A Crowded Coffin (17 page)

‘Stay there a minute, Harriet, there isn’t room for both of us.’ Rory shuffled painfully on his hands and knees to the opening of the cul-de-sac. He carefully shifted a few stones; there had been no attempt at complete concealment, just a cursory
camouflage
.

‘Christ almighty!’ He stared down at the earth-sprinkled hair, at the bruised, but unmistakably dead features of a man he recognized. ‘He’s been shot!’

Harriet could bear it no longer. ‘Who is it?’ She halted,
horrified
. ‘But, but that’s the vicar; that’s John Forrester.’

‘No, it’s not,’ he said quietly, shining the torch to show her the dead man’s face. His voice shook as he retreated.

‘Oh, my God.’ Harriet peered over his shoulder. ‘I thought the smell was the badgers but….’ she gulped, her hand to her mouth, ‘it’s Mike Goldstein. But I thought it was Mike out there with Brendan. It was Mike who hit you, wasn’t it? I was sure it was Mike.’

Her stomach heaved and she broke off abruptly, crawling aside just in time before she was violently sick. As she heaved, she was aware of Rory retching and taking deep breaths.

She rocked back on her heels, wiping her mouth on her
sleeve, as they stared at the body of Mike Goldstein who so manifestly had
not
been digging in the Burial Field; Mike, who could not possibly have hit Rory; Mike, who was so very clearly dead.

It was time to face facts.

‘There’s only one explanation; it has to have been John Forrester all along,’ she said flatly, almost in disbelief. ‘The vicar and Brendan Whittaker. All that stuff about oil exploration was just a smokescreen.’

It took them a good ten minutes to calm down. Rory was shivering, a hangover from the fever he’d caught in that Far Eastern jail, and for once Harriet was feeling her age and more.

‘Here.’ She found a packet of mints in her pocket. ‘Very soothing to the frayed nerves, peppermint.’ Habit helped her to summon up some self-control. She put an arm round Rory’s shoulders and hugged him, but there was a treacherous wobble in her voice as she tried to joke, ‘Bit more than you bargained for, isn’t it? Me too. I promised Sam I wouldn’t play at being Miss Marple but this is—’ She swallowed, unable to continue.

She shook herself, unable to leave it. ‘You said Mike was at the party so he can’t have been here…. Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ She managed at last to shy away from the thought of the dead man. ‘This place is depressing in its own right, a bit like a coffin, this tank. Sorry,’ she grimaced. ‘Not a helpful thing to say. Still, as long as I’m being macabre, it’s a pretty crowded coffin. I’m going to wriggle along the way the cat came, and see if I can find out how he got in.’

Rory started to protest.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she retorted. ‘I may not be thinner than you, but your shoulders are a lot broader than mine and you’ve just been beaten up. My concussion is on the mend and besides, I’m probably fitter than you anyway, even if I am thirty-odd years older, so stay put. I’ll make marks so I don’t get lost.’

Giving him no time to argue, Harriet set off, accompanied by the cat, whose curiosity was plainly roused. Glad of the company, she gave him an encouraging stroke. ‘Where are the
Famous Five,
or a St Bernard, when you need them,’ she grunted, speaking out loud to scare away the shadows. ‘But you’ll do, old moggie. Just remember to pack a small keg of spirits, whisky for choice, in future. You go in front and show me the way you came in, though I suspect it’ll be too narrow for the likes of us humans. Let’s take a look.’ She shone the torch into the darkness.

‘You know we could see that someone’s shored up the outer wall of the hypocaust?’ she called out to Rory. ‘Even though the hypocaust has collapsed in on itself, a kind of tunnel’s been pushed through, so a man could just about wriggle through. Just as well neither of us is exactly chubby but I’m quite sure we’d never squeeze through the hypocaust itself. This has been done properly, and not recently either. I think it could have been done in Tudor times as a hiding place for Catholic priests, even an escape route.’

She called back over her shoulder to report her findings. ‘I can see that someone’s been in here much more recently, clearing out muck and debris. There’s not hundreds of years’ worth of tree roots and rubbish in this passageway, not by a long chalk.’

With a lot of grunting and occasional cursing, Harriet
slithered
forward for some time in the wake of the cat. Toby pottered purposefully along, turning into a marginally larger space, with an enquiring look over his shoulder to see if she was still playing this interesting game with him.

