A Finer End

says Todd drowned in fresh water.’
    ‘Did the pathologist estimate time of death?’
    ‘I didn’t have a chance to ask. But if Nick’s telling the truth, it has to have been later than five o’clock.’
    ‘That gives Jack a fairly watertight alibi, I should think.’
    Kincaid stared at her. It had not even occurred to him that the local coppers might consider his cousin a suspect in Garnet’s murder. And it was obvious — if jack had thought Garnet responsible for Winnie’s brush with death, who would have had better motive?
    ‘That’s if you consider Faith a reliable witness from the time Jack reached Glastonbury,’ he mused, thinking it through.
    Gemma pushed aside her coffee cup with decision. ‘So what do we do now?’
    ’I’d say we give Greely another suspect.’
     
    Written sources connected the ‘island’ of Beckery with Glastonbury Abbey from 670, when a charter of dubious authenticity granted it to Abbot Berthwald. But oral tradition cited Beckery as a religious community as far back as 488, when it was supposed to have been visited by the Irish saint Bridget.
    Andrew had never been inclined to accept such stories at face value, but excavations did indicate that the community had been occupied at least since early Saxon times.
    Between Beckery and the mass of Wirral Hill, less than a kilometre to the south, lay what had once been Wirral Park, the ancient deer preserve of the abbots of Glastonbury — now home to a hideous complex of supermarkets and car parks.
    Standing atop the mound at Beckery, Andrew surveyed this modern encroachment with a disgust that bordered on hatred. They ruined everything, money-grubbing fools with no foresight and no appreciation of the past.
    He had walked from Hillhead with his spaniel, along what was left of the sluggish river. It was one of their frequent Saturday-morning excursions, and he was usually able to put aside his anger as he poked about the excavations. But on this day his rage seemed uncontainable, seeping like bile into every nook and cranny of his mind.
    He didn’t know which was worse — the developers or the crackpots. Even here at Beckery, which had never been more than an unassuming community, the crackpots had been at work. There had been a spring, most likely one of the main reasons for the founding of the monastery on that spot. By the middle of the nineteenth century it had degenerated into little more than a muddy pool, known thereabouts as Bride’s Well, after St Bridget. Then, in 1885, a doctor named Good-child had brought home a bowl he’d found in a shop in Italy and, instructed by a vision, placed it in Bride’s Well.
    Goodchild then cast hints in appropriate ears, and eventually two young and virginal ladies — also instructed by visions — had chanced to recover the dish. There followed much intense debate in exalted circles as to whether this bowl was the Holy Grail, although Goodchild later insisted that he had never claimed so.
    This incident had, in Andrew’s view, precipitated the entire business of the Glastonbury Revival — including the absurd claims of that charlatan, Frederick Bligh Bond.
    Andrew struck violently at a tussock with his walking stick, startling Phoebe, who looked up at him reproachfully.
    ‘Sorry, girl,’ he muttered, yet swung at the next with equal force. Dead monks, for Christ’s sake! Who could possibly have believed such nonsense? And now Montfort had perpetuated it. And worse, had dragged his sister into it.
    It must have been the clever references to music that had hooked Winnie so easily. Music was a love they had shared since childhood, one of the bonds that had sustained them after their parents’ deaths. Now that, too, had been stolen from him.
    Had he brought this disaster upon himself by his own actions, a ludicrous parody of some hero in a Greek tragedy?
    Brooding, Andrew continued his circuit of the excavation site, Phoebe at his heels. Over the centuries, three successive chapels dedicated to St Bridget had been built at Beckery, each around the confines of the previous one, at the highest point on the peninsula. According to medieval references, a hole had existed in the south wall of the earliest chapel, and all who passed through it had obtained forgiveness for their sins. How unfortunate for him, Andrew thought bitterly, that no such option now existed.
    Or would he have been buried face-down in the cemetery on the north side of the chapel, the fate of six out of the