The Age of Treachery (14 page)

“Magical words?”

“Please repeat that?”

“Were any of the things he asked you to translate… incantations, or spells?”

“What kind of spells?”

“For summoning… dark forces.”

“You mean the Devil?”

“Or Odin, or Wotan, whatever.”

Sepalla’s brow creased. “There were incantations, yes. But who was being summoned, what they were for… that was not clear.”

“I see. Thank you.”

There was a silence as Forrester tried to think if there was a question he should be asking, something that was staring him in the face, but his mind was a blank. Finally he said, “Thank you for telling us this, Ollie. I don’t know yet how it can help my friend, but I really appreciate it.”

“You are very welcome,” said Sepalla.

And minutes later he had disappeared into the night. Forrester looked at Harrison.

“Well done,” he said. “That promises to be immensely useful.”

“All part of the service,” said Harrison modestly, but obviously pleased at Forrester’s praise. “But what do you make of it?”

“Well, if Ollie’s telling the truth, the idea that Lyall was killed because he might reveal who betrayed him has to be ruled out.”

“
If
he was speaking the truth?” said Harrison. “You didn’t believe him?”

“Think about it,” said Forrester. “Even if what he said was word-for-word truth, it might not be the whole truth.”

“How do you mean?” said Harrison.

“Well, what if the farmer who’s now in jail had an accomplice? What if that accomplice was Ollie himself? And nobody knew except Lyall, who comes across Ollie here in Oxford and threatens to denounce him. Or perhaps doesn’t threaten – is simply seen by Ollie as a threat to be removed.”

“Good Lord,” said Harrison. “I hadn’t thought of that. He seemed such an above-board sort of chap.”

“I agree,” said Forrester. “And I’m not saying I think he had anything to do with Lyall’s death. All I am saying is that the possibility still remains.”

“How would we ever get to the bottom of something like that – I mean, something that happened three years ago in a village in Norway?”

“Hard to say,” said Forrester. “But I’ve already been asked to go to Berlin to make enquiries about Peter Dorfmann, and that gets me halfway there.”

And he told Harrison about MacLean’s surprising offer. Harrison looked at him, puzzled.

“There’s something fishy about that,” he said.

“MacLean’s offer?”

“Yes. I can understand the rationale he offered for sending you, but it seems just that – a rationale. Do you know what I mean?”

Forrester considered. Harrison had a point: he’d been so absorbed by his encounter with Gillian and his memories of Barbara that he hadn’t really analysed MacLean’s proposal. And of course, when he thought about it, Archie usually had several agendas he kept to himself whenever he sent Forrester on a mission. It was his standard operating procedure.

“I know what you mean,” he said to Harrison at last. “And you’re probably right. But frankly I’m not going to worry about that. If it gives me a chance to find out something about Dorfmann which at least muddies the waters for the police and makes the case against Gordon less conclusive, that’s progress as far as I’m concerned.”

“Point taken,” said Harrison. “By the way, I checked with Margaret Roberts about Norton’s alibi and she confirmed it. She’s a slightly alarming woman, isn’t she? Triumph of the Will and all that. She nearly had me joining the Oxford Conservative Association.”

“I’m surprised she and Norton haven’t come to blows. Or she and the rest of the department for that matter. For some reason crystallography seems to be a hotbed of left-wing agitation apart from young Margaret.”

Harrison re-lit his pipe. “The problem with Dorfmann as a suspect,” he said, “is that according to you he couldn’t possibly have done it except by magic. You’ve said all along he was in the Master’s Lodge with you and we know the murder was committed in Clark’s rooms. How do you get round that?”

“The very question I’d been asking myself,” said Forrester. “And in fact this evening I intend to go into it, if I can persuade the Master to let me. If he’s agreeable to us doing a walk-through, are you available?”

“You bet,” said Harrison. “There’s nothing like a chance to visit the scene of the crime.”

Winters looked at Forrester in some surprise when he broached the subject at High Table that night. “I hate to say this, Forrester,” he said, “but this feels to me like clutching at straws.”

“It feels a bit like that to me too,” said Forrester, “but I feel I have to.”

