The Nine-Spoked Wheel Read online

  THE NINE-SPOKED

  WHEEL

  J.R.L. ANDERSON

  CONTENTS

  IThe Fallen Stone

  IIA Noise in the Night

  IIIThe Cremation Urn

  IVThe Cigarette End

  VTombs and Ancient Mariners

  VIAnother Death

  VIIIn the Dark

  VIIISea Fever

  IXThe Best-Laid Plans . . .

  XThe Bishops and Clerks

  XIInquest

  About the Author

  Copyright

  THE J.R.L. ANDERSON COLLECTION

  The Peter Blair Mysteries

  Death on the Rocks

  Death in the Thames

  Death in the North Sea

  Death in the Desert

  Death in the Caribbean

  Death in the City

  Death in the Greenhouse

  Death in a High Latitude

  The Piet Deventer Investigations

  A Sprig of Sea Lavender

  Festival

  Late Delivery

  Other J.R.L. Anderson Mysteries

  Reckoning in Ice

  The Nine-Spoked Wheel

  Redundancy Pay

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The setting of this story is real, but I have taken certain liberties with topographical details. There are many barrows in that metropolis of our past between Avebury and the Wansdyke, but it would be profitless to look for one called The Wansdyke Great Barrow. And there is no disused airfield near Oare. I am told that it offers little legal protection against accidental libel for an author to say that his characters are fictitious, but please, mine really are.

  It may be proper to give a note of explanation for the Persian Tamam Shod which appears at the end of all my books. Where a medieval Latin scribe would write Finis at the end of a manuscript the Persian habit was to put Tamam Shod – it is to be found, for instance, at the end of the Rubá’iyát of Omar Khayyám. It does not, however, mean ‘The End’, but rather the much more pleasing ‘It is become complete (or whole)’. I came across the phrase many years ago when I was trying to teach myself Persian in an Army hospital during the Second World War and I have treasured it ever since.

  I

  The Fallen Stone

  THE NIGHT-PORTER had gone to sleep: there was no doubt about it, although he had tried to make out that Mrs Boyce had asked for a call at 03.00, instead of 02.30. But it was no use arguing about blame. By the time he had made them a pot of tea and they had put their luggage in the car it was close on 03.30, and Professor Boyce was beginning to think that it was barely worth setting out. His womenfolk, however – Mrs Boyce and their nineteen-year-old daughter Juliet –were determined sightseers, and reckoned they could just about do it. ‘And we’re not likely to have another chance of seeing the sunrise at Stonehenge at midsummer,’ Mrs Boyce said forcibly. That clinched it. With misgiving Professor Boyce followed the women to the car and got into the driving seat.

  The hotel was in Gloucester, where some seventeenth century Boyce ancestors had come from. The road trip of around fifty miles, through Cirencester, Swindon and Marlborough, seemed straightforward, and on the roads at home, through the wide open spaces of Iowa, it was certainly possible to do fifty miles in an hour. At that time of the morning English roads should at least be clear, and the car they had hired for their vacation seemed a good one. They made good time to Swindon, and their hopes of keeping their appointment with the sunrise rose. But they had not bargained on the complexities of crossing the motorway at Swindon, took a wrong turning and lost ten minutes. By the time they got to Marlborough it was already 04.30.

  Professor Boyce turned into an empty car park in the middle of Marlborough’s magnificently wide High Street and stopped. ‘Sunrise is in thirteen minutes, and we’ve all of twenty miles to go. We can’t do it, Miriam,’ he said.

  Back home, Juliet was majoring in archaeology. ‘Can I have the map, Mummy?’ she asked.

  Mrs Boyce, who had the map open on her knee, handed it to her daughter in the back seat.

  Juliet studied the map for a moment. Then she said, ‘Look, I’ve got an idea. Let’s go to Avebury instead of Stonehenge. It’s only four or five miles on. Everybody goes to Stonehenge; we’ll be different and see the sunrise at Avebury.’

  ‘What is this Avebury?’ asked her mother.

