Four Thousand Days, page 12
Annie would never understand students, not if she lived to be fifty-one. Overgrown children, they were, entitled and with smells under their noses. Annie could read just like them and she knew what they, apparently, didn’t; the world was going to change soon – that nice Mr Keir Hardie said so. So did the Reverend Cadwallader. He had told Annie to her face that the weak, of which she was definitely one, would one day inherit the earth. So it was written in the scriptures – Annie Scroggins, sweeper of the vestibule and main staircases of the University College of London, was about to be as good as her masters. Then let the students look down their noses at her, if they dare.
Darkness was coming to Gower Street, the gas lamps on the vestibule walls sending flickering shadows over the plaster. Lectures had long ago ended and the staff had gone home. The only people in the huge, echoing building were the cleaners. And, in the vestibule, only Annie. Old Jenkins, the nightwatchman, wouldn’t be on until eight and Annie would have gone by then; doubly so, because the filthy old man couldn’t keep his hands to himself.
But the moment had come. As it came every evening. It wasn’t too bad in the summer when the street outside was still busy with gigs and broughams and, every now and again, one of those loud, terrifying motor carriages, the ones that would never catch on. At that time of year the sun shone, gilding the brass fittings of the vestibule, flooding the worn carpet with light. But now, in October, the shadows lengthened and the stairs hung heavy in the semi-dark. The only sound was the swish of Annie’s broom. She looked up at the marble busts on the pedestals, the great and good who had presided over the college for three quarters of a century, pale patricians with chiselled features and side-whiskers to die for. Them, Annie could handle. Their faces were hard, unreal, their eyes as empty as the flask in Annie’s apron pocket. Bugger! She thought she’d filled that up yesterday. Now she’d have to face the moment, not only alone as always, but stone cold sober.
At the far end of the corridor, she saw him, sitting, as always, on his chair, looking at her. He was always looking at her. And yet, he never said a word, nor raised a hand in greeting. Not to her, not to anyone. She busied herself with a cobweb in a tricky corner, bent to scoop it up into her pan. She flicked her duster along the skirting board, listening to the invisible rats behind the timbers stir themselves before they came out to hunt when the building was silent and empty. And all the time, she felt his eyes on her. Her heart was pounding, her throat tight with fear. Bugger again. She did this every day except the Sabbath; why wasn’t she used to it? He never moved; never spoke; never did her any harm. So why …? She kept her eyes averted, hurtling around his glass case like a thing possessed, her broom rattling and clattering on the skirting board and hissing over the marble floor.
She’d done it! Thank God! It was over again for another day. She turned her back on him, sitting silently in his glass case, and she glanced up, broom in one hand, pan in the other. Then she saw it – a shadow, a blur, a darker shape in the darkness dashed across her view, coming from the stairs that led to the Archaeology department. Annie never went up there; she knew it was full of dead things that once had crawled the earth and would never do so again; people with sightless eyes and grey, leather skin. Who was that? What was that? There were no cleaners but her in this part of the building. Had it been one of them, she would have called ‘Hello’. It couldn’t be old Jenkins; he’d have made an excuse to come over to her and try to pat her bum. Anyway, she could count on the fingers of one hand the times he had approached from any direction but from behind. So … who?
She turned. And ’til her dying day, she didn’t know why she did. She turned and looked at the dead man in his glass case. She saw his thigh bone jutting through his faded, moth-eaten breeches; she saw his toe bones under the collapsing leather of his boots. She saw the pale green frock coat and the tambour-sprigged vest, the wideawake hat. And she saw the square, shiny face and the grey glass eyes. And she knew, that in the tin hat box between his feet was the man’s own head, a skull as grim and ghastly as anything kept upstairs in the Archaeology department. She forced herself away, the dustpan clattering to the floor, the broom following it with a crash that echoed and re-echoed through the whole building.
And Annie ran. She ran as she hadn’t run for years, faster than she had ever run away from old Jenkins. Tears ran too, down her cheeks and into the corners of her open mouth, too terrified, as it was, to let out a scream. Because Annie had seen him. She had seen what she had always known lurked in this part of University College, the reason that men called it the Godless Institution. She had seen the ghost of the man in the glass case. She had seen the ghost of Jeremy Bentham. On the stairs, coming from where the dead things lay.
