by Amy Myers
So where now? It was all very well to decide to track down Frank Watson, but where should I start, as the House of Lamb’s door had been gently but firmly shut? I wasn’t the only person after Watson. At the slightest hint of his whereabouts, his former partners in crime would be on his trail long before me. So would the police. An unusually sympathetic Dave had conveyed the news to me that the file was still open although there had been no leads since a sighting in Rio in 1980. Should I begin with Vic Trent? No, he would have no more information than Tony did, so I put him way down my list of ‘jobs to do’.
And also featured on that list was Melody.
Over the next few days Daisy took to alternately texting me (with a mournful ‘missing Mel’ as a subtle reminder) and just ‘popping in’, as she put it. Nice as it was to see her bright face, it was driving me round the bend – and Len and Zoe were ahead of me.
It was the following Wednesday before there was a breakthrough of sorts – in the form of Dave.
‘There you are,’ he told me irritably and unnecessarily as he rang me at breakfast-time.
‘I am,’ I agreed.
‘I spend a lot of time running after you. This Morris Minor of yours …’
‘Of Daisy Croft’s, to be exact – and featuring in a murder case.’
‘Don’t I know it. First you, then Brandon after me. It’s back.’
I was knocked off balance. ‘What?’ I asked stupidly.
‘Back. Found. By my team.’
‘Where? The middle of the Hindu Kush?’ I, too, can do stroppy.
‘Wormslea Retirement home. Know it?’
I did. ‘Belinda Fever lives there.’
‘And that’s good?’ Dave barked impatiently.
‘It was she who gave the car to Daisy in the first place. Belinda’s her grandmother.’
‘Bully for Gran. Off her trolley, is she? Pinched it back?’
‘No and no.’
‘Either way, the job’s truly over this time, Jack. We take over now.’ He must have heard me gathering breath. ‘And if you’re about to pontificate that there’s something weird going on, save your breath. I agree. That’s why we’re taking over. You’re fired.’
Great. Could the day get worse? It could. What, I wondered wearily, was going on? I didn’t have long to wait for the next stage. A cloud of smoke rivalled only by Zoe’s Fiesta announced the arrival of Daisy in her Volvo.
‘Boss says I should come straightaway,’ she told me breathlessly. ‘He’ll make up the rolls for me. Let’s go.’
I was lost. ‘Where?’
‘Gran’s, of course! Melody’s there.’
Back on target. ‘Then so are the police.’
‘Why?’ she wailed. ‘They haven’t taken her away, have they?’
‘It’s a murder case, Daisy, and Melody is mixed up with it.’
‘But she’s mine.’ Her face was a study in indignation.
I took pity on her and unlocked the Alfa. ‘Hop in. I’ll take you up there. We might get there in time.’
‘For what?’
‘They’ll probably take her for tests.’
‘Get going, kiddo,’ she ordered me grimly as she slammed the Alfa door and fastened her seat belt. ‘First Justin, now the police. Time someone realized that car’s mine.’
With Daisy bouncing in anticipation beside me, even I began to get into the Melody mood as we swung through the lanes with the sun deigning to beam on us. I half expected Melody to have vanished again by the time we reached Wormslea and perhaps Daisy did too, because we both breathed a sigh of relief when we saw her pinky-grey curves parked in the gateway to the field opposite the home.
I was about to joke that the description of pinky-grey curves for Melody was highly suitable for a village called Wormslea, when I saw Belinda. She was standing grimly by Melody with her arms folded. The reason was not difficult to fathom. There was a low-leader just approaching from the lane to Bredgar and two police cars already parked there. Dave’s or Brandon’s men, I wondered. It had to be one of them with this speed and degree of response.
‘Can’t you do anything about this, Jack?’ Belinda demanded as Daisy flung her arms around her, sobbing at this new threat.
‘No,’ I said sadly. ‘I wish I could.’ Melody had been missing for nearly two weeks this time. Where had she been and why?
‘Why has she got to go?’ Daisy sobbed.
‘Checking for evidence,’ I tried to explain, not for the first time.
‘Evidence of what?’ Belinda said scornfully.
