Sensing ill-feeling in the ranks, the colonel chipped in. “I say—are we thinking a change of bowling might be called for?” he suggested cheerfully. “Beginner’s luck and all that? You never know! I’d love to have a go. Take up the twig and give Doris a rest? I shouldn’t much care to handle Jack’s contraption, however. It could well take my fingers off!”
“In a moment perhaps, Colonel. If there’s a gold sovereign anywhere about, Doris will home in to it, I’m sure,” said Hermione confidently.
And it was Doris who made the find.
As the sun slanted over the Albert Bridge, they heard a small shriek and turned to see Doris struggling to hang on to a hazel rod that seemed to be leading a demented life of its own. They hurried to her side and Hermione relieved her of the thrashing twig. Jack knelt and marked the spot by scratching a cross over it with the handle of his contraption.
“I say! Well done!” he said. “This really looks most interesting.” He bent his head and peered sideways at the patch of mud. “If you look at it with the light slanting behind it, you could almost imagine there was a ripple … an anomaly of sorts … Sorry! Trick of the light, I’m sure … It’s smooth on top where last night’s tide has scoured it, of course, but … Odd, that … Shall we?”
Delighted that their moment had come, Sam and Joel took off their jackets, rolled up their sleeves, cracked their muscles and set to dig. Their shovel-spades, a country design carefully chosen for the work, sliced, scooped and heaved aside the heavy clods in an ancient rhythm. The lads had clearly come prepared to dig all day and were brought up short, not a little disappointed, when their spades struck something only a foot or so below the surface.
With a glad cry, Hermione moved in with her trowel. She was known to be a member of the Archaeological Society and a first cousin to a director of the British Museum. The others shuffled aside, giving her precedence—and room to operate.
Seven heads bent over the wet patch as the first gleaming surfaces were revealed, showing white against the black mud. At a signal from Hermione, Joel approached and carefully slaked the area with the contents of another bucket of water. The murky flow oozed away, revealing a pale arm. After a chorus of startled gasps, a silence fell and no one thought of telling Hermione to stop as the skilful movements of her trowel laid bare the remaining limbs. Two complete arms, two well-muscled legs and a torso lightly draped in a short, classical tunic were released to the sunlight by the action of Hermione’s whipping wrist, accompanied by carefully anticipated libations of river water from Joel. The digging pair worked on in harmony until a head appeared.
With a growl of distress, Joel put down his bucket, unable to go on.
Tendrils of hair curled about the neck and cheeks of the sleeping features. The shell-white ears were small and perfect. The straight nose was intact.
The delicate jaw, as the jaws of the recently dead will do, sagged open at the touch of Hermione’s exploratory fingers. Flesh still covered the bones but the image of the gaping skull below broke through, striking a grotesque note and arousing in the living an ancient terror.
With years of medical practice guiding her, Hermione tugged at a limb, pressed the livid white flesh and turned the head again slightly to inspect the mouth. Her unhurried, professional gestures calmed her audience. A horrified curiosity kept them firmly in place, huddled around the corpse. Hermione’s voice was deliberately emotionless as she spoke. “Not a child. A young woman. Perhaps twenty-five or younger. No broken limbs or obvious wounds.” Her words were controlled, but encountering the glare of challenging eyes and a reproachful silence from all, she added, “Though I think we have all observed the … er … anomaly.”
All eyes were drawn to the right foot. Heads bobbed slightly as, once again, the toes were counted. One, two, three, four.
“Do you think, Miss Herbert, that one of the spades may have severed her big toe?” Doris whispered.
“No. I revealed the feet with my trowel. The toe was lost at the time of death, I’d say.” She examined the foot more closely. “A clean severance but no sign that healing had begun. Perhaps we’re looking at a suicide? Perhaps she fell off a boat and drowned? She’s not been dead for long.” She peered at the neck, frowned, and then eased up the fabric of the tunic with a delicate finger to check the abdomen. Spellbound, no one thought of looking aside. “I see no sign of putrefaction. I’d calculate two days, three at the outside.” She got to her feet. “No. Let’s not deceive ourselves. This is a burial. And, we must suppose, a clandestine burial. Murder? Most likely. We ought to inform the authorities at once. Colonel, could you …?”
“I noticed one of those police boxes up on the embankment. I can phone from there.” The colonel’s moment had come. He shot off, a man on a mission, Burberry flapping.
“Poor, poor little creature,” Hermione murmured. “She is, you see, rather small. No more than five foot two, I’d say.”
“And so white,” murmured Doris. “I’ve never seen a dead body before. I thought at first it must be a bird—a swan perhaps. You do see them on the river sometimes.”
“And now this pale swan in her watery nest
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending.”
Jack was whispering, round-eyed with shock. “Except that we didn’t hear her swan’s song. Not starting. Finished. Two days ago, you say? God, I feel such a fool!” He threw down his steel wand, his voice thick with emotion. “Here we are—mucking about like kids with our daft little devices! When, all the time she was … she was …”
“Nothing more we can do, I think. We’d better all stay exactly where we are and wait for the police,” Hermione said.
“Allus supposin’ they gets ’ere fast, miss,” said Sam. His gentle delivery could not dampen the drama of his next announcement. “Red flag’s under water. Tide’s racing up. I reckon we’ve got ten minutes afore she goes under again.”
The sound of Professor Stone’s voice caught them all in a state of uncertainty amounting to paralysis. It was unhurried, calming even, in its familiar mocking tone. “Well, a day not entirely misspent,” he commented. “At least the team has achieved one of its objectives.” Receiving no response other than a glower of outrage from the others, he ploughed on. “Miss da Silva is to be commended on her find.” He pushed forward. “Excuse me. May I? While we still have a moment?” He knelt to look inside the dead girl’s mouth, clamping his arms behind his back to underline the fact that he was not about to tamper with the evidence.
“Ah, yes. Thought I caught a flash of something when you tested her for rigor, Hermione. I’ve seen one of these before. It’s a coin you see. A large one. It’s jammed in there, under her tongue. Hmm … And it’s gold. In fact …” He twisted his neck to an uncomfortable angle, recovered himself and pronounced, “If this is what I think it is, I’m going to make a unilateral decision to extract it before it gets lost in the tide. I know! I know!” He held up his arms to ward off the hissed advice to touch nothing. “These are exceptional circumstances, and I’m sure the police would want us to preserve any evidence we can find.”
They watched as he delicately slid the coin from the mouth and held it out for inspection on the palm of his hand. “Well, well! At last I can be of some use. This is a medal depicting the Emperor Constantius the First capturing London. Made to mark his victory over Allectus. In two hundred and ninety-six AD, I believe. Interesting. Very. You have indeed struck gold, Miss da Silva! Do you see the slight reddish tone it has?” He tilted the coin from side to side to demonstrate. “Thracian gold. Extremely valuable.”