Thieves Break In Page 4

  Silence.

  “Well, let’s hope she’s it, because I don’t see anything else promising. We’ve got at least eight people so far who could have followed Hillman up the tower stairs and shoved him off that roof, and the only people we can eliminate positively are first, the old man, who’s been in that chair for ten years and couldn’t push a teddy bear off a table, if we believe the doctor, and second and third, the cook and the butler’s wife, who were together the entire time from the brewing of the tea to the finding of the corpse. So if nobody has any other suggestions, I think we call it a night.”

  Meera wondered what it would do to Sir Gregory if they pinned a murder on his niece. She also wondered where the nephew was, and whether it was significant that they couldn’t find him. And finally, she wondered if she had accomplished anything remotely useful that day. She decided she probably hadn’t. The only bereaved person who’d found her any use or comfort was Meg Daventry, and it somehow didn’t count if you comforted the perpetrator. As for helping the investigation, Lamp would have set an inquiry team onto Meg even without Meera’s report; the girl had had her hysterics openly, uninhibited by the presence of the law, heedless of the suspicions she drew upon herself.

  She probably did it, said Meera’s harder side to her softer, which didn’t want to believe Meg guilty. And either Duncan and Morrisey and a little more digging among the staff will wrap it up, or we won’t find anything that’s not circumstantial and it’ll go unsolved, and in either case, what was I doing here?

  So it was that as the police vacated the Castle for the night, Detective Sergeant Patel was feeling frustrated. Not one to allow herself to wallow in negative emotions, however, she found herself looking forward to Saturday. If they hadn’t wrapped it up before then, or even if they had, maybe she could be of some use with the cousin from America. She wondered what a woman priest would be like.

  Chapter 5

  FEBRUARY 1997

  Five Months Before Rob Hillman’s Death

  Miranda Roghaar eyed Sir Gregory and his young guest with a touch of dismay. They were so eager, so excited.

  “Please don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “We don’t know that what’s behind the wall is a secret room. It may just be a hollow space, quite small. There may be nothing in it. There may just be some rubble. That’s frequently the case.”

  But both her listeners had seen the suppressed excitement on her own face, so it was too late to tell them not to expect much. Sir Gregory tried unsuccessfully to arrange his features into a semblance of indifference and inquired, “When will you know? How do you find out?”

  “First we have to put supports in place to hold up the stones over the area where we’re going to make the hole; that’s under way as we speak. We need to drill several more holes at the top of the area, then erect a counterweighted scaffolding. Since the wall, as I told your man earlier, does not appear to be structurally significant, we might finish the scaffolding by early afternoon. Then we’ll start removing stones. One at a time. Very carefully.”

  Sir Gregory smiled. “I should jolly well hope so. Is there anything we can do to help?”

  Miranda hesitated. “Well . . . if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could we take our elevenses there in the passageway? Nobody really wants to leave the site.” She smiled ruefully at him, knowing she’d just given the game away. If her team, the professionals, were that keen, then there was little point trying to pretend to the owner that nothing particularly interesting was about to happen.

  Sir Gregory’s smile widened. “Of course, dear lady. Simply tell Crumper on your way out; he’ll be standing the other side of the door there.”

  So Miranda Roghaar returned to supervise the assembly of scaffolding and the disassembly of the wall; Sir Gregory asked his guest if he’d care to say; Kit assured Sir Gregory he wouldn’t miss this for the world and phoned home to say he was lunching, tea-ing, and quite possibly dining at the Castle.

  After luncheon Sir Gregory announced he would take his daily nap, leaving Kit on his own in the library: “Dear Sir Greg! Two hours of uninterrupted dalliance with your books? Heaven, I assure you! Besides, I can make a few phone calls home and get a bit of the business done that I really ought to be home doing, but wild horses couldn’t drag me out of here at this point. You run along and have a good kip.”

  Kit was an easy guest in anybody’s house, but especially at Datchworth Castle, which had been his second home for most of his life; he and Sir Gregory, despite their age difference, were firm and comfortable friends. So the ailing Baronet wheeled away for the rest he needed, and returned shortly after three.

