Indian Summer

by Alec Marsh

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Historical Thrillers; Political Thrillers

Synopsis

This third novel in the Dabble and Harris thrillers is perfect for fans of action-packed, historical fiction. ' A rollicking good read' IAN RANKIN When daring journalist Sir Percival Harris gets wind of a curious crime in a sleepy English town, he ropes in his old friend Professor Ernest Drabble to help him investigate. The crime is a grave robbery, and as Drabble and Harris pry deeper, events take a mysterious turn when a theft at the British Museum is soon followed by a murder. The friends are soon involved in a tumultuous quest that takes them from the genteel streets of London to the wide plains of the United States. What exactly is at stake is not altogether clear - but if they don't act soon, the outcome could be a bloody conflict, one that will cross borders, continents and oceans... Meanwhile, can Drabble and Harris's friendship - which has endured near-death experiences on several continents, not to mention a boarding school duel - survive a crisis in the shape of the beautiful and enigmatic Dr Charlotte Moore? Praise for Alec Marsh's Drabble and Harris thrillers... ' An immensely readable treat!' ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH 'Told with humour and flair, Enemy of the Raj is a highly enjoyable, riveting read' ABIR MUKHERJEE 'A thoroughly engaging and enjoyable diversion' NEW STATESMAN on Enemy of the Raj 'Tremendous stuff! With the arrival of Alec Marsh's first Drabble and Harris thriller, John Buchan must be stirring uneasily in his grave' STANLEY JOHNSON

Release date: September 9, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 256

Sample

September 1937

Gravesend, Kent

Sir Percival Harris stood on the platform beneath a broad black umbrella. The water streamed off it, making him resemble a dreary sculpture in an elaborate fountain. Despite his sodden appearance, his pink, cold-looking face grinned from ear to ear. As the train jerked to a halt – throwing Ernest Drabble off balance in the carriage – Harris splashed forward and yanked open the door.

‘Bloody good to see you, Ernest. Have I got something to show you!’

Drabble pulled the coat flaps of his tweed greatcoat over him and stepped out into the deluge. He shook the proffered hand; Harris’s glove was soaked through.

‘Christ alive, Harris. You’ll catch the death –’

‘Trust me, it’s worth it.’

Before he said another word, Harris was on the move, seemingly oblivious of the standing water as he splashed through the puddles. ‘Come on, Drabble,’ he trilled. ‘Not a moment to lose . . . the light is fading fast!’

The station clock showed a quarter after five. In the background, a seagull cried out, cutting through the din of the passengers, engines, and chatter. Fittingly, Drabble caught a tickle of salt in the air amid the sweet smell of coal smoke. Harris hurried them out, past the waiting taxis and omnibuses, and into the high street, where he wove through the shoppers and children returning home from school. The rain ran down the awnings over shop windows and raincoats glistened under a glaucous sky.

Harris was too preoccupied to talk. He focused on navigating the human traffic, glancing back every now and then to ensure Drabble was keeping up. Drabble understood that his old friend would be incapable of discussing the matter in hand until they had arrived at it – physically and mentally: Harris could not do two things at once. Especially when he was on a quest.

‘Come on, Drabble!’ He dashed across a road towards a church, evading a swerving taxicab. Drabble dodged out after him, his impatience getting the better of him.

‘Are you going to tell me what this is about?’

Harris turned back, glaring indignantly from behind fogged-up spectacles.

‘Surely you of all people know why you’re here?’ He gestured towards the building behind him – a dark brick Georgian church, its square steeple topped with a spire.

‘You’re joking . . .’

Harris smiled. ‘Want me to introduce you?’

Harris heaved open the tall oak door, and peered inside.

‘All right.’ He pulled off his hat and gestured for Drabble to follow.

The interior of the church was gloomy, with the dim afternoon light seeping in grudgingly through small, high windows. Rows of pews culminated in steps leading to a marble-topped altar housed in a Romanesque apse supported by natty neoclassical pillars. On the left, a stately organ clung to a wall that was otherwise covered in memorial tablets and brass inscriptions. So far, so Georgian.

Harris strode up the aisle like an occupying Prussian, his soles leaving wet footprints on the tiles.

