The Nine-Spoked Wheel Read online

  They had not previously thought about breakfast, but now that it had been mentioned, they realised that they had been up for hours with nothing but that hasty cup of tea before they left Gloucester. They had not been in the dining room for more than a minute or so, when the manageress came back and put them at a big table in a bow window. ‘Being Americans, I expect you’d like coffee,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Juliet.

  *

  The manageress’s idea of a rushed-up breakfast turned out to be an enormous meal. They began with orange juice and porridge, went on to bacon and eggs, and finished up with toast and marmalade – and the toast was really hot. ‘Well, Stephen,’ said Mrs Boyce. ‘I reckon we came here an odd way, but this is the best meal we’ve so far met in England. I don’t know what it will do to my figure, but I sure needed it.’

  *

  The manageress, dressed now, took them up to their rooms, a big room with a double bed for Professor and Mrs Boyce, and a charming small room across the corridor for Juliet. Their suitcases were already there, the labels read intelligently so that they were in the right rooms. Boyce tried to thank the manageress, and felt that his rather professorial words sounded horribly lame.

  ‘Get along with you,’ she responded cheerfully. ‘A hotel’s a place for helping people. Now, if you’ve been up all night, I daresay you could all do with a rest. No one will bother you. Lunch is any time from 12.30 to 2.30. You’ll find a bathroom at the end of the passage.’

  Juliet said, ‘I’m not particularly tired, so when the town wakes up I think I’ll have a look round. Do I have to be here when that inspector comes?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said her father. ‘But probably it would be as well.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be there at midday, then.’

  *

  Miriam Boyce took off her dress and lay down on the big double bed. ‘I feel as if I’ve been up for ever,’ she said. ‘We’ve got nearly four hours before we have to do anything. I’m going to have a sleep. What about you, Stephen?’

  ‘I shall rest a bit, but I don’t think I could go to sleep. I’m still rather worked up. I can’t help wondering who it was under that stone; and how he got there.’

  *

  The firemen had no great difficulty in getting lifting gear to the fallen megalith, for the Great Circle at Avebury encloses some twenty-eight acres, and a road runs through it. They had no crane to lift over twenty tons, but they did not need one. With hydraulic jacks and long crowbars they tilted the edge of the stone sufficiently for the body to be dragged clear, and at that point Inspector Revers halted operations.

  ‘With a tackle led to the winch on the lorry I reckon we could get her upright,’ the chief fire officer said.

  ‘Yes, and I’d like you to do that if you can, because I want to examine the ground underneath. But not just yet. First we must see to the body, and then I want to have a good look at the foundations round the base of the stone before we start pulling it back. I wonder who the poor devil was.’

  The doctor was already examining the crushed, pathetic body. It was horribly mutilated. It had been lying face downwards, head towards the stone, but what had been the head was barely recognisable as such, for it was smashed almost to pulp. The clothes were blood-stained, but seemed oddly undamaged – faded blue jeans and a grey pullover.

  ‘Can you tell us anything about him? Age? How long dead?’ the Inspector asked.

  The doctor shook his head. ‘Not much, I’m afraid. Not very old, I think – it looks like the body of a fairly young man. As for time of death – practically impossible at the moment. Not very long, probably less than twelve hours. How much less I can’t say. We may learn more from the autopsy. I can’t do anything here.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Well, apparently multiple injuries caused by the falling stone. But again I can’t possibly be sure without an autopsy.’

  ‘He’s got something in his hip pocket,’ the Inspector said. He knelt down, put his hand in the pocket and extracted a wallet. It held two or three pound notes, and various bits of paper, among them a driving licence. ‘That’s a bit of luck,’ the Inspector said. He opened it to discover that it had been issued by Cambridgeshire County Council to Paul Andrew Clayton, of St James’s College, Cambridge. He gave it to the constable, who had returned from settling the Boyces in Marlborough. ‘You’d better take it to the station,’ he said, ‘and ask them to get on to the Cambridge police to see if they can find his next of kin and someone to identify him. It’s not absolutely certain that he was this Paul Clayton, of course, but it’s about ninety-nine per cent likely. Poor kid. What a hell of a blow to his parents.’ The Inspector had a two-year-old son of his own, and he hated the recurring police task of bringing bad news to parents whose children met with accidents or got into trouble.

