"But why could this theme park be such a money-spinner?"
"The Arthur industry is big business, that's why. I've been checking. There are over sixty books about him in print at the moment. Hollywood films the story every so often. Not bad for a petty tyrant who murdered his own son."
"Where do you get that from?" Bridget said, stifling a yawn.
"You look at the Arthur in the early Welsh poems and in eleventh-century saints' lives-he's very different. There's a reference to Arthur's two sons, one of whom, like Mordred, he kills. In one poem Arthur spends all his time trying to steal a pig. In one hagiography he's a `certain tyrant from foreign parts' who tries to steal a bishop's tunic. In another he has to be dissuaded by his men from raping a girl they're supposed to be rescuing from her abductor."
We were almost at Swindon. The traffic on the motorway was heavy and I was getting fed up having the car deluged every time a lorry went through a puddle. I suggested we divert off down the A4361 through Avebury.
"I've always liked the henge here," I said.
"Of course you have, dear," Bridget said with a laugh. "What the fuck is a henge?" she said.
"A stone circle. You know, like Stonehenge? This one's about four and a half thousand years old but, as usual, nobody knows why it was built. This is very atmospheric because the village is within one of the circles-there are two circles and also long processions spread over twenty-eight acres. In fact most of the houses are built from stones from the circle broken up a couple of centuries ago."
We passed a sign saying "Welcome to Crop Circle Country" and within a few miles the road ran through the outer bank of the Avebury stone circle. I pointed out through the heavy rain the large standing stones to left and right as we drove through. She shrugged. I pulled into the car park of the old pub, almost in the center of the stone circle, and we made a dash for the entrance.
The pub was pretty much deserted inside. Classical music was playing on the sound system. The walls were covered with photos of crop circles. We took our drinks over to a glasstopped table. It was actually the glass cap on an ancient well, some six hundred feet deep. The pub had run electric cable down to the water and set up a light there so you could see the old walls, lichen and moss growing from them and the black water below.
A notice on the glass top stated this was the old village well and that many villagers had been toppled to their deaths in here for misbehavior of various sorts.
"Seems a bit short-sighted," Bridget said. "What did they drink once the bodies started putrefying?"
"It's more theme park history," I said sourly. "Lowest common denominator stuff. Got to make it exciting for the family."
I looked through the window.
"Fancy going to look at the stone circles?"
Bridget glanced at the rain falling in thick sheaves.
"Very funny," she said.
"Do you?"
"Are you off your trolley? It's pissing down."
"I've got waterproofs."
"And a rubber sheet too I hope. Nevertheless, no. You go if you want. I'll stay here listening to this rubbish."
"It's Erik Satie. It's beautiful."
"It's classical music, isn't it? Enough said."
"I've got two lots of waterproofs in the boot."
"Do the words `fuck off' mean anything to you? You want me to tramp across the fields in this weather to look at big lumps of stone. I think not."
So I tramped off on my own. I walked across the road and wandered among the stones. It was very soggy, parts were almost under water and pools of water lay in the ditches. I climbed up the bank on the south side for a look at Silbury Hill rising out of the flat landscape in the near distance. The inverted pudding basin is man-made but nobody knows why. It looked today to be rising out of the sea for the fields around it had flooded.
On top of the hill, where until the nineteenth century they still held Mayday dances and cricket was once played, I could see tents and large groups of people. Followers of the Wiltshire Messiah no doubt.
I walked to the outer edge of the bank and glanced down into the field below. You know that scene in Zulu Daum where the British are looking for the Zulu but can't find them? Actually, you probably don't, but I'll tell you anyway. They come to the top of a hill and find them like swarming insects-so many of them are there-around a water hole just below them.
Well, spread below me for as far as the eye could see-which because of the mist, I have to admit wasn't very far-were tents and tepees and yurts ... I think that's what those Afghan things are called ... hundreds and hundreds of them.
At least these people didn't chase me with their assegai. I came down off the top and walked back to the pub, the rain rolling off my waterproofs. I figured Bridget would be happily getting stuck into her next triple vodka so I diverted off to look at the church. I remember reading it had a really nice rood screen and I wanted to see it mostly because I didn't actually know what a rood screen was.
"A rude screen?" Bridget said when I told her what had delayed me. "Did it insult you in some way."
"Rood. It's a-"
"Save it. I really don't want to know. And then you spent twenty minutes looking at gravestones."
"I thought maybe we could divert off to the West Kennett long barrow-it's just beyond Silbury Hill. It's one of the most impressive Neolithic burial chambers around."
"Fascinating. Gravestones in a churchyard; burial chambers. Nick, why do you like this stuff?"
"The dead are much more interesting than most live people."
"I don't want to know about your sex life." She thought for a moment. "I used to know a necrophiliac."
"Was that when you were going through your `Young Conservatives' phase?"
"Cheap. You know very well the one thing the Tories have always known how to do is fuck ordinary people good and proper. He was an actor actually. Could only do it if you didn't move."
