Chapter 18
CERENSTHORPE ABBEY – PRESENT DAY
The day was sultry, heavy with the smell of mulched leaves, fallen from the avenue of ancient trees leading to the barn.
A Saharan dust storm had swept across the country in the early hours, leaving a film of orange grit and dust patterns.
The accompanying wind had dropped and an unseasonably warm sun beat down from a hazy sky.
The light prismed through the remaining sand as it shifted, dispersing through the air, creating a peculiar golden glow, as though the day itself were holding its breath.
Tabitha and Tamar, dressed in jeans and short-sleeved tops, walked along the path towards the barn, discussing the treasure hunt.
When they had been deciphering the clue, their hopes had been high, but as they approached the vast building, Tabitha felt her positivity leaching away.
There were hundreds of items inside, all chaotically deposited over the years; she realised it could take weeks to search through them.
The doors were flung wide to admit light and air into the dingy building and muffled voices floated out to greet them: the deep baritone of Gulliver and the higher pitch of his mother, Molly.
The text Tabitha had sent the previous evening had not been answered until this morning.
Molly had phoned and declared she knew exactly which item she meant.
‘It’s awkward to reach,’ she had explained.
‘Edith has moved a great deal into the barn, but I’m sure the magpies are in the far corner.
One of the glass panels is cracked, so we stored it safely out of the way.
I’ll ask Gull to help; it’ll do him good to start taking an interest in the abbey again. ’
‘I hadn’t realised you faced such a challenge cataloguing the house,’ Tamar said, as they paused outside the barn.
‘This has been the problem all along,’ said Tabitha.
‘There’s never been a plan. The house has been in Edith’s family for centuries and each generation has simply moved things around.
She decided on a complete inventory when she realised Gulliver was about to inherit chaos. She hoped the Chaucer might turn up.’
‘Do you think it exists?’ asked Tamar.
‘It’s possible,’ admitted Tabitha, ‘but whether it does or doesn’t, it’s important to Edith. For her, it’s a link to her father and grandfather, whom she adored. If I’m only here for a year, I’d like to do something positive to help her.’
‘And you’re definitely planning to leave after a year?’ asked Tamar.
‘Unless they extend my contract,’ said Tabitha.
The thought of leaving the abbey always made Tabitha go cold.
She had found sanctuary here, a place to hide while she grieved, and she was loath to give it up too soon.
The longer she lived in Tadpole Cottage and worked with Edith, wandering the corridors of Cerensthorpe Abbey, the more she felt at home.
If she were to depart after twelve months, she knew leaving the old house with its beautiful grounds would be even more of a wrench than leaving the apartment she and Blake had shared.
A loud crash from within the barn broke her reverie.
Molly emerged, laughing, dust in her hair. ‘Tabs, Tamar! Perfect timing,’ she exclaimed.
All Tabitha’s sisters had helped her move in, meeting Edith, Gulliver and Molly in the process. Tamar had also stayed a few months earlier and, like everyone at Cerensthorpe Abbey, she was greeted like a long-lost family member.
Molly hugged the two sisters and Tabitha breathed in her Chanel No.
5 perfume. The powdery scent clung to Tabitha’s skin.
Molly was in her early sixties but looked younger, with light brown hair and blue eyes, a clear, smooth complexion and gently rounded figure.
Today, she was dressed in cut-off denim shorts and a shocking pink T-shirt with the word Believe in sparkly gold letters.
‘Can you credit this heat?’ she said. ‘It’s unnatural this late in the year.’
‘It was so unexpected, I had to borrow clothes from Tabs,’ said Tamar.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll probably rain by this afternoon,’ Molly replied with a grin. ‘Come and see what we’ve done. We’re clearing a path to the back corner, where the magpies have been stored these last twenty years. Slow going, though. Your help will make all the difference.’
‘Is Edith here?’ asked Tabitha, as they walked into the barn. She was concerned the older woman might overexert herself.
‘No, she’s at the hairdresser’s and she’s meeting her friend Letty for lunch. She won’t be back until after three.’
‘Good, we might have another clue for her to solve by then,’ said Tamar.
From further inside the barn, Gulliver called to his mother and Tabitha felt a rush of unease.
She had not spoken to him since his muttered apology on the phone, and she was unsure how to behave around him.
Their once easy friendship had fractured, and as they approached, she decided she would follow his lead.
Actions were often the easiest way for people to demonstrate their true feelings, and should Gulliver offer a tentative smile, joke or other endearment, she would respond. She did not believe in bearing grudges.