Drabble knew she wouldn’t be in here. She couldn’t be, not unless they’d built the ruddy church on top of her. That, of course, was possible. And now he came to think of it – all too possible when you considered what the Georgians were capable of.

‘Harris –’ he called out. ‘Are you telling me, they’ve found the grave?’

Harris spun around and squinted ferociously towards the door.

‘Shhhhhh! Come on. Leave your bloody bag there. We don’t have long.’

Passing the altar, Harris ducked down through a small door. Within was a spiral staircase, clearly of some antiquity, judging by the hollowed stone steps. It struck Drabble as odd, until he realised that they might well predate the newer Georgian structure above. ‘Shut the door behind you,’ Drabble heard Harris say, as he stomped down the steps.

They arrived in a chamber lit scarcely by slithers of glass: broad stone pillars supported a low ceiling over an undulating floor of marble. Here and there a stone inscription marked out a burial.

Harris bent down and scratched with a matchbox, lighting a lamp.

‘Come on,’ he repeated. ‘Get your coat off.’

In the far corner, Drabble saw that a stone slab had been prised off, leaving a dark hole through which poked the top of a ladder. He stripped off his wet overcoat, his trepidation mounting. Was she really in there?

‘Tell me you’ve got permission to be rooting around here.’

Harris held up the lamp, and grinned. ‘Of course I have, old man. But we mustn’t dally.’

Harris climbed awkwardly down the ladder, taking the light with him. Drabble cursed, and followed. Sometimes there was nothing to be done but to indulge Harris.

Drabble’s feet connected with soft earth at the foot of the ladder. It smelled pungently of soil and damp. He bent down under the low ceiling and immediately saw an exposed skeleton bathed in the yellow light of the lantern. Harris was gazing down at it, mesmerised.

‘There she is,’ he beamed, his sodden hair matted to his forehead and the light glinting from his dirty lenses. ‘There she is!’

Drabble stared down at the skeleton in disbelief. Of course, it was the first thing he had thought of when Harris had telephoned him in Cambridge that morning, telling him to ‘drop everything immediately’ because of a historically important find in Gravesend. She was said to have been buried here, but no one had ever found the grave. And even now, confronted by this diminutive skeleton, he could not believe that this was . . .

He turned to Harris.

‘Who says it’s her?’

‘The rector.’

‘And how does he know?’

‘He told me it’s a secret that’s been passed down from one rector to the next for generations.’

Drabble viewed the exposed bones sceptically. ‘I suppose it’s not every vicar who can boast having a full-blown Iroquois princess – not to mention the first of her people to convert to Christianity – in his undercroft.’

‘I should say –’ Harris smiled and bobbed his head towards the ceiling. ‘I’m told her name is actually inscribed on the marble slab up there – but it’s so faded and written in impossibly squiggly seventeenth-century copperplate it could ruddy well say Dick Whittington for all I know.’

‘Except he’s in St Michael Paternoster.’

Harris did not appear to hear Drabble’s comment. He nodded towards the remains.

‘What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’ Drabble repeated the question, a new light dawning on him, albeit belatedly. He scolded himself. ‘Is that why you asked me here . . . to confirm that this is her? I’m a historian, not a ruddy archaeologist.’

Harris grinned boyishly.

Drabble reviewed the skeleton, his mind working quickly.

First things first, if this was Pocahontas, daughter of the chief who had ruled much of the region of Virginia where the first English colonists had settled in the early 1600s, then the skeleton would obviously need to be that of a woman. The cranium, turned slightly to its left, was small and delicate. Drabble could tell from the angle of the mandible that this was likely to be a female. But it was not conclusive.

‘Here –’ Drabble pointed towards the middle of the skeleton and Harris moved the lamp closer. Drabble was looking for a small fan-shaped opening in the rear of the pelvis. ‘There –’ he pressed his thumb into the space in the bone. ‘That’s the greater sciatic notch.’

‘And?’

‘It’s good news, Harris –’ He wiped his finger on his handkerchief and saw Harris’s mouth break into a smile. ‘This is the skeleton of a woman.’

Harris’s smile subsided into disappointment. ‘Ah . . .’

