A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

open day. Racing’s so elitist, she’d wanted to involve the general public, get them to understand just how much trainers loved their horses. But the open day had been a total disaster.Len had refused to let anyone get near the horses, saying that they were too dangerous, and her father had strutted round all day like the worst kind of arrogant aristocrat. Afterwards they all said that Caroline should stick with what she was best at – managing the yard and keeping in the background.
    Caroline had loved her dad, and right now what she wants more than anything is to see his tall, rangy figure striding across the yard, demanding to know which horses are running at Newmarket. But she remembers how angry she’d been with him, how frustrated she had felt, how she’d longed to escape, to go back to her beloved red valleys, to do something worthwhile in life. Meeting Cathbad had saved her. He had reminded her that there were bigger causes, more important things than which horse was running in which race and whether Jumping Jack would go better in blinkers. And that’s why she can’t just run away now, though she’s sometimes tempted. She has bigger things to do …
    ‘Hi Caro.’ Randolph appears at the door. He looks pale and unshaven and she thinks she can smell whisky in his breath. She knows better than to ask where he’s been.
    ‘Hi Dolph.’
    ‘Where’s Tammy?’
    ‘In the house with Mum. They’re seeing the undertaker.’
    Randolph collapses into the chair opposite her, pushing back his hair with a hand that shakes slightly. ‘Bit quick isn’t it?’ he says. ‘He only died last night. A few hours ago.’
    ‘Don’t.’ Caroline looks across the yard towards the house. ‘I still can’t believe it.’
    ‘Nor me. I keep thinking that he’s going to stroll in and tell me what an unsatisfactory son I am.’
    ‘He loved you.’ Even to herself, Caroline’s voice lacks conviction.
    ‘Yeah.’ Randolph slumps further into the chair.
    ‘What about me? The last thing I said to him was “I’ll never forgive you.”’
    ‘Really?’ Randolph’s blue eyes flash at her. ‘Why did you say that?’
    ‘Oh, nothing important.’ Caroline turns back to her files. ‘Just that we’ve all got things to feel guilty about. I know Mum thinks that she neglected him for her business and her animal rights mates.’
    ‘Rubbish. She always supported him.’ Randolph is always on their mother’s side.
    ‘Well, we’re all feeling rotten.’
    ‘Except Tamsin. Little Miss Fix It.’
    ‘I’m sure she’s very upset about Dad,’ says Caroline doubtfully.
    ‘Are you?’ says Randolph, stroking Lester who has just jumped onto his lap. ‘I’ll take your word for it. What did that policewoman want this morning?’
    ‘Just to look through the CCTV footage.’
    ‘Did she find anything?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You look nervous,’ Randolph teases. ‘What have you been getting up to in the woods?’
    ‘Bugger off, Dolph. What about you?’
    ‘What do you mean “what about me”?’
    ‘What have you been doing in the woods?’
    They lock gazes, blue eyes meeting brown. Then Randolph gets up and strides out of the office.

CHAPTER 19
     
    The Elginists’ conference is held in a Quaker Meeting House in Great Yarmouth. Ruth has always rather avoided Yarmouth in the past, thinking of it as a kind of east-coast Blackpool, full of roller-coasters and drunken holidaymakers. Nelson once tried to tell her that Blackpool wasn’t like that; it had some wonderful countryside nearby, he had said. But Ruth hadn’t been convinced. She likes her seaside to be deserted, miles of lonely sand, not crammed with donkeys in funny hats. So she is rather surprised to find that the Meeting House is a delightful white-painted house dating back to the seventeenth century. If you have to have a religion, thinks Ruth, walking through the shady garden, you might as well be a Quaker. They’re non-hierarchical, non-sexist and pacifist. But a notice in the lobby reminds her of an older, rather more bloodstained religion. The house, she reads, was built on the site of a medieval monastery, an Augustinian cell. This reminds her of Bishop Augustine and of Mother Julian, the mystic anchoress. The sign also tells her that Anna Sewell, the author of
Black Beauty
,used to attend meetings in the house. Ruth, who loves books about horses, begins to feel better disposed towards the whole day.
    It has been a hassle getting there for nine.