The Coffin Trail

Chapter Twenty-Four

Hannah pointed to the grey bulk of the Sacrifice Stone looming before them. ‘So the legend had a grain of truth. You did look Death in the eye.’

Daniel followed as she picked her way along the narrow track on Priest Edge. The ground was bare underfoot. In the distance he could see the coffin trail winding down the fell. Since the drama of the previous week he’d made his apologies to the editor of Contemporary Historian and abandoned his article about corpse roads. Only last night he’d dreamed of Tash Dumelow jolting down the coffin trail in exultant mood, unaware that in the farmhouse below, a curtain was twitching.

When they reached the Stone he said, ‘I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t be climbing up it again.’

‘Glad to hear you say so,’ she scolded. ‘The Lakes aren’t a theme park. People ought to leave its monuments alone.’

‘Sorry, it was an aberration. Put it down to the ignorance of an off-comer. It’ll take time for me to behave like a native. Even longer to feel like one.’

‘Thirty years minimum, no reduction for good behaviour. Never mind the tourism and the twee craft shops, Daniel. This is a private corner of the world. You can’t just march in and hope to belong.’

‘I guess you’re right.’

‘Still happy you moved here?’

‘No regrets.’

‘Despite all that’s happened?’

He brushed his fingers against the Stone, feeling its roughness. ‘Somehow the Lakes have got under my skin. Besides, at least one good thing’s been achieved. Barrie’s name has been cleared. Even if not by a court of law.’

‘What’s so wonderful about the judgment of a court of law? I’ve seen a few dodgy verdicts in my time, I promise you.’

‘When we had dinner, you mentioned that case about the man who hired the hitman, Golac. Still rankles that he got off scot free?’

‘You bet. Unfinished business.’

He’d heard her use the phrase before, it seemed to have a resonance for her. ‘Like my father and the murder of Gabrielle Anders.’

She was glaring at him. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me about Tash instead of confronting her?’

‘It would have been the sensible thing to do.’

‘Too right.’

‘Leaving Oxford and coming here wasn’t sensible, either. Trouble is, I’m sick — yes, I’m so sick — of doing the sensible thing.’

‘You should have trusted me.’

‘I realise that,’ he said quietly. ‘It wasn’t about not trusting you. Please believe me.’

She swivelled, as if wanting to change the subject, and gazed down the slope towards Tarn Fold. ‘How’s the work on the cottage going?’

‘On bad days, it feels as though it will never end. As though I’ll never get the dust out of my sinuses and the wood shavings out of my hair. On good days, well, things are taking shape.’

‘And Miranda, is she glad she made the move?’

He looked at the traces of his footprints on the track. Soon the farmers would be praying for rain. People were never satisfied for long.

‘Most of the time, yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Whether she will still be so glad after she gets back from London, who knows? I’m not sure — not convinced any more that she really thought this through. When the excitement fades…’

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t pry. None of my business.’

‘I’m turning my attention to the garden. It’s a wilderness, yet there’s something that puzzles me. As if it were laid out according to a strange, lop-sided design. The only snag is, I can’t make any sense of it.’

She put her head to one side, weighing him up. ‘Mysteries fascinate you, don’t they?’

‘History is stuffed with them. Every historian wants to find answers to the puzzles of the past.’

‘You said something earlier, about the moment Tash threw herself from the pele tower. You had a flashback.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

He sighed. ‘Why not?’

He didn’t look at her as he talked about the death of his lover, but he was conscious of her intense scrutiny. When he’d finished, he said, ‘My old boss thinks that by moving to the Lakes, I’m running away from what happened to Aimee. If he’s right, it certainly didn’t work. I’ve spent all my life hungering after knowledge. I’m never satisfied until I understand. That’s fine for a historian, but it causes trouble in the real world. If I hadn’t confronted Tash, she’d be alive today.’

‘Do you wish she’d lived?’

He shrugged. ‘What matters is that she didn’t want to.’

A few moments passed. Hannah checked her watch. ‘I’d better be going.’

‘Marc will be getting back from the book fair soon, I guess.’

‘Maybe.’

