Grave Consequences (11 page)

There was a nasty surprise waiting for us when we returned to the house, a message asking Jane to come down to the police station to be interviewed by the Marchester constabulary. Greg was pacing, waiting for Jane’s arrival.

I watched her face go from curiosity to concern to alarm to…boredom. “God, how tedious,” she said, after she’d read the note. “Well, maybe during morning coffee I’ll nip down and take care of this—”

I thought it was a classic example of covering, but appar
ently Greg didn’t see that; Jane seemed to be pretty good at it. “They’re serious, Jane!” Greg said. “They mean first thing,
not
at your convenience. It’s not just one more thing to be shoved aside to await your leisure.”

Ouch, I thought. That bit.

Both Jane and I looked up at him. Although his voice was level, his words were angry. I thought about what Jane had told me about their present marital difficulties and how they’d left things last night.

“No need to take my head off,” Jane snapped, nerves fraying past masking. “I only thought—”

“Jane, this is serious. Julia has
died
—”

“Greg, I—” Jane was now visibly rocked, but it came too late for Greg to notice, and I wished myself anywhere but there.

“Only sometimes, I wonder if you have any sense of the importance of anything besides your job. I wonder if anything else matters. It colors everything you do. Even your relationship with Julia was poisoned because
you
were
threatened
by her—”

“I think you’d better leave off there,” Jane said, quite coldly. “I have to change. I have to see the police, and I wouldn’t want to keep them waiting.”

“Fine,” Greg said stiffly. “I’ll see to things at the site.”

“Fine.”

And with that it was over, even before I could figure out how to sneak away and give them a little privacy. Greg banged out the door and Jane turned to me, all business.

“Sorry. Emma, if you think you can manage, I’m going to be away for a bit. But if you have any questions, just pass them on to Greg, okay? If you don’t mind, I’ll take the tub first, okay? Brilliant, thanks.”

As if I hadn’t been there to see any of their fight. Whatever doubts I’d had as to the existence of the unflappable British exterior during the argument were slammed back into place by Jane’s behavior afterward. It happened so quickly, so much compressed emotion forcibly released, that
it was like being stunned in the aftermath of an explosion.

Soon after Jane left, I washed up and trotted out to the site, where everyone was just starting work. Everyone, that is, except Andrew, I noticed. He was nowhere to be seen. Then I frowned. Trevor the Odious was also missing; it wasn’t so much his absence that I noticed, it was the lack of complaint coming from his area. I began to head out to the center of the site, but was halted by Greg’s call. I joined him by the work desk, where I saw a pile of lumber and tools.

“The materials I picked up from the DIY yesterday,” he explained, and I recalled that we’d discussed getting the materials to make me some screens. Wasn’t that like Greg to remember, even after last night?

“No one was in any state to start anything…last night,” he continued, apologetically and a little embarassed.

“No, naturally not,” I said, thinking at last someone would be willing to talk to me about it. “Everyone was in a state of shock.”

“Dreadful. I offered to let some of the students off for the day or two—those who knew Julia best, that is, but no one was really very close to her,” he said hesitantly. “Everyone seemed to want the security of a normal day, what with all the uncertainty about. I think they are looking to Jane for some guidance, but she’s only going to find solace in work.”

“Everyone except for Trevor?” I said.

Greg sighed. “I don’t know where the little pillock has got himself off to, but it wasn’t with any of my leave. I’d just as soon he kept himself out of my sight, to be quite honest with you. And,” he said, anticipating my next question, “I haven’t the faintest notion of where Andrew is. I don’t believe he ever came home last night. The man might have had the sense to help out, today of all days, but there you are.” Greg finally seemed to be losing patience with his unreliable friend.

I shrugged. “What about the modern skeleton? Has he finished working on that in the lab yet?”

“I leave that up to Andrew; no matter what, he’ll meet his
work obligations—in his own time, mind you. But we do tend to leave our specialists to their own devices in England; it’s not so hands-on for the directors in England as it is in the States.”

