“It will be in a quarter mile on your left,” said Siger without opening his eyes. “About thirty seconds. You’ve done an excellent job of maintaining a steady speed, so I think my calculations will prove correct.”
Lois slowed and switched to the low beams. There it was. The turn was unmarked; they might well have missed it.
They drove under a canopy of old oak trees, on a road that was barely wide enough for a single vehicle. With only intermittent moonlight between the clouds, they continued on for several minutes through open fields, then across a stone bridge that traversed a creek, and finally up a gradual slope to the top of a hill.
As she slowed at the top of the hill, Lois could see bright white lights on the other side, and she knew what they must mean. She stopped the car. Siger opened his eyes.
Lois got out of the car, and a moment later, so did Siger.
They both stood and looked, without saying a word.
The road led down the hill and into a meadow. The meadow was bordered on the opposite side of the valley by a stand of tall pines, in dark silhouette against the sky. To the right, farther north, was the glimmer of a distant lake.
But what Lois cared about was just a few hundred yards down the slope from where they were standing. She had never seen plane wreckage before, except on the telly, and that, of course, was just from the point of view of the person holding the camera.
She hadn’t known what to expect, nor wanted to think about it, but what struck her now, looking down the slope toward the site, was how mundane the actual plane seemed, compared to the activity going on around it.
There was no field of strewn debris. The little plane had apparently just gone nose-down into the ground. Lois had no idea what might have caused that and was not inclined to guess. All she knew for certain was that the propeller and cab of the plane were bent and broken in front of the trees, the fuselage sticking into the air at almost a ninety-degree angle, and the wings intact.
None of that mattered. What distressed her was that, even from here, she could see that the plane had been fully engulfed in flame.
She could see the blackened metal and other materials clearly, because the entire scene, for a radius of about fifty yards out from the plane, was bathed in the bright white of floodlamps. Behind a perimeter of orange tape, Air Accident inspectors in fluorescent yellow vests hovered around the burned wreckage of the plane.
“We should go down there now,” said Siger. “There may still be something to be learned. Please do not be concerned that you will see—”
He stopped.
“See what?” said Lois.
Siger cleared his throat, then said, “The bodies will have already been removed.”
Lois made no response to that. She got back in the driver’s seat, started the engine without saying another word, and put the car in motion before Siger could even close his door.
They drove to within twenty yards of the perimeter and stopped. A small crowd of spectators had come from somewhere and gathered around in the dark—a loose cluster of civilians, standing outside the perimeter tape, staring in, talking among themselves in hushed voices, and maneuvering for better views of the burnt wreckage.
Several cars were parked nearby as well, just outside the range of the lamps.
“Is it a tourist attraction, then?” asked Lois.
“Locals, I think,” said Siger. “I noticed the tire tracks in the mud when we made our turn. These people came in the smaller passenger sedans from the opposite direction on the main road. There’s a smaller village out that way, too small, probably, for its own full emergency services. The larger vehicles—the initial emergency responders as well as the investigators who arrived in those two white vans—came from the same direction we did.”
“So the locals don’t have anything better to do in the evening?” said Lois, as she got out of the car.
Siger didn’t respond; he was already walking toward the perimeter tape, where a man sporting a red handlebar mustache was coming away from the scene. The man wore a white lab coat, walked with authority, and held up his hand when he saw them …
“Stay behind the tape,” he said.
“You are the coroner, I presume?” said Siger.
“I have no comments for the press,” said the man.
“Goodness. I hope we don’t look like we are from the tabloids,” said Lois, stepping up to the perimeter with Siger.
“I can see that you aren’t locals,” said the coroner. “And if you aren’t reporters, you can keep an even further distance. I have no patience with vulture tourism.”
“My friend here believes she might be next of kin,” said Siger, lying.
Lois started to gasp, but she stifled it.
“That’s interesting. Next of kin to whom? I’ve made no identification yet,” said the coroner.
“To put a finer point on it, she represents the only surviving family member of Laura Rankin.”
The coroner considered that for a moment. He sniffled, and rubbed his mustache with his fingers. Then he cleared his throat—painfully, by the sound of it.
“Would you like a lozenge?” said Lois, quite sincerely.
The coroner regarded them both suspiciously.
“If you have legitimate questions regarding identification of the remains, you may go to my office in Amesbury tomorrow morning at eight.”
“Thank you,” said Siger.
Now the coroner turned abruptly away, distracted by a tweedy pensioner couple who were too close to the perimeter tape.
“You there! Stay behind it, please,” he yelled, his voice cracking.
He turned back to Lois.
“You offered a lozenge?”
Lois produced one from a pack in her purse. The coroner thanked her, then turned away again and went back to his work.
Lois turned to Siger.
“He didn’t say it was them,” she said. “I don’t think he said that.”
“No,” said Siger. “He very carefully said nothing. Which is quite the correct response until he knows.”
There were both standing apart from the other civilians, but now someone called out to them.
“Hello there!”
