THE TRYSTING TREE by Linda Gillard Page B

of the trunk. There are old seed packets inside.’
    ‘Really? Well, the seeds could still be viable,’ he said, prising open the lid.
    ‘Don’t get too excited,’ I said filling the kettle. ‘The packets are all empty.’
    He’d taken several out and was turning them over. ‘How do you know they’re empty? They’re all sealed.’
    ‘You can feel. And if you hold them up to the light, you can see there’s nothing in them.’
    ‘Yet they’ve all been glued shut.’
    ‘Yes. I suppose someone wanted to preserve them as art work. A collector of some kind, perhaps.’
    ‘But why put them outdoors – and in a tree – if you wanted to preserve them?’
    ‘Yes, it’s odd, isn’t it? It seems more likely they were trying to hide them.’
    ‘Why would anyone want to hide seed packets?’
    ‘Search me. I thought you might have some ideas.’
    He turned a packet over and examined the printed text closely, then looking up, he said, ‘Do you mind if I open one? I’ll do it carefully with a knife, so I don’t tear it.’
    ‘Go ahead. But I think you’ll find it’s empty.’
    As I made the tea, Connor took a knife from the kitchen drawer and slid it under the glued paper flap. He ran the knife gently back and forth until the glue cracked, then he upended the packet over a plate and tapped. Nothing came out. Still refusing to believe it was empty, he looked inside.
    ‘My God…’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Look!’
    He handed me the packet and I peered inside. The interior was completely covered with tiny words written in pencil in a copperplate hand. I looked up at Connor who was grinning now and wielding the knife with a determined gleam in his eye.
    ‘May I?’
    ‘Please do.’
    He slit open the seed packet along its glued edges and smoothed it flat on the kitchen worktop. ‘It’s a letter!’ He pointed to the top left-hand corner of the yellowed paper oblong where someone had written, My dearest . ‘There’s no date though. And no signature. No name anyway. Just a letter. Is that a W? It’s very ornate.’
    I bent over the packet and examined where he was pointing. ‘Yes, I think that’s a W.’
    Connor was already opening another packet. ‘This one’s the same. Every inch is covered with tiny writing. These are love letters!’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Read them,’ Connor said, thrusting one into my hand. He was working his way through the packets now, opening them carefully and spreading them flat. ‘They’re all from W.’
    ‘How maddening that they aren’t signed or dated. I’d love to know who wrote them.’
    ‘Not to mention why they had to be hidden in a tree. Wait a minute…’ Connor peered closely at one of the packets. Without looking up he said, ‘You wouldn’t have a magnifying glass by any chance?’
    ‘Phoebe has a magnifying bookmark. She uses it to read newspapers. It’ll be on the table somewhere… Here it is,’ I said, handing him the piece of transparent plastic.
    ‘I just want to see this handwriting normal size… Yes, I thought so. I recognise this hand. ’
    ‘Really?’
    He looked up and nodded. ‘Well, I’ve seen it before, definitely. Somewhere in my grandmother’s archive, but I can’t remember where.’
    ‘Connor, look – that’s an H, isn’t it? “My dearest H”. Isn’t that what it says?’
    ‘Yes, I think so… Maybe these were love letters written to Hester Mordaunt. These packets could be a hundred years old. Easily.’
    ‘Hester? The unmarried daughter?’
    ‘The one who inherited Beechgrave. The woman who adopted my grandmother and gave her a name.’
    I poured three mugs of tea, preoccupied, then remembered something. ‘Didn’t you say Hester wrote a diary?’
    ‘Volumes. Some were destroyed in the fire though.’
    ‘But you still have some of them?’
    ‘Yes, and photocopies of some pages which were subsequently destroyed.’
    ‘So if we read the diaries—’
    ‘We might find out who W was. And why his letters had to be hidden in