"Well, unless you were dead of course."
"He wished I was dead by the time I'd finished with him."
She peered down into the well, lost in thought.
"That must have been difficult for you-the not-moving I mean."
"How do you know I move around when I shag? For all you know-and ever will know-I might be totally passive."
"You passive-the only time I can imagine you passive is if you pass out."
The weird thing was I'd been thinking of Bridget in that way lately. Not passed out, sexually I mean. Hearing her whining about all the men who treated her badly or were selfish in bed made me want to show her how nice it could be. The problem was I wasn't the right person to show her. As she was forever reminding me-based solely on the say-so of one old girlfriend-I wasn't much cop in bed. I took the waiting out of wanting.
"Do you want another drink?"
"What here? No thanks. This fucking pub can't play decent music. You got a problem, dikko?"
She was looking beyond me. I turned to where two New Age caricatures were standing in hob-nailed boots, worn cargo trousers, and heavy jackets, their long hair drawn back and faces adorned with a lot of metal.
"Wondered if you might be heading Glastonbury way. And if so if you might give us a lift."
"My car's only a two-seater," I said. "Sorry."
"It's very important and we've got no other means of getting there."
Bridget has never been what you'd call a hippy. She likes her creature comforts-she's the only person I know who took a matched set of Louis Vuitton luggage down the Amazon-but, bless her, she did try to engage them in conversation.
"On your holidays, are you?" she said.
The one with the ginger beard stared at her. The one with the rings through his lips shook his head.
"Crop circles," he lisped. He had a ring in his tongue, too.
"Bit early isn't it?" I said, glancing out at the sodden fields.
"We came for the millennium and stayed," the other said.
"So do you make them or worship them?" I sai
d.
The one with the beard and fierce eyes almost snarled.
"Nobody makes them," he said, "except a higher power."
I saw Bridget roll her eyes.
"What's in Glastonbury for you?"
"We heard there was to be a discovery. Maybe the Grail."
The guy with the beard and fierce eyes dug him in the ribs.
"Well, I'm sorry we can't help."
There was a narrow bench seat in back of the Karmann Ghia but Bridget had colonized that for some just some mind-of her luggage. It had taken an age to get all her stuff in the car. When I complained that the boot was already full of her luggage and I couldn't get the rest in, she showed an endearing ignorance when she replied:
"Can't you use a roof-rack?"
"Bridget, it's a soft top."
"So?"
Endearing is not, by the way, a word I would dare use of her in her hearing.
When we set off again, the rain was bouncing high off the road. Having seen the cars ahead aquaplaning, I crawled along. The rain had lessened by the time we reached Midsomer Norton. We drove on to Ilchester. From there it was only ten minutes by various small roads to Montacute.
There was a hairy moment when I thought we weren't going to be able to get through a ford. Soon after we passed a familiar looking gatehouse and drove up a winding drive to the front of a Tudor manor house.
I leaned forward to look past Bridget at the facade.
"Nice crenellations," I said.
"Saucy," she said, pushing up her bosoms.
"Have you been watching Carry On films again?"
I was expecting a butler but a young woman in a pair of jeans and a roll-neck jumper answered the door.
"Rex and Genevra are both out," she said in an East Coast American accent. "I'm Mara. The au pair."
"Is Faye around?"
"I think she's over to Glastonbury right now. Lord Williamson is here somewhere."
"Who else is coming down?" I said, trying to hide my surprise that the Labor Lord who had been the guest of honor at the college dinner was another of the guests.
"You're about it," Mara said with a shrug. "So okay, let me show you your rooms."
We reached Bridget's first. There were fresh flowers and a bottle of champagne in a bucket on a side table.
"You want to walk round the grounds?" I asked her as she went in.
She didn't answer straight away. She dropped her bagdon't worry, the Travel Diva had left the rest for me to bring up-hooked up the bottle of champagne and a glass in one hand and headed for the en suite bathroom.
"What I fancy is a long soak in the bath with a packet of fags and this bottle. See you later."
Mara pulled the door to and continued her walk down the corridor. "Crazy lady," she said, shaking her head.
"You don't know the half of it," I said.
My room was at the far end of the corridor with a view over the flooded fields to the north. I could see the remains of a small motte and bailey castle by a river some three hundred yards away at the bottom of sloping lawn. There was a landing stage some twenty yards to the right and a chapel actually set in the side of the motte. From the house I could just see its squat tower. A hundred yards or so to the left of the chapel was a boathouse.
The river wound across meadowland. It had flooded its banks and formed a lake some two hundred yards across. I half expected an animatronic Lady of the Lake to stick her arm out of the water and wave a greeting.
Instead I saw a surreal sight. Some twenty swans were floating on the meadow, sleeping, dipping their heads into the water, crying harshly to each other. Some of them glided quietly between cows and horses. The cows and horses were nibbling grass on the patches of higher ground, up to their forelocks in water.
I noticed a boat with something lying in it drift out from behind the motte, moved by the river's slow current.
