Philip Gooden - The Salisbury Manuscript

‘A clear distinction,’ said Helen. ‘I am so glad you are a lawyer, Tom, though others might consider it a rather dry profession.’

Thinking that this was more or less what Mrs Mackenzie had said to him, Tom pointed out, ‘The law was good enough for your father, Helen.’

‘Oh, he was a dry man. But we’ve wandered from the point. Did North and Canon Slater commit a crime in taking things from a burial chamber?’

‘Strictly speaking, they probably did. But the wronged party here is the Crown rather than the original owner of the property, and the Crown will not be very vigorous in pursuing a few bits of metal and flint, even assuming they have any value. Felix Slater for one wasn’t interested in these things because they might have been valuable but because they were evidence of past ages.’

‘Which is more or less what Mrs Banks said about her brother.’

‘Except in North’s case hunting hidden items had become a kind of obsession.’

By this time Tom and Helen had arrived at the western flank of Todd’s Mound. From here another path led off at right angles to the summit of the mound. They began the slightly steeper ascent, pausing for breath under a copse of beeches.

It was the sharp-eyed Helen who saw it. Something with a dullish glint which was not quite concealed under a pile of leaves below where they were standing. She bent forward and extracted a hip flask from the leaves. She turned it over several times.

‘It must be his.’

‘Whose?’

‘Andrew North’s. See here, Tom.’

On one side of the pewter flask a small set of initials had been inscribed, not professionally but neatly enough to suggest a careful hand.

‘A.H.N.,’ said Helen. ‘Who else can it be?’

‘This flask is North’s all right,’ said Tom, unscrewing the cap and sniffing at the contents. ‘He was called Andrew Herbert, I saw the names in one of the books at his sister’s. And she said that he carried a flask of brandy. There’s a little left in here.’

‘You said he “was” Andrew Herbert. You think he’s dead, don’t you, Tom?’

‘Most likely. A workman with a good reputation who starts to behave oddly, who absents himself for a long period without anyone catching a whiff of his where-abouts, one associated in some way with a churchman who has recently been murdered. Yes, Andrew North is dead.’

‘Murdered?’ said Helen.

Overhead the remaining leaves rattled in a sudden gust. Tom shivered but managed to turn it into a shrug. ‘I don’t know. Yes, maybe murdered.’

‘So if North’s hip flask is here, where is North?’

‘He could be anywhere. The flask might have fallen from his pocket as he was climbing up or down the hill.’

‘But it tells us he was here at Todd’s Mound.’

‘Or that someone was here. It might not have been North who dropped the flask.’

‘His murderer, you mean?’

Tom noted the controlled excitement in the way Helen referred to the ‘murderer’. He glanced sideways. She was still holding the pewter flask. There was colour in her cheeks. He leant across and kissed her.

‘Tom,’ she said half jokingly and only after a little time had passed, ‘what if someone is watching!’

And, as if on cue, they heard a heavy tread behind them, the sound of a person descending the hill. A person who was wearing leather leggings and great boots. In surprise, Tom and Helen sprang apart.

There was another watcher to this encounter. One who was — not by chance — in the vicinity of Todd’s Mound and who had seen the approach of two figures with a familiar outline. This individual took shelter behind a patch of bare brambles and observed the girl pick up an object from the ground. The flask was not easily identifiable from such a distance but the watcher knew what it was straightaway, since the flask had been taken from a dead man’s body and a swig taken from its contents. It must have dropped out of a coat pocket as the watcher was going downhill those few nights before. And now, in the present moment, a third person was added to the scene as the shepherd swung downhill and almost collided with the couple who’d just been spooning and were oblivious to the newcomer. The threesome, the shepherd, Ansell and the girl, exchanged a few words, more than a few words, quite a regular session in fact. After a time the couple turned away and continued their uphill progress while the shepherd kept going at a downhill diagonal, fortunately in a direction away from the observer. This person waited until Ansell and the girl were almost out of sight over the skyline before slipping from the cover of the brambles.

Tom and Helen didn’t speak again until they were inside the embankment at the top of the hill. It took them a moment to catch their breath and they rested, leaning on the walking sticks which belonged to Eric Selby. While they were climbing each was thinking of what the shepherd had said: that few people came to visit Todd’s Mound for pleasure and certainly not at this time of year. But that he had seen someone coming up this same path a few weeks ago, towards the end of the afternoon, and that he had particularly taken notice of the man on account of his shifty, uncomfortable look. The man had a bag slung over his shoulder and might have been an itinerant labourer, but the shepherd did not think so. The man struck a false note, as it were.

The shepherd, whose name was Gabriel as Helen quickly established, did not say all of this in quite such a coherent form or using exactly these words but rather the gist was teased out of him by Helen. To begin with, she smiled at Gabriel and showed him the pewter flask and wondered aloud whose it might be — those mysterious initials A.H.N. — and whether it would be possible to find the owner so as to return the flask, obviously a treasured item as the initials showed. And, by the way, had Gabriel seen anyone recently on these slopes? Tom noticed again what an assured touch Helen had with people. How she was able to speak naturally with them and gain their trust and find out what she wanted to find out. How she could be evasive with the truth (for example, she already knew whose the flask was). She didn’t even seem embarrassed that Gabriel had almost run into them while they were embracing. Of course, reflected Tom, the blonde tendrils of hair which curled down from under her sensible hat and the wide blue eyes might have something to do with it, especially where men were concerned. But the effect worked on women too. Mrs Banks had revealed things to Helen which she might not have done to Tom alone.

‘It must have been Andrew North,’ said Helen. ‘We know that he was in the habit of visiting Todd’s Mound after he worked with Canon Slater. And he disappeared from the house he shared with his sister at about the same time that Gabriel saw someone walking up here, someone looking shifty and uncomfortable. North the sexton?’

‘The shepherd has a good memory for the people he encounters.’

‘So would you, Tom, if you saw more sheep than people. Well, now we are here, what do we do next?’

They looked round at the bare interior of the plateau. It had a roughly rectangular shape, protected by ramparts of grass which had crumbled in places. There were a few shrubs and patches of bramble but no signs of human occupation, whether ancient or modern.

Helen and Tom hadn’t come out to Todd’s Mound totally unprepared. Helen had found a book in her god-father’s library which detailed the locations of some of the tumuli and other ancient remains to be found in the region around Salisbury. Little was known about Todd’s Mound (not even who the eponymous Todd had been) but it seemed there had most likely been entrances or gateways at both ends of the plateau, although a land-fall in the east had made access almost impossible from that side.