  At that point the scaffolding was safely established and the removal of stones had begun. With the first stone out, Miranda Roghaar had shone a small but powerful flashlight into the dimness beyond the hole, and Crumper had reported back to the library that the hidden space appeared to be an irregular triangle, about two feet at its deepest. Shortly thereafter, with a second stone removed and Mrs. Roghaar employing a flashlight and a small mirror set at an angle on the end of an eighteen-inch rod, the news sent to Sir Gregory was that there was a respectable pile of objects in the enclosed space.

  “They are irregular in size and shape,” Crumper reported, “and of course they are covered with dust, but Mrs. Roghaar says that she does not believe that they are rubble. More than that she does not wish to say at this time. However . . .”

  As Crumper was not given to significant pauses, both his listeners pricked up their ears.

  “She did ask me,” Crumper continued, “if I knew if the Family had hidden any silver from Cromwell in the Civil War, and if so, had it ever been found?”

  Kit let out a whoop of celebration and his host suddenly seemed ten years younger. “Crumper,” said Sir Gregory, “chill half a dozen of our best bubbly, ring Mr. Banner and Miss Daventry, and tell them”—here the old man assumed an air of mock grandeur—“to make haste to their ancestral halls.”

  “With pleasure, Sir Gregory,” the butler replied, allowing a small smile to adorn his face as he withdrew from the room.

  “They found a small batch of our silver,” Kit remarked, “in eighteen sixty-something, but my folks always held that there was a lot more under the lawn next to the knot garden. I asked why they didn’t just dig it up—I think I was ten at the time—and they said in shocked tones, ‘You can’t dig up the grass!’ as though I’d suggested dynamiting the dower house.”

  Sir Gregory chuckled, and began to regale his young friend with some of the lesser-known (and less illustrious) exploits of the Bebberidge-Thorpes in the Civil War, and how they (in company with most of the major landowners in Oxfordshire) had pledged their arms and their wealth to the King while burying the very best of the household silver, ostensibly to hide it from Cromwell, but simultaneously making sure that the King didn’t stumble across it, either. Kit had some stories of his own to offer, of course, and the exchange of family legends was creeping toward the apocryphal when the next guest arrived: Will Tandulkar, cordially summoned from his labors at the Morgan Mallowan home farm by a phone call from Kit. (“Oh, of course, dear boy, ring him by all means; the more the merrier!”)

  Will had known that Kit had gone to Datchworth that morning to see Sir Gregory through the invasion of his domain, and was delighted to learn that what earlier was deemed a damn nuisance now looked like it was turning into a cause for rejoicing. Sir Gregory explained that congratulations might be somewhat premature, but that he himself was passing from cautious to incautious optimism as the afternoon wore on.

  Tea was served, and Will was just offering to pour Sir Gregory a second cup when the door opened and Crumper pronounced, “Miss Daventry; Mr. Banner.” Meg and Derek, having made record time from Oxford, swarmed into the room demanding to know if the Old Silver had really been found.

  “Patience, children!” beamed Sir Gregory, receiving a kiss on each cheek from his niece and a warm handclasp from his nephew. “We shall know presentl
y. Meanwhile, do have some tea.”

  “Uncle Greg,” said Meg, having greeted Kit and Will and accepted a cup of tea from the latter, “I’m confused. How can it be the silver? The wall with the crack is twelfth century, didn’t you say?—and the silver would have been hidden about, what? Sixteen-thirty?”

  “My clever girl! I asked Mrs. Roghaar—she’s the English Heritage woman—that very same question. She says they have no way of knowing at this point how old the other wall is, the wall at the back of the enclosed space. They can’t get to it until the hole in the twelfth-century wall is considerably bigger than it is now.”

  And so they all discussed ancient walls and the complications involved in partially dismantling and repairing same, but everybody knew they were just killing time. When a slight click signaled that the door was being opened, conversation died instantly as everyone in the room turned toward the sound with a collective intake of breath.

  It was Miranda Roghaar herself who opened the door. She said nothing, but smiled conspiratorially at Sir Gregory, and stepped aside to make way for Crumper. The butler bore a large, serviceable tray (borrowed from Mrs. Drundle in the kitchen) on which were laid a number of nondescript and unidentifiable objects. Most appeared to be roughly cylindrical in shape, about eight inches long and four inches in diameter.

