Chapter 92
Joyce
So we told Gordon Playfair about the body. And we all had a good old chat about who might have buried it there all those years ago. All those years ago, when Coopers Chase was a convent and a young Gordon Playfair sat in the very same house, with his young family, on this very hill.
The offer for his land, by the way? It was from our mysterious friends at Bramley Holdings.
That name is still driving me crazy. But it’ll come.
He was just cutting off his nose to spite his face with Ventham, refusing to sell simply because he couldn’t stand him.
The moment Ventham was out of the picture, the sale was on.
I asked Gordon what he might do with the money, and it won’t surprise you to know that most of it will go to the kids.
There’s three, and we know one of them, of course: Karen, who lives in the small cottage in the next field over, and who was supposed to be teaching us about computers, until we were so unexpectedly interrupted.
Unmarried, but then so is Joanna. So am I, come to think of it.
So, the kids are lucky, but Gordon says he has enough left over to buy himself a little place somewhere nice, and—you will see where this is going—we’re going to give him a guided tour of Coopers Chase in a few days and see if anything takes his fancy.
Wouldn’t that be fun? Gordon is craggy rather than conventionally handsome, but he has broad, farmers’ shoulders.
Anyway, back to the bones. Gordon understood now why we wanted to hear his memories of the 1970s. And why we were studying his photo albums so intently. Just to take a look at any shots he’d taken on those trips down the hill all those years ago? See if anyone rang a bell.
In the end, it was in the second album we looked through.
It started with wedding photos, Gordon and Sandra (or Susan—I had glazed over, I’m afraid; you know other people’s wedding photos), then pictures of a baby suspiciously soon afterward.
That will be their eldest. Then, and I’m not making this up, page after page of pictures of sheep, and the way Gordon was telling it, all different.
And then, just as the wine and the fire and the sheep were making us drowsy, we reached the final photos in the album.
Six in all, black-and-white. All six photos taken at a Christmas party at the convent.
Probably not a party as such, but certainly Christmas.
It was in the fifth photo, a group shot. At first you couldn’t really see it. We’ve all changed a lot over fifty years. I’m sure I wouldn’t recognize Elizabeth, or she me. But we all looked, and we all looked again. And we all agreed.
And so we have our evidence, and we have a plan. Well, Elizabeth has a plan.
And speaking of photos, I found a nice one for my column in Cut to the Chase. It’s an old photo, which I know is vain, but you’d still know it’s me. Gerry is also in it, but Anne tells me she can crop him out on the computer. Sorry, love.