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Nine Lessons

Page 21

by Nicola Upson


  ‘But she’ll have to give up her job if she marries,’ Josephine said, horrified to think that someone as dedicated and ambitious with someone whom—only a few days before—she had readily admitted she didn’t love. ‘Surely she shouldn’t be making a decision as important as that while she’s still in shock from what happened. She’s throwing away everything she ever wanted to achieve.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a shame, but I know what I’d rather have.’ The nurse smiled, and perhaps it was Josephine’s imagination but she thought she saw a glimmer of pity in her face, as if she were talking to someone who was making the best of a life without the things that any sane woman must want, the man and the children and the home which were denied to so many of her generation. ‘It was kind of you to think of coming here, but I’m sure Mary will hear the news soon enough. I’ll tell the rest of the girls, though—I dare say there’ll be some celebrating tonight.’

  Josephine thanked her and walked back home, wondering how many of the rapist’s other victims were making rash decisions which there was every chance they would come to regret. As she reached St John’s Street, the sounds of the Armistice Day fair on Jesus Green were evident in each lull of passing traffic, and she caught the familiar tunes of Scottish pipers on the march, strangely out of place so far from their home and from hers. The newspaper board outside the tobacconist’s was already advertising the shocking turn of events to come in the evening edition, but she had no appetite for reading anything more about the morning’s developments; she had seen them with her own eyes, and, in any case, the fact of the guilty man’s capture offered inadequate compensation now for the lives he had ruined along the way.

  18

  It was the first time in nineteen years of remembrance that Penrose’s mind had been anywhere else but on the Western Front while he stood by the Cenotaph for the Armistice Day service, but as dignitaries and veterans gathered around Lutyens’s simple magnet for a nation’s grief, his thoughts were firmly with the more recent dead. Over on the north side of Whitehall, where the Prime Minister stood with his Cabinet colleagues beneath the windows of the Home Office, he could just make out the tall, silver-haired figure of Richard Swayne among a group of civil servants. He had made an appointment to see Swayne immediately after the ceremony and this time he was determined to make him talk, even if it meant arresting him on a tenuous charge and facing the consequences later. As far as he could tell, there were only four people still living who knew what had happened in Cambridge all those years ago; one of them—the killer—wasn’t giving himself away, and Rufus Carrington was nowhere to be found; somehow, Penrose needed to make Richard Swayne or Robert Moorcroft tell him what Alastair Frost refused to—and the best way to do that was to play them off against each other until one began to crack. From the little he knew of each man, his money was on Moorcroft to weaken first.

  As always, the atmosphere was uniquely charged, an awkward combination of public display and private reflection. King George, wearing the khaki service uniform of a Field Marshal, stared solemnly up at the Cenotaph, calm and dignified on his first Armistice Day as sovereign. His brothers—the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent—stood to either side, wreaths in hand, and the Queen looked on from the balcony, a bunch of Flanders poppies pinned to her black dress. Just as Big Ben drew breath to usher in a brief stilling of city life, Penrose was distracted by a movement in the crowd in front of the Home Office. A fair-haired man in a mackintosh stumbled as if he were going to faint, then pushed forward suddenly through the crowds and, before anyone could stop him, broke the ranks of naval ratings and headed in a direct line for the King. Uniformed policemen and security officers moved forward as one, Penrose included, but not before the man’s angry cries cut harshly through the silence, alarming and offending those close enough to hear: ‘All this is hypocrisy,’ he shouted as he was wrestled to the ground just a few yards from the Prime Minister. ‘You are deliberately preparing for war.’

  As he joined the skirmish, Penrose saw the fear in Chamberlain’s face. He put his hand over the protester’s mouth, trying to muffle the cries and protect the silence, and some semblance of order was restored to the crowd. The mounted police arrived, forming a protective circle around the small group of men on the floor, and Penrose waited impatiently for the seconds to tick by. When at last the guns boomed forth from Hyde Park, he and his colleagues got the man to his feet and took him between the troops into Downing Street, where an ambulance station had been set up in case of emergency. Fear was turning to anger in the crowd, but, as he glanced back over his shoulder, Penrose noticed that the King and his brothers had stood motionless throughout the uproar, and he admired their courage; when the time came for the national anthem, it was no surprise that it was sung more fervently than ever.

