The Suicide Exhibition

by Justin Richards

  Although Davenport was in no particular hurry, he did glance skyward every now and again, hoping that the Luftwaffe would hold off at least until he reached his destination. It would be just his luck if he managed to smuggle his cargo across France and into Portugal, ship it across the hostile seas only to see it bombed to bits on a London street almost within sight of its destination. Doubly annoying if he himself got blown up with it.

  Eventually they turned in through imposing iron gates and drew up outside an even more imposing building. The classical façade stood proud and defiant in the evening sunshine, though Davenport knew that much of the interior had been burned out by incendiary bombs back in May.

  “Here you are, guv,” the driver said. “The British Museum.”

  Davenport told him to wait and he’d send someone to help unload the crate. He descended from the cab, and hurried up the wide steps to the main entrance where he found a uniformed official. Davenport briefly explained that he had a delivery to go to Mrs. Archer. He waited while the crate was unloaded and carried round to the back of the museum.

  With four men carrying the crate, hoisted up on their shoulders, it looked rather like a funeral procession, Davenport thought. He went ahead to hold open the door, standing back to let them through.

  “Hey—aren’t you…?” one of the men started to say as they passed.

  “I get that a lot,” Davenport told him. “I gather he’s not so handsome in real life.”

  “Not so handsome on the big screen, if you ask me,” the man grunted as he helped manipulate the large crate through the narrow doorway.

  Davenport sniffed. “That’s a matter of opinion,” he murmured.

  With the crate safely deposited in a storeroom off one of the main galleries of the museum, Davenport made his way down a narrow corridor. Halfway along, he let himself through a doorway marked “Strictly Private.” Along another corridor, and he reached a solid metal door. It was locked, and Davenport spent almost a minute with a piece of wire and a narrow-bladed instrument before he managed to open it. He locked it again behind him, and descended a flight of stone steps.

  The steps emerged into a large area beneath the Great Court—a cavern of unpainted brick and rough stone. An area that few people knew even existed. Illuminated by electric lights strung from the vaulted ceiling high above, the whole area was almost filled with shelves and cupboards, crates and boxes and tea chests. Soon, Davenport knew, another crate would be added to the collection.

  He made his way through narrow paths left between the boxed artifacts and shelves. He always went the same way, a route he had memorized long ago. But even though he passed the same display cases and shelves, crates and boxes, he always saw something that he couldn’t recall ever seeing before. This time it was a large earthenware jar with a lid in the shape of a jackal’s head. Ancient Egyptian, he thought—a canopic jar. He must have seen it dozens of times and just not noticed it before. But then this place and the things gathered together in it never ceased to amaze him.

  Davenport’s destination was at the heart of the maze through the collection. Several of the pathways met in an open area. In the middle of it was a single desk, surrounded by several filing cabinets. A woman sat at the desk, intent on a large book open before her. She was old—her face lined and ancient, her steel gray hair tied up severely. Sensing she had company, she glanced up, peering over her gold-rimmed reading glasses. Her eyes were grayer than her hair, but alert and unblinking.

  “Oh it’s you,” she said, and returned her attention to the volume in front of her. “I do wish you wouldn’t just let yourself in like that. Where have you been, anyway?” Her voice was stronger and younger than one might expect. “Gallivanting?”

  “Always gallivanting, Elizabeth,” Davenport admitted. There was no spare chair, so he perched on the edge of a packing case and watched her until she sighed, took off her glasses and looked up again.

  “Well?”

  “I brought you a present. From France.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What sort of present? I should warn you that my yearning for silk stockings and perfume has long since passed.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. But actually, I don’t know exactly what it is. A prize of opportunity, you might say.”

  She leaned back, amused. “Yes, well, you were always the opportunist, Leo.”

  “The Nazis were excavating a site. Bronze Age, I think. Ancient, anyway. It was … interesting.”

  “Then you must tell me all about it.”

  “Oh, I will,” he promised. “But when they cleared out I managed to get hold of one of the larger artifacts. I’m hoping, if I liberated the right crate, that it’s the coffin and mortal remains of a chieftain. It’s in a storeroom off—”

  She waved a hand, interest evaporating. “I don’t care where it is now. Tell young Edward. He can have it brought down here.”

  Davenport nodded, amused. Young Edward might be younger than Mrs. Archer, but he was probably in his seventies. The two of them had run this place for as long as Davenport had known about it.

  “You haven’t been tempted to move out then?” he asked.

  “Ship some of this stuff out to Wales or dump it down the Aldwych Tube tunnel with the other exhibits and artifacts and I’d be lucky ever to get it back. It’s safe enough down here. We had a bomb in Prints and Drawings last September. It got through four floors to the sub-basement, but still didn’t penetrate this far.”

  “Must have done some damage,” Davenport guessed.

  “Didn’t go off. Four days later another bomb fell through the hole the first one made. What are the chances of that, do you suppose?” Mrs. Archer stood up, pushing the book she had been examining to one side. “Now, let’s find an atlas and you can show me where exactly in France you’ve been.”

  He followed her over to a bookcase. After a glance, she moved on to another.

