Bones of the Buried

by David Roberts

  It took a further half-hour to persuade Rosalía that she had to leave the body of her lover where it was and go for help. Whatever she might be hiding – and Edward was too cynical to believe she was quite the innocent she pretended – there was no doubt her grief was genuine. They found a large rock, almost circular, which they would be able to roll in front of the entrance to the cave but, before they did so, Edward braced himself to make one final examination of the corpse.

  With Verity’s torch he crawled inside, attempting not to disturb anything more than necessary. He stared at the corpse using the torch to study it section by section. Then, trying to control his urge to retch, he examined the body to see if there was any other wound invisible to the naked eye, but there was only the bullet hole in the forehead. He felt in Tilney’s pockets and, as carefully as he could, removed a wallet from the jacket the dead man was wearing and stuffed it in his own pocket to be investigated later. However, he noted there was a lot of money in it – about two hundred pounds in pesetas, he guessed – so obviously theft could be ruled out as a motive for Tilney’s murder. He was touched and surprised to see that the wallet also contained a photograph not of Rosalía but of his mother. Perhaps after all, Tilney was capable of love.

  In a corner of the cave, there was a little food wrapped in a cloth – sausage and lentils. For water, Tilney presumably used the stream. There was a simple army sleeping bag in one corner but nothing inside it – no papers or books even. There was no sign of any kitbag; had the murderer removed that? But in that case why not the wallet? Rather surprisingly, Tilney was wearing an expensive Swiss watch, but no other jewellery and, apart from an empty pipe – a Peterson 33 no less – with a pouch of tobacco, there was nothing personal. It dawned on Edward that Tilney was hardly here at all except in the form of an increasingly repellent heap of flesh. He had either had no personality or was a true ascetic indifferent to personal comfort, Edward decided. Maybe it was just that he had known his life was in danger and had deliberately kept his belongings to the minimum so he could speedily disappear into the mountains if need be.

  When he had stumbled out of the cave and vomited noisily into a bush, he and the two women rolled the stone in front of the entrance. It moved so easily, it had clearly been used to block the opening before. He felt for a moment that he was taking part in some Biblical drama but, in this case, he trusted the body in the tomb would remain undisturbed for at least twenty-four hours. He was well aware there were foxes and wild dogs in the mountains, and there was always the possibility that the killer might return to destroy the evidence but he considered it unlikely. To remove the body and toss it over the precipice might be possible but what would that achieve? They had seen what they had seen and their story would be supported by scientific evidence, he supposed.

  As they scrambled back down the rocky slope, hardly noticing the thorns scratching their flesh, the heat on their backs and the cold water around their feet, Edward was puzzling over the meaning of the riddle. Tilney, who had arranged his own death and burial for safety’s sake, had risen from the dead only to be killed again. Either he had been so surprised to see his murderer that he had not even had time to get up from his chair, or he had known his killer and had felt no alarm in his presence. He glanced at Verity. He wondered if she had seen the silver lining from her point of view. Whoever had killed Godfrey Tilney, it could not have been David Griffiths-Jones, ensconced in his prison cell.

  In San Pedro, the priest had been praying alone in his little church when they burst in upon him. Edward stood in silence as Rosalía and Verity bombarded the old man with news of violent death. At last, he raised his hands in the air as if to arrest the women in their flow. He summoned them with dignified authority – Rosalía the grieving lover, Verity the principled communist, and Edward the English milord – to kneel and pray for the soul departed. As he knelt beside Verity in the little white church, the walls bare of any ornament except a badly damaged Pietà, Edward was overwhelmed with a sense of the futility of his life. What had he achieved? What good had he done since leaving school and university, and not just any school but Eton, and not any university but Cambridge? A privileged education, the gift of a far from negligible intellect, enough money to do . . . something; since then restless, pointless travel. What did it all amount to? As a New York friend had put it so succinctly: a big zero. He managed a wry smile beneath the hands he held to his face. His self-disgust, which had been growing on him ever since he had embarked on the Normandie in New York, washed over him. In this simple church he felt the sharp pain of absence: the absence of any religion which might make sense of his life, the absence of meaning and purpose, and – if he were to wallow in self-pity – might he not add the absence of love. He knelt a few feet from the only woman he thought he could love, in the knowledge that they might as well be thousands of miles apart for all the good it did him.

  As the priest rose from his knees, Edward made a great effort to throw off his depression. There was one thing he must do in justice to a man he had not liked but whose claim on him was that of youthful comradeship: he could find out who had ended Godfrey Tilney’s life with cool deliberation on the side of a bare mountain and left him a feast for flies. Edward had thought it might take a couple of hours to summon police to the scene of the crime but it was soon borne in on him that this was an absurd underestimate. There was no telephone in the village for one thing. A small boy – there was at least a limitless supply of small boys – was bribed with promises of wealth beyond his wildest dreams to search out the local policeman who, in theory, might be anywhere within a twenty-mile radius. The boy, as it happened, knew exactly where to begin his quest. It was the policeman’s custom to spend his siesta in a little drinking shop, hardly more than a hut, in a neighbouring village.

