Grave Goods (Tamara Hoyland Book 3) Page 9

  ‘I know nothing about the treasure,’ Mr Black said.

  Tamara explained to Mr Black about Margot Ellice’s thesis, and Lady Clementine Bessemer’s trunk of letters. ‘Do you suppose it legally belongs to the DDR? Perhaps the heirs of the von Horns will claim it.’

  ‘I don’t think that we can admit any doubts as to its ownership. The treasure is the property of the East German state.’

  ‘For all practical purposes.’

  ‘For all purposes.’ Mr Black leaned back in his chair, his eyes travelling along the line where the ceiling met the wall opposite, as though he were reading off some invisible autocue.

  ‘I suppose it isn’t all that important,’ Tamara said. ‘Crown jewels don’t confer crowns these days. In the stories of my childhood, kingdoms toppled with the loss of a king’s ring. It was a much simpler world.’ She giggled nervously, regretting her words as she always used to with her formidable headmistress.

  ‘Simpler? Hardly. Though the world has always been the playground of unscrupulous individuals with suspect motives and devious methods.’

  ‘Which makes me feel that I’m much better off with unworldly scholarship,’ Tamara said, reaching for her bag, and making as though to rise.

  ‘But you seem to have become involved with a suspicious death, Tamara.’

  ‘Margot Ellice’s? Is it suspicious? Surely it was an accident?’

  ‘There’s the usual story of a faulty heater, of course. Room full of paper, mattress stuffed with a filling that gives off poisonous fumes when it burns, wooden floor – it’s a miracle that the whole house and its neighbours didn’t go up.’

  ‘Why didn’t they?’

  ‘A woman across the road called the fire brigade. She said she had sat admiring the sunset reflected in the windows opposite for ten minutes before remembering that it was a rainy day and she was facing north.’

  ‘Is there any evidence of arson?’

  ‘Not as such, not yet; and your friend was safely out of London early enough to be out of suspicion too. The fire was seen at about three o’clock, though it might have been smouldering for an hour or more before that.’

  ‘I first met Jeremy Ellice the day before yesterday, Mr Black.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Yes, that didn’t, in itself, mean very much. Forty-eight hours were enough to settle anyone’s emotional hash, Tamara knew that. She said, ‘I just like him, that’s all.’

  ‘And you don’t think he is the type to leave a time bomb in his house to burn up his sister and his stock in trade in his absence?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘His books are under-insured, by the way. He would have made quite a big loss if they’d gone,’ Mr Black said.

  ‘Didn’t they?’

  ‘He told the police that the papers his sister was writing and working on were a total loss, but nothing else.’

  ‘The carbon copy of the first section is in my flat,’ Tamara said. ‘I rather enjoyed it. I shall be sorry not to be able to read the second part. What bad luck that’s all gone too.’

  Mr Black sat very still, his hands folded as though in prayer, his upright back not quite in contact with the chair, his chin up. It was not hard to see in him the young Guards officer that he had been forty years before; much harder to recognise a man who had purposely chosen obscurity. But when he spoke again his face relaxed into the nondescript lines that enabled him to pass unremarked in crowds. Nothing about Tom Black betrayed his power except his own face unguarded, and few people ever saw that.

  He said, ‘Miss Ellice came into possession of some papers. The papers gave her information about the Horn Treasure and the family that owned it. The treasure is being sent here as part of a propaganda exercise by the East German government. The papers have simultaneously disappeared. I see.’

  ‘What do you see?’ Tamara asked. ‘That the fire was caused by someone who wanted to destroy those papers and the woman who knew what was in them? Why should anyone bother, after all this time? Nothing Margot Ellice found out or wrote could affect the present existence or ownership of the Horn Treasure. Even the present Prince of Horn – if there is one –’

  ‘Joachim von Horn,’ Mr Black said. ‘A member of an ultra-right-wing nationalist group. Lives in Bavaria. Son of one of Hitler’s generals, who managed to kill himself in prison before the Nuremberg trials. Grandson of one of the Kaiser’s chiefs of staff. I don’t think that the contemporary prince will relish seeing his family treasures used as propaganda by its present owners.’

