The Way, the Truth and the Dead

by Francis Pryor

  Fifteen minutes later he returned, still licking the grease of a doner kebab from his mouth. He sat down again and resumed reading, but now his fingers were working overtime.

  c. 1695: Surface of the ground in Fens around Ely lowered as result of earlier drainage. Celia Feinnes, riding through ­England ‘on a side-saddle’ noted that Ely was ‘ye dirtiest place I ever saw, not a bitt of pitching in ye streetes’. Cripps family established six-horse gin scoop wheels, which discharged their waters onto the common land of the parish, or so it was suggested by the villagers. This was disputed by David Cripps, Crowson’s son who had inherited the estate by then. Thereafter, this common reverted to summer grazing. D. Cripps was the magistrate who judged the case.

  1720: Horse gins replaced by windmills, Further complaints from locals.

  1781: Act of Parliament enclosing all land within the Parish of Fursey. The Cripps family acquire Fursey Common, which they drain first with windmills, then (1813) with steam. They establish the Fursey Main Engine and its Engine Drain. Most village landholders now confined to poorly drained grazing on edges of Parish.

  Blimey, Alan thought, little wonder they weren’t loved locally. But he also had to concede they could get things done – just like today. And if there’s one thing that local people resent, it’s the success of others when, that is, they achieve things they should be doing themselves. That’s pure poison – and it lasts. Boy, Alan sighed, does it last … But how did this all fit in with Stan’s work on the site? Was there someone out there who resented the work that he was doing? Alan realised he was in danger of getting ahead of himself. Step by step. He returned to his notes.

  C18–19: The Cripps family estate grew steadily. By WW1 it amounted to 3,000+ acres.

  1922: 1st Baronet Cripps created. Close friend of Lloyd George.

  1949: 1st Baronet RIP.

  1949: 2nd Baronet takes over running of the Fursey Estate.

  Hmm, Alan mused, the 2nd Bart could have claimed that Lloyd George knew my father. By now the family history had become very predictable and typical of Britain in the post-war decades.

  1949–1960: 2nd Bart sells off land and Smiley’s Mill to pay death duties and maintain the hall and farm buildings. Sells Isle Farm and its land. Fursey Abbey Farm is now too small to be profitable as an agricultural enterprise alone. The Fursey Abbey Farm is 250 acres and Woolpit Farm, 400 acres.

  1971: 2nd Bart RIP.

  Alan looked up from the tablet. Reading between the lines, it seemed that Barty, now the head of the family, came to his senses after the 2nd baronet’s death. Barty realised that the Cripps had come down in the world, but he didn’t panic. Instead, he set about joining the late 20th century; making practical choices and connecting with the people around him. But what about his offspring, Alan mused? Had ­Sebastian and John made their father’s journey, or had he shielded them from the new reality? And what about Candice? Was she shielding John by taking on the practicalities of the Fursey project, while he swanned around in the elite circles of tourism consultancy? The longer he thought about it, Alan realised that it takes more to change whole families than just one progressive individual. He sat back in his chair and sighed: there were so many devils in these details.

  1971: 3rd Baronet (Barty) takes over much reduced (2 farms and the park) estate. Estate much reduced by successive deaths and payments of death duties. The hall is very run down, so they get bank loan to do it up and convert into apartments. Bart and Molly move in to Abbey Farm.

  1977: With the estate slowly recovering, 3rd Bart becomes a Magistrate on Ely Bench.

  1978: 3rd Bart and Molly set up successful farm shop and restaurant at Fursey Home Farm, which they rename (probably as part of local marketing?) Abbey Farm.

  Alan could never spend much more than about two hours reading in libraries before his concentration began to flag. And now he was feeling distinctly drowsy. So he got out of his chair and took a stroll to the shelves where the books on Cambridge colleges were held. To his surprise there weren’t very many, then he paused. Of course, this was Cambridge and each college would still hold the best material themselves. Nonetheless, there was quite a lot on Fisher, most of it written by Professor Daniel. He went straight to what he knew was the definitive volume, Professor Daniel’s A Short History of Fisher College. It weighed fully 10 kilos. Thank God, he thought, he never wrote an extended version. As he lifted it off the shelf, his eye was caught by another, slimmer volume, The Cambridge Murders, by Dilwyn Rees, Daniel’s pseudonym.

