Days Without Number

by Robert Goddard

  They walked clear of the fence and looked down the slope to the lane. It was no more than twenty feet to the verge. ‘You’ll pull in there?’

  ‘Yeah. It’ll go like clockwork, Nick. I promise.’

  ‘When do you want to do this?’ Tonight. I’ll come to Trennor around eleven.’

  ‘There’s something you ought to know before then.’

  ‘Tell me what it is on the way back to the car park. No sense our hanging around here.’

  The condolences card left under the Land Rover’s windscreen wiper in Plymouth on Monday night was the thing Nick now reckoned Andrew needed to be told about. It might not be important. But Nick would not have bet on it. The card, the will, the body in the cellar: they all pointed to events in the past and people in the present that he and Andrew had no knowledge of. And ignorance was a poor basis for any plan.

  ‘You see what I’m saying?’

  ‘That there’s more going on than we have any idea of?’

  ‘A lot more would be my guess.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘Doesn’t that worry you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you think it should?’

  ‘No. Because one of the few pieces of good advice Dad ever gave me was “Don’t worry about what you can’t control”. This’—he gestured with his thumb back towards the shaft—‘I can control.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘Won’t be any concern of mine or yours once we’ve emptied that hole under the cellar.’ Andrew grinned. ‘And banked Tantris’s cheque.’

  Nick went back to Trennor anticipating that Pru would have turned up in his absence. But she would see nothing odd in Andrew having stayed at the house overnight and he reckoned the chances of her having tried to open the cellar door were negligible. Even if she had, he could cobble together a cover story.

  As it transpired, however, there had been plenty to occupy Pru’s mind in his absence. A strange car parked in the yard was the first warning Nick had of this. As Pru shortly afterwards explained, in a whispered conversation in the kitchen, they had a visitor. Or rather, strictly speaking, Michael Paleologus had a visitor.

  ‘I’ve put him in the drawing room, Nicholas. He was real shook up when I told him your father had passed away. He was expecting to see him today.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Says his name’s David Anderson.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘A former student of your father’s, apparently.’

  ‘Did he say what he wants?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. Well, it’s none of my business, is it?’

  ‘It may be none of mine either, Pru. I’ll go and find out.’

  David Anderson looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, a bulky, stooping figure with a mane of greying curly hair, aviator glasses and a ready smile. His corduroy jacket, sweat-shirt and jeans were all threadbare enough to date from his student days. In fact, it was not entirely clear that those days had ended. There was more than a touch of academic shabbiness about him.

  ‘Mr Paleologus. Good to meet you. You’re, er, Michael’s son?’

  ‘One of his sons, yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear what’s happened. Can’t say how sorry.’

  ‘We all are.’

  ‘A fall, your housekeeper said. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. Last Sunday.’ Nick decided against specificity about the circumstances. A request from Anderson to see the offending cellar steps was unlikely, but had to be avoided at all costs. ‘He’d been increasingly frail for quite a while. An accident was always on the cards, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He sounded as sharp as ever when I spoke to him.’

  ‘There was nothing wrong with him mentally. Like you say, as sharp as a razor. When did you speak to him?’

  ‘He got in touch with me about ten days ago.’

  ‘Uh-huh. You’d stayed in contact since Oxford, had you?’

  ‘Off and on. I teach history at Sherborne. Michael helped me get the job. So, I’d always have been happy to do him a favour. This is the first time he’s actually asked. I’m only sorry it’s too late now to give him the results.’

  ‘What did he want you to do?’

  ‘Oh, just a spot of research. Straightforward, really, though fitting it in round my teaching was a bit of a bugger. These places are never open when you want them to be, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘What places?’

  ‘Well, in this case, Exeter Cathedral Library. But I managed to get down there on Wednesday afternoon and take a look at the stuff Michael was interested in. Sadly, it seems I was too late.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. But, er, what was this stuff?’

  ‘Pretty esoteric. You don’t want me to bore you with it, I’m sure.’

