Night After Night (35 page)

This is from a 1783 account attributed to a man called Brooks, apparently an eyewitness to what happened at Sudeley the previous year, someone official. Marcus looks at the drawing of what Anderson thought looked like a longcase clock with small door that opened to a face that was a human face.

Marcus has read it four times. Seems bizarre that Parr was originally given such a cursory burial and then ignored by later owners of the castle.

As for the condition of the body after over two hundred and thirty years encased in lead, with just the earth below it, this is the level of preservation normally only associated with the remains of saints.

In the
Annals
, first published in 1877, he finds a poem attributed to a Mrs Clara Payne.

Even more remarkable considering a report made to the Society of Antiquaries in 1787 recording that the spot where Parr lay in her shallow grave had been used for the keeping of rabbits which ‘made holes and scratched very indecently about the Royal Tomb’.

There’s also a tradition of an ivy berry falling into the opened coffin and a subsequent inspection revealing an ivy wreath around the head of the Queen.

However, Brooks seems to have returned to Sudeley for another look at the corpse, by which time the poor woman seems to have been, not unexpectedly, in a state of considerable
putrefaction. The smell makes Brookes’s son, who was with him this time, ‘quite sick’.

Hardly surprising when you read about the lead coffin being opened several times by then.

‘Bloody tourist attraction,’ Marcus tells Anderson.

She’s given up waiting for him to come out, lowers a tray with a teapot, mugs, biscuits to his desk, nudging the
Annals
to one side.

‘Still be here in the morning, Marcus.’

‘It
is
the morning, and I don’t care.’ He stares down at the book as if its pages might start to putrefy before his eyes. ‘Don’t want to accuse anybody of something they didn’t do.’

‘Oh no. You widnae do that. Against your very nature.’

‘But, bloody hell, Anderson…’

Reversing the book, pushing it at her.

‘Probably bullshit, the last bit,’ Marcus says. ‘All the same…’

‘If you’re thinking what I’m thinking you’re thinking…’

‘As there’d be very little left on the bones by then, no, I’m not. I’ve found another version on the Net suggesting all they did was turn her upside down. Having a laugh. I’m thinking back to the early days after that very first opening of the lead coffin. When she was, ah, fresh and moist.’

‘No.’ Anderson wiping the air. ‘I don’t wannae hear this.’

‘Abel Fishe is Lucas’s neighbour. Within walking distance. Both tenant farmers. Land might even’ve been adjacent. Lucas was obviously fascinated by his discovery. Who does he tell first? Probably not his wife.’

‘He tells his friend the notorious sex addict?’

‘They didn’t even have to be friends. A lot of people owed Fishe – Abel’s Rent? Equally, a lot of people were shit-scared of him.’

‘Marcus you are never gonnae prove—’

‘I’m not a historian.’ Marcus slams the flat of a hand on the desk, making the tray rattle. ‘I don’t
have
to prove it.’

45

Dirty linen

GRAYLE AWAKENS TO
the sound of techies tramping through the mud, a dawn chorus of techie jargon. In the window, Saturday morning is seeping in through a sky like an old brown plastered wall.

She’s had maybe five hours’ sleep. The image in her head, detritus of a dream, is of a blackened log in a cold hearth. She feels isolation, a sense of betrayal. As she rolls out of bed, heads for the bathroom, something is coming together, the way these things do in the cold light.

Relating to the elder. A word she’s growing to hate. The viewers will watch that stuff tonight, thinking it’s a trivial issue. And it would’ve been trivial to virtually anybody walking into the house last night, had they even noticed what was on the fire. Trivial to everybody, except for Eloise.

OK. Grayle stands barefoot on the vinyl floor. If you assume it’s no accident that Eloise was the first person sent in, it suggests strongly that the wood incident was a set-up.

And if you assume it’s no accident that the second person in was Cindy, well that’s where it starts to smell. The whole thing is too subtle. Nobody ever asked
her
, as researcher, to find out the relevance of different types of wood when applied to fires.

In fact, you can’t imagine anybody on the HGTV team coming up with that idea. Too esoteric, too far out of the box.

Only Cindy would know about it.

Cindy who went in second.

Cindy the double agent.

Grayle spins the faucet in frustration, throws cold water on her face.

In the restaurant, she sees a couple of directors and an editor who’ve been working all night, cutting the rushes to show to Defford before they can go catch up on some sleep. She also sees Lisa Muir coming out of the plastic tunnel after delivering breakfast to the residents.

‘Oh,’ Lisa says, like she’s trying to remember where she’s seen Grayle before. ‘Er, hi.’

‘Lisa…’ Grayle’s making no effort to hide her no-shit mood. ‘I think we need to talk.’

‘Oh. Do we?’ Lisa’s baby teeth form a vacuous smile. ‘Sorry, I thought all that was over. Thought I was just being paid to serve meals and things, now. Am I wrong?’

Grayle spots someone beckoning her from the doorway. Jo Shepherd, wearing what looks like army kit. She sighs.

‘I’ll catch you later, Lisa. Don’t leave town.’

Lisa smiles at her like she’s some faded old person whose significance is waning fast, then walks away with a toss of the hair – something Grayle can’t do any more. Why is Lisa behaving younger than she is?

‘You’d better come and look at this,’ Jo says.

They’re alone in the live gallery amongst paper cups and illicit cigarette butts. Jo brings up a hard-disk menu.

‘Just in. This morning’s rushes. We were interested to see the individual residents’ reaction, waking up in the house. Mostly, nothing significant.
Except
… OK, look at this, tell me what you think.’

Ozzy Ahmed’s room. Room two, turn right at the top of the back stairs. Plain walls, but lumpy stone underneath, deep-set window with the view-concealing boards.

