Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries)

by Brett, Simon

  She also felt that talking about her work would be a betrayal of the confidences which some of the prisoners had shared with her. They had their integrity, and she had hers.

  It was serendipity that Jude’s next visit to Austen was scheduled for the Monday after she had had lunch with Carole at the Crown and Anchor. As she got off the train from Fethering, she made a private prayer to one of her gods that Mervyn Hunter would once again be part of her group.

  The walk from the station to the prison was pleasant in the autumn sunshine. HMP Austen was set on the flat coastal plain only about a mile from the sea. Behind her Jude could see the blue-grey humps of the Downs, receding ever paler into the distance. The town of Fedborough nestled in the crevice where their undulations began. If you had to be in prison, there were worse venues.

  And yet Austen was still bleak. The path she trod, past the redbrick houses of prison officers, made Jude think of the other people she had seen walking along the same route on other afternoons. Harassed wives, snapping at trailing, whining children, going to snatch an hour’s visit to their errant husbands.

  She remembered some words of Sandy’s. ‘You see them coming in, wiped out, totally exhausted, worried about money, worried about how the kids are behaving, forced into single parenthood. Then you see the men – a lot of them down here have been putting in time in the gym, and they’re brown from all that working outside, positively glowing with health. And you ask yourself: Who’s actually being punished here?’

  And yet Austen Prison was a place of punishment. Undeniably so. Though the dark redbrick entrance Jude approached could have belonged to a College of Further Education, the fact remained that there were walls all around the compound and the blocks in which the men slept were locked at night.

  Compared to other prisons, of course, the security at Austen was light. Anyone sufficiently determined to get out wouldn’t need to form an escape committee. It would be easy enough to hop over the wall, or become detached from an outside working party and slip away. Indeed round Christmas that did happen as home-loving prisoners decided they needed a few hours with their families. But such events were rare during the rest of the year. Most of the prisoners with experience of Category B and C prisons knew just how easy they had it in Austen. They knew how many fewer locked doors there were between them and the outside world. They knew how much more time they were allowed to spend outside their cells. It wasn’t the perimeter walls that kept the men inside Austen Prison; it was the knowledge that if they escaped and were – as they almost inevitably would be – recaught, their next sojourn would be back in a Cat B or C nick. And that would not be funny.

  Apart from the white-collar criminals – the aforementioned solicitors, bent financiers and careless accountants – most of the Austen population were young men banged up for minor offences that didn’t involve violence. There were also quite a few lifers, serving out their last few years of punishment in an environment which had a little more in common with the world outside than the grim compounds where they had spent the bulk of their sentences.

  Sandy Fairbarns was in the entrance hall to greet her, and vouch for the incomer. Jude was issued with her pass by a cheery prison officer who recognized her from a previous visit. They went through into the prison grounds and walked across towards the Education block.

  Austen Prison was laid out with generous allowances of space between the blocks. These were one-storey brick rectangles with pitched roofs, and the walls were painted a pale institutional yellow. The gardens between were beautifully kept. Some of the gardeners were crouched over beds, shirts removed to build up their tans even in the weak October sunshine. Men in blue overalls or denims wandered around with a kind of purposeful aimlessness. In spite of the space and the sunlight, there was a hangdog air about the place.

  When she did her first session, Jude had refused the offer of a prison officer actually in the room, but she was instructed to leave the door open and issued with an alarm whistle to summon the officer on the landing if there was trouble. But there had never been trouble, and she didn’t anticipate any. The men in her group might have been threatening to each other, but never to her.

  Even the lifers. In fact, particularly the lifers. Jude knew, because Sandy Fairbarns had told her, that, defined by their sentence, they were almost all murderers; and yet never had she met a less dangerous, less frightening group of men. She longed to ask each the circumstances of their crimes, who they’d actually killed and why, but she knew that was beyond the remit of her position in the prison. She also knew that she was seeing a specific minority of murderers. The truly vicious would not be given the relatively soft option of Austen at the end of their sentences. But it was still strange to encounter them. They were a quiet bunch, tainted by sadness and inadequacy. If all murderers were as gentle as these men, she decided, there could be no more crime fiction.

  Mervyn Hunter appeared the most vulnerable of the lot. He had the haunted look of a man rarely untroubled by his own internal demons. At the first of Jude’s sessions he had turned up, febrile with shifty paranoia, and had not opened his mouth once. She hadn’t expected to see him again, but to her surprise he was there on her next visit, and became one of her most regular participants. Gradually he relaxed and began to make his own contributions to the discussion. They were never ribald or trivial; Mervyn took the issues seriously, and was particularly intrigued by the definition of personal morality. Though he never referred to the crime that had brought him to Austen, he seemed constantly to be judging himself, finding personal applications in the abstracts of their discussion. He remained hypersensitive and twitchy, but Jude liked to think that she had begun to get through to him.

  As they entered the Education block that afternoon, it struck her that she knew nothing about Sandy Fairbarns’ life outside her work. They got on, Jude responded to Sandy’s tenacity and enthusiasm, and yet all that energy was job-related. Of the woman’s life outside Austen Prison, Jude knew nothing. There was no wedding ring, but that at the beginning of the twenty-first century could have any number of meanings.

