The Ghost Tree Read online

  THE

  GHOST

  TREE

  Also by M.R.C. Kasasian

  THE GOWER STREET DETECTIVE

  The Mangle Street Murders

  The Curse of the House of Foskett

  Death Descends on Saturn Villa

  The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

  Dark Dawn Over Steep House

  BETTY CHURCH MYSTERIES

  Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire

  The Room of the Dead

  THE

  GHOST

  TREE

  A Betty Church MYSTERY

  M. R. C.

  KASASIAN

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK by Head of Zeus in 2020

  Copyright © M.R.C. Kasasian, 2020

  The moral right of M.R.C. Kasasian to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781788546430

  ISBN (E): 9781788546423

  Cover design by Leo Nickolls

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  For Tiggy,

  with all my heart

  Contents

  Also by M.R.C. Kasasian

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART 1 – 1914

  1. MOLLUSCS AND THE LADY

  2. THE DAYS OF STRAW AND THE MONKEY’S EYE

  3. THE SMACK AND THE SEA SCOUTS

  4. MANNERS AND THE SHADOW OF A MAN

  5. THE AROMA OF HIPPOPOTAMUSES

  6. BATTENBERG AND THE BLOODHOUND

  7. THIN FYNN AND THE OUTRAGE

  8. THE SIDELINE AND THE PITY

  9. CONSPIRACIES AND THE ASYLUM

  10. A PORTUGUESE GRANDMOTHER AND THE STONE BOTTLE

  11. CUPS, CHOPS AND CONFESSIONS

  12. BLACKFLY, THE BIANCHI BOYS, SNOWBALLS AND THE WEASEL

  13. THE NIGHT VISITOR

  14. THE IMAGE OF ETTERLY AND THE HALF-FORMED CLAY

  15. DEBORAH AND THE POTTING SHED

  16. THE INSTABILITY OF HOPE AND STOVEBURY PRISON

  17. DELILAH AND THE HARRISONS

  18. PC48 AND THE TERBLE SCRATCHET

  19. PECK AND THE MANIAC

  20. CHANGING THE GAS AND NOT CHANGING FLOWERS

  21. GOBNAIT AND THE RUNNING BOARD

  22. CONFUSION, DISTRACTION AND CONCERN

  23. THE AUTO CARRIER SOCIABLE AND THE ENEMY

  24. NURSE HOCKWILL AND THE SPOON

  25. THE TRIBUTE AND THE HUNT

  26. SHERLOCK AND THE POLECAT

  27. THE GOAT AND THE UNICORN

  28. SWEAT, BLOOD AND SALIVA

  29. THE DEATH OF AREANUS AND THE ALIAS TREE

  30. KING CHARLES AND THE VERMIN

  31. THE SINISTER MIRROR AND DIMENSIONALLY STABLE PUTTY

  32. ARMADILLIDIUM CHURCH AND THE WORM CHARMER

  PART 2 – 1940

  1. DUNKIRK, HURRICANES AND THE THIRD FEAR

  2. STARFISH AND THE LISTENERS

  3. THE GATHERING OF BONES

  4. GOLDEN TEETH AND RELICS

  5. THE NAMING OF TOES AND CONTINENTAL DRIFT

  6. SPILSBURY AND THE VICAR OF TITCHFOLD

  7. ZINC PHOSPHATE AND THE ART OF LOVE

  8. THE TRAGEDY OF JERICHO ALLEY AND THE GREATER NEEDS OF MEN

  9. THE WITCH OF SACKWATER AND THE CROOKED TRAIL

  10. CAPRICORN, STRINGS AND ASTRONOMY

  11. THE TRADITION OF THE TROWEL AND THE CONDITION OF PATHOLOGISTS

  12. THE TIN MAN AND THE SILENCE OF THE LAMB

  13. HELENA RUBENSTEIN AND THE HARD-BOILED HACK

  14. MR CHAD AND THE DESTRUCTION OF DREAMS

  15. THE DIGGER OF BONES AND THE GREEK GOD

  16. THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE AND ERIC THE CLOCKWORK MONKEY

  17. BOUDICA AND THE TEARDROP MEDALLION

  18. THE STONE BOTTLE AND THE INDIGNITY OF SACKS

  19. THE BRASS RING AND THE HAMMER BLOWS OF FATE

  20. TREADMILLS AND THE COMFORT OF SWINE

