‘This morning’s tutorial will be a little different,’ Margaret Murray told her assembled students. They were crowded into Flinders Petrie’s study on the shady side of the college, mainly because his room was larger than hers. ‘We will be focusing on Rome.’
An involuntary groan escaped from the lips of Ben Crouch and he immediately turned it into a cough.
‘No, it’s too late for that, Mr Crouch,’ Margaret smiled. ‘I recognize a tone of disapproval when I hear one.’
‘No, no, Dr Murray.’ The man held up a guilty hand, anxious to placate. ‘It’s just that I am, as you know, a Greek, with perhaps a hint of Egyptian.’
‘How very cosmopolitan,’ she said. ‘Perhaps, however, you’d begin.’ She passed him a heavy globular object which once clearly had been part of something else. ‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘Oh, that’s easy.’ Crouch smiled broadly. He hated these tutorials when everyone was put on the spot, but he sensed that, this morning, he’d got off lightly. ‘It’s the pommel of a gladius,’ he told the assembly, ‘a legionary sword.’
‘Period, Miss Bairnsfather?’ Margaret had switched her gaze to the little Scots girl and Crouch had passed the pommel to her.
‘Umm …’ Janet had never faced one of Margaret Murray’s tutorials before. She felt like a rabbit facing a stoat.
‘Unfair question, Janet, my dear,’ Margaret smiled. ‘Mr Sheringham, you’ve been around the triforium a few times. Period?’
Will Sheringham was not one of Margaret’s gang. Secretly, he was of the old school, not at all sure that archaeology, anthropology or indeed any academic discipline was a suitable topic for female discussion. But he wasn’t about to let that show this morning. ‘First century,’ he said. ‘Give or take.’
Margaret pursed her lips. ‘Well, we can’t allow too much of that in archaeology, can we? Professor Petrie will have discussed with you whether our chosen field is a science or an art. I, of course, contend that it is both. Miss Crossley’ – she half turned to Anthea – ‘put these men out of their misery, would you?’
Anthea took the pommel and cradled it in her hand for a moment. ‘First century,’ she agreed, ‘but it’s not from a gladius; it’s from a pugio.’
‘A dagger?’ Andrew Rose could not let that go. ‘How the hell … oh, begging your pardon, Dr Murray … do you know that?’
Anthea all but threw the brass weight at him. ‘Hold it, Andrew,’ she said. ‘Pretend you’re holding the hilt it was attached to.’ He did. ‘Well?’ She gave him a moment.
‘Oh, all right,’ he conceded. ‘Pugio it is.’
‘Explain, Mr Baxter.’
George Baxter had not joined to become an archaeologist. He had signed on for engineering, but the mathematics defeated him. Then he opted for linguistics, but translations were not for him. This was his second year in the faculty of Archaeology, though he was by now more than old enough to have graduated. Pompous, however, was his middle name. He flared his nostrils and with great gravitas said, ‘Contrary to popular opinion, Roman hands of nineteen hundred years ago were roughly the same size as ours today. This is altogether too small for a sword hilt. Ergo …’ – and he looked around smugly to see who was impressed with his Latin – ‘it has to be a dagger.’
Margaret nodded. ‘Carried by the legionaries on the right or the left, Miss Halifax?’ she asked.
‘The left, Dr Murray.’ The girl was sure.
Andrew Rose snorted. Veronica had, after all, a fifty-fifty chance of being correct.
‘Now,’ Margaret said. ‘We are sitting in more or less a circle. I want you all to close your eyes.’
They all did, except for Janet, Veronica and Piers Gibbs, whose first tutorial this was.
‘It’s all right,’ Margaret assured them. ‘All will become clear.’
They closed their eyes. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘Anthea, pass the pommel to your left – that’s Mr Swinscombe, who will take it … that’s right. Hold it, Mr Swinscombe, feel the weight in your hand, the smoothness of it. Now, let your mind wander, back, back through time. You are standing on a shingle beach. It’s cold. Colder than the weather you’re used to. The sea is to your right. You’ve crossed that sea recently. And you’re quite relieved because the land you’re standing on isn’t actually at the end of the world after all, despite the rumours. But then, it’s not very welcoming, either. Take it, Miss Friend.’
Angela did so.
