JT01 - In The Blood Page 28

  Hayne squeezed his eyes shut and winced.

  Manning did not hide his irritation. “Wait here,” he said. Then he turned back into the house and closed the door.

  Hayne shook his head. “Better let me do the talking, Mr Tayte.”

  “Sure,” Tayte said. “Lady F’s all yours.”

  Both men turned away from the door and looked across the driveway at the expensive cars.

  “Nice,” Hayne said.

  “Very,” Tayte agreed. “So do you two always work together?”

  “Me and Bastion?”

  Tayte nodded.

  “Three years now,” Hayne said.

  “Still call him sir though, right?”

  Hayne flashed Tayte a serious-looking affirmative. “On and off duty,” he said. “I just can’t hear myself calling him Leonard. Doesn’t feel right somehow.” A moment later he added, “So, genealogy? Is it always like this?”

  Tayte could see the detective’s eyes flitting between his numerous bandages. “Not always,” he said. “But it’s not all archive rooms and microfiche, either.”

  “Sort of like Indiana Jones, then?”

  Tayte returned Hayne’s playful smile. Then the plink of harp music returned and both men wheeled in unison towards the door to see an attractive middle-aged woman. She was shadowed by Manning, who stood in the doorway like a fixture.

  “Lady Fairborne?” Hayne said.

  The woman nodded.

  Hayne stepped closer. “I’m sorry to trouble you, madam,” he said, offering his badge up for scrutiny again. “With your permission, I’d like to take a look around the grounds.”

  Lady Fairborne gave Hayne’s badge a cursory glance. “Whatever for?” she said.

  “I believe it might help us with our investigation. An American gentleman was murdered last night just across the river. You might have heard about it?”

  Lady Fairborne shook her head. “We’ve been very busy,” she said. “But you don’t think it has anything to do with us, do you?” She looked shocked at the idea.

  “No, of course not, madam. It’s just routine. We’re following a line of investigation that concerns the suspect’s motives that’s all. Specifically, we’d like access to the family burial plots. The family crypt, I suppose you’d call it.”

  Lady Fairborne flashed a wary smile at Tayte. “And is this man a policeman too?” she asked. “I don’t believe I caught your badge,” she said, addressing Tayte directly.

  Hayne intervened before Tayte could get a word out. “Er, no, madam,” he said. “He’s a specialist helping with the case.”

  “Is he indeed?” Lady Fairborne paused long enough for Tayte to think she had him rumbled. “I could be wrong,” she added, “but don’t you need a warrant for this sort of thing?”

  Hayne smiled. “Do you have something to hide, then?” He laughed to make light of the suggestion.

  “Certainly not.” She laughed with him. “They always say that on television programmes though, don’t they?” She looked suddenly satisfied with herself. “It is true, though, isn’t it?” she added. “You do need a warrant.”

  Tayte was losing his patience again.

  This time Hayne didn’t give him the chance to cut in. “I can get a warrant and be back here within twenty-four hours,” he said. His smile was gone. “And I can bring a very large team with me,” he added. “Discretion could not be guaranteed under the circumstances.”

  Touchdown! Tayte thought as he watched Lady Fairborne’s resolve collapse.

  Celia Fairborne shrank back into the doorway with her deflated smile. She drew a deep and thoughtful breath. “Very well,” she said. “But I want no interaction with the guests and you’re to leave quietly as soon as you’ve finished. I’ll have Manning meet you at the back of the house with the key.”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  By the time Manning reappeared at the back of the house, the last of the party guests had moved off the manicured lawn and were now inside enjoying hors d’oeurves and cocktails. Tayte had looked at his cheap digital watch too many times; it was almost 7pm and he had just over an hour now to find what he was looking for and get himself to Durgan. Before then he also had to lose Hayne and that meant he needed enough time to get a lift back to Helford Passage where his hire car was supposed to be and walk to Durgan from there. It wasn’t far by the coastal path, but it would be dark by then.

