Murder at the Ashmolean, page 16
‘You think that Goddard shot him?’
‘No, but I think he might hold the key to who did. And now we’ve got some leverage to use on him.’
Inspector Grafton sat on a wooden bench in the Fellows’ Garden of Exeter College alongside Professor Vorster. The garden, a place of beauty and tranquillity, hidden away from the bustle of the Broad, unsettled Grafton, who was more used to the dark alleyways and criminal-infested rookeries of London. The professor had led the way through a passageway from the front quadrangle to this private place bounded on one side by Convocation House and the Divinity School, and by the Bodleian Library on the other.
‘I thought this would be a good place for us to talk,’ he said. ‘When I got your note asking to meet me, I was intrigued by the idea that a detective inspector from Scotland Yard thinks I may have information of some use.’
The professor was a man in his sixties, white-haired, round-shouldered, bearded, dressed in a suit of tweed that looked in need of pressing – either a bachelor, or with a careless housekeeper, Grafton mused. He’d decided on his course of action: to ask the professor directly about the politics of South Africa and see how he reacted – whether the questions worried or puzzled him, or would he become shifty?
‘I’m from Special Branch,’ said Grafton. ‘Do you know what that is?’
‘No,’ said Vorster. ‘I don’t concern myself with police investigations.’
‘It’s about politics,’ explained Grafton. ‘Particularly terrorism directed against the British state.’
The professor looked puzzled.
‘Are you sure you’re talking to the right person?’ he asked. ‘I know nothing about terrorism of any sort, except that practised in Judea two thousand years ago. My speciality is the early Christian religion.’
‘Yes, but I’m more interested in the attitude of the Boer Republics in South Africa towards the British territories there.’
Vorster looked even more puzzled. ‘Why would you think I can make any useful comment on that?’
‘You are a Boer from South Africa?’ asked Grafton.
‘I left South Africa forty years ago, to come and study here in Oxford. I have not been back since. And I have no interest in the political situation in South Africa.’
‘Do you have any connections with other people from South Africa living here in England?’ asked Grafton.
‘No,’ said Vorster.
‘Do you know Lord Chessington?’ asked Grafton.
‘No,’ said Vorster. ‘Who is he?’
‘He is a rich businessman who lives in Oxford and owns shares in gold mines in the Transvaal.’
‘Then it is unlikely our paths will have crossed, despite us living in the same city. All my interactions are with fellow academics, most of them here at Exeter College, but occasionally with other like-minded individuals from other colleges. And, before you ask, none of them, to my knowledge, is from South Africa.’ He studied the inspector for a moment, then asked, ‘Do I take it from your questions you are under the impression that there is some sort of Boer revolution planned in British territories in South Africa?’
‘We’ve had such information, sir, yes,’ confirmed Grafton.
‘Then I would suggest your information is wrong,’ said Vorster.
‘And what makes you able to say that with such confidence, might I ask?’
‘Do you know much about the Boer traditions, Inspector?’ asked Vorster.
‘No,’ admitted Grafton.
‘The Boer, as you know, are Dutch who migrated to southern Africa in the seventeenth century as part of a programme of colonisation by the Dutch East India Company. The rule of these colonies by the Dutch East India Company was not benign. In fact, it has been described as despotic, the company’s main interest being profit at the expense of the welfare of the colonists. It was a harsh rule: the company formed the local government, made the laws, and even told the farmers what crops they were to grow. The farmers were heavily taxed.
‘In most circumstances this kind of despotic rule of colonials would lead to a revolutionary movement, as happened in America when the colonists rose up to overthrow the rule of the British. But that is not the Dutch way. When faced with a brutal government, the Dutch move on. It is the tradition of the trek. Do you know about the Great Trek?’
‘No,’ said Grafton again, wondering where all this was leading.
