In the Shadow of Winter: A gripping historical novel with murder, secrets and forbidden love. Lorna Gray
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worrying her, however, was perfectly obvious. I thought she had smiled cheerfully enough when I welcomed her, but she seemed oddly stiff with me as she refused my offer of a cup of tea and now she was hovering awkwardly by the kitchen table with the prudish air of someone who had just swallowed a very bitter lemon. I wondered whether she had caught sight of a half-dressed man disappearing up my stairs.
“What can I do for you, Mrs Ford?” I asked while sneakily trying to clear away the three sets of breakfast things.
“Well,” she began hesitantly, still looking uncomfortable. She stood for a moment staring at the pile of well-thumbed books that Freddy had left abandoned on a chair and fiddled with her handbag again. Then she must have caught my curious look because she seemed to give herself a shake before suddenly brightening and eagerly bursting out with; “Have you heard the news? Isn’t it too awful?”
“What news?” I asked, confused. Surely she hadn’t walked all the way from the village in these conditions just to indulge in gossip.
I was automatically making tea anyway, whether she wanted it or not, but then the flimsy webbing that covered the handle of the battered old tin teapot crumbled and fell away as I touched it, and with a silent curse I snatched up a teacloth so that I could pour without scalding my hand.
I glanced back at my visitor in case she had noticed the tatty state of my kitchenware but she didn’t seem particularly aware of anything as she flushed with the excitement; “I’m surprised you haven’t heard already – it’s been all over the wireless.”
I didn’t bother to mention that I had sold the wireless about six months ago when Freddy’s boots had finally got beyond repair. “What news?” I repeated.
“About that man over at Warren Barn, Old Whatsit’s son, you know; the one with the stammer.”
“Jamie Donald?” I supplied. Jamie was a seedy-looking man who made a dubious living by doing Lord knows what surrounded by pheasants in the heart of the nearby country estate commonly known as the Park. He had set up home there after the war and didn’t seem particularly fond of human company, sometimes, strategically I thought, adopting the offensive slur of the stage alcoholic as I rode past with ponies in tow. I had seen him do it to others too, so it wasn’t just me, but for all his oddities, he had given Freddy some honey once so couldn’t be all bad.
“Yes, him, that’s right. He’s only been murdered!” No sign of nervousness now, she clearly relished the horror of it. “Nearly five days ago – the poor man was brutally strangled. It’s been on the wireless; it would have been in yesterday’s newspapers had it not been for the blizzard. Which killed nearly all the sheep on Exmoor. Didn’t you know?”
“No, no I didn’t.” It wasn't entirely clear to me whether she had meant her question to refer to the man or the sheep; not that it mattered anyway because she had swept on regardless.
“Well —” There was a bizarre moment of suspension where I could see her mouth moving so I knew she was speaking but somehow, hard as I tried, I just couldn’t comprehend the words. But then, unhappily, my mind cleared of its numbness and I caught the tail end of her excited rush. “… and the police have had dogs out and everything, and Mr Langton from the Manor lent Sir William some men and they found a scent but lost it in the snow. I must say that I always thought he looked a bit sullen but who’d have thought that he was a murderer.”
“I’m sorry. Who did you say …?” But I didn’t need her answer. I already knew.
Matthew Croft.
For a moment it felt as though the world had actually stopped. Only that was clearly wishful thinking because then it started again, my heart racing painfully in my chest while those last few words resounded in my head with all the gentleness of a death knell.
So this was his terrible secret, the reason for his silence and the cause of his determined exclusion. But…why?
I must have spoken this last question out loud because she gave me a funny little smile that was mainly shocked but just a little bit gleeful. “The men that disturbed him at the scene said that they caught him going through poor Jamie’s pockets, so the wireless is saying money, but it’s my guess that he came back from the war damaged …What’s the word? Shell-shocked.”
I put a trembling hand behind me onto the worktop. My blood was pounding in my ears and I might have staggered but for its solid support. “Oh my God,” I finally whispered and carefully eased myself down into a chair.
She was quick with eager sympathy; “It is shocking, isn’t it? The police don’t know where he is and Sir William is furious. To think a murder could happen on his estate; it really …” There was a crash upstairs and she broke off, looking startled. “What was that?”
“Freddy, I expect,” I said hastily, hoping that she wouldn’t notice the way my breath was coming in short panicky gasps. The room was spinning with the horror of it; my frustration at his silence seemed utterly idiotic now, particularly when I realised that while he had hinted at danger and pursuit, he had been carefully neglecting to mention that it was, in fact, the police…
Mrs Ford was staring at me with wide-eyed alarm, “But I saw Freddy outside with the ponies.” She clapped a hand dramatically over her mouth. “Lord, you don’t think …?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I do not. It was probably just one of the cats.”
“But aren’t you afraid?”
“Of what?” I asked, almost impatiently. I wasn’t really paying attention as my brain fell back yet again into the search for flimsy excuses in the face of this awful discovery. It seemed impossible, every instinct screamed it must be, and yet cruel logic armed with the evidence of what I had found in the snow quietly persisted in forcing the point home. This was the mystery he had tried to hide from me? Impossible, my mind said again, forcefully, but then a memory flashed before my eyes of that first meeting, his hands imprisoning mine and his voice becoming nearly unrecognisable as it twisted into crazed unthinking fury.
I blinked quickly and focused on a bit of dirt on the table.
“All alone here,” she said in a low whisper. “With him on the loose…Oh I know you’ve got Freddy,” she waved my objections aside, “but what good is that boy going to be against that … that monster!”
“Oh, Mrs Ford, you do dramatise!” A brittle laugh somehow managed to disguise the trembling in my voice. “I can’t see why he would come here.”
“Can’t you? Time was when you two were rather close as I recall.”
“But how did you …?” I stared at her, shaken out of all appearance of calm, but Mrs Ford was so busy being shocked and appalled herself that I don’t think she noticed my change of colour. “I mean that was all a long time ago, Mrs Ford. There’s nothing between us now. No,” I said firmly into her protest, “I really don’t think that he would come here, and if he did, why I’d just send him packing again.”
I stood up quickly to cover the lie. I wasn’t even sure why I had said it. Over the years I had often fantasised about meeting him again and how my poise and cool reserve would prove to be a rebuke of the most powerful kind. Sometimes, fate being cruel, I had suspected that I would only come across him when doing something unbelievably foolish, forcing me to suffer his sharp wit and blush and stumble my way through our meeting as though I were still an embarrassed teen. It seemed insane that this was the way our little story would end.
A sudden remembrance of a past that could only bring me pain made me abruptly wish to change the subject; it was either that or give way to the rising nausea. I picked up the two forgotten teacups from the worktop and set one down in front of her before reclaiming my seat. “Anyway, Mrs Ford. Don’t tell me you trudged all this way through the deepest snow yet just to warn me of something nasty hiding in my woodshed?”
She smiled at my feeble joke. “No, dear.” She took a breath and slid into a chair opposite