Grave Consequences

by Dana Cameron

  Mr. Gilstrap and I strolled along the entryway from the far end, meaning that we were traveling backward through time, each picture a little earlier than the last, moving from the nineteenth-and twentieth-century landscapes to the earlier portraits, until we got to the end nearest the door. The first five pictures were portraits, of men who looked like clergy; they might have been prominent townsmen, but they didn’t look like connections of Jeremy’s. All the Hyde-Spofford portraits in the long gallery where lunch was being served had a similarity about the nose and the chin that marked the family right to the present day. Now that I considered some of Rory’s features beneath the makeup, I recognized the similarity he and his uncle bore to the pictures. But these portraits—the ones that showed views of Marchester in the front hallway—all depicted a landscape behind them, most likely the lands over which the men held sway, and in each of these the old abbey was still standing intact. It was in the third, the one Dora had indicated, dating to more than fifteen years after the lightning strike and devastating fire, that the abbey was first shown as a ruin.

  I told Mr. Gilstrap about Dora’s letter. I peered at the picture and he put on his glasses and squinted at the plate that had been screwed into the frame, sometime in the nineteenth century by my guess. He read it out loud: “‘Frobisher Cholmondeley, 1449–1521, c. 1520, Artist unknown, English.’ Well, that’s obvious! Look at that chin! Those watery eyes! Only a fellow countryman could have captured them so accurately.”

  I studied the portrait, close enough to smell the must of old wood and paint. “He does look a little porcine, doesn’t he?”

  Mr. Gilstrap snorted. “Like he shoved all his siblings away from the trough. He seems to have done all right for himself, at any rate, making it to threescore and ten years in a time when most people didn’t live nearly as long as that. But do you see what your friend was after you to find?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. I wonder if it hasn’t something to do with scale or aspect, or something.”

  “Well, I see what catches my interest. Always has done.” He grinned, quite pleased with himself.

  I shook my head and smiled. “What’s that?”

  “The river,” he said triumphantly. “That’s always been the thing that’s determined how the town changed through time. Even in my day, the river was the important thing, all that free power? But there’s lots in the history that you can’t see in the church records, or the tax documents, or you won’t, unless you learn to see between the lines. For example, I mentioned that the factory was important during the war. Can you guess why else the river was so important?”

  After I tried “water power” and “communication” and “trade,” I gave up.

  “You’re nearly there,” Mr. Gilstrap said. “Smuggling, of course. The black market. Very busy around here. The war was an extraordinary time. Mads Crawford, she could tell you all the stories. She was the one who was here, I was off at infantry training. But she and her friend Caroline Green, later Ashford, were right dashers in those days. Practically running things at home—most of the men in the service, of course, many killed in the raids, a few gone missing and no one knows what happened to them, whether they got caught in a bombing, or ran off or what. So the ladies were running the show at home and it was hard for them to give that up when the war ended. I tell you, although some of the blokes didn’t care for what the ladies had learned, in the factory and the home reserves and all, I liked a girl with dash then. Still do. But if you ever want to hear what Marchester was really like back then, buy old Mads a glass of something stronger than tea and you’ll get an earful, I promise you. But let’s have a look at your picture here.”

  As far as portraits went, it wasn’t very good. Frobisher Cholmondeley’s fingers were interlaced and rested on his lap like a pile of fat white sausages, his cheeks both plump and wrinkled, and his mouth small and insipid, possibly even beyond the art of a better painter to flatter. His robes and hat were flat blocks of color, with no fold or even a bit of braid to distinguish them.

  But looking over the sitter’s shoulder and out the window, it was possible to see where the painter’s real interest was: outside the room in which he worked and down on the field before the abbey. The tiny block of landscape in the upper right hand corner, less than one-ninth of the entire picture, was a jewel in miniature. There was only one tree, to the far left of the window frame, but each of its minute leaves was painstakingly rendered in a range of colors that was inconceivable, given the principal figure in the foreground, which was an almost childish cartoon. The patch of green meadow that spread out before the abbey—still standing at this point, shortly before its ruin—was lovingly depicted, the minute dots of bright color immediately suggestive of wildflowers. The stones of the abbey buildings must have struck the painter as part of the landscape, for they were as carefully drawn as the natural features had been, and the river was a bright, lively slash behind the abbey ruin that immediately drew the eye. A few small buildings could be seen across the river, small both as a matter of perspective and in social consequence next to the abbey, like the diminutive portraits of slaves next to the kings and queens in Egyptian wall paintings.

