The Way, the Truth and the Dead

by Francis Pryor

  Alan couldn’t think of an alternative. But he knew Stan well and he had never seen him as the sort of person likely to kill himself. When he was drinking he was usually fairly cheerful, and often outrageous. He was never one of those self-focused, introspective, maudlin drunks. But on the other hand, Alan knew he had been under a lot of pressure from Flower and the Fursey people to produce his report on the Fursey surveys for English Heritage. He must also have known that the future of the project depended on it. But even so, suicide? He shook his head. No, Stan would never have done it. Not in a thousand years.

  ‘I don’t know, Richard.’ Alan sighed heavily. ‘You’re right, it’s the explanation that fits the facts best. But I still can’t believe it. It’s just not like the Stan I knew.’ He thought for some time, then took a deep breath. ‘Well, you’ll probably be proved correct, but right now I can’t see it. I honestly can’t.’

  They were crossing the footbridge. Lane, who was walking in front, stopped and turned to his friend. ‘Alan, if you only knew the number of times I’ve heard that from grieving friends and relations. The worst thing about suicide is the terrible effect it has on those left behind.’

  ‘I know he was close to his parents, too, and he must have known how it would have affected them.’ He paused, before finishing. ‘No, I just can’t see him doing such a thing. Ever.’

  They were looking towards the cut, with the sound of water in the background. Eventually Lane spoke. ‘I know this has been difficult for you, Alan, but I’m afraid there’s another unfortunate factor, too. Stan worked for the Crippses, and the family have a terrible reputation locally. I haven’t checked any of it out, but according to local gossip it seems that over the years people who have close connections with them often end up dead in the river …’

  ‘Sounds a bit Hollywood. D’you think there’s truth in any of it?’

  ‘Again, it’s only a guess, but I’ve come across similar tales and long-running feuds when I first worked here over ten years ago, and so far as I could see, in those cases the roots of the rumours and the hostilities seemed to lie back in the drainage schemes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when different landowners and engineers sometimes had to be very ruthless, or else their entire fen would have flooded.’

  ‘Yes.’ Alan nodded. ‘It really was a case of co-operate or drown in those days. Of course, the history books stress the co-operation, but we also know the feuding could be fierce.’

  There was a short pause while they both considered this unpleasant aspect of Fen history. Then Alan continued, ‘So you reckon Stan’s death will set the rumour mills grinding again?’

  ‘Oh, yes. In fact, my desk sergeant told me that a couple of people had already said that “the Cripps Curse” had been revived, and that was only a day after we’d pulled your friend from the water. Word travels fast round here. And of course there was that terrible case of the drowned banker.’

  ‘What, around here?’

  ‘I suspect so. The man was called Hansworth. He was found at Denver Sluice back in 2004 – early summer, May, I think it was – but he was a tenant of the Crippses and we suspect he fell in the river. It was probably an accident when fishing. Then his body drifted downstream. It was quite a big case when I first worked for the Fenland force.’

  ‘You said “probably an accident”. Did you mean that?’

  Lane drew a deep breath. ‘I don’t know, Alan. The body was very decomposed, so it was hard to do any useful forensics.’ There was a pause. ‘Well, anyhow, I’ll certainly take another look through the Hansworth files when I return to the station.’

  In the Lincolnshire Fens where Alan grew up, the folk memories were all about feuding abbeys and priories, fighting to extend their estates by building ever-larger flood banks. King John’s treasure may well have vanished as a long-term consequence of one of those feuds. Down here, in the Black Fens of the south, it was more a story of individual entre­preneurial landowners and family rivalries. The great estates of the higher land reaching out into the richness of the unclaimed, newly drained peats. Usually it was the poor ­owner-occupier who suffered at their hands. For these people, drainage meant a slow, impoverished death. At the time of the English Civil War the Black Fen was the landscape with the richest potential of any in England. No wonder, Alan thought, that resentments were so deep – and long-lasting. Alan was also aware that each feud was different. They were all closely linked to the landscape and the people who lived in it. Quite literally, the devil lurked in the detail – and he knew exactly where he could uncover his telltale traces.