‘That,’ I said seriously, ‘is the question.’
I went over to talk to the police, introduced myself and enquired their own provenance. This made a difference. If they were Dave’s men, that meant one thing; if Brandon’s CID team, quite another. It meant Brandon was taking on the task of seeking alternative solutions to Carlos’s murder in earnest. Nevertheless, it opened up a can of pinky-grey worms and I would fairly and squarely be one of the fishermen. Whose men were they? They were Brandon’s.
When I returned to join Daisy and Belinda, Daisy said: ‘Well? What’s the answer?’
‘Not yet known,’ I said glibly, since it seemed a good catch-all answer. ‘There might be fingerprints, DNA and so on.’ Plus nastier things than that, but I decided not to elaborate.
Daisy looked at me in scorn. ‘Then they’ll arrest you. You touched her, didn’t you, when you found her in the barn, so your mitts will be plastered all over Melody. Anyway, that’s not the point. Melody’s mine. She’s, like, part of me.’
‘Does she mean more than Justin to you?’ I asked curiously.
She hesitated. ‘Yeah, well, there’s that. He’s OK is Justie. And his dad did lend me the old crock.’
‘Never call a car an old crock if you’re relying on it to get you home.’
‘There’s always you, Jack.’ She grinned at me.
Between Belinda and Daisy I didn’t get back to Frogs Hill until lunchtime, and even then it was a while before I had reassured Daisy sufficiently to persuade her to leave again in the ‘old crock’. I’d promised Len I would nip over to Headcorn on an errand for him, but Daisy’s departure had been even further delayed when she insisted we clamber over the fence at the end of my garden so that she could investigate the meadow beyond. It was mine and used to be rented out, but it’s been lying fallow for a couple of years and wild flowers have taken advantage of it to bloom in profusion. There were, Daisy assured me ecstatically, thousand upon thousand of ox-eye daisies there, and why had I not gone there to admire them? Everyone had a duty to do so, as they were named after her. To please her I did my duty by them, and it was indeed a world away from murder to consider how they flourished regardless however much mankind tried to stop them. Eva and Carlos vanished into the background of my mind as I wondered how many battles had been fought over the ground beneath our feet over the centuries. Poppies and ox-eye daisies grew where once warriors had fallen and armies had raped and pillaged.
My enjoyable detour had a good result in that had I gone out on the Headcorn mission (to pick up a spare radiator shell from a chum of Len’s) I would have missed the call from Wychwood House. It was from Ambrose Fairbourne’s son.
Dr Keith Fairbourne took after his late father with his academic, lean face and slight build, but there was a liveliness there that I had naturally never seen in Ambrose. A BMW estate was parked outside Wychwood House, which was a hopeful sign. Good cars often translate into likeable owners.
‘It’s good of you to come over,’ he welcomed me. ‘The police are fine but Josie suggested you could give me a broader picture now that things are calming down – somewhat,’ he added drily.
I uttered appropriate condolences as he ushered me through to the room where I had last seen the Charros and Ambrose together. ‘Is Josie living back here again?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Temporarily, at least. She’s out at the moment, but she’s coping, with Matt Wright’s help. Know him?’
I said
I did. Brandon had not mentioned Matt again, so I presumed he was not suspected of involvement in Ambrose’s murder. ‘Are you planning to move here?’ I asked Keith.
He grinned. ‘I’d have to get divorced first. My wife wouldn’t hear of it. She thinks the place is creepy.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I’m used to it, but I haven’t lived in Wychwood myself for a very long time. But at present I have to be here. There’s a lot to sort out, and Josie’s a great help.’
‘Have the police said when the funeral can take place?’
‘No idea. I hope soon because with the long vacation coming up I can act fairly speedily. You know, I still can’t believe he was murdered. Who would want to kill an old man with Alzheimer’s? Do you have any ideas? Josie explained the situation over your ex-wife and this other murder, and I’m sorry about that. Do you think there’s a link? The police won’t discuss it with me. Understandable, I suppose, but frustrating.’
