The Ghost Tree: Gripping historical fiction from the Sunday Times Bestseller

3

Sitting opposite Timothy Bradford at the kitchen table, Ruth found herself studying his face for the first time. He had pale pimply skin and mouse-coloured hair. When standing up he was the same height as she was but he had slumped into the chair and was leaning back, looking up at her, his expression guarded. He obviously resented her knock on his bedroom door and the invitation down to the kitchen.

She had seen Harriet off on the train at Waverley a couple of hours before and walked slowly back towards her father’s house in quiet, refined Morningside, in the south-west of the city. A lively autumn wind had risen and caught her hair as she crossed the Meadows, the area of parkland lying between the city and her destination, the leaves flying in clouds from the trees. As she neared Number 26 her pace had slowed. She was not anxious to see Timothy again but, if he was at home, this was the time to face him.

‘I wanted to thank you for looking after my dad,’ she began. ‘It was really good of you. I’m sorry it took me so long to find out he was ill.’ She paused, hoping he would acknowledge the fact that he could have made the effort to contact her, but he ignored the remark. He was watching her through narrowed eyes.

‘So, when are you going back to London?’

His question threw her completely. This was her line.

‘I’m staying here,’ she replied after the smallest of hesitations. ‘There’s a lot to sort out. So, I was going to ask you if you could let me know when you’re planning on leaving.’

She saw a flash of something in his eyes. Anger? Shock? Indignation? She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was immediately hidden, to be replaced by his previous bland stare. ‘I hadn’t planned on leaving, Ruth. Your father made it clear that this was my home as long as I wanted to stay here. He told me I was the son he had always wanted.’

In the end, with very bad grace, he agreed to move by the Thursday. The implication in his grudging acceptance of her request after she had threatened to go to her father’s solicitor, was that it would only be a matter of time before he returned.

As a house guest, he was for those last few days exemplary. He was neat, tidy and quiet. She barely saw him. She never met him in the kitchen or on the stairs. She wouldn’t have known he was still there at all had he not from time to time played his radio very softly in the evenings upstairs. Her father had given him the use of the two small rooms on the top floor and the guest bathroom which sat below it on the half landing. Once or twice she had tiptoed up when she knew he was out and tried the doors. Both were locked.

On the day stipulated in her ultimatum he moved out. She had been to the shops. Pushing open the front door she stopped in the hall. The house felt different; empty. She knew at once he had gone. Dropping her bag on the floor she stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up, then she caught sight of an envelope on the hall stand. It contained a postcard – a picture of the Scott Monument in the rain – and a set of keys.

Thank you for your brief hospitality. I am sorry I outstayed my welcome. I will return when you have gone back to London, Tim

That was all. No forwarding address, nothing.

‘I don’t think so!’ She found she had spoken the words out loud.

She ran upstairs two at a time. Both doors on the top floor stood open. She hesitated in the doorway of the first and looked round. He had left the window open and the room was cold, immaculately tidy, the bed stripped, the furniture neatly ordered. The wardrobe doors were slightly open. She peered in to find a mixed collection of empty coat hangers, nothing else. The second room, which overlooked the narrow parallel gardens at the rear of the long terraced street, was of identical size and layout except that the bed had been pushed against the wall to serve as a sofa. On the table there was a tray with neatly washed cups and saucers, an electric kettle, a couple of plates and an assortment of knives and forks and spoons.

In this room there was a range of fitted cupboards across the full width of one wall. Their doors were closed but she could see from where she stood that at some point they had been forced open; the wood was freshly chipped and splintered around the keyholes. Her heart sank. Pulling open the first door she saw the cupboard was full of boxes and suitcases, hat boxes and cardboard files, carelessly stacked on top of each other. With a sense of rising despair she opened the next door. That too was stuffed with boxes and papers. Only one cupboard appeared to have been left untouched. It contained a hanging rail and on it there were some half dozen of her mother’s dresses, some of the tailored trousers she had loved and a slightly moth-eaten fur coat.

It was the first time Ruth had cried since her father died.

