Robert Goddard - Name To a Face

“They’re not listening, Tim,” said Hayley softly.

He ran his hand round the frame of the trapdoor and encountered a cable emerging into the cellar. “There must be a light in here,” he declared in a small surge of optimism.

“But the switch is upstairs,” she responded, almost apologetically.

He patted the pocket where his phone should have been, but it was not there. “They’ve taken my phone,” he said grimly.

“There’s no way out, Tim.”

“There has to be.”

“No. There doesn’t. You just want there to be one. So do I. But there isn’t.”

He inched back down the steps and groped his way along the wall. It was constructed of big, roughly worked boulders, unyielding to the touch, solid and ancient. He came to a corner after twelve feet or so, and another, twelve feet after that. Before he reached the third corner, he trod on the edge of the blanket and knew he was back where he had started, their small, dark world all too swiftly circumscribed.

“Sit down beside me, Tim. Please.”

Reaching forward, he felt her outstretched hand and lowered himself to the floor. She had rolled herself in part of the blanket he had been lying on and was shivering with cold and fatigue. He put his arm round her shoulders. She sighed and rested her head on his chest. The shivering abated.

“I wondered if you’d come for me. It was the hope I was clinging to. And you did come, didn’t you? But it’s done neither of us any good.”

“So much has happened since I last held you like this, Hayley So much I don’t understand.”

“And so much you can’t forgive?”

“I can forgive you for wanting to avenge Kerry. It’s easy.” He kissed her on the forehead. “There. It’s done.”

“Thank you for saving me.”

“I haven’t.”

“I don’t mean here, now, today. I mean when I aborted my oh-so-clever plot to kill Carol and frame Barney for her murder. It was caring about you-you making me care about you-that stopped me. And that stopped me taking revenge on the wrong person. Because Barney didn’t kill Kerry. I know that now. I guess you do too. It was the Martyns who did it. It wasn’t Barney. He’s as innocent as he’s always claimed to be.”

He was going to have to tell her soon that Barney was dead and that, ironically she had been framed for his murder. But he could not bring himself to do so yet. “Why did they kill her, Hayley?”

“The reason’s in this cellar with us. Here.” She wrestled something from the pocket of her jeans and pressed it into his palm. “A miniature torch. The Martyns don’t know I’ve got it. Not that it’s done me much good. The battery’s nearly dead. But turn it on. Then you’ll see.”

Harding rotated the tiny barrel of the torch in his hand until he felt the ribbed surface of the switch. He pushed at it. Hayley’s face, hollow-cheeked and big-eyed, was suddenly illuminated. She smiled at him. He stretched forward, holding the torch at arm’s length. The rough-hewn walls revealed themselves in vaguely formed shadows. And there, in the centre of the chamber, he saw an old iron chest, about three feet high, four feet long and two feet wide, with an arched lid, mounted on some kind of platform. He glimpsed engraved lettering on the side of the chest facing him. Then the beam of light faltered. And ceased.

“What is that?” he asked.

“An ossuary chest.”

“A what?”

“It contains the bones of the Grey Man of Ennor.”

“How d’you know?”

“I drained the battery deciphering the inscription.”

“What does it say?”

“Eduardus Vir Canus Ennoris, MCCCLIV. The Latin version of his name: Edward, the Grey Man of Ennor. And the year of his death in Roman numerals: 1354.”

“No surname?”

“A monk or friar gives up his surname on taking his vows. But we both know who he was, don’t we?”

“I know Kerry was trying to connect the Grey Man of Ennor with Edward the Second. I learned that much from her old editor, Jack Shepherd. How did you find out?”

“Kerry stole the complete version of the Gashry report from Norman Buller, a descendant of Gashry’s executor. She hid it under the floorboards in the drawing room of our old home in Dulwich. Then she hid a sketch plan showing where it was in her recorder. She must have been worried from the start that something would be done to stop her and she wanted me to know why. I found the plan when the Horstelmann Clinic handed her possessions over to me. Then I found the report-where she’d put it. That’s what I needed the torch for. And when I read the section missing from Herbert Shelkin’s copy… I understood.”

“What was in the missing section?”

“Everything Gashry uncovered during his investigation here in the Scillies in February 1736, beginning with the Grey Man legend. He was supposed to have returned to St. Nicholas’s Priory on Tresco after the Black Death and to have died there a few years afterwards. He was buried in the priory church. When the priory was abandoned a century or so later, his bones were removed, placed in that chest and transferred to Old Town Church, here on St. Mary’s. Godfrey Shillingstone had identified him from his earlier researches and Lord Godolphin had authorized Shillingstone to take whatever so-called antiquities he wanted. So, he excavated the nave of Old Town Church, found the ossuary chest and took it back to Penzance, intending to make his name with his discovery in London. But there were people living here who’d sworn to protect the Grey Man’s remains. They followed Shillingstone to Penzance. And they had a valuable ally. Jacob Tozer was a Scillonian by birth. He helped them retrieve the chest, killing Shillingstone in the process and stealing the Shovell ring to put anyone investigating the murder off the scent. But Gashry couldn’t actually prove anything. In the end, he recommended supplying Admiral Shovell’s family with a specially made replica of the ring and, for the rest, letting sleeping dogs lie.”

“And that’s what his boss decided to do.”

“Yes. The incomplete copy of the report aroused Kerry’s curiosity and the complete copy convinced her there was a story in it. When she came down here to do some digging, she heard about Josephine Edwards’s miraculous recovery from terminal leukaemia. She put a photocopy of a newspaper article about that in with the report for me to find. When I arrived on Monday I went to see the Edwardses. They sent me here. Stupidly I thought it might be a coincidence that Josie had married Fred Martyn. By the time I realized it wasn’t, it was too late. They overpowered me so easily.”

“They believe the Grey Man’s bones still hold some of his healing power?”

“I guess. That’s why their ancestors were never going to let Shillingstone take the bones to London. They had to be brought back to Scilly at any price. Maybe there’s a folk memory of other miracle cures over the centuries. Maybe Josie’s was just the latest in a long line.”

“You don’t believe a chestful of old bones can conquer terminal diseases.”

“They believe it can. And they have a practical example to back up their belief. That’s all that matters. Josie got better, baffling her doctors. Then Kerry turned up, asking all kinds of questions. The way they must have seen it, she was threatening to do just what Shillingstone did. And just like Shillingstone, she had to be stopped. I don’t know how they were able to sabotage her gear without anyone noticing, but-”

“They weren’t able to, Hayley”

“What d’you mean?”

“John Metherell helped them.”

“Metherell?”

“Yes. He and the Martyns were left on the boat at the quayside when Barney went to fetch the others. Metherell told me he left the boat as well, to speak to the harbourmaster. But then he also told me the Tozers had no Scillonian connections.”