A Spider in the Cup (Joe Sandilands Investigation) (2 page)

“Now—how may we best deploy you, Reginald? Why don’t you sit yourself down on that boat? Check it for rats and rough sleepers first. From there you can watch our antics with your usual jaundiced eye and stand by to be consulted. Perhaps before we hear the chimes of Chelsea Old Church behind us calling us to coffee, you will be planning a new chapter in the history of Londinium?”

All were now primed and ready and at the right pitch of eagerness to start. “Did you all bring a flask? Excellent! Well, let’s get at it, then. You know what to do.”

R
ED FLAG IN
hand, Colonel Swinton turned to the river to conceal his smile. In Hermione Herbert, the British Army had missed out on an effective field marshal. But she hadn’t been lost to them entirely. As a casualty of Cambrai, Swinton had, himself, encountered the full force of Miss—or, as she was then, Matron—Herbert’s efficiency. He’d noted her leadership qualities from his hospital bed and had always reckoned it was the ministrations of this angular, grey-eyed angel that had saved his life.

He’d watched her skilful disposition and motivation of her troops; he’d admired the cheerful way she’d snipped out the professor’s sting, rendering him not only harmless but even an asset. All was going according to plan though he would not relax his vigilance. The colonel was accustomed to taking responsibility for events and people, for quietly managing outcomes. So far, so good. No need at all for crossing fingers.

D
ORIS DA
S
ILVA
wasn’t experiencing the colonel’s sunny confidence. She sidled timidly to Hermione’s side and began to whisper. “Excuse me, Miss Herbert, but I really don’t like this place. It’s creepy!” She looked over her shoulder with what Hermione considered an irritatingly girlish show of fright. “There’s someone watching us. I’m not at all certain I can bear to work here.” She took a scented lace handkerchief from her pocket and put it under her nose. “And what’s that dreadful stench?”

“Just normal river smells, Doris. Oil mostly. With a dash of Lots Road power station effluent thrown in. Possibly a dead dog or two. Detritus of one sort or another. Brace up! You won’t notice it after five minutes,” she lied cheerily. Four years of military hospitals, blood, gangrenous flesh and mud had never accustomed her to the smell of decay. She woke on some nights with her nostrils still full of the ghastly cocktail that no dash of eau de cologne seemed able to dispel.

“Now come along, Doris—you’re trembling so much I’m not certain how we’ll ever know if it’s the hazel twig vibrating or you. Calm down and show me a steady pair of hands. That’s better! I’ll come with you and get you started. Here’s your marker.” Hermione scraped a line in the mud with the heel of her boot. “I see our handsome young architect has designed his own dowsing implement! Do you see? He’s abandoned his parallel rods and brought along that steel contraption he was describing to us. I wonder if he’s taken out a patent. Oh, look—he’s off already! Now, here’s a challenge, Doris! Let’s see if your honest-to-goodness hazel twig can outdo him!”

T
HE FORKED STEEL
and the forked hazel moved along methodically at a slow walking pace, advancing towards each other from opposite sides of the tide-smoothed mud flats. The wands
were held stretched out in front of the two dowsers in hands that grasped lightly, waiting for the inexplicable—but always shattering—upward tug or the sideways swivel.

After an hour, nothing more exciting than a metal-studded dog collar, a two bob piece and an ounce of rusty straight pins from the clothing factory upstream had surfaced. They’d been washed clean of the sticky black mud in a bucket of water thoughtfully hauled up from the river by Joel. Jack Chesterton, whose wand had located the pieces, was encouraged. “There, you see! I tuned my gadget to metal receptivity! And it seems to be working.” He looked with sympathy at Doris’s hazel twig and shook his head. “Not much point using what is essentially a water-divining device on a
river
bank, is there?”

Sensing ill-feeling in the ranks, the colonel chipped in. “I say—are we thinking a change of bowling might be called for?” he suggested cheerfully. “Beginner’s luck and all that? You never know! I’d love to have a go. Take up the twig and give Doris a rest? I shouldn’t much care to handle Jack’s contraption, however. It could well take my fingers off!”

