CHAPTER TWO

‘Did you hear, they say they’re going to be bringing electricity to the village within the next seven years?’

The voice seemed to come out of the ether, and both Val and Arbie paused, their teacups in hand and hovering just in front of their faces.

They had dutifully wandered down to the Old Forge at a quarter to four, Val in her Sunday best frock and Arbie in a beautifully tailored summer suit, to take tea with Miss Phelps. Val, as ever vaguely annoyed by his effortless sartorial elegance, affected not to notice how handsome he looked, and the walk to the far end of the village had been done in a mutual, testy silence.

The Old Forge had, like many buildings, morphed over the centuries, this particular one from being a simple smithy into something of a rambling country-house residence, with various outbuildings attached: not exactly a squire’s residence, but not the home of a mere artisan either. Neither fish nor fowl, it was built of the local creamy Cotswold stone, had a plethora of grey-slated roofs of various heights and designs, and was consequently prone to odd twists and turns both inside and out. Small, mullioned windows in some parts gave way to the wide sash-windows favoured by the Georgians in others. Higgledy-piggledy chimneys marched up and down in various heights and widths, giving the whole building a curious but definite charm. An ageing and beautiful wisteria that clambered and flowered all over a rather lackadaisical porch and south-facing wall helped significantly.

Neither Val nor Arbie, though they’d lived in the village all their lives, had ever set foot in the place before. Miss Phelps usually saved her entertaining for the relicts of Victorian society, such as herself. So when they finally walked up the gravelled driveway and pulled down on the intricate iron doorbell handle (probably made by a past smithy in this very spot in days of yore), they didn’t know exactly what to expect.

The door had been answered by Mrs Brockhurst, Miss Phelps’s housekeeper of the past thirty years or so. The ‘Mrs’ was purely a courtesy title, since the woman herself had never been married, but she was a well-liked and respected member of the village community. She had smiled on them a genuinely warm welcome and proceeded to usher them through a rather dark and shadowy hall into a sun-filled parlour that faced the expansive back garden.

Here, Miss Amy Phelps had risen from a Queen Anne chair and greeted them a shade formally. Within minutes, Arbie and Val found themselves seated at a large round table and began the usual meaningless, polite social chit-chat that was such a prerequisite of an English tea party, whilst Mrs Brockhurst brought in trays laden with delicious things. Apart from the actual tea itself, which was housed in a heavy silver teapot and poured out into exquisite Spode teacups, there were plates of dainty sandwiches – with the crusts removed, naturally – savoury and sweet scones, cake, jam, clotted cream and delicate brandy snaps.

Miss Phelps had just been mother and poured out the first of the tea when the excited voice had interrupted the tableau with news of electricity coming to the village.

A second later another lady moved silently into the room, her face slightly flushed. She was, Val gauged, somewhere in her mid-sixties. Petite, with a neat bun fixed firmly atop her head, and big brown eyes set in a complexion of roses and cream, she eyed the two youngsters with a slightly squinting glance that gave away the fact that she probably needed glasses. Either she was too vain to wear them or had been absent-minded enough to forget to put them on.

‘Ah, this is my dearest and oldest friend, Mrs Cora Delaney. She’s staying with me for a few weeks this summer for a little holiday,’ Amy said, somewhat curtly. ‘Cora, Miss Coulton-James, the dear vicar’s daughter, and Mr Swift.’

‘Oh, our celebrity guest,’ Cora said, casting Arbie an inquisitive look. ‘I enjoyed reading your book, Mr Swift. So amusing, and so informative, if you like holidays in resorts. And I have to say, I thought that the methods you employed to try and capture evidence of the supernatural sounded most, er, intriguing.’ If her tone was rather on the dry side, Arbie decided not to notice.

‘I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ he said instead, trying his best to look modest. In truth, he still found himself genuinely buzzed that he’d produced a work that anyone bothered to read at all – even such a light, nonsensical piece as The Gentleman’s Guide.

‘What was it you were saying about electricity?’ Amy, like Val, had little appetite for feeding Arbie’s already healthy ego, and ruthlessly changed the subject. ‘I won’t have it here. I’m still not used to these awful gas lights,’ she said, casting a withering glance at an inoffensive glass gas lamp on the wall beside her.

