The Messiah Secret

by James Becker

  Mitchell had explained that a couple of weeks earlier, a man named JJ Donovan had entered the confessional box at his church in Monterey. He had seemed over-excited, hyped up about something and eager to talk. Donovan had followed his usual routine, confessing a fairly dull litany of what he perceived to be his sins, and Father Mitchell had granted him absolution, just as he’d done on previous occasions. But then, instead of ending the session as usual, he’d asked Donovan directly if there was some other matter troubling him, something that might account for his very different, almost elated, mood.

  What Donovan had told him had shocked him into stunned silence; a silence that had lasted so long Donovan had eventually knocked on the pierced wooden divider between the two sections of the confessional and asked if he was still there.

  ‘I told Donovan that what he was planning to do was a mortal sin, a blasphemy of such appalling magnitude that nobody would ever be able to forgive him. And I absolutely forbade him to even contemplate proceeding with his plans,’ Mitchell told Killian. ‘What stunned me most was that he apparently thought I’d be pleased with what he was intending.’

  ‘What was it that so shocked you?’ Killian asked quietly.

  So Mitchell told him, and what he said was so extraordinary that Killian felt the blood drain from his face.

  ‘Dear God in heaven,’ he had whispered, and then pulled himself together. ‘Tell me everything you know about that man,’ he’d said. ‘His address, telephone number, whatever you have.’

  Mitchell had passed across a sheet of paper.

  ‘God will reward your courage,’ Killian had told him. ‘Now you must leave everything to me. If Donovan approaches you again, about anything at all, let me know immediately.’

  Killian had prayed for guidance that night, and by the following morning the way ahead had been clear. Donovan himself wasn’t the problem. Whatever he had found could also be discovered by others, now or sometime in the future, and that could have disastrous consequences. The only way to achieve a lasting solution was to allow Donovan to locate the relic. And then it would have to be utterly destroyed, as would everybody involved in its search.

  He would have to break the first commandment; Killian knew this. But he also knew that he’d have God’s forgiveness. Because the reality was that the killing of one or two men – or even the deaths of hundreds or thousands of people – was completely inconsequential, totally insignificant, in comparison with the stakes he was playing for.

  16

  ‘I’m not even going to discuss it,’ Richard Mayhew snapped. ‘It’s completely out of the question.’

  ‘Actually, Richard, it’s not out of the question at all, and I’m afraid you’re not in any position to make an autonomous decision.’ Angela’s tone was sweetly reasonable, but there was no mistaking her resolve.

  ‘I’m in charge of this group,’ Mayhew snapped.

  ‘According to Roger Halliwell, you’re only the administrative head. That means you control the budget that buys our food and pays for the accommodation back at the pub. Otherwise, we’re here as six individuals from six different departments, with an equal say in what we do. Chris has volunteered to stay here overnight to make sure that whoever’s been burgling this house doesn’t get back inside again, and I for one think that’s a really good idea. I had hoped you’d think it was a good idea as well but, as you don’t, maybe we should take a vote on it.’

  ‘What’s the harm, Richard?’ Owen Reynolds suggested. ‘It’s not like one of us staying here – Chris is a police officer, well able to take care of himself. He’s the ideal man for the job.’

  Mayhew glanced around the kitchen, sensing general agreement among the others there. He made one more attempt to get them to change their minds.

  ‘Suppose he gets hurt? What about the insurance implications, all that kind of thing?’

  ‘It’s not your property,’ Bronson interjected, ‘so you have nothing to do with the insurance of the building or its contents. But if it would make you any happier, I’d be pleased to sign a waiver absolving you and the museum from any responsibility for me being here overnight.’

  Mayhew recognized defeat when he saw it, and raised his hands in the air. ‘Oh, very well, then. Do whatever you like,’ he muttered irritably, and stalked out of the room.

