The Nine-Spoked Wheel, page 14
‘It was a good effort, all the same,’ said Revers. ‘How are you really feeling?’
‘Not at all bad. Fed up with being here already, but they say I’ll have to stay for a few days yet. I’ve got two broken ribs, as well as a damaged collar-bone. But I’m well strapped up, and with luck I’ll mend pretty quickly.’
‘Can you tell me exactly what happened? I got a brief statement from Miss Boyce last night, but all she wanted was to talk about you.’
‘She’s a good kid.’ Marryat laughed, then he winced. ‘Mustn’t do any laughing for a bit,’ he said. ‘It hurts all down my side.’
‘Can you talk all right?’
‘Oh, yes, that’s no problem. I want to talk to you very much.’ He gave Revers a detailed account of the events of the evening before, starting with Dr Arbolent’s request that he should stay behind.
Revers listened in silence. ‘So it was entirely due to Dr Arbolent that you went back into the tomb chamber at all?’ he said when Marryat had finished.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you any idea why the roof fell?’
‘No. There was a good strong post supporting it. Dr Arbolent supervised the work of putting it in, but I was there myself and saw it done. The post was a little short, but it was well packed at the foot with chalk rubble. It was perfectly vertical, and I don’t see why it should have broken.’
‘It didn’t break. It was found just lying on its side when the place was dug out. Could either you or Miss Boyce have knocked against it?’
‘I’m quite certain neither of us did.’
‘Look,’ said Revers, ‘I’ve been frank with you before, and I’ll be frank with you again. I don’t like this accident. Think back very carefully, and tell me exactly what happened when you went into the tomb.’
‘Juliet spotted the notebook. I walked over to get it, and I think she took a step or two to follow me: anyway she was close by me when the lights went out. Then the roof fell in.’
‘Was there much of an interval between the lights going out and the roof-fall?’
‘Now you come to mention it, I think there was – quite an appreciable interval. It couldn’t have been more than seconds, but it might have been several seconds. I didn’t think about it at the time – I suppose I just accepted that the roof-fall had broken the wiring, but it couldn’t have happened like that, because the lights definitely went out before the roof fell.’
‘So it would have been possible for someone to have slipped a rope round the foot of the post and pulled it away? Someone who’d switched out the lights?’
Marryat thought for some time before replying. ‘It would have been possible, yes. But is there any evidence that the lights were switched off? What was the position of the main switch when Armitage got down?’
‘I’ve asked him that, and I’m afraid he can’t remember. The generator was certainly stopped, because he had to start it. But he was so anxious to get into the barrow after meeting Miss Boyce that all he can recall is getting the thing going and rushing in. The lights certainly came on, but whether he switched them on as he went in, or whether they just came on when the generator started, he can’t remember. But why did the generator stop after you had started it?’
‘It could simply have failed, or maybe there was a short-circuit, and it cut out. I haven’t studied the wiring, but there’s bound to be a cut-out for dealing with a short-circuit.’
‘And did it often fail?’
‘Not while I’ve been there, anyway – and I’ve not heard anyone complain about it. It seemed reliable enough.’
‘There couldn’t have been a short-circuit, or any other damage, because it started immediately for Mr Armitage.’
‘Perhaps the watchman turned it off. I don’t think he saw us go in, because he was having his tea. He may have thought the working party had forgotten it.’
‘He didn’t. I asked him about it.’ Marryat said nothing, and Revers went on, ‘I took the soil samples from your pocket and I sent them to Oxford during the night, with a note asking that they should be looked at first thing this morning, as a matter of urgency. I had a preliminary report on the phone just before I came here this morning. They say it will be a day or two before they can let me have a quantitative analysis, but all three samples contain pollen grains similar to those on Paul Clayton’s cigarette end.’
Marryat drew his good hand rather wearily across his forehead. ‘How horrible!’ he said. Then, ‘That gives a new importance to the tunnel.’
‘How?’
