Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (16 page)

Jude lingered over a white plate with the whole text of ‘Threnody for the Lost’ printed on it in black gothic lettering. ‘It’s so kitsch, I almost feel I should buy it.’

‘Well, don’t,’ said Carole severely. ‘You’ve got quite enough rubbish in your house already.’

Jude raised an amused eyebrow at this, but said nothing. She knew the cause of Carole’s scratchiness. It had rarely in the past proved a good idea to mix friends from different areas of her life. But Jude wasn’t really troubled by the atmosphere. Either Carole and Laurence would find a way of getting on with each other, or she’d arrange things so that they didn’t have to meet much. Because, at least for the time being, Jude reckoned Laurence Hawker was going to be a fixture at Woodside Cottage.

They found him near the closed-off kitchen garden, loitering on the path which led from the gift shop to the car park. He had already finished one cigarette, and unthinkingly trodden the butt into the flagstone beneath him; another was already alight and dangling from the corner of his mouth. As they approached, he was looking up at Bracketts.

‘I do like literary houses,’ he observed. ‘It sounds sentimental and simplistic . . .’ (That seems to be one of his favourite words, thought Carole sourly) ‘ . . . and yet there is a sense of place, a feeling of the forces that shaped the thoughts that were written there. I mean, obviously, the dourness of Haworth for the Brontës . . . the tweeness of Wordsworth’s Grasmere . . . and then for Jane Austen at Chawton a kind of neat elegance . . .’

Jude looked along the neatly tiled roofs of Bracketts, the skill with which the architectural styles of different periods had been homogenized into a kind of inoffensive primness. ‘So what do you get from this house, Laurence?’

‘Ooh, it’s bland, really bland. All the rough edges have been smoothed off, to produce a building which, in spite of its antiquity, is quintessentially middle-class.’

He seemed to make a point of looking at Carole as he said this, so she asked, ‘And what does “middle-class” mean to you?’

He smiled knowingly. ‘Devious. Secretive. The middle classes are always trying to hide something. Some failed aspiration, some thwarted ambition, someone presenting themselves to the world slightly differently from the way they really are.’

Carole couldn’t continue to meet the sardonic gaze of his sharp brown eyes. ‘So how does that apply to a writer like Esmond Chadleigh?’

‘I look at that house, and I see pressure to conform. Repression. Secrets.’

Jude chuckled softly at this, though Carole couldn’t see anything funny about it. ‘Look,’ she said brusquely, ‘I’ve just got to drop a letter in to Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. Won’t be a moment. Do you want to take the car keys, Jude?’

‘No, far too nice to sit in the car. We’ll just enjoy the final reminder of summer, in this beautiful spot.’

‘And I’ll light up another cigarette,’ said Laurence.

Carole turned, partly to set off to the cottage, and partly to hide the growing resentment that the man triggered in her.

‘Oh.’ Jude’s voice stopped her, and dropped to a whisper. ‘Could you just point out where . . . the thing . . . was found? Just so’s we know.’

Carole pointed to the locked gates of the kitchen garden. ‘I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to get inside or see anything interesting.’

‘No. But it’ll help to be able to picture the place.’

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ said Laurence, prompting anxiety in Carole as to how much Jude had confided in him about their case.

There was a solid gate which led from the main gardens of Bracketts to Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’ cottage. A notice on it read ‘Private’, but Carole had seen other Trustees using it, so went through.

Outside the cottage’s front gate, a taxi was driving off just as Carole arrived. She couldn’t be absolutely certain, but the height of the woman in the back seat and the flash of sunlight on chestnut hair suggested that the departing visitor was Professor Marla Teischbaum.

Carole had planned just to pop the publisher’s letter through the letter box and be on her way, but she hadn’t expected to find the front door of the cottage open.

She tapped on it. There was no response. She called out a gentle ‘Hello?’ Nothing.

