by Ellis Peters
‘I came to pick your brains, actually,’ said George, ‘over filling in the details of just two days. Your husband came home from choir practice on the Thursday evening, one week before his death, with the leaf of parchment I told you about. That we know. We also know that on Saturday evening he took it to Professor Joyce, and was confirmed in thinking that it might turn out to be something very important, even valuable. After that it seems likely he’d keep it under close guard, and I doubt if any outsider would have had a chance of getting near it, or learning anything about it. But during those two days he may have treated it rather more casually. On the face of it, it was a fake, and he’d know that. But he may not have known, until Evan Joyce got excited about it, that there was something genuine and potentially precious under the fake. I’d like to hunt up all those who may have got wind of his find. Some of his professional rivals have been going in and out pretty freely here, I take it.’
‘They certainly have,’ agreed Barbara with feeling. ‘These Little Nells watch one another like hawks, spy on one another on principle. All’s fair! And he encouraged them, of course, the risk was also his own opportunity. Part of my function was to bring them here and set them talking – prise information out of them if I could. No doubt they were doing as much for me. It wouldn’t take much to alert them, either. If he even looked excited or smug, they’d begin to probe. But those two days… let me think! I had a musical party here that Thursday evening, while he was at practice. He sometimes got more that way, by turning me loose on them in his absence, or he thought he did. Now I come to think of it, he did go straight through into the office with his music-case before coming in to join us, and he locked it away, too. I believe I even said something about how possessive he was looking, something about never knowing where treasure might turn up, even at choir practice. Good lord,’ she said, startled, ‘even that could have been enough to start a really keen one on the scent! Do you suppose it did?’
‘Who was present to hear it?’
‘I’m not sure I can remember them all. Mr Goddard was here, and he brought a Mr and Mrs Simmons who were staying with him, I’d never met them before. They’re nothing to do with antiques, though, as far as I know. Then there was that man who conducts for the Amateur Operatic Society, and Tom Clouston and his wife, they run the gallery in Comerbourne. But they’re more new and local things, paintings and sculpture and fabrics and pottery. And John Stubbs. I was having difficulty over getting rid of John at the time, though, so that needn’t mean much. He hasn’t been around since, probably doesn’t like the heat. And Colin, of course, he’s usually around. That’s the lot, I think. It was just a run of the mill party. Arthur joined us after he’d put his case away. He did look smug. But there was nothing said, of course. I wouldn’t think there was much given away that night. But you never know. Really you never know!’
‘And the next day, Friday?’
‘He was home all morning, and I don’t think there were any visitors. After lunch he had a date to play golf with Robert Macsen-Martel at Mottisham, to make up a foursome. I think the other two were Charles Goddard and Doctor Theobald, but you could confirm that with the club. I suppose if he was carrying this thing round with him, he might leave it in his locker, but if it was that precious he’d take care to turn the key on it.’
‘And the rest of Friday?’
‘He was home for tea, which doesn’t leave him time for many other contacts. And we had guests for dinner. Nothing to do with trade. He was collecting bits of county, you see, and this was a squireish night.’ She named the guests. They were antiques rather than antique-dealers, and feudal and distant rather than tribal elements from Middlehope. George shrugged them off resignedly.
‘And Saturday – Saturday isn’t so easy, because he left for Comerbourne after breakfast. The Clouston Gallery had a ceramics show, and he’d promised to look in there, and then he was going to a small exhibition at the Music Hall, Victorian jewellery, I think. He had lunch somewhere there, but I don’t know with whom. He was back before tea, and apparently that’s the evening he went to see Professor Joyce. Maybe he had an eye open for a possible safe confidant in town, but decided against it, and preferred to go to an academic here.’
‘So that’s about it. Somewhere along the way, I do believe, somebody got involved. All for a scrap of parchment.’
‘You really think that was why it happened?’ Barbara lifted her head and showed him a face more conscious of pain and worry than he was ever likely to see in Isobel Lavery. ‘Somebody killed him for a manuscript from the Middle Ages?’
