Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (33 page)

‘Yes. I heard rumours of the existence of a second Priest’s Hole, but I’ve never been here.’

‘Well, as Esmond’s biographer, I think you should have been.’ Carole gestured towards the boxes. ‘I’ve only glanced through it, but the little I’ve seen suggests that a revisionist view of Esmond Chadleigh is at least a possibility.’

‘Esmond was a good man. He did his best, according to his lights . . . according to the values with which he was brought up. He never harmed anyone.’

‘He may not have harmed anyone, but he was certainly involved in covering something up.’

‘What do you mean?’

Carole held out the letter from Felix Chadleigh to his son. Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’s fat face showed the struggle between two conflicting intentions. Then he made his decision. ‘I recognize the letter,’ he said.

Suddenly he snatched it from her, together with some of the other papers she had been looking at, and stuffed them into his pocket.

‘You mean you have been down here?’ asked Carole. ‘You have seen all this stuff?’

Caught out in his earlier lie, he nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘But you’re still not planning to include it in your biography?’

‘Some skeletons are best left undisturbed.’

‘Some of them refuse to stay undisturbed, Graham. That one in the kitchen garden that Jonny Tyson uncovered, that refused to be undisturbed, didn’t it?’

‘Yes. But nobody seems to know who it belonged to. It was nothing to do with the Chadleigh family.’

‘No? That’s certainly what you wanted people to think. You wanted people to think the body was buried before the Chadleighs moved here. Which is why you falsified the documents you gave to Professor Teischbaum, to try to put her off the scent.’

‘Maybe,’ he said sourly.

‘I think you were overreacting, Graham. Forensic science isn’t accurate enough to say exactly whether a body was buried in 1916 or 1917, so what you did was only going to cause a temporary confusion. The truth would have come out pretty quickly. All you achieved by your crude tampering with the documents was to reveal that you knew something about the body in the kitchen garden. And that you knew the body did have something to do with the Chadleigh family.’

‘Well, if it did, it was most likely the housekeeper’s son. Pat Heggarty. He went missing around that time.’

‘So how did Pat Heggarty come to have a bullet-hole in his head? Did one of the Chadleighs shoot him?’

‘No, of course not!’ Graham sounded flustered and confused.

‘All right. Let’s put that on one side for the moment. What about the other skeleton that refuses to stay undisturbed? Sheila Cartwright?’

He shook visibly at the mention of her name.

‘What about her? Who killed her, Graham?’

‘The police have arrested this convict, haven’t they?’

‘They’ve recaptured him. They’re holding him in Lewes Prison. But, so far as we know, that’s just because he escaped. They haven’t charged him with murder.’

‘Only a matter of time.’

‘Do you think so? Did you know, incidentally, that the convict, Mervyn Hunter, actually hid down here after he escaped?’

‘Really?’

Carole indicated the rug and candles. ‘He left those.’

‘Good God. How did he know the place existed?’

‘From some book he read in the library here, I think. But presumably you know the contents of the Bracketts library inside out . . .?’

‘Well . . .’ he prevaricated, ‘I can’t claim to have read everything.’

‘Tell me, Graham,’ said Carole, suddenly direct, ‘what did you do immediately after storming out of that Emergency Trustees’ Meeting on Friday?’

‘What the hell do you mean?’ He was full of a weak man’s ineffectual bluster. ‘Are you accusing me of murdering Sheila?’

‘I’m asking you what you did straight after the Emergency Trustees’ Meeting? If you have nothing to hide, I see no reason why you shouldn’t tell me.’

‘Because it’s none of your business!’

‘I may be being nosy, Graham, but I’m not accusing you of anything. If on the other hand, you don’t answer . . . well, that would make me suspicious.’

There was a silence, then he put his hand against the suspended floorboards in the middle of the cell, and mumbled truculently, ‘I went back to the cottage and straight to bed. I was very upset. Anyone’d be upset if they’d just had their life’s work rejected.’

