The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [135]
He paused and his eyes turned beyond us. “There was just Sir Andrew and myself that evening. The sickness was at its height and the other fellows had gone down from the Moor at tea-time, but sick or not you couldn’t keep Sir Andrew from his work. I stayed on with him because I didn’t like the idea of him up on the Moor alone. It’s a creepy sort of place, you know.”
“Well, it was late, almost dark when we uncovered the casket. We went to lift it, but it was infernally heavy and in the end Sir Andrew said to cover it up and leave it, let the other fellows see it in situ in the morning. Before we put the slab back I recall crouching in the pit with a lantern, for it was twilight, peering at the decorations on that wonderful thing and trying to make sense of them, and when I did I shuddered.”
He shuddered slightly again at the recollection.
“Why was that?” asked Holmes.
“Death,” said the archaeologist. “That splendid casket was covered in symbols of death. I have never seen anything like it, Mr Holmes. Those old peoples were like us, they believed in rebirth. If there are decorations connected with their burials they are always signs of life, sun wheels, spirals, plants, animals, but this was completely different. It was covered in skulls and bones.”
“And what did that suggest to you?” asked Holmes.
“I was excited. I believed that the casket would contain something remarkable, something that its creators regarded as of great importance. Because we could not lift it, Sir Andrew and I covered it up and went down from the Moor. We knew no villager would venture onto Addleton Moor after twilight. It was dark when we got back to our lodgings, and the other fellows had turned in, but I could scarcely sleep for wondering what lay in that bronze box.”
“Next morning we returned to the excavation and carefully lifted the container and opened it. As soon as the lid was removed we knew why it had been heavy and I knew that it had been tampered with. Apart from being constructed from very thick bronze, the casket had been lined with a layer of lead. Now lead, as you may know, can decay into a powdery, ash-like form, and parts of the lining had done so. Pieces crumbled away as we lifted it, and fell into the box, and, while the rest of them gazed at the contents, I became aware that those dusty fragments of lead had been disturbed by human fingers. The marks were clear.”
“I could not understand it. We were the first, or so it seemed, who had looked into that casket since it was placed under the barrow, but then I looked at the contents.”
“What were they?” I asked.
“You might have seen those, too, in the Barnard Museum,” he said. “A pair of fine bronze mirrors, brooches, beads, knives, cups, a strange quartz pebble mounted in a bronze holder, knives and the usual bone fragments and ashes contained in two handsome pottery urns. A very satisfactory find, or so my colleagues thought it, but they were wrong.”
“Why was that?” enquired Holmes.
“Because there was nothing there that had not been seen in other excavations, nothing at all to justify those sinister decorations on the outside of the container, and thereby I knew that something had been removed.”
He drew a deep breath. “Only Sir Andrew and I had even known of the casket’s existence overnight, but someone had opened it, disturbed the leaden lining and removed something, and that someone could only have been Sir Andrew.”
He closed a slide-box with a snap. “As I said, we came away, Sir Andrew distracted by his son’s illness and the necessity to leave him at Addleton and I appalled by the looting of our excavation by the man who had been my friend and mentor. The rest you know.”
“There