by Jane Adams
Rozlyn could not help but wonder at the strangeness of a doctor making house calls in this day and age and at this time of night and she wondered if that was a favour to Ethan — she vaguely recalled that he had said this man was a good friend — or if she’d be presented with the bill later.
Brook had left the main light on and the only way to switch it off was to cross the room. Slowly, head throbbing like it had the shop bell inside of it, Rozlyn sat up in bed and swung her legs over the side. Something bothered her. She lifted the fingers of her right hand to her face and looked closely at them. Mud caked beneath the fingernails and smeared across the palm. She remembered falling . . . reaching out, her hand breaking the fall and sliding in the mud.
Her coat hung on the back of the door, but her clothes . . . she was sure that Ethan had hung her shirt and trousers on a hanger and suspended that on the wardrobe door. Cassie had lent her a nightshirt and she wore that now, no sign of mud on that at least.
Rozlyn stumbled across the room and fumbled in the pocket of her leather coat. The spear. God, she still had the spear. Brook would go spare.
Then in the other pocket. She had a terrible premonition of what she would find even before her fingers touched that cold surface. She was sitting on the bed with the disk of bright metal resting in her palm when Ethan returned.
“Ah,” said Ethan. “So, that’s what you found.”
“You knew?”
“Not exactly. I went out for a while so I missed you leaving. Clever of you to find your car; you were hardly fit to pay attention when I told you where I’d parked it. Cassie took your clothes to be washed, by the way. They were soaked through and caked with mud. Red mud. I guess from Mark Richards’ land.”
“I thought I dreamed all that.”
Ethan smiled. “Apparently not. What your boss said about a man being with you . . . ?”
“No. No one. I mean who?” she broke off, recalling the image of the red-haired sword-wielding man who had run beside her. “I dreamed of someone,” she said. “And maybe I hit out with my torch, injured someone.”
“My torch,” Ethan said.
“Your torch? I took your torch?”
“We had a major power outage last winter. Cassandra does not like the dark. Since then we’ve kept torches in the bedrooms and on the landing.”
“Oh.” Rozlyn didn’t know what to make of it all. She looked more closely at the brooch. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
“It is. Do you know how you found it?”
She shook her head and then said, “in my dream, which turns out not to have been a dream, I was trying to think how Charlie would have thought.”
“You think your friend stole this from Mark Richards?”
“I don’t know. I mean . . . Look, we know there have been a series of thefts and that our Art and Antiques division think Donovan Baker was responsible. I found out earlier this evening that Mark Richards and Donovan Baker know one another. And I found evidence that Charlie had been there.”
Ethan looked unsurprised. “Baker and Richards move in the same circles,” he said. “Both are collectors and they belong, or should I say belonged, to the same organisations. Donovan has not been as prominent of late, not since his little problems.”
“Well, Charlie told Mouse that he knew something about stolen antiquities, that this Donovan was involved. Charlie had, I suspect, also figured out what game this Thomas Thompson was playing and had almost certainly worked out that Thomas Thompson and Richards were one and the same person. I figure he went to Richards’ place, confronted him, maybe. Stole the brooch but for whatever reason hid it in the chantry.”
“Well, you have it now,” Ethan said quietly. “Get some sleep. You’ve got to conserve your strength for seeing your boss tomorrow.”
Down to earth with a crash, Rozlyn thought. “Yes, that is going to be fun,” she said.
CHAPTER 40
Rozlyn woke mid-afternoon the following day. She felt better, oddly refreshed and clear headed. She showered and then, dressed in the now clean clothes, went downstairs taking the brooch with her.
Ethan had heard her moving about and made tea. He smiled warmly as Rozlyn entered the room and indicated a chair beside the fire. Cassie was curled up on the other side, reading Alice Through the Looking Glass, her pretty face creased by a frown as she concentrated. She glanced up at Rozlyn, grinned at her, then went back to her book.
