The Sussex Murder

by Ian Sansom

  Miriam yawned.

  ‘Downstairs, miss, there are lots of etchings and some very fine watercolours—’

  ‘If you think because I’m a woman I’d be more interested in etchings and watercolours,’ said Miriam, blowing smoke in his general direction.

  ‘No, not at all,’ said Michael. ‘I just thought—’

  ‘Apologies for my daughter,’ said Morley. ‘If she’d been born a few years earlier she’d doubtless have been a suffragette.’

  ‘Ah, well, you might be interested in our little display on radical Lewes then,’ said Michael, leading us towards another green baize-topped table, similarly set up with some typewritten documents and copies of engraved portraits.

  ‘The author of The Rights of Man?’ said Morley, indicating one of the engravings.

  ‘Correct. Though perhaps more famous for our purposes here in Lewes as the winner of the Headstrong Book, which was an old Greek Homer awarded to the most obstinate haranguer at the White Hart evening club, where we were the other evening.’

  ‘You don’t have the original Headstrong Book?’ asked Morley.

  ‘Alas, no,’ said Michael.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Morley. ‘I know just the person we might award it to.’

  ‘Very funny, Father,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Paine’s home is just off the High Street,’ said Michael. ‘Almost opposite St Michael’s, if you want to visit. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘Oh, we shall definitely visit Paine’s house,’ said Morley.

  ‘We shall definitely not,’ said Miriam to me quietly.

  ‘Now Paine I am familiar with,’ said Morley. ‘But these other Lewesians?’

  ‘Oh gosh, yes, we have a tremendous radical history here in Lewes. Home to Dissenters, obviously, Quakers and Baptists, Unitarians. And Lewes Prison once housed Eamon de Valera, after the Easter Rising.’

  ‘I did not know that,’ said Morley.

  ‘We don’t have a photograph, I’m afraid,’ said Michael. ‘But you’ll have heard perhaps of Reverend T.W. Horsfield, the historian?’ He pointed at an engraving of a man who looked very much like a Reverend T.W. Horsfield.

  ‘Ah yes, Horsfield, of course,’ said Morley.

  ‘And Gideon Mantell, the great Sussex geologist.’ He pointed at another engraving.

  ‘Discoverer of the bones of the iguanodon,’ said Morley. ‘Now him I do know about.’

  ‘Yes. Born in Lewes, and made his discoveries in Cuckfield. Many of his finds are now in the British Museum.’

  ‘How fascinating.’

  ‘Miriam, radical Sussex,’ said Morley. ‘Your sort of thing, eh?’

  ‘No women, I suppose?’ said Miriam.

  ‘I’m afraid not, no,’ said Michael.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Miriam, wandering off to sulk and enjoy her cigarette in peace.

  ‘So you’re here to write one of your county books, I understand,’ said Michael to Morley.

  ‘Yes, that’s correct. We are hoping to be able to travel across the county a little.’

  ‘Well, the greatest journey across Sussex, as you know, was that taken by Charles II in 1651, escaping with Thomas and George Gunter of Racton.’ Michael led us towards another green baize table, with another deadly dull display – this time of stuff vaguely relating to Charles II. ‘He first crossed the Broadhalfpenny Down, Catherington Down, Charlton Down, Idsworth Down, until reaching Compton Down, and then finally through Houghton Forest and so to Amberley and eventually to Brighton.’

  ‘Yes, an extraordinary journey,’ said Morley. ‘The definitive Sussex journey, one might say.’

  ‘Or one might not,’ said Miriam, who had wandered back, bored. ‘Depending on one’s point of view.’

  Miriam looked at me and indicated that we should try to move things along.

  ‘Mr Anderson—’ I began.

  ‘Where else would you recommend we visit in the county, while we’re here?’ asked Morley.

  Miriam shook her head at me in disgust.

  ‘Oh, there are so many wonderful places, and always new places to discover. I was visiting recently at a clergy house at Alfriston – I’d never been before – and which turned out to be a rare example of a fourteenth-century Wealden hall house.’

  ‘Really?’ said Miriam. ‘A fourteenth-century Wealden hall house?’

