Then he heard a footfall from the next gallery, then heard it again. A series of tiny taps followed, the sound of a pen top dotting on glass. Dryden slipped his feet forward noiselessly over the parquet flooring and moved towards the interconnecting doorway. The far room was dedicated to Anglo-Saxon finds in the area, principally the hill fort uncovered near Ely in the 1950s at Wardy Hill. Leaning over one of the display cabinets, her head almost touching the glass, was Ma Trunch.
‘Ma,’ said Dryden, surprised that she should jump guiltily at the sound of her own name.
Dryden peered into the cabinet with her. It contained some bronze items from an Anglo-Saxon burial in the north of the county.
‘Hobby?’ asked Dryden, remembering the metal-detector.
‘Not much else to do now the site is closed. The Crow didn’t help.’
She straightened up and blocked out quite a bit of light. Dryden couldn’t prevent himself from stepping back. The dog’s lead hung lifelessly at her side. She must have left Boudicca outside.
One of the slabs of meat which made up her face slid over another: ‘I can be interested like anybody else,’ she said. ‘I was a student once, you know.’
Dryden tried to imagine this but failed. ‘Cambridge?’ he said, playing the flattery card.
‘Oxford,’ she said, trumping him.
‘Find much?’
‘Yes. That’s mine,’ she said, pointing at a tiny gold pin mounted on a black card in a separate case. ‘Saxon tunic jewellery. Field over West Fen.’
‘Any news on the dogs?’ said Dryden.
‘It’s treasure trove, but I let the museum have it,’ she said, ignoring him.
‘The security firm guarding the archaeological site at California lost its three dogs two nights ago. I guess the police have been in touch?’ said Dryden, ignoring her now that it was his turn.
She looked at Dryden and he noticed the whites of her eyes were a mucky colour, like the old fridges at the dump.
‘Why’s that your business to mind?’ she said.
Dryden, intimidated, felt his Adam’s apple bobble.
Dr Mann reappeared with the keys to the annex and Ma Trunch melted away, an impressive feat given the terrain.
The annex, opened only for group visits or at weekends and in high summer, housed three large displays. The air was chilly, and a thin stratum of mist had seeped in through the louvred windows in the Nissen-hut’s roof. On one side stood a tableau of masons working on the cathedral roof, with gargoyles half finished, and stone being hauled using block and tackle. On the other wall an eel-catcher’s cottage had been built, complete with glowing fireplace and a smoking shed. And in the centre stood the PoW hut, the number 14 stencilled in black paint on the façade. The figure of a British squaddie in 1940s kit stood guard at one corner, a misshapen stuffed Alsatian at his side.
‘It’s a bit of a shock to see it,’ said Dryden. ‘You just don’t think…’
‘That the British had PoW camps too? Oh, yes. What else could they do with prisoners – there were more than 400,000 Germans taken, let alone the Italians. Something like three hundred camps in the UK.’
‘What do the kids think?’
‘It’s a popular exhibit, Mr Dryden. Possibly for the wrong reasons. They just think its like Colditz or The Great Escape. I’m not sure it sinks in that it happened here – in their own town. We used to do the occasional tour out to California, when the huts were still standing. Visiting German tourists were very interested, you see. I suspect it helps redress the balance of the mind: they too were victims.’ He smiled, but the hard edges of his face killed any warmth.
‘But nobody did escape, did they? From California.’
Dr Mann led the way into the hut. ‘That’s right. But more than four hundred Axis prisoners did get out of the camps around Britain and more than eighty were never accounted for. So escapes happened. Finding the tunnel is exciting – I’d like to get a short section moved here.’
Inside Hut 14 a dozen beds were lined on either side of a central aisle at the end of which stood a single pot-bellied stove, its flue rising through the roof. Beside each bed was a box side-table made from packing-case planks, and each pair of beds shared a roughly made wardrobe. On each table was an array of memorabilia: cut-throat razors, pictures, a lighter made from gunmetal, a gold chain with a locket, and some books – mostly bound in brown paper to stiffen the paperback covers.