  An ambulance had drawn up behind the Fire Brigade’s heavy-duty lorry. ‘Can we get the body away now?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Yes, I should think so. But tell me, doctor, are you as puzzled as I am by one thing?’

  ‘You mean the position in which he was lying?’

  ‘Yes, if he’d been walking past the stone when it fell he’d have been knocked sideways. If he’d been trying to climb the stone, he’d have fallen on his back. In either case his head would have been outwards, his feet towards the stone. I can’t at the moment think of any action that would have brought him head-on to the stone as we found him – unless he’d been lying on the ground asleep.’

  The doctor agreed. ‘It certainly is puzzling. The autopsy may enlighten us – he may have had a heart attack and fallen before the stone collapsed on top of him. Or he may conceivably have been drunk, or drugged. These youngsters do sometimes get mixed up with drugs, though on the very inadequate examination I’ve been able to make his body doesn’t look like a drug addict’s. But it’s another thing to look out for at the autopsy. I’d like to get that put in hand as soon as possible. And I think I’ll call in one of the forensic pathologists from Oxford.’

  The Inspector nodded. ‘Well, let’s get him away, then.’ He called up the ambulance crew. The poor, broken remains were put on a stretcher, and covered decently with a blanket.

  *

  ‘While we’re waiting to try to lift the stone a bit more, do you think your chaps could rope off an area of about twenty yards all round the stone?’ the Inspector asked the chief fire officer. ‘And while they’re doing that, could you go to the phone box for me and ask the station to send along another uniformed man? We don’t want the public trampling over things – and in any case the stone may still be dangerous, and people ought to be kept away. I also want a photographer – could you please ask them to send out a photographer as well?’

  ‘Of course.’ The fire officer told his men what to do about the rope and went off to telephone. Revers went round to the pit at the rear of the stone and cautiously climbed down into it.

  There were signs of recent excavation on this side of the stone, but it did not seem to have gone very far; what looked like controlled digging reached nowhere near the base of the stone. And the work had been carefully done, with two thick timber baulks placed across the cavity to secure the stone as the earth was removed. One of them had fractured, and the other had been thrown out of place as the stone fell. Revers could not see any obvious reason why it should have fallen at all; and why hadn’t it fallen into the hole instead of away from it? Well, it had fallen, and presumably there was some uneven distribution of weight in the mass of the thing itself which caused it to topple as it did. He examined the splintered ends of the broken baulk of wood. In the middle of the break was what looked like a knot-hole and searching in the surrounding earth he found a piece of knot-wood that roughly fitted the hole, though it was impossible to be sure because there was so much splintering. That might, perhaps, explain the fall, but it was curious that the sound baulk had not held.

  He asked one of the firemen for a spade, and began clearing loose ear
th around the base of the stone. It was an enormous boulder, at least four feet thick, and it seemed to have been roughly squared or shaped before being erected. About a foot from the bottom, a hole about an inch in diameter ran right through the stone, though whether this was natural or had been made for some purpose in antiquity was hard to tell: the stone had been standing where it was for at least 3,000 and perhaps nearer 4,000 years.

  In its fall, the embedded base of the stone had broken through the surrounding earth, throwing it up in a tumbled heap. Revers dug down through the broken earth to see how far it went before he came to solid soil. The spade suddenly went through to its handle, and the Inspector fell on top of it. He was getting to his feet when a man rushed shouting at him. ‘What are you doing there? Come out at once!’

  Revers achieved a more dignified position and looked up to see a tubby little man, with a mop of white hair, standing on the rim of the hole waving his arms wildly. The man appeared to be very angry. ‘You have no right to be here, you are a great oaf, you will spoil everything,’ he said.