  ‘I’d happily take the risk.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It seems a pity for you to do all that work and not get to tell anyone about it. He was my father. I’ve always been interested in his enthusiasms.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘There’s something I don’t understand, though. Why couldn’t he go himself? I don’t mean to be rude, but—’

  ‘It’s the nature of the material, Mr Paleologus. Reading seventeenth-century script isn’t a simple matter. Michael knew I’d had more experience than he had in the field. He was first and foremost an archaeologist, after all.’

  ‘Seventeenth-century script?’

  ‘Yes. To be precise, a haphazardly bound volume of correspondence from successive vicars and churchwardens of the parish of—’

  ‘St Neot.’

  Anderson looked at Nick in surprise. ‘You already know.’

  ‘Only that Dad was interested in the history of St Neot Church.’

  ‘He certainly was. I mean, this is pretty obscure material.’

  ‘What’s it doing in Exeter?’

  ‘Oh, there was no diocese of Truro in the seventeenth century. All Cornish parishes answered to the Bishop of Exeter. Though I doubt many of them produced such voluminous correspondence as St Neot. The collection goes back to the fifteenth century, as a matter of fact, and there’s a lot of it. But it was the mid-seventeenth century that Michael wanted me to concentrate on. He’d heard about a letter written by one of the churchwardens, Richard Bawden, in sixteen sixty-two, concerning precautions that had been taken during the Civil War to protect the church’s evidently rather fine stained glass. He wanted me to confirm the contents of the letter. It was his understanding that Bawden stated in the letter that one of the windows had been removed in sixteen forty-six and entrusted to a gentleman called Mandrell.’

  ‘And did you confirm that?’

  ‘Well, it’s a little complicated. I tried to telephone Michael to explain the situation, but, of course, I wasn’t able to speak to him. We’d already settled on this morning to meet, so—’

  ‘You could have left a message.’

  ‘Michael specifically asked me not to.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yes. I can’t imagine why, but he was most insistent. And I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how insistent he could be.’

  ‘No.’ Nick smiled. ‘I suppose I don’t.’ What he really needed, of course, was an explanation of why his father should so particularly wish to prevent a message being left on his answer phone. The only reason Nick could think of was because such a message would have been evidence of Michael Paleologus’s reluctance to accept the case Elspeth had made to him. But he could have justified that on the grounds of academic thoroughness. Secrecy on the point seemed oddly excessive. ‘So, what was this complication?’

  ‘Are you really sure you want me to go into it?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘OK. Well, let me show you this.’ Anderson burrowed in a briefcase beside him and pulled out a folder. ‘It’s a photocopy of the Bawden letter.’ He laid the folder on the coffee-table and opened it.

  Nick peered down at the sheet o
f paper on which the letter was copied. At once Anderson’s comment about seventeenth century script made sense. The sloping scrawl was clearly a letter, but, as to what it said, Nick saw only a jumble of curled and tangled pen-strokes. ‘Good God. You can read this?’

  ‘With practice, yes. Bawden was writing in answer to a letter from the Bishop’s secretary of which there’s no copy, at least not in this collection. He says here’—Anderson pointed to a passage that was indistinguishable from the rest as far as Nick was concerned—’ “Mr Philpe has asked me to state my best intelligence of the precautions we took to preserve the great and particular treasure of the parish and how it so came to be spared the attentions of the Parliament’s soldiery in those dark days nine years since.” That takes us back to sixteen fifty-one, since the letter’s dated’—Anderson’s finger moved up the page—‘the twenty-first of May, sixteen sixty two. Right. Now, Bawden goes on to say’—the finger moved back—’ “It was removed five years prior thereto.” That means sixteen forty-six. “We could not suffer it to stand at risk with Cornwall in the Parliament’s hands. It was immured safe in the keeping of our staunch friend Mr Mandrell, and is safe there still, I warrant.” The rest is just respectful gush. Those sentences are the essence of what Bawden communicated.’

