“OK,” Harding replied, acknowledging with a nod that such a time probably had come. “Let’s go.”
***
The scene at Pregowther Farm had not altered since Harding’s last visit: smoke rising from the farmhouse chimney; chickens scavenging in the yard; a perspective of hazy yellow away through the daffodil fields towards Porth Hellick. He suspected it had probably not altered to any significant degree in centuries. The past and the present were fused here in the thin grey light of late afternoon. Only the future could not be detected.
One of the Martyn brothers stepped into view from the deep shadows of the barn as they climbed out of the car. Harding could not have said with any certainty which of them it was. But Metherell knew. “’Afternoon, Alf,” he called.
“’Af’noon, Mr. Metherell.” Alf strode across the yard to meet them. “You’ve brought your friend with you, I see. Mr… Harding, ain’t it?”
“Well remembered,” said Harding.
“Still worriting about poor Miss Foxton?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“I read in this week’s Cornishman her sister was wanted for the murder of Mr. Tozer. That right?”
“It is.”
“Sorry to hear that. Folk should let tragedies heal themselves, not go after making them worse. But the gift of leaving well alone is a rare one and that’s a fact.”
“Mr. Harding just wanted to check a few points about the accident, Alf,” said Metherell.
“Nothing I can tell you I didn’t tell you last week.”
“It’s the week before the accident I’m interested in,” said Harding.
“Can’t see how I can help you, then. Mr. Metherell here arranged the trip with us. He’s the only one of the passengers that day Fred and me had ever clapped eyes on afore.”
“You’d never met Barney Tozer?”
“No more we had.”
“Or Carol Janes?”
“Her neither.”
“Never dropped into her café in Hugh Town?”
“We’ve got no use for cafés, Mr. Harding. There’s a hob indoors if we want a cup o’ tea.”
“What about Kerry? Did you ever meet her before?”
“That we didn’t.”
“Are you sure you can speak for your brother?”
“I am.” Alf gave Harding a long, deliberative look. “But maybe you ain’t. Fred’s in the house with Josie. We can step inside and ask him if you want him to tell you himself.”
“Actually, I was hoping to ask Josie the same question, so…
“Come away in, then.”
Alf turned and led the way towards the house. Metherell shot Harding a cautioning glance. But Harding had left caution behind. He would learn nothing by treading carefully. “How is Josie, Mr. Martyn?” he enquired as they crossed the yard.
“Blooming is how she is. Just blooming.”
“Good. Though I gather that hasn’t always been the case. She was once very ill, wasn’t she?”
“In her girlhood, yes. A long time ago.”
“Did you know her then?”
They had reached the door. Alf pushed it open and stood back to let them enter. “Oh, I know all the farming families on this island,” he said quietly.
A narrow hall led straight ahead, past the stairs, to the kitchen and a scullery beyond. A door to the left stood open, while the one to the right was closed. Harding glanced through the open doorway into a simply furnished sitting room, sensing more than observing the immutability that was the dominant characteristic of Pregowther Farm and its occupants.
“Fred,” Alf called over Harding’s shoulder. “We’m got visitors.”
Fred’s head bobbed into view round the scullery doorpost. “How do,” he said brightly.
“Hello,” Harding responded, advancing slowly along the hall with Metherell at his shoulder. He heard Alf close the front door behind them. An aroma the sweet side of mustiness disclosed itself around him.
“All well, Fred?” asked Metherell.
“All good, Mr. Metherell.” Fred moved into the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel.
“Josie about?”
“Resting upstairs.” A floorboard creaked above them. “But… sounds like she’s coming down.”
Josie appeared above them at the head of the stairs and began a slow descent, her pregnancy looking to Harding even more pronounced than the week before. She smiled down at them. “Hi, Mr. Metherell.”
“’Afternoon, Josie.”
“Hello again,” she said to Harding.
“Hello.”
