The Lie Tree (29 page)

Faith’s gratitude to the foreman was not enough, however, to make her reconsider her plans. She was there, after all, to cause confusion and conflict.

She had been discreetly observing the labourers. They were divided into two groups, she realized. Three strongly built men with Irish accents took care of the actual digging inside the cave and
emerged with barrows of rubble. Two locals were on hand for the rest of the fetching, carrying, sweeping away underfoot gravel and pushing barrows of rubble to a nearby heap. The two groups barely
seemed to speak a word to each other.

Only the local men interested her. If she wanted to infect Vane with an idea, she needed to put it into their heads first.

She found her chance in the mid-afternoon, not long before Uncle Miles was due to take her home. The two men had stepped aside to take a short rest and enjoy their allowance of beer. Their
barrow full of rubble was unattended. Out of her pocket she took the coin and dropped it in among the broken rocks, so that it was just peeping out. It was an old Spanish silver piece-of-eight that
Faith’s father had brought back from his travels. The blackened tarnish around the edge made it look mysterious.

A little later, Faith saw the labourers return to the barrow. One of them stooped to stare at it intensely, then dug his elbow into his friend’s ribs. Both whispered and glanced about
furtively, then one man plucked something out of the barrow and pushed it hastily into his pocket.

The following day, Faith drew fewer stares at the excavation site. She was not precisely accepted, but she was no longer quite so interesting. Her sketches were improving too,
thanks to some late night consultation of her father’s books, and everyone seemed happy to leave her to it.

This gave her the chance to do some observing of her own. She soon found that, under cover of sketching, she could set up her folding chair and easel wherever she pleased and eavesdrop to her
heart’s content, watching the scene from beneath her lashes.

Very soon, with her deft pencil, she might have drawn a map of the little camaraderies and frictions that ruled the excavation.

Dr Jacklers was happier than she had ever seen him. He had commandeered a small tent to house various papers from the Society of Antiquaries and his precious copy of the
Reliquiae
Aquitaniae
, the latest and most exciting book about cave artefacts. He was forever running in to consult it, and became extremely irascible if anybody else dared to approach it. Faith was
surprised that he did not chain it to the table like a medieval Bible.

Possessed of this source of cave-hunting lore, the doctor ruled supreme in the tunnel itself. He drove pegs into the cave floor and ran taut ‘datum-line’ strings between them,
dividing the area into grid squares so that it could be dug up a square at a time. Crock nodded courteously, agreed to anything suggested, then altered the doctor’s orders slightly when
passing them on to his men.

Lambent strode around the site and involved himself in everything. He examined newly excavated items, became excited about them, ran into the house with them, ran out with books from his library
and put the artefacts back in the wrong box. Crock quietly followed his rampages, setting everything straight in his wake.

Despite her famous ill health, Agatha Lambent came by again. She spent her visit sitting like an invalid queen in her billowing shelter, spectating with regal distance. Ben Crock could
frequently be seen stopping before her divan throne to make solicitous enquiries, his cap in his hand. Perhaps he was afraid that, without regular attention, she would fall over in the wind and
break.

To Faith’s surprise, Miss Hunter also visited. She showed no interest in the actual dig, but was content to drink tea with Mrs Lambent. Her arrival had a magical effect upon both Dr
Jacklers and Lambent. The former stormed off to the furthest corner of the site and stared moodily at mammoth teeth. The latter appeared to lose all interest in the dig and joined the tea-drinking
in the ‘Bedouin tent’.

As Faith had suspected, Crock was the glue that held everything together. He kept the site under control, without raising his voice or drawing attention to himself. He appeared to have eyes and
ears everywhere, and an uncanny ability to detect problems in the bud and nip them. In short, Faith quickly deduced that if she wanted to spy, steal, connive or do anything else underhand, then
Crock was likely to be her biggest problem.

The two local men, on the other hand, had changed their manner since the incident with the coin. They looked more alert and hungry, and were given to secretive, animated conversations in
corners. Several times Faith noticed them surreptitiously searching through the rubble in their barrow, and wandering into parts of the site where they did not usually work.

