Unholy Rites (17 page)

She tried to concentrate on the presenter's five key points for conducting community surveys, but it was no use. Instead she made a timeline of key incidents in this bizarre case as accurately as she could remember them:

Late '70s—Timothy Roberts found dead in millpond with head wound, rope burns around neck.

Early '80s—Violet Roberts starts bereavement group, takes son's belongings to Ethel Fairweather's charity shop in Stockport; Ethel keeps the boy's school cap.

Early '90s—Ethel sees the Lindow Man exhibit in Manchester; begins collecting info on Celts, ritual sacrifice; possibly added more material on Tim Roberts to scrapbook at this time.

Late 1992—Ethel's husband dies; she moves back to Mill-on-Wye.

Fall 1996—Ethel has stroke; asks Arthur about hiding unspecified things; writes comment about “dangerous man” next to clipping about Marple's resignation from boys' school; adds ‘See 1979–84,' referring to scrapbook for those years; possibly adds more on Timothy's death as response to concerns with Marple.

Fall 1996–Jan. 1997—Ethel continues to oppose Marple's appointment as vicar, without saying why.

Jan. 1997—Ethel tells Arthur she has a problem she wants to discuss with me.

Feb. 2, 1997—Ethel takes 3 scrapbooks to Liz Hazelhurst (1979–84; 1990–92; 1993–); dies that night of apparent heart attack; body discovered by Hazelhurst.

Mid-Feb.—Arthur begins research into Ethel's scrapbooks.

Mid-April—Brake line cut; Arthur injured in accident that could have been fatal. Intruder in house?

If Arthur
was right, Ethel Fairweather had been struck by similarities between the ritual sacrifice of the Lindow Man and the manner in which Timothy Roberts had died, and she had begun collecting as much information about both as she could find. For some reason, her search seemed to become more urgent last fall. Did her stroke make her fear she wouldn't live to learn the truth? Or was she prompted by Marple's appearance on the scene?

Whichever it was, she had died before she found the answer. Or she had died because she found the answer. Arthur was now pursuing the same information, and someone felt threatened enough to make an attempt on his life.

Mrs. Fairweather had been outspoken in her objections to Marple's appointment as vicar. He had seen them near the station and could have sabotaged the car. She needed to find out more . . . 

At the break she called Arthur to ask whether Marple knew about the scrapbooks.

He hesitated. “When I went to dinner there, he mentioned Mum's interest in pagan superstitions. I was so angry at the time I didn't think to wonder how he knew. I'm glad you called,” he added. “We were so busy talking about the brake line and Timothy Roberts at lunch that I forgot to tell you what I've found out about Liz Hazelhurst.”

“You mentioned something about a bequest at my promotion dinner,” Danutia said, trying to dredge up the details. Oh yes, she remembered, feeling guilty. She'd promised to talk to Arthur about his mother the next day but they'd ended up in bed together, and she'd backed off.

“As I told you then,” Arthur said stiffly, “Mum left Liz ten thousand pounds. While I was in Manchester last week, I talked to the solicitor who drew up the will. I made it casual, just checking to see whether all the bequests had been paid and so forth. He was quite chatty, said Liz had come in to collect her cheque instead of waiting for the mail because her cottage urgently needed some repairs. When Hugh gave me a ride home this afternoon, I maneuvered the conversation around to the cost of keeping up these old cottages. Hugh said that repairs aren't the only problem. Liz had told Justine that she was on the verge of losing her cottage because of unpaid taxes.”

“It does sound like she's been desperate for money,” Danutia said. Fellow officers were filing past her with coffee mugs and bottles of water. “Look, I've got to get back to my workshop. I'll call you tonight—”

“Wait!” Arthur said. “There's more. I had another look at that 1979–84 scrapbook this afternoon. Remember that article on the bereavement group? A couple of pages have been cut out right after that. When Liz returned the scrapbooks, she said she hadn't opened them. But who else could have done it? I think we should talk to her right away. She'll be here soon to help with the clay. You pick up fish and chips or something and I'll get her to stay for dinner.”

