Four Thousand Days, page 5
‘Indeed,’ she said, feeling for her handbag down the side of her chair. ‘I must admit I had hoped for more specific information, such as that a list of clients was always made in a bright red book the size of a table with “List Of Clients” written on it, but that was always a faintish hope, I concede. Hopefully, I will find it.’
‘These girls can be very cunning, I’m afraid.’ The General levered himself out of his chair and went to the door. Before he opened it, he turned and spoke, low and quickly. ‘I wish you all the best, Dr Murray, in finding your friend’s killer. I only hope that what you find will not tarnish her memory.’ He looked at her solemnly. ‘Many of the women we save have a low opinion of themselves and sometimes for good reason. I see the best in everyone, but that best is not always what we would wish it to be. Do you understand me?’
Margaret nodded. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Human beings are not always very good examples of the Lord’s work, I agree. But I try not to think ill of the dead. I know so very many of them, you see.’
The General looked at her from under his beetling brows and smiled. He took her hand and squeezed it gently. ‘God go with you, my dear,’ he said. ‘And do come back and see us sometime. I know Gertie would like to see you again.’
‘Perhaps I could meet her Sergeant Major Poultney,’ Margaret said.
‘Hmm, yes. Probably not.’
‘Oh?’
‘I think perhaps Sergeant Major Poultney will have been transferred by then. He and Mrs Poultney and all the little Poultneys. Sometimes, Dr Murray, old habits die a little bit too hard. Goodbye.’ And he gently closed the door behind her.
Damn! Margaret Murray could have quietly kicked herself. She had meant to ask the General for his autograph in her copy of his book.
‘What are we looking for again?’
‘A client list, Mr Crawford. Something that your superiors should have been looking for all along.’
Night had fallen over the grey splendour of the Abbey and the mist wreathed the Thames beyond. October was dying and the deep twilight reflected it. Constable Crawford’s hobnails were the only ones clattering on the cobbles at this hour and Margaret Murray made no sound at all. They turned left into Storey’s Yard.
The last time Crawford had been there, it hadn’t been hard to spot the house in question; it had been the centre of somewhat of a fracas. This time, he let his feet take him to what looked like the same door and pounded the doorknocker and waited. It seemed an eternity but eventually the sash window above grated open and the same raddled head of Upstairs Man poked out, minus the nightcap.
‘Not today, thank you,’ he called down.
‘In your own time,’ Crawford said and listened to the mumbled expletives as the window closed again. The front door opened eventually with much rattling of bolts.
‘I’ve had these fitted,’ the man said, ‘after all what’s happened. They haven’t let the room yet. I thought there’d be a queue round the block – you know what people are like; “Line up here to see where it happened” sort of thing. Ghouls, they are.’ He looked at Crawford and repeated the word with relish. ‘Ghouls. Who’s this?’
He was looking sternly at the little woman at Crawford’s elbow. She was too young to be his mother and there weren’t any of the female persuasion in the police, despite the odd protest.
‘This lady,’ said Crawford, ‘is helping me with my enquiries.’
Upstairs Man glanced down. He couldn’t see any bracelets on the woman’s wrists, so he assumed he was not at risk; you heard such stories.
‘Good evening, Mr Lawrenson,’ Margaret said. She had a thing for faces and Upstairs Man had stood near her, giving his evidence, such as it was, at Helen Richardson’s inquest.
‘How do you know me?’ the unneighbourly neighbour wanted to know.
‘As Constable Crawford says,’ Margaret smiled, ‘I am helping him with his enquiries. It would be remiss of me not to know you, wouldn’t it?’
‘Er … s’pose,’ was the man’s best attempt at a riposte.
‘You still haven’t got a key to the door, I expect?’ Crawford asked.
‘Nah,’ Lawrenson said. ‘Didn’t the other day. Haven’t now.’
‘Look away, then,’ the policeman advised and fiddled with the lock. In seconds, the door swung open.
‘’Ere!’ Lawrenson was astonished. ‘How did you do that?’
‘I used to be a conjuror,’ Crawford said, ‘but the magic went out of it. Thank you, Mr Lawrenson. We’ll take it from here.’
