‘Has he a key to the crypt?’
‘No, it’s opened at five each morning by the duty monk. We get up to be ready for matins at six in the church. There are three doors – north, south and one that leads from reception. The crypt is open until eleven in the evening which is when the duty monk locks the north and south doors. The internal door in reception is locked by the evening receptionist, usually around eleven.’
‘So anyone can enter at other times?’
‘I suppose they can. Usually, visitors use the south door when they’re touring the whole site. The other doors are generally used by monks and staff. We’d never allow a drunk or a known troublemaker to enter unsupervised – that’s when we ask the monkstables to deal with them.’
‘There is some form of regulation then?’
‘Not overbearing, Nick. We’re very tolerant. To be honest, apart from people attending mass, few visitors venture into this rather creepy crypt.’
‘Who’s on duty at reception after normal working hours?’
‘We have civilian staff between eight in the morning and eleven at night, but if they are ill or something prevents them, then one of the monks – or a monkstable – takes over.’
‘It does leave the crypt rather vulnerable, Prior Tuck. Even when it’s closed anyone with access to the key in reception could enter.’
‘I suppose that’s possible. Perhaps we should tighten our procedures, but I must say there’s never been any difficulty until now.’
‘Well, I can’t see the sculptor’s presence is a problem because we don’t know if this death is suspicious. But let’s hope the crypt doesn’t become a crime scene! So how long do you think the dead man has been lying behind this curtain?’
‘That’s something else I can’t tell you – I don’t know.’
‘All right. My next question: Who is he?’
‘Sorry, Nick, I don’t know that either. I’m not being very helpful, am I? This sort of response is not good enough in a police enquiry, but the truth is I’ve never seen this man before and neither has Father Robin. We thought it wise not to mention it to anyone at this stage. He might be a visitor who has collapsed and died here.’
‘You did all the right things, but I must say this gets more intriguing by the second. Maybe he just went to sleep and didn’t wake up? It happens! Or a heart attack, or some obscure illness. So, Father Prior, before I have a look, tell me who found him. And how or why did the witness come to peep behind this rather forbidding curtain at such an early hour of the day?’
‘We call it the Coffin Curtain, Nick.’
‘Coffin Curtain? Why?’
‘Because it hides a coffin and nothing else. The dead man is lying in it. It’s carved in stone. A massive hollowed-out body shape in a huge lump of solid stone on top of a plinth cut from rock. All carved from a single piece.’
‘This isn’t some kind of bizarre suicide or even a joke, is it?’
‘I can’t rule anything out, Nick.’
‘So if anyone looked behind the curtain out of curiosity before this man arrived on the scene, they’d see nothing but an unoccupied stone coffin? The room is otherwise empty, isn’t it? And thieves would not be able to steal the coffin on its plinth because it’s far too heavy for anyone to move. Am I right?’
‘Yes, spot on. It’s far too heavy to manhandle. In fact there’s a tradition that it must never be moved. That dates to medieval times, but we think the coffin is much older, possibly dating to the Roman era before Christianity arrived in these islands.’
‘So, as far as you know, it has never been anywhere else? Not in another abbey? A Roman graveyard?’
‘We can’t be sure, but this community respects that ancient wish – we have never tried to move it. If we allowed visitors to enter unaccompanied, you can be sure they’d throw sandwich wrappers or other litter into it. You know what the Great British Public is like, they drop litter anywhere except in the bins – so because successive abbots have always wanted the coffin to be accorded respect, that heavy curtain is very effective in shielding it from unwelcome attention by casual passers-by – not that many casual passers-by come here. The usual reason is to visit the chapels and perhaps to spend a few quiet moments in one of them.’
‘It would be interesting to establish the coffin’s age and history.’
‘I’m sure there’s something about it in the monastery library and even on the Internet. It’s a well known artefact. We believe it pre-dates the earliest days of the old monastery and that it was possibly destined to be the final resting place of a very senior person, not necessarily a priest or abbot.’
