Grave Consequences (2 page)

It was Dora’s turn to wrinkle her nose. “I don’t think we’re either of us quite the…adventurer that you are. Dirt and…things.” What “things” archaeology might represent for Dora—disease, alligators, or bandits—were left to her imagination alone. The other scholar shook her head definitely, rubbing her thumb against her fingers as if to rid them of imaginary filth.

“Dora, it’s not like that! Research in the great outdoors? It’s the best part of my job!”

Dora smiled pityingly and turned to watch the landscape as it rolled by, her head now wreathed in blue smoke.

Coughing a little, I was becoming increasingly dizzy. A glance at my watch revealed that it was now nearly one o’clock, an hour and a half since we’d begun our trek out of London and more than three and a half hours since Jane was supposed to pick me up. I began to worry again, but was then distracted by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. A church tower stood above the other buildings in the town we were approaching. We crossed a bridge that spanned a wide, lazy-looking river and I shook my head: I’d never been here before, so why did it all seem so familiar?

Palmer answered my unspoken questions. “We’re just coming to the outskirts of Marchester, this moment.”

The townscape was familiar to me, I realized with a start, because I had been studying Jane’s website in preparation for working on the dig. “Great! Mr. Palmer, the dig is over by the new church. Well, not really new new, but the replacement after the old abbey was burnt down in the sixteenth century. It’s Church Street, that makes sense doesn’t it? I guess that’s where I’d better try to find Jane first.”

Palmer drove along without paying much attention to me. “I know the town very well, ma’am. Never fear.”

“So what is it you’re looking for on this project?” Dora said. “Something unwholesome, I presume.”

I frowned: Dora knew perfectly well what I was doing, we’d been over it all when we were trying to see whether our schedules in England would overlap. Her studied interest could only mean that she was planning something; I could practically hear the wheels turning within wheels. More machinations than a Detroit assembly line, more plots than a graveyard.

Nonetheless I was used to Dora, and more than that, I was presently grateful to her. So I indulged her, wondering what was hatching in that byzantine brain of hers.

“Jane Compton and I know each other from conferences and books—”

“Your books.”

“And hers,” I agreed. “We met just after I finished graduate school, years ago now; her work here in England tends to date earlier than mine in New England, but she is doing some fairly neat stuff with women’s presence in the archaeological record, and that’s how we connected. She and her husband Greg Ashford have been working on the site of Marchester Abbey, a Benedictine monastery that was built in the twelfth century. This is their second season. I thought I’d take a couple of weeks and see how things get done on this side of the puddle.”

Dora looked sour and picked a tiny fleck of tobacco daintily from her tongue. “Don’t be vulgar. What you really mean is that you wanted a vacation, but were too much of an obsessive actually to go somewhere warm with lots of rum. So you thought you’d take your spare time and do some more work. How typical of you, Emma.”

“Not at all.” I shifted a little in my seat. “Not entirely. I have other work in England, documentary research, that I need to get on to, for Fort Providence and my new research on the Chandler family. But I also thought I’d give myself a break by actually digging, for a change, rather than overseeing everyone else while they have all the fun. Being the director is great, but you never get to dig. And for your
information, Brian and I are going on vacation, the last two weeks before classes start.” So there, I thought.

Dora wasn’t impressed. “Let me guess; you’ll be tearing down more of that monstrosity of a house of yours?”

“No, we’re taking a break from renovations.” I had her now. “We’re going away. Don’t know where yet, he won’t tell me. Anyway, Jane and Greg have been working on the burials this year, which will be fun for me. The rules about grave excavations are different in Britain than in the United States. It will be less complicated here anyway.”

I noticed that Palmer was now studying me in the rearview as often as he could safely tear his eyes away from the road. I couldn’t blame him because I was still as fascinated by archaeology as I had been when I started out in the field, almost twenty-five years ago, at the age of eight.

