Another Time, Another Place

by Jodi Taylor

  At the bottom of the staircase, Sands helped us step very carefully over Amy, still undiscovered, although surely not for much longer. I was heading for the door when Hyssop stopped and turned back. She crouched down beside the body. I’d missed something. She was carefully wiping Amy’s hand. Shit, I had forgotten she’d have a greasy hand as well, so good for Hyssop. But all this was taking time and even I was becoming nervous. I made sure we exited the hall considerably more quickly than we had gone in.

  This time we really didn’t hang around. There was a body back there. Both Hyssop and I smelled strongly of furniture polish. We were strangers . . . no, we didn’t hang around.

  Long purple shadows lay across the quadrangle. It was getting late. The wet marks around the horse trough had dried. There was no evidence that Richard Verney or his horse had ever been here. All we had to do was get out and there would be no evidence we’d ever been here, either.

  The quadrangle appeared very much larger than before and it seemed to take an age to reach the safety of the silent churchyard. All the windows of Cumnor Place were boring holes into my back. At any moment I expected to hear either Mrs Owens or Mrs Oddingsells cry for help.

  I could hear my dress rustling through the grass. The cat had gone but the pod was exactly where we had left it, which is always my criteria for a successful assignment. Once, in the Cretaceous period, Dieter and I had watched our pod career off a cliff. And we’d been in it at the time.

  And then, in the distance, I heard a man’s voice, calling. He was ahead of us on the track somewhere. Another man answered and then a woman laughed. Someone sang a snatch of song. The Dudley household was back from the fair.

  ‘Quick,’ I said, and Hyssop and I lifted our skirts and awkwardly ran the last few paces, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake because the cat, flat-eared, came flying out from under a bush and Hyssop tripped right over it. She staggered sideways and fell heavily to the ground. Evans grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. I called for the door. Sands stood to one side, covering us. With one last look around I stepped into the pod. The door closed behind us.

  ‘Well,’ said Sands, dragging his sleeve across his forehead. ‘I’m not sure that one went quite as well as it could have.’

  Evans deposited Hyssop on a chair and we all crowded around to have a look at the damage.

  ‘I went over on my foot,’ she said, wincing. ‘Painful but not serious.’

  ‘We’ll leave your shoe on,’ I said. ‘Dr Stone will sort you out.’

  She was cross with herself. ‘I’m not usually so clumsy.’

  I beamed at her. Just to rub it in. ‘Congratulations – you are now officially a piece of grit in the Oyster of History.’

  She didn’t seem that thrilled.

  I knew we should leave. And we would if things became dodgy, but I really wanted to see how events transpired after Amy’s body was found by the returning household. We weren’t ideally situated here but even I wasn’t going back out there. Sands angled the microphones and we cracked the door slightly for some fresh air, then sat back and waited to see what would happen.

  The minutes ticked by.

  Right out of the blue, Sands said, ‘Do you think they slept together?’

  ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Dudley and Elizabeth?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I doubt she’d risk it. Every month her women would be obliged to show proof of her monthly period to court officials. To show she was capable of breeding.’

  He shrugged. ‘Easily managed.’

  I shook my head. ‘But the risk of pregnancy. Why would someone as hard-headed as Elizabeth risk everything for a few minutes’ pleasure? And if she was pregnant, then why come here of all places?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sands, ‘but you’re thinking logically. She’s come to the throne. She’s triumphed over enemies and circumstances. She’s queen. She’s only twenty-five and she’s been spied on and imprisoned for most of her life. She’s been the virtuous Protestant princess whose enemies would swoop if she so much as put one foot wrong. Now though, she’s in charge and she can do anything she wants. Robert Dudley is handsome. Suppose she does sleep with him and the inevitable happens. Pregnant and unmarried? She’d be a laughing stock. She’d certainly lose her throne. The Scottish queen – at this moment also the French queen – would pounce. Or her French relatives would pounce on her behalf. Suppose attempts to abort the child failed. Or were too dangerous to attempt. What would she do?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘If any of this is true, then this is the last place Elizabeth would come.’

  ‘Not necessarily. I think it’s very likely mousey, lonely little Amy would love a baby to care for. Her husband’s child. And she’s sent her people away . . .’

  ‘Speaking of which, what’s taking them so long?’ said Hyssop, immediately dismissing these fascinating speculations as irrelevant. Barely had she spoken than a woman screamed in the distance. And then another one. A man shouted out. I could imagine the scene. I could see them bending over her, realising she was dead. That she’d died while they were all out at the fair. I could imagine them looking at each other in horror. What would this mean for them?

  And then, a minute later, a clatter of hooves grew loud. A man on a big strong horse galloped down the track throwing up huge clouds of dust and stones. Someone was taking the news to London.

  ‘Should we be going?’ enquired Hyssop.

  ‘In a moment,’ said Sands. ‘The last thing these people need at the moment is to glance out of a window and see a vanishing pod. Why risk it? I doubt we’ll be disturbed here.’

  ‘I shall put the kettle on,’ offered Evans, famous for his excellent grasp of priorities.

