A Shroud of Leaves

by Rebecca Alexander

  ‘We will.’ His voice was softer. ‘Look after yourself. And, Sage—’

  ‘I know. I love you too.’ It wasn’t until after that she wondered if that was what he was going to say.

  24

  NB: The Butts, cluster of bowl barrows. Maps and articles held by library in Lyndhurst; enquire for Mr Askwith, any afternoon except Thursday.

  Note in Edwin Masters’ Journal, 9th July 1913

  The family allow us much time to concentrate on the dig, which is generous. But they also want to spend time with Peter, naturally, and I am expected to also attend these social events. This morning, we planned to ride out in the forest and I became aware of some secret scheme for the day between Peter and Molly.

  The family have horses stabled less than a mile away, at a large livery yard at Blazeden Farm. I was curious to go there, as Chorleigh House had once been part of their holdings.

  The farm itself was of great interest to me. It had been built over and incorporated parts of a mediaeval farmhouse. The hall, the centre of operations for the farm with its stock books and office desk, had crumbling daub walls infilling ancient, somewhat wormy timber panels. The chimney was large enough to stand two men inside, and lined with tiny Tudor bricks.

  The rest of the place had a more modern wing with a comfortable parlour and what smelled like a kitchen. The farmer’s daughter looked me over, and suggested a lively gelding called Horace, her own steed. ‘He’ll be kind to you, sir,’ she said, ‘if you’ve little experience of riding in the forest.’

  ‘I rode as a child,’ I confessed, ‘but haven’t been on a horse for years.’

  ‘You don’t forget it,’ she said, ‘and Horace is a gentle horse. Watch Mr Peter’s mare, though, she nips him and he might shy. She’s a bit spiteful, and they haven’t had much exercise recently.’

  ‘Oh?’ I followed her out to the stable yard and admired the big bay she showed me.

  ‘Not since Miss Claire – you know.’ She turned her head so no one else would hear. ‘Mrs Chorleigh and the young ladies rode most days, when the weather was good. But not now.’

  The young daughter of the house, dead from diphtheria at fifteen. The reason the family were so tense, and why Mr Chorleigh was so uneven of temper. I resolved to be more patient and judge less.

  Hilda Chorleigh, Peter’s cousin, was riding with us on a heavy mare. We set out down one of the forest trails, Mr Chorleigh staying behind to talk to the farmer. Despite my resolve to be more understanding, I was somewhat relieved.

  Horace had a comfortable gait and seemed to know every bump and hollow in the path. Molly brought her horse alongside mine, as the track widened. ‘I’m glad you got Horace. He’s one of ours, we sold him to the farm.’

  ‘Was he your sister’s horse?’

  She was quick to reassure me. ‘No, Claire’s horse was too small for any of us, my father sold her to a neighbour.’ Her voice softened. ‘I see her out sometimes, it’s good to know she’s nearby.’

  ‘It must be difficult for you.’

  She smiled at me through tears. ‘I try not to think about it too much. But it has brought my mother very low, which is why it’s been so nice to have you here.’

  I had enjoyed my brief conversations with Mrs Chorleigh, but our exchanges were mostly about Peter and Molly. I said as much.

  ‘Ah, but you see, we haven’t had anyone stay since the funeral. Mother wasn’t well enough. Getting your room ready, keeping Father off your back – it has become a valuable distraction for her. She has even been down to annoy Cook about menus. And she has talked about Claire to you – she doesn’t even do that with me.’

  I smiled, somewhat wryly. ‘I hope I haven’t been too much work for your mother.’

  ‘No, no. I think Father likes you a bit better now he knows your father was a military chaplain.’

  I couldn’t imagine why – the two men could hardly have been more different. Peter was riding ahead with Hilda, their horses putting successive waves of birds to flight. A group of outraged rooks lifted, then landed on branches over our heads, cawing.

  ‘Here, Ed! What about this, then?’ Peter called back to me.

  Ahead lay a large clearing, maybe two acres, surrounded on all sides by trees. In the rough grass, the ground was uneven. Bowl barrows, a group of them, sat in undulating sward. I put Horace to the heel and he cantered up to the first of the features. ‘I don’t remember these from the map!’

