Missing Susan (9 page)

“Yes. Elizabeth MacPherson. I’m a forensic anthropologist,
with a doctorate but no job yet. My husband is a marine biologist. He went off to do seal research, so I decided to take this tour. I’ve read a few murder mysteries, but I really love true crime.”

“Having a husband who comes home with the Gulf Stream could drive anybody to true crime,” murmured Rowan, “but we’re glad to have you, anyhow. And you are …?”

“Kate Conway,” said the youngest member of the group, flashing her dark eyes at him. She was wearing a simple blue sheath dress and a string of pearls. “I’m an emergency room nurse. I like to travel. I enjoyed the public television presentations of Sherlock Holmes.”

When the discussion of Jeremy Brett’s interpretations of the Sleuth of Baker Street versus those of Mr. Basil Rathbone had subsided, Rowan Rover invited Alice MacKenzie to identify herself to the group. She announced herself in sympathy with the Christie readers and the Jeremy Brett watchers. Thereupon the attention turned to her roommate, Frances Coles.

Frances managed to smile and look terrified at the same time. She tugged at a lock of auburn hair and smoothed imaginary wrinkles out of her corduroy skirt. Rowan, who was hopeless at guessing ages, thought she might be in her early forties, but since she was a Californian it was hard to tell, since they cheated by exercising and going on diets. “I just wanted to come to England because I read so much about it,” she said softly. “I used to teach second grade. I’m a great fan of Ellis Peters.”

“You are in luck,” said Rowan Rover magnanimously. “We shall be visiting Brother Cadfael’s home city of Shrewsbury at the end of next week and you will be able to see the settings for the Ellis Peters novels.” Rowan Rover had never read Ellis Peters himself, but he was well-briefed on the tour itinerary. Besides, years of association with university English departments had left him able to bluff his way
through almost any literary discussion. Sometimes he even fooled himself into thinking that he had read
Moby Dick
and
War and Peace.

“Am I next?” said the serious-looking young woman in rimless glasses. “My name is Emma Smith and this is my mother, Miriam Angel.”

Her mother was the most English-looking of the bunch, pale with softly waved brown hair and green eyes in a gentle heart-shaped face. In her good-but-not-new tweed jacket and well-cut skirt, she fitted Rowan’s idea of a duchess—or she would if she gained forty pounds or so. In Rowan’s experience, duchesses seldom came in small packages.

“We’re from Colorado,” Emma was saying. “My husband thought we’d both enjoy coming on this trip. He’s at home minding the two kids.”

Miriam beamed with pride. “Emma’s husband is an attorney. And such a dear!”

Rowan Rover was unable to imagine any reason why a sane man who was capable of supporting himself would offer to babysit for two children while sending his wife and mother-in-law on an extended European vacation. Knowing lawyers, though, the motives were bound to be devious. He gave the assembly a bright smile. “How lovely,” he said. “So there we all are. No real crime experts here, then.” (Thank God, he finished silently.)

“I hear you’re a crime expert,” said Alice MacKenzie.

For a moment he froze. Then he realized that the comment pertained to his theoretical connections with crime history—not his future plans to practice what he preached. “Oh, me? You want to know about me?”

The group nodded solemnly. They still had an ounce or two of sherry to finish, after all.

“Well, I am from Cornwall originally,” said Rowan Rover. “I attended a minor public school in the West Country, and then went on to Oxford. We shall be going to Oxford
near the end of our tour, by the way. As some of you know, I give the Jack the Ripper tour in Whitechapel for one of the city tour companies—when I am not otherwise engaged as a media consultant on crime. And I write books about English crimes. I hope you will find me knowledgeable about your areas of interest. Certainly I shall be helpful in history and geography; fictional mystery stories are not, alas, within my realm of expertise.”

“Don’t worry,” said Susan Cohen cheerfully. “I’ve read most of them, and I’ll be happy to fill everyone in on the books pertaining to the areas we visit.”

“How nice,” said Rowan, from the depths of a plaster smile. “And now, before we adjourn for dinner, let me tell you tomorrow’s schedule. The hotel will serve you breakfast, any time between seven and nine—”

“I eat breakfast at six-thirty,” said Maud Marsh.

“So do I if I still happen to be up,” said Rowan. “Well, let me inquire for you. Perhaps they can provide something earlier than seven. At nine o’clock you will all assemble in the Wessex lobby and we’ll walk over across the green for your tour of the cathedral, to be followed by a quick tour of Winchester College and a look round the city. Lunch is on your own, but be back in the lobby at one. Bernard will bring the coach to the car park, and we will go off on our afternoon tour, to see the New Forest site where King William Rufus was murdered in the year 1100. We shall also visit the grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.”

Elizabeth MacPherson frowned. “Conan Doyle was Scottish. He was born in Edinburgh.”

Rowan Rover acknowledged the fact with a bland smile. “His heart may have been in the Highlands, madam, but the rest of him is under a stone cross in Minstead. I shall prove it to you tomorrow. Any more questions? No? Off you go, then.”

THE NEW FOREST

R
OWAN
R
OVER ABSENTED
himself from the morning tour of Winchester, leaving his charges in the capable hands of one of the cathedral’s volunteer guides, a tall silver-haired gentleman who identified himself as a retired physician. He began by telling them that they were standing in the longest church in Europe, except for St. Peter’s in Rome. “When Winchester was the capital of England, kings were crowned here in this cathedral, not in Westminster Abbey,” he said, in tones suggesting that he considered the move to London a recent bureaucratic whim.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” whispered Frances Coles, gazing up at the graceful succession of carved Gothic arches high above their heads.

Alice MacKenzie wasn’t ready to forgive the Conqueror for his destruction of the original church. “It’s a bit showy. What did the Saxon cathedral look like, Emma?” she whispered.

