Breaking the Circle, page 4
Actually, most of them did and they shuffled out accordingly, leaving the tiny scattering who had mistakenly signed up with Tingle at the start of the university term sitting with a resolved look of boredom on their faces. One man, however, had not moved.
‘Andrew!’ Margaret’s face lit up. ‘I didn’t see you there. Don’t tell me you’ve come to rejoin my classes?’
‘Ah, Dr Murray,’ he smiled, keeping it formal. ‘Would that I could. But you know how it is. In a busy world, a policeman’s lot and other overworked phrases.’
‘Precisely.’ She understood. Then, a thought occurred. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? Angela? The baby? The babies?’
‘No, nothing like that. I was just wondering – is there somewhere we can talk?’
Margaret fished her fob watch from under her mantle and looked at it, nodding. ‘The Jeremy Bentham,’ she said. ‘You can buy me a Chelsea bun.’
A Chelsea bun it was, complete with tea and a cream horn for the detective sergeant. Margaret had her favourite table in the tea rooms across the road from the monolith that was University College, and woe betide anyone else who sat there. An accommodating Thomas, the proprietor, always placed a reserved sign on the table to deter interlopers.
‘Sergeant Crawford,’ the man gushed. ‘Always a pleasure to entertain our brave upholders of law and order.’
‘Always a pleasure to be entertained by one who has seen the folly of his former ways.’ Crawford had seen Thomas’s record. Were he of the blackmailing persuasion, he could make himself, as several of his colleagues did, a nice little bit on the side.
‘My salad days,’ the surprisingly erudite Thomas said, ‘when I was green in judgement. Talking of which, if you are intending to extend your palates to lunch, we do have an exciting salmagundi on offer. Or there’s the Waldorf …’
‘Always,’ Margaret smiled. ‘We’ll stick with the cakes for now, Thomas, thank you.’
When he had gone, into that mysterious darkness from which magical delicacies emerged, Crawford became serious. ‘The Madame Ankhara case,’ he said, dropping his voice to a mutter.
‘So it is a case now?’ She raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘No,’ he scowled. ‘And thereby hangs a tale.’
‘Say on.’
‘John Kane doesn’t think foul play is involved at all. He’s going with the coroner’s verdict of “cause of death unknown”; something internal, something that now she’s no longer with us to tell us her symptoms, the doctors can’t quite put their fingers on.’
‘But surely,’ Margaret said, with a ghost of a wink, ‘she can tell us her symptoms. Don’t we just have to …’ she spread her fingers on the table and rolled her eyes, ‘… ask?’
‘Very amusing,’ Crawford said, trying to work out the least messy way to eat a cream horn. ‘She never said anything to her sister about feeling seedy and I just can’t accept that verdict. The inspector and I have spent the last two days interviewing various people and I just can’t shake the impression that something isn’t right. But I think I have come to the end of Inspector Kane’s tether.’
‘Who have you interviewed? Friends of the deceased?’
‘You might say that,’ he nodded. ‘They’re all members of the Bermondsey Spiritualist Circle. Ankhara was a founder member, quite a few years ago now, when table-tilting was all the rage. Have you ever dabbled?’
‘Séances?’ Margaret smiled reminiscently. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘What’s your view?’
‘Séances are party games,’ she said. ‘Like hunt the thimble or pin the tail on the donkey. I understand the Germans have patented a Ouija board, to make spiritual sessions easier. Rather than endlessly scribbling letters on bits of paper, this gadget has a printed board with the alphabet, ja and nein and a needle that moves. Great fun, kept in its place.’
‘So, it’s all a con?’ Crawford was poking a toe into the waters, testing the archaeologist’s reaction.
‘I didn’t say that,’ she said. ‘You don’t stand in a three-thousand-year-old pyramid and fail to feel it. The dead stay with us, Andrew, I am sure of that.’
‘So, you believe?’ He was probing further.
‘I believe … I believe … I believe that you have a blob of cream on your nose. I believe what I can see and what I feel, when I see and feel it. Everything else, my mind is open.’
Crawford wiped the cream off with his handkerchief and presented his nose for inspection, just as his son would. Margaret nodded her approval and looked at him over her teacup.
‘Andrew, where is all this going?’
