A Crowded Coffin

by Nicola Slade

  ‘None of it makes sense,’ Harriet declared. ‘I thought it looked as though John Forrester had something to do with Dr Sutherland’s death, though I don’t see what he could possibly gain by that. Even if it was John whom your Canadian lady saw in the cathedral, it doesn’t mean he killed the old man, though it’s a tad suspicious that he didn’t mention anything to you or Edith at the party. I also thought he must be involved with the missing items from the archives and with Colin Price; maybe that he knew where Price had gone.’ She shook her head slowly looking bewildered. ‘I just don’t see how. The police interviewed everyone at the time and as far as I know, word round the village was that John never actually saw Price. Besides, according to Sam’s mole in high places, nothing’s been stolen since Price disappeared.

  ‘Another thing I don’t get,’ Harriet paused, before continuing, ‘is what any of it has to do with oil, which is where you might expect Brendan to be involved, or at least Brendan and his boss. And none of it has anything at all to do with looking up ancestors, as far as I can see.’

  ‘I think you’re right about that,’ Rory added his two-pennyworth. ‘I think the whole ancestor thing could be a cover and that Mike Goldstein was brought over here to act as a dowser.’ He explained about Sam’s discoveries. ‘I know Sam’s friend said he wasn’t up to date on techniques, but maybe there’s still a place for a kind of human sniffer dog. Though it might just be that he’s connected with the oil industry anyway.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Harriet digested this snippet of information. ‘It’s a bit tenuous, isn’t it, solely based on the fact that he’s from Texas. Might be lying, after all. And what about the business with Walter Attlin? The vicar has a cast-iron alibi for that, but it could have been Brendan, or Mike Goldstein. But why would they want to do that?’

  ‘Maybe Walter saw something. Or it might be that they thought he could have seen something. Sounds a high-risk strategy, though, so maybe it was blind panic.’

  ‘And then there’s me.’ Harriet’s voice sounded very small and she was grateful when Rory reached out to clasp her hand. ‘Who was it who pushed me over the quarry? Someone on his way to the village via the short cut, no question, but who? The vicar’s car had a dent on the wing, but Edith spotted that before I went through the fence.’ She thought it over. ‘He dropped Edith home by ten that night, she told me. I suppose he could have gone out again later.’

  ‘Brendan’s car had a nasty scrape too,’ Rory offered. ‘He told Edith he got it in a car park, didn’t see who it was. But why would either of them want to get rid of you, Harriet? I mean the whole village is agog with rumours about prospecting for oil, at least three people told me so before I’d been here half a day. And if someone thought Sam was asking too many questions, why attack you and not Sam? Might as well bump off the whole village while he was at it.’ He sucked in a sharp breath. This was definitely not the moment, he decided, to let Harriet know of Edith’s suspicion that Sam might have been the intended victim in the cathedral.

  Harriet sat silent for a moment or two. ‘Right, let’s stop asking questions, we’ve no way of knowing what the truth is,’ she said firmly. ‘I vote we suss out what there is down here.’

  The meagre beam from her phone showed that they were in a small, square space that had a shaft let in from above and a culvert leading off at the side. Harriet crawled over to take a look and let out a squeal of fright as she came face to face with a pair of bright golden eyes, reflected in the thin line of light.

  ‘What—’ She rocked back on her heels, gasping for breath, as a ginger cat prowled up to her and head-butted her with great affection. ‘It’s Toby, he’s Penelope’s cat,’ she called to Rory, who had rolled over onto his hands and knees, preparing to crawl somehow to her rescue. ‘But how on earth did you get in here?’ She stroked the cat with shaking hands and shone the torch into the shadows.

  ‘Rory, the brickwork is amazing. I’m sure it’s Roman.’ Sidetracked for a moment, she ran her hands over the arched roof of the low tunnel. ‘Oh, my Lord, I wonder if it could be the hypocaust. I can’t imagine what else it could be. Oh.’ She was breathless with excitement. ‘This means there really was a villa and we’re underneath it. And,’ relief suddenly hit her, ‘if the cat can get in, perhaps we can get out the same way.’

  She crawled back to sit beside Rory, and the ginger cat immediately scrambled onto her lap, rubbing his cheeks against her chin. She stroked him absently, while shining the torch this way and that.

