EG02 - The Lost Gardens Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  ST. MARTIN’S/MINOTAUR PAPERBACKS TITLES BY ANTHONY EGLIN

  Praise for Anthony Eglin’s English Garden Mystery Series

  GET A CLUE!

  Acknowledgements

  The Water Lily Cross

  Notes

  Copyright Page

  For my friend, Roger

  Prologue

  Holland, 1944

  In the dawn of a September morning, the sergeant hunched on a filthy mattress amid the rubble of what, seven days earlier, had been a handsome three-storey Dutch house. It was now a wasted husk of blackened brick and creaking wood, shelled to a near skeleton by the German tanks and mortar shells.

  He reached into the pleated pocket of his tunic for the squashed pack of Woodbines. ‘Dammit,’ he muttered. Only three cigarettes remained—his last. He withdrew one, straightened it and, with a shaking hand, lit it.

  More than a week had passed since he last looked at himself in a mirror and he didn’t need a mirror to know he smelled. Living on adrenalin, fear and very little else can do that to you. After seven days and nights of fierce house-to-house combat, under a relentless counterattack by a heavily armoured German Panzer Division, more than half his company was now wounded or dead.

  The slaughter had nullified his senses. Everything in his horrifying world was muted, as though a tranquillizing cloud had enveloped it. Everything but the truth, that is—the truth never talked about among the men. But the gaunt faces and dust-circled eyes couldn’t hide from each other what they all knew—that the end was not far off.

  He shivered and pulled the collar of his mud-spattered greatcoat tighter around his neck, taking another long drag on the cigarette. Absently, he stared past the limp lace curtain and out through the jagged-edged hole that once was a window. The sky was turning from grey to pale gold as the anaemic sun rose over the shattered village of Kleinelangstraat.

  He jumped. Someone was kicking his foot. He looked up into the grim, exhausted face of his lieutenant.

  ‘Round everybody up, sarge. I want all the able-bodied assembled in the back of the house as soon as possible, in the big room. On the double,’ he snapped. About to leave, the officer stopped and looked back. ‘Corporal McBride bought it a couple of hours ago. Thought you might like to know.’ There was no emotion in his voice. ‘One more thing—the radio’s up the spout, too. Took a direct hit.’ He nodded grimly and walked away.

  The sergeant watched the lieutenant duck through the doorway, brushing the door that swung crazily on its hinges, and disappear. ‘Yes, sir. Yes, bloody sir,’ he muttered. Stiff and cold, he started to get up. Half standing, he caught a movement through the window out of the corner of his eye. ‘Jesus!’ he shouted, scrambling for the front door and dashing outside.

  It was one of his men. He was stumbling over the rubble-strewn road, past the smouldering skeleton of a German machine-gun carrier. He recognized who it was immediately. The lad had stripped off his jacket and was bareheaded. A dirty white rag hung limply from the business end of the rifle sloped across his shoulder.

  ‘Kit! Don’t!’ the sergeant screamed, lurching forward to reach him.

  Suddenly, from off to his left, another voice barked out: ‘Stop, you damned fool! Drop that bloody rifle, soldier—or I’ll shoot!’

  Stopping in his tracks, the sergeant turned. It was the lieutenant. No more than ten paces away he stood with his feet spread apart and his pistol levelled at Kit’s back. His voice was calmer now.

  ‘Last warning, son—stop right there.’

  ‘Christ almighty!’ the sergeant cried. ‘Don’t shoot the poor bastard!’ He leapt forward at a full run, hurling his body through the air at the officer.

  In the pandemonium that followed it was impossible to tell which came first: the crack of the lieutenant’s pistol or his shout of pain, reverberating off the walls of the shelled-out buildings, as he fell back hard on the brick and rubble, the sergeant’s thirteen stones crushing him.

  Arms and legs flailed under a thick cloud of dust as the two wrestled in the dirt. The sergeant soon gained the upper hand, pinning the officer down with one knee, gripping his wrist in a struggle for the pistol. He managed to force the officer’s arm down, but still he couldn’t wrest the pistol from him. With grunting force he kept twisting the lieutenant’s arm, expecting something to snap at any moment. He could see the officer’s finger curled round the trigger, only inches from his face. He summoned his last ounce of strength and gave a final jerk.

  It was as if both his eardrums had suddenly burst—an explosive incessant clanging.

  The blast of the shot hammered through his brain, making his eyes throb, flooding them with tears. The lieutenant’s piercing scream went unheard.

  He loosened his grip on the officer’s wrist, looking down to see that the bullet had shattered the man’s leg just below the knee. The sight of fragments of shinbone and fusion of blood and torn muscle made him want to retch.

  The lieutenant’s eyes were screwed tight, his grimy face contorted with pain, his body convulsing. The sergeant took the pistol, struggled to his feet and walked over to Kit’s motionless body. Blood was seeping through the lad’s white singlet.

  He knelt, placing the tips of two fingers on Kit’s neck. He waited, teeth clenched. There was no pulse. He stood for a few seconds, fighting back the tears that welled in his bloodshot eyes. He had to get the body and the lieutenant out of there quickly. It was still early but it seemed the German snipers never slept.

