Missing Susan

CHAPTER 11

CORNWALL

THE ONE FORTUNATE aspect of the entire incident was that no one seemed to have noticed that Rowan had been attempting to push Susan at the time he fell. He told them that he had suffered a dizzy spell from the heights. Their concern for his health assured him that there were no suspicions to the contrary. Aside from bruised knees and a few minor scrapes, he found that he was quite uninjured and, fearful of losing another chance at Susan, he insisted that the tour continue uninterrupted.

On his instructions Bernard continued to drive down the length of Cornwall to a picturesque castle across the inlet from Falmouth. St. Mawes, a military fortification rather than a residence, was built by Henry VIII as part of his chain of coastal defenses. Its massive guns protected Carrick Roads, still used as a berthing for oceangoing vessels. The guide took a perverse pleasure in marching his restive charges through the village high street, past any number of inviting shops, without letting them stop for even a postcard, let alone a cup of tea or a quarter of an hour of browsing. With only a trace of a limp, he led them up the hill toward the castle, past an assortment of private homes with lovely views of the inlet, and into the castle. Nancy Warren wanted to stop and examine the magnificent bushes of hydrangeas with blue flowers as big as cabbages, but Rowan was firm.

It was just past five o’clock when he herded them back to the coach, telling Bernard to forget the regular route to St. Ives. He knew a shortcut.

“We’ll take the King Harry Ferry,” he announced. “It’s just north of here.”

Bernard rolled his eyes, but, in the best British tradition, he concluded that it was not his to reason why; though if the do or die killed the bus, the company would go into fits, he was sure. Without a word of argument, he put the coach in gear and headed north on a winding, shady country road, labeled B3289 on his road atlas.

No one said very much along the way. It had been a tiring day of long walks and melodrama. The tourists were glad of a break. Rowan spent the time considering his contingency plan and wondering if the wretched Susan had nine lives-or only nine cats.

After a twenty-minute drive at a leisurely speed, they went down a long hill toward the river and joined the line of cars waiting for the ferry, which was on its way back to the dock.

“We’re the only bus in the ferry line!” Frances Coles remarked.

Bernard heaved a weary sigh and shook his head. One by one the small cars ahead of them were driven onto the flat deck of the small river ferry. When the huge coach lumbered up to the embarkation point, three ferry workers crowded about to see them safely aboard. With many hand signals and shakes of the head, they succeeded in getting the coach down the ramp with only one major scraping of the fender, to which Bernard reacted as if he had felt it personally.

The river was only about a quarter of a mile wide, approximately a five-minute journey on the ferry. The tourists amused themselves by studying the large ships anchored just downstream and by looking ahead to the tiny hillside village on the other shore. When the ferry docked, Bernard managed to get the coach onto dry land without much difficulty.

“There!” said Rowan Rover heartily, to disguise his relief. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He had spoken prematurely. Fifty yards from the ferry dock, Bernard began to search for the road that would lead them out of the village. It was just as Rowan spoke that he discovered the route-and the fact that it involved a series of corkscrew turns up the side of the hill, at intervals approximating the length of the coach.

First Bernard stared, then he looked for another way out of the village and found none. Finally he took a deep breath and said to Rowan, “You’ll owe me a pint for this one, mate.”

“Done!” said Rowan, who was seeing his shortcut in a new light. “I’ve never been this way in a battleship before,” he explained.

“I’ll never do it again,” Bernard assured him.

With steering maneuvers resembling acrobatics, he negotiated the twisting climb and emerged on the straightaway at the top, cheered on by the passengers.

“There’s nothing else today, is there, Rowan?” asked Bernard. “First you try to throw yourself off a cliff, then you nearly wreck the coach on a bloody ferry, and finally we have to bend the coach in half to get it up a corkscrew. There won’t be land mines up ahead, will there? Or bridges woven out of fraying jungle vines for us to cross?”

“No,” said Rowan, reddening a bit at this recital. “We’ll reach St. Ives within the hour.”

For once, he happened to be right.

Without further misadventure, Bernard navigated the narrow country lanes of Cornwall and drove into St. Ives, familiar to him from previous tours. Soon he was parking the coach beside the Tregenna Castle Hotel, a stately old building, perched atop the tallest hill in St. Ives, where it offered a commanding view of the bay and the city below.

