George Deakin watched his blood ebbing away, spilling over the first step where his head lolled, then edging towards the second, then down, by degrees, to the landing below, where it pooled into a kidney-shaped lake in the centre of which sailed the reflection of the full moon. He would die, he now knew, enjoying that double vision: the moon beyond the staircase windows, moving between the mullioned glass panes, and the moon on the mirrored surface below, where his lifeblood lay: a colourless moonlit scene, like the paintings on the walls above.
It was an odd place to die. At the top of the stairs on a moonlit night, with a stomach full of the dining hall’s sumptuous leftovers, and dressed in his favourite, freshly laundered, underbutler’s jacket. Had he survived the Somme, the mud-caked horror of those three endless days, for this? He licked his lips and tasted illicit brandy, thinking of his mother pouring cool water from an enamel jug.
He felt a fool, dying like this, on the wide polished floorboards of the Long Gallery. All his life he had let superstition guide his hand, except tonight. He’d been watching the moon rise after serving dinner, standing alone on the far side of the bridge over the moat, enjoying a cigarette before locking the doors, when the unexpected memory of the trenches had returned: the sound of the bayonet slicing through the brown army uniform and grating on his ribs, and the warm rush of the blood over his chest, and down into his breeches. He’d not relived the moment for nearly a quarter of a century, but it had come then, on a moonlit night in Norfolk. The day he should have died: 2 July 1916. And now, the day he would die: 10 August 1944. He looked at the hall clock as the hour chimed 3.00am.
By 1.00am the house had been silent, a dog in the village barking on the breeze. He’d locked the main gates, the downstairs stairwells, and the watergate. Then, the keys grating at his thigh, he’d climbed to the Long Gallery to lock the door out onto the roof. He’d learned to walk silently in the house at such times, past the bedrooms of the sleeping guests, up the central staircase to the upper storey. A life of service unseen. So he’d heard their whispered voices from the landing, but had climbed on, pooled in the light of the silver candlestick with the black ebony ring which he held at head height. And when his footfall creaked on the final step they’d frozen: half the pictures already down and one thief kneeling, running a penknife around the edge of an oil canvas to free it from the heavy gilt frame.
Stupidly he’d walked forward, outraged ‘You’ve no right,’ he said, placing the candlestick down on the table by the door and moving to the centre of the room. When the blow struck from behind, and the candlestick fell to the floor, he turned and saw the horror in the eyes of his assailant, a look he’d seen before in the trenches. He felt the deep-seated, internal impact – like the sound of rocks being rolled by the tide. There was no pain, just a sensation on his left side as if he’d been sitting, half-turned, in front of an open fire: a tingling warmth and a deep numbness.
Still standing, but skewed now, with his weight on his right foot, he edged round to face his assailant and remembered thinking that such dark oiled hair was already a cliche, even out in the wilds of Norfolk. And did he know the man? Surely he’d seen him out on the Home Farm, perhaps that harvest time? The man had blood on his raised hand, and George thought how thick and sticky it was, to hang like that in gouts. Then something flooded into his eye and he pushed it away and examined the blood, still black in the monochromatic moonlight, as if it belonged to someone else. He went down then, his spine collapsing as his nervous system shorted out.
They’d been gone an hour now. He had tried to cry out but the effort had produced nothing, a whimper perhaps, barely audible. Mabel would be asleep by now, she’d been working in the kitchen at dawn preparing the feast, so she wouldn’t miss him until sunrise. There was still no pain, and he wondered if he could live without blood long enough to see her again.
His head was on its side, the blood not yet quite dry. He’d never liked Sir Robyn’s collection, and he was perversely pleased to know that if he was going to die, at least the thieves had got away with everything. Those dreary moonlit scenes, so lifeless – except for one, the one with the shepherd and the swirling nightclouds. That had been his favourite, the one that gave him pause each night at the end of his rounds. How pleasing that this, the last scene of his life, should be moonlit too.
The pool of blood had reached its fullest extent. His body, bloodless, shuddered. And in the final seconds of his life he remembered what he should have seen: the still-wet footprints by the Watergate.
Friday, 22 October
8
Audrey House stood at the end of the High Street like a tombstone, a narrow four-storey stone frontage enlivened only by the carved epitaph on an otherwise plain plaque: THO. ALDER & SONS, FUNERAL DIRECTORS AND MONUMENTAL MASONS. Four Victorian ecclesiastical lancet windows marked the floors. Dryden, who found the concept of a monumental mason endlessly amusing, imagined the giant within bathing its feet in formaldehyde. Professor Azeglio Valgimigli stood on the whitewashed steps, immaculate in a full-length black overcoat with astrakhan collar. Even in the gloom of the inevitable early morning smog his gold wedding ring gleamed.
The playful autumnal mist of dawn, which Dryden had watched sipping coffee on the deck of his floating home, had thickened alarmingly, the white phlegm darkening with the blue-grey infection. He had slept fitfully, tortured by the nightmare of the tunnel in the sand. The morning had brought relief from the aimless drift of sleep: an appointment, and a chance to find out more about the man uncovered in the camp tunnel. It was 8.30am and shops were beginning to open reluctantly, old-fashioned awnings being eked out to offer protection from the moisture in the air. Electric light spilled out on the glistening pavements as if it was closing time. Professor Valgimigli was reading The Crow, Dryden’s story about the archaeological dig across the foot of the front page.
‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity,’ said Dryden, getting his retaliation in first. He felt confident anyway, he’d rung the professor that morning to request an interview to follow up the chariot find and to wrap up the body- in-the-tunnel story. Valgimigli had offered to meet him at Alder’s, an invitation he’d accepted with alacrity, delighted to get such an early opportunity to inspect the funeral director’s business, given Russell Flynn’s allegation that Alder was not averse to some trafficking in stolen artefacts.
The Italian shrugged, double-folding the paper under his arm with exaggerated neatness. Not for the first time Dryden wondered if the archaeologist was happily married, finding it difficult to imagine anyone penetrating his cool, brushed exterior.
‘Sorry about the weather. Not very Tuscan,’ said Dryden aimlessly.
‘’S OK. Neither am I,’ said Valgimigli, stepping smartly up the steps.
Dryden felt he’d a made a series of false assumptions which might matter, but typically let the subject drop.