  He scanned the pages by the learned professor. The college had been founded, like St John’s alongside it, by Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII’s mother, and John Fisher, senior proctor of the university, whom she ‘admired’ hugely. By all accounts the college buildings had been completed by 1595, apart, that is, from the fine, delicate, Wren bridge over the river Cam, which still provided such a slender foil to the same architect’s magnificent library for the much richer ­Trinity College, a few yards upstream. The college’s history in post-Tudor times was undistinguished and overshadowed by the two larger colleges, St John’s and Trinity, on either side. Daniel even quoted an example of undergraduate humour, then current in St John’s and Trinity: ‘Undergraduates at Fisher are truly unique; unlike everyone else, they have chips on both shoulders.’ Alan winced: it would be cruel, even today.

  But he was getting diverted. College history was one thing, but the Cripps family was another. How had they become involved with Fisher? More to the point, was drainage or land involved? He checked Daniel’s index for references to Cripps, and found several. The first referred to David Cripps, ­Crowson’s son, who was a student at Fisher in the very early 18th century. In 1720 he gave his old college £2,000 in cash and almost double that in ‘bonds and promissory notes’ – in other words, stocks and shares. Alan guessed his bequest was probably worth half a million in today’s money. Needless to state, his son and all future descendants would be welcomed by the college with open arms. In those days the extensive old-boy networks that went with a Cambridge college would have given the Cripps family a big advantage over their less privileged neighbours.

  There were further, smaller, bequests to Fisher in the 18th and 19th centuries, but one in particular caught his attention. It was made in 1753, by David’s son Harry, and it consisted of a grant of land with rights of access onto Fursey Common. Daniel published a map of the holding, which was still in the college’s possession when he wrote the book in the mid-1950s. Although hardly a major landowner (unlike its two neighbours), Fisher, in common with many other Cambridge colleges, had accumulated quite a substantial portfolio of holdings, which successive bursars had built up in subsequent years. As a result, the college was a significant landlord and Daniel’s map showed their estate, of about 5,000 acres, covering large areas of what is today rural Lincolnshire. Alan could see at a glance that this was excellent agricultural land, which was doubtless why the college had bought it. There were one or two, generally smaller, holdings elsewhere, including Fursey. All were listed in an appendix.

  Quickly Alan turned to the final chapter of the book, which described more recent transactions. Here he confirmed that the 2nd Baronet Cripps (Barty’s father) had sold off Isle Farm in 1953 to pay the second death duty assessment. There were two pictures of it: a medium-sized unpretentious Italianate house built about 1850 with an attached farmyard and a walled garden. It looked delightful, even in the monochrome picture in which an elderly lady, with two children playing at her feet, stood in the sunlit orchard of gnarled apple and pear trees.

  Alan put his head in his hands and closed his eyes: he could see the house out in the less open fen to the north of the pumping station and its Engine Drain that ran up to the very edge of Fursey Abbey. The fields towards Isle Farm were smaller and less regularly shaped and the landscape was less bleak, with more trees and even the occasional hedge. This would suggest it was drier land; probably a low-lying extension of Fursey island – as indeed its name sugg
ested.

  By the end of the 1950s, the Cripps’s Fursey Estate amounted to just over 400 acres, centred immediately north of Woolpit Farm, which in turn was adjacent to Fursey Hall, the large ancestral seat of the Cripps family. Alan checked his notes to confirm that the hall had been sub-divided into apartments in 1971; these included the residence of Sebastian and Sarah Cripps, who now managed what was left of the estate. Alan smiled. He could imagine that the huge Sebastian was inwardly cursing the generosity of his long-dead forebear. An extra 400 acres could come in very handy today. Alan Googled Sebastian to see if he, too, had attended Fisher. But no, although his younger brother John had. Instead, Sebastian had gained a degree (1982–84) in agriculture from Nettlesham College, just north of Sleaford. Funny, Alan thought, that’s where Dad wanted me to go. Indeed, his own brother Grahame had gone there; it was still widely regarded as one of the best agricultural colleges in Britain.

