Our man in Camelot

be reported to the local coroner. But in any case the land owner has to give permission, you can't just dig where you like.'

'Well, supposing he did give permission?'

'There still could be a scandal.' Audley pointed to the box.

'And with this stuff there will be scandal, I can promise you that.'

'With that!' Shirley sounded incredulous.

'I think your husband understands.' Audley glanced at Mosby quickly. 'Archaeological discoveries can be front page stories in Britain—Fishbourne and Vindolanda were. And if… if this really did turn out to be the key to Badon—' he shrugged '—I don't believe in the King Arthur legend, but—'

'But one hell of a lot of people do, huh?' Mosby completed the sentence.

'Passionately. Lots of people have never heard of Badon, but there isn't a single person in this country who hasn't heard of King Arthur.'

'It'd be headlines, in fact?'

'The biggest. And there'd be hell to pay—there's going to be hell to pay.'

'But—hold on—' Shirley began hotly '—my husband didn't dig this up. He just kind of… inherited it, that's all.'

'Inherited it?' Audley frowned at Mosby. 'From whom?'

'Well, I was going to tell you—I started to. There was this friend of ours, Di Davies—he was a pilot in recon.'

Audley caught his wife's eye. 'Photographic reconnaissance,' he explained.

'That's right. There's been one extra squadron on the base for the last six, seven months—RF-4cs—what you call Phantoms, only these are reconnaissance versions of the ships the RAF flies… And Di Davies was a real Arthurian nut, he even called his ship the Guinevere II. He came to me for a check-up one day and saw I was reading Keller—Keller's 'Conquest of Wessex'—and we got to arguing about Arthur before I even had a chance of getting a look into his mouth. He said Keller was a no-account Kraut-lover and Arthur was the real thing. And what's more he was going to prove it.'

'And how did he propose to do that?' asked Faith.

'That's just what I asked him. I said fat chance he'd got of doing it when the British had been trying to do just that for years, and they'd got no place—what'd he got that all the historians and the archaeologists hadn't got?'

'And what had he got?'

Mosby looked at her. 'Well, for one thing he said he'd got the exclusive use of one Phantom, with a whole battery of cameras that can do things you wouldn't believe—forward oblique, low and high altitude panoramic, side oblique, vertical, automatic exposure control, image motion compensation, black and white, colour positive or transparency or infra-red, you name it, he'd got it. Plus all the flying time in the world as well as the know-how, he'd got that too.'

Faith started to open her mouth, but her husband forestalled her. 'So he could take good pictures, I don't doubt it. But if that's his material—' he stabbed a finger at the box '—is it?'

Mosby nodded. 'Yeah, I guess so.'

'Well, if it is he's come down to ground level.' He paused, frowning. 'You say you inherited it?'

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

'In a way.'

'What way?'

'What way…' Mosby sighed. 'Last time I saw Di was— well, it'd be about a month back, with one thing and another. I went States-side on a conference, then he had some leave and after that I rilled in at Alconbury for a spell when a couple of the guys were sick there. And then he was on exchange duty with the RAF in Germany, at Wildenwrath, for the NATO cross-fertilization programme—it'd be all of two months, wouldn't it, honey?'

'You didn't see him, and I didn't see you,' said Shirley. 'But I saw him.'

'That's the point. Go on, honey—tell it how it was.'

She shrugged. 'There really isn't a lot to tell. When Mose was away at Alconbury Di came to me and asked if we could store some boxes for him. You see, we've got lots of room and he was in a little cottage off the base where you couldn't swing a cat. He said he just wanted somewhere dry and safe, that was all.'

She shrugged again as though she found the repetitiofi faintly boring; and lapsed into silence.

'For God's sake—' Mosby exclaimed with a flash of simulated irritation '—that wasn't all. I told you: just tell it like it was.'

'Huh?' The look of incomprehension was pure Billy Holliday.

'The bet, honey, the bet.'

'Oh, that.'

'Oh, that—yes.' Mosby gave Audley an apologetic 'I-know-she's-beautiful-but-lefs-face-it-she's-also-dumb' lift of the eyebrow.

'You and your silly bet. I can't see why you make such a fuss about it, honestly.'

'Because it was for real, that's why.'

'Oh—phooey.' She scowled at him, and then smiled sweetly at Audley. 'Well, naturally I asked Di what was in