Jacob Lawrenson had not got to where he was today by sticking his neck out too far. ‘Thank you,’ he replied politely, shuffling upstairs again. ‘Close both doors on your way out.’
Crawford took in the sad little rooms. Nothing appeared to have changed, except for the absence of a dead girl on the bed. The CID had been less than thorough, he was sure, and he rummaged in every corner. Wherever he was, Margaret was elsewhere, although seeing much even with the aid of Crawford’s single lantern beam was difficult. Time and again, Crawford came back to the bed. It was heavy, with brass and iron holding together a wooden frame. He lifted the mattress, pushing the horsehair to one side. And there it was. Or rather, there was where it had been. A drawer had been fitted under the springs, out of sight unless the mattress was removed. One piece of paper had become caught in the drawer’s joints. At the top was a handwritten number 3 – and there were two names below that.
‘Well, well.’ Crawford held his bull’s-eye close to the paper.
Margaret Murray almost clapped her hands together. ‘A client list,’ she said, ‘or I’m a Dutchman. Can you make out the names?’
Crawford could. ‘Reginald Glass and James Brisket,’ he read aloud. ‘It says “three” at the top. I assume the first two pages are missing.’
She smiled. ‘Spoken like a true archaeologist,’ she said. ‘Remind me to let you look at the Habakkuk archives sometime. What do you make of this?’
The archaeologist was holding a box in her hands, carved deal if she wasn’t mistaken, with a brass clasp and hinges. She put it on the bed and flicked it open. ‘It was over there in the cupboard, alongside poor Helen’s clothes.’
Crawford shone his torch inside. There was a screwed-up piece of wrapping paper that had been hastily handled and stuffed back in. A loop of coarse string was beneath it. Margaret carefully rolled the string and tucked it away in a corner of the box and then took out the paper carefully. ‘Hold that light steady, Mr Crawford,’ she said and smoothed the paper out on the bedside table. There were no markings of any kind but as she moved it another piece of paper fell out and she held it up to the light. ‘A railway ticket,’ she said. ‘A return to Hampton-on-Sea, Kent. Dated the eighteenth of August.’ She looked at him. ‘Over two months ago. Term had not begun yet.’
‘May I?’ Crawford took the stub from her. ‘A Summer Saturday Special,’ he said, nodding and handing it back.
‘A what?’
‘My old dad worked on the railways,’ Crawford smiled. ‘There’s nothing like sitting alongside the track on a balmy summer’s evening writing down the numbers of the locos. I used to find it restful. And when I gravitated to a stopwatch my dad gave me … well, I was in heaven.’
Margaret smiled up at him; the huge constable was a little boy again, his eyes shining bright in the pistons and the rivets and the steam. Crawford came back to the here and now.
‘The Kent and Thanet Railway,’ he said. ‘There’s a time stamp. Two thirteen. This would be from Victoria. Let’s see, it would get into Hampton at … allowing for crosswinds, leaves on the line … I wonder what the weather was, hmmm … overheating boiler and so on … depends on the size of the train, of course …’ He looked at the low ceiling as he did his calculation and Margaret wanted to shake him but managed to control herself. ‘Four thirty-eight, give or take a minute.’
‘It’s a return ticket,’ Margaret Murray said.
‘It is, and—’
‘And why wasn’t it handed in or punched?’ she finished the thought for him. ‘If the ticket collectors on the Kent and Thanet are as fastidious as I have found them to be on every other line.’
‘The return wasn’t used,’ Crawford said. ‘Whoever bought it came back by other means.’
‘Or,’ Margaret said, ‘didn’t come back at all.’
Crawford closed the box again. ‘This lock’s been tampered with. Look.’ His bull’s-eye beams gleamed on the brass of the lock. There were scratches all around the keyhole. He marched out of the dead woman’s rooms and called up the stairs. ‘Mr Lawrenson!’
The upstairs neighbour duly appeared. ‘What is it now?’ he asked.
‘Has anybody been here, since last Friday, I mean? Apart from my colleagues in the police?’
‘There may have been one or two,’ the man said cagily.
‘And you’re sure you have no key to Miss Richardson’s rooms?’
‘I told you, no. And get it right, mate. Whatever they said at the inquest, her name was Alice Groves.’
