Time Enough to Die

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Her examination felt like an icy draft down his neck. “Yes, it is.”

  “Was it found in this area? Chester or Corcester, perhaps?”

  “I’d have to check my records.”

  “May I see it, please?”

  “I’d have to unlock the case. Are you interested in making a purchase? I’m asking one hundred pounds for it.”

  She was right about one thing. Gareth didn’t have a hundred pounds to spend on a bit of glass, no matter how old. “How often do you get new items for sale?”

  “Every so often.” Dunning looked back toward the other customers.

  “Perhaps you could ring me when more Roman artifacts arrive.”

  “Give my assistant your name and telephone number.” With a frosty smile not reflected in her eyes, Dunning dismissed Gareth as small game and returned to the trophy consumers who were fingering several twee ceramic figures.

  On to Plan B, Gareth told himself, and turned toward the rear of the shop. A girl no older than Ashley stood behind the counter. Her dark-rimmed eyes looked at Gareth with considerably more warmth than Dunning’s pale ones had done. She was dressed in a white blouse and black skirt, to which her slouch gave a raffish air. So this was Emma, then.

  He picked his way through the ceramic and crystal mine field to the counter, where he explained his interest in Roman artifacts, left his name and the number of his mobile, and added that he was stopping at the Green Dragon in Corcester.

  “Corcester?” she repeated. “I grew up there. It’s a proper dump, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, compared to London. I’m only there for the dig at the Roman ruins. I’m writing it up for the Times.”

  “London?” She smiled hungrily. “I’m right keen on the Romans and that lot.”

  “Super! When’s your lunch break? Could we do an interview?”

  “Twelve. Meet me on the lower level, by the staircase. Name’s Emma.”

  Rewarding her with the most charming smile he could muster, Gareth left the shop and went downstairs to wait out the twenty minutes until noon. Once again Matilda had been right. Emma was the weak link on Dunning’s side.

  The girl arrived ten minutes late, her dark hair freshly sleeked back, her brows penciled, her lipstick painted. “We’d better go somewhere outside the Arcade,” she announced. “There’s a Greek caff up the street, as cheap as you’re going to find in this neighborhood.”

  “Lovely,” Gareth said, falling into step beside her. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? In a photograph at the Green Dragon?”

  “Oh that, the May Queen and the Festival. Bit of a giggle for the tourists. Not the real thing, you know.”

  “The real thing?”

  “Yeh, the rites of spring from the old days. You know, orgies in the woods.” She elbowed him in the ribs and winked.

  “The lad in the snap with you,” Gareth persisted. “Is he someone special?”

  Emma’s smile displayed every tooth. “You’re a sly one, asking if I have a boyfriend. No, luv, Clive’s legged it right and proper, haven’t seen him in donkey’s years.”

  “A pretty girl like you must have lots of admirers.”

  “A few. No one actually in the saddle, though.”

  They hurried across the zebra crossing and gained the other side of the street. Gareth took advantage of the pause to change the topic. “Do you like working at The Antiquary’s Corner?”

  “It keeps me in tights and cosmetics, don’t it? And it’s real educational, too,” she added hastily.

  “You’re lucky to have found a good job.”

  “Lucky for me. Not for the girl who had it before me. She was murdered.”

  Gareth hoped his expression looked properly horrified. “Not the woman found up on Durslow Edge! Did you know her?”

  “Oh no, no, never clapped eyes on the woman.”

  No point, then, to asking Emma to speculate about Linda’s relationship with Dunning. “So you simply lucked into the job?”

  “Not quite. The Dunning and I have a mutual acquaintance, like. Old school chum of hers, put in a word for me.”

  “That wouldn’t be Della Reynolds, by any chance? She’s one of the people I interviewed.”

  “Yeh, Mrs. Adrian-bloody-Reynolds it was.” Emma’s grimace indicated distaste for one or the other of the Reynoldses. “Here we are.”

  It was a down at the heels restaurant on the ground floor of an old building. “Acropolis Cafe” read the letters on the window, “Constantine Veliotes, Proprietor.”

  Veliotes, Gareth repeated as he opened the door. Coincidence was Matilda’s province. . . . He spotted the photograph of Nick behind the till before he was quite in the door.

