‘All secure, Kate?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Shooting an apprehensive sideways glance at her fellow DS, she cleared her throat. ‘It’s an amazing place.’
Markham’s smile was kind.
‘People think it’s all whipped cream and sponge-cake style paintings, but there’s a decent section on contemporary art,’ she elaborated, her tone defensive.
‘You mean folk being angry with splattery paint,’ Noakes grunted.
There was something almost ritualistic about their sparring, Markham thought with amusement. The preliminary skirmishes before they got down to the serious business of finding a murderer.
‘Where’re we up to with initial statements, Kate?’
‘Doyle and the uniforms are just winding things up downstairs, sir. He’ll be along in a few minutes.’
‘Good.’
Markham’s keen grey eyes were fastened on her face.
‘First impressions?’
‘As you’d expect, sir. Everyone shocked. The facilities manager, Rebecca Summerson, looked badly shaken up. I mean, she took control — snapping out orders left, right and centre — but when we were checking the rooms, I caught her leaning against a wall like she’d been sucker-punched.’
It chimed with what Noakes had noticed.
‘She didn’t like it when I said she should take a moment, sit down, have a glass of water. Got pretty sharp with me. So I didn’t push it.’ Burton’s expression was thoughtful. ‘She seemed like the kind of person who’s afraid of looking weak.’
Afraid of looking weak or afraid of something else? Markham wondered.
‘When was the last time anyone saw Ms Melville?’
‘No one’s entirely sure about that. Funnily enough, though, Gemma Clarke said she’d been spending a lot of time in the Pre-Raphaelite room.’ Seeing Noakes looking mulish, she elucidated, ‘The one with the Victorian paintings. The same room Gemma visited shortly before she found the body.’
‘Oh aye, what was the big attraction, then?’
‘Well, the pictures in there are very dramatic and brightly coloured — lots of myths and legends, biblical stories, if you like that kind of thing.’
It was clear her colleague didn’t.
‘But we’re not just talking escapist fantasy,’ Burton persisted. ‘Apparently they’re full of in-jokes and coded messages—’
‘Messages?’ She had Noakes’s interest now.
‘Yes, for people in the know.’
The DS cogitated.
‘P’raps there was a symbol in one of them pictures which meant summat to Helen Melville . . . summat dangerous.’
He caught himself up short, beefy features mottled with embarrassment, and looked belligerently at Burton as though he would accuse her of luring him into flights of fancy.
‘I think you may be onto something there, Sergeant,’ the DI observed quietly.
Mollified, Noakes proceeded to develop his hypothesis.
‘Which painting was it she liked best, then?’ he asked Burton.
‘The same one Gemma Clarke liked. Life and Thought Emerging from the Tomb.’
‘Eh?’
‘It’s what they call an allegorical painting.’ Burton was careful not to sound patronizing. ‘It shows two figures leaving a kind of little house . . . a sort of grave monument—’
‘Like the ones down the municipal cemetery,’ Noakes put in, ‘the tombs for the posh families. Proper fancy some of ’em.’ He shuddered slightly, doubtless recalling an earlier case when he and Markham had ended up exhuming murder victims from the waterlogged neighbourhood of one such mausoleum.
‘That’s right. Well, the idea is that the figures represent Life and Thought leaving the body and setting off for heaven.’
‘Is that all?’
Markham did his best not to smile. Clearly Noakes had been hoping for cabalistic clues worthy of the Da Vinci Code.
‘There are all kinds of symbols of life after death,’ Burton persevered gamely. ‘The painter included a peacock, a butterfly and a bird hatching out of an egg.’
Noakes did his best to meet her halfway.
‘It’s weird all right.’ He scratched his frowsy thatch. ‘But why would any of that stuff have spooked her?’
