Cursed Inheritance (47 page)

‘People forget.’

‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘As long as you’re not thinking of falling back on your insurance. ‘

Elsham looked up sharply. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I know about the place up in Scotland you ran. And your conviction. ‘

A slow, bitter smile appeared on Elsham’s thin lips. ‘I’ve

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put all that behind me. This place is kosher.’

‘So why keep those tapes of your clients’ confessions under hypnosis? Let’s face it, John - it is John, isn’t it? John Grey? - you were hoping for something to turn up. Something you could blackmail your clients over. In the place near Stirling - what was it called? Hartsmoor Glen? - a wealthy woman confessed under hypnosis that she’d slept with her stepson. You got six thousand pounds out of her before she broke up with her husband and decided to confide in the local police. What did you get? Two years? And I’m sure that wasn’t the only time you were tempted to turn people’s secrets into hard cash.’

‘You can’t prove anything.’

‘No, you’re right. We can’t take action unless anybody complains. And they probably won’t. But now you know that we know … ‘ Wesley smiled. ‘Do we understand each other?’

Elsham didn’t reply.

‘I believe you’ve given permission for a friend of mine to look round the Hall.’

Elsham nodded. ‘The archaeologist, yes.’

Wesley pointed to the portrait of the two men that hung behind Elsham’s desk. ‘I think that might interest him. Do you mind if he comes in here now to have a look?’

‘Help yourself.’ Elsham sounded as if he no longer cared who entered his private domain.

Wesley turned to go. ‘Thank you. I, er … I hope things work out. People do forget, you know.’

Elsham shook his head. ‘I’m selling up. Cutting my losses. They say there’s a curse on this place. I think they’re right.’

Wesley joined Neil in the hall, where he had made himself comfortable on a chair, reading a glossy magazine extolling the virtues of a healthy lifestyle and a vegetarian diet. The magazine was discarded as soon as Wesley appeared.

‘Do you remember I mentioned that there was a portrait

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here that might interest you? It’s in there;’ He pointed to the door.

As Neil stood up Elsham emerged from his office and made for the stairs, ignoring the two men. Neil followed Wesley into the office, complaining that it was a pity the place had been modernised. Wesley said nothing.

When Neil saw the painting he stopped dead and stared at the two men, posed stiffly side by side, one with his right hand on his hips, the other with his left hand resting on a globe. They were young men. In their early twenties probably but with the solemn expressions of people considerably older. Neil lifted it off the wall and carried it over to the window.

He screwed up his face with concentration and began to translate the painted Latin, barely visible against the dark background. ‘Ricardus Selbiwood. That’s the one on the left. And the one with his hand on the globe, that’s Edmund.’ He looked round at Wesley, his eyes wide with excitement. ‘Dated 1604 - the year before the Nicholas sailed for Annetown. It’s our man. This is Edmund.’

Wesley stared at the young man with the sharp-featured face and the restless eyes. The young man with his hand on the globe, anxious to explore new worlds. Edmund Selbiwood, who had killed a young woman in Devon then escaped to the New World only to die in agony far from home at the hands of his murdering wife.

‘The museum at Annetown would love to have this.’

‘You’d better have a word with Elsham then. He could do with the money right now. ‘

They left that day with the picture propped up on the back seat of Neil’s Mini, Elsham’s desperate pleas to get the best price for it ringing in their ears.

Earlier that day Wesley had watched his wife sitting on the shingle beach at Bereton, perched on a towel folded twice so that the sharp stones wouldn’t dig into her bare legs as Michael filled his plastic bucket with pebbles, totally

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absorbed in his task. Amelia had slept in her pushchair. It had been good to have a Sunday afternoon together. Good not to worry about the phone ringing. The Evans case had been cleared up and Arbel Jameston was still awaiting trial even though it was now June: the due process of law ground slowly but relentlessly.

He had been angry and upset when he’d heard that Joe Harper had been sentenced to five years for manslaughter. He felt for Emma: first she had lost her birth mother by violence then her foster mother, Linda, had died. And now her beloved, gentle foster father was in prison, trapped in an alien world amongst violent people quite unlike himself. Wesley just prayed that he’d survive. He had called to see Emma, now in her fourth month of pregnancy, but she had said little and Barry had hovered over her like a clumsy mother hen. After that visit he hadn’t called again.

Now that the children were in bed, Pam was at the dining table, leaning over books and reports. Being back at work was tiring her, Wesley could tell. And there was something else. She had been quiet ever since Neil had announced that he had invited Hannah Gotleib over from the States to pick up the painting of the Selbiwood brothers that the Annetown Archaeological Trust had bought from Jeremy Elsham. Elsham and Pandora had put the Hall up for sale and left, destination unknown, and Wesley wondered if they’d ever cross his path again.

As he watched Pam at work, he felt suddenly uncomfortable. Then he told himself that it was just her return to work after her maternity leave that had brought about the change. Then: was nothing wrong that a few more family days out and the long summer vacation couldn’t cure. And there was his sister’s wedding in August to look forward to.

He picked up the TV remote control and pressed the button. He didn’t want to miss the local news with all its possibilities of burgeoning crime and violence. He liked to know what the coming week had in store at work.

