A Shroud of Leaves

by Rebecca Alexander

  I recollected the swarthy-looking gentleman beside a photograph of Mr and Mrs Chorleigh’s wedding. ‘He’s certainly not Saxon fair,’ I said, looking at Peter’s golden hair and blue eyes. ‘Perhaps an ancestral link to an older generation.’

  Peter laughed at me. ‘There is an easier explanation,’ he said. ‘My great-grandmother was very close to the Rothschild family, especially one of the younger sons. He bought her some jewellery, my mother inherited it. Several fine diamonds and a huge sapphire.’

  I was reminded that it was Mrs Chorleigh who was considered to have the breeding and money in the family; Mr Chorleigh’s family have only been prosperous for two generations.

  The second slab was a little lighter, and came up relatively easily, exposing fine black soil, riddled with worm holes. Tool marks were still visible on the surface of the stone, all done with flint axes, I suspect. We took as many pictures as we could, then I borrowed Peter’s bicycle to take the rolls of film into the chemist’s in Fairfield. It was good to get away from the oppressive grave, an ugly dark rectangle now the slabs were removed. Both of us were certain it would yield buried remains but it was too late to start. I left Peter to cover up the grave site for tomorrow. He promised he wouldn’t even trowel off the top layer without me there.

  The chemist’s assistant, a friendly gentleman around my own age, took the films and gave me the packets of prints we had previously ordered. I slipped the envelope inside my shirt.

  ‘The whole village is talking about you digging up the dead,’ he said chattily, as he handed me a few pennies change. ‘People are saying you shouldn’t disturb the past.’

  ‘People always do,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the prints. I’ll be back for the new ones.’

  ‘Next Tuesday,’ he said. ‘Maybe Monday if I get time to do them.’ He followed me out the door and watched me climb onto the bicycle. ‘If you ever fancy a pint, the Royal Oak is good.’

  I looked over my shoulder at him. ‘Thank you. For the recommendation.’

  ‘I’m in there most Wednesday and Friday evenings. I’d be happy to buy you a drink.’

  His words were familiar, in a way I didn’t like. ‘Really. Good day,’ I said, wobbling the bike into the road then setting off to Chorleigh House. His tone was impertinent; I wondered if I had led him to believe that I wanted a closer acquaintance. I searched my own behaviour but I couldn’t see that I had encouraged him.

  When I got back, I told Peter, laughing off the encounter.

  ‘That’s Matthew Goodrich,’ he told me, his face twisting into a wry smile. He pulled an oilcloth and some sacks across the top of the tomb. ‘We were friends, when we were younger. That’s all.’

  ‘Friends?’ I packed up my tools as he opened the packet of pictures.

  ‘Years ago, when we were at school. Come on, let’s get washed up for dinner, Cook has a couple of capons in the oven.’ He stopped, a look on his face caught between happiness and grief. ‘Oh.’

  I stood at his shoulder, and he showed me two pictures of a fair-haired girl, just a child really, grinning at the camera with much the same expression as Peter’s. She looked both plumper and a merrier sort of person than Molly. ‘Is that your sister, Claire?’ He nodded, and I put my arm around his shoulders and hugged him. ‘I’m sorry, old chap.’

  ‘Mother will be pleased,’ he said, his voice thickened by tears that also sat on his lashes. ‘I know it will be sad, but also happy. The last picture she thought we had was from a school photograph. But I don’t want to upset her…’

  I squeezed his shoulder, and he turned to me for a moment, letting me hold him. ‘It’s all right, old chap,’ I said, glad to be of some comfort. ‘They are happy pictures, at least.’ He hugged me, and I felt the wetness of his unshed tears on my neck.

  He let go and looked at the two photographs. ‘I’d better give these to mother before dinner. It’s bound to make her feel a little wretched.’

  ‘But grateful,’ I reminded him.

  15

  Friday 22nd March, this year

  Sage had had another broken night, the rain hammering against the window, which disturbed Max several times. Eventually, she snuggled him in with her and hoped he wouldn’t fall out. She woke early to him kicking off the duvet and babbling like a bird.

