A Crowded Coffin Read online

  Rory slipped on his trainers as Harriet added, ‘The only time the vicar can have got this tangled up in his jacket is when he gave Edith a lift to the village to pick up the things I asked her to fetch; in other words it had to be yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘But that’s not …’ Rory stood up, still frowning. ‘I overheard him at the party telling Edith he only bought that jacket in Winchester at lunchtime today, I mean yesterday. He said he bought it especially for the party and was boasting about it not being too trendy to upset all the old fogeys in the village.’

  ‘You’re sure it was on his jacket? It couldn’t have brushed off someone else’s clothes?’

  ‘No chance. I had to give it quite a tug to free it up from the tweed. I’m surprised he didn’t notice me but he was too busy hitting on Edith. I was sure it was an earring; I assumed she lost it when she went out to dinner with him the other night.’ He peered closely at the tiny silver bauble. ‘A toast rack, really?’

  Harriet sat down hastily. ‘No, I’m all right, don’t fuss. It’s just the pills I’m taking, and I have to admit it’s come as a shock. If that jacket was new at lunchtime yesterday that means he must have broken into my cottage sometime the same afternoon, not on his visit with Edith the day before. At any rate it can only have been just before he turned up at the party. But why?’

  ‘Edith said he was looking at some notes you’d made,’ Rory remembered. ‘When he was there with her, I mean. He blamed the cat because the papers were on the floor, but when Edith took them off him, to replace them on your desk, she said the name Colin Price jumped out at her. Maybe that’s what he spotted. But why would that bother him?’

  Harriet had her mobile in her hand. ‘We need to call the cops,’ she said, her tone decisive, the momentary weakness vanished.

  ‘No, wait, I’ve just remembered something else.’ He caught at her arm. ‘I had a call from the Canadian lady who was in the chapel. You know, she took Edith to lunch after we found Sam’s friend in the chapel. She rang about half-past nine last night and I’d forgotten all about it till now. She said she noticed the party of German tourists who were milling about in the chapel but it had only just occurred to her that there was another man in there too. Mrs Mackenzie didn’t think it could be important but as I’d asked her to let me know anything at all, she decided to call me. I asked her if she could describe him, and she said it was only a clergyman who was praying beside the old chap, Dr Sutherland.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know.’ He hunched his shoulders, looking perturbed. ‘I asked her about this clergyman and she said she hadn’t taken much notice of him; she was busy with her own memories of her late husband and in any case, several of the tourists knelt to pray briefly. Mrs Mackenzie said she hadn’t even thought about him till I asked, after all, a vicar in a cathedral is a bit like wallpaper, so much what you expect to be there that you don’t even see it after a while. But when she thought about it, it seemed a bit odd. She’d seen Dr Sutherland enter the chapel and sit down but she was lost in her own thoughts so she didn’t see the other man come in, or leave, come to that. She couldn’t describe him but she did tell me she thought he was probably in his thirties with reddish-brown hair.’

  Silence hung between them until Harriet brushed a hand across her eyes. ‘I can’t make head or tail of it,’ she said irritably and moved over towards the window again. ‘They’ve gone,’ she gasped, and pointed as Rory joined her. ‘Here, see if you can make out anything.’

  ‘There’s no sign of movement,’ he agreed, after a moment. ‘I’m going to take a look – and before you say anything,’ he forestalled her protest, ‘I’ll take precautions, I’m not an idiot.’

  Harriet still held her mobile phone in her hand. Sam, she breathed as Rory disappeared downstairs. I know I promised him I wouldn’t do anything stupid but there’s no way I’m leaving Rory by himself. Let me think…. Inspiration struck and she sent Sam a text. ‘Checking activity in BField. Rory with me. Not stupid. H.’

  Tucking her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, she was at the head of the stairs when a thought intruded. Better spend a penny, she muttered to herself. I can just imagine Rory’s face if I say I need to nip behind a tree.

