Death in a High Latitude, page 4
‘What do you think has happened to the map?’
‘Well, your story confirms what I think. It’s obviously been stolen, and my own view is that it was stolen on the way back from Hamburg.’
‘The maps were escorted by Dr Steinberg.’
‘He travelled with a number of map cases – that is all he can really say about it. If you are right in thinking that some international gang of thieves is at work they could easily have somebody working for them at an airport, or in the baggage hold of an aircraft.’
‘I understand it was all before your time. Wouldn’t your predecessor have found out at once if the map was not among those returned from Hamburg?’
She thought about this. ‘In the ordinary way, yes,’ she said, ‘but Charles – I knew Charles Jackson well – was ill at the time, and he may just have assumed that the map had been put back by the staff.’
‘Dr Jackson’s death seems to have been particularly sad.’
‘Yes. He was the world’s leading expert on Arctic geography, and he had years of important work ahead of him. But he had some domestic problems and they affected his health. I had the greatest admiration for him. He supervised my thesis for my Ph.D. – I was working on climatic change in Alaska and the Bering Straits and he was a university lecturer in geography before he became Arctic Keeper at the museum.’
‘Did you expect to get his job?’
‘That seems to me an impertinent question. I’d been working in Charles Jackson’s field and all I can say is that it seemed reasonable that the trustees should invite me to succeed him.’
‘I’m sorry if I have upset you – I’m simply trying to get as accurate a picture as I can of the circumstances.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘I have taken up a lot of your time, and you have been very patient. If I may, I’ll report directly to you as soon as I have news of any developments.’
That mollified her. ‘You must forgive me. Charles Jackson was my friend, and I am still shocked by his death. You must do your job as you think fit. I can only wish you luck.’
‘Thank you.’ I got up to go. ‘May I say that the amber necklace you are wearing is an exceptionally beautiful piece?’
She laughed, but she was pleased. ‘It’s exceptionally interesting amber. It came from the area we’ve been talking about – from the shores of Baffin Bay.’
*
The Chief Superintendent at Cambridge was clearly impressed by whatever Sir Edmund Pusey had told him about me, but I cannot say that he received me with any noticeable enthusiasm. ‘We’re not at all sure that it is our case, or even that there is a case,’ he said. ‘We’ve put in a lot of police time with nothing to show for it. I can understand your anxiety for the German businessman, and of course we’re at your disposal for any help we can give, but I should say that the case properly belongs to Hamburg. However, you’d better have a word with the officer who actually handled our inquiries – Detective Inspector Richards. I’ve asked him to stand by. I must ask you to excuse me though. I’ve got to attend a meeting of the Traffic Committee at three o’clock.’
I was not sorry to be left with the inspector on my own. He was youngish and obviously intelligent, and he looked rather anxious. ‘I can’t help feeling that we must have slipped up in some way,’ he said. ‘I did everything I could think of, but it wasn’t exactly helpful to have the Curator insisting that the map was probably not lost, anyway.’
‘I’ve read your report, and it seems to me masterly,’ I said. ‘Please don’t think that I’m here to pick holes in anything you’ve done. What we’ve got to do now is to consider all the personalities involved and see if we can find any link with Hamburg, or the oil company. You knew nothing of that at the time, and you couldn’t have done more than you did.’
He brightened a little. ‘I don’t have many dealings with top brass, if you’ll pardon the expression, sir. But I’ve heard of one or two things that your Department has done, and I’m proud to be working with you.’
A pleasant-looking girl came in with tea and a plate of cucumber sandwiches – she must have had everything ready in advance. ‘The Chief Superintendent likes cucumber sandwiches, but as you know he’s had to go out. So I wondered if you might like them, they’re all fresh,’ she said. I thanked her. The inspector poured out tea, and we each took a sandwich. The slight informality of tea and sandwiches made things easier for us. ‘I’d like to go back to the situation at the museum before the map was reported missing,’ I said. ‘Did the rather sudden death of the Arctic man, Dr Charles Jackson, strike you as at all suspicious?’
