An Unhallowed Grave

An Unhallowed Grave by Kate Ellis

"Detective fiction with a historical twist fans will love it." Scotland on Sunday.

Also by Kate Ellis

The Merchant's House The Armada Boy The Funeral Boat

An Unhallowed Grave

Kate Ellis

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PIATKUS

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Copyright 1999 by Kate Ellis

First published in Great Britain in 1999 by

Judy Piatkus (Publishers) Ltd of

5 Windmill Street, London WIT 2JA

email: [email protected]

This edition published 2000 Reprinted 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 07499 3173 6

Set in Times by Phoenix Photosetting, Chatham, Kent

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent

For David and Mona Ellis

The girl looked out of the window. They had come for her.

She watched the cars glide up the gravel drive towards the house, soundless, like the ghostly coaches of legend that fetched the souls of the damned.

The policewoman put a firm hand on her shoulder. It was time to go. Leaving the room, the girl caught sight of herself in the gilded mirror. A waif looked back; a pale copy of the carefree seventeen-year-old who had arrived at the house only six months before.

She walked down the fine oak staircase slowly, carefully, the policewoman hovering behind like a nurse watching her patient take her first convalescent steps. The girl swayed slightly and the policewoman put out an arm to steady her.

The silence hung like glass between the girl and the group of people waiting in the hall. They stood watching her descend the staircase. A man, a woman and a small child, a handsome, fair-haired boy of six or seven.

The girl could hear her own breathing; her own heart beating. But the people at the foot of the stairs made no sound. They stood like waxworks even the boy avoiding eye contact.

The girl allowed herself to be led past them to where the police cars waited. She sat in the back of the first car, staring ahead as they swept down the gravel drive.

A gaggle of locals had gathered by the ornate gates. As she passed they thrust their bitter, distorted faces at the car windows. The girl tried to cover her ears but she couldn't block out the word they spat at her.

"Murderer ... murderer... murderer."

The jury state that John Fleecer, the blacksmith's son and divers others did riotously and unlawfully assemble near the church and did assault William de Monte. Fined I2d.

The same John Fleecer did then strike Ralph de Neston and drew blood on him. Fined 3d.

From the Court Rolls of Stokeworthy Manor

June 1999

The two teenage girls stood at the churchyard gate, trying to hide the nervousness they felt. In spite of the warmth of the summer night a thin mist was blowing in from the creek, slinking and swirling around the moonlit gravestones.

"We've got to do it. It's part of the ritual. It won't work if we don't."

"I can't see it working anyway." Joanne Jo to her friends -Talbot offered her friend Leanne a cigarette which was accepted with studied boredom.

"Go on, Jo. It'll be a laugh."

"You reckon it'll work, do you? You think we'll see our true loves?" she said with heavy sarcasm. "It's a bloody waste of good grass if you ask me."

"Oh, go on. Me gran said it worked for her. Go on. It'll be a laugh," Leanne pleaded.

Jo looked down at the tiny plastic bag in her hand. It contained a dried leafy substance. "Will this do?"

"It says hemp seed in the rhyme but..."

"Let's get on with it, then. I'm not hanging round in this bloody churchyard much longer. It's giving me the creeps." She shuddered.

"Scared, are you?"

Jo gave Leanne a withering look. "Piss off. "Course I'm not scared."

"We've got to do it on the path near the church door ... and we can't do it till midnight." Leanne was relishing the experience of being slightly, tantalisingly frightened. Anything to relieve the tedium of village life; of the dull routine of catching the bus to Tradmouth Comprehensive each morning and hanging round the village bus shelter and phone box each night.

"We'd better get a move on." Jo squinted to see her watch in the bright moonlight. "It's nearly midnight now. Can you remember that verse your gran told you?"

"Course I bloody can."

The two girls giggled nervously up the church path, not daring to look left or right. The mist prowled like lean white cats around the lichened tombstones.

Jo's hand was shaking as she handed the plastic bag to Leanne. This had better bleeding work."

Leanne opened the bag. "We walk towards the church door scattering it. Then we look round. That's when we see ..."

"Get on with it. Hurry up."

Leanne emptied the contents of the bag into her outstretched palm, then she began to walk slowly, ceremoniously, towards the ancient church, scattering the leaves onto the path.

"Hemp seed I sow. Hemp seed I sow. He that will my true love be, come rake this hemp seed after me," she pronounced solemnly. "Now we look round," she added apprehensively, dreading an encounter with her future lover less than her friend's sarcastic disdain when the ritual didn't work.

As the girls turned slowly, they saw a movement. Something white swayed from the branch of a large yew tree to their left. They stared for a few seconds before they realised that this was no vision of the man of their dreams.

The body hung there, twisting in the breeze that was blowing the mist in from the creek.

It was Jo who let out the first, night-shattering scream.

At ten past midnight Julian D'estry he had added the apostrophe to impress clients poured himself another glass of Chardonnay and waved the bottle at the lithe blonde who lay, supine, on the adjacent sun lounger

Monica Belman shook her head. "I'm going for another swim." She sat up and reached across to touch Julian's bare stomach.

Her hand slid lower but he grabbed it before it reached its target. "Not now."

Monica pouted in exaggerated disappointment. "What's the matter?"

"I'm a bit stressed out. Busy week."

"That's why we come down here. To relax ... to get away from all that. Come on. What's wrong?" She knelt up on her sun lounger and began fumbling with the back of her bikini top. "I know the perfect cure for stress."

