The Murder Room (36 page)

Professor Ballantyne, the elder of the two male visitors, said, “The counsels of the heart.” He took out a notebook and the group waited patiently while, peering at the printed service, he wrote down the last sentence of the prayer.

Ackroyd had less to say about the Rouse case, concentrating on the technical evidence about the possible cause of the fire and saying nothing about Rouse's explanation of a bonfire. Kate wondered whether this was prudence or sensitivity. She hadn't expected Ackroyd to mention the similarity with the Dupayne murder and he managed to avoid it with some skill. Kate knew that no one outside those most concerned had been told of the mysterious motorist or of how his words to Tally Clutton had so uncannily echoed those of Rouse. She glanced at Caroline Dupayne and James Calder-Hale during Ackroyd's careful recital; neither betrayed a flicker of particular interest.

They moved on to the Brighton Trunk Murder. It was a case less interesting to Ackroyd and one which it was more difficult to justify as typical of its age. He concentrated on the trunk.

“This was precisely the kind of tin trunk used by the poor when they travelled. It would have held virtually everything the prostitute Violette Kaye owned, and in the end it was her coffin. Her lover, Tony Mancini, was tried at Lewes Assize Court in December 1934 and acquitted after a brilliant defence by Mr. Norman Birkett. It was one of the few cases where the forensic pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, had his evidence successfully challenged. The case is an example of what is important in a trial for murder: the quality and reputation of the Defence Counsel. Norman Birkett—later Lord Birkett of Ulverston—had a remarkably beautiful and persuasive voice, a most potent weapon. Mancini owed his life to Norman Birkett and we trust that he was appropriately grateful. Before he died, Mancini confessed that he had killed Violette Kaye. Whether he intended murder is another matter.”

The little group surveyed the trunk, Kate thought, more from politeness than genuine interest. The sourness of the air seemed to have intensified. She wished that the party could move on. The Murder Room, and indeed the whole museum, had oppressed her from the moment of her first entry. There was something alien to her spirit about its careful reconstruction of the past. For years she had tried to throw off her own history and she resented and was half afraid of the clarity and the awful inevitability with which it was now returning month by month. The past was dead, finished with, unalterable. Nothing about it could be compensated for and surely nothing fully understood. These sepia photographs which surrounded her had no more life than the paper on which they were printed. Those long-dead men and women had suffered and caused suffering and were gone. What extraordinary impulse had led the founder of the Dupayne to display them with so much care? Surely they had no more relevance to their age than had those photographs of old cars, the clothes, the kitchens, the artefacts of the past. Some of these people were buried in quicklime and some in churchyards, but they might just as well have been dumped together in a common grave for all that mattered now. She thought,
How can I live safely except in this present moment, the moment which, even as I measure it, becomes the past?
The uneasy conviction she had felt when leaving Mrs. Faraday's house returned. She couldn't safely confront those early years or nullify their power by being a traitor to her past.

They were about to move on when the door opened and Muriel Godby appeared. Caroline Dupayne was standing close to the trunk and Muriel, a little flushed, moved up beside her. Ackroyd, about to introduce the next case, paused and they waited.

The deliberate silence and the circle of faces turned towards her disconcerted Muriel. She had obviously hoped to deliver her message discreetly. She said, “Lady Swathling is on the telephone for you, Miss Dupayne. I told her you were engaged.”

“Then tell her I'm still engaged. I'll ring her back in half an hour.”

“She says it's urgent, Miss Dupayne.”

“Oh very well, I'll come.”

She turned to go, Muriel Godby at her side, and the group again turned their attention to Conrad Ackroyd. And at that moment it happened. A mobile phone began ringing, shattering the silence, as startling and ominous as a fire alarm. There was no doubt from where it came. All their eyes turned to the trunk. For Kate the few seconds before anyone moved or spoke seemed to stretch into minutes, a suspension of time in which she saw the group frozen into a tableau, every limb as fixed as if they were dummies. The tinny ringing continued.

Then Calder-Hale spoke, his voice deliberately light. “Someone seems to be playing tricks. Juvenile but surprisingly effective.”

