by Rebecca Tope
‘Hello,’ said Thea, with a wink at Jessica. ‘Feeling better?’
‘A bit,’ whispered Granny. ‘Thank you, dear.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know your names,’ the woman said, looking from Thea to Jessica. ‘I’m Sarah Livingstone Graham. A bit of a mouthful, I know. I’ve got a little property between here and Batsford. The sheep field is rather an outpost. I’m afraid I neglect them a bit. I have to admit I thought they’d finished lambing. Gladys pulled a fast one on me, silly girl.’
Thea introduced herself and Jessica, and all three stood gazing at Granny, who was clearly enjoying the attention.
‘Works every time,’ she chuckled. ‘Sometimes it’s wonderful to be old. Everyone’s so afraid you’ll die on them, that’s what it is. Thomas deserved a shock, silly old buffer.’
‘You’d better not try it too often,’ said Jessica severely. ‘Crying wolf, and all that.’
‘Oh, no. I’m very discriminating. Besides, it was you I was thinking of. You left the gate open, not me.’
Thea tried to recall the sequence of events, and was forced to concede that this might be true. She pulled an embarrassed face at Sarah Livingstone Graham. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
Sarah laughed. ‘I won’t say anything. You were right, anyway, about the garden. Probably the best thing that could happen to it, in the long run.’
The two older women moved out onto the pavement, leaving Jessica to wrestle with her conflicting impressions of Granny Gardner. ‘How well do you know her?’ Thea asked softly.
‘Gladys? Well enough to know she’s an old fraud.’
‘Really? You mean all this forgetfulness is an act?’
‘Not quite. But she milks it shamelessly. Poor Yvette must be a saint to put up with it. What a mother to get yourself landed with, eh? Right from the word go, too.’
Thea let her confusion show. ‘Sorry?’ she said.
‘Oh, you won’t have heard. Yvette manages to keep it very quiet. She’s a friend of mine, you see.’
Thea waited, scarcely caring whether or not Sarah chose to tell her anything more.
‘The fact is, Yvette was born in prison. Quite a thing, eh!’
‘You mean – Granny was serving a prison sentence at the time?’
‘Precisely. Yvette was brought up by her father for the first eight years. Then Gladys was released and took over.’
‘Eight years! My God – what did she do?’
‘Manslaughter,’ said Sarah. ‘She was thirty, and pregnant and – well, I ought not to have told you. Don’t say a word to anybody locally, will you? It’s always been a deep dark secret. But, well, with things as they are, I expect it’ll come out before long. I just don’t want it to be through me.’
She doesn’t know Jessica’s a police officer, Thea realised.
‘Why tell me, then?’ she demanded. ‘I’m a total stranger. Why splurge it now?’
Sarah Livingstone Graham gave a bitter little smile. ‘Because it suddenly got too heavy for me to carry any longer. And surely you know a stranger is always the best person to tell a secret to?’
Thea suddenly felt the weight on her own shoulders, the leaden implications, the unsavoury questions. ‘Well, thank you very much,’ she said angrily.
Sarah took a step towards the road. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘It was nice to meet you, and I’m sorry. But you can walk away any time you like – which is more than can be said for the rest of us.’
Thea stumbled back into the cottage, where Jessica was impatiently watching the street from the front window. ‘At last!’ she said crossly.
‘How is she?’ Thea said softly, looking at the small figure on the sofa.
‘She seems OK.’
‘Mrs Gardner?’ Thea began. ‘Can you hear me?’
The old eyes flew open, the thin lips twitched in a half-smile. ‘I’m not deaf,’ she said.
‘Well, I need to know you’re really all right, otherwise I’ll have to call a doctor,’ Thea said firmly. ‘Everybody thought you’d died on us, half an hour ago.’
The old woman chortled contentedly. ‘Such fun,’ she said. ‘Aren’t I a bad old thing!’ In the light of Sarah’s revelation, Thea wanted to agree, loudly and reproachfully. Instead, she merely nodded.
‘So let’s see you upright, then,’ she said. ‘Just to be sure.’