‘Margaret.’ Flinders Petrie stopped shuffling the papers he was working on and looked into those bright, grey eyes. ‘Good of you to call. Er … what’s going on?’
‘Going on, Flinders? Whatever do you mean?’ Hope sprang eternal in the breast of Margaret Murray but she knew perfectly well that there was little chance of getting anything past this man. Whether digging in some corner of a foreign field or ferreting out secrets nearer home, there was no one to touch him.
The lamps were glowing out all over Petrie’s museum that evening, where things in jars sat elbow to elbow with papyri and amphorae and all things ancient. It was a second home to both of them.
Petrie got up from behind his desk and smoothed down his moustache. This one would take some careful timing. ‘You’re making quite a name for yourself in the university,’ he said, smiling at his protégée.
‘Thank you, Flinders.’ She smiled back.
‘But … and I don’t quite know how to say this …’
‘You aren’t usually so tongue-tied.’ She reached up to straighten his bow tie.
‘I am, to put it bluntly, a little concerned.’
‘Really?’ She widened her eyes again. ‘Why, pray?’
‘Well,’ he said, moving away from her, ‘this whole wretched Helen Richardson business, of course. It’s highly distasteful, Margaret.’
‘Indeed it is,’ she agreed. ‘But you have known worse in the back streets of Cairo, surely …’
‘Cairo be buggered, Margaret!’ he stormed. ‘Oh, saving your presence. Helen Richardson wasn’t one of the fellaheen. I understand you’ve been talking to Scotland Yard.’
‘They do have experience of sudden death in the Metropolis, Flinders,’ she reminded him.
‘And the tabloid newspapers, viz. and to wit, the Illustrated Police News. George Carey Foster is very concerned.’
‘Oh, Flinders.’ She waved her hands about. ‘That was days ago! I have also consulted a private detective.’
‘What?’ Flinders Petrie’s eyeballs looked ready to bounce out of their sockets.
‘Flinders.’ She crossed the study to him and led him gently back to his chair. ‘As you know, discretion is my middle name. Now, let me put the kettle on and we’ll talk about it over a Tetley’s, shall we?’
Margaret Murray didn’t hate many things in the world, but she did hate wasting time. So she walked along Gower Street one morning with even more than her usual vim and vigour. She was just about to turn into the University building when a familiar pair of shoulders caught her eye. She went to the edge of the pavement and peered through the morning traffic to make sure, then stepped off to cross the road.
‘Watch it, lady!’ The driver of a dray pulled up in the nick of time. ‘Got a bleeding deaf wish, ’ave ya?’
Margaret waved insouciantly at him. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed. ‘I need this policeman.’
The drayman clicked his tongue and his horse moved off. The lad was well set up, he wouldn’t deny, but surely even he wasn’t worth dying for.
Margaret got to the middle of the road without further incident and stood as close to Adam Crawford as common decency would allow, then moved even closer to avoid being run over.
‘Whatever are you doing here, Constable Crawford?’ she said, raising her voice over the rumble of wheels.
He didn’t look down, but stared straight ahead, his left hand raised in an admonitory gesture, his right elbow loose as his hand spun round to tell the waiting multitude it was finally their turn. It had been a tough morning thus far, and so he was a little terse.
‘Directing traffic,’ he said, through gritted teeth. An omnibus was heading straight for him and he knew the drivers did not take prisoners.
‘But why?’ Margaret was appalled.
‘Just because, Dr Murray,’ he said, counting cars on Gower Street from his left. If he let one too many through, there would be a riot. ‘Just because.’
‘Can I do anything?’ Margaret couldn’t help but worry whether perhaps at least a little of this was her fault.
‘You can get back on the pavement without getting mown down and then go and do what you do all day,’ he said. ‘I don’t always know what that is, to be frank. But what I do all day is easy to explain. It’s this.’ He waved an eloquent hand in a sweeping gesture and two milk carts collided with a crash of churns. He stepped back. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do. Goodbye, Dr Murray.’ He hurried over and started helping to extricate the milkmen from their milk. Taking advantage of the stopped traffic, Margaret slunk back to the kerb. It had put a dent in her mood, that was certain. Perhaps Norman would have news to cheer her up.
