1 The Museum Mystery

by John Waddington-Feather

  Kathy Burton was the only child of Mrs Frank’s first marriage. It hadn’t lasted long. She’d gone out to work when her husband left her and had not re-married for some years. The kids from her second marriage were younger than Kathy. The eldest, Gary, was twelve, and already putting in regular appearances at the police station. He was a pupil at the school when Ibrahim Khan’s wife, Semina, taught.

  “No wonder the poor kid got out of here as soon as she could,” muttered the inspector as they turned off the main road.

  They trudged down the street, avoiding the piles of dog-muck and rubbish which fouled the pavement. Backyard lavatories stood open to the elements in the houses which were boarded up. Their pans kicked in and their doors long gone for firewood. Rubbish spilled out of the yards of those still occupied. Rotting couches, abandoned prams, hypermarket trolleys.

  A mangy cur followed them barking the length of the street. Others joined it and snapped at their ankles, till Inspector Hartley turned and hoofed one, sending it away yelping. The rest then kept their distance.

  It brought Edna Franks to her door. She recognised them and stood glowering. Her hands grimly knit under her apron. She still wore curlers though it was almost mid-day.

  There was no need for them to show their I.Ds. As they entered her backyard she yelled, “If it’s about our Gary, he’s not in! An’ I’m saying nowt till I’ve seen my solicitor. I know me rights!”

  She’d been a good-looking woman once, but had gone to seed. One of those adolescent beauties who fade by the time they’re twenty. At thirty they look forty. At forty, sixty - sans teeth, sans looks, sans everything except layers and layers of fat. And Edna had plenty of those.

  She was huge! She stood in the doorway like a sumo wrestler, wheezing through the chain-smoked cig in her mouth. Her hair was a dyed brassy blonde, but she hadn’t made her face up. It looked very unwashed. She stood ready for battle.

  Her legs were like tree-trunks, thick and mottled with being too close to the fire. She wore knee socks which had rolled down almost to her down-at-heel slippers. She took her hands from under her apron and crossed her arms over her well blessed bosom to make it quite clear they could not enter.

  They heard a door slam behind her. “That’s her son doing a bunk,” muttered Khan as they walked up the yard. Inspector Hartley gave him a chance to get clear then told her they’d come not about her son but her daughter, Kathy.

  The hostility left her eyes. She unfolded her arms and said, “Is she all right? She’s not in bother, is she? Haven’t heard from her for weeks.”

  Neighbours had come to their doors anticipating trouble, hoping to enjoy a blazing row. “You don’t want the whole street to know your business, Mrs Franks, do you?” he said nodding to the audience behind them.

  “Nay,” she said. “The last thing I want is that bloody lot knowin’ my business. Yer’d best come in.”

  They followed her inside. The mean room reeked of damp and rancid fat. She’d a chip-pan permanently on the go in the cellarhead kitchenette. The cooker it sat on was black and hadn’t been cleaned since the day it arrived.

  She shuffled to the further end of the tiny room and shooed two cats off a broken down sofa which reeked of cat piss. Something worse was decomposing under it. As the detectives sat down gingerly, a bike resting against the back of the sofa slid down. It fell to the floor its back wheel spinning.

  “The number of times I’ve told our Paul to leave that bloody thing outside,” she boomed. She’d a voice like a foghorn. She picked up the bike and propped it against a badly scratched sideboard. Then she dumped herself in a grotty armchair. The detectives had seen better furniture on bonfires.

  They had to compete with the television the whole time they were there and the stench from some grey washing drying by the fire. Somewhere in the house a cat mewed incessantly.

  “Well,” she said, stroking her shins. Worry had replaced aggression. “What about our Kathy?”

  “She’s a friend of Rosie Adams?” began the inspector.

  “Aye, They’ve allus been friends. Right from school,” she said, trying to read his face.

  “And Rosie said she’s gone to London?”

  “As far as I know,” said Edna. “Our Kathy’s never told me owt for years. Not since she left home. I wouldn’t ha’ known she’d gone to London if I hadn’t bumped into Rosie last week.”

