After the Exhibition: A Jack Haldean 1920s Mystery (A Jack Haldean Mystery)

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  It was Colin Askern, albeit with Betty’s prompting, who’d taken Constable Shaw to Signora Bianchi’s cottage. Jack was prepared to eat his hat if Colin Askern hadn’t been radiating disbelief to the constable. That sort of mood was very catching. Constable Shaw wouldn’t be human if he didn’t find the idea of a hysterical, over-imaginative woman far easier to comprehend than a mysterious death involving the still more mysterious disappearance of a body.

  He glanced enquiringly at Bill. Bill gave a very slight shake of his head. They were clearly thinking more or less the same thing.

  ‘Please don’t tell him, Miss Wingate,’ urged Jack, softening the words with a smile. ‘I can understand why you want to, but from what you’ve said, it sounds as if Askern was fairly attached to Signora Bianchi. If you convince him she really has been murdered, he’s not going to keep it to himself, is he? He’s going to kick up a dickens of a fuss and demand a proper investigation.’

  ‘You don’t realise what it’s been like,’ said Betty reluctantly. ‘I hate everyone thinking I’ve been seeing things.’

  ‘Just for the time being, that could be one of our greatest assets,’ said Jack. ‘A murderer suffering from a false sense of security is a man who won’t take obvious precautions.’

  Betty’s muleish expression intensified. ‘Precautions? What precautions?’

  Jack took her hand and looked her straight in the eyes. ‘Murder. Murdering you.’

  Betty’s eyes widened. ‘He wouldn’t,’ she said helplessly.

  ‘Why not? You’re convinced we’re dealing with a man who’s murdered once. You’re a witness. The penalty for murder is hanging. He could kill again but he can only be hanged once. Think about that for a moment. At the moment no one, as far as he knows, believes you. Good. That makes you safe. Let him have the slightest suspicion that there’s any evidence that Signora Bianchi really was murdered and you’re in danger.’

  Betty swallowed hard. She was silent for a few moments then looked up at him wonderingly. ‘But that means you’ll never be able to investigate the murder.’ She was obviously rattled. ‘Not without him coming after me, that is.’

  ‘That’s not true, Miss Wingate,’ said Bill reassuringly. ‘I need permission to conduct a formal investigation. Once that’s granted and the investigation is underway, the murderer will know that anything you saw is now known to us and is being acted upon.’

  ‘There’d be no point him trying to bump you off then,’ said Jack, rather more cheerily than he felt. Betty was in real danger and he wanted to make her realise it, without scaring her witless. ‘In fact, it’d be worse for him if he did try anything, because that gives us more evidence to go on, you see?’

  ‘More evidence?’ She managed a wobbly smile. ‘My dead body, you mean?’

  ‘You’ve got it.’

  She stared at him. As she saw the sincerity in his face, she swallowed once more. ‘You really mean it, don’t you?’ Jack nodded. ‘In that case, I’d better keep things to myself.’

  Bill nodded approvingly. ‘Exactly. And, if you don’t mind, I think we’ll just go back the way we came without making too much fuss about the fact we were here.’ He patted the envelope in his pocket. ‘What I want to do is to show this to the chief, Sir Douglas Lynton, and take it from there.’

  ‘I thought you said Scotland Yard couldn’t do a thing unless you were called in?’

  ‘There’s such things as telephones, Miss Wingate,’ said Bill with a smile. ‘And if Sir Douglas has a word with the Chief Constable of Surrey Police, then I think all the pieces will fall into place.’ He glanced up and down the road. ‘Come on. The great thing now is to get away without anyone knowing we’ve been. I don’t want to explain our presence here.’

  As he spoke, the door of the chantry creaked open and a short elderly man came out. With a sinking of his heart, Jack recognised Henry Cadwallader.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered. They backed off, hoping to slip away unobserved across the road to the field gate, but it was too late.

  Henry Cadwallader stared at them for a moment, then stumped down the path towards them. Ignoring Bill and Betty completely, he made straight for Jack.

  ‘So you came to see the chantry, young sir?’

  Henry Cadwallader had the most direct approach of anyone he’d ever come across, thought Jack. Not for him the niceties of ‘Hello’, ‘How d’you do?’ or ‘Nice to see you’. He spoke as if he’d last seen Jack a few minutes ago, rather than a couple of weeks previously.