  The realization increased Jude’s admiration for Sandy. Knowing that people found her easy to talk to, Jude had got used to hearing more of their lives than she volunteered of her own. The situation suited her very well. Her life had many strands; different friends matched up with different strands, and there was rarely cause for them to intertwine. Without being deliberately secretive, Jude retained her privacy. She had never felt the need, which seemed to be such a common one, to tell everything about herself.

  In Sandy Fairbarns, she recognized a practitioner of the same method, and she respected what she saw.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Sandy. Through the open door at the end of first-floor landing, Jude could see her group assembled. A couple sat neatly in chairs like schoolchildren. Others lounged against the walls in attitudes of insouciant independence. The smell of stale masculine sweat, which permeates all prisons, was stronger.

  ‘What are you going to start with today, Jude?’

  ‘Thought I’d start with psychosomatic symptoms – how the body provides its own reactions to stress. And see where we go from there. And who knows in which direction that will be . . .?’

  She took another look through the door, and waved at a face she recognized. ‘Can’t see Mervyn in there. He’s usually one of the first, sitting upright waiting for teacher.’

  ‘Mervyn won’t be there today,’ said Sandy.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s with the police.’

  ‘Police? What, is this something to do with his release, the terms of his parole or—?’

  ‘No. A dead body was found up at Bracketts. It’s a place on the tourist map, house and Museum . . .’

  ‘I know it.’ But Jude still reacted as if the discovery of the body was news to her.

  ‘Anyway, Mervyn’s been working up there . . . you know, day-release stuff. Bracketts’ve taken quite a few people from Austen over the yea
rs. Mervyn’s a keen gardener, and it all seemed to be working very well for him . . . until this. That’s what the police are talking to him about.’

  ‘Oh, but for heaven’s sake! A dead body’s found somewhere, and so the police instantly turn on the one person present with a criminal record. I thought they were supposed to be getting more sensitive and imaginative these days. Why can’t they—?’

  ‘Jude, the police had no option.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Mervyn’s confessed to the murder.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Is this Carole Seddon?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was slightly mystified, trying to think who she knew with an American accent.

  ‘Oh, hi. My name is Professor Marla Teischbaum.’

  Carole was caught on the hop. She should have been prepared for a phone call like this. As it was, she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘From the University of California. Berkeley.’ But the voice wasn’t Californian; it carried the nasal twang of New York. ‘You probably know my name.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I’ve . . .’

  ‘Then you’re the only Bracketts Trustee who doesn’t.’

  Carole felt like a naughty schoolchild, caught out in her instinctive lie. She was normally better in control of herself, but the American’s forceful directness flustered her.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said feebly. ‘Professor Teischbaum. Now you’ve put yourself in context, I know exactly who you are.’

  ‘I’m writing a biography of Esmond Chadleigh . . .’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘ . . . and I’d like for us to meet.’

  Again Carole was uncharacteristically tentative in her reaction. ‘Well, I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘Listen, I know the official line on this. All you Trustees have been told about this crass American vampire who’s out to suck the lifeblood out of Esmond Chadleigh’s reputation . . .’

  ‘It wasn’t quite put like that.’

  ‘No, but basically you’ve been told you mustn’t talk to me. And I thought – because, if you like, I’m American and pushy – why should I just accept that? Why don’t I talk to the Trustees individually, and maybe explain what my agenda is on Esmond Chadleigh, and who knows . . . some of you might realize I’m not the monster I’ve been painted.’

  ‘I really don’t think I should talk,’ Carole floundered on. ‘Apart from anything else, I’m a very new Trustee. I don’t know much about the Bracketts set-up. And I’m certainly not a literary person, so I’m afraid my knowledge of Esmond Chadleigh is—’

  ‘All I’m asking is: could we meet, have a chat? I’m still going to do my biography if I get no co-operation at all from the Chadleigh family or the Trustees, but establishing a dialogue would seem to me to be a more civilized approach to the situation. I object to being branded as a muck-raking mischief-maker by people who’ve never met me.’

  ‘Well, I can see you have a point, but—’

  ‘Listen, Carole, I’d like to talk to you. Think about it for twenty-four hours. I’ll call you tomorrow. Tuesday. Goodbye.’

  And the connection was broken. Carole thought of all the more assertive things she should have said during the conversation.

  Immediately she rang the number of the Bracketts Administrative Office. ‘Gina, I’ve just had this Professor Marla Teischbaum on the phone.’

  ‘You too.’

  ‘She’s working through Trustees then, is she?’

  ‘Oh yes. Started at the top with Lord Beniston.’

  ‘Presumably no one’s told her anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And presumably you want me to clam up too?’

  ‘Well, actually,’ said Gina, to Carole’s considerable surprise, ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She won’t go away. I had her on the phone for an hour yesterday. Marla Teischbaum’s a tenacious woman. I think maybe we should chuck her something.’

  ‘In the same way you chuck a bit of meat to a circling shark?’

  ‘In exactly that way, yes.’ The Director made a decision. ‘Fix to see her, Carole.’

