Death in a High Latitude, page 11
‘Where did you find it?’
‘In Dr Jackson’s bedroom.’
I let this sink in, and went on, ‘You appear to have been remarkably frank with me, and I should like to be equally frank with you, but there are many things that you have not explained, and that need explaining. I must tell you that the police now have reason to believe that Dr Jackson’s death was not an accident. I’m afraid I can’t disclose the evidence for that, but since you also suspect that his death was no accident you can accept what I say. You will appreciate that the finding of your bead in the bedroom could be regarded as evidence against you. So far, I am disposed to believe what you have told me, but there must be much that you have not told me, for your story as such is even more preposterous than my account of the missing map’s being offered to a British Embassy.’
She put her head in her hands. Then she shook herself again, and with a touch of her old insouciance remarked, ‘To be accused of Charles’s murder would have elements of real comedy, or more accurately of farce.’
‘Nobody has accused you of Dr Jackson’s murder. I said that what you have just told me, coupled with the finding of one of your beads in his room, could provide a prima facie case against you. A prosecuting lawyer could certainly make a good deal out of it. What really happened on the night of Dr Jackson’s death?’
‘You know about the party. There was a woman there I didn’t know – about my age, and I suppose most men would call her attractive, but I’m sufficiently anti the exploitation of women as sex symbols not to care much for those very low-cut dresses by which women exploit themselves. She attached herself to Charles. I moved around a lot talking to people and fairly late in the evening was horrified to find that Charles was more or less drunk. I’d never seen him like that before. The woman left him when he began to get drunk. I stayed with him until Sheila came, and between us we got him home.’
‘Did you go into his room?’
‘Yes. I helped Sheila get him to bed.’
‘Did you go in by the door or the french window?’
‘The garden door – what you call the french window. Sheila ran in and opened it, and then I helped her get Charles into the room. It was easier from the garden, for we more or less had to carry him. I didn’t stay long – it was embarrassing for Sheila, and for me.’
‘Now I must go back a bit. I think you have told me nowhere near the whole truth. I find it impossible to believe that you were willing to be an accomplice in extracting a valuable map from the museum simply because Dr Jackson said that a friend of his, whom you don’t know, was being blackmailed.’
‘It wasn’t only that. I thought I’d explained that it was mainly to protect the map.’
‘Why did you think the map needed protecting?’
She was silent again for what felt a long time. Then she seemed to come to a decision. ‘You’re quite right, there was much more than the map,’ she said. ‘It is easy to be wise afterwards and I think now that I ought to have gone to the police long ago, but I couldn’t talk to the policemen I’ve met as I’m talking to you.’
‘You should have more trust in the police. They would probably have put you in touch with my Department.’
‘Maybe. But I didn’t know that. And it was the German police more than the English police. You see, Adrian was doing the most vital secret work that might have transformed the oil industry. Only Charles Jackson and I really knew what he was doing – oh, there was Dr Braunschweig who was head of his company in Germany, and who trusted him enough to give him a free hand in his work. But Dr Braunschweig only knew part of it, some of Adrian’s conclusions, but not all the scientific data on which he made them. After Adrian’s death Dr Braunschweig came to England to see Charles, but Charles was a bit suspicious of him and didn’t tell him much. Charles was a scholar, not an industrialist. He trusted Adrian because Adrian was a scholar, too, but Charles didn’t want his work to be exploited commercially before he was satisfied that he’d got things absolutely right. And he wasn’t, yet.’
‘What was this work?’
‘I thought you knew – it was the Arctic Calorific Syndrome which, if we could understand it properly, would, or rather might, open sea routes around the North Pole. Adrian believed that it would be practicable, and his calculations about oil transport were of immense economic and strategical importance. But he died – I think was killed – before he knew enough to translate theoretical calculations into practical action. Nobody knows quite enough yet, though Charles and I have learned a good deal more since Adrian’s death. Now that Charles is dead I’m the only one left, and I want Charles and Adrian to have the recognition that is due to them.’
‘Where are Charles’s papers?’
