Chapter 18
“So, weird, eh?” Charlie said.
Charlie, Jules, and Flo were gathered in the back office, grabbing lunch—tea and toasted cheese sandwiches—in between serving
customers. Jules had passed Charlie’s transcript of the grimoire over to Flo to read, but it had taken ages for her to get
around to it, the shop was keeping her so busy. At last, she had finished it the previous evening, and now they were comparing
notes.
“‘Weird’ is exactly the word,” said Flo, nodding at Charlie. “I mean, the recipes are fascinating, but it’s the ending. She
appears to disintegrate—those strange bits where she’s casting hexes on all and sundry, thinking she’s bewitched, that evil
spirits are surrounding her... poisoning her food... She was delusional, for sure. I mean, wasn’t she?” Flo asked, her
head to one side.
“You think she was ill?” asked Charlie.
“Well, I don’t think she was actually bewitched, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Flo, rather more sharply than usual.
“It’s heartbreaking watching this poor woman fall apart,” said Jules, a sheen of tears glazing her eyes and surprising her.
She blinked rapidly. It was ridiculous crying in sympathy for a woman who had—regardless of what had finally happened to her—definitely died more than three hundred years earlier.
“And it ends so suddenly,” she mused. “I mean, I’ve been thinking that’s when she died and—you know what?
—maybe that strange mental state was part of her final illness. ”
“Makes sense,” said Charlie.
“Or,” Jules speculated, “maybe she was killed. Maybe they really were out to get her.”
Silence fell. They all chewed thoughtfully.
“We could try and find out what happened,” Jules went on.
“How?” asked Flo.
“I don’t know, but there are sources. Parish records, for example,” said Jules. “I could ask the vicar up at Saint Thomas’s
on the hill. I was going to go and speak to him anyway, to ask if her grave was in the churchyard there.”
“I don’t somehow get the impression our Biddy Capelthorne was much of a churchgoer,” said Flo.
“Doesn’t need to be, necessarily,” Jules asserted. “The church records should cover everyone. It was one of the Church’s jobs
at the time to collect basic data for the Crown. I mean, no one else was doing it. That’s the one useful thing my history
A level has ever taught me. So, let’s think... what do we know? We know she was alive during the seventeenth century and,
assuming an average lifespan at the time, was around sixty.”
“If that,” said Charlie.
Jules nodded. “I know, it’s tricky, but we’ve got to start with some assumptions. The last dated entry in the book is 1685, so, if that’s roughly when she died, she would likely have been born
around or after 1620. And we think she was living in Portneath, possibly in this very building. We could look for a birth
record? A marriage, maybe? A record of the death for sure.”
“That second one doesn’t look likely,” said Charlie. “She didn’t seem the marrying type.”
“Sensible woman,” muttered Flo and Jules in tandem.
Charlie gave them both a comically sideways look. “Aren’t you both the hopeless romantics.” He chuckled, popping in the last mouthful of cheese toastie and wiping his greasy fingers on
a piece of kitchen towel.
“The death records are the place to start,” Jules went on, handing Charlie her plate for the washing up. “1685 onward. It
shouldn’t take long, unless there are hundreds... I mean, like, was there an outbreak of plague around that time? Could
it have been something like the black death that killed her? I don’t suppose a symptom of the black death was thinking your
neighbors were bewitching you, was it?”
“I think it finished people off quite quickly,” suggested Charlie. “So maybe not the plague, but... you know what was happening around those dates?”
The two women looked blank.
“So, how about witch hunts, maybe?” Charlie ventured.
“Ooh, the witch trials!” said Flo. “Now that would be amazing. Wasn’t there someone called the witch-hunter general or something around that time?”
“The witchfinder general, Matthew Hopkins,” said Charlie. “He was only really active for a couple of years. I think he died
young in the mid-seventeenth century—sixteen forty-something—thereabouts.”
“Gosh, two years, that’s such a short time,” commented Flo. “How was he the expert?”
“Self-declared,” admitted Charlie with a smile. “He didn’t lack self-confidence. He wrote a really famous book about how to
carry out a witch hunt called The Discovery of Witches ,” Charlie went on. “In antiquarian book terms, it’s basically the Ark of the Covenant, so copies of it are pretty much priceless.”
