An Old, Cold Grave

by Iona Whishaw

  “Do you think you could write down anything you remember, and I’ll collect it when we come back tomorrow?” Darling asked. After adjuring everyone to stay away from the cellar once more, Darling and Ames got into the maroon police car and made the perilous journey back down to the main road.

  “When we get back, Amesy, you can get into the archives and see if any child went missing in 1910 or any time in the last thirty years. It will be fun for you.”

  “Sir,” said Ames, with a sigh.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE POLICE VAN AND TWO cars made the slow trip early the next morning along the rutted road to the Hughes’ lawn under a threatening sky. Gladys and Gwen Hughes stood on the step outside the door watching them, Gladys’s lips compressed into a thoughtful consideration of how much tea was going to be required for the six men who got out of the vehicles. “Gwen, could you put that old dog rug down here by the door and plant a pair of boots on it. It might encourage them to take off their muddy shoes when they come into the house.”

  Darling led the posse of policemen, three of whom were dressed in rugged boots and khaki overalls. In an unusual move, he had brought Gilly out as well. The pathologist was curious to see the skeletal remains in situ. He was developing an idea that it would be helpful in general for coroners to be at the scene to see the body before it was messed about by the policemen moving it. He himself always studied the photos that were taken at other scenes of crime, but the unusual nature of what Darling had told him prompted him to ask to come along.

  “Mrs. Hughes, good morning. I’ve got my crew here, and I’m afraid we’re going to make a mess of your cellar. If you all could stay well back while we work, I hope we won’t be inconveniencing you for too long. It depends very much on how difficult it will be to gain access.”

  “Needs must. I expect you and your crew will need a break at some point. I’ve tea and some biscuits.” She looked up at the clouds banking against the northern mountains. “And umbrellas.”

  “I’m sure these will be very welcome. Let’s see how we get on. I’d like to be out of your hair before the umbrellas are needed.” Light reflected off the kitchen windows, but Darling could see Mabel Hughes standing at the kitchen sink watching, her face a contorted glimmer. He felt himself beginning the mental process of gathering that signalled the beginning of any investigation. He made no judgement, but he stored the observation that she had not come outside with her mother and wondered at it.

  THE ROOF OF the cellar was overgrown with sod and bushes. Buds were beginning to appear on the tangled mass of branches. The three men in overalls were already talking quietly and pointing, strategizing how they might best approach the bleak task before them. They elected to look inside the cellar first. Darling, Ames, and Gilly went in with them. In the glare of the powerful flashlights the men looked at where the bones discovered by Gwen still dangled, and then shone the light on the beams of the roof.

  “I thought we might be able to get at things from inside, but this roof structure would have to be destroyed,” opined one of the men. “It looks strong enough to hold any of us standing on it outside. What do you figure, four feet?”

  Ames looked around the cellar with rustic wooden shelving. “I can’t imagine why anyone would need one of these in this day and age,” he remarked.

  “If it’s something you’ve always had and it works, why not? These intrepid people all came here when there was nothing. They had no refrigeration, and in the summer it protected things from the heat and in the winter from the cold. Pretty resourceful, when you think of it. I might build one in my little yard,” Gilly said.

  Ames shuddered. “Well, I think it’s too much like a tomb. Thank God for refrigerators. Anyway, how come you know so much about them?” But he was never to learn this, as the two excavators had reached a decision.

  “Sir, we think it will be best to get at this from above. It’s going to be a pain uprooting all those bushes, but it might be easier than taking down this construction and having everything collapse onto the ground.”

  “All right. Well, let’s remove these loose bones now, after Ames takes a snap, and bag them, and see if we can get at the rest from above.”

  Shovels and picks were laid out, and the two men walked up the long slope to the top of the root cellar, where they found it no easy job to stand comfortably, so thickly grown were the bushes.

  One of the men pulled tentatively on the nearest bush to see if it could be torn out of the ground by hand. “We’re going to have to start digging,” he said, pulling on a pair of thick leather work gloves.

