The Once and Future Con

by Peter Guttridge

  She was sitting on the bed messing about with her feet. As I entered she was inserting something rubbery with five prongs on it between her toes on her left foot. A similar device was already in place on her other foot. Her toenails were painted purple.

  "I wanted your advice on a couple of things," I began.

  I knew Bridget would listen, being my best friend.

  "Oh God, what is it now?" she said grumpily. So much for friendship.

  I paused, distracted by the sight of Bridget getting out what looked like a miniature cheese grater and applying it to her heels. I gulped, fascinated and disgusted by the sight of hard skin falling onto the bed cover in thin slices. She caught my look.

  "I don't see that the snot-on-a-clothes-line kid-the guy I caught flossing his nostrils with string going up his nose and out of his mouth-can say much about disgusting hygiene habits."

  I plonked myself down on the bed beside her.

  "Look, let me take it one at a time."

  "Yeah, but keep it simple, Nick."

  "The bones in the sarcophagus, the ones that don't belong to Arthur and Guinevere-not that any of them probably do belong to Arthur and Guinevere-"

  "Simple," Bridget warned.

  "The newer bones."

  "The ones that are missing a skull-"

  "I'm wondering if they're Faye's brother."

  "Hasn't he been well?"

  I looked at her.

  "Okay, okay. Does Faye have a view on this?"

  "She suspects it might be him, yes. Her brother disappeared at about the right time. But the thing is-and there's no one I can discuss this with except you-Faye's acting pretty strangely both about that time and in general. And Rex is being a bit strange, too. Have you noticed? I wonder if they were in something together."

  "You think Faye offed her brother? With my Rex's help?" She dropped her file and sat up straight. "Fuck you and the Chihuahua you rode in on."

  "Bridget, you're responding to the possible loss of your new-possibly imagined-lifestyle rather than to what I'm

  "Am I buggery. And what do you mean imagined? So who chopped off Faye's brother's head? Faye or Rex? And why, for God's sake? Why would they do it?"

  "I don't know. The skull could have disappeared after death. I was wondering if it might be something to do with Frome's death."

  The old man's ramblings about Merlin the Duality had led me to think about Bernard Frome's seminars. That in turn had brought to my mind that the outrageously promiscuous gay had died, drunk and very disorderly, at around the same time Ralph had disappeared. Two promiscuous gay men in the same college-surely they must have known each other?

  "Frome? Who the fuck is Frome?"

  "Don't you listen to anything I say now? God, Bridget, sometimes I despair."

  "First of all, I never have listened to anything you say, so why should now be any different? Second, I've been rather preoccupied, in case you haven't noticed, with preparations for the impending nuptials."

  "Who's getting married?"

  She gave me a withering look. And a withering look from Bridget is truly withering.

  "I am, you pillock."

  "To Rex?"

  "Give the man a banana."

  I felt a peculiar twinge.

  "When did he propose?"

  Bridget avoided my eyes.

  "Well, he hasn't yet but I know he's going to."

  "Do you think it's a good idea to make plans on that basis?"

  "I can feel it in my water."

  "That's no guarantee of anything good. The last thing I remember feeling in my water was that candiru fish on the Amazon swimming up my urine to lodge in my urethra."

  "You're exaggerating."

  "I didn't know it at the time. It felt as real as if it were actually there." I crossed my legs at the memory. "Well, congratulations in advance. But back to the matter in hand-"

  "My almost affianced and the love of your life killing her brother. Why do they have to be his bones? They could be anybody's."

  "Yeah, but I've read my crime fiction. In this kind of situation you have only a certain number of possibilities to play with."

  "This is real life, Nick."

  "Tell me about it," I said glumly. I'd had another thought, after my conversation with Genevra the previous night, but that was even loopier than my present theory so I thought I'd keep it to myself.

  "So who's this Frome bloke?"

  "Bernard Frome was a tutor at college who taught a course on the Arthurian legends. He got drunk, fell down the stairs outside his rooms, and broke his neck. He was found with a half-full bottle of Scotch by his side."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. Was it good Scotch?"

  "That's not exactly the point."

