Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries)

by Brett, Simon

  ‘What will happen to him?’

  Jude shrugged. ‘You know more about the Prison Service than I do, Carole. But I would imagine that – even if he doesn’t get done for the murder of Sheila Cartwright – he’ll get something added to his sentence . . . and he’ll have to complete it in a higher security nick than Austen.’

  Carole nodded thoughtful agreement.

  ‘Which,’ Jude went on, ‘is quite possibly what he wanted. Why he went over the wall in the first place.’

  There was a silence while they both processed the new information. Then, after a preparatory cough, Laurence Hawker said lazily, ‘Something else of interest I’ve found in this lot . . .’

  Carole was instantly alert. ‘What?’

  ‘This business about the Priest’s Hole. We’ve all seen it, haven’t we?’

  ‘We went together,’ said Jude.

  ‘Of course we did. And I think we’d all agree that, though the room’s a fine bit of building work, and the sliding panel is well concealed to someone who’s unsuspicious, anyone who was actually looking for a Priest’s Hole in Bracketts would find it within five minutes.’

  Jude nodded. ‘So what’s your point, Laurence?’

  He picked up the photocopied sheet in the handwriting of Felix Chadleigh. ‘Given that, there’s an odd thing here in the diary entry of Esmond’s father for the day they moved into Bracketts.’ Laurence Hawker paused to cough before continuing, ‘He speaks of “a cunningly hidden and complex Priest’s Hole”.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ‘Maybe you should have a more detailed look around the Priest’s Hole at Bracketts . . .?’ Laurence Hawker went on.

  ‘See if there’s another secret hiding place Mervyn could have used?’

  ‘Something like that, Jude, yes.’ He tapped the pile of papers on the table. ‘Interesting, this lot. I wouldn’t mind finding out a bit more about Esmond Chadleigh’s murky past.’

  ‘Do you think he had a murky past?’ asked Carole.

  He smiled at her mischievously. ‘I’m sure we all have murky pasts, don’t we?’

  She didn’t grace that with an answer. Carole Seddon certainly did not have a murky past. Wistfully, she sometimes wished she had.

  ‘Where would you find out more information?’ asked Jude. ‘Up at Bracketts?’

  ‘Suppose there might be something up there.’ He coughed, stubbed out a cigarette in Carole’s rarely used ashtray, then immediately lit up another. ‘I’d be tempted to start with more traditional research sources.’

  ‘Is the internet traditional?’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll get on to that. But I was thinking of starting with local libraries, the County Records Office.’

  That reminded Carole. ‘Marla Teischbaum’s been working there.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘When she last rang me, she said she’d found out an interesting new approach to Esmond Chadleigh, from research she’d been doing in the County Records Office.’

  ‘Oh.’ Laurence smiled. ‘Well, I might meet her when I go down there. Find out what she’s on to.’

  ‘Talk to her, do you mean?’ asked Carole, with her upbringing’s knee-jerk reaction to the idea of addressing anyone one hasn’t been introduced to. ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘No, but it’s always easy to start a conversation with an academic.’

  ‘Oh? How?’

  ‘Appeal, Carole, to the vanity which is common to all of us. I look up her details on the internet, then, on seeing her, say, “Excuse me, aren’t you the Professor Teischbaum, who wrote that brilliant paper on Darwinian imagery in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ later poems, which was published in the 1997 Sprachphilologische Ephemeriden der Litteratur Festschrift . . .?” or whatever it happens to be – and I’m her friend for life.’

  ‘Clever.’

  ‘Oh, I guarantee it works.’

  Jude’s brown eyes were sparkling. ‘Do you really reckon, Laurence, that you could find out something useful at the County Records Office?’

  ‘I should think so.’ He indicated the papers on the table. ‘Given this lot as a starting point.’

  ‘But what would you be looking for?’ asked Carole.

  ‘That’s the beauty of academic research – you never know. You always find the best bits when you’re looking for something else. Some people never find what they’re looking for. Very distinguished academic careers have been built on the foundation of never having found anything at all.’

  ‘When are you going then? Tomorrow?’

