he was not afraid to take some extraordinary risks to add to the
collection at Quenton Park.
Duraid had first met him a number of years previously, when Sir Nicholas
had recruited him to act as an intelligence officer for an illicit
expedition to "liberate' a number of Punic bronze castings from
Gadaffi's Libya. Sir Nicholas had sold some of these to defray the
expenses of the expedition, but had kept the best of them for his
private collection.
More recently there had been another expedition, this time involving an
illegal crossing of the Iraqi border to bring out a pair of stone
has-relief friezes from under Saddam Hussein's nose. Duraid had told her
that Sir Nicholas had sold one of the pair for a huge amount of money;
he had mentioned the sum of five million US dollars. Duraid said that he
had used the money for the running of the museum, but that the second
frieze, the finest of the pair, was still in Sir Nicholas's possession.
Both these expeditions had taken place years before Royan had met
Duraid, and she wondered idly at Duraid's readiness to commit himself to
the Englishman in this way.
Sir Nicholas must have had unique powers of persuasion, for if they had
been apprehended in the act there was no doubt that it would have meant
summary execution for both of them.
As Duraid had explained to her, on each occasion it was only Nicholas's
resourcefulness and his network of friends and admirers across the
Middle East and North Africa, which he had been able to call on for
help, that had seen them through.
"He is a bit of a devil," Duraid had shaken his head with evident
nostalgia at the memory, "but the man to have with you when things are
tough. Those days were all very exciting, but when I look back on it now
I shudder at the risks we took."
She had often pondered on the risks that a true inthe-blood collector
was prepared to take to slake his passion. The risk seemed to be out of
proportion to the reward, when it came to adding to his accumulations;
and then she smiled at her own pious sentiments. The venture that she
hoped to lead Sir Nicholas into was not exactly without risk, and she
supposed that a circumlocution of lawyers might debate the legality of
it endlessly.
Still smiling, she fell asleep, for the strain of these last few days
had taken their toll. The air hostess woke her with an admonition to
fasten her seat-belt for the landing at Heathrow.
an phoned her mother from the airport.
ello, Mummy. It's me."
"Yes, I know that. Where are you, love?" Her mother sounded as
unflappable as ever. -'At Heathrow. I am coming up to stay with you for
a while. Is that all right?"
"Lumley's and ," her mother chuckled. "I'll go and make your bed. What
train will you be coming up on?"
"I had a look at the timetable. There is one from King's Cross that will
get me into York at seven this evening."
"I'll meet you at the station. What happened? Did you and Duraid have a
tiff? Old enough to be your father. I said it wouldn't work."
Royan was silent for a moment. This was hardly the time for
explanations. "I'll tell you all about it when I see you this evening."
Georgina Lumley, her mother, was waiting on the platform in the gloom
and cold of the November evening, bulky and solid in her old green
Barbour coat with Magic, her cocker spaniel, sitting obediently at her
feet. The two of them made an inseparable pair, even when they were not
winning field trials cups. For Royan they painted a comforting and
familiar picture of the English side of her lineage.
Georgina kissed Royan's cheek in a perfunctory manner. "Never was one
for all that sentimental fiddle, faddle," she often said with
satisfaction, and she took one of Royan's bags and led the way to the
old mud-splattered Land Rover in the car park.
Magic sniffed Royan's hand and wagged his tail in recognition. Then in a
dignified and condescending manner he allowed her to pat his head, but
like his mistress he was no great sentimentalist either.
. They drove in silence for a while and Georgina lit a cigarette. "So
what happened to Duraid, then?"
For a minute Royan could not reply, and then the floodgates within her
burst and she let it all come pouring out. It was a twenty-minute drive
north of York to the little village of Brandsbury, and Royan talked all
the way.
Her mother made only small sounds of encouragement and comfort, and when
Royan wept as she related the details of Duraid's death and funeral,
Georgina reached across and patted her daughter's hand.
It was all over by the time they reached her mother's cottage in the
village. Royan had cried it out and was dryeyed and rational again as
they ate the dinner that her mother had prepared and left in the oven
for them. Royan could not remember when last she had tasted steak and
kidney pie.
