by Amy Myers
He went very white. ‘That’s a dastardly thing to say.’
‘A Lady Macbeth?’
His face was strained. ‘No.’
‘She came with Jago that day, didn’t she?’
He hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘And you both murdered him.’
‘No.’ He was shaking with genuine emotion now. ‘Jennifer’s dead, so I might as well tell you. Lady Macbeth my foot. You just don’t bloody understand. She was crazy to have married Jago, and she knew it. We had had a spat, and she did it in a temper.’
‘But Mark was Jago’s child?’
‘He didn’t get a chance at another. He was—’
‘Shot?’ Peter said inexorably, when he paused.
Lance glared at him. ‘No. Jennifer came with Jago that day. For all his jabbering on about the Round Table, there was nothing gallant about our Jago. First he was raging because he’d found out about my joke – no sense of humour – then worse, called Jennifer a whore and anything else he could think of.’
‘He’d seen the other paintings?’ Georgia asked.
Perhaps it was the suddenness of her intervention that threw Lance off course. He looked startled, taken off guard. ‘What other paintings?’
‘Two of them had Jennifer as a model for Guinevere; I presume they were Michelangelo’s work.’
‘Means nothing to me,’ Lance said dismissively. ‘It was the scam. The scam was everything. Nothing would satisfy Jago but to come to Badon House that day. He was raving, but for heaven’s sake there’s no crime in a practical joke. So I drove him there with Jennifer. I’d buried the stuff near the church. It had been in the ground maturing like vintage wine. Once there, he went berserk all over again, and attacked me. For an unathletic man he had strength. SAS training, of course. I defended myself, he slipped, fell against a gravestone, and the fall killed him. Jennifer saw what happened. I was beside myself and couldn’t think straight. She said she wasn’t going to lose us both, and if we just scarpered together there would be enough evidence around to put one if not two of us in jail. We waited until the small hours, got Jago’s body into the car and drove hell for leather for Folkestone where I dropped Jennifer off to get a ferry; I went on to Hythe, got the body on board, waited till early morning so that I’d be seen to depart alone, then climbed into the dingy, set the boat adrift and that was that.’
‘Not quite,’ Peter said. ‘A dinghy was left on the boat. How did you get an extra one in such a hurry?’
A split second, before he replied easily: ‘Two dinghies on board. I told you. I’m a careful sort of chap. Overanxious, Jennifer always said.’ He smiled. Of course he would, Georgia thought dully. Lance would always win his game.
‘And now,’ he chuckled, ‘you must, I’m afraid, permit me my last game. The unveiling of Arthur’s goblet by Jago Priest. Poor Jago must have his hour of glory.’
*
The same spot in the same field as Georgia had looked at with Cindy. Of course it was here. That too had been a game. Talk of geophysical surveys and metal detectors was a smokescreen. So was Lance’s claim of having dug every inch of this field. There hadn’t been any digging here since the late 1950s.
Lance seemed to have recovered his strength, if his jauntiness was anything to go by. He’d even produced a yachting cap to wear, as if deliberately to taunt them.
‘Now we’re all here, let’s begin. I must say I’m looking forward to seeing it again. Poor Sam. If only she could have been here. Cindy was against the whole thing – I see why now.’
‘With the police forces of umpteen countries on her trail,’ Peter said, moving his wheelchair to one side as the digging began, ‘I can see why.’
‘Thanks to your meddling,’ Lance said grimly. ‘We’re hardly the Borgias, you know. All I wanted was to be one of the great hoaxers of history, like the Bruno Hat scam. No harm done, only a lot of red faces. That was my idea and look how it ended up.’
He glanced round at the assembled company. Mark – at least – Peter, Georgia, Luke, Mike Gilroy, two sturdy uniformed policemen and half a dozen diggers. ‘Anyone would think,’ Lance said drily, ‘that you were expecting to find a body in here. Well, you’ll be lucky. There is one.’
Mike moved forward.
‘Sir Gawain’s,’ Lance laughed. ‘What did you think I meant? Jago Priest’s?’
