by M. J. Trow
‘Impossible, Lestrade. I’m on my way to Die Fledermaus.’
‘I would suggest you didn’t leave the country at the moment, sir. Formalities, you understand.’
De Lacy looked oddly at Lestrade, as though he didn’t understand at all.
‘It must wait until morning, whatever the formalities.’
‘If you insist, sir.’ Lestrade was less than pleased.
‘I do. Good evening, gentlemen. Manfred will show you out.’
‘One moment, Mr de Lacy. Could I have the name of the friends your wife was visiting?’
‘Certainly.’ De Lacy picked up his topper and cane. ‘Bandicoot. Mr and Mrs Harry Bandicoot of Bandicoot Hall, Huish Episcopi.’
IT WAS TRUE THAT ASSISTANT Commissioner Frost was not an easy man to persuade. And a corpse floating at Shadwell Stair and another in a cave at Wookey bore little resemblance to each other. It took all Lestrade’s powers to make him accept that the medal in the mouth of one and the scarab in the mouth of the other stretched the laws of coincidence a little far and, with Frost’s insistence that he keep expenses to a bare minimum and a reminder that he didn’t approve of Inspectors of the Metropolitan Police who were prima donnas ringing in his ears, Lestrade went west.
And so it was that he stood on the green below the great arches of the abbey ruins, the sun glowing on the mellow stone. High on the tor above him rose another tower, more solid, more sinister than the ruins he walked among. For a moment he heard a whisper in the grass, some long-forgotten sigh that echoed down the dear, dead days.
‘Hic jacet Arturus Rex.’ A voice disturbed his solitude, and he tripped over an ancient slab at his feet.
‘Balch,’ the voice said again, extending a hand to haul him upright.
‘Pardon?’ Lestrade was back in his usual state, utter confusion.
‘Herbert Balch. Are you Mr Lister?’
‘The same,’ lied Lestrade. ‘How did you find me?’
Balch chuckled. ‘They told me at the George you had arrived. A stranger in our town has but two places to visit, Mr Lister – the abbey ruins or the tor. I hoped you’d choose the ruins. Less far to walk, you see.’
‘You don’t care for walking, Mr Balch?’
‘Ah,’ Balch grinned, ‘I’m the local postman, Mr Lister. It’s what you might call an occupational hazard.’
‘I was rather expecting Mr Bulleid,’ said Lestrade.
‘Gone,’ said Balch, dusting the inspector down. ‘To Camelot.’
‘Camelot?’ Lestrade felt the ground slipping away from beneath him again.
‘Cadbury Hill. Mr Bulleid believes it may be the site of King Arthur’s legendary castle.’
Lestrade had never realized King Arthur had lived in Birmingham, but he wasn’t in a position to dispute it.
‘That’s his grave, they say.’
Lestrade looked down. ‘Bulleid?’ A sudden panic seized Lestrade. Corpses were bobbing up in the sea of slaughter eddying red around him.
‘No, Arthur. As I said a moment ago – here lies King Arthur.’
‘Ah.’ Lestrade whipped out the pince-nez he had lifted from Skinner’s locker for the occasion. He put them on. He looked no more professional than before, but he persevered. ‘Quite.’
‘Of course, they hanged him, you know.’
‘King Arthur?’
‘The last abbot of Glastonbury. He refused to surrender the place to His late Majesty Henry the Eighth and they hanged him for it.’
‘I see.’ Lestrade looked up at the colossal stones.
‘Can you start tomorrow?’ Balch asked.
‘Delighted,’ beamed Lestrade.
‘Would you allow me to buy you supper at the George tonight? Professor Dawkins will be there and Miss Truefitt.’
‘Will they?’ Lestrade was getting in deeper and deeper. ‘Splendid. Shall we say eight?’
‘Eight it is,’ and Balch shook his hand warmly and left Lestrade to the solitude of the ages. It gave him time to worry that the fides he had sent by telegram to the local Clerk of Works might not be as bona as all that. He was posing as an archaeologist in an attempt to unravel the mysterious death of another archaeologist. What had Bulleid called it, rather ominously? The testimony of the spade?
THE PIG WAS CAPITAL. The port was excellent. The company impossible. Professor Boyd Dawkins took off his pince-nez as often and as resolutely as Lestrade and this at least gave the inspector some hope that he too was behaving like a real archaeologist. Dawkins was an old man who clearly was unimpressed by Bulleid’s techniques, preferring the Pitt-Rivers system to anything flashily achieved by Schliemann. He also spent much of the evening talking about hyenas.