‘Sheila still has them. They don’t matter very much to me because I know what he was doing and I’ve carried some of his work still farther, but I want Sheila to let me edit them for publication one day. I think she will, but I haven’t wanted to distress her by seeming to want to grab at the papers.’
‘Do you know that Dr Braunschweig has been kidnapped and that his life is threatened unless the Baffin Map is handed over to his kidnappers? Here is a copy of the ransom demand. It is a strange document.’
She took the sheet of typescript from me and studied it intently. ‘What a fool I’ve been,’ she said. ‘It looks as if Dr Braunschweig may have been on our side.’
‘I think probably he was. But who is on the other side?’
‘I don’t know. That’s where I’ve been a fool. I thought I could protect Charles’s and Adrian’s work by keeping it to myself, but all I seem to have done is to endanger other people. If I’d gone to the police long ago this might never have happened.’
‘It has happened, and we’ve got to find Dr Braunschweig before he is murdered, too. That’s why your help is vital. What makes the map so important that somebody is prepared to murder for it?’
She frowned. ‘But I don’t think the map is particularly important. It’s valuable as a rare example of early seventeenth-century cartography, and it has a bearing on the Arctic Calorific Syndrome in that William Baffin seems actually to have met some of the streams of slightly warmer water that the theory supposes to exist. My own view is that it was meeting a calorific stream that enabled him to get as far north as he did. But of course he knew nothing about the theory, and the theory wasn’t developed from his map. Only a handful of scholars really know anything about the theory – I’m astonished that you seem to have heard of it. One or two papers have been published, but they’re highly speculative, and the only detailed work has been done by Charles, Adrian and me. On what has been published so far I think it’s fair to say that most geographers reject the theory.’
‘Yet somebody has wanted the map for some time. On your own story Charles Jackson was asked to steal it in settlement of his friend’s debt to a blackmailer.’
‘Well, it’s worth quite a lot of money.’
‘But you know that it couldn’t be sold openly. You can’t have thought that it was simply a matter of money.’
‘No . . . but yes, in a way . . . I did think that the blackmailer wanted money, but I also thought that he wanted Charles to steal the map so that he would have a hold on Charles. You must remember that it wasn’t Charles who was being blackmailed – it was a friend of his.’
‘And you expect me to believe that? And that you don’t even know who the friend is?’
‘What you believe is up to you. I can only tell you what I know. I’ve tried to explain that it was entirely in keeping with Charles’s sense of loyalty that he should not disclose his friend’s name, and it was entirely in keeping with my relationship with Charles that I should accept what he told me and not try to cross-examine him.’
‘Did Charles Jackson have any personal knowledge of the Arctic?’
‘Of course he did. He was quite a distinguished explorer before he settled down to academic work and he led two expeditions to Northwest Greenland and the north coast of Ellesmere Island, which is known as Grant Land. My amber beads came from there – he picked up a fine piece of amber from a beach which he found unexpectedly ice-free near the Robeson Channel entrance to the Lincoln Sea.’
‘Some evidence that the coast was once forested.’
‘Perhaps, but the amber could have been carried there by currents in the sea. There’s better evidence in some seams of coal, a sort of lignite, that Charles also came across. I think there isn’t any doubt that the area was once warm enough for trees, but that was millions of years ago. What is still questionable is whether geothermal systems from this once warm Arctic exist to influence the pattern of ice formation today. Charles and Adrian believed that they do. I want to try to complete their work, but there’s a great deal still to be done.’
*
I wanted to get back to London. I also wanted to return to Hamburg. Another visit to Mrs Jackson seemed almost equally urgent, but I thought that might be left to Inspector Richards. I felt desperately sorry for Ingrid Mitchell – she’d done some silly things, but she must have been wretchedly lonely and unhappy and she did not know enough about either the English or the German police to know where she could have turned for help. For all the strange aspects of her story I believed her; and I respected her for trying to be matter-of-fact about events that were agony for her.