He could still laugh, Georgia thought with amazement. Yet there had been two deaths, and half his family arrested. Did he care? Yes, she thought, for two people. Sam – and Jennifer. Peter was still sure there was more of the story to come out, however. ‘I don’t believe this fall against a gravestone, do you?’ he had said on the drive there. ‘I suspect his old army training came rather readily to him.’
‘He had no need to kill Jago,’ she had pointed out.
‘Unless he realized that with Jago dead, not only could he wriggle out of blame over the scam, but take Jennifer too.’
‘That’s possible,’ she had agreed, but was aware that neither she nor Peter really believed they had the full facts.
Here on a late July afternoon in still sweltering heat, she could imagine the chaplains with their precious cargo, and it was hard to believe the story had all been built up in her mind thanks to Lance’s playacting, a charade he had clearly relished. And yet, she had to remember, Jago really had believed this theory because that’s why the scam had been possible.
‘Why did you leave it buried here after you sold Badon House?’ she asked, watching as the diggers progressed. Conversation had petered out, as the hole gradually grew deeper and tension grew. Even Lance had been silent. They were down six or seven feet now.
‘Why not?’ Lance replied. He carefully kept his voice low in Mike’s presence, Georgia noticed. ‘I was the only one who knew it was here, and I kept the field. I couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself as Jago Priest in connection with something that had connections with Paris in the 1950s. Suppose someone noticed I wasn’t the sort of person as the Jago they knew? Besides, there was the goblet. Kranowski wanted it back. I meant to pay him, but never got round to it, thanks to Jago.’
‘Seven feet,’ Mark called up. He was leading the diggers. ‘Any time now.’
‘You know,’ Lance remarked, ‘I almost feel that it’s real. Camelot is coming our way. Perhaps I am Jago after all.’
Georgia could detect a tremble in his voice. Peter’s eyes were fixed on every spadeful of earth and Luke was getting equally enthralled. She realized that she too was tense. What was she waiting for? King Arthur? Was the ghost of Jennifer here too? Or Jago’s?
‘There!’ Lance cried, shuffling forward to the very edge and pointing down. The diggers stopped and Mark scuffled in the soil as some scraps looking like decayed wood appeared. Luke had appointed himself photographer, as had Mark, who was already busy snapping away – for the family archives? she wondered.
‘Be careful,’ Lance said plaintively. ‘I took such pains with it.’
He had. Over the next hour the shape left by the wood scraps formed a rough oblong about four feet long and two wide. Within that, the earth was being eased away from what had been the box’s contents – no, Georgia caught herself, there was no box. This was a modern scam, not a sixteenth-century drama.
Luke was in the hole himself now, vowing that his archaeological competence was well known. Not to Georgia, but she said nothing. Impatiently, she clambered down the ladder to join them, feeling like Hamlet leaping into the grave of Ophelia. Lance was not pleased, but so far as she was concerned, he had no right to object.
‘Look,’ Luke said. He was squatting down clearing away earth. ‘Bones.’
Lance heard and was almost dancing with anger. ‘Come out,’ he ordered the entire crew. ‘One person only.’
The diggers took him at his word, but Luke and Georgia ignored him. Peter was urging them on, telling them to take no notice, and had his own camera in hand. Mike was now physically restraining Lance from following them.
‘Take care,’ Lance
shouted in anguish. ‘The skull is separate.’
‘Here,’ breathed Luke, as a bone protruded through a round mass of earth.
‘Give it to me, you fool. It’s Gawain’s skull,’ screeched Lance – and for a moment Georgia almost believed it was.
Luke stood up and handed it up to one of the uniformed PCs. ‘It had to be separate,’ Lance said more quietly. ‘The chaplains left in such a hurry, they wouldn’t have had time to arrange the bones and skull together. All hugger-mugger. By his side, you should find the buckle, and bits of sword.’
‘And the goblet?’ asked Luke practically.
‘To your right,’ Lance called.
Georgia felt around for some minutes, but neither she nor Luke could find anything. ‘I can’t see it,’ she called.
‘Dammit, woman,’ Lance yelled. ‘Let me go down, if you please, Mr Gilroy.’
Mike glanced at Peter, who nodded. ‘Not you, Georgia, nor you, Mr Priest,’ he said to Mark. ‘Luke can stay.’
