Murder in the Museum. Simon Brett
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once housed an estate worker, and though firmly separated by its own fence, still gave the impression that it was part of the grounds. A rather tart notice by the front gate read: ‘THIS HOUSE IS PRIVATE PROPERTY. VISITORS TO BRACKETTS SHOULD ENTER THROUGH THE CAR PARK 100 YARDS DOWN THE LANE.’ An arrow showed them the way.
Searchers after symbols might have seen that too as an expression of Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’ semi-detached relationship with Bracketts, half-loving and half-resenting the connection.
They could have seen symbolism in his surname as well. The anonymous Mr Bewes, whom Sonia Chadleigh had married in 1945, had been half-erased by a hyphen, so that his son would retain the famous literary name.
As she approached the cottage door on the Tuesday morning, Carole Seddon again reflected on how bossy everyone involved with the place seemed to be. And how meekly she continued to submit to their bossiness. Graham had quickly rejected her suggestion that they should meet on neutral ground, a café or pub somewhere midway between Fethering and South Stapley. ‘No, no, I’ve got all the papers here. You’ll have to come to me.’ But Carole sensed that it was not simply a matter of convenience. Graham Chadleigh-Bewes felt insecure off his own territory. He gained strength from his home environment, so close to the splendour of Bracketts.
It was raining heavily. The brightness of the last few days had been suddenly eclipsed, and the water sheeted off Carole’s precious Burberry.
To her surprise, the cottage door was opened by Belinda Chadleigh, who had only just come in herself. She was swamped in a huge, dripping blue waterproof coat which bore the same ‘Bracketts Volunteer’ labelling and logo that had been on the overalls Carole had seen in the kitchen garden.
At first Carole Seddon’s name seemed to mean nothing to the old lady. The Trustees’ Meeting, during which they had sat at the same table only a few days previously, might as well not have happened.
But when Carole said she’d come to see Graham, a kind of recollection entered the faded eyes. ‘Oh yes, of course. He said someone was coming. He’s very busy, as ever. You know, with the biography. And it’s not just that. You wouldn’t believe all the demands there are on Graham’s time, just the day-to-day dealing with the estate.’
‘I’m sure I wouldn’t,’ said Carole politely, but she was beginning to wonder how much work was actually involved. Belinda Chadleigh’s manner confirmed her previous impression of Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, that he was basically rather lazy, but kept going on about his workload and surrounded himself with people who endorsed his self-image as the impossibly stressed keeper of Esmond Chadleigh’s flame.
His aunt was evidently a willing partner in this conspiracy. The way she behaved suggested that she lived in the cottage, even acted as a kind of housekeeper to the tortured genius who was her nephew. Her offer of tea or coffee, when she ushered Carole into the great man’s presence, was both automatic and practised. Carole said she’d like a coffee, and Graham conceded that he could probably manage another one too. With the subservience of a housemaid from another generation, his aunt went off to make the necessary arrangements.
There was a chaos about Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’ study which might once have been organized, but had long since got completely out of control. He sat on an old wooden swivel chair in a recess backed by small cottage windows, against which that morning the rain rattled relentlessly. In front of him was a structure which logic dictated must be a desk, but the surface was so crowded with papers and the sides so buttressed by books and files that no part of it was visible. All available wall-space was shelved, and books were crammed in double ranks, some hanging precariously off the edges, others stuffed in horizontally over ranks of the unevenly vertical.
Hanging slightly askew from a nail on one shelf end was a small crucifix with an ivory Christ. Atop one of the peaks of the desk’s topography perched an old black telephone with a white dial and nubbly brown fabric-covered wire. There was no sign of fax, photocopier or computer – indeed no technology invented in the last fifty years.
Graham himself, poring importantly over some papers, did not even rise to greet Carole. Having rather grandly given his coffee order to his aunt, he waved his guest to a chair from which she had to remove a pile of flimsy carbon copies. ‘Be careful with that lot,’ he admonished, without looking up. ‘Mustn’t get them out of sequence.’
Sequence? As Carole sat down and looked around the room, she couldn’t see much evidence of sequence anywhere.
After dutifully watching Graham read for a couple of minutes, she decided she’d had enough. He was the one who had summoned her, after all.
‘Could we get on, please?’ she said. ‘I don’t have all day.’
He looked up from his letters with some hurt, as at a philistine interruption of the creative process. His expression was calculated to make her feel like the visitor from Porlock, breaking Coleridge’s flow on Kubla Khan, but if he thought it’d have that effect on Carole Seddon, he’d got the wrong woman.
‘I gather you want to give me some kind of briefing, before I speak to Professor Teischbaum.’
‘In a way.’ Reluctantly, he added the letters he was reading to the refuse tip on his desk. ‘I have to say, I’m not in favour of your meeting this frightful Yank, anyway.’
‘I’m not that keen on it myself, but Gina is very insistent that I should. When I agreed to be a Trustee, I took on certain responsibilities, and this is just one of them. If we clam up completely and refuse to let anyone talk to Professor Teischbaum, she’ll just think we’ve got something to hide.’
‘Yes. I suppose I see the logic of that.’ He didn’t sound convinced. He still reckoned, if the Bracketts hierarchy completely ignored his rival biographer, then she’d go away. ‘But I don’t think Gina should be the one to decide who talks to the woman.’
‘Gina is Director of this organization. I would have thought this was exactly the sort of decision that she should make.’
‘Yes, I know she’s Director . . .’ He dismissed the title as an irrelevance, ‘but she doesn’t really know Bracketts. She hadn’t even read any Esmond before she mugged him up for the job interview. And though she’s absolutely fine as a kind of office manager, she shouldn’t be making decisions about important things like this.’
‘So far as I can gather, her thinking in suggesting that I talk to Professor Teischbaum is that I know relatively little about Bracketts, and therefore won’t be able to give much away.’
Graham Chadleigh-Bewes pulled at his fat lower lip disconsolately. ‘It still should be someone aware of the issues at stake.’
‘You’re not suggesting you should talk to the Professor, are you? Rival biographers meeting at dawn? Who’d have the choice of weapons?’
‘No,’ he replied testily. ‘The obvious person to do it is Sheila.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she knows Bracketts. She knows everything about the place, everything about Esmond. She would see this woman off with no problem at all.’
‘But, as I understand it, Graham, Sheila no longer has any official role at Bracketts. She certainly isn’t the Director. I gather she isn’t even a Trustee.’
‘Oh, that’s just office politics.’
‘What, do you mean she was voted off by the other Trustees?’
‘No, no, no. She went entirely of her own accord. Sheila had been wanting to reduce her commitment to Bracketts for some time. She’s put so much into the place, she wanted to have a bit of time to herself. Who can blame her?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Of course not. So eighteen months ago, she resigned as Director – for which, incidentally, she was never paid – and she became a Trustee. Then after six months, she resigned as a Trustee.’
‘Why?’