  Crumper had claimed the right to bear the precious burden to Sir Gregory, but had selected a battered old kitchen tray for the task. Sir Gregory, who knew his butler’s face as well as he knew his own, noted with amusement that there was a faint quiver of distaste visible in the man’s left nostril. Crumper wouldn’t sully the tea tray with these dusty lumps; their odor offended his fastidious nose. The butler laid the tray on his master’s desk and was in the process of making a punctilious withdrawal when he was kindly bidden by Sir Gregory to stay.

  Miranda Roghaar had pulled on a pair of snug latex gloves. Delicately she peeled away the leather husk of one of the cylinders, then unwound cobweb-frail wisps of fabric which bound, mummy-like, the object within. A rousing cheer met the emergence of a metal goblet, gray with tarnish. This trophy Miranda placed on the desktop and invited her audience to “Look, but don’t touch.”

  Most of them hadn’t waited for this invitation, but had already drawn close to inspect the treasures as they were disclosed. To cries of ever increasing appreciation and excitement, the collection on the desk grew to seventeen more goblets (slightly mismatched) and, as other members of the English Heritage team came bearing more bundles, a generous collection of miscellaneous trays and plates together with three bowls, one of them footed.

  On the fourth goblet, Sir Gregory had dispatched Crumper for the champagne, adding kindly, “And Crumper: bring a glass for yourself.”

  “Thank you, Sir Gregory.”

  “Oh, and tell Mrs. Drundle to locate a very large fatted calf.”

  “Yes, sir.” Then as everyone else’s attention was clearly fixed elsewhere, Crumper murmured quietly to his employer, “I believe I saw one tied to the kitchen door this morning.”

  When Crumper returned, this time with the Charles II oval tray (1662, Special Occasions only) laden with chilled bottles and the Regency glasses (Very Special Occasions only), it was to a scene of near delirium. A new pile of dusty lumps, delivered in his absence, had contained an especially irregular package that had turned out to be the lid to the footed bowl. Instead of a knob on the top, the lid featured a five-inch, narrow, pointed spike.

  “My God!” Meg had exclaimed. “It’s a steeple cup!”

  Miranda Roghaar eyed her with respectful surprise and started to say something complimentary about a rare knowledge of old silver, but Meg disclaimed, “They have one at our college, bigger than this.”

  Kit chimed in, “College legend has it that it’s so far beyond priceless that Lloyd’s won’t insure it.”

  Derek was imploring one of the English Heritage team to loan Sir Gregory a pair of gloves so the Baronet could handle his own treasures; Mrs. Roghaar was telling Sir Gregory about a silver expert she wanted to telephone right away; Will Tandulkar had hopped up to assist Crumper in the disbursal of champagne to all and sundry; Crumper was informing Sir Gregory, as he handed him his glass, that Mrs. Drundle had the fatted calf, plus accessories, well in hand.

  The application of alcoholic bubbles did nothing to dispel the excitement, so perhaps it was a good thing, considering the Baronet’s age and health, that the last package fetched to the library from the Scene of the Crack constituted something of an anticlimax. It was a flat box, lined with tin and with waterproof seals, and it proved to contain nothing but a few nondescript books and a stack of quite unremarkable-looking manuscripts.

  Chapter 6

  JUNE 1944

  Shortly After D-Day

  Fifty-three Years Before Rob Hillman’s Death

  It’s a fairyland. A bloomin’ fairyland, he thought, unaware of the pun he’d made. What had stopped him at the church door, making his jaw go slack in amazement and his eyes go round as buckets, were the flowers. They were everywhere. They were tied in bunches at the ends of the pews. They were hanging like vines on the rood screen. They were like a wall in front of the altar. And a bunch of them were shooting up in front of the pulpit. Like they was growin’ out of the floor! he exclaimed to himself in silent wonder, unable to see, from where he stood, the tall vase that held them. Crumbs, thought Bertie. You can’t hardly see through the rude screen!