‘Just as well I don’t suffer from claustrophobia,’ she muttered. ‘Oops, now what?’ As she caught up with the cat she found herself facing a wall of tree roots and disturbed earth. All around she could see evidence of generations of animal
occupation
, small bones that could indicate that foxes had once been in
residence. And then she saw it: filtering in from outside was a faint, greyish light, the welcome dawn approaching.

Her shoulder was hurting like mad. Bother that bathroom ceiling, she muttered. Decorating in the spring had led to a frozen shoulder and although it was gradually improving, the pain was sometimes agonizing. Concussion and a frozen shoulder, what a state to go on a treasure hunt in. Miss Marple would have had a lot more sense. She gave a final massage to the afflicted shoulder then, following her marks, she wriggled back to where Rory was champing at the bit.

‘I think we can just about squeeze out,’ she told him as she led him back into the tunnels. ‘This enlarged passageway ends in what looks like another entrance to the badgers’ sett – they usually have several. You often get foxes moving in when the badgers leave and I could definitely see traces of a fox’s earth. That must be how the cat got in and I’m fairly sure we can scrape at it till we can clamber out. It’s the most terrific discovery; Cousin Walter shouldn’t have any trouble getting people interested, grants, and so forth.
Time Team,
even.’

Harriet set out again, averting her eyes from Mike Goldstein’s out-flung hand. Strange how pathetic it looked, she shivered, wondering about his death. And wondering even more who had killed him. And why.

Rory slithered after her, his broader shoulders making his passage through even the widened narrow flue more difficult. He gritted his teeth against the pain of his cracked rib, damaged knee and extensive bruises and when he caught up with her, he shone the torch back the way they had come. What he saw made him whistle.

‘What is it?’ Harriet was fearful now, the nightmare thought beginning to surface. ‘It’s not, not another body …? Oh God, it’s not Colin Price?’

‘Not a body – but that’s a thought, he could be down here,
couldn’t he? No, it’s not a body, but look, there’s something.’ He hooked a long arm into a shallow alcove she had missed in her earlier exploration, and fished out a plastic document folder.

‘Well,’ Harriet burst out. ‘
That’s
definitely not Roman.’

‘There’s something in here, a piece of paper, I think. Proves someone’s been down here recently, doesn’t it?’ Rory fished it out and squinted at it. ‘This isn’t Roman either,’ he said,
disappointment
in his voice as he handed it to her.

‘Well, you’re right, it’s certainly not Roman,’ Harriet said slowly, holding it up to her eyes as she tried to make it out. ‘But modern is a relative term. It’s old, though, but I’d have said eighteenth century, rather than much earlier. The writing’s faded but it’s in readable English.’

She spread the paper out and read the short message:
‘Dame Margery keeps the secret of Aelfryth’s Tears,’
followed by an
illegible
signature. Harriet turned the paper over, fruitlessly looking for further illumination. ‘That’s all there is.’

Rory shoved it down the front of his sweatshirt. ‘We’d better get a move on. Where’s this fox’s earth you want me to scramble through? I tell you, Harriet, you’re not like any teacher I ever had; your classes must have been lively.’

‘Fool.’ She headed towards the increasingly bright light. ‘Here, I think we can just about wriggle through here.’ She heaved a sigh and peered at her watch. ‘I wonder if Sam’s picked up my text yet?’

‘Sam? Text? What are you on about?’

‘Sorry, didn’t I tell you?’ She blinked in surprise. ‘Good Lord, I completely forgot to mention it. I sent Sam a text before we left the house, to tell him there was something going on in the Burial Field and we were going to take a look. As soon as he picks it up Sam will be galloping over the hill with the Seventh Cavalry to the rescue.’

‘You could have told me,’ Rory said, sounding aggrieved. ‘No
wonder you weren’t in a state of total panic at being trapped underground. I’ve been in awe, thinking how brave you were.’