Danutia agreed and rang off. When the workshop ended, she picked up Chinese takeout and headed to Mill-on-Wye. As she made the turn onto Mill Lane, she spied Arthur outside the stone garage, pouring water from a bucket into an old tin bath while Hugh Clough stomped up and down in mud-splattered rubber boots. Eric and a man Danutia hadn't met knelt in front of a mound of clay. She parked beside the river, gathered up her bags, and crossed the road.

Arthur looked around as she approached. “Down boots and trowels!”

“Hold on, Arthur,” Clough said. “We need to get the clay into the frames so it can set overnight.”

Eric glared up at her and then went back to picking rocks and other debris out of the clay. His fingers squeezed each handful till his knuckles went white. She couldn't shake her sense that the boy wasn't doing as well as Clough wanted to believe.

The pungent smells of soy sauce and garlic brought her back to the paper bags in her arms. “I'll put these inside and give you some help,” she said, and went into the cottage. To her surprise, the kitchen was clean and tidy. Putting the food in the fridge, she found an apron and a pair of rubber boots, a little small, beside the back door.

“Now, what can I do?” she said when she re-emerged.

“How are you with a trowel?” Clough asked.

“I can ice a cake.”

“Then you can give Liz and Justine a hand in there.” He nodded towards the stone garage, its wooden double doors propped open. Inside, shadowy figures bent over the well dressing frames, now laid out on saw horses. The stone garage was cool and dim, even with electric bulbs overhead. Danutia paused in the doorway to observe the two women absorbed in their work.

Justine Clough, as impeccably turned out as ever, was pressing clay into one of the smaller frames, her wool pants and sweater protected by a large carpenter's apron. Though she was friendly enough when Danutia and Kevin paid their weekly visits to Eric, Justine still seemed an enigma. Danutia wondered again why the woman had agreed to take him in. Had she not been able to have children of her own, and so found satisfaction in being a foster mother? Or had she been happily childless, but given in to some desire of her husband's? Danutia's hand, concealed by her apron, slid towards her belly, and then she let it drop. This was no time to think about motherhood.

To Justine's right, a woman in a kerchief and coveralls as many-hued as Joseph's coat of many colors bent over the main frame, humming softly. Hearing a roar of laughter from the men outside, she stood upright and turned towards the open door, trowel in hand.

“Come in, come in,” Liz Hazelhurst called to Danutia, stretching her hands upwards. Bits of clay fell to the floor. “All this bending is hard on my back. You're dressed for work, I see. We can always use another pair of hands. Some of the crew have scarpered off for dinner. Soon you'll be off too, won't you, Justine?”

“Yes, I have to get Eric fed and march him through his homework.”

“Not to mention your husband,” Clough said as he entered carrying the front end of the tin bath while Arthur followed with the other.

The men set the tin bath on the floor, and Clough began slapping clay into the bottom of the main frame. “Only this corner left to do. Arthur, you carry on with what I'm doing. Don't worry about the thickness. I'll come along behind you and level it, get out the air bubbles. Ms. Dranchuk—or should I call you Corporal?—you can grab that other trowel over there and smooth the clay behind me. Twenty minutes and we'll be done.”

“Danutia, please,” she said, picking up the trowel he'd indicated. “I'm off duty.” Off paid duty, anyway.

At first, anxious to get on with her inquiries, she attacked the clay furiously, only to find it resisted her proddings. Gradually, working in companionable silence among the rich scent of earth and the lighter fragrances of flowers and greenery, she let go of the internal pressure that propelled her through her days. Her pace slowed, and she smoothed the clay with unhurried strokes. The danger to Arthur, his mother's quest to discover the truth about a young boy's death, faded away, leaving only this moment, her breathing, her arm moving, the life growing inside her.

“That's the last of the small frames,” Justine said a few minutes later, dipping her hands into a bucket of water and wiping them on a towel. “Where's Eric?”

Clough said, “He's cleaning up outside.”

“I'd better check, make sure he hasn't done a bunk,” Justine said, bustling out. “Liz, I'll pick up the Blessing Day programs when I'm in Buxton tomorrow.”

Justine's worried tone brought Danutia back from her reverie. The others had finished and were cleaning off the worst of the muck. A few more strokes and then she too was done.

“You're staying, aren't you?” she asked Liz, hoping Arthur had followed their plan.

