by Jessica Mann
There must once have been pleasant lawns at the back of this now desolate house, planted with specimen trees, fragrant with box hedges and flowers, sloping gently to a stream. It was all grazing land now, with the odd tree still standing. Another folly had been erected where the stream broadened into a small lake. There was a stone bridge, Chinese-style, curving over the water, and a pathway to a tiny temple with a greenish roof.
The little monument consisted of a circle of pillars around a marble statue, about three-quarters life size, of a goddess, naked except for some tactful draperies, poised on one foot with the other raised behind her. In one hand she held a small bow, on her back a quiver of arrows: Diana, the huntress, or Artemis. Tamara recalled the words Artemis von Horn had written: In the shared care of the huntress and her sister.
Kim Rice, the Prince of Horn, emerged from the shadow of the domed roof. Tamara drew back behind a broken wall and watched him through her powerful miniature binoculars.
The statue stood on a pedestal made of stone, with bronze plates inset on its four sides. Kim bent to a bag that was lying on the steps and took out a rolled toolkit. With one instrument he poked at the rivets that fastened the plates to the plinth, then he took a different tool, with a larger blade, and began to probe the cracks between the metal and the stone. Two of the plaques fitted too tightly for the wedge to enter; the third allowed him to ease it in, deeper and deeper, until he was able to take a hammer and go round the outline of the metal with gentle taps on the implement’s handle, and lift the bronze plate away. He set it on the ground, and took a torch from his toolkit.
Tamara replaced the binoculars in her bag, and walked across the pasture towards him. He was kneeling, peering into the cavity. He took a couple of things out of it without much care, and put them on the ground behind him, a china doll, and a yellow box. When Tamara was close enough she saw that it was made of bone, with a picture of the Great Exhibition of 1851 incised on it.
‘Hello, Kim,’ she said.
Kim Rice stood up and whirled round in a smooth movement.
‘Did you follow me here?’
‘Follow you, Kim? Of course not. But aren’t you pleased to see me?’ She stepped closer to him, wetting her lips, reaching for him. He was wearing a blue padded anorak, and his teeth gleamed against his pale brown skin. He looks like a ski instructor, she thought – desirable, available, and faithless.
He embraced her ardently. She thought, he doesn’t trust me either.
‘What are you doing here, Tamara?’
‘My job. I told you that I work for the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments.’
‘Is this one of your monuments?’
‘Of course. It’s very important. Stockwell is an excellent example of its period. And these follies, of course, we are always anxious to preserve.’
‘What a pity for me. I was hoping to buy this statue,’ he said plausibly. ‘That’s why I am examining it so closely.’
‘Is that what you came here for, Kim?’
‘No, it’s a diversion. I came down to see if I could trace the history of the picture you saw with me. It came from that peculiar looking place you can see on the skyline. I hoped that if I asked around a bit . . . But I was distracted by this. Do you think I might be able to get the whole temple dismantled?’
‘That might not be easy. Have you found anything in there?’
‘It seems to have been a kids’ hiding place. Nothing but toys.’
‘May I look?’
She took his torch, and crouched to peer inside the dark cavity. As he had said, it was a child’s hiding place. Still inside remained some dolls’ teacups and a pile of varied shells. Kim had already pocketed, with a swift movement that Tamara might well not have seen, a small oilcloth packet. There was no treasure.
Now that Kim was standing under the shadow of the roof, Tamara could not see his face, only a dim blur, and the powerful shape of his body.
This was what she had seen that day last week, when she had gone into Margot Ellice’s room and found her struggling with a tall man whose face was concealed behind a stocking-mask.
Kim held out his hand for the torch. There was still a bandage on his wrist, from the wound Tamara had inflicted on him that day.
Was he looking for the treasure, having learnt from Margot Ellice’s research that it might exist still in England? Had he stolen the papers, or destroyed them, to make sure that nobody else would have that knowledge? Where would I look now, if I were Kim, Tamara wondered, twining herself closely to him, accepting his caresses. For a moment she feared that her treacherous body would respond; but all her delight was simulated. She moved her hands artfully under his jacket. He turned up at Jeremy Ellice’s that evening, she thought, to trace Margot; Grandpapa’s ladylike housekeeper must have told him where her predecessor was – or the hospital, perhaps. And he went back the next day. He killed Margot and destroyed the papers. But why did he ask me to meet him again?
