31
Tuesday 26th March, this year, later
Sage curled up on her mother’s sofa, nursing a glass of wine. She’d invited Felix home for dinner, and he was chatting to Yana in the kitchen. She hadn’t had an opportunity to speak to Nick again, and now she had the time she didn’t want to. She had left a message for Lenham, passing on the information about the timing of the animals visiting Alistair Chorleigh’s garden.
She heard a bump from upstairs, probably Max turfing something out of his cot. She found him standing holding onto the bars, his face solemn. He lifted his arms mutely and she picked him up, holding him close for a long moment. He smelled like bubble bath and clean laundry washed in lavender and geranium, the way her mother had treated her own clothes in childhood. She curled up on the bed and he clung to her, half in sleep.
‘Bad dream, Maxie?’ He settled into her, his body perfectly fitting into hers no matter how much he grew. She had never thought she wanted children of her own, but now she had Max she could hardly remember life without him. ‘I heard from Uncle Nick today.’
‘Dada.’ He wriggled as if looking around for him. Is he Daddy for Max already? She could never remember either of them using the name, yet Max went straight there.
‘He’ll be back soon. When we get home, he’ll be there.’
Max twiddled the hair over his ear and relaxed against her. She settled back on the pillows and remembered Nick packing last weekend. A flash of memory, quickly suppressed. Nick, a kitchen knife buried up to the hilt in his chest. With the memory came all the feelings of terror; they left her trembling and tense. It was hardly surprising she had flashbacks, but she had believed the sooner she got back to normal the quicker she would get over it. Only ignoring it wasn’t working. The baby wriggled on her lap and she loosened her grip on him.
‘I love you so much, Bean,’ she mumbled into his hair. ‘I will get help, I promise.’
She became aware of someone in the doorway. Felix smiled, but looked troubled. ‘Your mother sent me to get you,’ he said softly. ‘Dinner’s ready.’
‘OK.’ She hefted the sleepy child, feeling how heavy and relaxed he had become, and laid him in the cot. She pulled the blanket over him, stopping for a second; the breath stilled in her throat at how much she loved him, at how beautiful he was.
Felix half smiled. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
‘I hope it’s good news,’ she said, brushing past him to go down the stairs. ‘Because it’s been a really long day.’
* * *
The food was vegetarian and delicious. Yana had made samosas and a spicy chutney that made Felix grimace with the sour heat. ‘Wow.’
‘Mum likes her chillies.’ Sage grinned at him as he took another cautious bite.
‘I grow them.’ Yana passed Felix a bowl of yogurt. ‘Cool down.’
‘Thank you.’ The conversation had been mostly sparked by Yana, who was fascinated by Felix’s specialism, especially when she discovered he had been to Kazakhstan a couple of times.
Sage was happy to eat and listen, until Yana accepted Felix’s help to wash up and Sage had a chance to unwrap the precious leather-bound notebook. It felt, as she held it, as if it contained a pocket of history in its pages. The hand inside the flyleaf announced Edwin Masters, June 1913.
The first page was easiest to read, it was a thicker paper than the others, but it had missing and smudged words. She started copying out the text into her own notebook.
‘The invitation to excavate an ancient barrow had come at the right time, at least for me. My mother, laid low by a fever, was convalescing at the house of her sister, and there was no room for me in the cottage…’
‘Sage?’ Felix sat beside her.
She showed him the first page. ‘This is the journal Alistair Chorleigh gave me to look at. From 1913.’
‘Peter Chorleigh’s journal?’ He took the book when she offered it, holding it carefully.
‘No, it’s Edwin Masters’, the archaeologist who went missing. I wonder how it got so badly damaged. This looks like it was immersed, then dried out, but the papers at Chorleigh House were pristine and preserved.’
He brushed his fingers over the wavy pages, but the edges of the sheets were clumped together. ‘I’ve found out quite a lot about him, the mysterious Edwin Masters.’ He read the front endpaper inscription. ‘He was a brilliant student, by all accounts.’
‘Was there any suspicion of where he went?’ She corrected a word in her copy.