  ‘Where does he actually mention the window, then?’

  ‘That’s the complication. He doesn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘ “The great and particular treasure of the parish” is the phrase he uses. He doesn’t define what that treasure was. Probably he didn’t need to. His correspondent would already have known. It’s a good guess that the stained glass is what he’s referring to, if it’s as fine as I’m told. But that’s all it can be: a guess.’

  ‘The great and particular treasure of the parish’. Nick studied the phrase, legible now it had been spelt out for him, at some length after Anderson had gone. Elspeth had quoted Bawden as referring to ‘our finest window’. Nick was certain about that. Yet here, in Bawden’s own hand, was something altogether more ambiguous. It could mean the window, of course. It might well do. But it was not explicitly stated. It was not in black and white. There was an element of doubt, which his father would undoubtedly have seized on. ‘Trust nothing except primary sources in this game’ was one of the last things the old man had said. And here was the primary source. But what was the game?

  Elspeth’s misrepresentation was understandable in a way. She had been asked to find the Doom Window and this was as close as she had got. After all, what could the treasure be but the window? To call it a guess, as Anderson had done, was to undersell it. Elspeth had merely oversold it to a similar degree.

  But was that all she had oversold? ‘Michael said there was a “further ramification” of this he might want me to look into,’ Anderson had revealed on his way out. ‘What do you suppose that was?’

  ‘No idea, I’m afraid,’ Nick had replied.

  That had not been quite true. Nick felt sure his father would have proceeded next to the question of Mandrell’s connection with Trennor. Would that stand up to scrutiny any better than the Bawden letter? It was suddenly a pressing question.

  But it was not a question Nick could risk asking Anderson to ponder. More than ever, he had to keep his doubts to himself. There was one person he could ask, however, quite legitimately. He rang Elspeth’s mobile number.

  The phone was switched off. ‘Please try later’ was advice Nick did not welcome. Irritatingly, he had failed to ask Elspeth for her home number and, on a Saturday, he was never going to be able to contact her via the Bristol University switchboard. There was her friend at the museum, of course, but there again Nick was out of luck. Tilda Hewitt, a member of the curatorial staff, would not be in again until Monday and her home number was not about to be volunteered, perhaps because, he shortly afterwards established, she was ex-directory.

  The remorseless rules of a weekend were borne in on Nick. He could make no progress until Monday. But the drastic action he had agreed to participate in would not wait so long. Andrew was intent on disposing of the body that night. He would brook no delay. But what if, later, the chain of evidence linking the Doom Window to Trennor fell apart in their hands? What would they have achieved then by bundling a corpse down a mine shaft—other than their own incrimination?

  Nick kept trying Elspeth’s mobile number through the afternoon and evening. Without success.

  ‘I’ve brought a couple of rubble bags, a roll of duck tape and a length of rope.’ Andrew’s announcement on arrival at Trennor late that night was severely practical. ‘Two bags should be enough. Then we truss it up inside the tarpaulin and go. We can cover the slab with the rack and play dumb if anyone ever finds the hole. OK?’

  ‘As far as it goes, yes.’

  ‘Not getting cold feet, are you, Nick?’

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

  ‘Not again.’

  ‘It’s important. It concerns well, look at this.’ Nick showed him the photocopy of the Bawden letter and tried to explain its potential significance. But, even as he did so, he could see that Andrew was having none of it. He had made up his mind what to do and the phraseological nuances of a barely legible seventeenth-century letter were not going to change it. ‘Elspeth Hartley hasn’t quite played fair with us. We should check this out before—’

  ‘Bloody hell, Nick. You can’t seriously be trying to make something out of out of that.’ Andrew stabbed derisively at the sheet of paper. ‘I can’t even read it. Elspeth Hartley’s the historian, not you. If it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for Tantris. And that means it’s good enough for us.’

  ‘Anderson’s a historian. And he thinks—’

  ‘I don’t care what he thinks. Yeah, Dad probably would have tried to quibble about it. But it doesn’t sound to me like anything more than the tiniest of exaggerations.’