  ‘Maybe, Carole.’ Laurence Hawker exchanged a look with Jude. ‘If you’re free to take me there . . .’

  ‘I think I could probably manage that.’

  He sighed helplessly. ‘I’ve never been very good with public transport.’

  Honestly, Carole thought, he is so lazy. Never lifts a finger. Seems prepared for Jude to do everything for him. And she just seems to accept it all. Where’s her spine? Where’s her feminist solidarity?

  ‘Are you going to come too?’ asked Jude.

  ‘No, I’d better not. Marla Teischbaum knows me. She’d think we were up to something if she saw me round the County Records Office. No, I’m going to get on to Gina.’

  ‘Find out if we can have a snoop round the Bracketts Priest’s Hole?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Right.’ Jude tapped her chin thoughtfully. ‘So where do we stand on suspects for the murder of Sheila Cartwright?’

  Carole felt a slight resentment that Laurence Hawker seemed now to be included in their deliberations. But it wasn’t as great a resentment as it would have been an hour earlier. He had definitely proved himself to have skills that would be useful to them.

  So, putting her reservations on one side, she enumerated, ‘Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, Mervyn Hunter, Gina Locke, Belinda Chadleigh, possibly Marla Teischbaum, if she stayed around Bracketts that evening . . . and I suppose George Ferris could be in the frame too, because I don’t know how soon he left after the Emergency Trustees’ Meeting.’

  ‘Right.’ Jude nodded. ‘And the police’s prime suspect seemed to have shifted from being Graham Chadleigh-Bewes to Mervyn Hunter.’

  ‘We don’t know that. We’re guessing.’

  ‘Yes. As ever. I think it’s really mean the way the police don’t keep us informed about the progress of their investigations.’

  ‘’Twas ever thus, Jude,’ said Laurence, ironically sympathetic. ‘Keeping the amateurs informed has never been high on the police’s priorities.’

  ‘Presumably, now they’ve got Mervyn Hunter, they’ve stopped questioning Graham Chadleigh-Bewes?’

  ‘Who knows, Carole?’

  ‘I’ll ask Gina when I get in touch with her. She’s got her ear closer to the ground.’

  ‘And you said she’s convinced that Graham had killed Sheila Cartwright?’

  ‘That’s certainly what she wanted me to think. But who knows . . . she may have had a hidden agenda of her own.’

  Jude nodded ruefully. ‘That’s the trouble. All the suspects seem to have hidden agendas.’

  ‘Almost by definition,’ drawled Laurence Hawker.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, come on, no self-respecting murderer’s going to have an overt agenda, is he? Otherwise you’d know whodunnit straight away.’

  The West Sussex County Records Office was in Chichester, at the end of West Street which contained the Cathedral. An old building had been refurbished and considerably extended to house a wide range of local archives.

  Their cab dropped them directly outside. They were later than intended, round eleven-thirty. Laurence had had another minor bout of bleeding just before they’d first intended to leave, which had delayed them about an hour. Jude and he walked into the Reception Area of the Records Office. She carried a shapeless straw basket; he had his soft Italian laptop case under his arm. Jude was worried about how much effort each step seemed to cost him, and about the rasp of his breath when he wasn’t even coughing. Lauren
ce, though, behaved as ever. In spite of coughing up blood, he’d breakfasted on whisky, and been smoking continuously since Jude woke up that morning. In fact, since he was now getting very little sleep, he’d probably smoked through most of the night too.

  ‘They won’t let you smoke in there – that’s for certain,’ said Jude, gesturing through the glass to the Reading Room.

  ‘I know,’ Laurence wheezed. ‘Bloody uncivilized country we live in. I’m just going to check if she’s in there, while I suck down a few more precious lungfuls of smoke . . . assuming, of course, one is allowed to do that even in here.’

  The frosty look from the woman behind the Reception desk suggested that one wasn’t. Jude wandered across towards her, browsing through the various leaflets and local publications on display. Laurence meanwhile was surreptitiously comparing the people he could see through the glass at desks in the Reading Room with the printout in his hand. He’d downloaded a lot of information about Professor Marla Teischbaum, including a photograph which looked more like a glamour shot than an academic’s ID picture.