‘The Great Trek is the story that all Boer children are brought up on. It happened between 1835 and the early 1840s, when some 14,000 Boers, including women and children, left the British rule of the Cape Colony and walked across the great plains beyond the Orange River, and then onward through Natal and Zoutpansberg into the northern part of the Transvaal, where they settled. But this was not the first trek. The Boers had begun trekking in search of independence from repressive governments, first that of the Dutch East India Company and then of the British rule in South Africa, since the early eighteenth century. They could do this because the Boer were basically a nomadic people. They did not cultivate the soil and grow crops. They raised cattle, a movable agricultural commodity. So, when local government rules became too harsh, they moved on. They trekked. Hence the name they were given: Trekboers.’
‘But they did fight back,’ said Grafton. ‘The Boer War of 1880.’
‘That was not a war,’ said Vorster. ‘It was a series of skirmishes. And it came about because of British greed. Wherever the Boer settled on a tract of land, the British would arrive and claim it for their government. They did this with the Transvaal in 1877. The thing about the Boers is that they may be always moving on, but they are not weak. On the contrary, their lifestyle has made them a hard people. And they resent it when grave injustices are heaped on them, especially unfair and often illegal taxes. This was what happened in 1880. A Boer living in the Transvaal refused to pay a tax that everyone agreed was illegally inflated. British government officials seized his wagon and tried to auction it off to pay the tax, but his fellow Boers turned up en masse, disrupted the auction and reclaimed the wagon. The government sent troops after them to try and take the wagon back, but the Boers resisted, and in December the Transvaal formally declared its independence from Britain.
‘The thing the British had omitted to take into consideration was that the Boers, although having no regular army, as cattle farmers they’d spent most of their working lives in the saddle, and they were also skilled hunters with rifles. The British soldiers weren’t trained to fight this way but to line up in ranks and fire volleys. British army garrisons all over the Transvaal became besieged.
‘In all, this so-called “war” lasted about ten weeks. At the end, in March 1881, the British government accepted defeat and signed a peace treaty giving the Transvaal self-government, but with an acceptance of the Queen as the Republic’s nominal ruler.
‘And that was it, Inspector. The British lost after bringing this war upon themselves. The Boers of the Transvaal had no desire to take over any further territories from Britain, as far as they were concerned the matter had been settled. And that is why your suggestion that the Boers are in some way planning an insurrection in South Africa to take over the British territories is ludicrous.’
Abigail marched into the reception area of the Oxford Messenger and demanded to see Esther Maris. The man at the reception desk was about to ask the purpose of her visit, but one look at the obvious fury in Abigail’s eyes and the steely set of her mouth, and he chose to avoid any sort of confrontation with this obviously formidable woman and sent a messenger through the doors with a note. A short while later Esther appeared, but a very different Esther from her usual bubbly, excitable persona. The young woman looked haggard, and Abigail could see from the red rims of her eyes that she’d been crying.
‘Follow me,’ Abigail ordered. ‘It is my turn to buy us coffee.’
Abigail led the way to a coffee house nearby, where she ordered drinks for them both, then turned to Esther while they waited for them to be brought over and flourished the edition of the Messenger at the unhappy young woman.
‘Who is this Henry Loveday?’ she demanded.
‘He’s the Messenger’s crime reporter,’ said Esther miserably.
‘But this is your story,’ said Abigail. ‘It’s word for word as you wrote it and gave it to me to read.’
‘Yes, but Mr Pinker says the readers of the Oxford Messenger won’t put up with a crime report by a woman. So, he took the piece away from me and gave it to Henry Loveday.’
‘And what did this Henry Loveday actually do with it? Because it seems to me he hasn’t altered any of your words.’
‘He changed my name to his,’ said Esther. She groaned. ‘I thought this would be the start of a proper career for me as a journalist. As a crime reporter. But it’s all gone now. I suppose I was fooling myself. It was just a silly dream.’
‘No,’ Abigail told her firmly. ‘It’s an ambition, and an ambition can be achieved.’