  ‘Even so, I think we should ask Elspeth to explain herself.’

  ‘Well, I don’t. Are you trying to unravel this deal?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Good. Then let’s concentrate on the matter in hand.’

  ‘But that’s the point. If there’s really no substantial evidence that the Doom Window—’

  ‘I’ll tell you what the bloody point is.’ Andrew grasped Nick by the shoulder and stared at him. ‘Those bones down in the cellar are leaving. Tonight. I’ll do it alone if I have to. It won’t be easy, but I’ll do it. I’d rather you helped me, though. I was counting on it, in fact. You promised you would. The only question that matters to me is: are you going to?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  In the end, Nick did help his brother. Short of telephoning the police, he could not in fact have stopped Andrew going ahead. After watching him for several minutes struggling to pull all that remained of whoever their father had buried out from beneath the slab, Nick lost patience with his own doubts and stepped forward to lend a hand. Andrew acknowledged his assistance with the faintest of smiles, as if he had known it would be forthcoming sooner or later.

  It was a struggle even for two, a mutual revulsion at having to handle the slimy bone and rotted flesh of a dead human complicating the task. Eventually, with a rubble bag taped round the head and torso and another round the pelvis and legs, it became easier. The visual and tactile reality of the thing they were dealing with was suddenly shielded from them. They tied the tarpaulin tightly round the bundle until it resembled nothing more sinister than a roll of carpet and hauled it out to the Land Rover. Then they cleared up behind them in the cellar and set off.

  As Andrew had predicted, Bodmin Moor was deserted. The red aircraft warning beacon on the Caradon Hill transmitter was the only light showing in the black, cloud-blanked sky. One or two lamps shone behind curtained windows in scattered farmhouses and cottages, but they encountered no traffic after leaving the B road at Upton Cross. They approached the shaft cautiously along the lane from Minions, pulled in beside it, turned off the engine an
d lights and waited until their eyes had adjusted to the darkness and they were certain there was no-one about.

  They got out of the car and stood together, listening to the enveloping silence. Then they lifted the bundle out of the back, stumbled up the short slope and felt their way slowly round the fence enclosing the shaft until they reached the loosened stretch of wire. Pulling the wire up high enough for Andrew to crawl beneath it, dragging the bundle with him, seemed to make a lot of noise to Nick’s ears. He could only hope it would not carry far on the fitful wind, especially since this was the moment when he had to switch on the torch and shine it at the mouth of the shaft.

  ‘OK,’ coming in a whisper from Andrew, was the first word spoken since they had left the car. He pushed the bundle through the undergrowth ahead of him, the tarpaulin snagging on thorns and stalks, until it was hanging over the edge of the shaft. Then he gave it a final shove and it tipped over. As it did so Nick switched off the torch. He heard the bundle strike the sides of the shaft several times until it finally thumped to rest far below.

  Silence followed. Then Andrew said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and began scrambling back beneath the fence.

  A few moments later, they were on the road, the Land Rover’s headlamps slicing through the darkness as they sped away. The deed was done.

  Andrew became noticeably relaxed as they left the Moor. To him, though not to Nick, it seemed clear that their problem was solved; it was plain sailing from here on. The most obvious sign of this new lightness of heart was a sudden transition from tight-lipped terseness to what counted in Andrew as extreme loquaciousness.

  ‘Tom’s spending tonight with his mother. And he’ll be stopping off with her for a few days on his way back. I should be glad, I suppose. At least it means she won’t have an excuse to show up at the funeral. I’m picking the lad up from Bodmin Parkway tomorrow afternoon. I spoke to Irene earlier and we thought we could get together for tea at Trennor. Her and Laura, me and Tom. Plus you, of course. And Anna and Basil, if Irene can talk them into it. Anna might be feeling a bit left out, with Zack on the other side of the world. We’ll have to try and cheer her up. All that OK with you?’