Martin Edwards: The Coffin Trail

Wherever they looked, work needed to be done. The window-frames were rotten and the cellar was a damp dungeon cluttered with chunks of coal. The bedrooms were dingy, the bathroom a claustrophobe’s nightmare. Doors creaked and the staircase railing twitched neurotically at a touch.

‘Character!’ the agent declared, as the rusty handle of a kitchen drawer came away in his hand. ‘You won’t find anywhere like this in — where was it, again?’

‘Islington,’ Miranda said. ‘You’re right. I live in a flat opposite an all-night diner. This is very different.’

‘And you’re from Oxford, Mr Kind?’ The agent tried to shove the handle surreptitiously inside the drawer whilst he was speaking, but he lacked legerdemain and it clattered on to the uneven slate floor. ‘This is a marvellous place for getting away from it all. And if you need someone to keep an eye on your bolt-hole while you’re away, we can arrange it for a modest fee.’

‘We want to live here permanently,’ Miranda said. ‘Forever.’

‘Even better!’ The agent beamed. ‘It’s all the rage nowadays. Downshifting. Well, there’s nowhere lovelier on God’s earth than the Lakes. And Brackdale’s very much off the beaten track, as you can see. Yet you’re not cut off. You can be on the motorway inside twenty minutes. Think about that!’

‘Thanks, but I’d rather not,’ Miranda said, glancing through the kitchen window that overlooked the tarn. ‘My God! That’s a heron by the water’s edge — Daniel, do you see?’

The estate agent’s head jerked, as if on a string. ‘Where? Oh dear, I must have missed it. Never mind. They’re like London buses, there’ll be another along in a minute! You’re rubbing shoulders with Mother Nature here, make no mistake! The water’s fresh from a spring on the hillside. Marvellous!’

They went out to look at the barn. It had double doors, high beams, and a wooden ladder that led to the old hayloft. In his enthusiasm, the agent climbed up a couple of rungs, clutching at the frayed rope to steady himself, before descending rapidly when the ladder shivered under his weight. ‘Couple of loose brackets,’ he said, mopping his brow. ‘Nothing to worry about. The thrill of starting from scratch. The world’s your oyster. You can design everything exactly the way you want it. No need to put up with someone else’s tastes.’

Daniel shrugged. It didn’t matter: the spell was unbroken. No stopping now, they had gone too far. He’d make an offer even if the outbuildings were a jumble of stones.

Misunderstanding, the agent gabbled. ‘As I said, there’s a healthy discount factored into the asking price to allow for renovation expenses. You’ll have realised that already, if you’ve been looking around in the area. Tarn Cottage is exceptionally competitive. Oh yes, we’re expecting a lot of interest. A very great deal of interest indeed. The basic structure’s as sound as a bell. All the place needs is a bit of fine tuning. You’re lucky to have spotted it so soon after it came on to the market.’

They stood outside the bothy, under the shade of a damson tree. Daniel remembered telling Barrie Gilpin a story from the guidebook he’d been studying conscientiously. Supposedly, damsons were named by the Crusaders, who brought them back to England from Damascus. He could still recall Barrie’s shrugging: so what? Whatever they’d shared, it wasn’t a fascination with history.

The path to the tarn was criss-crossed with brambles and the long grass cried out for a scythe. The layout of the grounds was bizarre. As a boy, Daniel had taken its charm for granted, now its eccentricity intrigued him. Paths wound aimlessly, with no obvious destination, and at one point the picket fencing inexplicably changed into a stretch of dry stone wall. Two spiky monkey puzzle trees thrust out of a tangle of ferns and an old cracked mirror was nailed to an ivy-clad trellis with an arch that gave onto the waterside. Everything seemed to lack rhyme and reason, yet it struck Daniel that the garden must have been planned like this for a purpose. He could not guess what it might be.

‘You say the lady who owned the cottage died recently?’

‘Yes, it’s been in her family for generations. In the end she finished up in a nursing home. Cancer. Dreadful business. She left it to a distant cousin who is settled in Yorkshire. She gave us instructions to sell a week ago, so you’ve timed your enquiry to perfection. There aren’t many homes in Brackdale, and a little gem like this comes on to the market only once in a Preston Guild.’

‘So what can you tell us about Tarn Cottage?’ Miranda asked idly.

The agent cleared his throat noisily. Daniel guessed that the man intended to be economical with the truth. He wouldn’t want to risk the sale, not with two people up from the soft South who wanted to live the dream.

‘Well.’ The agent ran a pink tongue over fat lips, choosing his words with a cabinet minister’s care. ‘I never knew the family that lived here, but I suppose they were just ordinary folk. It’s very quiet, you can see for yourself. Can’t imagine anything out of the ordinary happening in a sleepy spot like Tarn Fold, can you?’

Except murder, Daniel thought. Of course it was history, but he still couldn’t get it out of his mind. He of all people knew how much the past mattered.

‘Daniel, is this wise?’ the Master asked.

‘Unlikely.’

‘But you intend to go ahead anyway?’

‘That’s right, Theo.’

Theo Bellairs sighed. They were taking Lapsang Souchong upstairs in the Master’s Lodgings, just as they had done on the day of Aimee’s death. Daniel had always had a sneaking affection for the sitting room and its atmosphere of sinful, old-fashioned luxury. To be enfolded by the vast leather armchairs was like succumbing to the embrace of comely if ageing courtesans. The room smelled of old Morocco-bound books and the tang of finest Spanish sherry; he associated it with learned conversation about Swinburne and Gerard Manley Hopkins and with slyly obscene jokes veiled by elaborate aphorisms.

Since Theo’s election as Master, the room also reeked of his cats, a pair of promiscuous Persians called Cesare and Lucrezia. Daniel had first come here as a shy undergraduate, to a cocktail party thrown by one of Theo’s predecessors, and to submit to the ritual of ‘handshaking’, when Theo, as his tutor, gave the Master an end of term report on his progress. Now he had succeeded Theo as Blenkiron Fellow in Modern History. They were colleagues, if hardly equals in the hierarchy of academe. Yet his stomach had lurched as he climbed up the worn stone steps to the Master’s door, as it had on his very first visit. He needed no reminding that he was embarking on an adventure. On something like a whim, he was giving up academic tenure, and an accompanying level of job security that most people would kill for.

Theo put down his cup with the reverence that Crown Derby deserved and strode to the seat in the bay window overlooking the spreading oaks of the Great Quadrangle. Settling himself on the velvet cushion, he folded one long skinny leg over the other. He was only a year away from retiring to the villa in Nice that he shared with his partner, a mediaevalist called Edgar, yet every movement was invested with a youthful grace. He was wearing one of the white suits for which he was renowned. Daniel had always wondered how Theo managed to keep them so clean; if he’d risked dressing in anything similar, it would be filthy within an hour. Grubbiness was alien to Theo; he was never besmirched by so much as a single cat hair.

He beckoned Daniel to join him. Down in the quad, a group of rugby players was heading for the Buttery bar, and a young man in a college scarf was running after a girl with red-rimmed eyes who was blowing her nose and pretending not to notice him.