Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries)

by Brett, Simon

  Not for the first time, Carole wished she had more certainty about what was happening in Jude’s life. Carole Seddon liked everything around her to be cut and dried, whereas everything that concerned her neighbour seemed in some mystical way joined-up and . . . whatever the opposite of ‘dried’ was . . . ‘Steamy’ perhaps . . . ?

  In the intuitive way that could sometimes be almost irritating, Jude sensed the way Carole’s mind was moving. ‘Laurence is not around today,’ she said, with a friendly grin.

  ‘Really?’ Carole made it sound as if, though there might be many things on her mind at that moment, they did certainly not include Laurence Hawker. But then she let down the front of insouciance by asking, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s away for the weekend. Got a cab about half an hour ago. He’s staying with a girlfriend.’

  Once again, so far as Carole was concerned, this was inadequate information. If Laurence was staying with a girlfriend, then presumably that meant that Jude wasn’t his girlfriend. And if Jude wasn’t his girlfriend, then why had she let him move into Woodside Cottage? Or was he a man who cultivated a great number of girlfriends? And if that were the case, and if Jude was part of that harem, how on earth did she tolerate the situation with such apparent equanimity? It was very frustrating not to have things defined.

  But all Carole actually said was ‘Oh?’

  And even if she’d wanted to say more, she wouldn’t have been able to, because Jude hurried on, ‘Right, let me get us some coffee, and you give me your full murder witness routine, just like you did it for the police.’

  ‘I’ll get coffee for guests in my own house, thank you.’ The instinctive spiky response was out before Carole could stop it.

  But Jude just smiled. ‘All right. Sorry. You make the coffee. But may I come into the kitchen and listen to you while the kettle boils?’ she added humbly.

  Carole knew she was being sent up. Her insistence on the principles that a hostess made the coffee in her own house, and that the coffee, once made, should be consumed in the sitting room rather than the kitchen was, she knew, old-fashioned and even ridiculous at the beginning of the twenty-first century. But that was the way Carole had been brought up, and this particular leopard was not about to change any more spots than were absolutely necessary. At times the way she was infuriated her, but that was the way she was.

  While Carole moved the kettle between sink and Aga, Gulliver greeted Jude as if he had never seen such a wonderful human being since he left the rest of the litter in his mother’s basket.

  Then, perching on the edge of the table (why couldn’t she use a chair?), Jude said, ‘So . . . tell me exactly what happened.’

  Carole had become so absorbed in her retelling of the previous evening’s events that she didn’t notice that they’d both ended up sitting at the kitchen table with their coffees.

  At the end of the account, Jude let out a long ‘Well . . .’, then went on, ‘Are you sure you’re all right? It must have been a terrible shock.’

  ‘Well, yes, it was. But I’m fine now. Actually slept very well last night.’

  ‘Emotionally drained.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Still, it’s a nice little murder mystery, isn’t it, Carole? A victim with lots of enemies, and most of them conveniently gathered in the place where she was killed.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Jude rubbed her plump hands together gleefully. ‘Who’ve we got then?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Suspects.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘From what you say, the two who Sheila Cartwright really humiliated at the meeting were Gina Locke and Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. Both very definitely on the scene at the relevant time. And you said you’d actually seen Graham with the murder weapon?’

  ‘If it was the murder weapon . . .’

  ‘Oh, come on. A handy World War One service revolver. How many more guns are there going to be around a place like Bracketts?’

  ‘All right,’ Carole conceded. ‘But Gina would have known of its existence. As would old Belinda.’

  ‘Ooh yes, don’t forget the old lady.’

  ‘Though I’m not sure what motive Belinda Chadleigh would have had to kill Sheila Cartwright. She seemed very much to approve of everything Sheila had done around Bracketts.’

  ‘Until,’ Jude suggested, with a gleam of mischief in her big brown eyes, ‘Sheila committed the unforgivable sin of upsetting the old lady’s beloved nephew.’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t think it’s very likely.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Carole, at this stage we’re not concerned with what’s likely. Just let’s allow our ideas to run for a bit.’

