The Memorial

The churchyard was almost exactly as her grandmother had described it.

The wall was a little higher than Kate had imagined, or perhaps the ground beyond it had sunk. Moss filled the gaps between the stones. The church stood apart from the village, with fields around it and the lane disappearing back towards the road.

The yew was easy to find, and so was the stone beneath it.

CATHERINE BELL

The lower lines had weathered badly. She could make out the year, 1777, and little more. Kate pictured how it would have looked sixty years ago, freshly erected. Her grandmother had stood here at eleven years old while her mother laid flowers at the base of the stone.

Kate stepped back.

After the trouble of finding the place, she was not sure what she had expected to feel on arriving. Satisfaction, perhaps. Instead there was something peculiar about seeing the name cut into stone, so similar to her own.

“You’ll have difficulty reading the bottom.”

Kate turned.

An elderly man with a kind face and a short white beard had come around the church carrying a pair of shears. He nodded towards the stone.

“Rain gets at that side of it.”

“So I see.”

He set the shears against the wall.

“Name’s Turner. I’m the sexton here at All Saints’,” he said with a smile, offering his hand. Kate accepted.

“Kate,” she replied, “Bell.”

That raised an eyebrow from the old sexton. “Family, eh? Can’t say poor Catherine has seen too many visitors over the years.”

Kate explained how she had found her grandmother’s diary and it had prompted her to visit the grave. At the mention of that word, Turner cocked his head.

“Memorial,” he corrected her. “No grave here, I’m afraid.”

Kate looked back towards the stone.

“Why just a memorial? Was she buried somewhere else?”

“I couldn’t tell you from memory,” he said. “But there’ll be a record somewhere, if you care to look.”

“Thank you, Mr Turner, that would be wonderful.”

He led Kate into the church. The air inside was cooler than the churchyard, carrying the faint smells of damp stone, wood polish and old paper. Their footsteps sounded too loud upon the flags. Turner paused to leave the shears beside the door, then led her past the empty pews towards the vestry.

Kate glanced back through the open doorway. From inside, the yew filled much of the view, its branches hiding the memorial beneath it. She wondered whether her grandmother had been brought into the church after the flowers were laid, and whether any part of that visit had stayed with her beyond the few lines in the diary.

Near the vestry, Turner tugged at a cupboard door swollen stiff in its frame. It opened with a dry crack, revealing shelves crowded with volumes of mismatched sizes, some patched at the spines and others leaning beneath their own weight.

Turner selected the burial register from among the older volumes and carried it to a nearby table, opening it carefully somewhere in the middle.

“1777, if I remember rightly?” he asked.

“That’s right. August.”

Names passed beneath his hand. Some had ages beside them. Some gave only a name and date. An infant occupied a single line between two men who had lived into their seventies.

Mr Turner reached September.

“No Catherine Bell. If she was buried, it wasn’t here. I’m sorry. Hold on,” he said, closing the register and replacing it on the shelf. He studied the volumes for a while before selecting a different tome.

These churchwardens’ accounts were less orderly than the burial register had been. Mr Turner went through two books before finding the right year. Most of the entries concerned repairs: timber, lime, a broken latch, work to a section of wall. He turned several pages at once, then went back.

“Ah, here we go. August 1777,” he began to read aloud.

“Stone set in remembrance of Catherine Bell, drowned in the River Derwent, her body not recovered. Her travelling cloak, recovered from the river upon the east bank near Makeney some days afterwards, was laid beneath at the request of the family.”

“Her cloak is under the stone?”

“It’s not unheard of. When there’s no body to bury, sometimes the family puts a token in its place. Something that belonged to them.”

“I see. Thank you, Mr Turner, you’ve been very kind. I wouldn’t have known where to start looking.” She shook his hand again and turned to leave the church.

“Miss Bell?” said Turner as she reached the door. She looked back.

“Not many come asking after her,” Turner said. “I’m glad somebody has.”

Kate smiled and thanked him again. Outside, she returned to the yew and stood for a moment before Catherine’s name. The stone looked no different, but it no longer felt like it had when she first arrived. Somewhere beneath it lay only a cloak, placed there because the family had nothing else to bury. Kate brushed a leaf from Catherine’s name and rested her hand against the stone. She remained there a moment longer before turning back towards Derby.

The memorial stayed with Kate on the road back to Derby. Catherine had once mattered enough for her family to bury the only thing recovered of her and raise a stone in her name. Sixty years later, Catherine had survived in the family as little more than a woman who had stolen something and drowned.

There had to be more to the story than that.

The theft from Kedleston was likely important enough to have been reported in the local newspaper at the time.

The newspaper office occupied a narrow building in the centre of Derby. The press could be heard somewhere behind the front room, a steady mechanical clatter beneath the voices of the clerks.

“August 1777?” the young man at the desk repeated.

“If you have it.”

