A Painted Doom (17 page)

‘It’s a nice village. Very pretty,’ he commented as the ancient stone church came into view.

‘Famous for its plums … and its house prices.’ Rachel smiled. ‘They reckon that more celebrities have second homes in Derenham
than in any other village around here.’

‘And Jonny Shellmer was planning to join them.’ Rachel didn’t reply. The Red Bull loomed on their left – the quintessential
country pub. It was open, and a blackboard displaying a mouth-watering menu was propped up outside the door to tempt in the
hungry. Wesley made a mental note that he should try it one lunch-time.

A few doors down from the pub stood a large ivy-clad house. Wesley stared out of the car window as the front door opened and
a man stepped out. He was tall with snow-white hair, probably in his fifties.

‘See who that is?’ Rachel whispered.

‘It looks like Jeremy Sedley.’

‘I read in one of my mum’s magazines that he’s got a place here.’

They drove on, Rachel taking her eyes off the road to look at the strolling celebrity. It wasn’t every day they saw an actor
whose face was well known from television dramas and films. Rachel made a mental note to tell her mother about it: Stella
Tracey was impressed by that sort of thing.

Just past the church a police patrol car and a new-looking Japanese four-wheel-drive were parked at the entrance to a field.
Wesley told Rachel to pull up behind them.

‘Shouldn’t we be seeing the Hoxworthys?’ Rachel asked, mildly annoyed. She’d spotted Neil Watson in the field and thought
it her duty to stop Wesley being sidetracked.

‘Neil said they’ve found a body. A skeleton. He’s called
the coroner and I think that’s Laura Kruger’s car parked in front of us.’

‘The new pathologist?’

Wesley didn’t answer. He was already out of the car and climbing the gate. Rachel took one look at the gate and decided to
wait in the car. That way she’d preserve her dignity.

When Wesley reached the middle of the field he found Neil and Laura squatting in a deep trench, watched by a motley crowd
of students and local volunteers. Neil greeted him with a grin. Some of the locals stared.

‘Come down and have a look at this, Wes.’

Wesley scrambled down into the trench, thankful that the rain had held off for a couple of days and the ground wasn’t a mudbath.

Laura looked at him and smiled. ‘Nice to see you again, Wesley. Found who killed Jonny Shellmer yet?’

‘We’re still working on it,’ he answered. ‘I take it the police needn’t be involved with this one.’

He looked down at the bones. Apart from the obvious absence of a head, the skeleton seemed to be complete. And, as far as
Wesley could see, it seemed to be lying face down.

‘We’ll have to be careful lifting this one,’ said Neil. ‘Laura here reckons it met a violent death. The head’s missing …’

‘The skull was found over near the gate, I believe,’ said Laura. ‘I’ve still got it down at the mortuary. From the look of
the neck vertebrae somebody took the head clean off – with a sharp sword at a guess.’ She bent down and gently picked up the
skeleton’s left forearm, which had just been released from the earth by Neil’s trowel. ‘And I think he tried to protect himself
from the attack. Look at these cuts on the arm bones – classic defensive wounds.’

‘So he was killed in some sort of fight?’ Wesley felt mildly disappointed that there didn’t seem to be much of a mystery surrounding
this particular skeleton. He – or she –
was the unfortunate victim of violence.

‘Yes,’ said Neil hesitantly. Wesley sensed there was a ‘but’. ‘But if that was the case why was he buried just here outside
the walls of the building? Someone went to the trouble of bringing the body outside and burying it. And burying the head some
way away. But why there? Everything points to a medieval date, but in those days it would have been considered terrible not
to be buried in the churchyard … in consecrated ground. Criminals and outcasts from society might be buried at crossroads
or boundaries but this sort of casual burial strikes me as very strange.’

‘Medieval skeletons are found buried on or near battlefields – I read in the paper that some were found at Towton in Yorkshire,
thrown into a pit after the battle during the Wars of the Roses. Perhaps there was some kind of skirmish here and the losers
were chucked into shallow graves. Maybe more bodies will turn up.’

Neil frowned and shook his head. ‘There’s no record of anything like that round here and there’s no sign of any other bones.
I think the body’s been buried secretly … like a murder victim.’

‘Bit of a mystery, eh?’ said Laura. ‘I’ll get these bones down the mortuary when you’ve lifted them and have a better look.’

