Page 6 of The Vanished

“And now she will?”

“She might,” Rhys countered.

“It all depends on how old the body is and if the timeline fits.”

“Lynn said the woman is quite elderly. Maybe she knew the victim.”

“I think you’re grasping at straws,” Quinn replied.

“The deceased was wearing a wedding ring on her left hand,” Rhys said. “That’s modern.”

Quinn shook her head. “Wearing wedding bands on the left hand goes back to Ancient Egypt. And it was formalized in England during the reign of Edward VI. Besides, it was a silver ring,” she reminded him.

“So?”

Quinn looked around, her gaze sweeping over the elegant room, the polished wood bar and brass fittings that glowed in the mellow light of the Tiffany lamps, and the art deco motif that was probably original to the house.

“If the deceased did come from this house, she was most likely a maidservant. I can’t imagine that a member of the family wouldn’t be missed, and her disappearance immediately reported and thoroughly investigated.”

“A married maidservant,” Rhys reminded her. “So, what happened to the husband? And why did he not report her missing?”

Quinn sighed. “If he was the one to toss her down that well, I doubt he would have hung around for very long or gone to the police.”

“Maybe we should speak to the local police,” Rhys suggested. “Surely Amelia Goff wasn’t the only young woman to go missing. There may not be a missing persons report, but there’s word of mouth. Nothing beats local gossip, and Terry here is just the start.”

“Why don’t we let Colin date the body first,” Quinn said. “There’s no point chasing local gossip when we don’t know when this woman lived. The well looks medieval, but it might be even older than that. This area was occupied by the Romans for hundreds of years. They even had a garrison nearby.”

“You think the body could date to Roman times?” Rhys asked, his eyes sparkling with excitement. “That would be quite something.”

“The well probably hasn’t been in use since the house was fitted with a water pump, which would be in the 1800s at the earliest, but if the water in the well was brackish, it’s possible that it was abandoned long before. The woman could conceivably have been in there for centuries.”

“Surely the remains would have skeletonized by now,” Rhys argued.

“Not necessarily. The are a number of bog bodies that have been preserved for millennia, some even longer. The cold, peaty water and the lack of oxygen prevent soft tissue from decomposing. The well was sealed, and the lack of fresh air probably created ideal conditions for preservation.”

“In other words, our girl could have lived at any time during the last two thousand years,” Rhys concluded.

Quinn nodded. “Precisely.”

She pitied the poor forgotten woman, but she would be lying if she said that she wasn’t getting excited at the prospect of meeting her and learning her story. If the body was ancient, the victim would finally receive a proper burial. And if the woman had lived recently, then perhaps some bereaved family would finally attain closure and get to bring her home.

Either way, it was time to give the woman in the well her name back.

FOUR

Despite Rhys’s best efforts, they weren’t able to learn anything more from the hotel staff. The two employees besides Terry who were local were too young to recall any incidents of young women going missing, and none of the others were overly interested in regional history. Lynn Michaels stopped by their table to exalt the talents of her French chef, but she had nothing more to add regarding the case and soon left them to their dinner.

Back in her room, Quinn enjoyed a long soak, then got into bed and rang Gabe. She filled him in on the details of the case, and they theorized for a few minutes, but with such scant information there wasn’t much to work with, and they eventually said good night. The bed was cozy, the sheets soft, and the mattress firm. A pleasant breeze from the open window carried with it the scent of freshly cut grass and the tang of the sea. But Quinn couldn’t rest. She spent a restless night filled with dark, menacing dreams, and was relieved when the sky began to lighten and she could finally get up. She called down for a pot of coffee, then settled in a comfortable wingchair by the window, folded her legs beneath her, and watched the sun rise over a restless sea as she enjoyed her drink.

Once Rhys was ready, they grabbed a light breakfast in the dining room, thanked Lynn and promised to keep her up to date on their findings, then checked out and headed into Ravenglass. It was a lovely autumn day. The sun shimmered through a gossamer haze that hovered in the air and blurred the sharp edges of the manor house and the outbuildings as they faded from view. The road was devoid of traffic, and only birdsong filled the air, but despite the beauty of the morning, neither Quinn nor Rhys was in a very talkative mood, and they made the drive to the mortuary in near silence.

As she looked out over the landscape that had hardly changed over the centuries, Quinn could almost imagine a group of Roman soldiers coming over the rise, their horses snorting and their breastplates and helmets glinting in the light of the morning sun as their standards snapped in the breeze. She knew she was being fanciful and that generations of Britons had walked upon this land since the Roman occupation, but she thought it would be fascinating to look through the eyes of a person who’d lived back then. But she wouldn’t know for certain when the woman had lived until Colin had run a battery of tests to date the remains. And until Quinn was in possession of the ring.

Once they reached Ravenglass, Rhys drove along the main street until they spotted the mortuary—a squat whitewashed building just down the road from the parish hall. The frosted windows ensured that no passersby could glimpse what lay within. Rhys pulled over, and they stepped inside. The reception area smelled sharply of carbolic and seemed to echo with the accumulated misery that had seeped into the very walls. No one came to a mortuary willingly—sometimes not even the staff.

The man who emerged to greet them was tall, Black, and impressively fit. Intricate tattoos wound across his forearms, and a gold hoop glinted in his left ear. He wore a printed cap over his curly hair, and a surgical mask hung loosely around his neck.

“Good morning. I’m Jared Harrison,” he said and extended his hand to Quinn before offering Rhys a firm handshake. “Ms. Michaels phoned to tell me you were on your way.”