A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

– and drove through the park. It was about two or three in the morning, I was just coming through the wood, where the all-weather track ends, and suddenly I saw these three men. I couldn’t believe it at first but they were definitely there, in a clearing between the trees.’
    ‘What where they doing?’ asks Clough.
    ‘Well this sounds weird, but they had long sticks with sort of skulls on the end of them and they were dancing.’
    ‘Dancing?’
    ‘I know it sounds crazy,’ says Randolph, rather miserably. ‘But there was a fire and they were dancing round it. They heard my car and looked round. One of them waved his stick at me and shouted something.’
    ‘What did you do? Did you speak to them?’
    ‘No. I know it sounds pathetic but I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I drove off. Left my car outside Caroline’s house and went to bed. But I went back in the morning and the remains of the fire were still there. And there were these weird patterns drawn in the ashes.’
    ‘What sort of patterns?’
    ‘I can’t really describe them. Wavy lines and circles and star shapes. But they had definitely been drawn deliberately.’
    ‘And have you ever seen these men again?’ asks Judy, ignoring Clough, who is trying to exchange significant glances.
    ‘No, but about a week later I came home late again.’ He laughs. ‘I’m afraid I’m rather a nocturnal animal, Detective Sergeant. I left my car outside Caroline’s, and I thought I heard something in the yard. I went to check but I thought it was just a fox or maybe that infernal cat. There was no one there but the security lights were on. And then I saw it. A dead snake nailed up over one of the horse’s stalls.’
    ‘A dead snake?’
    ‘Yes. A grass snake, I think. I took it down and threw it in the compost heap.’
    ‘Did you tell anyone?’
    ‘No.’ He pauses. ‘The thing is, my father had a particular fear of snakes. When he was little he had this ghoulish Irish nanny who used to tell him ghost stories, but she also used to tell him stories about snakes. You know that before Saint Patrick came along Ireland used to beinfested with snakes? That’s what she said anyway. Anyway, she told him that, one day, a great snake – as green as poison – was going to come for him.’
    ‘Nice sort of nanny,’ says Clough.
    Randolph laughs again. ‘She sounds a nutcase, doesn’t she, but my dad adored her. Paid her a pension until the day she died. Anyway, because of this snake phobia, I decided not to tell him. But a few days later, he told me that he’d got up at night because of a noise in the yard and he’d found a dead snake on the kitchen step.’
    ‘Did he have any idea who might have put it there?’
    ‘He said he didn’t but the night he died, when he was delirious, he kept going on about a snake. I mean, it can’t be coincidence, can it?’
    Can it? Judy wonders. She remembers Nelson mentioning some letters. Didn’t they say something about a Great Snake? She asks Randolph. He looks blank.
    ‘The old man used to get so much mail. Cranks asking for money, racing fans wanting tips. He didn’t say anything about any particular letters.’
    ‘What about when Neil Topham died? Did your father say anything about letters addressed to the museum?’
    ‘Letters to Neil? No, I don’t think so. DCI Nelson said that he didn’t think there was any link between the two deaths.’
    If Judy knows anything about Nelson, she’s willing to bet that he didn’t make any such assertion. ‘Never assume,’ that’s his motto. She and Clough must have heard it a thousand times. They look at each other.
    ‘Thank you very much,’ says Judy, standing up. ‘We’ll investigate further and let you know.’
    She means to sound bland and rather discouraging but Randolph seizes on her words as if they are a lifeline. ‘Oh, thank you so much. That means such a lot. I hope you won’t think I’m a loony but I really do think that something odd is going on. In the yard too. Something isn’t right. Tammy thinks I’m imagining things but Caroline agrees with me. Something just isn’t right.’
    ‘What does your mother think?’
    ‘I don’t want to worry Ma just now. She’s so cut up about Dad. All this stuff about snakes and mysterious dancing men, it would just upset her.’
    They walk back through the house towards the front door. On the doorstep, Clough asks, ‘The snake that was nailed up over one of the horse’s stables. Which horse