The Funeral Boat (7 page)

‘Of course you must search her room. I mean, if she’s been kidnapped or something … ‘ She didn’t finish the sentence, just shook her head at the horror of it all.

‘Did she tell you anything about herself, Mrs Questid?’ asked Wesley.

‘Oh,. I can’t remember. She taught English and she came from Copenhagen ’” I think that’s all she told me. I’m always welcoming to the guests - I chat to them and all that - but to be honest half of it goes in one ear and out the other, if you know what I mean.’

Wesley nodded. He knew what she meant all right.

‘My husband might remember something. He’s just in the back mending a lamp from one of the guests’ rooms at the moment. Do you want to see him?’ There was a slight hint of disapproval in her voice.

‘Perhaps later, Mrs Questid. If we could just see Ms Larsen’s room … ‘

‘Of course,’ she said, slipping easily into the role of hostess. ‘This way. You did say you wanted tea, didn’t you?’ She seemed to have recovered from the initial shock of their news, Wesley

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noticed. It would take more than a missing guest to put Barbara Questid off her stride for very long.

She showed them into a spacious first-floor room. The decor was pink, flowery and spotlessly clean.

‘Have you cleaned in here since Ms Larsen left, Mrs Questid?’ asked Wesley. The desire for cleanliness often destroyed evidence.

‘I’ve dusted and hoovered … just gave the en suite a wipe round like I always do. The bed was already made so I didn’t have to do much. She was a very tidy woman … not like some.’

With this grudging eulogy ringing in their ears, Wesley and Rachel began to search the room of the very tidy woman. Barbara Questid sniffed, took the hint and left them to it.

The room was indeed preternaturally tidy, and Wesley observed with disbelief the clinical precision with which Ingeborg Larsen’s possessions were arranged. In the drawers sweaters and T-shirts, even underwear - sporty rather than lacy - were folded, shop-style, in colour-coded rows. The neat, tailored clothes in the wardrobe hung in order of length. A white jacket hanging at the end of the row was still swathed in the thin, clinging polythene used by dry-cleaning firms, a pink ticket pinned to the label.

‘Obsessive,’ was Rachel’s only comment on the matter. ‘I always thought I was fairly tidy but … ‘

‘Not really natural, is it?’ said Wesley, grinning. ‘At least it’ll make our job easier,’ he added with sincerity. There was nothing worse than having to search through a jumbled mess of belongings.

It didn’t take long to search the room. Although Ingeborg hadn’t necessarily travelled light, she had certainly travelled in an orderly fashion. There was a bottle of pills in the drawer of the bedside table, and beside them was a bulky paperback book. Beneath the book Wesley found a photograph. A blonde woman, slender and lovely, standing framed in the porch of a white-painted wooden house. Next to her stood a tall, fair-haired man. Wesley picked the photograph up and studied it. The woman was Ingeborg Larsen - he recognised her from her passport photograph. But this image, unlike the official one, showed her true beauty.

He turned his attention to the book. Although he couldn’t llnderstand the Danish title, the cover told him that it was a steamy

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historical saga set in the age when bodices were ripped with monotonous regularity. Ingeborg’s reading taste didn’t appear to match the cool order of the rest of her life: perhaps a desire for romantic, uncontrolled chaos simmered somewhere beneath the smooth surface.

But was Ingeborg Larsen really so cool, so precise? He went over what they knew about her: she was thirty-eight, had a taste for neatness, lived in Copenhagen and taught English. But why was she holidaying in Devon alone? Her passport had listed her next of kin as a Sven Larsen. Was he her husband? Brother? Father? Was he the man in the photograph with her? Had she come to Devon to meet somebody? The unanswered questions irritated Wesley.

There was a shy knock on the door and a large man stepped into the room. ‘I’m Ralph Questid. My wife sent me up with some tea. Is that all right?’ The man looked at Wesley and Rachel appraisingly. He had a mane of steel-grey hair which he wore tied back in a neat ponytail. Well built rather than fat, he wore a colourful waistcoat and exuded the laid-back air of a semi-retired hippie. Wesley and Rachel exchanged a glance. They had imagined Barbara’s partner to be a small, balding, henpecked man. This apparition was quite unexpected.

