Four Thousand Days, page 3
‘I could be wrong,’ Crawford whispered, anxious to keep the conversation between just him and Angela, ‘but her rooms bore all the hallmarks.’
Angela didn’t have a clue what they might be and she suddenly felt just a little afraid to be dragged into a world in which she had no place – Crawford’s world; his day job. ‘I don’t understand, Adam,’ she said, her tea neglected, her choux pastry untouched. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because something’s not right,’ he told her. ‘Because in the police we’re told that if you want to know how and why a person died, you need to understand how they lived. At the moment, you and I are the only two who knew Helen, however slightly. I need some answers.’
Angela took a deep breath. She reached for her cup, took a swig and stood up. ‘Well, then,’ she said, straightening her hat, ‘the cleverest person I know, who has provided more answers to more questions than you and I have had hot dinners, is sitting just around the corner from here.’ She held up her hand. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk to Em-em.’
‘Who?’
‘Dr Murray. She’s the only woman I know who can tell a substantivized verb from a semantic object.’
Margaret Murray sat with a chisel in one hand and a piece of teak in the other. She looked up from her cluttered desk in the bowels of University College and fixed Mrs Plinlimmon with her fiercest stare.
‘Well,’ she said softly to the stuffed owl high on the shelf, ‘what’s it to be? Amenhotep or Ozymandias?’
The owl, as always, was stuck for an answer, but Margaret Murray, as the college’s only junior lecturer in archaeology, was short of colleagues whose opinions she could seek, so Mrs Plinlimmon it was.
‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘Amenhotep it is,’ and she began to chip away at the wood with an expert hand.
The tap on the door stopped all that.
‘Dr Murray, I’m so sorry to bother you.’
‘Angela.’ The lecturer put the chisel down. ‘And …?’
‘Adam Crawford, Dr Murray. I attend your Friday lectures for the public.’
‘Delighted, Mr Crawford,’ she smiled. Then she looked at Angela. ‘Is the library closed for refurbishment, my dear?’
Angela laughed, despite the shock she had had some moments ago. ‘We have a problem, Dr Murray,’ she said. ‘Adam and I.’
‘Oh dear.’ Whatever else Margaret Murray was, she was not a lonely hearts counsellor and knew at once that she was seriously out of her depth.
‘Did you ever come across Helen Richardson at the Friday lectures?’
‘Helen …?’ Margaret frowned. ‘Tall girl – well, you all are to me – blonde. Not unattractive. Interested in …’ – she paused and tapped her chin, remembering – ‘Roman archaeology, I believe.’ She looked up and Angela nodded. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘She’s dead,’ Crawford said, flatly.
‘Oh dear.’ Margaret put down her piece of wood and ushered her visitors to chairs.
‘I found her,’ Crawford told her.
‘You did?’
‘I should explain, Dr Murray,’ he said, ‘that I am a constable of the Metropolitan Police. A Division. In that capacity, I came across her body last Friday night … well, Saturday morning, speaking accurately, I suppose …’
‘One must always be accurate,’ Margaret reminded the room.
‘Um … yes. I was called to an altercation and when investigating that, I discovered her body in her rooms in Storey’s Yard.’
‘Adam thinks she was murdered, Dr Murray,’ Angela said, ‘but the detectives believe it was suicide.’
‘How distressing,’ Margaret said. ‘But I don’t see—’
‘Dr Murray,’ Adam cut in, ‘Neither of us knew Helen very well, but as a fellow amateur archaeologist I feel a sense of … I don’t know. I need to do right by her.’
‘And you are the most capable person I know,’ Angela threw in, ‘used, if it doesn’t sound too ghoulish, to dead bodies.’
‘Long dead,’ Margaret reminded her. She looked at Crawford, then at Angela. Then she whipped a notepad and pencil from under a pile of parchment and passed them to the constable. ‘Draw the position of the body,’ she said.
‘What?’ Crawford’s mouth hung open. Such a command from a hard-bitten copper or a bewhiskered police surgeon was one thing; but from a woman who barely, when standing, reached his collar badges, was altogether something else.
