‘Coffee?’ asks Spens, pulling out a chair for Nelson. ‘This machine does a tolerable cappuccino.’
‘Just black will be grand, thanks.’
To complete the picture, as Spens busies himself with the coffee, the perfect woman walks in from the garden. A gleam of honey-blonde hair, a flash of blue eyes, a general impression of suntan and scent and expensive clothes and the vision is holding out its hand to Nelson.
‘My wife Marion,’ says Spens shortly.
Marion wasn’t at the medieval party (Nelson doesn’t blame her) so this is Nelson’s first meeting with Mrs Spens. His first thought is – never trust a man with a beautiful wife. He should know; he has one himself.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ says Marion Spens. Close up, her face is almost too perfect, the contours too smooth, everything too symmetrical. She looks nervous too, glancing at Edward before she speaks.
‘Harry is just here to ask questions about Woolmarket Street,’ says Spens heartily.
‘They’ve found a body haven’t they?’ says Marion with a quick flicker of eyes towards her husband. ‘Roddy told me.’
‘Roddy?’ As far as Nelson knows, the Spens children are called Sebastian and Flora. Typical Newmarket Road names.
‘My father, Roderick. Mad keen on history.’
‘He said the body could be medieval,’ offers Marion.
‘I’m afraid it’s far more recent than that,’ says Nelson. ‘I’d like to ask a few questions about your family’s ownership of the house.’ He is perfectly happy to talk in front of Marion. He has a feeling that she will give more away than her husband. Edward, it seems, has other ideas.
‘No problem. Bring your coffee and we’ll go through into the study. Excuse us, darling.’
The study is, of course, decorated in leather and dark wood. The bookcase displays pristine hardbacks and well-thumbed paperbacks. The walls are the colour of underdone roast beef.
Spens sits himself behind the desk, Nelson takes what is obviously the visitor’s chair. Family photographs grin up at him, on the wall is a picture of a rugby team. Nelson is willing to bet that Spens is in the middle, holding the trophy.
‘Well, Harry, this is all very mysterious.’
‘Not at all, Mr Spens. Just following a line of enquiry. Your family lived at the house in Woolmarket Street from…’
‘From 1850. It was built by my great-great-grandfather Walter Spens.’
‘I’m interested in the years between 1949 and 1955. Who would have been living in the house at that time?’
‘My grandfather, Christopher Spens, his wife Rosemary and their children Roderick and Annabelle.’
‘And Roderick is your father?’
‘Sir Roderick. Yes.’
‘I’d like to talk to him. Does he live locally?’
Edward pauses, fiddling with an executive toy on the desk. ‘Well, actually he lives with us.’
‘He does?’ Wondering why on earth Spens didn’t mention this before, Nelson asks, ‘Is he in?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Could I speak to him?’
‘Of course.’ But Spens doesn’t move. Finally he says, ‘My father is in the first stages of senile dementia. He can seem lucid, very lucid, but he gets confused very easily. And when he gets confused he gets… upset.’
‘I understand,’ says Nelson, though he doesn’t really. He has never met anyone with dementia and can’t imagine what it would be like living with someone who is slowly losing their sense of themselves. It makes him see Edward and Marion in a rather different light. ‘Must be hard,’ he offers.
‘Yes,’ Spens agrees. ‘Hardest on Marion because she’s at home more. Sometimes, what with my father and the children… though we have an au pair, Croatian girl, very good. And Dad keeps himself busy, has the Conservative Association, the Historical Society, still plays bowls. He’s a silver surfer too. Better with new technology than I am. He’s not an invalid yet.’
The ‘yet’ hangs on the air because the one thing Nelson does know about dementia is that it is irreversible.
‘I’ll get him for you,’ says Edward. He smiles slightly. ‘He’ll probably be pleased. He loves talking about the old days.’
This is certainly true though Edward Spens hadn’t mentioned that the old days included Ancient Rome, the Counter Reformation and the Crimean War. When he can get a word in, Nelson asks, ‘Sir Roderick, do you remember your years at Woolmarket Street?’