‘Oh, but I was talking to the proprietor of the village shop this morning, and she was telling me how she got it from the clerk who works in the council offices that the electricity board is proposing a motion to run the pylons out your way in the next few years,’ Cora related sedately, her tone now definitely dry. A lifelong resident of cities, she occasionally found village life to be entertaining. Sitting down and carefully arranging her skirts, she eyed the table and its contents with a bird-like eye, reminding Arbie of a hungry sparrow. ‘Won’t that be exciting for you, my dear Amy? Of course, we’ve had it for years in our place,’ she added, addressing the remark to Arbie whilst eyeing the Dundee cake. ‘It’s so much cleaner, and you don’t get the smell like you do with gas light.’

And selecting a plate, she swooped on the cake, waving a silver slicer with expert balance.

‘Do help yourself to the teapot,’ Amy said, her own tone so arid that it would have made the Sahara Desert sit up and take notice. ‘And I tell you now, I won’t have it in this house. It’s positively dangerous, or so I hear. Killing people left and right, it seems. Nasty stuff! Now, where do you suppose … Oh, here is my other summer visitor.’

Both Val and Arbie noticed their hostess soften a little. ‘Reggie, I’d thought you’d forgotten we had guests for tea.’

As she spoke, a slender, silver-haired man sauntered in and eyed the bulging tea-table with a happy smile. ‘Ah, Mrs Brockhurst’s scones. Amy, I swear half the reason I come here every year is because of Mrs Brockhurst’s scones.’

Cora smiled minimally at this, but Amy’s smile seemed genuine enough. ‘I dare say that’s true, you old rogue,’ she even went so far as to tease him.

Arbie and Val watched this display, both fascinated and dumb-struck. Who’d have thought Miss Amy Phelps capable of such a feat!

Perhaps their hostess caught something of this, because she waved a hand vaguely in the air. ‘Oh, you mustn’t mind Reggie, and his odd ways,’ Amy Phelps informed them airily. ‘He’s a bit of an artist, you know, like my dear late mama, and likes to amuse himself over the summer indulging his various hobbies and nestling down in Mama’s old studio. Our families have known one another for so long, we’ve practically merged. Reggie and my late brother Francis went to school together, and he was always running about here in the school holidays.’

‘My parents were in India at the time,’ Reggie put in by way of explanation, sitting down and reaching for a plate and purloining a healthy selection of sandwiches.

Arbie, sensing that he had a rival in the food stakes, quickly followed suit. With a hard stare, Val watched him pile up his plate. Cora also looked on, much amused, from behind her teacup.

‘Yes, Amy’s right – during the school holidays Francis and I ran loose around here like a pair of wild animals.’ Reggie sighed happily. ‘And we just kept the tradition going after we’d grown up, somehow. I would often spend almost as much time here as in my own home, didn’t I, Amy m’dear? Of course, we liked to knock about the Continent a bit together too, or take longer trips away and get off the beaten path. Francis was a great one for finding little out-of-the-way places up in the mountains someplace, where we’d live off goat’s cheese and figs.’

At the mention of her late brother, Amy let out a small sigh. ‘I do so miss all my siblings, but Francis most of all. I know I shouldn’t say that, but I’m afraid it’s true. He had such a way with him. He was Mama’s favourite too,’ she added matter-of-factly, and without any evidence of jealousy.

‘But at least you have your nephew and niece as living reminders of the others,’ Cora put in, sotto voce.

At this, Arbie and Val, who were looking at Amy, noticed the older woman’s face shut down. It wasn’t in any way subtle, and even the affable Reggie appeared a little uncomfortable to see it. Cora, however, didn’t seem to notice her friend’s sudden coolness. Perhaps her eyesight was more defective than she realised, for she carried on obliviously, ‘Didn’t I see Phyllis arrive just a little earlier?’

‘Yes, she’ll be down shortly,’ Amy said primly. ‘She went upstairs to wash her face and hands after the train journey. She only lives in the next county, but travel is such a dirty, grimy business, I’m glad I have little to do with it,’ she added firmly.