Universities wake up slowly. So although it was bedlam outside in Gower Street, with the world and his wife going to work or sauntering home after working all night, inside the Godless Institution it was as quiet as death. Margaret made her way across the lobby and up the stairs towards the Archaeology faculty.
As was her habit, she bobbed a curtsy to the man in the glass case and Skinner the day porter wished, as he did every time, that he had the barefaced cheek to rumble ‘Good morning, Dr Murray’ and see how she liked them apples. But he didn’t have the cheek, so the joke, as ever, could keep for another day.
On the top landing it was, as usual, quiet. Margaret could tell that Flinders Petrie wasn’t in his rooms, as there was no fug of pipe smoke curling under the door. Her own room was, by definition, silent and dark – exactly as Mrs Plinlimmon the owl liked it. The kitchenette where the kettle sulked was similarly empty and dark. Margaret, through spending much of her time alone, didn’t like silence, so she was humming a little tune – ‘Goodbye, Dolly Grey’, as it happened – as she pushed open the door to the Roman faculty.
Which was also dark. This surprised her, as she would have bet good money – indeed, she had a small wager on with Mrs Plinlimmon – that Norman Minton would have burned the candle at both ends to get to the bottom of her little conundrum. Propping the door open, she felt her way across the room to the high window in the end wall. Her feet kicked against cushions and books as she picked her way; Norman had never been the tidiest of men, but she didn’t want to be so archetypally female as to remonstrate with him. She had always put it off, but really, he should—
She turned round and her hand flew to her mouth. For a moment, she couldn’t make out what she was looking at. In the centre of Norman Minton’s desk, there seemed to be something resembling a bunch of roses, red and glossy, with uneven edges. They were sitting in a pool of dark red ink, which dripped silently on to the carpet, and on to Norman’s legs, tucked neatly below it. Norman’s legs, yes; but where was Norman’s head? Her brain then confirmed what her eyes had refused to see. That broken, battered thing in the middle of the mahogany desert was Norman’s head. Cracked open like a walnut, spilling brain and blood out as if there was no room for them inside the skull any more.
Margaret knew what she should do. She should check to see if life was extinct, whether she should call for an ambulance or an undertaker. But she could tell there was no decision to be made. Norman Minton, Professor Norman Minton, as he had always reminded everyone, was quite, quite dead.
EIGHT
Margaret closed the door of the Roman department with due ceremony. She was not a religious woman, but she had a strong sense of what the dead were due and above all other things was reverence and ceremony; she had a horrible feeling, though, that Norman Minton’s mortal remains were about to get precious little of either.
She waited for a moment outside the door, leaning against the wall, with her face raised to heaven and her eyes closed. She needed to compose herself before she unleashed the gods of the establishment; police, doctors and without doubt the Press. The principal would doubtless get himself involved. Flinders, inevitably. The university cat and Jeremy himself, of course. He hadn’t missed a meeting, after all, in the sixty-eight years since he had died, so why start now?
She walked sedately down the stairs and no one but she could see how white her knuckles were on the railing. She walked up to the porter’s booth and knocked demurely on his door.
‘Morning, Dr Murray.’ The porter gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Are you ill, miss?’
‘No.’ Margaret found she was having to swallow hard. Her mouth was full of saliva and not being sick became her new main objective. ‘Can you stop anyone going upstairs until I get back, please, Skinner?’
‘Why, miss?’
‘Just do it!’ She didn’t want to use her teacher voice on this harmless chap, but there was no time for niceties. ‘I’ll be back in a moment, with a policeman. Until then, simply do as I say.’
Still calm, she walked outside and crossed the road to where Adam Crawford stood, a little less frazzled now the rush had begun to get less. She stood there until he noticed her.
‘Dr Murray!’ he hissed through his teeth. ‘I mean it! Leave me alone.’
She stood there, silent, swaying a little. He noticed that she was very pale, rather green around the gills, you might almost have said.
‘Dr Murray?’
She looked at him. ‘Hmm?’ she said, as if he had interrupted a train of thought.
