“Usually. But this is pitch black.”
True country night was wrapped around Rodmell. If there were stars somewhere above, their light was masked by a bank of cloud and the heavy weight of the Downs looming on the horizon.
“The easiest possible course is also the most exposed,” Peter said. “That’s to walk back round to the front and nip over the flint wall. Then we can simply amble along the side of the house to the back garden.”
“Somebody’ll see us,” Jo argued. “Can’t we just cross the field and cut through the hedge? You said the two elm trees once stood there.”
“I did,” Peter agreed, “but have you ever tried to cut through a hedge?”
“I do it all the time.”
He frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”
Jo reached for her purse and scrabbled in its depths. “While you were inspecting shovels, I bought a pair of secateurs. Autumn’s the time to prune, you know. I’ll do a passable job. It won’t hurt the hedge.”
“Smashing,” Peter said. “I’ll get the shovel.”
IT TOOK JO TWELVE MINUTES TO CARVE A BREAK IN THE soaring wall that divided field from garden. She chose a spot roughly around where Peter thought he remembered having once seen the marker to Virginia’s memory. So late in October, the yew was brittle: she was glad of the gloves, for the sharp evergreen would undoubtedly have drawn blood. She held back the tough stems and motioned silently to Peter. He swam through and she followed.
He had dropped to his knees on the far side of the hedge, and was probing the ground blindly with his fingers. She crouched down and followed him. They were like two rats, she thought, scuttling along in the dark, the shovel trailing between them. But they had not yet used the flashlight.
Suddenly, Peter stiffened, then to her astonishment rolled like a log against the base of the hedge, his gloved hands covering his blond hair. The unmistakable sound of swearing came to Jo’s ears; she flattened herself against the yew, heart pounding so loudly it had to be audible to the girl who was now standing outside the rear gate where they’d first encountered her that morning, trying to shove her unwilling key into the old lock.
Lucy. She’d probably walked to the Abergavenny Arms; it couldn’t be more than half a mile away. But had she drunk enough to be blind to two bodies lying half-exposed in the darkness of the hedge?
The lock turned and the gate swung open, creaking on its hinges. Lucy staggered up the walk, and Jo — who was so far under the yew it was sticking painfully into her neck — watched her make her determined way toward the rear gate into the walled garden that surrounded Monk’s House. Then she stopped short and turned. For an instant, she seemed to stare right at Jo, breathless and paralyzed on the ground.
A tiny orange light flared; Lucy, lighting a cigarette. She took a greedy draft of smoke and lingered by the garden wall, staring up at the chilly sky.
Go through the gate, Jo urged. Go inside. For Chrissake, you must be freezing. But maybe smoking wasn’t allowed in National Trust properties. Another burden Lucy had to bear, when staying at Monk’s House. There was no sign of life from Peter; had he seen the girl, motionless but for the pendulum of her right arm, lifting predictably to her lips?
Suddenly, Lucy dropped the butt and ground it beneath her heel. She lifted the iron hasp on the gate and swung through it, securing it behind her. Perhaps a minute later the house door slammed and a light bloomed in the window.
Jo exhaled.
“You all right?” Peter whispered from somewhere ahead of her.
“I’m scared to death,” she hissed. “Do we leave?”
His answer was drowned by a sudden swell of sound coming from Monk’s House — a cacophonic blare of music played at deafening volume. Jo could just make out a sporadic clapping as Lucy kept poor time to the music; and then a snatch of the girl’s voice, lifted in off-key song.
“Blimey,” Peter whispered. He had crawled up next to Jo. “She’s having her own little rave, right there in the caretaker’s apartment. Look at her!”
And, in fact, craning to spy over the wall, Jo could just see the twirling form passing before one window, then the next; lost to everything but the metal frenzy.
“Right.” Peter reached forward with his fingers again, searching the ground. “Let’s find this bloody marker, shall we?”
AGAINST YOU I WILL FLING MYSELF, UNVANQUISHED AND UN-yielding, O Death!
Brave words, Jo thought, as she read the few lines illuminated by Peter’s penlight. But what had the woman who’d written them, so long ago, felt as the water closed over her head, filled her mouth and lungs, cut her off from the sunlight and the bird singing triumphantly, Life, life, life?
How had Virginia come to the river, in the end?
Peter switched off the light and reached for the shovel. “Let’s hope it’s not too far down,” he said.
It was a slow and careful business. Peter’s plan, formulated on the fly, was to dig first at one side of the marker to avoid disturbing it too much; he would then angle under it and probe for several feet beneath. Jo kept watch alternately on the growing mound of dirt and the solitary party going on inside Monk’s House, which after seventeen minutes had begun to turn maudlin. Lucy had substituted torch songs for head-bangers, most of them by female artists, and was singing emotionally and wretchedly at the top of her lungs. How much had the girl drunk?
“Jo,” Peter said.
He lifted the shovel slantwise from the earth and then thrust it back in again. She heard a faint metallic clang.
“Shit,” she said. “Do you think it’s a… cremation urn or something?”
“Dunno.” He dragged a cautious bit of soil from the hole. “I’ll just… feel for it, shall I?”
Peter’s arm disappeared up to his shoulder.
“Doesn’t feel like an urn. Feels like a… a sort of box. Flattish and long.” He grunted slightly with exertion, then pulled the object out of the ground.
For an instant, Jo thought he was holding a book.
“What is it?”
Peter rubbed at the clods of earth with his garden glove. “A Peek Freans biscuit tin. Probably prewar. They stopped making them in 1939 — couldn’t spare the metal.” He sat down beside her, removed his gloves, and reached for the penlight. A narrow beam played over the tin’s surface.
“Peter — it’s shaped like a book!”
“Yes — they were rather elaborate in those days, a marketing ploy on the part of the biscuit makers. Quite collectible now. Sold at auction, in fact. This one’s gone a bit wonky, however — probably all the damp in the ground.” He attempted to pry off the lid and failed. “Corrosion.”
“Let me.” Jo tore off her gloves. Her fingernails were never long — that was impractical for a gardener — but her fingertips were more delicate than Peter’s. She found an edge and applied pressure. The lid moved.
Peter played the beam along the edge. “Here. Use the edge of the shovel. Like a lever — ”
Together, they pried off the tin’s cover.
Inside was what looked like a rubber bag.
“Oilskin, I think,” Peter said, and lifted it out. “Jo — you ought to open this.”
“What if it’s ashes?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “It’s not. I can feel it.”
Whatever it was, however, would have to wait. Lucy had suddenly stopped singing.
Chapter Thirty
THE LIGHTS WERE STILL ON, BUT MONK’S HOUSE WAS utterly silent. It was as though, Jo thought, Lucy and her tunes had been taken out by a neutron bomb.
“She’s coming into the garden,” Peter breathed, as the back door creaked open. “As long as she stays in the walled bit, we’re fine; but let’s hope she hasn’t forgot something in the car.”