Women of the Dunes Read online

  But when she reached it, it appeared quite intact.

  At least, what she could see was intact, although the head must have lain on its side, the face turned slightly downward into the mound. And that sense of uneasiness grew, mingled now with a guilty sense of desecration that she had never felt when excavating more ancient skeletons. It was some consolation to know that the police would have done it if she had not, and perhaps with less care.

  Even so—

  What she could see of the skull suggested the individual had regular features: a straight brow, and the cheek bones indicated a firm jaw. If she allowed her imagination full rein, she could see the man himself lying there, and she worked hard to keep her thoughts in check. Sooner or later they would discover how the man had died.

  And then the sand shifted beneath the mandible and the jaw fell open.

  She must have started. “Take a break.” Rodri’s hand was under her elbow, bringing her firmly to her feet. “And have a sit-down.” He led her to a grassy hummock, adding quietly, “You’re doing a fine job, but you can stop anytime, you know.” She met his eyes and saw real concern there, and found that she was glad to sit, her knees were stiff from crouching. “Angus went to ask Alice to bring down some tea. She’ll be here in a minute.”

  She nodded, pressing down hard on her knees to stop them from trembling. “It’s just cramp,” she said. Then she saw that the policemen were bent over the skull, studying it with a sudden intensity. “What have they seen?” she asked, looking up at Rodri, and he went over to join them. The sense of dread was heavy on her now. He returned immediately. “A bullet?”

  He smiled at her. “Gold filling, upper left molar. Excellent dentistry.” She bent forward to stifle giggles at the sudden release of tension. “Go on, have a good laugh,” he said, and then Alice appeared with a bright orange scarf wrapped round her neck and two thermos flasks tucked under her arm, mugs in her other hand.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  Rodri took a thermos from her and poured tea, handing a mug to Libby. “She’s doing just fine.”

  “Dear God!” Alice had gone to look over the policemen’s shoulders. “Poor soul. There’s tea, you two, if you want it.” The men straightened and came over, nodding without comment as Alice pulled a half bottle of whisky from her jacket pocket and added a drop to each mug.

  “Good lass,” said Angus as he took the bottle and offered it to Libby, but she shook her head.

  “He was no pauper, then,” Fergus said as he and Duncan sat down beside Libby. “Who could afford gold fillings a hundred years ago?”

  Rodri shrugged. “The gentry, rich tradesmen, some of the clergy, I suppose.”

  “Thieves, racketeers, gamblers—” added Alice.

  Angus offered another libation, which was silently accepted. “Aye. The field’s wide open.”

  Or was it? Libby swallowed her tea, remembering again what her grandmother had said, then pushed the memory aside and reached for a thermos to refill her mug, shaking her head again at the proffered bottle. She needed her wits about her. “Let’s press on, shall we?” she said.

  The wind was drying the exposed sand quickly now, and as she crouched again she could see that the little platform supporting the hand was beginning to crumble. She would have to work fast or it would all fall apart. It was not so easy to dig now as she had to lean across the exposed side of the skeleton, and she dreaded the whole thing collapsing. She built a second little cushion of sand to hold the mandible in place, and another to support the position of the cranium, then rapidly revealed the lower scapula, and investigated the position of the other arm. It was, as Fergus had said, squashed beneath the body. And the more she revealed, the less it felt like excavating bones, and the more it became a dead man, now shockingly exposed. There had been no attempt to lay him out with any dignity: he had simply been tipped into a shallow hollow scooped out of the side of the mound and covered where he lay.

  Then two things happened in quick succession. She saw something metallic in the sand beside the ribs and, in reaching towards it, her elbow caught the sand cushion she had constructed under the clenched hand. “Damn!” She pulled back as the finger bones slipped out of position. “We’d better bag these up, I think, before—” And then she stopped.

  The cascade of drying sand had collapsed the curl of the fist to reveal something once clasped there. “What is it?” Rodri asked, leaning over her shoulder. The others gathered round.

