Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (5 page)

‘The use of that word implies you’d be happier if there was no Board of Trustees.’

‘No question about that.’ Gina’s response was so instinctive that she felt she should perhaps soften it a bit. ‘I’m sorry, that’s the knee-jerk reaction you’d get from anyone in my position. Professional administrators always resent the presence of amateur advisory boards. That’s just one of the rules of business – as true in the heritage industry as it is anywhere else. From my point of view, the Trustees are just a pain in the butt.’

‘Well, thank you for being so frank,’ said Carole in mock-affront. ‘For telling me that, as a Trustee, I am entirely redundant.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean—’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not at all offended. In fact, what you’ve told me makes it rather easier for me to say what I was about to—’

‘No, the Trustees are a pain in the butt, but they exist, and that’s it. I have to work with them – which is why it’s so important that I get as many like-minded people on the Board as possible. Which is why I persuaded them to ask you to join, Carole. The more support I can get at those meetings from people like you, the easier my job becomes.’

‘Ah.’ Suddenly what Carole was about to say had become more difficult again.

They had reached the entrance to the stable block. ‘But if there’s something you want to talk about, come on in.’

‘Well . . .’

Carole’s indecision was interrupted by the ungainly arrival across the yard of a stocky young man in clean blue overalls. He moved with the suppressed excitement of a child with a secret to tell, and his face was childlike too. Though probably in his twenties, he had the flat face and thick neck that characterized Down’s syndrome. He was ruddy and freckled from outside work. Excitement sparkled in his watery blue eyes.

‘Gina. Gina.’

‘Yes, Jonny. Look, you can see I’m talking to someone,’ she reprimanded with surprising gentleness. ‘You shouldn’t interrupt.’

‘I know, but sorry, I . . . There’s something . . .’

‘This is Carole Seddon. Jonny Tyson.’

The young man held out his hand very correctly, then thought better of the idea, and wiped it on his overalls. ‘Bit dirty. Been digging.’

‘Jonny’s one of the Volunteers. They’re working in the kitchen garden, preparing the space where the Museum will be built.’ Gina smiled, again with great compassion. ‘We couldn’t manage without Jonny.’

His beam of gratitude for the compliment nearly split his face in half, but he was still agitated, bouncing uneasily on the balls of his feet, as if trying to contain the power of his muscular body. ‘Please, Gina. There’s something . . . where we’ve been digging. Could you come and have a look?’

‘Yes, all right, Jonny.’ The Director moved towards the stable block door. ‘I’m just going to have a word with Carole, and then I’ll—’

‘Please, it’d be better if you could come straight away.’

There was no panic in his voice, but the urgency communicated itself from the trembling intensity of his body.

‘All right. Carole, we can talk as we go along . . . if that’s all right with you?’

‘Fine.’

‘No, I don’t think . . .’ But the two women had already moved on before Jonny Tyson could articulate his objection.

The kitchen garden of Bracketts was between the main house and the field which had been tarmacked over into a car park, so it had the ideal position for a Visitors’ Centre. Every new arrival would have to pass by at the start of their tour, and as they left they would hopefully visit the gift shop to load up with Esmond Chadleigh mugs and tea towels, as well as copies of those of his books that remained in print.

Though the building of the new Museum would be done by professional contractors, the basic clearing and digging over of the space had been delegated to the Bracketts volunteer force. The kitchen garden had long ago given up its original function and been used increasingly as a convenient tipping ground. (The wall that surrounded it left tourists blissfully unaware of the accumulated mess.) Old farm machinery and garden implements had ended their life there; so had generations of superseded visitor signs. There were collapsed chairs and tables from the old tea rooms, broken glass display cabinets and rejected souvenirs.

When Carole had arrived earlier that afternoon, the clearing process was well advanced. Through the open gates to the kitchen garden, she had seen the Estate Manager organizing some half-dozen workers of various ages. All wore faded blue overalls palely emblazoned with the words ‘Bracketts Volunteer’ and the logo of some long-defunct or merged insurance company. They appeared to be enjoying their work. Piles of rubbish were being enthusiastically dragged to a large bonfire outside the walls. The acrid smell of burning plastic tainted the autumn air.

As Carole and Gina approached after the meeting, almost all the debris had been removed, and the fire subsided to glowing embers. Within the kitchen garden walls, freshly turned earth showed that a start had been made on digging over the surface soil.

But the work had stopped. The Bracketts Volunteers in their faded blue overalls were clustered round a corner near the gate, and turned uneasily at the approach of Jonny Tyson and the two women.

‘I found it,’ said Jonny, with a mixture of pride and trepidation. Then, treating the words as if they were too big for his mouth, he confirmed, ‘Yes, I found it.’

The Volunteers moved back, Gina and Carole looked down at the ‘it’ they revealed.

Though only partially uncovered by Jonny’s spade, ‘it’ was undoubtedly a human skull.

‘Right, can we just deal with this calmly, please?’

Carole turned to see the tall figure of Sheila Cartwright approaching through the kitchen garden gates.

‘Of course, we’ll deal with it calmly,’ said Gina Locke, determined not to allow another usurpation of her authority. ‘Has anyone notified the police yet?’

The Volunteers shook their heads, and instinctively looked to Sheila Cartwright for their next instruction. At Bracketts old habits died hard.

‘And does the Estate Manager know?’

More shaking of heads. ‘Jonny only just found it,’ said one of the girl Volunteers.

‘Well, could you go and tell him?’ The girl set off obediently towards the stable block.

While Sheila Cartwright issued further instructions, Carole looked down at the skull and tried to analyse her reactions. The way it lay suggested that further digging would show the skull to be attached to an entire skeleton. And the neat circular hole in the back of the cranial dome raised the possibility that its owner had met an untimely end. But to her surprise, Carole realized she felt only the mildest shock at the sight. The predominant emotion she felt was curiosity, a need for explanations.

