Читать книгу The Wolf Letters - Will Schaefer - Страница 13

“Arminius retreated into pathless country. Germanicus

followed … Arminius first ordered his men to fall back on

the woods in close order. Then he suddenly wheeled them

around and a force he had secretly posted in the forest was

given the order to charge.”

The Roman general Germanicus

is baited by the fugitive Arminuis in Germany, 15 AD.

Annals of Imperial Rome

On Thursday morning I got up early. It was cloudy, and very hot again, so I went swimming at the baths on Corby Street.

Swimming is a superb sport. It can strengthen one immensely, especially in the chest and arms, and is excellent for fitness. This sport is gentle on the body too, the perfect way to stay fit when I am nursing an injury from rugger or boxing. I swim four or five mornings a week in summer.

I swam the six-beat crawl for nearly an hour, back and forth relentlessly with strong, steady strokes, breathing well. But there were shadows on my good mood, for I could not suppress persistent questions about Claude and the stolen wolf.

Yes, I am a trained scholar. I am trained to find answers. And at this moment I had none. I was curious, very curious on several levels. Were the police still suspicious of Claude? Were they under pressure from the public, and looking for a scapegoat? Did the theft have anything else to do with the letters that I had read the night before?

* * *

As I towelled myself off in the changing rooms, Monsignor Charles Hough, a keen fellow summer-swimmer, began a conversation with me. Until a few years ago, the monsignor had tutored history, theology, Greek and Latin at St Matthew’s. He had been an academic mentor to me since I’d arrived in Allminster.

“How’s the doctorate, nearly done?” The monsignor had a highly educated accent, though one could detect a trace of Northern in it if one listened carefully.

“Getting there. Bit snowed under with other stuff. I’ve been thinking I could do with your help again, Monsignor.”

“I’d be delighted. What sort of help do you need?”

“Not nearly as much as last time. I’d like to borrow Freeman’s Norman Conquest again, if it won’t inconvenience you.”

“Inconvenience me? My dear boy, I don’t think I’ve even picked it up for months. How about you come by the presbytery on Monday afternoon?”

“Only if it’s not too much bother. I know how busy you are.”

“Not at all! Let’s make it four o’clock Monday, shall we? You can always ring me if you change your plans.”

We chatted for a while about the doctorate before settling into news of the college’s staff members. Then: “I meant to ask you on Friday,” said Hough, “about a Humphrey Miller from the Archaeology Department at St Matthew’s. He’s about your age, thirtyish. Do you know him at all?”

I thought for a moment. Through Claude and Tiernan, most of the names in the department were familiar to me, but I could not place Humphrey Miller. The only other man our age that I knew of in archaeology was Alan Reardon, the asocial, bookish specialist in Middle Eastern archaeology who lived at the college in rooms next to Tiernan’s. “No, I don’t think I’ve even heard of him. Perhaps he’s new, Monsignor.”

“Yes, perhaps that’s it. I just thought you might know him. But no-one at the department seems to know who he is.”

I thought for another moment. The monsignor had been so generous to me with his time. In February he’d practically devoted a whole month to straightening out my doctorate.

Here was a small chance for me to help him.

“Look, I’ll be at St Matt’s all day today. If it’s important, I could ask around for you. There’s bound to be someone there who knows him.”

“It is important. He said he had something of particular interest to me. Would you mind? I’m wearing out my welcome there.”

“I’d be more than happy to. What would you like me to do?”

“If you can find him, just tell him that I’ll be waiting for him at my presbytery at three today, as we arranged.”

I assured the monsignor I would. I finished dressing, and rode back to the college to dress for breakfast in Hall.

* * *

Once I had changed into something civilised and put my don’s gown on, I stopped by Claude’s digs to pick him up.

The layout of his digs was typical for the rooms of an unmarried don at St Matthew’s, and was identical to mine. A big sitting room with a sofa, spindly wooden chairs and a gas fire, a cramped bedroom with a cheap old wardrobe in it, a study, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom. Mostly, our digs were sparse. None of us had a wireless yet, and between us, our greatest luxury was Claude’s telephone, installed in his study just a month ago so Anne could reach him.

Some of the undergraduates, on the other hand, received huge allowances from home, and lived like princes. At night they nibbled on plover’s eggs, listened to gramophones, drank champagne and smoked Turkish cigarettes. After ten they’d often be drunk, sneaking out in groups and driving brand-new Italian sports cars to West End nightclubs like The Coconut Grove and The Nest. Claude, Tiernan and I could barely conceive of ever having enough money for things like that.

But we were voracious readers, and we spent significant amounts of our incomes on books. Volumes of every type -classical works, textbooks, literature - dominated our digs, just as they did the creaking wall shelves of our offices, the long library corridors we knew so well, and our black-gowned lives.

Claude was on his sofa reading a book about Egyptian mythology, his academic specialty. This was typical Claude: grinning, book in hand, a neat suit beneath his gown. Tiernan was also in the sitting room, his suntanned, handsome face lightening somewhat as I walked in.

“What happened to you yesterday afternoon?” I asked Claude.

“I went for a spin with Anne and a few of her doctor friends. One of them has a tourer.”