‘But how? Mr Pinker threatened me with the sack for daring to write the story in the first place. He’s told me to stick to writing about women’s interests: furnishings, clothes, cookery.’ She shook her head miserably. ‘And if that’s all the Messenger will let me do, there’s no chance of my being able to write what I want for any of the bigger newspapers. The nationals.’
‘Do you really want to do this?’ asked Abigail.
‘I do,’ said Esther. ‘More than anything.’
‘Then let me have a word with Mr Pinker.’
‘No!’ exclaimed Esther, alarmed. ‘That’s the worst thing you can do for me! He’ll sack me for certain!’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Abigail. ‘After all, I’m a world-famous archaeologist. You said so yourself in the article you wrote about me, so it must be true. And I don’t think Mr Pinker will want to upset me by doing anything so bad as sacking you.’
Daniel stood outside Goddard’s shop and looked at the handwritten sign stuck to the glass of the door: Gone away. All enquiries at Madame Angel’s next door.
Daniel looked at Madame Angel’s, the shop window filled with the same motley jumble of tarot cards, crystals balls, Ouija boards and other-worldly paraphernalia, and wished the sign had directed him to the second-hand furniture shop on the other side.
He strode to Madame Angel’s and pushed open the door. A large woman with a blaze of red and orange tints in her hair was sitting behind a counter, peering into a crystal ball.
‘Good morning,’ said Daniel. ‘I wonder if—’
‘No! Wait! Don’t tell me!’ said the woman, and she came from behind the counter and moved close to Daniel, looking intently at him.
This was a mistake, Daniel groaned inwardly. I should have tried the furniture shop anyway.
‘Give me your hand,’ ordered the woman.
‘What?’ said Daniel, bewildered, but before he could stop her the woman had grabbed his left hand and held it in both of hers.
‘I see why you are here,’ she intoned intently. ‘You come to ask where Josiah Goddard has gone.’
Daniel stared at her, stunned, his mouth dropping open in amazement.
Madame Angel let go of his hand, and suddenly burst into laughter.
‘Oh dear!’ she chuckled. ‘If you could see your face!’ And she laughed again.
Daniel tried to regain his composure.
‘Yes, but …’ he began.
‘Nothing supernatural about it, dear.’ The woman smiled at him. ‘I saw you and a woman arrive here yesterday to call on Joe at his shop. And after you’d gone, he comes in here and says he’s got to go away for a while, and for me to collect any post that comes for him, and he’ll pick it up when he returns. And there’s no getting away from it, you look like a copper. You got that air about you. So, it didn’t take much to add two and two and come up with the answer that Joe’s done a runner because you’re after him, and you want to know where he’s gone. How am I doing? Think I’d make a good detective?’
‘You’d make an excellent detective,’ said Daniel admiringly.
‘So, what’s he done?’ asked Madame Angel.
‘We’re not sure,’ said Daniel. ‘But we’ve got some questions to ask him. Do you know where he is?’
Madame Angel shook her head.
‘My detecting powers don’t stretch that far,’ she said. She gestured at the wares on display. ‘Course, I could try using a crystal ball, but it’ll cost you, and I can’t guarantee a result.’
‘Do you know where Joe – Mr Goddard – lives?’
‘I do, as it happens.’ She stood beaming at him.
‘Let me guess, I have to cross your palm with silver,’ said Daniel.
‘It’s traditional,’ said Madame Angel.
Daniel pulled a shilling from his pocket and handed it to her. She looked at it doubtfully, then shrugged. ‘Well, it could be worse, I suppose. It could have been a sixpence.’
‘Or I could have gone to make enquiries about him at Kemp Hall and saved myself any money at all,’ said Daniel.
The woman shook her head as she pocketed the coin. ‘No, you don’t want to do that, dear, not unless you want the curse of darkness to follow you.’
‘You do that as well, do you?’ said Daniel. ‘Put spells on people?’
