The student was pale and panting. "Pardon me, sir," he blurted, "there appears to be a dead body in my dig."
Sir Archibald Fairfax put down his magnifying glass. He had overseen the Colchester excavation for several months now, and finds-small, to be sure, but quite promising-were occurring daily. Just yesterday, for instance, the team at the Lion Street site had uncovered a patch of excellent Roman mosaic floor, in first-rate condition. As he had written to his colleague Howell, he expected momentarily to make a more stimulating discovery. He had not, however, expected to turn up a skeleton.
"Good show, old chap!" Sir Archibald exclaimed, rising. "There are artifacts?"
The discovery of skeletal remains in the Colchester excavations were surprisingly infrequent, given that the town, the first Roman colony in Britain, was destroyed by Queen Boadicea in A.D. 60 and again by the Danes in the ninth century, and was the site of the Roundheads' famous siege of the Royalists in 1648. Sir Archibald would be pleased to surrender any bones to those of his colleagues who were versed in physical anthropology. Of far greater interest to him were the artifacts found with the skeleton.
"Well, actually-" The student wrung his hands. "That is to say-"
"Come, come, man," Sir Archibald commanded, "get hold of yourself. A good archaeologist must manage his work with dignity, never permitting himself to be swayed by the emotions of discovery." He gave the student a more kindly look. "In what stratum are you working, my boy? Of what period is this skeleton of yours?"
The young man swallowed, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing above his collar. "But you see, sir, it's not a skeleton, at least not yet. The body appears to be recently deceased. And to make a bad lot worse, somebody tumbled dirt in on it. Mucked up my dig a good bit, sir." His voice became anguished. "And I was getting down to the Danes."
Sir Archibald forgot about skeletons and artifacts. He snatched up the pith helmet he affected on site, even in England, where it was hardly required to shade his head from the sun. In fact, even now the sun was well hidden behind a bank of clouds and the late-summer morning was dull and cheerless.
"Right," he said testily. "We'll just go and see, shall we? Can't have people tumbling dirt and mucking up the digs."
The student's excavation was located in the southeast corner of the larger dig. When Sir Archibald reached the site, he found that several people had preceded him and were clustered disturbingly close to the excavation, no doubt tumbling even more dirt. The first, he noted with approval, was a tall, strikingly lean man with a closely trimmed brown beard, a shapeless brown felt hat, and a camera on a wooden tripod. Charles Sheridan and his ubiquitous camera had provided an invaluable service at the dig. Sir Charles was also an amateur paleontologist who understood how to behave on an archaeological site. The second man on the scene, to whom Fairfax
took immediate objection, was a uniformed police sergeant, buttons gleaming. The unspeakable third was a seedy young police constable in a uniform shiny in the seat, his scuffed boots run over at the heels.
"I'm sorry, sir," the student panted, reading Sir Archibald's censorious scowl. "The constable happened to be walking by when I made the discovery. He heard my, er, exclamation of amazement. He summoned a superior."
"See here now," Sir Archibald said crossly to the two policemen, "we can't have this. Unauthorized persons at the site. Next thing you know, there'll be tourists." Tourists! As irresponsible as water buffalo. As undisciplined as sacred cows. He glanced at the gentleman with the camera. "Not meaning you, old chap," he added. "Carry on as you will."
Charles Sheridan gave Sir Archibald a restrained smile, took a photographic plate holder out of the large bellows camera, put it carefully into a shoulder bag, and inserted another one.
The sergeant, unperturbed by Sir Archibald's outburst, stepped back from the brink. ' 'I wonder, sir, if you 'ud mind askin' yer chaps t' remove th' dirt, or if you 'ud prefer my man t' do it."
Sir Archibald was incredulous. "Your man, sir? In my excavation? Absurd! He has no qualifications. Just imagine what would happen should a valuable artifact reside beneath that lot of dirt! Can't have amateurs mucking about with ancient skeletons and irreplaceable antiquities. Simply not done."
"P'raps, sir," said the student, tugging at his sleeve, "you had better have a look first."
Sir Archibald peered into the pit, an area about the size of a double grave, and very nearly as deep. At least, so it had been. Now, one of the sides had caved in, partially covering the floor of the excavation with an untidy heap of dirt and small stones. Out of the debris Sir Archibald saw protruding a human hand and perceived in an instant that this find would produce no artifacts suitable for the collection of the British Museum or for documentation in the British Journal of Archaeology. This relic belonged in the morgue.
"Well, sir?" the sergeant asked. "What'll it be?"
Sir Archibald turned to the student. "Right, then, lad," he said, not ungraciously. "Why don't you just pop down and clean out the pit? Down you go, now."
With that, he turned on his heel and marched back to his tent.
5
"You see, tut you do not observe."
Charles Sheridan remained at the lip of the impromptu grave for the next hour, soberly capturing with his camera the progress of the excavation. As the last of the covering dirt was shifted by the student archaeologist, down to shirtsleeves now and sweating in the bright sun that had burned off the cloud, Charles moved his tripod to get a different perspective on the work. While the sergeant and the constable hoisted the stiffened corpse out of the pit, he composed another exposure under the black cloth which covered the back of the camera, and made several others, from different angles, with the body lying faceup to the sun. A knot of curious onlookers was kept well to the street by a second police constable, summoned to control the crowd.
Studying the inverted image on the ground glass screen at the back of the camera, Charles saw that the body was that of a slim, swarthy gentleman of foreign appearance. He had
high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and thin lips under a waxed mustache, and was dressed for evening in a black frock coat, double-breasted waistcoat, single-wing collar, and striped trousers. Upon one well-cared-for hand was a curious gold ring in the shape of a scarab, such as Charles had seen among recently discovered Egyptian artifacts in the British Museum. That the corpse was not the ordinary inebriated casualty of several hours' pleasant imbibing at the nearby Red Lion was attested by the fact that a substantial amount of dirt had been deposited on top of him by the landslide. It was more unquestionably indicated by a half-inch cut in the man's dirt-soiled waistcoat in the vicinity of the heart. The cut was surrounded by a rich rosette of crusted blood. The floor of the excavation, onto which he had fallen facedown, was blood-soaked.
The sergeant knelt and jabbed a finger at the cut. He spoke without looking at the police constable standing at attention behind him. "Knife, wudn't yer say, Trabb?"
Trabb penciled nervous jottings in a small notebook. "I'd say so, Sergeant Bat'le."
"Inserted once firmly an' withdrawn?"
"So't appears, sir." Trabb turned his head squeamishly aside. "D'yer recognize 'im?"
" Traid not." The sergeant gingerly inserted his hand into the dead man's pockets, one after the other. "Not a Colchester man, I'd warrant. Don't appear t' have a thing in his pockets. Rob'ry, wouldn't yer say?"