Greg then rubbed his hands together, shaking off these unpleasant thoughts and effectively squelching any more of my questions. “But let’s get you set up. As you can see, I got the timber you wanted. Took a bit of doing, but it’s all just as you ordered. Good English oak,” Greg pointed out with satisfaction. “We’ll get you sifting away in no time.”

I looked down at the pile of lumber stock, nails, and screening and frowned. Something wasn’t quite right; the lengths of wood were absolutely enormous. The stock was thick, like beams for a house, it seemed.

“You got two-by-fours,” I said uncertainly.

“Yes. Had to have them ripped to specification, of course, as timber on this side of the water is in metric and in different standard heights and widths. I’m very interested to see how you put this all together.”

And so was I, I thought. The problem was, there isn’t a two-by-four in America that is actually two inches by four inches; it’s just a handy approximation. Everything’s actually a bit smaller than that and, for my purposes, much better suited to comfortable use. But I told Greg that everything looked fine and in a little less than an hour, we’d got things into roughly the right shape. It would sift dirt, certainly, but it wasn’t portable by any stretch of the imagination.

“Well, that’s not going anywhere,” Greg announced, beads of sweat running. “Make it through the next ice age, I shouldn’t wonder.”

He was right. What one generally ended up with, in my experience, was a shallow box with a screen bottom, the long sides of which extended out into a pair of handles with the opposite end supported on the bottom by a hinged set of legs. It took a bit of balancing, but ordinarily what you’d end up with was a screen that folded neatly onto its legs and was fairly portable. This one was similar but on a larger, bulkier
scale, portable the same way the Empire State Building was portable. With that in mind, I silently dubbed my new screen Kong.

“Is this really what you use on your digs?” Greg asked, a little confused. “It’s enormous.”

“I guess I got the measurements off,” I said. After all his trouble in getting the materials, I wasn’t about to tell him that it wouldn’t do. “I’ll cut down the handles a bit, so that they’ll be a bit more manageable.”

We both struggled to get Kong out to my burial, and then I began work. The day was pleasant enough, but the first break came and went without any sign of Jane. I tried to put it out of my mind, but found myself unable to concentrate properly. I kept looking up for her arrival, and kept being surprised when she didn’t come. I was starting to get worried about my friend, and it reflected in my work. Rather than bringing the entire length of the stain down in one even level, I got into a sort of downward spiral, where I would get one corner sorted out, only to find that the other three were still too high. Every time I tried to bring things level, I realized that I had gone too far.

At lunch I finally gave up trying. The crew was unusually subdued and Greg, so far from his usual pleasant efficient self, was snappish, particularly after a small red car pulled up to the site and a man got out, asking for a moment of his time. When Greg returned, his face was a torment. I didn’t dare to ask him what he’d learned.

We continued to eat in silence, but before the bulk of the crew returned from their pub run, I heard Greg sigh yet again. Knowing that personal conversation wasn’t his favorite thing, I decided to risk it, on the off chance that he might relax a little.

“You’re worried about Jane,” I said.

“I was hoping she’d be done by now,” he said abruptly. “I…I assumed that it would just be the same as before, when Julia was first reported missing. The police simply took statements from everyone, right here on the site. But
this is different. I don’t know why and I don’t like it.”

That having been said, there was little I could say to comfort him. I stuck with the commonplaces, which were as ever horribly insufficient. “I’m sure they’re just asking about Julia’s behavior on site, who she knew, that sort of thing. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Greg looked at me with impatience. “I’m absolutely certain it’s not nothing. I was just told that she probably won’t be back to work today, but that I should continue on here. There’s a student dead, and my wife quite well known for disliking her, and
she
wants me to keep working. How could anyone—?”

Then his face almost crumpled. He mastered himself before he’d even allowed himself the emotion. “Oh, God, Emma, I apologize. It’s…there’s no excuse. I’m dreadfully sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said hastily. “Please.”

