Time Enough To Die (14 page)

Someone came out of the hotel behind her. Gareth. He had been waiting for her.

The fort was silent, its long grasses and the plastic sheets over the trenches rippling in the wind. Transparent human shapes moved among the ancient stones. Maybe Gareth would call them corpse candles.

Matilda passed the bowling green and skirted a puddle in the depression beneath the gate. The grass squeaked wetly beneath her feet. She felt as thin as the shapes before her, scraped like vellum, ready for a new message. Reaching into her pocket, she grasped the spindle.

The room that materialized in her mind's eye wasn't defined as clearly in the daylight as it had been at night. Still Matilda saw implications of furniture and window shutters. Marcus reclined on a couch, not comfortably but warily, as though expecting a centurion to call him to action at any moment. And yet he was dressed in a simple tunic and cloak. He wasn't on duty. He was watching Branwen spinning.

The thread spun between her thumb and forefinger and the spindle danced. Marcus rose from the couch. Slowly, his face set in a grimace of pain, he walked to Branwen's side. He raised his hand, palm up, fingers curved, and stroked her thick plait of red hair where it lay across her shoulder.

Her hand clasped the spindle, stopping it. She looked up.

He touched her cheek, and bent over her, and her lips parted for his....

"Matilda!"

The image blinked out, snatched into another dimension.

"Matilda!” Gareth grasped her arms and shook her. “Are you all right? What happened to your car? Did you have a crash?"

"The hair on the severed head,” Matilda said, “isn't red because of the peat. It was red in life. In her life.... “She started coughing as though she'd swallowed the wrong way, even though she had no memory of swallowing at all.

Gareth put his arm around her shoulders and guided her through the wet grass back into what he fondly believed, no doubt, to be reality.

At first Gareth suspected that Matilda was leaning against him more to complete the scenario than because her knees had gone wonky.
She'd seen the ghosts again, eh? Pull the other one!

She wasn't faking. Her face was stretched tight, so pale it seemed translucent in the thin evening light, and her blue eyes were dull as the overcast sky. Judging by the scraped sides of her car she'd had much too close an encounter with another vehicle on her way back from Manchester. He had the queasy feeling the encounter hadn't been an accident. He should never have let her go alone.

Ashley, Courtney, and Jennifer came bounding down the staircase as Gareth and Matilda plodded up. They gathered round, cooing like pigeons in St. James's park. “She's all right,” Gareth insisted, “she had a bit of a scare on the road, a cup of tea and some sandwiches would be lovely, Ashley, if you'd see to it...."

The girls swept on down the staircase and across the lobby, Ashley throwing a nervous glance back over her shoulder.

"A bit of a scare on the road.” Matilda's shudder of self-possession made a seismic wave in Gareth's arm. He loosened his grip.

Her room was number 7, between 15 and 2. She fished her key out of her bag and after three tries got it into the lock. Gareth stepped inside and turned on all the lights. Her room was much nicer than his, with a four-poster bed and a bay window containing two chairs and a table. No one was hiding beneath the bed or in the wardrobe or adjoining bathroom. Neat rows of personal items, a few lotions and a lot of books, emitted an aroma that reminded him of a summer's afternoon spent reading in a rose garden. Beside the bed sat a photograph of a fair-haired young man with his mother's Mona Lisa smile.

Matilda sat down, folded her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes. Through the window behind her Gareth saw the turf billows of the fort looming dimly through the dusk. Two people were walking about the excavation. Quite corporeal people, thank you, a man and a woman, probably Jason and Caterina. Gareth pulled the curtains shut.

"The incident in the London Underground might have been an accident,” Matilda said. “So might the incident on the road this afternoon. But you can only stretch coincidence so far. Then it becomes deliberate action."

"The killer must want you out of the way, right enough, to have another go at you.” Shaking his head, Gareth sat down and pulled out his notebook.

Matilda opened her eyes. Their blue was once again breaking through the clouds. “It was on that high, narrow stretch of road just before Wormsley. It was raining torrents. I had my lights on. There was a bus in the inside lane. It might have skidded, I suppose. Whatever, it almost forced me over the edge."

"There's a guard rail, is there?"

"A very sturdy one, thank goodness."

"Describe the bus."

