by Will North
But perhaps as soon as tomorrow there would be a third occupant, and the sweet sense of sanctuary he’d so loved about this room, the cossetted two-ness of them in it, the morning views across the tiny harbor when the only sound was birdsong and the susurrate whisper of tidal changes, would be shattered with midnight cries, colicky screams, and feeding demands. He wondered idly whether he should spend the next few months on the settee downstairs, but couldn’t bring himself to abandon his responsibilities. He was a better man than that, and sure he could be a better father.
Wobbly, but feeling he must do something to welcome Joey home and make her comfortable for her return tomorrow, Bobby decided to lay out one of his wife’s nightdresses and her slippers. She’d never been away from him overnight before. In her absence, it was as if his chest, normally so full of her, was suddenly like that empty chamber beneath Archie’s field.
He’d never before ventured to Joey’s side of their bedroom chest of drawers, as if there were some unspoken yet inviolable wall of prudence between her four drawers and his. The simple but handsome Victorian-era piece had come down through his family: sturdy stripped pine that glowed from decades of being rubbed with Briwax, its fist-sized round drawer handles made of contrasting dark walnut. The joints were dovetailed like intertwined fingers, the work of a long-forgotten but meticulous craftsman. The drawers still slid on their runners as if greased.
Joey’s top drawer, he discovered, held carefully folded knickers and brassieres, each cup neatly folded into its mate’s. Though he’d removed them hungrily from her body on many nights, accompanied by her bubbly giggles, he shut the drawer quickly. He felt like a trespasser. The deeper drawer below held nightdresses: well-worn nubby flannel ones for winter, which he’d never liked, and white cotton gowns with eyelet lace for summer. He loved the way these became translucent as she walked through the morning sun flooding in from the dormer windows of their bedroom. On those mornings he believed he was the luckiest man in Cornwall. There were two other short gowns in lace, one pink, one black. Those were for play. He decided they were not appropriate for a new mother, but he fingered them nonetheless, remembering. It had been a while.
As he refolded these and returned them to the drawer, he felt something hard beneath and found a black, leather-clad book. Gold letters impressed in the cover spelled, “Grimoire.” He had no idea what the word meant and instinctively shoved the volume back beneath the nighties. If it was a sort of diary, he felt it something he should not open.
Grimoire. The word sounded French to him. He pulled the book out again and lifted its cover. He realized immediately that it was not a diary but something to do with Druidry—a kind of record of rites and spells Joey had participated in or learned, beginning long before he had ever met her and running up to the very present. The pages were dated and the rites seemed to have distinct purposes. Some were related to seasonal pagan festival dates: the spring equinox, Beltane, the summer solstice, the autumn equinox, the winter solstice, and so forth all around the wheel of the year. But the more recent entries were more specific and personal: rites for appearing attractive to others, for getting pregnant, for giving birth, for healing oneself or another. A few of the notations seemed written in a kind of code of letters and numbers: A216, A287, A319, A2910, A212, among others. It was a mystery.
Having no particular religious beliefs of his own, Bobby had accepted his wife’s embrace of Druidry, though at a remove. Now that remove had suddenly compressed. Had she been taking instruction from her group—her grove? Had she needed some special rite for getting pregnant? For giving birth? Was that necessary? Did it even make sense? Other couples did nothing of the sort; they simply rejoiced at the process of conception and the birth of a child. Suddenly his wife—the mother of his newborn son—was a stranger to him, a keeper of secrets.
He lay upon their bed, fully clothed, staring at the beamed ceiling until the ale took over and he slept.
Ten
ROGER MONTAGUE, WHO was well past what should have been retirement age, had chewed on Hugh Edwards’s tip about the southwest farmer’s alleged treasure discovery for several days. He was not the museum’s most decisive curator. But finally his acquisitive heart won. On Thursday morning, twelfth April, he pushed a number into his new office mobile, holding it as if dealing with something which might suddenly explode. He missed the old rotary phone.
“Egerton.”
“That you, Bonnie? Roger Montague here.”
