Page 22 of The Peculiar Incident at Thistlewick House

‘Poor love, everything’s wearing out,’ she said. ‘Her mind’s as sharp as it ever was, but I worry she’ll catch the influenza that’s doing the rounds. You have no symptoms, I trust?’

‘No, only the kitchen maid at Thistlewick House came down with it,’ he reassured her, ‘and she’s since made a full recovery.’

‘I’m making a pot of tea. Will you join us?’

Edward declined. His cousin would soon be wondering where he was, so he couldn’t stop long.

As they entered the tiny parlour, he saw the mother lying in a small bed that had been made up in the corner.

Old Mrs Cleyford’s twisted hands clutched the edge of the quilt as she eyed the visitor with suspicion.

‘Well, you’re a colourful one,’ she exclaimed.

‘I’ve heard you gad about the village in coats of emerald green and midnight blue.

At least you had the decency to wear black for the funeral.

Might be all the rage in London, but we’re simple folk.

Coming here with your spooky mumbo jumbo.

’ This lady was someone else who viewed him as corrupting the good people of Thistlewick Tye, he realised, but he didn’t comment.

‘What a pretty embroidery,’ Edward said, noticing a framed sentiment about friendship hanging above the mantelpiece.

‘Someone I was incredibly fond of gave it to me years ago,’ Miss Cleyford said, a light briefly flashing across her eyes. ‘It means a great deal to me.’

Her mother tutted. ‘Always getting gifts. My daughter’s got a secret admirer, it would seem. Little presents left on the doorstep for a couple of years now. Not that she should be thinking about romance at her time of life,’ she scoffed.

Miss Cleyford coloured and bowed her head, obviously uncomfortable at her mother’s observation. She must be in her fifties, and Edward thought it rather sad that there was a limit imposed on the age for finding love.

‘Had her eye on the baker when she was young, but he up and married someone a bit more grounded than this one.’ She tipped her head towards her daughter. ‘Always had her head in a book, dreaming about romance and adventure, but look where it got her?’ She sniffed.

‘And Thistlewick men like their women to do their duty to family and church,’ Miss Cleyford mumbled, a slight edge to her voice. ‘Besides, it’s been somewhat fortunate for you, as I’ve spent my life helping run your household.’

Her mother didn’t respond but spun her head back to Edward.

‘What do you want, then?’ the shrewd old lady asked, giving no credence to her daughter’s observation. ‘No one visits me any more unless they want something.’

Edward smiled. ‘I’m after some information.

At some point in the last fifty years, I believe a group of people either from, or visiting, Thistlewick Tye were buried on the common, and now that the winter weather ravages your coastline, their resting place has been disturbed and they’re tumbling into the sea. ’

Mrs Cleyford looked slightly alarmed and shuffled further up the bed. ‘No one was buried out there in my lifetime. They’ll be older than that, I’m reckoning. A plague pit maybe.’

‘A gold chain and a coin were both found with these bodies, and so I’m fairly certain that these people have not been in the ground more than half a century.’

Mrs Cleyford sniffed again. ‘Lots of people travel through. Once had a whole lot of foreigners staying here for a week when their cargo ship sank in a storm.’

Edward frowned. Esfir was a foreign name and Noah had spoken that one exclamation in a language he’d not recognised. ‘When was this?’

Mrs Cleyford shrugged.

‘About twenty years ago,’ the daughter volunteered. ‘Think they were Spanish, if I remember rightly.’

‘And what happened to these sailors?’

‘They stayed until the weather improved and then got passages home. One of the men married a Cromer girl and took her with him.’

‘And it was all men? No children? No little girls?’

The old woman sighed. ‘Of course not. Why do you ask?’

‘You’ve heard, I assume, of my gift? Of the reason that Mr Shaw called me to this part of the world?’

The daughter pulled up a chair for him and mumbled something about stirring the pot.

‘Of course I have. Everyone’s been talking about you. Strangers stand out in Thistlewick, and the word is that you’re one of those spiritualist types.’ Mrs Cleyford clearly did not approve. ‘Calling up the dead and getting them to perform silly tricks, when they should be left well alone.’

