Summon the Bright Water by Geoffrey Household Page B

bank,’ I suggested tentatively.
    ‘Would have telephoned. You’re sure you … well, I mean he was all right when you left him?’
    ‘I didn’t leave him. I watched him arrive and after that all I saw was the wake of the dinghy when he started out. So you got the cauldron?’
    ‘I could have. No trouble. No trouble at all.’
    ‘But you didn’t take it?’
    ‘Got in all right, made a mess of the place. Turned out the drawers and stole a few trinkets. But I hadn’t got the key of the casket. I think Simeon keeps it on him.’
    ‘You could have taken the whole thing.’
    ‘Too heavy, Piers. Couldn’t go down the drain pipe with that. I’d have had to throw it out of the window. Crash! Wake somebody.’
    ‘Why the hell didn’t you break it open?’
    ‘Hadn’t the heart. All that ivory work. And the bowl? What is it? We don’t know, do we? Could be … could be sacrilege.’
    It wasn’t difficult to guess the cause of the inhibition. The major had no hesitation in burgling the sanctum of alchemy, which he knew to be partly play-acting, but when it came to violating the golden bowl his illusions, reaching all the way back to the Dark Ages and Arthur, Champion of Christendom, prevented possible sacrilege.
    ‘Don’t tell me you think that crazy murderer is the Guardian of the Grail?’
    ‘What makes you say that?’
    My remark, more a spark of exasperation than serious, had struck home. I could have disclosed that I had witnessed the pagan ceremony which was far from a proper use of the Christian Grail, but I didn’t. The swings and roundabouts of his own heretical funfair were much too unpredictable.
    ‘Because I don’t see Marrin as Perceval. The thing was probably the favourite drinking bowl of some Saxon or Dane, or older still and the property of Nodens. Blood from his enemy or wine from his vineyard, depending on how civilised he was.’
    ‘You believe he existed before he became a god?’
    ‘Marrin does. And you said yourself that there is always a truth behind legend.’
    All side issues of no immediate importance. I asked him if anyone had been in the laboratory since the burglary.
    ‘Unlikely. I locked it all up again.’
    ‘And the broken window – has nobody noticed it?’
    ‘I don’t think so. Too high up. Eyes down. Meditation. Work.’
    Wearily I demanded what he had done with the swag. He marched off into the open order of the trees, beckoning me to follow as if any speech were an indiscretion. At first he could not find the right oak, though it was the only one which had a low branch close to the ground. He climbed from that into a much higher fork – he must, as he said, have been good at P.T. – and recovered a small bag well hidden by a bunch of mistletoe.
    ‘There you are! Up to you now!’
    An embarrassment. He should have left it up in the mistletoe. But he gave me no chance, and there was I with the proceeds of a pointless burglary which had been the major’s idea anyway.
    I had no doubt that Marrin was drowned. Thus there was no object – at any rate for the moment – in remaining dead. What I had to do in order to get the full facts and keep in touch with developments was to reappear at Broom Lodge as the spontaneous and sympathetic visitor. So I rearranged my den to look as if some tramp had lived there in the past but not recently, and took the last train back to London. Next day, bathed, respectable and dressed with conventional casualness I drove down to the Forest and paid a casual call at Broom Lodge as if on my way to South Wales. The place was disorganised, the workshops silent, and groups hanging about like listless bees without a queen.
    Elsa met me at the front door and told me that her uncle was dead.
    ‘His body was found yesterday afternoon caught in a salmon weir below Purton. The police telephoned us at once.’
    ‘Good God! One of his fishing expeditions?’
    ‘I think so. He drove away the night before last without telling anybody, and I know