“About as much as most people, I suppose. A plague carried by rats that decimated the population of Europe around the year… 1350?”
“You’ve got it. Actually, it was much worse than literal decimation. At least one in three died, possibly more. It spread across Europe, starting in Constantinople in late 1347 and reaching England in the summer of 1348. It was at its height in the West Country between then and the spring of 1349. Which is where the Grey Man comes in. During that period-1348/49-an elderly grey-haired monk from St. Nicholas’s Priory on Tresco is supposed to have left his cell and wandered through Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset, miraculously curing plague-sufferers as he went while remaining immune to the disease himself. Ennor was the common name for the Scillies then. Hence the Grey Man of Ennor.”
“Did he really exist?”
“Who can say? It was a widespread enough rumour to warrant mention in the chronicles of the period. But the Church did its best to scotch the rumour. St. Nicholas’s Priory was under the control of Tavistock Abbey and the abbot’s known to have sent letters to the Bishop of Exeter in April 1349 for distribution to his parish priests stating unequivocally that no monk had absented himself from Tresco. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. There was no shortage of people hoping and praying for deliverance from the plague. Basically, there’s no hard evidence for or against the Grey Man.”
“What about the other strand?”
“How much do you know about King Edward the Second?”
“Did Shakespeare write a play about him?”
“No. But Marlowe did. Thanks to which a lot of people know how he’s supposed to have died. A gruesome exit involving a red-hot poker.”
“Ah. That was him, was it?”
“Yes. Succeeded his macho-man father, Edward the First, in 1307. Probably gay, though he married and dutifully fathered four children. Certainly no great shakes as a military commander. Widely blamed for defeat by the Scots at Bannockburn in 1314. Court riven with jealousy and rivalry. Civil war constantly threatening. Eventually forced to abdicate in favour of his fourteen-year-old son, Edward the Third, leaving the government of the country in the hands of his wife, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer. Locked up in Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, where, after a couple of abortive rescue attempts, he was murdered, at some point in September 1327. Nasty end to a nasty story. Or was it? Kerry wanted to know just how certain historians were that Edward died in 1327. The answer turns out to be not very. He’s got a smart tomb in Gloucester Cathedral, but it took Isabella and Mortimer all of three months to get round to putting him in it. There’s a whole host of circumstantial evidence to suggest he wasn’t recaptured, as he’s usually thought to have been, after he was sprung from Berkeley Castle by a raiding party organized by his former confessor, Thomas Dunheved, in late July of 1327. After searching in vain for him in the Welsh Borders, Mortimer may well have decided it was best to say he’d been murdered, so that he could be dismissed as an impostor if he ever reappeared. But he never did. Perhaps because he didn’t want to. Perhaps because he recognized that he didn’t have it in him to be a king. So, what became of him? Well, maybe the answer is that the Church gave him sanctuary. Dunheved was a Dominican. Maybe he eased Edward’s passage into a remote monastery somewhere on the Continent.”
“You’re saying he became a monk?”
“Possibly. Monk. Friar. Hermit. Something like that.”
“Something like… the Grey Man of Ennor.”
“It’s a tempting thought, isn’t it? He was born in 1284. That would make him sixty-four in 1348. The age certainly fits. When he saw the plague rampaging across Europe, might he have decided to return to his homeland in its hour of need? He could have entered the country surreptitiously, via the Scillies. Hence the idea that he was from the Scillies. As for the notion that he was able to cure victims of the plague, well, the Royal Touch was a persistent medieval belief. Anointment with holy oil during the coronation ceremony was supposed to confer on the monarch the power to cure leprosy and scrofula in particular by touching the sufferer. This was conditional on the monarch leading a sinless life, which could hardly be said of Edward the Second. But perhaps twenty years in a monastery-or wandering the byways of Europe-could be regarded as sufficient to atone for his sins. Not that I’m suggesting he actually cured anyone, you understand. But the arrival of the Black Death must have felt like the end of the world, so it’s small wonder people fantasized about a nomadic healer coming to their rescue. If Edward the Second was still alive, he’d be a leading candidate for the role because of the myth of the Royal Touch.”
