by Rebecca Tope
The trip to the shop, which should have been a pleasant stroll, had to be done by car. Phil lowered himself into the passenger seat, and tried to let the upholstery take the strain, with only partial success. The muscles around the offending vertebrae would not let go enough for him to sit comfortably. As they turned out of the drive they both glanced back to the scene of Phil’s discovery, noting that a small SOCO team was still in evidence, police tape still zig-zagged around the plot and a large vehicle parked on the verge.
When they arrived at the shop, he insisted on getting out. In spite of himself, he found he wanted to see how the villagers conducted their retail experiment.
The shop was down a small side road, which was shaded on one side by tall trees. The bow window of the shop front gave it a Dickensian air, spoilt by the red Post Office sign above the door.
Inside there were well-stocked shelves and a tiny Post Office in a far corner. Fruit and vegetables in modest quantities were the first wares to be seen as they went in. It proved something of a challenge to find provisions for the coming evening meal, however. ‘Lucky I brought my own dog food,’ muttered Thea, as she did a double take on the price on one of the few tins on offer.
‘It’s not claiming to be a supermarket,’ Phil muttered back. ‘What do you expect?’
He could see she was itching to get into an argument about shopping practices, and deliberately headed her off with a loud, ‘I do like the way everything’s laid out here,’ which amply served the purpose. A friendly but slightly scatty woman served them. When Thea asked whether they sold shampoo, there was a moment of wild panic before the item was located. Phil stood back, examining an unusual arrangement of small wooden drawers, containing assorted items of hardware such as shoelaces and buttons. It made him think of earlier times, as did almost everything about Temple Guiting.
On leaving, with a disappointingly small bag of purchases, their way was blocked by the towering bulk of Janey Holmes, who gave them an unsmiling look. Her face seemed drawn, her step leaden. Phil recalled the lightness of her tread on Sunday and wondered at the difference.
‘How’s your back?’ she asked him.
He did his best to stand straight, but couldn’t help putting a hand to the point of worst pain. ‘Improving slowly,’ he said. ‘The doc said to keep moving, but it isn’t easy.’
‘How did St Yvo’s thing go?’ Thea asked. ‘I was sorry to miss it.’ Only then did Phil become aware that Janey’s friend Fiona was standing in her lee, quite invisible until she stepped out and smiled coolly at him and Thea.
Janey shook her head bemusedly, as if the question was too irrelevant to be taken seriously. But she managed to reply. ‘Not brilliant, to be honest,’ she said. ‘Was it, Fee? That fallen tree messed things up a bit for us. Made us late.’ She narrowed her small eyes until they almost disappeared in the surrounding flesh. ‘Pity we came down to you when we did. It must have happened in those few minutes we were at Hector’s.’ She sighed windily. ‘Why it had to happen just then, I don’t know.’
Phil digested this. ‘You think the tree came down while you were at our place?’ he queried.
‘I know it did. We drove along the road at ten to four with no trouble, and when we tried to get back at quarter past, there was a dirty great beech in the way. We called the fire brigade, there and then.’
‘You know what we found, later on, of course?’ Thea spoke quietly, glancing around for listeners in the small street.
Janey and Fiona each gave her a look. ‘Oh, yes,’ Janey said, as if half choked. ‘It was on the news last night – didn’t you see it? Not so nice for the village. Makes the St Yvo ceremony seem quite trivial. He is one of the sillier saints, in any case. Fiona likes him, for some reason.’ She smiled affectionately down at her friend, to neutralise her words and seemed to gain succour from the returning smile. ‘He’s more of a myth than any of the others,’ she went on, with less hesitation than before, ‘and no suggestion he was martyred. Polly Deacon and I wanted it to be a rule that they all have to be martyrs, but now and then a few others get included. He was just a dead body.’
Thea gave a short laugh. ‘Just a dead body?’
Janey looked aghast at her own thoughtless words, and clapped a hand over her mouth, like a young child. ‘Oh, gosh – I shouldn’t have said that, should I?’ Again she looked to her friend for support.