Georgia knew they were right; if Lance grabbed her down there she would be a potential hostage. Nonsense of course; but, she remembered, he had had SAS training. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Reluctantly she clambered after Mark up the ladder and she and Mike steadied Lance for the climb down, with Luke ready beneath. Lance managed the descent remarkably nimbly in his eagerness.
‘Now!’ he said. His face disappeared from their view as he bent down slowly and tugged at a dark bundle. Luke, to Lance’s obvious annoyance, helped him pick it up and bits of old cloth fell away. ‘The only thing I couldn’t get to be authentic,’ he said lovingly. ‘Sixteenth-century velvet, which is why there are mere scraps here. Look!’
The goblet had loomed so large in her imagination that the size took Georgia by surprise, as Lance clung on to the mound of earth. Then he began to pull lumps of earth away, until what remained was still a mud ball, but only now of four or five inches. It was still covered in mud, but now the clear shape of a goblet could be seen.
Lance held it aloft with one hand, and Georgia watched, fascinated. ‘The golden goblet of King Arthur,’ he cried. Lovingly he began to wipe it with a handkerchief. ‘Water,’ he commanded, and one of the diggers obliged with a watering can from the cemetery. Gradually she saw the gold begin to reveal itself, gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Still dark, still muddy, but soon it would shine out in all its glory.
Lance made the climb back, refusing to let anyone take his precious goblet from him, and when finally, with a great deal of help, he reached the top, Georgia saw tears in his eyes. He looked round in triumph at the assembled group as though he were victor, not loser.
‘Here!’ he said softly as the last bit of earth fell away, and he held it up again, clasped in both hands.
King Arthur’s goblet. It was impossible here to think of it as Raphael’s goblet, or Lance’s, or even Sir Gawain’s. For a few moments, even to Georgia, it was Arthur’s alone, gleaming out in the sunshine. She recognized that ornamentation from the painting: it had been an animal, and it could indeed have been a bear surmounting something she didn’t immediately recognize. A primitive crown? A Christian symbol? It hardly mattered. She knew what Antonio would have said if he were here: it has soul.
Georgia felt a few tears in her own eyes. Stupid. However good, it was fake. Yes, but Antonio had said that for a true artist there were no fakes, there were only creations. A fake was unique in itself. As was this gleaming masterpiece.
At last Peter held out his hand towards Lance, who handed the goblet to him, with Mike’s eye carefully watching every movement.
‘You know,’ Lance remarked at last, ‘I feel I own this goblet.’
‘Forget it,’ Peter said gently. ‘You don’t. The Kranowski family does.’ Even Peter, his daughter observed, didn’t have the heart to point out that Lance’s grand-daughter had murdered Sandro for its possession.
‘Morally I do. I brought it into existence.’
‘Tell that to Leonardo Kranowski.’
‘I suppose you are going to insist on taking it back to him. Suppose I challenge it? The land is legally mine, therefore so is the goblet.’
For a moment, Georgia froze, but Peter made short shrift of Lance’s challenge.
‘Jago Priest owns this land,’ he said flatly, ‘and after him his son Mark.’
‘Then there’s no problem,’ Lance said genially, ‘is there, Mark?’
Mark had been silent all this while, and Georgia held her breath. For a moment she thought he would side with Lance. ‘No problem at all,’ he replied steadily. ‘I’m sending it back to the Kranowksis.’
Georgia breathed a sigh of relief. Jago Priest had taken his revenge.
*
‘He’s still alive, isn’t he?’ Venetia asked. Georgia had elected to drive down to see her to break the news, rather than merely telephoning her.
‘We can’t prove it without his DNA, of course, although since Sam’s has been taken it shouldn’t be too hard if it comes to that. We don’t know yet. The police are pondering it.’
‘I knew it, you know. That’s why I was sure he was murdered. Lance wasn’t the type to disappear over the side of a boat. Too careful and manipulative for all his hail fellow well met line. That’s sincere too, of course.’
‘Do you want to meet him again?’
‘No thanks.’ Venetia pulled a face. ‘Jennifer won and that’s that. Besides, that would mean having to ask you where Jago is. Ah,’ she continued, ‘I can tell the answer from your expression. Lance did him in, didn’t he?’