  He laughed. ‘They were only found after the map was made. They will be in the next one, don’t worry. Local people have known about them for centuries; around here they’re called “The Butts”. There must be two hundred prehistoric barrows in the forest, maybe more.’

  They were three main features, maybe only three feet at their highest, with a shallow ditch outside each. The side of one mound was much pitted by rabbit holes. Peter slipped off his horse and tied it to a sapling. I followed suit, and Hilda took my horse for me.

  We walked up the slight slope to see the other barrows from the central one. They were quite small, I estimated eleven or twelve yards across. The rabbit-pocked barrow appeared to have a sagging contour. Perhaps some inside feature had collapsed. Another two slight mounds could just be seen, lying under trees.

  ‘This one used to have a huge badger sett in it,’ Peter said, pushing the hair off his face. ‘People thought it was just an uneven bit of the forest, full of animals. But when there was a fire here, the year I was born, the barrows were revealed. As you can see, nature is trying to reclaim them.’

  I looked around the site as I had been taught, forty-five degrees at a time. It was a level landscape with possibly five barrows in it, each with its ditch. They didn’t intersect and remained distinct from each other, but they appeared to have been built around the same time.

  Horace’s nose nudged me as Hilda allowed him to come forward.

  ‘Are they all burials? I mean, do they have bodies inside?’ she asked.

  I shook my head. ‘We don’t know that, but probably not. Most round barrows, when excavated, have no bones at their heart.’

  Molly slid down from her horse. ‘Will someone dig these up, too?’

  Peter reassured her. ‘These are in the National Park. They are protected by the new schedule.’

  ‘Well, aren’t ours?’ asked Molly.

  It was a question I had been turning over in my mind. ‘Yours is neither scheduled nor in public ownership. It belongs to your family.’ But, the question whispered in the back of my mind: should we have destroyed evidence, as we no doubt have, for the purpose of our own curiosity? I know we took every precaution to document and to preserve, but I am conscious that had we attempted this a hundred years ago, as so many historians did, we would not have had even a camera to document our findings. Perhaps better techniques will be available in the future.

  I used the stump of a tree to help me mount the patient Horace. The forest path took the four of us beyond the barrows and along a grassy track, and the question of legacy weighed heavily on me. We were impetuous, certainly, and I comforted myself with the thought that ploughing, tree roots and felling, badgers and rabbits have all taken their toll. One of our barrows is half robbed out altogether.

  ‘Edwin! Race!’ Peter put his heels to his horse, a beautiful creature I understood belonged to his mother, and she surged forwards. I’m afraid poor Horace was disinclined to even canter, falling into a tooth-rattling trot whenever he could. Peter, Hilda and Molly soon disappeared around a bend in the road before I realised my mount was favouring his right foreleg. Climbing down, I saw that his shoe was loose, so began to lead him.

  The forest is a strange place. The trees somehow absorbed the sounds of the riders ahead, and the susurration of leaves in the wind drowned out our own noises. The creak of saddle and harness, the jingling of Horace’s bit, they all seemed to become part of the forest. Even my riding boots, borrowed from Peter and a size too big, seemed to be cushioned by the grass and moss underfoot.

>   Someone was watching me. I stopped. I could feel someone – something – gazing at me, listening to me. I spun around, expecting to see some verderer or farm lad there, but nothing. My instincts became sharpened, and something had also bothered the horse. He flattened his ears back, snorted, looking around him. As I stood, catching my breath, my pulse leaping in my throat, I strained my eyes into the green shadows between saplings and under trees. No one. I have never been so sure someone was there in my life, and had to resist mounting poor Horace and riding him, to hell with his feet.

  I somehow managed to control the impulse and walked instead, murmuring something soothing to the horse, and he, great trusting creature, nudged me with his nose as if I would protect him. I looked around from time to time, and listened for footfalls, but nothing. As I walked the horse around a huge oak tree, I saw Peter and the girls had dismounted, and were resting in the shade beyond.

