She handed the receiver to Dame Beatrice and took a seat on the monks’ bench-cum-umbrella-stand in the hall.

  ‘I hope you do remember me,’ said Dame Beatrice. The telephone clacked encouragingly. ‘Oh, good. I am told that you are interested in archaeology. Were you ever a member of the Nodding Archaeological Society?… Oh, your brother was? Then you will remember the 1951 dig at Pigmy’s Ladder, perhaps.’

  By the time the brief but satisfactory conversation was concluded, Dame Beatrice had learned Crikey’s brother’s name and had recognised it from the records of the Society’s transactions to which she had been allowed access. She had also received an invitation to visit Crikey at home, which she countered by inviting her to dinner that evening at the Red Lion.

  Crikey (Miss Carol Timberley in formal parlance) met her in the saloon lounge and accepted a White Lady with a polite squeak of pleasure and they sat together on a settee under the window. There followed some small-talk while they took stock of one another, and then Dame Beatrice turned the conversation on to the 1951 celebrations.

  ‘You took part in these, Miss Timberley?’

  ‘Well, not quite to say “took part,” you know, Dame Beatrice, but we went to Norwich once or twice and stood about to watch the pageant, especially the dancers. They were very good, I thought, and it must have been very tiring. They danced all round the town, you know. Then there was Parson Woodforde on horseback – oh, and all sorts of people.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘And then, although we only had time for one or two, my brother and I both being attached to schools, he as a teacher and I in the school meals service, there were the outings.’

  ‘Outings?’

  ‘Grimes Graves was one of them. Ever so exciting, and everything organised from the City Hall. So wonderfully cheap, too. And then, when it was all over, my brother was terribly excited because the Nodding Archaeological Society had decided to dig at Pigmy’s Ladder all over again.’

  ‘As an epilogue?’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘As the ultimate or, possibly, the penultimate part of the Festival of Britain?’

  ‘Part of the festival is right, I suppose. Anyway, Dick was thrilled.’

  ‘What do you remember of the dig?’

  ‘Nothing much. I was rather scared. I’d never make a pot-holer, or anything like that, and, anyway, I was afraid of doing something wrong.’

  ‘I wish, Miss Timberley, that I could get in touch with your brother.’

  ‘Nothing easier, Dame Beatrice. Let me give you the telephone number of his school. He’ll be tickled pink to get in touch with you, I’m sure.’

  The school to which Mr Timberley had been appointed was in Yorkshire, between Harrogate and Ripon. In the morning, at a quarter-to-ten (by which time, according to Laura, who had parked Hamish on the vicar’s wife at Wandles Parva and returned post-haste to Nodding, the morning assembly would be over and the headmaster busy with correspondence and therefore in handy proximity to his telephone), Dame Beatrice rang him up, stated her business and requested an interview.

  Mr Timberley, who had already been apprised by his sister of the probability of such a request, gave his home address and the meeting was arranged for the following Tuesday evening. The Monday, therefore, found Dame Beatrice and Laura at the Old Swan in Harrogate and by six o’clock the next evening they were at Mr Timberley’s front door. He opened it and introduced himself.

  He was a grey-haired, pleasant-faced, tall man, obviously some years older than his sister, with a gentle voice and an air of scholarly calm. He ushered them into a homely, slightly untidy living-room, where his wife was doing some mending and a boy of about fifteen was doing his homework.

  ‘Push off into my den, Lance, will you?’ said Mr Timber-ley. ‘You’ll find some biscuits in a tin on my desk.’

  ‘Your son?’ asked Laura, when the lad had gathered up his books and departed. Mr Timberley smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Both my boys are grown up and married,’ he replied. ‘No, this is one of my chaps from school. He’s pretty sure to get his G.C.E. next year, but he’s one of a family of eight and there’s nowhere at home where he can get a bit of peace, so I have him here for a couple of hours each evening. He’s company for Betsy if I’m out at a meeting, and, anyway, he’s a decent lad and merits a chance to do well. And now, Dame Beatrice, you want to talk about Pigmy’s Ladder, I believe.’

  ‘You knew that a Mr Breydon-Waters was found dead some weeks ago in the workings?’

