The Lazarus Bell, an Irish Murder Mystery

by Patrick Dunne

  PATRICK DUNNE

  THE

  LAZARUS BELL

  For my beloved wife Theckla and in memory of Sheila

  A sinister little flower, in the mournful colour of decay

  Vita Sackville-West

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Postscript

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About Gill & Macmillan

  Prologue

  At the bend of the stream, the flow of water had carved out a pocket in the grassy bank. Beneath the bank a sandy shoal had built up, and beyond it the stream swirled lazily under an overhanging willow. Flotsam was often trapped there to circle round and round until an irregular eddy or gust of wind set it free. In summer, flowering water-weeds added traction to the whirlpool’s grip.

  On a Friday morning in May, Arthur Shaw leaned on a wooden footbridge over the stream and took in the scene. The sun had turned the water below to see-through honey. Above it, electric-red damselflies hovered and darted. The scent from drifts of frothy meadowsweet was wafting in from a nearby field. In the woodland shade downstream, the water rippled past a moss-clad outcrop of limestone boulders. Up at the bend, a mat of white-and-yellow crowfoot swayed in the current. It brought him back to his youth, to the way the Boyne had been before the riverbed, and with it every island, weir and millrace along most of its course, was torn up to provide better field-drainage.

  The tangled crowfoot reminded him of something else – one of his favourite paintings: Ophelia lying in a stream on a bier of flowers. Just as some people liked still lifes or winter landscapes or pictures of horses, anything to do with rivers appealed to him, more so if the subject matter was tragic. Because, although the aging Arthur Shaw lived in the twenty-first century, his heart was antique Victorian: cast iron on the outside, cushion-soft within.

  His brief meditation over, he was about to continue on his walk through Brookfield Garden when he noticed something glinting in the water upstream. He left the bridge and walked a few metres along the bank to get a better look. He was disappointed to find it was just a beer can on the bottom reflecting the sunlight. It made him feel grumpy. It was bad enough that kids were bringing drink into the garden, but dumping their rubbish in it was unforgiveable. For all their protests about polluting the planet, this generation was no more caring of the rivers and streams than those officially sanctioned vandals of the twentieth century who had ruined the Boyne.

  Then Arthur noticed something else, this time detected by his sense of smell. A dead sheep or lamb, he thought. They sometimes drowned in the spring floods, were swept downstream and got trapped in the pocket at the bend.

  He could see there was something bulky caught in the weeds, all right, but it wasn’t a sheep. It looked like a sack. There were flies buzzing on it in clusters. Someone’s drowned a litter of kittens, he thought, dipping his head beneath the willow and approaching the edge of the inward-curving bank.

  He had his walking-stick with him. It helped to prop up the side of his body that had been weakened by a stroke. With some difficulty he climbed down onto a patch of dry sand under the bank and pushed at the sack with his stick. Instead of floating free of the weed, the sack rolled over, and something attached to it rose above the water.

  It was a foot. And he knew it must be a woman’s because there was purple nail polish on some of the toes. He saw that the corpse’s skin was strangely mottled, like the plumage of a magpie. He blinked hard, wondering if the dappled light under the tree had confused him.

  Her piebald skin wasn’t the only odd thing. Ophelia’s pale face in the Millais painting was upturned, her long tresses trailing out into the current. This woman’s face was invisible at first, or so he thought; but as the bloated torso completed another revolution in the current, he saw that all that was left of her head was a stalk of bone emerging from between her shoulders.

  Chapter One

  The accident with the lead coffin occurred on the far side of Castleboyne at around the time Arthur Shaw was taking his walk. My archaeology company, Illaun Bowe Consultancy, had excavated a medieval graveyard on the original outskirts of the town and we were preparing to hand over the site to the local authorities. And that’s where it happened.

  A little earlier, I’d been trying on a cream linen jacket and skirt in the mirror when I got an excited phone call from Gayle Fowler, one of my team, who was acting as Finds Assistant on the excavation. I was due to meet a representative of the Town Council, to formally sign off on the project that had occupied much of my time since Easter, but for some reason I wasn’t happy with the suit, though I liked the white V-necked cotton top I had on under it.

  ‘We’ve discovered two coffins…’ Gayle was practically breathless. ‘Lead-lined…just outside the site perimeter…a section of ground near the chapel subsided when we were about to start backfilling. You have to come down here, Illaun.’

  I could understand her enthusiasm. None of the other remains had been buried in containers of any kind, let alone lead coffins.

  ‘Are they intact?’

  ‘One of them seems waterlogged. The other, well…I think you need to see for yourself.’

  ‘If there’s any question of it containing soft tissue remains, you know the drill. It’ll have to be sealed in heavy-duty plastic and reburied.’

  ‘It’s not like that. That’s why we need you here.’

