Murder in the Museum - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Simon Brett (Chapter Thirteen) #14

Chapter Thirteen

There was nothing on her answering machine when Carole got back from her visit to Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. Professor Marla Teischbaum would be ringing her later in the day.

The fridge offered little of excitement for lunch and, in a spirit of righteous abstinence, Carole made herself a cottage cheese salad (even though Jude would think she was eating ‘an abomination to God and Man’). Graham’s greed had left her with a reaction of distaste, and she felt the need to be cleansed, detoxified from the memory.

After lunch, once she had tidied everything up, Carole sat back at her dining-room table, and took out the file she had been given by Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. Although literature had never excited her that much – except as a point of reference for the Times crossword – recent events had made her hungry to find out more about Esmond Chadleigh.

There were twenty or thirty papers, some single sheets, others untidily stapled together. Only one dated from later than 1935, and she soon decided that it had been put in the file by mistake. Sent only the week before and addressed to Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, the letter was from a publisher, asking permission to reprint ‘Threnody for the Lost’ in an anthology of War Poetry for schools.

She rang through to Graham immediately, describing the letter and asking if it was meant to be handed over to Professor Marla Teischbaum. Her surmise proved correct. He reckoned he must have picked it up with the other papers. (Having seen the state of his desk, she didn’t find this hard to believe.) With no apology, he asked if she was going to be back at Bracketts soon; could she drop it in? Carole said that was unlikely, and he instructed her to post it back to him as soon as possible. The petulant tone in which he said this suggested that the misappropriation of the letter was her fault rather than his.

After this rudeness from Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, she had no qualms about reading the contents of the file. (Nor did she feel guilty when, later in the afternoon, she went down to the Fethering Stationers and took photocopies of all the documents.) If she was going to be used as a mere messenger by the Bracketts Trustees, then at least she had a right to know the message she was carrying. Besides, the schoolboy glee in Graham’s manner had suggested Professor Teischbaum was going to be offered little that was controversial or confidential.

So it proved. The photocopies were mostly scraps of drafts from articles and verses written by Esmond Chadleigh, or correspondence written to him. His distinctive untidily small handwriting, which veered slowly upwards to the right-hand side of unlined pages in his creative writing, was in evidence on none of the letters. Somewhere, presumably, was a collection of the letters that he had actually sent, rather than received. As she had the thought, Carole remembered Graham Chadleigh-Bewes at the Trustees’ Meeting talking about ‘getting together a selection of the letters’. If he was making as much progress on that task as he was with the biography, it might be a while before the published edition saw the light of day.

Thinking back to the Trustees’ Meeting, Carole also recalled the vehemence with which Graham had insisted that no contact should be made with ‘that dreadful woman’. He’d had quite a change of heart since then; now he was actually volunteering material – albeit of minor importance – to Professor Marla Teischbaum. Though the idea for this diplomatic rapprochement had come from Sheila Cartwright rather than Graham himself.

There were only a few of the photocopied documents to which Carole gave more than a cursory glance. The first attracted her attention because it looked like a pastiche of a schoolboy’s letter home. There were crossings-out and misspellings, and occasional splutterings of ink, where the writer’s pen could not keep pace with his thoughts.

17 Leinster Terrace,

London W.

29 December 1917

Dear Chadders,

It was topping to see you over Christmas. Back here in London under the beedy eye of Aunt P., I realize what an absolute collosal bore it would have been had I had to stay with her right through the festive season. I don’t think she likes anyone – certainly not me or Mr Lloyd George, so she’s in an even sourer mood than usual. You’re a real brick to have arranged my visit to Bracketts, and, as a small expression of my gratitude, my tuck box is open to you any time you feel a bit peckish next term. You never know, I might some day soon get some scoff through from the Aged Ps. When he started the war, the Kaeser should have been a bit more considerate, and thought about the effect it was going to have on communications between people in Calcutta and their poor starving sons incarserated in British public schools.

Talking of Aged Ps, I have, needless to say, done the proper thing by yours. The Bread and Butter Letter went off by yesterday’s first post, so I hope it’s arrived by now. They were real sports to take on another ravening inkey thirteen-year-old, and I really apreciated their generousity. I thought they seemed in frightfully good spirits, given the beastly circumstances.