  * * *

  They were sitting in Lane’s car in the mill car park, sharing a flask of warmish tea. The late afternoon had given way to a misty twilight and in the distance they could already hear the first few pops and cracks as bonfires were lit. Lane was the first to speak, as he handed the mug to Alan.

  ‘Personally, I think the coroner will enter a verdict of death by misadventure. For some reason he got drunk and decided to take a dip …’

  ‘In a swollen stream? With his rigger boots on?’

  ‘I agree, but people do strange things when they’re so drunk.’

  Suddenly Alan had a thought: that broken grille. It was so coincidental, or was it? ‘Could it have been murder?’

  Lane thought for a moment. ‘That had crossed my mind. Of course we can’t rule anything out entirely. But who on earth would have had a motive? Did anyone hate him in archaeology?’

  ‘Hate Stan?’ Alan laughed. ‘Absolutely not. He was one of those people who everyone liked. Sure, he could be irritating sometimes – can’t we all? But no, I think he was one of the most popular people around. We all liked old Stan.’ Alan reflected for a moment. ‘But what about the family, those “Cursed Cripps”, would any of them want to get rid of him?’

  ‘No, absolutely not. It was in none of their interests to raise that old myth. In fact, I can assure you that the baronet …’

  ‘Barty?’

  ‘So you’ve met him?’

  ‘Yes, I could see he was looking after – assisting even – Stan’s parents at the wake. I must admit, he struck me as a quiet, no-nonsense, intelligent man.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Lane replied. ‘He’s all of those things and a very good businessman, besides. I didn’t know it when I worked here before, but it was he and his wife Molly who established the restaurant and farm shop. It was all part of raising the money to pay off his father’s death duties.’ He paused. ‘Funny thing, Mary and I often went to the restaurant. They did proper vegetables that tasted of something – unlike that supermarket rubbish you get everywhere now. All grown on the estate.’

  ‘So did you know him when you were here before?’

  ‘Not as a personal friend, no. But he was a magistrate on the Ely bench and I got to know him then. He always struck me as scrupulously honest. And open. But at the same time, he was nobody’s fool. He could cut through slimy solicitors and crooked witnesses like a hot knife through butter. His pet hate was those whiplash cases. He loathed them!’

  ‘Do you think he was aware of the family’s local reputation?’ Alan asked.

  ‘Interesting you should ask that. But, yes, he was. I first met him at a grand official reception in the cathedral.’

  ‘When was that?’ Alan asked.

  ‘It was my first year with Cambridgeshire, so it must have been Christmas 1997. Actually, I remember that conversation quite well. Barty was talking to an earnest schoolboy, who was doing research into Fenland drainage. It’s a standard topic in these parts, as you might imagine. Anyhow, to my amazement, he described how his family had changed from Royalist to Roundhead in the Civil War and then something about drainage disputes in the eighteen century. I can’t remember all the details, but he said that people in the Fens have very long memories and that the Cripps had never been very popular locally. I remember he said something like “We’re the Campbells of the Fens”.’

  ‘Do you think there was ever a Glen
– a Fen – Coe?’

  ‘No, I’m sure there wasn’t. Although I would image that people weren’t too polite to each other during the Civil War.’

  No, Alan thought, they most certainly weren’t. It was a bloody conflict with high casualties. Much worse than it was portrayed at school – if, that is, it was taught at all.

  ‘Do you think these myths, these stories, had any effects on the Cripps’s businesses locally?’

  ‘It crossed my mind, too. Of course, Barty couldn’t produce any good solid proof, but he said that John – that’s his younger son—’

  ‘Married to Candice, right?’

  Lane nodded. ‘Anyhow, John had access to the White Delphs shop receipts, which he said were growing very much faster than Fursey’s. Worse than that, most of the Delphs’s visitors were locals and they weren’t known as far away as Cambridge, even – where the real money lay.’

  Alan was looking puzzled. ‘Sorry, Richard, but White Delphs?’

  ‘I thought you’d have known about it. It’s that Second World War visitor attraction on the old railway line, by the bank just off the Littleport Road.’

  Alan thought for a moment. Then nodded. Yes, he knew where it was.