After Wesley had introduced himself and Rachel, he thought a plea for cooperation might be in order. ‘Mr Questid, we’re sorry if we’re inconveniencing you but we are rather worried about Ms Larsen and … ‘

‘Actually … ‘ Ralph put the teacups down and looked round conspiratorially. ‘I did want a word with you. Ingeborg … er, Ms Larsen … asked me to do her a favour. She was, er, a very attractive woman, you understand.’ He winked at Wesley, man to man. ‘And I didn’t tell my wife at the time so I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mention it … avoid misunderstanding and all that.’

Rachel was growing impatient. ‘What exactly did you want to tell us, sir?’ she demanded with disapproval in her voice.

‘Well, I offered to help Ingeborg out. She was a foreigner…’

‘Was?’ Rachel seized on the word like a terrier.

‘Sorry … is a foreigner, alone in a strange country. She had a little prang in her car. No damage to hers luckily, but she was backing out of a parking space in Tradmouth on Saturday - the day after she arrived - and she just touched someone’s nearside

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wing. Just a little bit of damage apparently but she was rather confused about the procedure with the insurance companies and the man in the car had been rather unpleasant. I made a few phone calls for her … sorted things out. There was no problem, but with the other driver’s aggressive attitude and…’

‘Are you certain there was no damage to her car, sir?’

‘Quite sure. I had a good look. It was fine.’

‘What was Ms Larsen like?’ asked Wesley. Mr Questid had clearly known her better than his wife had.

‘A lovely woman … very, er, cool, very beautiful, but with a sense of humour. Always a twinkle in her eye, if you know what I mean.’ There was certainly a twinkle in Questid’s eye as he described her. She had made quite an impression.

‘Sexy?’ suggested Wesley, sensing Rachel’s disapproval of this cool, beautiful creature who flirted with other women’s husbands.

A wide smile appeared on Questid’s face. ‘Oh, very, Sergeant. That’s exactly the word I’d use.’

‘And did she talk about what she was doing in Devon … about her life in Denmark … anything that might help us?’

‘She taught English in some kind of college. She’d been to Devon before, when she was young, and she’d always wanted to come back.’

‘What did she do while she was over here?’

Questid shrugged. ‘Sightseeing mostly. She said she’d been to the castle and been on one of the river cruises. The usual tourist stuff.’

‘Did she say that she’d met anyone here she knew?’

‘She never mentioned it to me if she had,’ he said regretfully. ‘And before you ask, she never said when she was here before or where she’d stayed.’

‘And was she married?’ asked Rachel.

‘She was divorced. But she’d just moved into a flat with her brother. I had the impression the divorce was fairly recent. In fact she said that was why she decided to come back to Devon now. She needed a break and she remembered that this part of Devon was very beautiful. She came on impulse, she said … a spur-of- the-moment decision.’

‘Did the divorce cause much ill feeling, do you know?’

‘Oh, no. Ingeborg said they’d been separated for a while and it

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was all very civilised. You know what the Scandinavians are like … very modem,’ Questid said regretfully.

Wesley pictured Questid’s own marital circumstances. The brassy Barbara would probably not have approved of ‘modem’ arrangements. In fact he wondered how Ralph had managed to become so well acquainted with the ins and outs of Ingeborg Larsen’s life in such a short time under his wife’s roof.

‘So you were getting to know Ingeborg quite well before she disappeared?’

‘I wouldn’t say well. We passed the time of day.’

‘You seem to know her better than your wife does,’ Rachel said, watching for a reaction.

‘Well, I think Ingeborg’s more of a man’s woman, if you know what I mean. Nothing wrong in that. Some women just seem to get on better with men than with other women.’

‘Quite,’ said Wesley. He was building up an interesting picture of Ingeborg Larsen - the beautiful, neat, sexy woman with a twinkle in her eye who enjoyed her power over men. She had probably been more than capable of sorting out her own insurance, but she knew how to play the helpless foreigner when it suited her. But last Monday Ingeborg, for once, might have encountered a situation that she couldn’t control.

‘You said the driver she backed into was aggressive. Did she tell you his name, by any chance?’

‘Yes. It was Proudy … Laurence Proudy. Youngish, address in London. He said he was here on holiday, but I don’t know where he was staying.’

