Almost Love Page 7

  Alex nodded. She could understand what he was saying now. What remained difficult, alienating, even, was his apparent detachment from his marriage. She supposed that this conversation – it was in truth more of a monologue – could have been prompted by a not particularly subtle attempt by Edmund to indicate that he was still available, to demonstrate that he was willing to pick up from where they had left off last night. But instinct told her that this was not correct. His next comment, murmured sotto voce to himself, confirmed her in this belief. It was more as if he were trying to work out the place that he had reached in life, to comprehend how he had arrived at where he now found himself.

  “She is a very pretty woman. She was beautiful in her day. We were both in our thirties when we met, both thinking it was time we married. And she wanted children. Why she couldn’t find someone else to give them to her, I’ll never quite be sure.”

  “Are you going in to lunch?”

  Alex flinched, startled, while Edmund, still lost in whatever reverie he had just conjured up, looked up vacantly, his blue eyes clouded with some less than satisfactory thought. It was Oliver, leaning in to them across the wings of Alex’s lounge bar chair.

  “Oh, Oliver, you made me jump!” she said, as lightly as she could. “Has your policeman gone?”

  “Which policeman?” asked Edmund truculently. “Why are the police here?”

  “Yes, he’s gone,” said Oliver. “Nothing to concern yourself about, Edmund. He only came because I happened to call in on Claudia yesterday on my way here. I thought that the police should know that I had visited her, as it was so close to the time at which she disappeared. But I daresay I wasn’t much help really.”

  “Oh, God, yes – Claudia. I’d almost forgotten the reason for the lingering malaise that seems to have taken over this conference,” said Edmund spitefully.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” said Oliver, looking at Alex’s stricken face. “It has an excellent programme. It has delivered all that was expected of it so far. It’s just that the delegates are understandably melancholy about Claudia. Most of us have met her, after all, and some of us – like you and me – know her very well. When did you last see her, incidentally?”

  “Oh, how should I know?” asked Edmund crossly. He packed up his computer, shoving it and its power supply untidily into his holdall, got up and headed for the French windows which led to the terrace outside. He stumped off, trailing his gammy leg slightly.

  Oliver sighed.

  “Curmudgeonly as always, I see, but at least he’s running true to form. Shall we go into lunch?”

  Chapter Seven

  It was five-thirty that afternoon and Alex was back in her room at last. She hoped that she might slip into bed to take a few minutes’ sleep before the conference dinner and then thought better of it. Her hangover had disappeared completely, but in its wake had left her in the grip of such intense fatigue that she feared that if she were to lie down she would not wake again that day.

  Instead, she decided to call Tom. She was feeling guilty about him, although logically speaking there was no need, aside from her having failed to reach him yesterday evening. It was not her fault, after all, that Edmund had tried to seduce her, nor had it been the first time during her marriage that she had been propositioned. She and Tom had laughed about some of the other occasions. She wondered if she would tell Tom about Edmund and decided that probably she wouldn’t.

  She took her mobile from her handbag and was surprised to see the display light up before she had pressed the keys. It was Tom, calling her first – a rare event, as the received view in the Tarrant household was that she should always be responsible for their calls when they were separated.

  “Everything OK?” he said. Usually, that was her question; in fact, often Tom couldn’t wait for her to get off the phone.

  “Yes,” she said cautiously. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason – except that some female archaeologist has disappeared. The news has been full of it. I thought that it might be one of your lot.”

  “Well, she isn’t one of ‘my lot’, as you put it,” she snapped, exasperated, “though some of the delegates do know her – as you would expect.”

  “There’s no need to get shirty. It’s not my fault if I don’t understand who’s in and who’s out in your crowd. Put a bit of a dampener on the conference, has it?”

  She listened carefully to the tone of his voice and decided that he was trying to show sympathy rather than to exult.

  “Not really. Well, yes, I suppose it has, in a way. Everyone’s very subdued.”

  “From what you’ve told me about some of those malevolent old men, it’s probably not a bad thing.”

  “What sort of a day did you have?”

  “A difficult one, since you ask. You remember that I told you about the Herrick Old House scheme?”

  “Vaguely,” said Alex, wracking her brains. “It’s a work creation scheme, isn’t it? For juvenile delinquents?”

  “That’s more or less right, though we don’t use the term ‘juvenile delinquents’ any more. It was the brainchild of Lord Herrick after his son died of a drugs overdose. Its aim is to help young people, particularly those who have admitted that they have drugs problems. It’s a foundation that he’s set up in conjunction with opening the other Herrick House – the one he lives in – to the public. The outbuildings have been completely restored and Herrick House now has a working home farm, buttery, stables and laundry. Young people are trained in the traditional skills needed to run these facilities. They then either give demonstrations on the estate when the house is open or work in the facilities when the house is closed. The estate sells the produce and services, mostly to the local community, but sometimes to shops and enterprises further afield. The young people are paid proper wages for their efforts, even though it’s not usually much above the legal minimum. Lord Herrick is planning to extend the scheme to the gardens once renovation work in them has been completed.”

