Depths of Deceit

by Norman Russell

  ‘Why, that’s him! Fancy you knowing that! Who is he? Some famous criminal, I’ll be bound. Well, he hovered around impatiently until the door was opened again, and then he rushed in. Poor man! I thought he must have been desperate to obey a call of nature. In he went, Inspector – and never came out! I was there all the time, looking across the concourse, and the man in the naval jacket never came out of that wash-room. No wonder that Mr Cotton suggested that I might have seen a ghost.’

  ‘It wasn’t a ghost, Mr Potts. Not by a long chalk. Now tell me about the other man – the man who came out of the wash-room who had never gone into it.’

  ‘It was just after nine, as I recall,’ said Potts, ‘when a gentleman came hurrying out of the place as though the devil was after him. He was almost running, and I imagined that he was fearful of missing one or other of the trains. I could have sworn that the gentleman had never entered the wash-room in the first place. In fact, I know he hadn’t. I’d have seen him, sure enough, if he had.’

  ‘You didn’t see him come through that barrier over there to catch the nine-five train to Edinburgh?’

  ‘No, Inspector. There was quite a crush of passengers at that time, and in any case my attention was taken up with preparing for the next train.’

  ‘Can you describe the man?’

  ‘Yes, sir, He was a distinguished kind of man, bearded. I think he wore an eye-glass, though I’m not sure. He wore a frock coat and shiny top hat, and carried a light valise. So there’s all I can tell you about my two men: the one who never went in, and the one who never came out.’

  ‘Well, Mr Potts,’ said Box, ‘I can’t tell you what all this is about, I’m afraid, but I can tell you that you’ve been of enormous help to the police. When your colleagues start ribbing you again about your two men, tell them that you were personally thanked for your assistance by Detective Inspector Box of Scotland Yard.’

  ‘I think that ties it up, sir,’ said Sergeant Knollys as the two men made their way across the crowded concourse to the men’s wash-room. ‘It was Professor Ainsworth, right enough. He arrived in his character of the workman with the carpet bag, went into a cubicle, and changed into his own gentleman’s clothes. The delay at the door made him slightly late, but he caught the train none the less.’

  ‘It would seem so, Sergeant,’ said Box. ‘But of course, all our supposition doesn’t amount to legal proof. What did he do with the carpet bag? Incidentally, everyone’s noted that it was a very large bag. It would need to be, if it were to carry not only the professor’s outer clothes, but a top hat and valise into the bargain.’

  ‘He would leave the carpet bag in the cubicle, sir,’ said Knollys, ‘knowing that it would be found, and lodged in the lost property office. It was a neat, clever plan.’

  ‘It was, Sergeant, and, of course, it succeeded. No one would have found out about it if it hadn’t been for Mr Mackharness shaking me out of my dreams of ancient magic and putting me on the right road again. Come on, let’s have a word with the man in charge of the wash-room.’

  The foreman cleaner occupied a narrow glazed booth at one side of the vast tiled wash-room. He was sitting on a chair, surrounded by mops and mop buckets, and what looked like drums of carbolic disinfectant. Yes, he remembered that day. No, he couldn’t remember any particular man, workman or gentleman. All sorts came in there, and he was too busy mopping and cleaning up after them all to notice any individual customer.

  Yes, he did remember finding a big carpet bag in the last cubicle on the far wall. He took it to the lost property office. People were always leaving things, umbrellas and walking-sticks, mainly. They propped them up against the walls while they were making use of the facilities, and then walked out without them. Some folk would leave their heads behind if they were loose.

  They had no trouble in finding the carpet bag when they called at the lost property office. The counter clerk returned with it from his long lines of racks in minutes, and after they had shown him their warrants, he allowed them to open it. It contained a workman’s trousers, jacket and boots, together with a peaked cap. This, without doubt, was all that was left of the fictitious Michael Shane, of the non-existent Cobb’s Buildings, Hackney.

  ‘There’s dried blood on the bottom of the bag, Sergeant,’ said Box. ‘That’s from when he put the bloodstained adze back, after killing Gregory Walsh in the Mithraeum. Afterwards, he hid his deadly weapon in the midden behind Greensands’ shop.’