  ‘He won’t have much say in the matter I assume.’

  ‘None. The castle of Drachenschloss is well within the borders of East Germany.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound, Mr Black, as though the early history of the treasure or the Horn family can have anything to do with the planned exhibition. And presumably that’s what interests you in all this. The only thing I did wonder . . .’ Tamara said, hesitating.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I suppose that what the East Germans are bringing really is the Horn Treasure?’

  Mr Black took a stack of photographs from the drawer of his desk. ‘This shows what the East Germans intend to send. It’s still very hush, the glory of their treasures is to burst upon an unwary world.’

  There was the crown, its softly gleaming silver set with gems, and a broken sword polished free of stains. There was a golden chalice; and the amethyst ring was so vividly displayed that the intaglio face seemed to leap from the shiny paper. Each item looked not like a numinous component of legendary treasure, but a sterile artefact, for popular display.

  ‘There should be a mummified corpse in a crystal casket,’ Tamara murmured.

  From the same drawer, Mr Black took a booklet which Tamara recognised as a catalogue from Plinlimmon’s, the Edinburgh firm of antique and fine art auctioneers.

  The book fell open at the middle page, which was devoted to a colour spread of an amethyst ring. A large stone, carved with a man’s profile, set in gold filigree, and with a hairline crack bisecting the man’s cheek, like a scar.

  ‘Plinlimmon’s say that it’s offered on behalf of a seller from the south of England who bought the ring at a sale in Devonshire,’ Mr Black said.

  On the facing page, Plinlimmon’s had reproduced the drawing that Tamara had examined in the library of the Society of Antiquaries. Mr Black slid the photograph sent by the East Germans across the table. The two amethyst rings were similar but not quite identical; however, each was equally like the nineteenth-century sketch, but for the fact that the ring offered by Plinlimmon’s had the faint hairline across the amethyst.

  Tamara said, ‘Unless some modern glue or tool was used –’

  ‘There is no way of telling which, if either, is ancient.’

  ‘The only actual likeness is there’, Tamara said, pointing at the copy of the sketch.

  ‘Which is of dubious authenticity.’

  ‘There’s a flaw in the Plinlimmon’s ring,’ Tamara said.

  ‘That may indicate that it is a copy made from the sketch, with an imperfect stone,’ Mr Black said. ‘But the East Germans won’t like the competition all the same. Depending on who buys from Plinlimmon’s, it could all seem like a calculated political insult, the first time they come here with a major exhibition, due to go on to Paris, Melbourne and New York, with unprecedented publicity, and endless flagwaving. Our masters regard the whole thing as being of great political importance. They will not want rival articles about a rival object.’

  ‘A copy?’

  ‘Or a forgery. Most undesirable.’

  ‘What if the East Germans are sending a forgery?’ Tamara suggested. She flicked back to the photograph of the crown. Inset was an enlargement of a feature of the cross, showing a small dome of rock crystal, under which a fragment of blackened wood was set. ‘You can get a carbon 14 date from wood.’

  ‘That is said to be a piece of the True Cross.’

  ‘So Artemis von Horn was told when she married into the fam
ily,’ Tamara said. ‘It came with us, her husband said, and we shall go with it.’

  Mr Black put the pictures away in his desk. He said, ‘The German Democratic Republic is sending the authentic regalia of the Carolingian dynasty for display in the West. It is a gesture of goodwill – the first since the Republic was formed. The repercussions in other spheres, if doubt were cast on their generosity, would be . . . let me say, undesirable.’

  ‘They must be allowed their propaganda triumph?’

  ‘Precisely, Tamara,’ Mr Black said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The wet straw matting, with its rustic smell, had been lifted and draped over the banisters, and the bare floor boards were covered with books spread out in rows to dry. The air felt steamy, with the gas fire and two paraffin heaters turned full on. Jeremy Ellice was crouched in the far corner of the room, leafing through the books from the shelf behind him. He looked mournful and weary, like a monkey hunching itself away from the heartlessness of the world outside its cage. There was still a vacant patch of floor behind the door. Tamara took a book from the shelf, flicked through it, saw that the pages were crinkled like wet blotting paper, and laid it carefully flat.