  A few feet to the side of the main shaft, visible through broken brickwork, was a fall of earth that looked to Harriet like the remains of a badger’s sett. She peered at it, shining the light towards the brick arch that might once have been the villa’s heating system.

  ‘Damn, it’s collapsed, of course it would have. I knew it was too good to be true. Look, there’s no way we can force our way through that rubble and hundreds of years worth of roots.’ She was bitterly disappointed. ‘But how did the cat get through?’

  ‘I think somebody’s been down here, you know, it’s in pretty good nick for something that hasn’t been seen in sixteen hundred years,’ Rory said slowly, frowning as he shone the torch over the tile and stone piers, obscured in most places by hanging roots, rubble and more earth falls.

  ‘But it has been seen,’ Harriet protested. ‘Look, someone’s been shoring up some of those pillars and if you look up at the shaft we dropped down, you can see it’s been added at a later date. The brickwork is rough and the opening up from here has been hacked about to make it bigger.’

  She racked her brains. ‘It’s a while since I taught any Roman history,’ she confessed, ‘but I think we must be in some kind of cistern. According to that old book about the Attlin family history, the angel stone is supposed to be where the atrium was, you know, the centre courtyard-cum-entrance hall. In a Roman villa the atrium would have had an opening called the compluvium; it wouldn’t have been roofed right over and rain falling through would be collected in a shallow pool underneath, to be drained away into a water tank underneath.’

  ‘You mean we could be in the water tank?’ Rory’s imagination was fired and he swung the torch up and down the shaft. ‘I think you’re right. Look, it’s definitely made of lead, you can see where it’s drooped down into folds; lead does that when it’s neglected. It’s incredible it wasn’t stolen. Later generations knew about this place, they must have done, and for some reason came down here and made some alterations. I wonder why.’

  ‘But it’s in that old book.’ Harriet was excited, their danger forgotten. ‘There’s a mention of a priest’s hole at the farm but nobody’s ever been able to find it. Suppose it wasn’t in the house at all, but that the family knew about this space and made it bigger, to use as a hiding place.’

  An involuntary shudder made her hug herself for comfort. ‘Dear God, imagine being a priest in hiding, stuck down here till someone came to tell you it was safe, and terrified all the time that someone would give you away.’ She cast a fearful glance round at the shadows. ‘Think what capture meant; torture, hanging, drawing and quartering.’ A thought struck her. ‘Ugh, I just hope we don’t stumble over a skeleton, one of those poor devils who never made it out!’

  ‘You’re supposed to be the little ray of sunshine round here,’ Rory groaned. ‘Talk about a ghoul.’

  She managed a laugh. ‘Someone’s made an opening at the side of the cistern,’ she went on, standing on tiptoe to try and make it out. ‘As well as making the hole at the top bigger, I mean. The water tank and the hypocaust were originally quite separate of course, but it’s been altered so you can get through from the shaft. There’s air down here and look, there must have been a proper hatch above us, cast iron perhaps? You can see the ledges it rested on.’ She was excited. ‘I bet it’s still in use; that temporary lid would disintegrate in no time. Thank goodness we haven’t got the original one up there. They were obviously in too much of a hurry to get rid of us.’

  She felt carefull
y round the brickwork, wrinkling her nose as she came to the badger’s sett. ‘And who knows? The Attlins could even have used it in the Civil War, to hide royalist soldiers from the Roundheads.’

  ‘Harriet.’ Rory’s voice was harsh, his breathing ragged. ‘Shut up a minute and look over here.’

  While she was thinking aloud, he had wriggled over to the culvert, so she joined him, shining her phone alongside his torch, her eyes squinting along the finger of light that shone into the darkness. The smell was much worse here, and she gagged just as she caught up with Rory, who was staring at something. Just visible, secreted in a blind alley that was part of the ventilation system, the long body of a man lay very still, his hand flung clear of the rough covering of stones. Not a Roman, not a skeleton, it was a man whose modern, casual trousers and dark-grey jacket were only too visible.

  ‘Stay there a minute, Harriet, there isn’t room for both of us.’ Rory shuffled painfully on his hands and knees to the opening of the cul-de-sac. He carefully shifted a few stones; there had been no attempt at complete concealment, just a cursory camouflage.

