Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (10 page)

‘Well, good luck,’ said Carole. ‘I hope she plays ball.’

‘It is not a matter of her “playing ball”,’ snapped Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, suddenly angry. Perhaps, after all, there was something other than food that could rouse his passion. ‘It is a matter of the truth. And of the truth being told to the public. Esmond Chadleigh was a wonderful man, a good Catholic, and a writer of extraordinary genius! It is important that the public knows that about him.’

‘And that is what they will know when they read your biography?’

‘Yes. And what they won’t know if the muck-rakers are allowed to defile his memory!’

‘Your use of the word, Graham . . . suggests that there might be muck to rake . . .’

‘No! There is none!’ With an effort, he calmed himself down. There was a silence, filled only by the persistent rain outside. ‘God, it’s a comment on the modern world, isn’t it, that everyone is assumed to have a “dark side”. Literary biography these days doesn’t look at a man’s
writings
; it starts its researches in the divorce courts and the VD clinics. Unless there’s some sleazy scandal, nobody’s interested. Why can’t people still believe in the concept of goodness? Esmond had no “dark side”. He was a genuinely Good Man. And that’s how he’ll be remembered . . . in spite of the worst excesses of The Teischbaum Claimant.’

His tirade seemed both to have satisfied and exhausted him. The eyes in his chubby face gleamed as they moved towards the tray.

‘Now, are you going to have another slice of cake . . .’ he asked as his hand moved forward to the knife, ‘or is it just me?’

They heard the rattle of the front door opening, a loud female voice saying, ‘It’s all right, Belinda, I’ll see myself in’, and Sheila Cartwright’s height suddenly filled the room. She too was wearing one of the long Bracketts Volunteer waterproofs, and she shook the rain off as she lowered its hood.

Graham Chadleigh-Bewes was instantly on his feet. Though he’d shown no such deference to Carole, there were clearly some guests for whom he had respect – or possible fear.

‘I’m glad you’re still here, Carole,’ said Sheila without preamble of greeting. ‘I wanted to make sure you’d got the message right about what I want you to do, and I know Graham’s hopeless at that kind of thing.’

The grandson shrugged ineffectually. ‘Sheila, would you care for a bit of cake or—?’

‘No, thank you. Unlike you, I don’t spend my entire day stuffing my face. Carole, has he made it clear to you what you have to do?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ She indicated the file on her lap. ‘I have my olive branch at the ready.’

‘Mm. My first thought was that I should do it, but it makes sense to use someone more ignorant.’ Unaware that she’d said anything mildly offensive, Sheila Cartwright swept on. ‘The important thing is that you are very pleasant to
this dreadful woman
.’ She infused the words with the same level of contempt that Graham had. ‘You say the Trustees are happy to co-operate with her in her researches, but you also make it clear that those documents are the beginning and end of that co-operation.’

‘I somehow doubt if she’s going to take that very well.’

‘I don’t care how she takes it! That is all she’s getting. Which is why it’s a good idea for you to act as my ambassador.’ (Interesting choice of possessive pronoun, thought Carole. Not even the pretence that she was being sent as the representative of the Trustees. It said a lot about how Sheila Cartwright viewed her own relationship with Bracketts.) ‘Because I know so much about Esmond Chadleigh, the Teischbaum woman might try to winkle more out of me.’

‘It’d be the same if I talked to her,’ asserted Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, who thought he’d been out of the conversation too long.

Sheila Cartwright turned a withering look on him. ‘There was never any question of you meeting Professor Teischbaum. You’d have messed it up, like you mess up everything.’

Carole saw a momentary blaze of anger in his eye, but it was quickly extinguished. Graham Chadleigh-Bewes was used to being diminished by Sheila Cartwright; what angered him was the knowledge that her assessment of him was accurate.

She hadn’t finished, either. ‘If you’d done what you’d promised, and delivered your biography of Esmond last year, we wouldn’t have any of these problems.’

