A Shroud of Leaves

by Rebecca Alexander

  ‘It gets worse.’

  Sage shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I want to hear it.’ She rested for a moment. OK, she was ready. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Owen Sloane, who adored both of the girls by all accounts, went down to the lockup on Saturday because Melissa said she was looking for her ice skates, and found the girls. He thought River was dead, so he shut the garage and took Melissa skating as arranged. To establish an alibi, I imagine. I’ve seen the CCTV tapes at the rink. Owen was sat with his head in his hands but Melissa twirled around on the ice as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘It must have been horrible for him.’

  Lenham carried on. ‘He went back that night to clean up and get rid of River’s body. But he found she had crawled to the doorway and died there, of exposure and shock and her head injury. He was devastated – he could have saved her. He hid the body in the garage, locked it up with a new padlock and devised a plan to bury her in Chorleigh’s garden. He had always blamed Chorleigh for killing Lara. Early Monday morning was the first time he could get away as the police were searching. They didn’t know about the lockup and at that point it was just a missing person inquiry. You were right about the animals providing a time slot: he went down at two and returned home after four.’

  ‘So she could have been saved on the Saturday afternoon?’ Sage was appalled, she could still remember the feeling of almost freezing to death.

  ‘Definitely. If he had called an ambulance, River Sloane would probably still be alive. And his daughter, the little psychopath, would be looking at therapy rather than a conviction for murder.’

  It was all too horrible. ‘What did she say?’

  Lenham peered out the corner of the window, squinting down into the car park. ‘Believe it or not, she’s blaming her father. Says he lost his temper with River and beat her to death. She then mentioned injuries that she couldn’t have known about. Those kicks that came from boots she no longer owns but her mother identified as being similar to our exemplar.’

  She looked at his face. ‘She kicked River while she was helpless on the ground.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He stood up to look out of the window, arms crossed. ‘Melissa was crushed when Owen left her mother to marry again. And River was a beautiful girl, more than a year older, popular at school. She seemed to have everything Melissa wanted, including the attention of Jake.’

  ‘So she was angry, and lashed out in a rage,’ Sage said.

  ‘You’re right. It could have happened like that.’

  ‘But you think differently?’ Sage rested her head against the pillow, avoiding the sizeable lump on the back of it. ‘What about her phone. Does it show her luring River there?’

  ‘No, but it’s still helpful.’ He grinned at her. ‘You’re starting to think like a detective.’ The smile faded. ‘We have looked at the family’s viewing online. They watched a couple of crime dramas that show that someone’s smartphone location can be tracked. She left hers at home. Do you know how unlikely it is that a teenager would go out without their phone? She took the SIM card out of River’s and disposed of it.’

  ‘She went there to hurt her sister. It was premeditated.’

  Lenham nodded. ‘She didn’t just knock her over, she hammered into her, kicked her – you saw the body. She panicked afterwards because there was blood on her clothes. We found blood spray as high as the ceiling, thrown up there as she swung the club each time.’

  Sage closed her eyes. That child, wiping out a girl whose only crime had been being more popular with everyone, including boys. ‘Will she go to prison?’

  ‘Oh, she’ll definitely do some time, somewhere. How long depends on whether they can make the case for premeditated murder. Owen will do time too.’

  ‘For loving her. For protecting the one child he could save.’

  ‘For leaving River to die in a cold garage, afraid and helpless. The temperature that night went down to freezing. He scraped the frost off his car to go and deal with her body.’ He took a deep breath, looked down at her. ‘You’re off to the island soon, back to your partner?’

  ‘Yes.’ Yes, she was. She was going to follow Nick, wherever that took her. ‘How about you? Back to work on Monday?’

  ‘I won’t even get a day off. We need to keep on with the interviews until one of them admits Melissa did this intentionally and deliberately. I think she’s a danger to others, she needs to be locked up.’ He smiled. ‘Either way, I need all your reports as soon as you can write them. Felix’s too. I’ll be in touch.’

