‘I’ve chosen these three,’ says Judy, ‘because the deceased were all of a similar age and from the King’s Lynn area. Information is quite sketchy, but it appears that all three had jobs and families. Therefore, suicide might be seen as unexpected.’
‘Hanging’s very different from taking an overdose though,’ says Tanya, peering to look at the screen.
‘That’s true,’ says Judy, with just a touch of impatience. ‘But the other factors are there. Age, location, date of death. It’s about triangulation.’
‘Good work, Judy,’ says Nelson. ‘Tony, you can look into these. Talk to the families but be sensitive. These are recent tragedies. They’ll still be grieving. Judy and Tanya, you take the Avril Flowers case. Find out about the locked room. There may be an innocent explanation, but I can’t think of one right now.’
The team file out. Judy closes her laptop and seems to have something to say.
‘Yes?’ says Nelson, not very helpfully.
‘I was just wondering,’ says Judy. ‘Is Leah OK?’
‘I think so. Why?’
‘She seems a bit quiet, that’s all.’
‘She’s not one for chatting,’ says Nelson. But, as he says this, he remembers Leah talking to him about Samantha Wilson.You never know when people are desperate, do you?He resolves to pay more attention to his PA.
Ruth is in the café attached to Norwich Cathedral. It feels like skiving on a work day but, she tells herself, she has just visited the site where the body was found on Monday and she is talking to Janet Meadows about local history, something that might be seen as valid outreach work. True, she and Janet have also discussed children, pets and coronavirus but now Janet is asking about the Tombland skeleton.
‘I haven’t got the results back from the lab,’ says Ruth, ‘but I think it’s a woman. Probably medieval. The graveyard of St George’s would have covered that area.’
‘I had a student of yours in yesterday asking about it,’ says Janet.
‘Really?’ says Ruth. ‘Which student?’
‘I can’t remember his name,’ says Janet, ‘but he had one of those Victorian beards. A Lytton Strachey beard.’
Ruth remembers the student asking her about the plague. Victorian is a very good description. She pictures an intense face, dark eyes above facial hair like a mask.
‘I wonder why he didn’t ask me,’ she says.
‘He said his personal tutor was David Brown,’ says Janet, as if this explains everything.
‘David said that you and he had been having some discussions,’ says Ruth.
Janet laughs. ‘That’s one word for it. He doesn’t agree with my ideas for the exhibition.’
Ruth now knows that Janet is planning an exhibition entitledNorwich: the plague years. Janet launches into a description now, leaving Ruth to concentrate on her lunch. They are in the modern refectory attached to the ancient cathedral. Ruth remembers the first time she met Janet, in this same café, when she had been on the trail of a long-dead archbishop. Janet had shown her the cleric’s statue, hidden in one of the mysterious alcoves of the church, and they had become friends. Ruth feels instinctively on Janet’s side against David.
Janet talks about the plague while Ruth eats falafels and salad. In defiance of Lean Zone, she has also bought a chocolate brownie.
‘There was an outbreak of the plague in Norwich in the thirteen hundreds. It’s thought that Julian of Norwich contracted it and that her near-death experience is what inspired theRevelations of Divine Love. An eighteenth-century historian called Francis Blomefield said that fifty-seven thousand people died in Norwich in 1349. That figure seems far too high. There were only about twenty-five thousand people living here then but some sources say that, by the end of 1349, only six thousand people remained. Some will have escaped to the country, of course. There was another outbreak in 1578 when Elizabeth the First visited with her entourage. This time there were officially 4,800 victims but the real figure could have been twice that.’
‘A royal visit to remember,’ says Ruth. She thinks: so much for singing ‘God Save the Queen.’
‘Your friend David Brown thinks we’re making too much of the plague,’ says Janet.
‘Well, he can’t deny it happened,’ says Ruth. She wonders if she can remind Janet that David is not her friend but her employee.
‘Can’t he?’ says Janet darkly. She takes a bite of her sandwich.
Ruth doesn’t know why she should defend David but, in fairness, feels she has to say, ‘I think David was just worried by the mention of plague pits because none have been found in Tombland.’
‘Where are all the bodies then?’ asks Janet.
‘It’s possible that they were all just buried in local churchyards,’ says Ruth. ‘You can see how high they are around here, St John Maddermarket, for example. They may have been raised to accommodate the extra dead. David makes a good point about Tombland being too busy, too full of people. The Maid’s Head was already a hotel in 1349. It seems unlikely that anyone would bury plague victims here. And, you know, even the so-called plague pits they discovered on the Crossrail dig in London were actually rather orderly. Nothing like the mass graves in Bosnia.’ She stops. She doesn’t often talk about the time when, as a graduate student, she had helped to unearth the remains of men, women and children, hundreds of them, thrown together into a ghastly human soup, but she knows she mentioned it quite recently. Oh yes, it was when she was talking to her students on Monday, excavating the skeleton beneath the roadworks. She remembers carrying the bones back to Ted’s van in the gathering twilight, Janet appearing out of the gloom.
