Murder on the Old Road (3 page)

This path, that wood, smelt of decay and evil. Somewhere near here violence had taken place in the past, with the victim crying out for justice. His emotions had been stamped like ‘fingerprints' on the atmosphere for those who followed to pick up. She'd met them before, and now they were engulfing her again. Before the gunshot that had put Peter in a wheelchair, he had been in the police force, and there he had acquired a reputation for ‘intuition' that sparked off investigations into past cases. It had not been intuition, however, it was their shared gift – if gift it was – for sensing fingerprints, and now they put it to good use in the cases taken on by Marsh & Daughter.

Just as she could stand it no longer, the nausea passed, suddenly and completely. The misty sun cleared, and she could see Valentine Harper ahead with Aletta. She could hear Julian's loud bray, she could see Tim Hurst. They all seemed united in one common purpose, and she was an outsider, caught up in a situation she did not understand. But that was today's dark puzzle, not the reeking claws of yesterday she had experienced while walking out of that wood.

She ran to catch Luke up, and he turned to grin at her. The grin faded as he saw her face.

‘What's wrong?'

‘I'm OK now.' That was because she was clear of that wood. Luke didn't believe her though, and he put his arm round her.

‘Life getting to you, sweetheart?'

She wondered if he meant their personal problem, but it wasn't that. Not today.

Luke knew only about Marsh & Daughter's cases, not about what sparked them off. She could never bring herself to tell him, since their cases stood up by themselves and the reasons for their choices lay between herself and Peter. She sometimes thought Luke might suspect that there was more to the selection than she told him, and that he might feel excluded. She would tell him one day, she told herself. But not today.

She began to breathe more easily now, but Luke was still anxious.

‘We'll go back right now,' he said.

Back to that wood? She couldn't, even with Luke's support. She clutched at him as he turned round, and Anne Fanshawe, coming up behind them, must have noticed something wrong. ‘Nasty place, Peacock Wood. It always gives me the shivers. It must be the murder.'

So she had been right, Georgia realized without surprise. Violence had taken place there. ‘Murder?' she repeated.

‘Years ago, of course,' Anne said hastily. ‘Another age, another country. I've only been back in Kent seven years, and only four of them as vicar of Chillingham, so I don't feel personally involved.'

Anne was clearly sorry she had ever mentioned the word murder, and Georgia felt torn between a need to know more and her instinctive desire to get as far from this place as possible. ‘Was the murderer ever found?' she managed to ask.

‘No.' Then, perhaps feeling she had been too abrupt, Anne continued, ‘Look, I'm no historian, and I don't know that much about it. I've three other churches to look after besides Chillingham.'

Did the lady protest too much? Georgia must have looked as disturbed as she felt, for Anne looked at her doubtfully. ‘You're still a bit white. I'll drive you both back to the village after we've seen the jolly troupers off at Canterbury. My car's in the car park there.'

Simon was getting ready for the evening trade when Georgia and Luke arrived at the Three Peacocks, but he was eager for news of Tim and abandoned his kitchen duties. ‘How did it go?'

‘Good send-off,' Luke told him. ‘The pilgrims duly received a public blessing at the Cathedral entrance with at least three press there, plus local TV News.'

‘Tim do OK?' Simon asked. ‘He was pretty wound up about it.' Tim had planned and given a short speech after the blessing.

‘Fine,' Georgia told him. ‘After that, one of the pilgrims tripped over a cable, and somebody who said he was Herbert of Bosham and doubling De Brito got his sword tangled up in his cloak.'

Simon laughed. ‘That'll be Matthew Moon, Lisa's elder son. Derek, who's looking after the bar for me, is the younger. Rotten typecasting. De Brito's one of the chief villains, and Matthew's the gentlest soul in the village.'

‘Looks as if Becket's life may be spared after all then,' Luke commented.

‘Take my Matthew away from his carpentry and he'd trip over his own feet.' A pleasant looking elderly lady – perhaps in her late sixties, and with a cloud of white hair around a round rosy face – emerged from the kitchen area into the bar. Simon introduced her as Lisa Moon. Despite the stereotyped farmer's wife appearance, Georgia was aware of shrewd eyes busy summing her up.

‘You're not in the play then?' Georgia asked.

