The Grail Tree (22 page)

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Authors: Jonathan Gash

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‘Anyway, the Grail Tree will be worth it, whatever he has planned.’ The point was, I told myself eagerly, he couldn’t leave fingerprints or other sorts of evidence that he’d attacked me with some weapon from the display case because Maslow would trace him. Then Haverro would have lost just the same. Guns were out, because you can trace any modern gun by ballistics easy as that. And powder burns on bodies. And minute flecks of powder on clothes and skin. Every kid who watched television knows these elementary facts.

‘Rob.’ I interrupted its effortless, windless song. ‘What weapons do we know which are neither prehistoric, Roman, Early English, Conquest, Renaissance, post-Elizabethan or modern which will finish me, and let Dr Haverro get away unscathed and unrecognized? Well? Any offers?

He flew on to the grass to do battle with encroaching thrushes. An omen, I thought, pleased. Doing battle with only what he has. Like me and Thomas. A conquest with just ourselves. Still, I was certain I knew every inch of the museum. And Haverro didn’t. That was my main asset. But I knew he was going to try to finish me. And I already knew he was capable of trying very, very hard.

Brenda was helping to shuffle the crowds into indescribable disorder when I arrived at the Park about two o’clock. Children ran about hoping to get themselves lost and dramatically re-found. Ice-cream sellers sounded their bells. The town’s main streets were one gigantic concourse of people drifting towards the colours and sounds of bands from the show grounds. Teams of morris dancers tinkled to and fro or sprawled on the grass for a quick ale before the great procession.

‘Still as big a shambles as ever,’ I said.

‘I don’t want any criticism from you, Lovejoy.’ She laughed, not a little distrait.

I paused. She looked attractive even in that grotty traffic warden’s outfit. Why they don’t pension these uniform designers off I just don’t know. It would do us all a favour. ‘Is there anything you do want, though?’

‘Look. Don’t bother me right now.’ She waved out a small decorated lorry which was trying to enter the main gates. A jubilant group of dancers cheered and whistled, booing as their vehicle rumbled off down a side street towards North Hill. Brenda looked over her shoulder as I moved on. ‘See you at the plinth, soon after dark, Lovejoy,’ she said, smiling. ‘Maybe.’

‘I’ll be there, Beautiful,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’ And got away on to the moat walk as she was stung to a half-laughing retort I didn’t quite catch. The plinth is on the opposite side of the Castle to the entrance, a small monument where two dubious heroes were executed by Cromwell’s men. It’s something of a lovers’ trysting-place, lying as it does deep in the moated hollow. Her bloke would be around somewhere. I wondered who he was.

The Castle has this system of closing in the afternoon on weekdays. I checked on the wooden notice.
There it was, three o’clock close. My heart was banging. I had an hour. I drifted casually into the Castle among a horde of children and their parents. The eagle-eyed museum guardian sits in a small booth placed back from the entrance. He was safely nodding off as usual, which meant my unlikely prepared story about having to go back in at closing time for a lost niece need never be tested.

The main central area was crowded. A Queen Anne coach stands to one side of a massive fireplace you could drive into, and a waxwork tableau had been arranged on the other side. It depicted the visit of Queen Bess to the town and showed how merrily she’d been received at the Castle on the selfsame spot. You have to smile. Not one of the notices mentioned the complaints Bess had made about how the Castle’s primitive latrines stank to high heaven.

One of the children had ducked under the restraining rope and was trying to set the Galileo pendulum swinging. He got a cuff for his pains from the old uniformed attendant who creaked after him and returned him squawking to his indignant parents.

‘You’ve no right –’ they started up angrily.

‘Yes, he has,’ I intervened, pushing among the throng. ‘I’m Inspector Maslow, CID. Kindly keep your brat from damaging the exhibits.’ I turned grandly to pat the old sweat on the shoulder. ‘Well done, my man,’ I said. ‘Keep it up.’ He looked bemused, because he knew I was Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. Wise in the sudden moods of the public, he said nothing but gave me a creaky salute. ‘Carry on, Smith,’ I said, hoping on statistical grounds the name wasn’t far out. He’d remember I was in. With luck, he’d even be able to swear blind I left with all the others when closing time came.