‘I’d better take the map,’ I said. ‘I shan’t give it back to the museum yet. It seems to have done enough harm – it will be safer with us for the moment.’
‘Aren’t you going to arrest me?’
‘Certainly not. I’d much prefer to regard you as an ally.’
She rang for a taxi, and the Baffin Map in its cardboard case travelled with me by train to London. It was an awkward shape for the luggage rack, so it stood on the floor beside my seat. One man nearly tripped over it, but nobody else took the slightest notice.
I wasn’t much of an ally for Ingrid Mitchell. Ten minutes after I got to Sir Edmund Pusey’s office the phone rang. ‘For you Peter,’ Sir Edmund said.
It was Inspector Richards to tell me that Dr Mitchell was dead.
VII
The Second Note
THERE WAS NO doubt that Ingrid Mitchell’s death was murder because she had been shot. If there was a pattern in the killings connected with the Baffin Map it was continued here, for a .28 pistol was in her right hand with her forefinger bent round the trigger, to give an appearance of suicide. It was a poor performance; the wound was in the left temple, not easy to inflict with a pistol held right-handed. Furthermore, there were no burn marks round the wound, indicating that the shot had been fired from a distance of at least several feet.
It was chance that her death was discovered so quickly. A man had called to read the electricity meter and rang the bell at the front door. No one came, and this puzzled him because of the car standing in the drive. He rang again, and when there was still no answer he became slightly uneasy and tried the door. It was unlocked, and as it opened straight into the lounge he saw the body as soon as he had opened the door a few inches. He was an elderly ex-serviceman who had seen death, and it took him only a minute or so to decide that he could do nothing. Using the telephone in the cottage he rang the police and waited until they came. Inspector Richards was at the house with a doctor and a constable in ten minutes. He telephoned me from the house. He knew that I had planned to see Dr Mitchell at the museum that morning, but he did not know that I had been to her house. ‘What time did you leave?’ he asked.
‘Soon after midday, say about 12.15,’ I said. ‘Dr Mitchell telephoned for a cab for me, and I got to the station at 12.35 – I know the precise time, because I was hoping to get the 12.34 for London but the cab was held up in traffic and I missed the train by just one minute. I had to wait for a later train – that’s why I have only just got in.’
‘We were called at two twenty p.m. and were there by two thirty. The doctor can’t give a precise time of death, but he estimates that she could not have been dead for much more than an hour. That would mean she was shot around one thirty.’
‘I wonder why the front door wasn’t locked.’
‘It’s an old-fashioned mortice lock, with a biggish key. It doesn’t lock automatically. The key wasn’t in the lock, but we found it in Dr Mitchell’s handbag, in her bedroom upstairs. If she stayed at home after you left, presumably the door was unlocked when she opened it for her murderer – or the murderer took a chance and found the door unlocked. I suppose he didn’t lock it afterwards because he didn’t have the key.’
‘I can’t get back to Cambridge for the moment but I must talk to you. Can you come to London tonight?’
‘I could drive up. I could get to London by about seven thirty.’
‘Splendid. Come to the Department in Whitehall, and we’ll look after your car. Then we can have some supper and I can put you up for the night. Can you see if you can find any working notebooks or files, papers of any sort dealing with what is called the Arctic Calorific Syndrome?’
He repeated the phrase and promised to do his best. ‘By the way, I’ve recovered the map,’ I said.
*
While Sir Edmund was arranging for Seddon to meet Inspector Richards with us I got on the phone to Keller in Hamburg. He had news that took us one stage farther. The edge of one of the dinghy’s thwarts was slightly splintered, and in a crack in the wood was a tiny thread of fabric. On analysis it was identified as coming from a material widely used for men’s summer suits. He had been to see Frau Braunschweig and she thought that her husband had been wearing such a suit on the day he disappeared. Keller thought this established a strong probability that the dinghy had been used to take Dr Braunschweig out to Apfel.
