Depths of Deceit

by Norman Russell

  ‘It’s very good of you, Mr Phelps,’ said Box, ‘to come in on a Saturday morning like this. It’s much appreciated.’

  ‘Not at all, Inspector,’ said Phelps, ‘I’m always happy to explain the fascinating business of public drainage. It’s one of the great unsung triumphs of the late nineteenth century! We inherited boxes of these plans from the old Metropolitan Board of Works, and only a fraction of them have been freshly mapped. This one, as you can see, is one of our own devising, made earlier this year. It shows the area of Clerkenwell lying between Priory Gate Street – here, on the right of the plan – and Catherine Lane, at the bottom.

  ‘Priory Gardens, which were laid out in 1890, are at the top. Below the gardens is the large area of slum clearance, which was done by the council between 1893 and 1894. The site contains the entrance to the Mithraeum, and abuts on to the derelict Miller’s Court. At the bottom of the plan, in Catherine Lane, you can see the premises of Mr Gold, the wholesale jeweller, and the building known as Hatchard’s Furniture Repository.’

  ‘What is this little red square marked “Flagstone”, Mr Phelps?’ asked Box. ‘It has been drawn in the middle of the rectangle representing the premises of Hatchard’s.’

  ‘That flagstone can be found in many plans of this area,’ Phelps replied. ‘It was the entrance to the vaults of the old Church of St Catherine that used to stand on this site. It was situated on the south side of the nave floor. The church was burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, and never rebuilt. The present basement floor of Hatchard’s is actually the cleared pavement of the old church’s nave. Planners need to know about entrances to subterranean cavities, especially when contemplating the construction of new sewers.’

  ‘And these thin lines in red, blue and green, criss-crossing the plan—’

  ‘They are the various service pipes, Mr Box. The blue lines are water mains, and the red lines are live sewers. The green lines show sewers and water mains that have been closed off and sealed. As you can see, the whole upper area of the plan contains very little in the way of water and drainage. The whole area is due for redevelopment, you see. All the water pipes and sewers serving the buildings in Catherine Lane have been redirected to meet the new mains and deep sewer laid two years ago to the east of the site, beneath Phoenix Place.’

  Phelps stopped speaking, and in the ensuing silence – for Mr Phelps was rather fond of his own voice – Box studied the plan. The whole area from behind the premises in Catherine Lane to Priory Gardens was a mass of green lines, each line bearing a reference number. It was, in effect, an arid desert, with minimal water and sewage.

  ‘What can you tell me about the Mithraeum site itself, Mr Phelps?’ asked Box. ‘I mean from your own professional point of view. I know all I need to know about the archaeological aspect.’

  ‘Well, Inspector, that particular site is not only derelict but dangerous, and in the next six months it will be filled in, landscaped, and planted as an extension of Priory Gardens. Professor Ainsworth knew that the site could remain open for no longer than six months at the most. I believe he has planned to remove the antiquities from the old Roman vault, and present them to the British Museum.’

  ‘He knew all along that the Mithraeum would have to be destroyed?’ Box exclaimed. ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Inspector. You sound as though you don’t believe me. I told the professor myself. He came here, you see, to ask about the nature of the site, and whether it would be suitable for preservation. Very responsible of him, I thought. I told him that the exhibition of the antiquities could only be temporary.’

  ‘And was he put out when you told him that?’ asked Box.

  ‘No, not really. He took the matter philosophically, and we parted in great amity.’

  ‘Why do you say that the site is dangerous, Mr Phelps?’

  For answer, Phelps produced another, much older, plan, which he laid on top of the first. It was dated 1854, and showed the clear outline of a medieval church lying beneath what was now Hatchard’s Furniture Repository. A series of dotted lines delineated the long nave of the church, and its semi-circular apse. Once again, a little red square marked ‘Flagstone’ had been drawn at a particular spot in the floor of the nave.

  ‘I’m showing you this plan, Mr Box,’ said Phelps, ‘to explain why the whole area around the Mithraeum is dangerous. The original burial vaults of that long-demolished church, although cleared of human remains in the seventeenth century, are still there, great empty spaces beneath the earth. Parts of them are represented by the basement area of Hatchard’s, but there’s another, unseen section, long sealed off. Nearby, but six feet lower down, is the Roman Mithraeum, another empty space.

