Chapter Eight

  General Meeting Extraordinary

  * * *

  ‘This, however, is not making progress with my story.’

  Emily Brönte

  « ^ »

  THE circulating of the agenda of the Extraordinary General Meeting of the Nodding Archaeological Society had the effect of bringing all the members, except Peter Downing and Michael Gold, for whom term was not over, to a screened-off section of the Great Hall of the Castle Museum.

  When certain matters concerning the running of the Society had been settled, Downing went to his office to bring Dame Beatrice and Laura into the meeting to discuss the arrangements for Sir John’s visit.

  ‘Sir John has offered us the last Thursday in this month or the first Thursday in July,’ he said, when he had introduced Dame Beatrice to the Society (as such – she had already met the members individually). ‘Has anybody any preference?’

  Vindella and the two women teachers spoke at once and together. The first Thursday had been fixed for the inter-schools’ sports day, the proceedings of which were unlikely to be over much before half-past six.

  ‘And then there’s the clearing up and chivvying the youngsters into changing and clearing off home,’ added Vindella. ‘It’s the heck of a day for us. Even if it weren’t, we’d never have time to get home for a meal and a bath and get along here by eight o’clock for the lecture, so, if it’s all the same…’

  It was all the same, he was assured. The meeting agreed that Sir John’s offer of the last Thursday in June be accepted and the secretary was instructed to get the letter off without delay.

  ‘What is Sir John going to talk to us about? Has he said?’ enquired Gold, looking up from his scribbled notes.

  ‘At my special request,’ Dame Beatrice replied, ‘after his film and commentary on recent work in the Near East, he is going to talk about excavations in chalk and limestone.’

  ‘Pretty wide, isn’t it?’ asked Streatley.

  ‘Intentionally so, I expect,’ said Downing, raising his eyebrows as he looked at Dame Beatrice.

  ‘It embraces everything from cave art to the Maiden Castle system of Iron Age defences,’ she replied.

  ‘With an incursion into Neolithic flint mines, I take it,’ said Francis Bell. There was an uncomfortable silence until Bell added nervously, ‘I was only going on what Dame Beatrice said just now – that it was at her special request that he had chosen his subject.’

  ‘You are right, Mr Bell,’ said the witch-like old lady. ‘Neolithic flint-mines, including those well-known ones in Sussex, and then, of course, the East Anglian Grimes Graves and Pigmy’s Ladder will be referred to in the course of the talk.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Constance Rambeau. ‘I mean, I should have thought we’d all had enough of Pigmy’s Ladder for the time being – or haven’t the rest of you been grilled by Dame Beatrice?’ She smiled disarmingly and Dame Beatrice leered beatifically in response. Downing forestalled a mass response to the question by gesturing, and then rose to his feet.

  ‘I think we may take it that Dame Beatrice has questioned every member in turn,’ he said. ‘The only exceptions are the two boys who are still at school and who can be shown to have been nowhere near Pigmy’s Ladder when Breydon-Waters met his death there. I think, too, that we should ask Mrs Rambeau to withdraw the word “grilled” as being offensive in itself and by no means an accurate description of the way in which Dame Beatrice has performed her task – not a pleasant one, I am sure – of questioning us. She is attached, in her capacity of consultant psychiatrist, to the Home Office and is working on this distressing case of the death of our fellow member, Oliver Breydon-Waters, at the request of the County Police. I therefore suggest that if the murderer can be found as a result of her efforts—’

  ‘Oh, very well! Very well! Withdraw!’ cried Mrs Rambeau theatrically. ‘Scratch it out of your minutes, Mr Secretary, for goodness sake! Dame Beatrice knows perfectly well that I only intended a joke! Really!’ She got up and rushed from the meeting.

  ‘Dear me!’ said Carfrae.

  ‘I’ll go after her. She can’t be feeling well,’ said his daughter.

  ‘No, I will,’ said Priscilla Clarke. Both immediately retired.

  ‘Good,’ said Vindella. He gazed around at the enormous and threatening bulk of the Norman architecture about him. ‘Now we can get down to brass-tacks. Much easier without the three lady members.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Downing.