I was also glad to meet Lieutenant Strider – what a brave chap. Seeing someone like him makes me feel really cheesed off yet again that we aren’t old enough to go out and have a pot at Fritz ourselves. I’d like to get a bit of revenge for all those chaps Strider lost on the Somme. He seemed raring to go back, didn’t he, champing at the bit to finish the job? Now our boys have got those new-fangled tanks out there, it shouldn’t take long. You can see why Lieutenant Strider wants to be in at the kill, can’t you? Be a real frost to miss the end, wouldn’t it – like being run out on 99 and not making your century? Did you hear, incidentally, that old ‘Rattles’ Rattenborough, School Captain of a couple of years back, has died of wounds he sustained during that Somme fixture? Bit of a damper when you hear about chaps you know, but it seems to be happenning all too often these days.

On a more chearful note, your new house is an absolute pip. I just hope, when the Aged Ps finally come back from India, they get somewhere half as nice for us to kick our heels in. I know the place is a bit run down, but gosh, it’s going to be topping when the builders and gardners have been let loose on it. I enjoyed the shooting we had on Boxing Day and, when the woods have been properly tidyed up, it’ll be even better. Lieutenant Strider’s a pretty handy shot, isn’t he? I wonder if there’s anything that fellow can’t do? From what he was saying – though of course he didn’t brag – he’s a very useful batsman too. (I’m really determined to get into the nets early next season and consentrate on my batting.) You’ve got plenty of space in the grounds at Bracketts too, haven’t you? I hope you do manage to persuade your Old Man to have a tennis court laid. That would be corking fun in the summer, and I hope I’m invited to have a game with you. Maybe I’ll get my revenge for the trouncing your lot gave us in the House Cricket Competition!

So thank you, my dear old chum, for a topping Christmas. I was delighted to be part of your first one at Bracketts, and wish you and your family many more happy Christmasses in that jolly house. And you and I will meet up all too soon, won’t we? Assuming the Kaeser doesn’t suddenly invade, or we haven’t starved because of the price of bread, within a week the prison gates will once again close behind us, and we’ll face another term sentenced to the inhuman cruelty of Father Grey’s pep-talks about ‘Unhealthy Thoughts’ – not to mention ‘Blotter’ Parsons’ Irregular Verbs. ‘Moritui te saluant’, or whatever that wretched tag is he keeps quoting. It’s a monumental bore to have three more years of school to face, when I for one would much rather be out there for King and Country giving Fritz a bloody nose!

On the train, make for the second carriage from the back, last compartement, as usual. If there are any little Remove Worms in their before I arrive, I know I can rely on you to send them packing with flees in their ears.

Your chum,

Pickles

1917. So it was in that year that the Chadleigh family had moved to Bracketts. The year their elder son Graham was lost at Passchendaele. ‘Given the beastly circumstances’, it must have been hard for Mr and Mrs Chadleigh to appear to be ‘in frightfully good spirits’ that Christmas.

She flicked through the papers and found confirmation of their moving date in a photocopy of what appeared to be a page from a diary. The original must have been blotched and foxed by damp, which made it difficult to read. The handwriting was much better than Esmond’s, a spidery but regular copperplate, and the contents suggested it must have been written by his father. There was a splodge over the year, but the writer had firmly written in ‘1917’ over it.

12 November 1917

The Lord and all the Holy Saints be praised! After all the exhausting uncertainty of the last few months, we did finally today take possession of Bracketts. There is an infinite amount still to be done, but I insisted that Mrs Heggarty make up the beds in Sonia and my rooms, so that we can spend the first night of what I pray will be many happy ones in this blessed spot. When the rest of the servants arrive tomorrow, we will set about making the place habitable. I’m sure that over the next few months when the builders start their works, we will have to spend many nights in the Crown Inn at South Stapley, but at least for today, Bracketts is ours. It is a source of great pleasure to me that there is a cunningly hidden and complex Priest’s Hole here,a sign that for many years this has been a home to good Catholics. I have asked Father Ternan to come over tomorrow to bless the house. Here we will put our griefs behind us, and look forward to however much more life God in His wisdom sees fit to grant us. Thanks be to Him for this day!