“This is nice. We don’t get many visitors.” She glanced at Fred. “Put the kettle on, darlin’. We’ll have some tea.”
It was as she turned, leaning heavily on the banisters, that Harding’s eye was caught by a gleam of jewellery on the left breast of her smock-top. He gaped up at it in astonishment. And a fox cub, fashioned from jet and mother-of-pearl, gazed playfully back at him. “That’s a… nice brooch,” he said numbly.
“Yeah.” Josie blushed. “Fred gave it me.”
Harding turned towards Fred. “Where did you buy it?” he asked.
Fred’s mental wrestlings with the question were written on his face. “That’s no business of yours.”
“I think it is, actually.”
“He recognizes it,” said Alf quietly.
“What are you talking about?” asked Metherell. “What’s going on?”
“The brooch belonged to Kerry Foxton,” Harding replied, still staring at Fred.
“No,” said Josie. “It was her…”
“Sister you took it from?” Harding asked, looking back up at her.
“That’s torn it,” said Alf.
“You took that from Hayley?” demanded Metherell, rounding on Alf. “For God’s sake, how could you be so stupid?”
“Fred took it. I didn’t find out until it was too late.”
“But you knew…” Metherell broke off. He had said too much. And the significance of what he had said-the true, terrible meaning of it-was irretrievable. He turned back to face Harding. He seemed to struggle to say something. But no words came.
“You’re all in this together, aren’t you?” Harding gasped. “What in God’s name have you-” There was a movement behind him, fast and swinging; an impact; then oblivion, as complete as it was sudden, as black as it was total.
FORTY-SIX
Consciousness brought pain, but no vision. At first, he thought he might be blind. The sharpness of the pain, as he moved his head, seemed to confirm it. Then he saw a faint line of light above him somewhere, though how far above he could not tell. The darkness deprived him of all sense of scale. He was lying on a blanket spread on a hard, uneven surface.
He pushed himself up on one elbow, groaning as what felt like the worst headache in the world throbbed through his brain. Then he heard a voice, low and hoarse, from close beside him.
“Tim?”
“Who’s there?” He turned towards the sound.
“It’s me. Hayley.”
“What?”
“I’m here.” Her fingers touched his hand. They were cold and rough. They were not as he remembered them. But it was her. He recognized her voice despite the huskiness. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know. I’m alive. Where are we?”
“The Martyns’ cellar. Beneath the farmhouse. They brought you down not long ago, cradled in a blanket. They took me by surprise and I was blinded by the light. Before I could do anything, they were gone again. Not that I could have done much. I’m so weak. Weaker all the time.”
“How long have you been here?”
“What day is it?”
“Friday.”
“Four days, then. Since Monday.” She coughed. “I’m sorry. It must stink down here.”
“You’ve been here since Monday?”
“Yes.”
She had not killed Barney Tozer. That was certain now. But the identity of Tozer’s murderer was for the mo
ment unimportant. They were imprisoned in a cold, dank cellar. The Martyns had done with them what they did with all their secrets. They had buried them.
“There’s no way out. The trapdoor is weighed down with a slab of some kind. They heave it into place. The walls and the floor are stone: I’ve gouged at them, I’ve pulled, I’ve prised: nothing gives.”
“Is that light the trapdoor?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have a go at it.”
“You’ll be wasting your time.”
Harding scrambled to his feet, the pounding in his head worsening with every movement. He put his hand to the place behind his left ear that seemed to be the centre of the pain and felt a patch of semi-congealed blood. Then he stepped forward, stumbling against the lowest tread of a flight of steps. He felt his way up, reaching blindly ahead until his fingers touched the wooden trapdoor. There was a wall to his right. Bracing himself between it and the steps, he pushed up against the trapdoor, steadily increasing the pressure until he was at the limit of his strength. The door did not move an inch. He tried again, to no avail, then thumped at it. “Let us out of here,” he shouted.
“They’re not listening, Tim,” said Hayley softly.
