Four Thousand Days, page 19
‘I have called you here, William, and you, Margaret, because you were colleagues of Norman Minton. I have already accepted Walter’s resignation.’
‘I—’ Inkester began.
‘Don’t say another word, Walter.’ Petrie gripped the man’s shoulder. ‘I’m going to say this, George, because Walter is too much of a gentleman, and if Margaret says it, you won’t listen anyway. In this great country of ours, one of the guiding principles by which I hope we all live is that a man is innocent until proven guilty. Walter here has not even been charged.’
‘It’s only a matter of time,’ Foster snapped. ‘Scotland Yard is on to him.’
And it was only a matter of time before Margaret Murray snapped too. ‘And I have lost count of the times over the last few years when Scotland Yard has got things wrong,’ she said. ‘When they’ve failed to arrest anybody or have arrested the wrong man. Let’s not put too much faith in the long arm of the law, George, please.’
Another heavy silence. Carey Foster’s eyes swivelled to the top drawer of his filing cabinet, the one that bulged with Margaret Murray’s wrongdoings; he’d have to begin a second level after this.
‘Why did you send for us, George?’ Petrie asked.
‘I had hoped,’ the principal said, calmer now but in a barely restrained, homicidal way, ‘that I could rely on you two to say nothing whatever to the press. Walter here has assured me he won’t say a word.’
‘I—’
‘Precisely,’ Foster nodded. ‘But after Miss Murray’s recent outburst, I clearly can’t rely on that.’
‘You should be more concerned about my outburst, George,’ Petrie said. ‘And if you’d like all our resignations, pass the relevant bit of paper, will you? I have my own pen.’
Carey Foster was speechless.
‘You look as though you could do with a stiff cup of tea, Walter,’ Petrie said, helping the man to his feet.
‘Come on, Stinkster.’ Margaret linked her arm with his. ‘The Jeremy Bentham awaits.’
Twice in one week. Margaret Murray was making rather a habit of visiting King’s College and she hoped that none of her own colleagues would find out. She got off the bus at the Aldwych and threaded her way across lethal thoroughfares, past Wren’s grim little church of St Clement Danes, to the college’s main entrance.
The History department was, if anything, even more obscure than in her own dear college and she had to ask for directions three times before she found it. She didn’t know Professor Honorius Godbolt very well, but she knew enough about him to know that he was the very man to help her out of her current dilemma. She knocked on the frosted glass door and waited for the command to enter.
Honorius Godbolt was a ferret of a man, of Edmund Reid’s height but half his width, and he wore the thickest glasses Margaret had ever seen. Behind them, his eyes were pinpricks, not so much irises as speedwells.
‘Good of you to see me, Professor.’ She held out a hand. Godbolt stood up and nearly missed it first time but compensated for the error by gripping the woman with both hands.
‘The pleasure is mine, dear lady,’ he said. ‘To what do I owe it?’
‘Well, I must confess I was talking to Professor Mayhew the other day …’
‘Hilary?’ The voice hardened. ‘No avoiding it, I suppose, in that you work in the same establishment.’
‘Indeed. I went to see him on a matter of scholarship, but …’ – she timed the rest of the sentence to perfection – ‘I’m afraid he let me down.’
‘Tcha!’ Godbolt scoffed. ‘Nothing new there. What was your matter of scholarship?’
‘Joseph of Arimathea,’ she said.
‘Ah. Can I interest you in a Peek Frean?’ The professor held out a plate of ginger biscuits.
‘How kind,’ she said, and helped herself.
‘It’s funny, that.’ Godbolt said as the ginger hit his nostrils and he momentarily fought for air. ‘You are the third person to ask about him in as many months.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Who were the others?’
‘Well, the first – and this was quite a while ago now – was one of our archaeology students, appropriately enough. A … let me see, now …’ He ferreted among the papers strewn over his desk. ‘Here we are … no.’ He peered closely at it. ‘No, that’s my college mess bill – I really must pay that. Now, where … ah.’ He picked up another scrap of paper. ‘Oh, no, no, that’s my laundry list. Ah!’ He reached across for a book. ‘The diary. Of course. Just give me … yes, here it is. Wednesday. Miss …’ The professor suddenly turned puce and his glasses steamed up. ‘No, no, that’s something else entirely. Here.’ He tapped another page. ‘This is the one. Emmeline Barker. She was doing research, as I remember it, on a … what do you people call it, a dig?’