‘All around you is the camp. It’s an outpost. Smaller than most. Ahead is a trackway – there are no roads yet, unlike the Gaul that you probably know well. To your left, forest, dark, tangled, impenetrable. There aren’t even any trackways there. But you know you have to go forward, because that’s the Roman way. Mr Baxter, take the pommel. Your officers have told you this was the way the divine Julius came, making for a fording place on the river he called Thamesis. You know the fleet is to your right, Mr Baxter – floating on what we call the Medway – so what have you to fear? Pass the pommel.’
Still, all eyes were shut tight, the only sound in the room the hypnotic roll of Margaret Murray’s voice. ‘Mr Sheringham, you have everything to fear. There are madmen here and wild, shrieking women who worship the tree and the mistletoe and the stone. They crouch in sacred groves and they bury heads in holy water. Be afraid, Mr Sheringham, as you pass the pommel, because there are things that lie ahead that you cannot know, cannot understand. The wicker men, for example, and your comrades burning. No one here … take the pommel, Mr Rose … no one here speaks your language. No one cares whether you live or die. You are the enemy. There are the painted men to the far north; the Attacotti who eat the bodies of the men they have killed. Listen … listen, Miss Halifax, as you take the pommel, feel it bouncing on your left hip as you march … you can hear the moaning of the sea and the creak of leather; the tramp of the caligae and the shouts of the optio at your back. “Keep those lines straight. Where do you think you are, man? Fasten that strap, soldier. Or Teutates will get you!”’
Veronica couldn’t help herself. Her eyes flickered open and she expected to see a gruff centurion in front of her, grim-faced, the weak British sun glinting off the falerae on his chest, the cruel wind ruffling the horsehair of his helmet. Instead, all she saw was a little lecturer in archaeology, smiling at her.
‘And …’ Margaret paused as the pommel came full circle, ‘We’re back.’
All eyes opened and everybody fidgeted, slightly embarrassed at the places that their lecturer’s voice had taken them to. Some of the old hands remembered other days like this; how, indeed, could you forget the time that Archie Mulholland had abandoned all decency and stripped off, running out into Gower Street before he could be prevented? Telling the policeman on point duty that he was a Viking berserker had cut no ice at all.
‘Now, I think,’ Margaret said, ‘we’re ready for Rome. Essential to get into the mood, don’t you think?’ She was passing out slips of paper in all directions. ‘I wouldn’t presume to put anyone on the spot,’ she said, and Rose and Crouch exchanged glances with a simultaneous roll of the eyes. ‘So I’d like you to work in pairs and do some translations for me. I’ll give you … ooh, ten minutes.’
She bustled away along the corridor to coax that wretched kettle, the one with the mind of its own, into action. She hated not being able to offer tea to her class, but that was hospitality taken too far and the university in general frowned on such things. She heard the silence in Petrie’s study rise to whispered mutterings, then audible discussion and finally, Anthea Crossley at her best.
‘Don’t talk utter bilge, Crouch. That’s the subjunctive there or General Baden-Powell wears women’s frocks!’
‘Come off it, Anthea,’ Crouch came back. ‘You’re supposed to have gone to a good school …’
The arrival of Margaret Murray put an end to the usual verbal brawl but no sooner had she come back into the room than an older, altogether more male, figure followed.
‘Oh, Margaret … er … Miss … er, Dr Murray, I’m sorry. I’d forgotten you were holding court today. I can’t find my copy of Westropp anywhere and I know Flinders has one. Morning, gentlemen.’
There were murmurs of reply from the men in the room. The women sat there open-mouthed. Margaret Murray knew the spine of every book in Flinders Petrie’s inner sanctum by heart and she reached instinctively for the tome in question. ‘Here we are, Norman … er … Mr … Professor Minton.’ Then she held it just out of his reach. ‘But, now you’re here,’ she said, ‘as our resident Roman expert; sit yourself down and help us with our Latin, will you?’
‘Oh, now, Dr Murray …’ Minton blustered.
‘Oh, please, Professor,’ Andrew Rose said. ‘We’d so value your expertise.’
For a moment, Minton looked unsure. Then he folded. ‘Oh, very well,’ he said. ‘But I usually like a little more notice than this. What do we have?’
‘Well’ – Margaret resumed her seat – ‘as I said to these people when we started this morning, this tutorial will not be the usual fare. The pieces of paper you have before you, ladies and gentlemen, are copies of those taken from a box belonging to another student, not of this college. I regret to have to inform you all that that student’s body was recently found on a beach in Kent.’
There was a stunned silence. Angela Friend found her voice first. ‘May I ask how it came into your possession, Dr Murray?’