‘Yes, sir, it did, and I went into it as thoroughly as I could. It made quite a story in the local papers when it happened because of his reputation as a scholar, though of course nobody knew anything about the map at the time. There was an inquest because he died of an overdose of drugs, but he was being treated by a doctor for depression and they were properly prescribed. The evidence at the inquest provided a reasonable explanation of how he came to take the overdose, and in the circumstances there couldn’t have been any other verdict than accidental death. When I was making inquiries about the map I went into all the evidence at the inquest, and had a long talk with the sergeant who’d handled things. He thought everything was in order.’
‘Did Dr Jackson leave any family?’
‘Yes, sir, a widow and a daughter around fourteen. The girl is being educated at a boarding school, and the sergeant thought that the widow would find it rather difficult to manage. They were buying a house on a mortgage. The widow has a job as a school teacher, but her salary won’t go far with the mortgage and school fees to meet.’
‘Do you know that she was left badly off?’
‘Yes, sir. I happen to know the managing clerk in the solicitor’s office which dealt with Dr Jackson’s will. Of course he shouldn’t really have told me anything, and I didn’t ask him to go into details, but he did confirm that Dr Jackson left very little, and being only fifty-two when he died there’s not much in the way of pension.’
‘Does the widow know that the map is missing?’
‘I can’t say, sir. You see, with the Curator insisting that we must treat everything in confidence and not let out that there was any concern about the map I felt I couldn’t very well ask her about it. I was interested in Dr Jackson’s financial circumstances to see if he could have had any possible motive for trying to sell the map. There’s not the slightest evidence against him, but I went into motive because if anybody had taken the map from the museum he’d have been best placed to do it, or to help somebody else to do it. He had the big mortgage and his daughter at a fee-paying school, but he earned a good salary and he added to it by lecturing. I should say he lived up to his income, but he didn’t seem to be extravagant and I could find no evidence of secret gambling debts, or anything else.’
‘Why was he depressed? His successor, Dr Mitchell, said that he had domestic problems. What were they?’
The inspector looked worried again. ‘That’s new to me, sir. Nothing about domestic trouble came out at the inquest. His widow said that he began to get depressed about a year ago because he felt that the quality of his lectures was falling off. She thought that he was working too hard, suggested that they should take a holiday, tried all the normal ways to jolly him along. It didn’t work, and after a bit she persuaded him to see a doctor. The doctor said it was a type of depression not uncommon in academic men in middle age. He treated him with a fairly new type of tranquillising drug that he had found successful with other patients, and he thought that he was responding well. The overdose alone might not have killed him – he died from a combination of the overdose and alcohol. He and his wife had been to a farewell party for a college lecturer who was going to be a professor in America, and there was evidence that Dr Jackson drank a considerable quantity of gin.’
‘That was unusual for him?’
‘So it seemed, sir. He liked a drink, but the sergeant found nothing to indicate heavy drinking. The doctor said that a sudden turning to alcohol if it happened to be available was typical of his sort of depression.’
‘Funny that Dr Mitchell talked about domestic problems. But she seems to have known him well from her student days – she had actually been a student of his before he got the museum job. She may have used the phrase loosely, and not meant what is ordinarily understood by it. What do we know of her background?’
‘She wasn’t easy to interview, sir – she’d answer questions civilly enough, but she didn’t volunteer anything about herself. My feeling was that the Curator was a bit afraid of her, and if so I’d understand it. But the main facts of her life seem straightforward. She was a student at Bristol, and by all accounts a brilliant one. She took a Ph.D. here at Cambridge, and then she got a teaching fellowship at one of the women’s colleges. I’d say she was respected rather than liked. I talked to various people at the college, and they all seemed to think that she had a fair contempt for most other people, particularly for women’s colleges. But there’s no denying her ability. Her own special field is polar geography, and her colleagues thought it quite natural that she should be appointed to succeed Dr Jackson.’
