No Stone Unturned (21 page)

She heard a door click and saw her dad staggering out of her parents' bedroom, rubbing his eyes and still dressed in his pyjamas.

‘Am I still dreaming or is that my daughter up and dressed before I am?'

‘No dream. It's really me,' said Kelly, swallowing a mouthful of banana.

‘Why so early?' enquired Dad, filling the kettle from the tap.

‘I'm meeting Ben at the churchyard in half an hour.'

Dad put the kettle down on the draining board and turned to face Kelly. ‘Isn't this getting a bit ridiculous, all this sneaking off and meeting boys all the time?'

‘I'm not sneaking anywhere, and it's only one boy!'

‘Well, all right, but when were you going to tell me and your mum where you were going? I don't remember you mentioning it. And it might only be one boy but we don't know him from Adam. You didn't bring him in to meet us, last night, did you?'

‘No, I know. I'm sorry. He had to dash off. His parents had given him a curfew too. But he did ask me to apologise to you.' Kelly scraped the bottom of her yoghurt pot with her spoon. ‘And I didn't say anything about meeting Ben this morning because I didn't think it would be a big deal. The churchyard is just down the road from the bus stop so all I'm doing is leaving half an hour early. I'm going straight from there to the bus stop. I didn't think you'd mind.'

Dad shrugged then turned to continue making his pot of tea. ‘So why the churchyard? Why go at the crack of dawn?' He ducked his head to look out of the window above the sink. ‘Have you seen outside? It's a misty old morning. Looks freezing to me. It's hardly the morning for a trip to a spooky old graveyard—even if your boyfriend's going to be there.'

‘Dad!' cried Kelly. ‘I've told you. Ben's just a friend! And that's not why we're meeting, anyway. It's to do with our history project. We're wondering if the people who were killed in that railway accident—you know, the one in that newspaper cutting? We wondered if they might be buried in the churchyard. There might be some clues there as to who they were.'

Dad sat down next to her. ‘Don't you think you're going into a bit too much detail on this project of yours? How long do your teachers expect you to spend on it? It seems to be turning into an epic.'

‘Well, it kind of is,' conceded Kelly, ‘but only because it's so fascinating. It's like a real mystery, Dad. I'm desperate to know what happened in the accident. I mean, just think! It happened pretty much on the very spot where you're working now. And where Tyson found that old boot.'

Dad nodded. He seemed to understand

‘Anyway, the project's not due in till half term. So I've still got plenty of time.'

‘And what about this Ben lad?' asked Dad. ‘What does he want to get out of it?'

Kelly thought for a moment. ‘Well, he's doing it as a history project too. And Wilmcote is where he's grown up. His family have lived here for centuries. I don't know really, but it's like he believes this place has a story to tell, and he wants to piece it together.'

There was a click as the boiling kettle switched itself off. Dad rose from the seat. ‘Well, Kel, just be careful, love. If you're looking at gravestones, you're not only dealing with a story from history, you're dealing with real people's lives. There might still be relatives about. Be sensitive, yeah?'

Kelly smiled and nodded. ‘I will. You know I will.' Then she glanced at her watch and gasped. ‘Ah! I've got to go. It's nearly ten past. I'll have to run.'

There was no doubt about it: autumn was closing in. And Dad was right. It was really cold outside and the dampness of the heavy mist clawed its way through Kelly's blazer as she lifted the latch on the gate and entered the churchyard. Even the mad dash that had brought her there had not warmed her up. She turned up her blazer collar to stop the cold air from creeping down her back, and checked her watch. Seven thirty-three. She had made good time.

Starting up the gravel path, Kelly glanced left and right, reading the inscriptions on two tall memorials which marked the first two graves at the front of the church. One was a tall, narrow obelisk with a cross perched on the top; the other was a weeping angel, which reminded Kelly of a terrifying episode of
Doctor Who
. Her brother had deliberately recorded it so he could play it over and over again and laugh as Kelly dived behind the nearest cushion.

