‘Wasn’t it explored when she disappeared?’ Sage said, surprised.
‘The garden area was searched, briefly, and I like to think thoroughly. But when we went for a detailed warrant for the whole grounds it was refused and our previous limited warrant was rescinded. We didn’t get to search again with dogs and more equipment and we never went inside.’
Trent turned to Sage. ‘Let’s have a quick look, then we’ll sweep the floor and look under it with the GPR.’
Lenham walked back to the door and nodded to one of his officers, who leaned on it. It didn’t budge.
The PC looked up. ‘It’s got the weight of the whole roof on this corner, sir.’
Sage pointed at a line of three rusted hinges. ‘These don’t look so solid.’
Lenham leaned on the top edge and one of the hinges gave way with a puff of wood dust. ‘That’s better. Trent, Guichard, give me a hand.’ The three men forced the edge of the door inwards, creating a narrow wedge of a gap.
Trent leaned forward. ‘If we hold it open, you can look inside, Sage. Here, take my torch.’ The door creaked and cracked as they pushed, giving way a few more inches. ‘Careful, in case it comes down.’
Sage angled the torch into the stable, playing the light over the walls. Old riding tack, white with mould, hung from hooks. Cobwebs trailed almost to the ground. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom. A few holes in the roof allowed a grey light to creep in and brighten the floor. The sight took her breath away. Huge teeth in a yellow mask, eye sockets high on the triangular skull. It was the eerie shape of a horse’s head.
‘I don’t understand.’ She leaned on the door some more and with Felix and Trent’s help managed to force the hinges forward a few more inches. ‘There’s a horse’s skull on the floor.’
‘Don’t go inside,’ Trent warned. ‘The door is holding the frame up.’
She put her head around the doorframe, playing the beam of light around the concrete, over the cobwebs that filled the interior. ‘It’s a whole horse,’ she said, her voice strained. She swallowed the first of her questions. ‘I mean, it’s the skeleton of a horse. There’s some mummification, too.’
‘We’re going to have to search the stable for Lara Black,’ Lenham said. He stepped closer, peering in over her shoulder. ‘I doubt if we would have missed the smell of a decomposing horse, so it most likely happened after Lara went missing.’ They scraped it open another few inches before the roof sagged onto it.
‘It could have happened much later.’ She looked around at the stall door inside, kicked almost to pieces. She pulled her camera out of an inside pocket of her coat. ‘I think it might have been left in here, locked in. Look at the damage to the walls inside.’ She snapped a few pictures. The skull grinned back at her.
The wooden walls were reinforced by metal sheeting, dented with hundreds of hoof-shaped semicircles.
‘How long ago did it die?’ Lenham put his hand over his mouth. ‘It’s still a bit rank in there.’
‘A decade at least. Look at all the insect damage on the mummified skin over its ribs.’ Sage put a foot onto the threshold and peered behind the door. ‘Oh, God, there’s another one, smaller. They would have lasted a couple of days maybe, without water. Starvation would have taken a lot longer.’ She snapped another sequence of shots, the flash lighting up the grinning skulls and leather-covered ribcages.
Felix pulled at her shoulder. ‘Come out, it’s not safe. Let’s get the stable shored up. I think it’s mostly held up by brambles.’
She stepped back into the fresh air. ‘That’s horrible.’ She leaned against a tree, took a few breaths. ‘I can’t see how it relates to River’s death, but it might be something to do with Lara’s disappearance. We can probably get an estimated date for the horses.’ She looked around. ‘I can’t believe no one noticed the smell of two large animals decomposing for months. The stench must have been awful.’
Felix looked back at the building where Trent and Lenham were looking through the door and talking. ‘I don’t know, locked inside, maybe it was mostly contained. And it’s away from the house and the field. But why would anyone do that? I mean, who would go to the trouble of building a stable for their horses then leave them to die? That’s madness.’
Lenham walked over, shaking his head. ‘Christ.’ He pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘I’m sorry, do you mind?’
