Time Enough To Die (5 page)

Focusing on Gareth again, Matilda said, “Not to mention that the man Linda was with might not have been the man—or woman—who killed her. I'd like to see all the information, please. Including the photos. And we need to find an excuse to look at the place Linda's body was found."

Gareth opened his mouth, probably to protest either that the photos weren't especially attractive or that he was a detective, not a tour guide. He might even be thinking that the murder investigation was his territory, and that she should stick to her missing artifacts. Whatever, he thought better of speaking. He'd done that frequently the last few hours. She knew she—or her unusual skills, at least—rubbed him the wrong way. His slightly defensive, slightly suspicious gaze made her feel as though she'd dribbled her dinner on her blouse.

"What does local rumor say about the murder?” Matilda asked.

"That the New Age travelers did it."

"What do you think?"

"They had the opportunity—they were camped near Shadow End in February, not far from Durslow Edge. I looked over the files at the Yard, and no traveler has ever been charged with murder. They knock each other about fairly frequently, though—the victim could've been in their way for some reason."

"Linda,” Matilda said. “Her name was Linda."

"Watkins,” said Gareth, just a fraction more loudly, “showed the vic—Linda's photo round Corcester. Clapper recognized her, said she'd taken a drink or two here. I'll talk to him tomorrow, like a proper snoop of a reporter, eh?"

"Why don't you see if he knows anything about the missing statuary while you're at it?"

Gareth looked at her pityingly.

"Sorry,” Matilda said with a grimace. “Are there any other rumors about the murder?"

"Just the sort of rot you hear in small country towns. That Linda was sacrificed. By witches or Druids or men from Mars, no one can say. I think that's right out."

Matilda sat back in her chair and chewed on her lip. “There was that case in the forties, the old man accused of witchcraft found murdered. Presumably by his fellow villagers, but the Yard could never prove it."

"And there's always rubbish about UFOs and crop circles,” added Gareth. “I'd rather deal in facts, thank you."

"The fact is that this area was one of the last strongholds of the Druids. Howard thinks that your bog body was a sacrifice, dating to the early days of the Roman era. The modern neo-Druids base their beliefs on nineteenth-century romanticism. Completely harmless."

"Like the Eisteddfod in Wales. All the literary types playing at bards and Druids. It's harmless unless you're a poet with a whacking great ego."

"Whoever killed Linda wasn't playing. He or she was probably protecting an illegal artifact scam. Whether Linda's lover had anything to do with that remains to be seen.” Matilda chuckled. “The clue of the stolen artifacts. Sounds like a Nancy Drew mystery."

"Here,” Gareth said, “could you pick the murderer out of an identity parade?"

"Anyone who's able to justify his actions to himself, no matter how despicable they may be, can very likely pass a lie detector test and can undoubtedly get by me. I could only pick the murderer from a line-up if he had a very guilty conscience. You could do as much yourself."

Gareth discarded that flight of fancy with a flick of his brows. “What did Sweeney say?"

"We agreed I should use my skills as subtly as possible,” Matilda answered. “No reason to deal any wild cards to the students, they're innocent bystanders, after all."

"The girls might be in some danger."

"They're the same age as Linda Burkett, true, but they don't know anything about stolen artifacts. Howard did notice those traces of unauthorized digging at the fort, by the way."

Gareth glanced over at Sweeney, who was sitting side-saddle on the edge of the table making gestures describing either gladiatorial combat or gardening. “He knows his business, then? Seems a bit of a prat."

"Oh, he's a prat, all right. He knows his business very well indeed, and he likes to make sure the peasantry realizes it. We need to have an expert in charge, though. This is a genuine dig, even if it does have ulterior motives."

The girl, Matilda saw, had ordered a glass of lemonade. She opened the ice bucket sitting on the bar and apparently found it empty. Instead of asking Clapper for more, she replaced the lid and turned away. There were no empty seats among the other students.

Matilda smiled and beckoned. The girl stared—
who me?
—then slipped into the chair next to Matilda, across from Gareth. “Thank you, Dr. Gray."

"I don't believe I caught your name,” said Matilda, feeling certain it wasn't Nancy Drew.

"Ashley Walraven.” Her eyes skewed from Matilda's face to Gareth's and collided with his level gaze. She looked abruptly down at the table top. Wings of blond hair fell like curtains around her face.

