by L. C. Tyler
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That sounds like good advice.’
‘So, Sly reckons Polgreen had been doing some illicit digging?’ asked Elsie. ‘With Iris’s approval?’
‘But is that possible?’ I asked, readjusting the phone under my chin. ‘The whole process of excavation is quite tightly controlled these days. I doubt you can just turn up with a shovel and dig, even if you are the chairman of the committee. Surely he’d never do that?’
‘It’s what I’d do,’ said Elsie. ‘If I had a key, I’d go down there at night with a metal detector and see what I could find. What’s that rustling noise? Are you eating chocolate, Ethelred?’
‘There are rustling noises other than opening a chocolate bar,’ I said.
‘Are there?’
‘I was checking a book when you called. The Reverend Sabine Barclay-Wood. Curious Tales of Old Sussex.’
‘That rings a bell.’
‘It’s the book we were all talking about. You’ve actually read it – or some of it. It had a bit of local history in it that helped clear up the Robin Pagham case a couple of years ago.’
‘Oh yes, I remember that one. The story of “The Murderer and the Devil”. That was a load of crap, that was.’
‘But helpful. When you worked out which bits to believe. Well, the same book also contains The Sidlesham Madonna. Like I said, a little of Barclay-Wood goes a long way with me, and I hadn’t yet read that story. So, I thought I’d see what he had to say on the subject. It does seem to be the basis for the whole Maltese Madonna legend, as we know it today.’
‘So, is it crap too?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve only just started. Professor Cox was very rude about it, but there may be an element of truth in there somewhere. Barclay-Wood was petulant and indiscreet – hence his failure to become a canon of the cathedral and the action for libel taken against him by the Bishop of Chichester. And by the Dean of Chichester. But he did a great deal of meticulous research. When he got it wrong, he usually got it wrong deliberately in order to annoy somebody. What’s that rustling noise at your end?’
‘It might be a book,’ said Elsie. ‘Possibly one about Sussex.’
‘You’re eating a book?’ I said.
‘I’m hungry enough,’ said Elsie.
‘Is your assistant still keeping you to the diet, then?’
‘Let me know how you get on with your story,’ said Elsie. ‘I might need to come down to West Wittering again and give you a hand with treasure seeking.’
‘I might be too busy for visitors,’ I said.
‘Ethelred, I’m your agent. If you’re ever too busy, I’ll tell you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said. ‘All part of the service.’
AN EXTRACT FROM ‘THE STRANGE TALE OF THE SIDLESHAM MADONNA’ (PUBLISHED 1904)
by the Reverend Sabine Barclay-Wood
Once upon a time, there existed in the city of Constantinople, which was in those days Christian, two wonderful golden images of the Virgin Mary and our Blessed Lord, Jesus Christ. The man who had made these holy objects was more skilful than any who exist in our day, and nobody could set their eyes on the statues without wonder. The gold shimmered and gleamed in the Eastern sun, and the jewels that adorned the statues were beyond the powers of my poor pen to describe. Rubies and diamonds and sapphires and emeralds and garnets and pearls and opals and many other stones with strange and wonderful names studded the crowns that the statues wore and the edges of their robes. The Madonna’s cloak, so I am told, was all of lapis lazuli, for her colour was and ever has been the deepest, richest blue. And Christ’s emerald crown of thorns dripped with small blood-red drops of ruby. Their eyes were perfectly matched sapphires and their lips flawless rose quartz. It was said that, so long as the statues were in the city, it would never fall to an enemy.
But the Christians of Constantinople had many foes, including the fierce and implacable Turks, and the day came when these infidels had conquered all of the country right up to the mighty triple walls of the city. For weeks they laid siege to this last bastion of the true faith, but they could not break through or break the spirit of the Christians within, who prayed daily to God for deliverance.
