by M. J. Trow
‘What about Eleanor?’
‘Well, quite,’ Diamond sighed. ‘I didn’t know how to handle that at first. He didn’t mention her and I felt I had to say something. I offered him my condolences.’
‘Which he didn’t accept?’
‘No. In fact, he got a bit shirty, saying it was none of my damn business. Got a bit of a short fuse, hasn’t he, John?’
‘Do you remember his exact words, Headmaster?’ Maxwell asked, sipping his coffee gingerly so as not to disturb the relative composure of his lip. ‘This could be important.’
Diamond frowned in concentration. ‘Er … I think I said something like I was so sorry to hear about his wife and he asked me how I knew. Well, that was rather odd, I suppose, with hindsight – and in view of what you’ve just told me.’
‘What did you say?’ It was like pulling teeth.
‘I said I’d read it in the Advertiser. He was not pleased.’
‘Of course he wasn’t,’ Maxwell muttered. ‘As far as he’s concerned, Eleanor has left him. Gone back to mother. Not even the Advertiser carries stories like that. Unless you’re a film star, rock legend or frocked priest, of course, in which case it’s all fair game.’
‘Max…’ Diamond was struggling to come to terms with all of this. ‘You’ve been in teaching now how long?’
Maxwell made a big thing about counting on his fingers. ‘Three hundred and twenty-eight years,’ he said. Diamond, of course, didn’t crack so much as a smile. ‘Ah,’ the Head of Sixth Form wound him up still further, ‘but think of the Enhancement.’
‘The point I’m making,’ the over-promoted pedant went on, ‘is that I’ve never actually witnessed this before. A full-blown nervous breakdown, I mean. Oh, you hear stories, of course. There was that physics teacher found wandering stark naked in his labs a few years back, at that school on the Isle of Wight. People who can’t face coming in, getting clammy palms and palpitations at the door, that sort of thing. But this…it’s quite…well, scary, in an odd sort of way.’
‘Zen,’ agreed Maxwell. ‘Unreal. You didn’t get round to Annette Choker, I suppose, in your little chat?’
‘No,’ Diamond shook himself free of it. ‘No, John began rabbiting about setting strategies. Ironically, it was the first bit of the conversation I actually understood. So, Bernard’s optimism was misplaced.’
‘It was,’ Maxwell left his coffee. ‘Because now, you’ll have to find yourself a new Head of Business Studies. It’s going to be a bitch, isn’t it?’
Sylvia Matthews closed her eyes as she let her head rest against her chair back. Tommy Wiseborough had hobbled away with his bad knee that she’d redressed. Alex Brannon had taken her tablets under supervision and Jade Granger had come to moan about her mum, her period pains and that fucking horrible Mr Ryan. Just another Monday.
A strained, purple face appeared round the door. ‘Nurse! Nurse! I’ve got this facial problem.’
‘You certainly have,’ Sylvia the tired woman immediately switched to Nurse Matthews, the competent carer. ‘Sit down, Max, for Christ’s sake. It was hardly the moment to talk earlier, but what the hell happened to you?’
‘That’s not important now,’ he aped the worst line from the worst movie he’d ever seen. ‘Tell me about John Fry.’
She closed the door to her dingy little office, as Maxwell perched on the edge of her trolley-bed. He wasn’t certain about this – God knew what examples of humanity had sprawled here before him. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that you couldn’t catch things from toilet seats. But trolley-beds in school sick bays? Well, you couldn’t be too careful.
‘Where do I start?’ she asked. ‘Jenny Clark gave me a call shortly after nine. She was worried about John; he was behaving irrationally.’
‘I’m amazed she could tell.’
‘Max!’ Sylvia growled. ‘Don’t come the cynic with me. You’re as concerned as the rest of us.’
‘More,’ he said. ‘Jacquie’s missing.’
‘What?’ Sylvia’s eyes were wide.
‘DCI Hall doesn’t know where she is. Nor does her mother.’
‘Max,’ she held both his hands, her heart going out to him. ‘My God, this is awful. Here I am, burbling on about John Fry, and you…what are you even doing here? Go home, for God’s sake. There may be news.’
‘I’m not going to sit by the phone like some ineffectual old biddie,’ Maxwell snapped. Sylvia knew it was fear talking. ‘I’d rather be here, doing something. Besides, I can’t shake the idea that John Fry has something to do with Jacquie’s disappearance.’
