Murder in the Museum

Chapter Forty-Two

Laurence Hawker survived his latest health scare and left hospital, his ears ringing with the dire prognostications of the staff. Unless he seriously amended his lifestyle, they could no longer be responsible for him. The very slender chance of his condition improving lay entirely in his own hands.

As soon as he got back to Woodside Cottage, he lit up a cigarette and reached for the whisky bottle.

But not for long. After a few weeks, he did start to moderate both his smoking and his drinking. The reason was that he had been given a project, an academic project which so intrigued him that he became determined to live long enough to see it finished.

The idea came from Carole. Now that the Esmond Chadleigh archive had been found beneath the Priest’s Hole at Bracketts, it could not be unfound. While only the family was aware of its existence, the secret might be preserved, but with Marla Teischbaum knowing it was there, there was no way she was going to keep quiet about the subject.

Carole therefore suggested to Gina Locke that a report on the archive should be prepared for presentation to the Trustees, so that they could take a decision on what should be done with it, and to whom access to the material should be granted. She said that the ideal person to make the report would be an academic of her acquaintance, an expert on twentieth-century Catholic literature by the name of Laurence Hawker.

Gina thought this was an excellent idea and, with the new confidence she now brought to her role as Director, announced that the decision to commission the report should not be referred to the Trustees; she would make it herself. (It may have been a harsh experience in many ways, but she’d learnt a trick or two from working in close proximity to Sheila Cartwright.) Besides, as she pointed out, the Bracketts Board of Trustees was somewhat diminished. Sheila, who acted like a Trustee though she wasn’t one, was dead. So was Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. And Belinda Chadleigh was under arrest, being investigated for the murder of at least one of them. There was nothing to be gained from consulting such a depleted body.

So Laurence Hawker was given the job of checking through Esmond Chadleigh’s hidden archive and, where appropriate, Miss Hidebourne’s collection of Lieutenant Strider’s letters to his brother. The assignment gave him a reason to live for a little longer.

Jude would always have happy memories of the weeks during which he prepared his report. She nursed him unobtrusively, loved him, cuddled him, and watched with pleasure as his mind engaged with its final challenge. At first he would have letters and files and boxes scattered all over her sitting room table, while he sat with his laptop, keying in the relevant data. Later he would operate from her bed, propped up on a mountain of pillows, frequently working through the night, snatching his odd minutes of sleep amidst the chaos of research.

The security at Lewes Prison made clear to Jude why there were so few escapees from Austen. She almost lost count of the number of doors that were opened and locked behind her on the way to the Visiting Room. The Prison Officers also seemed more brusque and watchful; there was no comfort in this regime. The customary prison smells of sweat and disinfectant were more concentrated in the enclosed space.

Jude had felt oppressed before she even entered the place. Lewes always had that effect on her. There was something gloomy and introverted about the town, a feeling of hidden evil that had lasted through many centuries. Jude never arrived in Lewes without a psychic shudder.

The atmosphere of the Visiting Room was also in stark contrast to that of Austen. She didn’t know whether children were forbidden, but there were certainly none in evidence that afternoon. And the process of checking Visiting Orders was stringent and unsmiling, compared to the laid-back attitude she’d encountered on her last visit to Mervyn Hunter.

He looked paler, but sat with the same defensive body language. The tables were all boxed-in rectangles, so that no drugs could be passed beneath them. The Prison Officers who sat behind the visitors did not relax their vigilance.

‘How’re you doing?’ asked Jude.

Mervyn shrugged. ‘OK. I’m more used to this kind of nick than I was to Austen.’

‘Yes. You heard they found who murdered Sheila Cartwright?’

He nodded. ‘You get the news in here. Radio. Television news, too, except most of the time people want to watch something else.’

‘Sandy Fairbarns sends her best wishes.’ He didn’t seem that interested. ‘Mervyn, I’ve come to see you because I want to ask about your escape.’

‘Why?’

It wasn’t a question for which she’d prepared an answer, so, characteristically, she told the truth. ‘A friend and I got interested in Sheila’s murder. There are a few details we wanted to fill in, and we thought you might know.’

‘I didn’t have anything to do with it.’

‘I know that, Mervyn. I never thought you did.’

‘The police did. You’ve got one conviction, that’s it – obviously you’ve committed every other crime they haven’t stitched someone else for.’ He sounded almost too weary for bitterness. ‘Which doesn’t offer me much hope for when I’m back out in what they laughingly call “the real world”. Better off in here.’

Jude disagreed, but didn’t pursue it. ‘Sheila Cartwright visited you the day you escaped, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. That was another reason the police thought I’d topped her. I ended up shouting at her during the visit.’

‘Why did you shout at her?’

‘Because she kept on at me. She always did keep on at me. Always ordering me around, she was, telling me what to do.’

Jude could have told him he was not the only one to have suffered such treatment, but it wasn’t the moment. ‘What did she keep on at you about?’

‘About the body . . . you know, the one Jonny dug up. She said the press’d found out about it, and I wasn’t to say anything to anyone. How she thought the press was going to get into the nick, I don’t know.’

‘And that was all?’

‘Yes, but the way she went on at me. I . . . It made me think . . . It reminded me of . . .’ His words trickled away in pained recollection.

‘So why did that make you want to escape?’

‘Just to get away from her. The thought that I was kind of locked in the nick, and she could get at me any time she wanted . . . I couldn’t stand it. Anyway, I’d been thinking about going over the wall for some time.’

