The Coffin Trail Read online

  Now here they were in Tarn Fold. Talking about junking their jobs, their homes, and moving up here. Unreal, but so was the whole of their affair. They had fallen for each other in the course of a single evening. He’d met her at a party thrown by his publishers at Soho House. At seven that evening they were strangers; they parted next morning as lovers. Her spontaneity was a gift. It turned him on, the way she let herself be swept by a tide of passion.

  ‘I just can’t believe…’

  ‘You must believe,’ she said quickly. ‘Swear to me you won’t change your mind?’

  ‘I swear,’ he said. ‘You know I wanted you to share this place with me.’

  She put her head on one side, as though trying to decipher an inscription in Sanskrit. ‘I’ve never seen you like this before.’

  ‘You’ve never come here with me before.’

  Taking a pen out of the pocket of her Levis, she scrawled the estate agent’s name and number on the back of her hand. ‘Fine, we’ll call at the branch and arrange to view.’

  He couldn’t help grinning. ‘You really are set on this, aren’t you?’

  ‘Once I start on something,’ she said, ‘nothing will stop me.’

  It wasn’t precisely true. A month ago she’d begun to write a novel, about some other young journalist who lived in Islington and suffered from lesbian harassment, but she’d never made it beyond chapter one. Last night in the hotel she’d talked of pitching a feature to a broadsheet about alternative therapies. Over breakfast, she wondered about yet another variation on a favourite theme: Diana: how she taught us to get in touch with our emotions.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘we’d better get a move on. We mustn’t lose out.’

  She skipped off towards the car and he tramped after her in a blissed-out daze. Anyone would think they were both high on something.

  ‘This whole valley is a Shangri-La,’ she said as they left Tarn Fold behind. ‘If only the people here were immortal. It’s too beautiful a place to die in.’

  He switched on the CD player and started humming to Norah Jones. Anything to avoid talk of death. As they passed through Brack, he pointed to a window above the front door of a large pub on the main street. The Moon under Water. From it hung a ‘bed and breakfast’ sign.

  ‘That was my room,’ he said. ‘I shared with my sister Louise. She kept me awake, telling me stories from a book my parents bought us. Legends of Lakeland, it was called. Tales about stone circles that came to life and rivers that wept.’

  Beyond the church, the road narrowed. Purple aubretia and white alyssum spilled from cracks in the walls. On the verges, poppies were starting to bloom. A lane led off to a squat pele tower that formed the centrepiece of Brack Hall, another curved towards the hall farm and the fell beyond. He remembered clambering halfway up to Priest Edge with his father, to an embankment within which an irregular pattern of marked-out footways was all that remained of a hut village constructed by ancient Britons. According to Ben Kind’s books, fewer folk lived in the valley now than during the years BC.

  ‘My father and I used to roam around here while my mother and sister went into the town to shop.’

  ‘Your old man was a policeman, you told me. Was that difficult?’

  ‘Not for me,’ he said. ‘I was fascinated by the stories he told.’

  ‘But your mother, did she have a tough time?’

  He hesitated. ‘The week we came home, he told mum that he was seeing someone else. The affair had been going on for some time, but she didn’t have a clue. He might have walked out sooner, but the holiday was booked and he didn’t want to wreck it for all of us.’

  ‘And you never saw him again?’

  ‘No, my mother would have regarded it as a betrayal. Louise backed her to the hilt. We both had to promise never to speak to him again. It was a long time before I broke my word.’

  By evening, Miranda’s plans for the cottage were well advanced. They were staying in a hotel on the outskirts of Keswick, halfway between shimmery Derwentwater and the brooding heights of Skiddaw and Blencathra. The restaurant occupied an airy conservatory and over their meal they’d watched the sunlight streaking the lake, then marvelled at a sky so red as to delight even the gloomiest of shepherds. The dinner would have had Egon Ronay drooling. As they drank a final glass of Chablis in the low-beamed bar, Daniel felt light-headed, as if a hypnotist had put him in a trance of happiness. Viewing was scheduled for half-nine tomorrow. No one else had put in a bid. For Miranda that meant the cottage was as good as theirs.

  ‘Did I ever tell you I’ve written for home magazines about interior design? The importance of lighting and colour and stuff.’

  He waved at the ‘to-do’ list she’d scrawled on the hotel notepaper, and her lavish sketch of their redesigned living accommodation. Already everything was planned out in her mind. The bothy could provide additional guest accommodation and she’d decided the barn could be split into two offices: his and hers. In their new lives they could work from home and be together all the time.

  ‘You saw how rundown the place is,’ he said. So far words of caution had blown away like leaves in a gale, but he dreaded her distress if it all fell through. She cared so much about everything. In her vulnerability, if nothing else, she reminded him of Aimee. ‘The garden’s bad enough; who knows what a survey might show?’

  ‘Come on, loosen up. Anything can be fixed.’