Avoiding the angel's gaze, Kelly read the inscription on the plinth beneath her feet. ‘
At Rest. Oh
!
Twill be sweet to meet on that blest shore. All sorrow passed, all pains fore'er o'er.'
It was a memorial to someone called John Howard, who had died in 1925. ‘That's far too late,' said Kelly out loud.

Meanwhile the obelisk appeared to be marking the site of a family grave. The Lawrences. Four generations. Kelly deduced that the Lawrences must have been a very wealthy family if they could afford such an imposing gravestone. It commanded pride of place in the churchyard, too. It would be hard to pass by without noticing it and remembering who lay beneath.

Kelly knew that most of the graves were located further away from the road, behind the church, so she followed the narrow path around past the main church door. On her right, out of the corner of her eye, she detected a movement. Assuming it was Ben, Kelly called out his name into the mist but received no response. The churchyard remained eerily silent. Kelly reassured herself that it was just a bird swooping by or maybe a squirrel in the hedge.

Refusing to be put off, she focused on the task in hand and began checking all the tombstones, working her way along each row from left to right, so she didn't miss any. By the end of the second row, she was starting to feel rather melancholy. Each stone was a snapshot of loss. ‘Beloved' mothers, ‘kind and true' husbands, ‘tender' sisters, brothers ‘gone but not forgotten', children ‘sleeping peacefully': so many departed relatives ‘held in loving memory'.

Kelly was crouched down trying to decipher the faded inscription on one particularly old stone which was almost completely covered in scaly, yellow lichen, when something dark and heavy whistled past her ear, brushing the hair off her shoulder, hitting the gravestone and bouncing off to one side. Kelly screamed and ducked down, covering her face with her hands, hardly daring to imagine what it was.

‘Oh Kelly, I'm so sorry. I wasn't aiming it at you, honestly!'

Kelly breathed out and let her hands fall from her face, relief mixing with rage. ‘What the hell?' she screeched, rounding on her friend. ‘That was not funny! I was jumpy enough. It's really spooky here in this mist. And you're late!'

Ben grimaced. ‘I didn't mean to frighten you. I'm sorry.' He tried a smile.

Inside, Kelly softened, but she was determined not to let Ben know that he was forgiven just yet. ‘What did you throw at me, anyway?' she snapped. Ben nodded towards the patch of damp grass where the missile had landed.

Kelly followed his gaze then let out another little scream, this time in disbelief. ‘That's Tyson's boot. But how did you….? Where did you…? It can't be. I put it back in my treasure chest last night.'

She looked back at Ben, who was smiling more broadly now. The damp, early morning mist had darkened his usually bouncy blond fringe and plastered it flat to his forehead. He looked quite different.

Without saying anything, Ben reached over, picked up the old boot and handed it to Kelly.

She still wanted an explanation. ‘How come you've got my boot?'

‘Blimey, I thought you were good at examining clues!' Ben tutted and took the boot back from her, holding it up. ‘Look. Your boot is for a right foot, this one's for the left.'

Kelly's mouth dropped open. ‘What? You think they're a matching pair? No! That's too good to be true!'

‘Well, they look the same, don't they? When you brought me your boot last night, I knew straight away that I had one just like it.'

‘You what?' asked Kelly, incredulous.

‘What I mean to say is, I saw one just like it. When I was looking through old family stuff up in the attic. You remember, when I found the map? That's why I kept asking after the one you had. I didn't really believe that the two would match, but when you showed me your boot I could see it was the same.'

Kelly got to her feet, realising that her school tights were soaking wet from the grass. She didn't care. Her mind was working at a rate of knots, trying to figure out what this meant. She didn't know what to say.

Ben spoke for her. ‘You've been wondering if the boot belonged to someone involved in the accident, haven't you?'

Kelly nodded then walked towards him and looked up into his eyes. ‘But do you know what this means?' Her breath made its own mist in the narrow space between them as she whispered. ‘If the boots
are
a matching pair, and one was in your attic, we could be looking for the grave of one of your relatives. Are you ready for that?'

Ben blinked and looked away.

‘Because if you want to stop, we can. It's just a history project, after all.' Kelly reached out to touch Ben's face but he took a step backwards.