‘Mr Crawford’ – Margaret leaned towards him – ‘I have studied the corpses of Celtic warriors, Egyptian pharaohs and Finno-Ugric concubines. Without wishing to belittle humankind or question the sanctity of life, we are all the same length lying down.’
Anatomically, that wasn’t true, but Crawford knew what she meant and started sketching. When he’d finished, he passed the pad back to her.
‘Arms like so?’ Margaret checked. ‘Outspread?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the legs?’
‘Likewise.’ Crawford found himself blushing.
‘Wounds of any kind?’ the archaeologist went on. ‘Cuts, abrasions, bruising?’
‘None that I could see.’
‘Very well.’ Margaret leaned back, still looking at the sketch. Flinders Petrie would have hated it. ‘This is a bed, is it? On which the poor girl was lying?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Now,’ she said, ‘concentrate. Was there a table, beside the bed, perhaps?’
‘There was.’
‘Anything on it?’
‘A lamp. And a bottle. Well, a phial, really.’
‘Size? Shape? Come along, Mr Crawford. An archaeologist is nothing if he can’t observe.’
‘Er … it was about four inches high.’ He subconsciously mimed it with his fingers. ‘Square sided.’ His face was screwed up with the effort of remembering. ‘It was empty.’
‘Did you sniff it?’
‘As a matter of fact, I did.’
‘What did it smell of?’
‘Almonds,’ Crawford told her.
‘Cyanide,’ Margaret nodded. ‘Tell me, Mr Crawford, did you see anyone at those premises in … sorry, where?’
‘Storey’s Yard, Westminster. Yes, a neighbour and a rent collector. It was their altercation which drew my attention.’
‘And did you learn anything from them?’
‘I learned that they both knew her as Alice Groves.’
‘Interesting,’ the archaeologist muttered. ‘Do you have an explanation for that – the two names of the deceased?’
Crawford shifted uncomfortably. ‘I believe that the woman known as Alice Groves was … an unfortunate, a scarlet sister, a woman of the night.’
‘Hmm,’ Margaret nodded. ‘A policeman and a prostitute. I had no idea the public lectures on a Friday drew such a colourful audience.’ She smiled at Angela. ‘Makes the rest of the week appear quite dull, doesn’t it, my dear?’
‘Dr Murray.’ Crawford was still uneasy. ‘I shouldn’t have brought this problem to you. I—’
But the woman held up her hand. ‘Mr Crawford,’ she said. ‘Have you ever been to Ephesus in Turkey?’
The constable hadn’t. The furthest east he had been was Margate, though he lived in hope.
‘It’s a marvellous place, for an historian or an archaeologist. Or for anyone to commune with the past. It has the most wonderful library, once famous throughout the world. And as you look at its stupendous Greek façade, you will see a small door to the left. That was the entrance to the brothel that operated just behind it. When St Paul was writing to the Ephesians, up to a third of them weren’t listening because they were enjoying themselves in what I believe the hoi polloi of today would call a knocking shop. Academe and the bohemian world have always gone hand in hand. The late Miss Richardson’s profession doesn’t actually surprise me at all.’
‘I thought she was a telephonist,’ Angela remarked and the archaeologist and the policeman both looked at her. ‘Well, I did,’ she said, huffily. ‘She didn’t look like … well, she looked just like a telephonist …’ She gave up and folded her arms.
‘I met someone else at Helen’s place,’ Crawford said. ‘Freddie Fenton, a journalist, for want of a better word, with the Illustrated Police News. Freddie looks like and behaves like a ferret – he has his teeth into it now and won’t let go until he has sucked every ounce of blood from it.’
Margaret Murray looked at the constable with admiration. ‘I think you have missed your calling, Constable Crawford,’ she told him.
‘As an archaeologist?’ he asked, brightening.
‘No. As a dime novel writer. No, no’ – she saw his crest fall – ‘that is far from an insult. It is a skill not shared by many.’
‘Dr Murray.’ Angela was keen to get the conversation back on track. ‘I can’t forget that I talked to Helen nearly every week. She was funny and fascinated by archaeology. Can we do anything? To catch her killer, I mean.’
Margaret chuckled to herself. ‘All kinds of people come to “learn archaeology” as they put it – the pyramid theorists; the ladies who come to be taught, not to learn; the Bible cranks; the believers in curses and spells. But … a lady of the night.’ She smiled at Crawford. ‘I believe that’s a first, Constable.’