Felix nodded. ‘Go ahead.’
Lenham lit up and blew a cloud of smoke away from Sage. ‘My daughter has got two ponies.’
‘Out in the forest?’ Sage said.
He shook his head. ‘Stabled outside Lyndhurst. I don’t ride but I quite like looking after them. Shit. That’s horrible. We’re going to arrest Chorleigh on suspicion of cruelty, see if that shakes out anything useful.’
She kicked some of the earth aside from the concrete apron underfoot. ‘There’s quite a bit of yard out here.’
‘I can feel it,’ Lenham said. ‘I’ll call it in, but we can’t look under the floor until forensics have done a proper examination. We’ll need a vet to do the necropsy on the horses. There could be something of Lara’s in there – we don’t even know she isn’t dead in one of the stalls.’ He took another long drag on the cigarette. ‘You need to look at those carcasses.’
10
‘Volume 1 of Baron Abercrombie’s book of Bronze Age pottery defines potsherds from cord beakers which predominate in what he calls province 1, Wessex south of the Thames. It is possible to see small areas of geometric decoration typical of these earliest British Bronze Age remains.’
Journal of Edwin Masters, 28th June 1913
Several spoil heaps on oilcloths now dot the ground beside the barrows. Peter has set himself the task of sieving the soil as I trowel it out, and two of his friends from school have helped barrow the earth over to his makeshift tent. As a consequence, he has a sizeable collection of pot pieces and the odd piece of knapped flint that might be the remains of a stonemason’s working thousands of years ago. Hilda Chorleigh, Molly and Peter’s cousin, is helping me. She has stopped flirting so much with me now and I like her better. She has taken to wearing jodhpurs and is handy with a trowel. It was she who first hit the edge of the stone that brought us all running.
It was a rough-hewn slab of stone perhaps four feet by two and irregular in shape. Peter and I exposed it slowly, and then a matching fellow, lying alongside it. The shape, roughly grave-sized, excited us all, and even Mr Chorleigh came down from the house to examine it when Peter ran to tell him.
I cleaned away the edges to show its extent, and found the beginnings of vertical supports on which they were lying.
‘It’s a burial chamber, surely? It must be,’ said Peter.
Mr Chorleigh was disturbed by it. ‘Don’t bother your mother with this. It’s bound to be upsetting. Is there any chance of actual remains in that tomb?’
I felt it my duty to reassure him that it was probably an empty chamber.
‘I will ask the Reverend Dewey to say a few prayers over the site, just in case.’ He looked troubled and I was quick to agree. ‘Thank you, Mr Masters,’ he said. ‘I shall send a note up to the vicarage, then I must leave for court.’
‘We won’t proceed further until he has been,’ I promised.
So we extended the trench to work around what we thought might be a chamber and found piles of rubble loosely fitted at each of the short ends. I checked the alignment with my compass; the feature lay roughly along an east–west axis. I continued clearing an area beyond the western end, which I have already started thinking of as the head end, when I came across a circlet of fired clay.
‘Look!’ I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm and Peter came over with Hilda and Molly. ‘We’ll have to dig very gently here,’ I said, scraping away from the pot.
‘What is it?’ Molly was crouching on the edge of the trench, staring earnestly into my eyes. ‘Is it a whole pot?’
Peter knelt down beside me. ‘You’d better wait for Mr Dewey, Ed, if that’
s what I think it is.’
I concurred, and satisfied myself with cleaning the soil gently from the belly of the pot. Although cracks ran in all directions around it, it seemed complete.
‘Why?’ whispered Molly. ‘What is it?’
‘If Peter is right, it’s a funerary urn,’ I said, brushing gently at the lip. ‘Look. It’s quite full of earth. Perhaps it had a stopper once, which has rotted away.’
She reached a hand as if to touch its surface then pulled back. ‘It seems so strange that a man once shaped this, thousands of years ago.’
‘Or a woman,’ I said.
She smiled at me. ‘Or a woman. Look, Hilda.’