‘So that you’d be recaptured?’ asked Jude gently. ‘So that you’d end up back in somewhere like here?’

‘Maybe.’ He looked at her defiantly. ‘This is only temporary. They haven’t sorted out yet where I’m spending the rest of my sentence, but it won’t be Lewes.’

‘Still be the same security level, won’t it?’

‘Yeah. Not an open nick. I’ve been recategorized.’ There was almost a level of pride in his voice.

‘Mervyn, if you so hated Sheila Cartwright, why did you go straight to Bracketts, the very place where you were most likely to find her?’

‘I knew she wouldn’t be there that Thursday night. She mentioned something else she was doing. And it was late afternoon when I walked out of Austen, so I knew I had to find somewhere close for that first night.’

‘And you thought of the Priest’s Hole at Bracketts?’

He was genuinely surprised. ‘How do you know that?’

‘We worked it out,’ Jude replied mysteriously. ‘My friend found the secret cell underneath, and saw evidence that you’d been there.’

‘Did she?’ Mervyn Hunter sounded impressed. ‘Yeah, I’d read this book about the place and checked it out one lunchtime when I was working over there. Always useful to know a hiding-place.’

‘Listen, Mervyn, I can understand why you went there on the Thursday night . . . but why did you stay through the Friday?’

‘For one thing, I’d got a mate to organize some grub for me.’

‘Jonny Tyson.’

‘Here, you know bloody everything, don’t you?’

Jude shook her head. ‘Sadly, no. But you were still there in the evening, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. I’d just made this one quick trip out of my hiding-place to get the grub from Jonny. That lunch-time when I knew there wouldn’t be anyone around. Then I lay low till I thought everyone had gone for the day. But when I get out the house, I see there’s bloody cars in the car park, and I look in through the window and there’s a meeting going on in the dining room. Well, no way I was going to risk them hearing me getting back into the Priest’s Hole, so I scarpered.’

‘You went straight away? You left the grounds immediately? You didn’t do anything else?’

‘For Christ’s sake, you’re just like the bloody police!’

‘I’m sorry. But there’s something else that needs explaining. Did you go to the kitchen garden?’

Mervyn Hunter let out a long sigh, and nodded. ‘I knew where there was a spare set of keys in the Admin Office. Easy to break in there, without anyone noticing. That’s how I’d got into the main house. And just when I was leaving, I remembered there was a key to the kitchen garden on the bunch too, and I . . . I wanted to have a look at where the skeleton was found. So I unlocked the gates.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know why. It was . . . something . . . A dead body . . . something about seeing a dead body . . .’

Jude remembered Carole’s description of how he’d reacted when the skull had first been uncovered. ‘But of course there was nothing there,’ she said.

‘No. Don’t know why I thought there would be. I knew there wouldn’t be . . .’ He shook his head, and turned it despairingly against the wall, in exactly the same posture that Jude had first encountered him in the Visiting Hall at Austen.

‘Mervyn . . .’ she said very softly. ‘All of this . . . this fascination with the dead . . . this fear of what you might do to women . . . this . . . fear of women . . .’ She had hesitated before she spoke the last three words, but he did not contest her analysis. ‘It all goes back to Lee-Anne Rogers, doesn’t it?’

The silence was so long she began to fear he’d never break it, but finally he spoke. ‘I was very young, young for my age. Immature probably, a bit stupid. I’d never been with a girl, though all my mates – well, people I knew, didn’t have that many close mates – they all talked about it, and everything on television talked about it, and how you had to get your end away and . . . I was in this club, and this girl come on to me very strong, and I’d been drinking – wasn’t used to that either – and . . . Anyway, I thought this was it, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. And then she wants me to go out with her in her car, and I’m still thinking this is good . . . And she stops in this lay-by, and she gets in the back of the car and invites me to join her. She knew what she was doing, been through the routine lots of times before . . . So I get in the back with her and . . .’ The tension within him was now so strong he could hardly get the words out. ‘And she starts telling me what to do . . . Not loving, not caring, just greedy. She starts telling me what to do . . . She starts telling me what to do . . .’

‘Just,’ Jude suggested very gently, ‘like your mother used to tell you what to do?’

He nodded slowly, then suddenly averted his head, not to let his eyes betray his emotion. ‘I don’t remember exactly what happened next. But I know I killed her. I must have killed her.’

‘Yes.’

There was a long silence, isolated amidst the mutter of other prisoners and visitors.

Then Jude spoke. ‘Not all women are the same, Mervyn. Not all women want to bully you.’

‘No?’ He sounded sceptical.

‘No. The psychiatrists have said it, and I’m saying it too. You are not a danger to all women.’

‘I must be.’

‘No. Look, we’re talking all right, you and me, aren’t we? I don’t feel you’re a danger to me.’

‘No, but we’re not alone. There’s people here.’

‘When you finally are released, Mervyn . . .’ Jude said slowly, ‘I want you come and see me . . . on my own . . .’

‘But I . . . I mean, if you want me to . . .’

‘I don’t want you to do anything. I just want you to come and talk to me.’

‘I wouldn’t trust myself to—’

‘You’re the one who’s afraid of yourself, Mervyn. I’m not afraid of you.’

He let out a short, bitter laugh. ‘Then you bloody should be.’

‘No, Mervyn. I trust you.’

He turned his face to look at her. In his eye there glinted a tear, but also a tiny glimmer of hope.