Death of an Elgin Marble

by David Dickinson

  Initially, all three were to have a disappointing day. Sergeant Broome used all his charms on Megan, the widow of Carwyn Jones. He managed to make her smile, something she had rarely done since her bereavement. But he realized that she knew very little about what her husband had been doing. She didn’t even know that he had been going to meet two men from London in the Green Dragon on the day he died. She thought, she told the Sergeant, that there were money troubles, but Carwyn never bothered her with those kinds of worries. Broome was convinced she was telling the truth. When he asked if there was anything else she would like to tell him, she shook her head sadly. ‘He was a good man, my Carwyn, whatever people might say. He didn’t deserve to end up like that.’ When pressed about whatever people might say, she just repeated that he was a good man.

  Sergeant Bennett found it virtually impossible to get the sergeant and the constable who had been called to the undertaker’s where Carwyn Jones’s body was already lying in a coffin to talk. They had found him, they said. They had made out their reports. There was very little else to say. To the Londoner’s disgust they didn’t even speak in Welsh.

  Inspector Ferguson found a common interest with his Welsh colleague in mountains. They both liked walking in the highest places they could find. The Brecon Beacons, Inspector Davies assured Inspector Ferguson, afforded some of the finest mountain walking in the kingdom. And Davies performed one other service for his visitor. He took him to meet the head teacher who had written to the Caryatid Committee and left the two of them alone together, reasoning that the teacher might be more forthcoming to a stranger from the capital than he would be to a man who lived two streets away.

  ‘Now then, Mr Williams,’ said the Inspector, ‘perhaps you could tell us a little more about what you mentioned in your letter to the Caryatid Committee?’

  ‘That’s all there is. I have nothing to add. It didn’t say on the appeal that the police were going to read the applications.’

  ‘Come, come, Mr Williams. You must have realized that the only people authorized to catch the thieves would be the police, so the police were the only people who could judge which piece or pieces of information might be the most useful.’

  ‘Did you say pieces of information plural? Do you mean that the reward might be chopped up into pieces, that there could be two or even three winners?’ Illtyd Williams could see his reward shrinking before his eyes.

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that, I’m afraid. It’s possible but we just don’t know yet. I come back to my original question. Could you please tell me more about your letter?’

  ‘I’ve told you. I’ve got nothing to add.’

  ‘I am assuming that some, if not all, of the information came from the dead teacher at your school, Mr Jones. Would that be right? Did you have a conversation with him before he died?’

  ‘Inspector Ferguson, I’m tired of telling you, I’ve got nothing to add.’

  The policeman from Deptford was as tough as any other Inspector in the Metropolitan Police. But he had another side to him. He had a passionate hatred of injustice, of unfairness, of cruelty, even though he met some if not all of those qualities every day of his working life. There was a look in the head teacher’s eyes he had seen all too often before. Small shopkeepers on Deptford High Street, honest landlords who ran public houses filled with the dishonest in his borough looked at him like that. They were afraid. Illtyd Williams was very afraid. Thinking of the description of the corpse in the undertaker’s, Inspector Ferguson could understand only too well what they were afraid of. Boots in their faces. Vicious kicks to the head. Cigarette burns all over their bodies.

  He knew most of his colleagues would turn tough and start talking about obstructing the course of justice, of the penalties for refusing to cooperate with the police, of possible time in a prison cell. Inspector Ferguson didn’t think that would work. Whatever he said, the head teacher would be more frightened of the violence brought by the Twins than he would be of the police. In any terror contest, the villains would win. His only hope was to persuade Illtyd Williams that he could help secure the arrest and trial of the criminals who had beaten his colleague to death. That way the threat to his own safety and his own limbs would be removed.

  ‘Mr Williams,’ he began, ‘let me take you into my confidence. I would ask you not to repeat what I am about to say. We think, we are not sure yet, but we think we know who these men from London are. They have criminal records going back many years. Our problem is that nobody is prepared to give evidence against them. Let me ask you a question. Did you actually see the two men who came on the train?’

