by George Mann
Meredith laughed. “This is the Heighton Observer. Of course it’s not on microfiche. There’s a basement full of mouldering boxes. I can’t even promise they’re filed in the right order.”
Elspeth sighed. “Well, in for a penny…”
“I admire your tenacity, Elspeth. I really do.” Meredith pushed her chair back and got to her feet. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
They walked through the office. A small team of six people were sitting at a bank of desks, bathed in the light of their computer screens. The tinny radio was playing something god-awful by Justin Bieber, and the printer was churning out a constant raft of paper. No one bothered to look up.
“This way. Although be warned, it’s deadline day for the print edition, so you’d better not get in anyone’s way.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Elspeth.
“How’s the investigation going?” said Meredith, over her shoulder.
“Fascinating and disturbing in equal measure,” said Elspeth. “I’ll have an update for you soon.”
They turned a corner at the far end of the office – a corner that Elspeth hadn’t even realised was there – to see a stone archway leading to a short, steep flight of steps. A heavyset woman with a twist of blue hair sat behind a battered desk that looked a little too small for her, tapping away noisily on a keyboard. Elspeth recognised her immediately from the theatre.
“This is Rose,” said Meredith. “Our resident agony aunt. She only works a few hours a week, so she volunteered to take one for the team and sit back here so the others could be together.”
“Hello again,” said Rose, with a little wave. She peered over the top of her glasses.
“You two have met?” said Meredith.
“Yes, at Winthorpe Theatre,” said Elspeth. “It’s nice to see you again.”
Elspeth had to admit, Rose didn’t fit her stereotypical view of an agony aunt – for a start, she was far too young.
“You’re not going down there, are you?” said Rose.
Elspeth shrugged. “Needs must.”
Rose raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’d rather you than me. Just make sure you surface for a breather every now and then. It gets a bit… musty amongst the old stacks.”
Elspeth laughed. “I’ll bear that in mind. Thanks.”
“Right, well, this is your mission, not mine,” said Meredith. “The light switch is on the left inside the door. Good luck.”
Elspeth wondered if this was how lion tamers felt the first time they were sent into the cage. “Alright, thanks, Meredith,” she said.
She descended the steps, her heels clicking on the stone.
The door at the bottom was wedged shut, warped through years of cold and damp. She gave it a shove, and it scraped noisily across the flagstones, jamming partially open. There was just enough room for her to squeeze through.
The dust tickled her nose as she fumbled through the cobwebs for the light switch. The wall was bare and cold, and thick with dust. She felt something touch the back of her hand and shuddered, before realising it was the tip of a dangling cord. She yanked it, and heard the start-up motors in the fluorescent tubes grind to life. She waited for a few seconds in the chill darkness while they slowly stirred, before the overhead strips stuttered suddenly, and then the basement was flooded with harsh yellow light.
Elspeth squinted while her eyes adjusted.
Meredith had been right – the place looked utterly abandoned. A series of freestanding metal storage shelves had been erected around the bare walls, with two further rows in the centre of the small room. All of them were piled high with cardboard boxes, many of them draped in gossamer blankets of cobwebs, or beginning to disintegrate, spilling their innards across the shelves like overripe fruit. There were no windows, and the two strip lights suspended from the ceiling were harsh and garish. A third hadn’t come on when she’d pulled the cord.
For a moment she gaped, wondering how Meredith could allow things to get this bad. She supposed there wasn’t much call for anyone to access the archive of a local newspaper, though – anything important would be held in archives at Oxford, or else at the British Library in London, and there was very little call for the journalists working on the paper to look back more than a few years. Anything recent would be saved on the server.
She considered switching the light off and retreating back up the stairs. It wasn’t as if anything hinged on her finding the old story – there could be nothing in it at all, even if her mum was right. Something about the look of abject horror she’d witnessed on the dead woman’s face, though, made her want to push on. Mentally, she rolled up her sleeves.
