Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (29 page)

Jude’s had also arrived and she ate hers too, keeping an eye on George Ferris’s progress, and wondering what her next move should be. She already had some new information to share with Carole and Laurence, but was hopeful that, if her luck held, she might get even more.

George Ferris finished his fry-up, and Jude tensed, prepared perhaps to follow if he left the pub. But he didn’t. Instead, with relish he drank down the last of his second pint and went up to the counter for a third. This time his badinage with the barman included the phrase ‘Perdition to all women’. He was doing running repairs on the punctures Marla Teischbaum had made in his considerable self-esteem.

He sat back at his table, sipped away at his beer, and looked quite benign. His body language seemed to say that he’d had a narrow escape with that bloody American woman, and was well out of it.

Jude decided that Laurence Hawker’s recipe for starting conversations with academics was at least worth a try. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t have the relevant prop to hand. Extracting from her basket the copy of
How To Get The Best From The Facilities Of The County Records Office
, she turned towards his table and said tentatively, ‘Excuse me, you aren’t by any chance George Ferris, are you?’

His first instinct was suspicious, but then he saw the book in her hand. Like sun through trees, a wide beam broke through the foliage of his beard. ‘Well, yes, I am actually.’

Jude blinked with naïve enthusiasm. (She was particularly good at naïve enthusiasm – her brown eyes became bigger and more trusting by the moment.) ‘Someone in the County Records Office pointed you out to me.’

‘Ah.’ He preened himself in the glow of her adulation. ‘Yes, well, I am quite well known there.’

‘I do think . . .’ She tapped the book in her hand ‘ . . . that this is simply wonderful. Such a help in sorting through the complexities of the archives and what-have-you . . .’

His beam grew even wider. ‘Well, yes. I saw a gap in the market. I thought, here we have this wonderful research resource here in Chichester, and yet people waste so much time making the wrong approaches, going through the wrong channels. What is needed is a simple, straightforward guide which – without in any way “dumbing down” – presents the necessary information in a way that is accessible to the general public.’

‘You’ve certainly done a wonderful job,’ Jude cooed. ‘Have you written lots of books?’

He considered the question sagely. ‘I have quite a lot of books in me. There are many projects which I’ve been working on for some time, and which probably will end up in book form . . . but this is the only one I’ve had published . . . at the moment.’

‘Oh, it must be great to be so talented.’ Jude wondered if she was overdoing it, but the complacent grin on the Hobbit-face showed that it was impossible to overdo praise of George Ferris. He lapped up everything that helped to support his own self-estimation. Jude realized why he had bounced back so quickly from his apparent humiliation by Marla Teischbaum. In his own mind he’d already turned round the balance of guilt in their encounter. Marla had been the one who’d made a fool of herself. She wasn’t worthy of a man like him.

And, of course, he was probably thinking, she’s lesbian, which explains it all. That’s what she’d meant by being ‘very happily single’. There was no other explanation. Any woman who could resist the charms of George Ferris would have to be lesbian.

Having softened him up, Jude moved on to what she really wanted to talk about. ‘Who was that rather rude woman who was with you earlier?’

‘Oh,’ he replied airily, ‘just some American Professor I’ve been helping out with her research.’

‘She didn’t seem very grateful for your help.’

‘No. Well, a rather ungracious nation, the Americans, I often find. And . . .’ He let out a discreet, self-deprecating little cough ‘ . . . in that case, there was a personal agenda too . . .’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes. I always try not to mix business with pleasure . . .’ He grimaced wryly. ‘But can’t always be done.’ He smiled in apology, regretting what a dog he was, and how often his fatal attractiveness had led him into this kind of situation. ‘As Byron put it, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorn’d”.’

Jude happened to know that the line was from Congreve rather than Byron, and that George Ferris had in fact misquoted it, but she didn’t draw attention to his errors. She needed to keep him sweet for her next question.

‘So what kind of research was that American woman doing?’