Dryden picked up one of the books and smelt it: a wave of remembrance of stories past coming with the familiar odour of ageing paper.
He opened it. No linguist himself, he could still tell the difference between Italian and German.
‘Why Italian?’ He picked up one of the snapshots which showed a young man, proudly holding what looked like a new bicycle, on a crowded city pavement with the dome of the Vatican caught on the horizon.
‘They occupied the huts for three years – from 1941 to 1944. The Germans were there for only a year.’
‘But surely the Italians took their things with them when they moved out to the farms?’
‘No. No they didn’t. Well… It’s complicated.’
Dryden bristled, acutely aware when he was about to be patronized.
‘The authorities here on the Isle of Ely were concerned that there would be trouble if they told the prisoners they were being put permanently out to work. They were good workers in the fields, but they wanted to come back together at night. They were together at California, and there was a strong community spirit, I think – you only have to talk to those who stayed behind.
‘The train carrying the Germans turned up early – typical War Office cock-up. So the authorities decided to solve both problems in one move – they brought the Germans straight in and billeted the Italians straight out on the farms. They collected most things of value and the prisoners got it all – and new shaving kits, and other things, to sweeten the move. But a lot of stuff just stuck on the walls was left behind. It was a botched job, really – typical of war, I’m afraid, although most of the PoWs carried anything really valuable with them.’
Dryden tried to recall Mann’s academic field: history certainly, modern European perhaps.
‘So all this stuff was stored in the camp?’
‘Yes. The Germans collected the items here and stored them carefully for their eventual return. When they left they took all their personal effects. They were very neat.’
‘Did the two communities ever mix?’
‘No. There’s no record of that at all, although some of the Italians were drafted in to do menial work at the camp. As you can imagine, the Germans despised them for surrendering and for being, in their eyes, third-rate soldiers. The Germans were seen as ideologues, Nazis, and war criminals – a crude caricature but a view widely held.’
‘The tunnel – at the PoW camp. Do you think they dug it – the Germans? Or was it there when they were moved into the camp?’
Mann shrugged. ‘It would help to see it, I think – but so far, the site is still closed.’
‘They sent you the ID disc they found – the police?’
‘Yes.’ He took a folded pouch from his pocket, placed it on the palm of his hand and unfolded it to reveal the disc. ‘Very badly corroded I’m sad to say. Unreadable. But we have others here…’
He opened a cabinet and extracted an ID disc. It had been crudely engraved with a punch mark: FIELD WORKER 478.
‘Field worker?’
‘Yes. When they let the Italians out on the land they gave them these.’
‘Can you trace the number to a name?’
Dr Mann shook his head, replacing the disc with care in the museum cabinet.
‘Do you know Professor Valgimigli?’ asked Dryden.
‘Certainly. I taught him, Mr Dryden – at Cambridge. A fine student. He was here only last week, touring our modest museum. Which is, I think…’
‘Yes. Of course. The body found in the tunnel – well, the bones. It’s been suggested we might p
ut some items in the coffin – something which might be appropriate although we can’t be sure…’
‘Indeed. Your message made it clear so I took the liberty…’ On a deal table he had arranged items taken from the museum stores. Two medals – one Italian, one German, some ammunition, some furled flags and pennants, a tobacco tin, some playing dice, and an assortment of military buttons and buckles.
‘And these,’ said Mann. ‘We recovered these from the site.’ Some small gardening tools, handmade from broom handles and reworked metal. Mann packed them all carefully in a large Red Cross box, adding the cleaned ID disc with the deference of ceremony.
About to leave, Dryden had a sudden afterthought. ‘If the tunnel they found at the dig started in one of the huts – which is probable – where would the entrance have been, do you think?’
Mann surveyed the hut and a smile curled the corner of his thin lips. ‘Under the stove? Difficult, but ideal if you could keep the fire going twenty-four hours day – not many search parties would have gone to the trouble of trying to lift it red-hot. Under a bed? The shower block?’