  ‘I’ll show you round,’ continued Cadwallader. ‘It’s a marvellous place.’ His voice took on a reverent note. ‘It was built by Mr Lythewell himself.’

  ‘We’ll get off,’ murmured Bill.

  ‘You will,’ said Henry Cadwallader, leaning across the wall and seizing hold of Jack’s arm firmly, ‘enjoy it.’

  ‘I’ll meet you back at the car,’ said Bill. He spoke softly, but he needn’t have bothered. If he’d bellowed the remark, it was doubtful Henry Cadwallader would’ve noticed. He was entirely taken up with Jack.

  ‘Now then, young sir,’ said Cadwallader, rubbing his hands together, ‘let’s get into the chantry. My word, have you got a treat in store!’

  Five

  Henry Cadwallader’s complete absorption in the chantry was, Jack thought as he walked up the slope behind him, remarkable. He really did seem utterly oblivious to the departed Betty Wingate and Bill Rackham. Which was, of course, all to the good, but startling all the same.

  Cadwallader stopped at the large, red, nail-studded doors. ‘It isn’t locked,’ he said. ‘I was coming back, so I left it open.’

  ‘Is the chantry usually kept locked?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Oh yes. There’s works of art and valuable artefacts inside that many a one would like to get their hands on.’ He fumbled in the artist’s satchel he wore and pulled out an ornate wrought iron key. ‘Look at this! This key alone is a work of art.’ It was certainly an imposing piece of metalwork. The key must’ve been at least eight inches long and weighed two to three pounds. ‘There’s plenty who would like to get their hands on this, I can tell you, but the chantry’s always kept locked. This is my key,’ he said with some pride.

  ‘Who else has a key?’ asked Jack.

  Henry Cadwallader sucked his teeth. ‘Mr Lythewell and Mr Askern have keys, of course. Not that they bother overmuch with the chantry,’ he added disapprovingly. ‘And there’s a key in the office,’ he added, obligingly answering what would’ve been Jack’s next question, ‘not that you ever see anyone from the office in here either, barring young Mr Askern. He drops in from time to time but he’s not serious about the art. I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I’ve often thought there’s only me who values the chantry properly. If I’ve said to young Mr Askern once, I’ve said it a hundred times, that he should come and study how things should be done, but he just laughs. Youngsters,’ he added in a rumbling undertone.

  So anyone could get hold of the key. Okay …

  ‘The first thing to look at,’ said Cadwallader ponderously, ‘are these nails in the door. These aren’t your modern wire made rubbish. Modern nails split the timber, but these nails work with the wood. No real carpenter would use wire nails. Oh no.’ He patted the head of a nail with pride. ‘These are proper clouts, forged by the blacksmith for Mr Lythewell himself. That’s craftsmanship. Look, you can see every clout is stamped with Mr Lythewell’s initial. Now that’s what I call taking pride in your work.’

  There was, indeed, a capital L stamped onto the head of every nail, bearing testament to the departed Mr Lythewell’s pride in the work. Or, thought Jack, his ego. However, fascinating as Henry Cadwallader obviously found the nails, Jack wanted to get inside the door.

  He’d spotted the chantry as a major landmark from Signora Bianchi’s garden. From what Cadwallader said it was seldom visited. A good place to leave a body? Maybe, especially if no one knew a murder had been committed.

  ‘Take your time, young sir,’ grunte
d Cadwallader. ‘Not that I blame you for being eager, mind.’

  He pushed open the door. Completely involuntarily, Jack gave the reaction that Henry Cadwallader obviously expected: he gasped.

  ‘I can see you appreciate it, young sir,’ said Cadwallader with deep satisfaction.

  The interior, which measured at least forty feet round, was a blaze of colour, dazzling in the light from the stained-glass windows. Flights of angels were painted around the walls, robed in white with sashes of reds, blues, yellows and greens. Their gold wings stretched up the walls and met round a circular window set in the middle of the ceiling thirty feet above their heads. The rest of the roof was painted in blue, picked out with stars. Oak panelling, painted crimson, ran round the walls to shoulder height, and above it the walls were a riot of intertwined leaves, fruits, flowers and vegetation

  At the back of the chantry was a huge, highly carved and decorated oak altar, and above it, where Jack would’ve expected a crucifixion scene, was instead, an enormous mural, painted onto the circular plastered brickwork of the dome. It showed the gold and pearl gates of heaven wide open. God sat on a cloud above the gates and beneath him a white-robed, bearded figure welcomed another white-robed, bearded figure, watched by an audience of angels. Judging by the fact one of the figures was carrying keys, Jack correctly guessed he was St Peter.