  As Sage drove to Chorleigh House she couldn’t get the conversation with Nick out of her mind. She had turned her phone onto silent but was aware of it buzzing so she pulled over at the entrance to the national park to check her missed calls. It was Trent.

  ‘Sage, I’m going to be delayed with pathology. We can’t ID the skeleton in the sleeping bag.’

  ‘Can I do anything to help? Anything to get away from the wild woods.’

  ‘That bad?’ He sounded amused.

  ‘It’s just so empty out here. I never thought of the New Forest as being creepy before.’

  ‘You’ll be finished soon, and in a nice dry laboratory with about two million decaying leaves. Why don’t you make an appearance at the station in Lyndhurst for Lenham’s briefing? One of us ought to be there, anyway. It starts at nine.’

  ‘OK, will do. What about the concrete scan?’

  ‘I’ll be there for that. Meet you about eleven?’

  Sage agreed and rang off, rumbling over a cattle grid on the forest road towards the police station.

  Lenham was in his office, gathering up papers ahead of the morning meeting.

  ‘Hi. Trent’s been held up on his other case.’

  ‘So I heard. We’ll have to manage with you, then.’ He nodded to her and she looked around. ‘What about the radar scan of the stable floor?’

  ‘We’re going to do that later this morning. Trent’s got some staff and students from his department coming in to help,’ she said. ‘They will do all the related scans like magnetometry as well. If there was a body under there, they will pick up something, even if it’s just new concrete or disturbed soil.’

  ‘OK.’ He looked up at her. ‘He seems more interested in those old barrows than Lara Black.’

  ‘I promise you, we’re just looking for any sign of a burial. I’ll be looking at special aerial scans that were done in this area recently. We’re hoping to see any unusual shapes in the surface of the soil around the house and the field opposite.’ She stopped – he clearly wasn’t that interested. ‘Any more news on River?’

  ‘It’s early days,’ he said over his shoulder as he walked into the incident room. ‘Listen up, everyone. Those of you who don’t know her yet, this is Dr Westfield, our archaeologist.’ She recognised a few of the officers and PC Stewart lifted a hand.

  ‘Right, Martin, tell me about the shoe prints in the grass.’

  The forensic specialist stepped forward. ‘Common shoe, I’m afraid. They came from a work boot with steel toecaps, the sort of thing used in lots of light engineering firms. They were from a style introduced in 2015 and are still in shops, so nothing distinctive about them. There wasn’t enough detail to narrow down wear patterns, but they were size ten. Chorleigh takes a twelve.’

  Someone nudged Sage. It was Megan, holding an armful of papers. ‘You OK?’ she whispered.

  ‘Fine. Quite glad not to be at the house,’ Sage murmured back.

  Lenham nodded at Martin. ‘Thanks. How about you, Megan?’

  ‘Time of death probably no later than midnight, no earlier than about eight o’clock, Saturday night,’ Megan said, walking forward. ‘I’ve narrowed it down, that’s as close as I can get it, and it’s always an estimate. I’m ninety per cent sure of the window, though. The other thing is the shoe pattern on River’s face and body, which Sage and I uncovered at the scene and at the PM.’ She put several close-up images on the board marked ‘pathology’. ‘There are a few partial bits of the sole and toe, as you can see. The best composite is image D, which has also been enhanced on the computer – it looks like a size five from the size of the pattern on the tread. We swabbed the bruises for the forensic team; they came back with oil, metal d
ust, dried mud – basically, garage floor dirt.’

  Stewart put his hand up. ‘Any match on the shoe?’

  Lenham waved at another officer; Sage recognised her from Chorleigh’s garden as PC Patel. ‘Priya?’

  ‘It’s a rare import, a fashion boot from China, mostly sold on the continent but we had a shipment come into Southampton last year. We’re trying to track down who bought them, but a lot of them would be sold for cash at the market.’ She held up an ankle boot. ‘They came in black and purple; this one comes from customs and excise so we’re showing it around colleges and in the press.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lenham. ‘Check the family homes and ask friends. What about the boyfriend?’ He looked at Sage. ‘We have an ex-boyfriend, Ryan Wellans, and a current one, Jake Murdoch, in at the moment. If we don’t get anything in the next few hours we’ll have to let them go.’

