Almost Love (11 page)

“Yes, I believe you mentioned it when we first met. This Jared isn’t very sociable, is he? He got straight out of the Land Rover and went into the house. He must have seen me following him.”

Guy shrugged.

“He
is
a bit anti-social. But I must say I hardly think he’s at fault on this occasion. He would almost certainly have thought that any visitors would be for me.”

“He has a key to your house, does he?”

“No. But the door’s not locked when I’m here. He’s probably in the kitchen, making himself some tea. Would you like to meet him?”

“Not especially,” said Tim, “but I should like to have a further conversation with you about your aunt, if you don’t mind. Should we go inside?”

Guy Maichment propped the lopping tool against the side of his porch and, squeezing past Tim without touching him, flung open the door with an expansive movement and made a sweeping gesture with his left arm to encourage him to enter. Tim could not tell whether it was meant ironically or not.

Inside, Guy Maichment’s house was almost preternaturally tidy. The hall was bare of all furniture save for a doormat and a small mirror on the wall. Guy divested himself of the long raincoat and the quilted gilet that he was wearing beneath it and stowed them carefully in the cupboard under the stairs. He motioned Tim into what was evidently the main downstairs room of the place. Tim had realised by now that his abode was considerably smaller than Claudia’s.

The living-room was one of the most functional rooms that Tim had ever seen. It was furnished with a small cottage suite consisting of two fireside chairs and a two-seater settee, a coffee table, a standard lamp and a glass-fronted bookcase. A brass screen stood in the fireplace. There was an oblong Chinese rug before it that made a small green oasis in a desert of sanded and polished wooden floorboards. That was all. There were no pictures, no vases or other ornaments, no flowers and no plants in pots. There wasn’t even a television.

“The TV’s in the kitchen,” said Guy, as if reading Tim’s mind. “Ah, there goes Jared,” he added, as someone passed quickly by the window. “Pity. If he’d still been in the kitchen, I’d have asked him to make some tea.” Tim looked across, but caught only a glimpse of a navy-blue windcheater.

“Don’t worry on my account,” said Tim, not altogether sincerely. It seemed that Guy had no intention of doing so. He sat in one of the fireside chairs. The room was extremely cold, and it contained no radiator or any other form of heating that Tim could see besides the fireplace, which was clearly not in use.

“Now,” said Guy, rubbing grubby palms on his trousers, “tell me more about my aunt. Or rather, about what you’ve discovered about her disappearance. I’m assuming that you haven’t dropped by to tell me you’ve found her?” he added with a glint in his eye, his voice heavy with irony.

“Unfortunately not,” said Tim with studied blandness.

“But you have more information? I understand that yesterday the police were searching the woods near her house?”

“Yes, but unfortunately they didn’t find much – nothing, in fact, that might be connected directly with your aunt. However, DC Armstrong, whom I think you may have spoken to on the phone, has been doing a little bit of desk-based research. She’s discovered some quite interesting things about your aunt’s past.”

Guy Maichment gave out a loud guffaw, which sounded forced and was incongruous, coming from such a usually quiet, taut and ironical man.

“Oh, well done, Inspector! So my aunt had an interesting past, did she? And it’s taken you several days to find that out. Really, you must excuse me if I’m beginning to lose confidence in you. She was the most famous female archaeologist of her generation, for God’s sake – in fact the only female archaeologist of any note. The only British one, that is. She led digs in the Arab countries before the war, and she was subsequently in Nor . . . in Scandinavia, when some of the most important ship burial digs took place there. She has lived a life packed full of adventure. And you’re here to tell me that it was interesting!”

“I’m not referring to her accomplishments as an archaeologist, Mr Maichment, fascinating though I’m sure those are,” said Tim quietly. He paused to look Guy Maichment in the eye. Guy held his gaze, but with a look that was neither relaxed nor amused, though it tried to be both. Tim thought that he saw alarm, even fear, stalking Guy. “Tell me, did you know that your aunt was associated with some extremely right-wing political groups?”

Guy looked away and turned his gaze to the fireplace.