“Tell me what you’ve found out so far,” said Winters, and Forrester told him.

“An Old Norse manuscript?” he exclaimed, when that part of the story emerged. “But why on earth didn’t Lyall come to me if he’d found a manuscript? Why go asking engineering students for help with translations? Why go calling in Arne Haraldson? I’d have been delighted to help him.”

“He may have been embarrassed by the fact that there was an occult aspect to the manuscript.”

“Occult?”

“He told Haraldson there were certain incantations encrypted in the text.”

“I don’t believe it. What nonsense!”

“Can we be certain of that? Can we be sure the Vikings never tried to use runes or incantations to summon their gods? Or demons?”

Winters stared at him. “That is very different,” he said, “from claiming a Norse saga contained text that could have any supernatural power today, which is patently nonsense. But set that aside, my dear chap. If David had found a lost manuscript and wanted to publish it, we’d have been glad to help, whatever it contained. All the more grist to our mill – whether me or Tolkien. It’s the sort of thing we can all make use of.”

“And with your particular expertise in lost manuscripts, it’s particularly odd he never came to you,” said Forrester. “Professor Tolkien reminded me that you made your name with your reconstruction of the lost books of the
Heimskringla
. He said he often recites passages to his students.”

“How flattering,” said Winters.

“How were you able to reconstruct it?” asked Forrester. Winters rubbed his chin modestly.

“What happened was this: I found myself coming across references to the
Heimskringla
in other sagas, and I began to see a pattern. Then I collated all those references and went through dozens of hitherto unidentified scraps and remnants of manuscripts. Gradually I realised that if I put them all together and interpolated what we know of actual events, I could recreate the lost volume. To my great good fortune, in an academic sense, people accepted my interpretation and I gained what little reputation I have today.”

“The
considerable
reputation you have today,” said Forrester.

“
Assentatio nimia semper est acceptabilissimum
,” said Winters, passing the port. “Excessive flattery is always entirely acceptable.”

Forrester smiled. “So, to return to the question of whether I could have another look at the Lodge, Master, in order to pace things out a bit, get a feel of what might have happened. Is there a possibility of that?”

“But of course,” said Winters. “As I said, I’m happy to do anything I can do to help poor Dr. Clark.”

“Thank you, I very much appreciate that. There’s an undergraduate called Ken Harrison who’s been helping me; would you mind if I brought him along?”

“By all means. In fact, my wife and I are due at Magdalen this evening, and that might be a good time. I don’t want to upset her by dragging the whole thing up again while she’s at home. Would tonight suit you?”

“Perfectly,” said Forrester. “It’s very kind of you.”

“Not at all. Now tell me about this gossip you’ve picked up about Peter Dorfmann. I’ve always regarded him as a perfectly respectable academic. What exactly does this MacLean fellow have against him?”

* * *

Winters had promised to leave the door to the Lodge unlocked for Forrester when he and Lady Hilary left, and he was as good as his word. The house was dark and silent; so silent that when Harrison and Forrester had closed the door behind them and paused in the hall, they could hear the ticking of a clock somewhere on an upper landing. When they entered the sitting room there was the pleasant, lingering smell of wood smoke from the fireplace. Harrison reached to turn on the light but Forrester stopped him.

“No, the lights were off that night,” he said. “Most of the illumination came from the fire.”

“Do you want me to light it?” asked Harrison.

“I think that would be over-exploiting the Master’s hospitality. Let’s open the curtains and see what illumination we get through the windows.”

Indeed there was quite a lot of light from outside: the moon had risen behind the Lady Tower with its ungainly crown of scaffolding. As their eyes grew accustomed to the dimness the shapes in the room became clear. “The furniture was arranged differently,” said Forrester. “Lady Hilary got the Icelanders to swing the sofas round so we had our backs to the fire and were looking up at the minstrels’ gallery.”

“Where’s that?” asked Harrison, and Forrester pointed up into the darkness of the upper part of the room.

“Of course it was lit differently on the night,” he said. “They had reading lights up there.”

“So you could see their faces?” said Harrison.

“Not so much; they were a bit obscured by the balcony, and of course the light fell on the books. But let’s concentrate on the people down here first.”