Obligingly, Granny swung her legs off the sofa, and sat up straight. Even a much younger person might have turned giddy at the sudden change of position, but there was no sign of any such thing.
‘Better get you home then,’ said Thea. Without even thinking about it, they used the connecting door to the cottage, and Granny was settled comfortably in her living room.
‘I’ll do my tapestry for a bit, shall I?’ she said. ‘It’s coming along nicely.’
Thea fetched it from the table, opening it out to show Jessica. From what she remembered, considerable progress had been made since Saturday. ‘Goodness, you’ve done a lot since I saw it last,’ she said. ‘You must sit up with it half the night.’
The old woman made no reply to that, watching Jessica’s stunned assessment of the wild colours in the picture. She smiled as she took it from Thea, and laid it out tidily on her lap.
‘We’ll leave you for a bit, then,’ said Thea. ‘And if you need anything, just…’ She floundered, unsure of the best instruction to give.
‘Shout,’ said Granny. ‘If I need you, I’ll shout.’
‘Right,’ said Thea weakly.
Thea left Jessica searching the Internet for information on Upton, while she rustled up an early lunch. ‘Take the laptop into the study,’ Thea suggested. ‘There’s a nice empty desk to work on in there. You can make notes.’
‘Are we allowed? People don’t usually like strangers going into their study.’
‘Just do it. I’ll call you when the food’s ready.’
She had said nothing about the dramatic revelation about Gladys Gardner as gaolbird. Time enough for that, she judged, when she’d formed some conclusions for herself as to whether or not it was significant. Sixty years was a very long time. Simply because a person had brought about another person’s death in their younger days it could not possibly be taken as evidence that they could do the same again in extreme old age. Could it?
Without knowing the full story, it was impossible to decide. And the only way to discover the story was to hunt through old newspapers – or ask the woman herself. At least, she supposed, the police had not made the connection. The record of Mrs Gardner’s conviction and imprisonment in the 1940s had failed to show up on their computer files. It was quite probable that she had changed her name upon release, recreated herself, perhaps more than once. In sixty years, just about anything could happen.
She heard Jessica calling from the study and went to join her. ‘There’s a whole article here about the Upton excavations,’ she reported. ‘I wish I could print it out.’
‘Why not use Ron’s printer. He’ll never know.’
‘Mother!’ The girl was horrified. ‘That’s a terrible idea.’
‘Why? All you have to do is switch the cable from his machine to mine.’
‘And use his paper. And – oh, what the hell.’
Thea disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Jessica to sort out her own ethics as best she might. It seemed that the use of the desk was considered permissible, since a series of mutterings emerged from the study. ‘Well, well’ and ‘No, that’s not what I wanted’ and other hums and clicks from the girl and the machinery.
The meal was on the table before Jessica emerged with a page of jotted notes. She read from it as she ate.
‘Upton Deserted Medieval Village was first excavated between 1959 and 1968, revealing a densely occupied site. Twelve thousand sherds of pottery were found. Then in 1973 the people at that house we saw decided to run a water pipe through it, and a team of archaeologists from Birmingham University were allowed to record what was dug up in the process. Lots of boring diagrams of tren
ches, dum de dum. But they did find signs of much older settlement under the medieval stuff. I lost count, but there seem to have been about thirty buildings at least in that one field.’ She looked up, eyes sparkling. ‘That’s practically a town. Isn’t it exciting!’
Thea smiled. ‘History is exciting,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve been telling you that for years.’
‘Yes, I know. But imagine it, all bustling and busy, with people having babies and building houses and getting water from a well, and going to church and keeping sheep. Spinning, weaving, making all those pots…’ she paused briefly for breath. ‘Suddenly it’s all come alive for me.’
‘Good,’ Thea approved. ‘But does it tell us anything about the death of Julian?’
‘Not that I can see,’ Jessica admitted. ‘But I bet there’s something, if we could just work it out.’
Thea took a breath. ‘Why don’t you try searching for Julian, and Granny – and Joanna Southcott? While you’re at it, you might as well see if there’s anything that jumps out. It’s amazing what you can find on some of these obscure websites.’
