judging from the coach house, the gravel approach, the church, I guessed the tent was where the library had been. Beside it, one of their colleagues and a man I took to be their boss were in conversation with another pair of men. These were dressed one in a suit and overcoat, the other in a police uniform. It was the boss who was speaking, rapidly and with explanatory nods and shakes of the head, but when the man in the overcoat asked a question, it was the builder he addressed it to, and when he answered, all three men watched him intently.
He seemed unaware of the cold. He spoke in short sentences; in his long and frequent pauses the others did not speak, but watched him with intense patience. At one point he raised a finger in the direction of the machine and mimed its jaw of jagged teeth biting into the ground. At last he gave a shrug, frowned and drew his hand over his eyes as though to wipe them clean of the image he had just conjured.
A flap opened in the side of the white tent. A fifth man stepped out of it and joined the group. There was a brief, unsmiling conference and at the end of it, the boss went over to his group of men and had a few words with them. They nodded, and as though what they had been told was entirely what they were expecting, began to gather together the hats and thermos flasks at their feet and make their way to their cars parked by the lodge gates. The policeman in uniform positioned himself at the entrance to the tent, back to the flap, and the other ushered the builder and his boss toward the police car.
I lowered the camera slowly but continued to gaze at the white tent. I knew the spot. I had been there myself. I remembered the desolation of that desecrated library. The fallen bookshelves, the beams that had come crashing to the floor. My thrill of fear as I had stumbled over burned and broken wood.
There had been a body in that room. Buried in scorched pages, with a bookcase for a coffin. A grave hidden and protected for decades by the beams that fell.
I couldn't help the thought. I had been looking for someone, and now it appeared that someone had been found. The symmetry was irresistible. How not to make the connection? Yet Hester had left the year before, hadn't she? Why would she have come back? And then it struck me, and it was the very simplicity of the idea that made me think it might be true.
When I came to the edge of the woods, I saw the two blond children coming disconsolately down the drive. They wobbled and stumbled as they walked; beneath their feet the ground was scarred with curving black channels where the builders' heavy vehicles had gouged into the earth, and they weren't looking where they were going. Instead, they looked back over their shoulders in the direction they had come from.
It was the girl who, losing her footing and almost falling, turned her head and saw me first. She stopped. When her brother saw me he grew self-important with knowledge and spoke.
'You can't go up there. The policeman said. You have to stay away.'
'I see.'
'They've made a tent,' the girl added shyly.
'I saw it,'I told her.
In the arch of the lodge gates, their mother appeared. She was slightly breathless. 'Are you two all right? I saw a police car in The Street.' And then to me, 'What's going on?'
It was the girl who answered her. 'The policemen have made a tent. You're not allowed to go near. They said we have to go home.'
The blond woman raised her eyes to the site, frowning at the white tent. 'Isn't that what they do when…?' She didn't complete her question in front of the children, but I knew what she meant.
'I believe that is what has happened,' I said. I saw her desire to draw her children close for reassurance, but she merely adjusted the boy's scarf and brushed her daughter's hair out of her eyes.
'Come on,' she told the children. 'It's too cold to be outdoors, anyway. Let's go home and have cocoa.'
The children darted through the lodge gates and raced into the Street. An invisible cord held them together, allowed them to swing around each other or dash in any direction, knowing the other would always be there, the length of the cord away.
I watched them and felt a horrible absence by my side. Their mother lingered next to me. 'You could do with some cocoa yourself, couldn't you? You're as white as a ghost.' We fell into step, following the children. 'My name's Margaret,' I told her. 'I'm a friend of Aurelius Love.'
She smiled. 'I'm Karen. I look after the deer here.'
'I know. Aurelius told me.'
Ahead of us, the girl lunged at her brother; he veered out of reach, running into the road to escape her. 'Thomas Ambrose Proctor!' my companion shouted out. 'Get back on the pavement!' The name sent a jolt through me. 'What did you say your son's name was?'
The boy's mother turned to me curiously.
'It's just- There was a man called Proctor who worked here years ago.' 'My father, Ambrose Proctor.' I had to stop to think straight. 'Ambrose Proctor… the boy who worked with John-the-dig-he was your
'John-the-dig? Do you mean John Digence? Yes. That's who got my father the job there. It was a long time before I was born, though. My father was in his fifties when I was born.'
Slowly I began walking again. 'I'll accept that offer of cocoa, if you don't mind. And I've got something to show you.'
I took my bookmark out of Hester's diary. Karen smiled the instant she set eyes on the photo. Her son's serious face, full of pride, beneath the brim of the helmet, his shoulders stiff, his back straight. 'I remember the day he came home and said he'd put a yellow hat on. He'll be so pleased to have the picture.'
'Your employer, Miss March, has she ever seen Tom?'
'Seen Tom? Of course not! There are two of them, you know, the Miss Marches. One of them was always a bit retarded, I understand, so it's the other one who runs the estate. Though she is a bit of a recluse. She hasn't been back to Angelfield since the fire. Even I've never seen her. The only contact we have is through her solicitors.'
Karen stood at the stove, waiting for the milk to heat. Behind her, the view from the small window showed the garden, and beyond it, the fields where Adeline and Emmeline had once dragged Merrily's pram with the baby still in it. There could be few landscapes that had changed so little.
I needed to be careful not to say too much. Karen gave no sign of knowing that her Miss March of Angelfield was the same woman as the Miss Winter whose books I had spotted in the bookcase in the hall as I came in.
'It's just that I work for the Angelfield family,' I explained. 'I'm writing about their childhood here. And when I was showing your employer some photos of the house I got the impression she recognized him.'
'She can't have. Unless…'
She reached for the photograph and looked at it again, then called to her son in the next room. 'Tom? Tom, bring that picture from the mantelpiece, will you? The one in the silver frame.'
Tom came in, carrying a photograph, his sister behind him.
'Look,' Karen said to him, 'the lady has got a photograph of you.'
A smile of delighted surprise crept onto his face when he saw himself. 'Can I keep it?' 'Yes,' I said. 'Show Margaret the one of your granddad.' He came around to my side of the table and held the framed picture out to me, shyly.
It was an old photograph of a very young man. Barely more than a boy. Eighteen, perhaps, maybe younger. He was standing by a bench with clipped yew trees in the background. I recognized the setting instantly: the topiary garden. The boy had taken off his cap, was holding it in his hand, and in my mind's eye I saw the movement he had made, sweeping his cap off with one hand, and wiping his forehead against the forearm of the other. He was tilting his head back slightly. Trying not to squint in the sun, and succeeding almost. His shirtsleeves were rolled up above the elbow, and the top button of his shirt was open, but the creases in his trousers were neatly pressed, and he had cleaned his heavy garden boots for the photo.
'Was he working there when they had the fire?'
Karen put the mugs of cocoa on the table and the children came and sat to drink it. 'I think he might have gone into the army by then. He was away from Angelfield for a long time. Nearly fifteen years.'
I looked closely through the grainy age of the picture to the boy's face, struck by the similarity with his
