Thorn Read online

  Table of Contents

  A selection of titles by Sarah Rayne

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Acknowledgements

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Epilogue

  A selection of titles by Sarah Rayne

  BLOOD RITUAL*

  DEVIL’S PIPER*

  THE BURNING ALTAR*

  CHANGELING: AN IMMORTAL TALE*

  WILDWOOD: AN IMMORTAL TALE*

  PROPERTY OF A LADY

  THE SIN EATER

  *Originally published under the pseudonym of Frances Gordon

  THORN

  An Immortal Tale

  Sarah Rayne

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in 1997 by

  HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

  a division of Hodder Headline PLC

  338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH

  This eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 1997 by Frances Gordon

  The right of Frances Gordon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

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

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0070-9 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being

  described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this

  publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons

  is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland

  AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My grateful thanks are due to Dr C J Cooper, Consultant Psychiatrist, who patiently guided me through the medical and psychiatric aspects of this book, and to Chris Emery of William Emery & Sons, who provided such excellent help and information on the legalities of practices surrounding burials and funerals in England.

  PART ONE

  ‘She shall fall into a profound sleep which shall last a hundred years . . .’

  Charles Perrault, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood

  Chapter One

  Almost the entire family went to Edmund’s funeral. Imogen’s father said it was a time for supporting one another, and the aunts all agreed.

  ‘The Ingrams closing ranks with an audible click,’ said Great-Aunt Flora tartly, but no one paid much attention because Great-Aunt Flora was often tart. Eloise, Imogen’s mother, said ‘tart’ was a very good word, because Flora had had a great many lovers when she was a girl in the thirties and forties, and it had coarsened her.

  ‘I don’t know why she’s even here,’ said Eloise, irritably.

  ‘I think she’s here to be with me.’ Imogen said this carefully, because she had been in the car with her cousin Edmund when he crashed it, driving too fast, and if she had been sitting in the front instead of in the back she would have been chopped up as well. She was trying not to think about it too much, and she was trying very hard to forget the sight of Edmund’s body. Edmund had been showing off with the new car his mother had given him for his eighteenth birthday. Imogen had not liked him very much but nobody ought to die smearily like that, crushed into his seat and cut to pieces by glass.

  ‘Your father and I are with you,’ said Eloise in response to this. ‘You don’t need that mad old woman as well.’

  ‘Make sure to put a warm coat on before setting off,’ said Imogen’s father. ‘There’s a very cold wind today. Haven’t you a warm woollen scarf?’

  ‘Yes, you don’t want to catch flu again, Imogen. I remember I was prostrate with nursing you last year. Dr Shilling said at the time it was exactly the kind of strain I should avoid.’

  ‘I think we should have got Shilling to take a look at her again. The shock of the crash – I might still give him a ring.’

  They did not want Imogen to go to the funeral. They never wanted her to go anywhere. It had been a long time before Imogen had seen that they always managed to block invitations from schoolfriends or suggestions from teachers that she join the school choir or orchestra or drama group. She would quite like to have done all of these, or even just one of them, but in the end it had not been worth Mother’s migraines and palpitations and Father’s worried frowns, or the aunts’ twitterings. There had even been the suggestion of trying for a university place during her last year at school, but Father had not seemed to like the idea, and had had an interview about it with her headmistress. The aunts had all joined in, saying, oh dear, all that way from home, and supposing she was ill again? And then Mother had suffered some kind of collapse and lay around on daybeds and sofas looking ethereal, and Dr Shilling had said she must not be caused any kind of anxiety. And as for Imogen leaving home, well, it was not to be thought of.

  The aunts did not want Imogen to go to Edmund’s funeral either. There had been worried discussions for days beforehand – ‘All that emotional strain straight after the car crash,’ said Aunt Rosa who was thin and slightly acidulated and did not believe in shirking facts – and there had been much telephoning and anxious consultations as to what would be the best thing to do.

  ‘Better for her to stay safely at home,’ said Aunt Dilys, who was Rosa’s younger sister and lived with her in Battersea. Aunt Dilys was short and plump and addicted to sugary puddings and Barbara Cartland novels and a nice gin and tonic before her lunch.

  ‘I daresay Royston and Eloise will already have decided that,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Oh yes, probably they’ve called in that nice Dr Shilling. Of course, he’s known the Ingrams for a good long while – don’t you recall his father being called in when Royston’s father died? Mother said how very kind he was. And Royston and Eloise are both very careful of Imogen, although I’ve never seen any signs of . . . you know.’

  ‘Neither did Lucienne Ingram’s brother,’ said Rosa caustically.

  ‘Well, no, but they say she was really quite happy in – well, in that place they put her.’

  ‘Thornacre,’ said A
unt Rosa, and Aunt Dilys shuddered. ‘And Sybilla Ingram’s husband,’ Aunt Rosa went on inexorably, ‘didn’t see any signs of anything out of the ordinary either.’