She approached the nearest stack of shelves, unsure where else she should start. The boxes here seemed more recent, less faded, less caked in filth, and she walked slowly along the aisle of shelving units, reading the labels. They were all from the early part of the millennium. She needed to go back much further than that.
She turned, scanning the other central aisle behind her. The boxes here weren’t so well labelled, but appeared to date back to the mid-nineties. She was going in the right direction, at least. She circled the stack, following the dates in descending order. Two units on the far wall held everything from the eighties, and beside them, rich with the odour of decay, was a dusty heap of boxes from the second half of the seventies.
“In for a penny,” she muttered again, as she dusted off the front of a random box. It was from nineteen seventy-six. The one beside it was identical, and she guessed there’d be at least two or three boxes set aside for each year. Grimacing, she slid the box out, hacking and spluttering at the plume of dust, and placed it on the ground. Then, with a shrug of resignation, she dropped down beside it on the damp floor, crossed her legs, and began sifting through the contents.
* * *
“Fancy a cuppa?”
Elspeth looked up to see Rose hovering in the doorway, wrinkling her nose as if she was about to sneeze. She was brandishing two mugs, and trying to squeeze in through the narrow opening. Elspeth jumped to her aid, pulling herself to her feet and stumbling across on wonky legs to take the tea. She’d not sat on the floor for so long in quite some time, and now she was up again her thighs were protesting.
“You’ve got cobwebs in your hair,” said Rose, as she shoved the door aside and pushed her way in.
“I’ve got cobwebs in places I didn’t even know existed,” countered Elspeth. She looked at the two mugs. One had a picture of a unicorn on it, the other an advert for a local printing firm. “I’m guessing the unicorn is yours?”
Rose grinned. “It was a silly present,” she said. “From an old girlfriend. Reminds me of her.”
Elspeth passed it over, and took a sip from her own mug. “Thanks for this,” she said. “Much-needed sustenance.”
Rose indicated the pile of boxes on the floor. Elspeth had just finished working through nineteen seventy-eight, and was about to start on seventy-nine. “You’re really going for it, then?”
“I suppose I am,” said Elspeth. “It sounds dreadfully American, but I’ve got a bit of a hunch.”
“Nothing dreadful about sounding American,” said Rose. “What are you looking for?”
“A story about a missing child. It’s all very nebulous, really. It’s just Mrs Graves. My mum recognised her name, and thought she’d been mixed up in some scandal during the late seventies.” She shrugged. “I thought I’d take a look, see if there were any reports.”
“I saw your piece on the website. Horrible story. Do you think they’ll catch the killer?”
“I hope so,” said Elspeth. “I know they’re looking into it, running forensics and all that.”
“And you’re wondering if this old story might help get to the bottom of why someone killed her?” said Rose.
Elspeth nodded. “I suppose I am, yeah. It just feels a bit like unfinished business.”
Rose crossed to the heap of boxes. “Where are you up to? I’ve got a few minutes. I’ll
give you a hand if you like?”
Elspeth smiled. “It’s those boxes on the left. I’ve been through the others.” She joined Rose. “Here, you take this box and I’ll take that one.” She slid one of the boxes across the floor, leaving a wad of trailing cobwebs. “And thanks.”
Rose grinned. “I’m an agony aunt. I can’t help but stick my nose into other people’s business.” She placed her mug of tea on the ground and sat down.
“An agony aunt and a stage manager at the theatre,” said Elspeth. “They seem like strange bedfellows.”
Rose shrugged. “They keep me happy. And just about off the breadline. They’re a good crowd.”
“Here?”
“Well, yes, but I meant at the theatre,” said Rose. “We’ve been together for a while now, put on a few different productions, and I suppose we’ve become more like friends than colleagues.” She laughed. “Or a strange, dysfunctional family.”
“It must have been a real blow about Lucy,” said Elspeth.
Rose shrugged. “She kept herself a little aloof from the gang, to be honest. But yeah, what happened to her is awful.”
“Do you think anyone at the theatre was involved?”