  Away from the public eye, Penrose checked the protester for weapons and eventually managed to establish that he was an ex-serviceman called Stanley Storey, whose performance at the Cenotaph reprised an earlier disturbance in the House of Commons. He left the dissenting pacifist in the Colonial Office to wait for Special Branch, then walked quickly back to Whitehall, where the parade had just finished and the crowd was beginning to disperse. If Storey’s intention had been nothing more violent than to divert the public’s attention from the matter at hand, then he had certainly succeeded: there was talk of little else among the families in the street, although Penrose couldn’t help feeling that the shattering of the ceremony would have struck a rather different chord elsewhere in the country, where feelings about events in Europe ran high and the silence seemed less a mark of respect than a scream of collective impotence; many felt—like the man he had just arrested—that there was very little point in paying homage to the fallen when every day the country drifted closer to another war.

  By the time he reached the Home Office, he was twenty minutes late for his appointment and Swayne’s secretary shook her head as soon as she saw him. ‘I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but Mr Swayne has just left. He’s got a briefing with the Home Secretary this afternoon and he really couldn’t wait any longer.’

  ‘What time will the briefing finish?’ Penrose asked, cursing Stanley Storey and his bid for notoriety. ‘It’s essential that I speak with him. If I came back later this afternoon, perhaps he could see me then? I’m very happy to wait until it’s convenient.’

  ‘It would be a long wait, I’m afraid. He’s going straight from the briefing to Sussex for a few days’ leave. He won’t be back here now until the end of next week. He suggested you make another appointment for the week after, when he’s had a chance to catch up.’

  Her tone managed to imply without actually saying so that busy civil servants couldn’t be expected to organise their lives around tardy policemen, and Penrose tried another tack. ‘Do you have an address for him in Sussex?’ he asked, and then, when she was about to deflect him again: ‘I can’t overstress how important this is. I have very good reason to believe that Mr Swayne is in great personal danger, and that there may well be an attempt made on his life in the next few days. Please, for his sake—if you know where he’s going, let me have the address or persuade him to give me ten minutes before he leaves.’

  She hesitated, clearly unsettled by the force of his request. ‘I don’t have the authority to do either of those things,’ she said cautiously, ‘but I’ll speak to someone who does and let you know. That’s the best I can do, I’m afraid.’

  Penrose thanked her and headed back to Scotland Yard without any great hope of a result. ‘You’re popular this morning,’ the desk sergeant said as he walked through the door. ‘There’s a woman called Moorcroft been phoning non-stop. Don’t they have an Armistice in Cambridgeshire?’

  ‘Did she say what it was about?’ Penrose asked, too interested to pander to the sergeant’s ruffled feathers.

  ‘No, and she wouldn’t speak to anyone else either. Just insisted that you telephone as soon as you’re back.’

  Penrose did as Virginia Moorcroft had asked, but the mix
ture of relief and distress in her voice when she realised who it was made it hard to understand what she was saying. ‘Mrs Moorcroft, please try to stay calm and tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘You said to call and I didn’t know what else to do. My little boy found him early this morning. He was playing in the grounds with a friend from King’s College School. They shouldn’t have been there—I’ve told Teddy time and again that it’s too dangerous. Why didn’t he listen to me? Finding him like that with no warning. They’re just kids, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Finding who, Mrs Moorcroft?’ Penrose asked, although he was already anticipating the answer. Alastair Frost had obviously been wrong in his prediction: Richard Swayne was still alive and well, but it seemed that Robert Moorcroft’s body . . .