Crawford sighed as if he had been holding his breath for the last half an hour. ‘Kane and I have talked to every member of the Circle we could find. On the surface, they were all saddened and shocked by Ankhara’s death. They all subscribed to the view that she wasn’t dead at all, of course, just in a different plane, if you get my drift.’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘There!’ She pointed to a napkin that had just fallen from a nearby table. ‘To you and me, that’s an act of gravity, a whim of physics. To members of the Bermondsey Circle, it’s Madame Ankhara trying to tell them something.’ She looked up at the lights. ‘If one of those breaks, of course,’ she said, ‘it’ll be William the Conqueror trying to get in touch. Those who died long ago are on higher planes than the recently departed.’
Crawford leaned back in his chair. ‘So, you’re a sceptic,’ he said.
‘Always,’ she told him. ‘It goes with the job.’
‘Well,’ he finished his tea. ‘That’s exactly what I need – someone who is rational but involved, dedicated and open-minded.’
She laughed. ‘And what is this mythical person required to do?’ she asked. ‘Although I’m not sure that I measure up.’
‘Do?’ he repeated. ‘Oh, nothing much. Just join the Bermondsey Spiritualist Circle, that’s all.’
‘Is there anybody there?’ The voice behind the door was old and querulous, asking a question it must have asked countless times before.
‘Hello?’ Margaret called back. Perhaps her knock had not been firm enough.
‘Who are you?’
‘Henrietta Plinlimmon,’ Margaret lied. ‘Did you get my letter?’
The door opened an inch or two after what seemed endless rattling of locks and bolts and a watery eye peered through the small gap.
‘You are the Bermondsey Spiritualist Circle, are you?’ Margaret thought she had better make certain.
‘I am part of it, certainly,’ the voice said, ‘although I cannot claim to make up the entire circumference. Who did you say you were?’
‘Henrietta Plinlimmon,’ Margaret repeated. ‘I wrote to the hon. sec. of the Circle at this address. Are you she?’
‘No,’ the voice said. ‘I am Agatha Dunwoody.’ She hauled the door open. ‘You’d better come in.’
Stepping into the vestibule of Thirty-One Cavendish Street was like stepping into the past. Not the ancient past that Margaret Murray knew, but one with a vague feeling of yesterday, where nothing had changed since that nice Mr Disraeli was at Number Ten and General Baden-Powell wore short trousers the first time around. There were aspidistrae in the corner that made the botanical gardens at Kew look like a wasteland, and darker corners that had never seen a feather duster.
‘I’m afraid the hon. sec. isn’t here,’ the old lady said. She was a whisker shorter than Margaret, but considerably older, with silver hair and obsolete clothes that gave her an air of Miss Havisham.
‘Will he be long?’ Margaret asked.
‘He has crossed Beyond The Veil,’ the old girl said, ‘although of course we still converse at the meetings. And he still waters the plants, every other Wednesday, just as he did all our married life.’
‘Of course,’ Margaret said. ‘So, you are …?’
‘Out of mourning now, since week Thursday,’ the woman told her.
‘Er …’
‘Perhaps I should explain.’
‘If you would,’ Margaret said, wondering anew whether she’d knocked on the door of the asylum by mistake.
‘The hon. sec. of our Society was Alexander Dunwoody, of Dunwoody, Dunwoody, Pettigrew and Dunwoody, solicitors of this parish. He left this vale of tears over a year ago and I have assumed the mantle of hon. sec. Well, we had a lot of headed notepaper and it seemed profligate to waste it. I must say, I never quite appreciated how much paperwork was involved. My husband spent hours in his study and I always assumed …’ she lowered her eyes modestly, ‘… well, gentlemen have needs, don’t they?’ She looked up again, brightly. ‘But no, it turns out he really was dealing with paperwork. I am not as tidy as my husband, Mrs …’
‘Miss.’ Margaret thought that things were about to get complex enough without a phantom husband to muddy the waters.
‘Miss Plinlimmon, but do come into the parlour. I have your letter here, somewhere.’
She rummaged among a mountain of correspondence and eventually found the missive in question. ‘Here we are,’ she said, turning round. Margaret had found a seat and was waiting expectantly.
‘Oh, not there, dear!’ Mrs Dunwoody said, slightly horrified. ‘That was Alexander’s seat.’ She waved a withered hand over the oval table. ‘This is our actual Circle. We all have our places, you see. Sadly, we have two empty chairs now.’
‘Oh?’ Margaret saw her opening. ‘Another bereavement?’
‘Another crossing of the bar, yes,’ Mrs Dunwoody said. ‘Poor Muriel was recently taken from us. Drowned in her mulligatawny.’
