1 The Museum Mystery

by John Waddington-Feather

  “Come for owt special?” asked the stranger.

  “No,” said Inspector Hartley. “Just thought I’d look around. I’ve always wanted to know what’s in here. Old houses interest me.”

  “Well now yer know,” said the man.

  “You work here?” said Blake.

  “Aye,” said the other. “I’m t’ keeper, so to speak. So was me dad and grandad before me.”

  “And your name ?”asked Hartley.

  “Blackwell. Silas Blackwell. I daresay you’ll ’ave heard of me. I work for Mr Whitcliff who owns this place. I live in t’cottage yonder.”

  He came into the daylight and pointed through the open door to one of the broken-down farmhouses. Inspector Hartley could see him more clearly now. He’d weasel eyes which missed nothing. “Mind if I look around?” asked Hartley.

  The other shrugged his shoulders. “Please yerself. Ther’s nowt much to see. An’ watch where yer go. The place is falling from together. I’d best go wi’ yer.”

  The inspector walked over to the main part of the hall with Blackwell whose terrier was at his heels the whole time. The hall had been lavishly built. There were ornate fireplaces in every room and delicately plastered ceilings; all in the style of the Pharaohs.

  They wandered through room after room. Many of the doors were locked, but Blackwell had the keys to them all and let them in. Restoration work was going on in some of the rooms and Blackwell said it wasn’t safe to enter.

  When Blake Hartley had been shown as much of the building as the other permitted, Blackwell said they ought to go back. There was no lighting and it was getting dark. They were at the end of a long corridor on the top floor at the end of which were two massive doors. Blackwell seemed keen to get the inspector away, but he asked what lay beyond.

  “It’s getting dark,” the other repeated. “It’s noan safe for us to go on.”

  But the way he said it made Hartley all the more determined to see what was behind the doors. He insisted on entering.

  “All right,” said Blackwell sullenly. “If yer must.”

  He pulled out his bunch of keys as they tramped the length of the corridor. The lock opened easily enough. The room was evidently well maintained and well used, which was strange when so much of the building was in ruin.

  Why, he didn’t know, but Hartley shivered involuntarily. In the failing light he could make out murals all round the walls, figures of Egyptian gods and goddesses, with animal and bird heads. One with a crocodile head. They were huge and over-powering. They were also in excellent condition and in the half-light they seemed alive.

  In the middle of the room was a section of floor lighter than the rest. Something had stood there for a long time but had recently been removed. Hartley walked over and glanced up. They were directly under the vast dome. Two panels in it let in what was left of the livid sunset outside. By night, the place might have been an observatory, so clearly could he see the sky.

  But there was more to the place. His priestly instinct told him he was in the presence of something evil, the atmosphere was so claustrophobic. The figures on the wall seemed to move as the light faded. Seemed to become alive, as if they were moving round and round him in some weird ritualistic procession to hem him in. And as he stood there, in the centre of the room, their eyes stared unblinking from all sides.

  There were bits of black candlewax on the floor all round the edges of the oblong space where he stood. And there were darker stains. Brown and deep red.

  “Looks like someone’s been bleeding badly here,” said the inspector, kneeling down.

  “Probably one o’ t’ workmen. They’ve been doing this room up,” grunted Blackwell.

  He pulled in his dog viciously. It was sniffing at the stains. As he yanked it back, it brushed against the inspector’s legs, leaving a wadge of hair. He looked again at the lighter patch of flooring. Whatever had been there had been moved recently, and it was no workman’s bench as Blackwell suggested. That wouldn’t have been there long enough to hide the floor from the sunlight. And the candlewax? Blackwell had no idea what it was. Put it down to the workmen again.

  When Hartley commented on the figures on the walls, Blackwell said they’d always been there. As long as he could remember. Old Sir Joshua had had them painted “He were mad on owt Egyptian. So were his son and Mr Jason. It runs in the blood so to speak,” he said.

  “I should think it does,” said Blake, and looked at the stains on the floor.

  “I think we ought to be off,” said Blackwell, jangling his keys. “I hope yer’ve seen all yer wanted,” he said as they groped their way downstairs. By now the light had almost gone and the place was dark.