‘You may.’ Margaret smiled at her and moved on. ‘I have, of course, already perused these papers myself and I must confess to being, on the whole, baffled by them.’
There were mutterings of dissent all round. Em-em might have her shortcomings – she could not, for example, see over the rail at Goodwood – but bafflement? Never.
‘Which is why Professor Minton’s arrival is so timely.’ She turned to him, hands in her lap, waiting for the great man to explain the origins of the universe.
‘So,’ Minton said, ‘let me see if I’ve got this straight. These papers, whatever they are, are a sort of last will and testimony to this poor girl?’
‘In a way,’ Margaret said.
‘She was, I assume, an archaeologist?’ Minton probed, fumbling in an inside pocket for his spectacles.
‘She was; from King’s.’
Minton looked aghast and crossed himself.
‘Quite,’ Margaret said solemnly.
‘Was she working on a project? I know we have that system, but do they?’
‘They do,’ Margaret told him. ‘The dead girl was based at Hampton-on-Sea, Herne Bay. She was working on what may have been an outpost of Reculver.’
‘Ah, Regulbium’ – Minton gave it its Roman name – ‘the most northerly of the Saxon Shore forts. Anything about the Baetasians here?’ He looked around him and met blank stares, even from Margaret, whose field, it must be said in all fairness, this was not.
‘Chaps from Denmark,’ Minton explained. ‘Auxiliary cohorts, following the eagle.’
Piers Gibbs and Janet Bairnsfather at least had no idea what the eminence before them was talking about; and the sheer immensity of arcane archaeology rose up before them like a brick wall.
‘Let me see.’ Minton helped himself to the nearest piece of paper. There were doodles all over it. He’d seen such hieroglyphs before, mostly signs of boredom from the pens of students attending his lectures – especially, had he ever cared to look closely enough, the pen of Andrew Rose. ‘Ah, yes, here we are. Oh, this is interesting; “II Aug …”, “Vesp …”, “alae auxiliae”. Yes, yes, all good stuff. Are these fragments the originals, Dr Murray? From the … erm … horse’s mouth, so to speak?’
‘No,’ Margaret said. ‘Copies, but good ones, I venture to say, with all due modesty! Could you translate, Professor? We have some freshmen here.’
‘Oh, certainly, certainly. Well, this is actually quite rare. Ground-breaking, in fact. “II Aug” is the Second Augusta Legion, one of four who invaded under Aulus Plautius in 43. Regulbium would have been a base for them before they moved west. “Vesp” is of course Vespasianus. I suppose you’d call him a colonel today; commanded the II Augusta.’
‘Was he the one who became emperor later, Professor?’ Veronica asked.
‘That’s right, my dear,’ Minton beamed, glad that somebody was paying attention. ‘He was also the first man in recorded history to invent the penny a pee machine for public toilets …’
Janet Bairnsfather blushed to her Presbyterian roots.
‘… Oh, not literally, of course, but he did place a tax on urine. The Romans were nothing if not earthy. And pretty good at making money, too. “Alae auxiliae” – Mr Crouch, you’re a graduate, for God’s sake. Have a stab, man.’
‘Er … auxiliary cavalry, Professor,’ Crouch came back at him.
‘Good. Good. Now, what have we here?’ Minton took up another of the scattered sheets and read aloud. “Me salutatium …” No, that can’t be right.’ He was frowning now. ‘And what’s this? “Non saxus in me …” Margaret, this is gibberish. You must have copied it wrongly.’
‘Indeed I did not do any such thing.’ Margaret didn’t say what she really felt, for fear of distressing the gentlemen present. ‘But that is more or less what I thought,’ she said. ‘I was hoping wiser eyes could see what I could not.’
‘“Me salutatium” is “my bow down”. My bow down? Doesn’t make sense.’ He took up another sheet. ‘Ah, now, here we go. “Regulbium …” Yes. Messengers have been sent to Reculver. Urgent. Oh.’ And he stopped dead.
‘What is it, Norman?’ Margaret asked.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ the professor said. ‘I must … This’ – he switched back to the earlier sheet – ‘this is a poem of sorts. Look, caesura, pes. It’s supposed to be declaimed, recited, sung, even.’
‘Is it a soldier’s song?’ Sheringham asked.
‘Well, it might be,’ Minton nodded, ‘but this is very definitely reference to the first century – and soon after the conquest. Is there anything else, Margaret? Inscriptions? Tablets? Anything of that sort?’
