Chapter 7
The following morning DS Rachel Tracey was reading through the coroner’s report on the death of Timothy Fontescue-Burns that Rob had found and printed out.
The inquest verdict was death by misadventure and there were no suspicious circumstances.
Fontescue-Burns had been a habitual drug user, a university dropout who’d lacked for no material comfort during his pampered upbringing.
He had been an only child, whose father had been killed when the private plane he was aboard had crashed in the Alps on the way home from a skiing trip.
Timothy’s mother had attended his inquest but had been too upset to give evidence.
Rachel had formed a mental picture of Timothy Fontescue-Burns: a spoiled brat who looked down on his social inferiors and blew all the advantages life had given him. She suspected she wouldn’t have liked him, in the unlikely event that their paths had ever crossed.
‘I’ve been going through the police report on Timothy Fontescue-Burns’s death, Sarge.’
Rob Carter’s voice interrupted her thoughts. She looked up and saw the young man standing by her desk, waving a sheaf of papers. ‘Makes interesting reading, especially the people who were living at Sycamore House at the time.’
‘Did they make statements?’
‘Yeah. But they all say more or less the same thing.’
‘Were the statements suspiciously similar? Could they have cooked up the story between themselves?’
Rob considered the question for a few moments. ‘I guess that’s possible. I’ll show these to the DI.’ He looked round at Wesley, who was sitting at his desk deep in paperwork.
‘Did you notice anything unusual about the statements?’ Rachel asked.
‘Well, one of the witnesses at the inquest was a younger cousin called Miles Fontescue, who gave Fontescue Hall as his address.’
Rachel raised her eyebrows. ‘I was talking to DI Peterson yesterday and we wondered whether Fontescue-Burns might be related to the Fontescue family in some way. What did this Miles say?’
‘He said Timothy had always been a bit of a rebel and that he’d bought the house intending to turn it into a commune.
He and his followers, I suppose you could call them, called it Casa Mirabilis.
Timothy claimed the place was on a ley line, and there was some old ruined chapel in the grounds where he used to hold rituals.
Drugs were involved,’ he added meaningfully.
‘Miles told the inquest he’d called at Casa Mirabilis a couple of times because his aunt, Timothy’s mother, was worried about her son.
I get the impression that the rest of the family at the hall had washed their hands of him.
And Miles didn’t seem too impressed either. ’
‘You’d better share this with DI Peterson,’ said Rachel with a smile. ‘The bit about the ruined chapel sounds just up his street.’
Wesley was surveying his growing heap of paperwork with something akin to despair when Rob Carter approached his desk with the news that he’d managed to lay his hands on the police reports about the untimely death of Timothy Fontescue-Burns.
Welcoming the distraction, he listened carefully to Rob’s theory that the witnesses might have collaborated on their testimonies, but it was the mention of an old chapel in the grounds of Sycamore House that intrigued him most. The tree surgeons had certainly uncovered something unusual when they’d uprooted the unwanted leylandii.
He didn’t know whether Neil had managed to contact Mrs Jones about investigating further.
Some people were only too keen to have archaeologists digging up their garden, while others absolutely forbade it.
Wesley wasn’t sure which category Helen Jones would fit into.
So far there had been no sign of Mr Jones, so presumably he was still enjoying the four-star luxury of the Marina Hotel, leaving his wife to deal with the fallout from the discovery of a dead body in her dining room wall.
Reading through the inquest report Rachel had brought in, Wesley was particularly interested in the testimony given by Timothy’s cousin, Miles Fontescue. He thought they should make it a priority to speak to him, given that the body in the wall could well date from the early days of the commune.
He glanced at his watch. It was time for their appointment at the mortuary. He strolled over to Gerry’s office, where he found the DCI with his phone pressed to his ear, looking annoyed.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Wesley heard him say before he slammed the receiver down, muttering, ‘No, ma’am, three bags full, ma’am.’
‘The chief super?’
‘Got it in one, Wes. Says the Fontescues are an important family around these parts, so she wants results. We mustn’t get on the wrong side of the lord of the manor, must we?’ he added with uncharacteristic bitterness.
‘Well, the Fontescue connection is certainly worth following up,’ Wesley said, his mind wandering to the possibility of getting a tour round Fontescue Hall, then swiftly dismissing the thought as inappropriate.
‘But let’s face it, Dr Aleric Donnal is a bit of a mystery at the moment.
The team are still busy contacting universities, but no luck yet. ’
‘Unless he just called himself doctor. It has been known for people to exaggerate their qualifications, you know. Maybe he was a con man, and that’s why he was murdered.’
‘Anything’s possible. On the other hand, he seemed to be on good terms with Ethelred Bingley, and his was a long-established book-selling business.’
‘Unless he conned Bingley too. Like you say, anything’s possible.’
Wesley checked the time. ‘Colin’s expecting us. Better not be late.’
Gerry hauled his large frame out of the executive leather chair given to him on his promotion to chief inspector. It now looked rather worn, and creaked loudly as he stood up.
‘Back any better this morning?’
‘Fine.’ The reply sounded defensive. Wesley knew the chief super had been dropping heavy hints about retirement, a prospect Gerry regarded with horror. The last thing the DCI wanted was to appear vulnerable at work, and Wesley could sympathise.
‘You could try a heat pad,’ he suggested tentatively. ‘And some painkillers.’
‘I said I’m fine.’
He thought it best to let the matter drop.
It was a pleasant late-September day; the kind that made Wesley glad that he’d made the decision many years ago to move from the metropolis to this stunningly beautiful part of the country.
The river sparkled in the sunshine as the ferry chugged to and fro, yachts glided on the water, and late tourists sat outside the waterside pubs and restaurants, enjoying their morning coffee and the view.
Knowing what he was about to witness at the mortuary, Wesley envied them their leisure.
Colin was ready for them, gowned up and poised over the desiccated corpse on the table. The dead man’s clothing had been removed carefully and now lay in a steel tray.
‘I came across a key in the trouser pockets,’ said the pathologist. ‘Looks like a house key.’ He nodded towards a plastic bag in the tray. Wesley picked it up to take a closer look. The key was a Yale, which could well fit the lock of the house on Harbour Steps.
‘Anything else?’ he asked.
‘Yes. My assistant found a sketch folded up in another pocket. Odd thing. Couldn’t really make it out.’
Wesley replaced the key and picked up the second bag.
Inside was a rough sketch of a serpent with the Latin name Serpentes maris scrawled untidily underneath.
Below this was another image, more familiar to Wesley as the father of a young daughter: a woman with a fish’s tail with the word Serra beneath.
A mermaid and a sea serpent. Hardly creatures you met every day.
He passed the bag to Gerry, who looked puzzled. ‘That piece of paper the CSIs found with him in the wall – didn’t that list the names of strange creatures too?’
‘That’s right. “Bonnacon. Ape. Griffin.” Apes are real enough but the others are legendary. So are sea serpents and mermaids. If he was an academic, maybe he was studying ancient legends. Don’t forget, the book he failed to return was about beasts of the Middle Ages.’
Gerry was about to say something when Colin cleared his throat. He was ready to begin his examination. The two policemen fell silent and listened to the pathologist’s commentary, recorded into the microphone hanging above the table.
‘The body is remarkably well preserved,’ Colin began. ‘Must have been the right conditions inside that wall cavity. Judging from the barely digested stomach contents, I’d say he died soon after eating.’
‘What about the cause of death?’
He signalled to his assistant to turn the body over.
‘See those two marks on his back? They’re stab wounds. One went right through and hit the heart.’
‘So he was stabbed in the back?’
‘That’s right.’