The Nine-Spoked Wheel, page 4
‘That timber simply couldn’t have fractured like that when the stone fell,’ said Revers. ‘If it had fallen the other way, into the hole, yes. But falling outwards, away from the hole, there’d have been no pressure on the wood at all; the piece would simply have been thrown aside, as the other one was.’
Macleod got down into the hole, and looked closely at the splintered baulk of wood. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘But it certainly has fractured, round the knot-hole as far as I can make out. Yet there doesn’t seem any reason for it to have gone at all. What are those figures on the wood?’ He pointed to the numerals ‘29’ stencilled at one end of the broken baulk. There was a similar ‘29’ on the unbroken piece of timber.
‘Dr Arbolent referred to the stone as “Stone No 29”,’ Revers said. ‘They’re doing some pretty substantial excavating on the Wansdyke Great Barrow, and they must have tools and stores. I suppose the numbers are to identify the site, but I don’t know because I haven’t asked about them yet.’
‘We’ll get those broken timbers away for forensic examination,’ said Macleod. ‘And I’d like to get them away now. It doesn’t look like rain, but you never know, and I’d like them to be gone over thoroughly before they’re rained on. Do you think they’d go in your estate car? The broken bits are not all that long. It’s heavy wood, but I reckon we can manage it between us. And the constable can give a hand if we need it, though it would be better not to have too many finger-marks: it’s got yours and mine already.’
They got the broken baulk out of the hole and were able to carry the separate bits quite easily. When they’d been stowed in the back of the estate car they returned to the hole.
‘You think there’s a cavity going down even more than the original socket of the stone?’ Macleod asked.
‘There’s a cavity of some sort. How far it extends I don’t know: that’s where we’ve got to dig tomorrow. How did you get on with the Home Office about digging round a scheduled monument?’
‘All right. They want us to be careful, naturally, and to cooperate as far as we can with the archaeologist in charge – that’s your Dr Arbolent. It’s a Department of the Environment responsibility, and some top brass at the Home Office is going to have a word with equally top brass at Environment. If we need to act on our own we’re to go ahead, but if it’s at all possible Environment would like to know beforehand so that they can get one of their own experts down to keep an eye on things. Dr Arbolent seems respectable enough, and they’re quite satisfied with him. But he’s party to the affair, in a way, and I explained that in certain circumstances it might be desirable to act without him.’
‘As things are at the moment,’ Revers said, ‘I don’t think it matters much. He’s a pompous little man and as touchy as hell, but he knows the site, and he certainly helped over the identification, which couldn’t have been a pleasant job. I expect he’s more used to bodies that have been safely buried for a couple of thousand years.’
‘Where’s that carving that he got so excited about?’ Macleod asked.
The two men climbed down into the hole again and Revers pointed to the faintly scratched markings of a circle with nine radii. ‘Can’t say that I can make anything of it,’ said Macleod, ‘but any marking on one of these stones is likely to be important. Remember the excitement in the fifties when they found a drawing of an axe at Stonehenge? I daresay there’ll be half a dozen books about this circle before long. But it’s a queer place to put it, at the base of the stone where nobody could see it; it must have been at least three feet underground. What’s that hole a few inches below it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Revers. ‘It was full of earth, but it was fairly loose, and I ran a length of wire through it – the firemen had some stiff wire with their tools. The hole goes through. It may be natural, these sarsens do have odd holes in them sometimes, like the Blowing Stone near Uffington. Or it may have been made by the people who put up the stone, though Lord knows how they did it.’
‘They did some pretty marvellous things with stones, those ancestors of ours – at least, of yours, though probably not of mine,’ Macleod said. ‘Well, I think we’ve done about all we can do here for the moment. Let’s go back and have a think.’
*
Macleod’s typist brought them a pot of tea. ‘I suppose it’s my own Highland blood, but I’ve always felt that Avebury Circle is a bit of a spooky place,’ said Macleod. ‘How much of our puzzlement is due to the queer setting rather than to anything real?’
‘Not much,’ said Revers. ‘If there are ghosts at work, of course it’s another matter – police training doesn’t go into the next world, or the last, if that’s more appropriate to prehistoric stone circles. But that poor boy was flesh and blood, and the stone, and the bits of wood, and the earth seem pretty solid. I don’t like leaving things I can’t understand. I’ve no reason to suppose that there’s any crime to investigate, but I think there’s a good deal that still needs to be investigated.’