  Bronson had nothing to do. His stint as an unpaid night-watchman wouldn’t start until the evening, when everyone else had left the building, so he made a point of checking every room in the house, noting possible hiding places, points of entry, and so on. He made two complete circuits of the interior of the old house, then did the same outside, before going back to the kitchen, where Angela was still working her way steadily through the collection of china and ceramics.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ he asked, flicking the switch on the kettle.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘You?’

  Bronson shook his head. ‘Just one very slight oddity,’ he said. ‘This house has been owned by the same family for a while, hasn’t it?’

  Angela nodded. ‘Since the middle of the nineteenth century, I think. Why?’

  ‘There’s a coat of arms above the main door, cut into the stone lintel, and others on the backs of the dining-room chairs, on the wall over the fireplace in the salon, and so on. There’s also a coat of arms in the background of each of the two paintings of Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax that are hanging in the first-floor corridor.’

  ‘So?’ Angela was busy packing more worthless china into her auction box.

  ‘Well, the crests in the paintings of Bartholomew are slightly different. Both of those have the head of a fox in the top right-hand quadrant of the shield. All the others have the head of a bird – I think it’s a hawk – in the same position.’

  ‘Maybe the painter made a mistake,’ Angela suggested.

  Bronson shook his head. ‘Both paintings were obviously done from life. Bartholomew was sitting in a chair in the salon and the artist was painting what he saw. Why would he get three of the four quadrants of the shield right, and then substitute an entirely different image for the fourth?’

  Angela stopped packing. ‘You’re very observant, Chris,’ she said, smiling. ‘For a man, anyway!’

  ‘I’m a policeman, remember? I’m supposed to notice things. They’re called clues.’

  ‘Well, I agree – the paintings are a bit odd.’ She explained about the two pictures showing Bartholomew as a young man in exotic dress, both of which had been sold shortly after they were completed. ‘And then there was the fiasco of his Folly.’

  Bronson poured himself a cup of instant coffee and sat down as Angela explained about Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax’s obsession with a lost treasure hidden somewhere in the Middle East, and how it had been sparked by the discovery of a piece of parchment he’d found in a sealed earthenware vessel, a parchment that had then vanished.

  ‘Maybe it didn’t vanish,’ Bronson said. ‘Maybe the old man hid it somewhere and Oliver couldn’t find it. Suppose Bartholomew had the paintings done as a sort of a last laugh, so Bartholomew could tell Oliver that the clues had been staring him in the face all along.’

  ‘A fox’s head instead of a hawk doesn’t seem a particularly helpful clue to me,’ Angela objected.

  ‘It could be really simple,’ Bronson said with a grin. ‘There’s a fox in the dining room. Stuffed, of course, and in a glass case. Maybe he just hid the parchment inside it.’

  Angela put down the plate she’d been wrapping. ‘Lead me to it,’ she instructed, her brown eyes shining – always a sign, in Bronson’s opinion, that she was excited.

  The fox was standing on a small mound, glassy eyes staring sightlessly across the dining room towards the tall windows on the opposite side, mouth open to reveal yellowish teeth and a thin pink tongue. It was clearly old and rather mangy, a few patches of fur missing on its sides and tail. It stood on a wooden base, under an oblong glass dome.

  ‘It doesn’t look like much,’ Angela commented.
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  ‘Maybe that was the point. Bartholomew might have thought it was an ideal place to hide something.’

  He lifted off the glass dome. ‘The stitches don’t look as if they’ve been disturbed since the poor little sod was stuffed.’ He turned the fox around. ‘And I can’t see any slits or cuts anywhere, so I don’t think there can be anything hidden inside the body itself.’

  He ran his fingers around the base of the object, then stopped abruptly and bent down to look at the back of it.

  ‘This is more likely,’ he said. ‘I can see a line running along the base, just here, so it looks as if this section might open, and there are some scratches on the wood as well.’

  He tugged at the base, but nothing moved. Then he tilted the fox on to its side and looked at the underside. There were half a dozen brass screw-heads showing, presumably to hold the stuffed animal and the other parts of the tableau in place. One of them looked different to the others.