‘No body and all Lance says is that it was an accident.’
‘Not one through his falling over the side of his boat. Jago would never have set foot on it, not if he was alive. No, I don’t fancy seeing him again. I’d rather delude myself over the Lance I remember during the good times. The next thing would be his conning me into moving in to take care of him. Forget it. I’ve a dog to look after. I don’t need a jackal.’
Georgia laughed. ‘Did you know about the scam?’
‘I guessed, and from that it wasn’t far to considering Lance’s disappearance as fishy. I stopped halfway on that, which is why I said nothing to you. I didn’t want to know what happened, and still don’t. But come with me for a moment.’
Georgia followed her into a study with a sleek-looking computer and desk. Venetia opened a cupboard and took out an old carrier bag. ‘I got it down from the loft for you. Such a lovely thing. I couldn’t bear to throw it away.’ She shook the bag upside down and out fell a mass of scraps of parchment with ancient calligraphy and ornamentation.
‘These are beautiful,’ Georgia exclaimed, once she had got her breath back. ‘Could they possibly be Lance’s chaplains’ script, the provenance for the cup?’
‘I imagine that’s what Lance wanted them for. And there’s a letter too.’
‘From John Ruskin?’
‘Yes. I was keeping it for him. It’s all fake, of course.’
‘Do you know who faked it?’ Georgia asked.
‘I did.’ Venetia cast a mischievous glance at Georgia. ‘I always had an artistic gift.’
*
‘It’s at this stage I’m glad it’s not up to me as to what happens to Lance. There’s no proof of murder, or of accident now. What will Mike do?’ Georgia asked Peter on her return.
‘Without a body, not a lot forty years on. Even the DNA evidence wouldn’t prove he killed Jago.’
Georgia shivered. ‘Do we have to go down there?’
‘It’s where it began.’
‘The Gawain site?’
‘No, Sandro’s death.’
They were staying with Gwen and Terry at Peter’s request; he felt it only fair to fill them in on events, and had taken them to show them Gawain’s grave and such objects as Lance hadn’t taken with him.
The churchyard, where she and Peter had come alone, was a far creepier place, and, despite Peter’s presence, back came all her previous revulsion.
‘So it was h
ere,’ Peter said reflectively, ‘you found Sandro.’
‘Why was he murdered in this place, though? Chance?’
‘No. Sam kidded him she was going to pose for him with the goblet in the nude on a gravestone. Then the row broke out as he realized that was a joke. Her claim is that the gun was Sandro’s and she grabbed it from him in self-defence.’
‘Oh yeah? And then she stalked me and needed it for the same reason,’ Georgia said. She shivered again at the memory. ‘This corner is still creepy. Let’s get away. Lance could have buried Jago’s body anywhere.’
‘A moment, Georgia. Let’s get to the bottom of this story now.’
‘Aren’t we there?’
‘You know we’re not.’
‘But his story about putting the body over the side of the boat could be true.’
‘Too much trouble getting it there, and too risky.’
‘You mean – he is buried near Gawain?’ She tried to convince herself that must be the answer.
Peter shook his head. ‘I mean here. Where easier than a grave not long dug, with a coffin in it? Look, Josephine Jones, 1960.’
She swallowed, trying to distil logic from emotion. ‘It’s possible.’
‘Probable. I’ve already talked to Mike.’
‘Then why bring me here again?’ she cried.
‘We need to concentrate on Jago and Lance before Jago is forgotten and Lance prances off into a happy sunset.’
‘You’re sure it’s accidental death?’
‘Are you?’
How could she say yes when all her gut instinct told her that the story wasn’t yet over? ‘He murdered him.’
Peter nodded. ‘Planned murder.’
‘Never forget Jennifer,’ she said slowly.
‘You’re right.’
‘When Madeleine threatened to reveal the scam?’
‘Before that. What was going to happen after the scam? Have you asked yourself that? Jago would be humiliated, but what help would that be to Jennifer and Lance’s relationship? None. Murder would undoubtedly have taken place in due course. After the scam, Jago would apparently commit suicide in his humiliation, and after a decent interval she and Lance would marry. That would leave Mary dangling, which would be a problem, but one they could live with. Unfortunately this plan went drastically wrong.’