The Skeleton Garden

by Marty Wingate

  Orlando had hopped up, too. “I’ll go with you.”

  She didn’t reply, as different possibilities ran through her mind. She pounced on the first reasonable one and made another call. While it was ringing, she said, “No, Orlando, it would be better for you to stay. It’s just that—Hello, Evelyn? I’m sorry to ring so late. But I was hoping you could do a favor for me.” Evelyn and Peachey lived no more than ten minutes away; she could wait that long.

  Evelyn and Peachey, as it turned out, were sitting up in Kitty’s kitchen drinking cocoa, and Kitty had only that moment given her such a treasure. But if they were needed, they’d be there straightaway. They could be at Greenoak in two minutes.

  “A minder?” Orlando shouted. “I don’t need looking after. I’m an adult!”

  “Yes,” Pru said, “and as an adult you have to accept that you can’t do every single thing you want to do. I need you to stay here. Please.” Throwing on her coat, she looked down to see that she still wore her parachute dress. No time to change now.

  Orlando continued his protest until Evelyn and Peachey walked in.

  “Ah, here’s the fellow I need to see,” Peachey said, pulling out his phone. “Can you help me find an app that would organize my callouts by district?”

  “Orlando,” Pru said, waiting for him to drag his eyes up to hers. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, the sullen teenager returning as he took Peachey’s mobile.

  Evelyn followed Pru out the door. “You sounded frightened. What’s happened?”

  Pru grabbed the sleeve of Evelyn’s coat and squeezed. Will’s letter to your mum—his last letter, never posted to the pocket of Kitty’s pinny. It’s here, we have it. But she couldn’t begin that now, first she must go to Christopher.

  “Everything’s fine, really,” Pru said. “We’ll explain it later, Ev, but I’ve got to get to the pub now.” Pru gave her a quick hug. “Thanks so much for doing this—I couldn’t leave him alone. I’ll ring and give you the all clear.”

  —

  The Blackbird looked deserted and not a little forlorn after the evening’s activity. Only a dim glow shone from inside, replacing the sparkling lights that had rimmed every window earlier. No cars left parked along the road. Christopher must’ve pulled round behind to the small car park. Pru approached the front door and gave it a push—it was open. She glanced into the room before she entered. Empty. Where was Dick? The lamp behind the bar cast its light in an arc that fell only halfway across the room. She approached the bar and set her bag down. Dishes and glasses had been cleared away, but, on the shadowy side of the room, she could see papers strewn across the floor, people’s keepsakes of the war tossed about by Martin.

  “Christopher?” Her voice fell dead. The quiet air seemed to press on her, forcing her to be as silent as it was. On the far side of the room, a beam of light came up from the open trapdoor to the cellar. Yes, he’d gone down to find Martin. They must be in the back room, out of hearing. Christopher had things in hand. She took a few steps and was alarmed by how much noise her shoes—Mrs. Wilson’s shoes—made on the wood floor. She took them off, set them next to her bag, and walked silently to the opening. “Christopher?” she called down, stronger now. Nothing. She pulled out her phone and rang him, listening for his phone to go off, but again the call went straight to his voicemail. Where was he? She gave one more glance around the pub, and went down the stairs.

  Chapter 42

  She took the steep steps slowly, blinking against the bright lights of the cellar after the dimness of the pub. Her bare foot landed on the cold stone floor, where she stood amid a sea of metal beer casks. A fear rose in her. Dick kept them stacked neatly against the wall, but at least a dozen had tipped over, rolled across the floor, and crashed into the shelves of glasses.

  She picked her way round the casks, avoiding pieces of broken glass and wishing she’d kept her shoes on. The quiet was oppressive and made her reluctant to speak out. She looked into the next room, the one with the sofa and the garden twine and the magazines. But her gaze homed in on a sight that froze her in fear—Christopher, on the floor and with his back to her. He was tied to a post, his head slumped forward.

  “Christopher!” she screamed and ran to him, throwing herself to her knees and cupping his lifeless face in her hands. His eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t stir. A trickle of blood oozed from a split in his bottom lip.