  “Looks like the lad wished he was outside with the cows by the river,” Mr. Gilstrap murmured. “Anywhere but in that room with himself there.”

  I was confused, a little annoyed at being waked from my reverie. “What lad?”

  “The painter, of course. Although I’m assuming it was a lad, most painters must have been at that time, mustn’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose you’re right. His emphasis is really down in that field, by the abbey, isn’t it? That’s where all his energy and focus are. I suppose that’s what Dora meant, when she said that I would find it out.”

  I spent another few minutes staring at the landscape, but could find nothing of what my infuriating colleague might have meant. The abbey ruin seemed to be along the same stretch of river, its orientation the same as the one now indicated by the last bit of standing wall, and although the field had been filled over the years with more and more houses and small businesses, it all looked maddeningly correct to me.

  Damn Dora! I thought vehemently. Why couldn’t she have just told me her idea? Why did she always have to be grandstanding?

  “I give up, for the moment,” I said to Mr. Gilstrap. “I just don’t see what I’m supposed to see.”

  “I can’t make out anything unusual, myself. Nice of your friend to be so specific, wasn’t it?” he said dryly.

  “Well, that’s just her way.” I was annoyed to find myself defending Dora against just the same charges I’d been laying at her door an instant ago. “If you want to see what’s for dessert, I’ll be along in a moment.”

  “I think I will; a cup of tea would do me just right about now. Very nice to have met you, Mrs. Fielding.”

  I smiled. “And you, Mr. Gilstrap.”

  I took my notebook out of my pocket and made a note of the information on the brass plaque before I made a hasty sketch of the painting. I’m not much good at drawing freehand—any virtue in my artifact drawings or plans is strictly a matter of hours of study and too many erasures and measurements—but did a fair enough rendering of the sitter and the view out his window. I made the most effort with the buildings, the river, and the abbey, because they were the things I’d want to draw on later, so to speak.

  When the disturbance down the hallway intruded upon me, I had been too much in my own little world, immersed in a four-hundred-fifty-year-old landscape, a detail no more than four by four inches of the whole picture, to move discreetly away, as I should have. Ordinarily I would have claimed eminent domain and since I was there first, waited for the others to apologize and move on, but I wasn’t on my own turf and I really did not want to interrupt George Whiting again.

  “—If it had been anything but archaeology, if it had been anyone but that bloody Compton woman, it would never have happened,” he insisted, quiet
ly for him, but quite loudly enough for me to hear. He was standing so close to her, almost as if he’d been leaning on her while he cried.

  “George, you know that’s not true. You know that’s not the point at all—”

  I was surprised at how stern Sabine Jones sounded; she was not in the least intimidated by Whiting, personally or physically. Despite the hole in her sock and the dried leaf caught amidst a tangle of blond hair and combs, she had a force of personality that insisted you take her seriously.

  “—So why don’t you let me help you? As for Ellen, you know I can help you there, if you’ll let me…”

  Whiting’s voice was muffled now, but I could make out a bit. “I can’t…It’s all I can do to—”

  As surprised as I was to see George Whiting so deflated, so unlike the strutting, aggressive figure I knew, I didn’t wait to hear the rest of it. Having no place to hide, I turned and was about to head back down the hallway toward the gallery where the luncheon was being served, when I saw Palmer at the other end. Our eyes met, and without hesitating, I instinctively turned and hurried back toward the entryway and the front door. Perhaps if I hurried past, Whiting wouldn’t recognize me and Sabine mightn’t say anything; they needn’t know that I had heard any part of their conversation.