‘As far as we know.’ Crawford knew that not everyone was quite what they seemed.
She leaned back and looked at them both. ‘You know the most rewarding thing about being an archaeologist?’ she asked. They shook their heads. ‘It’s about filling a gap – oh, it might not be large and it might not be very important, but it is a gap, nonetheless. And, little by little, we archaeologists fill it. It’s one of the purest joys in life. So, let’s fill in a gap for Helen Richardson, shall we?’
Margaret Murray was not the only woman in the Boys’ Institute at St Vincent’s the next morning, but she was the only one taking notes. Inquests drew the flotsam and jetsam of London, not merely the coroner and his flunkies but the litany of ghouls who crowded on pavements after road accidents and who watched bodies being fished out of the Thames.
She carefully noted the names of the witnesses – Jacob Lawrenson, who lived in the rooms above and acted as general caretaker for the house in Storey’s Yard; Abel Turner, who collected – or tried to collect – the dead woman’s rent; Dr Richard Lambert, the Police Surgeon of A Division, who spoke in disinterested terms of cyanide poisoning and its effects on the human body. There were any number of men in that crowded hall who may have known Helen Richardson in another context, but, almost by definition, they were not coming forward with any information at all. Margaret was singularly unimpressed by the dismissive tones of Detective Inspector Athelgar Blunt of A Division, whose cursory account of the finding of the body, which in reality ought to have been Constable Crawford’s job, appeared to elicit from the coroner far more gravitas than it actually deserved.
As the proceedings drew to a close and the coroner thanked the jury, twelve men and stupid, for their time, the inevitable verdict was solemnly announced. ‘Suicide, while the balance of the mind was disturbed.’
It was the balance of the murderer’s mind that bothered Margaret Murray rather more; and to that end, she tapped one of the journalists leaving St Vincent’s on the shoulder, looking carefully at his Press badge. ‘Illustrated Police News?’ she said cheerfully.
He tipped his hat. ‘Freddie Fenton, madam,’ he said. ‘At your service.’
Margaret stifled a smile. Adam Crawford was quite right; the man was almost exactly like a ferret. She held up the previous week’s edition. ‘This.’ She tapped the lurid drawing of a woman drowning in Regent’s Canal. ‘Is it your work?’
‘The article, madam,’ he gushed, ‘not the illustration. Although I can vouch for the fact that our artist spent many a gruelling hour on the towpath of said canal accurately sketching the scene.’
‘How accurate will it be for Helen Richardson?’
‘Eh?’
‘Has your artist already trampled over the pavement in Storey’s Yard, quite possibly contaminating a crime scene?’
‘A crime …? Oh, come now, madam, did you not hear the coroner? A case of suicide.’
‘If it were a case of suicide, Mr Fenton, you wouldn’t be here. Neither would your nasty, spurious little magazine. Tell me, what do you know about Helen Richardson that I don’t?’
Fenton eased himself out into St Vincent’s vestibule, secretly longing for light and freedom. ‘Who are you?’ he felt bound to ask.
‘A seeker of the truth,’ she said. ‘Unlike the columnists of the Illustrated Police News. Do I assume you have no information on the late Miss Richardson?’
Fenton grinned and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You’ll have to buy next week’s edition to find out,’ he said.
‘I shall look forward to it,’ she told him. ‘There will no doubt be a ghoulish wraith standing in Storey’s Yard with a bloody knife dripping from his clawed hand.’
‘What?’ Fenton clutched her arm. ‘You mean, she was stabbed? I couldn’t get in to see the body … I … No,’ he laughed. ‘You’re having me on!’
‘Am I, Mr Fenton? You’ll have to read the letters page of next week’s Telegraph to find out. And, by the way’ – she tapped the front page of the rag again – ‘this advertisement “To Married Ladies – Try the French Remedy – not a dangerous drug but a wonderful secret invention.” I hardly know where to begin to point out the impropriety of all that. But I think I’ll start with the Press Agency. Good morning.’