They drew a little apart. ‘It’s so cold here. Let’s go back to the cars.’ They walked closely together.
He saw that I had read Margot’s manuscript, Tamara thought. He wanted to find out whether I knew any more than there was in the first part of it.
He held his arm around her shoulders, walking close at her side. ‘I thought I’d try to find any old friends of the people who owned that picture,’ he said. ‘Somebody might still know where they got it.’
‘That’s a good idea.’
‘But I didn’t have any luck. Nobody knows anything. So I’m going back to London. We shall look forward to being in your flat together again, mmm?’ Standing beside his car, they kissed like Hollywood film stars. When Tamara opened her eyes, she saw that his were wandering. She redoubled her efforts. When she got into her own car, and followed the red one that Kim had hired down the drive, the oilskin packet he had found in the care of Artemis Bessemer’s divine namesake was in her own pocket. Kim winked his headlights and turned southwards across the moor. Tamara tooted on her horn, and turned towards the nearest village.
Tamara had been taught to pick pockets by an Egyptian, at her postgraduate seminary in London. He told his class that he had been able to whisk wallets from pockets before he could speak. It had been an amusing lesson. Strong men, who delighted in shooting and hand-to-hand combat, grew fumble fingered and embarrassed when instructed to go out into the streets and return with three credit cards. They did not think it quite nice, unlike learning to kill and wound. Tamara was the star pupil. She brought Sayid the trophy of an invitation card for an investiture at Buckingham Palace, but insisted on returning it, anonymously, by post. Sayid was very disappointed. He had hoped to use it himself.
Tamara parked in a lay-by to examine this haul. She unfastened the twine that was wrapped around the oilcloth, and peeled back the layers of waterproof covering. Safer than Clementine’s trunks at Windsor, safer than her own little house with Philip Lambert, Artemis would have thought her childhood hiding place. She had used it for the legal proof of her son’s rights. There were two sheets of stiff paper: the certificate of her marriage with Joachim von Horn, and the birth certificate of their son, written in the old fashioned German Gothic script. Tamara made out Artemis’s name, and Joachim’s, and that of Heinrich Joachim Sigismund Bolko Frederick.
There was no way of knowing whether Philip Lambert ever told Henry who he really was and to what his mother had believed he was entitled. Here, untouched since he was a small child, was the evidence of his claim. It could surely represent no threat to the present Prince of Horn. But Tamara slotted the certificates carefully between the pages of her road map of the British Isles, and replaced the book in the side pocket of her car.
Chapter Eighteen
During their childhood at Stockwell, Artemis and Clementine Bessemer would seldom have entered the village and never have been allowed inside any of the houses, except perhaps the parsonage. It was a ‘Rest Home for Pensioners’ now.
Two of the shops
in the village were closed for the winter, one a Craft Centre, the other a Gift and Souvenir Shoppe. Between them and the General Store stood a small thatched chapel and a row of old cottages which would have been pitiful cob hovels in Artemis’s day, now all very spruce and painted in rainbow colours. The grey tower of the Church poked up between the stripped branches of a clump of dead elm trees.
Indira Patel, Licensed to Sell Wine and Spirits, was not a descendant of the hovel dwellers. She wore a sari, had a red spot between her eyebrows, and spoke with a Midlands accent. She was knitting something lacy in pale blue wool, and apologised for it.
‘It’s the Saturday Market in the town, you see, I want to get it finished in time.’ There was a poster advertising a Bring and Buy Stall in aid of the Peace Movement; others invited people to an Any Questions evening in the village hall, a Paper Mountain in the car park, a Jumble Sale at the Primary School, a Coffee Morning at ‘Tor View, by kind permission of Mr and Mrs Carwardine’, and a performance of Pygmalion at the Comprehensive School.