Unaware that she was under discussion, upstairs the woman herself cautiously opened a door and peered around to check that she was alone. It was not, however, the door to one of the house’s few bathrooms that she was exiting. Satisfied that the narrow corridor on either side of her appeared to be deserted, she tiptoed out, closed the door carefully behind her and hurried towards one of the Old Forge’s many twisty staircases.

As she did so, Mrs Brockhurst, a short, tidy-looking woman who’d been coming up another set of stairs that let out behind her, paused for a moment. Her face was totally expressionless. For a moment, she watched Phyllis Thomas, the only child of Amy’s sister Moira, as she hurried away, and only when the younger woman had turned a bend in the passageway and was safely out of sight did she herself move forward.

The housekeeper hesitated for a moment outside the bedroom door from which Phyllis had just emerged but did not open it to look inside. She had no need to. She knew very well that the room belonged to Amy Phelps, the mistress of the house. And whilst Miss Phelps tolerated the housekeeper’s necessary intrusion into her domain strictly for cleaning purposes, she wouldn’t have liked it at all if she knew that anyone else had been in her private quarters, for Amy had always been a secretive person who fulsomely guarded her privacy.

Quietly, Mrs Brockhurst carried on towards the airing cupboard, where she neatly deposited the set of towels she’d been carrying, before heading back down to the kitchen. Nothing about her would suggest that she was unduly concerned by what she had just seen, although in fact, she was thinking to herself that she wished Miss Phyllis would be more careful about how she went about things.

Downstairs, Phyllis was now smiling at Arbie and shaking his hand, then she turned a slightly less impressed smile on Val. ‘How nice it is to meet you both,’ she said, taking a seat and then accepting a cup of tea from Arbie, who had been quick to see to her needs. ‘I was saying to Cora only a little while ago, I’ve never met a famous author before. Have you really seen ghosts?’

Val sighed gently and wondered just how many more fawning females the man was going to collect.

‘No,’ Arbie answered, honestly. ‘That is … Not seen one, as such. But I think I may have heard one.’ This, he knew, was the kind of thing people liked and expected from him, and he’d been dining out on his supposed area of expertise for long enough now that he knew how to sing for his supper. Nothing too frightening, but just enough to scintillate, that was the ticket.

As expected, Cora smiled coolly and said, ‘Ah, that sounds interesting. Please do tell us all about it.’

‘Yes, Arbie, do spill the beans,’ Val said, turning to look at him fully. ‘We all can’t wait to hear about it.’ And if there was something slightly mocking in her eyes, or suspiciously sardonic in her tone of voice, Arbie manfully ignored it.

‘Yes, where was it? On one of the cases that you covered in your wonderful book?’ Phyllis prompted, far more sincerely.

‘As a matter of fact, no. It was in my own house, right here in the village. When I was twelve,’ he added. Then he sipped from his cup, apparently in no hurry to continue. Leave ’em wanting more – that was the thing.

Reggie looked at him approvingly from benign eyes. ‘This is more like it, young fellow – a bit of entertainment to give us all a little boost, eh? Well, go on, don’t leave us all in suspense.’

Arbie shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I can promise to be entertaining, Mr Bickersworth. Only honest.’ At this, Val’s eyebrow lifted sceptically, and he shot her a slightly hurt look. The story he was about to tell was true enough … well … in essence.

‘You see, when my friend asked me to write The Gentleman’s Guide, although I was a bit taken aback, in truth, I wasn’t all that averse,’ Arbie began. Of course, that was stretching things a bit but there was no point boring everyone with the true origins of his writing career, was there? ‘Because of what happened in the chapel,’ he added tantalisingly.

‘The chapel?’ Phyllis asked, puzzled. ‘I thought you said it happened in your own house?’

‘So it did,’ Arbie rushed to explain. ‘You see, I was orphaned when I was only three years old. My parents died in a boating accident, and so I came to live with Uncle, here in the village. And he’d just recently purchased the chapel. It was originally built in the early 1800s for the workers in the nearby clay pits who were nearly all Methodists and so wanted nothing to do with the local church. But when the pits were all worked out fifty or so years later, and the workers left, the chapel began to moulder a bit. Well, Uncle, being Uncle, bought it for a song and set about renovating the big awkward beast to his own … er … tastes.’

