Murder and the Golden Goblet Read online

  MURDER AND THE GOLDEN GOBLET

  Amy Myers

  © Amy Myers 2007

  Amy Myers has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2007 by Severn House.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Much of this story of Sir Gawain and King Arthur, as regards their connections with Dover Castle in Kent, is to be found either in legend or in historical records. The bones and skull of Sir Gawain are indeed mentioned by Caxton and John Leland, antiquarian to Henry VIII, as being on show at the St Mary-in-the-Castle. A nineteenth-century edition of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur states that the bones have disappeared since Leland’s time. My theory of what might have happened to those bones after Leland had recorded their presence is, however, fictitious, as is (so far as I know!) the goblet, although since Malory claims that Gawain was given the last rites it isn’t at all unlikely that a goblet survived . . .

  I have also added a fictitious dimension to Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s work. Although he was indeed in Paris with Lizzie Siddal, and did indeed use Arthurian subjects for his work, I have added four such paintings for the purposes of this novel. The contribution made to its plot by John Ruskin is also fictitious, although he was Rossetti’s patron. Wymdown, too, will not be found on any map, although its neighbouring villages will.

  I am indebted to the following for their help while I was writing this novel, although the use I have made of their information is my own: Phil Wyborn-Brown at Dover Castle, Lorraine Sencicle of the Friends of Dover Museum for her charming story in the Dover Mercury about the Lady of Farthingloe, and Mike McFarnell of the Friends of Dover Castle. I could find very few references to the Dover story in other sources, but among the many I have consulted about the King Arthur period and stories, I found Mike Ashley’s magnificent Mammoth Book of King Arthur of enormous help.

  I am also grateful to Bob and Pauline Rowson, and, as always, to my agent Dot Lumley of the Dorian Literary Agency and Amanda Stewart of Severn House for their constant support. The marvellous Severn House team has once again provided its expert help throughout.

  Chapter One

  ‘Lost at sea, 1961.’

  Georgia fought to concentrate her thoughts on the plaque on the church wall and not on the man sitting beside her. Did it mean literally lost: did he silently disappear or was he killed in an accident? A Navy man? Fisherman?

  ‘Survived the ordeal?’ Luke asked after the service, as they at last made their way down the aisle in the wake of the bridal couple.

  ‘So far, thanks,’ she replied amicably. After all, her aunt’s marriage to Terry Andrews was a happy occasion. It was a second marriage for Gwen and everyone liked Terry. It was merely that marriage was a delicate subject between herself and Luke, and one Georgia was trying her best to avoid. She’d taken one big step by moving in to live with him, so surely it would be sensible to have a breathing space before the next?

  ‘Who was Lance Venyon?’ her father asked, as he shot his wheelchair past them out of the church, to the annoyance of the photographer who had just positioned Gwen and Terry neatly against the porch.

  ‘Lance who?’ she asked him, once this was sorted out.

  ‘The fellow whose name you were staring at in the church.’

  Georgia was forced to laugh. Trust Peter to have noticed. His ex-cop’s eye never missed a trick. She’d already forgotten the plaque. She had been caught out, so now Luke would guess exactly why she’d turned her face to the wall. ‘I’ve no idea, except that someone obviously holds him or held him in loving memory. Nothing odd about it.’

  Peter pounced on that. ‘Then why should you feel the need to point that out?’

  For want of anything else to do while the fifty or so guests were shunted to and fro in various groupings, Georgia considered this question. ‘I was wondering how he was lost, a naval rating, a fisherman—’

  ‘Or a yachtsman or day tripper to France,’ Luke put in.

  Peter wouldn’t give up. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Weak, Georgia,’ he replied with some satisfaction – justifiably, she acknowledged.