“Is this old?” asked Kate Conway, gazing up at the ivy-covered castle with a tower at each corner and a row of battlements like jack-o’-lantern teeth.

“It is eighteenth century,” Rowan told her. “I suppose that in southern California that is practically prehistoric. Here we don’t make so much of it.” He turned to the rest of the group, engaged in claiming their luggage from the below-carriage compartment. “I’m going to see you checked in and then I shall go home for a few hours. I shall be in the bar at half past seven, if anyone would like to join me for a drink. Dinner is at eight tonight. I have arranged a special treat for you.” Like a bloody fool, he finished silently.

“Not another murder play?” sighed Martha Tabram.

“God forbid,” said Rowan. “No. I have asked three of my friends to dine with us. They are police officers here in Cornwall, I’m sure you’ll find it intriguing to talk to them about crime.” Especially, he thought, since there’s going to be one.

Kate Conway and Maud Marsh were just settling into their room when there was a knock at the door. It was Elizabeth MacPherson, whose room was in the passageway across the hall. They had discovered that the castle was a rabbit warren of short corridors, long passageways, and culs-de-sac, all carpeted with the most garish floor coverings imaginable, guaranteed to clash with any decor.

Elizabeth came in and spent a long moment gazing at their avocado-green bedspreads and the curtains of turquoise and orange. “You’d think that anyone who could afford a castle would have the taste to furnish it correctly.”

“They probably can’t afford to,” said Kate. “Imagine what it would cost to carpet this place! You wouldn’t want to pull it up every time you painted the walls.”

“How’s your room?” asked Maud.

“About the same,” said Elizabeth. “Except that mine has a door leading out to the roof, so I can walk the battlements tonight like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I came to see you because I wanted to talk to everyone before we see Rowan tonight at dinner. Do you know what we’re scheduled to do tomorrow?”

Kate Conway nodded without enthusiasm. “Smugglers’ caves.”

Maud Marsh looked solemn. “Sounds risky. And after today’s performance, I think Rowan is in more danger than anyone. What do we do if he falls into a fifty-foot pit?”

“Exactly,” said Elizabeth. “Besides, we’ve been in England for six days-and I’ve only shopped for an hour!”

“So you think we ought to ask him to give us a free afternoon?” asked Kate. She drew the curtain aside and peered down at the white cluster of buildings encircling the bay. “We could visit St. Ives, I suppose.”

“It looks like a perfect place to shop,” Elizabeth agreed. “But we have to present a united front. I’ll go and present our scheme to the others. Then we’ll tell Rowan in the bar before dinner.”

Kate’s eyes widened. “He’s not going to like this one bit! You know what a stickler he is about our schedule and how much he hates shopping. He’ll think we’re frivolous. Who’s going to tell him?”

“I will,” said Elizabeth, laughing. “What can he do? Kill me?”

By half past seven the conspiracy was well-established. Elizabeth had talked to all the others and, while not everyone was keen on shopping, there was general agreement that they needed a day of peace and quiet. No one wanted to clamber through damp uncharted smugglers’ caves with a man who almost fell off a sixty-foot rock. Elizabeth was the unanimous choice to break this news to Rowan Rover. She found him in the bar, clutching a double Scotch and chatting amiably with three men in business suits: the police who came to dinner. By the time she went to the bar and got herself a half of cider, the other members of the tour had come in and were being introduced to the officers and she was able to have a private word with the guide.

“Listen,” she said, blinking a little bit from nervousness, “about the plans tomorrow…”

Rowan beamed in anticipation. “It’s going to be marvelous, isn’t it? I know some caves that no one ever goes to! There’s no telling what we might come upon. You’re lucky to have someone who really knows Cornwall to show you about, aren’t you?”

“Er-well…” Elizabeth blushed to the top of her ears. “That’s what I wanted to discuss. We all got to talking about the plans for tomorrow and we decided that, while it’s really terribly generous of you to want to show us the local sights…” She took a fortifying breath. “What we really want is a free day.”

Rowan Rover gaped in astonishment. “In St. Ives?” he screeched.

“Yes. We’re rather toured out, you know, and we thought it might be fun to potter around the village and… you know … shop.” To her acute discomfort, Rowan was staring at her in complete disbelief. “You want to shop?” he repeated. His expression suggested that he was casting about for some other, more suitable meaning for the word. “You want to pass up these historic, fascinating smugglers’ caves that only I can take you to, in order to go and buy ornamental shrimping nets in that great lowbrow jumble sale by the sea?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Elizabeth. “After all, it will give you a bit of time off here at home.”