‘I have seen similar huge coffins overseas,’ I added.
‘Quite likely. This might have been copied from an overseas example for a manorial lord or even a royal personage. A Roman leader of some kind? Its sheer size suggests that; it was not built to be moved anywhere.’
‘And now it contains a dead body! Not it’s first, I suspect. Who found the body?’
‘That’s debatable.’
‘Debatable? How can it be debatable? Was it you?’
‘I didn’t discover it. A note was left at our abbey police office, the cop shop. It had been pushed through the letter box. It just said ‘Look behind the curtain in the crypt.’ No name on it. Nothing to suggest who sent it, or when it arrived. So I went for a look, found the body then called you.’
‘So where is that note now?’
‘At our cop shop. It’s quite safe, I’ve made sure of that.’
‘Good, we must keep it. This is all a bit weird. All right, Father Prior, show me, but remember we must be careful what we touch and where we put our feet. If this is a crime scene we don’t want to contaminate it.’
‘I understand.’
He moved the right-hand side of the curtain far enough towards its centre for me to enter ahead of him and he followed, each of us realizing this might indeed be a crime scene. Once inside, he allowed the curtain to fall back into its closed position and then switched on a light. A solitary bulb in the ceiling came to life and its dim glow was brightened by his torchlight. I was surprised that an electric light had been installed here, but, after all, this was a modern monastic establishment even if the coffin and crypt were from ages past.
We were now standing in a bare room that reminded me of a featureless police cell, except it had no feeding hatch, no lavatory and no window, barred or otherwise. With rough stone floor and walls, it was about four metres wide, four metres long and four metres high with a stone roof and a stone floor. It was like a large hollow stone cube, albeit with the curtain forming one side.
There was nothing inside apart from the huge stone coffin on its knee-high plinth. It lay in the centre of the room with the head facing west and its foot towards the curtained entrance at the east. Inside the coffin there lay what appeared to be a middle-aged man dressed in hiking gear with his hands crossed over his chest. If he had been carved from stone and adorned with colourful medieval clothing or armour he would have looked absolutely right in his surroundings – but this fellow was a modern man, not a statue or stone replica. And his clothing told me he was not a mummified survivor from former times.
Prior Tuck handed me his torch in case I wished to inspect anything more closely but I did not touch anything. I merely stood and shone the torch as I tried to absorb the key elements of the scene with Prior Tuck at my side. He appeared to be standing in an attitude of prayer with his head bowed and his hands clasped beneath his chin. For several minutes, we stood in absolute silence with not a sound anywhere near us in this dark, remote and eerie place. The beam of my torch scanned the entire floor, walls and roof but it revealed nothing, I couldn’t even hear the sculptor at work. We were standing in the midst of history in a dark and cold room that must have witnessed thousands of events over the centuries.
I reasoned that because there was such a huge heavy coffin here, the room itself might have once been a large tomb. Perhaps it was part of a form
er mausoleum or underground burial chamber of that ancient abbey church. Or had there been a pagan Roman graveyard here? Did the coffin pre-date Christianity? Certainly it would have been difficult if not impossible to move the coffin so it might have been carved in situ. But right now it was inside a windowless, stone walled room below a modern church and it contained the corpse of a recently deceased man. And the corpse also presented a mystery.
Because a doctor’s initial examination had confirmed the death and because we were refraining from walking unnecessarily around the coffin, I continued my silent observations aided by the torch. I had no means of accurately measuring the height of the dead man, but, because he fitted into the coffin, I reckoned he was quite small in stature. Such ancient coffins were not generally carved for large occupants. His clothing was typical of a modern hiker – a colourful woolly hat of patchy red with a symmetrical white and blue pattern, with a pompom on the top. The hat came down over his ears but the loose knitting style allowed some of his greyish/brown hair to poke through. His eyes were closed and I noted he did not wear spectacles. He had rather pale skin, a moustache and short beard the colours of which matched the straggles of hair poking through his cap.