“Oh, no,” said Rose, emphatically. “I can’t believe that for a minute. As I said, we’re more like a family. Vanessa gets herself wound up far too often, David’s a bit intense about the sanctity of his script, Oscar takes all the pagan stuff a bit too seriously… we’ve all got foibles that get on each other’s nerves from time to time. But none of them would do something like that.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Elspeth. She made a mental note to dig a little deeper into Oscar’s fascination with the ‘pagan stuff’.
Rose rubbed her hands together, as if anxious to get started. “Right. So what exactly am I looking for?”
“Front-page stuff, really – anything about a missing child from Heighton, or a reference to Patricia Graves.”
“You mean like this?” Rose lifted a ragged newspaper from the box and passed it across to her. On the front was a blurry black and white photograph of a young boy, with the headline: YOUNG BOY, 8, MISSING FOR THREE DAYS.
Elspeth stared at the newspaper, and then at Rose. “How did you…?”
Rose grinned. “I don’t know what took you so long,” she said, laughing. “That wasn’t very hard to find.”
Elspeth shook her head in mock dismay. “I’ve been down here ages, and you just pop your head in for a couple of minutes and voilá!” She shuffled another box out of the way and dragged Rose’s box closer. A quick rummage showed a series of news reports over the course of a number of weeks, detailing the search for the boy. It didn’t appear that he’d been found, at least in the first couple of months. The stories seemed to peter out after that.
She scanned the first article quickly. The child, Thomas Stone, had been in foster care – with Patricia Graves, and her husband James – and was presumed to have run away. They’d reported it to the police, and were appealing to any who might have seen him. They were pictured, along with another boy of similar age, George Baker, also under their temporary care.
Elspeth felt a pang of regret; Patricia looked so young, and so worried for the child. She wondered what had happened, to the boy, and to this woman, for her to end up in the way she had, dead on her bedroom floor.
She decided she’d photocopy the articles and take them home for a more considered read. Maybe she could ask Peter to check in the police system to see if Thomas Stone had ever turned up. She hoped he’d been found safely.
“So, are those the answers you were looking for?” said Rose.
“Only more questions, I’m afraid,” said Elspeth. “But it’s a start. Thanks for your help.”
“I hardly did anything,” said Rose.
“You found the article. And you brought tea,” countered Elspeth. “Anyone who does that is alright in my book.”
Rose laughed. “Well, I’d better make a swift exit while the going’s good. I’ll leave you to deal with all of this.” She indicated the boxes and slew of newspapers all around her as she got to her feet.
“I take it all back,” said Elspeth. “Every word of it.”
Rose chuckled as she made for the door, and then paused at the bottom of the stairs. “We’re going for a drink later, after rehearsals, if you fancy coming along?”
Elspeth grinned. “Yeah, that would be lovely, thanks. I could do with a night out.”
“Alright. Great,” Rose beamed. “We’ll be heading to The Horse and Cart in Winthorpe around nine thirty. See you there?”
“Great. I’ll look forward to it.”
Rose trundled off up the stairs, leaving Elspeth sitting there, surrounded by detritus, the newspaper from nineteen seventy-nine still unfolded on her knee.
Elspeth sighed. She was looking forward to a long, hot soak in the bath, just as soon as she’d finished up here. She looked again at the mess she’d created, and her heart sank. She hoped it was all going to be worth it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Elspeth couldn’t help but feel like an interloper as she stood at the bar in The Horse and Cart, reeling off a long list of drinks orders later that evening. The whole crowd from the theatre was there, with the noticeable exception of Vanessa, who had evidently declined to join them.
The mood amongst them all remained sombre – tense, even – and although Rose had dismissed it as a general nervousness about the impending opening night, Elspeth could tell immediately that there was a more serious undercurrent to their chatter. The rehearsals were going well, by all accounts but she suspected it had everything to do with Lucy Adams’s murder and the continued police investigation into the missing costume. She’d been careful to keep it out of her reports for the Heighton Observer website and social media feeds, and the police hadn’t yet released the information to any other news agencies or reporters, but she knew they had to suspect the missing costume was somehow involved – and with it, the implication that they were all potential suspects for the murder.
