‘Joan.’ The woman extended a surprisingly dainty hand. ‘Joan Webb. This is most awfully generous of you. You’re sure you don’t mind?’
‘Not a bit. Actually, I’m thrilled to meet someone who knows a bit about the house’s history. This is my daughter, Katie. Katie, this is Mrs Webb.’ (She had taken in the wedding band and a large, old-fashioned engagement ring.) ‘Pop into the kitchen and fetch a clean glass, would you?’ She gestured to one of the sun loungers and Joan Webb willingly sank into it. Wendy noticed that her feet were swelling in the heat, making her cream sandals bulge.
‘Is she your only one?’ Mrs Webb asked, as Katie obediently skipped off towards the house.
‘No. I have a seventeen-year-old daughter called Tara and a six-year-old boy called Jamie.’
‘How lovely. It’s nice to think there are children in the house again.’
‘Mrs Webb—’
‘Please call me Joan.’
Wendy smiled. ‘Joan, if you’re not in too much of a hurry, will you tell me all about the house as you remember it – in return for seeing round?’
‘Gladly, if you’ve got time to listen.’
Katie returned with the glass and Wendy poured out lemon squash all round.
‘How much do you know already?’ Joan asked.
‘Hardly anything, except that the previous owner was a very old lady who had lived here for a long time before she died.’
Joan thought for a moment, as if deciding where to begin. ‘I never actually lived at The Ashes, of course, but I did spend a lot of time here.’
‘Was it always called The Ashes?’
Joan smiled. ‘Yes, but I’ve no idea why. I don’t ever recall there being any ash trees here.’
‘I’ve always supposed that there must have been some, once upon a time.’
‘Well, not in my day anyway. Of course, the house had been here a long time before Aunt Elaine and Uncle Herb came.’
‘Our builder said he thought maybe 1840.’
‘Well, there you are. My aunt and uncle bought it when they got married, which was practically straight after the war, so 1919 or 1920. There was a story in the family that there was a bit of a row over them buying it. Uncle Herb’s parents thought they were over-stretching themselves. It is a big house … but of course they had help in those days, a cook and a maid, I think … everyone did back then. It was all too much for Auntie in the end, I expect. It’s far too big for one old lady living on her own. It’s a family house.’
‘And did your aunt Elaine have children?’ Wendy prompted.
‘Four: two boys and two girls. It was wonderful for me when I came to stay, because I was an only child, so I loved having some playmates. I was only a few months younger than Dora so I fitted in nicely.’
‘Was Dora the eldest?’ Wendy was as eager to keep Joan talking as a child who senses the approach of bedtime.
‘No, Dora was the youngest. Ronnie was the eldest, then Hugh. The boys were only about twelve months apart. Then came the two girls, Bunty and Dora. Four children in seven years.’
‘Hugh …’ Wendy repeated the name as if trying it out. ‘I wonder, could that have been the person who signed the conveyance?’
‘Hugh’s dead. He died about three years ago. I think his son, Charles, would probably have been the one who dealt with the estate. I expect Aunt Elaine left everything to be divided between her three grandchildren, but none of them would have wanted the house. Charles never did like The Ashes. I don’t imagine either of Bunty’s girls would have been overly keen either – and of course none of them live up this way.’
‘Oh dear, why didn’t Charles like it?’
‘Well, of course, he only ever knew it as a gloomy old place where his grandmother lived. He’d tried to persuade Auntie to sell up and move somewhere smaller. I believe they had quite a row about it. Charles thought the old lady was a bit of a liability, pottering about here all alone. Days would go by without her seeing or speaking to anyone. Uncle Herb had been dead for a long time by then, and most of her friends too I suppose, and Charles lived too far away to keep an eye on her, and his wife wouldn’t come at all, on account of the state of the house. I was abroad until just after she died, but I last saw her about ten years ago and things were going downhill then. It was sad to see everything getting in such a state.’
‘Poor lady. She must have been very lonely.’
Joan appeared to think about this. Eventually she said, ‘I think she’d gone a bit funny at the end. At least, that’s the impression one got from the rest of the family. Charles said she always insisted that she didn’t mind being on her own, or even seem particularly pleased when anyone did go to see her. I called in on Fiona a couple of weeks ago. That’s Bunty’s eldest. She said she’d been to see her grandmother a few weeks before she died and Elaine had talked a lot of nonsense.’ Joan hesitated, glancing across the garden to where Katie, still within earshot but apparently uninterested in the conversation, had gone to play with the swing-ball.
‘If you’ve finished your juice, let’s go and look at the house,’ suggested Wendy. ‘What sort of nonsense?’ she asked, once Joan had levered herself out of the lounger and they had put the outhouses between themselves and Katie.
‘Apparently she talked as if
