Blood From a Stone

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘Morning,’ called Jack cheerily, as they approached. ‘My word, you’ve got your work cut out here and no mistake.’ He pulled out his cigarette case and offered it round.

  Nothing loath, the men rested on their spades. ‘Are you the gentleman who was pulled out of the cave last night, sir? The one who climbed down the well?’ asked one of the gardeners, a grizzled, older man in a moleskin waistcoat. Jack nodded.

  The men exchanged looks. ‘It’s more’n I’d care to do, and no mistake,’ said the gardener. ‘I said as much to Sam, here.’ He nodded at a younger man in earth-spattered corduroy who smiled bashfully. ‘We never thought as our old well’ ud come in so handy.’

  Jack stepped back and looked at the entrance. The men had made an uneven gap about five foot high and three foot wide in the mound of earth and rubble. ‘This must have taken some clearing. Have you been at it long?’

  ‘Since nine or thereabouts. Excuse me, gentlemen, but were you wanting to go in the cave?’

  ‘We were, actually.’

  The men looked at each other dubiously. ‘I don’t know about that, sir. Mr Leigh said nobody was allowed in. He was worried about the roof collapsing, you see.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Ashley. ‘I’m a police officer. This is official business.’

  The men looked at each other and shrugged. ‘Mind your heads, then,’ said the man in corduroy. ‘There’s a fair old bit of timber down in there.’ He reached out his hand to help Isabelle over the rubble. ‘Up you come, miss. Watch your step.’

  With her torch as a guide, Isabelle picked her way through the entrance and into the cave, Jack and Ashley close behind.

  The light of their torches showed the bulk of the damage was beside the entrance and up the far side of the cave, where the fire had burnt away the timber props of the roof and walls. Jack winced as he saw the mound of rubble he had been trapped under.

  Ashley made his way across the stream and directed his torch at the soot-blackened altar. ‘It’s enough to give you nightmares,’ he said with feeling. ‘I’m not surprised there’s so many tales about Breagan Stump, with that thing in the middle of it. Who the devil is it meant to be?’

  ‘I imagine it is more or less meant to be the devil,’ said Jack. ‘According to Duggleby, it’s a British god called Euthius from late-ish on in Roman times. The Reverend Throckmorton, the Victorian vicar he quotes endlessly, thinks Euthius was the god of an anti-Christian cult.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect to see his picture on a Christmas card, that’s for sure,’ said Ashley. ‘And that ghastly thing had human sacrifices made to it?’

  ‘He nearly had a couple more chalked up to him last night.’

  Isabelle shuddered and Jack squeezed her arm comfortingly. ‘Come on. Let’s see what we can turn up.’ He shone his torch at the roof. ‘I think everything that was going to fall has fallen already, but we’d better not make any sudden noises.’

  They picked their way across the uneven ground. The remains of a roof timber, charred and hollow with white ash, lay scattered across the shallow depressions of the graves.

  ‘There were six graves in all,’ said Jack. ‘Six grave covers, anyway.’ He crouched down and shone his torch along the ground. ‘The covers have mostly burned away but there’s a rim of wood round the edges.’ He reached out and the wood crumbled to ashes in his hand.

  ‘Are you sure there were six graves?’ asked Isabelle. ‘I can only see five.’

  ‘One’s under the rubble, Mrs Stanton,’ said Ashley. ‘I can see the edge of it. Haldean, where were you when you found the body?’

  Jack stood up and, with his torch, picked out the broken beam which had pinned him to the ground. Looking behind him, he took a few paces backwards. ‘This is the place. Which means,’ he added, directing the light downwards, ‘the grave in question should be ... here!’

  They crowded round. The depression in the earth was filled with ash and scattered earth, but nothing else.

  ‘It’ll be one of the others, I daresay, Haldean,’ said Ashley. ‘You probably mistook the place, and no wonder, on top of everything else that was going on.’

  They carefully searched through the rest of the uncovered graves. They found a great deal of ash but nothing else.

  Ashley rocked back on his heels. ‘Haldean, you can see for yourself there’s nothing here. Could you have imagined it?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. I admit I didn’t stand and gaze at the thing, but there was a body in the grave, all right.’

  Ashley ran his hand round his chin. ‘It wasn’t a skeleton, was it? I’m wondering if it was an ancient body that this Victorian vicar overlooked somehow. If they were old bones, they might have been burned in the fire and be mixed up with all this ash.’

