The Nine-Spoked Wheel, page 7
It is less easy at nineteen to discuss books one has not read than it becomes later in life. Juliet was saved from embarrassment by the arrival of a tray with drinks.
*
Dinner had barely started when Dr Arbolent, holding a glass of Sir Cyril’s claret, stood up. ‘My host and hostess, ladies and Professor Boyce,’ he said, ‘I can contain myself no longer. Today I have made the most important archaeological discovery of all time, and it is fitting that you, my generous hosts, and your American guests, should be the first to be told about it. I would ask you to drink a toast to the vindication of the theory of civilisation from the West.’
Obviously embarrassed, Sir Cyril and Lady Caponet raised their glasses, and the Boyces followed suit. Dr Arbolent went on, ‘I do not dispute that there were early civilisations in Mesopotamia, but archaeologists and ancient historians have been bemused by this sunrise. They have assumed that every dawn of human civilisation has risen in the East. Now we know that they are wrong. I have found incontrovertible proof that here, in this countryside, within a mile or so of where we are sitting, the prototypes of Mediterranean civilisation were established. Civilisation did not flow from Babylon to Egypt, to Crete, to Greece, to Italy. It came from Britain and ultimately, perhaps, from even farther west. If you throw an empty packing case into the sea anywhere on the eastern seaboard of North America, the chances are high that it will land in Cornwall, or on the Bristol Channel coast. The prevailing winds are westerlies, and there is the Gulf Stream to help things on their way. I do not yet know about the origins of civilisation in prehistoric North America, but I suspect that once people start looking for the right things they will be found to antedate much that is supposed to have originated in the East – and my suspicions have a way of turning out to be correct. I do know that in prehistoric Britain cultures arose which carried writing to the Mediterranean, and all that megalithic artifice which is at present thought to have come the other way.
‘The key to it all, as I have long suspected, is with the Etruscans. It is supposed that no one knows whence the Etruscans came. I know. They came from Britain. A few weeks ago I found clear examples of a proto-Etruscan script in my excavation of the Wansdyke Great Barrow. I said nothing about it, because I wanted to be sure. Two days ago, in the presence of a stolid, unimaginative police officer, whose witness to the discovery is unshakeable, I found an incised carving of a nine-spoked wheel on one of the stones at Avebury. The nine-spoked wheel is unique – the only people known to have used it are the ancient Etruscans. There is a splendid example from an Etruscan chariot dating from the sixth century BC in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. My find at Avebury is, perhaps, a thousand years earlier than this, convincing evidence that the use of the nine-spoked wheel spread eastwards from Britain. And that is not all – no, ladies and gentlemen, it is by no means all. Today, again in the presence of police officers, I discovered a tomb underneath the same Avebury stone containing an urn-cremation of a type exactly similar to cremations supposed to belong to the early Villanovan culture of Etruria, the predecessor of Etruscan civilisation proper. What is more, incised on the cremation urn, in proto-Etruscan script, is the name “SARQUIN”, a name so similar to the famous Etruscan “TARQUIN” that there can be no possible doubt of their connection.
‘All the history books will have to be rewritten. Forgive my interruption to your dinner party, Sir Cyril, but the news is too important to be withheld.’
He sat down. There was an embarrassed silence for some moments, then Sir Cyril said, ‘It is all exceedingly interesting. Is it the same stone where that unfortunate young man was killed?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Dr Arbolent, ‘but please do not let one unhappy incident intrude on the greatness of my discovery. In any case, it was largely his own fault. I had instructed him to excavate there – and events have shown how right my theory was. But he began the excavation badly, with inadequate timber support. The stone collapsed, and he was killed. I am very sorry for what happened, but the accident in fact hastened the discovery of the tomb. His name will go down to posterity in association with the new knowledge that – unwittingly – he helped to bring to light. I shall ensure that this is so. He will have a lasting fame that – who knows? – he might never have achieved in a lifetime of worthy, academic work.’