“The site is pretty close to the new church that was built after the abbey was destroyed. The abbey ruins are on the banks of that river we just crossed, so it should fill my requirements for working on really gorgeous sites. And I figure if the beer is as good as Jane keeps insisting, I may never go home.”

“You know there was a student gone missing from that dig?” Palmer offered. “She’s been missing since last Thursday.”

“Did she go home?”

“Didn’t say a word to anyone; she just vanished,” he replied with ghoulish satisfaction.

“Students can get discouraged and take off,” I said. “It happens, sometimes. Was there a fight or anything?”

“Nothing at all,” Palmer said.

“Her parents must be going crazy.”

“You might think so.”

“Well, yeah, I’d think so,” I said. “At home, a kid goes missing, the parents are all over the television, flyers plastered all over town—”

“Well,” the driver said. “Twenty-two’s hardly a kid, is it?”

“I really don’t think there’s that much difference—” I began, but it was then that I realized with a start that we were heading away from the church tower that I knew marked the site’s approximate location. A few minutes passed, and it became clearer and clearer that we were not just navigating our way around the one-way streets, but were in fact heading for the outskirts of town, and directly away from the site. I began to worry.

“Dora, Palmer’s overshot the site, I think,” I said in a low voice. “The church tower back there—”

“He’s not missed anything; he’s taking us to Marchester-le-Grand. To see Pooter.” Dora flicked an even inch of ash into the ashtray.

Panic rose in me. “What! Dora, Jane and Greg are going to get worried when I don’t—”

“Jane and Greg should have picked you up hours ago if they were that worried,” she mimicked back. “Emma, Pooter will be dying to meet you! He’s never met an American archaeologist before and will be utterly charmed by you. It will only be for a moment or two, then I’ll make sure that you’re whisked back to your precious Jane and Greg.”

I considered my grubby state and knew that I wasn’t fit for meeting a lord of the realm. I was tired, worried, and plain pissed off with Dora for being exactly as she always was. “I’m not some sort of prize you can go parading around in front of your friends,” I said tersely.

“Oh, my dear.” Dora looked at me sympathetically; of course I was. “If Pooter’s kind enough to offer you a lift, then you should be gracious enough to say thanks in person. Where are your manners?”

I eyed Dora sourly; Pooter didn’t know I existed. I knew full well that she didn’t buy all that Miss Manners nonsense and that she didn’t really expect me to believe she did. She, however, knew that
I
believed in it and was using my ingrained pretentious Connecticut upbringing against me like a canny judo opponent. Anyone who treated other people’s servants like her own, smoked Cuban stogies in other peo
ple’s Bentleys, and generally ordered the universe to suit herself wasn’t going to pay attention to my protests, no matter how logical, polite, or anything else. There was simply no gainsaying Dora, as I’d learned by hard experience back at home. So I settled back into the Bentley’s upholstery and consoled myself that I could try calling Jane and Greg again when I got to Marchester-le-Grand, but deep in my heart, I knew I didn’t have a choice at all.

“How’s Brian?”

Since I knew Dora and Brian cordially loathe each other, it was obvious that the question was a distraction. The one thing I had been able to insist upon, early on in our relationship, was that she not criticize my husband to my face.

“Brian’s fine. Busy,” I said, not mollified by her overtures. I stared out the window.

“Good, good.”

“Sure you wouldn’t like to try one of the cigars, ma’am?” Palmer offered. “Might take the edge off you.”

Great, now everyone thought I was edgy and unpleasant. I crossed my arms over my chest and continued to inspect Marchester as we drove away from it. The low, whitewashed shops and brick row houses gave way to low hills and fields separated by lines of trees. If you squinted, it wasn’t so different from where I taught, in Maine, and where I lived, in rural Massachusetts.