“You were expecting someone else?”
“No, no, it’s just that it’s been a long time since we chatted. Didn’t know whether this exchange was still valid.”
“We call them phone numbers now, Roger,” Bonnie said. Detective Inspector Bonnie Egerton was the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiquities Unit at New Scotland Yard, just off Victoria Street on the Broadway. It was her job to investigate illegal trade in ancient objects and art.
Bonnie waited. She could hear Montague’s breathing, as if the old man were trying to get up enough steam to speak again.
“Is this a social call, or had you something to discuss?”
“As it happens, Bonnie…ah, Miss Egerton…there may be a treasure find that’s being shopped.”
“I’m listening…”
Another pause. Then, finally: “Got the tip from Edwards at Bonham’s.”
“This would be Hugh Edwards, at New Bond Street?” Egerton, who held a first in British history from Oxford, had been with the Met for more than two decades. But she’d headed the Arts and Antiquities unit for only a few years. The Edwards-Montague rivalry was legendary, however, and had long been a subject of mild amusement in her department.
“The very same but, as usual, his intelligence was inadequate.”
Egerton wondered if Montague referred to Edwards’s tip or his I.Q. “Did you call to complain or to give me something I might find useful?” She stood at her window on the fifth floor of the Yard’s Victoria Block and gazed out toward the upper stories of the Art Deco headquarters of the London Underground, built above the St. James’s Park Tube station.
“Oh, the latter. Definitely the latter.”
Another pause.
She pulled the receiver away from her ear, and looked at it as if it were something that needed a slap to keep functioning.
“And…?” She struggled to stifle her exasperation.
“He says some farmer called Tregareth gave him a bell, but all Edwards learned was he was from the Southwest. No address. The rustic rang off as soon as he heard about the Treasure Act. Wanted nothing to do with it, apparently…”
“By Tre, Pol, and Pen, shall you know all Cornishmen…”
“Pardon?”
“Old rhyme, that is, Roger.” Egerton, the child of a naval officer, had been raised in Plymouth, on Cornwall’s Channel coast. “Tre-gareth would be Cornish. Doesn’t mean he resides there, of course. What’s Edwards say the chap’s found?”
“Roman gold jewelry and coins, he claims, though, honestly, how would a farmer know, eh? I mean, really…”
“Have you heard of the Internet?”
“Yes, yes, I know; but a farmer?”
Egerton sighed. “Are you asking the Met to intervene? A bit out of our patch, the Southwest is…”
“Well, shouldn’t someone?”
Egerton, like everyone else in the Met, was buried in cases. While the Prime Minister, like all prime ministers, had promised a commitment to law enforcement, most of the government’s policing resources were focused now on terrorism…and rightly so, she reckoned. But it left her department, and most others, gasping for staff and funds. And anyway the Met—Scotland Yard—served London, not the provinces.
“Tell you what I’ll do, Roger: I’ll get on to the finds liaison officer down that way—probably connected to the Royal Cornwall Museum—and see if they can locate this Tregareth, all right?”
“They’d report to the British Museum,” Montague mused wispily. “I suppose I could
have done that myself…”
“Except you didn’t. No problem, a nudge from Scotland Yard might help get the ball rolling, yeah?”
“My thoughts exactly, Bonnie. Grateful for your help…”
Egerton rang off, thinking: Who really needs the nudge here?
DICKY TOWNSEND WAS not a member of any professional antiquities association. Indeed, he was a member of no recognized association whatsoever, except perhaps, that of con artists. What Dicky excelled at, and what his boss, Reg Connor, valued him for, was that he was a chameleon. He could take on the role of almost anyone Reg needed him to become, and he could do it with such aplomb no one questioned his credentials. Dicky had not read history at Oxford, as he’d claimed to Archie Hansen. The child of performers who’d toured music halls after World War Two, he’d become a young trouper in regional theatrical performances all over Britain, where his talent for becoming who he was not was rewarded, though meagerly. Discovered, finally, by Connor, he’d moved on to more lucrative roles: impersonating antiques dealers, estate agents, artists’ representatives, or whomever else Reg needed him to be to snag a deal. Each task involved a lot of study, but Connor paid him well and Dicky had a steel trap memory. He loved the research and he loved performing the roles. They’d been partners for years.