  ‘More important, though, is the presence now – I mean in September 1894 – of twelve vast empty sewer tunnels which are in a poor state of preservation. They had, in fact, been condemned for years by the Metropolitan Board of Works. The danger of collapse is very great, Mr Box, which is why the area of the Mithraeum will be shored up, filled in, and levelled as a public garden. There’s talk, I believe, of turning that upper section of the site into a pleasant residential square. When the time comes, we’ll tell Professor Ainsworth to remove his Roman monument to the British Museum.’

  Box, looking at the young engineer, made a sudden decision. The time to act in this matter of the so-called Mithraeum was now, and Mr Percy Phelps should play his part in this, the last stage of the murderous drama.

  ‘Mr Phelps,’ he said, ‘I have already obtained a search warrant to investigate the premises in Catherine Lane, Clerkenwell, known as Hatchard’s Furniture Repository. I can assemble my search-party within the hour, and my search would take us down beneath that mysterious flagstone marked in red on these plans. Would you agree to join the party as its specialist guide?’

  The young man gave Box a broad smile. His eyes danced with excitement.

  ‘I’d be delighted, Inspector Box,’ he said. ‘Myself – and the London County Council – are at your service!’

  The morning of Saturday, 1 September, began with a bright mist, through which the sun’s disc rose to assume that brazen hue so typical of those deceptively hot days that often presage the onset of autumn. Rising from the dining-room table, where he had breakfasted alone, Professor Roderick Ainsworth stepped out through the open French window and on to the rear terrace of Ashleigh Manor.

  Zena would be in her studio by now, earnestly addressing the various challenges of kneading clay. He could hear Margery playing something slow and pensive on the Bechstein grand piano in the music room.

  How horrible – damnable – those murders had been! At first, he had tried to rationalize his deeds by telling himself that fear of exposure as a fraud had temporarily unhinged him. But that was not true. As soon as Crale had told him of Wayneflete’s attempts to have the mortars and the pigments analysed, he had yielded to an overwhelming surge of anger. This had been followed by a long period of deadly calm, during which he had meticulously and dispassionately plotted the destruction of the two men who had posed an immediate danger to his public reputation. With Crale’s unwitting help, all had gone well.

  Professor Ainsworth descended some steps that took him on to a sunken garden, where some late roses still bloomed valiantly in their well-tended beds. He lit a cigar, and walked thoughtfully along the paths.

  Had Abraham Barnes ever done anything about those mortar samples? Certainly, nothing had been heard of them since Barnes’s death. Perhaps his executors, or his family, had thrown them away? It was of no matter, now.

  He hadn’t minded about Barnes. For one thing, he had struck in the dark, and had seen little but an agitated shadow as his prey. There had been just enough light to do the devilish business with the mercury, and leave the lapis lazuli token behind…. But young Gregory Walsh – that had been different.

  He, Ainsworth, had arrived, unseen, at the Mithraeum, and concealed himself in the darkness of the vault. Walsh had come down the wooden st
eps, brisk and businesslike, just before seven o’clock. By that time, light was pouring down from the open entrance, and he could see the man quite clearly. Seeing Walsh’s youthful face from his place of concealment, his determination had almost failed him. But then, Walsh had produced a spatula, and had begun to scrape the scarlet pigment off the figure of Mithras, pausing to wipe his hands on a handkerchief before turning his attention once again to his work of desecration by flaking some more paint off the monument with his fingernail. He had applied those specially chosen pigments carefully and subtly, to heighten the shadowy traces of the original, long faded over the countless centuries. And now, this philistine was destroying his work of restoration…. A blinding anger had consumed him.

  He had hurtled out of the darkness like a Fury, and had struck the young man dead with a single blow of the adze.

  Spooning the honey into the dead man’s mouth had almost driven him mad, but it had been necessary. How low he had sunk as a man and a scholar in that moment!

