The Frozen Shroud (13 page)

During the party, there had been a torrential storm. The grass was sodden, and they found themselves splashing through large puddles on the driveway. Lamps spaced at regular intervals illuminated the way as far as the Hall’s iron gates. Beyond, the lane leading to Martindale was unlit, but the moon was high, and the Knights had supplied everyone with torches.

There was something peculiarly British about a ghost hunt, Daniel reflected. In ancient times, had people believed this misty, twilit land was on the very edge of the world? The Roman legionnaires who strode along the road high above Martindale believed the country to be infested with spirits. But apparitions were untouchable, tantalising those who sought them out. However close they seemed, whatever form and shape they took, they remained forever out of reach.

Louise broke into his thoughts. ‘Think of that poor girl Gertrude. What in God’s name was she doing outside, the night she was murdered?’

‘One account suggests Letty lured her out. Sent a message arranging a tryst, pretending it came from Clifford. Caught her unawares, and bashed her face in.’

‘So was Letty strong enough to batter her to death despite her poor health?’

‘Her illness was mental, not physical. What’s more, Gertrude had a withered arm. If Letty took her by surprise, she couldn’t have managed much of a fight to save her life.’

‘The disability must have made it tough, working as a maid.’

‘Depends on her duties, doesn’t it? She had fair hair, blue eyes and a coy smile. All the reports of the case dwell
on how pretty she was. I doubt Hodgkinson recruited her just to clean the silver.’

‘And then it all went tits-up when Gertrude got pregnant?’

‘That’s one way of putting it. Question is – who was the father? The assumption seems to have been that it was Clifford, and Letty found out. Suppose the news of the pregnancy drove Roland Jones to fury.’

‘You think he killed Gertrude in a rage?’

‘Or maybe he was the father, and she wanted to get rid of the child … the permutations are endless. But it doesn’t look like Miriam Park will be much help.’

An owl hooted in the trees. It sounded despondent, as though contemplating human folly. Otherwise, everything was quiet. Daniel fixed his torch beam on the ground. He needed to watch his step. It would be easy to trip, and sprain an ankle, or worse.

‘Nothing could ever be proved anyway, not after all this time,’ Louise said.

‘A historian can’t ever afford to think like that.’

‘So are you going to see what you can find out about Roland Jones?’ He nodded. ‘And what about Shenagh Moss?’

‘Everyone here resists any suggestion that Craig Meek wasn’t responsible.’

‘Can you blame them? Raking over the ashes when the people concerned are dead and buried is one thing. Very different when everyone involved is still around. Nobody likes having their lives put under the microscope. All over again, years after the case was officially closed? Nightmare.’

A fresh gust coming in from the lake rippled the branches.
‘I’ll talk to Hannah about Shenagh, and see if she’s interested in looking into the evidence.’

‘Good plan.’ He didn’t need to look at his sister to picture the told-you-so smile.

‘Pity Robin Park was out of action. I wanted to say hello.’

‘What’s your ulterior motive?’

She knew him too well. ‘He may not have met Dorothy Hodgkinson or Roland Jones, but he might tell me more about her than I prised out of his mum.’

Raucous laughter tore through the silence. Terri Poynton’s hilarity was noisy and distinctive as she enjoyed one of her own jokes. Could Terri make a go of her relationship with Robin Park? Hannah, Daniel knew, despaired of her friend’s judgement of men, though after Marc’s betrayal of her, she was in no position to talk.

‘Is this the place?’

Louise clutched at her brother’s sleeve. They’d passed Miriam’s cottage, but Quin and Jeffrey had halted where the road crossed the lane running from one side of the promontory to the other. Hodgkinson planned this as the hub of the development. An empty house stood at one corner, and a shop-cum-post-office was to have been built on another, but all that remained were a few foundations, hidden from view by clumps of stinging nettles and a patch of gorse.

‘Gertrude’s body was lying under the trees, on the other side of the beck,’ Jeffrey panted. ‘No sign of her on the move tonight, alas! Not so much as the flicker of a shroud.’