“All of you, then?” he asked, steadying himself against a nearby table against the magnitude of this betrayal. “You all want to go shopping?”

“In the afternoon, then,” said Elizabeth, feeling that some sort of compromise was indicated. “Maud and Martha did mention that they’d like to see St. Michael’s Mount tomorrow morning. But no caves!”

Rowan, Samson in the hands of the Philistines, heaved a sigh of resignation. “All right, then. I suppose I can rearrange my plans.” Surreptitiously he patted the pocket of his jacket. The little vial he had brought from home was still there. Now he was forced to use it.

The party made two tables of five and one of six, with a guest policeman seated at each one. Elizabeth was sitting with Inspector George Burgess, at a table with Alice, Frances, and Martha Tabram. After duly admiring the spacious Trelawny Room (omitting any references to its carpeting), Alice leaned forward and whispered, “Did you tell him, Elizabeth?”

Before she answered, Elizabeth looked to see where Rowan Rover was sitting. She located him at the far table, sitting between Miriam Angel and Susan Cohen, who seemed to be talking nonstop across the table to the policeman dining with them. Emma Smith, who sat on Susan’s left, was eating her soup with the resignation of one who does not expect to get a word in edgewise. Reassured that she could not be overheard, Elizabeth recounted her conversation with the guide about the next day’s schedule.

“Free at last!” sighed Frances. “But I don’t envy you having to tell him.”

“Somebody had to,” Elizabeth replied. “Did you want to spend the day slogging through a dark cave?”

After that the talk turned to crime. The foursome listened happily to tales of police work in Penzance. Midway through the main course, Elizabeth thought of something else to ask. “Are you familiar with the case of Constance Kent?”

Burgess thought it over. “Victorian era? The teenage girl who supposedly cut her little brother’s throat?”

“That’s the one,” said Elizabeth. “Rowan and I are arguing about whether or not she did it.”

“It’s been years since I read about the case,” the inspector warned her, “but I seem to remember that there was insanity in the family. The girl’s mother was shut up in her room for years before she died. The child who was killed was the son of the second Mrs. Kent, formerly the older children’s governess. I think it was put about at the time that Constance might have taken after her mother-mentally unstable, you know. And a year or so before the murder, she tried to run away. Dressed as a boy. She wouldn’t be the first neurotic teenager who resorted to murder.”

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth. “That seems quite conclusive. I wonder what Rowan will say to that!”

Two tables away Rowan Rover’s mind was on a more immediate crime than the one at Road Hill House. He had pointed out the interesting arrangement of exposed beams in the high ceiling of the dining room, and while his tablemates were inspecting this architectural marvel, he had sprinkled some powder into Susan Cohen’s untouched glass of wine. The maneuver had been completely successful: no one had noticed his sleight of hand. After a few more minutes of conversation, Rowan, anxious to get it over with, said, “I should like to propose a toast!” He lifted his glass and smiled at his tablemates from behind a film of cold sweat. “Er-here’s to crime!” Obediently they reached for their glasses. Susan Cohen made a face. “I hate white wine,” she whined. “It tastes like horse piss. Here, Emma, your glass is empty, and you haven’t touched your water. You take my wine, and I’ll toast with water. I don’t see why they can’t serve Pepsi over here-”

Before Rowan Rover could think of a way to salvage the situation, Detective Heamoor echoed, “Here’s to crime!” and finished his glass.

With mounting horror, Rowan saw Emma Smith take a generous swallow of Susan Cohen’s tainted wine. Immediately she made a face. “You’re right, Susan,” she giggled. “It does taste like… what you said.”

After that the conversation progressed smoothly on to other topics. Rowan supposed that he must have uttered a word here and there, but he had no idea what went on at his table, beyond a vague impression that Susan had given the police officer plot summaries of a great many murder mysteries-so perhaps no one remembered much of the conversation. Rowan’s own mind was reeling with the enormity of his error, and he was frantically engaged in trying to devise some excuse to persuade Emma Smith to take an emetic. (Ipecac as a traditional Cornish beverage? But where would he get any on ten minutes’ notice so late at night?) His one consolation was that he hadn’t been able to obtain a really good poison like arsenic. His homemade herbal concoction might, after all, prove too weak to cause serious injury. Perhaps, he thought hopefully, she will have a thundering case of indigestion, for which I shall blame the seafood. Please let her survive, he thought. Idly he wondered if the Deity paid any attention at all to the prayers of aspiring murderers.

