Depths of Deceit (14 page)

‘It’s horrible, sir.’

‘Yes, it is, and that’s why we’ve got to get on with the business of bringing this man to justice. I’m going to come out in the open, now, Sergeant, and name that man, without beating about the bush. No more ifs and buts. The ruthless and cruel killer of Gregory Walsh and Abraham Barnes is Professor Roderick Ainsworth! To my way of thinking, there can be no doubt
whatever
about that. But we’re a long way from proving it, Jack, and there’s a lot to be done yet.’

‘Have you a plan in mind, sir?’ asked Knollys.

‘Yes, I have. First, I want you to reopen your investigation of Gregory Walsh’s death. I’m still not clear
why
he was silenced. What did he know? Go and find that young woman of his – Thelma, wasn’t it? – and talk to her and her new gentleman friend. Find out if Walsh had a particular friend, someone who he might have confided in. He didn’t seem to have told Thelma very much, and after all, he didn’t appear to be very welcome in the family laboratory, did he? That man Craven was jealous of him.’

‘That’s very true, sir,’ said Knollys. ‘I’ll go to Hayward’s Court first thing tomorrow. What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going down by train to a place called Melton Castra, in Essex,’ said Box. ‘There’s a lady living there who evidently knows a lot of interesting things about Professor Roderick Ainsworth. She’s his second cousin, apparently, and an acquaintance of Mr Mackharness’s old friend Lord Maurice Vale Rose. Lord Maurice has given me a letter of introduction to this lady – well, he
actually
gave it to Old Growler to give to me, if you see what I mean.’

‘I wonder how it is that Mr Mackharness is so friendly with a lord?’

‘Well, Sergeant, whatever else Old Growler is, he’s definitely a gentleman. He’s out of the top drawer, all right, is our guvnor. Lord Maurice is the younger brother of the Marquess of Killeen,
and the two of them were together in the Crimea. That’s the bond that links them. They were both “stormed at with shot and shell”, and were glad to survive.’

‘Well, I never knew that, sir. Thanks for telling me. Shall I give them a receipt for this carpet bag, and lug it back to the Rents?’

‘Yes, Sergeant, do that. And then tomorrow, you and I will embark on what I hope will be the final leg of our journey to bring the killer of Gregory Walsh and Abraham Barnes to justice.’

Melton Castra proved to be a very ancient, straggling village of some size, with many picturesque houses adorned with the
particular
kind of pargeted plaster work found throughout Essex. Arnold Box booked a room for the night at a hostelry called The Sun Inn, and set out to interview Mrs Warwick Newman, the lady known to Lord Maurice Vale Rose, Superintendent Mackharness’s old friend.

He walked to the end of the village street, and saw an old church set in a swathe of mature woodland, above which rose what looked like the extensive excavations of some prehistoric British archaeological site. A signpost placed at the entrance to a rustic path told him that it led to Melton Church. After a few minutes’ walk he emerged from the trees into a clearing, where he saw a stone church with a squat tower and massive carved porch. It stood in an overgrown churchyard, bright with summer flowers, its many gravestones almost hidden by long, untrimmed grass. Both church and churchyard looked as though they had fallen asleep long ago, and would never waken.

Facing the church was an old Tudor house, its timbers twisted, and its roof covered with lichen. This, then, would be the Old Rectory, home of Professor Roderick Ainsworth’s second cousin. Arnold Box walked through a riotous garden until he reached the house, and knocked on the black oak door.

‘Lord Maurice tells me here in his letter,’ said Mrs Warwick
Newman, ‘that you want to hear about Roddy Ainsworth’s youthful days. He doesn’t say why, and I’m not sure that I want to
know
why. Roddy and I are second cousins, but I’m much older than he is – I think there’s fourteen years between us. You’ll
understand
, I think, that I have not seen him for many years. We were not close, you know, though I liked him well enough. It would have been impossible not to like Roderick Ainsworth when he was a boy.’

Box listened to Mrs Warwick Newman’s well-enunciated and silvery voice as he tried to form an estimate of her character. The parlour in which she had received him was well furnished, and everything was highly polished. A soothing old grandfather clock ticked away against one wall. Books and magazines were
everywhere
, but carefully arranged so as not to create any kind of disharmony. This lady believed in organization and neatness. No doubt her mind functioned in a way that was reflected in the arrangements of her home.