  They seated themselves cozily in a booth and scanned a flyspecked menu. The proprietor looked enough like a Nick devoured by time and circumstance that Gareth assumed he was the traveler’s father. But Constantine looked at Emma with dull eyes, registering no acquaintance.

  Gareth ordered lemon soup and a gyro sandwich. Emma requested the same, with an order of chips. When Constantine walked heavily into the kitchen, Gareth asked the girl, “Speaking of photographs, I’ve seen the bloke in that one hanging about Corcester. Do you know him?”

  Emma turned and looked. Her face crumpled in what Gareth could have sworn was genuine puzzlement. “I might have done, at one of the festivals, maybe. Looks like a film star, don’t he?”

  Gareth made no comment on Nick’s appearance. Clapper’s testimony—or at least the gossip about Emma and Nick he’d repeated—was looking more and more suspect. Gareth decided he’d better ask something about the Romans or he’d look suspect as well. “Tell me about the artifacts you sell.”

  “I don’t know why people want such tatty old things. The trout sold one of them glass bottles like you was looking at to Adrian Reynolds for five hundred quid! Nothing like a posh horse form to put you in the brass, eh?”

  “Fortuna Stud?” Gareth asked. “Oh yes, that’s a bit of all right. But you’re not so keen on Reynolds himself, are you?”

  “He’s a right bastard. Can’t see what Della wants with him.”

  “I’d wondered that myself,” Gareth told her in perfect honesty.

  Constantine appeared with their food. Gareth ate with good appetite, pleased he was finally making some progress on the case. So did Emma, darting predatory glances at him through her spiked lashes. He kept the conversation on an academic level, learning from her that Boudicca was one of them Roman queens and that Cornovium’s walls were once cannon emplacements.

  At last Emma eyed her watch, frowned, and applied more lipstick to her pouting lips. “The trout’ll give me a proper wigging if I’m not back on time. She goes on at me if I don’t leave on time, for that matter.”

  “She doesn’t like for you to work late?”

  “Oh, every now and again when I’m not finished with the packing. Most times she wants me gone as soon as the shop is closed. I think she has a boyfriend, if you can credit that.”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “Yeh. She tarts herself up with some posh perfume and unlocks the back door, don’t she? One morning I found a man’s coat in her office. A dried-up old stick like that, a boyfriend!”

  “You’ve not seen him, though?”

  “No. Not so sure I’d want to.”

  Gareth slipped out of the booth, Emma so close behind him he almost elbowed her in the eye. No use in asking her if Dunning was dealing in illegal antiquities or even keeping two sets of books. Emma was only a pawn. Although pawns had their uses. . . . Reminding himself that Emma had already moved him to King Four, Gareth paid for the meal and tried to strike up a conversation with Constantine. The man gazed blankly at him, defeated.

  Back at the Arcade, Emma paused at the foot of the staircase and leaned against Gareth’s chest. “My mates and I are having a rave-up Friday night,” she murmured. “The rites of spring, you know. Our party’s not nearly as starchy as the Festival in Corcester. Would you like to co
me along?”

  “Sounds right tempting,” Gareth said with a smile. “I might have to spend the weekend in London, though. I’ll ring you, shall I?”

  She scribbled a number on a scrap of paper from her bag, pressed it into Gareth’s hand, and raised her lips.

  Gritting his teeth and thinking of Scotland Yard, he kissed her. Her tongue seemed rough, like a cat’s, and he evaded any further intimacy. “Cheerio, Emma.”

  “Ta-ta,” she returned, and hurried up the stairs.

  Gareth scrubbed the lipstick off his mouth. Laying the murderer by the heels would justify the ugly red smudge, like blood, on his fingertips. Not to mention the parcel of lies he’d told over the last couple of weeks. . . . No, he thought sourly, his lies weren’t for Scotland Yard, or even necessarily for Linda Burkett. They were for his own ambition.

  Gareth went out to the car park, climbed into his car, and pulled his notebook and pen from his pocket.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Without Gareth’s matter-of-fact presence the morning’s work dragged. Matilda puttered about the Miller trench, helped Ashley measure and draw her hypocaust, and argued with Sweeney about whether Caterina’s inscription should be left in situ or dug out, stabilized, and taken to Manchester.

