Grave Consequences (19 page)

“Oh, no, I know well enough she’s another fucking archaeologist. She’s in with Jane Compton, I know that well enough.”

Something about the way he kept harping on archaeology struck me, but I had no time to consider it now. “Mr. Whiting. I’m very sorry for your—”

“Don’t ever waste your pity on me!”

“George, get hold of yourself!” Sabine hissed.

“—Loss, but the other day, I only wanted to help my friend. Surely you can—”

“I only wanted to help my friend,” he lisped back at me, face contorted. “Isn’t it a kind and decent thing to want to help its friend! You don’t know anything of my loss, and that’s well enough with me. You’ve shown more interest in it than some others who have more right have done. All I can say, missy, is that you have a lot to learn about choosing your friends, and even more about choosing your enemies! For you needn’t worry yourself about Jane Compton”—he spat out the words like he’d eaten a bug by accident—“that nasty bitch will devour you before she disturbs one hair on her head! And as for me, if I catch you near me or mine again, I shall very gladly ring your neck.”

He turned and slammed the heavy front door open and stormed out into the rain, not bothering to shut the door behind him. I stood, the cold of the marble chilling my feet, blinking.

Sabine shook her head and sighed. “Emma, get your shoes. I’ll give you a lift home.”

After making my good-byes to Jeremy, I found my shoes and coat and tried calling Jane and Greg. No one was at home, so I met Sabine out at her car, which smelled of her hand-rolled cigarettes. We drove back toward Liverpool Road through the rain, not speaking until something finally forced me to ask: “Sabine, what was George Whiting doing at Jeremy’s? Surely he wasn’t there for the hunt, not so soon after his daughter’s death?”

“No, of course not.” There was a long pause from the right hand driver’s side, interrupted by the squeak-thump of the windshield wipers. She perched right on top of the steering wheel, not a very confident driver. “No, George had come to drop off a check for a fundraiser, a dinner that Pooter’s having in a month. He’d promised to get it to Pooter early, to pay the deposit for the caterers, and he didn’t trust the post with a sum so large.”

“Oh.”

She darted a quick, remonstrative glance at me, then immediately turned back to the road. “That’s the kind of man he can be when…under other circumstances. Julia’s murder…and everything, well, you have to forgive him, Emma. He’s in horrible pain.”

“I see.” And I did, but then again, I couldn’t afford to be as forgiving as Sabine Jones. She hadn’t seen Whiting threaten Jane, call her a murderess.

We pulled up to 98 Liverpool Road. I noticed all the lights were off in the house; Greg had told me that they would be home all day.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said finally.

She leaned back in her seat, glad to have the break from driving. “Not at all. I had to get going anyway. I must get ready for tomorrow.”

I wrinkled my brow. We weren’t working tomorrow, as far as I knew…

Sabine laughed. “Tomorrow’s Sunday, you heathen. My busy time, well, the morning, at least, so I must polish up the sermon tonight. Cheers, Emma.”

“See you.”

There was no one at home. I went up to my room, noticing that Andrew’s door was open now. I remembered that Greg had said he’d come back last night. Why they put up with him I’d never know. He didn’t seem to be all that hot at his job; he hadn’t even prepared a report for Jane yet about the skeleton we’d worked on my first day, as far as I could tell. I wanted to see a copy of that and the police report, particularly to see what he’d made of the twentieth-century button. There was something about the stratigraphy, too, that I wanted to double check. I didn’t care whether Jane and Greg were unconcerned; I wanted to see it for myself.

I sat down on my bed and stared at the ferny green Laura Ashley wallpaper. I was too wound up to sit and read the novel I hadn’t finished on the plane, so I took out the file on Mother Beatrice that Morag had given me and went down to the kitchen to read it. But I couldn’t get comfortable in the
chairs, and the empty room had that same hollow loneliness that had given me the shivers the day I’d found the pictures of Julia in the darkroom. The parlor, perfect for lounging with a glass of wine, mocked my studiousness on a wet Saturday afternoon, and it was impossible to juggle the contents of the file while struggling to sit upright in the soft cushions of the couch. The whole place echoed of Jane and Greg and I decided that if I didn’t feel at home here, I could at least move to neutral territory. I got my coat, umbrella, and file and reasoned that since there was no library that I knew of within walking distance, I might as well go to the pub, someplace where nobody knew my name. A quiet pint and an hour or so of anonymity would be just the thing I needed, as Greg had suggested, to get better acquainted with Mother Beatrice, as Morag saw her. Alas, as with so many of my plans on this trip, it was not to be.

