Watchers of the Dead

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘I’m inclined to agree,’ said Hulda. ‘But does this mean that not everyone here thinks displaying cannibals was a good idea?’

  ‘It does,’ admitted Roth reluctantly. ‘But Professor Dickerson is very persuasive, and he promised that the Kumu would be a sensation. By the way, I hope you won’t put any of this in your newspaper, Alec. It would be a shocking betrayal of our friendship.’

  ‘Of yours and his, perhaps,’ said Hulda before Lonsdale could reply. ‘But you and I have only just met. We don’t have a friendship to betray. Of course, I might stay my pen if you let me see the basement and get me an interview with Mr Owen.’

  ‘Done,’ said Roth, extending a slender hand to seal the agreement.

  The basement was a gloomy place used for storing specimens. It was kept cool to preserve them, but the Kumu had been housed near a steam boiler, in a room that was pleasantly warm. A flight of stairs led up to a tiny yard with a tree and some scrubby grass, which was both private and quiet. Roth said the staff used it for picnics in the summer, but as it was winter the Kumu had had it to themselves.

  While Lonsdale and Hulda explored, Roth supplied them with more information about the tribesmen – he doggedly refused to refer to them as ‘cannibals’. There were three of them – a young woman, her husband, and an older man. Roth remained adamant that all had been enjoying what they had considered to be a fine adventure. Everything had seemed rosy until he arrived one morning to find them gone.

  ‘Bones,’ said Hulda, poking some with her foot. ‘Not human, I hope. Have any of your staff gone missing of late?’

  ‘Those are from a horse,’ said Roth stiffly. ‘And the Kumu’s last meal here was pork. It’s their favourite meat, although I imagine they jest when they claim it tastes like human.’

  Lonsdale was not so sure about that.

  ‘I think I’ll have fish for dinner tonight,’ muttered Hulda.

  ‘You’ll keep your promise?’ Roth asked her suddenly. ‘Nothing of what you’ve learned here will appear in The PMG?’

  ‘It won’t,’ Lonsdale assured him. ‘Our assistant editor is a very ethical man, and he’d never publish anything that might result in your Kumu being put in danger – which they might be if word seeps out that cannibals are on the loose.’

  ‘It’s true – he wouldn’t,’ said Hulda, and glared at Roth. ‘For which you should be grateful, because what you’ve done is irresponsible. You say the Kumu came of their own free will, but I doubt they had any real concept of what they were being asked to do.’

  ‘You’ll find they did,’ countered Roth sharply. ‘They aren’t stupid. They leapt at the opportunity to live in London for a few weeks, especially when they learned how much we were willing to pay. Indeed, I rather think the real difficulty might come when it’s time for them to go home.’

  ‘Meaning what?’ demanded Hulda.

  ‘Meaning they like it here and will probably want to stay longer. All three are great fans of cricket, tea rooms, and Gilbert and Sullivan. We took them to see the first performance of Iolanthe last month, and they enjoyed it so much that we’ve been back to see it several times since.’

  Lonsdale blinked, wondering if Roth was joking, but he could see from the earnest expression on his friend’s face that he was not. Even so, cricket, tea and light opera seemed unlikely pleasures for folk who hailed from the Congo. He half listened while Hulda continued to ply Roth with questions, then began to wander through the basement on his own, looking for he knew not what.

  As the museum was vast, so was the underground part of it. The Kumu had lived in the boiler room, but there were so many other nooks and crannies that he imagined it would be possible to hide there and not be discovered for weeks. It was full of cupboards, chests and cabinets, some of which were filled with curated treasures, and others that were still empty.

  ‘This stuff was given to us by the explorer Joseph Thomson,’ explained Roth, following Lonsdale into a particularly cluttered section. He spoke not so much as to provide information, as in the hope of escaping from Hulda’s barrage of questions. ‘He collected it from the region of Lake Tanganyika. I hope to start cataloguing it soon.’

  ‘Why haven’t you done it already?’ asked Hulda. ‘Isn’t it scientifically important?’

  ‘Very, and he’ll be offended if he learns how little I’ve done so far, but opening a new museum is hard work. Besides, his collection’s safe down here – it’s the coldest part of the basement, so his materials are very well preserved.’