But Neil’s mind was still on the past. ‘I’m trying to find out about the people who lived here. This field belonged to a family
called Merrivale. They owned a lot of land in the village and made gifts to the church, according to some documents I’ve found.
I’m going to Exeter on Monday to look for any relevant wills and parish records.’ His eyes lit up with the excitement of the
chase. ‘I’ve been told that some of their fifteenth-century letters were collected and published by a local vicar about a
hundred years ago so I’m trying to track them down. I asked Pam yesterday if she could find out from her friend Anne whether
there are any copies of the Merrivale letters about in the library system.’

Wesley smiled. ‘Yes. I heard. She rang Anne last night and she says she’ll see what she can do. She also said that the Merrivale
letters have been popular recently – I don’t know what she meant by that. And Pam says that you should ask Anne yourself if
you want anything finding in future.’ Giving Neil a little push in the right direction wouldn’t do any harm.

‘Is Pam okay, Wes?’ said Neil unexpectedly. ‘She didn’t look too good when I saw her.’

Wesley was surprised. It wasn’t often that Neil noticed anything that hadn’t been buried in the ground for centuries. ‘She’s
just a bit tired. I think work’s getting her down.’

He climbed out of the trench carefully. Neil climbed out after him and led him over to a plastic sheet laid on the ground
on which the afternoon’s finds were displayed. Pottery fragments galore, sections of fine masonry; roof tiles; coins; an almost
complete medieval bowl; and fragments of window glass. Glass windows meant wealth in the Middle Ages, the equivalent of a
private indoor swimming pool today. The Merrivales hadn’t been short of a groat or two.

A woman was standing at a trestle table near by, washing the finds. She wore rubber gloves on hands that were immersed in
a plastic washing-up bowl full of dirty water. He had seen her somewhere before and quite recently. He closed his eyes for
a few seconds, trying to remember.

Then it came to him. Maggie Flowers, the woman who had accepted the cheque for the village hall fund from Jonny Shellmer.
He had been intending to pay her a visit at some point to see what she knew about the dead man.

‘Mrs Flowers, isn’t it? I saw your picture in the
Tradmouth Echo
. You were receiving a cheque from Jonny Shellmer.’

The woman flushed and began to dry her hands on a greying white towel. She was around fifty, Wesley estimated. Still slim,
her grey-blond hair was cut in a page-boy
style which gave her a youthful appearance.

‘Yes. I’m on the village hall committee. Treasurer, actually.’ The woman gave a brisk half-smile which disappeared rapidly.

‘You’ll know that Mr Shellmer was shot. Murdered.’

‘Yes, of course. Terrible.’

Maggie Flowers arranged her features into an expression of polite sympathy, but Wesley sensed that she was a little wary.
Then he realised that she had no idea he was a policeman and probably thought he was a reporter. But when he introduced himself
her expression didn’t change. Some of the middle classes, he thought, probably didn’t have a glowing opinion of policemen
either.

‘I’ve been meaning to visit you to ask what you knew about the dead man.’

She smiled. Wesley sensed she was relieved. ‘Then I’m afraid you’d have had a wasted journey. I hardly said two words to him.
He just gave me the cheque and posed for the photograph. There was some small talk, of course, but I’m afraid that’s all I
can tell you.’

‘Have you helped out at a dig before?’ Wesley asked, making polite conversation.

‘No. But I felt obliged to take some interest in this one. We used to own this field, my husband and I, and we sold it because
it was the most suitable site for the new village hall. We live in that house next door, Derenham House.’

‘Very nice place,’ said Wesley appreciatively. ‘My wife and I live in a modern house in Tradmouth and we’d like something
with a bit more character eventually.’

‘My husband’s a surveyor for an estate agent’s in Tradmouth so he saw it as soon as it came on the market. As I was saying
to Neil Watson, it’s wonderful to think we’ve got a bit of the old manor house buried in our garden.’

Wesley smiled. ‘Neil and I were at university together. I studied archaeology, believe it or not.’

Maggie Flowers’ expression grew a little warmer.
‘Really? How on earth did you end up in the police force?’

‘My grandfather was a chief superintendent in Trinidad, and when I stayed with him he used to tell me about his more interesting
cases instead of a bedtime story. And I’d always been a great fan of Sherlock Holmes in my formative years.’