Louise shone her torch around, as Terri and Miriam joined them. The beck ran roughly in parallel with the road
for a short distance, before veering off towards the lake. Two women had died near here. Daniel could hardly bear to picture their final moments. Had they recognised their assailants, had they realised they were about to die at the hands of someone they knew – perhaps someone they had once loved?

And was that someone necessarily the obvious suspect?

‘Woo! Woo!’ Terri was loving the occasion. Her eyes were glassy, her gait unsteady. ‘C’mon, Faceless Woman, let’s be having you! We haven’t got all night!’

Daniel visualised Jeffrey’s sketch map. ‘So Fell View is down there, on the other limb of Water Lane?’

‘Beyond the trees, that’s right,’ Jeffrey said. ‘Although Gertrude’s body was left close to the roadside, this is a pretty safe place to commit a murder. Not overlooked by any of the houses, and at this time of night, no danger of passing traffic.’

The Knights joined them, Melody trudging behind her husband. She looked weary and cold. The rain had swelled the beck and they could hear the rush of water in the distance.

‘Don’t tell me Gertrude is skiving off tonight?’ Oz called. ‘No Faceless Woman? Dear me, how disappointing.’

‘Shockingly remiss of you as a host, old chap,’ Jeffrey said. ‘I expected you to put on a bit of a show for us.’

Oz’s perfect teeth glinted in the torchlight. ‘Absolutely. You all deserved a special treat, and I’ve let you down.’

‘What about Shenagh Moss?’ Daniel asked. ‘Where was her body found?’

‘You seem terribly interested in Shenagh,’ Quin said. ‘Any particular reason?’

‘Both cases fascinate me. Two women, their faces destroyed, then shrouded, on Hallowe’en.’

‘Craig Meek must have lacked imagination,’ Terri scoffed.

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Miriam muttered. ‘This Stefan of yours, he’s no different. Men like that are a menace to decent folk.’

The wind was gathering strength, and in the moonlight Daniel saw branches dancing in the dark. Melody seemed lost in her own thoughts. Her husband waved towards the woodland.

‘A network of paths lead from the road to the shore. Shenagh used to walk their dog all around. Francis found her, two minutes from here. Does that answer your question?’

‘Thanks.’

Miriam stifled a yawn. ‘I’m about done in. Terri, do you mind if I come back with you for a minute to make sure Robin is all right?’

‘Course not. I’ll walk you back home, make sure you aren’t accosted by any old ghost.’ The Black Widow linked arms with the old witch. ‘Goodnight, all! Oz, Melody, thanks a million, it’s been fantastic. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Robin will be gutted he couldn’t make it.’

She’d given the signal for the party to break up. Assorted ghouls kissed and hugged, before Daniel and Louise followed Jeffrey and Quin up the road towards Watendlath.

As they trudged off into the night, they heard Terri’s voice, ripping up the silence.

‘Woo! Woo!’ she cried. ‘Woo! Woo!’

And then she dissolved into helpless, boozy laughter.

Hannah had a phobia about hospitals, dating back to her childhood. It was a dread she’d kept to herself; she’d never shared it with Marc, not even in their earliest, happiest days together. Did that show she’d never really trusted him? It didn’t matter now, anyway.

At the age of thirteen, she’d been rushed in for an emergency operation to remove her appendix, an experience more frightening than any of her adult encounters with sociopaths armed with knife, gun, or – a few months earlier – scythe. She’d never forget the heart-pounding fear of being slit open, the dizzying terror of never being whole again. To this day, the squeak of hospital trolleys on tiled floors set her teeth on edge, and the smell of antiseptic made her gorge rise. She’d spent her adult life making excuses to avoid visiting hospitals unless there was no choice. But today she had no choice. She had no hope of getting any rest until she found out how Marc was. After waking from
her nightmare, she’d found it impossible to get back to sleep. She needed to know.

