Chapter 5
A few days later Jake and Alex get a call from the school office inviting them back to the school. Term has started, and as they walk down the road from the house boys and girls in sports kit are heading back from the playing fields. The building is busy and they are shown into the business manager’s office and offered tea.
“Hello,” says Claire, looking up from her desk and coming over to greet them. “I’m glad you could come back. Please, sit down.”
A large cardboard documents box sits on a low table in front of a sofa, and Claire gestures to the sofa and sits down opposite them.
“I’ve been meaning to call you before this,” she says,”but the start of the school year is always a busy time.”
“No, that’s fine,” says Jake. “It is good of you to take the time to see us.”
“Actually my excuse is that I wanted to wait for the archivist to come back from holiday. I wanted to check whether he had anything.” She indicates the box. “There’s not as much as it looks, but I’ve found a couple of things that will interest you.”
She takes the lid of the box and removes a small pile of papers, sorting through it as she does.
“This is mainly stuff the solicitors had, no longer legally relevant. I think technically it’s all yours now, but if you don’t mind I’d like to keep it with the school archive.” It is clear that she has no intention of handing over the documents. And then she smiles at them. “But you’re welcome to look at it whenever you like.”
“I’m sure that would be OK,” says Alex. “We’ll find a time that suits you if we can look through them.”
“That’s fine. But I have had a look, and there are a few things that are interesting. This caught my eye.”
She pulls out a typed document a few pages long. ‘Last Will and Testament’ is clearly printed across the top. She hands the document across to Alex who looks through it as she speaks.
“It is the will of Edward Price, he was the first headmaster. The will was made in 1930, and he died a few years later. He had retired and moved out of the house by this time, but clearly he still owned it. In his will he gives the house and garden and everything in it to the school trustees. The school was set up as a charitable trust, and the legal status hasn’t changed. It was the trustees who sold the house to you.
“The actual conveyance is here as well. I think you’ll want to see this.” She sorts through the box and finds another typed legal document.
“Hold on,” says Alex, who had been reading through the will. “This is interesting.” Claire and Jake turned to look at her. “After giving the house to the school he makes various individual gifts, and then it says that the residual estate passes to his surviving children, Mark Edward Price and Emily Louise Patterson.” She points at the page.
“So?” says Jake. ”He gave everything to his surviving children. Perhaps he had other children who died.”
“No, that’s not it. Emily Patterson. She was my great grandmother.” Alex looks at the business manager. “Patterson is my maiden name, my middle name is Emily. I was named after her. I don’t remember her, she died when I was about two, but I have seen a photograph somewhere of her holding me at my christening. I had no idea I was connected to the house.”
“It could be a coincidence,” says Jake. “It’s not such an uncommon name.”
“It could be, but I’m sure it’s her. I’ll have to work out the family tree and see if I can link it up. I’ll try one of those websites. But how brilliant to think that I’m coming home.”
“There are some photographs in an envelope here, says Claire. This might help.”
She opens rather tired envelope and a few black and white photographs slide across the table. All are old, of a person or a small group of people. A couple of them show the Headmaster’s House in the background. Jake picks them up. Some have a date on the back; a few have names. Then he notices the face of a woman in one of them and looks more closely at it. The photograph is of a man in his 60s with three younger people who, the resemblance suggests, must be his children. Two are a boy and a girl in their teens, looking uncomfortable in smart clothes. But it is an older girl who has caught his eye. She is in her late 20s, hair tied back in the style of time, wearing a plain dress that reaches her ankles.
“Alex, it’s you”.
Alex looks up, takes the photograph from him and looks at it carefully. The resemblance is striking. The hair, the clothes are wrong, but it is her face looking out of the picture. She turns it over, it has a date on the back, 14 June 1919. She gives it to Claire who looks at the photograph, and back at Alex.
“That’s extraordinary,” Alex says. ”Spooky.”
“Yes, it looks just like you,” Claire says. “1919. Edward Price retired at the end of the First War, so would have been in his 60s. I guess this might be him.” Claire turns the picture in her hands, and then looks up.” We can check whether it was Price; there are portraits of all the old headmasters in the School Hall.” She looks at her watch. “It’ll be empty now, it’s just down the corridor.
They follow her down a corridor that links the administrative side of the school with the main school building. Most of the classrooms are now in a modern building behind, and the oldest part of the school is mainly for show. The entrance hall is grand, with a carved wooden staircase leading up to a gallery. Alex stops to look at the banister, running her hand over the polished wood. The design is similar to the staircase in Headmaster’s House, but on a much grander scale. Double doors at the back lead to a large wood-panelled room, double height, with a vaulted, timbered ceiling. The panelling is impressive if a bit dull; dark wood making the room formal and gloomy. Long wooden tables with long uncomfortable wooden benches run the length of the room. Around the walls are a series of formal portraits, all of men, most wearing academic dress. At one end of the room the floor is slightly raised, the table here facing the rest of the hall, and in the middle of the wall behind it is a painting of a man aged about 40 in formal robes staring straight out of the painting. A small plaque on one side says that it is Edward Price MA Oxon, classics and organ scholar at Balliol College Oxford, Headmaster from 1885 to 1919.