  ‘Christ almighty!’ He stared down at the earth-sprinkled hair, at the bruised, but unmistakably dead features of a man he recognized. ‘He’s been shot!’

  Harriet could bear it no longer. ‘Who is it?’ She halted, horrified. ‘But, but that’s the vicar; that’s John Forrester.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he said quietly, shining the torch to show her the dead man’s face. His voice shook as he retreated.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Harriet peered over his shoulder. ‘I thought the smell was the badgers but….’ she gulped, her hand to her mouth, ‘it’s Mike Goldstein. But I thought it was Mike out there with Brendan. It was Mike who hit you, wasn’t it? I was sure it was Mike.’

  Her stomach heaved and she broke off abruptly, crawling aside just in time before she was violently sick. As she heaved, she was aware of Rory retching and taking deep breaths.

  She rocked back on her heels, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, as they stared at the body of Mike Goldstein who so manifestly had not been digging in the Burial Field; Mike, who could not possibly have hit Rory; Mike, who was so very clearly dead.

  It was time to face facts.

  ‘There’s only one explanation; it has to have been John Forrester all along,’ she said flatly, almost in disbelief. ‘The vicar and Brendan Whittaker. All that stuff about oil exploration was just a smokescreen.’

  It took them a good ten minutes to calm down. Rory was shivering, a hangover from the fever he’d caught in that Far Eastern jail, and for once Harriet was feeling her age and more.

  ‘Here.’ She found a packet of mints in her pocket. ‘Very soothing to the frayed nerves, peppermint.’ Habit helped her to summon up some self-control. She put an arm round Rory’s shoulders and hugged him, but there was a treacherous wobble in her voice as she tried to joke, ‘Bit more than you bargained for, isn’t it? Me too. I promised Sam I wouldn’t play at being Miss Marple but this is—’ She swallowed, unable to continue.

  She shook herself, unable to leave it. ‘You said Mike was at the party so he can’t have been here…. Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ She managed at last to shy away from the thought of the dead man. ‘This place is depressing in its own right, a bit like a coffin, this tank. Sorry,’ she grimaced. ‘Not a helpful thing to say. Still, as long as I’m being macabre, it’s a pretty crowded coffin. I’m going to wriggle along the way the cat came, and see if I can find out how he got in.’

  Rory started to protest.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she retorted. ‘I may not be thinner than you, but your shoulders are a lot broader than mine and you’ve just been beaten up. My concussion is on the mend and besides, I’m probably fitter than you anyway, even if I am thirty-odd years older, so stay put. I’ll make marks so I don’t get lost.’

  Giving him no time to argue, Harriet set off, accompanied by the cat, whose curiosity was plainly roused. Glad of the company, she gave him an encouraging stroke. ‘Where are the Famous Five, or a St Bernard, when you need them,’ she grunted, speaking out loud to scare away the shadows. ‘But you’ll do, old moggie. Just remember to pack a small keg of spirits, whisky for choice, in future. You go in front and show me the way you came in, though I suspect it’ll be too narrow for the likes of us humans. Let’s take a look.’ She shone the torch into the darkness.

  ‘You know we could see that someone’s shored up the outer wall of the hypocaust?’ she called out to Rory. ‘Even though the hypocaust has collapsed in on itself, a kind of tunnel’s been pushed through, so a man could just about wriggle through. Just as well neither of us is exactly chubby but I’m quite sure we’d never squeeze through the hypocaust itself. This has been done properly, and not recently either. I think it could have been done in Tudor times as a hiding place for Catholic priests, even an escape route.’

  She called back over her shoulder to report her findings. ‘I can see that someone’s been in here much more recently, clearing out muck and debris. There’s not hundreds of years’ worth of tree roots and rubbish in this passageway, not by a long chalk.’

  With a lot of grunting and occasional cursing, Harriet slithered forward for some time in the wake of the cat. Toby pottered purposefully along, turning into a marginally larger space, with an enquiring look over his shoulder to see if she was still playing this interesting game with him.

  ‘Just as well I don’t suffer from claustrophobia,’ she muttered. ‘Oops, now what?’ As she caught up with the cat she found herself facing a wall of tree roots and disturbed earth. All around she could see evidence of generations of animal occupation, small bones that could indicate that foxes had once been in residence. And then she saw it: filtering in from outside was a faint, greyish light, the welcome dawn approaching.

