tapping various combinations of words into her search engine.
‘I think you have to pay,’ said Fran. ‘Anyway, Andrew said he’d phone later. He was going to see Rosie.’
‘You’re right. It does look as though you have to pay. Did you know that the Canterbury Land Registry office is in Nottingham?’
‘How ridiculous. Well, I hope Ian has some joy with it. Although if he thinks that it’s an old body I can’t see why he’s bothering.’
Libby sat for a while in front of the laptop, wondering how she could find out any more about White Lodge. As it was Saturday, she could reasonably expect no results from either Andrew or Ian until Monday and it irked her to sit and do nothing, even if there was nothing she was expected to do.
“Gone cold” was the term she had used to Ben the previous evening when telling him about the developments. He had been careful not to show how pleased he was about this, but she’d known, and been depressed.
This morning, however, he’d gone off with his cousins Peter and James to make a rare visit to his son who lived somewhere in the north. Ben’s relationship with his children had been soured by the break-up of his marriage, and he rarely had the opportunity to see either of them, so despite the fact that it would mean a weekend on her own, Libby was pleased for him.
And, she reminded herself, it meant she could do exactly what she wanted until Sunday night. Harry had suggested she joined him at The Pink Geranium for Sunday lunch, but, other than that, she was free. So free, in fact, that she immediately decided to go and have another look at White Lodge. But first, she looked it up on the satellite mapping site to see if there was any other way in.
It was confusing, however. She could see the open road by which she and Fran had approached it, but the grounds around it looked heavily wooded and seemed to have no definitive boundary. There did appear to be a lane which led towards the back of the property, but it petered out as far as she could see. Still, she thought, it was worth a try.
The easiest way to approach the other side of the property was to go via Steeple Mount, a village which hadn’t always had happy connotations for Libby, but she drove through happily enough, noting as she did so that the baker’s shop had gone, and gave a quick glance upwards to the standing stone Grey Betty, keeping watch over the town. The road dipped down to become a cut between high, heavily treed banks, similar to many others in this part of Kent, although Libby knew that either side of the lane the fields spread out with hardly a tree in sight.
Then, she came to a crossroads. A few houses and a pub were gathered round it, and to her right what looked like a small estate of new houses. Hesitating, she looked round for clues. Nothing. As there was no one to be seen, she couldn’t ask directions, but then she didn’t know where she was aiming for herself. With a shrug, she put the car into gear and went straight on.
The lane began to climb a slight slope. On Libby’s right were a few more cottages, on her left a terrace of them and what looked like a coach-house, with a carriage entrance. Then, on a rise to her left surrounded by even more trees, a church. She frowned. This was odd. She had assumed White Lodge was quite isolated, but creeping up behind it was all this civilization. Although to be fair, she told herself, she didn’t know exactly how far away from White Lodge she was. And sure enough, as shown on her computer, the lane, by now thick with last year’s fallen leaves and almost completely shaded from the sun by huge trees, petered out. Yards ahead of her an old gate hung half open on its hinges, and to her left, a bank of rubble and tree roots, behind which the forbidding grey face of a large, stone building.
Libby got out of the car. It looked as though where she had parked had once been some kind of drive or entrance, but now access to the building had effectively been silted up. Nevertheless, she climbed over the worst of the roots and scrambled to the top of the bank, where she peered past huge tree trunks to the building itself.
At this end there were no windows, but further along there were a few. Many were cracked or simply missing, and she could see nothing of what was inside except the flutter of a piece of rag at one of the upper casements. There was little clue as to what age the building was, other than iron building ties high up on the blank wall.
She contemplated climbing down the other side of the bank but the area between it and the building was so overgrown with brambles it was even worse than the gardens of White Lodge. She looked up at the grey wall in front of her. White Lodge. Was this in the grounds of White Lodge?
She climbed back down the bank, went round the car and to the end of the lane where the gate hung open. Peering to the left, she could see nothing but a line of trees, and, in front of her, a wide, open field, full of something golden and waving. Wheat, she supposed. Well, logically, it could be the back boundary of the grounds of White Lodge, and, she thought suddenly, this could in fact be one of the old workhouse buildings. She went back to it and shivered. Above the trees the sun was still shining, but here all was cool and ominously still.
‘Can I help you?’
Libby almost screamed. When she turned round, so quickly she almost fell, she found herself being regarded politely by a dark-skinned man with a moustache and a very sharp suit.
‘Oh, goodness!’ she said. ‘You startled me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The man stepped forward a little. ‘I wondered if you were lost?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Libby, feeling uncomfortable and wondering how much she should say. ‘I was hoping to find – um – a back way to Cherry Ashton.’
‘Ah.’ The man smiled. ‘This is Cherry Ashton.’ He waved a hand behind him. ‘Not very big, you see. Were you looking for someone in particular?’
Someone, he said, not something.
‘Well, I was, actually.’ Libby gave what she hoped was a disarming smile as her brain raced. ‘The Cherry Ashton workhouse.’
He raised his brows. ‘Really? But that has been gone since the beginning of the last century.’
Bum. Think again. ‘Yes, I know, but I was hoping to find some remnants of it. You see,’ she went on, gathering confidence, ‘the main house is still standing, and it was turned into a sanatorium after the workhouse was demolished. I thought there must have been at least one other building in use as the sanatorium.’ She gestured behind her. ‘So I wondered if this was it?’
