The trouble with Mr Antrobus was that he had no wife to look after him. He had a nice, comfortable billet down at Botley, near the railway station, and his landlady did her best for him. But that wasn’t the same as having a wife. He and Mrs Maxwell persuaded him to come for Sunday dinner every couple of months, and the experience always did him good. Mr Antrobus seemed content to remain a widower, and it was not their place to persuade him otherwise.
‘You said we needed to ask some more questions, Sergeant. What questions would they be?’
‘Well, sir, we need to get Constable Roberts to find out if any strangers had been lurking round Hadleigh that Friday night. He needs to ask the landlord of the Bull if any visitor had been in for a drink, or to ask questions. He could knock on a few doors roundabout, and ask if anyone had seen any strangers in the village acting suspiciously, or in a furtive manner.’
Antrobus nodded, but made no reply. It was time, thought Maxwell, for them to get back to the police station. The guvnor looked depressed and dissatisfied. It was very obvious that he didn’t want to let go of Dr Jeremy Oakshott.
‘I’ll tell you something else, Guvnor,’ said Maxwell. ‘Just because someone spins you a plausible yarn, there’s no need for you to go and believe it. Third-hand evidence is not always to be trusted.’
‘Are you referring to something in particular? Or are you just dispensing general wisdom?’
‘All I’m saying, Inspector, is that you’re not obliged to believe everything that you’re told. This Rector – what do you know about him? And the lady he trotted out for you to interview – all very nice and cosy, Guvnor. What do you know about her?’
‘So you think this ordained clergyman, and this retired prison wardress were conspiring against me in order to lead me astray?’
‘That’s as may be,’ said Sergeant Maxwell.
6
A Dinner at the Randolph
Jeremy Oakshott and Mrs Herbert Lestrange were having afternoon tea together in one of the quiet lounges of the Clarendon Hotel in Cornmarket. There was a certain faded charm about the Clarendon that had always appealed to Jeremy. Perhaps, he mused wryly, it was because it chimed with his own inner conviction that he was a washed-out, dull sort of fellow.
Mrs Lestrange was pouring tea from a battered silver pot, talking the while of Syria and its mysteries. Outside, the clock in the ancient Saxon tower of St Michael at the North Gate struck four.
‘I told you that I had something to show you,’ said Mrs Lestrange, when they had disposed of the buttered crumpets and fruit cake. ‘It’s something that I hope will make you realize that there is a potential world of ground-breaking scholarship waiting to be recorded outside the bounds of Oxford and Cambridge.’
She opened her reticule, and took from it a tin pencil-case, which she opened. Oakshott saw that it contained a slip of parchment, some three inches wide, filled with ancient Arabic writing in what he recognized as Kufic script.
‘I found this length of parchment in that cache that I told you about. Let me read it to you.’
They were sitting in an alcove, so that no one else in the room could hear Mrs Lestrange as she read to Oakshott in a low, urgent voice. As he listened, he was conscious of the fact that he was blushing with something approaching shame. For she was speaking in Arabic, the rich sounds punctuated by occasional glottal stops. He looked up and caught her eyes, and she stopped abruptly.
‘How thoughtless of me,’ she murmured. ‘You don’t speak Arabic, do you?’
‘No. And I don’t read it, either,’ he added, with a kind of foolish truculence.
Jeremy Oakshott suddenly felt provincial and second-rate. The modern world of exploration and discovery had passed him by, leaving him marooned in a scholastic cul-de-sac. How long was it since he had consulted a primary source for his own work on the Crusades?
‘Let me translate it for you, Dr Oakshott. You know that some scholars deny that Sultan Baibars could have forged a letter purporting to have come from the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, ordering the defenders of Krak to surrender the fortress. Well, listen to what is written here, on this slip of parchment.
‘“The Commander of the Faithful sent gold secretly to the Frankish King Otakar, who furnished him with a scribe well versed in the Latin and Frankish tongues. He it was who wrote that letter as coming from the Infidel Lord of the Hospitallers. And the men who held Krak were deceived (it was the Will of Allah) and threw open their gates.” And so it goes on. And it concludes with a date: “From the Year of the Hijra 649”, which in the Gregorian Calendar is 1271. Proof, you see. And it will be you, Jeremy – do you mind my being so familiar? It will be you who will confirm the truth of that old legend in the second volume of your great work.’