  ‘I did not, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Well, that’s good news for you. If you didn’t see them, they didn’t see you. They will have no idea who our informants are. They don’t know we’re here, the villains in London. If you didn’t see them, you couldn’t identify them. That means you are safe from their violence because they don’t even know you exist.’

  Illtyd Williams didn’t look any happier. But the Inspector thought some of the terror might have gone from his eyes.

  ‘With your help, Mr Williams, we can put these people away. If the two men can be convicted of the murder they will hang. They will be out of your life for good. Now then, I come back to where I started. What else can you tell me about what you wrote in your letter to the Committee?’

  Illtyd Williams stared at the policeman from London for a long time.

  ‘It’s quite simple really,’ he said, and Billy Ferguson knew he had crossed into new territory. ‘Carwyn wrote me a letter before he died. I think he must have done it when he knew these people were coming down from London to talk to him. He’d started the whole thing off, you see.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Williams, he’d started the whole thing off?’

  ‘He was short of money, see. Once he heard about the missing Caryatid he thought it might have had something to do with what was going on here some time ago. Lucas Ringer the undertaker knew a lot about it. Carwyn wrote to him, asking for more money or he’d tell his cousin in the police force. Ringer sent the letter off to London. You know the rest.’

  ‘I know some of it. You spoke in your letter of big barns in Wales and hammering heard in the night, enormous coffins being sent away to Bristol for transit to God knows where. What else do you know, Mr Williams?’

  ‘I only know what Carwyn said in his letter. That’s all.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Inspector Ferguson, ‘could I ask you for a favour? Could you bring me to meet this Lucas Ringer? Right now?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Let me assure you of one thing before we leave your house, Mr Williams. Before I leave South Wales I’m going to arrange with the local police for a guard, a watch, to be put on certain people in this town. Knowing what I do now, I don’t think for a moment that you are in any danger. But I propose to put your name on the list. I hope that will help set your mind at rest. I don’t think it will be for very long.’

  Ringer and Sons, the local undertakers, had a discreet office in the High Street opposite the Methodist Chapel. The ring on the door was answered by a spotty young man with filthy brown hair who looked as though he hadn’t washed for a week. Inspector Ferguson thought he was not the best advertisement for the firm.

  ‘Now then, young Gareth, is your father at home?’ Inspector Davies began. ‘This gentleman here would like to speak to him.’

  Billy Ferguson smiled at the boy. ‘Just a matter of routine,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you can’t,’ said Gareth Ringer, ‘speak to him, I mean. He’s not here.’

  ‘Has he just popped out to see a client perhaps? Are you expecting him back soon?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ the young Ringer replied triumphantly, ‘he’s gone away. He’s gone away on business, so he said. He didn’t say when he would be back.’

  ‘And you have no idea where he’s gone, I suppose?’ Inspector Ferguson often wished he had a pound for all the people he w
ished to speak to who had been called away on business. The world was a very busy place. They didn’t always come back.

  ‘I have no idea at all.’

  ‘No,’ said Inspector Davies sadly, ‘I don’t suppose you do.’

  ‘Could I speak to Mrs Ringer, please? Is she still at home?’ Inspector Ferguson had little hope of succour from the temporarily abandoned wife, but the formalities had to be gone through.

  ‘She’s just next door. I can’t stop you speaking to her,’ said the boy in a tone that implied he wished he could.

  ‘And while Inspector Ferguson is next door with your mother perhaps you could show me the company records for the last three months.’ Inspector Davies headed off towards the back room where the records were kept. He didn’t mention what he was looking for but he hoped to find further details of certain transactions with a firm in Bristol some time before.

  Half an hour later the two Inspectors met up again outside the undertakers.

  ‘I hope you had more joy than I did,’ said Inspector Ferguson. ‘That bloody woman managed to say nothing at all for well over twenty minutes. I don’t think she knows enough to be frightened, not of nasty people coming down from London anyway. Maybe she’s frightened of the undertaker she’s married to. But however he did it, he’s certainly managed to shut her up good and proper. What about you?’