‘That’s boarding school. We were taught to be strong, capable women, not spineless jellyfish. It was the ethos of the school along with cold baths and lots of exercise. Mind you, I think we’ve both been pretty brave,’ she reproved him, though he saw a twinkle in her blue eyes. ‘But anyway, I also took the
precaution
of leaving a note in my bedroom, for Edith or Sam, whoever got there first. I just said there was someone digging around the old stone and it looked like Brendan and Mike Goldstein. And that I thought they were looking for the remains of the original villa, on the hunt for treasure.’

She shot him a disarming grin. ‘I’m sorry you were worried. And it would have given Sam or Edith a pretty horrible ten minutes or so, wondering if we were still alive under there. However,’ she squared her shoulders with a groan, ‘let’s get a move on and make our way above ground, because after that comes the difficult bit.’

‘And that is?’

‘Finding out where John Forrester and Brendan have gone.’ She made a face as she added, ‘And what they’re up to.’

As they made their cautious way across the fields, Harriet cocked an eye at her companion. He was looking a lot better, she decided, in spite of his extremely disturbed night. Happier too.

‘Are you getting on better with Edith?’ she asked tentatively and hid a smile as he reddened.

‘She’s suddenly stopped treating me as though I’m something the cat dragged in,’ he confided. ‘In fact, she….’ He halted, embarrassed, and Harriet tactfully turned to admire the sunrise.

‘You know why she was treating you like a leper?’ she asked casually.

‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Whatever the reason, she’s given up on it now.’

‘It was because Lara Dean told her or rather, hinted, that you were brother and sister.’

‘
What?
’ He was so astonished that he stopped in his tracks.

‘Shh.’ She frowned at him. ‘Keep moving and don’t make so much noise. We’ve no idea where Brendan and the vicar went.’ She glanced round fearfully, but the fields were empty of human life.

‘Yes, anyway; I dragged it out of Edith tonight, no it’s yesterday now, anyway, it was in the evening when she looked in on me. We had a very instructive ten minutes or so. She told me about poor old Oliver Sutherland and I knew there’d been something bugging her that was making you both
uncomfortable
. Apparently Lara saw an old documentary about heroes
from Hampshire, including Major Richard Attlin, billed as the late son of a well-known local family, a bomb disposal expert who eventually died of wounds sustained years earlier.

‘They showed a picture of Richard and Lara was struck by the likeness when she met you. She put two and two together and made far too many then, out of spite, she told Edith, who hadn’t got the sense she was born with, and half-believed it.’

At the gate to the kitchen garden Harriet paused. ‘I’m going to ring the police now,’ she said. ‘I know we’ve no idea where Brendan and the vicar have gone, and I also know we’re going to have the Devil’s own job convincing anyone that the vicar is a murderer, but there’s a dead man in those ruins and he needs justice.’

Looking stern, she called in, spoke urgently to whoever was on duty, was transferred to someone else, and finally caught up with an officer who not only knew her but also took her
seriously
. ‘He’s sending a car right away,’ she said, with grim satisfaction. ‘And he also said we’re to keep out of trouble.’

‘Fair enough,’ Rory shrugged. ‘All I want to do is have a bath and go to sleep, but first of all, a coffee. Come on, I’ll put the kettle on.’

Harriet nodded. ‘Tea for me, please. No sign of Karen and Elv
eece
? What happened to them?’

‘He had a late-night gig in Portsmouth. The party here was very sedate and finished by nine o’clock, so Karen went with him. They’re staying overnight with one of his mates so they’ve got today off.’ He spooned coffee into a mug for himself and found a tea bag for Harriet. ‘Let’s have another look at that note.’ He pulled the plastic wallet out from under his sweatshirt and they studied the document once more. It still made no sense to either of them.

‘Oh well, let’s leave it till tomorrow. That’s the best cup of tea I’ve had in years,’ she told him. ‘I’m feeling much better already.’

‘Me too.’ He finished the slice of cake she’d cut and stood up. ‘I’m not tired any more, still pumping adrenaline. Are you doing okay? So how about we go up and check out the picture gallery while we’re still wired? I’d like to take another look at a couple of paintings – I think they could be very special.’

‘Fine.’ She drained her mug and followed him out of the kitchen. ‘Edith told me you’d been dropping hints, but she was a bit put out that you wouldn’t go into any detail.’

‘No chance,’ he grinned as they crossed the hall. ‘You know what she’s like, she’d be up there with the Fairy Liquid, trying to clean off the grime of centuries, hoping to find a Leonardo.’

