Landscape of Lies

by Peter Watson

  The day wore on. Instead of lunch, they hunted through the London telephone directories. They found three of the names. None of the addresses meant much and two of the people answered when Isobel rang them. She could tell from their voices that neither man was Molyneux.

  ‘He’s two days ahead of us,’ hissed Michael to no one in particular. ‘Nearly three.’

  ‘We’re so close. Isn’t there somewhere else we can check?’

  Michael called a book dealer he had already tried, and asked him to suggest colleagues in the West Country. He was recommended to a firm in Bath. But that did no good either. None of the names meant anything in Bath.

  Four o’clock approached. Isobel paced around Michael’s small office, her impatience visibly growing. He tried a gallery in Lower Sloane Street which, he knew, had once held an exhibition of heraldry and naval flags. The gallery sold maps with coats of arms on them. No, none of the names meant anything there either.

  Four-thirty. Isobel had sat down and now Michael was pacing the room. He stopped opposite his books on Holbein. ‘Hold on a minute,’ he said. ‘Remember how the Order of St Michael was right under our noses?’ He tapped the spine of a book. ‘Inside this very volume.’

  Isobel looked across to him.

  ‘Come with me.’ He led the way downstairs and out of the gallery. They walked to the end of Mason’s Yard where Michael pointed across Duke Street. ‘Look.’

  ‘It’s a bookshop.’

  ‘Not just any bookshop,’ said Michael. ‘Oliver Quartermain, the art world’s bookshop. Lots of expensive books in all languages, books of which there are only forty-nine copies printed, books so academic you’d fall asleep before opening them.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They have a section on stained glass. Remember that one name—Grainger—which rang a bell with the stained-glass dealer? Maybe he was a customer, maybe he was an authority who had written about it. Let’s see.’

  They crossed the road and entered the shop. Michael was known and they were left to browse. The books on stained glass were one of the smaller sections, at the back, high up. Michael reached up and ran his finger along the spines of the books. They were alphabetically arranged: Barbier, Broglie, Chadwick, Fleming, Fouquet, Friedrich, Goody, Grainger! He reached up quickly and took down the book. It was entitled: Northern Light: Stained Glass of the British Isles. Michael turned to the back flap.

  ‘It’s him!’ Isobel stared at the author’s picture, a small square in black and white. The silvery hair, a long jaw, creases in the cheeks, a sharp wariness about the eyes.

  ‘Odd,’ said Michael. ‘It looks to me as though he was photographed in Oxford or Cambridge—that’s an old-fashioned quadrangle behind him. Yet it says underneath that he is Reader in Medieval Studies at the Royal Institute of History, here in London.’

  ‘So he changed jobs. People do.’

  ‘An academic. We should have thought of that before. I should. You were right. I have been a donkey.’ Michael reached into his pocket for his wallet. ‘Better buy this. Maybe it will tell us something about the man.’ He paid for the book and they went out to the street. Michael flipped through the pages but the book was very academic, technical even, and revealed very little of its author.

  ‘We know who we are up against, at last. This still doesn’t help us with our next move.’

  ‘It might, Michael. Where is the Royal Institute of History?’

  ‘Search me. The Tower of London would be appropriate for Grainger, don’t you think?’

  ‘Michael! Go and look it up.’

  They crossed back into Mason’s Yard. The phone books were by the secretary’s desk on the ground floor.

  ‘Gordon Square,’ said Michael. ‘I know that … It’s up behind the British Museum … where the Courtauld Gallery was before it moved.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  ‘Come on where? And what for?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Back in Duke Street, Isobel raised her arm and waved down a taxi that had dropped someone off at the Cavendish Hotel. She got in and Michael followed. It was just after five o’clock.

  They reached Gordon Square about twenty minutes later. After paying the taxi driver Michael pointed across the square. ‘There we are. But—’

  ‘All right, leave this to me. Grainger—as we can now call the snake—broke into my house, broke into your car and your house, and burgled Helen. It’s time he was on the other end—’

  ‘Isobel—’

  ‘You don’t have to come. In fact, it’s better if you wait here. Now you’ve got that book jacket, you know what he looks like. I’m going inside, to find his office. I don’t know what I’m going to do if he’s there but if he’s not … we’ll see. You wait here and, if by chance he comes back, detain him somehow.’

