An Unhallowed Grave (22 page)

"I thought that poor woman was hanged or something ..."

"There's been another murder since then, madam. A young man was knocked unconscious with the oar and then drowned. He was found downstream but our forensic experts are sure that..."

"Oh dear, Inspector. This is really most distressing," Mrs. Thewlis said conventionally.

"Did you happen to see a young man walking with another man, possibly wearing a dark weatherproof coat, on Saturday night, about ten o'clock? The light would be fading by then, of course, but..."

"No. I'm sorry. I was here all night but I saw nothing."

"Who else was in the house?"

"My husband. The children. The nanny. We were having a quiet weekend. With the life my husband leads, quiet family weekends are precious, believe me."

"Do you own the cabin cruiser anchored in the creek? The Pride of de Stoke?

"Yes."

"Strange name."

"My husband's idea. The de Stokes owned this house in the Middle Ages, I believe. There's some long-haired archaeologist delving in our archives at the moment. I don't know if he'll come up with anything interesting."

Heffernan looked at Wesley. "I'm sure he will, madam. Thank you for your time."

The two policemen turned to go, walking slowly down the gravel drive towards the village. Caroline Thewlis watched them, then shut the door slowly.

She leaned on the door for a few moments, thinking. The children were out at friends and their nanny was upstairs. Caroline climbed the stairs to Gemma's room and pushed the door. It opened slowly. The young woman inside was lying on the bed reading a magazine, the headphones of a Walkman obliterating all sound. The movement of the door made her look up. She took off the headphones, watching her employer nervously.

Caroline strolled casually into the room, looking around. Gemma Matherley's eyes followed her, wary. "What do you want?" she asked. "I'm going for the kids at three ... that's what was arranged," she added warily.

Caroline gave a slow smile. "Don't play the innocent." She sat down by Gemma and touched her shoulder. "I know all about you and him. I even know what you two get up to in my bed. When Philip first introduced me to him I thought he was such a gentleman ... just shows how wrong you can be."

Gemma looked up, alarmed, then, having no more weapons in her armoury, burst into tears.

Linda Stoke-Brown lived on an unprepossessing modern estate on the outskirts of Plymouth. Gabled porches had been added by the builders to create a cottagey look to the tiny houses, each huddled up to its neighbour to maximise the profit to be gleaned from the available land. The newness of the bricks and the shrivelled sparseness of the small front gardens, their fertility strangled by building rubble, gave the estate a bleak look. Maybe things would improve with time as the vegetation grew. Wesley Peterson parked carefully outside the address they had been given and got out, leaving his boss in the car.

Linda Stoke-Brown was out, but it didn't take Wesley long to establish from the young woman next door, with toddlers clinging to her legs and longing for a bit of excitement to lighten the domestic routine, that Linda worked in the local tax office, just half a mile down the road.

Wesley broke the news to the inspector. "She's taken the car," Heffernan commented. "Not very environmentally conscious, our Mrs. Stoke-Brown. If it's only half a mile she could have walked."

Wesley, mildly surprised by Heffernan's new ecological awareness, made no reply. He was sure he could detect Squirrel's influence.

Undaunted, Wesley drove to the tax office: the fact that they were on police business justified a spot of environmental pollution. It was a modern building, functional and brutal. Wesley wondered if the government always housed its tax gatherers in its most unlovely buildings. The ex-wife, he thought, must envy her former husband's ability to seek solace in art and the beauties of the Devon countryside. She had to exist between the aesthetic wasteland of her box-like home and her soulless place of work.

They were shown into an empty office, where they waited in expectant silence. After a few minutes the office door opened. A woman stood in the doorway. She was slim and against the light she looked youthful. It wasn't until she stepped into the room that the lines on her face and the coarseness of her dyed blond hair destroyed the illusion. Tiny lines radiated from her thin lips. She looked at the two policemen with disdain.

She sat down, saying nothing, and lit a cigarette. Wesley watched her exhale a slow stream of smoke and waited for her to speak.