  ‘All right.’ But Carole didn’t really sound as though she approved of the proposal.

  ‘And what about your ex-librarian?’

  ‘George Ferris?’

  ‘Yes. Was he still around when Sheila Cartwright was shot?’

  ‘I don’t know. He went off towards the car park, but I didn’t actually see him leave.’

  ‘So he definitely stays on our list of suspects.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Not being seen to leave is, by definition, a suspicious action. So – hooray – four lovely juicy suspects!’

  Carole’s pale eyes were not quite so disapproving as she looked at her neighbour and said primly, ‘I don’t think you’re taking this completely seriously, Jude.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘I wondered if we could talk.’ Gina Locke’s voice sounded cool and authoritative. The call had come through early on the Saturday afternoon.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Carole had replied. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘Be easier if we could meet up . . . if that’s all right with you?’

  ‘Fine. When?’

  ‘Sooner the better. I don’t mind coming down to Fethering. Or we could meet somewhere for a drink or . . .?’

  ‘There’s a nice pub near the seafront here. Called the Crown and Anchor. Meet there about six-thirty?’

  She got a frisson from making the arrangements. The Carole Seddon of a few years before would never have fixed to meet someone in a pub, and certainly not in a pub with whose landlord she had a history.

  ‘Yes, I heard about that business up at Bracketts. Couldn’t avoid it. Regulars at lunchtime weren’t talking about anything else.’

  Carole had deliberately arrived at the Crown and Anchor early for her appointment with Gina Locke. Deliberately so that she could have a word with Ted Crisp.

  Though their brief relationship – Carole still had difficulty allowing herself to use the word ‘affair’ – hadn’t worked out, she was glad still to be in contact with Ted. Now the embarrassment of splitting-up was over, she could once again find reassurance in his shaggy presence. He was once again all that he should ever have been – a good friend (and Carole never admitted to herself how influential Jude had been in restoring that state of affairs).

  But looking at him that Saturday evening, Carole did find slightly incongruous the idea that he’d ever been more to her than a good friend. Having sweated through a busy Saturday lunchtime at the end of the tourist season, Ted’s hair and beard looked like flake tobacco, while there were white tide-marks round the armpits of his T-shirt. Thank God at least he wasn’t wearing the shorts . . .

  No, Ted Crisp would never really have fitted into the clinical neatness of High Tor. Or the matching neatness of Carole Seddon’s life.

  ‘What,’ she asked, as she sipped her white wine, ‘are your lunchtime regulars saying about the murder at Bracketts?’

  ‘How’d you mean?’ He’d taken advantage of the lull to pull himself a half of lager and was actually sitting at the table with her.

  ‘Well, I’m sure the Fethering gossips have already worked out whodunnit.’

  ‘Plenty of theories, yes. But Bracketts is a bit far away. No one knows any of the people involved.’

  ‘You know one,’ said Carole, with the nearest her thin face
could get to a mischievous expression.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I’m a Trustee of Bracketts.’

  ‘Are you?’ The look on his face did no favours to her self-esteem. ‘Why you, of all people?’

  ‘Because of my successful career in the Home Office,’ she replied frostily (though, even as she used it, she had a little niggle of doubt about the word ‘successful’).

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Ted Crisp nodded the nod of a man who didn’t know about that kind of thing. ‘So, if you’re a Trustee, you can give me all the dirt.’

  ‘Sadly, I can’t. For two reasons. One – we’ve all been sworn to absolute secrecy . . .’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And, two,’ she confessed sheepishly – though not entirely accurately, ‘I don’t really know any dirt.’ He nodded in sympathy with the unfairness of her situation. ‘So what your lunchtime regulars were saying, Ted, is probably at least as useful as anything I know. What were their speculations?’

