Breaking the Circle, page 19
‘Before any more murders,’ Crawford said, solemnly. He could see the circus element of all this taking over and there were dead women to remember.
‘Before any more murders,’ Margaret agreed. ‘Let’s drink to that!’
The next morning, Margaret Murray had an early lecture and was glad that the students were at least arm’s length away. She was always rather aware after dinner at Mama’s that garlic was never far away, and didn’t want to flay any of them with her breath. She kept a small bag of cachous handy, but there was only so much violet-flavoured sugar a person could take. After two hours of holding forth, however, she felt as though she was probably a little less toxic to be near and had the better part of five hours at hand before she had a tutorial. She had galleys to check and a lot of dusting to do. That was something she had never expected to have to do, having trained the cleaners who worked in her rooms to within an inch of their lives, but after Stockley Collins’s visit, everything seemed to be covered in a fine dust, even places where Inspector Collins’s little badger-hair brush had not been. She was beavering away, her hair tied up in a scarf and a sack tied round her waist, when Jack Brooks opened the door, expecting the room to be empty.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He looked at the clock. Surely he couldn’t have got the time so very wrong this morning as to have slept the whole day away. He looked again at the woman standing there, feather duster akimbo. ‘Dr Murray?’
‘The same. I’m just cleaning up after Inspector Collins. Such a nice man, but that dratted powder has got everywhere. Fascinating process, though.’
Brooks shrugged. ‘Flash in the pan, I call it,’ he said. ‘How does it help to know what fingerprints are in a place if you don’t know who they belong to?’
Margaret stopped and tapped the duster on her chin thoughtfully, transferring quite a large amount of dust down her front. ‘I suppose … well, I suppose that eventually, people’s prints will be on record. Inspector Collins was telling me that they have a very superior filing system at the Yard, based on shoeboxes and very comprehensive cross-referencing.’
‘Hmm.’ Brooks had narrowly escaped a hefty fine only the previous weekend because the policeman who felt his collar for climbing Eros in Piccadilly Circus didn’t recognize him from the exact same exploit from just the weekend before. ‘Can’t see it myself. Anyway, you’ll need to stop that. I come with a message from the mater. She has an unexpectedly free lunchtime due to the indisposition of one of my great aunts. Mad old trout will insist on going on long walks with unsuitable young men and this time has got herself in quite a pickle.’
Margaret pricked up her ears. Gossip was meat and drink to all university denizens and she knew that at least one of Jack’s relatives was a substantial donor.
He laughed, seeing her expression. ‘It’s no one you know, I don’t think. She is based in Somerset. Used to have a house on Eaton Square but poor Great-Uncle Josiah had to move her west, out of harm’s way. But the devil finds work for idle hands, eh?’
Margaret looked around her. Somehow, her dusting hadn’t made much difference to the general look of the place and she was feeling disheartened. She took off her scarf and untied her sack. She patted her hair into place and reached for her hat. ‘Do I look presentable?’ she asked her student. ‘Could you brush me down?’
Brooks hesitated. The last time he had done that, Flinders Petrie had caught them in flagrante and, with the mood the great man seemed to be in at the moment, he had no wish for that to happen again. Margaret read his mind.
‘I’ve just seen William heading off for one of his special lectures,’ she said. ‘He won’t be loose in the building for a couple of hours, so you can make as free with the whisk as you think fit, Mr Brooks. Your mother is always so beautifully turned out, I really don’t want to let the side down.’
She turned like a top in the middle of the room while Jack Brooks flicked the dust off her and soon felt ready to face Lady Sylvia Brooks, a challenge at the best of times but impossible with epaulettes of dust on one’s shoulders.
‘Are you coming?’ she said, as she shrugged into a light linen coat, suitable for the beautiful June day burgeoning outside.
‘I was going to carry on with the galleys,’ he said, but quietly. He would much rather be enjoying one of his mater’s lunches, sur l’herbe if he knew his mother.
‘Come along, then,’ she said. ‘Is your father at home?’
It struck Jack Brooks that he had no idea. His father was a vague, if pleasant enough figure, but he didn’t exactly stand out. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.
‘But you live there, don’t you?’ Margaret was confused.
