Breaking the Circle, page 2
Rigor mortis had long passed and the woman’s head lolled back and forth, the jaw becoming slack as the binding cloth tucked under her chin slipped free. Maud Whitehouse let go the shoulders and stepped back, her hand to her mouth. A black feather emerged between the pale lips and lay, moist and bedraggled, on the mortuary sheet.
Maud Whitehouse and the constable slid gracefully to the floor in a simultaneous dead faint.
Andrew Crawford, being a happily married man and, moreover, a man happily married to a very rich wife, had a packed lunch which some others would give their eye teeth for. The delicate egg mayonnaise sandwiches, made freshly that morning by the cook, were cut into elegant triangles, the crusts removed and the cut edges garnished with finely chopped cress, grown for the purpose on a square of flannel on the kitchen windowsill. The package was wrapped in oiled paper and tied with a narrow length of raffia. The dessert was a slice of pie, filled to the brim with peaches grown last summer on the south-facing wall of his parents-in-laws’ country home in Kent and bottled lovingly for Miss Angela’s husband by her nanny, kept on long after she was needed simply because no one knew how to ask her to leave. A small glass jar accompanied it, filled with brandied cream. Crawford rarely ate in the office – he loved his job but needed the smell of the river, the bustle of the Embankment, at least once a day, to remind him why he still worked when he could be a gentleman of leisure. If any of his colleagues ever found out how much money his wife had, his life as he knew it would be over.
So he left the Yard going at a fair old lick on that lovely spring day. Almost unbelievably, there was a hint of the smell of blossom in the air, the plane trees were giving off their little puffs of golden dust which reduced so many to puffy-eyed automata but made not one jot of difference to Andrew Crawford’s sense of bonhomie. He dropped the pack of sandwiches into the hand of a beggar on one corner, the pie was laid at the feet of another. Andrew Crawford and his packed snap was legend among the shiftless and homeless who hunkered down under Westminster Bridge, and he tried to spread his largesse evenly among them. The jar of cream he kept; cook would have his hide if he didn’t return her cream jar.
Soon, he was in the damp fug of the coffee shop on the corner, crushed shoulder to enormous shoulder with Constable Freeman, of Vine Street Police Station down the road.
Freeman was a storyteller par excellence. His friends often told him he should write a book and he would duck his head, blushing. The truth was, he had tried, but always came to a dead stop after ‘It was a dark and stormy night …’ But today, he held his audience rapt as always, with the tale of Mrs Whitehouse and the constable, entwined on the mortuary floor, to all intents and purposes dead to the world.
‘So, old Joe, the mortuary chap, he don’t know quite what to do, see. Because Constable Bentinck, the daft young fool, he’s fallen across Mrs Whitehouse’s legs, y’see, and so he can’t lift her up first, like he should, being a real gent and as nice a chap as breathed. But he don’t want to move Bentinck, because it would mean, well, he’d have to touch the woman’s legs and he didn’t want her to wake up and find him with his hand on her fol-de-rols, as you might say.’
Crawford, his mouth full of bacon sandwich, the grease running down his chin, just nodded in agreement.
The girl behind the counter was agog. She didn’t know the mortuary attendant, but the big lad with the greasy chin could put his hand on her fol-de-rols whenever he liked. She wiped the same patch of zinc over and over again with a none-too-clean cloth. ‘What happened next?’ she breathed.
‘Well,’ Freeman said, wiping round his plate with a hunk of bread and popping it into his mouth, ‘luckily for all concerned, Bentinck woke up first and was up and trying to look as if nothing had happened as quick as winking. Poor Mrs Whitehouse wasn’t far behind him, but she wasn’t too chipper. We had to take her into the inspector’s office for a lie-down. It was the feather what finished her off, I reckon.’
‘Feather?’ Crawford asked. ‘I don’t think you mentioned the feather.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Freeman said. ‘A feather, a blackbird’s wing feather old Cartwright on the desk reckons, him being a bit of a birdwatcher in his spare time. It was in her mouth. Fell out with the shaking.’
‘A fevver?’ The girl-behind-the-counter’s level of agogness rose exponentially. ‘What did she have a fevver in her mouth for?’