Harriet was struck by his air of excitement. ‘A Leonardo?’

‘Maybe,’ he said, with a tantalizing smile. ‘It’s no use teasing, Harriet, I’m not saying another word till we’ve got an expert in.’

As they passed Rory’s door, Harriet was surprised to see him hesitate and glance anxiously round. He said nothing. They were heading up the back stairs, Harriet in the lead, when her heart almost stopped. Just above them, in the gallery, she could hear cautious footsteps on the old polished boards.

Too late to retreat, her abrupt halt made Rory walk into her and his ensuing grunt was loud enough to wake the dead. Damn, she thought, her heart thudding now, I really wish I hadn’t had that particular thought. The door stood half open and she froze, panic rising like bile. What are we to do? There’s a murderer in there. She reached a hand back behind her and was relieved to feel Rory’s firm, warm clasp. Did he hear us? Can we get away downstairs?

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ John Forrester stood in the doorway, a look of mild exasperation in his eyes. ‘I thought you two were out of the picture. Oh well, you’d better come in.’

The gun in his hand made the argument persuasive and they followed him into the room. Harriet gave a little gasp when she
spotted Brendan Whittaker lying unconscious on the floor, and she shot Rory a warning look. The vicar was a very dangerous man, there was no question.

‘Quite,’ he said, evidently picking up on her thought. ‘Sensible, Miss Quigley. Keep it like that.’

He looked at them and, to her astonishment, he smiled at her. ‘For heaven’s sake, sit down, Dr Attlin,’ he said, pointing to a chair. Rory staggered across the room and sat down, unable, Harriet realized, to do more than obey. The boy was clearly exhausted almost beyond bearing and might be close to collapse. She turned back and caught the vicar watching her.

‘You sit down too, Miss Q,’ he said, pushing another chair in her direction. ‘And maybe you can suggest what on earth I’m supposed to do with you both?’ He shrugged. ‘I should have made sure of you, I knew it at the time, but Brendan interfered. Oh well.’ He nodded to her and she was suddenly chilled by the familiarity of his charming smile. ‘Maybe you can assist me in my enquiries, as they say. You know a lot about the Attlins, don’t you, being one of the family yourself.’

Harriet nodded silently, glancing covertly at the silent form of Brendan Whittaker. Was he unconscious, or – worse? John Forrester was still watching her and he followed her gaze. ‘Yes, well, sometimes people get in the way.’

He said nothing more but she felt herself recoil. So it was true; and if Brendan had got in the way, what of Rory and Harriet?

‘What have you got there?’ He tweaked the plastic folder out of Harriet’s hand and frowned. ‘Something else I ought to have destroyed, or at least taken with me,’ he said fretfully. ‘I should have checked what Brendan had done with it, he was quite
careless
. Another minus point to chalk up to working with other people.

‘I don’t know.’ He paced to and fro across the gallery, always watchful, looking first at the exhausted Rory, slumped in his
chair, looking only half-conscious, and then at Harriet, with a calculating expression.

‘Maybe we should pool information?’ he began. ‘I know your cousin, Canon Hathaway, was poking his nose into my affairs. I suppose he told you everything he discovered?’

She shook her head, feeling hopeless. It was ten, fifteen minutes ago that she had spoken to the inspector. How long would they take? Any time now, if he had despatched someone at once, but who knew? She shivered. John Forrester was surprisingly cool for now, but that surely couldn’t last.

‘I’ll tell you what I’ve been researching,’ he said. ‘Then maybe you can come up with some answers, you never know. I’m aware that you’re well up with the family legends, so you may know something I’ve missed.’ He sat down and chewed at his thumbnail.

‘It all started,’ he said, ‘when I was at Cambridge and there was a little local difficulty with a girl. I paid her off and it was over as far as I was concerned. I graduated, went to theological college, was ordained and started climbing the ladder to fame and fortune – in so far as it’s possible in the Church of England.’ He grinned at her. ‘And it is possible, you know, if you’re
good-looking
, can turn on the charm and have plenty of money, which I have, courtesy of my wife, who, sadly, turned out to be a drag on my ambitions and not the stepping stone I’d bargained for. Still, more of that later.