  Jude was actually making a purchase from the suspicious-looking woman at the Reception desk when she heard Laurence wheezing towards her.

  ‘What are you getting?’

  She showed him. How To Get The Best From The Facilities Of The County Records Office, by George Ferris. ‘Might come in useful.’

  ‘I can’t think where.’

  ‘Here, I would imagine.’

  ‘Are you suggesting, Jude, that I don’t know my way around a Records Office?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. The academic life may not bring much in the way of practical benefits, but it does make one a dab hand round libraries and archives.’

  ‘I’m sure it does,’ said Jude as she took her change and moved away from the desk.

  She heard the rasp of Laurence’s breath close against her ear as he murmured, ‘Got a winner straight away. She’s in there.’

  ‘Marla Teischbaum?’ He nodded. ‘What are you going to do – go straight up and congratulate her on her Festschrift?’

  ‘Not immediately, no. Start a bit of research of my own . . . and maybe peer over her shoulder and see what she’s digging into.’

  ‘OK. You’re the academic, Laurence. And who am I – another academic?’

  ‘By no means. You are my Research Assistant.’

  ‘I seem to recall you using that description quite a lot back in Prague. For those pretty young students who were so essential to your work when you went off to conferences.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He smiled fondly, without a scintilla of guilt in his expression. ‘You’re joining a very distinguished list, you know, Jude.’

  ‘And do I get the same bonuses all the other Research Assistants used to get?’

  ‘If you play your cards right –’ he winked ‘– you might be in with a chance.’

  But his pose of the Great Seducer was destroyed by another bout of coughing. He waited until it had passed, then immediately screwed his cigarette back into his mouth for the final drag. The woman at the Reception desk approved of him even less.

  The cool of the air conditioning hit them as soon as they walked into the Reading Room. Also in the air was the vague mustiness of old documents. One or other – possibly both – brought on a renewed spasm of coughing from Laurence. At the end he panted, ‘Can’t take this for long. Twenty minutes top-weight, then I’ll have to go out for another cigarette.’

  He gestured to the backview of a tall figure in elegant linen suit and neat copper-beech hair, bent forward over documents, and gave Jude a meaningful wink.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she murmured.

  ‘What do you think? Research.’

  Instinct and long experience with libraries pointed out to him exactly the right person to ask and the right material to ask for. He gestured Jude to a chair and drew out of his leather bag the photocopies he’d taken from Carole’s house.

  ‘You’d better have a look at these, get up to date,’ he breathed at her.

  ‘Why?’ asked Jude, with slight irritation.

  ‘Because that’s what Research Assistants do.’ He turned to leave.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Have a smoke while they fetch our stuff.’ And he went out to antagonize the woman at Reception even more.

  Jude read through the photocopied material he’d left her. She found it engrossing. Old documents always moved her. She could sense the characters of the people who had written them, feel the strong but invisible link between her own time and the moment when the pen had first marked the pages.

  The volumes Laurence had ordered were soon delivered to the desk and, seeing their arrival through the glass, he came back in, once again coughing at the assault of the air conditioning. To Jude as he came towards her he now looked impossibly thin.

  ‘One thing this tells us,’ he murmured as he sat beside her, ‘is that Marla Teischbaum’s well ahead of us.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Jude whispered back.

  ‘This stuff is to check the date Esmond’s father actually took possession of Bracketts. She’s already done that.’ He looked speculatively across to the neatly coiffed woman the other side of the Reading Room. ‘I wonder what she’s on to now.’

  The documents Laurence had ordered were bound copies of Land Registry documents, photocopied Parish Registers and census forms. They all confirmed his conjecture. Felix Chadleigh had moved into Bracketts and written his celebratory diary entry on 12 November 1916.

  With practised skill, Laurence Hawker removed his laptop from its leather case, started it up and began to key in information. Jude was intrigued to see he had already opened files named ‘Bracketts’, ‘Chadleigh Family’ and ‘Esmond Chadleigh’. Maybe that’s what he had been doing, as well as smoking, during his long, sleepless night.

