“While conspiracy theories are entertaining, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Besides,” Matilda added with a grin, “Dunning would douse any travelers in sheep dip before letting them across her threshold.”
Gareth shut his book. Not only was she right, her mild attitude didn’t even give him the satisfaction of being annoyed with her rightness.
The new knock on the door was a firm one. Gareth admitted Ashley and Watkins, who tucked his hat beneath his arm and whipped out his notebook. “I had a look at your car, Mrs. Gray. What happened?”
Matilda told him. If Ashley hadn’t been hovering solicitously over the tea tray she might have ventured into possibilities and motivations, but as it was she kept to a strictly factual version of events.
At last Watkins put his pen back in his pocket. “I’ll have the lads on the lookout for a bunged-up bus—it had to have scraped a good bit of red paint from your car.”
“It’s probably miles from here by this time,” said Gareth.
“That’s as may be. But them travelers go about in clapped-out buses and vans. It was an older model vehicle, you said, Mrs. Gray? And them travelers, they’re all nutters, probably driving drunk or worse.”
Ashley fumbled the cup and saucer and they cracked together. Matilda’s eyes snapped from Watkins to Ashley like headlamp switching from low to high beam. The girl was wearing a bland expression, and Gareth couldn’t see any reason for Matilda’s sudden interest. “I’ll take these things downstairs now,” the girl said, “unless you need something else?”
“No, thank you,” said Matilda. “I appreciate your help.”
When Watkins opened the door for Ashley and the tray, Howard Sweeney’s plummy voice wafted down the corridor, “. . . women drivers . . .” He patted Ashley’s shoulder as he swept into the room. “Matilda, my dear, I hear you had a close call. Are you all right?”
Ashley disappeared. Matilda sighed. “I’m developing a distinct streak of paranoia, but other than that I’m fine, thank you.”
“I’m off,” Watkins said. “Don’t worry yourself none, the lads and I are watching over the dig.” He tapped his nose significantly.
“Thank you, Constable,” said Sweeney. And, as Watkins shut the door behind him, “Mr. March—Inspector—are you any farther in your inquiries?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Gareth replied, hoping the standard refrain would conceal his lack of progress.
Matilda rested her head against the back of the chair and rubbed her eyes. “Do you know Celia Dunning in Manchester, Howard?”
“The trout with the souvenir shop in Borley Arcade? I don’t believe we’ve met. She’s very small beer when it comes to antiquities. Hardly a threat to us.”
“Who is a threat to us? Reynolds?”
Sweeney laughed. “Half of his vaunted collection consists of forgeries. The other half reeks of clandestine digging and forged expertises. That’s one reason I chose Corcester for our little venture. The man’s had free rein with the place much too long.”
That wasn’t anything Gareth didn’t already suspect. “Do you think Reynolds is capable of murder?”
“Hard to say, isn’t it?” Sweeney replied. “That sort talks a good show, but often falls short when it comes time for action. Seems to me, though, he’s doing his best to cast suspicion on the travelers.”
“Very convenient,” murmured Matilda, “to have the travelers to blame for everything from murder to tooth decay.”
“Must dash,” said Sweeney, “I’m meeting with my group leaders.”
“Have you made Caterina a group leader yet?” Matilda asked.
“Whatever for?” Sweeney disappeared out the door.
Gareth remembered the first time a female Chief Inspector had been put in charge of a murder case. Some of the lads had acted as though she had them by the balls. In his opinion, she herself had the balls for the job, and that was that. Now it wasn’t Caterina but Matilda who had. . . . Well, never mind.
Matilda shut her eyes and wilted even further into the chair. The best thing he could do for her was leave her alone. “Good night,” he said quietly.
She pried open an eyelid and managed a wan smile. “Good night.”
Gareth waited outside the door until he heard her turn the key in the lock. There wasn’t much else he could do—he could hardly move into her room with her. He set off down the hall with his teeth gritted so tightly his jaw ached. She’d insisted on going off on her own, true, but he shouldn’t have let down his guard. Maybe she’d learned her lesson.