He looked sulky. ‘I thought we’d agreed that it’d be better for the book to come out for the centenary of his birth in 2004.’

‘We only agreed that when we saw there wasn’t a chance in hell of it coming out any earlier.’

Wounded, Graham shrank back into his chair. ‘It’s a massive undertaking. You wouldn’t understand, Sheila, because you’ve never been a writer. New material keeps being discovered.’

But his whingeing defence prompted no more response than a dismissive ‘Huh’. Sheila turned her attention to Carole. ‘When are you going to meet the woman?’

‘Actually,’ Graham interrupted, ‘I’ve got a rather good name for her . . .’

‘What?’ asked Sheila testily. ‘Good name for who?’

‘La Teischbaum. I call her “The Teischbaum Claimant”.’

His esoteric pun didn’t even get an acknowledgement. ‘So when are you going to see her, Carole?’

‘We haven’t fixed a time. She was going to ring me back today.’

‘Make it as soon as possible. We need that woman safely back in America. We’ve got quite enough on our plates here without distractions of that kind.’

‘Are you referring to the body in the kitchen garden?’

Carole was favoured by the kind of look she might have given her dog Gulliver if he’d made a mess on the carpet. ‘That is one of the issues concerning us here at Bracketts,’ said Sheila Cartwright loftily. ‘And, incidentally, whatever you do, don’t mention anything about that to Professor Teischbaum.’

‘Of course I won’t.’ Carole was getting sick of being treated like an unreliable schoolgirl. ‘So it hasn’t become public yet?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The police haven’t made an announcement to the press yet?’

‘No. Mercifully, the whole business is still under wraps.’

‘It can’t stay that way for ever.’

‘I am well aware of that, thank you.’

Carole was enjoying being more combative, and she could see that Sheila Cartwright disliked the taste of her own medicine. ‘Have the police arrested the Austen prisoner who made the confession?’

The shock on Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’ face showed that he knew nothing of this, but Sheila Cartwright’s reaction was even more extreme. ‘How on earth did you hear about that?’ she hissed.

Carole thought it was time to show that she could do ‘lofty’ too. ‘From a contact in the prison service.’

‘Well, you keep it to yourself. Don’t breathe a word about it to another soul.’

‘Of course I won’t. I do understand the responsibility of being a Trustee. I won’t mention it to anyone.’ Except Jude, of course. ‘Anyway, what’s happened? Have they arrested him?’

‘The police are continuing their enquiries.’ Sheila Cartwright sounded like an official spokesman at a press conference. ‘The remains found in the kitchen garden are currently undergoing forensic analysis.’

‘Oh? Well, do let me know when you hear anything, won’t you?’

This question was not even thought worthy of an answer.

‘I must go,’ Sheila announced abruptly. ‘There’s always so much to do round this place.’

Even when you no longer have any official function here, thought Carole.

Graham Chadleigh-Bewes quailed when the beam of Sheila Cartwright’s eye was turned on him. ‘Forget you ever heard anything about the confession – right?’

‘Right,’ he echoed feebly.

‘I know what a blabbermouth you are. For once, just keep that mouth of yours zipped, Graham. Not a word to a soul. Not even to Belinda – all right?’

His reaction to her last words suggested she had anticipated an intention to spill the beans to his aunt at the first opportunity. ‘No. No, of course not, Sheila.’

Then, straightening up her tall frame, raising the hood of her waterproof against the weather, and with the most perfunctory of goodbyes, Sheila Cartwright left the cottage. Carole had seen plenty of the energy that had created the Esmond Chadleigh shrine. But she had yet to see evidence of the charm, which must also have been there, to enlist the army of Volunteers and wheedle large sums of money out of people to set up the project.

Still, at the end of the encounter, Carole felt pleased with the advance that she’d made in her relationship with Sheila Cartwright. There had been no rapprochement between them – and Carole thought such an event remained extremely unlikely ever to happen – but she had found a level at which to deal with the other woman. By exactly matching the abruptness and aggression, Carole could neutralize her power.