As she put herself through the purgatory of an ice-cold shower, she remembered where she’d seen the strange church of her dream. On a wall in Tarn Cottage. Daniel had hung a watercolour that fascinated her. A Jericho, Oxford, street scene; he said he’d lived there as a student, and the exotic architecture of St Barnabas had fascinated him. She’d never given the image another thought, and yet it had lodged in her subconscious.

As she drove through the drizzle along the winding road to Kendal, she focused on psyching herself up for whatever lay ahead. By the time she strode into A&E, she was ready to cope with anything. Even the suffocating claustrophobia that the labyrinth of corridors induced in her. And yes, even big hospital bureaucracy. For all its virtues, the NHS, like the police, and probably any large organisation, allowed systems and process to get in the way of talking to people.

This morning, she had become an irresistible force. Token efforts to fob her off until visiting hours made no more impression than a kid’s catapult on a Chieftain tank. Within ten minutes of her arrival, steely determination, coupled with the ruthless deployment of her warrant card, earned an audience with a calm and caring young Asian doctor.

‘I’m afraid Marc isn’t a pretty sight at the moment, DCI Scarlett. You can imagine, after such a terrible accident. He’s …’

‘What’s the damage?’ She breathed in. This felt like trying to hold off an avalanche, an avalanche of emotion. A picture flitted through her head of the cool, collected
woman she’d once imagined herself to be. Just another figment of her imagination.

‘He sustained a nasty gash to his forehead that needed a lot of stitches.’ The woman paused. ‘The other cuts are largely superficial. It will be several weeks before he’s posing for snapshots again, but the scars will heal. Two ribs are broken, and there’s a lot of bruising. Fortunately, there’s nothing more serious.’

Hannah ground her teeth. ‘You think he’ll make a full recovery?’

‘I’m absolutely confident. He’s sleeping now, totally out of it, and he’ll be sore and uncomfortable for a while, but he’s a fit and healthy man, and he’ll get through in decent shape.’

Hannah didn’t trust herself to speak.

‘Don’t let him feel too sorry for himself when he comes back home. You know what men are like.’

Not really, Hannah thought: the more I know about men, the less I understand them. Do Greg, and Marc, and Daniel feel the same about me?

‘You’re sure …?’

‘He’s lucky, Detective Chief Inspector. Believe me, it could have been so much worse.’ The doctor fiddled with her spectacles. ‘How did the accident happen?’

Stupid, stupid idiot! Hannah only just stopped herself screaming in self-reproach. All she could do was mumble something hopelessly incoherent. Why hadn’t she prepared for the obvious, the inevitable question: had she completely lost the plot? Lurid visions had swum in her head. Marc in a wheelchair, Marc in a coma, Marc in a morgue. She hadn’t slept after waking from the nightmare, couldn’t rid 
her mind of the terror she’d felt when peering down into that open grave.

‘Are you okay?’ the doctor asked. ‘Sorry, silly question. This must all have come as such a shock. Would you like a cup of tea?’

Hannah shook her head again. ‘You’ve been very kind, Doctor Sharma. I know you have to do your rounds. I mustn’t take up any more of your time.’

They shook hands, and she made good her escape. As she turned into the corridor, it was hard to resist the urge to break into a run. Anything to get away in one piece. She’d dodged that tricky question, and though others would press her harder than a nice young medic with more important things on her mind, she’d worry about that some other time.

Marc was going to make it, and nothing else really mattered. She’d escaped from the dreaded hospital. Everything was going to be fine.

Outside, the rain was pelting down like tracer bullets, but she didn’t care. As she walked through the car park, she felt a sudden urge to sing and dance. Marc wouldn’t burden her conscience for the rest of her days. She could wriggle free of the handcuffs of moral obligation. Nothing now could stop them going their separate ways.

The words of an old movie song came into her head.
Because I’m free, nothing’s worrying me.

