A Crowded Coffin(64)
An involuntary shudder made her hug herself for comfort. ‘Dear God, imagine being a priest in hiding, stuck down here till someone came to tell you it was safe, and terrified all the time that someone would give you away.’ She cast a fearful glance round at the shadows. ‘Think what capture meant; torture, hanging, drawing and quartering.’ A thought struck her. ‘Ugh, I just hope we don’t stumble over a skeleton, one of those poor devils who never made it out!’
‘You’re supposed to be the little ray of sunshine round here,’ Rory groaned. ‘Talk about a ghoul.’
She managed a laugh. ‘Someone’s made an opening at the side of the cistern,’ she went on, standing on tiptoe to try and make it out. ‘As well as making the hole at the top bigger, I mean. The water tank and the hypocaust were originally quite separate of course, but it’s been altered so you can get through from the shaft. There’s air down here and look, there must have been a proper hatch above us, cast iron perhaps? You can see the ledges it rested on.’ She was excited. ‘I bet it’s still in use; that temporary lid would disintegrate in no time. Thank goodness we haven’t got the original one up there. They were obviously in too much of a hurry to get rid of us.’
She felt carefully round the brickwork, wrinkling her nose as she came to the badger’s sett. ‘And who knows? The Attlins could even have used it in the Civil War, to hide royalist soldiers from the Roundheads.’
‘Harriet.’ Rory’s voice was harsh, his breathing ragged. ‘Shut up a minute and look over here.’
While she was thinking aloud, he had wriggled over to the culvert, so she joined him, shining her phone alongside his torch, her eyes squinting along the finger of light that shone into the darkness. The smell was much worse here, and she gagged just as she caught up with Rory, who was staring at something. Just visible, secreted in a blind alley that was part of the ventilation system, the long body of a man lay very still, his hand flung clear of the rough covering of stones. Not a Roman, not a skeleton, it was a man whose modern, casual trousers and dark-grey jacket were only too visible.
‘Stay there a minute, Harriet, there isn’t room for both of us.’ Rory shuffled painfully on his hands and knees to the opening of the cul-de-sac. He carefully shifted a few stones; there had been no attempt at complete concealment, just a cursory camouflage.
‘Christ almighty!’ He stared down at the earth-sprinkled hair, at the bruised, but unmistakably dead features of a man he recognized. ‘He’s been shot!’
Harriet could bear it no longer. ‘Who is it?’ She halted, horrified. ‘But, but that’s the vicar; that’s John Forrester.’
‘No, it’s not,’ he said quietly, shining the torch to show her the dead man’s face. His voice shook as he retreated.
‘Oh, my God.’ Harriet peered over his shoulder. ‘I thought the smell was the badgers but….’ she gulped, her hand to her mouth, ‘it’s Mike Goldstein. But I thought it was Mike out there with Brendan. It was Mike who hit you, wasn’t it? I was sure it was Mike.’
Her stomach heaved and she broke off abruptly, crawling aside just in time before she was violently sick. As she heaved, she was aware of Rory retching and taking deep breaths.
She rocked back on her heels, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, as they stared at the body of Mike Goldstein who so manifestly had not been digging in the Burial Field; Mike, who could not possibly have hit Rory; Mike, who was so very clearly dead.
It was time to face facts.
‘There’s only one explanation; it has to have been John Forrester all along,’ she said flatly, almost in disbelief. ‘The vicar and Brendan Whittaker. All that stuff about oil exploration was just a smokescreen.’
It took them a good ten minutes to calm down. Rory was shivering, a hangover from the fever he’d caught in that Far Eastern jail, and for once Harriet was feeling her age and more.
‘Here.’ She found a packet of mints in her pocket. ‘Very soothing to the frayed nerves, peppermint.’ Habit helped her to summon up some self-control. She put an arm round Rory’s shoulders and hugged him, but there was a treacherous wobble in her voice as she tried to joke, ‘Bit more than you bargained for, isn’t it? Me too. I promised Sam I wouldn’t play at being Miss Marple but this is—’ She swallowed, unable to continue.
She shook herself, unable to leave it. ‘You said Mike was at the party so he can’t have been here…. Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ She managed at last to shy away from the thought of the dead man. ‘This place is depressing in its own right, a bit like a coffin, this tank. Sorry,’ she grimaced. ‘Not a helpful thing to say. Still, as long as I’m being macabre, it’s a pretty crowded coffin. I’m going to wriggle along the way the cat came, and see if I can find out how he got in.’