Condemned, R.C. Bridgestock [most romantic novels TXT] 📗

Even though it was daylight, the graveyard still contained a certain blanket of darkness, mostly owing to the overgrown trees which bordered the plot and the dense low-hanging cloud which had thickened since their earlier visit. Rain threatened, but it was cold enough to fall as snow. Charley quickly looked back to see the men heading towards them.

From a few feet away, Ted hollered at the women. ‘Don’t wait for us! We’ll catch you up! Go find Seth Alderman’s headstone! It seems as good a place as any to start, don’t you think?’ She lifted the heavy metal bar and walked through the wooden gate. She looked around at the church whilst Annie followed, with the search and rescue team not far behind.

‘I wonder why the birds don’t sing in this graveyard?’ said Annie.

Charley could feel the hairs on her arms raise. Goosebumps prickled her skin.

‘Given the location of tunnel A to the secret doorway inside the church, I think if we pace out, it should give me…’ murmured Ted, as he joined them and began walking to and fro between the dull, grey gravestones, with long, purposeful steps. ‘…which should give me a rough idea.’ Suddenly he came to a halt in the overgrown jungle, and searched around with his eyes. No words were necessary. With small steps the others joined him to search for the rod.

‘It’s got to be somewhere amongst this overgrowth,’ he said. Ted appeared to be holding his breath, as did the others, their attention on the grass beneath their feet as they walked in a line, searching.

Charley’s eye was drawn to a dismal-looking headstone where a robin sat. As if the robin’s work had been done, it flew. This was not a bit like the one she had seen in the history books. Roots of a fallen tree had broken it into many pieces whilst freeing it from the earth. She went down on her haunches, straining to read the weather-worn inscription, when she was made aware of someone behind her. ‘If you’d asked, I would have shown you where Seth Alderman is buried,’ Lily Pritchard said, appearing as if from nowhere.

Chapter 13

Annie eyed a rectangular-shaped stone nearby, raised from the ground. It had a stone lid upon it.

‘Don’t!’ shouted Lily, but it was too late. Annie had already sat down.

The younger detective put her hand to her chest, jumped swiftly to her feet, stumbled, and fell flat on her face. She gasped and tried to sit up, holding her stinging right cheek. When Annie withdrew her hand, she could see blood. Charley saw the anxiety in Annie’s eyes.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ Annie replied, with a forced cheerfulness. ‘It was her tone,’ she said, nodding towards Lily. Annie was about to get up.

‘Stay where you are for a moment,’ said Charley. ‘You’ve had a shock.’

‘It’s an altar tomb…’ Charley could hear Lily talking to the men. She offered no apology for alarming Annie.

Seth Alderman’s broken gravestone was in the corner of the graveyard that was isolated and concealed from view by a large felled yew tree. Their eyes explored the fallen trunk. When upright, the tree had been growing beside part of the cemetery wall which had tumbled down, when the tree had become uprooted.

‘Could it have been that the tree was planted purposely to conceal the exit to the tunnel, by giving the exit a canopy of foliage to protect it from view?’ The thought crossed Charley’s mind.

‘Did you know yew trees were planted in graveyards because they thrive on corpses?’ said Ted.

‘Druids regarded yew trees as sacred plants,’ said Lily.

‘Altar tomb?’ said Annie. ‘What’s an altar tomb?’

Fred walked the few steps to where she sat.

‘They were often placed over the vaults or burial place, sometimes they have supporting leaning statues or memorial brasses on top,’ said Fred. Head down he continued to searched the surrounding area by sight. He offered Annie his hand to help her get to her feet.

The young detective took it with one hand and put her other to the ground as she made to stand. A sharp pain ran up her arm and she squealed. ‘Ouch! What the—’ Instantly Charley knew it had to be Ted’s indicator from the tunnel. The Detective Inspector’s heart picked up a beat.

Ted’s eyes found Charley’s. ‘I reckon we’ll find exactly what we’re looking for under this tombstone,’ he said, with a certain degree of satisfaction.

A minute later Fred was down on all fours, frantically pushing fallen branches of the tree away to reveal more of the buried tomb. Ted dropped to one knee to help. Panic appeared to have set in, such was their desperation to uncover the metal spike, which would announce the location of the exit to tunnel B, before they lost the light for the day.

Annie was rubbing the palm of her hand where the spike had pricked her. ‘You’re not gonna go in that tomb, are you? Who knows what’s waiting for you beneath? Holy Mother of God!’ she said, crossing her chest as the nuns had taught her.

‘It’s a fair question. What is in that tomb? Maybe Ms Pritchard can answer it for us?’ said Fred.

Lily Pritchard’s face was free from emotion. In fact she appeared to be in shock.

‘There’s a saying, “Leave no stone unturned”,’ said Charley, ‘and that’s what we’re going to do.’

‘Is it legal for us to go on in without any authority?’ asked Annie.

But Charley’s attention remained on Lily’s face.

‘What will the church records tell us about this particular plot? Do you know, Ms Pritchard?’

Still the sexton remained mute.

Charley needed to find a common thread that ran through the evidence gathered in the investigations so far to be able to proceed, now the probe had been found. As darkness approached, the team returned to Crownest, to find the others were still painstakingly sifting through the dirt taken from beneath where the male corpse had been found behind the fireplace. If there had been something