Joe had paid careful attention, committing the words and signs to memory, writing down nothing, swearing a fearsome oath never to reveal the secrets of the craft until his own last moments. To his astonishment, the Word whispered to him over a sack of corn in a barn at midnight—a hasty approximation of the initiation into the Society of Horsemen—had been two words, two words in Latin. Though he’d made no comment at the time and made no reference to it ever after, Joe’s classical education had led him to suspect, with an awe that was almost religious, that the whole ceremony and structure had been devised in a very ancient past. Romano-British, most probably. The traces they’d left behind in the landscape showed that the Roman army had had a stronger and more peaceable presence in these northern lands than was generally supposed. They’d farmed and kept stock. They’d married local girls. A good number of the soldiers were also horsemen by trade, some from far eastern lands, Persia and beyond. It had pleased Joe to think that when he’d whispered the Roman words into the ears of horses he’d ridden in India and Afghanistan that he was using a link in an unbroken chain reaching back from Britain, through Mithras, god of the soldiery, and Epona, goddess of horses, to some ancient, horse-taming homeland.
His life had taken him away from the country and finally anchored him to an office desk. The skills were not forgotten, though. Joe would say nothing to Hunnyton, as he’d said nothing to anyone, not even to Dorcas. His oath was his oath.
Lightly he remarked, “Amazing what an effect a Fitzbillie’s Chelsea bun will have! I nipped out after breakfast and bought a bag of them in Trumpington Street. I say—do you think they’d have the same effect on girls? Shall we try it?”
He made no reference to the tiny bottle of oil of cloves he’d bought for an alleged toothache from Lloyd’s the chemist next door. A few drops of that on his handkerchief and a discreet smear on his face and neck had done its job. Better than a calling card. Always a good stand-by in horse country.
“There’s Frank come to round them up,” Hunnyton said. “We’d better be off and leave them to their work.”
“Well, thanks for that! I enjoyed meeting your friends.” Hunnyton peered at him. “Got a hanky have you? You might like to wipe the crumbs and froth off your chin before we encounter civilised society.”
THE VILLAGE OF Melsett was indeed small. A strung-out length of timber-framed cottages, plastered and painted, with small windows squinting out under the weight of low-hanging reed thatch, undulated with the rise and fall of the land for half a mile. Each had a neat and extensive plot under cultivation at the back and the small front gardens, where there was space for one between the skirts of the cottage and the road, were ablaze with hollyhock, delphinium and foxglove. At the centre, where the road dipped into a water-splash, there was a village pub—unsurprisingly, The Sorrel Horse—and, opposite, a building which, judging by its size and the bell mounted on the roof, could only be the school. The Friday fishmonger—Mr. Aldous of Southwold, apparently, from the name painted on the side of his Morris van—had arrived to sell his wares from a box of ice in the back. They passed slowly along the high street, Hunnyton pointing out his own cottage as they drove by until they arrived at the ancient village church mounted on a slight rise above the village.
“We’ve time to stop here and look about before we go to see the vet,” he said, showing Joe through the sheep-gate. “There’s something you’ll want to see, Sandilands.”
Joe set off up the path, his eye intrigued by the many headstones engraved with a name he thought he recognised. As they approached the church Hunnyton caught him by the sleeve and pulled him off to the left. “No, this way. Never go round a church widdershins. If you do, the Devil will have you!” Joe doubted the Devil knew his widdershins from his elbow but if Hunnyton favoured a clockwise approach, he was happy to indulge him.
They went off beyond the church and away to the furthest perimeter hedge that divided the church land from the cultivated farmland. A solitary grave with a simple stone marker seemed to be their destination. Joe noticed before they arrived at the spot that the plot was tended, grassed over and carefully trimmed. A stone vase held a bunch of white roses. Buxom, overblown garden-variety roses. A scatter of petals over the grave told Joe that they had been placed there some days ago. Hunnyton was not the only one in the village who remembered her, it seemed.
Joe knelt and read the name. PHOEBE PILGRIM. BORN: 1892. DIED: 1908. MAY SHE REST IN PEACE.
“I noticed other Pilgrims in graves a bit nearer the centre of things,” Joe said. “A Suffolk name?” Hunnyton nodded. “So why is Phoebe laid to rest here, away from her family?” he asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it from Hunnyton.
“There were some as said she’d no right to be on hallowed land at all. They wanted her planted out at the crossroads.” He snorted with disgust. “Medieval barm-pots! You’ll still find ignorant old shell-backs in these parts who think a suicide has no place in Christian soil.” His voice had taken on a rougher countryman’s edge to give traction to the remembered emotion. “I were that mad you could ’a boiled a kettle on my head! I gave that no-good preacher what for—right there in his own church and I got the old man to back me up.”
“Good man! Glad to hear you’re dragging them into the twentieth century. But—suicide? You don’t have to be a countryman to find that a bit tricky. It’s still regarded as a crime by the law, even in sophisticated London Town. Poor child. She was only sixteen.”
Joe knelt at the grave and said a silent prayer. Deep in thought, he removed a dead flower and rearranged the rest.
“Are you ever going to tell me why you’ve lured me here, Hunnyton? You’ve managed what no official body has managed in a quarter of a century—you’ve got a Scotland Yard officer on his knees at a graveside on Suffolk soil. Quite a feat! Look—there were twenty-five recorded self-inflicted deaths in the Suffolk police authority in 1908 and, apart from the war years when the rate went down, it’s been pretty steady ever since. I check these things! So, I’m wondering why you want the Yard here, six feet from the bones of little Phoebe Pilgrim, asking questions.”
Hunnyton knelt down opposite Joe, putting his right hand on the grave and staring at him across the small plot, using the earth as he might have used the Bible offered in court. A gesture of sincerity. An accepted guarantee of truth.
“It wasn’t a suicide. Someone murdered her. I’ve always known that. I let it go all these years but this latest—another woman in the Truelove household dying unnaturally—I had to stir myself and do something. It needs a good brain and an influential position to get to the bottom of this and sort it out. It needs you, Sandilands. I didn’t just pick your name off a list. Oh, no. The insubordination and the clout I hear about appealed to me, but I chose you for a reason that’s personal to you though you don’t yet know it.”
Joe shied away from things personal. “Shall we start with Phoebe?” he said crisply. “What was she to you?”