  Ames was busying himself taking the small bag of loose finger bones to the van, and Darling and Gilly watched the proceedings. Darling furrowed his brow and then looked about him. The roof of the cellar tapered gradually downward to ground that lay somewhat lower than the house. There was a path from where he was standing that wound down toward chicken coops on one side, and on the other side, outbuildings and a fenced-in pig yard. Behind him, a well-walked path led between raised borders, past the ancient car they must have taken from the garage in order to store the contents of the cellar, and disappeared into some long grass and a well-established orchard.

  “It’s remarkable—it looks as though it has grown to become a part of the landscape,” he said.

  Gilly nodded. “My parents had one at home. I was always being sent to fetch things. I associated it with all good things, I think, because most of the food we had was in there.” He waved his hand around, encompassing the property in general. “They live twenty years in the past out here. It’s rather lovely.”

  Unused to sentiment in his practical medical examiner, Darling said, “Well, we’d better get a sense of the place. Some unlovely person dragged, or carried, a body here from somewhere. How and why is the work of the day.”

  The cellar was situated just south of the Hughes residence, its front door facing the side of the house. They walked past the front of the cellar and around to the other side. This dropped steeply into dense bushes and trees, and they could see that a path descended in gentle switchbacks from the Hughes house toward, he remembered, the Armstrongs’ post office.

  “I wouldn’t think it was brought from along here.” Darling said. If the arrangements had changed little since the original settlement, someone, sometime within the last thirty-six years had approached this place either from the house, along one of these paths, or by the road up which they’d driven, with a small body and had buried it.

  He could hear the shovels being applied to the crowded area around the base of the bushes, and grunts and no small number of curses as the men began to loosen the thick vegetation. It was not going to be an easy job. “When you manage to clear the shrubbery, please dig carefully. Gilly needs to see the body as it was laid before we bring it out,” Darling commanded.

  Inside the house the three women had settled uneasily into their morning routine. Beds were made, dishes washed, laundry taken down off the drying racks and folded into baskets. If they could have given a name to this brittle normalcy, it would have been fear. They were increasingly in the grip of the realization that someone had buried a human body right next to their house, and even keeping busy could not still the mix of anxiety and even guilt that was beginning overcome them. Only Gwen seemed inclined to want to talk. She and Gladys were folding the sheets, an activity they had moved from the kitchen to the sitting room, perhaps in an unconscious desire to distance themselves from the faint sound of the men working outside. “I keep thinking, who could it be? I’ve gone over every person, well, child, I can think of that we’ve ever known, and not one of them is unaccounted for.”

  Gladys said nothing, because she realized that the thing she’d been about to say—that it could have happened before they settled there—was nonsensical. It was self-evident that it had happened after they rebuilt the cellar. “I can’t quite remember when Mabel planted the gooseberries,” she said suddenly. “I mean, it’s not the sort of thing you rememb
er. Was it a year after we rebuilt the thing? Two years? Or did we start off with sod?” She sighed and hurled a heavy, folded sheet into the basket. “I’m going out to see what’s happening.”

  The three women stood far from where the men were working and watched. Most of the bushes now lay, uprooted, in a pile on the ground. This upheaval had considerably loosened the soil, and the men were now probing more carefully with shovels, as Ames took pictures.

  “There go the gooseberries,” Mabel muttered unhappily.

  “I wonder when they’re going to want tea. They’ve been at it for more than two hours,” Gladys said, and she moved toward the inspector who was, she noted with irritation, surveying the garage as if there might be more bodies buried about the place. “Inspector, do your men want a break? I’ve water on the stove, so it’s the work of a moment to make tea.”

  Darling looked toward where the men were now carefully creating a long trench on the side of the cellar where the bones had been found. “Perhaps. I’ll see where they’ve got to. Thank you.”