  ‘That could be a locking screw,’ Bronson said. He pulled out a folding pocket knife and selected the correct blade. Rotating the odd screw until it dropped out on to the sideboard, he grasped the edge of the base and pulled. One section of it moved slightly. He returned the fox to an upright position and looked at the back, where a section perhaps a foot wide had now slid clear of the rest of the base.

  He could hear Angela’s indrawn breath of excitement.

  The section of wood opened like a drawer and, as Bronson pulled it clear of the base, they both saw what looked like a small leather-bound book lying inside it. He picked it up as soon as he’d fully opened the drawer and passed it to Angela.

  ‘Don’t expect too much,’ he warned. ‘My guess is that Oliver found this some time ago – he was probably the one who tried to open it – so if the parchment was here, he’ll have removed it.’

  But it wasn’t a book. What they’d actually found was a slim and shallow wooden box, covered with leather, that opened like a box-file. The inside was stuffed with loose papers of various sorts and a couple of large photographs, each of them folded twice so they’d fit into the box.

  Angela flicked through the contents briskly, then shook her head. ‘No lost parchment,’ she said sadly. ‘That would have been too easy, I suppose. This seems to be a collection of old bills and invoices, and also some of Bartholomew’s expedition notes.’ She held up several sheets of paper covered in small and neat handwriting. ‘I’ve spotted a couple of references to Egypt already.’

  ‘What about the photographs?’

  ‘Just pictures of the two paintings Bartholomew sold. Interesting, but not helpful.’ She shrugged. ‘Back to work for me, I’m afraid. But do keep poking around. You never know what you might find.’

  It was early afternoon, and Bronson and Angela had just finished their sandwich lunch. There was an extra sandwich in the fridge, and this would be Bronson’s lonely dinner after the rest of the team had left him in the house at the end of the day.

  ‘Look what I’ve found in one of the attics,’ Bronson said, walking back into the kitchen carrying a dusty cardboard box. The label says “First C Corinth”, with a question mark after it.’

  Angela walked across to where Bronson was standing.

  ‘If that label actually relates to the contents of the box, it could be quite interesting,’ she said. ‘A first-century Corinthian piece would be a lot more exciting than most of the stuff I’ve seen so far. Let me have a look.’ She lifted the newspaper-wrapped object out of the box. The pot was shaped like a tall water jug, and Angela stood it on its base while she cut the string and removed the wrappings.

  ‘Coffee or tea?’ Bronson asked, but got no response. When he turned round to look, Angela was staring at a tall, wide-necked, blue-green vessel with a single handle and some kind of animal images inscribed in horizontal bands around it. There was a scatter of paper and bits of string lying on the table nearby.

  ‘If I had champagne here, I’d drink that,’ Angela said at last. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  ‘I’m just a simple copper, remember? What is it?’

  ‘I think – in fact, I’m almost sure – it’s a proto-Corinthian olpe.’

  ‘Really? It just looks like a big green jug to me.’

  Angela came over and gave him a hug. ‘What you’ve just found is very rare, especially in such excellent condition. I’ve seen one similar one, but it’s in the Louvre in Paris. An olpe is a wine vessel. This one’s decorated with registers – these horizontal bands – of what I think are lions and bears, and it probably dates from around six hundred and fifty BC.’

  ‘Not first century, then, like it says on the box?’

  Angela shook her head decisively. ‘Definitely not. It’s over half a millennium older than that.’

  ‘So it’s valuable, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m not an appraiser, but this could be almost priceless!’

  ‘So do you want me to bring the others down?’

  ‘Others?’ Angela went white. ‘There are others?’

  Bronson smiled at her. It felt great to be working together again. ‘I’ve no idea. There are a few more cardboard boxes up in the attic. I’ll go up and have another look, if you like.’

  Bronson returned about fifteen minutes later carrying another dusty box.

  ‘No other jugs, I’m afraid,’ he announced, ‘but I did find some bits of a broken pot.’