‘Bless you no. Matthew's in it, and my granddaughter Tess is too. That's enough for one family. The rest of us get on with our work.'

‘The Moons pretty well run this village,' Simon joked. ‘Matthew's wife Christine runs the village shop, Matthew's the carpenter, Derek decorates and builds. Been here for centuries, haven't you, Lisa?'

‘Clive was the Moon, not me,' she replied. ‘My husband, he was. As for me, I was an incomer way back. Lived all of six miles away, I did. Just about accepted now.'

‘Tess, Lisa's granddaughter, is playing Fair Rosamund, the king's beautiful mistress, whom the wicked Queen Eleanor tried to poison, just like Snow White,' Simon said. ‘Lisa—' Simon broke off, perhaps aware that Lisa wasn't laughing.

‘Long time ago, Simon,' she said.

Georgia watched them curiously. There had surely been a note of warning in Lisa's voice. More subtext?

TWO

‘
C
an we look in on Peter before we go home?' Georgia asked.

Luke nodded. ‘Fine by me. Will Janie be there?' Janie was Peter's fiancée, but the relationship was an up and down one. Luke was certain that Janie and Peter would make a successful long term relationship, whereas Georgia was none too sure.

‘Try prising her away.' She spoke more sharply than she had meant to, and when Luke looked surprised, she regretted it.

Sure enough, though, as she rang the doorbell, then used her key (as was their standard arrangement), she saw Peter in his office on the left and a glum-looking Janie watching TV in the living room on the right. In her late forties, Janie was about ten years older than Georgia, but they got on well, which was surprising given how different they were in most ways. Janie favoured the romantic approach to life, although that hid a very practical side indeed, while Georgia was aware that she herself took life head on, hiding her own romantic side. She longed to sweep around in floating romantic dresses as Janie did, but never had the nerve.

‘Hi,' Janie got up to greet them. ‘Come to join me in my solitary confinement?'

‘I need a word with Peter first,' Georgia said apologetically, knowing she would be delaying him even longer. That was easy enough, and she wondered how many evenings Janie spent like this. She wasn't living here permanently, and therefore had to travel over each time, only to find, no doubt, that all too often Peter considered the computer more interesting – as Janie must view it.

Peter tore his gaze away from the offending computer as Georgia went in. ‘Ah,' he said complacently, ‘I wondered if you'd pop in. Fingerprints?'

‘So you knew.' Georgia was indignant, but not greatly surprised. ‘You might have warned me about that wood.'

He looked hurt. ‘I
didn't
know. Anyway, if I had warned you, it wouldn't have been a fair test.'

‘What of?' She knew all too well the answer to that one, but would make Peter pay for not confiding in her. ‘That unsolved murder?'

‘So
you
knew,' he said accusingly.

‘That's
all
I know. Tell me.'

‘Murder on the Old Road in 1967. A new one on me, although we live so near to it, but I didn't move here with your mother until after that. You were a mere toddler. I've spent hours on the Internet since I got back, checking
The Times
and everything else that I could click on or read.'

‘What set you off?'

‘Simon, our friendly but desperate publican.'

‘Desperate about trade or Tim, do you think?'

‘The former more obviously. And the murder—' Peter paused for effect.

She had to know. ‘Whose was it?'

‘Hugh Wayncroft, lord of the manor and Julian's father.'

She hadn't expected that, and found it astonishing. This afternoon Julian had been marching in pilgrimage right past the place where his father had been murdered. True, it was forty years ago, but even so, how could he bear to go there? Then she did her arithmetic. Julian would scarcely have been born or would have been only a toddler when the murder happened, and so his father had no physical reality for him. But for his half brother? Hugh had been his stepfather, and in 1967 Valentine would have been about Sebastian Wayncroft's age today. Was that significant or was she building without bricks?

‘No one was charged,' Peter continued, happy now that he had taken her by surprise, ‘and now you confirm there were fingerprints. Wouldn't that suggest there are still outstanding issues? Where did you feel these fingerprints?'

‘At the far end of Peacock Wood – that's the first one you come to on the Old Road going towards Canterbury. You can see it from the village. Was he killed there, do you know?'

‘Yes.'

