The Janus Stone

by Elly Griffiths

  ‘What about the mother?’ asks Tanya. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Sir Roderick says she was “like an angel” but I get the impression that he didn’t really know her that well. Probably brought up by a nanny. The mother died quite young, in 1957.’

  ‘Only a few years after her daughter,’ says Judy, ‘probably died of grief.’

  ‘This isn’t a woman’s magazine,’ says Nelson, ‘she died of pneumonia. Quite common in those days.’

  ‘All the same,’ says Clough, ‘they were an unlucky family, weren’t they?’

  Ruth is having trouble working. Having Judy in the house forced her to get up early, offer to make tea, etc. But Judy said that she would get something at the station. She left at eight, looking far more together than Ruth ever manages before ten a.m., or indeed ever.

  It had been unexpectedly pleasant to have company last night. Max had left almost as soon as Judy arrived and that had been a bit of a relief too. She feels that she needs time to absorb Max’s story, to come to terms that Max Grey is, in fact, Martin Black. How could anyone go through all that and emerge the other side apparently normal and well-adjusted? If she had ever thought about Max’s childhood she would have imagined a middle-class home, public or maybe grammar school, a smooth transition to university, the usual relationships and friendships along the way. Never a children’s home, a dead sister, living rough, adopted by gypsies. Jesus – it’s like Wuthering Heights. And there is, she admits, something slightly Heathcliffy about Max.

  Ruth sits down at her table by the window. It is a dull morning, the grey marsh merging seamlessly with the grey sky. She opens her computer but, after staring at her lectures notes for a minute, closes it again. She opens a drawer and gets out a beautiful clean piece of paper. One of the few things she and Nelson have in common is a liking for lists. At the top of her list Ruth writes: Woolmarket Street. Then she lists everyone she knows who is connected to the site.

  Children’s Home

  Father Hennessey

  Max Grey (she stares at this name for a second before crossing it out and writing Martin Black)

  Kevin Davies, undertaker

  Other former residents

  Staff (Max had mentioned a Sister James and she knows that Judy went to Southport to interview another nun)

  Building Site

  Edward Spens

  Foreman and other building workers

  Ted

  Trace

  She looks at the list for so long that Flint becomes bored and tries to sit on it. Ruth pushes him off. Anyone on the list could have put the two-headed calf on her doorstep, could have put the baby in the trench and written her name on the Roman wall. Of all the names, she has to face the fact that Max is the most likely. He knows about Roman ritual, he was the one who told her all that I, Claudius stuff in the first place; he has had the means and the opportunity. He was there when she found the writing on the wall. He was the one who found her in the trench after she had fainted. What if he had been there all along? What if he was the one who put the baby there (it was only the night before, after all, that she told him that she was pregnant)? As an archaeologist, he would have access to the museum; he could easily have got hold of the two-headed calf and the model baby too.

  But why? Why would Max want to scare her, scare her to death, as he himself put it? To warn her away from the Woolmarket Street site? To prevent her from discovering his identity as Martin Black? Or is there some other mystery concerned with the old children’s home?

  She looks at the list again. If the body under the door was killed over fifty years ago, there is only one person who was alive at the time. Father Patrick Hennessey. Well maybe there are still some nuns or other staff members alive but Father Hennessey is the only one she knows. If there is a secret, he will be the one who knows it. Don’t priests always know secrets? Isn’t that the whole point of the Catholic confessional?

  When they met at the site, Father Hennessey had given her his card. At the time, she had thought it amusing that a priest would possess something as worldly as a business card. Father Patrick Hennessey SJ it says, in discreet grey capitals. She has no idea what SJ stands for and she doesn’t want to know. On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt to meet him again and ask him a few questions of her own.

  Her hand hovers by the phone.

  Judy is sitting at her desk, fuming. Bastard! How dare he sneer at her. ‘This isn’t a woman’s magazine.’ And in front of Tanya Fuller too. Judy likes Tanya. She’s fun on a night out and she certainly provides a welcome antidote to Clough and the rest of the lads. But Judy also knows that Tanya is competition.

