A Room Full Of Bones

by Elly Griffiths

  As they go out into the yard, there is a tremendous banging and clattering from one of the boxes in the far corner. Harris sets off at a run. Judy follows him.

  Inside the box, a bay horse is sprawled awkwardly on the ground, almost sitting, front legs straight, back legs collapsed. Its eyes are rolling and it’s clearly in agony. Two stable lads are struggling to get the horse on its feet, hauling on ropes, pushing at its rump. Len goes into the box and joins in the effort, bracing his legs against the wall to push with his back.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asks Judy.

  ‘Cast himself,’ pants Len. ‘Probably colic.’

  Judy can see that the animal’s stomach does look distended, a symptom of colic. The horse appears in terrible pain, almost bellowing, the white of his eyes yellow. She looks at the laminated card on the stable door. The horse is called Fancy, she reads, and he’s a four-year-old colt.

  ‘Shouldn’t you get the vet?’

  ‘He’s coming,’ says Len shortly. ‘Now, please, can you leave us to get on? The cottage is by the gates.’

  Judy walks back through the yard with Fancy’s tormented neighing ringing in her ears. She feels very shaken. It’s part and parcel of looking after horses, she knows, but she can’t forget the look in the poor animal’s eyes. She hopes the vet gets there soon. She’d wanted to be a vet once too, before she’d realised that you needed three As at A-Level.

  Judy had imagined Caroline very elegant, a grown-up version of the sort of girl who used to intimidate her in her pony club days. But the woman who greets her at the cottage door couldn’t be further from the twin-setted Home Counties lady of her imagination. To be frank, Caroline looks a mess; her dark hair is unbrushed and her eyes are red and swollen. She is wearing jeans and her top is on inside out. She hardly seems to take in Judy’s explanation about who she is and what she wants to do.

  ‘I thought you were my sister Tamsin,’ says Caroline. ‘She’s coming from London.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about your dad,’ says Judy.

  Caroline’s eyes fill with tears. ‘It just doesn’t seem possible that he’s gone. I keep expecting him to walk in.’

  ‘It’s hard, I know,’ says Judy. Empathetic echoing, the books call it.

  ‘I just feel so terrible…’

  It must be awful to lose your dad, thinks Judy, however old you are. She hopes that Caroline’s family gives her some support, but she doubts it somehow.

  ‘The tapes?’ she prompts gently.

  ‘Oh, yes…’ Caroline gives her a tremulous smile. She keeps looking towards the door, which is freaking Judy out slightly. ‘This way.’

  The room by the front door is full of screens. There are five cameras in different parts of the yard: one by the main gates, one by the house gates, one in each quadrangle and one at the far gates, ‘where the original house once stood’ Caroline explains.

  Judy settles down to look, gratefully accepting the offer of coffee. Look at last night’s footage, the boss said. She starts at eight p.m. It’s incredibly boring. Hours of night vision camera showing empty driveways. The only distraction is when Lester the cat appears, walking delicately along the footpath, sitting to wash himself in the empty courtyard. Occasionally a horse’s head looks out over one of the stable doors, but, for the most part, Lester is the only living thing to be seen. Judy’s eyes start to blur. She sips her cold coffee. Outside she hears a car draw up and voices talking. This must be the famous Tamsin. She hears a woman’s voice, very loud and upper-class. ‘For fuck’s sake have some respect, Randolph.’ Happy families.

  She fast-forwards to ten o’clock. At twenty past midnight, the camera by the house starts to get interesting. A car draws up and a man gets out. He’s carrying a case, so Judy assumes he’s the doctor. The door opens to let him in. A few minutes later, a sports car screeches to a halt by the house. A Porsche, thinks Judy. She likes cars as well as horses. Really, there’s a speed demon in there somewhere trying to get out. A man gets out of the sports car. She can’t see his face but she thinks it might be the son. What was his name? Randolph. The one Len Harris thinks is useless. The one who needs to have more respect. Ten minutes later and an ambulance is through the gates. Lights, running footsteps, a sense of urgency. A figure is carried out on a stretcher. A woman climbs into the ambulance and the man follows in the Porsche. Then the gates shut behind them and she’s back to Lester and the empty yard. Where was Caroline when all this was going on? she wonders. More footage of silent horse boxes. What is she looking for anyway? The boss didn’t seem convinced that there was anything suspicious about Danforth Smith’s death. Does he really believe that someone sneaked in and shot him a poisoned dart or something? He’s getting fanciful in his old age. She’ll tell him so when she gets back to the station. She won’t, of course.

