Thorn

by Sarah Rayne

  Leo looked at him contemptuously. ‘You’d better stand watch instead of Porling then. Porling, take Dr Shilling’s spade and lend a hand, will you?’

  As Porling grasped the spade, Mackenzie said softly, ‘Aren’t you being a bit hard on Shilling, Doctor? Don’t forget he knew the lady.’

  ‘Don’t forget he signed her death certificate,’ said Leo.

  As the soil level went down it was necessary to go down with it, so that within a short time they were waist deep and then chest deep in the open grave. There was a black, sour stench, and a damp clinging miasma of mould. The noisome breath of the grave, thought Leo. The stink of decay and putrefaction. He knew this was absurd; the coffins had only been in the ground for a day and a half, but the impression persisted. They were neck deep in the grave now, and it felt as if they were sinking inexorably lower and lower into a black, yawning maw. This is the stuff that nightmares are made of, Imogen, thought Leo grimly. I’m right out on that limb for you now, and a dangerous and precarious limb it is.

  He was beginning to think they must be nearing the bottom when Huxtable leaned over and said, ‘Keep well to that side from now on if possible. Royston Ingram’s side.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To cause as little disturbance as possible to the – to Eloise Ingram’s coffin. So that we get as true a picture as possible.’

  ‘Oh yes, I see. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  Leo thought he was prepared for the scrape of the spade on the coffin lid, but when it came it jolted his heart into a painful too-fast beating once more, betraying the raw state of his nerves.

  Mackenzie, who had gone up to take a breather on the grave edge, slithered back down to help clear away the soil. ‘And Porling, if you and Mr Frisby will wedge the torches in the ground just there – yes, that’s it – we should be able to see what we’re up against.’

  ‘D’you want us down there with you, Leo?’ This was Frisby.

  ‘I don’t think there’s room.’

  ‘Where’s Huxtable? Oh, there you are. I think we’ll need your formal identification of the coffin in a minute.’

  Leo straightened up for a moment, suddenly aware of a monstrously aching back from bending over for so long, and of mounting apprehension. The inside of the grave smelt of fear and despair. In a very few minutes they would know.

  As the torches were directed into the grave, the two beams met and joined, giving the eerie impression of miniature spotlights aimed on to a small stage set, with black swirling darkness beyond. Leo was perched awkwardly on the foot of Royston Ingram’s coffin, and he stayed where he was. But the horror was scudding across his skin again and he felt as if a huge weight was pressing down on his lungs.

  At his side, Inspector Mackenzie drew in his breath sharply, and then said, ‘Move that torch to the left a bit, Porling. Dr Sterne, can you see just there?’ He leaned forward, pointing, and as Leo followed the line of his finger, he felt a surge of dread.

  Huxtable and Frisby were leaning forward, both of them still outside the torchlight. ‘What is it?’ called Frisby softly. ‘Leo, what have you found?’

  Leo said, in a voice devoid of all emotion, ‘I think the coffin’s moved,’ and felt the recoil of the others. He indicated the left-hand corner and Frisby adjusted the torch again. ‘Can you see? Just there? There’s a mark in the wet earth. Like the rut you get in wet ground when a car’s been parked.’

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t dislodge it in the digging?’

  ‘No, the coffins are lying quite tightly together and anyway we kept to the other side. But there’s a definite depression in the wall of the grave surrounding Eloise. We haven’t made that.’ And even if we have, he thought, I’m not admitting to it. I’m not letting them give up now. If I can use anything to force them on, I will. He leaned forward cautiously. ‘It’s as if the corner made a deep gouge in the earth and then shifted. And I don’t think,’ said Leo, infusing his voice with conviction, ‘that it could have been done by anything other than the coffin moving after it was lowered.’

  Huxtable was kneeling on the edge of the grave, peering down. ‘But it’s quite impossible, Dr Sterne. The weight of the earth alone would preclude any movement.’

  Frisby said, ‘And there shouldn’t be any movement at all. Not unless—’

  ‘Unless what’s inside the coffin caused it. Quite,’ said Leo. And then, ‘Shilling, if you’re about to throw up, go and do it somewhere else.’