  ‘Oh, the usual suspects. A serial killer. They like serial killers, the old geezers who come in here. The Sanatogen and Stairlift Brigade. I keep trying to tell them that you can’t have a serial killer responsible for a single murder. By definition, there has to be at least one more stiff before you can start using the expression. But will they listen?’

  Carole grinned. Her previous life hadn’t encompassed anyone like Ted Crisp.

  ‘Then some of the old farts reckon the murder’s down to local politics inside Bracketts. If they knew you was a Trustee up there, then they’d definitely finger you for the job, Carole. Or again, there’s the Escaped Convict Theory.’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Always very popular for any crime done round this locality. ’Cause we’re so near to Austen, you see. Crime in a nice middle-class area like West Sussex – must’ve been done by a criminal, that’s how the logic goes. And where are there any criminals round here? HMP Austen’s bloody full of them. So there’s your culprit. And, as it happens, a lifer did go over the wall few days back, so . . . there you are – bingo, hit the jackpot – he must’ve done it.’

  Carole nodded slowly, as the image came to her mind of Sheila Cartwright turning on Mervyn Hunter just after he’d discovered the skull in the kitchen garden.

  There was a clatter from the door, and the sounds of a tired family entering after a chilly day on the beach. The wife had wanted to go straight home. The husband was insisting on having a quick pint before they faced the drive back. The children had had enough.

  Ted rose to his feet. ‘Better go and do my job, I suppose.’ He grinned down at Carole. ‘My regulars’ll be dead impressed when I tell them you’re a Trustee up at Bracketts.’

  ‘What, because they haven’t heard before about my distinguished career in the Home Office?’

  ‘Nah.’ Ted Crisp shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Because there’s been a murder up there.’

  The bickering family’s arrival was quickly followed by that of Gina Locke. She also asked for a white wine, and the two women were soon ensconced in a corner booth, well away from the Crown and Anchor’s other customers.

  The impression Carole had received the previous evening – and indeed on the telephone – that the Director had been empowered by Sheila Cartwright’s death, was accentuated by seeing her again in the flesh. The charisma which had struck Carole on first meeting seemed to have paled during their subsequent acquaintance, but was now back in full force. She had never particularly noticed Gina’s clothes before, but that evening was aware of the finesse with which the generously cut grey trousers and skimpy chocolate-coloured woollen top had been chosen. The brown eyes had an added lustre, and the short dark hair looked newly sculpted. The murder of Sheila Cartwright had effected a make-over in Gina Locke.

  ‘Reason for this meeting is a bit of a hymn-sheet one,’ she began.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Hymn-sheet. See that we’re all singing from the same one.’

  ‘Ah. Yes.’ Carole felt exposed and unfashionable. She had heard Sheila using the expression before; she should have caught on quicker.

  ‘I think there could be an announcement from the police sooner rather than later, so I want all the Trustees to be prepared.’

  ‘An announcement? Are you talking about an announcement of an arrest?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a pretty open-and-shut case. Even the notoriously thick British Police Force can’t take long over this one.’

  It wasn’t Carole’s style to say ‘Whoa, whoa, hold your horses!’, but she raised a hand which had the same effect. ‘You’re saying you have no doubt who killed Sheila?’

  ‘Of course not. It was Graham.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he’s the obvious suspect. You were there, you saw her humiliate him in front of the other Trustees. You saw her take away from him his life’s work – the biography of Esmond Chadleigh. If that’s not sufficient motive for murder, I’d like to know what is.’

  ‘But—’

  Gina was not about to stop. ‘What’s more, he’d got the gun. Supposedly taken it for cleaning, but if you believe that, you’d believe anything.’

  Gina clearly shared Jude’s conviction that the murder weapon was the gun from the display-case, but Carole wanted more proof. ‘Have the police actually told you that Graham Chadleigh’s service revolver was the one that was used?’

  Gina smiled. ‘You say Graham Chadleigh’s, but in fact there’s some doubt about that.’