P
LEASED AS
I
WAS WHEN
I
AN THE BARTENDER AGAIN
recognized me in a friendly fashion, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed when I heard my name called out from across the room. A small group of Jane’s graduate students were sitting in the corner waving to me. I recognized the two who’d asked me to sign books for them, Nicola and Will, and the Scottish Gareth, and Lucy, who’d told me about Andrew and the worm ritual.

“Join us, Professor Fielding,” Nicola, the small brunette, called.

Since they all scooted aside to make room for me, I didn’t think I could refuse without being impolite. Still, I reasoned as I took a sip of my beer to keep it from sloshing, maybe it would be nicer to have the pleasant company of barely acquaintances on such a dispiriting day.

Then, of course, there was the awkward silence as everyone struggled to think of something to start the conversation. “Is this a regular Saturday thing for you all?” I asked.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes.”

“We’re just meeting tonight before we go off to the cinema,” Gareth explained. He hooked his overlong hair out of his eyes with his pinkie, revealing a skull and crossbones earring. “It beats sitting around and drinking and making fun of my burr. Are you meeting Professor Compton and Greg here?”

“No, they’re out. I just came to do a little work, get out of the house, you know.”

“D’you always work on the weekends, even when you’re on holiday?” Will asked.

“Well, this isn’t so much a real vacation for me as a chance to visit with Jane and do some documentary research at the same time. My husband and I are going away at the end of the summer, before classes start.”

“Where are you going, then?” Nicola said.

I had to laugh. “I couldn’t tell you. Brian’s keeping it a surprise.”

“Oh, isn’t that lovely?” Lucy said. “So it’s not all work and no play for you, then. It seems that Jane is always slaving away. I like archaeology, but I don’t want a job that is going to keep me from having a life too.” She blew out a sigh that lifted her bangs from her forehead.

“You seem to do pretty well for yourself, Lucy,” Gareth pointed out. The rest laughed. “I haven’t noticed you in the library lately.”

“Well, it’s summer, isn’t it?” Lucy replied. “I do my work during term and then a bit of fun and then off to dig in July. I’m not like Julia, but I do all right. No one can say I can’t.”

“So there was nothing else for Julia?” I asked noncommittally, taking another sip of beer. “No job, no outside interests, no boys?”

“Are you joking?” Will said. “The original girly swot.”

“She was pretty dedicated to her schoolwork,” Nicola agreed. “Didn’t often come out with the rest of us.”

“Now, that’s not fair,” Lucy protested. “You’re all making her out to be, I don’t know, standoffish. She was really bril
liant and she was very shy, but she wasn’t horrible or anything. She had other interests, she just didn’t go for the usual things that we do. But a week or so back, she and I went to get a reading done. You know, for a laugh, had our tarot cards read.”

“You never did!”

“We did so, Gareth. She was looking pretty down about something; I think she’d been on the phone to her dad.” Lucy looked sad. “Masses of problems in the family, I reckon. And so I just sort of suggested it, mostly to try and cheer her up.”

“So what’d they say?” Will asked.

She settled back and toyed with the coaster under her beer. “It wasn’t what I thought, it was all very flashy, high tech. Gave us recordings and all, didn’t they? I mean, they didn’t do us together, but I just asked about grades and you know, whether a certain someone was coming back from Jordan soon to sweep me off my feet—”

Here there was some laughing at an inside joke. “So what did the psychic say?” I asked.

“Oh you know.” Lucy waved her hand. “Usual. Loads of work ahead of me, but I’ll succeed in the end.”

“And was that with regards to a first or Maurice, d’you reckon?”

There was some playful scuffling between Lucy and Gareth. Nicola said, “I’m sure Julia was asking about exam questions or the like. I mean, I never saw her with a boy. Twenty-two and no men in your life? What’s the point?”

