‘Yes, but there is still the little matter of Tom Bostock to deal with,’ Maltravers reminded her. She sat up, abruptly re-animated.
‘Shit! I thought you sorted that out. Where is he?’
‘Under the bed.’
‘Under the bed,’ Tess repeated tonelessly. ‘The bed on which I am now sitting. Of course he is. Where else would he be? What shall we do with him? I know, let’s take him home with us. A little souvenir of the holiday. Marvellous conversation piece at dinner parties. “Oh, it’s just a little thing we picked up in Old Capley. Amazingly cheap. It only cost us our sanity and a man’s…”’ The nonsense and deliberate rising tone of artificial hysteria in her voice were not enough to hold off the swarming emotions of the sudden return to the knowledge of all they had been through. The protective layer of acting fell away and was replaced by a look of anguish.
‘Oh Christ, stop me joking about it, Gus! Simon’s dead and Joanna’s nearly been destroyed and I’m the big super girl who can look after herself and…’ She started to cry.
Maltravers crossed the room and sat with his arms around her as the tears washed out everything that had been building up inside. After a few minutes he felt her pull herself together and relax as she sat up again and leaned back against the headboard of the bed.
‘I’m all right now,’ she told him. ‘So what are you going to do about…?’ Her eyes glanced downwards.
‘I’m taking him home. It should be safe enough in about a couple of hours. I’ve worked it all out.’
‘Before you tell me, just take him from underneath the bed,’ Tess interrupted. ‘I’m too tired to get off and I don’t want him that close to me.’
Maltravers knelt on the floor and carefully pulled out the sheet and its contents. Tess shuddered as a corner fell away, revealing a glimpse of the skull, and turned away in agitation. ‘Cover him up. He’s too horrible.’
Maltravers lifted the sheet and placed it by the bedroom door, as far out of Tess’s line of vision as he could manage. Then he told her what he meant to do.
‘Do you think it will work?’ she asked.
‘I think there’s a reasonable chance. As far as we know, the theft has never been reported and there’s been enough drama at Edenbridge House in the past couple of days. I think they’ll want to avoid any more. With a bit of luck, they’ll just take him back in, keep quiet about it and eventually bury him as Lady Pembury wants. Even if they do call in the police, they’re very unlikely to connect it with the murder—or with me.’
‘What about Alister York? He’ll realise what you’ve done.’
‘Of course he will, but he’ll want to keep it quiet more than anybody else.’
Tess looked at her watch; it was nearly midnight. ‘What a weird vigil. It’s crazy of course, but so is everything else about this.’
At first they tried to read, but it was no use; concentration on the words was constantly vandalised by the silent presence in the corner of the room. Finally, they just sat side by side, each wrapped in their own thoughts as the night crept away. When the church clock struck its single note for half-past one, Maltravers could stand it no longer.
‘It’s as safe now as any time,’ he said.
‘How long do you think it will take?’
‘No more than half an hour I hope.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No, I can manage on my own. If I’m not back by half-past two, start praying.’
He rolled off the bed and crept quietly across the bedroom floor, picked up the sheet very carefully then tiptoed out of the room and downstairs. Tess sat still for a few minutes, then reached down and found her handbag from which she took her manicure set and occupied herself in unnecessarily attending to her nails.
Above St Barbara’s a racing moon swam between silvered flotsam of cloud and the trees in the churchyard whirred softly in the crisp whisper of the night breeze. A shadow among shadows, Maltravers made his way through the gravestones, carrying death between the dead in its strange winding sheet. He passed beneath the dark mass of the building and round to where a low wall formed the boundary with Edenbridge Park. He was just able to reach over and place his burden with a faint rattle on the ground the other side before cautiously scrambling after it. A hundred yards in front of him was a small copse of trees with the outline of the house, about a quarter of a mile away, just visible beyond them. As he hesitated before crossing the first open space, a fox coughed in the distance; the trees were full of tiny nocturnal noises as he crept among them. Emerging into the open again, an owl, swift and soundless, swooped out of the gloom and brushed the top of his head. There was a clatter of bones as he ducked in panic and for a few moments he crouched there, heart almost erupting and momentarily faint.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he muttered as his breath gasped back, then he remembered Joanna York’s face and moved on towards the turrets of the house, slates gleaming like blue ice in spasmodic moonlight. He had forgotten the gravel approaches and the crunch of every step sounded to him like a shriek in the silence; he kept stopping, convinced he had heard a sound which would mean discovery and almost comically dropping Tom Bostock with a splintering crash as he fled. But there were no sudden shouts of outrage, no terrifying appearance of approaching lights as he stepped off the gravel and climbed the wide semi-circle of steps, keeping close to the wall.
Finally he reached the front door where he and Tess had last stood when Simon had said goodnight to them after the concert—and had then gone to tell Lord Pembury about the disappearance of the skeleton. Delicately, Maltravers laid the sheet down on the flagstones and opened it out; the bony remains of the wandering highwayman shone with a faint phosphorescence in the cold white light. Using his handkerchief again, he placed his hand against the top of the skull and inched the skeleton out. The empty eye sockets stared up at the infinite spaces of the sky. Maltravers was about to go when he remembered something. Kneeling down again, he moistened a corner of the handkerchief with his tongue and carefully wiped away the traces of Joanna’s lipstick from the front teeth; then he stood up and looked for the last time at the mortal remains of the man whose adventures in death had been so rare and hideous.
