Page 71 of The Path to the Last House Before the Sea

Jack’s torchlight sparked off the gold and jewels resting in Alyssa’s palm.

‘I can reasonably deduce that these are the remains of Charity and Josiah because this is the brooch that Josiah was supposed to have run away with after murdering Charity.’

‘Are you sure?’

Alyssa ran her fingers across the exquisite piece of jewellery. It felt heavy in her hand. She traced the ruby at its centre, red as blood, and the glittering diamonds and emeralds that surrounded it. The seed pearls she’d sketched into her notebook at Driftwood House hung from the bottom of the brooch, brushing her skin. ‘I’m quite sure. It’s exactly the same as the brooch described in the history book that belonged to Rosie’s mum. Have a look.’

She passed the brooch to Jack, who studied it for a while in silence before handing it back.

‘I have to admit, that is quite compelling evidence.’ Jack whistled through his teeth. ‘I can’t get my head around it. This is Charity Hawkins and Josiah Gathergill.’

‘You thought he’d murdered her and fled, and I hoped they’d run away together. But it seems they’ve been here in Heaven’s Cove all this time.’

‘So, no happy-ever-after then,’ said Jack gruffly.

Alyssa shook her head as tears trickled down her cheeks. It was all too much: being trapped in what was basically a tomb, and now discovering that Josiah and Charity had suffered a tragic end.

Jack knelt down again beside the skeletons. ‘What do you think happened to them?’

Alyssa scrubbed her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘I think that Josiah was a smuggler and, if Charity was close to him, she probably knew these tunnels well. She found out that the customs men were planning a raid and came down here to warn him and to give him something precious, her mother’s brooch, so he would have the funds to flee. But part of the tunnel collapsed and they were trapped.’

Alyssa waited for Jack’s alternative theory about what had happened to these two poor souls. But all he said was: ‘I wonder why they weren’t rescued after the cave-in.’

‘What if no one knew they were in the tunnels?’ said Alyssa, very aware that no one knew she and Jack were down here either. ‘The rest of the smuggling gang was arrested so never came back, tunnel entrances were bricked up or blocked off by the customs men, and Josiah was thought by local villagers to have murdered Charity and made his escape.’

‘So, no one came looking,’ said Jack, the shake in his voice betraying that he was thinking the same thing as Alyssa.

‘Your dad will look for us, won’t he?’

‘Of course. But I’m not sure where he’s gone or how long he’s going to be, and he won’t think to look for us in the cellar anyway.’ Jack ran a hand through his hair. ‘Let’s just hope there aren’t any more rock falls before he does eventually get round to checking the cellar. That last one could have made the whole tunnel unstable.’

Alyssa shuddered, hoping that she and Jack weren’t about to join ill-fated Charity and Josiah in their final resting place.

Jack took in a deep breath and sighed. ‘I thought he’d murdered her,’ he said quietly. ‘I never gave him the benefit of the doubt.’

‘Everyone thought he was a murderer.’

‘Everyone, except you.’

Alyssa’s shrug went unseen in the gloom. She wanted to tell him why Josiah’s redemption meant so much to her, explain how it had become tied to her own, but she didn’t know where to start. So she picked up her dropped phone instead and said nothing.

As the roof supports creaked and groaned, Jack glanced up nervously before searching around the pile of bones. ‘I can’t see a lantern anywhere so they must have been in darkness after the rock fall.’

‘But at least they were together,’ said Alyssa, trying to salvage some comfort from that fact. The smaller skull was resting on the larger rib cage, as though Charity and Josiah were embracing. It was unbearably romantic and unutterably sad.

‘It’s such a shame they weren’t rescued.’

‘Not really,’ said Alyssa into the darkness. ‘I mean, what would they have faced if they had been discovered in time? Josiah would probably have been hanged as a smuggler, and Charity’s reputation would have been trashed for being found alone with him. She’d have ended up married off to any man who would still have her.’

No, it was better this way because they’d rather have died, thought Alyssa, tears snaking down her cheeks again. Died together, in each other’s arms.

THIRTY-THREE

JACK

The skeletons were entwined. Jack stopped studying the bones as if they were exhibits in his lab and tried to picture them as people: Charity, small and slight with a precious brooch clasped in her hand as a gift for her lover; and Josiah, taller and broader – with a mop of bright red hair, if Alyssa’s theory was correct. And it probably was. Alyssa, with her wild flights of fancy, seemed to be right about a lot of things.

Charity and his ancestor Josiah had lain together, undiscovered in the dark for almost three hundred years. And now they’d been found, and the mystery of their disappearance was solved, thanks to Alyssa.

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