‘Yes,’ said George, ‘that’s exactly what I think. There are other possibilities, but none of them explains why that membrane of parchment has vanished. And when and if we find it, I do believe we shall have found your husband’s murderer.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
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Five days!’ said Bunty thoughtfully, over the breakfast table on Tuesday morning. ‘Late to bring in the Yard – for which I’m sure you’re grateful – but you do seem to be up against a long slog, don’t you? After the almost invisible man. Nothing from any of the local garages on cars with one front wing damaged?’
‘Any amount of reports,’ said George, ‘all of which petered out on examination. Probably hardly any damage at all, if the truth be known, maybe a slight dent, nothing to be noticed, and he had plenty of time to get well away before we even got the call, let alone felt sure it wasn’t an accident.’
‘So you’re left with a list of all those dealers in close competition with Rainbow, especially the ones who were frequent visitors up there, plus all the other guests at his house that particular Thursday evening. Plus,’ she added doubtfully as an after-thought, ‘Evan Joyce, who just may have let his scholarly passion run away with him at the sight of treasure. Two days to fill in, in detail, for all those. Quite an order! So I suppose,’ she ended with a sigh, ‘I can expect you when I see you!’
‘Not even then!’ said George, and kissed her, and set off to begin a long day of patient leg-work at the Golf Club.
At about this same hour Bossie Jarvis, brushed and fed and fit, his school cap at the approved angle, erupted in the doorway of Sam’s study and solemnly reported himself off to catch the school bus down to Mottisham. By this time his grazes had faded to a quiet light-brown colour, and ceased to be glaringly noticeable. He was wearing his Sunday choir-boy look, so glossily clean that it was plain no dirt would adhere to him, so neat that the experienced adult, confronted with him, must instantly be haunted by suspicion of such virtue. His bulging school-bag was slung on one shoulder, and his glasses shone urbanely in the morning sun of what promised to be a fine day.
‘I’m going now, Dad!’ He had the doctor’s permission, and the sense to be just a degree more dutiful and amenable than usual, for reassurance to parents whose nonchalance hadn’t got him fooled for a moment. ‘Ginger and Bill are outside, we shall all be together.’ Don’t overdo it! One step too far, and they’d smell a rat.
‘Push off, then,’ said Sam briskly, aware that he, too, was playing a part, and skating over even thinner ice. ‘Just as long as you all come back together, too.’ Not much could happen on a school bus full of riotous youths, and in broad daylight. No coddling, they agreed firmly. One, he wouldn’t stand for it, and two, he’s smug enough already, deploy an army round him and he’ll be unbearable.
‘Oh, yes, well, we always do. But, Dad, a bunch of our class are staying later this afternoon and going round Mottisham Abbey with a party. All right if I go with them? We’re going to do a project on it.’ Magic word, terror of all parents whose schooldays occurred before projects were invented to take the place of hard graft. ‘We’ll all be coming back together, only on a later bus. Our passes are OK for any of them. I wouldn’t want to miss it.’
That, at any rate, was a safe line. Of all the schoolboys Sam had ever known, Bossie was the least likely to want to miss what others might think a deadly dull archaeological visit.
‘Oh?’ said Sam, turning to look at his son more narrowly. ‘Who’s going from here?’
‘Ginger, and Bill, and Jimmy, and Spuggy Price – all our bunch.’
From the new comprehensive school at Mottisham to the abbey was not ten minutes’ walk, and the escort appeared to be more than adequate. ‘All right,’ said Sam, ‘just behave yourselves and keep off the walls. Don’t spin it out too late, though, we’ve got a visitor coming tonight.’
At any other time Bossie would instantly have demanded to know who, out of the practical need to adjust his own engagements according to his liking or dislike of the guest. This time he was too intent upon his own single purpose to prolong the interview, once he had got the permission he wanted.
‘Right!’ he said buoyantly, ‘I’ll see you later, then.’ And forthwith departed rapidly. Not until much later did it occur to Sam to remember this unusual want of curiosity, and feel uneasy about it.