‘Blessed if I know,’ Freeman said, draining his tea. ‘She died when she was eating her bit of supper, and there wasn’t no poultry. Just soup and some bread.’
Crawford couldn’t help it, he always needed to get to the bottom of any story. ‘But … even if there had been poultry,’ he said, ‘surely, a feather wouldn’t go into her mouth like that, not whole?’
‘It’s a bit of a mystery,’ Freeman conceded.
‘What does your inspector think?’ Crawford asked.
Freeman shrugged and reached behind him for his coat. It was time he was back in the station. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘The inquest’s tomorrow. I think it’s accidental death, from what I remember.’
‘Accidental death?’ Crawford was staggered. ‘A woman of not too advanced years, found dead at the table, no marks of violence, no illnesses we know of, and it’s accidental death?’
‘Well,’ Freeman said, on his way to the door, ‘these sensitives, they take a risk, don’t they? Meddling with the Other Side and everything. Must take a toll.’ And with that, he was gone.
‘Take a toll?’ Crawford looked at the girl, still cleaning the same bit of counter. ‘What does he mean?’
‘Ooh, well,’ the girl leaned forward, ‘they speak to dead people and that, don’t they? My old gran, she comes back to my auntie sometimes and auntie has to have a lie-down and some gin after.’
Crawford smothered a smile. ‘So, it’s hard work, is it, speaking to dead people?’
‘Ooh, yes,’ the girl said. ‘And Madame Ankhara – that’s the dead lady he was talking about, she lived down our street – Madame Ankhara, she worked all hours, helping people talk to their departed. It’s a dying trade, you know.’ She looked at Crawford portentously. ‘A dying trade.’
‘So it appears,’ Crawford said, fishing some money out of his pocket and wiping his mouth with a spotless handkerchief. ‘How much?’
‘Five bob.’
‘How much?’ Crawford might have a rich wife, but he wasn’t stupid.
The girl looked at the door, significantly. ‘That includes Constable Freeman’s.’
Crawford sighed and pushed three florins across the zinc. Why, along with Madame Ankhara, had he not seen that one coming?
‘Keep the change,’ he said.
Edmund Reid was a busy man. Not as busy as he had been back at the Yard, of course, but he kept himself occupied. It had not taken long in a town the size of Hampton-on-Sea, for news to get around that he was a conjuror of some skill, and he had as many children’s parties and Ladies’ Groups to attend as he could wish for – the fact that he took no fee was not the only reason he was so popular, but it certainly had a bearing. But this lovely May day, he was at a loose end. No toddler needed to be entertained as it turned three. Ladies’ Groups were taken up with flower arranging again now that spring had definitely sprung. His housekeeper was turning all the mattresses and airing the rugs out in the garden, savagely beating them with a yard broom. Wherever he went, there seemed to be clouds of dust or billows of feather beds. He found his mind wandering to ‘Sensitive Found Dead. Police Baffled’.
He was in two minds about mediums. That they were fraudulent, he was in no doubt. But they brought comfort to many, in exchange for hard cash though that may be. When his wife had died, his friends had encouraged him to visit various women they knew, who would put him in touch with the ‘dear departed’. He didn’t need women in seedy back rooms to put him in touch with his wife. She was in every breath he took, every step he made on the path he was now treading alone. If her face was now less clear in his mind’s eye, that was not a sadness to him. He knew he had aged, as she would not, so he just let her image fade, in lieu of wrinkles.
But – Sensitive Found Dead? Was it just a bored journalist who chose that headline or was the fact of her mediumship that had caused her death? Edmund Reid sat behind his desk, looking out over the sea and tapped his teeth with a pencil, a habit which had driven colleagues in J Division to the brink of murder over the years.
It was no good sitting here, mulling. Edmund Reid jumped up and went out into the lobby to get his coat. He would do what he always did when he had a conundrum wearing grooves in his brain. He would go and see Margaret Murray.
Margaret Murray sat by the fire in the nursery at Angela and Andrew Crawford’s house in Bloomsbury. Their eldest child, little Esme, sat curled in her lap, playing with the beads that were looped carelessly around her neck. The child didn’t know that they were from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom and should have been in a museum – she just loved the feel of them, smooth and cool in her fingers. Her mother, sitting opposite, smiled indulgently.
