The Murder Room (3 page)

2

Dalgliesh followed Ackroyd into a wide hall with its chequered floor in black and white marble. Facing him was an elegant staircase which, after some twenty steps, divided, the stairs running east and west to the wide gallery. On each side of the hall were three mahogany doors with similar but smaller doors leading from the gallery above. There was a row of coat hooks on the left wall with two long umbrella stands beneath them. To the right was a curved mahogany reception desk with an antiquated telephone switchboard mounted on the wall behind, and a door marked
PRIVATE
which Dalgliesh supposed led to the office. The only sign of life was a woman seated at the desk. She looked up as Ackroyd and Dalgliesh moved towards her.

Ackroyd said, “Good afternoon, Miss Godby.” Then, turning to Dalgliesh, “This is Miss Muriel Godby who presides over admissions and keeps us all in order. This is a friend of mine. Mr. Dalgliesh. Does he have to pay?”

Dalgliesh said, “Of course I have to pay.”

Miss Godby looked up at him. He saw a sallow, rather heavy face and a pair of remarkable eyes behind narrow horn-rimmed spectacles. The irises were a greenish yellow with a bright centre, the whole iris darkly ringed. The hair, an unusual colour between rich russet and gold, was thick and straight, brushed to the side and clipped back from the face with a tortoiseshell slide. Her mouth was small but firm above a chin which belied her apparent age. She could surely not be much above forty, but her chin and her upper neck had some of the sagging fleshiness of old age. Although she had smiled at Ackroyd, it had been little more than a relaxing of her mouth, giving her a look that was both wary and slightly intimidating. She was wearing a twinset in fine blue wool and a pearl necklace. It made her look as old-fashioned as some of the photographs of English débutantes seen in old copies of
Country Life.
Perhaps, he thought, she was deliberately dressing to conform to the decades of the museum. There was certainly nothing either girlish or naÏvely pretty about Miss Godby.

A framed notice on the desk gave the admission charges as £5 for adults, £3.50 for senior citizens and students, free for the under-tens and those on job-seekers' allowance. Dalgliesh handed over his £10 note and received with his change a round blue sticky label. Ackroyd, receiving his, protested: “Do we really have to wear these? I'm a Friend, I've signed in.”

Miss Godby was adamant. “It's a new system, Mr. Ackroyd. Blue for men, pink for women and green for the children. It's a simple way of reconciling takings with the number of visitors and providing information on the people we're serving. And, of course, it means that the staff can see at a glance that people have paid.”

They moved away. Ackroyd said, “She's an efficient woman who's done a great deal to put the place in order, but I wish she knew where to stop. You can see the general layout. That first room on the left is the picture gallery, the next is Sports and Entertainment, the third is the History Room. And there on the right we have Costumes, Theatre and Cinema. The library is on the floor above and so is the Murder Room. Obviously you'll be interested to see the pictures and the library, and perhaps the rest of the rooms, and I'd like to come with you. Still, I need to work. We'd better start with the Murder Room.”

Ignoring the lift, he led the way up the central staircase, sprightly as ever. Dalgliesh followed, aware that Muriel Godby was watching at her desk as if still uncertain whether they were safe to be left unescorted. They had reached the Murder Room on the east side and at the back of the house when a door at the top of the stairs opened. There was the sound of raised voices suddenly cut off and a man came hurriedly out, hesitated briefly when he saw Dalgliesh and Ackroyd, then gave them a nod of acknowledgement and made for the stairs, his long coat flapping as if caught in the vehemence of his exit. Dalgliesh had a fleeting impression of an undisciplined thatch of dark hair and angry eyes in a flushed face. Almost at once another figure appeared standing in the doorway. He showed no surprise at encountering visitors but spoke directly to Ackroyd.

“What's it for, the museum? That's what Neville Dupayne has just asked. What's it for? It makes me wonder if he's his father's son, except that poor Madeleine was so boringly virtuous. Not enough vitality for sexual capers. Good to see you here again.”

He looked at Dalgliesh. “Who's this?”

The question could have sounded offensive if it had not been asked in a voice of genuine puzzlement and interest, as if he were faced with a new if not particularly interesting acquisition.