  ‘It’ll cost a small fortune.’

  ‘Have you checked house prices here? You could buy a mansion for the cost of a terrace in Islington. Well, almost. Anyway, we’ll have plenty of cash to spare when we sell our old homes. Money isn’t a problem.’

  He swung back on his chair and tried another tack. ‘Country living is different. Winters are hard. Ever tried unblocking a septic tank?’

  She giggled. ‘I’ll learn to love it. Hey Daniel, relax. This is going to be wonderful. Trust me.’

  * * *

  The ruddy-faced estate agent smelled of bacon and burned toast and looked like a prime candidate for a coronary. Tubby and panting and over-dressed in tweed suit and camel coat, he was yet naked in his desperation to earn commission on the sale. A fast man with a superlative, he didn’t seem to realise that all he needed to do was to let the cottage and its setting sell themselves. The sun gatecrashing through the faded blinds was so strong that Daniel needed to shade his eyes. The cottage hadn’t been occupied for months; although the windows were flung open, a mustiness hung in the air. Who cared? One glance at Miranda’s face was enough to tell him that Tarn Cottage was everything she’d yearned for. It’s going to be all right, he said to himself. We can make it happen.

  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.

  Chapter Two

  ‘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.

  ‘Look at them, Daniel. Do you recall how it felt to be eighteen? Your early struggles with Tocqueville stick in my mind. Remember telling me that you intended to change subjects, that you wanted to study…ah, Politics, Philosophy, and Economics?’

  He rolled the words out as if they were exotic profanities. Daniel couldn’t help smiling. ‘And I remember your telling me to have patience.’

  ‘And I was right, was I not?’

  Conversing with Theo was like playing chess with Capablanca. You always had to anticipate the move after next to have a prayer of staying in the game. In his mind, Daniel heard Miranda’s words.

  ‘Yes, but life is short.’

  ‘It may feel longer for those who fritter away the opportunities that it affords.’

  ‘Sorry, but I didn’t come here to be talked round. You gave me time to think over my decision. I’m grateful, but my mind’s made up.’

  Incapable of crude exasperation, Theo fingered his cravat. ‘You always had a streak of stubbornness.’

  He’d once employed the same tone to criticise a truncated account of the coal mining industry’s role in Britain’s industrial development that Daniel had dashed off during an essay crisis prompted by a hectic affair with a girl from St Catz. That was the first time Daniel had heard the advice that Theo gave to all his disciples: to quote from one source is plagiarism, to quote from several is scholarship.

  ‘And it’s no good telling me that a man who’s tired of Oxford is tired of life.’

  ‘Yet of course it is true. Oxford is unique. Look out of the window, Daniel.’ Theo’s tone became warm although he was not, Daniel thought, a warm man. For all his many acts of personal kindness and his unfailing manners, he always seemed remote from the quotidian. Quotidian was, Daniel thought, the right word: very
Theo. Theo simply did not do emotion; according to Edgar, he loved his cats more than any human being, and Daniel wasn’t sure that Edgar was joking. ‘The brightest and the best come here to learn from us. We owe it to them to give them what they seek.’

  ‘They seemed to manage well enough when I was away.’

  ‘We are about to start Trinity Term, Daniel. As you well know, the custom is to give notice during Michaelmas, so that interviews for a replacement may be conducted during Hilary with a view to an appointment commencing at the start of the new academic year.’

  ‘Sorry, Theo, but you won’t be short of strong candidates available at short notice. Have a word with Pederson, he’s chafing to move back from Wales. Or how about…’

  Theo put up a mottled hand. It was more like a claw, these days, Daniel thought. ‘Enough. I hope this isn’t a delayed reaction to Ernst Walter’s boorishness?’

  Last summer, an argument had raged in the Senior Common Room about Daniel’s entitlement to a sabbatical. The guiding principle was that one was eligible for a term away from college after completing six years as a tutorial fellow. Daniel had spent his sixth year as a visiting fellow on the other side of the Atlantic. A law don called Ernst Walter Immel had complained that a year’s absence from Oxford should not be permitted to count towards the entitlement to yet more leave, but Theo had ruled in Daniel’s favour. The deal was that he’d continue teaching until the end of Hilary. By giving notice now, Daniel could honour his side of the bargain and still leave college at Easter.

  ‘Much as I hate college politics, I promise that wasn’t the reason.’

  ‘What of the response to your television series? Petty jealousies are always vexing.’

  Daniel’s scripts had been edited by ratings-driven zealots. The book on which they were based proclaimed a parallel between historical research and the work of a detective; the rewrites transformed it from a light academic essay into a quasi-crime show. The producer said this made the programmes more accessible and the viewer figures left him salivating with delight. A couple of reviewers from rival faculties of history, on the other hand, had frothed with rage. The focus on history as popular entertainment was symptomatic of collapsing educational standards and they made it pretty clear that Daniel was personally to blame.