  What was he to do? Could he bear the guilt much longer? Could he live with the ghosts of his innocent victims for ever present in his mind? Perhaps not. But at any rate, he would try to survive as long as he could. If the time came for confession, then he would seek out that young detective inspector, and confess to him. A remote possibility of escape through suicide he had dismissed with revulsion and contempt.

  He’d never intended the Mithraeum to exist for more than a month or two. He knew that the fabric was unsound, and that the whole area was riddled with tunnels and chambers. After all, he had explored it all, at leisure and unseen, ever since he had discovered the Clerkenwell Treasure nearby, in 1887.

  Within minutes of Walsh’s death, so he had been told, a great stone slab had fallen from the roof of the crypt, forming a kind of canopy over the poor young man’s dead body. Curse Wayneflete! Why couldn’t he have curbed his jealous desire for revenge? What a mean, sneaking fellow he was! All this business was his fault.

  He would go up to London now, this very day, and move slightly out of true some of the pit-props that supported the roof. There were already hidden cords attached to the bases, which he could pull from a concealed position beyond the Roman vault. If he could bring the roof down, then he could appear later with some of the site workmen, and remove the shattered remains of the reredos. The great image of Mithras could disappear for good, and with it all fear of exposure as a fraud.

  Ainsworth found Zena in her studio. She was wearing a flowered smock, and her hair was tied back with a black ribbon. She paused, her hands caked with clay, and dragged her eyes away from the massive clay figure that she called The Sleeper.

  ‘What is it, Ainsworth?’ she asked. ‘I’m frightfully busy this morning. I thought you were going to write up those new lecture notes?’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind, Zena. I’m going up to London today, to have another look at the Mithraeum. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Have you seen Crale this morning?’

  ‘Crale? Yes. I saw him hurrying down the drive towards the main road about half an hour ago. I assumed you’d sent him on an errand. That man Box was here, yesterday. He had quite a long chat with Crale, so Mason told me. Why, you’ve gone quite pale! You’re liverish, that’s what’s the matter. It’s those foul cigars. Goodbye, I’ll see you this evening, I expect.’

  When her husband had gone, Mrs Ainsworth – Zena Copley, the rising sculptress – returned to the serious business of The Sleeper. Her hands moved skilfully across the figure, kneading the clay, and giving physical form to what she had conceived as an image in her fertile mind.

  She heard the crunch of the carriage wheels on the gravel, left her work, and crossed to the window. Her husband was climbing up into the vehicle, a stout canvas bag in his hand. There: the groom had closed the door, and the coachman was moving away along the drive that would take them to Epsom Station.

  A sudden fear clutched at her heart. What was wrong? What had ailed the man for these last few weeks? He was moving away from her through the heavy haze of the late summer day, moving away from her…. ‘Goodbye’, she’d said. Zena Copley stood motionless at the window, heedless of the clay drying on her hands. This house, and her husband’s fortune would all pass to her if anything happened to Ainsworth. Margery had better settle upon which young man to marry, and do it as quickly as was decent….

  What was the matter with her? Her husband would be back that evening. She gave her whole attention once more to The Sleeper.

  Catherine Lane, cobbled and narrow, dozed in the strong late morning sun. Mr Gold’s shop was closed and barred, and there was nobody about. Nobody, that is, except the stately, bearded figure of Sergeant Kenwright, who was standing guard at the narrow entrance to Miller’s Alley.

  In the derelict and doomed Miller’s Court beyond, Arnold Box stood on the broken flags and surveyed the back wall of Hatchard’s Furniture Repository. Nothing had changed since he’d first seen it on the day of the murders. The stout door, with its three mortise locks, was undisturbed. Whatever may have happened there during the past few weeks, no one had gained entrance to the building through that door. A discreet examination of the front entrance in Catherine Lane had shown him that the locks there were stiff and free of oil.

  This building, so Superintendent Mackharness had discovered, belonged to a company called The North-Eastern Storage Association, with an address in Sunderland. That company was ultimately owned by Professor Roderick Ainsworth. Had he used this building as a workshop, in which he had secretly assembled the five pieces of ancient stone from which he had concocted his fraudulent altar of Mithras? It seemed more than likely.