  ‘Oh, yes. My sister sends me the local paper, so I keep abreast of the news.’

  ‘Were you acquainted with Mr Breydon-Waters?’

  ‘No. He must have joined the Society after I left Nodding.’

  ‘Did you know a Mr Streatley?’

  ‘Our millionaire member? Oh, yes.’

  ‘You and he were among the 1951 excavators of Pigmy’s Ladder, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. So were Downing, Gold and Carfrae, who, I believe, are the present officers of the Society, and so were two of my old boys, Albert Sansfoy and Harry Glover.’

  ‘I have been in touch with all of them.’

  ‘But Streatley is the man who interests you, I take it. I know very little about him. We didn’t meet at any point except as members of the Society.’

  ‘What kind of person did you take him to be?’

  ‘He struck me as quite a decent sort, but, as I say, I had very little to do with him.’

  ‘To what extent, if at all, did he finance the excavations?’

  ‘Pretty heavily, as I happen to know. When Carfrae had influenza at one time and we had the annual audit, Downing asked me to step in and see to the books, and it was then that I learnt how much of Streatley’s money had gone to bolster us up.’

  ‘You would call him, then, a keen archaeologist?’

  ‘Well, I think he must have been, to support us in that style.’

  ‘Did he ever go abroad to dig, do you know?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He went to many and various places, I believe; to Greece, of course, several times, and once each, at least, to Palestine, to Syria, to the Upper Nile and to Denmark.’

  ‘I understand that the dead man, Mr Breydon-Waters, was invited to join a very recent expedition to Mount Gerezin, but did not go.’

  ‘Really? I know nothing about that.’

  ‘It was at the end of the fortnight which he was supposed to have spent in Palestine that his body was found in the flint-mines.’

  ‘It all sounds fantastic to me. How can I help?’

  ‘By telling me why Mr Breydon-Waters was murdered.’

  Timberley looked at her; then he filled his pipe. His wife, Dame Beatrice noted, looked at him anxiously.

  ‘It’s all right, Betsy,’ he said, apparently interpreting her glance. ‘I’ve nothing to hide, as you know, and I can’t possibly answer the question. I have never so much as spoken to this man Breydon-Waters. It is some years since I left Nodding.’

  ‘Ah, but you have returned there several times,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Yes, of course I have. I have friends there, and I have been to see my sister, who has become an acquaintance of yours, it seems.’

  ‘What does it mean – to salt a dig, Mr Timberley?’

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Timberley. ‘So that was it!’

  ‘What was what, Mr Timberley?’

  ‘Streatley, you know. He used to pull our legs.’

  ‘Expound. This appears to conform with a nebulous theory I hold.’

  ‘Well, it was done partly as a joke, I suppose, but also to keep us interested and on our toes. He had a smallish but very fine collection of Roman and pre-Roman objects, purchased on his travels or obtained through advertising, and occasionally, on a dig, he would affect to find one of them and offer it for our inspection. Sometimes he would so arrange it that one of us did the finding, and then came the grand inquisition. It irritated some people so much that he gave up the practice in the end. Personally, I thought it good fun and it certainly added interest. I myself extended my reading and my visits to museums pretty considerably on the strength of it. A school-master, of all people, I suppose, doesn’t want to be caught out if he can help it. The profession, I’m afraid, tends to build up one’s rather touchy vanity in certain respects.’

  ‘I should not think that you yourself were either touchy or vain, Mr Timberley.’

  Timberley laughed.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said.

  ‘I think, Dick, you’d better tell Dame Beatrice why Mr Streatley really gave up those stupid practical jokes of his.’

  ‘But they weren’t stupid, Betsy, and they did keep us on our toes. The trouble was…’

  ‘The trouble was that they began to break up the Society.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know whether we can go as far as to say that. People – some people – got a bit restive, I know, but—’

  ‘Which people?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.

  ‘Well, Downing himself didn’t like it much, for one; Gold thought it was undignified and childish, and Carfrae, it’s true, threatened to give up office and resign from the Society if Streatley didn’t give up his little jokes.’

  ‘Did he make this statement publicly?’

