Red Dragon – White Dragon

by Gary Dolman

  “Oh, I believe I can shed some light on it,” Atticus replied, taking his wife’s hand as she stepped up into the style. “The battle between the White Dragon and the Red Dragon is a very famous allegory from Arthurian legend.”

  “Uther’s sketch showed exactly that; a battle between a red dragon and a white dragon and he mentioned that his armour had been made to re-enact the battle between them at a fête.”

  He squeezed through after her, wincing as he felt a waistcoat button scraping against the big stone in front of him. “Exactly so, Lucie. In the Arthurian legends, there is a tale told by Merlin, Arthur’s magician, about a long running battle between a red dragon, which symbolised the Celtic Britons, and a white dragon, which represented the Anglo-Saxon invaders of the time. Merlin prophesied that the Red Dragon, the Celts, would prevail during King Arthur’s lifetime, but that after his death the White Dragon, the Angles and the Saxons would overcome it until Arthur is finally awakened again at ‘The End of Days’ to restore the Red Dragon’s supremacy.”

  “And he thinks that Arthur has been awakened? That he has risen again?”

  “It would seem so, but not only that he has risen, it appears he is also paying him house calls and bringing him his hallowed relics to boot.”

  Lucie sighed. “It’s a great pity to see Uther as he is. As Sir Hugh said, his life isn’t much better than those of the cattle in the field over there – except for his art that is; he’s an exceptionally talented artist. He’s obviously a very brave man, too, in spite of his refusal to join in the massacre at Lucknow. He saved the life of Sir Douglas after all.

  “And do you know, under all of his dirt and his unkempt appearance he is a fine-looking man. He has a certain vulnerability which makes him very appealing.”

  Atticus grunted.

  “So why, Lucie, does he let himself remain like that? Why doesn’t he simply snap himself out of it?”

  Lucie frowned. “In the time I worked at the mental asylum I learned that it is very often just not possible to do that.”

  “But it’s an affliction of the mind,” Atticus protested. “I can train my mind as I please; I have complete control of my thoughts. Surely he must have complete control of his too?”

  “Atty, that is the whole point of it; he has not! You heard him describe his life story, how his father was so cruel and how he was deeply affected by his experiences in India. His mind is out of balance; it can’t be controlled by anyone. It is his moods and his illness that control him, not the other way about.”

  “I see,” Atticus said dubiously. He mentally pigeonholed Lucie’s explanation for deeper thought at a later date.

  “Ah, here is our cast of what I hope should be the murderer’s footprint. With luck the plaster of Paris should have hardened sufficiently for us to lift it if we’re very careful.

  “So, Lucie, let us see exactly what manner of boot he or she was wearing.”

  Atticus laid his bag carefully onto a large, flat stone which had long ago fallen from its place in the wall and been smothered by the thick grass. Then, stooping and prising his fingers around the cast, he gently eased it free of the sucking grip of the mud.

  “Good Lord,” he murmured, carefully plucking away at the wet earth that still clung to the surface. “How very curious.”

  Lucie knelt beside him. “It looks like the shell of an armadillo – an elongated armadillo.”

  Atticus Fox regarded it thoughtfully for several minutes, turning it over and over in his hands. It was indeed exactly as his wife had described it.

  “Good Lord,” he repeated softly.

  “It’s the boot of a knight isn’t it?” Lucie said.

  Atticus nodded. “I believe it is, yes – a knight’s sabaton. One of King Arthur’s sabatons, do you suppose?”

  Lucie looked at him, uncertain as to whether or not Atticus Fox could really be hinting at the existence of the preternatural.

  “It sounds utterly inconceivable I know,” Atticus continued, “But could Michael Britton be right? Could King Arthur really have risen again?”

  Lucie glanced at him uncertainly. “Surely not. You can’t really think that, can you?”

  Atticus grimaced. “Who knows? Perhaps someone has cut the garter and blown the bugle horn after all. I think it’s a very good question, Lucie, a very good question indeed, and one we might well give some thought to on our way to the Broomlee Lough…”

  His voice tailed away as he saw tiny explosions of realisation in his wife’s eyes. “What is it, Lucie? What’s wrong?”

