Free The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier

in the book of pedigrees, although I found a descendant, Isolda Carminowe, whose father was a Reynold Ferrers of Bere in Devon."
    "Reynold Ferrers rings a bell, he said. The son, I believe I'm right in saying, of Sir William Ferrers who married the heiress. Therefore your Isolda would be their granddaughter. I know the heiress sold the manor of Tywardreath to one of the Champernounes in 1269, just before she married William Ferrers, for one hundred pounds. Quite a sum in those days."
    I made a rapid calculation in my head. My Isolda could hardly have been born before 1300. She had not looked more than about twenty-eight at the bishop's reception, which would date that event around 1328. I followed the vicar round the shop as he made his purchases. "Do you still celebrate Martinmas at Tywardreath?" I asked.
    "Martinmas?" he echoed, looking bewildered—he was hesitating between a choice of biscuits. "Forgive me, I don't quite follow you. It was a well-known feast in the centuries before the Reformation. We keep Saint Andrew's Day, of course, and generally hold the church fete in the middle of June."
    "Sorry," I murmured, "I've got my dates rather mixed. The truth is, I was brought up a Catholic, and went to school at Stonyhurst, and I seem to remember we used to attach a certain importance to Saint Martin's Eve..."
    "You are perfectly right," he interrupted, smiling. "November 11th, Armistice Day, has rather taken its place, hasn't it? Or rather, Armistice Sunday. But now I understand your interest in the Priory, if you're a Catholic."
    "Non-practising," I admitted, "but you have a point. Old customs cling. Do you ever have a fair on the village green?"
    "I'm afraid not," he said, plainly puzzled, "and to the best of my knowledge there has never been a village green at Tywardreath Excuse me..."
    He leant forward to receive the purchases dropped in his basket, and the assistant turned his attention to me. I consulted the list given me by Mrs. Collins, and the vicar, with a cheery good morning, went his way. I wondered if he thought me mad, or merely one of Professor Lane's more eccentric friends. I had forgotten Saint Martin's Eve was November 11th. An odd coincidence of dates. Slaughter of oxen, pigs and sheep, and in the world of today a commemoration of uncounted numbers slain in battle. I must remember to tell Magnus. I carried my load of groceries outside, dumped them in the boot of the car, and drove out of Par by the church road to Tywardreath. But instead of parking outside the gents hairdressers, as I had done the day before, I drove slowly up the hill through the centre of the village, trying to reconstruct that non-existent village green. It was hopeless. There were houses to right and left of me, and at the top of the hill the road branched right to Fowey, while to the left the sign-post said To Treesmill. Somewhere, from the top of this hill, the Bishop and his cortege had driven yesterday, and the covered wagonettes of Carminowes, Champernounes and Bodrugans, their coats-of-arms emblazoned on the side. Sir John Carminowe would have taken the right-hand fork—if it existed—to Lostwithiel and his demesne of Bockenod, where his lady awaited her confinement. Today Bockenod was Boconnoc, a vast estate a few miles from Lostwithiel; I had passed one of the lodge gates on my drive down from London. Where, then, did the lord of the manor, Sir Henry de Chainpernoune, have his demesne? His wife Joanna had told her steward, my horseman Roger, 'The Bodrugans lodge with us tonight.' Where would the manor house have stood?
    I stopped the car at the top of the hill and looked about me. There was no house of any great size in the village of Tywardreath itself; some of the cottages could be late eighteenth century, but none belonged to an earlier period. Reason told me that manor houses were seldom destroyed, unless by fire, and even if they were burnt to the ground, or the walls crumbled, the site would be put to another purpose