‘Murdered?’ said Helen.
Overhead the remaining leaves rattled in a sudden gust. Tom shivered but managed to turn it into a shrug. ‘I don’t know. Yes, maybe murdered.’
‘So if North’s hip flask is here, where is North?’
‘He could be anywhere. The flask might have fallen from his pocket as he was climbing up or down the hill.’
‘But it tells us he was here at Todd’s Mound.’
‘Or that someone was here. It might not have been North who dropped the flask.’
‘His murderer, you mean?’
Tom noted the controlled excitement in the way Helen referred to the ‘murderer’. He glanced sideways. She was still holding the pewter flask. There was colour in her cheeks. He leant across and kissed her.
‘Tom,’ she said half jokingly and only after a little time had passed, ‘what if someone is watching!’
And, as if on cue, they heard a heavy tread behind them, the sound of a person descending the hill. A person who was wearing leather leggings and great boots. In surprise, Tom and Helen sprang apart.
There was another watcher to this encounter. One who was – not by chance – in the vicinity of Todd’s Mound and who had seen the approach of two figures with a familiar outline. This individual took shelter behind a patch of bare brambles and observed the girl pick up an object from the ground. The flask was not easily identifiable from such a distance but the watcher knew what it was straightaway, since the flask had been taken from a dead man’s body and a swig taken from its contents. It must have dropped out of a coat pocket as the watcher was going downhill those few nights before. And now, in the present moment, a third person was added to the scene as the shepherd swung downhill and almost collided with the couple who’d just been spooning and were oblivious to the newcomer. The threesome, the shepherd, Ansell and the girl, exchanged a few words, more than a few words, quite a regular session in fact. After a time the couple turned away and continued their uphill progress while the shepherd kept going at a downhill diagonal, fortunately in a direction away from the observer. This person waited until Ansell and the girl were almost out of sight over the skyline before slipping from the cover of the brambles.
* * *
Tom and Helen didn’t speak again until they were inside the embankment at the top of the hill. It took them a moment to catch their breath and they rested, leaning on the walking sticks which belonged to Eric Selby. While they were climbing each was thinking of what the shepherd had said: that few people came to visit Todd’s Mound for pleasure and certainly not at this time of year. But that he had seen someone coming up this same path a few weeks ago, towards the end of the afternoon, and that he had particularly taken notice of the man on account of his shifty, uncomfortable look. The man had a bag slung over his shoulder and might have been an itinerant labourer, but the shepherd did not think so. The man struck a false note, as it were.
The shepherd, whose name was Gabriel as Helen quickly established, did not say all of this in quite such a coherent form or using exactly these words but rather the gist was teased out of him by Helen. To begin with, she smiled at Gabriel and showed him the pewter flask and wondered aloud whose it might be – those mysterious initials A.H.N. – and whether it would be possible to find the owner so as to return the flask, obviously a treasured item as the initials showed. And, by the way, had Gabriel seen anyone recently on these slopes? Tom noticed again what an assured touch Helen had with people. How she was able to speak naturally with them and gain their trust and find out what she wanted to find out. How she could be evasive with the truth (for example, she already knew whose the flask was). She didn’t even seem embarrassed that Gabriel had almost run into them while they were embracing. Of course, reflected Tom, the blonde tendrils of hair which curled down from under her sensible hat and the wide blue eyes might have something to do with it, especially where men were concerned. But the effect worked on women too. Mrs Banks had revealed things to Helen which she might not have done to Tom alone.
‘It must have been Andrew North,’ said Helen. ‘We know that he was in the habit of visiting Todd’s Mound after he worked with Canon Slater. And he disappeared from the house he shared with his sister at about the same time that Gabriel saw someone walking up here, someone looking shifty and uncomfortable. North the sexton?’
‘The shepherd has a good memory for the people he encounters.’
‘So would you, Tom, if you saw more sheep than people. Well, now we are here, what do we do next?’