  Marsh & Daughter, her partnership with her father, needed more than ‘thinks’ or mere curiosity to work on. The past had to speak to them clearly before it decided there might be a case for them to look into. But why on earth should she even be considering that plaque in such terms? The past could throw up ghosts from injustice or unsolved tragedies, but she felt no such vibes in this case, and therefore there was no reason for Marsh & Daughter to be involved. The plaque was a memorial to someone in the past, of great importance to his loved ones, but not to others, save in the general sense that ‘no man is an island’. If anything, it was the church itself that reeked of the past.

  Wymdown was an interesting village. On a spring day such as this it presented a peaceful face to the world. A duck pond, a village green, a pub, a main street lined with old cottages, some twentieth-century development on the outskirts, and a farm shop. (Georgia envied Gwen for the latter.) Nevertheless the village lay close to the busy A2 dual-carriageway road between Canterbury and Dover, which roughly followed the route of the old Roman road. It was on the higher side of the road, where villages sheltered in the lee of the North Downs, but despite this in winter Wymdown would present a far bleaker picture than it did today. A few miles further towards Canterbury, on the open Barham Downs, the winds could howl to their hearts’ content. Over the centuries warrior tribes and armies had gathered there to fight out their grievances – or rather their leaders’ grievances. She had walked the North Downs Way once with Luke, and on the Barham stretch when the sun no longer shone it was easy to believe that the past was still stamping its mark on the present, and that given their head the elements would win over all that man could build or try to cultivate on this land.

  So who was Lance Venyon? Nobody to worry about today, she told herself, as she and Luke obediently took their places to be photographed beside Gwen and Terry’s best man, her cousin Charlie Bone. He winked at her as she equally obediently ‘cuddled closer’ at the photographer’s demand.

  ‘Going to catch the bride’s bouquet, Georgia?’ he asked.

  ‘Good grief no, I never tamper with fate. I might catch you instead of Luke.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Charlie conceded.

  He was in his mid-thirties, as was she, and showed no signs of settling down, as Gwen would sigh from time to time. There was no reason he should, given Gwen’s example. She had married at twenty-nine, and had spent most of the preceding ten years or so tramping round the world with a rucksack. She had kept her energetic figure but nevertheless, looking at her now, one could easily take her as a cuddly grey-haired old lady for whom a visit to Canterbury would be the highlight of adventure. One, Georgia thought solemnly, can never tell.

  St Alban’s Church lay at the end of a long lane leading up from the village centre towards the higher downland. The tarmac ended at the church, and beyond that the lane degenerated into farm track, which must once have been wild heathland. The church was small, with a squat tow
er, and built of Kentish ragstone. No high towers here, for the winds could blow strongly, and the church was sheltered by ancient yew trees, protecting its secrets. Now that was a ridiculous thought, Georgia acknowledged. All churches held secrets; that’s what they were there for. There were two types of secret, however: those of knowledge lost through time, and those that deliberately avoided discovery. Which, she wondered, did St Alban’s guard?

  ‘There was a Mary Venyon buried in the churchyard,’ Luke remarked idly, as, with the photo session over, they struck out across a footpath to Gwen and Terry’s home. Peter and some of the guests were driving round to Badon House, but for the more able at a village wedding it seemed right to walk the footpath. It wasn’t a long one, although the drive by road entailed a half-mile back to the village, then up the main street and along another lane, which in effect completed three sides of an oblong. The footpath provided the fourth, and provided a splendid view of the Jacobean chimneys of Badon House as they approached – albeit Georgia’s high heels suffered from mud, not to mention the frequent cowpat.

  ‘She’s buried right next to your Lance,’ Luke added.

  ‘He’s not my Lance,’ Georgia replied. The momentary thought flashed through her mind: why did he need a grave and a plaque? ‘He was lost—’ she said to herself, unfortunately out loud.

  ‘And must have been found again,’ Luke supplied helpfully. ‘If the body turned up later, they wouldn’t have taken the plaque down, would they?’

  Putting love to one side (and there was plenty of that), was it a good idea to be living with one’s publisher, Georgia wondered. Luke and she had been together in Medlars for nearly six months, and she had been taken aback – scared? – at how easy it had proved. True, they both had their own bolt-hole: Luke ran his publishing business from the oast-house workroom only thirty yards from their front door. This was his working space, just as she had hers in her old home next to Peter’s in the village of Haden Shaw a mile or two away.

