Murder on the Old Road Read online

  ‘My robe’s in here.’ Tim flourished a backpack. ‘I didn’t wear it behind the bar in case any normal people dropping in for a pint took fright.’

  ‘Are you both going?’ Georgia asked. Tim was clearly pleased that she and Luke were to accompany them, even though Tim looked strained, and his light banter had a false note.

  ‘Just me,’ Tim replied. ‘Can’t both be away two weeks. Simon doesn’t mind, do you, Si?’

  ‘Simon does, in fact,’ he answered wryly, ‘but we bow to necessity. We need the publicity.’

  ‘Badly.’ Tim pulled a face.

  So they expected the play and pilgrimage to help the pub as well as the drama society. Georgia remembered Seb’s talk of the great god Publicity – more, surely, than the need to cover costs in a local production would require. There had been real emphasis on it, and Aletta had even used the word ‘desperately’. Was there something here she wasn’t getting? The subtext of village life was seldom available for strangers to read, but this particular subtext disturbed her. Had it had that effect on Peter too? It might explain why he was keen for her to join the merry band this afternoon.

  ‘Tough times for pubs now.’ Simon pulled a face. ‘The Three Peacocks is in every pub guide we can break into, but we really need word of mouth local trade as well.’

  Georgia felt guilty that she and Luke had come so seldom since their first visit. The Three Peacocks’ prices were far from cheap, however. Gastro food demanded gastro rates, and she wondered how long it might be before standards – or menus – had to be downgraded.

  ‘Can you cope on your own, without Tim?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Should be able to,’ Simon replied. ‘Derek Moon comes in to run the bar, and his mum Lisa will give me a hand front of house and in the kitchen. We’ll manage.’ He didn’t look happy at the prospect.

  ‘It’s worth it, Simon,’ Tim said quietly.

  ‘If it works.’ The reply was even quieter and obviously destined for Tim alone.

  If what works? Georgia wondered. It couldn’t be the play, because if Tim were directing it, Simon would surely never suggest it might fail. The pilgrimage? Perhaps. Or was this a different subtext altogether?

  There was an awkward silence, which Peter broke with a jovial, ‘So, the lord of the manor and a pub owner are going on a pilgrimage today. Don’t you need to complete the village establishment with the vicar? Is he blessing the pilgrimage with his presence?’

  Another pause, then Tim replied quietly, ‘She has to come. It’s a village event, isn’t it?’

  ‘Good thing we keep our trainers in the car boot,’ Luke said, opening it up.

  Was it? Georgia’s misgivings had returned. Perhaps, she told herself, her personal problems were beginning to cast their pall over daily life – and if she were not careful they would suck Luke in too. So far her lack of success in conceiving a child had seemed to affect only her, but where Luke was concerned she could never be sure. He was a past master at disguising his true feelings – admirable in a publisher, but it could be tricky in a husband. This afternoon she would force herself to push the personal aside, however, and concentrate on what might, after all, be an enjoyable walk.

  In the two years she and Luke had lived at Medlars they had walked most of the local footpaths, including most of the old Pilgrims’ Way. Medlars was only a mile or two from here and quite near the track. Their walks had always been towards Old Wives Lees or Charing, however, not eastwards to Chartham Hatch, probably because of the urban sprawl as Canterbury was approached, and so this stretch of the Old Road was unfamiliar.

  The name ‘the Old Road’ had a touch of magic about it, Georgia thought, giving it an atmosphere of its own, at times almost creepy and at times comfortably humbling. It brought back an age when travelling was an experience to be enjoyed in itself and a pilgrimage a devotional journey that added meaning to life. It could also be a holiday, it could be made for penance, it could be to pray for the restoration of health, it could even be an escape from paying taxes, since pilgrims were exempt from such burdens – let the Chancellor put that one in his Budget! It could be for all those reasons that pilgrims took to the road. When a shrine was visited, they could buy badges and other signs to fix to their robes or hat, as proof that they’d visited the saint. They rode if they were rich, they walked if they weren’t. They went barefoot if seeking penance.