Greg said nothing, but only kept shaking his head and staring at the tops of his rubber work boots.

I hated seeing him like this. “Look, I’m going to straighten out the mess in my unit. I’m keeping you from looking in on the others when I’m supposed to be a bigger help.”

“Right, and we wouldn’t want Jane to come back and find us slacking off, would we?” he said with a faint smile. “I’ll stop by later.” He fled.

It took most of the rest of the afternoon, but at last I got my unit to a respectable state: corners square, floor level, extraneous dirt removed. Rather than follow the others for tea, or bother Greg, who had found refuge deep in a notebook with the intent of ignoring what was going on, I stayed by my unit, squatting on an upturned bucket, scribbling notes. Truth to tell, there wasn’t much to write, only that the feature of the burial was becoming more and better defined, and that based on the depth I would probably start to uncover any skeletal remains shortly. There was a light breeze com
ing off the river, and off in the distance I heard the faint tinkling of wind chimes; I pulled the shell of my barn coat closer around me, wondering when spring really started in around here. I found myself doodling names—Jane, Julia, Palmer, Andrew—but none of them meant anything to me in relation to the others. I tried to dig back through my memories, reexamine everything of context that everyone had mentioned to me since I’d been here; there seemed to be connections, but nothing clear. I knew so little that it was meaningless. Add to that the presence of a relatively recent skeleton that showed every indication of having been murdered, and a less suspicious nature than mine would be concerned. As Jane was embroiled in this, innocent though I knew she must be, I decided suddenly I was going to make it my business to find out exactly what those connections represented. After all, I was on vacation, I could afford to nose about, and I simply couldn’t stand idly by…

One tiny little something did surface, however, from all my mental sieving that I began to wonder about. Julia’s body had been found on a construction site, in a Dumpster or skip, to be precise. I recalled Palmer’s comments that Jane was at odds with one of the local builders. That struck me as something worth investigating.

At that moment, a chill stole over me. At first I thought the sun had gone behind a cloud, but after I hurriedly jotted down my last notes, I realized that someone was standing behind me. I covered over my notes. It wasn’t Greg, it wasn’t one of the students—twisting around awkwardly, I knew that none of them would be wearing a long black skirt. The tinkling I’d heard earlier was closer now, and I now knew that it came from two rows of tiny bells sewn into the skirt. As I looked up, the first thing that caught my eye was a pale white hand, with what at first I thought was a complex bracelet draped over it. Then that little part of my brain that is so good at recognizing patterns identified the bracelet as a tattoo, a complex trailing green vine that wrapped around
the woman’s middle finger and curled up round her wrist and presumably up the rest of her arm. I swung all the way around to look up into the stranger’s face.

“Brightest blessings,” said the woman, smiling warmly, though there was a guarded look in her eyes.

I sighed. Oh, puh-lease.

“You know, I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” I said.

“Oh, but you’re wrong there,” she replied with an accent that was coarser and less precise than either Jane’s or Greg’s: I knew that I was talking to Morag. “I think we’ll both find, at the end, that I’m exactly where I’m meant to be, in the midst of all these lines and triangles. But judging by the look on your face, I wonder: Can you say the same for yourself?”

“A
CTUALLY
,” I
SAID WITH SOME ASPERITY
, “I
CAN
say why I’m meant to be here, but why don’t we discuss that outside the dig parameters?” I noticed distantly that I sounded a bit like Jane.

“Certainly, but I don’t see what harm I’m doing here,” Morag replied haughtily. “Simply standing here, not touching anything. My mere presence isn’t going to pollute your work.”

Her tone struck me as the same used by teenagers at times, confrontational and defensive all at once. Her stance was very much the same: arms crossed over her plump little pot belly, head tilted backward, so that her tangle of red hair was thrown dramatically back, exposing a silver pentacle pendant snagged on the laces of her blouse. Morag was a nice study in contrasts: the round face I might expect to see across the bakery counter and the clothing—all black, save for a bit of gold and red trim—that made me think of first-year art students.

