Murder in the Museum

Chapter Thirty

Brenda Tyson left them discreetly alone, announcing that she had to get on with lunch, and maybe Jonny would like to show Jude round the garden. This he did, with great enthusiasm, pointing out the various features and the work he had done on them.

‘Daddy used to do it all, and I helped him. Now I do it, just like he did,’ he said with pride. ‘Daddy can’t do it, and I’m looking after it for him . . . until Daddy’s better.’

Oh dear, thought Jude, was this another example of Brenda Tyson trying to protect her son? Medical science would have to advance exponentially before the wreck she’d seen in the customized armchair would be once again looking after his own garden.

They had reached the bottom of the valley, where a tall thick hedge marked the limits of the Tysons’ property. An area had been flattened down there, and work had begun on paving it with huge slabs of York stone.

‘This’ll be a place for Mummy to sit in the evenings. It catches the last of the afternoon sun. It’s a proper little sun-trap.’ He spoke the words confidently, but he was clearly quoting his mother verbatim.

There was something strange about the way Jonny spoke. His voice was gruff, but had an adolescent’s liability to crack from time to time. And he sounded as though he was modelling his speech on someone else’s. But the model he had chosen was out of date, nearer the nineteen-fifties than the beginning of the twenty-first century. Maybe that was the effect of an upbringing cosseted by an ageing mother and lacking contact with his contemporaries.

‘You’re doing it beautifully,’ said Jude, looking at the half-finished patio.

‘Yes. It’s going to be very good for Mummy.’ Suddenly, ebulliently, he lifted up one of the piled York flagstones and laid it neatly on the prepared sand. He leaped back, waving his upraised fists in excitement, like a footballer who had just scored a goal, then jumped forward, landing his full weight on the stone to settle it.

He turned and smiled shyly at Jude. She smiled back, but all she could think about was Jonny’s strength. He had lifted the solid flagstone as if it had been made of polystyrene.

The scene was idyllic. A warm autumn day in one of the most beautiful parts of the British Isles, the sun rousing smells of the garden, the distant flavour of a Sunday roast. And Jonny Tyson, beaming in the glow of Jude’s approval.

But she knew she had to break the perfection. And quickly. She didn’t want to disrupt the established routine of the Tysons’ Sunday lunch.

‘Jonny . . .’ she began.

‘Yes, Jude,’ he said trustingly, proud of his command of her name.

‘I want to talk about things that have been happening up at Bracketts.’

‘I work there.’ The statement gave him great satisfaction.

‘I know you do. Listen, something rather unpleasant has happened. Someone at Bracketts has been killed.’

‘There’s no need to tell me that. It was actually me who dug up the skeleton.’ Whatever shock may have been his initial reaction to the discovery had now been replaced by pride.

‘I wasn’t talking about the skeleton, Jonny. Someone else has been killed.’

This puzzled him. ‘Someone else? Who?’

‘Sheila Cartwright.’

There was a long silence. Jude tensed, awaiting the outburst of a tantrum. But when Jonny finally spoke, he sounded bewildered, as he tried to piece together the logic. ‘Sheila Cartwright got me my job at Bracketts . . .’

‘I know.’

‘Does this mean I won’t still have a job at Bracketts?’

‘No, I’m sure it won’t change anything about the running of the place,’ said Jude, without questioning the basis on which she made this assertion.

‘Sheila Cartwright’s dead.’ Jonny slowly processed the information. ‘Like Granny Tyson. I won’t see her again.’

‘No. You won’t.’

The confusion in his face gradually melted into one of his huge smiles. ‘Mervyn’ll be pleased,’ he announced.

‘Mervyn Hunter?’

‘Yes. My friend. Mervyn doesn’t like Sheila Cartwright.’

‘Ah.’ The opportunity was too good to miss. ‘I did actually want to talk to you about Mervyn Hunter, Jonny.’

‘That’s all right. He’s my friend. And he lives at Austen Prison.’ These facts were produced like rich gifts.

‘But he isn’t at Austen Prison now.’

‘Isn’t he? Have they let him go home early?’

‘No, they haven’t, Jonny. He ran away from the prison.’

‘Did he?’

‘Yes. Last week.’ Jude looked into the slightly watery blue eyes. ‘When did you last see Mervyn, Jonny?’

‘At Bracketts. At work. Last week.’

‘Do you know which day?’

Jonny Tyson shook his head dubiously, jutting out his lower lip. ‘I’m not sure.’ But then he remembered. ‘Oh yes, it was Thursday. Late Thursday . . . because my friend Mervyn was doing a special project.’ He brought his voice down to a childlike conspiratorial level for the words.

