Colin Doyle had been working at Lord Haysham’s and found the medallion on the bog body that morning. Had it caught his eye or was there something about the body that had caused him to look for the medallion? If the latter was the case, then was it right to think he had taken the job at Haysham’s because he knew the discovery of the bridge would also lead to the discovery of the body? (When did Doyle take the job at Haysham’s?)
Having grabbed the medallion, Doyle then delivered it to the church tower. Somehow. For some reason.
Then he went to his garage, composed a suicide note that was uncannily similar to an imaginary discussion with Father Gilbert, and killed himself.
Father Gilbert sighed deeply. Finding the medallion had pushed Doyle to the ultimate act of self-absorption. How could a piece of jewellery lead to that level of despair?
The priest lowered his head and said a prayer for the soul of Colin Doyle.
* * *
Father Gilbert walked down a narrow hallway past a couple of rooms designated for children’s education. The walls were adorned with boards filled with drawings and posters with cute Christian sayings, usually accompanied by fuzzy kittens. He reached a meeting room that doubled as the church library. Bookshelves covered the walls while a rectangular table sat in the centre. Half a dozen chairs lined each side of the table. With the care of a hostess setting the table for Sunday dinner guests, Mrs Mayhew had placed the committee agenda at each chair.
He sat at the chair at the head of the table. As the committee members filed in, he glanced over the brief agenda. Old business: the tower. New business: Mr Urquhart wanted to say a few words about the ongoing flooding in the crypt.
Father Gilbert directed Benson to sit at his right. Mrs Mayhew sat down to his left, placed the notepad squarely in front of her, and then quickly checked her collar and blouse to be sure they hadn’t gone askew.
David Todd took a chair at the opposite end of the table. Lord Haysham arrived late, ignored the chairs closest to David Todd, and sat down near to Mrs Mayhew. Haysham had changed from his tweeds into a black cardigan, grey trousers, and an open-necked white shirt.
Father Gilbert said nothing about the bog body at Lord Haysham’s estate, nor did he bring up Colin Doyle’s suicide. He began with a brief prayer and then led them in the well-worn discussion about the tower, including a budget for repairs, fund-raising, and the process for finding the contractor to do the job – the sorts of things that left everyone but Henry Locksmoor, the church accountant, glassy-eyed and slack-jawed.
Mr Urquhart then talked about the flooding of the crypt, which truly was old business, but had come around again for its annual revisit. Mr Urquhart was now convinced that the tower might be subsiding because of water damage below the ground.
David Todd had been attentive and polite during the meeting. But the mention of the flooding brought out the fire in him again. “Has anyone investigated whether or not the flooding in the crypt may be due to someone draining his land and saturating the surrounding area with water?”
Lord Haysham was unperturbed. “There’s no evidence that the work on my land is affecting the church or any other building in Stonebridge.”
Todd ignored Haysham and said to Father Gilbert, “Look at the pond down by the common. Or the path along the stream. You can hardly cycle there for all the mud. Ask Jack Ramsey. His farm has suffered because of it.”
“Unsubstantiated,” Haysham said coolly.
“For you,” Todd said. “The entire town could disappear into a sinkhole and you wouldn’t notice because of your greed.”
“David, please,” Father Gilbert said. He suddenly felt a weariness deep in his bones.
Mr Urquhart said, “It’s likely the water damage is due to all the rain we’ve had this spring.”
“There you are,” Lord Haysham said.
Todd snorted. “It doesn’t let you off the hook. Your selfish pursuit of—”
“David!” Father Gilbert snapped. “Sanctuary, please! None of that kind of ranting here.”
Todd looked at Father Gilbert for a moment. Then, with an affected calmness and formality, he said: “As a member of this church, I have to insist that Lord Haysham instructs his engineers to divert the marsh-water in a manner less detrimental to our church and community.”
Haysham folded his arms and let out a harrumph.