“No, of course not,” I said as I got up out of my crouch
with a crack of my knees. “But there are issues of safety and security that I need to attend to.”

“Fine, but—” Morag turned, a little cascade of single notes following the abrupt motion of her skirt. “Just one thing.”

Unless I was going to frog-march her off the site, I had to listen. For now. I always wondered whether I could effectively frog-march someone.

“Can I see one of the relics? From that area where you’re working? Right here?”

“There isn’t much,” I said, “not from a—”

She nodded impatiently. “From a grave shaft, yes I know. But ‘not much’ doesn’t mean ‘nothing,’ does it?”

“Let’s take it with us, shall we?” I suggested. I bent over and pulled something from a plastic bag in the tray. “There’s a nice bit of sunny patch over beyond the barrier, and I’d like to warm up a bit.”

“I’m really not going to hurt anything,” she said; again, half-ironic, half-defensive.

“No one said you would. Shall we?” I held out my hand in invitation toward the gate.

Once we were off the actual site, I decided to reestablish things on my terms. I stuck out my hand. “Hi, I’m Emma Fielding.”

“Morag Traeger.” She shook my hand.

“Now, what can I do for you?”

“May I see the relic?”

I hesitated, knowing what she was going to do, but not quite certain why. “The word ‘relic’ is probably a bit of an overstatement; you’re probably closer to the mark with ‘artifact.’ I consider anything a relic to be religious object, properly associated with a saint.”

Morag smiled patronizingly. “Don’t you consider Mother Beatrice a saint? I think she was a holy person, not a Christian, but a worshiper of the Old Religion.”

I shrugged. “I guess if the Church doesn’t think her a
saint, then I don’t. I don’t know her story that well. Besides, I’m pretty sure this never belonged to her. I don’t even know if I’m actually working on her grave.” I realized that she couldn’t know that I might be working on Mother Beatrice; I must have just looked like fresh meat she could get around.

I handed Morag the sherd I was carrying, and she scrutinized it carefully. Then she closed her eyes and held the lowly bit of pottery up to her forehead reverently. I watched, a little curious, a little annoyed, a little uncomfortable.

“No,” she said finally, opening her eyes, and handing back the sherd to me. “It was never hers, but it did belong to
some
troubled soul—”

I noticed that she didn’t actually identify the piece of stoneware for me; it was from a ceramic mug, probably several centuries later than Mother Beatrice’s period. “Just someone picnicking in the graveyard,” I said, “maybe a gravedigger had a drink of something, and this got kicked around for a couple of centuries. It was from just above the shaft. No way to tell if he—or she—was troubled or not.”

“Of course there is,” she said.
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophies—”

Mentally I corrected her: dreamt, not dreamed; philosophy, not philosophies. Easy enough mistakes, but she left out poor Horatio altogether.

“Besides. You were trying to trick me. It’s not from the grave itself.”

“No, I did just what you asked,” I replied. “I even told you. You asked to see an artifact from where I was working. Besides, nothing I might find there is going to have been put there by Mother Beatrice. Once you’re dead, you have very little say in what people put in the ground with you.”

Morag shook her head sadly and I caught a strong scent of some heavy incense. “I will tell you, Emma, that I feel lots of hostility from the people working on this site. I deeply resent the fact that this important part of history—
local and spiritual—is being co-opted, dominated by a select few. It seems wrong that history should be hoarded, perverted to serve the interests of the governing.”

Problem was, I agreed with her—in principle, just not in this specific case. “I’m sorry you feel threatened—”

“Not
threatened,”
she said. “I didn’t say
threatened,
I said I feel hostility, which is very—”

“—But maybe what you are sensing is the anger of people who feel you don’t respect their work or their rules. The fences are up there to help protect the site—which, you’re right, does belong to everyone, in a sense—and to protect the public. I’ve seen unwary visitors break ankles by falling into working units because they weren’t looking where they were going. Jane would be blamed if anyone got hurt. I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.”

