‘It’s a sparrowhawk,’ continued Edith.
‘And the part about Lugh?’ asked Molly.
Edith reached over and flicked a switch, the carving lit up and from the shadow it cast, it looked as though waves were rippling across the walls.
‘These rooms were where we studied,’ said Edith, pointing along the cramped corridor. ‘My father once said to me and, my younger sister, Phyllis, “When you leave here, your childhood is behind you and you stand on the cusp of the changing tide.”’
‘It certainly fits,’ said Molly, ‘but, if this is supposed to be a treasure hunt, where’s the next clue?’
Edith’s smile faded and as the three women gazed around, Tabitha heard a noise, the squeak of a board, as though someone stood out of sight around the bend of the corridor and a waft of the cloying perfume her mother had once used, Poison, with its overwhelming scent of tuberose lingered.
‘I was so excited about solving this clue, I’d forgotten it was supposed to lead to another,’ lamented Edith.
‘Unless, there never was a trail,’ said Molly.
Tabitha did not feel it was her place to join in with the conversation and instead took a few steps away, peering around the bend, but there no one there.
It’s an old house, she thought.The noises and groans are from the walls, perhaps I imagined the scent.
Instead, she returned her mind to the issue at hand. She was unsure the reference to Lugh was as simple as the carved finial doubling up as a light. It felt too vague. Instead, she shone her torch around the passageway to see if there were any dark corners where another clue might be inscribed.
Outside, there was a crackling sound and lightning ripped across the sky, infusing the corridor with a blinding blueish light. Tabitha stared in surprise as words appeared on the panelled wall above her head, vanishing seconds later.
Spinning around, she looked up and high above her was a stained-glass window. A tall, willowy man stood in the centre and the name Lugh was inscribed in italic letters at his feet, but above his head were four lines of poetry in tiny writing. As she had done with the painting, Tabitha snapped a series of pictures on her phone, adjusting the light and zoom until she was certain she had a clear image, then she turned to Edith.
‘I think I’ve found the next clue…’
But before Edith or Molly could respond, the huge front door below them crashed open and they heard a man’s voice shouting their names. He sounded frantic, terrified.
‘Edith, Molly, are you there?’
‘We’re here, Seb,’ called Molly, running down the stairs towards the gardener.
‘You have to come,’ shouted Seb. ‘It’s Gull, he’s on the roof, I think he’s going to jump.’
11
CERENSTHORPE ABBEY – PRESENT DAY
Molly screamed and Edith uttered a guttural noise, a hybrid of a sob and a shriek, before a cry of despair left her lips. They fled down the stairs behind Seb, shouting to each other, their words tangled in a meaningless cacophony of fear.
Tabitha remained on the landing, frozen to the spot, her heart pounding. Suicide was a terrible way to die and her heart ached with sorrow, pain and the smallest prickles of anger. Gulliver was on the roof. Was he suicidal? She had not thought so when she had seen him the previous day, but then who could tell the inner workings of another’s mind? One thing she did know, being on the ground shouting up at Gulliver would not save him.
She raced down the short flight of stairs from the school rooms to the main landing, then sprinted past the top of the staircase, towards the opposite side of the house. Plunging down another short flight of steps, she turned a corner, heading towards the cramped staircase that led to the vast attics and the entrance to the roof.
When she had first arrived, Gulliver had given her a more detailed tour than Edith, who had dwelled largely inthe renovated scriptorium. He had pointed out the more unromantic parts of the house, like the fuse box, the ‘odds and sods’ cupboard as he named it, where a small selection of tools and cleaning equipment was kept, along with other interesting nooks and crannies.
‘This,’ he had said as they’d entered the dark passageway where Tabitha now ran, ‘is the entrance to the roof. A large section of it is flat and this is the easiest access for maintenance. We do regular checks of the stonework and tiles, then major repairs every few years when we cover the house in scaffolding. Last year, we replaced a small section of the roof because the tiles had slipped and were dangerous. The statue of the swan over the front door needed some repairs, too, as well as a few of the decorative stone falcons on the chimneys.’
He had shown her where the key was stored and emphasised the importance of keeping it locked whenever there was no one outside.
‘If you do have any reason to go out there alone,’ he had said, ‘which isn’t advisable, flip this card to show you’re on the roof and you won’t be accidentally locked out there.’
He had shown her a battered piece of card hanging from a nail on a rustic piece of string that said:
In Use
on one side and on the other:
