A week after watching Gwendaline Montague die, Sylvia was with her grandmother’s lawyer in his London office. The irony wasn’t lost on her that here she was in a lawyer’s office when she’d only recently murdered an old woman.
There hadn’t been a moment since when the thought of her almost sister wasn’t on her mind.
A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye earned a smile.
A cough from the old man in the grey suit in front of her brought her back to the present.
‘I was the one your grandmother asked to look into these matters for her, but it was a long time ago, so forgive me if my recollection proves to be in any way inaccurate.’ His name was Bernard Peters and he looked like he should have retired twenty-five years ago.
‘I found my grandmother’s journal just recently,’ Sylvia said by way of reminding herself as much as him where they were in the conversation. ‘In it she mentions a psychic who told her the family was cursed.’ Sylvia recalled the psychic’s warning – ‘There’s another who has been twisted by the curse, and by the actions of those who should love her. You must change the direction of her life before more people die’. It had occurred to her straight away that the warning pertained to her. Did the psychic mean her work with the Order when referring to the direction of her life? And what of the warning that people would die? She had mused over these questions for no more than a moment. She didn’t care. She was surrounded by sheep. She would do what was necessary to complete her work.
‘Maude went on to say that she’d employed you to look into the family’s history,’ she said, once again pulling herself from her 142thoughts. ‘To discover where that curse may have come from. But I couldn’t find anything in her papers that might tell me what was found.’
Peters plucked a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and dabbed at his right cheek, just under his eye. The eyelid had long since drooped, showing a stretch of blood-rich tissue that constantly leaked. ‘Quite the thing,’ he said, ‘being asked to look into a family curse.’ His smile revealed teeth that were almost as grey as his suit. ‘I never found an actual curse, but I did discover a perfectly dreadful divide in your family going back centuries.’
Sylvia’s heart gave a little flip of excitement. ‘Oh?’
‘It was one of my finest pieces of detective work,’ Peters preened. ‘Witch trials in the seventeenth century, my dear. It almost beggared belief.’
‘Please continue.’
‘Your side of the family weren’t always wealthy, you know. That happened much more recently thanks to an intrepid soul going out to the colonies. There was even a hint of piracy in the eighteen hundreds.’ Peters seemed to puff out his chest, pleased with his research.
Sylvia crossed her legs, keen that he just furnish her with the facts.
‘You are directly descended from one Jean McLean, who was burned at the stake in 1707 in an area of the West Highlands called Ardnamurchan. Jean and her twins – a boy and a girl – were all found guilty of witchcraft, then worrit and burned.’
‘Sorry. Worrit?’
‘Apologies,’ Peters said. ‘At this point in history they weren’t so savage as to burn these poor wretches alive. They strangled them first – or worrit as it was in old Scots – then fed their bodies to the flames.’ He gave a little shiver. ‘Dreadful, dreadful stuff.’ He dabbed again at his eye. ‘When I looked into Jean’s family I found that she had another daughter and a sister. 143
‘This daughter was protected by cousins and helped to found a new township in a more remote glen nearby. Jean’s sister, Mary, her twin, I believe – lots of twins in your family – married the local laird. A Campbell.
‘That was quite the difference in fortune, don’t you think? One sister marries into relative wealth, and the other is burned at the stake for being a witch.’
‘Were there any records of the judgement?’ Sylvia asked. ‘I presume they held some kind of trial?’
‘Yes, trials of a sort were held. Although many of these poor people were tortured, or at the least sleep-deprived, so that they would confess. The records are patchy to say the least. But I was able to uncover a list of witnesses at Jean’s trial. Not what they actually said, but their names, and on that list were Jean’s sister, Mary, and her husband, John Campbell.’
‘She testified against her own sister?’
‘Indeed.’ Peters head sagged low on his neck. ‘One can only speculate as to how Mary might have assisted the prosecution, but I was able to see the birth certificates of Andra and Isobel, Jean’s children, who also burned.’ He paused, his look one of excitement, as if he was expectant of a shocked reaction. ‘And they both showed John Campbell as the father.’