Nobody quite knew what to say to this. Sir Cyril, doing his best, coughed slightly, and asked, ‘How did your proto-Etruscans get to Italy? Across the Channel, and then overland from the Biscay coast?’
‘No,’ said Dr Arbolent, ‘they went by sea, via Gibraltar. You know that it is popularly supposed that Phoenician ships first came from the Mediterranean to Britain to obtain tin from Cornwall. I cannot even begin to go into all the evidence now, but I shall soon be able to prove that it was ships from Britain that took tin to the Phoenician merchants of Carthage, and that such ships also sailed to Italy. How did the blue stones from the Prescelly hills in Wales get to Stonehenge? By unmanoeuvrable rafts across the Bristol Channel? No. I have found evidence that the proto-Etruscans – I may call them proto-Phoenicians, too – of Britain were capable of building seaworthy sailing ships, fit for long voyages. Later this year I propose to demonstrate this, by making just such a voyage in a replica of one of those ships. The Sunday Examiner has agreed to finance the project – but this is still highly secret, and nothing must yet be said about it outside this room.’
The soup on the dinner table was now stone cold. Sir Cyril made a gesture of apology, and rang for the butler. As he cleared away the soup, Dr Arbolent got up again. ‘I deeply regret disturbing your dinner party in such a way,’ he said, ‘but my excitement overcame me. With your permission I shall now withdraw – I am much too exercised in mind to eat. I have a very long article for the Sunday Examiner which I must finish, and alas, tomorrow morning I am summoned to attend the inquest on that unfortunate young man.’
‘I, too, have been summoned to attend the inquest,’ said Boyce.
‘You! But—’
‘It is wholly fortuitous, but it appears that we were the first to see the fallen stone. We had gone to Avebury to watch the sunrise, came upon the accident and telephoned the police.’
‘My dear sir, I am indeed sorry. And your charming daughter is an archaeologist! How distressing for her!’
Juliet put in. ‘Dr Arbolent, before you go, may I ask a very great favour?’
‘Of course, Miss Boyce.’
‘Would it be possible for me to see some of your wonderful discoveries?’
‘It will be difficult in the next few days. But I can do better than that. As you are an archaeological student, I can arrange for you to work with my team over the summer holidays, if you would care to.’
‘Oh, Dr Arbolent, I should love it! Daddy, please can I? I don’t really have to go back yet, and if it meant being a little late for term, I’m sure you could fix it with the Dean. It would be a wonderful experience for me.’
Before Boyce could reply, Dr Arbolent said, ‘Clearly you must discuss the matter with your father. I have very much work to do, and now I must really ask you to excuse me. If you decide that you would like to work with me, go to the camp at South Down and report to Mr Armitage. He will explain everything.’
*
‘What an extraordinary man,’ Boyce observed when Dr Arbolent had gone. ‘I suppose his discoveries really are important?’
‘I suppose so. I can’t say that I know him very well. I met him in Rome before I left the Diplomatic Service – he was concerned with some excavations in Tuscany, and we were asked to help in negotiations with the Italian authorities. He is, I believe, quite distinguished in his own line, though I must say that some of his theories seem a bit far-fetched. But maybe people said that about Schliemann in Troy and Evans in Crete before their importance was established. He wrote to tell me that he was to be in charge of archaeological work here this summer, so we invited him to stay. I don’t know how right he is about Etruscans in the second millennium BC, but he certainly wrecked our twentieth century soup. And it was a very nice soup, Stephen, although I say it.’
Diplomatic training and the genuine friendship between Stephen Boyce and his host somehow repaired what was left of the dinner party. Whatever might be thought of Dr Arbolent’s behaviour, his news was certainly exciting. The Boyces enjoyed their evening very much. Back at the hotel, before they went to bed, Juliet persuaded her father to let her stay on in England to join the archaeological team.
IV
The Cigarette End
THE DAY OF the inquest was a Friday. It got three lines in one of Saturday’s morning papers, but the rest ignored it. Things were very different next day. The Sunday Examiner devoted virtually its entire issue to Dr Arbolent’s discoveries – ‘the scoop of the millennium’ it called its publication of them. Television and radio took up the story, and so did Monday’s papers, one of the populars coming out with the inspired headline, ‘Britain Started The Lot!’