“So, quite a few historians have identified him with the Grey Man of Ennor, have they?”
“As a matter of fact…” Shepherd smiled. “None at all.”
“But you think Kerry was trying to?”
“It’s the obvious conclusion. It’s certainly what I concluded at the time.”
“But why? What’s there to interest an ambitious free-lance journalist in a story like that?”
“Exactly. It’s hardly big news today, is it? There has to be more to it. And the more has to be what took Kerry to the Scillies, ostensibly to write about the total eclipse, in the summer of 1999. The research I did for her was just background. There must have been something else-something bigger-she was on the track of.”
“What could that have been?”
“I’ve absolutely no idea. But a mystery from the mid-fourteenth century doesn’t give anyone a plausible motive for murder in the late twentieth. I’m clear about that.” Shepherd squinted at Harding suspiciously. “Which should be good news for you. But strangely, judging by your expression, it isn’t. You look what you said you wouldn’t be: disappointed. Now, why’s that, I wonder?”
THIRTY-EIGHT
In the end, Harding told Shepherd the truth. There was nothing to be gained by keeping him in the dark about Hayley’s murder of Barney Tozer once he had revealed what Kerry was investigating at the time of her fatal dive off the Scillies: not Tozer’s suspect finances, but an historical conundrum which by any rational standards could have no connection with her death.
Shepherd deduced Harding’s motive for holding out on him swiftly enough and was only briefly angered by it. It was a double tragedy now, he observed, the more so since he did not believe Kerry’s accident had been engineered by anyone. There was nothing for Hayley to avenge. And nothing Harding could do to help her.
Nor was there much Shepherd could do to help Harding. Except suggest he top up both their glasses and offer him a bed for the night; as well as proffer some sage advice.
“Go back to France, son. Landscape a few more gardens. Get on with your life. Let the dead bury the dead.”
“But Hayley isn’t dead.”
“She’ll be as good as, once the law’s finished with her. Not that it ever will finish with her. Prison and/or mental hospital sounds like her foreseeable future to me.”
“I keep wondering… if there was something I could’ve done to prevent this outcome.”
“I wonder that about my entire existence to date. The answer’s yes, of course. But it doesn’t help to know it. What’s done is done. There are no second chances.”
Harding thought of Hayley’s apparently serious suggestion that he and Kerry had met in some cosmically real alternative existence. In which case he and Hayley had also met there, with a different result. A happier one, surely. “Going back to my old life isn’t exactly possible.”
“Make it the nearest approximation, then.”
An approximation of life sounded uncannily like what did await him in France. And what he had left behind there when he first set off for Penzance on Barney Tozer’s behalf. The truth was that it was no longer enough. He realized now that he had coped with Polly’s death by withdrawing from the world he knew. And he had still found no other world to replace it.
“I get the feeling I’m wasting my breath,” said Shepherd, breaking into Harding’s thoughts. “You
won’t be content until you’ve explored every last avenue and proved it to be a dead end.”
“Perhaps one of them isn’t.”
“Perhaps.” Shepherd eyed Harding over his whisky glass. “For your sake, I hope so.”
Harding slept poorly, as he had each night since the shooting at Nymphenburg. Whenever he closed his eyes, his mind would replay for him the last few seconds of Barney Tozer’s life, over and over again, until eventually it tired and let him sleep-though never for long. He found it restful by comparison to lie awake and hear Shepherd snoring in the adjoining bedroom, to gaze into the darkness and wonder, almost neutrally what the future held; and to know it had never been less certain.
Shepherd was still snoring away when Harding got up the following morning, made himself a cup of coffee and composed a farewell message for his host on a Post-It note he stuck to the toaster. Thanks for hospitality. Gone to explore those other avenues. Let you know if I find anything. TH.