They looked round at the bare interior of the plateau. It had a roughly rectangular shape, protected by ramparts of grass which had crumbled in places. There were a few shrubs and patches of bramble but no signs of human occupation, whether ancient or modern.
Helen and Tom hadn’t come out to Todd’s Mound totally unprepared. Helen had found a book in her god-father’s library which detailed the locations of some of the tumuli and other ancient remains to be found in the region around Salisbury. Little was known about Todd’s Mound (not even who the eponymous Todd had been) but it seemed there had most likely been entrances or gateways at both ends of the plateau, although a land-fall in the east had made access almost impossible from that side.
Tom pointed to the opposite end, the eastern one.
‘If there’s anything to be found,’ he said, ‘it should be over there.’
‘Why?’
‘Look around, there are no signs of disturbance to the earth here. And there weren’t any marks either near the path we’ve just come by. If North was poking around and digging things up, it must have been somewhere different.’
They began to pace the length of the hilltop. There was a rustling in a patch of bushes as they passed and they turned to see a deer start from shelter and scamper back towards the western side of the mound. Helen paused and held her hand to her breast.
‘That startled me, Tom.’
Tom Ansell, also, had been startled but he wasn’t displeased to see the effect on Helen since it was an excuse to put his free arm round her for a moment. Then they resumed their progress towards the far embankment, in which there was a kind of a larger dip or notch. Through this, as they walked, they caught glimpses of the city and the cathedral spire.
‘This is where one of the entrances to the settlement – or whatever it was – must have been,’ said Tom, as they stood on the lip of ground below which the land fell away steeply. The slope was studded with clumps of yew and to one side lay the great carcass of a fallen tree. Helen turned her back on the view and surveyed the grassy basin they had just crossed.
‘It’s strange to think that our ancestors once lived up here. I wonder why they moved away.’
‘Perhaps they were driven out and had no choice over moving,’ said Tom. ‘Or they got bored with life on this cold hilltop and wanted the comfort of the lowlands.’
‘They have left no traces.’
‘Except their burial places.’
‘They would not be buried here, inside this place,’ said Helen gesturing at the area bounded by the earth ramparts.
‘But not far outside either. On the slopes around this hill maybe.’
They moved back to the entrance or gateway to Todd’s Mound. Tom looked downhill in the direction of the fallen tree. A tattered black shape seemed to unfold itself from the tangle of branches and Tom felt a thrill of horror until he realized that it was nothing more than a crow, a great crow which rose into the air and clattered out of sight round the slope of the hill. Tom wrinkled his nose. He glanced at Helen standing beside him but, though she too had observed the bird, she was now gazing out at the city and the countryside beyond.
‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘Wait for me.’
‘Stay there, Helen. It’s probably nothing.’
He was already several yards below and to one side of the embankment gateway. The slope was steeper than it seemed from above. To keep his balance, Tom used his walking stick. The hem of his coat brushed a
gainst the chalky soil. He edged towards the fallen tree. That was where the crow had been. That was where the smell seemed to be coming from.
He halted to get his bearings. But if he’d expected to see anything he was disappointed. The flank of the hillside rose sharply on his left. The bulk of the falllen tree – a beech, he thought – lay a little below where he was standing. The crown of the tree was further down, although a number of severed branches were strewn casually across the slope. Where the roots had been was a gaping black hole with only tooth-like shards remaining. Nothing more. But not quite, because Tom noticed that just above the root-hole was another gap, a yet darker space, partly obscured by a branch to which withered leaves still clung.
Afterwards he didn’t know what had drawn his attention to that darker spot on the slant of Todd’s Mound. Whether it was the suspicion of something man-made in the arrangement of stones around a hole in the ground. Or the way the severed tree branch almost seemed to have been positioned so as to obscure the hole. Or the sense that, if the smell – a sharp, unpleasant smell – on the hill-side had a source, then it was from here.
Tom covered the few dozen feet to the place. He was right. It was an entrance, of sorts, into the hillside. There were three slabs of stone forming a primitive door, although one of the uprights had fallen. He tugged at the branch laid across the entrance.
