The Age of Exodus Read online

  “To be honest I don’t,” said Forrester, suddenly distracted as he read the title on the spine of one of the books on Lanchester’s shelf. It was The Poetry of Ancient Sumer, by Edward St. John Townsend.

  Lanchester caught his glance. “As you see,” he said, “I have given some attention to the question of what happened to poor Templar. But, like you, I have come up with no answers.”

  “It’s the same translation Crispin Priestley used,” said Forrester. “The man who helped Templar decipher the photographs that were sent to him.”

  “Indeed it is,” said Lanchester. “Poor Priestley. He’s most upset by what’s happened, as you can imagine.” He rose to his feet, reaching out his hand to shake Forrester’s. “Look,” he said, “I’m very glad we had this conversation, and I’ll make appropriate enquiries, but I have a meeting shortly with the undersecretary.”

  “Of course,” said Forrester.

  “See you on the Queen Mary,” said Lanchester, and dropped back into his seat, as if the farewell had exhausted him.

  * * *

  The next day saw Forrester back in his rooms at Oxford making the arrangements necessary to cover his academic obligations during the three weeks he expected to be away. In the midst of them, Ken Harrison knocked at the door, his face uncharacteristically grim.

  “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this,” he said. “You must be feeling rotten.”

  “Yes,” said Forrester. “Templar asked for my help and advice and I was totally useless. I feel as if I’ve let him down.”

  “Well, please don’t,” said Harrison. “Whoever had it in for him was going to kill him whatever you said or did. I should never have got you involved.”

  “You did it for the best of motives,” said Forrester. “Both for him and for me – I know that. But it is a bloody shame.”

  “Do the police have any idea who did it?” asked Harrison.

  “The list of suspects is growing by the hour,” said Forrester. He wondered whether he was under any obligation of confidentiality, and decided he wasn’t. He’d been giving the police information, rather than the other way round. “Shall I fill you in?”

  Harrison sat down and took out his pipe. “I’d be very grateful if you would,” he said. “Templar was a good chap and if I can help find out what happened to him, well, frankly, it would be a relief.”

  So Forrester spent the next half hour describing everything that had happened in London that day, all of which undermined Templar’s optimistic assertion that he had no enemies apart from whoever was sending the messages. As Forrester spoke Harrison took out a notepad and began making a list.

  “There’s no shortage of suspects, is there?” he said at last. “A professional rival or rivals in the Foreign Office, love rivals Arthur Koestler and Jack Casement, possible enemies in the world of black magic such as Aleister Crowley, and of course the beautiful Angela Shearer.”

  “Who wasn’t remotely physically capable of committing the murder herself…” said Forrester.

  “But perfectly capable of getting someone else to do it,” said Harrison. “We both know that most married people are murdered by their spouse. Perhaps she wanted to get rid of him so she was free to marry Jack Casement. I’m sure Aleister Crowley isn’t physically capable of it either, but you’ve got him in the frame, and you have to admit any of the people you’ve been talking about could have hired somebody to do the deed for them.”

  “Fair point,” said Forrester. “By the way, there’s another interesting character associated with Watkins Books: Oggy Pritchard.”

  “Not another suspect?”

  “No, no,” said Forrester. “He’s a midget who lives under the counter.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No, it’s literally true. He lost his parents in the Blitz and came there looking for some sort of séance to help him get in touch with them. Geoff Watkins took pity on him and gave him a job and a place to stay. People tend to forget he’s even there, so I’ve asked him to keep his ears open in case he hears anything that might be useful. I mention him in case he tries to get in touch with me here.”

  “Do you think the Watkins might be working with Crowley?”

  Forrester considered. “I talked to both the Watkins after he’d gone and they seemed totally shocked by what had happened and eager to give me any information I wanted.” And he summarised what they had told him about the split in the ranks of Crowley’s followers and the rumours of a new source of occult power.

  “Care to hazard a guess as to what it was?” said Harrison.

  “No,” said Forrester. “I’ve genuinely no idea. And I won’t be able to investigate any further until I get back from New York.”

  “New York?” said Harrison.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said Forrester. “I’ve got clearance to go to the archaeology conference at Columbia.”

  “That’s terrific news,” said Harrison. “Does that mean you won’t need my essay on Athenian shipbuilding till next month?”

  “On the contrary, I’m afraid,” said Forrester, meeting his eye. “I need you to get it to me by the weekend so that, instead of hearing you read it to me, I’ll be able to spend the voyage studying it closely.”

  8

  THE MAN FROM DOWN UNDER

  When she was being built in the 1930s the ship was known by the codename 534. The directors of the Cunard Line determined that her name should match those of their existing ships, such as the Mauritania and the Aquitania, and wanted to call her the Victoria, or the Queen Victoria, but decided before doing so to ask her grandson’s permission. So the chairman of the Cunard board went to see King George and explained that they wanted to christen their new liner with the name of England’s greatest queen: to which His Majesty graciously replied, “I’m sure my wife will be delighted.”

  As a result of which the 534 became the Queen Mary.