Mottisham Abbey, according to record, had been in a sad state of dilapidation, physically and morally, even before the king’s commissioners made an end of it, and for centuries it had passed almost unnoticed among the ancestral houses of England. Only the former abbot’s lodging and a few attached buildings remained in full preservation, turned into a private house after the expulsion of the few remaining monks. Even the church had been in such a poor state of repair that it had been pulled down to provide a quarry for the enlargement of the parish church, half a mile away, and for the private purposes of the Macsen-Martel who had acquired the property. Nobody had ever investigated the relics, or suggested that a dig might be rewarding, until the family, sagging under the burden of maintaining the place, offered it to the National Trust with what endowment they could provide to accompany it. The resulting consultations had brought in various experts, and turned up evidence that the ground-plan of the vanished establishment was remarkably complete at and below soil-level, and showed some unusual features well worth investigating further. Gangs of enthusiastic volunteers had been at work under Charles Goddard’s guidance ever since, and still were, laying bare with love the intricacies of a Benedictine house in decline. The property would end up administered jointly by the National Trust and the Department of the Environment, and after renovation they would hope to find a tenant for the house.
This brief introductory history Bossie Jarvis expounded to his henchmen, as they stood waiting to be marshalled into a conducted party, just within the entrance gate at the inner end of the drive.
‘You mean they’re working like this for nothing?’ demanded Jimmy Grocott incredulously, eyeing the distant excavations where the kitchens and offices had once been, where half a dozen students were industriously brushing away at half-revealed stonework, or measuring, or fixing mysterious tags into position.
‘Of course they are. They like it!’ Bossie would have liked it, too, though he would have preferred something that would make faster headway than a small brush. ‘Not those, of course!’ he added, nodding towards the overalled men who were erecting a steel scaffolding round the walls of a huge round building half-seen among the trees of the grounds, and crowned with a fine conical roof. ‘Those are professionals, they’d never let the public do the restoration work.’
‘What is that thing?’ Spuggy Price wanted to know.
‘The dove-cote. That’s famous. Maybe they’ll let us inside there. There’s holes in that lantern in the roof for the birds to get in and out, and all inside there’ll be nesting holes in the walls, for thousands of birds. They kept them for food.’
‘Not much meat on a dove,’ said Toffee Bill disparagingly. Food was his special subject.
The entire site was a hive of activity, both professional and amateur. At this stage the gardens had naturally suffered somewhat, since half the revelations for which the enthusiasts were digging were under rose-beds and shrubberies. A bewildering number of people were moving about purposefully, paying no attention to the mere sightseers. One conducted party had vanished into the house itself about ten minutes previously, presumably those still waiting would be launched on the same round with another guide as soon as the group ahead had progressed far enough to avoid confusion. Meantime, they looked about them curiously at all this incomprehensible activity, and were not particularly impressed.
‘I don’t see why the National Trust would want it,’ said Spuggy, always outspoken. ‘There’s nothing much here.’
‘They’re only just finding out what’s here, and they say it’s turning out more important than anybody thought.’ But Bossie was tolerant of those who did not share his thirst for knowledge, and appreciated their loyalty in assisting him regardless. ‘What does it matter, anyhow? You know what we’re here for.’
A few stray adults and a family had joined them by this time. A youngish, dark, sombre man who seemed to be in an official capacity here was looking out from the ticket office, to which he had just crossed from the house, and visibly counting them, and equally visibly frowning at the sight of a bunch of schoolboys at an age he did not trust. He eyed them coldly, said something probably derogatory over his shoulder, to the girl in the kiosk, and went away as abruptly as he had come.
‘I hope we don’t get him,’ said Spuggy, his hackles already rising. ‘You know what, I’ve seen that bloke somewhere before. Up our way. He’s been hanging round Mrs Rainbow, but I don’t think she’s keen.’
