Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (31 page)

There was no doubt about it. The sound on two sides of the room, near the landing and along the right-hand wall, was dull and solid. But over the remaining rectangle, into the far corner, the floorboards sounded hollow, as if there were a space beneath. A space that would have been enclosed by the cupboards on the ground floor.

The bubble of excitement returned, and this time it was irrepressible.

But how on earth could anyone get into the space beneath?

Carole Seddon stood up, and once again tried to bring her logic to bear on the problem.

The walls were solid and smoothly plastered, leaving no possibility of a hidden entrance. There were no visible breaks in the length of the floorboards either, which ruled out the chance of a section being lifted out, like a trap-door.

Then the only possible way for access to be given to the space beneath was for a whole length of floorboard to shift.

Carole moved backwards towards the landing as she pondered this. She heard a creak, just like the one when she had entered the room. She looked down at her feet. Yes, there was a slight give in the floorboards there.

Suppose one floorboard . . . or two floorboards . . . or a central section of floorboards . . . could be lifted out . . . or released downwards . . . or pivoted . . .?

Excitement bubbled again, but was primly curbed.

She moved to the far end of the room and looked under the fixed table. Disappointingly, the ends of the boards were tucked neatly under the skirting. But there was a marked creak and an almost imperceptible bounce underfoot at that end too.

Carole went back towards the landing, and knelt down to inspect the flooring by the entrance. Here again the ends of the boards disappeared under the solid beam that framed the bottom of the doorway.

But if that beam could be removed . . . then the boards would be freed . . .

Carole put both hands on the solid rectangle of wood and tried to pull it towards her.

Nothing. Locked solid.

She squatted back on her haunches, defeated and frustrated.

As she did so, she heard the mocking creak of a floorboard.

And she knew exactly what she had to do.

She put her full weight on the floorboards as near to the landing as she could. They gave. Only a little, but enough to release the lock on the step.

Carole reached down to the beam once more. This time it moved easily towards her, pivoted in the corner of the room. Carefully she stepped over the beam, as she swung it out in a wide arc until it lay parallel to the floorboards to the left-hand side of the room.

Her full weight was still on the floorboards at the landing end. Carefully, she stepped to one side.

The balance was finely judged, one end of the seesaw only slightly heavier than the other. Three parallel floorboards moved together on their hidden fulcrum, lifting slowly next to Carole and, at the table end, tipping down into the darkness beneath.

The bubble of excitement burst, and filled her body.

She let out a long, satisfied exhalation of relief. Then she switched on her torch.

Its beam revealed metal rungs fixed on the exposed wall below floor level.

In spite of her excitement, Carole Seddon, being Carole Seddon, was worried about how dirty the space beneath might be. So she removed her precious Burberry, and left it neatly folded on top of the table.

Then, with her torch held firmly between her teeth, Carole Seddon lowered herself down into the secret, ‘cunningly hidden’ section of the Priest’s Hole.

Jude hadn’t prepared any cover story. In spite of the frailty of her voice over the telephone, Miss Hide-bourne had sounded strong-willed, not the kind of woman to mess about with. And when Jude said she was interested in her collection of letters, particularly as they related to Lieutenant Hugo Strider, Miss Hide-bourne had said she was welcome to come and discuss them . . . ‘Though you’ll have to come here, I’m afraid, since I don’t get out as much as I used to.’

Jude hadn’t succeeded in persuading Laurence to go to the hospital or see a doctor – which didn’t surprise her – but he had agreed to spend the day in bed at Woodside Cottage. That might save some of his energy, which, given the difficulty he was having moving around, would be a good thing, but Jude didn’t delude herself that he’d do anything else mildly healthful. When she got back home, she expected to find the ashtrays full and the whisky bottles empty.

Miss Hidebourne lived in a small village just to the North of Lewes, where the South Downs flatten out and lose the lushness of West Sussex. Jude travelled by cab, and said she’d call a quarter of an hour before she wanted to be driven back to Fethering. She justified the expense on the grounds that she didn’t want to leave Laurence on his own for too long.

The old-fashioned voice on the phone had led her to expect a country cottage, but Miss Hidebourne lived in a modern block of flats for the elderly, right in the middle of the village. There were slopes for wheelchairs at all the entrances, round handrails on every wall.

The woman who opened the door looked in the last stages of time’s erosion. Her angular back was bowed; on her crooked hands the veins and bones vied for prominence; and her stick-like legs tottered on bandaged feet in large Velcro-flapped slippers. But she was neatly dressed, her thin white hair had been recently whipped by a hairdresser into a neat meringue, and there was no vagueness in the sharp brown eyes embedded in her wrinkled face.

‘You’re Jude, I take it. Come in.’

Hearing the voice again, Jude was aware of how upper-crust it was, a voice from another era, redolent of Angela Brazil’s school stories.

‘Incidentally,’ said Miss Hidebourne, as she led her into the tiny, neat sitting room, ‘I can’t just call you “Jude”. Sorry, it’s the way I was brought up, to use people’s proper names. Can’t stand the way all these nurses and people who’ve never met you before insist on calling you by your Christian name. So what is your full name?’

Meekly, because she rarely mentioned it, Jude said, ‘Jude Nichol.’

‘Right, so is it “Mrs” or “Miss” Nichol?’

‘ “Miss” will do fine,’ replied Jude, retaining a little of her mystery.

‘Now, I’m sure you’d like a cup of tea.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ the bird-like figure riposted firmly. ‘I was just about to have one myself. Do just sit down and I’ll bring it to you.’

‘Isn’t there anything I can do to help?’

‘No, there certainly isn’t.’ The tone used by Miss Hidebourne suggested that a serious breach of etiquette had just been committed. As she sank obediently back into her chair, Jude couldn’t help being reminded of Carole. A certain generation of middle-class British had tea rituals at least as elaborate as anything witnessed in Japan.