  Forrester could not help smiling to himself at the recollection of this story as he looked up from the Southampton docks at the towering bulk of the liner, repainted from her wartime drabness as a troopship to the self-confident black, white and red of her 1930s glory days. And his mood only improved as he climbed the gangplank and was guided to a first-class cabin by a steward in a white uniform just as crisply perfect as the ship itself.

  The first-class cabin, of course, made sense. Bevin would be travelling first class and if Forrester was to keep an eye on him, he had to be in the same part of the ship. For the next five days he would be experiencing a level of luxury he had never known, and he was determined to make the most of it.

  He unpacked, delighting in the elegant comfort of his surroundings: the crisp linens, richly varnished woods and gleaming brass porthole, which reminded him of his visits to the trawlers on which his father had worked – although the portholes there tended to be greenish in hue and distinctly reluctant to open. These looked as if they were polished daily to within an inch of their lives. There was even a small writing desk – with two envelopes on it.

  The first contained the passenger list, which he put aside to read later. In the second was a note from Roy Bell, brief and to the point.

  “According to Darlington, there are no tablets in the British Museum with inscriptions matching those in the photograph, either on public display or in the vaults, but he kindly gave us a list of other museums to check – a mere dozen or so, in England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Cairo and Baghdad. If, having searched them all, the tablets turn out to be in private hands, the keeper said he would be very glad if we could let him know who the owner is so he can set about acquiring them for the museum. Curators! What a bunch! So on that front we’re no further forward.

  “I went to see your friend Crowley myself: he’s delighted to be a suspect and quite happy to waste as much police time as possible with as many hints and allegations as he can come up with, including the claim that this ‘Mr. Smith’ is a golem he brought to life himself and can unleash on his enemies at will. He e
ven said, ‘You don’t have to worry about him now, officer, I’ve sent him to America.’ Absolute tripe, I’m sure, but I felt I should mention it in case you hear the sound of large boots tramping down the corridors of the Queen Mary.”

  Unable to resist the temptation, and as if responding even at a distance to Crowley’s will, Forrester glanced at the passenger list. There were four Smiths – one a child, one a single woman, and a couple. To be on the safe side, he decided that when he had time he would check up on the couple, and immediately felt a fool. Smith was obviously a figment of Crowley’s warped imagination.

  He was about to resume his study of the passenger list when the ship’s hooters sounded and he set out along the immaculately carpeted corridors to return to the upper deck.

  For the past few years the Queen Mary had been anything but immaculate. Painted grey to make her less visible to attacking aircraft, the luxurious art-deco furniture in her staterooms had been replaced with triple-tiered wooden bunks for troops. The swimming pools had been emptied and filled with yet more bunks. Then, relying on her speed to outrun U-boats, the Queen Mary, now nicknamed the Grey Ghost, had begun carrying as many as sixteen thousand men at a time across the Atlantic to do battle with Hitler’s Wehrmacht.

  But now, with the war over, all her art-deco magnificence had been restored to the condition it had been when she was launched in 1936. As she pulled away from the dockside, Forrester stood with his hand on her newly scoured rails as passengers threw coloured paper streamers to the crowds below. As he watched, the streamers stretched until they finally broke, and the parting was suddenly real.

  He remained by the rail, looking out at the green fields of England as the ship glided down on the Solent, and suddenly felt strangely proprietorial about the land he was leaving. It was absurd, he knew, but having spent five years fighting for England’s survival, he felt it somehow belonged to him in a way it never had before he had joined up.

  And he still felt protective towards it: to this absurd country with its ruminative farmers ploughing fields their ancestors had tended since before the Norman conquest; its square-towered Saxon churches; its flat-capped working men streaming into their factories in the week and their football stadiums on the weekends; its cheerful, ridiculous Home Service radio comedies (Can I do you now, sir?) and sonorous shipping forecasts about barometric pressure falling slowly on the Dogger Bank; its bewigged judges, ermine-clad lords, royal processions in golden carriages; its sweet shops and corner grocers and street urchins yelling out the latest outrageous headlines from its wildly excitable newspapers.

  “You love it all, don’t you?” said a voice beside him. “The whole ridiculous shebang.” And, as he looked down to see Gillian Lytton, for a moment his heart was filled with the same almost unbearable delight he had felt when he looked into the eyes of her sister, dead now these past four years.

  “Gilly!” exclaimed Forrester. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I’m going to the United Nations,” said the girl. “To translate for the benighted foreigners. There’s a whole gaggle of us aboard.”

  “That’s terrific. I’m so pleased for you.”

  “And you?”

  “Archaeology conference in New York.”

  “What a bit of luck. We can keep each other company.”

  “We can,” said Forrester promptly, trying to decide how he really felt about Gillian’s unexpected appearance.

  Gillian was the younger sister of Barbara Lytton, the first woman he had truly loved. Barbara Lytton who, believing Forrester had been killed on one of his missions for the SOE, had volunteered to go to France herself, parachuted behind enemy lines as a radio operator and within weeks had been betrayed, captured by the Gestapo and shot.

  Wracked with guilt and loss, Forrester had been unable to deal with the tragedy beyond trying to comfort Barbara’s bereaved parents, to whom he had become close. For a long time, amidst his grief, he had felt as if his heart had been permanently cauterised – and then he had met Sophie.

