Friday, January 10
Dartmoor National Park
Tom and I awoke to a cold, crisp, and unexpectedly sunny day. The night before, as we lay in bed, discussing what we’d learned about the Romanichals in Devon, I’d explained about the photograph of the Squires and Heron families Maggie Hughes had found in the archives.
Tom was still thinking about it when, after a late breakfast at the Crown, we set off for Merivale House. “The Luke Heron in that photograph has to be the same Luke Heron someone was hoping to trace through the Romany & Traveller Family History Society—Queenie Squire’s grandson. Ms. Boswell-Cooper said Heron wasn’t a common Romani name in Devon.” Tom turned onto the road toward Hexworthy.
“And I think the person who contacted the RTFHS must have been Gideon Littlejohn.”
“I agree.” Tom pulled to the right, overtaking a slow-moving caravan. “He was probably trying to figure out himself why the bloodstained dress was packed up with items suggesting a Romani connection. He must have made the same link we did, between Widdecombe Throop and the Squires family who camped on Merivale land. Funny he didn’t mention it.”
“That reminds me. There’s something I haven’t mentioned—something Julia Kelly told me. I meant to tell you right away, but that fuss Quinn Pearce made at the Crown that night put it out of my mind. It’s about Dr. Hawksworthy. I don’t think it’s related, but it is odd.” I told Tom the story of the medieval commentary that turned out to be a fake. “Maggie Hughes from the library was the one who caught the discrepancies, and she’s no medieval scholar. So why did Hugo, with all his training, miss them? We know he’s eager to make a name for himself. Julia said he wanted the commentary to be legitimate, so he didn’t follow normal procedures and brushed aside any suspicions he may have had.”
“You mean like he wants the bloodstained dress to belong to a murderous Victorian lacemaker.”
“Exactly, and that means we need to follow every lead, even if it means not completing the assignment to the client’s satisfaction.”
“That’s the problem with private investigation.” Tom pulled down his visor. “Police are successful when they establish the truth. Nash & Holmes is successful—at least financially—when they complete the job to the client’s satisfaction.”
“And if the dress isn’t authentic, Hugo won’t be satisfied.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes.
“Tell me about Merivale House,” Tom said, changing the subject. “What are we to expect?”
I read the description on the brochure aloud:
Merivale House, a historic five-bedroom Grade II-listed residence dating back to 1109, has changed hands only twice in the last 500 years. Set in fifty-three acres of woods and pastureland, the stone house and traditional buildings are arranged around a central quadrangle. Lady Helen Merivale, the current owner, welcomes visitors on Wednesdays and Fridays from one to three p.m. Tours begin on the hour and cover three reception rooms, the great hall, the kitchen, and three bedrooms on the ground floor, plus several outbuildings, a small chapel, and an interesting stone-and-timber barn. Admission: £20 adults; £12 children under 12 when accompanied by an adult. No appointment necessary.
Twice before in the UK I’d encountered once-grand houses that had fallen into decrepitude. And I’d watched a documentary the previous autumn about a so-called “urban explorer” who’d filmed inside an enormous nineteenth-century mansion in the Welsh countryside. The old house with its faded chandeliers, spiraling staircases, and stunning stained-glass windows had been abandoned by its owners, the beds still draped in insect-infested linens and pillows.
“Old buildings are horribly expensive to maintain,” I said. “I understand that, but it’s a shame to lose them. They’re part of our history.”
“The top layer of history,” Tom said. “With a few notable exceptions, the houses of ordinary people don’t usually qualify for public funds.”
“And their clothing wasn’t usually saved for posterity—not like that red silk ball gown.” I thought about the Nancy Thorne dress. Why had an ordinary workingwoman’s dress, stained with blood and surely insignificant in the eyes of the world, been so carefully preserved? Whose blood was it? No one, not even Nancy Thorne herself, it seemed, knew what had really happened that night in September 1885. Had she truly no memory of the event, or had she taken her secrets to the grave? As much as I wanted to know the answer, solving that mystery wasn’t in our remit. All we were expected to do was prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the dress was hers and then determine if the bloodstains contained enough genetic material to test. That part of our assignment was Tom’s responsibility—finding a private lab that would agree to test the blood. Assuming the museum would allow a portion of the fabric to be removed.