This was useful as far as it went, but I had an urgent job for Keller. I told him of the apparent suicide of Adrian Stowe and asked if he could look up the records and perhaps go into the case again. ‘On the face of things it is rather similar to the death of Dr Jackson in Cambridge. That was assumed to be accident, with a possibility of suicide, though we now know that it was murder. Adrian Stowe was working for Universal Oil in Hamburg, but he was also engaged with Dr Jackson on geographical research relating to the Arctic. There’s been another murder in Cambridge – no doubt at all this time, a woman killed by a bullet in her head. We have a conference about all this tonight. We’ve recovered the map, though we’re not saying anything about it at the moment. It’s a long story – I’ll tell you later.’
Keller understood the pressure we were under without having to be told. He didn’t try to question me. All he said was ‘Right, I’ll get on to the Stowe case straight away. Good luck.’
*
We began with a drink of Sir Edmund’s whisky, which we all needed. Richards at first was inclined to be overawed by so much of what he would have called Top Brass, but Sir Edmund is at his best on such occasions. After I had outlined my own interview with Dr Mitchell the inspector told us about his day. ‘To deal with your question, sir,’ he said to me. ‘I looked everywhere I could in the cottage, but I couldn’t find any notes or papers on that Arctic Syndrome you mentioned. Dr Mitchell’s desk wasn’t locked, and it looked as if someone had been through the drawers. Dr Mitchell herself seems to have been a neat person, and her clothes were all beautifully tidy. The drawers in the desk were a mess – papers all mixed up, and things that had obviously been in alphabetical order shoved in any old fashion.’
‘You’re probably right. She must have had some papers on the Arctic, and it seems likely that whoever killed her took them. Maybe he or she was also looking for the map. There’s one thing I’m thankful about. When I first talked to Dr Mitchell about the map I said I’d give her a receipt for it when I took it away, but in the end I didn’t. She trusted me by then, I think, and didn’t ask for one. So there was nothing to show that we have it.’
‘That was a stroke of luck. It had better remain missing for the moment,’ Sir Edmund said.
‘Yes, we still don’t know why there’s all this apparent interest in the map – the Arctic papers seem far more important. I can’t help feeling that it has been brought in to confuse the picture. Where are Dr Jackson’s research notes? Mrs Jackson said they are at the museum, but Dr Mitchell told me that Mrs Jackson still has them. When you get back to Cambridge, Inspector, I’d like you to check Mrs Jackson’s story. I’m fairly sure that she herself believes the papers are at the museum, but my own view is that they were taken on the night her husband was killed – I think probably that is why he was killed. You might have a look at his desk or filing cabinet to see if there are any signs of its having been rifled. After all this time there may not be much to find, but you may spot something.’
‘I can try, anyway,’ Richards said. ‘How did you know that Dr Mitchell had the map?’
‘I couldn’t know, but for a woman of her intelligence to swallow my story about the map’s being offered to a British Embassy was too much to believe. If she’d thought that this really was a chance of getting back her precious map, she’d have moved heaven and earth to know where the Embassy was, and although she did suggest rather tepidly that she should go there herself, she didn’t press the point. And there were other things that didn’t make sense. When she insisted on calling in the police about the map she calmly accepted the doddering old Curator’s reluctance to have any publicity. You’d have thought she’d have wanted every museum and art dealer in the world alerted. She didn’t even have a proper description of the map available when I went to see her – she was ridiculously casual about it.’
‘How much of her story do you believe?’
‘Pretty well all of it, but I can’t understand her reasoning. When she got Charles Jackson’s job she could have put back the map without any trouble at all. Why didn’t she? I’m absolutely certain that she wasn’t hanging on to it because she wanted to steal it – I feel more and more strongly that she was an honourable woman in a situation that became too much for her. She was trying to play a lone hand as a detective. She regarded herself as the trustee of the work of Charles Jackson and Adrian Stowe, and she guessed that somebody was threatening that work. But she didn’t know who. Someone had tried to involve Charles Jackson in stealing the map, presumably to get a permanent hold over him, and I think she may have hoped that whoever it was would try the same thing with her, which would give her a chance of discovering his identity. Outside the museum, remember, nobody knew that the map was missing.