Margaret nodded, smiling.
‘A dig in … um …’ He squinted at the page. ‘Hampton-on-Sea. She said she’d found something extraordinary but couldn’t tell me what.’
‘Because she didn’t know or because it was a secret?’ Margaret felt obliged to ask.
‘Er … oh. To tell you the truth, I don’t exactly know. But she said it was first century Anno Domini, specifically the forties. Whatever it was referred to a Joseph who was from Judea. Well, of course, that could be anybody.’
‘Not Titus Flavius Josephus?’ Margaret needed confirmation.
‘Oh, no, no.’ Godbolt shook his head. ‘No, there’s no evidence for that at all.’
‘And Joseph of Arimathea?’ she asked.
‘Well … what did Hilary Mayhew say?’
‘He laughed at me, Professor,’ she said, eyes all large and little-girl. ‘Called it a fairy story.’
‘Laughed?’ Crawford was appalled and passed her another ginger biscuit passing itself off as a Peek Frean. ‘Oh, that’s shocking, dear lady, shocking. But Mayhew … well, what can I say?’
‘And Joseph of Arimathea?’
‘Oh, he’s real enough. He was a wealthy Jerusalem merchant, possibly a Pharisee, but he was an early Christian convert. Some accounts say he was Jesus’ uncle, but that’s stretching things a bit far. The story goes that he paid for Christ’s funeral and arranged the tomb, and so on.’
‘The story?’ Margaret repeated.
Godbolt laughed. ‘You know as well as I do,’ he said, ‘that there are stories and stories. Some are based on evidence, rooted in fact. Others … well, of course, there are those and have been since the days of that bounder Huxley, who say that every word of the Bible is a story; none of it’s true.’
‘Do you believe it, Professor?’ she asked.
‘Dr Murray,’ he chuckled. ‘I teach at King’s College. We were founded, as you very well know, in rebuttal of your own Godless Institution. I could turn the tables and ask if you believe.’
Margaret smiled. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ she said. She could have told this pleasant man of the times on digs when she could all but see the souls gathered thick above their mortal remains, but it was important to keep things on an earthly level.
‘Indeed, dear lady.’
‘You said there were three people,’ she reminded him.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Three people, including me, asking about Joseph of Arimathea.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Emmeline Barker was one. Who was the other?’
‘Ooh, now you’ve asked me.’ He rummaged among his papers again. ‘No, there’s no point. I know I didn’t write it down. He was not from King’s, though. I’m certain of that.’
‘But a man? And a student?’
‘Man, definitely. Student – I couldn’t be sure.’
‘And he wanted to know about Joseph of Arimathea?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Did he know Emmeline Barker?’ Margaret asked.
‘I didn’t ask,’ Godbolt said. ‘It didn’t occur to me.’
‘This man.’ Margaret tried a long shot. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Oh, average, you know.’
‘Hair?’
‘Yes, I’m pretty sure he had hair.’
‘No, I mean, what colour was it?’
‘Ooh, now, then …’
‘Tall? Short? Thin? Fat?’
Godbolt shook his head and sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘As you know, historically, my reputation is second to none, particularly that oaf Mayhew, but I’m absolutely useless with faces.’ He passed her the biscuits again. ‘Mint imperial?’
‘Piers?’ Anthea Crossley had been voted ‘the girl most likely to’ when it came to getting a favour out of Piers Gibbs.
‘Anthea.’ Gibbs was on the alert. Although he had twinkled and smiled at Anthea for some time now, he had never had much effect. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Goodness, Piers,’ she bridled, tapping his arm with her perfectly manicured fingers. ‘Surely I can speak to you without wanting a favour?’
‘Well, that’s always possible, of course.’ Piers Gibbs came from the sort of family that didn’t bother with beating around the bush. ‘But as I appear to have been invisible to you until about …’ – he fished a gold half-hunter out of his pocket and consulted it ostentatiously – ‘two minutes ago, I assume that a favour is on the cards. So, how can I help you?’
