The Empty House

by Michael Gilbert

  The Austin turned again, this time through an open gate in a wire-mesh fence, and Peter saw that they had arrived.

  The living quarters consisted of three caravans, parked in a neat row. There was a large hut of the sort you could buy in sections and put up in five minutes with a spanner and a bit of luck, and a barn which had clearly been on the spot when the diggers arrived. Behind the caravans was an Army-style marquee, and behind the marquee a stove was smoking cheerfully.

  “You’re well set up here,” said Peter.

  “There is no premium in being unnecessarily uncomfortable,” said the Professor. He led the way into the hut. There was a trestle table, with neat piles of files on it. One wall was taken up with a plan and a cross-section of the dig.

  The Professor said, “This will give you a rough idea of what we are doing. We obtained access through the kindness of the Exeter Archaeological Society. It is the known site of a Roman villa with a small village settlement. The owner of the villa was probably a magistrate. His dependents and slaves were housed in the village. It is unfortunate that we have not been permitted to open the whole site. The owner of the western end—” he demonstrated on the map— “is apparently opposed to any form of investigation. I am unable to tell you why. It is thought locally that he may have fallen into one of the trial excavations when the site was first explored.”

  He smiled, and Peter smiled back cautiously. Sometimes he found it difficult to decide whether the Professor was joking or not.

  “However, we are opening up the portion of the site which is available to us, east of that red line on the plan, and we have made some interesting discoveries. If you look at the sectional drawing, you will see that we have cut through the perimeter wall which no doubt acted as protection to the village, and into the fosse which was dug when the wall was built. Ditches are always worth investigation. Then as now, people were apt to throw unwanted artifacts into ditches. I will get one of my young men to show you. Ah, here he is. Stephen, this is Mr. Manciple, whose name I mentioned to you yesterday.”

  A young man had come in quietly. He was wearing an open-necked shirt and shorts, was about four inches shorter than Peter but a lot broader, and looked fit to tackle any item in the Olympic decathlon without further training.

  “I see that there are papers here which I shall have to attend to. Would you show Mr. Manciple round?”

  “I should be pleased to do so. Come with me, Mr. Manciple.”

  Although he enunciated the words correctly, he was clearly foreign. Peter wondered if Stephen might originally have been Stefan.

  “We will look first at the work in progress, yes?”

  “Fine,” said Peter.

  They followed a path which led around a shoulder of the hill to a place where there was a trench some twenty yards long and six feet wide in the chalky soil.

  “That must have taken a bit of digging,” said Peter.

  “We have an enthusiastic team,” said Stephen.

  Peter could hear cheerful voices some way away on the far side of the mound.

  “They are commencing a trench at right angles to this one. When we have finished, we shall have divided the area into four sections. This is known as the cruciform method of excavation. We then remove the soil carefully – using trowels, not spades – from each section in turn, starting at the centre and moving outward. If you will follow me, I will show you.”

  Peter stepped forward to look, and felt himself slipping. A muscular hand grasped him by the arm and pulled him back.

  “It is better to remain on the duckboards,” said Stephen. “The ground is still very slippery.” He glanced down at his wristwatch.

  “I am afraid I’m keeping you from your work,” said Peter.

  “Not at all. But I think we have seen all that is of interest here. We will return and I will show you some of the results of our labours.”

  The barn had been fitted up as a showroom. Overhead lighting had been installed, and a line of shelves put in. On the shelves was a variety of different objects, each with a numbered card beside it. There was pottery, from small fragments up to nearly complete bowls and dishes. They were all of the same orange colour, and on the larger pieces Peter could make out designs in relief. The one he was looking at showed a lion which seemed to be chewing off a man’s head while a second man, armed with an axe, attacked it from the rear. A name in the top corner possibly identified the artist.

  As well as the pottery, which formed the bulk of the exhibits, there were a number of flint arrowheads and some curious square stones with a hole in each corner.

  “What on earth could they have been?” said Peter.

  Stephen consulted a numbered list which he was holding. He read out, “They were wrist guards used by archers. There would be thongs threaded through the holes which would attach them to the forearm.”

  Peter could think of no intelligent comment to make. He moved back toward the door, reflecting that it was very difficult to go on being interested in something about which one knew absolutely nothing.

  Beside the door, in the lefthand wall, was a smaller opening which had probably led to an inner storeroom of the sort where a French farmer would have kept his wine casks. It had been fitted with a stout door, and Peter wondered what treasures were kept in it. On a bench by the door were arranged trowels, shovels, and sieves, all clean and all arranged with the neatness which characterised the whole outfit. He picked up one of the trowels idly and put it down again. As he left the hut, he saw Stephen rearrange it so that it was exactly in line with the other trowels.

  The Professor emerged from the office and waved a dismissive hand at Stephen. “You have seen it all. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s most impressive,” said Peter. “I had no idea of the amount of organisation involved.”

  “Archaeology today is business. It is no longer a matter of enthusiastic amateurs digging at random. You have seen the finds we have made so far? They have attracted much interest. Hardly a day passes but we have people coming in. Usually, I try to show them round myself.”

