A Room Full Of Bones

CHAPTER 13

Nelson is not normally much of a one for breakfast. He likes to leave early and grab a bacon butty on the way to work. Sometimes he even accompanies Clough for a traditional McDonald’s breakfast. What he doesn’t do is sit at his breakfast bar consuming the Full English and trying to make conversation with his wife. But today, 6 November, is his birthday and Michelle announced that she was going to ‘cook him a proper breakfast for once’. The trouble is that it’s only seven-thirty and neither of them feels much like eating. All Michelle has on her plate is a single piece of toast.

‘Have some of this bacon, love.’

Michelle shudders. ‘I couldn’t.’

‘It’s too much for me. You know I’m trying to lose weight.’

Michelle’s face falls. ‘I thought you’d like a proper breakfast. You always used to when we lived in Blackpool.’

Nelson and Michelle are both from Blackpool. They lived there when they were first married and Nelson has noticed that, in the last few months, Michelle has increasingly been harking back to those days. It’s as if she wants to remember a time before Norfolk, before the children grew up, before Ruth.

‘I was young then. I didn’t have to watch my weight.’

‘You should come to the gym with me. You said you were going to.’

In the euphoria of reconciliation, Nelson and Michelle had agreed to do more things together. Nelson would go to the gym, Michelle would watch football matches, they would go out for meals, book mini breaks. So far Nelson has been to the gym once, they have had two unsatisfactory meals out and Michelle has leafed through a brochure full of details of spas and golf links but coy about prices. Nelson did try to get tickets when Blackpool played Norwich but neither of them had been too disappointed when he was unsuccessful. Michelle hates watching Blackpool; orange isn’t her colour.

‘I haven’t got time,’ he says now, gulping his tea. ‘Work’s a nightmare. We’re getting nowhere on the drugs case.’

‘I thought we’d have more time together now the girls have left,’ says Michelle. Both daughters are now at university. Laura reading marine biology at Plymouth, Rebecca doing media studies at Brighton. Nelson is rather in awe of higher education (he and Michelle both left school at sixteen) but he wishes his daughters would study subjects he understood. Still, Brighton’s a grand place. Perhaps they could have a mini break there.

‘We’ll go out for a meal tonight,’ he says, kissing Michelle on the cheek. ‘I’ll try to get off early.’

She smiles, rather forlornly. ‘Happy birthday Harry.’

Nelson leaves the house feeling depressed. He’s not wild about his birthday at the best of times and forty-three sounds worryingly old. His dad died at fifty. Bloody hell. Only seven more years. And Michelle had seemed so sad, so unlike the confident woman he had married. How can he make things better, short of obliterating the last two years? It’s ironical that now he thinks about Ruth more than ever. In the past, he was able to forget her when he was with Michelle but now she is there all the time, the invisible presence. The elephant in the room. He smiles thinly to himself. She’d love that description, he’s sure. He notes with irritation that there are two spent rocket cases in his garden. Why can’t people go to organised bonfire parties rather than trying to set themselves alight in their own gardens? It just makes more work for the emergency services. He opens the garage and starts up the Mercedes. He’ll make sure that he’s home early, take Michelle somewhere nice for dinner. But, before he has even left the cul-de-sac, he gets a message on his phone: Danforth Smith found dead.

Ruth has no one to cook her breakfast and right now she’s glad. Kate woke up twice in the night and then, inexplicably, slept in until eight. Ruth has got used to Kate being her alarm clock and so no longer sets the other kind. She rose in a panic, flinging on clothes and ignoring Kate (and Flint’s) demands to be fed. She usually drops her daughter off at Sandra’s at eight, and even then it’s a rush to be at the university for nine. She gets in early these days because she does so much more of her work there – home no longer being a place where she can read for hours and forget the rest of the world. And today she has a lecture at ten. Bloody hell. No time for make-up, she’ll just have to scare her students with her naked face. Maybe they’ll think she’s wearing a Halloween mask.

Ruth slops cat food down for Flint, stuffs porridge into a resistant Kate and is just heading out to the car when her phone rings. The landline. She hesitates. Should she leave it? Surely if it was important they’d ring her mobile, but it might be her parents who regard mobile phones as the work of the devil (they are experts on the Prince of Darkness). Ruth goes back inside, still carrying Kate. Flint, delighted by this turn of events, climbs onto the table, purring loudly.