  ‘I take it that, having settled Sir John’s date, and having been told the subject of the lecture, (although I should have thought we might have had some say about that), we’ve now reached Other Business on the agenda. And I want to say…’

  ‘You’re out of order,’ said Streatley. ‘We have to consider first what hospitality is to be offered Sir John. Has he given any indication of how long he can stay?’

  ‘He is to lunch with me at the Gauntlet,’ Dame Beatrice replied, in response to a glance from the president, ‘and then he has been invited to meet Mrs Breydon-Waters.’

  ‘Why?’ burst out Harry Glover. ‘Is it all part of the same put-up job?’

  ‘Yes, it is, Mr Glover,’ replied Dame Beatrice serenely. ‘Am I to take it that you object to my attempts to discover the identity of Mr Breydon-Waters’ murderer?’

  Glover subsided, with an angry mutter, the gist of which was that he objected to the washing of dirty linen in public. To the general surprise, as was evident, Bert Sansfoy took up the cudgels.

  ‘I believe Mrs Waters is a decent old mawther, then,’ he said. ‘That isn’t right she should be mizzled about with. That can’t help what her boy was like.’

  ‘And what was her boy like?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

  ‘A dirty, thieving, little old bastard,’ said Sam Brent, without heat, as one stating a known fact.

  ‘Chapter and verse, Mr Brent?’

  Brent caught his chief’s eye. Ronald Downing was registering strong disapproval.

  ‘No, I open my big mouth too wide,’ said Brent. ‘Think nawthen of it. Let’s get on with the meeting.’

  ‘Where were we, Mr Secretary?’ asked Downing.

  ‘Sir John is to lunch with Dame Beatrice at the Gauntlet and then he is invited to meet Mrs Breydon-Waters. Would that be in her own home?’

  ‘Yes, it would. It appears that Mr Breydon-Waters made a collection of objects which might interest Sir John. Mrs Breydon-Waters is most anxious to obtain Sir John’s opinion as to their intrinsic value. She proposes to sell the collection if it has any monetary worth.’

  ‘Monetary worth? Oh, it could hardly have that!’ exclaimed Vindella. ‘It would only consist of the odds and ends of flint implements and potsherds that we’ve all pocketed from time to time on the various digs – things which are so common that every little local museum has examples of them.’

  ‘For instance, Mr Vindella?’

  ‘Well, sling stones, scrapers, sickles, oyster-shell coinage, lance-heads, arrow-tips, fragments of “beaker” pottery and so forth. Haven’t we all taken bits and pieces from the sites we’ve excavated?’

  ‘By general agreement, of course,’ David Gold put in. ‘Always by general agreement, and only when, as Vindella says, the supply exceeds the demands of the museums.’

  Dame Beatrice made rapid notes, and glanced across at Laura, who, at a table just outside the circle of the meeting, was also taking notes.

  ‘This is most helpful,’ she said. ‘Do you remember in what year the Society was founded, Mr Downing?’

  ‘In my predecessor’s second year as curator here. Carfrae will bear me out. It was when that fellow Branwick turned up a bronze spear-head on his farm out Gossett way. Do you remember the date, Carfrae?’

  ‘Now, of course I do. We can look up the first minute-book to confirm it for Dame Beatrice, but it would have been in ’37, I fancy. I was a founder member, to the best of my recollection. Anyway, I’ll look it up.’

  ‘You’ll need the key,’ said Gold. ‘Is it handy, Downing?’

  ‘Hanging in my office. You might just see how Mrs Rambeau is going on. Never been the same since her husband died,’ Downing added, in an aside to Dame Beatrice, as Gold went briskly out through the enormously heavy Norman archway which led to a modern passage and so to the curator’s office. ‘Very sudden and sad affair. Fell down a lift-shaft. It was never completely cleared up how it happened. She’s been nervy and on the jump ever since.’

  Dame Beatrice made a slight sound which conveyed either an expression of sympathy or one of ironic doubt, according to the ear of each particular hearer, and Gold came back with the key, which he handed to Carfrae. It proved to unlock one of the exhibits in the form of a typical Georgian drawing-room which was built in the north-east corner of the Great Hall. On three sides it had wooden and glass screens so that visitors to the museum could peer in and look at the fireplace and the furnishings.

  Carfrae disappeared into this pseudo-room and returned in a few moments with two heavy, leather-covered volumes, which he handed over to Gold.

