Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (14 page)

‘What kind of thing did you have in mind?’ asked Carole, suddenly assertive. The Trustees had cast her in a subservient role, but that didn’t mean she had to play it their way. ‘Some dirt? That’s what the Trustees think you’re after. You won’t be surprised to hear that, when your name came up for discussion, the word “muck-raker” was used.’

‘I’m not surprised at all. It is, as it happens, an inaccurate description, but there’s no reason why you should believe that. What I am after, in fact, is not dirt but truth.’

Carole did not disbelieve her. Increasingly she was feeling a tension between the part she was meant to be playing and her instinctive trust in the other woman. But all she could say was, ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

‘What do you mean by that, Carole? That you don’t deal in truth?’

‘In my current situation,’ came the curt reply, ‘I deal only with what the Trustees have given me to deal with. A very limited role, with which – you will not be surprised to hear – I am far from happy.’

Marla smiled. ‘I was beginning to detect that, yes.’

Carole gathered up her handbag from the floor. ‘So I think I may as well leave, really.’ She waved the folder. ‘Shall I take this back with me? If you think it’s going to be completely useless to you.’

‘No, no, I’ll take it. Thank you. Could be something there I haven’t seen before. I don’t think even Graham Chadleigh-Bewes would be quite so crass as to give me all rubbish.’

‘I had a glance through the stuff. Some of it did look interesting. But, as we have established, I am not an expert.’

‘No. But you’re clearly shrewd. So, if you thought some of the material was interesting, I will accept it with gracious thanks for your recommendation.’

As Marla Teischbaum took the folder, she looked again towards the bar. ‘Sorry, as you see, the Pelling Arms is not really geared to this encounter. There’s no chance of the coffee arriving for a short meeting.’

‘Well, there you go,’ said Carole, rising awkwardly to her feet. Marla’s poise made her feel clumsy.

‘So what do you report back to your Trustees?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Presumably they will want to hear what happened at this meeting?’

‘I suppose they will, but a formal report wasn’t discussed.’

‘It was thought that handing this file over to me would be the end of the matter? That I would gracefully touch my forelock, and return to the wilds of California?’

‘Well . . . maybe. Yes, perhaps that was what they hoped.’

The Professor shook her head in wry disbelief. ‘Gard, they sure don’t know me, do they?’ She tapped the file. ‘This was Graham’s idea, I take it . . .?’

‘I, er . . . I’m not sure that he came up with it completely on his own.’

‘No. Unlikely, I agree. I don’t think Graham’s ever come up with anything completely on his own. So who was it? Gina Locke, the new Director? I’d be surprised. From the correspondence I’ve had with her, she sounds too bright to think something like this’d work.’

‘I’m not sure . . .’

But as Carole floundered, a light of knowledge came into Marla’s dark eyes. ‘No, of course. Oh Gard, yes, I’ve got it. Her predecessor. The One Who Will Not Go Away. Yes, this little scheme has Sheila Cartwright written all over it.’

There seemed no point in denying this conclusion. ‘Now I really had better be going.’

‘Sure.’ But Marla Teischbaum held Carole there by the force of her personality, as she said, ‘Even if you haven’t got a formal arrangement to report back to the Trustees, I do have a message for them. I am going to write my biography of Esmond Chadleigh.’

‘Can I ask why?’

‘What do you mean –
why
?’

‘Why Esmond Chadleigh? There are so many other literary figures you could write about, so why did you choose him?’

Marla Teischbaum’s head shook slowly, in a mixture of exasperation and disbelief. ‘You don’t get it, do you, Carole? You don’t get what being an academic is about.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Carole, trying desperately not to sound humble.

‘It’s not random, you know. In my line of work, you don’t suddenly say to yourself, “Hey, I feel a biography coming on. Who’s it going to be? Who shall I pick? Maybe I should stick a pin in some list of authors and see who I come up with . . .?” ’

Carole felt uncomfortable, as though she was being treated like a child, while the Professor continued, ‘I like Esmond Chadleigh’s work. What I know about his life intrigues me. I want to find out more. That is why I am writing his biography.’

The conviction in Marla Teischbaum’s voice did not diminish Carole’s discomfort. She was silent.

‘And I am going to make that biography as accurate as I possibly can. If I discover that Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’ assessment of his grandfather is correct, that Esmond really was a saint walking on earth, then fine, that is what my biography will say too. But if I find information which does not fit in with that rosy picture, I will use it. If this folder is the extent of the Trustees’ co-operation with me, I’m grateful, but I think they’re being very foolish. Continued co-operation with me offers them a much better chance of influencing what I write than they will get by making an enemy of me.

‘I don’t blame the other Trustees for the way they’re reacting. I certainly don’t blame Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. He’s just weak, and worried that I’m going to publish my biography before he gets round to finishing his. But I know where the power lies at Bracketts. Still. It’s Sheila Cartwright. She’s the one behind this deliberate blocking of my researches. She has already made an enemy of me.’ The lipsticked mouth framed a bittersweet smile. ‘You have my permission to tell her that, Carole, if you wish.’

At that moment a spotty youth in a blue waiter’s jacket appeared with a tray of coffee. There was a silence while he put it down on the table between the two women.

‘Are you sure you won’t have some, Carole? Now it’s actually arrived?’

‘No. I think I’d better be on my way.’

‘Fine. Your choice. Just one thing . . .’

‘What?’ Carole turned to look back at the elegant creature in the armchair. Again an unconscious hand was caressing the neat contours of her shining hair.

‘I do know about the body that was found in the kitchen garden,’ said Professor Marla Teischbaum.

Jude emerged slowly from a deep sleep, and took a moment or two to orient herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t know where she was. She knew exactly where she was. She was in her own bedroom, but it took a moment or two for her to realize what was different about that bedroom.