‘Remember them?’ Roderick looks at him sharply from under bushy white eyebrows. ‘Of course I do. I remember everything, don’t I, Edward?’ Edward agrees that he does.
‘You would have been, how old?’
‘I was born in 1938. I lived at the house until I left for Cambridge, when I was eighteen.’
That makes him seventy, Nelson calculates. No great age these days. His own mother has recently taken up line-dancing at seventy-three. Roderick Spens could be a decade older.
‘You lived with your parents?’
‘Yes, my father was the Headmaster of St Saviours on Waterloo Road. He taught classics as well.’
‘The school’s not there any more, is it?’
‘No, it closed sometime in the sixties. Great shame. It was an excellent school.’
‘Did you go there?’
‘Yes, it was my father’s school, y’see.’ He looks beadily at Nelson as if suspecting a trap. ‘My mother wanted me to go to Eton but m’father insisted. His word was law in our house.’
Nelson tries, and fails, to imagine one of his daughters saying the same about him. ‘And your sister… Annabelle. Did she go there too?’
Roderick looks confused. ‘Annabelle?’
Edward Spens cuts in. ‘It’s all right, Dad.’ He turns to Nelson. ‘My father still gets upset when he talks about her. She died young, you see.’
‘How young?’ asks Nelson, his antenna up.
‘Five or six, I believe.’
CHAPTER 21
Ruth is at Woolmarket Street. The builders are starting work again tomorrow and she wants to collect the rest of the finds. Not that the other trenches have turned up anything very exciting – some more pottery, some glass, a few coins. But there might be something interesting there and she needs to check that the site is tidy. That’s her job as lead archaeologist. It’s another warm day and it’s surprising how innocuous the site looks in the sunlight. Nevertheless, Ruth finds herself looking over her shoulder every few minutes and jumping when a squirrel runs across the wall in front of her.
Although she still has a plaster stuck rather rakishly over one eye, Ruth feels remarkably well after Saturday’s trauma. The boy doctor had told her not to be alone in the night, ‘in case you fall into a coma’ he explained cheerfully, but Ruth had been so exhausted that she went to bed at nine and slept beautifully with only Flint for company. She’s sure that it was the conversation with Nelson that caused her to sleep so peacefully. He knows. He may be agonised and conflicted and all the rest of it, he may now drive her mad by interfering at every stage in the pregnancy, but at least he knows. She is no longer entirely on her own. And this morning she had a civil, if stilted, conversation with her mother. Ruth didn’t mention any of the events of the last few weeks but assured her mother that she was no longer feeling sick, had more energy, was not doing so much awful digging. ‘I sailed through both my pregnancies,’ said her mother smugly and Ruth is only too happy to allow her this victory.
The site is still deserted. Ruth had half expected to see Irish Ted and Trace. There is still some work to do back-filling trenches, though maybe they have decided not to bother in view of the fact that the house is shortly to be razed to the ground. Ruth collects the finds from the foreman’s hut. No sign of him either, thank goodness. She looks across at the arch silhouetted against the blue sky. Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit. She must remember to ask Nelson to check when the arch was built. It seems a strange, grandiose thing to find in a private house. Ruth is reminded of Roman generals b
eing granted triumphal arches when they achieved great victories. She thinks of a trip she and Shona took to Rome a few years ago. The arch of Titus in the Roman forum, decorated with reliefs illustrating Titus’s victory against the rebellious Jews. She remembers reading that it is meant to be impossible for a Jew to pass through the arch. ‘I can do it,’ Shona had exclaimed, running laughing underneath. ‘You’re not Jewish,’ Ruth had objected. But Shona had been in the midst of an affair with a Jewish law lecturer and considered that this counted.