Something in her voice caused him to look up. ‘Something wrong?’

She pushed a hand through her hair. ‘Nothing that can’t be sorted out, I suppose.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’

She hesitated. ‘I–I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘Okay.’

‘You understand what I mean?’ Her shoulders were hunched, her tone defensive. ‘I don’t want to sound secretive, especially when you told me all about Aimee. But some things need to stay private.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ll walk you back to the car.’

In silence, they made their way along the edge of the fell and then down the coffin trail, towards Brack Hall and the farm. Hannah had parked at the point where the trail joined the lane. When they reached her car, she offered her hand. It was warm to touch.

‘Perhaps I’ll see you again sometime.’

He wondered if he should kiss her. Just a peck on the cheek, nothing more. He leaned towards her and her eyes widened. Something in her expression unsettled him. Shit, he thought.

Slowly, trying not to show his reluctance, he drew back.

‘So how are things here?’ Miranda asked as he unlocked the front door.

From the moment he’d picked her up at Oxenholme station, she’d scarcely drawn breath. The jaunt to London had been an unqualified success. She’d seen friends, lunched at the next table to a couple of hunky actors from a long-running soap, and accepted Suki’s offer to contribute a regular column to the magazine. The pay was amazing and the friends mouth-wateringly envious of her idyllic lifestyle in the Lakes. A couple of people she’d wanted to see had been away, but it didn’t matter because she’d soon have another chance to catch up with them. She needed to go back to Wapping to chat up an ex-boyfriend who had moved to The Sunday Times and might be interested in occasional lifestyle features. No need to be jealous, she’d assured Daniel; the boyfriend had finally decided he was gay and was living with a bloke who was a driver on the London Underground.

‘Eddie says he’ll be starting work on the bothy next week. And I took Tash’s watercolour and gave it to the Oxfam shop. Otherwise, not quite as exciting as they were for you, by the sound of it.’

‘Listen,’ she said as he put down her suitcase. ‘You’ve already had enough excitement to last a lifetime. I still can’t get over the idea of Tash killing her own housekeeper. Let alone this horrid picture that keeps coming into my mind of her splattered all over the courtyard. All the blood and the brains — ugh! This is a beautiful part of the world, I’ve been telling everyone, but…weird, somehow.’

‘You’re still glad we moved here?’

‘Of course! Let’s face it, I’ve fallen on my feet. If we didn’t have a cottage in the country, Suki would never have crossed my palm with silver. I only wish you hadn’t made me promise not to write about the murders. I could have made a small fortune. All the same…’

‘Yes?’

‘The agent still hasn’t found a buyer for my flat. Not at the price I wanted.’

‘You are asking top dollar.’

‘Why not? It’s an up-and-coming area. But I was wondering whether it might be an idea to keep the flat. It would be so useful to have a place to stay in the city. Our very own pied-a-terre. What do you think?’

‘Why would we need it?’

In playful mood, she wagged a finger. ‘Don’t forget what you said about Tash. She wanted to start again, but you said it was impossible. We’re all the prisoners of our history.’

‘God,’ he said gloomily. ‘I can be pretentious sometimes.’

‘You’re an Oxford don,’ she said, punching him gently in the stomach. ‘It comes with the territory.’

He shook his head. ‘Oxford’s in the past. I’m not going back.’

‘You’ll change your mind. Everybody does in the end.’

‘Not me.’

‘Daniel.’ Her tone was patient and kind. ‘The Lake District is wonderful, but it is a bit — well, remote. We don’t want to cut ourselves off.’

‘But that’s what we agreed.’

She reached towards him and started to unbuckle his belt. ‘Hey, let’s not argue. I’ve only been home five minutes and there are far better ways we can spend the time.’

He closed his eyes as she touched him. She still had the gift of making him forget everything but the here and now. Trouble was, with his eyes shut, his brain played a trick on him. Wove a dark spell that made his body tremble.

No point denying it, no point in trying to fool himself. In his mind, Miranda too had changed places. For a few seconds before he jolted back to his senses, the wandering hands belonged to Hannah Scarlett.