Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries)

by Brett, Simon

  On the train, make for the second carriage from the back, last compartement, as usual. If there are any little Remove Worms in their before I arrive, I know I can rely on you to send them packing with flees in their ears.

  Your chum,

  Pickles

  1917. So it was in that year that the Chadleigh family had moved to Bracketts. The year their elder son Graham was lost at Passchendaele. ‘Given the beastly circumstances’, it must have been hard for Mr and Mrs Chadleigh to appear to be ‘in frightfully good spirits’ that Christmas.

  She flicked through the papers and found confirmation of their moving date in a photocopy of what appeared to be a page from a diary. The original must have been blotched and foxed by damp, which made it difficult to read. The handwriting was much better than Esmond’s, a spidery but regular copperplate, and the contents suggested it must have been written by his father. There was a splodge over the year, but the writer had firmly written in ‘1917’ over it.

  12 November 1917

  The Lord and all the Holy Saints be praised! After all the exhausting uncertainty of the last few months, we did finally today take possession of Bracketts. There is an infinite amount still to be done, but I insisted that Mrs Heggarty make up the beds in Sonia and my rooms, so that we can spend the first night of what I pray will be many happy ones in this blessed spot. When the rest of the servants arrive tomorrow, we will set about making the place habitable. I’m sure that over the next few months when the builders start their works, we will have to spend many nights in the Crown Inn at South Stapley, but at least for today, Bracketts is ours. It is a source of great pleasure to me that there is a cunningly hidden and complex Priest’s Hole here,a sign that for many years this has been a home to good Catholics. I have asked Father Ternan to come over tomorrow to bless the house. Here we will put our griefs behind us, and look forward to however much more life God in His wisdom sees fit to grant us. Thanks be to Him for this day!

  So Graham Chadleigh had never lived at Bracketts. His young life had been cut short in the Flanders mud before his family took possession of the house.

  This seemed to be confirmed by the photocopy of an undated letter written in an uneducated hand.

  Dear Mr Chadleigh,

  I’m writing to you at the request of my commanding officer who had a request from Lieutenant Strider for anyone who witnessed what happened to his men on 26th October 1917 at Passchendaele. I was there on stretcher duty that day and bringing a wounded man back from the front over near Houthulst Forest when I saw Lieutenant Strider. I recognized him because I’d stretchered off a couple of his men during the big push on 12th October. On the 26th he was advancing at the head of maybe twenty men. It was hard to tell what with the rain and fog but they went past us on the duckboards what had been laid over the mud.

  They’d only just gone past us and we wasn’t no more than a hundred yards behind them when a German shell landed and blew us off our feet. It put paid to the poor blighter on our stretcher and my mate got a big lump of shrapnel in his back. I was pretty shook up but thank the Lord not more than a bit brused.

  When I managed to get up and look back towards the German lines, it was like the whole landscape had changed. When the smoke cleared I could see this huge crater, which was already filling up with water and mud. Where the duckboards had been there was nothing. Where Lieutenant Strider’s men had been there was nothing. They must have took a direct hit. I heard later that Lieutenant Strider himself survived, though badly wounded. I reckon that must’ve been because he was far enough ahead of his men leading by example to miss the full force of the blast.

  But the others in that mud I don’t think they’ll ever be found. And if as I hear your son was one of them, I’m very sorry. No one could have survived that.

  I wish I didn’t have to write what I’m writing, but I’ve been told you want to know the truth and that’s what I’m writing. I’m sorry I didn’t know your son and can’t give no personal memories of him, but I hope it will be a comfort to you to know that he died bravely, facing the Boche. And now the War’s going our way and victory’s in site, you can be sure that your son did his bit for King and Country.

  With condolences,

  Yours truly,

  J. T. Hodges (Private)

  The fourth document Carole read seemed to be a draft for an essay, or a piece of journalism. Even if the upwards-slanting handwriting had not given it away, she had still heard enough about Esmond Chadleigh since she had become a Trustee to recognize the tub-thumping, populist style.

  HEROISM

  In these diminished days, what need do we have for heroes? Does the wage-slave travelling in the clockwork regularity of his train from dusty office to leafy suburb still have need for anyone to look up to? Do young working men, their minds full of the newest craze – wondering which greyhound chasing a mechanical hare can make their fortunes – ever dream of aspiring to heroism? Do young women, the brains inside their bobbed heads full only of the cacophony which goes by the name of ‘jazz’, look for more solid qualities in a potential suitor than his pecuniary ability to buy a solitaire engagement ring? Do the deeds of Drake or Marlborough, Nelson or Wellington no longer strike any resonating chord in the tone-deaf ears of today’s Britain?

  I devoutly hope they still do. It is hardly yet ten years since the end of the greatest conflict ever witnessed on this poor benighted planet, hardly ten years since David Lloyd George, positing the question: ‘What is our task?’, came up with the resounding answer: ‘To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.’ And has the great Welsh Wizard’s task been accomplished? Or have we forgotten? Have we let our minds fill up to the brim with the newer wonders of the age – motor-cars and telephones for every man-jack of us, trains impelled along their rails by electricity rather than steam, and cinemas in which the actors can be heard to speak aloud, murmuring endearments which will be thought by each shopgirl to be meant for her ears alone?