There was, however, an evil man in their midst. Though he was called a Knight of St John, he was weak and unworthy of the title. His knees trembled at the mere mention of the enemy. I am pleased to say that he was not an Englishman but a Greek or an Italian, of whom there were far too many in the town. He refused to place his trust in Our Lord and told his neighbours that the Turks would most certainly slaughter them all. In spite of their laughing at his foolishness – or perhaps because they did so – he hatched a desperate plan. He would steal the two gold statues and use them to bribe the Turks to let him leave the city peacefully. This he did. Since he was a Knight of St John, nobody questioned him when he went into the church one evening after the day’s service had finished. He quickly seized the two statues and concealed them under his cloak.
He waited until it was dark and then crept out through a small postern gate into the great emptiness of deserted olive trees and vines. He shivered as he looked up at the strong walls that had until then separated him from his enemies. Now they were behind him, immensely tall and pale lemon in the soft moonlight, he felt very small and alone. It was as if the cold eyes of the whole world were upon him. A Turkish sentry soon challenged the knight, for no Christians were permitted to cross the Turkish lines. He asked to be taken to the chief of the Turks, which they did in a most polite and civil manner, seeing the knight’s fine armour and believing him to be an honourable soldier and a gentleman. Once in the presence of the infidel general, however, the knight cunningly produced the two images.
‘Choose, O Mighty Pasha!’ he exclaimed. ‘If you allow me to pass safely through your army and into Greece, then you shall have one or other of these fine gold statues!’
At first, the chief did not know what to say, for he was a good and honest man, in spite of being a Turk. Then he said, ‘But are these statues not of your Lord, Jesus Christ, and of his Holy Mother, the Virgin? How can you offer them up in this way? If they were of Mohammed, whom I worship, then I should never let them go, no matter how dreadful a death I suffered as a result.’
‘They are just trinkets that I do not value,’ said the knight. ‘But you may only have one, for I wish to sell the other for my own gain and profit.’
‘You deserve to keep neither, O false knight, but I will not compound this evil deed by robbing you. Go! Take the statue of the Virgin. I, for my part, will have the other, but I shall treat it with more respect than you have, for your Christ, whom we call Isā ibn Maryam, was a true prophet.’
And he was as good as his word. He not only let the knight go but gave him a bag of bread and some black olives and dates and a flask of wine to take on his journey, and also a letter of safe passage to show to any other Turk who might try to stop him. And the false knight went into Greece and took ship for the island of Rhodes, where the Knights of St John then had their castle. So much for him.
Now there was, as you may imagine, much consternation in Constantinople the following day, when it was found that the statues had gone, and there was a great deal of weeping and wailing. Had it been an English city, I rather think that they would have pulled themselves together and jolly well got on with things, like the gallant defenders of Ladysmith and Mafeking, but they were merely foreigners and decided they might as well surrender to the Turks as not. Thus, Constantinople fell under the rule of the Mohammedans, and the Christians were all forced to flee or become Mohammedans themselves, which I am sad to relate some chose to do.
In the meantime, the false knight had arrived in Rhodes. It had been his intention to have the statue melted down and to sell the gold and become rich. But even as he gazed at the statue in his cabin on the ship, a sort of terror came over him. Surely after such a betrayal the statue must be cursed? And so, he did not sell
the relic as he planned but presented it as a gift to the order. And he told his master a story of having saved the statue from the sack of Constantinople, after he had fought long and hard and killed the chief of the Turks in single combat. But he said nothing of the sale of the statue of Our Lord, and the commander of his order asked no questions, being very content with his prize. In the end, it did none of them any good, for the knight soon died of leprosy and the order was driven out of its castle by the Turks and had to wander Europe looking for a new home.
By and by, the Emperor took pity on them and gave them a new castle in Malta, which is now, of course, fortunate enough to be British but which at that time belonged to him, and the statue of the Madonna travelled there too, though this time not in a bag with the dates …
The phone had been ringing, I realised, for some time. I picked it up.
‘Have you finished reading your little book?’ asked Elsie.