‘She’s writing a biography of Esmond Chadleigh. Have you heard of him?’

‘Didn’t he do those children’s poems about the nurse?’

‘
Naughty Nursie’s Nursery Rhymes
.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Yes. And of course a lot more stuff.’

‘Oh, so she’s writing about Esmond Chadleigh, and she came to you as an expert on the subject?’

The description pleased him. ‘Yes. I’ve given her some very useful leads. Not of course that she’ll acknowledge my input.’ He sighed at the selfishness of the academic world, in which true genius was so often ignored; then nodded knowingly. ‘No, I think there’ll be quite a lot of stuff in Professor Marla Teischbaum’s book that she’d never have known about if I hadn’t set her on the right track.’

‘What kind of stuff?’ asked Jude innocently.

‘Oh, some unpublished private collections of letters, that kind of thing.’

‘Letters from members of the Chadleigh family?’

‘No,’ said George Ferris self-importantly. ‘Anyone’d know where to look for those. But if I hadn’t given Professor Teischbaum the lead, she’d never have looked for the Strider family letters.’

‘Oh,’ said Jude, as if she’d never heard the name before.

‘In my role as a consultant to the County Records Office . . .’ He bathed in self-admiration ‘ . . . I often check through documents which have been offered by members of the public . . . decide which ones should genuinely be kept, which ones justify use of the limited storage space we have available to us.’

‘And the . . . what did you say . . . Strider family letters? Those did seem worth keeping?’

‘Very definitely, yes.’

‘So when Professor Teischbaum’s biography comes out, and it gets wonderful reviews, really the credit should go to you . . .?’

‘Oh, I think that would be excessive.’ Though his manner suggested he didn’t, really.

‘Well, I think she’s behaved very badly. To be so ungrateful after all the help you’ve given her.’

‘I would have given her more . . . if she’d played her cards right,’ he added coyly.

The image appeared in Jude’s mind of George Ferris rationing out gobbets of research to Marla Teischbaum in exchange for sexual favours. It was too revolting to contemplate.

‘So you do have other information . . . that you didn’t give her . . .?’

‘Oh yes. As I say, with my consultancy to the County Records Office hat on, I do have access to all kinds of private documentation . . .’ he sniggered ‘ . . . and, without my pointing her in the right direction, there are certain connections she’s never going to make on her own.’

‘It must be a very responsible job,’ said Jude, still apparently awestruck by his brilliance.

‘Well, yes,’ he agreed. ‘I do have to make some pretty important decisions. For instance,’ he went on, in case she still hadn’t taken on board quite how important he was, ‘there was an old lady came to see me last year, name of Hidebourne. She had some letters, didn’t want them to get chucked out when she died, did I think there’d be a place for them in the County Records Office? She showed me a few, and I thought they would be very interesting, particularly because . . .’ He smiled at his own cunning ‘ . . . and this is the bit I didn’t tell Professor Teischbaum . . . there was a connection with the Strider family. Some letters from a Lieutenant Strider, who had a connection with Esmond Chadleigh. So . . . old Miss Hidebourne didn’t want to hand the documents over then and there . . . she still enjoys reading them . . . but it’s all been sorted out legally . . . and, soon as she pops her clogs, the letters will come here . . . to the County Records Office, that is.’

‘And you sorted all that out?’

‘Oh yes,’ he replied airily.

‘Fancy,’ breathed Jude, tapping her copy of
How To Get The Best From The Facilities Of The County Records Office
, ‘being able to do all that, and write books too.’

‘Just something I do.’

He made a self-deprecating wide-handed shrug, then looked at Jude closely. He seemed to realize for the first time that she was an attractive woman.

‘Maybe I could get you another drink . . .?’

Though thwarted in his pursuit of Professor Marla Teischbaum, a man as attractive as George Ferris wouldn’t have to go long without female company. Maybe it was time to strike out in a new direction. Jude could see the thoughts going through his head.

