“Perhaps I should go to Lambeth,” I started to say, but Byram interrupted me with the familiarity of an old servant. “Pardon me, madam, but for what purpose?” he asked. He sank the last of his ale and rubbed his sleeve across his mouth. “Mr. Catesby will tell you nothing, nor will any word of yours sway him from his course. You would do better to stay here and enjoy your time with Master Robbie. Far better to know nothing.”

Still I fretted. “Perhaps, then, I should go to Rushden,” I said. “Mayhap Thomas will be able to tell me more.”

“He is sick,” Byram said. “I called in there on my way home.” He patted his jacket. “I have a letter for you here from Lady Tresham—”

I took it, feeling an odd sense of premonition, as though I had been waiting for this moment in some way, as though it was the beginning of the end. And even as I reached to unfold it there was a knocking at the door, and the maid burst in to say that a messenger had come from Rushden. Sir Thomas had taken a turn for the worse and was asking to see me before he died.

Nineteen

Lucy

The first thing Lucy did that afternoon was to ring the number she had found for Maud Enright, the elderly lady in Knightstone village whom Verity had mentioned as being the person who had encountered Catherine’s ghost decades before. She had toyed with the idea of calling around to see her but thought it better to ring first; the errand was so strange and there were so many reasons why Mrs. Enright might not want to talk to her, or even be able to remember or discuss what had happened back in the nineteen forties. The phone was answered by a brisk woman who identified herself as Janet, Mrs. Enright’s daughter. Lucy explained tentatively that she was staying at Gunpowder Barn and was doing some research in support of the garden project. Would Mrs. Enright be prepared to talk about the article that was in a book about Knightstone history and legends, published in the 1950s? She heard a brief, muffled conversation in the background and then Janet came back. “Mum would be glad to talk to you,” she said. “Come for coffee tomorrow morning if you’re free.”

This was more than Lucy had hoped for so she thanked Janet profusely and made an arrangement to drop by at eleven o’clock. She wasn’t sure if the story was a red herring or whether it might yield anything of interest about the ghost, the treasure or the garden—or all three—but she wanted to try to find out.

She spent the rest of the afternoon scouring the book about Lyveden New Bield for comparisons with the garden at Knightstone and also making a note of anything that seemed relevant from the Robert Catesby biography. Finn and Johnny had gone over to the spiral mounds in the orchard and in Clarabelle’s field to cover up the test pits before the rain started. As the day went on the hot sun vanished behind a thick bank of cloud that piled in from the west, building higher and higher like an anvil.