Tiernan glanced up from the newspaper he was reading. “You didn’t say that earlier. Is it new?”

“Brand new. Four hundred pounds worth. Does seventy on a straight, even with four passengers. Corners beautifully. Exactly what I need.” He looked at us both, knowing full well what we were likely to say. “I will get one, you know.”

“One day,” said Tiernan.

“One day soon, I’ve told you,” he said.

I found Claude’s car fantasies amusing, probably because I cared little about automobiles and had only actually driven once or twice before. Then Claude’s voice dropped a bit.

“I saw Deborah there, George.”

Deborah Caraman. Anne’s best friend, a doctor, like she was. Also an old girlfriend of mine.

“Good thing I wasn’t with you, Claude. She’d probably have pushed me out of the car and got her friend to me run over.”

“She hardly said a word all day to me. It’s a shame, you know, we used to get on well. Now talking to her’s like playing tennis by yourself. You’ve got to hit the ball, then run round the other side of the net and hit it back. Bloody exhausting. Poor old Anne gets so upset about it, but she keeps trying.”

“That sort of frigidity’s exactly why I broke it off,” I said.

“I told you that’s what you’d get for seeing a Catholic,” said Tiernan.

“That’s got nothing to do with anything, Tiernan.”

“It does, you know. She’s a rabid papist, while you were christened an Anglican and you’ve hardly set foot in a church since you left school. It was never going to work, I’m sorry.”

I felt like rolling my eyes. “Tiernan, let’s talk about something else, for God’s sake. What did you do yesterday?”

“Well, I worked the morning, but I wasn’t in a very good mood. I went for a walk.”

“Bit hot for that yesterday. We nearly melted on our drive.”

“You mustn’t spend time alone if you feel like brooding,” I said. “It isn’t good for you.”

“Look, I wasn’t brooding. I wanted to leave the college for a while.”

“But that’s the very definition of brooding.”

Tiernan’s voice was clipped. “I’m well ahead on all my work. There’s no peace here. I simply went out for some air.” He went back to his newspaper. It was best to change the subject when he was like this.

I turned to Claude. “Did you know that we’re both fugitives now?”

“What? Don’t tell me you’ve done something illegal. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

“Too late. They came here for me yesterday.”

“Oh, go on! You’re not serious!”

“I am! A detective came looking for me yesterday afternoon. Gave his card to Stevens and everything.”

“Sounds like Bernard Kraay. Beastly weasel of a man. Don’t let him get it in for you the way he’s got it in for me, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

“It wasn’t Kraay. This was a Detective Sergeant Aage Nielsen. He didn’t ask anything about you at all, but he knows we’re friends and he knew perfectly well what it is I do for a living at the college.”

“Detective Sergeant Aage Nielsen,” said Tiernan, at last looking up from his paper. “Sounds as though things have gone up a notch at the station. What did he want? You don’t even work in archaeology.”

“He wanted me to translate something for him, something to do with the missing jet wolf.” Suddenly I recalled my promise to Nielsen. The detective had assured me the matter had nothing to do with Claude, and I now felt it would be dishonourable of me to discuss the letters like this. I tried to wind the conversation up as quickly as I could. “Latin Church letters. Nothing important. He’s barking up the wrong tree, I think. He didn’t realise how irrelevant they were.”

“What have they got to do with the wolf, then?” asked Claude.

“One of them describes it. But it’s pretty much the same description in the newspaper article you wanted me to read.”

“Oh, you’ve read it. What did you think?”

“It makes the entire college look foolish.”

Tiernan agreed and disappeared into his newspaper again. Claude looked uncharacteristically serious. “You know, it’s strange - one of the few things Deborah did mention on the drive concerned a jet artefact of some sort. She said that yesterday morning she treated an antique-shop owner who was nearly murdered in his store. The attacker was an old man, a frail-looking chap who somehow had the strength to pick up heavy objects and hurl them at the owner. There were plenty of witnesses. It took four men to drag him away.”

“What happened to him?”

“Don’t know. But here’s the queer thing: before he went mad and started trying to murder the owner he was yelling at the top of his lungs about a jet piece of some kind. He kept screaming, ‘You’ve got it, I know you do …’ ”

“Do you think it’s our jet wolf ?”

“Well, who knows? It’s an antique shop, it could be anything made of jet. Not the most uncommon sort of jewellery stone.”

“Sounds as though the old man very badly wanted whatever it was.”

“Yes, it does. Very badly.”

“Which antique shop was it?”

“Lyndon’s Antiques on Lyon Street.”

“Oh yes, I know that one. Deborah and I went there last year to see if they could fix an old chair of hers. Run by a rather large man from what I remember.”

“A large man - almost killed by a old waif. Doesn’t stack up if you ask me.”

“No. What happened to the owner?”

“Terrible bruising about his body, several deep cuts on his face, according to Deborah. The old man smashed a cello on him.”

“A cello?”

“An antique cello. Is there anything in today’s paper on that, Tiernan?”

Tiernan shuffled the newspaper sheets. “No. Nothing.” He looked at Claude’s clock on the mantle. “Let’s go. It’s getting on.”