Murder at the Ashmolean, page 25
Pitt gestured for the two constables to drop the grappling hook into the pond, then withdrew, tugging at Stevens’ sleeve to move him away from the pond.
As the constables pulled at the rope, Daniel took a large handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to Abigail.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘You’ll need this.’
She took it but regarded it with puzzlement.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘When they start to reveal the body.’
She offered the handkerchief back to him.
‘You forget, I’m not unfamiliar with seeing dead bodies. And I don’t get tearful over people I don’t know.’
‘Yes, but those have either been recently dead, or thousands of years old. This body has been here for three months or so. In that time, the creatures in the pond will have been at work, the flesh will have decayed and started to decompose, and the stench will be awful.’ He produced another handkerchief from his pocket. ‘I’ll be covering my nose and mouth with this. If you look, you’ll see that Inspector Pitt and the constables are doing the same.’
Abigail looked and saw that the constables had, indeed, tied cloths around the lower part of their faces, as had the funeral directors, while Pitt had his handkerchief ready in his hand.
‘Thank you,’ said Abigail. ‘I shall know to come prepared in future.’
Their first drag of the pond was unsuccessful, the grappling hook appearing from the pond with just grasses caught up in it. The constables moved their position a few yards to one side and dropped the hook in again, and once more it came up empty.
Pitt looked enquiringly at Stevens, who began to tremble.
‘She was here!’ he burst out. ‘She was! This is the place!’
The grappling hook was thrown in a third time, and again came up with just a tangle of grasses.
‘Throw it nearer the middle,’ Pitt told them.
They did, and this time as they began to pull on the rope, it snagged on something. The two constables hauled at the rope, but they were having difficulty. Inspector Pitt stepped forward and joined them, grabbing the rope, but even with three of them heaving at it, whatever they had caught hold of refused to appear. Daniel left Abigail and joined them, taking a section of the rope in his hands, and now the four men looked like a tug of war team. Pitt called out commands to coordinate their efforts, and very slowly the rope came upwards out from the pond water, until finally a piece of cloth broke the surface. As it did so they saw that a broken branch had become tangled with a bundle, causing the hook to snag below the surface.
The four men continued pulling at the rope, and soon the large bundle of cloth was being dragged from the water in the claws of the grappling hook and pulled to lay on the grassy ground clear of the water.
Daniel rejoined Abigail, and Pitt resumed his place beside the miserable figure of Stevens, at the same time gesturing for the funeral directors to come forward.
The four men lifted the wooden box and carried it to where the bundle lay, putting it down beside it. Two of them began to lift the bundle, and as they did so the cloth, which had rotted, parted, and something that was not wholly human, yet not completely a skeleton, fell out onto the grass. As it hit the ground it began to move, and for a moment Abigail was stunned – how could a dead body move? Then she saw the different creatures come crawling and flapping out of the body. Suddenly the appalling stench hit her, and she was glad of the handkerchief Daniel had given her.
The whole thing – the sight of the decomposing body tumbling out of its rotted blanket, the creatures, the smell – was too much for Piers Stevens, who fell to his knees and vomited, and kept vomiting.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The remains of the body of Eve Lachelle had been taken by the funeral directors to the hospital mortuary to be examined by the resident pathologist. Piers Stevens had been returned to a cell at Kemp Hall to be held on remand pending the outcome of the medical examination. Josiah Goddard had been released after taking Inspector Pitt, Daniel and Abigail to his shop and handing over his sketchbooks.
Abigail’s first desperate desire after the exhumation had been to soak herself in a bath at the Wilton Hotel to try and rid herself of the stench of decayed corpse that she felt still enshrouded her, but she had forgone that in order to get her hands on Goddard’s notebooks. Now, bathed, she and Daniel were back in their room at the hotel.
Abigail had the sketchbooks open on the dressing table and was leafing through them, but her mind was running over the final part of Goddard’s statement about the mysterious lady he claimed to have seen waiting outside the Ashmolean on the evening Everett was shot.