‘Wonderful,’ Oakshott murmured.
‘But there is more than that,’ said Mrs Lestrange. ‘Turn the parchment over, and see what is written there.’
Oakshott did so, and saw an inscription in what he immediately recognized as an ancient form of French called the Langue d’Oïl. Pro Deo amur, et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament… .
Jeremy Oakshott uttered a stifled cry, and half rose from his chair.
‘That is the Strasburg Oath,’ he said, ‘sworn by Louis the German to his brother Charles II, King of France, in 842 AD. Yes, it’s there, and at the end is a signature: “Otto, scribe, wrote this out for his lord Louis, to send to the hidden prince in Syria, the fourth day of December, in the year of Our Lord 842.” What can it mean?’
Mrs Lestrange held out her hand for the parchment slip, and returned it to its tin box, which she dropped into her reticule.
‘Do you know what we archaeologists call a find of that nature?’ she asked. ‘We call it an “anomalous artefact”. That letter about Sultan Baibars belongs securely to the period of the other documents in the cache. But as you see, it has been written on the back of a copy of the Strasburg Oath, penned centuries earlier, in 842. How did it come to Krak? Who was the “hidden prince” in Syria? That slip of parchment was out of its place and out of its time. It didn’t belong there, and yet it was there for the Arab scribe to use when he came to write the Baibar letter. And that’s what we archaeologists call an anomaly.’
‘It could have been Fulke de Barbazon,’ said Oakshott. ‘Or maybe it was—’
Leaning across the table, Mrs Lestrange took Jeremy’s hand in hers, and looked earnestly into his eyes. He felt his heart leap with sudden excitement.
‘I knew that you would be stirred by that inscription,’ she said. ‘Already you are suggesting some kind of solution to the mystery. You must come out with me to Krak next season. Our combined skills will make the academic world ring with our discoveries! There are other documents still sealed up in that cache, waiting for your interpretation. As for that anomaly, you may become renowned as the solver of the puzzle that it presents. If you were to write a paper on it immediately after your return from Krak, you will become uniquely associated with it. People will start to call it “The Oxford Anomaly”, because it was the distinguished Oxford scholar Dr Jeremy Oakshott who gave his interpretation of it to the academic world.’
Mrs Lestrange sighed, and sat back in her chair. Her companion seemed to be lost in a trance. She had worked hard to bring him on to her side. It was time to press home her advantage.
‘That little college of yours, Jerusalem Hall, is a dead end, a backwater. Come out with me, and when you return, and publish your findings, the universities will be clamouring to offer you professorships! Have you been to America? No? Well, there are boundless opportunities for a man of your calibre there. I speak of our combined skills. You are a bachelor. I am a widow. Could you consider, even for a moment, the possibility of a more intimate union between us? There, I have made you blush again, and I apologize for being so forward. Perhaps you have other plans.’
‘No! No, I – Mrs Lestrange – Celia – I can see a whole new world opening for both of us. But I will need time to
think, to assess my current financial position—’
‘Will you be at the Randolph tomorrow night? The dinner of the Richard Hoare Society? I’ll see you there, then. Meanwhile, keep in mind old Horace’s adage: Carpe Diem. Seize the day!’
As they left the lounge of the Clarendon Hotel, a tall man with tinted glasses came out of the public bar, and followed them as far as the cab rank in Broad Street, where Oakshott handed her into a cab. The man watched Oakshott as he walked off towards New College Lane. Then he turned on his heel and passed through the ornamental gates of Trinity College.
Unless you lived in that part of Oxford known as Osney Town, you would never find Ditch Lane, a kind of alley marooned behind the old dwellings in Becket Street.
Ditch Lane consisted of a single row of old three-storey brick houses, each approached by a flight of steps. At the end of the lane a blank wall, topped with broken glass, cut off all communication with the rest of the area. Opposite the houses was an engineering shop belonging to the Great Western Railway.
