Ruth shoved the letter back in its envelope and gathered it up with the others. She couldn't burn them in the house, Hester might walk in and see her doing it. Hester would understand but she didn't want Hester to know. She'd burn them in the garden. It was wet underfoot out there, but that didn't matter, a few papers needed only a match put to them.
She slipped past the kitchen. From within came the sound of a wooden spoon being scraped round a bowl and Hester humming to herself. Out the front door Ruth went, round the side of the house, scurrying down the garden path, behaving like a sneakthief on her own property. Behind the privet hedge she set to work. It wasn't as easy as she'd thought it would be. Just putting a match to an envelope and its contents resulted in the corner smouldering, turning brown, going out. She had to take each letter from its envelope. The first single sheet she set match to, floated up into the air to her alarm and still burning, fluttered across the sky towards the house.
âDamn!' said Ruth aloud.
Each sheet had to be separated, screwed into a twist. She piled them up and finally managed to set light to the lot. They
burned satisfactorily, though blackened wisps still floated away, betraying her presence and activity. She just hoped Hester didn't look out of the kitchen window.
Hester hadn't, but someone else had. Someone she'd quite forgotten.
âWhat are you doing there?'
The voice came from close behind her. Ruth jumped, squeaked, and spun round.
A solid figure in a quilted nylon coat and Crimplene trousers stood watching her. Dilys Twelvetrees, a middle-aged female version of Old Billy. Her broad face, normally devoid of any expression, was alive with curiosity.
âBurning rubbish,' said Ruth firmly.
The expression on Dilys's face turned to one of cunning. âBurning old letters,' she said.
Ruth wanted to snap that it was none of her business. Instead she muttered, âOld receipts and business stuff.'
Dilys rightly dismissed this pathetic invention. She put her head on one side and contemplated Ruth. âYou got left, didn't you?' she said.
âWhat on earth do you mean?' Ruth heard herself ask.
âYou got left,' repeated Dilys patiently. âLike me. Your feller left you, too.'
âNonsense,' said Ruth. âYou knew my husband. He died.'
âNot him,' said Dilys scornfully. âBefore him. A young feller.' She glanced at the patch of blackened scraps and feathery pale ash. âSurprised you kept 'em so long,' she said.
With that, as if she knew she'd uttered an unanswerable statement, Dilys turned and plodded off on her way home.
How could she know? How could the woman know? Was it
just by some instinct or â Ruth's heart pounded at the thought â had Dilys found the key, worked out that it opened the box and read the letters? She hadn't thought Dilys had that much curiosity in her. Now she wasn't sure.
Drat the woman, thought Ruth. Drat the whole Twelvetrees, clan.
Dilys was employed by them as a cleaner for the ârough work', the scrubbing of the ancient flags on the kitchen floor, the cleaning of windows, the taking up of rugs and beating the living daylights out of them in the backyard. In winter, Dilys cleaned out the log-burning stove in the sitting room. Dilys was good at peeling spuds and carrots, releasing Hester for the making of her complicated sauces.
Of course, Ruth and Hester could easily have managed all these things between them. But what other work would Dilys have found in Lower Stovey? Employing Dilys was what the Reverend Pattinson, Ruth's father, would have called an act of Christian charity. What was more, the link between their two families covered two generations.
Many years ago, Dilys's mother had been employed by Ruth's mother to scrub the vicarage floors. Dilys's brother, Young Billy, had mown the vicarage lawns before he left the village to make his way in the outside world. When Ruth and her late husband had returned to Lower Stovey to set up home in the Old Forge, Dilys had turned up on the doorstep on their first morning there, stolidly announcing, âYou'll want me to do for you, will you?' Not a question, just a statement.
So why was it, then, that the sight of Dilys's shapeless form and work-worn hands added to that sense of guilt which Ruth seemed to have been destined from birth to carry around with
her, weighing down her shoulders and unable to be shed. Sinbad had the Old Man of the Sea and she, Ruth, had Dilys.
Ruth could remember, as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, the very first time she'd set eyes on Dilys Twelvetrees. They'd both been five years old and it had been their joint first day at school.
The school, of course, had been Lower Stovey Church Primary School. It no longer existed as a school. Dwindling numbers had led to its closure some years back, followed by sale and redevelopment. The buildings had been converted into a close of maisonettes, done rather cleverly. The people who lived in School Close were not villagers, although they were residents. They commuted to jobs in Bamford or elsewhere. They might show their faces occasionally of an evening in the Fitzroy Arms, but otherwise they were invisible, taking no part in village life. Or, as Ruth phrased it to herself, what passed for life in Lower Stovey these days.