  He knelt and hoisted Kit’s body over his shoulder and carried him back to the house. Leaving the corpse inside he went back to help the lieutenant.

  While one of the medics went to work on the officer’s leg, the sergeant sat by Kit’s side, leaning forward, head between his hands. Now he let the tears flow.

  He sat like that for more than a minute, finally interrupted by the lieutenant’s contemptuous voice. ‘You’ll go up a long time for this,’was all he said.

  The sergeant said nothing. He removed the watch from Kit’s wrist and went through his trouser pockets. In the front was a St Christopher medallion, some chewing gum, a bone-handled penknife and a handkerchief. In one of the back pockets he found a folded envelope addressed To Em. In the other, his fingers touched what felt like a small book.

  He took it out. It was a black leather diary.

  Chapter One

  Somerset, 2003

  The clang of metal on metal resounded off the walls of the old stone house, echoing across the lawns to be lost in the dense forest beyond.

  ‘Doctor!’

  Lawrence Kingston brought the sledgehammer down on the iron stake one more time.

  ‘Doctor!’

  He looked up to see the carrot-haired figure of his foreman, Jack Harris, approaching.
Leaning the sledgehammer against his leg he wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He was about to take a rest anyway. For the last twenty minutes he had been surveying, driving in stakes on the top lawn—one of three football-field-size levels that stepped down from the back of the big house. Once mown and rolled twice a month to look like green carpeting, they were now a waist-high tangle of weeds.

  ‘Need you to come and take a look at something,’ Jack said, nodding back over his shoulder.

  ‘Be right there.’ Kingston picked up the survey maps, put them in his canvas bag and walked over to join Jack. Was it good or bad news? From the look on Jack’s face, Kingston couldn’t tell. ‘What you got then?’ he asked.

  Jack smiled. ‘You’ll see in a minute.’

  With nothing further said, they took off.

  Soon they reached a clearing some five hundred yards from the house. It was in one of the most overgrown sections of the ‘Jungle’, as it was now nicknamed. Nearby, to the staccato whine of chainsaw and thwack of axe blade on wood, Jack’s crew of three was chopping up the fallen trees and cutting down the dead ones, many of which were supported by their less tipsy neighbours. Wood-smoke from their bonfire was thick in the still air. When Jack and Kingston arrived, the men stopped work and gathered around.

  Jack said nothing, waiting for Kingston’s reaction. Facing them, built partway into a vertical limestone crag, was the façade of what appeared to be a small chapel. Off to one side was a house-high tangle of ivy, brambles and vines that had been cut and ripped away from its walls by Jack’s crew.

  ‘It was completely covered,’ said Jack. ‘You could’ve walked by here a hundred times and never known it was there. Three feet thick it was.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Kingston muttered, walking up to the blackened oak door, touching the rubblestone surround. Fern-edged trails like giant snail tracks tattooed the wall where the ivy had been tugged away. On either side of the door two identical stained glass windows displayed griffins. The glass was filthy but intact.

  ‘Did you go inside?’ asked Kingston.

  ‘No, I thought it best to wait for you.’

  ‘Let’s take a look then.’

  Gripping the large iron door handle, Kingston turned the key and the door swung open, hinges creaking. Why the key had been left in the door was something that he would ponder later. He was too excited to worry about it now.

  Sufficient light filtered through the open door for them to make out the interior. The space was no more than twenty-five feet wide and about forty feet long. The walls were wood and plaster, the ceiling simply raftered. For a chapel, and that’s surely what it was, Kingston was surprised at the absence of ecclesiastical artifacts and trappings. The only ornamentation apparent was the handsome bronze sconces, four on each of the two long walls, none holding candles. A central flagstone aisle ending at a pulpit was flanked on either side by eight rows of simple wooden pews. The pulpit was panelled with turned balusters. But Kingston’s eyes were not on the pulpit. He was looking at what was beyond.

  As he walked farther down the aisle he could now see clearly what had seized his attention. Behind the pulpit alongside a small baptismal font was a large stone circular well about five feet in diameter. It looked out of keeping with the rest of the interior. He went up and rested his hand on the cold stone.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said, turning to Jack. ‘I bet this was originally a healing well.’

  ‘A healing well?’

  ‘Right,’he said, leaning over the waist-high ledge, peering down into the inky darkness. ‘They go back to Celtic times and beyond, long before the Romans came. I’m told there are quite a few around here.’ His voice echoed around the stark walls of the chapel. ‘The waters are believed to have healing powers. In the Middle Ages wells were sanctified and frequented by pilgrims.’

  One of Jack’s crew had followed them into the chapel. ‘What do the waters heal?’he asked.

  ‘Apparently just about anything ailing you—from a hangnail to a heart condition. Skin complaints, asthma, epilepsy, stomach ailments, you name it—even paralysis! Mental as well as physical, so legend has it.’

  Kingston stepped back, reached into his pocket and took out a coin. Dropping it into the well, he counted under his breath. One … two … on three, he heard the plop of the coin hitting water. ‘Deep, by the sound of it.’ He turned and cast his eyes around the low ceiling. ‘Tomorrow, let’s rig up some lights in here, Jack, and we’ll show it to Jamie. She has her own place of worship now.’

