Enter Pale Death (20 page)

A quick glance at Hunnyton’s estate map that he’d tucked into his pocket gave him his orientation and he set out across the open ground to his right, heading for an intriguing incursion into the landscape of what looked like several acres of ancient woodland which had been left untroubled to serve as an element of the framework of the Hall and as a screen for the stable block. A group of three tall elms, outliers of the wood, stood on guard. To welcome or repel? Joe made straight for them across the close-cropped grass, using them as a marker.

As he approached, he picked out oak, ash, hazel, much tangled hawthorn and a concentration of lower-growing shrubbery. Tantalisingly, Hunnyton had marked in the centre of this wilderness a tiny building he’d labelled
TEMPLE OF DIANA
. On a sporting and sociable estate like Truelove’s there was bound to be a temple to a classical god and Diana was most suitable. Diana the Huntress, eternally young and lovely. An appealing challenge to the sporting male ego since she had dedicated herself eternally to a state of virginity. Joe had always thought it odd that her other attribute was a mismatched concern for fertility. Denying it in herself, she loved and encouraged it in women. Those who wanted to become pregnant sought her intercession and when the moment came, this goddess would even help them through a painful childbirth.

Follies, hermitages (occasionally still with hermit in residence), marble temples, they were thick on the ground in English country seats, usually put up at the whim of eighteenth-century young English gentlemen recently returned from their Grand Tour. They came back from the continent, travelling boxes stuffed with architectural designs of a classical style or Italianate nature. Some, more adventurous, brought along the architect himself if he were of cool classical style or hot Italianate nature.

Joe enjoyed harmless whimsy. He approved of follies—they made useful trysting places or a refuge from boring company. A place to retire to with a good book minutes before someone’s aunt
called for a fourth at bridge. He had fond memories of kisses snatched, surprising intimacies allowed, in his youth; he had less fond memories of a corpse he’d been called in to attend to, hideous flesh and blood polluting the white marble beauty. He reckoned he had time to take in Diana on his way to the stables. He hoped there’d be a statue of some sort, for choice a scantily clad Grecian lady on whose lips he could plant a chaste kiss. Sculptors quite often went into flights of erotic fantasy when chiselling out a Diana. He’d make off to the house before she could turn him into a wild animal or a bush of some sort. He remembered Diana had a quick temper and a short way of dealing with unwanted romantic overtures; her admirer, Actaeon, even her male priests had all come, one after the other, to a sticky end. Better treat her with respect when he found her. Still—a guest who took the trouble to stop off and make a votive offering to the goddess of the place on his way up to lunch might just soften the heart of the Dowager. It would certainly get the conversation going.

The heat of the open parkland changed within a few strides to cool shadow as he entered the wood. He paused for a moment to let his eyes grow accustomed to the gloom and he breathed in deep forest scents laced with the intoxicating sharp top note of the elderflower that frothed in abundance, creamy-white amongst the dark foliage. He wished he could spend the afternoon here, alone with his thoughts.

Some yards to his right, a twig snapped. A small animal? Joe moved on briskly into the heart of the wood, seeking for a rise in the ground for that would be where a temple would be sited. The trees now crowded overhead, blotting out any external pointers like the tall bell tower of the distant chapel he’d lined up his sights on. If he kept his back to the sun he couldn’t go far astray—the whole grove couldn’t be much more than a couple of hundred yards wide. He stopped as, again, a twig snapped, to his left this time, and slightly behind him. Could be a poacher? Joe thought
not. Those fellers didn’t go about snapping twigs so carelessly. Joe was used to tracking—and being tracked. Even allowing for the still air and the smothering effect of the thick tree canopy, that snap had been too loud. Not accidental. He could have sworn someone had picked up a stick and broken it with gusto. To attract his attention? Warn him off? Frighten him?

All senses alert, he continued on his way more slowly. A rustling in the undergrowth kept pace with him. A low growl raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Not an animal, he thought. But what human would be making hostile noises at an innocent visitor in broad daylight? He’d try to lure it into view. Joe took his notebook from his pocket and, humming a snatch from
The Mikado
, went to stand in the shade of a particularly gnarled oak tree and affected to be drawing a sketch of the writhing outline. A very ancient specimen he decided and tentatively reached up and tugged at one of the lower branches, testing its resilience.