Hardly surprising, Matilda thought, that Ashley would find Gareth attractive. He was not only good-looking, he was also intelligent and polite. But he found Ashley no more significant than a kitten. Matilda didn't kick him beneath the table. Matchmaking wasn't in her job description. “What do you think of England?” she asked the girl.

"It's awesome, if kind of dark and wet. We've made plenty of cool field trips, Little Moreton Hall, Gawsthorpe, the Wirral. Even Shadow Moss. We saw them digging out the rest of the bog body.” She waved toward the south instead of the north. Matilda didn't correct her.

"Did you get a good look at it?"

Ashley's chocolate brown eyes widened. “Not really. It just looked like a muddy sack in the ground. I got a good look at the hand in Dr. Sweeney's lab. That was enough. I had nightmares about it. It's the same size as mine.” Ashley laid her right hand on the table, perfectly imitating the gentle curve of the severed hand.

Gareth flinched. Someone just walked over his grave, Matilda told herself.
How interesting.
“Nightmares?"

"Oh,” Ashley replied with a shrug, “just dumb things about Druid rituals and stuff. I mean, we don't really know what the Druids actually did, most of our evidence is from Roman sources. Since they were trying to break the political power of the Druids maybe they made up lies about the sacrifices. They were pretty good at sacrificing people themselves, after all."

"The Romans did see for themselves the carnage from Boudicca's campaign. Her troops massacred an appalling number of people before they were massacred in turn."

"After what the Romans did to her and her daughters.... “Ashley stopped in mid-sentence.

".... maybe they deserved to be massacred?” finished Matilda.

"Does anyone ever get what he deserves?” Ashley said into her glass.

The girl may not have understood where her flash of anger had come from, but Matilda did. Ashley's intelligence and emotions had been dismissed as unimportant so many times she no longer believed them to be valid. A shame—she was a sensitive girl, just the sort to be disturbed by the implications of the severed hand.

Gareth, whose profession should have accustomed him to such testimonies of mortality, stared into the middle distance. He wasn't nearly as easy to read as Ashley was—he was older, and a man, and his defenses were as carefully constructed as those of Carnarvon Castle. Matilda suspected that he himself didn't know what was lurking in his dungeons.

She drank the last of her whisky and tested the locks on the doors of her own dungeons. More than a few times she'd wished she were as blind, deaf, and mute as everyone else. As a child she'd been ridiculed for her skills. As a young woman Ashley's age she'd hidden them, not trusting them, not trusting herself to deal with them. As an adult of Gareth's age she'd at last accepted them and taught herself some measure of control. Now, in early middle age, she'd come to recognize that her skills could mend only the occasional injustice, not the world's pain.

"Well, well,” said Sweeney over Matilda's shoulder. “Talking about me behind my back? And here I've ordered another round of drinks."

Ashley jumped. Gareth looked up. Matilda smiled politely. The man's round teddy-bear stomach was a tempting target, although poking it wouldn't make him deflate. “She was telling us about the bog body, Howard."

"Ah yes, fascinating item, that. A girl about twenty, give or take a year or two. We have the trunk and most of the legs, even though the head is still missing. I thought at first the hand had been cut off by the peat cutter. Now we know that the head was taken off on purpose—ritual decapitation, I'd say—so maybe the hand was as well. Our old Celtic friends coveted their neighbor's heads, no doubt about it, but I've heard damn-all about their taking hands.” Making a peremptory taxi-calling gesture at Clapper, Sweeney sat down.

"If thy right hand offends thee, cut it off,” Matilda said quietly, and amended, “Another mythology, although it seems apt."

"To this day,” said Gareth, “in some of the Arab countries, the authorities will cut off the right hand of a thief."

"And the Celts would sometimes sacrifice condemned criminals?” Sweeney asked.

"I'm not sure it follows,” admitted Gareth.

Sweeney said, “Dr. Gray is fond of saying that historians and archaeologists don't take myth and magic seriously enough. They're parts of our heritage, even though we've outgrown the need for them."

"Speak for yourself,” said Matilda.

"Magic?” Ashley hadn't so much as blinked since Sweeney appeared. He could tell her the sky had pink polka dots, Matilda thought, and she'd accept it as truth.

"A people's beliefs affect their art, their architecture, their artifacts,” Matilda explained. “We'll never fully understand paleolithic cave paintings, for example, because we don't know what the painters intended. Simply to depict the animals? Or to ensure a good hunt through a ritual?"