It was Muriel Godby who acted. Scarlet-faced, she burst out with “Stupid, stupid!” and, before anyone could move, dashed to the trunk, knelt and lifted the lid.

The stench rose into the room, overpowering as a gas. Kate, at the back of the group, had only a glimpse of a hunched torso and a spread of yellow hair before Muriel's hands fell from the lid and it dropped back with a low clang. Her legs were shaking, her feet scrabbling at the floor as if she were trying to rise, but the strength had gone out of her body. She lay across the trunk making stifled noises, shuddering groans and pitiful squeals like a distressed puppy. The ringing had stopped. Kate heard her muttering, “Oh no! Oh no!” For a few seconds she too was rooted. Then quietly she came forward to take command and do her job.

She turned to the group, her voice studiously calm, and said, “Stand back please.” Moving to the trunk she put her arms round Muriel's waist and tried to lift her. She herself was strong-limbed, but the woman was heavily built and a dead weight. Benton-Smith came to help and together they got Muriel to her feet and half carried her to one of the armchairs.

Kate turned to Caroline Dupayne. “Is Mrs. Clutton in her cottage?”

“I suppose so. She may be. I really don't know.”

“Then take Miss Godby to the ground-floor office here and look after her, will you? Someone will be with you as soon as possible.”

She turned to Benton-Smith. “Get the key from Miss Dupayne and check that the front door is locked. See that it remains locked. No one is to leave at present. Then ring Commander Dalgliesh and come back here.”

Calder-Hale had been silent. He was standing a little apart, his eyes watchful. Turning to him, Kate said, “Will you and Mr. Ackroyd take your group back to your study, please? We'll be needing their names and their addresses in this country, but after that they'll be free to leave.”

The little group of visitors stood in stunned bewilderment. Scanning their faces, it seemed to Kate that only one of them, the elderly Professor Ballantyne, who had been standing with his wife nearest the trunk, had actually glimpsed the body. His skin looked like grey parchment and, putting out his arm, he drew his wife to him.

Mrs. Ballantyne said nervously, “What is it? Was there an animal trapped in there? Is it a dead cat?”

Her husband said, “Come along, dear,” and they joined the small group moving towards the door.

Muriel Godby was calm now. She got to her feet and said with some dignity, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It was the shock. And it was so horrible. I know it's stupid, but for a second I thought it was Violette Kaye.” She looked piteously at Caroline Dupayne. “Forgive me, forgive me. It was the shock.”

Ignoring her, Caroline Dupayne hesitated, then moved towards the trunk, but Kate barred the way. She said again, more firmly, “Please take Miss Godby to the office. I suggest you make a hot drink, tea or coffee. We're phoning Commander Dalgliesh and he'll join you as soon as he can. It may be some time.”

There were a few seconds of silence in which Kate half-expected that Caroline would protest. Instead she merely nodded and turned to Benton-Smith. “The front door keys are in the key cupboard. I'll let you have them if you come down with us.”

Kate was alone. The silence was absolute. She had kept on her jacket and now felt in the pocket for her gloves, then remembered that they were in the compartment of the car. But she did have a large clean handkerchief. There was no hurry, AD would be here soon with their murder bags, but she needed at least to open the trunk. But not at this moment. It might be important to have a witness; she would do nothing until Benton-Smith returned. She stood motionless, looking down at the trunk. Benton-Smith could only have been absent for a couple of minutes but they stretched into a limbo of waiting in which nothing in the room seemed real except that battered receptacle of horror.

And now at last he was at her side. He said, “Miss Dupayne wasn't too happy about being told where she was to wait. The front door was already locked and I've got the keys. What about the visitors, ma'am? Is there any point in holding them?”

“No. The sooner they're off the premises the better. Go to Calder-Hale's office, will you, take their names and addresses and say something reassuring—if you can think of anything. Don't admit that we've found a body, although I don't imagine they're in much doubt.”

Benton-Smith said, “Should I make sure there's nothing useful they can tell us, nothing they've noticed?”

“It's unlikely. She's been dead some time and they've only been in the museum for an hour. Get rid of them with as much tact and as little fuss as possible. We'll question Mr. Calder-Hale later. Mr. Ackroyd should leave with them, but I doubt whether you'll shift Calder-Hale. Come back here as soon as you've seen them out.”