  Georgia had a fleeting image of Julian Wayncroft hobbling along barefooted and falling on his knees in penance once he got to the shrine. King Henry II had done so after he ordered Becket’s murder, and the relations between Julian and Valentine seemed to lack as much cordiality as those between the King and Becket.

  She began to cheer up as the group moved off from the pub, heading for the track that ran along the top of the village. When it was established in the 1970s, the North Downs Way followed the route of the Old Road or Pilgrims’ Way, where that was still possible. If she remembered correctly, the route of the Old Road was unclear between Chilham, Old Wives Lees and Chillingham, but from this point on the new track was following the original one. The group even began to look a merry band, with the banner held aloft, the hum of voices and even singing to the lutes, not to mention a peculiar clanking, which came, she was told, from the wooden balls attached to the tops of the walking staffs.

  ‘Very traditional,’ Luke remarked.

  ‘Are you two new recruits?’

  Georgia turned round at hearing the unfamiliar voice behind her. It belonged to a woman perhaps in her early fifties, whose identity was easy to guess. She was wearing a long black cassock, presumably the nearest she could get to a medieval pilgrim priest’s habit.

  ‘Very temporary.’ Georgia stopped to wait for the vicar to catch up. ‘We’re merely hangers-on for the afternoon.’

  ‘Splendid. Very medieval. I’m sure that’s what the villagers must have done in the old days. Turned out to follow the pilgrims, and then went back home when they were tired – thus winning both ways.’ The vicar was having to shout over the noise now. ‘Anne Fanshawe,’ she introduced herself. ‘Vicar of Chillingham, together with several other parishes in the neighbourhood.’

  Georgia introduced herself and Luke. She liked the look of Anne Fanshawe. A strong face, but a kind one, she thought. ‘Luke’s a friend of Tim’s,’ she explained, ‘so he couldn’t resist joining in.’

  ‘Luke Frost? You’re the publisher, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am. Currently planning a new book on tea shops for pilgrims,’ he joked.

  Anne Fanshawe didn’t laugh. ‘That would be good. The Old Road’s a shivery experience at times.’

  ‘Is that why Fright Wood got its name?’ Georgia had been studying the map, and she had seen the name on the way to Chartham Hatch. The track was running along the hillside, and at first there had been apple orchards on their right, and in the distance the blue haze over the fertile Weald of Kent. Now they were walking past woodland, little changed, Georgia imagined, over the centuries, save that it must have been much thicker on both sides then. Apart from the Old Road, this hillside would have been impenetrable.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Anne replied. ‘This is Peacock Wood.’ She seemed disinclined to say more, and at that moment the music stopped and there was silence, save for marching steps. And no bird sang, Georgia thought uneasily, remembering Keats’ creepy poem – and no pilgrims either. Just an eerie silence, broken at last by one solitary bird’s warning call.

  Luke went ahead to chat to Tim, and Anne fell back to talk to someone else, leaving Georgia briefly alone as the woodland closed in on both sides. Trees were arching over the path to form a tunnel, with the sun blotted out. As the trees began to thin out she could see open countryside ahead. But then it happened. Her stomach churned, with a sickness that seemed to be stifling her. The path turned a corner, and the woodland was almost behind her. Ahead, however, the line of walkers looked misty, almost unreal, as though they were the pilgrims who had trodden the Old Road in the past. Luke was not f
ar in front, but even so she felt isolated, nauseous and choking with no reason. She recognized these symptoms all too clearly as she forced herself to stumble onwards. They had nothing to do with lunch, and everything to do with the place through which she was walking.

  This path, that wood, smelt of decay and evil. Somewhere near here violence had taken place in the past, with the victim crying out for justice. His emotions had been stamped like ‘fingerprints’ on the atmosphere for those who followed to pick up. She’d met them before, and now they were engulfing her again. Before the gunshot that had put Peter in a wheelchair, he had been in the police force, and there he had acquired a reputation for ‘intuition’ that sparked off investigations into past cases. It had not been intuition, however, it was their shared gift – if gift it was – for sensing fingerprints, and now they put it to good use in the cases taken on by Marsh & Daughter.

