An Unhallowed Grave (32 page)

"So now who do you think killed Peter?"

"I didn't think about it again until a few years ago ... not long after I'd discussed it with my father. I was at Philip and Caroline's when one of their children was a baby. We were in the garden of his London house and Caroline threw the baby up into the air and caught it. Just a game ... the baby was laughing, enjoying it. Philip shouted at her to stop. He went quite ... well, the colour drained out of his face. I thought about it for a few days after... it had been so unlike him to react like that. Then I remembered how he used to play that game with Peter; throwing him up in the air. I remember our housekeeper telling him off about it. I got hold of the transcripts of Pauline's trial and ... I noticed there were inconsistencies. The statements implied that Philip went home to get his binoculars but I know for a fact he had them at our house."

"Go on," Wesley encouraged.

"I had an uneasy feeling I wouldn't even describe it as a suspicion but I told myself I must be wrong. And I had no proof ... no proof whatsoever. Of course, I never mentioned it to Philip. We were close friends and he'd been very good to me ... extremely good. He'd helped my career, got me the right contacts. I owed him a lot... and I was probably wrong. I tried to put it out of my mind ... until now."

"Did he ever mention Pauline to you?"

"No... never."

"A witness saw you walking through the grounds of the Manor with Lee Telford last Saturday night."

"Then they're lying. I didn't even know Lee Telford ... I'd never even heard of him and I certainly wouldn't have recognised him. I was with my family all Saturday night. That's the truth. Whoever told you otherwise is lying."

Heffernan changed the line of questioning. "Did you call on Pauline on the night she died?"

"Yes. I saw her just before I went over to Bloxham. I felt I should talk to her. She'd called on my wife as you said. When I saw her she was very calm ... very civilised. But as we talked she became more and more agitated and I realised that she thought I'd killed Peter. She'd had a lot of time to think about it in prison, she said, and she knew I'd been upset that day. She said she blamed herself for leaving me alone ... and not looking after Peter while she ..." He hesitated. "She'd heard I was standing for Parliament and she threatened to make the whole thing public if I didn't help her clear her name. She said there were journalists who'd be only too happy to take up her case. I swore I'd had nothing to do with Peter's death." He hesitated. "I hadn't intended to tell her about Philip ... but when she started talking about journalists it just, er ... came out."

"So what exactly did you tell her, Mr. Wills?" Wesley had the feeling that he knew what the answer would be.

Philip Thewlis allowed Gemma to go first down the path which led to Knot Creek. He had never allowed anybody to stand in his way. Even as a child he had known how to manipulate, how to avoid trouble ... how to engineer the truth.

Tim could be a liability ... Philip had always wondered how much he knew about that day when his baby brother died. The day when Philip had left him alone to fetch his new binoculars from the Wills's house ... always careful to call it 'the house' in any statements so that he couldn't be accused of lying but so it would be assumed that he meant his own house near by. He had run to the house, found his binoculars and, on the way back to join Tim, he had passed the rose garden. He had paused when he heard the sounds. The twelve-year-old boy had watched for a few seconds,

fascinated as Tim's father writhed on top of the young nanny, emitting groans of what sounded like pain but which he now knew to be pleasure. Then, fearful of being discovered, he had run into the trees near the house, where he had found the baby awake and gurgling unguarded.

He knew little Peter's favourite game ... being thrown high up in the air until he laughed with pleasure. It had started well; the child giggled with delight as Philip threw him higher and higher. Then came the awful, heart-stopping moment when he failed to catch him. The baby hit his head on the tree and went limp and pale. Philip had kept calm. He had run back through the trees, his heart pounding, almost on the point of vomiting when he thought about what he had done. But if he was careful, if he gave nothing away, nobody need ever know.

When Pauline Quillon had called on him so unexpectedly that Friday night all those years later, he knew Tim had said too much. But Tim was no real danger: nobody who wants to make it in the political world can risk being associated in the public mind with a scandal involving the death of a child. Besides, now that Pauline was dead, there was nobody who could prove anything against him. If he said that it was Tim who ran off towards the house that day thirty years ago, it would be Tim's word against his. And Tim owed him so much ... he had always made sure of that.

