The Maltese Herring

by L. C. Tyler

Ethelred nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘They did OK,’ said Polgreen. ‘When their house was closed down, the deal was that they got a pension or were transferred elsewhere. But, like I say, it would have been easy for them to pocket the odd relic, before they left, to supplement their pension fund. There would have been a stage, towards the end, when nobody much cared about guarding things and everyone was looking to put something aside for a rainy day. In the confusion of closing down a place this size, there must have been all sorts of opportunities to stuff a chalice or crucifix under your robe and head off down the road to whatever the future held for them. It’s not just the Madonna that vanished. The inventory of the Abbey in 1530, one of the many documents we know existed before Barclay-Wood’s time, was published in a history journal in the 1880s, and it records a gold chalice, silver candlesticks, a large silver bowl, an enamelled pyx and numerous smaller items. Most of it went missing at about the time the Abbey was sold off. All of the excavations over the years to find treasure would have been no more and no less than harmless fun, if they hadn’t destroyed a lot of important archaeological evidence in the process. There aren’t many places you can dig now where the soil hasn’t been disturbed and sifted over by somebody. Bits of pottery from one dig thrown on top of bits of pottery from another – twelfth-century material mixed with sixteenth and no clue as to which part of the site it originally came from. So, I’ve said – no more digs. Not that Tertius Sly takes much notice. He’d have the bulldozers in tomorrow, he would. He thinks a big find would turn us into a major tourist attraction.’

  ‘Secretary of the committee,’ said Ethelred to me, as if providing scholarly footnotes.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. He didn’t need to add that Polgreen and Sly hated each other. Some things don’t need subtitles. ‘So, if the Maltese Madonna may never have been here, why do so many people think it was?’

  Polgreen rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t get me started on that,’ he said. ‘The story, as we know it, also comes from the Reverend Sabine Barclay-Wood, in a book he wrote on Sussex legends. He enjoyed off-the-wall gothic tales. He collected some locally, stole some from other parts of the country, often just changing the name of the village in which it took place, and made up the rest himself. He was an evangelical and not favourably inclined towards religious images of any sort. He liked the idea that a statue of the Virgin might be cursed, and that it could bring death and destruction to anyone who touched it. But it’s just a story. Nobody’s going to die here.’

  I vaguely remembered the book in question, because Ethelred had a copy. I was about to agree it was crap, because it was, but at that point we all saw a small man in shorts, T-shirt and floppy hat advancing on us. He had a determined look on his face.

  ‘Talk of the devil. Bloody Tertius Sly,’ Polgreen muttered. ‘I wonder what he wants now.’

  I looked at Ethelred, who showed as little enthusiasm for Mr Sly as Polgreen had.

  ‘A friend of yours?’ I asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Ethelred.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ethelred

  ‘A friend of yours?’ asked Elsie in a voice that was intended to carry far enough to cause embarrassment.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I replied at a slightly lower volume.

  Elsie nodded and took in Sly’s baggy lower garments and the T-shirt that he had probably bought from a charity shop for 50p. She approved of frugality, but felt he had still overpaid.

  I knew Sly a little, though much less well than Polgreen. I often saw him around the village. I rarely spoke to him if I could help it. His conversations were peppered with casual disclosures of anything he knew that was to the discredit of his neighbours and acquaintances. Sly regarded it as an added attraction if he had received the facts in strict confidence before divulging them to the listener. I never told him anything that I would not have been happy for the whole county to know.

  Sly was one of those people who have a nervous tic when agitated, which he was much of the time. He had overcome these minor afflictions well enough to be elected a councillor – though whether that was county, district or parish I had never felt the need to enquire – and, as we had been informed, he was the secretary of the Abbey preservation committee. These were, one suspected, the highest offices he would ever hold, but they at least spoke of his diligence and willingness to serve without payment or gratitude. Polgreen had once told me that Sly aspired to succeed him as chairman, but that the committee would never elect him. Though Sly had devoted many years to the committee and would do any job diligently for as long as he was permitted to work many unremunerated hours, I believed Polgreen. The committee would elect somebody who was less well qualified but who (on the credit side) wasn’t Tertius Sly.