Miss Truefitt was another matter. A lady of perhaps twenty-five, she explained that her grandfather had worked with Fiorelli at Pompeii. Lestrade assumed he was an ice-cream salesman until the lady began to discuss erosion, debris and bedrock. Then he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. She was a dazzling-looking woman, however, with a fine mouth and glittering fingers which played incessantly with her wine glass. She sat next to Lestrade and as the evening wore on and the dining-room emptied, he felt a certain pressure on his good knee below the table cloth. After a while, he felt the unmistakeable squeeze of fingers on the same knee and, clear his throat though he might, the light pressure continued. There was nothing in the face or conversation of Miss Truefitt to betray why only one hand now toyed with her wine glass.
‘You know the cave, of course?’ Dawkins asked and it needed a nudge from the hand on his thigh to make Lestrade realize he was being addressed.
‘Indeed,’ he said, possibly his first truth that night.
‘How should we proceed?’ Dawkins went on.
‘I . . . er . . . well, we’d better . . .’ It was the moment of truth.
‘Now, Professor.’ Miss Truefitt came to Lestrade’s rescue. ‘Mr Lister has not seen Arthur Bulleid’s notes. And after all, you are the renowned excavator of the Hyena Den.’
Dawkins was old enough and silly enough to blush and take his spectacles off. ‘Well, then, I suggest we move outward from the Den towards Glencot . . .’
‘“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran, Through caverns measureless to man . . .”’ Balch suddenly interrupted.
Lestrade took the opportunity to remove his knee, but the leg of the table was a powerful obstacle and he bit hard on his port glass as the whole structure trembled. Miss Truefitt smiled at him and continued to examine the weave of his trousers.
‘Balch,’ the Professor said quietly, ‘I know you believe the Axe runs deeper . . .’
‘It must, Professor. Ever since I first took up a trowel at your knee, I have been sure of it. There are subterranean chambers there, Mr Lister. Mr Bulleid was coming to believe it, I know. So was Mr Tetley.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Lestrade saw the chance he had been waiting for. ‘What a tragedy. Did any of you know him?’
‘I delivered his letters for some weeks before my promotion to counter service,’ said Balch.
‘Egyptologist,’ snorted Dawkins, pouring himself more port. ‘Too flashy, these Egyptologists. Not true scientists at all.’
‘But he worked at Wookey,’ said Lestrade.
‘He gatecrashed at Wookey,’ retorted Dawkins. ‘You’ve seen the type, Lister. Johnny-Come-Latelies who let some other fool do the digging and then steal all the glory for themselves.’
“Steal the glory”; the phrase echoed round the vast emptiness of Lestrade’s head. Nanny Balsam had said Tetley was a thief.
‘All the same,’ Dawkins pursued the point with the tenacity of a miffed warthog, ‘a murder, in Somerset, of a prominent archaeologist. Shocking! What are the police doing about it, that’s what I’d like to know.’
‘The local constabulary are in charge,’ Miss Truefitt said. ‘An Inspector Guthrie. Perfect pig of a man. Has the sloping forehead and pronounced eyebrow ridges of Homo Neanderthalensis.’
Lestrade wondered where he had seen them be
fore.
‘They say,’ she leaned towards Lestrade, lowering her eyelids, ‘that a chap from Scotland Yard was investigating the crime, but Guthrie sent him packing.’
‘Tut, tut.’ Lestrade put his spectacles on quickly and shook his head. ‘Did you know Tetley, Miss Truefitt?’
She ran her fingers higher up his thigh and purred. ‘No. He wasn’t my type, Mr Lister . . . of archaeologist, I mean,’ and she fluttered her eyelashes at him.
‘They say they found a scarab in his mouth,’ Lestrade said.
Miss Truefitt sat upright and withdrew her hand, much to Lestrade’s relief. Dawkins and Balch blinked at each other.
‘Damned Egyptologists!’ Dawkins snorted, quaffing his port.
‘I didn’t read that in the papers,’ Balch said, with a frown.
‘Er . . . no . . . Arthur Bulleid told me.’
‘Oh? When did you see him?’ For a postman turned amateur archaeologist, Balch had a mind like a razor.
