Time Enough To Die, page 9
"Really? Matilda was saying something the other night about St. Michael and the dragon."
"Matilda?"
"Dr. Sweeney's second-in-command at the dig. She's American, too, but she knows an awful lot about British stuff."
"Ah,” said Nick, with a thoughtful nod. “There's a green man carved into one of the pews in the south aisle of the church. I'll show you."
Ashley found herself escorted through the churchyard with its ranks of weathered gravestones and into the musty interior of the building. Nick guided her from nave to transept to chancel, their steps ringing on the floor, pointing out paintings and carvings that, he said, had pagan subtexts. He spoke of the old spirits of wood and stone and water. He drew parallels between the mysteries of Greek Eleusis and Welsh Annwn. He spoke movingly on the meanings of the bull, the buck, and the horns of an altar until Ashley grew dizzy, with information overload and physical attraction both.
"The white horse,” he concluded as they turned from yet another shadowed recess, “is the goddess Rhiannon. Rhiannon, Keridwen, and Brighid are the three aspects of the Celtic mother goddess, expressed in fire and water. More recently the white horse has been the symbol of the Saxons, and of the House of Hanover. If you've read your Homer you remember that the horse was sacred to Poseidon. Who was Neptune to the Romans."
He might be pulling her leg, thought Ashley. She preferred to think he was an amiable eccentric overdosed on Robert Graves, James Frazer, and Joseph Campbell. A scholar, even, like Matilda and Sweeney. “The Trojan Horse,” she suggested, “and the emperor Caligula's horse that he made a senator...."
"Very good! I knew you were a clever girl.” Nick seized her hand and brushed it with his lips. A shock wave of sensation ran up her arm, exploding in the pit of her stomach. She retrieved her hand and ducked her head to hide her glowing face. He was piling it on pretty heavily. But how exciting to have a handsome, intelligent man pile on anything at all.
The stained-glass windows lightened and darkened as clouds skimmed by outside. Nick led Ashley around a complete circuit of the church and returned to the porch, where he pointed to a wickerwork contraption hung high on the wall next to several impressive sets of antlers. “There's the May Day Hobby Horse, and the horns for the dance. You'll be here for May Day, won't you?"
"Oh yes. I saw a poster about the celebration somewhere—in the hotel, probably."
"Clapper turns a few bob from the tourists. He lays in extra beer and five kinds of film. Like most ceremonies, the May Day rites have lost their original meaning and become an excuse to make money."
He pushed open the doors. Ashley blinked at the rush of sunlight and fresh air and almost tripped over the hollowed stone of the step. Two crows perched on the churchyard fence. Ashley waited for Nick to rhapsodize over them, too. All he said was, “I told you I knew my history."
"I'm impressed. What college did you go to?"
"University's for posh toffs with brass. I didn't even pass my O-levels. Doesn't mean I couldn't keep on reading, though."
"Reading's free,” Ashley agreed. “Is there a good library here?"
Nick chuckled at some private joke. “Yes, but it's not the public one.” He ushered her through the gate, took her hand and bowed over it. He didn't offer to read her palm. Instead he kissed it again, lightly. She felt as though she were holding a handful of his warm breath. Her fingertips tingled even after he released her.
"Thank you for the—er—mythology lesson,” she managed to say.
"Would you like another one? This Sunday, perhaps? I'll meet you here, four o'clock."
"Oh, er, well.... “Why not? She shouldn't miss a valuable learning experience just because the New Age travelers weren't on the official curriculum. A learning experience of more than one kind. “Sure. I'll meet you here on Sunday."
"Super.” Nick's grin was an in-your-face dare that defied both authority and convention. Ashley couldn't help but grin back.
With a backwards wave he strolled away. Beside the ancient magpie house he passed the police constable, who shot him a suspicious glare. Nick turned with a quick, controlled dance step and made an elaborate bow. The officer huffed and walked on by.