  ‘I am Detective-Inspector Revers of the North Wessex Police. There has been an accident,’ Revers said as calmly as he could.

  ‘Accident? What accident? Good God, the stone has fallen,’ the little man exclaimed. He began running his hands through his hair, apparently trying to pull out hunks of it.

  Revers climbed out of the hole and dusted his trousers. ‘Come, sir, there is no need to be so excited,’ he said. ‘May I ask who you are, and what you are doing here?’

  The little man calmed down a bit. ‘I am Dr Ragmund Arbolent,’ he said importantly. ‘I am the archaeologist in charge of all excavation in this area. It is most important work, and I act with the authority of the Department of the Environment.’

  ‘Did you know a young man called Paul Clayton?’ Revers asked.

  ‘Paul? Of course I know him. He is one of my assistants.’

  ‘Then I must ask you to go as soon as possible to the mortuary at Swindon to see if you can identify a man killed by that falling stone. We have reason to fear that it may be Mr Clayton. If you will wait here for a few minutes a constable will take you to Swindon in a police car.’

  Dr Arbolent sank to rather than sat on the ground at the edge of the hole.

  ‘Paul dead? I cannot believe it. But I cannot understand what has happened,’ he said, all self-importance gone.

  Revers spoke gently. ‘We ourselves do not yet know what happened,’ he said. ‘Apparently this stone collapsed at some time during the night, trapping and killing a man who was found beneath it. We have not yet identified the body, but papers found on it suggest that it was Paul Clayton. You may be able to give us material help – if you had not come, I should myself have called to see you. Can you tell me what sort of excavation work was being done around the stone? We have to determine how and why it fell.’

  For a full minute Dr Arbolent was silent. Then, in a voice that contrived to be both thin and pompous at the same time – Revers, when he got to know him better, called it his ‘lecturing voice ’– he said, ‘You are, I suppose, trying to hold me responsible for whatever happened here. I shall, of course, say nothing except in the presence of my solicitor.’

  Revers was considering a diplomatic reply when Dr Arbolent’s whole body underwent a sort of electric jerk, he hurled himself into the hole and began scrabbling round the base of the stone. ‘Look, look,’ he screamed. ‘This proves everything! And a police witness – what could be better? Get out your notebook, man, and write: “I ”– whatever your name is – “being an Inspector of the North Wessex Constabulary” – put police if you like, I don’t mind – “was present when Dr Ragmund Arbolent discovered the wheel-drawing at the base of Stone No 29 of the Avebury Great Circle . . .” Write, man, write! Why aren’t you writing?’

  ‘What, exactly, have you discovered?’ Revers asked.

  ‘Can’t you see? Come down and have a look. It is the greatest find in archaeological history. It will make even your name famous, just for being here.’

  Revers climbed down into the hole again and stood over the crouching Dr Arbolent. He pointed to a shallow engraving near the bottom of the stone of what looked like a circle with several radii.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a wheel, the wheel,’ Dr Arbolent said excitedly. ‘Count the spokes, man. How many are there?’

  Assuming that the lines or radii drawn from the centre of the circle to the circumference were the spokes, Revers counted them. ‘I make it nine,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly! So there can be no doubt any longer,’ Dr Arbolent said triumphantly. ‘You must get a police guard – oh, I suppose you will have one anyway. I must get this photographed, and myself go to London as soon as possible. Give me a hand out of this pit.’

  Revers helped him out of the hole, and as they climbed out the uniformed constable and police photographer who had come in response to the fire officer’s message walked up.