‘Oh dear.’ Now was not the time to pry – for now, Margaret tried to put mild sympathy into her voice, as anyone would hearing of the death of a stranger.
‘If you wanted to, you could take her place.’
‘I’d be honoured,’ Margaret said.
‘But first,’ the old girl sat down and did her best to cross her legs, ‘a few preliminaries. Forgive me, Miss Plinlimmon …’
‘Henrietta, please.’
‘Henrietta. There are so many charlatans in our world – and of course, in the world beyond. We have to be careful.’
‘Indeed we do.’
‘Your letter says that you have been a believer for a number of years.’
‘Correct,’ Margaret smiled and nodded.
‘May I ask how old you are?’
‘I am forty-two.’
‘And what success have you had, in your contact with the Other Side?’
‘Little, I’m afraid,’ Margaret told her. ‘Ambience is so important in these matters, don’t you think? Somehow the atmosphere of previous Circles I have known has never been quite right. But this room,’ she smiled up at the cobwebs and took in a deep, spiritual breath, ‘this has such a presence.’ She stifled a cough as the lungful of dust struck home.
‘We think so,’ Mrs Dunwoody beamed.
‘I was saying to Oliver only the other day …’
‘Cromwell?’ The old girl looked excited.
‘Lodge.’
‘Sir Oliver Lodge?’
‘Yes,’ Margaret trilled. ‘But he’s such a dear. He hates to stand on ceremony.’ This was not quite a lie, more an embroidery of the facts. She did indeed know that Oliver Lodge did not stand on ceremony – his brother and sister, who had wisely taken the path of historian, were often at dinners Margaret attended and could wax long and elaborately about how their brother had a fine mind, was a lovely man and excellent husband and father, did not stand on ceremony but nonetheless was as mad as a box of frogs.
The old girl’s eyes were wide with admiration. ‘You know one of the greatest advocates of our faith alive in the world today?’
‘Why, yes,’ Margaret said. ‘Not to mention Arthur Conan Doyle.’
For a moment, Agatha Dunwoody sat there, mouth open. Then, with a suddenness that surprised them both, she clasped Margaret’s hands with her own. ‘Dearest Henrietta,’ she said, ‘when can you start?’
THREE
Unusually for him, Jack Brooks had his head down and was working on a particularly obtuse page of transcribed hieroglyphs when Margaret Murray came into her study with even more speed and gusto than usual.
He looked up, to see her brushing herself down with a horsehair fly whisk she kept in a vase on the mantelpiece. He let her get on with it for a moment, before he asked the obvious question. ‘Can I help at all, Dr Murray?’
‘Of course you can,’ she snapped. ‘Check me over for spiders, will you? I’ve been twitching like a horse in a heatwave all the way here. I just know there’s one on me somewhere.’
‘A horse?’
She fixed him with a baleful stare. ‘Don’t be flippant, Mr Brooks.’ She glanced at the pile of untranslated papers at his elbow. ‘There are plenty more of those where that lot came from. Now, for the love of Ra, check me over for arachnids. And don’t spare your blushes – they could be anywhere.’
And so it was that William Flinders Petrie walked in some minutes later to find one of Dr Murray’s graduate students beating her gently but thoroughly with a fly whisk. After a confused few moments, a flustered Brooks gathered up his papers and fled to the library. Margaret Murray put the kettle on and Flinders Petrie settled himself by the fireplace. The spring day was warm and the fire had been replaced for the duration by a silhouette of Bast – no home was complete without a cat on the hearth, according to those who should know.
‘You’re not afraid of spiders, though, Margaret,’ Petrie said, picking over the biscuits she had put down on the low table in front of the hearth to find the garibaldi with the most squashed flies. ‘You’re not afraid of anything.’
‘I know,’ she said, suppressing a final shudder. ‘But the whole place was full of fresh cobwebs. As opposed to the cobwebs of the ages, if you know what I mean. On the walk here, I could just feel a spider down my back. As if it were stalking me, on behalf of Alexander Dunwoody.’
‘Alexander Dunwoody of Dunwoody, Dunwoody, Pettigrew and Dunwoody?’ Petrie asked, biting into his biscuit. ‘He’s dead, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know that,’ Margaret said, puzzled. ‘But how do you?’