  Sage folded her arms. ‘Do either of them have a car?’

  Lenham answered. ‘Both. What are you thinking?’

  ‘The body was two hundred plus metres from the road and the leaves were another seven hundred metres into the woods,’ Sage said. ‘They carried her in, dug a shaped hole, created a border and covered her with leaves. That took time and energy. I imagine the person who did that couldn’t do it all without a car and some sort of spade and trowel. They definitely used a curved digging tool, I don’t think it was a tool of opportunity.’

  PC Patel stepped forward. ‘Ryan and his girlfriend Soraya have been dissing River online, saying she was more interested in her animal causes than people. I’ve talked to Soraya, her alibi was: “I was home, in my room, watching TV.” She could have been anywhere; her parents were out with friends. Ryan’s tyres don’t match the ones found on the verge but he takes a size ten shoe.’

  ‘What about Jake?’ Lenham said. ‘He is very close to the family.’

  Patel consulted her notes. ‘He attended a demonstration at the university against animal experimentation on Saturday evening, and expected River to be there. He claims to have been in bed in his student accommodation, with no witnesses that night. We haven’t seen either car coming from Lyndhurst or Lymington but there are no cameras across the forest to pick them up. His tyres don’t match the impression we took at the scene, although we don’t know if that’s related to the burial yet, and his shoes are size eleven. We’re checking other family and friends.’

  Lenham nodded and allocated tasks to people. Sage walked over to him. ‘Anything for me?’

  ‘Trent promised me you would look at the scans of the garden, see if you can see anything like a grave from 1992. I was hoping she would come forward alive and well but that’s looking increasingly unlikely. You will also have to supervise the examination of the leaves.’

  She nodded. ‘Did you find out more about what happened to the horses?’

  He brightened. ‘Actually, we did. The vet said both horses were killed with what’s called carotid sticking, just below the jaw. It takes training, some skill, and a blade at least five inches long. The forest agisters might have that training.’

  ‘The knife in the stable was about that long.’

  He pointed at a picture on another board, this one filled with – on closer inspection – pictures of injured or dead animals. ‘Forensics found horse blood on the knife. I’m trying to decide whether we need to spend the money to match DNA to the animals. I can’t prove it’s directly related to Lara but—’

  ‘There could be human blood on that blade as well.’

  He slowly nodded. ‘I’ll send it for detailed examination. Go find me a burial site.’

  * * *

  Sage headed out to Chorleigh House. The place was quiet, just a few cars parked on the verge, including Trent’s and Felix’s. She walked through the grounds, calling out to Trent but not getting a reply. She felt uneasy, like she was trespassing, and wondered where Alistair Chorleigh was. To put off the moment when she had to examine the stable, she clambered up the side of the intact barrow and checked her phone for messages, the only place she knew she might get a signal. There weren’t any but she had a great view of the surrounding field and forest. She turned slowly, forty-five degrees at a time, as she’d been taught.

  The post and wire stock fence stretched for maybe three hundred metres. On the other side of the field was more forest. She could just see the roof of the church beyond the trees, a small spire projecting over the red-tiled roof. Turning again she could see the sloped end of the second earthwork on the ground. From this angle it looked taller and there was a dark edge to the slab on the top.

  Continuing her rotation, she stared into the trees and at the corner of the stable. Hopefully Trent would be setting up to scan the floor. She turned again, and all she could see was the middle section of the trees, the trunks packed together, crowding each other out. There was no planting plan here, the trees had just seeded themselves where they could. They could easily all have grown since the stables were abandoned. Looking along the barrow, she could see how the middle was sunk in a little. Maybe Trent was onto something; there could have been something buried here a generation ago that had collapsed. She crouched down to look for changes in flora, any evidence of an interment.

