Chapter 22 - Beneath the Blackwood Stones
The churchyard of St. Jude-in-the-Fens sat three miles outside the township border, perched on a chalky ridge where the wind stripped the moss from the slate markers. It was nearly five in the afternoon by the time Arthur secured the emergency exhumation order from Judge Albright—a magistrate who had once been broken under Richard Sterling’s banking cartel and seemed grimly satisfied to sign the parchment with a stroke of black ink.
Two county coroners, clad in heavy canvas overalls, waited near the heavy iron gates of the Sterling mausoleum. The rusted iron doors groaned in agony as Arthur applied a crowbar to the padlock, breaking the seal that had stood untouched since Evelyn Sterling’s quiet, broken burial fifteen years ago.
"Watch your step, Mrs. Mercer," the senior technician, a man named Henderson, cautioned as he flicked on an industrial halogen lamp. "Mausoleums this old trap sewer gas and damp rot."
I stepped inside the cool, subterranean crypt. The air tasted of limestone, dead leaves, and the lingering residue of old candle tallow. Along the right wall lay the heavy stone sarcophagi of the Sterling ancestors: Charles, his stern likeness carved into marble; Evelyn, marked with a single granite dove; and beside her, a smaller, delicate slab of white quartz bearing the inscription:
*Clara Sterling — 1972–1978 — An Angel Called Home Before Her Time.*
"Bring the pneumatic chisel," Henderson ordered his assistant.
The sharp, hammering rattle of the tool echoed deafeningly through the stone vault. I stepped back, my shoulder brushing against Miles, whose grip on my hand was bone-crushing. We watched as the mortar between the quartz slab and the stone base turned to white powder, flying into the halogen beam like winter snow.
Within twenty minutes, the heavy quartz lid was pried loose and shifted onto wooden dollies.
Henderson shone his lamp into the dark cavity below. There was no ornate bronze casket. There was only a rough pine crate, its timber split and blackened by decades of subterranean condensation.
"The seal is broken," Henderson muttered, pointing the yellow beam down. "Look at the corner nails. They were hammered in from the outside with common masonry spikes."
Using a small crowbar, Henderson wrenched up the pine lid. The wood groaned, cracking down the center with a sound like snapping bones.
I leaned forward, bracing myself for the horror of skeletal remains—for the small, pathetic bones of a six-year-old child who had crossed my father's path.
The beam illuminated the interior.
There were no bones.
Resting inside the lead-lined trough of the pine crate were three burlap bags, their coarse fabric rotting away to reveal gray, smooth river cobbles, gathered from the shores of the Blackwood Gorge. Resting atop the stones was a single, rusted adjustable wrench, stamped with the faint initials: *R. E. S.*
Richard Edward Sterling.
"Jesus Christ," Miles breathed, covering his mouth. "The old man left the weapon in the coffin."
"Not just the weapon," Arthur whispered, pointing his finger toward the foot of the box.
Wedged between two heavy stones was a small, sealed glass mason jar. Inside, preserved against the damp air, was a folded copy of the *Sussex Morning Post* from October 16, 1978, with the headline: *Tragic Drowning at Blackwood Bridge.*
Taped to the front of the paper was a handwritten confession signed by Doctor Julian Halloway, admitting that he had signed the death certificate under financial duress from Richard Sterling, witnessed by Charles Sterling.
"This isn't an exhumation," Arthur said, turning his face toward me, his legal mind snapping the trap shut. "This is a crime scene that has been preserved in amber for forty-four years. Richard didn't just lie to the probate court. He falsified a death to commit grand larceny, insurance fraud, and attempted murder. There is no statute of limitations on attempted homicide in this commonwealth."
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"He thinks he is sitting in his study right now, planning how to sell Blackwood Manor to pay off his debts," I said, looking down at the stones that had carried Clara's name for half a century. "Let him sit there. Arthur, where is Sarah Dunn?"
Arthur carefully sealed the glass jar into an evidence bag. "If she survived the Sisters of Mercy... she is fifty-one years old today. And I believe I know exactly which ledger Charles hid her identity under."