  The next second, she was grabbed from behind, jerked back, and held fast before she had a chance to react. “Let’s get you situated, Pru,” Martin said in her ear, his voice trembling as she struggled, “and we can sort this out.”

  She screamed in response, and he slapped a hand over her mouth and nose, pressing hard and cutting off her air while he made hushing noises. She couldn’t breathe and had no leverage against him—she was still on her knees and he towered over her, twisting her head at a painful angle. She worked her mouth open just wide enough for one of his fingers to slip in. She bit down, hard.

  He shouted and let go long enough to hit her on the side of her head. Pru reeled and collapsed across Christopher’s legs as the room swam. Martin pulled her up roughly, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” as he bound her hands together before she could get her bearings. He pushed her into a sitting position and tied her up with a thin cord that cut into her arms and across her breasts. When she shook her head to clear her vision, her head bumped into the post. She was back-to-back with Christopher. She groped about, searching for his hands. Something jabbed her, but at last she could feel his fingers and gave a squeeze. There was no response, and her hand came away sticky. With a wave of dread, she imagined it smeared with his blood.

  Martin stood a few feet away, sweat matted his dark hair to his forehead, and a red gash stood out on one cheek. “You’ve found Jimmy’s letter,” he said, breathing hard as he got in her face. “I heard you talking to Stan yesterday—you said you’d got the papers you’d been looking for. You wouldn’t let it go, would you—not Will Donovan or Jack Snuggs. You must tell me where the letter is, Pru. I need to destroy it.”

  “Martin,” she said, trying to keep her voice level and reasonable, “this isn’t you. I know you wouldn’t do this. You…you’ve had a shock, that’s all. Let us go—Christopher will help you.”

  Lies, she thought, all lies, and he knew it. Martin lunged at her and she flinched. “Jimmy Chatters was a good man,” Martin said as he began walking back and forth across the floor. “But if this story comes out, that’s all he’ll be remembered for.”

  As her head cleared, she looked down at her bindings—garden twine. He had grabbed the first thing at hand, the Second World War–era garden twine on the shelf. She strained against it, but she knew how jute kept its strength. “It was an accident with Jack, wasn’t it, Martin? You didn’t mean to do that.”

  He paused, appeared to grow pensive as if listening to the quiet. “I didn’t know about Jimmy’s letter. Jack told me what he’d found, but he wouldn’t give it to me. Said he didn’t hold with secrets.”

  “But, Martin, did you read the letter? It was Jimmy’s last request—he wanted to atone for what he’d done.” Wake up, Christopher, please wake up, she thought, as she rubbed his fingers, praying she could rub life into them. “Jimmy should be allowed to rest in peace.”

  Martin paced again, slapping his hands on posts as he passed. “Jack asked me if I knew what Jimmy had done, and I didn’t lie, I told him, yes, I did know, but I wasn’t going to let something that happened all those years ago tarnish the name of a man who did only good for others. I looked for the letter everywhere—I thought he’d hidden it at Stan’s or Kitty’s—or was it in Peachey’s van? I was down here in the cellars that night when Jack rang and said to meet him at Greenoak.”

  “Did he want you to read it—to know what it was like for Jimmy that night?”

  “I wanted that letter.” Martin’s breathing was heavy and loud. “I lost myself for a moment, and I pushed Jack down an
d held him. ‘Only tell me where it is and I’ll leave you alone,’ I said. But he stopped breathing.” Martin paused, as if surprised all over again at the outcome. “I didn’t mean for him to die—he should’ve just given me the letter.”

  Jack knew he was dying, anyway, Pru thought, and so he had nothing to lose by resisting. As Martin rambled, she squirmed, trying to loosen her restraints.

  Martin looked through the next arch toward the room where Jack had found Jimmy’s letter. “One day, out of the blue, my dad told me about it. Said he wanted to confess, that he couldn’t take the guilt any longer. But my mum was dying. What good would it do her to know this, I asked him. Wait, I said. And he said he would wait. Then, after she died, his memory started to go. It happened so fast—it seemed as if one day he and Mum were working the crossword, and the next she was gone and he could barely remember who I was. But at least he didn’t remember what he’d done to Will Donovan, either. And then Jimmy died, too.”