  ‘When were you last in here?’ asked Lonsdale from the darkest corner, where he crouched to inspect what he had thought was a pile of rags. His breath plumed as he spoke; it was indeed a chilly place.

  ‘Probably not since October,’ replied Roth. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve found a dead body,’ replied Lonsdale softly, ‘and I’m trying to assess how long it might have been here.’

  Roth gaped at him, then inched forward to look for himself, reluctance in every step. His face was so white that Lonsdale stood to take his arm, afraid he might swoon. Hulda was made of sterner stuff, and strode forward confidently.

  ‘It’s Professor Dickerson!’ cried Roth in horror.

  ‘How can you tell?’ asked Lonsdale. ‘His face is under his arm.’

  He did not mention that, below the arm, the head was so covered in blood that some serious rinsing would be required before any reliable identification could be made.

  ‘I recognize his jacket,’ gulped Roth unsteadily. ‘That horrible old patch on the elbow, where he wore it through by leaning on his desk to write. How could this … why is he …?’

  He reeled, so Lonsdale caught him and made him sit on the floor, some distance from the body. He told Hulda to fetch the police, but she lingered, wanting to hear more from Roth.

  ‘When did you last see Dickerson?’ asked Lonsdale, more to see if Roth was capable of speech than for information. He was no expert, but it was clear that the victim had been dead for days.

  ‘When I saw him off on the Devon train,’ replied Roth shakily. ‘The nine twenty-five from Paddington Station.’

  ‘Yes, but what day?’ pressed Lonsdale.

  ‘Last Thursday,’ breathed Roth. ‘Eight days ago. I remember, because I had an appointment with my doctor at eleven o’clock, and I treated myself to a bag of roasted chestnuts on the way. They were overly salted, and made me feel sick, so that my physician thought I might be in for another bout of my Black Volta trouble.’

  The ‘trouble’ that had almost taken his life, thought Lonsdale. ‘So you last saw Dickerson on the day that the Kumu went missing?’

  ‘They didn’t do this,’ said Roth, seeing what he was thinking. ‘They wouldn’t. They liked him and he liked them.’

  Lonsdale thought he would reserve judgement until he had more information – particularly information pertaining to whether any of Dickerson had been eaten.

  ‘Presumably, you searched the basement very thoroughly when you realized they’d gone,’ he said. ‘That means Dickerson must’ve been killed after the hunt was called off.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Roth miserably. ‘We were looking for three living souls, not a single, crumpled corpse, and I, for one, barely glanced in here. Besides, the Kumu don’t use this bit, on account of it being so cold and cluttered. None of us examined it very closely.’

  ‘And Dickerson definitely went to Devon last week?’ asked Lonsdale. ‘You saw the train leave with him on it?’

  ‘I left when it was still in the station because of my appointment.’ Roth swallowed hard. ‘He may have got off – he’s done it before. Owen told him to fetch these particular artefacts, but he didn’t want to go – he wanted to stay here, because there was so much for him to do. He went under protest.’

  ‘So he might’ve jumped off the train and returned here,’ surmised Lonsdale, ‘where he surprised the Kumu, who were expecting him to be away …’ He turned to Hulda. ‘Will you fetch the police, or shall I?’r />
  ‘Please don’t tell the authorities that the Kumu did this,’ begged Roth. ‘Once such a notion is in their heads, they’ll see no other, and I’m certain they aren’t to blame.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s a conclusion they’re likely to draw regardless of anything we tell them,’ said Lonsdale soberly. ‘It is the most obvious answer.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you knew them,’ said Roth wretchedly.

  TWO

  It seemed an age before Hulda returned to say that a guard had been dispatched to summon the police and inform the relevant museum authorities about the grim discovery. In the interim, Lonsdale had given Roth his overcoat, afraid that shock and cold would rob his friend of what little health he had left. Hulda began to prowl, looking for clues as to what might have happened.

  ‘Can you tell how he died?’ asked Roth in a small voice, watching her.

  ‘Not without moving the body,’ she replied. ‘Which we’d better not do before the police arrive. However, there’s so much blood that foul play is a certainty, in my humble opinion.’