  ‘Yes, and the churches at—’

  ‘We don’t do churches,’ said Miriam firmly.

  ‘Well, Selmeston,’ said Michael, ‘pronounced by the locals Simson. That’s rather lovely. Firle, pronounced Furrel. Alciston, which is Ahlstone. The pronunciation takes a bit of getting used to, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Lewes almost sounds like Lose,’ said Morley.

  ‘I suppose it does,’ said Michael. ‘I’d never thought of that.’

  ‘And how do you find living in Lewes?’ asked Morley.

  ‘Oh, I adore it,’ said Michael. ‘I rather think of Lewes as like the nation in miniature, actually. You’ve got the Medieval alongside the Georgian alongside the Tudor alongside the—’

  ‘Knee bone connected to the thigh bone?’ said Miriam.

  ‘We’ve got the river and the racecourse, and it’s an assize town, of course. I think I like it because it seems … untainted.’

  ‘Really?’ said Miriam, her interest piqued. ‘Untainted in what sense, Mr Anderson?’

  ‘It’s a place where perhaps some of the problems and pressures brought by outsiders to the country have not reached.’

  ‘And the sorts of problems and pressures you have in mind are?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘Well, undesirables, really, you know, the Jews and their—’

  One had begun to hear a certain amount of this sort of talk. One didn’t necessarily expect to hear it under the ancient tie-beams of the Barbican House in Lewes.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Miriam, wagging her finger at Michael. ‘No, no, no. I didn’t realise you held such objectionable views, sir.’

  ‘Everyone is entitled to their opinion, miss, are they not?’

  ‘If their opinion is based on facts,’ said Miriam.

  ‘I think you’ll find if you look at what’s happening in London, miss—’

  ‘Do you know the play Sir Thomas More?’ asked Morley, who had been unusually silent for a moment, clearly gathering his thoughts.

  ‘I can’t say I do, sir—’

  ‘It’s about—’

  ‘Sir Thomas More?’ said Miriam.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Morley.

  ‘Relevance, Father?’

  ‘Bit of an Elizabethan obscurity, admittedly, but in the play – which I saw performed by students in London a few years ago, a really remarkable production—’

  ‘Anyway, Father.’

  ‘Anyway, in the play, More asks Londoners to imagine the plight of the “wretched strangers” – something like that – arriving with their children and their worldly goods at the port of London and he asks them – I’m paraphrasing here, obviously – what would you think, if you were the wretched stranger? To ignore the plight of the stranger, in More’s words, is to display “mountainish inhumanity”. It would not do for us English to be mountainish inhumane, would it?’

  ‘It rather depends, I think, Mr Morley, if one thinks that one does more good by encouraging people to come to this country, leaving behind their own culture and ways, or whether one might do better to encourage them to remain in their own countries and work for the good of their own people.’

  ‘And if the latter is not possible?’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I’m an Englishman, Mr Morley, and for me, my nation and my people will always come first. Britain first.’

  ‘And last, with that sort of attitude,’ said Miriam.

  A silence descended upon the great room of the ancient Sussex Archaeological Society, as the great irreconcilable differences between us became apparent.

  Morley glanced up at one of the maps on the wall.

  ‘Regnum, I believe the Romans called it,’
he said, attempting to restart and redirect the conversation. Michael, in fairness, played along, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Chichester? Yes, Regnum, the great rural capital of England,’ he said.

  ‘And the southern terminal of Stane Street, I believe, which was one of the great ancient Roman roads, was it not?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Michael.

  ‘The others being, Sefton?’

  ‘The other?’

  ‘Great Roman roads in Britain?’

  ‘Erm …’

  ‘Never mind. Romans. Anglo-Saxons. Vikings. Normans. Huguenots. Have all trod those roads, and doubtless made their homes here in Lewes, over many generations.’

  ‘All the more reason for us to protect the place now,’ said Michael.

  ‘Again, we shall have to agree to disagree,’ said Morley. He pointed to an area on the map.

  ‘Do you know, Mr Anderson, I’ve always wanted to have a look at Manhood,’ he said.