“No, I wish no one to be hurt, or blamed. I just question her right to be on this site, when so many others are denied. From where does her privilege come, to pick and chose who might be here?”

My shoulders heaved; this drama was tiring. It was the oldest story in the book, the rights of scientists versus the rights of everyone else—to history, to be on a particular bit of land, to dig, even.

“It’s not fair,” I said. “But it’s the best solution. By letting people who are trained excavate a site, you have the best chance of preserving all the data—for everyone. On the other hand, Jane and Greg, and even the students, have trained for years, so it’s not without some sacrifice on their part, this privilege. And it’s not random: They had to prove their ability to be here, had to get a license from the Home Office to work on the human remains.”

“Still and all, I wish that you scientists would be a little more open-minded,” Morag persisted. “I think that Mother Beatrice was something special, someone important, and I think she’s not been granted her due. She was tied into this place—a place of real power, mind you—in a way that I think is truly important. She had visions and I know, just
know, she was one of us. I’m just trying to see that justice is done, that her story is given as much prominence as it deserves, as much as any Christian’s. As much as any man’s.”

Again I found myself agreeing with her, but only halfway. I also felt a headache coming on. “Look, like I said, I don’t know the story all that well, but I find it pretty amusing that you should lump Jane with the establishment. As far as I can tell, Jane’s in everyone’s bad graces here, and as far as feminist interpretations go, you’ve got a better chance with Jane than most.” Morag really wasn’t all that politically astute, that was for sure.

“I can see I won’t get anywhere with you.” The other woman gestured grandly, again to the sound of tinkling bells. “You’re as shut off as the rest of them—”

Now, if you want to get me angry, just tell me how narrow-minded I am. I’ve spent my life training myself not only to see patterns, to make logical leaps, to pay attention, but also to follow my instincts as much as my intellect. I could feel my jaw muscles tighten.

“Look, Ms. Traeger. Why don’t you tell me what evidence you have for Mother Beatrice’s spiritual—pagan—importance, and I’ll consider it. Next time you visit the site—just wait at the fence—I’ll tell you what I think.”

There, I thought, she’ll say I’m not considering the spiritual side of things, that I’ll only consider the ordinary, material world that anyone can look at. Then she’ll leave and I can get back to work.

To my surprise, however, Morag nodded, and pulled out a file from the large bag on her shoulder. “Here, take it. I’ve made copies. Take my card, too. Come and chat, if you like. I’d be very interested to hear your point of view.”

More than surprised, I took the folder and the card, which read, “Marchester Interactive, Web Site Design and Construction, Morag Traeger, Creative Lead/ Co-Founder” with a telephone number, Web site address, and a Fitzwilliam Street address.

“I’ll be sure to have a look,” I said. I was very curious to see what she’d collected.

“I wonder. Still, it was nice to meet you Emma. I get a good feeling from you.” She looked around the site, and shook her head sadly. “And that’s a relief, in the midst of all this pain, all of those triangles.” And with that, she walked off, the self-assured sway of her hips causing the little bells to jingle madly.

Greg came over as Morag left. “Well, that was unusually quiet.”

“Huh?” With all of the bells, the garish trim, the smell of incense, and Morag’s insistent defensiveness, her theatrical choice of words, I couldn’t imagine anything less quiet. She overwhelmed every one of the senses.

“Usually, Jane ends up in a slanging match with her.”

“Well, that never works with her sort of people. Morag’s, I mean. People who are stuck on one idea.”

“Oh, and don’t I know it. Jane knows it too, but she just can’t stand that Morag is so…”

“So very…”

“That’s it, exactly,” Greg agreed. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed his glasses with it. The usual confetti of odds and ends landed on the ground, and he retrieved them after he’d replaced his glasses. “What’d she want this time? I’ve worked on sites where the visitors wanted to come in and lie on one of the graves. Get the vibe.”

