Martin Edwards - The Frozen Shroud

His reputation as bad news had preceded him; when he’d joined the team, he already had one broken marriage to his credit, and God-knew-how-many broken hearts. He was a Geordie Jack the Lad, and like most of the people the brass moved into cold case work — including Hannah — he’d blotted his copybook. The team was widely regarded as a bunch of misfits, yet to everyone’s surprise, they had bonded into a cohesive whole. Best of all, they’d solved crimes that had festered in the too-difficult pile for years.

Doctor Who interrupted her mental time-travelling. Her heart skipped a beat; her first thought was that Terri was calling again. Had Stefan caught up with her? Was she in danger?

A glance at the caller name turned apprehension into anger.

Marc . Oh, for God’s sake. Did some men never learn?

Louise left Tarn Cottage for work, still munching her toast. Cutbacks had led the university to offer her only a part-time contract this academic year. She’d taken the financial hit for twelve months, as a quid pro quo for a better work-life balance, yet a sadistic twist of timetabling fate had landed her with a nine o’clock lecture on Monday morning. Insider trading for a bunch of half-asleep first years. No wonder she was monosyllabic over breakfast. Neither she nor Daniel was a morning person, and after a few weeks of careful politeness, they’d eased back into territory familiar from their teens. Arguing about what to watch on television, and whose turn it was to load the dishwasher.

The air in Tarn Fold was damp as Daniel trundled the wheelie bin along the rough track. The trees that formed a thick summer canopy were shedding their leaves, the birds flitting through twisted branches had lost the urge to sing. Somewhere in the distance, a sheep bleated as if in mourning. After a rainy summer, the autumn hues remained vivid, but winter was inching closer, ready to clutch Brackdale in an icy embrace. He parked the bin at the lane end where the refuse lorry stopped, and scooted back to the centrally heated sanctuary of his study.

A deadline loomed for an article commissioned by an American journal, but he excelled at displacement activity. Anything to put off the moment of truth: fashioning the first sentence that set the tone for everything that followed.

Louise had developed a passion for tidying the cottage, so he found it too easy to fritter away time trying to find where she’d hidden the keys or book or CD that he wanted. She could never understand the strange comfort he found in chaos and clutter.

He made a fresh mug of coffee, dug out an album of Dusty Springfield covers by Shelby Lynne, decided against answering a stroppy email from his accountant about his tax return, and finally flicked on to Google, wanting to learn about the Frozen Shroud while listening to a breathy paean to the joys of just a little lovin’, early in the morning.

Too right, Shelby; it beat a cup of coffee any day. Daniel turned up the volume a shade. He’d been celibate for too long; another thought to push out of his mind. He forced himself to focus on the screen.

The wealth of knowledge available on the internet amplified Jeffrey Burgoyne’s account. Clifford Hodgkinson, a builder from Blackburn, moved to the Lakes at the turn of the century with his wife Letitia, and their newborn daughter. He bought a stretch of land on the east bank of Ullswater, known as Satan’s Head. Fearing the old name might depress property prices, he rechristened the area Ravenbank, and set about creating a private fiefdom beside the lake. Long before planning laws and National Park regulations prevented large-scale speculative development, his dream was to preside over a small, exclusive community with its own village shop, post office and pub. He started by rebuilding a half-derelict house on Ullswater’s shore, and transforming it into Ravenbank Hall, a testament to his wealth and status. Two roads were laid out, and individually designed homes built. The fifth was completed a week before Gertrude Smith’s murder.

The housemaid had come down from Glasgow in search of work, and Hodgkinson offered her a job at Ravenbank Hall eight months before she died. She had been ‘courted’, as the old reports quaintly put it, by Roland Jones, a tutor hired to teach Dorothy Hodgkinson at home, but Hodgkinson admitted he’d been having an affair with her. According to some websites, Gertrude was pregnant, but whether the father was Jones or Hodgkinson wasn’t revealed. What was certain was that, less than twenty-four hours after the discovery of Gertrude’s corpse, Hodgkinson’s scorned wife took a fatal dose of veronal.

Letty Hodgkinson had a history of jealous rages, and she’d suffered from depression since Dorothy’s birth. She’d spent time in a sanatorium, and the police took her suicide as proof that she was guilty but insane. There was mention of a suicide note in which Letty admitted killing Gertrude, and the authorities were quick to treat the case as closed. Letty was buried, not in the graveyard at Martindale, but in the grounds of Ravenbank Hall. That was why Gertrude’s ghost was supposed to walk endlessly down the lane leading to the Hall. She wanted to know why she and her unborn child had to die.

The scandal wrecked Hodgkinson’s reputation, and his plans for Ravenbank collapsed. He died of heart failure not long afterwards, ‘a broken man’. Dorothy never married, but became well known in the county for charitable work. After the end of the First World War, Roland Jones rose to prominence in the field of liberal education. And that was pretty much that.

The phone rang just as Shelby launched into ‘Wishin’ and Hopin”. He pressed pause and said, ‘Hello.’

‘Daniel? This is Melody Knight. I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

‘Glad of an interruption.’ He gazed through the window. Beyond the rambling back garden rose the slopes of Tarn Fell. A view he loved at any time of year, although a fleecy mist obscured Priest Ridge, and he couldn’t make out the dark outlines of the Sacrifice Stone. ‘Any excuse not to write.’

‘We agreed to get together so you could tell me more about your book. It just so happens that this afternoon I’m in your neck of the woods, picking up supplies for the party in Brack. We could have a cuppa and a chat about The Hell Within . If you can spare the time.’

Spending an hour with Melody would be no hardship. Perhaps he could kill two birds with one stone.

‘As a matter of fact, I was meaning to visit Amos Books. I wondered if they had anything on Ravenbank, or that legend of the Frozen Shroud. They have a cafeteria there, if that suits you.’

‘Oh, I adore that shop! Not just the books, did you know their cakes have won awards? Not that I dare gobble many of them. I’d need to buy a whole new wardrobe. Or rather, talk Oz into buying it for me.’

‘Three o’clock suit you?’

‘I’ll look forward to it.’

After she rang off, Daniel googled Shenagh Moss. Tales of Gertrude Smith’s ghost, coupled with the murderer’s decision to cover Shenagh’s face with a blanket, had been a gift for the media. The crime was a nine days’ wonder. Craig Meek, the ex who turned into a stalker, was described by an unnamed ‘friend’ as ‘a bit of a lunatic, really’ and ‘sort of a Mr Angry’, which made Daniel wonder what his enemies thought of him. Nobody suggested that Meek might not have killed Shenagh.

And so, despite the link with a pleasurably macabre ghost story, Shenagh’s murder soon slipped out of the headlines. The presumed killer was dead, the narrative complete. There was nothing more to say.

Yet five years after Shenagh’s murder, something kept alive Jeffrey Burgoyne’s scorn for her. Possibly others felt the same. Daniel couldn’t help wondering if Ravenbank was home to more than one ghost.