He didn’t slam the door of his own room. Being angry at himself or Matilda wouldn’t help. He might as well be angry at Forrest for assigning them the case. Best be angry at the criminal. Who had tipped his hand today. He must be feeling threatened. That, at least, was encouraging.
Gareth lay for a long time in his narrow bed pondering whys and wherefores. He invented elaborate intrigues involving half the population of Cheshire. He imagined one super-criminal working everything personally. He remembered Matilda standing in the dusk, staring intently at nothing. He hadn’t seen anything, or heard anything, or felt anything.
When he dozed off it was to dream of Aberffraw and Anglesey, of Gwydion ap Don and Keridwen’s cauldron of rebirth, of spectral horses, oak-shadowed ledges, and a disembodied hand stroking his cheek in a lover’s caress.
* * * * *
Yawning, Gareth pushed his way through the gate. The fog of his dreams still gathered in the hollows of his mind, just as mist clotted in the river valley and amongst the buildings of Fortuna Stud. The fort itself rose sleek and green toward the hazy sky. Matilda, he thought, acted as though the trenches in its sides were the open windows of a flat, and she was a Peeping Tom.
The focus of today’s work was mud. Mud clung to the tools, to the diggers’ boots, to the artifacts that appeared in the trenches. Gareth couldn’t concentrate on the Mithraeum emerging at the bottom of the Miller ravine. He was too far away from the center of action. After a time his neck began to hurt as he strained giraffe-like toward the surface.
Just before lunch Matilda took the easy way into the ravine—from its mouth on the side of the hill—and checked over his work. She was still pale, but her alto voice was steady. “Looks good. If you ever decide to resign your police commission you could become an archaeologist.”
“Chance would be a fine thing,” Gareth responded skeptically.
Sweeney, with Reynolds on his heels, worked his way to their sides. “. . . the sun-god Mithras. Appealed to the legionaries, I suppose, because of the bit about the immortality of the soul. A shame the Druids and the Romans couldn’t agree politically, the Druidic religion also believed in immortality. The Celts were fierce fighters, they thought if they died they’d move on to a better world—we’ve heard that one often enough ourselves, eh? Fools, the lot of them.”
“Mankind’s religious impulse is generally directed toward some concept of life after death,” Matilda pointed out. “None of us want to believe that when the final curtain comes down, the play is over.”
“Is that what ghosts are?” hazarded Gareth. “The actors lingering on for a few curtain calls?”
Matilda laughed. “That’s as good an explanation as any.”
“Ghosts?” repeated Reynolds, his voice edged with sarcasm.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Sweeney gestured toward the exposed column drums. “And these are the remains of the temple to Augustus or whoever—maybe that inscription Caterina is working on will tell us.”
Reynolds’s beady eyes glittered. “I reckon that’s where my statuary came from.”
“Could be, could be. . . .” Sweeney led Reynolds away.
Gareth looked at Matilda. Matilda shrugged. “I can only sense guilt in someone if he feels guilty. Reynolds might feel justified in stealing his own artifacts. He might feel justified in murdering someone who threatened to turn him in. That b
luster of his is like white noise, it muffles a lot of what’s going on beneath.”
“Super.”
“Cheer up. It’s early days yet.”
“No, it’s not. Not when the beggar almost did you over yesterday.”
Even Gareth’s rudimentary senses picked up on Matilda’s evasion tactic. “It’s lunch time, isn’t it? I think I’ll have curry, it’s a cold day.”
They surfaced to find the students filing down the hillside, Ashley bringing up the rear. Reynolds had apparently invited himself to lunch. He walked along with Jennifer and Courtney, chatting them up. They laughed politely at his jokes.
Linda Burkett had stuck Reynolds’s boorishness because she planned to do a deal with him, Gareth thought. He couldn’t imagine why Della had married the man. Something to do with low self-esteem, probably. He opened the gate for Ashley and she skipped through, shooting him a smile. Distractedly he returned it.
Voices coasted down the wind. Matilda glanced back over her shoulder and Gareth followed her eye. Jason and Caterina still stood over the inscription. “Yeah, right,” he said. “You were out here in the dark checking for mud. There’s a word for girls like you, you know.”
