The sexton’s eyes left Charley’s face. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea, but the kettle went bang, and it hasn’t worked since.’
Annie’s wide eyes invited Charley to look at the straggly bare wires leading out of the plug.
Charley raised her eyebrows. ‘May I suggest you call an electrician?’
‘Oh, I did call an electrician. In fact, I called all the electricians in the Yellow Pages, but everyone was surprisingly busy.’ Lily paused for a moment, before turning her head towards Annie.
‘You could always go into the crypt and boil a pan on the gas stove m’love,’ she said. Was that a spot of mischief Charley saw flash in the old woman’s eyes? When Annie looked at Charley for her reaction, Lily pulled a face.
‘Odd that, people always decline. Probably the prospect of going down into the black hole where coffins gape horribly amongst tattered shrouds, bones and dust which time and mortality have strewn!’ she hissed. A single light bulb with a dust-coated red shade hung on a strand of wire above a table at her side, upon which there was a bottle and two upturned glasses.
Tittering, Lily poured herself a glass of blood-red port, swirled the beverage in her glass, and held it up to the light. Dramatically she sniffed it once, took a taste, and savoured the nectar, before looking towards the detectives with a wicked smile upon her face. ‘I’m jesting.’ She paused and smacked her lips together. ‘There is electricity down in the cellar. Will you join me in a drink?’
Charley politely declined.
Annie shook her head, produced a notepad from her bag, and sat with legs crossed and her pen hovering above the paper.
‘I’ll start from the beginning, shall I?’ said Ms Pritchard.
Charley nodded. ‘Please. In your own time.’
‘Crownest House stands on the site of a former farmhouse, but there was a fire back then when the lightning struck. A long way back. A man known as Jeremiah Alderman was the beneficiary of the farmhouse in the will and he built Crownest using the ruins of the original house. It was a bad idea. He should have demolished the lot, but wasn’t allowed to as the will had certain conditions attached. The farmhouse had been long been cursed, you see, by the farmer’s wife who, losing the only child she’d borne, had renounced her faith, and turned to witchcraft for her vengeance.’
At that moment the sun must have been crossed by a cloud, and the light shifted. ‘Go on, what else do you know?’ said Charley, in a hushed tone.
The old woman raised her arms in the air. ‘Jeremiah Alderman donated money to help rebuild the church buildings, including the place where I grew up, God’s house, bless him.’
‘Would you know if there is a tunnel leading from here through to Crownest, by any chance?’ Charley asked.
For a moment it felt like the unthinkable had been spoken, to Lily. She appeared guarded. ‘There are lots of stories about all sorts of ridiculous things that supposedly relate to the Aldermans and to the church. Comes with the territory when you have a murderer or two in the family’s history, I suppose, but that one is true.’
Annie couldn’t disguise the excitement in her voice. ‘So, you know about the tunnel?’
The nod of Lily’s head was confirmation. Lily’s demeanour had changed. ‘Oh, don’t you go getting yourself all excited. It’s bricked up, on Master Seth Alderman’s instructions. He was Jeremiah’s youngest son, and Lucinda’s husband. She grew up here, daughter of the caretaker.’ Lily dipped her head to place her hand to her brow. When she raised her hand, she looked uncomfortable.
‘Are you okay, Ms Pritchard?’ asked Charley.
‘I will be,’ she replied. ‘You see, I shouldn’t be telling you this because Seth Alderman forbade anyone to mention the tunnel ever again.’
Charley was puzzled. ‘Why?’
But Lily sat staring up at a photograph of a priest hanging on the wall. When she lowered her eyes to face the detectives, she briefly closed them, and shook her head.
‘Seth was only nineteen years of age when he was left in charge of the family business after his elder brother Felix was executed, but he secretly loathed it, so much so that he turned to drink and to drugs.’ Lily sighed heavily.
‘I read that,’ said Charley.
Lily’s eyes were downcast. ‘They said he was a selfish, selfish man,’ she said, quietly, but with feeling.
‘I read that he had an older sister. What became of her, do you know?’
Lily frowned. ‘Catherine; I was told she went to Australia.’
‘Do you know why Seth Alderman didn’t go with her?’
‘They say Lucinda was carrying his child,’ said the old lady.
‘What else do you know about what happened after Catherine left?’ asked Charley, gently. Without knowing why, she sensed that she needed to tread carefully, but she had two sets of human remains to identify, and she suspected that the earlier murder would be the most difficult to solve.
‘It is said that Seth beat Lucinda. One night, the pregnant teenager is said to have fled through the tunnel to take sanctuary in the church, afraid of what he might do to her, or so the story goes. Seth was apparently heartbroken when he sobered up, but fearing that he might actually kill Lucinda in one of his drunken stupors, he ordered the door to be bricked up and, and the gates to Crownest barred. Reportedly, he never saw Lucinda again.’
‘What happened to Lucinda and the baby?’
Lily shrugged her shoulders. ‘No one knows.’
The silence in the room was such that Charley could hear the pen scratching the paper on which Annie was writing.
‘Moving forward, do you know anything about the latest occupiers of Crownest? We are led to believe that they were called Dixon.’
Lily’s glum face brightened up the instant the Dixons were mentioned. She leaned conspiratorially towards Charley.
‘They were bad ’uns,’ she growled. ‘I heard they had guns. I saw the estate agent, old man