  But when they got outside, Blackwell switched on some floodlights, explaining they came from the Mausoleum and when the hall was restored and newly wired, full electricity would be installed.

  “Then Mr Whitcliff intends living here?” said Hartley.

  “It’s allus been his plan to come back,” replied Blackwell.

  “Restore it to its former glory, eh?”

  “Yer could say that,” grunted the other. “Aye. Yer could say that.”

  They left by a door opposite the Mausoleum, which was floodlit and guarded by a high electric fence. Inside it he could see a prowler and his guard-dog, a white Alsatian. The security guard shouted a greeting to Blackwell, who escorted Hartley all the way to his car. The white Jag which had been parked when he came had gone.

  He asked whose it was.

  “T’boss o’ t’ builders. He comes reg’lar to check what they’ve done,” said Blackwell.

  Inspector Hartley didn’t believe him but gave him full marks for his slick reply. For all his dourness, the man was glib. Too glib. Too ready with slick answers. Hartley thanked him and drove off. He was glad to get away. The floodlighting threw into relief the black shadows of the building and its place of the dead. In his mirror, the inspector saw the keeper watch him leave, standing stockstill with his dog by his side till he was out of sight.

  He reached the main road and drove till he was well clear. Then he pulled into a lay-by and carefully pulled the dog hairs off his trousers and put them in his wallet. They were white. Like the dog hairs found on Manasas’ clothes. If Dr Dunwell matched them up, Blackwell would have some explaining to do, and that would take the smug smile off his face.

  Chapter Nine

  Before he went to see Dr Dunwell, Inspector Hartley called in at his office. Sgt Khan told him the Met knew of a Kathy Burton from Keighworth. Had done for the past couple of years ever since they’d booked her for soliciting. “She worked a pitch just outside Kings Cross Station, sir, where she rents a pad.,” he said.

  Hartley grunted and read the fax. “Usual stuff,” he said. “Straight off the train, picked up by a pimp and on the game. So that’s how she paid her rent in Keighworth. A lady with no pence but much poise and presence.”

  He mooched around the office a while, reading the rest of his mail. Sgt Khan was curious.

  “Find out much about Pithom Hall, sir?” he asked.

  Hartley looked up. “Aye. There’s summat odd going on there. The place gives me the creeps.”

  Sgt Khan was even more curious. “What happened?” he asked.

  “The place is connected with the Manasas murder, I’m sure, “ he said. “Whitcliff and his crew are in it up to their necks. That lot at the Middle East Academy, too. Then there’s that goddess, Hathor, and the whole damned tribe of Egyptian gods running round a wall up there. Amun, Sobek, Osiris – the lot.”

  His sergeant was impressed. Hartley had done his homework.

  “You’re becoming quite an expert on pagan gods, sir,” he said, smiling. “Does your bishop know?”

  “It’s no joke, Khan, believe me. Evil was tangible in that room. You’ll see what I mean if you ever visit it. And that chap Blackwell. He’s the spitten of Ammit’s painting on the wall.”

  “Ammit?” asked Khan.

  “The Egyptian go
ddess who eats the souls of the dead. Those who were weighed in the scales and found wanting. I’ve got a picture somewhere here. Got a head like a crocodile.”

  The inspector pulled out a battered reference book from his desk. The drawer where he kept the sermons he worked on in his lunch hour. The drawer Donaldson was always on at him to tidy. He showed his sergeant a picture.

  “Not the sort of book to read before going to bed,” said Hartley. “Those paintings on that wall were straight out of a horror film ! ”

  He put the book back and said he was going to the path lab. He asked if his sergeant would like to go with him. Khan declined saying he’d a lot of work to get through..

  The inspector caught Dr Dunwell as he was leaving for lunch, so they drove together to the Black Bull, a few miles out of town. Like many bachelors he fed his belly well. He was a connoisseur of good wine and whisky, so he dined frequently with Hartley. Their speciality was traditional Yorkshire food, “None of your fancy foreign stuff when I can get good Yorkshire home-cooking,” Dunwell used to say. “I settled up here in Keighworth because of the food!”

