In Prior's Wood

by G. M. Malliet

  * * *

  It was a large private room where Lady Duxter lay, drifting in and out of consciousness, her aristocratic, proud features pale against the white pillowcase. Max had a word just outside the room with Dr. Martin, the man overseeing her case.

  “A complete recovery is always possible,” the doctor said. “We just don’t know with carbon monoxide poisoning. She is lucky to be alive. The rest of this we can put down to miracle.”

  Jane walked over to them as they stood talking in low voices in the hospital corridor. “I’d like to sit with her if I may.”

  “I’ll join you,” said Max. “It is likely to be a long vigil. Let’s go and get some coffee to bring back. I just need to pop outside first to make a phone call.”

  As they stood in line for service at the hospital canteen, Jane said, “When I thought Colin and Marina had been having an affair, I was fairly broken up. I can admit it now. I know, you’re thinking I’m some major brand of hypocrite. But Colin and I—we were young together. We loved each other; it just didn’t last. But because it was over for me doesn’t mean I wished him any ill. Certainly I didn’t wish him dead—murdered no less, if what you say is true. Thank you for helping put my mind at ease—at least Colin didn’t die hating me. But now more than ever, we must find Poppy. When we do, I think we’ll find Colin’s killer, too. Don’t you?”

  Max could only nod noncommittally.

  They returned with their coffee to the hospital room where Marina lay hooked up to tubes and IVs and the entire panoply of the best that modern medicine could offer. People imagine that a person in a coma is at peace, a sort of sleeping beauty, but Max knew how far that often was from the truth. Anyone could see Lady Duxter’s mind was agitated, her hands tugging at her blankets, her handsome face crumpled in distress. She was extremely lucky to have survived at all. She was beyond lucky if she suffered no permanent brain damage from her ordeal.

  Max felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. It was the signal he had been waiting for.

  He left the room.

  And the moment Jane Frost was alone, or thought she was, she tried to unhook the IV. It was DCI Cotton and one of his larger sergeants who stopped her, the two men emerging from behind a hospital screen.

  Following close behind, having first made sure the police had Jane securely in custody, was Carville—a fully alive-and-well Carville Rasmussen, untouched by fire and enjoying his role as one of Marina’s rescuers. Later he would testify in court to what he had seen while standing next to Max Tudor, from the safety of the corridor. With every retelling following the trial, Carville’s participation got bolder and more heroic, until he had placed himself squarely in the room, keeping Jane in a chokehold.

  But in court, for once, he would not give in to the temptation to embellish. He had seen with his own eyes, from a safe distance, Jane Frost’s attempt to end Lady Duxter’s life.

  Jane did not go quietly. Cotton had to forcibly drag her out of the room.

  Poppy and Stanley stood in the hospital corridor and watched her go.

  Chapter 21

  JUSTICE

  “Max, you may want to come out here and see this.” Cotton’s voice was puzzled. Another week had passed and something had again happened to jar Cotton out of any sense of complacency. Just as the police had been tying up the loose ends of the case, getting ready to move on to the next, some thread kept threatening to unspool.

  “The fire damaged one of the trees near the old church,” Cotton told Max. “Well, it damaged many trees, of course. But this was a particularly old and vulnerable oak, and it fell over, splitting open—it just cracked apart, like an egg. And as men were working to remove the debris from the site, they saw the roots of the tree were actually growing around some old bones.”

  “Human bones?”

  “Without question. There’s a complete skull. And there’s little doubt it is human.”

  Holy … “I’ll be right there.”

  * * *

  “How old, can they say yet?”

  The two friends, the blond policeman and the dark-haired priest, stood some distance from the area where a forensics team of two men and a woman stood discussing the best way to extricate the bones, their hands and arms waving in illustration of the finer points of the many problems presented to them by the discovery of the remains. In the end they agreed they had to remove the bones intact without disturbing the roots that grew around and through them, lacing a delicate pattern in and out of the rib cage. To try to separate the bones from the roots on site would quite evidently destroy both.

