At that moment, the door opened and the new principal appeared, trailed by Nat and Julian who hung back shyly while further introductions were made. Despite a certain self-deprecating Woosterishness, Dr O’Keefe exuded a quiet authority which suggested to Markham that he could be formidable. Certainly, Nat and Julian appeared somewhat intimidated, the former gazing up at his new headmaster with reverential awe.
Markham understood immediately why Olivia had yearned towards the two boys. Nat was clearly a doughty little character, with an expression of ingrained wariness, as though life had already dealt him a harsh hand and he was watchful for further blows. Julian was more difficult to read, but Markham sensed the lonely vulnerability lurking beneath a surface nonchalance. Evidently a unit, there was something infinitely touching about the boys’ rapport – as though each had found in the other a whole family that had been lost.
‘By way of a special privilege, Inspector, I am allowing two of our more responsible students’ – Nat very solemn – ‘to show you and DS Noakes around St Mary’s.’ The principal turned to Woodcourt. ‘I wonder if I can walk over to the cathedral with you. Just a quick query.’
‘Of course,’ replied the canon affably. He smiled kindly, albeit somewhat absent-mindedly, at Nat and Julian, obviously preoccupied with thoughts of his next appointment.
Cynthia appeared at the door of the parlour with murmured injunctions as to lunch and tea. Their voices faded away down the corridor.
Noakes addressed Nat and Julian. ‘It’ll be good to see the grottoes through your eyes – have an insider’s point of view.’ With a little awkward gesture, he added, ‘To be honest, I feel a bit out of my depth. More of a Church-at-Christmas-and-Easter kind of bloke, if you know what I mean.’
It was remarkable, Markham thought, how his colleague – so often crass and clumsy in his dealings with the public – had such a sure touch with children.
They visibly brightened at Noakes’s respectful, man-to-man tones, and flushed with pleasure when the DS declared, ‘Right, Guv. I’m off to have a recce with the lads. I’m in safe hands with these two.’
‘Yes, we know all the secrets!’ confirmed Nat.
The little party left the parlour.
There it was again. That word secrets!
Markham stood alone in the deserted room. The sun had gone in and a gust of wind whistled mournfully round the casement windows.
His eyes returned to ‘The Forty Martyrs’. What was it the canon had called the carpenter-saint?
The master illusionist.
Was St Mary’s shimmering golden radiance an illusion? And, if so, what lay beneath?
At that moment, Markham thought he heard a light rustle from the corridor, as though fingers had softly swept the panelling outside the door. Then silence.
Time to go.
Markham gathered up his papers and left the parlour. A fanciful observer might have imagined that the martyrs’ eyes followed his departing form.
5. The Grottoes
Like Olivia the previous day, Noakes was distinctly underwhelmed by his first sight of St Mary’s Grottoes. Nasty-looking place, he thought to himself, as he surveyed the caves. Like skulls they were, with all those gaps and hollows so many toothless bony gums.
Aware that Nat and Julian were looking at him expectantly, he did his best to look suitably impressed. And in fairness, he reflected, the place had been neglected over the years. Hardly a Time Team spectacular.
Fluorescent-jacketed officers waved cheerfully as he picked his way with Nat and Julian across the uneven muddy terrain to a narrow, sheer-sided little gully with crumbling sandstone steps projecting at right angles from the foot of the largest cave. A verdigris-encrusted rail formed a rickety balustrade which appeared more ornamental than useful.
‘OK to go down, Mike?’ he asked the paper-suited SOCO officer who was painstakingly bagging soil samples at the head of the stairs.
‘Be my guest,’ replied the other. ‘The contractors were in earlier checking for earth-falls, shoring up and what have you. So it’s safe. Have you got a torch? It’s a bit murky down there.’
Quick as a flash, Nat whipped out a traveller-set with Maglite torch and Swiss army knife.
‘Blimey, talk about coming prepared! Think we might have a candidate for the Cadet Corps here eh, Noakes!’
Seeing how Nat swelled with pride, the DS forbore to produce his own police-issue flashlight. Gingerly, he led the way down the precipitous descent.
Once underground, it was cold, musty and perfectly still, as though hermetically sealed off from the everyday world above.
