“Thank you,” adds Ron.
“Not at all,” says Elizabeth, standing. “Now, I will leave you to your sauna. I have to make a few calls. Ron, I need to see you at the graveyard at ten this evening, if you’re free. Joyce and Ibrahim, I’ll need you there too.”
“Sounds lovely. Wouldn’t miss it,” says Ron. His son gives him a questioning look.
“And Jason?” says Elizabeth.
“Yes?”
“If this is a bluff, it’s a high-risk one. Because we will catch this murderer. Even if it’s you.”
71.
Do you need a hand to get down into the grave?” asks Ibrahim.
“Yes, please,” says Austin. “That would be terribly kind of you.”
Bogdan has borrowed an arc light, and it is trained on the grave he had dug on the morning that Ian Ventham was murdered. The grave that had revealed an extra corpse lying on top of the coffin. A skeleton buried where it had no right to be buried.
Austin holds on to Ibrahim’s arm and takes a step down into the grave. He is careful not to step on the bones scattered on the lip of the coffin. He looks up at Elizabeth and chuckles. “This takes me back, Lizzie. Remember Leipzig?”
Elizabeth smiles; she certainly does remember. Joyce also smiles, because she has never heard Elizabeth called Lizzie before. She wonders if the others caught it.
“Whaddaya think, Prof?” asks Ron, sitting happily at the feet of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and drinking from a can of Stella.
“Well, I wouldn’t ordinarily like to say,” replies Austin, raising his glasses to get a closer look at the femur he is now holding, “but if I were a gossip, among friends, of course, I would say these have been down here some while.”
“Some while, Austin?” asks Elizabeth.
“I would say so,” he replies, considering. “Just by the coloration.”
“And if you were being more specific?” asks Elizabeth.
“Well, goodness,” says Austin. “If you want me to be specific, I would say...” He takes a moment to calibrate his thoughts. “I would say really quite some while indeed.”
“So they could have been buried at the same time as Sister Margaret?” asks Joyce.
“What’s the date on the headstone?” asks Austin.
“Eighteen seventy-one,” reads Joyce.
“Not a chance. Thirty, forty, fifty years, perhaps, depending on the soil, but not a hundred and fifty.”
“So at some point,” says Ibrahim, “somebody has dug up this grave, buried another body in it, and then filled it in again?”
“Certainly,” agrees Austin. “You have yourselves a mystery.”
“Another nun, perhaps, Austin?” asks Elizabeth. “Any jewelry down there? Any fragments of clothing?”
“Not a thing on this one,” he says. “Stripped bare. If it was murder, then someone knew what they were doing. I’m going to take a few bones with me, if you don’t mind? I’ll have a little look at them in the morning, just to give you a clearer picture.”
“Absolutely, Austin, take your pick,” says Elizabeth.
Bogdan blows out his cheeks. “So we got to tell police now?”
“Oh, I think we can probably keep this to ourselves until Austin gets back to us,” replies Elizabeth. “If everyone agrees?”
Everyone agrees.