‘While I’m getting the tea ready, Miss Nichol, you may care to peruse those documents I’ve put on the little table there. They’ll tell you something of Gerard.’

‘Gerard?’

‘My brother. He it was with whom Lieutenant Strider used to correspond.’

‘Ah, thank you.’

Jude watched the agonizing slowness with which Miss Hidebourne made her progress out of the room. If the tea-making was going to be conducted at the same pace, then she could be alone in the sitting room for some time.

The documents Miss Hidebourne had prepared for her were in a buff cardboard folder, a collection of neatly clipped-together papers, a few letters and some news cuttings. It was soon clear that most of them dated from 1984, the year of Gerard Hidebourne’s death.

The newspaper cuttings were obituaries. Born to an eminent Catholic family in 1889, he had gone to Oxford in 1908 (one of a small minority of his faith, because Catholics had been banned from English universities until 1897). Subsequently Gerard Hidebourne had trained as a priest, being ordained in 1913. He appeared to have taken no part in the First World War, and continued working as a parish priest until his retirement in 1964. For the remaining twenty years until his death, he had lived with his sister in Lewes.

‘Not a very exciting life, was it?’

Jude looked up in surprise to see Miss Hidebourne edging into the room with a tea tray balanced precariously on her arthritic hands. Everything must have been prepared in the kitchen, even the kettle boiled, before her guest arrived.

As Miss Hidebourne teetered towards her, Jude watched with trepidation. The entire contents of the tea tray looked as if they might at any second be tipped into her lap, but she knew better than to cause offence by making an offer of help.

By sheer will-power, Miss Hidebourne managed to secure the tea tray on the small table by her chair. Then she sat down, with a smile that suggested the exercise had been no effort at all.

‘Now you’ve moved the file, you’ll be able to use the small table beside you,’ she said, once again reminding Jude of Carole.

While tea was solemnly dispensed, Jude picked up on Miss Hidebourne’s entering remark. ‘You say your brother’s life wasn’t very exciting.’

‘Would you describe a life spent administering meaningless sacraments to uncomprehending parishioners as one packed with interest, Miss Nichol?’

‘It certainly wouldn’t suit me, but then I don’t have faith.’

‘Nor did Gerard,’ Miss Hidebourne almost snapped. ‘He started with faith. His early letters glow with faith. But the Great War started the rot. He lost so many friends . . . so many friends . . . not to mention two brothers.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘Why should you? Don’t worry, I never met them. I was born after the War. 1919. My parents’ attempt to replace part of what they’d lost, perhaps. Or maybe just a late surprise. Either way, it was a big responsibility for me. Imagine the pressure of going through life with that over your head all the time.’

‘It can’t have been easy.’

‘You have a gift for understatement, Miss Nichol.’

‘So your brother lost his faith. What about you, Miss Hidebourne? You were presumably brought up a Catholic too?’

‘Yes, and I lost mine. In my early twenties, inevitably, when contraception became an issue. I am still sometimes appalled when I stop and think how much harm, how much total destruction, the Catholic Church must have caused in human sexual relationships.’

‘But they say, “once a Catholic . . .” ’

‘And I believe, Miss Nichol, they intend the tag to be finished “ . . . always a Catholic”. Not in my case. For me, being “Once a Catholic” has made me daily more aware of what a pernicious creed it is.’

Miss Hidebourne, Jude had by now pieced together, was not a woman who had problems about speaking her mind.

The old brown eyes focused on her guest. ‘Do you have a religion?’

‘I have . . . beliefs.’

Miss Hidebourne shrugged them quickly away. ‘Not the same thing at all. Beliefs don’t have rules. With beliefs you can change them at will. They don’t have a whole meaningless superstructure of rituals and rewards and punishments.’

Jude did not entirely agree, but she didn’t take issue. ‘So are you saying you think your brother’s life was wasted?’

‘Absolutely. He devoted his life to something for which he had no aptitude, and which for most of his life he didn’t even believe in. He was not a man with the common touch. As a result, for his parishioners he was always a kind of joke. And, because of Gerard’s choices, I am the last of the Hidebournes. When I die – and it won’t be long now – that will be the end of the family.’

‘Was this why you wanted your papers to be kept at the County Records Office?’

‘So that there’s something left, yes. Gerard should have married. He would have been much happier with a wife and children. And the name would have carried on. Don’t get me started on the subject of the celibacy of priests. A totally ridiculous principle, based on no scriptural authority at all, introduced first as an economic measure so that the Catholic Church would not be responsible for the upkeep of all the brats spawned by their staff, and the cause of more misery than . . .’

She caught Jude’s eye and, surprisingly, smiled. ‘As I said, don’t get me started on that . . . No, Miss Nichol, that is not why you are here, is it?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘The subject of the harm done by the Catholic Church must wait for another occasion.’ The old lady rubbed her misshapen hands together. ‘You said on the telephone you were interested in the letters to my brother from Lieutenant Hugo Strider.’

‘Yes. It’s in fact in relation to some research a friend’s doing on Esmond Chadleigh.’

‘Ah, another victim of Catholicism.’ She raised her hand mischievously, as if to curb her tongue. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to fulminate again. Hugo Strider, yes. He and Gerard met at Oxford. There weren’t that many Catholics there at the time, so they bonded deeply. Kept up a correspondence until Hugo’s death.’

‘When was that?

‘Early thirties. 1933 . . . 34 . . . I was little more than a child, but I remember hearing that Gerard had been terribly upset. Though, of course, Hugo Strider had never really been the same after the War. He was hideously injured at Passchendaele. Lost the power of speech and . . . I think his death was probably a long-delayed, but merciful, release. He died at Bracketts.’