  “It all sounds wonderful – exemplary paternalism which presumably creates some kind of income for his lordship in the process. So what’s the problem?”

  “There’s no problem with the scheme as such. It was a brilliant Idea, and one that is being monitored with the intention of rolling out similar plans elsewhere in the country. My problem is that I sent two of my most promising lads to work on the home farm and they’ve now been discovered to be in possession of Ecstasy – and not only that, but allegedly caught trying to sell it to some of the visitors to the attraction.”

  Alex giggled.

  “That was very enterprising of them!”

  “For God’s sake, Alex, it’s not like you to be so irresponsible! You know how serious this is, especially for kids who already have a record. These two are both on probation. They’ll probably get custodial sentences now. And, needless to say, his Lordship wants to ban them from his property. They’ll certainly never be allowed to set foot on the Herrick Estate again and, in all probability, neither will anyone else recommended by the youth service.”

  “Sorry,” said Alex. “I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s been a strange day. Is there anything you can do to mollify Lord Herrick? Do you know how they came by the drugs? Can it be explained as a temporary lapse?”

  “That’s part of the problem. They both swear blind that they had no knowledge of the drugs, which were found in their rucksacks, and therefore can’t explain how they got them. Typical responsibility-evading replies, I know, but I’m disappointed even so; particularly with the elder of the two: I’d have expected better of him. They weren’t actually caught in the act of selling the drugs, but they were packaged for the street, apparently in a very professional way. ”

  “How was it discovered?”

  “Just during a routine search. A random check is carried out on two or three of the trainees every day. It was one of the
conditions that Lord Herrick laid down when he set up the foundation.”

  “So they would have known that the chances of their being caught were high?”

  “Yes, they knew the score. All of the trainees go through an induction process at the Centre, and a further refresher session when they actually start work on the estate.”

  “And you say that at least one of them now normally behaves responsibly. How bright are they?”

  “Better than average. I hand-picked them and a few others because the scheme has only just started and I wanted to choose kids who’d make a good impression.”

  “Well, either they aren’t such reformed characters as you’d thought, or they’re telling the truth. From what you say, there’s a fifty-fifty chance of either. If I were you, I wouldn’t assume automatically that they are lying. Stranger things have happened than kids having drugs planted on them.”

  “You sound like the Delphic Oracle! But thanks for the advice. It’s not like me not to keep an open mind, as you know, but I’ve been so disappointed, not to say embarrassed, over this that I may have allowed my own feelings to cloud my judgment. I’m not going to be able to budge Lord Herrick unless I can find some concrete evidence of their innocence. And I can’t for the life of me think what anyone could hope to gain from planting the drugs on them. When are you coming home, by the way?” he asked, audibly brightening up as he changed the subject.

  “I should be back by tomorrow lunchtime. It’s the conference dinner tonight and the AGM tomorrow morning first thing. I’m planning to cut it as short as possible and I’m guessing that in any case the delegates won’t want to spin it out. Their current mood is too downbeat. They’ll probably all have left the hotel by about 10 a.m. I’ve got a few things to sort out after that, but I should be able to get away myself by soon after eleven; and the drive back shouldn’t take much more than three quarters of an hour.”

  “You’re surely not planning to work at the Society tomorrow afternoon?”

  “No, but I need to call in briefly, to return some stands and things. After that, I shall come home to work.”

  “Meet me for lunch? At the White Hart? You seem to have been gone for ages and I can afford to take a longer lunch break than usual tomorrow.”

  Alex tried not to sigh aloud. It was flattering that Tom was missing her, but at the moment she felt that she would never want to eat – or drink – again. And she knew that having to sit through the protracted rituals of the conference dinner this evening would not improve her mood.

  “Would you mind if we just both went home? I’ll pick some things up from the delicatessen on the way.”

  “OK, sure, if that’s what you’d prefer,” said Tom. He sounded surprised rather than offended. “I’ll see you here, then, at around one o’clock?”

  “That should be fine,” said Alex wearily. “I’ve got to go now. I need to change.”

  “Don’t let me keep you. I love you. Take care.”

  “You, too,” said Alex, as she put the phone down.

  She peeled off the navy blue suit, and let it drop to the floor. She was about to head for the shower when she realised that her bedroom curtains had not been drawn. Although she may have been protected from view by the floor-length nets, they were pretty sheer, and she suspected that, as it was almost dark, it would be possible for someone standing outside to see into the room now that she had switched on the lights. Quickly she snapped the lights off again and went to draw the heavy drapes. She noticed that the french windows were still open a few inches. She didn’t close them; she would be bound to feel hot when she returned from the dinner. She leaned briefly into the dusky evening, enjoying the rush of cold air on to her face. As she did so, she became aware of something moving in the courtyard below. Quickly, she stepped to the other window to get a clearer view, but whatever it was had disappeared around the side of the building before she could glimpse it again.