  ‘Isobel! This isn’t our style. This isn’t primetime TV either, you know. You can’t do it.’

  She looked at him. ‘He’s got two days’ start on us—nearly three. You said it yourself. Now stay here.’

  Isobel half ran across the square so that Michael couldn’t hold her back. She approached the entrance of the Royal Institute of History. A posse of students stood outside. Michael watched Isobel push her way past them, climb a few steps and disappear through the glass swing-doors.

  Inside, there was plenty of bustle and so she went unnoticed as she examined a board on the wall. From this she learned that Dr George Grainger was to be found in room 216. That, she realised, meant his office was on the second floor. She found the stairs and climbed to the second landing.

  She stopped when she reached the landing and tried to compose herself as best she could. She didn’t dare think of meeting Grainger. Grainger? She still thought of him as Molyneux.

  It was quiet in the corridor. Isobel marvelled—and worried—at how short the interval had been between her first notion to come here, outside Quartermain’s bookshop, and this moment, when she was on the verge of doing something illegal. It was only evening the score, she said to herself over and again.

  She set off down the corridor. As she passed room 212 she heard voices, but no one appeared. Room 214—silence. It was now nearly 5.45. She reached room 216. Quickly she glanced behind her; she was, for the moment, alone.

  She gripped the door handle and squeezed it gently. Noiselessly the door swung open. Isobel followed the sweep of the door, as if she was part of it, and closed it behind her. She breathed more easily, though she knew that if she was found here, by a cleaner or—perish the thought!—Grainger himself, she would have some explaining to do. She looked about her, then moved across to the desk. As she did so, she glanced through the window, down into Gordon Square. There was no sign of Michael. She prayed that didn’t mean Grainger had been spotted.

  At that moment she heard voices. Some people further up the corridor must be leaving. Surely they wouldn’t look in here? What if one of them stopped by to leave a note? What could she do? Footsteps were approaching and there was absolutely nowhere to hide!

  The voices were outside the office now. Had the people stopped walking? Were they coming in? Isobel stared at the door handle, watching for any movement that would precede its opening. She held her breath.

  Being near Grainger, she remembered, always made her hold her breath.

  The voices stopped. They were coming in!

  But then the voices started up again and the footsteps moved down the corridor. Still, Isobel didn’t dare breathe. Only when the voices started to fade, as they descended the staircase at the end of the corridor, did she began to relax.

  Now she turned back to the desk and began to search around. Grainger’s desk was covered with papers. Books and academic journals stood in stacks, like models of skyscrapers. One journal had a ticket stuck between some pages and Isobel opened it. Several lines were highlighted with yellow marker: it seemed to be about horse breeding and she closed it. She tried the desk drawers, marvelling at her new-found ability as a burglar.

  The
drawers were all locked and she turned her attention back to the desk top. The other books were unhelpful—dry academic works, some of them in French. She tried to remember how the books were stacked before she had disturbed them. In rearranging them, she noticed that another book had a marker between the pages. The book was a university library book, about divorce in the Middle Ages. Wasn’t that the subject which Philip Cross was so concerned with? She read pages of the book at random. They were no help. Then she noticed that the marker was in fact a receipt from the National Portrait Gallery. She examined it. It was printed faintly in crimson ink. The date was illegible but the amount wasn’t: 35p. What could have cost so little? Not a book or a poster or a slide. A postcard perhaps—or, she realised with a shiver, a few sheets of photocopies.

  She searched the rest of the desk for other things that might help. There was nothing. Yes, there was. By the phone a number had been scribbled. Isobel looked at it and grunted. She snatched the NPG receipt from the book, took a pen from a holder and copied the number. Then she replaced the pen and left the room, taking the receipt with her. An NPG receipt more or less equalled a Helen Sparrow invoice, she told herself.