‘Yes, of course. Are you sure you went
straight
up to bed? You didn’t go into any of the other rooms in the house?’

‘No . . .’

Carole pounced on the slight hesitation in his voice. ‘Did you go into the study, Graham?’

‘Why should I have done?’

‘That’s where you had Graham Chadleigh’s service revolver.’

‘No, I didn’t go in there,’ he snapped.

‘So you went straight upstairs to bed?’

He wilted under the ferocity of her gaze. ‘Well, no . . .’

‘Where did you go, Graham?’

‘Only into the kitchen. I got a tin of biscuits. I get very hungry when I’m upset.’

Looking at the girth of the pathetic child-man in front of her, Carole Seddon could well believe that.

‘But tell me, when did you . . .?’

Her words trickled away. A new panic fluttered her heart.

There was a sound of footsteps on the floor above them. And of voices.

Jude got home to find that Laurence had suffered another haemorrhage. Since he was unconscious, he couldn’t argue about being hospitalized.

She sat anxiously in a corridor, waiting for the news that he’d come round. Though in theory she knew the seriousness of his condition, the haemorrhage had brought home its implacable reality. The threat to the life of someone she loved took priority over the deaths at Bracketts.

Jude’s mind was too full to think about the case. And if anything urgent came up in that connection, Carole had got her telephone number.

The voices from above were those of Belinda Chadleigh and, surprisingly, Marla Teischbaum. Even more surprising, there seemed to be an atmosphere of considerable cordiality between them.

‘This is very good of you,’ the Professor was saying, as they approached. ‘I’d really given up hope of ever getting any co-operation from anyone at Bracketts.’

‘I think you have to be realistic.’ Belinda Chadleigh’s voice sounded much more focused than before. The vagueness had gone, to be replaced by a brusque practicality. Observing the displaced floorboards, she said, ‘Well, goodness me, not the first visitors of the day. Graham, are you down there?’

Graham admitted that he certainly was.

‘So am I. Carole Seddon.’

‘What a busy Priest’s Hole we have today. Are you another researcher after knowledge, Mrs Seddon?’

‘In a way, I suppose I am.’

‘Hm. Graham, you’d better come out of there.’

‘Very well, Auntie,’ he said with childlike docility, and started laboriously to pull his heavy bulk up the rungs to the surface.

‘I’ve just been talking to Professor Teischbaum,’ Belinda Chadleigh went on, ‘and I’ve made a decision.’

‘Oh?’ he puffed, heaving himself up to the next level.

‘I think we should allow Professor Teischbaum to see the archive down there.’

‘What!’ Graham was appalled. ‘But after all the trouble we’ve gone to to protect it . . . Auntie, you’re going against everything you’ve believed in all your life.’

‘Then maybe the things I’ve believed all my life were wrong. I’ve come to the conclusion, Graham, that the truth cannot be suppressed.’

‘I’m so glad to hear you say that, Miss Chadleigh,’ Marla cooed. ‘Truth is the goal of all academic—’

‘Nobody asked your opinion!’ Graham Chadleigh-Bewes snapped.

There was a silence and, though she couldn’t see them from down in the cell, Carole could sense the drop in temperature as the two rival biographers faced each other.

‘Auntie, you can’t let this woman invade our family’s most precious secrets. I thought you swore to your parents that you’d never let anyone see this material.’

‘Yes, I did, Graham, but I think there comes a time when you have to question the hold the past exerts over the present. Maybe all these oaths and secrecy have done the Chadleigh family more harm than good over the years. Maybe in some way they contributed to the death of Sheila Cartwright. I don’t know. All I do know is that I’ve decided Professor Teischbaum should have access to these hidden archives.’

‘But, Auntie, you can’t—’

‘That is what I have decided, Graham.’

The strength in her words, and the silence that followed them, showed the power the old woman exercised over her nephew.

‘Now,’ she said, continuing to take control, ‘I’m sure Professor Teischbaum would like to have a quick look at the riches on offer.’

