Free The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths Page A

some pastoral melodrama. There is something grand about Cass, something operatic that is quite out of tune with her surroundings.
    â€˜The thing is,’ he says, with his eyes on the pig (she is operatic too, in her way), ‘I’m worried about Grandpa. What if he has one of his turns?’
    Cassandra turns to look at him. ‘But he’s been OK for years.’
    â€˜I know. But what if this sets him off again? Mum said that he was really bad after his oldest brother disappeared. This might bring it all back.’
    â€˜Mum doesn’t know. She wasn’t even around when Uncle Lewis went missing. She just makes these things up.’
    Chaz knows that Cassandra is touchy when it comes to their mother but this strikes him as unfair. ‘I don’t think she makes things up. Grandpa must have told her. He talks to her more than he talks to Dad.’
    Cassandra looks mutinous. ‘There’s no reason to think Grandpa will get sick again. He hasn’t so far, has he?’
    â€˜Mum said he didn’t like the policemen coming to the house.’
    â€˜Oh, that’s just him doing his lord of the manor bit.’
    â€˜And he’s furious about this American film. Says he doesn’t even want to meet Fred’s daughter.’
    â€˜He had a daughter? How old is she?’
    â€˜Older than Dad. He said she was really dishy when she was young. She came over in the sixties, with a miniskirt and an open-top car. I think Dad was quite smitten.’
    Cassandra laughs. ‘God, I hope she’s not still wearing miniskirts. We want to come over well in the film, after all.’
    â€˜I’m sure
you
will,’ says Chaz. And he means it.
    Â 
    At the back of Blackstock Hall, the land falls gently away towards the sea. The main entrance to the house is obviously here because a proper tarmacked drive leads up to the back door, which is the stable type with the top part open. There’s a kitchen garden too, with raised beds and a small greenhouse. Everything looks pretty wild and gone to seed but, Ruth reflects, that probably because it’s autumn. She’s hardly an expert on gardening. As they walk past the rows of giant cabbages (who knew they grew so big?), Ruth casts an eye over the soil. It has been turned fairly recently, no doubt about that, but isn’t that what you would expect in a garden? Then again, Ruth once found a body buried in a vegetable patch. She stops and looks at the earth. The topsoil seems to be mostly clay, clumpy and wet after the rain, but underneath there’s some chalk—she can see white flakes in the compost heap. A skeleton might be well preserved in this environment, if it wasn’t buried too deeply.
    â€˜What are you doing, Ruth?’ calls Nelson from the gate. ‘Planning on making cabbage soup?’
    â€˜I’m analysing the soil,’ says Ruth with dignity. She spent several weeks on the cabbage soup diet. Never again.
    Through the gate there are a few stunted apple trees, bent almost double by the wind. But to their right is something that makes Ruth and Nelson look at each other. It’s a large stone cross, not visible from the house because it is situated in a slight dip. As they approach, they see that there are other crosses and headstones lower down the slope. The stone is almost the same colour as the grass, which makes the markers look as if they have grown there, strange hunched trees perhaps, or distorted rock formations.
    Nelson has reached the biggest cross. Because of its position it seems to loom unnaturally large against the sky, like one of those optical illusion pictures beloved of tourists, where a person can hold up the Tower of Pisa. But here the effect is sinister, the massive crucifix seeming to overshadow Nelson, stretching its arms towards him. It’s all Ruth can do not to call out.
    â€˜Admiral Nathaniel Blackstock, 1789–1850,’ Nelson is reading. ‘Safe in harbour.