  She felt heavier when he had left, her bruises seemed to hurt more. She dozed off, waking abruptly to the sound of Max calling to her from Nick’s arms.

  40

  ‘Peter, Peter, I call but you do not come. I can hardly breathe, I am so cold. I doubt if anyone will read these words, or even if my pencil still makes a mark. But I will say it, because now there is no time for lies. The hours I spent in your arms were the golden point of my existence. If that is sin, then yes, I will die for it. My legs are smashed, there will be no relief. Once I thought I heard your father shouting and I called out for help, but my voice was weak. He stopped, there was a long silence, and for a moment hope surged that he had heard me. But nothing, no rescue. Perhaps Bessie Warnock was right, and the barrows are cursed. Maybe we raised the vengeful spirit of the wolf, who now crushes me in its jaws. I know I am bleeding, my face is cut and there is little skin on my elbow and shoulder. It seeps slowly, but I am stuck here. It is night again, I think, and when I reached down I found water flowing against my shins. My legs no longer have any feeling, it’s as if I no longer exist below the chest. Perhaps I have shattered my spine. The pain was agonising in the first day, but now it is gone. I cry out again, not for help but just the animal moans I have left. I am as weak as a baby, and have less voice. If these are my last words, let them be of love for you, my Peter.’

  Edwin Masters’ Journal, around 14th July 1913

  41

  Wednesday 1st May, this year

  Sage had her arm out of plaster but still favoured her good hand, and winced out of habit when she leaned on her healing shoulder. Her office at the university was full of her colleague’s stuff; he had already moved in but had let her use the equipment to work on Edwin’s journal. She had decided to take an extended sabbatical to recover, and sort out their living arrangements. They had already carved out a room in the vicarage for Maxie, who was enjoying the extra space, and she was spending more time with Nick. Living in the vicarage was stressful and public, but for the moment she was enjoying seeing him every day.

  She positioned the camera so it focused at an acute angle to the page in Edwin’s notebook. The book had been soaked at some point in the past so she couldn’t use electrostatic analysis. X-rays hadn’t revealed much but she was determined to find all his last clues and entries. She had read Edwin’s journal and had discovered the heartbreaking story of his relationship with Peter. What she wanted was to know what happened at the end, because all she had were a few notes at the back of the journal, scribbled in the dark. She wanted to get the entire story before Felix came in with his own research. One thing had been confirmed: the book had been immersed in the same water that had nearly drowned her and had been inside the barrow with Edwin. Mud on the outside suggested it had been washed out of the barrow and into the pond, perhaps retrieved by one of the family or a gardener.

  Lara’s camera case had been drowned in the same water. Like the notebook, it must have washed out from the stone cistern inside the earthwork and landed in the mud below. The assumption was that George Chorleigh had moved it to distract the police, believing his son was to blame for Lara’s disappearance. He couldn’t have known that a film canister of water would lead right back to the barrows.

  The pages were faded, the writing had not lasted well and mould had eaten away at much of the paper and crumbled the edges. She snapped another picture, this time from above. There, the indentations were obvious, the blunt pencil tearing in
to the fibres of the old paper. The words had been scribbled across the page over a previous journal entry. She knew how little light there was in the wolf trap; Edwin must have been writing blind with the remains of an unsharpened pencil. The wood had just disrupted the fibres of the paper enough to show up.

  She tried another colour filter until she was able to reduce the ink writing to see the looping letters of another entry. She started to transcribe.

  Later: A night has come, and most of another day. I pray that someone will look at these mounds of rock and soil and see what is under there. A burial mound for a man, and the wolf that killed him. And a trap, forever set to kill wolves that wander in, attracted to the scent of the creatures trapped before. I have no strength left. I can just reach to push my journal up high, since the water is rising, and I shall leave it there. Perhaps it will wash out. If this comes to your hand, know that I would never have left you, nor let any miles come between us. Live long and find new love, my Peter. Find someone to whom you can give every waking moment, as I would have for you. Goodbye, my love.

