Murder at the British Museum

by Jim Eldridge

  Put a copy of those two papers in every room in the museum. If the statement isn’t in them, I’ll kill her.

  Daniel raced up the stairs to Ashford’s office and found the manager at work on his ledgers.

  ‘Mr Ashford!’ said Daniel.

  Ashford was immediately alerted by the urgent tone in Daniel’s voice, took the note that Daniel thrust at him and read it.

  ‘My God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who …?’

  ‘Jenny Warren,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Jenny Warren?!’ repeated Ashford, shocked. ‘But … but …’

  ‘We need to take this to Sir Jasper. Is he in?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ashford.

  Daniel took the note back from him. ‘There’s no time to lose if we’re going to keep Miss Fenton alive,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need his help with The Times. And I’ll need your information as to the layout of the museum.’

  ‘In what way?’ asked Ashford.

  ‘Jenny Warren has got a hiding place somewhere here. We need to find out where it is.’

  ‘I’ll bring the plans of the museum,’ said Ashford. ‘You go on to tell Sir Jasper. I’ll collect the plans and see you in his office.’

  Daniel hurried on to Sir Jasper’s office, this time doing without the protocol of checking with his secretary. Sir Jasper was reading a newspaper when Daniel rapped urgently at his door and rushed in.

  ‘Jenny Warren is the person who killed Whetstone, Sir Jasper!’ said Daniel.

  ‘But … but she was the one who found him!’ said Sir Jasper.

  ‘That was her being very clever. A case of hiding in plain sight,’ said Daniel. He handed him Jenny’s note. ‘She may also be the one who killed Professor Pickering, although that may have been her father, William Jedding. She’s now taken Miss Fenton hostage and is threatening to kill her unless we put this announcement in tomorrow’s Times and another major newspaper. I have a contact at the Daily Telegraph who I’m sure will help, but I don’t know anybody at The Times.’

  ‘I know the editor quite well,’ said Sir Jasper. ‘In fact, we were at school together and I used to help him with his revisions for exams, so I’m sure he’ll come through for us.’

  The door opened and Ashford entered, holding rolls of building plans in cradled in his arms.

  ‘I have the plans,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve told Mr Ashford about the letter and the threat to Miss Fenton,’ said Daniel to Sir Jasper.

  Ashford put the rolls of plans down on a table. Sir Jasper tapped the note from Jenny. ‘This business of her wanting a copy of the newspapers put in every room.’

  ‘She’s obviously hiding somewhere in the museum,’ said Daniel. ‘Just as she did before, when she carried out that attack and painted “Who killed Ambrosius?” on the wall by the exhibition. We need to find out where her hiding place is, which is why I asked Mr Ashford for the plans of the museum.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to wait and see what happens tomorrow morning?’ asked Sir Jasper. ‘If we put guards everywhere we can catch her when she appears to look at the newspapers.’

  ‘If that’s what she’s really planning to do,’ said Daniel. ‘There’s also the possibility that this is a ploy and she’ll leave the museum before tomorrow morning, satisfied that her father’s reputation is going to be salvaged.’

  ‘And you’re worried what might happen to Miss Fenton if she does that,’ said Ashford.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Daniel. ‘The only clue we’ve got as to where she might be hiding is the fact that she used to bring her father lunch when he was working here.’ He turned to Ashford. ‘So, if you can find out what he was working on, it may help us narrow down the places she’d be familiar with and where she might have her hiding place.’

  ‘What was his name again?’ asked Ashford.

  ‘William Jedding. He was a carpenter.’

  Ashford’s face creased into a thoughtful frown. ‘Jedding. Jedding,’ he muttered. Then his face brightened. ‘Yes! I remember him! An excellent worker!’

  ‘What was he working on?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘Some rafters in the roof were in need of repair. It was quite a complicated job, so he was here for quite a time. Two months, as I recall.’

  Daniel groaned. ‘The place where he and Jenny used to have lunch can’t have been in the roof, there’s no space there. Every part of the roof is covered in skylights to let light in, and there’s only about a foot of space between the ceilings and the roof. And the walls between the rooms are solid, no hidden places there.’