  “The trouble with this place is that’s it’s almost impossible to find anything that’s less than a few hundred years old.”

  “Does that include the staff?” Davenport said.

  That earned him a glance that was half amused, half resigned. But before she could comment, a telephone began to ring. Elizabeth Archer made her way back to her desk, uncovered the phone lurking beneath a pile of papers and answered it abruptly.

  “Yes.” She listened for a moment, then said: “Yes, he is.” She held the receiver out to Davenport.

  He took the phone. He could guess who it was—there were not many people who knew this number. Even fewer could have known that he might be here.

  After a brief conversation, he hung up.

  “You’re leaving?” Elizabeth guessed.

  “Sorry. But I shall return to tell you all about my adventures and the mysterious crate.”

  “But first?”

  “But first, someone’s in trouble. And as usual, it’s up to me to get them out of it.”

  * * *

  The journey back from Bletchley was a nervous one. Both Guy and Sarah were desperate to talk about what had happened, what—if anything—they had discovered. But before they got the chance, a man let himself into their compartment and settled on the seat beside Guy. He nodded a greeting, then unfolded a copy of The Times.

  They sat in silence for most of the journey, exchanging only the blandest comments to pass the time. Several times Guy thought he saw the man with the paper staring at him or Sarah. He was probably being over-anxious, he thought. And of course, Sarah was well worth staring at.

  He was relieved when the train finally pulled into Euston. The man with the paper waited politely for the two of them to leave before following. When they stepped down from the train to the platform, the man continued to follow closely behind as they made their way toward the main concourse.

  “Is he following us?” Sarah hissed as they pulled ahead of the man.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Guy replied quietly.

  “I thought he was staring at me,
” Sarah said.

  “Me too.”

  Her mouth twitched into a half smile. “That’s all right. I don’t mind you staring.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He realized she was joking as soon as he’d said it. “Sorry.”

  Sarah glanced back. Guy resisted the urge to look back too, but he could see the man reflected in the glass of a window as they crossed the main concourse.

  “Probably heading for the underground, like us,” he said.

  “Or not,” Sarah added as they approached the wide steps leading down.

  Standing at the top, also holding a newspaper, was a man in a long nondescript raincoat. His hat shadowed his face, but Guy could see that his attention wasn’t on the paper so much as the people passing by. Did he imagine it, or was there a flash of recognition as he and Sarah approached?

  Guy took Sarah’s elbow and steered her gently aside, past the steps.

  “Let’s see if there’s a cab.”

  He sensed rather than saw the man at the top of the stairs following them.

  “Two of them now,” Sarah said, confirming his fears.

  Another man in raincoat and hat stood by the exit to the taxi rank.

  Sarah had seen him too. “They probably know who we are anyway. Even if we get away from them now…” she didn’t need to finish the thought.

  They paused at a paper stall. “If we can get to my office,” Guy said, thinking out loud, “then I might persuade Chivers, my boss, that I was following up a legitimate lead. Get him to call this lot off, whoever they are.”

  “And what about me? Am I following up a legitimate lead too?”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  “Who are they anyway?” She looked round. The three men were walking slowly toward them, confidently unhurried. “Police.”

  Another figure had appeared from the exit to the taxis. A figure that Guy recognized at once—the man from the tube station, Alban. He stood watching, hands in his jacket pockets and a thin smile on his ruddy face.

  “MI5. Christ!”

  “Is that better or worse.”

  “Yes. No. Maybe—I don’t know.”

  The acrid smell of smoke announced the arrival of another train more clearly than the station announcer. It was a busy train, and people streamed out from the platform and across the station concourse.

  “Now!” Guy said, grabbing Sarah’s arm.

  They disappeared into the mass of people, losing themselves in the middle of the crowd. Guy caught glimpses of the MI5 men looking into the mass. One of them pushed through, staring round as he tried to see where they had gone.

  The tide of people swept them past the newsstand back toward the exit. There was a narrow gateway past the main exit. As they reached it, Guy pulled Sarah out of the crowd and they hurried through. Her heels clacked so loudly on the flagstones that Guy was sure everyone in the station must be turning to look. He risked a glance back over his shoulder.

  Nothing.

  No one was following. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Taxi?” Sarah suggested as they emerged into the dying rays of the evening sun.

  He shook his head. “They might have someone watching.”

  They set off briskly round the side of Euston and down a narrow alley that led away from the thoroughfare of the Euston Road and toward Cardigan Street.

  “We can cut through St. James’s Gardens, take a back way to Whitehall and find Chivers.”

  “You really think he can help?”

  “I don’t know,” Guy admitted. “You got any better ideas?”

  “I know a chap at the American embassy. Friend of Mother’s.”

  “You said,” he remembered. Was that an option? Maybe he could call Chivers from the embassy.

  He was still considering the alternatives as they reached the gardens. They turned in at a narrow gate, past a low wall drilled with holes where the iron railings had been removed to be melted down for the war effort. Not that they were much use, but it was another way of showing that Something Was Being Done.

  A man coming the other way stepped back to let them through. Guy nodded a thank-you, and the man acknowledged with a smile.