  There was the sound of somebody blundering into the darkness, and then of being wetly sick on the ground.

  Mackenzie was staring down at the coffin. When he spoke again, the others heard the extreme reluctance in his voice. ‘We’ll have to get it open, won’t we?’

  ‘Oh yes. Right away. Are we in order for that, Frisby?’

  Frisby said, with an edge to his voice, ‘Even if we weren’t, I don’t think any jury would convict us for opening up a coffin that looks as if there’s been movement from inside.’

  ‘You agree with me, then?’

  ‘I agree that we should investigate. Inspector, what’s your opinion?’

  Mackenzie was still examining the area around Eloise’s coffin. After a moment he said, ‘I couldn’t be sure about it, and I couldn’t say that – that there’s anything untoward, but . . .’

  Leo sent him a look compounded of irony and grim amusement. ‘You’re a master of understatement, aren’t you, Inspector?’

  ‘I think the marks are suggestive,’ said Mackenzie. ‘But I don’t think they’re conclusive.’

  ‘But we’ll have to make sure.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  There was an appalled silence, and then Frisby said, ‘But look here, wouldn’t it – I mean surely she would have called for help?’

  ‘Would anyone have heard if she did?’ This was Huxtable.

  ‘I don’t see how they could, not from – not from down there,’ said Frisby, frowning. ‘Good God, she was under six feet of earth!’

  Leo looked about him. ‘And it’s pretty deserted here as well,’ he said. ‘The nearest houses are easily a mile off. I remember noticing that on the way.’

  ‘There’s the office,’ began Mackenzie. ‘No, that’s on the other side. But there’d be people coming and going a bit, surely.’

  Porling cleared his throat. ‘Begging pardon, sir, but the cemetery manager said the funeral was late yesterday afternoon. If it was their last one for the day—’

  ‘It was their last one,’ said Huxtable. ‘They fitted it in at short notice because the family wanted a quick interment.’

  ‘And so the office probably closed shortly afterwards,’ said Mackenzie, thoughtfully. ‘What time do they lock the gates, Mr Huxtable?’

  ‘Five o’clock at this time of year.’

  ‘And,’ said Porling, determinedly, ‘if you remember, sir, it rained for most of yesterday, which means you wouldn’t get many relatives visiting graves either.’

  ‘Yes. Thirty-six hours. My God, Eloise Ingram could have screamed until her throat burst and no one would have heard her.’

  In the harsh torchlight they looked at one another. ‘We’d better get on with it,’ said Leo at last.

  ‘Yes. Wait a bit though, Doctor, I’ll need to get a couple more shots first. Porling, pass down the camera again, will you? Huxtable, while we’re doing that, I suppose you have to formally identify the coffin, don’t you?’

  ‘I – yes. I – identify it,’ said Huxtable. ‘Mr Frisby? Is that sufficient? Is there anything you need me to do?’

  ‘If there is, I’ll worry about it afterwards,’ said Frisby. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  The sudden white flash of the camera lit the scene to vivid and bizarre life. Inspector Mackenzie took several shots, and then passed the camera back to Porling.

  ‘Hold on to that as you value your promotion, Porling. Ready, Dr Sterne?’

  ‘Yes. And Porling?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Concentrate on keeping a wat
ch up there. We’re about to break open a coffin to get at a corpse, and the fact that we’re doing it with the blessing of Her Majesty’s coroner doesn’t make it any more acceptable to the average night prowler weirdo.’

  ‘And we don’t want any tasteless jokes about body snatchers or Burke and Hare either,’ said Mackenzie, suddenly grateful for Dr Sterne’s abrasive mood, and attempting to match it.

  ‘The only Burke in the party is over there being sick on somebody’s headstone.’ Leo took the small metal toolbox from Frisby and surveyed its contents. ‘It looks as if we have quite an embarrassment of riches in the way of implements, Inspector. Which do you fancy? Screwdriver or chisel?’

