Lessons in Solving the Wrong Problem: A Cambridge Fellows Mystery novella Read online

  Lessons In Solving The Wrong Problem

  Charlie Cochrane

  Lessons in Solving the Wrong Problem © Charlie Cochrane, 2020

  Cover art by Alex Beecroft

  These are works of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or establishments, events or locales is coincidental. All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Chapter One

  February 1912, a field near Cambridge

  “Well, here we are.”

  Orlando Coppersmith glanced sideways at his companion. They’d had to park up the automobile—known to anyone who had a scrap of sense as the metal monster—two hundred yards away, in the only place it could safely fit on the small road without obstructing livestock or irate farmers. Then they’d had to climb a style and negotiate a muddy field to arrive at another style, on which Orlando was currently perched. “We’re certainly somewhere. Would you care to enlighten me further?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Jonty Stewart, grinning, raised a sandy coloured eyebrow—how his hair colour was subtly changing with the years, although any hint of grey was yet to appear—then swept his hand to encompass the scene.

  “It’s obviously a field.” Orlando observed. That was about as much information as he’d received in advance of the visit, other than it was something he’d find of interest and he’d be getting his lunch as part of the process. “A field with people in it. Digging. I assume they’re not mining a newly discovered seam of gold or opening a coal mine.”

  “And I assume—or at least I hope—that you aren’t deliberately being obtuse just for the fun of it. This isn’t an ordinary field, as the slight humps and bumps will attest.” Another sweep of the hand. “Those people are a mixture of students and fellows from the university and the digging isn’t in search of nuggets or ore—that’s not easy to say at this time of the morning, so don’t make me repeat myself.”

  Orlando couldn’t help but grin. How could anyone not be amused in the presence of Jonty, even if they also felt the urge to murder him on frequent occasions? Or roger him stupid on others. “Then this must be an archaeological dig. Iron Age? Saxon? Roman?”

  “Possibly all three, according to Dr Applecross. He believes they had a habit of reusing sites, our forebears. Mind you, who can blame them when there’s a view like this?”

  Orlando had to agree with that. If the vista to the west had been just as splendid a couple of thousand years ago and the countryside equally lush and productive, it would have made an ideal place to live, as long as they were sheltered against the fierce East Anglian winter wind, which often appeared to be blowing straight from the Russian steppes. The first hints of spring were starting to appear, so in a few weeks the scene would be a joy to the eyes.

  “These forebears inhabited different styles of housing, one assumes?” Not a subject Orlando knew much about, although he remembered a picture book he’d had as a boy, which had depicted various parts of British history.

  “I believe so. I’m out of my academic depth here, as you no doubt are, too.” Jonty shrugged, then took in the view once more. “Applecross also reckons there may well have been family continuity. He’s adamant that the Romans didn’t push out or enslave all the native British, simply amalgamated some of them. Gave them jobs and a bit of power.”

  “You seem to have been chatting to this Applecross man rather a lot. I’ve not come across him before.”

  “You won’t have done. He came up to St Thomas’s earlier this year and is still finding his feet. Quite a shy chap, I believe.” Jonty pursed his lips. “Now, before you get any funny thoughts, no, I don’t think he’s in any way attractive. Just interesting to listen to. Even the dunderheads like his lectures, which is praise indeed.”

  “I’ve not had any ‘funny thoughts’ for ages,” Orlando said, although that wasn’t quite the truth and both of them knew it. Still, nobody could say he was as possessive and as lacking in confidence as he’d been when he and Jonty had first met. A few experiences of the character-building type had seen to that, alongside the healing effect of Jonty’s love. “Which one is he?”

  “I can’t tell from here, given the way they’re all dressed similarly and the fact he’s built like a student. He’d be the chap waving his arms around in an organising kind of way, I’d guess but I’m not committing myself until we’re closer.”

  Orlando resisted a little jibe about Jonty’s long sight becoming as bad as his close sight and could that be a factor of old age. From this distance you’d have been hard pressed to pick out the king himself. They threaded their way down a slope, between some small gorse bushes, the site opening up before them and becoming more recognizable as an excavation with every step they came closer. Turf had been lifted and laid to one side, great areas of earth had been exposed and what looked like a course of masonry rose up from one of them.

  “Dr Stewart!” The chap who’d been gesturing at the students waved a hand in salute. “Delighted you could get here. Is this your colleague?”

  “It is indeed.” Jonty shook the man’s hand. “Dr Applecross, Dr Coppersmith.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Orlando produced a happy smile as he shook the man’s hand. Applecross, while still blessed with a schoolboy’s frame, was fifty if he was a day and not the sort of man Orlando would rate as attractive. Ignoring the frisson of disquiet at exactly why he should be feeling any hint of jealousy, he peered into the cleared area. “Is that a mosaic?”

  “It is. Not a very high class one, given the size of the tesserae, but good, plain workmanship and a pleasing pattern is beginning to reveal itself. Mason, could you take a little more earth back, to show our guests?”