  ‘Did any of them escape?’ she asked.

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Any hope of them drying unmarked?’

  ‘Not much.’

  They worked together, Jeremy steadily, and Tamara occasionally diverted by the subject of the volume she had chosen.

  Jeremy Ellice was obviously exhausted, having been up all the previous night, and having spent much of the morning being questioned by police and insurance assessors.

  ‘It’s lucky I can prove I was miles away. I spent yesterday morning valuing a library in Gloucestershire, and the afternoon at a sale. Then in the evening some of us had dinner before I drove back.’

  ‘Dividing up the spoil?’

  ‘Dealers’ rings are against the law.’

  ‘So they are,’ Tamara agreed, looking at his drawn face. Jeremy Ellice was not young or attractive, not, it seemed, one of life’s winners. Tamara felt sorry for him, with the horrified pity that is so close to a fear of contagious misfortune.

  ‘Do you actually have any other next of kin? I wondered last night.’

  ‘No. There was just Margot and myself, and we were not very close. I feel badly about it now, though you probably noticed I was annoyed by her when she was alive. Even the work she was doing hasn’t survived.’

  ‘There’s the carbon copy I took home yesterday.’

  ‘Good Lord. So you did. I had forgotten. Though whether that will be much memorial . . . do you think it’s publishable?’

  ‘Not as it stands.’

  ‘Poor girl. Mugged, and then dying in this macabre way, so soon afterwards . . .’

  ‘A horrid coincidence.’

  ‘I suppose it must have been coincidence.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I couldn’t help wondering.’

  ‘Would anyone have wished her harm?’ Tamara asked.

  ‘How would I know? We weren’t ever very close. She was five years older and we both went off to boarding school at the age of eight. Then school holidays, you know how it is, we both had friends to stay, or went to stay with them, I don’t suppose Margot and I were in the same house for more than a month of each year. Then she married Bill Agnew and lived abroad, usually in such uninviting places that I never went to see them, and our parents were dead by then, so there was no base for her here. We used to meet of course when they came to London, but I could never stand Bill and he disapproved of me. We were at the same school and he thought I was a bad advertisement for it. I should have been something like a captain of industry, or at least a professional man, to please him. And he didn’t get on with my wife.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were married.’

  ‘I am not, now. My wife’s remarried, and they are in Scotland with the children.’

  ‘You have children?’

  ‘Three. They come down in the holidays sometimes. Very broad Scots accents, and a fine superiority to my way of life. They only understand about stalking and skiing and shooting, that kind of thing. They don’t really know what you are meant to do with books.’

  ‘How sad.’

  ‘Not at all. They are living their lives at first hand. All my experience has been vicarious. Everything I know has come off a page of print. I could tell the kids the words they should use for their activities, I could make a better stab than any of them at describing what it feels like to be out on the moors with a gun or thigh deep in the river after salmon, but I’ve never done the things. It’s all out of books. I’m over educated. You probably are yourself.’

  Tamara thought of the deaths she had caused and the dangers she had undergone. Neither showed on her smooth face. She said, ‘That may be true of all archaeologists.’

  ‘It is true of all scholars and all readers. We’re all over civilised. All the same, oh Lord, give me first hand experience, but not yet. All this is as much reality as I can take.’ He gestured around him.

  The wooden planks of the floor were smeared with dust that had turned to mud where the fire fighters had reached it. The stairs leading up to the higher floors had been draped with greyish sheets, and there was a barrier on the second floor landing, marked by a pair of printed labels: EXPOSED POWER CABLES, KEEP CLEAR; and GAS TURNED OFF.

  ‘The forensic people finished here this morning,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘How long before you hear from them?’