  “Follow me, gentlemen,” Manning said as he arrived with a bunch of old keys. He passed them and kept going, heading down through the gardens towards the sea.

  They followed Manning’s jangling keys almost to the edge of the grounds, to the far right hand corner of the gardens and beyond through high and thick gorse that served to conceal the structure they were looking for. Manning finally stopped at a barely visible cobbled pathway that wound through a tangle of overgrown rhododendron bushes and other unkempt shrubbery. It was clear to Tayte as he followed Manning along the path, pushing aside the foliage as he went, that this was not a place frequented by the family with any regularity.

  A defunct water fountain marked their arrival at a heavy granite structure, which over the years had become a frame for climbing roses and ivy. Apart from that it reminded Tayte of the General Grant National Memorial in Manhattan, New York City. It was smaller in scale, incorporating a purely aesthetic conical dome rather than the great pillared dome that housed the commemorative mosaic murals of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. But it shared the mighty, pillared exterior at the front of the structure’s base.

  Manning must have anticipated their interest in the architecture. “It was modelled after the interpretation of the Mausoleum of Maussollos,” he said, like he was giving them a guided tour. “One of the seven wonders of the ancient world.”

  Several granite steps as wide as the structure led to a row of five broad pillars. Tayte walked the steps between them to a carved oak panelled door, framed by granite sculptures of nameless saints. Manning was close behind him with the keys and Tayte noted he had no trouble choosing the correct one from a selection of many.

  As Manning pushed the door silently open, Hayne produced a Maglite torch, testing the beam as Manning stepped boldly through. Tayte felt his heartbeat quicken as he followed them in, wondering what revelations awaited. He heard a switch click. Then the main lights came on and the illusion Tayte had in his head of some dusty old chamber evaporated like a waking dream.

  They were standing in what Tayte thought looked like a chapel. It was adorned with white marble engravings and was nothing like the dingy place Tayte had imagined it to be from the outside. It hadn’t been used in a while, though; there were no pews and no other adornments that were not literally set in stone.

  “I keep the cobwebs at bay,” Manning said, as if he’d registered the surprise on Tayte’s face. “You never know when such a place might be called upon again.”

  To the side walls, Tayte saw several recessed chambers - the sepulchres in which the sarcophagi of past members of the Fairborne family rested. Directly ahead of him the room recessed into a wide space that housed a larger, highly sculpted sarcophagus that you could easily walk around. Tayte moved instinctively towards it, past the floor-to-ceiling cinerary urn niches on either side whose spaces were part taken and part waiting to be filled, then up a single white marble step to the sarcophagus that had drawn his eye.

  “The resting place of William Fairborne,” Manning said before Tayte had chance to read the inscription.

  Tayte fired a look at Hayne that said, yeah, right! But this wasn’t the time or the place to argue the paradox of how William Fairborne could be buried both here and back home in the States.

  Manning approached Tayte, leaving DS Hayne to continue reading from the many inscriptions on offer. “The building was designed and part built by him, so I’m told,” Manning said. “On the plaques behind you you’ll find everything you’re looking for.” He pointed past Tayte to the end of the chamber, where white marble slabs engraved with go
ld lettering rose to the ceiling. “All the family interred here are listed on that wall.”

  Tayte loved organisation. A simple list could save so much time and he was never more thankful for such a list than now. He went to the nearest plaque first. Separating them was another, thicker slab that bore no engraving. He could see there was room on this plaque for more names at the bottom. He quickly scanned the dates. The oldest entry was at the top of the list - 1903. Too late.

  He moved across the wall, past the nondescript central slab to his left and saw that this list was full. A quick glance at one of the dates somewhere in the middle read, ‘1882’. This has to be the one, he thought. His eyes quickly scanned up the list and his hopes lifted with his eyes, but he was running out of names and the years were not receding fast enough. He reached the top of the list and read a name he knew well. There were no entries dated before that of William Fairborne. 1841 was as far back as they went.