  Hyssop was examining the sad remains of her headdress and saying nothing. I couldn’t decide whether she was in pain from her foot, listening carefully to cogent and well-reasoned historian arguments, or just sulking. Whatever it was, I left her to it while I told Sands and Evans of our discoveries.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Sands, taking Hyssop’s cap off her to see if he could bend it back into shape. ‘So, Amy was murdered after all.’

  ‘It would seem so,’ I said. ‘Unless a maid was just careless and forgot to wipe the polish off the newel post.’

  ‘It was definitely murder,’ said Hyssop, sitting up and taking the cap back again. ‘But have you considered Amy Robsart might not have been the intended victim?’

  We stared at her.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Sands. ‘You could be right.’

  ‘Well, don’t sound so astonished,’ she said, tartly.

  ‘No, you could,’ I said, taking great care not to sound astonished at all. ‘Suppose, just suppose, someone knew Elizabeth would be here this afternoon. It’s perfect because Amy would set the scene herself. She would be the one to send her people away and . . .’

  Evans shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t work. Amy would still have fallen down the stairs when she went to meet the queen.’

  ‘Almost as bad,’ I said. ‘The queen is discovered with her lover’s wife dead at her feet. The scandal would still prove fatal for her.’

  ‘I think it was more carefully planned than that,’ said Hyssop. ‘Would I be right in assuming the queen takes precedence wherever she goes?’

  We nodded.

  ‘Did Richard Verney seem annoyed to find the hall empty?’

  We nodded.

  ‘Amy should have been there. In person. To greet the queen. Protocol would demand it.’

  ‘But Amy was upstairs,’ I said, remembering that sunny room. ‘She’s not well. It was warm and quiet. She fell asleep over her embroidery. I bet you anything she fell asleep.’

  ‘She’d greet the queen and take her upstairs,’ said Sands. ‘The queen would go first. Elizabeth would still fall.’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘When you go up, you
use the other hand. The outer hand. As both Hyssop and I did. It’s instinct. You trail your hand up the wall – not the newel. No, Elizabeth would have arrived safely upstairs, joined her hostess in a glass of wine on a hot day, talked about . . . whatever it was they wanted to talk about . . . and then they’d go downstairs . . .’

  ‘And the queen would go first . . .’

  ‘She’d reach out for the newel post, just as I did . . .’

  ‘And bang crash wallop down the stairs.’

  We sat in silence, thinking about it.

  ‘Or,’ said Evans, ‘and I just chuck this in because I like upsetting historians – Amy herself greased the pole.’

  There was even more silence while we thought about that.

  ‘But . . . she’d have been arrested immediately.’

  He shrugged. ‘She’s dying of cancer. What would she care? The ultimate revenge.’

  ‘Little mousey Amy Robsart plotted to kill the queen?’

  Hyssop leaned forwards. ‘May I just point out that your supposed murderer was the one who died.’

  Evans shrugged again. ‘She forgot. She woke suddenly. She’s disoriented. She’s not well. Someone downstairs is shouting her name. She’s late. The queen is in the house and Amy’s not there to greet her. She runs out of the room, pauses at the top of the stairs to pull herself together, adjust her headdress, straighten her gown, whatever, takes a deep breath to calm herself, instinct­ively grabs at the newel post, remembers too late and . . . bang.’

  I was watching the screen. People were running about in all directions. There was no reason why they should, but no one appeared to be taking any notice of us here in the churchyard.

  ‘A very good theory,’ I said. ‘But we’ve all forgotten the fourth person in their love triangle.’

  They looked at me.

  ‘The most powerful man in the land,’ I said.

  Sands sat back. ‘Cecil. Of course.’

  ‘The queen’s first minister,’ I said to Hyssop.

  ‘I know who Cecil is,’ she said, annoyed, so I moved swiftly on.

  ‘He hated and feared Dudley. In fact, they hated and feared each other and Elizabeth went to considerable trouble to keep them that way. But now, she’s about to embark on the matrimonial merry-go-round – all those foreign kings and princes Cecil’s got lined up for milking while the queen pretends to try to make up her mind. He has a lot riding on that. Worse – Amy’s dying. He must have been wetting himself over whether Elizabeth would marry Dudley, because he’d certainly be out on his ear if she did. Even if Dudley didn’t have him quietly put away first.’

  ‘I bet,’ said Sands, slowly, ‘Cecil doesn’t know Elizabeth was here this afternoon.’

  ‘Good God, no. When he does – if he ever does – he’ll have a heart attack.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll tell him?’

  I shook my head.

  Silence fell.

  ‘Well – there we have it,’ I said.

  ‘Except . . .’ said Hyssop, and looked at me.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said.

  ‘Who was upstairs with her? Who closed the door?’

  Bugger. If only we’d been able to put someone upstairs.

  ‘Can’t we go back and try again?’ asked Hyssop.

  Typical – just as I was beginning to feel moderately well disposed towards her – her contributions to our discussion had been sensible and useful – she says something daft like that. She should know we couldn’t do that. Daft bat.

  Or – I could take a deep breath and remember she was inexperienced. Be a nice person, Maxwell.