  He did not know, or seem to care. He worked on, occasionally stopping to mourn over a ruined volume, and once or twice to gloat over a precious one. ‘Thanks be that the Baskerville Press ones were out of range,’ he said piously. Tamara admired his row of leather bound editions of fine printing. ‘It took me years to complete this set, and I suppose I should be ashamed of the way I managed it.’

  ‘Did you steal them?’ Tamara asked.

  ‘Somebody did. These two were on a stall in the Portobello Market. I bet they were stolen from their owner, they were far too cheap and the book plates had been steamed off.’

  ‘Are they legally yours, then?’

  ‘They wouldn’t be if I’d bought them in a shop. Title in stolen goods doesn’t pass to a purchaser, no matter how innocent, unless they are sold in an open market.’

  ‘Market Overt?’

  ‘That’s right. English law seems to be riddled with mediaeval phrases. It has to be a long established market place, out of doors I think. I suppose the idea was that the owner might have a chance to claim his own goods back in time if they were displayed there, before anyone else had a chance to pay good money for them.’

  ‘That might have worked in a mediaeval village, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, it’s crazy now, isn’t it? But lucky for me.’ Jeremy rubbed his thumbs affectionately over the glossy leather, and showed Tamara the handsome title pages. But there was hardly an inch of flat surface left to arrange the damp volumes on.

  ‘Let’s stop for a while. Come on down.’

  The stairs were puddled with stains and footprints, but the door of the basement room was tight fitting, and must have been closed the previous day, for the room looked unchanged since Tamara had last seen it, except that the bed was unoccupied, and covered with a gaudy mirror-work cloth.

  ‘Amazing how little trace there is in here,’ Jeremy said. But Margot’s suitcase was still on the chair beside the bed, its lid open to show her sensible nylon dressing gown, and plastic hairbrush, and on the bedside table were the books about nineteenth-century court life that Jeremy had brought her. Tamara opened the letters of Queen Victoria and her daughter, the Princess Royal, at the page where Vicky had written about her ladies-in-waiting.

  *

  They are so very nice, the more I see of them the more I love them, they are so full of tact, and always so respectful and nice to me, they are more like sisters than anything else.

  *

  Jer
emy made tea. It was evidently a ritual, the pot polished, the tea precisely measured, the cups warmed, an incongruously elegant ceremony for those filthy hands to perform. He said, ‘I keep wondering whether it might have been more than an accident, I know those paraffin stoves are supposed to be dangerous, but I can’t think why it should have toppled over, and even if it did, why the papers Margot was working on, and very little else, should be gone.’

  ‘What do you mean, Jeremy?’

  ‘I can’t help thinking that Margot might have started the fire herself. I don’t mean that she wanted to commit suicide, but perhaps she had some reason for wanting to destroy those papers, and lost control. Not that I can imagine what it was.’

  ‘Is there a fireplace in the room?’

  ‘Just a tiny disused grate with a mini-mantelpiece, not big enough to heat the room. It hasn’t been used since I lived here. But Margot might have lit the papers from the flame in the paraffin stove, meaning to put them in the grate to burn, and somehow knocked it over.’

  ‘Why do you suppose that Margot would have wanted to destroy her research material? Those papers were her dowry, that’s the word she once used to me,’ Tamara recalled. ‘She said they were her passport to the academic world. She was going to make a contribution to knowledge that would establish her as a serious historian.’

  ‘You don’t think there could have been something that disgusted her so much that she wanted to be rid of it at once?’

  ‘Or frightened her?’ Tamara suggested. They sipped tea, together, thinking about Margot’s work.

  Jeremy said, ‘It could hardly be anything to do with the death of Artemis von Horn and her son. Even if it was murder, it’s so long ago . . .’

  ‘It’s the kind of skeleton people are quite proud to find in their cupboards. Romantic, wicked ancestors. Anyway, with a Junker General and a Nazi nasty in the family tree, a little thing like a forefather who murdered Artemis wouldn’t worry anyone,’ Tamara said.

  ‘I didn’t know about them.’

  ‘I looked them up, didn’t I mention it?’ Tamara told him. ‘I found out more about the treasure too.’