by Amy Myers
‘How did you manage that?’ Georgia asked.
‘I had a clever wife, or rather partner, if it makes any difference. We celebrated our fortieth anniversary in 2001.’
‘Did she help you plan her husband’s murder?’ Peter asked dispassionately. No letting him off any hooks, she noted.
Lance’s expression grew harder. ‘What murder?’ he asked again. ‘Jago went on a few days’ holiday to – where was it, Outer Mongolia, perhaps? – and never returned.’
‘Without knowing he was dead, why did you go ahead with the theft of his identity?’
If Peter had hoped to throw him by this, he was out of luck. ‘Ah,’ Lance replied immediately, ‘because he’d been missing for the whole of that summer, it was clear to me he must be dead. He would never have stayed away from Jennifer so long otherwise. When it was clear he was not returning for whatever reason, Jennifer suggested I should move in with her. Mark needed a father, he was very young.’
‘Why take his name, then?’
Lance looked shocked. ‘Society in those days would not have tolerated our living together otherwise, and there were of course poor Mary’s feelings to consider. We didn’t want to wait the necessary seven years or so for Jago’s death to be formally declared. We decided we could make a new life in Toulouse, and perhaps eventually England, to benefit from my King Arthur coup in due course. I was reluctant about the latter; it seemed to me one dice thrown too often. Apparently I was right, but Sam was insistent that I should have another shot at the dig, so I thought why not? Coincidentally – what a surprise – the rumours began again. A chip off the old block, is Sam.’
‘So it seems,’ Peter said. ‘Even in murder.’
‘Diminished responsibility,’ Lance said quickly. ‘I couldn’t bear . . . Enough of that.’ He caught himself briskly. ‘To resume my tale: I took the new position in Toulouse, at a somewhat lower academic standard. I knew enough about art to teach its history admirably and was a far better teacher than Jago himself. I have quite a reputation you know, even now. In those days there weren’t quite so many conferences so it was possible to keep to my own turf; Jago and I were much the same build, and with the help of a beard and change of parting, that sort of thing – and of course with Jennifer at my side – it proved quite easy to avoid recognition. Friends and family were a problem, of course. Fortunately, only one of Jago’s parents was alive, and she was senile.’
Fortunately? Georgia felt sick.
‘My parents, of course,’ Lance continued, ‘believed I was dead, and it was easy to lose contact, as it was with friends. As we were in Toulouse, distance made their hearts grow considerably less fonder, and for those stalwarts who were more clingy, it was possible to invent excuses for not seeing them, or for Jennifer seeing them alone. As the years passed, it grew even easier, until we were able to return to England – not too close to Wymdown or Dorset, of course, until Mary died.’
‘You were listed as being at the funeral,’ Georgia said puzzled. ‘Your wife would have been there, surely.’
‘Quite. I did take a few risks. I had taken the boat out on 14 September, with an extra dinghy on board, to near the French coast, where Jennifer was waiting for me. It was a wrench to part with my beloved Hillyard, but needs must. As for the funeral, well, that was a problem. I had missed the memorial service through tactical illness, though Jennifer attended. When it came to the funeral it was a different matter. Mary had been obsessed with the thought that she had to see a body before she would believe I was dead. Otherwise she hoped I might come marching home, or so she told Jennifer. Today this would be understood, but then the police merely thought her a nuisance, clamouring to view every body that could possibly fit the bill. When one did pop up, Jennifer went with her for company. I suspected that Mary knew about Jennifer’s role in my life, but in an odd way that made her more dependent on Jennifer after my so-called death. Mary was set on the body being mine, and Jennifer gently helped her to believe it. As for the funeral, it was ultimately simple. Jennifer gave my name to the undertakers and to the journalists there, each time indicating some other man as if that were me.’
‘But Mary would have noticed you weren’t there.’
‘I had to leave promptly, Jennifer explained to Mary. Poor dear Mary was in such a state that she believed I rushed right away because I couldn’t take the emotion of Lance’s death. I wrote her the most charming letter afterwards, of course. In Jago’s handwriting naturally, since that was something I most certainly had to acquire. As for my voice – well, I never rang Mary. Only Jennifer did, and Mary was too diffident to make international calls. They’re commonplace now, but it was quite a fandango in those days.’
