Chapter 31
CERENSTHORPE ABBEY – PRESENT DAY
Tabitha stared at the sketch and wrinkled her nose.
The shading was wrong, making the stones of the ruins look out of proportion.
She sighed and turned to a fresh page, but she was unenthusiastic and rather than begin a new attempt, she gazed out of the window of the scriptorium.
It was Saturday and Tabitha had been hoping to spend time outside, sketching.
The November weather had been mild and wet, the leaves slow to fall, glowing a myriad of reds, golds and orange in a week of gentle sunshine, but today a fierce wind had roared across the countryside, ruining her plans.
It was Edith who had suggested Tabitha use the scriptorium.
‘It’s the perfect place to sketch,’ she had said. ‘I have spent many happy hours in there drawing.’
‘But it was only renovated recently,’ Tabitha had said in surprise.
‘The scriptorium has always been here, perhaps not in the beautiful condition Gulliver has restored it to, but the space, the feeling of peace, it has remained since the thirteenth century, no matter the décor.’
The room was a mixture of ancient and modern.
When she had first seen it, Tabitha’s initial thought had been it was a space out of time, a place of harmony linking the eras of the house, each generation reinventing it afresh and leaving their imprint in the ancient walls.
Gulliver had shown it to her a week after her arrival.
He had been filled with quiet pride as he explained it had been his passion project five years earlier.
‘I found some old plans in the archives,’ he had explained.
‘A friend put me in touch with an architect, Oliver Lennox, who specialises in renovating old properties. He visited and we worked together on the designs. When I showed them to Edith, she loved the idea. Oliver’s drawings were sympathetic but practical.
He created a workable space but with a sense of the abbey’s history. ’
Once an area of study and illumination, the scriptorium had been reimagined as part archive, part sanctuary, part homage to the abbey’s past. The air carried the faint scent of old books, lavender and beeswax from the polished oak of the reclaimed floorboards.
An old-fashioned writing desk sat in one corner, a quill in an inkwell, a row of bottles lined up beside it, as though waiting for the scribes to continue with their work.
The rest of the room was modern, liveable, with chairs, tables and a sleek computer for research.
A long stone seat ran beneath the window, softened by cushions in shades of muted green and gold against the pale stone.
It was here Tabitha sat, her knees drawn up, sketchbook balanced against them.
Through the window, she could see the ruins of the abbey church, the broken arches half-swallowed by ivy and the deer moving ghostlike through the leaf-stripped branches of the wind-bent trees.
Light, even on this dull day, pooled gently around her, reflecting off the pale plaster and the faint outlines of the mediaeval paintings uncovered during the restoration: a wing, a star, a hand raised in blessing, all ghosts from another time.
The rest of the room was a quiet conversation between the centuries.
The original stone ribs supported a vaulted ceiling, while the tables were modern and the glass cabinets hummed softly with humidity control.
Drawers lined one wall, containing the more robust documents, including a recently updated Swanne family tree, as well as books, papers and ledgers.
A vitrine displayed the falcon shard, catching the light like a suspended flame.
The space was calm, as if the abbey itself had gathered its history into one angelic breath.
It’s less a room, Tabitha thought, more a memory carefully preserved.
Here, she felt time behaved differently.
The tick of the clock sounded slower, the outside world receded.
Tabitha returned her gaze to her blank page and she was inspired to try again.
Her pencil whispered across the page and, as she drew, she felt the hush of those who had sat here before her: the nuns, Elizabeth Boleyn, Edith, all leaving their echoes in the gentle air.
The swift strokes of her pencil soothed her nerves and, after ten minutes, she looked down at the magpie’s feather she had drawn.
She stared at the image, it was as though she had drawn it in a trance.
The urge to draw left her, replaced by an unexpected feeling of unease.
She wound her hair into a knot on her head, securing it with her pencil, then stared out the window, breathing deeply to control her sudden attack of nerves.
Lucia had returned the previous afternoon and Tabitha had overheard her demanding an evening with Gulliver to discuss their marriage. The conversation had taken place outside Tabitha’s office and she wondered whether Lucia had staged it there on purpose.