‘Here, shine the light on the skull there –’ Drabble moved out of the light and peered closely at the cranium. Despite its great antiquity, he could see the zigzagging sutures, the fusion lines between the bones of the head, which indicated this to be a young adult, one whose skeleton was not yet fully formed. This was consistent with Pocahontas’s death at the reported age of twenty-one. All this he explained.

‘Much more than that – I can ascertain that this woman was of medium height for the era, indicating she must have had a good diet and perhaps been high-status. Her teeth are in good shape, which shows she was not blighted by an excess of sugar – that suggests the woman lived before sugar became commonplace, which is fine as far is it goes: if you were rich in the early 1600s there was enough of it about . . .’

‘She mightn’t have had a sweet tooth?’

‘Quite possibly . . .’

‘None of which categorically contradicts what the rector says –’ Harris’s eyes glistened with calculation – ‘or the swirly writing inscribed on the slab. Excellent!’

Harris set down the lantern and began scribbling in his notebook. Drabble’s heart sank.

‘One more question, Professor – do you think anything is missing?’

‘What?’

Harris lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘Someone broke in to the church last night. They lifted the slab and got in here and did God knows what to the remains. You’ll read all about it in tonight’s newspaper.’

‘I see . . .’ So, as well as being asked to confirm the remains, he was now being required to ascertain if anything had been taken.

‘Well, what do you think?’ asked Harris.

Drabble exhaled irritably and motioned for Harris to pick up the lamp. It was possible that she would have been buried with her wedding ring, so he located her left hand and blew the dust away. He took out his pen and began prodding the dense layers of silt and dirt, formed by centuries of rot and decay – and Lord knows what else. No ring was present, and the bones in the left wrist had come adrift from the remains of the hand. The right hand, meanwhile, had also fallen apart. This wasn’t archaeology so much as guesswork.

‘It’s just possible that the neck has been shifted – but whether it was last night or last century, I couldn’t be sure.’

Harris looked up from his notebook, an eyebrow cocked. ‘A necklace or pendant?’

‘Impossible to say.’

‘Care to speculate?’

‘I’ll leave that to you.’

‘All right. What about the wrist?’

‘The burial has been disturbed is all I’ll say.’ Drabble frowned at him. ‘And you’re not to quote me by name. You understand?’

‘You have my word.’

‘I’ve had that before.’

Harris coughed in such a way as to communicate the closure of that topic of conversation. ‘How recently would you say that the burial has been disturbed? Yesterday or decades ago?’

‘You’d need an archaeologist for that.’

Harris growled, ‘Come off it, Ernest. Some of those marks in the dust look pretty fresh to me.’

‘So what do you need me for?’

It was Drabble’s turn to smile mischievously.

‘I’ll say this: if someone did go to the trouble of finding this grave – which, don’t forget, archaeologists failed to locate back in 1923 when they excavated here – and they broke in at the dead of night to achieve it, then you must wonder what they wanted.’

Harris’s eyes lit up. ‘Well exactly, old man –’

‘Either something was here and has been taken, or they will have been gravely disappointed, so to speak.’ Drabble looked down at the skeleton, at its slightly mangled spine and sternum and that dislocated left wrist. ‘If she was laid to rest with a bracelet or necklace then this could well be consistent with robbery. Plus, those marks in the dust do look pretty recent.’

Harris looked up eagerly from his notes.

‘Fresh?’

‘Don’t quote me.’

‘Heaven forbid.’

A breeze sent the flame in the lamp flickering over and they heard a rising creak – like the door at the top of the stairs opening. Hadn’t Drabble latched it? Harris seized the lamp.

‘Come on, we’d better not outstay our welcome.’ He crawled over to the ladder, and looked back, smirking. ‘This place gives me the crypts!’

At the station they bought a copy of the second edition of Harris’s paper, the London Evening Express, and boarded the next train for the capital.

Harris slammed the first-class compartment door shut, and plumped down opposite Drabble, who was stowing his Gladstone bag. He pulled out his pipe.

‘Grave robbery in Gravesend!’ he declared with relish. Plumes of smoke ballooned from his pipe as he began to jot down his story with the stub of a pencil. ‘But what did they steal? A necklace or pendant; a bracelet of some description? Both, perhaps?’