Deciding that she had maintained her masquerade quite long enough, she politely made her excuses and left the Cathedral. Just as she was about to enter the County Records Office, she looked back and saw George Ferris also leaving the pub and moving, a little unsteadily, in the direction of the car park.

Jude found Laurence Hawker sitting in the Reception area. He was coughing, of course; and continuing to smoke, of course. In fact, he only took the cigarette out of his mouth to take swigs from the half-bottle of whisky he held in his other hand.

The frosty woman behind the counter was clearly having a problem with him. She disapproved of his smoking. Now he’d added drinking to his crimes, her disapproval was even greater. But his appearance made her uncertain as to what she should do. She knew the protocol for ringing security to get rid of the usual type of drunk or dosser from her domain. But this visitor looked too elegant, too cultured, to be dealt with in that way. He confused her, and she didn’t like being confused.

Laurence looked up languidly at Jude’s entrance. ‘I knew you’d come back eventually,’ he said, and coughed.

She sat beside him and asked in a low voice, ‘Did Marla come back?’

He nodded, jerking his head back towards the Reading Room. Jude looked through the glass and saw the backview of Marla Teischbaum. She was once again arched over her books, absorbed in her research. She gave no signs of being affected by her recent encounter with the mistakenly amorous George Ferris.

‘Did you get any useful information, Laurence?’

‘You bet.’

‘Me too.’

‘Let’s go and have a drink somewhere and pool what we’ve got.’

The Cathedral was the nearest source of alcohol, and Jude had seen George Ferris leave, so she felt safe to return there. From Laurence’s slow pace of walking, the rattling and rasping of his breathing, he wouldn’t have been able to make it much further, anyway.

After the lunchtime rush, the pub was fairly empty. Jude got another white wine for herself, and a quadruple Scotch for Laurence. No point in rushing back and forth to the bar every five minutes.

‘You go first, Laurence. Did you manage to get a look at what Marla had been studying?’

‘Oh yes. It’s an academic skill you don’t lose. Get very used to peering over people’s shoulders in libraries, finding out what the opposition is up to. Sadly, though, I fear it’s a skill that won’t be valuable for a lot longer. As more and more research is done through the internet . . . Hm, a dying art.’ He grinned sardonically. ‘Probably see me out, though.’

Jude didn’t react to the morbid joking. ‘What was she looking for then?’

‘The lovely Marla appeared to be following up on the history of the Strider family.’

‘Strider as in Lieutenant Hugo Strider who was mentioned in those documents?’

‘I imagine so. She had some letters. And from the other stuff she had out – parish records, Land Registry documents, I’d say she was trying to trace any living descendants of Lieutenant Hugo Strider.’

‘But you don’t know whether she’d found any?’

He shook his head, sardonically regretful. ‘Rather thoughtlessly, she hadn’t left a notebook open on the desk with the name and addresses of the people she was next going to talk to.’

‘And even if she had,’ said Jude, ‘there’d be one very significant name and address missing from the list.’

‘Oh?’

‘An old woman who has in her possession some letters written by Lieutenant Hugo Strider. Her name’s Miss Hidebourne.’

‘I’ve spoken to Gina,’ said Carole. ‘She’s quite happy for me to have a look around Bracketts tomorrow.’

‘To inspect the Priest’s Hole?’

‘Yes. I’m going over about twelve.’

‘The police haven’t been there yet?’

‘Apparently not. Maybe they’ve got more important questions to ask Mervyn Hunter than where he spent the nights he was on the loose. Will they actually be questioning him in Austen Prison?’

‘No way.’ Jude shook her head. ‘I asked Sandy. Anyone who’s captured after an escape from an open prison goes straight into a Cat B or C one, at least initially. Mervyn’ll probably be in Lewes . . . if he’s not still with the police.’

‘Maybe he did kill Sheila Cartwright . . .’ said Carole, with an air almost of despondency.