  ‘Dear me, no. That was Waterloo year, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Trafalgar.’

  Imogen knew about Lucienne who was supposed to have done something appalling to her brother around the time that Edward VII had been on the throne, and whose photographs had been systematically destroyed by the family so that if you ever looked through old albums you kept coming across unexpected blanks. She knew about Sybilla as well, who looked slyly out of an oval frame in the dining room, and had glossy golden hair twisted into ringlets and a narrow red velvet ribbon round her neck to show sympathy with guillotined French aristocrats. Imogen had always disliked being alone in the room with Sybilla’s portrait, especially on dark winter afternoons before the lights were switched on. As she and Edmund grew up, it occurred to her that Sybilla looked at you from the corners of her eyes with the exact same smile Edmund wore when he was about to do something particularly cruel – like the day of his ninth birthday, when he had held the cat over the kitchen range for five solid minutes. Then he had blandly gone into his birthday tea with Mother and the aunts, his jersey still smelling of scorched cat fur and cat sick. Imogen had not been able to eat anything, even though there was strawberry shortcake and cream trifle.

  The aunts always beamed on Edmund and admired his golden hair, and said, oh, wouldn’t his father have been proud if he could have lived to see him, and wouldn’t it be rather suitable if one day he and Imogen . . .

  ‘Wouldn’t it be rather suitable’ meant, of course, that Imogen and Edmund might one day get married. Being married to Edmund would be absolutely the worst thing in the world, and Imogen would have done anything to stop it happening.

  Looked at sensibly, it was not really such a very bad thing that Edmund was dead.

  Great-Aunt Flora, sweeping into the Hampstead house ten minutes before everyone was due to leave, brushed aside all the ditherings and said energetically that of course Imogen was going to the funeral. ‘And don’t press your temples and look sorrowful, Eloise.’

  Somebody – Imogen thought it was Dr Shilling – murmured something about migraine and the strain of the occasion, and Great-Aunt Flora said, ‘Rubbish. The only thing wrong with you, Eloise, is rampant hypochondria.’

  Everyone at once looked to see how Eloise would field that one, but Eloise declined the bait. She leaned back in her chair and half closed her eyes, but Imogen thought the headache or the dizzy spell would not develop because Mother had bought a new suit in Knightsbridge earlier in the week to wear today. Aunt Dilys had already commented how very smart it was – ‘And so youthful’ – but Great-Aunt Flora had asked if Eloise thought it really suitable to wear such short skirts at her age.

  ‘She’s decked out like a black widow spider,’ remarked Flora to Imogen as they set off. ‘Silly creature. I told your father at the time not to marry her, but he would do it.’

  One of Flora’s lovers had been a racing driver and he had taught her to drive at breakneck speeds. They dashed along the road to the church like bats escaping hell, but Imogen did not mind. The funeral was going to be pretty harrowing, but when you were hurtling round bends at sixty miles an hour, at least you were not worrying about minced-up bodies in coffins.

  ‘Cheer up, child,’ said Flora as they drew up outside the church. ‘There’s still the inquest to come. You can dress up to the nines for that – I bet your mother will – that family always did over-dress, everyone used to comment on it. The press will probably be there. You might find you’re questioned by a good-looking journalist. Or even a policeman.’

  ‘Father would put a barbed wire fence round me within the hour. Or whisk me out of the country the next day.’

  ‘He worries because you aren’t very strong.’ If it was possible for Great-Aunt Flora to sound hesitant, she sounded it now.

  ‘I’m strong enough to enjoy being questioned by a good-looking policeman.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want a policeman,’ said Flora at once. ‘They make frightful lovers, policemen. No staying power.’

  She’s changed the subject, thought Imogen. But she said, ‘Is it true you once had six lovers in one night?’ This was the kind of thing you could say to Great-Aunt Flora, although you never knew whether to believe the reply.

  Flora grinned. ‘You’ve heard that one, have you? I expect it was the night of the Pineapple Ball in nineteen forty—No, never mind the exact year. And there were certainly six good ones.’

  Imogen found Great-Aunt Flora a huge comfort.

  Dan Tudor had only attended Edmund Caudle’s funeral because of two things. One was that the Messenger wanted a piece on the funeral and the family, and he was broke; the other was the intriguing nature of the Ingrams themselves.

  As the owners of a children’s publishing house they were not so very remarkable, but as a family they were slightly macabre. Dan found himself wondering if there was material for a book here. There was the famous cause célèbre of Lucienne Ingram in 1905: the guileless lady who had taken an axe to her brother and, as the idiom of the day had it, attempted to turn him into a female. Dan, researching background beforehand in accordance with his custom, read the report of the case on the Messenger’s microfiche, and derived wry amusement from this gem of Edwardian prurience. And there had been an Ingram lady somewhere around 1810 who was supposed to have murdered a straying husband or lover, although the details of this were vaguer. Either the Messenger had not had very efficient record-keepers then, or the Ingrams had managed to cover it up a bit more successfully.

