BURY ME DEEP an utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist (Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1) JANE ADAMS (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📖

“No, I don’t believe they did. My father told me he paid a couple of the gardeners to help. You’ve got to remember, Rozlyn, even between the wars a house like that would have retained most of the staff it had from when Victoria was queen, so there was help to be had. You’ve also got to remember that pay was poor and that the demarcation lines were still fully drawn between the indoor and the outdoor staff. In an establishment like Albermy, the outdoor labourers were the lowest of the low. For a few shillings, they’d have kept quiet, at least for a time and, besides, who would have believed them? My father was a respected man. A fine surgeon and a pillar of the community . . . he was, in this case, also a thief.”

“But why? What was he, a treasure hunter? He must have been pretty pissed off to find the box contained a couple of books and not the fabled chantry treasure.” Even as she said it, she knew that was a stupid statement. These books must be so rare as to be worth more than any gold to a man like Ethan and, probably, to a man like Ethan’s father. “How come they’ve survived so well?” she wondered, turning the precious object in her hands and stroking the heavy cover.

“The pages are vellum. Prepared animal skin. Hence the wooden covers. It has a tendency to curl if it’s not weighted down. And they were buried with the intent that they should be preserved, inside a sealed reliquary alongside fragments of bone. The bone served to absorb moisture and the casket was lined with lead and sealed with pitch and wax. Even so there is a touch of the miraculous in their survival. My father was, of course, certain that these would not be the only things concealed beneath the altar. But he never had the opportunity to search again. Albermy was sold the following year and it’s been through many changes since.

“In the second war it was taken over as a convalescent home. After that, a school for orphaned children. It went to rack and ruin through lack of money and everyone lost interest in the pile of stones and broken walls that stood in the grounds. I expect children climbed the walls and jumped off the altar stone. I imagine it must have made a wonderful playground. I saw Albermy just before it was sold to Richards. The stucco falling from the stonework let the damp through. The panelling was rotting on the walls and the place stank of mildew and neglect.

“As for the chantry, I could barely reach it. Brambles and birch had invaded and the place run wild. The altar stone itself was invisible behind a stand of nettles higher than my shoulder. I blistered my hands trying to tear them down. Then Mark Richards bought the place and began the restoration. And to give him credit, he’s brought the old house back to life.”

“And the Donovan Baker excavation? Were you there?”

Ethan was silent as he poured fresh tea. “At first,” he said. “Please, eat, you need to build strength. Mark Richards knew nothing of the legends until Donovan and I approached him. Donovan had done the initial research, as he mentions in the book — incidentally, the version you must have is the updated one, published after the second excavation. There was still a demand for it and I allowed the revised version to be printed, though I had little to do with the actual production by then.

“Anyway, Donovan was certain, as was I, that the foundations were earlier than the walls. I’d found an obscure reference to the building of a chantry by the Abbott Kendryk, of Storton Abbey. We’ve lost the location of Storton, but the chantry . . . Donovan and I believed that this could be the window we searched for, having a view directly onto those past clues to the mother Abbey, perhaps. And, of course, for me there was the incentive of my father’s story. Beyond that stupid little treasure hunt back in the twenties, we knew it to be a virgin site. On private land so long that no one had ever touched it. No ploughing, no disturbance to speak of. It was a wonderful opportunity.”

“And, of course, you knew what had already been found.”

“And was stupid enough to tell Donovan.” Ethan fell silent for a while and stirred his tea. It was a meaningless act as he’d added no sugar, and Rozlyn realised, it was merely to give him space to collect his thoughts.

“I let slip to Donovan that something else had been buried beneath the altar. Oh, I didn’t tell him about the books. I said I’d found a paper in the library and that it looked like a copied inventory — one list in the original Old English and a second written in translation. In truth, I’d had one of my old students mock this up for me.” He smiled, “we are deceivers all when curiosity or greed gets the better of us. My father went to his grave frustrated with the need to know what else lay beneath that stone. It gnawed at him and I never truly understood why. Then, when the opportunity arose for me to find out, it began to gnaw at me in much the same way and for a month or so, I suppose I would have sacrificed anything, moved heaven and earth, never mind a block of stone, to know, to discover what was there.

“Kendryk was right, you see, as was Treven. What lay beneath the altar stone should never have been disturbed. The monks that buried him, didn’t fully understand his wishes, so they buried these books with their Abbot and with