Here Amy Phelps drew in a sharp breath. ‘Your uncle always has been, shall we say, someone who forged his own path in life,’ she acknowledged tightly.

At this, both Cora and Reggie sat up a little straighter. Now it sounded as if some dirt was going to be dished.

But Arbie was having none of it. Whilst it was all right for him to suspect his relative of all manner of dodgy deeds and less-than-salubrious practices, he wouldn’t stand for it from others. ‘Yes, I suppose Uncle always has been a bit of a black sheep,’ he admitted cautiously. ‘But when disaster struck, he didn’t hesitate, you have to give him that.’ Here Arbie paused to take a decorous sip of tea, and let the point sink in. ‘And even though he had no wife to help him, he took me in without a murmur, and saw to getting me a nanny and then overseeing my schooling and such.’

‘Yes, that was admirable,’ Amy acknowledged grudgingly. ‘But I still maintain he was not the ideal guardian for a young boy.’

‘Well really, you know, I had a jolly time as a young ’un, dashing around that cold old building,’ Arbie chided gently. ‘I think I must have learned enough to be an architect had my inclinations been that way, watching as Uncle put in staircases and dug out a cellar and extended into the attic and what have you.’

‘Yes, you really must see it some time, Reggie,’ Amy said dryly. ‘The conversion of the Old Chapel into a private residence is really … er … remarkable. You’d appreciate its eccentricities, I think.’

Arbie openly grinned. ‘What Miss Phelps is too polite to say, old boy, is that the place is an utter horror! Oh, it has no fireplace, for instance, but is wonderfully centrally heated – my uncle designed and built the system himself. He’s something of a mad inventor, I’m afraid. It has bespoke furniture all over the place, but the pulpit is still in the living room, as well as the fully functioning organ! And as for the kitchen – it has all the mod cons, but the arched windows are still all stained glass. It’s neither fish nor fowl. My bedroom is in the loft and has rafters and the original bell still dangling over my bed, right over my head. I only hope the rope holding it in place really is as stout as Uncle says it is, otherwise one day it’ll come down and brain me!’

‘Oh my!’ Cora said dryly.

‘How brave of you to sleep under it! I’d never get a wink!’ Reggie said, eyes twinkling.

Phyllis, who was made of sterner stuff, smiled upon him a shade impatiently. ‘It all sounds utterly charming, Mr Swift. But you were going to tell us of your ghost?’

‘Ah, yes, so I was. Well, it was when I was around twelve. I was home for the school holidays, and it was a foul night.’

‘Oh really. Not a thunderstorm, Arbie?’ Val protested. The last thing she was in the mood for was listening to Arbie spouting utter tosh to his adoring fans. ‘Wind howling around the rafters and thunder and lightning crashing and flashing all over the place? It really is too Frankenstein’s monster for words.’

‘Actually, there was no thunder and lightning,’ Arbie told her with dignity. ‘Just a lot of wind and rain. A typical British summer in fact.’

At this, everyone smiled wryly. They could all tell their own horror stories about British summers.

‘Anyway, it was dark, and I’d been in bed some time when I heard it,’ Arbie said, his voice lowering dramatically a little. And even though they were all perfectly aware that he was only doing it for effect, everyone was now hanging on to his every word.

‘What? What did you hear?’ It was, a little surprisingly, Amy Phelps who asked the question. Arbie would have said that, of them all, she’d be the least taken with his tale, but then he remembered that she had ghostly troubles of her own, so perhaps she was feeling less sceptical than she might have been otherwise.

‘I heard the organ playing,’ Arbie said. And as he spoke, he was once more back in his bed on that night, waking up and hearing the unmistakable sound of the pipes letting forth.

‘Is that all, old chap?’ Reggie said, sounding a little disappointed. ‘It was probably your uncle having a bash. Bach was it? A bit of Mozart?’