  Juliet had done her Prehistoric Britain. ‘It’s the greatest Stone Circle in Europe – older than Stonehenge, or bits of it are,’ she said. ‘We’ll be able to say we’ve been there, when lots of people haven’t.’

  ‘OK then,’ said her mother. ‘How do we get there?’

  Juliet glanced again at the map. ‘Straight on, Daddy, I’ll pilot you,’ she said.

  *

  They got to Avebury with about two minutes in hand. They had just time to put the car in the deserted car park and climb to the top of the great embankment on which the huge stones stand when the sun glinted into the Kennet valley and a shaft of light touched one of the standing stones. None of the little party said anything for several moments. They were quite alone, for sunrise at Avebury is not a tourist spectacle, and the empty grandeur of the place was strangely moving.

  ‘Well, that was quite something,’ Miriam Boyce said at last.

  ‘We’re lucky to have a clear morning,’ said her husband.

  It was a most beautiful morning, sunlight now sparkling on the young green of the trees and making diamond-drops of the dew that still lay on the grass. Slowly the three of them began to walk round the great embankment, Juliet a little ahead. Miriam Boyce slipped her fingers into her husband’s hand. ‘It’s all right now, Stephen, I wouldn’t have missed this for worlds,’ she said. ‘You can keep your old Stonehenge.’

  Suddenly Juliet called back, ‘Oh, Daddy! One of the stones has fallen, I think.’

  They were approaching the Eastern Entrance (actually slightly north of east) of the Great Circle, from which a track leads to the Downs, and sure enough a huge boulder near the entrance seemed to have fallen on its side. Juliet hung back to join her parents, and the three of them walked up to it together.

  ‘I suppose they must fall sometimes,’ said Professor Boyce. ‘And quite a lot seem to be missing – where they’ve put concrete posts to mark the place of stones.’

  When they were still a few yards from the fallen stone Miriam Boyce gripped her husband’s hand hard and gasped out, ‘Stephen, look . . .’ There was no need to say any more, for they all saw it. The brilliant morning seemed somehow to turn cold. Projecting from beneath the fallen stone was a man’s foot.

  Professor Boyce would not have called himself a man of action, but he had served in the war and long-repressed memories of a dreadful beach in Normandy came flooding back. Telling his wife and daughter to stay where they were, he ran up to the stone. There was no chance of a mistake. A foot, wearing a grey plimsoll, protruded from the stone, and somewhere underneath the mass of that enormous boulder there was presumably a body. Boyce pressed on the boulder, leant against it, shoved with all his might; it moved not a fraction of an inch, for it weighed twenty or thirty tons. He went back to his wife and daughter. ‘We can do nothing here, we’ve got to get help,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think there’s much anyone can do for whoever it is underneath the stone – he’s surely dead.’

  ‘We’d better wake someone in the village,’ Miriam Boyce said.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  They ran back along the embankment towards the houses they remembered near the car park, but when they reached the village street Juliet saw a telephone box. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to call up the police?’ she said.

  Her father thought for a moment. Then he said, ‘I guess so. We don’t know anyb
ody here, and it looks like being a job for the police.’

  Juliet said, ‘I know what you do – it’s in the thriller that I bought in Cheltenham. You dial 999.’

  ‘Yes,’ said her father. ‘That’s what it says on the notice in the box.’

  He dialled 999 and almost at once a man’s voice answered. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘I’ve found a body, a dead body. I think I need the police.’

  ‘Right, putting you through now. Don’t go away from the telephone.’

  Professor Boyce had not hitherto been impressed by the English telephone service, but this, he thought, was good work. A moment later another man’s voice was on the line. ‘North Wessex Police, Marlborough,’ it said. ‘Can we help you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Boyce. He gave a brief account of coming upon the foot projecting from the fallen stone. The police voice was matter-of-fact. ‘You think whoever it is, is dead?’ it asked.

  ‘Yes, I don’t see how it could be otherwise. That stone must weigh many tons.’

  ‘Then we’ll need some heavy lifting equipment. I’ll get on to the Fire Brigade. And a doctor, of course, and an ambulance. What is your name, sir?’

