Elly Griffiths - The Janus Stone

Judy is meant to be helping Tanya with the dentist search but instead she is going over the notes from the case. She is sure they are all missing something. And, if she spots it, that will mean one in the eye for Nelson, Tanya, all of them.

Idly she sketches a Spens family tree. She met Edward Spens once at a police do and found him rather attractive. This doesn’t affect her deep-seated belief that his family have something to hide.

She looks hard at the name Rosemary Spens. She hears Nelson’s voice, speaking in the flat tone he uses for briefings: ‘Sir Roderick says she was “like an angel” but I get the impression that he didn’t really know her that well. Probably brought up by a nanny.’ That’s it. Judy goes back to the file and rifles through until she comes to the census of 1951. She remembers Clough reading it out to them: ‘Christopher Spens, Rosemary Spens, children Roderick and Annabelle.’ But, typically, Clough has overlooked something and Nelson’s casual words have brought it back to her. There would have been other people in the house – servants, a cook and almost certainly a nanny. And, sure enough, there are four other names on the list:

Lily Wright – cook general

Susan Baker – domestic

Edna Dawes – domestic

Orla McKinley – nanny

Judy looks at the last name for a long time.

Clough, swallowing the last of a chunky doughnut-to-go, is in a stonemason’s studio. The air is thick with dust and out of the fog loom disembodied shapes – columns, fireplaces, the occasional half-finished statue, horses and angels and Greek goddesses. Clough walks carefully through the stone figures thinking that it’s like a book he read as a child where a witch turned her enemies into stone and then decorated her house with them. Either that or a graveyard.

They have had a bit of luck with the stonemason. The firm who made Christopher Spens’ archway in 1956 are still in business. The actual mason has retired but his son is now in charge and has volunteered to bring his old dad into the studio to talk to the police. Clough now wends his way slowly towards the back of the vast room where the comforting sounds of Radio 1 are mingling with the smell of reheated coffee and calor gas. Clough sniffs appreciatively.

An old man is sitting in an armchair in from of the gas stove. A younger man, presumably the son, is chipping away at a small block of marble. Duffy is begging for mercy in the background.

‘Mr Wilson?’ Clough extends a hand. ‘Detective Sergeant Clough.’

The old man holds out a thin hand in a fingerless glove. ‘Mr Wilson senior. Reginald Wilson. I assume it’s me you wanted?’

‘Well, yes, sir. As I explained to your son on the phone, we’re interested in an archway you built in 1956, on Woolmarket Street. For Christopher Spens.’

Reginald Wilson gestures towards a cloth-bound book on his lap marked, in black ink, 1954-1958. ‘It’s all in the book. I always say to Stephen here, put it in the book. You never know when you might want to refer to it. But it’s all computers these days. Not as safe as a book.’ The younger man rolls his eyes good-naturedly.

Clough follows the shaking finger to an entry marked in pencil. ‘Stone archway and portico. Portico with Roman-style columns. Archway, stand-alone, granite. Eight foot by four. Inscription to read: Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit.’

‘Latin,’ says Clough. ‘Gobbledegook, eh?’

‘I studied Latin at school,’ says Reginald Wilson mildly. ‘It’s a fairly well-known saying. It was important to Mr Spens,

I think, because of his daughter dying. He said that the arch was a memorial to her, a sign that nothing was ever really lost.’

Feeling snubbed, Clough says, ‘What sort of a man was Christopher Spens?’

Wilson is silent for a moment, holding his hands out towards the fire. Then he says, ‘He was always very courteous to me. Treated me as a craftsman. That’s important in our line of work. But he was distant, if you know what I mean. Of course, he’d lost a child and that changes you. But he was a difficult man to know, that was my impression.’

‘What about his wife, Rosemary?’

‘I hardly saw her. I understood she was a bit of an invalid. We saw the son though, nice lad, he helped us dig.’

‘Roderick?’

‘Yes. He runs the business now, doesn’t he?’

‘His son, Edward.’

‘Ah, fathers and sons.’ Reginald Wilson glances at his son, working industriously on the marble, its sides shining in the light from the fire. ‘That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Passing the business on to your son. That’s the only reason why any of us do it.’

On the way out, moving through the stone menagerie, Clough remembers the name of the book. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He must remember to tell Judy. She’s always saying that he never reads anything.

27th June Festival of Jupiter Stator

This morning a black dog appeared on the front lawn. Clearly a messenger from the goddess. As it paused on the lawn, it turned and looked at me (I was reading Suetonius in the drawing room). I looked back, sending a message, ‘Is it soon, lady?’ And she answered, ‘It is soon.’

‘How charming,’ says Father Hennessey politely, although the café chosen at random by Ruth is, in truth, anything but charming. Determined to avoid Starbucks she’d Googled ‘cafés Norwich’ and come up with Bobby’s Bagels, an old-fashioned greasy spoon with Formica tables and dirty net curtains. The owner (Bobby himself?) has at least three days’ worth of food spattered on his apron and is either talking on a hands-free phone or is in the grip of severe schizophrenia.

The café is, at least, fairly near to Woolmarket Street and Ruth was able to look in at the site as she went past. Apart from the archway, the old house has now vanished completely: reception rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, wishing well, outhouses all subsumed in a smooth sea of mud. At the back of the site, the new apartments are rising stealthily, now at first-floor height complete with flimsy-looking balconies. Edward Spens is obviously going all out to beat the property crash.

Ruth orders tea because she doesn’t trust the coffee. Father Hennessey orders coffee and, rashly, a bagel. This he eats with every appearance of relish despite the fact that the plate seems to have traces of egg on it. The priest looks completely calm and relaxed. It is Ruth who fiddles nervously with the sugar bowl and twice spills her (disgusting) tea.

‘You must have been delighted to see Martin again,’ she says.

Father Hennessey smiles. ‘Indeed I was. It was a great gift from God. I had feared I would die without knowing what had happened to Martin and Elizabeth.’

This is, presumably, more than a manner of speaking. Father Hennessey, Ruth knows from Max, is over eighty; death is no longer a metaphor. What must it be like, wonders Ruth, to know that you are going to die and to be sure that eternal life awaits?

‘Max… Martin… said that you were very good to him.’

Father Hennessey looks meditatively into his coffee cup. ‘Ah, I tried to be but we never know how much harder we could have tried. If I had been more understanding, maybe he wouldn’t have run away. Maybe Elizabeth wouldn’t have died.’

‘Maybe she would have,’ says Ruth gently. ‘Max says she was often ill as a child.’

Hennessey smiles but says nothing. There is a silence broken only by Bobby in the background having a fierce row with someone called Maggie. Eventually Ruth says, ‘You’re probably wondering why I asked to see you.’