Читать книгу Murder in the Museum - Simon Brett - Страница 7

‘I’ve been sworn to secrecy . . .’

‘Carole, I just love openings like that.’ Jude rubbed her hands together with glee. ‘The ones which mean the exact opposite of what’s being said. “I’d be the last one to criticize . . .”, but that’s exactly what I’m about to do. “To be perfectly honest . . .” – always sets the alarm bells ringing for me. And, of course, “I’ve been sworn to secrecy . . ”, but that’s not going to stop me telling you every gory detail.’

‘Well, perhaps I shouldn’t.’

‘Oh, come on. You know you’re going to tell me eventually. Just get on and do it.’

It was two days after the discovery of the skull. They were sitting in the bar of the Crown and Anchor, which was full of Saturday seaside visitors, bulbous parents bursting out of sweatshirts, children with sand in their plastic sandals. The tables outside were even busier. The day was hot for late October, the kind of weather that made local residents talk darkly of ‘global warming’.

Fethering’s only pub had about it the feeling of a well-used armchair, and the same could be said for its landlord. Ted Crisp’s shaggy hair and beard were the same all the year round, but now he was in his summer uniform of grubby T-shirt rather than his grubby winter sweatshirt. Carole had an uncomfortable feeling that he might be wearing shorts too, but since Jude had been the one to buy their glasses of Chilean Chardonnay and Ted hadn’t emerged from behind the bar yet, she had no proof of this.

There was an air of ease about Jude too, a lightness that was unusual in a woman of her ample dimensions and fifty-five years. The sun had generously toasted her broad face and bare arms; the blonde hair, secured by an insufficiency of pins, made a gravity-defying structure on top of her head. As ever, she breathed serenity, a quality which Carole recognized her own more uptight personality could never hope to attain.

The two women could not have been more different, and yet, ever since Jude had moved into Wood-side Cottage next door to Carole, their friendship had flourished.

‘So tell me,’ said Jude.

‘There’s not much to tell. Just the finding of a skeleton.’

‘That doesn’t happen every day.’

‘Not to most people. I think you and I are bringing up the national average, though.’

Jude chuckled. ‘But we are talking about a murder, aren’t we? Please say yes.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You haven’t heard anything from the police?’

‘No. They were around Bracketts, of course. Still are around, I imagine. They interviewed all of us, told us not to tell anyone anything . . .’

This prompted a grin. ‘An instruction which, I’m glad to say, you, Carole, have ignored completely.’

‘Look, this goes no further. OK?’

‘Of course not.’ Jude grinned innocently. ‘What do you take me for?’

Carole didn’t bother to answer that.

‘I’m sure it’s a murder,’ Jude persisted. ‘You said that there was a hole in the skull.’

‘You can get a hole in your skull from something falling on it. Doesn’t have to be foul play.’

‘But if someone dies accidentally, you don’t hide their body in a kitchen garden, do you?’ Jude’s face took on an expression of childlike insistence. ‘Go on, say it was a murder.’

‘I can’t say that,’ Carole responded primly. ‘The person who owned the skull is dead; beyond that I haven’t got anything definite to go on. Everyone at Bracketts has clammed up. Certainly no information coming out of there.’

‘Not even to a Trustee?’

‘Particularly not to a Trustee. Or particularly not to this Trustee. The Director was acutely embarrassed that I even saw as much as I did.’

‘Who is the Director? Sheila somebody?’

‘No, you’re thinking of Sheila Cartwright, the one who got the place going as a literary shrine.’

‘Yes, that’s the name.’

‘So do you know Bracketts?’

‘I did the Guided Tour soon after I moved down here. I had a friend staying who’s interested in that period of literary history.’

‘Oh, did I meet her?’

‘Him. No.’ Carole would have liked more information about the friend, but Jude had already moved on. ‘We saw Sheila Cartwright then. She was pointed out to us by the guide, almost as if she was one of the remarkable exhibits. Very much Lady of the Manor, I thought.’