  Her phone beeped: it was a message from her mother. I’m taking Max to the adventure park with Elaine. Be back later. The signal was already gone when she tried to reply but by waving the phone around in several directions it finally went.

  She walked down the other side of the barrow and started up the flank of the second, truncated earthwork. The grass and ferns were crushed in places; she had to walk around a few bramble patches that looked impenetrable. Right at the top the scrub gave way to an area of rough grass with mosses and lichens filling in the middle. She could see stone underneath, a few high points pushing through the green. Looking back she could see that the whole top could be an enormous capstone some three or more metres long and at least a metre and a half wide. A light area caught her eye and she crouched down on the grass, looking along the stone.

  Someone – probably Trent – had scraped away some of the grass and soil. It was a finished slab, fairly flat and certainly not the natural surface of a riven stone. She could see a couple of tool marks at the very edge. Even the type was unusual: the vertical stones were limestone but this was slate which must have been imported from somewhere else; Hampshire didn’t have any. It must have been far too heavy just to top a burial chamber. It made it more likely that it was some sort of early water tank, built over a natural well.

  Sage glanced over at movements against the distant hedges on the other side of the field. Deer, a dozen of them, all standing alert, heads up, scenting the air. She crouched down on the grass beside the stone to the edge. The slab was slippery and the drop into the mud seemed longer now, so she was careful.

  The top seemed to be surrounded by the edges of a limestone framework, perhaps for the cavity of a well head or burial. Again she could see where Trent had scraped away. Slowly, she exposed the edges of flat stones, three buried in the soil and forming some sort of box. The LiDAR data had suggested the feature was originally about thirty metres long and ten wide. Both mounds might even have been one big barrow.

  Burial cists were normally a few feet across, but she knew the one at Gaulstone in Ireland was more than two metres by one and a half, even bigger than this one. There was a carpet of grass; she could lift it up at the edge where Trent had loosened it. She caught a sound, a man’s voice. It was coming from the stable so she dragged herself away from the Bronze Age to see if Trent had any results.

  * * *

  Two students and the geophys expert, Marina, were setting up the heavy equipment on the swept floor of the stable. Trent was watching them.

  Felix was checking his phone. ‘No signal,’ he said, putting it away. ‘I’ve been doing some research.’

  ‘I got a bit of signal on top of the barrows,’ Sage said. ‘Did you find anything interesting?’

  ‘I’ve found some
strange legends about Hound Butt. Or rather “Wolf Butt”, as it used to be known.’

  She sniggered, immediately feeling really stupid. ‘Sorry, childish. I’m a bit nervous about what we’re going to find under the concrete.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I had PC Patel helping me in the library all day yesterday, she was just as amused at “Wolf Butt”. Do you think Lara is under there?’

  ‘We didn’t see any irregularity when we cleared it out. They would have had to replace the whole floor to do it.’

  Marina waved at her. ‘Just starting. We’ll try electrical resistivity as well.’

  Sage and Felix moved a few paces down the path. ‘I was wondering about the history of the area,’ he said, ‘and its relationship to local mythology. There were stories of a curse on the burial in the barrows.’

  She sighed. ‘That’s what people always think about when they talk about archaeology, you know that. Mummies, treasure and curses.’

  ‘The thatched building beyond the field is Blazeden Farm. That’s the farm that owns the land around Chorleigh and once owned the estate. They must have sold it to the Chorleighs to build on in 1888.’

  ‘OK.’

  He pointed in the direction of the house. ‘The locals claimed that a giant supernatural dog haunts the land, and the farmer was glad to get rid of it.’

  ‘Oh. One of those giant dogs, Hound of the Baskervilles and all that. What’s that got to do with River?’ She remembered the grave, the dead girl, and the intrusive memory made her feel sick. ‘Or Lara.’

  ‘It might have everything to do with why someone chose this garden to bury her in. Apparently the Chorleigh family has had nothing but bad luck since they have lived here. Peter Chorleigh was sent away and didn’t come back until after his father died some years later. His sister died young, too. Then, in this generation, Alistair Chorleigh’s mother left with his baby sister. He must have felt abandoned, especially if his father was difficult.’