  As soon as my feet hit the marble floor, I knew I couldn’t go out the front door: I was still in my stocking feet and it was pouring with rain outside. I hesitated again, but slid forward on the cool stone floor. It was a horrible moment when the vicar and the contractor broke off to stare at me, and I wished I could sink under the decorative marble tiles.

  “I was heading out…I forgot my shoes,” I said, knowing just exactly how inane I sounded.

  “Emma, perhaps I’ll save introductions for another time,” Sabine said, smoothly and pointedly.

  Which was fine with me. I nodded my head and turned to go, ready to face an army of Palmers, when George Whiting looked up. His face hardened as he recognized me.

  “Oh, no, I know well enough she’s another fucking archaeologist. She’s in with Jane Compton, I know that well enough.”

  Something about the way he kept harping on archaeology struck me, but I had no time to consider it now. “Mr. Whiting. I’m very sorry for your—”

  “Don’t ever waste your pity on me!”

  “George, get hold of yourself!” Sabine hissed.

  “—Loss, but the other day, I only wanted to help my friend. Surely you can—”

  “I only wanted to help my friend,” he lisped back at me, face contorted. “Isn’t it a kind and decent thing to want to help its friend! You don’t know anything of my loss, and that’s well enough with me. You’ve shown more interest in it than some others who have more right have done. All I can say, missy, is that you have a lot to learn about choosing your friends, and even more about choosing your enemies! For you needn’t worry yourself about Jane Compton”—he spat out the words like he’d eaten a bug by accident—“that nasty bitch will devour you before she disturbs one hair on her head! And as for me, if I catch you near me or mine again, I shall very gladly ring your neck.”

  He turned and slammed the heavy front door open and stormed out into the rain, not bothering to shut the door behind him. I stood, the cold of the marble chilling my feet, blinking.

  Sabine shook her head and sighed. “Emma, get your shoes. I’ll give you a lift home.”

  After making my good-byes to Jeremy, I found my shoes and coat and tried calling Jane and Greg. No one was at home, so I met Sabine out at her car, which smelled of her hand-rolled cigarettes. We drove back toward Liverpool Road through the rain, not speaking until something finally forced me to ask: “Sabine, what was George Whiting doing at Jeremy’s? Surely he wasn’t there for the hunt, not so soon after his daughter’s death?”

  “No, of course not.” There was a long pause from the right hand driver’s side, interrupted by the squeak-thump of the windshield wipers. She perched right on top of the steering wheel, not a very confident driver. “No, George had come to drop off a check for a fundraiser, a dinner that Pooter’s having in a month. He’d promised to get it to Pooter early, to pay the deposit for the caterers, and he didn’t trust the post with a sum so large.”

  “Oh.”

  She darted a quick, remonstrative glance at me, then immediately turned back to the road. “That’s the kind of man he can be when…under other circumstances. Julia’s murder…and everything, well, you have to forgive him, Emma. He’s in horrible pain.”

  “I see.” And I did, but then again, I couldn’t afford to be as forgiving as Sabine Jones. She hadn’t seen Whiting threaten Jane, call her a murderess.

  We pulled up to 98 Liverpool Road. I noticed all the lights were off in the house; Greg had told me that they would be home all day.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said finally.

  She leaned back in her seat, glad to have the break from driving. “Not at all. I had to get going anyway. I must get ready for tomorrow.”

  I wrinkled my brow. We weren’t working tomorrow, as far as I knew…

  Sabine laughed. “Tomorrow’s Sunday, you heathen. My busy time, well, the morning, at least, so I must polish up the sermon tonight. Cheers, Emma.”

  “See you.”

  There was no one at home. I went up to my room, noticing that Andrew’s door was open now. I remembered that Greg had said he’d come back last night. Why they put up with him I’d never know. He didn’t seem to be all that hot at his job; he hadn’t even prepared a report for Jane yet about the skeleton we’d worked on my first day, as far as I could tell. I wanted to see a copy of that and the police report, particularly to see what he’d made of the twentieth-century button. There was something about the stratigraphy, too, that I wanted to double check. I didn’t care whether Jane and Greg were unconcerned; I wanted to see it for myself.