  “Of course, sir.” The student in question—whom Orlando recognized from the environs of St Bride’s—gently scraped back some soil with his trowel, revealing a continuation of the geometric pattern. The colours were amazingly well preserved: white, red and what Orlando felt was grey but which Mason, who’d been providing a commentary as he went along, asserted was blue. “We think this would have been the corridor connecting the rooms.”

  Orlando was about to ask how they could possibly know that, but a swift glance up and down the trench indicated a long, relatively narrow tessellated area, so the supposition made sense. “It’s a very pleasing mathematical design,” he observed. “These chaps clearly knew what they were doing.”

  “Oh, yes. There are set patterns and depictions that turn up all over the place,” Mason said, rocking on his heels enthusiastically. “Would you like to see a much finer example?”

  “Of course.” Orlando, impressed by the wonderful workmanship and application of mathematics, let himself be led off, with Jonty following in his wake.

  “Instant convert,” Jonty said to Applecross. “I should have guessed those shapes would appeal to him.”

  Applecross nodded. “He’ll no doubt like the hypocaust, as well. Perhaps Dr Coppersmith, I might ask a favour of you?”

  Orlando slowed his pace. “Ask away. If I can help, I will.”

  “Would you be prepared to do some calculations on how efficient the heating system would have been? We understand the construction of these things but we’d like to know more about their operation. We’re thinking of reconstructing one at some point in the winter and some input on the thermodynamics of the thing would be helpful.”

  That was a promise which it would be a pleasure to
keep. “I’d be delighted to, if you could provide me with all the dimensions and the like.”

  “Naturally. I have another student—young Kane—who is focussing on that part of this excavation. It incorporates the bath house, which appears to be a later addition to the original site, although the whole area is rather complex.” Applecross’s eyes sparkled. “A thousand years or so of occupation and different living styles. I’d love to know whether it was the same family all the way through that time although how that could ever be proved is beyond me.”

  Jonty nodded. “I was telling Dr Coppersmith about your theory. I believe it rather goes against the grain of what some others think?”

  “I’m afraid that’s so. I get into heated debates with those who are certain that the Iron Age inhabitants of the area would invariably have been either enslaved or ousted by the invading Roman hordes. That doesn’t necessarily happen now when countries are invaded, so why should it have happened then?”

  Orlando kept his counsel on that, recalling stories Dr Panesar had told them from his family history, tales of the impact of colonial policy. Admittedly some native folk had done well, where they’d embraced the new rule and made themselves invaluable in terms of utilising their existing local influence. That hadn’t applied to everyone.

  “I take your point,” Jonty said. “Although if you were among those who objected to your Iron Age life being turned upside down by these Latin chappies with their straight roads and right-angled houses, would you have regarded those who co-operated with the invaders as pragmatic or treasonous?”

  Applecross spread his hands, as though weighing the merits of the two opinions. “I favour the former. If you had a family to look after and wanted to put bread and mutton on the table, you’d choose the path that helped you to do so, surely?”

  Jonty tipped his head from side to side, evidently also weighing up the argument. “My mother might well have taken that line, had she been the wife of a local chieftain.”

  Orlando, certain that his partner was giving a diplomatic answer, rather than a strictly accurate one, refrained from pointing out that if Helena Stewart had been in that position of leadership, the Romans wouldn’t have had a snowball in a hypocaust’s chance of invading the country. They’d have been sent back across the channel with their tails between their legs and feel themselves damn lucky that they still had legs to put their tails between.

  The Stewarts were a remarkable family and not simply for having produced such a notable youngest son. Mr Stewart had a title but refused to use it, Mrs Stewart had been one of the beauties of her generation and both of them had a reputation for putting up with no nonsense.

  “Your mother,” Applecross said, “if I may be so bold, is a woman of great renown. Alas, I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting her, but the Master of St Thomas’s has, and he avers that she’s one of the most remarkable ladies of her generation.”

  “Perhaps you should arrange for her to visit this excavation, Applecross,” Jonty suggested, with a roguish twinkle. “So you can measure her degree of remarkableness for yourself. Any parts of the building you’re unsure of or strange artefacts you’re struggling to identify, you could simply show them to her and she’d hit the proverbial nail on the head. That’s a Roman lady’s whatsit for curdling her doo-dahs.”

  Jonty’s extraordinarily precise imitation of his mother’s tones produced guffaws of laughter all round. Before the show-off could launch into any other of his vocal impersonations, Orlando said he was desperate to see the hypocaust, so the party moved on to another trench.

  “This is the system we’d like you to do your calculations about,” Applecross said, hand sweeping to take in a broad area, not all of which was yet exposed from its grassy covering.

  Orlando studied each of the visible remains in turn. He had come across such things when they visited Italy and had felt then the stirrings of something within his blood. Hints, maybe of the Italian thread in his ancestry. He’d put it down then to being in the land of his great-great-grandfather, Baron Francisco Artigiano del Rame, and therefore simply a matter of absorbing the atmosphere. yet he felt it again now, for the first time in England, a tug of something that might just be familiarity.

