Full Of Old Men's Bones

 

Chapter One

 

After dropping our twins Kitty and Pat and our foster daughter Sophie at the Edinburgh Airport, my husband Otis Campion and I, Clarice, along with our permanent guest, Miss Letty, were all set to begin our well-deserved vacation in the British Isles.

Otis and I function as caretakers of a B & B/historic house, Belgrath, situated on an island in the Halifax River in Old Daytona, Florida. Miss Letty, aka Letitia Lorraine, former star of the Silent Screen and third owner of Belgrath House, had deeded the house to the Restoration Society with the proviso that she maintain a room there for life. Lately, we have acted as exchange innkeepers: at Castle Keep in St. Augustine, Florida; Flanagan’s Guest House in Bray, Ireland; and, most recently, Castle Skeldon along the Firth of Lorn in Scotland.

Recent events—two skeletons found in a hidden shaft in the castle and a near catastrophe to me and our B & Bers—had left us exhausted and in dire need of…something. Our kids proposed flying back to Florida after two semesters studying abroad. They would take little Sophie, our foster daughter, with them and run the B & B while their father, dear old mum, and Miss Letty explored the country.

Miss Letty had demurred about accompanying us, citing our right to privacy, but Otis had insisted. Not that he didn’t trust our kids, but Miss Letty is over ninety now (she’s stopped counting). Otis suggested we make one spot our base and take side trips. But first we gave the kids a trial run at operating Castle Skeldon B & B while we ‘did’ Scotland.

We stayed in Inverness and took a van-guided tour of the Isle of Skye; we went through Castles Dunvegan, Cawdor, and Glamis, the childhood home of the Queen Mother; and we booked into a hotel on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and visited Edinburgh Castle and the Museum of Childhood.

When we returned to Castle Skeldon, we had found it intact, the owner returned, and all the kids ready to go home. We saw them off and headed to our base of choice. At least Miss Letty’s and my choice: Bath.

Shades of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer! Otis was less enthusiastic.

“The houses all look alike,” he said.

“Right. It’s called Georgian architecture,” I pointed out.

“It’s packed with tourists.”

“That’s because it’s a World Heritage Site,” I said patiently. (Otis hates tourists. He doesn’t believe in the unofficial Florida motto: ‘We’re glad you’re here.’)

After checking in as guests at our chosen B&B, we took the Walking Tour of the city, free, given by residents of Bath. Otis liked the free part, so that reconciled him to Bath. His other boon was that our B & B, Hallowed Fields, backed onto the Kennet-Avon Canal and boasted a car park. Again, free. Otis would have been perfectly content sitting in a chair on the back lawn, watching the long boats glide past and occasionally helping the boaters navigate the locks.

But events intervened. One occurred while we were out exploring the countryside; our hostess fell and broke her hip. We returned to find the paramedics (or whatever they’re called in England) loading our hostess into an ambulance and carting her off to the hospital (or hospital, as the Brits say.) One of the longboaters heard her calls for help and rushed to her aid. He found her on the kitchen floor next to the cellar door. What could we do? Two experienced B&B hosts, plus Otis’s caretaking abilities, and my formal nursie-nurse training making me ideal for helping with our hostess’s rehab when she came home. The other event was Otis’s discovery, once again, of a skeleton. Or skeletons.

He had found one in the disused dumbwaiter at Belgrath House [Make Old Bones]. He had found one under the floor of the icehouse at a former plantation site in St. Augustine [Bred in the Bone] Oh, but wait. That was Miss Letty and me. Bodies, rather than skeletons followed us in Ireland [The Closer the Bone]. And Otis found two skeletons behind a castle wall at Castle Skeldon [The Bonnie, Bonnie Bone].

But I digress.

Let’s get back to our hostess with the broken hip.