  What with attending to the call of nature, she was some minutes behind her fellow conspirator but she could just glimpse him as he circled the Burial Field, using the old stone wall as both guideline and shelter. Harriet took a deep breath and followed suit, her mind racing madly. Why did the image of John Forrester praying beside the old clergyman make her shudder in distaste? John was a cleric himself, after all, and the old man had died of a heart attack, hadn’t he? Or if he hadn’t, how in the world could John have killed him undetected and, what was even more to the point, why in the world should John, or anyone else, have killed him? Oliver Sutherland was a cheerful old man who did nobody any harm and was popular and well respected among his former colleagues and parishioners.

  Perhaps it was a heart attack. Or a stroke and maybe John had found him already dead? But no, surely in that case the natural thing to do would be to summon help, as Sam and Rory and Edith had done. I don’t like the vicar, Harriet admitted to herself, in a moment of honesty, but no, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t – to somehow murder an old man in a cathedral, of all blasphemous things to do.

  It must be a mistake, but Rory was insistent. Mrs Mackenzie was a calm, rational witness who was adamant that she had noticed a youngish man of the cloth quietly praying beside an older colleague. It was a kind and thoughtful act but if that were all, Harriet wondered with a heavy heart, why had John not raised the alarm himself? Why had he not even mentioned the circumstance?

  The snatched conversation she’d had with Rory a few minutes earlier made it clear that the subject of the sad death in the cathedral had not been raised at the drinks party, probably because most of the guests were in ignorance. But even allowing for John to be showing consideration to his elderly hosts, who most probably had been acquaintances, if not friends, of the elderly Dr Sutherland, surely the normal thing for him to have done was at least to sympathize in private with Edith and Rory?

  She caught up with Rory at the corner of the two fields, where the stone walls joined to make a sheltered spot for a clump of blackthorn bushes, their flowers all gone and the sloes showing hard and green. From there they had a reasonably clear view of the tangled thicket further up the rise, where the ancient stone stood. They crouched there, in the rank grass and nettles, straining to see, to hear. A sudden clang, of metal against stone, made them both freeze and Harriet could hear her heart thumping as Rory touched her arm and pointed towards the angel stone.

  ‘Who?’ She breathed the question and he pointed again. A figure, tall and angular, was silhouetted against the silvery light; it was Gordon Dean’s visitor from Texas, Mike Goldstein, unmistakable in his lean length. As she and Rory held their breath, he dropped to his knees and seemed to be peering at something beside the angel stone. Or was it something below the stone? Harriet felt a frisson of excitement; could they be excavating the Roman ruins?

  Even though recent Attlins had been unable to finance any serious exploration, most people in the area knew the legends and, in Harriet’s opinion, her cousin Walter had been incredibly lucky that no enterprising treasure-seekers had so far disturbed the ruins. It looked as though his luck had run out now, because anyone with an innocent interest in archaeology would hardly be out here, secretly, in the middle of the night.

  Rory was watching silently while Harriet speculated. Surely Mike Goldstein and his henchman – it would be Brendan Whittaker, her money was on him – surely they couldn’t believe that the rewards of such a dig would be enough to justify such a hole-and-corner venture. This wasn’t a fabled site like Sutton Hoo, or, nearer home, the Roman palace of Fishbourne, a few miles along the coast towards Chichester. Harriet recalled her history. Fishbourne was the home of Cogidubnus, king of the Regni, and recognized by the occupying Romans as a sub-ruler but L
ucius Sextus Vitalis, the supposed founder of the Attlin family, had only been a retired soldier who married into the local gentry. Alfred’s son had been the family’s one essay into major-league high society and since then they had kept a low profile: dutiful soldiers, hard-working farmers, solid citizens, with no shooting stars or shining lights. The Locksley villa was small potatoes.

  ‘We’d better get back to the house,’ Rory whispered. ‘Wonder where they parked their car?’

  ‘It’s down the back lane.’ The voice, from about six feet behind them, made them both freeze. ‘Oh, don’t look so fed up.’ It was Brendan Whittaker, a gun in his hand pointed straight at Harriet. ‘You’re well hidden. It’s your bad luck that I missed the first turning or I’d never have spotted you. But now, oh dear me.’ His tone was mocking. ‘I thought you had more sense, Miss Quigley. No,’ as Rory straightened up, ‘no heroics please, Dr Attlin, or I’ll have to kill you both. Now get over there to where my, er, colleague is.’

