A Room Full Of Bones

right now.’

Ruth thinks of Mother Julian’s adage: All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. Why is it so hard to believe this?

‘What’s going to happen to the museum?’ she asks.

‘Oh, I’m going to manage it,’ says Caroline, with another wide smile. ‘I’ve got great plans. It’ll be a different place.’

‘What about the stables?’

‘Well, after that drugs business…’

‘What drugs business?’ Ruth wants to scream, but she carries on standing there smiling, holding Kate by the hand. There’s too much going on here that she doesn’t understand.

Caroline switches the smile back on. ‘If the stables stay in business, Randolph will be in charge. It’s what he’s always wanted. He’s a genius with horses. And I’m going to make the museum a real success. We’re going to have proper local history exhibitions starting with “Augustine: the first woman bishop.”

‘Sounds great,’ says Ruth. ‘I’m meeting someone. Is it OK to go inside?’

‘Of course! She’s waiting for you.’

The museum seems deserted but benign in the afternoon light. There’s a room by the entrance lobby which Ruth hadn’t noticed before but which is full of butterflies, impaled upon pins and labelled with spidery Victorian writing. Kate loves the butterflies but her real enthusiasm is reserved for the stuffed animals. She runs delightedly from case to case shouting ‘Fox!’ ‘Dog!’ ‘Cat!’ Her range of animals may be limited but her enjoyment is not. Ruth finds herself looking at them all, even the murderous gulls, with a kinder eye.

Eventually Kate allows herself to be led through the study of Lord Percival Smith (‘Man!’) and into the long gallery. In the Local History Room, Janet Meadows is looking out of the window.

‘Hallo Ruth,’ says Janet.

‘Hi. Thanks for meeting me.’

‘No problem. Is this your little girl?’

‘Yes, this is Kate.’

‘Hallo Kate.’

‘Fox,’ says Kate.

Ruth looks at Janet and remembers her comment when Ruth had remarked flippantly that Augustine’s snake didn’t look very terrifying:

He’d subdued it. Evil has been defeated. He was a great saint.

She thinks of the room as she saw it that day: coffin, guidebook, grass snake and a single shoe.

‘You were here, weren’t you,’ she says, ‘the day Neil was found dead.’

Janet suddenly looks wary. ‘I told you I was. I came to see the opening of the coffin but the place was closed off.’

‘But you came earlier, didn’t you? You put the snake in here and a single shoe, to remind people about Augustine.’

Janet either brought a spare pair of shoes or she walked home barefoot. Ruth bets on the latter. Janet would have walked barefoot to emulate the man she called a ‘great saint’.

‘They had no right to desecrate his grave,’ says Janet. ‘He… she didn’t want anyone to open the coffin. That’s why it was buried where it was. So I put a snake there, a grass snake in a glass case, to remind them of Augustine’s warning. The shoe too. It was one of Jan’s shoes…’ For a second Ruth wonders who Jan is but then she remembers. Jan is, or was, Janet. Her old self, Jan Tomaschewski. ‘I dressed as Jan too,’ Janet is saying now, ‘in one of my old suits. The museum was deserted. I got the snake from the Natural History Room and carried it in here. The coffin was on a trestle in the middle of the room – open.’

‘Open?’

‘Yes, slightly open. I think the curator must have prised it open. I could hear him moving about in his office. So I put the snake and the shoe on the floor. I left the guidebook too, with a few words highlighted, just as a warning. Then I heard someone coming so I climbed out of the window. I don’t think anyone saw me and, if they did, they saw a man in a suit and a hat. Not a woman.’ She turns and does a mock twirl.

It must have been only seconds later that I came in and found Neil Topham dead, or nearly dead, thinks Ruth. Why on earth had he opened the coffin? But it was closed when she saw it. She remembers how easy it was for Phil to prise up the nails, far easier than it should have been. The coffin had already been opened, just days before.

Why would Neil open the coffin?’ asks Ruth.

Janet shrugs. ‘Search me. Perhaps he just wanted a look. Perhaps he just got impatient. Either way, it did for him, poor guy. Bishop Augustine had his – her – revenge.’

By afternoon Nelson is well enough to be moved to another ward. He enjoys the trip. It’s good to see a different view and, as the porters seem determined to take the longest route possible, he gets to see quite a lot of the hospital. Also, the move gave him an excuse to suggest to his mother that she go back to his house and get some rest. She agreed reluctantly, saying that she’d be back in the evening with a proper meal for him. ‘The muck they serve in these places is enough to kill you, so it is.’ As Michelle has also promised to bring him some food, Nelson foresees a clash of wills over the shepherd’s pie. Perhaps Michelle will be so tired that she’ll be happy to let Maureen do the honours. She’s good with his mum. Better than he is, anyway.

The new ward is much more relaxed. Nelson’s bed is by the window and the nurses’ station is right at the other end of the room. He guesses, correctly, that this means that he is considered to be out of danger. His recovery really has been remarkable. He has been able to eat, drink and have a pee – the three measures of achievement in a patient. No one really knows why he has got better so quickly or what was wrong with him in the first place. ‘Last night we thought you were a goner,’ one of the doctors tells him cheerfully. Nelson smiles faintly. He likes a near- death experience as much as the next man but it worries him that so much could have happened while he was out of the picture, asleep, unconscious. He has thought about the prospect of death, all policemen have, but he’d always thought that he’d have a leading role in the drama: negotiating the release of hostages, foiling a terrorist plot, saving children from a burning house. He never thought, when the Grim Reaper came knocking, that he’d be fast asleep.

Nelson’s first visitor of the afternoon is Clough. He comes bearing a bunch of flowers which he is told to leave in the lobby ‘due to health and safety regulations’. Nelson doesn’t know where to look. Cloughie bringing him flowers! He’ll be making him a friendship bracelet next. Still, he appreciates the chance to catch up. Clough tells him all about Operation Octopus, dwelling on his own heroism, and Nelson is suitably impressed. He always knew that there was something funny about the stables but he never thought that it would turn out to be the centre of an international drugs ring. That was smart detective work from Judy. Less smart, of course, to go skipping off in the middle of the night, alone, as a result of a text message. She was lucky that the whole thing turned out so well. Nelson particularly enjoys the bit about The Necromancer and the horse walker.

‘Honestly, boss, he was as big as an elephant. And his teeth! He attacked me but I managed to hold him off. I’m pretty strong when I’m roused. Bastard took a chunk out of my leg though. Do you want a look?’

‘No thanks.’

‘I think Johnson was pretty shaken by the whole thing.’

‘I bet she was.’

‘Some people thought I should have been put in charge but I don’t know…’ Clough trails off modestly. Nelson says nothing, though he would have put Clough in charge. Judy may be the better detective but Clough is senior and that counts for something. Nelson is a great believer in fairness; it comes of being the youngest of three.

No sooner has Clough disappeared through the swing doors than another figure appears, a figure wearing a rather crumpled purple cloak.

‘Hallo Cathbad.’

‘Hi Nelson. You’re looking better.’

‘You didn’t see me when I was ill. At death’s door I was, wasn’t I love?’ Nelson appeals to a passing nurse.

‘So I hear,’ she says, straightening his sheet. ‘They’d given him up for dead in ICU.’

‘Quite an experience,’ says Cathbad, when the nurse has gone.

‘I can’t remember any of it,’ says Nelson. ‘I had these weird dreams though. You were in some of them.’

‘I know,’ says Cathbad.