  ‘It wasn’t a skeleton. I knelt on the thing and it was, if you’ll pardon the expression, all squishy.’

  ‘Then where the deuce is it?’ said Ashley, getting to his feet. ‘It’ll be difficult to get the chief constable to take any action if we haven’t got any evidence to show him. He can’t argue with a corpse but if we haven’t got one to show him, it’s going to be tricky.’

  ‘It was here last night,’ said Jack firmly. ‘It’s not here now. Therefore it’s been moved.’

  ‘But who could have moved it, Jack?’ asked Isabelle. She stopped. ‘I don’t suppose Mr Leigh could have, could he?’

  ‘He could,’ agreed Jack. ‘After he pulled me out from under that ruddy beam I was spark out until the firemen came to the rescue. He could have moved a hundred bodies and I wouldn’t be any wiser. The trouble is, I know what you heard him say in the gallery all right, but he saved my life.’

  ‘Which doesn’t stop him from being guilty, more’s the pity,’ said Ashley.

  ‘Let’s have a word with the men clearing the rubble,’ said Jack. ‘They’ll tell us if anyone’s been in here.’

  But the gardeners’ account was nearly, if not quite, conclusive. There had been a succession of sightseers coming and going to the entrance all morning, which Jack could well believe. Gazing at the aftermath of a fire was such a natural human response that he wouldn’t have credited it if they’d said otherwise. As far as getting into the cave itself, though, the gardeners were sure that no one, bar themselves, had done it. No, not even Mr Leigh. Quite apart from Mr Leigh’s instructions, the hole hadn’t been big enough to get through with any ease until an hour or so ago. Which wasn’t, as Isabelle said, the same thing as saying that no one had got through; it was just they hadn’t been spotted doing it.

  ‘They’d have to get out again, though,’ said Ashley. ‘They’d be very lucky not to be seen either coming or going.’

  ‘The body was here,’ insisted Jack. ‘Someone’s moved it.’

  ‘Well, where is it now, Haldean?’

  ‘It must be in the cave somewhere,’ said Isabelle. ‘I still think someone could have waited their moment and sneaked in and out, but I can’t see them taking a body with them.’

  ‘That, I’d say, would be very unlikely,’ agreed Ashley dryly.

  After a good forty minutes, in which time they had thoroughly explored the entire cave, including both entrances to the stream and a good way along the course of the water, they had to give it up as a bad job. The body could, as Ashley said, be hidden under the rubble from the roof, but Jack could tell that Ashley’s faith that there had ever been a body at all was waning fast. Not only that, but the light of his torch was growing weaker by the minute.

  ‘I think we should give it up for the time being,’ said Jack, much to everyone’s relief. ‘I’ll come back later.’

  ‘It’s nearly lunchtime,’ said Isabelle, squinting at her watch in the dim light.

  ‘Oh hell,’ said Jack. ‘Are we going to be late?’

  ‘We will be if we don’t get a move on. It’s only cold stuff, thank goodness, not a formal meal, but we need a wash and brush up. We must look like absolute sweeps with all this ash and mud.’

  ‘Fair enough,’
said Ashley. ‘I’ve got to meet Rackham at the station and I’ve got Mr Bloomenfield, the jeweller, arriving this afternoon. I think, if you don’t mind, we’d better keep what we were doing in here private for the time being.’

  ‘Give us some credit, old thing,’ muttered Jack. ‘The last thing either of us is going to do is to rush up to Mr Leigh and Co. and tell them we were playing hunt the corpse. However,’ he added thoughtfully, as they climbed over the earth and rocks to the entrance, ‘we’d better give the gardeners some sort of story.’

  Sam, the gardener, was loading up the wheelbarrow with earth as they climbed through the hole.

  ‘Sam,’ said Jack, as they scrambled clear. ‘It is Sam, isn’t it?’ The gardener nodded. ‘We’ve been looking for my diamond bracelet.’ Sam’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Well, not my diamond bracelet, of course,’ said Jack with a diffident laugh. ‘It’s actually Miss Celia’s, but that’s the trouble. I was looking at it when we got the alarm about the fire and I just shoved it in my pocket without thinking. I know I had it in the cave last night, but I think I must have dropped it in the comings and goings.’