  21. DAHLIAS AND THE COILED LINKS

  22. CLARICE MAYNE AND THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL

  23. JUSTICE AND THE BLACKBIRD

  24. FALSE HOPE AND A FEW BONES

  25. CHEERFUL MENACE AND THE LONG WAIT

  26. RABID DOGS AND THE KALEIDOSCOPE KILLER

  27. WHITE FLAGS AND THE LOST BOYS

  28. TWO WORDS AND THE RESISTANCE OF CARTILAGE

  29. BEES, WASPS, HORNETS AND TALKING TO MANIACS

  30. POISON AND THE LIFEBOAT

  31. SAD CATS AND WINDFALLS

  32. BATS, RATS AND THE CURLICUE

  33. WEIGHTS, MEASURES AND CYANIDE

  34. BLOOD AND THE MAGICIAN

  35. THE DEAD DON’T TALK AND OFFICERS DON’T SCREAM

  36. MRS GRUNDY AND THE THRILL OF DESTRUCTION

  37. CONTRAPTIONS AND THE GREAT CLOUD

  38. THE MAN IN THE MOON AND CREATURES OF THE NIGHT

  39. BEARS, RATS AND SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION

  40. PRIMING THE GRENADE

  41. THE FEELINGS OF MACHINES

  42. HENRY V AND THE WOODWORM

  43. STRANGE STREET AND THE BUCKET OF SAND

  44. CROW TIME AND THE HALF WOMAN

  45. EZEKIEL AND THE GHOST OF THE WORD

  46. DONKEYS, SHEEP AND FERRETS

  47. JESSICA LAMBERT, MR JARMAN AND THE GENIE

  48. THE BIG SLEEP AND THE SECRET OF BAWDSEY MANOR

  49. TIME AND THE MONGRELS

  50. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

  51. PENCILS, POSTMARKS AND KILLER BLOWS

  52. DUTY AND THE RUINS OF THE MAN

  53. BLOOD AND THE MAN

  54. SECRETS AND BITTERNESS

  55. THE DOG AND PEACOCK

  56. COURAGE AND THE CARDIFF CLAN

  57. THE KNOCK AND THE FERRET

  58. VELVET AND THE SCENTED PALACE

  59. VICTORIA SPONGE AND THE SEEKER

  60. HANRATTY AND THE CHUFFY DUNT

  61. TWISTER MAGHULL AND THE SPARROW

  62. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED

  63. THE LONG ARDUOUS JOURNEY OF GONE WITH THE WIND

  64. OLD ABINGDON AND THE SPANNER

  65. THE STONEY WAY

  66. IF

  67. HEARTS AND ASHES

  68. KNEES, ELBOWS AND THE UNEXPLODED BOMB

  69. MUSSOLINI AND THE MAGNIFYING GLASS

  70. HACKLES AND HOMICIDAL MANIACS

  71. THE HEAD OF KARL MARX AND THE WORDS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL

  72. MRS GUNN’S LETTER BOX AND THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

  73. OLD MAN PECKHAM AND THE RAGE

  74. DIZZY AND THE DUTCHMAN

  75. THE FALLING AND THE FALLEN WOMEN

  76. BADGER AND THE WIRE

  77. FYNN AND THE HARDENED HEART

  78. RATIONS AND THE TRICK

  79. THE RADIOGRAM MURDERS AND WHODIDIT

  80. STONE STEPS AND THE LAST DROP

  81. RULES, FOOLS AND DOUGLAS BADER

  82. BONE, BLOOD AND VAPORISATION

  83. THE HOLIDAY AND THE HAUNTING

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  PART 1 – 1914

  1

  MOLLUSCS AND THE LADY

  18th July

  When he arrived for his appointment, Mr Lorris had a crinkled mouth, folded flabbily like the lips of a mussel. By the time my father had extracted his patient’s stumps, tossed them in a kidney dish and crammed in two blocks of vulcanite decked with porcelain, Mr Lorris looked like an exhausted horse.

  ‘I can’t speath proper,’ he whinnied as I burst into the surgery.

  ‘Properly,’ my father corrected him.

  ‘Etterly is missing,’ I cried.

  ‘Missing what?’ my father asked.

