Restoration (8 page)

  "Sounds like evening prayer's started," he said to Walsingham.

  "They never stop," Walsingham replied. "A more devout band cannot be imagined."

  "I suppose there's not much else to do up here," said Ashe.

  "Hello," said Walsingham, "who's this?"

  Ahead of them, no more than a silhouette in the dimming light, a figure was making its way towards them from the monastery gates.

  "Nigel," a voice shouted as the figure drew closer, "is that you?"

  "Sounds like Helen," Walsingham said. "What is she playing at coming out here?" He pulled his scarf away from his mouth, the better to project his voice. "Helen?" he called. He began to trot faster down the mountainside, clearly concerned as to what had brought his wife out into the cold.

  "Nigel," Helen sighed with palpable relief once they were face to face, "I came out to fetch you, something terrible's happened to Rhodes."

  "What is it?" Walsingham asked. "Some sort of accident?"

  Helen shook her head. "I wish." She struggled for a moment, as if uncertain how to express the news. Eventually she took the no-frills approach: "Someone's murdered him."

 

 

Ashe felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, his simple plans were clearly about to complicate themselves.

  "Who's this?" Helen asked, looking at Ashe with undisguised suspicion.

  "What?" Walsingham was still trying to assimilate the news that one of his party was dead. "Oh… Mark Spencer, a colleague of Roger's, we met a little way up the mountain."

  "Really?" Helen replied. "How bizarre."

  "I'm actually here on Roger's behalf," Ashe explained. "I have an artifact that may be of interest to him."

  "We'll hear all about it later," she replied. "We have more important matters on hand for now."

  "Of course," Ashe nodded. "May I suggest we keep moving; you can explain everything once we're in the comfort of the monastery."

  "Spencer's right," agreed Walsingham, taking Helen's arm and leading her back the way she had come. "I can't believe the major let you out here on your own as it is."

  "He could hardly claim I would be safer at the monastery," she replied, "and our good doctor's suffering from one of his 'blue funks' again."

  "Dear Lord, the man's a liability." Walsingham was in shock, stumbling along in a twitchy state that wasn't due to the cold. "I can't believe it," he said, his voice quiet, almost lost beneath the increasing volume of the monk's chanting. "Rhodes dead… but, darling, you must be overreacting… it can hardly be murder." He was asserting a sense of calming logic. "There must be an alternative explanation."

  "We found him in the stables with an ice pick in the back of his head," Helen countered. "He didn't end up like that by losing his footing."

  She was a cold hearted creature, Ashe thought. There seemed to be little sense of sadness at the death of one of her colleagues, more an irritation that her life had been cluttered up by the fact.

  They reached the entrance to the monastery, a tall set of wooden doors fixed into the stone wall. It made Ashe think of a Medieval castle, barricaded to repel invaders. Helen yanked at the cord of an iron bell, its chime bouncing between the walls of the valley as if the noise were a creature gleeful to be let loose. After a few moments the door opened, a slender monk stepping to one side to let them enter. He bowed as they filed past, his pointed hat looming towards their faces. He gave the ground a double tap with the base of the long pole he carried, a fighting stick, Ashe assumed.

  "Thank you," said Walsingham, giving a rather selfconscious bow in return.

  The door opened into a central courtyard. Ashe turned slowly, getting the lay of the land. A pair of monks worked their way around the perimeter, lighting heavy sconces in preparation for the night ahead. There was the thick smell of manure coming from what Ashe took to be the stables, a small, two-level outbuilding to the left of the courtyard. "That was where the body was found?" he asked, pointing.

  "Yes," Helen answered, "though we've taken him upstairs."

  "Our accommodation is directly above," Walsingham explained, "what it lacks in pleasant odour it makes up for in warmth."

  "Not sure you should have moved the body," Ashe commented.

  "Oh really?" Helen retorted. "And who are you to have an opinion one way or the other?"