His expression suggested that Kate had asked for something far less reasonable. He disappeared into the back room and remained there long enough for Kate to wonder whether the newspapers had swallowed him. Eventually he returned carrying two broad leather-bound volumes, one balanced awkwardly upon the other.

“Here’s everything we have from 1777-1778,” he said, lowering them onto a nearby desk with evident relief.

“Thank you,” Kate said. “I shall try to justify the effort.”

The print was small, the columns crowded and the subjects arranged according to principles she could not discover. A report of a robbery might sit between an advertisement for a horse medicine and a notice concerning imported tea, only to vanish entirely from the following issue.

At least she knew where to begin. Catherine had died in August 1777, so Kate worked backwards.

She found the theft first.

KEDLESTON

We hear that an article of not inconsiderable value has been lost from the house at Kedleston following an entertainment given there last week.

Suspicion has fallen upon a Miss Catherine Bell, one of the performers engaged for the occasion, who left the house shortly before the loss was discovered.

Miss Judith Pike, another of the company, is also absent and is believed to be travelling with her.

Enquiries are being made for both women, who were last traced upon the road towards Duffield.

Kate copied the report into her notebook. She underlined the name of Judith Pike.

Catherine had not fled alone.

She searched the next issue and found nothing, then another. The missing property appeared again in a short notice offering information about the two women. Neither had yet been apprehended.

Kate turned the page. She was so intent on her research she barely noticed as the clerk passed her table carrying another bound volume.

“More?”

“I hope not.”

He looked at the pages in front of her.

“You said that an hour ago.”

“I was more optimistic then.”

He left her to it.

Judith Pike appeared once more, a much smaller notice, a few issues after the previous.

We understand that no further proceedings are to be taken against Miss Judith Pike in the matter lately reported at Kedleston. Mr Nathaniel Curzon has declined to proceed against her, there being no evidence that the missing property ever came into Miss Pike’s possession.

Kate copied the notice.

Nathaniel Curzon. That name, at least, she knew. Even someone with no particular interest in Derbyshire families could hardly avoid the Curzons. Kedleston had belonged to them for generations.

Kate continued through the volume, following every mention of Kedleston or Judith Pike, but found nothing more. By December the columns had filled with notices of winter assemblies, church collections and the approaching Christmas markets.

She sat back and rubbed at the ache between her eyes. Catherine’s story could not simply have ended between one issue and the next. Somewhere there ought to be an account of the death which had prompted her family to raise the memorial.

Kate returned to August and began again. This time she stopped searching only for familiar names and read every local notice in full. Halfway down a column in an issue she had already passed, beneath a heading which mentioned neither Kedleston nor the theft, she found it.

MELANCHOLY OCCURRENCE AT DUFFIELD

Miss Catherine Bell, lately sought in connection with the theft at Kedleston, is feared drowned in the Derwent.

Her companion, Miss Judith Pike, having since been examined by a magistrate, stated that she and Miss Bell had travelled together as far as Duffield.

Miss Pike related that, upon reaching the bridge, they became aware of men approaching along the road behind them. Miss Bell, fearing apprehension, attempted to descend from the bridge in order to conceal herself from the road. She lost her footing and fell into the river. Miss Pike saw Miss Bell surface once before the current carried her from sight.

Assistance was called for and a search made, but Miss Bell’s body could not be recovered.

Miss Pike remains in custody while enquiries continue into the affair at Kedleston.

Kate stopped reading. Though she had always known that Catherine had died after fleeing from Kedleston, seeing the account written down made it feel more real than it ever had before. Two frightened women. Men somewhere behind them. A tragic accident.

Kate could imagine how easily the story had shortened over the years.

She copied this report into her notebook and considered the various reports. Catherine Bell had been accused of stealing something valuable from Kedleston. Judith Pike had fled with her. Within days Catherine was declared dead and the complaint against Judith had been allowed to disappear with her.

There might have been nothing more to it. Without Catherine, and without evidence against Judith, there may simply have been no case to bring.

She closed the volume.

“Finished?” the clerk asked from across the room.

“For today.”

That evening, the diary still lay where Kate had left it on her grandmother’s writing desk.

The room was almost empty now.

Another crate had gone that morning. The mantelpiece was bare apart from a pale rectangle where the clock had stood for as long as Kate could remember. Someone had removed the curtains from the smaller parlour, giving the house the exposed look of a place already waiting for new occupants.

Kate lit the lamp and spread her notes across the desk, reading each in turn. Nothing in the words themselves seemed unusual, yet together they troubled her.

Outside, someone was walking along the street, the sound of their steps passing slowly beneath the window and fading away.

Kate remained at the desk.

After a while she took out a clean sheet of paper and copied one sentence from the newspaper.

Upon reaching the bridge...

She left a space beneath it.

She read the sentence again.

Then she saw it.

Kate sat back and stared at the papers before her. The unease that had followed her from the newspaper office sharpened into certainty.

The accepted story could not possibly be true.