  He didn’t mind me coming in, even though I was a minor. I often helped, cutting up squares from a fat roll of gauze to staunch bleeding, fetching things for him or rinsing forceps under the tap to be ready for the next extractions. Today, my mother, bored with nursing, was reading a copy of The Lady that a previous patient had forgotten in her nitrous-oxide-addled hurry to leave. My mother would already have done her duty, holding Mr Lorris down while he clawed semi-consciously at my father’s wrist, because – and dentists never tell you this – it is very difficult to gas someone completely to sleep without killing them.

  Mr Lorris was straining to pull his lips together, but they were not designed to stretch that far.

  ‘Mithing wha’?’ he asked, in case I hadn’t understood.

  ‘Missing whom?’ my mother asked, in case I hadn’t understood and because she thought it sounded more grammatical.

  ‘She has gone missing,’ I explained, because they had all misunderstood.

  ‘Ah,’ my father commented unhelpfully.

  My mother flicked through the social announcements.

  ‘I see the
Honourable Peregrine Botherleigh is to be interred in Titchfold,’ she announced.

  My father perked up. ‘Does it say when?’

  ‘Oh,’ my mother sighed. ‘It was yesterday.’

  My father huffed. I don’t think they knew the gentleman in question, but they did love a good funeral and a chance to mix with what they saw as their equals.

  ‘Mithing?’ Mr Lorris enquired, proving that at least this poorly educated knife grinder could stick to the topic. ‘Fwom where?’

  His lower set shot into his lap, bouncing miraculously unscathed onto the lino.

  ‘The King’s—’ I began, interrupted by an ominous snapping noise when my father stepped backwards. ‘Oak,’ I ended, and my father glared.

  ‘Well, pick it up,’ he ordered angrily, leaving me in no doubt that it was my fault for having distracted him.

  I recovered the two halves and rinsed them under the tap.

  ‘The Ghost Tree?’ Mr Lorris sprayed bloodily.

  ‘It won’t glue,’ my father asserted. ‘You’ll have to pay for another.’

  ‘Oh.’ His patient grinned lopsidedly. ‘Dint you worry ’bout tha’. I can speak more better without it.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ my father piffed.

  ‘Why do they call it the Ghost Tree?’ I asked Mr Lorris, offering him the two halves uncertainly.

  ‘Because terble things do happen there,’ he told me, wiping his chin until the side of his face and the back of his hand looked like he had had a terrible accident with his grinding wheel.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ my mother protested, tossing her copy of The Lady aside angrily. ‘Women will not be wearing blue this summer.’

  2

  THE DAYS OF STRAW AND THE MONKEY’S EYE

  We could not have known it at the time, but this would be remembered as The Golden Age, days of peace and security before the world hurled itself into a frenzy of slaughter. It was a time of long summer afternoons, of tea on the terrace and croquet on the lawn – a time when our navy patrolled the oceans and the globe was liberally painted in British Empire red. In France they called it La Belle Époque. In Sackwater, because the months of sunshine with no rain had turned every lawn and meadow into dry pale yellow stalks, we called it, less romantically, The Summer of Straw.

  When I was thirteen, Etterly Utter was my best friend. She was born two years before me – quite a difference for playmates, especially as I was still at boarding school and Etterly had been working in her father’s jeweller’s shop since she was twelve, but I always preferred to be with older girls and Etterly was young for her age. The Sackwater and District Gazette was to label her – unfairly, I thought – as simple, but there was nothing simple about the way she came to their attention.

  The sunshine was disastrous for local farmers. Ponds evaporated and streams became dry beds. Sheep – the source of Suffolk’s ancient wealth and power – had sparse natural grazing and the harvest of beets, the main local crop, was the worst in living memory. Yet still the sun blazed. Even the nights, usually cool if not cold on the East Coast, were suffocatingly hot.

  The drought was not all bad, though. In the heat people flocked to the coast, the women in their wide-brimmed, out-of-fashion-everywhere-else picture hats, the men in their boaters, many paddling, the young and the brave plunging into the North Sea, which the summer had warmed from icy to painfully cold. Anglethorpe, north of the River Angle estuary, was filled to capacity and the overspill oozed south into Sackwater. Even the huge Grand Hotel, built by a local consortium overly blessed with money and cursed with too much optimism, was booked up for most of the season.

