The Knapthorne Conspiracy Malcolm Ballard (most popular novels of all time .txt) 📖

make for the Spaniards Inn. Some years back a favourite place of hers, it was a sixteenth-century pub said to once be the haunt of the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin. If Bella was seeking inspiration, it just so happened that a breeding ground for myth and legend might provide the right atmosphere.

Later that same day, when the last vestiges of daylight had disappeared and dusk had turned, inexorably, into night, a meeting was being held in a small upstairs room above the saloon bar of The Lamb. The setting was drab, even dowdy, with the brown, lacquered paint on the panelling of the walls peeling in places, and a threadbare, green carpet covering the floor. A pair of crumpled, beige curtains which were slightly too short for the windows had been roughly drawn and the faint odour of mothballs permeated the air. An old trestle table, which usually lay along one wall of the room, with its legs folded up, had been hastily set up and nine chairs had been placed around it. Every one of those senior members of the Knapthorne community, now seated around the table, could remember the chairs from their time at Sunday school. The hard, wooden seats with their circular pattern and the unforgiving backs which consisted of two, arched hoops one inside the other. Like everything else in the room, nothing much had changed after decades of use. Illumination, such as it was, came from a number of wall-mounted lamps around the room, two each on the longer walls and a single lamp on the others. The bulbs, of which there were two to a lamp, were shaped like a candle flame and screened from view behind pink glass sculptured in the form of a shell. At the far end of the room, opposite where the chairman was seated, one of the bulbs had blown some eighteen months previously and had never been replaced. The committee comprised seven men and two women, each and every one of whom had been born and raised in the village. Samuel Handysides, the publican, who had known everyone in the room for forty years or more, chaired the meeting and there was only one item on the agenda. There was none of the usual levity that preceded most of their meetings and the seriousness of the matter in hand was reflected on the faces of all those present.

Chapter Five

It is called the Doppler effect, when the intensity of a sound wave increases or decreases in relation to the distance of an object. An example is the muted sound of a far-off train which intensifies with its approach then lessens once it has passed. Bella experienced something similar as the ringing of her telephone woke her, at first seeming to come from a long, long way off then steadily increasing in volume as she came to full consciousness. Drowsily, eyes still closed, she flopped a hand over the surface of the bedside cabinet searching for the offending instrument until, at last, she found it. For months she had been meaning to dispose of her landline. Now she was convinced it had to go.

“Hello?” She answered the call, her voice thick with sleep.

“Bella, is that you? It’s Maria.” The sound of her mother’s voice rung alarm bells in her head. Suddenly she was wide awake. Although the two of them kept in contact regularly, by e-mail or messaging, it was unusual for her to call unless something dire had happened and Bella could recall all too vividly, as if it were yesterday, when Maria had rung to tell her that Liam was dying.

“Mother! Is everything alright?” Bella was unable to hide her surprise.

“Yes, of course! Why shouldn’t it be?” Maria spoke excellent English, having been privately tutored as a child but her first language had come in very useful when she was married. During her frequent rows with Patrick she would often revert to Italian, annoying him immensely as he couldn’t understand a word she was saying. “Does it have to take a disaster for a mother to call her daughter?”

“No, mother, but that’s what usually happens,” she replied, easing herself up into a sitting position then running a hand through her hair. “So why are you calling at this unearthly hour?” Bella looked at the clock, blinking rapidly as she tried to focus. The hands indicated it was a little after 6.45am. She stretched and yawned expansively.

“Your sister phoned, last night, and told me about Rupert’s will.” At the mention of Laura, Bella’s mood changed instantly, like the sun going behind a cloud. It wasn’t difficult to work out what the call would have been about and Bella could just imagine the whining, nasal tones of Laura’s voice complaining down the phone line. “She told me about the cottage,” Maria said, adding nothing more, obviously waiting for Bella to say something. Bella sighed, wishing the day hadn’t started this way.

“Just what, exactly, did she tell you?” No, she thought, I’m not getting into this. I’ve got better things to do. “Never mind, mother, I don’t want to know. Rupert left me a cottage, in his will. It’s that simple.”

“Laura didn’t sound too pleased, I must say.” Bella closed her eyes, wondering if she should count to ten. “Anyway, I just called to let you know I thought it was extremely kind of Rupert and perhaps I might come over and see it, some time.”

“I’d love you to!” Bella replied, enthusiastically. Maria and her were still close, seeing each other once or twice a year. Laura, on the other hand, had not seen her mother for years and the only time she phoned was when she had something to complain about. A sudden thought occurred to Bella.

“You weren’t mentioned in the will, which I thought was a bit odd.” Maria’s tinkling laughter came down the line.

“Rupert looked after me very well when your father died. He was very generous, dear and I’ve never wanted for anything