An Air That Kills

by Andrew Taylor

‘It was upside down when we found it,’ Evans said.

  Thornhill turned the box round. The corners were reinforced with scraps of what looked like tin tacked into the wood.

  ‘Was the lid still on?’

  ‘It had come adrift, but only just.’

  Thornhill lifted the lid off. Inside were half a dozen bones, a scrap of yellowed newspaper and a small metallic object. The bones were so small they might have come from a chicken or a cat. Was that a femur? Another looked like a humerus with a ball-and-socket joint.

  Cyril George uncapped a fountain pen and made a note. The nib scratched on the paper. It was very quiet: the thick stone walls insulated the room from the sounds of the outside world.

  The bones had yellowed with age and the marrow had gone. Thornhill touched the possible femur with his fingertip. Its surface felt rough and dry. There was nothing intrinsically disturbing about the bone, which he found disturbing in itself. Time had drained away its significance. All that was left was a decaying piece of animal matter, a sign of mortality, tangible evidence of an episode which must have brought suffering to at least one individual, probably more. And it affected him no more than the portion of rib in a lamb chop. Thornhill wondered whether his job had worn away something important inside him, its absence making him a little less than human. It was an old worry and he barely noticed it.

  ‘Where exactly were they found?’ he said.

  ‘In a heap of rubbish. Old cesspit, I reckon. We were clearing out part of a yard behind the Rose in Hand.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘This whole place is the Rose in Hand.’ Evans jerked his thumb towards the window, towards the reflection of the office in the dark, cracked glass. ‘Used to be an inn.’

  ‘Did you look around the box?’

  ‘To see if anything had fallen out? I had a quick dekko. There was nothing obvious. We were lucky to find what we did.’

  Lucky? The word danced in Thornhill’s mind. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The rats got the rest, look.’

  ‘Could they be cat bones? A small dog?’

  Evans shrugged. ‘Anything’s possible. But I’ve seen the bones of babies before.’

  ‘Because of your father’s job?’

  ‘Aye.’ Evans’ dark eyes stared calmly at Thornhill. ‘And I saw kiddies’ bones during the war as well – in Burma.’

  George made a show of consulting his wristwatch. ‘I hate to hurry you chaps, but time’s getting on.’

  Thornhill ignored the interruption. He picked up the scrap of newspaper. It was brittle with age. As he touched it, a few flecks broke away from the main piece. The fragment was roughly triangular. He laid it on the palm of his hand. Each of the three sides was about two inches long. The print was small and blurred.

  AT THE BULL HOTEL will be offered for sale on January 15th, the entire household effects of the late Jas Gwynne of High Street, Lydmouth. Together with . . .

  He turned the paper over.

  . . . and the Reverend Mr Brown proposed a vote of thanks to Mr Chad, the Acting Superintendent of the Band of Hope Sunday School. He himself would bring up the sum collected to four guineas (cheers), which would be remitted to the Church Missionary Society without delay . . .

  Thornhill put down the piece of newspaper and picked up what he assumed to be the brooch. He could make out the shape of a knot: on closer examination, it looked like an ornate clove hitch. He turned the brooch over and found the remains of a catch on the back. There was a hallmark, too. A scratch ran through the mark, revealing the glint of the metal beneath the black tarnish. Someone, probably one of the workmen who had found it, had wanted to find out if the brooch was made of silver.

  ‘Well?’ George said testily. ‘What do you think?’

  Thornhill put the brooch gently back in the box. ‘It’s hard to know at this juncture, sir.’ He looked at Evans. ‘Do you think all these things were originally inside the box? Or could they have been thrown away at different times?’

  Evans shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘The lid was off the box, but only just. The base was still resting on it. On the other hand, it’s hard to know how much it had been disturbed before we came along.’

  ‘What would you say if you had to come down one side or the other?’

  ‘More likely than not they all came together, all in the box. There was a bit of china nearer the top – must have been a hundred and fifty years old.’

  Thornhill nodded. ‘I’d better have a look at where you found it.’

  ‘Can’t it wait till the morning?’ George said.