  She sounded anything but humble, and Lonsdale supposed she considered herself an expert on such matters because of the murders they had solved earlier that year. She was about to add more, but there was a murmur of hushed, shocked voices, and the museum staff began to arrive, alerted by the guard before he had gone for the police. They came to stand in horrified huddles, but then a sharp voice cut through the babble of consternation.

  ‘Don’t stand in here gawping,’ snapped Richard Owen; there was a burly guard at his heels to enforce his orders, should it be necessary. ‘Not when our museum is crammed to the gills with visitors. Get about your duties, or I’ll dismiss the lot of you. Go on, go!’

  He clapped his hands, and most of the onlookers hurried away obediently. One remained, though – a man Lonsdale recognized as the talented anatomist-surgeon William Flower. Flower was widely tipped to be Owen’s successor, despite the two being bitter rivals in a controversial debate about the nature of the human brain. He was a tall, patrician man, who appeared slim, elegant and refined next to the short and tatty Owen.

  ‘It is Dickerson,’ said Flower, crouching to inspect the body. ‘His face is covered in dried blood, but I recognize his occipital bun – very distinctive. Poor Dickerson!’

  ‘How dare he!’ snarled Owen. ‘Today, of all days.’

  ‘How dare he what?’ asked Flowers archly. ‘Get himself killed?’

  ‘Yes!’ spat Owen. ‘Now the papers will only write about his murder, rather than the opening of one of the greatest institutions London has ever known. I should never have let him bring cannibals to London. The public is far more interested in my dinosaurs. Everyone loves dinosaurs.’

  ‘Yes,’ acknowledged Flower. ‘But everyone loved Dickerson, too. He was a good man, Owen, and I’m deeply saddened to see him thus. When will the police arrive?’

  ‘Soon,’ replied Hulda, bustling forward importantly. ‘I sent for them myself.’

  ‘And who are you, pray?’ demanded Owen, regarding her with eyes that were unhealthily yellow, suggesting either a fondness for drink or some liver complaint.

  ‘Hulda Friederichs, The Pall Mall Gazette,’ replied Hulda briskly. ‘I came to learn about your cannibals, but they seem to have vanished, leaving your professor dead in the basement where they’ve been staying.’

  ‘I told you – the Kumu have nothing to do with this,’ objected Roth in a low, strained voice. ‘They’d never hurt the professor. They’re his friends.’

  ‘Out!’ ordered Owen savagely, pointing a furious finger at Hulda. He turned to the guard. ‘Driscoll? See this woman off the premises. And if she writes one bad word about my museum, I’ll crush her.’

  ‘He means metaphorically,’ Flower assured Hulda hastily. ‘But may I add my voice to his in begging that you think very carefully before you set pen to paper? Our future depends on good publicity, and we’ll flounder if Londoners think it’s dangerous to come.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Hulda wryly, ‘it’s likely to attract them in even greater numbers.’ She turned back to Owen. ‘And for your information, sir, I always think very carefully before setting pen to paper. I’m a professional reporter.’

  ‘I don’t care what you are,’ snarled Owen. ‘I’ve invested years of my life in this place, and I won’t see it ruined by a newspaper.’ He all but spat the last word.

  ‘And it is a fabulous achievement,’ said Hulda placatingly. ‘Especially the exhibits of extinct species. Incidentally, I thought your monograph on the Little Archaeopteryx was nothing short of genius.’

  ‘You can stay after all,’ said Owen promptly. ‘You’re obviously a woman with a good mind, unlike most of my staff. However, not even that’ll save you from my wrath if you write anything derogatory about my museum.’

  ‘I won’t,’ promised Hulda. ‘We want it to succeed. Indeed, Lonsdale here has a claw to give you – courtesy of The Pall Mall Gazette.’