  ‘Anyhow,’ Lane continued, ‘Cambridge, especially the university, was where most of the Fursey restaurant’s customers came from. Barty said that John was sure of that because they could often be found sipping a pre-dinner G and T while they strolled round the abbey ruins. He laughed – said that was where he did most of his customer research.’

  Alan could picture the scene. ‘So despite attracting richer people from Cambridge …’

  ‘They were doing less well than White Delphs who were mostly attracting locals.’

  ‘And presumably lots of them.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what he seemed to be saying. He reckoned the local market had to be cracked if Fursey was ever to be sustainable.’

  ‘Tell me more about White Delphs? Its fame certainly hasn’t spread as far north as Lincolnshire.’

  ‘I took a stroll round there last week. It’s a strange place, obviously run by volunteers, who were everywhere. But in essence it’s part of an old marshalling yard that includes about a mile of the old Ely-Bedford line …’

  ‘Which was axed by Beeching in the early 1960s, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, but like many railway lines and larger dykes in the Fens, it was used in early wartime defences. It became part of what they called the Fenland Command Line, which was established in the summer of 1940.’

  ‘A defensive line, not a railway line?’ Alan wasn’t too clear.

  ‘A bit of each …’

  ‘So it’s got pillboxes, that sort of thing?’ Unlike some of his colleagues, Alan didn’t consider himself a ‘concrete anorak’, but he had to admit that wartime remains did have a strong appeal to him. His last case with Lane had involved a huge hangar where Lancasters had once prepared for bombing missions over Germany. In many ways its dark interior put him in mind of echoing cathedrals. And as for those myths about wartime airfields being haunted by the spirits of long-dead airmen: they weren’t so strange to him now. Everyone said that place was haunted, too. But one thing he did know: ghosts don’t exist in the past. They’re all around us, in the actions and minds of the living.

  ‘Yes,’ Lane continued. ‘There are several pillboxes and two very much larger field-gun emplacements, plus several ­spigot-mortars and a jumbled mass of anti-tank cubes that had been bulldozed to one side after the war. But I was struck by one thing: they weren’t quite as amateur as I’d imagined.’

  ‘In what way: their displays? Their facilities?’

  ‘Both actually. They had quite a smart coffee shop with a souvenir and small bookshop alongside it. Both were housed in what looked like pre-fab wartime barracks. And the display panels were new and well-done; professionally, I reckoned. No, I was quite impressed.’

  It was now almost night-time and as the temperature dropped, the mists cleared. Suddenly the evening sky was ripped apart by a dozen large rockets. As if synchronised, they arched gracefully high above their heads. There was half a second’s pause, then simultaneously they exploded into showers of glittering celestial confetti. Briefly Alan caught sight of Lane’s face staring up. In the fireworks’ light, he seemed far happier, more confident and at ease now that he was back in the Fens.

  As Alan drove away his resolve strengthened even more. Lane was only doing his job, following the most obvious leads. But Alan knew Stan, and Lane didn’t. He had to do the right thing by his friend. And to do that, he needed to use Stan’s own methods. Begin with the research. Find out about the place and the history. Take it step by step. The devil would be in the detail.

  * * *

  The financial crisis, bankers’ bubble, call it what you bloody like, Alan was thinking as he drove into Cambridge, happened two years ago, but you wouldn’t know it here; this is as prosperous as London – maybe even more so. And very, very different from the small towns and scattered villages around his brother’s house in south Lincolnshire. He’d been in Grantham the other day and was shocked to see how many shops were closed, with ‘For Sale’ or ‘Lease’ boards in their windows. One glance at the local paper’s property pages told the same tale: prices were falling and quite a few places had been put up for auction by the building society or bank. Alan sighed, it was depressing: a foolish investment for a banker was a ruined life, shattered dreams, for an ordinary family. But not here, not in Britain’s fastest-growing city. He was driving through the northern industrial suburbs, known by locals as Silicon Fen, and already the road was packed with Lycra-clad executives cycling their way to their offices. For a moment he wondered how they displayed their wealth to their peers. Was it fancy helmets (wired for sound and vision), high-tech shoes, or just flashy suits and bicycles? He didn’t know, these were other worlds, but on the whole he preferred them to the old ways of Rolls Royces and vast SUVs.