Liz stripped off her coveralls, revealing a still-trim figure in black yoga pants and black turtleneck, set off by her Celtic knot pendant. With her hair covered, the lines in her face and a slight tummy bulge gave the only evidence of her age. “With pleasure,” she said, wrapping a gray shawl around her shoulders. “I get rather bored with my own company, and I could say the same for my cooking if I bothered to do it.”

Justine reappeared with Eric in tow, the Cloughs said good night, and soon the remaining three were inside the cottage.

“Put on the fire, would you, Arthur?” Liz said, clutching her shawl more tightly. “I'm freezing after being in that garage.”

Leaving Arthur to light the gas fire, Danutia went into the kitchen to warm the food in the microwave. By the time she returned, the sitting room was toasty warm.

Liz had taken the flowered armchair close to the fireplace. She had removed her kerchief and was rebraiding her long hair, her fingers creating a pattern of silver and black.

Arthur held up one of his mother's scrapbooks and raised his eyebrows inquisitively. Danutia shook her head. Eat first, talk later. It was a lesson she'd learned from Len Berwick, with whom she'd worked a case on Salt Spring Island. Unless it's a formal interrogation, don't leap in. Take the time to build trust and you will encourage openness. Danutia had taken a fancy to Berwick and he'd let her know, in the nicest possible way, that he had other plans. A year later, she'd gone to his combined retirement party and wedding. He'd resolved the conflict between police work and parenthood by taking them on sequentially, becoming stepdad to his new wife's pre-teens. Danutia had promised to let him know her own solution. Assuming she found one.

Through dinner at the big oak table they chatted about Liz's experiences as a herbalist, Danutia gently probing about her training and subsequent working life. When Liz said she'd practiced in Bakewell briefly in the late seventies, Danutia's attention sharpened; Bakewell was close to Rowsley, where Timothy Roberts had died in 1979.

“Such a charming place,” Danutia said. “How could you bear to leave it?”

A shadow passed across Liz's face. “It was time to move on,” she said, laying down her fork. “Enough about me. Tell me about Canada.”

Danutia obliged with tales of Prairie winters at forty below, all the while wondering about the chapter in her life that Liz had closed so decisively. Over tea and coffee in front of the fire—even Arthur refrained from anything stronger, she noted approvingly—she turned the conversation back to herbal medicine.

“In Canada, many herbalists are trained in traditional Chinese medicine,” Danutia remarked. “It seems different in the
UK
.”

“That's right, in Europe there's a long tradition of using plants for medicinal purposes, going right back to the Greeks. The tradition was seriously disrupted for three centuries when healers were burned as witches, but it survived.” Liz chuckled. “Luckily for me, herbal medicine is now considered cool by the baby boomers.”

“Not just baby boomers, I'm sure. Mrs. Fairweather was one of your patients, wasn't she?”

If Liz Hazelhurst was bothered by the question, she didn't show it. “Ethel had lived in the city too long to trust her health totally to me. She came to me for the equivalent of over-the-counter remedies for minor ailments, there being no chemist in Mill-on-Wye. For anything more serious, she went to Dr. Geoff.”

“Wouldn't it be dangerous to mix the two?” Danutia asked, conscious of the stern warning she'd had that morning about the dangers of drugs of any kind during pregnancy.

“It could be,” Liz admitted. “I always make sure I know what prescription drugs my clients are taking.”

“Neither kind saved her,” Arthur put in abruptly, his hand shaking as he poured Liz more tea.

Maybe asking about his mother's death was too much for him. Danutia gave him a questioning look. Should she take over? Arthur shook his head slightly and took a deep breath. “I know you told me about the night Mum died, but when Danutia asks me questions about what happened, I realize that I didn't take in what you said. If you don't mind, I'd like you to go through it again.”

“Of course I don't mind,” Liz said. “I miss your mum. It helps to talk about her, and I don't get many chances.” She turned to Danutia. “You know the British, stiff upper lip and all that.”

Danutia nodded. Although Arthur now seemed keen to pursue questions about his mother's death, he still didn't talk about what she'd meant to him. If he would open up a little, it would be easier for her to talk about her big secret.