Breakfast at Watendlath was a classic case of the morning after the night before. Daniel hadn’t stopped yawning since the stroke of seven, when Louise roused him with an imperious knock on his door. Her next lecture wasn’t due
until late afternoon, but he’d promised to drop her off at the campus so she could finalise a paper about shareholder duties. A shower did nothing to invigorate him, and his brain was so fuzzy that he twice nicked himself shaving. It didn’t help that Louise looked so good in her pinstriped business suit that you’d never guess she’d been up in the early hours, searching for a ghost that refused to show. Daniel just felt like a ghost; the only bits of him that seemed real were the dry mouth and hangover-induced headache.

By quarter past, he was blundering down the stairs after her. The aroma of fresh toast wafted down the passageway linking their staircase to the rest of the house. The heating was on, and the cottage felt snug and secure from the clatter of the wind and rain outside. In the breakfast-kitchen, they found Jeffrey, plump frame enveloped in a silk dragon kimono, fussing over an elaborate bean-to-cup coffee maker like a fretful mother with a mutinous child.

‘Morning, both! Dreadful weather today, and the forecast is ghastly, but never mind. Help yourself to juice – orange, pineapple, cranberry, whatever. Cereals and fruit are on the table, pop a couple more slices of bread in the toaster if you like. Coffee will be ready in a jiffy.’

The over-the-top geniality was pure ham acting, his smile as much a disguise as a Hallowe’en mask. As he turned to resume his anxious scolding of the machine, Daniel spotted red rims around his eyes. Had Jeffrey quarrelled with Quin last night or this morning? The walls of Watendlath were as thick as a castle’s. Even if there’d been a screaming match, he’d have heard nothing.

‘Pity we didn’t manage to see Gertrude Smith on the prowl.’ Louise sank her teeth into a plump Orange Pippin.
‘I’ve caught the bug myself now. Do you think Dorothy suspected Roland of killing Gertrude, and tracked him down?’

‘Who knows? The possibilities are endless. What if she witnessed the killing?’

‘Yes, if she saw Roland Jones kill his girlfriend, she may have been too scared to say a word. Then when her mother killed herself so soon after Gertrude’s death, she’d have been even more terrified. Perhaps it took a lifetime for her to come to terms with the guilt of having kept her mouth shut.’

He smeared honey on his toast. ‘Plausible.’

‘Whoever killed Gertrude, it must have been a crime of passion. The catalyst was Gertrude’s pregnancy. It changed things for everyone at Ravenbank Hall.’

He glanced out into the wild garden. After another storm, ferns and shrubs dripped in the shadow cast by the copper beeches marking Watendlath’s boundary. The downpour had blurred the windowpanes, distorting the shape of the evergreens, turning them into dark green creatures, sombre and surreal.

‘I reckon Melody should collaborate with you on the case, not me.’

‘It’s your fault if I’ve caught the murder bug. And what I wonder about Shenagh’s murder …’

Quin strode through the door. Dark bags hung under his eyes, and the customary charmer’s smile was nowhere to be seen.

‘Shenagh’s dead, don’t you think we should let her rest in peace?’

He scowled at Jeffrey’s vast rump. His partner ostentatiously
carried on pouring coffee into four mugs. Each of them was emblazoned with insults culled from the works of Shakespeare.

‘Sorry,’ Louise said. ‘That was insensitive of me. I didn’t mean to …’

Jeffrey wrapped the dragon kimono more tightly around him. His cheeks were bright pink. He handed out the coffees without a word. Quin grimaced at the writing on the side of his mug.

‘“Dissembling harlot”,’ he quoted. ‘Actions speak louder than words, eh?’

Louise threw a frantic glance at Daniel. A ringside seat to a domestic row was too close for comfort.

‘We’d better get out from under your feet as soon as we’ve finished our coffee,’ he said. ‘Thanks very much for your hospitality.’

‘Yes, you’ve been so kind,’ Louise said, desperate to ease the tension. ‘I’m so envious of you, living in such a …’

A ferocious battering on the front door interrupted her. Jeffrey plodded out to see who was calling so early in the morning. Daniel and Louise clambered down from their kitchen stools, but Quin did not move. While Jeffrey fumbled with the mortice key, the thunderous knocking began again.

‘Just a minute!’