  ‘That’s a real shame, sir,’ said Sam sympathetically.

  Jack rubbed the side of his nose in an embarrassed sort of way. ‘You’re telling me. Miss Celia doesn’t know it’s lost yet. I was hoping to find it before she rumbled the fact it had gone, if you see what I mean.’ Jack gave a man-to-man laugh. ‘It might be awkward, you understand?’

  ‘I do,’ said Sam with fellow feeling.

  ‘The thing is, if anyone else finds it, Miss Celia will know I lost it, and I’ll be in the dog-house, good and proper.’ Sam grinned broadly. ‘So,’ said Jack, taking out his wallet and handing Sam a ten-shilling note, ‘if anyone else from the house comes poking round the cave, let me know who it is, will you? If I catch them before they spill the beans to Miss Celia, I might be able to get away with it, after all. I’ll be back later on, but I’d be obliged if you could just keep tabs on things for me.’

  ‘That’s very generous of you,’ said Sam, pocketing the note. ‘Don’t you worry, sir. Ladies get very attached to things, I know.’

  ‘Don’t mention it to anyone from the house, will you?’ asked Jack, lowering his voice anxiously. ‘I don’t want anyone to know it’s missing.’

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ promised Sam.

  ‘You really are the most accomplished liar, Jack,’ said Isabelle in amused disapproval, once they were out of earshot. ‘Did you really think it was worth ten bob to satisfy the gardeners’ curiosity with all that rigmarole?’

  ‘I thought it was worth ten bob to know if anyone else tries to get into the cave,’ said Jack. ‘And to stop Sam and his pals talking about what we were doing. We don’t want to put the wind up anyone unnecessarily, do we?’

  ‘I thought it was pretty smooth,’ said Ashley in approval.

  ‘Are you going to ask Mr Leigh and Mrs Hawker about what I heard them say in the gallery?’ asked Isabelle as they emerged into the temple.

  Ashley shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. That’d achieve nothing, apart from warning them to look out.’

  Isabelle breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I’m glad about that. If Mr Leigh knew I’d overheard them, it’d be very awkward.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Stanton. We’ll just let sleeping dogs lie for the time being. If we’d found this blessed corpse, that’d be a very different kettle of fish but, as it is, it’s hard to see what I can do.’

  ‘I’m going to find that body,’ said Jack. ‘I damn well know it was there.’

  ‘I only hope you do,’ said Ashley. ‘In the meantime, I want to know what Inspector Rackham’s got to tell us.’

  Isabelle, after a thorough wash and change of clothes, came out of her room. There was, she knew, a cold lunch in the dining room and she really should be there, but ...

  She hesitated at the head of the stairs, then continued along the corridor to the portrait gallery. The events of yesterday had been so fantastic, they had a dream-like quality to them, and they had started with Frank Leigh and Mary Hawker in the gallery.

  She hadn’t been mistaken about what Mrs Hawker said. This is murder we’re talking about. I don’t blame you for what you’ve done but this is murder. That much she was certain of. Was there anything else? Some forgotten phrase perhaps? Maybe if she stood in the gallery once more, it would come back to her.

  She walked into the oak-panelled room, with its wide, dark, creaky floorboards. She shut her eyes and remembered Mary Hawker’s sharp, frightened voice. You must get rid of Major Haldean, Frank. He’s dangerous.

  A sound made her snap her eyes open. She froze as the door in the middle of the gallery opened, then sighed with relief as Jack opened the door and shut it carefully behind him. ‘Thank goodness it’s you. You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

  ‘I thought I’d see where the staircase in the middle of the gallery led to,’ Jack said quietly. ‘The first room on the floor below is Mrs Leigh’s. If she was looking out, she’d have a good view of Mrs Hawker, say, coming up that staircase. It’d be easy enough for her to follow, to see why Mrs Hawker was wandering round the house.’

  ‘Especially if she had her suspicions of an affair between her and her husband,’ agreed Isabelle, softly. ‘I wish I knew what it was all about, Jack. I like Mr Leigh.’

  ‘After last night, so do I.’ He ran his hand though his hair. ‘Besides that, I’d have said he was a good sort and, of course, he’s Celia’s father.’

  ‘She thinks the world of him,’ said Isabelle. ‘She gets exasperated with him sometimes but she really does care for him an awful lot.’