  ‘Here we are,’ said the secretary, when he had flicked over the first few pages of one of them. ‘The Society was inaugurated in September, 1937. – So you were right. Was there any particular reason, Dame Beatrice…?’

  ‘I am not certain yet. Do those books contain records of all the transactions of the Society?’

  ‘This one contains the minutes of the various meetings up to 1940, when we disbanded because of the war, and then from our reformation up to the annual general meeting of last year. This one,’ he tapped the volume he had not opened, ‘contains brief accounts of our various activities, with lists of finds. It is the earliest of such records. We possess two other similar books, bringing our researches up to date.’

  ‘Most interesting. I should wish,’ said Dame Beatrice, turning to Downing, ‘to consult these records at some time in the very near future.’

  ‘Certainly, if the committee have no objection.’ He looked around him.

  ‘As long as they are not removed from here,’ put in Carfrae.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Dame Beatrice, at once. ‘I am most grateful. They may be of the utmost importance to me. I wonder whether I might have access to them tomorrow afternoon?’

  ‘With pleasure,’ Downing replied. ‘And, if you like, I can close the Georgian room and you can work in there. The candelabra all work by electricity, so you will have plenty of light. Now, gentlemen, is there any other business?’

  ‘Mrs Rambeau is going to be taken home by Miss Clarke,’ Gold remarked. ‘Miss Carfrae is seeing them off and locking up after them.’

  ‘We always lock the doors at night during our meetings,’ Downing explained. ‘We once found a tramp camping out in the Panorama Room and nowadays, unfortunately, there is always a chance of rowdies coming in and creating a disturbance if they see a light and the doors are unbolted.’

  At this point Diana Carfrae returned to the meeting and asked brightly where it had got to.

  ‘It’s got to this,’ said Glover, ‘in my opinion: is Dame Beatrice prepared to tell us exactly how far she’s got in her enquiries?’

  ‘I agree with asking that, Mr Downing, sir,’ said Brent. ‘I take it we’ve wholly a right to know. We’ve answered a lot of questions and that seem as if we’re all under suspicion of bringing about Mr Waters’ ontimely end, so I believe that’s only fair we should be told how we stand.’

  There were slightly belligerent murmurs of assent. Dame Beatrice drew out a notebook from a capacious pocket in her skirt, surveyed her audience with an indulgent leer, and flipped over the pages.

  ‘I would not say that you are all under suspicion,’ she said. ‘What I would say is that my researches up-to-date have not given me a definite pointer to any one of you, or a complete alibi for anyone, either. The next thing I shall need to know, before I can eliminate any of you from the enquiry, is exactly where you were, and what you were doing, from Friday afternoon until Saturday midday, a fortnight ago last week-end.’

  ‘Police business, surely,’ growled the dry-stone expert, Chipping. Dame Beatrice nodded, slowly and rhythmically, and looked expectantly at him.

  ‘As you please, Mr Chipping,’ she said. ‘By the way, I shall require your services again, very shortly, at Pigmy’s Ladder.’

  ‘For why, ma’am? Not as I won’t oblige you.’ He added the statement in great haste to the question and made a curious little gesture which Dame Beatrice recognised.

  ‘Do Cotswold people believe in the power of the evil eye?’ she asked. Chipping scowled and did not reply. ‘I will answer your question,’ she went on. ‘I need to have some more of that dry-stone walling removed.’ She paused, waiting for questions from the meeting. To her great satisfaction, none came. ‘So now,’ she went on briskly, ‘to my notes. I have made a little progress, but, as you will hear, it is not enough. Not nearly enough to be of help to the police, that is. For my own purposes, it is both interesting and valuable. Here it is.’

  There was a slight stirring, shuffling and re-settling of her audience. Bert Sansfoy looked at his wristwatch.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Got to go. Early turn tomorrow, and mother, that don’t fare to be alone in the caravan after dusk fall. Good night, all.’

  ‘Good night,’ said a mechanical chorus of voices.

  ‘I’ll let you know if you’re bound for the lock-up tomorrow,’ said Chipping. ‘So long, Bert.’

  ‘You know, father,’ said Diana, ‘I ought to go, too. Mother won’t take the dog out on her own.’