In Marlborough, extra police had to be found for traffic control as sightseers poured in on their way to Avebury and Wansdyke. Most of them were disappointed. The fallen stone and the dramatic burial chamber beneath it were under police guard, and nobody except officials of the Department of the Environment was admitted to the site. The South Down Camp swarmed with reporters and TV crews, but the Wansdyke Great Barrow was also roped off and guarded. The Sunday Examiner did a brilliant job in rushing out a fine descriptive pamphlet, copies of which sold in tens of thousands. Hotels, cafés and pubs throughout North Wessex did a roaring trade.
Revers was less happy. On Monday morning he had a long session with Superintendent Macleod. They had had a report on the broken timber from the forensic laboratory, but like everything else so far in the case it was suggestive without being in any way conclusive. The wood had fractured round a knot-hole, which was reasonable enough if there had been any reason for it to break at all. On each side of the break there were scratches and shallow indentations which suggested that it might have been held in clamps to be fractured deliberately, but the whole baulk was rough wood which had seen a lot of service, there were many other marks and scratches on it, and those near the break might mean anything or nothing. ‘What do you really want to do, John?’ Macleod asked. ‘Have we found any single scrap of evidence that points to any crime? Should we just close the file?’
‘I don’t know, honestly, I just don’t know. Remember your own lectures, that detection is applied common sense. So much that seems to have happened here is against all sense. There was no reason for young Clayton to be anywhere near that stone in the middle of the night. There is no reason that I can see why it should have fallen on him. Yes, there was this burial chamber underneath it, but if we’re to believe the archaeologist it’s been there for 4,000 years or more. Clayton’s preliminary excavation had not gone far. It hadn’t even reached the shaft leading into the burial chamber: I found that by prodding down myself. Of course, when I got there the earth was all disturbed by the wrenching out of the heel of the stone – it’s hard to say now what the ground was like before the thing collapsed. But I don’t think there was enough digging to upset the stone.
‘Then what are we to make of that queer engine noise in the night? The tractor driver and his wife are good witnesses, and they certainly heard something. We’ve gone over the wheel tracks, and there does seem to have been a Land Rover there before the firemen and the ambulance got there – its tracks are overlaid by theirs. The tyre marks are not very clear, but it looks as if it was the archaeological team’s own Land Rover, the one that Mr Armitage brought their equipment on. Again, why not? We can say it was there before the morning when Clayton’s body was found because of the overlying tracks, but we can’t say how long before. The only evidence that puts it in the night is the noise the tractor driver heard, and there’s nothing to connect an engine noise with any particular vehicle. It would have been quite in order for Clayton to have driven the Land Rover there himself – he was authorised to use it. But if so, who drove it away? He couldn’t, because he was dead.
‘And what about the doctors? They’re not happy about some of the head injuries. Yes, I know that twenty or thirty tons of rock on the rampage can do almost anything, but it was a very odd position for the body to be found. I don’t like questions I can’t answer, and I don’t want to close the file, Super. But how far we’re justified in spending more time on the case, I don’t know.’
Macleod considered things for a moment, then he said, ‘We can’t close the file yet, John, and in any case, we’re covered for a bit by the Coroner, who adjourned the inquest for further inquiries to be made. But just what we can do is another matter, and the present hullabaloo with the public stampeding all over the place doesn’t help. Have you come across no line of any sort in the personal inquiries?’
‘Nothing at all. Dr Arbolent seems open and above board. He’s got a good job at Oxford, and although some people think he’s given to pretty wild theories, he seems to be held in general esteem in his profession – at least, that’s what the Department of the Environment’s experts tell me. He’s a queer bird with an offputting manner, but there doesn’t seem to be anything else against him. George Armitage, who appears to be acting as his number two now, also seems about as harmless as they come. He’s got a reputable post with that museum in Manchester, and he’s held it for some years. The Manchester police say that he’s expected to get the top job when the present curator retires next year. I haven’t made inquiries about all the young people at the camp – there hasn’t seemed much point. But I’ve got a list of all their names and addresses. Perhaps I ought to start on that.’