She found herself sitting on the makeshift sofa sobbing uncontrollably. These were all her mother’s things. She recognised them; she could see letters and papers scrawled with her mother’s large cursive handwriting; she remembered the old handbag that lay on top of one of the boxes, the little make-up case, her hair brushes, her faded silk bathrobe, scarves, hats.

Had her father pushed them all in so carelessly, or had someone else forced open the cupboards and ransacked them? It had to be Timothy who had so terribly violated her mother’s privacy. Who else would have done it? Her father was a meticulous man. If he had kept her mother’s things, he would have kept them neatly. Standing up, Ruth fingered them miserably. Now, when it was too late to talk to him about it, was this a sign of her father’s love and his loss when her mother died? He had bullied his wife, and harangued her, questioned everything that made her who she was and made her life unbearably unhappy, and yet he had kept all these memories of her. It doubled the insult that Timothy had gone through the cupboards and then shoved the contents back out of sight, not even bothering to hide his depredations.

Why hadn’t she come up to Scotland sooner? Unable to reconcile herself to her father’s treatment of her mother, she had never visited him again after her mother died, not until these last weeks, when he was too ill to speak to her. It had been his next-door neighbour, Sally Laidlaw, who had found her phone number and called her. Timothy had done nothing to contact her and seemed to have been surprised that she existed at all. He had been living in this house for several months and her father had not mentioned to him even once, or so Timothy claimed, that he had a daughter living in London.

Suddenly she couldn’t bear to stay there a moment longer. Running downstairs, her cheeks wet with tears, she went into the front room. She didn’t turn on the light. She just sat there as the colour faded from the sky outside while indoors, behind the heavy net curtains, everything grew dark.

It was only as she was falling asleep that night that it occurred to her to wonder if Timothy had stolen anything.

She had made the room next to her father’s into her base when she had moved into the house; the small box room next to it had been occupied by Harriet for the few days she had stayed. A carer had slept there during her father’s last weeks, but Harriet’s vivacious personality still filled the room now, as did the scent of her various lotions and creams. ‘Glasto’s best,’ she had joked as she was packing to leave. ‘All herbal; all guaranteed to give me a luscious skin or spiritual insight or both. Here, have them.’ She had pushed several bottles into Ruth’s hands. ‘Your need is greater than mine. They will soothe your aura. I can always get more. And here’s the book I told you about. I’ve marked the first place Lord E is mentioned, though he seems to have guided her through her whole life.’ She clasped her fingers round Ruth’s wrists. ‘Remember, for a couple of weeks or so I won’t be too far away. Call me, any time, if it all gets too lonely.’

It was a complete surprise when next morning Ruth received an email from her father’s solicitor inviting her to the office to discuss an ‘unexpected problem’.

James Reid had been a friend of her father’s for many years. The tall, grey-haired man who rose to greet her with great courtesy, pulled out a chair for her then returned to his own side of the desk and produced a folder which he aligned on his blotter without opening it. This was an office, she noticed, where all signs of modernity – computer, scanner, printer – had been relegated to a shelf along the back wall beneath a solid phalanx of old law books. It was somehow comforting.

‘I’m sorry to ask you to come in so soon after our telephone conversation,’ he said once she was settled, ‘but there is something that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.’ They had spoken briefly on the phone after her father’s death, and again at the funeral. Her father’s affairs, he had assured her then, were relatively straightforward. Donald Dunbar had left her, his only child, everything, the house and all his money of which there was quite a substantial sum. Now James Reid glanced up at her with what appeared to be some anxiety. He was a handsome man, perhaps in his mid-sixties, she guessed, and was blessed by a natural expression of wise benevolence. She felt her stomach tighten with anxiety.

‘A possibly contentious issue has arisen.’ He paused.

Ruth felt her mouth go dry. ‘What’s happened?’ It came out as a whisper.

‘Do you know a Timothy Bradford?’

Her heart sank. ‘Yes. He was staying with my father in the last months of his illness.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘Capacity?’ She echoed the word helplessly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Was he there as a friend? A guest? A carer?’

‘A bit of each, I suppose. I don’t really know.’

‘Not a relative?’

‘No. Absolutely not.’