Maggie smiled. Then her expression suddenly became serious. ‘Are you here about the bones they’ve just found?’

‘Officially, yes. But if they’re more than seventy years old – which I’m sure they are – they’re not a police matter at all.’
He hesitated for a moment, then decided that the question was worth asking. ‘What did you think of Jonny Shellmer?’

She looked surprised by the question. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she muttered quickly.

‘What was your impression of him?’

‘Well, he didn’t say much but he seemed pleasant enough. I thanked him for his support on behalf of the village hall committee
and we chatted for a few minutes about the village. He said he expected to move here as soon as he’d found a suitable property.
He mentioned he was interested in the Old Vicarage. I was trying to make conversation and I told him about the famous people
who already lived in the village. We’ve got Jeremy Sedley, the actor – he takes a lot of interest in the village; in fact
he’s doing a lot for the church history evening I’m organising. And there’s Michael Burrows, the weatherman … and Jack Cromer,
the man who does that interview programme on TV. I can’t really remember anything else. We just passed the time of day, I
suppose.’

‘One of our detective constables reckons Shellmer used to be one of the bad boys of rock; taking drugs, smashing up hotel
rooms, that sort of thing.’

Maggie Flowers shook her head. ‘Well, if he was, he showed no sign of it when I met him. He seemed quite …’ She searched for
a suitable word. ‘Quite ordinary, I suppose.’

‘He must have mellowed with age,’ Wesley observed with a smile.

He glanced over to where Neil and Laura Kruger were bending over the bones, newly lifted from the earth. He looked at his
watch: he still had to visit the Hoxworthys. Then on to Neston to find out whether Angela Simms had any connection with Jonny
Shellmer.

There was nothing more to be learned here for the moment. He’d leave Neil to it.

Fifteen minutes later Wesley was standing in the doorway of Lewis Hoxworthy’s bedroom. Rachel Tracey stood by his side in
silence. Jill Hoxworthy hovered behind them nervously, as though she didn’t know quite what to do.

‘I know it’s a terrible mess,’ she began apologetically. ‘I’ve been meaning to tidy up but …’

Rachel turned to her. ‘Don’t worry, Jill. We’ve seen worse. Have you had a good look round to see if anything’s missing? If
he’s taken things it might mean all this was planned.’

Jill shook her head. ‘I’m going to have a go at it after supper. I know I should have done it already but I …’ She sniffed
and pulled a crumpled handkerchief from her sleeve. ‘I don’t seem to have had the time. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s okay. I understand.’ Rachel put a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder. She was a good person to have around at
times like these. Never intrusive, never insensitive, Rachel always knew the right thing to say.

Wesley turned to Jill and spoke gently. ‘As Sergeant Tracey said, we’ve had a word with this Yossa and he says that Lewis
sent him some e-mails.’

‘Oh, I don’t know anything about that. I’m not used to computers … not like Lewis,’ she added quietly.

‘What about your husband?’

Jill Hoxworthy shook her head again. ‘No. He’s no good on them neither. I said we should learn, go on a course, but what with
the farm, we never seem to have the time.’

‘Where’s your husband now?’ asked Rachel.

‘He’s gone down to the cow shed; one of the Jerseys has a touch of mastitis and he’s meeting the vet down there. Terry’s not
been up here at the house much,’ she said without resentment. ‘It’s his way of dealing with it.’

Jill Hoxworthy was a practical, independent woman; strong, some women’s magazines would have called her. She would rather
have her husband keeping busy to take his mind off his worry than hanging around in a futile attempt to comfort her.

‘Would you mind if we had a look at Lewis’s computer?’

‘Help yourself.’

Rachel, who knew which end of a computer was which but who would never have claimed to be an expert, went downstairs with
Jill, leaving Wesley to pick his way over the debris on Lewis’s bedroom floor towards the cluttered computer desk. No wonder
Jill hadn’t had the heart to search through this lot, he thought. Excavating the stratified clothes, papers and rubbish was
more a job for an archaeologist than a mother.

Before sitting himself down at the desk, he walked over to the window and looked out on the lush green landscape. He could
see a solitary patrol car at the Old Vicarage, and he noticed a tiny distant figure entering the lodge, Gloria Treadly’s son
Alec perhaps. In a field he could just make out a Land Rover parked by what looked like a cow shed. Probably the vet.