‘Doctor Galloway?’ Not her parents then.

‘Yes.’

‘This is Janet Meadows. I’m a local historian. Cathbad said that you wanted to talk to me.’

Not for the first time Ruth marvels at the efficiency of Cathbad’s information service. He left her house last night at nearly midnight yet has already had time to network. She looks at her watch. Nearly nine. Ruth hates being late, she can feel her facial muscles knotting into a tension headache.

‘That would be great. It’s just that I’m in a bit of a-’

‘What about today? Midday. At the cathedral refectory.’

‘I don’t think I can…’ Ruth tries to conjure up her timetable. She doesn’t think she has any lectures between eleven and three.

‘Cathbad said it was important.’

Why is Cathbad so keen for Ruth to meet this woman? It’s not important in any real sense but still… Ruth would like to talk to someone about Bishop Augustine before the press gets hold of the story. And lunch in the cathedral cafe sounds tempting. Weird but tempting.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you there.’

Nelson is surprised to find that it’s business as usual at the yard. He meets a string of horses coming through the gates and another set are being saddled up in the quadrangle.

‘Horses can’t wait, I’m afraid,’ says a leathery individual who identifies himself as Len Harris, Head Lad. ‘They need to be exercised. We’ve got runners today and the owners expect to see their horses run. So life goes on.’ He grimaces as if he realises how inappropriate this sounds. ‘Though we’re all devastated about the governor.’

Nelson can’t see any evidence of devastation in the faces of any of the riders but he has begun to realise that jockeys and stable lads don’t give much away. There is something watchful, almost withdrawn, about them. Perhaps it’s the strain of keeping their weight under ten stone. The only creature who seems at all upset is Lester the cat, who is meowing piteously in the office. When Nelson walks through the yard towards the house, Lester follows him.

This time, Nelson knocks at the front door, which is opened immediately by Randolph. He does look upset, Nelson acknowledges, his eyes are red and he seems almost unhinged, running his hands through his hair and talking at random. ‘Detective… ah… good of you to come… we’re all… ah… well… you can imagine… yes.’

Nelson follows Randolph, still gibbering, into a large, light sitting room. There, looking rather lonely on a vast leather sofa, are two women. One he recognises as Caroline, the other is a slim woman with short, grey hair. The wife, presumably.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he begins formally. ‘Do you feel up to talking to me?’ He wishes Judy Johnson were here; he has asked her to join him as soon as possible.

‘Of course,’ says the woman, who introduces herself as Romilly Smith, Danforth’s wife. ‘It’s just been the most terrible shock. I’ve only just got back from the hospital.’

‘Was your husband taken ill in the night?’

‘It was so sudden,’ says Romilly. She’s about sixty, Nelson reckons, but still powerfully attractive. The sort of woman confident enough not to dye her hair. She’s distressed now, holding her handkerchief tightly in one hand, but still very much in control. ‘He seemed fine yesterday,’ she says. ‘He was full of the opening of the coffin, finding out that the skeleton was female. He was really intrigued.’

Randolph, who is pouring himself a whisky, lets out a sudden laugh.

‘Isn’t it a bit early?’ his mother indicates the drink.

‘I’ve had a shock, Ma.’

‘We’ve all had a shock,’ snaps Caroline. She, too, looks very shaken. Her dark hair is pulled up in a bun which makes her look older but rather beautiful.

‘So Lord Smith didn’t seem unwell yesterday evening?’ says Nelson, sitting in a squashy armchair which seems about to digest him.

‘No. He was his usual self,’ says Romilly. ‘We had supper together and he told me all about the bishop’s coffin and how impressed he was with your colleague Dr Galloway, and he said goodnight about ten. He goes to bed early because he gets up so early. I stayed up to watch the news and Newsnight, then I went to bed. I was woken up at about eleven-thirty by Dan calling out…’ She stops.

‘He called out?’ Nelson prompts.

Romilly Smith takes a deep breath, holding her handkerchief to her eyes. Caroline pats her arm rather ineffectually.

‘I heard him shout something. I went to his room and he seemed to be having the most dreadful nightmare. He was pouring with sweat and his eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to be able to see.’