  Judy has been in the police force for three years. She’s a graduate (something she doesn’t often mention to Nelson) and, as such, on the so-called ‘fast track’ to success. When, after eighteen months, she’d been given the transfer to CID she felt that she really was on the way up. She loves detective work and she gets on well with Nelson whose bark is definitely worse than his bite. He may sound like an unreconstructed male chauvinist but, in practice, he is fair to the women in his team and (unlike some DCIs) does not view them as useful only in cases of rape or domestic violence. But somehow Judy feels that her career has stalled. She is a Detective Constable, by now she should be a Detective Sergeant, like Clough. She knows that Nelson has the funding for another sergeant so why hasn’t he given her the stripes? At least until Tanya Fuller turned up she could be sure that she was the best candidate for the job. But now Tanya breezes in from another force with her intelligent questions and her eyes fixed adoringly on Nelson’s face. What if Nelson promotes Tanya over Judy? She couldn’t bear it. She’d jack it all in and become a bookie like her dad.

  Judy is meant to be helping Tanya with the dentist search but instead she is going over the notes from the case. She is sure they are all missing something. And, if she spots it, that will mean one in the eye for Nelson, Tanya, all of them.

  Idly she sketches a Spens family tree. She met Edward Spens once at a police do and found him rather attractive. This doesn’t affect her deep-seated belief that his family have something to hide.

  She looks hard at the name Rosemary Spens. She hears Nelson’s voice, speaking in the flat tone he uses for briefings: ‘Sir Roderick says she was “like an angel” but I get the impression that he didn’t really know her that well. Probably brought up by a nanny.’ That’s it. Judy goes back to the file and rifles through until she comes to the census of 1951. She remembers Clough reading it out to them: ‘Christopher Spens, Rosemary Spens, children Roderick and Annabelle.’ But, typically, Clough has overlooked something and Nelson’s casual words have brought it back to her. There would have been other people in the house – servants, a cook and almost certainly a nanny. And, sure enough, there are four other names on the list:

  Lily Wright – cook general

  Susan Baker – domestic

  Edna Dawes – domestic

  Orla McKinley – nanny

  Judy looks at the last name for a long time.

  Clough, swallowing the last of a chunky doughnut-to-go, is in a stonemason’s studio. The air is thick with dust and out of the fog loom disembodied shapes – columns, fireplaces, the occasional half-finished statue, horses and angels and Greek goddesses. Clough walks carefully through the stone figures thinking that it’s like a book he read as a child where a witch turned her enemies into stone and then decorated her house with them. Either that or a graveyard.

  They have had a bit of luck with the stonemason. The firm who made Christopher Spens’ archway in 1956 are still in business. The actual mason has retired but his son is now in charge and has volunteered to bring his old dad into the studio to talk to the police. Clough now wends his way slowly towards the back of the vast room where the comforting sounds of Radio 1 are mingling with the smell of reheated coffee and calor gas. Clough sniffs appreciatively.

  An old man is sitting in an armchair in from of the gas stove. A younger man, presumably the son
, is chipping away at a small block of marble. Duffy is begging for mercy in the background.

  ‘Mr Wilson?’ Clough extends a hand. ‘Detective Sergeant Clough.’

  The old man holds out a thin hand in a fingerless glove. ‘Mr Wilson senior. Reginald Wilson. I assume it’s me you wanted?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir. As I explained to your son on the phone, we’re interested in an archway you built in 1956, on Woolmarket Street. For Christopher Spens.’

  Reginald Wilson gestures towards a cloth-bound book on his lap marked, in black ink, 1954-1958. ‘It’s all in the book. I always say to Stephen here, put it in the book. You never know when you might want to refer to it. But it’s all computers these days. Not as safe as a book.’ The younger man rolls his eyes good-naturedly.

  Clough follows the shaking finger to an entry marked in pencil. ‘Stone archway and portico. Portico with Roman-style columns. Archway, stand-alone, granite. Eight foot by four. Inscription to read: Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit.’

  ‘Latin,’ says Clough. ‘Gobbledegook, eh?’

