Depths of Deceit

by Norman Russell

  ‘Inspector!’ Percy Phelps’s voice came from somewhere in the darkness beyond the circle of lantern light. ‘Here’s the flagstone! The flagstone covering the entrance to the vaults of old St Catherine’s Church. There are metal rings let into its surface. Get your two massive sergeants to raise it, and I’ll guide you down.’

  The stone flag rose easily. Knollys and Kenwright pulled it bodily to one side of the black pit that yawned beneath it. There was a stout wooden ladder lying against the wall of the warehouse, which was evidently used to gain access to the vault. They lowered it cautiously until it came to rest on a hidden pavement below. The burly Kenwright made as it to climb down immediately, but Percy Phelps placed a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘Just a brief word of warning, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘This cellar floor is safe enough, but once we descend into the old vaults of St Catherine’s Church, we’ll find ourselves in a world of empty, abandoned chambers, and decaying brick sewers. Tread carefully, and be ruled by me, because I know where all these ancient places lie with respect to the roads above.’

  Percy Phelps stepped on to the ladder, and cautiously descended the six feet that took him to the floor of the vault. The others followed him, the two sergeants carrying the blazing lanterns. A cellar beneath a cellar…. It was not a pleasant place to be, thought Box, twelve feet below ground level, where the topsoil gave way to the binding London clay, and they were dependent upon paraffin lanterns for illumination. The air smelt damp, and the stone walls were dank with moisture. Somewhere near them they could hear the running of water along a hidden conduit.

  ‘This was the major burial vault of the old church before the Great Fire,’ Phelps told them. ‘All the human remains were removed when the site was levelled in 1668, and buried elsewhere.’

  Percy Phelps stood still, squinting at his folding plan by the light of the lanterns, while the police officers searched the ancient crypt. They found a neatly folded tarpaulin, and a number of paint-brushes standing stiffly in an earthenware pot. There was also a wooden box containing candles and an old-fashioned tinder-box.

  ‘Mr Box,’ said Phelps, ‘here is the door leading to the Roman vault. It’s an ancient thing in its own right – oak, I’d say, strengthened with iron bands. It’s medieval, of course: the clergy of St Catherine’s would have used the old Roman chamber as an extra burial vault. Shall I open it? If my plan’s correct, there will be a short passageway leading directly into the Mithraeum.’

  ‘He must have arranged some kind of false wall at the back of the chamber,’ said Box, half to himself. ‘A kind of secret panel…. Yes, Mr Phelps. Open it, by all means. Let’s explore this business to the end.’

  Phelps put his hand to the catch, and pushed open the door. They had just time to glimpse a short tunnel stretching ahead into the darkness when the pavement of the vault began to tremble, and a noise like a fast-approaching roll of thunder was heard. Phelps shouted a warning, and they rushed as a man towards the ladder that would take them up to the basement of the repository. There came a sudden scream of collapsing masonry, and a tornado of dust-laden air rushed at them from the tunnel that Phelps had exposed.

  Half blinded, they scrambled up the ladder and into the empty basement. In less than a minute they had climbed the iron staircase, and were safe in the vast, sunlit warehouse, which rapidly filled with a kind of hot acrid mist. They heard shouts coming from Miller’s Alley, and the shouts were followed by a frantic hammering on the bolted rear doors.

  ‘Ainsworth? Dead? It’s not possible!’

  Arnold Box had found Sir Charles Wayneflete sitting on one side of the chess table in the study of his house in Lowndes Square. Major Baverstock, looking particularly pugnacious as he fought a losing battle against his opponent, seemed to freeze in surprise, one of his green malachite bishops still held in his right hand.

  ‘He is dead, Sir Charles,’ said Box. ‘He was in the Clerkenwell Mithraeum this morning, engaged upon some private business of his own, when the whole site collapsed, burying him under tons of earth and masonry. He must have died instantly.’

  ‘And you came here to tell me? Why did you do that, Mr Box? I’m more sorry than I can say. He and I were no friends, God knows, but I would never have wished that fate upon him.’

  ‘Best thing that could have happened, Charles.’ Major Baverstock had finally relinquished his bishop, and was watching his old friend with interest. ‘Don’t forget that Mr Box here had proved Ainsworth to be a double murderer. He’s lucky to have gone that way, though I expect the inspector is vexed that he’s cheated the gallows.’

  ‘Professor Ainsworth was never charged, Major,’ said Box. ‘But the warrants were already prepared, and I would have taken him up this coming Monday. As to why I came straight away to you, Sir Charles, it was because I feel you were mightily abused by Ainsworth, who publicly belittled your standing as a scholar in order to gloss over his own failings. I think he resented your honesty, and his constant sniping at your reputation may in the end have undermined your own self-confidence. Also, of course, he may have attempted to do you an injury. So I came here straight away to tell you that you can now breathe freely.’

  Sir Charles glanced briefly at the chessboard, made as though to move a piece, and then thought better of it.

  ‘That was very civil of you, Mr Box, and I thank you. Did you know that I’m selling the lease of this place, and moving out to a new house in Chiswick? Old Josh there – Major Baverstock – has persuaded me to make a fresh start. I’m minded to write a scholarly monograph on the Clerkenwell Treasure in collaboration with Father Brooks, with the idea of restoring its academic integrity. Oh, I’ll give Ainsworth his due, but I’ll set the record straight about those chalices.’