  Yes, Thornhill thought, it almost certainly could. But the decision had nothing to do with George.

  ‘I’d prefer to have a look tonight, sir. You never know.’

  George screwed up his mouth. ‘You’ll need a torch. It’s as black as pitch out there.’

  ‘I’ve got a torch in the car.’

  ‘Still, there’s no need for me to stay, is there?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I’ll push off then. Evans will lock up after you.’

  Thornhill watched as George got up. ‘I shall have to take away the box and its contents. I’ll leave you a receipt, of course.’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘And where can I find you in case I need to get in touch with you this evening?’

  George stuffed the file into his already bulging briefcase. ‘Why should you want to do that?’

  ‘I probably shan’t,’ Thornhill said.

  George stared across the room at him. The building contractor’s eyes were a very pale and cloudy blue. ‘As you like.’ He scribbled something on a business card and passed the card to Thornhill. ‘That’s my home phone number. You’ve finished in here, I take it?’

  Thornhill nodded.

  ‘Good. Then if you take away your bones, I can at least lock up the office. Then all Evans need do is lock the gate to the road.’

  ‘Do you have a night watchman?’ Thornhill asked automatically.

  ‘Yes – but he spends most of his time on the other side of the site. There’s an old warehouse – that’s where we keep anything worth stealing. Evans will introduce you if you want.’

  Thornhill wrote a receipt. George drummed his fingers against the surface of his desk. Evans stood by the door, his weight evenly balanced on his two legs and his face expressionless. It was impossible to tell whether he minded George’s habit of treating him like a well-trained dog. Thornhill gave George the receipt and picked up the box.

  Suddenly Evans cocked his head. ‘Someone’s banging out there. On the gate. I think.’

  ‘It may be Doctor Bayswater,’ Thornhill said. ‘I asked him to meet me here.’

  ‘A doctor? For that?’ George grinned, revealing a mouth crowded with jagged yellow teeth. ‘Bit late for a doctor, isn’t it?’

  ‘The wicket’s on the latch,’ Evans said. ‘I’d better let him in.’

  ‘Come on.’ George herded Thornhill out of the room. ‘You can talk to him in the yard.’

  It had started to rain again. Evans was standing with the doctor just inside the gate. Bayswater was hunched under a big umbrella and carrying a black bag. George muttered something which might have been a greeting as he slipped through the wicket gate to the street beyond.

  ‘What have you got, then?’ Bayswater said. He was a stooping man in late middle age. ‘Bones, they told me. Personally, I don’t see why they couldn’t have waited until the morning.’

  ‘Is there somewhere we can go with a light?’ Thornhill said to Evans.

  The man nodded. ‘The passage outside the site office is the only place. Unless you want to come over to the warehouse.’

  ‘The nearer the better,’ said Bayswater. ‘I hope this isn’t going to take long. I’ve got calls to make.’

  Evans took them inside. Thornhill put the box on the floor under the single bulb that dangled from the ceiling. He lifted off the lid. Bayswater crouched beside the box, the skirts of his raincoat
trailing on the dusty floor. He was hatless, and in the unflattering overhead light his grey hair looked like a wire brush. He poked at the bones and then picked up the curved one which Thornhill had tentatively identified as femur. He tossed it back into the box and it rattled against the others.

  ‘Might be human. Might not. God knows, eh? You’ll need to ask a pathologist if you want chapter and verse on them. You know that as well as I do.’

  Bayswater picked up the scrap of newspaper. He held it a few inches away from his eyes and studied both sides. Thornhill noticed he wasn’t wearing glasses: he wondered whether the omission were due to vanity or forgetfulness. Bayswater let the piece of paper flutter back to the box.

  ‘Does that go with the bones?’

  ‘It might do,’ Thornhill said.

  ‘Looks like a bit from one of the local rags – they still have auctions at the Bull Hotel.’ He got to his feet, grunting with discomfort as if his knees were giving him pain. ‘That should help you date it anyway. If I were you, I’d go and see Charlotte Wemyss-Brown. Kill two birds with one stone.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘Her grandfather founded the Gazette. The family still owns it. Besides, she knows a lot about local history. And that’s what you want – a historian, not a policeman or a doctor.’