She smiled at Rose and Oscar as they came over to help her carry the drinks, and followed them back to the corner where the gang had assembled in their usual spot, pulling two small tables together so they could all fit around.
The pub was relatively quiet, aside from the theatre lot, with just a few older gents gathered around the bar and a couple of young men sitting in the opposite corner, deep in conversation. It had that rarefied, yet somewhat stereotypical air of a classic country pub, the sort of place she’d half missed down in London and half been glad to get away from – still mired in the décor of fifty years previous, cluttered with pictures of hunting dogs and men with shotguns, and rich with the scent of stale beer and waxed Barbour jackets.
Elspeth tentatively placed the drinks on the nearest table – now wishing she’d not attempted to carry so many at once – and then pulled out a stool and dropped down between Rose and David Keel. To Keel’s left was Elizabeth Jones, the costume designer, who smiled warmly and thanked Elspeth for the drink.
Elspeth recognised all the other faces from the programme, having studied the cast list on Saturday evening, and again before coming out to meet them all tonight. The man who’d reminded her of Andrew – Graham Furnham, playing The Master of the Hunt – was sitting opposite her, and when he saw her looking he smiled nervously and reached for his pint, averting his eyes as he took a long swig. Elspeth did the same, sipping at her apple juice and wishing she were able to drink something stronger.
“So, Mr Keel – Vanessa tells me you’re a bit of an expert on the old Wychwood myths?” she said, deciding her best course of action would be to just launch in.
Keel smiled at this, rubbing his ear as if mildly embarrassed. “David, please. And no, despite what our glorious leader might have to say on the subject, I’m far from an expert. It’s more that I’m fascinated by the old stories, and what they can tell us about the modern day. That’s what I’m trying to do with this play, you
see – relate these ancient morality tales to modern life. There are lessons to be learned for us all.” He grinned, and reached for his pint. This was a very different man than the one she’d seen at the theatre the other day. Here he seemed relatively relaxed and willing to talk. Perhaps the news of Lucy Adams’s murder had affected him more deeply than she’d given him credit for, or more likely the opportunity to talk about his work had helped to soften him up.
“And what sort of lessons would those be?”
He sipped at his pint thoughtfully. “That the sins of the past always return to haunt us. That even if we think we’ve escaped, we’ll be drawn back to the start of our story. That facing our fears is the only way to deal with them.”
Elspeth glanced at Graham Furnham again. He was rubbing the back of his neck and looking longingly at Alice Turner, the young woman whose costume had gone missing. She turned her attention back to Keel. “I’m looking forward to seeing it,” she said. “I met with Professor Byron Miller yesterday. He spoke very highly of the script. He mentioned he’s been assisting you with your research?”
Keel laughed. “If by that you mean he’s told me everything I needed to know about the original myths, then yes, he has. The subject was his idea in the first place. I couldn’t have done it without him, to be honest. He’s even attended a few of the rehearsals and given me notes, and advised Elizabeth on the costume designs. The man’s a bit of a genius, at least in his chosen field.”
Elspeth glanced at Elizabeth. “Where do you even start with costumes like that?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Well, half of it is made up, and the other half is taken from the only source we have – a bunch of mediaeval woodcuts. They’re primitive, and were made five or six hundred years after the fact, but they’ve served us well as inspiration. I’ve done my best to marry it all up with the Saxon designs of the time, but really, it’s complete fantasy.”
“I’ve seen those woodcuts,” said Elspeth. “They’re quite…” she trailed off, looking for the right word.
“They’re bloody horrible,” said Keel, laughing. “Someone’s imagined portraits of ritual death. But they help to show us how the myths developed. It’s like religion, see – over the years the stories are twisted and added to, bent out of their original form to suit the expectations of the intended audience. They end up being riddled with anachronisms and strange asides. But as with all good morality tales, the central story, the heart of the lesson, rings true. Our play is just another step on the evolutionary ladder of the original stories.”