Ashley started back toward the Green Dragon. Image and sensation cascaded through her mind. She felt as though she were going over Niagara Falls without so much as a barrel to protect her. Her mother had always insisted that her main goal in life was to protect her daughter, as though Ashley couldn't be trusted with the truth. Her mother would have huffed just like the policeman and slammed the door in Nick's face. He was too brash, too vital. Even Chris, of late, lamentable memory, was blandly self-absorbed compared to Nick.
Compared to Gareth, for that matter, Ashley thought as she rounded the corner of the hotel and almost fell over him.
The reporter was standing by the curb, talking to the slight figure on the brown horse. The horse turned its large, liquid eyes toward Ashley and shifted its weight with a clack of hoof on pavement. The colorless woman on its back stopped abruptly in mid-phrase. Gareth looked around.
"Hello,” he said. “Della Reynolds, this is Ashley Walraven, one of the students. Ashley, Mrs. Reynolds."
"How do you do,” said Della.
"Hello,” Ashley returned breathlessly.
"I'm off,” said Della to Gareth. “Call in if you'd like to see them."
"Thank you. I'll do that.” With a pat on the horse's flank Gareth stood back. Della and mount trotted away toward Fortuna Stud.
Matilda walked out of the hotel. “Hello there. Was that Mrs. R.?"
"Yes.” Gareth told her. “She was offering to show me Adrian's antiquities collection."
"You do want to cover private collecting in your article,” replied Matilda. To Ashley she said, “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary. What have you been up to?"
"I—er—I.... “She didn't want to admit she'd been hanging out with one of the travelers, since Gareth so obviously disapproved of them. He just didn't understand, no reflection on him, but....
Matilda smiled. “I'm prying. Never mind."
"That's all right,” Ashley replied gratefully. “Have you eaten? I'm going to get a sandwich or something in the bar."
"Yes, thank you,” said Gareth. “Matilda, I need you to look over my notes, make sure I have the dates correct."
"Certainly."
All three of them walked together into the hotel. There was the poster by the reception desk, just as Ashley remembered it. “Corcester May Day Fair,” it read. “Traditional Festivities. Song, Dance, and Real Ale.” Below the words were sketches of costumed figures that were either dancing or fleeing for their lives.
Re-enactments for the tourists, Ashley thought. Nick thought the old traditions were still viable in spite of such debasement. And why shouldn't they be? Too many time-honored customs had been swept away by the pace of the modern world. Or so her mother often said, griping about the now ubiquitous “Ms.” or the way no one bothered to answer an R.S.V.P. any more. As much as Ashley liked Dr. Sweeney, she couldn't bring herself to agree with his sophisticated cynicism any more than she could agree with her mother's blind belief. Just where Nick fell between those two poles she couldn't say.
Ashley waited in the lobby until Gareth and Matilda disappeared upstairs. Matilda was considerate, intelligent, and assertive without being aggressive, she thought. A good role model, even though she probably didn't have a sex life any more.
Then there was Gareth. In spite of his red hair, he was cooler than Nick—in terms of temperature, that is. His personality, like his body, was more compact. More adult. He didn't have to try to be sexy, did he? He just was, with that hint of hidden depths. So far, though, he'd looked at Ashley like a kid sister, if that much.
Nick was trying to be sexy. He might even be a version of Jason, more surface gloss than depth. But he wasn't Jason. He was polite, he was certainly exotic, and he was definitely making a play for her. A date with him wouldn't hurt anything.
Smoothing her hair, Ashley turned toward the bar. Her hand smelled sweet and smoky, like incense. Her hand smelled like Nick. A thrill tightened the back of her neck. She didn't analyze just what kind of thrill it was.
Chapter Eight
Gareth unlocked the door and ushered Matilda inside. She noted without surprise that his tiny single room was neat as the proverbial pin—although why a pin should be neat, she didn't know. On the back corner of the dresser sat a CD player and a stack of plastic CD boxes. She titled her head to read the titles. “A Celtic Journey.” “Ton Gron,” “Can Gwynt Y Gorllewin,” and “Blas Y Pridd.” Mozart and Puccini.