‘If Jago went to Outer Mongolia, he’d have taken his passport with him,’ Georgia pointed out.
‘So he would. Fortunately, my line of work, shall we say, allowed me to overcome this difficulty. Ten years ago, with Mary no longer alive, we thought it safe to move back to Kent, and reacquaint myself with my daughter. My appearance had by then changed with age, and no one would remember the old Lance’s voice – save perhaps darling Venetia, but fortunately she too had moved away. She was a highly inquisitive sort of person.’
‘So the mysterious visitor the afternoon you went to Hythe wasn’t Jago?’ Peter asked.
‘Good heavens, no. There was no visitor. I lied. Needed time to myself.’
‘Madeleine visited you that day.’
‘So she did.’ Lance laughed. ‘How could I forget? Most unwelcome. She wanted to probe into the scam on Jago. She felt protective of Jennifer and was convinced it was all my idea. A stupid woman.’
‘How had she heard of it?’
‘No idea.’
‘It couldn’t be that Michelangelo Kranowski came over to warn you that Raphael Kranowski was about to be exposed as a fake? That you fobbed him off with the same story that the great scam was about to be sprung but you weren’t going to tell him where the goblet was buried; that he thought you had pinched it, and went back to ring Madeleine in Rome?’
Lance still didn’t look fazed. ‘I suppose it was possible. Dear me, such a long time ago.’
‘It must be. According to what you said just now, Jago had been missing for some weeks, even months, and you thought he was dead so it seems unlikely the scam would still be sprung in his absence.’
A split second while Lance realized he’d been trapped. He wagged an indulgent finger. ‘Words, Peter, words.’
‘Which can be fatal.’
‘If verbal, not worth the paper they’re written on, as Sam Goldwyn once famously said.’
‘Was the scam all your idea? Or Jennifer’s too?’
‘Forget Jennifer,’ he snapped.
‘And the murder?’ Peter asked.
The gamester was beginning to tire. He shrugged. ‘Very well. That prat Michelangelo bleated to Jago about the goblet being Raphael’s work, and revealed the whole damn scam to Jago. Jago came hot foot over to Dover; I met him after I’d dropped Madeleine off. God, what an afternoon. What a day, come to that. We had an interesting discussion. I put him on a ferry back to France and he went off quite happily – well, not happily, he didn’t even like ferries very much.’
‘He didn’t come aboard your boat?’
Lance snorted. ‘Jago? You have to be joking. One of the less pleasant sides to this particular game has been my inability to sail any more. Fortunately having Jennifer made up for that.’
‘So did Jennifer murder Jago to get him out of the way so that she could be with you? You knew he was dead, so if you didn’t kill him then she did.’
He went very white. ‘That’s a dastardly thing to say.’
‘A Lady Macbeth?’
His face was strained. ‘No.’
‘She came with Jago that day, didn’t she?’
He hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘And you both murdered him.’
‘No.’ He was shaking with genuine emotion now. ‘Jennifer’s dead, so I might
as well tell you. Lady Macbeth my foot. You just don’t bloody understand. She was crazy to have married Jago, and she knew it. We had had a spat, and she did it in a temper.’
‘But Mark was Jago’s child?’
‘He didn’t get a chance at another. He was—’
‘Shot?’ Peter said inexorably, when he paused.
Lance glared at him. ‘No. Jennifer came with Jago that day. For all his jabbering on about the Round Table, there was nothing gallant about our Jago. First he was raging because he’d found out about my joke – no sense of humour – then worse, called Jennifer a whore and anything else he could think of.’
‘He’d seen the other paintings?’ Georgia asked.
Perhaps it was the suddenness of her intervention that threw Lance off course. He looked startled, taken off guard. ‘What other paintings?’
‘Two of them had Jennifer as a model for Guinevere; I presume they were Michelangelo’s work.’