“I should say thanks,” Rozlyn told Ethan. “I’m embarrassed. I turn up here at some ungodly hour and you take me in and then I bring trouble to your door. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Ethan handed her a mug of tea. It was hot and strong and slightly sweet when Rozlyn sipped at it. It tasted like nectar.
“You’re looking better,” Ethan told her, “and as for looking after you, what else should I do? Anyway, my belief is that these things happen for a reason. Part of the interconnectedness of life. For you to come walking through my door was not without its purpose.”
“The Web of Wyrd,” Rozlyn laughed. “You read to me about that. No one’s read to me since I was a little kid.”
“Ah, well I thought it might be appropriate under the circumstances,” Ethan said.
Cassie looked up, bright blue eyes gleaming with interest. “Did you read Kendryk’s letters to her?”
Ethan nodded. “Some of them. Would you get them for me please, Cassie? I left them in my room, on the dresser.”
Cassie leapt to her feet and trotted off up the stairs. Rozlyn watched her, wondering and saddened at this woman with the body language of a child. “Who’s Kendryk?” she asked. “And,” taking the brooch from her pocket, “what the hell is this?”
Ethan picked it up and weighed the object thoughtfully in his hand. “In nineteen twenty-two my father was staying at what is now Mark Richards’ place. It was then called Albermy and belonged to a man called . . .”
“Frederick Greer. A banker of some sort. I read the book you published. Donovan Baker wrote the foreword.”
“Oh. You found that, did you?” Ethan nodded thoughtfully. “In those days we were still . . . we’ll I’d never have said we were friends, but we rubbed along well enough. Both experts in the same field, though I was already retired of course but it was inevitable we should work together from time to time, I suppose. Anyway, the quickest way to give you the story, is if you let me tell it from the start.”
Cassie returned, carrying a polished wooden box. Ethan took it from her and sat it, closed, on the floor at his feet.
“In nineteen twenty-two, my parents were house guests and, if you read the book, you’ll know that a so-called excavation took place one Sunday afternoon in the middle of July.”
“A treasure hunt, Donovan called it.”
“And a treasure hunt it was. Imagine it, ladies in their silks and gentlemen in waistcoats and shirt sleeves wielding shovels and spades borrowed from the outdoor staff, digging away there in the ruins. There was more of it then, the chantry I mean. A wall fell not long after and another section was removed as a precaution. The stone went into building a rockery in the 1950s, when that sort of thing became something of a fad and I’ve no doubt close inspection of the rest of the estate would reveal pillars and cornices recycled as birdbath stands or some such.”
“I didn’t think they found anything?” Rozlyn said.
Ethan smiled. “My father was an amateur historian. He was also interested in what was then the developing science of archaeology. Techniques were still primitive, by today’s standards, but some albeit patchy methodology was starting to be applied and my father was an avid reader about such stuff. It was his influence, I suppose, that led me to where I am now. His and my mother’s rather unusual skills.”
“Unusual?”
Ethan hesitated, but Cassie giggled. “She could see things like Ethan does,” she said. “Ethan says you can too, but you don’t like to do it yet.”
“See things? You mean she was psychic or something?”
Rozlyn’s laugh was derisive. “I’m sorry, Ethan, but I don’t do with that sort of stuff. It’s about as real as Alice in that book Cassie’s reading.”
“And yet, when you took the spearhead from me, you saw,” Ethan said softly.
“I saw nothing. I just . . . imagined it because of the stuff we’d been talking about, that’s all.”
“And Treven?”
“Treven?”
“You talked about him in your sleep. That’s when I knew you should be told about all of this,” he indicated the box and the brooch.
“All of what? Look, I’ve got one man dead and another beaten so badly he lost an eye. I’ve got a racket bringing illegal workers into the country and a bloody psycho who, though he might well be an educated man, is little more than a thug, as far as I can see. If you have anything to help me with that, then Ethan, I’ll listen gratefully enough. But I don’t have time to sit here and let you ramble. You’ve been great and I don’t mean to be rude, but I think it’s time I went.”