‘Well, she’s no longer in charge of the place . . . though you’d never know it from the way she goes on.’ Jude raised interrogative eyebrows, but Carole shook her head. ‘Complex management politics which I’m not going to go into at the moment. I’ll fill you in soon enough.’

‘Then what are you going to go into at the moment?’

‘Just the discovery of the skull.’

‘You used the word “skeleton” earlier.’

‘Yes, there were other bones around. Certainly part of a spinal column. Only the top bit had been unearthed, but it was lying as if it was still with the rest of the skeleton.’

There was a silence. Jude prompted, ‘There was something you thought odd, though, wasn’t there?’

‘I told you. There was a hole in the skull.’

‘Yes. Must be murder. Did it look like a bullet-hole?’

‘Jude, I’ve no idea.’

‘Hole made by surgery? Or by an ice-pick, as in the case of Trotsky?’

‘I just don’t know.’ Carole looked thoughtful and took a long sip from her Chardonnay. ‘It wasn’t the skull itself so much . . . it was the people’s reaction to it.’

‘Like . . .?’

‘Well, Sheila Cartwright was desperate that no publicity should leak out about the find.’

‘Fair enough. She didn’t want the status quo at Bracketts disrupted.’

‘Her reaction seemed more than that. She said it was dangerous. She actually used the word “dangerous”.’

Jude shrugged. ‘Just meant that bad publicity could be dangerous”.’

‘Possibly.’ But there was something else nagging at Carole. ‘Then there was this man who broke down in tears.’

‘At the sight of the skull?’

‘That’s right. He said that he couldn’t stand seeing dead bodies, but his reaction was very violent.’

‘Some people are spooked by that kind of stuff. It’s a nasty shock for anyone.’

‘Yes.’ Carole sighed and nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Do you know who this man was?’

‘One of the day-release prisoners from Austen. Do you know Austen, the Open Prison?’

‘I know it,’ replied Jude, with a new seriousness in her manner. ‘Did you get the man’s name?’

‘Sheila Cartwright called him Mervyn. And – this was the strange thing – she implied that this man was used to seeing dead bodies.’

‘Was that explained at all?’

‘No. That’s all I got, before I was summarily whisked off the premises.’

Jude looked thoughtful.

‘Why, do you know an Austen prisoner called Mervyn?’

‘No. I don’t.’ Introspection was swept away with a toss of the blonde hair. ‘Come on, we’re going to have lunch here, aren’t we?’

‘Well, I’ve got a cottage cheese salad in the fridge.’

‘In that case, we are definitely going to have lunch here. Cottage cheese is an abomination in the sight of God and Man. Ted!’ Jude called across to the bar, ‘What do you recommend today?’

Instantly ignoring the queues of the thirsty in front of him, the landlord turned to his favoured customers and replied, ‘Well, putting my good self on one side, I don’t think you’d go far wrong with the Fillet of Fresh Cod. Tell you, this morning that fish was still in the sea at Littlehampton, worrying about paying the mortgage on its special piece of seaweed.’

‘Right, I’ll go for it.’ On a nod from Carole, ‘Make that two.’

‘Two Fillet of Fresh Cod it is, ladies.’ Ted Crisp called the order through to some unknown person in the kitchen. Then he turned back to the two women and emerged from behind the bar.

He was wearing shorts. They might once have been blue and didn’t, it has to be said, do a lot for him. His stomach sat on the ledge of their belt like a jelly on a plate.

‘You two been finding any more dead bodies, have you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Carole replied primly.

‘Oh well, there you go,’ said Ted Crisp, and returned to serve the holiday hordes.

‘So that’s it,’ said Carole flatly. ‘I was present at the unearthing of a skull. Full stop.’

‘In that case, maybe you’d better go through the boring stuff now.’

‘Boring stuff?’

‘ “Complex management politics” was the phrase you used.’

‘Oh. All right.’

And so Carole Seddon outlined to her friend the conflict between the former and current Directors of Bracketts, thinking – wrongly, as it turned out – she’d never hear any more about the skeleton that had been found there.