The Moon Tunnel(42)

Dryden revelled in the implied insult. It was nice to know he was worth a mention.

The woman bristled, clearly annoyed at the anonymous introduction as the professor’s chattel.

She took Dryden’s hand warmly. ‘Louise Beaumont. Dr Louise Beaumont.’

The touch was cool and sensuous, and Dryden saw briefly a vision, a swimsuit, the water running in rivulets off the suntanned skin. ‘A visit?’ said Dryden to her, unable to guess her age. She might, like her husband, be into her forties but she could have passed for early thirties.

‘Yes, yes. A week – London, and home. I felt I should come today. An unknown soldier, then?’ she said, looking beyond her husband towards the open grave.

‘Not quite,’ said Dryden. He sensed an air of repressed agitation in her, too, some pressing unfinished business perhaps, despite the sound of clay being shovelled onto the nearby coffin.

Professor Valgimigli buttoned his coat, ignoring Dryden’s remark. ‘As I said – a story lost to the past.’

‘My husband is a romantic, Mr Dryden,’ she said. ‘I think he’d rather all stories were lost in the past. That’s where he’s at home – in the past.’

Valgimigli smiled but Dryden sensed this was a bitter division between their views of life, between the love of the past and the joy of the present.

‘Doctor?’ asked Dryden.

‘Medical,’ she said. ‘Absolutely nothing academic,’ and they all laughed.

‘My wife believes science can solve everything,’ said Valgimigli, gripping her arm just above the wrist. ‘I suspect we will never know. I like it that way. This makes me a romantic – this I don’t understand.’ He smiled with his mouth, and Dryden was again impressed by his falsity, the air of show.

‘We do actually know some more about him,’ said Dryden, instantly securing the professor’s attention.

‘Well, we think we know more. An Italian prisoner named Serafino Amatista – one who went under that name, anyway – absconded from internment shortly after being released from the camp in 1944. He has never been found. He was one of a small group of prisoners who dug the tunnel, and later – after they were billeted out on farms – carried out a robbery at a country house. That’s where the pearls in the tunnel came from: Osmington Hall.’

Professor Valgimigli leaned in close and Dryden caught the look in his wife’s eyes: suspicion was there, certainly, and perhaps pity.

‘Fascinating. How delightful that you have found this man, Mr Dryden – but who shot him, eh? Can you tell us that?’ Dryden noted that Valgimigli’s agitation had disappeared, the hands, relaxed now, snaked around his wife’s waist. ‘And why crawling back into the camp? That is bizarre too – no?’

‘Thieves fall out,’ said Dryden. ‘And perhaps another reason… Serafino was a deserter. He left his post, guarding a village in occupied Greece. The German authorities were led to believe he had been killed by the villagers. There was a reprisal. He had good reasons to try and protect his identity. But someone at the camp – one of the Germans who replaced the Italians at California – recognized him. Perhaps they met?’

He could have told them more; that the burglars had killed someone that night in 1944. And that the most valuable item taken from Osmington Hall was still missing: the priceless Dadd. All this he kept to himself, distrusting Valgimigli and guarding his story.

The archaeologist laughed and slipped his gloves on, finally ending the hand-to-hand shuffle. Dryden watched them talking as they walked away, arm-in-arm, towards the cemetery gates. Despite the way they held on to each other, the rest of their bodies never touched.

Thomas Alder, funeral director, raised a black top hat to the mourners as they left. He made an exception for Dryden.

‘Can you arrange a house clearance?’ asked Dryden. ‘The stuff has been moved once – to an old barn. There’s several generations of it, I’m afraid – but little of any worth.’

Alder nodded, sensing that the animosity which had existed between them had lessened. ‘We usually recommend the auction rooms – at least for the best furniture. You have removed anything of sentimental value?’

‘There’s very little,’ said Dryden. ‘Some photographs, perhaps, one or two pieces of furniture which have been in the family since before the Great War, and some pictures. I’m afraid I’m no expert. And neither…’

‘Indeed,’ said Alder emphatically. He handed Dryden a card. ‘Let me know when the items are ready for collection.’

A polished hearse drew up smartly to ferry the funeral director away. Dryden examined his own reflection in the black mirror of the paintwork: a lonely figure, standing amongst gravestones.