"So what are you going to do now?" Georgina asked as she poured what
remained in the black bottle of Guinness into her own glass.
"To tell the truth, I don't know." As she said it, Royan wondered
ruefully why so many people used that particular phrase to introduce a
lie. "I have six months' leave from the museum, and Prof Dixon has
arranged for me to give a lecture at the university. That is as far as
it goes for the moment."
"Well," said Georgina as she stood up, "there is a hotwater bottle in
your bed and your room is there for as long as you wish to stay." From
her that was as good as a passionate declaration of maternal love.
Over the next few days Royan arranged her slides and notes for the
lectures, and each afternoon she accompanied Georgina and Magic on their
long walks over the surrounding countryside.
"Do you know Quenton Park?" she asked her mother during one of these
rambles.
"Rather," Georgina replied enthusiastically. "Magic and I pick up there
four or five times a season. First-class shoot. Some of the best
pheasant and woodcock in Yorkshire. One drive there called the High
Larches which is notorious. Birds so high they baffle the best shots in
England."
"Do you know the owner, Sir Nicholas Quenton Harper?" Royan asked.
"Seen him at the shoots. Don't know him. Good shot, though," Georgina
replied. "Knew his papa in the old days before I married your father."
She smiled in a suggestive way that startled Royan. "Good dancer. We
danced a few jigs together, not only on the dance floor."
"Mummy, you are outrageous!'Royan laughed.
"Used to be," Georgina agreed readily. "Don't get many opportunities
these days."
"When are you and Magic going to Quenton Park again?"
"Two weeks' time."
"May I come with you?"
"Of course - the keeper is always looking for beaters.
Twenty quid and lunch with a bottle of beer for the day." She stopped
and looked at her daughter quizzically. "What is all this about, then?"
"I hear there is a private museum on the estate. They have a
world-renowned Egyptian collection. I wanted to get a look at it."
"Not open to the public any more. Invitation only. Sir Nicholas is an
odd chap, secretive and all that."
"Couldn't you get an invitation for me?" Royan asked, but Georgina shook
her head.
"Why don't you ask Prof Dixon? He is often one of the guns at Quenton
Park. Great chum of Quenton-Harper."
It was ten days before Prof Dixon was ready for her. She borrowed her
mother's Land Rover and drove to Leeds. The Prof folded her in a bear
hug and then took her through to his office for tea.
It was nostalgic of her days as a student to be back in the cluttered
room filled with books and papers and ancient artefacts. Royan told him
about Duraid's murder, and Dixon was shocked and distressed, but she
quickly changed the subject to the slides that she had prepared for the
lecture. He was fascinated by'everything she had to show him.
It was almost time for her to leave before she had an opportunity to
broach the subject of the Quenton Park museum, but he responded
immediately.
"I am amazed that you never visited it while you were a student here.
It's a very impressive collection. The family has been at it for over a
hundred years. As a matter of fact, I am shooting on the estate next
Thursday. I'll have a word with Nicholas. However, the poor chap isn't
up to much at the moment. Last year he suffered a terrible "personal
tragedy. Lost his wife and two little girls in a motor accident on the
MU He shook his head. "Awful business. Nicholas was driving. I think he
blames himself' He walked her out to the Land Rover.
"So we will see you on the twenty-third," he told Royan as they parted.
"I expect that you will have an audience of at least a hundred, and I
have even had a reporter from the Yorkshire Post on to me. They have
heard about your lectures and they want to do an interview with you.
jolly good publicity for the department. You'll do it, of course. Could
you come a couple of hours early to speak to them?"
"Actually I will probably see you before the twenty-third," she told
him. "Mummy and her dog are picking up at Quenton Park on Thursday, and
she has got me a job as a beater for the day."
"I'll keep an eye open for you," he promised, and waved to her as she
pulled away in a cloud of exhaust smoke.
The wind was searing cold out of the north.
The clouds tumbled over each other, heavy 6- and blue and grey, so close
to earth that they brushed the crests of the hills as they hurried ahead
of the gale.