  “‘Who drew the sword, the garter cut.’ That’s what the legend says, Atticus. The cloth I cut away from Sir Douglas’s throat – the tablet-woven silk – it was a garter. And if I remember correctly, one of its ends was frayed and worn. But I think – in fact I recall for certain now – the other had recently been cut.”

  Chapter 14

  The Broomlee Lough.

  When she spied the silver veil of water draped over the moorland, Lucie Fox rubbed her arms and shivered. Perhaps with a woman’s intuition for such things she could sense the ancient magic of what surely must be the enchanted lake of Arthurian romance. Had brave Sir Bedivere of the Sinews felt it too as centuries earlier he had hurled Excalibur across those same glistening waters? Perhaps he too had shivered as he watched the Lady of the Lake rise and pluck it from the air and carry it forever to the realm of the water-spirits.

  “There! That must be the spot where James found Sir Douglas.” Atticus’s voice shattered the spell.

  They stood regarding a little wooden chair set on the tip of a grassy outcrop that reached out into the lake. It was a folding chair, a knock-down army campaign chair with a leather seat hanging limp and empty from the frame. Fingers of green lichen were reaching up the legs, slowly reclaiming the sun-bleached rosewood for the moorlands.

  Lucie bustled ahead to examine it and it became immediately apparent that Atticus was entirely correct; this must have been where Sir Douglas Lowther had died.

  The sphagnum moss, which carpeted the outcrop, was spattered with what was undoubtedly dark, congealed blood. Sir Douglas, like Sir Hugh himself, had been a fighting man and clearly he had not given up his lifeblood easily. Here and there the mosses had been scuffed and kicked up into bloody tendrils and there was not a stain that had not been smeared and trodden by struggling boots.

  Atticus stooped to pick up a battered, silver hip flask from the edge of the lapping waters. Its mirror polish was dulled by a thick film of dew but there was definitely something engraved into the metal beneath. Wiping his gloved thumb across he revealed the initials DEL and a familiar coat of arms beneath with a device of six round annulets; arms that had proved so impotent in the face of whoever or whatever stalked these moors.

  Lucie glanced over at it and nodded. “Do you think there could be anything else – any other clues that might have fallen into the lake?” she asked.

  “There could be anything in there for all we know and unfortunately there is very little we can do about it.

  “James told me there’s reckoned to be a treasure in there,” Atticus added after a moment, “but it has a magician’s enchantment on it.”

  “Is there really?” Lucie, bloody turf forgotten for a moment, came to stand by him.

  “So the legends say,” Atticus replied. “The enchantment is that the treasure can only be reclaimed by a seventh generation blacksmith with a chain he himself forged. He must bring two twin horses, two twin oxen and two twin lads to help him; seven souls in all.

  “Everything around here seems to be shrouded in mystery and magic.”

  He shrugged.

  “I doubt anything has been thrown in there deliberately though.” He glanced towards the bleakly empty chair and its leather seat polished smooth by decades of use. It seemed to be waiting for a master who would now never come. “Whoever did this and whoever killed Samson Elliott wasn’t interested in covering their tracks.”

  The big clock over the carria
ge house at Shields Tower surprised them rather; it was still very early by the time they passed underneath it to pick up their bicycles from the adjoining stables. Atticus had left them propped against the dusty planks of an unoccupied horse stall and some wag, likely they were told Albert Bradley the puckish head groom, had hung a nose-bag full of oats from the handlebars of each. But that was before James had brought Sir Douglas’s mutilated corpse back from the lakeside and the humour had long ago run sour.

  They had somehow contrived to miss the police Superintendant on the vastness of the moors. He had been and he had gone, so they took their bicycles and coasted down the steep, narrow lanes of the valley side into the village of Bardon Mill. It was easy riding and they very soon found themselves back in the welcome normality of the bustling little railway station. There they left their bicycles with the stationmaster, deftly evading his scandalised questions and caught the Newcastle train the few miles down the valley to the busy manufacturing and market town of Hexham.