‘We don’t know that it did,’ Markham observed before Burton had a chance to embark on a discussion of nineteenth-century iconography. ‘The painting might not have anything to do with her death. She could just have been in a morbid state of mind. Or perhaps she simply felt drawn to it like Gemma.’ Observing his subordinates’ disappointed faces, he added, ‘But it’s part of the background to her murder . . . part of the context. So let’s not discount it.’
Suddenly there came the sound of an eerie rhythmic rattling which took them by surprise.
Sleet.
To Markham the moment felt disconcertingly sinister, as though they were trapped in some sort of kettledrum.
‘It’s not the first murder to have happened here,’ Noakes blurted out.
He had their full attention.
‘Well, last time was more a disappearance than a murder.’
‘You’re full of surprises, Sergeant. Tell us more.’
Knuckling his forehead as though by this means he could assist his memory, the DS duly obliged.
‘It wasn’t long after I’d joined the force, guv. A little lad wandered away from his mum down one of the corridors upstairs. There’d been a power cut or summat like that an’ she kinda lost sight of him for a moment . . . got distracted . . . Afterwards she said she remembered him walking away from her but then he seemed to sort of, well, blur into the shadows.’ The DS shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Like he was there one minute and gone the next. It was quite dim and gloomy with the lights being off, so at first she thought she could still see him. But then she called out an’ he didn’t answer. By the time she got to the other end, there was no sign.’
‘I’m with you now, Sergeant,’ Markham said slowly. ‘The Carter abduction.’
‘That’s the one, guv. Never solved. Big Jim McLeod an’ the rest bust a gut on it, but nada.’ Noakes’s face was grim. ‘It was a Sunday afternoon . . . bit like today. The poor cow only really came in to get out of the rain and see some nice bits ’n bobs. Never got over it an’ ended up on the sauce.’
‘You don’t think there’s a connection with Helen Melville do you, sir?’ Burton looked troubled. ‘I mean, a cold case . . .’
‘Could just be a tragic coincidence, Kate, but I’ll want to review the Carter files asap.’
She nodded, her face sombre.
There was a rap at the door and DC Doyle appeared.
The tall, gangling ginger-haired detective was the fourth member of the unit and, after a rocky start, had proved himself a valuable member of the team. Something of a sharp dresser, his Hugo Boss suit struck just the right note of professionalism, so that he looked perfectly at ease in his surroundings. As with Noakes — his mentor when it came to football and affairs of the heart alike — it had taken time for him to jell with Kate Burton, but they had developed a solid mutual respect which seemed proof against any ‘arty-fartiness’ on her part.
‘We’ve got all the statements and contact details now, sir,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘There were only a few visitors in the building on account of it being a Sunday, but they’re all accounted for.’
‘Thank you, Constable,’ Markham said crisply, rising to his feet. ‘I’d like a word with Ms Summerson, but the rest of the staff can go. With the gallery being a crime scene, we’ll do interviews in the library next door. I’d like you to get that set up for tomorrow morning please.’
Clicking his heels smartly, Doyle disappeared into the corridor.
Outside the sleet had ceased its insistent thrumming.
Burton felt curiously reluctant to leave the safe space of the office. But Markham was motioning towards the door.
Time to hear what Rebecca Summerson had to say.
2. Birds of Para
dise
Now that the staff had left the building, the front entrance seemed more cavernous than ever, its hollow acoustics heightening the gallery’s resemblance to a place of worship.
‘Jus’ like the swimming baths,’ Noakes observed more prosaically. ‘Everything sounds like it’s a long way off.’
Dream-like and somehow unreal, thought Markham, watching strange aqueous shafts of light strike the chilly marble floor from the cupola high above.
The facilities manager’s office was located to the rear of the gallery café. Not particularly prepossessing, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other executive office. Save for one unusual feature.
A reproduction which the DI immediately recognized.
The famous And When Did You Last See Your Father?
He contemplated it with pleasure, temporarily oblivious to the other occupants of the room.