‘Where was that?’
‘There were four. You can tell they are different – they were built with a special kind of porous brick to stop the damp. The dormitory huts are in concrete, and they had the stoves. There was no heating in the shower blocks.’
A vision of enforced school cross-country runs flashed before Dryden’s eyes and he shivered. ‘Thanks,’ he said, buttoning up his greatcoat and fishing a half-eaten sausage roll out of the folds of one pocket.
Dr Mann helped him carry the Red Cross box to the cab outside. He gave Dryden his card as he left: Dr S. V. Mann. Curator, East Cambridgeshire Museums. It was the home address that caught the reporter’s eye: Vintry House was a Georgian pile on the edge of the town, with fine views over the Black Fen, views recently enhanced by the demolition of the nearby PoW camp huts, separated from the house by a single copse of pine trees.
11
The sun was low in the late-afternoon sky and the mist beyond the city banished, leaving the light to shine across their path as they turned south on the zigzag route to Osmington Hall, the wartime scene of the burglary and murder Roger Stutton had recalled. The light made the freshly harvested peat-fields glimmer a marmalade orange; across them stretched the impossibly long shadows of the roadside poplars. The overarching sky relegated the landscape to a footnote. The sense of space was intoxicating and Dryden felt his mood lift. Humph hummed in tune with his socks as he watched seagulls in his rear-view mirror, trailing the cab like a trawler leaving port. Dryden thought of Dr Mann and the oppressive museum and kicked out his feet, annoyed by the lack of leg room in the rust-jammed passenger seat. He thought of the dead PoW, struggling forward in the nightmare of his escape, encased in clay. He looked up at the sky and drank in the space like an antidote.
Humph pushed his full weight on the accelerator as they passed the last outlying cottages of the town and sped into the wider fen, exploding into the sunshine like a bullet fired from inside the wall of mist they left behind. Dryden checked the map: ‘Head for Southery, then take the back road past the sugar beet factory, then turn back south towards the Lark.’
The PoW had been found with what looked like part of a burglars’ haul. Could he have been part of the gang that raided the house in 1944? But by that time the Italians were billeted out on the farms – so what was he doing in an escape tunnel under the old camp? If he could find any solid link between the body in the tunnel and the burglary it would give him a decent story for the Express. Friday afternoons were otherwise an ocean of lost time he needed to fill: The Crow published, the next paper days away, and a weekend beckoning unpunctuated by work, measured only by the listless ticking of clocks.
It was only 4.00pm when Humph swung the cab into the gravelled car park of the hall but the damp was already rising from the moat which surrounded the fortified Tudor house. Beyond the National Trust café and the herb garden – both deserted – a bridge spanned the water and entered the house under a portcullis reminiscent of a Cambridge college. A peacock strutted in the parterre, its screech echoing back from the surrounding woods. The inner courtyard was empty save for a few wooden benches, some potted trees and a sports car in lipstick red.
A National Trust volunteer appeared from a cubby hole in the gatehouse brandishing a clipboard.
‘The entrance is straight ahead,’ she said in an accent dipped in something posh. She had perfect white hair carved into a filigree helmet and appeared expertly dressed as Celia Johnson’s double from Brief Encounter. A blue enamel badge proclaimed her to be an ‘authorized guide’. Dryden cocked a thumb at the parked-up sports car, which radiated wealth like a diamond.
‘Family still live here?’
‘No, no. I’m afraid the family is gone. The late forties. Death duties, you understand.’
Dryden nodded as though this was a common problem in his own family.
‘The Trust bought it from the administrators of the estate; the family no longer has any formal connections with Osmington.’
‘Anyone left of the family – locally, I mean?’
‘Miss Hilgay.’
‘Miss Hilgay?’ Dryden wondered if he would have to repeat everything the woman said.