Mrs Patel knew exactly who would be able to tell Tamara about the Leslies. ‘You’re the second person to ask me that today. Gorgeous he was. An artist, I think, something to do with a painting. Anyway, Miss Christie will know everything. Friends from way back, she and Mrs Leslie were.’ She gave directions for finding Miss Christie’s house at Stockcross as though she had lived in the area all her life. Tamara bought some fruit, and as she was paying for it Jeremy Ellice, more shabby and shaggy than ever, hunched into a sheepskin coat worn shiny and patched with dirt, came into the shop.
He said to Tamara, ‘I saw your car outside. I have to talk to you. I was so upset – I mean, here you are, not expecting any trouble, planning your article for Antiquity – I feel responsible.’
‘Let’s get out of Mrs Patel’s way, shall we?’ It was snowing properly now, though it melted as it fell and a fierce wind numbed human nerves.
‘Sorry, it’s just I was so glad to find you. The thing is this, Tamara, I saw the policeman in charge of Margot’s case and it looks as though – it seems hardly credible – but they seem to think it wasn’t an accident. They actually think she might have been murdered!’
Tamara mimed astonishment.
‘Yes, they say that she was unconscious before the fire. They think that she was left there to breathe in the fumes on purpose. The pathologist . . .’
‘That’s horrid news for you, Jeremy, I am sorry. But why did it make you follow me all the way down here?’
‘It suddenly occurred to me that the only thing it could possibly have to do with was the treasure, and I thought of you looking round down here – I was worried. If whoever did it thought that Margot was the only one who knew anything about it, and then found out that you were on the trail too, you might be in danger yourself. Well, I couldn’t . . . I mean to say, I know how capable you are, but it wouldn’t . . .’
‘How sweet of you to worry about me.’
‘I tried to ring your flat but there was no answer. And then I guessed . . . it only took me three hours to get here. Such a relief to see your little car here.’
‘Get in, won’t you? It’s so cold.’ If Kim saw her here with Jeremy Ellice it would remove any lingering doubts he might have about her part in this affair.
‘Yes, and then you can look at this letter. It was forwarded from your grandfather’s flat.’
The envelope, addressed to Ms Margot Ellice, was superscribed ‘The University of Buriton’. The letter inside, from the head of the department of Modern History, Professor Dwerryhouse, began with the usual apologetic incantation about the delay in replying to Miss Ellice’s query.
However, I was glad to have the incentive to refresh my own memory about Philip Lambert, since he is a minor figure of some importance in the philosophical thought of the last century, and is of especial interest to me, as I am at present working on the allied subject of the French political thinkers of the second half of that era. As you rightly point out, little is known of Lambert’s personal life. The entry in the Dictionary of National Biography is brief indeed, and describes only his academic work. There are, however, one or two references to him in the published letters and memoirs of the period, from which I deduce that he was not a native-born Englishman, though I can find no evidence to suggest that he was a political refugee, nor any pointer to his country of origin. His works, as you know, are published in the English language, and in French. I think it likely that he was a member of that circle of political emigrés like Karl Marx himself, who settled in London, and I should perhaps suggest to you that it would be worth trying to find out whether there is some record of his having been a regular reader at the British Museum.
I have mentioned your query to my colleague, Dr Jacob, who is currently writing a history of Palestine in the pre-Mandate period. He tells me that he believes your Philip Lambert to be one of the Jewish philanthropists who collected money in Europe to purchase land in Palestine upon which impoverished Zionists might settle. In that case, since there may have been some association with the Baron de Rothschild, you might find the Rothschild archives a fruitful source of information. No doubt you have access to the various libraries specialising in Jewish affairs. I assume that you are also aware that Lambert’s published work shows him to have been an anti-monarchist egalitarian. You may not have come across an article published in the (rather obscure) Journal of Equality, of which only three issues appeared, in 1893 to 4. I enclose a photocopy of Lambert’s proposals for a political system without titles or honours, which still reads very well today. Do let me know if there is anything else I can tell you, and meanwhile I wish you all success with your researches into this fascinating period . . .
‘How properly Margot was going about this work,’ Tamara said.
‘She had a teach-yourself book called How to do Research, I got in a sale somewhere.’