He leapt to one side a split second before a log of wood crashed down, grazing his cheek, and thumping to the ground at his feet. He turned and caught a flash of green and brown behind a thick hazel only feet away. With a hideous cackle some being began to crash its way through the undergrowth, running away from him.

Joe set off in pursuit, anger and outrage and a stinging face urging him on. In ten strides he had caught up. He launched his weight at it in a high tackle learned on the rugby pitch, automatically reaching for a human right arm and, to his relief, finding one. He hauled it up behind the creature’s back, shouting a dire caution in a police voice. When he sensed that resistance had stopped, he flipped his victim over onto his back and immediately recoiled in disgust. A stench of sweat and fear wafted up from the leather-clad body of a man. A wiry man, smaller than Joe but well muscled. His face was obliterated by a green mask, his head hidden under a cap of knitted wool woven through with oak and ivy leaves to produce
an extravagant mass of greenery. Joe stared in astonishment. The mask was no amateur, papier maché, village-hall-drama-club attempt at stage costume. It was Venetian in quality, dark green silk, a full face mask, with embroidered slanting holes for eyes and a red-lined slit for the mouth. The eyes were dark and venomous, the teeth bared in a growl were grey and rotting.

A Woodwose! He was holding down, but barely holding down, a bloody Woodwose! Joe had seen hundreds of effigies and carvings of the Wild Green Man in wood and stone on bench ends, on architraves, hidden up in the ceiling, keeping sinister watch on the congregation in country churches. No one had any real idea where the image came from but two things were certain: they were ancient and they were malevolent. Joe was disturbed to be faced with a flesh-and-blood relic of this paganism. He resisted the urge to tear off the mask and look into the face of the coughing, winded creature wearing it. Instead he pulled him to his feet, forcing him under his arm in a neck lock, and marched him back to the pathway.

Joe stopped at the spot where his abandoned notebook told him he’d been standing, right by the considerable chunk of oak that had so nearly dropped him in his tracks. With time now to assess the weight of the object, he knew for a certainty that it could have split his skull. If he’d stood still, he calculated he would now be lying bleeding or dead—and from a wound that could have been caused by a falling branch. It would have been very simple, the work of a few moments, to arrange the scene. Remove the killer log, lose it in the undergrowth and replace it with a freshly torn down branch from the ancient tree overhead, ensuring that it bore signs of his blood. “Poor chap!” they’d say. “Killed by the very tree he was sketching! So sad … Still, it was a
very
old tree, rotten, quite rotten … Mentioned in the Domesday Book I shouldn’t wonder …” There you had it: a death by misadventure. Another death by misadventure on Truelove land.

Keeping his voice steady, “The Green Man of the Woods, I presume?” he said. “How do you do? Or are you calling yourself the Green Knight in such seigneurial surroundings? Before I chuck you in the moat, which I am advised to do, tell me—why did you try to kill me?” He released the man’s head but kept a firm grip on his arm.

“Kill you? Good Lord! Are you barmy? I didn’t! If you hadn’t leapt like a startled hare it would have landed harmlessly at your feet. I always aim to miss!” The voice was accentless and dismissive.

The man was lying but at least he was talking. Joe needed to hear more.

“City gent, clearly—how was I to guess you’d move like a grasshopper?” The shaggy head tilted to one side, assessing him and the voice was slick with suspicion as he asked, “Who the hell are
you
anyway?”

This was a bit rich, coming from a man in a ludicrous mask, Joe thought, and he fought back a hysterical urge to laugh out loud. He saw the eyes flick, taking in his officer’s trench coat. “The war’s been over a few years now, you know. Didn’t anyone think to inform you, Captain?” The jibe was delivered with a derisory sneer, the use of the lowly rank insulting.

“And the Middle Ages are even more distant,” Joe said, “so stop arsing about before I haul you up before the beak on a charge of buffoonery as well as attempted murder. Let’s have some ID, shall we, and we’ll start by taking a look at your ugly mug. Off with it, mate!”

The man pulled himself to his full height and with an overdramatic gesture peeled the mask from his face. He shook the cap of leaves from his head and stood staring impassively at Joe.

“I’m Virbio, King of the Woods,” he announced in all seriousness. “Have you come to kill me?”