“You are being mean. She was perfectly nice; she helped me whenever I was having problems with my theory. I hate theory. And she did so have a boyfr—” But Lucy clammed up very quickly.

“Come on, you can’t just leave it there.” There was silence in the group after Will’s pleading, hoping to force her into an answer.

Lucy hesitated. “I wasn’t supposed to know. She…well, I’m sure it wouldn’t do her any harm now, poor thing,
but she was seeing someone…someone she wasn’t supposed to be seeing, and I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble, would I? Besides, I think she thought it was nearly over, so it doesn’t matter, does it, so I would never say to anyone. No call to.”

Oh, yes, there was plenty of call to, I thought. Good God, it makes all the difference in the world.

“Come on, who was it?” Nicola said. “Whisper it to me, I won’t tell anyone…” She winked at the rest of us.

“You can be such a bitch, sometimes! You don’t care about anyone, do you, Nicola?”

And with that, Lucy shoved her way out from the table and out of the pub.

“Lucy, come on! God, Nicola.” Gareth ran after her.

“And I think we’d better be heading off. Sorry, Professor Fielding. I guess feeling about Julia is still running a bit high for Lucy. For all of us, really.” Will paused awkwardly. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

“Thanks.”

I found myself alone again, but with a whole new set of worrying thoughts. A boyfriend she wasn’t supposed to be seeing? Who might have been ending things, she or him? This put a whole different light on the situation and suddenly, I wanted to meet the young stranger who’d accosted me outside the Fig and Thistle again. The thought of Greg’s unwonted and unpleasant volubility of Wednesday evening also sprang into my mind. What had he said, “I tried to give her the space she wanted…I don’t like to think how I tried”? Whose space had he tried to respect? Had he meant that he didn’t like to think how hard he had to work to put Jane from his mind or that he didn’t like to think, literally, about what he’d
done
to try and ignore Jane? Had he had an affair with Julia? Or was it something much worse than that? Had he killed her, to take some of the burden from Jane?

Greg loved Jane, that much was obvious. He’d repeatedly
said he’d do anything for her, and frankly, it was a little scary to see the changes he went through the other night. I wasn’t sure how to explain it. I knew how much I loved Brian, so much that I felt like I had to shut down that part of my life when I was away from him so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by what I was missing, what I was so used to having near to me. I would try to fill that void with work, to make the time pass faster, and that worked to a certain extent. But it was like having a limb amputated and trying to ignore that it was gone. I could function perfectly well, for a while, until that next phone call came and I remembered what life was usually like. That was the hardest, just after the phone calls. And I knew Brian felt the same way as Greg, he’d do anything for me, though he’d never said it like that.

The difference between Brian and Greg was that Brian was sure I’d come back. Greg wasn’t sure about Jane at all.

Greg was desperate.

What if Greg had tried to remove some of Jane’s fear of being outstripped for her. What if he’d tried to remove at least one of “the Julias in the world”?

One horrendous thought immediately liberated me to think another. I recalled Greg’s rapid changes in mood that evening, and, at the end, how various degrees of anger, sadness, and despair had vanished or seemed to with Brian’s phone call. All of it was gone in an instant. Had all that emotion been some kind of show, a distraction, like a bird dragging its wing as if wounded, to lead a predator from the nest? Had Greg been trying to draw attention to himself because I had been getting too close to finding out something about
Jane
and Julia? Surely Jane wasn’t that insecure…but she had told Andrew not to underestimate what she would do to protect her position…

I shuddered and shoved my beer glass away. I couldn’t put the thoughts away from me so easily, though I decided I couldn’t pursue them any further at the moment. Merely thinking them had been enough; they wouldn’t fade and I knew I would eventually have to come back to them, with a
more critical eye and a firmer resolve. But for now, I could convince myself that I would still be doing justice to my involvement in this mess by studying Morag’s file of information about Mother Beatrice.

The file folder was an old one, pale lilac in color; the fine creases that had been worn in from being carried about were darker, giving the thing the look of flesh, aged and veined. Longer than the files I was accustomed to, to accommodate the longer A-4 paper that was standard in Britain, the folder also felt different, a little less rigid, maybe. I catalogued these details casually and opened the file.