"I'm glad you're on to him," she said, the bitterness almost palpable. "You want to lock him up and throw away the bloody key."

Thomas de Monte, the stone carver accuses Christina Tandy of withholding a debt. Fined 2d.

An enquiry by jurors who state, regarding certain malefactors in the lord's woodland, that Matilda Tandy and her son Richard are in the habit of carting off the lord's wood and of burning down hedges belonging to the lord or to their neighbour, William de Monte, Each fined 12d.

Alice de Neston and Thomas de Monte, by special favour, have the lord's permission to marry before Michaelmas.

From the Court Rolls of Stokeworthy Manor

"Mrs. Stoke-Brown ..."

"Brown. It's just Brown. He calls himself Stoke-Brown, but it's just a bloody affectation if you ask me."

"You don't get on with your ex-husband?" said Gerry Heffernan, stating the obvious.

"He walked out on me two years ago. He said he was going to "find himself'." She said this with heavy irony. "He used to have a good job teaching art at the comprehensive and a lovely house, but it had to be sold when he left. He went to live out in the country ... to paint. He'd become obsessed."

"Obsessed?" Wesley was trying hard to follow her train of thought.

"His mother's maiden name was Stoke, and before she died she did all this research into her family tree. She found that her ancestors had owned this village called Stokeworthy ... the de Stokes, they were called. After she died Charlie kept disappearing off to this village and going off to libraries to look up his ancestors. Then he started on about living in the country ... how it was a better life." She rolled her eyes. "He talked as if the country was some paradise where the manure didn't stink and the yokels danced round the bloody maypole all day."

"And there was no crime and no ELF regulations for the farmers to worry about," said Heffernan, warming to the theme.

'Et in arcadla ego," added Wesley philosophically.

"That and all." The inspector gave him a curious glance. "He must have got a shock when he started living there. He was even burgled the other night."

"I can't say what goes on in his mind, Inspector. But in the end these dreams of living in this village and being an artist took him over completely. He lost a grip on reality and everything went his job, our marriage ... everything." She shrugged as if the whole thing was beyond her comprehension.

"When did you last see him?"

"Like I told the policeman who came to the house, it was about three months ago."

"Did your ex-husband ever mention a woman called Pauline Brent?" Heffernan sat forward in the plastic office chair, watching his prey.

"That's the woman who was found hanged in that churchyard ... I heard it on the news," said Linda, suddenly animated.

"According to your husband, they had a relationship: there were even hints of marriage," said Heffernan, omitting to mention that the hinting had all been on Pauline's side. He sat back and waited for a reaction.

This was news to Linda. She stubbed her cigarette out violently and stood up. "He never mentioned her... but then he wouldn't. He knew I wouldn't make trouble so long as I thought it was this bloody mid-life crisis thing, but another woman ..." She drew herself up to her full height, furious and ferocious. "No. I couldn't deal with losing everything ... not for another woman."

Wesley saw it all. She still had some residue of love for the wayward husband, but for him to replace her with another was the ultimate betrayal. If Linda had found out about her rival, mightn't she deny Charles an alibi when he most needed it, as a satisfying act of vengeance.

Linda sat back down in silence, her face set like stone. There was nothing more to discover that day. They told her she was free to return to work.

Instead of returning to her flickering VDU screen, Linda Brown made straight for the ladies', where she locked herself in a cubicle before being sick. Afterwards, she rinsed her face and looked into the brightly lit mirror, which showed up every line and imperfection. Her heart was still thumping inside her like a caged animal trying to escape.

Neil Watson's Latin was good, but the court rolls of Stokeworthy Manor had defeated him. He sat in the gloomy muniment room, gazing at the obscure legal Latin in some medieval clerk's appalling handwriting, and wondered why he wasn't outside enjoying the dig and the sunshine with his colleagues. He was no nearer discovering the identity of the hanged skeleton. The rolled-up membranes of vellum lay on the shelf inside the dusty cupboard, challenging him: they were bulky, about twelve inches wide, and made up of strips of vellum stitched together. Now yellowed and faded after more than five centuries, they held the secret. But the very quantity of the information they contained ruled out any quick discovery. Transcribing the things into legible English could be a few years' work for some dedicated historian.

