The Sussex Murder

by Ian Sansom

  ‘Well, I think this traditional shape is the one to go for, don’t you, Sefton?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘The word trug, after all, I believe, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon trog, meaning “boat-shaped vessel”.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir,’ said Mr Walter.

  ‘I think I’m right in saying that the trug derives from the practice in the late eighteenth century – early nineteenth century? – when people would hollow out pieces of timber to make boat shapes and fixed handles to them, for various purposes.’

  ‘People use them to carry grain and measure out for planting mostly, sir,’ said Mr Walter. ‘But they did used to be made from a single piece of timber, sir, that’s correct. So they could measure liquids as well.’

  ‘Hence the pint-size trug?’ said Morley.

  ‘I suppose, sir.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with the history of the modern trug, Sefton?’

  ‘I can’t say I am, Mr Morley, no.’

  ‘Well, I think they became popular – you’ll correct me, Mr Walter, if I’m wrong – after a Mr Thomas Smith of Herstmonceux showed them at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and Queen Victoria was so taken with them she ordered several for members of the royal family.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir,’ said Mr Walter.

  ‘Legend has it he made his delivery of trugs from Herstmonceux to Buckingham Palace in a wheelbarrow.’

  ‘Dubersome folk, in Herstmonceux,’ said Mr Walter. ‘I should get back to work here, sir.’

  ‘Yes, yes, we don’t want to keep you, Mr Walter.’ Morley produced his wallet. ‘Yes, we’re just shopping for trugs.’

  ‘That’s what brings you to Lewes?’

  I saw Morley peering out the back of the shop – the front room – towards the kitchen and beyond.

  ‘And we are writing a book about Sussex actually.’

  ‘Are you, now? You’d make a fine oration of anything, I’d say.’

  ‘I wonder if we might have a look at your workshop.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, sir,’ said Mr Walter. ‘It’s a bit of a rattlebone place back there.’

  ‘That’s perfectly all right,’ said Morley, who was already striding towards the kitchen and into the yard beyond. ‘The more rattlebone the better.’

  Out back, in a tiny yard that had been converted into a tiny workshop, a man sat shaving away at a thin board. He was knee deep in wood shavings, as though he were emerging from a sea of pink-white foam.

  ‘Good morning!’ said Morley.

  The merman looked up, nodded, and went back to work.

  ‘This is the heart of the operation, then,’ said Morley to Mr Walter. We had followed him outside – what else could we do? ‘The old HQ, eh? Just talk me through the process, would you?’

  Mr Walter looked at me and looked as though he wasn’t sure where to start, but then which of us could explain our jobs from start to finish?

  ‘To start?’ asked Morley.

  ‘You take your sweet chestnut poles,’ said Mr Walter. ‘We call them batts.’ He pointed towards a pile of long sticks.

  ‘Very good,’ said Morley.

  ‘And we split them in two using a froe.’

  ‘A froe?’ said Morley.

  ‘That’s a froe,’ said Mr Walter, pointing towards what looked like a long-bladed axe, leaning up by the chestnut poles. ‘And a cleaving brake.’

  ‘A cleaving brake?’ asked Morley.

  ‘Stops the poles splintering.’

  ‘Actually, I’m going to ask my assistant to make some notes, if that’s all right with you, sir?’

  And this, this I realised was the reason for our visit, and for the whole trug-shopping expedition: before I could reach for my German pocket notebook, Morley thrust into my hands the piece of notepaper we had pulled from Lizzie’s drawer, with her list of women’s names upon it.

  ‘You can use that, Sefton.’

  ‘Are you sure, Mr Morley?’

  ‘Absolutely sure. Waste not, want not. I think Mr Walter said a froe, Sefton. Isn’t that right, Mr Walter?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  I wrote down the word froe, at the bottom of the page, underneath the list of names.

  ‘Now let me have a look,’ said Morley. ‘I’m afraid my assistant’s writing is sometimes difficult to read. Just check that spelling for me would you, Mr Walter?’

  And he held the piece of notepaper before him.