It was the gentleman in the tweed coat and his wife, who a moment earlier had had their knuckles rapped for intruding a bit too close on the perimeter. The woman looked a bit sheepish about it. The gentleman came striding toward Lois and Siger now with a friendly smile.
“I don’t believe we’ve met before, have we?” said the man, extending his hand. “We’ve been in the village more than a week now, and thought we’d seen everyone there is to see!”
Siger politely shook the man’s hand.
“My name is Siger. My … colleague, Lois.”
The couple introduced themselves as Nancy and Roy. They were staying at someone’s little house in a village named Bodfyn, which they felt very lucky to have arranged through Airbnb, because the village had no hotels.
“And what about you two?” Nancy continued. “Do you have a place to stay?”
“We’re in Amesbury,” said Lois. “We only drove out to pay a visit to the—”
Siger interrupted.
“A visit to Bodfyn,” he said quickly. “We’re only staying in Amesbury because, as you say, the accommodations in Bodfyn are limited.”
“Then you will visit Bodfyn? That’s wonderful. Perhaps you’d care to join us for tea tomorrow?”
Lois wasn’t sure she wanted to have tea with a couple who visited fatal crash sites for the fun of it. She edged away, leaving Siger to handle the response, and sighed as she heard him respond in the affirmative.
Then something caught her eye.
The coroner had gone back to his car; three AAIB security personnel were at positions on the perimeter; two investigators were studying the point of impact of the propeller and the ground, and two more were kneeling down to sift through scorched debris that had spilled from the cabin of the plane.
Now one
of them was standing. He held something in one gloved hand as he carefully brushed away ash with the other.
He consulted a companion, who looked and nodded, and now he came walking back to the van with what he had found.
Lois saw what he was carrying, and for a moment she could not breathe.
It was a necklace—strands of silver, blackened with soot and partially melted from the fire, and a single teardrop sapphire.
Lois recognized it.
It was Laura’s.
19
Lois insisted on being at the coroner’s office early the following morning, even though the night that led into it had been one of the longest of her life.
That was partly because she had lain on her back worrying about Laura and Reggie. But it was also because Siger, who was supposed to be sleeping on the pullout cot in the front room, had not actually done so, at least so far as Lois could tell.
Instead, almost from the moment Lois had securely closed the bedroom door between them, he had played the violin. And not the cheery, up-tempo pieces he played in the subway for the morning commuters, or the soothing notes he played when the commuters returned from work in the evening. No, it was instead one of the most somber things she had ever heard.
She had finally gotten up and rapped on the door between them. And he had immediately stopped, and then started up again just as soon as she got back to her bed, only now at half volume. Which was to say, just loud enough that she could hear it if she listened for it, which she couldn’t help but do, which made it all the more annoying.
Even so, she had made sure that she and Siger were already standing there, in the chilly morning air, when the coroner arrived to open his office.
“Why didn’t you wait in your car and stay warm?” asked the coroner as he unlocked the door.
“I wanted to be sure we were here first,” said Lois.
Siger, standing next to her, said nothing, but nodded.
The coroner looked at Lois’s eyes, saw the shadows below them, and decided not to point out that there was no one else waiting and she might just as well have gotten some sleep. It was clear to him that if she could have slept, she would have.
“My receptionist won’t be in for half an hour,” said the coroner, as he let them in. “I myself must have some coffee before I do anything else. If you will both have a seat and give me five minutes, and are brave enough, you can share in my best efforts.”
“Thank you,” said Siger. “I’m sure nothing you do to coffee can make it worse than what I get every morning in the tube station.”
“Huh. Personally, when I go to London, I always wait until I’m out of the tube station to get my coffee, but to each his own. Milk or sugar?”
“Both,” said Lois.
“Black,” said Siger.
The coroner went through an interior door to the back rooms, and Lois and Siger sat down on green plastic chairs to wait.
The waiting room of the coroner’s office was not like that of a doctor’s. Or even that of a dentist’s. The chairs were not upholstered and there were no gossip magazines. Lois thought it was like the office of an extremely clean auto mechanic—but with no mildly risqué calendar and no car magazines. Just no magazines at all.
There was something to look at, though. On one of the side walls—opposite the one where the coroner had hung his own framed diplomas—was a museum-style display case containing several photos of varying sizes, with typewritten index cards pinned next to them.
At the top of the display case was a large label, in magenta block letters, that announced RECENT FINDS.
Siger stood in front of the display and studied it for some minutes, longer than it seemed to warrant, and then he went back and sat down next to Lois.
Siger didn’t seem to care about the lack of magazines. He also didn’t seem to care about small talk. If he cared about small talk, he would have realized that when two people are not good at it, magazines make it easier for them both not to feel awkward.
Of course, digital devices were just as good for that purpose, or perhaps even better. But Siger wasn’t using his.
He was just sitting there with his eyes closed—or at least Lois thought they were—and his fingertips pressed together again.
If he’s trying to sleep, she thought, he can join the club.