Harding could think of at least two leads he could still follow: Nathan Gashry’s reluctance to talk to him; and Darren Spargo’s claim to know who had stolen the Shovell ring from Heartsease. He would start with Nathan. Ann Gashry had said he worked for an executive recruitment consultancy in the City called Caddick Pearson. That was where the police had contacted him, to his considerable embarrassment. So, why not find out how he would react to an office visit from Harding?
About halfway through the two-hour train journey to London, Harding’s phone rang. Seeing the number of the caller, he was tempted not to answer. But he reasoned in the end that Whybrow was a man more safely misled than ignored.
“Hi, Tony. What can I do for you?”
“Where are you, Tim?”
“Oh, in… transit.”
“Only I was puzzled when Carol told me the time you left yesterday morning. It didn’t seem to fit with any of the scheduled flights to Nice.” So, he had checked, which was worrying in itself.
“I’m in England, actually, Tony. I decided… I needed a break… after everything that’s happened. Thought I’d see the folks and a few old friends.”
“Good idea. Just a little odd you didn’t mention it.”
“It was a last-minute thing. No problem, is there?”
“Only that they still haven’t found Hayley”
“But they will.”
“Yes. Of course. But tell me, this break… wouldn’t be cover for some… ill-advised attempt to do the police’s job for them, would it, Tim?”
“How d’you mean?”
“Well, you haven’t taken it into your head to try and find Hayley yourself, have you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“I wouldn’t know where to look. Don’t worry Tony. I’ll be back next week.”
“Fine.” There was a momentary silence that felt significant. Then Whybrow concluded, “We’ll talk then.”
It was mid-morning when Harding arrived in London, late morning by the time he reached the offices of Caddick Pearson: one floor of a steel-and-glass tower near Liverpool Street station. His plan to catch Nathan unawares in his workaday environment was stillborn, however. Nathan had phoned in sick that morning.
Harding reckoned it was no better than fifty-fifty he would find Nathan at his flat. He did not suppose for a moment the man’s illness was genuine; he was up to something. Harding was not discouraged by the thought, however. Quite the contrary. It meant he was on to something.
The first warning he had that all was not well came as he approached the apartment block across Vauxhall Bridge. There were assorted vans and cars drawn up in the courtyard area below the flats-at least one of them a police vehicle.
As he drew nearer, he saw a line of police tape, with a constable standing just beyond it, barring access to the courtyard and the adjoining riverside walkway. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered, although they were in the process of dispersing. The incident, whatever it was, had evidently already lost some of its novelty value.
An Asian man dressed in dark-green uniform overalls was among those drifting away. Harding caught sight of the name of the block displayed on his breast pocket. He intercepted.
“Excuse me. Has something happened?”
“A tragedy. Someone has fallen. From one of the flats. They have just taken the body away.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“Oh yes. I saw him. Before the police came. Nasty. Very nasty. Poor fellow. Suicide, I suppose. But who would have thought it? Such a nice man. There was always a joke or a smile from Mr. Gashry”
“Nathan Gashry?”
“Yes. You are a friend?”
“Sort of. You’re saying… Nathan Gashry’s dead?”
“Fifth floor. Straight down into the courtyard. You could not survive. He did not want to, I suppose. A desperate, terrible thing. But there it is.” The man spread his hands helplessly. “Yes. I am sorry. Mr. Gashry is dead.”
THIRTY-NINE
Harding waited till dark before presenting himself at Ann Gashry’s door. This was not only to allow time for the police to contact her with the news of her brother’s death. Harding had needed time himself, to come to terms as best he could with an event that seemed to make no sense in the context of what had gone before-unless, he was coming more and more to suspect, what had gone before was not as he had believed it to be.
Ann’s greeting suggested she had been expecting his visit. She invited him in and he found himself once more in the sombre, fustily decorated drawing room, which was thickly curtained and fire-lit against the chill of the evening. There was no obvious sign of distress on her part. She was dry-eyed and calm, though perhaps paler than ever. A photograph album lay open on the table beside her chair. Harding glimpsed faded snaps of seaside holidays long ago: stiffly smiling parents; a teenage girl in an unglamorous swimsuit; a pouty little boy brandishing a plastic spade like a weapon.