  He would have needed an accomplice – no, that was too strong a word. He’d merely need a not very imaginative workman to assist him. Hadn’t he shown a slide in which such a man had appeared? ‘The indispensable Ruddock’, he’d called him, ‘now dead, alas!’ Yes, no doubt the late Mr Ruddock had done the necessary heavy work for his master.

  Arnold Box looked at his companions, Sergeant Knollys, silent and grim, a tempered steel cold chisel in one hand, and a compact steel hammer in the other; PC Gully, the local constable from ‘G’ Division, who had summoned them there on 16 August to investigate the death of Gregory Walsh; Sergeant Kenwright, who had just joined them from Miller’s Lane; and Percy Phelps, the council engineer, who would guide them through whatever labyrinth faced them beneath the floor of Hatchard’s Furniture Repository. He had brought with him from Spring Gardens two powerful paraffin lanterns as his contribution to the coming search.

  The time for talk and speculation was over. Only by breaching the guarded privacy of this enigmatic building would the full truth of Ainsworth’s imposture be known. He turned to Sergeant Knollys.

  ‘Break off the locks,’ he said, and the massively strong sergeant began his assault upon the doors.

  Their voices echoed in the vast warehouse. It was very clean, and well swept, but entirely empty. Light poured in from a number of skylights, and the atmosphere was warm and without any hint of the sinister. They had closed the doors, and secured them with a bolt.

  ‘Remind me, PC Gully,’ said Box, ‘what did that old man tell you – the old man who once lived out there in Miller’s Court?’

  ‘Sir, he said that he remembered a pile of packing-cases being brought into the warehouse through the rear doors, soon after the discovery of the Clerkenwell Treasure. Other things went in, too: bags of cement, pots of paint, and so on. This old gaffer reckoned that the owners were going to do a bit of decoration.’

  ‘I suppose they were, in a way, PC Gully,’ said Box. ‘But the man who brought those packing-cases in here was bent on decorating the truth, not the walls.’

  Percy Phelps had crossed to a low door set into the left-hand wall of the warehouse. His voice came as a hollow echo across the empty floor.

  ‘Mr Box,’ said Phelps, ‘this is the staircase leading down to the basement.’ Box saw the young man produce a folded plan from his pock
et, and shake it open impatiently.

  ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘the basement floor is six feet lower, and there’s a decent iron staircase here. Isn’t it time we went down?’

  Yes, thought Box, it’s time enough to plumb the depths – the depths of deceit which had led to the murders of two innocent men. Ainsworth’s star had set.

  ‘Will you take the lead, Mr Phelps?’ said Box. ‘Sergeant Kenwright, light those lanterns, and make sure they’re burning at full power. I think it’ll be very dark where we’re going.’

  They left the ground floor of the bright warehouse, and followed Phelps down a spiral staircase which brought them into the basement of the building, the floor of which had once formed the nave of old St Catherine’s Church. The lanterns were very powerful, but they failed to penetrate the dark farther limits of the vast space. Phelps had commandeered Sergeant Kenwright, and Box watched the two men walk away in a pool of lantern light. Presently, Kenwright called out, and his voice came as a muffled echo through the chill gloom.

  ‘Sir, there are some half-used sacks of cement here, and a workbench. And there are two massive fragments of stone, with images carved on them. Perhaps they were pieces that wouldn’t fit in to the final design.’

  Box and the others had reached the spot where Kenwright stood, and looked down on what they were convinced was the evidence of Professor Ainsworth’s engagement in an appalling fraud – appalling in its own right as a betrayal of scholarly integrity, and appalling because it had led to the violent murder of two innocent men.

  ‘It’s unbelievable, sir,’ whispered Knollys. ‘And it was this paltry fraud that led to murder. Do you think that man Crale was an accessory?’

  ‘I let him believe I did, Sergeant,’ Box replied, ‘but I never really thought so. You see, Professor Ainsworth is too honourable a man to implicate a subordinate in a capital crime. I know it sounds paradoxical, Jack, but I think it’s true enough.’