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.

Dr Arbolent explained the construction of his boat. No iron was allowed, but some of the fastenings could be of bronze, since he believed that bronze-working from Cornish tin and Welsh copper had originated in Britain long before it was known in the East. The main fastenings, however, were provided by wooden pins and strong lashings of the fibrous roots of the yew, which, he pointed out, made not only for strength, but also gave the hull flexibility in a seaway. Caulking was to be a compound of wool, and tar derived from opencast coal seams. The boat was to be rigged with one huge lateen sail, and he had no hesitation in using canvas, because he believed that linen-weaving from flax had also originated in Britain. Cordage, he admitted, was a problem he had not yet completely solved. The tombdrawing indicated that the mast was stayed. Flax might have been used for rope-making, but that did present certain difficulties. On the other hand, since he was certain that long voyages were made, the prehistoric seamen must have had adequate rope of some sort. Possibly there were certain prehistoric grasses which could have been used, or they might have depended on plaited leather thongs. Since the perishable nature of vegetable fibres made it unlikely that any rope of the period could have survived, and since there was not time for long experiments with the various materials that might have been used, he intended to use hemp. Some might feel that this was an anachronism, and he freely admitted that he respected such a point of view. But questions of safety arose, and he hoped that his use of modern hemp rope would not be regarded as reflecting on the authenticity of his voyage. ‘I am confident,’ he said, ‘that later research will enable us to say with some certainty what materials these wonderful prehistoric ancestors of ours used to make cordage for their ships. For the moment, I do not know. I do know that the ships existed, and that they could sail. I hope I may be forgiven this one departure from a precisely accurate reconstruction of the past. In every other respect the Lady Penelope will be an exact replica of a vessel which put out from Fishguard Bay on some August morning around 2500 BC.’

He proposed to carry no compass, and to navigate as he believed these ancient mariners had navigated. ‘We have met,’ he said, ‘their symbol of the Nine-Spoked Wheel. Consider this a little more deeply. It is a wheel, yes, but it is also a symbol so sacred that its properties must derive from something more vital than the wheel of a cart. Consider it as a circle divided into nine segments – is it not superior in accuracy to the later circle divided into merely four cardinal points that we use for North, East, South and West? It is commonly believed that the mathematical division of a circle into 360 degrees derives from Babylonia. I don’t accept this. I believe that the Babylonians acquired the device from the West – and never understood how to make full use of it! Consider the number 36: it is wonderfully flexible, being divisible by 3, 4, 6, 9, and 12. The Babylonian mathematicians never developed its property of being divisible by 9, which, to my mind, very strongly suggests, if it does not actually prove, that they could not themselves have invented the 360 degree circle. In my view the Nine-Spoked Wheel was a directional device, giving not merely four quarters (our North, East, South and West) but nine directional segments. Alas, I cannot yet say what these were called, but as we learn more of the language of the inscriptions I have discovered, I hope we may come to know what these early points of the compass – far more precise than our own crude cardinal points – were called. Given such an instrument as a nine-point directional circle, and the knowledge of the sun, moon and stars that we know the ancient world had, I am confident that navigation would present few really difficult problems. I have worked out a course from Fishguard Bay around the coast of Pembrokeshire into the Bristol Channel, which I shall follow by means of the Nine Point system alone. And I assure you that I shall deliver my precious cargo of blue stones from the Prescelly Mountains safely in Bristol.’

*

All this added greatly to Dr Arbolent’s fame with the public, but the editor of the Sunday Examiner had some private reservations. Dr Arbolent might be a brilliant pre-historian, but he had little or no experience of practical seamanship. The newspaper had invested a lot of money in Lady Penelope, and more in Dr Arbolent himself. It would do the story no good if they came to grief, or had ignominiously to be rescued. The question of a crew for Lady Penelope had yet to be decided. Dr Arbolent thought that the original vessel would have carried a crew of around twelve, and the editor insisted that eight of these should be yachtsmen of proved experience, including at least one competent navigator. The editor also felt that Lady Penelope’s equipment should include radio, a compass, a sextant, and a set of modern charts.

Radio was a necessity, anyway, for Dr Arbolent to transmit the story of his voyage to the paper, and since without radio there would be nothing like the publicity that he could have with it, he accepted this. But he jibbed at carrying compass, sextant and charts. In the end it was agreed that they should be carried, but kept locked in a sealed box, to be used only in emergency. He made no difficulties about the editor’s stipulations concerning his crew – indeed, he thought them sensible, though he insisted that he alone was to be in command. The paper invited applications for crewing on Lady Penelope, and had 1,500 replies within three days. A shortlist was prepared by the newspaper’s staff, and the candidates were then interviewed by the editor, Dr Arbolent, and the commodore of a famous ocean-racing club. The eight finally selected included a leading ocean-racing skipper, and five men and two women, all with impressive experience of sailing.

Dr Arbolent was left to choose the lay members of the Lady Penelope’s complement himself. Announcing that he thought it right that those who had shared in the labours of the dig should share in its triumphant climax, he invited George Armitage, two of the archaeological students, and Juliet – to add, as he put it magnanimously, a representative of the great Western civilisation of the United States.

*

Juliet was overjoyed, Marryat markedly less so. They had had supper in Marryat’s cottage, and as it was a beautiful, warm evening they had taken coffee into the garden, where there was a bench under a huge old walnut tree. During supper they had come as near as they had ever come to having a row, and Juliet was now penitent. ‘Of course I understand how you feel, Tony,’ she said ‘but there are going to be eleven other people on board as well as Dr Arbolent. It’s a big strong boat and I don’t see that I can possibly come to any harm. You must understand that it’s a wonderful chance for me. Things like this just don’t happen in Agostine County, Iowa.’