  “There’s nothing here for James Fairborne,” Tayte said, speaking the words softly to himself as a disbelieving murmur. “Nothing even for his last wife, Susan, or their children, let alone the family he arrived from America with.”

  Tayte turned to Manning, hoping for some enlightenment. “Nothing before 1841?” he said. Then his eyes caught the date engraved in prominent if faded gold numerals over the doorway. He read, ‘1830’ and realised why; that was the year after this man calling himself William Fairborne inherited everything James Fairborne ever had. And it appeared that one of the first things he’d done with his new wealth was to build himself a mausoleum.

  Manning and Hayne stood beside Tayte looking up at the faded date over the door.

  Tayte still couldn’t believe it. “You said William Fairborne had this place built?”

  “That’s right,” Manning replied. “In 1830 as it says there. Eleven years before he died.”

  “Well what did he do with James Fairborne?” Tayte asked. He got a blank look. “His benefactor?”

  Manning continued to show nothing but vacant incomprehension.

  What Tayte couldn’t believe was that the man who claimed to be James Fairborne’s brother could take everything from him and not even bury him in the family crypt. Wait a minute… Tayte paused to check his understanding. This man wasn’t really a Fairborne. It suddenly made perfect sense. Why would he want a real Fairborne in there alongside his own family? He’d taken the name and the baronetcy along with everything else. He probably wanted to forget where it all came from. How could he sustain the illusion if James Fairborne was always there under his nose to remind him?

  So he built a mausoleum…

  Tayte smiled to himself. “He probably built this place right on top of the old family’s graves,” he said.

  Hayne edged past Manning and flicked a casual glance at some of the names on the plaques. “What better way to hide something?” he said.

  Tayte turned to Manning. “Was there anything on this site before the mausoleum was built?”

  Manning threw Tayte a bewildered stare. “I may look old,” he said. “And I may have been with the family for over thirty years, but that’s hardly long enough to know that now, is it?”

  Tayte shrugged. “People can do a lot of talking in thirty years.”

  “Well not to me they don’t. This place is private. Everything about it is the family’s business and no one else’s.”

  Hayne scoffed. “That all depends on what they’ve been up to.”

  “I believe you’ve seen all there is to see here,” Manning said, jangling his keys as he went for the door.

  Tayte couldn’t argue with him. He was standing in a marble tomb with sarcophagi and cremation urns all around him, and a list on the wall told him that what he was looking for wasn’t there - simple as that. If there were bodies buried beneath the marble that someone didn’t want anyone to know about then they’d made a good job of it. Without an inscription somewhere, short of digging the place up, how would he know? And he hardly had enough proof to warrant that.

  Hayne was already at the door with Manning, who stood looking at Tayte, waiting with one hand on the door, the other on the keys.

  “I’d like to take a quick look outside,” Tayte said as he reached the door.

  Manning sighed deliberately as Tayte passed him to meet the onset of night.

  The fading light was a sullen reminder to Tayte that he had little time left if he was to make his life-saving appointment with Simon Phillips. He didn’t know what he expected to find outside the mausoleum - just that it had to be soon. His best hope now was to find a long forgotten burial ground nearby; a resting place for the family before the mausoleum was built.

  As he moved around the side of the building however, it was immediately apparent that even if such a plot of ground existed, in this low light, amidst such overgrown vegetation, he had no hope of finding it. He sighed and scuffed a loafer through the dirt.

  “Perhaps we could come back when there’s better light,” Hayne said.

  Not an option, Tayte thought. He left Hayne and began to walk around the back of the mausoleum, trampling beside an unfussy granite wall until he reached the corner. He looked back. Hayne seemed distant. Then something caught Tayte’s imagination. Hayne was too distant. The building was too deep. The plaques on the wall inside hadn’t seemed as far away as Hayne was to him now, and he was sure it hadn’t taken him anything like as many steps to reach them.