  The beach was packed with visitors jostling for ice creams, donkey rides and cockle stalls, roaring with laughter at Mr Punch beating his baby unconscious, packing the Lyons Corner House, queueing for creaky music-hall shows in the Pier Pavilion, already slightly dilapidated after its Victorian heyday.

  When not by the sea, my friends and I liked to play in The Soundings, a large square in the Georgian part of town. There was not much there – roughly cropped grass bordered by iron benches and a low hedge and conker trees, a great source of entertainment in the autumn. At one end stood the King’s Oak, huge, leafless and hollow, with an inverted V opening through which we could enter. When we were younger, the tree became a castle or ship or hospital or shop, whatever we decided it should be. The more nimble of us could scramble up through the middle and emerge from the hole at the top, the braver of us sliding out to straddle one of the few remaining branches. Now we were older it was more a place to stow our coats and bags.

  The day before Etterly went missing was Rowdina Grael’s birthday and she had been given a rounders bat. Rowdina was very sporty. She was captain of the netball team and came second in the East of England Girls’ Cross-Country run. There were only six of us that day but we were getting along nicely using our cardigans as bases and marking out the bowler’s square with twigs, avoiding any of the many molehills that had been erupting through the grass lately.

  Major Burgandy sat on his usual bench. He was there most days and rarely paid attention to us.

  Mrs Cooksey, the solicitor’s wife from number twelve, came out to watch. She was one of the younger residents – prettier and more fashionably dressed than most of the others – and had not lost her sense of fun, applauding every bowl, hit, run and catch. She used to play for Surrey before she moved, she told us, and she showed Rowdina a better way to grip the bat before going off to fetch something.

  We restarted the game and were getting along quite nicely until the boys turned up. Boys bring trouble, Etterly’s mother used to recite, and we both used to laugh about that. I hope so, Etterly whispered once, but neither of us could have known how prophetic her mother’s warnings would turn out to be on that fateful day of July 1914.

  3

  THE SMACK AND THE SEA SCOUTS

  Nobody was overly concerned at first. Etterly was a trustworthy girl but a bit of a daydreamer. At school, she was always getting into trouble for not paying attention, and she had lost her first job, in Hobson’s Dairy, for flushing away a full vat of milk when she was supposed to be cleaning the empty vat next to it. That was why her father had taken her on, though he had no real need of assistance. As far as I know, he worked conscientiously, but Kendal’s the Jewellers had a big shop on High Road East and it was there, rather than Mr Utter’s dingy premises above Mac the Bookmakers on Slip Street, that people tended to buy their clocks and watches, only taking them to Mr Utter for repairs.

  Perhaps, Mrs Utter suggested, Etterly had wandered off to Folger’s Estate Farm, where Delilah, the carthorse, had had her first foal. Maybe Etterly had gone to play tennis and forgotten to tell me. That didn’t seem likely to me.

  Mr Utter – short, and delicately built, with an unusually large head and a not very successful moustache, peppery to match his centre-parted hair – came into the hall, grumbling about his own lunch being ruined, and took his jacket off a hook.

  ‘Not too big for a smack,’ he muttered, though, strict as they were, he had never raised a hand to his daughter in her life. ‘As if Mrs Utter int got enough on with her sister bein’ taken sick.’

  Wherever Etterly got her looks, I thought uncharitably, it was not from her parents. Etterly was tall and slim, with thick black hair that I was always envious of. Probably her most striking feature was her eyes – big and flashing green, and she was already learning how to flutter her lashes. Etterly’s behaviour was not especially mature but her figure often made people take her for a good two years older than the sixteen she was approaching.

  Mr Utter had a prominent brow and bow legs, both symptoms of rickets – all too common in his and my generation – and he swayed side to side as he marched off to fetch her. Where he was going to he did not say, but Etterly, I remembered, liked to potter in the back room of his shop, making cheap costume jewellery from scraps. She had given me a ring once, made from a slice of copper pipe that she had bevelled and engraved with my name. I loved her gift, but neither my parents nor my school approved of children wearing such things.

  ‘People will think you’re engaged,’ my father had objected.

  Really? At twelve? And I wore it on my little finger.

  ‘Who would have her?’ my mother had countered, and she patted my arm as if she had been sticking up for me.