That Thursday night, Connor and Townsend sat in a corner of The Old Royal Ship Inn at Luckington, in Wiltshire. The pub was just on the edge of the fifteen hundred acre Badminton estate. Connor had an interest in the firm that handled the betting for the annual Badminton Horse Trials, one of the most important equestrian events in Britain. A recently minted member of the horsey circle, Connor kept his perfectly groomed silver head down, socially and professionally, but, thanks to the earnings of his various enterprises, he’d turned a crumbling, cruck-roofed, seventeenth century limestone tithe barn into one of the most-admired residences in the area. He was not yet fully accepted by the local gentry, but he was a patient man…and a man used to winning.
He and Townsend were huddled at a small table beside the pub’s hearth. It was a raw and misty April night, a cold wind having dropped down from Scotland. A welcoming coal fire glowed in the grate. The pub, a classic with low beams and lots of atmosphere, was mostly empty but for a knot of boisterous young men at the bar. Connor was in full country gent kit: pressed brown twill trousers, green rubber Wellies, white Tattersall checked shirt, olive green waxed Barbour countryman’s coat, and flat tweed cap. The clothes were right, but Connor didn’t quite pull off the look. His features were too coarse: a broad ruddy face with pores large as pox marks and a nose that had seen too many fights. Reg Connor in country kit was like a thug at a costume party.
Dicky, in his customary worn corduroy jacket, had just returned from the bar with a foam topped pint of Wadworth’s 6X bitter for the boss and a double whisky for himself. It frosted him that Reg never bought a round when they met, like it was beneath him or something.
Connor passed a slip of paper across the oak table to Townsend beneath his hand, a hand, Dicky noticed, upon which the skin was loose, puckered, and age-spotted. Reg was getting on in years.
“Name’s Archie Hansen, just like he said. Sharp of you to get his auto plate. Mate of mine in the local force hereabouts tracked it for me. Handy he is, for speed tickets.” Connor’s sleek, charcoal grey BMW M5 sport sedan sat outside in the car park like a crouched animal waiting to spring.
“Lives on the Lizard in Cornwall, this Hansen does. Had to look that up, I did. Never heard of it. Bit of land that pokes into the Channel south of Falmouth. Has a farm there called Higher Pennare. Pretty remote, which could be a good thing. Got his phone as well; just his land line, not his mobile. You’ll have to work with that.”
“Photos next, Reg?”
“Use that little digital Sony I gave you for the antique furniture job we did in Wales a while back. The Swansea job? When you get the images, my people can assess the value—fair market for the Crown and private market for collectors. Got that?”
Dicky nodded. The boss liked to talk down to him. Dicky, who was nobody’s fool, let it pass. All in a day’s work, he reckoned. Him, he stayed focused on the goal, which was to break free of Connor completely one day, and Hansen was looking like his chance.
“So I pay a visit?”
“You tell him you need photos. Without them, you can’t interest the private collectors who’ll reward him big-time for his find. They will want photographic evidence.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“I’m on it,” Townsend said, draining his whisky. He rose, nodded to Connor, and slipped out the low door of the pub. Connor stared at the door for a moment. Suddenly, he felt less the director and more the advisor. He didn’t like it. He went to the bar and ordered another pint and a supper of chicken curry. Waiting for the pint, he turned to the closed door again and thought, What’s the lad up to?