  Jonty, nudging Orlando’s elbow, gave him a smile, perhaps recognising where his thoughts might be straying.

  “I’ve seen hypocausts before,” Orlando said, “but if someone could explain to me the exact workings of this one, that would help me in my calculations. I’ll also need all the measurements, flue diameters and the like, as exactly as possible.”

  Kane, who showed more enthusiasm for his subject than many a student, began a detailed explanation of how the system worked, in a gratifyingly logical manner. He started with what they believed might be the site of the boiler house, although all that was too be seen were lumps and bumps in the turf, hardly visible to Orlando’s untutored eye. Kane indicated what was allegedly the line of the flue, then turned to where he had begun digging, an area which the team hoped might turn out to be a small bath house.

  “It’s probably a reasonable guess, given its proximity to the small spring, now pretty well dry, which opens in the next but one field. It would have drained into what appears to be a culvert.”

  As the student spoke, Orlando made some notes, despite Kane promising to put all the details onto paper and leave it in Orlando’s pigeonhole. Students’ promises weren’t always worth the breath they’d been spoken with. When all the details had been divulged, Orlando noticed that Jonty, evidently tired of heating systems, had gone off with Applecross to another field.

  “They want to put in test pits there,” Kane said, gesturing in Jonty’s direction. “We think there may have been Iron Age occupation here, so we’d be looking for an enclosure ditch and possibly roundhouse.”

  “That’s the Romans and the ancient British accounted for, so what about the Saxons?” Orlando asked. “Where did they do their eating, drinking and sleeping?”

  “On that flat piece of land in this field, closer to the little stream. When Dr Applecross had his aerial pictures developed, he spotted what might be a faint hint of post holes, in a rectangular formation. Typical of a Saxon hall.”

  “Post holes?” What strange things might they be? It was like learning a foreign language: so far on his tour Orlando had been forced to ask Kane to tell him more about both opus signinum and roman roofing material. At least he already knew what Samian ware was and could talk with authority about amphitheatres. He now listened to a Kane give a surprisingly interesting explanation about the wooden poles that were used in construction and how they were anchored into place. Apparently, it took a very practiced eye to pick one the footprint a post had left in a trench. Applecross was allegedly very good at it.

  “Would you like to see the winter dining room?” Kane asked. “It has a heated floor, so it may be germane to your calculations, although the mosaic decorating it has sadly all but collapsed into the hollow area below. It would likely have been magnificent, going from what little we have of it.”

  “I’d like to see that very much, thank you.”

  Orlando let himself be led the short distance back to the main range of rooms, where a much-ruined mosaic was being exposed.

  “This, we believe, was where the family ate in winter,” Kane told him. “The pattern on the floor would have been a gladiatorial scene, we believe, like the one at Bignor. We have one and a half figures that survived fairly intact. We only lifted them yesterday, from where they’d fallen in between the pilae and they’re currently being treated for preservation.”

  Jonty’s voice sounded to Orlando’s left. “Is that quite common?”

  Applecross, appearing at Orlando’s right, said, “Yes. When the Roman empire collapsed, the effects were felt far abroad. Splendid villas such as these were robbed out, the stones taken over the years to construct other buildings and the rest left for the grass to grow over and, incidentally, preserve it for nosy folk like us to come and pick ov
er. Interestingly, we think that in this case when the inhabitants left, this winter dining room was used as a granary. We’ve found some evidence of burned grain among the soil we’ve lifted and sifted. Of course, it might have been the family themselves who put the building to a new use, perhaps taking a pragmatic approach again when the infrastructure that had supported them disappeared, but somehow, I doubt it. I can imagine them wanting to make a new start.”

  Jonty asked the very question Orlando was musing on. “Why did the Saxons or whoever came afterwards—sorry, history not my subject and all that—simply not use the house itself? Given its sturdy construction wouldn’t it have remained habitable for a long time?”

  Protected from the elements, too, with its tiled roof and stone walls. Orlando and Jonty appreciated the continuity of habitation, living in a house which had been built in Tudor times and given later additions and improvements. Any workmen who visited often averred that the older parts were the soundest. Would buildings put up now be so well preserved in hundreds of years’ time?

  “Alas, we’re unable to read the Saxon minds.” Applecross’s reply brought Orlando out of his thoughts. “They’d have found the Romans too alien a culture, wouldn’t you say, Kane?”

  “Yes, sir.” The student nodded. “If they’d never been brought up to it, they wouldn’t necessarily know how to work the heating system or keep the baths running. Even repairing a broken tile on the roof might have been outside their experience. Also, while I’m no expert on them and may never be, I can’t imagine the average Saxon being as wedded to cleanliness as the Romans and those who embraced their culture were.”

  Jonty gave Kane an encouraging smile. “As someone who knows a bit about the Tudors, I can assure you that many a generation hasn’t been too wedded to cleanliness. I suppose using the granary is pragmatism, again. Employ standing buildings which were well aired and likely to keep the grain snug. The average Roman villa might also have made a lovely place to keep your cattle safe in assuming you could get them through the door.”