The Theft of Magna Carta (8 page)

“Frank,” she said, “you'll be all right. Just keep your nerve. You came to evaluate some pictures for Neil, to tell him whether you thought they were real or fakes. That's all. When you'd done your job you went back home. There's absolutely nothing to worry about,” she went on. “And Neil has a really big idea. I want a share in the proceeds, and then he and I can part company. Just be patient.”

“I know,” Caldicott said. “I should be. But I can't bear to think of you sleeping with that—”

“Don't talk so,” Sarah rebuked. “My body is mine, and I don't find it difficult to sleep with Neil or anyone who can give me a luxury trip like this. There's no love in it, don't you understand that? It doesn't mean a thing to me with him, but with you—” She broke off. “Have
you
been a celibate all your life? Even the past six months?”

She broke off, and there was no sound but his breathing. When he didn't reply she whispered: “Good night, Frank,” and rang off.

Caldicott felt as if Sarah's breath actually touched his cheek, his ear, as she said: “Good night, Frank.” He hardly heard the receiver go down and could not believe she had gone. “Sarah!” he called pleadingly, and repeated: “Sarah!” But she did not reply. He put the receiver down slowly, and sat very still, until suddenly he exclaimed: “It's impossible!” He paused again and then went on: “I mustn't let myself be obsessed by her.” He was silent again, then switched his thoughts. “No one in their senses would plan to steal Magna Carta.” He stood up and began to pace the large room with its oddments of furniture, some good, some worth practically nothing. He lived in this small flat alone and there was untidiness everywhere; hardly a surface without dust on which one could draw finger pictures.

He stood still, looking at an old print of London before the first great fire which had razed the city when the Salisbury Cathedral was already over three hundred years old; it was one of his treasures.

“Magna Carta,” he breathed. “Impossible!”

Yet he stared at the old print, and then spun round and took a book off a wide shelf:
Rulers of England.
He flipped over the pages until he came to a full plate picture: the Lincoln Magna Carta. On one side was the original York copy; on the opposite plate a copy of the translation, on what appeared to be parchment.

“It's impossible,” he breathed again.

It wasn't until later that he realised that for nearly an hour he had forgotten the police search for Linda Prell.

 

 

On his second day in Salisbury Roger West stood at the window of the King's Arms, a small hotel overlooking the eastern wall of the cathedral. Oak beams supported wall and ceiling, beams which had been placed in position over four hundred years ago. Not far along this same road, a main highway to the west of England, was the Hart Hotel, from which Linda Prell had disappeared. Two miles beyond the cathedral and the River Avon was the Rose and Briar, which he had not yet visited.

Towering above wall and buildings was the slender, graceful spire. He could almost hear Batten saying: “And believe it or not, a hundred years after the cathedral was built, another bishop came along and had that spire put on top. The original tower was as squat as any Norman church one. Anyone would have said there wasn't a hope of the spire staying put. But it did. Wonderful builders and engineers they had in those days. Anyone who tried to do what old Dick Farleigh did back in the fourteenth century would be called a fool.”

And there it rose into the sky.

There was magic in both the spire and the building, magic which lured him out of the hotel and along to Queen Anne's Gate, an entrance to the close only for pedestrians.

Beyond the old stone wall which surrounded the cathedral sweeping lawns were covered with huge patches of daisies and buttercups, already closing their petals, for the evening was chill. One great cedar tree lorded it over younger, smaller beech and chestnut and elm. But it was the building itself, so massive and yet so delicately wrought, in which the stone seemed to be part of a tight-knit lacery; there were the buttresses standing alone and yet part of a whole which had such grandeur. The arched windows, some of stained glass given brightness by sunlight which shone through windows on the far side, and the small spires – turrets might be a better word – seemed to point upward not to the sky but to the tower and its spire. Beyond and to his right were many houses of weathered red brick and some of stone, and gates of wrought iron. One was clad in a mass of wisteria which the sun caught and seemed to trap as if it were stolen from the sky.

Roger walked from this north-eastern corner toward the southern porch and the western doors, where the carved figures of saints and patriarchs had survived Cromwell's onslaught, softened in this place by a commander who had reverenced beauty and tradition as much as he had been loyal to the soldier of change. He passed the entrance to the cloisters, from which two boys came running, eight or nine perhaps, reminding him vividly of his own sons as they had been fifteen years ago. In the cloisters was more green beyond many delicate arches; a cedar of Lebanon and another tree he did not recognise stood on this lawn, branches intertwined like the fingers of lovers.

