Death on the Downs

Forty

Tamsin had been persuaded to turn off the television. She lay on the crumpled cover, propped on a pile of pillows against the pine bedhead. Her manner wasn’t adversarial, just exhausted and apathetic. Defeated.

“How’s it been?” asked Jude.

“I have good days and bad days. Sometimes I have some energy, sometimes I don’t have any. I find it terribly difficult to concentrate on anything. Even a half-hour television soap leaves me mentally exhausted.”

“And are you managing to read much?”

A shake of the head. “That’s too much concentration as well. I flick through the odd magazine, but…” Tamsin gestured helplessly to the mess around her.

“How about the physical symptoms?”

The girl grimaced. “Bad. Like having flu a lot of the time. Some days my joints just ache so much that…Oh, I don’t know.”

“And do you think what Charles is doing is making things better?”

Tamsin seemed to contemplate a quick fiery response and reject the idea. There was a silence. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s helping. I mean, I know this…what I’ve got…this illness…it’s partly to do with the mind. I don’t mean it’s in the mind,” she added sharply.

“I know what you mean,” said Jude gently. “You don’t have to convince me it’s a real illness.”

“No. That’s a good thing about Charles too. He never questions that it’s a real illness.”

Jude felt the uncharitable thought forming in her head: at the prices he’s charging, why should he? She wished she could curb the distrust that the thought of Charles Hilton always prompted in her.

“And he’s good,” Tamsin went on, “about showing how the mind works. Some of what he says is garbage, but a lot of it makes sense. So if I can understand my mind…see how that ties in with what’s happening to my body…maybe I’ll get closer to getting better…” With an unexpected surge of animation, she echoed her mother’s words. “I mean, we’ve tried everything else! I’ve had endless tests in hospital. I’ve been prescribed vitamin supplements, tonics, anti-depressants. None of them’ve worked. Maybe what Charles is doing will help…” She shrugged and repeated a despairing, “I don’t know.”

The long speech seemed to have drained her. There was now no colour in her face at all; she was in monochrome, pale, pale grey. And her eyes a darker grey.

“So you’re staying here because you think he may be able to cure you?”

An almost imperceptible nod.

“But that’s not the only reason, is it, Tamsin?”

A wariness came into the dull eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Jude didn’t beat about the bush. “I talked to your mother. She said you were staying here because nobody knows where you are. She said you were afraid if you were out in the world, someone might kill you.”

The girl was too washed out to argue. “Yes,” she said, and tears spilled slowly down her cheeks, as if they too were exhausted.

“Don’t bother to say anything, Tamsin. I’ll tell you what I think happened. You stop me when I’ve got something wrong.” Jude took the silence as assent. “Let’s start that night at the beginning of February when you went back to Weldisham. You went to see your mother because your father was away on business. I think that night you couldn’t sleep and you wanted a cigarette. You knew your mother didn’t like smoking in the house…Anyway, there was the danger your father might smell the smoke when he came back and start asking questions…”

“So, as you often had done before, you went out into the garden to light up. But it was a cold night. Maybe you’d only got a dressing gown on over your nightie. You knew you’d be more sheltered in the old barn at the bottom of your garden.”

“I think it’s what you saw when you got into the barn that terrified you, Tamsin.”

The haggard girl on the bed nodded and almost smiled. Jude’s words seemed to bring relief to her. She no longer had to bear her secret on her own.

“What was it you saw in the barn?”

“There was a light set up, fixed on a pole…” The voice was very thin, but quite audible in the intense silence of the room. “There was someone there, digging…”

“Digging like in a grave?”

“Yes. But it wasn’t digging to put something in a grave…”

“It was digging to get something out? Or someone out?”

Flattened against the pillows the girl’s head could only just manage a nod.

“It was a skeleton, wasn’t it, Tamsin? The remains of a human body?”

“Yes.” The word was no more than a breath.

“And the person saw you, didn’t they? And they knew who you were.”

“Yes. And he said he’d kill me.”

“Did he come chasing after you?”

“Mm. But he had to…put the bones down and…I managed to get back into the house and lock the back door…and he didn’t follow then.” Jude could see the energy demanded by every word, but she could not come to the girl’s rescue until Tamsin had finished what she had to say.

“The next morning…I just knew…I had to get back here…I had to stay here…It’s the only place I’m safe. So long as he’s around…there’s no way I can ever go back to Weldisham…”

“Who was it?” asked Jude. “Who was the man you saw digging up the bones?”