  Mr Walter looked at the piece of paper and happily nodded his head.

  ‘That looks right,’ he said, without hesitation.

  ‘Just there,’ said Morley, pointing to the word, ‘below that list of names.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Mr Walter. ‘Froe. I have my letters, sir.’

  And so we had what we needed: proof that the list was not written by Lizzie, for what father seeing his recently deceased daughter’s handwriting would not be shocked?

  But we then had to persist for another twenty minutes in the charade of being interested in the making of a trug. Or, rather, I had to persist in the charade of being interested in the making of a trug: Morley really was interested, of course. I allowed my mind to drift while Mr Walter demonstrated the use of the wooden shaving horse, clamping the chestnut in and using a knife to trim the handles and the rims of chestnut to exactly the right width and thickness, and then the use of a steamer – a fire beneath an old iron drum – to bend and shape the wood for the frame, the willow boards cut and soaked and nailed into place … You certainly had to admire the craftsmanship.

  ‘What’s this book about Sussex then?’ asked Mr Walter, as we were preparing to leave with both our trug and our newly acquired trug-making knowledge.

  ‘It’s a guide to Sussex,’ said Morley.

  ‘What sort of a guide?’ asked Mr Walter.

  ‘A guide for admirers of nature, for lovers of antiquity, and for friends of the arts,’ said Morley.

  ‘Not for the likes of me, then,’ said Mr Walter.

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘I’m not an educated man,’ said Mr Walter.

  ‘You must have been very proud of your daughter then,’ I said, realising immediately that I shouldn’t have said it.

  ‘What?’ said Mr Walter, his face suddenly contorting. ‘My daughter?’ He raised himself to his full height, his fists clenched. ‘What about my daughter?’

  ‘We – I – heard people saying something about … In the hotel.’ All I wanted to do now was to get out of the place as quickly as possible, now that the man’s pain was suddenly apparent.

  ‘Get out, the pair of you,’ he bellowed, ‘before I throw you out!’

  ‘I assure you,’ said Morley, ‘that we came here with good intentions, sir.’

  ‘And I assure you, sir, that if I ever see you near here again I will beat the both of yous senseless. Get out!’

  And so we exited, through the truggery, with our trug.

  CHAPTER 26

  ‘HOW WAS YOUR SHOPPING then, chaps?’ asked Miriam, once we were back at the hotel.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Morley. ‘Excellent. Look at this magnificent trug.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Miriam. ‘Yes. Quite magnificent, Father. Fabulous, in fact. Astonishing.’

  ‘Now now,’ said Morley.

  ‘Was that really the best use of your time, though, Father? Trug shopping? Fiddling while Rome burns?’

  ‘I think if you’re referring to the proverbial, apocryphal story of Nero, Miriam, you’ll find that Rome burned around AD 64, fiddles weren’t invented for another millennium, and that anyway Nero wasn’t anywhere near Rome when it was burning.’

  ‘But my point still stands.’

  ‘It would, my dear, except for the fact that we managed to make some considerable progress on important matters.’

  ‘Which important matters?’

  ‘I think we’ll save that for the moment, Miriam. We need confirmation on a couple of things.’ />
  ‘I think we might need confirmation on more than a couple of things, Mr Morley,’ I said. I still had no idea in what direction Morley’s investigation was headed.

  ‘Well, let’s get to the museum, shall we, have a quick word with this chap, Lizzie’s boyfriend, and then we can regroup and see where we’ve got to?’

  The museum in Lewes is by Lewes Castle, which is entered by and through a magnificent barbican which, according to Morley in The County Guides: Sussex, is highly sketchable. So highly sketchable, indeed, that before we entered the museum, Morley paused to sketch it.

  ‘Look at that flint work, Sefton.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said.

  The flint work looked exactly like flint work.