  ‘I don’t know who he is,’ Virginia Moorcroft said, wrong-footing him completely. ‘It’s impossible to tell. He’s obviously been dead for a while.’ A few weeks, Penrose thought, guessing now that the body was Rufus Carrington. ‘I have no idea how he got there,’ she added. ‘Please come, Chief Inspector. I don’t know what’s going on, but my children . . . You will come, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course, I’ll leave now—but first I need to know exactly what happened this morning. Where did your son find the body?’

  ‘There’s a derelict mill on the outskirts of the estate, with a house and some old outbuildings,’ she explained, her voice much calmer now. ‘They used it for grinding cement before the war, but the company went bust and it’s been falling into disrepair ever since. All the old machinery’s still there—which is why it’s too dangerous for Teddy to play in, and why it’s too enticing for him to take any notice of me when I tell him that. Anyway, there’s a cellar in the ruins of the house, and that’s where the body is.’

  ‘Have you seen it yourself?’

  ‘Yes. Teddy was in a terrible state and he was obviously telling the truth, but when I’d calmed him down I went to make sure that he hadn’t made a mistake.’

  ‘Are the remains skeletal?’ Penrose asked, anxious not to read too much into a corpse which had lain undiscovered for years.

  ‘No, more recent than that. I didn’t look too closely—it was worse than anything I could have imagined. In fact, it took me a moment to work out what I was seeing. He’s just sitting there, at a table . . .’ She tailed off, but Penrose had heard enough to know that the crime scene echoed very clearly another of M. R. James’s most famous stories, ‘The Tractate Middoth’, in which one of the characters—a vindictive, elderly clergyman—chose to be buried in an underground room, sitting at a table. ‘This has something to do with my husband, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Where is your husband?’

  ‘He’s in his study, drinking himself to death.’

  ‘And does he know what’s happened?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I told him myself, but it was as if he hadn’t heard—or wouldn’t listen. He just screamed at me to leave him alone and locked the door after I’d gone. He’s frightened, Chief Inspector—frightened, and out of control.’

  ‘Have you contacted the Cambridge police yet?’

  ‘No. I had your card, and you were the first person I thought of.’

  ‘Then I’ll telephone them now and ask them to send some men out to the Priory to secure the scene until I get there. I’ll be as quick as I can. Will you be all right in the meantime?’

  She seemed to understand that his concerns for her stemmed more from her husband’s potential for violence than from whoever was responsible for the body in the derelict cellar. ‘Yes, I’ll be fine. I can handle Robert when he’s drunk. It’s when he’s sober that he frightens me. And anyway, I’ll be with Teddy. He’d never lay a finger on his children.’

  Penrose rang off, then telephoned Cambridge police station and asked for Superintendent Clough. ‘I know this is the last thing you need when you’re already overstretched,’ he began, but was quickly interrupted.

  ‘Looks like we’ve got him, Penrose. Webster arrested a man this morning. The bastard assaulted a shop assistant during the two-minute silence, would you believe? He’s not talking yet, but it’s early days. So what can I do for you?’

  ‘I need you to send a couple of men over to Angerhale Priory right away,’ Penrose said, and explained why.

  Clough listened without any interruptions, then said a little peevishly: ‘Can’t imagine why she didn’t call us first. I suppose this is connected to your earlier interest in Moorcroft?’

  ‘Without a doubt,’ Penrose said firmly.

  ‘Do you think Moorcroft did it? And the chap in Hampstead?’

  ‘I’m not making any assumptions until I’ve had a look at the body for myself—and it’s vital that I see the scene as it is, without any—’

  ‘Don’t get yourself worked up about it, Penrose. No one’s going in until you get there—I’ll make sure they understand that.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll be with them in a couple of hours, and I’d be grateful if they could also make sure that Robert Moorcroft doesn’t leave the house. From what his wife tells me, he’s in no fit state to go anywhere, but if he tries anything they have my full authority to arrest him.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll make sure they know what’s expected.’