Ackroyd said, “Good afternoon, James. This is a friend of mine, Adam Dalgliesh. Adam, meet James Calder-Hale, curator and presiding genius of the Dupayne Museum.”

Calder-Hale was tall and thin almost to the point of emaciation, with a long bony face and a wide, precisely shaped mouth. His hair, falling across a high forehead, was greying erratically with strands of pale gold streaked with white, giving him a touch of theatricality. His eyes, under brows so defined that they could have been plucked, were intelligent, giving strength to a face which otherwise could have been described as gentle. Dalgliesh was not deceived by this seeming sensitivity; he had known men of force and physical action with the faces of unworldly scholars. Calder-Hale was wearing narrow and creased trousers, a striped shirt with a pale blue tie unusually wide and loosely tied, checked carpet slippers and a long grey cardigan reaching almost to his knees. His apparent anger had been expressed in a high falsetto of irritation which Dalgliesh suspected might be more histrionic than genuine.

“Adam Dalgliesh? I've heard of you.” He made it sound rather like an accusation. “
A Case to Answer and Other Poems.
I don't read much modern poetry, having an unfashionable preference for verses which occasionally scan and rhyme, but at least yours aren't prose rearranged on the page. I take it Muriel knows you're here?”

Ackroyd said, “I signed in. And look, we've got our little stick-on labels.”

“So you have. Silly question. Even you, Ackroyd, wouldn't get beyond the entrance hall if you hadn't. A tyrant of a woman, but conscientious and, I'm told, necessary. Excuse my vehemence just now. I don't usually lose my temper. With any of the Dupaynes it's a waste of energy. Well, don't let me interrupt whatever you're here for.”

He turned to re-enter what was obviously his office. Ackroyd called after him, “What did you tell him, Neville Dupayne? What did you say the museum was for?”

Calder-Hale hesitated and turned. “I told him what he already knew. The Dupayne, like any reputable museum, provides for the safe custody, preservation, recording and display of items of interest from the past for the benefit of scholars and others interested enough to visit. Dupayne seemed to think it should have some kind of social or missionary function. Extraordinary!”

He turned to Ackroyd. “Glad to see you,” and then nodded to Dalgliesh. “And you, of course. There's an acquisition in the picture gallery which might interest you. A small but agreeable water-colour by Roger Fry, bequeathed by one of our regular visitors. Let's hope we're able to keep it.”

Ackroyd asked, “What do you mean by that, James?”

“Oh, you couldn't know, of course. The whole future of this place is in doubt. The lease runs out next month and a new one has been negotiated. The old man drew up a curious family trust. From what I gather, the museum can only continue if all three of his children agree to sign the lease. If it closes it will be a tragedy, but one which I personally have been given no authority to prevent. I'm not a trustee.”

Without another word he turned, went into his office and shut the door firmly.

Ackroyd said, “It will be something of a tragedy for him, I imagine. He's worked here ever since his retirement from the Diplomatic Service. Unpaid, of course, but he gets the use of the office and conducts the favoured few round the galleries. His father and old Max Dupayne had been friends from university. For the old man the museum was a private indulgence, as of course museums tend to be for some of their curators. He didn't exactly resent visitors—some were actually welcomed—but he thought one genuine enquirer was worth fifty casual visitors and acted accordingly. If you didn't know what the Dupayne was and the opening hours, then you didn't need to know. More information might attract casual passers-by wanting to come in out of the rain, hoping they might find something to keep the children quiet for half an hour.”

Dalgliesh said, “But a casual uninformed visitor could enjoy the experience, get a taste for it, discover the fascination of what in deplorable contemporary jargon we are encouraged to call ‘the museum experience.' To that extent a museum is educational. Wouldn't the Dupayne welcome that?”

“In theory, I suppose. If the heirs keep it on they may go down that path, but they haven't got a lot to offer here, have they? The Dupayne is hardly the V and A or the British Museum. If you're interested in the inter-war years—and I am—the Dupayne offers practically all you need. But the 1920s and '30s have limited attraction for the general public. Spend a day and you've seen it all. I think the old man always resented the fact that the most popular room was the Murder Room. Now a museum devoted entirely to murder would do well. I'm surprised someone hasn't set it up. There's the Black Museum at New Scotland Yard and that interesting little collection the River Police have at Wapping, but I can't see either of them being opened to the general public. Admissions strictly by application.”