‘King’s didn’t seem to have anything else,’ she told him, ‘and I’ve been to the site itself, the one the poor girl was working on. Nothing.’
‘There’s erosion, though, isn’t there?’ Rose asked, ‘along that part of the coast?’
‘There is indeed,’ Minton said. ‘Who knows what’s been lost over time?’
‘Ah, the archaeologist’s dilemma,’ Margaret said.
‘This, though …’ Minton had gone back to the third sheet. ‘“Turbator Josephus …”’ and his voice trailed away. ‘I shall need more time, Margaret,’ he said stiffly, standing up. ‘Look, could I take these papers away? They’re probably the inconsequential ramblings of an undergraduate … oh, no offence to anyone.’
There were uneasy grins all round and someone muttered, ‘None taken.’
‘Feel free, Professor Minton,’ Margaret said. ‘We know, after all, where to find you. Here.’ She opened her bag, which was tucked under her chair, and took out a large, thick envelope. ‘Take the originals. I copied everything as I thought it should look, but perhaps something in the background I took to be dirt may have a bearing.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the envelope and waiting by her chair.
‘Yes?’ She looked up.
‘Westropp?’
‘Oh, I am so sorry.’ She handed the book over and he tucked the envelope inside. ‘As you say, you know where to find me, so pop in at any time, see how I’m getting on.’ He looked round the room and tried not to see any women. ‘Yes, yes, indeed.’ And he left, humming to himself.
‘Next week,’ Margaret said, when the door had closed behind Minton, ‘we’ll be looking at the Iliad, Mr Crouch, so we’ll be back in your beloved Greece at last.’
‘Thank you, Dr Murray.’ Crouch half bowed and they stashed away their notebooks and made for the door.
‘Boss wants a word with you, Crawford.’ Sergeant Sadler, on the desk that morning, was a difficult man to read. That could mean ‘You’ve been promoted, son, and you’re probably in line for Commissioner’ or it could mean ‘Pack your waders, mate; it’s the horse troughs for you’. In the event, it was neither of the above … quite.
‘I’m afraid you’ve been over-zealous, lad.’ Athelgar Blunt was wreathed in pipe smoke, in his office on the first floor.
‘In what way, sir?’ Crawford felt obliged to ask.
‘In the way of getting right up the nose of a member of the public.’
‘Anybody in particular?’ It had to be said that Adam Crawford didn’t like Athelgar Blunt. Technically, he wasn’t even his boss, despite what Sergeant Sadler had said.
Blunt slammed his spare hand down on his desk so that the pens jumped and the inkwells rattled. ‘I wouldn’t be so flippant if I were you,’ he snarled. ‘For your information, the complainant is a Mr John Daventry, of …’
‘… Firtree Road, Isleworth. Yes, sir; I thought it might be.’
‘Mr Daventry is a property owner of some standing in this city,’ Blunt told him. He narrowed his eyes at the constable. ‘You’re not one of those Socialists, are you?’
‘No, I …’
‘One of the lumpenproletariat trying to lose their chains?’
‘No, I …’
‘Sneering at men like Mr Daventry because he has money and a bit of class?’
Crawford had had enough. ‘Mr Daventry,’ he told the detective levelly, ‘is an extortionist who charges obscene rents for slum properties. He is also – although I haven’t got hard evidence yet – a pimp, renting out his premises to prostitutes.’
‘Well, that’s it!’ Blunt screamed. ‘I was going to be generous, Crawford, and let this go. Now, I’m not. Let me remind you, once and for all, that you are uniform. You do not detect, in any shape or form. Leave that to the big boys. From now on, until hell freezes over, you are on traffic duty in Bloomsbury. I want you as far away from the Yard as I can put you without embarrassing the Force. And you step out of line there – if you so much as help an old lady across the road – your feet won’t touch, son. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Abundantly, Detective Inspector.’
Norman Minton was not an imaginative man, and that was a shame. He worked, and lived, and had his being amongst perhaps the most romantic men the world had ever seen; even the humblest of pedes two thousand years ago had a story to tell to freeze the blood, but Norman never heard them. Rome and its empire was facts, figures, rules, regulations to Norman Minton. It was stone. It was sometimes wood. It was, even more rarely than wood, fabric or parchment. But it had no voice.