  Just as she could stand it no longer, the nausea passed, suddenly and completely. The misty sun cleared, and she could see Valentine Harper ahead with Aletta. She could hear Julian’s loud bray, she could see Tim Hurst. They all seemed united in one common purpose, and she was an outsider, caught up in a situation she did not understand. But that was today’s dark puzzle, not the reeking claws of yesterday she had experienced while walking out of that wood.

  She ran to catch Luke up, and he turned to grin at her. The grin faded as he saw her face.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m OK now.’ That was because she was clear of that wood. Luke didn’t believe her though, and he put his arm round her.

  ‘Life getting to you, sweetheart?’

  She wondered if he meant their personal problem, but it wasn’t that. Not today.

  Luke knew only about Marsh & Daughter’s cases, not about what sparked them off. She could never bring herself to tell him, since their cases stood up by themselves and the reasons for their choices lay between herself and Peter. She sometimes thought Luke might suspect that there was more to the selection than she told him, and that he might feel excluded. She would tell him one day, she told herself. But not today.

  She began to breathe more easily now, but Luke was still anxious.

  ‘We’ll go back right now,’ he said.

  Back to that wood? She couldn’t, even with Luke’s support. She clutched at him as he turned round, and Anne Fanshawe, coming up behind them, must have noticed something wrong. ‘Nasty place, Peacock Wood. It always gives me the shivers. It must be the murder.’

  So she had been right, Georgia realized without surprise. Violence had taken place there. ‘Murder?’ she repeated.

  ‘Years ago, of course,’ Anne said hastily. ‘Another age, another country. I’ve only been back in Kent seven years, and only four of them as vicar of Chillingham, so I don’t feel personally involved.’

  Anne was clearly sorry she had ever mentioned the word murder, and Georgia felt torn between a need to know more and her instinctive desire to get as far from this place as possible. ‘Was the murderer ever found?’ she managed to ask.

  ‘No.’ Then, perhaps feeling she had been too abrupt, Anne continued, ‘Look, I’m no historian, and I don’t know that much about it. I’ve three other churches to look after besides Chillingham.’

  Did the lady protest too much? Georgia must have looked as disturbed as she felt, for Anne looked at her doubtfully. ‘You’re still a bit white. I’ll drive you both back to the village after we’ve seen the jolly troupers off at Canterbury. My car’s in the car park there.’

  Simon was getting ready for the evening trade when Georgia and Luke arrived at the Three Peacocks, but he was eager for news of Tim and abandoned his kitchen duties. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Good send-off,’ Luke told him. ‘The pilgrims duly received a public blessing at the Cathedral entrance with at least three press there, plus local TV News.’

  ‘Tim do OK?’ Simon asked. ‘He was pretty wound up about it.’ Tim had planned and given a short speech after the blessing.

  ‘Fine,’ Georgia told him. ‘After that, one of the pilgrims tripped over a cable, and somebody who said he was Herbert of Bosham and doubling De Brito got his sword tangled up in his cloak.’

  Simon laughed. ‘That’ll be Matthew Moon, Lisa’s elder son. Derek, who’s looking after the bar for me, is the younger. Rotten typecasting. De Brito’s one of the chief villains, and Matthew’s the gentlest soul in the village.’

  ‘Looks as if Becket’s life may be spared after all then,’ Luke commented.

  ‘Take my Matthew away from his carpentry and he’d trip over his own feet.’ A pleasant looking elderly lady – perhaps in her late sixties, and with a cloud of white hair around a round rosy face – emerged from the kitchen area into the bar. Simon introduced her as Lisa Moon. Despite the stereotyped farmer’s wife appearance, Georgia was aware of shrewd eyes busy summing her up.

  ‘You’re not in the play then?’ Georgia asked.

  ‘Bless you no. Matthew’s in it, and my granddaughter Tess is too. That’s enough for one family. The rest of us get on with our work.’

  ‘The Moons pretty well run this village,’ Simon joked. ‘Matthew’s wife Christine runs the village shop, Matthew’s the carpenter, Derek decorates and builds. Been here for centuries, haven’t you, Lisa?’

  ‘Clive was the Moon, not me,’ she replied. ‘My husband, he was. As for me, I was an incomer way back. Lived all of six miles away, I did. Just about accepted now.’