‘Dr Murray? What’s wrong?’ A cold hand of fear gripped him as he noticed the blood on the hem of her grey skirt and spattered on her shoes. ‘It … it isn’t Angela?’
She shook herself. ‘No, no, of course it isn’t Angela,’ she said, almost like her usual self. ‘It’s … well,’ she looked down at her feet and realized the grey smudge on the toe of her shoe was part of Norman Minton’s brain, a part that would never think again. ‘No, Adam, it’s … well, it’s murder.’
And then, for the first and she hoped the last time in her life, Margaret Murray, with a little sigh, fainted.
Margaret Murray had woken up in more unusual places than most women of her age and class but it took her a moment on this occasion to work out where she was. The view of the ceiling gave her no clues, being off-white and crazed with faint lines, like most ceilings in the building. She sniffed. No pipe smoke, so not a man’s room, in all probability. No perfume either, so not the principal’s secretary’s room; a lovely woman in many ways, but addicted to Attar of Roses to an almost unhealthy extent. The smell was of … no smell at all; it was the smell of Clean.
She heard voices off to her left and turned her head, gingerly. She didn’t feel giddy, so that was a relief, but she couldn’t see the speakers either. Then, a face swam into view.
‘She’s awake,’ the face said over its shoulder. ‘How are you, Dr Murray?’
She started to get up but was prevented by kind hands. ‘Don’t get up just yet. You fainted and that nice policeman from point duty carried you in here.’ The voice dropped to a whisper. ‘There’s been an Incident, I’m afraid.’ The tongue clicked and the head shook.
Margaret shook off the restraining hand. ‘I know there’s been an incident,’ she said. ‘I found it, spread all over his desk.’ She decided at that instant that she was going to be as clinical as possible. It wasn’t Norman, bumbling, Rome-obsessed Norman, in that room. It was a murder victim, probably like dozens more the capital had seen in just the last few weeks. She looked around. ‘Where am I?’ And instantly hated herself for the cliché.
The voice’s owner stepped around so she was standing in front of Margaret as she sat on the edge of the narrow cot on which she had been lying. ‘The San,’ the woman said. She also sounded rather tarter now her patient was Up and About. The matron of University College both spoke and thought in capital letters – a tartar indeed. In this regard, she and Ethelfleda Charlton spoke with one voice. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform, stiff with starch, cuffs blindingly white and a goffered cap you could cut bread with. ‘You fainted.’
‘I know I did. You said.’ Margaret stood up, pushing the nurse aside. ‘I need to—’
‘The Police have been called,’ the matron said, patronizingly. ‘I think you should stay here until you are properly rested. Who knows what Damage the Sight has done to your Brain?’
Margaret looked her up and down and bit back a remark something along the lines of at least she had a brain to damage, but forbore. The woman was almost certainly of the Nightingale persuasion, but Florence Nightingale had been around for far too long. This woman probably meant well, but judging by the extreme neatness and cleanliness of the room, her services were not in huge demand. A lecturer delivered in a fainting condition was probably the most excitement she had had all year.
‘All right,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘Take my pulse or temperature or whatever you need to do. Then I really must get on. There is someone I need to speak to, urgently.’ She looked around. ‘Do you have a telephone in here?’
The matron grabbed her wrist and shoved a thermometer in her mouth. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘It is the Sanatorium, when all is said and done. Now, hush, while I count …’ She turned the little watch hanging upside down on her bosom round so she could see the second hand and her lips moved silently. After a minute, she dropped the lecturer’s wrist and yanked the thermometer from her mouth. ‘Yes, well, sixty-five and a temperature of …’ – she shook the thermometer and squinted at it – ‘I’m not sure why they make these numbers so small.’ She looked at it again. ‘But it looks to be normal, as far as I can tell.’ She stepped aside. ‘All right, Dr Murray. You can go. The telephone apparatus is over there, on the wall. You might have to jiggle the thingie a bit; it’s rather temperamental.’ And she grabbed the bedclothes where Margaret had been lying and threw them into a wicker basket in the corner. The conversation appeared to be over so Margaret crossed to the corner where the telephone squatted on the wall like some obscene black beetle. She jiggled the thingie as instructed and finally the disembodied voice of the telephonist sounded in her ear.