  They ordered a ploughman’s lunch and homemade pickle and, as they ate, Hartley just had to tell him about that strange presence of evil he’d experienced. Gus Dunwell would at least take him seriously though, being the agnostic he was, he’d try to explain away the mystery.

  Dr Dunwell munched away in silence as he listened, and when Inspector Hartley had done, he wiped his mouth slowly on his napkin. He’d enjoyed his meal and sat back to deliver judgement.

  “Blake, it’s all in the mind,” he said, wiping his glasses. Then, when he’d replaced them, he said more quietly, “Yet I have to confess, if I’m honest with myself, there are boundaries of the mind I can’t cross that you can as a priest.” He took a sip of his wine. “‘Parameters of the mental faculties’ our esteemed Superintendent would call them were he here.”

  “And I wonder what our Arthur would have made of it all if he’d been there?” mused the inspector.

  “He’d have passed it off as imagination, a commodity he’s singularly lacking in. The psychology of narcotics and its ilk is about as far as he stretches to. What he can’t explain, he doesn’t believe exists. God must be a great mystery to him.”

  “Steady on,” said Blake. “He’s churchwarden and a Reader at St Swithun’s over at Ilkesworth”

  “That explains why he locks God up securely in church when he leaves. You never hear him mention the Almighty out of it,” said Dunwell. “At least I admit I’m still looking for Him. But not in St Swithun’s.”

  The inspector laughed, but he was glad the pathologist hadn’t dismissed his story out of hand. That presence of evil had been too real, too tangible. And Dunwell recognised it, too.

  They finished their meal and returned to the lab to check out the dog hairs Hartley had collected. “Went for me like a hound from hell,” said Hartley, as they walked to the path lab. “And all Blackwell did was laugh.” When they arrived at Gus’s office, the pathologist put the hairs under a microscope, projecting them onto a screen contrasting them with the dog-hairs he’d taken from the dead man. Then he leaned back.

  “Well, Blake, I’m sorry to say your little terrier doesn’t tally with the hell-hound Manasas met. Good try, but definitely not the same doggie.”

  “What sort of dog brushed against Manasas then?” asked the inspector.

  “A much bigger breed,” said Dunwell. “The bruising on Manasas’ leg was made by a much larger dog than a Jack Russell. A terrier doesn’t have jaws big enough to bite a full-grown man’s leg. It can only nip.”

  Inspector Hartley looked disappointed. “I’d have put a fiver on those hairs matching,” he mumbled and rubbed his chin philosophically. “Manasas, Whitcliff and Blackwell all link up somehow. If those hairs had tallied we could have pulled in Blackwell.”

  “But as it stands, my friend, he’s got the laugh on you,” said Gus, putting his slides away and adding, “I’ll hang on to these terrier hairs. They might come in useful.”

  The pathologist put the coffee on and for some time they sat discussing the case. Gus Dunwell, like Blake Hartley, had been doing some research on ancient Egypt. In particular, he’d been looking up how they preserved their dead.

  “Did you know that ‘mummy’ comes from the Arabic word ‘bitumen’?” he said. “Their embalmers used eucalyptus for the Pharaohs and sodium carbonate for the hoi polloi. Cheaper than eucalyptus which they had to flog all the way from Australia.”

  “Australia?” exclaimed Hartley.

  “Yes. And they didn’t fly Qantas either. Makes you wonder how they did it five thousand years ago. The Ancients were into black magic in a big way, “ said Dunwell. “Spent days over their funeral rites chuntering away to their gods. Sacrificed to them in a big way, too. All their household slaves went into the pot, as well. Just to make sure they had company in the next world. And half the time they were so drugged out they didn’t know whether they were in this world or the next.”

  The inspector told him about the candle wax at Pithom Hall and the wax in the girls’ rooms.

  “You’re not trying to tell me they’ve been up to all this business at Pithom Hall too, are you?” said Dunwell.

  The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Nowt that goes on there would surprise me after what I saw,” he replied. “But right now I want to know where that missing girl is.”

  Their conversation switched to Superintendent Donaldson, and Dunwell asked when he was due back.

