Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (32 page)

‘Did he?’

‘Yes. Felix Chadleigh, Esmond’s father, offered him a home, and he went there after the medics had patched him up. Spent the remainder of his life at Bracketts. A miserable time, if his letters to Gerard are to be believed.’

‘Miserable because of his physical sufferings?’

‘He hardly mentioned those. No, it was his conscience that hurt him.’ The old woman smiled sardonically. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that guilt is another destructive speciality of the Catholic Church.’

‘So I’ve heard. But tell me, Miss Hidebourne, what had Hugo Strider got to be guilty about?’

‘He felt guilty about his involvement in the death of Felix Chadleigh’s son, Graham.’

Little light spilled down from the chamber above, but Carole Seddon’s torch revealed the dimensions of the tiny secret cell. Pointing it upwards, she could see, through the cobwebs, a fine ceiling decorated with carved Tudor roses. On the floor lay a tattered rug, a candle in a holder, a couple of old books and an empty biscuit packet. Unlike everything else in the space, these were not dusty, and Carole felt certain they were signs of Mervyn Hunter’s recent occupation . . . though how he’d come to know of the hiding place she had no idea. As she had the thought, however, she recalled Jude mentioning Mervyn’s reading about the house’s history in the Bracketts library. Maybe he’d found some reference to the double Priest’s Hole and investigated it for himself.

The conjoined floorboards which had seesawed to allow her entrance stayed in the open position, and she had to make her way around the downward-projecting end to see what lay on the far wall. As she passed, she turned the torch-beam up towards the bar or beam on which the boards pivoted.

A solid iron rod stretched the whole width of the ceiling. It was fixed in place by huge metal fittings whose ornate working, picking up the rose motif carved on the beams, suggested they dated from the time of the house’s construction. A very simple, but neat and effective feat of engineering.

Though not given to flights of the imagination, Carole couldn’t help wondering how many Catholic priests had quaked down here in desperate prayer, listening as the sound of searching footsteps boomed around the house. Her excitement was diluted with uneasiness.

Nor could she quite suppress a shudder of claustrophobia. Locked down here, she thought, you’d be completely at the mercy of someone else. When the floorboards were back in place, the locking mechanism could only be released from above. The cell would be the perfect place in which to immure an unwanted visitor. She wondered if its history had encompassed the slow death of some unfortunate who had offended one of Bracketts’ owners.

To displace such uncomfortable thoughts, Carole turned the beam of her torch on to the far wall, to reveal a collapsing bookcase loaded with cardboard storage boxes. They were of antiquated design, probably thirties office equipment, and over them the dust lay as thick as felt.

Carole wished she had gloves, but they were in the pocket of her Burberry, and she was too excited to bother going up to fetch them.

She reached forward to one of the cardboard boxes, lifted the lid, and shone her torch inside.

It was full to the brim of hand-written papers.

The paper was unlined, and the further down the page the small awkward handwriting progressed, the more its lines tended to drift upwards to the right.

Whatever Carole was looking at had been written by Esmond Chadleigh.

Miss Hidebourne riffled through a neat box-file of letters, one of many, each labelled with dates and details of its contents. When they were finally handed over to the County Records Office, the papers would be in excellent order.

‘The same theme recurs in many of the letters, amidst a certain amount of Bracketts domestic trivia and news of old Oxford friends.’ The old lady held one out to Jude. ‘This’ll give you an idea of the sort of thing, Miss Nichol. Dated 1933, the year before Hugo Strider died. Read that paragraph.’

Jude obediently followed the swollen-knuckled finger.

‘I don’t suppose,’ asked Jude, ‘that you have any idea of the nature of the crime which Lieutenant Strider committed.’

The small, white-haired head shook. ‘No idea that I can prove, no. But it’s clearly nothing venial, is it?’

‘No.’

‘And in the heat of the battle, in a hell on earth like Passchendaele, with men armed to the teeth, all kind of things could have happened, couldn’t they? With nobody any the wiser?’

‘Are you suggesting that Lieutenant Strider murdered Graham Chadleigh?’

‘Well, it’s a thought, isn’t it?’ said Miss Hidebourne with a sweet smile.

Carole was sitting with her back against the wall of her cell. Around her spread a litter of open, dusty boxes. She was totally absorbed in the riches she had unearthed.

She focused torchlight on to a letter in the neat copperplate handwriting of Felix Chadleigh.

What on earth could it mean? What
was
he talking about?

Carole riffled through the contents of the latest box. She found another unlined sheet in Esmond Chadleigh’s distinctive hand. There were scratchings-out and words inserted, a draft of something he was working on.

She read: ‘I’m writing to you at the request of my commanding officer who had a request from Lieutenant Strider for anyone who witnessed what happened to his men . . .’

Carole heard a sound from the main Priest’s Hole above. Her heart leapt in shock, as she looked guiltily upwards.

The beam of a strong torch invaded her hideaway, coming to rest on her face, blinding her.

Jude was thoughtful as she left Miss Hidebourne’s flat and stood waiting for her taxi. The old lady had, reasonably enough, not allowed her to take any of the letters with her, but given permission for further research visits if required. If he was fit enough, Jude wanted to get Laurence to come and look through the material. Though the image of him dripping his cigarette ash over the neat surfaces of Miss Hidebourne’s flat was incongruous, his instinct for research would quickly lead him to what was important.

Jude had found some useful detail in the letters, and pieced together a kind of chronology for Lieutenant Strider’s life in 1917. Writing to Gerard Hide-bourne, he had told how he’d used his influence from out in Flanders to get a commission in his own regiment for the eighteen-year-old Graham Chadleigh. There were a few mentions of the young man’s officer training, details passed on in letters Strider had received from Felix Chadleigh, and the Lieutenant’s clear view that such minimal preparation was inadequate for someone about to face the horrors of the Ypres Salient.

Then, at the beginning of October 1917, Strider wrote to his friend from Bracketts. He’d been given two weeks’ home leave and, since he had no close living relatives, the natural course was to spend that time with his old friend Felix Chadleigh and his family.

Jude recalled how the letter had captured the atmosphere of suppressed tension in the house.

After that letter, there had been a long gap in the correspondence between Lieutenant Strider and Gerard Hidebourne. It was not resumed until March 1920, by which time the doctors had done all they could for the crippled man and he was staying as a permanent invalid at Bracketts.

From the moment this new stream of letters started, the guilt was in them. Jude had read a few more, but they hadn’t added a lot to the first one Miss Hidebourne had shown her. Hugo Strider was deeply troubled by something dreadful he had done, something so dreadful he could not tell his closest friend, so dreadful he could not even breathe the secret in the anonymity of the confessional. And the crime was in some way related to the death of Graham Chadleigh.

‘You’re not meant to be down there,’ said the owner of the torch. ‘Nobody’s meant to go down there.’

‘But I’m a Trustee,’ protested Carole. In the circumstances her assertion sounded rather feeble.

‘I’m coming down,’ said Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. And, with considerable puffing and wheezing, he lowered himself down the rungs into the cell below.

His wide torch-beam sought out the opened boxes around Carole. ‘You shouldn’t be looking in those.’

All Carole could think of was to repeat the fact that she was a Trustee, but there didn’t seem much point.

‘This material’s all secret. It’s been down here since Esmond died. No one’s allowed to look at it.’ He sounded as if he was repeating a formula learnt by rote, a pupil in detention reciting the school rules.

‘Do you mean even you haven’t looked at it, Graham?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s forbidden.’

‘Is this the first time you’ve been down here?’