Breaking the Circle, page 24
‘Because I was here when the prof was told by …’ he glanced at Margaret, unsure whether to share what he knew about Mortimer.
‘Go ahead, Thomas,’ she said. ‘No harm in it now.’
‘Well, one of the blokes from that Circle was a ghost hunter. Came here after Margaret and told her all about everyone.’
The policemen’s heads all swivelled in her direction.
She shrugged. ‘It was something and nothing,’ she said. ‘But I think we can assume that it exonerates all of the Bermondsey Circle. They’re not perfect, but they don’t have skeletons in their closet worth killing for.’
Kane looked thoughtful. ‘You think that’s the motive?’
‘Why not? It’s common enough. That or gain. There seems too much method in these killings for them to be motivated by madness.’
‘You can’t legislate for the loonies,’ Thomas said. ‘Why, when I was in Wandsworth, we had a bloke in there—’
‘That’s a story for another day, Thomas,’ Reid said, not unkindly. ‘If we can discount the Bermondsey lot, what about the Circle which met with Evadne Principal?’
‘I think we really can cross off Hilda Ransom, don’t you?’ Crawford said.
‘Which one’s she?’ Reid remembered some women but couldn’t put names to faces.
‘The little one, she sat opposite Boothby.’
Reid furrowed his brow. ‘I remember her now, yes. You’re right, I don’t think she would have the strength. A dressmaker or something, isn’t she? Very delicate hands, at any rate.’
‘Veronica Makepeace,’ Crawford said, suppressing a shudder. ‘She’s quite … statuesque.’
Margaret Murray smiled. ‘You’re always so polite, Andrew,’ she murmured.
‘That’s one word for it,’ Reid said, also smiling. ‘She looks as if she could crack walnuts between—’
‘That’s quite enough of that, Edmund, thank you.’ Dr Murray thought she should keep things on the right side of decorous. ‘I understand she was there on behalf of another member. Lucinda something, was it?’
‘Lucinda Twelvetrees. Very nervous disposition,’ Crawford said.
‘Is she also hefty?’ Reid chose his descriptive word with care.
‘I don’t know,’ Crawford said. ‘She wouldn’t open the door. She could have been crouching down, but she didn’t seem very tall.’
‘There’s always Mr Justice Grosvenor,’ Kane said, hopefully.
Reid clicked his tongue. ‘You have to keep your predispositions to yourself, John,’ he said. ‘None of us like old Let-’Em-Off Grosvenor, but I don’t see him as our man, sadly.’
‘No.’ Kane was reluctant but had to agree.
‘There’s what’s-his-name, Alfred d’Abo, the Mail man.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought a postman was a typical Circle member,’ Reid said. He was more a Police Gazette reader when he had the time.
‘No, I mean he’s a journalist,’ Kane explained. ‘And he isn’t a Circle member. He was just there covering the last séance that Evadne Principal gave, for his paper. Bit of a scoop, it turned into, of course. He was only invited to the séance last night so no one was inadvertently missed out. He was very rude about Mrs Principal’s skills, to the point of suggesting she was killed for being a really bad sensitive. But he was being flippant, as journalists so often are, of course. But you can’t arrest someone for being flippant, more’s the pity.’
‘Did Eusapia notice anyone else suspicious?’ Crawford asked.
Reid rubbed his eyes and groaned. ‘So many people to remember, and some I hope I never think of again. There was a duchess, deaf as a frog, she started to tell me some long story about something that happened in the woodshed when she was a girl – it turned me up, it really did. So I told her that the gardener was in the ninth circle of hell, my spirit guide could see him planting out salvias for all eternity and she seemed to like it.’ He gave a retrospective shudder. ‘Sir James Brooks, of course – we mustn’t forget him. He backed out of attending the séance. Why?’
‘He’s got alibis up to his armpits,’ Crawford said. He turned to Margaret. ‘Sorry,’ he told her. ‘I haven’t checked on everyone connected with Jack, but it has to be done.’
Margaret gave him a sour smile. ‘It’s nice to think that someone has a clean bill of health, maniac-wise. Was there anyone else?’
