Only the last time he must have asked for a full list of what he'd bought—'as per your instructions' it says. And when he didn't turn up last week the bookseller just popped the latest thing in the same envelope and brought him up to date with the news.'
Anthony Price - Our man in camelot
Finsterwald nodded. 'Okay—so what?'
'Harry—' Merriwether spread his hands '—so this is probably the first letter Barkham ever wrote to him. If he called in every week, and paid cash for what he bought, there wouldn't be any need to write to each other. And the guys who cleaned this place out must have known that. They just didn't know there was a letter in the post.'
Finsterwald opened his mouth, then closed it.
'The guys who—? What guys?'
Merriwether waved his hand, for the moment ignoring him. 'I knew there was something wrong with this place—it's got a wrong feel to it, like 'who's been sleeping in my bed, man?'. Only I was dumb, and I just had to go looking for something that 'ud tell me I had the right feeling.'
'For Pete's sake—what guys?' Finsterwald pleaded.
'Who knows what guys? The ones who stopped Davies's mouth. The guys from Nijni Novgorod, maybe, I don't know. But for sure someone's been here before us.'
'How do you know?'
Merriwether pointed. 'That piece of paper you're holding tells me how. Because there's not one of the books on that list in this house but those five bird books—' He thrust four chocolate fingers and a chocolate thumb at Finsterwald. 'So where those books go? They didn't fly away like birds, man. 'And good luck with your continuing researches'—what researches? There's not one scrap of paper in his desk says he was researching anything, nothing… And you can't tell me someone who buys all those books doesn't make a single note 'bout what he's working on.'
Finsterwald stared at the list.
'There must be forty—fifty—books here,' he said finally.
'Not here now, there aren't. Just five—on bird-watching.' Merriwether's derision was unconcealed.
'And we nearly bought it, Harry. We came looking for a pilot who watched birds, and that's what we got, and that's what we were meant to get. Until the mailman delivered the mail.'
'But for God's sake—' Finsterwald lifted the list '—what would anybody want with
'Not to somebody, it isn't. Looks like the Major researched into the wrong piece of history.'
Anthony Price - Our man in camelot
Anthony Price - Our man in camelot
I
IT WAS LIKE they said: the seventh wave was often the biggest one.
The last big one had slopped over into the castle moat, smoothing its sharp edges. Then there had been six weaker ones which had all fallen short. And now came the fatal seventh.
Mosby had watched it gathering itself out in the bay. At first it hadn't looked much, more a deep swell than a conventional wave like its white-capped predecessors. But where they had broken too early and wasted their strength in froth, the seventh had seemed to grow more powerful, effortlessly engulfing the first fifty yards of the line of saw-toothed rocks to the left and only revealing its true nature when it burst explosively over one tall pinnacle which until now had remained unconquered.
As the pinnacle disappeared in a cloud of spray the castle-builder looked up from his work. For a second he stood still, the sand dropping from his hands, staring at the oncoming wave. Then he swung round and lifted up the toddler beside him and deposited her within the innermost walls of the castle.
Mosby took in the scene with regret. It wasn't just that the big Englishman had been working like a beaver for upwards of an hour getting the castle just the way he wanted it, but also that the end-product was a work of art the like of which Mosby had never seen.
It wasn't just a pile of sand, but a real castle, with inner and outer walls and regularly-spaced towers, each capped with a conical fairy-tale roof, rising to a massive central keep. There was a moat and a drawbridge complete with a barbican and a defensive outwork, all of which had been constructed to a carefully drawn ground plan which had been marked out in the smooth sand before construction had started.
In fact it wasn't only a real castle, but obviously an actual one—he had watched the man count off the towers one by one as though checking them in his memory, finally nodding in agreement with himself that he'd got it right. It was a good bet that somewhere, maybe not far from here, on some hill above some sleepy English town, he'd find a great grey stone pile, dog-eared by centuries of neglect, matching those walls and towers. And maybe once upon a time some highly-paid craftsman had built just such a model to show the King of England what he was getting for his cash.
The child's squeal of excitement broke his flash of historical inspiration. Defeat on the natural breakwaters of the rocky headlands on either side of the bay seemed to have concentrated the wave's power: it swallowed the last retreating remnants of the sixth wave and surged forward up the beach towards the castle.
The outer walls and towers were instantly overwhelmed, dissolved and swept away irresistibly as the rushing water encircled the castle, meeting in its rear in a triumphant collision on the site of the drawbridge.
For two seconds the child stood surrounded by the towers of the inner keep. Then, as the wave began to retreat, these last defences cracked and toppled outwards to be swept away with the rest. The ruin of the castle was complete. It was a goddamn pity.
As far as the child was concerned, nevertheless, the breaking of father's masterpiece was the making of the occasion, and presumably that was the nature of the deal between the two because he showed no sign of irritation as she danced in triumph on the wreckage.
Anthony Price - Our man in camelot