She should have another look at the trench where the cat was found but something makes her wary about going into the grounds, so far away from the main road. There is something heavy, something watchful, about the silence. Don’t be silly, she tells herself, it’s broad daylight. What can possibly hurt you? She shoulders her backpack and picks her way through the rubble, past the outhouses and into what was once the back garden. Was this ever the happy place that Kevin Davies remembers? Ruth tries to imagine children running laughing through the garden, swinging on the tree, throwing pennies in the wishing well. No, the well was covered up by then. She approaches the well now and looks inside. A dank, unpleasant smell meets her and she straightens up hastily. When was the well covered? That’s another question for Nelson. The skulls must have been put in the well before the concrete cap was put in place. Skulls in a well. The words have a crazy, topsy-turvy sound, like a nightmare nursery rhyme. She thinks of the children on the beach. Ding Dong Dell.
The cat’s trench is by the outer wall, bulging now with age. This is the boundary. Terminus, the God of boundaries. ‘I pray to him whenever I go to Heathrow,’ Nelson had said when he heard the name. She can’t imagine Nelson on holiday somehow. She is sure that Michelle insists on somewhere sun-kissed and glamorous whereas Nelson is more suited to wilder, colder places – the Yorkshire moors, perhaps, or the Scottish Highlands. She can just picture him up to his waist in some freezing loch.
Ruth stands up, easing her back. It is really hot now and the air is still. She climbs out of the trench and walks along by the outer wall. The new buildings are obviously going to come up right to the edge of the boundary. So much for spacious apartments. The modern walls look brash and confident against the crumbling flint of the originals. There are still some apple trees here though, and, in the far corner of the site, Ruth finds gooseberry and redcurrant bushes choked with thistles and dusty with builder’s dirt. Blackberries too, the brambles reaching out like tiny, spiteful fingers. The flowers haven’t set yet and, by the time they are berries, these bushes will have been ripped out to make room for ‘spacious landscaped gardens with water features’.
‘Blackberry and apple pie,’ says a voice, ‘now there’s a dish fit for a king.’
Ruth wheels round. An elderly man in a dark suit is standing smiling at her. He has an unripe apple in his hand and, for one mad moment, Ruth thinks of Adam in the Garden of Eden. An older, sadder Adam come to mourn the devastation of paradise. Then she sees the clerical collar and her brain clicks into gear.
‘Father Hennessey?’
‘Yes.’ The man holds out his hand. ‘You have the advantage of me, I’m afraid.’
‘Ruth Galloway. I’m an archaeologist.’
‘An archaeologist?’
‘I specialise in forensics.’
‘Ah,’ says Hennessey, understanding. ‘You’re involved in this sorry affair then.’
‘Yes.’
Father Hennessey sighs. From Nelson’s description, Ruth imagined that he would be a more aggressive presence, like one of the fire and brimstone preachers she remembers from her childhood. This man just looks sad.
‘The building work’s more advanced than I thought it would be,’ he says. ‘How on earth have they managed to cram so much onto one site?’
‘By making everything extremely small,’ says Ruth drily. ‘The whole of one of these flats could probably fit into the drawing room of the original house.’
‘You’re right there,’ says Hennessey, ‘this was a grand house once.’
They walk back through the garden. Hennessey stops once to look at a fallen tree, patting its stump sadly. It is hotter than ever. Thunder weather, Ruth thinks. Her shirt is sticking to her back and her feet seem to have melted and are spilling over the sides of her shoes. She longs to be lying down.
When they reach the front of the house, Hennessey looks up at the stone archway.
‘Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit. Everything changes, nothing is destroyed.’
‘The arch was there in your time then?’
‘Yes. It’s a folly, of course, but a rather magnificent one. And I always thought the words quite appropriate. After all, if you’re a Christian, you believe that death itself is just a change, not destruction.’
Ruth says nothing. Death is death as far as she is concerned. There is no way of cheating death except, perhaps, by having a child. But Hennessey’s words remind her of something. Max, on the beach with the Imbolc bonfire behind him, talking about Janus. ‘He’s not just the god of doorways but of any time of transition and change, of progression from one condition to another.’ The ultimate transition, from life to death.
‘Miss Galloway,’ Hennessey’s soft Irish voice cuts into her thoughts, ‘I wonder if you can show me… where you found the body.’
