‘Such as yourself?’ said George.
If it was a shock, he was then so inured to shocks that it made no impression. With bitter dignity he said: ‘I am a third-rate sub-expert and a fifth-rate scholar, and the real ones know it as well as I do.’
Lesley whispered: ‘Stephen, dear!’ and laid a hand appealingly on his arm.
Imperturbably George pursued: ‘But other authorities have visited Aurae Phiala. There have even been brief and limited digs under some of them.’ He was gathering up his few notes, and stowing them away in an inside pocket, preparatory to leaving. He looked up once, briefly, at Charlotte, a glance that told her nothing. ‘You might give it some thought. Consider who has visited here, and who has dug, during—say—the past year and a half to two years. No, please don’t disturb yourself, I can find my way out.’
He was halfway to the door when he added an afterthought: ‘One name we do know, of course. It’s just about eighteen months, isn’t it, since Doctor Alan Morris left from here on his way to Turkey.’
They were still staring after him, motionless and silent, when the door closed gently; and in a few minutes they heard his car start up on the gravel drive.
The inquest opened formally on Saturday morning, took evidence of identification, and at the police request adjourned for one week. George drove the bewildered but stonily dignified pair who were Gerry Boden’s parents back to their home, from which he had also conveyed them earlier, because he was by no means sure that Boden was yet in any case to drive. Not that they were making difficulties or distresses for anyone; their composure was chill and smooth and temporary as ice, but though it might thaw at any moment, it would certainly not be in public. Their disciplines included containing their private sorrows. And in a sense Gerry had always been, if not a sorrow, an ambivalent sort of joy, a perilous possession, capable of piling either delights or dismays into their laps at any moment without warning. Life without him was going to be infinitely more peaceful and inexpressibly dimmer. He could have been anything he had put his mind to, good or bad, and now he was a carefully but impersonally reconstructed body put together by strangers to be presentable enough to be released for burial. Boden had already seen him dead. Mrs Boden had not, but would surely insist on doing so when he was given back to them.
Afterwards, of course, they would take up the business of living again, because they were durable, and in any case had not much choice. And in time they would be comfortable enough, being happily very fond of each other, though they had never in their lives been in love.
George went home to do a little thinking, and take a fresh look at the laboratory reports he’d hardly had time to read that morning. Also to get the taste of despair and disgust out of his mouth and the mildew of misanthropy out of his eyes by looking at Bunty. She was getting a little plumper and a little less sudden now that she was in the middle forties, but her chestnut and hazel colouring was as vivid as ever; and knowing every line of her only made her more of a delightful surprise in everything she said or did. For George had been in love with Bunty ever since he had first heard Bernarda Elliot sing at a concert in Birmingham, while she was still a student, and had never got over her unhesitating choice of marriage with him in preference to a career as a potentially first-class mezzo. Police officers are not considered great catches.
Their only son was busy mending agricultural machinery and driving tractors for an erratic but effective native mission in India, and had just welcomed to the same service his future wife, fresh from an arts degree and a rushed course in nursing. And what Tossa was going to make of the Swami Premanathanand’s organisation was anybody’s guess, but arguably she would fall completely under the spell of its gentle but jolting founder, as Dominic had done, and lose herself in his hypnotic ambience. George thought of them, and was lifted out of his despond. He withdrew to the study of his morning’s professional mail in better heart.
He was halfway through compiling an up-to-date précis when Bunty looked in, unastonished as ever, and announced: ‘Miss Rossignol wants to talk to you.’ Bunty vanished on the word, and Charlotte, small and trim and magnificently self-possessed, at her most French, came sailing in upon him from the doorway. She looked very determined, and very young.
‘Now this,’ said George, ‘is a pleasure I wasn’t expecting. Come and sit down, and tell me what I can do for you.’
‘You can tell me,’ said Charlotte, looking up intently into his face, ‘whether you really meant what you implied last night. Because I’ve been thinking along the same lines, and not liking it at all. And then, if you don’t mind, and it isn’t top secret, you can tell me what you know that I don’t know about my great-uncle Alan.’
CHAPTER NINE
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By late morning the diggers had exposed the broken roof of the flue, and half the arch of its slightly damaged neighbour, for a distance of about six feet, and were setting to work in earnest to remove the shattered brickwork and lay bare the channel below. Since this process involved moving sacred relics, and it was a life-and-death matter to Paviour that they should not be damaged or allowed to fall into disorder, both he and Bill Lawrence were now employed, not so much fully as frantically, in trying to label and number everything that emerged, and laying out the materials of the arch in the grass, aside from the affected area. Barnes, out of pure good-nature and some reviving interest in archaeology, lent a hand under Paviour’s irritable and anxious direction, but even with three pairs of hands they had all they could do to keep pace. Gus Hambro had taken over one of the small sheds attached to the museum, where there was a sink and a water tap, and removed himself there with all the minor trophies of the first day’s work, and with sleeves rolled up, and an array of small nailbrushes for weapons, was carefully washing off the corrosion of soil and dust from dozens of little objects, most of them derisory: fragments of red glaze, one segment of cloudy glass from the lips of a jug, a plethora of animal bones, two plain bone hair-pins and one with the broken remnants of a carved head, and the single interesting item, a bronze penannular brooch with coiled ends to the ring. A boring job, but a vital one. He had good reason to want to be first in discovering and studying whatever there was to be found, but so far the result was disappointing.
It was a little past noon when the door of his shed opened, and Lesley looked in.
‘Lunch prompt at one,’ she informed him, and came to his elbow to examine the trifles he had laid out on a board beneath the window. ‘Dull,’ she said, sadly but truthfully. ‘Do you need any help?’ There was still a heap of grimy objects awaiting his attentions, their nature almost obscured by layers of soil grown to them like rust.
‘I shouldn’t. You’ll get terribly dirty.’ And after a moment’s hesitation he asked what he had been wondering all morning. ‘What happened to Charlotte? I haven’t seen her around at all today.’
‘I know. She went off after breakfast in my car. She said she wanted to see somebody in town, but she promised to be back for lunch. I offered to drive her wherever she wanted to go,’ said Lesley, frowning thoughtfully down at the little bronze brooch, ‘but she wouldn’t let me, so I saw she didn’t want company. Only two days, and you know, I really miss her. I’ve just got used to having somebody to chatter to, a rare luxury here. Stephen doesn’t chatter, or understand being chattered to. Stephen converses. When he isn’t being totally taciturn, that is.’ She laughed suddenly, recognising how fluently she was illustrating her own theme. ‘You see? Failing Charlotte, someone else gets sprayed with words. You don’t mind being a stand-in, do you? All the others are far too busy, and you can at least go on brushing bones while you listen.’