Bones of the Buried (15 page)

Verity returned with the torch and, not waiting for Edward, thrust past him further into the cave. Her scream brought Edward to her side. In the feeble orange light of the torch, which seemed
unwilling to penetrate the gloom, they saw the figure of Godfrey Tilney. He was seated on a canvas chair, the sort one finds in front of bandstands. Death had clearly taken him unawares. He looked,
at least at first glance, almost normal, as though at any moment he might rise from his chair to greet them, but there was a bullet hole in his forehead the size of a florin. The buzzing Edward had
heard was made by the flies which swarmed in a black cloud above the dead man’s head like some devilish halo. Pulling himself together with an effort, Edward pressed the back of his hand
against Tilney’s cheek. The flesh, even in that icebox of a cave, was still faintly warm. As Edward helped Verity out of the cave, he found he was very angry. Godfrey Tilney was dead because
of his indiscretion. Without a doubt, it was he who had brought Tilney’s murderer to him. He must have been killed perhaps only an hour before. Verity, her hand to her mouth, had burst out of
the evil-smelling cave and was clasping the Spanish girl to her bosom. A harsh keening wail filled the air. Rosalía was mourning her lover.

Edward was unable to dissuade her from entering the cave to see for herself that her Englishman was really dead. As Edward took her back outside into the clean mountain air, he could not doubt
that one person at least had really loved Godfrey Tilney. Edward was anxious to leave the place as soon as possible. It now seemed to exude evil and he was very much aware that Tilney’s
killer might be tempted to take a pot shot at them if they dallied. He said nothing of this to the two women, unwilling to alarm them further. At first, Rosalía could not be persuaded to
leave the mouth of the cave unguarded and Verity announced that she considered it her duty to stay with her. Patiently, Edward pointed out that, if he went off without them, they would be in for a
long vigil. It would take him at least two hours to get back to San Pedro and at least another two hours to get the police organised. It might be six or seven hours and almost nightfall before he
returned. The police would almost certainly refuse to set out up the mountain until early the next day. The idea of spending a night by the cave made Verity shiver. They had brought some food
– bread, salami, chocolate and biscuits – but no warm clothes, let alone camping equipment. There was nothing for it but for them all to return to San Pedro.

It took a further half-hour to persuade Rosalía that she had to leave the body of her lover where it was and go for help. Whatever she might be hiding – and Edward was too cynical
to believe she was quite the innocent she pretended – there was no doubt her grief was genuine. They found a large rock, almost circular, which they would be able to roll in front of the
entrance to the cave but, before they did so, Edward braced himself to make one final examination of the corpse.

With Verity’s torch he crawled inside, attempting not to disturb anything more than necessary. He stared at the corpse using the torch to study it section by section. Then, trying to
control his urge to retch, he examined the body to see if there was any other wound invisible to the naked eye, but there was only the bullet hole in the forehead. He felt in Tilney’s pockets
and, as carefully as he could, removed a wallet from the jacket the dead man was wearing and stuffed it in his own pocket to be investigated later. However, he noted there was a lot of money in it
– about two hundred pounds in pesetas, he guessed – so obviously theft could be ruled out as a motive for Tilney’s murder. He was touched and surprised to see that the wallet also
contained a photograph not of Rosalía but of his mother. Perhaps after all, Tilney was capable of love.

In a corner of the cave, there was a little food wrapped in a cloth – sausage and lentils. For water, Tilney presumably used the stream. There was a simple army sleeping bag in one corner
but nothing inside it – no papers or books even. There was no sign of any kitbag; had the murderer removed that? But in that case why not the wallet? Rather surprisingly, Tilney was wearing
an expensive Swiss watch, but no other jewellery and, apart from an empty pipe – a Peterson 33 no less – with a pouch of tobacco, there was nothing personal. It dawned on Edward that
Tilney was hardly here at all except in the form of an increasingly repellent heap of flesh. He had either had no personality or was a true ascetic indifferent to personal comfort, Edward decided.
Maybe it was just that he had known his life was in danger and had deliberately kept his belongings to the minimum so he could speedily disappear into the mountains if need be.