The Reverend Pattinson had believed it right and proper that his daughter should attend primary school with the other village children. The inevitable boarding school would come later. This wasn't because her parents couldn't bear to send her miles away. It would be nice to think that, but untrue. Had they considered it the right thing to do, they'd have ferried her back and forth to some private school. But they had considered it right she should attend Lower Stovey Church Primary. Possibly they'd also been happy to save on fees for a few years and the chore of the daily school run. But chiefly the vicar (more than his wife who knew the village rather better than he did) believed that Ruth would learn from mixing with the village children and they from association with her. Moreover, the parents of
the children would see that the vicar and his family were approachable, human, one of them.
Which they weren't and couldn't ever be, thought Ruth crossly. Her four years at Lower Stovey Church Primary had been wretched. Good intentions don't always result in good outcomes. From the start she'd been an outsider and an oddity, held by the other children in contempt. She talked posh. Her father didn't work with his hands at a proper job. He was a Holy Joe who sat in his study among books. In Ruth's hearing at school, the children, quoting their parents and finding the words hilarious, referred to their spiritual leader as a bit of an old woman.
But his wife, now, that had been a different matter. Ruth's mother, prior to her marriage, had been Miss Fitzroy, last of that line. She'd grown up at the Manor, (nowadays a retirement home for the well-heeled elderly). Older villagers, ignoring her marriage, had continued to address her as âMiss Mary'. The vicar's wife drove a car, which none of the village women did fifty years ago. She drove it once a week to Bamford to have her hair washed and set at a proper hairdresser's, and twice a year made an expedition by train to London where, villagers whispered in awe, she had her hair cut in Harrods' hairdressing department. The village women gave each other home perms which, in damp weather, frizzed and made the wearer look as if she'd had an electric shock.
On her first day at school Ruth had been confused at midday by being told it was now dinner-time and if she wasn't having her dinner at school, she could go home, returning by two o'clock. At the vicarage they ate dinner in the evening. She caused hilarity by saying, âOh, you mean lunch.' Only she'd
probably said âluncheon' because the vicar was fussy about details like that. It was one of many
faux pas
Ruth was never allowed to forget.
On that first day she'd been seated next to Dilys Twelvetrees and been distressed by the strange odour emanating from the other child. Later she was able to identify this odour as being compounded of rancid chip fat and cabbage water, the smells of which clung to Dilys's clothes which were seldom washed. As was Dilys, come to that. To be fair, the majority of village parents wouldn't have dreamed of sending their offspring to school other than clean and tidy, the boys with hair cut to military shortness and girls with tightly-braided pigtails. But the Twelvetrees family, Ruth had soon discovered, was not as other families. They were regarded by other villagers with mistrust and unease. They, too, were outsiders of a kind and Ruth sometimes wondered if the class teacher had seated the two little girls together for that reason, calculating that individual isolation might cause them to strike up a friendship. If so, it hadn't worked. Dilys might be one of âthem Twelvetrees lot' but she joined in the general contempt of Ruth.
Also at the school, but older and in senior grades, were Sandra and Young Billy (already so-called) Twelvetrees. Ruth had little to do with Young Billy who was an amiable, unteachable ten-year-old, given to âskiving off'. Sandra and Dilys were poorly nourished and badly dressed. Dilys was the worse dressed because she had to wear Sandra's cast-offs and they'd already been cast off by someone else. On one terrible day, Dilys had appeared in a last year's cotton dress of Ruth's, bought for a few pence at a church jumble sale. It was too tight in the bodice and where the hem had been let down it was a different colour.
Ruth had been embarrassed by this, but Dilys had hated her for it and contrived to spill green poster paint over Ruth's laboriously just-finished painting of the Queen in her Coronation Coach. In winter, the Twelvetrees sisters wore knitted pixie hoods. Their shoes were never cleaned, neither were their teeth. Which is why, thought Ruth sadly, I've got my own teeth now and poor Dilys has got a false set.
Moreover, there was one thing about both Dilys and Sandra which secretly fascinated and frightened the infant Ruth. From time to time their arms and legs sported unexplained bruises, not the sort caused by falling down and scraping your knees in the playground. These were long narrow bruises and appeared in clusters. She never dared to ask Dilys about them.
