Elly Griffiths - A Room Full Of Bones

After Debbie has disappeared, carrying a thoroughly over-excited Kate, Ruth rifles through her desk collecting scripts and lecture notes. There, under a dissertation on Syphilis, Yaws and Diseases in Dry Bones , Ruth finds an article on Bishop Augustine, sent to her by Janet Meadows. She glances at the first lines and instantly is transported back to that Halloween afternoon: the empty room, the open window, the pages turning in the breeze.

She picks up her phone. ‘Hallo,’ she says. ‘It’s Ruth Galloway. Could we meet up? Yes, that would be fine.’

Ruth drives to a park in the centre of King’s Lynn, called The Walks. It’s very old and contains a fifteenth-century chapel, said to be haunted. There’s also a children’s playground and a river with ducks on it. It’s a bright afternoon so there are a few people wandering about, the sort of people who don’t have to be at work at two in the afternoon. Pensioners, mothers with pre-school children, a bird-watcher whom Ruth eyes with distrust. Predictably, Kate ignores the more picturesque birds in favour of staggering about after a mangy pigeon and is soon joined by two other yelling toddlers. Ruth watches them with pleasure, until it becomes too cold to stand still and she persuades Kate to move on. They pass Red Mount Chapel, a strange hexagonal building said to contain a relic of the Virgin Mary. Ruth thinks of Bishop Augustine and her visions. Really, religion is so strange – virgin births, the devil disguised as a snake, bread turning into flesh – if you believe all that you can believe anything. And maybe that’s the attraction.

They cross the bridge and walk, through streets that become increasingly less green and pleasant, to the Smith Museum. To Ruth’s surprise, a woman is by the front steps, sweeping up leaves. Getting closer she sees that it’s Caroline Smith. She doesn’t think that Caroline will recognise her, but in answer to Ruth’s hesitant hallo, the other woman says, ‘It’s Ruth, isn’t it? Cathbad’s friend?’

Ruth cautiously admits that she’s Cathbad’s friend.

‘Have you heard?’ asks Caroline, pushing her dark hair back behind her ears. She seems very friendly, almost manic.

‘Heard what?’

‘The skulls are going back,’ says Caroline. ‘Randolph agreed last night. We’re going to have a repatriation ceremony. It’ll be wonderful. Bob’s here now.’

Ruth doesn’t quite know how she feels about seeing Bob. She doesn’t believe that Bob was responsible for Lord Smith’s death and Nelson’s illness but, all the same, thinking of the mysterious figure in her garden last night, she still doesn’t quite trust him. She remembers his face when he told her about the fate of the man with a skull on his mantelpiece. He’s dead now. The ancestors are powerful.

‘You must be pleased about the skulls,’ she says to Caroline.

‘Oh yes,’ Caroline grins at her. ‘The wrong will be righted. Mother Earth will be satisfied. Everything will be all right now.’

Ruth thinks of Mother Julian’s adage: All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. Why is it so hard to believe this?

‘What’s going to happen to the museum?’ she asks.

‘Oh, I’m going to manage it,’ says Caroline, with another wide smile. ‘I’ve got great plans. It’ll be a different place.’

‘What about the stables?’

‘Well, after that drugs business…’

‘What drugs business?’ Ruth wants to scream, but she carries on standing there smiling, holding Kate by the hand. There’s too much going on here that she doesn’t understand.

Caroline switches the smile back on. ‘If the stables stay in business, Randolph will be in charge. It’s what he’s always wanted. He’s a genius with horses. And I’m going to make the museum a real success. We’re going to have proper local history exhibitions starting with “Augustine: the first woman bishop.”

‘Sounds great,’ says Ruth. ‘I’m meeting someone. Is it OK to go inside?’

‘Of course! She’s waiting for you.’

The museum seems deserted but benign in the afternoon light. There’s a room by the entrance lobby which Ruth hadn’t noticed before but which is full of butterflies, impaled upon pins and labelled with spidery Victorian writing. Kate loves the butterflies but her real enthusiasm is reserved for the stuffed animals. She runs delightedly from case to case shouting ‘Fox!’ ‘Dog!’ ‘Cat!’ Her range of animals may be limited but her enjoyment is not. Ruth finds herself looking at them all, even the murderous gulls, with a kinder eye.

Eventually Kate allows herself to be led through the study of Lord Percival Smith (‘Man!’) and into the long gallery. In the Local History Room, Janet Meadows is looking out of the window.

‘Hallo Ruth,’ says Janet.

‘Hi. Thanks for meeting me.’

‘No problem. Is this your little girl?’

‘Yes, this is Kate.’

‘Hallo Kate.’

‘Fox,’ says Kate.

Ruth looks at Janet and remembers her comment when Ruth had remarked flippantly that Augustine’s snake didn’t look very terrifying:

He’d subdued it. Evil has been defeated. He was a great saint.

She thinks of the room as she saw it that day: coffin, guidebook, grass snake and a single shoe.

‘You were here, weren’t you,’ she says, ‘the day Neil was found dead.’

Janet suddenly looks wary. ‘I told you I was. I came to see the opening of the coffin but the place was closed off.’

‘But you came earlier, didn’t you? You put the snake in here and a single shoe, to remind people about Augustine.’

Janet either brought a spare pair of shoes or she walked home barefoot. Ruth bets on the latter. Janet would have walked barefoot to emulate the man she called a ‘great saint’.

‘They had no right to desecrate his grave,’ says Janet. ‘He… she didn’t want anyone to open the coffin. That’s why it was buried where it was. So I put a snake there, a grass snake in a glass case, to remind them of Augustine’s warning. The shoe too. It was one of Jan’s shoes…’ For a second Ruth wonders who Jan is but then she remembers. Jan is, or was, Janet. Her old self, Jan Tomaschewski. ‘I dressed as Jan too,’ Janet is saying now, ‘in one of my old suits. The museum was deserted. I got the snake from the Natural History Room and carried it in here. The coffin was on a trestle in the middle of the room – open.’

‘Open?’

‘Yes, slightly open. I think the curator must have prised it open. I could hear him moving about in his office. So I put the snake and the shoe on the floor. I left the guidebook too, with a few words highlighted, just as a warning. Then I heard someone coming so I climbed out of the window. I don’t think anyone saw me and, if they did, they saw a man in a suit and a hat. Not a woman.’ She turns and does a mock twirl.

It must have been only seconds later that I came in and found Neil Topham dead, or nearly dead, thinks Ruth. Why on earth had he opened the coffin? But it was closed when she saw it. She remembers how easy it was for Phil to prise up the nails, far easier than it should have been. The coffin had already been opened, just days before.

Why would Neil open the coffin?’ asks Ruth.

Janet shrugs. ‘Search me. Perhaps he just wanted a look. Perhaps he just got impatient. Either way, it did for him, poor guy. Bishop Augustine had his – her – revenge.’

By afternoon Nelson is well enough to be moved to another ward. He enjoys the trip. It’s good to see a different view and, as the porters seem determined to take the longest route possible, he gets to see quite a lot of the hospital. Also, the move gave him an excuse to suggest to his mother that she go back to his house and get some rest. She agreed reluctantly, saying that she’d be back in the evening with a proper meal for him. ‘The muck they serve in these places is enough to kill you, so it is.’ As Michelle has also promised to bring him some food, Nelson foresees a clash of wills over the shepherd’s pie. Perhaps Michelle will be so tired that she’ll be happy to let Maureen do the honours. She’s good with his mum. Better than he is, anyway.