I strolled on upstairs to the Roman Galleries and thought I’d have a look along the Georgian displays. Maybe they’d done something about them since my irate letter of complaint last month. The plan was to follow the main mob at closing time, ambling in stops and starts towards the main door where the attendants gather to check you out. They use a technique so as not to lose anyone. Rather like sheepdogs on the high fells, they move in crescents to and fro round the back of the crowd, sweeping us all towards the funnel which leads to the exit. If anyone shows a tendency to wait at an exhibit one attendant just stays politely by his side until he moves back into the crowd. That way you can’t lose anyone, and the entire crowd gets winkled from the honeycomb galleries and poured outside. It’s a well tried, almost foolproof system.

But.

There’s one serious flaw in it. Think of the sheepdog. The one lamb he loses and has to go back for after lights-out is invariably the one which is too scared to move. For some reason it stays put. Maybe it has a foot trapped or something. Anyhow, it’s immobile when it should be on the hoof. So the herd technique only works with those of the herd
who are moving.
Stay still and you’re free. Next time you’re in an art gallery or museum pay attention when the attendants call, ‘Time, Ladies and Gentlmen. Please proceed towards the exit!’
All
visitors will at least turn a head, take a step, glance at a watch, look about for a coat or reach for a child’s hand prior to making their way. Get it? Movement. It’s what the attendants look for. After all, the rest of the things in the museum are pretty well static, aren’t they.

The Temple of Jupiter lies under the main area. An entrance, made into a descending spiral staircase of
lovely Georgian wrought-iron, is situated to one side of the main area’s bookstall. I’d chosen this because it’s well-lit, and because most of the foundation arches of the underground temple are visible from the main level. Some five or six dungeons are down there, constructed for William Penn and similar subversives in early Quaker days. I’ve seen the attendants do their check a hundred times. They switch on all the lights, clatter down the iron staircase, glance along the arches and open the one – first – dungeon door which is unlocked. They lean in, holding the grille-and-stud door, peer about for strays, then come out and step upwards on to the main level. The one who does this stays there until the main door closes. Inference: nobody can get down again unnoticed once the ancient temple has been declared empty. But a cunning Lovejoy can hide behind an arch, casually stockstill so as not to create any moving shadows which could hint at an interloper getting himself left behind for possibly nefarious purposes.

I wandered round the main tier of galleries where the Roman and pre-Roman exhibits were on show. Glass cases lined the ancient walls, and in alcoves Roman funereal statues alternated with cased models of scenes – the wharves, galleys, household interiors, industries, clothes and military displays – constructed by local historical societies. I popped in to see my display of model Roman furniture for old time’s sake. That was from the time when I actually made things to give away, which only goes to show how much sense I had. No change to the crummy Civil War section, I noticed in annoyance. The same two heaps of saltpetre and sulphur, the same single unmounted cannon and the dusty armour hanging askew. A breastplate had
been added now, lodged unerringly on an old clock movement fixed to a wall. A bloody disgrace. I told an apologetic attendant so, but they haven’t a clue and you might as well talk to the wall.

By the time three o’clock was approaching I’d made an estimate of the number of attendants the curator had put on duty this festival day. Eight. I hadn’t forgotten to include the old lady at the bookstall, who was doing a roaring trade in reproductions and postcards. There is always a nighttime caretaker, but he was lodged in a little office in a large house at the edge of the Park gardens, which the Castle had taken over as an art gallery and additional museum for household items of post-Georgian times. After an hour or so’s concealment I reckoned I’d be safe.

The Civil War Gallery is on the second tier. As the Castle Keep is basically rectangular in shape each gallery is identical in area and has more or less the same margins and alcoves as all the rest. Four galleries to each of the two tiers, one gallery to a side. I only wished you couldn’t see all the way across the central space. Still, I consoled myself, even Tarzan couldn’t leap across a gap that size. I peered over into the central area below. The drop from the square glass ceiling to the floor I guessed was about a hundred feet. Without pacing it out, the galleries seemed maybe half as long again. A staircase split into symmetrical curves runs up to the first tier, too showy but essential for the crowds we get. My mouth was already drying when I noticed the Castle attendants beginning to signal across the space that time was getting on. My big moment.