Anthea Crossley looked at him with new eyes. He wasn’t as handsome as Andrew Rose. But mercifully, he could hide behind Ben Crouch and not show around the edges. He clearly was no fool, as his place at University College attested. But he couldn’t hold a candle to her intellectually. On the other hand – she had run out of hands some time ago, but no one was counting – he didn’t exactly curdle milk and he obviously had more money than he knew what to do with. ‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ she said.
‘I wish you would.’ Like most men, Piers Gibbs found Anthea Crossley almost too attractive; her face and clothes were perfect, she clearly had a mind like a razor, but there was something about her which was a little off-putting. She certainly wasn’t a girl you could take home to mother.
‘You’ve heard about Angela and Constable Crawford, I suppose?’ Anthea said, smiling as brightly as any woman can when a friend has managed to snaffle a man who looked very like Michelangelo’s David, but more handsome.
‘It depends.’ Gibbs had sisters. He knew it was never wise to say he knew something when they could well be talking about something else entirely.
‘About their engagement.’ Anthea’s smile could etch glass. ‘I don’t know what her family will think, of course. He is, after all, only a policeman.’ Another smile, of sorts. ‘But she has enough money for them both, so he’ll probably stop all that nonsense and go into business in some way, I expect.’
‘Why?’ Gibbs was beginning to edge away. He had been right; this conversation wasn’t one a mere man could win.
‘Well … a policeman, after all. It isn’t quite … well, it isn’t, is it?’
‘We’d be pretty much in the soup without them, generally speaking,’ Gibbs said mildly.
‘They don’t seem to be doing too well on our little murders, do they?’ Anthea sneered. ‘Arresting Walter Inkester; what are they thinking? According to a friend of mine who is in his department, he is as mild as milk toast.’
‘Really? That’s what she said, was it? Mild as milk toast.’
‘He. And no, not exactly. That’s just my reading of it.’
Gibbs stood looking at her. Eventually, he had to know. ‘So, what’s this favour, Anthea? I have a tutorial with Flinders Petrie in …’ – again, he flourished his gold watch – ‘ten minutes, and his room is eight minutes from here. So, you either walk with me and get ten minutes, or we talk here and you get two.’
‘We’ll walk,’ Anthea said, tucking his arm in hers. ‘But if we see Angela, change the subject.’
‘Umm … all right. If I knew what the subject was, perhaps …’
‘Yes. Right. Of course. Well, the engagement. I gather they don’t intend it to be a long one …’
‘Oh.’ Despite protestations, Piers Gibbs liked gossip as much as the next man. ‘That’s how the wind blows, is it?’
Anthea thumped him lightly. ‘No, indeed. It’s just that poor dear Angela isn’t getting any younger, is she, and they don’t have their way to make or anything. Angela is one of the Friends, you know.’
‘One of the Friends?’ Gibbs had no idea what that meant.
‘Friend’s Scouring Paste. Surely you had some in the kitchen at home. Have some, perhaps, in your home in town.’
‘I am happy to report that I have no idea. But now you come to mention, I have seen the advertisements, I think. In The Times.’
‘That’s the one.’ Anthea waved an arm. ‘“If you want that rust to end, Buy Scouring Powder from your Friend”. Well, she’s one of those, so she is richer than God.’
‘And so this favour is?’ Gibbs could see Flinders Petrie’s door by now, and time was short.
‘In a nutshell, can we hold a little soirée for Angela and her young man at your house?’
Gibbs blinked. ‘That’s it?’
‘Yes. I suppose it is.’
‘Well, yes, of course. I’d be delighted. Just check with Crouch and Rose, pick your evening and I’ll tell Cook. Canapés all right? A little champagne?’
‘You have a cook?’
‘Of course. Don’t you?’
‘We have a woman who does.’ Anthea could tell she had underestimated Gibbs. She was losing her touch.
‘Well,’ he said with a smile, tapping on Petrie’s door. ‘Angela may have more money than God. But when God needs an extra bob or two to tide him over, he comes to the Gibbs family. Let me know when the party is – as long as I’m invited, of course.’ And in answer to a muffled ‘Come!’ he disappeared through the door.