  Sophie, whom he had also lost.

  The twist to the situation was that he knew perfectly well Gillian Lytton was in love with him. She had had a schoolgirl crush on him when he was going out with Barbara, and when he met her after the war the feeling had turned to a love he knew he could not accept. His unwitting role in her sister’s death placed between him and Gilly, as far as he was concerned, an insuperable barrier. He had told her this, and she had told him not to be so silly. He had tried to stay out of her way, and had largely succeeded.

  Now they were trapped together for the next five days. And despite everything, despite the fact that the last thing he needed now was a distraction, despite the fact that he was determined not to hurt her, or hurt himself by opening his heart so soon after losing Sophie Arnfeldt-Laurvig, he had to admit, as he looked at that upturned, open face, that the world seemed a better place.

  “I can see you calculating,” she said. “Is this embarrassing? Are you here with another woman?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Forrester. “I’m very happy to see you. Really.”

  “So you should be,” she said. “Unless you’re determined to become one of those old bachelor dons.”

  “To hell with that,” said Forrester, suddenly realising that the best way out of his dilemma was to tell her the truth. He knew that his mission was secret, but no one had got around to swearing him to secrecy, and he knew she could keep her own counsel.

  “Listen, Gilly,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  And as the great liner left the Solent behind and slipped into the Channel, Forrester walked Gillian Lytton around the deck, explaining exactly what he was doing there and why he could not give her all his attention. As he had expected, she took the situation in her stride.

  “It’s not a problem at all,” she said. “I can be the perfect cover. You can seem to be canoodling with me when you’re really eavesdropping on conspirators. And I can be your eyes and ears on the lower decks, which is where all us lowly translators have been stowed. And while I’m with you I can see all the first-class bits.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Well, I had, and I think it’s a terrific wheeze. So will you take me round?”

  Forrester did, and for the next hour he felt happier than he had done for months as they explored libraries, beauty salons, music studios, cinemas, lecture halls, paddle tennis courts, and gazed in wonder at the swimming pool hall, two decks tall. They admired the mirrors engraved with eurhythmic ladies, the streamlined bas-reliefs of steam trains being pursued by centaurs and biplanes being chased by winged horses. They looked into the Grand Salon lined with massive pillars which made Forrester think of an art-deco version of the Foreign Office, and drank Buck’s Fizz amidst the red leather and gleaming chrome of the Observation Lounge. And then suddenly Gillian looked down the bar over Forrester’s shoulder and said, “Isn’t that Sir Jack Casement?” which brought the idyll to an abrupt halt.

  Forrester had been quite happy to accept Gillian’s offer to be his eyes and ears when it was purely theoretical; suddenly the notion that she might come between him and a killer, or at least a potential killer, was distinctly unsettling. And what the hell was the man doing here? Surely if he wanted to go to New York he of all people, as one of Britain’s top aircraft manufacturers, would fly? Forrester forced himself not to look round, but Gillian knew from the expression on his face that the sighting of Jack Casement had upset him.

  “Perhaps he just likes boats,” she said.

  “Possibly,” said Forrester, keeping his voice low.

  “Don’t tell me you think he might be here to knock off the Foreign Secretary?” she said.

  “No. It’s just that he’s linked to another case I’ve been looking into.”

  Gillian’s eyes widened. “Good Lord. I hadn’t realised you were turning into a full-time private eye.”

  “Of course I’m not,” said Forrester. “The Ernie Bevin thin
g is because I was in Palestine during the war. The other business, about Charles Templar, came about because the poor fellow asked my advice about a cylinder seal from Mesopotamia.”

  “Charles Templar? Oh golly, he’s the Sumerian demon man, isn’t he? Angie Shearer’s husband? The one who was murdered in the British Museum.” She looked at him with almost girlish admiration. “You do get the most interesting cases, don’t you?” Then her eyes narrowed, just as Barbara’s had sometimes done when something puzzled her. “But what does Sir Jack have to do with the demon murder? Don’t tell me he was after that cylinder seal?”

  Forrester drew a deep breath and realised he had little option but to fill Gillian in on the rest of the story. He was in the middle of it when Casement himself moved along the bar.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Forrester?”

  Forrester ignored the aggression and explained, politely enough, about the archaeology conference, but Casement’s attention was no longer on him. He was looking at Gillian, and when Forrester introduced her, the industrialist immediately enveloped her small hand in his.

  “Delighted to meet you,” he said. “Let me buy you both a drink.” He had to include Forrester in the invitation, but it was clear the only person he was interested in was her. Forrester opened his mouth to give her an excuse to refuse – but Gillian spoke first.

  “That’s very kind of you, Sir Jack,” she said. “We’re having Buck’s Fizz.”

  “Possibly, but I’m not giving you any of that muck,” said Casement firmly. “The only thing to drink at the start of the voyage is brandy, and needless to say the brandy they serve here is the best.”

  As he turned to the barman Gillian caught Forrester’s eye and pulled a face which said, Don’t worry, leave this to me.