‘Shot during a shooting party?' she asked. That might explain why no one was charged – it could easily have been an accident. Then she realized Peter was looking smug, which meant he was holding something back.

‘No. Strangled, and on a pilgrimage.'

‘
What
?'

‘Just like the one you joined today,' Peter told her. She could see he was enjoying winding her up. ‘In 1967 there was a pilgrimage from Winchester to Canterbury to stage Tennyson's
Becket
.'

‘They have this pilgrimage and play every
year
?'

‘No. It's the first time since 1967.'

‘But that really is creepy.' Too creepy, she thought with foreboding.

‘Someone had the bright idea that it would be good to recreate it. The pilgrimage and play presumably, rather than the murder. The plan is to put the village on the map, rather than just to promote the play. They had an identical plan in 1967, which doesn't seem to have come to anything. You'd think the murder would have achieved that by itself, but everything went quiet. The sixties pilgrimage, as is this one, was to celebrate the July anniversary. As Aletta said, winter is not a good time for pilgrimages, and my guess is that the monks realized that it wouldn't attract so many pilgrims as the summer date. And we think
we're
publicity conscious. In 1220, fifty years after Becket was murdered, his tomb was moved from the crypt to the Trinity Chapel, and fifty years after that came the first Jubilee remembrance of it. I wonder if the 1967 Chillingham pilgrimage was some sort of trial run for a really big do in 1970?'

‘Was there one?'

‘Not so far as I can see.' Peter frowned. ‘Strange that. The excitement all died down again, along with all reference to Hugh Wayncroft's murder. Chillingham seems to have sunk back into slumber again until this year.'

‘Because of the murder, do you think?'

‘Perhaps. But, if so, why the repeat performance?'

‘Doesn't Simon know why?'

‘I didn't ask. Of course, he wasn't in Chillingham in 1967.'

‘Nor was the vicar, the Reverend Fanshawe.'

‘Oh yes, she was.' Peter looked smug at pulling this new rabbit out of his hat. ‘Her name was then Anne Riding, daughter of the village historian and teacher Bill Riding. She was ten years old and played the role of Geoffrey in
Becket
, the small son of Fair Rosamund, the king's mistress.'

Again, Georgia was taken aback. She was sure Anne had made no mention of that, only that she had been back in Kent seven years. Perhaps there had been no intention to mislead her, and yet every antenna Georgia possessed was waving as furiously as a hazel twig in the hands of a water-diviner. Was there a conspiracy of silence in Chillingham? Or had life simply moved on after a tragic episode? But if the latter, surely some people must still feel the wounds.

‘Go ahead. Tell me,' she said.

She could see Peter was itching to spill out the whole story, and she wanted to hear it. Hugh Wayncroft had been murdered over forty years previously, but the family was still at odds with itself, and perhaps Chillingham itself was too. In a small village unrest could spread from the centre out.

At the back of her mind she registered that Janie would be fuming if she and Peter stayed talking much longer, but consoled herself that, far from being annoyed, it was possible Janie might be grateful. This puzzle, virtually on his own doorstep, might distract Peter from his other preoccupations, which she suspected were also driving Janie crazy.

Peter needed no urging. ‘Let's start with Hugh Wayncroft's murder. He was forty-five, married, with a small child, Julian. His body was found in woods close by the Old Road – or, if you, prefer Pilgrims' Way – which at that point is now the North Downs Way. He was still clad in his Becket costume, but the pilgrimage was nearing its end. The company had walked the whole length of the Old Road from Winchester to Canterbury, so far as was possible, because by 1967 parts of it had long disappeared. Tennyson's play had been performed in Canterbury, and on Sunday, the ninth of July, the happy pilgrims had walked the last few miles back from their triumph to an intended celebratory welcome in the Three Peacocks.'

‘I wonder who sparked off the notion that repeating it would be a good idea. And what happened to the final celebration? Was it still held?'

‘As to the first question: no idea. As for the second, yes, in a way. With the largish cast, and all the production staff and so, over forty people were involved. Only some time after they had reached the Three Peacocks, where the publican Fred Miller had arranged for the welcome home, was it realized that Hugh Wayncroft was no longer with them. When it was discovered he hadn't returned to Chillingham Place either, a search party set out and found his body. He'd been strangled, and there the matter rests.'