  ‘We can’t, no, because you can’t be in the same time twice. Trust me on that. But I could send someone else. We could put someone upstairs, hidden away. It’s a possibility.’

  In the interests of rounding off the story, as a matter of fact, we did. It was some considerable time afterwards, because many of us were overtaken by other events, but we did. We sent Roberts and Gallacio who secreted themselves upstairs behind a convenient screen. The door opening was Mrs Oddingsells at the other end of the house, presumably looking out to see what the crash had been. Seeing and hearing nothing, she closed the door and returned to her cards.

  My theory about Amy dozing in the warm room was probably correct. Roberts and Gallacio saw Amy Robsart whirl past. She was running, they reported. For some reason, she looked frightened. No, they didn’t see anyone else upstairs. She ran past them at a tremendous rate, screeched to a halt at the top of the stairs and tried to straighten her headdress, which was all crooked. It took her a while to sort herself out and then she grabbed at her skirts with one hand and started down the stairs, travelling fast. The top of her head disappeared from view and then they heard the sound of her fall. No, there was no one at the top of the stairs with them and no one on the landing, either.

  They’d all heard Sir Richard’s hail – was she just eager to see him? And why was he there? Announcing the queen’s imminent arrival? Was that why Amy was so agitated, that she wasn’t there to welcome her? Or had there been another reason? Were other people working behind the scenes? Cecil, the queen’s right-hand man and Dudley’s sworn enemy might have had a hand in this. I have to say that on this occasion, I don’t think we’d done anything to clear up the mystery. In fact, we might have made it worse.

  You could say that even without the greasy pole, Amy was moving too quickly for safety and would have fallen. Yes, she might have escaped with just bruising – except that her bones were brittle with the cancer. Did her neck snap by itself?

  So there you are. There’s almost as much evidence for accidental death as for murder. Apart from us, there was no one in Cumnor Place who shouldn’t have been.

  Except . . . the last I saw of Amy Robsart, her headdress was lying three or four steps above her on the stairs and her skirts were up around her hips. When her servants eventually found her, someone had replaced her headdress and pulled her skirts down. Who? And why? To cover up a crime? As a sign of respect? It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery that has come down to us through the ages and still no one knows.

  They were all there that afternoon. The queen. Sir Richard Verney. Were Mrs Oddingsells and Mrs Owen in the pay of someone else? Did the little mouse plan revenge on the woman who had stolen her husband? Why was Elizabeth there? Who killed Amy Robsart? You tell me . . .

  I was dissatisfied with the Amy Robsart jump. In fact, I classed it as a failure. It happens occasionally, but it’s not often that St Mary’s are on the spot, that we actually witness some controversial event, and come away not only no wiser as to what happened, but even more confused than when we set out. I was in a grumpy mood for a couple of days afterwards. Even Hyssop’s better-than-expected performance and positive contributions to the discussions afterwards didn’t cheer me up.

  Her foot healed in a day or so and as soon as she could hobble around the place in her army-issue sandals, sports, brown, suede, warm-weather, feet-for-the-encasing-of than she brought up her report for my initials. I could see by the expression on her face that she wasn’t impressed at having to do this. I rather suspected the day would come when I would have to take my report to her.

  I took a deep breath and remembered Peterson’s words.

  ‘Try and be a little nicer, Max,’ he’d said. Or something like that, anyway. ‘You have to establish some sort of working relationship with each other, so put some effort into it. A chance to bond.’

  As if I was a tube of bloody Araldite. But he was right, so I sat her down and prepared to be sympathetic.

  ‘Good to see you up and about again. How’s your foot?’

  ‘Fine – the swelling’s beginning to go down. It was pretty painful for a day or two, but now it looks much worse than it is.’

  Remembering to show concern, I leaned over the desk to check out the damage. ‘Oh my God – are
you sure? That looks awful. You’ve got toes like giant sausages.’

  She said coldly, ‘It’s the other foot,’ and Rosie Lee had to slide off her chair and pretend to be looking for something on the floor and I decided I’d had enough of being nice to people. It never works.

  I was wandering around the gallery one day, still thinking about Amy Robsart and trying to devise a strategy for another visit – one that could put us actually right on the spot to discover exactly who greased the newel post – and at the same time compiling a list of so-called profitable jumps as requested by Dr Bairstow, and wondering how Leon was faring in his quest for a new remote site. I really wasn’t looking where I was going, and I walked straight into Mrs Partridge.

  I apologised and stepped to one side to let her pass, glancing casually out of the window as I did so, and there were Mrs Brown and Dr Bairstow having afternoon tea on the terrace. The Full Monty. There were finger sandwiches, scones, mini quiches and tiny cakes, and Mrs Brown was wearing a very pretty summer frock and pouring out the tea and Dr Bairstow was actually smiling.

  Bloody bollocking hell. That was . . . I groped for a word that wasn’t ‘unsettling’, failed, and galloped along to Peterson’s office because he had an appropriately facing window where I could see without being seen.

  He looked up as I burst in. ‘Don’t you ever do any work?’

  I brushed past him to get to the window.

  ‘What are you doing?’