  ‘I think we’ve all wanted to have a look at manhood, Father,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Manhood, the name of the West Sussex peninsula,’ said Morley. ‘Just here.’

  ‘Lovely spot,’ said Michael.

  ‘Your West Sussex of course is never to be confused with your East Sussex.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Michael.

  ‘The West with its Chichester,’ said Morley, ‘its Crawley, its Horsham. The East with its Lewes, its Brighton and its Eastbourne. Anyway. Speaking of manhood.’ He was always liable to such unexpected swerves in conversation. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a personal question, Mr Anderson.’

  ‘A personal question?’

  ‘It’s just, with the terrible tragedy of the death of Lizzie Walter I wanted to check something. Someone mentioned that the two of you were …’

  ‘Engaged,’ said Miriam.

  You will doubtless have heard before the expression that a person’s face ‘drained of colour’. Until one sees it for oneself, it’s hard to believe that a face can actually drain of colour, but that’s exactly what Michael Anderson’s face did at this point in our conversation.

  ‘Well,’ he said, his face drained. ‘Engaged? No. Well, I mean …’

  ‘Not engaged then?’ said Miriam.

  ‘We had been stepping out together for a while, but …’

  ‘Engaged or not engaged, then?’ said Miriam. ‘There’s a simple answer.’

  ‘We are – we were – very close,’ said Michael, choosing his words carefully and speaking slowly. ‘But we – drifted apart – recently.’ The colour had now not only returned to his face, he had started to turn a shade of puce that would have suited a spluttering colonel in a children’s comic.

  ‘Because?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, miss, I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ said Michael.

  ‘Perhaps the two of you disagreed on the future of fascism in this country, did you?’ said Miriam.

  ‘You’ve got a damned cheek, miss!’

  ‘That’s quite enough, Miriam, thank you,’ said Morley, first laying a hand upon her arm and then stepping towards Michael. ‘Apologies, Mr Anderson. I’m sure there was no intention to offend on my daughter’s part.’

  ‘It’s absolutely disgraceful,’ said Michael.

  ‘Now. Calm, please, Mr Anderson. Can I just ask—’

  ‘Can I just ask that you leave,’ said Michael, squaring up to Morley.

  I stepped forward and between the two men, gently pushing them apart.

  ‘We are leaving, Mr Anderson,’ said Morley, perfectly calm. ‘But before we leave – we are dealing with a serious matter here – I wonder if you could tell me if you think you would recognise Lizzie’s handwriting, if you saw it?’

  ‘Again, I don’t think that’s any of your damned business,’ said Michael. ‘I have asked you to leave.’

  ‘We are simply doing our best to establish the facts of the matter,’ said Morley, ‘about Lizzie’s tragic death.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that’s the police’s job,’ said Michael. ‘Not some crowd of … outsiders.’

  ‘We are doing our best to assist the police,’ said Morley.

  ‘I’ll call them then, shall I, and they’ll confirm that?’

  ‘I am simply asking, Mr Anderson, if you think you would recognise Lizzie’s handwriting.’

  ‘Of course I would. We frequently corresponded.’

  Morley produced the handwritten list of names.

  ‘And does this look like her handwriting?’

  Michael looked at the list, looked at Miriam, looked at me.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Definitely not.’

  CHAPTER 27

  ‘WELL, I don’t quite see where all that’s got us,’ said Miriam. ‘Apart from annoying the hell out of that awful little man.’

  We were back at the White Hart.

  ‘Oh, I think it’s got us quite far, actually,’ said Morley.

  But before he was able to explain exactly how far our unpleasant confrontation in the Lewes Museum had got us, the cook Bevis appeared at the door of the residents’ lounge, where we were about to enjoy afternoon tea. He was vast and resplendent in his chef’s whites.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said, without sounding at all sorry.

  ‘That’s perfectly all right, sir,’ said Morley.

  ‘There’s a bit of a problem,’ he said to me.

  ‘With the tea?’

  ‘Have you met Bevis, Father?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘Bevis, as in the giant of Sussex legend?’ asked Morley.

  ‘We’ve already established that, Father. He was named after an uncle, isn’t that right?’