  Sage sat back, filled with her own memory of being in the wolf trap, of working out how its deadly design had caught her. Edwin, an archaeologist to the last, had done the same. What she couldn’t understand was why the person who found it didn’t call the police. Even if they had just retrieved his body it would have given his mother some peace. Instead, they kept the diary for all these years.

  She read the last faint words again. Perhaps the answer was that the family couldn’t cope with the relationship between Peter and Edwin.

  She finished the transcription, filling in a few missing letters and words but the gist was there. He had tried to reach the slot to push the book out at least, for Peter. Her eyes were wet, she brushed them away. God, that had so nearly been her. Would Felix and Lenham and Nick eventually have found her body?

  Her phone beeped and a text told her Felix was on his way up to her office in the university. He had presented his evidence to the police and was coming by on his way back to Devon.

  She had time to organise her notes before he tapped on the door.

  ‘Hi, Felix.’

  He came in, hugged her slightly tighter than her shoulder appreciated, then sat down on one of the high stools by the table. ‘I come bearing some more clues to the story,’ he said, putting a fat folder on the desk.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Peter’s regiment’s war diaries, his service record.’ He opened the folder revealing dozens of sheets of photocopied information.

  ‘You did all this?’

  He looked sheepish. ‘Well, no, I got one of my students to do it. I was too busy tracing these.’

  He pulled out a sheet with the copy of a newspaper page in it. She checked the date at the top – The Hampshire Telegraph, June 6, 1914. He pointed to the article amongst adverts and obituaries.

  ‘Missing: Mr Edwin Masters.

  A reward of fifty guineas will be awarded upon the receipt of information leading to the whereabouts of Mr Edwin Masters, alive or dead. Mr Masters is of medium build, dark hair and complexion and has dark eyes. His late mother resided in Colchester. He is a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied antiquities and ancient history. Information please to Peter Chorleigh, 44 St Ann’s Street, Inverness, or direct to the police at Lyndhurst. Mr Masters was last seen at Chorleigh House, Fairfield, New Forest, in July 1913. His friends anxiously await news.’

  ‘Peter placed adverts like this for more than a decade,’ Felix said.

  ‘So sad that they never found him. The police recovered the broken skull and some long bones that must have been Edwin’s. They found Lara too, she had a fractured skull. She probably never regained consciousness. He fell into water, like I did, so survived for a few days.’

  ‘I thought you’d discover the whole skeletons.’

  ‘The water is too acidic, it dissolved the smaller bones over a century.’ She read through the advert again. ‘Poor Peter. Do we know why they didn’t search the barrows?’

  ‘Not for sure. We do have a number of letters the police found in Alistair Chorleigh’s house. Peter and Molly corresponded, and he kept their letters after her death. They never gave up looking for Edwin. Molly and Peter were packed off to Scotland after their father claimed Edwin had run away after “dastardly” behaviour. It seems he found out about Peter and Edwin somehow, perhaps related to the photographs. Peter and Molly mention them a few times.’

  ‘He found the journal,’ Sage said slowly. ‘He must have done, he could see the picture and read the entries. I wonder if he really did leave Edwin to die?’

  ‘But he kept the journal? Why would he?’

  Sage thought about it. ‘Perhaps to confront Peter when he came home. Only he didn’t return to the New Forest until his father died, in 1919, just after Molly.’

  ‘You mentioned a picture?’ Felix said.

  ‘This one?’ Sage brought out the scanned, enlarged copy of a picture she had found wedged inside the notebook. It was almost black in places but the young man’s face was still visible. ‘Peter was being blackmailed by Matthew Goodrich, who developed the pictures.’

  ‘I suspect his father was just trying to protect Peter’s reputation,’ Felix said. ‘He probably didn’t know what happened to Edwin.’

  ‘But I think he might have,’ Sage said, leafing through her transcription of the notebook. ‘Listen to this: “Once I thought I heard your father and I called out for help, but my voice was weak.” Maybe he did hear Edwin, but he didn’t do anything. Then the book appeared in the pond, so he just tucked it away so no one would work it out.’

