A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

accepting the offer of coffee. Look at last night’s footage, the boss said. She starts at eight p.m. It’s incredibly boring. Hours of night vision camera showing empty driveways. The only distraction is when Lester the cat appears, walking delicately along the footpath, sitting to wash himself in the empty courtyard. Occasionally a horse’s head looks out over one of the stable doors, but, for the most part, Lester is the only living thing to be seen. Judy’s eyes start to blur. She sips her cold coffee. Outside she hears a car draw up and voices talking. This must be the famous Tamsin. She hears a woman’s voice, very loud and upper-class. ‘For fuck’ssake have some respect, Randolph.’ Happy families.
    She fast-forwards to ten o’clock. At twenty past midnight, the camera by the house starts to get interesting. A car draws up and a man gets out. He’s carrying a case, so Judy assumes he’s the doctor. The door opens to let him in. A few minutes later, a sports car screeches to a halt by the house. A Porsche, thinks Judy. She likes cars as well as horses. Really, there’s a speed demon in there somewhere trying to get out. A man gets out of the sports car. She can’t see his face but she thinks it might be the son. What was his name? Randolph. The one Len Harris thinks is useless. The one who needs to have more respect. Ten minutes later and an ambulance is through the gates. Lights, running footsteps, a sense of urgency. A figure is carried out on a stretcher. A woman climbs into the ambulance and the man follows in the Porsche. Then the gates shut behind them and she’s back to Lester and the empty yard. Where was Caroline when all this was going on? she wonders. More footage of silent horse boxes. What is she looking for anyway? The boss didn’t seem convinced that there was anything suspicious about Danforth Smith’s death. Does he really believe that someone sneaked in and shot him a poisoned dart or something? He’s getting fanciful in his old age. She’ll tell him so when she gets back to the station. She won’t, of course.
    More empty pathways. An owl hooting. Lester prowling through the long grass. A clock striking. Then – Oh my God. The main gates opening and a man appearing.
    Judy peers closer. ‘Bloody hell,’ she says aloud. ‘I don’t believe it.’

CHAPTER 15
     
    Although Ruth has lived in Norfolk for thirteen years now, she has never before been to Norwich Cathedral. It’s more the sort of thing tourists do, and one way or another she isn’t really into churches, though she has a sneaking liking for vast Catholic edifices full of pictures of the end of the world. So, although she has often shopped in the lanes nearby, the evocatively named Tombland, and she has seen the cathedral’s spire pointing up through the rooftops like a medieval space rocket, this is the first time she has entered the building.
    They walk through the cathedral close across manicured green lawns. Janet Meadows has absolutely no truck with any sign saying ‘Private’. At the main entrance, Janet points at two modern statues on either side of the door. One depicts a man, his finger on his lips in a rather threatening adjuration to silence, the other is a woman, head draped in a flowing scarf, holding a book.
    ‘Who are they?’ asks Ruth, peering up.
    ‘Saint Benedict and Mother Julian. Julian of Norwich. Another fourteenth-century holy woman.’
    The name rings a faint bell with Ruth. ‘Who was she again?’
    ‘She was an anchoress.’
    ‘A what?’
    ‘A hermit if you like. She lived on her own in a cell attached to Saint Julian’s church. She spent her life praying and people used to come to her for advice. When she was about thirty she became very ill and had a series of visions of God. She wrote about them in a book called
Revelations of Divine Love
. It was the first book written in English by a woman.’
    ‘I don’t think that’s on my reading list somehow.’
    ‘There are some wonderful things in it.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well
. Julian was incredibly optimistic given the times she lived in.’
    ‘Do you think she knew Bishop Augustine?’
    ‘I’ve been wondering about that. The dates just about coincide, though Prior Hugh doesn’t mention Julian much.’
    ‘Maybe Augustine pretended to be a man because her only other option was becoming an anchoress and shutting herself away from the world.’
    ‘Maybe,’ says Janet,