At last, reluctantly, he turned away from contemplation of the stone; and soon, away from the old houses facing the west entrance. He made himself walk back quickly, nodding to the security officer and the close constable, still helping the tourists who flocked here, guiding car drivers, answering the searching questions of hippy-like youths. He heard the security officer say: “I know they say there are four of them, but there are only three and a half, really – one was damaged by fire. And I've heard that the one at Lincoln was damaged when they photographed it by infrared . . .”

His voice faded.

Tom Batten had told him, Roger, of that and of much more when they had walked round, earlier in the evening. Love for the cathedral and for the Sarum Magna Carta echoed in this man's voice as it had in Batten's.

“There's a group of us who are worried about the safety of all the old manuscripts in the library,” Batten had said. “Why there's a Gallican Psalter there, written in Latin but with Saxon words between the lines. Would you believe it!” And Batten would not be satisfied until he had taken Roger into the cathedral and across to the library entrance, up the stone spiral staircase to the library itself. At one end of a long display case a group of people were listening to a very old woman who was talking of the Sarum Magna Carta with as much reverence as if she were praying. Whispering, Batten pointed to the psalter, in a triangular glass case with a thermometer beside it.

“That's to check the temperature,” he had said. “These old vellums mustn't get too hot or too cold.
Look.
There's the Saxon writing. Do you see? That was the language of the country then. Hardly anyone but Saxon scholars can read it, but
thousands
can read the Latin which practically no one spoke in those days.”

“How is it you know so much?” Roger had asked him.

“Always fascinated me even when I was a choir boy here,” Batten had answered. “And I've been one of the special security guards for years. A few of us take turns to keep an eye on the place at night. Why, I could show you . . .”

A message had come for Roger to call Scotland Yard and the library had closed a special late opening before he had been able to see the precious Magna Carta itself.

“It'll be back in the safe by the time we could get back,” Batten had said. “I'll show it to you tomorrow.”

When Roger had returned to the King's Arms it had been nearly seven o'clock. Now, it was almost ten.

Nothing sensational had happened at the auction; the Old Masters had not reached their reserve and would next go to London salerooms; but high prices had been obtained for the rest of the paintings, and Leech, who impressed Roger as very shrewd, had sold at least a dozen pictures from his own stock.

The Stephensons and Caldicott had been remarkable only by their absence.

Kempton was still out with a search party sweeping across some of the hills and through copses, because two farmworkers had reported a car parked off the road the previous day; and repeated, also, that the wind had carried the sound of a woman's voice as she cried: “No, don't, no!”

They had thought it was an unwilling woman who had taken too great a chance. When asked why they hadn't gone to investigate, one, a man of forty or so with a wind-reddened face and distance-calmed eyes had said simply: “No business of mine, was it? In any case I couldn't have got there in time to stop ‘un, even if he'd be stopped.” And then the eyes had crinkled and the voice had cackled: “Take more than that to stop me if I was anywhere near, that I'll tell you.”

Roger, drawn again to his room window, was thinking of that now.

It wasn't callousness; it was simply acceptance of the way of the world. If a girl went with a man she couldn't trust, then who was to blame for what happened? Another thought hovered at the back of his mind: that in this age of permissiveness, when comparatively few girls were virgins until their marriage, the old customs died hard. One was still shocked by rape; all his life as a policeman hadn't hardened him to that. And once a girl found the man she wanted, she used all the old tricks to get him to the altar.

Whatever the intellectuals and the pseudo-intellectuals said, marriage was still the ultimate aim of most young women. And men, for that matter. It was still the way of society, and if it changed, would change slowly and almost imperceptibly.

He turned back from the window.

That kind of semi-philosophical pondering would get him nowhere. He had this job on his plate, and the fact that he was away from London didn't alter the fact that he was obviously in charge. All eyes, then, were on him.

Did all eyes see what he sensed? That he had slipped up?

A whole day had passed with no progress at all, except that he had become familiar with local people and the local scene.

He had been accused much of his official life of working on hunches, and if he preferred to call them intelligent deductions, what did it matter? Hunches came in two kinds: the good and the bad. He had a bad one, now. At some stage in the investigation he had gone wrong. He wasn't yet sure how or where but was beginning to think it was over Caldicott and the Stephensons. Had they been involved he would have expected them to show some kind of panic, but they behaved normally. Caldicott was in his St. John's Wood flat, the Stephensons had gone on from Bath to Cheltenham, visiting picture galleries and antique shops on the way. They were due back in Bath tonight, for a sale next morning.

Should he have picked them up earlier? Should he at least have seen them himself instead of relying on others to tell him what they looked like? And should he see them himself, now? He went into a tiny bathroom, which had a shower, not a tub, and began to undress. He was stripped down to his underpants when the telephone bell rang. He turned back, without effort, muscular, lean, very flat at the stomach; he had a good body and was proud enough to take good care of it.

