A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

the cul-de-sac, he gets a message on his phone:
Danforth Smith found dead
.
    Ruth has no one to cook her breakfast and right now she’s glad. Kate woke up twice in the night and then, inexplicably, slept in until eight. Ruth has got used to Kate being her alarm clock and so no longer sets the other kind. She rose in a panic, flinging on clothes and ignoring Kate (and Flint’s) demands to be fed. She usually drops her daughter off at Sandra’s at eight, and even then it’s a rush to be at the university for nine. She gets in early these days because she does so much more of herwork there – home no longer being a place where she can read for hours and forget the rest of the world. And today she has a lecture at ten. Bloody hell. No time for make-up, she’ll just have to scare her students with her naked face. Maybe they’ll think she’s wearing a Halloween mask.
    Ruth slops cat food down for Flint, stuffs porridge into a resistant Kate and is just heading out to the car when her phone rings. The landline. She hesitates. Should she leave it? Surely if it was important they’d ring her mobile, but it might be her parents who regard mobile phones as the work of the devil (they are experts on the Prince of Darkness). Ruth goes back inside, still carrying Kate. Flint, delighted by this turn of events, climbs onto the table, purring loudly.
    ‘Doctor Galloway?’ Not her parents then.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘This is Janet Meadows. I’m a local historian. Cathbad said that you wanted to talk to me.’
    Not for the first time Ruth marvels at the efficiency of Cathbad’s information service. He left her house last night at nearly midnight yet has already had time to network. She looks at her watch. Nearly nine. Ruth hates being late, she can feel her facial muscles knotting into a tension headache.
    ‘That would be great. It’s just that I’m in a bit of a—’
    ‘What about today? Midday. At the cathedral refectory.’
    ‘I don’t think I can …’ Ruth tries to conjure up her timetable. She doesn’t think she has any lectures between eleven and three.
    ‘Cathbad said it was important.’
    Why is Cathbad so keen for Ruth to meet this woman? It’s not important in any real sense but still … Ruth would like to talk to someone about Bishop Augustine before the press gets hold of the story. And lunch in the cathedral cafe sounds tempting. Weird but tempting.
    ‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you there.’
    Nelson is surprised to find that it’s business as usual at the yard. He meets a string of horses coming through the gates and another set are being saddled up in the quadrangle.
    ‘Horses can’t wait, I’m afraid,’ says a leathery individual who identifies himself as Len Harris, Head Lad. ‘They need to be exercised. We’ve got runners today and the owners expect to see their horses run. So life goes on.’ He grimaces as if he realises how inappropriate this sounds. ‘Though we’re all devastated about the governor.’
    Nelson can’t see any evidence of devastation in the faces of any of the riders but he has begun to realise that jockeys and stable lads don’t give much away. There is something watchful, almost withdrawn, about them. Perhaps it’s the strain of keeping their weight under ten stone. The only creature who seems at all upset is Lester the cat, who is meowing piteously in the office. When Nelson walks through the yard towards the house, Lester follows him.
    This time, Nelson knocks at the front door, which is opened immediately by Randolph. He
does
look upset, Nelson acknowledges, his eyes are red and he seems almostunhinged, running his hands through his hair and talking at random. ‘Detective … ah … good of you to come … we’re all … ah … well … you can imagine … yes.’
    Nelson follows Randolph, still gibbering, into a large, light sitting room. There, looking rather lonely on a vast leather sofa, are two women. One he recognises as Caroline, the other is a slim woman with short, grey hair. The wife, presumably.
    ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he begins formally. ‘Do you feel up to talking to me?’ He wishes Judy Johnson were here; he has asked her to join him as soon as possible.
    ‘Of course,’ says the woman, who introduces herself as Romilly Smith, Danforth’s wife. ‘It’s just been the most terrible shock. I’ve only just got back from the hospital.’
    ‘Was your husband taken ill in the night?’
    ‘It was so sudden,’ says Romilly. She’s