  I sat down on my bed and stared at the ferny green Laura Ashley wallpaper. I was too wound up to sit and read the novel I hadn’t finished on the plane, so I took out the file on Mother Beatrice that Morag had given me and went down to the kitchen to read it. But I couldn’t get comfortable in the chairs, and the empty room had that same hollow loneliness that had given me the shivers the day I’d found the pictures of Julia in the darkroom. The parlor, perfect for lounging with a glass of wine, mocked my studiousness on a wet Saturday afternoon, and it was impossible to juggle the contents of the file while struggling to sit upright in the soft cushions of the couch. The whole place echoed of Jane and Greg and I decided that if I didn’t feel at home here, I could at least move to neutral territory. I got my coat, umbrella, and file and reasoned that since there was no library that I knew of within walking distance, I might as well go to the pub, someplace where nobody knew my name. A quiet pint and an hour or so of anonymity would be just the thing I needed, as Greg had suggested, to get better acquainted with Mother Beatrice, as Morag saw her. Alas, as with so many of my plans on this trip, it was not to be.

  Chapter 14

  PLEASED AS I WAS WHEN IAN THE BARTENDER AGAIN recognized me in a friendly fashion, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed when I heard my name called out from across the room. A small group of Jane’s graduate students were sitting in the corner waving to me. I recognized the two who’d asked me to sign books for them, Nicola and Will, and the Scottish Gareth, and Lucy, who’d told me about Andrew and the worm ritual.

  “Join us, Professor Fielding,” Nicola, the small brunette, called.

  Since they all scooted aside to make room for me, I didn’t think I could refuse without being impolite. Still, I reasoned as I took a sip of my beer to keep it from sloshing, maybe it would be nicer to have the pleasant company of barely acquaintances on such a dispiriting day.

  Then, of course, there was the awkward silence as everyone struggled to think of something to start the conversation. “Is this a regular Saturday thing for you all?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “S
ometimes.”

  “We’re just meeting tonight before we go off to the cinema,” Gareth explained. He hooked his overlong hair out of his eyes with his pinkie, revealing a skull and crossbones earring. “It beats sitting around and drinking and making fun of my burr. Are you meeting Professor Compton and Greg here?”

  “No, they’re out. I just came to do a little work, get out of the house, you know.”

  “D’you always work on the weekends, even when you’re on holiday?” Will asked.

  “Well, this isn’t so much a real vacation for me as a chance to visit with Jane and do some documentary research at the same time. My husband and I are going away at the end of the summer, before classes start.”

  “Where are you going, then?” Nicola said.

  I had to laugh. “I couldn’t tell you. Brian’s keeping it a surprise.”

  “Oh, isn’t that lovely?” Lucy said. “So it’s not all work and no play for you, then. It seems that Jane is always slaving away. I like archaeology, but I don’t want a job that is going to keep me from having a life too.” She blew out a sigh that lifted her bangs from her forehead.

  “You seem to do pretty well for yourself, Lucy,” Gareth pointed out. The rest laughed. “I haven’t noticed you in the library lately.”

  “Well, it’s summer, isn’t it?” Lucy replied. “I do my work during term and then a bit of fun and then off to dig in July. I’m not like Julia, but I do all right. No one can say I can’t.”

  “So there was nothing else for Julia?” I asked noncommittally, taking another sip of beer. “No job, no outside interests, no boys?”

  “Are you joking?” Will said. “The original girly swot.”

  “She was pretty dedicated to her schoolwork,” Nicola agreed. “Didn’t often come out with the rest of us.”

  “Now, that’s not fair,” Lucy protested. “You’re all making her out to be, I don’t know, standoffish. She was really brilliant and she was very shy, but she wasn’t horrible or anything. She had other interests, she just didn’t go for the usual things that we do. But a week or so back, she and I went to get a reading done. You know, for a laugh, had our tarot cards read.”