The Gentle Art of Murder

by Jeanne M. Dams

  In this exalted mood I stepped out, with Alan, into a morning as dismal as any England can produce, and that’s saying something. The autumnal mist that had pearled the air earlier had turned to a dreary mizzle. Not as definite as rain, not as innocuous as mist, it can carry on for days on end at this time of year. One becomes wet to the skin in a matter of minutes, and an umbrella is of little use, since the slimy dampness is everywhere. I clung to Alan, hurrying as fast as we could over the treacherous paving stones to our gate.

  A car pulled up in front of our house just as we reached the door, and a man stepped out. He was so swathed in mackintosh and black rain hat that it took me a moment to recognize him as Jeremy’s partner, Christopher Lewis.

  ‘Good grief, Christopher, come in and get warm. What a nasty day this turned out to be!’

  He came in, but didn’t take off his coat and hat. ‘I’m quite warm, thank you. I wrapped up because I take a chill easily, and I wanted to avert it if possible. I won’t stay. I just thought you’d want to know that Matt Thomas seems to have disappeared.’

  The story, conveyed in the few minutes Christopher could spare before he went to sing in the Cathedral choir, was simple and profoundly unsatisfactory. Some friends had invited Matt to dinner the night before, determined to try to keep him cheerful and occupied. He didn’t show up, didn’t phone. The friends had gone round to his house, an old cottage on the edge of town. It was dark; his car was gone. He had no near neighbours; the closest house was barely within sight, and they knew nothing. The friends went to the university. The Fine Arts building was dark and locked, but someone found a sympathetic guard who went in and looked. The only occupant he found was a mouse nesting in a broom cupboard.

  ‘Has anyone called the police?’ Alan asked.

  ‘I thought someone had to be missing for twenty-four hours before they’d take notice.’

  ‘There are extenuating circumstances,’ said Alan, and his tone was grim. ‘There, the bells are starting. You’d better go. I’ll take it from here.’

  Christopher dashed off, and I turned to Alan. ‘Do you think …?’

  ‘I think I’d better speak to Derek straight away. This could be nothing, but it could be very serious indeed.’

  He pulled out his phone, found Derek’s direct number, and placed the call. I stood there wondering what I could do, besides worry.

  There was nothing useful to do in the house. We’d had a good breakfast and it was a long time before I needed to start thinking about lunch. The house was in reasonable order. I’d done the laundry a day or two ago. Gardening was out of the question in this weather.

  None of the things, in short, that women do to keep busy and keep our minds off disagreeable thoughts were available to me just now. I went into the room that I choose to call our parlour and sank down on the couch. Watson was too sound asleep in the warm kitchen to sense that I was in need of comfort, and the cats were invisible.

  Alan came into the room and started to build a fire. That was one of the things he did to stave off uncomfortable thoughts.

  ‘What did Derek say?’

  ‘He’s concerned. Several scenarios come to mind, some of them not very favourable.’

  ‘Matt’s committed suicide out of grief. Or because he can’t face the guilt of murdering Chandler. Or he saw who did it, and the murderer has killed him. Or he thinks he knows who did it and he’s gone off to confront whoever it is. Or—’

  Alan held up his hand. ‘Enough, love. All of those things are possible. It’s equally possible that the boy simply couldn’t stand the atmosphere around the college anymore and has gone to the seaside for a breather.’

  ‘Right.’

  The fire was going nicely. Alan sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Derek’s putting someone on it. The police will do everything possible. There’s no point in worrying.’

  ‘Right,’ I said again.

  The distress in our voices got through to Watson, who came trotting in and sat on my feet.

  It was a very long day. The weather stayed grey and wet and miserable. I bestirred myself to open a can of soup and make some cheese sandwiches for lunch, but neither of us ate much. I tried to read, and after I’d been on the same page for ten minutes, without taking in a word, I put the book carefully back on the shelf. I wandered into the kitchen and thought about making a batch of cookies, but we had no chocolate chips, or oatmeal, or peanut butter, which disposed of my three favourites. I certainly wasn’t going out to Tesco’s in such rotten weather. I pulled out a crossword book and tried to concentrate, with conspicuous failure.