‘You might as well, unless something better turns up.’
*
Something, or rather, somebody, did turn up next day. Revers was in his office, dealing with the papers in a routine case of breaking and entering, when a constable came in. ‘There’s a gentleman downstairs who says he wants to see someone in connection with the Avebury case,’ he said. ‘He gave me this card. Will you see him?’
Revers took the card, and read,
Anthony Marryat, M.A., Ph.D.,
St James’s College,
Cambridge
‘Yes, certainly I’ll see him,’ he said. ‘You can bring him up now.’
Dr Marryat was a man of about Revers’s own age, with a pleasantly craggy face, and clear blue, rather deep-set eyes, looking at the moment decidedly troubled. The constable announced ‘Inspector Revers’, and withdrew. Revers got up from his desk and held out his hand. ‘I don’t know yet if I can help you, but if you’ll tell me what it is, I’ll do my best,’ he said. There was a chair facing the desk, and Dr Marryat sat down in it. Revers, wanting to seem as informal as he could, sat on the edge of the desk.
‘It is good of you to see me so quickly.’ said his visitor, ‘but I’ve only just heard of Paul Clayton’s death, and I don’t know anything about it. Now there’s all this tremendous excitement about Arbolent’s fantastic discoveries, and I can’t make sense of any of the newspapers. So I came here. I was excavating in Greece, and I heard the news on the radio, with something about a young archaeologist called Clayton being killed by a falling stone. I am a Fellow of St James’s, and I was his director of studies when he was an undergraduate. Then he got a research studentship, and since his interests in Megalithic cultures were similar to my own, we worked together quite closely. I had a tremendous respect for him – he was very able indeed, and his death is an appalling loss to archaeology. But I don’t yet know what happened. I flew back from Greece yesterday, and thought the best thing I could do was to go to the police straightaway. You see, I had a letter from him, only a few days ago.’ He took a folded letter from his pocket and gave it to Revers.
It was a longish letter, in neat, small handwriting. Most of it was a straightforward description of life at the South Down camp, and of the work on Wansdyke Great Barrow, and there were inquiries about someone called ‘Ruth’. The letter was signed simply ‘Paul’. Underneath the signature was written,
‘P.S. Did you know that they smoked cigarettes in the second millennium BC?’
‘Who is Ruth?’ Revers asked.
‘My sister. She was at Newnham when Paul was an undergraduate and now she works for an international bank in Switzerland. If Paul had lived I think she would have married him.’
Revers went to his safe and took out the envelope with the contents of Paul Clayton’s wallet. He extracted the photograph and handed it to Dr Marryat. ‘Is that Ruth?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘He carried it in his pocket.’
Marryat was deeply moved, but said nothing. Revers was moved, too: this was a side of police work about which he could never acquire professional detachment.
*
‘What does the postscript about cigarettes mean?’
‘I haven’t the least idea. It looks like a sort of joke, but it hasn’t any point that I can see. And it’s quite unlike Paul to make cryptic jokes.’
Revers thought of the cigarette end among the contents of the wallet. ‘Does your sister smoke? Did Mr Clayton himself smoke?’ he asked.
‘No, neither of them. Why?’
‘I was just wondering about that postscript.’ He said nothing about the cigarette end, but decided that he must examine it more closely. He’d rather dismissed it as a pathetic little keepsake – kept because it had touched some girl’s lips. That, now, seemed improbable. He didn’t see what bearing it could possibly have on the case, but it was another unanswered question. He took back the photograph from Marryat. ‘I’d like to give you this,’ he said, ‘but at the moment I can’t. It’s inventoried as among Mr Clayton’s possessions, and until we know if he left a will I’m afraid it must stay here.’
‘As a matter of fact, Paul did make a will. I know, because he asked me if I’d act as his executor, and later on he brought me the will to show me.’