  More empty pathways. An owl hooting. Lester prowling through the long grass. A clock striking. Then – Oh my God. The main gates opening and a man appearing.

  Judy peers closer. ‘Bloody hell,’ she says aloud. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  CHAPTER 15

  Although Ruth has lived in Norfolk for thirteen years now, she has never before been to Norwich Cathedral. It’s more the sort of thing tourists do, and one way or another she isn’t really into churches, though she has a sneaking liking for vast Catholic edifices full of pictures of the end of the world. So, although she has often shopped in the lanes nearby, the evocatively named Tombland, and she has seen the cathedral’s spire pointing up through the rooftops like a medieval space rocket, this is the first time she has entered the building.

  They walk through the cathedral close across manicured green lawns. Janet Meadows has absolutely no truck with any sign saying ‘Private’. At the main entrance, Janet points at two modern statues on either side of the door. One depicts a man, his finger on his lips in a rather threatening adjuration to silence, the other is a woman, head draped in a flowing scarf, holding a book.

  ‘Who are they?’ asks Ruth, peering up.

  ‘Saint Benedict and Mother Julian. Julian of Norwich. Another fourteenth-century holy woman.’

  The name rings a faint bell with Ruth. ‘Who was she again?’

  ‘She was an anchoress.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A hermit if you like. She lived on her own in a cell attached to Saint Julian’s church. She spent her life praying and people used to come to her for advice. When she was about thirty she became very ill and had a series of visions of God. She wrote about them in a book called Revelations of Divine Love. It was the first book written in English by a woman.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s on my reading list somehow.’

  ‘There are some wonderful things in it. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Julian was incredibly optimistic given the times she lived in.’

  ‘Do you think she knew Bishop Augustine?’

  ‘I’ve been wondering about that. The dates just about coincide, though Prior Hugh doesn’t mention Julian much.’

  ‘Maybe Augustine pretended to be a man because her only other option was becoming an anchoress and shutting herself away from the world.’

  ‘Maybe,’ says Janet, looking up the statue. ‘But Julian’s name and her writing live on today. That’s more than can be said for most bishops.’

  They enter through the visitor’s entrance, modern smoked glass fused onto ancient stone. Automatic doors glide open at their approach, and in the lobby interactive displays wink and hum. Ruth is surprised to see men busily erecting scaffolding outside.

  ‘They’re filming,’ explains Janet. ‘Lots of films are set in the cathedral.’

  ‘It’s all very commercial,’ says Ruth disapprovingly. She may be an atheist but she likes her churches traditional.

  ‘Wait till you get inside.’

  Ruth ignores a sign asking for donations and follows Janet into the cathedral. At first she is simply struck by the height and space. The cathedral resembles the
monastery it once was, long and narrow with a high gothic roof, stone pillars branching out like great trees. The air is cold and smells of candle wax. The stone floor is uneven, and with a slight jolt Ruth realises that she is walking over gravestones. ‘Dearly beloved… Here lies… Rector of this parish… Beloved father…’ A phrase from Ruth’s churchgoing days comes back to her: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

  The high altar is at the back of the church, flanked by pillars, but around the outside there is a sort of pathway, like an arched cloister. Ruth follows Janet past tombs and statues, tiers of candles glittering with wax. Crusaders lie in stone splendour, gruesome crucifixes run with blood, the occasional piece of modern artwork looks small and rather sad. You need centuries to achieve gravitas.

  ‘Here’s Augustine,’ says Janet.

  Bishop Augustine’s statue is in a shadowy corner, placed on a plinth so high that Ruth has to tilt her head back. It shows a figure in flowing robes with a mitre on its head, holding a crosier. It looks like hundreds of other such statues and reminds Ruth of visiting Rome with Shona – the cool of the churches after the heat of the day, the myriad stone effigies of saints, their names and deeds forgotten.