  ‘Boyce.’ He spelled it out. ‘Professor Stephen Boyce, of Iowa, in the United States.’

  ‘Thank you, Professor. We’ll get someone out to you straightaway. Where exactly are you speaking from?’

  Boyce explained, and the voice said. ‘Can you wait by the telephone box until a police car comes?’

  ‘I’ll wait by my own car in the car park. It’s just across the road.’

  The police voice said that would do very well, and Boyce put back the receiver. ‘What’s happening?’ asked Juliet as he came out of the box.

  ‘Well, the police say they’re coming. Also, apparently, the Fire Brigade, to lift the stone. We’re to wait in the car park. God knows how long it will all take.’

  It was not yet half-past five. Boyce felt additionally aggrieved at the negligent night-porter, but he couldn’t help also feeling rather excited by the whole affair. He joined his wife and daughter, standing forlornly by their hired car: it seemed the only evidence of reality in a weird dream, or nightmare.

  A police car arrived much sooner than Boyce had dared to hope, and a constable got out. ‘Professor Boyce?’ he asked.

  Boyce acknowledged himself, adding ‘and my wife and daughter’.

  ‘Thank you, sir. I was on radio patrol and got a message that you had found a body. Can you show me where it is?’

  ‘Of course. It’s up there.’ Boyce pointed along the embankment.

  The constable considered for a moment. Then he said, ‘We’d better get to it. But there’ll be a C.I.D. Inspector along in a few minutes, and the Fire Brigade. Do you think, sir, that you could take me to the body while the ladies wait here to tell the others where we’ve gone?’

  They agreed at once, and Boyce went off with the constable to climb the embankment and take him to the fallen stone. Everything was exactly as he had left it. The constable knelt down and gently felt the ankle of the projecting foot. ‘Seems quite cold,’ he said, ‘but you can’t rightly tell with so little showing. Did you feel his foot, sir?’

  ‘No,’ said Boyce. ‘In my country we are told to touch nothing at the scene of an accident, but to wait for the police – unless, of course, you can do something to help an injured person. In this case there did not seem anything I could do.’

  ‘You were quite right, sir. Ah, this’ll be the C.I.D.’

  A small party, led by Juliet, came up. ‘Mummy’s waiting for the Fire Brigade,’ she said.

  A youngish man, still under thirty-five, Boyce thought, introduced himself as Detective Inspector Revers of the North Wessex Police, and he introduced an elderly man with him as Dr Mortimer. The doctor knelt to examine the foot. ‘The bone is crushed just above the ankle,’ he said. ‘If the rest of the body is underneath that stone, it will be dreadfully crushed. But I can do nothing until the stone is lifted.’

  ‘There is no chance of life, doctor?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘I should say none at all.’

  The Inspector studied the stone. ‘They are called sarsens,’ he said to Boyce, ‘great blocks of rock left on the Downs from an earlier cap that covered the chalk before it was broken up in one of the Ice Ages. You can see plenty of sarsens between here and Marlborough. How prehistoric people manhandled them to positions like this beggars understanding. But they did. I wonder why this stone fell?’

  He walked slowly round the stone. The mass of the boulder was roughly lozenge-shaped, and it had stood on one of its points, deeply embedded in the chalky earth of the embankment. In front, where the face of the stone had fallen, there was nothing much to see: the stone had fallen slightly downhill, covering the turf and everything beneath it except the grim projecting foot. At the back there was a large cavity, the earth wrenched up by the base of the stone as it had toppled over. There were pieces of wood that looked like timber shuttering, some of them splintered, lying in the earth of the hole.

  ‘Do you know if this was one of the places where that archaeological team has been excavating?’ the Inspector asked the constable.

  ‘I don’t, sir, but it looks a bit like it. That might explain why the stone fell.’

  ‘It might. Well, we shall have to find out.’

  Mrs Boyce appeared, leading another, and this time rather larger, party.