Even so, his Latin was immaculate. He had gone to the sort of school where every declension was beaten into his head with a swipe of the ruler or the master’s palm. Amo. Smack! Amas. Thwack. Amat. Slap. Amamus, Amatis, Amant, gabbled quickly to cut down on blows. At first, it was just by rote. Then, one morning – he remembered it as if it were yesterday – the lines on the page had stopped being a code and begun to be words, a language he could hide in when the world got a bit much, when the chant of ‘Minty, Minty, Minty, Slow and Fat and Squinty’ had made him want to cry. It was good to be able to shout, ‘Es porcos et adipem totum olfacies.’ Calling them fat smelly pigs wasn’t high wit, but they didn’t know what he had said. That it got him beaten up more than once scarcely mattered. It was just good to know that he knew more than them. And while they were giggling over the silly translation for eleven-year-olds – ‘Caesar had some jam for tea; Pompey had a rat’ – Norman Minton overtook them all.
And yet again – he took a slurp of tea long gone cold and hardly noticed – he knew more than the others here at the college too. Margaret Murray was clever enough – for a woman, at any rate. The students. Well, perhaps one or two had a brain in their heads. But they had to ask him what it was all about. For years he had been a professor, and yet he was still Minty, slow and fat and squinty, even if he exercised religiously and the eye had been sorted out years ago, by the simple expedient of sticking plaster over his glasses.
He laid out the papers in any order, then looked at them, narrowing his eyes in thought, not because he was squinting. He hummed a little to himself and moved two papers, swapping them over. Then two more. And then two more. He smiled again and rubbed his hands. He was just too clever, sometimes.
He didn’t hear it coming. He certainly didn’t see it coming. But from behind, wingèd Mercury, messenger of the gods, swept through the air and struck him around the side of the head. In an involuntary movement, his arms swung up, then out and down, scattering the papers across the desk, spattering them with his blood. His head fell forward on to the desk and he looked at the small arc of his study that he could see from there. His books. His statuary. All his lovely things. He drew air into his lungs with an effort almost too much for his dying brain and breathed it out softly.
Only his murderer heard his dying words. And he didn’t understand them.
‘Vale,’ Norman Minton said. ‘Vale in sempiternum.’
Annie Scroggins had been a sweeper all her adult life. And for much of her childhood, come to that. She was nearing fifty now and, truth be told, the years of handling polished wood and lifting buckets had taken their toll. Her back clicked most mornings when she got up and there was an occasional numbness in her left leg. By evening, as it was now, her shoulders ached and she had to force her rheumatic fingers to pick up the screwed-up papers the students left behind.
Annie would never understand students, not if she lived to be fifty-one. Overgrown children, they were, entitled and with smells under their noses. Annie could read just like them and she knew what they, apparently, didn’t; the world was going to change soon – that nice Mr Keir Hardie said so. So did the Reverend Cadwallader. He had told Annie to her face that the weak, of which she was definitely one, would one day inherit the earth. So it was written in the scriptures – Annie Scroggins, sweeper of the vestibule and main staircases of the University College of London, was about to be as good as her masters. Then let the students look down their noses at her, if they dare.
Darkness was coming to Gower Street, the gas lamps on the vestibule walls sending flickering shadows over the plaster. Lectures had long ago ended and the staff had gone home. The only people in the huge, echoing building were the cleaners. And, in the vestibule, only Annie. Old Jenkins, the nightwatchman, wouldn’t be on until eight and Annie would have gone by then; doubly so, because the filthy old man couldn’t keep his hands to himself.
But the moment had come. As it came every evening. It wasn’t too bad in the summer when the street outside was still busy with gigs and broughams and, every now and again, one of those loud, terrifying motor carriages, the ones that would never catch on. At that time of year the sun shone, gilding the brass fittings of the vestibule, flooding the worn carpet with light. But now, in October, the shadows lengthened and the stairs hung heavy in the semi-dark. The only sound was the swish of Annie’s broom. She looked up at the marble busts on the pedestals, the great and good who had presided over the college for three quarters of a century, pale patricians with chiselled features and side-whiskers to die for. Them, Annie could handle. Their faces were hard, unreal, their eyes as empty as the flask in Annie’s apron pocket. Bugger! She thought she’d filled that up yesterday. Now she’d have to face the moment, not only alone as always, but stone cold sober.