Matilda sat down in a chair and closed her eyes. Her deep breaths detected the odors of soap, starched laundry, and horse. She told herself that it didn't matter that Gareth had interesting tastes in music. It didn't matter which boy had been flirting with Ashley, or that Ashley was developing a crush on Gareth. Ashley wasn't the reason Matilda was in Corcester. She was here because of antiquities looting, and because of murder.
When she opened her eyes Gareth was looking at her doubtfully. “Telepathy?"
"Just trying to sift through all the impressions I've been getting. That's what they hired me to do."
Keeping a very straight face, Gareth pulled a briefcase from beneath the bed. “How are you getting on, then? Can you prove that the statuary was stolen from here?"
"No. The looters must have cleaned out the entire cache. If they'd left an artifact, or even a broken bit of an artifact, I could compare it with the ones in Canada."
"Surely there are a lot of artifacts still at the fort."
"Oh yes. Some very interesting ones, too. But that particular set of artifacts, the statuary, had not only been made at approximately the same time and place, it had been buried together for almost two millennia, so it would all feel the same...."
The corner of Gareth's mouth tucked itself in skeptically.
"If I blindfolded you,” Matilda tried to explain, “and handed you two handmade wool Aran sweaters and two factory-made acrylic sweaters, you'd be able to classify them by touch, wouldn't you?"
"I suppose so. Is that what it's like, then?"
"It's about as much like that as water is like Guinness Stout."
Laughing, Gareth opened the briefcase.
"As for catching the looters who took the statuary, and keeping any more looters from taking anything,” Matilda went on, “I hope I'll be able to keep one jump ahead of them. I wouldn't be surprised if Reynolds is involved."
"Clapper implied as much. Perhaps Reynolds and Linda were working together to begin with, and she double-crossed him. Now Reynolds can't admit he knows for certain the statuary came from Cornovium, because he'd be admitting he took it himself."
"Many of our leads come from one looter turning in another."
Gareth spread several file folders across the bed, spilling papers and photos. “I told you what Clapper said about the travelers."
"Devil-worshipping druggies feeding at the public trough? Or was that Reynolds's line?"
"They agree, I expect. Here are the police reports and transcripts of the interviews, if you're sure you want to see them. A murder case is hardly an art fraud case.” Gareth sat back against the headboard.
"It is when the victim is apparently involved in the illegal antiquities trade.” Matilda fished her reading glasses out of her shoulder bag, moved to the bed, and began to sift through the pile.
The pictures made in the morgue at Manchester were well-lighted and clearly focused. On the stainless steel tray Linda's body seemed like a cool and clinical anatomical display, nothing human. It was the photos taken at Durslow that captured the horror of her murder. Her body had lain crumpled on the leaf-strewn stone, one hand outstretched, her head twisted back at an unthinkable angle, her face turned to the indifferent sky. Dead faces had no expression, but still Matilda thought that Linda had died surprised.
She glanced through the forensic reports. The right parietal of Linda's skull had been fractured in a blunt force trauma. Her esophagus, trachea, and associated tissue had been cut with several strokes of a small but very sharp knife. Only her cervical vertebrae still connected her head to her body. Blood had soaked the back of her clothing and pooled on the stone itself. A faint stain on the basin of the spring meant that the murderer had washed his hands there. He must have gotten blood on his clothing as well. His shoes had left no prints.
"No murder weapon,” Matilda said.
"The murderer took it away with him,” replied Gareth. “We can say ‘him', if you like."
"Just to simplify the discussion, yes, let's."
"She was bashed from behind with a rock. There were certainly enough to hand, although the investigators couldn't find any that matched the injury. He had to bash her head in first, mind you. His knife was too small to have done much damage with the first thrust. She would have been able to fight back. But there were no parry cuts to her hands and arms. There were no bruises other than the natural lividity of the body."
Matilda put down the photos. Gareth was looking past the walls of the room, visualizing the murder scene. He'd been here three days and hadn't yet solved the crime. He hadn't even found any clues, other than the receipt from the antiquities shop in Manchester. If he could have produced a solution by sheer brain power, like calculating pi to the hundredth place, he would already have the criminal behind bars.