‘Aztec gold?’ suggested Drabble with a lift of an eyebrow, as he glanced about for a radiator or heater. The carriage was cold and damp.

‘It’s a mystery –’ Harris referred back to his notes and then leafed back and forth, scribbling down shorthand notes from an earlier conversation into quotes for his story. All the while smoke poured from his pipe and dispersed from his mouth. It was a wonder he could see what he was writing. He grinned over at Drabble through the mist, pipe gritted between his teeth.

‘You staying at the club?’

‘Where else?’

‘Bloody marvellous. We can have a right old binge!’

Unfolding the Evening Express, Drabble was able to read Harris’s first story on the case – just five short paragraphs, detailing the fact that the remains had reportedly been found – Pocahontas’s grave ‘discovered’ in Kent’ – and ‘likely disturbed’ but nothing more:

The alarm was raised by the churchwarden, Mrs Wyndham, shortly after seven a.m. this morning, according to the Kent County Constabulary. ‘It’s a violation,’ she told this paper’s correspondent.

Drabble looked up from the paper. ‘Did she really say “violation”?’

‘With the usual prompting.’

‘How did they get in?’

‘Broke a window in the vestry. Didn’t take anything, mind.’

‘Just after Pocahontas?’

Harris nodded and returned to his notebook. Drabble read on:

Speaking on behalf of the American people, the United States ambassador welcomed news of the discovery of the resting place of Pocahontas, and expressed concern over the break-in. The official spokesman confirmed the ambassador would be visiting directly in the coming days to see the burial for himself, and to pay his respects.

Drabble looked over at Harris.

‘You spoke to the rector, didn’t you?’

It took a moment for the question to register before Harris looked up.

‘What?’

‘The rector. Did you speak to him?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Harris’s face lit up. ‘And strangely enough, he was rather irritated. But not about the break-in, rather about the fuss . . . the attention. If I didn’t know better I’d have said he was annoyed that Mrs Wyndham raised the alarm at all.’

‘It stands to reason. You said yourself the grave was a secret they’ve guarded for generations. Presumably he would rather she hadn’t told the police.’

‘Good point.’

‘Don’t forget, he has been happy to contribute to the fiction that the precise location was lost, so it must have been galling for him to have to own up to the fact that he and his forebears have been lying to all and sundry for centuries. Bearing false witness and all that.’

At Waterloo station, they took a cab to the Granville club.

Once there they headed straight for the Long Bar and were but paces from the first drink of the day, when a voice hailed Harris.

‘Sir Percival, sir?’

Harris turned back to confront the speaker, a look of repressed rage informing his features. He really did have an enormous thirst on.

‘Message from the office for you, sir,’ the porter said timidly. ‘You’re to call the moment you arrive. Most insistent, the gentleman was.’

Harris nodded, the gentleman would be. And Harris was a Dutchman if whoever had telephoned from the office was a gentleman.

‘Thank you, John.’

They went straight to the bar.

‘What a day,’ declared Harris as he raised the tankard to his lips. He leaned his head back, tilted the near-full vessel to his mouth, and held it there at forty-five degrees for ten seconds, fifteen at most.

‘Right –’ He slammed down the tankard and exhaled like a man who has just sired a deity. ‘Order up another brace, Professor. I’ll be right back.’

Drabble watched his old friend hurry towards the lobby, where there was a row of telephone booths, and smiled. Harris never changed. Well, not much, and never for the better.

Drabble caught the eye of Le Goff, the barman, and ordered a second round. He was just beginning to enjoy a moment of peace when Harris erupted back into his presence, roaring.

‘Holy smokes!’ He clapped Drabble on the shoulder and seized up his pint. ‘I’ll tell you this for nothing, old man. This is right up your street . . .’

Before Drabble could discover the cause of Harris’s excitement he had to wait for him to drink. He watched the man’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as he gulped. Finally, Harris came up for air. ‘Somebody’s just burgled the British Museum!’ he gasped. The pint went back to his mouth as the information sank in.

‘The British Museum?’ Drabble repeated, his mind filling with terrifying prospects of endangered national treasures large and small – items the value of which could not be calculated in simple financial terms. ‘What’s been taken?’