  ‘Hello, Henry,’ he said. ‘Hello, Ethelred.’ Sly looked at Elsie and twitched.

  ‘Elsie Thirkettle,’ said Elsie. ‘I’m Ethelred’s agent. Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Oh yes, you write books or something, don’t you, Ethelred?’ He made it sound as if writing books was the last resort of the otherwise unemployable.

  Elsie nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, he does write books. It’s a great shame more people don’t read them – or at least buy them. And you work for Mr Polgreen, I believe?’ It had taken her a very short time to work out that this was the most annoying question she could ask Sly. But she’d had a lot of practice at that sort of thing and was good at it.

  ‘We both serve on the committee,’ he said, scowling at her. ‘As one of the three senior officers. And that’s what I want a word with you about, Henry. In private, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I’m talking to Ethelred,’ said Polgreen. ‘He has brought his friends to see the site. Elsie and a historian—’

  ‘Dr Hilary Joyner,’ said Sly. ‘A very distinguished professor from Oxford University.’

  ‘That’s more or less right,’ I said. ‘He’s a Fellow of my old college.’

  ‘I’ve met him,’ he said. ‘Just now. We had an interesting chat, Dr Joyner and I. He seemed very much in favour of further excavations here and at the Priory. As I am myself. An extremely clever and well-informed man, I’d have said. Unlike some here, even if they do have university degrees.’

  There was a great deal about the way he said ‘university degrees’ that indicated he thought all academic qualifications, except possibly Hilary Joyner’s, were mere ostentation.

  ‘It’s still not a good idea,’ said Polgreen. ‘Whatever Dr Joyner may think. Not at the Abbey. And Iris will never allow it at the Priory – you know that.’

  ‘But she would allow it here.’

  This seemed a slightly odd concession on Iris’s part, then I remembered that she was also on the Abbey preservation committee in some capacity.

  ‘Even if that were true, the whole committee would have to approve it,’ said Polgreen. ‘Not just you and she.’

  ‘As it happens, I’ve checked the rules and under certain circumstances the approval of two of the three senior officers is sufficient authority. For example, you and I, and Iris as treasurer, can take whatever action we deem necessary, if we have reason to believe that a committee member has acted improperly …’

  He left this accusation hanging in the air in front of us.

  ‘Sadly, I don’t carry the rule book with me at all times,’ snapped Polgreen.

  ‘Fortunately, I have a copy with me,’ said Sly.

  ‘For some reason, that comes as no surprise. And you are suggesting that I have behaved improperly and that you and Iris can therefore approve further excavation to prove it?’

  Sly smiled the smile of one who knows they have finally been understood. ‘It wouldn’t be appropriate to discuss that here and now, would it? Not with your friends here. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t be appropriate,’ said Polgreen. ‘Or convenient. I’ll come and find you later. We can discuss it then.’

  For a moment, he and Sly faced each other down across the geraniums and snapdr
agons.

  ‘I’ll be in the office,’ said Sly, pointing to the small green shack that served as a museum and, apparently, the administrative hub of the operation. ‘I’ve got some important work to do there, anyway.’

  Polgreen watched him depart.

  ‘Dr Joyner seems to have impressed Tertius Sly,’ I said.

  ‘Anyone who favoured digging here would have his vote,’ said Polgreen. ‘Tertius Sly’s easily pleased in that respect. Dr Joyner wants to promote his book. Sly wants to add to the fame of the Abbey – and hence of himself. The discovery of a gold statue would do nicely in each case. Well, I’m very sorry that you had to witness that little scene, Ethelred. Sly’s determined to have me out and replace me as chair of the committee. He’s got a bee in his bonnet that I’ve been searching privately for the Madonna, for my own gain, and he thinks a new investigation here will reveal that. He knows the committee won’t support him, so he’s come up with this obscure rule, that he probably drafted himself this morning. I’ve no idea why Sly thinks Iris is on his side, though. She actually thinks he’s a tedious little shit, as he’ll find out if he decides to descend on her at the Priory and demand action.’