Our car climbed through the high moorland, where a few stunted, wind-blasted trees punctuated the landscape. Soon Tom downshifted as the road descended again toward a crazy quilt of small, irregular fields separated by rough stone walls. Occasionally, in the folds of the land, we saw ominous pools of dark, peaty water.
We almost missed the road to Merivale House, as the sign was nearly overgrown with tall grass. The narrow roadway, hugged on both sides by high hedges and barely wide enough for a single vehicle, bent sharply to the left before opening up into a large gravel courtyard. Before us rose the blunt stone face of a high wall, which merged into what looked like a barn with a pitched roof and narrow glazed windows. Parking under a leafless oak, we grabbed our jackets and walked through a stone archway into an inner courtyard.
There the stern facade of Merivale House met us. This was no posh country house in the home counties but a working farm constructed of stone painstakingly cleared from the land. We rang the bell and waited. And waited. We were beginning to think Lady Helen wasn’t home when we heard the scuttling of a key in a lock. The door opened.
“Yes?” A tall, elderly woman eyed us suspiciously. “What do you want?”
“We’re here for the tour,” I said. “The brochure said you’re open on Fridays between one and three.”
“I know what day it is,” she snapped. “I haven’t gone doolally yet. You’d better come in. I can’t afford to heat the entire outdoors.” She beckoned us into a dank entryway lit by a pair of wall sconces. “Will you keep your jackets?”
We nodded. It wasn’t much warmer inside than out.
Lady Helen Merivale must have been in her mid to late seventies. Her spine was straight and her gray eyes clear, but her hands, gnarled and roped with veins, betrayed her age. She wore a baggy tweed skirt and a pale-blue blouse buttoned to her neck, around which hung a single strand of pearls. Over the blouse, she’d layered a battered wax Barbour, and over that what appeared to be a man’s heavy wool jacket with the sleeves rolled up.
Tom pulled out his wallet. “Forty pounds—is that right?”
“For the tour. Refreshments are extra, and the chapel is closed today.” Her cut-glass accent was matched by an air of snobbery completely at odds with her grimy fingernails and thrift-store ensemble. She took the bills and shoved them into the pocket of her wool jacket, glaring at us as if daring us to reclaim our money. “Shall we begin?”
Moving farther into the gloom, she began without preamble. “Welcome to Merivale House. I am Lady Helen Merivale, widow of Sir Martin Merivale, the sixteenth owner. In March of 1539, Merivale House was granted by Henry the Eighth to Sir Charles Plympton.” She began to reel off what was obviously a memorized presentation. “In 1653, when the Plympton family failed to produce an heir, the property was sold to the Merivales. We’ve lived here now for three hundred and seventy years.”
It had been a few more than 370 years, but she apparently hadn’t gotten around to updating her spiel.
We followed her into a long narrow room with walls of dressed stone and an intricately beamed ceiling badly in need of restoration. The room smelled musty—not surprising, as the stone walls were stained by the rising damp.
“This is the great hall,” she said, “the oldest part of the house, built by the Benedictines in 1412.”
The room was empty except for a long table of rough wood and a carved-wood sideboard of dark oak that looked Jacobean. If it was, it belonged in a museum, even in its present condition. At some time in the past, the beamed ceiling had leaked, allowing rain to pool on the carved oaken top and spill down the front, causing the old wood to swell and the old wax finish to whiten. This valuable antique needed saving. So did its owner.
The great hall was as cold as a refrigerator. I turned up my jacket collar and slipped my numb fingers into my pockets.
Next, along a dark corridor, Lady Merivale showed us the drawing room with its ruined fireplace, pitted plaster walls, and the remnants of what appeared to be Chinese silk wall coverings. The portrait of a handsome woman with dark curls hung over the mantelpiece.