Carole stepped into the hall. A coat-rack supported a selection of ‘Bracketts Volunteer’ waterproofs. Gum boots and walking shoes, some with the previous spring’s mud on them, were scattered higgledy-piggledy on the floor.

She tried another ‘Hello?’, but no one responded.

Carole moved on into the cottage. The door to Graham’s study was ajar. She pushed it open, and walked in.

Graham Chadleigh-Bewes was sitting behind his desk.

In his hand was an old service revolver.

He was unaware of Carole’s presence as he announced, ‘I can’t escape the Chadleigh bad blood. It’s always there. This time I’m really going to do it.’

Then placed the barrel of the revolver pointing upwards in his mouth.

Graham Chadleigh-Bewes caught sight of Carole Seddon standing in the doorway, and embarrassment coloured his ageing baby face. He removed the revolver barrel from his mouth and let out an inadequate ‘Ah’.

Clearly it wasn’t her he’d been expecting. Carole didn’t have any difficulty working that out. Nor was it too wild a conjecture to conclude that the person he had been expecting was his aunt. She lived in the cottage, after all, and there had been a note of familiarity in Graham’s words. Were his suicide threats, Carole wondered, another of the rituals which he and Belinda played out on a regular basis, a darker counterpoint to their cake-eating pantomime?

He put the revolver down amidst the chaos of his desk. ‘I don’t know what you must be thinking,’ he said, with an incongruous attempt at joviality. ‘Just a little game I play.’

‘Russian roulette?’

He chuckled, assuming her to be sharing the lightheartedness he was trying to impose on the situation. But she wasn’t. Carole’s emotions were more complex. There was an element of shock at seeing the man in that situation, but, more powerfully, a sense of embarrassment, as if she had disturbed some shameful ritual. Graham’s own reaction to her arrival compounded the impression

‘No, not Russian roulette,’ he replied tartly.

‘You mean there aren’t bullets in any of the chambers?’

‘Oh no. In fact, every one is loaded.’ He let out a manufactured chuckle. ‘So the odds for any Russian playing games of chance with that gun wouldn’t be very good. I don’t think even Dostoevsky would have taken that bet.’

‘The gun works then?’

‘Oh yes. Been looked after with great care. The Estate Manager is a great gun enthusiast. Checks that one out at least once a year. Even indulges in a little target practice in the kitchen garden.’

‘Is that legal?’

‘I’m sure it isn’t. But who’s to know? When the revolver was originally put on display, it was spiked, so that it couldn’t be used. The Estate Manager thought that was a pity, so he restored it to its original splendour.’

Carole moved into the room and sat down. ‘I assume it’s the one that belongs in the glass case in the Bracketts dining room?’

‘Yes. Graham Chadleigh’s revolver.’

‘ “Contents removed for cleaning and restoration”.’

‘Exactly. It’s been to a specialist gunsmith, to be properly cleaned. Has to be done every few years. Only came back from there yesterday.’

‘And when did it go? When was it sent off to be cleaned?’

‘Oh . . . What? Three weeks ago.’

‘Before the last Trustees’ Meeting?’

‘Definitely before that, yes.’

Carole didn’t contest this, but she knew it wasn’t true. She remembered seeing the revolver in its display case at the meeting. Either Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’ memory was playing him false, or he was lying. She favoured the second explanation, though she could not guess at the reasons for his duplicity.

‘You talked of “Chadleigh bad blood”,’ she said suddenly.

‘Sorry?’

‘When I came in. When you were playing your . . . game with the revolver. Is “Chadleigh bad blood” part of the game?’

He looked flustered, and went on to the attack. ‘I don’t see why you’re bombarding me with questions. There’s one very basic one I haven’t asked you yet. What do you think you’re doing walking uninvited into my house?’

Carole held out the envelope with the publisher’s permissions request in it. ‘I brought you this. Remember? You asked me to.’

‘Oh, yes.’ He retreated.

‘Your front door was open. I knocked and called out, but got no reply.’