‘In Dr Jackson’s bedroom.’
I let this sink in, and went on, ‘You appear to have been remarkably frank with me, and I should like to be equally frank with you, but there are many things that you have not explained, and that need explaining. I must tell you that the police now have reason to believe that Dr Jackson’s death was not an accident. I’m afraid I can’t disclose the evidence for that, but since you also suspect that his death was no accident you can accept what I say. You will appreciate that the finding of your bead in the bedroom could be regarded as evidence against you. So far, I am disposed to believe what you have told me, but there must be much that you have not told me, for your story as such is even more preposterous than my account of the missing map’s being offered to a British Embassy.’
She put her head in her hands. Then she shook herself again, and with a touch of her old insouciance remarked, ‘To be accused of Charles’s murder would have elements of real comedy, or more accurately of farce.’
‘Nobody has accused you of Dr Jackson’s murder. I said that what you have just told me, coupled with the finding of one of your beads in his room, could provide a prima facie case against you. A prosecuting lawyer could certainly make a good deal out of it. What really happened on the night of Dr Jackson’s death?’
‘You know about the party. There was a woman there I didn’t know – about my age, and I suppose most men would call her attractive, but I’m sufficiently anti the exploitation of women as sex symbols not to care much for those very low-cut dresses by which women exploit themselves. She attached herself to Charles. I moved around a lot talking to people and fairly late in the evening was horrified to find that Charles was more or less drunk. I’d never seen him like that before. The woman left him when he began to get drunk. I stayed with him until Sheila came, and between us we got him home.’
‘Did you go into his room?’
‘Yes. I helped Sheila get him to bed.’
‘Did you go in by the door or the french window?’
‘The garden door – what you call the french window. Sheila ran in and opened it, and then I helped her get Charles into the room. It was easier from the garden, for we more or less had to carry him. I didn’t stay long – it was embarrassing for Sheila, and for me.’
‘Now I must go back a bit. I think you have told me nowhere near the whole truth. I find it impossible to believe that you were willing to be an accomplice in extracting a valuable map from the museum simply because Dr Jackson said that a friend of his, whom you don’t know, was being blackmailed.’
‘It wasn’t only that. I thought I’d explained that it was mainly to protect the map.’
‘Why did you think the map needed protecting?’
She was silent again for what felt a long time. Then she seemed to come to a decision. ‘You’re quite right, there was much more than the map,’ she said. ‘It is easy to be wise afterwards and I think now that I ought to have gone to the police long ago, but I couldn’t talk to the policemen I’ve met as I’m talking to you.’
‘You should have more trust in the police. They would probably have put you in touch with my Department.’
‘Maybe. But I didn’t know that. And it was the German police more than the English police. You see, Adrian was doing the most vital secret work that might have transformed the oil industry. Only Charles Jackson and I really knew what he was doing – oh, there was Dr Braunschweig who was head of his company in Germany, and who trusted him enough to give him a free hand in his work. But Dr Braunschweig only knew part of it, some of Adrian’s conclusions, but not all the scientific data on which he made them. After Adrian’s death Dr Braunschweig came to England to see Charles, but Charles was a bit suspicious of him and didn’t tell him much. Charles was a scholar, not an industrialist. He trusted Adrian because Adrian was a scholar, too, but Charles didn’t want his work to be exploited commercially before he was satisfied that he’d got things absolutely right. And he wasn’t, yet.’
‘What was this work?’
‘I thought you knew – it was the Arctic Calorific Syndrome which, if we could understand it properly, would, or rather might, open sea routes around the North Pole. Adrian believed that it would be practicable, and his calculations about oil transport were of immense economic and strategical importance. But he died – I think was killed – before he knew enough to translate theoretical calculations into practical action. Nobody knows quite enough yet, though Charles and I have learned a good deal more since Adrian’s death. Now that Charles is dead I’m the only one left, and I want Charles and Adrian to have the recognition that is due to them.’
‘Where are Charles’s papers?’