Rachel frowned for a moment, deep in thought. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard that name before … but I can’t remember where.’

The journey back to the station was a silent one as Rachel dredged her mind for the elusive information. Where had she heard the name Laurence Proudy before?

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997

AD

A traveller came to the Minster this day seeking shelter on the

way to Exeter. He said that the Danes had sailed around the

coast, attacking many dwellings and churches. They had come

ashore at Stoke Beeching and had burned the church there to

the ground. Some men of the village had defied them and had

fought bravely but to no avail. All that the people possessed

was plundered and many were taken as slaves. Then Mass

was said and prayers offered for those dead and enslaved by

these enemies of God.

[Note in margin of the text] 1 pray that my father and

mother came safe through the outrage at Stoke Beeching. Oh

Lord hear this my prayer.

From the chronicle of Brother Edwin, monk of Neston Minster

Neil Watson felt pleased with himself. He had found Saxon foundations underneath Neston parish church - he was certain of it. And they had not been simply demolished to make way for a bigger and more up-to-the-minute structure in Norman times: they had been destroyed by fire. Neston’s Saxon minster had met a violent and fiery end only to rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes at a later, more peaceful, date. They had found other things too. Late Saxon pottery and a number of styli, Anglo-Saxon writing implements, all of which fitted in with Neil’s minster theory - a house of learned monks in the heart of the walled town, ministering to the people of the area.

Neil sat back on his heels and looked at his handiwork. It was coming on nicely - which was more than could be said for the

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playing of the amateur organist, who was still murdering Mendelssohn up at the church’s east end.

‘Coming to the pub for lunch, Neil?’ asked a well-bred female voice from the next trench.

‘Er … no thanks, Jane. I think I’ll pop along to Longhouse Cottage.’ .

‘I thought you’d finished there. Any word from the museum about those rivets?’

‘They say they’re early … won’t give an exact date, though.’ He paused for a minute, thinking. ‘I wanted to speak to the people at Longhouse Cottage … see if they know anything about the history of the place. It’s probably a long shot but … ‘

‘Well, you know where we are if you change your mind,’ said Matt, wiping his hands on his black T-shirt. He and Jane walked out of the cool, dark church in amicable silence. Those two, Neil thought, are becoming more like an old married couple every day. Resolutely single, he watched them leave without envy.

The heat came as a shock to Neil when he stepped outside the church. He had spent the morning shaded from the warmth - the happy result of a ridge of high pressure hovering over the south-west of England - and, like most of his fellow countrymen, had been totally unprepared for an outside temperature which was greater than that indoors. He walked down Neston High Street past men with pallid legs displayed beneath ill-fitting shorts and women in diaphanous dresses, resolutely staying out of doors to make the most of the rare heat wave. When he reached his car, he found it hot enough inside to bake bread in. He wound the windows down and drove the ten miles out to Stoke Beeching, where a pleasant breeze blew in off the sea, making the temperature more bearable.

Maggie Palister must have spotted him as he drove up the bumpy track to Longhouse Cottage. She waited for him outside the front door, arms folded. Her expression was hardly welcoming.

‘I thought you’d finished. What do you want?’

‘Is Carl about?’ Carl, at least, had been interested in their discovenes.

‘He’s seeing to the hens. He’s busy. And he’s filled in that hole. He had to lay the drainage and he thought you’d finished,’ she said accusingly.

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Neil sensed that she regarded him as a nuisance, interfering with the running of their precarious livelihood. He’d have to tread carefully.

‘That’s okay. I just wanted to ask you if you knew atJ.ything about the history of this place.’ ‘

Maggie regarded him suspiciously. ‘You’re a friend of that policeman, aren’t you … the black one?’

Neil wondered why she had mentioned Wesley. Did concern about his friend’s occupation indicate a guilty conscience? ‘Yeah. We were at university together. Why?’

‘Did he say anything … about my husband?’

‘Not to me he didn’t,’ said Neil, casually. He did remember Gerry Heffernan saying something about a Jock Palister - presumably Maggie’s husband - but he hadn’t been taking much notice, his mind being filled with thoughts of Viking raiders. He changed the subject to one he considered more appealing. ‘I think the burial in your field might date back to the late tenth century. I can’t be certain yet, of course, but…’