‘Requiescat in pace,’ he murmured. ‘Both you and Simon.’ Then he folded the sheet and stole away, leaving Tom Bostock awaiting admittance at the door of his ancestors.
Five hours later, a maid opened the front door of Edenbridge House and her scream streaked like an arrow across the morning peace of the park before she fainted. Lord Pembury was summoned and gave immediate instructions that Tom Bostock should be replaced in his coffin and the cellar door locked. It had all been a tasteless prank, he decided, and gave strict orders that his staff were to say nothing whatever about it. Once the burial of his son was over, the matter would be dealt with as arranged.
Tom Bostock was to make one last journey to Bellringer Street, carrying with him a secret unguessed and unguessable.
*
‘You’re looking tired.’ Peter looked at Maltravers carefully as they shook hands. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep very well for some reason.’
‘I thought I heard you moving about in the night. Sure there’s nothing you want? Paracetamol or something?’
‘I’m OK, don’t worry. Probably just a bit of reaction. It’s been a funny few days one way and another.’
Peter looked apologetic. ‘Come again. Susan will be sorry to have missed you and…you know.’ His look covered words he could not find.
‘I know,’ Maltravers assured him. ‘Give her our love and take care of yourselves.’
The children were suddenly all about, excitedly saying goodbye with Emma holding out some soft toy that had to be kissed, then there was a waving of retreating hands as Maltravers and Tess drove away. He stopped at the T-junction at the bottom of Bellringer Street to let another car pass.
‘Did you notice that old framed map on Peter and Susan’
s staircase?’ he asked. ‘It shows where all the pubs were in Bellringer Street in the old days. The Yorks’ house used to be the Maid’s Head, which is where Tom Bostock was arrested with his mistress. Strange to think that he may have been kissed in that room before.’
Tess made no reply but stared out of the window as Maltravers drove on, catching a glimpse of the shop where they had first seen Joanna York crack up. She found the inevitable sign above the window ironically painful. It said ‘Family Butcher’.
13
Varnished with rain, gold, fire-red and cinnamon leaves flecked the grey gravestones of St Barbara’s churchyard or lay in piles like dank rag rugs under their parent trees and along the edges of pathways shining with a damp film. Their autumn livery and the faded green of the grass seemed to hold the only colours in a monochrome world as a fine spray oozed down on to the leaden church out of seamless charcoal clouds. The quietness was only broken by the muffled tolling of a single bell, the dull repeated notes striding relentlessly from the flint tower of the church and vibrating down the canyon of Bellringer Street like the retreating drum of an army of the dead. In the gloom of the late October afternoon, the mourners shuffling behind the coffin of Tom Bostock were figures cut from black paper, moving slowly through the seeping curtain of drizzle. Lord and Lady Pembury led them, followed by Oliver Hawkhurst and his wife, the new Edenbridge House secretary and a handful of estate workers. Drawn out of macabre curiosity, a small group stood by the main gate watching the strange procession for the very private funeral pass up the path to where the vicar of Capley—another sable figure—waited in the porch. As the coffin reached him, he bowed solemnly then turned and led them all into the building, his fading voice intoning the Christian incantation for a human soul of whom all will be forgiven.
‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die…’
The doors closed and only the wet, whispering sounds of the smearing rain remained. Standing alone to one side by the door of the vestry beneath a black umbrella, Augustus Maltravers was immobile with recollection of poisonous events. After a few moments’ contemplation that so much had finally reached its end, he brought himself back to normality and walked towards where the little crowd of the curious was dispersing. As he neared the gates, he saw Joanna York looking impassively at the church. She smiled slightly as he walked up to her.
‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t going to come at first, but then I thought it might lay some ghosts.’
‘And has it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Slender shoulders shrugged slightly under her olive-green tweed coat. ‘Perhaps. I’ll have to see.’
Her saddened eyes went back to the church for some final contemplation then she appeared to pull herself together again.
‘Thank Tess for her letter,’ she said. ‘I’ll reply before I leave in a couple of weeks.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘New Zealand. My sister lives in Wellington. She always was the strong one. She’ll look after me. It’s…about as far as I can go.’
‘And Alister?’ Maltravers ventured cautiously.
‘That’s just between the solicitors now. He’s agreed to a divorce after two years’ separation and I don’t think he’ll go back on that.’ She looked up at him. ‘I don’t expect I’ll see you again. It sounds inadequate, but thank you for everything you both did. I won’t let you down. Give my love to Tess.’
There was nothing else to say as they faced each other, two people in the rain at the top of Bellringer Street in the dying light of the dripping melancholy day.
‘Goodbye,’ Maltravers said gently and leaned down towards her. She pulled away abruptly.
‘No…I’m sorry. I don’t like being kissed any more.’