  Isobel closed Grainger’s door behind her and quickly marched down the corridor to the stairwell. Breathing more easily all the time, she descended to the ground floor and went out by the glass swing-doors.

  Michael had bought an evening paper and was leaning casually against a car. She crossed to where he was. ‘Quickly, let’s get out of sight. Then I’ll explain.’

  Isobel scurried off, south to Russell Square. Michael followed. When they reached the square Isobel turned left towards the Russell Hotel. She found the phones. ‘Got 50p?’

  Mystified, Michael searched his pockets. A long-distance call?

  Isobel inserted the money and dialled the number she had scribbled on the Portrait Gallery receipt.

  ‘Good evening,’ she said when someone at the other end answered. ‘Can you tell me, please, are either Dr Grainger or Dr Molyneux still with you? … Oh, I see. Tell me, where are you exactly? Yes … yes … thank you. Goodbye.’

  She turned to Michael and showed him the receipt with the number on it. ‘Look at this number. I found it scribbled on Grainger’s desk. The code is the same as for Dorchester, except that one digit is different. I know because I had to phone The Yeoman, to book our rooms, remember?’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘It’s another hotel, called Peverell Place. They just confirmed that “Dr Molyneux” left yesterday morning. We’ve done it, Michael. We’re back on the trail. Two days late, but we’re not out of the race altogether.’

  Michael smiled. ‘And where is Peverell Place?’ He took out his matches to light a cigar.

  ‘Stoke Hembury, midway between Dorchester and Bridport on the Dorset coast. Do you have to light that filthy object?’

  ‘Another early start, then. Don’t be so disapproving, Inspector Sadler. Remember, you’re the burglar.’

  10

  The A303, Michael thought, was a nice enough road. No big towns, mostly dual carriageway, faster than the A30 these days. Some heavy-duty traffic but not like the main motorways heading north from London. Just lately, however, he had seen quite enough of the A303 and was becoming bored with it. It was 9.30 the next morning and they were already approaching Sherborne. They had left London before seven, stopping for breakfast at a roadside café on Salisbury Plain. Vivid fried eggs awash in fat that was so deep it was navigable. Lethal and wonderful.

  Over breakfast Michael had handed Isobel a sheet of paper, a photocopy he’d had made the evening before in his club. After their adventures in Gordon Square, Isobel had gone off to the mews to call Tom and tell him she wouldn’t be coming back to the farm after all. Michael’s club was the only place open at that late hour where he could consult the Dictionary of National Biography. The entry on the Peverells was not long. It read:

  PEVERELL, Sir Harold (1485–1549), was a key figure in English horse breeding. The son of Henry, an ambassador to Venice, who brought back a number of horses from his travels, Harold Peverell crossed the animals with native stock to produce a sturdy but good-looking strain, now known as the Stoke Chaser, named after Stoke Hembury, the estate where they were first bred.

  Harold Peverell had two sons, Charles, who became bishop of Poole, and Percy, who became a naval captain and perished in 1568 when his ship, the Weymouth, sank in heavy seas off Ireland.

  ‘That explains one thing,’ said Isobel. ‘The book about horse breeding on Grainger’s desk. It all fits. Why would an academic lie about his name and burgle houses? It’s not exactly donnish behaviour.’

  ‘Maybe living in ivory towers gives you a taste for ivory. And fifteen million pounds, don’t forget, is apt to turn even the most level of heads. Here’s something else that fits. I called a friend at Oxford last night, a man who’s an assistant keeper at the Ashmolean Museum there. I asked him if he knew anything about Grainger. It wasn’t much but it was enough. Apparently he was involved in a bit of scandal a couple of years ago when he authenticated an allegedly rare piece of stained glass, so that it was bought by a German collector for quite a lot of money. Grainger was paid a fat fee, dependent on the sale. Later it turned out that the glass was a clever forgery. Completely modern. When that happened, Grainger lost his fellowship at his Oxford college. He wasn’t sacked exactly, he just wasn’t re-elected, but in that world it amounts to the same thing. He may still be smarting from the humiliation. It could be that he needs to make an academic comeback and he thinks the discovery of the Monksilver silver is it.’