"And she lay there for two days until she was found,” Matilda picked up another printed page. “Very cold weather, that was helpful from the forensics standpoint.... “She looked up. “Gareth, her body was found February third. She was killed on February first. February first is Imbolc, one of the old Celtic quarter days. Now February second is St. Brigit's day, one of those saints who used to be a god."
He cocked his brows at her. “You think that's important?"
"It might be. So might the fact that she was killed at Durslow, an ancient sacred site."
"The murderer was familiar with the area, knew the ledge was an isolated place."
"Great stretches of countryside are isolated, especially in the Peak District east of here."
"Are we going back to the devil-worshipping nutters, then, with Linda as some sort of sacrifice?"
Matilda shook her head. “Rumors of evil conspiracies are no more than public paranoia. Satanists only prowl the streets looking for innocent victims in TV movies-of-the week, not in real life. One of the few genuine cases I've ever heard of was on the Mexican border several years ago. The leader of that cult was playing terrible games to impress his followers. You see the same thing happen in the odd Christian cult, unfortunately. It's a variety of mental pollution."
"Is there such a thing as authentic ritual?"
"Not to mention real magic? Yes, there is. In the world's great religions you can trace an unbroken ceremonial path back for thousands of years. For modern pagan ritual, though—the varieties are not at all synonymous—the best you can do is combine educated guesses with a lot of imagination. Which is why it probably doesn't matter that the ancient Celts would occasionally sacrifice a human being not on Imbolc but on Beltane, May first—the progenitor of Corcester's happy little festival."
"Would a group of nutters care about Imbolc or Beltane? They can make up the rules as they go along, just like the yobs in Mexico."
"Exactly. That's our variable in the case. If there's some kind of relationship between Linda's death and the rumors of devil-worship, there might be a relationship between the rumors and the stolen antiquities."
"That's a bit round the houses,” protested Gareth.
Matilda sighed. “The Maypole and the horn dances and the hobby horses that look like children's games on the poster downstairs once had all the gravity, say, of Holy Communion to us."
"I'm an atheist,” Gareth said.
"Even so, you're not likely to trash out a church, are you?"
"No. What's your point?"
"That just because you don't believe in something yourself doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. Whether something is real or not doesn't matter, as long as a person believes it's real and acts on his beliefs."
"That's as may be, but I'll carry on believing in fakes and phonies, myself."
"Fine,” Matilda said with a smile.
Gareth shifted his weight. The bedsprings creaked and the piles of paper slipped sideways. Voices rose and fell in the hall outside. A phone rang. A door slammed. “The case might be a perfectly simple one,” he said. “Linda was a confederate of Reynolds, he found out she was planning to grass on him, so he killed her. I'll have a go at Della, see if I can break his alibi."
"Be careful. She was very nervous talking to you tonight, and yet there was something—well—hungry there as well. She's a desperate woman."
"Super,” he groaned.
Matilda leafed through the transcripts. The police had interviewed Adrian and Della Reynolds and the stable man Jimmy. They had talked to various travelers who identified themselves only as Bob, Sanjay, Shirl, Nick, Gordon and DeDe—none of whom had ever heard of Linda Burkett. The truck driver boyfriend had an alibi. Celia Dunning had been shocked at the entire distasteful business. Linda's relatives had been stunned into incoherence.
At last Matilda bundled everything into a pile. “Worse than a crossword puzzle, isn't it? You don't know what is a clue and what isn't. All you know is that you don't have all the clues."
"Well I won't say which one of us hasn't a clue,” Gareth responded, but he grinned as he spoke.
Matilda whacked his thigh with a sheaf of papers. “I'll talk to Ms. Dunning in Manchester."
"That leaves me to the travelers and to Della. In the future one or the other of us should always be here, don't you think?"
"Yes.” Matilda tucked her glasses away, stood and stretched. “Good night. Don't dream of gods, demons, and forensics."
"I rarely dream.” Gareth got up and opened the door for her. “Be sure to ask Dunning about the stolen statuary as well."