There were piles of wellingtons and a sheaf of umbrellas by the front door. I found a pair of wellingtons that fit me and squelched across the grass toward the landing stage. The rowing boat, without its oars, nudged the jetty and stopped there.
I was curious to know what was in the boat. I made my way over to the jetty, lifting my knees high with each step. I sank almost to the tops of the wellingtons in the quagmire. I hoisted myself onto the jetty and looked down toward the chapel. I thought I had seen something move. The boat's oars were on a low knoll.
I looked into the boat. A woman lay there, her eyes closed, her hands folded neatly across her stomach. She was in jeans and a waxed jacket. She could have been sleeping but I had the certain feeling she was dead.
I looked back toward the house. Faye, in waxed jacket and wellingtons, was making her way across the swampy lawn toward me. I looked beyond her and thought I could see a tall figure standing at the French windows leading out of the drawing room. I had an indistinct impression of a long white face peering down at me.
Faye raised her hand in a little wave as I walked toward her. She was about to call something when she saw my solemn face.
"We need to get an ambulance and the police."
She looked beyond me.
"Is somebody injured?"
"I think she's dead but I can't be sure."
"You go to the phone," she said. "I'll check. I know first aid."
She strode past me.
I used the phone in the hallway then hurried back outside.
Faye, her back to the house, was leaning over the woman in the boat. She straightened and turned as I squelched close. Her mouth was tight. She slipped her hands into the pockets of her jacket and took a step toward me.
"Dead?" I said.
She nodded.
"Do you recognize her?"
"Oh yes," she said, glancing back over her shoulder for a moment.
"And? Who is she?"
"Lucy Newton. She is . . . was the archaeologist for the project"
"Ali," I said.
"She's the one who made our discovery."
"How long has she been working here?"
"About a year." She looked at me. "Why?"
"It must be awful for you seeing her dead when you've got to know her so well. Especially after ..." My voice trailed away.
"She was a scheming little bitch," Faye said. "Rex was planning to get rid of her. She was obsessed with him. But he'd done with her anyway."
"Done with her?"
"Rex puts it about a bit. Noblesse oblige and all that. He's diddled everybody round here so he's had to start shipping then in."
I realized she was referring to Bridget.
"Bridget can look after herself," I said quickly. "And did you say everybody?"
She smiled thinly and pointed to the raised bank below the motte.
"The oars are down there."
"I know, I saw them. I suppose we'd better leave them for the police to look at," I said.
"You mean they're clues? You think Lucy was murdered?"
"It's the kind of thing I've come across from time to time."
She looked up at the sky and shook her head.
"That's just what we need."
It was dark by the time the police had finished. They took statements from Faye and me and arranged for any other people in the house to give statements the next day. Everyone else seemed to be out, even Bridget, who I'd thought was in the bath.
I was surprised by Faye's harshness but I put it down to grief at the death of Askwith. I sat with her in the drawing room while she paced it in a proprietorial sort of way.
"So you've known Rex and Genevra since childhood?" I asked.
"Sort of. Their father didn't let them mix with anyone else round here. They were sent off to school when they were four or five. But when they were teenagers I got to know them a little better."
"When Rex was diddling everything in sight?" I said, and immediately regretted it. Faye looked at me but said nothing.
"Rex and my brother got to know each other at Oxford. They were in the same social
group."
"Askwith, too?"
"No, he wasn't part of that set." She looked down. "Occasionally on the fringes."
We heard the doorbell chime.
"We lost contact over the years, but then when Rex inherited the title he started spending more time down here and we saw him quite a lot. That was mostly at weekends until he decided to turn some of the outbuildings into a conference center or artists' studio kind of place. Then he was down more often-he had to do a lot of work inventorying and one thing and another. And that's when they discovered-well, I'll let him tell you."
I'd noticed her hesitation when she'd referred to her brother.
"How is Ralph?" I said.
"Rafe," she said automatically. Before she could say more, Mara knocked and entered the room.
"There's a King Uther Pendragon to see Lord Wynn. I didn't know whether you might wish to see him. He doesn't have an appointment."
Faye looked at me.
"Word's got out about us. He's the third one this month if it's not one of the others coming back." She turned to the an pair. "Is he the short, fat one with the long, red beard and an Excalibur almost as long as himself, or the large bald-headed gentleman with the stutter?"
"Neither. D'you wanna see him?"
"This isn't a very good time, Mara. Suggest that he phone and make an appointment."
"Sure, only he said he's come all the way from Asgard."
"That makes him Odin, King of the Gods. Tell him he needs to brush up on his myths and legends."
"I'll be going now, too, by the way," Mara said.
Faye nodded.
When Mara went out there was a slight commotion in the hallway, then Bridget and Genevra barged in. Bridget had on a waxed jacket and a pair of thick, green socks.
"I walked into the village and bumped into Genevra," she said. "We've just walked back." She looked at my expression.
"You have a problem with that?"
"The notion of you walking? Anywhere? No, no."
The Once and Future Con Page 4