The little boy with feathery blond hair, clad in powder-blue breeches and lace-collared jacket, confronting Cromwell’s Roundheads with his hands clasped nervously behind his back as they interrogated him about his Royalist father’s whereabouts. Perhaps it was the fact that the child was depicted standing on a footstool which made the portrait so poignant . . .
‘It was moved down here some years back. No one remembers where it hung to start with. The original’s regularly on tour, of course. On loan to Sudley House in Liverpool right now.’
This was a whippet-thin nervy-looking blonde with sharp angular features and cut-glass accent to match. Expensively dressed in what looked like a vintage coral dress and jacquard tapestry jacket, hair drawn back in an elaborate pleat, she appeared composed, though her features were bleached with strain.
‘Just as well CID’s budget doesn’t run to high art,’ Markham said lightly. ‘No chance of our being distracted by Halsbury’s Laws of England or Spilsbury on Blood Stains, eh, Noakes?’
And a good thing too, was the DS’s private conclusion, though he forbore to voice this aloud, preserving the inscrutable stolidity which he considered an essential antidote to the guvnor’s intellectualism.
At their entry, Rebecca Summerson had been standing with two men in the centre of the room, flanked on one side by a mahogany partners desk with smaller adjoining desk, and on the other by a brown leather chesterfield and three button-backed armchairs. Ugly central heating pipes ran along the scuffed white-painted skirting but they at least had the merit of ensuring the room was several degrees warmer than the marble lobby. The uneven hardwood floor was almost covered by a somewhat faded crimson Aubusson carpet while a ceramic jardinière in one corner held some forlorn sprays of winter jasmine. Two fussy chandelier floor lamps and a low wooden cabinet crammed with art books failed to soften the room’s rather oppressive atmosphere. All in all, it was a curiously impersonal space which gave no clue to its occupant’s personality. Perhaps that was the intention.
The room had no windows, but there was a large square skylight on which the darkness of the November evening seemed to press down like a pall. For a moment, glancing up at it, Markham thought he saw the outline of a face in the top right-hand corner. Then he blinked, and the fleeting impression was gone.
Introductions were duly made.
The older of the two men was Aubrey Carstone, head of Conservation, who looked to be in his early seventies but held himself ramrod straight. With his double-breasted, two-piece pinstriped suit and waistcoat, fine head of silver hair, patrician mien and round-frame glasses, he exuded an air of courteous formality. Marcus Traherne, by contrast, appeared almost spivvish. Much younger, short and stocky with slicked back dark hair and fleshy, petulant features, he was flamboyantly dressed in a garish Prince of Wales check suit whose calculated Woosterishness seemed almost designed to set teeth on edge. Carstone’s voice was mellifluous and cultured, while Traherne’s words emerged in a lazy drawl. Vowels optional, one might say.
Markham had the feeling that neither Rebecca Summerson nor Aubrey Carstone particularly cared for Traherne. Certainly, Carstone visibly winced when the head of Craft and Design joked about the gallery being ‘jinxed.’ Involuntarily, the older man’s eyes wandered to the room’s sole painting and the figure of the little boy with the golden hair. The facilities manager’s eyes followed his gaze, her expression solicitous. Of course, if Carstone was a long-timer, he could have been around at the time of the Carter tragedy, so his colleague’s ill-judged levity was no doubt dredging up all kinds of painful memories.
Traherne seemed to realize he had made a gaffe. ‘Sorry, bad taste,’ he mumbled with what appeared to be genuine compunction.
‘It’s been a trying day,’ Carstone said with magnificent British understatement.
And indeed, all three looked drained, Summerson and Carstone almost putty-coloured with fatigue and distress. As for Traherne, well something was definitely troubling him, thought Markham. Not just the murder . . . something else.
But the DI knew better than to press. Even in the ‘Golden Hour’ of an investigation, he knew how to wait. Fools rush in, was ever his watchword. The checking of alibis could wait till morning.