  ‘Screwdriver,’ said Mackenzie, pointing to the coffin’s edges. ‘See there? Brass screws. Driven into the lid and then down into the coffin sides. The wood’s pretty thick. Huxtable, your people do a good job, don’t they? I’ll bet those screws are all of three inches long.’

  ‘And there are at least twenty of them,’ said Leo, peering to look more closely.

  ‘Would we do better to lift the thing up on the ground to work on it, d’you reckon?’

  ‘If the guy ropes were still around we might. But I think it would be a harder job than it looks,’ said Leo, frowning at the coffin. ‘Huxtable, what’s the expert opinion?’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll be better in situ, Doctor. I can fetch guy ropes but it will take some time.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d say that. All right, Inspector, it looks as if we’re stuck down here.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  It was an appalling situation. The grave was a double plot, but it was only sufficiently wide to take the two coffins lying side by side. Leo and the inspector jockeyed for position, and in the end Mackenzie half knelt on Royston’s coffin, with Leo astride Eloise’s. Mackenzie glanced at him and said, ‘I hope you aren’t subject to nightmares, Doctor.’

  ‘If I wasn’t before, I will be after this. Ready, Inspector?’

  ‘No. But here we go anyway.’

  Together they began to unscrew the coffin lid.

  For a long time the only sound was the faint drip of moisture from the trees and the thin, barely perceptible squeaking of the disengaging screws. Once Leo caught a movement from above, and realised it was Porling keeping John Shilling back from the grave, and once an owl flew out of a tree behind them and sent its low, whooping cry into the night. Both men jumped and Mackenzie’s hand shook so badly he had to pause before going on. Leo brought up the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Mackenzie glanced at him, and thought, so he’s not as detached as he’s been making out after all.

  Neither of them could have said how long it took them to remove the brass screws. They were in a strange and unreal world where time seemed to have run down and stopped, or to be grinding itself into reverse. At length Leo said softly, ‘That’s the last one, I think. If we both take this edge and push it across on to the other coffin . . .’

  There was the scraping of wood against wood, and then the lid slid free. Something gusted dry, sour breath upwards, and both men flinched. And then the light from Porling’s torch fell across the thing inside the coffin.

  The face that Dan Tudor had compared to a fair, pale Morte d’Arthur heroine and that John Shilling had guiltily and lubriciously fantasised over was suffused with purple where the veins had swollen with the frenzied efforts to escape and the panic-filled struggle for air. The eyes were staring and bulging from their sockets, the whites stained crimson where the tiny capillaries had haemorrhaged, and the lips were stretched wide in a silent scream, with blood-specked froth staining the corners.

  The coffin was quite shallow, but she had managed to draw her knees up a little to push against the lid, and her hands were curled into helpless, frantic claws, most of the nails broken and the fingertips crusted with blood. Leo glanced at the underside of the coffin lid and saw that the lining was stained with blood and ripped. He drew in a shaking breath and forced himself to look back at the dreadful thing in the coffin.

  Examination under these circumstances was unthinkable, and he did not attempt it. But he forced his mind to clinical observation. She was plainly dead and he thought that rigor mortis was still present in most of the body. If it had not started to wear off – and he did not think it had – she might have been dead for just under twenty-four hours. Sometime during last night, then, or maybe the early hours of the morning. If the funeral had taken place in the late afternoon, and depending when she had come out of whatever cataleptic state she had been in, she might have had twelve hours of horror before she died. Or had she suffocated almost at once? It did not really matter whether she had had twelve hours or twelve minutes of it; two minutes at full consciousness, fighting to breathe, dreadfully aware of what had happened, would have been sufficient to send her mad.

  He looked more closely at the neck and jaws, which was where the relaxing of rigor usually started, and for the first time saw several crimson weals. He bent closer, puzzled, and then understanding flooded his mind. The small wounds had been made by her own fingernails, and Leo had a vivid and dreadful image of Eloise Ingram despairing but still appallingly conscious, attempting to claw open her own jugular vein in a pitiful bid to die quickly and cleanly. He looked hopefully at the inside of the coffin, but there were no stains to indicate a sudden effusion of blood. Then if she didn’t die of asphyxiation, she died of exhaustion and fear, thought Leo in horror. And someone’s got to deal with this unbelievable situation. Someone’s got to tell Imogen.