“Not so upscale,” Emma whispered back. “Based on what we found on the dig, I’d say it was a lot smaller, and the architecture was simpler. Besides, even before William
trashed it, it had been damaged by the Danes during the tenth-century Viking raids.”

“Go, Vikings!” whispered Susan, who had heard only the last few words of the conversation and had assumed they were talking about her hometown football team.

Emma pretended not to have heard. “When we were excavating the ruins of the old cathedral, we found a few Viking graves. You could always tell when you’d found one who had converted to Christianity late in life. The deceased would have a cross on his chest, but just in case Odin was the right god after all, the bones would be lying in a layer of charcoal—symbolizing the flaming ship burials of the Norse religion.”

“Did you find any treasure?” asked Frances. “My pupils love stories about buried treasure.”

Emma shook her head. “Nothing much. A few Roman coins. It’s the knowledge of Saxon Britain that we valued.”

“It hardly seems worth the bother of excavating for a few lousy coins,” said Susan. “I’d want to work on a dig where there was a chance of finding treasure. Like Egypt. I’ll bet you could smuggle a lot of stuff out of the country without the authorities ever knowing. If your dig didn’t find anything worth selling, how could they afford to pay you diggers?”

“We only got four shillings a day,” Emma admitted. “That was lunch money.”

Susan hooted. “Boy, talk about your migrant workers!”

Her fellow tourists glanced at each other, but no one said anything in reply.

They walked on in silence, reading the grave markers that made up the flooring of the cathedral and listening to the explanations provided by their distinguished guide. Charles Warren, armed with a complex-looking 35 mm. camera, was taking light readings and discreetly photographing the points of interest.

They admired the nave, built in 1079 by Bishop Walkelyn,
a kinsman of William the Conqueror. (“Two hundred fifty feet long and seventy-seven feet high at the ridge rib,” the guide informed them.)

After that, Elizabeth’s attention began to flag. She followed the group dutifully through the south aisle, thinking about the gift shop and the hour of free time before the one o’clock departure of the coach. She only half listened to the details of Bishop Wykeham’s transformation of the nave from three tiers to two; her admiration of the elaborately carved choir stalls of Norwegian oak was only perfunctory. She came back to full alert when the guide stopped before a collection of decorated wooden chests balanced on top of the stone side screens of the choir. “Boxes of bones,” the guide repeated.

“Bones?” echoed Elizabeth with renewed ardor.

“That is correct. In 1524 Bishop Fox placed the bones in these chests. Kings, queens, and bishops are all collected together in the boxes atop that wall. We have most of the early monarchs of England. Westminster Abbey has many of the later ones.”

“Do you ever open the boxes?” asked Elizabeth, hoping for a professional perusal of a royal skull. Examining the suture closures of William the Conqueror would be even better than waving at the present Queen from a distance of ten feet, her only royal encounter thus far.

“No,” said the guide. “We never open the boxes.”

A disappointed silence followed before the guide resumed his lecture. “Besides providing us with these boxes of royal bones, Bishop Fox has other claims to fame. He founded the college of Corpus Christi at Oxford and he served as Secretary and Lord Privy Seal to Henry VII.”

Everyone nodded politely.

“I can take you down to see the crypt if you like,” he offered.

This cheered them up immensely.

Alice MacKenzie, after wandering about the choir enclosure
examining the carvings, had strayed farther afield. She called out, “Look what I found!”

The others turned to see her pointing to a simple stone slab, located beneath the tower in the very center of the cathedral. “It’s King William Rufus!” she announced.

“This afternoon we’re going to visit his death scene,” Elizabeth told the guide.

The old gentleman cleared his throat. “Ah … hmmm. It was in Winchester Cathedral that Mary Tudor married Philip II of Spain in 1554. This marriage later gave Philip some claim to the throne of England and resulted in his sending of the Spanish Armada to reinforce that claim.”

“William Rufus was murdered, you know,” said Elizabeth happily. “It’s unsolved.”

After this exchange, the old gentleman became so distracted that he had to be reminded to show the group the grave of Jane Austen as they were leaving the church.

   After a picturesque but tedious walk-through of Winchester College, whose gates lay a few hundred yards from the cathedral, the group was temporarily disbanded for lunch, money-changing, or whatever other necessities suggested themselves to the ladies and Charles. They met again shortly before one o’clock in the lobby of the Wessex, where a smiling Rowan Rover awaited them, notes in hand.

“Good afternoon. Everyone behaved this morning, I trust? No going round saying ‘We have two of those at home,’ or making the vicar an offer for the altar silver?”

Wisely leaving the murder discussion unmentioned, they swore that they had behaved in an exemplary fashion. Then they allowed themselves to be shepherded aboard the bus for the afternoon’s outing to the New Forest. They still occupied the front half of the vehicle, sitting two by two, like good schoolchildren. Rowan Rover took up his accustomed front row seat next to the coach door. Elizabeth, who obviously
considered herself the tour’s other murder specialist, slid in beside him. Susan Cohen sat alone in the other front seat and directed most of her remarks to Bernard, who pretended to be inordinately occupied with driving.

The day was bright and sunny, too warm even for a sweater: perfect weather for exploring the country lanes of rural Hampshire. Bernard eased the coach out of the parking lot. The coach rumbled slowly through the narrow streets of Winchester and headed for the A303 motorway south. A few miles outside the city, they would pick up the A31, which would take them southwest, bypassing Southampton, and in an hour’s time they would be exploring the winding lanes of the New Forest.

“We will, of course, return to the hotel tonight for dinner and our second night’s stay. Meanwhile, to start off this afternoon’s jaunt, I must tell you a thing or two about the New Forest,” said Rowan Rover, leaning into his microphone like a rock star. “It isn’t new—and it isn’t a forest.”