‘And you hadn’t met him before?’

‘No. I had no idea he was even there until I came to Edinburgh. I assumed he was some kind of lodger. He claims Dad never mentioned me. It was a neighbour who got in touch to tell me about his illness.’

‘So your father didn’t tell him he had a daughter?’

‘He said not.’

‘I see.’ He sighed. ‘Mr Bradford has written to us informing us that he has a copy of your father’s will. A far more recent will than the one which I have, leaving everything to you, which was originally written fifteen years ago.’ He paused for a moment. ‘The new will leaves the house and all your father’s possessions to Mr Bradford.’ Before Ruth had a chance to interrupt he went on, ‘He further claims that he is your father’s son by a liaison formed in the late 1970s before your father and mother were married. I am sorry. This must be an awful shock to you.’

Ruth sat speechless for several seconds. ‘I can’t believe it. Daddy would never have done such a thing.’ She looked across at him helplessly. It wasn’t clear whether she was thinking about her father’s affair or the fact that he had changed his will.

‘I find it incomprehensible,’ James Reid said gently. ‘I have known your father for over forty years and I remember no mention of such a circumstance, but we are forced to take this claim seriously. The will is, as far as we can see, properly drawn up and signed and witnessed by someone from a reputable firm. I am so sorry.’

‘Who was his mother?’ At last Ruth managed to speak.

‘He doesn’t give her name.’ He opened the folder on his desk. It contained a single sheet of paper. ‘He gives no details of how long he has actually known your father, or of how he came to be living in Number 26.’ He looked up at her. ‘As soon as the will is processed, he wants vacant possession of the property. In other words, he wants you to leave.’

4

Ruth took a cab back from the lawyers, terrified that she would come home to find Timothy had returned. Her hands were shaking as she inserted the key in the lock, but to her relief the front door opened normally. She closed it behind her and drew the bolt across, then she paused to listen. The house was silent.

Tiptoeing into the sitting room she sat down on the edge of the sofa just as she had the night before. Velvet-covered, under a tartan rug, it was placed in the window so the light fell over her shoulder. She remembered from her childhood how it had been a favourite place for her mother to sit and read. Now it was dusty and faded; the room smelt stale and cold and unloved. The whole house felt abandoned and empty. Even the ticking of the clock had stopped. She had hated that clock as a child. It had underlined the echoing quiet of the place, the passing of time, her loneliness as the only child of two older parents, and she had felt it was mocking her with every jerky movement of its hands.

James Reid had assured her that nothing would happen while he appealed on her behalf against the new will. The absolute worst that could happen was that, if it was proved genuine, she would have to share the inheritance. As her father’s undisputed daughter, she was entitled to at least half of everything. He also told her that she was quite justified, at least for now, in changing the locks if she was nervous; after all, whether or not Timothy was related to her, he was still a stranger.

Her phone made her jump. It was Harriet. ‘How are things going? I’m loving it here in North Berwick. Liz and Pete are being so kind. I can stay as long as I like, so I’ll be here for a while, working on my book.’

The sound of her voice broke the spell. Ruth stood up and, walking round the sofa, drew back the curtains that had blocked half the light from the room. She stood staring out as she relayed the morning’s events.

‘Shit!’ Harriet summed up in one word.

‘I’d never given the inheritance a thought; of course I hadn’t. I’d spoken to James on the phone after Daddy died; he had told me that my father’s will, which he made after Mummy died, left everything to me.’

Harriet snorted. ‘I told you Timothy gave me the creeps. What a bastard! So, what happens next?’

‘I wait to hear from James. He is formally going to contest the will. Apparently, if Timothy is genuinely Daddy’s son, he can claim half the inheritance, whatever the will says, but then so can I.’

‘Ouch. I’m sure he’ll sort it out. Keep calm, Ruthie. It’ll be OK. There’s no way that vile toad could be a relation of yours.’

Switching off her phone, Ruth sat for a moment, staring into space.

The house and all your father’s possessions, his money …

‘Don’t panic,’ James had said as he shook hands with her at his office door. ‘Your father’s bank accounts are frozen and nothing will happen for a while. These things take time.’