Hilda shook her head. ‘I don’t want to even touch it,’ she said. ‘Has it got bones inside?’
‘I think this might have been a burial that was added to the barrow after it was finished,’ I said, showing the girls where the fingers of the unknown potter had smoothed the raw clay, leaving impressions faintly against the rim. ‘The bodies were usually burned and the ashes buried.’
Molly put her own slight fingers into the depressions. ‘Definitely a man, I’m afraid,’ she said, laughing at the mismatch.
We cleaned up the site a little and sat in the shade of the trees and the awning, drinking the remaining lemonade and eating the last of the biscuits Cook had brought down for lunch. She seems to think Peter is too thin and brings baskets of food every two or three hours. I fed a few crumbs to a curious pied wagtail, and Molly told me that the Hampshire name for them is Polly Dishwasher. She bounced in front of us, flicking her tail, until she took a crumb right from my hand.
‘I spent my summer holidays in Norfolk after my father died,’ I told her. ‘They call tadpoles “Pollywiggles” there.’
‘Was that with the general?’ she asked, nibbling a little biscuit.
‘And his wife,’ I said. ‘He is the kindest of men. My father’s uncle is childless and was generous to me.’
‘Don’t you have any cousins at all?’ Molly glanced at me from under eyelashes that were almost white. I did feel it then, a little breathlessness.
‘I have two female cousins on my mother’s side,’ I said. ‘But they have settled in America so I only knew them when I was very young. One pinched me to make me cry.’
‘How horrid! I’m glad she went to America, then.’
I smiled at her. ‘I’m sure she is much improved now, she is married with children of her own.’
I saw a flash of a black cloak and hastily stood, brushing the dried grass off my clothes. I gave a hand to Molly too, and the others saw me and followed suit.
‘Here is the Reverend Dewey to bless the site,’ Peter said. We were introduced, then stood in the sun with our eyes closed and hands folded while he droned some prayer or other. I should have listened, but the sound of bumble bees in the honeysuckle at my shoulder almost drowned him out.
‘Amen,’ he said, and we all echoed it.
‘I should be most interested in your findings,’ Mr Dewey said to Peter, smiling at him. ‘Such a worthwhile endeavour.’
‘We would be happy to show you once the barrow is opened,’ Peter said, fanning himself with his straw hat. ‘We mean no disrespect, of course, and will be careful with any remains we find.’
‘These are hardly Christian burials,’ Mr Dewey replied, smiling at Peter. ‘Just heathens who lived and died without the benefit of our Lord.’
It seemed strange to me. My father lived, and eventually died, for his beliefs. Yet he never bored me, nor applied his faith to every little thing. I also found Mr Dewey strangely overfamiliar, especially with Peter, whose arm he insisted on clutching over ‘rough ground’ and whom he kept calling his dear boy. Molly seemed no more enamoured of him than I was.
Once the reverend had been shaken off and Peter’s cousin and friends returned to the house, we could cover up the stone box and then protect the urn. It was about two-and-a-half feet high and a little less wide, more cracks at the base but still in situ, packed with soil. Around the middle were two lines of small scratches, and two thin lines around the top under the lip. It must have been a handsome piece, probably dark grey with black decoration but Peter detected (he thought) a hint of red in the dots. Time will tell when we get the whole thing out. At the moment the infill keeps its shape.
Molly’s pencil flew over a sketch of the pot. She had tried to get the shape right several times and had given up. ‘Oh, this blasted pencil.’
‘Here, let me.’ I took it and opened my penknife.
‘I can do it,’ she said, staring at the pot. ‘You always make it too sharp.’
I relinquished the knife and pencil to her expert shaving. I looked down at the crown of her head, the whorl of ragged curls so like her brother’s. ‘It’s probably mostly full of wood ash. There would have been a funeral pyre.’
‘It’s strange to think that someone’s bones might be buried under the stones, too. It’s a bit scary. Peter used to chase me around the garden with an old sheep’s skull, I blame him.’