‘Veronica Makepeace told me about someone at the Principal séance who she didn’t really know. Hang on …’ Crawford fished out his notebook. ‘I jotted it down … here it is. Valerie Exeter. She wasn’t a regular, but Miss Makepeace got chatting with her.’
‘Not like Miss Makepeace,’ Reid said.
‘Do you know her?’ Kane was surprised. Veronica Makepeace didn’t seem Edmund Reid’s usual cup of tea.
‘No. But I know her sort. She was using the séance as a sort of … well, sales opportunity. You have to give her credit where it’s due, she’s going to be a busy lady for a while, I think. I even saw her slipping her card to young Jack, though I shouldn’t think he is her usual clientele.’
‘There you are!’ Kane was triumphant. ‘They’re working together!’
‘No grasping at straws, Inspector Kane, please.’ Margaret could still not believe that Jack Brooks had anything to do with the murders.
‘So to take time to chat with a woman is not what I would expect of her.’
‘She was being nosy, I think,’ Crawford said. ‘And besides, women do have brothers. Fathers. I don’t think Veronica would baulk at husbands. But Veronica seemed to think that this Exeter woman was a true believer. She didn’t say otherwise, anyway, and I think she’s quite a shrewd judge of character.’
‘True. Do you remember this Exeter woman, Edmund?’ Kane asked. ‘Was she there last night?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Margaret said, interrupting. ‘She wouldn’t have been on the Circle’s list and she certainly wouldn’t be on Lady Sylvia’s.’
‘A gatecrasher?’ Thomas suggested, giving up and sitting at a nearby table eating his own scones.
‘Was anyone on the door?’ Reid asked.
‘Bennett,’ Kane said, with a sigh. ‘Brooks and his pa, handing out the tickets to get them in to the séance. So, no one we can trust, really. My boys were only there incognito to make sure there was no rough stuff.’ He looked at Margaret Murray with a glare that brooked no argument.
‘So she could have been present,’ Crawford said, hurriedly defusing the situation. ‘Tall, quite broad in the beam, according to Veronica. Lots of makeup.’
Reid said, in the tones of one who had found out through sad experience, ‘That describes practically every titled woman over forty there last night. In London, probably. Some of them have got handshakes which would faze a collier.’
‘We may need to re-interview the people at the séance itself,’ Margaret said, finally taking a sip of tea. ‘Thomas,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘My tea’s cold.’
Thomas, the perfect host, hauled himself out of his chair and set off for the kitchens.
‘No need,’ Kane said, getting up. ‘It’s Jack Brooks and I’m going off to finalize the warrant now.’
The ultimate damper being placed on the party, everyone went their separate ways, Crawford popping back for some scones and a paper bag. He had his homeless to feed and he had been busy lately.
Margaret Murray let herself in to her office high under the eaves in University College that June evening and dropped into her chair, unpinning her hat and skimming it on to the shelf where the newly re-instated Mrs Plinlimmon sat, overlooking the room and the rooftops of Bloomsbury from her lofty perch. She liked a change of scene and Margaret had moved her from the museum that day, after she had awarded Jack Brooks his PhD. The owl had been badgering her for weeks to tell Jack the good news, so it seemed only fair that she could now share a landing with him, now that he was a doctor and eligible for a desk crammed into the corner of the room set aside for the chosen few.
The archaeologist leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
‘Mrs Plinlimmon,’ she said, ‘I do believe I may be getting too old for this. My trouble is, I get attached. I shouldn’t, I know.’ She opened her eyes and looked across at the owl. She was not the bird she had once been. Some feathers had gone from the back of her head, never to return, and her beak had once belonged to a barn owl, but she still looked pretty spry and her wisdom had not lessened with the years. Margaret smiled. ‘You’re right, of course,’ she murmured. ‘What’s the point in knowing people if you can’t get attached to them. It’s pointless.’ She put the heels of her hands over her eyes and pressed them lightly. After a moment, she cleared her throat and sat up, giving herself a shake.
‘Mrs Plinlimmon,’ she said, firmly. ‘Today has been quite a roller coaster. I think before the sun goes down, I must find William and say I’m sorry. His apology was not exactly fulsome but perhaps I was feeling fragile after my long night. When does the sun go down tonight, by the way?’