‘Maybe something in it after all,’ she heard one of them say, failing to notice her inside the nearby tent. ‘Maybe old Sunderly wasn’t happy with his share.’

‘Or perhaps the others wanted a
larger
share, and he knew too much,’ suggested the other. ‘They left out the doctor, didn’t they?’

Faith’s jaw ached with trying not to smile. Whoever had found her half-rolled paper spill had clearly read it, and shared its contents with others. If word had reached these men, it was
probably gossip all over the island. Her plan was working.

In spite of everything, there was real pleasure in the thought of her lie sending tremors through Vane, knocking her self-important enemies off balance and making them fight like cats. She was
filled with pride and a sense of power. She was
good
at this . . . and getting better.

On Sunday, of course, there was no work at the excavation, nor any possibility of Faith visiting the site. On Myrtle’s insistence, the whole Sunderly family, dressed in
their night-hued best, braced themselves and went to church.

As they entered all conversation died among the waiting congregation. Faith felt sick. It was too much like the funeral day a week before. As the family trooped up the aisle, however, the
whispers sounded nervous, not venomous. When they arrived at the box pew in which they had rented space, those already seated in it moved out without a word, taking pains to avoid passing too close
to them.

Clay, who had seemed so lost and ineffectual during the funeral, now stamped up into his pulpit with a purpose. His sermon was about the dead, respect for the dead, kindness to those they left
behind. What sort of people were they if they mocked the deceased? Were they inviting vengeance from the unseen powers?

Halfway through this sermon there was a muffled squawk from somewhere in the main body of the church, followed by concerned cries.

‘. . . fainted!’ somebody called out.

Trapped in her box pew, Faith could not look round. From the noises behind her she could tell that somebody was being carried out. After a pause, the sermon continued.

After the service, as the Sunderly family were leaving the churchyard, Clay hurried after them, his brow creased with concern.

‘Mrs Sunderly, Mr Cattistock – I am very sorry to tell you this, but I am afraid your maid Jeanne Bissette was taken ill during the service. She is recovering now . . . but she
refuses to leave the church.’

‘Why ever not?’ demanded Myrtle.

‘I am afraid a rather grotesque fancy has taken possession of her imagination. I shall try to dissuade her from it, but she believes herself cursed. Haunted. She absolutely refuses to
leave holy ground.’

Myrtle’s face was invisible under her veil, but she was silent a moment and seemed to be taking his words on board.

‘I have heard some of the rumours,’ she said softly. ‘How widely believed are these stories? Will all our servants use them as an excuse to abandon us?’

Clay opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking pained.

‘I am sorry, Mrs Sunderly. I fear the tales are commonly regarded as fact. Every day people visit the parsonage, demanding to know why I have not “done something about the
ghost”.’

‘Then . . . if you told them that burying my husband would lay the ghost . . .’ suggested Myrtle.

‘Alas, decisions regarding his place of burial are no longer in their hands or mine. The law must decide.’ Clay looked uncomfortable. ‘And . . . I could not in conscience
encourage their superstitions, which are too far entrenched already. Some claim to have
seen
the ghost, walking the cliff-paths near your house. Just yesterday, a sizeable donation was
left on the church altar, with an unsigned note asking me to say prayers for the, er, unquiet spirit.

‘As for Jeanne Bissette, her fear appears quite genuine. Indeed, she seems to be in a dangerously nervous state.’

It was only later that evening that one of Clay’s chance remarks struck Faith with new force. Somebody had anonymously paid a ‘sizeable’ amount for prayers to lay the ghost.
They had also left an unsigned note, like the one that had lured Faith’s father to his death.

Somebody out there was desperately afraid of the Reverend’s spectre, and just as desperate to hide their identity. Perhaps Faith’s ‘ghost’ had done more than feed the Lie
Tree. Perhaps she had frightened the murderer.

A lie was like a fire, Faith was discovering. At first it needed to be nursed and fed, but carefully and gently. A slight breath would fan the new-born flames, but too vigorous
a huff would blow it out. Some lies took hold and spread, crackling with excitement, and no longer needed to be fed. But then these were no longer
your
lies. They had a life and shape of
their own, and there was no controlling them.