“You can have that conversation somewhere else,” Father Gilbert said with finality.
The meeting ended after a discussion about how to properly assess the crypt’s flooding. David Todd left quickly. The others chatted as they drifted out.
Lord Haysham lingered long enough for the room to clear.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with the two of you,” Father Gilbert said.
“He started it,” Haysham replied, with a boyish smirk. Then he leaned in close and said, “Would you like to see the bog body up close?”
CHAPTER 9
As he walked to Benson’s Mini Cooper, Father Gilbert glanced to the far end of the church car park. Lord Haysham had parked under the shade of an oak tree and was nearing his car when David Todd stepped out from behind the tree. He said something to Haysham. Haysham stopped at the driver’s door, but didn’t open it. He responded. Todd came closer. Their postures and hand-gestures as they talked suggested something other than their usual tension.
Benson also saw the two men and asked, “Should you intervene?”
Father Gilbert reached for the passenger door. “Let them work it out,” he said. But he kept his eye on them as Benson navigated the car out onto the road. There was something about the expressions on the men’s faces that told Father Gilbert they weren’t discussing land development or property management. It was a worried conversation between two men who had a common problem they weren’t sure how to solve. Conspiratorial, was the word Father Gilbert would have used to describe the scene.
“What does David Todd actually do?” Benson asked.
“He sells houses and land,” Father Gilbert said. “Like an estate agent at times, but more like an investor or a broker or something like that. It’s always been fuzzy to me.”
“Wouldn’t that make him more agreeable to land development?”
“One would think,” Father Gilbert said. “But that would imply a certain reasonableness behind his thinking. The argument between the Todds and the Haysham family goes back too far for reasonableness.”
Father Gilbert fought his growing irritation with both men. Each grated on his nerves in one way or another. Haysham’s attitude exuded a certain smugness, the superiority of the wealthy over the ignorant poor. Todd’s attitude, on the other hand, conveyed a working-class arrogance, militant and belligerent as he spouted outdated phrases from a book on social justice he’d probably read at college.
Ironically, both men presented a false front. Haysham privately suggested a loathing for his inherited wealth and the snobbery of his peers. There were times when Father Gilbert was certain he would have enjoyed an entirely different life. And David Todd was not working-class at all, having been raised in an upper-middle-class family. His hatred for Haysham seemed more like an addiction than a conviction. If Father Gilbert had believed in reincarnation, he could easily imagine the two men as souls replaying the same battle over and over again throughout time.
Benson drove them south to Southaven – a modest city on the south coast. Its glory days had been centred around shipbuilding and shipping, the docks busy with incoming and outgoing goods. Now the docks contained office buildings and luxury flats. The ships were mostly gone, apart from a renovated eighteenth-century warship for the tourists. Ferries now catered for people travelling across to France.
The coroner’s office and mortuary were tucked in an industrial complex that had been taken over by local law enforcement. Father Gilbert and Benson signed in at a glass-enclosed front desk. A young assistant, who couldn’t take her eyes off their clerical collars, led them back to a small meeting room. On one wall was
a wide window looking into a room of fluorescent lighting and stainless steel – a lab for post-mortems.
The standard surgical instruments were there. Long, sharp, functional. And the drills, both electrical and manual. Father Gilbert shuddered. He had seen his fair share of autopsies without an incident of vomiting or fainting. But the drills, their noises, and their purposes had brought him close.
The bog body lay on a steel gurney surrounded by trays of small brushes, scrapers, and bottles labelled as distilled water. Father Gilbert remembered seeing a documentary on television about the process. The distilled water was used to spray the peat from the body. The small brushes and scrapers were then used to clear other sections of the corpse. It was a painstaking process. He assumed the body would have to be carefully scrutinized on the outside before they cut it open to see what was inside.
