Sharyn McCrumb - Missing Susan

Alice MacKenzie was shocked. “The king was killed by a cult?”

“The theory has been proposed,” Rowan Rover admitted, following his Ripper custom of never saying whodunit. “There has always been a tradition of the divine victim, the king who must be sacrificed to ensure the harvest. The mumming rituals are based on those old beliefs, and so is the legend that inspired King Lear.” “It would explain why the Christian priests gave him no funeral, and said no masses for him,” Emma mused.

Her mother nodded in agreement. “They surely would have said a mass for him otherwise.”

“I suppose the treeline here has changed in the past nine hundred years,” said Elizabeth. “Because if it hasn’t, that’s suspicious. The legend says the hunters took cover behind trees, but there are no trees within twenty feet of this stone that marks the death scene.”

“My sources say that the treeline hasn’t changed,” Rowan told her. “Apparently, the clearing itself is marshy and incapable of supporting trees, so the scene should look approximately as it did then.”

“It wasn’t a hunting accident,” Elizabeth declared. “He was deliberately assassinated.”

“Ritual sacrifices can’t be considered murder,” said Emma Smith.

“That’s true,” said Martha Tabram. “It isn’t as if he were done in by some shabby thug for money.” Rowan Rover reddened slightly, and drowned out further comments with a smoker’s cough. “All very interesting,” he managed to say at last. “But it is getting a bit late and I for one could use a drink. Do you suppose we might continue this postmortem in a pub? I believe there’s one within walking distance, just down the road.”

He ushered his charges back across the road, signaled to Bernard to follow in the coach, and marched them a few hundred yards around the bend to a large half-timbered pub set in its own graveled parking lot. One look at the quaintly lettered inn sign caused everyone to burst out laughing.

“Good heavens!” said Alice MacKenzie. “The Walter Tyrrel Pub!” She pointed to the inn sign, with its carefully painted illustration depicting the deer and the deflected arrow striking William.

Martha Tabram shook her head. “Oh, dear. How gauche. They’ve named the local pub after the king’s murderer!”

“Sometimes crime does pay,” said Rowan Rover with a smile.

STONEHENGE TO TORQUAY

BREAKFAST ON DAY two of the tour was an eight o’clock buffet in the Wessex Hotel, after which they would be departing for the wilds of Devonshire. Rowan Rover, who had no objections to early hours or free meals, joined the breakfasters and found himself at a table with the smuggest of the party’s early birds: Alice MacKenzie, Maud Marsh, and Susan Cohen. Rowan, in an aging sky-blue pullover and black pants, looked rather like an early bird himself, or perhaps like an insomniac parakeet.

Rowan began the meal with a bowl of shredded cereal, topped with milk and figs. After bidding his tablemates a brisk good morning and noting that they also had plates of food before them, he began to attack this first course in cheerful anticipation of his just-ordered coffee.

“Aren’t you supposed to drink tea?” asked Susan, whose own cup sported a dangling string and a square of cardboard.

“I prefer coffee,” said Rowan, halting a spoonful of cereal inches from his lips.

“But you’re English. I thought Americans drank coffee and English people drank tea.”

“I am a defector.”

“And what’s that stuff you’re eating?” Susan persisted. “Ee-ooo. It looks like the sort of wood shavings they put in boxes of china to keep them from breaking. Sawdust. I ordered an English breakfast.”

Rowan showed his teeth in a parody of a smile. “You must try the blood pudding,” he purred.

“I know all about British customs,” she informed him. “I have all of Upstairs Downstairs on video. And I’ve read all of Dorothy Sayers.”

This remark inspired Alice MacKenzie to a new line of questioning. “I love Dorothy Sayers! Especially Gaudy Night. You went to Oxford, didn’t you, Rowan?”

“Somewhat after Miss Sayers’ own time in residence there, yes,” said Rowan Rover cautiously.

“I’m really looking forward to touring Oxford,” said Alice. “In the footsteps of Peter Wimsey! Are you a Balliol man as well?”

“Ah… no,” said Rowan, balancing another spoonful of cereal within loading distance.

“Christ Church?”

“No, that’s a rather exalted place, and I was just a clever youth without peer.” Rowan smiled at his own pun.

Alice cast about for other possibilities. “Magdalen? Trinity? Merton?”

“Ah!” said Maud Marsh. “T. S. Eliot and J. R. R. Tolkien both went to Merton.” They looked at Rowan expectantly.

He looked longingly at his soggy cereal. “No, actually… I went to Keeble.”

This admission was received with a silence that made it patently obvious that they had never heard of Keeble. They may have been entertaining some doubt as to whether there was such a college. Rowan felt himself redden at this impugning of his credentials.

“It’s one of the modern colleges,” he said petulantly. “Founded in the early part of this century. Not as arty and hidebound as some of the old ones, where they want blue blood instead of brains.”

“I expect it was a lot cheaper, too,” Susan remarked, eyeing his ratty pullover.

At that moment a white-coated teenager arrived, bearing a stainless steel pot which he set before Rowan Rover with a flourish of personal triumph at having remembered both the beverage and the existence of the diner. “Ah, my coffee,” said Rowan, grateful for the diversion. He poured a few drops into his cup and inspected the result. “This doesn’t look like…” He raised the cup to his lips and, seconds later, sputtered out his verdict. “Bloody Earl Grey!”

“Do you want to call the waiter back?” asked Alice.

“No, it took him an age to bring this. God knows how long he’d be if we asked for something else. Since the Americans evidently expect it of me, and the waiters conspire to abet them, I shall drink tea.” He reached for the cream jug.

“Milk in first?” asked Susan, raising her eyebrows. “I thought you weren’t supposed to do that. Isn’t it-what’s the phrase?-non-U?”

“If it’s me, it’s U,” muttered Rowan, stirring the fawn-colored beverage. Suddenly the prospect of doing away with Susan Cohen had become a little less dreadful to contemplate.

First Bernard counted the suitcases, counted them again, and stowed them into the coach’s luggage compartment. Then Rowan Rover took a head count of the passengers, and, satisfied that all were accounted for, he ushered them onto the bus, where they took up their accustomed positions, sitting two by two in a clump at the front.

“Good morning, ladies and Charles!” said Rowan, standing in the aisle and addressing them without benefit of microphone. “Does everyone have sweaters out? It’s a bit chillier today and we are going to do a bit of walking, as our first stop is Stonehenge. Did everyone have breakfast? I hope so, because lunch today is-as usual- on your own , which means that we’ll stop in a pub somewhere along the route.” “Aren’t there any pizza places in England?” asked Susan plaintively.

“Not as many as in Minneapolis,” said Rowan between clinched teeth.

“I went to Stonehenge when I was over on the archaeological dig in ’sixty-eight,” said Emma Smith. “I don’t suppose it has changed much since then.”