‘No, I’m about halfway through the story, I think.’
‘Any good?’
‘His style is, as usual, a sort of mock folk tale. A lot of it is rubbish but I think he knows it’s rubbish.’
‘Really?’
‘There’s stuff he can’t possibly believe.’
‘Such as?’
‘He tells us that Muslims respect Jesus and that they call him Isā ibn Maryam, but at the same time he claims that they worshipped images of the Prophet Mohammed, something which would, in fact, have been repugnant to them. He must have known that they didn’t. He claims that the Turks were fierce and implacable, and yet one of the few honourable and genuinely decent characters in the story is the chief of the Turks. It’s as if he was laughing at his readers.’
‘Writers!’ said Elsie. ‘What are they like? Let me know if he says where the treasure is now. Anyway, I’ve just remembered what I phoned you about the first time – before you started rambling on about diets. I’ve been doing some research on the Internet. You remember the gardener who died?’
‘Yes, he accidentally fell into the well.’
‘Maybe, or maybe not. Iris’s grandfather was tried for his murder. His brief got him off. It was quite a famous case at the time.’
‘I’ll look it up. What was the name of the gardener?’
‘Sly,’ said Elsie with some emphasis. ‘Walter Sly. Small world, eh?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ethelred
There are few things that cannot be verified on the Internet. You can check the weather in Tokyo, the exchange rate for the Vietnamese Dong, the shortest route from Chichester to Bristol, the day on which a full moon occurred in June 1657 and how to mix an Old-Fashioned cocktail. You can also find the outcome of long-forgotten murder cases.
The death of Walter Sly had caused a stir at the time and, almost sixty years later, a few ripples still lapped up against the vast edifice of the World Wide Web. On a site created for those who liked their crime real rather than fictional, I managed to discover the outline of the case.
Walter Sly had been the gardener at the Priory for many years before the Munnings family had bought the house. He had been kept on as part of a much larger labour force required to create the garden that the new owners required. Sly had, it was clear, resented both the desire to rip up the garden he had tended for so long and his demotion, as he had seen it, to a mere labourer amongst other labourers. For some weeks large quantities of earth had been shifted, walls built and the old priory carp pond re-excavated. Then, it would seem, Sly had got his way. Munnings apparently decided that fewer changes were needed than he had first envisaged. As if on an impulse, everyone except Sly had been dismissed, and for some weeks Munnings and Sly had worked on alone, side by side. When the last geranium was in place and the new lawn had been turfed, Sly was kept on in his old role, in a garden that was different, but less different than it might have been. Munnings was noted, even after a few months in the village, for his stubbornness and short temper. It did not go entirely unremarked that his gardener seemed to have an unusual influence over him.
Then Walter Sly had been discovered, drowned, in the well. He had failed to come home one evening. The following morning his family, having made enquiries at both village pubs and at the Priory, went to the police and reported him missing. Munnings told the police that, as far as he knew, Sly had left the Priory at about his usual time, though unaccountably not locking up the tool shed before he left. It was two or three days later that a proper search of the garden was conducted and the old wooden cover to the well was found to be broken. It was not easy recovering the body from the deep shaft. At first the case seemed straightforward. That Sly should have made a final tour of the garden before going home, that he should have stepped or leant on the rotten cover inadvertently, that he should have fallen, striking his head on the sides of the well – all of these things were quite possible. Then Sly’s widow told the police that she was sure that her husband was in possession of some secret of his employer’s. Sly had told her, a few days previously, they would shortly be very rich – something he had never envisaged before, neither drunk nor sober, not during the entire thirty-two years of their marriage. Even at the time it had worried her. The police returned to the Priory and conducted a more thorough search. From the depths of the well they extracted a large claw hammer. After almost a week’s immersion, the hammer yielded only one verifiable fingerprint. That fingerprint belonged to Munnings.