‘She’s quite attractive. I wonder why she’s never married.’
The inspector’s worried look had gone again, and he laughed. ‘Well, I wouldn’t like to be married to her, sir,’ he said.
‘The world’s a bit hard sometimes on women of outstanding ability, but I can see what you mean. Where does she live?’
‘Nice little cottage out towards Cherry Hinton. Looks after herself inside, but employs an old chap as a gardener three days a week. I put a man on to watching the place for a while, but we’re short-staffed as always, and I couldn’t justify keeping up a watch. She doesn’t have much to do with her neighbours, though they all say she’s civil enough. She entertains a bit in the evenings and at weekends, rather fancies herself as a cook, or so it’s said. Guests mostly cars with local registrations, so they’re probably academic friends of one sort or another. All highly respectable. Apart from opportunity there’s not a scrap of evidence to suggest that she knows anything about the map, and making the Curator call us in as she did rather points the other way.’
‘Know anything about her family?’
‘Only from the most elementary inquiries. She seems to be an only child. Parents still alive – father’s a doctor in Nottingham, and well thought of, according to the local police.’
‘You’ve been extraordinarily thorough. What about the rest of the staff?’
‘Well, a sergeant and I between us have interviewed all of them, and there’s nothing against any of them. Most of them, even the typists, have been there some time – jobs at the museum are reckoned good to have.’
‘Yet you yourself are not satisfied.’
‘No, sir, I’m not. I’d like to put in more time on the case, but with so little to go on, and the Curator’s insistence that the map is probably not lost anyway, I can’t justify it.’
‘He could be right.’
‘Of course he could, but in common sense I don’t think he is, nor does Dr Mitchell. It’s all very well to say that the map’s only been misplaced, but where has it been misplaced? There’s a staff of people called map handlers, and when a map is lent for some exhibition outside the museum the handlers are responsible for packing it in a specially made case. The cases are all labelled with the catalogue number of the map inside. When cases come back from an exhibition they go to the Chief Map Handler – he’s a kind of Head Porter – and he sees that they go back to the department they came from. Once there, it is for the Keeper of that particular department to decide whether the map goes into one of his own cabinets, or is taken away for storage. There are air-conditioned storage rooms in the new buildings where maps that are not likely to be wanted very often are kept. The Chief Map Handler took the case labelled with the catalogue number of the Baffin Map to the Arctic Room himself. He knew that it normally lived in the department, but it was for the Keeper – it was Dr Jackson then – to decide, so he left it there without unpacking it. That seems to be quite normal. If they don’t get any special instructions they go round next day to collect the empty case. That’s what happened this time. The case was left in the Arctic Room, and next day one of the handlers collected it empty from Dr Jackson’s secretary. She says that she assumed that Dr Jackson had put away the map himself. He never said anything to her about it, but there was no particular reason why he should. Dr Jackson often stayed after she’d gone home – you’ll recall his widow saying that he was overworking – and the secretary just thought that he’d dealt with the map after she’d gone.’
‘All the handlers can say is that the case was empty when they took it back. There’s no proof that the map was ever in the case.’
‘No, sir, but that’s where the university of Hamburg comes in. They say that all the maps were packed under the supervision of a representative of the insurers, and there’s a signed list of all the cases, with their contents.’
‘So either the map was put back in its proper place by Dr Jackson and was taken some time afterwards, or Dr Jackson took it away himself.’
‘That’s about it, sir, with such evidence as there is in favour of Dr Jackson – I mean, in favour of his innocence.’
‘What does the Curator think can have happened?’
‘He’s just vague, sir, because he doesn’t want anything to have happened. He says that they’ve got tens of thousands of maps, and it must have been put in the wrong place somewhere.’
‘But surely they’ve looked?’