Father Gilbert stepped closer to the window. Brown and shrivelled, the corpse faced him, drawn up into a foetal position. It was dressed in a collarless shirt, an overcoat, and breeches with corroded buckles just below the knee. One wrinkled leg was covered with a riding boot. The other leg showed exposed leather-like skin down to the shackle. The ankle was so thin, it was a wonder the shackle hadn’t slid off. The rusted chain that had attached the leg to the crate of cannonballs was now free of both and sat on a smaller table. The crate wasn’t to be seen. There was something about the position of the corpse – the way the hip lay – that struck Father Gilbert as odd, as if the victim had a deformity.
The features of the face were shockingly distinct. It was stretched in that grotesque way mummified faces often are: the eyes closed and the mouth constricted in a permanent scream. The nose was slightly pressed down and angled to one side. Father Gilbert could see the eyebrows, even the crow’s feet around the eyes. The hair was matted and chocolate-coloured, probably stained by the peat.
Father Gilbert eyed the corpse from head to toe. He stopped at the exposed foot and wondered where the second boot had gone.
A woman in a white lab coat entered the autopsy room and, without looking at them, sat down on a stool next to a counter. She typed quickly on a laptop, then pressed her eyes against a microscope.
The door to the meeting room opened. Professor Braddock entered, carrying a battered leather briefcase. He eyed the two priests with obvious disappointment. “I thought Lord Haysham was here,” he said.
“He’s on his way,” Father Gilbert said.
The professor looked them over again. “Haven’t I seen you before? You were at the site where the body was found.”
“That’s right.” Father Gilbert made introductions.
Braddock briefly shook their hands, then gave Father Gilbert a fresh look. “You found the medallion, too, I heard. At the church.”
“On the roof of the tower.”
“That’s a confounded thing,” Braddock said. “How did it get from the site to your church?”
“That’s a very good question.” Father Gilbert gestured towards the corpse in the other room. “Have you had much success?”
“I’ll save my preliminary findings for Lord Haysham and the Chief Constable,” he said and moved to an empty bulletin board covering part of the wall. The professor retrieved papers and photos from the briefcase and began pinning them to the board.
“May I look?” Father Gilbert asked.
“They may not make any sense to you,” the professor said.
“Oh, go on. Give me a try.” Father Gilbert stepped over to the board. Benson joined him.
The photos showed the bog body from various angles, with closeups of the skull. A long slender gash was visible on the left side of the head, just below the crown and above the ear.
“Tell me, Professor: how is it possible for bodies to be preserved in peat?” Benson asked. “Wouldn’t peat speed up decomposition rather than hinder it?”
“There’ve been several theories about that,” Braddock began, clicking into teacher mode. “The key ingredient in peat is a moss called sphagnum. It dies and releases other substances which eventually get turned into humic acid.”
“What does humic acid do?” Benson asked.
“All sorts of strange things. It makes the bones go soft so that they bend, stretch, break, or even flatten under the weight of the bog. That’s why they sometimes look distorted. And the humic acids also mess around with the skin, slowing down the decaying process and turning it brown. Something to do with the nitrogen in the flesh. But there remains the question of why some bodies are almost perfectly preserved while others are badly decayed.”
Benson rubbed his chin thoughtfully, clearly playing the role of the inquisitive student. “I remember reading an article about that. Two sixteen-year-old Irish girls—”
“Oh yes. Them,” said Braddock, not to be outdone by a layman. “They were interested in the Lindow Man. You know about the Lindow Man, I assume.”
“A little,” Benson said.
Braddock nodded, as if that was enough to proceed. “Most experts thought he was probably a sacrifice victim – part of a Druidic rite. Like everyone else, the two Irish girls wondered why he was so well preserved when other bodies found in the vicinity weren’t. So they tried an experiment using stillborn pigs from a local farm. The girls picked several bog sites that had the same chemical make-up for preservation – low oxygen, antiseptic properties – and dropped the pigs in. They waited, I think, six or seven months and then dug the pigs up. They clearly had too much time on their hands.”