  ‘That’s absolutely right,’ said Cadwallader. ‘I painted that picture, but it was Mr Lythewell’s idea. I painted it under his direction. He thought an awful lot of that painting, did Mr Lythewell. It’s an exact portrait of him. It shows him being taken up to heaven.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Jack. He felt sand-bagged by the scene. He was fairly lost for words, but he tried hard. ‘It’s a remarkable piece of work.’

  Fortunately, Henry Cadwallader didn’t need much encouragement to take Jack’s comment as unbounded enthusiasm. ‘Exactly!’ he agreed, his eyes shining. ‘Now that’s what church art should be like.’

  Thank God, thought Jack, that for the most part it wasn’t. ‘Was the chantry ever consecrated?’ he asked, falling back on neutral ground.

  Cadwallader shook his head. ‘No, it never was. Mr Lythewell, he had a falling out with the vicar about it. The vicar had very narrow views and said he thought it was all too Papist, would you believe.’

  ‘Shocking,’ murmured Jack. ‘Papist, eh?’ Privately his sympathies were entirely with the vicar. The late Mr Lythewell seemed to have as much modest self-effacement as a Borgia Pope. He tried hard and came up with a question. ‘Is there any of Mr Lythewell’s own artwork in here?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He wanted to be interred here. He made his own tomb. He spent a lot of time on it, he did, but,’ Cadwallader added with a curl of his lip, ‘the family weren’t allowed to carry out Mr Lythewell’s wishes.’

  ‘The family being …?’

  ‘Mr Daniel Lythewell. No, Mr Lythewell had to be buried in the churchyard, like he might have been anyone, but this is the tomb he intended for himself.’

  He led Jack across the chantry to where the light from the circular window in the ceiling shone directly on a stone coffin standing on a plinth in the middle of the floor, supported by four squat feet in the shape of lions’ paws.

  The stone coffin – or should that be sarcophagus? wondered Jack – was fairly plain, but the surrounding floor was covered with ornate tiles, decorated, as was the oak panelling, with intertwined leaves, fruits and flowers. The tile on the floor at the end of the sarcophagus showed a picture of the chantry, inlaid in silver metal and encircled with enough vegetation to make it look in imminent danger of being overgrown.

  A life-size copper-coloured metal figure of a man knelt beside the coffin, his face covered by his arms, which were flung out over the coffin lid in an expression of grief. The coffin, its lid to one side, gaped open.

  ‘Mr Lythewell made the tomb himself,’ said Henry Cadwallader reverently. ‘Wonderful work.’

  The lid shielded part of the coffin. Jack felt his pulse quicken. Kneeling down beside the statue, he looked inside. Could this be the place the killer had put the body? It would be a bit obvious, but … No. The coffin was empty.

  ‘That was very respectful of you, young sir,’ said Cadwallader approvingly. ‘There’s not many who’d think to kneel in prayer like that. I was glad to see you do it.’

  ‘Just a gesture,’ said Jack, rather embarrassed, when his attention was caught by the dust on the floor by the base of the plinth. There was plenty of ordinary grey dust, but this dust was a different colour, yellow and bright. He reached out and, picking up a handful, ran it through his fingers.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Henry Cadwallader.

  ‘Sawdust,’ said Jack, showing Cadwallader the dust in his hand.

  Cadwallader sucked his teeth in disapproval. ‘That woman isn’t worth paying in washers.’

  Jack looked a question.

  ‘The cleaner, Mrs whatever-it-is the woman’s called, from the village. I told her there was some sawdust got in and she said she’d swept it all up.’

  ‘It looks as if she swept most of it under Mr Lythewell’s tomb,’ said Jack, peering into the narrow gap under the plinth.

  Henry Cadwallader was shocked. ‘That’s bordering on disrespectful, that is.’

  ‘Yes, but where did it come from?’ said Jack, rising to his feet.

  ‘Sawdust?’ Cadwallader looked puzzled. ‘It comes from wood.’

  ‘Yes, but what wood?’