  “It’s very public-spirited of you.”

  As he bucketed down the lane in the Savoia, something was nagging him. It worried him so much that when he reached the macadam road he stopped the car and sat for a moment making a systematic effort to locate the trouble. It was the same instinct which had drawn his attention to a minor item in the accounts of the Palgrave Marina Company, and he expended a like degree of effort in identifying it.

  It was nothing to do with the excavation itself or the objects which had been extracted from it. It was – yes, that was right – it was the trowel he had picked up. It had a strong wooden handle, a metal tang, and a pointed blade. The tang was attached to the blade, as he had seen when he had turned it over, by three metal rivets.

  He was going to have to do some telephoning.

  He studied the map. The road he was on was a secondary one which would take him out onto the Dulverton-Corfley road and so into Exeter. As he was putting the map away, he spotted a name: Watersmeet Farm. A very minor road was marked, leading to it and to nothing much else. Peter thought he might have a quick look at the place where Dr. Wolfe had done his fishing. Ten minutes later he was beginning to wonder if he had been wise. The road had deteriorated into a cart track. The Savoia rode the ruts gallantly, like a big ship in a cross sea. The moor stretched on either side, bare of fence or hedge, green and seductive. When he stopped the last rise, he found he was looking down onto a shallow basin which held the headwaters of the River Culme.

  The farm buildings slept in the sun. When Peter knocked on the door, a dog started barking. Footsteps came shuffling up the passage, and the door was opened by a very old woman. Peter said, “I understand you have some fishing to let.”

  The old woman blinked up at him. Her mouth opened slowly. She said, “You’re very tall.”

  “Six foot five,” said Peter.

  “My name’s Horridge.”

&
nbsp; “I was asking about the fishing.”

  “Dan is my boy. He’s mowing just now. When the sun comes out, you’ve got to take advantage, haven’t you?”

  Peter smiled. The old lady smiled back, revealing a single tooth, lone survivor of the long campaign of life. She waved one hand to indicate a track which led down through meadows to the river.

  Dan Horridge was driving a tractor towing a gang-mower. He stopped when he saw Peter. “Saw your car,” he said. “You’ll have been talking to Mother. I expect you had some trouble there, didn’t you?” He smiled, too. They seemed friendly people. “She’s stone deaf, but she won’t admit it.”

  “I’m afraid it’s a long shot,” said Peter, “but I’m staying at Bridgetown, and Mr. Brewer mentioned that you had some fishing here.”

  “Dave Brewer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I do and I don’t, if you follow me. I have a stretch of water here, but I’d let it to that poor gentleman who went over the cliff. I expect you heard about it, didn’t you?”In fifteen leisurely minutes Peter heard a lot about Dr. Wolfe.

  “He was a very clever gentleman, so I understand. But you’d never have guessed it, not to talk to him. When the river wasn’t right for fishing, on account of there being too much water in it or too little, why, he’d come right into our kitchen and talk to us by the hour. Anything you mentioned, he’d have something to say about it. Mother took to him at once. So did our old dog, Blackie. He’s a suspicious brute, for the most part. Of course, you need a guard dog in a place like this. But he made friends with Dr. Wolfe at once. He used to talk to him, and Blackie seemed to understand what he was saying. That’s what made it so funny.”

  Mr. Horridge stopped to spit politely over the far side of the tractor.

  “Funny?” said Peter.

  “Odd. Mind you, I’m not superstitious myself. But there’s no denying it was odd. The night it happened – last Wednesday, that was – he couldn’t settle down at all. Then he started barking. I went and had a look outside, but there wasn’t nothing to be seen, so I came in and gave him a piece of my mind, but I could see he was upset about something. Afterward, when I heard about what had happened to Dr. Wolfe, well, I did wonder. They say dogs can feel things that human beings can’t. Do you think he might have sensed what had happened?”

  “What time did he start this barking?”

  “What time? Why, it would have been about four o’clock in the morning. Just before it got light.”

  “How far would you say you were from Rackthorn Point?”

  “By road, or coming across the moor?”

  “Can you come straight across?”

  “Easy enough. All you’ve got to do is stick to the riverbank and follow it up. How far, you were asking. It might be twelve miles or maybe a bit more. Say fifteen if you didn’t rightly know the shortcuts.”

  “Yes,” said Peter. “I see.”

  He thought that Mr. Horridge, who was no fool, was beginning to cotton on, too.

  9

  “Coincidences,” said Roland Highsmith, “are forbidden in fiction, but happen quite frequently in real life, particularly in our profession. I had a client who came in not long ago and asked me, ‘What happens if my wife and I die at the same time?’ I had to explain to him that, in the law, two people couldn’t die at the same time. And then, what do you think?”

  “Airplane crash?” suggested Peter.

  “As a matter of fact, no. He killed his wife and took his own life.”

  “I’m not sure, sir, that I should call that a coincidence.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” said Mr. Highsmith. He considered the point. “You think he may have been meaning to do it all along. I’m afraid your profession may be turning you into a cynic.” Roland Highsmith was spherical rather than fat. A lot of his weight was spread around his hips, giving him the low centre of gravity invaluable to a racquets player or a boxer. At forty he was beginning to go thin on top, but looked both shrewd and cheerful – qualities very necessary to someone running a one-man solicitor’s practice.