‘Well, assuming that someone faked those inscriptions, he’d have to get in. There doesn’t seem any doubt about the excavations: the tomb chambers, as far as I can see, are genuine, and they came on them quite genuinely during the dig – there was no sign of any previous excavation. But someone could have got in before the excavation through the old tomb-robbers’ tunnel from the top. Then the inscriptions could be found, as they were, with the tomb chambers.’
Revers was impressed. ‘That’s a very good point – it may be absolutely vital. But it makes the accident to you even more puzzling. It should have happened after you had discovered the tunnel. Can you think of anything – anything at all – which might make someone want you to have that accident?’
‘There is one very far-fetched possibility, which is flattering to me, and I don’t in fact, believe it. I told you what happened when I asked Arbolent if I could join his team, of how he began by being offensive, then suddenly changed his mind. I thought then that he’d had an idea of using me for something. Suppose I’d studied his inscriptions and died before I could publish anything about them? He could claim that I’d accepted them. I don’t say that that would have made other archaeologists believe in the inscriptions, but it would have some weight in the academic world, and leave an element of doubt about them – for a time, anyway. But that makes the whole thing seem insane.’
‘Perhaps it is insanity.’
‘God knows. But there’s one other thing that happened yesterday. I thought nothing of it at the time, but looking back on it now after all you’ve told me, I’m not so sure.’ Marryat described the incident of his noticing the number 29 on the roof support.
Revers was deeply interested. ‘You couldn’t have known,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think there should have been any timbers numbered 29 in the workshop. They belonged to the stone that fell at Avebury, and the pair of them was lying in the wreckage. One had fractured in a quite inexplicable way. Suppose that had been substituted for the sound timber left in the workshop? Who else might have noticed it?’
‘Juliet saw the figures, but they wouldn’t have meant anything to her. I daresay one or two others saw them as well, but again, they wouldn’t have meant anything. I knew they belonged to Avebury because I’d looked up the number of the stone on the archaeological map before going out to meet you. That’s why I asked. When he said it didn’t matter I thought no more about it. I don’t suppose anybody else thought about it at all.’
‘I wonder,’ Revers said slowly, ‘I wonder.’
VIII
Sea Fever
IT WAS TIME for another conference with Macleod. Revers talked solidly for the best part of an hour, giving the Superintendent every fact he had, and the inferences he felt could be drawn from the facts. Macleod didn’t interrupt. When Revers had finished describing his interview with Marryat in hospital, Macleod said, ‘It’s a formidable case, John, but I don’t see that you’re in a position to make an arrest.’
‘No,’ said Revers unhappily. ‘I keep telling myself what a good defence lawyer would make of my various points. He’d tear them to pieces.’
‘You feel sure that the Korsky murder and the Clayton case really are connected?’
‘Yes. You’ve told us often enough, Super, how criminals tend to repeat themselves. There’s an extraordinary amount of repetition here. I’ve explained how I think that stone was made to fall. The report from the forensic laboratory makes it clear that the hole at the base of the stone is a recent drilling: the earth inside was found to be identical with fresh soil outside, and the masonry expert is prepared to swear that he can identify drill-marks. We have evidence of a tractor noise during the night the stone fell. I think it was probably the power-takeoff from a Land Rover, but the noise would be much the same. Run a steel cable through the hole in the stone, pull with a powerful engine, and the thing would surely go over. I’m more than ever convinced of this by the so-called “accident” to Marryat and Miss Boyce. There was the same mind at work – a quick tug at the base of the roof-support, and down it comes.’
‘There doesn’t seem much resemblance between the subtlety at Avebury and the sheer brutality that killed Jan Korsky.’
‘But there is, Super – it’s only because you haven’t been living with it, as I have. Paul Clayton wasn’t killed by the falling stone. He was killed by a savage blow on the side of his head, probably several blows. So was Korsky –incidentally, on the same temple.’
‘But why the subtlety to cloud Clayton’s death, and the absence of any such attempt with Korsky?’