  ‘I did a little research myself, sir,’ said Box. ‘At least, I asked a scholarly friend of mine, Miss Louise Whittaker, to undertake it for me. Professor Ainsworth said that he’d found out about the existence of the Mithraeum in a old manuscript called – I have it recorded here, in my notebook – Cotton Augustus Extra B vii. He said that the original had been destroyed in a fire, and that he’d bought a transcript of it at Sotheby’s. He crowned his tale by declaring that this transcript was in turn destroyed by a fire in his own house.’

  ‘And what did your friend find out?’

  ‘She found out that Sotheby’s had never sold such a manuscript, and that, in fact, no manuscript of that name had ever existed. The so-called “Mithraeum”, sir, was based upon an elaborate and impudent lie.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Sir Charles Wayneflete, ‘it’s a wicked world, Inspector. Ainsworth was a greater rogue than I thought. Maybe Josh is right, and it’s all for the best.’

  His hand hovered over the chessboard for a few seconds, and then executed a series of rapid moves. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, ‘perhaps it’s all for the best. Check! And also mate!’

  Superintendent Mackharness finished reading a report that he had picked up from his desk, and then looked at his audience. Box and Knollys waited to see what he would have to say about the previous Saturday’s dramatic conclusion to the business of the Clerkenwell Mithraeum. It was the morning of Monday, 3 September.

  ‘It would appear from this brief report from Superintendent Hunt, of “G”,’ he said, ‘which was kindly brought to me here at the Rents this morning, that Professor Roderick Ainsworth entered the Mithraeum from Priory Gate Street at the very moment that you and your colleagues had chosen to push open that subterranean door. We shall never know why he went to that place on Saturday, or what particular action it was that caused the sudden and total collapse of the site. However, when the body was finally unearthed, its right hand was found to be clutching a length of thin rope that was attached to the base of a splintered baulk of timber, one of several that had been used to support the ceiling of the chamber.’

  Mackharness put down the report on his desk, and sighed.

  ‘You’d been warned by Mr Phelps that the area was dangerous, and that cave
-ins were likely,’ he said, looking at Box. ‘But in view of what I’ve just told you, I don’t suppose you will see this sudden collapse as an accident?’

  ‘I don’t, sir,’ Box replied. ‘I thought all along that Ainsworth took fright, and went to the Mithraeum on Saturday in order to destroy the evidence of his fraud. He must have arranged some kind of apparatus to weaken the structure. I wondered, too, whether he’d planned to start a fire – we’ll never know for certain. But I believe he was there for malign intent, and that either something went wrong with his apparatus, or events simply took their course, and the whole rotten site collapsed. It was an act of fate, sir, or Providence, to my way of thinking.’

  ‘He fell into the pit that he had digged for others, as the Good Book says,’ said Mackharness. ‘Well, whatever the cause, Professor Roderick Ainsworth is dead, and beyond our earthly justice. He also remains unaccused in law. All this business of his frauds will cause an enormous public scandal. Do you think that side of the affair could be quietly forgotten?’

  ‘No, sir, I don’t,’ said Box hotly. ‘You and I know well enough that Ainsworth cruelly murdered two innocent men, and tricked out their slaughters to look like ritual sacrifice. That truth, sir, must not be suppressed, and therefore his frauds – the cause of those murders – must not be suppressed either. Let all be known!’

  ‘Well done, Box!’ cried Mackharness. ‘I admit I was tempting you there, in order to see what you’d say, though I knew what your answer would be. You’re right, of course. Yes, let all be known.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Box. ‘There’s a gaggle of reporters outside, with Billy Fiske holding court among them. I’ll go out to them now, sir, and make a brief statement. Then I’ll meet them all in the Clarence Vaults in Victoria Street at two o’clock, and tell them the whole wicked story.’

  ‘Tell them the facts, Box,’ said Superintendent Mackharness, wagging a finger at Box, but smiling at the same time, ‘no tripe, do you hear?’

  ‘No tripe, sir!’ said Inspector Box. He and Sergeant Knollys left their master’s office, and made their way downstairs and out on to the steps, in front of which a crowd of eager reporters, notebooks and pencils at the ready, had assembled on the cobbles facing 2 King James’s Rents.

  By the Same Author

  The Dried-Up Man

  The Dark Kingdom

  The Devereaux Inheritance

  The Haunted Governess

  The Advocate’s Wife

  The Hansa Protocol

  The Ancaster Demons

  Web of Discord

  Evil Holds the Key

  The Gold Masters

  The Unquiet Sleeper

  The Aquila Project

  Copyright

  © Norman Russell 2008

  First published in Great Britain 2008

  This ebook edition 2012

  ISBN9780709096863 (epub)

  ISBN9780709096870 (mobi)

  ISBN9780709096887 (pdf)

  ISBN9780709085683 (print)

  Robert Hale Limited

  Clerkenwell House Clerkenwell Green

  London EC1R 0HT

  www.halebooks.com

  The right of Norman Russell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988