The body had a thick, plain white sweater, a coloured shirt beneath it with its collar showing, and sturdy plus-four style corduroy trousers fastened with Velcro below the knee just above long thick red socks. On his feet were a pair of well-used hiking boots of soft tan-coloured waterproof material, not leather. If this death was not natural there would need to be a forensic examination of the earth and other materials clinging to his boots and clothing. That might tell us where he had come from. In his pockets there could be documents to provide his identification, home address or a contact point, but due to the need to preserve the scene, I did not search him or his pockets.
Without disturbing his clothing, I could not see whether his body bore tattoos or other marks, there was no hiker’s stick beside him or haversack or back-pack of any kind. There were no binoculars and no map hanging around his neck in its waterproof covering. I estimated his age at around fifty but his hat prevented me from seeing whether he had a bald patch.
‘I’m going to touch him,’ I told Father Prior. ‘I know he’s been examined by Father Bowman but I need to be sure in my own mind that he’s dead, not merely faking death or lying unconscious. Mistakes can be made.’
Maybe I was arrogant in doubting Father Bowman’s diagnosis but I needed to be sure, so I moved closer to the coffin and touched the man’s cheek and then tested his pulses on both wrists. He wore a cheap wrist watch that showed the correct time and there were no rings on his fingers.
‘Stone cold and no pulse,’ I commented. ‘But that’s not surprising in here. So, yes, I’m sure he’s dead, Father Prior but I can’t guess the time of death. Rigor mortis is present but that is never an accurate guide especially in a cold place like this. Father Bowman was correct but we do need to have him examined more thoroughly.’
In the brief silence that followed, I could hear the choir of monks in the church directly above us. They were rehearsing a Gregorian chant, Veni Creator Spiritus, a tenth-century hymn to the Holy Spirit. It produced a highly emotive moment. I took a deep breath and moved closer to the body shining the torch into the coffin to see whether any of his belongings had fallen down the sides. I could not see anything but the corpse and, as I looked at the head area, I realized why his hat bore a strange red design: it was soaked with blood.
CHAPTER 3
NEITHER OF US spoke for a few moments, not really comprehending what we were looking at, then I said somewhat inanely, ‘This is just what we didn’t want, Father Prior.’ I indicated the bloodstained hat and the pool of thick blood in the head-well. The blood had apparently oozed from beneath the recumbent head. ‘We are probably looking at a murder victim.’
He peered into the coffin and said, ‘He couldn’t have clambered up here and tripped, could he? Fallen in, banged his head in the process?’
‘And then lain down to fold his arms neatly across his chest?’ I issued a long and heavy sigh. ‘No, Father, I’m afraid we have a suspicious death on our hands. This looks like a very serious head wound and there are no weapons here to suggest it was self-inflicted. Didn’t Father Bowman notice the blood?’
‘No, he can’t have done, otherwise he’d have told me. It was a very cursory examination, Nick, merely to determine whether he was alive or dead. A trained police doctor wouldn’t have missed something as obvious as that.’
‘Probably not, but I must say doctors have been known to miss such things. I recall one who failed to spot that a man had been shot in the back! It was pure chance I spotted this. A self-inflicted fatal wound at the back of the head would be impossible to achieve, except perhaps with a pistol shot. If that had happened, the weapon would be here. With a blunt instrument I doubt if you could kill yourself with a blow like this – and there’s no weapon. It’s clearly a vicious attack – in other words, it’s murder. We must close the crypt and call in the CID. This is now a crime scene.’
As we were walking from the coffin, ensuring the curtain was closed behind us, the prior sounding worried, said, ‘It’s a good thing you came here, Nick. This is dreadful. It shows how inexperienced we are.’
‘It’s all part of the learning process, Father Prior. Everyone makes mistakes, that’s how we learn. Every police officer has to start somewhere.’
‘Well, this is going to be a new experience. Does it mean the abbey will be crawling with detectives, journalists and morbid sightseers? It will surely disrupt our routine….’