He ran his hand round the frame of the trapdoor and encountered a cable emerging into the cellar. “There must be a light in here,” he declared in a small surge of optimism.
“But the switch is upstairs,” she responded, almost apologetically.
He patted the pocket where his phone should have been, but it was not there. “They’ve taken my phone,” he said grimly.
“There’s no way out, Tim.”
“There has to be.”
“No. There doesn’t. You just want there to be one. So do I. But there isn’t.”
He inched back down the steps and groped his way along the wall. It was constructed of big, roughly worked boulders, unyielding to the touch, solid and ancient. He came to a corner after twelve feet or so, and another, twelve feet after that. Before he reached the third corner, he trod on the edge of the blanket and knew he was back where he had started, their small, dark world all too swiftly circumscribed.
“Sit down beside me, Tim. Please.”
Reaching forward, he felt her outstretched hand and lowered himself to the floor. She had rolled herself in part of the blanket he had been lying on and was shivering with cold and fatigue. He put his arm round her shoulders. She sighed and rested her head on his chest. The shivering abated.
“I wondered if you’d come for me. It was the hope I was clinging to. And you did come, didn’t you? But it’s done neither of us any good.”
“So much has happened since I last held you like this, Hayley So much I don’t understand.”
“And so much you can’t forgive?”
“I can forgive you for wanting to avenge Kerry. It’s easy.” He kissed her on the forehead. “There. It’s done.”
“Thank you for saving me.”
“I haven’t.”
“I don’t mean here, now, today. I mean when I aborted my oh-so-clever plot to kill Carol and frame Barney for her murder. It was caring about you-you making me care about you-that stopped me. And that stopped me taking revenge on the wrong person. Because Barney didn’t kill Kerry. I know that now. I guess you do too. It was the Martyns who did it. It wasn’t Barney. He’s as innocent as he’s always claimed to be.”
He was going to have to tell her soon that Barney was dead and that, ironically she had been framed for his murder. But he could not bring himself to do so yet. “Why did they kill her, Hayley?”
“The reason’s in this cellar with us. Here.” She wrestled something from the pocket of her jeans and pressed it into his palm. “A miniature torch. The Martyns don’t know I’ve got it. Not that it’s done me much good. The battery’s nearly dead. But turn it on. Then you’ll see.”
Harding rotated the tiny barrel of the torch in his hand until he felt the ribbed surface of the switch. He pushed at it. Hayley’s face, hollow-cheeked and big-eyed, was suddenly illuminated. She smiled at him. He stretched forward, holding the torch at arm’s length. The rough-hewn walls revealed themselves in vaguely formed shadows. And there, in the centre of the chamber, he saw an old iron chest, about three feet high, four feet long and two feet wide, with an arched lid, mounted on some kind of platform. He glimpsed engraved lettering on the side of the chest facing him. Then the beam of light faltered. And ceased.
“What is that?” he asked.
“An ossuary chest.”
“A what?”
“It contains the bones of the Grey Man of Ennor.”
“How d’you know?”
“I drained the battery deciphering the inscription.”
“What does it say?”
“Eduardus Vir Canus Ennoris, MCCCLIV. The Latin version of his name: Edward, the Grey Man of Ennor. And the year of his death in Roman numerals: 1354.”
“No surname?”
“A monk or friar gives up his surname on taking his vows. But we both know who he was, don’t we?”
“I know Kerry was trying to connect the Grey Man of Ennor with Edward the Second. I learned that much from her old editor, Jack Shepherd. How did you find out?”
“Kerry stole the complete version of the Gashry report from Norman Buller, a descendant of Gashry’s executor. She hid it under the floorboards in the drawing room of our old home in Dulwich. Then she hid a sketch plan showing where it was in her recorder. She must have been worried from the start that something would be done to stop her and she wanted me to know why. I found the plan when the Horstelmann Clinic handed her possessions over to me. Then I found the report-where she’d put it. That’s what I needed the torch for. And when I read the section missing from Herbert Shelkin’s copy… I understood.”