‘Sheila still has them. They don’t matter very much to me because I know what he was doing and I’ve carried some of his work still farther, but I want Sheila to let me edit them for publication one day. I think she will, but I haven’t wanted to distress her by seeming to want to grab at the papers.’
‘Do you know that Dr Braunschweig has been kidnapped and that his life is threatened unless the Baffin Map is handed over to his kidnappers? Here is a copy of the ransom demand. It is a strange document.’
She took the sheet of typescript from me and studied it intently. ‘What a fool I’ve been,’ she said. ‘It looks as if Dr Braunschweig may have been on our side.’
‘I think probably he was. But who is on the other side?’
‘I don’t know. That’s where I’ve been a fool. I thought I could protect Charles’s and Adrian’s work by keeping it to myself, but all I seem to have done is to endanger other people. If I’d gone to the police long ago this might never have happened.’
‘It has happened, and we’ve got to find Dr Braunschweig before he is murdered, too. That’s why your help is vital. What makes the map so important that somebody is prepared to murder for it?’
She frowned. ‘But I don’t think the map is particularly important. It’s valuable as a rare example of early seventeenth-century cartography, and it has a bearing on the Arctic Calorific Syndrome in that William Baffin seems actually to have met some of the streams of slightly warmer water that the theory supposes to exist. My own view is that it was meeting a calorific stream that enabled him to get as far north as he did. But of course he knew nothing about the theory, and the theory wasn’t developed from his map. Only a handful of scholars really know anything about the theory – I’m astonished that you seem to have heard of it. One or two papers have been published, but they’re highly speculative, and the only detailed work has been done by Charles, Adrian and me. On what has been published so far I think it’s fair to say that most geographers reject the theory.’
‘Yet somebody has wanted the map for some time. On your own story Charles Jackson was asked to steal it in settlement of his friend’s debt to a blackmailer.’
‘Well, it’s worth quite a lot of money.’
‘But you know that it couldn’t be sold openly. You can’t have thought that it was simply a matter of money.’
‘No . . . but yes, in a way . . . I did think that the blackmailer wanted money, but I also thought that he wanted Charles to steal the map so that he would have a hold on Charles. You must remember that it wasn’t Charles who was being blackmailed – it was a friend of his.’
‘And you expect me to believe that? And that you don’t even know who the friend is?’
‘What you believe is up to you. I can only tell you what I know. I’ve tried to explain that it was entirely in keeping with Charles’s sense of loyalty that he should not disclose his friend’s name, and it was entirely in keeping with my relationship with Charles that I should accept what he told me and not try to cross-examine him.’
‘Did Charles Jackson have any personal knowledge of the Arctic?’
‘Of course he did. He was quite a distinguished explorer before he settled down to academic work and he led two expeditions to Northwest Greenland and the north coast of Ellesmere Island, which is known as Grant Land. My amber beads came from there – he picked up a fine piece of amber from a beach which he found unexpectedly ice-free near the Robeson Channel entrance to the Lincoln Sea.’
‘Some evidence that the coast was once forested.’
‘Perhaps, but the amber could have been carried there by currents in the sea. There’s better evidence in some seams of coal, a sort of lignite, that Charles also came across. I think there isn’t any doubt that the area was once warm enough for trees, but that was millions of years ago. What is still questionable is whether geothermal systems from this once warm Arctic exist to influence the pattern of ice formation today. Charles and Adrian believed that they do. I want to try to complete their work, but there’s a great deal still to be done.’
*
I wanted to get back to London. I also wanted to return to Hamburg. Another visit to Mrs Jackson seemed almost equally urgent, but I thought that might be left to Inspector Richards. I felt desperately sorry for Ingrid Mitchell – she’d done some silly things, but she must have been wretchedly lonely and unhappy and she did not know enough about either the English or the German police to know where she could have turned for help. For all the strange aspects of her story I believed her; and I respected her for trying to be matter-of-fact about events that were agony for her.
‘I’d better take the map,’ I said. ‘I shan’t give it back to the museum yet. It seems to have done enough harm – it will be safer with us for the moment.’