“I don’t understand,” protested Caterina. “It is treasure here. It is important. What is your problem?”
Jason responded with a four-letter directive Gareth hoped wasn’t in Caterina’s vocabulary. He drew back his foot as though to kick the scattered blocks of the inscription. Caterina defended them with a push so firm he staggered. Jason repeated his injunction and plunged down the hill, his face suffused with rage.
“That sucks,” said Ashley. Matilda shook her head. Gareth closed the gate, muttering, “kids!” beneath his breath. But then, if everyone pursued their relationships in a calm and considerate fashion, he’d be out a job.
A white crane glided to a landing amongst the distant willows. Two crows glared balefully down from the eaves of the hotel as the students went inside.
* * * * *
Saturday dawned as cold and misty as Friday, but by the time Gareth emerged from the dining room satiated with eggs, bacon and sausage, the sun was breaking through the clouds. Most of the students had left early, taking the inter-city coach to brighter lights, although a few still lingered in Corcester. He glimpsed Ashley curled up with a book before the electric fire in the sitting room, the headphones of her CD player clamped to her ears. When she glanced up and saw him watching her, she made a face that was part grin, part grimace. He waved and went on his way.
Clapper stood behind the reception desk. “And what have you laid on for the weekend?” he asked.
“A little research, a lot of note-taking,” Gareth replied.
He passed Caterina on the stairs. “Buon giorno!” she said cheerfully.
“Good morning.” Jason had left with the other students—his and Caterina’s affair was already over. Affairs, Gareth thought, are never bought on the cheap. More than one of his own had ended costing dearly in truth and trust. He collected his camera bag from his room and went back downstairs.
Matilda stood in front of the hotel contemplating the peekaboo sun. “I’m off for a ride,” Gareth told her.
“To the traveler’s camp?” she asked.
No point to flanneling with Matilda, was there? “It’s time I had a look about the place, yes.”
“Good luck. I’m going to check out the bookstore behind the bank. Don’t worry, I’ll stay out of trouble.”
Gareth hoped so. With a half-salute he turned toward Fortuna Stud, where Great Caesar’s Ghost was looking inquisitively over the fence. He offered the horse his hand and received a wet breath in return. He walked on wiping his palm on his jeans.
Reynolds’s beak of a nose was already out and about, sniffing round the stables. “Chatting up Caesar, were you? Would you care to take him out? He needs the exercise.”
“Oh yes, certainly,” Gareth said, beaming. “I’m honored!”
Reynolds summoned Jimmy, who chased down the horse and had him saddled before Gareth could do more than inquire about Della’s health.
“The old trouble-and-strife?” Reynolds answered. “She’s a bit pulled down. Gone to see the doctor again. Can’t stick the cold. Always at me to take her to Greece or Ibiza. Ought to send her alone, just to get shut of her.”
Gareth forced a polite smile, wondered why Reynolds had married Della to begin with, and mounted Caesar.
What a magnificent animal! He paced out of the stable yard like his namesake entering Rome in triumph. No matter that he had hardly distinguished himself at the Grand National.
As soon as Caesar was warmed up, Gareth prodded him into a run. The horse moved effortlessly, his great muscles flexing, his hooves drumming the damp earth. Birds flew up from the trees along the river. Durslow loomed ahead. Exhilarated, Gareth turned Caesar toward the fence enclosing the rocky upward slope. The horse leaped the closed gate like a puff of thistledown.
Gareth glanced round, but no one had seen him taking liberties with such expensive horseflesh. He reined Caesar to a more sedate pace. Instead of taking the path upward to Durslow he took the one leading down to the road and the layby where the travelers were camped, pausing once or twice to take photos.
The encampment looked like a setting for a Mad Max movie. Battered caravans, cars, and buses were scattered haphazardly over what had once been an attractive little park. If any of the buses sported red scrapes Gareth couldn’t tell. Their original colors had disintegrated into a patchwork of dents, paint, and rust.
Music blared from at least two caravans, the boom of the bass reverberating in Gareth’s teeth. Heavy metal music wasn’t evidence of devil-worship, though. Look as he might, Gareth didn’t see a single bloody altar.
