‘A.H.N.,’ said Helen. ‘Who else can it be?’
‘This flask is North’s all right,’ said Tom, unscrewing the cap and sniffing at the contents. ‘He was called Andrew Herbert, I saw the names in one of the books at his sister’s. And she said that he carried a flask of brandy. There’s a little left in here.’
‘You said he “was” Andrew Herbert. You think he’s dead, don’t you, Tom?’
‘Most likely. A workman with a good reputation who starts to behave oddly, who absents himself for a long period without anyone catching a whiff of his where-abouts, one associated in some way with a churchman who has recently been murdered. Yes, Andrew North is dead.’
‘Murdered?’ said Helen.
Overhead the remaining leaves rattled in a sudden gust. Tom shivered but managed to turn it into a shrug. ‘I don’t know. Yes, maybe murdered.’
‘So if North’s hip flask is here, where is North?’
‘He could be anywhere. The flask might have fallen from his pocket as he was climbing up or down the hill.’
‘But it tells us he was here at Todd’s Mound.’
‘Or that someone was here. It might not have been North who dropped the flask.’
‘His murderer, you mean?’
Tom noted the controlled excitement in the way Helen referred to the ‘murderer’. He glanced sideways. She was still holding the pewter flask. There was colour in her cheeks. He leant across and kissed her.
‘Tom,’ she said half jokingly and only after a little time had passed, ‘what if someone is watching!’
And, as if on cue, they heard a heavy tread behind them, the sound of a person descending the hill. A person who was wearing leather leggings and great boots. In surprise, Tom and Helen sprang apart.
There was another watcher to this encounter. One who was — not by chance — in the vicinity of Todd’s Mound and who had seen the approach of two figures with a familiar outline. This individual took shelter behind a patch of bare brambles and observed the girl pick up an object from the ground. The flask was not easily identifiable from such a distance but the watcher knew what it was straightaway, since the flask had been taken from a dead man’s body and a swig taken from its contents. It must have dropped out of a coat pocket as the watcher was going downhill those few nights before. And now, in the present moment, a third person was added to the scene as the shepherd swung downhill and almost collided with the couple who’d just been spooning and were oblivious to the newcomer. The threesome, the shepherd, Ansell and the girl, exchanged a few words, more than a few words, quite a regular session in fact. After a time the couple turned away and continued their uphill progress while the shepherd kept going at a downhill diagonal, fortunately in a direction away from the observer. This person waited until Ansell and the girl were almost out of sight over the skyline before slipping from the cover of the brambles.
Tom and Helen didn’t speak again until they were inside the embankment at the top of the hill. It took them a moment to catch their breath and they rested, leaning on the walking sticks which belonged to Eric Selby. While they were climbing each was thinking of what the shepherd had said: that few people came to visit Todd’s Mound for pleasure and certainly not at this time of year. But that he had seen someone coming up this same path a few weeks ago, towards the end of the afternoon, and that he had particularly taken notice of the man on account of his shifty, uncomfortable look. The man had a bag slung over his shoulder and might have been an itinerant labourer, but the shepherd did not think so. The man struck a false note, as it were.
The shepherd, whose name was Gabriel as Helen quickly established, did not say all of this in quite such a coherent form or using exactly these words but rather the gist was teased out of him by Helen. To begin with, she smiled at Gabriel and showed him the pewter flask and wondered aloud whose it might be — those mysterious initials A.H.N. — and whether it would be possible to find the owner so as to return the flask, obviously a treasured item as the initials showed. And, by the way, had Gabriel seen anyone recently on these slopes? Tom noticed again what an assured touch Helen had with people. How she was able to speak naturally with them and gain their trust and find out what she wanted to find out. How she could be evasive with the truth (for example, she already knew whose the flask was). She didn’t even seem embarrassed that Gabriel had almost run into them while they were embracing. Of course, reflected Tom, the blonde tendrils of hair which curled down from under her sensible hat and the wide blue eyes might have something to do with it, especially where men were concerned. But the effect worked on women too. Mrs Banks had revealed things to Helen which she might not have done to Tom alone.
‘It must have been Andrew North,’ said Helen. ‘We know that he was in the habit of visiting Todd’s Mound after he worked with Canon Slater. And he disappeared from the house he shared with his sister at about the same time that Gabriel saw someone walking up here, someone looking shifty and uncomfortable. North the sexton?’
‘The shepherd has a good memory for the people he encounters.’
‘So would you, Tom, if you saw more sheep than people. Well, now we are here, what do we do next?’
They looked round at the bare interior of the plateau. It had a roughly rectangular shape, protected by ramparts of grass which had crumbled in places. There were a few shrubs and patches of bramble but no signs of human occupation, whether ancient or modern.
Helen and Tom hadn’t come out to Todd’s Mound totally unprepared. Helen had found a book in her god-father’s library which detailed the locations of some of the tumuli and other ancient remains to be found in the region around Salisbury. Little was known about Todd’s Mound (not even who the eponymous Todd had been) but it seemed there had most likely been entrances or gateways at both ends of the plateau, although a land-fall in the east had made access almost impossible from that side.
Tom pointed to the opposite end, the eastern one.
‘If there’s anything to be found,’ he said, ‘it should be over there.’
‘Why?’
‘Look around, there are no signs of disturbance to the earth here. And there weren’t any marks either near the path we’ve just come by. If North was poking around and digging things up, it must have been somewhere different.’
They began to pace the length of the hilltop. There was a rustling in a patch of bushes as they passed and they turned to see a deer start from shelter and scamper back towards the western side of the mound. Helen paused and held her hand to her breast.
‘That startled me, Tom.’
Tom Ansell, also, had been startled but he wasn’t displeased to see the effect on Helen since it was an excuse to put his free arm round her for a moment. Then they resumed their progress towards the far embankment, in which there was a kind of a larger dip or notch. Through this, as they walked, they caught glimpses of the city and the cathedral spire.
‘This is where one of the entrances to the settlement — or whatever it was — must have been,’ said Tom, as they stood on the lip of ground below which the land fell away steeply. The slope was studded with clumps of yew and to one side lay the great carcass of a fallen tree. Helen turned her back on the view and surveyed the grassy basin they had just crossed.
‘It’s strange to think that our ancestors once lived up here. I wonder why they moved away.’
‘Perhaps they were driven out and had no choice over moving,’ said Tom. ‘Or they got bored with life on this cold hilltop and wanted the comfort of the lowlands.’
‘They have left no traces.’
‘Except their burial places.’
‘They would not be buried here, inside this place,’ said Helen gesturing at the area bounded by the earth ramparts.
‘But not far outside either. On the slopes around this hill maybe.’