Shortly thereafter, we turned down a long, tree-lined drive that led to a vast house of venerable gray masonry and darker sandstone details. I guessed that the main part of the house was sixteenth century, but it was clear to me that other, later additions had been built on through the years. The grounds were immaculately kept and I had to believe that the little folly that I could just make out on the horizon contained a piece of genuine classical statuary brought back for the purpose from someone’s Grand Tour three hundred years ago.

The house was in good repair, and that, along with the Bentley, the grounds, and the driver, coupled with Dora’s ca
sual talk of “pictures,” led me to believe that Lord…Pooter…was definitely not one of the growing fraternity of the titled impoverished.

We pulled up to the front of the house with a crunch of gravel. This time I waited until Palmer had opened my door for me, then got out and stretched. Dora headed right up to the front door as if she knew the way, and, once again, I was left to follow if I would.

“Perhaps you’d like to freshen up first, while I inform Lord Hyde-Spofford that you’re here and get the tea?”

Hyde-Spofford makes much more sense than Pooter, I thought with relief, but why is the chauffeur getting the tea? “Yes, please, and if I could trouble you to use the phone? I’m sure my friends are quite worried—”

“Of course. Over there.” Palmer led me to a curtained alcove that housed a modern touch-tone phone.

I dialed the number for Jane and Greg’s house for the tenth time that day. This time I got an answer after the second
brrrr-brrrr.

“Hello? Yes?” came the frantic answer. It was a male voice.

“Hello, er, this is Emma Fielding—”

“Oh, Emma, thank God!” Relief suffused the voice on the other end of the line. “This is Greg, Jane’s husband. Where are you?”

“I’m in a house, Lord Hyde-Spofford’s house, in Marchester-le-Grand. A friend gave me a lift.”

“Oh?” There was a pause in which Greg was too polite to ask obvious questions. “Well, I’m glad you found your way this far. Things have been in a dreadful muddle here and when I ever realized that we’d left you stranded…Jane’s almost in a state of nervous collapse—”

The worry in his voice was enough to infect me. “Is she all right? What’s happened?”

“Jane’s all right,” Greg reassured me hurriedly. “Only she’s had a dreadful shock. We unearthed something rather nasty and puzzling this morning, and since Julia’s gone—”

I broke in before he could add any more confusion. “Greg, what did you find this morning?” I mentally ran down the list of possibilities: a broken sewer line or alarm system, contaminated groundwater, and old tannery or other early industrial waste site, any of which would require emergency attention.

“We…we found a skeleton.”

That took me a minute. An instant urge to be sarcastic was replaced by a growing concern, and, hoping against hope that he didn’t mean what I thought he did, I tried to keep the irony out of my words. “But Greg…it’s an abbey
graveyard
you’re working on…”

“Emma, this skellie isn’t like the others.” I could hear Greg swallow and, moisten his lips, and I knew I was correct. My heart sank.

“This one isn’t right,” he continued. “The orientation, the location, the depth…it doesn’t look medieval. It’s hard to tell, we’ve only just hit it and all, but it looks modern. Very modern. Too modern, actually. We called the police. They’re still at the site. We’re still trying to determine whether…whoever it is…died naturally.”

W
HATEVER IT IS
, I
TOLD MYSELF FIRMLY, IT HAS
nothing to do with me. It’s not my problem, I don’t know who it is; I wasn’t even here when the skeleton was found.

“Emma? Are you there?”

“Yes, Greg, sorry, it’s the jet lag. Umm, I’m not sure what to do. I’m not even really sure where I am, exactly—” I looked around, as if expecting to see a conveniently placed address plate inside the house. Outside the nook, the ever-helpful Palmer made a polite noise. I covered the receiver and stuck my head out from behind the curtain.

“Pardon me, Professor Fielding, but I’m sure Lord Hyde-Spofford would want me to offer you a lift after you’ve had a chance to catch your breath.”

There at least was movement in the right direction: toward the dig. “That would be wonderful,” I said with relief. I was pretty certain this place wasn’t on a bus route. “Greg, I can find my way to you, but it will be an hour or so, while I—” What? Visit?
I
hadn’t been invited. Pay my respects? I
was certainly not some tenant shuffling in front of the great house, ready to drop eager curtsies to the laird. “—While I have tea,” I finished.