THE FAST TRAIN from Bristol to London’s Paddington Station took less than two hours, and by eleven the next morning, Dicky Townsend was climbing the broad marble stairs from the British Museum’s light-filled Great Hall to the floor above in search of Room 50: Britain and Europe 800BC to AD 43. He found that the long, narrow space was filled with tall glass cases. As he moved from one display to the next in the hushed room, his rubber-soled shoes squeaked on the polished wood floor. Just before the opening to the next room, Roman Britain, he saw something familiar in a case filled with objects from the late Iron Age: a bronze brooch not unlike the one Hansen had shown him in Bristol. The case held other brooches, as well as bronze garment pins and bracelets, many incised with patterns or decorated with what looked like bits of coral. These were mostly from the period 300-100 BC. He was amazed at the artistry of the vines and flowers etched upon the back of one particular polished bronze hand mirror. There were also spear blades, ax heads, and knives, their wooden hafts long since returned to the earth. There were even iron scissors. He wondered if they’d been for sheep shearing.
Then he turned and saw a case that made him gasp. In it were displayed several glittering, nearly-circular gold ornaments from the same period—torcs, the display sign called them. They were heavy, rigid necklaces made of thick strands of pure gold plaited like braids, the ends of which, probably designed to rest just below the collar bone, were finished with sculpted finials, some shaped like animal heads, others more geometric. Dating to around 50 BC, the sign above them said they were worn like badges of office by Celtic clan chieftains and their wives. Given the narrowness of their diameter and their rigidity, Townsend wondered if they’d been modeled on the wearer directly and would then be worn until death.
A case opposite presented a display of small, somewhat irregularly shaped gold coins stamped with Celtic symbols. And in an adjacent case was an exhibit of similar coins, but this time made of almost charcoal grey silver or silver alloy, many of them fused together by time and tarnish. Some of these coins, Celtic quarter staters they were called, also had stylized horse images stamped upon them, as well as wheat sheaves and other images he couldn’t figure out. Definitely no Roman emperors. The coins were dated to before 50 BC.
Townsend had a quick look in the Roman room next door, but instinct told him that if Archie’s brooch was Iron Age, the rest of the hoard would be, too. He checked the time on his mobile phone: best head back to his computer in Bristol and research what relics like these were worth. He walked out through the museum’s main doors and smiled as he thought about the grey coins: Dull stuff, indeed.
Eleven
IT WAS SATURDAY morning, nineteenth May, two days after the floater had been pulled from the Channel, when Comms finally received a missing persons report that seemed to fit:
Woman, Charlotte Johns, reports her partner, Archie Hansen, went fishing with a friend called Charlie, seventeenth May. Has not returned. Boat missing from usual mooring.
Davies immediately rang Johns and arranged an interview. When the detective swung her car into the farmyard at the
rear of Higher Pennare, her partner, DC Terry Bates, squinted through the windscreen and whistled.
“That’s one ancient cob house…”
“Cob?”
“Way of building houses back in the eighteenth century and earlier, cob is: clay, sand, straw and water mixed and rammed into forms for the walls. Chaps who did the ramming, they were called cobbers.”
“Where I come from, in Wales, we build houses from stone. Slate. Solid.”
Bates laughed. “This is beginning to sound like The Tale of the Three Pigs, but ‘huff and puff’ all you may, a cob house will hold. Plus, those walls will be two feet thick or more, I reckon; they keep out the chill of winter and keep in the cool in summer. Fine old house is this one. Rare.”
“I feel like I’m in the middle of an article in Country Living magazine. Only thing you’re missing is the Wellies and the golden retriever!” But as she parked the car, Davies marveled yet again at this novice detective. She’d worked with her on that case last year down in Penzance, the one with the pedophile murderer and the witch, but Bates kept surprising her with how much she knew…and how much of what she knew she kept under her hat.
As they pulled into the rear farmyard, a petite figure emerged from the back door of the farmhouse. Charlotte Johns wore sandals and loose, slightly oversized clothes: a colorful skirt, blouse, and loose waistcoat, the varying patterns of which seemed engaged in some kind of pitched aesthetic battle.
Looks like a waif escaped from a Gypsy encampment, Davies thought. Davies herself was in her usual blue pantsuit and starched white blouse, her streaked blond hair set in short, sharp vertical points, like a wire brush. Bates, in crisp raw linen trousers, low saddle-brown heels, and a white cotton jumper, looked like she was on holiday. Davies would have to have a word with the lass.