  There was a pause. The worry on her face increased.

  “There’s summat up, isn’t there?”

  “There’s summat I want to know about her, Mrs Franks,” replied Hartley. “I want to know if she ever visited Madame Marie. You know, to have her fortune told. Lots of lasses do.”

  “Her what advertises in t’paper every week?”

  “Aye. Clairvoyant and all that. Reads the stars.”

  “She does more than that,” said Mrs Franks, and lowered her voice. “She does stuff I don’t agree wi’.”

  “Such as?”

  “They say she calls up the dead,” whispered Edna, screwing up her eyes. “I told our Kathy to stop goin’ near her. But she wouldn’t listen. Rosie Adams an’ her went together. Madame Marie had a hold on ‘em. An’ now summat’s happened, eh?”

  “I hope not, Mrs Franks,” said Inspector Hartley. “I sincerely hope not. I just wanted the address of her flat.”

  She told him. It was one of several bed-sits in a large house. Sgt Khan knew the owner well. He was a good landlord and had converted into flats an Edwardian house similar to the one Khan and his wife lived in.

  The inspector questioned her further about Madame Marie. She told he she’d been in the fortune-telling business some years. Advertised each week in the local rag. He knew all about that. But this necromancy bit, that was new to him.

  “There’s lots go to her to find out what’s happened to their late-lamenteds,” she said. “But what I say is let the bloody dead alone. I certainly wouldn’t want t’ buggers I’ve been wed to raised again! I had enough of ’em in this life!”

  She laughed loudly and Blake laughed with her. She offered them a cup of tea, but they decided to go. They’d been staring into the depths of a black-stained mug in the hearth all the time they’d been talking. Other unwashed mugs stood on the table along with a dirty jam pot and used butter still in its wrapper.

  They moved to the door and before they left the inspector thanked her, asking if she’d let him know if she heard anything of her daughter. She said she would. When they were walking back down the yard, they heard her call out, “It’s all right, Paul. Yer can come in. They’ve gone now.” The outside lavatory door opened and Paul came out.

  The keys to the bed-sits were kept at the landlord’s office. Mr Ali ran a flourishing estate agency in Keighworth where he’d lived since immigrating.

  “Sala’am alekum,” said Khan as they entered.

  “Wa alekum sala’am,” the other responded, bowing to the sergeant and Inspector Hartley. He spoke briefly in Urdu to Khan, then switched to English. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  They said they’d like to check out Kathy Burton’s room. She was missing. That explained why she was behind with her rent, said the landlord. Most unusual. She’d never been in arrears before. He’d given her some weeks’ grace and was about to contact her himself. To see if he could help.

  “We’d heard she’d gone to London. She didn’t leave a forwarding address, did she?” asked the sergeant.

  No. It was the first the landlord had heard about it. She kept herself very much to herself, but up till recently she always paid her rent on time and looked after her flatlet.

  Mr Ali gave them the key and they left for Kathy’s bedsit. The house the bedsit was part of was the former home of a bank manager. It stood three storeys high and the bed-sit was on the top floor with good views across the valley. A large well-kept garden lay below, and beyond it a small park. It had once been an exclusive part of Keighworth, but the great houses in the area had been converted either into flats o
r nursing homes. There were three more rentings on the same floor, much larger than Kathy’s single room.

  The detectives had hardly got inside it when there was a knock on the door. Khan opened it and the woman in the flat next door stood there, trying to peer past him. The sergeant said who he was and showed her his I.D. When she explained she was Kathy’s neighbour, Inspector Hartley told her to step inside.

  “I just came round to see if everything were all right. I heard someone moving around in Kathy’s flat an’ I knew she wasn’t there. Is summat up?” she asked, her eyes roving round the room.

  “Not that we’re aware of Mrs…?

  “Miss. Miss Pickles,” she said, smiling coyly. “I hope you don’t mind me coming round but you can’t be too careful these days, can you? I mean, there’s been some funny folk comin’ and goin’ here these past few weeks since Kathy took up wi’ them. I’ve worried meself about her. She’s changed, y’know. Used to be such a quiet lass till…”

  “Till what?” asked Sgt Khan.