‘It seems as if we’re back to this mysterious titled lady with the Shakespeare play,’ she said. ‘Which means either the Duchess of Charlbury or Baroness Whichford. Except now, one of them might well be our murderess. From what Esther told me about interviewing them both, I’d put my money on the duchess. Esther said the baroness was a fragile woman, very nervous. I can’t see her holding a pistol and firing such a good, firm shot to kill Everett. According to Esther, the duchess, on the other hand, is an excellent shot and sounds like she’s got nerves of steel.’
‘No,’ said Daniel, who was lying on the bed, deep in thought. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
Abigail looked at him inquisitively.
‘Think about it,’ enlarged Daniel, getting up from the bed and joining her at the dressing table. ‘She’s agreed to meet Everett and bring him the play. She arrives as scheduled. Except she shoots him. Why would she do that?’
‘Because something changes,’ suggested Abigail. ‘Something she doesn’t expect to happen.’
‘But she’s brought a gun with her. Why?’
‘She planned to shoot him.’
‘Again, that makes no sense. If she’s going to kill him, why do it at the Ashmolean? It’s too risky. Far better to make arrangements to see him somewhere private and secret, and then shoot him there.’
‘So, what do you suggest?’ asked Abigail.
‘Someone else arrived. They’d found out about the prospective sale and followed her in order to stop it.’
‘Her husband?’
‘It has to be.’
‘So our killer is either the Duke of Charlbury or Baron Whichford.’
‘Yes,’ said Daniel. ‘The problem is, at that level of society, we can’t arrest one of them without being absolutely sure it’s him. Superintendent Clare and Inspector Pitt wouldn’t entertain it.’
‘So how do we identify which one is the killer?’
‘By working out how one of them would have known his wife was planning to sell the family heirloom. Which means, which one had the play in his family’s possession?’
‘That’s impossible to find out,’ said Abigail. ‘If they’re asked directly, the guilty one will simply deny it.’
‘But Everett found out that one of them had the play,’ said Daniel. ‘According to Marriott, he was told about it by some man acting as an intermediary for the wife. But I have my doubts about that. Everett lied about nearly everything. I’m pretty sure the story about an intermediary was a cover. I think he found about the play some other way, and then took advantage of it.’ Suddenly his face brightened and he smiled. ‘Everett was an eavesdropper. I think he heard someone brag about his family owning such a play. And where might he have heard this talk? At a place where gentlemen meet to play cards, talk, and socialise.’
‘The Quill Club?’ asked Abigail.
‘Exactly,’ said Daniel. ‘I wonder if either the Duke of Charlbury or Baron Whichford is a member?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Abigail doubtfully. ‘Even if one of them is a member, it doesn’t mean he’s the one who shot Everett. It’s all circumstantial, and if just one strand of your thinking turns out to be wrong, your whole theory collapses. At the moment it’s all just speculation. You’re guessing. You don’t know.’
‘I do,’ insisted Daniel. ‘It’s my detective’s nose. It’s led me to this point, and it’s rarely wrong.’
‘Rarely isn’t good enough,’ said Abigail. ‘Without proof you have nothing.’ She weighed up that thought, then said, ‘We need to talk to Inspector Pitt.’
When Daniel and Abigail arrived at Kemp Hall, they discovered that Inspector Pitt was busy with a visitor.
‘But I’m sure you can go in,’ the duty sergeant told them. ‘It’s Dr Lennox from the hospital, come to report about the body that was brought in.’
‘Dr Lennox,’ said Daniel as he and Abigail walked along the corridor towards Pitt’s office. ‘He was the doctor who examined me after the War Office people, or whoever they were, let me go.’
‘He’s worked fast,’ said Abigail.
‘Too fast,’ said Daniel doubtfully. ‘He can’t have done a proper examination in this short time.’
They entered the office and found Doctor Lennox leaning on the inspector’s desk as the two men looked at a sketch of a human head. The doctor smiled as he saw them and stretched out his hand in greeting.
‘Good to see you again, Mr Wilson. I hope your head has recovered.’
