A Room Full of Bones (23 page)

‘Nice sort of nanny,’ says Clough.

Randolph laughs again. ‘She sounds a nutcase, doesn’t she, but my dad adored her. Paid her a pension until the day she died. Anyway, because of this snake phobia, I decided not to tell him. But a few days later, he told me that he’d got up at night because of a noise in the yard and he’d found a dead snake on the kitchen step.’

‘Did he have any idea who might have put it there?’

‘He said he didn’t but the night he died, when he was delirious, he kept going on about a snake. I mean, it can’t be coincidence, can it?’

Can it? Judy wonders. She remembers Nelson mentioning some letters. Didn’t they say something about a Great Snake? She asks Randolph. He looks blank.

‘The old man used to get so much mail. Cranks asking for money, racing fans wanting tips. He didn’t say anything about any particular letters.’

‘What about when Neil Topham died? Did your father say anything about letters addressed to the museum?’

‘Letters to Neil? No, I don’t think so. DCI Nelson said that he didn’t think there was any link between the two deaths.’

If Judy knows anything about Nelson, she’s willing to bet that he didn’t make any such assertion. ‘Never assume,’ that’s his motto. She and Clough must have heard it a thousand times. They look at each other.

‘Thank you very much,’ says Judy, standing up. ‘We’ll investigate further and let you know.’

She means to sound bland and rather discouraging but Randolph seizes on her words as if they are a lifeline. ‘Oh, thank you so much. That means such a lot. I hope you won’t think I’m a loony but I really do think that something odd is going on. In the yard too. Something isn’t right. Tammy thinks I’m imagining things but Caroline agrees with me. Something just isn’t right.’

‘What does your mother think?’

‘I don’t want to worry Ma just now. She’s so cut up about Dad. All this stuff about snakes and mysterious dancing men, it would just upset her.’

They walk back through the house towards the front door. On the doorstep, Clough asks, ‘The snake that was nailed up over one of the horse’s stables. Which horse was it?’

Randolph looks surprised. ‘Oh, a fellow called The Necromancer. Good sort. Bit of a devil in his own way, though.’

This time they go back through the yard. Judy wants to show Len Harris that she can’t be intimidated so easily and perhaps she wants to scare Clough a little, taking him so close to the fearsome horses. The first yard seems quiet enough, stable lads are mucking out, trundling wheelbarrows about, but again they ignore Judy and Clough completely. A man in a leather apron is examining the hooves of a large grey horse.

‘Farrier,’ Judy says. Clough looks blank.

‘Blacksmith,’ she explains.

‘I wouldn’t want his job. That white horse is the size of an elephant.’

‘Grey,’ says Judy, pausing to pat the horse’s neck. ‘White horses are called grey. Unless they have pink eyes, that is.’

‘Don’t bother trying to educate me,’ says Clough, giving the grey a wide berth. ‘Let’s just get out of here.’

A ginger cat comes bustling up and rubs itself round Judy’s legs. This reminds her of something.

‘Do you think we should tell Ruth? About the boss?’

Clough thinks for a moment. ‘Maybe we should. It’d sound better coming from you.’

Thanks a lot, thinks Judy, though she agrees with him. After all, isn’t bad news her speciality?

They are passing through into the second yard when, suddenly, there is a terrible noise from one of the stables. A dreadful clattering and banging accompanied by the spine-chilling screams of an animal in pain. Judy runs towards the sound but her way is blocked by Len Harris.

‘No you don’t.’

‘What’s going on?’ demands Judy, slightly breathless.

‘One of the horses has cast himself. It often happens. Especially if they’ve been flown over recently.’

Judy tried to look past Harris into the stable. She gets a fleeting glimpse of a horse on the ground, an anguished rolling eye.

‘This happened before. When I was here a few days ago. I remember it.’

‘Like I say, it’s not unusual. Billy!’ He shouts to a passing stable boy. ‘Can you show these people out?’ And he turns and shuts himself in with the horse.

Judy hesitates. Harris was undeniably rude and her detective instincts tell her to stay and discover what’s going on. But Clough is already on his way out and, after all, the welfare of the horses is not her primary concern right now. Telling herself that she’ll call the RSPCA, ask them to pay a discreet visit, she follows Billy out through the main yard. He’s a thin lad, about sixteen, with spots and a pronounced squint.

‘What happened to the horse called Fancy?’ Judy asks. ‘I saw him when I was here last.’

Billy’s eyes shoot, alarmingly, in two opposite directions. ‘I’ve never heard that name.’