  I was in my office, less than a kilometre away, glad to be able to shuttle back and forth quickly from site to office for once, and pleased to be working on an important excavation in my home town. I looked at my watch. Was this the excuse I needed to change out of the suit? Light-coloured linen wasn’t the best attire for a site visit, and I needed to lose weight to wear it anyway. I had just enough time to change, go to the site and still make the meeting.

  ‘OK, I’m coming. Meanwhile, handle the lead as little as possible. Tell anyone who’s working with you to gear up. And safety helmets to be worn around that collapse.’

  The team was used to donning protective clothing, including micro-biological masks. The site we had excavated was a mass grave, its occupants victims of the Black Death.

  The road from Dublin forked in two as it entered old Castleboyne, and in the V, behind a low stone wall, was a triangular field that widened out as it sloped uphill from a barred ir
on gate. Most people passing by would have been unaware of its past. There were no headstones, crosses or markers of any kind; the only clue was the hummocky, uneven ground under the grass. At one time there had been a Magdalene hospital, chapel and graveyard in or around this location. The site was now honeycombed with earthen trenches that might have been made by a giant waffle-iron. They had been due to be filled in when the subsidence had occurred further up the field. I could see members of the team there, hunched around a gaping hole in a grassy bank, which was surmounted by a wall and the gable end of the ruined chapel. To one side of them was a spoil heap and a pile of dismantled scaffolding, and to the other a yellow Hymac excavator.

  Gayle saw me arrive and detached herself from the others. Like me, she had on a white safety helmet, and from under hers a wedge of frizzy black hair stuck out. She was wearing glasses the size of saucers, baggy jeans and a black Pixies T-shirt that billowed around her as it was caught by the summer breeze. Gayle had lost a lot of weight recently but had failed to buy new clothes to take account of it. I noticed with growing concern that her helmet was the only protective item she was wearing.

  ‘Hi, isn’t this exciting?’ she said.

  ‘What happened, exactly?’

  ‘The Hymac operator was about to start backfilling when he noticed the ground caving in under one of the tracks. He moved on just before it fell away and exposed a partially collapsed vault under the wall. It must have been part of the church at one time. It was just about big enough to contain the coffins. We’ve got one of them up here – the smaller one.’ She led the way towards a rectangular, ash-grey container lying on the grass slope. As I followed her along the wooden walkways and earthen baulks between the trenches, I was glad I’d worn cargo pants and lightweight hiking shoes. I was still wearing the white top, but if I’d worn my business suit, with the helmet, my briefcase and heeled sandals, I would have looked like one of the politicians or public officials who had made frequent visits to the site over the months. As we got nearer the coffin, which was lying on the grass about ten metres from where the ground had subsided, I noticed there were streaks of rust running down the sides, probably all that was left of iron bands that had once surrounded the coffin’s long-rotted timber container.

  ‘How did you get it out?’ I asked.

  ‘With scaffolding bars as rollers and planks as levers. Then we lashed ropes around it and raised it onto the bank with the Hymac. The gang’s working on the bigger one now. It seems to be waterlogged, like I said. You can hear something sloshing around inside.’

  Her mention of this earlier had set off a tiny but insistent noise in my head, like a distant house alarm. I glanced over at the activity beside the excavator. The heads I could see there were all sporting safety helmets, at least, and a couple of the team had also donned white coveralls and masks. I opened my briefcase and took out a white dust-mask and two pairs of heavy-duty latex gloves.

  ‘There’s no need, believe me,’ said Gayle, patting my arm reassuringly as I pulled on the gloves and fixed the mask over my mouth.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ I said, the authority in my voice somewhat muffled by the mask. Because we’d been working outdoors most of the time and dealing only with bones, and because diseases usually last no longer than fifty years in skeletonised remains, it was understandable that the crew had developed a relaxed attitude to wearing protective gear, especially on a warm summer’s day like this one. But sealed lead coffins can harbour lethal diseases, and lead dust can carry spores and parasites’ eggs through the air.

  I was about to follow Gayle up the grassy slope when a warning shout halted us in our tracks. At the top of the field, the other coffin was being hauled up in a rope sling by the arm of the excavator. The heavy lead box spun slowly in the air as the operator rotated the arm in our direction, evidently intending to set the coffin down beside the other one. I wasn’t entirely happy with what was going on. If the coffin was waterlogged, it was probably damaged, which meant it could leak its contents or disintegrate before we had time to get it sleeved in heavy-duty plastic.

  Short of its target by a couple of metres, the Hymac began to crawl down the slope. Gayle and I circled away from it but kept our eyes on the gyrating coffin. Without warning, the excavator lurched sideways as the ground gave way beneath its caterpillar tracks and subsided into the vault where the coffins had been. The site workers fanned out away from the machine as it leaned precariously, threatening to fall over on its side. Gayle and I were rooted to the spot, as though any movement might make it topple.