  Jack nodded towards the portrait of the cavalier holding his doffed hat with its sweeping feathers. ‘He’s obviously an ancestor of Mr Leigh’s, isn’t he?’

  ‘That’s what I thought. It’s amazing how the same faces crop up in a family. Do you remember that bit in Northanger Abbey, where Jane Austen says that once a face is painted, it’s painted for all generations to come?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ said Jack. ‘As I remember, she’s making fun of the idea, but there’s a lot to be said for it, all the same.’

  He walked up the gallery, pausing to smile at the seventeenth-century incarnation of Celia Leigh. ‘Here’s a family face. The teeth are different, though.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Isabelle. ‘Celia had to wear a brace at school. She hated it, poor girl. Still, it did the trick, otherwise she’d have ended up with rabbit teeth.’

  Jack stopped. ‘That rings a bell. Who’ve I heard of recently who had rabbit teeth ...?’ He frowned in an effort of remembrance, then clicked his fingers. ‘Mrs Welbeck!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mrs Paxton’s housekeeper. Hello!’ He stopped by the portrait of the Georgian clergyman that had puzzled Isabelle yesterday. ‘Who the dickens is this?’

  ‘That’s Ebenezer Leigh,’ said Isabelle. ‘I wondered about him. He looks familiar, somehow, but it’s hard to tell with that full wig.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Jack. He pulled a chair over to the portrait, climbed up and held his hands over the painted wig. ‘Does that ring a bell?’

  Isabelle took a step backwards and gave a little gasp. ‘Jack! It’s Mr Wood! Aloysius Wood! Hold on, let me take your place so you can see.’

  Jack got down. Isabelle climbed on the chair and held her hands over the wig.

  Jack gave a low whistle. ‘You’re right! Crikey, that’s him all right. You said he fitted in. Blimey, Isabelle, it’s not surprising, is it?’

  Isabelle got down from the chair. ‘He must be a member of the family, Jack. He just has to be. I suppose,’ she added, pausing delicately, ‘he could be – er – unacknowledged.’

  ‘He most certainly is,’ said Jack with a grin, ‘but not, I’ll be bound, in that sense, so there’s no need to blush.’

  ‘Why are you so sure? From what I’ve heard, Mr Leigh’s father had quite a reputation.’

  ‘Yes, but why does that mea
n that Wood has to conceal his identity? It’s not as if old Matthew Leigh was known as a pillar of virtue. Far from it. If Wood’s just a stray member of the family, why not say so? Every family has odd cousins that nobody shouts about too loudly.’

  ‘A good many families do, at any rate,’ amended Isabelle. ‘That’s true enough.’ She stepped back and looked at the portrait thoughtfully. ‘D’you know, I’ve always wondered about Mr Wood. I think it’s his Christian name, apart from anything else. Aloysius seems so unlikely, somehow.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Jack, nodding. ‘Some poor beggar might be called Aloysius but I’d say it’s either a family name you’re saddled with or the sort of moniker you give yourself if you’ve got a wayward sense of humour.’

  ‘But who is he, Jack?’ asked Isabelle, as he put the chair back and dusted off the seat. ‘My first thought was that he’s Terence Napier, but he can’t be. We know that.’

  Jack braced his hands on the back of the chair. ‘Yes ...’

  He stood quietly for a few moments, his eyes narrowed. ‘Isabelle,’ he said slowly, ‘I’ve got the beginnings of an idea. Why did we think it was the Vicar who was out to get you?’

  ‘Because of the things you found in the train,’ said Isabelle. ‘You know. There were the cards with his sign drawn on them and the books with his name written inside and so on.’

  ‘There was also the case, a handkerchief, a hairbrush and a hand-mirror. They were old and expensive. Anyone can write a name in a book or scribble a drawing on a card but those things were real, Belle. Someone – someone whose initials were A.P. – had kept those things.’

  ‘A.P.,’ said Isabelle slowly. ‘Alexander Paxton. I said as much before.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack thoughtfully. ‘Alexander Paxton.’ He stood for a few more moments, then drew a deep breath. ‘I’ve got a rotten feeling this is going to be very awkward.’

  ‘Is there any chance you could let me know what you’re thinking?’ asked Isabelle.

  Jack looked up, saw Isabelle’s expectant face, and grinned. ‘Only when I’ve thought it through properly. Come on. Let’s go and get something to eat, shall we?’