‘I wish you were my sister,’ I blurted out, which wasn’t quite what I meant to say.
Her whittling paused for a moment, then resumed. ‘Do you?’
‘What I mean is…’ I ran out of words.
‘I know,’ she said, then blew the shavings off her pencil and closed the knife. ‘I like you, too.’
* * *
Letter from Robert Conway to Edwin Masters, 27th June 1913
My dear Edwin,
How pleasant to have heard from you, I have just finished the round of end-of-term meetings that I most despise. I have examined your potsherds and am quite intrigued. I had to attend a dinner in London so took the opportunity to consult with a colleague in the British Museum.
You are quite correct as to the date, although I think earlier rather than later, say 1800–1200 BC. I was especially interested in the short section of black-rimmed beaker. What was so interesting is that this type of clay is usually Germanic in origin. You may have a precious pot brought by traders or settlers or even invaders in your hands!
The coin is of interest but little value. I showed it to Dr Arnold: he confirms that it is Commodus, an interesting bronze coin from about the second century anno domini – nothing to do with your earthworks, I suspect.
I was unable to exactly relate your Chorleigh House to the old maps of the area. If you let me have your location in more detail I may be able to find it on our own maps in the library here. I am most intrigued by the second of your features, especially the one close to water. Could it be a ceremonial dock? It would be worth looking within the wet area itself for ritual items.
I envy you; the New Forest is truly an excellent location for a holiday, especially with an ancient burial on site.
Yours affectionately,
R. Conway, Balliol College
11
Afternoon, Wednesday 20th March, this year
Chorleigh House, Fairfield, New Forest
Two hours later, the police had shored up the front of the stable and Sage had more information. She showed her photographs of the horses to Trent. ‘They look as if they just lay down together for warmth or comfort, then died.’
‘I hope they were humanely put down,’ he said, ‘but you’d think they would be separate and laid flat.’ He packed bags and a camera into the boot of his car. ‘Look, Lenham will tell you what he needs. I have to look in on the postmortem of the woman in the sleeping bag.’
‘I thought that was just benefit fraud?’ Sage glanced back at the house. It was dark and quiet.
‘That was before they discovered blood in the top of the fabric.’ He slammed the boot shut. ‘This looks like it might have been transferred before death. I’ll keep you in the loop; it might be useful for you to have a look, broaden your experience.’
She waved him off, then stood by her car, resisting the urge to follow him.
Sage was aware how quiet the place was. The press had gone, the road had been opened but n
o traffic came down it. Although Alistair Chorleigh’s car was on the drive there was no sound from the house, even from the dog. She wasn’t sure if he was there or not but she knew the police had brought him home. She grabbed her work camera and started walking across the old lawn towards the path to the stable, her clothes and boots brushing the grass and bracken. She could hear her own breathing. Even the birds had fallen silent. Anything could happen here. A snap in the undergrowth stalled her, one foot off the ground, and she held her breath, her heart jumping. Sage felt as if the trees and bushes were staring back and for a moment, she was standing right at the edge of the gaping well on the island.
She shook off the fear and stomped along the narrow path, widened by successions of police feet.
She could hear Felix’s voice as she approached the stable. ‘That’s – heartless.’
‘You can see where the horses kicked the stall doors down. They couldn’t get through the main door but they did some damage to the frame.’ Lenham turned as Sage reached the entrance to the stable. ‘Look at the flat-backed water buckets; there was no automatic system for filling them.’ He kicked at the remains of a feed pail. ‘Bastards.’
The front of the stable was now propped up, and light flooded through the door, highlighting the skull of the larger animal. The smaller one was beside it, its head leaning against the forelegs of the other horse as if they had lain down together to die. It made tears spring to Sage’s eyes. The mummified skin appeared bone dry and cracked with age. Thousands of holes peppered the skin, blowfly maggots burrowing out, she imagined, as well as beetles burrowing in.
‘Is it safe yet?’ Sage didn’t wait for the answer but stepped forward to Felix’s side, just inside the doorframe.
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