The three stood in a narrow passage at the bottom of the steps where the sandstone gave way to lime washed walls glistening with damp.
‘Yuck, it smells like our bogs!’ exclaimed Nat, wrinkling his nose in disgust.
Julian glanced apologetically at Noakes, visibly relaxing when the latter winked broadly and riposted, ‘Nah, more like Bromgrove CID’s!’
‘There used to be a large marsh somewhere round here, next to the meadow,’ Julian volunteered. ‘That’s most prob’ly why it smells so bad.’
‘And it was used to store all those bones.’ Nat was not to be outdone. ‘You know the oss – oss—’ he finally gave up, ‘oss-thingy.’
‘Ossuary,’ Julian corrected patiently.
‘What’s one of them?’ Noakes asked, seeking to draw out the quiet, serious boy.
‘It’s a place to keep the bones of dead people, when the graveyards are full and there isn’t any more space,’ Julian replied earnestly. ‘In some countries, they even cover walls and ceilings with skulls and skeletons – like a sort of collage.’
‘That’s perfectly horrid!’ Nat sounded outraged, but Noakes could tell he was enthralled by the notion of walls patterned with crania in a grinning cavalcade of death.
Unexpectedly, Julian grinned at the younger boy. ‘It’s meant to make you think about being good, Nat.’ His voice dropped to a melodramatic whisper. ‘What you are now, we once were. What we are now, you shall be.’ In response to Noakes’s enquiring look, he explained, ‘That’s an inscription from one of the graves in the cathedral graveyard.’
Concentrates the mind right enough, thought Noakes, somewhat discomposed.
Aloud, he said, ‘A bit spooky, that is. Reckon folk should stick with the Bible. Now, let’s check out this corridor. C’mon, Nat, we’re going to need that torch of yours!’ As he spoke, with a prestidigitator’s flourish, Noakes took a ball of string from his pocket and proceeded to loop it around the stair-rail.
‘What’s that for?’ demanded Nat with lively curiosity.
‘I’m going to spin out the string behind us so we can easily find our way back and don’t have to wait for them above to come and rescue us.’
Noakes knew that the so-called catacombs were compact – a couple of hundred square feet at most – with no danger of the little group getting lost, but he figured Nat and Julian would respond to a touch of drama.
‘It’s just like in Theseus and the Minotaur. You remember that story, don’t you, Nat?’ Julian sounded keyed up. ‘The one about the creature in ancient times with the head of a bull and body of a man. They built a labyrinth and the wicked king fed his enemies to the monster. Then Prince Theseus came and defeated the creature. He could get out of the maze cos the king’s beautiful daughter had given him a ball of thread and told him to tie one end to the door post.’
‘Oh yes! But he was really mean to the princess, wasn’t he?’ Nat was keen that Noakes should know of the princely perfidy. ‘Left her behind when he sailed away!’
‘Well, that was proper ungrateful,’ agreed the DS.
Nat nodded with grim satisfaction. ‘Theseus had lots of bad luck after that an’ it served him right.’
The trio passed through several little corridors like the vestibule entrance. Each was lined with niches, some oval, some horizontal – desolate little bleached receptacles where bones had been left to moulder into a
quintessence of dust.
The passages appeared to form an octagon, in the middle of which was a small claustrophobic space supported by squat pillars which seemed to strain under the weight of centuries. The ceiling at this point was so low that the top of Noakes’s head almost brushed it.
The vault held four oblong shelves which looked to have been excavated more recently than the other alcoves, judging by the way their dark cement stood out against the neighbouring lime wash.
Noakes was not a man generally much troubled by his imagination, but something about the four narrow shafts – leprous blotches against the surrounding whiteness – made his skin crawl. While the other cubbyholes and crannies had inspired merely a quiet sadness, the sight of these ledges made his mind swim with charnel images of coffins, tombs and worms. At that moment, he felt a deadening numbness, even stronger than fear, which intensified the claustrophobia of the place. As perspiration rolled down his forehead and into his eyes, Noakes sensed that Julian felt it too. Their eyes locked for an instant like those of petrified rats trapped in a sewer. What had been buried in that wall?
The question hammered insistently inside Noakes’s head.