  ‘Look at the feet,’ says Janet.

  Ruth looks. In contrast to his formal clothes, the Bishop is barefoot and from under his big toe peeps the head of a snake.

  ‘It’s hardly a great serpent,’ says Ruth. ‘Looks like a grass snake.’

  ‘He’d subdued it,’ says Janet. ‘Evil has been defeated. He was a great saint.’

  Ruth squints up at the statue’s face. It’s rather beautiful, certainly, but she supposes that all such images are idealised. Shoulder-length curly hair flows from under the ceremonial headgear.

  ‘He could be a woman,’ she says.

  ‘The hair doesn’t prove anything,’ says Janet. ‘Look at all that fuss about St John in The Last Supper, people saying that he must be a woman because he’s so beautiful with such long flowing hair. Da Vinci just liked painting beautiful men.’

  Ruth thinks about The Da Vinci Code which, reluctantly, she rather enjoyed. Is there a clue here? Is there something she’s missing? Something about a coffin, a snake and a shoe. About an anchoress and a bishop, a man who could be in two places at once. She walks on, deep in thought. A minute or so later Janet calls her back. She is standing by what appears to be a side chapel, a small altar surrounded by a few pews. Stained-glass windows turn the stones blue and green and gold.

  Janet is pointing up at one of the windows.

  ‘Look. There’s Julian again.’

  Ruth looks, and sees in the coloured glass a woman in nun’s habit, covered by a rather grand red cloak. But what makes her look twice is the creature at Julian’s feet.

  ‘It’s a cat!’ she says in delight.

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Janet. ‘I’d never noticed that before.’

  But Ruth feels a new kinship with the fourteenth-century holy woman. Because Julian undoubtedly had a cat. A large ginger cat, just like Flint. Ruth is sure that Julian’s pet must have been important to her, because otherwise why go to the trouble of depicting it in yellow and orange glass? There can’t be very much wrong with anyone who loves their cat that much.

  She is about to speak when her phone rings. Janet smiles but Ruth is extremely embarrassed.

  It’s Cathbad. This is getting to be a habit.

  ‘Ruth, can you come? I’ve been arrested.’

  ‘Do I need my solicitor?’

  ‘Shut up, Cathbad. This is serious.’

  Cathbad arranges his face in a serious expression. Judy glares at him. They are in Interview Room 1, the bigger of the two interview rooms at the station, but suddenly it seems far too small. Judy is acutely aware of Cathbad’s hands, the long fingers tapping gently on the arm of his chair. He has a leather bracelet round his wrist, the kind that surfers wear. No watch. He told her once that he didn’t believe in time.

  ‘You were at Slaughter Hill last night. I saw you on the CCTV footage.’

  Cathbad smiles enigmatically. Judy explodes. ‘Don’t you see how this looks? What the hell were you doing at Slaughter Hill at one in the morning?’

  ‘Visiting a friend.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Caroline Smith.’

  ‘She must be a very good friend,’ says Judy coldly, ‘for you to be calling on her at one in the morning.’

  She thinks of the tear-stained woman she saw that morning. She supposes that under normal circumstances Caroline might be considered attractive. Does Cathbad think so?

  ‘I was at Ruth’s,’ says Cathbad. ‘I left at about midnight. I like walking at night so I thought I’d walk to Caroline’s.’

  ‘All the way from the Saltmarsh to Slaughter Hill?’

  ‘I got a lift as far as Snettisham.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘A friend called Bob Woonunga.’

  Another one of those people with ridiculous names, thinks Judy savagely. Why the hell can’t Cathbad have ordinary friends? Why does he have to go prancing around the countryside calling on women in the middle of the night?

  ‘Let’s get back to Caroline Smith,’ she says. ‘Was she expecting you?’

  ‘I’d said I might call in.’

  ‘Why?’ asks Judy. If Cathbad is having an affair with Caroline, she wants him to say it aloud.

  Cathbad looks at her, a smile playing around his lips. Judy wants to hit him.

  ‘There’s nothing between us,’ he says gently. ‘She’s a friend, that’s all. And she’s a member of the Elginists. That’s why I was calling.’

  ‘You just popped in to discuss Aborigine relics?’

  ‘That’s it exactly.’