‘Er . . . the other week,’ Lestrade went on. ‘That’s when he asked me to join this dig.’
‘Yet he didn’t mention that he was going to Cadbury? How odd.’
‘Yes.’ Lestrade drained his glass quickly. ‘Isn’t it?’ He rummaged in his pocket for the half-hunter. ‘Good Lord. Is that the time? I have been travelling much of the day . . .’
‘Of course.’ Miss Truefitt rose with him. ‘Are you staying here at the George, Mr Lister?’
‘Er . . . Yes, I am.’
‘Well,’ she beamed, ‘what a coincidence. So am I. Goodnight, gentlemen. Shall we say nine in the morning?’
‘Nine in the morning,’ the men chorused and they made their various exits.
LESTRADE SHOULD NOT have been surprised at the knock on his door in the wee, small hours. He lit the candle with much fumbling and fussing and peered through the heavy velvet which shrouded his bed.
‘Who is it?’ he whispered. He could see nothing but the reflection of the flame on the distorted medieval glass of the latticed windows.
‘Valentina Truefitt,’ the voice said.
‘It’s late, Miss Truefitt,’ Lestrade protested.
‘It’s never too late,’ she said and before he knew it, the door was opened and closed and she stood there in the candlelight, his and hers.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘is that regulation at Scotland Yard?’
Lestrade glanced down frantically. He hoped she was referring to his nightshirt. ‘Scotland Yard?’ he tried to bluff it out.
She sat on the bed and placed her candle on a cabinet. ‘I too was intrigued by the death of Richard Tetley,’ she told him. ‘That’s how I know Inspector Guthrie. The silly man prides himself as a paragon among policemen – suspecting no one and everyone, giving nothing away. Within a few moments he had told me all he knew. And I’d only gone to him to report a lost dog.’ She crossed the rug to him and ran her finger up his arms. ‘I have that effect on most men.’
He broke away. ‘Miss Truefitt . . .’
‘Inspector Guthrie was incensed by the arrival of an Inspector Lestrade.’ She turned to face him, with wide, angelic eyes. ‘A man, I gathered from the talk at the station, who had a pronounced limp and the tip missing from his nose.’ She flicked it playfully.
‘Good Lord,’ he said.
‘What they didn’t tell me at the station,’ she said, ‘was that Inspector Lestrade had such lovely eyes.’
Their lips closed together in the candlelight and he held her to him. Her hair smelt like fresh flowers as she swayed there, running her fingers the length of his spine.
‘Miss Truefitt.’ He came up for air.
‘Vallee,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Call me Vallee.’
‘We hardly know each other . . .’
‘Oh, Mr Lestrade . . .’
‘Call me Inspector,’ he said.
‘I do so hate the silly little conventions society imposes. I was brought up at my grandfather’s knee in digs all over the world. I have handled more corpses than you, Inspector. I am not only a woman of this world but of many others. We are creatures of pleasure, Inspector. Men and women. Why should we be bound by pettiness and the fatuous little rules they make out there?’
She forced him backwards so that his head smacked awkwardly against one of the posts of the bed. Undaunted, she hauled him upright and pinned him under her on the mattress.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘you and I will be up to our haunches in Palaeolithic droppings. I because it is my life’s work and you because . . . because I assume you must play out this charade in order to catch a murderer. But tonight . . . tonight belongs to us . . .’
She pressed still further and he squeaked as her hand found its way up his nightshirt.
‘I really don’t think . . .’he was still protesting.
‘Probably not,’ she said, holding her free hand over his mouth, ‘but that’s no fault of yours. You’re a policeman. Now, where were we?’
‘Who do you suspect, Miss Truefitt?’
‘Vallee,’ she whispered, letting her long hair cascade over him like a warm tent. ‘If I tell you, will you stop talking, just for a moment?’
He nodded.
‘Balch,’ she said. ‘Never trust a digging postman.’
‘What was his motive?’
‘You heard him tonight.’ She rolled sideways and pulled up his nightshirt. ‘Ooh,’ she purred, ‘so it wasn’t your truncheon. He’s obsessed with the cave. The Great Hole of Wookey. But he’s an amateur, Inspector. A beginner. Richard Tetley was a professional. Years of experience in Egypt and elsewhere. Boyd Dawkins summed it all up. Tetley, Balch feared, would take over the excavations at Wookey. He’d rob him of his moment of fame. Now . . .’ She wriggled closer. ‘Now it’s our moment.’