At his trial, Munnings was represented by an eminent QC. The QC was able to argue that the wounds suffered by Sly were as consistent with a head striking a projecting flint – for some were mixed with the brickwork – as they were with a blow from a blunt weapon. It was true that the hammer had Mr Munnings’ fingerprint on it, but then it was, legally, his hammer. There was no law, or none that he knew of, against owning one. Nor did Mr Munnings bear any blame for the tragic accident. As gardener, it was, arguably, Sly’s responsibility to ensure that the well was safe – it was not to be expected that the master of the house would do this personally, if he employed relevant staff. Mr Munnings would in due course give evidence that he had asked Sly to do precisely this some weeks before. Only Sly’s tardiness had left the cover in its precarious state. Surely what had happened was that, that afternoon, Sly had finally heeded his instructions, taken the hammer from the workshop in order to repair the cover, carelessly knelt on the rotten wood and fallen through. Mrs Sly had accused Mr Munnings of having some secret that her husband knew. Well, if she was going to accuse him, let her say now what Mr Munnings had been concealing.
Mrs Sly, to be fair, made a good witness. She stuck to her story that Munnings had a motive for killing her husband. Her husband had known something. She was unimpressed by the QC’s suave manner or his silk gown. She was more than willing to answer back, a talent for which she was repeatedly reprimanded by the judge. In the end, however, she was no match for the eminent QC. He ridiculed all of her suggestions as to why Walter Sly might have been able to blackmail his employer. Finally, he asked her whether her husband was the sort of scoundrel who would stoop so low as to threaten the man who put bread into the mouths of his family. She paused, realising that both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ held dangers. The QC had smiled at the jury before she had a chance to reply and said, ‘No further questions for the witness, M’lud.’
The jury retired and deliberated for two whole days. They would clearly have liked it to have been a case of blackmail and murder, and would have given a great deal – ten shillings each at the very least – to have been told what the secret was. In the end they were sufficiently impressed by the eminent QC to bring in a verdict of not guilty, but they left the courtroom with a vague sense of having missed out on something good.
‘So,’ said Elsie, ‘it’s obvious, isn’t it? In the process of creating this new garden, they discovered the treasure. Munnings recognised what they’d found and knew that he’d have to hand the whole lot over to the Crown or the Knights of St John or somebody, probably with no compensation if it co
uld be shown that Henry VIII had specifically reserved the stuff for himself. Munnings sacked the new workforce before they got wind of it, and started to excavate properly, with just himself and Sly, the trusted family retainer. They stored the loot somewhere – in that old ice house in the garden, probably – and started to look for a buyer who wouldn’t ask too many questions. Meanwhile, they turfed over where they found it so nobody would know what they’d done. But then Sly got greedy and demanded a bigger cut of the profits. So, Munnings hit him over the head with the hammer and dumped him in the well. Because Sly hadn’t trusted his wife with the full story – a warning to all men who keep secrets from their wives or agents – the jury didn’t know about the Maltese Madonna and couldn’t work out why Munnings would suddenly decide to kill a perfectly good gardener. If they’d been on to that, Munnings would have been hanged for sure.’
She took another scoop of her chocolate pudding and defied me to contradict her.
I was up in London for the day and was lunching with my agent. When I first joined Elsie’s agency it was a small concern, and lunch consisted of a sandwich and a coffee, for which I often paid. More recently, the firm had grown and, when I phoned Elsie, it was usually one or other of her staff who took the call. I was, as Elsie pointed out at most of our meetings, now merely one of her much-loved but, frankly, less profitable clients. But that had been equally true when I joined her. It was just that she had moved on and I hadn’t. Lunch now ran to three courses, with wine for me. Elsie rarely, if ever, touched alcohol, preferring not to waste calories that might otherwise be allocated to some form of chocolate.
‘So, where’s the treasure now?’ I asked.
‘Sold long ago.’
‘It can’t have been worth much. Iris seems fairly short of money to maintain the house.’