  "So where do you want to go with this?"

  I groaned.

  "I don't know! I just feel there's something very wrong now and I think the answer may lie back there."

  "Your serial killer goes back that far?"

  I stood up and threw my hands in the air. Well, in a manner of speaking.

  "Bridget, I don't know! I'd like your input on this. So if you could broaden your attention beyond this-this madness about marrying Rex I'd be really, really grateful."

  "Why is it madness?" she said sharply.

  "What's the main thing we know about aristos? They're endogamous."

  "That's the main thing we know? I didn't know that's what we know. Thanks for telling me. Now tell me what the fuck endogamous means!"

  "They marry within the tribe. Keep the bloodline pure. They're never going to marry the likes of you and me."

  "Better break the news to Genevra then. She hears wedding bells every time she sees you. I mean-are you mad? She's gorgeous, she's loaded, and, for reasons that are quite beyond me, she's falling madly in love with you." She peered at me. "Yet you don't seem keen. What gives?"

  "She said she was in love with me? I thought she was just doing that upper-class thing and using me as a stud."

  They say laughter is a release of tension. Bridget must have been excessively tense. When her laughter finally died down, she dabbed her eyes and said: "I think I can almost guarantee it's more to do with loving you than using your body. Lovely body though it is."

  "I know why you're saying that," I grumbled.

  Bridget knows that I haven't always been a success in bed. For whatever reason, I've had no real trouble getting women to make love with me-once. Repeat sessions, however, have been a little harder to come by.

  "So what is the problem, Nick?"

  She looked me up and down.

  "Is it Frigid Faye? Has she still got your heart in her icy clamp?"

  "That's unusually poetic for you," I said, hoping to change the subject.

  "This is like one of those bloody film noirs you make me watch on late-night TV. You're in love with her but you think she might be a murderer. And we both know how that plot always ends. Badly for you. So come on, snap out of it!"

  I felt like a schoolboy in front of the head. And just like a schoolboy, I found something to cling onto: the sight of those rubber things still sticking up between her toes like shark's teeth-as if the shark had made an attack on her feet and got the worst of it. Although, thinking about it later, that shouldn't have been comforting at all.

  I spent the rest of the morning reading up on the discovery of Arthur's grave back in 1191. Around noon, Bridget came in and plonked herself down in the wingbacked chair.

  "Fancy going to the pub for lunch?"

  "Only if you leave off the waxed hat and gumboots. Where's Rex?"

  "Gone up to London with Bucky Buckhalter," she said.

  "Meeting some money men."

  I put the book I'd been reading down beside the chair.

  "Do you remember Genevra talking much about her stepmu m?"

  "Only what a bitch she was. She'd struggled to get where she was-she'd worked for a hospital trust or something before and she was determined not to let it slip. I met her once a
t some `do' years ago. She was loathsome. `Well, of course, until you've run an eighty-five bedroom house you just don't know anything.' I worked as a chambermaid in a two-hundred-room hotel in Rickmansworth, does that count?"

  Bridget pointed at me.

  "And she, by the way, proves you're wrong about endoganiy. Yes, I looked it up. They draft outsiders in if they're getting too inbred."

  "You know she just pissed off and abandoned everybody," I said. "Don't you think that's odd?"

  "Rex got rid of her."

  "What?" I sat up straight in my chair.

  "Not like that, you nelly. She was squandering his money so he paid her off."

  "How could he do that? Didn't his dad control the money? And I bear no resemblance to a seabird." I saw her look. "That's what a nelly is."

  "Know-all. Rex had a trust fund of a couple of mill-" She suddenly shrieked and pummelled the chair arms with her fists. "Sorry. It's just that this is the guy I'm going to marry."

  "But you love him, right?"

  "Are you kidding-have you seen his bod? Well, aside from his big feet. But you know what they say about men with big feet-oh, of course you do. Sorry-I forgot the rule has exceptions. No need to hang your head: Genevra obviously finds you adequate."

  "Adequate. Thanks a lot. But you love him, right?"

  "Don't be so ... bourgeois, Nick. We can get along."