“It must be a full-time job restoring a place like this,” Tom said.
I wondered if Lady Helen would take offense, but she didn’t. “The main thing is to keep the water out and make sure the electrics don’t catch fire,” she said, and then seeing the looks on our faces, she added, “Peeling wallpaper isn’t important.”
“No, of course not,” Tom said. “But controlling the dampness might help.”
“Houses are supposed to be damp.” Lady Helen looked at us as if we’d just crawled out of some primordial slime. “People today overheat their houses. Weakens the structure. Fabrics crumble, wood deteriorates. My husband never lit fires in rooms that weren’t occupied.”
“Who’s the lady in the portrait?” I asked, deciding we needed a change of subject. Despite the portrait’s present condition, I could see the woman had been quite lovely.
“That’s Lucy, wife of old Lord Merivale. She died in childbirth in the summer of 1885. Four months later her husband married again. His second wife, Esmeralda, was my husband’s great-great-grandmother.”
I looked at Tom. This was getting us nowhere. We needed to get her off-script.
When she took a breath, Tom asked, “Did you say there were refreshments?”
Lady Helen considered our request. “End of the tour. Tea and biscuits. Ten pounds each.”
The price was outrageous, but I supposed we could consider it charity. “That sounds lovely. Just what we need on a cold January day.” I could only hope there was a room in the old house where heating wasn’t considered a danger to health.
The rest of the tour took less than twenty minutes. Each room was like the last—literally falling into ruin. Everywhere were signs that furniture and framed pictures had been removed. Had they been sold for cash or snatched up by other family members?
We ended our tour not in the cavernous original kitchen, obviously no longer in use, but in a side room fitted with simple furniture, including a sofa that might have doubled as a bed, an oak desk, a microwave oven, an electric kettle, and a deal table with three mismatched chairs. A two-bar heater produced just enough warmth to make the room habitable. Lady Helen was camping out in her own home.
She switched on the kettle. From a high, painted shelf, she lifted a tin decorated with the image of young Queen Elizabeth. Inside were cookies—biscuits in the UK. I hadn’t noticed the small fridge shoved beside the desk. She pulled out a glass pitcher half filled with milk. She didn’t offer sugar, and I decided not to ask. When the kettle squealed, she poured steaming water through a sieve strainer into three teacups. I hoped they were clean. If there was a sink somewhere for washing up, it wasn’t in this room.
“Merivale House was used in the 1960s for the filming of a miniseries, Lorna Doone.” Lady Helen handed Tom a china teacup decorated with what appeared to be the family crest. “My husband was alive then. I’m constantly hounded by major film producers, but they never offer enough to make it worth my while.” She handed me a cup. “The inconvenience, you know.”
I thought this highly unlikely but had no intention of saying so. Her attitude toward us had warmed a bit. Maybe it was the extra twenty pounds. Time to get to the point.
“I learned recently that your husband’s great-great-grandfather allowed a Romani family to set up camp on his land in exchange for seasonal work. The family of Queenie Squires, the one they named the tea shop after.”
“That is correct.”
“Do you know where the pitch was located?” I cradled the warm cup in my hands and tried not to shiver.
“The Gypsy Field, of course.” She leaned toward the window sash and pulled back the curtains. “Do you see that stand of trees in the distance?”
I nodded.
“The Gypsy pitch was just this side of it. My husband’s father gave that portion of land to the National Trust in the 1950s. There’s a public footpath along the River Dart.”
“I understand you donated some of your family treasures to the museum in Coombe Mallet,” I said. “I saw an extremely beautiful red silk dress which will soon be on display.”
“That wasn’t me,” she said. “My husband’s half sister in London donated the dress. She has no real interest in family history. Which is why my husband left Merivale House to me.”
Out of love or spite? I wondered.
Tom was pretending an interest in the landscape. I was to take the lead.
“Did the red silk ball gown belong to your great-great-grandmother?”
