of the women in the picture. She was a housemaid.’
After Michael has gone downstairs, I open the brown leather album again and leaf through it, looking for the photo. Archaeologists today wear funny hats, walking boots and woolly jumpers; in most of these pictures Keiller is in suit and tie and golf shoes. He was fabulously rich, the heir to a marmalade fortune, a playboy who loved fast cars and the ski slopes. A good-looking man, too: wide, sexy mouth, oddly haunted eyes.
No wonder Frannie–if it was Frannie–looked awkward in front of the camera. As well as being hardly out of school–fifteen? Sixteen?–she wasn’t from anything like the same background or class. How did she manage to talk her way into a job on the excavation? I try to remember what else I’ve gleaned about Keiller since I’ve been in Avebury. He was an egalitarian employer, and at least one of his wives worked alongside him as a professional archaeologist. Until he divorced her, that is, and moved on to the next Mrs K.
I stare at the photo. No, it can’t be Frannie. She’d have said something.
But…the letter hidden in her armchair. Anyone with eyes in their head at the Manor knew what was going on.
I pick up one of the box files, and set to work.
As well as Keiller’s letters, the boxes also contain, in no particular order, correspondence from other archaeologists, friends, tradesmen and the occasional nutter. Keiller seems to have replied to everyone, even the weirdos. Did Frannie really type some of these letters? And what else might she have done for the Great Man? Wear a mask and cast a pentangle, like something in sixties Technicolor starring Christopher Lee?
The room is darker. Outside, the sun has disappeared behind heavy cloud. Almost two hours have passed. I stand up to stretch, wondering if I can be bothered to go downstairs to the staff kitchen to warm up. There are several large cardboard boxes in a stack by the door, waiting to be transferred to the main storeroom. I kneel down to lift the lid of one, catching a glimpse of about a billion polythene bags containing tiny fragments of yellowish-white honeycomb, then scramble guiltily to my feet as footsteps rap on the stairs.
Michael.
‘I came to see how you were getting on.’ There’s a hint of reproach in his voice. ‘That’s animal bone from Windmill Hill, by the way.’
‘Sorry. I…was curious.’
‘Thought for a moment you were after our skeletons too. Had another missive this morning from those bloody Druids. Want a coffee? Kettle’s already on.’ I follow him downstairs. ‘Are there skeletons in the cardboard boxes?’
‘Lord, no. Not human, anyway. We only keep Charlie in this building, in his glass case, and I’m sure the Druids aren’t fussed by the dog and the goat on display. All the rest are in secure storage.’ He puts his head round the door into the gallery where one of the volunteers is manning the till. ‘Chris? Fancy a cuppa? Don’t know anyone who’d do a couple of months part-time as assistant warden, do you?’
‘Why won’t you take me on?’ I ask, as Michael returns to the kitchen and sets out a line of mugs.
‘India, you are a splendid woman of many talents but you don’t have the right qualifications. I don’t mind letting you do the odd day, but I’d prefer someone with a grasp of landscape archaeology.’ He dispenses instant coffee into the mugs with unnerving precision. Every spoonful probably has the exact same number of granules. ‘Besides, I understand you’re now archaeological consultant to a film crew.’
This is news to me. I’d been half expecting to hear nothing more from Overview TV. And, oh, shit, if Michael knows–
‘Don’t look so worried.’ Michael clamps the lid onto the coffee jar and swings round to face me, but I can’t look him in the eye. ‘Daniel Porteus called me this morning and asked me to tell you he’d be in touch. He wants you to go to London for some meeting next week. And, no, I didn’t tell them your main function for the National Trust was making cappuccinos. Indeed, I told them on the phone not ten minutes ago that you were labouring in the archive.’
‘Thanks.’ With some difficulty, I meet his eyes, and discover only amusement.
‘We’ve all at some point embellished our CVs. By the way, I like your idea of putting up another stone. Don’t look smug, though, you aren’t the first to have it–nobody’s yet succeeded in persuading a broadcaster to part with enough money to do it. Anyway, how are you getting on with the letters?’
‘Slowly’ I cast around for milk. ‘I can’t help reading them. Hey, you know this woman who says my grandmother used to work at the Manor?’
‘Said,’ says Michael. ‘She died in December. She was something like ninety, mind.’
Damn. ‘Anyone else left who was around then?’
‘That’s what the TV people wanted to know. Gave them all the names I had, but everyone I could think of was at last night’s meeting. Most of them were tots in the thirties. It’s a pity your gran is so confused because, by my reckoning, she’s the last surviving person who worked at the Manor then.’
At home, Frannie is ensconced in her favourite armchair, watching Flog It!.
‘Why do you find it so fascinating?’ I’ve asked her this more than once.
‘All this stuff,’ she says. ‘People’s treasures. Never think it was worth so much, would you? I live in hope, Indy. One day there’ll be something come up and I’ll think, Ooh, blow me down and bugger, I got one of those.’
On the television, someone’s holding up a truly hideous pottery figurine, turning it this way and that so the camera takes in every porcelain dimple and simper.
‘You know these television people want to make a film about Alexander Keiller? I’ve spent the whole morning in the archive sorting out his letters. Michael at the National Trust says you used to be one of AK’s secretaries.’
Frannie rearranges her features to look more than ever like she should be serving drinks on a budget airline, face utterly bland and unreadable. Strikes me you can hide a lot of dirt in wrinkles. ‘How’s he reckon he knows that?’
‘Somebody else who used to work at the Manor.’
‘That’d be the interfering old bitch below stairs. Dead now.’
Well, knock me down with the duty-free trolley. ‘So you did? Work for the Great Man as a secretary?’
‘Before the war I did, yes.’
‘You never told me. What was he like?’
‘You never asked. ‘Sides, told you, I prefer not to ‘member those times. Bad for everyone.’ She heaves herself out of the armchair. ‘Thing about diggin’ up the past, like Mr Keiller did, don’t really know what you’m turning over with your spade, do you?’
‘Where are you going? Your programme’s not finished.’
‘Call of nature.’ She shuffles out of the room. ‘You wait till you’re my age. Getting old’s no fun. No fun at all’
I should wait till tonight, after she’s gone to bed, but I can’t. As the loo door closes, I’m across the room, hand diving down the side of her armchair.
My fingers come up empty. The letter has gone.
There’s a man on Flog It! with a lovely Victorian cow-creamer. Black Jackfield lustre glaze, he says, little gilt flowers painted on its hide. It has a lid on the top, where you fill it, and the tail curls into a handle so you can lift her up by the arse end and pour the cream out of her mouth. Mr Keiller had one just like it. No, I’m wrong. Our mam had one just like it, and Mr Keiller wanted to buy it off her, but she wouldn’t sell. Said it had