‘What are you doing down there, Tom? Are you all right?’
By now, Tom was on his hands and knees, oblivious to the mud on his coat. Oblivious too to Helen’s call. A strong smell emanated from the mouth of the cave or chamber or whatever it was. Something dead lay in there. Of course something dead lay in there! It must be a burial chamber. But this was a recent death, not one from thousands of years ago.
Two things prevented Tom Ansell from rising to his feet and scrambling back to where Helen stood, and then calling for attention and help. The first was the fear of looking a fool. Whatever was inside the chamber might be animal, not human. He did not want to summon a rescue party to pull out a dead sheep. The other reason was that Tom felt he ought to see this through himself. It was up to him to have a first sight of whatever lay inside this hole in the hillside.
Clutching his stick with one hand, he got out a hand-kerchief and held it tight against his nose and mouth as he edged his way inside the aperture. The smell was almost overpowering. He paused. There were small sounds, scuffling sounds, which he could just detect over the banging of his heart. He coughed, and the scuffling stopped. Using the walking stick as a probe he pushed forward and it tapped against a hard object. He picked it up. A bone, a human bone he thought. But not recent, because it was white and dry and stripped of everything.
The day was overcast but there was enough light seeping into the entrance of the hole for Tom to get an impression of what was lying deeper inside. More scattered bones, it seemed, and something else in among the bones, not white and sterile like them, but an object which was wrapped up and foul-smelling and too large to be a sheep. An object with shod feet. He prodded at the soles of the feet with his stick. Then he crawled as fast as he could out of the hole, going in reverse. He sat on the chalky slope, gulping in draughts of fresh air, even if that air was still tainted by the scent from the burial chamber. A movement startled him. It was Helen. Worried by Tom’s absence, she had half walked, half scrambled down the slope. Her hair was tumbling out from under her sensible cap and her face was flushed. Seeing Tom, she shrieked because of his appearance. He’d turned a touch green. But Tom hardly noticed her arrival or her shriek. Instead, he was trying to keep his gorge from rising and he was thinking: two bodies in three days. It’s a bit steep.
Somewhere below Tom and Helen, near the eastern base of Todd’s Mound, was a third figure. The discovery of the body – it must have been discovered, judging by the woman’s shriek, sharp as a bird-call – was no surprise to this person, who had been responsible for putting the body in the burial chamber. Well, it would have been found sooner or later. No great harm done.
Canon Selby’s House, Again
Tom Ansell’s thoughts were echoed by Inspector Foster that evening as he sat with Tom and Helen in the drawing room of Canon Selby’s house. They were all sipping brandy, courtesy of the owner.
‘You mustn’t make a habit of this body-finding, Mr Ansell. First Canon Slater and now, well, now whoever the unfortunate individual was out at Todd’s Mound . . .’
‘We think it was Mr North,’ said Helen.
‘Possibly, possibly,’ said the policeman with all his professional caution. ‘But there’s no way of telling, is there? Not until we get some of those clothes cleaned up and give Mrs Banks a sight of them.’
This was true enough. The process of recovering the corpse from the flank of the hill had taken up most of the day. Tom and Helen returned to the town on foot and entered the police house, muddy and bedraggled and breathless. Inspector Foster had to be found and their story told several times over. A trio of constables was gathered and, together with the Inspector and Tom and Helen, they were driven back to Todd’s Mound in a carriage and a cart. A carriage for Foster and the two young people, the cart for the three constables. There was a purpose to the cart, as they realized later. Tom urged Helen to stay behind – he could lead the group to the place by himself – but she insisted on being ‘in at the kill’ (as she said, before clapping her hand over her mouth in horrified amusement).