Harris stood his tankard on the bar and stifled a belch.

‘A pipe belonging to Sitting bloody Bull! Now, get your hat . . .’

The taxi pulled up outside the proud iron railings of the British Museum and Drabble and Harris hurried in through the gate. A policeman stood under the streetlamp, swathed in an oiled greatcoat. The rain had relented but the poor sod looked like he was there for the duration. He touched the rim of his helmet.

They crossed the forecourt, bounded up the darkened steps, and were admitted by a flustered-looking clerk, who reviewed them savagely.

‘And you are?’ he sniffed imperiously. Harris’s reply was met with a shout towards the darkened cavernous interior. ‘McMillan . . . show these gentlemen of the press to the Americas room.’

They were led through the museum: Drabble glimpsed the Rosetta Stone in the gloom, he saw winged, human-headed Assyrian lions and the faces of forgotten gods. They passed rooms full of coins and urns and pottery, zigzagging through doorways, corridors, centuries, and continents. There was plenty here to attract a burglar.

The door in front of them opened into a brightly lit room: Harris strode in ahead. Drabble saw a totem pole and a two dug-out canoes . . .

‘Ah . . . the Evening Express!’ The voice came from a fleshy face that bore a lascivious expression. ‘Early as always.’ The man spoke breathlessly, and smiled as he spotted Drabble, showing teeth that wanted a dentist’s care. ‘You’ve just missed the Standard, and The Times were here earlier.’ The man’s ginger hair was unwashed and he was dressed in an exhausted grey suit. His complexion leaned towards yellow.

‘Inspector Stephenson.’ Harris bowed his head with ironic courtesy, and introduced Drabble.

‘Professor Drabble,’ replied Stephenson with emphasis. Judging by his tone, he held academics in higher esteem than journalists.

The policeman led them across the room past several display cases filled with American Indian artefacts: there were several paddles, their blades painted with deities, and a totem pole carved with animals and strange faces. The inspector paused before a display case from which the pane of protective glass had been removed. Any shards had been cleaned away. Inside among various objects – including a small clay pipe and a pair of moccasins – stood an empty baize-covered plinth. Next to it was a broad clothes hanger, likewise devoid of its artefact. Besides it was a five foot high chief’s war bonnet which was adorned by what must have been a hundred or more black-tipped eagle features.

‘This,’ Stephenson breathed heavily, ‘is where until just before twelve noon there used to be a pipe belonging to the Indian chief, Sitting Bull, who I daresay requires no introduction. If the text is to be believed, the pipe was critical to working his magic.’ Stephenson arched an eyebrow. ‘And on that hanger there was a battle shirt of some description, also said to have supernatural powers. I am told that if you put it on it rendered you immune from gunfire.’ The policeman offered a sarcastic smile. ‘In which case we could do with a few of them down the Mile End Road.’

The inspector cleared this throat.

‘The thief waited for the guard to exit the room over there, and then choosing a moment when no one else was in the gallery, he broke the glass, snatched the items, and made good his escape. The alarm was raised at eleven fifty-three a.m. We can only assume that the theft took place but minutes prior to this.’

Harris finished writing. ‘Any leads?’

‘We’re investigating. No one conspicuous was seen in these galleries or in the museum before or after. As far as we know, no one else apart from the burglar was in the room when the cabinet got broken into. No one saw the stolen property exiting the building.’

‘Are the items valuable?’

Stephenson’s face contracted, his yellowing skin pulling itself taut. ‘We’re still trying to get a figure . . . Not without value, let’s put it that way. Mind you, if money was your motive there would be plenty of other things to lift from the museum first.’

‘So it’s likely to be a collector of some sort?’ suggested Harris.

‘Precisely.’ Stephenson lit a cigarette. ‘Probably some crank who’s desperate to complete his Red Indian dressing-up costume.’ He glanced back over at the display case. ‘Don’t quote me on that.’

Harris crossed out what he had been writing and exchanged a glance with Drabble.

‘Inspector, I was in Gravesend earlier today. Do you think there could be a connection to the Pocahontas robbery?’

‘Who said there had been a. . .