After a sleepless night of worry and more contingency planning for Susan’s demise, Rowan crept down to breakfast, half expecting his detective friends to be present in their official capacity. Instead, he found Emma Smith alive and well and eating breakfast with her mother and Maud Marsh. In his relief at this unexpected miracle, he scooped up a bowlful of Mueslix and sat down at their table.

“Good morning, ladies. How are you? How are you, Emma?” Never had the greeting been less perfunctory.

“Oh, I’m all right, I suppose,” Emma replied, but her tone suggested that she might have complained if she’d tried.

“Feeling a bit seedy?” asked Rowan. “Probably the rich food. Let me bring you a glass of milk.” Milk, he knew, could also act to lessen the effects of certain poisons. It was worth a try.

Half an hour later the group was assembled in the parking lot, marveling at another perfect summer day granted to them in late September.

“It’s St. Michael’s Mount this morning, isn’t it?” asked Nancy Warren.

“Can’t we go to Land’s End?” asked Elizabeth MacPherson.

“No,” snapped the guide. “That place is a complete tourist trap. I do have my standards. They may be low, but I have them. St. Michael’s Mount is much less commercial.”

“All right,” said Elizabeth. “It’s just that I was reading some English folklore about the lost land of Lyonesse, now covered by the sea. It’s supposed to be off the shore at Land’s End, and they say that during storms you can still hear the church bells of the drowned village, tolling beneath the waves.”

Rowan’s glare was flint. “Perhaps you’d like to go there on a buying spree this afternoon.”

This salvo ended all further discussion, and the rebellious flock boarded the bus in chastened silence. Susan managed to maintain this silence until the coach was nearly out of the grounds of Tregenna Castle. “I thought Mont St. Michel was over near France,” she remarked. “Have you read Aaron Elkins’ book Old Bones? It’s set out there, and it’s about this-”

Rowan lunged for the microphone and cut her off in mid-gallop. “Some of you may have confused Cornwall’s Mount St. Michael with its French counterpart Mont St. Michel.” Those of you to whom the word atlas denotes a brand of tire, he finished silently. “Actually the two differ somewhat in size and are located in entirely different places geographically. The French one is, conveniently enough, in the Channel, off the coast of France. The Cornish one was a port on the tin route to the Mediterranean in Roman times, but in 1070 a monastery was founded there by monks from Mont St. Michel.”

“William the Conqueror’s doing, I suppose?” said Alice.

“Probably. It’s a captivating place. An ancient granite castle seems to rise out of the rock itself at the summit of a mound surrounded by the sea. Actually, it will be interesting to see whether it is an island when we arrive. At high tide, the Mount is a few hundred yards from shore, but when the tide is out, you can walk out to it. There is a paved path leading from the shore to the stone steps at the harbor.”

“Maybe we could swim!” said Kate Conway, with rather more enthusiasm than she showed for walking.

Rowan Rover was stunned. “Swim? In the seas off Cornwall? You might as well go snorkeling in the sewage treatment plant. If it is low tide, you may walk the path to St. Michael’s Mount; otherwise, you will enrich a local boatman by fifty pence for a three-minute ride to the rock.”

Elizabeth, remembering the legend of Lyonesse, said, “How long ago was the island cut off from the mainland?”

“Well, the old Cornish name for the Mount means gray rock in the middle of the forest. There are still traces of old tree trunks in Mount’s Bay. Legend has it that the rock used to be five miles inland and in the middle of a dense forest. The forest was submerged by the sea around the time that Stonehenge was built-long before the arrival of the Romans. Or the French.”

“Is it a fortress?” asked Charles Warren.

“It was once. It has been the home of the St. Aubyn family for three centuries, though. Though I believe there was fear of a Nazi sea invasion during the war. It never occurred, however.” He turned to Elizabeth. “To my knowledge, there have been no lurid crimes associated with the Mount.”

Elizabeth returned his smirk. “And can we trust you not to fall off it?”

