AllFreeNovel
Share Us
11
Claude
The girl was persistent, he’d give her that. Claude watched her march purposefully along his path and waited for the knock on the door. When it didn’t come, he peeped out of the window.
She was standing there, with her fingers wrapped around the tarnished door knocker, as though she was deliberating what to do. She was building up the courage, he realised in a flash of shame. What would his mother think of him becoming so frightening? What would Esther say?
His thoughts were stilled by her heavy knocking which reverberated through the tiny cottage. Buster, sitting at his feet, got up slowly and wandered out of the front room.
Sighing, Claude walked into the hall, ignoring the fatigue that dogged him these days, and opened the door.
‘Yes?’ he asked slowly, deliberately trying not to snap.
The girl – Lettie, wasn’t it? – gave him a nervous smile. She was wearing a bright cotton sundress today and neat brown sandals but her red hair was still untamed and falling in waves down her back. She looked like a woman from the Pre-Raphaelite paintings that his mother had loved so much.
‘I’m sorry to bother you again,’ said the girl hesitantly. ‘I know you were quite… definite when we last spoke that you didn’t want to help me, but I’m not quite sure where else to try.’ She started gabbling, her words tumbling out. ‘I need to go back to London soon and I haven’t got to the bottom of what happened to my great-aunt when she lived here, and I don’t want to let her down. She would understand. She was always lovely to me. But it’s the last thing I can do for her. She died, you see.’
Her bottom lip wobbled at that and her eyes glistened as though she was about to cry. Oh, hell. Claude was never good with women’s tears. They were unsettling and, these days, made him want to cry himself, which would never do.
‘What exactly is it that you want?’ he asked, giving a curt nod to local postmaster Marcus, who was passing by and craning his neck to see what was going on. Claude talking to an attractive young woman on his doorstep! It would be all around the pub by this evening.
‘If possible, I’d like to have a look at local photos and documents from the 1930s and 40s. Is that the kind of thing you might have?’ Lettie smiled when Claude nodded. ‘That’s great. It might tell me more about my great-aunt. All I know for sure is that she knew Florence Allford’s brother so I’m trying to find out more about him too.’
‘Why don’t you ask Florence?’
‘I tried but she doesn’t want to speak about it.’
‘Perhaps it’s best left unspoken then.’
‘You might be right, but I won’t know until I find out what’s going on.’ She shook her head slightly. ‘What went on in the village so long ago. It’s in the past, but the past can have such a bearing on the present, don’t you think?’
It certainly had a bearing on his present these days. He spent hours thinking back to what might have been.
Claude suddenly noticed that Lettie looked done in, with smudges of dark shadow beneath her eyes.
‘What are you expecting to find?’
The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but something happened back then. Something that made the family leave Heaven’s Cove and never come back. Something that still affected my great-aunt eighty years later, even though that sounds daft.’
It didn’t sound daft to Claude. The past weighed heavily on him, and this girl who’d appeared out of nowhere somehow felt like a link to what he’d lost. He hesitated before stepping aside. ‘You’re being very mysterious, but you’d best come in.’
He was giving the girl what she wanted, but she still hesitated on the doorstep. Claude suddenly caught sight of himself, reflected in the tarnished mirror hanging on the hall wall. His hair was wild today, frizzed out around his leathered face, and his beard was bushier than ever.
‘I daresay Belinda would have informed you if I was a serial killer on the quiet,’ he said, raising an eyebrow, and ironically, the girl seemed to relax at that. Her shoulders dropped.
‘Belinda does seem to know a good deal about the people who live around here.’
‘Too much,’ muttered Claude, grateful that she hadn’t yet picked up on his latest news. His visits to the hospital had gone unnoticed.
He opened the front door as far as it would go. ‘After you, if you are coming in.’
With a nervous smile, the girl walked into his cottage and he followed, leaving the front door wide open. Buster wagged his tail and nuzzled up to her leg.
The hall – more of a tiny passage, really – led into a little sitting room with a low ceiling and small windows with deep stone windowsills. It was gloomy in here, even on the brightest of summer days, and the girl’s features were thrown into shadow.
Claude gestured for her to sit on the two-seater sofa, after moving Buster out of her way with his foot. He took a seat at the table, next to the window, and stared at his unexpected guest.
‘What did you say your name was again? Something Starcross?’
