Читать книгу The Wolf Letters - Will Schaefer - Страница 7

“… the dark death-shadow drove always against them,

old and young;

abominable he watched and waited for them, nightlong

walked the misty moorland.

Men know not where hell’s familiars fleet against their

errands!”

Beowulf, c. 700 AD

August 26th, 1936. A suffocating morning. Heat - awful, inescapable - had returned to my patch of southern England for the sixth day in a row.

The sun was a powerful and hated foreigner to us. Thin, milky clouds were perishing above the warming city. Long, sharp church-spire shadows retreated from the playing fields of Allminster University. A blue haze slowly cooked from the leaves of my college’s oaks, elms and beeches. The old city baked like a Roman tile.

No wind. From the window of my stifling college office, I could see the air begin its shimmering ascent from Stafford Road. I heard insects - hundreds, thousands of them, chirping like fanatics of the heat.

It would be noon in three hours. By then the carthorses would be loping, miserable and thirsty. The city’s trams would clang and clatter over softening rails. Soot and smoke from factories on the outskirts of the town would settle in a grimy shroud upon its centre and the birds would leave the hedges for the deeper shelter of the trees.

I let out a sigh. It was hard to concentrate, not least because of the weather. For two hours I had struggled with the lecture I was due to read at tomorrow’s scholars’ conference. I caught myself rubbing my eyes, stretching my face with my fingers and decided that my lecture, “Anglo-Saxon Poetry and Historical Fact: A Study of The Battle of Maldon“, would have to wait a few minutes.

I lit my pipe and watched the blue smoke drift slowly out through the open window. Feeling myself relax a little, I permitted my eyes to wander. Monday’s edition of The Allminster Telegraph lay on my desk, where Claude had left it for me. The missing artefact … this was big news around here. The whole college, especially my two closest friends, archaeologists Claude Pownall and Kenneth Tiernan, had been talking about little else.

The Allminster Telegraph

Monday, August 24, 1936

Artefact Stolen from Local College in

Daylight Robbery

An irreplaceable artefact on loan from Univerzita Karlova in Prague, Czechoslovakia, has been stolen from the Archaeology Department of St Matthew’s College at The University of Allminster. The robbery, described as “brazen” by the police, took place late on Thursday afternoon.

The item - a wolf-shaped jet ornament thought to have been made in Whitby during the seventh century - was discovered along with several other artefacts in January this year during construction of a dam one mile north of Brno, Czechoslovakia, 110 miles south-east of Prague. Professor Zdenek Sedlacek, a senior archaeologist at Univerzita Karlova, identified the ornament as “early Anglo- Saxon” and loaned it to Allminster University earlier this month as part of a goodwill arrangement between the two institutions. The jet wolf had been in Allminster University’s possession for a mere four hours before it was stolen.

Mystery: Thief Leaves Other Artefacts

Untouched

When asked by the Allminster Telegraph about the jet wolf’s potential value to thieves, Professor Leonard Callaghan, Head of St Matthews’ Archaeology Department, commented:”The artefact in question is an extremely rare and valuable specimen of Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship in excellent-quality Whitby jet. Given its near-perfect condition, I’d say it would fetch up to a thousand pounds on the collectors’ market.

“The theft is puzzling,” continued Professor Callaghan. “The ornament was only one of many valuable items stored at the college, and I cannot say why none of the other artefacts was touched by the thief, despite several of them being just as small and easy to steal.”

According to police, the jet wolf was last seen in the department’s locked cabinet at approximately 3:15 pm. But by the time Mr Claude Pownall, a don at the department, entered the Artefact Room at approximately 4 pm, the cabinet had been smashed open, and the ornament stolen.

Early this morning, Detective Inspector Bernard Kraay, of the Allminster Police, stated: “There are no definite leads at this time. I believe this to be a well-organised theft. The jet wolf is exceptionally valuable, and I am convinced that it will command a high price on the collectors’ market. My enquiries will continue.”

Anyone with any information is urged to contact Detective Inspector Kraay at the Allminster Central Police Station on Crawford Road.

I closed the paper. Everyone - those nosy porters and scouts, the lecturers and secretaries, those smug, sherry-quaffing old dons - everyone blamed poor old Claude. Detective Inspector Kraay had already visited the College several times, and seemed to be paying particular attention to him.

Ignoring my work, I smoked at my desk for a few moments more, wondering how old Claude was getting on. It was Term break, he was most likely out somewhere with his girlfriend, Anne, or sneaking a pint with Tiernan. As long as he stayed away from St Matthew’s, he’d probably be fine.

I persisted with preparing the lecture, eventually settling into a productive rhythm and working right through lunch into the early evening. I was just about to go back to my digs to get ready for Hall when there was a knock on the door. It was Stephens, the porter. He was sweating and out of breath.