  Bayswater picked up his black bag.

  ‘Thank you for coming out,’ Thornhill said.

  ‘Next time you might like to consider whether calling me out is necessary or not.’ Bayswater stamped down the corridor towards the doorway. His voice, which was as beautifully modulated as a BBC announcer’s, rose higher and higher in volume. ‘Use your intelligence, my dear fellow. If those bones are human, and it’s a big if, the odds are they belong to someone’s by-blow and they’ve probably been underground since Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.’

  In the yard, he put up his umbrella and, without saying goodbye, went through the wicket gate into the road. Thornhill watched him go. In the yard it was dark enough to conceal his face, for which he was glad. Evans stood to one side, saying nothing.

  Thornhill took a deep breath and the anger receded a little. ‘I’ll just get a torch from the car.’

  ‘No need,’ Evans said, ‘I’ve got one here.’

  The two men cut through the ruined barn and emerged into the smaller yard at the back. The torch beam zigzagged across the slippery cobbles and slid across gleaming puddles. When Evans raised the torch, the light caught on silver tendrils of mist which twisted in the breeze. It was darker here than it had been nearer the main road. Thornhill shivered and looked up at the dark grey sky.

  Evans led the way towards the remains of the little outbuilding. The torch picked out the pile of rubbish in the wheelbarrow which was still outside the doorway. When they were inside, Evans handed Thornhill the torch.

  ‘We found it down there, look,’ he said. ‘Near the back wall.’

  Thornhill made a pretence of examining the place. He soon realised there was little to see except rain and rubbish. He picked up a half-brick, felt something cold and slimy on its underside and let it fall to the ground. He crouched down and gingerly examined the spot that Evans had pointed out. Besides earth and stones, he found pieces of broken glass, dead leaves, the yellowing root of a nettle and a fragment of Willow Pattern china.

  ‘We’ll have another look in daylight,’ he said. He handed the torch back to Evans. ‘Thanks for your help.’

  As they left the outbuilding, the torch beam picked out the gates on the far side of the yard.

  ‘Is there another entrance?’ Thornhill asked.

  ‘There’s a lane at the back,’ Evans said. ‘When there were stables, they used to take the horses out to pasture that way.’

  A moment later, they reached the front yard. Evans collected his bag and they went outside on to the road.

  ‘I’m going up to the High Street now.’ Thornhill said as Evans was locking up. ‘Can I give you a lift?’

  Evans looked at him. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ Thornhill asked driving up to the centre of the town.

  ‘The library. If it’s not out of your way.’

  Neither of them said anything else until they had reached the High Street. Thornhill stopped outside the building which housed the town’s museum and library. He kept the engine running.

  ‘By the way – just for the record – who was with you when you found the bones?’

  ‘Frank Thomas. Emrys Hughes.’ Evans yanked his door handle; the door swung open, letting in a blast of icy air. ‘Charlie Meague.’

  Evans got out of the car. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ He shut the door and walked unhurriedly through the rain up the steps to the library.

  Thornhill kneaded his gloved fingers together in an attempt to squeeze the cold out of them. The rain slid diagonally down the windscreen from left to right. Cars, a bus and two lorries swished past.

  Charlie Meague again, he thought. In his job. Thornhill had long ago learned to respect the power of coincidence. Williamson was right, at least in this: Lydmouth was a small world.

  Several people came in and out of the library. Almost everyone was in a hurry because of the weather. There was one exception – a man in a billowing raincoat. He was hatless and had a nautical beard which in profile gave him a resemblance to the head of King George V on prewar coins.

  The man sauntered down the steps from the library and glanced about him. He raised his face and sniffed the air as though it brought him a bracing sea breeze rather than the foggy vapours of a cold November evening. Thornhill watched him crossing the road and strolling into the pillared entrance of the Bull Hotel.