‘Yes. She’s the last of the family. She must be seventy by now – Ely, I think. A home, perhaps. She was the only child.’
‘The car?’ asked Dryden.
‘The car?’ she said, clearly vexed that she might have to repeat everything the young man said.
‘The sports car.’
‘Ah. Mr Tobias – from the National Gallery. Visits quarterly to check the collection. When the estate collapsed the pictures were sold but the Trust is allowed to show some of them here, with appropriate security of course.’
It took Dryden half an hour to find Mr Tobias. He trailed through rooms where the smell of beeswax polish was almost hallucinatory in its power, and past four-poster beds which reeked of mothballs. At the top of the house, in the roof space above the Great Hall and just below the exit to the battlements was the Long Gallery, with polished oak floorboards a foot wide and whitewashed walls displaying about twenty paintings in heavy gilt frames. Mr Tobias, Dryden presumed, was the man on a footladder working with a scalpel at the edge of a large, crowded canvas.
Mr Tobias wore an expensive suit, Dryden noted, which on a brief inspection was probably worth more than the pictures.
Dryden paced the gallery, laying his heel down first with a sharp click like a military boot. One wall appeared to be full of the paintings of one artist, scenes of Europe’s antiquities – from the Parthenon to Pisa, the Colosseum to the ruins of Pompeii, all depicted by moonlight. The opposite wall held a variety of work, but all, again, showed the moon, or were scenes by moonlight. Most exhibited a sickly Victorian sentimentality which brought on in Dryden an almost overwhelming desire to blow raspberries. He diverted this urge by squirrelling into his pockets and extracting a Cornish pasty, which he begun to nibble by the crust.
Mr Tobias worked on, oblivious to Dryden’s manic presence. The canvas receiving treatment was one of the moonlit antiquity series, this one a rather wobbly rendition of the Oracle at Delphi.
‘Moonlight,’ said Dryden.
Tobias turned, the spell of concentration broken.
‘Who was the collector?’ asked Dryden, his mouth full of potato and gristle.
Tobias jumped down, landing with surprising agility on the wooden floor, and began to wipe the scalpel clean of oil paint.
‘The Hilgay family – mainly Sir Robyn – collected between about 1880 and 1949. The war stopped the spending, I guess, and he died sometime soon after – but there were no further acquisitions.’
‘Philip Dryden,’ said Dryden, offering his hand.
‘John Tobias – National Gallery.’ The accent was neutral, without a trace of the art world twang Dryden had expected.
‘The gallery owns the pictures, I un
derstand,’ said Dryden. ‘How much are they worth?’
Tobias began to pack the scalpel away in an expensive black leather bag, and took his time annotating a moleskin notebook. ‘Today? Difficult to say. The collection was bought by an anonymous benefactor and presented to the gallery. The price was something in the region of £30,000 at that time – 1950.’
‘That doesn’t seem very much.’
‘The Pethers aren’t very sought after, I’m afraid.’
‘These?’ said Dryden, pointing to the moonlit European tourist spots.
‘Yes. I think they’re what started Sir Robyn off on the theme. The Moonlight Pethers. A whole family of artists – they knew they were on to a good thing and kept painting. There’s hundreds around – a good one by Samuel is worth £10,000 today – perhaps. They’re local – to Norfolk, anyway.’
‘There was a burglary during the war. Was it these paintings they took?’ asked Dryden.
‘Er, yes. Yes, I believe it was. You can see the damage here.’ Tobias slipped out a metal pointer from the black leather bag and tapped it on some blemishes on two of the Pethers. ‘Water damage. They stuffed them in a potato store, would you believe? They were recovered very quickly, within weeks, I think. They were kept above water level but you can see what the damp has done even in that short time.’
‘But no real harm done?’
‘Not to these. But one of the paintings was never returned. It’s still missing.’
Tobias stopped, reluctant to go on. Dryden nodded and took a closer look at one of the Pethers. ‘And what do we know about the missing painting?’ he said finally.
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