by Ellis Peters
It was a rapid displacement of air behind him, rather than a sound, that suddenly raised the short hairs on his neck, and caused him to swing round on his heel, too late to save himself. He caught a chaotic glimpse of a looming shape and a raised arm, a violent shifting of shadows and deeper shadows. Then the contours of earth and the complexities of starlight whirled and dissolved about him, as the stone that should have struck him squarely at the base of the skull crashed obliquely against his temple. An arm took him about the thighs and heaved him from the ground; and in some remaining corner of consciousness he knew what was happening to him, and could not utter a sound or lift a finger to fend it off.
He fell, cold, dank air rushing upwards past his face for what seemed an age, and dropped heavily upon some uneven and loosely shifting stuff that rolled at the impact, and bore him helplessly with it.
The breath was knocked out of him, but he never let go of that last glimmer of consciousness. Something rebounded from the wall of the shaft above him, with a heavy thud and a faint ring of metal, and scraped the opposite wall. The light, the only light, was the faint circle of sky now beginning to glow almost with the radiance of day by contrast with this incredible, dead blackness where he was. In the confused panic of shock he prised himself upwards to run, and struck his head sickeningly against an arched ceiling. All over his body the delayed protests of pain began, outraged and insistent. They helped him, too. They made him aware that he was alive, and acutely aware of other things in the same instant: that he was down the shaft of the laconicum, that the wooden cover had been removed in advance to facilitate his disposal, and that the second object tipped down after him must be his suitcase.
He put his head down in his arms for a moment, feeling horribly sick; and before he had gathered his damaged faculties, the thump and reverberation of falling earth and stones began in the shaft, and disturbed dust silted down over him acridly, choking him. He dragged himself frantically forward as stones began to fall about his legs, and holding by the rough bricks of the floor, found the solid wall ahead of him, and groped left-handed along it into the mouth of an open flue.
The rain of stones went on, heavier fragments now, broken masses from the very masonry of Aurae Phiala, or more likely the rim of the laconicum itself, hurled down to lodge awkwardly in the loose rubble, and pile up until they began to climb the walls.
Then he knew that someone was deliberately filling in the shaft. For a long time there followed a staccato rattle of loose brick and tile, and after that there was already so much matter between him and the outer air that the continuing softer fall of earth over all made only a slight, dull sound, receding until he could hardly distinguish it.
The circle of starlight was quenched. Nothing broke the solid perfection of the dark. He was buried alive in the hypocaust, ten feet beneath the innocent green surface of Aurae Phiala.
CHAPTER TEN
« ^ »
For a moment he lay flattened over his folded arms, and let himself sag into a self-pitying fury of bruises and concussion. It was more endurable when he closed his eyes; the darkness was no darker, and infinitely more acceptable, as though he had created it, and could again disperse it. And after a few minutes his mind began to work again inside his aching head, with particular, indignant energy. Because somebody had done a thorough job on getting rid of him—somebody? Paviour! Who else?—and circumstances and his own carelessness had played into the enemy’s hands. His departure was already accounted for, nobody was going to be starting a hue and cry after him. His suitcase, his clothes, his camera, everything that might have afforded a clue to his whereabouts, lay here under the earth with him. All except the car; and since whoever had followed him and struck him down had brought the suitcase to dispose of along with the body, it didn’t need much guessing to decide what was now happening to the Aston Martin. A mobile clue that can be removed from the scene of the crime at seventy miles an hour is no problem. He’d known many a car vanish utterly inside a new paint job and forged plates, within a few hours. By the time someone, somewhere, grew uneasy about his non-appearance, he would be dead. He was meant to be dead already. Only that one lucky movement had saved him.
A movement made a shade too slowly and a fraction of a second too late to show him anything more than a looming shadow, a man-shaped cloud toppling upon him, and a descending arm, before the night exploded in his face. The shadow never had a face. But who but Paviour knew how beautifully his tracks were already covered? Who else had just engineered his elimination from the scene, taking advantage of Lesley’s sickness, perhaps even sending her after him deliberately, to ease him out of Aurae Phiala without trace? It couldn’t be anyone else!
Or could it? There were two of them, he reminded himself, one to bait the trap for me, and one to spring it. Supposing they—whoever they were—had been out in the night on their own furtive occasions, and had to freeze into cover within earshot of that scarifying interview? If they had wanted to get rid of him, and hardly dared to take the risk earlier, what an opportunity!