The high promontory of St. Michael’s Mount was visible for some distance before they actually reached it. When Bernard pulled the coach into the gravel parking lot adjoining the beach, they could see that the tide was high. Only a few feet of the paved path was visible at the shore, sinking into the blue water of the bay. As they trooped across the sand toward the embarkation point, they could see a flotilla of motorboats waiting to ferry passengers to the Mount. At midpoint in the bay an outcrop of barren rocks rose above the waterline, making a natural marker for monitoring the movement of the tide.

The castle looked like the Gothic cathedrals they had already seen, except that it was perched atop a steep hill, covered with shrubbery and scrub trees. Surrounding the stone docks at the base of the hill was a cluster of old buildings resembling a fishing village. They climbed into motorboats and reassembled on the quay for further instructions from Rowan. “We have about two hours to spend here,” he told them. “I wouldn’t want to cut into your shopping time. You may wander about the port here or, if you are feeling energetic, you can climb the Mount and have a look inside the castle.”

“Let’s go and see the castle!” said Maud. “Anyone want to come along? Miriam? Emma?”

“I don’t think I’m feeling up to it,” said Emma Smith.

Rowan glanced at her furtively. “There’s also a tea shop here in the village. Perhaps you’d like a glass of milk, Emma?”

During their two-hour sojourn on the Mount the tide turned, halving the distance from island to mainland. Now the motorboats picked up their passengers from the Mount and let them off at the outcrop of barren rocks that had formerly been in mid-bay. Now the path from those rocks to the sandy beach was clear and dry above the exposed mud floor of the bay. When they were once again on dry land, Rowan Rover said, “Bernard will now take you back to St. Ives and you will have a free afternoon and dinner on your own. Unless anyone wants to have a look at the caves. Susan?”

She shook her head. “There’s a new Reginald Hill novel that isn’t available in the States yet and I want to see if I can find it.”

The guide looked as if he had swallowed a frog. “Very well, then. I shall see all of you tomorrow.”

No one would give Rowan Rover the satisfaction of admitting that he was right, but shopping in St. Ives had not been the idyllic experience they had envisioned. Like most seaside tourist attractions, the village specialized in cheap, mass-produced merchandise intended as souvenirs for day-trippers. The group ended up buying very little. Even Susan had come away disappointed in her quest for Mr. Hill’s new novel.

By ten o’clock the next morning, they were aboard the coach once more, on a day of tours inspired by the legend of King Arthur. The first stop was the ruins of Tintagel, legendary birthplace of Arthur. It was located on the north coast of Cornwall, past Bodmin and Camelford, a longish drive, but nothing compared to the walk required to reach the ruins of the castle. From the picturesque little village of Tintagel, where Bernard parked the coach, they had to follow a dirt track for several miles through a fold of green hills before they could catch a glimpse of the ruins.

Fortunately for those whose bodies were set for the California climate, the day was perfect, convincing them that Cornwall’s nickname, the English Riviera, was well-deserved. The sun blazed in a brilliant blue sky without a wisp of cloud, and the weather rivaled the best day in July. They trotted along the dirt track in sunglasses and sleeveless shirts. “I don’t know why everyone complains about British weather,” said Kate Conway, inspecting the deepening tan on her arms.

“Come to Scotland,” said Elizabeth MacPherson. “That brown on your arms would be rust.”

The setting for the castle was romantic enough, isolated as it was on a windswept cliff high above a sapphire sea, but there was little left of the structure itself.

As they stood on the path looking out at the towering peninsula of rock, Emma Smith said, “This reminds me of a saying we had when I was on the archaeological dig. ‘One stone is a stone…’ ”

Elizabeth MacPherson, another veteran excavator, caught the reference, and chimed in, “Two stones a Roman wall…”

Together they chanted, “Three stones a ca-the-dral.”

“It isn’t as bad as that,” said Rowan. “You can see a few feet of wall still standing, and the foundations of buildings are evident here and there.”

“It’s a very beautiful place,” said Maud Marsh. “And you say King Arthur was born here?”

“I don’t know that I say that,” said Rowan, “but tradition maintains that belief. So far the archaeologists haven’t found a shred of proof. Those ruins date from a twelfth-century castle built by Reginald of Cornwall, a son of Henry the First. But if you look into the inlet you can see an opening in the rock known as Merlin’s Cave, so perhaps folklore knows best after all.”