The DS watched uncomfortably as Julian walked over to one of the burial niches and swept his fingers across its dank interior before slowly rejoining his companions.
Staring at the four narrow cavities, a half-remembered Sunday School image came into Noakes’s mind of lost souls condemned to whirl like cinders down a bottomless shaft while a red-eyed devil gloated in the shadows. This impression was so vivid that he half expected to see his childhood bogeyman emerge from the gloom in a cloud of malignant ectoplasm.
‘D’you think there could be any ghosts down here, Mr Noakes?’
Nat’s voice sounded small and he looked pinched and wan, white face and arms specking the gloom and transforming him into a changeling.
Noakes became deliberately casual, almost gossipy.
‘Well, I don’t rightly know about this place, Nat. But they say there was a skeleton discovered down in the cellars out at Sir Philip Soames’s property many years ago, long before my time, of course. Nobody could work out the cause of death or the identity of the poor wretch. Most mysterious of all, they found two iron staples, about two feet apart from each other, near the skeleton. One of these had a short chain hanging from it and the other had a padlock…’
‘So, someone was kept chained up like a wild animal,’ breathed Nat entranced. ‘Is the skeleton still down there?’
‘Sorry to disappoint, son,’ replied Noakes lightly, ‘They took it away for a decent burial in the cathedral graveyard.’
The DS’s lips twitched at Nat’s crestfallen expression as it dawned on the boy that his hopes of a further cache of macabre relics were doomed to disappointment.
At least the anecdote had served to distract him and lighten the oppressive atmosphere.
There’s something wrong here, I can feel it, Noakes thought. Best get moving.
He shook himself, as though to slough off the pervasive taint of the place, noting uneasily that Julian was unable to tear his eyes away from the disfiguring stains which appeared to hold a fearful fascination for him. So much so, that it took two reminders and a firm prod to jolt him out of his trance.
‘I think Julian’s a bit freaked out, Mr Noakes.’ Nat looked at his friend in concern.
‘Mebbe he just doesn’t like being underground,’ the DS temporized.
Back on the surface once more, the little party gratefully gulped down lungfuls of cold fresh air. Noakes was surprised at how relieved he felt to have left the clammy little sepulchre and guessed that the two boys felt the same. Julian’s face had turned the colour of putty, while Nat kept darting worried looks at him. Privately, the DS cursed himself for not having recced the place before bringing the two youngsters below ground. The Boys’ Own detour had turned into something far more disturbing.
Nasty, Noakes thought again. Like that rank scrap of ground just over the hedge there, choked in long grass and weeds with its row of wonky crosses – the little teachers’ cemetery or whatever it was. Bloody depressing place to end up.
Shrewdly taking in the situation at a glance, the SOCO officer who had admitted them to the lower levels engaged Nat and Julian in some sparky banter. Noakes meanwhile seized his chance to slip over to one of the uniforms.
‘Anything?’ he grunted.
‘Nothing yet, Noakesy.’
‘Where did they find the bodies?’
The young constable gestured to the perimeter of the excavation site which was criss-crossed in every direction by archaeological and police pegs, tapes and other boundary markers.
‘That section backs onto the little private cemetery, right?’ Noakes narrowed his eyes as he calculated the distance between the two plots.
‘Yeah. Ginormous screw up. The diggers weren’t supposed to be turning over that area. Site architect had said it was strictly off limits – smack on top of a burial ground, you see – but for some reason the message didn’t get through. That’s the architect over there, Edward Preston.’
As though conscious that he was under discussion, the object of their scrutiny waved a greeting and trudged across to Noakes. Tall, square-jawed, with wavy auburn hair and chiselled cheekbones, his startling good looks lent the unbecoming hi-vis waterproof and hard hat an air of distinction. God, it’s Richard Chamberlain in a donkey jacket, the DS thought to himself as the piercing blue eyes met his own.
He cleared his throat and straightened up, inwardly cursing his lack of inches.
‘DS George Noakes, Bromgrove CID. Mr Preston?’
‘At your service.’ A clear pleasant tenor to match the frank open features.
‘Mr Preston! Mr Preston!’
Nat panted across to them. ‘You haven’t forgotten you’re going to let me have a go on the digger?’ he burst out.