  ‘The dog can stay for a bit. I daresay it won’t take Dame Beatrice long to tell us what we have to know,’ said her father, giving her a quelling, admonitory glance.

  ‘All right, then. But Mother will create,’ said Diana, settling back in her chair and taking out a cigarette.

  ‘Sorry, Diana,’ said Downing, with an apologetic smile. ‘No smoking in the museum.’

  Diana thrust her case back into her handbag, raised her eyebrows and glanced amusedly around her at the vast, stone-flagged, heavily-walled room.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The president’s word is law.’

  ‘It’s not my word. It’s the bye-law, my dear girl. You’d better tackle the Town Clerk about it,’ retorted Downing, a trifle testily. He, too, was longing for a cigarette. Diana shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Can’t we begin?’ she said. Dame Beatrice, well-versed in the reactions of audiences, felt that this one was politely (on the whole) but definitely antagonistic. For one thing, the members were afraid of what she might be going to disclose; for another, they were tired of their chilly, grim, imperfectly lighted surroundings and, in the case of at least five of them, there was the agonising consciousness that time was slipping by and the pubs would close in less than an hour and a half.

  ‘Bert Sansfoy done the dirty,’ muttered Chipping to Brent. Both sighed, having a clear vision of Alfred, darts in hand, pint at the ready, in the public bar of the Jack Cade. Brent nodded.

  ‘Trust him!’ he said. Then, in the same low tone, ‘What’s she going to talk about now?’

  ‘Lawyer’s talk. Nawthen to go on, so her’ll try to get some more out of we.’

  ‘Nawthen more to get out of me. Told all I know.’

  ‘Same here, but not all I can guess, I reckon.’

  Dame Beatrice looked at them and they were silent. There was an uneasy pause.

  ‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘it seems that Mr Breydon-Waters was not a popular member of the Society. He was considered to be snobbish, non-co-operative, unreliable and, in some respects, strange and somewhat irritating in his behaviour. He was a physical coward, a weather-cock and a picker-up of unconsidered trifles and of objects not so trifling. Would anyone care to enlarge on this unflattering description?’

  ‘No. That do be right enough, that do be,’ said Chipping, in the reassuring West Country burr that sounded oddly against the anxiously rising cadences of the East Anglian speech of Brent, and the educated accents of Downing, Gold and Streatley.

  ‘Then there is the other side of the medal,’ Dame Beatrice went on. ‘He seems to have been a good and devoted son, an excellent teacher and a useful man in handling a boat. Can anyone add to that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gold. ‘He was an inexhaustible man on a dig, keen as a terrier.’

  ‘If the terrier ’ad buried a bone,‘ put in Chipping, with the sly humour of his kind.

  ‘That brings me to my point,’ said Dame Beatrice, glancing at Downing as though to warn him that this was indeed the case. ‘It has been suggested that Mr Breydon-Waters had become a member of the Society chiefly for what he could get out of it. Is that the general impression?’

  ‘It isn’t mine,’ said Streatley, unnecessarily loudly. ‘I think Breydon-Waters was a dead keen archaeologist. He was as pleased as a child whenever we found anything interesting.’

  ‘I don’t quarrel with that view, as it stands,’ said Gold, ‘but I had the impression, at times, that not everything of interest went into the Society’s collection. Of course, I may be mistaken, but I thought, Streatley, that you were of the same opinion.’ So did the interested Dame Beatrice.

  ‘I had a similar impression,’ said Downing, ‘but I could never prove anything, and it is not my policy to probe. I cannot imagine myself challenging any member as to whether he or she had contributed every find to the general collection.’

  ‘Did you employ workmen on any of the sites?’ Dame Beatrice asked.

  ‘Never,’ said Carfrae. ‘Speaking as the treasurer, it wouldn’t have paid us. With but one exception,’ he inclined his head towards Streatley, who smiled, ‘we are anything but wealthy folk. We all have to earn a living and two of us have sons to educate. What we do, quite often, if we hit upon a site which has popular, as against scientific or historic, interest, is to enlist the help of volunteers. These work under our supervision, of course, but they work extremely well, especially the schoolboys and schoolgirls.’

  ‘Brought into action by Mr Vindella and Mrs Rambeau, no doubt.’

 

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