Lestrade gulped. ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘Miss Truefitt,’ he lifted her earnest face, ‘be gentle with me!’
THE LITTLE PARTY WOUND their way among the stalactites, out of the glare of the September sun. They picked their way past what was left of Guthrie’s blue cordon where Richard Tetley had lain, another corpse for the cave. Another sacrifice for the gods. Another victim of the witch. Their voices echoed as they spoke, to be drowned out now and then by the rush of the air in the caverns, the clashing cymbals described, as Balch lovingly told Lestrade, by Clement of Alexandria.
‘There she is,’ said Balch, taking off his pack and jacket. ‘The Great Witch.’
Lestrade looked up again to the yawning formations overhead and saw the legendary creature outlined in stone, who guards the head waters of the Stream of Sorrow.
‘“Her haggard face was foull to see; Her mouth unmelt a mouth to bee; Her eyne of deadly leer . . .”’ Balch was in his element, leering even more madly than the witch might have done before a local parson turned her to stone.
‘Shall we get on?’ Dawkins brushed past him. ‘I assume you’re familiar with all this, Lister?’
Lestrade looked with mounting horror at the paraphernalia arranged carefully above the line of peat-brown water ahead.
‘We thought you’d like the honour, as it’s our first day.’
‘Honour?’
‘Of diving, man. I’m too long in the tooth. Balch here can’t swim and you wouldn’t ask Miss Truefitt, surely?’
Lestrade smiled stupidly at them. ‘But, I . . .’
‘Now, now.’ Miss Truefitt began to haul off his jacket and tie. ‘You’re the obvious choice. Just remember to watch your footing and keep pulling on the line every thirty seconds. It’ll be dark down there,’ she pressed briefly to him, ‘but I know how capable you are in the dark,’ she whispered.
Lestrade found himself being thrust into a diving suit of vast proportions. It smelt revoltingly of indiarubber, but worse was to come. Balch and Miss Truefitt began buckling a metal corselet over his shoulders.
‘Get your hands in the air, Mr Lister.’ Balch hooked lead weights on to Lestrade’s chest and back. ‘You probably won’t need
these, but we don’t really know how deep the water is or what you’ll meet.’
‘Er . . . what am I looking for, exactly?’ He hoped his voice wasn’t trembling as much as his body was.
‘Palaeolithic remains. Bones, shards. Evidence of civilization, Lister.’ Dawkins busied himself with the airline and the pump.
‘That noise.’ Balch lifted a finger. ‘The clashing cymbals. It’s probably the Axe gushing out down there somewhere. There must be other chambers, Mr Lister, going who knows how many miles underground.’
‘Miles?’ Lestrade’s voice was scarcely audible and he was sure the thudding of the mighty Axe was his own heart, drowning in hopelessness. Balch lifted the great copper helmet and screwed it shut around Lestrade’s neck. He opened the grilled porthole at the front.
‘All right?’ he beamed.
Miss Truefitt blew him a kiss. ‘Be careful,’ she said.
And Lestrade turned to the water.
‘Come on, Lister,’ Dawkins said. ‘He who hesitates is lost.’
Lestrade heard nothing but the sound of his own breathing as he waded into the black water. The lights of the company’s torches danced and dazzled on the beaten copper. Miss Truefitt saw the eyes wide with disbelief and the moustache floating on water as Lestrade’s lead-lined boots parted company with the ground and he slid headlong into the gloom. Balch fed out the line inch by inch, foot by foot. Dawkins operated the pump.
‘Now?’ said Balch as the bubbles subsided.
‘Now!’ snarled Dawkins and turned off the pump. Simultaneously, Balch fed out the line quickly and let go of it. Miss Truefitt ran forward. ‘What are you doing?’ she screamed. ‘You’ll kill him.’ Her words ricocheted round the cave.
‘He’s an impostor, Valentina,’ Dawkins said. ‘You heard him last night. He’s no more an archaeologist than I’m a police inspector.’
‘That’s no reason to kill him.’ Miss Truefitt wrestled with the controls and the air thudded through the pipe again. ‘Herbert, grab that line.’
‘We’re not going to kill him, Valentina,’ Balch said. ‘Just frighten him a little. The police should be here soon.’