Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (30 page)

‘Don’t even think it. I’m sure he didn’t.’

‘Where’s Laurence?’

The question was posed casually enough, but Carole really wanted to know the answer. Although her attitude to Laurence Hawker had thawed a little, she’d still be glad to receive the news that he’d left Woodside Cottage for good.

‘He’s having an early night. Wasn’t feeling so hot.’ That was an understatement. The day out in Chichester, following on his weekend away, had taken a lot out of Laurence. He’d coughed up more blood after the cab brought them back. Jude was beginning to wonder how much longer he could continue without being hospitalized. But it was not a subject to raise over a glass of wine in the neatness of Carole’s kitchen.

‘Incidentally,’ said Carole. ‘One detail I got from Gina . . . about the first body in the kitchen garden . . .’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Still been no official identification, but Gina had found some old letters about one of the Bracketts stable-boys who’d disappeared about the right time. Called Pat Heggarty. Son of the Chadleighs’ housekeeper. The thinking at the time was that he’d done a runner to escape conscription. I don’t know. It’s a thought.’

‘Yes, that body seems rather to have paled into insignificance since the death of Sheila Cartwright.’

‘True. I wonder if there
is
a connection between the two deaths,’ said Carole thoughtfully. ‘When Sheila died, I was convinced there was. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘I think there is a connection . . . at least through Bracketts. Something that’s happened in this house was important enough to make someone commit a murder . . . By the way,’ Jude went on, ‘am I included in this invitation?’

‘Invitation?’

‘For Priest’s Hole exploration.’

‘Well . . .’ Carole began awkwardly.

Jude picked up the hint very quickly. ‘Say no more. You’re wangling your way in as a Trustee. Justifying bringing a friend along might prove more difficult.’

‘That, I’m afraid, is the situation exactly, Jude.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ve got things to do tomorrow.’ Trying to persuade Laurence to see a doctor being one of them, she thought grimly. But she said, ‘There’s an Esmond Chadleigh lead Marla Teischbaum’s been following up. Some letters from Hugo Strider.’

‘Did you get to see them?’

‘Laurence had a quick look after the Professor had left. They’d been written to a distant cousin while he was living at Bracketts.’

‘Useful stuff?’ asked Carole eagerly.

‘Not really. All very correct and British and giving nothing away. I’m afraid upper-class English gentlemen between the Wars didn’t go in for baring their souls much. Laurence says he’ll go back and have another look at them, but he wasn’t very hopeful of finding anything.’

‘Another blind alley then?’

‘That one may be, but there’s something else,’ Jude announced proudly. ‘Another Strider connection about which Marla Teischbaum knows nothing at all.’

‘Really?’

So Jude told Carole about what George Ferris had told her. ‘And, because Laurence is such a whiz at research and positively zipped around the County Records Office, I now have an address and telephone number for Miss Hidebourne.’

Even as she spoke, Jude was keying numbers into her mobile phone.

When Carole arrived at the Bracketts Administrative Office at noon the next day, Gina Locke was still in her post-Sheila Cartwright pomp. Her brown eyes sparkled, and her confidence was almost overweening.

‘Had a really brilliant day yesterday, Carole. Went to see a major potential sponsor. Better not mention the name, because everything’s still a bit under wraps, but they are seriously big. Multinational food company, I can tell you that much. Anyway, they’ve had a bit of a battering in the media recently, because one of their American subsidiaries used a lot of GM produce, and basically they need a mega-public relations make-over. To show how caring they really are as a company, how involved in the local community and the arts. And I think I’ve persuaded them that sponsoring the Museum here at Bracketts would give them just the kind of image-transplant they need.’

‘Well done.’

‘Yes. As I say, it was a good day. You know, some days you feel really competent and fluent and like you could take on the world . . .’

Carole didn’t have many days like that, but she still nodded, not wishing to interrupt Gina’s flow.

‘I saw the guy who Sheila had been cultivating, but I think I was probably more effective than she would have been. He clearly had an eye for the ladies and the younger woman . . .’ She grinned. ‘Have to be prepared to use any wiles to get sponsorship these days, you know.’

‘And did you use the “what a tragedy about Sheila” wile?’

‘You bet I did. Damn nearly got his condolences in the form of a cheque. No, I said all the right things . . . how much she’d enjoyed her meetings with him . . . how optimistic she’d been about a happy outcome to their discussions . . . how the Museum would become like a memorial to Sheila Cartwright . . . and how good it would be for the compassionate image of any company involved in such a project.’

Had Jude been there, Carole would have exchanged a raised eyebrow with her, but as she was on her own, she just nodded.

‘So . . .’ Gina Locke rubbed her hands gleefully ‘ . . . with a bit of luck I might get the whole Museum paid for by this one company. An exclusive sponsorship, just what I need. And, if it goes through quickly, we could open the Museum in 2004 on the centenary of Esmond Chadleigh’s birth.’

‘Will there be time for that?’

‘You bet. The architects’ plans were drawn up over a year ago. The Planning Permission’s sorted. Only waiting for the money to make it happen.’

‘Well, congratulations on a day well spent yesterday.’

‘Thank you.’ There was no humility in the Director’s response. She was just taking the praise that was her due.

But the wrapping-up of that part of the conversation did enable Carole to move on. ‘I was very interested in what you said on the phone about that stable-boy . . . Pat . . .?’

‘Pat Heggarty.’

‘Right.’ Carole was remembering a previous encounter, in the Crown and Anchor, when Gina had been very firmly trying to direct her thought processes about the body in the kitchen garden. ‘Who did you hear about him from?’ she asked diffidently.

‘Graham. He’s the great repository of all knowledge about everything that’s ever happened at Bracketts.’