‘When you meet the pater – if you meet the pater – you’ll understand.’
They stood irresolute on the pavement. On one hand, the day was warm and sunny and London lay before them, the breeze from the river bringing a waft of salt to their nostrils. It was a pleasant enough walk, west from Gower Street to Berkeley Square, but Margaret had long ago learned that her little legs had to take two steps to every one of a six-footer like Brooks and she put up her hand for a cab.
‘No point in getting hot and grumpy,’ she said over her shoulder as she climbed into the growler. Brooks agreed. He had never believed in walking where you could ride; he just hadn’t had Dr Murray pegged as someone with the same habits.
The Brooks house in Berkeley Square had a tranquil air, and window boxes of verbena and mignonette scented the air while they waited to be admitted. Margaret was surprised when her companion had knocked and stood back. She began to wonder if she had her facts straight.
‘You do live here, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ he said, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, his hands held loosely behind him as he looked up at the façade. ‘But if I just walked in, Bennett would have a fit.’
‘The butler?’ she checked.
‘The same. He rules us all with a rod of iron, even the mater. She moved a vase of flowers two inches to the left the other day and he gave notice. It took her ages to talk him round.’
‘Does that happen a lot?’
‘Not that often. Only when …’ the door opened and a man who looked very like one of Margaret’s more desiccated mummies stood there, looking down his nose at them. ‘Ah, Bennett,’ Jack said, hopefully. ‘Is the mater in?’
‘I will enquire, sir.’ The voice echoed up from the tomb. ‘If you would like to follow me?’ He led them at a stately pace into a small anteroom just to the left of the front door. There were some chairs around the walls and some of the less prepossessing Brooks ancestors glared down from dark portraits, scattered about with no attempt at chronology or colour coordination. It was not a room to linger in.
After less than a minute, scurrying footsteps echoing on the tessellated marble of the hall floor told them that Lady Sylvia was indeed at home, and she burst in on a wave of heliotrope and fluttering lace.
‘Darling,’ she clutched Jack briefly as if he had been away for weeks rather than about an hour. ‘Margaret! I do apologize for Bennett. He is an excellent butler in many ways but lacks …’
‘The brains God gave sheep?’ Brooks suggested.
‘Discernment.’ She smiled at them both. ‘Let’s get out of this ghastly room. I have a gazebo erected in the garden and we can sit out there and have a nice light lunch, I thought. Just some amuse-bouches, nothing too heavy. It’s such a glorious day.’ She swept out with her guests in her train and Margaret Murray smiled. It was a well-known fact that what Lady Sylvia Brooks wanted, Lady Sylvia Brooks got, but she had never come up against Margaret Murray before. Jack was looking forward to the next hour or two immensely.
The gazebo in the small but immaculate garden was formed of willow hurdles, and placed just so to protect its inhabitants from the heat of the midday sun. The garden itself was based on the one whose acres surrounded the Brookses’ country house, and had herbaceous borders crammed with every conceivable flower. As June really took hold, they would burgeon, but for now they were teasing with fat buds of paeony, spikes of lupin and the first signs of hollyhock. Margaret Murray did not pretend to be a gardener – sand and clay was more her terroir – but she couldn’t help but exclaim as Lady Sylvia led them to the gazebo, exiting through the French windows from the drawing room.
‘That’s just beautiful!’
‘Oh, Margaret, too kind. We try our best. Come and meet my husband. Or have you already met?’
‘I think we may have been at the same function once or twice …’ Margaret was looking forward to meeting the pater, putty in everyone’s hands, according to his son and heir.
‘He won’t remember you,’ Lady Sylvia assured her. ‘Memory like a sieve, poor darling.’ They had reached the gazebo and a man with grey hair and a clipped moustache rose to meet them. He was almost uncannily like his son and Margaret smiled just to see them together. Some synapse in her brain told her that it was hardly fair to drag these very nice people into a murder hunt, but she tamped it down firmly.
‘Darling,’ Lady Sylvia said, touching the man’s sleeve with elegant fingers, ‘May I introduce Dr Murray. Jack has told you all about her, I know, and she and I have met many times at WSPU meetings. Margaret, may I introduce my husband, Sir James Brooks. He’s got loads of other bits to his name as well, but we don’t bother with those, do we, darling?’