Ethan let her finish and when Rozlyn stood, he did not move. Instead he sat regarding her thoughtfully with his hands steepled beneath his chin. “You can spare me an hour, no more.” He said. “Call it a return for hospitality. Then I’ll drive you over for your appointment with Brook.”
“I don’t need that. I’ve got my own car.”
“Which is missing a rear screen and has a bullet hole in the front dash.”
“What?” Rozlyn sat down, the strength suddenly going from her legs. “He shot at me, didn’t he? Christ.” She wiped her hands across her face as though to clear the cobwebs from her thoughts. So much had happened over the last two or three days that they had taken on a dreamlike quality. She was no longer certain she could sort clearly what had actually happened from what she had only imagined. She reached across and took the brooch from the little table where Ethan had placed it.
He poured more tea into her mug. This time, he added milk but no sugar. “Cassie, darling — could you bring those sandwiches through and I think we might have some cake? Can you manage?”
“Sure. You like cherry cake, Rozlyn?”
She nodded, wondering if they had gone mad or if it was just her. So many threads but she still wasn’t certain how any of them tied up.
“So,” Ethan continued. “Nineteen twenty-two.”
Rozlyn stared, then came to a decision. She reached for her tea and sat back in the leather chair. “Ok,” she agreed. “An hour, then you drive me to town and I see Brook and tell him . . .” She paused and took another deep breath. “Whatever there is to tell.”
“Some of it he knows already,” Ethan informed her. “I thought it best to mention the car. I told him I’d moved it for you and that you’d been rambling about shots being fired. Of course,” he continued airily, “I’m not au fait with such incidents and assumed it was the fever talking.”
“Oh sure. Not au fait. Right.”
“He came back this morning to take a look. They removed the car about an hour ago but there’ve been people in white overalls crawling over it most of the day. They recovered the bullet, I believe. Brook wasn’t impressed by the idea that Mr Richards might have armed men on his property, even if they did happen to be shooting at trespassers. I think it offended him even more that the trespasser in question was one of Brook’s own.”
“One of Brook’s . . . Don’t make me laugh.”
“Oh, I think he takes this very seriously. I think he takes you very seriously. I told him I’d bring you back to town when you woke.”
“Happy with that, was he?”
“He didn’t have a choice. Ah, thank you, Cassie. Rozlyn, would you move the tea tray? I’ll go and make some more, I think.”
He left Cassie fussing over Rozlyn’s choice of sandwich and disappeared into the kitchen. Rozlyn suspected Ethan was enjoying her impatience.
“Now, where was I?” Ethan asked as he returned.
“Nineteen twenty-two,” Rozlyn muttered darkly.
“Ah, yes. You know that there had been rumours about a treasure hidden in the chantry ruins.”
“Oh sure. I hear it has a ghost too.”
“I imagine it has several. Anyway, the digging didn’t last very long. They found a few trinkets and the odd coin, but nothing of any age or worth and so, once boredom set in, off they went, satisfied at having got their hands dirty and carried out more manual labour than ever before in their spoiled little lives. But my parents went back. My mother had felt something, you see. She sensed that there was something to be found. Oh, if you don’t like that explanation you can settle for the one that says my father knew enough to suspect that the legend was not without foundation. These things rarely are. So they hung around after the others had gone and, beneath the altar stone, buried in a lead casket still sealed with wax, they found these.”
He lifted the box from the floor and set it on his lap. Opening it, he removed what Rozlyn thought at first were smaller wooden boxes. As Ethan handed her the first, it dawned that this was a book, the pages thick and oddly textured between wooden covers carved with twining leaves and words she could not read.
Letters chased across the pages, crammed together so that there was little break to define them. The lines ruled by the scribe were still visible and the ink remained black and bold. The writing had been formed in a rounded almost childish hand and the whole was written as though right justified on a modern printer, the margins equal all around. Looking at it, Rozlyn could almost make out words. Trying to shape them, to discern where one ended and a second began, she felt a soft jolt of recognition in the pit of her stomach and a shiver that began at the base of her spine and raised hairs on her neck and arms, but she could not immediately place the source of that recognition.