  ‘I studied Latin at school,’ says Reginald Wilson mildly. ‘It’s a fairly well-known saying. It was important to Mr Spens,

  I think, because of his daughter dying. He said that the arch was a memorial to her, a sign that nothing was ever really lost.’

  Feeling snubbed, Clough says, ‘What sort of a man was Christopher Spens?’

  Wilson is silent for a moment, holding his hands out towards the fire. Then he says, ‘He was always very courteous to me. Treated me as a craftsman. That’s important in our line of work. But he was distant, if you know what I mean. Of course, he’d lost a child and that changes you. But he was a difficult man to know, that was my impression.’

  ‘What about his wife, Rosemary?’

  ‘I hardly saw her. I understood she was a bit of an invalid. We saw the son though, nice lad, he helped us dig.’

  ‘Roderick?’

  ‘Yes. He runs the business now, doesn’t he?’

  ‘His son, Edward.’

  ‘Ah, fathers and sons.’ Reginald Wilson glances at his son, working industriously on the marble, its sides shining in the light from the fire. ‘That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Passing the business on to your son. That’s the only reason why any of us do it.’

  On the way out, moving through the stone menagerie, Clough remembers the name of the book. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He must remember to tell Judy. She’s always saying that he never reads anything.

  27th June Festival of Jupiter Stator

  This morning a black dog appeared on the front lawn. Clearly a messenger from the goddess. As it paused on the lawn, it turned and looked at me (I was reading Suetonius in the drawing room). I looked back, sending a message, ‘Is it soon, lady?’ And she answered, ‘It is soon.’

  CHAPTER 26

  ‘How charming,’ says Father Hennessey politely, although the café chosen at random by Ruth is, in truth, anything but charming. Determined to avoid Starbucks she’d Googled ‘cafés Norwich’ and come up with Bobby’s Bagels, an old-fashioned greasy spoon with Formica tables and dirty net curtains. The owner (Bobby himself?) has at least three days’ worth of food spattered on his apron and is either talking on a hands-free phone or is in the grip of severe schizophrenia.

  The café is, at least, fairly near to Woolmarket Street and Ruth was able to look in at the site as she went past. Apart from the archway, the old house has now vanished completely: reception rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, wishing well, outhouses all subsumed in a smooth sea of mud. At the back of the site, the new apartments are rising stealthily, now at first-floor height complete with flimsy-looking balconies. Edward Spens is obviously going all out to beat the property crash.

  Ruth orders tea because she doesn’t trust the coffee. Father Hennessey orders coffee and, rashly, a bagel. This he eats with every appearance of relish despite the fact that the plate seems to have traces of egg on it. The priest looks completely calm and relaxed. It is Ruth who fiddles nervously with the sugar bowl and twice spills her (disgusting) tea.

  ‘You must have been delighted to see Martin again,’ she says.

  Father Hennessey smiles. ‘Indeed I was. It was a great gift from God. I had feared I would die without knowing what had happened to Martin and Elizabeth.’

  This is, presumably, more than a manner of speaking. Father Hennessey, Ruth knows from Max, is over eighty; death is no longer a metaphor. What must it be like, wonders Ruth, to know that you are going to die and to be sure that eternal life awaits?

  ‘Max… Martin… said that you were very good to him.’

  Father Hennessey looks meditatively into his coffee cup. ‘Ah, I tried to be but we never know how much harder we could have tried. If I had been more understanding, maybe he wouldn’t have run away. Maybe Elizabeth wouldn’t have died.’

  ‘Maybe she would have,’ says Ruth gently. ‘Max says she was often ill as a child.’

  Hennessey smiles but says nothing. There is a silence broken only by Bobby in the background having a fierce row with someone called Maggie. Eventually Ruth says, ‘You’re probably wondering why I asked to see you.’

  ‘I assumed you’d tell me,’ says Father Hennessey mildly.

  So Ruth tells him about the baby and the two-headed calf, about the writing in blood and the presence lurking outside her house. She probably tells him more than she means to and she attributes this to some innate spooky priest power. Certainly Hennessey’s pale blue eyes never leave her face.