Sadie Mae (S’Mae) Winthrop, like us, had transplanted from the great state of Florida. Occasionally her genteel accent slipped. Miss Letty, as a former star of the Silent Screen and an expert on accents, figured that, instead of a seaside restaurant in Panama City, she had run a bikers’ bar elsewhere in the Panhandle.

Not that she wasn’t perfectly amiable, even with a broken hip. Instead of bemoaning her lot she considered herself fortunate to have us to look after her B&B and her hip. Aided by her walker (or Zimmer frame, as it’s known in England), she undertook to watch over the reservations desk and lobby, greet guests, and guide me in the intricacies of her establishment. When I pointed out that Otis and I had run Flanagan’s Guest House in Bray, Ireland, she sniffed. Evidently an Irish guest house wasn’t on the same plane as hers.

She was adamant about not taking any walk-in guests: only those already reserved. And she would not accept any new reservations for the foreseeable future.

“You’ll have enough on your hands with our current bookings and my rehab,” she said.

She didn’t know the half of it.

It was Otis once again who stirred the pot.

“How did you happen to fall?” he asked.

To Otis, no one just falls. There must be a reason.

“There’s a storage area under the stairs to the cellar. Some previous owner boxed it in.  I was in there looking for something when I tripped. The floor is earthen and uneven and slippery.”

“Slippery?” Otis said, his caretaker’s instincts aroused.

“How did you get upstairs to the kitchen floor where the long boater found you?” I asked, more interested in my patient.

“Crawled.”

I shuddered, thinking what that flight of stairs had cost her. “What was so all-fired important in that storage area?”

“A box of knick knacks.”

Knick knacks! She had more of them? Every piece of furniture in her drawing room boasted its share.

I raised my eyebrows.

“I rotate them periodically,” she said. “After all, this is a Victorian B & B.”

She had that right. Flocked velvet wallpaper, antiques juxtaposed with kitsch, doilies, puddled draperies. Even the outside looked like a Victorian mansion, sort of out of place juxtaposed against Georgian Bath.

“She probably wants to put as much distance as she can from the bikers’ bar,” said Miss Letty privately to me.

“Now, Letty, we don’t know that she ran a bikers’ bar.”

“Bet she had her own Harley.”

Otis heard only knick knacks, yada, yada, uneven floor. To a handyman/caretaker/engineer, uneven spelled smooth it over.

To give him his due, Otis never puts off duties – especially those involving personal safety.

I followed him to the cellar, natch.  

“Seems to be pushing up from below,” he muttered.

We mounted the stairs to speak to our hostess. Actually, to ask for a shovel.

“Don’t you go discovering another Roman Bath,” she said, waggling a finger playfully at him. “That’s all I need.”

We had learned on our walking tour of Bath that a leak, back in Victorian times, led a Clerk of Works and a Surveyor to explore under the White Hart Hotel and there to find ruins of the Roman Bath. Abandoned for centuries, overgrown, and forgotten, the Bath was restored by the enterprising Victorians, who, to give them their due, recognized a moneymaker when they saw one. As witness the tourists pouring into Bath today.

I knew what S’Mae meant, though. If further Roman ruins lay under her property, the city (or whatever power) would seize it, displace S’Mae, and tear down Hallowed Fields. We returned to the cellar, Otis armed with a shovel.

He began to dig. The shovelfuls of earth grew progressively muddier the further down he went. And heavier to lift. And smellier.

“Don’t you go having a heart attack,” I warned him. Otis doesn’t like to be reminded of his silent coronary and retirement.

He grunted. “I’m about to give up.” He stopped and mopped his brow on his sleeve. He thrust the shovel downward into the hole. And something clanged.

“I’ve hit something. Maybe a pipe. I need to call a plumber to pump out this muddy water so I can see what’s what.” Otis willing to call in someone he felt less qualified than he.

We abandoned the cellar and went upstairs to consult with S’Mae again.

She sighed. “Well, I guess if there’s a leak under the house, I have no choice.”

“It may be a broken sewer pipe,” said Otis.