“I’m not quite certain what you mean by ‘extremely right wing’, Detective Inspector. I suspect that you and I might disagree if we were to try to define such a term. I am, of course, aware that Claudia’s most ground-breaking work sought to tie her findings – some of them very spectacular findings – to sociological and anthropological hypotheses which were open to dispute. Not to put too fine a point on it, some of her critics thought that she embroidered the conclusions which she drew beyond the basis of the actual facts that she was able to record. Her methods were popular just before and just after the war; but, as archaeology became more allied to science and as science rapidly improved to the extent that it could enable many statements to be made with certainty that had only been educated guesses before (and, of course, vice versa), her views became discredited in some quarters. Unjustly, in my view. We’re still subject to creative ideas, even in these scientific times, and often some notion that’s been dressed up by ‘science’ is just as unprovable as an idea put forward by an amateur. And Claudia’s work on early languages was actually quite ingenious. It still deserves to be taken seriously.”

“I agree with you there,” said Tim, not wishing to draw out the hostility that he knew was never very far from the surface when he was speaking to Guy. He chose the most innocuous of Claudia McRae’s theories, as retailed to him by Juliet, in an attempt to maintain Guy’s good will. “These ideas of which you speak: are they related to her convictions as an early feminist?”

“Goodness, Inspector, you
are
well-informed! It’s true that when Claudia was a young woman and still trying to make her name as an archaeologist she picked up and ran with the premise that the role of prehistoric women had been underestimated by the historians that followed them, because by the time that history was first recorded the societies that recorded it were mostly patriarchal. Claudia’s argument was that women and men must have contributed more equally in very primitive times in order for communities to survive, but as far as I know there was little evidence to support this, save Claudia’s observations on the way that some flintheads and other tools had been fashioned. Anthropologists were quick to point out that she was in any case applying twentieth century values to cultures that may, for all we know, have revered the woman’s role as bearer of children and homemaker. I’ve read some of that early stuff and I think that it was pretty jejune. No, what I was referring to were the much more sophisticated arguments that she constructed from her work on the McRae Stone. Since you’ve been delving into her past, Detective Inspector, you must have found references to it? It was undoubtedly the most important find of Claudia’s career.”

Tim nodded. “The Northern Rosetta,” he offered, to indicate that he understood the reference. “Can you explain to me, broadly speaking, what your aunt’s ‘sophisticated arguments’ consisted of?”

Guy Maichment leaned forward in his chair, earnest and engaged.

“They were at once quite simple, in being easy to grasp, and linguistically very complex. I couldn’t begin to go into the detail – even if you were interested in it, I am no expert myself. As you say, the McRae Stone, which was discovered during a dig in the Orkneys (ironically, Claudia hadn’t even wanted to take that dig on, but she agreed to do it because she’d been evacuated from the Middle East in the run-up to the war, so she was at a bit of a loose end), was similar to the Rosetta Stone, in that it bore the same inscription in three different languages. One of them was a Celtic language symbolised by runes that had already been partially deciphered by others – romantically, it has sometimes been called Thari, or ‘the language of the Druids’. The other two languages were both forerunners of Gaelic – one she called proto-Gaelic-Norse and the other proto-Gaelic-Scots. By carefully transcribing all the words that she had of these languages and carrying out painstaking work on the probable roots of each of them, she was able to attribute to them a kind of hierarchy of semantic richness and sophistication which she believed to be a reflection of how noble and cultivated the people who spoke them were.”

“I see. So she conferred upon the people who spoke what in her view was the best of these languages the attributes of a master-race?” Tim was being deliberately provocative. Guy Maichment blinked and looked across at him sharply, but his reply was urbane enough.

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Inspector. But you’re on the right track.”

Tim bowed his thanks and decided to surprise Guy by changing tack. He would keep his most important piece of information until last.

“Tell me, Mr Maichment, have you heard of a Norwegian academic called Dr Elida Berg?”

Guy Maichment examined his knuckles.

