lay quiet; frozen with fear between the sheets. I heard her come upstairs and pause on the landing outside my door, with creaking of floorboards. “Please don’t let her come in,” my child’s mind was praying. Came a further creaking of the boards and a low laugh… and I awoke, with that laugh still held in my ears, to find myself back in the present, a grown man, but upstairs in the dark, crouched on the small bed and clutching a handful of counterpane!
As a grown man, I could stand on the chair (which I righted!) and look out of the window without getting on to the ledge. It was nearly morning; the moon had waned and there was nothing to be seen. It was, indeed, that ‘darkest hour.’ I pulled myself together, put on the landing light and went downstairs, nerving myself to enter the front room. There lay Aunt Lucy in her coffin, head returned to face the ceiling; the
There was plenty of life in the range fire, and I drew it up to boil water for tea and to fry some eggs. I picked up the books where they had fallen to the floor and put them on the table. After eating I washed myself at the sink and went up the lane for a walk, to see the welcome dawn break over the hills and to enjoy the birds’ chorus.
I was listening to the nine o’clock news on the radio when the undertaker’s men arrived to close the coffin. Not long after, Sefton and some others of the family arrived, and after introductions we preceded the pall bearers into the chapel, where the itinerant preacher was removing his bicycle clips. After a brief service and tribute to Aunt Lucy’s long years of caretaker duty, we marched ahead of the hearse up the village street to the new burial ground beyond the churchyard. Few if any of the villagers were about and none had attended the service; yet curtains twitched and a few heads were looking over the churchyard wall… no doubt wondering if their secrets had gone to the grave with her.
As we walked away leaving her in the ground, a formally dressed young man touched my arm and introduced himself as my aunt’s lawyer. He gave me an ordinary manila envelope addressed in her writing. I undertook to contact him about the will in due course, and he got into his 14 hp Austin and drove off.
I declined Sefton’s invitation and returned to the cottage as I wanted to catch the afternoon train back to Craven Arms and college, if possible. Outside the pub, the landlord was shiftily watering his potted geraniums in the window boxes. He turned reluctantly as I spoke: “I found some notes of my aunt’s concerning the business of folk in the village.” He swallowed hard and eyed my tie-knot. “You may like to tell them that I have burned the lot and that their privacy is respected.” He mumbled something, then—spontaneously—shook my hand and turned away as if in embarrassment. I guessed that at any rate, he and Maisie Bassett would sleep the easier now.
My aunt’s letter was brief and to the point, enclosing a copy of her will. “You have my gift of sight,” she wrote. “Do what you will with it. Meantime you will find in my herb table” (here she gave directions for opening the drawer I had already discovered) “some books—use them as you see fit. If you should care to succeed me as a healer you will find that the villagers will support you because of the great knowledge in these books. My journal will explain that which mystified you as a child and I leave you to do what you think necessary.” In essence, the will itself left the cottage and effects to me if I chose to occupy them, or—if sold—to divide the proceeds between Sefton and myself.
Clearly then, the ‘Journal’ that I had mistaken for an embryo novel, was the one I wanted; so I settled down to read it there and then. As I did so, my hair began to rise.
By this account, my Uncle’s ministry had not been confined to the spiritual plane where the females of his congregation were concerned. Certainly the decisive involvement with that farm lass—a distant relative—had deteriorated from spiritual to physical in remarkably short time; and the undue amount of spiritual guidance given to her alone in the chapel would have aroused suspicion in far less astute a person than Aunt Lucy, who had clearly put her peephole to good use. Her writing grew less and less legible as she vengefully recorded some of their inane utterances and the more sacrilegious aspects of their behavior in the apparent security and privacy of the chapel. She bode her time and thus became aware of the girl’s pregnancy as soon as her husband. Rage almost obliterated her meaning when she wrote of their plans to run away together, and I had a hard time deciphering the scrawl.
Once they had arranged a rendezvous at the chapel gate for a certain evening, she acted with speed and decision. Suffice it to say that along with an appetite for the females of his flock, my uncle liked ‘Welsh cakes,’ those unleavened sweet buns baked in the oven from flour and water. My aunt simply substituted flour made from the roots of Hawthorn (For obvious reasons this identity is incorrect. However, there are well-documented cases where multiple hawthorn scratches—hedging etc—have produced nausea and vertigo) which contain a virulent poison that baking would reduce in toxicity to a general paralytic agent.
Inert as he was; paralyzed, but horribly conscious, she had dragged her offending spouse on a carpet out to the Wash House, humped him upright, then—with the aid of the laundry basket hook and line—upended him, head first, into the water butt. There she left him to drown, upside down, while she returned the carpet to the cottage and swept it clean.
I was so horrified at this ‘confession,’ that I could hardly continue reading.
However, the agitated, eccentric handwriting continued relentlessly to relate how, later that night, the girl had arrived at the chapel gate to rendezvous with my uncle. Aunt Lucy had put a thick sack over her head and dragged her into the Wash House, where a hurricane lamp was lit. The first thing the terrified girl saw when the sack was removed was the flaccid body of her dead lover hanging upside down out of the big sink—his inverted face toward her, eyes staring blankly and hair dripping on to the floor. She had shrieked and fallen in a fit, which had made it easy for Auntie to hoist her similarly into the butt—head first again, to prevent any chance of her getting out even if she revived. Aunt then went off to make a cup of tea, gathering up the girl’s bag of belongings en route. An hour or so later she hoisted the sodden bundle of dead girl out with the basket hook and reunited the lovers in the sink. It seems incredible to me, but she left them there all next day, during which she instituted a search for her missing husband and played the worried wife. Simultaneously the police were looking for the missing girl, and they soon concluded—in the light of local opinion—that the two had run away together. A report of a couple seen boarding an early train to Hereford at Craven Arms seemed to confirm the theory. That night my aunt dug up a portion of her herb garden and buried them both, bags and all beneath the thyme. When the local policeman came with tidings of the ‘Craven Arms couple’ she was placidly hoeing the topsoil around the thyme plants—which (she said) were doing rather badly that year.
(Mr. Cummings paused. We all sat in silence, surprised at the sudden blunt turn of his narrative. With a heavy sigh, he continued…)
I sat down for a long time, thinking over this chronicle of events which—if true—would scandalize Wenlock for years. On the other hand, the protagonists were all dead, with no direct family links remaining; what possible benefit to anyone to stir up a mess of this nature, now? My prospect of catching the afternoon train vanished, for I needed a talk with Sefton: his common-sense would be a lifeline to my somewhat disordered wits.
In the event, we left things as they were and burned the journal. Clearly, if the ground contained remains that could eventually be uncovered, then it was best kept in the family. Sefton turfed over the herb garden, and we let the cottage to his brother-in-law, and then to a cousin. Neither stayed; both moving out soon after arrival, claiming the place was haunted and that they could not stay. Since then we have not even been able to get a local jobber to tend the gardens—word has spread, you see—and they have run wild; the cottage is fast going to ruin, though of course the chapel has remained in use and they keep their path clear. There you have it, gentlemen: the story of the skeletons that literally lurk in our family gardens, if not cupboard.
I had noticed that as Mr. Cummings concluded his narrative, Fr. O’Connor became fidgety and flushed. Now he looked decidedly uncomfortable and exchanged glances with the Rev. Timothy.
“It is embarrassing to say this, Mr. Cummings, and please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not quarrelling with your handling of this matter except in one respect.
Mr. Cummings looked surprised. “You think we should exhume them, Father?”
“My dear chap, whatever we do, we must at least ensure their rest. See here now, this is no time for sectarian differences; obviously I don’t expect you to share my very real belief in purgatory; but if there