  "Bourgeois, me? You're the one brought up in Rickmansworth. You know what they say. You can take the girl out of Rickmansworth but you can't take Rickmansworth out of the girl."

  "I thought it was that you can't get the boy out of the Ramsbottom?"

  "Ha ha." I couldn't help coming from a place with such a daft name. It hadn't affected me too badly. I knew a bloke from Mold once who just couldn't handle the embarrassment. Tring has a lot to answer for, too.

  I smiled at Bridget. I had the same odd twinge again. Jealousy. But how could it be? I'd known Bridget for years. God knows, if I'd wanted to have sex with her or start something there had been ample opportunity. Well, provided she'd been of the same mind, of course.

  "The stepmother went for his trust fund when she was married to millions more?" I said. "Doesn't make sense."

  "No, he raised a lot of other money on the basis of what he was going to inherit and paid her off with that. The deal was that she'd just disappear. She got about ten mill-less than she would have squandered."

  "But if she liked the limelight?"

  "Nick, how do we know how big a name she is in South America? She's on the front page of every society magazine every month out there on the pampas for all we know."

  "But Rex and Genevra would know-aristos nip all over the world for parties."

  "That's Euro-trash, sweetheart. Trust fund kids. You mustn't get all your notions of the aristocracy from the style sections, you know."

  "And you're the expert, I suppose. Rex looks pretty typical to me. He oozes upper class-all this `old stick' stuff."

  Bridget tutted-she was clearly picking up some strange habits.

  "I thought you were a film buff? He told me he got it from a villain in an old Paul Newman film scripted by William Goldman, based on a Ross MacDonald novel. Can't get less upper class than that."

  "Classy though," I whispered. I was in shock that she'd remembered her first bit of film trivia, let alone three bits.

  "But I don't get Rex," I said. "At all."

  "What's to get? He's a big, rich swinging di-eelightful to see you, Nanny."

  "Am I intruding?" Nanny said, shuffling forward from the doorway.

  "Not in the least," I said, jumping to my feet and offering her my chair. I blanched to think how long she might have been standing at the door listening.

  "I won't join you. I have just come in for a book. Did I hear you discussing Rex?"

  Bridget and I exchanged glances.

  "We come to praise Caesar not to ..."

  Bridget's attempts at quotes were always a little off-key.

  "He's a lovely boy. I'd do anything for him. Anything. And woe betide anyone who tries to harm him."

  She looked at inc.

  "Or Genevra, of course."

  I suggested to Bridget we go into Glastonbury for lunch.

  "I don't want some lettuce-burger crap," she warned. "I want proper food."

  "Vegetarian food is proper food," I said absently. I was thinking about how I might find the white-haired old man in Glastonbury to tell me about Lucy.

  The sky was brighter today. There was even a hint of sunshine. It hadn't rained for forty-eight hours-the first break in the weather for what seemed an age-and the floods were beginning slowly to abate. The water authorities were still predicting hosepipe bans in the summer, of course, since for sound business reasons-i. e., it cost money-they hadn't been repairing leaky pipes and reservoirs. "Where's the profit in that?" one bewildered millionaire chief executive was quoted as saying.

  We drove into Glastonbury past flooded peat beds. Peat is one of the area's major industries. From prehistoric times down to the 1950s it was cut by hand. These days mechanical diggers remove the peat to use not as fuel but as agricultural fertilizer.

  It was eerie to look across the flooded fields and see clusters of trees and lines of fencing seeming to float on the water. This whole area, I knew, used to be underwater. Years ago archaeologists found the remains of ancient lake villages west of Glastonbury, with wooden trackways made of planks and poles linking areas of higher ground.

  It was people like the inhabitants of those villages who used to bury their dead in hollowed oaks, not sixth-century Celts, who would use barrow burials. That was one reason I was pretty sure the bones in Arthur and Guinevere's tombs weren't theirs.

  "But why would the monks at the abbey pretend to find King Arthur's grave?" Bridget said, tucking into steak and chips in the restaurant of a medieval pub in the town center.

