The Age of Exodus

by Gavin Scott

  “I hadn’t heard that before,” admitted Forrester. “But I sometimes wonder if Yahweh was himself originally one of those Sumerian gods, perhaps the personal household guardian of Abraham’s family that he decided to elevate above all the rest. Perhaps that was why he had to leave Ur: for heresy.”

  “Ever the iconoclast, Duncan,” said Glastonbury. “No, I prefer to think that our Creator chose to reveal himself to Abraham as he sat making those effigies, knowing he had found a man of sufficient strength to found a great religion; effectively of course, three great religions, for both Christianity and Islam emerged from the chrysalis of Judaism.”

  “Not that the Jews would regard Judaism as a mere chrysalis,” said Forrester.

  “Ah, the Jews,” said Glastonbury, with real sadness. “How those poor people have suffered.”

  “And go on suffering, of course,” said Forrester, “while governments make up their minds what to do about them.”

  “Did Mr. Bevin discuss that subject the other night? I gather his visit was quite a success.”

  “It was, and he didn’t. I think the main thing preoccupying him now is making sure we don’t find ourselves fighting another war, this time with the Russians.”

  “God forbid,” said Glastonbury. “We’ve all had enough of that, and no one more so than you. How are you, by the way?”

  His tone was casual, but as Forrester met those shrewd, kindly eyes, he knew that Glastonbury was aware of the same malaise that had led Ken Harrison to come up to the roof of the Lady Tower.

  “At a low ebb,” he said frankly.

  “I thought so,” said Glastonbury. “Would you care to tell me about it?” And to his surprise Forrester found that he did want to tell Glastonbury what had been going on since that night in the Salonikan taverna. When he had finished the vicar sat silent for a while, looking out of the window over the manicured lawns of the college, and the students strolling to and fro in the sunshine.

  “There is only one consolation I can offer you,” he said at last, “but it is an important one. You did what you felt was the right thing, disregarding the cost to yourself. Ultimately that will bring its own reward, if only in peace of mind.”

  “I’m not feeling any peace of mind now,” said Forrester.

  “No, I can see that,” said Glastonbury. “But let me assure you it will come. Good deeds bring their own recompense in God’s good time.” Forrester inclined his head in polite acknowledgement.

  “I hope you’re right,” he said, and smiled. “I notice you don’t urge me to speed up the process by attending divine service.”

  Glastonbury grinned. “It might help,” he said, “and I’m always glad of any increase in my congregation, but I’m afraid I simply can’t bring myself to proselytise. It would make me feel like a vacuum cleaner salesman.”

  “Souls cleansed with the latest methods,” said Forrester. “Might make a good sales pitch.”

  “But not for me,” said Glastonbury. “I’m not selling anything, you see, merely offering the product for free. Nevertheless, I do find the words of the Anglican prayer book enormously soothing, and it’s possible you may too.”

  “Even if I find the underlying theology very hard to believe?” said Forrester.

  “Especially if you find the underlying theology very hard to believe,” said Glastonbury. “Whatever our mental constructs, we all need to keep in touch with the numinous.”

  “There, my dear vicar,” said Forrester, “you and I are in entire agreement.”

  As he said these words he realised there was a figure hovering in the corridor beyond his still open door. It was Piggot, the college porter.

  “Very sorry to disturb you, Dr. Forrester,” he said, “but there’s been a telephone call for you, from London.”

  Forrester got up. “I’ll come down and take it,” he said, but Piggot shook his head.

  “I’m afraid they wouldn’t wait, sir, but they left a message asking you to call Scotland Yard.”

  “Scotland Yard?”

  “Yes, it seems they’d found the body of someone you know in the British Museum.” Forrester felt his stomach contract.

  “Did they give a name?” he asked.

  “Yes, they did, Dr. Forrester,” said Piggot. “They said the deceased is a Mr. Charles Templar.”

  * * *

  Forrester took a late morning train to London in a state of shock. His call to Scotland Yard had revealed that Templar’s wallet had been found near his body, containing a note with Forrester’s name and details. As a result, unsurprisingly, the police were anxious to interview him. He was asked to go straight to the British Museum and make himself known to a certain Detective Inspector Roy Bell.

  As he hurried to leave, his shoelace broke. He did not have a spare, so he put on his old army boots, which for some reason had not been returned with the rest of his uniform when he was demobbed. The boots were familiar, and well worn in, but their tread was heavy, and they weren’t ideal summer wear.

  As he walked from Tottenham Court Road station to the British Museum the boots rang loudly on the hot noonday pavement.

  The museum was closed when Forrester arrived and there was a policeman on duty outside the massive entrance doors. In the months since he had last seen the museum some progress had been made in restoring it from its wartime battering, but it was still distinctly rough around the edges, and there was scaffolding everywhere.

  Once inside Forrester was aware of an even deeper hush than normal: the public had been kept out and those members of the museum staff he saw seemed to be going about their business like people moving underwater. As a sergeant escorted him towards the Gallery of Near Eastern Antiquities Forrester felt his nerves tighten, and when they reached the gallery itself he found he had to force himself to keep breathing normally.