  Alan leant back in his chair and looked out at the institutional roofs of Downing Street – and the sunshine. He was starting to feel cooped up.

  Time for a pint. He went to a quiet pub he knew in a residential area the other side of the Downing Street complex, where he sat down and opened the local paper. His eye was caught by a story on page two about a big new academy school which was being proposed for Ely. The chairman of the district council, Councillor Sebastian Cripps, was quoted as being strongly in favour of it: ‘It would enhance the life chances of new residents in the neighbourhood and would greatly improve their prospects in the future.’

  He reached out for his pint, but his hand stopped in ­mid-air. His mind was racing. Was Sebastian’s concern for the good citizens of the Cathedral city entirely altruistic?

  Or was there more to it than that?

  Three

  Alan was woken from a deep, dreamless sleep by the sound of men and machines in the farmyard below his window. He glanced across at his radio alarm: 5.43am. Then he remembered that his brother Grahame had arranged for the potato harvesting contractors to come today. He only had a couple of acres of Piper to lift, but after all the recent wet weather he was very concerned about slugs. So they’d very kindly agreed to fit the job in on a Sunday.

  Below him in the kitchen he could hear the radio tuned into Farming Today which was giving an outline forecast for the week ahead: more rain, but not quite as much as last week. The pipes, which passed through his bedroom from the tanks in the attic above, hissed briefly as Grahame did something in the sink downstairs. Then Alan heard the door to the back porch open and close. A brief pause, while his brother slipped on his wellies, then the outside door slammed shut. Alan knew there was nothing he could usefully do to help, but he was now wide awake and he wouldn’t be going back to sleep.

  His mind was going over what he had learnt: first at Stan’s wake, then down at the Mill Cut, and finally yesterday, in the Haddon Library. One question kept returning: where was the truth? Who could be believed in a family where self-interest and greed were a part of their identity, their DNA? Alan thought about the family members he had met: each with their own histories and conflicting motives. But at the heart of it all was Stan’s death – and the river. Despite much evidence to the contrary, Alan was still convinced it wasn’t suicide. But doubts were starting to gnaw at his confidence: he knew to his cost that he could sometimes get things wrong. Could he be mistaken again? But on the other hand, he thought, Lane seemed as reluctant as him to quit the case. Alan had huge respect for his old friend: after all, last year he had stood by him through a long and difficult case. So did Lane know something he didn’t? And what about his new job in Fenland? He wouldn’t reveal anything about it to Alan, yet he seemed to have time to hang around Fursey. Surely that wasn’t on a whim? DCI Lane didn’t act on mere whims. So what was going on? Where was the truth?

  Another door opened and shut below him, but this was at the foot of the backstairs into the kitchen from Grahame and Liz’s bedroom. The house had tipped over in the late 19th century and although more-or-less stable now, those backstairs were still dreadfully steep and uneven. Alan was convinced that sooner or later there’d be a nasty accident. He could hear the sound of his brother’s wife emptying the dishwasher and stacking things in the appropriate places (which he always managed to get wrong when he did that job). Alan liked Liz. In the family she had the reputation of being a bit distant, of not engaging, but Alan had always respected her private nature.

  When Alan emerged into the kitchen, she smiled, brought two mugs over to the table and sat down beside him.

  ‘So, Alan, what’s happening with you these days? We never seem to get the chance to chat. You’re either out with ­Grahame on the land or stuck up there in your room surrounded by a pile of notes, plans and maps.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Liz, I know my room’s a bit of a tip, but you’ll be glad to learn that I’ve just finished writing up two old sites. So that’ll let me clear loads of stuff.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Alan, stop behaving like a naughty schoolboy!’ She was laughing, despite her exasperation. ‘I’m not worried about your room. That’s your affair. No, I’m more concerned with you, with your life; you’ve been deeply hurt by Stan’s death.’ She reached across the table and laid a hand on his arm.