  Her shoulder was hurting like mad. Bother that bathroom ceiling, she muttered. Decorating in the spring had led to a frozen shoulder and although it was gradually improving, the pain was sometimes agonizing. Concussion and a frozen shoulder, what a state to go on a treasure hunt in. Miss Marple would have had a lot more sense. She gave a final massage to the afflicted shoulder then, following her marks, she wriggled back to where Rory was champing at the bit.

  ‘I think we can just about squeeze out,’ she told him as she led him back into the tunnels. ‘This enlarged passageway ends in what looks like another entrance to the badgers’ sett – they usually have several. You often get foxes moving in when the badgers leave and I could definitely see traces of a fox’s earth. That must be how the cat got in and I’m fairly sure we can scrape at it till we can clamber out. It’s the most terrific discovery; Cousin Walter shouldn’t have any trouble getting people interested, grants, and so forth. Time Team, even.’

  Harriet set out again, averting her eyes from Mike Goldstein’s out-flung hand. Strange how pathetic it looked, she shivered, wondering about his death. And wondering even more who had killed him. And why.

  Rory slithered after her, his broader shoulders making his passage through even the widened narrow flue more difficult. He gritted his teeth against the pain of his cracked rib, damaged knee and extensive bruises and when he caught up with her, he shone the torch back the way they had come. What he saw made him whistle.

  ‘What is it?’ Harriet was fearful now, the nightmare thought beginning to surface. ‘It’s not, not another body …? Oh God, it’s not Colin Price?’

  ‘Not a body – but that’s a thought, he could be down here, couldn’t he? No, it’s not a body, but look, there’s something.’ He hooked a long arm into a shallow alcove she had missed in her earlier exploration, and fished out a plastic document folder.

  ‘Well,’ Harriet burst out. ‘That’s definitely not Roman.’

  ‘There’s something in here, a piece of paper, I think. Proves someone’s been down here recently, doesn’t it?’ Rory fished it out and squinted at it. ‘This isn’t Roman either,’ he said, disappointment in his voice as he handed it to her.

/>   ‘Well, you’re right, it’s certainly not Roman,’ Harriet said slowly, holding it up to her eyes as she tried to make it out. ‘But modern is a relative term. It’s old, though, but I’d have said eighteenth century, rather than much earlier. The writing’s faded but it’s in readable English.’

  She spread the paper out and read the short message: ‘Dame Margery keeps the secret of Aelfryth’s Tears,’ followed by an illegible signature. Harriet turned the paper over, fruitlessly looking for further illumination. ‘That’s all there is.’

  Rory shoved it down the front of his sweatshirt. ‘We’d better get a move on. Where’s this fox’s earth you want me to scramble through? I tell you, Harriet, you’re not like any teacher I ever had; your classes must have been lively.’

  ‘Fool.’ She headed towards the increasingly bright light. ‘Here, I think we can just about wriggle through here.’ She heaved a sigh and peered at her watch. ‘I wonder if Sam’s picked up my text yet?’

  ‘Sam? Text? What are you on about?’

  ‘Sorry, didn’t I tell you?’ She blinked in surprise. ‘Good Lord, I completely forgot to mention it. I sent Sam a text before we left the house, to tell him there was something going on in the Burial Field and we were going to take a look. As soon as he picks it up Sam will be galloping over the hill with the Seventh Cavalry to the rescue.’

  ‘You could have told me,’ Rory said, sounding aggrieved. ‘No wonder you weren’t in a state of total panic at being trapped underground. I’ve been in awe, thinking how brave you were.’

  ‘That’s boarding school. We were taught to be strong, capable women, not spineless jellyfish. It was the ethos of the school along with cold baths and lots of exercise. Mind you, I think we’ve both been pretty brave,’ she reproved him, though he saw a twinkle in her blue eyes. ‘But anyway, I also took the precaution of leaving a note in my bedroom, for Edith or Sam, whoever got there first. I just said there was someone digging around the old stone and it looked like Brendan and Mike Goldstein. And that I thought they were looking for the remains of the original villa, on the hunt for treasure.’