  He duly arrived, sweating and exhausted from his uphill bicycle ride, three hours after they had brought the news to the village priest. Unfortunately, the policeman seemed to Edward to double as the village idiot and, when the whole story had been told him, did nothing but shrug his shoulders and sit down in the shade with a bottle of beer. It was by now four in the afternoon, too late to go up the mountain even if the policeman had been in a fit state to do so and, in any case, Rosalía was too distressed to guide anyone anywhere.

  Edward then did what he knew he should have done hours before and announced that he and Verity would walk back to San Martino and hope to catch the bus to Montejo de la Sierra where they could get the train back to the city. They were both weary but it was unthinkable to vegetate in San Pedro for twenty-four hours. At San Martino, they could report what they had discovered to the local police and telephone Hester in Madrid so that she could alert Capitán Gonzales. Rosalía would not come with them. She wanted to stay as near her dead lover as possible and be there to accompany the police to the cave the next day.

  The priest had a guest room of which he was very proud but his housekeeper – she might very well, Edward thought, be rather more than that – made it plain she was reluctant to have a strange woman in the house, particularly one as beautiful as Rosalía. She looked even gloomier when the priest offered the three strangers food. In the end, the priest had to command her to show what Spanish hospitality meant. A meal of ham, coarse bread and a kind of stew, the contents of which, Edward decided, should not be investigated too closely, made them all feel better. Even the priest’s housekeeper cheered up when Edward slipped her enough pesetas to cover her expenses several times over.

  Back at the hotel that evening, weary, scratched and bruised with his clothes in rags, Edward was greeted by Felipe, the manager, bobbing and bowing at the front desk, waving a sheet of yellow paper.

  ‘Señor, Milor Coreeth, I have a telegram for you, from London,’ he said with awful solemnity, his moustaches quivering with excitement.

  Edward grabbed the paper from the little man’s hand and began to read. It was from his sister-in-law, Constance, and it was dated February 22nd and addressed from Mers
ham Castle. ‘GERALD FELL WHILE HUNTING AND BANGED HEAD STOP DOCTOR SAYS YOU SHOULD BE HERE STOP COME IF YOU CAN STOP LOVE CONNIE’

  Part Two

  9

  Edward took a step back and almost tripped over the hotel manager. He knew Connie was the last one to panic so Gerald must really be in danger. He read the message again and then made a decision.

  ‘Felipe, I need to send a wire. My brother is very ill and I must return to England immediately.’

  ‘In the morning, señor, in the morning,’ he said shrugging his shoulders. ‘It is too late tonight.’

  Edward repressed a desire to hit this innocent bearer of bad news and with an effort said, civilly enough, ‘In that case get me Miss Browne on the telephone, please.’

  It was Hester who answered the telephone, her cool American drawl calming him. ‘Oh Hester, is that you? Is Verity there?’

  Verity had gone out. Apparently, Hester informed him, she always wired her stories through to the New Gazette at about this time and, despite her exhaustion, had insisted on tapping away on Hester’s ancient Remington as soon as she got into the apartment.

  ‘I told her she was being dumb and needed to shower and rest but I guess you know how much attention she pays when she’s set on doing something.’

  Of course, Edward thought bitterly, the discovery of Tilney’s corpse was just a story to her, to be relished by a million Englishmen as they decapitated their boiled eggs before setting off to work. He knew he was being unfair. Verity had a job to do and could not afford to have another newspaper report a murder she had discovered. It suddenly occurred to him that two of those New Gazette readers might be Tilney’s father and mother. It struck him as horrible that they should hear of their son’s ‘second death’ in this way and he would not be able to rest until he knew that someone at the embassy, Tom Sutton most likely, had forewarned them.

  ‘Are you still there, Edward?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry, Hester. I was just thinking about Tilney’s parents – what a shock it’s going to be for them.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right there. Is that what you wanted to tell V?’

  ‘No, not really. I wanted to break it to her that I have to go back to England.’

  ‘You mean because David is now out of danger? I guess he can’t be tried for killing the guy a second time – while he was in a Spanish prison. It seems crazy . . . V said he had only been dead an hour or two.’

  ‘The body was still warm,’ Edward said simply and he shivered remembering the horror of of the scene. ‘But that’s not why I’m going. My brother has had a fall from his horse and . . . and my sister-in-law thinks I ought to be there.’

  ‘I see. I am so sorry. Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Well yes. Lord Weaver said Harry Bragg – our pilot – would collect me whenever I wanted but I’m not sure how to get in touch with him. I suppose you couldn’t ask Verity to go back to the post office and wire Lord Weaver again and see if he could send an aeroplane for me tomorrow? The train would take two days, perhaps three and . . .’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll tell her as soon as she gets in.’

  ‘Thank you, Hester, I’ll . . . I’ll talk to you later.’