Another incipient conflict between Sheila Cartwright and Gina Locke brought her back to the present. The fuse was lit by Sheila’s assertion that she would notify the police of what had happened.

Gina instantly dug her toes in. ‘I don’t think that’s your job.’

‘Why?’ The older woman withered the younger one with her stare. ‘I rather doubt whether you know the Chief Constable as well as I do.’

‘This is hardly a matter to go up to Chief Constable level.’

‘If I may say so, Gina, that shows how little you know. The finding of a dead body somewhere like Bracketts is the kind of thing that must be kept from the press for as long as possible. If it can be kept quiet till the house closes for the end of the season, that will save a lot of disruption. Paul – the Chief Constable – will know exactly how to control the publicity. I’ll go and make the call.’

Then she turned her dominant eye on the little group that stood around the skull. ‘I need hardly say that this is something you keep entirely to yourselves. No information must be allowed to leak out before I release an authorized press statement.’

‘It isn’t
you
who will be issuing a press statement.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Gina! This is important. And dangerous. This is no time for petty demarcation disputes.’

The Director’s mouth was open for her response to that, but she didn’t manage to get it out, before Sheila Cartwright turned the beam of her disapproval on to one of the Volunteers. ‘Mervyn. How is it you always seem to be on the scene when there’s trouble?’

He was a thin man in his thirties with a shaven head, and the effect of her words was unexpected. Suddenly he started to sob; his whole body shook with the strength of his emotions. Jonny Tyson moved to the man, and enfolded him in an instinctive hug, the comfort given by one child to another who had just fallen over in the school playground.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ snapped Sheila Cartwright. ‘This is a serious situation. We’ve got enough on our plates without you having hysterics!’

‘I’m sorry, it’s just . . .’ The man called Mervyn’s thin, Northern voice trembled. ‘ . . . Seeing a dead body . . . I’ve never been able to stand that . . .’

‘Must make life difficult for you,’ said Sheila Cartwright unsympathetically, ‘ . . . given your past history.’

‘I’ve been sworn to secrecy . . .’

‘Carole, I just love openings like that.’ Jude rubbed her hands together with glee. ‘The ones which mean the exact opposite of what’s being said. “I’d be the last one to criticize . . .”, but that’s exactly what I’m about to do. “To be perfectly honest . . .” – always sets the alarm bells ringing for me. And, of course, “I’ve been sworn to secrecy . . ”, but that’s not going to stop me telling you every gory detail.’

‘Well, perhaps I shouldn’t.’

‘Oh, come on. You know you’re going to tell me eventually. Just get on and do it.’

It was two days after the discovery of the skull. They were sitting in the bar of the Crown and Anchor, which was full of Saturday seaside visitors, bulbous parents bursting out of sweatshirts, children with sand in their plastic sandals. The tables outside were even busier. The day was hot for late October, the kind of weather that made local residents talk darkly of ‘global warming’.

Fethering’s only pub had about it the feeling of a well-used armchair, and the same could be said for its landlord. Ted Crisp’s shaggy hair and beard were the same all the year round, but now he was in his summer uniform of grubby T-shirt rather than his grubby winter sweatshirt. Carole had an uncomfortable feeling that he might be wearing shorts too, but since Jude had been the one to buy their glasses of Chilean Chardonnay and Ted hadn’t emerged from behind the bar yet, she had no proof of this.

There was an air of ease about Jude too, a lightness that was unusual in a woman of her ample dimensions and fifty-five years. The sun had generously toasted her broad face and bare arms; the blonde hair, secured by an insufficiency of pins, made a gravity-defying structure on top of her head. As ever, she breathed serenity, a quality which Carole recognized her own more uptight personality could never hope to attain.

The two women could not have been more different, and yet, ever since Jude had moved into Wood-side Cottage next door to Carole, their friendship had flourished.

‘So tell me,’ said Jude.

‘There’s not much to tell. Just the finding of a skeleton.’

‘That doesn’t happen every day.’

‘Not to most people. I think you and I are bringing up the national average, though.’

Jude chuckled. ‘But we are talking about a murder, aren’t we? Please say yes.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You haven’t heard anything from the police?’

‘No. They were around Bracketts, of course. Still are around, I imagine. They interviewed all of us, told us not to tell anyone anything . . .’

This prompted a grin. ‘An instruction which, I’m glad to say, you, Carole, have ignored completely.’

‘Look, this goes no further. OK?’

‘Of
course
not.’ Jude grinned innocently. ‘What do you take me for?’

Carole didn’t bother to answer that.

‘I’m sure it’s a murder,’ Jude persisted. ‘You said that there was a hole in the skull.’

‘You can get a hole in your skull from something falling on it. Doesn’t have to be foul play.’

‘But if someone dies accidentally, you don’t hide their body in a kitchen garden, do you?’ Jude’s face took on an expression of childlike insistence. ‘Go on, say it was a murder.’

‘I can’t say that,’ Carole responded primly. ‘The person who owned the skull is dead; beyond that I haven’t got anything definite to go on. Everyone at Bracketts has clammed up. Certainly no information coming out of there.’

‘Not even to a Trustee?’

‘
Particularly
not to a Trustee. Or particularly not to this Trustee. The Director was acutely embarrassed that I even saw as much as I did.’

‘Who is the Director? Sheila somebody?’

‘No, you’re thinking of Sheila Cartwright, the one who got the place going as a literary shrine.’

‘Yes, that’s the name.’

‘So do you know Bracketts?’

‘I did the Guided Tour soon after I moved down here. I had a friend staying who’s interested in that period of literary history.’