The architect laughed. ‘As if there was any chance of my forgetting!’
From the affectionate way he tousled the golden head, it was clear the architect was very fond of his would-be assistant.
Julian came up at a more sedate pace. ‘Nat,’ he said reprovingly, ‘you know we’re not supposed to pester Mr Preston.’
‘It’s no bother, Nat,’ reassured the other. ‘And you’ll be welcome to have a go too.’ He winked at Julian.
For all his resentment of Edward Preston’s natural advantages, Noakes had to admit he had an easy way with the two boys.
‘I’ll be dropping into school later today, Detective. We could bring each other up to speed then.’
Noakes, having no great wish to conduct an interview while up to his hocks in mud, readily agreed to the architect’s proposal and the little troop headed back to St Mary’s.
On their return, Cynthia escorted Nat to clean off the mud with which he was mysteriously caked – ‘as if you had wallowed in it!’
Noakes and Julian were left in the school kitchen toasting themselves in front of the Aga. A substantial high tea was laid out on the well-scrubbed kitchen table but, with gentlemanly restraint, Julian clearly intended to wait for Cynthia and Nat before tucking in. With much inward sighing, Noakes followed his lead.
As they lounged in companionable silence, Noakes became aware that Julian held something in his hand.
‘What have you got there, son?’ he asked lazily.
Julian extended his hand.
A little plastic figurine. A Star Wars character, at a guess.
‘It’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mr Noakes.’ Seeing the other’s look of incomprehension, he added kindly, ‘Luke Skywater’s mentor and a Jedi Master.’
Noakes was none the wiser but nodded encouragement.
‘You get them with children’s magazines,’ Julian continued, ‘as free gifts. I found it inside one of those empty shelves at the grottoes.’
Noakes sat bolt upright, suddenly fully alert.
Careful, he told himself, mustn’t alarm the boy.
‘What, just
now?’ he asked with no alteration in tone.
‘Yes, I put my hand down one of the holes when we were looking round.’
It was true. In his mind’s eye, Noakes saw Julian gently caressing the inside of the tomb, almost as if he was communing with the spirts of the dead.
What was a child’s toy doing in that miserable place?
As Noakes cradled the figurine wonderingly in his hand, it seemed to vibrate with a mysterious sadness. His mind teemed with questions. Who was its owner? How did it come to be down in the tunnels? Was there any connection with the bodies discovered in the grottoes?
The DS’s hand closed upon the little plastic relic. Relic. He had the sudden sickening conviction that the owner of this little model was long dead.
‘D’you mind if I hang onto this for a bit, Julian?’ Nothing to show his heart was beating wildly.
‘Could it be useful then, Mr Noakes?’ There was something curiously intense about Julian’s tone.
‘Well, we’ve not much to go on right now, so I’d like to show this to Inspector Markham.’ He hesitated then added, ‘Can I ask you to keep this between the three of us for now – just you, me and the DI?’
‘Not even Nat to know?’
‘The fewer people in the loop the better, Julian.’
The warning that lives might depend on his discretion was never uttered.
Julian’s eyes met his own with an oddly adult expression. ‘You can rely on me, Mr Noakes.’
Footsteps were approaching along the corridor.
‘Just one thing, sir.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Would I be able to have it back later? You know, when you’ve finished the investigation.’
A lump rose in Noakes’s throat. ‘Never fear,’ he said gently, ‘I’ll see you get it back.’ Then, as though embarrassed by this momentary lapse into softness, he chivvied gruffly, ‘Come on, lad, you could do with some flesh on those bones. Let’s have our tea!’
With the arrival of Cynthia and Nat, conversation became general. The boys’ affection for their teacher was obvious and any friend of Olivia had to be kosher, but Noakes found it hard to relax. These intense, highly-strung types were always heavy going and her eyes skittered everywhere. ’Course, folk were always uncomfortable when the police came calling, but Miss Gibson seemed unusually jumpy. Any fool could see she had a thumping great crush on the dishy architect. Dropped a whole plate of scones when he popped his head round the kitchen door, Noakes observed disapprovingly. The DS would never have pegged them for a couple, but there was no accounting for tastes, he opined sagaciously.
Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set Page 7