“I wondered if there were any famous murders associated with Winchester,” Elizabeth said. “The only one I can think of is Sweet Fanny Adams.”
Rowan stifled a cough. “That was in Alton,” he wheezed. “Dreadful story. Dismembered girl in a meadow a hundred and twenty-odd years ago. Couldn’t be much to see there now.”
“I expect not,” said Elizabeth wistfully. “I suppose they buried her?”
“The British Navy has its doubts,” said Rowan. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m a forensic anthropologist. I was hoping to get a chance to use my training at least once on this tour.”
Rowan Rover inhaled another column of smoke down the wrong passage. When his coughing fit subsided and he had waved away all inquiries about his health, he said, “I expect you will have a chance to do a bit of that at Madame Tussaud’s when the tour concludes in London. You know about the Chamber of Horrors, of course?”
Elizabeth nodded. “And I’m looking forward to taking your Ripper tour as well. Incidentally, I’ve read your book,
“I believe so,” said Rowan Rover, trying to channel his thoughts back to murder in the abstract. “Glasgow, wasn’t it? Young boy who poisoned his family and was sent to Broadmoor?”
“Right,” said Elizabeth. “I knew him.”
“Did you really?” asked Rowan Rover happily. “This was after he got out, I take it? Oh! Were you on that dig in the Highlands with him where he started up again? Were you really?”
For the next thirty miles they prattled on, dropping killers’ names left and right, while Alice MacKenzie dropped off to sleep and Susan Cohen, refreshened after her own nap, told Bernard the bus driver in agonizing detail all about beautiful downtown Minneapolis.
Nearly two hours later the coach left the motorway and negotiated a series of increasingly smaller thoroughfares, until it finally pulled in to the city of Winchester. Emma Smith studied the narrow streets, flanked by rose brick buildings, sporting shop names and pub signs. “I don’t recognize any of this,” she said.
“We may have come in the back way, so to speak,” said Frances Coles soothingly. “After all, the driver has to choose a route wide enough to accommodate the bus.”
“Look, Emma!” said her mother, who was gazing out the window. “Isn’t that the market cross? I recognized it from one of the coasters you brought me.”
Emma studied the street scene with a frown of recognition. “That was the high street,” she said. “But it isn’t a street anymore. Apparently, they have made it into a mall.” Her frown suggested that she disapproved of the giddy town planners who were mucking about with the design of an ancient city. She braced herself for a renovated cathedral with neon lights and a petting zoo.
Fortunately, however, civic irresponsibility stopped short of architectural sacrilege. A moment later the bus rounded a corner. “Winchester Cathedral,” Bernard announced.
“Right over there.” It was quite unchanged. The gray Gothic edifice with its spires and buttresses sat in the middle of a well-kept green, looking much as it had for centuries, unaltered since Cromwell’s men shot out the huge pictorial stained-glass window for cannon practice and the puzzle-inept churchmen had glued it back in as a mosaic. Twentieth-century visitors to the cathedral often praised its twelfth-century builders for their modern design instincts, when, in fact, the credit should have been given to the Roundhead Artillery.
“And here’s your hotel,” said Bernard, stopping the coach in the driveway of a very modern brick and glass building a hundred yards from a wing of the cathedral.
“I see,” said Emma Smith thoughtfully. “This is what they were planning to build back in the Sixties when they found the artifacts. This is where the cathedral outbuildings would have been.”
Rowan Rover was on his feet with more immediate concerns. “Ladies and Charles,” he announced, “this is what the tour calls a free evening, which you are soon to learn means that it is
He braced himself for a storm of protest from budget-bound Americans, who were, he knew, already reeling from the unexpected rise of the pound, making their dollars worth half as much as last year. To his surprise, no one objected to an evening at leisure. “It’s only money,” said Susan Cohen with her grating laugh. “I wonder if Winchester has any pizza parlors.”
When the coach door opened, Rowan stationed himself on the pavement in case anyone needed help getting out. They looked fit enough, but you could never be certain. “Bernard and the hotel porter will assist you with your cases. After that, we shan’t be seeing Bernard until tomorrow afternoon.”
After he shepherded them into the Wessex and saw to it that everyone had a room, Rowan Rover ascended to his own assigned quarters on the third floor to spend the remainder of the afternoon plotting his murder. He discovered that either by chance or as an expression of divine sarcasm, his tiny bedroom was graced with an enormous picture window, affording him an inescapable view of Winchester Cathedral. It loomed reproachfully before him in the fading sunlight, as he sat down with his itinerary to schedule in an unfortunate accident.
His most optimistic maiden aunt wouldn’t have called Rowan Rover a religious person, but years of public school chapel-going had left a lingering impression upon his soul that was more superstition than piety; besides, his keenly developed sense of irony could not fail to miss the omen of the cathedral view overlooking his plottings of murder.
“Well, look here,” he said to the ceiling, and to anything that might or might not lie infinitely above it, “I’ve already spent the money, all right? It’s for a good cause. Surely you don’t disapprove of a public school education? I could donate a bit to the Church, if you like.”
He glanced out at the church, a squat gray pile of granite that seemed crouched like a hound of hell, ready to leap at his window. He tried to bolster his resolve by picturing the Deity as an ethereal version of Alec Guinness, nodding understandingly at his plight as one gentleman to another, but instead he kept seeing his first wife, with that
“Look, it’s just this one murder,” said Rowan reasonably. “And then I shan’t break that particular commandment ever again. I could do something commendable to atone for it. Give up smoking-no, perhaps not that. It isn’t a commandment anyhow.” He wandered over to the bureau and began idly stuffing the complimentary chocolate packets and tea bags into his suitcase, next to the extra bars of soap and vials of shampoo already liberated from the bathroom. “Well, I’ll think of something.”
Alice MacKenzie and Frances Coles, who had paid tour fees based on a double occupancy rate, decided to be roommates. They had followed the porter upstairs to a spacious third-floor room overlooking the car park. Once they settled in, they boiled water for tea in the electric kettle provided in each room by the management.
Frances’ eyes shone with excitement as she savored her first trip to England. She was a primary school teacher, with that delightful quality of unjaded enthusiasm that one sometimes finds in people who enjoy small children and spend considerable time among them. With her winsome smile and jogger’s figure, she made an appealing contrast to Alice’s bluff heartiness.
“What do you think so far?” asked Frances.
Alice was reading the little packets in the china bowl beside the teapot. “Too early to tell,” she said, selecting two tea bags and placing them in the pot, which she filled to the brim with the boiling water. “I thought our guide was a little strange at first, but he seems very knowledgeable.”
“I want to buy his book,” said Frances. “If we see any bookshops, I’ll go in and look for it. I also collect cat figurines.” She fingered the emerald-eyed cat pinned to the shawl collar of her black sweater.
“We have time for a walk before dinner,” said Alice cheerily. With a fresh application of aloe cream, her finger had ceased to trouble her, and she felt refreshed after her nap in the coach.
Frances looked doubtful. “Walking by ourselves? Suppose we got lost?”
“Emma Smith and her mother are in the room next to us. We could see if they want to go. Emma spent a summer here once.” Alice poured a cup of tea for each of them. “I’d hate to spend my first day in England doing nothing. Such a waste.”
“True,” said Frances. “You never know when it might rain. Let’s ask them.”
Twenty minutes later Alice MacKenzie, Frances Coles, and Emma Smith were strolling across the lawn of