  "Helen!" Walsingham snapped. "That is no way to address our guest."

  "Forgive me Nigel," she replied, "but I would hope you understand that the notion of a stranger appearing on the mountainside at the same time one of our party meets his end is a source of great concern for me. It seems somewhat coincidental don't you think? I mean, what are the odds of you bumping into the gentleman up there? This is a sparsely inhabited valley in Tibet not Oxford Street."

  "I understand your concern," Ashe admitted, thinking quickly before he lost all sense of credence amongst the party. "My appearance here at the same time as your own was completely intentional. As I partly explained to your husband I came here with the interests of Roger Carruthers at heart. I've been researching the history of an artifact that would interest him. I traced it here and, learning that your party were also in residence, it made sense to coincide my visit with yours. I left my main party up the mountain there, planning to drop in for an hour or two before rejoining them. Roger assured me that I would be made welcome."

  "And so you are," Walsingham insisted.

  "It is a wonder to me that Roger didn't see fit to warn us of your impending arrival," Helen noted, though it was clear that – whether through deference to her husband's feelings or her own – she was willing to let go of some of her hostility. "That would have avoided any misunderstandings, would it not?"

  "I left some time after your own departure so unfortunately…"

  "It is of no matter," insisted Walsingham, losing his patience. "Can we please deal with the business in hand? I want to know what happened to Rhodes."

  Helen gave him an irked glance – it was clear to Ashe that this was a partnership she was in control of, however much that may be against the period's norms, and she didn't like being snapped at. "Forgive me if I thought we were discussing just that."

  Walsingham didn't rise to the comment, following his wife up a creaking wooden staircase to a heavy Dutch door. She yanked on the handle, grunting as it held fast in its frame. "It's locked. The major no doubt."

  "He's only concerned with our safety, dear, that is, after all, his job."

  Ashe expected Helen to make the obvious comment that, seeing as one of them had died, the major wasn't doing his job very well. If the comment occurred to her, she kept it to herself, hammering on the door and waiting in silence to be let in.

  After a few moments there was the solid crack of a bolt being drawn. It was slammed into place with military precision so that nobody could be in doubt that the door had been well and truly opened.

  The major's face appeared within the revealed slice of candlelight. "Oh, Walsingham, it's you." He stepped back to allow them room to enter.

  "And you are?" he asked Ashe, his eyes narrowing over a Roman nose that had sneezed salt and pepper curls over the lower half of his face.

  "Mark Spencer," Walsingham said perhaps determined not to let Ashe's relationship with Major Kilworth get off on the same wrong foot as it had with his wife. "He is a colleague of Roger Carruthers and is here under his recommendation."

  "You've picked a bad time to join us," the major said to Ashe, "as you have no doubt heard."

  "Indeed."

  "Where is he?" Walsingham asked.

  "Through there," the major answered, nodding towards a door in the corner, "Helen has donated her accommodation for the time being."

  "Better that than have a corpse in the middle of the room," she said. Now that Ashe could see her clearly he was less struck by her coldness. There was a vacuousness to her gaze as she picked at the wool of her scarf as if trying to remove invisible insects from its weave. She was in shock and not half as strong as she had been trying to suggest. Easier to deal with her dismissive comments than a tearful breakdown, Ashe supposed.

  "Has the doctor examined him?" asked Walsingham.

  The major gave a pointed look at them and shook his head. "Our medical expert is suffering from another bout of his 'altitude sickness'," the skepticism in his voice couldn't have been clearer. "'Physician heal thyself', eh? He's sleeping it off in his bedroll."

  "Much use the blasted man is," Walsingham said. "He's more of a hindrance than a help."

  "Can I take a look at the body?" asked Ashe.

  They looked at him, Walsingham hopeful, the others still wary.

  "Do you have medical experience, sir?" Helen asked.

  "I have experience with violent death," Ashe admitted, and there was a good deal of truth to that.