Charlie’s eyes lit up at the thought of discovering a copy.
“Well, he certainly made his mark,” pondered Jules. “I know nothing about witches and even I’ve vaguely heard of him.”
“He was in East Anglia, though,” said Charlie. “Although he did travel around a bit, I don’t remember anything about him coming
all the way down to Devon.”
“But the dates are about right, aren’t they?” asked Jules. “A bit early maybe?”
Charlie nodded. “That said, he sparked quite the anti-witch movement, and that carried on after his death, so witch trials
could absolutely have still been a thing in Devon later in the century.”
“You seem mightily well informed about it all,” said Flo, clearly impressed.
“I took a brief, nerdy interest when I was a kid,” admitted Charlie, sounding mildly embarrassed. “It was the whole witchy,
werewolf-y, vampire-y schtick. It was huge at the time, in my defense, plus—can you guess?—I took the Stephenie Meyer Twilight
franchise über-seriously. I was kind of a geek.”
“Cool,” said Jules. “I’m impressed at the breadth and depth of your nerdiness. I didn’t get much beyond books about ponies
and boarding schools myself.” She thought for a moment. “So, yeah, let me talk to the vicar about where we can find some old
records, and we can go from there.”
The easiest way for Jules to strike up a conversation with the vicar about the parish records was to accompany Flo to church
the following Sunday, which meant regretfully blowing off Roman on their usual Sunday morning coffee. Given her long absence
from all things holy, Jules didn’t know whether to be impressed or embarrassed when the vicar—the Reverend Martin Reeves—greeted
her by name. He was an amiable man in his mid-forties, with a sweet, motherly-looking wife and three adolescent boys who all
looked remarkably like him, except for the beard.
It was Pentecost, and inside the little stone church on the hill, the local schoolchildren had stuck their artwork—collages of doves—all around the walls.
The June sunshine was slanting through the stained-glass windows, painting multicolored abstracts onto the stone floors, but there was a chill in the little church that made Jules think of the Montbeau crypt outside.
She was glad when the small congregation straggled back out into the warmth of the sun’s rays, most carrying cups and saucers of weak tea from the bubbling urn at the back of the church.
Outside, blustery winds blew cotton-wool clouds rapidly across the sky, plunging the scene from bright to dull and back again,
threatening showers.
Jules, awkwardly juggling her cup, saucer, and lone chocolate biscuit, sidled her way over to the vicar and stood unobtrusively
by his side while he gave full weight and attention to his discussions of the Sunday school treasure hunt to be held the following
week.
“So, Julia,” he said at last, turning to her with a broad smile. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Is it so obvious?” she answered, having the grace to blush just a little.
“We find our young people drift away and then pop up again when they want something—like to have the banns read?” he finished
with a questioning raise of the eyebrows.
“ God no,” Jules exclaimed, “I mean goodness no, definitely not that,” she added firmly, before briefly explaining what she was
after.
“Fascinating!” he exclaimed. “So, our parish records date from 1538, which is encouragingly far back enough for your dates, but I’m afraid I am going to have to disappoint you if you hope to make a breakthrough today.
Saint Thomas’s parish record books have been stored at the county council office in Exeter for many years now.
I believe they have everything on microfiche, because I know they don’t let many people near the original records these days. ”
“Isn’t it amazing births and deaths were recorded so long ago,” marveled Jules politely.
“Oh, they weren’t,” Martin corrected her. “I’m talking about baptisms, marriages, and burials, I’m afraid—nearly the same
but not quite; there weren’t many people who escaped being recorded doing at least one of the three. I think it wasn’t until
a while after the period you are interested in that actual births and deaths were formally recorded, but the people at the
records office will help you with all that.”
“That’s all brilliant, thank you,” said Jules, a little disappointed that there was nothing she could do that day, especially
having therefore unnecessarily sat through an hour-long church service.
“If this lady of yours really was local to Portneath, I would expect her to be buried in this churchyard, though,” Martin
went on.
Jules’s eyes lit up.
“There are graves here dating back to the fourteen hundreds,” he explained. “That’s the older end.”
