‘Ouch!’ It was a comment about everything in general, but particularly about that bright sunlight. I tried to grab a pillow to put over my eyes, but it was too heavy. I turned my head, groaned, and saw that the pillow was weighed down by my husband’s head. He hadn’t even moved when I tried to take his pillow away.
Very, very gingerly I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and stopped on the way back to draw the curtains. I crawled back into bed as quietly as I could, but I could have brought a brass band with me. Alan was out for the count.
When I next woke, it was to the smell of coffee. I sat up, carefully. Alan wordlessly handed me a cup, and I finally surfaced enough to look at him properly.
And a sorry sight it was. One eye was purple. A bandage on his cheek didn’t quite cover three long scratches. The hand holding his cup of coffee had— ‘Alan Nesbitt, is that a bite?’
‘It is. The lady was not acquainted with the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. Fortunately she didn’t break the skin. A human bite can be nasty to treat.’
‘We look like the sole survivors of a losing battle. Oh, but this is life-saving!’ I held up the coffee cup.
‘I went downstairs and cajoled Amy into letting me bring up a pot of the real stuff. We got in quite late last night, and looked rather the worse for wear, so she’s feeling sorry for us this morning.’
‘Also dying to know what happened!’
‘She’s already read most of it.’ He held up a paper. ‘We’re all over the news, my dear.’
‘Hmph! The saying used to be that a lady appeared in the news only three times: when she was born, when she married, and when she died. I’m grateful that that last doesn’t apply here. For a moment or two last night I thought it might. Let me see.’
I sipped coffee as I read through the news account. The reporters and photographers had apparently arrived shortly after the rush of policemen, because there was a lovely picture of me lying on the ground with Alan hovering over me, blood streaming from his face. Another photo showed the Priestess in a straitjacket being wrestled into an ambulance. The written account was almost as lurid as the pictures. They got my name wrong, and misspelled Alan’s.
I set it aside. ‘I hope this doesn’t hit the national news. Our friends will figure out the name glitches, and they’ll be appalled.’
‘I’m afraid Jane has already called, and the Allenbys. I told them the reports of our deaths were highly exaggerated.’
‘Thank you, Mark Twain.’ I picked up the paper and turned the pages. There was nothing more about our colourful evening. ‘They don’t actually say much, do they? No details about the crimes those two are charged with, nor the quarrel between them that led to the violence. And, of course, they don’t give her name.’
‘Because nobody knows it. At least, somebody does, but not the police here. I would imagine this story has brought Rob several calls about her. Such a bizarre figure is bound to be known somewhere. Meanwhile they’ve booked her as Jane Doe.
‘Now. If you’ve finished your coffee, Rob has invited us for Sunday brunch.’
‘Sunday! Oh, Alan, and it’s’ – I counted on my fingers – ‘it’s All Saints’ Day! What time is it?’
‘Far too late for church this morning. I think God will forgive us for once. There are extenuating circumstances, and we can go to Evensong. Can you make it to the shower, do you think? Hot water might be good for what ails you.’
It was. I felt much better once I was clean and dressed. My hair, on the other hand … Oh, well, I just wouldn’t look in the mirror. ‘Do I need a coat?’
Alan looked out the window. ‘The trees are blowing about.’ He opened the window a crack and quickly shut it again. ‘Bright but brisk. Yes, certainly a coat. And hat or scarf.’
‘Scarf, I think. A hat would blow off.’
I hobbled a bit, and when we got out into the wind I had to hold Alan’s arm, but on the whole we walked into Rob’s house not looking too much like the Spirit of ’76.
‘Congratulations!’ said Sylvie. ‘This morning we’re celebrating all being alive, with the bad guys behind bars. Mimosas?’
I accepted one gladly. ‘They say I don’t have a concussion, so I can drink this with impunity. Thank you!’
‘Anyway, it’s pretty light on alcohol.’
‘True. My first husband used to call it a waste of perfectly good champagne. But I love them.’ I lifted my glass. ‘Here’s to us!’
‘I’ve invited Judith, too, and Andrew,’ said Rob. He hadn’t risen for the toast, and I saw that one foot was wrapped in bandages. So he, too, was among the walking wounded. ‘Sammy isn’t quite ready to leave the hospital,’ he went on, ‘but we’ll have a little party for him later. Large groups tend to confuse him.’
The bell rang, Judith and Andrew came in and were provided with Mimosas, and Sylvie served us with a variety of pastries and a tray of cold meats and cheeses. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I just wasn’t up to cooking this morning. We all got to bed rather late last night.’