Now the coroner returned. He brought with him three cups of coffee and his digital tablet. He gave the black coffee to Siger, who finally opened his eyes; he gave the heavily modified one to Lois, who tasted it and decided the coroner had been truthful when he warned them of his coffee-making skills.
The coroner pulled up a plastic chair for himself, sat down facing the two of them, and fired up his digital tablet.
He began to speak in a soft, carefully modulated tone of voice that made it clear to Lois that he had gone into a bedside-manner mode. Or whatever the comparable mode was for coroners. Nice of him to try so hard, she thought.
“I am not at liberty to allow anyone in the general public to view the remains, other than next of kin,” said the coroner. “And we still don’t know who that might be. I am still in the process of making an identification. However, the accident investigators tell me that you—rather insistently—told them last night that you saw something that would help with that?”
He was asking this of Lois. Siger said nothing. He sampled the coffee and didn’t seem to mind the taste of it.
“Yes,” said Lois. “Last night. I saw it being carried away from the crash scene.”
“Is this a photo of it?”
The coroner showed Lois an image on his tablet.
It was of Laura’s necklace—the strands of silver, blackened by fire, and the single teardrop sapphire.
“Yes,” said Lois.
“Do you know something about it?”
“I know who wore it. She wore it at her wedding.”
“Who did?” said the coroner.
For a moment, Lois could not speak.
“Laura Rankin wore a necklace like that at her wedding,” said Siger.
“Laura Rankin the actress?”
“Yes,” said Siger. “It’s visible in the photos published by the paparazzi, if you need a quick identification. I’m sure there is a jeweler in London who can verify whom he made it for.”
“No doubt,” said the coroner. “But now that I know where to start, there are more direct means of identification.”
“Dental records?” asked Siger.
“Yes.”
Lois sniffled, wiped her eyes, and said that she did not know the name of Laura’s dentist. Or Reggie’s, either. She was sure that Reggie’s dentist did not actually go by the names Reggie had for him when returning from a visit.
“You needn’t worry about that,” said the coroner. “I’ll take care of it.”
Lois took a moment now, and she could hardly bear to look at the coroner as she spoke.
“Do you … do you need me to look at the … their … bodies?”
“No.”
“Laura’s aunt Mabel and Reggie’s brother, Nigel, are the nearest relatives. The only ones that I know of. Will they need to look—”
“No. And I should tell you that to this point we have found the actual remains of only one body. That of a woman.”
Lois looked up at the coroner when he said that. So did Siger.
“Do you mean there was only one person in the plane?” asked Siger.
“No, just that so far we have found only one set of remains. We have found a man’s watch and a belt buckle, but no physiological evidence yet of the man himself. But it’s still early in our investigation, and … well, skeletal remains can become difficult to recover for a variety of reasons.”
“I don’t think we should say anything to either Aunt Mabel or Nigel until we know for sure,” said Lois. She looked to both the coroner and Siger for confirmation.
Siger nodded.
“Of course,” said the coroner. “I suggest you both go back to your hotel an
d get some rest. I will contact you as soon as we know.”
“Thank you,” said Lois. “We won’t be at the hotel today, though; you’ll need to reach us on mobile. We are going to Bodfyn.”
“Really?” said the coroner. “There’s not much there. I would think you’d be more comfortable here in Amesbury.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Lois. “But last night we promised a couple that we would join them for tea.”
The coroner frowned.
“You mean a couple you met last night at the crash site?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm,” said the coroner, with a doctor’s noncommittal inflection.
“I try not to renege,” said Lois. “And anyway, just waiting in the hotel room to hear word is—well, it’s difficult, you know.”
The coroner nodded.
“Understood,” he said. “I’ll contact you by mobile as soon as I know.”
Siger paused in the lobby as they walked to the door, and he nodded toward the display cases.
“Is that a hobby?” he asked. “Or official business?”
“Official business,” said the coroner. “The Antiquities Act requires—or at least requests, because it’s not an easy thing to enforce—that when citizens happen upon historical antiquities in the area, they bring them to the coroner for recording and possible donation to the British Museum or other agencies. As opposed to most people’s first instinct, which I think is to rush out and sell them on eBay. I post all the recorded finds in that display.”
“Nothing recent, then, I gather,” said Siger. “Judging from the age of the photos.”
“No, nothing recent,” said the coroner. “The last big find of anything new was more than twenty years ago. Now, if there is anything else I can do for you, please don’t hesitate…”
Siger stopped in the doorway.
“I think many people might imagine that a coroner’s practice in such a bucolic area would be a quiet one, but it isn’t always, is it?”
“It can be quite busy enough for a part-timer like myself,” said the coroner. “I suppose we aren’t high on the lists for murder rate, but we have our fatal auto accidents and the occasional drunken drowning. Bird-watchers getting shot on misty mornings by grouse hunters. Food poisonings that have to be investigated to ascertain whether they were indeed just food poisonings, which they always are.”
A Baker Street Wedding Page 13