And, she reminded herself, he had told her she was entitled to change the locks.

The locksmith said he could make her his last call that evening. Pulling the curtains across once more after a quick look out into the street, she checked the bolt on the front door and then headed back upstairs to the cupboards on the top floor.

Looking at the rail of dresses and coats she was pretty certain they hadn’t been touched; presumably Timothy wasn’t interested in clothes. But what about the other stuff, the boxes and cartons? Now she was looking more carefully she could see paler patches in the dust. Parcel tape had been pulled off and not replaced, latches on old suitcases were standing open when she knew her father, even in the act of banishment, would have made sure they were all neatly closed. He had been too ill to have made it up to the top floor for a long time, never mind stir up the contents of the cupboards like this. This had to have been Timothy. He had rifled through all her mother’s precious possessions, the things she had treasured and loved, her books, papers, jewellery, pictures. Even the little writing box with its inlaid brass initials that Ruth remembered from her childhood was there, lying crookedly on top of another box in the corner.

Methodically she began to take items one by one out of the cupboards and line them neatly on the floor. Tossed in a corner of one of the cupboards was a teddy bear. He had been hers, her beloved Pooh. She picked him up and held him close, burying her face in his threadbare fur. He had lost the warm comforting scent she remembered and smelt of sawdust. She had loved him above all her other toys and, knowing this, her mother had kept him for her; so too, she realised with a sob, had her father.

The locksmith did not miss the fact that her hands were shaking as she fetched him a cup of tea while he attended to the front door. ‘Were you burgled, hen?’ he asked sympathetically as he wielded his screwdriver.

‘No. Expecting to be.’

‘That’s tough. On your own here, are you?’ He was thorough and efficient, testing the new lock, handing her the keys, doing the same in the kitchen where the back door led out into the narrow garden. ‘I’m glad to see you have bolts here. Don’t forget to use them. Maybe get an alarm fitted in the house. Motion sensors. If you’re scared of being attacked, you can think about a link to the police; or at least a rape alarm.’

It hadn’t occurred to her that Timothy might attack her. It was the house and its contents he wanted; her mother’s treasures. Surely she ought to hide them somewhere they couldn’t be found.

Was there no one in Edinburgh she could go to for help? It was then her thoughts turned to Finlay Macdermott. He had been at school with her ex, and one of their greatest friends. It was worth a try.

‘So, what you’re saying is, you need to hide stolen goods, eh!’ The familiar voice rang out of the phone after she called him and explained the situation. To her relief he had sounded pleased to hear from her.

‘Not stolen!’ she protested. ‘They’re mine. Legally. The solicitor said my mother’s things would almost certainly be deemed to be mine as my father disowned them and locked them away. The law would presume he was planning to pass them on to me.’ She wasn’t sure if that bit was true. ‘They’re probably not worth much either, so I am not cheating the government of tax.’

‘Blow the government!’

She realised suddenly how much she had missed Finlay’s irreverent humour, which used to echo so often down the line from Scotland and around their living room in London.

‘I will be over to see you tomorrow, sweetheart. First thing.’

She smiled as he ended the call.

Whatever had precipitated that final quarrel between her parents had echoed in her head forever afterwards. She must have been very young but her mother’s angry denials and pleas and eventual capitulation had haunted her. It was then that her mother’s precious things had first disappeared. Ruth looked round, trying to remember what Lucy had brought to her husband’s Scottish home from her parents’ house in Sussex. One or two of the more robust items were still there, downstairs, the others, the delicate chairs that Ruth as a small child had loved so much, the spindly-legged tables, had vanished overnight. Where were they? There had been portraits of ladies in exotic clothes and bewigged gentlemen and landscapes and drawings and paintings of houses and castles, horses and dogs. Where were those?

