Chapter 1
It was September, and Catherine Dodd didn’t really know what she was doing in England, in the small village of Woodleighville, nearly 60 kilometers away from London.
The houses were small, shacks really, with tin roofs, and cloudy windows. Everything seemed to be coated with a thick layer of dirt from the road and the smell of the air was somewhere between a landfill and a farm. It seemed as though it would rain, but the clouds simply loomed overhead, making room for slight rays of sunshine to peek through every moment or two. The village felt shadowy, perhaps from age and poverty, perhaps from something else. Children played in mud puddles along the side of the road and shabbily dressed women with creased faces stood in their doorways and watched them.
Catherine also watched them with little interest. All she could think about was the letter from Grandmother Freel’s lawyer. She had been holding the paper so tightly in between her thumb and forefinger every time she held it, that there was a large dent in the right corner where Mr. Landry’s smudged signature stamp was printed.
Catherine knew her father’s family was from Woodleighville. The ‘country folks’, he had called them, and never meaning it very nicely. That side of the family was apparently akin to having relatives in the backwoods of Kentucky or West Virginia to those who had lived their lives in New York or Los Angeles. He never took Catherine to visit them.
Which made Mr. Landry’s letter all the more odd. Catherine knew about Grandmother Freel, who was her father’s grandmother. She had even written her a couple of letters once, when she had a school project about family heritage in history class in the 5th grade. Grandmother Freel had sent her a locket with a pink cameo on it, and a diary written by her sister, and a very long letter about the Freel’s being ordinary people, with no great ambitions or ties to royalty or aristocracy, except for one cousin who bore an illegitimate son to Lord Robert of Kingsford in 1782. It was all very uninteresting to Catherine at the time, and so she decided to write her report on her mother’s family, who had been bootleggers in Chicago during the Prohibition and had consequently made a lot of money and had been well-off ever since. She had wrapped the locket and the diary up it the brown paper it had come in, and never opened them again, but her mother had made her write a thank-you note anyway.
Mr. Landry’s note said that Grandmother Freel had recently passed away. Catherine was sorry, but as she had never met her great-grandmother, she really didn’t have any feelings on the matter. Furthermore, there was some inheritance, and Catherine had been named as a beneficiary of some property and belongings.
Catherine had been flabbergasted, but with all that was going on at home – namely her husband, Stephen, losing his law firm to bankruptcy and leaving her and filing divorce the next day – it had come at a pretty good time. Catherine needed to get away from Chicago and from everyone and everything there. Friends had become distant recently, and even Catherine’s parents weren’t quite as involved as they had been before Stephen left. Catherine had told herself that they must think she needed some space and time alone, but really, she felt like they were embarrassed by the scandal. Stephen had been a prominent prosecution attorney and the pride of the family. He was charming and witty, and made everyone feel so very special to him.
Catherine tried to push thoughts about Stephen, and home, away from her mind and concentrate on the landscape going by. The cab ride from London had been long and bumpy. She was all alone, and the cabbie had little interest in her. He didn’t say anything except ‘Where to, mum?’ and then he turned up the radio, some wretched techno dance music with an annoying constant drumbeat underneath computerized melodies, and began to drive west.
When the car stopped, Catherine quickly paid the cabbie and gathered her bags. The building she now stood in front of had a rain-streaked wooden sign that was painted ‘Landry and Morrison – Solicitors of Law’. Like every other house in the village of Woodleighville, it was coated with dirt and had cloudy, diamond-paned windows. Dim light could be seen through two of them, and a man, who had been standing there watching, now moved to answer the door.
As Catherine raised her fist to knock on the black wooden door, it opened, and a thin-faced man with thinning black hair and a thin moustache, appeared. His fingers were bony and long, and his vest was missing one button. He wore small round glasses and behind the glasses were tired blue eyes with deeply creased eyelids. He was probably nearly 80, and was bent with age.
“Mrs. Dodd, I presume?” he said in a clipped sort of way. He extended his hand to Catherine and ushered her inside.