‘He left some bits and pieces to the museum,’ Petrie said. ‘Nothing much, it’s not on display. A scarab, if memory serves. An ankh. Nice enough tourist pieces, I suppose.’
‘Well,’ Margaret put the cup down next to the biscuits and took a seat opposite the great archaeologist. ‘What a small world it is, to be sure.’
‘Very,’ Petrie agreed. ‘But with that as a given, why did you think that Alexander Dunwoody was chasing you?’
Margaret Murray looked at him, this man who had encouraged her and so much more over the years, and opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again with a snap. ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way, William,’ she said, ‘but I’m not at liberty to say.’
He shrugged. He knew his Margaret. When she wanted to tell him, she would.
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Aren’t you going to press me? To insist I tell you?’ she said.
‘No,’ he said, laughing. ‘You’ll just have to keep it to yourself, Margaret. Unless you want me to beat it out of you, something I had no idea you enjoyed.’ He choked on a biscuit crumb and had to stop while he coughed.
‘Don’t think I’m going to so much as pat your back, William Flinders Petrie,’ she said, from the back of her highest horse. ‘And I’m not going to tell you, not even when it’s all over and I am the heroine of the hour!’
‘Margaret,’ he managed to grate out, ‘you’re always a heroine to me.’ The biscuit crumb finally dislodged itself. ‘Any chance of another cup. I think I’ve overdunked in this one.’
Tutting, she washed out his cup and poured some more tea.
When she gave it to him, he was more serious. ‘Margaret, my dear,’ he said, putting his hand on hers. ‘Will you promise me one thing?’
‘Anything, William,’ she said, smiling. He was hard to stay angry with for long.
‘Before you go off chasing whatever hares you have in your sights, leave a note for me, will you? Or for Detective Sergeant Crawford. Mrs Plinlimmon. Anyone. Just don’t disappear.’
She patted his hand. ‘If you say so,’ she said, sitting opposite him again.
‘No, Margaret.’ He leaned forward, his face solemn. ‘Promise me you will.’
She looked deep into his eyes and felt her own fill with tears. Margaret Murray had not gone down the path of marriage and motherhood that her contemporaries had done. It wasn’t in her to preside over a growing nursery while her intellect took second place, as Angela Crawford did. But she knew love when she saw it and she was looking at it now.
‘I promise,’ she said. ‘I promise, William.’
The next morning, there was a note propped up on Mrs Plinlimmon’s perch – the stuffed owl tolerated most things. Under the heading of ‘A. Dunwoody, Hon. Sec.’, it was short and to the point. ‘Miss Plinlimmon,’ Margaret chuckled as she realized why Brooks had propped it there, ‘we have an extraordinary meeting this evening at the above address and would be delighted to see you. 8pm. Yrs AD.’
She sat down at her desk and drummed her fingers for a moment, thinking. Was this an important moment? Should she leave a message for William Flinders Petrie as she had promised to do in this very room only the day before? Surely not – an extraordinary meeting would simply mean a quick sit round the table, someone taking laborious minutes with a pen with a crossed nib and much stertorous mouth-breathing. Someone would propose her, someone else would second it and that would be that. She folded the invitation and slid it into her pocket. Time enough to report to Detective Sergeant Crawford when she had met everyone. Meanwhile, she had lectures to give, postgraduate students to encourage or hector, depending on one’s point of view. A full day, just how she liked them – and the prospect of an evening of potential sleuthing. Dr Margaret Murray rubbed her hands together and prepared to meet Friday head on.
Thirty-One Cavendish Street was no less dusty and spider-haunted for the extraordinary meeting than it had been when Margaret had called there on spec the day before. She suspected that Mrs Dunwoody did have help in the house, because there was a shadowy presence in the room at the end of the long, dingy corridor that led from the front door, though in a Spiritualist’s house, how could anyone be sure? In the meeting room, there was a tray with some smudged glasses and a half-empty bottle of Amontillado of the cheapest kind, already being addressed by a large woman with a commanding bust. Margaret Murray, of diminutive stature and neat figure herself, often wondered how such women managed their avoirdupois. Did it all leap out of the fetters of corsets at the end of the day, rejoicing in its freedom? Or did it sag, depressed and beaten into submission, and have to be loaded into the kinder but no less confining contours of a nightgown to await imprisonment in the morning? She had never felt close enough to a woman of larger proportions to ask and, somehow, she didn’t think this person would become a friend near enough to enquire about bosom management. Creating a bright smile, she put out a friendly hand.
