A Room Full Of Bones

‘Seriously,’ Clough persists. ‘You don’t think there’s anything in all this voodoo nonsense?’

‘I don’t know what I think,’ says Judy. ‘But clearly someone was trying to frighten Lord Smith. The letters, the dead snakes. Someone had a grudge against him and now he’s dead. That’s worth investigating.’

‘It was a heart attack,’ says Clough. ‘The pathologist’s report said so.’

‘But what gave him the heart attack?’ says Judy. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

‘Have they gone?’

Randolph looks up. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

Romilly Smith sits opposite her son and smiles up at him. She is wearing jeans and an old jumper but still manages to look effortlessly elegant. Randolph, knowing that she has probably spent the night in some squalid bedsit discussing factory farming, can’t help feeling reluctant admiration.

‘They’ve gone,’ he says.

‘Was it Nelson? He was quite bright, I thought. Not your usual policeman.’

‘No, the woman. Judy something. And another man. Rather an oaf but good-looking, if you like that sort of thing.’

‘What were they doing here?’

Randolph hesitates. He hasn’t told his mother about the men in the wood. Not, as he told Judy, because it would upset her. On the contrary, she would be far too interested. She’d want to go and join them, especially if they were plotting trouble of any kind.

He shrugs. ‘Just routine enquiries.’

Romilly loses interest.

‘Is there any coffee?’ she says, yawning neatly, like a cat. ‘I’m exhausted.’ She sounds like a debutante complaining about flower-arranging fatigue.

‘I’ll make you some,’ says Randolph. ‘I didn’t want to offer any to the Old Bill.’

‘Old Bill,’ Romilly smiles. ‘How sweet.’

‘Why, what does your lot call them?’

‘The enemy.’

‘Really, Mum, you sound very childish sometimes.’ Randolph gets up and walks to the window. He can see a line of horses galloping up the hill, their manes and tails streaming out. That’s the way to spend a Sunday morning, riding like a demon with the wind in your face. Not stuck in an office having a ridiculous conversation with your loony-leftie mother.

‘What’s childish about animal rights?’ snaps Romilly. ‘They suffer because we’re too greedy and selfish to do anything about it. Universities use them for their ghastly experiments. This place,’ she gestures towards the window, ‘exploits them. Hundreds of horses die steeple-chasing every year but no one gives a damn because the bookies are making money.’

This place, thinks Randolph, gives you a socking great expense account, enough to finance any amount of designer direct action. He has been looking through his father’s accounts, but now’s not the time to mention that. He is thinking of something else his mother said.

‘The university,’ he says. ‘Are you planning something?’

Romilly smiles. ‘It’s better if you don’t know.’

‘Be careful, Mum.’

‘I’m always careful. Now make the coffee, there’s a good boy.’

CHAPTER 23

Ruth has had a perfectly lovely Sunday. After a leisurely breakfast, she and Max and Kate (and Claudia) had gone for a walk on the Saltmarsh. Claudia had rushed through the grass, putting up flocks of snipe, plunging knee deep into murky pools, barking excitedly at the sky.

‘She likes it here,’ said Max.

Kate had been fairly excited too. When they reached the beach, she ran towards the sea with her arms outstretched. The tide was coming in and Kate had been delighted when a wave broke over her wellingtons. ‘Again! Again!’ she had shouted.

‘That’s the thing about the sea,’ said Max. ‘It does it again and again.’

‘The relentless tide,’ said Ruth, quoting Erik. ‘The unending ebb and flow.’

‘That too,’ grinned Max, throwing a stick for Claudia.

On the way back, Kate had been tired so Max had carried her on his shoulders. A very male way to carry a child, thought Ruth. She never does it that way, preferring to hoist Kate onto her hip, but Cathbad always does. She is sure that Nelson carried his eldest daughters like this when they were young but he has never had the chance with Kate. But she wasn’t going to think about Nelson…

They drove to the Phoenix for lunch. The Phoenix is the pub near Max’s Swaffham dig, the scene of much drinking and carousing that summer, two years ago. Max insists on going to see the site, striding up the steep hill with Kate riding like a Queen. That’s the only problem with Max, Ruth remembered. He loves walking up hills. Nelson is a strider too, always in a hurry, never looking behind to check that she is following. But she wasn’t going to think about Nelson.

To the untutored eye there is little evidence of a Roman settlement in the grey undulating landscape, but Max was looking at a bustling garrison town with Italianate villas, a market place and a road leading directly to the sea. Ruth, arriving breathlessly at the top of the hill, saw it too. She also saw children’s bodies buried under walls, a skull in a well, the Goddess Hecate with her two spectral hounds. The Goddess of the crossroads. Luckily Claudia, distinctly unghostlike, provided a distraction by chasing a rabbit.

‘Claudia!’ shouted Max.

‘Perfectly trained,’ observed Ruth as Claudia, taking absolutely no notice of her master, disappeared over the horizon.

‘I’ve been taking her to obedience classes,’ said Max ruefully. ‘We got a medal for trying hard.’

Kate laughed, tugging Max’s hair.

Claudia arrived back in time for the descent to the Phoenix. Ruth and Max ate roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and even Kate managed three roast potatoes. After lunch, in the late afternoon, they stood outside the pub, Ruth holding Kate, Max with a struggling Claudia on the lead.

‘When will I see you again?’ asked Max. ‘What about next weekend?’

Ruth had been delighted that Max wanted to see her again, that he was making all the running, but, all the same, next weekend seemed a little too soon. ‘I think my parents are coming,’ she extemporised. ‘Maybe the weekend after?’

‘Sounds good,’ Max had said, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. ‘Keep in touch.’

And now, driving back through the twilight, Ruth feels free to enjoy the thought that she actually seems to be in a relationship with Max. A proper grown-up relationship with a proper grown-up man who isn’t married to someone else. A weekend relationship suits her perfectly. She likes having her house to herself all week, not having to cook for another person or wear her chillier, more glamorous, nightwear. But it would be lovely to have someone to see at weekends, to go to plays or to the cinema, to walk with on the beach, to sit and watch Antiques Roadshow with on a Sunday evening. And to have sex with, of course.

It’s nearly dark when she reaches the Saltmarsh. The clocks went back last week and now, at four-thirty, it’s almost night. She has been chatting to Kate all through the journey, trying to keep her awake, and her efforts have been rewarded. Kate, though definitely sleepy, is still bright-eyed, exclaiming happily whenever Ruth starts a new verse of The Wheels on the Bus. What a sexist song, thinks Ruth, why do the mothers do nothing but chatter and the fathers nothing but nod? Kate won’t be able to accuse her mother of chattering – sleeping with strange men perhaps but not chattering. Ruth stops outside the cottage. Bob’s car isn’t there. It’s strange how quickly she has got used to having neighbours. Now she feels slightly nervous at being here on her own, on the edge of the world. Ridiculous, she tells herself, you were alone for nearly two years and nothing happened to you. But the wind is howling in from the sea and Ruth clutches Kate tightly as she gets her out of the car. You’re getting soft, she tells herself.