Tom and she had been content to do no more than guide Foster and his men towards the point above the fallen beech on the eastern side of the hill. They did not see Gabriel the shepherd again. Perhaps he was alarmed by the crowd of police. Tom and Helen watched from the embankment gateway while the constables did what was literally the dirty work down below under Foster’s direction. The first constable to go in, Chesney, came out almost straightaway. He said, ‘There’s two of ’em in there, guv.’ Foster explained that they weren’t interested in bare bones, which might have lain there for centuries, but in fresh (or freshish) corpses. Chesney should go back inside and concentrate on that.
The burial chamber was too small to hold more than a single person at a time so first Constable Chesney and then the other policemen entered one by one, holding their breath and tugging at the corpse until it was brought out, inch by inch, from the interior of the burrow and laid out on the hillside. One of the constables turned away to be sick. Even from a distance the sight was unpleasant. Tom instinctively put up his hand to shield Helen but she had already averted her gaze.
The body was still clothed but the garments were stained and discoloured, and rents in the material showed grey-green flesh underneath. The head, which was the same colour, had little hair left and the face was shapeless and pitted with myriad tiny holes. It was apparent too that small animals must have been feeding on the whole body.
The police had brought with them ropes and a canvas sheet in which they tied the body, and a makeshift stretcher to carry it away on. Foster ordered them to lug their burden to the other side of Todd’s Mound and dump it in the cart. He slapped down the frivolous suggestion of one of his men that it might be quicker to roll the body down the steep incline on this side and collect it at the bottom. After their initial shock and surprise, Tom and Helen had become fascinated by the process, almost against their will. Helen, in particular, had started hanging over the shrouded body in a manner that Tom considered pretty unhealthy. He put it down to her novelist’s sensibility.
While his men were dealing with the corpse, the Inspector and the others returned to Salisbury. By now it was growing dark. Foster promised he would call on them at Canon Selby’s to give them his news.
Foster was as good as his word even if he didn’t have much to convey. Identification of the corpse was almost impossible, said the Inspector, and in any case it would have to be cremated as soon as possible in the interests of public health. Identification could only be done through the dead man’s garments which, when cleaned up, would be shown to Mrs Banks in the hope (or r
ather the fear) that she might recognize some article belonging to her brother. He thought it likely that the corpse was North. The Inspector had already informed Mrs Banks of this because, chancing to meet him in the street, she had badgered him with questions. He had no choice but to tell her they had unearthed a body which was probably Andrew’s.
‘Mrs Banks is naturally distressed,’ said Foster, ‘but when she found that it was you two, Mr Ansell and Miss Scott, who had made the discovery, she was grateful you had gone to such trouble after you visited her. I didn’t know you had called on Mrs Banks.’
‘It’s not against the law, Inspector,’ said Tom.
‘Of course it’s not, sir, but I must say that we do not much approve in this part of the country of members of the public involving themselves in police business. Asking questions, finding corpses and the like.’
‘Is there evidence of foul play on the body, Inspector?’ said Tom quickly.
‘Foul play?’ said Foster, pulling at his great side-whiskers and gazing into space as if the words were spelled out there in capital letters. ‘You mean murder, Mr Ansell. There’s no evidence one way or the other, I’m afraid, not on the body itself. It’s in far too decomposed a state for us to tell anything from it, whether the chap was throttled or bashed over the head or stabbed in the back. But I don’t think that Mr Whoever-he-was crawled inside that burial place by himself. Someone pushed and shoved him inside so that he was lying next to the remains of some other gent, who is none of our concern since he died long before the Salisbury police was a gleam in anyone’s eye. But the pushing and the shoving to Mr Whoever-he-was suggests to me that he was done away with.’
‘Not Mr Whoever-he-was but Mr North. We know that North was in the habit of visiting Todd’s Mound, Inspector,’ said Helen, repeating what she’d said to Tom earlier that day. Helen was back on an even keel. A hot bath, a change of clothes, a light supper and some of her godfather’s brandy (taken by Helen against Eric Selby’s advice) together with the basic excitements of the day recollected in tranquillity, had brought her back to her usual self.
The Salisbury Manuscript Page 18