  “You didn’t know he wrote out his confession?”

  Martin used the sleeve of his jumper to wipe the sweat from his face. “When you dug up Will Donovan’s bones, I thought, well, no one will ever know who he was or how he got there. Dad’s gone, and his story is still safe. I didn’t know about the letter until Jack told me.” Martin laughed as he nodded toward the back room. “Jimmy had hidden away his confession in the one place he thought he’d never forget. But he did forget—he forgot everything. I remember I’d come home at the end of the day, after he started getting bad, and he’d’ve dragged everything out of the pantry or taken all the plates from the cupboard. ‘Where is it?’ he’d ask. ‘What have I done with it?’ I never knew what he was talking about.”

  “He’d had a lifetime of guilt, and you denied him his chance at absolution,” Pru said.

  She jumped, crying out—Christopher had squeezed her hand. His fingers got to work—groping around the stone floor. Again, she felt something smooth and cold, followed by a prick, and understood what it was—he must’ve got hold of a piece of broken glass.

  But Martin, lost in memories, took no notice as he began talking to the walls. “Do you know what I remember about being a lad in Southampton? My mum and I lived in a bed-sit, just the one room with a hot plate for our cooker. I was too young to understand what my mum did for work. All I knew was that when she had a…visitor…she would set me in my pushchair in the corridor with a packet of sweets. ‘You stay out here, boy, I won’t be long.’ I’d go to sleep like as not.” Martin’s face hardened. “Like as not I’d wake up to find a visitor of mine own—a rat crawling into my pushchair to get at my bag of sweeties. That was our life,” he said, choking on a sob. “That’s the life we had until Jimmy took us away from it.”

  Pru felt Christopher shift as he sawed his hands free with the glass shard. The movement must’ve caught Martin’s eye, because his head jerked round, and he took two long strides toward them. But he didn’t go for Christopher; instead, he grabbed Pru’s hair and shook her hard. “Where is it?” he shouted in her face and hit her again high on her cheekbone, the same place, magnifying the pain.

  “She doesn’t have it, Martin.” There was a slur in Christopher’s voice, and he strained against the old twine. “She doesn’t have it”—his voice growing stronger—“I took it.”

  “Now you’ll talk, will you?” Martin circled around to face him. “I knew you’d tell me if Pru was here.” Of course, she thought—the text had been from Martin. “Where is it?”

  “Get us out of this, Martin, and I’ll take you to the letter. But only if I know that Pru is away and safe first.”

  Martin didn’t reply, but walked off. Pru couldn’t turn her head far enough to see what he was doing and the right side of her face was beginning to swell, further obstructing her vision—but she heard the match strike one, two, three times, and then the flare of the flame. Martin moved around at some task, and Christopher, his hands released, now reached for hers. But even if he freed her hands, they were still both bound to the post.

  An acrid odor caught in Pru’s nose, and she could see a wisp of smoke out of the corner of her eye. Martin had set fire to the horsehair sofa.

  “Right,” Martin said, “now you’ll tell me. This old thing may smoke for a while before it burns, but the smoke will get worse. If you tell me now where the letter is, I can get back in time to put it out and we’ll say no more about it. But you must tell me the truth, or it’ll go badly for you.”

  Martin was no criminal, Pru thought, but that didn’t mean his intimidation methods weren’t deadly. A rising fear set her to breathing hard. She inhaled smoke and coughed.

  “This isn’t the way to do it, Martin,” Christopher said. “You need to let Pru go. What you did was an accident, and we can talk about this and find a way out of the problem.”

  Martin rushed at Pru, and Christopher shouted, “All right! It’s out behind the pub—the cottage Sadie and Evelyn lived in. The back corner has crumbled, and I put the letter and Will’s documents there underneath the pile of bricks.”

  All was quiet. Martin didn’t move, as if he was having trouble deciding whether to believe that. The smell of smoke grew stronger.