This time the wait was longer. Although the trunk was closed, it seemed to Kate that the smell intensified with every second. It brought back other cases, other corpses, and yet was subtly different, as if the body were proclaiming its uniqueness even in death. Kate could hear subdued voices. Benton-Smith had closed the door of the Murder Room behind him, muffling all sound except a high explanatory voice which could have been Ackroyd's and, briefly, the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Again she waited, her eyes on the trunk. Was it, she wondered, actually the one that had held Violette Kaye's body? Up until now, whether or not it was genuine, it had held no particular interest for her. But now it stood, black and a little battered, seeming to challenge her with its ominous secrets. Above it the eyes of Tony Mancini stared defiantly into hers. It was a brutal face, the eyes darkly fierce, the large mouth obstinately set in a stubble of hair; but then the photographer hadn't set out to make him look appealing. Tony Mancini had died in his bed because Norman Birkett had defended him, just as Alfred Arthur Rouse had been hanged because Norman Birkett had appeared for the Crown.

Benton-Smith had returned. He said, “Pleasant people. They made no trouble and they have nothing to tell except that they had noticed the stale smell in the room. God knows what stories they'll take back to Toronto. Mr. Ackroyd went under protest. He's avid with curiosity. Not much hope of his keeping quiet, I should say. I couldn't shift Mr. Calder-Hale. He insists there are things he needs to do in his office. Mr. Dalgliesh was in a meeting but he's leaving now. He should be here in twenty minutes or so. Do you want to wait, ma'am?”

“No,” said Kate. “I don't want to wait.”

She wondered why it was so important that it was she who opened the trunk. She squatted and, with her right hand swathed in the handkerchief, slowly lifted the lid and threw it back. Her arm seemed to have grown heavy but its upward movement was as graceful and formal as if this action were part of a ceremonial unveiling. The stink rose up so strongly that her breath caught in her throat. It brought with it, as always, confused emotions of which only shock, anger and a sad realization of mortality were recognizable. These were replaced by resolution. This was her job. This was what she had been trained for.

The girl was crammed into the trunk like an overgrown foetus, the knees drawn up together, her bent head almost touching them over folded arms. The impression was that she had been neatly packed like an object into the cramped space. Her face wasn't visible, but strands of bright yellow hair lay delicate as silk over her legs and shoulders. She was wearing a cream trouser suit and short boots in fine black leather. The right hand lay curved above her left upper arm. Despite the long nails lacquered in a vivid red and the heavy gold ring on the middle finger of the right hand, it looked as small and vulnerable as the hand of a child.

Benton-Smith said, “No handbag and I can't see the mobile phone. It's probably in one of the pockets of her jacket. At least it will tell us who she is.”

Kate said, “We won't touch anything else. We'll wait for Mr. Dalgliesh.”

Benton-Smith bent lower. “What are those dead flowers sprinkled over her hair, ma'am?”

The small flowerlets still held a trace of purple and Kate recognized the shape of the two leaves. She said, “They are—or were—African violets.”

2

Dalgliesh was relieved that Miles Kynaston, when telephoned at his teaching hospital, had been found beginning a lecture and was able to postpone it and be immediately available. As one of the world's most eminent pathologists, he might well have been already crouched over some malodorous corpse in a distant field, or called to a case overseas. Other Home Office pathologists could be called, and all were perfectly competent, but Miles Kynaston had always been Dalgliesh's pathologist of choice. It was interesting, he thought, that two men who knew so little of the other's private life, had no common interest except in their work and who seldom saw each other except at the site of a dead and often putrefying body, should meet always with the comfortable assurance of instinctive understanding and respect. Fame and the notoriety of some highly publicized cases hadn't made Kynaston a prima donna. He came promptly when called, eschewed the graveside humour which some pathologists and detectives employed as an antidote to horror or disgust, produced autopsy reports which were a model of clarity and good prose, and in the witness-box was listened to with respect. He was indeed in danger of being regarded as infallible. The memory of the great Bernard Spilsbury was still green. It was never healthy for the criminal justice system when an expert witness had only to step into the witness-box to be believed.