  The sight before him was a heart-stopping one. In the centre of the gallery were the massive statues of Rameses II and his accompanying ministers, gods, goddesses and sphinxes, together with the massive stone fist of the pharaoh that always made Forrester think of Shelley’s lines in “Ozymandias”. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

  But today even the drama of ancient Egypt was totally eclipsed by the bizarre scene in the Assyrian room.

  The two massive winged lions of Ashurnasirpal, each twenty feet high and twelve feet in length, guarded the entrance to the gallery. The lamassu had been carved for an Assyrian ruler in the ninth century before Christ and were said to embody the strength of lions, the fleetness of birds and the intelligence of men, while their horned helmets proclaimed them as gods. For decades they had gazed with awe-inspiring majesty over the visitors to the museum, bringing with them, by their sheer presence, the pomp and glory of Nineveh and Tyre. They had been moved out of the museum for safety during the war and were clearly in the process of being shifted back into position under their respective archways.

  “This is Dr. Forrester, sir,” said the sergeant, steering him towards a stocky man in a raincoat who appeared to be in charge; indeed, would probably have been in charge of any situation in which he found himself, so bristling was he with energy and purpose. He stuck his hand out and took Forrester’s in a firm grip.

  “Detective Inspector Roy Bell. Thank you for coming so soon. Watch that bloody ladder! You’ll have the whole thing over in a minute.” These last words, shouted out at a volume that would have done credit to a Whitechapel fruit-seller, were directed at the constables who were clambering on the scaffolding around the lamassu, attaching a stretcher to a rope and pulley.

  “I take it Templar’s body is up there,” said Forrester, more to extinguish any last vestige of hope than because he thought it could be anything other.

  “So we believe,” said Bell. “His wallet was on the floor, which was how we got onto you.”

  “May I ask how he was killed?”

  “You may, but we don’t know yet and even if we did I wouldn’t tell you. I’m not ruling anybody out as a suspect at this st
age.”

  “I know Templar reported the threats to his life to the Yard. Did he also tell you he’d been consulting me about them?”

  “Tell me what he told you,” said Bell, “and then what you told him.”

  “Now?”

  “Why not now? I can’t do anything useful until we’ve got the poor bugger down. Sergeant Morris will take notes.”

  So as the grim work went on around the lamassu, Forrester handed over the photographs Templar had given him and gave a succinct account of their dealings, at the end of which the detective shook his head in disbelief.

  “This seal,” said Bell. “What did it look like?”

  “It’s a small black cylinder of obsidian, about an inch long.”

  “Was it valuable?”

  “Not particularly. They’re quite common. Some of them are believed to have magical significance.”

  “And you’re suggesting somebody wanted it badly enough to lure him to the British Museum and kill him for it.”

  “Not at all. I’ve no idea why Templar came here.”

  “You don’t think he’d come here to give it to whoever had been sending him those messages?”

  “Would you come to the British Museum in the middle of the night to have a chat with somebody who’d been threatening your life?”

  “Fair point,” said Bell – and pounced. “But how do you know it was the middle of the night?”

  “I don’t,” said Forrester. “But I’m assuming that the murderer didn’t chuck him up there when the place was full of visitors, or it would have been on the six o’clock news. So it must have been while the place was closed, and the middle of the night was a figure of speech. When did it happen?”

  “I don’t know yet, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you, would I? In fact, I’d very much like to know where you were last night?”

  “In my college, at first in Hall and then my rooms. The college porter can vouch for my not having left. His name’s Piggot – you already have the number.” Bell turned to the sergeant.

  “Check that, would you?” he said.

  “Is there any sign of forced entry?” said Forrester as the sergeant hurried away.

  “Not that we’ve found. It was all locked up like the Bank of England till the staff opened it this morning.”

  “So somebody had a key.”

  “I had a key,” said a thin, piping voice, “as did the deputy keeper.” Forrester recognised the speaker, a slight bald man with a fringe of white hair, as Horace Darlington, the keeper of Near Eastern Antiquities.

  “And are both keys still with you and your deputy, Dr. Darlington?” said Bell. Darlington held out his hand: the keys lay in his palm. “Then how could either the killer or the victim get in here?”

  “Perhaps they came with the visitors yesterday and hid while the museum was locked up,” said Darlington impatiently.

  “You mean the victim hung around voluntarily until there was a convenient moment for the killer to strike?” said Bell.

  Darlington frowned, as if offended by being challenged. “I agree it seems unlikely,” he said dismissively.

  “Unless it was this Sumerian demon he was terrified of,” said the detective. Darlington’s face darkened.

  “I must object to this talk of the supernatural. The British Museum is a place of science, not some sort of ghost train. I’m surprised at you, Inspector, even considering such nonsense.”

  “It was a throwaway remark, sir,” said Bell. “But it would help if you could give me any suggestions as to how the victim got into such a strange position.”

  “He must have been thrown up there,” said Darlington, as if the answer was obvious.

  “Not by an ordinary mortal,” said a grey-haired man in a rumpled suit, joining them.

  “Ah, Dr. Cronin, glad you could get here,” said Bell. He turned to Darlington. “The best forensic man the Yard has.”