  Some members of the team shouted at the operator to get out of the cabin, but he kept the machine under control and managed to reverse away from the collapsed vault and regain an upright position. But by now the hastily tied-up coffin was swinging wildly. Suddenly one of the ropes slipped off and the coffin tilted downwards at a steep angle. Now I became really alarmed.

  Gayle instinctively headed up the slope towards the excavator. ‘Hold on,’ I warned her. ‘Let’s not get too near.’

  While the operator hesitated, unsure of which way to manoeuvre the revolving coffin, one of the workers reached up in an effort to keep it still, calling to the others to help him. I recognised him as Terry Johnston, an experienced journeyman digger – one of those who make a career of flitting from site to site. And, true to form, Terry was dressed only in a singlet and shorts that displayed his leathery, matchstick-thin arms and legs as he tried to wave instructions to the driver. The coffin was right over his bare head.

  ‘Get back, Terry,’ I shouted.

  The coffin spun away from him again and he decided to stay where he was. But, like a pendulum, it turned back, and I noticed what I thought was a thick cobweb hanging from one of the downturned corners. Then it caught the sunlight.

  I ran towards him, waving my arms in the air. ‘For God’s sake, get out of there!’

  There was liquid spilling from the coffin.

  Terry began to retreat but stumbled and fell on his back. Then the base of the coffin, deprived of the support provided by the earth for centuries, gave way. Terry yelped in fright as a dark, viscous fluid poured down on him.

  We all ran to help him. But the stench stopped us in our tracks.

  Chapter Two

  While the men hosed down a stripped-naked Terry behind the excavator, Gayle and I approached the area where the liquid had spilt and saw that it was seeping fast into the earth, dry from a long rainless spell. I signalled to the Hymac operator to lower the dripping container onto the ground there and then. While the remainder of the rope cradle had prevented the lead base from falling on Terry, there was no guarantee it would hold.

  I handed Gayle my car keys. ‘There are some sample jars in the back. Grab a couple and we’ll try and collect some of this stuff.’

  Gayle made a face and moved off. Ribald laughter rose from the area around the stand pipe, where Terry was being liberally sprayed with the hose we used to dampen the earth from time to time when digging. No doubt his colleagues were trying to raise his spirits after his experience.

  I watched as one end of the coffin, tilted at forty-five degrees, approached the ground. Suddenly it slipped its cradle and rotated into a vertical position. Something solid inside it fell to the bottom, then out onto the ground. It was a heap of blackened bones, and they landed not with a clatter, but like sods of damp turf.

  The remaining ropes gave way and the entire container landed on its end, stayed upright for a few seconds, then toppled over and landed less than two metres away from me, making the earth tremble under my feet.

  ‘Wow, Illaun, that was close,’ said Gayle, rejoining me with the specimen jars, each in a paper bag.

  ‘Close? This is turning out to be a disaster at every turn, Gayle. I wish to God you’d…never mind.’ I had to resist the temptation to take out my frustration on her. Even though I thought she’d been precipitate in removing the coffins, I would probably have criticised her for not using her initiative had
the vault collapsed before we could remove them.

  The fallen coffin lay upside down on the grassy slope, the partly sheared-off base uppermost. It looked like an outsize half-opened sardine tin. A dusting of pulverised bone lay scattered about it, but most of the pile that had fallen lay underneath, probably crushed to powder.

  Inside the container, a residue of black, foul-smelling gloop still adhered to the surfaces. I had no doubt it was ‘coffin liquor’ – a kind of soup created by the rendering down of human tissue by decomposition.

  ‘Oh, my gosh…the smell, it’s awful,’ said Gayle. She was swallowing hard to keep from retching.

  I had to agree it was truly repulsive. And in the noonday heat it seemed to be rising up at us in ever more pungent waves.

  ‘Stand back a bit,’ I said, slipping my mask over my nose and mouth again.

  A glance inside revealed that the lead box was otherwise empty, a brown tide-mark a third of the way up the sides indicating how much liquid had been in it before it drained out. I was disappointed to find there were no other bones present. Estimating the age or sex of the individual was going to be impossible. There was nothing for it now but to scrape off some of the residue and gather it into an airtight container, to prevent it deteriorating any further now that it was exposed to light and air.

  Gayle handed me one of the sterile sample jars – a clear plastic vial with a built-in scoop and handle forming a resealable lid. The combination of mask and helmet was making perspiration trickle down my forehead – I would have to be careful not to get any drops of sweat mixed with the sample. I unscrewed the lid and, taking a deep breath, leaned under the projecting section of the base and scraped some of the substance into the scoop, holding the jar underneath to catch any that dripped down.

  Still hunched under the stiff tongue of lead, I started screwing the lid-scoop back on. Then I noticed what looked like a sodden tangle of fibres in a corner of the coffin below me.

  I ducked out from under the base, turned and breathed in some fresh air. ‘There’s something else there,’ I mumbled into my mask. I handed the sample jar back to Gayle. ‘Open the other one, please.’