‘Should you really be wearing those, Margaret?’ she asked, knowing the answer.
Her guest looked down and smiled back. ‘If I wasn’t wearing them,’ she said, ‘they would be in a packing case somewhere in the basement of the museum,’ she said, ‘waiting to be catalogued. And they have been restrung, it’s not as though they will break and go rolling everywhere.’ She bent and kissed the little girl’s glossy head. ‘Esme can feel the antiquity, look at her. An archaeologist already.’ She gave her a squeeze and the child looked up with a smile.
‘Nurse tells me that she wants to be a gingerbread man when she grows up,’ Angela told her.
‘A worthy ambition,’ Margaret said, nodding. ‘Perhaps we can leave it to Francis to be an academic.’ She looked fondly to the cot in the corner, where Esme’s brother slept soundly.
‘Or Esme could be the first gingerbread man to graduate from university,’ Angela said. ‘If women can do it, then I don’t see how biscuits can be far behind.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Margaret said, looking at her friend sitting across the hearth, her face glowing with the joy of motherhood, ‘when will we be seeing you back at your desk? Surely, you haven’t left us forever, have you?’
Angela Crawford dipped her head. ‘Not forever, no. It’s simply that …’
Margaret Murray cocked her head and waited for the excuse. She had never been one to let students down lightly, even students like Angela who had taken another path.
‘The children, you know. They keep me busy …’
‘With two nannies?’ Margaret was unconvinced.
‘I like to spend time with them. I like them. And Andrew … well, he wasn’t brought up like I was. For him, parents look after their children.’
‘Hmm, yes, Andrew. Why isn’t he back at his studies too? You’ve been married, what is it? Four years, now?’
‘Four years and two months.’
‘How very precise.’ Margaret’s twinkle took the edge off the words. ‘And how many children is it?’ She knew the answer, but liked to keep up to date.
‘Only two!’ Angela laughed. Then she looked askance at her erstwhile mentor. ‘All right, Margaret, since it’s you, two and a third. But how on earth …?’
‘Mrs Plinlimmon told me,’ Margaret said, then added, ‘actually, it was you. The way you stand, the way you sit. The glow. When are we to be blessed with another Crawford?’
‘Well …’
Esme struggled off Margaret Murray’s lap and ran to the door at the sound of boots on the stairs.
‘Any moment now,’ Angela said, as her husband burst through the door, bringing the fresh air of the spring day with him. ‘Darling, you’re early. Look, here’s Margaret come to tea!’
Detective Sergeant Crawford swept up his daughter and leaned over to kiss his wife and his mentor in a smooth movement. Pausing briefly to check on his sleeping son, he subsided on the hearthrug, tucking Esme into his crossed legs, where she sat, playing with his watch chain. ‘This child is going to be a pickpocket, I am sure of it,’ he said. ‘How are you, Margaret? It seems ages since we saw you last.’
‘At Francis’s christening, I think,’ Margaret Murray said. ‘And now, it seems, I must start saving for another new hat.’
Crawford blushed and grinned. ‘You spotted that. I thought you might. You don’t miss much and actually … for that reason, it’s good to see you today. Not that it isn’t always good …’ His blush deepened. ‘Is it me, or is it hot in here?’
Angela nudged him with her toe. ‘Stop, dearest, before you dig yourself too deep to climb out. Tell us what’s bothering you.’
Crawford put Esme gently off his lap. ‘Can we call nanny and decamp downstairs?’ He turned to Margaret. ‘We try not to talk … shop … in front of the children.’
‘Very wise,’ the archaeologist said. ‘Although I assume you mean police business specifically, it isn’t really very appropriate to talk archaeology either, when you consider some of the practices of the ancient Egyptians …’
Angela got to her feet and led the way downstairs, calling to the nanny as they went. A starched woman with a bust like a rolltop desk took their place in the nursery; there would be no racy chat on her watch, that was clear.
The drawing room had no fire on this warm afternoon, and a bunch of immortelles in a cloisonné vase filled the fireplace. Crawford rang for tea as to the manner born and Margaret suppressed a smile. He and Angela were from different ends of the spectrum, socially, but they had met seamlessly in the middle and she had seldom known such a happy home. She had no regrets, but spared a moment while they waited for tea to arrive for all the Crawfords she had let slip through her fingers.