  Sergeant Knollys turned his back on the carpet bag and leaned against the counter, looking across the station concourse. Hundreds of people were busily concerned with their own business, and none of them glanced in the direction of the two detectives. How many of those people, he wondered, harboured vile secrets?

  ‘Sir,’ said Knollys, ‘all this means that the business of the honey, and the business of the mercury, were simply blinds. The honey and the mercury were no different from the crude imitations manufactured by your paltry murderer over the river in Rotherhithe. What kind of a man will violate the bodies of the people he had just slaughtered?’

  ‘What kind of a man? A man who’s had his moral senses blunted by fear – fear of discovery, I mean. And fear of exposure can make a decent man hate the one who’s doing the exposing. Hatred, resentment – with sentiments of that kind to the fore, Sergeant, the frightened man ceases to see his prey as victims at all. He’s simply annihilating living dangers. So he’ll not scruple at pouring mercury down a dead man’s throat, or spooning honey into his mouth. I’ve seen that kind of thing before.’

  ‘It’s horrible, sir.’

  ‘Yes, it is, and that’s why we’ve got to get on with the business of bringing this man to justice. I’m going to come out in the open, now, Sergeant, and name that man, without beating about the bush. No more ifs and buts. The ruthless and cruel killer of Gregory Walsh and Abraham Barnes is Professor Roderick Ainsworth! To my way of thinking, there can be no doubt whatever about that. But we’re a long way from proving it, Jack, and there’s a lot to be done yet.’

  ‘Have you a plan in mind, sir?’ asked Knollys.

  ‘Yes, I have. First, I want you to reopen your investigation of Gregory Walsh’s death. I’m still not clear why he was silenced. What did he know? Go and find that young woman of his – Thelma, wasn’t it? – and talk to her and her new gentleman friend. Find out if Walsh had a particular friend, someone who he might have confided in. He didn’t seem to have told Thelma very much, and after all, he didn’t appear to be very welcome in the family laboratory, did he? That man Craven was jealous of him.’

  ‘That’s very true, sir,’ said Knollys. ‘I’ll go to Hayward’s Court first thing tomorrow. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going down by train to a place called Melton Castra, in Essex,’ said Box. ‘There’s a lady living there who evidently knows a lot of interesting things about Professor Roderick Ainsworth. She’s his second cousin, apparently, and an acquaintance of Mr Mackharness’s old friend Lord Maurice Vale Rose. Lord Maurice has given me a letter of introduction to this lady – well, he actually gave it to Old Growler to give to me, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I wonder how it is that Mr Mackharness is so friendly with a lord?’

  ‘Well, Sergeant, whatever else Old Growler is, he’s definitely a gentleman. He’s out of the top drawer, all right, is our guvnor. Lord Maurice is the younger brother of the Marquess of Killeen, and the two of them were together in the Crimea. That’s the bond that links them. They were both “stormed at with shot and shell”, and were glad to survive.’

  ‘Well, I never knew that, sir. Thanks for telling me. Shall I give them a receipt for this carpet bag, and lug it back to the Rents?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant, do that. And then tomorrow, you and I will embark on what I hope will be the final leg of our journey to bring the killer of Gregory Walsh and Abraham Barnes to justice.’

  Melton Castra proved to be a very ancient, straggling village of some size, with many picturesque h
ouses adorned with the particular kind of pargeted plaster work found throughout Essex. Arnold Box booked a room for the night at a hostelry called The Sun Inn, and set out to interview Mrs Warwick Newman, the lady known to Lord Maurice Vale Rose, Superintendent Mackharness’s old friend.

  He walked to the end of the village street, and saw an old church set in a swathe of mature woodland, above which rose what looked like the extensive excavations of some prehistoric British archaeological site. A signpost placed at the entrance to a rustic path told him that it led to Melton Church. After a few minutes’ walk he emerged from the trees into a clearing, where he saw a stone church with a squat tower and massive carved porch. It stood in an overgrown churchyard, bright with summer flowers, its many gravestones almost hidden by long, untrimmed grass. Both church and churchyard looked as though they had fallen asleep long ago, and would never waken.