 

Alden & Sons responded to our SOS. The elder Alden, a gloomy Gus, whether naturally or by dint of his profession, foretold dire predictions as to expense and disruption. And that was before he cleared out the muddy water and got down to the sewer. His face grew longer when he saw that the sewer was made of brick.

“Aye, I’ve seen that afore and no good came of it. Roman, I’m guessing. You won’t be needing a plumber. One of them fellas from the University, more like.”

He meant an archaeologist.

We were stymied. Was there still a Clerk of Works in Bath? There was, but under a different name. And he had the Archaeology Department at the University of Bath on speed dial.

 

The head of the department showed up, followed by his minions. I wondered if Basil Armistead brought his students along for the grunt work, not demeaning himself to lift a shovel. But I wronged him: he pitched the dirt with the best of them, especially when it came to the meticulous work requiring a trowel and a paint brush.

The pump churned merrily away, water still oozing up from somewhere. After hours sweating away in that hole Professor Armistead emerged, dirty, wet, and triumphant.

“Tumulus,” he said gleefully.

“My Latin’s a little rusty,” I admitted. Sophomore year of high school rusty.

“A tomb, or barrow,” he said. “Usually, a mound of stone covered by grass.”

“Shouldn’t it be above ground?” I asked.

“It probably was, originally. Then, over centuries, it was covered up, built over, and forgotten.”

I remembered seeing, on a trip to Rome, ruins suddenly appearing among modern buildings as the bus raced by. And wondering at the fact that said ruins were about fifteen feet below present-day Rome. Did soil grow?

“Are we talking Roman here?”

“Possibly. The practice of barrow burial was still extant in Roman Britain. But it could be even older. Earlier pagan times.”

Otis, ever practical, zeroed in on his concerns. “Where’s the water coming from then?” he asked.

Professor Armistead ignored that as he hoisted himself from the hole. “I’ll have to consult with a colleague in anthropology. I need to make some phone calls,” he muttered.

“The water?” Otis asked again, through gritted teeth.

“Oh,” said the professor. “Plumbing isn’t my specialty.”

 

So naturally Otis descended into the hole by himself. Engineer that he is, he pooh-poohs archaeology. He thinks they draw conclusions based, not on science, but on wishful thinking. Giant leaps.

“Hand me the shovel,” he said.

I demurred. “Professor Armistead had switched to the smaller version. You can do a lot of damage by diving in head first with no regard for—”

“What channel have you been watching?”

History Channel, PBS, Travel.

The professor and his students had uncovered the top of the tumulus. Otis dug deeper. He wanted stone. He wanted an entrance.

He found one. An arched entrance. Bricked over.

 

“What have you been doing?” Professor Armistead clutched at his bad combover. I sympathized somewhat. How would Howard Carter have felt if someone unrelated to the field of archaeology had entered King Tut’s tomb first?

“Exposing the entrance,” said Otis. Surely, he didn’t expect a thank you?

“But samples have to be taken,” he howled. “Documentation must be meticulous.”

“I was just about to break through the brick—”

The professor danced up and down, his belly fat jiggling. “No, no, no! We must determine the age of the brick. It was probably put in later, after the tumulus was no longer used for burials. Sealed.”

“But the source of the water,” began Otis.

“The hell with the water!”

“You might not feel that way if a giant sinkhole opens up and swallows us all,” Otis said stiffly.

“Sinkhole?” said a voice from the top of the stairs.

I heard a thump.

“S’Mae, don’t you try to come down here with your walker!” I spoke.

“I have a right to know what’s happening in my own basement!” she shouted.

I wasn’t so sure about that, not knowing the laws governing antiquities, National Monuments, and World Heritage Sites. The government might enact something similar to our Eminent Domain.

I decided my first duty belonged to my patient and hostess, so I scurried upstairs. But any minute now I might have another patient if Professor Armistead suffered an apoplexy.