  “But my dear Matilda,” he concluded, “until the good people of Corcester bestir themselves to make a proper museum of the site, we must take all the important finds to the laboratory where they’ll be safe.”

  With an exasperated gesture she gave up. It was almost noon. High gauzy clouds smudged the sun and a damp breeze hinted of burgeoning plants and the not-so-distant sea. Gareth was right—it was time for action. When Sweeney and the students trooped into the hotel dining room for lunch, Matilda freshened up and set out for the town square, trolling for travelers.

  For a time everyone she saw was moving purposefully and tidily about. Soon, though, she spotted two girls in their early twenties. One wore long, lank hair, a shapeless dress covered with a shawl, several earrings and a nose stud. The other sported crew-cut hair and battered fatigues, but her delicate features betrayed her sex. Both were pitifully thin. They ambled aimlessly across the square, checked out the interior of a trash container, and went into the tiny fish and chips shop behind the two magpie houses. Matilda followed.

  Even though the atmosphere of the shop was heavy with suspended grease molecules, the frying food smelled delicious. Something in the human psyche, Matilda told herself, finds fat comforting. She ordered a plank of fish and some chips, which came across the counter liberally sprinkled with salt and malt vinegar. She sat down at a dirty chrome and vinyl table next to where the two girls had settled. They were sharing one paper plate of fried potatoes and exuding boredom.

  A poster advertising the weekend Festival hung in the scummy window behind the girls. Matilda leaned across the aisle. “Excuse me. The Festival on that poster, is it the genuine article?”

  “Eh?” asked the crew cut girl.

  Matilda tried to look at the girl’s eyes and not the bolt piercing her lower lip. “There’s a picture of the green man carving from the church—the spring spirit, you know—and the hobby horse and the Maypole. But is it the real ancient ceremony, or just pretend for the tourists?”

  “Oh,” the long-haired girl said, “you’re one of them, are you?”

  “I’m studying the old religion, if that’s what you mean,” Matilda told her. “I’m Matilda Gray. I’m working on the dig at the Roman fort. Actually I came all the way to England hoping to find some kind of authentic May Day ceremony, but it’s almost the end of April and all I’ve found is tourist trap stuff."

  The two girls looked cautiously at each other. “Well,” said crew-cut, “we don’t know much about that lot, mind you. There’s a bloke who does.”

  “You mean there really are practitioners in the area?” Matilda smiled her most engaging smile. “Could you tell me where to find your bloke?”

  “The Druid,” long-hair said sarcastically, and lowered her voice. “What do you think, Wendy?”

  Wendy shrugged. “He likes a bit of skirt, don’t he?”

  “Younger than her,” returned the other, quietly, but not quiet enough.

  Matilda pretended not to hear. “I promised to do a piece for my coven’s newsletter when I get back to the States. However, I’ve been very disappointed. And I just couldn’t bring myself to tell my son in Philadelphia the bad news. He’s squatting in an abandoned tenement, turned against the materialism of the world, he says. I thought he’d like to know there are still spiritual values. . . .” She ate a few bites, drooping picturesquely over the plate. Patrick’s taste actually ran to studio apartments festooned with enough electronics to furnish NASA shuttle control, but he didn’t need to know his mother was taking his image in vain. That she was lying through her teeth, to be accurate.

  The two girls were no longer wary but amused. “She’s a nutter, Shirl,” whispered Wendy. “He gives us such aggro about history and all that bunk, let’s set her on him.”

  Shirl. Matilda recognized the girl’s name from the police reports—Watkins had interviewed her about Linda’s murder. She’d claimed ignorance.

  “Here,” Shirl said to Matilda, “it’s hard remembering dates and places when all we’ve had to eat is a few chips. We’re skint.”

  Matilda opened her handbag and pulled out a five pound note. “I’m so sorry, I should have offered you something earlier. Get yourself some nourishing food—whole grains, vegetables. . . .”

  “Yeh,” said Wendy. She folded the money into her pocket. “Ta.”

  “You know where the traveler’s encampment is?” Shirl asked Matilda.