  “Not for another week,” said Hartley. “He was hoping to be promoted to the London Drugs Squad before he left. Anything to get out of Keighworth. Believe me he’s getting desperate. Said this course would give him more clout when he applied for Chief Superintendent grade down south.”

  “Good luck to him then,” said the pathologist. “And I bet you’ve been on your knees all week praying for it,” he added.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t,” said Blake.

  “Anything to get our Arthur off our backs,” rejoined Dunwell. “Even praying!”

  But their prayers remained unanswered. Donaldson came back the next week as full of himself as ever - but with no promotion and no prospect of moving on.

  Chapter Ten

  Superintendent Donaldson was full of it when he returned. He called a meeting of his staff and told them at length all about the psychology of narcotics and the drugs unit he would be setting up at Keighworth. His eyes trawled the room. Hartley looked at the ceiling. Khan at his shoes. The rest looked steadfastly through the windows. In the end Det. Sgt. Kemsworth, a grade-one boot-licker, volunteered to set up the new unit. He’d pinned himself to Donaldson’s coat-tails when he’d arrived at the station and when the Super got his promotion, he was hoping to rise with him.

  When he’d dismissed the meeting and returned to his office, Donaldson summoned Hartley and his sergeant. He’d got the Manasas file on his desk.

  “I never seem to get much response from you, Hartley, whenever I suggest anything new. I was rather hoping you’d volunteer for the new drugs unit. You, too, sergeant. You’re always going on about cleaning up the drugs scene in Keighworth,” he began.

  “With respect, sir, I can’t see going into the psychology of drugs or any other sort of psychology will make me better at my job,” said the inspector.

  The Super saw he was up against a brick wall and turned to the file on his desk. “You don’t appear to have got much further solving this either,” he said, nodding at the file. “We can’t go on indefinitely, y’know, Hartley. Resources are tight.”

  Hartley coughed. There’d been enough money spent on the psychology of drugs course, which he’d have kicked all the way back to London. But he said nowt.

  He didn’t mention the Cairo connection and Colonel Waheeb’s fax, which he’d placed in his drawer inside one of his theology books. He’d tell him about that later. Let it come as a surprise, before he could do anything about it. But he did tell
him about his visit to Pithom Hall.

  Arthur Donaldson’s reaction was predictable. “Go carefully, Hartley,” he said quickly, and his voice had a sharp edge. “We don’t want to tread on Mr Whitcliff’s toes.”

  The inspector was surprised. “Is there something I should know, sir?” he asked.

  Donaldson coughed uneasily and wandered to the window. He fiddled with his tie. When he spoke, it was to the pigeons in the town-hall square rather than Hartley.

  “Sir Joshua Whitcliff founded the first masonic lodge in Keighworth,” he said. “The Whitcliffs have played a leading part in freemasonry in Keighworth ever since. You may not realise it, but they have a lot of clout hereabouts. Mr Jason Whitcliff stands high in the Ridings Grand Lodge in Bradford. I think you ought to know that, Hartley. He has friends who could come down hard on us if we put a foot wrong. You understand?”

  Donaldson turned to see the effect of his words.

  “Aye. I understand, sir,” said the inspector, doggedly.

  The Super coughed again. He never knew how to take him, could never read his thoughts, yet sensed Hartley read his before they’d surfaced. “I know you haven’t much time for us masons, Hartley,” he said, with some pique, “but when it comes to solving crime, we’re all on the same side. Mr Whitcliff’s a strange man. I admit that. Lived abroad too long. But he has contacts high up - very high up. And you never know when we may need help.”

  “No, sir,” said Hartley. “None of us knows that.” “Nor when he might drop us in it,” he felt like adding. But all he said was, “Will that be all, sir?”

  The superintendent looked at his watch and said it was time he was off. As he reached the door, Hartley paused, almost making his sergeant collide with him.

  “Oh, just one thing, sir, while we’re on the subject of the Whitcliffs,” he said. “ I think you ought know that I met a character called Simon Blackwell at Pithom Hall. He’s Mr Whitcliff’s man there. Been there for years, he says.”