“In a moment perhaps, Colonel. If there’s a gold sovereign anywhere about, Doris will home in to it, I’m sure,” said Hermione confidently.

And it was Doris who made the find.

As the sun slanted over the Albert Bridge, they heard a small shriek and turned to see Doris struggling to hang on to a hazel rod that seemed to be leading a demented life of its own. They hurried to her side and Hermione relieved her of the thrashing twig. Jack knelt and marked the spot by scratching a cross over it with the handle of his contraption.

“I say! Well done!” he said. “This really looks most interesting.” He bent his head and peered sideways at the patch of mud. “If you look at it with the light slanting behind it, you could almost imagine there was a ripple … an anomaly of sorts … Sorry! Trick
of the light, I’m sure … It’s smooth on top where last night’s tide has scoured it, of course, but … Odd, that … Shall we?”

Delighted that their moment had come, Sam and Joel took off their jackets, rolled up their sleeves, cracked their muscles and set to dig. Their shovel-spades, a country design carefully chosen for the work, sliced, scooped and heaved aside the heavy clods in an ancient rhythm. The lads had clearly come prepared to dig all day and were brought up short, not a little disappointed, when their spades struck something only a foot or so below the surface.

With a glad cry, Hermione moved in with her trowel. She was known to be a member of the Archaeological Society and a first cousin to a director of the British Museum. The others shuffled aside, giving her precedence—and room to operate.

Seven heads bent over the wet patch as the first gleaming surfaces were revealed, showing white against the black mud. At a signal from Hermione, Joel approached and carefully slaked the area with the contents of another bucket of water. The murky flow oozed away, revealing a pale arm. After a chorus of startled gasps, a silence fell and no one thought of telling Hermione to stop as the skilful movements of her trowel laid bare the remaining limbs. Two complete arms, two well-muscled legs and a torso lightly draped in a short, classical tunic were released to the sunlight by the action of Hermione’s whipping wrist, accompanied by carefully anticipated libations of river water from Joel. The digging pair worked on in harmony until a head appeared.

With a growl of distress, Joel put down his bucket, unable to go on.

Tendrils of hair curled about the neck and cheeks of the sleeping features. The shell-white ears were small and perfect. The straight nose was intact.

The delicate jaw, as the jaws of the recently dead will do, sagged open at the touch of Hermione’s exploratory fingers. Flesh still covered the bones but the image of the gaping skull below
broke through, striking a grotesque note and arousing in the living an ancient terror.

With years of medical practice guiding her, Hermione tugged at a limb, pressed the livid white flesh and turned the head again slightly to inspect the mouth. Her unhurried, professional gestures calmed her audience. A horrified curiosity kept them firmly in place, huddled around the corpse. Hermione’s voice was deliberately emotionless as she spoke. “Not a child. A young woman. Perhaps twenty-five or younger. No broken limbs or obvious wounds.” Her words were controlled, but encountering the glare of challenging eyes and a reproachful silence from all, she added, “Though I think we have all observed the … er … anomaly.”

All eyes were drawn to the right foot. Heads bobbed slightly as, once again, the toes were counted. One, two, three, four.

“Do you think, Miss Herbert, that one of the spades may have severed her big toe?” Doris whispered.

“No. I revealed the feet with my trowel. The toe was lost at the time of death, I’d say.” She examined the foot more closely. “A clean severance but no sign that healing had begun. Perhaps we’re looking at a suicide? Perhaps she fell off a boat and drowned? She’s not been dead for long.” She peered at the neck, frowned, and then eased up the fabric of the tunic with a delicate finger to check the abdomen. Spellbound, no one thought of looking aside. “I see no sign of putrefaction. I’d calculate two days, three at the outside.” She got to her feet. “No. Let’s not deceive ourselves. This is a burial. And, we must suppose, a clandestine burial. Murder? Most likely. We ought to inform the authorities at once. Colonel, could you …?”