  ‘I do not understand the significance of what you have found,’ Revers said to the archaeologist, ‘but there is a photographer here now, and he can take a photograph of your drawing, if you like. And if you would like a statement from me to the effect that I was present when you saw the drawing, I’ll gladly give you one. You can get to London from Swindon, but I must ask you to call at the mortuary on your way to the station to see if you can identify the unfortunate young man who was crushed when the stone fell. We do not yet know how and why he died, and the investigation must proceed. It will be a great help if you will let me put a few preliminary questions now. If you wish to consult your solicitor I have no objection, though it will obviously delay things. And you will have to answer questions put to you by the coroner at the inquest, in any case. You can be of great assistance by cooperating with us now. I should have thought that was the duty of any citizen, but I cannot force you.’

  Dr Arbolent was still in a state of great elation. ‘Of course I’ll do my best to help you. You took me by surprise – I responded naturally. It is quite different now. What do you want to know?’

  Revers adjusted himself to this new tack, and produced his notebook.

  ‘First, sir, your full name and address.’

  ‘I have given you my name – Dr Ragmund Arbolent, Reader in Mediterranean Archaeology in the University of Oxford. My address is King Alfred’s College, Oxford, but I am staying with the Caponets, Sir Cyril and Lady Caponet at the Hall, while I supervise the work here.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. And the work involved excavation round this stone?’

  ‘Yes, but indirectly. The major work is excavation of the Wansdyke Great Barrow, of which you must have heard. I am well known for certain theories about the Megalithic Culture here, and in the course of my work at Wansdyke I discovered certain things which suggested that it might be useful to extend our excavation to the Avebury Circle. As you have seen, it was an inspired thought. But the work here started only a few days ago. I put young Clayton in charge of it.’

  ‘Was he a competent excavator?’

  ‘Of course. He is a Cambridge man, but a promising archaeologist.’

  ‘Can you suggest any reason why the stone should have fallen? And would it be part of Mr Clayton’s duties to be here at night?’

  ‘To your first question, no. To the second, Paul was in charge of the dig we’d just started at Stone 29. There was no need for him to be here at night, but if he wished to inspect something, to refresh his memory on some detail, there was no reason why he should not visit the stone at any time. He had quarters in the hutted camp on South Down: it is only about a mile away, and he could get here easily enough.’

  Revers remembered the disappearance of his spade, and his own fall.

  ‘Do you know anything of what is apparently a deeper cavity underneath the excavation?’ he asked.

  Dr Arbolent was tremendously excited. ‘Another cavity? Good God, man, do you realise what you are saying? Where, precisely, is it?’


  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Revers. He explained how his spade had gone through the rubble suddenly to a full spade’s length, suggesting that there was a deeper hole, perhaps some fault in the earth, underneath the stone. It would have to be investigated, because it might explain the collapse of the stone. And if the subsoil had shifted for some reason, it might make some of the other standing stones unsafe, so it was doubly necessary to discover the exact nature of the lower cavity, or fault.

  ‘Do you mean that you propose to dig down further?’ Revers nodded.

  ‘You will do nothing of the sort. Or rather, you will dig only in my presence, and under my instructions. I forbid you and your men to touch anything more around that stone.’

  Revers was a little uneasy. He knew that the site was an important one, scheduled as an Ancient Monument, and protected by the Department of the Environment. If this half-mad archaeologist was right, clearly the stone, or the drawing on it, had some particular significance. He didn’t want questions in Parliament about the police interfering with possibly valuable archaeological evidence. At the same time there was a death to be investigated, and everything surrounding the fallen stone needed looking into. It was time, Revers thought, to get in touch with higher authority. He said, tactfully, ‘You will understand, sir, that I must consult my superiors, but I cannot think that there will be any objection to your being present when we have to dig.’

  ‘There had better not be. I am not without friends in the Government.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, sir. May I suggest now that you let us take you to Swindon? There’s a train timetable in the car and the driver will see that you get the first available train to London after calling at the mortuary. Will you be coming back tonight? I can arrange for you to be met at Swindon. We need to get on with digging as soon as we can.’

  ‘You are forgetting the photography.’

  ‘No, sir, I have not forgotten. You shall have a photograph of your wheel.’