Grave Goods (Tamara Hoyland Book 3) Page 16

  Mr Black came forward, and nodded as though his expectations had been confirmed. ‘You got it, I see.’

  Tamara’s arms tightened around the package.

  ‘Can we see it?’ Rob Hoyland said.

  ‘Your father and I are old friends,’ Mr Black said.

  ‘You never mentioned it!’

  ‘It was unnecessary.’

  ‘We were in the army together,’ Rob Hoyland said. ‘Recognised each other at once.’

  ‘Do you mean you’ve told my father –?’

  ‘Safe as houses, aren’t you, Rob?’ Mr Black said. His smile looked as artificial as a crocodile’s. With great but inexplicable unwillingness, Tamara preceded the two men into the long living room, and knelt to spread her trophies on the low table in front of the fire.

  There they lay: the broken sword, the dismembered crown with its separate cross, the battered chalice, and for the first time Tamara felt in her heart what her intellect had already realised. These chunks of rock and metal were indeed treasures. She said, ‘They belong to me, you know. I paid for them in an open market. I have acquired a good legal title.’

  ‘There speaks a lawyer’s daughter.’

  ‘Stockwell is an ancient market overt,’ Rob Hoyland said.

  ‘Treasure takes some people like that,’ Mr Black said indifferently. He put his hand out to the sword handle, and Tamara made a sharp movement, quickly arrested, to prevent him touching it. He spoke in the soothing voice a man might use to a baby or an animal. ‘It’s all right. I won’t do it any harm.’

  ‘One can see that it will be beautiful when it’s restored,’ Rob Hoyland said, brushing his fingers against the linked pieces of the tarnished crown.

  ‘I have the ring,’ Mr Black said.

  ‘From Plinlimmon’s?’ Tamara asked.

  ‘They didn’t argue. Patriotic duty, and all that.’

  Tamara stared at him, and sat back on her heels, feeling the welcome heat of the open stove on her back. Large gobbets of snow were falling now outside the tall windows, and the brief winter daylight was already fading. She said, ‘How did you get here anyway, Mr Black? I thought the west country was cut off?’

  ‘The army were very helpful. When it’s a matter of the national interest they usually are.’

  ‘He was landed by a helicopter in the paddock,’ Rob Hoyland said. ‘The geese had hysterics.’

  ‘The national interest,’ Tamara repeated.

  Rob Hoyland got up to fetch a vacuum pot of coffee from the sideboard at the other end of the room. He poured a mugful for his daughter, and put it into her hands. ‘Come on, Tara. Wind down.’

  ‘Let me explain,’ Mr Black said. ‘I have already told your father all about this. It concerns the exhibition of treasures from East Germany.’

  ‘In which the nineteenth-century copy of this is included?’

  ‘Was included. All the London news media received the same anonymous statement last night, to the effect that the exhibition included blatant and cynical forgeries.’

  ‘It would be hard to show that the nineteenth-century version was a fake, if the Germans don’t allow scientific tests.’

  ‘If the showcase contained it, you would probably be right. But the expert who was taken in before the exhibition opens to the public tomorrow says that it contains a crude copy, which could not conceivably be ancient, and doesn’t even have real jewels in it. Stuff out of Christmas crackers, one of them said, stuck together with modern glue. It would not have deceived anyone for a moment.’

  ‘That can’t be so. I saw the jeweller’s blueprint dated 1917. It was meticulous,’ Tamara protested.

  ‘When I tell you that there are also traces of the case having been broken into, and a substitution made . . .’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Tamara said, rubbing her eyes. ‘Three versions of the treasure? Mind, this is the real one, I know that,’ she added.

  ‘You are possessive already,’ her father commented.

  ‘Why do you suppose that your friend Kim Rice was looking for what you have here?’ Mr Black said.

  Tamara blushed fiercely, but her father’s eyes did not flicker; there were some details that Mr Black seemed not to have told him, thank goodness.

  ‘For the same reason as Jeremy Ellice wanted it. Presumably, to make money out of.’

  ‘No, the Prince of Horn came to Devon either to make sure that the original treasure had not survived, which is what was supposed until he received Margot Ellice’s letter; or, if by any chance it had, to ensure that it did so no longer. He did not want any doubt cast on his authentication of the treasure that had certainly been in Drachenschloss in his father’s and grandfather’s day, and for which he was to receive the price of authenticated mediaeval regalia backed by his unimpeachable pedigree, and with a millennium’s worth of provenance.’

  Tamara went quite pale. ‘Do you mean he’d have destroyed this?’

  ‘Without hesitation. If any whisper of the existence of this lot got out, his purchaser would not have paid for the set stolen from the museum.’

  ‘And that’s why he wanted to steal or destroy the Bessemer papers and Margot’s manuscript,’ Tamara murmured.

  ‘It must have come as a most disagreeable shock when he got Margot Ellice’s letter out of the blue with a photocopy of the part of her work that showed Artemis had stolen the treasure. It had been kept so quiet in the family, probably one of those secrets that is passed to the heir on the deathbed . . .’

  ‘But the previous Prince of Horn killed himself in prison,’ Tamara reminded him.