At the far end of the corridor, she saw him, sitting, as always, on his chair, looking at her. He was always looking at her. And yet, he never said a word, nor raised a hand in greeting. Not to her, not to anyone. She busied herself with a cobweb in a tricky corner, bent to scoop it up into her pan. She flicked her duster along the skirting board, listening to the invisible rats behind the timbers stir themselves before they came out to hunt when the building was silent and empty. And all the time, she felt his eyes on her. Her heart was pounding, her throat tight with fear. Bugger again. She did this every day except the Sabbath; why wasn’t she used to it? He never moved; never spoke; never did her any harm. So why …? She kept her eyes averted, hurtling around his glass case like a thing possessed, her broom rattling and clattering on the skirting board and hissing over the marble floor.
She’d done it! Thank God! It was over again for another day. She turned her back on him, sitting silently in his glass case, and she glanced up, broom in one hand, pan in the other. Then she saw it – a shadow, a blur, a darker shape in the darkness dashed across her view, coming from the stairs that led to the Archaeology department. Annie never went up there; she knew it was full of dead things that once had crawled the earth and would never do so again; people with sightless eyes and grey, leather skin. Who was that? What was that? There were no cleaners but her in this part of the building. Had it been one of them, she would have called ‘Hello’. It couldn’t be old Jenkins; he’d have made an excuse to come over to her and try to pat her bum. Anyway, she could count on the fingers of one hand the times he had approached from any direction but from behind. So … who?
She turned. And ’til her dying day, she didn’t know why she did. She turned and looked at the dead man in his glass case. She saw his thigh bone jutting through his faded, moth-eaten breeches; she saw his toe bones under the collapsing leather of his boots. She saw the pale green frock coat and the tambour-sprigged vest, the wideawake hat. And she saw the square, shiny face and the grey glass eyes. And she knew, that in the tin hat box between his feet was the man’s own head, a skull as grim and ghastly as anything kept upstairs in the Archaeology department. She forced herself away, the dustpan clattering to the floor, the broom following it with a crash that echoed and re-echoed through the whole building.
And Annie ran. She ran as she hadn’t run for years, faster than she had ever run away from old Jenkins. Tears ran too, down her cheeks and into the corners of her open mouth, too terrified, as it was, to let out a scream. Because Annie had seen him. She had seen what she had always known lurked in this part of University College, the reason that men called it the Godless Institution. She had seen the ghost of the man in the glass case. She had seen the ghost of Jeremy Bentham. On the stairs, coming from where the dead things lay.
‘Margaret.’ Flinders Petrie stopped shuffling the papers he was working on and looked into those bright, grey eyes. ‘Good of you to call. Er … what’s going on?’
‘Going on, Flinders? Whatever do you mean?’ Hope sprang eternal in the breast of Margaret Murray but she knew perfectly well that there was little chance of getting anything past this man. Whether digging in some corner of a foreign field or ferreting out secrets nearer home, there was no one to touch him.
The lamps were glowing out all over Petrie’s museum that evening, where things in jars sat elbow to elbow with papyri and amphorae and all things ancient. It was a second home to both of them.
Petrie got up from behind his desk and smoothed down his moustache. This one would take some careful timing. ‘You’re making quite a name for yourself in the university,’ he said, smiling at his protégée.
‘Thank you, Flinders.’ She smiled back.
‘But … and I don’t quite know how to say this …’
‘You aren’t usually so tongue-tied.’ She reached up to straighten his bow tie.
‘I am, to put it bluntly, a little concerned.’
‘Really?’ She widened her eyes again. ‘Why, pray?’
‘Well,’ he said, moving away from her, ‘this whole wretched Helen Richardson business, of course. It’s highly distasteful, Margaret.’
‘Indeed it is,’ she agreed. ‘But you have known worse in the back streets of Cairo, surely …’
‘Cairo be buggered, Margaret!’ he stormed. ‘Oh, saving your presence. Helen Richardson wasn’t one of the fellaheen. I understand you’ve been talking to Scotland Yard.’
‘They do have experience of sudden death in the Metropolis, Flinders,’ she reminded him.
‘And the tabloid newspapers, viz. and to wit, the Illustrated Police News. George Carey Foster is very concerned.’
‘Oh, Flinders.’ She waved her hands about. ‘That was days ago! I have also consulted a private detective.’
‘What?’ Flinders Petrie’s eyeballs looked ready to bounce out of their sockets.
‘Flinders.’ She crossed the study to him and led him gently back to his chair. ‘As you know, discretion is my middle name. Now, let me put the kettle on and we’ll talk about it over a Tetley’s, shall we?’