Again, Greg’s pause was full of politely unasked questions. “Well, if you can manage that, we can sort things out here, perhaps calm down a bit before you arrive. I’m most dreadfully sorry about all this—”

“No problem,” I said. I was starting to develop the most appalling headache and wanted nothing more than to be left alone in the dark and quiet for a while, but that clearly wasn’t in the cards, at least for the next few hours, at any rate. “Should I stop by the house or the dig? What would be easiest for you?”

“We live within walking distance of the site, so it might be better if you met us there.” I heard another nervous swallow. “The police aren’t entirely finished with us. Unless you’d like to go directly to your room—but, wait, no, you won’t have a key, will you? I could meet you at the house, but, no I have to get—”

“Greg, I’ll just come to the site. It will be simpler all around if I do that,” I said firmly; clearly the morning’s events were taking their toll on him. “I’ll see you all shortly. Tell Jane I’m fine; I’m one less thing for you all to worry about.”

“Right. Great. See you then.” Greg rang off.

As I hung up, Palmer was again prepared. “Perhaps you’d like to freshen up a bit?”

My thoughts flew back to the airport and my hours incarcerated on the plane. “Ah, you’ve traveled, clearly. Yes, thanks.”

Palmer pointed to a door just past the phone. “Not so’s you’d notice, ma’am.” His lips twitched. “Once to London, and several times to the Hackmoor, but apart from that, it’s been back and forth from home to here, most my life. I don’t hold with gallivanting to foreign parts.”

I thanked him and then closed the door behind me with
relief. The bathroom was small and modern, the space obviously renovated from one of the original rooms. It was the first time in twelve hours that I’d had anything like privacy. I washed my face and hands, and buried my face in the towel. I didn’t want to leave the bathroom; it was quiet, it was clean, it was very pretty. I didn’t want to meet Lord Hyde-Spofford; if he was anything like the few other of Dora’s art history colleagues I’d once encountered, he’d be horrible. They were all overdressed, arrogant, ironic, and dismissive, and I couldn’t stand any of them. On the other hand, it was always fun to observe exotic creatures interacting in their native habitat. The plumage and pelts were spectacular, the mating dances complex, and the marking of territory aggressive. Since I am a much duller creature by comparison, I am generally ignored and left to watch in comparative safety, but there’s a big difference between watching and interacting.

Just one more reason to dislike Lord Pooter, I decided, replacing the towel and opening the door. My irritation at Dora for this detour had quickly replaced gratitude; it overflowed effortlessly to engulf anyone else I thought was keeping me from the dig.

Especially when Jane and Greg had such troubles suddenly heaped upon them. The last thing they needed was to worry about me. It was imperative that I get to the site as soon as possible, to allay at least one of their concerns. I might even be able to take some of the burden of the dig from them while they worked with the police. I’d help with directing the crew, perhaps. It really was essential that I leave as soon as politely possible. They needed me.

When I returned to the entry hall, there was no one there, not even Palmer. Typical Dora, I thought, to leave me behind as casually as she’d picked me up, but then I realized that I could hear her voice farther down the hallway. Given Dora’s capacity for projection, it wasn’t difficult to follow her. Despite my earlier resolution to have my tea and leave quickly, however, I had to pause. This room, which might have been
called the front hall or entryway if it had been in my house, was spectacular. I dug back through my memories of architectural research and lectures and decided that this would properly be called a hall or perhaps a communicating gallery. The fact that there were paintings and a tapestry hanging from the wall was incidental: this was not a place to loiter in, but a space to be walked through. It was made to make a grand first impression, but overall, it was an insignificant part of the whole establishment.