  None of the passers-by gave the Austin or Thornhill a second glance. From a purely professional viewpoint, this was, if anything, an advantage, but it also made him feel anonymous and insignificant. It reminded him yet again that he was a stranger here.

  In his previous job, he had been based in an area he had known since boyhood. He had not been sentimentally attached to the Fens, but they had a stark simplicity which he had appreciated – not at the time, but since the move to Lydmouth. In the Fens of north Cambridgeshire, the flatness, the huge fields, the ruler-straight dykes, the scarcity of trees – everything made concealment difficult. Here, in this land of trees, rivers, hills and unexpected valleys, it was the reverse. He looked at the people who flowed along the pavements, their faces dark and closed. Most of them were swathed against the winter cold and he felt that they were hugging secrets to themselves.

  Thornhill glanced over his shoulder at the box on the back seat. There was another secret – and one which in all probability would remain a secret for ever. He had gone to Templefields as a matter of routine, mainly to avoid giving Williamson further grounds for criticism. But the contents of the box had caught his imagination and he wished that they hadn’t. A handful of bones, perhaps from a baby. A scrap of newspaper, probably from the last century. The silver brooch that might or might not have something to do with the other items. Weren’t knots in jewellery often designed to be given and received as tokens of true love?

  There was something pathetic about the cluster of grubby objects. ‘Someone’s by-blow,’ Dr Bayswater had said with an implicit sneer attached to the verdict: silly girls shouldn’t get themselves pregnant, and if they did, they had to cope with the consequences.

  Suddenly the pity of it became unbearable. Part of the pity was for Thornhill himself and part of it was for whatever had happened at the Rose in Hand all those years before.

  He raised his hands, balled them into fists and hammered them against the steering wheel.

  Chapter Five

  When the phone rang, Charlotte left the room to answer it. Jill heard the voice of her hostess in the distance, but could not distinguish the words.

  Philip sidled back to the trolley where the drinks were.

  ‘Top up your glass?’

  Jill smiled and shook her head.

  With his back
to her, Philip poured himself some gin. He turned back to Jill and raised his glass.

  ‘Cheers.’

  She smiled dutifully at him, raised her glass and took an unwanted sip of sherry.

  ‘So what are you going to do if you’re not going to be Bystander?’ he asked. ‘Carry on as before?’

  ‘I don’t think so. In fact I know so. I’ve resigned.’

  ‘With nothing to go to?’

  ‘I feel like a change, that’s all. Perhaps I’ll freelance for a while.’

  ‘Rather you than me.’

  Charlotte came back into the room; Jill knew from her face that something had pleased her.

  ‘Do you know an Inspector Thornhill, Philip?’

  ‘He’s a new chap. CID, isn’t he? I haven’t met him yet.’

  ‘He wants to come and interview me,’ Charlotte announced. ‘It seems that they’ve found some old bones at Templefields. He’s on his way.’

  Philip glanced at the clock as he sat down. ‘Bit late, isn’t it? We’ll be having dinner soon. Couldn’t it wait till the morning?’

  ‘Actually it was my suggestion.’ Charlotte sat down and picked up her sherry. ‘He was quite happy to leave it till the morning.’ She sipped her drink and peered over the rim of her glass at her husband. Her eyes were bright and shrewd. ‘But I thought it would be something for the Gazette. If there’s anything worth having, one wouldn’t like the Post to get it first.’

  Philip shrugged. ‘You’ve got a point, I suppose. But on Jill’s first evening . . .’

  ‘But I’d be interested—’ Jill began.

  Charlotte overrode her. ‘Jill knows what it’s like, darling. I’m sure she won’t mind a bit. I’ve had a word with Susan and asked her to put dinner back twenty minutes. Nothing’s going to spoil.’

  Philip shrugged. ‘You know best in that department.’

  ‘Besides, it sounds as if I was right. I said this would happen, you know. That dreadful man George – bulldozing his way through that wonderful collection of old buildings. Heaven knows what he’s going to destroy.’

  ‘I told you Charlotte’s got a bit of a bee in her bonnet about local history,’ Philip said. ‘She did a couple of articles for the Gazette.’