  Tayte thought about Gerald Braithwaite and the writing box, reminding himself of one of the procedures Gerald said he used to determine if a box had anything to hide. The Fairborne mausoleum was nothing more than a big box after all, and from where Tayte was standing this box was definitely hiding something.

  He paced deliberate steps back to Hayne. “Twenty-four,” he said as he arrived.

  Hayne looked bewildered.

  “Hold it!” Tayte shouted to Manning as he arrived back at the entrance to see him reaching a key towards the lock. He rushed up the steps with Hayne in tow. “I need to go back inside.”

  Manning froze as Tayte grabbed the handle and threw the door open. He walked into darkness and a torch flicked on behind him, shortly followed by the main lights. Tayte stared at the marble slab on the far wall, beyond the sarcophagus in the central recess. It had struck him as being a little too plain for its surroundings; no engravings and seemingly no functional purpose. He counted his paces towards the slab and when he arrived he knew he was right.

  “Only seventeen,” he called back. “It’s seven paces short. There must be another chamber.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  With just under forty minutes to spare before his scheduled meeting with Simon Phillips on Durgan beach, Tayte wasn’t sure whether his pulse was hammering because he thought he was going to be late or if it was just because he’d arrived at one of those rare defining junctures that made everything he ever did worthwhile. He was at the marble slab, running his fingers along the edges, looking for a way through into the chamber that every instinct in his body told him had to be on the other side.

  Hayne joined him. “Looks pretty solid,” he said. “Are you sure you counted right?”

  Tayte didn’t turn around to answer him. He was on his knees now brushing his hands along the floor where it joined the slab. “There’s a raised lip,” he said. He looked up at the ceiling and pointed. “There’s another,” he added. “They’re holding the slab in place, like it’s on runners.”

  “A sliding door?” Hayne said.

  “Why not? Whoever sealed the chamber off might have wanted access again at some point.” Tayte fixed his hands on the right side of the slab and began to push. It was like pushing against a brick wall - nothing gave.

  Hayne was directly in front of the slab. He gripped the edge with Tayte, ready to pull. “Three, two, go!” he said.

  This time Tayte felt something move. “Again,” he said, and now he felt the slab slide a little further. A dark crack appeared and he could feel the draught as
he put his face to it, drawing the air in. It wasn’t the best fragrance he’d ever sniffed but it was all his - he’d discovered it. They heaved again and Tayte could tell by the look of disgust on Hayne’s face that the time-locked reek was far from his liking.

  “Urgh! What’s that?” Hayne said. He shied away. “Smells stale - like that musk aftershave I always got off my gran at Christmas.”

  Tayte smiled at the idea that anyone would deliberately manufacture anything that stank like the air that was coming out from behind the slab. “Earthy too,” he added, shoving at the edge of the slab again. “Two key ingredients that go into making a great find.”

  Manning was still with them, though he kept his distance. “I’m sure her Ladyship would not approve of this,” he said.

  Tayte was too focused to pay him any attention. The gap was a few inches wide now and growing by the second until Hayne was able to squeeze a shoulder in. He put his back into it and Tayte nearly fell over as the momentum picked up and the slab slid a couple of feet at once.

  Hayne’s Maglite lit the way. “After you.”

  The gap, which was plenty wide enough for Hayne to fit through was not so accommodating for Tayte. He sucked everything in and squeezed through into a narrow tunnel-like space that was dark until Hayne joined him with the torch. They were standing beneath a stone door lintel. Rotten wood littered the floor and the rusty hinges where the door used to be still hung out across the opening. Tayte pushed the upper hinge and it broke away, falling with a dull clank onto stone steps that gave way to soft earth part-way down. He was convinced he’d caught the ground moving at the edge of the torchlight.

  Hayne shone the torch to the back wall, revealing a two by four matrix of empty recessed chambers. The beam wandered higher then until it caught a stone angel looking down on their arrival with an uncharacteristically malevolent stare. Hayne flicked the light away again to a large central granite sarcophagus that was plain sided and carried no decorative detail. Both men followed the light towards it.