  ‘No, in private to one or two of us.’

  ‘So Dick did what Mr Downing ought to have done,’ said Mrs Timberley, ‘and brought up the subject at the Annual General Meeting and tried to get it thrashed out.’

  ‘And was it thrashed out?’

  ‘No,’ said Timberley, ‘it was not. Everybody dodged expressing an opinion except one or two who openly fawned on Streatley. They were afraid of offending him and losing the financial backing, I suppose.’

  ‘And this Annual General Meeting was held after the 1951 dig at Pigmy’s Ladder, I take it?’

  ‘Yes. We dug in July and the A.G.M. was in the following September.’

  ‘And Mr Streatley “salted” Pigmy’s Ladder?’

  ‘Well, he denied it, but some of the others thought that he put a shrine, complete with phallic symbols and a fertility goddess, in it. He was thought to have taken the idea from the one which had been found in Grimes Graves.’

  ‘But some of your people believed that the shrine was genuine?’

  ‘I myself thought so. You see, in all the other cases, the cuckoo in the nest, so to speak, was obvious, if you kept your wits about you, and your reading, and so forth, up to date, because it was always something which had no right to be there. For example, faience beads might turn up almost anywhere in Europe because we know they were exported and we can pretty well map the routes; but a copper axe from Kish is most unlikely to be dug up anywhere but in the palace-turned-cemetery at Kish, so if you find it, as the Society did, in a long barrow in Gloucestershire, you can be pretty sure it’s been planted there by a modern hand – by Streatley, in fact.’

  ‘What made you choose a copper axe from Kish as your example, Mr Timberley?’

  ‘Because, as I say, I was told that they found one in the long barrow at Upton Hover, where it was quite incongruous. All Streatley’s “plantings” were incongruous, if you knew your stuff.’

  ‘Are you aware that the police believe that a similar axe – possibly that identical axe – was connected in some way with Mr Breydon-Waters’ death?’

  ‘Good gracious! Is that really so?’

  ‘Yes, it is so. Tell me more about those practical jokes. What happened to the objects after they had been “found” and identified?’

  ‘Oh, Streatley used to give them to the finders.’

  ‘Who found the copper axe-head in Gloucestershire?’

  ‘I have no idea. It was found after I had left. I did find the Pigmy’s Ladder shrine, though.’

  ‘Were you offered it as a present?’

  ‘No, I was not.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘It was hardly the kind of thing you would want in a private house, so I suppose Streatley took it away and destroyed it. Rather a pity. If it was a fake it was beautifully done.’

  ‘I should have crowned him with it,’ said Mrs Timberley indignantly. ‘I can’t bear to think of him trying to make decent people look fools.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t make decent people look fools, dear.’

  Dame Beatrice said nothing, but her brilliant black eyes twinkled with intense interest.

  ‘I hate him for being able to deceive you, Dick,’ stated Mrs Timberley, with passion.

  ‘I had a hunch at the time – and it’s grown stronger over the years – that he didn’t deceive me, dear. And he did deny that he’d placed it there, you know.’

  Dame Beatrice then added her quota.

  ‘I presume that you can draw and sketch, Mr Timberley?’

  ‘More or less. Most teachers can. It’s part of our stock-in-trade.’

  ‘Then I wish you would procure a sheet of unlined paper and draft out a representation of this shrine as you first saw it.’

  ‘Willingly – although I can’t see—’

  ‘Are you able, clearly, in your mind, to differentiate it from the one which was discovered in Grimes Graves?’

  ‘I have never seen the shrine which was discovered in Grimes Graves; I have read about it, but that is all. Now for this drawing.’

  He went out and then re-appeared with a sheet of drawing paper and a stick of charcoal. He sat at the table, closed his eyes for nearly a quarter of a minute and then began to sketch rapidly. He had soon done.

  ‘Ah!’ said Dame Beatrice, taking the finished sketch. There was the goddess, but in place of the little heaps of arrow-heads stood an unmistakable phallus. ‘So that was what you saw, and it isn’t there now.’

  * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  Croesus and Other Nodders

  * * *

  ‘There is a way which seemeth right unto a man,

  but the end thereof are the ways of death.’