  One of Miriam’s rules for dealing with her father, which she had explained to me when we first set out on our adventures together, was never to let him get on to flint work. There were a lot of other forbidden topics, it has to be said, ranging from anthropometrics to Ottoman history. (Notably, in the context of our trip to Sussex, we were supposed never to allow him to discuss Piltdown Man. Morley was with Ramström of Uppsala, in believing that though the skull may have belonged to prehistoric man, the jaw definitely belonged to an ape. Piltdown Man was an absolute no-no.) The trouble with Morley was that he was simply too curious about everything, which was an affliction rather than a skill or a gift, and which meant that, say, the study of flint work might easily occupy as much of his time and money as, say, the study of world political and economic systems, or the future of farming in an age of scarcity.

  Some Highly Sketchable Flint Work

  ‘He is obsessed with blasted flint work, Sefton. Knapping, coursing, cobbling and goodness knows what else-rying.’

  Back at Morley’s home in Norfolk I had indeed already enjoyed many conversations with him on the subject of flint knapping, so I always did my best, wherever we were, to steer him away from flint work. On this occasion, however, Lewes Castle had caught me off-guard. From bitter experience, I knew that the only thing to do, once the subject of flint work was introduced, was to try to steer him immediately into a conversation about some other building material. Exactly which building material, and indeed what was the building, was irrelevant.

  ‘Mmm,’ I said, looking around. ‘Look, Mr Morley—’

  ‘Yes, black-glazed bricks,’ said Morley, nodding towards a building, which I hadn’t even noticed, to our left.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But the flint work, Sefton!’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But what about the …’ I pointed randomly towards the top of the barbican.

  ‘Machicolation?’ said Morley.

  ‘Yes, exactly, the …’

  ‘Machicolation,’ repeated Morley. ‘I am right in thinking that you did study history at school, Sefton?’

  ‘I did, Mr Morley, indeed.’

  ‘And French?’

  ‘And French, sir, yes.’

  ‘So, machicolation, from the French mâchicoulis, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I think so.’

  ‘And it is therefore …’

  ‘It is …’

  ‘The opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement. There, see?’

  I eventually saw what he was pointing to.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘Machicolation. Through which rocks or boiling oil can be dropped on attackers at the base of the wall.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said.

  ‘Very common in France,’ said Morley. ‘Less so in England. Which is what makes it so remarkable.’ He then went on to explain the differences between English and French fortifications and defensive tactics during the Middle Ages.

  But at least we avoided the flint work.

  Lewes Museum was housed in the Barbican House, a big red brick building, which according to the small brass plate outside was officially the home of the Sussex Archaeological Society. We entered the building through a magnificent stone-floored hallway, hung with paintings and with some rather half-hearted displays of pottery ware and old flint arrow heads in half-empty display cabinets: a typical English provincial museum. So typical, in fact, that, typically, there didn’t seem to be anyone about.

  ‘Hello?’ called Miriam. ‘Anyone there?’ There came not a sound, not a peep, not a creak, not even the slightest museum echo. ‘Hello? Anyone in? Shop?’

  Morley was already venturing up the ancient staircase, taking the steps two at a time.

  ‘This way!’ he called.

  ‘Father!’ said Miriam.

  ‘This’ll be the way,’ he said.

  And he was, as so often – when he wasn’t utterly incorrect – absolutely correct.

  At the top of the house there was a vast room with great tie-beams. ‘Look at the tie-beams, Sefton!’ said Morley, and look indeed I did, and I can confirm that the tie-beams of the Barbican House in Lewes are truly great tie-beams. The room resembled a library, though with rather fewer books, and at the far end, working at a table with a heavy serge cloth upon it, haphazardly piled with books and papers, and looking for all the world like Dürer’s St Jerome in His Study, though without the lion, and some years younger, and with a full head of hair, was Michael Anderson, Lizzie’s boyfriend – the rather weak-featured fellow we’d already met at the dinner at the White Hart.

  ‘I really don’t see what she sees in the chap,’ whispered Miriam to me.

  Michael, for his part, was delighted to see us.

  ‘Mr Morley!’ he said, getting up from his chair. ‘How delightful. And Miriam. And …’

  ‘Stephen Sefton,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, of course, the assistant.’

  ‘We couldn’t leave Lewes without a look round the museum,’ said Morley.