  Alan retired to his den, where he turned on his computer and sat, presumably working on his memoirs. He’s been writing them for ages, more as busywork than anything else, I suspected. Whenever I glanced in, he was sitting staring at the screen, hands idle, which didn’t seem to indicate much progress.

  By tea time I simply couldn’t stand it anymore. Derek hadn’t called. Nobody’d called. The only sound was Watson’s snores and the steady drip, drip of the sodden world outside. I nudged Watson aside and stood up.

  ‘Alan, we’re going over to the college.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and shut off the computer.

  Neither of us knew what we expected to accomplish there, but it had become simply impossible to sit doing nothing.

  TWELVE

  ‘There won’t be anyone here on a Sunday afternoon,’ I said as Alan pulled the car into a parking space.

  ‘Probably not.’ He fished the umbrellas out of the back seat and handed me mine. I got out of the car and put up the brolly, though I knew it would do little good. Moisture was everywhere, seeping into one’s clothes and hair, into one’s very pores. Not for the first time, I wished the car park were closer to the Fine Arts building.

  The main door was locked. That was no surprise. ‘Shall we try one of the other doors?’ Alan suggested.

  ‘Might as well try them all,’ I said, trying not to sound as morose as I felt. ‘We can’t get much wetter.’

  The building had lots of doors, some of them hidden away at the end of narrow passageways between the cubes that made up the structure. I was about to give up when Alan spotted a loading dock around the back, with a steel roll-up door at the top of a slight ramp. ‘That must be where they bring large sculptures in and out. It will be locked, but I’ll just make certain.’

  I stayed in the car, wet and shivering and thoroughly fed up, while Alan walked up the ramp and surveyed the door for any sort of opening mechanism. It looked like the sort that opens only from inside, electrically. He looked at me and shrugged. No hope there.

  There was a concrete platform to the side of the steel barrier, though, and in the interest of thoroughness Alan stepped over to it. I couldn’t see very well because of the angle, but he fumbled with something and then gave me a broad smile and wave.

  He’d found an unlocked door.

  If Alan hadn’t been there, nothing could have made me enter that dark, apparently deserted building. I admit that doesn’t make sense. If a building is deserted, it’s harmless. It’s the people inside who might be hazardous to one’s health. But if anyone wants to make fun, let him enter, alone, a labyrinthine structure where someone has been murdered; let him, furthermore, enter late on a dark, misty afternoon, when no lights are visible and there are no passers-by to hear a possible cry for help – let that person say, if he dares, that fears are foolish.

  Even with Alan right there, I wasn’t wild about the idea. I hadn’t much enjoyed my tour of discovery the day before, with corridors leading nowhere and people popping out of unseen doors.

  I had a reputation to maintain. Dorothy the intrepid. My comments as I got out of the car and trudged up the ramp were unspoken ones, and I hoped that Alan wouldn’t be able to read my face in the half-light of the deepening gloom.

  Whether he could or not, he sensed my mood and tucked my hand firmly over his arm. ‘We stick together,’ he said very softly, ‘and m
ake as little noise as possible. The place may be empty, but I don’t quite like that open door.’

  Of course that raised my spirits immensely. I gripped his arm rather tighter than strictly necessary and wished my wet shoes wouldn’t squeak so on the linoleum.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ I murmured.

  ‘First, a way out of this confounded loading area.’ It came out as a sort of growl and I almost giggled. Tension does that to me. I hoped I could behave myself.

  Alan loosed my hand for a moment, groped in his pockets, and came up with, miracle of miracles, a flashlight. A bright, new one, too, with that penetrating blue light that LEDs supply. It wasn’t very big, so the beam wasn’t broad, but that almost windowless space was very dark indeed, so the light seemed powerful. It showed us another large garage-type door at the other side of the room, as firmly shut as the outer one, but with two prominent buttons to one side, a red one and a green one.

  ‘I don’t think we dare, Dorothy. It’ll sound like Hannibal and all his elephants. There must be a human-sized door somewhere.’