If he kept his senses, if he let his memory do its own work, there ought to be some detail, even in so brief a glimpse, that would resume recognisable identity. In time he would know his murderer. But time was all too limited unless he gave all his mind to his first and most desperate duty, which was to survive. For after all, he thought savagely, maybe I have got one advantage he doesn’t know about: I’m alive! Let’s see if there’s any other asset around. Yes, I’ve still got a watch with a luminous dial, one little bright eye in all this dark, and it’s still going. There may not be any day or night, but there’ll still be hours. For God’s sake, don’t forget to wind it! And there’s the suitcase. If I can find it. If it isn’t buried ten feet deep under all that lumber. But no, it hit the wall and rebounded, and slid down this side. It’s not far. What is there in there that might be useful? There’s a pocket torch, though it won’t run for long unless I’m sparing with it. And leather gloves. I’ve got no eyes now but my fingers, and they don’t see much in gloves, but I can carry the things, and if I have to dig…
That brought him to the real point; for there was no sense in studying how to help himself until he had a possibility in mind. And there was not the slightest possibility of digging his way vertically upwards through that settling mass of earth and stones in the shaft. Try it, if you want to know how peppercorns feel in a peppermill! No way out there. And no way out anywhere else…
But there was, of course! There was some seven feet of flue laid open to daylight at the far end of this hypocaust, down by the river. Even the inner end of that was blocked by rubble. Not completely, though. There was room at the top for a cat to wriggle through; and the barrier might be thin, would certainly be loose, since the roof still held up, and no great weight had fallen upon it to pack it hard.
His mind was clearing, he could actually think. With his eyes closed he could even draw himself a diagram of the caldarium, and he had seen for himself, in the one flue they had excavated, how the grid ran, with true Roman regularity.
Consider the landward perimeter, one of the shorter sides of the rectangle, as its base. Then the laconicum is located in the bottom left-hand corner, and that’s where I am. And the open flue is very close to the top left-hand corner, the length of the hypocaust away, but on my side. He thought of the huge extent of the caldarium on top of him, and felt sick. My God, it might as well be a hundred miles! Better get moving, Hambro, and just hope, because there isn’t for ever, and there isn’t all that much air down here, and what there is isn’t too good.
Careful, though, don’t be in too big a hurry to move until you’re sure which way you’re going, he reminded himself urgently. And he began to think his way back, with crazily methodical deliberation, to his fall. He had come from the road, towards the river, following the bronze spark; and though he had tried to turn at the last moment, his impression was that in falling he had still been facing fairly directly towards the same point, and had been
hoisted over in that direction. When stones began to fall after him he had not turned, simply clawed his way forward until he encountered the wall of the flue, and turned left into its tenuous shelter. Therefore he was now facing towards the left-hand boundary of the rectangle, and no great distance from it. His best line was to crawl ahead until this flue terminated in the blank boundary-wall, then turn right along it, and keep straight ahead, and he would be on the right course for the distant corner where the flue was laid open. If the air held out. If he found the brick passages still intact throughout, or at least passable. If the final barrier—supposing he ever survived to reach it!—didn’t prove so thick that he would die miserably, digging his way through it with his finger-nails.
All right, that was settled. Better die trying than just lie here and rot. So before he moved off, he had now to edge his way back a few yards, without turning, for fear of losing that tenuous sense of direction, and feel gingerly among the rubble for his suitcase.
Movement hurt, but goaded instead of discouraging him. The sudden small, hurtling body that went skittering over his feet and away along the route he favoured startled but braced him. The rats got in and out somewhere—probably in a dozen places—and if he could find even a rat-sized hole on starlight he would find a way of enlarging it somehow to let his own body out. If there was a hole there would be air, and he was not going to starve for days, at least.
He was beginning to be aware of the minor horrors that up to now had been obliterated in the single immense horror of being buried alive: the chill, the closeness and earthy heaviness of the air, its graveyard odour, the oppression of the low ceiling over his head, and the soft, settled dirt of centuries cold and thick under his hands, so fine that he sank to the wrist in it in every slight depression where it had silted more thickly, and so filthy that every touch was loathsome, though not so disgusting as the foul drapings of old cobwebs that plastered his head and shoulders from the roof.
His left hand groped among stones and soil, disturbing fresh, rustling falls, but he found the corner of the leather case, and patiently worked it clear. The lock had burst open, clothes spilled from it. He found the torch, small and inadequate but better than nothing, and snapped it on for a second to be sure it still worked. Better conserve that. As long as progress was possible along the outermost flue he could do without light. It took him longer to find the gloves, but he did it finally, and thrust them into his pocket. Now forward, and careful at any offered turning. Far better not risk the interior of the maze. Once reach the outside wall, and all he had to do was keep his left hand on it until he reached the far end. If… My God, he thought, feeling the cold sweat run down his lips and into his mouth, so many ifs!
He had moved forward only a couple of feet, crawling carefully on hands and knees, when he set his left hand upon something smooth and marble-cold, and feeling over its surface with cautious finger-tips, traced in stupefaction the features of a rigid face, and above the forehead rough, moulded bands, and a shallow, battlemented coronal. He sat back on his heels and dug away silting soil that half-covered it, and his nails rang little, metallic sounds against its rim. It seemed to him then that he remembered the ring of metal as the stones began to fall.
He used the torch for the first time. A bronze face sprang startlingly out of the darkness, a hollow bronze head with chiselled, empty, hieratic features and elongated voids for eyes, with a frieze of fighting figures across its forehead, and curls of formal hair for ear-pieces. The visor had broken away at one hinge from the brow, the crown was dented in its fall, but he knew what he was holding, and even here, in this extremity, it filled him with the exultation of delirious discovery. The thing was a Roman ceremonial helmet, of the kind elaborated not for battle but for formal cavalry exercises, complete with face mask of chilling beauty. He knew of only one as perfect in existence. Moreover, this one had been carefully cleaned and polished, he thought even subjected to minor repairs, to make it wearable at need. He was holding in his hands the moonlit spark that had been used to lure him back to the laconicum and to his death, only half an hour ago, and had here been jettisoned and buried with him.