‘Did Hall say anything?’ Sylvia asked. ‘I mean, is there a ransom note or something?’
‘Nothing.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘Nothing as of yesterday, anyway. Hall agreed to keep me in the loop. He’ll let me know if anything breaks. Annette Choker’s not back, I suppose?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Sylvia sat next to Maxwell on the low bed. ‘I did raise her with John, when I took him to the hospital, I mean.’
‘You did?’ Maxwell looked up. ‘What did he say?’
‘Well, I’m not proud of myself, Max,’ the Nurse said, ‘but it’s totally obvious that John has no idea that Eleanor’s dead. He was talking non-stop in the car. A lot of it was rambling, repetitious. It’s funny. He seemed quite rational at first, when Jenny called me over, but by the time we’d got to Leighford General, he was a basket case. He told me he’d had a few days away. Needed a break. Said it was all getting a bit on top of him.’
Maxwell nodded grimly. ‘Business Studies’ll do that to you, every time.’
‘No, no,’ Sylvia was adamant, shaking her head. ‘No, whatever John’s problem is, it’s not school. At least, not directly.’
‘Meaning?’
‘He said…’ Sylvia was trying hard to remember. ‘He said he’d come home to find the house empty and Eleanor gone. He knew at once what had happened, that she’d left him.’
‘Did he say why he thought she’d left him?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Sylvia said. ‘It was because of the girl.’
‘Annette Choker,’ Maxwell nodded. It all fitted.
‘No,’ Sylvia corrected him. ‘No, I don’t think so, Max. I asked him about Annette. Oh, perhaps I shouldn’t…after all, the man has just lost his wife, whether he’s aware of it or not.’
‘What did he say?’
Sylvia looked at Maxwell. ‘He said “She’s a good girl. She won’t let us down”.’
Maxwell looked at Sylvia.
‘Us, Max?’ Sylvia said. ‘What’s all that about? I suppose he was just confused, out of it.’
‘Yes,’ muttered Maxwell. ‘Yes, I suppose he was.’
‘Hello!’ No answer.
‘Hello, the Museum!’
‘Sorry,’ a voice answered somewhere to the rear of the Victorian chemist’s shop front. ‘Ah. Hello, Max. Good God!’ He was staring at the man’s face.
‘Yes, yes.’ Maxwell shook the man’s hand. He’d been hearing similar outcries all day. ‘That goes without saying. Tony, how the hell have you been?’
‘Better,’ the Museum curator said. ‘Better than you, by the look of it.’
‘Look, I know you’re about to lock up…’
‘Ah, the lad will do all that.’ He bellowed through to the portico, ‘Alan. Shut up shop, can you please? Enough is enough. I do believe…’ he checked the ledger at the front desk. ‘Yes, four people and a junior school today. That’s probably a personal best for June. Come on through.’
Leighford Museum stood in the town square. It was one of the oldest buildings the place possessed, a merchant’s pad built in the 1820s when that nice William Huskisson at the Board of Trade was reducing duties and opening up foreign commerce with assorted foreigners, which was good news for merchants in the 1820s. Tony Lyman had been Curator here for nearly four years, but he and Peter Maxwell spoke the same language and it felt as if they’d known each other all their lives.
‘Southern
Comfort, isn’t it?’ Lyman had led his visitor into his inner sanctum, a dark, stuffy room crammed with papers, charters, maps and a legendary amount of dust. It was a graveyard for anybody with allergies.
‘It is,’ Maxwell was impressed. ‘Well remembered.’
‘Oh, I haven’t got any,’ Lyman told him. ‘I just pride myself in remembering these little things about people.’
Lyman was a little round pudding of a man, ideally suited to working in the cramped, musty corners of a museum. He looked as though, if you could bear to look closely enough, he had mouldy bits somewhere.
‘What do you remember about Alfred the Great?’ Maxwell settled for tea.
‘Alfred?’ Lyman clattered the kettle, sliding some title deeds aside. ‘Bit before my time.’
‘I’m particularly interested in his death.’
‘Well,’ Lyman was looking for teabags. ‘You’re in luck. I’ve got a book on it. Four, to be precise.’
