The Ghost Garden by Catherine Curzon

Author:Catherine Curzon [Harkstead, Catherine Curzon & Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Totally Entwined Group Ltd
Published: 2019-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Evening was drawing in by the time Hugh returned. Cecily heard his approach along the corridor, the tapping of his metal-tipped shoes. She went into the hallway, hands clasped over her apron, ready to welcome him.

“Good evening, Mrs. James,” he said as he entered the apartment, a thin specter silhouetted against the landing light. He sounded almost happy, she thought, the idea a curiously ominous one. “The journey was uneventful, the conference equally so. The school is still standing, I see.”

“I’m glad to see you safely home, Dr. James. I’ve left some supper for you.” Cecily nodded stiffly. Even if he seemed happy, she wasn’t about to let down her guard, because as soon as he heard from Graham… “I made a pie. Your favorite.”

Hugh closed the door and turned the key with deliberate slowness. His back was still turned to Cecily when he asked in a worryingly calm voice, “And why is there a pit in the middle of the lawn?”

Cecily bit her lip. She pictured Raf digging in the ghost garden, and recalled the words of love that had lain forgotten in the ground for all that time. It was odd to think that a man like Hugh could exist in the same world as those words of passion and longing.

“Foxes, we think. Or badgers. Mrs. Culpeck thought so anyway. Rabbits, maybe. There’s a lot of the little fellows about.”

His head cocked to one side in a curious, jerking gesture, then corrected itself with an audible, sickening crack. Cecily remembered again the cloudy eye and the wheezing croak, the hellish fingers splayed against the filthy window in the clocktower.

“If I see them, I shall wring their necks with my bare hands,” he said, just as the cuckolded husband had threatened to do. Finally Hugh turned, his eyes nothing more fearsome than eyes, his lips thin and bloodless as ever. “Supper, Mrs. James. I am famished from my endeavors on behalf of the school.”

She thought of the terrifying hand from the clocktower window passing over a woman’s décolletage. And she was glad, because now she could get away from him.

“Of course, Dr. James. Dinner in half an hour.” She turned toward the kitchen, then paused. “You’ll have spoken to Mr. Culpeck since your return?”

“School business is outside your concern,” he told her coolly. “Mr. Culpeck has apprised me of the situation. I shall telephone the concerned parties after church tomorrow. Mr. Culpeck, Mrs. James, is an errant fool to entertain such nonsense.”

Cecily decided to appeal to his vanity. “If I may, Dr. James, you have made a name for yourself at Whitmore, and will leave quite the legacy—it would be a shame if it were to be tarnished on account of troublesome masonry.”

“It is more likely to be tarnished on account of my idiot wife. Supper, Mrs. James.” He waved his hand to dismiss her. “Now.”

If only he knew.

Cecily shut herself in the kitchen to heat through Hugh’s pie and cook the vegetables she had prepared for him that afternoon.

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