‘Aren’t you going to arrest me?’
‘Certainly not. I’d much prefer to regard you as an ally.’
She rang for a taxi, and the Baffin Map in its cardboard case travelled with me by train to London. It was an awkward shape for the luggage rack, so it stood on the floor beside my seat. One man nearly tripped over it, but nobody else took the slightest notice.
I wasn’t much of an ally for Ingrid Mitchell. Ten minutes after I got to Sir Edmund Pusey’s office the phone rang. ‘For you Peter,’ Sir Edmund said.
It was Inspector Richards to tell me that Dr Mitchell was dead.
VII
The Second Note
THERE WAS NO doubt that Ingrid Mitchell’s death was murder because she had been shot. If there was a pattern in the killings connected with the Baffin Map it was continued here, for a .28 pistol was in her right hand with her forefinger bent round the trigger, to give an appearance of suicide. It was a poor performance; the wound was in the left temple, not easy to inflict with a pistol held right-handed. Furthermore, there were no burn marks round the wound, indicating that the shot had been fired from a distance of at least several feet.
It was chance that her death was discovered so quickly. A man had called to read the electricity meter and rang the bell at the front door. No one came, and this puzzled him because of the car standing in the drive. He rang again, and when there was still no answer he became slightly uneasy and tried the door. It was unlocked, and as it opened straight into the lounge he saw the body as soon as he had opened the door a few inches. He was an elderly ex-serviceman who had seen death, and it took him only a minute or so to decide that he could do nothing. Using the telephone in the cottage he rang the police and waited until they came. Inspector Richards was at the house with a doctor and a constable in ten minutes. He telephoned me from the house. He knew that I had planned to see Dr Mitchell at the museum that morning, but he did not know that I had been to her house. ‘What time did you leave?’ he asked.
‘Soon after midday, say about 12.15,’ I said. ‘Dr Mitchell telephoned for a cab for me, and I got to the station at 12.35 – I know the precise time, because I was hoping to get the 12.34 for London but the cab was held up in traffic and I missed the train by just one minute. I had to wait for a later train – that’s why I have only just got in.’
‘We were called at two twenty p.m. and were there by two thirty. The doctor can’t give a precise time of death, but he estimates that she could not have been dead for much more than an hour. That would mean she was shot around one thirty.’
‘I wonder why the front door wasn’t locked.’
‘It’s an old-fashioned mortice lock, with a biggish key. It doesn’t lock automatically. The key wasn’t in the lock, but we found it in Dr Mitchell’s handbag, in her bedroom upstairs. If she stayed at home after you left, presumably the door was unlocked when she opened it for her murderer – or the murderer took a chance and found the door unlocked. I suppose he didn’t lock it afterwards because he didn’t have the key.’
‘I can’t get back to Cambridge for the moment but I must talk to you. Can you come to London tonight?’
‘I could drive up. I could get to London by about seven thirty.’
‘Splendid. Come to the Department in Whitehall, and we’ll look after your car. Then we can have some supper and I can put you up for the night. Can you see if you can find any working notebooks or files, papers of any sort dealing with what is called the Arctic Calorific Syndrome?’
He repeated the phrase and promised to do his best. ‘By the way, I’ve recovered the map,’ I said.
*
While Sir Edmund was arranging for Seddon to meet Inspector Richards with us I got on the phone to Keller in Hamburg. He had news that took us one stage farther. The edge of one of the dinghy’s thwarts was slightly splintered, and in a crack in the wood was a tiny thread of fabric. On analysis it was identified as coming from a material widely used for men’s summer suits. He had been to see Frau Braunschweig and she thought that her husband had been wearing such a suit on the day he disappeared. Keller thought this established a strong probability that the dinghy had been used to take Dr Braunschweig out to Apfel.