  The Inspector drew Professor Boyce aside. ‘This is the Fire Service lifting crew,’ he said. ‘I don’t know yet how they’ll get their equipment here, and it may take some time to get the body out, but they’ll manage it. I don’t think there is any need for you and the ladies to stay: indeed, I think you ought to go, because what is underneath that stone will not be pleasant. Are you staying in Marlborough?’

  ‘No,’ said Boyce. ‘We’ve been stopping in Gloucester. We left early this morning intending to see the sunrise at Stonehenge, but the journey took longer than we’d reckoned and we came here instead. My daughter is studying archaeology.’

  ‘Where can I get in touch with you?’

  ‘Well, my home address is Milman University, Agostine County, Iowa – I’m Professor of English there. We haven’t got any fixed address in England. We’re on vacation, and touring around. We left Gloucester this morning, and thought that we might find somewhere around Salisbury tonight.’

  ‘I don’t want to bother you for a statement now, and I do want to see everything I can of the state of the earth around the stone before the lifting operations disturb it. Would it be possible for you to come to the police station in Marlborough some time later today?’

  ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t stay in Marlborough if there’s a hotel with room for us.’

  ‘There are several hotels. If you like, the constable will drive back with you to Marlborough and see that you are fixed up. Then I could call on you, say around midday.’

  ‘Yes, that would be all right.’

  *

  Like a good many Americans – indeed, like many people anywhere – Professor Boyce was fundamentally afraid of the police. It was not exactly a conscious fear; it was rather a sense of individual helplessness in dealing with a strange but obviously powerful machine. These English police had been polite enough, he thought, but they might as easily turn nasty. He did not know what powers they might have to hold him and his family as material witnesses. He had to think of getting back to the States: the financial planning of their vacation was pretty tight, and an extra week or two in England would be hard to manage, to say nothing of the possibility of losing their already booked return flight. They were foreigners, they didn’t know any lawyers in England, and it was better to keep on the right side of the police. And why not stay in Marlborough? From what he had seen of it in the half-light before dawn it seemed a pleasant old town, and it was certainly in a lovely countryside. He explained the situation to Miriam and Juliet. Somewhat to his surprise, they jumped at the idea. ‘
Well, we didn’t think of stopping in Marlborough,’ Miriam said, ‘but now that we’re here we might just as well stay. And I must say I’d like to learn more about what happened to that stone.’

  Juliet, too, seemed pleased. ‘When the shops open I’ll get a guide book,’ she said. ‘I saw a sign near the car park pointing to a museum, and we’ll be able to explore a bit. That queer Silbury Hill is somewhere in the neighbourhood, and there’ll be all sorts of interesting places. It will help a lot with my course back home.’

  *

  The hotel the constable took them to was an old coaching inn, with low beams and lots of horse brasses, but it had been discreetly (and, as it turned out, comfortably) modernised. It was barely seven o’clock, and without the constable, Boyce reflected, they’d probably have had a pretty cold reception. The constable, however, was splendid. He persuaded a cleaning woman to fetch the manageress, and when she appeared in a dressing-gown and with her hair in curlers he produced a wonderful mixture of officialdom and charm. Without explaining precisely why the police were interested in the Boyce family he conveyed that they were somehow important people who had turned up unexpectedly early, and that it was necessary for Marlborough in general and the manageress in particular to do everything they could for them.

  ‘Have they had breakfast yet?’ the manageress asked practically.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Boyce.

  ‘You poor things – and after coming all that way!’ It was early yet for breakfast, she explained, but if they’d go into the dining room the kitchen would soon manage something. After breakfast she’d see about their rooms. If they’d put their car in the yard, and give her the key, the porter would bring up their things.

  She hustled off, and the constable said that he must be going, too. ‘You’ll be all right here now,’ he said. ‘The Inspector will come about noon. I’ll tell him you’ll meet him in the hall, and then either he can go up to your room, or perhaps you’d care to go round to the station with him.’

  Boyce felt relieved to be on their own again. ‘That door’s marked Dining Room,’ he said. ‘I suppose we go in there.’