  As if in response to this last thought, he caught a quick movement above. He straightened up, aware that Inspector Mackenzie was straightening up as well, and saw backing away from the grave’s edge, just outside of the torch’s beam, Imogen.

  Her eyes were on the terrible thing inside the open coffin.

  Porling just managed to catch her before she fainted.

  Leo straightened up in the narrow hospital cubicle and regarded the A and E registrar levelly.

  ‘No change at all?’

  ‘Not yet, I’m afraid. The lady’s staying determinedly out of the world. We’ve checked for the usual things – drugs overdose, diabetic coma.’

  ‘It’s stupor rather than coma though, isn’t it? There are still some responses.’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes. The swallowing reflexes and so on are all still there. She’s breathing normally, and the limbs are flaccid. Well, you can see all that for yourself.’

  ‘And her eyes are open,’ said Leo, half to himself, looking down at the still, remote figure on the bed.

  ‘Yes. We’ve checked to see if they’re following deliberate movements and there is some response at times. I thought you said she was on only a mild dosage of diazepam, by the way.’

  ‘So she was, according to Briar House.’

  ‘H’m. The tests don’t show it as mild at all,’ said the registrar caustically. ‘Either she was supplementing it with her own private supply – and you know as well as I do that they will do it, these teenagers – or someone’s been trying to keep her more or less permanently doped.’ He glanced at Leo. ‘Is that a possibility?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put anything past her GP,’ said Leo.

  ‘Could he have made a mistake?’

  ‘Any amount from what I’ve seen of him.’ Leo paused, and then said, ‘Listen, I don’t want to trespass on your territory—’

  ‘Oh, trespass away.’

  ‘But in view of what happened, isn’t the likeliest diagnosis hysterical stupor? She simply couldn’t face what she saw and withdrew?’

  ‘If we’re talking about territories, that one’s yours rather than mine,’ said the registrar. ‘But I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right. We’ll have to wait for the CT scan, and we’ve still got to do a lumbar puncture to eliminate meningitis. We can’t rule that out yet, or subdural haematoma or a subarachnoid haemorrhage either.’

  ‘Tumour?’ said Leo. ‘No, that wouldn’t present in such a sudden
way, would it?’

  ‘Well, it’s unlikely. Unless there’s any history of epileptic fits.’

  ‘Not as far as I know. Her GP should be able to tell you, if he can stay sober long enough to tell you anything at all,’ said Leo.

  ‘We’ll check it with him. What about clinical depression? Is there any history of that, do you know? I mean prior to what happened tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘What about a blow? When she fainted, did she hit her head?’

  ‘Almost certainly not.’ Leo remembered vividly how Imogen had tumbled forward, and how the young police constable had caught her.

  ‘Well, we’re getting an X-ray of the skull as well just to be sure there aren’t any fractures. It shouldn’t take too long at this time of night,’ said the registrar with the instinctive and defensive vagueness of one constantly working under interruptions. ‘But in view of what you’ve told me . . .’

  ‘You agree with me.’

  ‘Well, yes, I do.’

  ‘Hysterical or depressive stupor.’

  ‘Yes. Appalling thing for her to witness,’ said the registrar, glancing at the bed. ‘Enough to make anyone shut down for a while. All that diazepam wouldn’t have helped either.’

  ‘I know,’ said Leo, suddenly understanding why people occasionally ground their teeth with sheer anger.

  ‘We’ll probably have to admit her, or hand over to your people. We’ve started a chart measuring the time she’s unconscious, counting this as day one. D’you want to stay with her until we get the X-ray done?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘OK, I’ll get someone to bring you a cup of tea.’ A buzzer bleeped imperatively in the registrar’s pocket, and he made a resigned gesture. ‘I’ll have to leave you to it. But sing out for someone if she looks like coming out of it.’ He paused, and sent Leo a quizzical look. ‘You’d take the case yourself, I suppose, Dr Sterne?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I thought you would.’

  The thin curtain twitched as he went out, and Leo was alone with Imogen.