‘I am indeed. Were you aware that Mrs Shaw, suffering delirium after her recent illness, claimed to be a girl called Esfir?’

Behind him, there was a clatter as the daughter dropped something in the kitchen. Edward heard it but didn’t turn to draw attention to her clumsiness.

‘What sort of silly name is that?’ Mrs Cleyford scoffed.

‘It sounds Persian or Russian to me,’ Edward said. ‘Perhaps a form of Esther? And she was asking for someone called Zella – another curious name. You’re a quiet village, and the arrival of any foreign peoples would have created gossip and intrigue. Gypsies, perhaps?’

‘Gypsies have occasionally camped on the common over the years, and whilst it’s my Christian duty to be kind to everyone, even travellers, they’re nothing but trouble, in my experience. Coming here and causing mayhem. They steal and lie, and lead such wicked lives.’

‘It’s not fair to judge all travellers the same,’ Miss Cleyford said, returning to the room with a small fruit cake, which she placed on the dining table.

‘The earliest of peoples led nomadic lives, following herds and using up the natural resources of one area, before moving on to the next. We welcome the arrival of tinkers to mend our pots and pans, and farmers rely on seasonal labour to gather in harvests.’ She sighed.

‘I wonder if we’ll always persecute those who are different to us, when we should be embracing them. ’

‘Always were soft in the head.’ Her mother tutted. ‘Reading about actresses, opera singers, royalty and the like. As if your world was ever going to include such people.’

‘But it did, Mother. Do you not remember when I was younger and the circus came that winter? Camped up on the cliffs.’

‘Circus?’ Edward’s ears pricked up.

‘Silly notions about their glamorous life and sneaking off to look at the animals when you had chores to do. Ugly freaks – tiny men and deformed women – filling your head with nonsense and practically kidnapping you. You’ve no idea how close we came to losing you, because you were only a child.’

‘They were fascinating people, Mr Blackmore. Everything was so colourful.’ Miss Cleyford ignored her mother’s words and looked misty-eyed for a moment.

‘They performed wonders that you couldn’t imagine: vaulting on the backs of beautiful white horses, breathing fire, shooting arrows at silk hearts, walking across tightropes in the sky… ’

‘You were so young,’ her mother said. ‘You didn’t know about the filthy things they got up to.

Drunkenness and debauchery. Light fingers – the lot of them.

A pig went missing, they stole some of the church plate and set fire to Farmer Tutter’s barn of grain.

Nearly killed poor Lord Felthorpe’s dog – Master Felthorpe, he was back then – smashed windows the night they left, and one of their dirty horse hands took advantage of poor Mary Tutter. Wicked, they were.’

‘What year was this?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ The old woman was getting irritated now. ‘My daughter was about ten. Maybe forty years ago.’

‘And what happened to them?’ Edward was curious. The date would certainly fit with the coin.

The old woman shrugged. ‘They weren’t even putting on shows.

It was the start of the winter months when they pitched up.

Just resting, they said, but they came to cause mischief.

Heathens, mostly. And those that did have a faith were worshipping other gods.

The swarthy man with the snake – ringing bells and burning scented sticks.

Weren’t right. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Says it right there in Exodus.’

‘I wish you’d show some tolerance, Mother,’ her daughter said, angrily snatching at the knitted blanket on her mother’s bed and straightening it.

Could the bones belong to a circus troupe, Edward wondered?

Perhaps some illness had struck them when they were visiting and, unable to bury their dead in the churchyard, they’d dug a grave on the common.

Something like an outbreak of typhoid fever?

But then, surely the villagers would remember such an occurrence, if only because they would have been anxious that any such disease didn’t spread through Thistlewick.

‘Did any of them pass away during that time?’ he enquired. ‘Illness or accident?’

‘Not to my knowledge. Only here a couple of weeks and then they moved on. I’m sure the Reverend Marsham – he were the vicar back then – said they’d gone to King’s Lynn, with plans to sail abroad.’