TWELVE
There was no doubt about it; carrying out a murder investigation took one to alien parts and expended a considerable amount of shoe leather. Margaret Murray had been to the Physics department before, but that was years ago and she’d been looking for the new library at the time.
Laboratories other than those used by archaeologists were a mystery to Margaret Murray. Body parts, hair, teeth, bones and grave furniture were her stock-in-trade, not so much wavelengths and linear coefficients. So it was comforting, if a little surprising, to see a face she recognized as she rounded a corner of the annexe in Torrington Place. A statuesque woman, looking a little flushed, was coming out of a side door.
‘Elspeth.’ Margaret nodded to her. ‘What a small world!’
‘Isn’t it, though?’ the woman said, colouring up a little more. She called back to a man emerging from what appeared to be a cupboard, ‘Thank you for your donation, Arnold.’ She turned an acid smile on Margaret. ‘I’m collecting for the cavalry horses,’ she said. ‘Half a million of the poor things have perished on the Veldt already.’
‘I was so sorry to have heard about Walter,’ Margaret said. ‘Wretched business.’
‘Oh, utterly,’ Elspeth Inkester’s smile had vanished and she wore her concerned wife face. ‘Still, these things are sent to try us, aren’t they? À bientôt, Arnold.’ And she swept out.
Arnold Hinchinbrooke looked rather exhausted after giving Elspeth his donation, but it was hardly Margaret’s place to say so. She barely knew the man except by reputation, and that reputation had changed subtly in the last few minutes.
‘Are you collecting too, Dr Murray?’ he asked. Hinchinbrooke was an unprepossessing man of indeterminate years. His white coat might well have hidden a multitude of sins; it was not for Margaret to judge. She had a murderer to unmask and Arnold might just be the answer to her prayers.
‘Your in-college memorandum spoke of a bag, as I recall,’ Hinchinbrooke reminded her. ‘Is that the bag in question?’ He was pointing at Margaret’s portmanteau, heavy as it was with learned tomes and the thigh bones of a high status burial from Mycenae.
‘Lord, no,’ Margaret said, and fished out some brown paper. ‘It’s not a bag per se, but a roll of paper which I suspect has been made into a bag, or wrapping of some sort. I was wondering if you could tell me what it once contained.’
Hinchinbrooke looked at it, out of the light, in the light, sideways, backwards, forwards. ‘In matters such as this,’ he said, ‘I always bow to August Köhler.’
‘Who?’ It was not like Margaret Murray not to know a name.
‘Works for Zeiss.’ Hinchinbrooke perched himself on his upright stool and did his best not to laugh when Margaret tried to do the same. He gently lifted her by the elbow and spread the paper out on a glass tray. Taking a wooden stick with cotton wool twisted over one end, he took a sweep across the paper, left to right, then, with another swab, right to left, placing the ends of each one on a glass slide. When he had quartered the paper with deft sweeps, he took up each glass slide and tapped the cotton over it. He then, with infinite care, holding his breath, slid the first slide under the lens of his microscope. Margaret was transfixed. If Arnold put this much care and attention into everything he did, she had a sneaky feeling that Elspeth Inkester would be back for another donation before too many days had passed.
Arnold Hinchinbrooke finally had enough brain cells left to speak as well as work. ‘August Köhler invented this natty little illumination device a few years back, and what a Godsend it’s been.’ He tapped the paper gently with an acid-stained forefinger. ‘This is standard enough, don’t you think?’
Margaret murmured assent. It was nice to be included and she thought that Hinchinbrooke had a lot to teach the men in her own department.
‘Nothing special. You can buy it in any hardware or stationery shop in the country. In fact, I think we have a roll in the cupboard where we keep such things.’ A strange, mottled blush crept up his neck but he kept talking. ‘As to contents, let’s see.’ He twiddled knobs and tweaked lenses. ‘Silica,’ he said, and, for clarification, ‘sand.’
Margaret smiled. She was often knee deep in the stuff and she hadn’t even been to Egypt yet.