  Facing the church was an old Tudor house, its timbers twisted, and its roof covered with lichen. This, then, would be the Old Rectory, home of Professor Roderick Ainsworth’s second cousin. Arnold Box walked through a riotous garden until he reached the house, and knocked on the black oak door.

  ‘Lord Maurice tells me here in his letter,’ said Mrs Warwick Newman, ‘that you want to hear about Roddy Ainsworth’s youthful days. He doesn’t say why, and I’m not sure that I want to know why. Roddy and I are second cousins, but I’m much older than he is – I think there’s fourteen years between us. You’ll understand, I think, that I have not seen him for many years. We were not close, you know, though I liked him well enough. It would have been impossible not to like Roderick Ainsworth when he was a boy.’

  Box listened to Mrs Warwick Newman’s well-enunciated and silvery voice as he tried to form an estimate of her character. The parlour in which she had received him was well furnished, and everything was highly polished. A soothing old grandfather clock ticked away against one wall. Books and magazines were everywhere, but carefully arranged so as not to create any kind of disharmony. This lady believed in organization and neatness. No doubt her mind functioned in a way that was reflected in the arrangements of her home.

  Mrs Warwick Newman was a woman well over seventy, with grey hair and rather faded blue eyes, that regarded Box appraisingly through gold-rimmed glasses. She was very well dressed in the fashions of the seventies, and Box realized that in addition to the elderly maid who had opened the door to him, she probably kept a personal maid to help her maintain her love of fastidiousness.

  ‘Now, Mr Box,’ she said, ‘where shall I begin? Roderick, as you know, belongs to the Ainsworth family of shipbuilders up in Newcastle. They were related both to my late husband’s family and to mine, and from the time that Roddy was fourteen, he came down here every year to stay with us for a few weeks in July and August. I was nearing thirty when he first came, and I immediately assumed the role of an admonitory elder sister.’

  ‘Did you have to do a lot of admonishing, ma’am?’ asked Box. His hostess laughed.

  ‘Well, he was a lively boy, you see, the type of boy who falls out of trees, or breaks glasshouse windows – he was a very physical boy, if you can understand what I mean. He was very good-looking, and unfailingly cheerful and, despite his family’s wealth, he mixed easily with the local boys. They went fishing together, and encouraged each other in all kinds of boyish mischief….’

  Mrs Warwick Newman paused for a while, and Box watched her as she began to look more closely into the past.

  ‘He had to have his own way, you know,’ she said at last. ‘My parents were alive then, of course – it was long before I married – and they tended to indulge him. I think they had been disappointed in having only one child, and that a girl into the bargain – me, you know! But I tried to teach him that the world had not been made entirely for him to bustle in. “Yes, Bella”, he’d say, and look suitably crestfallen, but he was never sincere in his repentance.’

  ‘And did he always get his own way with the village lads?’ asked Box.

  His hostess threw him a shrewd glance of understanding.

  ‘He did not,’ she replied. ‘Boys of any class won’t put up with anything like that. There were fights from time to time – quite ugly, bloody affairs, as only boys can manage. When these fights occurred, it would take a couple of grown men to pull Roddy away from his opponent. Thank goodness that he was only here for part of each summer! All that belligerence, I’m glad to say, stopped once he’d passed his sixteenth birthday, and he began to realize that there were other things in the world than fighting, playing village cricket, and so on.’

  ‘What other things did he discover, ma’am? This is all very interesting.’

  ‘He discovered the old earthworks above the village, Mr Box, and from that moment, I think he dedicated his whole life to archaeology. He was still only a youth, but he discovered a horde of Neolithic flint weapons up there on the ridge. It caused quite a stir, and brought Roddy to the attention of Mr Marcus Kent, the antiquarian, who lived some three miles from here. He took a great interest in Roddy, helped him to classify his finds, and lent him a quantity of books on prehistory, all of which he devoured. His personal collection of artefacts grew to quite impressive proportions, and his father realized that the boy had a promising future as an academic archaeologist.’

  ‘I imagine that was unusual for an industrialist, ma’am,’ Box ventured.