‘Seventh daughter of a seventh daughter,’ said Madame Angel. ‘You’d be surprised at the powers I can conjure up.’
‘Let’s just have his address,’ said Daniel. ‘And if I need any witchery to help me further, I’ll be back.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Abigail strode along the corridor to the door marked ‘Editor’. She rapped upon it smartly and had opened it and stepped in before Pinker had the chance to call, ‘Come in!’ He looked enquiringly at her, wondering who this stranger was and how she’d managed to get to his office without prior arrangement.
‘Mr Pinker, I’m Abigail Fenton.’
‘Ah, Miss Fenton!’ Pinker beamed, stepping forward and shaking her hand. ‘It is a great pleasure to meet you! Your reputation as an archaeologist, of course, preceded your arrival in our wonderful city. I was delighted to read the piece that our Esther Maris wrote about you in the women’s column. Did you see it?’
‘I did, and I was very impressed by Miss Maris’s work.’
‘I’m delighted to hear you say that. We have high hopes for her.’
‘In that case, why did you take the story about the shooting in Oxford away from her and give it to someone else? I have read Miss Maris’s account, and also the account that appeared in your newspaper under the byline of one Henry Loveday, and I can see no difference in the wording. It seems to me that Mr Loveday took Miss Maris’s copy and simply put his own name where hers should have been.’
Pinker gulped. ‘Er … well, that’s because there is a procedure to these things. Mr Loveday is the acknowledged crime reporter for this newspaper …’
‘By simply copying what other people write and adding his own name to their work? I believe that is called plagiarism and is a criminal offence.’
‘No, no, madam! It is procedure! As I explained to Miss Maris, our readers expect stories about unsavoury things such as crimes to be written by a man.’
‘What nonsense!’ exploded Abigail. ‘Have you ever read Frankenstein? The story of the creation of a murderous monster?’
‘Of course,’ said Pinker.
‘And who wrote it?’
‘Mary Shelley …’
‘A woman! And I’m sure you’re familiar with the works of the Brontë sisters, particularly Wuthering Heights which features a very brutal central character capable of terrible criminality.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘There are no “buts” about this, Mr Pinker. Mr Wilson and I agreed to give the details of the shooting to Miss Maris because we have met her and trust her. We could have taken the story to one of the national newspapers, such as the Daily Telegraph or The Times, because Mr Wilson has a good rapport with the crime reporters on those papers due to his excellent reputation.’
‘Yes, I am aware of his reputation—’ began Pinker.
Abigail held up a hand to silence him. ‘Regardless of your “procedure”, the next time something happens on any case that we are involved in that takes place here in Oxford, we shall insist that the story is covered by Miss Maris, or we shall circumvent the Oxford Messenger and take our exclusive side of the story to one of the nationals.’
‘But—’ began Pinker.
‘I say again, there are no “buts”,’ said Abigail firmly. ‘The choice is yours. We believe we may be able to bring a very big case here in this city to a conclusion very shortly. We will give our account of it to Miss Maris if it is understood that the story that appears in your papers does so with her name attached, and as sole contributor to it. Otherwise we will take our story to the nationals and leave your Mr Loveday to pick up the crumbs from them.’
Inspector Grafton weighed up his options as he left Exeter College and headed back to his room at the Swan Inn. He was convinced that if Everett’s death had been the result of a Boer conspiracy then Professor Vorster wasn’t involved. His years of experience as a detective had given him ‘the nose’, the ability to sniff out guilt, and Vorster didn’t have that taint. Grafton was sure Vorster was exactly what he appeared to be, an academic whose interests began and ended with his own particular strand of study. However, he’d been interested by what the professor had said about the Boers and their attitude towards politics and power. If he was correct – and Grafton felt he spoke with authenticity – then the politics of power could be ruled out. Which left the other alternative: riches. And in the case of South Africa that meant gold, and the one person he’d been told of in Oxford who fitted that bill was Lord Chessington.
It was time to take a close look at his lordship.