  ‘Which would explain why his son made this elaborate and dishonest plan without having any idea that it could be foiled by the reappearance of the original treasure.’

  ‘And now that it has reappeared,’ Tamara said. There was love in her voice. She yearned over the artefacts on the table as though they were a living creature. Rob Hoyland and Tom Black exchanged glances, as Tamara said, ‘Won’t the whole thing make a marvellous story, when these are put on show?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Mr Black said drily. ‘On show, yes. The story, no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My dear girl, this is not like you. Always so quick, so intuitive and intelligent. I don’t usually have to explain things to you.’

  ‘Words of one syllable, please,’ Tamara said, staring at him.

  ‘The East German exhibition is of great political importance. It is the first such gesture made by that régime since its establishment. The first whisper of any softening in their attitude. The exhibition is a piece of propaganda. No more, no less, but one to which HMG attaches much importance.’

  ‘You told me all that before.’

  ‘Then you should be able to see for yourself what effect there would be on the new relationship, if the western media accused the Germans of foisting a modern trinket on us in place of Charlemagne’s regalia, and if the Germans accused us of replacing the genuine treasure with that trinket, or of being so careless that we let thieves get away with it. Disaster, either way.’

  ‘Well, where’s the first copy?’

  ‘It would have been out of the country within two hours of being lifted.’

  ‘But Kim is down here. He can’t have driven out of the west country.’

  ‘My dear, you’re being uncharacteristically dense. Kim isn’t a thief himself. It was not he who worked as a security guard in the museum so as to be trusted to guard the German treasure. He didn’t disconnect the alarms and replace one set of exhibits with another – not with his own hands. That’s a very complicated and expensive type of operation. He’s one of a syndicate; and he was probably included only because his personal authentication of the goods would raise the price for them.’

  ‘Are you telling me that the exhibit will have disappeared into one of those secret collectors’ vaults that nobody can be sure exists? It sounds like story-book stuff!’

  Neither man replied. They sat passively in the glooming daylight, waiting for t
he message to sink home into Tamara’s mind. She realised that they were being careful with her, that she was being treated with purposeful tact, like a child, or an invalid, or – a woman. All the same, she needed a few minutes to collect herself. What was that Mr Black had said? She was always so quick, intuitive and intelligent? What was he waiting for her to deduce without being told. She said, ‘I suppose you want to put the real treasure, my treasure, into the case. To make a present of it to the German Democratic Republic.’

  The firelight flickered on the jewels. One could imagine the ghostly head of a man within that circlet which conferred and indicated his power. What had he derived from the fragment of wood, perhaps two thousand years old, supposedly endowing him with supernatural authority? Tamara put her finger on the crystal. How could a twentieth-century sceptic know what power had once flowed from these inanimate things? Or whether the very conviction of potency created it? Could peace depend on this assembly of stones and metals?

  ‘It’s only a trinket, after all,’ Rob Hoyland said.

  ‘Trinkets have been the pivot of international relations before now,’ Mr Black said.

  Tamara said, ‘What about Kim Rice, Mr Black? Will you leave him to profit from theft and murder?’

  ‘We shall deal with Kim Rice,’ Mr Black said, the promise all the more sinister for his unemphatic manner.

  ‘I don’t want him to be dealt with, as you put it,’ Tamara said. ‘I want him to be tried. I want him to be named at the coroner’s inquest. Papa, surely you –’

  ‘I,’ said Rob Hoyland, ‘want a drink. And you could do with one. Bring a tray through, Tara, would you?’

  The drinks were kept in a glass-fronted dresser in the kitchen. Automatically Tamara set out glasses and bottles, filled the vacuum bucket with ice, poured a package of salted almonds into a bowl. She refilled the ice tray with water and stood holding it vacantly for a long moment, before pulling herself together and replacing it in the freezing compartment. Did she have to give the Germans the treasure? Had she no right to her own political judgement, that it was a régime to which she would give nothing, not even her own hard currency as a tourist? I won’t. I’m damned if I will, she thought, and lifted the tray to carry it through.

  In the living room the long French windows leading into the garden were open with a blast of cold air coming through them, and the sound of a powerful engine: a helicopter. The curtains billowed into the room, knocking some books off a table, and then were sucked outwards as the machine rose into the sky. Rob Hoyland straightened the lengths of fabric as he stepped back into the room. He fastened the windows behind him, and exclaimed, rubbing his hands, ‘It’s Arctic out there. But I think the thaw is coming.’

  ‘Father, how could you –’

  ‘My dear, you’ll have to take it from me. You couldn’t hang on to those things.’

  ‘But they are mine. You have no right –’

  ‘Technically they are yours. It’s a quirk of our law. But this is not a case where legal quibbles will help you. Can you see it ever coming to court?’ Pouring out two whiskies, and handing one to his daughter, Rob Hoyland went on with his rational, patriotic, masculine explanation of why he had been right to let his old friend Tom Black take the treasure of Charlemagne back to London.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The invitation announced that decorations would be worn. Tamara had none, but she had inherited a Siberian amethyst from her grandmother, which looked well on a dress she borrowed from a friend in the rag trade. Mr Black, who was entitled to a chest-full of medals. wore his shabby dinner jacket unadorned. He stood beside Tamara to watch the formal opening of the exhibition.