It was a quiet Thursday at the Jeremy Bentham. Nobody knew quite why the place was less than packed on that particular day of the week; it just was. And that made it a perfect time for Margaret Murray to ask a favour of her favourite restaurateur. Thomas brought the Tetley’s, as usual, to Margaret’s perch in the far corner. It was not a generally known fact in the corridors of Gower, but the lecturer in Egyptology was addicted to American dime novels. And she, better than anyone, knew the insanity of sitting with your back to an open door or window. All right, the Jeremy Bentham was not exactly the Last Chance Saloon and Margaret didn’t have the flowing moustachios of Wild Bill Hickok, but you couldn’t be too careful. So here she was, in the innermost recess, barely visible behind the gleaming copper and hissing steam, but able to survey the entire room at a single glance.
Tom sat down opposite her. ‘So,’ he said, ‘is this the item in question?’
‘It is,’ she said. ‘What can you tell me?’
Tom whipped a pair of pince-nez from his waistcoat pocket. He didn’t need them, but it gave him a gravitas he felt he needed in the heart of Academia as he was. ‘Sorrento ware,’ he said, looking at the box she had half-inched from Storey’s Yard. ‘Very nice. Notice the grain around the swallows. That’ll get you three bob down Borough Market any day of the week; best part of two guineas in New Bond Street.’
‘I’m not interested in its value, Thomas,’ she said. ‘Look at the lock – what do you see?’
Tom tilted the box. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said, leaning back. ‘Work of a rank amateur. Somebody’s tried to force it. See these scratches? Nail-file, probably. One of your stouter hatpins at the outside.’
Margaret nodded. She knew Thomas would know. ‘Dree your weird, then.’
Tom had no idea what the Prof had just said, but he got the general gist – her Scottish accent had not been particularly convincing, but he assumed, rightly, that it was a saying from North of the Border. He tossed a teaspoon in his hand. ‘You see, your Italian locksmith is no fool. Most people’s inclination, if they’re going to pick a lock, is to use something sharp, pointed. Whereas what we really need is something blunt, as much like a key as possible. Something like …’ – and the lock clicked open – ‘a spoon.’
Margaret clapped her hands together like the grown-up schoolgirl she was. ‘Thomas, you’re a marvel.’
‘Thanks, Prof.’ He got up and bowed. ‘Praise indeed.’ And he got up to go.
‘Don’t you want to know what was inside?’ she asked. In her world, the packaging was important, yes, but the contents were the thing.
‘No, thanks, Prof,’ he chuckled. ‘In my world, the less you know the less the esclops can get out of you, catch my drift.’
Margaret Murray had not been brought up with the backwards slang of the London rookeries, but she knew that ‘esclops’ were the boys in blue and she had no intention of prying into Thomas’s past.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a piece of Victoria sponge in the kitchen that’s got your name all over it!’
The lights burned blue in Margaret Murray’s inner sanctum in the darkest recesses of the Godless Institution. It was late and she’d long ago heard the click-click of the cleaners’ brooms and their cheery ‘goodnights’ to each other. She didn’t imbibe much – her uncle John, in whose rectory in Rugby she had spent some, at least, of her childhood, did not approve. Neither did the ayah who had brought her up in India – her religion forbade it. Even so, there were times, and tonight was one of them, when a little hair of the dog was definitely called for and Margaret reached into her desk, fumbling past the scarab amulet from Shepseskaph’s tomb, and poured herself an averagely sized Dow’s. She raised it to the stuffed owl in the corner.
‘The fact is, Mrs Plinlimmon – and we have to face this – Helen Richardson was a woman of two worlds, a sort of Janus of our time, looking back to the old, looking ahead to the new. Although, come to think of it, both her faces looked backwards, didn’t they? One peered into the past of archaeology; the other to what is, after all, the world’s oldest profession. Or is that the Church?’
She sighed and sipped. ‘Yes, I know Herne Bay is rather out of the way at the moment, but that railway ticket bothers me. If she bought it, why didn’t she use it for the return journey? And what took her to Hampton-on-Sea in the first place? At the moment, we still have questions galore and not a single answer. Well’ – she held up her glass to the lamplight – ‘cheers,’ she said. ‘Who knows what tomorrow may bring?’