‘That’ll be the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ Maxwell lifted the brass Heavy Cavalry helmet from the chair. ‘This is rather fine. Can I take it off your hands for a song? Give you a bit more room.’
Lyman took it from him with a deft movement. ‘That belonged to Colonel Sir Edward Lacey, Fifth Dragoon Guards. The family used to own…’
‘…Staple Hill; yes, I know. That’s actually why I’m here.’
‘Oh?’ Lyman found a temporary home for the helmet, not altogether happy with the envious gleam in Maxwell’s eye, purple and puffy though it was.
‘One thing at a time,’ Maxwell eased himself into the chair. ‘Alfred.’
‘Right. Alfred. Just dunk that, would you?’
Maxwell took command of the teabags while Lyman fished about in a book case. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Which text do you want?’
‘Which text have you got?’
‘Oh, all of them. Um…’ he flicked the pages. ‘Here we go. “Here died Alfred, Aethelwulf’s offspring, six days before the Feast of All Hallows.” As always with the Chronicle, of course, there’s a brouhaha over the dates.’
‘Really?’
‘The Winchester Manuscript says 901, whereas it was actually 899. The Peterborough and Worcester texts give October 26, which would be right, and they say “and he held the kingdom healfum laes ?e xxx wintra…” That’s 28 and a half years to commoners like thee and me, Max.’
‘Thank you for that,’ Maxwell wasn’t up to smiling for all sorts of reasons; nor with wrestling with the complexities of Old English. ‘Where was he buried?’
‘Winchester,’ Lyman told him, putting the Chronicle back. ‘Old Minster.’
‘Does it say so there?’ Maxwell passed his cup to the man.
‘No. Thanks. In fact it’s very sparse on the passing of Alfred, bearing in mind how important the man was. National hero, saving our bacon from the Danes…oh, that’s rather good, isn’t it?’
Is it? Maxwell wasn’t really listening. ‘So how do we know?’ If he was nothing else, Peter Maxwell was consistent.
‘Asser,’ Lyman told him. ‘The king’s biographer.’
‘But Asser wrote in 893,’ Maxwell said. ‘Six years before Alfred’s death. Anyway, come in for a bit of flak, hasn’t he, old Asser, authenticity-wise?’
‘Well, yes,’ Lyman had to admit. ‘Yes, I suppose he has, but… Look, Max, what’s all this about? I didn’t think you taught this stuff at Leighford High.’
‘Oh, we don’t,’ Maxwell told him. ‘So, where was Alfred buried?’
Lyman had planned to sit down and have a well-earned cup of tea. Tottingleigh Juniors had been little short of a nightmare that afternoon. Now, however, Peter Maxwell had got right up his nose, setting him a challenge, questioning his authority. Did he know what it was like running a museum? Did he? Did he? ‘I’ve got a copy of his will somewhere,’ he said.
Three or four minutes ferreting through papers produced results. ‘Here we are…um… “I, Alfred, by the grace of God and on consultation with Archbishop Aethelred and with blah…declare how I wish to dispose of my inheritance”… blah, blah…“And all the booklands which I have in Kent”… Ah, here we are… “And there to be distributed for me and for my father and for the friends for whom he used to intercede and I intercede”…blah, blah…“fifty to the church in which I shall be buried”… There you are.’
‘Yes?’ Maxwell waited in mid-sip.
‘Yes, what?’
‘Which church?’
‘Well,’ Lyman shrugged. ‘The Old Minster, Winchester.’
‘Does it say so?’
‘Well, no, but… Look, what is this all about, Max?’
‘I’ll get to that,’ Maxwell promised, pinning his man with terrier-like tenacity. ‘Why Winchester?’
‘Well,’ Lyman conceded, ‘actually, there’s only one reference to Alfred being there. He certainly set the place up as one of the burghs that defended Wessex. And we know it was the headquarters of Aethelred and Cnut…’
‘That’s guilt by association,’ Maxwell told the Curator. ‘What’s the reference?’
‘A couple of crews from Viking ships washed up on the south coast…er…hang on.’ He fumbled through the Chronicle again. ‘Here we are… This is 896…’
‘Three years before Alfred’s death.’
‘Yes. The Winchester manuscript says “They”…that’s the Viking ships…“were then so damaged that they could not row past the land of Sussex, but there the sea cast two of them up onto land; and the men were led to Winchester to the king and he ordered them to be hanged there.”’