This was useful as far as it went, but I had an urgent job for Keller. I told him of the apparent suicide of Adrian Stowe and asked if he could look up the records and perhaps go into the case again. ‘On the face of things it is rather similar to the death of Dr Jackson in Cambridge. That was assumed to be accident, with a possibility of suicide, though we now know that it was murder. Adrian Stowe was working for Universal Oil in Hamburg, but he was also engaged with Dr Jackson on geographical research relating to the Arctic. There’s been another murder in Cambridge – no doubt at all this time, a woman killed by a bullet in her head. We have a conference about all this tonight. We’ve recovered the map, though we’re not saying anything about it at the moment. It’s a long story – I’ll tell you later.’
Keller understood the pressure we were under without having to be told. He didn’t try to question me. All he said was ‘Right, I’ll get on to the Stowe case straight away. Good luck.’
*
We began with a drink of Sir Edmund’s whisky, which we all needed. Richards at first was inclined to be overawed by so much of what he would have called Top Brass, but Sir Edmund is at his best on such occasions. After I had outlined my own interview with Dr Mitchell the inspector told us about his day. ‘To deal with your question, sir,’ he said to me. ‘I looked everywhere I could in the cottage, but I couldn’t find any notes or papers on that Arctic Syndrome you mentioned. Dr Mitchell’s desk wasn’t locked, and it looked as if someone had been through the drawers. Dr Mitchell herself seems to have been a neat person, and her clothes were all beautifully tidy. The drawers in the desk were a mess – papers all mixed up, and things that had obviously been in alphabetical order shoved in any old fashion.’
‘You’re probably right. She must have had some papers on the Arctic, and it seems likely that whoever killed her took them. Maybe he or she was also looking for the map. There’s one thing I’m thankful about. When I first talked to Dr Mitchell about the map I said I’d give her a receipt for it when I took it away, but in the end I didn’t. She trusted me by then, I think, and didn’t ask for one. So there was nothing to show that we have it.’
‘That was a stroke of luck. It had better remain missing for the moment,’ Sir Edmund said.
‘Yes, we still don’t know why there’s all this apparent interest in the map – the Arctic papers seem far more important. I can’t help feeling that it has been brought in to confuse the picture. Where are Dr Jackson’s research notes? Mrs Jackson said they are at the museum, but Dr Mitchell told me that Mrs Jackson still has them. When you get back to Cambridge, Inspector, I’d like you to check Mrs Jackson’s story. I’m fairly sure that she herself believes the papers are at the museum, but my own view is that they were taken on the night her husband was killed – I think probably that is why he was killed. You might have a look at his desk or filing cabinet to see if there are any signs of its having been rifled. After all this time there may not be much to find, but you may spot something.’
‘I can try, anyway,’ Richards said. ‘How did you know that Dr Mitchell had the map?’
‘I couldn’t know, but for a woman of her intelligence to swallow my story about the map’s being offered to a British Embassy was too much to believe. If she’d thought that this really was a chance of getting back her precious map, she’d have moved heaven and earth to know where the Embassy was, and although she did suggest rather tepidly that she should go there herself, she didn’t press the point. And there were other things that didn’t make sense. When she insisted on calling in the police about the map she calmly accepted the doddering old Curator’s reluctance to have any publicity. You’d have thought she’d have wanted every museum and art dealer in the world alerted. She didn’t even have a proper description of the map available when I went to see her – she was ridiculously casual about it.’
‘How much of her story do you believe?’
‘Pretty well all of it, but I can’t understand her reasoning. When she got Charles Jackson’s job she could have put back the map without any trouble at all. Why didn’t she? I’m absolutely certain that she wasn’t hanging on to it because she wanted to steal it – I feel more and more strongly that she was an honourable woman in a situation that became too much for her. She was trying to play a lone hand as a detective. She regarded herself as the trustee of the work of Charles Jackson and Adrian Stowe, and she guessed that somebody was threatening that work. But she didn’t know who. Someone had tried to involve Charles Jackson in stealing the map, presumably to get a permanent hold over him, and I think she may have hoped that whoever it was would try the same thing with her, which would give her a chance of discovering his identity. Outside the museum, remember, nobody knew that the map was missing.