“I haven’t looked at these photographs in years,” said Ann, gently closing the album. “They date from before my parents divorced: the brief period when Nathan and I were brother and sister under one roof.”
“I’m sorry Ann.”
“Thank you. It’s a shock, of course. There can be little true grief. We led such different lives. And yet…”
“He was your flesh and blood.”
“Indeed.” She picked up a glass from the table and sipped some of the contents. Brandy, Harding assumed. Her tipple, especially at times of stress. “Would you like a drink?”
“Thanks.”
“Help yourself.”
He poured himself a whisky and tilted the Courvoisier bottle enquiringly towards Ann. She shook her head and sat down. Harding joined her.
She drew a deep breath. “How did you hear?”
“I went to see him. It had just happened.”
“Was it… very dreadful?”
“They’d screened everything off.”
“Did you speak to the police?”
“No. They’d have… queried my being there.”
“So you want me to tell you what they make of it.” She looked him in the eye, defying him to pretend his principal reason for visiting her was to offer his condolences. “Well, perhaps we could start with why you went to see Nathan today. You didn’t seem to have it in mind yesterday.”
“I hoped Jack Shepherd-Kerry’s old editor-would know what she’d hidden under the floorboards. But he couldn’t help me. So, I decided to try Nathan instead.”
“You seriously expected him to know-or to tell you if he did?”
“I was running out of options.”
“Well, you’ve one fewer left now.”
“Do the police believe it was suicide?”
“They seem inclined to. An accident’s out of the question. And murder? There was no sign of a struggle, apparently. Naturally, they wanted to know how he’d been when we last met. Was he distraught at being implicated, albeit unwittingly, in Barney Tozer’s murder? Was there any
suggestion he was keeping back vital evidence? Was he perhaps not so unwitting after all and prey to remorse? I’m sure you can imagine the direction their questions took.”
“How did you answer them?”
“As frankly as I felt I could. A degree of reticence was essential, for my sake as well as yours. I certainly made it clear I regarded the idea that Nathan had committed suicide as absurd. I gather his girlfriend said much the same. He was planning to go to work today as far as she knew. He wasn’t ill. And according to her he wasn’t depressed, just angry at Hayley for using him to lure Barney Tozer to his death. None of which I suspect is likely to deflect the police from their suicide theory. It fits the facts better than any other from their point of view.”
“If it wasn’t suicide…”
“Hayley’s not physically capable of throwing a grown man from a balcony, Mr. Harding. You know that. It’s as absurd as suggesting he threw himself.”
“But something propelled him.”
“Yes. Or someone.”
“Someone other than Hayley.”
“Quite so.”
“Which means…”
“Have you seen Sir Clowdisley Shovell’s tomb in Westminster Abbey?”
Harding blinked in surprise. “Sorry?”
“If not, you ought to take a look at it, in view of your involvement in the Association story. A grandiose marble monument carved by Grinling Gibbons. Bizarrely in accordance with the fashion of the day, Sir Clowdisley is depicted, despite his obviously eighteenth-century wig, in a toga and sandals, more like a Roman emperor than an admiral. Most of the thousands of tourists who file past the tomb every year don’t pause to read the inscription, so probably have no idea he was a man of the sea. Costume sends a message. And sometimes that message can be misleading, whether by design or not.”
“What are you getting at, Ann?”
“How sure are you that it was Hayley who shot Barney Tozer?”
Harding could not suppress a rueful smile. It was the question he had been asking himself since learning of Nathan’s apparent suicide. It was the question that begged all others. He had persuaded himself at one point that the young woman he had pursued through rain and lamplight along the streets of Munich might not be Hayley after all. He had only changed his mind at Nymphenburg, in the seconds after Tozer’s death, when he had watched the same young woman run away through the trees, without looking back. She matched Hayley in height and build and hairstyle. And she was dressed for the part, in the same kind of mac Hayley had been wearing the very first time he had seen her, at Heartsease, a few days before the auction. But was it her? Was it her beyond the shadow of a doubt?
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