“That’s him,” says Claire, looking from the portrait to the photograph in her hand. “A lot older, but close enough.”
They look at the portrait for a few minutes.
“So presumably these are his children?” says Alex.
“Hang on,” says Jake. “We saw his grave up by the chapel, and next to it, Elizabeth Price. She died in 1919 ,I think it said 1890 to 1919 on the tombstone.” He looks back at the old photograph and indicates the older woman.” This must be her, and just before she died. The other two must be Mark and Emily.”
Alex takes the picture back and runs a finger over it. The two women in the picture are clearly sisters, but while Elizabeth looks just like Alex, Emily’s features are subtly altered, and she holds herself quite differently. She is younger in the picture, with a forced smile. Elizabeth is older, and looks just as you would imagine an unmarried teacher to look.
“I wonder how she died?”
“It could’ve been Spanish flu,” says Claire. “It was just at this time that the pandemic hit, and young women were particularly vulnerable. You can probably get the death certificate if you’re really interested.”
Alex is quiet for the moment. “If this is Elizabeth, Lizzie, then who was Danny?”
“What do you mean?” says Claire.
“Sorry,” says Jake. “We found something else up at the chapel. Some sheet music in an old cello case, and on it was written ‘from Lizzie to Danny’, and a date, July 1914. Just before the War started. We thought that Lizzie might be Elizabeth Price.”
“I don’t know anything about Elizabeth Price, or Lizzie, and I don’t think there’s any mention of her in the papers I looked at. But if she had any connection with the school I can look her up. One thing we’ve done over the last few years is digitise a lot of the old school records, including staff and pupils.”
She leads them back to her office, and wakes up her computer. “I can check whether she worked here, just give me a minute.” She navigates to the school records and types a few words in. After just a few seconds she smiles. “The wonders of technology. Here she is; Elizabeth Price, music teacher, 1911 to 1919. That’s all I have I’m afraid, but I think we can assume it was her. It clearly runs in the family, Edward Price was an organist.”
“What about Danny?” asks Jake, walking round to look over her shoulder. “Perhaps he was one of her students? He’d have been here in 1914.”
Claire turns back to her screen. “There are only four Dannys in the database… and looking at them they are all recent. I can try Daniel… but there are loads of them, and a lot of them are older. We’d need to know more about him to identify him.”
“Well we know he played the cello, and was doing Grade VIII, judging by the music we found.”
“Hm. I’m not sure that helps… no wait. I can search against scholarship students… so I can see three scholarship students call Daniel… there was one here from 1910 to 1914. Daniel Williams. music scholar, Wellesley House. That must be him.”
They are quiet for a few seconds, and then suddenly Claire turns back to her keyboard and starts typing again, moving the mouse, frowning. “I’ve got War records here as well; old Barnstead boys who fought in the War. They aren’t comprehensive and haven’t been cross-referenced because we aren’t always sure they are accurate, but given the timing…” and she carries on with her search. “No, I can’t find him. That almost certainly means he wasn’t killed in the War; it doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t fight.
“That’s probably all I can find out about Danny from here – assuming it is him. In the archives we do have some old house photographs, sports teams, and other records going back to that time, but they aren’t all indexed and the archivist only works part time. I don’t think I can justify spending his time on this.”
“No, that’s fine, you’ve been really helpful,” says Alex. “It makes sense of the dedication on the manuscript, and creates a firm linked to the House.” She looks at her watch. We are taking up too much of your time Claire. Was there anything else in the box?”
“Yes, just one thing I wanted to show you. I found it earlier, it was with Price’s will.”
She comes back over to the table and picks up the document on top of the pile.
“This was the conveyance of the house from the executors to the school trustees. It recites that it is being transferred in accordance with the terms of the will, as you’d expect. But you might want to see this.”
Attached to the conveyance is an older conveyance, a single page dating from 1885, and two drawings showing the house and the boundary of the land being transferred. The drawing of the house is a plan showing the house and garden. It has been carefully drawn at a scale to show the outline of the building. In the garden a few features are shown, a well, a large oak tree.
Jake is looking closely at the outline of the house. “It has changed, Alex. The house, look here.” He points to one side of the house on the plan. “This side of the house is different. There’s now a straight wall on this side. In the plan the building sticks out over the terrace; as if there was an extension or something on this side that has been demolished.”
Alex looks at the plan. “The house is over a hundred years old, there will have been lots of changes during that time. I think that’s where the doorway you found was, they must have demolished part of the house and bricked it up. Why would they do that?”
“Who knows,” says Jake. He turns to the business manager. “Could we hang onto this one?”
“I’d rather keep everything together, but let me take a copy of the plan for you; it’ll come out better than on your phone.” She copies the plans and gives them to Jake. “Let me know when you want to look through the rest of the box, and I’ll clear a space for you. Half Term might be a good time, if I’m away someone else can set it up for you.
They thank her and walk back up to the house.
“I can’t really believe it,” says Alex, as they approach the front door. “I’m not just connected to the house; the man who built it was my great great grandfather. No wonder it feels like home.” She smiles at Jake. “I feel comfortable here. It feels as if I have come home.”