  Chapter Eight

  The search of the woods that surrounded Dame Claudia’s house yielded no spectacular results – no knife bearing whomever’s blood was smeared across her hall wall, no discarded clothing in the undergrowth. Unless it had been buried very deep and the freshly-dug soil camouflaged so expertly that it could escape the noses of sniffer dogs, there was no body. One or two small items had been found which probably were not related to her disappearance: a black leather button with long tails of thread attached to it and a badge depicting a swastika. Tim thought that the latter might have been lost from a child’s dressing-up kit, but he sent it for analysis, anyway. He asked Juliet to try to find out what sort of garment the button had been torn from. On the whole, the search had been disappointing.

  Since they could not obtain primary evidence that might help to explain why Dame Claudia had vanished, Tim determined to gather more background stuff. He was beginning to realise that they did not have enough objective information about Dame Claudia and how she had lived her life – just conflicting views from a number of people who probably had their own reasons for presenting her in a certain way – and he therefore now asked Juliet to find out as much about her as she could. “The private as well as the professional woman, if you can,” he had said.

  Juliet thought to herself that this shouldn’t be too difficult. There were many drawbacks to investigating the disappearance of famous people, but always one bonus: they left a trail of information in their wake wherever they went. She was well aware that Claudia’s glory days had pre-dated the Internet, but, even so, you never knew what online searches might turn up. People were always digitising the most arcane old rubbish. Juliet was a past mistress at ferreting out the obscure details that made up the building blocks of other people’s lives.

  She began with straightforward Google searches about Claudia’s activities. She found details of some of the digs that Claudia had led in the Middle East in the 1930s and, occasionally, the archaeological reports that had followed on from them. Until 1938, the main geographical areas in which Claudia had worked were the region that the newspapers called ‘Mesopotamia’; then it was the North of Scotland and the Orkney Islands. Juliet was familiar with the word ‘Mesopotamia’ from school scripture lessons, but she did not know what its modern-day equivalent was called. Further searches revealed that it has no exact modern equivalent: the term was used to describe a very large region which today would include parts of modern Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. That Claudia was familiar with this part of the world was significant enough for Juliet to download some of the reports and newspaper articles that gave accounts of how Claudia’s digs were funded, who accompanied her and what she had discovered while working on them. Juliet skim-read some of these, thinking perhaps that she might find references to entanglements with Islamic extremists or other groups who might have had cause to resent Claudia’s presence or her activities in their country. However, she could discover no controversies: just tedious accounts of the day-to-day work at consecutive sites in the desert, none of which seemed to have yielded anything of spectacular interest to the lay person. Claudia’s involvement with the local populace appeared to be minimal; some local labour was employed to carry out removal of soil and for porterage, but most of Claudia’s entourage on these expeditions appeared to consist of young academics or student volunteers from England or, less commonly, other European countries. Her sponsors were nearly always scholarly foundations, mostly British. She also received some donations from benefactors, the list of whose names sounded like a roll-call from Burke’s Peerage.

  The northern expeditions were fewer – Claudia had worked on sites in Scotland and the Orkneys twice in the years 1938 and 1939 – but had produced more exciting results. The star among these was the discovery of a fifth-century rune stone – a kind of Orkney version of the Rosetta stone – which was unearthed during the late autumn of 1938, just as the dig was about to halt for the winter. Claudia published several articles on this in the winter of 1939; s
he was clearly very excited about the find herself and also, Juliet suspected, determined to publish as much about it as possible before her peers and colleagues could air their views.

  Juliet noted that the style and nature of her writing changed abruptly in the Orkney ‘McRae Stone’ articles. Previously, although she had been a reasonably good documenter of her digs, the conclusions that she had drawn had often been florid and imaginative and, to Juliet’s eye at least, did not illustrate the caution and scrupulous rigour usually associated with academic argument. She had been a very early proponent of ‘feminist archaeology’, not only arguing that women as well as men could have made the stone and bronze artefacts that she and her team had discovered, but that they were just as likely as men to have used them for hunting and battle. Juliet herself was not averse to listening to a good feminist argument, but she could not help feeling that, if men had been so marginalised in pre-history and very early written history, it was difficult to explain the transformation that had taken place by the time that whole documents began to appear. Although she was not a historian, she knew there was little evidence of matriarchal societies having existed in the ancient Middle East.

  However, in her articles on the McRae Stone, Claudia had attempted something quite different. Although the theories that she was proposing were still colourful, and must undoubtedly have been controversial at the time, she was manifestly trying to present them in a much more scholarly fashion. She built step-by-step arguments which were underpinned at each stage by allusion to her findings and carefully explained her interpretation of the significance of each one of them. The broad-brush approach had gone. Although some of the logic she employed still seemed to Juliet to be tenuous, she saw that these articles were Claudia’s attempt to become accepted by the establishment. Prior to this, she had been a rogue woman in a man’s world, a socialite outsider who had thumbed her nose at the coterie of male archaeologists who believed that, because they had had the privilege of being formally educated, only they had the right to contribute to the corpus of archaeological knowledge. Now she wanted to be of that world and she had to raise her game by showing that she had the right kind of incisive mind. The newspaper articles and reviews from this period suggested that, although her work would always be controversial, she had succeeded.