‘So,’ Dr Murray said, balancing a plate on her knee, ‘what did you want to ask me about?’
‘It’s awkward,’ Crawford said, wolfing two egg sandwiches in one go.
‘Dearest!’ Angela put out a restraining hand. ‘Not so much egg! You had them for lunch as well; you’ll get bound up and you know what that means.’
Crawford was caught between a rock and a hard-boiled egg. He couldn’t tell his wife what had become of his sandwiches, and yet … feigning constipation couldn’t be that difficult, surely? ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot. And they are delicious.’ He took two pieces of anchovy toast and put them carefully on his plate.
Margaret Murray smiled encouragingly. Domestic bliss was all very well, but she was sure that there was more interesting conversation to be had.
Crawford took a sip of tea. Egg sandwiches were so cloying. He cleared his throat and told her all about the feather in the dead medium’s throat, how it had come to light and how the powers that be were putting the death down as accidental.
Margaret Murray had not got where she was by being slow on the uptake. ‘Accidental sounds like another way of saying they can’t be bothered to look into it,’ she said. ‘Surely, the feather alone …’
‘You would certainly think so,’ Crawford said. ‘Sometimes I am ashamed of my colleagues. But the feather … it reminded me of something …’
Angela put down her teacup. ‘It reminds you of death, dearest,’ she said. ‘Black birds presage death in many cultures, as you know.’
Margaret Murray smiled at her indulgently. So her brain had not quite atrophied, after all.
‘Mostly they are ravens,’ Angela went on, ‘especially in European folklore. And we mustn’t forget Poe, either. He gave it a bit of a boost.’
‘Nevermore,’ Crawford intoned, right on cue.
‘Norse mythology has the two ravens of Thor … but this wasn’t a raven’s feather, was it?’ Margaret just wanted the facts.
‘Blackbird, or so some birdwatcher at the station reckoned. I don’t think they even kept it. Poor Madame Ankhara, she’s just one more of the legions of the dead, whichever mythology we follow.’ Crawford pushed his plate away. Even he could be full up sometimes, and something about the way the conversation had gone had quelled his appetite.
‘Ankhara?’ Margaret Murray sat up and looked brightly at the policeman. ‘As in “ankh”?’
Crawford thought a moment. ‘I suppose so. I haven’t seen it written down. It’s what she went by, when she was mediuming. Her name was actually Muriel Fazakerley.’
Margaret Murray smiled, the smile that all her students, present and past, recognized. It was the smile that said she would not be letting this one rest. But she turned to Crawford and said, as if they had not been discussing dead women bringing forth feathers of birds of ill omen, ‘So, Andrew, the Stratton brothers. You must all be so proud.’
‘I have to admit,’ he said, ‘there are some trassenos – er, felons – we almost feel sorry for. The Strattons are not among them.’
‘Burglary gone wrong, wasn’t it,’ Angela asked, ‘the Mask Murders?’
‘It’s not often a burglary goes right,’ Crawford said. ‘And it certainly won’t from now on, thanks to fingerprinting. Yes, the Strattons forced a strongbox at premises in Deptford High Street. They left their dabs all over it and the owners dead – Ann and Thomas Farrow, nice old couple by all accounts who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Sorry to sound harsh, ladies, but come the reckoning day, I’ll be holding Mr Billington’s coat.’
‘I wonder,’ Margaret said, ‘if it’s possible to take fingerprints of the dead, as well as the living. Who’s in charge of all this at the Yard, Andrew?’
‘Well, it’s the assistant commissioner’s baby, of course. Edward Henry insisted on it being implemented before he took up the post, apparently. The actual department is run by Stockley Collins, part of the Anthropomorphic Office.’
‘Right,’ Margaret beamed. ‘Tell Mr Collins I may have a lot of extra work for him.’
TWO
Margaret Murray had two inner sanctums. The Classical Scholar in her knew that that should be sanctu, but she didn’t like to boast, nor did she stand on ceremony. Her little eyrie above the boiler rooms at University College had a window that looked out over Gower Street and contained the stuff of most people’s nightmares.