‘Because the whole thing was subtle. Clayton’s death had to be clouded. Speaking to you, Super, I can name names. I believe that both murders were carried out by Dr Arbolent as part of his scheme to carry out a gigantic fraud on the Sunday Examiner and the public. Probably he didn’t intend originally to kill Clayton. But the boy found the cigarette end, and he was too good an archaeologist not to have doubts about the inscriptions. By all accounts, he was a transparently honest person, so he took his doubts to Dr Arbolent. The man would have been horrified – officially to Clayton, unofficially inside himself. He couldn’t let his whole great scheme collapse through some stupid bit of carelessness. He may have told Clayton that he, too, had suspicions; he may have suggested the possibility of odd goings-on at Avebury, and asked Clayton to keep a watch on the stone at night. He got him there, he killed him, and he had to make the death look like an accident. A refinement here was that it made his remarkable finds underneath the stone seem almost accidental, too.
‘But I don’t think the killing of Clayton was any part of his original plan. Korsky’s killing probably was: he couldn’t afford to leave his secret in the keeping of that old drunk. I think he met Korsky about three years ago when he was doing a dig in Somerset. Korsky was in the neighbourhood at the same time. I’ve worked through his list of churches, and there was one in the same village as Dr Arbolent’s dig, where Korsky was employed to restore some medieval lettering and do up an ancient wall carving over the font. The rector – it’s still the same man – remembers Korsky well. “A dreadful drunkard, but a magnificent craftsman,” he says. It seems he did some memorial plaques after the war, which got written about in the art magazines and made him quite a reputation. Architects restoring old buildings – mostly churches – were glad to employ him, until he became more or less unemployable: the Somerset job seems to have been about his last work of any importance. The rector tried to help him, but there was trouble over Korsky’s falling down drunk during a service. He finished the job, and just disappeared – it seems he never even collected the last of the money owing to him for it.
‘My feeling is that Dr Arbolent met him there, decided that he was tailormade for faking tomb inscriptions, and perhaps started paying him for some drawings. Anyway, it was about then, or shortly afterwards, that Korsky began giving money to the Kranz couple. As far as I can make out, he pretty well kept them. The old man became too crippled with arthritis for farm work, and they were so scared of being separated that they wouldn’t go near the welfare authorities. Korsky certainly did an occasional week or two’s work for a farmer, but he doesn’t seem to have worked at all regularly – nothing like enough to keep him in drink, let alone to help the Kranzes and to fill his cigarette tins with £5 notes.
‘I think he must have worked in the tombs during last autumn and winter. Dr Arbolent had done some preliminary work on the barrow before his big excavation this summer. I imagine he discovered the passage by which Miss Boyce managed to escape after the roof-fall, got in by it, and then took Korsky there. The barrow’s a lonely place after the tourists have gone, and nobody is likely to have seen them. In any case, it wouldn’t have mattered then, because Dr Arbolent could reasonably have gone there at any time.
‘According to Mrs Kranz, Korsky had an acquaintance who sometimes took him off in a car: unfortunately, she knows nothing whatever about cars, and can’t offer any description of it. But it would fit in with trips to the barrow – he couldn’t have been left to get on with the job by himself, because he might have decided to get drunk instead. Mrs Kranz seems to have washed his shirts regularly, and his trousers at least once during the winter: that’s a pity, because otherwise I’d have sent them for an analysis of the dirt. But she never washed his shoes, and he certainly never cleaned them. He had an old pair of boots that he wore for farm work, and some plimsolls – almost falling to pieces – that he had on when he died. I expect he’d have worn the plimsolls for work in the tombs. Anyway, I’ve sent both the boots and the plimsolls to Oxford. If they find pollen grains similar to those on Clayton’s cigarette end and Dr Marryat’s floor samples from the tombs, we’ll be a long way forward.’
‘We’ll be some way forward, John. I don’t doubt your reasoning – if you weren’t a member of my own staff I’d say it was a fine bit of police work. Indeed, John, even though you may hold it against me next time I need to tick you off, I’ll risk it, and say it now. But I don’t see how the hell you’re ever going to prove it.’