He caught up with Gemma and they strolled along, side by side, to the creek. It would be best if it looked like an accident.

Neil Watson sat at the desk in the site hut in front of a flickering computer. The time had come to backfill the pit where the Jesse tree carvings had been found. He had left his colleagues to it and had taken refuge in the hut to finish recording the finds.

But his mind kept straying back to Alice de Neston, whose poor bleached skeleton now lay in Tradmouth mortuary, and the anguished confession of Simon de Stoke. The writing on the reverse of the sketch in the church had been no help: just a name, written over and over again. John Fleecer. As if the writer had been doodling playing with the sound of the name. Neil had recognised it from the court records: the blacksmith's son who had become, in modern-day parlance, a young offender a nasty bit of work in his own or any other century.

Two large volumes lay on the shelf above the desk. He had brought the accounts book back to the site, intending to return it to the muniment room: the court roll translation he would hang on to a little longer as he had only reached the trial and execution of Alice de Neston.

Intrigued to know what had become of the village delinquent, Neil lifted the court records from the shelf, put his feet up and made himself comfortable. The recording of the finds could wait half an hour.

He flicked through the leather-bound volume, seeking references to John Fleecer but he found nothing. Fleecer had either died, left the village for good or gone straight.

Neil turned the pages, year after year of petty wrongdoings and neighbourly squabbles passed through his fingers in seconds. When he reached 1494 two years after the Jesse Tree had been carved he saw it. "John Fleecer is returned to the village and my lord orders the constable to keep him close confined."

So the village bad boy had returned from his travels only to be banged up on the orders of the new lord of the manor, Simon de Stoke. Neil read on.

"John Fleecer, having returned to Stokeworthy, is brought before my lord and the jury to answer for his wrongdoings many years past in the time of my lord's late father. My lord states that as a child he did see John Fleecer enter the chamber of my lady, his mother, and feloniously take a jewel belonging to my lady, his mother. He did also slay my lady's babe by stopping the infant's cries with most grievous force and did make terrible threats to my lord, then a young and innocent child, that if he did betray him he would return and kill him. My lord, in fear, stayed silent and the nursemaid, Alice de Neston, was hanged for the crime. The jury state that John Fleecer is to stand trial for this dreadful offence at the assizes in Exeter and should stay close imprisoned until that time."

So that was it. John Fleecer had killed the child: Simon had kept his mouth shut at the time, probably through fear, and Fleecer had disappeared from the scene probably up to no good somewhere else. But years later Simon found himself in a position of power and could ensure that justice was finally done when Fleecer returned to his home village. But he hadn't lived easily with the knowledge that Alice had died because of his silence. He had been haunted by guilt for the rest of his days, had blamed himself; had commissioned the Jesse tree and had ended his days in pilgrimage.

Betting wasn't one of Neil's vices, but if it had been, he would have laid money that the repeated writing of Reccer's name on the reverse of the Jesse tree sketch had been done by Simon, obsessed by his guilt, doodling the name at the forefront of his mind. Neil picked up the phone and dialled the number of Wesley's mobile.

Wesley answered almost immediately and announced that he was on his way to the Manor and couldn't talk long. Neil quickly gave him the outline of his discovery about John Fleecer. Wesley said nothing but Neil could sense the workings of his brain.

"Thanks," Wesley said at last. "Is Thewlis in, do you know?"

"I've not seen him leave." Before Neil could continue he heard a commotion some way off. The noise seemed to come from the trees, then it surrounded the site rhythmical, swaying, growing louder as more of the protesters joined in. "Sorry, Wcs, I'm finding it hard to hear you. Our eco-warriors here seem to be up to something." He put a dirty finger in his ear. The noise was growing as Squirrel and his colleagues chanted and drummed. "I'll ring you later. Okay?"

Neil pushed the court rolls to one side and rushed out of the hut. "What the hell's going on?" he asked Matt, who shook his head and leaned on his spade.