‘He didn’t have many places to go. He was a scholarship student, his family couldn’t afford his fees. It was a difficult period for poor students. There were bursaries for exceptional students but you had to be sponsored by an alumnus of a college to apply.’ He broke off to smile at Yana when she came into the room. ‘Thank you for a lovely meal.’
‘My pleasure,’ she said. Yana seemed to have warmed to Felix too. Suddenly, Sage saw her mother as she was, probably only a few years older than Felix, vibrant and sociable. Elaine seemed to have released something in her.
‘Mum, tell me more about your new friend.’ Sage received the book from Felix and started to wrap it back in the protective paper.
‘Have made many friends. Yoga, ramblers, herbalist guild.’ Yana’s accent was always stronger when she was evasive.
‘I meant Elaine.’ Sage turned the book over to see the heavily stained back. It was covered with mould as well as water marks, and there was a darker blot that suggested ink or paint.
‘Elaine? She is good friend.’ She disappeared and returned with mugs of coffee. ‘Drink.’ Her voice was pointedly strict. Clearly she didn’t want to discuss her new relationship in front of Felix.
‘Yes, Sheshe.’ There was an awkward silence while Sage sipped her hot coffee and Felix looked from one to the other.
Finally, Yana’s face softened. ‘Elaine has grandchildren too, we are both divorced. We are going on holiday together in the autumn, to Italy. Venice.’
‘Great. Wonderful.’ It was, too. Yana smiled at Sage.
‘This journal, if you can get into it, will be fascinating,’ Felix said. ‘I need to get back home soon. I ought to get back to Sadie in the next couple of days, she hasn’t been well.’
‘Sadie is daughter?’ Yana asked.
‘No – yes, she’s my partner’s adopted daughter. But she has health problems, she needs a lot of looking after.’ He stood, stretching his back. ‘But I wanted to tell you what I found in the Imperial War Museum archives.’
‘About Edwin?’ Sage said.
‘His father was a chaplain with the 3rd Division, in the Second Boer War. He died of his wounds months after the battle at Magersfontein, leaving his mother to care for young Edwin on what I imagine was a pretty small pension. Anyway, he attended a grammar school near Colchester, and did well. His headmaster was an Oxford man, so was his father, so he applied there. Edwin was eligible for a scholarship from the university and the church paid him a small grant towards his living expenses as well.’
‘How on earth did you get all this information?’
He looked awkward for a moment. ‘I was at Oxford myself.’
‘Old boys’ network?’
He shrugged. ‘To be honest, like many students I got in in much the same way as Edwin. My father was a diplomat so I had a scholarship to go to his old college. I still had to get the grades, which wasn’t easy. It’s different now.’
‘So, what else do you know?’
He sat back down. ‘When Edwin disappeared, the police were called by Peter and Mary. He’d been missing a few days by then. There was speculation about why the police hadn’t taken it more seriously at first.’
‘Mary – I suppose that was Molly. Alistair mentioned her name and showed me her picture.’
‘Sage, he was still the last person we know who saw Lara alive.’
‘He feeds the badgers in his garden,’ she said, ‘and puts pony nuts out for the deer. I am keeping an open mind – he does cr
eep me out sometimes. He’s an odd man, sad, abused.’
‘Healthy, happy people don’t usually kill teenage girls,’ he said. ‘It might be worth you doing a few criminology or psychology classes if you’re going into forensics.’
‘I’m not.’ The answer popped out, surprising Sage almost as much as the others. ‘I already know I’m not cut out for it. I think I was drawn to forensics because of what happened to Nick and how Steph died.’ She choked back tears. ‘And how someone could hurt a sweet girl who did nothing wrong.’ She could feel a tear running down her cheek. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do. Thinking about River brings it all back. She was campaigning for animal rights, she had a boyfriend, school. She’s a real person, not just a case.’
Her mother passed her a tissue. ‘Better out than in, yes?’
Sage dried her eyes and blew her nose. ‘I know what you’re saying, Felix. I am being careful with Chorleigh; I tell someone I’m going there and I check in afterwards.’