James Antrobus lived at number three, a boarding house kept by Mrs Hardy, the relict of a scout who had worked at Worcester College. He occupied the first floor front, which consisted of a sitting room, bedroom, and a minute kitchen. What Mrs Hardy called ‘the usual offices’ were at the end of the landing.
It had been a trying day, and he was glad to get away from Sergeant Maxwell and the whole business of police work for the evening. At five o’clock Mrs Hardy would bring him his dinner, which tonight was to be a steak pie with cabbage and potatoes. He sat down in a sagging but very comfortable chair in the window, and looked across at the railway workshops. It was very near the railway here, and at all times of the day you could hear the trains thundering and clanking and letting off steam. You got used to it with time.
His little round table was set for tea, with knife and fork, cruet, and napkin. On top of his well-stocked bookshelf stood a framed photograph of his late wife, wearing a dress that had been fashionable in the early eighties. She was only just into her thirties when she had died of a seizure.
There was a knock at the door, and Mrs Hardy came in, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a rather stout, kindly soul, who mercifully did not fuss over him, which would have made him feel even more of an invalid than he was. It was too early for tea. What did she want?
‘Mr Antrobus, sir,’ she said, ‘You’ve got a visitor. It’s Superintendent Fielding. Shall I show him up?’
Antrobus sprang up from his chair, and glanced in the mirror over the fireplace. Did he look presentable? He straightened the black tie under his wing collar, and pulled his shoulders back.
‘Yes, show him up by all means, Mrs Hardy.’
The heavy tread on the stairs heralded the appearance of Antrobus’s superior officer. The superintendent wore the black frogged uniform jacket, buttoned to the neck, and pill-box hat that went with his rank. He was a man nearing sixty, with silver grey hair, and luxuriant side whiskers. His voice betrayed the fact that he was a Londoner in origin.
‘I hope I don’t inconvenience you, Inspector,’ he said, standing on the threshold. ‘I just want to have a little word with you. How are you? Are you coping well with your sad complaint?’
Antrobus made no reply, knowing from experience that none was expected. He motioned to the superintendent to sit down in the chair opposite his, and waited for him to speak.
‘I don’t know whether you are aware of the fact, Antrobus,’ said Superintendent Fielding, ‘but yesterday evening the Vice-Chancellor gave a reception for senior officers in the Oxford City Police, and a number of, er, legal luminaries. Yes, I think that is how best to describe them. It was held in the Sheldonian Theatre.’
Fielding had placed his hat on the table, and was looking out of the window. He seemed curiously constrained.
‘And did the Vice-Chancellor minister to the inner man, sir?’
The superintendent smiled, and gave his full attention to Antrobus.
‘What? Yes, he did. There were very substantial refreshments, and a commendable quantity of alcohol. And it was there, Antrobus, that I met the Rector of Jerusalem Hall. He told me that you had been investigating the bona fides of one of the Fellows, Dr Jeremy Oakshott, the distinguished historian of the Crusades. Apparently, some friends of Oakshott’s living in the country had told him – told Oakshott, I mean – that you had been asking questions about him. You had also, it seems, interviewed Oakshott himself at Jerusalem Hall. Not unnaturally, Oakshott is feeling peeved about all this, and had complained to the Rector, who mentioned the matter to me, last night.’
‘I did interview him, sir, because—’
‘Before I came here, Antrobus, I went to the police station in High Street, and made your Sergeant Maxwell tell me all about it. His air of belligerence cuts no ice with me. Apparently, you’ve been up in Herefordshire delving into this man Oakshott’s antecedents. All this, I gather, is connected to the murder of a certain Michael Sanders out at – what was the place called? Hadleigh. Do you think that Oakshott murdered him?’
‘Sir, I felt entitled to regard him as a suspect until I could prove otherwise. I have now done so, and can eliminate Dr Oakshott from my enquiries.’