When he had stumbled out of the cave and vomited noisily into a bush, he and the two women rolled the stone in front of the entrance. It moved so easily, it had clearly been used to block the
opening before. He felt for a moment that he was taking part in some Biblical drama but, in this case, he trusted the body in the tomb would remain undisturbed for at least twenty-four hours. He
was well aware there were foxes and wild dogs in the mountains, and there was always the possibility that the killer might return to destroy the evidence but he considered it unlikely. To remove
the body and toss it over the precipice might be possible but what would that achieve? They had seen what they had seen and their story would be supported by scientific evidence, he supposed.

As they scrambled back down the rocky slope, hardly noticing the thorns scratching their flesh, the heat on their backs and the cold water around their feet, Edward was puzzling over the meaning
of the riddle. Tilney, who had arranged his own death and burial for safety’s sake, had risen from the dead only to be killed again. Either he had been so surprised to see his murderer that
he had not even had time to get up from his chair, or he had known his killer and had felt no alarm in his presence. He glanced at Verity. He wondered if she had seen the silver lining from her
point of view. Whoever had killed Godfrey Tilney, it could not have been David Griffiths-Jones, ensconced in his prison cell.

In San Pedro, the priest had been praying alone in his little church when they burst in upon him. Edward stood in silence as Rosalía and Verity bombarded the old man with news of violent
death. At last, he raised his hands in the air as if to arrest the women in their flow. He summoned them with dignified authority – Rosalía the grieving lover, Verity the principled
communist, and Edward the English milord – to kneel and pray for the soul departed. As he knelt beside Verity in the little white church, the walls bare of any ornament except a badly damaged
Pietà, Edward was overwhelmed with a sense of the futility of his life. What had he achieved? What good had he done since leaving school and university, and not just any school but Eton, and
not any university but Cambridge? A privileged education, the gift of a far from negligible intellect, enough money to do . . . something; since then restless, pointless travel. What did it all
amount to? As a New York friend had put it so succinctly: a big zero. He managed a wry smile beneath the hands he held to his face. His self-disgust, which had been growing on him ever since he had
embarked on the
Normandie
in New York, washed over him. In this simple church he felt the sharp pain of absence: the absence of any religion which might make sense of his life, the absence
of meaning and purpose, and – if he were to wallow in self-pity – might he not add the absence of love. He knelt a few feet from the only woman he thought he could love, in the
knowledge that they might as well be thousands of miles apart for all the good it did him.

As the priest rose from his knees, Edward made a great effort to throw off his depression. There was one thing he must do in justice to a man he had not liked but whose claim on him was that of
youthful comradeship: he could find out who had ended Godfrey Tilney’s life with cool deliberation on the side of a bare mountain and left him a feast for flies. Edward had thought it might
take a couple of hours to summon police to the scene of the crime but it was soon borne in on him that this was an absurd underestimate. There was no telephone in the village for one thing. A small
boy – there was at least a limitless supply of small boys – was bribed with promises of wealth beyond his wildest dreams to search out the local policeman who, in theory, might be
anywhere within a twenty-mile radius. The boy, as it happened, knew exactly where to begin his quest. It was the policeman’s custom to spend his siesta in a little drinking shop, hardly more
than a hut, in a neighbouring village.

He duly arrived, sweating and exhausted from his uphill bicycle ride, three hours after they had brought the news to the village priest. Unfortunately, the policeman seemed to Edward to double
as the village idiot and, when the whole story had been told him, did nothing but shrug his shoulders and sit down in the shade with a bottle of beer. It was by now four in the afternoon, too late
to go up the mountain even if the policeman had been in a fit state to do so and, in any case, Rosalía was too distressed to guide anyone anywhere.

Edward then did what he knew he should have done hours before and announced that he and Verity would walk back to San Martino and hope to catch the bus to Montejo de la Sierra where they could
get the train back to the city. They were both weary but it was unthinkable to vegetate in San Pedro for twenty-four hours. At San Martino, they could report what they had discovered to the local
police and telephone Hester in Madrid so that she could alert Capitán Gonzales. Rosalía would not come with them. She wanted to stay as near her dead lover as possible and be there to
accompany the police to the cave the next day.