  Judy has had enough.

  ‘You’ll need a better story than that,’ she says, ‘when this comes to court.’

  ‘When what comes to court?’

  ‘Danforth Smith died last night. We think it was murder.’

  Ruth arrives at the police station, hot and stressed from her long drive, to be met by a grinning Tom Henty. ‘Come to post bail for Cathbad, have you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  All Ruth has in her purse is seven pounds fifty and a lottery ticket. Her bank account is not looking too healthy either, what with Kate’s birthday and the cost of childcare. How much is bail, anyway?

  Tom laughs even harder. ‘Don’t worry, Ruth. He hasn’t been arrested and there’s no bail been set. He’s just been helping us with our enquiries, that’s all.’ He manages to make the phrase sound even more sinister than usual.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Interview Room 1. Detective Sergeant Johnson’s been speaking to him. I think they’re still in there.’

  Ruth looks over to where Tom is pointing. The King’s Lynn police station is in an old Victorian house. Interview Room 1 looks as if it might have been the downstairs cloakroom. A green light shines above the door.

  ‘Can I go in?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Ruth is surprised, but not as surprised as she is when she bursts into the room to find Judy and Cathbad locked in a passionate embrace.

  CHAPTER 16

  Ruth tries to back out but Judy has seen her. She breaks away, her face scarlet. Cathbad, on the other hand, turns round and says casually, ‘Oh hallo Ruth. Good of you to come but it turns out I’m not under arrest after all.’

  ‘You do seem to be in protective custody,’ says Ruth drily.

  ‘Ruth…’ Judy starts to speak but then shrugs and sweeps out of the room. Cathbad is still completely unabashed.

  ‘Are you going back to the university? Could I have a lift? I’m meant to be working this afternoon.’

  In the lobby, Tom Henty tells them to be sure and call again soon. Cathbad laughs and says he’ll be in touch. Ruth can’t get out of the place quickly enough.

  ‘Is Nelson around?’ she asks as they go out through the double doors.

  ‘No. I think he’s out. They seem to be working flat
out on this drugs case. Anyway, Nelson’s knocking off early today. It’s his birthday.’

  Ruth is silent. She has never known Nelson’s birthday and is slightly shaken to find out that it’s so near Kate’s. She remembers Cathbad guessing correctly that Nelson was a Scorpio the first time they met. Kate’s a Scorpio too, hot-headed and passionate according to the books, not that Ruth believes in any of that nonsense.

  It is not until they are in the car and driving towards the university that Ruth says, ‘So what’s going on between you and Judy?’

  ‘Going on?’ Cathbad is looking out of the window, a half smile on his face.

  ‘For God’s sake, Cathbad,’ explodes Ruth. ‘Just give me a straight answer for once. Are you having an affair with her?’

  Cathbad sighs. ‘You remember in April, when Nelson asked Judy to go over to your house and check that Kate was OK? You couldn’t get home because it was snowing and Nelson wasn’t sure about the babysitter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I was there too. I got this feeling that I ought to check on Kate and you know I always trust my instincts.’

  There is more that Ruth could say on this theme but she keeps quiet.

  ‘I met Judy on the way there. It was late at night, snowing, very receptive conditions.’

  ‘Whatever that means.’

  ‘I’m sure you can guess. It was dark, it was cold, we felt cut off from the rest of the world. We ended up in bed together.’

  In my house, thinks Ruth. Probably in my bed. Aloud she says, ‘But she’s married. She only got married a few months ago.’

  ‘I know. She loves Darren. She didn’t want to hurt him by calling off the wedding. They’ve known each other since they were children.’

  ‘But isn’t she hurting him now?’

  ‘We tried to break it off but the connection was too strong. We started seeing each other again in September.’

  Four months after Judy’s May wedding, thinks Ruth. She remembers Judy, radiant in her white dress. The perfect wedding, the couple who had known each other so long, the families already united. But, come to think of it, wasn’t there something odd at the reception? Ruth had come across Judy, all on her own, in a darkened room. Ruth had said that she was sure Judy and Darren would be happy. ‘Are you?’ Judy had answered. ‘I’m not.’ Was Judy already in love with Cathbad? Did she already know that her marriage was doomed?