  "I'm not sure I find that reassuring," she replied though was clearly not concerned enough to argue further.

  "There can be no harm in it," offered the major, "though the issue lies not so much with the departed Rhodes as ensuring the rest of us don't end up sharing his condition."

  "The two aren't mutually exclusive," said Ashe, opening the door to the small side-room where the body lay.

  "Allow me," said Walsingham, pushing ahead with a lit lantern. He hung it from an iron hook in the centre of the ceiling where it swung gently, throwing black, syrupy shadows across the walls. The ice pick was still in place, the shadow of its elevated handle turning the corpse into a sundial, telling the time against the straw covered floor.

  "Whose is the pick?" asked Ashe.

  "Mine," the major admitted, "though it scarcely means much, the equipment is all stored together in a bridle room just off the stables."

  "So anyone could grab it?" Ashe clarified.

  "Precisely."

  "But why would they?" Ashe asked, squatting over the body.

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Motive," Ashe replied, squinting at Rhodes' face. He was a handsome chap, early thirties, with that look of the gentleman adventurer much favoured by Hollywood period movies.

  "As much as I hate to say it," the major replied, "surely that's obvious?"

  "Really?" Ashe looked up at him, trying to read his facial expressions in the dim light.

  "One of the locals has issue with our presence."

  "Issue enough to sneak up behind one of you and put several inches of steel in his head? I find that hard to imagine."

  Walsingham crouched next to him. "Rhodes was often somewhat… expressive about his feelings towards the locals."

  "He was a racist."

  There was an awkward pause as the major glanced at Walsingham and his wife. "Not sure I know the term," he admitted. "He had no great love for foreigners if that's what you're driving at?"

  Ashe shook his head, he'd forgotten how modern a word – or indeed concept – racism was.

  "You make it sound like he was permanently abusing the monks," Helen commented. "That's hardly the case."

  "Well, no…" the major admitted, "but he could be somewhat insensitive."

  Only Victorians could see insensitivity as a crime worthy of murder, Ashe thought.

  "It still seems slender motive to me," Ashe said, "but then it's none of my business."

  He stood up, a little angry with himself for being drawn into the matter. If these people were picking one another off – certainly he didn't believe for a minute an over-sensitive Buddhist was behind the murder – then it was no business of his. Unless… a worrying thought occurred to him: what if the murderer attacked Walsingham next? If the man was dead he could hardly contact Carruthers and play out his role in the historical scheme of things. For all Ashe knew, it was only through his own involvement that the murderer was exposed and Walsingham preserved from harm. Or, of course, the opposite could be true and Ashe was putting all their lives at risk by involving himself.

  Time travel was a pain in the ass.

  "Without wishing to fall out with my husband again," said Helen, "we only have your word that this is no business of yours. For all we know you could have murdered him yourself."

  "Before popping up the hill to introduce myself to your husband?"

  "Well… yes."

  "True, I suppose I could have. Equally your husband could have killed the man before returning to his researches and establishing an alibi."

  "I say!" Walsingham was somewhat put out to find himself put in the frame.

  "Just making a point, I'm not saying I think you did it for one moment – and I know for a fact that I had nothing to do with it – but, yes, if we are to be thorough about this we're potential suspects as much as anyone else."

  "Have you told the Abbot?" Walsingham asked Kilworth.

  "That rather presupposes he doesn't already know," his wife muttered.

  "I thought it best to keep the situation to ourselves for the moment," said the major, "until we decided how to respond to it."

  "That sounds like fighting talk," Ashe commented.

  "Fighting talk?" the major raised an eyebrow at Ashe. "You have a most peculiar turn of phrase, sir."

  "Spent a lot of time in distant climes," Ashe admitted. "You pick up the vernacular."

  "More distant than Tibet?" Helen joked.

  Ashe chose to say nothing. Just looking at Rhodes' dead body. "It's a cowardly injury," he commented finally.