  ‘I suppose it was, Inspector, but Roderick’s father was a man of broad vision -perhaps that’s why his shipyards prospered as well as they did. When Roddy was eighteen, his father made him experience the business at first-hand, and he spent three years in all departments of the yard. Roddy was more than willing to do this, as he knew that a successful business would furnish all his needs for the future.

  ‘When the three years were up, Roddy entered upon what I call his academic phase. He entered London University as an undergraduate, and progressed from there. His rise was rapid, and his excavations, both in Britain and abroad, were of a high order. The rest of Roderick Ainsworth’s career, Inspector, is public knowledge.’

  Mrs Warwick Newman stopped speaking, and sat back in her chair. The old grandfather clock ticked away. Through the open window, Box could hear the sultry murmur of bees in the garden. She’s waiting for me to challenge her story, he thought. Unless I do, she won’t tell me the whole of it.

  ‘I think there’s more to Mr Ainsworth’s early life than you’ve told me, ma’am,’ he said, and fancied that the elderly lady gave an almost imperceptible sigh of relief.

  ‘You’re right, Mr Box,’ she said. ‘There is something that I haven’t told you, and it’s this: Roderick Ainsworth couldn’t keep his hands off other people’s goods. The difference between “thine” and “mine” was very blurred where he was concerned. He’d help himself to small sums of money lying around the house, or filch food from the larder, always from the back of a dim shelf, so the loss wasn’t immediately noticed. Light-fingered, was my young cousin.’

  ‘And it led to trouble?’ Box hinted.

  ‘It did. How clever of you to realize that. Certain items began to disappear from Mr Marcus Kent’s house – medieval coins, old Celtic brooches – and it soon became obvious that they must have been purloined by Roddy. He hotly denied the suggestion, but it was all bluster. Mr Kent broke off all relations with the family, and soon afterwards Roddy’s father called him back to Newcastle. He was nineteen by that time. He has never visited us here at Melton Castra since.’

  Mrs Warwick Newman rose from here chair, and motioned to Box to follow her.

  ‘Enough of Roderick for the moment, Inspector,’ she said. ‘Let me show you over our ancient church of St John the Baptist. Its foundations date back to the sixth century, and there’s a lot of surviving Norman work. It’s well worth a visit.’

  They left the old rectory, and crossed the lane to the church. It was a hot, intensely quiet day, and Box could hear the crickets singing among the long grass growing up between the graves. They passed unde
r the great carved porch and descended three steps into the cool, gloomy nave. Box followed his hostess as she walked slowly up towards the sanctuary, stopping occasionally to point out some carving or unusual feature that had survived from pre-Reformation times.

  When she came to the chancel steps, Mrs Warwick Newman stopped, and pointed to a tall empty niche let into the north wall of the choir. Above it was an inscription in convoluted blackletter, painted on to the stone wall in a fanciful scroll. Box was no expert in such matters, but he could tell that the inscription was not of ancient date.

  ‘Can you read what that says, Mr Box?’ asked Mrs Warwick Newman. ‘It’s not in Latin, for a change. It was put up there on the wall in 1752.’

  Box peered up at the scroll, and slowly read the inscription.

  ‘“I am that Great Giant, Old Bobbadil, who guardeth the folk of Melton”. And who was this Old Bobbadil, ma’am?’

  ‘He was a piece of sculpture found buried beneath the chapel floor at Sir Lewis Dangerfield’s house near Saffron Walden. He declared that it was Old Bobbadil, a giant-figure that features in many local legends and epic poetry in this corner of Essex. Dangerfield was patron of the living here at St John the Baptist’s, and had the thing brought here and fixed into that niche. Before the Reformation, it had contained a shrine to the Baptist.’

  ‘But Old Bobbadil’s gone now, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Box, he’s gone. He stood there, in that niche, guarding the folk of Melton Castra, for one hundred and thirty-seven years. And then, in 1889, he was stolen. Some villains came in the night, forced entry to the church, and carried Old Bobbadil off. No one ever found out who did the deed, and the rector, who’s what I call a black gown and Bible man, was relieved to see the thing gone from his church. He came here in 1880, found candles and surplices in use, and initiated a second Reformation. He was no friend of Old Giant Bobbadil.’