‘It’s true, though,’ said Fiona. ‘No harm in saying it.’
Janey seemed to relax. ‘Well, that’s all right, then.’
‘You did promise you’d tell me the whole story,’ Thea prompted, much to Phil’s despair. All he wanted was to sink into the car and be driven home. But not one of the three women appeared to notice.
‘Go on, tell her,’ encouraged Fiona. ‘You know you want to.’ Phil heard an intimacy in this that caused him to make a fresh mental note.
‘Oh, all right then. Come over here a bit. We’ll be in people’s way.’ They moved across the deserted little street to a wall opposite, where large trees shaded them. Phil unashamedly leant against the wall, letting it take the weight off his spine. ‘Well, it goes like this,’ Janey began. ‘A body was found in the year 1001 near Huntingdon, and for some reason made a big fuss of. Perhaps it was to do with the date – new millennia do odd things to people. Anyway, there must have been a special casket – or something of that sort. They reburied in at Ramsey Abbey and called it St Yvo, thinking it must have been the famous foreign bishop of that name who’d arrived four hundred years earlier. Fiona likes the mystery around it. How did they come to remember him for so long? And what was it about the body that made them think it was him?’
‘Gosh!’ Thea breathed. ‘That’s a splendid story.’
Fiona laughed. ‘They’re all splendid stories. That’s the whole point. I know it all sounds a bit daft, doing them every month, year after year – but it’s important not to forget them.’ It was as if she’d waited patiently for Janey to have her say, and now it was her turn. She seemed to expand, wanting to be noticed. Phil realised that he still had not properly looked at her. She was only an inch or two taller than Thea, probably four or five years older. If she was free on a June Wednesday, then it was tempting to assume she was not engaged in full-time employment. But he had learnt better over the past decade – people, especially in this area, worked at home on computers, and could clock up a forty-hour week following all kinds of strange schedules, that enabled them to go shopping in the middle of the morning with no trouble.
But he was intrigued enough to want to stay with the subject of this weird saints thing. ‘So what exactly do you do for the festival?’ he asked. ‘Dig up bodies and bury them again?’ The echoes of what had taken place the day before were too strong to ignore. ‘And why does it have to be at four in the morning?’
Fiona was all forbearance. With a glance at Janey that clearly said, Let me handle this, dear she explained, ‘We have a little march, from the east, which is where Yvo came from, just as the sun is rising. He had two companions with him, and we’ve written out a little playlet acting out the local people’s reaction. It was the seventh century – the Dark Ages. He was very exotic, dark-skinned, they didn’t know what to make of him. Imagine it. Then he died and they gave him a special burial – we made a cardboard mausoleum for that – and then four hundred years later somebody finds it and a saint is born.’ Her eyes glowed. ‘We find it all very moving,’ she concluded.
‘Are you Catholics?’ Thea asked suddenly. ‘I mean – they’re the ones who have saints, aren’t they?’
‘We have one Catholic, two Anglicans and seven or eight others who aren’t religious at all. Janey and I are in the last group. It’s about history and society and human beings, not religion. I’m an historian by profession, and so is Polly. Janey’s our inspiration – she’s so passionate about the stories and the heritage they carry with them. You realise she’s from the original Templar blood, don’t you?’
‘Um…’ said Thea. ‘No, actua
lly.’
‘Oh yes.’ Fiona seemed fired by a personal pride in this fact.
‘Hush now,’ Janey murmured, with a glance towards the shop. Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of this odd little gathering under the trees. ‘No need to go into that. You know it only causes trouble.’ She looked at Thea. ‘You’re an historian, too, aren’t you? That’s why we thought you’d be interested. You see—’ Again there was a glow to her, a rising passion, ‘every one of the saints we celebrate has a message for us today, if you know how to read it. The same as fairy tales do.’
‘Ah!’ said Phil. ‘Now I’m beginning to understand.’ All three women looked at him with annoyance at the unveiled sarcasm.
‘Sorry.’ He held up his hands. ‘So when was the saints and martyrs club actually founded?’