At last the door swung open. A tall, haggard man whom Daniel had never seen before stood on the outside step. Rain rolled off his blue Barbour jacket, and down his cheeks. He’d been caught in the cloudburst, but didn’t seem to notice he was drenched. His blue eyes seemed unfocused, and he was breathing hard.

‘Robin, what is it?’ There was a tremble in Jeffrey’s voice.

‘Have you seen her?’ The man was hoarse and desperate, as if pleading for his life. ‘She’s nowhere to be found. For Christ’s sake, where is she?’

‘How is he?’

Greg Wharf had shut the door after coming in to Hannah’s office. She nodded as he took a seat, though they mustn’t make a habit of talking behind closed doors. For so many people in Divisional HQ, gossip was as natural as breathing. Essential not to give them any oxygen. Anyway, she could only give him a couple of minutes; she was supposed to be on her way to Lancaster.

‘He’ll live.’ She repeated what the doctor had said.

A theatrical sigh of relief. ‘Thank Christ for that. Looks like he’s got away with it by the skin of his teeth.’

‘Yes, he’s lucky.’

‘And the breath test was negative.’

‘Breath test?’ Her brain wasn’t functioning.

‘Yeah, I – um – didn’t mention it last night.’

‘What?’

‘Hey, you weren’t … yourself. I called Traffic as well as the ambulance when I saw his car wrapped around that tree. Best play it by the book with an RTC.’

Of course, he was right. There were no such things as road accidents, these days. They were, at the very least, incidents with some form of causation. This was a Road Traffic Collision, and the law allowed the police to breathalyse a driver involved in a collision. In practice, they always did so, in order to feed the Home Office’s addiction to statistics. Trees were, in the quaint jargon of police
legalese, ‘roadside furniture’, and Marc’s crash, inflicting damage on the old oak, opened him up to prosecution. Driving without due care and attention was the likely charge. They’d never make a dangerous driving rap stick, and driving your car into a tree was solid enough evidence of a lack of due care. It could have been so much worse, but all the same …

‘Shit.’

‘Something new for you to worry about?’ He kept his face straight, but she knew he was teasing her.

‘You think the CPS will be interested?’

‘Dunno. Nobody else was involved, and the tree will get over it. At any rate, the council won’t need to chop it down. I gave it a quick once-over this morning before I came in. It’s not as if he hit another car or wrote off a signpost or something.’

A smart guy, Greg, more efficient than your typical Jack the Lad. Very good at dealing with a crisis. Of course, his reputation suggested he’d had plenty of practice.

‘Do you reckon they should treat it as a specified file?’

Guidelines covered the case of a family member of a serving police officer who was potentially liable to prosecution. Extra care needed to be taken, to avoid any whiff of nepotism.

‘Your guess is as good as mine, but chances are, the answer’s yes. It’s not long since you and Marc were a couple, and you were together a long time.’

‘Too long,’ Hannah said through gritted teeth. ‘I guess the prosecutors will want to avoid any whiff of “he only got away with it because his ex was a DCI.”’

Greg contrived an elaborate sigh. ‘You really don’t find it easy to look on the bright side, do you?’

Already the joy she’d felt in the hospital car park was beginning to evaporate. ‘Has it crossed your mind that sometimes there isn’t a bright side?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Hannah, what are you like?’

She found herself collapsing into a fit of giggles. Absurdly childish, yes, but she couldn’t help herself. Something about him was hard to resist. Better make sure she didn’t find him too irresistible. A repeat of last night was off the agenda. Absolutely, definitely, forever.

‘That’s better.’ He looked her in the eye, his face stripped of any clue to what he was really thinking. ‘Ma’am.’

Robin Park stood in the middle of the breakfast-kitchen, dripping onto the terracotta tiles, a picture of misery. So this was the man who was planning a new life with Hannah’s best friend. Robin was unmistakably handsome, with blue eyes and regular features compensating for the weakness of his chin and limp handshake. Jeffrey fussed around him with the coffee pot, as if not knowing what else to do, but Robin waved him away.