  ‘Tess, Lisa’s granddaughter, is playing Fair Rosamund, the king’s beautiful mistress, whom the wicked Queen Eleanor tried to poison, just like Snow White,’ Simon said. ‘Lisa—’ Simon broke off, perhaps aware that Lisa wasn’t laughing.

  ‘Long time ago, Simon,’ she said.

  Georgia watched them curiously. There had surely been a note of warning in Lisa’s voice. More subtext?

  TWO

  ‘Can we look in on Peter before we go home?’ Georgia asked.

  Luke nodded. ‘Fine by me. Will Janie be there?’ Janie was Peter’s fiancée, but the relationship was an up and down one. Luke was certain that Janie and Peter would make a successful long term relationship, whereas Georgia was none too sure.

  ‘Try prising her away.’ She spoke more sharply than she had meant to, and when Luke looked surprised, she regretted it.

  Sure enough, though, as she rang the doorbell, then used her key (as was their standard arrangement), she saw Peter in his office on the left and a glum-looking Janie watching TV in the living room on the right. In her late forties, Janie was about ten years older than Georgia, but they got on well, which was surprising given how different they were in most ways. Janie favoured the romantic approach to life, although that hid a very practical side indeed, while Georgia was aware that she herself took life head on, hiding her own romantic side. She longed to sweep around in floating romantic dresses as Janie did, but never had the nerve.

  ‘Hi,’ Janie got up to greet them. ‘Come to join me in my solitary confinement?’

  ‘I need a word with Peter first,’ Georgia said apologetically, knowing she would be delaying him even longer. That was easy enough, and she wondered how many evenings Janie spent like this. She wasn’t living here permanently, and therefore had to travel over each time, only to find, no doubt, that all too often Peter considered the computer more interesting – as Janie must view it.

  Peter tore his gaze away from the offending computer as Georgia went in. ‘Ah,’ he said complacently, ‘I wondered if you’d pop in. Fingerprints?’

  ‘So you knew.’ Georgia was indignant, but not greatly surprised. ‘You might have warned me about that wood.’

  He looked hurt. ‘I didn’t know. Anyway, if I had warned you, it wouldn’t have been a fair test.’

  ‘What of?’ She knew all too well the answer to that one, but would make Peter pay for not confiding in her. ‘That unsolved murder?’

  ‘So you knew,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘That’s all I know. Tell me.’
r />   ‘Murder on the Old Road in 1967. A new one on me, although we live so near to it, but I didn’t move here with your mother until after that. You were a mere toddler. I’ve spent hours on the Internet since I got back, checking The Times and everything else that I could click on or read.’

  ‘What set you off?’

  ‘Simon, our friendly but desperate publican.’

  ‘Desperate about trade or Tim, do you think?’

  ‘The former more obviously. And the murder—’ Peter paused for effect.

  She had to know. ‘Whose was it?’

  ‘Hugh Wayncroft, lord of the manor and Julian’s father.’

  She hadn’t expected that, and found it astonishing. This afternoon Julian had been marching in pilgrimage right past the place where his father had been murdered. True, it was forty years ago, but even so, how could he bear to go there? Then she did her arithmetic. Julian would scarcely have been born or would have been only a toddler when the murder happened, and so his father had no physical reality for him. But for his half brother? Hugh had been his stepfather, and in 1967 Valentine would have been about Sebastian Wayncroft’s age today. Was that significant or was she building without bricks?

  ‘No one was charged,’ Peter continued, happy now that he had taken her by surprise, ‘and now you confirm there were fingerprints. Wouldn’t that suggest there are still outstanding issues? Where did you feel these fingerprints?’

  ‘At the far end of Peacock Wood – that’s the first one you come to on the Old Road going towards Canterbury. You can see it from the village. Was he killed there, do you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shot during a shooting party?’ she asked. That might explain why no one was charged – it could easily have been an accident. Then she realized Peter was looking smug, which meant he was holding something back.

  ‘No. Strangled, and on a pilgrimage.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just like the one you joined today,’ Peter told her. She could see he was enjoying winding her up. ‘In 1967 there was a pilgrimage from Winchester to Canterbury to stage Tennyson’s Becket.’