"Don't do that sort of thing any more,” said Clapper. From a tray he doled out fresh glasses of beer, lemonade, and whiskey—"Scotch for you, Mrs. Gray, and bourbon for Dr. Sweeney."

"Thank you,” Matilda told him. “Yes, we do still do that type of thing. Look at Nazi Germany and the swastika. It used to be a symbol of good luck but now it sends shudders down our spines. Would it mean anything to an Amazonian tribesman, though?"

Ashley nodded. “Churches are full of symbols."

"Definitely. Take St. Michael's, just up the street. It's laid out in the shape of a cross, like many older churches. The carvings of the capitals depict Bible stories. The holy water font and the altar are symbolic memories. And yet none of this would made sense to someone unfamiliar with Christianity."

"Just why is it St. Michael's?” pontificated Sweeney. “Because, like St. George, St. Michael allegedly killed a dragon. All across Britain churches built on hilltops are attributed to St. Michael. Hilltops were often pagan sanctuaries. Since a dragon could be a symbol of pagan power, you have a neat little allegory of triumphant Christianity. Of course, it's all academic now, the stuff of dusty tomes and crabbed scholars, eh, Matilda?"

They'd had this argument before. Matilda declined a re-match with a smile.

"There's Roman stones in the church, the vicar showed me,” said Clapper, and walked away.

Sweeney said under his breath, “Occupational hazard, the unenlightened lower classes."

Gareth reached into his pocket and pulled out a notebook. “Is all this for public consumption, Dr. Sweeney?"

"Of course, of course, be sure to spell my name right, there's a good chap."

Gareth's pen made dark slashes on the page. Ashley's eyes moved speculatively from Sweeney's grin to Gareth's frown.

The hair twitched on the back of Matilda's neck. She looked toward the door of the bar. The man who stood there, his head thrust forward and his shoulders rounded, bore an unfortunate resemblance to a parrot. His dark, almost black, eyes ranged over the room. They paused appreciatively at the sight of Caterina nestling onto Jason's lap, and at Courtney's and Jennifer's denim-clad behinds presented to his view as they leaned on the bar. He strolled to their sides, ordered a lager, and made some remark to which both girls responded politely.

"Speaking of occupational hazards.” said Sweeney with a sigh. “I say, Reynolds!"

Matilda had to agree with Gareth's description of Adrian Reynolds as “a proper little git.” Even though his suit was well-cut and immaculately clean, he wore it as though he'd found it in a garbage can. His natty little moustache seemed painted on. She knew he'd reek of expensive cologne before she could smell it.

Reynolds walked up to the table and thrust his hand toward Sweeney. “Well then, Doctor, I see we're at the starter's gate, eh?"

"How very pleasant to see you again,” Sweeney returned. “May I present Dr. Matilda Gray, my second, Gareth March from the
Times,
and one of my students, Ashley Walraven."

The fierce handshake left Matilda's fingers tingling. Gareth gritted his teeth and held his own. Reynolds bent over Ashley's hand, contemplated it, looked soulfully into her eyes, and said, “Charmed, I'm sure."

"Hello,” said Ashley. As soon he relinquished her hand she wiped it off. Being young and pretty, Matilda thought, had its hazards.

"I was just speaking with Watkins,” Reynolds announced, forcing a chair between Ashley's and Matilda's. “He says he has no cause to turf out those yobbos camped on the way to Macclesfield. No cause! Why, they're destroying property values! There's too much cosseting the criminals today, if you ask me, and not enough attention paid to the rights of the landowners who support this country.” He paused to drink.

Gareth asked casually, “I suppose you get cheap labor off the travelers—mucking out the stables, that sort of thing?"

"Good God no,” said Reynolds. “Wouldn't have them about the place!"

Then who had invited them in this afternoon? Matilda wondered.

"I suppose you hire local people to exercise your horses?” persisted Gareth.

"Silly little chits who hardly know a muzzle from a hock. I don't suppose you ride, Dr. Gray?"

"I've ridden. Mostly I hang onto the saddle and hope the horse is gentle."

"Any time you'd like to go riding,” Reynolds said expansively, “just call round. I have several older mares, calm as a rocking chair. Even my wife can manage them. You too, March. And Miss Walraven."