  ‘As I remember, the builders and carpenters kept their tools and equipment in the old tunnels beneath the Reading Room,’ said Ashford. ‘It was the best way to make sure the museum was kept open to the public while the work was being carried out. That’s where they used to go for their breaks.’ He began to unroll one of the plans. ‘Unfortunately, the plans don’t show the whole network of tunnels.’

  ‘How big are these tunnels? How far do they stretch?’

  Ashford gave a heavy sigh and said, ‘Miles.’

  ‘Miles?’ echoed Daniel, stunned.

  Ashford nodded. ‘It might appear that there are just a few small tunnels going off from the basement, but when the Reading Room in the Great Court was being constructed in the late 1850s and they dug down to put in the foundations, they uncovered a whole network of tunnels. Obviously, I wasn’t here myself then, but I heard about it from the people who were here at the time, and also, I’ve seen the documents that supported the discovery.

  ‘Remember, London is two thousand years old, and in that time, buildings were often constructed on top of existing buildings and even roadways, especially Roman, so those older buildings and roadways became a network of tunnels. Also, there are rivers running beneath London, like the Fleet and the Tyburn, and many others, which were once open rivers but were built over and now run through tunnels.

  ‘Then there were the catacombs, burial places and tunnels that were dug so that people could get away if threatened during all of the many civil wars that have happened over the centuries. Some of the tunnels will be dead ends, some will have crumbled, but some will link with others that can go as far as the very outskirts of the city. And if you come across one of the underground rivers it could take you all the way to the Thames.

  ‘Dangerous, of course. And you’d need light of some sort to be able to see. But for those fleeing for their lives, it was a risk worth taking.’

  ‘Our only hope is that Jenny hasn’t taken Abigail too far down these tunnels, but has stayed within touching distance of the basement,’ said Daniel. He turned to Ashford. ‘Can you show me the way into these tunnels?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Ashford. ‘At the back of the storeroom in the basement between the gentlemen’s and ladies’ conveniences is a door that goes down some steps. But you’ll need a lamp.’

  ‘Of course!’ groaned Daniel as realisation struck him. ‘That’s where she or Jedding hid when Pickering was killed. And I’m now starting to think it was Jenny Warren who killed Pickering, not her father.’ He stood up. ‘I’m going to see my contact at the Telegraph and get the announcement in tomorrow’s paper. Then I’m going to Scotland Yard to enlist Inspector Feather’s help in searching the tunnels.’

  ‘If she is in the tunnels and she hears you coming, she might kill Miss Fenton before fleeing,’ said Ashford.

  ‘It’s a chance we have to take,’ said Daniel. ‘If we don’t, Abigail could well die down there anyway.’

  Carson made his way slowly along the narrow tunnel using one of the oil lamps to show him the way. Every now and then he heard a rustling that startled him, until he realised it was rats. Of course this place, with its smell of underground rivers, would be crawling with them.

  Was he in the right tunnel? There seemed to be a maze of them. He was following what he was sure were voices, but they still seemed to be muffled and distant. They were hiding, that was sure. No, not they; the girl was hiding.

 
A thrill went through him. Wilson had said he wasn’t a real reporter. Well, this would show him! At last, he had a real story. In some way it was definitely connected to the murders. Whoever the girl was, she was involved. An accomplice of the murderer, most likely. The mystery was why she’d brought the Fenton woman down here? Maybe she’d taken the Fenton woman prisoner. Possibly a hostage. Was that what had been in the note she’d left for Wilson at the main reception? A ransom note?

  Where were they? This was to be the story he’d been waiting for all his life, and he didn’t want to miss a word. The People’s Voice had been a good vehicle for him, but the story he’d produce now would push him into the top ranks of real reporters. Those people like Joe Dalton who’d spent years sneering at him – behind his back, admittedly, but he knew what they felt about him and the Voice – would have to change their tune.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Daniel leapt down from the hansom cab and ran into the building on Fleet Street that housed the offices of the Daily Telegraph, driven by the thought of Abigail being held prisoner by Jenny Warren.