  “Till she met up with a real odd lot. They’ve been in an’ out of her place like yo-yos this week. I came round yesterday an’ asked them what were up, but they told me to bugger off!”

  She was right. Kathy Burton’s bed-sit looked like Dr Manasas’ office. Drawers and their contents were strewn everywhere and piled on the settee.

  Hartley asked if she knew the visitors. She said no - except one, Madame Marie. Everybody in Keighworth knew her, it seemed. There were two men with her.

  “They looked like you,” she said, turning to Ibrahim Khan.

  “Handsome? he said innocently.

  But the joke was lost on her.

  “Asian,” she said. “Only bigger. They were well set. Could ha’ been bouncers!”

  Khan asked her to describe them. He enquired also about Kathy. Did she have friends? Did she throw parties?

  “She weren’t that sort o’ lass. She had one friend. Her own age who came reg’lar. I think they were into one o’ these freak religions. New Age stuff.”

  “What makes you think that?” asked Khan.

  “They sang an’ burned this incense muck. It came right through the wall. You could smell it for days!” she said. “Only time I ever complained to the landlord ’cos it got on me chest. An’ it were a rum do when I went round to see what was up.”

  “Oh?”

  “T’lights were switched off an’ t’room were lit only by candles. Two black candles wi’ this funny brass snake in between ’em. They were burning that sickly-smelling muck,” Miss Pickles said.

  “Were there just the two of them?” asked Hartley.

  “No. I saw Madame Marie sitting on that sofa with Kathy’s friend. Kathy barely opened t’ door but it were enough. I said whatever they were burning were affecting me. She said she were sorry, then shut t’ door quick. I heard her turn t’ key, which I thought were odd,” she explained. That was the last time she’d seen her.

  Miss Pickles would dearly have liked to stay longer. Her little birdy eyes flitted everywhere taking in all she saw. But the inspector quietly ushered her out.

  “She’d have made a good copper,” he commented. “Didn’t miss a thing while she was here.” And she hadn’t missed a thing when she’d last seen Kathy Burton. He was glad of that.

  They sifted through the things piled on the settee and the rest of the stuff there. The drawers from the dressing table and cupboard were stacked in one corner of the room. On top of the wardrobe was a cheap suitcase covered with dust.

  “Not much here,” said Khan. “Whatever they were looking for either wasn’t here or they took it when they found it.”

  Blake Hartley stood silently in the middle of the room gazing at the pile of clothes on the settee, then at the suitcase on the wardrobe.

  “If she went to London, she didn’t take much with her,” he said at length. “Her suitcase is still here, and I’d say all her clothes, too.”

  “There’s no sign of the snake or candlesticks,” said Sgt Khan, going to the dressing table. “But there is black wax here.” He pointed to where the candlesticks had been burning.

  “I think they came looking for anything which led back to them,” said the inspector. “That’s why they took the candlesticks and snake. There were probably other things. The question now is where do we find Kathy Burton? Get onto the Met when you return, Khan. Fax Kathy Burton’s photo and ask if she’s been seen in the places where young lasses from the provinces usually turn up. There’s not much else we can do here.”

  They left quietly enough, but Miss Pickles came out as they shut the door.

  “Find owt?” she asked.

  The inspector smiled and shook his head. She watched them all along the corridor. At the end of it Inspector Hartley stopped. He turned, catching her unawares.

  “Oh, there is one thing, Miss Pickles,” he said. “Will you let me know if those people return or anyone else comes to Kathy’s room. Keep well out of their way, but give me a ring at once, please.”

  Then he raised his trilby and was off before she could ask more questions.

  Chapter Eight

  Inspector Hartley had been fascinated for years by Pithom Hall and its Mausoleum. He’d seen them from the main road many times on his way to Halifax, but had never been able to get near them. Now he had the excuse.