Her husband shook Margaret’s hand and nodded. ‘No. Just James will do. I hope Jack is doing his best, Dr Murray. It’s all we ever expect, you know. That he does his best.’
Again, Margaret’s conscience gave her a kick. She would definitely let him know he had his PhD one day, very soon.
‘It’s so lovely to meet you,’ she said. ‘Jack has told me so much about you.’
The man’s face lit up and the resemblance to his son grew even stronger. ‘Has he? Has he, indeed?’ He sat down happily, smiling at the thought.
‘Jack, darling, could you roust Bennett and get him to start thinking about lunch. Cook has it all planned. Perhaps in, what shall we say?’ She looked from Margaret to her husband and back again. ‘Half an hour? Thank you, darling.’
Margaret Murray had worked out how Lady Sylvia got her own way so often. She made everyone think that they were simply doing her a small favour, no pressure, only if it was convenient. And then they went off, to move heaven and earth. She smiled. She knew that technique, though she bowed to a mistress of the art.
‘Now, Margaret,’ her hostess said, ‘the séance. We were thinking, weren’t we, James, of a smallish party.’
‘That certainly works best with a séance,’ Margaret agreed.
‘No more than two hundred, certainly,’ Lady Sylvia said. ‘A hundred and fifty as a perfect number.’ She smiled at Margaret and then looked worried. ‘Margaret, is that not enough? Too many? Tell me what you had in mind.’
Margaret didn’t quite know where to begin. It was too many by approximately a hundred and forty-one, using the lower estimate.
‘Most Circles – that is, the number who meet to try to pierce the veil, as they have it – settle on eight or nine, including the medium,’ she said, and sat back to wait for the reaction.
Lady Sylvia blinked. ‘Eight or nine?’ she said. ‘Eight or nine people?’
‘Yes. It’s not easy to manage more. Except of course, because we have managed to secure the services of Eusapia Palladino …’
Lady Sylvia clapped her hands. ‘You have? Jack said you were trying to get her, but I never dreamed! Margaret, you are a genius.’
As this was nothing but the truth, the archaeologist let that one go and continued. ‘Miss Palladino has been known to manage a table of twenty, but I think the nearer we can get to nine or so, the better. For results, you know.’
Jack Brooks returned to the gazebo and threw himself into a steamer chair. Love-all, so far, if he was any judge. He glanced at his father, who gave a sly wink.
Lady Sylvia looked pensive. ‘Could we manage … a hundred?’ she asked.
‘Not around the table, no.’ Margaret smiled but was clearly not to be budged.
‘But we could have more people? We could have … oh, what do you think, Jack? Ouija boards around the rooms? Planchettes?’
He shrugged. He had been hoping he could dodge this particular evening, which he had already peopled with old ladies smelling of mothballs and conversations about the Great Divide. ‘That might work. Or would it be too frivolous, Dr Murray?’
‘If we could arrange a very quiet room for Miss Palladino,’ Margaret said, thinking hard. She didn’t want to lose this venue for what might be the final act in a maniac’s progress. But on the other hand, she didn’t want hundreds of twittering old ladies – she had much the same picture in her mind as Jack Brooks had – ruining any ambience there might be.
‘We have any number of quiet rooms,’ Lady Sylvia said. ‘The blue boudoir would be ideal, Jack, James, don’t you think? We could clear it …’
‘… of your Aunt Sidelia,’ her husband said dryly.
Lady Sylvia looked at him, puzzled. ‘Aunt Sidelia? Is she still here?’
‘Mater, really!’ Jack threw her a kiss. ‘She’s been here since Christmas. She just never seemed ready to go.’
‘Goodness.’ Lady Sylvia went quiet, a rather unusual event. ‘Well, not the blue boudoir, then. But something similar. Would that do, Margaret?’ she asked. ‘A soirée of perhaps … I could get it down to a hundred without ruffling too many feathers, I think … yes, a hundred people. And then we could have the séance itself in a quiet room on the second floor. Now … who to invite to the séance …?’