There wasn’t much in it, really, and everything there was a photocopy, presumably of Morag’s original findings. Nice as it would have been to have the originals—to get as close to the same experience as Morag had had in handling them—I noticed a few things about the copies as well. The first one, for example, was a copy of a newspaper clipping that had been held in a clear plastic sleeve to protect it. The image of the sleeve, and the lint and dust that clung to it, was like a film, a thin veil over the image of the clipping, which looked quite dark and crepey with age. Even if someone hadn’t written the date in pen in the corner of the photocopy, June 12, 1908, I would have guessed that the newspaper article was old by the fine web of lines across it and the old fashioned style of the print itself. Even the tone of the article, a little summary of the history of antiquities and curiosities of Marchester, felt creaky to me, personal and didactic, almost conversational in style, as if an old professor was used to lecturing spontaneously and unchallenged on any topic, a far cry from the impersonal reportage of today. “And, if the visitor is pleased to turn to his left and follow the river past the new church of St. Alban’s—noting the lovely windows, designed in 1732—he will come upon the ruins of Marchester Abbey—” The photocopy had been carried around for a long time.

The next photocopy was several pages long and from a book of late nineteenth-century vintage on the history of
Marchester and Marchester-le-Grand by Geoffrey Reese. These photocopies were from the section on the churches and several paragraphs that had been underlined in pencil described the abbey and in one line, the presence of Mother Beatrice and her works there. One poetical turn of phrase caught my eye: “And she tended the poor and the sick, the living and the dead, all the days of her life.” That reminded me of the newspaper article I’d just seen, wherein a line ran very similarly: “And for the rest of her life, she tended the poor and the sick, as well as the living and the dead.” It seemed perfectly clear to me that the author of the newspaper article had read, digested, and used the text in the book by Mr. Reese. I wondered if the phrase hadn’t come from a translation of a description in Latin or old French, and this would explain its slight oddness to modern eyes. There was an asterisk and I would have checked for end notes, but whoever had copied the section hadn’t also included the notes section or the title of the book for me to note.

A much more recent encyclopedia article about Marchester and other towns in the central south coast had but a single line, stating that among the events of the late fifteenth century was a line from another, uncited church history describing a falling out between the abbess and the church fathers, who had at first cut off then reinstated funding to the abbey after Mother Beatrice’s time. This one had someone’s—presumably Morag’s—flowery handwriting in the corner, where she recorded the date and the name of the volume: 1987.

Even more recent than that was a clipping from a magazine,
The New Pagan’s Almanack,
only about five years old, that had a very amateurishly done pen-and-ink drawing of a medieval-style lady—complete with a veil and wimple and embellished with background whorls—who was meant to be Mother Beatrice. The article was two pages long, one page of which was devoted to the title and the picture, by “Rowan Blessingtree,” who claimed to channel denizens of the spirit world. The article was poorly written, and the few facts that
I was aware of from my readings on the abbey were badly mangled; dates were off by fifty years or more, names were misspelled, and a picture of a brooch was at least two centuries too early. This seemed to be where Morag was getting most of her information about Mother Beatrice; as far as I could tell, the information that she’d been persecuted for her supposed pagan beliefs was based on none of the information that I’d seen; Rowan Blessingtree hadn’t even read the old book by Reese. Like the other photocopies that were in the file, this article had no bibliography or a notes section.

There was nothing else. I sighed and stacked everything carefully back into the file, reminding myself that I should show it to Jane, so that she could check it out, if she hadn’t already. She might even know the source of the quote in the local history and the newspaper story, I thought. Maybe she’d want to make a copy of the article about Mother Beatrice, just for a private souvenir—it would be very interesting to see whether she could explain why some of these notions had found their way into print. From little mistakes like this, whole histories had been diverted down wrong paths. Misinterpretation—cultural or translational—was probably responsible for more historical inaccuracies than anything else. I should also show her the picture I’d drawn of Jeremy’s painting and Dora’s note. Maybe she could make something of that.

I thought about having another beer, but then checked my watch and realized that it was very late. I needed to make an appearance back at Jane and Greg’s at some point, and it might as well be now. With another sigh, I put Morag’s folder under my coat and headed out once again into the rain, hoping that I wasn’t making any of those little mistakes that would send me chasing after wild geese.