The flash of sadness and pain in her face caught him before she turned and walked rapidly down the hill. He watched until she vanished from sight round the corner opposite the square, then crossed the road and rang the Penroses’ bell. Susan opened the door, smiling with her infant son in her arms.
‘What a day for a funeral,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’
Maltravers lowered his umbrella and shook it on the step before entering.
‘You look awfully sad.’ Susan looked at him closely. ‘What on earth are you so upset about Tom Bostock for?’
‘I just found it rather moving.’ Maltravers took off his coat and hung it on the pillar at the foot of the bannisters. ‘Here, give him to me and I promise not to drop him.’
Susan passed the baby over and Maltravers looked at him seriously.
‘“In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make by loving others, but across most it sweeps as all they might have done had they been loved.” A very perceptive man called Philip Larkin wrote that.’
The baby squinted at him, then pushed a tiny hand clumsily against his face, unable to comprehend the gibberish that grown-ups talked.
If you enjoyed Skeleton Key then you might be interested in An Act of Evil by Robert Richardson, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from An Act of Evil by Robert Richardson
Chapter One
“REBECCA, MY DEAR,” said Augustus Maltravers, “you are a child to make one contemplate the possible attractions of celibacy.”
This reasonably well turned aphorism, which he had spent some minutes mentally constructing, was totally ignored by his three-year-old niece who contentedly continued to dismantle his retractable ball-point pen which had proved a greater attraction than a scattered and rejected collection of ingenious toys marrying education with entertainment. There was a slight twang as the spring jumped out, much to her delight, and, quite inexplicably, a further streak of ink appeared on her hand; the exit of the spring appeared to trigger a total self-destruct mechanism and the entire pen collapsed into its component parts. Her mother, Melissa, came back into the kitchen, instantly comprehended the scene and took appropriate action. In a single maternal movement she scooped Rebecca up with one arm, planted her in the middle of a previously demolished yellow plastic construction and stepped expertly through the various pieces of debris to the sink.
“Don’t give her things like pens, Augustus,” she said. “At this age everything ends up in the mouth.”
Maltravers retrieved what he hoped were all the dismembered parts and began the formidable task of reassembly in the proper order. His wife, with whom he had shared a physically satisfactory but otherwise hollow brief marriage, had once remarked that he only just understood the principle of the hammer and that he approached anything more technical than replacing a light bulb with caution and a profound sense of the hostility of the inanimate.
“Isn’t it time to go and collect Diana?” asked Melissa, and Maltravers realised from her tone of dissolving patience that he had failed to fulfil the role of avuncular child-minder as surely as he would never make a manufacturer of pens.
“She’s not due for nearly an hour,” he countered cautiously.
Melissa’s back made subtle but eloquent movements plainly indicating that that was not the required response and Rebecca’s coincidental demands of a lavatorial nature convinced him that his departure would be prudent. Like all people without children, he found their basic natural functions threatening.
“I’ll wander round to the cathedral,” he said.
“What an excellent idea. Oh, and you can buy some avocados while you’re out. They’re for dinner before we go tonight.”
Suitably instructed on the correct methods of assessing avocados, Maltravers set off into the streets of Vercaster. As a residentiary cathedral canon, his brother-in-law Michael occupied a handsome, if tied, Georgian house in the cathedral precincts of Punt Yard, conveniently central but constantly plagued by the cars of tourists and shoppers. The only possibility of pu
nting lay on the lethargic waters of the River Verta, nearly a quarter of a mile away in the hollow of the valley which the cathedral and its compact city had once dominated; before, that is, late Victorian development brought by the railways, and the questionable pleasure of commuting the twenty miles or so into London, had spread the stain of urban growth about the adjacent land.
What Maltravers irreverently — and to Michael’s mild annoyance — referred to as God’s desirable detached property loomed to his left as he stepped through the front door, the end of the Lady Chapel almost opposite him. Vercaster Cathedral owed its existence to a Saxon peasant girl, its splendour to sheep and its survival to tobacco. Etheldreda, an otherwise unremarkable child, had fallen into a transported fit one day on the hill where it now stood, crying that she could see hosts of angels and hear the sound of bells. Shortly afterwards, she died in a similar state of ecstasy and the contemporary authorities, with an eye to their vulnerable immortal souls, had erected the first church on the site of her experience. The Normans had developed the building but their work had been gloriously overtaken in the fourteenth century when Flemish immigrants, combining their weaving skills with the abundant supply of wool, created vast local wealth coinciding with the soaring burst of Perpendicular architecture. The result was an ascending masterpiece of Man praising God in stone and stained glass, with the particular magnificence of the Chapter House by the south transept. Its incredibly delicate stone tracery cascaded in a dome of lace-like interlocking triangles of woven masonry above eight burning windows of polychromatic glass. After the Benedictine monks had been summarily evicted to provide Henry VIII with some much-needed cash, the structure had declined until the early nineteenth century when one Thomas Reade, a son of the city who had made his fortune in the plantations of Virginia, had paid for its complete and intelligent restoration, saving it from the later ham-fisted attentions of the Victorians.
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