  She made no reply but carried on, carefully now. One by one she picked up and bagged the phalanges. Twenty-seven individual bones in the hand, she told herself to steady her mind. And as she lifted the fan of metacarpals which were once the palm of a man’s hand, she saw the flash of gold.

  She stared down at it in disbelief, then picked it up.

  Could there be two such—?

  “Wow,” said Alice. “Is that a ruby in the middle?”

  “A garnet,” she said, without thinking, and turned the object over, gently brushing the sand from the back, and then nearly dropped it.

  The cross was identical in every way to the one her grandmother had sent, except for the fact that this one was hallmarked, and its twin, nestled in the top drawer of her dressing table at home, was not. She turned it back over quickly.

  Rodri shot her a look. “Is it old?”

  “Yes,” she replied, distracted. It was true. Sort of.

  “How old?” he persisted, and made to take it from her, but Fergus was there with an evidence bag.

  “We can worry about that later,” he said, taking it. “Let’s press on.”

  Her mind was whirring now. This went deep, too deep, and she felt herself drawn in further— In a daze she turned back to the mound, and only then remembered the other flash of metal that had caught her attention, and scraped the sand away from around the ribs.

  This time it was a bullet.

  Chapter 10

   Odrhan

  They laid the dead man in a hollow between two dunes and Odrhan watched from the headland as the men set white stones around him in the outline of a ship. The woman laid his sword beside him, then lifted a string of beads from her neck and placed them on his chest. Odrhan stood, arms folded and scowling, but felt the first prick of conscience as she slumped forward, sobbing, over her lover’s dead form. The men stood back a moment and then raised her to her feet, drawing her aside, and began covering the corpse with sand.

  Ulla turned away, her head in her hands.

  Once the mound was covered, the men went inland, returning with turves cut from above the strand line, which they placed on top. And all that time the woman stood and watched, and a sense of shame began to creep over Odrhan for what he had done.

  The man had looked strong! He would have lived—

  Then, as the sun rose to its zenith, Ulla’s men drew aside to confer, and Odrhan saw them look towards him. He tensed as they approached, but they simply collected their baskets of stolen goods and went back down to the beach.

  He watched them reloading the ship at the place where they had first come ashore. They were leaving! God be praised. The sand was now blindingly white, reflecting the sun, and he narrowed his eyes, seeing that the woman still knelt beside the mound. Suddenly she became aware of what the men were doing and called out, but by then the vessel was in the surf. She ran towards them, desperate now, grabbing at the nearest man, but he thrust her away and she fell as the next wave hit her. Her garments became heavy with seawater and she reached out only to fall again as the men raised the ship’s tan sail and it caught the freshening wind. It was soon yards from the shore.

  And so for the second time Odrhan found himself staring back at the woman as she stood in the ebbing flow of the tide, and for the second time he found that he had no will but to go down to where she stood waiting for him, at the strand line.

   Libby

  Two hours later they were back in Rodri’s kitchen. The skeleton had been exposed, recorded, and lifted,
and was now in plastic bags inside the boot of the police car, together with the finds.

  Libby felt drained and shaken, and could only play with the bowl of broth that Alice had placed in front of her. The attitude of the two policemen had changed as soon as the bullet was found. Politely but firmly, she had been moved aside while the men completed the work themselves, but they had all seen the marks on the ribs where the bullet had entered the body from the back. “Probably punctured a lung or hit the heart,” Fergus remarked.

  Silently Libby helped them lift and pack the bones, her mind racing. She labelled them as carefully as she would have done in an excavation, and the task had steadied her enough for her to stop and scribble a few notes on the various deposits they had seen. A dark layer of soil suggested that the mound might originally have been covered by turves which had decayed and left a distinctive stain in the soil, and the makeshift grave had been dug through the turf layer. Maybe, just maybe, it had sealed an earlier burial. If the students were still to have a chance to excavate this summer, something which now hung in the balance, that observation might be useful.

