“And there has always been a history of fabricated treasure?”

“To such an extent that after the disaster to the baggage-train, the scribe of the royal Patent Rolls was charged to make a careful inventory of all that had been lost. For some years subsequently, when it was claimed that an item was found, it was possible to check the description minutely against the entries in the parchments.”

“And now?”

The rector smiled.

“At that time, Mr Holmes, most of the land round here consisted of tidal mudflats. Where we are sitting now, St Clement’s Church and the ground immediately about it, was on a spit of land just above sea-level. At high tide, the church was on an island. In the reign of King John and his successor, Henry III, it would have been possible for fragments of wreckage from the baggage-train to be carried by currents. Scraps of wood may float and some items of jewellery are too light to sink far. But anything that was engulfed in the quicksands is not likely to have been washed out of them since.”

Holmes relaxed. His straight back and narrow shoulders reclined against the chair, the keen profile seemed to relax a little. He took his first sip from the glass of Madeira and said,

“Mr Gilmore, I would ask you to trust me.”

“Great heavens, Mr Holmes!” It was a burst of boyish amusement. “I am your brother Mycroft’s friend and I would certainly do more than that!”

“I will ask you to trust me and not to ask why. I will tell you this much. A man’s life, let alone a family’s reputation may depend upon your discretion.”

I had not the least idea what my friend meant. What man’s life? From his bag he now drew a length of folded yellow lint. From its soft covering he produced our slim length of metal with its corroded ends. From his pocket he took the leather pouch containing the five pebbles which were all that we had so far found. Using the lint as a surface, he laid the upright across the table and shook the pebbles from their bag.

“I have gone so far as to clean a minute area of surface with carborundum, Mr Gilmore. Unless I am much mistaken, the surface metal with which this strip is covered must be gold, though not of any great quality. I should like to know whether the object suggests anything to you.”

The rector stared for a moment. He drew a reading-glass from the breast pocket of his black clerical jacket. Opening it, he continued to gaze at the pieces, his amusement giving way to perplexity. Holmes took the five pebbles and placed three in the indentations. The other two he positioned at either side where the crossbeam of a crucifix would have been. Mr Gilmore put away his glass.

“One moment,” he said.

He stood up and crossed to his tall break-front bookcase. Opening its glass-panelled doors, he took out a handsome volume bound in red cloth and stamped in gold. I saw that it had been issued by the Lincolnshire and Norfolk Society of Antiquaries to its members and had been published a dozen years earlier. He laid it down on the support of his oak book-stand, open at an illustrated page. Holmes and I joined him.

The page contained a steel engraving of a cross. It was done from a photograph but the subject was described as merely a reconstruction.

“You will see at once,” Mr Gilmore drew his finger down the length of the engraving, the mark of an inlay made by the maker’s tool. It bears similarities to two lines on the piece that you have. Down the length of it and on either hand, the craftsman had embedded five stones. What they were was quite impossible to tell from a black and white engraving.

“What is the picture?” I asked.

Mr Gilmore held the book open firmly.

“It is a facsimile of a twelfth century bishop’s pendant in gold, sapphire and coral. The bishops donated it to the King’s Treasury during John’s war against the barons. It was said to possess miraculous powers. As with all such treasures, it carried a warning of the ill-fortune that would attend its loss. King John reached Swineshead Abbey, just up the road from here, on the day of the disaster to his baggage-train. When the news of it was brought, he fell into great distress of mind, followed by fever and heat. He died at Swineshead seven days later, robbed on his deathbed by those who attended him.”

“And this?” Holmes indicated the pebbles and the metal upright. Mr Gilmore shook his head.

“Impossible to say, Mr Holmes. There have been copies, similar pieces and downright fraud. The fraud, if it is one, may be Medieval or Tudor as easily as modern. It may have been an attempt to impose upon the superstitious or the gullible five or six centuries ago by producing a miraculous relic, just as Chaucer’s Pardoner sold pigs’ bones in a glass as relics of the Christian martyrs. Much would depend on how and where this remnant was found. When you are able to tell me that, I shall perhaps be able to pass better judgment. Until then, I will keep silence, as I have promised you.”

“That is all?” I asked.

“No, Dr Watson. I will say this. If anyone were to claim that this fragment had been found in the earth recently, I would think that it must be a fraud. It is a near-impossibility. If it has come to us in some indirect way, that may be a different matter.”

“In what other way?”

“During six and a half centuries, Dr Watson, an object may be lost, found, lost again, found again, lost and found once more. I should find that easier to believe.”

“And what of any miraculous powers?” I persisted.

“Medieval people lived wretched lives and met early deaths. Typhus, scurvy, scrofula, bubonic plague, which are mercifully rare now, were common then. The healing of these widespread afflictions was the greatest object of their prayers. Heaven alone knows what may drive a man or a woman to pray for relief.”

“You do not know of any cause that might have driven Abraham or Roland Chastelnau?” Holmes asked.

“Unfortunately I knew neither of them well enough for that. Nor, I think, could anyone else answer your question.”

Like so many local historians, Roderick Gilmore was not only delighted to provide us with information which might assist us but also to encumber us with a good deal that we could have done without. All the same, as we made our way through the churchyard yew hedges once more, towards the road that led back to the Bridge Hotel, I felt that our host had been suggestive rather than informative. Was there something he was holding back?

8

In the hours that followed, Holmes was kind enough not to remind me that so far as the strip of ancient metal and the “pebbles” were concerned, “my case” appeared to have run into the sand. I daresay he felt that with both the brothers dead, whatever evil possessed Abraham according to the poor fellow’s own account, was no longer a threat to those around him. My friend seemed content that I had provided a solution to the mystery of the Chastelnau brothers’ disappearance.

That evening, as we sat at dinner in the hotel dining-room, the beam of the Old Light shot fitfully across the dark sea. The new keepers of the wooden lantern and barrack-room were now in place. Whatever part that remote beacon had played in murder or tragedy was over. Holmes looked up from his mutton chop, which along with potatoes, green peas and a bottle of indifferent St Emilion was the table d’hôte of the establishment.

“What is to become of our questionable relic?” I inquired, “The fragment of the Chester Cross-or not, as the case may be.”

“I have given the matter a little thought.” he said, “It should, of course, be yielded up to Her Majesty’s Treasury, like all treasure trove. Far the best person to act as go-between would be Brother Mycroft. He knows these Treasury fellows and will save us a good deal of bother.”

“Unless it should be a copy or a fake. In that case, you might keep it among your souvenirs.”