Page 102 of Secrets and Seashells at Rainbow Bay
‘That is so sad,’ I say, thinking how awful it must have been to get ill back then when medicine was much more basic than it is now, and the mortality rate was so high. But then something strikes me.
‘Benji, does it say in Clara’s diary what Mary’s children were called?’
‘Yes, er . . . ’ Benji flicks through a few pages. ‘They were called Violet and Ruby.’
Ruby!My thoughts are racing faster than my mind can make sense of them. Ruby was Clara’s niece. No wonder she was so kind to her in the afterlife. She felt responsible for her because of Mary.
‘What’s up?’ Benji asks. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ He turns around sharply. ‘You haven’t, have you?’
I shake my head. ‘No, I leave that to Charlie. But somethinghasjust clicked. It doesn’t matter for the moment. Is that the whole story or is there more?’
‘Oh yes, there’s more. Quite a lot more, actually.’
‘You sound serious, Benji,’ I say, wondering why he’s treating this so sombrely. It’s not a pleasant story obviously, especially the part where Mary and Ruby sadly passed away, but it wasn’t anything too worrying.
‘Like I said before, Mary had two children – Ruby, who passed away shortly after her, and Violet, who survived. I couldn’t find out much about Violet from Clara’s diaries. The mentions of Mary, as you know, seem to stop after this particular diary.’ Benji taps the cover again. ‘However, I’ve managed to do a bit of my own searching using both the castle records and some online resources, and it seems that although Violet left the castle after her mother and sister died – she was taken in by a local couple who had no children of their own, so she did stay in Chesterford – it was only later as an adult that she returned to work here again.’
‘Oh, she came back? That’s good. Did she have a happy life, do you know?’
‘We can only hope so. She married and had two sons, David and George, I believe, but the trail seems to fizzle out after that – which is most annoying, but sadly quite common when tracing families.’
‘Why does the trail fizzle out sometimes?’
‘It can be for a number of reasons – records get destroyed, people change their names. Sometimes they even escape being registered at all.’
‘So Violet had children; that’s nice. They would have been Mary’s grandchildren – am I right?’
‘Yes, that’s right . . . ’ Benji agrees hesitantly.
‘What’s wrong, Benji? I know something’s bothering you about all this.’
‘Well, you know I had my suspicions when I read the previous diary to this one. That’s why I was so keen for us to find the missing diary – the missing piece of the puzzle, as it were. But now I know what I do, my suspicions have been confirmed.’
‘Suspicions of what?’What is Benji going on about?
Benji takes a deep breath. ‘That you, Amelia, might not be the rightful heir to Chesterford Castle. Now we know about Mary and her offspring, both you and Charlie might not be the last Earl’s next living relatives. There could be someone else.’
Thirty-eight
‘What do you meansomeone else?’ I ask, my heart beating hard against my chest. ‘Who? I mean, how . . . ? Oh, I don’t know what I mean. I’m confused.’ I reach for my lemonade, wishing, unusually for me, that it was something stronger.
‘That’s understandable; it is somewhat confusing and, if I might say, a tad ambiguous on my part. That’s why I haven’t said anything before, in case I was mistaken.’
‘Benji, cut the waffle and just tell me.’
Benji nods. ‘Okay, let’s go back to why I thought originally you were the rightful heir. If you remember it was because you were descended from Clara’s side of the family. Not directly, Clara didn’t have any children, but indirectly through her father’s side. However, that was when I thought Clara was the only child of the fourteenth Earl. Now we know there was anothereldersister, any claim to the Chesterford dynasty should by right come from that line – from Mary’s descendants.’
‘So that would be Violet and her family?’
‘Exactly.’
I think about this. ‘You said Violet had two sons. So it’s the eldest son we should be thinking about here – David?’
Benji nods. ‘Initially.’
‘And did he have any children?’
‘No, David died young of tuberculosis.’