‘That’s bound to happen, but any disruption will be kept to a minimum, especially where the monks’ divine office and the college routines are concerned, it means it’s in our interest to control events. Anyway I must now call the local CID to get things moving. We’ve no time to waste.’
‘Shall I inform the abbot and headmaster now?’ he asked.
‘Yes, that’s important. Then we need to ask that sculptor to keep away until the initial investigation is over and the body has been removed. He’ll be able to return once examination of the crime scene is complete, but I’m afraid we can’t let him remove any of his tools.’
‘You’re saying they could be murder weapons?’
‘There are some useful-looking hammers and chisels among them, but I’m not suggesting Harvey used one of them! But someone else could have done. We need to secure the entire crypt immediately, but before we leave we must search it in case the killer is still hiding here, or there are more bodies. Or a murder weapon that has been thrown into a dark corner.’
‘Is that likely?’ He sounded even more worried at the thought.
‘It’s not impossible,’ was my response.
We carried out the search, working together for safety reasons as we examined every possible hiding place for people and weapons, checking all the chapels, cupboards and dark spaces. It took half-an-hour but we were both satisfied that the killer was not concealed within the crypt and that no more bodies awaited discovery. Similarly, we did not find anything cast away that might have been the murder weapon, but a more thorough search would have to be undertaken by the police, perhaps with dogs. Our tour of the crypt led us back to Harvey’s work bench, now deserted with its tools scattered haphazardly about it. Not far from the coffin curtain, we stood briefly to admire his unfinished work. When finished, it would be fitted into a wall of the Lady Chapel; its measurements had been determined and the abbey’s estate workers had created a space by removing several courses of stones to create an upright trough which would house this beautiful work.
‘He works in wood and stone,’ Prior Tuck told me. ‘His work appears in several churches and cathedrals. Apart from creating works of art he carries out repairs to damaged statues. I don’t know how he’ll react to this disruption, though, he’s very touchy. He’s left already.’
‘I’m sure the detectives will do their best to let him continue working,
’ I assured the prior. ‘All I can say is that if the killer is quickly identified and caught, normal services will be restored as soon as possible.’
‘Now I must break the bad news to the abbot and headmaster, and I’d better include the procurator. They might want a chat with you, Nick, to outline exactly what we might expect.’
‘I’ll be happy to do that.’
‘The actual murder enquiry – if it turns out to be murder – won’t really involve us, will it? By us, I mean the monkstables, as I’m beginning to call them!’
‘We might be allocated some modest local enquiries, Father Prior, bearing in mind that we have been sworn-in as local constables and we know a lot about the establishment, its routine, personnel and so forth.’
‘It would be fascinating to be involved….’
‘It would, but a lot depends upon who’s in charge of the investigation. Now we must leave and lock the crypt. While you inform the abbot and the others, I’ll call the CID. I’ll use phone in the cop shop.’
‘I hope the sculptor doesn’t return – he won’t be able to get in.’
‘Then that’s one security problem solved! Next we need to know the sculptor’s full name, Father Prior. The murder team will definitely want to interview him, if only for elimination purposes.’
‘I know him as Harvey, but don’t know his other name or where he comes from. The procurator should know. I understand his work is being paid for by a wealthy benefactor, so both his name and that of the sculptor will surely be on some sort of contract.’
‘Good. So we’ve already made a start to our own investigation. I see no reason why we can’t carry out our own enquiries quite independently of the police, especially if the CID doesn’t want us to join them. But there’s another matter to think about. The detectives will require secure accommodation they can use as their murder room – it’ll need desks, a blackboard, computer terminals, telephones, seating, space for refreshment breaks and probably more besides. They’ll provide all their own equipment. A lecture theatre or conference room would be ideal – there’ll be regular conferences of detectives throughout the enquiry when lots of tea and coffee will be consumed. And it will need to be made secure when they’re not using it. This enquiry could last for several days, or be over in just one.’
Murder at Maddleskirk Abbey Page 2