‘Did he say anything? Anything that you could understand?’

‘He was ranting on about a coach and horses. Afterwards I realised what that meant. Dan had an Irish nanny when he was little. Niamh she was called. She sounds like a real ghoul but he was devoted to her. She told him about this black coach that’s meant to come for people when they’re dying. It’s pulled by six black horses and the coachman’s headless.’

‘It’s called the Coach-a-Bower,’ says Caroline. ‘The black coachman knocks three times on your door and when you open it he throws a bucket of blood in your face.’

‘I thought it was a banshee in the coach,’ says Randolph, still standing by the drinks trolley. ‘You heard her voice and you knew your time was up.’

‘So you know this story too?’ asks Nelson.

‘Dad used to tell it to us’ says Caroline. ‘At bedtime.’ Charming, thinks Nelson. Nothing like a banshee and a bucket of blood to make children sleep well. He’s glad that he was just a working-class dad who stuck to Winnie-the-Pooh.

‘So your husband was talking about this coach,’ says Nelson. ‘Was he delirious?’

‘I think so. He kept saying that the coach was coming for him and he kept talking about a snake.’

‘A snake?’

‘He said a snake was there on the bed with him. He said he could see its eyes. They’re burning, he kept saying.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I felt his forehead. He was boiling hot so I called the doctor. I tried to sponge Dan down, to get him to have some water, but he was beside himself, yelling and… and crying.’

‘What time was this?’

‘About midnight.’

‘Was anyone else in the house?’

‘I was out,’ says Randolph, sounding rather sheepish. ‘I arrived back at the same time as the doctor. I couldn’t believe the state Dad was in.’

‘You should have called me,’ sobs Caroline.

‘I’m sorry.’ Her mother touches her hand. ‘But we just didn’t know how serious it was. Everything happened so quickly.’

‘What did the doctor say?’

‘He said that we should get Danforth to hospital. He was dehydrated and needed liquids intravenously. He called for an ambulance. They were very quick but Dan died on the way to hospital.’

Just like Neil Topham, thinks Nelson. Another man in apparently good health one minute, dead the next. And he doesn’t like the mention of the snake. He doesn’t like it at all. A line from one of the letters comes back to him. We will come for you. We will come for you in the Dreaming.

‘Did they offer a cause of death?’ he asks. ‘I’m sorry if this is hard for you.’

‘Heart attack, the paramedics said, but someone at the hospital said it might have been a lung infection.’

There’ll have to be an autopsy, thinks Nelson. Of course, Danforth Smith could have died of natural causes – heart attacks can happen to anyone – but two suspicious deaths in six days, both connected to the museum?

‘Did Lord Smith have any heart problems?’ he asks.

‘No.’ Romilly seems exhausted by her account. She leans back against the sofa cushions and shuts her eyes. ‘He always seemed as strong as a horse.’ She laughs sadly. ‘Of course, the horses were his life. Maybe he worked too hard. I don’t know.’

‘He was diabetic wasn’t he?’ asks Nelson.

Romilly looks surprised, almost angry. ‘How did you know that?’

‘He told me. When I came to speak to him about Neil Topham’s death.’

‘You don’t suspect that there’s any link between Dan’s death and that chap at the museum,’ says Romilly. ‘I mean, it’s preposterous to suggest-’

‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ says Nelson, ‘but I’ve got two unexpected deaths in a week. I’m sure you’ll agree that I need to investigate. Likely as not, your husband’s death was from natural causes. I’ll leave you alone now, I’m sure you’ve all had enough questions. My sergeant will be here in a few minutes. Could you show her any CCTV footage from last night? I believe you have CCTV?’

‘Yes,’ says Caroline. ‘But I’d know if anyone came in. My cottage is by the gate.’

‘Did you hear the doctor and the ambulance?’

‘No. They came the other way. By the house.’

‘So it’s possible that someone could have got in that way?’

‘Do you really think that someone could have got in and… and poisoned him or something?’ asks Caroline.

Interesting assumption, thinks Nelson. Never assume, that’s his motto.

‘It’s unlikely,’ he says. ‘I just want to make sure that we leave no stone unturned.’

And what do you find under stones, he reflects, as he walks back through the yard, watched by the curious horses and impassive stable lads.

Snakes.