  Harriet stumbled along behind, achingly conscious of Brendan’s gun He whistled to the other man who had hastily donned his black balaclava – why on earth? – and who now stood, saw in hand, beside a pile of cut saplings. Without a word he gestured with his other hand to what was revealed as a hole, roughly a metre square, at the base of the ancient plinth. Neatly set aside was a turf ‘lid’ resting on a wooden base, together with some of the uprooted scrub that had been scattered carelessly around. There was no sign of the heap of excavated soil that Harriet would have expected, she noticed, without properly registering the thought, but there was no time to wonder.

  Brendan pushed Rory to his knees and with the other man covering Harriet herself, briskly lashed his captive’s wrists with baler twine that he took out of his pocket. Rory uttered a wrathful protest but to Harriet’s horror, Mike Goldstein who had so far not uttered a word, swung his shovel at Rory’s head. Even though he managed to twist away, the back of the blade still clanged viciously against his skull and he dropped to the ground, still and grey in the moonlight, and to Harriet’s extreme distress, apparently dead.

  ‘You bastard!’ She lost control then, shrieking with rage and anguish. ‘You barbarian, get out of my way, let me see to him.’ Kicking and screaming, beside herself with fury, she scratched and howled, fighting against Brendan’s restraining grasp. The other man ignored her completely and casually gave Rory a shove down into the ruins. As she landed a lucky punch on him, Brendan let out a yelp of pain and loosened his grip.

  Harriet twisted away but it was no use. Rory’s captor reached out and caught her, then, barely pausing, picked her up and dropped her down after Rory.

  Terrified and breathless she heard Brendan’s voice; he was arguing with the other man. ‘There was no need for that, they’re harmless. You can’t….’

  As she dropped she heard the other man’s harsh grunt of laughter at Brendan’s protest, then nothing else mattered as she braced herself for the fall, but somehow, miraculously, she was jolted but undamaged, apart from scratching herself on the heaps of scrub and saplings that Brendan and his crony had thrown down out of sight. This, she realized, was what had saved her from injury. Even more fortuitously, she hadn’t landed on Rory.

  As she took a shuddering breath there was a further horror. The light from the moon vanished as the turf ‘lid’ was replaced over the gaping hole about ten feet above and Harriet winced as a scatter of earth and small stones bounced off her face.

  Muffled sounds from above suggested that their attackers were replacing the uprooted scrub and then there was silence. Harriet’s bowels wrenched with an agonizing spasm of terror but somehow she managed to control herself, putting her emotions on hold so that she could attend to Rory. Where the hell was Rory? Fearfully, she blundered about on all fours, almost kneeling on him when she located him at last. She groped feverishly for a hand, a pulse, but although she eventually located his wrist, she could feel no pulse, not even a flutter.

  Sam Hathaway couldn’t sleep. Although the dinner on offer at the meeting had been substantial, mostly what Harriet always called ‘a manly meal’, a roast with plenty of potatoes and a hearty steamed pudding and custard to follow, he had eaten sparingly. It felt strange, camping in the cottage, strange but not unpleasant and the cat in the next room gave him a comforting sense of not being alone. Harriet would laugh when she heard that after a trip to the bathroom just before 2.30 a.m., he had nipped downstairs: coffee for himself; cat treats for Fat Hector, who snoozed happily in a corner until Sam coaxed him out to be stroked and admired. It felt good, he thought, listening to the tentative purring. Although Avril’s severe allergies had made pets impossible, Sam was inclined to agree with his cousin that a house needed a cat to make it a home.

  Harriet. He wondered how she was feeling, praying that her concussion was as slight as the doctor had assured him and shivered at the thought of life without her. Harriet had been his mainstay in the dreadful days after Avril’s death and in the bleak darkness that followed, how could he manage without her? Fear made him reach out for his phone, to check on her.

  Pure selfishness! He frowned in the darkness and withdrew his hand. His cousin would be tucked up in bed at the farm, doped to the eyeballs and waited on hand and foot. A panic call at this time of night was the last thing she needed. He settled down and managed at last to grab a couple more hours of restless sleep.