With a sigh of resignation, Neil turned his attentions to the account books from the late fifteenth century which lay on a lower shelf. Whoever had kept these had at least possessed decent handwriting and had written in clear and concise English.

Being one who had always dismissed any form of accountancy as being strictly for the unimaginative, Neil was surprised to find himself fascinated by the entries and what they told him about the inhabitants of Stokeworthy Manor at the time. My lady, he discovered, had purchased a goodly length of blue ribbon for the son born to her on the night of the Feast of the Annunciation, 1475. A few days later the lord had bought a small pony for my lord his son. Surely not for the newborn baby, Neil thought: perhaps a gift for an older child displaced by the attention given to the new addition to the family. He found payments to Felicia de Monte, a wet nurse, and Alice de Neston, a nursemaid: payments for gifts given to visitors; a considerable sum spent during a visit by My Lord Courtenay, a local bigwig who landed on the de Stokes for dinner; payment to Robert the Minstrel, who provided the entertainment. The account books told the story of the de Stokes's daily affairs as vividly as any chronicle.

Neil flicked through the ancient books, fascinated, resolving to ask Philip Thewlis if he could take them away and study them further. But now he only had time for a tantalising taste, a brief flavour of life in a Devonshire manor house in the late fifteenth century. He picked up another of the volumes and opened it. This one was from later, 1492. My lady's baby son would have been seventeen. He turned the delicate pages slowly and carefully until a long entry caught his eye.

"For payment to Thomas de Monte, master stone carver forty pounds. Being for the carving of a great Tree of Jesse in the church of Saint Peter in the village of Stokeworthy to be set upon the south wall there." The entry went on to describe in detail each of the Jesse figures and their sturdy stone frame. It ended with "In addition a further carving to be set at the base of the great tree, this to be privy twixt my lord and Master de Monte'. Neil reread the last sentence and scratched his head. What could be 'privy' about a sculpture displayed in a parish church, that most public of places in the Middle Ages?

A loud knock on the muniment-room door brought Neil back to the present. "Neil," Mart's voice called. "We've found another statue. Hezekiah ... Are you coming to have a look?" Neil sighed and put the account book back on its shelf.

"It's about time we visited Mrs. Green," Heffernan said as they passed the sign proclaiming that Stokeworthy welcomed careful drivers.

Wesley smiled. "Wonder why she wants to see you." As Wesley parked outside Susan Green's cottage, a large BMW pulled slowly out of Worthy Court opposite. The beautiful Mrs. Wills was in the driving seat, her aspiring politician husband by her side. In the back sat an elderly couple, the man large and powerfully built, distinguished and still handsome for his years, and a small, bird-like woman, elegantly coiffeured, who stared blankly out of the car window at Wesley. The car disappeared down the road towards the Manor as Gerry Heffernan knocked on Susan Green's front door.

They waited, Heffernan smoothing down his unruly hair and shifting from foot to foot. When the door opened, Mrs. Green greeted them with a calm smile and asked them in. Heffernan took a seat on the sofa, his eyes downcast, looking like a nervous and oversized schoolboy. Wesley knew it would be up to him to ask the questions.

Susan Green took a deep breath. "I've been thinking about a question you asked last time you were here," she began. "That's why I called you, Inspector. I guess there's something you should know. I did see Pauline before she came here ... at least I'm sure it was her. But under the circumstances I thought it best not to mention it. After all, I wasn't one hundred per cent certain and she might have been there for a completely different reason and

"Please, Mrs. Green," said Wesley gently. "Just tell us about it and we'll judge whether or not it's relevant."

"I was a social worker in Birmingham," she said. "About fifteen years back we shared a building with the local Probation Service. Ex-prisoners used to visit their probation officer and ... well, I saw Pauline at the Probation Office. I'd been here a few months before I realised where I'd seen her before. I've a good memory for faces but..."

"Could she have been working there ... voluntary work, something like that?"