‘Means nothing to me,’ Lance said dismissively. ‘It was the scam. The scam was everything. Nothing would satisfy Jago but to come to Badon House that day. He was raving, but for heaven’s sake there’s no crime in a practical joke. So I drove him there with Jennifer. I’d buried the stuff near the church. It had been in the ground maturing like vintage wine. Once there, he went berserk all over again, and attacked me. For an unathletic man he had strength. SAS training, of course. I defended myself, he slipped, fell against a gravestone, and the fall killed him. Jennifer saw what happened. I was beside myself and couldn’t think straight. She said she wasn’t going to lose us both, and if we just scarpered together there would be enough evidence around to put one if not two of us in jail. We waited until the small hours, got Jago’s body into the car and drove hell for leather for Folkestone where I dropped Jennifer off to get a ferry; I went on to Hythe, got the body on board, waited till early morning so that I’d be seen to depart alone, then climbed into the dingy, set the boat adrift and that was that.’
‘Not quite,’ Peter said. ‘A dinghy was left on the boat. How did you get an extra one in such a hurry?’
A split second, before he replied easily: ‘Two dinghies on board. I told you. I’m a careful sort of chap. Overanxious, Jennifer always said.’ He smiled. Of course he would, Georgia thought dully. Lance would always win his game.
‘And now,’ he chuckled, ‘you must, I’m afraid, permit me my last game. The unveiling of Arthur’s goblet by Jago Priest. Poor Jago must have his hour of glory.’
*
The same spot in the same field as Georgia had looked at with Cindy. Of course it was here. That too had been a game. Talk of geophysical surveys and metal detectors was a smokescreen. So was Lance’s claim of having dug every inch of this field. There hadn’t been any digging here since the late 1950s.
Lance seemed to have recovered his strength, if his jauntiness was anything to go by. He’d even produced a yachting cap to wear, as if deliberately to taunt them.
‘Now we’re all here, let’s begin. I must say I’m looking forward to seeing it again. Poor Sam. If only she could have been here. Cindy was against the whole thing – I see why now.’
‘With the police forces of umpteen countries on her trail,’ Peter said, moving his wheelchair to one side as the digging began, ‘I can see why.’
‘Thanks to your meddling,’ Lance said grimly. ‘We’re hardly the Borgias, you know. All I wanted was to be one of the great hoaxers of history, like the Bruno Hat scam. No harm done, only a lot of red faces. That was my idea and look how it ended up.’
He glanced round at the assembled company. Mark – at least – Peter, Georgia, Luke, Mike Gilroy, two sturdy uniformed policemen and half a dozen diggers. ‘Anyone would think,’ Lance said drily, ‘that you were expecting to find a body in here. Well, you’ll be lucky. There is one.’
Mike moved forward.
‘Sir Gawain’s,’ Lance laughed. ‘What did you think I meant? Jago Priest’s?’
He could still laugh, Georgia thought with amazement. Yet there had been two deaths, and half his family arrested. Did he care? Yes, she thought, for two people. Sam – and Jennifer. Peter was still sure there was more of the story to come out, however. ‘I don’t believe this fall against a gravestone, do you?’ he had said on the drive there. ‘I suspect his old army training came rather readily to him.’
‘He had no need to kill Jago,’ she had pointed out.
‘Unless he realized that with Jago dead, not only could he wriggle out of blame over the scam, but take Jennifer too.’
‘That’s possible,’ she had agreed, but was aware that neither she nor Peter really believed they had the full facts.
Here on a late July afternoon in still sweltering heat, she could imagine the chaplains with their precious cargo, and it was hard to believe the story had all been built up in her mind thanks to Lance’s playacting, a charade he had clearly relished. And yet, she had to remember, Jago really had believed this theory because that’s why the scam had been possible.
‘Why did you leave it buried here after you sold Badon House?’ she asked, watching as the diggers progressed. Conversation had petered out, as the hole gradually grew deeper and tension grew. Even Lance had been silent. They were down six or seven feet now.
‘Why not?’ Lance replied. He carefully kept his voice low in Mike’s presence, Georgia noticed. ‘I was the only one who knew it was here, and I kept the field. I couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself as Jago Priest in connection with something that had connections with Paris in the 1950s. Suppose someone noticed I wasn’t the sort of person as the Jago they knew? Besides, there was the goblet. Kranowski wanted it back. I meant to pay him, but never got round to it, thanks to Jago.’