  Gladys nodded at the girls and the three of them moved toward the house. Inside, they laid out cups and saucers, brought more chairs from the small bedroom off the hallway, and pulled a tin of biscuits off the top shelf. Mabel was going to have to bake if they were to keep up with these crowds of tea drinkers.

  Gwen poured water over the tea and then turned and said, “Are we sure?”

  “Are we sure about what?” Gladys asked.

  “Are we sure that everyone is accounted for? Every child I mean. Besides the Anscombs, there were several families that came and went. Who were those people up the road in the cabin? Remember them? I’m sure there were two little girls, but they were here such a short time I can barely remember them. They left before the Great War. And who lived in that cabin behind Ponting’s? Did they have children?” Gwen asked.

  “It wasn’t two little girls,” Gladys said, suddenly remembering. “It was three. Remember that horrible business when one of them drowned?”

  “It’s inconceivable,” Gwen said. “A child! It’s monstrous.”

  Mabel’s hand slipped and the tin of cookies slammed on the table. They all three jumped at the sound of a discreet knock. A spattering of rain was beginning. Ames was at the door. “The men would be glad of a quick cup of tea now. I’ve got everyone to take their muddy boots off. Can I have them come in?”

  The three men involved in the heavy work filed in and were shown the sink and given soap and towels. Darling and Gilly stood outside looking thoughtfully at the now-shattered mound of the root cellar. The men had erected a tarpaulin over the place where they had been digging. “You coming in, sir?” asked Ames.

  “I am, yes. But you’re not. It’s not far now, and I want the men rested and focused so that they can take care as we unearth the body. We will need to gather every bit of information we can from that burial. I want you to pop down to Miss Winslow while we’re having tea. Tell her . . .” he paused. Tell her what? He knew this was a turning point. If he asked for what he was thinking of, then that changed their relationship yet again. She would become part of the team.

  He would have to trust her implicitly. In his heart he did, despite her past and her inability to disclose anything about her actions during the war. What she did may have been mysterious, even dark, but who she was could not be doubted. Honest, intelligent, perceptive. It was this Miss Winslow he could use now. “Tell her that I am going to need her to try to learn a bit more about the history of this place. About the people who live here, and who lived here before.”

  “Are we asking her to spy for us?”

  “No we are not asking her to ‘spy’ for us. We are asking her to investigate, pay attention, follow up using her, according to you, fantastic instincts,” said Darling irritably, conscious that what he was asking could well be construed as spying. “And get back here smartly. We haven’t got all day for you to moon about with her.”

  “Ah,” said Gilly. “The young woman you arrested last year. Circumstances seem to have changed.”

  He left this semi-query hanging, and Darling did not satisfy it with an answer. “Let’s go and have the offered tea. I think the men are close, so I’ll want them to go easy from now on, and you can be on hand to see what’s what.”

  In the kitchen, tea was being drunk and cookies were being eaten in an atmosphere that was as far from cheerful as it was possible to get. There was little conversation beyond that required in the handing out and receiving of refreshment. The presence of Darling, who did not sit, but leaned against the counter by the window, created a sense that the tea had best be consumed smartly. “Right, well. Best get back at it. Thank you, Mrs. Hughes, for the tea,” Darling put his cup into the sink. Then he waited outside the door for the men to file out, put their boots on, and assemble in front of him. “We need to be extremely careful from now on in. I need to understand everything I can about this burial. Gilly will be looking on and may request that you stop from time to time to make his notes. I’ll need your observations and suggestions as well. Ames will be back shortly, and we’ll have him take notes and photos,” Darling said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN THE MEANTIME, LANE HAD spent part of the morning after the discovery of the bones having elevenses in the Armstrong kitchen, seated beneath the two photos of the kings George V and VI, who shared the wall space with portraits of generations of beloved Armstrong terriers. This too was a more sombre gathering than usual. Kenny, who normally lounged with his feet propped up on the edge of the stove, had sat toying glumly with his teacup. They were all very conscious of the police presence at their neighbours’ house. “The shocking thing,” he said, “is that it must be someone we knew. No one would bring someone from somewhere else to bury them over poor Gladys’s root cellar.”