  By George, I hope we haven’t! Heroes are no less important to a society than are gods. As the Almighty provides us with a pattern to which we can aspire but never attain, heroes are closer to our capabilities, they are gods with human faces. Nelson was a mere mortal – and a sickly one at that – yet in the boiling seas of Trafalgar he triumphed over the might of Napoleon. Only a man, but what a man! Oh yes, we need heroes.

  I had the good fortune to know a hero, to know him well when I was a boy, and in him I found the qualities of manliness and good judgement on which I have tried to model my subsequent life.

  The hero I know was a man called Lieutenant Hugo Strider. He was a friend of my father, and before 1914 shared with him those pursuits of fur and feather and fish with which the gentlemen of that long-gone age were wont to fill their leisure hours. But come the clarion call to arms, Hugo Strider, without a backward glance, gave up the pampered indolence of his former life, and turned all his mighty energies to the business of soldiering.

  He was a fine officer, fierce in the face of the enemy, firm but compassionate amongst his own. Hugo Strider was loved by his men, who knew that he would never send them on a mission he was not prepared to face himself.

  I had many reasons to know of his kindness, not least because he cut through the niceties of army regulations to ensure that my brother Graham could join his own regiment. I myself, then a bellicose stripling of some thirteen summers, tried to cajole him into making the same arrangements for me, but Lieutenant Strider wisely dissuaded me from such ambition. Not only would I be breaking the law, but a brat like me would also, as he told me with gentle firmness, be a perishing nuisance in the heat of battle!

  My brother Graham did not survive the war. He gave his life to sustain the freedoms that we now enjoy – even if some of the denizens of this fine country use that hard-won precious freedom only to listen to jazz music! I am confident that my brother showed a degree of heroism, but I know for a fact of the heroism that was shown by Lieutenant Strider. He was the only survivor o
f the push at Passchendaele in which my brother died. At the head of his men, while behind him lives ended in the savage suddenness of shellfire, Lieutenant Strider was as good as his name and, oblivious to the fatal bullets and shellfire which filled the air, strode on towards the enemy lines.

  And of that whole company he alone survived, though regrettably I cannot add to that verb ‘survived’ the common accompanying adjective ‘unscathed’. No, the Great War left its marks on Lieutenant Hugo Strider. After the doctors had done their makeshift repair work on his shattered body, at my father’s invitation he came to stay at our family home Bracketts, there to convalesce and to contemplate the mighty actions in which

  The piece stopped, suddenly, leaving two-thirds of the page blank. Whether Esmond Chadleigh had lost interest in what he was writing, decided the article wasn’t up to standard, or had been interrupted, was impossible to know.

  Carole was intrigued, not so much by the piece’s content, but why Graham Chadleigh-Bewes had thought it a suitable inclusion in the package of papers that she was due to hand over.

  There were two more short letters she glanced at, both written in the same hand as the diary entry, that of Felix Chadleigh, the boys’ father. The first was a copy of the letter in the dining room display-case at Bracketts, a rousing directive to stiffen the lip of his son in France, full of references to ‘King and Country’, ‘doing the job that has to be done’, ‘knowing instinctively and never questioning how a true-born English man should behave’. There was also some rather heavy-handed humour. ‘After your exploits on the rugger pitch, where you were always wallowing in the stuff, I shouldn’t think a bit of mud’s going to put you off.’

  Given the fact that the date was ‘24 October 1917’, it was doubtful whether the letter had ever reached its intended recipient. Indeed, Felix Chadleigh may never have posted it, the news of his son’s death having rendered such an action tragically irrelevant.

  The other letter was written by his father to Esmond at school and dated ‘5 June 1919’. The paragraph that caught Carole’s eye concerned the heroic Lieutenant Strider.

  Hugo is still with us, and I think could stay at Bracketts for a long time. He’s still horribly crocked up by the beastly things that happened to him in the war, and the quacks don’t think he’ll ever recover the power of speech. But he never makes a fuss – against his nature to do anything like that – and I must say I’m extremely grateful for his companionship. He’s still not keen on shooting, afraid he heard more than enough guns in Flanders to last him a lifetime, but we’ve had some very good days fishing on the Fether and caught some good size pike. I enjoy Hugo’s company because we share so much – not just our religion, but a kind of bond forged by Graham’s death. So I’m sure Hugo will still be here when you come home for the summer hols and—

  At that moment Carole’s reading was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. She gave her number.

  ‘Good afternoon. This is Professor Marla Teischbaum.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Laurence Hawker was a lot thinner than when Jude had last seen him, but still very good-looking. Though the face had fined down, making his nose more prominent, the lips retained their fleshiness; and his hair, though now grey, was still abundant. He wore his uniform black – leather jacket, shirt, jeans and clumping lace-up shoes. He carried his laptop in a soft leather bag that somehow looked Italian. Laurence was too much the archetypal intellectual to be accepted without irony in England. His style went down much better abroad, which was presumably why he had spent most of his working life out of the country.