  Harriet could safely wait till the morning.

  chapter twelve

  At last, Harriet found a pulse. Thank God, Rory wasn’t dead after all. She almost broke down then but years of self-control came to her rescue and she forced herself to relax, steadying her breathing, keeping her fingers lightly but firmly on Rory’s wrist. The pulse seemed a little stronger and she swallowed once or twice, gulping with relief.

  ‘Rory? Can you hear me?’ Over the thumping of her own heart she heard a murmur, a breath taken and a thread of a whisper.

  ‘S’posed to be a cure, you know.’ The faint laugh in his voice was the most welcome sound in the world. ‘Country air, family reunion, nothing strenuous.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Her brisk reply was undermined by a slight wobble in the voice, but she rallied as she ran her hands over him. ‘Always something going on in a country village, you know; you need to man up, put hair on your chest. Now, do you think there’s anything broken? I’m sure you hurt all over, but can you tell if there’s any serious damage? Here, I’ve got my Swiss Army knife, I’ll cut that stupid baler twine so you can poke about. We’ll need all our strength to get out of this predicament.’

  ‘Mmm, no, no bones broken.’ His voice was beginning to sound stronger. ‘There isn’t a single bit of me that isn’t agony and my knee hurts where I must have banged it as I landed, but it’s not broken.’

  There was silence as he explored the extent of his injuries. ‘Got a headache, but I don’t think my skull’s damaged. What about you, Harriet? You’ve already got concussion. Did they hurt you?’

  ‘Not really.’ She sighed and gave his hand a companionable squeeze to reassure them both. ‘I felt sick with fright when he walloped you with the spade but they didn’t actually hurt me, just dropped me into the hole. I can’t believe we didn’t break our necks but when they cut back all the shrubbery, they must have chucked everything down here to hide the evidence. A lucky break for us.’

  ‘Don’t say break,’ Rory groaned, and shifted uneasily. ‘Ugh, I think I have got a cracked rib after all, that bastard kicked me when I fell. He was aiming at my balls, I’m sure of it. Good job I managed to hunch up just as I passed out, otherwise I’d be singing soprano for the rest of my life.’

  The feeble joke made them both feel better and Harriet fished out her key ring again. ‘Here, there’s a torch on it,’ she grunted. ‘Stupid little pencil light but better than nothing. Let’s have a look at where we are.’

  ‘Swiss Army knife? Torch? Harriet, if I had to choose who to be thrown in a gloomy hole with, you’d always be my first choice!’ He rubbed
his sore knee. ‘I suppose you were a Girl Guide?’

  ‘And a Brown Owl,’ she added, thoughtfully shining the sliver of light around the shaft above their heads. ‘Useful motto: “Be Prepared”. Unfortunately I forgot to pack a gun and a picnic tonight, let alone a JCB to dig us out of here.’

  ‘God, I’m stupid.’ He was feeling very gingerly in a pocket. ‘I forgot all about my phone. It’s got a light and we can—It’s gone.’ He sounded aghast and she patted his arm.

  ‘It probably fell out of your pocket while they were giving you a good going-over,’ she consoled him. ‘I’m just surprised they didn’t search us as a precaution. Just as well.’ She held up her own mobile triumphantly. ‘It’s not one of those state-of-the-art gadgets like yours, just a bog-standard basic model, but it’s better than nothing.’ She peered at it and shook her head. ‘Just as I thought, there’s no signal down here.’ She shrugged, settling herself more comfortably as she tried to ignore the rank smell that pervaded the place; nothing mattered now she knew Rory was more or less in one piece.

  ‘Let’s take a breather before we start worrying about signals or trying to get out of here. I shouldn’t think that makeshift cover would take much pushing, but it’s ten or more feet up, so you’d certainly have to give me a bunk up (which you’re in no state to do) and I’ve no head for heights anyway. But we’ll keep that as a last resort. We’re safe enough down here for now.’ She held out her key ring. ‘Here, you have this and I’ll use my phone and pray the battery holds up.’

  ‘Safe? If you say so.’ He shone the light round. ‘What I’d really like to know is, what the hell is going on?’