Some ideas caught more easily than others, of course, and there is no spark quite like the promise of treasure.

As she rode with her uncle in the doctor’s carriage on the third morning, Faith could not help noticing that along the lonely road to the dig there were now a few idlers, leaning against
the breakwater with their hands in pockets, or chatting in the shadow of the cliff. There was something lazily purposeful about them, like gulls with an instinct for scraps gathering over a
boat’s wake.

As they neared the site, the carriage passed the pile of broken rubble from the excavation. Three of the local children were picking over the broken stones with hungry zeal.

At the site itself there was an air of tension. Spotting Lambent in earnest conversation with Dr Jacklers and Ben Crock, Faith set up her easel within discreet eavesdropping distance.

‘Some bee has flown into their bonnet,’ the doctor was saying, ‘and unless we know the species of bee and where it sits in the bonnet, we cannot shake it out.’

‘I have asked them what they mean by it,’ said Crock. As usual he was slightly bowed, so that he did not rival Lambent for height. ‘They made sour faces at me, and slouched
away without giving proper answer. One of them called me a “dog in the manger”, and said he supposed I was “getting my portion”.’

‘Your
portion?
’ The doctor’s face darkened. ‘What, are those fellows turning scientist? What interest can these oafs possibly have in fossils and bones? Unless .
. . Can it be that somebody has been offering them money for specimens?’

‘There is worse, sir,’ interjected Crock. ‘The navvies tell me they chased two intruders from the site last night.’

‘Vagrants?’ suggested Dr Jacklers.

‘Vagrants would head to the tunnel for shelter,’ said Crock, ‘or the tents for easy pickings. These men were at the top of the shaft, cranking up the mining basket.’

‘Museums!’ Lambent struck his palm with his fist. ‘I knew this would happen! Some museum must have got wind of our discoveries. You know how they are, always ready to steal
glory and specimens from the gentleman scientist! They must have agents on Vane! Fossil-thieves! Mammoth-snatchers!’

‘The navvies recognized one of the men,’ Crock continued. ‘They say it was Stoke.’ Peter Stoke was one of the two local men who worked on the site.

‘Stoke!’ Lambent glanced towards the man in question. ‘Are they sure? Do you believe them?’

‘They seem certain, sir, and I cannot imagine why they would lie.’

‘Will you excuse me, gentlemen?’ said Lambent, who had been swelling with annoyance throughout Crock’s explanation. ‘It seems I must have a discreet word with
Stoke.’

Lambent strode over to the two Vane men, who were loading rubble into their barrow, in order to have his ‘discreet word’. As it turned out his ‘word’ was neither discreet
nor singular. There were many words, some of which echoed back down the gorge.

‘. . . criminals . . . see you in jail if you do not leave my sight right now!’

Both the local men departed, casting alarmed and resentful looks over their shoulders as they did so.

Lambent strode back to join his friends. ‘Crock, I believe we shall need to hire two more of your navvy friends,’ was all he said.

This was not the end of the matter. Trouble waited its moment and struck in the early afternoon. Faith was examining one of her sketches when she happened to look up out of the
little gorge towards the top of the nearby ridge.

‘Who is that?’ she asked reflexively.

It was just a human head and shoulders, silhouetted against the sun, peering down into the gorge.

Crock, who was standing within earshot, looked up and was just in time to see the silhouette before it ducked out of sight again. He said nothing but broke into a sprint and started scrambling
up the side of the gorge, ignoring the zigzag path.

There was a
cra-thock
noise. It seemed to Faith that a rock some ten yards away suddenly jumped in the air, then landed and rolled around. Then she looked at it, and saw that it had
cracked in half. It had not ‘jumped’; it had been thrown down from a height.

Faith jumped to her feet and sprinted for the tunnel. Canvas tents might slow a thrown rock, but she would be safer in the tunnel.

On the ridge above she could hear a lot of confused shouting. One of the voices belonged to Crock. There followed sounds of a very brief scuffle, more shouting, then quiet.