‘What kind of “special project”?’

‘It was something Sheila Cartwright had asked him to do. That’s why he couldn’t be seen by the other Volunteers. Only me. I was the only one he trusted,’ said Jonny Tyson, once again as proud as Punch.

‘Did he give you any more details about it?’

‘No, he said it was secret. And if something’s secret, that means you can’t tell people about it.’ He looked at Jude reprovingly. ‘Which means I can’t tell you about it.’

‘But do you actually know about it? Did Mervyn tell you?’

Jonny looked a little discomfited. ‘No, he didn’t tell me. But if he had told me, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you about it. Because it was a secret.’

Jude didn’t want to bully him, so she shifted the angle of her questioning. ‘But it was definitely Thursday you saw him?’

‘Thursday.’ He nodded emphatically. ‘And Friday.’

‘Oh?’ The young man could not begin to know the impact of his words. ‘Mervyn Hunter was at Bracketts on Friday?’

‘Mm. Because I gave him something on Friday.’

‘What did you give him, Jonny?’

‘They don’t do nice food at Austen Prison. My friend Mervyn used to have the same packed lunch every day he came to Bracketts. Not very nice. Not like the packed lunches Mummy does for me on my working days.’ The pleasure in his voice once again demonstrated the close relationship between Jonny Tyson and his food. ‘And I always said to my friend Mervyn, “Why don’t you have some of my lunch? Or, even better, why don’t I get Mummy to do a nice packed lunch for you too?” But my friend Mervyn always said no. Until last Thursday.’

‘He did ask you to bring him a packed lunch?’

‘Yes. On Thursday. He said the “special project” he was on meant it was difficult to get his packed lunch from Austen Prison. So I asked Mummy, and she did two packed lunches for me on Friday.’ Awestruck by his own cunning, he went on, ‘I didn’t tell her who it was for. Because my friend Mervyn had said it was a “special project”, you see. And that meant it was a secret. And I had to meet him somewhere secret at Bracketts to give him his packed lunch.’

‘Do you know,’ asked Jude softly, ‘whether his “special project” meant Mervyn couldn’t go back to Austen Prison on Thursday night?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That could explain why he wasn’t able to get his food from the prison, couldn’t it?’

Jonny looked confused. Clearly the idea had never entered his head. All he could produce was another ‘I don’t know.’

She smiled her most reassuring smile. ‘Don’t worry about that. Mervyn didn’t ever talk about the idea of staying at Bracketts, did he . . .? Of having a secret place there that he could stay in if he wanted to . . .?’

‘Yes, he did,’ said Jonny in innocent surprise. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘You’re very clever, Jude.’ He looked at her with increased respect. ‘Yes, my friend Mervyn did say there was always somewhere he could hide at Bracketts.’ A belated caution came into his wide blue eyes. ‘But he said it was a secret. And you can’t tell people about secrets, can you?’

‘Well, sometimes you can. If someone’s going to be hurt by something being kept secret, then telling the secret might be a good thing . . . because it would be stopping that person from getting hurt.’

This ethical argument seemed too difficult for Jonny Tyson to understand. Anyway, as he explained, he didn’t need to understand it. ‘My friend Mervyn didn’t tell me where his hiding place was, so I haven’t got the secret, so I can’t tell anyone.’

He looked troubled at the end of this, so Jude soothed, ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’

‘No.’ He was silent for a moment, organizing his thoughts. ‘Sheila Cartwright’s dead . . .?’

‘Yes.’

‘So she won’t come back . . .?’

‘No.’

‘Mummy says nobody comes back when they’re dead.’

‘That’s true.’

‘She says when Daddy dies, he won’t come back.’ He seemed to be testing the ideas against some abstract standard in his mind. ‘Mummy says when she dies, she won’t come back.’ The anxiety in his voice resolved itself into confidence, and his huge smile returned. ‘I’ll look after Mummy. I won’t let her die.’

‘Listen, Jonny, it’s not as simple—’

But that was as far as she was allowed to get with her explanation. Brenda Tyson came hurrying over the brow of the garden towards them. And the expression on her face suggested she was announcing something more weighty than the readiness of Sunday lunch.

‘Jonny, you are popular today. Some other people have arrived who want to talk you.’

For the first time Jude saw petulance in his face as he said, ‘I don’t want to talk to anyone else. I want to have my lunch.’

Though pained by the situation, this time his mother could not let him have his own way. ‘You’ll have to talk to them, Jonny. The people who’ve arrived are from the police.’

Jude’s first thought was that she’d got there only just in time.

Her second was more compassionate. She prayed Jonny Tyson’s next interviewers would be as gentle with him as she had been.