‘All right. And it’s Ruth.’ She hates to be called ‘Miss’ and Dr Galloway seems too formal somehow.
Part of the front wall still stands, the steps and the stone portico. Was this from the same period as the arch? It has a similar grandiose feel. A folly, the priest had said. The words reverberate uneasily in Ruth’s head.
‘Careful here,’ she says as they go through the doorway. On the other side, the ledge of black and white tiles is still there. It will be the last thing to go, thinks Ruth. The last link to the old house.
‘This way.’ She leads Hennessey along the ledge. As they climb down into the trench, he stumbles and almost falls.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine.’ But he is breathing heavily. He must be in his late seventies or even eighties, Ruth thinks.
Ruth points to the pile of earth in front of her. ‘The body was buried directly under the doorstep. We’ve removed that. We tried to leave everything else undisturbed.’ She looks at Hennessey’s face. ‘We’re very careful,’ she finds herself explaining, ‘very respectful.’
Hennessey’s lips move silently for a second. Is he praying? Then he says, ‘Buried under the doorstep, you say?’
‘Yes.’ She doesn’t mention the foetal position.
‘And the skull was in the well?’
‘That’s right.’
Hennessey is silent for a few minutes and then he says, ‘Would you mind if I said a prayer?’
‘Go ahead.’ Ruth backs away. She finds public prayer embarrassing at the best of times but to be trapped in a trench with someone chanting in Latin and waving incense – it’s her worst nightmare.
However Hennessey’s prayer turns out to be mercifully short, the words muttered and not (as far as Ruth can tell) in Latin. At the end he takes a small bottle from his pocket and sprinkles water onto the earth.
‘Holy water,’ he explains. He looks at Ruth’s face. ‘You’re not a Catholic?’ He sounds amused.
‘No. My parents are Christians but I’m not… anything.’
‘Oh, you’re something, Ruth Galloway,’ says Father Hennessey. He looks at her for a second and Ruth has the strangest feeling that he knows her very well, almost better than she knows herself. But then the moment passes and Hennessey says briskly, ‘I’m parched. Do you fancy a cup of coffee?’
Nelson is leaving the museum when he gets a call from Judy.
‘I’ve got Annabelle Spens’ death certificate, boss.’
‘Good. Anything interesting?’
He hears her rustling paper and he thinks of his father’s death certificate, those few stilted words encompassing all the pain and grief. His father’s cause of death had bee
n ‘myocardial infarction’. At the time he had no idea what that meant.
‘Date and place of death,’ reads Judy. ‘24 May 1952, Woolmarket House, Woolmarket Street, Norwich. Cause of death: Scarlet fever. Children don’t get that any more do they?’
‘They get it,’ says Nelson, ‘they just don’t die of it.’ He stops as a party of schoolchildren stream past him, holding photocopied worksheets and trying to trip each other up.
‘She died at home,’ Judy is saying. ‘How come she wasn’t in hospital?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps it was more usual to nurse children at home in those days.’
‘But they had money, they could afford health care. This was before the NHS, wasn’t it?’
‘Early days of the NHS.’
The children push through the glass doors of the museum. He can hear their teacher telling them that they’re going to be divided into groups. ‘You’re in my group, Ryan.’ That’s your day ruined, Ryan, you poor sod.
‘What about the certificate of interment?’ he asks.
‘Tanya’s getting it,’ says Judy, sounding slightly pissed off. ‘Boss, do you really think that Annabelle was buried in the house and not in a grave?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Nelson. ‘But there’s something odd about that house. There’s something odd about this whole case.’
He had been to see the curator, to ask how the foetus model could have escaped from the museum and ended up at Ruth’s feet in the trench in Swaffham. The curator had been perfectly pleasant but unable to offer any answers. The stages of development model had been taken down from display a few weeks ago (they had had some complaints from parents) and the components placed in the store room. Who had access? Well, any of the museum staff. The more valuable exhibits were kept in a safe but who would steal a plastic model of a baby? Who indeed?
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