  “Is that the one the road to Macclesfield? Are you living there? My son would love being out in the country like that, close to nature.”

  “Close to nature, yeh.” Shirl rolled her eyes. “Call round an hour before sunset on Friday. Someone can take you to the party. The rites of spring, he calls it. A right rave-up it was last time. Are you up for it?”

  “I’ll bring along my reading glasses, my cane, and my hearing aid,” Matilda told her.

  Shirl laughed. Wendy inhaled the last of the chips and stood up. “We’ll tell him to look out for you. Ta-ta.”

  Matilda watched the girls walk out of the shop, across the square, and around the corner. Him, she repeated. Nick? He’d better be looking out for her, she had no idea what he looked like. But her hunch that there would be an alternative Beltane ceremony was right. Whether her hunch that the old Celtic holidays had something to do with the case was right, was another matter.

  She ate a few bites. The food was congealing fast. Her lips and chin felt greasy. The penalty for speaking with forked tongue, she told herself, and started back toward the dig.

  Halfway there she spotted Della Reynolds, astride Bodie, pacing up the road. “Mrs. Reynolds! Good afternoon!”

  Della looked myopically down from beneath the tiny bill of her riding hat. “Oh, Dr. Gray. Hello.”

  “Let me tell you again how much I appreciate your letting me ride Bodie the other day, especially when I hardly know what a saddle is.” She held her hand out to the horse, who snuffled amiably at it.

  “Bodie’s a good beast,” Della said. “Not so temperamental as Caesar and Gremlin.”

  “Gremlin did seem a bit skittish,” returned Matilda, “but then, I’m very much the amateur, not like you.”

  Della seemed to perk up a little, like a parched plant given water.

  “My colleague, Mr. March,” Matilda went on, “tells me you’re a historian.”

  “No, not really, I just like to read.”

  “Many self-educated people know more than the experts. You must know a great deal to have put together such a fine antiquities collection.”

  “That’s Adrian’s. I go in for Waterford, that sort of thing.”

  “Collecting takes real skill. I wouldn’t be able to tell a genuine Waterford vase from a jelly glass. Antiquities, now—well,
even though that’s my field, I can always learn more.”

  Della smiled. “Come for tea tomorrow afternoon, Dr. Gray. Adrian would love to show you his artifacts. And we can have a quick lesson in collectibles, if you like.”

  “How very kind of you! About four-thirty? I’m sure Gareth would love another look at the collection.”

  Della’s cheeks grew pink. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Have a nice ride,” Matilda told her, and patted Bodie’s shoulder.

  “Oh, I’m just out and about. . . .” The woman’s voice trailed away as the horse clopped on up the street.

  Shameless, Matilda chided herself. Utterly shameless. But she didn’t have time to beat around the bush with Della.

  Beltane was two days away. She knew, with the same subliminal certainty she knew the shape of the Roman ruins beneath the sod, that time was running out.

  * * * * *

  Matilda picked a table in the corner of the bar and sat down, her back to the wall. The speakers were silent tonight, thank goodness. Perhaps Clapper’s sugary tapes had congealed, like Jell-O.

  Sweeney leaned against the bar telling Clapper some extended joke. The innkeeper nodded and laughed. Matilda rolled her eyes. Typical Sweeney, to fiddle while Cornovium burned.

  Ashley, Bryan, and Jennifer occupied a table nearby. “. . . no way,” Ashley was saying. “I’m sure not going to go home and tell my mom I got scared and couldn’t stick it out. She kept telling me I was wasting my time coming here anyway.”

  “My dad kept griping about how much it was costing,” said Jennifer. “I figure I have to stay, just to make his investment worthwhile.”

  Bryan said, “You know, there comes a point you have to tell the old parental units to buzz off. Of course, it helps if you have good grades and some independent income when you tell them.”

  Bryan was a nice boy, Matilda repeated. He and Ashley could have a positive relationship. But she looked at him the same way Gareth looked at her, polite and oblivious. The two students hadn’t been together on Sunday. Matilda could only assume Ashley had been with some local lad, and hope that he, too, was a nice boy. As for Gareth. . . . Sorry, Ashley, she thought. He’s not auditioning to play your Prince Charming.