‘I’m with you all right, John,’ said Macleod. ‘I was just being a wise old policeman and making sure that fancy doesn’t run away with us. We have got evidence that needs explaining – the position of the body and the splintered wood. I’ll get those timbers away to the forensic laboratory, though whether they’ll be able to tell us anything, I don’t know. You should have a report of the autopsy in the morning – that may clear up most of our doubts. It won’t explain the timbers. But I was in the Engineers during the war, and I’ve seen some astonishing things happen when a great dead weight runs amok. What else do you want to do, John?’
‘Just straightforward police routine, Super, though I’ll need a couple of men. That American family found the body within a minute or so of 05.00 this morning. I don’t think the stone could have fallen before dark last night – somebody in the village would have noticed it, and Avebury gets a good many visitors at this time of year. I’d like to make a house-to-house inquiry in the village to see if anybody heard anything during the night.’
‘Aye, you must do that, John. And I’d make a start on that now – it’s much better to ask about “last night” than “the night before last”. But don’t go yourself – we’ll put Sergeant Grey on to it. I’d like you to go across to that camp where the archaeologists are staying and find out what you can about young Clayton. Somebody may know why he’d have wanted to walk out to the stone at night, and even when he went. By your account the doctor’s in London the noo, and it may be easier to get people to talk if he’s awa’.’
*
Revers got to the camp soon after five o’clock. It was a biggish establishment, made up of four of those long transportable buildings that can be moved on lorries and erected to stand on jacks. One end of one of the buildings was labelled ‘Office’. Revers went there, to find it empty. He was wondering what to do next, when a young woman came out of one of the other buildings. ‘Where can I find whoever is in charge of the camp?’ he asked her.
‘Well, Dr Arbolent is in charge of things,’ she said, ‘but he doesn’t live here, and anyway, I think he’s away today. Mr Clayton is a sort of second-in-command, but he’s not here either, and we’re getting very worried about him because there seems to have been an accident at Avebury. I’m on cookhouse duty today. The others will be knocking off from the site soon. You can wait in the Mess for them. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Revers didn’t particularly want any more tea, but he accepted the offer because it would give him a chance to talk to the girl. She was about twenty, wearing faded, much-patched dungarees. She took him into the building she had just come out of. ‘It’s the Mess one end and the cookhouse at the other,’ she explained. ‘We have a rota for the cookhouse job.’
The Mess consisted of two trestle tables, with wooden benches along each side. He sat down at the end of one of the tables, and the girl drew a mug of tea from an urn. ‘Milk and sugar on the table,’ she said. ‘Oh, but you’ll want a spoon to stir it.’
Explaining that he did not take sugar in tea, Revers declined the spoon. ‘How many do you have to cater for?’ he asked.
‘Well, there are ten of us working on the dig,’ she said ‘and sometimes Dr Arbolent comes in for meals as well. And there’s his secretary usually for lunch, but she doesn’t live in the camp. She’s staying somewhere in Marlborough, I think, and as Dr Arbolent isn’t here today she isn’t here either.’
‘Where do you all come from?’
‘Oh, all over the place. Paul Clayton’s an archaeologist from Cambridge – he’s already a graduate, and he’s doing research on Megalithic Cultures. One of the other men – there are six men and four girls – is also a graduate: he’s got a job at a museum in Manchester. The rest of us are students. We don’t get paid anything, but we get our keep and it’s quite an exciting sort of holiday.’
‘Are you all archaeological students?’
‘Oh, no. Three are I think, but the rest of us are doing all sorts of things. I’m doing Social Economics, we’ve got a couple of historians, a chemist, even a mathematician, and various other things. We’re all interested in archaeology, of course, and most of us have been on other digs, so we know a bit about it.’
The door opened, and a big, pink-cheeked man, with a bright flaxen beard came in. ‘Hullo, Sara,’ he said, ‘what’s for tea?’ Then, ‘Who’s the visitor?’
Revers got up. ‘Detective Inspector John Revers, of the North Wessex Police,’ he said.