‘Funny he didn’t mention it before . . . when the body was first discovered.’

‘Odd, yes.’ But Gina Locke didn’t sound that interested; her mind was moving ahead to the next step of her Museum-building project.

‘Straight after Sheila’s death . . .’ Carole persisted.

‘Yes?’

‘ . . . you seemed to be convinced that Graham had killed her.’

‘Mm, I remember saying that.’

‘Presumably you don’t still think he did?’

‘No. Just seemed to make sense at the time. Now the police have got hold of this escaped convict . . . well, I must have been wrong.’ But there was no apology in her tone, no sense that there was possibly something reprehensible in bandying around accusations of murder.

‘Right.’ Carole stood up. ‘If you’re sure you don’t mind my having a look at the Priest’s Hole . . .’

‘No, of course not.’ Gina took a large set of keys down from a row of hooks on the wall. ‘I’ve got a few follow-up calls to make on the sponsorship. Do you mind letting yourself in . . .?’

‘Not at all. If you’re sure that’s all right . . .’

‘Look, you are a Trustee. You’re hardly going to walk away with the exhibits, are you? If there was somebody I didn’t know wanting to get into the house, that’d be different.’

Probably, thought Carole, it was just as well she hadn’t brought Jude along.

Carole Seddon had a logical mind; all her colleagues at the Home Office had recognized that. And logic dictated that, before she went inside Bracketts, she should look at the exterior of the house.

She recalled the words of the white-haired kilted lady as their Guided Tour had reached the Priest’s Hole. ‘From the outside of the house no windows are visible, but comparisons of the exterior dimensions and the measurements of this landing demonstrate that there is a space within the walls unaccounted for.’

It was a bright, bold autumn day, with a whiff of wood-smoke on the air. Carole, warm in her Burberry, moved over the dampish grass, orienting herself by the large landing window. To the right of this was the angle of the house which, on the first floor, had no corresponding concave angle inside. That’s where the Priest’s Hole was.

Nothing looked odd from outside. The lack of windows in the relevant part of the structure raised no questions; there weren’t that many windows in the rest of the house. But, Carole noticed with a little spurt of excitement, there were no windows in the ground-floor section directly beneath the Priest’s Hole either.

She didn’t rush, but continued to work logically. She went up to the house and, producing the tape measure she had brought specially for the purpose, took a reading from each side of the distance from the edge of the nearest window to the corner of the house. She tried to make out what lay inside, but the windows were curtained to protect the elderly furniture from the sun.

Controlling her excitement, Carole Seddon walked round to the front of the house and let herself into Bracketts.

She went straight to the ground-floor area directly beneath the Priest’s Hole. This involved going through a door marked ‘
PRIVATE
’ into a part of the house not included in the Guided Tours. But what the hell? She was a Trustee. She could go where she wanted.

Disappointment stared her in the face. Her best fantasies had been of a jutting pair of walls, matching the area of the Priest’s Hole above. There’d either be another sliding panel, or maybe the hidden space was only accessible from the first floor.

But, instead of walls, she was confronted by cupboards, large cupboard doors on either side of the projecting right angle. When she opened them, she found an array of vacuum cleaners, brushes, mops and other cleaning equipment.

Oh well, it had been a nice idea. Carole was about to close the doors, when a thought struck her.

Yes, they were cupboards all right, but they were surprisingly shallow cupboards. The vacuum cleaners fitted in fine, but there was only space for one row of them. Carole Seddon once again took the tape measure out of the pocket of her Burberry.

The cupboards both sides of the right angle were of the same depth. Two feet. According to Carole’s recollection, the dimensions of the Priest’s Hole were about twelve foot by eight. So behind the cupboards, depending on the thickness of the walls, there could be a space of up to ten foot by six.

She felt the walls behind the vacuum cleaners, the suspended mops and brushes. She tapped them. There was no false backing; they were solid stone.

Punctiliously, Carole closed the cupboard doors and, deliberately slow, went upstairs. Sufficient light came through the landing windows to show the dummy panel that led to the Priest’s Hole. And over the years enough fingers had pressed against the relevant part for a shallow indentation in the wood to indicate the locking mechanism. The hands that started this erosion, Carole estimated, must have belonged to Catholic priests shaking with panic and the fear of imminent discovery. Now the pressure on the panel was applied by white-haired kilted ladies, caught between a genteel sense of duty and total boredom.

She pushed, and the panel slid aside.

The Priest’s Hole had been emptied for the winter. The low table was still in place, which was hardly surprising since it was bolted to the floor. However, the cloth, candlesticks and book that had adorned its surface were gone.

Ever provident, Carole did have a torch in her pocket, but she felt sure there must be a light-switch somewhere. Sure enough, there was, tucked away on the panelling inside. The concealed lighting came on, illuminating the intricate carved ceiling, and once again rendering the space solemn and ecclesiastical. She climbed over the step into the room. There was a low creak as the floorboards took her weight.

‘Cunningly hidden and complex’. That was what Felix Chadleigh had written in his diary on the day he moved into Bracketts. ‘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.’

Carole ran her eye along the floor. Each dark board ran the length of the room, from the landing opening to the far wall. They were uneven, a little warped with age, but rubbed to the smoothness of glass by centuries of sweeping and polishing. She got down on her knees and lay with her cheek flush against the wood, trying to spot some break or irregularity. But all was universally smooth.

Once again planning ahead, Carole had put on shoes with hard, stubby heels. She stood up, and started to tap her way along the floorboards. She did it systematically, moving back and forth down the length of the room.

There was something. Definitely. A bubble of excitement started within her, but she dourly swallowed it down. Double-check, always double-check. So she repeated the whole exercise to be sure.