‘Indeed, it has, Doctor. Thank you for your ministrations.’ He indicated Abigail. ‘This is my partner, Abigail Fenton.’
‘Good to meet you, Miss Fenton,’ said Lennox, shaking her hand.
‘Dr Lennox was explaining about the cause of death of Eve Lachelle,’ said Pitt.
‘Yes. As I explained to the inspector, I haven’t had time to do a proper examination, but Inspector Pitt specifically asked me one question to which he said he’d appreciate a speedy answer, so I concentrated on that. The full examination of the cadaver will follow over the next couple of days.’
‘I wanted to know if Stevens’ defence was plausible,’ said Pitt. ‘You remember he said he hit her and she fell and struck her head on a beer crate.’
‘And the answer is, yes, that’s a very possible explanation,’ said Lennox. ‘She died from a fracture of the skull as the result of a blow from a pointed object made of wood. The sharp corner of a wooden beer crate would fit. There were splinters of wood embedded in the fracture. Unfortunately for the woman, she had an exceptionally thin skull, so if she fell and hit her head against the corner of a wooden beer crate, that would be a probable cause in my opinion.’ He looked at Daniel and smiled. ‘Unlike your head, Mr Wilson. Even without doing an autopsy on you, my examination of you showed that you are fortunate in having a thick bone structure to your skull.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well, I’d better get back and continue with examining the rest of the body. I’ll be able to let you have my full report in a couple of days.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Pitt. ‘I appreciate you coming in and letting me know this.’
After Lennox had gone, Daniel said, ‘You’re thinking the charge could be involuntary manslaughter.’
Pitt nodded. ‘Which is a far less serious charge than either murder or even voluntary manslaughter.’
‘You want him to avoid prison,’ said Abigail. ‘Even though he killed the woman.’
‘There’ll be a prison term, but he won’t face the hangman,’ said Pitt. ‘But that decision won’t be up to me. All I can do is pass the evidence to Superintendent Clare, and he’ll decide what the charge will be.’ He looked at Abigail. ‘I trust you’ve recovered from the ordeal of the exhumation?’
‘I still have the smell in my nostrils,’ said Abigail.
‘Yes, it takes some getting used to,’ said Pitt sympathetically. ‘What can I do for you? Have Goddard’s sketchbooks produced a result?’
‘Not yet,’ said Abigail. ‘We need to talk to you about our prime suspects for the murder of Gavin Everett.’
‘This mysterious lady that Goddard talked about,’ said Pitt.
‘No, her husband,’ said Abigail.
‘Her husband?’ echoed Pitt, surprised. ‘And does he have a name?’
‘He’s a choice of two,’ said Daniel. ‘Either the Duke of Charlbury or Baron Whichford.’
Pitt looked at Daniel, stunned. Then he said, ‘This is getting above my pay grade. I think we need to go and see Superintendent Clare.’
‘So you think that either the Duke of Charlbury or Baron Whichford murdered Everett,’ said Clare thoughtfully.
Daniel, Abigail and Inspector Pitt were in the superintendent’s office, and Daniel had just set out his theory behind the shooting of Gavin Everett.
‘I do,’ said Daniel.
‘But you have no proof.’
‘The evidence so far is circumstantial, but it does point to the killer being one of those two.’ Daniel enumerated his train of thoughts. ‘The person who killed Everett was a good shot with a steady hand. According to Gladstone Marriott, Everett was due to meet a lady, or the lady’s representative, at six o’clock in his office at the Ashmolean to arrange to buy a Shakespeare play from her, which her husband’s family had owned since the sixteenth century. Her husband’s ancestor had bought the play from Shakespeare himself. The only two families that fit that possibility are those of the Duke of Charlbury and Baron Whichford.
‘Just before Everett was shot, a lady was seen by Josiah Goddard, the man who was Everett’s confederate in the fraudulent artefacts racket, waiting to go into the Ashmolean. He described her as appearing distinguished in her dress, although he never saw her face. This points to her being either the Duchess of Charlbury or Baroness Whichford.’