Their guide, however, when he emerged from the house and crossed the sweep of gravel to collect them, turned out to be a very different person, large, blond and friendly, in a polo-necked sweater and charcoal slacks, casual and reassuring. He had sharp, quirky features, and mobile eyebrows that acknowledged juvenile scrutiny with a tilt that was as good as a wink, and a philosophical grin. He had an air of finding his role as guide, though pleasant and even important, slightly funny. That didn’t put Spuggy Price off him at all, quite the contrary. Spuggy, though aware of their reason for being there, was also finding this funny, and if his guide felt the same, the whole round might be enlivened.
‘All right, let’s go!’ said the fair young man briskly, and led his sheep off across the gravel to the arched doorway of what had once been the abbot’s lodging. Fourteen in his party, nine of them children. Some of his volunteer colleagues would have blenched, he seemed to be stimulated.
The comparative gloom of the house closed over them, the huge, vaulted hall, the panelled drawing-room. The panelling had been scoured free of all accumulated varnishes, and gleamed pale and shimmering in fine oak, and the ceilings were renovated and beautiful. The guide talked just enough, and listened if other people talked, willing and glad to answer questions, even when the questions were silly, and very soon paying particular attention to Bossie’s questions, which were not silly.
‘You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you?’ he said appreciatively. ‘Yes, this is where the king, or any other noble guest, would have been entertained. This wasn’t one of the greater houses, but even here, in its heyday, the abbot may have had five hundred guests to dinner. If there was a king among them, the whole house would be given over to him. Of course, when it became a private house, however wealthy, those days were over. The rooms you see have almost all been adapted later. But not the hall.’
From the house he led them eastward through a wilderness of truncated flower-beds and scoured areas of excavation, towards what was now the stable block, or had been when the Macsen-Martels could still afford horses and carriages, and arrayed them along a slightly bumpy aisle of grass on the outer side of the stable-block’s northern wall.
‘Now you’re standing in what was once the nave of the abbey church. You can see it’s completely gone, at least above-ground. Not so much as the base of a pillar. It wasn’t one of the greater efforts, but all its stone was used for other purposes after the Dissolution. And you can see, if we’re in the nave of the church, that inside there, in the stable enclosure, that same square was once the abbey cloister. It usually adhered to the south
wall of the church, and so it did here. We’ll look at that from the inner side on the way back, for that’s one wall that’s practically untouched since the secularisation.’
Bossie was gazing with absorbed attention at that rough stone wall, under its roof of yellow-lichened tiles. Spuggy, on the other hand, was staring in the opposite direction, where, in the middle of what had certainly once been the cemetery of the brothers, two pick-ups were unloading more sections of scaffolding, and two folding metal ladders, and a lorry was tipping cement. There was a mixer turning busily in a corner, under what would once have been the north transept, and a thickset elder shovelling in sand. So much more interesting to Spuggy that he almost got left behind when the party moved on, over the site of the altar and through the gardens, to the dove-cote, where there was a pause to allow everybody to duck inside by the low doorway, and gape up at the vast expanse of wooden framework inside, and the tier after tier of nesting-alcoves.
Jimmy Grocott, whose father kept racing-pigeons, stared with glazing eyes, imagining the flock needed to people such a palace. The guide laughed goodhumouredly, and invited him to start counting, but he lost count before he was a third of the way up the walls. Even when Spuggy Price was discovered three tiers up, head and shoulders into one of the nesting-places, he was merely slapped amiably on the behind, and invited to get down before the warden spotted him. He slid down backwards, grinning, scouring the toes of his school shoes raw on the stonework. They had come to the conclusion that they were lucky in their guide. He seemed quite impressed with Bossie, by the way he kept drawing him out and inviting him to display his knowledge.
‘Now we’re coming to the edge of the grounds, and as you can see, we’ve uncovered the outline of a whole range of buildings, that actually stretch away beyond the hedge, under the lane and into the village. Probably the outlying barns and stores go halfway under this side of the housing estate. But these four rooms you see laid out here form a sort of hospital block. The monks’ infirmary – then that small apartment, which was the misericorde.’ He caught Bessie’s knowing eye, and grinned. ‘Go on, you tell ’em what the misericorde was.’