A tarnished chandelier with large crystals and many cobwebs hung in the hall, and Catherine thought to herself that at one time it had probably been the talk of the town. The office showed hints of bygone finery, as though it had once been extremely well-to-do, but now was decaying into the history of the village.
“I am Joseph Landry, your great-grandmother’s solicitor, Mrs. Dodd,” Mr. Landry said. “I am delighted that you have been able to come and claim your portion of the inheritance.” Mr. Landry couldn’t have possibly sounded less delighted to see her.
“Let’s get down to business. I have little time for entertaining guests,” he said shortly. He sat down in his black office chair behind a large ebony desk that was scratched and shabby and reached into a filing cabinet behind him. He produced a small metal box and a file stuffed with papers.
“Foremost, Mrs. Freel wished for you to have these letters, particularly this one, which she apparently has addressed specifically to you.” He handed Catherine the file with all the papers. She opened a corner of it, eyeing the envelopes and yellowed pieces of paper with little interest.
“Then there are some of the family heirlooms, which are in this box. I am afraid you will discover soon that some of your other relatives are rather put out with you regarding these items as most of them are quite valuable. Family jewelry and such.”
Catherine’s ears buzzed for a moment and she felt as though something had pierced her brain. Mr. Landry was handing her the box and she took it, feeling like she was watching herself receive it from him. She fumbled with the latch on the box for a moment, and then decided perhaps it would be wise to leave it until later.
“The next matter is the Lionshead,” Mr. Landry said. “Unsurprisingly, no one in the family wanted to claim it, and so it has fallen to you. I think it would be best to sell it.”
Catherine’s brow furrowed. “A lion’s head?” she repeated. “Why did my great-grandmother have a lion’s head?”
“Forgive me Madam,” Mr. Landry replied. “I meant the Inn. Your grandmother was the owner of the Lionshead Inn, which rests in tragic disrepair at the furthest north side of the village. It was beautiful in its heyday I might add.” Mr. Landry smiled slightly, as if he was remembering something fond. Catherine became curious.
“Can you tell me a bit more?” she asked.
His faced changed and became stern once more. “It was a lovely place, and your great-great grandfather was the innkeeper. He and his wife were wonderful people. As a lad, I simply remember going there with my mother for dinner every Tuesday night. Good food.” With that, his lips pursed and he said no more about it.
“As I said, it has fallen into tragic disrepair. No one has been inside for nearly fifty years and it probably isn’t safe anyway. It would be wise to sell the property, and I can make the arrangements for you as soon as possible. It should probably have been torn down years ago, but Mathilde wouldn’t allow it.”
“Mathilde?” Catherine said without thinking first, and then, “Oh, Grandmother Freel. Of course. I don’t think I ever heard anyone say her first name.”
Mr. Landry shook his head. “Your father did that poor woman a great disservice. He was her favorite grandchild.”
At that moment, the phone rang, and Mr. Landry excused himself and became very occupied with the call. Catherine took the moment to look at the letter addressed to her from Grandmother Freel. As she removed it from the envelope, a faint odor of chamomile and lavender arose. The paper was yellowing and very fragile.
“My dear Catherine,” it began:
Many years ago, when I received your letter about the family history, I felt that you were very special. Perhaps you would be the one who would uncover the family’s secrets and put an end to them. I wanted you to know us, but your father wouldn’t allow it. He was foolish. It does no good to run away from family demons – they will only follow.
And so, as I feared, you never knew us, and grew up without ever realizing what curses, and blessings, would someday come to you. Now, as you are grown and my life is ending, I want to leave you with these few things. There are secrets in the family, as I have mentioned, that should probably be aired.
This is the story, and it is a long one. It begins at the turn of the century, when I was a young girl and the Lionshead was the most popular inn in all of Woodleighville….”
Mr. Landry suddenly finished his phone call. “Shall we visit the Lionshead, Mrs. Dodd?” he asked brusquely, rising from his desk.
Catherine folded the letter quickly and stuffed it back into the file. “Catherine,” she said. “Please, just Catherine. Yes, let’s go there.”