I shivered; the idea wasn’t so much spooky as it was just weird. “No. She wanted to hold one of the artifacts. I let her and she said it belonged to some tortured soul.”

He smiled faintly. “Well, it’s no fun if no one’s tortured. Anyway, I was going to suggest—”

Suddenly Greg was interrupted by a loud honking. He frowned at this infraction of common decency and we both turned to see what the matter was. I should have suspected: the matter, as it was so often, was Dora.

“Emma! I’m over here, Emma! Emma!” Dora was calling out of the car window as though we were on separate alpine peaks, or as if she were on a sinking ship and I had the lifeboat. Jeremy Hyde-Spofford was seated next to her, and Palmer, scowling all the while, hopped from the driver’s seat to open the door for them. It wasn’t the Bentley this time, but a huge Land Rover that actually looked as though it did estate work.

Palmer had just enough time to shoot me one truly poisonous look, reminding me of his implied threats to me, before he opened the door and Dora emerged, still hallooing. I sighed, realizing that, as always, I couldn’t just wave from where I was: Dora required my full attention. I wiped the dirt off my trowel and went to meet them at the gate.

“Hello, Dora, Jeremy.” I turned and smiled sweetly at Palmer, in memory of our last, rather hostile encounter. “Mr. Palmer.”

“Good afternoon, Emma,” Jeremy replied. He was wearing a green jacket similar to Greg’s and a truly horrible silk scarf—so crammed with electric yellow paisleys that the thing appeared to be alive and crawling. “I hope that we’re not interrupt—”

“We haven’t got time to stop, Emma,” Dora trumpeted, by way of greeting. “I’m on my way to the airport, off to Florence.”

“I thought you were supposed to be there already,” I said.

“Well, you know how it is. One gets caught up where one is. They won’t mind, once I get there,” Dora responded, waving a hand airily.

“But I did want to take the opportunity to renew my invitation for this weekend,” Pooter said, firmly stanching any further philosophizing on Dora’s part. “And to ask your friends too, if they’d like. The more the merrier.”

So Dora wouldn’t be at the faux fox hunt. That would have been worth seeing. “I’m afraid Jane’s not here at the moment,” I said. I turned and found I couldn’t keep my eyes
off Palmer, who, although seeming to pay close attention to rubbing some dirt off the front headlight, was, I was sure, paying deepest attention. “But Greg is.”

“I’m what?” Greg asked, joining us. I made the introductions and Jeremy repeated his invitation to Greg, who looked uneasy, his wavy ginger hair blown about by the light breeze.

“Thanks all the same, but I’m afraid you’d better not count on us. I’m sure you’ve heard the sad news about Julia Whiting and our troubles here, and I wouldn’t want to accept your offer without checking with my wife first.”

“I understand completely,” Jeremy said. “In fact, I almost canceled, out of respect to George and Ellen Whiting, but George insisted we carry on the yearly tradition. Quite adamant on that account. So, please, if you find yourselves free, don’t hesitate to join us. Emma, if your friends can’t make it, I’ll send Palmer to fetch you.”

Palmer looked carefully blank, and I tried to squash the butterflies in my stomach. “That’s very kind of you.”

“Pooter! We must leave immediately,” Dora announced. “Signor Bravatelli won’t wait another instant.”

Jeremy made a studied attempt to ignore her. “I’m sorry to have to dash off, Ashford.”

“Perhaps you’ll join us again when I can give you a tour of the site,” Greg said.

“Delighted to. Emma, until this weekend.”

“Good-bye. Bye, Dora. Have a good time in Florence.”

My colleague slid back into the vehicle. “I’m going to seize, remove, and totally reconstruct the idea of Raphael for a generation of scholars. I shall not have a good time, but it shall be worthwhile and they shall thank me after. It is not easy, revising hundreds of years of erroneous academic consideration, but I shall persevere.”

Greg watched thoughtfully as the Land Rover tore away. My pounding headache worsened, and I suddenly decided I needed a break. “Greg, can you spare me for an hour or so?”