Free The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton by Elizabeth Speller, Georgina Capel Page B

worshipping in a church which had been Roman Catholic for centuries before we Protestants got hold of it.’
    Most of the interior walls had been whitewashed but one retained a painted design in a dark madder. Stylised flowers filled a pattern of squares over an area perhaps three feet by four.
    ‘Quaint,’ Patrick said.
    ‘Old,’ Laurence replied. ‘Very old, I think.’
    ‘Lucky to survive my mother’s improvements,’ Patrick said. ‘How old?’
    ‘Medieval, I would imagine. The same sort of age as all this.’
    He switched on his torch and shone it upwards. The ceiling was formed from simple wooden trusses, but the stone corbels that supported the beams were as elaborate as the entrance archway, with clusters of leaves, flowers and small animals, including a hedgehog, a field mouse and a slow-worm. Deep among them was an impish face sprouting leaves. It was easy to see what had inspired the man who much more recently had sculpted the creatures on the garden steps.
    Laurence shone the beam into the corner near the long table under the window. To the right was what appeared to be the top of a rudimentary arch with a column, about four feet high, incorporated into the wall. Above it was a carving, about a foot square. It looked hacked at, rather than eroded by time; either way, its original subject was lost but could possibly have been some kind of head and body.
    After a minute, he said, ‘I think there might have been an earlier building here.’
    ‘Before the church? Or part of it?’
    ‘Hard to tell.’
    With anyone else, he would have expected them to push him but Patrick just nodded.
    Eleanor joined them. ‘Interesting,’ she said.
    ‘Interesting, but probably not significant. People did use the foundations of old buildings to raise new ones from time to time, or areas that had some sacred connotation would acquire various structures over the centuries.’
    Patrick was thoughtful. ‘My father used to say that the altar had been a standing stone. Perhaps it was true and some doughty Christian hauled it here to purge it of its heathenness.’
    ‘It’s just as likely they built the whole church round it,’ Laurence said. ‘Churches are enclosures for altars—the altar’s not furniture for the church.’
    Patrick said nothing but he looked at Laurence with respect.
     
    Dinner that evening was more formal than the night before. It was not completely dark outside when they sat down; from the nearest windows it was possible to see beyond the terrace but the maze was hardly discernible. A clear violet sky tinged with green promised a cold night, although the day had been beautifully warm for late April.
    The tarnished silver, which had appeared at every other meal, was now clean and bright; crystal glasses stood on a newly laundered tablecloth. The women had dressed up too. Lydia looked serenely beautiful in what he thought must be a pre-war dress, which fell to her ankles and sparkled with thousands of tiny beads. She was walking with a silver-topped cane and was evidently finding it hard to put her weight on one leg. Frances was watching her. She wore an equally old-fashioned long crimson dress, with her hair caught back in a small jewelled clip.
    From everything Eleanor had told him about Frances, Laurence doubted she ever left Easton much or had any call for fashionable evening dress. He thought that at least Lydia had known marriage, even if followed by tragedy, where Frances had only escaped briefly to Cambridge. Eleanor alone wore a modern evening dress, with a low waist and a silk fringe bouncing on her knees. A long pearl necklace was knotted on her chest. She had obviously seized any old cardigan to throw on over it but the effect nonetheless made her look young.
    William was already at the table. Julian pulled back Lydia’s chair for her. Lydia handed him her stick and laid her hand on the table edge to steady herself as she lowered herself into the chair. Laurence ran a finger under his dress