James Becker - The Messiah Secret

Angela flicked through the contents briskly, then shook her head. ‘No lost parchment,’ she said sadly. ‘That would have been too easy, I suppose. This seems to be a collection of old bills and invoices, and also some of Bartholomew’s expedition notes.’ She held up several sheets of paper covered in small and neat handwriting. ‘I’ve spotted a couple of references to Egypt already.’

‘What about the photographs?’

‘Just pictures of the two paintings Bartholomew sold. Interesting, but not helpful.’ She shrugged. ‘Back to work for me, I’m afraid. But do keep poking around. You never know what you might find.’

It was early afternoon, and Bronson and Angela had just finished their sandwich lunch. There was an extra sandwich in the fridge, and this would be Bronson’s lonely dinner after the rest of the team had left him in the house at the end of the day.

‘Look what I’ve found in one of the attics,’ Bronson said, walking back into the kitchen carrying a dusty cardboard box. The label says “First C Corinth”, with a question mark after it.’

Angela walked across to where Bronson was standing.

‘If that label actually relates to the contents of the box, it could be quite interesting,’ she said. ‘A first-century Corinthian piece would be a lot more exciting than most of the stuff I’ve seen so far. Let me have a look.’ She lifted the newspaper-wrapped object out of the box. The pot was shaped like a tall water jug, and Angela stood it on its base while she cut the string and removed the wrappings.

‘Coffee or tea?’ Bronson asked, but got no response. When he turned round to look, Angela was staring at a tall, wide-necked, blue-green vessel with a single handle and some kind of animal images inscribed in horizontal bands around it. There was a scatter of paper and bits of string lying on the table nearby.

‘If I had champagne here, I’d drink that,’ Angela said at last. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘I’m just a simple copper, remember? What is it?’

‘I think — in fact, I’m almost sure — it’s a proto-Corinthian olpe .’

‘Really? It just looks like a big green jug to me.’

Angela came over and gave him a hug. ‘What you’ve just found is very rare, especially in such excellent condition. I’ve seen one similar one, but it’s in the Louvre in Paris. An olpe is a wine vessel. This one’s decorated with registers — these horizontal bands — of what I think are lions and bears, and it probably dates from around six hundred and fifty BC.’

‘Not first century, then, like it says on the box?’

Angela shook her head decisively. ‘Definitely not. It’s over half a millennium older than that.’

‘So it’s valuable, then?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m not an appraiser, but this could be almost priceless!’

‘So do you want me to bring the others down?’

‘Others?’ Angela went white. ‘There are others?’

Bronson smiled at her. It felt great to be working together again. ‘I’ve no idea. There are a few more cardboard boxes up in the attic. I’ll go up and have another look, if you like.’

Bronson returned about fifteen minutes later carrying another dusty box.

‘No other jugs, I’m afraid,’ he announced, ‘but I did find some bits of a broken pot.’

He placed the box on the table, opened it and pulled out a number of shards of reddish pottery which he spread out in front of Angela.

She dragged her attention away from the olpe with apparent difficulty and glanced at the fragments.

‘Now those probably are first century,’ she said, ‘and most likely Middle Eastern in origin.’

She picked up a couple of the pieces and fitted them together in her hands. They matched exactly.

‘It looks like these might all be part of the same vessel,’ Bronson suggested.

Angela nodded and picked up a fragment that looked as if it had formed the neck of the broken vessel. In it was a small hole, and in a band around it was a dark brown deposit. Angela picked at this with her thumbnail thoughtfully, then picked up another couple of the broken shards, piecing them together in her hands to reform the neck of the vessel.

She pressed the pieces together firmly. A few slivers were still missing but she’d found enough of the neck of the ancient pottery jar to see that the hole on one side of it was exactly matched by a second hole opposite. That, and the band of darker material, told her all she needed to know.

‘There’s a hole driven through both sides of the neck where it’s narrowest,’ she said, ‘and this darker material seems to be some kind of sealing putty or resin. According to Richard Mayhew, who seems to have taken quite a keen interest in the Wendell-Carfax history, the vessel Bartholomew found was secured with a pin driven through the neck, a pin that went right through the wooden stopper, and the outside was then sealed with some sort of putty. And this,’ she finished, ‘could well be the remains of that first-century pot.’ She paused. ‘There was nothing else up there, was there?’

‘Just the usual sort of rubbish that seems to migrate to any attic. Look, I’ll need to stay awake tonight, so I should get my head down this afternoon. The first bedroom on the left at the top of the stairs still has a bed and mattress in it. Can you come up and wake me about half an hour before you all leave?’

Angela looked troubled. Although she’d eagerly embraced the idea of Bronson staying at the property overnight when he’d first suggested it, now that the evening was approaching she was feeling markedly less certain that it was really such a good idea.

‘Are you sure you want to do this, Chris? I mean, suppose there are half a dozen intruders, all armed?’

‘Then I’ll lock myself in the loo and dial triple nine on my mobile,’ Bronson said. ‘But most burglars operate alone, and they almost never carry weapons, because the penalties for being caught with a knife or a gun are so severe.’ He put his hands on Angela’s shoulders and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘If I think I’m in danger, I promise I’ll put on that suit of armour that’s standing in the hall.’

6 p.m. Angela and her museum colleagues had left, and Carfax Hall was completely silent.

Chris Bronson walked through to the kitchen and clicked the switch on the electric kettle. Coffee, he knew, would help him keep alert. He’d have no trouble staying awake until well after midnight — he’d always been a late bird — but staving off boredom and sleep in the early hours of the morning would be more difficult.

He’d establish a routine, and prepare the house for his coming vigil. At night, sound travels further and more clearly than during the day because of the absence of other noises to interfere, so there were things he needed to do. The first was to go round the entire house and open every door to allow him to enter any room as silently as possible — a creaking hinge would be an obvious giveaway.

He started on the ground floor, checking that both the front and back doors of the house were securely locked. Then he walked through each room in turn and opened all the internal doors wide. Some he had to prop open because they were fitted with self-closing hinges, but there were plenty of boxes he could use.

He walked up the wide staircase and repeated the process on the first floor, and then on the attic floor above that. Back on the ground floor, he checked that the cellar doors were also open. There were two doors, one leading to a wine cellar that appeared to have been emptied of its contents, and the other to a general-purpose cellar full of various sorts of household junk, and which also housed a large and clearly elderly central-heating boiler.