  “Not yet, not with any certainty,” said Cotton. “It is strange: Someone had put her body inside the base of that enormous tree trunk and covered her up with dirt, moss, and leaves, tamping it all down and tightly sealing the hole. She was left undisturbed, even by animals, eventually becoming part of the tree’s root system. If the fire hadn’t been extinguished when it was, we might never have realized she was there—the fire would have consumed her, the tree, and all.”

  “Her?”

  “Yes. Dr. Winterbottom decided at a glance the bones were those of a female. Something about the width of the pelvis. He thinks she was young, too, when she died. Not a child, but an adolescent.”

  They watched a few moments as the forensics team attempted to brush away as much dirt as possible without disturbing all the evidence of the girl’s resting place. She had been put into the tree in what looked like a fetal position.

  Something like that, thought Max, could so easily have happened to Poppy, and to Stanley for that matter—if Max hadn’t had them taken to a safe house in London, calling in a favor from his former boss in MI5. It wasn’t the first time Max had used such a ruse in his agent days. He was just starting to understand that he would never be permitted to leave those days behind him.

  “Nothing simpler,” George had said when Max rang him. “I’ll send someone to fetch them now. Just tell them to keep their heads down meanwhile.” Max hadn’t been sure at the time what was going on, but his every instinct told him Jane was somehow involved, alibi or no alibi. Even if he turned out to be wrong, there was nothing for it but to make sure Poppy was out of harm’s way for the duration. Stanley’s disappearance at the same time, with the willing complicity of his family (more like their complete indifference) and the cooperation of the police went to further ensure someone caring was around to keep an eye on her.

  “The girl’s bones have to be carefully excavated, packed up, and sent to London to the forensic guys with the big Bunsen burners. We don’t have the facilities in Monkslip-super-Mare to manage this sort of affair, when what is needed is a dedicated forensic anthropologist running the tests. Or in this case I suppose I mean archaeologist, if we’re right in thinking the bones are very old indeed, and a preliminary look suggests that they are. In any event, it may be months before we know more.

  “But it’s odd,” Cotton added, “how these old tales often turn out to have that kernel of truth to them.”

  “Just as Awena said. In this case it’s more than a kernel. A girl went missing long ago, and songs were written and sung about her, and her legend, as they say, never died. The villagers seem to have suspected foul play was involved even if they were a bit sketchy as to her exact final resting place, just that it was somewhere around the woods area they called ‘the Girl’s Grave.’ Otherwise they’d have dug her up for themselves years ago and given her a proper burial.”

  “Nether Monkslippers always seem to know, even if they do get a few facts wrong,” said Cotton. “I suppose some equivalent of a gossipy Miss Pitchford has been disseminating misinformation about the village for centuries.”

  “And viewing it as a vital service to the community. Yes. So, what happens now?”

  “As far as the girl is concerned, of course, we wait.” Cotton looked about him pensively. “The poor thing. I think we have to assume this is the missing young woman. A girl who couldn’t escape her fate. The lords and landowners in those da
ys would have held all the cards. There was no Angela-type system that might have saved her.”

  “Angela?”

  “Yes. Women have taken to asking after ‘Angela’ in pubs and bars—‘How is Angela?’ or ‘May I speak with Angela?’ It’s a code to the bartender to say the guy they’re with has turned out to be a problem and they need a safe way to escape from him. An escort out to a car, or a cab brought to the door, or even the police called in. In the U.S., it’s called asking for an ‘angel shot’ and there are variations of wording to indicate how bad the situation is. An angel shot with lime, for example, means ‘call the police now.’ It is something that originated with the Lincolnshire Rape Crisis people. They’ve posted signs explaining the meaning in ladies’ rooms all over Lincolnshire.”

  “It’s one of those ideas so clever and long overdue you wonder why no one ever thought of it before. Certainly, you’re right: our Victorian girl was out of reach of any help like that.”

  “Who do we like for this one?” Cotton asked. “What rogue long dead, himself?”