Margaret Murray didn’t hate many things in the world, but she did hate wasting time. So she walked along Gower Street one morning with even more than her usual vim and vigour. She was just about to turn into the University building when a familiar pair of shoulders caught her eye. She went to the edge of the pavement and peered through the morning traffic to make sure, then stepped off to cross the road.
‘Watch it, lady!’ The driver of a dray pulled up in the nick of time. ‘Got a bleeding deaf wish, ’ave ya?’
Margaret waved insouciantly at him. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed. ‘I need this policeman.’
The drayman clicked his tongue and his horse moved off. The lad was well set up, he wouldn’t deny, but surely even he wasn’t worth dying for.
Margaret got to the middle of the road without further incident and stood as close to Adam Crawford as common decency would allow, then moved even closer to avoid being run over.
‘Whatever are you doing here, Constable Crawford?’ she said, raising her voice over the rumble of wheels.
He didn’t look down, but stared straight ahead, his left hand raised in an admonitory gesture, his right elbow loose as his hand spun round to tell the waiting multitude it was finally their turn. It had been a tough morning thus far, and so he was a little terse.
‘Directing traffic,’ he said, through gritted teeth. An omnibus was heading straight for him and he knew the drivers did not take prisoners.
‘But why?’ Margaret was appalled.
‘Just because, Dr Murray,’ he said, counting cars on Gower Street from his left. If he let one too many through, there would be a riot. ‘Just because.’
‘Can I do anything?’ Margaret couldn’t help but worry whether perhaps at least a little of this was her fault.
‘You can get back on the pavement without getting mown down and then go and do what you do all day,’ he said. ‘I don’t always know what that is, to be frank. But what I do all day is easy to explain. It’s this.’ He waved an eloquent hand in a sweeping gesture and two milk carts collided with a crash of churns. He stepped back. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do. Goodbye, Dr Murray.’ He hurried over and started helping to extricate the milkmen from their milk. Taking advantage of the stopped traffic, Margaret slunk back to the kerb. It had put a dent in her mood, that was certain. Perhaps Norman would have news to cheer her up.
Universities wake up slowly. So although it was bedlam outside in Gower Street, with the world and his wife going to work or sauntering home after working all night, inside the Godless Institution it was as quiet as death. Margaret made her way across the lobby and up the stairs towards the Archaeology faculty.
As was her habit, she bobbed a curtsy to the man in the glass case and Skinner the day porter wished, as he did every time, that he had the barefaced cheek to rumble ‘Good morning, Dr Murray’ and see how she liked them apples. But he didn’t have the cheek, so the joke, as ever, could keep for another day.
On the top landing it was, as usual, quiet. Margaret could tell that Flinders Petrie wasn’t in his rooms, as there was no fug of pipe smoke curling under the door. Her own room was, by definition, silent and dark – exactly as Mrs Plinlimmon the owl liked it. The kitchenette where the kettle sulked was similarly empty and dark. Margaret, through spending much of her time alone, didn’t like silence, so she was humming a little tune – ‘Goodbye, Dolly Grey’, as it happened – as she pushed open the door to the Roman faculty.
Which was also dark. This surprised her, as she would have bet good money – indeed, she had a small wager on with Mrs Plinlimmon – that Norman Minton would have burned the candle at both ends to get to the bottom of her little conundrum. Propping the door open, she felt her way across the room to the high window in the end wall. Her feet kicked against cushions and books as she picked her way; Norman had never been the tidiest of men, but she didn’t want to be so archetypally female as to remonstrate with him. She had always put it off, but really, he should—
She turned round and her hand flew to her mouth. For a moment, she couldn’t make out what she was looking at. In the centre of Norman Minton’s desk, there seemed to be something resembling a bunch of roses, red and glossy, with uneven edges. They were sitting in a pool of dark red ink, which dripped silently on to the carpet, and on to Norman’s legs, tucked neatly below it. Norman’s legs, yes; but where was Norman’s head? Her brain then confirmed what her eyes had refused to see. That broken, battered thing in the middle of the mahogany desert was Norman’s head. Cracked open like a walnut, spilling brain and blood out as if there was no room for them inside the skull any more.
Margaret knew what she should do. She should check to see if life was extinct, whether she should call for an ambulance or an undertaker. But she could tell there was no decision to be made. Norman Minton, Professor Norman Minton, as he had always reminded everyone, was quite, quite dead.