She stopped and, before she could quite reason herself out of the notion that she had seen a ghost, another, smaller figure appeared, rounding a corner of the ruins and dawdling towards the house. Fortunately there was no mistaking this for a spectre. It was, very certainly, young Georgie, walking slowly: dragging and scuffing his good boots mercilessly. The injuring of shoe leather was a crime Dido never could regard with equanimity and, for a moment, she forgot all about ghosts.
‘Pick your feet up, Georgie!’ she cried indignantly. ‘You are spoiling your boots!’
‘Well, what if I am?’ He stopped in front of her, thrust out his plump chin and stared up defiantly, then put out one foot and scraped it slowly and deliberately against a stone that edged the path. A pale, ugly scuff mark appeared on the dirty, but costly, brown leather.
Dido withdrew her eyes from the distressing sight – and found herself looking more closely at the fat little face which was watching eagerly for her disapproval. There was a fresh red bruise upon his cheek.
‘Your face is hurt, Georgie,’ she said – glad of the distraction. ‘How did you do that?’
He quickly put his hand up to cover it. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘I just fell – on the path back there.’
‘You had better have some witch hazel put upon it immediately.’
He shrugged and began to walk away, saying something quietly which sounded remarkably like, ‘It’s none of your damned business.’
‘Georgie!’ she called after him angrily. ‘I do not think your mama would like to hear you using that word.’
‘But she can’t hear me, can she?’ he said and he was off – still scraping his boots with all his might.
She watched him swagger away along the path, greatly angered by his self-consequence. He looked so disgustingly easy and prosperous in his fashionably cut blue jacket and his pale pantaloons …
‘Ah!’ she cried aloud.
Her anger suddenly forgotten, she turned from contemplation of the retreating little gentleman and looked instead at the path along which he had come – a path which the traffic of ‘improvements’ had left almost an inch deep in mud … And she thought again about those pale, clean pantaloons …
No one could have fallen upon that path without staining his clothes. It was an impossibility …
So how had he come by such a bruise? And why had he lied about it?
She almost ran after him, but stopped herself and stood irresolute on the muddy path in the gathering dusk and encroaching shadows of the ruins. Her curiosity – that powerful motive of her character – was now pulling her in two directions: urging her to pursue the boy with a question or two, but also demanding that she discover who was in the gallery.
For someone was in the gallery; she had seen no one descend during her conversation with Georgie. And, since the boy had seemed to come from the shadows surrounding the nave, the person up there might well be the cause of the bruise. And besides, she would dearly love to know who else was taking an interest in the haunted ruins …
She hurried into the deeper, slightly damp gloom between the high walls and picked her way across the broken pavement of the nave, where fallen pillars and great blocks of fallen masonry lay about, choked with weeds and ivy and deep drifts of dead leaves. A bird clattered up from a twisted ash tree which grew in the sanctuary, making her start foolishly. But she continued up the night stair, clinging with one hand to the ivy on the wall, and came into the deeper dusk of the gallery, which smelt of moss and damp stone – and which seemed, at first, to be entirely deserted.
She stared along it, her eyes gradually accustoming themselves to the poor light. Parts of the roof had long since fallen away and the walls were dank and fringed with moss; tiny ferns grew in the gaps between stones. Beneath the holes in the roof, the floor was worn into hollows by rain which had fallen in upon it for centuries: in one particularly deep hollow water glinted darkly. On one side the arched front of the gallery gave a dizzying view down into the great nave of the old abbey church and the magnificent Gothic outline of the east window. And through the remains of the window’s stone tracery could be seen the muddy pool and the blazing red of the beeches and yellow of the chestnuts in the park.
There was a movement beside one of the pillars that supported the roof of the gallery. A dark shape stepped out – and resolved itself into the figure of Captain Laurence. His back was towards her and he did not see her immediately. He stood instead gazing out through the great window towards the drained pool and the park. He raised a hand, rubbed his chin thoughtfully then turned back into the gallery with a look of great calculation on his face – and saw Dido watching him.
‘Miss Kent!’ he stepped forward and bowed with a very uncomfortable look. ‘What are you doing here in the gloom?’ he cried. And then, changing his expression to one of tender concern: ‘Are you too hoping to discover what it was that frightened poor Miss Lambe?’
She acknowledged that that was indeed her errand and he eyed her keenly. ‘And have you found out anything?’ he asked.
‘I have as yet had no opportunity to look about me,’ she said returning his keen gaze with interest. ‘I met young Georgie on the path just now. Has he too been searching for the ghost?’
No, he hastened to assure her, he had seen nothing of the boy. There was a momentary hint of alarm as he spoke, but whether that arose from the consciousness of lying, or the fear of having been overlooked, Dido could not quite determine.
She knew no positive harm of the captain, but she did not like him. He was a big, loosely made man of one or two and thirty, handsome in what she considered to be a rather coarse style, with a great deal of colour in his face, heavy brows and a lot of thick black hair. In Dido’s opinion, he was altogether more masculine than a man had any cause to be. Wherever he went there was likely to be jealousy among the other men – and folly among the ladies.
He was now looking about him and exclaiming that it was ‘a mighty strange business. I cannot account for it. Now, if we were on board ship, it would be a different matter. Some men get overwrought when they have been a long time at sea, Miss Kent, and imagine that they see all manner of things. Why, I remember one occasion …’
‘But we are not at sea, Captain Laurence,’ interrupted Dido who was in no mood for naval talk. She began to walk along the uneven stones of the gallery. ‘What did Penelope see?’ she mused. ‘What did she mean when she said “I saw her”.’
‘There cannot have been anyone here in the gallery,’ said the captain as he followed her, ‘for you see there is no door here,’ he waved a hand at the blank walls. ‘And here,’ he continued as they reached the end, ‘is only this broken wall and a drop of twelve feet or more down into the nave. Even a sailor could not have climbed up – though on board ship, you know …’
‘Yes, quite so,’ said Dido quickly as she turned away and continued to pace the old flagstones. She was impatient of his habit of bringing everything around to a discussion of the navy, but she could not help but admit he was right. There was no way in which anyone could have got into the gallery. There could have been no one standing behind Harriet when Penelope turned back.
‘The only way into this gallery is up those steps,’ said the captain.
‘And Harriet and I were standing at the top of the steps all the time our party remained here,’ she said firmly. ‘No one could have come past but we would have seen them.’
She had now come back to the head of the stairs and she found that she was rather cold. She pulled her pelisse closer about her and descended the first two steps – to the place from which Penelope had fallen. She turned and saw that her companion was now lounging against the nearest pillar, watching her thoughtfully.