He pointed unnecessarily. It was clear where the original graveyard had begun, on the west side of the church where gravestones
were in loose rows, tipped drunkenly this way and that, under the shade of two ancient yews that stood sentry either side
of the path. In the far corner, waist-high cow parsley frothed daintily. Some smaller, even more ancient-looking gravestones
had clearly been moved at some point, the ground repurposed for fresh graves when space ran short, Jules imagined. These stones
were propped in a row against the stone wall at the perimeter of the graveyard to the north.
“The inscriptions are very worn on most of those,” Martin admitted, following Jules’s gaze.
“And then, of course, you’ve got the Capelthorne crypt on the south side, but I’m pretty sure the oldest inscription on that is around the early eighteen hundreds—after this Biddy Capelthorne’s time, by the sounds of it? ”
“Yes, we think so,” agreed Jules. “Judging by what we do know, her death will have been around 1685 or so. And so, her body will definitely have been buried here?”
“If she lived in Portneath, yes,” Martin confirmed. “Unless she was a murderer,” he added with a laugh. “If you were a ‘bad
lot’ you were hanged and buried at the crossroads.” He smiled broadly as if the very thought were a delight. “That would keep
you out of the parish burial records too, of course.”
Then he caught Jules’s horrified expression. “I’m sure she wasn’t,” he added. “I suppose I’ve got a fascination with bad people,”
he admitted, shamefaced. “Evil can be compelling, can’t it?”
“Which crossroads? Any?” Jules asked, with an involuntary shudder. Why could she feel a chill at the back of her neck? Surely,
it was just from standing there in the full force of the blustery wind.
“Every community had its own ‘crossroads of doom,’” Martin explained. “And I don’t know for sure where ours is, but I reckon
it’s pretty relevant that there’s a Hangman’s Lane at that crossroads just outside Portneath on the Middlemass road,” said
Martin distractedly. He was waving an acknowledgment in the direction of someone he could see over Jules’s shoulder, his attention
already on the next conversation.
Jules sent Flo home to get out of the cold and spent a short while studying what looked like the oldest gravestones before
retreating to the flat to warm up. She had had no luck, although she did see a couple of old Capelthorne graves, in addition
to the posh Capelthorne crypt, with its polished marble and carved angels at the corners.
“Also,” she said to Flo as they had a late lunch, “we don’t really know whether her Christian name was really Biddy—Bridget—or whether she was just called that because she was a spinster and an older woman.”
“Such fun to find out more about an ancestor,” mused Flo. “To imagine she actually sat in this room!”
“Has the shop really been in the possession of the Capelthornes all that time?” asked Jules.
“Probably,” said Flo. “My mother always told me the Capelthornes had loads of property in Portneath, although now it’s just
this shop and flat, and, of course, the Montbeaus have even got their grubby hands on this too, if this funny payment I have
to make every year is anything to go by.”
“Is it much?”
“Heavens no, just a hundred pounds a year, not proper rent in the way I understand the term,” said Flo vaguely. “Which reminds me, I will go and see our lovely solicitor to look at this boring lease thingy soon. He sent me another email about it a while ago.
I keep forgetting, and it’s getting embarrassing.”
“You’re too busy thinking about lover boy,” teased Jules.
Flo patted her hair self-consciously. “I don’t know what you mean. Graham and I are just friends, united in our love of books
and food.”
“And books about food. Talking of which, that copy of The Little Library Year you told him to buy? It came in yesterday morning, I forgot to say.”
“Perfect!” exclaimed Flo happily. “I can take it to him when I go for lunch tomorrow. It is all right to be away from the
shop for an hour or two, isn’t it?”
“Of course!” said Jules quickly. “You don’t have to ask. It’s your day off and it’s only an admin day. Charlie’s going to
be in too, so don’t worry, we’ll be having a great time without you.” She shot Flo a cheeky grin.
“Thank you, darling. I’m being promised beef kofta meatballs with roasted vegetables and gooseberry fool to follow.”
“Ah, the food of love,” Jules said with a smirk.
“Hmph. Too old for all that nonsense,” Flo insisted unconvincingly. “He’s just a very nice, kind man. Good company.”