I glanced at the floor, which was polished marble covered with oriental carpets. They were Chinese, for the most part, I decided, and if they were real, the smallest red one would probably be worth about a year’s worth of mortgage payments to me. I looked at the wainscoting that covered the walls—where there wasn’t a painting covering it—and saw how the oak had aged, darkening over the course of centuries, had
been
aging since before the Pilgrims started shivering in their little shacks in salt-blown Plymouth Colony. Looking up, I could see that the ceiling was ornately carved into a complex pattern of lattice work and drops and had once been brilliantly painted, perhaps even gilded. Though the decoration had faded to near oblivion and there were cracks in the carving, it was astonishing still.

I found myself gaping like a baby bird waiting to be fed while I stared at the ceiling and forced myself to stop craning and move down the hallway toward the voices. It’s just a front hall, Emma, I thought to myself. No boots scattered on the floor or coats hanging off the baluster or cat toys gathering dust in the corners, but it
is
a front hall. I thought of the Funny Farm, the nineteenth-century house with connected buildings that Brian and I had struggled to save for, had only bought just two years ago. I had prided myself on its age, its spaciousness, its architectural details, and, well, its style. It was larger than the Cape that most people can afford for their first house and far more interesting than the 1990s prefab McMansions my father had tried to convince me to buy—at a drastic discount, of course. It didn’t matter to me
that it was presently decorated in the height of early twenty-first-century Renovation Eclectic, with sawhorses and plywood stacked in the dining room, orange extension cords snaking along the floor between rooms, and a large hole in the kitchen wall where Brian had removed some water-cracked plaster.

It was my house and I loved it, but for all that pride, standing in this room, I was suddenly confronted with the knowledge, knowledge I’d really possessed since the first time I’d laid eyes on the Funny Farm, that my house was a spavined example of a Massachusetts farmhouse.

Pooter’s house was a Stately Home.

I never felt so middle class, so small, so…
provincial
in my entire life.

That overwhelming sensation of being, simply and finally, outclassed shocked me into paralysis. Then something in me rallied and offered me comfort. Looking at it anthropologically, there was no way I could compete, should I have desired to, with Lord Hyde-Spofford. Any artillery I might have brought to bear—my advanced degrees, my supposed status as a college professor, all the things I had worked to earn—simply could not be compared with a hereditary title and its material appurtenances. Apples and oranges. So, even if I was the competitive type—which I certainly am not—I understood immediately that I just wasn’t in the same league. That made me relax: the outcome of any social battle was a foregone conclusion.

Though I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that anyone whose front hall was worth my entire house, and then some, would be ordinary—common American snobbery ensured that—at least I could relax, be polite, and drink my tea.

Realizing I’d been dawdling too long, I hurried down the hall, only to be brought up short again. The paintings were all of Marchester, different views from various perspectives, ranging from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. In most of the early ones, the original abbey tower could be seen only as a backdrop in various portraits of someone or
other; in the later ones, particularly the romantic eighteenth-and nineteenth-century renderings, the landscape with the new church and the ruins of the abbey was the focus of the subject. I wondered if Jane had had a chance to study these: they would provide an invaluable record of how the site had changed over time. I took another quick look around before I headed for the room where I could hear Dora.

“You took your time, Emma,” she called from across the parlor as soon as I entered.

I restrained myself from making a face. “I couldn’t tear myself away from the views of the abbey in the hall. They make a nice history of the town.”

“They’re not bad, are they?” a man’s voice said.

I turned to see my host for the first time. Subconsciously I suppose I had been expecting either an aged and jowly gentleman in the Hogarthian tradition or a refugee from a Brontë novel, talk, dark, brooding, and secretive. Like most preconceptions, this one was less than accurate. Lord Hyde-Spofford was probably in his forties, and although he was a little on the thickset side, he hadn’t gone to jowls yet. His hair was light, short, with tight blond curls that were probably his mother’s delight and a boy’s worst nightmare growing up. His face had a babyish quality, round and full, that emphasized the cupidlike impression; his wide mouth and straight nose broke up the softness of his face. His eyes were alert, another thing that helped keep him from looking ridiculously immature. His lordship was dressed casually in dark trousers, a yellow shirt, and maroon cardigan, and I swear to God, he was actually wearing an ascot. Baby blue, to match his eyes. Even though all the colors clashed like crazy, it somehow seemed to work.

