Murder in the Museum

Chapter Fourteen

Laurence Hawker was a lot thinner than when Jude had last seen him, but still very good-looking. Though the face had fined down, making his nose more prominent, the lips retained their fleshiness; and his hair, though now grey, was still abundant. He wore his uniform black – leather jacket, shirt, jeans and clumping lace-up shoes. He carried his laptop in a soft leather bag that somehow looked Italian. Laurence was too much the archetypal intellectual to be accepted without irony in England. His style went down much better abroad, which was presumably why he had spent most of his working life out of the country.

In spite of the coughs that intermittently rattled his body, at the corner of his mouth still hung a permanent cigarette. The smell brought back to Jude the atmosphere of the Austen Prison visiting hall, which she had only just managed to rid from her clothes.

But it was good to see Laurence, as she had rather suspected it would be.

It was Wednesday lunchtime and they were in the Crown and Anchor. He had been quite happy to come down to Fethering. By train. Moving from university city to university city, he had never felt the need to learn how to drive. And the time involved in taking a trip out of London didn’t seem to be a problem for him.

‘I’m virtually retired now,’ he had said on the phone.

‘Virtually? What does that mean?’

‘Completely,’ he had replied.

Jude had her customary large Chilean Chardonnay. Laurence drank whisky. No water, no ice. It was the only alcohol he drank, though he had at times drunk quite a lot of it.

‘Funny,’ he drawled. ‘I’d never envisaged you ending up in a seaside town in West Sussex. You of all people.’

‘Who said anything about “ending up”. I’m here at the moment. That’s all. I’ve got a long way ahead of me, a lot of time to go to other places.’

‘Maybe,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘And you? Are you “ending up” in England?’

He nodded. ‘Oh yes. Here for the duration.’

His cigarette had reached a point where he instinctively knew it needed stubbing out. The hand movements which killed it in the ashtray, found the packet in his pocket, shook out and lit the next one, were entirely automatic. He sucked on the new cigarette as though it were providing him with sustenance.

It certainly interested him more than the food on the plate in front of him. Laurence had never been much of an eater, though he loved restaurants. So long as he had his whisky and his cigarette, he was quite happy – no he positively enjoyed – to watch his female companion of the moment tucking into the biggest platefuls that the chefs could provide. At that moment he drew pleasure from the sight of Jude working her way through the Crown and Anchor’s Crispy Fish Pie, while he broke the occasional morsel off his ham roll.

Jude would have put money on the fact that he still didn’t sleep much. Still liked staying up late, talking the circular talk of academics, then snatching a few jumpy hours in bed before rising early to light up the first cigarette of a new day.

Laurence Hawker had cultivated self-neglect almost into an art form.

Jude often wondered why she was so drawn to him. Had she ever attempted to describe him, she knew she would project the image of a total poseur. The black clothes, the languid voice, the total unconcern for the practicalities of life, the cigarettes, the whisky, the promiscuity . . . it all made him sound like a refugee from the seventies, the redbrick academic who could spout for hours on the minutiae of the latest vogue in critical theory.

But what no description could put across was Laurence Hawker’s own in-built irony. There was always a twinkle in his eye, an awareness of his potential absurdity that removed the risk of his ever being thought absurd. He had always been post-modernist, even before the expression was coined.

‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Are you working?’

‘Not a full-time job. But I do some of the healing, counselling stuff, you know . . .’

He nodded. That was another thing about Laurence. Though he could be excoriatingly funny at the expense of other academics, he never sent up his friends. If there was something they took seriously, he respected that. He had never uttered a word of criticism or scepticism about Jude’s alternative therapies.

Mischievously, she thought she’d test the limits of his tolerance. ‘And I have got involved in solving the occasional murder.’

This too he took at face value. ‘You’d be good at that. Good understanding of human nature, suitably lateral mind. Yes, would suit you.’

‘Ever appealed to you, Laurence?’

He chuckled languidly. ‘Well, I certainly know about back-stabbing in academia. Trouble is, there are always too many suspects.’

‘There’s something around at the moment on which you might be quite helpful.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I say there is. Not much to go on yet. A body’s been found, that’s all. A skeleton. No news yet whether it’s even a murder.’

‘Let’s assume it is. Always makes for more fun.’

‘Mm.’

‘But why might I be helpful?’

‘There is a literary connection, Laurence. The body was found in the grounds of a house called Bracketts.’

‘Ah.’ He was there instantly. ‘Esmond Chadleigh.’

‘You know his work?’

‘Hard to avoid knowing “Threnody for the Lost”. Or, if you had parents like mine, Naughty Nursie’s Nursery Rhymes. I even read the impossibly twee Demesnes of Eregonne. Yes, he was an interesting figure. Minor figure, of course. I think he knew that, and I think the fact made him very miserable. Versatility can be a curse for a writer, you know. The curse of being “almost good at everything”.’

‘Have you studied Esmond Chadleigh then?’

‘No, not studied seriously. Read a lot of stuff around him. I’m quite interested in that between the wars period, when it was still possible to make a living as a “man of letters”.’ There was a wistfulness in his voice, and Jude wondered whether that was what Laurence himself would really like to have been.

‘Do you think Chadleigh was more interesting as a man than he was as a writer?’

‘Sadly, no. Settled comfortably at Bracketts at a relatively early age, cushioned by a bit of family money. Stayed married to the same woman till he died. No great emotional upheavals in his life, I’m afraid. Not the stuff of biographies.’

‘At least two are being written of him.’

‘Are they? I’m afraid I won’t be rushing out to buy either. Esmond Chadleigh was too like too many other literary figures to be that interesting in his own right. There was the Catholicism, of course, but there are plenty of other, more interestingly neurotic Catholics in English literature.’

‘Had he got a strong faith?’

‘Like many other Catholics, Esmond had a crust of Catholic complacency over a thin layer of doubt, which spanned a deep morass of sheer terror.’

‘Right. Well, nice to know an expert.’ Jude grinned at him. ‘When I need further information, I’ll come and pick your brains mercilessly.’

‘Sounds fun.’ Laurence Hawker looked at her plate, now empty of Crispy Fish Pie, then at his equally empty whisky glass. ‘Could I offer you another drink perhaps?’

‘I have both whisky and wine back at home.’

‘Ah.’

‘Would you maybe like to see the delights of Wood-side Cottage?’

‘Yes. Thank you, Jude. I’d like that very much.’