  Chapter 15

  When they stepped down from the comfort of their railway carriage onto the broad platform at Hexham station, the first thing that clawed at their senses was the pervasive, pungent stench of the town’s tanneries. Hexham, Atticus suddenly recalled, was renowned for its glove and hat-making industries.

  Lucie held her perfumed pocket handkerchief to her nose as Atticus went to tap on the shoulder of one of the platform porters and politely ask for directions to the town’s police station.

  “It’s very easy,” he announced when he returned. “We need to walk into the town towards the Abbey and find the Hall Gate. The police station is opposite the Old Gaol there.”

  The busy lane leading into the town bordered a large and verdant orchard, and it would have been a pleasant enough walk except for the steady, westerly breeze which carried the acrid fumes from the myriad mill and manufactory chimneys into their throats. But then the orchard all too soon gave way to rows of stinking slums and hovels and they quickly found themselves continually switching their attention between the quaint, stone architecture and tantalising glimpses of St Wilfrid’s great abbey beyond and the piles of rotting rubbish and excrement that littered the streets.

  At last, they were pointed into the ancient Hall Gate and found themselves in front of a neat stone building with dark blue window-shutters and a large blue-glass lantern above the door marked ‘Police.’ Atticus pushed open the door, a bell tinkled overhead and a harassed-looking sergeant glanced up with obvious irritation from a sheaf of papers fanned across his desk like a hand of cards. His expression of annoyance dissolved instantly as he caught sight of Lucie and he stood smartly to dutiful and smiling attention. He said, “Good morning, madam, good morning, sir.”

  Atticus smiled back cordially and politely offered their calling card. Lucie had reminded him more than once on the train and again as they walked through the town how important it was to keep police officers of all ranks as allies rather than enemies.

  “A very good morning to you, Sergeant,” he said. “We are Mr and Mrs Atticus Fox of Harrogate and I believe that we are expected.”

  The sergeant’s smile faltered just a little as he examined their calling card and his warm Northumbrian accent became a degree cooler and more officious as he said: “Very good, Mr Fox, the detective superintendent has just got back. Follow me please,” and led them through a battered door to the rear of the station.

  They clattered noisily up a cramped flight of bare wooden stairs and stopped on the landing where the sergeant paused to button his collar up tight. He steeled himself and knocked smartly on a door marked, ‘Detective Superintendent Thos. Robson.’

  After a brief pause, a gruff, muffled voice barked, “Yes, what is it?” and the sergeant twisted the brass door-knob and stepped inside. Atticus caught the words ‘private,’ ‘commissioned,’ and ‘Fox,’ and stepped forward to join the sergeant in the room.

  Detective Superintendent Thomas Robson stood as he caught sight of Atticus and circled his broad, cluttered bureau with his dinner plate of a hand outstretched. His gaze shifted onto Lucie as she followed in her husband’s wake and he bowed briefly and politely to her before offering the two mismatched, wooden chairs without cushions in front of his desk.

  He waited until Lucie and Atticus were seated before slumping wearily into his own. His chair creaked sharply as it caught him.

  “It has already been a long day for the both of us, Mr and Mrs Fox. How can the Hexham Constabulary be of assistance to you?”

  Atticus already had Lucie’s agreement for him to speak directly.

  “You might be aware, Superintendent Robson, that Sir Hugh Lowther has engaged us to conduct a parallel investigation to your own into the recent death on his estate. That investigation will now naturally extend to include his father’s unfortunate demise yesterday.”

  Robson was silent for a few moments as he meticulously aligned the side of a heavily-doodled blotting pad with the edge of his desk.

  “I am Detective Superintendent, and if you will pardon me, I will be perfectly candid with you both. Yes, I am well aware of the reason you are both in Northumberland. However, unlike Colonel Lowther, I do not believe that you can bring one atom of assistance to the case – or cases if you prefer. Rather, I suspect that at best, you will only serve to get in the way of our own proper investigations.”