The priest had a guest room of which he was very proud but his housekeeper – she might very well, Edward thought, be rather more than that – made it plain she was reluctant to have a
strange woman in the house, particularly one as beautiful as Rosalía. She looked even gloomier when the priest offered the three strangers food. In the end, the priest had to command her to
show what Spanish hospitality meant. A meal of ham, coarse bread and a kind of stew, the contents of which, Edward decided, should not be investigated too closely, made them all feel better. Even
the priest’s housekeeper cheered up when Edward slipped her enough pesetas to cover her expenses several times over.

Back at the hotel that evening, weary, scratched and bruised with his clothes in rags, Edward was greeted by Felipe, the manager, bobbing and bowing at the front desk, waving
a sheet of yellow paper.

‘Señor, Milor Coreeth, I have a telegram for you, from London,’ he said with awful solemnity, his moustaches quivering with excitement.

Edward grabbed the paper from the little man’s hand and began to read. It was from his sister-in-law, Constance, and it was dated February 22nd and addressed from Mersham Castle.
‘
GERALD FELL WHILE HUNTING AND BANGED HEAD STOP DOCTOR SAYS YOU SHOULD BE HERE STOP COME IF YOU CAN STOP LOVE
C
ONNIE
’

Edward took a step back and almost tripped over the hotel manager. He knew Connie was the last one to panic so Gerald must really be in danger. He read the message again and
then made a decision.

‘Felipe, I need to send a wire. My brother is very ill and I must return to England immediately.’

‘In the morning,
señor
, in the morning,’ he said shrugging his shoulders. ‘It is too late tonight.’

Edward repressed a desire to hit this innocent bearer of bad news and with an effort said, civilly enough, ‘In that case get me Miss Browne on the telephone, please.’

It was Hester who answered the telephone, her cool American drawl calming him. ‘Oh Hester, is that you? Is Verity there?’

Verity had gone out. Apparently, Hester informed him, she always wired her stories through to the
New Gazette
at about this time and, despite her exhaustion, had insisted on tapping away
on Hester’s ancient Remington as soon as she got into the apartment.

‘I told her she was being dumb and needed to shower and rest but I guess you know how much attention she pays when she’s set on doing something.’

Of course, Edward thought bitterly, the discovery of Tilney’s corpse was just a story to her, to be relished by a million Englishmen as they decapitated their boiled eggs before setting
off to work. He knew he was being unfair. Verity had a job to do and could not afford to have another newspaper report a murder she had discovered. It suddenly occurred to him that two of those
New Gazette
readers might be Tilney’s father and mother. It struck him as horrible that they should hear of their son’s ‘second death’ in this way and he would not be
able to rest until he knew that someone at the embassy, Tom Sutton most likely, had forewarned them.

‘Are you still there, Edward?’

‘Oh, yes, sorry, Hester. I was just thinking about Tilney’s parents – what a shock it’s going to be for them.’

‘Yeah, you’re right there. Is that what you wanted to tell V?’

‘No, not really. I wanted to break it to her that I have to go back to England.’

‘You mean because David is now out of danger? I guess he can’t be tried for killing the guy a second time – while he was in a Spanish prison. It seems crazy . . . V said he had
only been dead an hour or two.’

‘The body was still warm,’ Edward said simply and he shivered remembering the horror of of the scene. ‘But that’s not why I’m going. My brother has had a fall from
his horse and . . . and my sister-in-law thinks I ought to be there.’

‘I see. I am so sorry. Is there anything I can do?’

‘Well yes. Lord Weaver said Harry Bragg – our pilot – would collect me whenever I wanted but I’m not sure how to get in touch with him. I suppose you couldn’t ask
Verity to go back to the post office and wire Lord Weaver again and see if he could send an aeroplane for me tomorrow? The train would take two days, perhaps three and . . .’