‘We would need that to be largely adherents of Spiritualism,’ Margaret said, quickly. ‘Real ones, I mean, if I can say that without giving offence. And you, of course, Lady Sylvia, and Sir James.’
‘Oh, no, no, no.’ The baronet was shaking his head, his hands up to ward off the very idea. ‘Count me out. I don’t do mumbo-jumbo, as you know, Sylvia. I will marshal the guests with pleasure. Mingle and whatnot. But no table-turning or that nonsense.’
‘Ah.’ Margaret liked a man who knew his own mind, though she hadn’t had Sir James Brooks down as one such. ‘That makes it easier. That would leave a few seats. You could choose a few …’
‘Goodness me,’ her hostess said. ‘That would be almost impossible. Anyone left out would be bound to take offence. Oh, dear. I’m not sure that this is going to work.’ Her whole face fell and her menfolk immediately rose to the occasion. It was as if their sun had gone in.
‘What about a raffle?’ Jack said.
‘A raffle?’ Lady Sylvia knitted her brow. ‘Is that not a little common, dear? It smacks of a church bazaar.’
‘You don’t need to call it a raffle,’ her husband pointed out. ‘You could … let me think … you could count people in, and every twentieth or a figure you choose, every twentieth has a place at the séance.’
‘Or,’ Jack was in full flight, ‘we could paste tokens under the supper plates, and some have a tick and some have a cross …’
‘… or,’ his father said, ‘we could put all the invitations into a hat and pull out the requisite number.’
‘Or,’ Jack said, sitting up straight, his finger in the air, ‘we could arrange some games, simple things, bezique, loo, snap, even …’
‘… on a knockout system, last men standing – séance!’
Lady Sylvia looked at them proudly and whispered to Margaret, ‘They can go for hours like this. Let’s just say we can work out some method to ensure that only the right number sit down with Miss Palladino.’
Margaret nodded. All in all, it had been easier than she had expected. Before the plans could change again, a small retinue made its way across the lawn, bearing jugs, glasses and plates.
‘Oh, lunch,’ Jack said, jumping up to help his mother and Margaret to the table set up in the shade of a cedar tree in the corner of the garden. ‘No more talk of séances and Ouija boards, Mater. Pas devant les serviteurs, at any event. You know how they worry about living across the square from Number Fifty.’
Margaret Murray pricked up her ears. ‘Number Fifty?’
‘Haunted,’ Jack said. ‘Ask me later. The maids …’ he rocked his hand back and forth. ‘Makes them very skittish.’
‘Jack, please,’ his mother said. ‘It’s just gossip.’
‘But is it, though?’ he said, leaning back to let a maid deposit a plate of tiny savoury pastries in the middle of the table. ‘Is it?’ The maid had turned white. ‘I’ll tell you later, Dr Murray.’ He turned to the table at large. ‘Dr Murray has had some very strange experiences, haven’t you, Dr Murray?’
And the rest of the lunch went by on a wave of glorious food and Egyptian anecdotes. Murder seemed very far away.
TWELVE
It wasn’t quite an oubliette, one of those ghastly windowless cells they used in the Middle Ages for prisoners they’d prefer to forget; a place in a circle of hell where rats ruled and gnawed at fingers. It was actually a pleasant little room, with a view through grimy glass of people’s feet and the spinning wheels of buses as they passed. But it was a cell for all that, twelve feet by six, and Adolf Beck was allowed out twice a day to answer the call of nature.
It was not the appointed hour for that when he heard the bolts jar and slide. The steel door swung open and two detectives stood there. One Beck knew well; John Kane, the inspector who had worked miracles for him once before. The other was Andrew Crawford.
‘You are free to go, Mr Beck,’ Kane said.
The-man-they-couldn’t-set-free-for-long stared at him, open-mouthed. He had begun, like the Count of Monte Cristo and the Man in the Iron Mask, to mark off the days on the bricks of his sanctum, using the little pencil stub they had let him have. But in the end, that was too depressing while he waited for the wheels of British justice to grind.
‘I am?’ he said.
John Kane closed to him. ‘You are.’ He held out his hand. ‘Mr Beck, I cannot apologize enough. It’s not my place to say so, but the system – our system – has let you down. You have a strong case for compensation – again. Do you have a solicitor?’