  “Oh, the son of the lord of the manor at the time was always a favorite for this, once it became clear she hadn’t just taken off to be with the gardener. Since someone took the trouble to hide her so well, I’m going to guess that someone was responsible in some way for her death. It may have been an accident of some kind and the guilty party panicked for unknown reasons. If this turns out to be our missing village girl I’ll see if I can’t get her bones interred in the vault at St. Edwold’s. Members of the family are still around; they might agree to a DNA comparison.” He paused to peer through the canopy of dying leaves on the overhead branches being thrown about and shuffled by a raw breeze coming off the pond. The sky had begun to roil with clouds.

  “Anyway,” he added, “we have a modern-day problem to wrap up.”

  “Lady Duxter,” said Cotton. “Yes. It’s lucky for her she made it but … Now she’s on the mend, I suppose I’m wondering—will she forgive her husband? Can they just go back to the way they were before?”

  “Will he forgive her? With an ego his size, it’s doubtful. No one leaves Lord Duxter, no matter how unfaithful he’s been. Anyway, I should think that’s the last thing she’d want, to go back to the way things were before. Because the way things were before was awful. Bad enough to drive her to attempt suicide the one time, and making her vulnerable to Jane’s murderous plot. Think how close Jane came to getting away with this. Even though Lord Duxter began to suspect her, he had no proof she was other than the efficient, docile woman she presented herself as being to the world.”

  “Right,” said Cotton. “There was no physical evidence against her. It was her car, too, so of course her prints were everywhere. In the end we had no choice but to, well, test her.”

  Max could tell Cotton had rather enjoyed that moment, proving that some measure of actor’s blood coursed through his veins, inherited from both his parents.

  “As for Lady Duxter: Miss Pitchford reports that she’s handed him an ultimatum, finally realizing how much of her depression came from her inability to speak up for herself, and from spending so much of her energy maintaining the status quo. I would say if the lord shapes up, she’ll stay with him. She likes the glamour, if you will, of being Lady Duxter—that Lady Duxter of publishing fame. They’ve been together so long, and I think she’s a loyal sort at heart, even if she’s not the strongest of women. It’s strictly up to him to appreciate that quality of loyalty. But it may be too late. Now there’s Carville.”

  “Oh, surely those two won’t end up together,” said Cotton. “Carville is … well he’s…”

  “A self-serving, egotistical, basically dishonest man with an inflated sense of his own importance? Yes, but don’t you see, that also describes Lord Duxter. To end up with Carville would be jumping out of the frying pan into the flames.”

  “I guess horrible men are her type,” said Cotton. “Really, that’s the tragedy. That the poor woman has such poor judgment she can’t see what others around her see so clearly.”

  “Every couple is different. We just can’t know.” Max took a last look at the team huddled around the bones in the tree. “Come round to the vicarage when you’re finished here,” he said. “We’ll have a drink.”

  Chapter 22

  THE WORLD

  Time passed, and Lady Duxter’s condition improved with each day. Physical therapy, mental therapy, nutrition, drugs, and a good deal of luck combined to bring her round nearly to where she once had been. She would have phases of weakness and blurred vision, and according to Dr. Martin, she would never return to robust health. But she was here, still alive on the planet, and her husband claimed to be elated, although not everyone believed him (Miss Pitchford, on hearing the entire story, forever would brand him as an upstart cad and a scoundrel).

  Lady Duxter had begun to remember and she had begun to talk.

  “If there ever was any doubt,” said Cotton, “we know now it was Jane who did this. And she acted alone. Up until near the end, I thought she might have a partner in crime. Carville or Lord Duxter or even a third person we never suspected.” Cotton sat back in his chair by the vicarage fire and crossed one leg over another, first ensuring the crease in his slacks would remain knife sharp.

  “But now in addition to the attempted murder we all saw at the hospital—our sting operation—we have an eyewitness to the murder of Colin Frost. Jane is the last person Marina remembers seeing before she passed out. She came to her senses briefly in the back of the car. There was Colin beside her, already nearly gone. And Jane was at the wheel. None of it made sense to her. Now it does.”