Emma Smith was consulting a newly purchased guidebook. “It says here that recent excavations have found remnants of a fifth-century Celtic monastery here. That would be Arthur’s time, wouldn’t it?”

“Good heavens!” said Alice MacKenzie, pointing to the headland across the inlet from the ruins. “What is that monstrosity?” At the top of that windswept cliff stood a very solid-looking nineteenth-century stone building, incongruous with the rest of the landscape.

“That,” sighed Rowan, “is the King Arthur Castle Hotel, placed above the Barras Nose by the Great Western Railway. Descendants, no doubt, of Mordred.”

That afternoon on the way to the next Arthurian shrine, Elizabeth MacPherson said, “I discussed the Constance Kent case with Inspector Burgess the other night. He thinks she’s guilty, too. He says that there was insanity in her family.”

“You are referring to Constance’s mother, I presume? Certainly Mr. Kent said that she was insane. She did stay shut up in her room a good bit of the time-and was perhaps an invalid. Of course, considering the fact that the poor woman had borne nine children and that her husband left her in seclusion and turned over the running of the house to a high-spirited young governess of twenty-one, I think perhaps a bit of depression was in order, don’t you?”

“I think the wrong person was murdered,” muttered Elizabeth. “I suppose Mr. Kent was having an affair with the governess?”

Rowan grinned. “You would need a more trusting nature than I possess to doubt it. He married the spunky little governess when the first Mrs. Kent died of a mysterious bowel obstruction. Constance would have been ten or eleven at that time, I think.”

“So the governess was the mother of the murdered child? Francis?”

“Yes. Incidentally, the family called the child Savile, not Francis.”

“Teenage jealousy,” said Elizabeth. “No doubt the child by Mr. Kent’s new wife received much more attention than the older children. Perhaps Constance decided to punish everyone by killing the little usurper.”

“But was it the sort of crime a teenage girl would commit? Do you know the details of the murder and on what evidence she was suspected?”

“No,” Elizabeth admitted. “The crime book I read covered the case in about two paragraphs.”

“We’ll be staying in Bath for two nights,” Rowan reminded her. “The crime happened at Road Hill House, just a few miles south of the city, you know.”

“Do libraries over here keep microfilm copies of old newspapers?”

“I can’t vouch for Bath’s public library system, but you might try, if you really wish to pursue your little investigation.”

“I do,” said Elizabeth. “We’ll continue this discussion tomorrow night.”

It was nearly five o’clock before the coach arrived at their second Arthurian shrine: Glastonbury. Maud Marsh was looking eagerly out the window. “I have really been looking forward to coming here,” she announced. “I’ve read so much about the legends of King Arthur, and Glastonbury is one of the most mystical places in the world. The isle of Avalon! Do the boats run this late in the evening, Rowan?”

Rowan Rover blinked. “Boats?”

“Oh, yes!” cried Emma Smith. “I read The Mists of Avalon! Wasn’t it wonderful? You got into a little boat and if you just crossed the river-or whatever the water was-you ended up in Glastonbury, but if you got into the boat and said the magic words, you ended up on the magic island of Avalon!”

“It’s a very holy place for the Church, too,” said Rowan, postponing the answer to Maud’s question and the inevitable reaction. “Joseph of Arimathea is said to have brought the Holy Grail here, and when he planted his staff in the earth, it grew into the Holy Thorn of Glastonbury.”

“You might want to explain who Joseph of Arimathea was,” Elizabeth whispered to the guide.

“Nonsense!” said Rowan. “Everybody knows that!”

“They’re Californians,” said Elizabeth gently.

“Who was Joseph What’s-His-Name?” asked Kate Conway, looking blank and beautiful.

Rowan sighed. “He was the man who gave the tomb in which Jesus was buried after the Crucifixion. Legend has it that Joseph was in possession of the Holy Grail-that’s the cup used by Christ during the Last Supper, for those of you who didn’t see Paul Newman in The Silver Chalice.” By this time Bernard had found a public parking lot on the brick-lined high street of a small country town. He was pulling the coach into a space near a cluster of other tour vehicles. “Here we are,” he announced. “Abbey is just to the left there.”

Radiating astonishment, Maud Marsh peered out the window. “This is Glastonbury?” she demanded.

“Right.”

“It isn’t an island?”

“No.”

