Murder in the Museum. Simon Brett
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a professional Director, for heaven’s sake. She said she didn’t want to outstay her welcome, like Margaret Thatcher. She wanted to give whoever took over from her a completely free hand and, as for herself, just withdraw gracefully.’
If Sheila Cartwright’s behaviour at the recent Trustees’ Meeting had been an example of her graceful withdrawal, Carole had even more sympathy for the impossible position into which Gina Locke had been placed. The new Director’s power was only theoretical. Every decision she made was going to be scrutinized – and quite possibly countermanded – by her predecessor.
The Board of Trustees, the regulatory body with the mandate to control such behaviour, seemed to be so awed by – or possibly in love with – Sheila Cartwright, that they gave Gina Locke no support at all. And since the discovery of the skeleton in the kitchen garden, no one even attempted to maintain the illusion that Sheila had taken a back seat.
‘Well,’ said Carole firmly. ‘It is going to be me who talks to Professor Teischbaum, so what do you want me to say to her?’
Whether Graham might have argued his point further was impossible to know, because they were interrupted by the arrival of his aunt with the coffee. And not just coffee, either. As well as the silver pot and bone china cups on the tray – with a tray-cloth! – there was an untouched circular sponge cake whose midriff revealed a jam and cream filling. Side-plates and silver cake forks completed the layout.
In the speed with which this apparition distracted Graham Chadleigh-Bewes from their conversation lay the explanation for his spreading girth. His Aunt Belinda not only pampered his ego and kept house for him; she also saw it as her duty to fatten him up. And the gleam in Graham’s eye showed that he loved being fattened up. The arrival of the sponge cake crystallized a vague feeling that Carole had formed about the man – that he was asexual, driven by pique rather than passion, that even his enthusiasm for the works of Esmond Chadleigh was in some way automatic. But there was nothing half-hearted or unspontaneous about his love of food.
Carole refused the offer of a slice. She had only had breakfast a couple of hours before and, anyway, didn’t ever eat between meals. Having resisted the biscuit-nibbling culture of the Civil Service all her working life, she wasn’t going to relax her standards in retirement.
Her host had no such scruples. His ageing face looked ever more babyish as he watched his Aunt Belinda make one incision in the powdered surface of the sponge and remove the knife. Then she went through a little pantomime of moving the knife round the arc to find exactly the size of slice he favoured. An angle of twenty-five degrees was condemned as ‘Too mean’, and her overreaction of moving the knife round to forty-five degrees prompted a squeal of ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Auntie – I’ll explode!’ But the slice he ended up with was still a pretty substantial one.
Carole found the display a little unwholesome, because it was clearly such a well-established routine. The two of them did this every day – possibly at every meal – the elderly woman playing mothering games with the middle-aged man-child. Carole found herself wondering what had happened to Graham’s real mother, and how long Belinda had been looking after her nephew.
As soon as he’d got his slice of cake, Graham Chadleigh-Bewes said, with some brusqueness, ‘Now you must go, Auntie. Carole and I have got important things to discuss.’
The old lady, unoffended, reached for the tray. ‘Shall I take this with me?’
‘No,’ her nephew replied hastily. ‘I . . . or my guest . . . might want some more . . . coffee.’
The coy exchange of looks between them made Carole realize that this was an extension of their game. Aunt Belinda threatened to take Graham’s cake away every morning. Every morning he stopped her – and no doubt later helped himself to a second slice. Carole felt increasingly uncomfortable as, with a little chortle, Belinda Chadleigh left the room.
‘Now where were we?’ asked Graham, as though he were a serious executive in a serious business meeting.
‘We had just agreed,’ replied Carole, removing the possibility of further argument, ‘that since I’m going to see Professor Teischbaum, you were going to give me some stuff for her.’
He looked puzzled. His recollection had not got their conversation to quite the same point. But Carole didn’t give him time to respond – and his mouth was too full of sponge cake to make a very effective remonstrance, anyway.
‘That’s what you mentioned on the phone, Graham. That’s why I’m here. You said you wanted to give me some papers for Professor Teischbaum.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘In fact, to use your precise words, you said you wanted to “fob her off with some unimportant stuff”.’
Graham Chadleigh-Bewes chuckled at his own cunning. ‘Exactly. I’ve got it all ready here.’ Clearly he’d given up on Plan A, persuading Carole to cede her meeting with Marla Teischbaum to Sheila Cartwright, and he was moving on to Plan B.
Given the chaos on his desk, it was surprising how quickly he found the documents he was looking for. And how neatly they were ordered in a cardboard file.
He flicked through the contents. Carole could see holograph and typewritten letters. ‘These are only copies,’ he said. ‘Obviously we wouldn’t let her have the originals. Original Esmond Chadleigh material is like gold-dust. My mother and Aunt Belinda wouldn’t let a single scrap of paper be destroyed when he died.’
‘Not even stuff that wasn’t to his credit?’
Graham Chadleigh-Bewes looked at her sharply, piqued like the baby whose rattle has been taken away. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. There were no secrets in Esmond Chadleigh’s life.’
Oh no, thought Carole. Then that makes him unique in the history of the human race. But she didn’t pursue the point. ‘So all this material I’m passing on to Professor Teischbaum is completely useless, is it?’
‘By no means. And they’re documents I know she won’t have seen, because they’re from our archive here at Bracketts.’
‘Very generous of you all of a sudden,’ she observed.
Once again he glowed at his own cleverness. ‘Oh yes,’ he agreed, ‘very generous.’ He tapped the file. ‘Useful stuff. No biographer could write anything about Esmond without access to this.’
‘But equally, I assume, all pretty uncontroversial.’
‘Hm?’
‘Material that reinforces the accepted image of Esmond Chadleigh, just a further illustration of information that could be obtained from other sources.’
Graham nodded complacently. ‘That is exactly right. Sheila and I worked out a strategy on this, you see. If we give the Teischbaum woman – I might almost call her “The Teischbaum Claimant” . . .’ He chuckled at his own verbal dexterity. The play on words about a famous Victorian fraudster, ‘the Tichborne Claimant’, was exactly the sort of joke to tickle Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’ fancy – obscure, academic, and completely pointless.
‘If we give her this lot, there’s no way she can accuse the Esmond Chadleigh estate of being uncooperative. And when we refuse to give her anything else, we won’t appear to be unreasonable.’
Carole took the file. ‘From the way she sounded on the phone, I don’t think she’ll be satisfied with this.’
‘That is her problem, not ours. That is all the documentation that will be granted to . . . The Teischbaum Claimant.’ He was rather pleased with the nickname that he had coined, and would undoubtedly be using it on many other occasions.
‘And what about the family?’ asked Carole.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I would think it quite likely that Professor Teischbaum would ask to talk to you . . . to your Aunt Belinda, I imagine