  Max slumped in his chair across from Cotton. He crossed his arms over his chest, a look of profound disquiet on his handsome face.

  “This was pure evil. When will I learn to spot it?”

  Privately, Cotton thought the answer was, “Never.” One of Max’s strengths was that he didn’t see evil everywhere he looked. It allowed him to assess people without the inbred paranoia Cotton so often saw in the police force. When everyone you meet is a bad guy, the real bad guys can slip through the cracks. “When did you know, Max?”

  “I didn’t know for certain,” he said slowly. “This case came near to defeating me, which is why I had to resort to, well, to some MI5 tricks I swore I’d never use again. I thought Jane had had no direct hand in the murders herself, because she was with Awena at five fifteen. Poppy’s evidence created a sort of bookend effect to the timing: She said she was briefly with Jane at five or a little after. That’s less than fifteen minutes. Poppy said she popped in to the library to ask if it was all right for her to use the ATM in the village. Her father was there, having a drink with Jane. Poppy kissed him good-bye.”

  “She didn’t notice if his car was there, if he’d driven over, but he had.”

  “Yes. But all this meant Jane could not have done it all in fifteen minutes, however she went about it—subdue two people, somehow get their bodies into the car, drive them out to Prior’s Wood, set up the hose for the carbon monoxide, wait several minutes to make sure they were not going to come round, and sprint back to the priory on foot.

  “But Jane had altered the library clock, giving herself an extra twenty minutes. The times we were given to work with are irrelevant. Poppy’s testimony in particular, as we now know, is irrelevant.

  “You had Sergeant Essex run that mile, and for good measure, you had her run it back. She is of a similar build and age to Jane and like Jane, in good shape. When Miss Pitchford complained of seeing Jane running about the village, she meant that literally. Jane is a runner—not at a professional level, but fast enough to suit the purpose. In total it took Essex a little over twenty minutes to get to and from the Girl’s Grave—there and back, over terrain that is not flat. And she stopped there for ten minutes and sort of moved about “committing the crime” in pantomime. If Jane ran it both ways we have to figure she needed at least thirty minutes. Add at least ten minutes to “manha
ndle” the victims in the first place—to subdue them with drugs and alcohol, and get them to the area where they were later found. From the start of the crime to the finish of the crime we were looking at forty minutes for her to do it all. There’s no way—that did not fit what we knew of the timetable.

  “The bodies were discovered very soon after, and just in time, or Lady Duxter would have been dead as well.”

  “Yes, that put an end time to the deed. Jane had forty minutes, tops, and even then she was lucky the hunter who found the bodies—an illegal poacher, really—didn’t see her leaving the scene.

  “I kept thinking Jane would need an accomplice—that for such a small person as she is, there was no way she could lift dead Colin’s weight into the car. That would be nearly impossible for someone her size. Not even with that adrenaline rush that surges through you when you kill someone.”

  It was news to Cotton that Max had ever killed anyone. Cotton suspected that he’d never learn the details, although that wouldn’t stop him from trying one day to pry the story out of Max.

  “If she acted alone, I wondered, how did she manage it?” said Max. “If she had an accomplice—the only way I could see for her to shave time off the proceedings—who was it? With an accomplice to help her shift the victims, she could drive them out there and then run back, giving her that much-needed seven or so extra minutes. I thought of Poppy…”

  “As someone who would lie for Jane. Someone she could manipulate, perhaps. Threaten or bully. Right.”

  “Unlikely, knowing Poppy’s spirit, not to mention her dislike amounting to hatred of Jane, but not impossible. It would also go a long way toward explaining that dislike, if Jane had something on her. But I also wondered if Poppy might have done it, acting alone. She also could not do the heavy lifting by herself, but she was clever enough to convince two people to drive off and meet her in the woods. Time would be largely irrelevant if Poppy were the guilty party. Certainly, it would be easy for Jane to frame her for this murder if need be. But time mattered greatly in the case of Jane. She relied absolutely on our taking Awena’s word for the time she was with Jane in the library.”