  ‘Pay the bill,’ Isobel had said. ‘All he’s going to discover is that we are back on the trail.’

  Stoke Hembury, which Michael had found on the map only with difficulty, was further south and west than the places they had already visited in Dorset, and it was very close to the sea. To reach it, they had to travel to Dorchester, then west along the Bridport road. The landscape was more windswept here: wide expanses of green wheat, rolling slopes of lemon rape. After Winterbourne Abbas and Black Down, they turned south again through Litton Cheney. The roads got narrower and they descended rapidly, nearing the sea and the cliffs. The earth turned redder. They passed an old fort and the remains of a chapel.

  Suddenly the Channel came into view. Michael stopped the car and wound down the window. Dimly they could hear the roar of the waves. A brisk breeze blew off the sea. Michael always forgot the smell of salt water but it always brought back memories of childhood holidays in north Cornwall where the sea went out for miles and where, once, out boating with other children, they had come across a school of basking sharks—entirely harmless, though they didn’t know it at the time and had been terrified.

  Slowly, he eased the car forward. Stoke Hembury was only half a mile down the road now. For once, as they came into the village, their next step was easy. ‘Look,’ said Isobel. ‘That must be it.’ She pointed to a blue sign with red lettering, partly hidden by some rhododendron bushes. The lettering announced: ‘Peverell Place Hotel’.

  Michael stopped the car opposite the entrance. From here they could see past a thicket of trees to the parkland inside and, at the centre, the house itself. ‘A lot of that must have been added after Harold the horseman,’ said Michael. ‘It’s no older than seventeenth or eighteenth century. Some is even Victorian.’

  Isobel followed his gaze. ‘We’ll have to go in. Maybe we should stay the night. That would be the most natural way to look around.’

  Michael turned off the road into the drive. As they emerged through the line of trees, the drive curved left and made a shallow arc around the building.

  ‘Lord, how beautiful!’ cried Isobel as they saw the point of this. A view of high cliffs and beyond that the sea stretched out before them in a magnificent panorama. ‘It’s like being on the bridge of an enormous ship.’

  Besides the Channel, another part of the house came into view, on the seaward side. It was much older than the res
t, with gables and stone mullions.

  ‘That’s the Tudor part,’ said Michael. ‘And very fine it is too.’ The drive ended in a wide gravel sweep and he pulled the car around before stopping. They both got out and waited a moment, enjoying the breeze and the vast horizon, before they entered the hotel.

  They found themselves in a large panelled room with a huge stone fireplace in the middle of one wall. On either side of the fireplace, where suits of armour might once have stood sentry, were enormous bunches of flowers, massive splashes of colour in an otherwise dark hall. At the far end, through an arch, they could make out a reception desk, or rather a dark oak table with desk things on it.

  As they went through the arch, they could now see a young woman to one side. She was hunched over a filing cabinet, red metal and rather out of place. When she saw them she smiled, straightened up and asked, ‘May I help you?’

  ‘If you have any free rooms, you may,’ replied Michael.

  The woman moved around to the table and riffled through a number of cards in a box. She frowned, but then brightened. ‘I have a double room in the Jacobean part of the building,’ she said, looking up. ‘That’s not the oldest part of the house, of course, but it does have a view of the sea. Will that do?’

  Flustered, Michael hesitated. If they had only one room, what should they do? However, Isobel said quickly, ‘May we see it, please?’

  ‘Of course. This way.’

  The woman turned, retrieved a key from a cupboard on the wall behind the stair, and led them back through the hall and beyond. Here the house grew lighter, the wood pannelling paler and the ceilings higher. She took them up a large staircase, which doubled back on itself. On the first-floor landing the woman turned right and stopped opposite a pale oak door. ‘Here’s the room,’ she said. ‘I hope you like it. You’re lucky. Most days at this stage of the season we’re booked solid for weeks at a time. This was a late cancellation.’ She opened the door. ‘The rooms aren’t numbered. They’re named after local landmarks. This is Old Priory.’