The Water Room

‘Not much. He was named after a balloonist. He fought in the First World War and was a War artist in the Second. Lived in Cookham, beside the river, became fascinated by the concept of resurrection. His paintings are odd, naive and eerie. Some are downright disturbing. He had a bit of a split personality, painting in two distinct modes, his realist pictures and his so-called heavenly-vision paintings. His style was very dynamic-you can see from these illustrations-but there’s a great sense of harmony in the compositions, even though the figures disturb. That’s about the extent of my knowledge.’

‘It seems an odd sort of book for a homeless man to lug about.’

‘Perhaps not; it could be rather comforting to carry a visual depiction of the Resurrection with you. I’ve never seen these before.’ She opened the first of the matching cloth-bound volumes. ‘Printed back in a time when ordinary men and women might wish to read about English art. Dreadful cheap reproduction, but rather valuable, I’d imagine.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘You don’t find too many records of these paintings and sculptures. A lot of stuff’s vanished now. It wasn’t valued much at the time.’

May watched as she traced the pictures with her fingers, as if reading messages hidden in the ink. ‘Anything else?’

‘They’re by minor artists, certainly, but what makes this set interesting is that all the art has a common connection.’

‘Really? I couldn’t see one.’

‘No reason why you would, darling. They haven’t been seen for fifty years. I think you’ll find that these pictures were all lost or looted during the Second World War. I’ve certainly never seen them gathered together in volumes like this. Some of them are very peculiar. Naive paintings so often are. An insight into the abandoned soul; amateur artists can develop highly personal visions as a response to their inability to communicate. Pity the second volume is damaged.’

‘Show me.’

Monica allowed the book to fall open at the centre, and he saw that a number of pages had been removed with a knife.

‘Check the index,’ he instructed her.

‘Hm. The missing pages contained the works of an artist called Gilbert Kingdom.’

‘Ever heard of him?’

‘Doesn’t ring any bells, but I can give you a few college websites to search. They might be able to help you.’ She took a notepad from her bag and jotted them down. ‘Use my password. You go and solve your crime, I’ll stay with my husband until he’s mended, and then perhaps we’ll talk again.’

42. SECRET HISTORIES

‘Ah, you’re back. Chyndonax Druida,’ said Bryant excitedly. ‘It was carved on the door of William Stukeley’s house in Kentish Town.’ He waited for a response, but there came none. ‘Look, I know it’s demanding, but please make an effort to follow this. It’s really important.’

‘All right, then explain.’

‘It’s a reference to an urn inscribed in France that was believed to hold the ashes of the Arch Druid of that name, one of the grand masters of Stonehenge.’

‘How do you know these things?’ asked May in some exasperation.

‘I looked it up in this.’ Bryant raised a moulting paperback entitled The Mammoth Book of Druid Lore. ‘The Victorians believed that the urn itself had a greater purpose. Lord Carnarvon tried to buy it from the French, but of course they wouldn’t sell. There was an immense fascination with Egyptian artefacts at the time. As you know, Carnarvon financed Howard Carter, the discoverer of the tomb of the Boy Prince Tutankhamun, and subsequently died, some believed as part of the “curse”. His supporters thought that the vase was modelled over a much earlier container that had been smuggled out of Egypt.’

‘Don’t tell me, let me guess,’ groaned May. ‘They thought it was the original vessel containing all the counted sorrows of mankind.’

‘Exactly, well done. So you see, it does exist, and now we have proof that the urn is linked to Kentish Town. Ask me what happened to it.’

‘I’ll bite, although I’m sure I’ll regret it. What happened?’

‘It was stolen from the Louvre two years after the unsuccessful purchase bid,’ said Bryant with an air of satisfaction. ‘The French government suspected one of Carnarvon’s pals of taking revenge for his death, but they had no proof. So it could conceivably have wound up in this vicinity, hence Ubeda’s need to enlist a local expert like Greenwood in his search.’

‘None of which helps us in the slightest when it comes to solving matters of murder.’ May felt old and tired. Bryant was starting to draw the lifeblood from him again, he could feel it.

‘You may say that, but I have a feeling that if we find the urn, we find our murderer.’

‘Why?’ May all but shouted. ‘Why must the two be connected? They were entirely separate investigations! We have no reason-no reason at all-to assume anything of the kind. Do you realize there’s not a single element of this investigation that’s built on empirical data? Do you have any idea how annoying you are?’

Bryant’s watery blue eyes widened with boyish surprise. ‘I don’t mean to be.’

‘I know you don’t, Arthur. I’m not sleeping well, that’s all. I should go home. Let’s face it, we’ve missed the deadline. We’ve failed.’

‘I’ll drive you.’

‘No offence, but your driving would really put me over the edge. I’ll get a bus.’

‘You might want to stay for a while,’ said Janice Longbright, entering the room without knocking. ‘There’s a lady here to see you, Arthur. A Mrs Quinten. She says she has the information you requested.’

‘Then show her in.’ Bryant made a half-hearted attempt to smooth down his unruly ring of white hair. ‘How am I?’

He turned to May for approval, like a schoolboy submitting to a neatness check. May shrugged. It was a long time since his partner had considered his appearance before the arrival of a woman. He smiled to himself. ‘You’ll pass.’

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing. Here’s your lady now.’

Jackie Quinten looked about her with obvious pleasure. ‘This is nothing like I imagined. Not like a police station at all,’ she beamed. ‘How lovely. It looks like somebody lives here.’

‘We do,’ said Bryant. ‘I’m thinking of opening up the fireplace.’

‘I miss real fires, don’t you? Worth the effort, I feel.’ She planted her ample rump in the chair beside Bryant’s. Nobody ever dared to do that; it was May’s chair. ‘There’s a lady in our street whose husband is a cartographic restorer attached to the British Library. I went round to borrow their belt sander, and while I was waiting for her to repack her collapsible attic ladder I thought about what you said, about the history of houses and the sort of people who lived in them, and I asked her if she’d ever heard local stories about strange events occurring in or around the flood years, specifically involving death or injury. She remembered a story about an eccentric old man who lived, she thought, in Balaklava Street. At that time the street was pretty rough-the police went around in pairs. The families of the men who had built the railways had prospered and outgrown their terraces, and as they moved out, poorer families moved in. Those families sublet their rooms, and the overcrowding and unemployment brought trouble-you know how it is.’

May reseated himself, beaming. It looked like Bryant had finally met a soulmate.

‘Anyway, some local kids got it into their heads that the old man was hiding a fortune somewhere, and beat him up trying to find its whereabouts. Unfortunately they kicked him unconscious and left him in the street while they searched his house, just at a time when the heavy rains were causing the roads to flood. The old man had fallen into a dip in the road where the cobbles had sunk, and as the water rose over the blocked drains, he