  Anyway, that was enough about Lance Venyon. ‘Let’s think weddings,’ she suggested, ‘not graves.’

  ‘Glad you’re so keen,’ he murmured.

  Damn. There was no answer to that, and she had to ignore it. If you step in a cowpat, deal with it yourself.

  *

  Badon House was a seventeenth-century building, architecturally altered over the years, and now looking just a little down at heel. Terry had lived here since the 1980s, and it had suited him and his first wife, Anna, admirably, since they, like Gwen, were both great walkers and country-lovers. Terry was at his happiest when his tall, grey-haired figure was either marching pole in hand along a remote pathway on the downs, or delving deep into Kentish history in search of the past. Badon House had suited him in that respect too, since there had been a dwelling on the site for centuries before the present one.

  Gwen was now moving into Badon House ‘properly’, as she explained gravely, for the first time. It was a welcoming home. It was the first time Georgia and Luke had come here, since they had previously met Gwen and Terry either at her former home or at a pub, and Georgia was pleasantly surprised. Wellington boots stood side by side with Victorian jardinières, and on the dresser a chipped Staffordshire eighteenth-century highwayman rode cheek by jowl with a fluffy pink pig. The kitchen range well pre-dated the nineties’ vogue for them; one of the lavatories, she later discovered, still possessed an overhead flush, not to mention a tasteful blue rose painted inside the bowl, and the layout of the house had remained all but unchanged since before the Second World War.

  ‘Ah.’ Terry’s eyes were somewhat glazed by the time they arrived, as the champagne was already flowing. It was a warm day for April, and the party was beginning to spill out on to the brick terrace. ‘News for you, Peter. Remember I told you about the medieval foundations we found in the cellars? I’ve done some more homework. The place is said to have been some sort of dosshouse for monks.’

  ‘Rather far off the road, isn’t it?’ Georgia commented. ‘What would they do up here?’

  ‘Maybe they liked peace and quiet,’ Terry laughed. ‘Too many wagons thundering by and jolly minstrels disturbing the peace on the A2. Anyway, the church goes way back, and I suppose there were tithes and so forth to collect.’

  ‘Is St Alban’s Anglo-Saxon?’ Peter asked. There were quite a few such churches in Kent, and several cemeteries too.

  ‘Earlier,’ Terry said with some pride. ‘There was a Romano-British church or chapel here before the Saxons took it over.’

  ‘A Christian church?’ Georgia asked surprised.

  ‘Certainly. Christianity had been around since at least the fourth century, though I guess when the Anglo-Saxons arrived they gave it a bit of a bashing until St Augustine came steaming over to convert them all again. Early Christianity is big in Wymdown. Ever wondered why this place was called Badon House, Peter? King Arthur himself. There’s a village tradition that he’s still snoozing in them thar hills. Plenty of tumuli and barrows around on the downs, so why shouldn’t his royal majesty be tucked inside one, waiting to come back in the hour of England’s need?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she groaned.

  Peter was chortling, of course. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t guess, Georgia. Badon was Arthur’s big battle.’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ she said firmly. Books on King Arthur had littered Peter’s desk for weeks when they’d been investigating and writing up their last case stemming from the Battle of Britain period. She had banned all mention of the gentleman, and for some month or two now all had been mercifully quiet.

  Terry chuckled. ‘Sorry, Georgia. It’s only a tradition. There’s not a Round Table in sight in Wymdown.’

  ‘No T-shirts and mugs of Camelot in Kent?’ Georgia asked sweetly.

  ‘You may laugh, young woman, but I can tell you,’ Terry said firmly, ‘there’s folk around here reckon they’re related to Julius Caesar.’

  ‘You don’t have the Ring of the Nibelung in the village pond, do you, or Hobbits running around?’