Mrs Warwick Newman was a woman well over seventy, with grey hair and rather faded blue eyes, that regarded Box
appraisingly
through gold-rimmed glasses. She was very well dressed in the fashions of the seventies, and Box realized that in addition to the elderly maid who had opened the door to him, she probably kept a personal maid to help her maintain her love of
fastidiousness
.

‘Now, Mr Box,’ she said, ‘where shall I begin? Roderick, as you know, belongs to the Ainsworth family of shipbuilders up in Newcastle. They were related both to my late husband’s family and to mine, and from the time that Roddy was fourteen, he came down here every year to stay with us for a few weeks in July and August. I was nearing thirty when he first came, and I immediately assumed the role of an admonitory elder sister.’

‘Did you have to do a lot of admonishing, ma’am?’ asked Box. His hostess laughed.

‘Well, he was a lively boy, you see, the type of boy who falls out
of trees, or breaks glasshouse windows – he was a very
physical
boy, if you can understand what I mean. He was very
good-looking,
and unfailingly cheerful and, despite his family’s wealth, he mixed easily with the local boys. They went fishing together, and encouraged each other in all kinds of boyish mischief….’

Mrs Warwick Newman paused for a while, and Box watched her as she began to look more closely into the past.

‘He had to have his own way, you know,’ she said at last. ‘My parents were alive then, of course – it was long before I married – and they tended to indulge him. I think they had been disappointed in having only one child, and that a girl into the bargain –
me
, you know! But I tried to teach him that the world had not been made entirely for him to bustle in. “Yes, Bella”, he’d say, and look
suitably
crestfallen, but he was never sincere in his repentance.’

‘And did he always get his own way with the village lads?’ asked Box.

His hostess threw him a shrewd glance of understanding.

‘He did not,’ she replied. ‘Boys of any class won’t put up with anything like that. There were fights from time to time – quite ugly, bloody affairs, as only boys can manage. When these fights occurred, it would take a couple of grown men to pull Roddy away from his opponent. Thank goodness that he was only here for part of each summer! All that belligerence, I’m glad to say, stopped once he’d passed his sixteenth birthday, and he began to realize that there were other things in the world than fighting, playing village cricket, and so on.’

‘What other things did he discover, ma’am? This is all very interesting.’

‘He discovered the old earthworks above the village, Mr Box, and from that moment, I think he dedicated his whole life to archaeology. He was still only a youth, but he discovered a horde of Neolithic flint weapons up there on the ridge. It caused quite a stir, and brought Roddy to the attention of Mr Marcus Kent, the antiquarian, who lived some three miles from here. He took a
great interest in Roddy, helped him to classify his finds, and lent him a quantity of books on prehistory, all of which he devoured. His personal collection of artefacts grew to quite impressive proportions, and his father realized that the boy had a promising future as an academic archaeologist.’

‘I imagine that was unusual for an industrialist, ma’am,’ Box ventured.

‘I suppose it was, Inspector, but Roderick’s father was a man of broad vision -perhaps that’s why his shipyards prospered as well as they did. When Roddy was eighteen, his father made him
experience
the business at first-hand, and he spent three years in all departments of the yard. Roddy was more than willing to do this, as he knew that a successful business would furnish all his needs for the future.

‘When the three years were up, Roddy entered upon what I call his academic phase. He entered London University as an
undergraduate
, and progressed from there. His rise was rapid, and his excavations, both in Britain and abroad, were of a high order. The rest of Roderick Ainsworth’s career, Inspector, is public
knowledge
.’

Mrs Warwick Newman stopped speaking, and sat back in her chair. The old grandfather clock ticked away. Through the open window, Box could hear the sultry murmur of bees in the garden. She’s waiting for me to challenge her story, he thought. Unless I do, she won’t tell me the whole of it.

‘I think there’s more to Mr Ainsworth’s early life than you’ve told me, ma’am,’ he said, and fancied that the elderly lady gave an almost imperceptible sigh of relief.