  They exclaimed at my ill fortune, and I took Horace down to the spring where the other horses were drinking, and we sat on the bank and shared the picnic Cook had made for us. I hesitated to appear foolish, and made a joke of thinking I was being watched. Hilda scoffed at the notion but neither of the Chorleighs thought me a fool.

  ‘It’s as if the forest looks at you,’ concluded Molly. ‘You can see why so many people believe in ghostly ranks of ruffians, lying in wait for travellers, or the spectres of huntsmen or poachers lost in the forest.’

  Peter laughed at my serious face. ‘We’ve all felt a bit lost, but I can assure you, old fellow, you were perfectly safe. Although in the rut, the stags can chase you. My school friend Alfie told me he was chased three times around a tree by a stag while the girls’ school looked on.’

  We walked back on foot, having knocked Horace’s shoe back on with the heel of my boot. When we returned, Peter had a letter which made him stop, read it again. He frowned as he folded the note up and put it in his pocket. He mumbled something to us and ran back into the house, leaving Molly and I to stare at each other and Hilda to look to Molly for an explanation.

  I shall ask him after dinner if everything is quite all right, for I have never seen such a look on his face. I would say it was fear, dread. I hope it is not bad news.

  25

  Monday 25th March, this year, forensic lab

  The following morning, Sage was in the corner of a lab with dozens of bags of leaves to sort through. A quick look had determined that the ivy and especially the glossy holly leaves could potentially hold a fingerprint as well as hair or fibres. With Jazz’s assistance, she started poring over the leaves with a magnifier, back and front, carefully sorting them according to how close they were to the body. Different light sources could reveal smudges that might take fingerprint powder.

  A tiny piece of plastic tape caught her eye – not the first one, she remembered finding one in the grave site. She held it up to the light under the binocular scope: a single blue line ran through the flat tape, which was about eight millimetres long and barely two millimetres wide. She put it in a tiny evidence box and tagged it.

  ‘Look for anything like this,’ she said, showing Jazz. ‘We found one before, but Martin, the forensic co-ordinator, thought it might have come off a forensic suit.’

  ‘I’ll keep my eye out. Are we really looking for fingerprints and trace evidence on old leaves all day?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Sage sighed and lifted out another stack of leaves. A fine white mould seemed to have developed since they were collected – God was it only seven days? There were no obvious fingerprints so far. Since the body was clean, she had to assume that the killer had some knowledge of forensic countermeasures, perhaps from watching television shows. It seemed likely they had at least worn gloves.

  She turned over more leaves, skeletonised oak mostly, and a little of the brown humus the leaves were collapsing into. The holly leaves were in better condition. They dropped all year, rather than all at once in the autumn, leaving the tree covered year round.

  ‘Another piece of that tape,’ Jazz said an hour later, peering at something on the end of forceps.

  Sage handed her a vial. ‘Label it up, will you? They need to be analysed.’

  Jazz bent over the bench again, her sigh muffled in the mask she wore. They were both dressed in forensic suits; Sage thought they must look like ghosts against the subdued greys of the lab. The leaves started to blur after a couple of hours but they were getting through the bags.

  She caught the squeak of the door opening and glanced up. ‘Sage?’

  ‘Felix!’ She introduced him to Jazz, then excused herself for a coffee break.

  He opened the door for her. ‘How long will it take to examine all the leaves?’

  She pulled the mask down. Her face was hot and damp from exhaled breath. ‘We’ve done about fifteen bags so far. It’s going to take the rest of the day, maybe longer. How are you getting on?’

  ‘I’ve been talking to the leaders of animal rights groups around at that time. Some are in prison for offences they have committed over the years. Police are following up leads, but the people they interview aren’t telling us much – they see the police as part of a corrupt system they have to fight against.’ He paused outside the canteen. ‘Anything more on the bag of bones?’

  ‘I’m sure they are the Bronze Age remains dug up from the barrow. As certain as I can be before the radio-dating comes back, anyway. Do you want to sit in the canteen?’

  He shook his head. ‘Actually, I think we should go outside, get some fresh air.’

  ‘OK, great.’

  Outside the lab was a narrow strip of garden with a few benches. They looked over a park, and it was strange to sit in an evidence suit watching children play. They must be used to the strange clothes, as hardly anyone gave Sage a second glance.