The big man and the girl both looked rather startled. Revers went on gently, ‘I’m afraid I may have rather bad news for you. A stone at Avebury that Mr Paul Clayton was, I believe, working on collapsed during the night and a man thought to be Mr Clayton was crushed by it.’
‘Is he – is Paul badly hurt?’ asked the girl.
‘I am sorry to tell you he is dead.’
The girl sat down on one of the benches and began to sob. The big man put his arm round her shoulders, but said nothing. Revers said, ‘Please forgive me. It must be a terrible shock. But there will have to be an inquest, and you will understand that we must learn what we can of Mr Clayton.’
‘The person you should talk to is Dr Arbolent,’ said the big man.
‘I have already seen Dr Arbolent. He has had to go to London, and I saw him before he went. Unhappily he does not know much about Mr Clayton in a personal sense – he knew him only as a Cambridge archaeologist who had been working with him. The only address we have for him is a Cambridge college. It is necessary for us to discover the whereabouts of his relatives, and to collect any belongings he may have here. You can do nothing now for Mr Clayton himself, but you may help to save other people distress if you can help me with the information I need.’
‘Of course we’ll help you,’ said the man. ‘I am George Armitage, Assistant Keeper of the Dennison Museum in Manchester. This is Sara Rogers. We . . .’ He broke off as a group of three or four more young people entered the hut. Then he raised his voice and went on, ‘Listen, everybody. There’s been a dreadful accident, and Paul Clayton is dead. This gentleman is a police inspector who has to make inquiries. Sara, I think you’d better get on with tea. Inspector, if you’ll come with me to the office I’ll tell you everything I can, and then if you need to you can talk to any of the others.’ He patted the girl’s shoulder, and said, ‘Life’s got to go on, Sara.’
The girl got up and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘Paul was so nice,’ she said.
*
In the office hut, Armitage said, ‘We’d heard that there’d been some sort of accident. One of our chaps went to the post office at Avebury at lunchtime and learned that one of the stones had fallen, and that the police were there. He tried to find Paul, who’d just started a dig on the Circle, but he couldn’t. Nobody seemed to know much about what happened, and he had to get back to our own work on the Great Barrow. Dr Arbolent’s very strict about time-keeping.’
‘Can you tell me how your work is organised?’ Revers asked.
‘Well, it’s the usual sort of vacation dig, but because of the importance of the site it has to be controlled pretty carefully. Our main work is on the Great Barrow, about a quarter of a mile from our camp here, and until a few days ago everyone was working there. Then Dr Arbolent wanted a trial dig round one of the stones at Avebury, and he put Paul and another man, Bill Summers, on to that. They had bad luck, because they’d only just started when Bill went down with some sort of tummy trouble, and the day before yesterday he had to go to Devizes hospital for observation. It doesn’t seem to be serious. I’ve been on to the hospital this morning, and they say they’ll probably let him out tomorrow. But it meant that yesterday and the day before Paul was on his own. Several of the others volunteered to take Bill’s place, but Dr Arbolent wouldn’t let them. He said that work on the Great Barrow couldn’t be held up for a subsidiary dig.’
‘What was Mr Clayton’s position?’
‘Well, he and I are both qualified archaeologists. Paul’s special field is Megalithic Cultures, so he acted as Dr Arbolent’s second-in-command. I’m chiefly concerned with the Early Roman period. Very little is known of what happened to these sites then, whether there were any continuous settlements, and so on. That’s why I was particularly keen to come. But Paul knew a lot more about the main Megalithic period – second millennium and early first millennium BC – than I do.’