‘Twelve years ago,’ Fiona said promptly. ‘Midsummer’s Eve. It all started as a bit of a game, in a way. We had a retired vicar living in the area, and he was keen on old British saints. Robin discovered St Alban, who was nicely martyred in about 300 AD, and we re-enacted the whole thing.’
‘Lovely,’ said Phil dryly. ‘I suppose the village children got to throw the first stones.’
‘He wasn’t stoned. He was beheaded. It’s no worse than burning Guy Fawkes every November. Some of us feel quite strongly that the old stories of violence and abuse of power have something to teach us today.’
‘Oh,’ said Phil, wondering just how she worked that out. ‘All your saints came to gruesome ends then, did they?’
‘Provided we can find one that fits. Sometimes we have to make do with something a bit tamer, like Yvo.’ The eyes went dreamy. ‘For some reason, I really do love St Yvo.’
Phil refused to be drawn. ‘What happened to Kentwyn?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t he next on the list?’
‘Kenelm. You mean St Kenelm. Well, the stories vary, but we prefer the one where his jealous sister murdered him. Raises some useful issues about sibling rivalry, you see.’
He had been just about to snort derisively when he realised she was teasing.
‘Come over to my place this afternoon,’ Janey suddenly invited. ‘Both of you.’
Phil remembered that the woman had been at Hector’s Nook when he’d arrived. She had latched onto Thea almost from the outset and still seemed intent on maintaining the connection for some reason.
‘Thanks,’ said Thea quickly. ‘That would be lovely. What time? Where are you?’
Janey gave her the details, and then continued on her interrupted progress into the shop. Phil noted that her tread was still sluggish, her shoulders bowed. ‘She seems sad,’ he said softly.
‘But she’s got Fiona to watch out for her – and Miss Deacon, as I understand it.’
‘Probably the whole village rallies round her. She might be a kind of mascot for them.’
Thea gave him a considering look, as if wondering how to react. He reran the words in his head, checking them for inappropriateness. To his relief, they both seemed to think he had said nothing too bad. All the same, he was left with a sense of irritation that such monitoring should be required.
‘We didn’t see the local news, did we?’ Thea changed the subject. ‘It never occurred to us to watch it.’
Phil felt the familiar shudder that always came with the realisation that much of his work was subject to media and public scrutiny, often making everything much more complicated. What and when to feed the news people was a central issue in police investigations, with a dedicated individual handling the whole matter in large cases. And yet it had not occurred to him that the television news would report his find so quickly.
‘None of us said anything about the missing Giles Pritchett,’ he noted.
‘Nor directly about the body. I think Janey finds it too upsetting.’
‘Maybe she’s related to Giles.’ He had a strong sense of a back story that needed to be told, involving these throwbacks to the Middle Ages, with their Templar ancestry and recurring surnames. That Rupert chap had called himself a ‘scion’ as if it was important. The missing Giles had grown up with the Templar stories from his great-grandfather and a proud belief that it was personally relevant to him. There was sure to be a cache of genealogical tables somewhere, demonstrating just how it all worked, and who was the bearer of the crucial genes. But how did it bear on the death of a man years ago? There was no hint of a connection, and yet Phil could not help thinking there had to be one. The expressions on the faces of Pritchett and Janey, if nothing else, implied that this death was important to them, and they would very much rather it had stayed hidden under the uncooperative beech tree.
Just before they got to the parking area at Hector’s Nook, Phil’s mobile went off. He answered it while still sitting in the car, mouthing Gladwin at Thea, who raised her eyebrows and remained sitting in the driving seat.
The Senior Investigating Officer spoke succinctly, summarising the report from the pathologist.
‘Of course he’s not finished, by a long way,’ she began, ‘but this is what he’s found so far. The deceased was male, naked, of medium height, aged somewhere between late thirties and early fifties. No obvious signs of disease or old injuries. We’re testing for residues of drugs and other substances. They’re still examining the scene, with scarcely anything to show for it so far. He was buried in soft soil, about two feet down.’
‘Is that enough to keep foxes and so forth away?’