‘Very circumstantial,’ said Clare. ‘She could have been any lady, going into the Ashmolean for any number of reasons.’
‘True,’ admitted Daniel. ‘But I feel it was one of them.’
‘Feeling is not proof,’ said Clare.
‘But we can get proof,’ said Daniel.
‘Daniel’s got a theory that Everett learnt about the existence of the play from a conversation he overheard at the Quill Club,’ said Abigail.
‘Yes,’ said Daniel. ‘And if we see Mr de Witt and insist he tells us which of those two, the duke or the baron, is a member …’
‘No,’ said Clare.
The firmness of his tone surprised them.
‘But we are very close to solving the murder,’ insisted Daniel.
‘No,’ said Clare again. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a letter, which he passed across his desk to them. ‘There is no murder.’
The letter was from the War Office, addressed to Superintendent Augustus Clare at Kemp Hall police station, Oxford, and signed by Commander Atkinson. The message was direct.
Dear Superintendent Clare,
By order of this office I confirm that the original instructions regarding the death of Mr Everett at the Ashmolean Museum are to be complied with. Mr Everett’s death is officially suicide. There is to be no continuation of any investigation into Mr Everett’s death by your force.
Yours sincerely,
Commander Wilfred Atkinson
‘That arrived this morning,’ said Clare. ‘I had intended to summon you to make you aware of this directive, but your request to meet made this the opportunity.’
‘Why did you wait until I’d outlined our case?’ asked Daniel, frustrated. ‘Why didn’t you tell us about this letter at the start?’
‘I wanted to hear if you had any evidence to back your claim,’ said Clare. ‘If you had, I would have taken it up with the War Office. But you have no evidence. You have suppositions based on circumstances. I’m sorry, Mr Wilson, Miss Fenton, but the involvement of the Oxford police force in any investigation into the death of Gavin Everett is now at an end.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
There was an air of gloom between them as Inspector Pitt escorted Daniel and Abigail through the police station towards the exit.
‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do,’ he said ruefully. ‘Nor can the superintendent. And it’s not his fault. You saw the letter from London.’
‘Yes,’ said Daniel. ‘And fair play to him, he needn’t have shown it to us. Many superintendents I’ve worked with wouldn’t have. He’s a good man.’
‘So, what will you do now? Return to London?’
‘There’s still the matter of the fakes on display at the Ashmolean,’ said Abigail. ‘Now we have Goddard’s sketchbooks we can identify them and have them removed.’
‘Pity the originals have gone.’ Pitt sighed.
‘Well, we’ll see what we might be able to unearth,’ said Abigail.
They shook hands, then Daniel and Abigail left the police station and set off for the Ashmolean.
‘So that’s the end of the case.’ Abigail sighed.
‘No,’ said Daniel.
Abigail looked at him, puzzled. ‘But you heard what the superintendent said. And Inspector Pitt. We saw the letter from the War Office.’
‘There’s to be no official police investigation,’ said Daniel. ‘But we aren’t the police. We’ve been hired by Gladstone Marriott and the Ashmolean Museum.’
‘To do what?’ asked Abigail impatiently. ‘We have no powers of arrest.’
‘I don’t like walking away from a case and leaving it unfinished.’
‘It’s not unfinished,’ insisted Abigail. ‘We solved the mystery of what happened to Eve Lachelle, and the man who killed her has been brought to justice, to a degree. We’ve found out who was behind the fakes at the Ashmolean, and there’s a very good chance we’ll be able to recover some of them, if I was right about what I saw at Lord Chessington’s house.’
‘But the case we were hired to look into was who killed Gavin Everett.’
‘And we know that. If you’re right, it was either the Duke of Charlbury or Baron Whichford.’
‘If I’m right,’ stressed Daniel. ‘I need to know.’
‘But how will you do that?’
‘I’m going to have a word with de Witt at the Quill Club,’ said Daniel. ‘Once we know which of those two is a member, we’ll know who the killer is.’
‘And do what? It’s all still circumstantial.’
‘I know,’ admitted Daniel unhappily. ‘But I need to get the answer.’