There were two boxes of books still in the cupboard, at the very back; presumably Timothy had felt they were valueless. She hauled them out to join the rest of the items on the floor and began to look through them. These were stories of ancient Scotland, the poetry, the works of Sir Walter Scott, a tattered volume entitled The Lives of the Lord Chancellors which had, she assumed, included her mother’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, the same Lord Erskine who had precipitated her father’s rage. She picked them out, handling them with something like reverence. The Lives of the Lord Chancellors was signed by the author, John, Lord Campbell. She stared at the title page in awe. It was a first edition, published in 1847. She flipped open a shabby leather-bound volume of Sir Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward. Another first edition, signed by the author in 1823, and another signed ‘Byron’. She sat back and took a deep breath. Her ancestors had known these people.

When, all those weeks ago in London, she had started the research it had been relatively easy. All she did was call up Lord Erskine on her laptop, after she had threaded her way through all the different men of that name until she had found the one she wanted.

She had clicked on the entry, feeling almost guilty looking him up, but thinking of him as a historical reality helped start to dispel the lingering miasma of superstitious dislike her father had created around his name. This man was someone her mother had been inordinately proud of.

Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine KT PC KC (10 January 1750–17 November 1823) was a British lawyer and politician. He served as Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom between 1806 and 1807 in the Ministry of all the Talents …

He was, it appeared, the son of an earl. That was what her father would have hated most. He would not have resented the fact that the man was a brilliant lawyer, surely, or the fact that to all intents and purposes he was a self-made man. It was the fact that he was the son of the 10th Earl of Buchan, a Scottish aristocrat of ancient lineage, that had got up her father’s nose.

She smiled sadly. Over the last weeks of her father’s life she had put her lurking interest in genealogy to the back of her mind, but suddenly here, tucked into an untidy heap in a long forgotten cupboard box, was all that remained of her mother’s background. She sat cradling Lord Campbell’s book on her knee for several minutes, fighting back her tears, before gently putting it down on the carpet beside her and scrambling to her feet to reach for the writing box.

It was about fifty centimetres long and made of some dark wood, perhaps rosewood or mahogany, inlaid with brass decorations and entwined initials and would when unlocked open to make a writing slope. She lifted it onto the divan. The box was broken. There was a deep splintered gouge around the lock and the delicate mechanism itself had been levered out completely; she found it lying on the floor of the cupboard. The body of the box under the leather and gilt writing surface was empty, as were the surrounding small compartments and drawers. Was it her father who had done this all those years ago, or Timothy on his quiet nights upstairs alone after his host had gone to sleep? Whoever it was had used considerable force to lever it open.

She sat back wondering what, if anything, had been hidden there. There had been a secret drawer in it somewhere. She remembered her mother showing her and chuckling at the little girl’s wonder as it slid out of the side of the box. Picking it up, Ruth shook it experimentally. If there was something inside it would surely rattle. There was no sound. She put it down again and studied it carefully. Where had the secret drawer been? She ran her fingers over every surface. There were no grooves or ridges that she could discern, save for the vicious damage inflicted by chisel or screwdriver; nothing that betrayed any hidden compartment.

Her mother had pressed something. As she cudgelled her memory, an image of the slim questing fingers with their narrow gold wedding ring the only decoration, popped into Ruth’s head. There had been some sort of button inside one of the compartments. There had been a silver-filigree-topped inkbottle there and her mother had lifted it out before pressing the secret place. The inkpot had gone, its former position clearly marked by the faded black stains on the wood. With a sudden surge of hope, Ruth felt the side of the compartment. There was indeed an almost undetectable bump beneath the thin veneer. She pressed it firmly. There was a click but nothing happened.

She pressed again, harder this time. There was no sound. The mechanism, such as it was, had shifted but she couldn’t see any sign of a response. Once more she ran her fingers over the outside of the box and then she felt it: a faint ridge at the bottom of the back panel that hadn’t been there before. She bent closer and tried to insert her fingernail. Slowly and reluctantly a small drawer began to emerge with her coaxing from the body of the box. It was stuffed with some sort of soft material. Intrigued and excited, Ruth unwrapped the delicate silk handkerchief to expose a portrait miniature. She sat staring at the tiny painting in the palm of her hand. It was of a young man; he wore a short white wig, a pale blue coat and a lace ruffle at his throat. She turned it over to see if there was anything written on the back. There wasn’t.