“What did they find – besides bacon?” Benson asked.
Braddock looked at the priest with disdain. “Some of the pigs were very well preserved while some of the others had decayed. So the two girls went further. They experimented to account for the differences. What they figured out, over time, was that the state of preservation was directly related to the length of time between the death of the pigs and their burial. In other words, if the body was dumped in the bog immediately after the subject died, then it would probably be well preserved. If, however, there was more time for decay before the body was put in the bog, then it would have greater degrees of decay in the peat.”
Benson gave an aha expression. “The peat works as a preservative in one instance and an accelerator in the other.”
Braddock nodded. “The girls won several awards. And archaeologists and forensic experts are still following up on their work.”
“I’m sure those girls were a lot of fun on a date,” Benson said.
Braddock gave a thin smile. “At sixteen I was trying to figure out how to kiss Diana Hamilton, not discover the secrets of decaying bodies. That came later.”
“The kiss or discovering secrets?” Benson asked.
Braddock snorted.
Father Gilbert thought about what he was doing at the age of sixteen. Obsessing about becoming a detective and dating Katherine Donovan, he recalled. The thought of Katherine and how their relationship had played out made him frown. He pushed the memory aside.
The professor pinned up photos of the medallion. The close-ups brought out the details. Some of the dirt had been removed. The engraved inscription was still worn, but clearer than it had been.
Benson moved in close and read, “Rex regum et Dominus universorum.”
“Roughly translated: King of Kings, Lord of the Universe,” Braddock announced.
“Or ‘Lord of Lords’,” Benson said.
Just then Lord Haysham walked in with Carol Grant, looking every bit as frumpy as she had earlier in the day, even without the waders. Chief Constable James Macaulay, a tall, white-haired, square-jawed man in police uniform, followed her. A younger man in a plain suit trailed behind them both. He wore a stony expression, all business.
“Sorry we’re late,” Lord Haysham said. He offered introductions around the room. The younger man, whom Father Gilbert had met on some unremembered occasion, was Detective Inspector Alexander Wilton. He was related to a parishioner of St Mark’s.
The Chief Constable turned to
Braddock. “We were told you have preliminary findings from the so-called bog body.” His cavernous voice boomed in the small meeting room.
“Only the most basic information,” Braddock said. “It will take some time to do all we need to do with that corpse.”
“But you are moving quickly,” Lord Haysham prodded.
Father Gilbert noted the look between Haysham and Braddock. Delays with draining the marsh – and the subsequent development of the land – could cost Haysham a lot of money. He wondered if Lord Haysham had offered Braddock a substantial grant or a donation to the University to hurry things along.
“So, what do you have?” Macaulay asked.
Braddock stepped over to the board of photographs. He pointed to the various images as he spoke. “The body, at least as much as we’ve uncovered, appears to be perfectly mummified. Eighteenth century, based on the clothes. I’d guess his age to be around thirty-five years at the time of death.”
“How did he die?” Lord Haysham asked.
“A blow to the head.” Braddock pointed to the close-up of the gash.
“Weapon?” asked DI Wilton, taking down details in a notepad.
“We can’t say for certain,” Carol Grant interjected, as if she thought she ought to say something. “Something sharp-edged.”
“Probably a sword,” Braddock added. Then he swung his hand as if brandishing the weapon. “Swung by a right-handed man. My current theory is that the victim was struck in the head, chained to a crate of cannonballs, and dropped in the river.”
“You know for certain he died from a blow to the head?” Father Gilbert asked. “Have you checked the lungs? If he was still alive when he was thrown in—”
“Yes, yes, we will certainly check,” Braddock said irritably.
Carol Grant explained, “A pathologist and forensics expert will come down from London on Monday. Professor Braddock has invited various specialists in to examine the corpse: chemists, microbiologists, entomologists, botanists, metallurgists, and textile experts.”
The Body Under the Bridge Page 5