‘Fancy,’ repeats Judy. ‘Four-year-old colt. He had colic.’

Billy shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know all the horses. Here’s the main gate now. I’ve got to get back to work.’

In the car, accompanied by a pungent smell of dung, Clough explains why all the Smith family are clinically insane. ‘I mean Rudolph, Randolph, whatever he’s called. All that crap about strange men dancing in the woods. Loco, that’s what he is.’

‘I thought it was quite convincing,’ says Judy.

‘I’m surprised at you,’ says Clough. ‘Never thought you’d fall for all that Hugh Grant crap.
It’s just that some fairly odd things have been happening.’
He puts on an accent that’s halfway between Prince Charles and Julian Clary.

‘He doesn’t look like Hugh Grant,’ says Judy. ‘More like Robert Pattinson from the
Twilight
films.’

‘Never heard of ’em,’ says Clough.

‘They’re for young people,’ says Judy.

Clough grunts and continues with the attack. ‘What
about the incredible reappearing snake? Someone’s having a laugh here.’

Judy thinks of something Cathbad told her about a saint who was meant to appear in two places at once. That’s the thing about Cathbad; you never know what he’s going to say next. The opposite of Darren. Thinking of the missed family lunch, she sighs, feeling even guiltier than usual.

‘Seriously,’ Clough persists. ‘You don’t think there’s anything in all this voodoo nonsense?’

‘I don’t know what I think,’ says Judy. ‘But clearly someone was trying to frighten Lord Smith. The letters, the dead snakes. Someone had a grudge against him and now he’s dead. That’s worth investigating.’

‘It was a heart attack,’ says Clough. ‘The pathologist’s report said so.’

‘But what gave him the heart attack?’ says Judy. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

‘Have they gone?’

Randolph looks up. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

Romilly Smith sits opposite her son and smiles up at him. She is wearing jeans and an old jumper but still manages to look effortlessly elegant. Randolph, knowing that she has probably spent the night in some squalid bedsit discussing factory farming, can’t help feeling reluctant admiration.

‘They’ve gone,’ he says.

‘Was it Nelson? He was quite bright, I thought. Not your usual policeman.’

‘No, the woman. Judy something. And another man. Rather an oaf but good-looking, if you like that sort of thing.’

‘What were they doing here?’

Randolph hesitates. He hasn’t told his mother about the men in the wood. Not, as he told Judy, because it would upset her. On the contrary, she would be far too interested. She’d want to go and join them, especially if they were plotting trouble of any kind.

He shrugs. ‘Just routine enquiries.’

Romilly loses interest.

‘Is there any coffee?’ she says, yawning neatly, like a cat. ‘I’m exhausted.’ She sounds like a debutante complaining about flower-arranging fatigue.

‘I’ll make you some,’ says Randolph. ‘I didn’t want to offer any to the Old Bill.’

‘Old Bill,’ Romilly smiles. ‘How sweet.’

‘Why, what does your lot call them?’

‘The enemy.’

‘Really, Mum, you sound very childish sometimes.’ Randolph gets up and walks to the window. He can see a line of horses galloping up the hill, their manes and tails streaming out. That’s the way to spend a Sunday morning, riding like a demon with the wind in your face. Not stuck in an office having a ridiculous conversation with your loony-leftie mother.

‘What’s childish about animal rights?’ snaps Romilly. ‘They suffer because we’re too greedy and selfish to do anything about it. Universities use them for their ghastly experiments. This place,’ she gestures towards the window,
‘exploits them. Hundreds of horses die steeple-chasing every year but no one gives a damn because the bookies are making money.’

This place, thinks Randolph, gives you a socking great expense account, enough to finance any amount of designer direct action. He has been looking through his father’s accounts, but now’s not the time to mention that. He is thinking of something else his mother said.

‘The university,’ he says. ‘Are you planning something?’

Romilly smiles. ‘It’s better if you don’t know.’

‘Be careful, Mum.’

‘I’m always careful. Now make the coffee, there’s a good boy.’

Ruth has had a perfectly lovely Sunday. After a leisurely breakfast, she and Max and Kate (and Claudia) had gone for a walk on the Saltmarsh. Claudia had rushed through the grass, putting up flocks of snipe, plunging knee deep into murky pools, barking excitedly at the sky.

‘She likes it here,’ said Max.

Kate had been fairly excited too. When they reached the beach, she ran towards the sea with her arms outstretched. The tide was coming in and Kate had been delighted when a wave broke over her wellingtons. ‘Again! Again!’ she had shouted.