‘Did it seem strange that he should be detached from the main work to dig at Avebury?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Dr Arbolent wanted to be at the Great Barrow most of the time. He was excited by some markings he’d come across on the stones in one of the burial chambers there. There are at least six other burial chambers, all very early, and filled with rubble and fallen earth. Only the front part of the barrow has ever been properly excavated, and the older part seems to have been blocked off in antiquity. Dr Arbolent wanted the blocked off chambers cleared and examined as thoroughly as possible. It’s slow work, because everything has to be sifted, and exact levels measured and recorded. And a digging team is only available for a limited time. Dr Arbolent thought he’d found evidence linking these early burial chambers with the Avebury Circle – I’m not sure exactly what, because he’s a bit secretive: no, I don’t want to give a wrong impression, “academically cautious” would be better, perhaps. And there’s another reason for his being secretive. A dig like this is very expensive: I know we don’t get paid, but we’ve got to be fed, and equipping and maintaining the camp costs a lot of money. This particular work has been financed largely by the Sunday Examiner, in return, of course, for news of any spectacular finds. Naturally they want their news to be exclusive – Dr Arbolent gave us all a lecture on the first night stressing that we mustn’t say anything to anybody about the job. Since he got the money out of the newspaper, it’s understandable that he should want to be discreet. Anyway, he formed some theory about Avebury, wanted his ideas followed up, but couldn’t go himself. It was reasonable enough that he should send Paul.’
‘Did you know Mr Clayton well?’
‘No, I’d never met him before coming here, though I’d heard of him as one of the best of the young generation of Cambridge men. I was at Nottingham, and I’m several years older than he is – or was, I suppose, I should say. But we were both professionally qualified, both a bit older than the students, so naturally we rather gravitated together.’
‘Do you know anything of his family?’
‘No – except that I don’t think he had much in the way of family. We went into Marlborough for a meal one evening, and talked a bit about ourselves. I think he said that he was brought up in an orphanage – I thought he’d done remarkably well to get to Cambridge.’
‘What sort of a person was he?’
‘Quiet, gentle, exceptionally able, and passionately keen on his own period of prehistory. Everybody liked him –you heard what Sara said, that he was “so nice”. That about sums it up.’
‘It seems that he must have gone to Avebury at some time during last night. Would he have any reason for going there? And why wasn’t he missed this morning?’
Armitage considered this. ‘We work to a pretty strict timetable, but we’re not exactly a military encampment,’ he said. ‘We’re all volunteers – we’re more or less on holiday. People have their private affairs, and after tea there’s no reason why anybody shouldn’t go off as he pleases. I don’t know about last night, because I went to have dinner with some friends of my parents who live near Swindon. Paul was certainly here when I left. Breakfast is always a bit of a rush. Obviously Paul wasn’t here then, but I can’t say I noticed that he wasn’t. After breakfast we wouldn’t expect to see him, because he had his job at Avebury and we had to get off to the Barrow.
‘The men – six of us – sleep in one of the huts, the girls in another. We turn in at different times, and since we’ve been doing manual work for most of the day, we’re mostly pretty tired. Someone may have noticed that Paul didn’t come in, but I don’t know. You can ask. I didn’t notice his not being there myself, because I came back pretty late, and I went to bed by torchlight, not wanting to disturb any of the others.
‘Why did he go off to Avebury at all last night? I haven’t any idea, but there could be a hundred reasons. It’s unusual for someone to go back to a dig in the evening, I’ll admit that. But Paul was exceptionally keen: he may just have thought of something, and it would be like him to go off and test some theory straightaway. But this is all speculation. My only real answer to your question is that I don’t know.’
*
Revers asked if he could see the sleeping quarters, and Armitage took him across to the men’s dormitory hut. It was much like a barrack room, with a row of iron beds. ‘We bring our own sleeping bags,’ said Armitage, ‘but the mattresses and blankets are provided. We don’t bother with sheets.’
Beside each bed was a wooden locker. Clayton and Armitage, as the two senior members of the party, had beds at each end of the hut, which gave them slightly more room. Revers opened Clayton’s locker – it had hasps to take a padlock, but it was not locked. Inside were two shelves. On the top shelf were a sponge bag, containing a razor, shaving brush and toothbrush, a small canvas wallet holding needles, cotton, darning wool, half a dozen assorted buttons and a pair of scissors, and another small bag with shoe cleaning materials. On the shelf below were three paperback detective stories and a writing case. The case held notepaper, envelopes, and a few stamps: there were no letters. On the floor by the locker was a kitbag holding a spare pullover, a clean shirt, a couple of pairs of socks and a few other oddments of clothing. A grey suit of quite good quality, neatly arranged on a coat hanger, was suspended from a hook on the wall, and underneath the bed was a pair of well-polished shoes. That seemed the extent of Paul Clayton’s earthly possessions at the site. ‘He seems to have travelled light,’ said Revers, ‘but he was well-equipped.’
