Simon Clark - Humpty's bones

Her husband barked out a louder ‘NO! No preferential rates! Klein pays full! Especially after last time. The place was a pig-sty. I found a vodka bottle in the toilet bowl.’

Under her breath, Heather said, ‘Curtis opened a recording studio in York early this year. We still have,’ she raised her eyebrows, ‘teething troubles. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who book studio time then never turn up. Last week the studio’s loo flooded. Crap all over the new carpets. Curtis ignited. I’ve never seen him so angry.’ This seemed to remind her. ‘Curtis. We’ve a guest.’

‘Heather, just one moment!’

Heather shrugged, then said to Eden, ‘Look at the fragment of skull.’

‘Human?’ Eden made a point of not touching it, even though Heather offered it to her.

‘No.’ She sniffed. ‘Odd. No human fragments of skull. This is dog.’

In the living room, Curtis poured three glasses of white wine. ‘Eden, I’m sorry to hear about your apartment. Were all the rooms affected?’

‘There’s smoke damage to the living room and the bedroom; they need repainting. Worst is the kitchen. The fire ruined the cupboards and even part of the floor burned through.’

‘Good heavens. But the insurance will take care of it?’ Even though Curtis had changed into a smock-top and jeans, which could best be described as rural hippy, he still sounded like the no-nonsense business man. Eden decided that many people Curtis met would be surprised by how his bohemian, easy-going appearance was at odds with the waspish manner.

‘I’m covered, so they’ll pay for the repairs in full. The trouble is the time it’ll take. It’s been nearly impossible to find a builder, they’re all so busy these days. I finally managed to get someone who can start at the end of the month.’

‘Long job?’

‘Two weeks to get it liveable again.’ There was something about Curtis’s expression that prompted her to add quickly, ‘Are you sure it’s alright for me to stay with you for so long?’

‘Fine… its fine.’

‘It really is good of you to put me up.’

‘No, the pleasure’s all ours.’ The smile was a tad professional, his eyes cold looking. ‘Heather could do with some company. We’re isolated out here… we love the peace of course. And that landscape, once you get use to the flatness, is really quite beautiful you know. Vast open spaces, enormous skies. You can almost reach out and touch the tranquillity of it all.’

Eden found she could only repeat her gratitude. ‘Thanks for inviting me to share it with you. I’ll do what I can to help out around the house.’

‘That’s very generous. With Heather standing in that damn hole in the garden all day sometimes the more mundane day-to-day stuff slips. And she has her accountancy work, too.’ He laughed. ‘We don’t want her clients banging on the door, do we? Howling about delayed tax returns. Now… seeing as Heather won’t come out of her lab and leave those bloody bones alone. Shall we take these to her?’

Eden picked up two wine glasses. Curtis followed with his.

‘Right to end of the passageway, Eden. Last door on your left. Duck your head; it’s the oldest part of the house. The doorways were built for goblins.’

The door was part open, so even with a glass in each hand, Eden managed by pushing it ajar with her elbow. Heather leaned over the long table in the centre of the room, with the kind of expression of concentration someone might wear when immersed in a jigsaw puzzle. On the table were laid fragments of bone; most still coated with mud. The low-ceilinged room accommodated ‘treasures’ from the dig: plastic trays full of those greenish copper coins, fragments of pottery, pieces of tile. On a desk in the corner, a microscope and a laptop sat side by side. Heather was oblivious to the new arrivals.

‘Have you put the chap back together again, yet?’ boomed Curtis.

Heather flinched. She shot him a glare that clearly said, Don’t you dare interrupt me like that! With Eden being there, Heather managed a polite. ‘Oh, you’ve come to see if I’ve made any progress? Eden, welcome to the lab, by the way.’

‘Lab?’ Curtis chuckled. ‘This is where they used to do the laundry way back when. So? Humpty Dumpty here… a Roman Legionnaire stabbed in the vitals, or a Vestal Virgin done horribly to death for being a tease?’

‘Ooh, wine. Lovely, thank you.’ Heather took the glass, her fingers still coated in good Yorkshire earth. ‘And at least it’s not too dry.’

‘White wine can never be too dry.’ As he sipped his he pulled a face that suggested he thought the wine mediocre. ‘Please note, Eden, your aunt isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. I tell her that stuff sticking to her fingers… if what she’s digging up is a stable… is two thousand year old poop.’

‘Hardly a stable. The dimensions are too small.’

‘A lavatory then. With contents thereof in situ.’

‘And these bones. There is definite charring.’

Heather offered a thighbone for her husband to examine more closely. He responded with a terse, ‘I’ll stay with the vin blanc , thank you.’ Then: ‘Eden was telling me about the fire damage to her apartment. Terrible state of affairs, isn’t it?’

Again Eden felt as if she had to reassure them that her visit wouldn’t be a long one. ‘And thanks again, Heather for inviting me to stay. I’ve told Curtis that I’m more than willing to help out around the house; I won’t get under your feet.’

Heather gulped her wine. ‘A boy, wasn’t it? Didn’t he do it deliberately?’

Eden tightened her grip on the glass. ‘I invited a friend home.’

‘But it turned out he didn’t give you his real name, did he?’ Heather’s gaze became uncomfortably penetrating as she regarded Eden.

‘That’s right. For whatever reason he didn’t want to… ’ Simply voicing the events that led to the destruction of half her home weren’t only painful, but they made her feel so foolish.

Curtis uhmed. ‘And you’d only met him the once, I understand?’

‘Yes. I feel such an idiot.’

Heather turned back to her bones. ‘You’re a very trusting person. Your mother’s like that. The trouble is that people aren’t always nice.’

Curtis took the empty glass from Heather as she picked up a jaw bone; it still had brown canines embedded in the sockets. Almost as if he couldn’t stop himself, he added, ‘The police think it was arson, don’t they?’

Heather murmured, ‘You can’t be too careful who you let into your home these days.’

‘Drug addict, was he? Or insane? Did he look right to you when you met him in the pub?’

Eden’s face burned. ‘He looked perfectly normal. There was nothing odd about him.’

‘Outwardly, maybe. But, with hindsight, you must remember some strange quirk about his behaviour?’

Eden’s hand shook enough for a drop of wine to spring over the rim to fall onto the bones laid on the table.

‘Careful!’ Heather used a tissue to dab wine from a rib bone.

Curtis laughed. ‘Did he spend the evening fiddling with a cigarette lighter?’

‘Look, I’d had a drink, I was lonely — ’

‘Eden, there goes more wine. Stand back from the table — please .’

Curtis still laughed. ‘But a dirty, great keg of diesel would have been a dead give away. I wonder what turns people into arsonists?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Eden’s eyes pricked. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. People could have died that night. My neighbours have children — ’

‘Uh, there it goes again.’ The phone in the passageway began to ring. ‘Excuse me.’ Curtis vanished back through the door. A second later Eden heard his brisk voice dealing with what appeared to be more problems. ‘You’ve tackled Klein, I hope? He gets no more studio time unless he pays at least half upfront… what’s that? If it’s not Klein, what is it then? The heating? What do you expect me to do about it this time of night? No, don’t call out the engineer. We can’t afford to run up more bills. The studio’s supposed to generate income for us. At this rate we’ll be pouring more cash in than we’re getting out. Damn it, Wayne. Look at the thermostat. Somebody’s probably just dicked around with the thing. Turn it down; don’t expect me to hold your hand while you do it.’