  Politicians, socialites and academics moved in their overlapping circles. Thea Crawford, not by any stretch of the imagination a dowdy bluestocking, none the less quoted the comment of an English Ambassadress about the French elegantes: ‘It is odd that their effect upon me is to crush me with the sense of my inferiority while I am absolutely gasping with the sense of my superiority.’

  Sylvester Crawford’s shrewd eye moved from Thea to Tamara and back. He said to Mr Black, ‘Do you know what she’s talking about?’

  Mr Black was standing next to the case of prehistoric objects which were interesting but ugly: some faded beads, a pock-marked bone ornament, some crude pottery. He said, ‘Some women would look beautiful even in these grave-goods.’

  The exhibition was of objects from every period. No traces were now apparent of the frenzied work that had gone into its preparation. The initial unpacking of the heavy metal cases, and the arrangement of their contents, went according to a carefully laid plan, and the museum’s director, experienced in the ways of enthusiasts, had even adjusted his timetable to allow the expert from the Victoria and Albert Museum to fall into a trance at the sight of the Meissen porcelain, and for the jewellery specialist to make frequent pauses in the work to shriek and coo: ‘Oh, it’s too much, I’ve never seen anything like it, I don’t believe it.’

  An international authority on Carolingian art stood beside the main show case. The strain of the last few days could be seen on his face. He had collapsed when he was shown what the burglars had put in place of the treasure he had admired when it came out of its travelling cocoon. It was feared that he was having a heart attack, but after a rest he had revived sufficiently to denounce the fake. It seemed that the exhibition really did contain ‘a cynical deception foisted upon a credulous world for political advantage’, in the words of the anonymous message to the press.

  The old man still looked fragile, for he had spent the previous night hovering over the conservator, watching six months’ work being crammed into a few hours. A handful of people knew that the exhibit now shown was not that which had been brought from East Germany. Very few more knew that there had been a robbery, and they believed that efficient police work had recovered and replaced the stolen goods.

  A record number of visitors were expected to come to this exhibition, and the display cases were arranged along aisles to prevent enthusiasts retracing their steps or lingering long enough to hold up the queue behind them. The only lighting was from the spots aimed at the objects on show. The maze of partitions, all lined in dark velvet, led inexorably towards the pièce de résistance: the regalia of Charlemagne.

  The softly gleaming metal and jewels seemed to float out of mysterious darkness, drawing all eyes, even though their brilliance was less than that of the Royal Lady’s aquamarine and diamond tiara, even though their materials separately were worth less than the lady-in-waiting’s necklace.

  The gold and silver of the individual pieces had been buffed into a high shine. Set into the metal were lumps of the gaudiest stones available to Europeans of the first millennium. Except for the ring, the jewels were uncut; smoothed and polished, their irregular shapes studded the regalia.

  I had it and it was mine, Tamara Hoyland thought. Now that the treasure was clean and separated from her by booby-trapped glass, it was hard to credit.

  Mr Black was reading the catalogue. ‘The coronation of Charles The Great, on Christmas Day in the year eight hundred, was the central event of the Middle Ages and altered the history of the world.’

  The Royal Lady had reached the main show-case. ‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘It looks very old.’

  ‘More than a thousand years old, Ma’am. It’s the Horn Treasure.’

  ‘I know the Prince of Horn. Is he here tonight?’

  The lady-in-waiting leaned forward to whisper a reminder. A darker flush spread over the royal cheeks.

  ‘Remanded in custody at a special court,’ Mr Black murmured to Tamara.

  ‘In Stockwell?’

  ‘In Hampstead. He was charged with the murder of Margot Ellice. He was seen leaving the house on the afternoon of the fire.’

  The Museum Director read aloud to the Royal Lady the contemporary account that had been reprinted in the catalogue. ‘On the most holy day of the Lord’s birth, when the King, at mass before the confe
ssion of St Peter, rose up from prayer, Pope Leo placed on his head a crown, and he was acclaimed by the whole populace of Rome: “To Charles, Augustus, crowned by God the great and peaceful Emperor of the Romans, life and victory”.’

  ‘What about Miss Christie?’ Tamara asked.

  Mr Black replied, ‘One life sentence will do.’

  Life; the Royal Lady was pregnant. Forgetting the watching eyes for a moment, she rubbed the small of her back with her white-gloved hand.

  Life and victory; the concrete-shouldered men who stood near her, in formal expression of a new relationship between their country and hers, were the victors. They would take the royal insignia of Charles the Great home with them, never knowing that an American collector had a good copy of it, and the Black Museum at Scotland Yard a bad one.

  ‘Crowned by God the great and peaceful Emperor,’ Tamara repeated.

  ‘Greatness and peace are both symbolised and promoted by cultural exchange,’ Mr Black told her.

  ‘The treasure was on the stall of the Peace Movement in Stockwell market, Mr Black,’ Tamara said. ‘Somebody owes me one pound.’

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