Mrs Plinlimmon thought it was probably about half past eight.
‘I have an hour or so, then, to have a small sherry, tidy myself up and have a bit of a snooze. I’ll put my “Do not disturb” notice on the door and with luck, anyone still in the building will actually read it and take notice of it.’ She rummaged vaguely on the top of her desk but couldn’t find the notice. Instead, she settled for setting her alarm clock, usually used to time tutorials, for an hour hence, and stretched out as best she could in the armchair. The last thing she thought, before sleep took her, was that there was nothing like an almost all-night séance to make a person tired.
FIFTEEN
The alarm shrilled through the air and made both Mrs Plinlimmon and Margaret Murray jump. She grabbed the clock without opening her eyes and held the clapper with one hand while clawing for the lever on the back to make it stop. She would probably be still all right for time if she had another twenty minutes or so.
Soft hands removed the clock from her clumsy fingers.
‘Here, Dr Murray,’ a gentle voice said. ‘Let me do that for you.’
Suddenly, Margaret Murray was wide awake. She knew the voice and yet she didn’t. She struggled upright in the chair and opened eyes still sticky with sleep to see a tall, upright form walking away from her, to resume the seat behind the desk. Because some sixth sense told her that she had not been alone for quite a while. The room had an underlay of patchouli and neroli, but there was also a faint whiff of fear.
The curtains had been drawn over the low window and the sun, westering fast, came in golden but without much help when it came to discerning detail in dark corners. Margaret peered and tried to lean forward, but couldn’t. She felt at her waist and found she was tied to the chair, with William Flinders Petrie’s dressing gown cord, of all the ironies. He often left the garment hanging on the back of the door when they had had a late night in his study. Margaret blushed and could have kicked herself.
‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘And why am I tied here?’
‘As to who I am, we’ll see if you can work it out, shall we?’ The voice was almost a purr. But one thing cheered Margaret Murray. It certainly wasn’t Jack Brooks. ‘You are tied to your chair, Dr Murray, because you have proved to be a very hard prey to dispose of. I really thought I had kicked the living daylights out of you that night by the park railings. I didn’t see how you could have survived it. The stupid woman I took to be you …’
‘Christina Plunkett,’ Margaret said. ‘She has a name and she isn’t stupid.’
‘She has a thick skull, in any event. And thicker stays. She should have died from any one of the blows I dealt her. You would have done, I am sure. You don’t strike me as a whalebone sort of woman.’
‘You’re right,’ Margaret said. ‘A liberty bodice is all I have felt the need for. But … why should you want to kill me?’
The shape in the shadows shrugged, the square shoulders lifting and falling with effortless grace. ‘Why shouldn’t I? You were poking your nose where it wasn’t wanted. You and your stupid pet policeman. After you, he’s next.’ The shoulders shrugged again. ‘I may just be a woman, but I can overpower a man if I have to. And I will have the element of surprise.’
‘I don’t want to appear stupid,’ Margaret said, leaning back and not struggling against the cord, ‘but I assume you are the habitual homicide preying on mediums?’
‘Habitual homicide?’ The shadow laughed throatily. ‘I think that is to give me a label which I don’t deserve.’
‘Why don’t you?’ Margaret asked. ‘You have killed three women to my knowledge. In the eyes of the police and most right-thinking people, that makes you an habitual homicide. Three, habitual. Bodies, homicide.’
‘But you don’t understand.’ The voice cracked and the shadow leaned forward, showing a curve of cheek and extravagantly long lashes for a moment. ‘I didn’t set out to kill three people. I didn’t set out to kill anyone. If the first one had been the one I was looking for, and if she had not …’ there was an intake of breath that sounded like a beast about to paw the ground and charge ‘… defied me, then no one would have died.’
Margaret sat for a moment. Hopefully, give this woman an inch and she would tell a story a mile long.
‘But no.’ She couldn’t keep quiet now she had started. ‘No. I went to see her. I was reasonable. She claimed she didn’t know what I was talking about, though I knew she did.’ There was a silence and the voice, when it resumed, was slower, quieter. ‘Or, I thought she did. I put some poison in her soup.’ Long nails rapped on the desk top. ‘She died.’