  “Well, we’ll see, won’t we.” Martin took off up the stairs. They heard the trapdoor crash shut and something heavy being dragged across the floor.

  The smoke billowed up along with Pru’s despair. “He won’t come back, will he?” Her hands were now free, but the twine still bound them to the post and to each other. “I wish I could see your face,” she said with a sob.

  “Hang on,” Christopher said, gripping her hand, “I’m not letting go of you that easily. He’ll have to come back, because the letter isn’t there. Did you leave it at the house?” She could feel him strain against the twine as he tried to reach up and cut a strand.

  “Yes,” she said, sniffing. But they both knew Martin had no reason to return for them. If he thought they were the only two who knew where the letter was, then why not just let them burn up?

  “This is too slow!” Christopher shouted. “Can you move at all?”

  She wriggled. “Just a bit.” She used what little give she had and scooted down, trying to get under their bindings. The skirt of her dress wadded up around her hips and caught the bottom round of twine while the top string was around her neck. Her hands were loose, but her arms were cinched against her body; she could scoot no further without choking herself and she couldn’t sit back up either—she was a fly caught in a spider’s web. “I don’t think this is working.” From her vantage point almost flat on the floor, she could see the growing cloud of smoke accumulating near the ceiling.

  “Hang on,” Christopher said. The twine choked her for an instant and then pop. The tension eased. “Can you get loose now? I’ve got an extra length or two around me, so if you can get free…”

  They heard a thunder of footsteps on the ceiling—a familiar, heart-sinking sound.

  “Oh, no,” Pru said.

  “Did Orlando come with you?”

  “No,” she said, her heart in her throat, attempting to deny the obvious. “Evelyn and Peachey stayed with him—they should be at the house.”

  But there was no mistaking those heavy thumps. They were followed by furniture scraping across the floor. At last free, Pru got up on her knees and pulled off twine. She took the glass and cut through the strands around Christopher. They stepped out of the strands just as the trapdoor was raised, drawing in a rush of fresh air. The sofa burst into flames.

  A figure in lime-colored trousers flew backward down the stairs and crashed into the casks, sending them colliding about like bumper cars.

  “Orlando!” Pru called.

  Christopher staggered into the cask room to the boy, but Martin dropped onto both of them from halfway up the stairs. Christopher threw him off as Pru scrambled to pull Orlando clear, heedless of walking into the middle of the broken glass until she felt the stabs of pain. Martin broke free of Christopher, seized Pru’s wris
t with one hand, and raised his other arm, but Christopher caught it and twisted it behind his back. Peachey appeared and leapt down the stairs, taking hold of Martin’s other arm. Martin struggled for a moment and then collapsed in a heap.

  In the thickening smoke, Christopher turned to Pru—she motioned them forward. “We’re all right,” she said, coughing. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  The two men dragged Martin to the top of the steps and stopped near the bar. Pru pushed Orlando ahead of her and winced at every step as pain shot up through her feet. In the pub, Evelyn held the door open for the police until she saw Pru, who plopped down in a chair next to Orlando.

  “I rang the police before we left the house, but they said Dick Whycher had already been on to them,” Evelyn said. “When we pulled up, the boy ran in ahead of us—he was too quick for me.” She lowered her voice. “He showed us Mr. Jimmy’s letter. We knew something was wrong.”

  Pru heard a siren nearing as the fire brigade arrived. At the bar, the young PCs seemed reluctant to cuff a detective sergeant, but after a sharp instruction from Christopher—repeated by DI Harnett—they followed orders.

  The smoke continued to pour from the trapdoor. “Right, everyone out,” Harnett said.

  “Orlando,” Pru began as they walked out into the cold night, but the shooting pain in her feet drew her attention.

  “You don’t have a very good poker face, Aunt Pru,” he said, dropping to the ground at the side of the road, just out of the way of the commotion. He coughed. “I knew it was serious, whatever took you and Uncle Christopher away. I got out that letter as soon as you’d left.”

  Her eyes were stinging. She pressed her fingertips against her eyelids and saw an image of his mother’s face. What would she tell Claire?