How on earth did my father ever imagine I'd fit in at Lower Stovey Primary? wondered Ruth now, not for the first time. The teachers had been kind but it had made matters worse, causing her to be dubbed âteacher's pet' and to have âgoody-goody' chanted at her. It was true she never misbehaved. She couldn't. She was the vicar's daughter and he had told her, as had her mother, that she must set an example. An example of what? At five you really don't understand. Ruth had interpreted it as meaning you always did as you were told and never opened your mouth without permission.
Originally she was to have suffered at Lower Stovey Church Primary until she was eleven. But one day, when she was nine, she had come home and innocently repeated some new words learned that morning in the playground. These words (she had no idea what they meant) were apparently so wicked as to necessitate her being taken away from the school almost at once. The day she'd walked out of the gates for the last time
had been one of the happiest of her life.
After that she'd been dispatched, despite her tender years, to boarding school, a wind-swept institution on Dartmoor which might have shared much of its regime with the celebrated prison there.
From then on, Lower Stovey had only been visited at holiday times and later, in university vacations. Her mother's letters would occasionally mention some village event which would update Ruth on her former schoolmates. Sandra married a soldier and went off to foreign climes with him, something it was hard to imagine. Dilys got married too, but was abandoned by her husband within a year. She'd returned home to her parents, which suited them as Mrs Twelvetrees (who also, from time to time, had sported odd bruises), had been rendered housebound by an affliction of her legs. She died not long afterwards and Dilys stayed on to keep house for her ageing father. Her married name was abandoned by common consent and she'd become Dilys Twelvetrees again, as if her marriage had been a sort of blip and could be ignored.
So it had been until Ruth's return to Lower Stovey with her husband some twelve years earlier. Both her parents were dead by then. The vicarage was a private residence inhabited by Muriel Scott and Roger, then a boisterous pup of whom his mistress would blithely assure everyone that âhe'd quieten down as he got older'. If only! Age, in Roger's case, seemed to have disposed of what little canine reason he'd ever possessed. The school was on the verge of closing. Somehow, seeing Dilys on the doorstep that first morning, far from being unwelcome, had been almost a comfort. Something at least was the same. Probably exactly the same. Ruth wondered whether, in secret, Dilys still despised her.
Dave Pearce stood before the bathroom mirror, his mouth opened as wide as was physically possible, and performed a series of stretches and contortions in an effort to inspect one of his own teeth. The mirror was inconveniently placed, not high enough for him. Tessa insisted that fixed any higher, it would be too high for her. It meant he had to half-crouch in an attitude hard to maintain. The light wasn't good enough. If he approached the mirror any closer, his breath steamed it up and he couldn't see at all. He hooked a finger into his lower lip, pulling it down, and wrenched his head sideways producing one more face which would have won him any girning competition. The tooth looked all right to him. So why, then, when he ate anything on that side, or drank anything very hot or cold, did it suddenly feel as if someone had jabbed a redhot needle in his jaw?
He gave up the attempt and finished shaving. He supposed he could stop off at a dentist's surgery on the way to work and
make an appointment. He clattered down the stairs. As he reached the hall, the front door opened and Tessa appeared, flushed of face, hauling a reluctant brindled lurcher in her wake.
âI've walked Henry,' she said in a voice which held layers of meaning.
âI said I'd do it,' offered Pearce lamely.
âSaying's not much good, is it? I didn't think you were ever coming out of that bathroom. I've just run round the playing field with him. But tonight you can walk him. It's your turn!'
âAll right, I'll walk him!' Pearce's temper began to fray. Henry collapsed on the floor, put his head on his paws and rolled his eyes upward, watching his owners with interest.
âI know why you were so long up there!' announced Tessa, arms akimbo. âIt's that flipping tooth. I told you to make a dental appointment.'
âI will, I'll make one,' he promised.
âYeah, like you promised to walk Henry. You put everything off, David.'
He knew he was in trouble when she called him David.
âI promise you,' he said, âthat some time today, if I'm not too busy, I'll ring the dentist's and fix an appointment. And when I get home the first thing I'll do is walk Henry.'
âI'm going to be late for work,' she swept on effortlessly to a new grievance. âYou'll have to drop me off.'
âIt means going outâ' Pearce began but didn't finish. âAll right,' he said. âGet your skates on or we'll both be late.'
âGet
my
skates on? You know, Dave, for someone with such a responsible job as you've got, you're not very good at taking responsibilities at home. You can't just switch off, you know,
like a â a telly. One life inside the box, another out. I mean,' Tessa became aware that her simile was leading down a complicated path. âOf course, I don't want you to bring your work home. I don't bring my work home, do I? I get loads of hassle at the building society. But I don't leave my sense of responsibility behind when I leave at the end of the day, either. Now youâ'
âFor crying out loud, get in the car!' exploded Pearce.