  ‘So,’ she concludes, ‘someone is trying to scare me. Someone linked to the house. And I wondered if you had any idea who that could be.’

  She forces herself to confront that blue stare. Father Hennessey looks steadily back at her. ‘Do you have any ideas yourself?’ he asks.

  ‘No,’ says Ruth though, in truth, she does.

  ‘Have you ever met anyone else from the children’s home?’ asks Hennessey.

  ‘Only Kevin Davies.’

  ‘None of the nuns?’

  ‘No.’

  Is he really, as Ted would say, going to pin it on the nuns? But the only person Ruth knows from the Sacred Heart Children’s Home is Father Hennessey himself.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ says Ruth.

  For the first time, Hennessey does not meet her eyes. He looks down at the murky grey liquid in his coffee cup.

  ‘There are other secrets,’ he says at last. ‘The evil in that house began long before I ever saw it.’

  Nelson is actually at Judy’s desk when she calls him. He has been looking for the transcript of her interview with Sister Immaculata and is, therefore, surprised and a little spooked to hear that Judy is actually on her way to Southport to see the nun again.

  ‘What are you playing at, Johnson?’

  ‘I think I’ve discovered something about Sister Immaculata. I think it’s important.’

  Nelson starts to counts to ten and gives up on five. ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘Later tonight.’

  He sighs. Judy is a good officer. He trusts her instincts and, God knows, they could do with a breakthrough.

  ‘No. Stay the night if you have to. I’ll get Tanya to stay at Ruth’s tonight.’

  Some routine surveillance will do Tanya good, he thinks. She’s been a bit too pleased with herself lately. He hopes she hasn’t got her eyes on Judy’s job. Tanya is obviously intelligent but she still has a lot to learn. Besides he would never promote a newcomer over a long-standing officer. Nelson believes in precedence; it comes of being the youngest of three.

  He continues rifling through Judy’s (incredibly neat) papers and comes across the sheet of paper on which she has jotted down the Spens family tree.

  He stares at the scribbled names, sure he is missing something. He is so deep in thought that he doesn’t hear his name being called. It is not until Cathbad is actually in the room with him that he registers his presence, purple cloak and all. Tom, the desk sergeant, hovers in th
e background looking embarrassed.

  Since the Saltmarsh case, Nelson and Cathbad have almost become friends. There is an understanding between them, despite Nelson’s contempt for new age philosophy and Cathbad’s dislike for authority. Cathbad has even visited Nelson’s house, bearing dreamcatchers for the girls and Nelson has once or twice met him for a drink in dodgy pubs where the beers all have names and, unless you are careful, people play folk music at you.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ says Tom. ‘He said it was important.’

  Nelson notices that, cloak notwithstanding, Cathbad does look unusually serious, even worried.

  ‘What it about?’ he asks.

  ‘Max Grey,’ Cathbad answers.

  Judy arrives at Southport at just after four to be told that Sister Immaculata is ‘unwell’ and can’t see anyone.

  ‘It’s important,’ pleads Judy, standing in the spotless reception area surrounded by tropical plants and pictures of saints.

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ says the Sister sympathetically, ‘but Sister Immaculata is having a bad day. Perhaps she’ll be brighter tomorrow.’

  So, after promising to be back tomorrow, Judy finds herself on Southport seafront, tired, hungry, discouraged and slightly scared. What if Nelson is furious with her for disappearing like that? What if Ruth gets murdered tonight and it’s all her fault? What if Tanya finds the dental records, solves the case and gets promoted? She sighs and starts to walk towards the nearest B and B.

  Ruth had not been pleased to open her door expecting Judy but finding Tanya Fuller, designer glasses flashing, on the doorstep. She likes Judy and had been looking forward to seeing her again. The morning’s conversation with Father Hennessey has left her rather more unsettled than before. What did he mean, ‘The evil in that house began long before I ever saw it.’? ‘Surely you don’t mean the place is haunted?’ Ruth had answered lightly.