‘Well, see that you do. As you know, I’m a man who shows no favour to anyone merely because of their rank or standing, but I have to maintain the delicate balance of amity between Town and Gown. I want no importunate dons interfering with police work. So tread lightly, Antrobus, will you? I know you too well to be deceived by your verbal blandishments. Keep away from Oakshott, do you hear? Look elsewhere.’
‘Today,’ said the elderly Catholic priest sitting on Oakshott’s right, ‘is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.’
Jeremy Oakshott looked out of the window of the private dining room on the first floor of the Randolph Hotel, and saw the elegant spire of the Martyrs’ Memorial rising in front of the little cemetery of St Mary Magdalen’s. What would those unfortunate polemicists Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, have thought about a Catholic priest enjoying a five-course dinner so near the spot where they had died for the Protestant religion?
‘I mention the fact,’ the priest continued, ‘because our guest of honour, the Honourable Mrs Herbert Lestrange, was born on that day.’
There were twenty ladies and gentlemen sitting at the long table, which was adorned with silver-gilt epergnes, tall candelabra, and the special set of china belonging to the Richard Hoare Society. This eighteenth century pioneer of archaeology had taken for his rallying cry the words: ‘We speak from facts, not theory.’
Raising his voice above the excited babble of the members, Oakshott asked his neighbour whether he was personally acquainted with Mrs Lestrange.
‘I knew her husband, the late Captain Herbert Lestrange, quite well – but I say, we have not been introduced! I know who you are, of course, your fame has preceded you in your magisterial studies of the Crusades. I am Father Cuthbert Linacre of the Society of Jesus, one of the clergy at St Aloysius’s church in Woodstock Road.’
Father Linacre was a balding gentleman in his seventies. He wore little gold spectacles that made him look like Mr Pickwick. He sat well back in his chair, savouring the delights brought up from the Randolph’s kitchen.
‘Yes, I knew Captain Lestrange quite well. He was a dashing sort of fellow, though there was a strain of weakness in his character that didn’t quite sit well with his vocation as a soldier. He was only thirty-two when he was killed at Alexandria. That’s when she’ – he waved his fork in the direction of Mrs Lestrange – ‘that’s when she began her career as a lecturer and frequenter of dinner parties, progressing from that to being a practical archaeologist.’ He laughed.
‘You don’t like her?’
‘Oh, yes, I like her well enough. But those four books that she published… . The first one, a selection of her husband’s letters, was an instant success, and deservedly so. He wrote well, and engaged the reader in his accounts of life in the E
ast. But you know, the other three volumes of letters – well, there are some people who claim that she wrote them herself!’
‘And you are one of those people, I take it, Father Linacre?’
The priest suddenly looked vexed. He realizes that he’d said more than he should have done, thought Oakshott. The excellent wines from the Randolph’s cellars were apt to loosen tongues at events like this one.
‘Dr Oakshott, I was myself an archaeologist working on several of the Vatican digs in Egypt and Palestine in the seventies and eighties. In those three later volumes I have detected inaccuracies, descriptions of sites and objects that are no longer there, accounts of meetings with people who were dead at the times when she claimed to have spoken with them, and recorded their words. I say “she”, because I am convinced that it was she, not her husband, who composed those accounts.’
‘And why have you come to this dinner, Father?’
‘I’ve come because, like you, I’m a member of the Richard Hoare Society, and because I know they feed you well here. Ah! Here’s the roast lamb coming in!’
Oakshott turned his attention to the guest of honour, the Honourable Mrs Herbert Lestrange, who sat at one end of the long table. Dear, enigmatic Celia! She looked very striking in her black silk evening dress. Her corsage was adorned with a deep red rose, and she wore a necklace of flashing diamonds, with matching earrings. She was talking animatedly to a lady sitting on her left, whom Oakshott recognized as a distinguished Fellow of St Hugh’s College. And then, for a single moment, Mrs Lestrange threw him a speculative look, a kind of unspoken questioning that made him blush. Already, they were more than friends.
‘There’s no money there, you know,’ said Father Linacre, ‘that’s why she’s for ever holding those fundraising events.’ He turned his whole attention once more to the saddle of lamb.
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