Apart from the background blare of the distant bands and the murmur of the crowds outside, the chatter in the museum was deafening. That’s the best
of museums where antiques are placed in their original settings – the atmosphere, the antiques themselves, the customers, everything becomes so much more relaxed. In those brand new mausoleums the antiques know they’re entombed for all eternity in unloved glass coffins made without a thought as to what a precious object, lived with for centuries and loved as it deserves, actually needs. It beats me why councils believe that a plate-glass cube glaringly badly lit is exactly right for displaying a Viking shield, a jewelled casket of Saxon design, Victorian spectacles, Georgian enamelled or gold toilet sets, and an array of Queen Anne ladies’ shoes. They ought to remember that a glass box may look very swish and modern, but it’s the only permanent home a precious antique will ever have once it gets stuck in there for us to gawp at.

The crowd was thinning noticeably as I reached the bookstall and bought a couple of postcards.

‘Have you a postcard of Bishop Odo?’ I asked Mrs Tyler across the counter. I’d seen the rack empty.

‘All gone, Lovejoy,’ she apologized. ‘You’re the third that’s asked.’ That was no good to me. I needed remembering, not to say remembrance, I thought uneasily.

‘Er, then I’ll have a reproduction Viking galley, love.’

‘I’m so sorry. They’ve all gone too. We expected some more –’

‘Er, then a copy of
History of the Local Bay Industry
, please.’ I drove my demand home with a breezy grin.

‘I’m out of those, too, dear,’ she said helplessly.

‘Pull your socks up, cock,’ I remonstrated. ‘Nil out of three.’

‘Well –’

I pulled her leg some more till she was smiling and scolding, then said I’d see her in the car park if her husband wasn’t around and melted swiftly back into the drifting tide of humanity certain she would remember my departure. I strolled round the postcard racks until I was near the spiral stairwell. A casual look about told me no attendant was in sight. I crouched down, quite offhand but seeming interested despite myself, to feel the surface of the Mithraic figure in the mosaic by the opening. One more casual glance and without rising I slipped my leg on to the lowest iron stair tread I could reach, drew in the other leg and slowly strolled down the narrow iron staircase with as little speed as my nerves would allow.

The lights in the underground temple were still on, naked bulbs placed every few feet to hang from the arches just above head height. The first dungeon’s door was ajar. Nobody around. I trod the sloping sandy floor along the row of sealed dungeon doors, almost giving myself a heart attack when I peered in through the grille of one and came face to face with a wax image of a terrified dummy prisoner stuck at the bars, evidently rotting away in punishment for very little. My cry of alarm echoed along the subterranean vaults. Mercifully, there was nobody there.

I’d cut it fine. They were calling closing just as I settled behind the arch’s pillar second from the end. The very farthest would have been a mistake. I was near the Mithraic altar at this end. It was cold but I drew myself flat against the upright and checked the ground and walls for revealing shadows cast back to show my silhouette. None.

The calls on the main floor above were becoming more frequent. Families added to the racket. Children
were being assembled and last-minute purchases made. Keys rattled as the single wooden bars were locked in place along the sections of each gallery. The attendants’ calls and pleadings approached the head of the spiral stairs. If one came down and walked conscientiously along the length of the Temple I was done for. I’d a notebook and a black drawing stick with me just in case. My pose would be of an absent-minded artist drawing the altar if I got found out. Earlier, though from memory, I had drawn a rough sketch, partly completed, to lend more conviction.

‘Thank you,’ a voice called, too near. ‘The museum is closing now.’ A boot sounded on the iron stair. Steps and the same call. ‘Three o’clock closing, please.’ A pause. Scuffling steps on the floor. A door, chains going. My heart lurched again. Please God, there wasn’t an iron manhole cover or anything to go over the stairwell, was there? I’d be entombed in this bloody place. I almost cried out in fear but held myself back. Surely, if there was I’d have noticed it on my way in. I told myself this a few times for encouragement, and was bathed in a sweat of relief when finally the steps receded up the staircase with no further sinister rattlings. I was clear. Still scared, I stayed rigidly behind the pillar until the main Castle door slammed with a dull booming echo overhead. Clear. And safe. A few boot-shod feet clashed on the paving above but my confidence returned. Naturally the attendants would make one last check for stray infants. They’d set alarms at the windows, switch on the central alarm. Then the round of the glass cases. Then lights off in the crypts, the Temple, the dungeons, the alcoves. Then the signatures to say they’d done the security check. Then the bookstall to be locked after signing the ledger. Then
the phone call to the caretaker at the distant house.

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