A bell dinging, the bedside light coming on, an arm emerging from the duvet with an extended, mocking finger. Jo flicks forward
to Ozzy standing by the side of the bed, wearing red shorts, a small paunch hanging over the waist. No personal mic. He walks over to the door, stares at it then tries the handle, but the door remains closed. There’s a key in the lock. Ozzy bends over, seems to be turning the key. Opens the door. Closes it, pulls on the handle. Scratches his head, his face serious. Stands still for quite some time, before turning back into the room. Seems to remember the camera, looks up into the wrong corner and smiles.

Then he goes into the bathroom.

Grayle shrugs.

‘What was that about?’

‘Don’t know. It was as if he thought someone was trying to get into his room in the night. Out of interest, I got one of the guys to flip through the dark hours in Ozzy’s room. No sound from him, no sound of anybody messing with the door.’

‘He’s not laughing, is he?’ Grayle says. ‘But then, deadpan’s his thing.’

‘It’s not deadpan either.’ Jo plays it back. ‘Watch his face. Not fear, but it’s certainly consternation. Like he’s thinking, Is somebody winding me up.’ She stops the recording. ‘OK, we’ll leave that. Here’s Ashley, not too long ago.’

They watch Ashley Palk as she bends over her bed, in her silky nightdress, picking up the edge of one of the pillows between finger and thumb. Disdain on her face as she pulls the pillow over the edge of the bed, lets it fall to the bedside rug, shudders, scowls.

Grayle turns to Jo.

‘What’s that on it?’

‘Stain. You can’t see it clearly. When Palk was up and about, we sent Lisa up to bring it down. Carefully. I’ve seen it. It’s faded now – not as dark as it looks here, but it was definitely there.’

‘A stain on the pillow.’

‘In an indentation.’

‘She reported this?’

‘When she went downstairs, Helen was there. Palk’s like, had
your
bedding been washed? Claiming she didn’t notice it last night – early this morning – because she was too tired. But oh, how disgusting. How
cheap
of them. And yes, she’s right, it would have been a pretty bloody cheap trick. If it hadn’t been a new pillowcase, fresh from the wrapping.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘We got the housekeepers on the phone.’

The housekeepers are a company, based in Cheltenham, on 24-hour call. They’re booked to come in every day. Grayle figures they don’t recycle old bedding. Jo grimaces.

‘They were quite annoyed. Like their hygiene standards were being questioned. All the pillowcases are new. Leo’s wondering what we do next. Send it for analysis?’

‘I’m guessing you wouldn’t find anything unusual. Nothing foreign to the room. Nothing you couldn’t scrape out of a dusty corner.’

‘You encountered this kind of thing before?’

‘Well, similar. It’s never, like, moondust or anything. What’s Palk saying?’

‘Nothing specific. She’s just disgusted at having slept on it.’

‘On what? How’s she describe it?’

‘As a dirty pillow.’

‘Where it looks like a man’s unclean head has lain. That mentioned?’

‘You said it. She didn’t.’

‘But is that what it looked like?’

Grayle feeling the questions being ripped out of her.

‘I’ve only seen it on here,’ Jo says, ‘but yes, apparently it did. Like a man with dirty hair had lain there and rolled his head from side to side. But I don’t want even to
think
about that.’

‘Anyone know apart from Helen?’

‘She won’t say anything. But think if it had been Eloise?’

‘Nothing disturbed Eloise?’

‘Full night’s sleep, it looked like. Like everyone else, far as we can tell.’

On several monitors, Grayle watches the residents gathering in the dining hall, summoned by bells: Ashley Palk with a cardigan around her shoulders, helping herself to toast, Eloise searching for muesli, Herridge and Sebold doing the full English. Ozzy Ahmed sitting alone with a coffee.

The place is a hotel again. Grayle feels a pressure – to say something, do something. Let in some hard daylight.

‘OK. Jo, you need to tell me. Is someone doing this? Has Defford hired somebody, like he’s hired Cindy, as insurance? Is stuff getting messed up deliberately. Is there a game plan?’

Jo stands up, walks out, hauling her tote bag after her. Doesn’t speak until they’re outside, like you don’t diss God in the temple. The sun is palely visible in the brownish sky, like an old coin in the sand at the bottom of a wishing well. Jo lights up a cigarette, gazing out over the site.

‘I’ve never worked with him before. But he doesn’t have a reputation for sharp practice, or Channel 4 wouldn’t touch him. On the other hand, I agree you don’t go into something like this without fallbacks.’

‘But he hasn’t told you about anything.’

‘All I know is about Cindy, because it was my job to set him up.’

‘So Defford could, far as you know, have other deals going with other residents?’

‘Anything’s possible, but I can’t see it. Everybody informing on each other, it would just make a farce of the whole project. Let’s not ignore the other possibility which is that Palk did it herself.’

‘Messed up her pillow?’

‘When you think about it, they all want
Big Other
to be a massive success, attract record viewing figures, re-fire their careers. And if that means helping it along the way…’

‘Palk’s an arch-sceptic. A
professional
sceptic.’

‘So she lets us build this up into a spooky head-on-a-pillow situation and, towards the end of the week, she’s saying, You suckers, how easily you fell for my little scam.’

‘You really think Palk would do that?’

‘I’m not ruling it out, Grayle.’

‘OK, yeah, it’s possible.’

Now she thinks about it, you look back over Palk’s lectures and her pieces on YouTube, it was all acerbic stuff at one time. No leeway given; anyone so much as sent their kids to Sunday school was a hopeless crank. But not here, where even the condescending smile’s been less in evidence. Grayle thinks of the Antichrist, Richard Dawkins. One day it’s all withering scorn, then he’s describing himself as a secular Christian, who loves the liturgy, just a shame about there having to be a God. That other guy, de Botton, playing the same game. And, to a sceptic, it
is
a game.