  I nodded. In spite of our invitation to the Priory, I was still unsure that Iris necessarily thought any more highly of me than she did of Tertius Sly. ‘I must bring Dr Joyner over before you go off and have your chat with Tertius,’ I said. ‘I know he’s got some questions he’d like to ask you, if you can spare a moment.’

  Polgreen nodded unenthusiastically. I was sorry to impose this burden on him, but it would possibly save him a visit from Joyner to his home later on. There was, as I had already discovered, no avoiding Dr Hilary Joyner if he was determined to see you.

  It was at that point that we saw Joyner striding across the site to join us, panama hat firmly on his head, awkwardly juggling his now discarded coat and his rucksack. He was breathless, either from his speed of travel or from his indignation.

  ‘You will never guess who I’ve just seen,’ he announced.

  We knew he’d seen his new admirer, Mr Sly, but it seemed unlikely that that was what was troubling him.

  ‘Brian Aldridge?’ said Elsie. ‘Eddie Grundy? Linda Snell?’ She’d always liked guessing games, especially when other people took them seriously and might get annoyed if she didn’t.

  ‘Anthony Cox!’ he announced, without waiting for her to go through the rest of the cast of The Archers and move on to EastEnders. ‘What is he doing here?’

  ‘Where is he exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘Over there,’ said Joyner.

  We looked in the direction Joyner had come from and where he was now pointing to, but there was no sign of anyone.

  ‘He must have gone,’ said Joyner. ‘But he was there.’

  ‘A brief visit, then,’ I said.

  ‘You treat his intrusion remarkably casually, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘He has as much right as we do to be here. I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent reason for his visit.’

  ‘Innocent?’ said Joyner. ‘Innocent? You think so? I swear to you, Ethelred, I’ll kill that man. One day, I really will murder him. If he doesn’t get me first, of course.’

  ‘But are you sure it was Professor Cox?’ I asked, as we drove at an even pace through the narrow Sussex lanes. Tall, dark-green hedges hemmed us in on both sides, but there was always just room for two cars to pass each other, if driven with care. You just had to hope that you didn’t meet a combine harvester coming the other way. In places, the trees arched right over the road, making a dappled tunnel for us to travel through.

  ‘Of course. I’ve seen him from most angles over the past twenty years. If you’d just been a bit quicker off the mark, Ethelred, we might have caught him and confronted him.’

  I wasn’t aware that I’d ever offered to do that. More to the point, I hadn’t stopped Joyner doing anything. Anyway, as I’d said, Cox had as much right as Joyner to view the Abbey in the course of his research.

  ‘Well, you saw him first and could have confronted him there and then if you wished,’ I said. ‘I was never informed of any plan to chase him across West Sussex. You’ll presumably see him back in College next week. There should be plenty of opportunity to confront him then, if that’s what you’d like.’

  ‘It’s what he’ll do in the meantime that worries me. It wouldn’t surprise me if he went straight round to the Priory. Now I think it, that must be his plan. We should drive there without delay. We must be very close. And by good fortune we have your car available to us.’ He fiddled with his phone, trying to work out directions from Google Maps.

  ‘I’ve booked a table for lunch at The Lamb,’ I said. ‘And Iris Munnings isn’t expecting us until two o’clock. She’s not the sort of person who would take kindly to our arriving out of the blue, when she’s probably having lunch herself. She’ll simply send us away and I’ll have wasted the time I spent on persuading her to see you.’

  Actually, fixing the appointment had been easier than I had feared. I’d phoned and dutifully explained the problem. She’d said she’d think about it, and then called me back five minutes later to say yes. I was pleasantly surprised at how persuasive I’d been. But she was notoriously touchy on matters of etiquette, and I wasn’t sure that I could charm her twice in one week. There was no advantage, from my point of view, in upsetting her for the sake of an hour or so.