‘Seven feet,’ Mark called up. He was leading the diggers. ‘Any time now.’
‘You know,’ Lance remarked, ‘I almost feel that it’s real. Camelot is coming our way. Perhaps I am Jago after all.’
Georgia could detect a tremble in his voice. Peter’s eyes were fixed on every spadeful of earth and Luke was getting equally enthralled. She realized that she too was tense. What was she waiting for? King Arthur? Was the ghost of Jennifer here too? Or Jago’s?
‘There!’ Lance cried, shuffling forward to the very edge and pointing down. The diggers stopped and Mark scuffled in the soil as some scraps looking like decayed wood appeared. Luke had appointed himself photographer, as had Mark, who was already busy snapping away – for the family archives? she wondered.
‘Be careful,’ Lance said plaintively. ‘I took such pains with it.’
He had. Over the next hour the shape left by the wood scraps formed a rough oblong about four feet long and two wide. Within that, the earth was being eased away from what had been the box’s contents – no, Georgia caught herself, there was no box. This was a modern scam, not a sixteenth-century drama.
Luke was in the hole himself now, vowing that his archaeological competence was well known. Not to Georgia, but she said nothing. Impatiently, she clambered down the ladder to join them, feeling like Hamlet leaping into the grave of Ophelia. Lance was not pleased, but so far as she was concerned, he had no right to object.
‘Look,’ Luke said. He was squatting down clearing away earth. ‘Bones.’
Lance heard and was almost dancing with anger. ‘Come out,’ he ordered the entire crew. ‘One person only.’
The diggers took him at his word, but Luke and Georgia ignored him. Peter was urging them on, telling them to take no notice, and had his own camera in hand. Mike was now physically restraining Lance from following them.
‘Take care,’ Lance shouted in anguish. ‘The skull is separate.’
‘Here,’ breathed Luke, as a bone protruded through a round mass of earth.
‘Give it to me, you fool. It’s Gawain’s skull,’ screeched Lance – and for a moment Georgia almost believed it was.
Luke stood up and handed it up to one of the uniformed PCs. ‘It had to be separate,’ Lance said more quietl
y. ‘The chaplains left in such a hurry, they wouldn’t have had time to arrange the bones and skull together. All hugger-mugger. By his side, you should find the buckle, and bits of sword.’
‘And the goblet?’ asked Luke practically.
‘To your right,’ Lance called.
Georgia felt around for some minutes, but neither she nor Luke could find anything. ‘I can’t see it,’ she called.
‘Dammit, woman,’ Lance yelled. ‘Let me go down, if you please, Mr Gilroy.’
Mike glanced at Peter, who nodded. ‘Not you, Georgia, nor you, Mr Priest,’ he said to Mark. ‘Luke can stay.’
Georgia knew they were right; if Lance grabbed her down there she would be a potential hostage. Nonsense of course; but, she remembered, he had had SAS training. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Reluctantly she clambered after Mark up the ladder and she and Mike steadied Lance for the climb down, with Luke ready beneath. Lance managed the descent remarkably nimbly in his eagerness.
‘Now!’ he said. His face disappeared from their view as he bent down slowly and tugged at a dark bundle. Luke, to Lance’s obvious annoyance, helped him pick it up and bits of old cloth fell away. ‘The only thing I couldn’t get to be authentic,’ he said lovingly. ‘Sixteenth-century velvet, which is why there are mere scraps here. Look!’
The goblet had loomed so large in her imagination that the size took Georgia by surprise, as Lance clung on to the mound of earth. Then he began to pull lumps of earth away, until what remained was still a mud ball, but only now of four or five inches. It was still covered in mud, but now the clear shape of a goblet could be seen.
Lance held it aloft with one hand, and Georgia watched, fascinated. ‘The golden goblet of King Arthur,’ he cried. Lovingly he began to wipe it with a handkerchief. ‘Water,’ he commanded, and one of the diggers obliged with a watering can from the cemetery. Gradually she saw the gold begin to reveal itself, gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Still dark, still muddy, but soon it would shine out in all its glory.