"I only caught a glimpse of it. An older model, I think, with the engine forward of the body. A radiator full of bugs. Only one windshield wiper was working, the one.... No, it was the one on the driver's side. He could see out."

"Were the bus's headlamps switched on?"

"No. It seemed to spring out of the rain, coming straight at me."

"Did you sense anything?” Gareth couldn't believe he asked that. But whilst she might have copped a peek at the Burkett reports before their visit to Durslow Edge, she had yet to mess him about with crystal balls, tarot cards, and ectoplasm. Her
common
sense covered a multitude of sins.

"Yes, I sensed it was going to kill me.... “Matilda frowned. “No, now that you mention it, I didn't sense anything beyond my own emotions. If it had been an accident you'd think the bus driver would have been surprised and scared as well."

Gareth duly noted that in his book, with a question mark. “Who knew you'd be on the road today?"

"Half the people at the dig, to begin with. I was talking to Clapper over breakfast. Reynolds saw me leaving. Ionescu at the University. Celia Dunning and her assistant. The man in the restaurant where I ate lunch. There wasn't any reason to keep my movements secret, even if I wasn't being entirely honest about my motives."

"Stick as close to the truth as possible,” agreed Gareth. “It makes the—er—distortions easier to remember."

Matilda didn't manage a laugh, but her chuckle sounded almost human.

Gareth realized that the light tap-tap-tap he'd been half-hearing was someone knocking at the door. He hurried across the room. Ashley stood outside, both hands laden with a tray, tapping at the door with her foot. He wondered what, if anything, she'd overheard. They hadn't been talking loudly, though, and the clash and clatter of the dining room echoed up the stairwell.

Ashley set the tray on the table. “There's tea and everything, and Mr. Clapper made you some tomato and cheese sandwiches. He says he's sorry to hear, quote, you aren't quite the ticket, and he hopes the rozzers tear strips off the clot what did it. Unquote. Bryan says it looks like two diesel engines tried to make a sandwich out of your car. Are you all right?"

"Yes, thank you. It was just a fender-bender in the rain."

"Sometimes it can be scarier afterward than during.” Ashley poured a cup of tea and handed it to Matilda.

"Thank you,” Gareth said, and tried to urge Ashley on her way with his most charming smile.

Her return smile was oddly glazed. She sidled toward the door. “Oh—er—Mr. Clapper called P.C. Watkins and told him about the accident and he said he'd come by later on and make out a report. And Manfred went to tell Dr. Sweeney, but he and Caterina are checking the trenches for mud. We'll make sure he knows."

Gareth grimaced. He could hardly debrief Matilda in the midst of a circus.

The tea was drawing the color back into her cheeks. Matilda settled back in her chair like a queen awaiting an audience. “I appreciate your help, Ashley. You're very efficient."

"I'll go wait for P.C. Watkins and show him the way up here.” Ashley and her blond ponytail whisked away.

She was a pretty little thing, after all. Gareth shut the door and turned back to Matilda. “Tell me about the rest of your day."

"Not much to tell. First I went to the university. Sweeney's assistant Ionescu—my son would call him a geek—showed me the hand and the body. And the head, which just turned up, but we're not supposed to know about that."

The last things Gareth wanted to know about were body parts belonging to the uncanny hand. “Sweeney's keeping it under wraps, is he?"

"So he can present it with an academic dog and pony show after the dig, no doubt. He doesn't realize it has any significance for the dig itself."

"Is that what you were going on about tonight?"

"Yes. The hand belonged to a Celtic woman who was given to the commander of Cornovium in its early days. That he
was
the commander then is proved by the stele. What I don't know yet is why she died as she did.” Matilda ate half a sandwich. The lines in her face began to ease.

Gareth nodded, committing himself to nothing. “And you talked to Celia Dunning?"

"If you can call it talking. She makes you look positively loquacious."

"Excuse me?"

This time Matilda managed a dry laugh. “I tried to start a conversation about collecting, looting, and dealing. I even said something about Linda's murder, which she shrugged away. Dunning claims she does everything legally, and that it's better to have artifacts appreciated by collectors than neglected or destroyed. Which is a debatable point, not that we actually debated it. You might make more headway with her by flashing your warrant card, but I doubt it. We should tackle the clerk. Dunning tyrannizes her and she resents it.” Matilda ate the other sandwich half. “I can't see Dunning dirtying her shoes at Durslow, let alone being so careless as to drop a receipt. And logically it's the person who bought the vase who dropped the receipt. They got out of Dunning's shop for only eight pounds. That's quite a feat."