  He placed the box on the table, opened it and pulled out a number of shards of reddish pottery which he spread out in front of Angela.

  She dragged her attention away from the olpe with apparent difficulty and glanced at the fragments.

  ‘Now those probably are first century,’ she said, ‘and most likely Middle Eastern in origin.’

  She picked up a couple of the pieces and fitted them together in her hands. They matched exactly.

  ‘It looks like these might all be part of the same vessel,’ Bronson suggested.

  Angela nodded and picked up a fragment that looked as if it had formed the neck of the broken vessel. In it was a small hole, and in a band around it was a dark brown deposit. Angela picked at this with her thumbnail thoughtfully, then picked up another couple of the broken shards, piecing them together in her hands to reform the neck of the vessel.

  She pressed the pieces together firmly. A few slivers were still missing but she’d found enough of the neck of the ancient pottery jar to see that the hole on one side of it was exactly matched by a second hole opposite. That, and the band of darker material, told her all she needed to know.

  ‘There’s a hole driven through both sides of the neck where it’s narrowest,’ she said, ‘and this darker material seems to be some kind of sealing putty or resin. According to Richard Mayhew, who seems to have taken quite a keen interest in the Wendell-Carfax history, the vessel Bartholomew found was secured with a pin driven through the neck, a pin that went right through the wooden stopper, and the outside was then sealed with some sort of putty. And this,’ she finished, ‘could well be the remains of that first-century pot.’ She paused. ‘There was nothing else up there, was there?’

  ‘Just the usual sort of rubbish that seems to migrate to any attic. Look, I’ll need to stay awake tonight, so I should get my head down this afternoon. The first bedroom on the left at the top of the stairs still has a bed and mattress in it. Can you come up and wake me about half an hour before you all leave?’

  Angela looked troubled. Although she’d eagerly embraced the idea of Bronson staying at the property overnight when he’d first suggested it, now that the evening was approaching she was feeling markedly less certain that it was really such a good idea.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this, Chris? I mean, suppose there are half a dozen intruders, all armed?’

  ‘Then I’ll lock myself in the loo and dial triple nine on my mobile,’ Bronson said. ‘But most burglars operate alone, and they almost never carry weapons, because the penalties for being caught with a knife or a gun are so severe.’ He put
his hands on Angela’s shoulders and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘If I think I’m in danger, I promise I’ll put on that suit of armour that’s standing in the hall.’

  17

  6 p.m. Angela and her museum colleagues had left, and Carfax Hall was completely silent.

  Chris Bronson walked through to the kitchen and clicked the switch on the electric kettle. Coffee, he knew, would help him keep alert. He’d have no trouble staying awake until well after midnight – he’d always been a late bird – but staving off boredom and sleep in the early hours of the morning would be more difficult.

  He’d establish a routine, and prepare the house for his coming vigil. At night, sound travels further and more clearly than during the day because of the absence of other noises to interfere, so there were things he needed to do. The first was to go round the entire house and open every door to allow him to enter any room as silently as possible – a creaking hinge would be an obvious giveaway.

  He started on the ground floor, checking that both the front and back doors of the house were securely locked. Then he walked through each room in turn and opened all the internal doors wide. Some he had to prop open because they were fitted with self-closing hinges, but there were plenty of boxes he could use.

  He walked up the wide staircase and repeated the process on the first floor, and then on the attic floor above that. Back on the ground floor, he checked that the cellar doors were also open. There were two doors, one leading to a wine cellar that appeared to have been emptied of its contents, and the other to a general-purpose cellar full of various sorts of household junk, and which also housed a large and clearly elderly central-heating boiler.

  Finally, because he hadn’t got a torch, he switched on the hall, staircase and main upper corridor lights so he’d be able to move around without walking into doors or tripping over things. Those lights would be enough to let him see where he was going, but hopefully wouldn’t raise the suspicions of anyone who’d tried to force the rear windows.