âThere's no need to shout. You're not arresting me, you know. I've not some yobbo with a skinful of lager. If you'll just hang on a moment, I've got to change my shoes.'
âCan't you change them in the car?'
âI wouldn't have to change them at all if I hadn't had to walk Henry. And I wouldn't have had to walk Henry if you hadn't been stuck in the bathroom messing with that tooth. If we're running late this morning, David Pearce,' Tessa finished this
tour de force
of logic, âit's because you're scared of going to the dentist. So there,' she added.
Sometimes, thought Pearce, police work was a doddle compared with domestic life. He sighed.
Henry groaned in sympathy from the carpet.
Alan Markby sat at his desk. He'd been there since early morning, arriving while the cleaners were still at work. Yet when he'd picked up the phone he'd found that someone had arrived in Records, though the off-hand tone with which the phone was answered suggested whoever it was had just got in and was taking off his coat.
âWhat is it?' asked the voice curtly. It added loudly to someone else, âYeah, you can bring me a cup of coffee and a bacon sarnie.'
Markby identified himself and was mildly amused by the change in attitude and tone.
âYes, sir. Sorry, Mr Markby, didn't know it was you. I just got in. What can we do for you?'
âYou can look out an old file for me,' said Markby. âIt was a serial rapes case, unsolved, and the perpetrator was nicknamed the Potato Man.' He gave the date and location of the rapes.
âGet it up to you directly,' promised the voice.
Markby walked down the corridor and helped himself to a brew from the machine there. He presumed it to be tea because he'd pressed the button marked âTea' but without this clue, anyone could have been misled. Though normally he didn't take sugar he selected the sweetened version because it masked the usual taste of burnt cocoa which seem to dominate any beverage provided by this dispenser.
He carried it back to his office, his footsteps echoing in a building still half-empty. Back in his office, he stood with it in his hand, staring from the window, not seeing the asphalted parking area, the moving cars below like so many shiny beetles, and the ant-like clusters of men and women. He saw Stovey Woods.
Occasionally his gaze drifted from the scene outside to the top of his desk and the crumpled package lying there. He murmured, âWho are you?'
Just bones? Or bones which could still speak to them? In the days before X-rays, a skeleton had been the symbol of mortality, the intricate and unlikely framework of the human body, only
seen once its owner had long gone, dust to dust. It pranced, grinning, along the façade of many a medieval cathedral in a
danse macabre
, reminding the other revellers, the monk, the lady, the knight, the peasant, of that end to which all must come. That symbolism had faded in the glare of scientific advance. Yet perhaps true awareness of reality lay not with modern scientists and their machines but with the sculptor of long ago. Even the sad little collection on his desk represented a living, breathing being. Flesh had clothed those bones once. That jaw had moved up and down in speech, chewing food, singing a popular song, and he had to put a name to him or her. The necessity was like a nagging pain. It wouldn't leave him, the question would never cease to plague him morning, noon and night. Was he looking at the mortal remains of the Potato Man? Or at the pitiful remnants of one of his victims? Or, indeed, someone else altogether? He mustn't let himself become so convinced that the bones related to the old case that he ignored other possibilities.
Though the bones were few, they contained the lower jaw and that, in turn, contained something which might be the invaluable key to identity. He'd already been on the phone to his own dentist, confirming his suspicions. Expensive dental work ought to be traceable, especially that kind.
Markby allowed himself a wry smile. It wasn't the kind of dental work that a Lower Stovey villager might have been able to afford, all those years ago. If the jaw was that of the Potato Man, it suggested that the rapist had been from outside the village, after all, as the Reverend Pattinson had always insisted.
He sipped his tea, winced and sighed. He should have gone up to the canteen but his appearance there, so early in the day,
would disturb things. From the window he saw Dave Pearce arrive, park his car, and stride purposefully towards the building. Dave looked a bit out of sorts.
Markby went into the outer office. âInspector Pearce is just on his way up,' he said. âWhen he gets here, tell him I want to see him at once, will you?'
Pearce, the message received, made his way to Markby's office, wondering what was up and half welcoming a diversion which would take his mind off his own problems. Along the way, the tooth twinged, letting him know it wasn't to be forgotten so easily. After the detour to deliver Tessa to the building society, he hadn't had time to stop off at the dentist's.
He found Markby standing by his desk, staring down at a creased sheet of paper on which lay some not unfamiliar objects.