  ‘But it’s in the display-case with a card saying it belonged to Graham Chadleigh.’

  There was a little cynical shrug. ‘Truth is one of the first casualties of the heritage industry, Carole. If you counted up all the beds in which Queen Elizabeth the First slept, she’d’ve had to be using about three a night.’

  ‘Ah. Have you ever handled the revolver, Gina?’

  ‘No,’ came the sharp reply.

  ‘Graham told me it was in full working order.’

  ‘Must’ve been. And if he admits to knowing that . . . behold another argument for the fact that he shot Sheila.’

  ‘He said the Estate Manager sometimes used it for shooting rabbits . . .’

  ‘Not the current Estate Manager. He’s anti-blood sports, anti-meat-eating, anti-virtually everything. You’d never catch him shooting anything other than his mouth off.’

  ‘Ah, right. So nothing else of interest you’ve gleaned from the police, Gina?’

  ‘No, they’ve told me very little, actually. Not surprised, they’ve been so busy questioning Graham.’

  ‘Have they?’

  ‘Yes. Apparently, he claims to have an alibi for the time of the murder, but it’s only old Belinda. And since she only seems to be half-conscious at the best of times, the police shouldn’t take long to crack that. I think they’ll arrest him in the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘What makes you so sure, Gina?’

  ‘Logic. The logic I’ve just outlined to you and . . . Graham’s character. He’s not the most stable of people, is he?’

  ‘No. True. But there’s a big jump from being unstable to being a murderer.’

  ‘Depends on the provocation.’

  ‘Maybe. So you’re of the view that we’re all capable of murder, given the right provocation?’

  ‘Yes, I think I’d go along with that.’

  Carole fixed Gina with her pale blue eyes. ‘You took quite a bit of provocation at the Emergency Trustees’ Meeting.’

  ‘Yes.’ The Director giggled, suddenly girlish. ‘Sheila had got me pretty furious, I don’t deny it. Maybe I would have topped her myself . . . if Graham hadn’t so conveniently saved me the trouble. Her death is certainly the best thing that’s happened since I took over this job.’

  Carole must have shown some instinctive middle-class reaction of disapproval, because Gina went on, ‘Sorry, not the right thing to say, is it, of a woman less than twenty-four hours dead? Don’t speak ill, et cetera . . . But I can’t pretend in Sheila’s case. That woman’
s sole aim was to make my life a misery. I am ecstatic to know that she is no longer around, and that I am now free to get on with my job as Director of Bracketts.’

  A motive for killing Sheila Cartwright could not have been more straightforwardly expressed, and yet the very insouciant baldness with which Gina Locke had spoken seemed instantly to rule her out as a suspect. Surely, thought Carole, no double bluff could be that elaborate.

  But Gina hadn’t finished. ‘I think what really annoyed me was that I’d been set up from the start.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘With the job. Sheila had decided a year or so back that she was taking on too much at Bracketts, and she needed to back off a bit, bring in someone else to do the administration. The Trustees, some of whom had been getting a bit sick of her high-handed ways, agreed, and advertised for the job of Director. Sheila wanted a yes-man – or yes-woman – someone to do the boring stuff and rubber-stamp her decisions. The Trustees wanted someone with a bit more self-motivation and energy. I got the job. Sheila stood down, and became a Trustee.

  ‘Except, of course, she was no more capable of standing down and giving her successor a free run than Margaret Thatcher was. From the day I started here, it was clear that I was Director in name only. I was still going to have Sheila leaning over my shoulder all the time, cherry-picking the best bits of the job. A potential major sponsor in the offing . . . did I get to go and do the pitch to them? Did I hell! No, they were used to dealing with Sheila Cartwright. They wouldn’t be safe in the hands of someone my age – in spite of the qualifications I have in the arts, leisure and heritage industries.’

  Gina Locke took a long, satisfied sigh, and sipped from her glass. But Carole didn’t say anything; she sensed there was more to come.