  There had been another little flurry of excitement when a steel cufflink had appeared beneath the wrist bones of the lower arm, and a little bit of sifting through the sand had produced its match on the other side. They might be marked, Fergus had said, and give a date of sorts. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed the tiny cartouche on the arm of the cross, but it would be spotted once it reached the lab.

  She needed time to think.

  “Eat up, Libby,” Alice commanded from across the table, bringing her back to the moment. “You’ve gone all white again.”

  She smiled and picked up her spoon. “This is delicious,” she said, making an effort, and feeling Rodri’s eyes on her.

  The policemen stayed only long enough to eat, eschewing the whisky bottle with a firmness which suggested their earlier enthusiasm for it was something to be overlooked. Stern duty had become the order of the day. With the rest of the equipment packed into the car, they were ready to leave. Rodri went with them into the courtyard and stayed there, chatting, while Alice began clearing away the dishes. Libby rose to help her.

  “And that’s how you make a living!” Alice remarked, as they stood together by the sink. “I hope it pays well.”

  “It doesn’t, actually.”

  Alice looked at her, curious. “Doesn’t it ever get to you, that sort of thing, stirring up bits of the past?”

  “Not really.” At least not until today.

  “And yet twice now I’ve seen you go a very peculiar colour. I was waiting for you to keel over.”

  Libby smiled. “I can’t say I enjoyed finding that bullet.”

  It was the cross, though, that had really shaken her. Two crosses, one on a dead man, the other taken by Ellen. What could it possibly mean?

  Rodri came back into the kitchen, having seen off the policemen, and sat on a stool beside the dresser and looked across at her. “So. Well done, Libby Snow. The lads were impressed; it wasn’t an easy thing to do.”

  She smiled slightly. “What happens now?”

  “It’s wait-and-see time, but I’d better warn you that they’re talking about wanting to clear the rest of the mound—”

  “Oh no—”

  “Aye. They’re pretty well convinced that the body’s too old to be of interest to them, but they need to be sure.”

  Too old to be of interest. Could that ever be the case? “I suppose they do, but if they decide to clear it, will you let me know, and I’ll come up again and at least watch them do it? There has to be something else down there. Something ancient, I mean.” The thought of all that planning coming to nothing was too awful to contemplate.

  “Of course.” He turned to Alice. “Can you or Maddy collect the boys? You could feed them all here. I have to head off to see the bank. Hector’s been in touch—”

  “Not again!”

  “—I was supposed to go this morning but with everything else it got forgotten. I’m sorry, Libby, but the girls will look after you, and I’ll see you later. And your professor’ll be here at ten tomorrow. We need to decide what to tell him.”

  Declan. She’d forgotten again.

  “I’ll check on your car as I pass the garage.” And with that, he was gone.

  Chapter 11

   Libby

  After lunch Alice suggested that they go to see work in progress at the dairy. And as Libby followed her across the courtyard, she wondered again about the strange ménage: the two women and the three such similar-looking boys. Whatever was going on here? But it wasn’t her concern, she thought, as she watched the churns turning rich cream into pale butter, and stood by as Maddy divided it into portions, weighed it, and wrapped it in the distinctive Sturrock House packaging. “We’re developing a brand,” Alice explained. Sunlight shafted in through a high window and lit Maddy’s red hair as she and Alice worked side by side. There was a pleasing calm to the place, a sort of contentment, and a continuity of use which was somehow satisfying. Next Alice showed her the old game larder which, in season, also served its original purpose. “The smokehouse is a couple of miles away round the next bay. Angus’s province.” Angus, it transpired, was Maddy’s father, but there was no mention of her partner or husband. “Now come and see the latest project.”