“How many were there?”

“About a dozen in all, I think,” said Forrester. “Bitteridge, Calthrop, Dorfmann, Lady Hilary, a few dons from other colleges and their wives.”

“I wonder if Lyall had had his way with any of the wives?” asked Harrison.

“Oh, God,” said Forrester. “That way madness lies. Let’s focus on Calthrop and Dorfmann. Let me think where they were sitting.”

“Where were
you
sitting?” asked Harrison. “That should help.”

“Good point.” Forrester looked around the room. “I think it was there. That armchair was a bit more to the right.”

Without further ado Harrison moved the armchair into position and Forrester sat down in it.

Suddenly he could hear the voices from that night as if the readers were still up there.

I saw there wading through rivers wild

Treacherous men and murderers too,

And workers of ill with the wives of men;

There Nithhogg sucked the blood of the slain,

“So where was Dorfmann sitting?” asked Harrison. “In relation to you?”

“To my left. Calthrop was there, a little in front of me, Dorfmann was somewhere off over here.”

“I’ll be Dorfmann,” said Harrison, who pulled up a chair and sat down. “Does that seem about right?”

Forrester considered. “I think so,” he said. “The truth is of course I wasn’t taking much notice. Good dinner, plenty of port, hypnotic voices. Let’s take it as a working hypothesis that’s where he was.”

“Perfect conditions for an illusion,” said Harrison.

“What?”

“You’ve just described the kind of conditions a magician longs for when he has to perform a complicated trick.”

Forrester chuckled. “You think there was a trick?” he asked.

“Well, if Gordon Clark is innocent there had to have been,” said Harrison. “Because somebody very effectively created the illusion that he killed David Lyall, didn’t they? So keep your eye on the minstrels’ gallery. Can you remember what they were saying?”

“Vividly,” said Forrester.

“Think about it, imagine it happening again.”

Reluctantly, Forrester obeyed, listening in his head to the voices.

The giantess old in Ironwood sat,

In the east, and bore the brood of Fenrir;

Among these one in monster’s guise

There feeds he full on the flesh of the dead,

And the home of the gods he reddens with gore;

Dark grows the sun, and in summer soon

On a hill there sat, and smote on his harp,

Eggther the joyous, the giants’ warder;

Above him the cock in the bird-wood crowed,

“Boo,” said a voice, next to his right ear, and Forrester sprang to his feet, ready for action.

“Good God,” he said instead. “You frightened the life out of me.”

“Sorry about that,” said Harrison, “but if I could move out of the chair where I was sitting without you noticing, Peter Dorfmann could have done the same thing, couldn’t he?”

“He could,” said Forrester. He needed to do something, to express himself in action. Powered by the adrenalin Harrison had inadvertently triggered, his mind was racing. He looked around the room and saw a small cupboard-like entrance. “There’s a door he could have used. Let’s see where it takes us.”

They went through the door into a hallway; at the end of the hallway was a narrow set of stairs. There were two doors at the head of the stairs; Harrison opened the one on the right and stepped into the minstrels’ gallery.

“Well, he didn’t go that way,” he said, though for a moment both men stood looking down into the sitting room from this new perspective. The chairs, sofas and occasional tables seemed somehow to be waiting for the human observers to go away and leave them to their own devices.

They left the gallery and opened the left-hand door. Behind it was a corridor, which ended in a second set of stairs going down to the foyer through which they had entered the house.

“Hmmm,” said Forrester, feeling that this did not take them very far – but Harrison was opening one of the doors, revealing a bedroom beyond. Harrison went to the window and slid up the sash. Cold night air flooded in, and Forrester joined him as he stuck his head out.

They were looking down on the lesser quadrangle, with Clark’s rooms opposite across the lawn and the Lady Tower to their immediate right. “Well, even if Dorfmann or anybody else got up here from the main room, it still doesn’t get them anywhere near Clark’s rooms,” said Forrester. “They’re on the far side of the quad and even if you climbed down you’d have to climb up to them, which becomes impractical in the time. Also, there were no footsteps in the snow when we came out of the Lodge.”