‘OK,’ Jessica shrugged. ‘But I can’t see old Granny Gardner showing up in any of them.’
‘You might be surprised,’ said Thea, with an inward shudder.
‘She was bonkers,’ Jessica announced, emerging from the study nearly an hour later. ‘A complete nutcase.’
‘Who?’ Thea had managed to resist the temptation to read the screen over Jessica’s shoulder, and was instead watching Reservoir Dogs on DVD. Somehow it seemed to capture the mood she was in.
‘Joanna Southcott.’
‘OK,’ said Thea, with a surge of relief. ‘Justify.’
‘You name it. When she was living here in Blockley, she was visited by God at four every morning and given loads of prophecies which she wrote down. She was constantly hiding them in boxes and opening them again. The last box somehow acquired mystical significance. One story has it that it was opened in 1927 and contained nothing but rubbish. There’s a prophecy that says the year 2004 will be one of huge crisis and the box must be opened in order to avert catastrophe. The Day of Judgement itself, according to some. It just goes on. There’s plenty of websites run by her followers, who think she really was the “woman clothed with the sun” which is a line from the Book of Revelation apparently. A second Messiah, or possibly the mother of the second Messiah. Shiloh is his name. He was going to be born here in Blockley.’
Jessica was reading from a printed page. Evidently, thought Thea, there were no more scruples about using Ron’s equipment. ‘It’s all stark raving mad,’ the girl went on. ‘How can anybody be clothed with the sun, anyway? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Plenty to go on, though, if you’re into that sort of thing,’ Thea said. ‘She must be due for a big revival, by the sound of it.’
‘Except she was wrong about 2004. That must have been a bit of a downer for the followers. They’re called the Panacea Society, by the way. Isn’t that a wonderful name!’
‘Splendid,’ said Thea coolly. ‘So – nothing about Granny or Julian?’
‘Not so far. Gladys Gardner is a much more common name than you might expect. He’s got a few mentions in archaeology circles.’
‘Nothing to link him with Joanna Southcott?’ Thea was thinking slowly, half her mind still on the film she’d been watching.
‘Not that I can find.’ Jessica sighed. ‘It feels as if we’re wasting time,’ she complained. ‘Where’s Uncle James? What are the police doing? Everything’s gone so quiet.’
‘Don’t knock it,’ said Thea. ‘I don’t think it’s going to last.’
* * *
A sense of urgency was growing, with Jessica due to depart next day. ‘I can’t leave without knowing who killed Julian,’ she wailed.
‘You might have to. Besides, you’ve got plenty waiting for you back in Manchester. You’ll soon forget all this.’
‘Not with you here for another week. I’ll be terrified someone’s going to murder you next.’
‘Well, don’t be. You’re as bad as James and Phil. I hate people worrying about me. Your father never did it.’
‘You never went off to strange places on your own when he was alive. He didn’t have anything to worry about, did he?’
They exchanged the special gentle smile they reserved for talk about Carl. Then they went back to the business in hand.
Jessica went back for a final trawl of the Internet, and Thea was left to scour her conscience about whether or not to divulge the secret about Granny Gardner’s shady past. Before long, Jessica was back, with little to report. ‘I can’t see anything to connect Julian with anything,’ she said. ‘Not even Upton. But how could he resist, when it’s right here on his doorstep? He must have been itching to have a proper look at what was there.’
‘Not necessarily. This country is riddled with sites like that. They’re everywhere you go. Burial chambers, Roman villas, abandoned villages – most of it lost without trace. Gone and forgotten, for ever.’
‘I never thought of it before. It makes you scared of where you put your feet, doesn’t it. Whose bones you might be walking on.’
Thea laughed. ‘Bones don’t mind what you do to them. So where does this leave us, do you think? Any theories?’
Jessica hesitated. ‘Well, I was looking at those photos in the study just now. Come and see. You can tell me I’m crazy if you like.’ Thea followed her into the small room, where Jessica stood back, waving a finger at one of the pictures.