He offered his hand. “How do you do? I’m Jeremy Hyde-Spofford.”

Oh, hell, there was yet another name to add to the mix of lordships and Pooters—what to call him? Well, I’d simply avoid the issue for the moment. I shook hands. “Emma Fielding. I’m very pleased to meet you.”

“Emma’s here to do something archaeological over at the abbey,” Dora announced. She was draped comfortably, cup of tea in hand, across an antique chair with slender cabriole legs that looked scarcely sturdy enough to support her bulk.

He looked interested. “Is that so? Well, you must have a seat, and tell me about it. Can I interest you in a cup of tea?”

The gentleman gestured for me to take a seat in a chair that matched Dora’s and I sat down tentatively on the edge of it, until I was sure it would bear my weight, and then settled back a little further.

“That would be lovely, thank you—” Here I paused, taking a deep enough breath to get both title and hyphenation out, but his lordship waved a hand and interrupted pleasantly.

“Oh, call me Jeremy. The rest of it makes too much of a mouthful. How do you take your tea?”

“Milk, no sugar, thanks, er, Jeremy.”

Jeremy went to a small side table arranged with a porcelain and silver tea service that looked so much like the ones I’d studied in eighteenth-century paintings that I started. He handed me a delicate cup and saucer, so thin as to be translucent, and I was terrified that I might drop them.

Palmer came in with a tray full of sandwiches; his rough bearing and coarse demeanor stood out in this place of delicacy and refinement like a pig in a party dress, and yet he seemed to feel right at home in the house. Perhaps he was a sort of general dogsbody as well as driver?

Jeremy picked up one of the sandwiches, peeked under the bread hopefully, sighed in disappointment. “Perhaps cheese and pickle, just once, Palmer? Just for me?”

Palmer stood impassively, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Palmer always makes cucumber,” his lordship explained, “no matter how much I tell him I’d much rather have ham or cheese. They’re very nice, though; please have one.”

My stomach was just beginning to remind me that it was well past lunchtime and so I decided I’d better take him up
on the offer. Jeremy turned to get me a small plate. While I still had one hand free, I automatically flipped my saucer over to examine its base.

“I’m pretty sure it’s real, Emma,” Dora said.

It wasn’t until she’d opened her mouth that I realized my faux pas and blushed violently. I looked up in horror, first at Dora, who was positively delighted, and then at Jeremy, who had returned with my plate and was staring curiously at me.

“Uh, I…of course I know it’s…er.” I took a deep breath and tried to stop stammering. I will not apologize, I thought fiercely, I will not! I addressed Jeremy. “It’s just this terrible habit I have of looking for the maker’s marks on the bottom of dishes and things. Archaeologists learn so much about where and when the wares were made from the markings that I’m afraid I’m always embarrassing myself that way. I’m just happy that I didn’t tip the cup over while it was full.” I shrugged and smiled.

Jeremy was seriousness itself. “Well, if it’s marks you’re interested in, marks you shall have. I’ve a whole pantry full of ’em.”

I began to blush again, but then realized he wasn’t needling me when he continued.

“I’m afraid it’s my fault you’re here,” he explained. “Dora knows I collect the little bits of things—pottery, glass, bones—that pop up when I’m gardening. I stash ’em in shoe boxes in my pantry. I mean, they belong with the house, don’t they? I won’t chuck them just because they were in my way.” He handed me my plate, and I nodded my thanks. “Plenty of little marks on them. Perhaps sometime you’d stop back and have a look at them, tell me about whether I should hang onto them or no.”