  If there had ever been one, some remodelling project or other had taken it away or covered it up. No matter how carefully Alan surveyed the room with his light, there was plainly no way out of the dock except the way we’d come in, or the electric door into the building.

  ‘Shall we risk it? Or acknowledge ourselves defeated and go home to a thumping good tea?’

  I was suddenly impatient with our precautions. The building was plainly empty. There was no danger. (I suspect that Alan’s flashlight played a big part in my new courage. I’ve never liked the dark.) ‘We’ve come this far. It would be too silly to turn tail and run. Let’s risk it. The green button, I’d think.’

  Alan pressed it. The door obediently rose, with little more noise than a low rumble, and we were free to roam as we wished.

  The only lights visible were the green exit lights here and there over doors. The corridors had no windows, and although some of the rooms that opened off to left and right had windows, and glass-panelled doors, what little light penetrated those recesses had given up heart long before it reached the hallway.

  ‘All right, Miss Braveheart. Shall we switch on some lights or make do with the torch?’

  ‘I’m not quite that foolish. Lights, even in the corridors, could be seen from outside, and if someone like a campus guard came to investigate, we could be in a lot of trouble. Let’s make do with your flashlight and what little I remember of the layout of this chamber of horrors. And I warn you, people can sneak up on you before you hear them. Something about the acoustics.’

  ‘Ah, but there’s no one to sneak, is there?’

  ‘I certainly hope not. We’ll be careful anyway, though, okay?’

  Now that I was actually in the place, some of my trepidation returned. I resumed my tight grasp of Alan’s arm. ‘I think the sculpture studios are just ahead,’ I said in barely audible tones. I knew they were on the ground floor, anyway, and surely they’d be as close as possible to the dock.

  And yes, behind the first door we opened, here they were. Probably on a bright sunny day there’d be plenty of natural light here. Today we might as well have been at the bottom of an aquarium; the light was green and murky. We could see enough, with Alan’s cautious use of the flashlight, to know that there was no one in any of the rooms, though Gillian’s Summer gave me a nasty jolt for a second.

  ‘Onward and upward?’ I murmured.

  ‘Let’s just have a quick look at the offices first. I don’t think we need bother with any of the lecture rooms.’

  This wasn’t the time or place for a lengthy discussion, but I wondered again what we thought we were doing here. If we were looking for Matt, the way to do it would be to bring in several friends, turn on all the lights, and make a systematic search of the building. Except the police had probably already done that. I couldn’t explain why we both had the strong feeling that there was something important to be found here. Nor why we felt so uneasy about it that we were sneaking around like a couple of burglars.

  Nobody in the main office. Nobody in Chandler’s office. I made some excuse not to go in there, telling myself firmly I was not getting stupid ideas about ghosts. Nobody in a kind of work room, with a photocopier and stacks of paper and a couple of computers. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa, nobody under the bed … I wrenched my thoughts away from Ebenezer Scrooge and his uneasy ghost-hunt and directed Alan toward where I thought we’d find the stairs to the second floor and the photo studios.

  For a wonder, I was right. Getting around the studios themselves was a bit trickier. We first found several darkrooms, which were indeed very dark. But we bumbled about, using Alan’s light when we absolutely had to, and finally found ourselves in the large room where set pieces, or human models, could be photographed. It was full of windows, floor to ceiling, and also full of obstacles. Here a large silver umbrella on a stand loomed over one corner, there I nearly got myself tangled in a roll of background paper. Tripods thrust their wiry legs out to trip us up, and light stands were everywhere. I finally stood in the middle of the room and rotated slowly, surveying the room with the aid of a very occasional flash of light.

  ‘No one,’ I said at last.

  Alan nodded. ‘I checked the darkrooms while you were doing your slow pirouette. No one. And nothing. They’re virtually cleaned out.’

  ‘I know. Isn’t it sad? Now shall we try the next floor?’

  ‘That’s the print department, isn’t it? Matt’s department?’

  I nodded, swallowed, and gripped his arm again.