‘Oh Julie,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry I got het up. I’m not your father—’

‘You certainly are not! You’re nothing like old enough, for one thing.’

‘—I’m not your father, but I do love you very much. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be worried about you. It’s a damnable coast, and goodness knows how that weird tub is going to sail. But I’m not going to say any more.’ He put his good arm round her shoulders and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

‘Oh, Tony, that wasn’t much of a kiss!’ She pulled his head down to her, and kissed him on the mouth. ‘There! I shall have to teach you!’ He held her to him and began to kiss her fiercely. She snuggled up to him for a moment, then pushed him away. ‘Not now, Tony,’ she said. ‘You’ll upset the coffee cups! No, Tony darling, please, no. One day, perhaps, but not now. Besides, it’s time you took me back to the camp.’

‘All right, Julie. Sorry.’

‘You needn’t be all that sorry.’

‘Perhaps you don’t know what I’m sorry for.’

They both laughed, and Juliet got up. ‘I’ll help you with the washing up, Tony, and then you must take me back.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. I’ve got to have something to take my mind off things when I have to come home without you. I do wish you weren’t going – going anyway, but going on that trip particularly.’

‘So does nearly half of me. But the other half feels that I’d be a coward not to go. I feel that I’d be letting down Daddy, and America, and you, too, Tony. Try to understand that.’

‘I do, Julie. But I know much more about the sea than you do, and I can’t help being worried. But I’ve said I’m not going to say any more. When do you have to go to Fishguard?’

‘On Saturday.’

‘And you sail on Saturday week! And the boat’s not even launched!’

‘It’ll be all right. She’s going to be launched on Saturday, and there’ll be time for several days of sailing trials. The whole crew is going to be at Fishguard for a week. And you’re coming to Bristol to meet me when we get in. Let’s look forward to that.’

*

Marryat did not look forward to the coming fortnight. The passage from Fishguard to Bristol would be about 200 miles, and given reasonable weather, even a not very fast sailing boat should do it in three days or so. But the Lady Penelope was not a normal sailing boat, and although she would have a competent crew he doubted whether many of them had much experience of dhow-rig. Still, they’d be a strong crew, and really it wasn’t all that far. But Marryat had far more reasons than Julie knew for distrusting Arbolent, and he disliked the whole project intensely. He was also getting more and more bothered about whether he ought to express publicly his profound doubts about the inscriptions and the whole edifice built on them. But he had to be fair. He had wished himself on Arbolent for private reasons – he had not been called in to express a professional opinion on anything. He believed Arbolent to be a murderer and he thought it probable that Arbolent had tried to kill him, with Julie’s death thrown in as a casual makeweight. Merely thinking of the man made him grit his teeth in anger. But there was precious little evidence to justify his feelings – the police had made no move against Arbolent, and if they didn’t have enough evidence to act, what could he do? They might all be wrong. He was not wrong about the inscriptions – he was absolutely sure that they had been faked. One day they’d have to be submitted to professional scrutiny, and there was no doubt of the outcome of that. But so far everything had been wrapped up in that damned newspaper, which seemed to think it owned the lot, and preserved its copyrights jealously. It might own Arbolent’s articles and photographs, but it didn’t own the Wansdyke Great Barrow, or the stone circles at Avebury. They were national property, and there’d have to come a time soon when the Sunday Examiner was told where it got off. But the whole story was such a sensational success and such an immense fillip to national pride, that for the moment the newspaper seemed to have everything going its own way.

Marryat felt ill-at-ease, and unhappy. Juliet was off to Fishguard, and much as he wanted to follow her he decided that it wouldn’t do – she’d be immersed in the community of the crew, and his presence could only be a nuisance. Then he thought, why not go to Fishguard by sea?

*

Marryat had been brought up in small boats. He was born in South Devon, and his father had owned a succession of elderly sailing boats, and had spent every moment he could pottering about in them. Marryat had started crewing for his father almost as soon as he could walk, and as he grew up he had acquired various dinghies and small cruisers of his own. Three years ago he had bought a twenty-eight-foot yawl, which he called Clio, after the Muse of History. He had sailed her twice to the Mediterranean to serve as floating headquarters on archaeological expeditions, and it was mere chance that she wasn’t in the Aegean now: he had planned to take her to Greece, but as things turned out he couldn’t get away from Cambridge in time and had to go by air instead. So Clio was at Plymouth, but she’d been hauled out and anti-fouled in the spring in readiness for the Greek cruise, and she was more or less in commission. It wouldn’t take long to make her ready for sea. He’d enjoy sailing her to Fishguard, it would give him something to do and help to take his mind off other things.

He had no charts in his rented cottage, but he had a diary with a set of maps in it. The scale was tiny, but good enough for rough reckoning. He scaled off a passage from Plymouth to Fishguard, and made it something under 300 miles. He could certainly do it in the time: even if he met headwinds all the way. Clio had a good diesel auxiliary, and he could always use the motor.

What about his left arm, though? It was still far from reliable, and he considered the question of a crew. Apart from the difficulty of getting hold of anyone at short notice, he didn’t want a crew: he wanted to be alone, to recover, if he could, some peace of mind. Did his arm really matter? He had done much singlehanded sailing, and normally he could handle Clio perfectly well on his own. His arm was all right now for driving a car, and provided he remembered not to put any sudden strain on it, there ought not to be any trouble. Having come to a decision he wrote a note to Juliet, got in his car, and went off. It was better to drive through the night than to lie awake thinking, and it would be a joy to be on board Clio again. There was a West Coast of England Pilot among the books on the shelf above Clio’s chart table. He didn’t have a chart of the approaches to Fishguard, but he could get that in Plymouth. He could also shop for stores in the afternoon, and have Clio ready for sea some time in the afternoon.