At the sounds of departure, Belinda Chadleigh appeared in the doorway (prompting speculation about how much else she had heard of the conversation). As Sheila bustled past her, the old woman caught her nephew’s eye. They watched the former Director leave the house, and Carole was surprised to see on both their faces an expression of pure loathing.

The first thing that hit Jude when Sandy Fairbarns ushered her into the hall was the noise. Then the smoke. Children screamed and shrieked above the low rumble of conversation. There was a crèche area cordoned off in the corner, manned by a couple of inmate orderlies with red armbands, but few of the children were in there playing with the plastic toys. The very tiny ones sat on their mothers’ knees, but all the rest seemed to be rushing round the room making as much noise as they possibly could, while their parents tried to make meaningful contact between their fragmented lives.

The prisoners and their visitors sat in low easy chairs around low tables (low so that nothing could be passed unseen beneath them). Everyone seemed to have a cigarette in his or her mouth – in the case of the prisoners usually a roll-up. Individual plumes of smoke rose up to join the fug which blurred the metal girders of the pitched roof above. The smell of smoke was more powerful than that of male sweat. Jude knew she’d have to change all her clothes when she got home, hang them out in the garden for a long time, and have a bath to get rid of the tang of tobacco.

The weather outside made the space feel even stuffier. As a bass motif under the high-pitched chatter and shrieking, rain drummed on the building’s metal roof.

But the atmosphere inside was quite relaxed. A prison officer by the door was checking Visiting Orders and handbags in a desultory way. Recognizing Sandy, he waved the two of them through.

They looked around. Jude remembered Sandy’s words about the exhausted-looking wives and their finely toned menfolk, and she did see a few examples of that, but the overall impression was not as depressing as she had expected. Beneath the layer of children’s noise, there was quite a lot of laughter. People wandered back and forth to the canteen in the corner, returning with cups of tea, biscuits and chocolate bars. No doubt there were many personal crises being played out in the conversations in the room, but there was very little sign of them on the surface.

Intuitively, Sandy read Jude’s reaction. ‘Like a Sunday afternoon picnic, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You’d notice a big difference in a closed prison.’

‘Yes, I’ve been in a few.’

Sandy did not follow this up with any enquiry, as most people – certainly Carole – would have done. Again Jude felt the relaxation of being with someone who truly respected her privacy.

‘There he is.’

Jude’s eyes followed the pointing finger. Mervyn Hunter sat alone, uneasily upright on an easy chair, away from the noisy clusters, as near to the wall as he could possibly be.

He sprang up nervously as soon as he saw the two women approaching him. He didn’t look much less nervous when he recognized who they were.

‘Have you really come to see me?’ he asked. His Northern voice was thin and tight, permanently stretched by emotion.

‘Yes,’ said Sandy. ‘Didn’t they tell you?’

‘Well, obviously they told me, because I’m here. But they didn’t tell who it was coming.’

Sandy sighed with exasperation. ‘The communications in this place are absolutely appalling.’

‘At least there is someone,’ said Mervyn Hunter. ‘Blokes in my hut thought I was doing a “moody visit”.’

This prompted a chuckle from Sandy, and Jude looked at her for elucidation.

‘A “moody visit” is a well-known prison scam. Men pretend they’ve got a visitor, so don’t go off on their afternoon’s work duty, but are sent back to their huts to smarten up. Then they stay there all afternoon. Just another way of skiving.’

‘Ah. Thank you.’

‘Look, Jude, I’ve got some stuff to sort out, so I’ll be off.’

‘You’re not leaving me alone with her?’ Mervyn Hunter’s reaction was instinctive, panicked, surprisingly fearful.

Sandy Fairbarns turned back. ‘Yes, I’ve got things to get on with. Jude has come to visit you.’

He slumped back into his chair, and leant his cheek against the wall, as if he wanted to burrow inside it, to disappear. Jude drew up another easy chair to sit in front of him, close enough to be heard, but no closer.