  ‘Have you found anything about Lara’s friends?’

  Felix opened his case and brought out a few copied sheets. ‘There are two strands to my investigation. One is the animal rights lobby who were into liberating animals from testing labs. They released mink from fur farms, causing untold damage to the native wildlife, by the way. A naïve approach. Many of the same people were against the fox hunt; there was a large group of hunt saboteurs in Hampshire. Lara and her friends made a lot of enemies, including George Chorleigh. Interestingly, he dropped a lawsuit against Lara three days after she was reported missing.’

  ‘Well, that’s odd. Did he know she was dead?’

  ‘He claimed he didn’t want to add to the family’s distress.’

  Sage snorted. ‘He didn’t mind upsetting them when he sued their sixteen-year-old daughter.’ Sage sat back, let the weak sunshine warm her face. ‘And the other strand?’

  ‘It’s the water in an old camera case they found after Lara went missing.’ Felix grimaced. ‘I know the police don’t think it’s significant but it seems strange to me. The case was found on the edge of the village graveyard, and inside was Lara’s camera and an empty film canister, everything saturated like it had been soaked in water. This was pre-digital cameras, remember. The film case was filled – to the top – with water. They tried to develop the film in the camera without success but they sent the canister off to identify the location of the water. These are the items.’

  ‘Give me the highlights,’ Sage said, looking at the pages.

  ‘The water was very clean, with very few microorganisms.’

  ‘OK.’ That didn’t make any sense. ‘That’s odd. If it was a pond or puddle the water would be teeming with life.’

  The pages showed photographs of a branded backpack and a drenched case for the camera. ‘Tell me more about the water.’

  ‘The report concluded that it was not river, bottled or even distilled water.’ He handed her the paper. ‘It had very low levels of bacteria, some ions of dissolved calcium and the like. They also found the tiny spores in it, but not pollen, which you might expect from a puddle or even a stream that was open to the air.’

  ‘So we should
look for unusual water sources around the Chorleigh property,’ she said. ‘The barrow has water coming out of it. It might be the well head for a spring.’ She remembered the water seeping into the hole where they had retrieved the bones.

  ‘Have you ever been around the back of the house?’

  She frowned. ‘I’ve had no need to. We were focused on the burial itself.’

  ‘There’s a broad terrace, some overgrown shrubs and more grass. It’s just as overgrown as the front. It must have looked down towards the river at one time. It’s got trees fifteen, twenty feet high all over it, and a lot of gorse.’

  ‘OK.’ She couldn’t work out what Felix was trying to tell her. ‘So?’

  ‘There’s an abandoned swimming pool around the back, covered in plastic, half filled with rainwater.’

  ‘So Lara could have been around the back of the house, lost her camera in the pool? That means someone retrieved it later and left it where the police or public might find it.’

  ‘If I’d killed a girl I would want to refocus the police away from the area,’ Felix said. ‘It was found about a mile away.’

  Sage turned to the water analysis. ‘Low nitrates,’ she said. ‘Much less than you would find in pond water. No chlorine, so not drinking water or pool water. Even if a swimming pool had been neglected, algae would have produced nitrates, and lots of organics would have accumulated. I don’t know much about rainwater, but there’s very low carbonic acid, too.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’ Felix stretched his feet back and looked up at the sky. ‘Are you talking about acid rain?’

  ‘Basically, as rain falls through the atmosphere it dissolves small amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and sulphur oxides too. They all create a slight acidity. But the pH of this is almost neutral, even slightly alkaline.’

  ‘So, is it purified water?’

  She ran through the other results. ‘Any filtering and buffering system would clean out some of the contaminants but they would also have picked up – these things.’ The tiny green shapes had been photographed under a microscope. ‘They don’t look like any pollen I recognise. I know a bit about common ones found in peat and soil, but nothing like these.’ There were searchable databases she could look at. ‘I’d better get back to my mouldy leaves,’ she said, without enthusiasm. ‘Then I’m going to reward myself by asking Alistair Chorleigh if I can have a look at the finds Peter and Edwin dug out of that barrow.’