  ‘Is Joe Dalton in?’ he asked the receptionist.

  She consulted her list and said, ‘Yes, he’s in today. His office is—’

  ‘I know where his office is,’ said Daniel.

  He ran up the stairs to the second floor and found Dalton at his desk in the large, open room where the reporters wrote their copy. Dalton was scribbling away when he saw Daniel approach.

  ‘Daniel!’

  ‘I worried you might be out somewhere,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I’m still dealing with the aftermath of Armstrong’s announcement,’ said Joe. ‘I don’t know if you saw what Ned Carson wrote in his rag?’

  ‘I don’t give the People’s Voice house-room,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Well, his take on the superintendent’s speech may interest you,’ said Joe. He located a copy of the People’s Voice from a pile of newspapers on his desk and handed it to Daniel. ‘Page three,’ he said.

  Daniel turned to page three and saw the headline: What are the Police Hiding?

  Eager to tell Dalton his reason for his visit, Daniel scanned the report quickly, but then read it again. Fortunately, as with most pieces in the Voice, it was short:

  Yesterday we were told by Superintendent Armstrong of the Scotland Yard with the greatest confidence that the recent murders at the British Museum had been solved. They were committed, according to this smug oaf, by a seventeen-year-old vagabond orphan girl who was taken prisoner while digging for bones and coins in the mud of the Thames along with other mudlarks. We were told that she is insane, too mad to stand trial. How very convenient. This way the brave superintendent solves two notorious murders without fear of his investigative powers being questioned.

  Today the Voice sends out a warning to all other mudlarks and those other poor orphaned souls with no one to look after them: Superintendent Armstrong is after you. The next time a major crime is committed, you, too, may find yourself picked up and locked away in Bedlam. Case solved.

  The Voice asks: What are the police hiding?

  ‘Carson’s usual line,’ said Dalton. ‘Attack the police.’

  ‘In this case he’s right,’ said Daniel.

  He told Dalton about the note from Jenny Warren, the threat to kill Abigail, and Jenny’s demand for an announcement to be put on the front page of the newspapers about her father being the true author of the book on Ambrosius.

  ‘If she’s got Abigail, trust me, I’ll make sure our editor puts it on the front page. But how sure are you that this Warren girl will keep her word and let Abigail go?’

  ‘I’m not,’ admitted Daniel. ‘That’s why I’m going to go looking for her. I’m fairly sure she’s holding Abigail prisoner somewhere in the old tunnels under the Reading Room in the museum.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘If I have to, but I’m going to Scotland Yard next to try and get help from John Feather.’

  ‘I thought you were barred from the Yard.’

  ‘I am, but Armstrong isn’t going to stop me asking.’

  ‘John Feather’s a good man, but he’s answerable to Armstrong. If Armstrong says no …’ He thought for a moment, then said, ‘How about if I come to the Yard with you? I can go and see John Feather and tell him you’re outside, waiting for him, and it’s urgent.’

  ‘Thanks, Joe, but I think you doing the story for your front page for tomorrow’s early edition has greater priority. And I need to get a move on to search for Jenny Warren and Abigail, so I guess I’m going to have to take my chance about running into Armstrong.’

  ‘In that case, once I’ve put my story in and know it’s got the editor’s approval, I’ll make for the Yard and seek out John Feather. If he’s still there I’ll know you never got past Armstrong and I’ll fill him in.’

  ‘Thanks, Joe. One thing, the Telegraph won’t be the only one with the story on its front page. Jenny Warren insisted it went in The Times. Sir Jasper Stone’s arranging that.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Dalton. ‘But when this is over and you’ve got Abigail back, you’ll tell me the whole story?’

  ‘I will,’ promised Daniel. ‘And thanks for saying “when”, not “if” we get her back.’

  ‘I know you, Daniel. I’ve seen the way you are with her. If there’s anyone can save her, it’s you.’

  Daniel left the Telegraph offices with Dalton’s last words echoing in his mind. In spite of what Dalton had said, he knew that saving Abigail was still an ‘if’ – and a very, very big if at that.