‘I saw some of the tapes of Chorleigh being interviewed.’ Felix leaned forward. ‘I do think Chorleigh is hiding something, even if it’s not the murder. After two days of hardly saying a word, he suddenly talked about his father brutalising him, killing the horses, lying to him for years about his mother. The old man told Chorleigh his mother was dead, can you imagine that? Just because she left him to get away from a life of domestic violence.’
‘I get that. It was a shitty childhood,’ Sage said. ‘Do you think George Chorleigh killed Lara?’
‘Maybe. When he talked about his father, I thought he was going to go berserk. The hatred he carries for that man is banked down inside. But I don’t think Alistair believes his father killed her, although maybe he did. And almost killed Alistair to prevent him saying anything incriminating.’
His words triggered a memory. ‘Alistair was expelled from his private school. Do we know why?’
‘Public schools offer very high levels of confidentiality and they claim they don’t have records from that far back,’ he said. ‘I’m concerned that he might have been antisocial even then, although it wasn’t referred to the police. They’re working on interviewing teachers from the school. It will take time – they all signed non-disclosure waivers and some have died.’ Felix half smiled. ‘I have met a lot of smiling, friendly murderers. Ones who love their dogs while they lash out at people.’
‘Can we talk about something else? I’m fine, I’m being careful. You said you found something about Molly – was that at the War Museum as well?’
‘It was.’ He rummaged in his briefcase and pulled out a handful of papers. ‘They emailed these over to me.’
The copies were of drawings, most were originally in pencil but a few were ink. They were pictures of men, injured, dying, one at least looked dead. ‘These are from the war?’
‘Molly was deployed as a nurse from 1915 onwards, under her real name Mary Chorleigh. She took it upon herself to record the faces of the injured and dying, the ones that couldn’t easily be identified, because the photography of the time was both expensive and needed good light. Many of the Germans didn’t keep their ID on them, hoping to get better medical care from the British. Molly recorded them so their relatives would at least know what happened to them.’
He showed her another sheet, a portrait of a thin young man, his eyes closed. The image of the reverse of the page had two lines of handwriting at the bottom. ‘Gerhard Schmidt, aged twenty, said his brother was Wolfgang. Died of wounds 15th November 1916.’ ‘She wrote whatever she could find out about the patients on the reverse of each picture.’
Sage got an image of Molly, sat beside a dying soldier in a ward of dying soldiers, sketching by lamplight. She looked up, tears prickling in the corners of her eyes. ‘These are so good. Was that the Battle of the Somme?’
‘It was. She made almost two hundred sketches and notes while nursing the German wounded.’ He handed her another sheet. ‘She has a whole archive in the Imperial War Museum, and the local record office has a few more of her drawings. She had the makings of a great artist.’
Sage could see the individual faces in each of the dozen drawings Felix had printed off. They were young men, so very young, so real. ‘It makes me want to find out more about Molly. Hopefully she’s mentioned in the journal.’
Felix shrugged. ‘I hope you can read it, it seems to have been badly water damaged at some point.’
‘Alistair Chorleigh’s mother showed him and a stack of drawings of the excavation. Not just the dig, but a couple of sketches. One is of Molly and one is of Edwin.’ She looked at Felix. ‘It really feels like Edwin, Lara and River are connected somehow.’
‘It does, doesn’t it? I can’t see the connection to Edwin, though.’
Sage shuffled the papers into some order. ‘Are you around tomorrow?’
‘I’ve done what I can here, I just have a lot of statements to read. I was going to drive back tonight, carry on researching from home.’ He looked at Sage. ‘I suppose I could hang on for one more day. But I let my hotel room go.’
Yana stood, collecting the empty cups. ‘That’s easy. You stay here. Big sofa, yes?’
He looked taken aback. ‘That’s very kind. I don’t want to be a nuisance.’
‘Don’t be so English,’ Yana teased. ‘Say “yes, please” and I get duvet and pillow.’
Sage laughed at Felix’s confused expression. ‘Welcome to Kazakh hospitality.’
* * *
It was close to midnight when Sage phoned Nick. She had already texted to make sure he was awake, and his voice was neutral down the phone.