“Not mine or my husband’s,” she corrected me. “The dress belonged to Lord Merivale’s first wife, Lucy—the one in the portrait. My husband’s great-great-grandmother was his second wife, Esmeralda. They married in 1885, when he was forty-four and she was seventeen, just four months after the death of her predecessor. Her husband lavished her with the finest of everything. He even commissioned a local woman to make lace for her wedding gown. Did you know Devon was a center for the lacemaking trade back then?”
I felt a bubble of excitement in my chest. “Do you remember the name of the lacemaker?”
She looked at me as if I was the one who’d gone doolally. “Of course not. Who remembers such things?” She made a small dismissive gesture with her spare hand. “I do remember she was the sister of the seamstress who made the red silk dress. She made all the dresses for the Merivale women—the first and the second wife. They said she was a treasure—trained by a Frenchwoman with arthritic fingers. She couldn’t sew any longer but had made gowns for the French nobility.”
Finally we were getting some answers. “I believe you’re talking about the Thorne sisters from Widdecombe Throop.” I sipped my tea, which wasn’t bad.
“I’m talking about the French court, dear,” she said in the tone one might use with a particularly dim child.
“I mean the lacemaker, Nancy Thorne. The seamstress was her sister, Sally Tucker. Do you know what happened to Esmeralda’s wedding dress?”
“Given away, I suppose. Or cut up for christening clothes.”
“And the lace?”
“Oh, well.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “In the end, they had to import lace from France. A shame.”
“Why? What happened?” I tried to tamp down my excitement.
“A scandal. Contract had to be canceled.”
“What sort of scandal?”
“My dear.” She fixed me with a rather stern look. “This was more than a hundred and thirty years ago. Anyway, I don’t know. Some impropriety.”
I lifted my cup to examine the crest, a shield of black supported by a pair of winged griffins and emblazoned with three green, sprigged acorns. A helmet at the top was crowned with what appeared to be some sort of plant or flower. Along the bottom, a banner bore a motto: Nostris Viribus Semper Novis. “Is this your family crest?” I asked. “Can you tell me what it means?”
Lady Helen’s lips parted in a smile, revealing long yellow teeth. “The motto says ‘Our strength renews with each generation.’” She waved a hand. “Something like that, anyway. The shield of black means constancy, and the griffins represent courage and vigilance. The acorns refer to independence and self-rule. The fact that they are green means this will always be so.”
Looking around the room, I couldn’t help feeling pity for this proud woman. Strong she may have been, but the power of her adopted family had seriously waned.
“The trefoil symbol at the top represents past, present, and future,” Lady Helen said. “Of course, it’s also a nod to Dartmoor, where the yellow trefoil grows everywhere.”
I pictured the acorn and the bird’s-foot trefoil motifs plaited into the lace collar of Nancy Thorne’s dress. The slight pressure of Tom’s arm against mine told me he’d recognized the symbols as well.
“Lady Helen,” I said, “Tom and I have been hired to investigate the provenance of a dress donated to the Museum of Devon Life. No, not the red silk. This is a calico dress, one that would have been worn by a village woman.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I’m asking because a collar of exquisite lace, incorporating acorns and the bird’s-foot trefoil, your family symbols, was sewn onto this calico dress. We believe the dress belonged to Nancy Thorne, the lacemaker, or possibly her sister, Sally, the seamstress. It was found in a trunk with items suggesting a Romani connection.”
“The lacemaker was a Gypsy?” Lady Helen looked skeptical. “That can’t be right.”
“No, but there was a link. That’s what we’re trying to determine. Do any family papers from that time still exist?”
“All that was discarded when my husband died. None of anyone’s business.”
“You said your father-in-law gave the land to the National Trust in the fifties. Was the Squires family still camping there then?”
“Heavens, no. They’d stopped coming long before that. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, I believe.”
“Do you know why?”
“Not sure I ever did.” She gave me a curious look. “I don’t wish to seem rude, but what does this have to do with a calico dress?”
“That’s what we’d like to find out.” I handed her my card. “If you remember anything, will you contact me?”
She didn’t answer. Which told me everything I needed to know.