‘I sure would love that.’

‘Mrs Seddon, you seem to have made a start. Maybe you’d be so kind as to show the Professor what you’ve discovered so far.’

‘Of course.’

Carole had been initially surprised by Belinda Chadleigh’s sudden co-operation with the American, but she quickly rationalized it. The old lady seemed such a peripheral figure that she was easily ignored. All of Professor Teischbaum’s previous approaches had been made to the more dominant Trustees. Perhaps from the start all that had been needed to break the deadlock was a direct approach to Belinda.

‘I can’t thank you enough, Miss Chadleigh.’ Already Marla Teischbaum’s elegantly trousered legs were making their way down the rungs into the lower cell.

‘Just have a quick look now. The archive will be open to you whenever you need to consult it in the future. When you’re ready, come over to the cottage for a cup of tea . . . and I dare say we could all manage a nice slice of ginger cake . . .?’

‘You bet, Auntie.’

Marla Teischbaum had been kitted out with a Camping Gaz lamp which spread light throughout the small cell. As the woman straightened up to her full height, Carole could see the gleam of triumph in her eye.

‘Oh, Mrs Seddon,’ she heard Belinda Chadleigh call from above. ‘I just met Gina Locke on the way over here, and she was asking if I knew who owns a white Renault car in the car park.’

‘It’s mine.’

‘Apparently it’s in the way of some big trailer the local farmer’s trying to manoeuvre into a field.’

‘Shall I come and move it?’

‘Don’t worry, just throw the keys up. Graham’ll move it.’

‘Will I?’ he grumbled.

‘Yes, you will.’

‘Oh, very well. Chuck them up here.’

Carole did so. The two women in the cell looked at each other in silence, as they heard the pair of footsteps above recede into the silence of the old house.

Then, with an even more triumphalist beam, Marla Teischbaum announced, ‘I did it! I knew if I stuck at it, I’d get there. It was a matter of getting past bloody Graham. Gard, every time I tried to get through to the aunt, he’d stand in my way. But then I found out which days Graham wasn’t there . . .’

‘Who did you find that out from?

‘Gina. She set it all up for me. Told me the right time to ring Belinda, Belinda agreed to see me and . . .’ She gestured flamboyantly around the small space ‘ . . . here I am.’

‘You got off lightly, Marla. I virtually had to break in.’

‘Don’t worry, I’d have broken in too . . . if I’d known the damned place existed. If you want to get information, you have to reckon on a bit of breaking and entering.’

‘You mean you’ve done it before?’

The tall American shrugged. ‘Hardly breaking and entering when the door’s left open, is it?’

Carole had a sudden insight. ‘That’s what you did during the Emergency Trustees’ Meeting, didn’t you? As soon as you saw Graham and his aunt come over to Bracketts, you walked into his cottage and started going through his research notes.’

‘Now that’d hardly be ethical, would it?’ But the way Marla said it convinced Carole that her conjecture had been right.

‘So when they came out of the meeting so early, they must’ve caught you snooping.’

‘No, they didn’t.’ Realizing she’d given something away, Marla Teischbaum smiled easily. ‘OK, I was there. What the hell? I wasn’t getting information any other way. Yup, and it did give me quite a turn when I heard Graham coming back into the cottage. It was raining so hard, I didn’t hear footsteps or anything, just the front door opening. I stood there in the study, trying to think what clever explanations I’d come up with when he walked in. But I was lucky, he didn’t. I heard him going into the kitchen, then he just stumped off upstairs. Tell you, I didn’t need no second invitation. I hightailed straight outta that place.’

‘And went to wait in George Ferris’s car?’

‘Oh, you are clever,’ said Marla mockingly. ‘Well done.’

‘Just a minute, though. The rain. I’ve never seen it raining like it was that night. And when I saw you earlier, you didn’t have a raincoat. You never went out of Graham’s cottage and risked your precious hair in weather like that.’