  ‘The Messenger’s features editor wants something a bit gossipy,’ his agent said.

  ‘I’m not a gossip columnist,’ said Dan, with extreme distaste.

  ‘No, but they printed that extremely good review on your Le Fanu biography. You owe them something for that.’

  ‘I don’t owe them a free gossip column.’

  ‘When did I ask you to do anything free?’ demanded his agent. ‘It won’t be free. Now listen. Dig up the Ingram murders if you can – it almost looks as if there’s a homicidal female born about every ninety years—’

  ‘Something nasty in the distaff shed.’ Dan found the idea of disinterring skeletons from the cupboard of a family who had just suffered a bereavement a bit unsavoury.

  ‘Yes, the ninety-year interval is probably coincidence, but you might look further back than Sybilla. Describe the present-day family as well, of course, if you can do it without being too litigious.’

  ‘Piers, I’m never litigious.’

  ‘And particularly describe the females,’ said Piers, ignoring this. ‘Eloise Ingram is supposed to be a bit of a stunner, in a die-away, Lady of the Lake fashion.’

  ‘Oh, all right. And the bereaved mamma – what’s her name? Thalia Caudle?’ Dan supposed he might as well get as much detail as possible beforehand.

  ‘She’s Royston Ingram’s cousin,’ said Piers, and Dan heard the grin in his voice.

  He said, ‘Do you know her? What’s she like?’

  ‘Fortyish. Efficient. Well known in charity circles. She does a lot for student groups.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she’s supposed,’ said Piers, ‘to have a robust appetite for good-looking, very young men, although she’s fairly discreet about it. But I’ve heard it said . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That all the charity work she does is simply a way of finding new lovers.’

  ‘I’d better wear my chastity belt and take a rope ladder to escape with. Anything else?’

  ‘Try to drag in the family empire: Royston Ingram’s books for tiny tots.’

  ‘Was Edmund Caudle the heir?’

  ‘If he wasn’t, find out who was. Basic research, Daniel.’

  ‘Basic gutter-press fodder,’ said Dan and took himself off.

  The aunts thought that considering the dreadful nature of the o
ccasion, everything was going off quite well.

  They had managed to keep Flora and Thalia more or less apart which was always advisable at a family gathering because those two had never got on. Flora had always said that Thalia spoiled Edmund disgracefully but then Flora had always preferred Imogen. It was surely only natural for Thalia to be concerned about Edmund’s future. When he was born, everyone had seen him as Royston’s natural successor at Ingram’s, but lately this had looked a bit doubtful, what with Edmund failing his exams and not wanting to go on to university – ‘Not being accepted to go on to university,’ said Flora – and Thalia apparently prepared to support him financially for as long as he wanted. Of course, she could afford to do it; her husband had left her comfortably off. Nobody knew the precise amount concerned, although Dilys and Rosa had speculated about it at the time, but it was plainly a very substantial amount. And anyway, a great many young men were a bit wild in their youth and settled down later on.

  Aunt Rosa thought the choice of hymns had been suitably restrained and Dilys thought the lack of any flowers in the church showed a nice sense of feeling on someone’s part. Two unmarried great-aunts of Royston’s who lived in Dulwich commented on the excellence of all the arrangements.

  ‘And everyone brought back to Hampstead, with a buffet lunch all waiting for us. Very efficient. And so nice to see all the family assembled as well. There are a good many people we don’t recognise, but then no one ever makes introductions at a funeral.’

  No one made introductions at a funeral. It was this that had been in Dan’s mind as he got in his car and drove behind the cortege as it turned out of the church. If you had enough panache you could bluff your way in anywhere.

  The house was more or less what he had expected; large and solid and rather complacent. No one who lived here would ever have known what it was like to grind out hack articles because the gas bill was due.

  The rooms were overheated almost to suffocation point and there was a scent of slightly too strong rose potpourri everywhere. If this was the way the Ingrams normally lived, Royston Ingram must have to publish an average of one bestseller a month to pay his central heating bills alone. Dan accepted a glass of chilled Traminer from a tray that was circulating, and studied the company. There was a fluffiness of elderly aunts and cousins, as there was at most funerals, and there were one or two decorative females. Dan regretfully but resolutely kept away from them. The elderly aunts all sat together and caught up on family news with guilty relish and smiled on Dan with hopeful curiosity. Dan smiled back with uncommunicative courtesy, and retired to the sketchy concealment of a window seat. The slightly furtive nature of this afforded him a perverse pleasure. Like the Robert Burns line: ‘There’s a chield amang ye, takin’ notes, an’ man, he’ll print it . . .’