“Sorry to interrupt you, sir.”

“That’s all right, Stephens. What is it?”

The porter glanced behind him into the corridor, leaned forward, and whispered, “I think it’s about Master Claude, sir.”

“Come in, Stephens. Shut the door.”

Wiping his forehead, the porter closed the door and took a breath. “A policeman came in today asking for you. I took him to your rooms but you weren’t there. He was in a hurry, sir, a definite hurry, said he had to go. Gave me his card and told me to find you.”

I took the card from his outstretched hand.

Detective Sergeant Aage Nielsen

Allminster Central Police Station

88 Crawford Road

Allminster

Allminstershire

Telephone: Allminster Police 811.

I turned it over and saw a note in small, neat handwriting.

25-8-1936. 4.15 pm.

Mr Haye,

You will please telephone or visit me personally at the station as soon as you are able. The matter is extremely urgent.

A. Nielsen.

I pocketed the card. “Thank you, Stephens. That was kind.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

Within the hour, Stephens would tell everyone he knew that there had been a policeman looking for me. Bloody porters.

I studied the card more carefully, noting Aage Nielsen’s rank. I didn’t know much about how the police operate, but I did know that both were fairly high-ranking, and that Detective Sergeant Nielsen outranked Detective Inspector Kraay. Was Claude in more trouble? I should speak to him first, I thought. Make sure he at least knew they were still looking into the theft, but mostly, make certain that I wouldn’t say anything that compromised my friend.

But by six o’clock, I hadn’t found him. He was not in his digs, nor in his office. Tiernan, who had the rooms next door, hadn’t seen him all day.

It couldn’t be helped. I couldn’t put my visit to the station off, or the wagging tongues of St Matthew’s would suspect that I had something to hide. I went out to the rack for my bicycle and set out for the station on Crawford Road.

* * *

Allminster. The city of one hundred and ten thousand souls shimmered all around me as I cycled through the heat. This is a university town, much like Oxford or Cambridge, and the city wears a whole millennium of fascinating past. There are the high sentinels of medieval steeples, unmoving wardens of the lichen-spotted gravestones at their bases. There are the regal, ivy-covered colleges that rise from wide lawns; stretches of cobblestone streets beneath stout-timbered Tudor shopfronts; the old bridges that run from bank to willowed bank across the Moore River. Scores of cart lanes trodden by centuries of traffic into rutted tracks. Tram wires. Ancient chestnuts, ancient spreading oaks and mulberry trees.

Allminster has generated every type of suburb. Near the city centre there is Molton, a narrow-streeted medieval quarter. Across the river is Langstone, a rundown beehive of cramped workers’ tenements and abandoned warehouses. And every evening our lawyers and bankers retire to their cocoons within the mossy gates and coddled gardens of their cottages in West Mawson.

It was 1924 when I came here. With both parents dead by the time I was eleven, I had been taken in by my bachelor uncle, Albert Haye, a clergyman. Albert could not have been more different from my father, though apparently they got on well. If it had been my father who had shown me to fight, and to seize life, it was Uncle Albert who had taught me how to pronounce Old English, to drink tea, and to study. It had cost Uncle nearly every pound he had to send me to Lancing College in Sussex, and I came through for him. I worked hard at my studies, was good at games, and won a scholarship to St Matthew’s College, Allminster. I’d been here ever since. My life was here: I still played rugger and boxed for my university, my work was here, and my best friends Claude and Tiernan were here.

Ever since our earliest undergraduate days, Claude, Tiernan and I had been extremely close. We were a triumvirate; a manly, drinking-hall-forged fellowship of esoteric jokes and shared tastes.

Claude was blond. From the Cotswolds. Extroverted for a scholar - he had been our ladies’ man until he’d settled down with Anne. Claude was the only man I referred to by his first name. Tiernan, who’d never liked his first name, and preferred us to use his last, was the best read and most intelligent among us. He was intense, handsome, dark. And as for me: I am the sportsman, the scholar-athlete.

* * *

Allminster Central Police Station was a large, square building erected just after the war. In this run-down area of Allminster it looked to be the newest structure for many blocks. There must have been fifty offices inside: the building was two storeys tall, municipal red brick with rows of clean, white-painted window frames spaced evenly along each level. Four wide steps led up from Crawford Road towards a swing-doored entrance.

As I neared, two black cars suddenly charged out of the station driveway and sped past, their urgent-faced, uniformed occupants presumably on serious police business. More policemen were out the front, smoking and talking, some in uniform, some not. I was surprised: this was Tuesday evening, but the station looked intensely manned, as though the police could not dare to relax their grip on Allminster.

I leaned my bicycle against the wall by the steps and made my way inside, wondering what on earth I was doing there.