  He telephoned the embassy but, as he had expected, everyone had gone home except for a sleepy-sounding clerk who refused to give Edward Tom Sutton’s home number. Verity must have it or, if not, presumably he would be at Chicote’s again tonight. He wondered why he felt so worried – almost guilty – about the Tilneys hearing the news from a newspaper. He could try telephoning them himself but he knew that, even if he could get through, the line was likely to be bad and it would be very difficult to make himself understood. They probably wouldn’t even remember who he was. He wondered if he was making excuses but decided he was just being practical.

  He went up to his room, took off his jacket and shoes, lay on his bed and settled down to some serious worrying. What if Gerald were to die? He suddenly realised how much he loved his brother. Gerald had been fortunate in one respect. He had found in Connie one of the few women with the sense to recognise that beneath all his pomposity there lay a genuinely good man. She was the anchor who had given Gerald the strength to lead a useful and fulfilling life. He had not wished to become Duke of Mersham but, as the position had been forced on him, was determined to use whatever influence it gave him to stop England being dragged into another European war.

  Edward had no desire to succeed his elder brother. It was a great weight off his mind that Connie and Gerald had had a son, their only child, who had been named Franklyn – or Frank to his family and friends – as were all immediate heirs to the dukedom of Mersham. Frank, now aged sixteen, was at Eton. Uncle and nephew got on well, liking and respecting each other. Edward was young enough – ‘unfossilised’ as the boy put it – to play the part of the older brother Frank had never had. He pitied his nephew and feared for him. It might seem magnificent to be heir to a dukedom but the silver spoon was poisoned. In the modern world being a duke, Edward considered, was rather ridiculous. It was bad enough to be a duke’s younger son with pots of money and no chance of being taken seriously. His birth – his position in society – aroused expectations in some people, suspicion in most, and envy in a few. As far as women were concerned, he knew the girl he wanted was put off by his being a lord while the girls who threw themselves at him were precisely the kind he despised. Would it be worse for Frank?

  It made him itch with frustration that he could not at once rush to his brother’s side and he knew he would not be able to sleep. It seemed to put everything else into perspective. What did it matter if David Griffiths-Jones rotted in a Spanish gaol or if Godfrey Tilney, whom he remembered as a bully and a liar, had been murdered by one of his enemies? In the mood he was in, he was prepared to believe that anything bad which happened to these political troublemakers was no more than they deserved.

  At last, unable to lie still any longer, despite aching limbs and a headache which made him giddy and sick, he got up, grabbed his coat and walked hurriedly towards Chicote’s. It was almost eleven o’clock but it was just possible Tom Sutton would be there and could be persuaded to telephone London for him. Chicote’s was much less busy than it would have been earlier in the evening. The bar was only half full and the waiters chatted behind the long wooden counter, surreptitiously dragging on cigarettes. There was no one at the table which seemed to be reserved for Ben Belasco and Hester but he spotted Maurice Tate talking to Carlos, the barman. Tate had his back to him. He had his arm around the shoulders of a slim young man in a dinner jacket whom Edward identified as the pianist. He went up to Tate and tapped him on the shoulder. Tate turned round, his face a picture of irritation, but his annoyance quickly turned to something like alarm. ‘Ah, Lord Edward, it’s you. Um, this is my friend Agustín.’

  Agustín looked about twenty-four or five. He had long eyelashes, a swarthy skin and almost shoulder-length hair which fell lank on his none too white collar. He smiled into Edward’s face and then looked down at his feet. In that moment, Edward knew that this half-starved-looking Spanish boy was Tate’s lover and the knowledge disgusted him.

  Tate saw the expression which passed over Edward’s face and knew at once that he had been judged and found wanting. Homosexuality was not a crime in Spain as it was in England but not because Spanish society was more tolerant. In Spanish culture there was nothing finer than the comradeship which came naturally between men – it was of a higher order than the love between a man and a woman – and sexual feelings dishonoured it.

  ‘I was looking for Tom Sutton. I suppose he’s not here yet,’ Edward said a little too quickly, ignoring Agustín.

  ‘No,’ said Tate, ‘he should be here. He usually comes about now.’ It seemed to be an effort for him to speak.

  ‘I’ll wait then,’ Edward said shortly. Then, his natural good manners insisting he ought not to sound superior or worse still, contemptuous, he added, ‘I need to get Sutton to telephone London for me.
I have had some bad news which makes it necessary for me to get home as soon as possible.’ He cursed himself for coming out with all this but he was embarrassed and that made him voluble.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tate. ‘Have a drink while you’re waiting. Carlos . . . what will you have? Sherry? Cognac?’

  ‘Just a beer, please.’

  ‘Una caña, por favor, Carlos. An illness in the family?’ he said, turning back to Edward.

  ‘Yes,’ said Edward shortly, not wanting to say more to this man for whom he had an instinctive dislike. Then, realising he was being rude, he added, ‘My elder brother has had a riding accident.’

  ‘The Duke?’ said Tate and Edward again felt the disgust well up inside him. What was he doing talking to this odious man? He hated to think of Verity having friends like Maurice Tate, Belasco and even Hester Lengstrum who seemed to think marriage was a convenience to be shrugged off when it had served a purpose – in her case making her a baroness.