‘Of course they have. All the other maps that came back from Hamburg have been checked, and they are all in the right places. It’s just possible that the map may have found its way into what they call Unclassified Storage.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The old cellars, sir – they’re full of boxes and bundles of maps, hundreds and hundreds of them. Mostly they are not important maps, and they’re being gradually sorted out. It’s a job that’s been going on for years, but nobody does much to get on with it. Dr Wilding says that it’s one of the things that his successor will have to do. I think he’s convinced himself that one day the Baffin Map will turn up, and it’s no use worrying about it.’
‘You think he’s wrong?’
‘Well, he knows the museum much better than I do, and if that’s what he thinks, that’s it. If the map has got into the Unclassified Collection it could be years before anybody comes across it. But unless Dr Jackson suddenly went mad or something I don’t see any way in which it could have got into the cellars. Mostly they’re just left locked and nobody goes there much.’
‘So how do things stand as far as you are concerned?’
‘Just an unclosed file, sir. The new information you’ve brought makes it look like a serious crime, and I’ve been told to act on your instructions. But on the information we have there doesn’t seem much more that I can do.’
*
I liked Inspector Richards, and felt that we were lucky to have him at the Cambridge end. I wanted to call on Dr Jackson’s widow before leaving Cambridge, and thought that I might as well stay in Cambridge for the moment. I phoned Ruth to tell her that I seemed likely to be stuck for a day or two. ‘In that case, Peter, I think I’ll drive over tonight and join you,’ she said. ‘There are several small things I want to do in Cambridge, and at least we’ll be together. Get a room for us, and let’s meet at the University Hotel for dinner. I should be there soon after seven.’
III
Death of a Geographer
AFTER FIXING UP our room at the hotel there was just about time to find a library. I wanted to consult the Admiralty’s Arctic Pilot, but the reference section of the public library I went to didn’t have it. The librarian explained that pilot books were a bit too specialised for them, and he recommended the library of the Museum of Cartography. I didn’t want to go back to the museum so I asked if there was anywhere nearer, and he suggested the School of Geography which, he said, had a library for students, though he didn’t know if they’d permit a casual visitor to use it. I decided to have a go, talked nicely to a young woman in the office who rang through to the librarian. She was helpful, and found me Volume III of the Arctic Pilot, which covers Baffin Bay. I could get the Pilot in London, but I needed to have a quick look at it. The historical notes which are such a splendid feature of the Admiralty’s pilot books confirmed what Dr Mitchell had told me of the importance of William Baffin’s discoveries. I found one point of particular interest – the curious existence in the far north of a considerable body of navigable open water known to the old whaling fleets as the North Water. The reasons for the existence of this open stretch in an area of ferocious ice apparently remain obscure. Beyond telling me that ‘more than one possible explanation has been suggested’ the Pilot did not enlighten me, contenting himself with saying that I could expect to reach open water north of about the 75th parallel and continue sailing northward until I found myself blocked by the fast ice of Smith Sound, that desolate channel running between Greenland and Ellesmere Island to the Arctic Ocean and ultimately the North Pole. Interesting as this was, it seemed scarcely relevant to the disappearance of Dr Braunschweig and the Baffin Map.
*
Ruth’s special field is geophysical mathematics, the complex mathematical relationships of the earth movements that produce earthquakes and in their time have thrown up mountains and formed continents.* According to Ruth they still do, although her timescale for the movement of continental land masses makes it unlikely that any of us will live to explore Atlantis. Earthquakes, however, are another matter, and seismic prediction is an important branch of her studies, which are also useful to geologists in the oil industry. I was so glad to see her that I was more concerned with the beauty she added to that lovely summer evening than with the geological processes of a few million years ago that formed Cambridge for us to meet in. Looking at her over dinner I wondered what made her so different from Ingrid Mitchell. Both were outstandingly able women with a mastery of abstruse subjects, yet Ruth was feminine and lovable where in some indefinable way Ingrid Mitchell was not. Or perhaps the difference was in me – I found Ruth the dearest of companions and infinitely comforting to be with, whereas on the whole I thought I shared the inspector’s view of Dr Mitchell. Some men, though, might find her very attractive.