Miss Letty already had things in hand, coaxing S’Mae into a kitchen chair and fussing over an electric tea kettle. Nothing like a cuppa in stressful times. I wondered why Miss Letty hadn’t left S’Mae to make her own tea while she herself joined the group in the basement.

I soon had my answer. The professor’s phone calls had borne fruit. Miss Letty and S’Mae had fielded phone calls from scientists wanting reservations. When they were told we weren’t taking reservations at this time, we were told oh-so-politely that we didn’t have a vote.

With all the disruption I couldn’t descend to the basement for some time, being fully occupied with seeing that beds were made up, rooms vacuumed, furniture dusted, and towels dispensed.

The first arrival, an authoritative government official who claimed credentials with the British Museum, piled luggage and equipment in the lobby and said, “See to it, will you?”

I smiled sweetly. “Do you expect your hostess, Ms. Winthrop, to sling your cases over the handles of her walker and negotiate the stairs? Or perhaps ninety-something-year old Miss Lorraine could act as pack mule. I myself am a fellow guest in this establishment, not a bellhop.”

That floored him. He actually stammered an apology and then belatedly removed his hat.

“Let’s establish some ground rules. Just pretend you’re on a dig in, oh, sunny Egypt. This is your camp. I’ll cook breakfasts because that’s what this is: a bed and breakfast. I’ll supply you with clean sheets and towels, but you can clean up after yourselves. And if you leave muddy footprints on the kitchen floor, you can mop it.”

He mumbled a question which I took as an inquiry as to the direction of the basement. I waved him toward the kitchen.

More arrivals came, mainly students with rolled-up sleeping bags and back packs. They were grateful for a floor to crash on. By the time I organized them, considerable time had elapsed, and I wanted to know what was happening in the basement. I tiptoed unobtrusively down the steps, trying to fade into the background.

The students were on their knees, circling the hole, and peering into it. The BM guy stood looking down. Of Otis and the professor there was no sign, so I assumed they were in the hole. I could hear their voices ringing hollowly but couldn’t distinguish the words. They didn’t sound acrimonious, however. More like a discussion between two guys.

Equals. Had Otis convinced the professor of his engineering (and farm boy) abilities? Or had the professor convinced Otis that not all archaeologists were assholes?

They emerged from the hole, sweaty, yet oddly exuberant. They were deciding which of the Learneds should have the privilege of entering. BM voted for himself, natch. The students didn’t have even one collective vote and wouldn’t have spoken up if they had. The professor voted for himself and Otis echoed him.

I chimed in. “This is Bath, and he’s from the University of Bath. It’s only fair. But I should mention King Tut’s curse. You don’t know what infections may lurk in a tomb sealed for perhaps centuries.”

BM said sotto voce to no one in particular, “That’s the bitch I was telling you about.”

Otis said pleasantly, “Oh, so you’ve met my wife.”

BM shuffled his feet self-consciously.

“And just what is your title, Mr. Er…” I said, not wanting to dignify him with some appellation like doctor.

He mumbled something about treasure trove.

“If there’s no gold or silver here, you can go home,” said Professor Armistead.

Otis raised an eyebrow interrogatively.

“There are certain rules to be followed when talking about treasure trove. It has to be gold or silver, hidden with the thought of eventual retrieval and the treasure is of such an age that the owner is presumed dead or unable to locate. The word trove is French for found,” said the professor. “Let’s see if you’ve wasted your time.”

With that said, the professor descended once more into the hole. I had to admire his chutzpa. And when you consider that most of Bath must have been excavated, you had to respect his wish to keep the find for Bath.

I figured he and Otis would carefully remove whatever the ancients had used as mortar and document their progress. Instead, I heard a loud resounding thump, more like a sledge hammer, which I didn’t think constituted a tool found on an archaeological dig.

A cloud of mortar dust arose followed by more coughing than generally accompanied Otis’s smoker’s hack.

Two heads appeared above the level of the hole. “Skeletons!” said Professor Armistead triumphantly.