“West,” he announced.

“Kempton here,” the chief inspector said. “I think we've found something. At Gorley Woods, sir. A local man is on his way to pick you up.”

 

Gorley Woods was entrancing in the evening light. The sun caught the western branches and gilded the green and spread an eerie glow among the leaves at the top of the trees; and a gentle wind moved light and shadow, leaf and branch. It was high on one of the great stretches on the plain, at the top of a long climb from Salisbury toward Blandford, surprisingly near the road and yet hidden from it by a cutting in the crest of another hill. A dozen policemen, as many farmers and some newspapermen were gathered about, as well as ten or twelve youthful-looking soldiers. Kempton and Tom Batten stood by a slender tree, young compared with most of the beeches here, while policemen in plain clothes were searching the beech mast and the husks at the foot of the tree itself. New grass spots showed in sparse patches all about the roots, which spread evenly from the base of the trunk.

Kempton was on one knee, but stood up when Batten, at the trunk itself, called him. A newspaperman glanced round, saw Roger, and uttered his name; a photographer spun around and his flash went off. Roger reached the tree as Batten said: “It looks like ‘un.” He was peering at the trunk at chest height and Kempton was examining the spot just as closely. He took out a magnifying glass and went closer. As Roger drew up, Kempton said to Batten: “I think you're right.”

“About what?” asked Roger.

Both men glanced round, Batten startled, Kempton calmly; and it was Kempton who answered.

“It looks as if Prell was here and fastened to this tree, sir. There are several pieces of linen strands, I mean. She was wearing a loose-weave linen suit of those colours. Then look down here, sir.” He bent down again and Roger knelt beside him. “Do you see the scuff marks on the root of the tree just above the ground? They were almost certainly made by shoes with iron heel tips.”

Such marks were there – obviously they were freshly made. Roger studied the ground nearby. It was dusty close to the tree but fairly damp on the edges, although wind and sun had dried the dirt road from the highway. It seemed clear that someone had been standing here, moving his feet; scuffing the ground. Roger stood up and Batten held out his right hand with three strands of linen: a green, a yellow, and a brown.

“The bark's rough just here, sir,” he said. “If she was tied to it—” He broke off.

“Can we identify the fabric?” asked Roger.

“I can vouch for the colours,” Batten said, “and I
think
there's an identical suit only a smaller size at a shop in town, sir, in Salisbury. It would be easy to check.”

“Yes,” Roger said. “How did you find the spot?”

“A local estate agent going to Blandford and Dorchester saw a metallic blue Ford Capri coming off this track onto the main road yesterday, just after lunchtime. Two-thirty or so. He didn't think anything of it until he got back today and heard what had happened. So we searched the area. Two or three people have certainly been moving about just here, and a car was definitely here yesterday afternoon. One or two damp patches of soil show the tyre marks. Firestone F.100. Haven't found any other distinguishing marks, but photographs may reveal something.” Kempton rubbed his great jaw. “Not much doubt she
was
here, sir, so we'll have to concentrate the search in this area. Of course, if she was taken away in the car she might be hundreds of miles away by now.”

“Yes.” Roger looked at Batten. “Better search the ground nearby. Can we rig up some floodlights?”

“Oh, yes, sir! The army will help out with those.” Batten gulped. “Do you expect to find a grave?”

“All I know is that we have to look for one,” Roger said gruffly.

He left with Batten ten minutes afterward, with the precious linen strands in a small plastic envelope. Batten drove his own small Morris while Roger looked about the almost deserted fields and road with the sun behind them, bringing different and darker shades of green and brown. But he noticed very little, he was concentrating so hard on the problem.

Had
he gone wrong?

They reached the police station before he realised how far they had travelled, and went to a small office which was assigned to Roger for the duration of the case. Batten went straight to the telephone while Roger unfastened a large brown envelope addressed to him. Inside were small cards, each filled out with remarkably fine handwriting which sloped slightly backward. On each was a name and address, and Roger began to look through them. He found what should have been the top card, which read:

 

Notes on known visitors to Leech's preview of forthcoming sale at the Hart Hotel

 

“Is Mr. Murrow there?” asked Batten into the telephone. “Or Mrs. Murrow?”

There were seventy-one cards, the assessment stated, and forty-five had been identified by Leech as trade visitors or local residents. He had identified Caldicott but not the Stephensons.

“Good evening, Mrs. Murrow,” Roger heard. “I'm sorry to worry you. . . . Oh. Oh! I'm Tom Batten, of . . . Yes, that's right,
that
Batten.”