  Carson had found them. He’d located the voices, mainly one voice, that of the girl, and followed the course of the tunnel until he saw the glow from a lamp coming from a deep recess at one side. He turned out the lamp he carried and edged nearer, desperate not to make a noise.

  ‘This is where me and Dad used to come for lunch,’ he heard the girl say, and Fenton respond with, ‘It’s a long way. There were other places a lot nearer.’

  ‘Me and Dad didn’t mind,’ said the girl. ‘We preferred to be away from the others. They didn’t talk about the things we were interested in. Here, we could talk about things without the others listening. Mainly it was about his book and Ambrosius.’

  Carefully, Carson sat down. Rats scurried around him, but he did his best to ignore them. Ignore the rats and they’d ignore him, that’s what an old sailor had once told him. Whether it was true or not, this story was too big for him to be scared off by a few rats.

  He noticed that a glimmer of light shone near him where there was a crack in the tunnel wall. He put his eye to the crack and peered in at the scene. The girl was sitting on a heap of stone. The Fenton woman was sitting on the ground, her hands tied together at the wrists, the other end of the rope looped through an old iron ring set into the wall of the recess. Carson strained his ears and listened.

  For Abigail, the rocky floor of the recess was uncomfortable, but she knew her only way out of this situation was to sit and listen, let the girl talk; but she couldn’t take her eyes off the knife that Jenny held in her lap.

  ‘The book that Dad wrote about Ambrosius was what made his life worth living,’ said Jenny. ‘Life’s hard when you’re poor and you’re living in an area like the back of King’s Cross, and you see all the rich people and those who’ve got everything when life’s a struggle, like it was for Dad. Mum had her own problems, but different ones. She was never well. Depressed. It got worse after the babies died. She had Percy first, then me, then later she had three more, but one was stillborn and the other two both died at birth. It sort of finished her. She had no zest for life. Not like Dad. He wanted to do things. He was a good carpenter, one of the best, but he wanted to do something different, something that lasted.

  ‘He was always searching through rubbish, looking for things that might be useful, and one day he found this book. It was about King Arthur, and it had stuff in it by these old writers from long ago. People with funny names.’

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bsp; ‘Gildas,’ said Abigail. ‘The Venerable Bede. Nennius.’

  ‘That’s them,’ said Jenny. ‘And there was one bit in it that said about this bloke, Ambrosius, and one of them said he was the real Arthur. And that got Dad thinking. We’d always been told that King Arthur was a story, not real. But Dad wondered: say he was based on someone real? And he started to go looking for stories about this Ambrosius character. He started looking in the British Museum, in the Reading Room, and then he started looking in second-hand bookshops. He used to get all excited when he found something about him, this Ambrosius. Then one day he said to me, “I’m going to write a book about him, Jenny. About how this Ambrosius and King Arthur were one and the same. And it’ll be published, and my name will be on it.”

  ‘I was the one he talked to about it because there was no one else he could talk about it to. Mum had her own problems, and she didn’t care about this Ambrosius, or King Arthur. And as for books of any sort, she can’t read, so she wasn’t interested. Same with Percy. He can read, but only just. He’s not interested. But me, I always loved books and reading. I take after Dad, see.

  ‘When Dad found something new and wrote about it, he used to give it to me to read. Mainly so I could check the spelling and put it in the right grammar, that sort of thing. Dad was clever, but spelling and stuff wasn’t what he was best at. So, I knew every part of that book as he wrote it.

  ‘About a year ago he said he’d finished it. Everything he wanted to say about Ambrosius being King Arthur was there, all the proof taken from these old writers you said: the Battle of Badon, the knights in armour which was Ambrosius and his troop of cavalry – everything. The trouble was, he didn’t know what to do with it, how to go about getting it published. You see, he was just a carpenter from the lowest level of society, living by the canal at the back of King’s Cross. He was worried that no one would take him seriously, these big publishers and the toffs who run everything. So, he thought about finding someone who’d back him. He said that was the way it was done in the old days; people like Shakespeare found a rich patron who’d help him put his plays on, or someone like Geoffrey Chaucer would find a well-known bloke with connections who’d persuade a publisher to print his Canterbury Tales.