  ‘That’s right, miss.’

  ‘And the problem?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘You might need to come and see for yourself,’ he said, again looking at me, lowering his voice, though there was no one else in the residents’ lounge and so there was really no need. ‘It’s not the sort of thing we can talk about in here.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said, getting up.

  ‘Right-o,’ said Miriam, also getting up.

  ‘You don’t need to come, miss.’

  ‘If you get one of us, you get all of us, I’m afraid,’ said Morley, also getting up. Our encounter with Anderson in the museum had clearly put us on our guard, and forged a bond between us – a bond that was about to be tested. ‘And if there’s a problem to be solved, sir, the more the merrier.’

  ‘So?’ said Morley, as the four of us stood out the back of the hotel in the afternoon sunlight.

  ‘Someone’s complained about a smell,’ said Bevis.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how I can—’

  ‘Plumbing?’ said Morley. ‘Super! If I’d known there were so many sewage problems in Sussex I’d have brought my equipment. Have you got a set of rods? I’m assuming you’re not on a septic tank here, are you?’

  ‘I think it’s the dog, sir,’ he said to me, nodding towards the Lagonda.

  In the turmoil of what had been happening we’d all forgotten about Pablo.

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘I’m afraid the only place we could find to put him was …’

  ‘Oh, Sefton! No! Tell me you didn’t.’

  ‘You put him in the back of the Lagonda?’ said Morley.

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mr Morley.’

  ‘What were you thinking, Sefton?’

  Morley was something of a car fanatic, a collector indeed, and a member of the esteemed RAC Club on Pall Mall, where he had only recently given a talk entitled ‘Everyman’s Castle: The Motor Car’. (The talk was published in the Practical Motorist, September 1937. His idea of Utopia, Morley writes, is ‘Motopia’, with everyone having the freedom to travel by car. ‘God Bless Karl Benz!’ he concludes. ‘The People’s Liberator!’) Storing a dead dog in the boot of the Lagonda was clearly not his idea of how to treat a vehicle. I could see he wa
s having to contain himself.

  ‘In the back of a Morris maybe,’ said Miriam, ‘but in the Lagonda, Sefton!’

  ‘We didn’t know what else to do with him,’ I said.

  ‘We couldn’t have him in the kitchen,’ said Bevis.

  ‘I thought it would be cool enough to keep him outside and …’

  Morley and Miriam had gone over to the Lagonda. Morley indicated for me to open the boot, which I did. Miriam gasped.

  Pablo in his winding sheet made for a pathetic sight, though the smell wasn’t actually too bad. I think the smell was really from the hotel’s bins, or its plumbing.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Morley. ‘What are we going to do with the poor fellow?’

  ‘Can we not take him home?’ said Miriam.

  ‘Not in this state, Miriam. We’d have to get him into ice.’

  ‘Which would melt,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, well done, Sefton,’ said Miriam. ‘Thank you for that. You’re an expert in preservation, all of a sudden? It’s you who caused this problem.’

  ‘I’m sure he was acting out of the best of intentions, Miriam,’ said Morley, who had already put his emotions aside and was busy working on the problem at hand. ‘We could take him to George Bristow, in St Leonards, on the way home. If we could get him into ice. Specialises in birds, Bristow.’

  ‘Birds?’ said Miriam.

  ‘Yes, rarities mostly. Not sure if he’s much of a dog man. The black lark, the masked shrike, the olivaceous warbler. That’s more his sort of line.’

  ‘What? He breeds them, Father?’

  ‘Breeds them?’

  ‘The birds?’

  ‘My goodness, no, Miriam! He stuffs them.’

  ‘We’re not having Pablo stuffed, Father.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We have quite enough at home,’ said Miriam.

  (St George’s did indeed boast the most extraordinary range of animals both stuffed and unstuffed: the diorama in the entrance hall would have happily graced the Natural History Museum.)

  Morley was staring at the mummified Pablo.

  ‘The problem is always decay,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed, Mr Morley,’ I said, in my gravest undertaker tones.

  ‘Dogs, birds. Cultures. I mean, even a decomposing dodo’s not a lot of good to anyone, is it?’