“Damned English. They lie about everything!”

As they walked up to the admission complex adjoining the entrance to the grounds, Rowan Rover explained that the geography of England does not stay the same. “You remember that St. Michael’s Mount was once a mountain in a forest, and now it is an island in Mount’s Bay. Glastonbury was indeed an island centuries ago. The Celts called it Ynis Witrin, the isle of glass. It was once a towering peak in an inland sea, but now it is surrounded only by Somerset’s flat meadows and marshland, some of which has been drained in modern times, I expect. Progress, you know.”

“No wonder the fairies left England,” muttered Emma Smith, still thinking of The Mists of Avalon. She was looking paler than usual and she seemed irritable.

Rowan Rover showed the group’s admission pass, and led them through the gates and into the grounds of the ruined abbey. A few yards from the iron gates, Rowan stopped beside a spreading tree, about twelve feet in height. “That,” he said, “is the Holy Thorn of Glastonbury.”

Nancy Warren examined a branch with the eye of a practiced gardener. “It’s a hawthorn tree,” she announced.

“A variation thereof,” Rowan agreed. “But this tree flowers in December. A cutting of white flowering branches is sent each year to the royal family as a Christmas gift.”

“It can’t be the original tree,” said Nancy Warren, whose belief in miracles did not extend to botany.

“No, Cromwell’s men cut it down in their usual rage against holy relics. This is descended from a cutting of the original. Now, if you’ll come this way, I’ll tell you what these ruins are and we shall find the grave of King Arthur.”

For a pleasant hour they walked about the spreading green lawn amid the soaring ruins of the abbey. Charles took many pictures, conscious of the deepening twilight that would soon envelop the site. The others wandered around, strangely quiet, trying to imagine the church in all its medieval splendor.

Rowan, consulting his guidebook with great discretion, told them about the twelfth-century historian, William of Malmesbury, who wrote a chronicle of the abbey, placing its founding a thousand years before his time. According to legend, Ireland’s St. Patrick ended his days as abbot of Glastonbury, and St. Bridget and Wales’ patron saint, David, also visited the holy site. The Domesday Book pronounced it free from taxation, and the Viking raiders left it alone. Just after Malmesbury’s time, a fire destroyed the old structures, but even that turned out to be a mixed blessing, because in the old burial ground, the monks discovered two oak coffins, containing the remains of a large man and a woman with strands of golden hair still clinging to her skull. A leaden cross found with them identified the bodies as those of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. The bodies were reburied in a shrine within the church, and the site of that burial was located again in 1934.

“What a lot of famous people have been here!” said Kate Conway. “King Arthur! St. Patrick! Imagine a Grauman’s Chinese Theatre of saints’ footprints!”

“If it’s so important to England, you’d think they’d have taken better care of it,” said Susan disapprovingly. Seeing the others’ frowns, she said, “Well, they restored the shopping mall in Exeter after the Blitz, didn’t they? Why couldn’t they rebuild one old church?”

Rowan Rover closed his eyes and counted to ten in several languages. Finally he glanced at his watch and, with evident relief, announced, “It is nearly six o’clock, ladies and Charles. The grounds are closing, and we are due in Bath this evening. Tomorrow we shall be seeing the ruins of the Roman baths.”

Rowan was looking forward to inspecting the drowning facilities.

By seven o’clock that evening, they had arrived in Bath and had been shown to their rooms in the stately Francis Hotel in the city center. The hotel, an eighteenth-century building overlooking Queen’s Square, adjoined the residence occupied by Jane Austen when she visited that elegant spa of Georgian England. The natural hot springs over which the city is built were much prized by the Romans, who built the spa baths for their soldiers. Taking the waters became fashionable again in the eighteenth century when Beau Nash made London the playground of the aristocracy. Much of the classic Georgian architecture of the time remains, making Bath an architectural treasure, if not an English Lourdes. (“Wait until you taste the waters,” Rowan kept telling them gleefully.)

At eight Rowan had exchanged his khaki windbreaker for a tweed jacket and was waiting for the rest of the party in the dining room, where they were expected for dinner en masse. His head count, though, showed that there were three people missing.

He was just trying to figure out who they were when Maud Marsh appeared in the doorway. “We can go in to dinner now,” she told him. “I’m afraid Miriam and Emma won’t be joining us. Emma is quite ill.”