‘Don’t you think that might be Upton? There’s the little farmhouse, look.’
Thea followed the pointing finger. ‘Is it? Are you sure?’
‘That mound, see? It’s where we saw signs of digging this morning. It looks just like that, from the south, where we were.’ She clicked the computer’s mouse a few times, and up came a diagram of the whole site. ‘That’s it,’ she pointed. ‘Two mounds close together, then another a little way away. And that photo,’ she indicated the one next to the first, ‘is these furrows here. It all fits.’
Thea was unconvinced. ‘You’re reading too much into this,’ she demurred. But then she made a closer comparison and changed her mind. ‘Well, there is a trench running there and there,’ she noted, ‘just like in the photo.’
‘Right!’
‘But why does it matter? I mean, so what?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Jessica. ‘But it’s beginning to amount to something that looks like a motive.’
‘Is it? Whose motive? What do you mean?’
Jessica shook herself briskly. ‘First we need to find out who that van belongs to. And who was driving it. And whether that digging at the site is recent, and matches the soil from the van. And whether Ron Thingummy is some kind of archaeologist.’
‘Heavens! And how are you going to do all that?’
‘Phone Uncle James, of course.’
Thea’s feelings were mixed concerning her daughter’s sudden intense involvement in the killing of Julian Jolly. There was certainly something admirable in the way she tackled her own hypothesis, but to Thea it still seemed hopelessly fragile, from a logical point of view. In the light of what she now knew, it seemed even further offbeam than before. But she also found that she was glad to have the spotlight off Granny. It gave her time to work out her own line of action.
‘Guess what!’ Jessica crowed, having finished the phonecall to James.
‘What?’
‘The van belongs to Nick Jolly. Nice Nick, grandson of the victim. And he was driving it when the accident took place. He’s been kept in hospital overnight, but isn’t badly hurt.’
‘The other driver died,’ Thea remembered. ‘Was it anybody local?’
‘A girl from Moreton, apparently. Twenty-five, single.’ Jessica spoke unemotionally, but Thea was not deceived. Carl, their husband and father, had been killed in a road accident which had been none of his own fault.
‘He must be feeling dreadful,’ she said. ‘What
a ghastly thing to happen.’
‘He might be prosecuted for dangerous driving. Serve him right if he is.’
‘That won’t bring the girl back, though, will it?’
Jessica shook her head dumbly.
James had also confided several more details from the investigation, which Jessica shared with her mother. ‘There are four witnesses who saw Julian at the Little Village Hall on Saturday afternoon, where there’s a photographic exhibition on this week.’
‘Little Village Hall? Where’s that?’
Jessica sighed exaggeratedly. ‘Mother, you are hopeless! Haven’t you seen the sign to it, on the corner opposite the deli? It’s perfectly clear.’
Thea shook her head apologetically.
‘Well, it’s up a steep little street that runs parallel to this one, more or less. We can go for a look, if you like.’
‘Not now. Stick to the point. What else did James say?’
‘They’ve been looking into Granny’s background.’
Thea froze, awaiting the blow. Then she realised that if it was the blow she anticipated, Jessica would not have left it until third in her list of findings. She looked up cautiously. ‘Oh yes?’
‘She worked with Julian from the early seventies, so she’s known him for more than thirty years – maybe a lot more. Before that she had her own business, restoring ancient artefacts. It did very well and she sold it and moved here.’
‘No husband?’
‘It seems not.’
‘And what about the other daughter? Frances?’
‘Don’t know,’ Jessica shrugged. ‘He didn’t say.’
Thea knew she couldn’t stay silent any longer. If Jessica found out later that the secret had been kept from her, she would be rightfully angry. ‘Um…Jess… That woman this morning. The owner of the sheep. She told me something when I went outside with her.’
‘When you left me with Granny, with no idea what to say to her,’ Jessica nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, she said Granny had a record. She was in prison in the 1940s. For manslaughter.’
‘No!’ Jessica’s eyes protruded with amazement. ‘But – it would be on file. They would have found it.’