‘Uncle hasn’t got a musical bone in his body,’ Arbie scoffed. ‘He’s a painter. Inventor. Man of business. Or a combination of any of those things – according to Uncle that is,’ he added with a gentle laugh. ‘But I can testify to the fact that he has a tin ear when it comes to music.’

‘So he couldn’t have been playing then?’ Cora nodded. ‘So what did you do?’ For the first time, the no-nonsense woman sounded genuinely interested.

‘Well, like any curious boy, I got out of bed and sneaked to the top of the stairs to have a peek,’ Arbie said truthfully. And once again, he was there that night, creeping along the short landing and peering over the banisters and looking down into the cavernous main living room below. ‘Uncle, you have to understand, was doing odd bits and bobs to the building for years. Adding this here, taking that out there, as the whim took him. And I seem to remember, that holiday, that he had had the big main entrance door removed because it was going rotten at the bottom and was in the process of having another big oak thing installed instead. I was half inclined to wonder if he’d forgotten to secure the doorway properly, and some tramp or other had wandered in out of the weather and thought he’d play a tune to cheer himself up.’

‘Was it a hymn?’ Phyllis asked. ‘It being a former chapel, I mean?’

Arbie smiled. ‘No. Funnily enough – it was “Greensleeves”. I could just about recognise it.’

‘Oh. It wasn’t being played well then?’ Reggie asked, exaggeratedly forlorn. ‘Bit of a letdown that. You’d think a ghost would be able to do better than that, somehow.’ He smiled gently. ‘It would be nice to think you’d be given accomplishments in the afterlife that had evaded you whilst in the land of the living.’

Val gave him a warm look. He had a jolly, easy way about him that was soothing, and she could well see why he was a regular visitor at the Old Forge.

‘I know. But there you are,’ Arbie responded to his sally philosophically. ‘There I was, twelve years old, listening to the organ playing by itself a rather hit-and-miss rendition of old Henry the Eighth’s greatest hit!’

‘You mean, there was nobody there actually playing it?’ Phyllis asked sharply.

‘Not a soul,’ Arbie said, for once stating nothing but the truth. ‘When I looked down, I could see the organ and the stool in front of it, and although the pipes were emitting sounds, nobody was pressing down on the keys. Well, nobody alive that is,’ he added gruesomely.

Of course, when he’d told his uncle this tale the following morning, Uncle had explained it away with ease. What with the huge draught coming from the ill-fitting temporary doors, not to mention with the wind howling down the experimental chimney that he’d put in (and three years later discarded), it was simply a case of a major draught getting into the organ pipes and emitting a series of random notes. Notes which his half-awake schoolboy mind had interpreted as being ‘Greensleeves’, a tune that he and his fellow schoolmates had been forced to learn a few years earlier, courtesy of a particularly sadistic music master.

And whilst his now adult and rational self believed that his uncle’s explanation was probably the true one, nevertheless, Arbie did still sometimes wonder. That organ had sounded as if it had played ‘Greensleeves’ that night. And what with that, and one or two other minor incidents which he hadn’t seen fit to tell his uncle about over the last decade, it did give him pause to ponder. Like that time …

‘I see. And this incident fed your interest in the supernatural?’ Phyllis interrupted his musings. ‘My friend Janice swears by a medium that her mother sees regularly.’

‘Stuff and nonsense, my dear,’ Reggie broke in kindly. ‘Oh, I know it’s all the rage nowadays, these seances, and table-rapping and what have you. But so much of it is fakery. The Victorians, bless them, came to the same conclusion decades ago.’

‘Oh, I agree with you there, sir,’ Arbie said, finding pleasure in taking a little of the wind out of the old duffer’s sails. ‘When I was researching The Gentleman’s Guide the literature given over to exposing the amount of trickery by so-called mediums would make your hair turn white.’

Cora looked at him with her head cocked a little to one side. ‘Are you saying you don’t actually believe in ghosts then, Mr Swift?’ she asked uncertainly.

‘Of course he does, Cora, haven’t you been paying attention? It’s mediums he doesn’t believe in, not the possibility that ghosts don’t exist,’ Amy cut in sharply. ‘That’s why Mr Swift is going to help me with my own manifestations. Aren’t you, young man?’ she said pointedly, shooting him a glance.