  ‘Well, I am truly honoured,’ said Michael.

  ‘So you are the director? The curator of this …?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘I am officially employed by the Sussex Archaeological Society, which is one of the nation’s great ancient societies.’

  ‘How old is the Sussex Archaeological Society, Mr Anderson?’ I asked, reaching instinctively for my German notebook, in the full knowledge that if I didn’t quickly start taking notes, Morley would soon be asking me to take a note, so I might as well start.

  ‘We were founded in 1846.’

  ‘Not that ancient, then,’ said Miriam. ‘Not that much older than Father.’

  ‘Thank you, Miriam,’ said Morley.

  ‘We were founded after the discovery of the ruins of the Cluniac Priory of St Pancras at Southover, when the railway was being developed. You know the story of the priory of course?’

  ‘Henry VIII decided he had the right to the priory’s wealth, and Thomas Cromwell had it destroyed?’ said Miriam off-handedly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael, with something of a snort. ‘In a nutshell I suppose that’s it.’

  ‘And how did you end up here, Mr Anderson, in this wonderful place?’ asked Morley. ‘You’re not local? I’m not picking up the accent.’

  ‘The house once belonged to my great-uncle, actually.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Miriam.

  ‘But he – having no children – was succeeded by my father, who was the son of his brother, who was an 8th Hussar, reputed to be the bravest officer in the British Army.’ He gave a bitter little laugh.

  ‘Very good,’ said Morley.

  ‘And who as a young subaltern eloped with the colonel’s wife. Hence me, and hence …’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I was a teacher at the Berlitz School in Brussels for a while, and then I returned to London, where I was living in Chelsea.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Miriam.

  ‘I then ended up in Crawley, whose only distinction is that it’s halfway between London and Brighton, but it allowed me to pursue my studies.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Miriam. ‘Bad luck. Crawley’s awful.’

  ‘I don’t think Crawley’s that bad, Miriam,’ said Morley.

  ‘No, no, you’r
e quite right, Miss Morley,’ said Michael. ‘I’m afraid Crawley is rather Limbo-like. But, by various means, I ended up back here in Lewes. So it’s a sort of homecoming, I suppose.’

  ‘And what’s your specialism, may I ask?’ asked Morley.

  ‘Actually,’ said Michael, ‘I’m not so much an archaeologist as a geologist. I’m a bit of an expert in flint.’

  ‘Oh no,’ groaned Miriam.

  ‘Flint!’ said Morley. ‘Really? Marvellous!’

  ‘A fellow enthusiast?’

  ‘Absolutely!’ said Morley. ‘The great sedimentary rock.’

  ‘Lot of competition?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘A naturally occurring mineral that can be used as a weapon and as a tool?’ said Morley. ‘A grey shapeless shape that yet contains within it darkness and sharpness and edge? Can you name another such sedimentary rock?’

  Miriam gave a loud groan.

  ‘Do you have a cigarette, Sefton?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, you’re certainly in the right county for flint, Mr Morley,’ said Michael. ‘The great hill called Cissbury Ring is of course one of the great repositories of flint in England.’

  Miriam looked at me, appalled.

  ‘Anyway, Mr Anderson, perhaps you’d give us a tour?’ said Miriam, desperate to avoid any more flint talk.

  So Michael began to show us around.

  ‘Now, do you want to start with the shield bosses, or perhaps some brass rubbings? We have an extraordinary collection of old ankle fetters. Take your pick.’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I whispered to Miriam, who was now in full fug and furiously smoking.

  ‘I noted your flint arrow heads downstairs,’ said Morley.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Michael. ‘Plenty of flint arrow heads. But I suppose for the general public the most remarkable exhibit is probably the mummified hand of a murderess – everyone wants to have a look at that.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Miriam. ‘Let’s have a look at the mummified hand of the murderess.’

  ‘But if we perhaps come over here first, we have a little display – that I must say I’m rather proud of – about Togidubnus, who was a local chieftain who was friendly with the Romans …’

  The display consisted of some handwritten documents and some black and white photographs laid out on a small green baize-topped table.