“No, I can’t say that I have. Why? Is she an associate of Claudia’s? If so, I should tell you that Claudia has supervised and collaborated with scores of people, academics and others, and that I’m aware only of a tiny proportion of them, mostly those relating to the latter part of her career. You must remember that Claudia was well into her forties when I was born.”

“Indeed,” said Tim. “Nevertheless, I thought that you might have come across Dr Berg. For one thing, she and Dame Claudia wrote a number of joint papers on the McRae Stone after its discovery and you might have read some of them. More importantly than that, we have reason to believe that Dame Claudia may have spent the Second World War living with Dr Berg, who was working at a Norwegian university at the time.”

Guy shrugged. “It’s perfectly possible. As I’ve said, I don’t know – it was before my time. You know of course that my aunt is gay. But quite honestly, Detective Inspector, interesting as it may be to review my aunt’s life and work and even to discuss her friends, I don’t see where this is leading us. In fact, I feel inclined to say that if your investigations don’t take a more direct turn very shortly, I shall be in touch with Roy Little again and ask him to remove you from this investigation.”

“As you wish, Mr Maichment. I am perfectly aware that you are able to exert influence in that quarter. However, I should also like you to consider this: Although Norwegian by birth, Dr Elida Berg was a Nazi sympathiser who eventually had to ‘disappear’. We’re not sure exactly why, yet. Your aunt, on the other hand, continued to live in Norway until some time after the end of the war, when she returned to the UK. Her celebrity as an eminent archaeologist continued to increase.”

“Another set of irrelevant points, Detective Inspector, unless I am missing something. My aunt can hardly be expected to have been accountable for the political views of her colleagues.”

“I quite agree. But what interests me is that it is from this period – or, more specifically, from the period just before the war when your aunt collaborated with Dr Berg on the papers about the McRae Stone – that your aunt’s publications become much more tightly argued and scholarly. As you said yourself, before that they were rather florid and naïve. And she continued to employ this more erudite style throughout the fifties, long after Dr Berg disappeared, though it has to be said that she didn’t develop her arguments very much thereafter.”

“So? Perhaps she was a good pupil. Perhaps the original work was so good that she could not make many material additions to it.”

“Perhaps, Mr Maichment. And perhaps there were other reasons. We may never know, but, if we can find out, I think that we may be able to solve the mystery of your aunt’s disappearance.”

Guy Maichment regarded him stonily. “Is that all, Detective Inspector?”

“Not quite,” said Tim. “There is one other thing. A very reliable witness says that she saw your aunt in Boston yesterday morning, being escorted by a man.”

Guy Maichment was visibly disconcerted: his face blanched; he seemed to gasp for breath.

“Why have you only just told me this?” he demanded, with clumsy indignation – almost certainly feigned, Tim thought. “Why aren’t you there now, searching for her?”

“I’m sorry to startle you, sir. Of course we began extensive enquiries in Boston straight away, but so far they have yielded nothing. Although your aunt was seen near the hospital, she has not been admitted there; and, if anyone else saw her, they have not reported it to the police.”

“So it might not have been her at all?”

“It might not; although the witness is convinced that it was.”

“What about the man? Do you have a description?”

“Unfortunately not. He had his face turned away from the witness.”

“Why didn’t she – you did say the witness was a woman? – call the police, or seek help?”

“She didn’t realise that it was your aunt until afterwards. She had not seen a photograph of her until one was shown after the police press conference was televised early yesterday evening. Were you watching, by any chance?”

“I – No. No, I didn’t know about it. I don’t watch much television. But if this woman couldn’t identify the man and no-one else has said that they saw my aunt, don’t you think that her claim sounds a little far-fetched? Surely she must have been mistaken – or perhaps even making it up. I’ve heard that there are people who do such things, who deliberately get themselves involved in high-profile enquiries of this kind by pretending to have useful information.”

“There are such people,” said Tim, “and although we think that this witness is reliable it is also possible that you are right.”

“Who is she, anyway?”

“I cannot tell you that at the moment, sir. If she should ever have to testify about what she saw in court, you would find out her identity then.”