‘Eva’s my very ex-wife, so I’m in the same position. It’s hard to believe she could be guilty, however.’ I hesitated over whether to elaborate on any possible connection between the two murders, but as Josie was a common factor I thought I should, although I would soft-pedal on the Charros. Keith Fairbourne listened intently.
‘So far the car is the only firm evidence of a link. The rest is theory.’
Keith blinked. ‘Car?’
‘A stolen Morris Minor. It was found here. Didn’t Josie or the police tell you?’
‘They may have done. I didn’t take it in, thanks to everything else going on. Is it important?’
‘It could be.’ I told him the whole story, and he heaved a sigh.
‘My parents were always crazy about the Morris Minor 1000. Do the police think it possible my father stole the one you found in the barn? He sold the one he had when my mother was alive and bought one of the newer models. One of the last batch, I think, but he switched to Renaults in the late seventies.’
‘It’s possible he stole the Moggy, although the state he was in makes it highly unlikely he could have planned the theft.’
Keith looked dubious. ‘He hadn’t driven for years, so he couldn’t have helped himself to it from very far away.’
‘It had a local owner.’
‘Ah. Did Josie know anything about it?’
‘She says not.’ I didn’t emphasize the ‘says’ but he took the point.
‘Equally unlikely that she would steal a car – she’s got a perfectly good Polo. Unless you think she stole it for my father’s sake?’
‘I doubt that.’
‘What happened to this car in the barn?’
‘It vanished and has now turned up again. Reasons not known.’
‘And its owner?’
‘A girl who works in the bakery at Burchett Forstal. Before that it belonged to Belinda Fever who used to run the May Tree Inn with her husband James from the late seventies until the mid-nineties. Did you know them?’
‘Only a dim recollection. My mother died in 1971, and I was brought up largely by my aunt in Canterbury as my father couldn’t cart a six year old around wherever he decided to dig. I came here quite often as a child, but pubs weren’t included in the entertainment.’
‘You don’t remember the Carlos and the Charros band then? It was formed of local people in 1987 and collapsed in 1991.’
‘I was at university doing my PhD in 1987 so those years come under the “dim recollection” heading.’ A sudden smile. ‘I do remember a sexy barmaid – Josie’s mother, I understand. So, tell me, Jack, what do the May Tree and Morris Minor have to do with my father’s death?’
‘Not yet known,’ I admitted. ‘I suppose this is rather like a dig. You go down through the layers, sort out the finds and hope you’ve struck gold.’
‘A bad comparison.’ He grinned. ‘Gold is the metal least affected by its surroundings. You know it almost as soon as you see it. I imagine that isn’t the case with the murders of my father and this Carlos, which is why the context is vital.’
He was right. With Ambrose’s death a whole new field was opening up, and whether or not it had any relevance to Carlos’s death was a priority task. I might have to dig deep but this, I thought, was the man who might give me some answers. ‘Your father seems to be chiefly known for the hoard he found in Suffolk, so why was it he so constantly talked of Eastry? At least in latter times.’
He grimaced. ‘Poor old dad also assumed he was king of Kent in latter times.’
‘I know.’ I didn’t think politic to tell him how. ‘Why Eastry though, when as far as I can see none of the digs there have produced evidence either way that Egbert’s royal palace was there, only that Eastry had a gathering point at Highborough Hill and that there was an Anglo-Saxon settlement there?’
‘Easy one,’ Keith said promptly. ‘Dad was convinced the palace was at Eastry, despite the absence of proof, but it wasn’t the palace that he was after. It was Egbert’s grave and grave goods. Egbert is thought to have been killed by an arrow in July 673. He was a staunch Christian, murderer or not, but in the seventh century the two religions, old and new, would still have been overlapping. Egbert’s father had issued a decree outlawing paganism and its rites, but that doesn’t mean the two didn’t carry on side by side for a while, unofficially. The probability is that Egbert was buried in what was known as St Mary’s Oratory, a chapel beside the first St Augustine abbey church in Canterbury, both of which then disappeared under the present cathedral. His father was buried in St Mary’s, and his great forefather Ethelbert had specifically built the abbey church for the bodies of the kings of Kent as well as the archbishops.’
‘So where does Eastry come in?’