  And they were all white. Bertie had never seen so many white flowers in his whole life. Of course he’d seen some white roses in the formal gardens at the Castle (you could sneak in early on summer mornings, before the Family woke up), and of course every Easter they had them lilies that smelled so sweet, they smelled up the whole church. But never anything like this. Did all swell weddings have white flowers? he wondered. There hadn’t been anything like this in Wallwood for a generation, so he had no way of knowing.

  He would have liked to ask somebody whether this was what all posh weddings looked like, but everybody was too busy. And besides, if they even knew Bertie was here, they’d probably tell him to leave, so he was careful not to stand where anybody’d see him.

  The Vicar was talking to the organist, Mr. Pockets. Both looked excited and maybe a little worried, but anybody could tell they agreed about something because they kept nodding at each other the whole time. Mrs. Pockets was hopping around the church like a fat brown rabbit, fussing with the flowers, moving a little one here and there, like she was worried they wasn’t perfect yet, which anybody could see they was.

  “Bertie Crumper!”

  The voice wasn’t angry, more like surprised, but it made Bertie jump.

  “Beg pardon, Mrs. Collins, I was just looking at the flowers.”

  “They are pretty, aren’t they?” said the Vicar’s kindly wife. “If you’ve had a good look at them now, though, I think you’d better toddle off. See, Mr. Pockets is going up to the organ now, so the music should be starting soon. And then the guests will be arriving.”

  He didn’t need to be told that if he was still there when the guests started to come, he’d be sure to catch a couple of mean licks from his Pa later for bein’ in the wrong place. Bad thing, bein’ in the wrong place. Gettin’ in the family’s way. Bertie took a final look at fairyland and slipped out of the church.

  Mrs. Collins watched him go, wondering what the boy had made of all this extravagance. Wartime shortages being what they were, the Bebberidge-Thorpes were rumored to have ransacked every florist from Southampton to Birmingham to produce this show. The cost of the roses alone would have supported Bertie’s entire family from Petertide to Advent. Had that thought even crossed the boy’s mind? She doubted it.

  Mary Collins had spent five years in the slums of the East End while her husband labored to better the physical and spiritual lot of London’s poor. The futility of the task, implacable and inescapable as the bombs raining down on them, together with (his wife suspected) his guilt at not being acros
s the channel with the troops, had wearied him to the point of collapse. In the winter of 1943, his bishop became belatedly aware that if something wasn’t done quickly, young Collins was going to wind up in hospital. His Grace sent a note to his old school chum, the Bishop of Oxford, and asked if the latter had a nice restful little living in the country somewhere. Thus the Rev. Winston Collins found himself Vicar of St. Swithin’s, Wallwood, Oxfordshire. There his most arduous duty was trying to reconcile his conscience to writing sermons which neither offended Lady Bebberidge-Thorpe by their political content nor bored Lady Wallwood to tears.

  His wife had been grateful to see him saved from irretrievable damage to his health; she admitted to herself that Wallwood was in almost every way a blessed relief from the East End. But something about this pastoral paradise disturbed her. She had finally decided it had something to do with the apparent contentment of the rural working class. The urban poor had seemed to sense the injustice of their lot, even as they ignored it in the patriotic fervor of surviving the German bombs. They were aware, however deeply buried that awareness was and however inarticulate it might be, that the rich were using, abusing, and ignoring them.

  But these country people! As far as she could tell, they didn’t seem to mind that much. They were like little moons, content to shine only by reflecting the light cast upon them by their “betters.” Mary Collins was several furlongs short of the outright socialism of the British Labour Party, but she had (rarely, for 1944) allowed enough of the Gospel to penetrate her English sensibilities that she was vaguely disquieted, not so much by the class system itself as by the failure of those at the bottom of it to resent it.

  Her reflections on Bertie Crumper and his ilk, perceptive though they might be, extended only to the sociopolitical. It was her husband whose sight penetrated to the spiritual. The Vicar, turning from his conversation with the organist, caught fleeting sight of the Crumper lad scampering out of the church. Of course. The boy was bound to make an appearance. Bertie would be drawn to this celebration of wealth and privilege like a moth to a flame.