  “Gladys named all the people who she thought worked on the cellar in 1910. You, Robin, and John, and then Henry and Bob, was it?” Lane asked.

  “Yes. Bob Anscomb. They lived in that house up behind the Bertollis’ place. They were the ones that left before the Great War.”

  “Remember that picture of the children in front of the school. Are they all in that?” The previous summer Lane had been in the Armstrongs’ parlour looking at framed early photographs of the settlement.

  “Yes, of course. Why didn’t I think of that? I think I have a few more as well. Eleanor, where’s the album living these days?”

  “Where it always lives, in the window seat,” said his wife. “You two go look at the pictures. I’ve got things to do.”

  The parlour, a formal sitting room, really, had been shut off from the rest of the cottage during the winter. The only rooms in daily use were the kitchen, the bedroom, the mailroom, to which entry was gained through the pantry off the kitchen, and the enclosed porch that led out onto the back garden. The parlour was cold, as if it still held the vestiges of the winter, and the sun, intermittent at best after an early morning rain, made no impression.

  “Sorry about this,” Kenny said. “We usually light the stove every couple of weeks to keep down the damp. We’ve been lulled into complacency by the mild spring.” Two easy chairs and a couch were covered in sheets, but the window bench displayed its long, fading, yellow silk cushion. Lane had loved this room in the summer. It was as though time had stopped at the beginning of the century. A cabinet with small porcelain figures and silver vessels of one kind or another occupied the corner of the room. A great silver sword in its scabbard, a relic from Kenny’s father, was propped in front of the cabinet. Lane had longed to open the cabinet and ask about every carefully preserved and dusted item. The wall opposite the cabinet was devoted to bookshelves. She would ask to come and explore this room in the warmer weather, she thought.

  These markers of a family’s history fascinated her. Here was a sepia photo in a gilt frame of a group of nurses. Was Eleanor among them? On the occasional table, beside an elegant porcelain kerosene lamp, the silver-framed picture of Kenny’s younger br
other, John, still sat in silent splendour. He was dressed in the uniform he donned when he had signed on in 1915 and left to fight. He never came back.

  Kenny had gone to the window seat and lifted the lid and was now looking inside it, moving books and papers onto the floor. Lane went over to where she knew the picture of the school was and carefully took it off the wall. Looking at it, she thought she could recognize a very young Kenny and maybe Robin Harris. She turned it over to see if there was a date. “When was this taken?” she asked, moving toward the window where Kenny made a victorious noise.

  “Here it is. Right at the bottom. Typical.” With less difficulty than she would imagine a man in his late sixties would exhibit, he stood up, holding the dark red leather-bound album. “Let’s go back to the warmth. My knees are cold.”

  They started with the picture of the school. “I think that would have been right around 1898.” Kenny took it and moved to the sink where the kitchen window offered more light. “Cold winter. I remember that. My mother taught us there, did I tell you that before? There’s another one taken a bit later, in 1902, somewhere.”

  “No, I don’t think you did. My Lady Armstrong, a teacher?” Lane was enchanted to think of it. Her house had been the home of Lady Armstrong and her children, Kenny and John, and Robin Harris, Kenny’s cousin, who had been sent to out to Canada as a small boy to live with his aunt. She felt particularly close to her because Lady Armstrong was known to engage in a spot of light haunting by way of opening the attic windows during the summer.

  “She wasn’t bad. She had had a very good education as a child in England and she spoke French. She gave up on trying to teach any of us French in a hurry! But we did okay otherwise. John was the quickest of all of us. Okay, so here’s Johnny, then me, and that’s Robin. He obviously jiggled his head when we’d been told to hold still. That’s Bob Anscomb. Robin and Bob were as thick as thieves then, I remember. These two girls . . . what were their names? Mary and Susan, something with a c—Chase, was it? Gosh, I can’t remember.”