“How old is this?”
“As old, almost, as the brooch. A little younger than the spear.”
Rozlyn stared, disbelieving. “It must be worth a fortune? Are you sure it’s genuine?”
“Oh, yes, as genuine as it was the day my father stole it from the chantry.”
“Stole it? I don’t quite understand.”
“What is there to understand? He found it and he took it. They replaced the altar stone and disguised what they had done by rubbing the scuffed stone with moss and mud.”
Rozlyn shook her head. “I’ve seen that thing. It’s lying toppled on the ground and I’ll bet it weighs a quarter ton if it weighs a pound. One man, even a man and a woman together, couldn’t move it.”
“No, I don’t believe they did. My father told me he paid a couple of the gardeners to help. You’ve got to remember, Rozlyn, even between the wars a house like that would have retained most of the staff it had from when Victoria was queen, so there was help to be had. You’ve also got to remember that pay was poor and that the demarcation lines were still fully drawn between the indoor and the outdoor staff. In an establishment like Albermy, the outdoor labourers were the lowest of the low. For a few shillings, they’d have kept quiet, at least for a time and, besides, who would have believed them? My father was a respected man. A fine surgeon and a pillar of the community . . . he was, in this case, also a thief.”
“But why? What was he, a treasure hunter? He must have been pretty pissed off to find the box contained a couple of books and not the fabled chantry treasure.” Even as she said it, she knew that was a stupid statement. These books must be so rare as to be worth more than any gold to a man like Ethan and, probably, to a man like Ethan’s father. “How come they’ve survived so well?” she wondered, turning the precious object in her hands and stroking the heavy cover.
“The pages are vellum. Prepared animal skin. Hence the wooden covers. It has a tendency to curl if it’s not weighted down. And they were buried with the intent that they should be preserved, inside a sealed reliquary alongside fragments of bone. The bone served to absorb moisture and the casket was lined with lead and sealed with pitch and wax. Even so there is a touch of the miraculous in their survival. My fathe
r was, of course, certain that these would not be the only things concealed beneath the altar. But he never had the opportunity to search again. Albermy was sold the following year and it’s been through many changes since.
“In the second war it was taken over as a convalescent home. After that, a school for orphaned children. It went to rack and ruin through lack of money and everyone lost interest in the pile of stones and broken walls that stood in the grounds. I expect children climbed the walls and jumped off the altar stone. I imagine it must have made a wonderful playground. I saw Albermy just before it was sold to Richards. The stucco falling from the stonework let the damp through. The panelling was rotting on the walls and the place stank of mildew and neglect.
“As for the chantry, I could barely reach it. Brambles and birch had invaded and the place run wild. The altar stone itself was invisible behind a stand of nettles higher than my shoulder. I blistered my hands trying to tear them down. Then Mark Richards bought the place and began the restoration. And to give him credit, he’s brought the old house back to life.”
“And the Donovan Baker excavation? Were you there?”
Ethan was silent as he poured fresh tea. “At first,” he said. “Please, eat, you need to build strength. Mark Richards knew nothing of the legends until Donovan and I approached him. Donovan had done the initial research, as he mentions in the book — incidentally, the version you must have is the updated one, published after the second excavation. There was still a demand for it and I allowed the revised version to be printed, though I had little to do with the actual production by then.
“Anyway, Donovan was certain, as was I, that the foundations were earlier than the walls. I’d found an obscure reference to the building of a chantry by the Abbott Kendryk, of Storton Abbey. We’ve lost the location of Storton, but the chantry . . . Donovan and I believed that this could be the window we searched for, having a view directly onto those past clues to the mother Abbey, perhaps. And, of course, for me there was the incentive of my father’s story. Beyond that stupid little treasure hunt back in the twenties, we knew it to be a virgin site. On private land so long that no one had ever touched it. No ploughing, no disturbance to speak of. It was a wonderful opportunity.”