‘I thought Auntie was here,’ he said rather peevishly, maybe confirming Carole’s guess that the suicide routine had been for Belinda Chadleigh’s benefit.

She decided to push forward while he was on the back foot. ‘I thought I saw Professor Teischbaum leaving as I arrived.’

‘What?’ He considered denial, but thought better of it. ‘Yes, she was here.’

‘Offering to co-operate with you? A jointly written biography?’

There a bark of derisive laughter. ‘Hardly. No, she was trying to blackmail me.’

‘Oh?’

‘Somehow she knows about the body that was found in the kitchen garden.’ Carole reacted as if this were fresh news. ‘She’s threatening to tell the press.’

‘So what did you say to her?’

‘I told her to bloody tell them!’ he snapped petulantly. Then a comforting thought came to him. ‘If she does, I think we can guarantee that she’ll alienate every single one of the Bracketts Trustees. Nobody’ll contemplate taking her side after that kind of betrayal.’

‘I didn’t think anyone contemplated taking her side now.’

‘There are a few waverers.’ He looked piercingly at her, so that his words became an accusation.

Carole ignored the challenge. ‘You don’t think Marla Teischbaum’s going to the press will cause any harm?’

‘So long as I warn Sheila what’s going to happen, it’ll be all right.’

‘Sheila won’t be surprised.’

‘Oh?’

‘I told her Marla Teischbaum knew about the body.’

‘But how on earth did you—’

Carole didn’t let him get any further. ‘Anyway, what’s this about Sheila? Isn’t Gina the one you should be telling?’

‘Who?’ At first, he appeared genuinely to have forgotten the Director’s existence. ‘Oh yes. Yes, of course. Sheila’ll tell her.’ He smiled with satisfaction. ‘Actually, we’ve done very well. Sheila’s contacts are brilliant. She’s kept the story quiet all this time. Only two more days till Bracketts closes for the winter. And if there is any threat of over-inquisitive press or ghoulish members of the public creeping round, we can just close a little early.’

‘So what was Marla Teischbaum trying to blackmail you for?’

‘Sorry?’

‘She threatened to spill the beans to the press, unless you did . . . what?’

He coloured, and pushed the revolver around in its nest of papers. ‘She wanted more information about Esmond, more documentation. Huh. If she thinks I’m going to give up my hard-won research that easily . . . well, she’s taken on the wrong person.’

Coming from those flabby lips, the attempt to sound macho didn’t work.

‘Going back to the “Chadleigh bad blood”, could we—?’

She was interrupted by a panicked voice from behind her. ‘Graham, what on earth are you doing with that?’

Carole hadn’t heard Belinda Chadleigh enter the room. But, when she turned and saw the old woman’s faded eyes staring with horror at the revolver on Graham’s desk, she began to wonder how much of a game his suicide threat had been.

And, also, whether the ‘Chadleigh bad blood’ perhaps referred to a depressive tendency in the family’s genetic make-up.

There were three butts on the ground by the Renault when Carole returned, and the fourth cigarette was already drooping from Laurence Hawker’s mouth. Neither he nor Jude noticed her approach. He was lounging against the car, gazing out over the green downland, while Jude looked at him with unusual intensity, as if trying to impress his image on her mind.

Carole, with some annoyance, interpreted this as a look of love, and in fact she wasn’t far wrong. Jude was having increasing difficulty in maintaining her ‘no love’ agreement with Laurence. Insidiously, over the past few days, he had become part of her life, and the prospect of losing him was more and more painful to contemplate.

Finally hearing Carole’s approach, she shook herself out of introspection, and observed, ‘Took a long time to pop an envelope through a letter box.’

‘Yes. I talked to Graham.’

‘And?’

But Carole didn’t want to discuss the case with a third person present. Particularly with Laurence Hawker present. Mumbling that Graham hadn’t said anything of great interest, she got into the car. Jude knew exactly what was going on, but said nothing.

On the way back, Laurence again trailed his smoking hand out of the window, but Carole was still very aware of the smell.