‘No kidding.’ I looked around the room. ‘And rather worse for wear. Sylvie, you’re a saint to entertain at all. Did the madwoman get you, too?’
‘Just a few tufts of hair. It hurt quite a lot, but it isn’t serious. I’m happy she’s restrained now.’
‘All right,’ said Rob, calling us to order. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about last night.’
‘All we know is what we read in the paper,’ said Judith, deadpan.
‘First Mark Twain, now Will Rogers! You Brits are well up on American authors this morning.’
‘Right,’ said Alan. ‘Now you can quote us some Shakespeare to get even.’
‘Let me think about it. Proceed, Rob.’
He did a quick recap of the night’s events that we already knew about, the set-up, the brouhaha, the woman’s capture. ‘At that point she was still Jane Doe. But we reckoned the news story would bring responses, and it did. The most interesting, and the most reliable, came from a pair of infuriated Druids.’
‘Ah,’ said Alan. ‘Upset about the bad publicity.’
‘Upset about the whole situation. It seems that our Priestess is a woman named Charity Walcot.’
‘Charity!’ I burst out. ‘What a desperately inappropriate name! Sorry. I interrupted.’
‘You’re right, though. The Druids told us that she’s been relatively harmless until recently. A pain in the neck, quarrelling with everyone else in her group, but not really crazy until lately.
‘Modern Druids, you see, are pretty tolerant of differences of opinion. The basic tenets, respect for the earth and so on, are fundamental, but beyond that, there’s no required set of beliefs or essential rituals, nothing of that kind. Miss Walcot didn’t approve of that. She wanted to set up a temple whose members would swear to her ideas of what Druids are and were and should be, based on her misreading and outright invention of ancient texts.’
‘But I thought there wasn’t much written about them, at least not until the Romans came,’ said Judith.
‘You’re quite right. So Miss Walcot was free, actually, to make up history as she went along. And that was fine until she started pressuring everyone to agree with her. The Druids did build Stonehenge, according to her version. The modern enclosure of it, the encouragement of tourism, all that is anathema. Profaning a holy place. And all of Bath is a sacrilege. The Romans built those baths over a holy place. Destroy them! The abbey, a monument to a false god – destroy it! Even the Jane Austen Centre is a place of homage to a blasphemous woman. Destroy it!’
‘Oh!’ said several of us together. ‘Then the fire and the oak leaf—’
‘Got it in one. It’s fortunate that she wasn’t a competent arsonist.’ Rob helped himself to a chocolate croissant and a Bath bun. ‘Have I left any loose ends?’
‘What’s going to happen to them?’ asked Andrew, setting down his mimosa so he could take a bite of pastry. Eating with one hand is a challenge.
‘That’s
up to a jury, of course, later on. Miss Walcot will certainly be declared unfit to stand trial. Broadmoor for the rest of her life, I’d imagine. Robinson is another question. He actually did very little. Trafficking in stolen goods is about it. We can’t even charge him with corrupting a minor; Sammy is nearly thirty in actual calendar years. Robinson and his lawyer will claim he was unduly influenced by Miss Walcot, and he can be such a charming and plausible fellow, he’ll probably get off with a light sentence.’
‘And what about Sammy?’ asked Judith. Her voice was quiet, but we could all feel the tension.
Rob smiled. ‘Sammy who? I know of no one named Sammy who’s been involved in anything criminal. And I don’t intend to know. Cheers!’
‘So “All’s well that ends well.”’
That got me a resounding chorus of boos.
After the others had left we gave Andrew his chess set. He was speechless. ‘Let this be a memento of a case you’ll never forget,’ said Alan, ‘the amazing case that happened even before you joined the force.’
We went to Evensong that afternoon and listened to the choir sing the Psalms and canticles in timeless Anglican chant. We prayed and gave thanks. And that evening we told Amy we’d be leaving in the morning. We called Jane to say we were coming home. And just before we went to bed Alan handed me a box. ‘Happy birthday, love.’
In the box was the round brooch I had so admired at the Baths. ‘But how … where—?’
‘Rob retrieved it from Caine’s loot. Drat, I can’t stop calling him that. Rob took it back to the shop with my credit card, but they refused to let me pay. So it’s your souvenir of probably the most memorable birthday trip of your life. Good night, darling.’
And all night I dreamed, not of the brooch, not of the tumultuous two weeks, but sweetly, of home.
The Bath Conspiracy Page 25