  ‘Wymdown,’ Terry said cheerfully, ‘is an odd place. Wouldn’t surprise me if I dig up Excalibur round here one day.’

  ‘Keep hoping, your majesty.’ Gwen came to join them, linking her arm through her new husband’s. ‘Meanwhile, Guinevere’s here to tell you the Battle of Badon-Lunch is about to begin.’

  *

  Hats off to Gwen, Georgia thought, some time later after the magnificent buffet she had produced. Even if she hadn’t coped with it all herself, she’d clearly had a hand in it. Peter was equally enthusiastic, when Charlie came to join them on the terrace. ‘It’s a magnificent old pile, isn’t it?’

  ‘Lunch or the house?’ Charlie enquired.

  ‘The house,’ Peter replied.

  ‘Yes. Terry and Anna couldn’t afford to do much to it, and then as soon as he had the money, she died and he didn’t have the heart. He’s getting interested again now, though. He bought it from a young couple who had ideas about running it as a B-and-B but got divorced instead, and before that it was rented out. So one way and another, poor old Badon House needs some TLC, and tender loving care is what it’s going to get under Gwen, if I know my mother.’

  ‘I envy her this garden,’ Georgia said, looking at the lawns, trees and flowerbeds stretching, it seemed, into infinity. ‘How will Gwen cope with that?’ She was no gardener as Georgia knew well.

  ‘Terry’s keen enough for two. Also there’s an ancient garden retainer.’ Charlie pointed to an elderly man, who looked so smart he couldn’t have been near a slug in sixty years, Georgia thought.

  ‘Anyway,’ Charlie continued, ‘the garden isn’t quite as big as it looks. There’s a ha-ha out there . . . and the meadow beyond doesn’t belong to Terry. It’s grazed, so Ma will have the pleasure of seeing the cows wandering around from time to time. By the way, I asked Terry about your Lance Venyon.’

  ‘He is not my Lance,’ Georgia repeated patiently.

  Charlie grinned. ‘Luke says he is. Got
the story for you anyway. Lance and Mary Venyon were well known in the village in the late 1950s. Mary seems to have been the domestic type, Lance more of a rip-roaring adventurer. Liked sailing, kept a boat at Hythe. Drowned in 1961. Body later found, duly buried. Wife and daughter moved away shortly afterwards, but wife wanted to be buried next to husband.’

  ‘How on earth did you find all this out?’ Georgia felt unexpectedly deflated. A sad story but one that had an ending. Marsh and Daughter’s noses twitched at those that lacked closure.

  Charlie looked mysterious. ‘I have my methods.’

  ‘If entirely lacking in little grey cells,’ she threw back at him. ‘What methods?’

  ‘His daughter’s here.’

  Georgia laughed, her interest reviving. ‘Really? Where?’

  He pointed. ‘The lady in mauve and inclining to the non-slender. Elaine Holt is her name.’

  Georgia could see the woman he meant. She looked fairly formidable, and the mauve was a mistake – which suggested a lady of firm opinions. She moved towards her, then wondered why on earth she was bothering, and stopped to talk to Peter instead.

  ‘Good do,’ he announced with satisfaction.

  ‘Did Gwen do all this food herself?’

  ‘No, some friend of hers helped. Elaine something.’

  ‘Holt,’ Georgia supplied. ‘Lance Venyon’s daughter.’

  Peter’s eyes gleamed. ‘Have you talked to her?’

  ‘No point,’ Georgia said. ‘A sad story, but nothing for us.’

  ‘Every story should have something for everyone,’ Peter said sanctimoniously.

  She made a face. ‘Then you chat her up. She looks your cup of tea.’

  ‘I will,’ he declared, letting this slur go by. She watched as Peter wheeled himself up to Elaine, then her attention wandered, and she was addressed by the elderly man Peter had been talking to. He must be in his eighties, and his mane of white hair was impressive, beautifully soft and smooth. His white eyebrows matched exactly. Mane or not, he looked more lamb than lion.