  The joints of his chair creaked again as he leaned forward, defiantly across his desk. “And frankly it does nothing at all to help the public’s confidence in its police force if wealthy local landowners bring fancy privately commissioned investigators up from the south.”

  He glared at them as if to reinforce his point.

  “However, notwithstanding all of that,” he continued, a little more reasonably now, “Sir Hugh himself has personally requested that we cooperate fully with you. He is an influential man here in this part of Northumberland, and generally a good friend to the police, so on this occasion that is precisely what we shall do.”

  Atticus couldn’t help beaming. They could have asked for nothing more.

  “Then you have our word of honour that we will do our utmost not to obstruct or to compromise your own investigation in any way.”

  He hesitated.

  “May I ask who the investigating officer is please?”

  Robson sat back in his chair and regarded him shrewdly.

  “I am the investigating officer in both cases, Fox. This isn’t Harrogate. Here at Hexham, in addition to me, we have the sergeant, whom you have already met, and just four constables. We are, as you might imagine, somewhat undermanned.

  “I could have requested that a detective inspector be sent out from Newcastle or even Gateshead, I suppose, but because of the very serious nature of the case and especially because Sir Hugh’s own father is now a victim, I have decided to oversee the inquiry personally.”

  Atticus tested the water further. “Very wise. So may we ask what your conclusions are so far?”

  “You may ask of course, Fox, and I will freely admit in return that we are quite baffled at this stage, although our enquiries are of course continuing. We know that it isn’t King Arthur, and we suspect it isn’t Jack the Ripper either, but beyond that…” He spread his enormous hands in a gesture of bafflement. “Now, Sir Hugh asked if you could speak to the coroner about an autopsy and whether Mrs Fox could see the corpse at first hand.”

  “May I?” Lucie asked, “It is always preferable to reading reports.”

  Robson regarded them for several moments as he considered the request. “Actually, you’re in luck,” he replied eventually. “A local doctor has been asked to carry out autopsies on both Samson Elliott and Sir Douglas Lowther. He’s to begin later today and he has agreed that you both may observe.”

  He smiled.

  “I’ll warn you though, Elliott’s body in particular is in quite a poor condition and it has already begun, in spite of being in the chill of the morgue, to… decompose.”

  Ch
apter 16

  Detective Superintendent Thomas Robson duly delegated a constable to escort the Foxes to the basement morgue of the Hexham Infirmary, where Sir Douglas’s corpse was to join that of Samson Elliott’s on adjacent, porcelain slabs. Fate after all, pays no heed to rank or office. Lucie in particular had been to many such places and, like the others, it was silent and eerie and reeked of the all-pervasive stenches of formalin and death.

  Atticus kept his eyes fixed firmly on the black-and-white tiles of the floor as he followed his wife into the post-mortem examination room. Once inside, he settled himself next to a small writing desk and determinedly faced the little drawers full of writing materials as he waited for the examination to begin. He could feel the chill of the place creeping into his skin but at the same time it seemed hot and airless. Robson had been entirely correct about the condition of Elliott’s body and the rank fetor emanating from it twisted his guts.

  He breathed deeply on it and said, “I think I shall leave the actual observations to you, Lucie. You have the medical background after all.”

  “Thank you, Atticus; that is very sensible.” Lucie’s voice carried a faint tone of amusement and she flashed a knowing smile at a young mortuary assistant standing nervously by the door. He blushed and grinned back.

  “Ah, Mr and Mrs Fox, I presume?” A small, shrewd-looking man with a balding head and pointed chin appeared in the doorway. He reminded Lucie all at once of an elderly pixie and she smiled at the sudden thought.

  They exchanged polite greetings and the man introduced himself as Dr Julian Hickson, the parish doctor for Bardon Mill and the surrounding villages.

  “I’m to do the necropsy on the deceased,” he explained. “As always, the hospital is a little short-handed so you are both most welcome to assist me if you wish.”

  Atticus politely declined but Dr Hickson and Lucie accepted heavy, rubber aprons from the assistant and stood like vultures at either side of the heavy, white porcelain that cradled Elliot’s corpse.