  In spite of the coughs that intermittently rattled his body, at the corner of his mouth still hung a permanent cigarette. The smell brought back to Jude the atmosphere of the Austen Prison visiting hall, which she had only just managed to rid from her clothes.

  But it was good to see Laurence, as she had rather suspected it would be.

  It was Wednesday lunchtime and they were in the Crown and Anchor. He had been quite happy to come down to Fethering. By train. Moving from university city to university city, he had never felt the need to learn how to drive. And the time involved in taking a trip out of London didn’t seem to be a problem for him.

  ‘I’m virtually retired now,’ he had said on the phone.

  ‘Virtually? What does that mean?’

  ‘Completely,’ he had replied.

  Jude had her customary large Chilean Chardonnay. Laurence drank whisky. No water, no ice. It was the only alcohol he drank, though he had at times drunk quite a lot of it.

  ‘Funny,’ he drawled. ‘I’d never envisaged you ending up in a seaside town in West Sussex. You of all people.’

  ‘Who said anything about “ending up”. I’m here at the moment. That’s all. I’ve got a long way ahead of me, a lot of time to go to other places.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘And you? Are you “ending up” in England?’

  He nodded. ‘Oh yes. Here for the duration.’

  His cigarette had reached a point where he instinctively knew it needed stubbing out. The hand movements which killed it in the ashtray, found the packet in his pocket, shook out and lit the next one, were entirely automatic. He sucked on the new cigarette as though it were providing him with sustenance.

  It certainly interested him more than the food on the plate in front of him. Laurence had never been much of an eater, though he loved restaurants. So long as he had his whisky and his cigarette, he was quite happy – no he positively enjoyed – to watch his female companion of the moment tucking into the biggest platefuls that the chefs could provide. At that moment he drew pleasure from the sight of Jude working her way through the Crown and Anchor’s Crispy Fish Pie, while he broke the occasional morsel off his ham roll.

  Jude would have put money on the fact that he still didn’t sleep much. Still liked staying up late, talking the circular talk of academics, then snatching a few jumpy hours in bed before rising early to light up the first cigarette of a new day.

  Laurence Hawker had cultivated self-neglect almost into an art form.

  Jude often wondered why she was so drawn to him. Had she ever attempted to describe him, she knew she would project the image of a total poseur. The black clothes, the languid voice, the total unconcern for the practicalities of life, the cigarettes, the whisky, the promiscuity . . . it all made him sound like a refugee from the seventies, the redbrick academic who could spout for hours on the minutiae of the latest vogue in critical theory.

  But what no description could put across was Laurence Hawker’s own in-built irony. There was always a twinkle in his eye, an awareness of his potential absurdity that removed the risk of his ever being thought absurd. He had always been post-modernist, even before the expression was coined.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Are you working?’

  ‘Not a full-time job. But I do some of the healing, counselling stuff, you know . . .’

  He nodded. That was another thing about Laurence. Though he could be excoriatingly funny at the expense of other academics, he never sent up his friends. If there was something they took seriously, he respected that. He had never uttered a word of criticism or scepticism about Jude’s alternative therapies.

  Mischievously, she thought she’d test the limits of his tolerance. ‘And I have got involved in solving the occasional murder.’

  This too he took at face value. ‘You’d be good at that. Good understanding of human nature, suitably lateral mind. Yes, would suit you.’

  ‘Ever appealed to you, Laurence?’

  He chuckled languidly. ‘Well, I certainly know about back-stabbing in academia. Trouble is, there are always too many suspects.’

  ‘There’s something around at the moment on which you might be quite helpful.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, I say there is. Not much to go on yet. A body’s been found, that’s all. A skeleton. No news yet whether it’s even a murder.’

  �
��Let’s assume it is. Always makes for more fun.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘But why might I be helpful?’

  ‘There is a literary connection, Laurence. The body was found in the grounds of a house called Bracketts.’

  ‘Ah.’ He was there instantly. ‘Esmond Chadleigh.’

  ‘You know his work?’

  ‘Hard to avoid knowing “Threnody for the Lost”. Or, if you had parents like mine, Naughty Nursie’s Nursery Rhymes. I even read the impossibly twee Demesnes of Eregonne. Yes, he was an interesting figure. Minor figure, of course. I think he knew that, and I think the fact made him very miserable. Versatility can be a curse for a writer, you know. The curse of being “almost good at everything”.’

  ‘Have you studied Esmond Chadleigh then?’

  ‘No, not studied seriously. Read a lot of stuff around him. I’m quite interested in that between the wars period, when it was still possible to make a living as a “man of letters”.’ There was a wistfulness in his voice, and Jude wondered whether that was what Laurence himself would really like to have been.

  ‘Do you think Chadleigh was more interesting as a man than he was as a writer?’

  ‘Sadly, no. Settled comfortably at Bracketts at a relatively early age, cushioned by a bit of family money. Stayed married to the same woman till he died. No great emotional upheavals in his life, I’m afraid. Not the stuff of biographies.’