Gareth wrote “Dunning—assistant.” “Did you catch the girl's name?"

"Emma."

"Emma. Now that's interesting. Clapper mentioned a local girl named Emma who was involved with the travelers. He said she was working in a posh shop in Manchester."

"Even if it is the same girl, it might be only coincidence...."

"Deliberate action,” Gareth reminded her. “We know that Linda Burkett knew the whereabouts of illegal antiquities. Were they in Dunning's collection? In Reynolds's? Is Reynolds using the travelers to help him dig or to smuggle artifacts? If we could make a connection between the travelers and Dunning...."

"While conspiracy theories are entertaining, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Besides,” Matilda added with a grin, “Dunning would douse any travelers in sheep dip before letting them across her threshold."

Gareth shut his book. Not only was she right, her mild attitude didn't even give him the satisfaction of being annoyed with her rightness.

The new knock on the door was a firm one. Gareth admitted Ashley and Watkins, who tucked his hat beneath his arm and whipped out his notebook. “I had a look at your car, Mrs. Gray. What happened?"

Matilda told him. If Ashley hadn't been hovering solicitously over the tea tray she might have ventured into possibilities and motivations, but as it was she kept to a strictly factual version of events.

At last Watkins put his pen back in his pocket. “I'll have the lads on the lookout for a bunged-up bus—it had to have scraped a good bit of red paint from your car."

"It's probably miles from here by this time,” said Gareth.

"That's as may be. But them travelers go about in clapped-out buses and vans. It was an older model vehicle, you said, Mrs. Gray? And them travelers, they're all nutters, probably driving drunk or worse."

Ashley fumbled the cup and saucer and they cracked together. Matilda's eyes snapped from Watkins to Ashley like headlamp switching from low to high beam. The girl was wearing a bland expression, and Gareth couldn't see any reason for Matilda's sudden interest. “I'll take these things downstairs now,” the girl said, “unless you need something else?"

"No, thank you,” said Matilda. “I appreciate your help."

When Watkins opened the door for Ashley and the tray, Howard Sweeney's plummy voice wafted down the corridor, “...women drivers...” He patted Ashley's shoulder as he swept into the room. “Matilda, my dear, I hear you had a close call. Are you all right?"

Ashley disappeared. Matilda sighed. “I'm developing a distinct streak of paranoia, but other than that I'm fine, thank you."

"I'm off,” Watkins said. “Don't worry yourself none, the lads and I are watching over the dig.” He tapped his nose significantly.

"Thank you, Constable,” said Sweeney. And, as Watkins shut the door behind him, “Mr. March—Inspector—are you any farther in your inquiries?"

"I'm not at liberty to say,” Gareth replied, hoping the standard refrain would conceal his lack of progress.

Matilda rested her head against the back of the chair and rubbed her eyes. “Do you know Celia Dunning in Manchester, Howard?"

"The trout with the souvenir shop in Borley Arcade? I don't believe we've met. She's very small beer when it comes to antiquities. Hardly a threat to us."

"Who is a threat to us? Reynolds?"

Sweeney laughed. “Half of his vaunted collection consists of forgeries. The other half reeks of clandestine digging and forged expertises. That's one reason I chose Corcester for our little venture. The man's had free rein with the place much too long."

That wasn't anything Gareth didn't already suspect. “Do you think Reynolds is capable of murder?"

"Hard to say, isn't it?” Sweeney replied. “That sort talks a good show, but often falls short when it comes time for action. Seems to me, though, he's doing his best to cast suspicion on the travelers."

"Very convenient,” murmured Matilda, “to have the travelers to blame for everything from murder to tooth decay."

"Must dash,” said Sweeney, “I'm meeting with my group leaders."

"Have you made Caterina a group leader yet?” Matilda asked.

"Whatever for?” Sweeney disappeared out the door.

Gareth remembered the first time a female Chief Inspector had been put in charge of a murder case. Some of the lads had acted as though she had them by the balls. In his opinion, she herself had the balls for the job, and that was that. Now it wasn't Caterina but Matilda who had.... Well, never mind.