A Woman of Consequence

come.’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Dido, tried beyond endurance. ‘We do not even know that Penelope saw a ghost!’

Lucy sat up sharply, her small mouth contracted, her brow furrowed. ‘I declare,’ she cried in a quick, peevish voice, ‘you are quite determined to find out that there is no ghost in the ruins, are you not?’

‘I am determined to come at the truth.’

‘But the truth is that there is a ghost. Everyone in the place has seen her now.’

‘Have they?’ cried Dido in amazement. Then, immediately suspecting the information, she asked, ‘And who, precisely is “everyone”?’

‘Oh, all the housemaids – well, I believe that two of them have. And Jones, who is Mrs Harman-Foote’s maid.’

‘They have seen the Grey Nun?’

‘Oh yes! Did you not know? – Well, they have not quite seen the nun herself. But they have seen a light – late at night, on the gallery – moving about. Which is as good as seeing the nun.’

‘Is it?’

‘So you see it is proved.’

‘I cannot at all agree that it is proved.’

‘You are determined to ignore the evidence.’

‘No, I am determined to consider all the evidence – not only that which supports my prejudice.’

‘And what, pray, is all this other evidence?’

‘Well … I do not yet quite know.’

Lucy smiled with insufferable satisfaction and resumed her languid accents. ‘Oh! My dear friend!’ she said pityingly, ‘I fear you listen too much to your head and too little to your heart. If you would only allow yourself to feel a little more. You would instinctively know, as I do, that there is something dark and terrible in the ruins …’

Dido promised herself that, come what may, she would prove there was no ghost.

As she passed through the little side gate which led from the park into the gardens of Madderstone Abbey, Dido paused a moment to catch her breath and gaze across the muddy lawns and felled trees to the house. A pleasant, rather rambling building standing on slightly rising ground, it had been built and added to and embellished ever since the first Harman had bought the land at the time of the Dissolution. Every generation had made ‘improvements’ according to its own taste, so that now the old Tudor core was flanked by many-windowed wings from Queen Anne’s time, a grand ballroom built by the late Mr Harman and a conservatory and orangery of the present owner’s creation.

At a short distance from the house stood the broken outline of the once great religious foundation; its mass of tumbled, ivy-covered walls appeared rough and irregular in the fading light, the great broken arch of the east window loomed against flying, red-tinted clouds. A likely home for a ghost, thought Dido as she set off through the mud towards the ruins.

And there had been a ghost at the abbey for as long as anyone in Madderstone or Badleigh could remember. Everyone could tell a story of the Grey Nun – though, as is generally the case with apparitions, she had usually been seen by a relative – or a friend – or the relative of a friend – rather than by the speaker himself. And Dido could not admire the originality of her story, for it was one which had probably been told of every ruined abbey since Henry VIII turned the nation to the Protestant faith.

In the ‘old days’ a rich young girl had fallen in love with a poor knight and had been parted from him by her cruel father – a baron (for barons are, by common consent, much more addicted to mistreating their daughters than any other class of men). The girl had refused the grand suitor her father would have forced upon her, become a nun and pined to death within the abbey walls. Her spirit had haunted the place ever since. Though why she should haunt the abbey, Dido did not know. She could not help but think that it would have been much more to the purpose to go off to the wicked baron’s castle and haunt him …

But by now she was approaching the ruins and, as she looked about at the red sky, the lengthening shadows, and the rising moon gleaming palely through an ivy-clad arch, she found that she was not quite above a superstitious shudder. Perhaps she should have deferred her visit to a more propitious time …

No, there was no rational reason why twilight should be feared more in a ruined abbey than in the parlour at home. She walked on resolutely, but a minute later there was a lurching of the heart. A dark figure was just visible among the great fallen stones of the nave, pacing towards the night stair – mounting towards the gallery above, and vanishing into the shadows.

She stopped and, before she could quite reason herself out of the notion that she had seen a ghost, another, smaller figure appeared, rounding a corner of the ruins and dawdling towards the house. Fortunately there was no mistaking this for a spectre. It was, very certainly, young Georgie, walking slowly: dragging and scuffing his good boots mercilessly. The injuring of shoe leather was a crime Dido never could regard with equanimity and, for a moment, she forgot all about ghosts.

‘Pick your feet up, Georgie!’ she cried indignantly. ‘You are spoiling your boots!’

‘Well, what if I am?’ He stopped in front of her, thrust out his plump chin and stared up defiantly, then put out one foot and scraped it slowly and deliberately against a stone that edged the path. A pale, ugly scuff mark appeared on the dirty, but costly, brown leather.

Dido withdrew her eyes from the distressing sight – and found herself looking more closely at the fat little face which was watching eagerly for her disapproval. There was a fresh red bruise upon his cheek.

‘Your face is hurt, Georgie,’ she said – glad of the distraction. ‘How did you do that?’

He quickly put his hand up to cover it. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘I just fell – on the path back there.’

‘You had better have some witch hazel put upon it immediately.’

He shrugged and began to walk away, saying something quietly which sounded remarkably like, ‘It’s none of your damned business.’

‘Georgie!’ she called after him angrily. ‘I do not think your mama would like to hear you using that word.’

‘But she can’t hear me, can she?’ he said and he was off – still scraping his boots with all his might.

She watched him swagger away along the path, greatly angered by his self-consequence. He looked so disgustingly easy and prosperous in his fashionably cut blue jacket and his pale pantaloons …

‘Ah!’ she cried aloud.

Her anger suddenly forgotten, she turned from contemplation of the retreating little gentleman and looked instead at the path along which he had come – a path which the traffic of ‘improvements’ had left almost an inch deep in mud … And she thought again about those pale, clean pantaloons …

No one could have fallen upon that path without staining his clothes. It was an impossibility …

So how had he come by such a bruise? And why had he lied about it?

She almost ran after him, but stopped herself and stood irresolute on the muddy path in the gathering dusk and encroaching shadows of the ruins. Her curiosity – that powerful motive of her character – was now pulling her in two directions: urging her to pursue the boy with a question or two, but also demanding that she discover who was in the gallery.

For someone was in the gallery; she had seen no one descend during her conversation with Georgie. And, since the boy had seemed to come from the shadows surrounding the nave, the person up there might well be the cause of the bruise. And besides, she would dearly love to know who else was taking an interest in the haunted ruins …

She hurried into the deeper, slightly damp gloom between the high walls and picked her way across the broken pavement of the nave, where fallen pillars and great blocks of fallen masonry lay about, choked with weeds and ivy and deep drifts of dead leaves. A bird clattered up from a twisted ash tree which grew in the sanctuary, making her start foolishly. But she continued up the night stair, clinging with one hand to the ivy on the wall, and came into the deeper dusk of the gallery, which smelt of moss and damp stone – and which seemed, at first, to be