‘He could hardly ask you, and take your word for it, could he? Obviously he thought you’d witnessed something you shouldn’t have. At best he was afraid you might have, and that was enough. But Miss Rossignol was some way behind, and advancing without stealth.’ He cast one brief glance at Charlotte, caught her large, clear, self-possessed eye, and one conspiratorial spark of laughter passed between them. He knew she had been exercising what stealth she was capable of, and he knew why, but that was purely between the two of them. ‘There was no need to think she’d noticed anything, and whoever he was, he wasn’t mad enough to go looking for extra murders. He took a chance—admittedly an almost negligible one—on you, and slipped away to avoid her.’
Lesley brought in a laden tray, set it down on a side-table, and distributed cups in silence.
‘In view of the apparent urgency of getting rid of you,’ said George Felse, stirring his coffee, ‘it might be an idea if you tried to recall what, if anything, you did see.’
Gus held his head, and pondered. ‘Well, of course there’s always some reflected light, once your eyes get used to being out at night. But I didn’t meet anyone, I didn’t hear anyone. Oh, yes, after I got to the perimeter of Aurae Phiala, where you can see clean across the bowl to the road the other side, I did see cars pass there a couple of times. You get a sort of lighthouse flash from the headlights, as they swing round the curve there and out of sight. The lights cross the bowl gradually, and out again, and then the dip in the road cuts them off. Yes, and the second time that happened it swept across the standing walls there, and in the near end of the caldarium there was somebody standing by the wall. No, not moving, quite still. It was only a glimpse. The light swerves off in an instant, and it’s darker than ever. But he was there, all right.’
‘He?’ said George.
‘Oh, yes, it was a he. The whole cut of him,’ he said, imprecisely but comprehensively. ‘No doubt about it.’
‘But nothing more detailed? Clothing? Build?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Gus irritably. ‘One flash of light, and gone. Just a mass, like a Henry Moore figure. He didn’t have any clothing, just a shape. All I know is, it was a he, and he was there.’
‘And how long was this before you were attacked?’
‘I’d say about three full minutes, maybe even four, before I was hit. I didn’t think anything of it. He had as much right to be out walking as I had.’
‘Not in Aurae Phiala,’ said Stephen Paviour, in tones of quiet outrage. ‘Not at that hour. Our gates are closed at six—seven in summer. He had no right inside the enclave, whoever he was.’
‘No, true enough. But the path along the river is a right of way, and there’s only a token wire in between. Anyone could walk up into the enclosure. You’d have a job to stop them.’
‘You know,’ said Lesley, busy at the coffee-tray, ‘I must have been out there about the same time. Oh, no, I wasn’t down by the river, I was over on the side next to the road. I often have a little walk along the new plantation there. That’s what cuts off the headlights, you see. The site is very exposed on that side, in Roman times there was a woodland there, so it was sheltered. Now we’re trying to replace it, to reproduce the same conditions. I was home well before ten, though. I never noticed the exact time, but I was in the bath when I heard the stir down here.’
‘You didn’t see anything of this man in the caldarium?’ George asked.
‘No, I didn’t. Though I must have been around just at that time, I think. I do remember seeing two—maybe three—cars pass on the Silcaster road, but I didn’t notice anything shown up in their headlights.’ She hesitated for a moment, poised vulnerably with the coffee-pot in one hand, and the jug of hot milk in the other. ‘You know… please don’t think I’m being funny!—maybe Mr Hambro saw the Aurae Phiala ghost. And don’t think I’m crazy, either,’ she appealed warmly. ‘Look, it’s only half a joke. You go and ask in the village. People have seen things! You don’t have to take my word for it, they’ll talk about it quite freely, they’re not ashamed or afraid of it.’
‘My dear, this is frivolous,’ her husband said with frowning disapproval. ‘Mere local superstition. We’re concerned with realities, unfortunately.’
‘Are there such stories?’ George asked mildly.
‘Can you imagine such a place as Aurae Phiala existing without giving rise to its own legends? I have heard loose talk of people seeing things here by night, but I’ve never paid the least attention, so I can’t tell you what they claim.’
‘I’m not being frivolous,’ Lesley declared firmly, ‘and these are realities. I don’t mean helmeted sentries literally do patrol the walls by night, I don’t mean even that anything’s actually been seen, but the things that go on in people’s minds are realities, and do influence events. It hardly matters whether there’s a ghost there to be seen or not—what matters is whether someone is convinced he saw it. Besides, what’s a ghost, anyhow? I’m not a convinced believer, I just don’t find it difficult to credit that in these very ancient sites of occupation, where such emotional things are known to have happened, people should develop special sensitivities, racial memories, hypernormal sympathies, whatever you like to call them. I don’t see anything supernatural about it, just rather outside most people’s range of knowledge. The test of that is, that the local people treat the experiences they claim to have had as perfectly acceptable—almost take them for granted. They don’t go challenging them, they respect them, take what’s offered but don’t go probing any farther. A thoroughly healthy attitude, I call it. Look at Orrie,’ she appealed to her husband. ‘He’s seen the sentry twice. He doesn’t run away, or hang out crosses or wreaths of parsley, or ring up the local press, he merely mentions it to his friends in passing, and gets on with his work. And you couldn’t find anyone more down-to-earth than Orrie.’
‘Orrie?’ George enquired.
‘Our gardener. He’s local stock from way back. They had the same site, even bits of the same cottage, in the sixteenth century.’ She laughed suddenly, the evening’s first genuinely gay sound. ‘You wouldn’t credit what the Orrie’s short for! Orlando! Orlando Benyon! The name’s been in the family for generations, too.’
‘And Orrie’s seen the Roman sentry?’
‘Listen!’ she said, abruptly grave again. ‘I’ve seen him myself, or else hearing about it has put me in a special state of mind, and all the other factors have come up right, atmospheric conditions, combinations of light and dark, what you like, and made me create what I believed I was seeing. Twice! A figure in a bronze helmet, both times a good way off, and both times close to the standing walls. I didn’t find anything very strange in it, either. In its last years Aurae Phiala surely did mount a watch every night. Just such a sentry must have been the first to die, the night the Welsh came.’
Paviour’s uneasiness and distaste had grown so palpable by this time that his rigid bones looked tensed to breaking point. He said with nervous acidity: ‘We’re not dealing with atmospheric hallucinations here, but with an attempt at murder. When violence breaks in, something a good deal more material than imagination is indicated.’
She agreed, with an unabashed smile. ‘And when ordinary mundane light like a car’s headlights starts making the immaterial perceptible. Now that would be supernatural! I paint a bit for fun,’ she said, with a grimace of deprecation for the unsatisfactory results. ‘I do know about masses and light, even if I can never get them right. No, this person you saw was a pretty solid kind of reality.’