Why? she thought. To upset me? To show me Gulliver is her husband and not available…
She forced herself away from this train of thought, but it was difficult.
Ever since her conversation with Tamar, she had been more aware of Gulliver and of her own feelings for him.
From the beginning, they had connected, they had laughed easily and he had been genuinely delighted she had agreed to stay to help them organise Cerensthorpe Abbey.
On his heartbroken return, he had turned to her, but, she wondered had he come to her out of friendship, as she had told herself, or a more visceral reason?
For so long, she had pushed away the thought of becoming involved with another man, unsure she would ever be able to trust anyone to such an intense degree again.
Yet, Tamar’s words rang in her ears – ‘He fancies you… I wonder where it might have led if Lucia hadn’t made her unexpected appearance’ – where would she have wanted it to lead?
She felt a flash of overwhelming desire as she imagined Gulliver’s lips on hers, his arms pulling her tightly into him, their bodies touching.
No, she told herself, we’re friends.
But were they?
Yes, she insisted to the whispering voice in her mind. Gulliver loves Lucia. He was distraught over the loss of his wife, he was a wreck, sobbing on my doorstep.
But since Lucia’s return, Gulliver had been holding his wife at arm’s length. Did he still love her? Or had his feelings for Lucia changed after her unfaithfulness? Tabitha pushed these thoughts aside.
Love is an intense, multi-faceted emotion, she thought. Being in a relationship with one person did not mean you were never going to be attracted to anyone else, whether you acted upon those emotions or not was another matter.
Outside, the wind shrieked and she wondered, did she have romantic feelings for Gulliver?
The hot blush she experienced when she asked herself this question confirmed what she was trying to deny, even to herself.
Whenever she saw Gulliver, spoke to him, thought about him, she felt an intense connection between them and she felt sure it was reciprocated.
Was this why Lucia was so spiteful? Had she spotted the spark between Tabitha and Gulliver?
You don’t like Lucia, but that’s no reason to accuse her of manipulative behaviour, Tabitha thought.
Then the memory of the scent in the corridor returned to her.
She had noticed the smell around Cerensthorpe Abbey since Lucia had come back.
Could she have been in the corridor on the morning she, Edith and Molly were searching for the third clue?
No, of course, not. How would Lucia have managed to conceal herself?
The rooms in that part of the house were rarely used, except, of course, for the Widow’s suite.
A curious thought occurred to Tabitha and she reached for her phone.
‘Tay, can I ask you a question?’ she said as her sister answered.
‘Hello to you too and, yes, of course,’ Tamar replied.
‘When we were in the barn, you were closest to the door. Did you see which direction Lucia arrived from?’
Tamar was silent while she considered the question, then said, ‘From the side of the house nearest the stables.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Tabitha.
‘Yes,’ replied Tamar. ‘I remember glancing over my shoulder because I heard a noise outside, but there was nothing there, then I saw a shadow near the path to the stables. You shouted, I looked away and, next moment, Lucia was stalking towards us in all her Poison-scented glory.’
‘What did you say?’ asked Tabitha, shocked.
‘Poison, the perfume. Do you remember, Mum wore it for years, then we all clubbed together to buy her a bottle of J’Adore by Dior to bring her more up to date.’
‘Yes,’ Tabitha murmured, her mind whirring. ‘I do.’
‘What’s going on, Tabs?’ asked Tamar.
‘This is going to sound strange,’ said Tabitha, ‘but I think Lucia has been hiding in the house for longer than we realised.’
‘What?’
‘The direction you said she appeared from doesn’t come from where the family park their cars, which, if she’d come straight from the airport as she claimed, would have been the obvious place for her to be.’
‘Unless she’d gone inside first, looking for Gulliver,’ said Tamar.
‘True, but then she would have approached from the path we used, as it’s the most direct route from both the front doors and the kitchen. To come via the stables is a very circuitous route.’
‘Perhaps she searched the stables for Gulliver, too.’
‘Why?’ asked Tabitha. ‘If she’d gone up to the house asking for him, anyone there would have told her Gulliver was staying with Molly. The most direct route to her cottage is from the front doors.’
‘But why would that make you think Lucia was hiding in the house?’ asked Tamar.