  Penrose thanked him and left instructions for Sergeant Fallowfield to follow on with Bernard Spilsbury as soon as the pathologist could make himself available, then headed for the fens by the now familiar route. This time, Virginia Moorcroft opened the door to him herself. She was even paler than usual, her skin bone-white in the shadows of the hallway, her lips a slash of crimson. ‘Thank you for coming, Mr Penrose,’ she said, as if he were fulfilling a social obligation, although the way she took his hand was less formal. ‘This is beginning to feel like a very bad dream.’

  She led him through to a drawing room at the back of the house, more intimate than the room he had questioned her husband in, with oak panelling in the Jacobean style and an elaborate plasterwork ceiling. At the far end of the room, in front of a roaring fire which seemed to have been built as high as possible to banish the horrors that lurked outside, two small boys were playing quietly with a train set. ‘How is Teddy?’ Penrose asked, easily identifying Virginia Moorcroft’s son by the rich, chestnut brown hair that he had inherited from his mother.

  ‘It’s hard to say. He was very upset when he got back to the house—they both were—but he’s calmed down now. I guess I’ll find out how he really is when he tries to go to sleep. I haven’t worked out yet what I’m going to say to the other parents. Finding a dead body isn’t the sort of activity we usually plan for a visit to Angerhale.’ She gave him a faint smile. ‘Anyway, I brought you in here because I thought you might need to speak to the boys?’

  ‘No, not at the moment. It looks as if their minds are on other things, at least for now, and I don’t want to remind them unnecessarily. I’ll look at the scene first, and save any questions for later.’

  ‘Then I’ll show you to the old mill.’ She seemed grateful for his sensitivity, and they left the boys in peace. ‘You know who that poor wretch in the cellar is, don’t you?’ she said as they walked through the staff quarters to the other side of the house.

  ‘Obviously he’ll need to be formally identified, but I think his name is Rufus Carrington. He was a professor of medieval history at Oxford who was supposed to be here on a research sabbatical. He was also at King’s with your husband. They were in the choir together.’

  ‘Like the other men who’ve been killed? The ones you asked me about when you were last here?’

  Penrose nodded. ‘Where is Mr Moorcroft now?’

  ‘Upstairs, sleeping it off. He passed out in his study so I got a couple of the staff to put him to bed.’ She stopped by a window which looked out across a kitchen garden, and he knew what she was going to ask. ‘Is Robert the next to die? Is that why he’s so frightened?’

  Penrose hesitated, but there was little point in keeping anything from her now. ‘There are only
two men still alive from that particular group of choral scholars,’ he said. ‘Your husband and a civil servant in London called Richard Swayne.’ The name obviously meant nothing to her, so he carried on. ‘Four of the others have been murdered, one was killed in the war, and another—Alastair Frost—died very recently from cancer. I spoke to Dr Frost just before his death, and he told me that these men are being murdered because of something they did during their time at King’s. Do you have any idea what that might be?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. I was telling you the truth when I said that their names mean nothing to me. Robert never talks about them.’

  ‘And do you think you could persuade him to talk to me now? Until I know what happened all those years ago, I can’t even begin to work out who might want to punish them for it. It could be the difference between his living and dying.’

  ‘That might be quite a dilemma if I really thought I could change his mind. Fortunately, I can’t. Robert never listens to me.’ She gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘You must think very badly of me, Mr Penrose.’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘No, I don’t think badly of you at all. On the contrary.’ She smiled and they walked on in silence as far as the rear porch. ‘Just give me directions from here,’ Penrose said. ‘You don’t need to come with me—you’ve seen more than enough already.’

  She put a hand to his cheek and he felt himself flush like an adolescent. ‘You’re very kind,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you have any idea how terrifying kindness is when you’re not used to it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there’s always a chance you’ll come to depend on it—and then you really are lost.’ She opened the door abruptly, saving him from the problem of knowing what to say. ‘The mill is a five-minute walk from here. Follow that path until you get to the river on the edge of the estate, then you’ll see the mill and the ruins of the house up ahead. There’s a trapdoor down to the cellar. It’s been covered over for as long as I’ve been here, but I suppose whoever did this uncovered it.’

 

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