‘That’s the thing about the sea,’ said Max. ‘It does it again and again.’

‘The relentless tide,’ said Ruth, quoting Erik. ‘The unending ebb and flow.’

‘That too,’ grinned Max, throwing a stick for Claudia.

On the way back, Kate had been tired so Max had carried her on his shoulders. A very male way to carry a child, thought Ruth. She never does it that way, preferring to hoist Kate onto her hip, but Cathbad always does. She is
sure that Nelson carried his eldest daughters like this when they were young but he has never had the chance with Kate. But she wasn’t going to think about Nelson …

They drove to the Phoenix for lunch. The Phoenix is the pub near Max’s Swaffham dig, the scene of much drinking and carousing that summer, two years ago. Max insists on going to see the site, striding up the steep hill with Kate riding like a Queen. That’s the only problem with Max, Ruth remembered. He loves walking up hills. Nelson is a strider too, always in a hurry, never looking behind to check that she is following. But she wasn’t going to think about Nelson.

To the untutored eye there is little evidence of a Roman settlement in the grey undulating landscape, but Max was looking at a bustling garrison town with Italianate villas, a market place and a road leading directly to the sea. Ruth, arriving breathlessly at the top of the hill, saw it too. She also saw children’s bodies buried under walls, a skull in a well, the Goddess Hecate with her two spectral hounds. The Goddess of the crossroads. Luckily Claudia, distinctly unghostlike, provided a distraction by chasing a rabbit.

‘Claudia!’ shouted Max.

‘Perfectly trained,’ observed Ruth as Claudia, taking absolutely no notice of her master, disappeared over the horizon.

‘I’ve been taking her to obedience classes,’ said Max ruefully. ‘We got a medal for trying hard.’

Kate laughed, tugging Max’s hair.

Claudia arrived back in time for the descent to the
Phoenix. Ruth and Max ate roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and even Kate managed three roast potatoes. After lunch, in the late afternoon, they stood outside the pub, Ruth holding Kate, Max with a struggling Claudia on the lead.

‘When will I see you again?’ asked Max. ‘What about next weekend?’

Ruth had been delighted that Max wanted to see her again, that he was making all the running, but, all the same, next weekend seemed a little too soon. ‘I think my parents are coming,’ she extemporised. ‘Maybe the weekend after?’

‘Sounds good,’ Max had said, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. ‘Keep in touch.’

And now, driving back through the twilight, Ruth feels free to enjoy the thought that she actually seems to be in a relationship with Max. A proper grown-up relationship with a proper grown-up man who isn’t married to someone else. A weekend relationship suits her perfectly. She likes having her house to herself all week, not having to cook for another person or wear her chillier, more glamorous, nightwear. But it would be lovely to have someone to see at weekends, to go to plays or to the cinema, to walk with on the beach, to sit and watch
Antiques Roadshow
with on a Sunday evening. And to have sex with, of course.

It’s nearly dark when she reaches the Saltmarsh. The clocks went back last week and now, at four-thirty, it’s almost night. She has been chatting to Kate all through the journey, trying to keep her awake, and her efforts
have been rewarded. Kate, though definitely sleepy, is still bright-eyed, exclaiming happily whenever Ruth starts a new verse of
The Wheels on the Bus
. What a sexist song, thinks Ruth, why do the mothers do nothing but chatter and the fathers nothing but nod? Kate won’t be able to accuse her mother of chattering – sleeping with strange men perhaps but not chattering. Ruth stops outside the cottage. Bob’s car isn’t there. It’s strange how quickly she has got used to having neighbours. Now she feels slightly nervous at being here on her own, on the edge of the world. Ridiculous, she tells herself, you were alone for nearly two years and nothing happened to you. But the wind is howling in from the sea and Ruth clutches Kate tightly as she gets her out of the car. You’re getting soft, she tells herself.

Kate screams, a cry of real terror. Ruth reels round and sees a monster lurching towards her through the darkness. A hideous misshapen figure, ink black, with a giant head, like a goblin or a minotaur. Ruth shields Kate with her body, unable to move further. The creature looms nearer and nearer. Where’s her phone? She has to ring Nelson. Oh God, it’s still in the car. She and Kate are going to be murdered and no one will hear them scream. Nelson will investigate and then, perhaps, he’ll be sorry for abandoning them. Her parents will pray for her soul. Cathbad will light a bonfire in her honour. The figure is getting nearer, making hideous squelching sounds. It has come from the sea, it’s one of Erik’s malevolent water spirits, come to put its slimy fingers round her throat and drag her back into the depths.