My mind was a blank on how and where to make my next attack on Broom Lodge. According to the major, Marrin seldom left the estate during the day. Night – well, it was pointless to go out every night in the hope of something happening. The best bet was for the corpse to create some diversion, in order to walk off with that chalice and obtain an expert’s opinion.
In the reddish light of the torch the two-handled cauldron had again seemed to me of great age. Could it be, I wondered, that Marrin was passing off his own work as two thousand years old or better? Highly improbable that he could deceive the authorities at the British Museum! And if he had, we should all have heard of the extraordinary find. The papers would be full of it.
A photograph, then, from several angles. The major could probably manage that. But would photographs of the cauldron be enough to tell an expert whether the goldsmith was living or long dead? I doubted it. However, once my mind began to run on photographs a secondary object presented itself. How about some shots of the turtle? I knew a zoologist who would remember me well, though I had not seen him for some years. He would give me his opinion by return of post if I asked for it. The beast could not be so obscure that neither he nor his colleagues could fail to identify it.
At any rate it was a scheme to fill up an otherwise empty day. So I wrote a note to the major: ‘Can you secretly take some close-up photographs of the turtle in his laboratory and leave them here? I believe they may give us a line on what he is doing.’
This time I was very careful to approach Broom Lodge from the back, avoiding the paths, moving from tree to tree and ready to drop into the bracken at any moment. I had more trouble than I expected in finding the stump of the ash sapling. That done, I covered the letter with a cushion of moss and marked it with a white sliver of wood.
No one was about except a party of two men and two girls on the nearest track, walking in a dream of the Forest of Arden and prettily singing a madrigal, so I determined to have a look in daylight at the open space where my wandering spirit had received attention. That, too, took some finding, for there were many places where the oaks stood far enough apart to form a glade, though none had the beaten-down bracken between them. I doubt if I ever would have found it if not for the glimpse of another person moving across my front. I turned on to a parallel course and arrived at the outer pillars of the woodland sanctuary, on the opposite side to my position the night before.
I recognised him. It was Carver, whom I had often seen packing a primitive kiln with bricks to be fired – hard physical labour which he carried out with a set, contented smile. Those smiles were one of the most exasperating features of the tonsured, expressing the false puritanical humility of the saved. During the ceremony he appeared to have lost something, for he was now searching through and under the squashed bracken, moving methodically over the ground which he had covered the previous night.
After some twenty minutes he gave up and started back. I was curious to know what he had dropped and, as so often happens when a fresh pair of eyes take over a search, found the missing article near the circumference of the circle. It was his wrist watch, and hard to see since it was face downwards with the back encased in dark green leather. The strap was worn and half split, and the watch must have fallen from his wrist when he stretched out across the beaten circle to pass the bowl to Marrin. Obviously neither of them had noticed it, being entranced by fumes and piety.
I picked it up and would have liked to return it. After all, it had been lost in an act of kindly monkeying with my soul. But even returning it through the major would lead to far too many questions. So I decided to leave it where Carver or one of his fellows could not miss it – not difficult since I knew the path by which they went out and back. Some of the colony’s pigs were rooting and grubbing not far away, covering any noise I made and allowing me to walk normally. He at the same time must have been dreaming of enlightenment or in no hurry to return to heaving bricks, for I found that I had got ahead of him. I laid the watch in the middle of the track face upwards with a shaft of sunlight falling directly on it through the leaves, and slipped back into the bracken to see what he would do.
He didn’t miss it. He couldn’t. He picked it up with an exclamation of astonishment, raised his hands, murmured something I couldn’t hear and looked upwards into all the branches around as if assuming that some bird had dropped the watch into his path. Then he continued to Broom Lodge almost at a run. His manner was so peculiar and excited that I was bursting with curiosity and followed, slipping into the tall, pink foxgloves from which, the day before, I had watched the back of the house and caught a glimpse of Elsa.
Now it was that I perceived a new facet of that many-sided man, Simeon Marrin. He was a fraud, an idealist and a born leader – like so many of them not excluding murder when needful – but I had not suspected him of being superstitious. Perhaps superstitious is the wrong word. It implies illogicality, whereas the ritual which I had witnessed showed that he had worked out or accepted some sort of purgatory as a consequence of the transition from one life to another. Carver dashed into the estate office and almost immediately came out with Marrin. He was showing him the watch, miraculously transported to the spot where he could not miss it, but the other, so far as I could see, was not over-impressed until Carver pointed to the broken strap. Then Marrin’s face quite evidently displayed a sudden gravity, even shock. The broken strap had no special meaning for Carver, but for Marrin it was an instant reminder of the cunning weakening of the straps on the open-heel fins. My spirit by a neat piece of telekinesis – I was always good with my hands – had established its identity. Inspired guesswork, but I am sure I am right.
I left for the rock where I had deposited the diving kit and waited there until it was dark and I could walk home with the aqualung without attracting attention. I had no immediate use for it, but I did foresee that Severn and Forest were equally likely to hold the clue to the hoard which Marrin was ransacking. I think it was that night when my attitude towards him changed. After a solid, much-needed supper I lay on my bed of twigs, concentrating not so much on the mystery of the gold as on my quarry. In my mind I called him that because I hoped to track him through the forest as relentlessly as a carnivore. If the druidicals knew how my thoughts were running and believed in such things – was there any damned nonsense they weren’t ready to believe? – they could call me possessed, though in fact I wanted Marrin alive, well and talking. At any rate I slept as soundly as any satisfied werewolf.
Off again in the morning to find a message from the major at the foot of the sapling.
‘Easy. He left me alone there. Perhaps we are assuming guilt where there isn’t any. Mining. Naturally keeps it quiet. Are you sure your misfortune was not accident? Meet me tomorrow same place eleven am.’
‘My misfortune’ – hell! But of course he wanted to believe in his hero if it was at all possible. In spite of that, our interests were the same. He had put it plainly enough when he said that he must keep Marrin out of gaol. As for me, I was determined to prevent a crime more monstrous than murder. I was a little suspicious of that phrase ‘left me alone there’. But after all, why shouldn’t the major be left alone there? He was a welcome guest and an old friend and it did not matter if he wandered round investigating chemicals. It was proof of his value to me as an ally, so long as he could keep his mouth shut, and did not go chasing after preposterous ideas like mining. There might be some stream in the Forest where you could pick up a few grains by panning, but you could not dig a hole, as in the Klondike, and find sizeable nuggets at the bottom.