  Alan knew the sort of things she meant him to talk about, but he’d never been much good at discussing his own problems. So he took the easy way out and mentioned his writing up jobs, his desk work. ‘As it happens, I’ve been asked to pull together all Stan’s papers.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not exactly full-time work, is it?’ she cut in. ‘I mean, seriously, do you have anything else in mind?’

  ‘Why?’ Alan was smiling. ‘Do you plan to double the rent?’

  This was a long-standing joke between them. He’d agreed with his brother, after their father’s death 20 years before, that he should treat Cruden’s Farm as his second home. And for his part, he liked working on the farm, and helped ­Grahame wherever and whenever he could. His conscience was clear.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Alan, I’m being serious.’

  Maybe this would be a good opportunity to get an objective opinion about Fursey. Liz was no fool and he knew Grahame relied on her heavily. Theirs was very much a partnership of equals.

  ‘OK,’ he said with slight trepidation. ‘But it might take some time.’

  She smiled, rose to her feet and put a tin of home-made biscuits on the table between them.

  ‘Fire away.’

  Alan sketched-in how he had found himself involved with Fursey: his two visits the previous year, then Stan’s death and Lane’s phone call to him that night.

  ‘Do you normally find yourself so heavily involved with another person’s project in this way?’

  ‘How d’you mean, “normally”?’

  ‘It just seems rather strange that you should have been very heavily involved at those two places you’ve just finished writing up.’

  ‘Guthlic’s and Impingham,’ Alan added.

  ‘Yes. And with the added complications that Richard helped you sort out.’

  ‘Or not.’ Alan still felt bad about his role in what came to be known as the Flax Hole Case.

  ‘No, don’t give me that, Alan. You two saw that justice was done. That’s what matters. But yet you still found time to wander down Ely way. I’d have thought you’d have had other things on your mind?’

  ‘Not really. My first visit was at the end of July and life had been very stressful.’ Alan thought for a moment, then continued more slowly. ‘If you must know, I desperately wanted to get back to normal. I didn’t like my situation; I’d lost control of the events in my life. Seeing Stan and talking about work helped.’

  ‘Yes?’ Liz was listening closely.

  ‘It was simple. I needed, quite literally, to get grounded.’

  ‘But was it just a return to some sort of normality, or was there something deeper, too?’

  ‘Since you ask, Liz, yes, there was something else.’ He took a final
sip from his now tepid tea. ‘Most of the sites I’d been working on had been relatively shallow. In other words, the archaeology lay quite close to the ground surface, but over the years I’ve been lucky enough to work on one or two where the old land surface dipped below the plough-soil.’

  ‘Sorry, Alan, what exactly do you mean by “old land surface”?’ It was a question he’d often been asked by students and diggers.

  ‘The old land surface, or OLS, is the ground on which people walked about at various times in the past. Now on most sites the OLS is also the ground on which we move today. In other words, it’s directly below our feet, but mixed up within the topsoil by millennia of burrowing moles, earthworms and the like. Which is why if you take a walk across most fields in Britain after they’ve been ploughed, you’ll discover pieces of Roman pottery, alongside Bronze Age flints or indeed fragments of Victorian clay tobacco pipes.’

  ‘But whenever we’ve visited any of your sites, everything seems to be nice and distinctive. You point at Bronze Age post holes or Roman walls. How come?’

  ‘That’s because we’ve removed the topsoil and with it the OLS. So what we reveal below it is only a small part of the story. It would be like trying to establish how you and Grahame lived your lives here, but only once we’d bulldozed the house and garden down to foundation level. So we’d find a few drain pipes, Scruffy’s remains and Grahame’s carp pond liner. Not much to go on, you must admit.’

  ‘So all the really informative stuff is in the OLS?’