“What was in the missing section?”
“Everything Gashry uncovered during his investigation here in the Scillies in February 1736, beginning with the Grey Man legend. He was supposed to have returned to St. Nicholas’s Priory on Tresco after the Black Death and to have died there a few years afterwards. He was buried in the priory church. When the priory was abandoned a century or so later, his bones were removed, placed in that chest and transferred to Old Town Church, here on St. Mary’s. Godfrey Shillingstone had identified him from his earlier researches and Lord Godolphin had authorized Shillingstone to take whatever so-called antiquities he wanted. So, he excavated the nave of Old Town Church, found the ossuary chest and took it back to Penzance, intending to make his name with his discovery in London. But there were people living here who’d sworn to protect the Grey Man’s remains. They followed Shillingstone to Penzance. And they had a valuable ally. Jacob Tozer was a Scillonian by birth. He helped them retrieve the chest, killing Shillingstone in the process and stealing the Shovell ring to put anyone investigating the murder off the scent. But Gashry couldn’t actually prove anything. In the end, he recommended supplying Admiral Shovell’s family with a specially made replica of the ring and, for the rest, letting sleeping dogs lie.”
“And that’s what his boss decided to do.”
“Yes. The incomplete copy of the report aroused Kerry’s curiosity and the complete copy convinced her there was a story in it. When she came down here to do some digging, she heard about Josephine Edwards’s miraculous recovery from terminal leukaemia. She put a photocopy of a newspaper article about that in with the report for me to find. When I arrived on Monday I went to see the Edwardses. They sent me here. Stupidly I thought it might be a coincidence that Josie had married Fred Martyn. By the time I realized it wasn’t, it was too late. They overpowered me so easily.”
“They believe the Grey Man’s bones still hold some of his healing power?”
“I guess. That’s why their ancestors were never going to let Shillingstone take the bones to London. They had to be brought back to Scilly at any price. Maybe there’s a folk memory of other miracle cures over the centuries. Maybe Josie’s was just the latest in a long
line.”
“You don’t believe a chestful of old bones can conquer terminal diseases.”
“They believe it can. And they have a practical example to back up their belief. That’s all that matters. Josie got better, baffling her doctors. Then Kerry turned up, asking all kinds of questions. The way they must have seen it, she was threatening to do just what Shillingstone did. And just like Shillingstone, she had to be stopped. I don’t know how they were able to sabotage her gear without anyone noticing, but-”
“They weren’t able to, Hayley”
“What d’you mean?”
“John Metherell helped them.”
“Metherell?”
“Yes. He and the Martyns were left on the boat at the quayside when Barney went to fetch the others. Metherell told me he left the boat as well, to speak to the harbourmaster. But then he also told me the Tozers had no Scillonian connections.”
“That’s not true. Francis Gashry reported that Jacob Tozer was definitely born here, even though he couldn’t prove it because the parish registers for the period had been conveniently destroyed by fire.”
“Exactly. Everything’s very convenient. Maybe those registers would show Metherell’s ancestors were Scillonian as well. He’s been deflecting me and leading me on by turns. He pointed me straight to the Josie connection when I contacted him yesterday. He must have reckoned I’d find out about it sooner or later, so decided to short-circuit the process. Then he could guarantee being on hand to stage-manage my meeting with the Martyns. The plan was obviously to bluff it out and convince me you hadn’t been near them. But Josie was wearing Kerry’s fox-cub brooch, so that didn’t work.”
“She liked it as soon as she saw it. Fred took it from me. But how did you know about it?”
“Gary Lawton described it to me. If he hadn’t… they might have been able to fob me off.”
“It would’ve been better for you if they had.”
“Don’t say that, Hayley” He squeezed her hand and she responded, clutching him tightly. “I don’t regret coming after you. Not in any way.”
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