‘We think the clue must mean the magpies in the broken case,’ Molly said as they reached the doorway. ‘Nothing else fits, although Gull wasn’t sure about the whistle.’
‘What did you think of the style of the clue?’ asked Tamar.
‘Very gothic,’ replied Molly. ‘Gulliver said it was creepy.’
‘The words were carefully chosen,’ said Tabitha and, despite the heat of the day, she shivered. ‘It felt like a curse.’
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Molly.
‘“Blowing the whistle summons danger”,’ said Tabitha. ‘This clue is darker, it has a warning hidden within the words.’
Molly looked uneasy and they all jumped when Tamar’s phone rang; with apologies, she wandered away to take the call.
Gulliver appeared in the doorway, he raised a hand and gave Tabitha the ghost of a smile, ‘Tabs, could you give me a hand?’ he called and disappeared into the gloomy interior again.
‘I’ll be there in a moment,’ said Molly and gave her an encouraging smile.
Tabitha was about to protest, then remembered her promise to herself: follow his lead.
He had used the shortened version of her name, it held an intimacy, and his summons halted further discussion about the clue.
Tabitha’s night had been punctuated by flickering and intense dreams; the words of the clue had swirled like a murmuration of starlings around terrifying giant wading birds, who picked their way through rivers running thick with blood.
The shrill call of a whistle, merging into a bird’s screech, followed by an ethereal and desperate cry for help.
The barn was stifling, its two small windows were thick with grime and the light filtering through them held a murky quality. Gulliver was at the back, shifting a chest of drawers, his grey T-shirt clung to the muscles of his arms and back.
‘Hang on,’ Tabitha called, hurrying forward to help as she saw the corner of the chest snag on a tumble of abandoned fabric. She knelt, tugging free a length of faded blue curtain. It tore in her hands.
‘Sorry…’
‘Throw it on the pile,’ he said, exasperated but not unkind. ‘Half of this so-called “salvage” is rubbish. I’m hiring a skip.’
‘Won’t Edith mind?’
‘She hasn’t been in here for years. She won’t even know.’
‘What if there are answers to more clues?’ asked Tabitha.
‘Unlikely,’ said Gulliver. ‘You don’t believe the story of the clues leading to the long-lost Chaucer?’
‘They might do,’ she said, ‘and for Edith’s sake, I live in hope.’
‘I hope so too, which is why I agreed to Mum’s request to find the hideous taxidermy magpies. But I think you’re all wrong.’
‘I’ve been through the records, there’s nothing else with a magpie listed,’ said Tabitha.
‘It doesn’t follow the pattern,’ snapped Gulliver with a burst of irritation. ‘The other clues have been parts of the house—’
‘No, they haven’t,’ she interrupted. ‘The first was a painting, which is why I was so surprised when I realised it was still in situ. It could easily have been removed and the second clue lost. The next clue was part of the house, but this one is another artefact, it does follow a bit of a pattern.’
‘I suppose,’ he agreed, but his tone was reluctant.
‘Let’s find it, shall we,’ she said before he could continue his argument, ‘and decide when it’s in front of us.’
He did not reply, instead he moved behind the chest of drawers.
‘Help me to shove this out of the way,’ he said.
They pushed the chest aside together, the scrape of wood echoing through the barn. Beyond it, a rust-brown tarpaulin covered a large square object.
‘This is it,’ Gulliver murmured and gave an involuntary shudder.
They pulled the cloth away and dust spiralled, catching the murky light as the taxidermy sculpture was revealed in all its horrific glory.
It oozed violence. One magpie lunged, wings outstretched, beak wide as though screeching, its eyes black and pitiless.
The other, standing incongruously on a hardback book, shrank away, wing twisted, head bowed in defeat, ready for death.
Tabitha felt both pity and revulsion as she stared at the two birds, frozen forever in the terrible quarrel.
‘It’s hideous,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ replied Gulliver simply. ‘Mum said the clue mentions a whistle, this is why I don’t think it can be this monstrosity. There’s no—’
Tabitha pointed to the glimmer of gold around the injured magpie’s neck and Gulliver bent down for a closer look.
‘In all the years I used to race past this, I never noticed the whistle,’ he admitted.
‘Where did this stand?’ Tabitha asked Gulliver.
‘In an alcove in a corridor near the library. I used to race past it with my eyes shut,’ Gulliver said grimly. ‘My father broke the glass – whether by accident or design, I never knew – but it meant it was unsafe and had to be removed.’