Joe was lost for words. In spite of his wiry strength, the man,
he now saw, was in late middle age. In his fifties perhaps. White hair sprang about his head in tight corkscrews yet his face was not the face of an old man. The brows were still black above dark mocking eyes, the practised, sardonic smile was that of a pantomime villain. He was freshly shaven, his jaw firm and in his ears he wore gold earrings a pirate captain would have sighed for. Hard to place in normal society.

“I’m Guardian of the Shrine of Diana, which, if I’m not mistaken, you were about to hunt out with murder in mind,” the man elaborated.

Mad. Stark, staring. Joe was at a loss as to how he should proceed. Medical attention needed perhaps? For a moment, he had a longing for the company of Adelaide Hartest. He sensed instinctively she’d know what to do. She would identify the condition and stick a highfalutin label on it, prescribe a sedative and have him hauled away somewhere appropriate for treatment. One thing was sure—Joe could not allow a homicidal maniac to remain at large in these woods. Surely the family were …?

The penny dropped and he felt foolish. His own sanity must have been knocked sideways for a moment by a perceived attempt on his life. He felt a trickle of blood dripping from his chin and dashed it away with his hand. Of course the family bloody well knew! Follies, hermitages—this idiot was a modern-day version of those poor old blokes the Georgians had employed to live a life of seclusion and poverty in romantically architected cells at the bottom of their lands. The object of an afternoon’s stroll around the estate. A source of laughter and wonder for their spoilt guests. These days, with neo-Gothic, hey-nonny-nonny, Merrie England myth and legend all the rage, the Trueloves had gone one better and in their ancient woodland had installed their own rural jester.

This Green Man was tricked out expensively in an outfit straight from the stage of Covent Garden. Joe looked again with
disapproval at the green tights, the leather tunic and the knee-high kid boots. He wondered how long the man had been in residence. Were the Trueloves aware that they were harbouring a log-chucking psychopath in their holy grove?

Joe resolved to raise the matter with … Oh, Lord! Her ladyship was waiting for him, probably tapping her little foot in exasperation. He looked at his watch. If he ran he could just do it. If he could only rid himself of this clown.

“How do you do? I’m Joe Sandilands. Now, listen, er, Virbio. I’m prepared to overlook your offence on two conditions. One: lead me to your goddess. I have something to give her. Two: get me out of this bloody wood and point me in the right direction for the Hall. I’m late for a lunch appointment with your mistress. That’s: Cecily, Lady Truelove, not Diana the Huntress.”

He had not taken the name of Cecily in vain. The King of the Woods reacted visibly when he used it. Unctuous servility and cooperative sanity followed. “Of course, sir … Come this way … Happy to oblige Your Honour … I do apologise for the churlish welcome—I had taken you for a policeman.”

On the whole, Joe had preferred the rude, mad Green Man.

A
FEW YARDS
in front of an ornate but sturdily built wooden pavilion in a clearing, she was looking out at him, staring wide eyed over one white marble shoulder. Girlish breasts not entirely successfully concealed beneath a diaphanous shift, short pleated skirt, soft ankle boots, bow in left hand, she’d clearly been distracted by someone lurking in the bushes behind her and to the right. By Joe. He stepped forward feeling absurdly guilty that he’d startled her. She was holding out her right hand, palm uppermost to one of her hounds in the act of offering him some titbit. Superstition and a spirit of playfulness made Joe approach her plinth with head bowed. He went to stand by her side and, knowing that any seduction of the chaste goddess was bound to fail, he decided
to turn his attention first on the hound. He caressed the marble head in an entirely natural gesture and murmured into its ear. “Hello, old mate. I wonder if you’re Syrius or Phocion? And has your mistress detailed you to tear my throat out if I take a liberty? I’ll chance it!” He reached up on tiptoe and dropped a kiss on the cold white lips. He felt about in his pocket, found what he was looking for and placed a small gold object on her upraised palm.

“
Amor vincit omnia
, Diana,” he whispered. “Love conquers all. I do hope I haven’t got that wrong.”

H
E HEARD THE
stable bell ringing out one o’clock as he pounded across the drawbridge. The huge door swung open as he arrived and he prepared, hot and breathless, coat tails flapping, to face the butler.