So now he simply expressed his condolences. Correctly, sincerely, with the compassionate reserve which invariably characterized his dealings with all those caught up in the maelstrom of a murder investigation.
Taking the hint, Carstone offered Traherne a lift to Bromgrove Station and the two men left the facilities manager’s office.
Once the door had shut quietly behind them, the words burst out of Rebecca Summerson with the brittle velocity of machine gun fire. ‘I think I should tell you — before you hear it from anyone else — that I was in a relationship with Helen Melville.’ Two spots of angry colour burned on the high cheekbones. ‘Or rather, I had been in a relationship with her until just recently,’ she concluded miserably.
Something in the steady tranquillity of Markham’s gaze seemed to reassure her. More collectedly, she continued, ‘We were having space from each other, if you like . . . Things had got too heavy . . .’
‘Was there someone else?’ Markham prompted gently.
‘A PhD. Fine Arts student from the university. Charles Randall. Tall, dark and handsome, if you like that kind of thing,’ she added defiantly.
‘Were the two of ’em happy together?’ Noakes asked bluntly.
It was a twist of the rack.
‘They were thick as thieves all right,’ came the bitter reply. ‘Forever whispering and passing each other notes about their latest hobby-horse.’
‘And what would that be, Ms Summerson?’
‘Randall’s specialism is aediculae. Funerary shrines and monuments. Last I heard, he was writing a paper on the Holy Sepulchre. Helen was helping him with it.’
‘That’s the cathedral in Jerusalem with the strange miniature church inside it,’ Burton broke in excitedly. ‘I’ve seen pictures. It’s got a little secret passageway and room with a shelf marking where they think Christ was buried and—’
‘Hold on a sec.’ Noakes radiated bafflement. ‘Whatcha mean miniature church? Like in one of them model villages? A toy church?’
‘No, sarge. It’s a real church but inside a cathedral. People can stand up and walk round in it.’
‘Think of it as being like a house within a house,’ the facilities manager said kindly, momentarily distracted from the wreckage of her love life. ‘As if a mausoleum from the municipal cemetery were to be magically transported from the graveyard and set down in St Mary’s Cathedral.’
Noakes’s eyes widened, not altogether pleasurably, at the thought.
‘Aediculae,’ Markham said musingly. ‘That’s an interesting field of study. Isn’t there something similar in Italy?’
‘That’s right. Inside the basilica — the cathedral — in Loreto. A stone house where the Virgin Mary was supposed to have lived in Nazareth.’
‘How’d it get to Italy?’ Noakes was intrigued despite himself.
‘It was supposedly carried there by angels in the
Middle Ages to protect it from the Saracens. After a few stops along the way, they eventually set it down at Loreto where a shrine was built over it.’
The DS made a noise that sounded very much like ‘Pshaw’, but it was clear the idea had a hold on him nonetheless. ‘Like those funny stacking dolls — the Rusky ones — that go one inside the other,’ he said ruminatively.
‘Same principle, Sergeant,’ the facilities manager said laconically.
Markham regarded her narrowly. ‘You said Ms Melville and Charles Randall were “thick as thieves.” Were they up to something you didn’t approve of . . . something underhand?’
‘Well, they were always in a huddle . . . almost conspiratorial. Then Helen dropped hints about having found something in our archives. Stood right where you’re standing now and bragged about finding the key to a mystery from the past. Unsolved crimes or some such folderol.’
‘Think carefully, Ms Summerson. This could be important,’ Markham said seriously. ‘You’re quite sure that’s what she said?’
The woman looked discomfited.
‘Well, she was always prone to melodrama. My attitude was she could keep her stupid secret.’
Perhaps if Helen Melville had confided in her former lover, she might still be alive. As it was, an indiscreet boast had likely signed her death warrant.
‘Was Mr Randall in on the secret?’
The DI knew what was on Burton’s mind. Charles Randall might well be in danger if their killer believed his girlfriend had shared her discovery.
Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set Page 104