  They’d been built at the height of the Whitcliff fortune. Old Sir Joshua had been hooked on ancient Egyptian architecture and his obsession was reflected in the great hall and its Mausoleum. Great Egyptian pillars stood at the entrance of the hall, over which loomed a copper dome, green with verdigris. Marble sphinxes stretched themselves at the feet of the pillars. Castellation ran along the eaves. Much of it had deteriorated, leaving broken-toothed stretches. Grass and weeds grew in what was left of the guttering.

  There had once been extensive gardens round the hall flanked by a high wall. That, too, had largely fallen down and scattered through the bracken and grasses, which had already claimed much of the old garden, were bits of broken fountains. An ornamental lake was now a marsh.

  It was a half hour’s drive to Pithom Hall. The run went through Ingerworth and climbed steadily from there up to the moors, passing through straggling Victorian terraces, which ran off the main road on both sides.

  At Crossgates there was an intersection. One road went west to Lancashire over the hilly backbone of England. The other went east to the south Pennines and Halifax. Inspector Hartley went that way, driving deeper and deeper into the bleak moorland. The Whitcliffs owned the farms all round the hall. Most of these had long been abandoned and stood as black ruins, savaged each winter more and more by the frost and snow. Washed away by the driving rain and wind, which blew there constantly. The moors had a grim and sodden outlook even on the brightest day.

  The hall was also ruinous, though attempts were being made to restore it. By contrast, the Mausoleum was in good condition with a high electric fence running round it. Where the drive left the main road for the hall, a recently erected notice warned off trespassers, announcing that guard dogs patrolled the grounds. Inspector Hartley drove past the notice and parked his battered Ford behind the hall. There was another car there. A brand new white Jag.

  Hartley walked the perimeter of the fence till he reached a gap. A well-worn path headed for it, coming straight from the main road across the intervening moorland.

  As he picked his way carefully through mounds of debris and weeds, he saw something move inside the building, but when he looked again there was nothing there. He couldn’t be sure but he thought he’d seen two faces peering down through a window on the second floor.

  Much of the portico over the main door had collapsed, but the heavy pillars remained with their attendant sphinxes. The huge doors were also still intact, one swinging drunkenly in the wind, the other creaking on rusty hinges.

  Nearly all the windows had gone, and those on the first floor had been boarded up. There was scaffolding at the far end where it was
being restored, and there were other signs of recent improvement. He was about to move on when he was startled by a raven screeching loudly as it left a chimney high above. It circled round him menacingly then flew off towards the Mausoleum.

  Over the doors was the Whitcliff coat-of-arms. It re-appeared in various parts of the hall and was conspicuous on the Mausoleum. One of the emblazons was familiar. The shield had two bars. The higher charged with three raised cobras. The lower with three pyramids. Underneath were some hieroglyphics and a motto which had worn away.

  Hartley made a mental note of it and stepped inside, to be immediately attacked by a brindle terrier. It ran from a room adjoining the hallway, snapping at his heels. The windows there had been boarded up and a figure emerged from the gloom to call off the dog, but the way it had attacked left Hartley in no doubt the brute had been deliberately set on him.

  The man stood in the shadow of the doorway with his hands in his pockets enjoying the spectacle. He wore dirty corduroy riding britches and leather gaiters, a greasy black jacket and a greasier waistcoat. His shirt was collarless and he’d a red neckerchief round his neck. His face was swarthy and unshaven. He could have been a gypsy.

  He stood insolently a moment smiling to himself. Then he called the dog off and said, “What d’yer want, mister? D’yer know yer trespassing?”

  Inspector Hartley took out his ID. “I’m Inspector Hartley from the Keighworth police,” said Blake. The other gave it the merest glance and curled his lip.

  “If yer ’d ha’ said that first, instead o’ creepin’ in here without permission, it’d ha’ saved a deal o’ bother,” said the man surlily. “Yer might ha’ got hurt. I thought yer were one o’ them tramps that kips ’ere. They’re a bloody pest. Had the place alight once and have knocked it about summat rotten, they have.”

  He was right. Floorboards had been ripped up and the doors smashed for firewood. Rusty tin cans lay strewn about. There was a stench of stale urine and worse. The man had been clearing up when Blake entered.