So Graham Chadleigh had never lived at Bracketts. His young life had been cut short in the Flanders mud before his family took possession of the house.

This seemed to be confirmed by the photocopy of an undated letter written in an uneducated hand.

Dear Mr Chadleigh,

I’m writing to you at the request of my commanding officer who had a request from Lieutenant Strider for anyone who witnessed what happened to his men on 26th October 1917 at Passchendaele. I was there on stretcher duty that day and bringing a wounded man back from the front over near Houthulst Forest when I saw Lieutenant Strider. I recognized him because I’d stretchered off a couple of his men during the big push on 12th October. On the 26th he was advancing at the head of maybe twenty men. It was hard to tell what with the rain and fog but they went past us on the duckboards what had been laid over the mud.

They’d only just gone past us and we wasn’t no more than a hundred yards behind them when a German shell landed and blew us off our feet. It put paid to the poor blighter on our stretcher and my mate got a big lump of shrapnel in his back. I was pretty shook up but thank the Lord not more than a bit brused.

When I managed to get up and look back towards the German lines, it was like the whole landscape had changed. When the smoke cleared I could see this huge crater, which was already filling up with water and mud. Where the duckboards had been there was nothing. Where Lieutenant Strider’s men had been there was nothing. They must have took a direct hit. I heard later that Lieutenant Strider himself survived, though badly wounded. I reckon that must’ve been because he was far enough ahead of his men leading by example to miss the full force of the blast.

But the others in that mud I don’t think they’ll ever be found. And if as I hear your son was one of them, I’m very sorry. No one could have survived that.

I wish I didn’t have to write what I’m writing, but I’ve been told you want to know the truth and that’s what I’m writing. I’m sorry I didn’t know your son and can’t give no personal memories of him, but I hope it will be a comfort to you to know that he died bravely, facing the Boche. And now the War’s going our way and victory’s in site, you can be sure that your son did his bit for King and Country.

With condolences,

Yours truly,

J. T. Hodges (Private)

The fourth document Carole read seemed to be a draft for an essay, or a piece of journalism. Even if the upwards-slanting handwriting had not given it away, she had still heard enough about Esmond Chadleigh since she had become a Trustee to recognize the tub-thumping, populist style.

HEROISM

In these diminished days, what need do we have for heroes? Does the wage-slave travelling in the clockwork regularity of his train from dusty office to leafy suburb still have need for anyone to look up to? Do young working men, their minds full of the newest craze – wondering which greyhound chasing a mechanical hare can make their fortunes – ever dream of aspiring to heroism? Do young women, the brains inside their bobbed heads full only of the cacophony which goes by the name of ‘jazz’, look for more solid qualities in a potential suitor than his pecuniary ability to buy a solitaire engagement ring? Do the deeds of Drake or Marlborough, Nelson or Wellington no longer strike any resonating chord in the tone-deaf ears of today’s Britain?

I devoutly hope they still do. It is hardly yet ten years since the end of the greatest conflict ever witnessed on this poor benighted planet, hardly ten years since David Lloyd George, positing the question: ‘What is our task?’, came up with the resounding answer: ‘To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.’ And has the great Welsh Wizard’s task been accomplished? Or have we forgotten? Have we let our minds fill up to the brim with the newer wonders of the age – motor-cars and telephones for every man-jack of us, trains impelled along their rails by electricity rather than steam, and cinemas in which the actors can be heard to speak aloud, murmuring endearments which will be thought by each shopgirl to be meant for her ears alone?

By George, I hope we haven’t! Heroes are no less important to a society than are gods. As the Almighty provides us with a pattern to which we can aspire but never attain, heroes are closer to our capabilities, they are gods with human faces. Nelson was a mere mortal – and a sickly one at that – yet in the boiling seas of Trafalgar he triumphed over the might of Napoleon. Only a man, but what a man! Oh yes, we need heroes.