‘Hi, Sage. I assume you got my message?’
‘I did.’ She kept her voice low, although Max was sound asleep in his cot on the other side of the room. ‘I’ve been thinking about you – us – all week.’
‘I’m driving back tomorrow. I’ll meet you at Yana’s, we can go back to the island and talk about everything.’
Sage nodded to herself. ‘One other thing.’ She started to smile. ‘Maxie called you Dada today.’
‘He did?’ His voice had gone up at least an octave, and he laughed out loud. ‘Smart boy. Now we have to work out how to live together.’
Sage smiled. ‘We definitely do.’
She said goodnight and rang off. She glanced at the clock, it was late and she had an early start. She pulled her notebook over and scribbled ‘look for spores – water in film case’ and ‘Alistair expelled?’ before she put her head on the pillow. When she closed her eyes, she could see flashes of the yawning mouth of the well she had excavated last year, the well that had snuffed out lives. The black water, the damp stones like teeth around a maw – she put the bedside light back on and sat up. Her notebook had the name of the therapist Felix had been seeing, somewhere in the front pages. She started searching for him on the internet.
32
‘NB Check preservatives suitable for crumbly bones. Possibly alcohol?’
Footnote in Edwin Masters’ Journal, 11th July 1913
The day dawned dryer than I had expected, as the storm had flown past the forest in a couple of hours. I had fallen asleep to its rat-a-tat on the window, and despite our midnight excursion, I had slept well. Mr Chorleigh was already at the breakfast table with the professor, who waved at me when I entered.
‘Have you checked the excavation yet, gentlemen?’ he asked.
Peter was sat next to him, reaching for the butter. He usually ate a large breakfast but now was picking at a piece of toast. I took some warm bacon from a chafing dish on the sideboard.
‘Not yet,’ Peter said. ‘We couldn’t do anything about it so we didn’t see any urgency. All being well it won’t be under a foot of water, the bones are crumbly as it is. I just hope we don’t have to scoop them out with a spoon.’ His voice was flat. I raised my eyebrows at him when he glanced at me, but then he looked at his father.
‘Peter!’ Molly sat opposite her father. She smiled at me. ‘That’s horrid. You’ve quite pu
t me off my eggs.’
‘Sorry.’ He grinned at her though, and she pushed her tongue out at him.
The professor took another piece of toast. ‘Water won’t do any more damage to – begging your pardon, Miss Molly – the remains. It might even make getting underneath easier.’ He turned to Chorleigh senior. ‘The ground is quite compact after thousands of years. Almost like stone itself.’
Molly picked up a teapot. ‘Are you coming down to the dig today, Father?’
‘I’m at the magistrates’ court all day,’ he answered, nodding to her for some tea. ‘I have a particular case, one I feel needs a firm hand.’
The professor smiled at Molly while she filled his cup. ‘Oh?’
‘A sad case for a lady in Burleigh who gained a divorce from her husband in—’ He harrumphed when he saw Molly. ‘Sad circumstances, shall we say. Unusual circumstances.’
‘Why are you seeing the case if there’s already been a divorce?’ Peter glanced over at me, but I shrugged.
‘Offences were discovered when the divorce evidence was aired,’ Mr Chorleigh replied. ‘And I am not going to discuss it further. We should break for luncheon; I may come down to inspect your progress later.’
‘Which leads to another question from me, I’m afraid,’ said Peter. ‘Can we lay the bones out in the house, to check that we have both skeletons? Last night’s storm has showed me how vulnerable they are. I was thinking we could put canvas on the library table. We can wrap them in newspaper and box them up.’
‘I have no objection as long as you clean the table thoroughly afterwards. We must decide what will be done with them after that.’ He finished his tea and nodded to Molly to pour him some more.
One of the housemaids came in, carrying a letter which she handed to the professor. He opened it and ran his quick gaze over it.
‘Good news. It’s Miss Molly I have to thank, I believe, for this remarkable information.’
Molly looked fleetingly at me before she turned her attention back to the professor. ‘Was it the drawing? Did your friend identify it?’
A Shroud of Leaves Page 26