Jane came running up. She had been at the medieval-village end of the dig and knew more. "They've decided it's time to take the protest to Thewlis," she announced, breathless. "They're staging a peaceful vigil round the Manor."

"Come on, then," said Neil. "I reckon we can leave the students to it for half an hour ... see the fun."

Wesley and Heffernan found Caroline Thewlis comforting a pair of whinging children, looking more than a little annoyed. "I don't know where she's got to ... and Philip said he'd be working here all day ..."

"You mean Gemma's not here?"

She shook her head, tight-lipped with annoyance.

"You can't get the staff these days," said Gerry Heffernan, tongue in cheek. "Where's your husband?"

For the first time Caroline Thewlis looked apprehensive. "I don't know. Why?"

The two policemen didn't answer.

"I think we should head for the creek," said Wesley, quietly, when they were out of earshot.

"Is that your considered opinion, Sergeant?" Wesley nodded. "What's that awful noise?"

"Sounds like ... drums. And voices. It seems to be getting nearer."

It would be easy. Gemma was off guard, relaxed. Philip Thewlis was good at charm, putting people at their ease. Pauline Quillon had been relaxed before he had strangled her, convinced by his stories of Tim Wills's guilt. He had walked with her down the drive, done her the courtesy of seeing her off the premises. He had offered to go with her as far as the churchyard and she had been pathetically grateful. Then he had struck.

He had had to act quickly before she had a chance to think his arguments through. It would only be a matter of time before she realised the truth, spoke with Tim again and pronounced his secret to the world; a world so ready to bring down the successful like jackals attacking a weakened lion. He had fought and clawed his way to the top of the tree; exchanged a Dorset village council house for Stokeworthy Manor; had become not just another avaricious businessman but a public figure ... one of the country's great and good. He wouldn't be brought down by one mistake; a moment of carelessness so many years ago.

He had remembered the court records in the library which he had read with considerable interest when he had moved into the Manor, become Lord of Stokeworthy ... quite an achievement for the son of the Wills's odd-job man the child condescendingly allowed to play with the family's son, Tim ... as long as he knew his place and kept to it.

He had found the rope and a ladder in the churchyard and it had seemed like an amusing touch ... the hanging. He had assumed the local police would take it for suicide. But, it seemed, he had underestimated them.

He hadn't realised that he had been seen until he had noticed that stupid youth urinating behind a gravestone near by. He had been vacant, unaware ... drugged up, most likely, but one couldn't take risks. He had followed him, and when his friend had gone into the Ring o' Bells he had persuaded him to take a walk, to talk ... to have a drink at the Manor. He had led him to the creek and pointed out his boat, the Pride of de Stoke. When the boy was off his guard he picked up an oar and knocked him off balance, then held him beneath the water. It had been high tide ... easy to dispose of Lee Telford's scrawny body.

Now Gemma was there, strolling in front of him, so trusting. But she knew that it wasn't Tim Wills who'd been walking through the grounds with Lee Telford that Saturday night. She had been watching from the window, watching for Tim, and had recognised her employer. It was only self-interest and fury at Tim's rejection that had made her lie to the police. One day she might choose to tell the truth ... and Philip Thewlis was not prepared to risk everything he had the wealth, the reputation, the power, the respect on the whim of some silly girl, employed to look after his children.

It was high tide. He knew. He wasn't a man who left things to chance. They reached the end of the path. Where there had been an expanse of muddy sand at low tide, there was now water, lapping up to the sandy, tree-lined bank. Philip took Gemma firmly by the shoulders and pulled her down until she knelt by the water. When the shock wore off she began to struggle, to scream. Philip clapped his hand over her mouth and pushed her head down towards the water. But her arms and legs were free, kicking, fighting him. He took his hand from her mouth and grabbed her hands, forcing her downwards. Lee had been drunk; Gemma was putting up more of a fight.

Her head hit the water while she continued to struggle. Philip held it there, avoiding her flailing limbs. Then he heard the drumming, distant at first but coming nearer, and for a moment his hold relaxed and Gemma's face shot out of the water.