The Haunted Lady Read Online Free Page A

The Haunted Lady
Book: The Haunted Lady Read Online Free
Author: Bill Kitson
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very well here. I can understand how he feels, though, it must be a worry for him, but I’m not sure how we can help. Except if perhaps we were able to recover the painting. When exactly was it stolen?’
    ‘We can’t actually be sure it was stolen. I can’t tell you the exact date, but it was somewhere around twenty years ago, before the church repairs were completed. Certainly a long time before Michael was appointed to the parish. He would only have been about six or seven then.’
    ‘That would make it far more difficult to trace. After so many years the painting could have gone anywhere.’
    Eve winced at my blunt assessment of the problem, but asked, ‘Why can’t you be sure it was stolen?’
    ‘When the church had to have a new roof the building was stripped of its contents. It is possible the vicar at the time removed the painting. Unfortunately he died before the church was ready to be reopened. The painting wasn’t amongst his belongings at the rectory, but he might have given it to someone else to store and it hasn’t been returned.’
    That seemed unlikely to me but I didn’t have the leisure to ponder it, because Eve, it seemed, was ready to move on. ‘Let’s leave that on one side for the moment. You mentioned something connected to Chloe. That’s the girl your son is engaged to.’
    ‘That’s correct, her name is Chloe Kershaw. Or at least that’s what everyone believed, but now we can’t be sure. The problem arose because she and Michael wanted to visit Italy for their honeymoon. That meant she had to apply for a passport. She sent in her birth certificate months ago and that was when the trouble started.’
    ‘What trouble?’
    ‘The passport people told her that the birth certificate was a forgery. They refused her passport application, and now the poor girl is in a terrible state. Apart from everything else, they’ve had to call the wedding off, which has made things even worse.’
    ‘Surely her family can confirm that she is who she believes herself to be, can’t they?’
    Far from cheering Marjorie up, my statement seemed to make her even more perturbed. ‘That’s just the point; there is no one who can vouch for her. Both her parents are dead, and her uncle David and his wife Valerie can’t help.’
    ‘That sounds very odd. Why is that?’ Eve got the question out in a split second before I could ask.
    ‘David was the younger brother and he lived and worked in London. I understand Chloe’s mother and father were abroad when they married. Her father was in the Diplomatic Service and posted to various different countries, rarely returning to England, so they never saw each other. Chloe was only a baby when her parents came to Elmfield Grange and lived with her grandfather. I believe she has no other living relatives apart from her aunt and uncle, so she turned to them for help with the birth certificate problem, but they could tell her very little. Her uncle said he believes her father was in Europe during that time, but that’s all he can say.’
    ‘When was Chloe born – or rather when does she think she was born?’
    Marjorie responded instantly. ‘The date given on the birth certificate was tenth of November 1961. The reason I know it by heart is that’s also my birthday. I teased Michael about it, telling him he had no excuse for forgetting either of us now.’
    I was still dwelling on this when I realised the topic of conversation had moved on.
    ‘As if all that wasn’t bad enough, now there’s this horrid murder on top of everything else.’
    ‘Yes, we’ve heard something about it,’ Eve responded. ‘Our village policeman is involved in the inquiry. He popped in to see us this morning. Naturally, he told us a quite a bit about it, or as much as they seem to know, which admittedly doesn’t seem a lot. He said they were holding Mr Kershaw on suspicion.’
    To be fair, what Marjorie had been able to tell us added nothing to what we had already learned from
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