Dogs pawed through piles of rubbish. A woman carrying a child, a shovel, and a roll of loo paper picked her way over a broken-down fence into the shadows of the fir plantation. The cool breeze did little to dispel a stench of sausage, sewage, and smoke. Several scruffy men were nursing bottles of beer round a small fire. When they saw the approaching rider they stood and swaggered forward, their expressions far from welcoming. Gareth sat a little taller in the saddle. Caesar shook his head, making his bridle jingle.
“Who are you?” one of the men demanded.
“Gareth March. I’m from the Times. I’d like to interview you.”
Another man suggested possible uses for the Times.
The door of a nearby caravan opened and a dark-haired man appeared, buckling his belt. Just as the door swung shut Gareth glimpsed a woman inside, wearing, so far as he could tell, nothing more than an unbuttoned shirt.
The others parted to let the man through. “Gareth-bleedin’ toff-March,” announced an anonymous voice.
“Nicholas Veliotes,” said the man, with an unnecessarily familiar pat on Caesar’s neck. “What’re you on about, March?”
So this was Nick, eh? Gareth repeated his introduction, adding, “Wouldn’t you like to have your side of the story represented in the Times?”
“That’s rich,” said Nick. “Who buys the Times, then, save sods of politicians who care more about their own arses than about making jobs and providing housing? They don’t want to read about us. Out of sight, out of mind.”
“Here’s your chance to sort them out. Tell me your life story, where you’ve lived, how you get along. . . .”
Caesar leaped straight up, corkscrewed, and did a fair approximation of a jitterbug. Convulsively Gareth’s knees tightened. He grabbed for the rim of the saddle and managed not only to quiet the horse but also to retain his camera bag. Scowling, he spun to face his audience.
The men were falling about laughing. Except for Nick, who took a bear-like man with a scraggly beard by the scruff of the neck and made him hand over a pen-knife. “Well done, boyo. Knock him about and the pigs knock us about, don’t they?”
Gareth focused on the pen knife, swallowed, and said more calmly than he felt, “I’ll overlook that, Nick,
if you’ll talk to me.”
“Bugger off,” said Nick. He tossed the knife in the air, catching and closing it as it came down, and grinned.
It wasn’t on for a detective to murder his suspect, tempted as he might be. Gareth pulled Caesar round and touched his heels to his flanks. Tossing his head disdainfully, the horse leaped into a run, cleared the fence across the road, and thundered up the hillside.
Gareth didn’t pull up until he was round the curve of the hill, out of sight of the camp. Muttering obscenities, he leaped down from the saddle and inspected Caesar’s flank. A shallow cut about two inches long broke the smooth chestnut hair. It wasn’t bleeding badly. Good show, he told himself. That interview had gone down a bomb, hadn’t it, risking another man’s horse, letting the sods make him look like an idiot—a good thing Matilda hadn’t been along, even placid Bodie would’ve objected to a knife in the flank and thrown Matilda on her head.
Gareth apologized to Caesar, mounted again, and turned toward Corcester. At least, he thought, he’d spotted a possible murder weapon. In the hands of not only one, but two arrogant bastards with enough neck to make trouble, if not to kill.
Man and horse returned to Fortuna Stud very slowly, without any further incidents, although Gareth suspected his face was still red as a beet. Once in the stable yard he pointed out the cut to Jimmy, but before he could confess to its origins the old man said, “So you walked him into a thorn bush or a fence post, did you?” And with a hostile glare at Gareth, he led Caesar away. “We’ll set you to rights, won’t we, boy?” The horse whickered his grievances.
Gareth turned toward the house. He had to own up to exposing Caesar to danger. A task that might not be as awkward as he feared, he realized as he walked by the open door of the garage—Reynolds’s red MG wasn’t there.
Della answered his knock on the door. She really did look ill, flushed and feverish. Clasping her jersey tightly across the chest of her blouse, she waved away Gareth’s apologies about the horse. “I’m sure it was an accident, the New Agers are really quite pleasant, simply down on their luck. . . . Please come in, surely you’d like to see Adrian’s collection. He’s not here, he’s—well, he’s gone away.”
Time Enough to Die Page 12