‘The land of Sussex,’ Maxwell mused. ‘Leighford.’
‘Oh, come on, now,’ Lyman laughed. ‘That’s stretching it a bit, all right. I’d love it to be Leighford, but it could be anywhere.’
‘Could it?’
‘Look, Max,’ the Curator put the book back for what he hoped would be the last time. ‘Everybody knows that Alfred was buried in the Old Minster in Winchester. When they opened the new one across the road in 903 his remains were removed there. And when Hyde Abbey was consecrated in 1110, they were disinterred again. There’s even a plaque there, for God’s sake.’
‘Oh, really?’ Maxwell said. ‘What does it say?’
‘Well, it’s been a while since I’ve been,’ Lyman was patience itself. ‘But if memory serves, it’s got a Latin inscription “Alfredus Rex” and the date 871, the year of his accession.’
‘And the plaque was made…?’
‘Eighteenth century.’ Lyman knew exactly how Maxwell was going to demolish this little piece of tosh.
‘Ah, yes.’ The Great Man tried to beam. ‘That’ll be the century in which they said Alfred burnt some cakes, Cnut tried to stop the incoming tide and little “Noll” Cromwell had a punch-up with the Prince of Wales, later Charles I. Oh, and Boudicca was really called Boadicea and built Stonehenge. We’re talking Fairyland here, Tony.’
‘Yes, all right.’ Lyman couldn’t leave it there, ‘but …’
Maxwell interrupted, in full flow now. ‘Let’s say you’re right,’ he said, one hand held in the air. ‘Alfred dies in Winchester and is buried in the Old Minster. Count with me – that’s burial one.’
‘Yes.’ Lyman had no idea where this was going.
‘He is disinterred, according to you, four years later and buried in the New Minster. Burial two.’
‘Agreed.’
‘And then, a hundred and seven years later, they dig the poor bastard up again and plant him at Hyde. I make that burial three.’
‘What’s your point?’ Lyman asked.
‘Two-fold,’ Maxwell said. ‘Three burials leaves room for doubt as to exactly which body is being shifted. Especially with over a century intervening between the last two.’
‘Well, yes…’
‘And secondly,’ Maxwell was stabbing the air, ‘and much more importantly, how do we know where Alfred actually died? And, for that matter, which church got his fifty quid.’
‘Well, I suppose,
technically, we don’t…’ Lyman had to concede.
‘Let me,’ Maxwell settled back with his steaming mug still in his hand, ‘bring you altogether up to date with someone else altogether better known than Alfred the Great. Arthur Wimble.’
‘Who?’
‘Precisely. Scion of the Metal Detectives’ Society and all-round snooper. Says he knows you.’
‘Oh, God, yes. Wimble. What about him?’
‘Has he brought any finds to the Museum? Recently, I mean?’
Lyman shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘Nothing Saxon?’
‘No. We’ve had Professor Fraser here a couple of times, that Latymer chap. You were here washing pots last week, I understand – sorry I missed you. Conservancy symposium at the University of Bradford.’
‘Bad luck,’ Maxwell commiserated. ‘But not Wimble?’
‘No. Oh, he’s often hanging around, I’ll grant you, but not recently. Maxwell, will you please tell me what all this is about?’
‘What if…’ Maxwell was thinking aloud really. ‘What if someone – an archaeologist; professional, amateur; trained, lucky – I don’t know yet. What if someone found an undisturbed grave? A Christian burial of a late ninth century king of Wessex, complete with body and some absolutely foolproof provenance?’
‘You’re talking Alfred,’ Lyman nodded.
‘In the grave, yes,’ Maxwell said. ‘And the amateur, lucky archaeologist who found it, Arthur Wimble. What, in your estimation, would such a grave be worth?’
‘Name your price,’ Lyman shrugged. ‘If the grave contained artefacts like the Alfred jewel, crown, sword, armour, it would be fabulously valuable.’
‘It would contain grave goods like that? A Christian burial?’
‘Sure. There are other examples. Whoever was buried in the ship at Sutton Hoo – probably Raedwald – had two apostle spoons with him, with the effigies of saints Peter and Paul. Are you seriously trying to tell me that Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, was buried at Leighford?’