  The police doctor nodded sagely towards the top of the lamassu. “As I say, it would take a being of almost superhuman strength to throw a man that high,” he said.

  “Not you too, Doctor,” said Darlington. “Please.”

  Cronin shrugged and turned to the detective.

  “When can I have a look at him?”

  “As soon as we’ve got him down. We’re taking our time because we’re trying not to do any damage.”

  “Any more damage,” said Darlington pettishly.

  “I’m assuming that the gallery was already in some disarray when the body was found,” said Forrester. “Because of the evacuation.” Most of the greatest treasures of the museum had been dispersed across the country during the war, the Elgin Marbles hidden in a disused tunnel at the Aldwych Underground Station, other precious artefacts taken to distant locations like mineshafts in Welsh mountains – precautions which had proved all too justified when the museum was hit by incendiary bombs at the height of the Blitz.

  “Of course,” said Darlington. “Restoring everything is a huge task, but we were making good progress, until this. Has the poor man’s wife been told what’s happened?”

  “We’ve been leaving messages for her all over the place,” said Bell, “but she seems to have been off for a drive in the country.”

  “It’s Angela Shearer, isn’t it?” said Forrester.

  Bell groaned. “Don’t remind me,” he said.

  “You’ve got something against the acting profession?”

  “Not in itself,” said Bell, “but with Angela Shearer involved the headline writers are going to have a field day.”

  “Hey up,” said a voice from the top of the winged lion. “Lower away.” And with infinite care the policeman at the top of the ladder slid the stretcher holding the body of Charles Templar off the top of the monument. The ropes went taut as they took the weight. Steadied by several hands, the stretcher was lowered to the ground, and as it settled onto the marble floor, the body was visible for all to see.

  There was blood coming out of the corner of Charles Templar’s mouth, but that was not what drew their attention.

  What drew their attention was the fact that his chest looked as if it had been crushed in a massive vice.

  “Good God,” said Bell, under his breath. But his reaction was eclipsed by that of the latest arrival in the gallery, who, on seeing the body, let out a scream that would have filled an auditorium.

  As Forrester turned towards the sound he found himself staring at a woman whose white, horrified face was still heart-stoppingly beautiful.

  “Oh, Christ,” hissed Bell. “Who let her in here?”

  Then the woman began to topple over and Forrester caught her just before she hit the floor.

  “Don’t tell me this is his wife?” he said.

  “It most certainly is,” said Bell. “Who the hell was on the door?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to a constable. “Get her out of here. Get her back home. Call the Yard and ask for a policewoman.” But before the constable could reply the sergeant hurried into the room.

  “You need to get to the Yard straightaway, sir,” he said. “It’s a General Alert: everybody back to Whitehall.”

  “What the hell is going on?” demanded Bell. Forrester saw the sergeant’s tongue run over dry lips before he replied.

  “It’s the Foreign Secretary, sir: Mr. Bevin. He’s been assassinated.”

  5

  ARTHUR AND ANGELA

  Half an hour later a police car had dropped Angela Shearer off with Forrester at her flat in Drayton Gardens, largely because there had been no one else to look after her.

  “I’ll send a policewoman round,” Bell had said, “but don’t hold your breath. Call me if there’s a problem.”

  Forrester extracted the keys from the actress’s handbag, helped her through the front door, and together they took the lift to her flat. All the time she said nothing, staring straight ahead in a state of shock, leaning heavily on him as if she would collapse the minute he let go.

  The flat was light, air
y and elegantly furnished, and to Forrester’s relief, when he had sat the woman down on the couch, he saw it had a relatively well-stocked drinks cabinet. He poured a generous tumbler full of brandy and returned to the couch, where he got as much of the liquor into her as he could. To his relief the brandy seemed to revive her, and then, as the immediate shock passed and the reality hit her, she began to sob, great racking gulps so powerful it seemed they would break her apart. She buried her face in Forrester’s chest and he let her stay there, murmuring vague words of comfort. Finally she stopped weeping, wiped her face, sat up and looked at him curiously.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but who are you?”

  Forrester explained, and at the mention of her husband Angela began to weep again, but this time more gently, as if the wave of grief that had overwhelmed her moments before was receding into some distant sea. Finally she was able to speak again.

  “He was supposed to pick me up at the theatre,” she said, “but he never did. He loved coming to get me after the shows, you know – and now he never will again.”

  “What did you do when he didn’t turn up?” said Forrester.

  There was a momentary panic in Angela’s eyes, and then she shrugged. “There was a party down in Henley afterwards, I went on to that.”

  “Did you leave a note for him to let him know?”

  “I must have done. I’m sure I did.”

  “Did you ever send him notes here, telling him not to come and pick you up for some reason or other?”

  “Sometimes,” said Angela. “Does it matter?”

  “It may not,” said Forrester. “I was just trying to work out how it was he came to be at the British Museum in the first place.”

  Angela reached up to her tear-stained face. “Would you fetch me my handbag please?” and when Forrester did she opened it, used a handkerchief to wipe away the tears and then took out a compact and began to repair the damage to her make-up. When she looked at Forrester again, although her eyes were still red, her voice was steady.