But the image on the screen made him increase the TV’s

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volume and sit forward. A building was ablaze and fire crews were desperately trying to douse the flames with their hoses; a seemingly impossible task as the fire had caught hold and was destroying the edifice like a devouring monster.

‘Fire crews from all over the area are attempting to save historic Potwoolstan Hall,’ the reporter announced with what sounded like relish. ‘The Hall, a former healing centre, is currently empty and it is not thought that there were any casualties.’

Wesley glanced at Pam. She had heard nothing, understood nothing. He stood up, grabbed the phone and dialled Gerry Heffeman’s number.

Emma Oldchester had watched for a while from the safety of the trees before summoning the courage to approach the Hall. When Barry had asked where she was going she’d told him she was fetching something from Joe’s; something he’d asked her to bring when she next visited. The way he always believed her made her feel guilty, as if she was lying to a trusting child. But this ‘was something she had to do. And Barry wouldn’t stand in her way.

As she broke the glass in the back door and poured the petrol and flaming rags through the jagged holes, the crows in the trees had risen cackling and shrieking, as though their feathers were burning like the fabric of Potwoolstan Hall.

When the place was gone it would all be over. And the curse would be lifted at last.

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Historical Note

When I began my research for this book I came across accounts written by some of the first Englishmen to settle at a place called Jamestown on the James River in Virginia, USA. And when I started to dig deeper in search of facts on which to base my fictitious ‘Annetown’, I made some surprising discoveries.

Commonly it is assumed that the arrival in 1620 at Plymouth, Massachusetts of 102 pious English men and women seeking religious freedom, heralded the birth of modern America. The truth, however, is rather less romantic. Sir WaIter Raleigh made an ill-fated attempt to establish a colony at Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina in 1585 and the first American child of English parents was born there in August 1587 and named Virginia Dare. Three years later, however, all these settlers had vanished, their fate a mystery to this day.

In 1606, King James I granted the Virginia Company of London permission to colonise Virginia, exhorting them to ‘dig, delve and hew for all manner of deposits and residues of gold, silver and copper’. James also needed to establish a foothold in North America to halt the spread of Spanish power in the area.

In 1607 - thirteen years before the Pilgrim Fathers set sail from England - 105 men and boys from all social classes, aristocrats to artisans, arrived at Jamestown after a

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daunting five-month voyage. However, within months of their arrival, sixty-seven of their number had died and contemporary accounts suggest that they met their end in terrible pain. Master George Percy - brother of the Earl of Northumberland and a Councillor of that first colony - wrote ‘There was never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this newly discovered Virginia.’ The dream of riches in the New World had become a nightmare.

Many theories about what really happened at Jamestown have been put forward over the years, the most common being that the settlers starved to death for want of adequate food supplies (even though food was abundant in nearby settlements). Accounts written by survivors tell of famipe and illness. However, recent studies suggest that there might be a more sinister explanation. The skeleton of a young man was found - a gentleman buried in a coffin rather than the shroud reserved for the lower social classes - and he had obviously died from a massive gunshot wound, suggesting murder or civil unrest. Some experts who have studied the survivors’ accounts have noticed that the symptoms of the settlers’ mysterious illness - bloody diarrhoea, skin peeling, fever, psychotic behaviour, delu-sions, weakness, a famished appearance and swelling - appear to match the symptoms of arsenic poisoning (arsenic being readily available as ratsbane was used to control vermin). This might explain why the settlers were too weakened to search for food. And why the debilitating symptoms only began when the ships returned to England, and with them any hope of help.

Captain John Smith (famously rescued by Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan) wrote that within ten days of the ships’ departure, hardly anyone could stand or walk - a suspiciously sudden deterioration. Was a poisoner at work in early Jamestown? And, if so, was it an attempt to sabo-tage the enterprise by England’s principal enemy at the time, Spain?

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This idea may seem far-fetched, but even in our own day the CIA and MI5 have been known to do some strange things. And the use of poison was fairly common at the time: in 1622, following a massacre of settlers by the Chesapeake tribe, the physician for Jamestown, Dr Potter, brewed up poisoned ale for a peace conference, and 200 Indians died as a result. In perilous times - and this was the era of the Gunpowder Plot - anything is possible.

So could one or more of those first settlers have been agents of an enemy power? Archaeological evidence suggests that some of the Jamestown settlers harboured secret Catholic sympathies: rosaries and medallions were found during the excavation, hardly the sort of thing one would expect in a fiercely Protestant settlement. Or was the motive personal rather than political? Some kind of power struggle, perhaps? Maybe one day evidence will emerge that will throw more light on the mystery.

Those settlers who survived abandoned the Jamestown settlement and set sail in search of a more congenial place. But they met with a supply ship from England and were persuaded to turn back. This time they made a fresh start and the settlement thrived.

The colony fell into decay after the Virginian seat of government was moved in 1699 to the Middle Plantation (later called Williamsburg) and the site of the original settlement was, for many years, thought to be lost. But now the Jamestown site has been excavated and boasts a reconstruction of the settlement complete with replicas of the ships that brought the first settlers to Virginia in 1607. After an unfortunate beginning, Jamestown lives again.