A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

Mother Julian’s adage:
All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.
Why is it so hard to believe this?
    ‘What’s going to happen to the museum?’ she asks.
    ‘Oh, I’m going to manage it,’ says Caroline, with another wide smile. ‘I’ve got great plans. It’ll be a different place.’
    ‘What about the stables?’
    ‘Well, after that drugs business …’
    ‘What drugs business?’ Ruth wants to scream, but she carries on standing there smiling, holding Kate by the hand. There’s too much going on here that she doesn’t understand.
    Caroline switches the smile back on. ‘If the stables stay in business, Randolph will be in charge. It’s what he’s always wanted. He’s a genius with horses. And I’m goingto make the museum a real success. We’re going to have proper local history exhibitions starting with “Augustine: the first woman bishop.”
    ‘Sounds great,’ says Ruth. ‘I’m meeting someone. Is it OK to go inside?’
    ‘Of course! She’s waiting for you.’
    The museum seems deserted but benign in the afternoon light. There’s a room by the entrance lobby which Ruth hadn’t noticed before but which is full of butterflies, impaled upon pins and labelled with spidery Victorian writing. Kate loves the butterflies but her real enthusiasm is reserved for the stuffed animals. She runs delightedly from case to case shouting ‘Fox!’ ‘Dog!’ ‘Cat!’ Her range of animals may be limited but her enjoyment is not. Ruth finds herself looking at them all, even the murderous gulls, with a kinder eye.
    Eventually Kate allows herself to be led through the study of Lord Percival Smith (‘Man!’) and into the long gallery. In the Local History Room, Janet Meadows is looking out of the window.
    ‘Hallo Ruth,’ says Janet.
    ‘Hi. Thanks for meeting me.’
    ‘No problem. Is this your little girl?’
    ‘Yes, this is Kate.’
    ‘Hallo Kate.’
    ‘Fox,’ says Kate.
    Ruth looks at Janet and remembers her comment when Ruth had remarked flippantly that Augustine’s snake didn’t look very terrifying:
    He’d subdued it. Evil has been defeated. He was a great saint.
    She thinks of the room as she saw it that day: coffin, guidebook, grass snake and a single shoe.
    ‘You were here, weren’t you,’ she says, ‘the day Neil was found dead.’
    Janet suddenly looks wary. ‘I told you I was. I came to see the opening of the coffin but the place was closed off.’
    ‘But you came earlier, didn’t you? You put the snake in here and a single shoe, to remind people about Augustine.’
    Janet either brought a spare pair of shoes or she walked home barefoot. Ruth bets on the latter. Janet would have walked barefoot to emulate the man she called a ‘great saint’.
    ‘They had no right to desecrate his grave,’ says Janet. ‘He … she didn’t want anyone to open the coffin. That’s why it was buried where it was. So I put a snake there, a grass snake in a glass case, to remind them of Augustine’s warning. The shoe too. It was one of Jan’s shoes …’ For a second Ruth wonders who Jan is but then she remembers. Jan is, or was, Janet. Her old self, Jan Tomaschewski. ‘I dressed as Jan too,’ Janet is saying now, ‘in one of my old suits. The museum was deserted. I got the snake from the Natural History Room and carried it in here. The coffin was on a trestle in the middle of the room – open.’
    ‘Open?’
    ‘Yes, slightly open. I think the curator must have prised it open. I could hear him moving about in his office. So I put the snake and the shoe on the floor. I left the guidebook too, with a few words highlighted, just as a warning.Then I heard someone coming so I climbed out of the window. I don’t think anyone saw me and, if they did, they saw a man in a suit and a hat. Not a woman.’ She turns and does a mock twirl.
    It must have been only seconds later that I came in and found Neil Topham dead, or nearly dead, thinks Ruth. Why on earth had he opened the coffin? But it was closed when she saw it. She remembers how easy it was for Phil to prise up the nails, far easier than it should have been. The coffin had already been opened, just days before.
    Why would Neil open the coffin?’ asks Ruth.
    Janet shrugs. ‘Search me. Perhaps he just wanted a look. Perhaps he just got impatient. Either way, it did for him, poor guy. Bishop Augustine had his – her – revenge.’
    By afternoon Nelson is well enough to be moved to another ward. He