  Slowly he drove his way through the rush-hour traffic to the Downing Street site at the heart of the city. He left his Fourtrak in the multi-storey car park that had been built over the remains of the Saxon city. Alan was fascinated by place names. The fact that he was saying words that he knew people a thousand years ago would probably have understood fired his imagination. So Cambridge or Grontabricc, to give it its eighth-century Saxon name, meant the bridge over the River Granta. The ‘bridge’ part of the name was Early English, or Saxon, but the name of the river was very much older: Celtic, with roots going back to prehistoric times. It was so old, in fact, that it had lost its original meaning. His interest in place names had taught him that rivers run very deep in people’s consciousness: the Thames, or Tamesis, had been named for centuries before London was founded by the Romans. It probably meant ‘Dark River’ in Celtic, the Iron Age tongue. Dark River. How different from the foaming torrents of the hill country: slower, deeper, darker and more deadly. For an instant he saw Stan’s face beneath the swirling brown waters. Then it sunk away.

  He crossed Downing Street and joined the throng of students heading towards the large courtyard which housed the department of archaeology, where he turned sharp right and made his way to the Haddon Library. Just inside the door were pictures of past Disney Professors of Archaeology; among these distinguished, serious faces, his eye was caught by the warm smile of Dr Glyn Daniel. As a boy, his father had been a fan of Glyn Daniel who chaired the very popular TV show, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. Alan frowned ruefully, Test Pit Challenge still had a very long way to go before it matched their viewing figures, but never mind, TPC was a much better programme. Then he remembered that Daniel had written the standard history of Fisher College. He made a mental note to check it out.

  First, Alan enlisted the help of the assistant librarian to assemble as much information as he could find about the Cripps family. The sun was just starting to shine through the Haddon’s tall windows when Alan looked at the books around him on the table. When he’d discussed t
he Cripps family with Lane in the mill car park he’d determined to reveal the devil in the detail of their family history. And this was the place to do it. But he’d need to keep his wits about him. Such research wasn’t just about reading words in a book; it was about using reason to get at what the author was originally thinking. And that took imagination. But now he had the motivation for the task and, as if to give him a further boost, he remembered working closely with Stan the previous autumn, sorting out levels in the site notebooks. They’d made a good team.

  He began reading, every so often stopping to tap on the Notes app and jot something down. In the past he would have taken notes in longhand, but recently he had been persuaded to try a tablet and now he swore by them. By one o’clock his tummy had started making loud gurgling sounds. People were even turning to look. Time for a beer, pie and chips. But before that, he read through what he’d written that morning:

  1650: Cripps family acquire the lands that previously (pre-1538) belonged to Fursey Abbey (Benedictine). During the Civil War, the main family under Colonel Crowson Cripps began by supporting the Royalists, but then switched to Parliament when they started to rise after Naseby. For his loyalty, Cromwell gave him a grant of land at ‘Fursbea, near Eley’. This was seen by many locals as the ‘Devil’s Due’. Crowson was known to have played an active part in the ‘Fursey Massacre’, when the (Royalist) vicar, a local squire and the congregation of the parish church was locked in and the timber building set alight. The squire who, like everyone else, died in the fire, was Edward Cripps, Crowson’s first cousin. Local legend (see Powis (’49) Cambridgeshire Folklore and Legends, pp. 78–81) reported that Crowson’s men stopped townspeople from taking water from the river to quench the blaze. Powis (p. 80): ‘This inhumane act, if true, probably explains the persistent local myth of the ‘Cursed Cripps’ and the associated, and possibly equally ancient, link of that family to the river.

  Alan set the tablet aside and stared up at the ceiling. He was beginning to understand why the Crippses had been hated so much. And it wasn’t as if they were outsiders, the equivalent of rich London second-homers today. No, they were Fen folk, born and bred. That must have made it ten times worse. His brain was now working at double speed. No time to go to the pub, he’d grab a quick bite instead. The pie and pint could wait.