âBones,' observed Pearce with professional detachment. Inside, he was feeling far less sanguine. Was that what this call to Markby's office was all about? That crummy collection of oddments? He wasn't going to be asked to make something of them, was he? Yes, he probably was. With a note of resignation in his voice, he added, âYou wanted to see me, sir?'
âYes, Dave, and yes, bones. They were found in Stovey Woods at the weekend by a hiker.'
Pearce drew nearer and studied the gruesome collection unenthusiastically. âOld,' he opined. âAnd pretty chewed about. Found in the woods? Then the damage will be down to foxes, most likely. Is that it? No more?' Even Markby couldn't expect him to conjure up a miracle of identification, surely, from this little lot?
Oh, yes, he did
âNot as yet. The woods will have to be searched.'
Pearce drew a deep breath. âIt'll be quite something to organize. Those woods cover a fair area. You know we've got a bit of a manpower problem. Oughtn't we get the bones to a boffin first? They could be donkey's years old.'
âAnd you're obviously hoping they are. I'm hoping they're not, not relating to a time out of living memory, anyway.' Markby poked the bones with a long thin forefinger.
Pearce clearly resisted the urge to ask why, realising the danger that any information might result in yet more work. He stooped to low cunning. âIf animals are involved, the bones could've been carried from somewhere else.'
âThen check Lower Stovey churchyard,' suggested his boss mildly. âSee if any old graves have been disturbed. No one ever goes there and a disturbance mightn't be noticed. I was there myself at the weekend,' he added contradictorily
âWhy?' asked Pearce, genuinely curious this time and putting a hand to his jaw without being aware of the gesture.
âHouse-hunting. No, not in the churchyard. We looked at the old vicarage next door to it.'
âAny good?' enquired Pearce, suddenly seeing the faint hope of deflecting Markby from the bones.
âI'd say it'd got possibilities,' Markby told him. âBut it's on the large side.' He caught at the paper and rustled it. âWithout having had an expert look at these, I'd judge them to have been lying around for twenty years at least. But that, Dave, is still recent enough to interest us!'
âIt'll be some old tramp, died of hypothermia,' Pearce persevered in the face of certain defeat.
âWe can't assume that!' Markby told him severely. âTake a look at the jawbone.'
The last thing Pearce needed was to study a set of rickety teeth. He picked up the jawbone gingerly.
âNotice anything?' the superintendent was asking.
Which meant there was something to notice, Markby had already seen it and Pearce had better see it quickly. He saw it.
âSome fancy dental work here. I've not seen anything like it.' Nor did he like the look of it, or the thought of it. Implanted in the jaw was a discoloured piece of metal resembling the popular image of a Christmas tree. He sighed, seeing his hope that the remains were historical vanish. Nor did tramps usually have mouths filled with expensive dentistry.
âIt's called a blade implant,' Markby informed him. âThis type is called a Christmas tree implant. I know this,' he explained, âbecause before you came in, I rang my dentist and described the thing to him.'
Pearce wondered what time that morning Markby had arrived in his office. Very early, by the sound of it. Pearce had worked with Markby over several years. He knew that this early morning eager-beaver stuff usually meant Markby was dissatisfied about something, not necessarily to do with police work, and having another problem to worry at, got the dissatisfaction out of his system. It was probably the house-hunting, thought Pearce, not without sympathy. He and Tessa had suffered similarly before buying their house. He just hoped that domestic frustrations didn't lead to Markby pushing everything that came their way under his, Pearce's, nose. Especially, if it had anything to do with teeth.
âWhat's more,' Markby was saying, determined, it seemed,
to talk about teeth and nothing else. âAbout twenty years ago â assuming that to be the age of the bones although that can only be guesswork at the moment â such dental work was comparatively rare and carried out only in a few places. So, we might be able to trace that particular effort. The metal piece has some sort of mark on it.'
âOh, yes â¦' Pearce, forgetting his personal aversion, peered at the blade. âLike a hallmark.'
âManufacturer's mark, most likely. Get on to it, Dave.'
Just like that. He was going to be busy all day. Which meant, Pearce decided, he wouldn't have time to ring his own dentist about his own teeth. He gathered up the mystery bones. âI'll get 'em over to the experts,' he said.
But Markby had something else for him. He picked up a file from the desk. It looked to Pearce to be a pretty old one. âYou might,' Markby said casually, âlike to read up on this old case. It might have some bearing.'
Pearce added the file to the parcel of bones in his arms. âRight you are,' he said and edged towards the door before he could be burdened with anything else.