“I noticed one of those police boxes up on the embankment. I can phone from there.” The colonel’s moment had come. He shot off, a man on a mission, Burberry flapping.

“Poor, poor little creature,” Hermione murmured. “She is, you see, rather small. No more than five foot two, I’d say.”

“And so white,” murmured Doris. “I’ve never seen a dead body before. I thought at first it must be a bird—a swan perhaps. You do see them on the river sometimes.”

Jack was whispering, round-eyed with shock. “Except that we didn’t hear her swan’s song. Not starting. Finished. Two days ago, you say? God, I feel such a fool!” He threw down his steel wand, his voice thick with emotion. “Here we are—mucking about like kids with our daft little devices! When, all the time she was … she was …”

“Nothing more we can do, I think. We’d better all stay exactly where we are and wait for the police,” Hermione said.

“Allus supposin’ they gets ’ere fast, miss,” said Sam. His gentle delivery could not dampen the drama of his next announcement. “Red flag’s under water. Tide’s racing up. I reckon we’ve got ten minutes afore she goes under again.”

The sound of Professor Stone’s voice caught them all in a state of uncertainty amounting to paralysis. It was unhurried, calming even, in its familiar mocking tone. “Well, a day not entirely misspent,” he commented. “At least the team has achieved one of its objectives.” Receiving no response other than a glower of outrage from the others, he ploughed on. “Miss da Silva is to be commended on her find.” He pushed forward. “Excuse me. May I? While we still have a moment?” He knelt to look inside the dead girl’s mouth, clamping his arms behind his back to underline the fact that he was not about to tamper with the evidence.

“Ah, yes. Thought I caught a flash of something when you tested her for rigor, Hermione. I’ve seen one of these before. It’s a coin you see. A large one. It’s jammed in there, under her tongue. Hmm … And it’s gold. In fact …” He twisted his neck to an
uncomfortable angle, recovered himself and pronounced, “If this is what I think it is, I’m going to make a unilateral decision to extract it before it gets lost in the tide. I know! I know!” He held up his arms to ward off the hissed advice to touch nothing. “These are exceptional circumstances, and I’m sure the police would want us to preserve any evidence we can find.”

They watched as he delicately slid the coin from the mouth and held it out for inspection on the palm of his hand. “Well, well! At last I can be of some use. This is a medal depicting the Emperor Constantius the First capturing London. Made to mark his victory over Allectus. In two hundred and ninety-six AD, I believe. Interesting. Very. You have indeed struck gold, Miss da Silva! Do you see the slight reddish tone it has?” He tilted the coin from side to side to demonstrate. “Thracian gold. Extremely valuable.”

He was elbowed out of the way without ceremony by Joel. The man whose spade had brought her back into the light picked up his jacket and draped it respectfully over the slender remains. He bowed his head and his deep Suffolk voice rolled out over the unconsecrated grave.
“Lord, grant her eternal rest and may light perpetual shine upon her,”
he said.

Their “amens” mingled with the shrill blasts of a police whistle and the peremptory calls of a pair of beat bobbies racing along the embankment towards them.

J
oe Sandilands, seated in the back of the unmarked squad car that had picked him up from his flat in Cheyne Walk, was speeding along the embankment in the opposite direction, heading for Mayfair. The driver’s automatic but abrupt raising of his right foot from the accelerator at the sound of the police whistles caused Joe’s briefcase to fall to the floor. He leaned forward and slapped his driver happily on the ear with his rolled-up newspaper.

“Eyes front! Not one for us, Sarge! Just grit your teeth and drive past. The local plod can manage.”

All the same, both men’s heads swivelled to the right as they passed the scene of activity on the riverbank.

“The usual, I expect,” offered the sergeant. “Three bodies washed up on that spot so far this month. It’s the current,” he explained vaguely. “You’ll be all right, sir. We’re no more than ten minutes from Claridge’s. It’s still early—we should beat the crush at Hyde Park Corner.”