‘The village is so close to Woodnesborough, the heart of the old Viking religion, that my father believed there might also have been a second burial in Eastry with Viking rites as a “just-in-case” measure – although this second burial would probably only have had a single bone or other such relic together with the grave goods which would buy him his passage to Valhalla according to Viking ritual.’
‘Overlapping of the two religions, yes, but this sounds a step too far,’ I commented.
‘I thought so too. But that’s the excitement of archaeology. We can never know for sure what happened, only degrees of probability.’
‘So Ambrose was focusing on the four known Anglo-Saxon graveyards in Eastry?’
‘No way. Our Egbert was a king and had to be buried like one, if the old gods were to allow him in.’
‘Which meant?’
‘Heard of ley lines?’
‘Everyone has, I imagine. And your father –’ I suddenly remembered – ‘mentioned one once. Do they exist though?’
‘Who can be sure? The evidence seems strong enough. Dad was brought up by my grandfather on Alfred Watkins. Watkins was no archaeologist by training, but when he was sixty-five he came up with the theory of the ley system, his name for ancient trackways, which were punctuated at sight-line points with mounds, castles, churches etc., and he published two books on it in the early 1920s. The theory sounds reasonable enough, but it shook the archaeological world up like a mini Galileo round-earth concept. Mounds, moats, beacons and mark stones fall into straight lines, interconnected at vital points, with the traces of old trackways still to be seen. Mounds, Jack, mounds.’
‘There was a track running through Eastry?’
‘My father believed so. The Roman road runs straight through the village of course, but the track he thought existed would have connected the churches of Eastry, Northbourne and Great Mongeham; there’s an intersection of several tracks at that point, one probably leading to Upper Deal, which in those days was much closer to the sea than it is now.’
‘And the churches align?’
‘Yes and no. The current Eastry Church, which is early thirteenth century, is at the side of the old manor house, Eastry Court. A straight line from the church to the current Great Mongeham church doesn’t connect with
the current Northbourne church though. What it does go through is Northbourne Court, where there was an old Augustinian chapel or abbey. According to William Thorne’s Chronicle of St Augustine’s, the land was given to it by Egbert’s forefathers in 618.’
Interesting, but time to get back to Egbert. ‘But the mound? I don’t see how a track between the Christian churches fits with a Viking burial.’
‘Because the tracks preceded Christianity, and the burial mounds played an important part on them. Dad at first thought Egbert’s mound would be on Highborough Hill, which was towards Woodnesborough, and of course the word borough stems from barrow. That theory would fit nicely with the Time Team 2006 dig – which Dad was too far gone to appreciate – but it didn’t work out, and in any case Dad had already changed his mind over Highborough. He believed Egbert’s grave was on the track to the south-east of the village, which ran from Eastry along the rising ground known as the Lynch and then continued on to Northbourne. He picked on a stretch of it called Woodlea Hill, which he discovered was once called Kinlea Hill – which suggested a king’s mound to Dad. All he had to do was find the grave.’
‘Did he dig there?’
‘Of course. Woodlea covers quite a long area of hillside, and a mound isn’t necessarily at the highest point but on the slopes. When he and my mother were hunting for Egbert’s grave, the technology wasn’t as good as it is now, but even so he found it – or so he thought. But the dig produced nothing and he dug elsewhere. Again nothing. Whenever I asked after that, he’d say: “It’s there, Keith, it’s there all right,” but so far as I know he never did find it. That’s the reason that when the Alzheimer’s took hold Eastry became the one subject on which he was fixated.’
‘Has that left you to take over from him?’
Another grimace. ‘No. I’m a Roman man, and as a side issue I have to confess to a fascination with King Arthur, so far as that’s possible. There are lots of later legends about Arthur in Kent, but less evidence. A major monastic library was burnt down in the so-called Dark Ages, and who knows what treasures disappeared with it? That’s my fantasy, just as Dad’s was Eastry.’ Keith paused. ‘But I can’t see that this can have any bearing on Dad’s death, unless you think he did find his treasure and was sitting on it. If so, let me disillusion you. He was a highly moral man of firm beliefs where archaeology and buried treasure were concerned.’