  ‘But I know virtually nothing about Esmond Chadleigh. Of all the Trustees, I’m the newest and the most ignorant.’ There was a silence, which Carole filled in, ‘Which is exactly why you want me to talk to her, isn’t it?’

  ‘Spot on.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like the idea of—’

  ‘I’ll get a pack of stuff together for you. Some biographical articles and what-have-you, photocopies of some of Esmond Chadleigh’s correspondence . . .’

  ‘Though none of the important stuff?’

  ‘Of course not. If Bracketts and its Trustees are positively antagonistic to Professor Teischbaum, we’ll make an enemy of her. This way we maintain cordial relations . . .’

  ‘And really give her no help at all?’

  ‘That’s it, Carole. Excellent. The Trustees have appointed you to liaise with her.’

  ‘No, they haven’t. You have.’

  ‘Professor Teischbaum doesn’t know that. All requests for information about Esmond Chadleigh and Bracketts must be channelled through you. And we solve our immediate problem very neatly.’

  Carole was getting a bit sick of being steamrollered by dominant women. Her own character was strong too, and it was about time she asserted it.

  ‘I think that’s a bad idea, Gina. I’m sorry, I’m not going to do it.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ There was genuine entreaty in the young woman’s voice. ‘Please, you must.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if you don’t . . .’ Gina Locke sounded young and distinctly vulnerable.

  ‘What’ll happen?’

  ‘Sheila Cartwright will do it. She said, if the Trustees didn’t appoint a spokesman today, she’d talk to Professor Marla Teischbaum herself.’

  And Carole Seddon realized she wasn’t the only one being steamrollered by dominant women.

  ‘So what about the dead body?’ she asked, effectively conceding that she would take the role appointed for her. ‘What’s the Trustees’ official line on that?’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll need an official line on that. It’s all still under wraps. Nobody except the people who witnessed the discovery and the police know anything about it.’

  ‘But it can’t stay that way for long. The press are going to get hold of the story soon.’

  ‘Hasn’t happened yet. Sheila’s influence with the Chief Constable really seems to be working.’ Even a sworn enemy like Gina couldn’t completely exclude admiration from her tone.

  ‘You haven’t even told the other Trustees about the body?’

  ‘I told Lord Beniston. Couldn’t avoid that. But he, with his military background, said the information should be spread on a strictly “need-to-know” basis. At the moment, in his view, none of the other Trustees do “need to know”. Which, I must say, is a great relief for me.’

  ‘Oh?’ Carole picked up the potential lapse of professionalism in Gina’s words. Was the Director about to say something else diminishing about her esteemed Trustees?

  She was, but she couched it in relatively diplomatic terms. ‘It’s Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. He’d be on the phone instantly if he knew about it.’

  ‘For a long conversation?’

  ‘There is no such thing as a short conversation with Graham. In fact there’s hardly such a thing as a conversation. His favoured method of communication is the long monologue.’

  ‘So at least you’ve escaped that.’

  ‘On the subject of the skeleton, yes. Don’t worry, though, he’ll be on about something else before the day is out. Phone calls from Graham Chadleigh-Bewes are one of the drawbacks of my position here. Unfortunately,’ Gina said ruefully, ‘they weren’t mentioned in the job description.’

  ‘Or you might not have applied?’

  ‘Oh no, I’d still have applied.’ There was a new grit in the Director’s voice. ‘
I’m going to make Bracketts work . . . in spite of any obstacles that may currently be in my way.’

  ‘Right, so, going back to my position on the skeleton, you’re pretty sure Professor Teischbaum won’t know anything about it?’

  ‘Positive. And, for heaven’s sake don’t tell her.’

  ‘I’m not entirely stupid,’ said Carole with some asperity.

  ‘Sorry. I’m just so concerned that it’s kept quiet.’

  ‘There won’t be any lapse of security through me.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Gina, humbled by the continuing sharpness in the voice. Carole felt a twinge of guilt for the lapse of security she’d already committed by telling Jude.

  ‘So,’ she asked more gently, ‘you haven’t had any information from the police? About the identity of the body, for instance?’

  ‘Nothing at all. As they always say – unhelpfully – “Investigations are proceeding.” I think the skeleton’s undergoing forensic examination and tests, but we haven’t been told anything definite.’

  ‘So there have been no developments at all on the case?’

  ‘None,’ said the Director.

  Chapter Eight

  The inaccuracy of Gina Locke’s words was made clear as soon as Carole saw Jude that Monday evening. But whether the Director had been deliberately lying or merely ignorant was impossible to know.

  ‘The police have actually had a confession to murder?’ They were in the sitting room of High Tor and Carole was pouring white wine.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d call that a development on the case. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ But Jude sounded distracted. She toyed with a tendril of blonde hair that had escaped the pile on top of her head, and looked around the room. Carole had had the place redecorated the previous autumn by an interior designer called Debbie Carlton, but already the owner’s intrinsic neatness had taken the softness out of the décor. The relaxed pale apricot and dreamy blue of the paintwork was at odds with the disciplined ranking on the books of the shelves, even the exact alignment of The Times on the coffee table. No make-over could ever fully blunt the spikiness of Carole Seddon’s personality.