‘I don’t understand how you knew she wasn’t the right one. Or when you would know when you had found the right one.’ Margaret Murray could never leave a puzzle unsolved, even when her life depended on it.
‘Of course you don’t know,’ the woman spat. ‘Why should you? And yet, not knowing, you still poked your nose in. You inveigled yourself in to the Bermondsey Spiritualist Circle using the insane name of Henrietta Plinlimmon.’
Margaret could almost sense the owl bridle on her high shelf.
‘Of course, George had you pegged almost from the start. He’s a bit … handy, perhaps, but he isn’t a stupid man. Except his belief in all that beyond-the-veil nonsense; that’s ridiculous, of course.’
‘George? George Boothby? How do you know him? Are you a member of the Bermondsey Circle?’ Margaret asked. Her eyes were getting used to the dark and she could almost make out the woman’s features. But it couldn’t be Agatha Dunwoody or Olivia Bentwood. She could have kicked herself for not asking about other ex-members. In her naivety, she had thought that everyone had been there for ever, but of course that wasn’t necessarily the case.
The guffaw was anything but ladylike. ‘George and I go back years. I know several of that Circle. Robert and I have known each other since … well, goodness, I can’t remember how long I have known Robert.’ A throaty chuckle came from the shadows. ‘Man and boy I have known George and Robert. But you didn’t think to ask, of course, and neither did the police. That’s the trouble with the police these days and, if I may say so, Dr Murray, with the academic mind. You see one thing and you assume the rest. Sometimes, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it isn’t actually a duck. It’s a pelican doing a darned good duck impression.’
The researcher rose in Margaret Murray’s chest and nearly burst out, snarling. ‘I beg your pardon, Miss …?’
‘You don’t get me that way,’ the shadow laughed.
‘I beg your pardon, but that is not what I do. When I research anything, whether it is a mummy or a murder, I do it with the facts to hand, not the facts as I would like them to be. I made no assumptions. I have just come from a meeting with the police and they are sending men round to the Brooks house in Berkeley Square to arrest Jack.’
‘Oooh,’ the woman purred. ‘What a worry for you.’
‘Not really,’ Margaret said. ‘They don’t have a scrap of evidence against him and the family solicitor will have him out of the Yard before they have had time to make him a cup of tea.’
‘You seem to have such a strong belief in the law,’ the woman said.
‘It has never given me reason to not believe in it.’ It was the simple truth.
‘Ha! Let me tell you something about the law.’ She stopped. ‘Or not, perhaps. Not yet, at any rate. I shall be making you a nice drink in a minute. Sherry is it, your tipple at this time of day? I hope it’s a nice nutty Amontillado, so the cyanide goes well on the palate. I have no reason to dislike you, Dr Murray, but I have the feeling that if I leave you much longer to mull all this over, you will find out who I am and, although I am open to all kinds of experiences, I am not ready to hang, not just yet.’
‘Who is?’ Margaret remarked.
‘True. Now, where is the sherry?’
‘It’s in the bottom drawer. There are some glasses there, too. I prefer the one with the green spiral in the stem. Take care with it, it’s very old.’
There was a chuckle from the deepening shadow. ‘I think I will give you … let me see. I will give you this rather clumsy little tumbler, which I suspect is a piece of Roman glass. It would amuse you to drink from it and also, you wouldn’t trust anyone else not to drop it.’
Margaret inclined her head, to an intellect close to hers. ‘You are very clever, Miss …?’
‘I don’t think we need to repeat this, do we, Dr Murray. I am really not likely to fall for anything that obvious.’
‘No, Miss Exeter, I don’t think you are.’
There was a palpable silence in the room, but a silence with an edge on it which could have cut diamonds.
‘Miss Exeter?’ the woman said eventually. ‘I don’t know any Miss Exeter. Are we back to the duck analogy again?’
‘I’m sorry if I have mistaken you for someone else. It just seems to me that there is a missing piece in every puzzle and, in this case, it is in the shape of Valerie Exeter.’
‘And what shape is that?’ The question was rhetorical, but Dr Murray answered it anyway.