  Book of Proverbs

  « ^ »

  IT isn’t there now?’ said Timberley. ‘Well, but I didn’t think it would be, if people thought we’d found a fake in the dig. I don’t suppose it’s even mentioned in the annals, is it?’

  ‘No, it is not. I have had access to all the Society’s documents, and there is certainly no word of such a shrine. Let me show you what it looks like now.’

  She picked up his stick of charcoal – or, rather, one of the pieces into which it had broken – and sketched clearly, although on a smaller scale that that of his drawing because there was not a great deal of space left on the paper, what she had come upon in Pigmy’s Ladder.

  ‘So the shrine we uncovered was genuine,’ said Timberley. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it? But what on earth has been going on since?’

  ‘That is what I have to find out, but I believe you have put the end of the string firmly into my hand.’

  ‘Then I hope you’ll find your way out of the maze all right.’

  ‘Having slain the Minotaur?’

  Upon this classical note they parted.

  ‘What did you make of him?’ asked Laura, when they were in the car and were heading for Harrogate.

  ‘Perspicuous, honest, well-balanced, kindly, courageous and the possessor of a sense of humour, child.’

  ‘Sounds like God’s gift to an undeserving universe.’

  ‘I do not quibble with your postulation.’

  ‘What are we going to do now?’

  ‘We are going to talk to Mr Downing, Mr Gold and Mr Carfrae. But, first, to dine.’

  The dining-room at the Old Swan was exceptionally large. It held, at that time of year, the usual complement of coach-party visitors and the equally usual Old Guard of residents. The menu, however, was long and the waiting was adequate. Laura enjoyed her meal. Dame Beatrice ate because, without food, life becomes precarious. She waited until Laura was ready for coffee.

  ‘In the lounge?’ asked Laura.

  ‘It seems inevitable, dear child.’

  ‘You know,’ said Laura, when they were seated in the lounge, ‘the whole thing gets more Paul Jennings each day.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, oddlier and oddlier. Yet we have but to follow the gleam.’

  ‘Dashed if I see any gleam. Back to Nodding tomorrow, I suppose?’

  Ronald Downing, David Gold and Philip Carfrae were interviewed separately on the following day, Downing in his office at the Castle Museum, Gold at the central library and Carfrae in his own home, this at his own request. At each interview Dame Beatrice produced the drawings and at each interview she asked the same questions.

  ‘Mr Timberley, who used to belong to your Society, claims that he saw this shrine when you re-excavated Pigmy’s Ladder in 1951. Have you any comment to make?’

  ‘Yes, of course I have, Dame Beatrice,’ said Downing, her first consultant. ‘I was delighted when we first uncovered the shrine, but so many members who had been taken in, to their chagrin, on previous occasions were so certain that it was a practical joke on Streatley’s part that I gave in and pronounced it a fake.’

  ‘Exactly in what way did the other members convince you?’

  ‘They pointed out that it approximated in all respects to the shrine previously unearthed in Grimes Graves and that it was unlikely that there would be two so close together.’

  ‘Yes, I see, although I don’t admit the argument.’

  ‘It seemed more than probable that they were right, so I gave in. Anyhow, we certainly made no photographic or other record of it. Streatley, I must say, took it extremely well. The only stipulation he made was that we should neither remove nor destroy it and, so long as he would agree to having it walled in, we agreed. You see, he gave the Society a good deal of very welcome financial help and we did not propose to seem ungrateful.’

  Dame Beatrice passed on to David Gold.

  ‘I did not see how we could have the good luck to discover a genuine shrine, like the one at Grimes Graves,’ he said, ‘and therefore I accepted the general ruling rather gratefully. You see, the shrine which was discovered at Grimes Graves seems to be out of the ordinary. So far as I can make out, it was a sort of prayer for bigger and better flints. Money couldn’t breed’ – he smiled – ‘according to the English mediaeval communities, and therefore the Jewish moneylenders who demanded interest were the children of Satan. The Neolithic forebears – or were they? – of those same communities had far more modern ideas. Not only money, but flints, could breed, and the shrine was an invocation to them to do so.’

 

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