A late afternoon breeze had risen, and it lifted the curtains, admitting the occasional streak of sunlight across the tousled bed. But the air still felt warm on Jude’s ample nakedness.

It was Laurence’s presence that made the room different. That, and the smell of smoke he brought with him. The permanent cigarette was back in place now; he had only removed it while they made love. He had his back to her, sitting totally naked on the stool in front of her dressing table while he keyed something into his laptop. The nobbles of his spine stood out like a line of knuckles down his back.

Her slight movement on the bed attracted his attention. He turned and flashed her a little smile of complicity.

‘You’ve lost a lot of weight.’

‘Uhuh,’ he said and coughed.

‘Which is more than can be said for me.’

‘One of your attractions, Jude. With you, I always got my money’s worth.’

‘What are you doing, Laurence?’

‘Just checking my emails.’

‘From other women?’ asked Jude languorously.

‘I bloody hope so.’

She chuckled. Other women had no power to hurt her now. She found, as she got older, she preferred relationships outside the white heat of exclusive, jealous love. Old friends with whom she might not even make love. Or she might. And it was usually good when she did. Certainly Laurence retained his old skills. And their bodies remembered each other.

‘Hope you don’t mind,’ said Laurence. ‘I’ve plugged into your phoneline.’

‘No problem.’ She traced a hand idly over her full breasts. ‘Maybe I should come into the twenty-first century and get email.’

‘You won’t regret it, I promise you. And there’s the whole internet out there too. Brilliant for my sort of work. Researching articles, going through newspapers for references. The amount you can just download. University libraries hardly get used these days.’

‘Must spoil your fun rather, Laurence. Seem to remember, you always had a taste for librarians.’

‘True,’ he agreed. He had never been secretive about his conquests. That, at the time Jude had been obsessively in love with him, had made things worse. She’d even sometimes found herself yearning for a bit of the dishonest duplicity you got from most men. But no. Laurence always told her.

‘Hey.’ She had a thought. ‘Does this mean you can access any newspaper story?’

‘Within certain parameters. I’ve got subscriptions to a good few of the newspapers.
The Times
and
The Sunday Times
, for example. You can get anything back to about 1985 without too much problem.’

Jude swung her legs round to the floor. ‘Great. See if you can find me something about a man – well, a boy – called Mervyn Hunter. Twelve years back – no, about eleven years back.’

‘I’ll have a go. Can you give me any clue as to what I’m looking for?’

‘He was convicted of murder. Murdering a woman.’

‘Ah. Back to your new hobby, are we?’

‘Any objections?’

‘No. Murder’s quite interesting. Better than the alternatives. Just think,’ he added with distaste, ‘it could have been golf.’

It was too warm to bother to put anything on. As she passed, Jude ran her hand lightly across his shoulders. ‘What do you want? Tea? Coffee?’

‘Whisky,’ he said.

When she came back upstairs with his whisky and a herb tea for herself, he had already found what he was looking for. ‘I’d get you a hard copy, but I don’t have a printer with me. I can easily run one off as soon as I get back to civilization.’

‘Don’t worry. All I need are the facts.’

Jude’s naked body pressed against Laurence’s back, as she read what was on the laptop screen.

The facts the report from
The Times
revealed were straightforward. Mervyn Hunter, a jobbing gardener aged just eighteen, had gone out one evening to a club near his parents’ home in Wetherby. According to witnesses, he had drunk a lot and been seen dancing with a local girl called Lee-Anne Rogers. She was twenty-three, and worked in a betting shop in Wetherby. They were seen to leave the club together and to get into her car. The vehicle was discovered the next morning in a lay-by on the road to Sicklinghall, which was popular after dark with couples in cars. Lee-Anne Rogers’ body was found in the back seat. She had been strangled. When confronted by the police the same morning, Mervyn Hunter had confessed to killing her. At his trial, the judge, saying that he was ‘a menace to law-abiding society and particularly to innocent young women’, had sentenced Mervyn to life imprisonment.

‘I am sure I can do some follow-ups and get more information if you want it,’ said Laurence.

‘No, that’s fine for the time being. I just need the basics. Thank you.’ And joining her arms around his neck, she gave him a big hug.

‘I’d forgotten how nice that was,’ he murmured. ‘All that warm flesh against me.’

He rose from his stool and turned in her arms until he was facing her. Then he put his arms around her in a crushing embrace. They tottered unsteadily, and fell back on to the bed.

In the stillness that followed, Jude held Laurence’s bony body in her capacious arms. One hand slid its way along the corrugations of his spine.

‘You’re ill, aren’t you?’ she said.

There were two messages on Carole’s answering machine when she got back to High Tor. One from Sheila Cartwright, one from Gina Locke. Both asking the same thing. How had her meeting gone with Marla Teischbaum?

Sheila’s number was engaged, so Carole spoke to Gina first. She gave the Director a quick résumé of her encounter at the the Pelling Arms, finishing with the news that the American knew about the body in the kitchen garden.

‘Oh,’ Gina responded. ‘Sheila won’t be happy about that.’ And she couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of her voice.

For a moment Carole wondered. Gina’s animus against her rival was so strong, was it possible that she might have leaked the information to Marla Teischbaum? An attempt to put Sheila Cartwright in her place? To demonstrate the frailty of her influence over ‘Paul’, the Chief Constable? It was an intriguing possibility.

But when Sheila herself heard that Marla knew about the body, the reaction was surprisingly muted. ‘It was bound to get out at some point. Only a matter of time. Did she say what she planned to do with the information, Carole?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, well, wait and see. If we can keep it quiet till the house closes at the end of the week, well and good. If not,
tant pis
. We’ll just see to it that all press enquiries are handled through the police.’