‘Good heavens,’ Tamara said faintly; it was a depressing but poignant thought.
‘What about your own research?’ Jeremy asked. ‘I take it you have been asking around about the treasure. When I heard you had come down here I guessed it must be what you were doing.’
Tamara found that Jeremy, weedy and incompetent as he looked, was impossible to dislodge. In the end she mentally shrugged her shoulders and took him with her to call upon Miss Christie.
*
‘I have lived her for nearly half a century you know,’ Miss Christie said. ‘Worked here, made a life here, though they still think of me as an incomer. But when you asked me about Clemmie Leslie it’s the old days that come to mind. The very old days, many years ago, not recent times at all. No, I have such a clear picture of the time before the war, when I first came here. I moved to Devon to be near to Clem; we had been friends since our Somerville days.’
Miss Christie was thin and busy. She went on with her work as she spoke, cutting shapes of cream coloured silk out of a bale of fabric, at a large polished table. She was making smocked nightdresses. ‘I am setting up a mail-order business, I expect a very steady turnover; women want handmade goods in natural materials. It is so important to keep busy once one has retired, and I’ve always believed in the value of handwork. I used to encourage my girls to make things; it was always difficult to make time in the curriculum, but it’s so important to combine academic and practical skills. I am afraid that we haven’t struck the right balance in modern education. When society begins to value the carpenter as highly as the banker . . . have you acquired manual skills, my dear?’
‘I am quite handy, yes. Archaeologists usually know how things ought to work, even if they can’t make them.’
Miss Christie nodded. ‘A very good training. I shall use it as an example in my next speech.’
Miss Christie had been the headmistress of a private girls’ school which had closed down very recently. ‘But I really admire what they are doing at our local comprehensive school,’ she said, her scissors twinkling in the beam of her spot light. ‘They have made me a g
overnor now. Of course, my own working life was spent in much easier circumstances, our girls were preselected for their will to co-operate. But once Clem had gone . . .’
‘Mrs Leslie was a teacher too?’
‘Yes, we always worked together. History was her subject. She used to help out part-time until the children were out of the way. And that took years as there was twelve years between them. Artemis wasn’t born until after Will Leslie came back in 1944.’
‘They live abroad, don’t they?’
‘Nigel runs a hotel in California, and Artemis went to a kibbutz in Israel. The young do such unexpected things. Clem would as soon have expected her daughter to become the Pope of Rome, as an orthodox Jew.’
‘Was Mrs Leslie a Roman Catholic?’
‘No, no, she was an atheist, but her background was Jewish. Not practising, that’s why Artemis surprised us so much.’
Tamara explained that it was Clem Leslie’s background about which she hoped to learn. ‘It’s because I’m trying to trace the history of one of their pictures.’
‘The Gainsborough, I suppose. It’s a Bessemer, of course. You knew that my friend Clem inherited the Folly, as well as her pictures, from her father, who had it from an old aunt called Lady Clementine Bessemer. None of that family left here now, alas.’ Miss Christie arranged her paper patterns onto another stretch of silk. ‘Just hand me that pin cushion, would you my dear? Yes, I knew Clem Lambert’s family – that was her maiden name – better than my own in some ways. I am afraid I outgrew my relations, they never could understand what made me want to go to college; all they wanted for me was to marry and have children and a comfortable home. Now the Lamberts, they were quite unconventional. They’d spent a good deal of time in Palestine, as it was called then, they were involved in purchasing land from the Turks for Jewish emigrés to live in, and collecting funds for them. Of course, by the time I met him old Henry Lambert was too old for the travelling any more, he’d settled down in London, but he often spoke about his work there, it was always so interesting. His son, that was Clem’s father, was killed in the first war. So many boys died in that war.’ Miss Christie’s voice remained steady, but her shears swerved into the material, and, tutting, she put them to one side and tore off the length of ruined cloth. ‘I really must concentrate, it’s such a waste otherwise. In any case, I am sure you didn’t want to hear all that. It’s the Bessemers you will have to study, to trace the pictures. They were all old Lady Clementine’s.’