  ‘Like Alistair Chorleigh. He knew Lara had gone up there and disappeared, but was too frightened to tell his father about it, so put her rucksack back in the bus shelter. Then the camera case was washed out, and Alistair’s father must have dumped it away from the house.’

  He put photocopies of handwritten sheets onto the table. She read the direction on the letter. ‘Miss Mary Chorleigh. Molly. What did she die of?’

  He rummaged through the pages for a copy of a death certificate. ‘The cause of death is “Influenzal purulent bronchitis”. She was nursing in France looking after the many injured servicemen brought back from the front. The correspondence between the siblings is lovely, they were close. He was already at the Western Front; she was preparing to join him after her training as a nurse. Her letters were returned with her things after she died. There’s a little watch as well.’

  At the bottom of the certificate, Sage could make out the name of the person registering the death. ‘Captain Peter Chorleigh. Hopefully he was there to offer her some comfort, at the end.’ She looked up. ‘Do we know what happened to him after that?’

  ‘I noticed his father’s death in 1919, possibly also from the flu, and then Peter returned to the New Forest to live. He married Beatrice Elizabeth Marchmont in 1920. They had at least one son, Alistair Chorleigh’s father, George, born in 1932.’

  ‘That’s amazing.’

  ‘Well, Sadie really got involved in the story and created a whole list of things he did.’ He passed her a page covered in scribbled notes and dates in purple ink. ‘Peter was chief agister in 1930, and was an alderman by the time he died. He seemed like a very popular man.’

  ‘What about Beatrice? Edwin mentioned her in the journal.’

  Felix pointed to the final line. ‘“Mrs Beatrice Chorleigh is again hosting the mayor’s Christmas fundraising dinner in the absence of his wife, who is convalescing in Switzerland.” Sadie thinks this is as close as the reporter will get to saying they are having an affair. She was the mayor’s unofficial social secretary, and lived in Southampton.’

  ‘So that’s where Peter ended up. In a loveless marriage without Edwin or Molly.’ It sounded so sad.

  ‘Maybe not. There is a picture from his old age in the Telegraph. His secretary had a book published in 1959 about the use of cavalry at Waterloo. We wondered if perhaps this Mic
hael Bishop was actually his partner in later life.’ The grainy newspaper picture showed Peter, unmistakeably Peter, with a plume of white hair and eyebrows, smiling proudly down at a younger man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, probably twenty years his junior.

  She smiled. ‘He had a type, didn’t he? Dark, intense-looking. I have something to show you, too. Edwin’s final entry, written in the dark with the remains of a broken pencil.’

  She read the words out loud, and Felix sat, looking down at the table.

  He glanced up with his crooked smile. ‘Sad story. It must have been awful for him, waiting to die.’

  ‘It was bad enough for me and I was only down there, what, seven hours? He lasted several days.’

  ‘About that. Chorleigh knew, but he didn’t call for help, just like he did with Lara, and just like his ancestor left Edwin Masters.’

  ‘I know. He did try and help once people turned up and questioned him. I’m still angry with him.’ She started to put the papers back in the folder. ‘Can I keep these?’

  ‘I made the copies for you. Sage, you have to testify against him. He needs to have some consequence for his behaviour. It’s going to be hard to prove he left you to die without your testimony. If we hadn’t turned up when we did, you could have died.’

  ‘I know. But he was brought up in a violent household, he never stood a chance. Psychopathic bullies ran through his bloodline.’

  Felix tapped the closed folder. ‘He tortured animals, he lied about Lara’s disappearance then he left you to die. You need to help the police build a case against him. The historical animal abuse isn’t going to come to court, they can’t prove it and it was too long ago.’

  She stared down at her hands. There were pink scars on the knuckles of her right hand, a healing cut on her left.

  ‘What about Lara?’ she said. ‘He told me what he did. He knew where she was, he left her, too.’

  ‘There’s no independent evidence that he knew where she was, except what he said to you. If Owen Sloane hadn’t buried River in Chorleigh’s garden, we probably would never have found Lara.’