‘Your words, Super – more police work. I’d dearly like to find the weapon that killed Korsky. If you think of Korsky’s killing, you’ll see what I mean when I say that it was subtle, too. There was nothing to connect a famous archaeologist with a drunken old soak living in squalor on a disused airfield. The killing was just the sort of brutal business you’d expect after a drunken row. We’re meant to look at it like that – and to be looking for some chance-met stranger who helped the old boy home, helped him to finish the gin bottle, and then bashed him on the head and went off with whatever money he could find. I’ve been thinking a lot about the weapon. The doctors think it was probably a hammer of some kind, something with a heavy head rather than a piece of wood, or club. What would you do with a hammer? You can’t burn it, you can’t destroy it at all easily. The best thing would be to throw it in the sea, but there isn’t any convenient sea. In the circumstances, I’d expect it to be thrown into a ditch, some way from the scene of its use. I’ve no great hopes of finding it, but, as you know, we’ve put out a general notice asking people to keep their eyes open for it, and it may turn up. Of course, it may be unidentifiable, and no use to us. But we can’t be sure of that until it’s found. And mercifully for the human race, even the cleverest murderers sometimes make mistakes.’
‘They do, John,’ said Macleod. ‘Well, good luck with your hunt.’
*
If luck was coming Revers’s way, it did not come quickly. The forensic scientists did find pollens similar to those in soil from the tombs in the ingrained dirt in Korsky’s tattered plimsolls, which deeply impressed Macleod, and comforted Revers to the extent of confirming his own reasoning. But the evidence remained wholly circumstantial, and he could see no way of linking any of it directly with Dr Arbolent. In his more pessimistic moments he found himself fearing that he was simply wrong, and that he had taken up an immense amount of police and forensic laboratory time for no purpose at all.
The inquest of Jan Korsky was straightforward. The coroner sat with a jury, and the jury had no hesitation in bringing in a verdict of murder against some person or persons unknown. That did not take things any farther. Other news came along. The Korsky case diminished from headlines to small paragraphs, and days went by when there was no mention of it at all.
*
Marryat mended well and was discharged from hospital. He did not go back to the dig because his left arm had to be in a sling for a bit, but he did return to the camp to give his twice-postponed lecture. Dr Arbolent attended it – whether as an act of courtesy, or because he wanted to keep an ear on what was said, Marryat didn’t know. He scrupulously avoided saying anything about inscriptions, and confirmed himself to the construction of barrows in the 3rd and 2nd millennia. Dr Arbolent proposed a vote of thanks, and it was all very friendly.
Marryat, however, did not go back to Cambridge. He found himself growing more and more attached to Juliet Boyce, and seeing a furnished cottage on the outskirts of Savernake advertised for summer letting, he rented it for the rest of the summer. This enabled him to see Juliet frequently, and to keep in touch with Revers.
*
Dr Arbolent was not now spending much time at the dig: he had transferred his headquarters to Fishguard, where his proto-Phoenician boat was being built. The Sunday Examiner wanted the voyage made late in August, when there would be bank holidaymakers in tens of thousands to see him set off, and his fabulous story would make good reading for the holiday season. Dr Arbolent’s sketch plans of his dhow-like vessel had been transformed into working drawings by a distinguished yacht designer, and the delays that would normally have been inevitable in boatbuilding of such unorthodox construction were charmed away by the simple magic of the Examiner’s money. The story of Civilisation from the West was already being syndicated all over the world, and rights in the narrative of the forthcoming voyage looked like being equally valuable. The Lady Penelope had to be ready on time, and that was that.
At the end of July, Dr Arbolent gave another big press conference. He announced his date of departure for the Saturday before the August Bank Holiday – the last Monday in the month. This was the optimum date for the Sunday Examiner, because it allowed for full coverage in its own pages for the holiday Sunday, and a massive circulation drive by its daily stable-companion during the holiday week.