Margaret Murray could have quietly kicked herself. The inquest had told her precisely nothing and in latching on to the equally useless Freddie Fenton, she had missed her chance to collar Detective Inspector Athelgar Blunt. There was nothing for it; the mountain would have to go to Mohammed and she took a hansom to Scotland Yard.
This was the second – or was it the third? – building to go by that name. And it had once been intended to be an opera house. Appropriate, though, that during its building a headless body had been found in its foundations; after that, what else could the building be used for but the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police? For most of the afternoon, Margaret Murray sat in the outer vestibule, the shortest person in the whole building by a country mile. A kindly desk sergeant had brought her a cup of tea and the afternoon shift provided ginger biscuits. No, she had not contributed to the Police Benevolent Fund nor to the Seaside Home in Hove for Distressed Constables; neither did she wish to do so. She merely wished to talk to Detective Inspector Blunt and so, after only three hours, there he was.
People often said that senior detectives looked like bank managers; Athelgar Blunt looked just like a policeman, from his outsized brogues, via the obsolete Dundrearies that framed his face, to the severest of Teutonic haircuts. Margaret knew she could never entrust her savings to a man like that.
‘Madam.’ He nodded. The man and his entire office smelled of pipe smoke and the pale sun of Westminster barely penetrated the room.
‘Doctor,’ she corrected him.
‘I didn’t know there were any,’ Blunt said, clearly an oaf to his fingertips.
‘Of medicine, I believe there are four. But I am a doctor of archaeology. Helen Richardson was one of my students.’
‘Who?’
‘The dead woman in Storey’s Yard. You attended her inquest this morning.’
Blunt narrowed his eyes at her. He prided himself that he was an observer par excellence, but he had no recollection of this diminutive woman at all.
‘I’ll come to the point, Inspector,’ Margaret said. ‘Aware of how busy you must be. On what grounds do you believe that Helen took her own life?’
Blunt blinked, reaching into his pocket for his pipe. ‘I am not at liberty to divulge,’ he said.
Margaret waited until the match had been struck and the flame hovered near the bowl. ‘Must you?’ she asked, clutching her breast as though the oxygen in the room had disappeared.
‘Oh … er …’ and Blunt blew the match out.
‘Perhaps I should explain,’ she said. ‘Helen was only a part-time student of mine. She was nevertheless, in a strange way, my responsibility.’
‘Ah.’ Blunt came as close to a smile as he ever did, though it was hard to tell. ‘Am I my sister’s keeper?’ There was no change of expression on his listener’s face. ‘To paraphrase the Good Book.’
‘Yes, I understand the allusion, Inspector,’ Margaret said. ‘And, in this instance, yes, I am.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ the inspector said, laying the derelict pipe down on his desk. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t know a great deal about her, though. Being just part time and all? Do you know of any family, for example? We’ve been unable to trace anybody so far.’
‘That isn’t the kind of conversation my students tend to have with each other, Inspector, unless they become especially good friends, or perhaps share a house, as many of them do. I understand she was particularly interested in the early Roman period in Britain, if that’s any help to you.’
Blunt raised an eyebrow.
‘No, I thought possibly not. One of my students thought that perhaps Helen Richardson was a telephonist. Another, though …’ She gave a cough. Although she had no problem using the word prostitute or any alternative to it, she had a sneaky feeling that perhaps Athelgar Blunt had other expectations of ladylike behaviour.
Blunt did indeed lower his eyes slightly before embarking on his next piece of information. ‘This didn’t really come up at the inquest,’ he said, ‘but … and I appreciate that this is rather indelicate. The late Miss Richardson made her living on immoral earnings.’
‘She was a prostitute, yes.’ Margaret thought the word had to be used or they would be dancing around each other until midnight struck.
It took Blunt a split second to come back from that. ‘Well, there you are; another motive for self-slaughter. Guilt. Shame. Believe me, I’ve seen it all.’
‘I’m sure you have,’ Margaret said, suddenly seeing Athelgar Blunt as the brick wall he was. She stood up. Blunt did not. ‘So, you can’t help me further?’ she asked, just to be sure.
He shrugged and pulled a pile of paper towards him, already on the next task. ‘No. But if you’ll take my advice, madam, I’d stay well out of this. Leave it to us; it’s what we’re paid for.’