‘No, it's all right,' he muttered, almost to himself. ‘I want to find out.'

Worried that Ben might change his mind and decide they should leave, Kelly told him which gravestones she had already checked and set him to work, looking at the inscriptions on the gravestones along the rows from the far end.

‘That way we will meet in the middle and know we haven't missed any,' she explained. ‘And don't forget, we're really looking for four graves. The news clipping said there were four victims.'

Kelly and Ben worked their way along the gravestones. As she discounted one after the next, Kelly began to get frustrated. The minutes were ticking away and soon she would have to go and join the queue for the school bus. She lifted her gaze and squinted through the mist, trying to see how far Ben had got. As she did so, a break in the usual pattern of the headstones caught her eye. About half way between her and Ben, she could see a spot where, rather than the usual single headstones equally spaced, there was one slightly taller headstone with a gap at either side and four little stones in a row at the foot of the grave.

She held her breath and tiptoed across, praying that the inscriptions would be clear enough to read.

‘Oh my God, Ben! Come and look at this!' she spluttered, when the engraving came into focus. Ben ran over to her side.

‘Look at the date!' whispered Kelly, her fingers brushing away the dirt.

Ben read: ‘Died, 28
^th
September, 1860.'

The two friends glanced at one another, eyes wide.

Ben continued to read, taking each phrase slowly, one at a time:

‘A bitter cup, a shock severe;

To part with ones we loved so dear.'

He paused and swallowed hard. His voice cracked with emotion as he completed the verse:

‘Our loss is great, we will not complain.

But trust in Christ to meet again. RIP.'

‘That's so sad,' said Kelly. ‘28
^th
September, 1860. It's the right date, but it doesn't say anything about a railway accident. That's a bit strange, don't you think? I've seen inscriptions here which talk about people having been killed at war, and there was one which said a woman had drowned. There's a recent one for a local fire-fighter, too. It said he was killed while on service. So why not mention something as major as a railway accident? Four people dying at once in tiny old Wilmcote must have made an impact, surely! Wouldn't they want people to remember it?'

Ben remained silent. Kelly stepped back to get a better view of the four footstones, poking out of the grass like a row of tiny baby teeth.

‘Ooh, these are harder to read,' she complained, parting the blades of grass that were obscuring the letters carved into the stone. One by one, she made out the initials and ages of the deceased:

‘E. R. S. Age 36.

‘L. T. W. Age 27.

‘G. G. B. Age 43.'

Kelly crouched down to wipe away the moss from the fourth footstone. Her lips parted as she prepared to read out the final set of initials, but it was Ben who spoke, his voice thin and wobbly in the cold air:

‘W. T. D. Age 35.'

‘That's right!' exclaimed Kelly. ‘Had you seen it already?'

When Ben didn't reply, she straightened up, staring quizzically at him. Ben met her gaze, his face ashen. ‘That last one—W. T. D. It stands for William Thomas Denton.'

Kelly was shocked. ‘How do you know that?'

‘I don't know…' He staggered backwards, his eyes filling with tears.

Thinking Ben was about to fall, Kelly took a step towards him, but he backed away from her, dropping the boot at his feet.

‘I've got to go, Kel,' he muttered, moving further away between the gravestones. ‘I can't be here. Just let me go.' He turned and began to run away across the churchyard.

‘Ben!' Kelly called after him. ‘Ben!'

She snatched the boot up from the grass and considered running after him, but something told her to do as Ben had asked, and let him go. Anxious and confused, she watched her friend disappear into the mist. She wasn't surprised to feel tears prickling her own eyes, too. Kelly had no idea what to say or do, or why he had reacted so badly, but her dad's words of advice over breakfast came back to her.

When she was sure that Ben was not coming back. Kelly rummaged in her school bag for her notebook and pen. Quickly, she copied out the inscriptions on all five stones. At the bottom of the page, in capital letters, she wrote WILLIAM THOMAS DENTON, and next to the name, a giant question mark. Then, deep in thought, she made her way back to the path and headed for the bus stop.

Chapter 28 – September 2012