‘Last summer I was having a drink in the Wykeham Arms when that little tick, Colin Price, tapped me on the arm and said, “Remember me?” How could I forget? He’d been at Cambridge with me; he was a fresher when I was in my final year. He knew all about the wretched girl so of course he thought it would be worth my while to keep his mouth shut. It wasn’t actually too bad; he was working in the Stanton Resingham archive and one evening when he’d had too much to drink, he bragged about the
valuable stuff there was, that nobody had a clue about. So we did a deal. I financed his trips abroad and we split the proceeds fifty-fifty, with him always insisting on cash payment from the auctioneers or buyers. That went straight into two European bank accounts, under assumed names, of course.’

Harriet listened in silence, no need to feign interest, it was fascinating. And utterly terrifying. Besides – she nourished a faint hope – the longer she kept him talking, the sooner the police ought to arrive.

‘One of the letters Colin found mentioned something called “Aelfryth’s Tears”, which was said to contain tears shed by the Virgin Mary. Soon afterwards a couple of other references turned up. We narrowed it down to King Alfred’s time; I used to nip into the archive room and work with Colin; nobody ever bothered me. Another clue led me to Alfred’s mistress, and all the indications are that it was a fabulous piece of jewellery, along the lines of the famous Anglo-Saxon Jewel, or the Middleham one.’

Harriet glanced furtively at Rory and for a moment thought he had passed out but he caught her eye and gave the ghost of a wink. She breathed again, just in time as John Forrester gave him a pitying look and continued his story.

‘I went into the business of selling archive items because Gillian was being very difficult about money at that time. Up until her breakdown she was always very generous, proud of her high-flying husband and looking to be an archdeacon’s wife within a few years, but suddenly she turned very tight-fisted and tried to limit my allowance. I decided it would look good if I took a year out, to try to cope with my poor, neurotic wife; you wouldn’t believe the outpouring of sympathy I got about it. So I put in my request for a country parish. It suited me very well, less scrutiny, lots of “Ah, poor dear vicar”, while my wife’s health worsened visibly. It didn’t take long for people to realize
Gillian was an addict and the levels of sympathy rose even higher, encouraged by a few manly tears, judiciously rationed. Oh yes, nobody would be surprised if the poor, addled creature had an accident.’

Harriet caught her breath but she continued to sit in silence, nervously watching his every move with narrowed eyes.

‘Where was I? Oh, yes, Colin Price. I had no idea the jewel was said to be connected with the farm here until he spotted a letter stuffed into the spine of some account books, dating back to Queen Anne’s time. It referred to a hiding place, known only to the Attlin family, where they always stashed their treasures in times of trouble. The letter was written in 1642 and was
obviously
overlooked when the ledgers found their way into the Resingham collection. That’s the last page you had there.’ He waved a hand at the plastic wallet. His face darkened. ‘It should still be safely in my study, but I suspect Brendan’s been doing a spot of breaking and entering on his own account.’

His expression lightened and as he strolled over to peer at Dame Margery’s portrait, looking so normal and
conversational
, Harriet had to remind herself that it was a real gun that dangled so negligently from his hand.

‘Things suddenly fell into place,’ he went on, with a pleased laugh. ‘I wound up here, which was almost enough to restore my faith in miracles. There was no mention anywhere on the Web of the Attlins having a fabulous jewel in their possession so it didn’t take a lot of guesswork to decide that any hiding place the Attlin family had might be connected with the legendary Roman villa, the ruins of which were known to be undisturbed. I set about establishing to all and sundry that I was burningly interested in the late Romano–British period and that I liked nothing better than pottering about Roman ruins.

‘I was planning on suggesting to Mr Attlin that he should let me finance and oversee a small, exploratory dig when two
things happened. The first was that just before Christmas old Misselbrook, the Attlins’ tenant farmer, thought he was dying and sent for me. I let him talk and he told me that he’d found a way down into the ruins: “I know you likes them old things, Vicar.” He’d been getting rid of badgers illegally, using snares and poison and so forth, and when he was digging out one of the setts he spotted that the badgers had broken through over the centuries into a brick-lined chimney, or so he thought. He didn’t venture down there – too old and rheumaticky – but he told me he was sure it led to the ruins of the villa that his “old dad” had told him about.’