  ‘Well,’ said Inspector Davies, ‘it’s more bad news, I’m afraid. I had a good look at those records. I never thought about it before but there’s a remarkable amount of traffic in corpses going round South Wales all the time. A lot of people don’t die in their beds as they’re supposed to. They die on a visit to their relations, or on business, or on their holidays. Our friend Lucas Ringer was forever sending bodies off to Cardiff or Bridgend and waiting for his own dead to come home from wherever they’d passed away.’

  ‘Giants’ coffins?’ asked Inspector Ferguson. ‘In transit to Bristol perhaps?’

  ‘There’s the interesting thing.’ Inspector Davies checked his notes carefully. ‘For a period of two weeks a couple of months ago the records have disappeared. They’ve been cut out of the ledger with a sharp knife, I should say. There is no record here of any traffic with Bristol or anywhere else for that time. All the written records have vanished.’

  ‘Francis, I think you’d better stop reading that boring newspaper and pay attention. You’re going to love this.’

  ‘Love what? Love whom, Lucy?’ Powerscourt put down his copy of The Times and looked across at his wife. It was breakfast time in Markham Square. The children had all gone off to be educated. He saw that she had an official-looking document in her hands. He was well used to mysterious packages, sent under plain cover from provincial estate agents with details of desirable properties in the West Country or in the remoter parts of Norfolk. These were always carefully filed in one of Lady Lucy’s plain folders with the boring name ‘House Improvements’ on the spine for further inspection when her husband was out.

  ‘You remember telling me,’ Lady Lucy began, ‘that the poor dead porter from the British Museum, the man run over by a train or something, used to work at a place near Amersham called the Hellenic College?’

  ‘I do,’ Powerscourt replied.

  ‘Well,’ Lady Lucy went on, ‘I rang them up yesterday and asked them to send me some information about the place. This—’ she waved a brochure over the remains of the toast ‘—is what they sent. It’s full of useful facts about the school. Situated, apparently, on the edge of a great park full of statues and reproductions of ancient temples like they have at Stowe. There’s a scale model of the Parthenon, apparently. And the College themselves are building a replica of that later temple on the Acropolis called the Erechtheion. That’s nearly finished, it says here. They have close links with the Greek Orthodox Church, compulsory Sunday school with the bearded Fathers, and do everything in their power to re-create the atmosphere and values of Greece in a different culture.’

  ‘Did you say they were building an Erechtheion, my love? That’s where the Caryatid came from, as you know. Any word of marble maidens holding up the porch, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Not yet, but you never know.’

  ‘I think I should go and see this place,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I would dearly like to know why they are embarking on this building programme.’

  ‘Maybe I should go, Francis. I could be a devoted mother looking for a place for her children. Greek husband is away on business much of the year and insists his wife goes with him. What sort of Greek husband would you like to be, my love? Banker? Shipping magnate with interests all over Greece and the Near East? Raisin importer?’

  ‘I think I’ll be an import export merchant, if that’s all right with you, Lucy. Maybe I could have a chain of shops in the Greek districts like that one near Moscow Road.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Lady Lucy happily, ‘but I haven’t told you the best bit.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Well, you’ve got to look at the staff list quite carefully. After Mr Avramopoulos and Mr Livieratos and Mr Roupakitosis we have an English name. The person is described as Senior Educational Consultant in Greek and Roman studies.’

  ‘And who might this lucky fellow be?’

  ‘Why, Francis,’ Lady Lucy put her brochure on the table next to the teapot, ‘he is none other than the Head of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, Dr Tristram Stanhope.’

  ‘Five feet ten inches tall. Broad chested. Built like barrels rather than humans if you see what I mean. One of them has a scar on his left cheek. Otherwise they’re identical.’

  Inspector Ferguson was giving a description of the Twins to Eli Postgate, landlord of the Green Dragon where the visitors from London had met with Carwyn Jones on the last day of his life.