The Murder Room was large, at least thirty feet long and well lit by three pendant lights, but for Dalgliesh the immediate impression was darkly claustrophobic despite the two easterly and the single south-facing windows. To the right of the ornate fireplace was a second and plain door, obviously permanently shut since it was without either doorknob or handle.

There were glass-fronted display cases along each wall with, below them, shelves for books, presumably dealing with each case, and drawers for relevant papers and reports. Above the cabinets were rows of sepia and black-and-white photographs, many enlarged, some obviously original and starkly explicit. The impression was of a collage of blood and blank dead faces, of murderers and victims united now in death, staring into nothingness.

Together Dalgliesh and Ackroyd made a tour of the room. Here displayed, illustrated and examined, were the most notorious murder cases of the inter-war years. Names, faces and facts swam into Dalgliesh's memory. William Herbert Wallace, younger, surely, than at the time of the trial, an unmemorable but not unappealing head rising from the high stiff collar with its tie knotted like a noose, the mouth a little loose under the moustache, the eyes mild behind steel-rimmed spectacles. Beside it was a press photograph of him shaking hands with his counsel after the appeal, his brother at his side, both rather taller than anyone in the group, Wallace a little stooped. He had dressed carefully for the most appalling ordeal of his life, in a dark suit and the same high collar and narrow tie. The sparse hair, carefully parted, gleamed with brushing. It was a face somehow typical of the meticulous over-conscientious bureaucrat, not perhaps a man whom housewives, paying over their weekly pittance, would invite into the back room for a chat and a cup of tea.

Ackroyd said, “And here's the beautiful Marie-Marguerite Fahmy, who shot her Egyptian playboy husband, in the Savoy Hotel of all places, in 1923. It's remarkable for Edward Marshall Hall's defence. He brought it to a crashing conclusion by pointing the actual gun at the jury, then letting it fall with a clatter while he demanded a not guilty verdict. She did it, of course, but thanks to him she got away with it. He also delivered an objectionably racist speech suggesting that women who marry what he called ‘the Oriental' could expect the kind of treatment she received. Nowadays he'd be in trouble with the judge, the Lord Chancellor and the press. Again, you see, dear boy, we have a crime typical of its age.”

Dalgliesh said, “I thought you were depending on the commission of the crime for your thesis, not the workings of the then criminal justice system.”

“I'm relying on all the circumstances. And here's another example of a successful defence, the Brighton Trunk Murder in 1934. This, my dear Adam, is supposed to be the actual trunk in which Tony Mancini, a twenty-six-year-old waiter and convicted thief, stuffed the body of his prostitute mistress, Violette Kaye. This was the second Brighton trunk murder. The first body, a woman without head and legs, had been found at Brighton railway station eleven days earlier. No one was ever arrested for that crime. Mancini was tried at Lewes Assize Court in December and brilliantly defended by Norman Birkett. Birkett saved his life. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, but in 1976 Mancini confessed. This trunk seems to exert a morbid fascination on visitors.”

It held no fascination for Dalgliesh. Suddenly he felt the need to look at the outside world and walked over to one of the two easterly windows. Below, set among saplings, was a wooden garage and, within eight yards, a small garden shed with a water tap. The boy he had seen in the drive was washing his hands and then rubbing them dry on the side of his trousers. He was recalled to the room by Ackroyd, anxious to demonstrate his last case.

Leading Dalgliesh to the second of the display cabinets, he said, “The Blazing Car Murder, 1930. This is certainly a candidate for my article. You must have heard of it. Alfred Arthur Rouse, a thirty-seven-year-old commercial traveller living in London, was a compulsive womanizer. Apart from committing bigamy, he is supposed to have seduced some eighty women during the course of his travels. He needed to disappear permanently, preferably to be thought dead, so on sixth November he picked up a tramp and on a lonely road in Northamptonshire killed him, threw petrol over him, set the car alight and made off. Unfortunately for him, two young men walking home to their local village saw him and asked him about the blaze. He went on his way, calling out, ‘It looks as though someone is having a bonfire.' That encounter helped to get him arrested. If he'd hidden in the ditch and let them go by he might have got away with it.”