  "They were great marketing men-Buckhalter would've loved them. Relics in those days were like rides now. The more relics you had the better you did. So in the twelfth century, first they claimed they had the three biggest rides-that's to say, three major saints were all buried there: St. David of Wales, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Gildas of Brittany. Later on they tried to claim another-St. Dunstan. That probably came as a surprise to the monks of Christchurch Canterbury, who thought the saint had been buried there for the past two hundred years."

  "So they were con-men?"

  "Total rogues. One historian said Glastonbury was a laboratory of forgeries because the monks were infamous for manufacturing stories to bring renown to the abbey-and money in the form of pilgrims' offerings.

  "They had pretty much a full set of Last Supper relics: a bit of the table, the pillar Jesus was tied to for scourging, the scourge, a thorn from the crown of thorns. They had both sponges-one filled with wine and myrrh, the other with vinegar and gall-and other odd bits and pieces of the True Cross and Calvary. They didn't have Christ's foreskin from his barmitzvah unfortunately-some other church had that on show."

  Bridget's eyes hadn't started glazing over yet so I carried on.

  "I read somewhere that if you put together all the supposed pieces of the True Cross that are scattered in churches throughout the world you'd have a cross the height of Big Ben."

  "I can do you one better than that," Bridget said. "Rex was telling me about Napoleon's Johnson."

  "Interesting conversations you and your intended have."

  "You'd be surprised. A piece of his penis was the musthave relic in the nineteenth century. It's true. There are bits of it scattered all over Europe. Put them all together and you get a penis about the size of Buck Buckhalter."

  "It may even be Buckhalter," I said. "What a prick that guy

  Bridget pushed her plate away and reached for her cigarettes.

  "So finding Arthur was just another money-making scam. Why did they need to find him, though, if they were already doing so well?"

  "I'll get back to you when I've done a bit mo
re reading."

  Bridget was having her legs waxed and various other beauty therapies in the afternoon. We were going to meet up later. Before we parted we walked up the main street together. I indicated the sign for the Chalice Well.

  "Until 1826 that was known as Chalkwell-it's a medieval well. The water has a reddish tinge, so the owner back then decided to make some money by declaring it to be the well above which Joseph of Arimathea hid the Grail containing Christ's Holy Blood. Hence the Chalice Well."

  "Why is the water red?"

  "Iron oxide deposits in the water," I said. I stopped before the entrance to the abbey. "I need to find this old bloke. He may be able to shed light on Lucy's death. Sure you don't want to come with me?"

  Bridget flashed me a hard look.

  "No, I do not. Nick, why don't you leave it to the police? It's going to end in tears."

  I shrugged.

  "See you later then."

  I described the old man to the woman at the ticket office. "Do you know who he is?"

  "Why?" she said cautiously.

  "Not for anything bad. He just seemed an unusual person when I saw him here the other day."

  She laughed.

  "Unusual-he's that all right. He gets a bit carried away but he's harmless. John Crow. He used to be quite a well-known writer in his day. He knows more about the Arthurian legends than anyone else I've met. He's a regular visitor."

  "Is he here now?"

  She shook her head.

  "He lives over at Wookey Hole. He spends most of his time around the caves and the mill. He used to be a guide there for a few years." She looked at her watch. "That's where you'll find him now, I shouldn't be surprised. They don't charge him to go in as long as he doesn't go off on one of his rants and disturb the other visitors. Not that there are many at this time of year."

  "Is he disturbed?"

  She laughed again.

  "Not really. John's just an old show-off. Likes the sound of his own voice. His family have been lay preachers for generations."

  I thanked her and looked at my watch. Wookey Hole was about fifteen minutes' drive away. I decided I just about had time to go there, speak with him, and get back to meet Bridget.

  Wookey Hole is the name given to a series of subterranean caverns through which the River Axe flows. Iron Age Celts lived in some of the caverns and in the Middle Ages an old woman who was said to be a witch made her home there. Of course, there's a King Arthur link. One of the Welsh stories had him slaying a black witch who lived in a cave at the head of the Stream of Sorrow on the confines of Hell. Tradition applied the story to Wookey Hole and its witch.