A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

“So did I. She’ll find him again, you can bet on that. She wasn’t the sort to let death stop her.”

The Mini turned in to the left among the dunes. The little open lantern of St. Nectan’s stood clear against the sky.

“It wasn’t ugly,” said Simon unexpectedly from the back seat. “A scent, and a puff of air, and a little dust. She was very little, like in her picture, and all muffled up in a travelling cloak with a hood—at least, I think so. She had masses of black hair, and such tiny bones.”

Paddy said nothing more. He sat almost oblivious when they got out of the car and left him there between the shadowy dunes. He woke out of his daze when he heard the strange voices, and turned his head to see them met and greeted by Hewitt, with George Felse in attendance, and a stranger who must be the police pathologist. He watched them unlock the padlock on the gate, and go in single file down the steep staircase. He heard the heavy door below swing wide, but he didn’t move. If the window of the car had not been open, he would not have heard the raised tones of their voices, like gasps of amazement and consternation rising hollowly out of the grave.

Something was wrong, down there. Something, was not as they had expected it to be. Paddy put out a hand to open the door of the car, and then drew it back, shivering, afraid to want to know.

But you can’t turn your back on knowledge, just because it may be uncomfortable. Supposing someone else should need what you know? Someone who belongs to you, and doesn’t know how much you know already?

He slipped out of the car, and crept close to the rail of the vault. The open doorway showed him nothing but a corner of Treverra’s empty tomb, and half of George Felse and all of Tim, hiding from him even the foot of the second coffin. But the voices sailed up to him clearly, roused and brittle, and in signal agreement.

“None of it was there this morning,” said Hewitt. “There was nothing with her in the coffin. All of us but Mr. Rossall were here, we know what we uncovered.”

“We couldn’t possibly have missed seeing this,” said Simon. “Even if we didn’t disturb or touch her, we looked pretty carefully. It’s enough to make you look carefully, isn’t it? Well, she’d none of all this with her then. Nothing!”

“But if you’ve had both keys in your own hands all the time, and you locked up again carefully this morning,” said the one strange voice with dry mildness, “it would seem to be impossible.”

“It is, damned impossible, but it’s happened.” It was the first time Paddy had ever heard Hewitt sound exasperated. “Take a look at this, this is real enough, isn’t it? That wasn’t here, none of this was here spilled round her feet, at eleven o’clock this morning. But it’s here now at six in the evening. And I’m telling you—I’m telling myself, for that matter—this place has been locked all that time, and I’ve had both keys on me. And tell me, just tell me, why should anyone, guilty or innocent or crazy or what, bring this here and leave it for us to find?”

He plunged a hand suddenly into something that rattled and rang like the loose change in a careless woman’s handbag, and brandished across the coffin, for one moment full into Paddy’s line of vision, a handful of coins and small trinkets that gleamed, in spite of all the discolorations of time, with the authentic yellow lustre of antique gold.

He shut himself into the front passenger seat of the car, and held his head, because it felt as if it might burst if he worked the brain within it too hard. One little guinea in the sand of the tunnel, and a fistful of them in Morwenna’s coffin. And the door locked, and both keys in police custody, and the whole thing impossible, unless—it was the last thing he had overheard as he retreated—unless there was yet another key.

Or another door! Nobody had said that, but he couldn’t stop thinking it. Not an ordinary door, a very retiring door, one that wasn’t easy to find.

Under the ground he’d had almost no sense of direction, but Dominic had said—somewhere under the dunes. Paddy took an imaginary bearing from the church towards the blow-hole under the Dragon’s Head, and tried frantically to estimate distances. It was possible. It had to be possible, because there was no other possible way of accounting for everything.

They were down there a long time, nearly an hour. He stayed in the car all the time, because it had dawned on him that if he spied on them, or even asked them questions when they returned, he would have to tell them things in exchange; and he couldn’t do that, not yet, not without other people’s consent. No, there was only one thing to do, and that was go straight to the Pollards, and tell them what he knew, and try to make them see that the next move was up to them.

But there was no reason why he shouldn’t use his eyes to the best advantage when the five men emerged from the deep enclosure of the Treverra tomb. Hewitt climbed the steps only to cross to his car, take a small rug from the boot, and make a second trip down into the vault with it. When he came up again he was carrying the rug rolled into a thick, short bundle under his arm. What was inside it, allowing for the bulk of the rug itself, might be about the size of a three-pound bag of flour, but seemed to be a good deal heavier. Say, a small gunnysack full of coins— or maybe a little leather draw-string bag, such as they used for purse and wallet in the eighteenth century. About the right size, at any rate, to match that small, shapeless bundle Rose had carried under her arm at noon.

Tim got into the car prepared for questions, and there were none. “Don’t you want to know if it is really Morwenna?” he offered, concerned at such uncharacteristic continence.

“Well, yes, of course!” The boy brightened readily. “I thought you’d tell me what I’m allowed to know. I didn’t want to poke my nose past where the line’s drawn.”

“Such virtue!” said Tim disapprovingly. “You’re not sickening for something, are you?”

He started the engine, and the Mini came about gently in the trodden space before the church, and followed the police car back to the road.

“Is Uncle Simon riding with them, this time?”

“Yes, he wanted to talk to the pathologist. We’re pretty sure it’s Morwenna. Right age, right period, right build, no reason to suppose it would be anyone else. There’ll be some work to do on fabric, and all that, but it looks authentic.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Back to the police station. We’ve got a bit of conferring to do, if you wouldn’t mind amusing yourself for an hour or so. Or would you rather I took you home first?”

“No,” said Paddy, almost too quickly and alertly. “I’ll come down into town with you, that’ll suit me fine. While you’re in your official huddle, there’s somebody I want to see.”