Arbie nearly choked on his tea. ‘Oh, er, quite, Miss Phelps,’ he finally managed to stutter.

In her chair, Val grinned widely. It wasn’t often the usually eloquent Arbie was lost for words and she was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle. ‘So, why don’t you tell us all about your woes, Miss Phelps?’ she said sweetly. ‘I’m sure we can help. Isn’t that right, Arbie?’

Arbie eyed her with a growing sense of doom. What was all this ‘we’ business? he thought warily. But what he said was, ‘Oh yes, rather. So, who is it exactly that is causing all the fuss? Do you know?’

‘My ancestor of course. The smithy,’ Amy said flatly. ‘You’ve probably heard the story about our family ghost – the whole village must have – but do you know the more interesting parts of the family legend? No? Well, it concerns my great-grandfather, Wilbur Phelps. He was only twenty-eight when he died of tuberculosis. Before that, however, he’d been a big strapping man who worked the forge and was very ambitious to get on in the world and improve the family’s already growing fortune. It was his long-term business plan that helped shape the family’s future successes.’

She said all this with a curious mixture of complacency, matter-of-factness and determined bravado – as if the humble origins of the Phelps family legacy were a matter of pride and yet, underneath it all, she was grudgingly aware that something about it was not quite nice. She would undoubtedly have preferred it if her family fortune and power had come about as the result of inherited wealth from a genteel family background, but since it wasn’t, she was determined to make the best of it.

Val, the daughter of an impoverished vicar who happened to be the very minor younger son of a father who was himself a very minor younger son of a lord, understood this distinction at once, but would never have publicly admitted it.

‘He married young and produced only one child, luckily a son, but he always lamented a lack of more heirs,’ Amy swept on majestically. ‘In those days, child mortality was so high you can understand his fear, I suppose. If he died without issue his line would be lost, and the power and growing fortune of the family would be scattered amongst a few distant relations. When he knew he was dying, he made his young son promise to strive hard and grow and protect the family, making sure that the Phelps name lived on forever. All very dramatic, I’m sure,’ she added dryly.

Her listeners sighed a little in relief at this sign of levity. The tale had been in danger of becoming somewhat hoary.

‘When he was buried, they went through the usual ritual of tying a piece of string on his big toe, and attaching it to a bell above ground,’ Amy continued matter-of-factly.

But this bombshell statement made Val start. ‘Oh my! What on earth for?’ she asked, sounding genuinely alarmed. ‘It sounds so macabre.’

Reggie reached over and patted her hand gently. ‘There, there, my dear, don’t fret. It was a common practice back then. Don’t forget, in past times the doctors weren’t quite so, er, proficient as our modern quacks! Sometimes they mistook unconsciousness for death, and a few poor unfortunates found themselves waking up six feet under.’

Val couldn’t stop herself from giving a faint squeak at this, and even Arbie felt a cold shiver of horror scuttle up his own spine.

‘For that reason,’ Reggie hurried on, ‘people did the sensible thing, and whenever someone was buried, they tied a bell on a piece of string and attached it to the dear departed’s toe. That way, should there be any little mishaps, all the poor soul had to do was waggle his foot up and down and the bell would ring, and alert anyone out and about that they needed to be dug up again pronto.’

‘I think if I were passing a churchyard and heard a little bell ringing, I might die myself,’ Cora said crossly. ‘Just imagine it!’

For a moment, everyone in the room did imagine it.

‘Yes, quite.’ It was, of course, the redoubtable Amy who broke the appalled silence. ‘Be that as it may. Legend has it that, ever since, any Phelps family member who seemed to be in danger of putting the family legacy in danger could expect a visit from the ghost of Wilbur – heralded by the ringing of a tiny bell – forcing them back onto the straight and narrow. My grandmother always swore that her husband, who had taken to drinking far more than he should have, was shocked sober one night after one such visitation. Myself, I think it far more likely that Grand-papa just fell in the river one night when a little the worse for brandy, and it was the near-drowning experience that did the trick.’

Everyone laughed obligingly.