  ‘Any wood at all,’ said Cadwallader, still puzzled. ‘Even a very close-grained, dense wood produces sawdust.’

  Jack sighed and gave up. He reached out and touched the metal statue. With the metallic fingers grasping hold of the open stone lid of the coffin, it was difficult to see how the sarcophagus could ever have been intended to be used as a tomb. ‘Is this statue Mr Lythewell’s work as well?’

  ‘No. At least, not Mr Josiah Lythewell, you understand. It was Mr Daniel who made that statue. He said if his father couldn’t be buried where he wanted to be, at least his preferred last resting place should be treated with respect. That statue meant he’d always have at least one mourner. I thought it was very fitting.’

  ‘I didn’t know Mr Lythewell – Mr Daniel, that is – was a metal-worker,’ said Jack in surprise. It seemed hard, somehow, to imagine Mr Lythewell doing any sort of physical work.

  ‘He hasn’t done any for years,’ said Cadwallader with a shrug. ‘We used to do a lot of forging, electroplating and casting, but that’s all gone now. We still have a forge but we haven’t done any major work in metal for years. In fact, I think I’m right in saying that’s Mr Daniel’s last piece right there. Mr Lythewell, he was an expert in metal. He was a wonderful engraver and did beautiful inlaid work.’ He stepped away from the empty tomb and pointed to a flagstone. ‘You see? This lettering that’s inlaid in the stone is Mr Lythewell’s work.’

  Jack obediently went to inspect the stone. As Henry Cadwallader said, a sentence in cursive script was inlaid into the stone in shiny metal.

  ‘Stop, my son, to pause and pray for treasure,’ read Jack. Treasure? It was probably metaphorical, but … ‘What treasure is that?’ asked Jack.

  Henry Cadwallader gave a rusty laugh. ‘Mr Lythewell’s treasure. Mortal rich, he was, but no one knows what happened to it all. He left very little, as I’ve heard more than once. There’s rumours that he buried a load of treasure before he died. I don’t believe in it, myself. Young Mr Askern, he’d like to find it. He’s been in here nosing round a few times lately. I thought he’d seen sense at last and come to see the art, but I reckon it’s the treasure he’s after.’

  So Colin Askern had been looking round the chantry, had he? That, thought Jack uncomfortably, could be significant. He could have been looking for a hiding place …

  ‘He’s always on some money-making scheme or other,’ continued Cadwallader. ‘He’s always wanting to bring in new ideas and new ways of working. He’d do better concentrating on the firm and how
we’ve always done things. The firm did very well when Mr Lythewell was in charge.’

  Jack looked across the chantry floor. Another engraved flagstone caught his eye. ‘This talks about treasure, too,’ he said, walking over to it. ‘A far lesser treasure also behold. What does that mean, I wonder?’

  Henry Cadwallader looked blank. ‘It’s a sentiment,’ he said. ‘A funeral sentiment. Mr Lythewell wrote it.’

  ‘Yes, but what does it mean?’

  From Cadwallader’s expression it was obvious he didn’t expect a sentiment, however funereal, to mean anything.

  Jack cast around for the next flagstone. It was a few feet away. ‘Be wise. Shun greed, let avarice be mute,’ he read. ‘Well, it’s good moral advice, I suppose.’

  ‘Moral advice, you say?’ said Henry Cadwallader in satisfaction. ‘That’s exactly what I’d expect of Mr Lythewell. He always had a word in season for those who were failing. See here,’ he added, pointing to another flagstone. ‘That’s a warning, that is.’

  ‘Art which is wrested from that evil root,’ read Jack. ‘I can’t say I can exactly see what it’s warning against, but it could mean the love of money.’ Henry Cadwallader looked blank again. ‘Money is supposed to be the root of all evil,’ explained Jack. ‘St Paul says as much.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cadwallader, enlightened. ‘Scripture. Well, that’s fitting, isn’t it?’ He looked dubiously at Jack. He had obviously expected more enthusiasm and fewer questions. ‘Anyway, you need to see the rest of the chantry.’

  It took a good three-quarters of an hour for Henry Cadwallader to show Jack the rest of the chantry. Fortunately, Cadwallader took Jack’s keen – even minute – interest in any place that could possibly conceal a body as evidence of his overwhelming enthusiasm for the chantry, Mr Lythewell and all his works. Eventually, with a promise to return, Jack was able to make good his escape.