  His desk had been placed so that he could see, over a line of intervening roofs, the tall tower of Exeter Cathedral. He was staring at it now, as though he derived comfort from its square and stony strength.

  “The case of Alex Wolfe was different,” he said. “You might, I suppose, call it a sort of coincidence, but it didn’t start out that way. He had read too many accounts of airplanes going down into the sea or into some remote part of the Arabian desert and not being found for years or perhaps not at all. That was the sort of contingency he was guarding against and was prepared to pay an extra premium to avoid.”

  “Did he fly much in those parts?”

  “In the early years, when he was at the university and afterward, he learned to fly, and flew a lot. He had at least one narrow escape when the plane he was in, a Piper Cub, missed the landing ground at Muscat in a sandstorm and then lost its way. Mercifully, it came down on the foreshore and not in the sea.”

  “Recently, I gather, he took most of his holidays by car, in Europe.”

  “They started in Europe. Where they finished up was a mystery. He was a good driver, and enjoyed driving for its own sake. He could also navigate and handle a small boat.”

  “Then the whole world was his parish,” said Peter. “He sounds a remarkable sort of man.”

  “I wouldn’t quarrel with that assessment,” said Mr. Highsmith. “With good eyesight, sound nerves, and a first-class mind, he could apply himself to acquiring any technique which attracted him. When we were at Cambridge together, I taught him to play chess. It took him exactly three months to move right out of my class.”

  “I suppose you knew him better than most people.”

  “I think perhaps I did.”

  “Then can you suggest how a man with sound nerves and good eyesight could have driven his car accidentally over the top of a cliff?”

  There was a moment of silence. Peter could hear three typewriters being belted, two of them in synchronisation, one in counterpoint.

  Mr. Highsmith said, “Blackout?”

  “It’s been suggested, but do you really believe it?”

  “Can you think of any more likely explanation?”

  “Yes,” said Peter, “I can.”

  “And what is that?”

  All three typewriters stopped together, as if they, too, were waiting for his answer.

  Peter said, “I don’t think Dr. Wolfe went over Rackthorn Point at all. I think he manhandled his car over the cliff.”

  “Singlehanded?”

  “It wouldn’t be too difficult. Once the car is off the path, there’s quite a sharp downhill run to the cliff edge. He’d have broken the guard rail beforehand, of course.”

  “I see. And what do you suggest he did then?”

  “If I’m right about the first part, I know what he did next. He walked straight down into the wood. It was getting on for dusk. Possibly he stayed in the wood until it was quite dark. Then he walked fifteen miles across the moor, keeping the Culme stream at his right hand, and arrived at Watersmeet Farm at four o’clock in the morning. I imagine he spent the whole of that day tucked away in a barn, sleeping and eating the food he’d brought with him.”

  “I suppose someone saw him arrive at the farm?”

  “No one saw him arrive. But the dog at the farm, who was an old friend of his, heard him and tried to tell the farmer about it.”

  “A difficult witness to produce in court.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Can you suggest any reason why Dr. Wolfe should have pursued this—this extraordinary course?”

  “Yes. I think I can guess that, too. He’d been preparing to get out for some time. I understand that he kept a spare kit permanently in the back of his car. What gave him the actual signal to do so was when one of his personal guards was killed.”

  “A hit-and-run accident, it was assumed.”

  “I think Dr. Wolfe may have
seen it in a different light. The work he was doing was beginning to make him a fairly obvious target for attack.”

  “For attack by whom?”

  “By people who didn’t approve of the work he was doing. There must have been plenty of them. Particularly when you remember that he once advocated the complete removal of the state of Israel.”

  Mr. Highsmith said, “That was a monstrous attack. A piece of unscrupulous propaganda. Anyone who troubled to read that comment in the context of the article as a whole must have realised that it was no more than a pedantic joke.” For the first time in their talk he seemed to be both angry and personally involved.

  “Maybe the people who might have been on the receiving end didn’t see it that way.”

  “All right . . .” Mr. Highsmith was still angry. “Let’s get on with your story, shall we?”

  “There isn’t a great deal more to it. A second night’s walk, rather an easier one, would have brought him to one of the stations on the main London-Exeter line. By taking an early train from there, he could have been anywhere in England by that evening. Or out of it.”

  “After two nights’ tramping and a day in a barn? The stations between Exeter and Tiverton Junction are not large or busy. Surely someone would have reported such an odd and unkempt sort of passenger.”

  Peter said, “You knew Alex Wolfe well?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why should you imagine that he would be unkempt? On the contrary, he would have been freshly shaved, his hair would be neatly brushed, he would be wearing an inconspicuous raincoat, possibly carrying a rolled umbrella in one hand and a briefcase in the other.”

  “A briefcase?”

  “I’m not sure about the umbrella. But a briefcase, certainly.”

  “So?” said Mr. Highsmith. “What then?”