Royan wore three layers of clothing under the old green Barbour jacket
that Georgina had lent her, but still she shivered as they came up over
the brow of the hills in the line of beaters. Her blood had thinned in
the heat of the Nile valley. Two pairs of fisherman's socks were not
enough to save her toes from turning numb.
For this drive, the last of the day, the head keeper had moved Georgina
from her usual position behind the line of guns, where she and Magic
were expected to pick up the crippled birds that came through to them,
into the line of beaters.
Keeping the best for last, they were beating the High Larches. The
keeper needed every man and woman he could get into the line to bring in
the pheasant from the huge piece of ground on top of the hills and to
push them off the brow, out over the valley where the guns waited at
their pegs far below.
It seemed to Royan a supreme piece of illogical behaviour to rear and
nurture the pheasants from chicks I and then, when they were mature, go
to such lengths to make them as difficult to shoot as the keeper could
devise.
However, Georgina had explained to her that the higher and harder to hit
the birds passed over the guns, the more pleased the Sportsmen were, and
the more they were willing to pay for the privilege of firing at them.
"You cannot believe what they will pay for a day's shooting,, Georgina
had told her. "Today will bring in almost 14,000 to the estate. They
will shoot twenty days this season. Work that out and you will see that
the shoot is a major part of the estate's income. Quite apart from the
fun of working the dogs and beating, it gives a lot of us local people a
very useful bit of extra money."
At this stage of the day, Royan was not too certain just how much fun
there was to he had from the job of beating. The walking was difficult
in the thick brambles, and Royan had slipped more than once. There was
mud on her knees and elbows. The ditch ahead of her was half filled with
water and there was a thin skin of ice across the surface. She
approached it gingerly, using her walking-stick to balance herself. She
was tired, for there had already been five drives, all as onerous as
this one. She glanced across at her mother and marvelled at how she
seemed to be enjoying this torture. Georgina strode along happily,
controlling Magic with her whistle and hand signals.
She grinned at Royan now, "Last lap, over." love. early Royan was
humiliated that her distress had-been so obvious, and she used her stick
to help her vault the muddy ditch. However, she miscalculated the width
and fell short of the far bank. She landed knee-deep in the frozen water
and it poured in over the top of her Wellington boots.
Georgina laughed at her and offered her the end of her Own stick to pull
her out of the glutinous mud. Royan could not hold up the line by
stopping to empty her flooded boots, so she went on, squelching loudly
with each pace.
"Steady on the left! the order from the head keeper was relayed over the
walkie-talkie radio, and the line halted obediently.
The art and skill of the keeper was to flush the birds from the tangled
undergrowth, not in one massed covey, but in a steady trickle that would
pass over the waiting guns in singles and pairs, giving them the chance,
after they had fired two barrels, to take their second gun from the
loader and be ready for the next bird to appear in the sky high above
them. The size of the keeper's tip and his reputation depended on the
way he "showed' the birds to the waiting guns.
During this respite Royan was able to regain her breath, and to look
around her. Through a break in the branches that gave the drive its
name, she could see down into the valley.
There was an open meadow at the foot of the hills, the expanse of smooth
green grass broken up by patches of dirty grey snow from the previous
week's fall. Down this meadow the keeper had set a line of numbered
pegs. At the beginning of the day's sport the guns had drawn lots to
decide the peg number from which each of them would shoot.
Now each man stood "at his allotted peg, with his loader holding his
second gun ready behind him, ready to pass it over when the first gun
was empty. They were all looking up expectantly to the high ground from
which the pheasant would appear.
"Which is Sir Nicholas?" Royan called to her mother, and Georgina
pointed to the far end of the line of guns.
"The tall one," she said, and at that moment the keeper's voice on the
radio ordered, "Gently on the left.
Start tapping again." Obediently the beaters tapped their sticks. There
was no shouting or hallooing in this delicate and strictly controlled
operation.
"Forward slowly. Halt to the flush of birds."
A step at a time the line moved ahead, and in the brambles and bracken
in front of her Royan could hear the stealthy scuffle of a number of
pheasants moving forward, reluctant to take to the air until they were