Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave Read Free Page B

Looking at the beautiful coffee-coloured Tina, Jemima thought she might be the product of some rather more recent union between a rakish Archer and a Bo’lander maiden; more recent than the seventeenth century, that is.
    Her attention was wrenched back to Miss Izzy’s reminiscing monologue by the mention of the Archer Tomb.
    “You’ve seen the grave? You saw it this morning. Tina there has discovered that it’s all a fraud. A great big lie, lying under the sun—yes, Tina dear, you once said that. Sir Valentine Archer, my great, great, great”—an infinite number of greats followed before Miss Izzy finally pronounced the word grandfather, but Jemima had to admit that she did seem to be counting. “He had a great big lie perpetuated on his tombstone.”
    “What Miss Izzy means, you know—” This was the first time Tina Archer had spoken since they entered the darkened drawing-room; she was still standing while Jemima and Miss Izzy sat. Perhaps there had been some wisdom in her silence. For Miss Izzy immediately interrupted her.
    “Don’t tell me what I mean, child,” rapped out the old lady; her tone was imperious rather than indulgent, Tina might for a moment have been a plantation worker two hundred years earlier than an independent-minded girl in the late twentieth century. “It’s the inscription which is a lie. She wasn’t his only wife.” Miss Izzy quoted: “ ‘His only wife, Isabella, daughter of Randal Oxford, gentleman.’ ” The very inscription should have warned us. Tina wants to see justice done to poor little Lucie Anne and so do I. Independence indeed! I’ve been independent all my life and I’m certainly not stopping now. Tell me, Miss Shore, you’re a clever young woman from television; you know the answer to this question. Why do you bother to contradict something unless it’s true all along? That’s the way you work all the time in television, don’t you?”
    Jemima was wondering just how to answer this question diplomatically without necessarily traducing her profession when Tina Archer firmly, and this time successfully, took over from her employer.
    “I read history at university in the UK, Jemima. Genealogical research is my speciality. I was helping Miss Izzy put her papers in order for the museum—or what was to be the museum. Then the request came for your programme. I began to dig a little deeper. That’s how I found the marriage certificate. Old Sir Valentine
did
marry his young Carib mistress, known as Lucie Anne. Late in life: long after his first wife died. That’s Lucie Anne who was the mother of his two youngest children. He was getting old and for some reason he decided to marry her: the Church, maybe. In its way this has always been a God-fearing island; perhaps Lucie Anne, who was very young and very beautiful, put pressure on the old man via the Church. At any rate these last two children, of all the hundreds he sired, would have been legitimate.”
    “And so?” questioned Jemima in her most encouraging manner.
    “I’m descended from Lucie Anne—and Sir Valentine of course.” Tina returned sweet smile for smile. “I’ve traced that too from the church records, baptisms, marriages and so forth. Again not too difficult, given the strength of the Church here. Not too difficult for an expert, at all events. Oh, I’ve got all sorts of blood, like most of us round here, including a Spanish grandmother and maybe some French blood too. But the Archer descent is perfectly straightforward and clear.”
    Tina seemed aware that Jemima Shore was gazing at her with new respect; did she however understand the actual tenor of Jemima’s thoughts? “This is a formidable person,” Jemima was reflecting. “Charming, yes, but formidable. And ruthless. Yes, maybe that too on occasion.” Jemima was also, to be frank, wondering just how she was going to present this sudden change of angle in her programme on Megalith Television. On the one hand it might now be seen as