  ‘Does that ring any bells, Mr Postgate?’

  ‘I don’t remember the visitors very well. I seem to remember they sat in a corner. They didn’t come near the bar at all.’

  Inspector Ferguson nodded. The Twins always stayed in the background. Nobody would be keen to identify them anyway. And if they were virtually invisible, so much the better.

  ‘I have to ask you this, Mr Postgate. Would you be prepared to swear that the Twins were the two visitors from London who came to your bar with the undertaker and the teacher all those weeks ago?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ said Postgate, and Inspector Ferguson felt that the normal cloud of uncertainty and reluctance to bear witness had followed him all the way from Deptford to South Wales. ‘I didn’t know they came from London, see. I didn’t hear them speak. They could have come from Talybont as far as I knew. Or Timbuktu for that matter.’

  ‘Never mind, Mr Postgate, you’ve been very helpful.’ Inspector Ferguson stared at the publican’s back as he made his way to attend to his other customers in the public bar. In spite of all the problems, he felt that his trip to the valleys had been worthwhile. The Twins had indeed come to Brecon. They had, almost certainly, killed Carwyn Jones, though he had no witnesses and could never bring them to trial.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said to his two colleagues and the three local policemen, ‘let the Met buy you a drink before I ask for your further assistance.’

  A couple of minutes later, with six pints on the table, Inspector Ferguson made his requests.

  ‘I think we need to keep a close eye on one or two of the locals, if you don’t mind,’ he began. ‘That school teacher fellow for a start. He’s scared out of his wits already by the death of his colleague, and though I tried to persuade him that he’s perfectly safe, I’m sure he’d sleep better if he felt the police were keeping an eye out for him. Then there’s the undertaker person, Lucas Ringer. Have any of you gentlemen any idea where he might have gone? Relations or family in other parts of Wales perhaps?’

  ‘Don’t you worry. We’ll put the word out for you,’ said Inspector Davies. ‘Nobody goes missing in Wales for very long. Mind you, we’ve had our eyes
on Mr Ringer for some time.’

  ‘And why is that, might I ask?’

  ‘We suspect he’s been involved in criminal behaviour, handling stolen goods, acting as a courier or providing transport for the big boys from Cardiff and Bristol. It’s amazing what you can hide inside a coffin. Nobody’s going to be in a hurry to look inside, are they. It was no surprise to hear he’d been mixed up in these stories of bangings in the night and so on.’

  ‘Really,’ said Inspector Ferguson, before taking a long drink from his glass. ‘Who knows? Who knows indeed? Maybe our friend Mr Lucas Ringer has got a little out of his depth.’

  Years later, in the comfort of his retirement in a pretty cottage in the Cotswolds, Theophilus Ragg would look back on this time of the Lost Caryatid as the worst period in his life.

  The days passed. Policemen came to talk to him. Reporters pestered him for more quotations on the steps of his building. He felt, he knew, that hostile rumours were already flying around the corridors of the museum. Any building that housed the remains and the statues of so many tyrants and human monsters was bound to contain some hidden residue of venom, of poison leaching from the stone and marble past into the present. Rumour, he remembered Virgil’s lines from The Aeneid, is of all pests the swiftest. They said that the theft of the Caryatid was his fault, that he should have taken more trouble with the security. He was too old. He should be sacked. If only, the whispers went, the place was run by a man with real vision like the Head of Greek and Roman Antiquities, this would never have happened. Ragg was certain that this particular untruth originated from Tristram Stanhope himself.

  Towards closing time, when the museum was nearly empty, the Deputy Director haunted the plinth where the Caryatid had stood. His curators told him that more people were now coming to look at the empty space where the statue had stood than came to see her when she was at home in her glory and her hauteur. He also haunted the foyer and the reception rooms of the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly, searching for a sight of the man who had driven him round London in the dark. Sometimes he would start and move rapidly towards a figure disappearing out of a distant door but he never found the person he sought. At night he prayed for deliverance.