A Late Phoenix by Catherine Aird Read Free Book Online Page B

out Garton obstinately.
    â€œYou mean”—Sloan attempted to sort out the police wheat from the commercial chaff—“that this Gilbert Hodge didn’t own these houses when they were bombed in the war?”
    â€œMr. Hodge,” said Garton respectfully, “is a purely postwar enterprise. What he has done began with his gratuity.”
    â€œWho owned them before?”
    â€œI couldn’t say, Inspector.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Try the doctor’s receptionist. She’ll know. She knows everything in these parts. Face like the back of a bus but a memory like an elephant.”
    â€œMuch more important,” agreed Sloan gravely. Faces were deceptive things. Until you considered them all impartially as masks you couldn’t really be said to be a policeman. Then you knew you had first always to get behind the mask.
    Mr. Esmond Fowkes, the curator of the Berebury Museum, was a short man with a neat white spade beard. He was down at the Lamb Lane site within minutes of getting Sloan’s message. He certainly wanted to be present if there was going to be any further digging.
    â€œThe Saxon excavation …” began Sloan, waving an arm towards the cellar.
    â€œAh! Most disappointing.”
    â€œYou thought …”
    â€œThought? I was sure, Inspector. Ready to stake my reputation on there being a Saxon settlement there.”
    â€œBut …”
    â€œIt was all most unfortunate.” The little man was determined to have his say. “You see, I had to be in London last weekend. No time. They were going to start building work first thing on Monday morning, you know …”
    Sloan said he knew.
    â€œSo I had to drum up help quickly. I got Colin Rigden to arrange the actual dig. He’s a good lad. But they found nothing at all, I’m afraid.”
    â€œNothing Saxon,” pointed out Sloan, who was a policeman and not an archaeologist.
    â€œNot a thing,” declared Fowkes, the museum curator. “And I could have sworn they would. There’s a fair bit of Saxon stuff in Berebury, you know, and I took my bearings from a known settlement. A late one.”
    â€œLate?” enquired Sloan carefully. “How late?”
    Fowkes waved a hand. “Ninth century.”
    Crosby smothered a snort.
    Only just.
    â€œQuite so,” said Sloan swiftly.
    â€œAnd when they ran the new gas main down Lamb Lane—you can see their trench over there—one of the workmen came up with a disc brooch. Same date. Lovely piece. Silver niellosed.”
    â€œReally, sir?”
    â€œSaxon art is a study of its own …”
    â€œI’m sure it is, sir,” said Sloan hastily.
    â€œCan’t understand it at all.” Fowkes frowned. “I still think there should have been something here.”
    â€œSomething Saxon,” interposed Sloan.
    There had, after all, been something there all right.
    â€œI worked it out most carefully. Sat up most of the night, if you must know, Inspector.”
    â€œDid you, sir?”
    â€œI only got wind of the work starting so soon on the Thursday. You know what it is. We have all this elaborate business of someone in the Council Office giving us museum people fair warning, and when it comes to the point some little office girl forgets and the whole machinery breaks down.”
    â€œYes, sir.” Their instructions at the police station had been equally firm. Ever since a police constable had put a piece of perfect Roman glass in the dustbin. Esmond Fowkes, though small, had torn a stripe off no less a person than the Chief Constable. “How did you happen to hear in the end?”
    â€œI got a whisper in the Goat and Compasses, if you must know.”
    Sloan nodded. He knew that pub, all right. Just off the Market Square.
    â€œThen I got straight on to Garton. Blew him up good and proper, I did …”
    Sloan could well imagine it. A mere builder would