‘How are you, George?’ Professor Flinders Petrie had had the devil’s own job getting to Gower Street that morning. There was a dray horse down in Gordon Square and a watermain had burst along Malet Street, threatening to drown the whole of Bloomsbury and beyond. As a result, the archaeologist was damp of foot and in a decidedly bad mood.
George Carey Foster’s brandy helped with all that, except, perhaps, the damp feet and he offered a glass to his visitor now.
‘God rot Arthur Evans,’ Petrie toasted and Carey Foster sighed. Not of the archaeological persuasion himself, he could never understand the snipery that went on in the particularly murky corridors of that branch of academe. ‘Now,’ Petrie sat down in Foster’s best Chesterfield and composed himself. ‘I assume your summons involves the late Miss Richardson?’
‘Hardly a summons, William,’ Foster said, lolling back in his captain’s swivel chair. ‘You and I go back a long way.’
They did. George Carey Foster had been made principal of University College earlier that year, but he felt he had known Petrie all his life.
‘Command, then,’ Petrie corrected himself. ‘Order. Decree from on high.’
‘I don’t think you should be so flippant, William,’ Foster snapped. ‘A woman is dead.’
‘Sorry,’ Petrie said. ‘You’re quite right, of course.’
‘One of Margaret’s, wasn’t she?’
‘Indirectly,’ Petrie said. ‘Attended the public classes, so I believe. Fridays.’
‘And what’s Margaret doing about it?’
Petrie guffawed. ‘Why should Margaret be doing anything about it?’
‘Because she’s Margaret, William; you need no more than that. That’s why I want you to step in.’
Petrie looked at the man, wide-eyed. ‘Step in, George?’ he echoed. ‘Step in? You’ve just told me how precisely you know Margaret Murray. You must have some idea how ludicrous that suggestion is?’
The principal leaned forward in his chair and the springs groaned. ‘See that filing cabinet?’ He pointed to the furniture in question.
‘I do,’ Petrie said.
‘Would it surprise you to learn that the entire top drawer – the locked one – contains a list of Margaret’s delinquencies?’
‘Delinquencies?’ Petrie repeated. ‘Oh, come, now …’
Foster didn’t need to unlock the drawer. He knew the contents off by heart. ‘The woman refers to herself as “Doctor”, whereas she hasn’t even, to my knowledge, got a bachelor’s degree.’
‘She has,’ Petrie replied. ‘I gave it to her myself.’
‘You …? Such honours are not given out with the toilet paper, William.’
‘The “Doctor” thing is a little outré, I’ll grant you.’ Petrie raised both hands. ‘But again, Margaret and I agreed it would increase her standing in a world of men.’
‘But we are in a world of men, Petrie!’ Foster snapped. ‘I was talking to Sidney Hartland the other day. The world’s leading anthropologist doesn’t even allow women into his lectures. And you can’t just agree on a degree; the university has to confer it.’
‘All in good time,’ Petrie said.
But Foster hadn’t finished. ‘Then there’s that business with Professor Virchow of Berlin.’
Petrie leaned back, cradling his left knee, perhaps for moral support. ‘Never proven,’ he said.
‘And in Scottish law, as you know very well, that means as guilty as hell,’ the principal reminded him. ‘Then there was that wretched incident involving the Feuchtwanger diamonds.’
‘They came to her,’ Petrie reminded the principal.
‘The theft of the King’s College mascot?’ Foster hadn’t finished yet.
‘Student pranks, George,’ Petrie dismissed it. ‘You’re scraping the barrel.’
‘Am I?’ Foster thundered. ‘I haven’t got on to the Hissarlik controversy yet. Even you can’t defend that one.’
As it turned out, Petrie couldn’t. ‘I’ll grant you, she may have overstepped the mark there. But it was all in a good cause.’
‘Good cause, my arse, Petrie.’ Foster slammed his glass down on his desk. ‘The only cause uppermost in my mind at the moment – as it should be in yours – is the reputation of this college. Bad enough that one of our students has lost her life, but for Margaret to poke her trowel into it all is unacceptable. I hear she attended the wretched girl’s inquest the other day.’
‘Well, what do you expect me to do about it?’ Petrie felt obliged to ask.