  He was certainly absorbed. Jude hadn’t seen him working for a long time, since Prague in fact, and she was reminded what an indissoluble link there was between the man and his studies. Women might come and go in Laurence Hawker’s life; his real passion would always be his work. If Jude had recognized that fact earlier, she might have accepted with more equanimity his diversions with the series of ‘Research Assistants’. No one woman would ever possess Laurence Hawker.

  She once again felt a strong urge to argue with him in favour of treatment. Maybe there was no dominant reason in his personal life to keep fighting, but to be able to continue with his work for longer . . . Even as she had the idea, she rejected it. Laurence Hawker’s life was his, to dispose of as he saw fit.

  He was so caught up in what he was typing that he didn’t see the newcomer in the Reading Room. Though unprepossessing, short and bearded, the man moved with assurance, on his own patch and wanting everyone to be aware of the fact. His arrival had an immediate effect on one of the County Records staff, who greeted him sycophantically and introduced him to a younger colleague. ‘You haven’t met George Ferris, have you?’

  That’s handy, thought Jude. Another suspect.

  The younger colleague was suitably appreciative of the honour bestowed by introduction to the former Assistant County Librarian. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You wrote How To Get The Best From The Facilities Of The County Records Office.’

  They were the right words. The Hobbit-face beamed. Jude found herself idly wondering whether, beneath the thick grey socks and stout brown walking shoes, there was hair on the top of George Ferris’s feet.

  After a little more condescending badinage, the great man brought the librarian-talk to an end. ‘Someone I’ve got to see,’ he said, with a man-of-the-world wink.

  Jude tapped Laurence’s arm and they both watched George Ferris move across towards Professor Marla Teischbaum. There was something of a turkey-strut in his walk; he got a charge from knowing an attractive – even exotic – younger woman.

  ‘I was wondering, Marla,’ Jude and Laurence heard him say, ‘whether I coul
d lure you out for a spot of lunch . . .?’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  George Ferris’s luring proved effective. Leaving the documents she was working on open on her desk, Marla Teischbaum scooped up the elegant leather bag by her side, and the two of them left the Reading Room. As they walked out, the Tolkien imagery seemed reinforced; he was a rustic bumpkin from the Shire, she some elegant, exotic creature from an elfin master-race.

  Jude looked across at Laurence, mouthing, ‘What do we do?’

  ‘You follow them,’ he whispered back.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll try and get a peek at what she’s been researching.’

  Jude nodded and, gathering up her straw basket, moved towards the Reception area. Through the glass she could see George Ferris lingering there, waiting. Marla must have gone off to tidy herself up in the Ladies. Jude showed great interest in a framed map of eighteenth-century Sussex boundaries.

  Her conjecture proved correct. Professor Marla Teischbaum emerged a moment later, patting her recently brushed chestnut hair with satisfaction. Jude remembered Carole saying something about the woman being in love with herself, and particularly with her hair.

  She gave the ill-matched pair a moment to get out of the Records Office, and then slowly, almost lackadaisically, followed.

  It wasn’t a difficult tailing job. In the bright October sunshine, which pierced the threatening clouds of autumn, George Ferris and Marla Teischbaum walked along West Street towards the Cathedral. But they didn’t go far, soon crossing the road and entering the first available pub, rather imaginatively named ‘The Cathedral’. Jude wondered whether Marla had insisted on lunching close by so that she could return quickly to her studies; or, more likely, that the pub had been George’s regular in the days when he had worked for West Sussex Libraries.

  There were enough people in the Cathedral at half past twelve for Jude’s entrance to be inconspicuous. From the bar she located her quarries at a table in the window. Marla had a glass of sparkling mineral water, George Ferris a pint ‘in a jug’ from which he drank with much elaborate beard-wiping. He’d used the word ‘lunch’, so Jude reckoned she was safe to order herself. An unashamed lover of fry-ups, she went for the All-Day Breakfast, and took her glass of white wine over to a table near theirs. Neither had met her before, so, with her back to them, Jude felt suitably invisible.