  She led Libby back into the courtyard and through a gate into a small walled garden completely hidden from view. There were two old glasshouses built against the wall, one derelict, the other in use. “We restored it last autumn, ready for this season.” Alice pushed open the door and Libby was hit by that loamy smell peculiar to hothouses, and saw rows of plant pots with green shoots already pushing through. “All organic, of course.” The winding mechanism for the roof ventilation looked to be the same vintage as her shower fittings and, like them, still functioning. “If it’s a success, we’ll start repairing the other one this autumn, then we might get a pay rise.”

  A pay rise? It was flippantly said, and Libby was still considering what it might mean when Maddy appeared. “Stewart from the Abbey Inn’s on the phone with a big order. You’d better take it or I’ll be late getting the boys.” Alice keeps house, Rodri had said, but did he mean quite literally? So what about the purple leggings and the dressing gown?

  Alice left Libby to wonder and, as she surveyed the lost world of the walled garden, she felt the charm of it. As in the house itself, there was a sense of time standing still; it would still be recognisable to those who had once worked there, the gardeners, the stable hands, and the dairymaids who had provided service for meagre returns and a roof over their heads, but it was imbued with a new spirit. The garden had once supplied food for the household and now was making a living for them again. A big project. Impressive. Some of the old raised beds had been restored and planted out, but others were full of nettles and thistles, over-sailed by brambles and couch grass. A brick-built potting shed stood at the far end of the garden with an old wooden wheelbarrow, sturdy and still usable, propped against it. Rusting away in a patch of nettles was an old garden roller, and she wondered when the daisy-strewn lawns of Sturrock House had last felt its weight. She pushed open the potting shed door and took in the array of old clay pots, antiquated pruners, and vintage tools. It was not only the ancient past which had resonance at Sturrock House—the Victorians had simply never left.

  Determination and energy had gone into bringing the walled garden back to life, she thought, as she pulled the door closed behind her, and if this was the handiwork of Rodri and the two women, she took her hat off to them.

  And all for another man’s property, she thought, as she luxuriated a little later in the deep bath, having decided not to risk the terrifying shower— But the estate and the nascent food business would surely be better run as a single enterprise, so why was it not? She thought again of Rodri’s cleft brow, and wondered—

  There seemed to be endless hot water, presumably supplied by the Aga, but having reached no conclusion to
this puzzle she dressed and went downstairs to find that Maddy had returned with the boys.

  The kitchen table was laid for six. “You sit there, Libby. It’s fishcakes and peas. That alright?” The fishcakes looked homemade and tasted very much alright, and the peas, she was told, were frozen from last year’s garden produce. She ate and, as yesterday, listened as the boys regaled them with the events of the day. Hands-on motherhood too, even if that motherhood was partly surrogate.

  Charlie fed titbits to the dog until Alice told him to stop.

  “Sorry, Coalbox. No more.”

  “Why Coalbox?” Libby asked him, but it was Donald who answered.

  “I said he was as sooty as the coal box when we got him.”

  “And Rodri drew the line at Sooty,” said Maddy.

  “Quite right too,” said Alice. “But the name stuck.”

  Coalbox looked up at her. Of course it had, in this curiously eccentric household. She looked around the table and thought of her own childhood, rootless and wandering, never long enough in one place to feel grounded. How different for these lads, chatting away, unabashed by a stranger at the table, properly cared for, whatever unusual arrangement it was that existed between the adults.

  Maddy was asking David about future football matches, and he frowned as he tried to recall. “We’re away next, I think,” he said, and his frown deepened. “Or maybe that changed?” Then he shrugged. “I’ll check.” His brow cleared, but not before Libby had seen an exact replica of Rodri Sturrock’s frown, a single vertical line etched deep.

  Oh!

  But then, why not?

  “Are you going to do some digging now?” Donald asked her, breaking into the thought. “Now that your head’s better.” The black eye had not, after all, developed into an object of envy, although the bruise on her forehead was still striking. The boys must wonder why she was still here.

  “No. I’m just waiting for my car to be fixed, but I’ll come back in the summer to dig.” So where did Maddy fit in?