Amy sighed gently. ‘Well, for some reason, my ancestor seems to have taken against me. I can’t think why. I think I’ve been a steady guardian of our legacy after losing the last of my dear siblings. But it seems Wilbur doesn’t think so. Recently, a few odd … things … have been happening that lead me to suspect that he’s unhappy with me.’

‘Oh, come now, Amy, surely you’re exaggerating,’ Reggie said gently. He looked at her with obvious concern, but before he could say anything more comforting, he was forestalled.

‘Who’s this who would dare to be unhappy with you, Aunt?’ A hearty voice broke into the tense atmosphere, as a man in his early to mid-thirties swept in through the open parlour door. ‘Just give me his name, and I’ll soon sort the blighter out.’

Everyone turned to look at the interloper. Not particularly tall, he was just a little portly, with a head of thick brown hair and a pair of dark brown, penetrating eyes. A button nose rather spoilt an otherwise classically handsome face, and he was wearing an expensive business suit made by a tailor who knew his business.

Val looked at him with distinct interest.

Phyllis looked at him with quickly disguised dismay.

Cora and Reggie both acknowledged him with muted pleasure.

But it was the look on Amy Phelps’s face that struck Arbie the most, as it was so hard to read.

‘My nephew, Murray Phelps,’ Amy introduced him dryly. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, Murray. How nice of you to call in.’ If there was a slightly mocking edge to her voice, her nephew didn’t seem to hear it.

‘Not at all, Aunt, not at all. Always glad to see you, you know. Oh, hello, Phil old thing.’ He tossed the greeting casually at his cousin, his eyes quickly going from Val to Arbie and back again. ‘So what’s all this then?’ he said, a distinct challenge in his voice.

‘Mr Arbuthnot Swift and Valentina Coulton-James, the vicar’s daughter,’ Amy said. ‘You’ve probably seen them both around the village from time to time, since they’re lifelong residents,’ she added laconically.

Arbie did, in fact, vaguely recognise the man, having seen him fleetingly once or twice about the village, this relative obscurity being mute testimony to the older man’s lack of interest in the residents of Maybury-in-the-Marsh. Something told Arbie that this man had not set foot in The Dun Cow Inn, nor yet spent any of his pennies in the village shop. No, this was the sort of man who would patronise only fine-dining places, and the haughtiest of emporiums.

‘Swift? Why does that name ring a bell?’ Murray asked, bending down absently to deposit a rather hit-and-miss attempt at a kiss on his aunt’s cheek.

‘Oh, Murray dear, you must have read The Gentleman’s Guide to Ghost-Hunting by now. Almost everyone else in the country has,’ Cora teased him drolly. ‘Such a witty, light-hearted guide to some of the country’s best ghosts and places to stay and all that?’

Murray’s face cleared. ‘Oh yes, I have as it happens. Good wheeze that. Jolly useful holiday guide too, and those little stories of yours about ghosts and things – most amusing.’

Arbie waved a vague hand in the air, pretending that he hadn’t detected the patent insincerity in the other man’s tone. ‘Oh, it passed the time for me nicely, writing it,’ he said airily. ‘Once a chap’s come down from Oxford he has to find something to do after all.’

Murray shot him an ill-concealed look of vague disdain. ‘Wouldn’t know, old chap. I’ve been toiling in the family business since I was in short trousers.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, Murray,’ Amy Phelps said sharply, a definite chill in her voice now. ‘And you make it sound as if you’ve been forced to work in a coal mine, instead of holding an executive position in a thriving business.’

‘Oh, only teasing, Aunt. You know Phelps Industries is my very life.’ He put a hand mockingly on his heart, making Cora tut and Reggie guffaw obligingly at his antics.

‘Well, sit down, Murray, since you’re here, and have some scones,’ his aunt said flatly. ‘I was just about to show Mr Swift and Miss Coulton-James the gardens.’

This was news to Arbie and Val, but both abandoned the bread and butter and Mrs Brockhurst’s triumphant strawberry scones to follow her outside. ‘I’m sure your cousin and our summer visitors can keep you entertained, Murray,’ Amy tossed imperiously over her shoulder as she passed through the open French windows.