  We found the stairs easily, and climbed them very quietly. My shoes were dry by this time, at least on the bottom, and no longer squeaked. I nearly held my breath. We were walking into Matt’s world, the place where he was master, where he created such splendour. I didn’t want to find him there, hurt or … I didn’t want him to be there.

  We came out of the stairwell, crept down the corridor, and opened the door to the main print studio.

  I gasped and would have fallen if Alan hadn’t supported me.

  By the fading light we glimpsed a scene of utter chaos.

  ‘The hell with this!’ said Alan roughly, and found the light switches. By the glaring light of the overhead fluorescents, the mess was truly appalling.

  Tables were overturned. Sharp tools lay all over the floor, presenting a very great hazard. Plastic bottles of acid for etching, rolls of silk, inks of every colour made a sort of mad collage. Even some of the lithograph stones lay broken on the floor. We just stood and looked for a moment, and then I gave a great cry. ‘Alan! The prints!’

  For the woodcuts, the glorious, miraculous woodcuts that I had so admired, had been torn from the walls and lay in ragged pieces, soaking up spilled ink.

  Alan walked gingerly to one that had escaped the worst destruction. He stood looking at it for a long time, and then took his phone out of his pocket and punched in a number.

  ‘Derek? You’d best come over to the Fine Arts building. There’s been the most damnable vandalism.’

  I stood there in tears. How could an artist, how could anyone destroy such beauty? Had Matt gone utterly out of his mind and done this himself? Was he … oh, God, was he lying dead in one of the printing rooms? Destruction of his work and then of himself?

  ‘Alan, we’d better search—’

  ‘No, love. We’ll do nothing until Derek gets here. This is a murder scene.’

  ‘Then you think …’

  ‘I don’t know if Matt is here somewhere, if that’s what you mean. But if it’s murder to destroy a man’s very soul, then someone committed murder here.’

  I drew a shaky breath. ‘Could we at least turn out some of the lights? I don’t think I can bear to look at this.’

  ‘I suppose. I touched the switches once tonight. Once more won’t make much of a difference.’

  He turned to walk back to the switches, and a cold voice from the door said, ‘I see
that, not content with trespassing, you have now embraced mass destruction.’ William Braithwaite started to walk into the room.

  ‘I’ll ask you to stay where you are, sir,’ said Alan, in his most commanding voice. ‘This is a crime scene. I have called the police, and they will be here very soon. Meanwhile no one must disturb anything.’

  ‘I say! You’re a cool customer, telling me what I can and can’t do in my own college! I am W.T. Braithwaite, and I am the head of the school of art, and who the hell are you?’ He strode past Alan, crushing plastic tubes of colour as he walked into the room.

  Alan caught his shoulder and swung him around. ‘NO FARTHER, SIR! My name is Alan Nesbitt, I am the former chief constable of Belleshire, and I am still a sworn police officer with every right to arrest you on the spot. I assure you I shall do so if you take one more step.’

  Alan will never see seventy again. Braithwaite was probably in his forties. He was also six inches shorter than my husband, and soft around the middle. He shook off Alan’s hand, with some language I tried hard not to hear, but he stayed where he was.

  We waited in uncomfortable silence for Derek to arrive.

  Alan’s phone rang. Keeping a stern eye on Braithwaite, he pulled it out, listened a moment, and uttered an uninformative, ‘Right. I’ll see to it.’ Then he turned to the unhappy painter and held out his hand. ‘Your keys.’

  The man started to protest, considered Alan’s grim expression, and sullenly pulled a key ring out of his pocket.

  ‘Main door?’

  Braithwaite indicated it.

  ‘Right. Dorothy, can you bear to go down and let Derek in? Can you find the door?’

  ‘Yes, and yes, but I’ll need your flashlight.’

  He handed it to me. ‘But go ahead and switch the lights on as you go. There’s no need for caution now.’

  I was thankful to get out of that terrible room. The carnage had sickened me. Alan was right, I thought. It was a massacre, the slaughter of hopes and dreams and brilliant achievement, and it would give me nightmares for a long time. I could only hope, as I threaded my way down the stairs and through the corridors, that Derek did not find Matt somewhere amongst that butchery.