"What?"

"Wait and see." She discarded her top and slipped elegantly out of her bikini bottom something most women are incapable of doing with any panache. Then she approached the edge of the pool and, after looking over her shoulder to make sure Julian was taking in the view, plunged her slender, naked body into the chlorinated blue waters of Worthy Court's communal indoor swimming pool.

Julian propped himself up on his elbow and watched Monica appreciatively while he sipped his Chardonnay.

"Put some music on," shouted Monica from the pool, floating neatly on her sun bed-bronzed back.

Julian obliged, placing a CD expounding the merits of 'sexual healing' on the portable player by his side.

"Turn it up. Right up. It'll get us in the mood." Her voice held a cockney twang and more than a hint of erotic suggestion.

Julian obeyed and, after a few minutes of watching Monica frolicking mermaid-like in the water, pulled off his swimming trunks and joined her in the pool. He swam up to her and she flipped onto her back, a come-hither look in her bright blue eyes.

"Listen to the sound quality of those little speakers it pays to buy the best," he called over the suggestive rhythm.

"What? Can't hear you over the music," Monica replied. She had no need of conversation. She reached for Julian's arm and pulled him towards her, her hand wandering downward to discover that the mad Friday evening drive from London to Devon had taken its toll on his libido. Monica, not one to give in without a fight, attached her mouth to his as the music that echoed off the swimming-pool walls approached its inevitable conclusion.

The silence came like an explosion. Sudden. Unexpected. Shocking. Julian and Monica looked up out of the pool like a pair of startled seals. Standing at the edge of the pool watching them was an elderly couple, well dressed and furious-faced. A tall, grey-haired man and a younger woman with tumbling auburn tresses stood nervously behind them; the man's hand protectively on his companion's shoulder as if anticipating trouble. The elderly woman defiantly held the unplugged CD player above her head.

Monica tried to cover her embarrassment with her hands while Julian, naked and helpless, could only open and shut his mouth in impotent rage as the CD player joined them in the water with a satisfying splash.

"Perhaps now you'll learn to have more consideration for others," shouted the woman righteously. "And don't think you can treat us like the local peasants and frighten us with your pathetic death threats. We know you're all mouth." She approached the edge of the pool and peered at the pink shapes in the water. The corners of her mouth twitched upward. "And no trousers," she added before marching away, her supporters following in her wake.

Police Constable Ian Merryweather answered the call in his new patrol car. Suspected suicide in Stokeworthy churchyard. He hoped it wasn't messy. Only last week he'd been called to a farm where a man had put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger: blood and brains everywhere. As he put his foot down and negotiated the narrow country lanes at considerable speed, he hoped this corpse had been considerate enough to swallow a few sleeping pills before lying down in an orderly fashion.

It was twenty past midnight when he drew up at the rickety lych gate that separated the churchyard from the road. A small group of people milled around the gate: late Friday night drinkers on their way home from the Ring o' Bells, Merryweather thought. It was hard for the constabulary to enforce licensing hours in these scattered villages. He stepped out of his patrol car, donned his cap and drew himself up to his full height as the good, or not so good, citizens of Stokeworthy eyed him expectantly. The group parted to reveal a pair of teenage girls sitting on the lych gate bench,

sobbing into disintegrating tissues. They were being comforted by a couple of overweight older women, presumably their mothers. Merry weather took charge of the situation.

"Right, then. Can someone tell me what's been going on?" From the distraught state of the girls, Merryweather feared that the message had been wrong: perhaps they had been indecently assaulted. He contemplated radioing for a WPC right away.

"Go and have a look for yourself," said the plumper of the mothers defiantly. "Over there." She gestured impatiently with her thumb.

Merryweather took a deep breath and set off down the church path.

It wasn't long before he saw it. A couple of the male pub-goers had followed him tentatively up the path. He turned to address them. "Hasn't anyone thought to cut her down? She could still be alive." The men looked blank. The idea hadn't occurred to them. "Move back, now. Don't just stand there gawking," he said with what he hoped sounded like authority.

He looked up at the figure hanging from the tree. It was a woman in a belted white mac. Her arms hung limply by her side, puppet-like, and her discoloured face, tongue protruding, told that hers had not been a peaceful death. A metal ladder was propped up against the tree: she must have jumped from it to her untimely death. Constable Merryweather climbed up a few rungs and touched her wrist, feeling for a pulse. There was none. The body hadn't yet begun to stiffen but it felt cool to the touch. He descended the ladder and radioed for assistance, wondering whether to cut the body down for decency's sake.

But something stopped him taking action. It was obviously suicide but, if by any chance it turned out to be less straightforward than it looked, he had no wish to be hauled up before CID for destroying evidence. He'd leave that to someone else: Merryweather was always a man to play safe. Besides, his back had been playing him up recently and hauling dead bodies around might be the last straw.

Crowd control: that was the best use of his talents until help arrived. He noticed that the people by the lych gate had begun to edge into the churchyard. "Come on, now. Move back. There's nothing to see," he announced in time-honoured fashion. There was nothing he could do for the poor cow who was dangling from the tree, but he could at least keep public order: that was what he was paid for.

"Who found her?" he asked the assembled company, trying not to look at the hanging body which stood out white against the darkness of the great yew tree.

"I ... er ... we did," said one of the sobbing girls. "It was 'orrible."

"I'm sure it was, miss. We might need a statement from you. What's your name, my luv ver he asked in true Devon fashion.