I had the good fortune to know a hero, to know him well when I was a boy, and in him I found the qualities of manliness and good judgement on which I have tried to model my subsequent life.

The hero I know was a man called Lieutenant Hugo Strider. He was a friend of my father, and before 1914 shared with him those pursuits of fur and feather and fish with which the gentlemen of that long-gone age were wont to fill their leisure hours. But come the clarion call to arms, Hugo Strider, without a backward glance, gave up the pampered indolence of his former life, and turned all his mighty energies to the business of soldiering.

He was a fine officer, fierce in the face of the enemy, firm but compassionate amongst his own. Hugo Strider was loved by his men, who knew that he would never send them on a mission he was not prepared to face himself.

I had many reasons to know of his kindness, not least because he cut through the niceties of army regulations to ensure that my brother Graham could join his own regiment. I myself, then a bellicose stripling of some thirteen summers, tried to cajole him into making the same arrangements for me, but Lieutenant Strider wisely dissuaded me from such ambition. Not only would I be breaking the law, but a brat like me would also, as he told me with gentle firmness, be a perishing nuisance in the heat of battle!

My brother Graham did not survive the war. He gave his life to sustain the freedoms that we now enjoy – even if some of the denizens of this fine country use that hard-won precious freedom only to listen to jazz music! I am confident that my brother showed a degree of heroism, but I know for a fact of the heroism that was shown by Lieutenant Strider. He was the only survivor of the push at Passchendaele in which my brother died. At the head of his men, while behind him lives ended in the savage suddenness of shellfire, Lieutenant Strider was as good as his name and, oblivious to the fatal bullets and shellfire which filled the air, strode on towards the enemy lines.

And of that whole company he alone survived, though regrettably I cannot add to that verb ‘survived’ the common accompanying adjective ‘unscathed’. No, the Great War left its marks on Lieutenant Hugo Strider. After the doctors had done their makeshift repair work on his shattered body, at my father’s invitation he came to stay at our family home Bracketts, there to convalesce and to contemplate the mighty actions in which

The piece stopped, suddenly, leaving two-thirds of the page blank. Whether Esmond Chadleigh had lost interest in what he was writing, decided the article wasn’t up to standard, or had been interrupted, was impossible to know.

Carole was intrigued, not so much by the piece’s content, but why Graham Chadleigh-Bewes had thought it a suitable inclusion in the package of papers that she was due to hand over.

There were two more short letters she glanced at, both written in the same hand as the diary entry, that of Felix Chadleigh, the boys’ father. The first was a copy of the letter in the dining room display-case at Bracketts, a rousing directive to stiffen the lip of his son in France, full of references to ‘King and Country’, ‘doing the job that has to be done’, ‘knowing instinctively and never questioning how a true-born English man should behave’. There was also some rather heavy-handed humour. ‘After your exploits on the rugger pitch, where you were always wallowing in the stuff, I shouldn’t think a bit of mud’s going to put you off.’

Given the fact that the date was ‘24 October 1917’, it was doubtful whether the letter had ever reached its intended recipient. Indeed, Felix Chadleigh may never have posted it, the news of his son’s death having rendered such an action tragically irrelevant.

The other letter was written by his father to Esmond at school and dated ‘5 June 1919’. The paragraph that caught Carole’s eye concerned the heroic Lieutenant Strider.

Hugo is still with us, and I think could stay at Bracketts for a long time. He’s still horribly crocked up by the beastly things that happened to him in the war, and the quacks don’t think he’ll ever recover the power of speech. But he never makes a fuss – against his nature to do anything like that – and I must say I’m extremely grateful for his companionship. He’s still not keen on shooting, afraid he heard more than enough guns in Flanders to last him a lifetime, but we’ve had some very good days fishing on the Fether and caught some good size pike. I enjoy Hugo’s company because we share so much – not just our religion, but a kind of bond forged by Graham’s death. So I’m sure Hugo will still be here when you come home for the summer hols and—

At that moment Carole’s reading was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. She gave her number.

‘Good afternoon. This is Professor Marla Teischbaum.’