Elly Griffiths - The Janus Stone

Inexplicably Roderick lets out a high-pitched giggle. ‘Tied up? So you are. Dr Galloway’s busy. She’s tied up.’

Ruth does not know what is happening but she knows that she is suddenly very scared. And Roderick’s face, so mild-looking with its faded blue eyes and fringe of white hair, is the scariest thing of all.

‘Let me go,’ she says, trying to sound authoritative.

‘Oh I can’t let you go,’ says Roderick, still sounding gently amused. ‘You have what I want, you see?’

‘What?’

‘You have Detective Inspector Harry Nelson’s baby. You lay with him and now you’re with child. You’re carrying his daughter. That’s what I want.’

Ruth stares, cold with horror. The archaic language ‘lay with him… with child’ only serves to heighten the horror. Somehow this old man knows her secret, that she is carrying Nelson’s baby, and he is going to use this knowledge in some terrible way.

Still smiling, Sir Roderick approaches and Ruth sees the dull gleam of a knife.

‘I want the baby,’ he repeats.

Nelson stares at Cathbad.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Max Grey. I think he’s got something to do with Ruth disappearing.’

When Cathbad appeared in Nelson’s office (was it only yesterday?), he had had some actual information about Max to go with his sixth sense. Apparently Cathbad had been speaking to a fellow Druid who lives in Ireland. ‘He knew Max Grey from a long way back, when he lived in Ireland. He described him in detail. Only he called himself by a different name entirely. And Pendragon-’

‘Who?’ Nelson had asked, wincing as if in pain.

‘Pendragon. My friend. He said that this Max Grey character was a real troubled soul. Full of inner violence.’

Whilst admiring the Druid networking system, Nelson had, at the time, dismissed this as mere new age fancy. But now he says with real urgency in his voice, ‘Why do you think he’s involved?’

‘Today, when I couldn’t find Ruth, I rang him. No answer. I contacted his students. He hasn’t been seen all day.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘On a boat, apparently. Moored near Reedham.’

‘Come on then.’ Nelson reaches for his phone. ‘Let’s pay him a visit.’

Ruth screams, so loudly that it startles both of them. Roderick stops and looks at her quizzically.

‘Why are you frightened?’ he asks.

‘Why do you think?’ shouts Ruth. ‘I’m stuck here on a boat with a madman. A madman with a knife.’

Roderick looks quite hurt. ‘I’m not mad,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a first in classics from Cambridge.’

From what Ruth has seen of Oxbridge graduates, the two are not mutually exclusive. But she knows that her best hope is in getting Roderick to speak to her. She tries to make her voice calm and reasonable, as if she is having a cosy chat with another academic.

‘I did archaeology at UCL,’ she says. ‘They’ve got a good classics department.’

‘University College London,’ muses Roderick. ‘A very respectable university. You must be a clever girl.’

Ruth attempts a simper. ‘Are you a classicist?’ she asks, trying to sound suitably admiring.

‘I am a Roman.’ His eyes are glittering. Cataracts or madness? At least he sits down on a small stool opposite Ruth, and lowers the knife. ‘I realised that at an early age. I was born at the wrong time. I belong in the age of discipline and self-reliance, of sacrifice and the pure libation of blood. Of the old gods.’

The old gods. Ruth thinks of the body buried under the door, the head in the well, the black cockerel. She remembers the feeling that the house on Woolmarket Street belongs to an older, darker, time.

‘Of course,’ Sir Roderick is saying, ‘I don’t do much these days. I belong to the historical society and, of course, I’m a trustee of the museum.’

The museum. Alarm bells go off in Ruth’s head and in quick succession she sees the model baby, the two-headed calf and the black drapery that was thrown over her head. In the same moment, she recognises the smell, lemon and sandalwood. The scent that emanates discreetly from Sir Roderick Spens.

‘My father was a great classicist,’ Roderick goes on, ‘Christopher Spens. Have you heard of him?’

Something tells Ruth that she had better say yes.

‘He was a great man. A great headmaster. Wrote many books about Ancient Rome. But he never got the recognition he deserved. He died a broken man. Never got over my sister’s death.’

‘Your sister died?’ Ruth remembers Nelson saying something about Annabelle Spens. Could Roderick’s sister be the child buried under the door?

‘Of scarlet fever, yes. Nothing was ever right again. My mother stayed in her room all day crying. My father spent every hour at the school, never seemed to want to come home. He knew the house was cursed, you see. That’s why I had to kill the other baby, you see. To lift the curse.’

Ruth’s whole body is suddenly stone cold. ‘What baby?’ she whispers.

‘My baby,’ says Roderick carelessly. ‘I lay with one of the servants. An ignorant Irish girl but comely enough.’ His voice thickens.

‘And she had a baby?’

‘Yes, that’s what happens, you see.’ He leers at her. ‘I was only a boy, of course. She took advantage of my adolescent urges. She said she loved me. She was a poor thing really. But she had a child, a girl. She called it Bernadette.’

It. Despite everything, Ruth feels tears rush to her eyes. The baby, stabbed, beheaded and buried under the door was Sir Roderick’s child. And to him she is still ‘it’.

‘What about the mother?’ she asks.

‘Oh, she went back to Ireland. The land of saints and scholars.’ He gives that chilling giggle again. ‘I buried the body in the garden but when the pater had the arch and the columns built I dug it up and buried it in the hole under the new doorway. An offering to Janus, y’know. Protect our walls and all that. I put the skull in the well. It seemed the right thing to do.’ He smiles complacently.

‘But what have I got to do with all this?’ asks Ruth. Even if she gets free, will she be able to get past Sir Roderick? He is old but he looks fit. And he has a knife.

‘That detective, Nelson, he’s too close to the truth. I’ve told my son that I’ve got Alzheimer’s. He was only too ready to believe that I was going senile. Fits in with what he and his brainless wife already think about me. Anyway, he speaks freely in front of me. Doesn’t think I understand. I got him to take me to the site. I saw you digging there and I knew you would find out the truth. Then, when I was at the police station, I overheard your call. When DCI Nelson rushed out, he left his phone behind. Very careless.’ Giggle. ‘I read your message and I knew. You were having his baby. So, unless he calls off the investigation, I’m going to kill his daughter. It’s only fair after all.’

‘It’s not at all fair!’ Ruth bursts out, in spite of herself.

Roderick ignores her. He continues speaking, in a self-satisfied tone. ‘I saw you at the Roman site. I was there with the Conservative Association. They’d hired a minibus. Very civilised. Then, when I saw you at the house, I made the connection. I thought I’d try to scare you off. I wrote your name on the stone with the blood of a cockerel. Strong magic. I knew the archaeologist from Sussex would find it and tell you. I thought the dead baby was a nice touch. I knew you’d be there that day because you’d had dinner with him the night before.’

‘You’re well-informed,’ says Ruth, between dry lips.

‘My granddaughter works on the site,’ answers Sir Roderick airily. ‘She tells me all the comings and goings.’

‘Your granddaughter?’