  Jamie Gibson, an American, was the new owner of Wickersham Priory, the estate on which they were all working. Her project, both ambitious and expensive, was aimed at restoring the ten-acre gardens that had fallen into decay after decades of neglect.

  As he turned to go, something on the flagstones caught his eye; a slight glint, nothing more. He stooped to look closer. It was a coin. A few feet away there was another, then a third. Picking them up, he examined them in the palm of his hand. One was a shilling, dated 1963. A sixpence was dated 1959, as was another shilling.

  He turned to Jack, who was about to walk off. ‘Jack, how long would you say this place has been buried in that ivy?’

  Jack thought for a moment. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Bloody long time, by the looks of it. You’d know better than me—why?’

  ‘Just curious, that’s all.’

  By eight o’clock the next morning Jack and his men had set up a battery-powered lighting rig with two floodlights clamped to a vertical rod mounted on a tripod. Over the wellhead they had constructed a makeshift pulley with a rope tied to the handle of a galvanized bucket.

  Shortly after eight fifteen Kingston and Jamie joined them. The bucket, weighted with a rock, was lowered into the well. It was some time before it reached the bottom.

  Huddled around the wellhead in the chill air, the small group watched silently as two of Jack’s men began pulling hand-over-hand on the pulley rope to bring the bucket up from the bottom of the well.

  At last it broke the surface and they all peered over the stone ledge as it jerked and scraped its way up the last slimy ten feet—the sound echoing around the small space, misshapen shadows dancing against the white walls from the blaze of two halogen floodlights.

  Sloshing water as it was lifted over the stone surround, the bucket was lowered to the floor. Jack walked over and up-ended its contents, splashing them on to the flagstones. On his haunches, he shoved the rock aside and examined the fragments of whitish material that had spilled out with the last ooze of well water and black sludge. ‘Looks like we got ourselves some animal bones, doctor,’ he said. ‘Rat—squirrel maybe.’

  Kingston walked over and knelt by the upturned bucket, poking the skeletal remains with his finger. He glanced at Jack. ‘Can one of your chaps find a bag or a cloth that we can wrap these in?’

  ‘Sure. Why?’

  ‘Because this was no animal. It’s what’s left of a human hand.’

  The next day, in response to Kingston’s phone call, Detective Chief Inspector Chadwick and Sergeant Eldridge from Taunton police arrived at Wickersham in an unmarked car. They were accompanied by a van with personnel from Avon and Somerset Constabulary Underwater Search Unit.

  Sitting in the third row of the pews, Jamie, Kingston and the chief inspector watched as the well area was cordoned off with blue and white tape and the scene photographed with a 35mm still camera, then videotaped. Soon the underwater search diver was lowered into the well.

  Three minutes passed. The diver had been submerged longer than any of them had anticipated. Conversation had ceased and all eyes were now on the steel hawser that dangled from a new pulley the police had rigged over the wellhead. Suddenly it jerked. He was on his way up.

  Everyone watched with anticipation as the diver was lifted out. He snapped open his buoyancy vest and swung the scuba tank to the floor. Gripping his mask with both hands, he eased it up, resting it on the slick hood on his forehead, blinking his eyes to adjust t
o the floodlights. By the time he had removed the mouthpiece and tugged off his gloves there was a puddle of water at his feet. Those in the pews waited on his words.

  ‘Bloody dark down there,’he said. ‘Bloody cramped, too.’ Though his words were meant for Inspector Chadwick who was standing next to him, his voice echoed off the bare walls of the chapel for all to hear.

  ‘Anything interesting, Terry?’ Chadwick asked.

  ‘If you call bones interesting, sir,’ he said, peeling off his hood, waggling a finger in his ear and cocking his head to one side. ‘The doctor was right. There’s what’s left of a body down there. Mostly bones.’

  ‘No soft tissue, ligaments, clothing?’

  ‘Just a skeleton by the looks of it.’

  An hour and a half later in the living room at Wickersham Priory Lawrence Kingston and Jamie sat discussing the grisly discovery. Between them on the coffee table was a disarray of china cups and saucers, a cosy-covered teapot, cake plates and crumpled napkins—the remains of their tea.

  The DCI and sergeant had departed a couple of minutes earlier, having spent the best part of an hour asking questions about the events leading up to the discovery of the bones.

  ‘I must say, your policemen are polite,’ said Jamie, starting to stack the china.

  Kingston pulled on his earlobe—a quirky habit whenever he was lost in thought—and nodded but made no comment.

  Jamie paused, fingers on the handle of the china teapot. ‘Can you get DNA from bones?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Kingston replied. ‘Though I believe it might be difficult coaxing DNA from the bones if they’ve been down there for many years, which appears to be the case.’

  Jamie got up, went to the sideboard to retrieve the tea tray.

  Kingston looked down at the table, speaking more to himself than to her. ‘The inspector’s probably right. I doubt seriously that we’ll ever know who the poor soul was. Dental charts a remote possibility, I suppose.’