  “Keep walking,” Sarah hissed as they entered the gardens.

  “What?”

  “That man—I’ve seen him somewhere before. He must be one of them.”

  There was something familiar about him, Guy realized. He turned back to look.

  And found the man was walking close behind them.

  “Looks like you’re going my way,” the man said. His voice was cultured—almost plummy. He had a round, handsome face, with bushy eyebrows and dark eyes and looked to be in his early forties, with slicked back dark hair. “No, no, don’t run.” The man glanced down, and Guy followed his gaze. The man’s right hand was in his coat pocket.

  “I really wouldn’t advise it, Major Pentecross,” the man said. He smiled apologetically. “I promise you, I can shoot both you and Miss Diamond in less than a second and vanish into the evening in less than a minute. Or we can all go for a little stroll through the gardens, which I have to say are looking very fine despite everything. Now then, which would you prefer—smelling the roses, or pushing up the daisies?”

  CHAPTER 15

  The sun was dipping below the shattered London skyline. It bathed the ruined streets with an orange warmth that belied the destruction. Barrage balloons shimmered in the evening sky. An elderly lady picked her way through rubble balancing herself with a large bag in each hand.

  Perhaps it was all she had left in this world, Guy thought. He wondered if, under different circumstances, he might have waded through the debris and offered to help. But right now that wasn’t an option. At some point Sarah had taken hold of his hand. Or perhaps he had taken hold of hers.

  The man behind gave them terse instructions about which way to go. Guy had assumed it would be toward Piccadilly. MI5 had offices in St. James’s Street, identified to those who knew—and disguised from those who didn’t—by a large TO LET board outside. But they seemed to be heading instead toward the lower end of Oxford Street.

  “Nearly there,” the man said as they turned onto High Holborn.

  There were more people around here, and Guy wondered if he should make a run for it. Could he and Sarah lose themselves in the crowd? Or would the man fulfill his boast and shoot them both within seconds? But even if they did get away—where could they go? The more he thought about his plan to get Chivers to intercede, the more he knew it wouldn’t work. Chivers was relatively unimportant, even if he could be persuaded to stick up for Guy Pentecross. More likely he’d shake his head sadly and offer his universal mantra: “Rather you than me.”

  Sooner or later both he and Sarah would have to account for themselves. Running for it now could only make things worse.

  Guy was used to buildings not being what they appeared from the outside. There was no TO LET sign, but a polished brass plaque announced that the imposing building the man had led them to was THE ATLANTEAN CLUB. Sarah gave him a quizzical look as she too read the sign, and Guy shrugged. Inside, it was likely to be offices and desks.

  Except that it wasn’t. A tall, thin man immaculately dressed in a dark suit stood inside the door.

  “Are you members?” he asked, peering suspiciously at Sarah.

  “It’s all right, Charles,” the man behind them said.

  Charles was immediately deferential. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there, sir. Will you be dining with us tonight? The chef has, I believe, managed to acquire some mutton for a casserole.”

  “That sounds ideal.” Their captor pushed past Guy and Sarah. “Don’t worry, you won’t need your ration books here. It’s all right, Charles, I’ll sign them in. Then if you could find us somewhere quiet?”

  It felt more like a weekend party at a country house retreat than an interrogation. Guy and Sarah were shown into a large wood-paneled room, and invited to sit in small leather armchairs round a low c
offee table. The man who had brought them here took a third chair, from which he had a good view of both his prisoners. He kept his jacket on, and his hand in his pocket.

  “What is this place?” Sarah demanded. “Why have you brought us here? Who are you anyway?”

  The man nodded. “Fair questions. In strict order of asking, this is my club, and I’ve brought you here for dinner.” He smiled, and settled himself comfortably into his chair. “I’d offer to shake hands,” he said, “only…” He smiled apologetically, his jacket twitching as what Guy knew was a gun barrel jutted against the material. “Harry Heslington-Smythe,” the man went on. His voice was as affected as his name.

  “I suppose you want some answers,” Guy said. Maybe if they cooperated things might not go so badly.

  “I suppose I do.”

  Guy looked at Sarah. She gave a quick nod, then looked away. “We went to some crummy little village in the middle of nowhere,” she said without looking at either of them. “That’s all there is to it. It’s a free country isn’t it?”

  “Well,” Smythe said, “I’m not sure we really have long enough to debate that one. What people will give up to preserve their freedom, eh?”

  “Look—what do you want to know?” Guy demanded. “Can you just stop being so damned affable and get on with it?”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve ruffled your feathers,” Smythe said, his smile undercutting the apology. “But really I’d just like to know why you’re so interested in Colonel Brinkman and his merry men. What would induce a former officer now highly regarded in the Foreign Office and a young lady with a penchant for airplanes and fast cars to infiltrate a highly secret establishment?”

  There was something in his manner, something in his voice which again made Guy think they had met before. It was more than just his appearance—he knew how the man sounded, recognized his voice.

  “Do you work in the FO?” he asked.

  “Alas, no.”

  “But I know you from somewhere.”