  ‘The West African claw?’ asked Flowers, frowning. ‘I thought that was the gift of a private citizen, not a donation from a newspaper. I’m not sure we’d have accepted it, had we known.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll accept it,’ said Owen hastily. ‘One can never have too many claws. It—’

  He turned at a commotion by the door. Lonsdale expected it to be the police, but it was two courtiers, sent downstairs by a guard who knew Owen was in the basement. Lonsdale knew both by sight, from assignments that had taken him to Buckingham Palace. One was Sir Algernon Fleetwood-Pelham, a Groom-in-Waiting, whose official duties seemed to entail running errands for the Queen and supplying her with gossip. He was a curious-looking individual, in that the top half of his skull was far larger than the lower part, so that an enormous braincase and a huge handlebar moustache topped an almost non-existent chin. Lonsdale thought he might have been wise to add a beard to the moustache, to even things out, and wondered why no one had suggested it.

  The second was Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue, Baron Carlingford. A career politician, Carlingford had served as a Member of Parliament for more than a quarter of a century before being elevated to the peerage. The previous year, he had been named Lord Privy Seal, a court sinecure that paid a handsome salary in return for very little work. He was short, slight and haughty – a small bundle of arrogance and bristling pride.

  ‘We’re here about the Queen,’ began Fleetwood-Pelham, although he baulked when he saw the body. ‘She intends to visit the museum later today, although I don’t think we’ll bring her down here, not if there’s a corpse …’

  Owen regarded him sourly. ‘She should’ve accepted my invitation to open it. Then we wouldn’t have had to resort to hiring cannibals to draw the crowds, and Professor Dickerson would still be alive.’

  ‘The Kumu didn’t kill Professor Dickerson,’ said Roth again, although his voice was feeble compared to Owen’s feisty bellow, and no one took any notice.

  ‘Cannibals?’ queried Carlingford, shocked. ‘You have cannibals here?’

  ‘That’s Dickerson?’ blurted Fleetwood-Pelham at the same time. ‘You must be mistaken! He was a good man – and a good friend. He can’t be dead!’

  ‘Well, he is,’ replied Owen shortly. ‘And you’d better leave, because we can’t accommodate the Queen today. Tell her to try again next week.’

  Carlingford gaped at him. ‘We can’t tell her that!’

  ‘Poor Dickerson!’ breathed Fleetwood-Pelham, still staring at the body. ‘What happened to him? Is that blood?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Owen shortly. ‘Now please leave. I—’

  ‘I appreciate your distress, Owen,’ interrupted Carlingford, ‘but life goes on, and the Queen won’t be denied. We must sit down and find a time suitable to accommodate her.’

  ‘Not now,’ snapped Owen. ‘For God’s sake, man, can’t you see I’m busy?’

  ‘We’ll come back,’ said Fleetwood-Pelham hastily, before Carlingford could argue. ‘Dickerson must be the
ir first priority, Carlingford. The Queen will understand.’

  The expression on Carlingford’s face suggested that she probably wouldn’t.

  When the police appeared, it was with all the paraphernalia the modern constabulary used to investigate serious crime. There was medical expertise, too, and Lonsdale and Hulda exchanged murmured greetings with the pathologist, Dr Robert Bradwell. A vigorous man with a ready smile, a head of black hair, and thick mutton-chop sideburns, he had been involved in the last case Lonsdale and Hulda had explored together.

  Another familiar face was Inspector George Peters. He was slightly built with a droopy moustache that made him look mournful. Despite his unassuming appearance, he possessed a keen mind that had put many a criminal behind bars.

  He was with one of the most celebrated policemen in London – Superintendent Hayes, famous not only for helping to save the Queen from being assassinated, but for his abilities as a detective. He was on secondment to the Metropolitan Police, charged with hunting down the escaped Maclean. Lonsdale did not envy him the task, especially as the gutter press was making a fuss about the time it was taking. Hayes’s task was rendered no easier by the Metropolitan Police’s Commissioner, Edmund Henderson, who kept using him to solve other major crimes, too.

  The police went about their business with smooth efficiency, and the first thing they did was clear the basement of spectators. Everyone, even Owen, was herded into the staff room, where a team of experienced officers took names, addresses and preliminary statements. They spent longer with Lonsdale and Hulda, while poor Roth was bundled away to a private room to be questioned more closely.

  ‘He’s the professor’s assistant, and, so far, he’s the last one to see him alive,’ explained Peters, when Lonsdale expressed his concern. ‘Of course, we need to speak to him at greater length than anyone else.’