  Joyner was still protesting, though largely to himself, when I swung the car slowly but firmly into The Lamb car park. He condescended to eat a hearty lunch – as did Elsie – but he sulked all the way through it and looked at his watch at every opportunity. Seeing Cox like that had completely unsettled him. Eventually, at one-thirty, I conceded that we might pay the bill and leave. Fifteen minutes early was probably forgivable.

  In fact, we were twenty minutes early when I parked outside the Priory. I sighed and prepared to be admonished for my inconsiderate timeliness.

  The Priory was a mellow red-brick building, for the most part just two storeys high, but with a Tudor gatehouse that had long offered a distinctive landmark for sailors navigating the coastline to and from Chichester Harbour. It had never possessed the grandeur of Sidlesham Abbey – no Cathedral-like church, no vast monks’ refectory, no gothic cloisters – everything had always been on a cosy and domestic scale. The very modest priory church had been demolished soon after the cluster of buildings ceased to be a religious house, and a new kitchen wing, also in red brick, had been added in the early 1800s. Its grounds had once stretched all the way down to the pebbly beach. They were now slightly more curtailed but still extensive enough to be worth opening to the public a few days a year, for the benefit of various local charities. From where we stood, rhododendrons blocked the view of most of the garden, but I knew well their damp, mysterious woodland paths, sunny lawns and bright flower beds. At this time of year, they would be full of roses, peonies, verbena, lavender, stocks and geraniums. There were some pink elders that would be in flower. I was looking forward to seeing it all again. Once I had apologised sufficiently.

  ‘That is outrageous!’ Joyner exclaimed.

  I was about to lock the car but, instead, I turned, following the line of Joyner’s trembling finger. He was pointing to a white Mercedes convertible that was also parked outside the house.

  ‘The sports car?’ I asked. It was a pretty little thing – low, sleek and well-cared-for. Not a saloon car lacking a roof, but a proper two-seater, designed to be driven fast on an open road, down towards the glistening blue Mediterranean or along the rugged, winding coast of the Adriatic. It was perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea – it lacked proper luggage space – but it seemed unlikely to arouse the sort of distaste that Joyner was exhibiting.

  ‘Cox,’ said Joyner. ‘That’s bloody Cox’s bloody car! He must have driven straight here from the Abbey. It is precisely as I feared. He has come here and turned Mrs Munnings against us. You should have listened to me, Ethelred. I hold yo
u personally responsible for any damage he has done through your neglect.’

  I looked at Joyner’s face. He was genuinely worried, though I doubted the hour or so Cox had had with Iris would persuade her to do anything she didn’t want to do. If anyone in the village knew her own mind, then Iris Munnings did.

  ‘Well, it’s partly as you feared,’ I said. ‘His car is here. There’s no evidence that Professor Cox has done anything yet except park it under that tree. It’s a lime, and he’ll be sorry when he sees the sticky mess that drips from it at this time of year.’

  Joyner surveyed the pristine leather seats and allowed the merest glimmer of a smile to pass across his lips, then he recollected that greater matters were at stake. ‘Ring the bell at once!’ he commanded. ‘The only dripping that’s going on at this moment is Cox dripping poison into her ear.’

  That, too, seemed unlikely, but I pocketed my car keys, rang the bell and prepared myself for Iris’s recriminations.

  There was, in fact, a long pause and a slow tread of feet, then Iris opened the door. She was dressed in a short white jacket, white T-shirt and black jeans, rather than one of her usual knee-length summer frocks. It wasn’t clear if that was in some way in our honour or because she needed to do something for which jeans were more appropriate than a skirt. Her short grey hair was also neat and practical. Perhaps she envisaged a hand-to-hand struggle with Joyner to prevent his digging up her garden. The white jacket would show the blood, though. In that respect it was not a good choice. She looked at me and swallowed hard. Her gaze was normally firm, aristocratic and thoroughly entitled. But, for once, she appeared ill at ease, even on her own doorstep.

  ‘Ethelred!’ she exclaimed more enthusiastically than I had any reason to expect. ‘You’re a little more prompt than you said but …’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry, Iris,’ I said. ‘We finished lunch early. If you like, we can go away for ten minutes and take a stroll along the beach—’