The Paviour household was at breakfast when Bill brought the news that his guest had departed overnight. Lesley read the note of explanation and apology with a still, displeased face, and looked up once, very briefly, at her husband, before crumpling the paper in her hand with a gesture which alone betrayed something more than consternation, a flash of hurt, highly personal anger. But she said nothing in reproach against the departed, Charlotte noticed; the anger was not with him, nor did she see any point in expressing it further.
‘Nothing I could do about it,’ said Bill, hoisting his shoulders in deprecation. ‘He was gone when I got back. I shouldn’t have thought he need have dashed off overnight, but he knows his markets, I suppose. And if you don’t work at it, you don’t keep your clients.’
‘Mr Hambro has a living to make, like all of us,’ said Paviour austerely, ‘and no doubt he knows his own business best. But it’s a pity he couldn’t stay longer. He was a very competent archaeologist, from what I saw of him.’
It was that use of the past tense that crystallised for Charlotte everything that she found out of character in this abrupt departure. She looked from face to face round the table, and all three of them were perfectly comprehensible, both on the surface level and beneath it. She could take the situation at its face value, flatly literal like that note lying beside Lesley’s plate, or she could delve beneath the upper layer and recall all yesterday’s curious emotional signals, and begin to put together quite a different picture. But in both versions she was negligible, without a part to play. And she was well aware that she had been playing a part, one which had now been written out by some alien hand, and that she was not negligible. He would not go away like this without word or hint to her. Word might, of course, be on its way by a devious route, and she could wait a little; but not long. She was uneasy, and convinced she had grounds for uneasiness. She simply did not believe in what she was witnessing.
She went out with Lesley to the site, but George Felse was not in attendance, only Detective-Sergeant Price superintended the enlargement of the cleared section. It was Sunday morning, and the sound of church bells came pealing with almost shocking clarity through moist, heavy air, and below a ceiling of cloud. It had rained all night since about one o’clock, and the water of the Comer, grown tamed and clearer during the last two days, ran turgid and brown once more. Fitful sunlight glanced across its surface like the thrust of a dagger. The edge of the path, glistening pallidly, already subsided into the river.
‘We always go to church for morning service,’ said Lesley, with perfect indifference, merely stating the routine of the day. ‘If you’d like to come with us, of course, do, we’d be glad. But I rather thought it might not be the right brand for you, if you know what I mean.’
Charlotte had been brought up in a household cheerfully immune from any sectarian limitations, and not at all addicted to churchgoing of any kind, but the opening offered her was too good to miss. She said the right things, and was tactfully left to her own devices about the house when the Paviour car drove away to Moulden church.
As soon as they were gone she rang up George Felse.
It worried her a little that he didn’t seem worried. He listened, he was interested, mildly surprised, but not disturbed at all.
‘Or were you expecting this?’ she challenged suspiciously.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t expecting it, and I don’t know the reason for it. I don’t take this sudden errand very seriously, any more than you do. But there could be a good reason for it, all the same. I think it quite probable that he may have gone off after some lead of his own, something he didn’t want to make public.’
‘He’d still have found a way of communicating with you,’ said Charlotte firmly, ‘or with me.’ She made no comment on the implications of what she was hearing, because time was too precious, and i
n any case she had had it in mind all along that Gus Hambro was not quite what he purported to be. Indeed, one of the first things she had ever consciously thought about him when he first accosted her was that a face and manner so candid, and eyes so jokingly innocent, marked him out as a man who needed watching. She didn’t attempt to explain or justify her last remark, either, George must take it or leave it. Judging by the brief and thoughtful pause, he took it.
‘There may well have been no time for that before he left. Say, for instance, that he was following somebody. In which case he’ll get in touch as soon as he can.’
‘And if he can,’ she said flatly.
This pause was still briefer. ‘All right,’ said George. ‘No waiting. I’ll be over there later on, I’ve got things to do first. But for public consumption his going is accepted as offered. And in the meantime you can do two things for me. How is it you’re calling from the house?’
‘There’s no one here but me. They’ve gone to church.’
‘Good! Then first, go and tell Detective-Sergeant Price what you’ve told me, and what I’ve said. And second—what happened to this note? Is it destroyed?’
‘No, I’m sure Lesley just crumpled it up and left it on the table. It’s probably been thrown out with the crumbs.’
‘Find it if you can, and hang on to it. Would you know his handwriting?’
‘I’ve never even seen it,’ she said, surprised at the realisation, ‘except a weird scribble on a label tied round the neck of a plastic sack.’
‘Then get the note and hold it for me. I’ll be over before they come out of church.’
Charlotte hung up, and went to turn out the contents of the blue pedal bin in the kitchen, and there was the loosely-crumpled sheet of Bill’s graph paper ready to her hand. Quite certainly nobody was attempting to get rid of the evidence; nor had she really any doubt now that it was Gus who had written this mysterious farewell. Which still left the problem of why.