‘Barely. It looks as if a layer of dead wood was placed over the grave, which would have helped.’
‘Why not go deeper?’ Phil wondered.
‘Lack of time. Tree roots in the way. It’s quite stony, too. Plus we can really only guess at most of this from the effects of the uprooted tree and the slope of the bank. It seems a peculiar place to choose, although the tree would have concealed the whole thing from the road.’ She was almost babbling in her hypothesising, painting a picture that Phil knew would stick in his mind for quite some time.
‘So, probably not a vagrant,’ he concluded. ‘How long had he been dead?’
‘Impossible to say for certain, but the pathologist thinks around five years.’
‘Not Giles Pritchett, then,’ said Thea, when Phil related these details to her.
‘Not Giles Pritchett,’ he confirmed. ‘Which leaves me with something of a dilemma.’
‘Oh?’
‘Whether or not to call the anxious father and put him out of his misery.’
‘Not to mention the invisible anxious mother.’ Thea’s tone was bordering on the flippant, and Phil gave her a probing look.
‘You don’t appear to care very much,’ he observed.
She sighed. ‘I care in theory,’ she said. ‘But I can’t pretend to take it very personally. Anonymous dead person found, not the missing son of worried village couple. It’s a bit of a non-story, somehow.’
‘Never say that,’ Phil warned her earnestly. ‘It’s never a non-story. Each man’s death diminishes me, remember.’
Thea sighed again. ‘I know. Normally I’d be the first to take that line. But somehow I can’t help feeling that the real tragedy around here has to do with something other than those bones.’
‘You mean Janey,’ he said slowly.
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Yes, I mean Janey.’
Chapter Eight
‘How do they date the age of a skeleton anyway?’ Thea wanted to know. ‘I mean, the time since it died.’
Phil shook his head. ‘I’m not familiar with the precise procedure, although I was sent on a course a while ago which filled us in on the latest forensic stuff. There are all sorts of ways, especially when the body’s been buried outdoors. It involves insects and plants and worms. Are you sure you want to know?’
‘I can probably imagine for myself, if I put my mind to it. It’s quite interesting, isn’t it? I suppose the calcium leaches out of the bones at a specific rate, so you could get a good idea by measuring how much was left,’ she suggested. ‘I mean, a very old bone is all
white and brittle, isn’t it? And marrow – the marrow must all dry up and disappear. I rather like bones,’ she added thoughtfully, her eyes on her own bare arm.
‘That’s because your dog likes them,’ he teased.
She ignored the remark. ‘I always wanted to have the bones after Sunday lunch. I would suck them for ages and carry them around with me. My mother used to get furious.’
‘Disgusting,’ he smiled. ‘She should never have allowed it.’
‘She tried not to, but I was too devious for her. I hid them in my pockets.’
Phil made an exaggerated grimace. ‘That’s really disgusting,’ he protested.
He had been about to pick up the phone to call Stephen Pritchett when Thea had asked her question about bones. Now he achieved his goal, and was not surprised when the man answered before the second ring. The image of him sitting like a faithful dog watching the instrument was an unhappy one.
‘It isn’t Giles,’ he said, quickly. ‘It’s somebody older, who’s been dead for around five years.’ He shuddered at his own breach of security in imparting even that much information. Why, he asked himself, was it so important to set Pritchett’s mind at rest? Could it possibly be the old Freemason bond, still operating in spite of everything?
‘Ah.’ It was less of a word than an emotional exhalation. ‘Thank you.’
Phil was greatly tempted to leave it there, to let Giles Pritchett slide back into whatever fragile oblivion he had found over the past two and a half years, and get on with his own unexpected holiday with Thea. After all, Giles’s disappearance was two or three years after the body had been hidden under the tree, which strongly suggested that it had nothing to do with that event. But he was too much of a professional to allow himself to let it lie.
‘I can’t leave it at that, you know,’ he said gently. ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’ It was a foolishly trite way of expressing the unease surrounding Giles, but it served its purpose.
‘Wrong?’ Pritchett attempted. ‘In what way?’