‘You’re right, Mr Box,’ she said. ‘There is something that I haven’t told you, and it’s this: Roderick Ainsworth couldn’t keep his hands off other people’s goods. The difference between “thine” and “mine” was very blurred where he was concerned. He’d help himself to small sums of money lying around the house, or filch food from the larder, always from the back of a dim shelf,
so the loss wasn’t immediately noticed. Light-fingered, was my young cousin.’

‘And it led to trouble?’ Box hinted.

‘It did. How clever of you to realize that. Certain items began to disappear from Mr Marcus Kent’s house – medieval coins, old Celtic brooches – and it soon became obvious that they must have been purloined by Roddy. He hotly denied the suggestion, but it was all bluster. Mr Kent broke off all relations with the family, and soon afterwards Roddy’s father called him back to Newcastle. He was nineteen by that time. He has never visited us here at Melton Castra since.’

Mrs Warwick Newman rose from here chair, and motioned to Box to follow her.

‘Enough of Roderick for the moment, Inspector,’ she said. ‘Let me show you over our ancient church of St John the Baptist. Its foundations date back to the sixth century, and there’s a lot of surviving Norman work. It’s well worth a visit.’

They left the old rectory, and crossed the lane to the church. It was a hot, intensely quiet day, and Box could hear the crickets singing among the long grass growing up between the graves. They passed under the great carved porch and descended three steps into the cool, gloomy nave. Box followed his hostess as she walked slowly up towards the sanctuary, stopping occasionally to point out some carving or unusual feature that had survived from pre-Reformation times.

When she came to the chancel steps, Mrs Warwick Newman stopped, and pointed to a tall empty niche let into the north wall of the choir. Above it was an inscription in convoluted blackletter, painted on to the stone wall in a fanciful scroll. Box was no expert in such matters, but he could tell that the inscription was not of ancient date.

‘Can you read what that says, Mr Box?’ asked Mrs Warwick Newman. ‘It’s not in Latin, for a change. It was put up there on the wall in 1752.’

Box peered up at the scroll, and slowly read the inscription.

‘“I am that Great Giant, Old Bobbadil, who guardeth the folk of Melton”. And who was this Old Bobbadil, ma’am?’

‘He was a piece of sculpture found buried beneath the chapel floor at Sir Lewis Dangerfield’s house near Saffron Walden. He declared that it was Old Bobbadil, a giant-figure that features in many local legends and epic poetry in this corner of Essex. Dangerfield was patron of the living here at St John the Baptist’s, and had the thing brought here and fixed into that niche. Before the Reformation, it had contained a shrine to the Baptist.’

‘But Old Bobbadil’s gone now, ma’am.’

‘Yes, Mr Box, he’s gone. He stood there, in that niche, guarding the folk of Melton Castra, for one hundred and thirty-seven years. And then, in 1889, he was stolen. Some villains came in the night, forced entry to the church, and carried Old Bobbadil off. No one ever found out who did the deed, and the rector, who’s what I call a black gown and Bible man, was relieved to see the thing gone from his church. He came here in 1880, found candles and surplices in use, and initiated a second Reformation. He was no friend of Old Giant Bobbadil.’

Mrs Warwick Newman treated Box to an amused smile, and led the way out of the gloom of the church and back to the bright comfort of the Old Rectory.

‘I have an old photograph of Bobbadil somewhere,’ she said, when they had settled once again in their chairs. ‘As far as I know, it’s the only image of the thing extant. It was taken in 1858 by the rector in those days, Canon Julian Rodgers. I’ll fetch it for you.’

Why has she drawn my attention to this old country legend? thought Box, when his hostess had quitted the room. She’s gone as far as she dare in talking about young Roderick’s indiscretions, but she’s given me a lot to think about. Old coins, brooches…. Did Ainsworth’s light fingers run to acquiring post-Reformation chalices, ancient Roman artefacts, Mithraic seals?

‘Here you are, Mr Box,’ said his hostess, suddenly returning.
‘It’s rather faded, but you can see Old Bobbadil quite clearly, standing proudly in his niche.’

She placed the old photograph in Box’s hands, and he studied the likeness of the legendary giant that had been wished upon the village by an eighteenth-century enthusiast for such things.

Box found himself looking at an emotionless, almost tranquil face, surrounded by a halo of curls, and topped with a leathern cap. Painted on to a slab of stone roughly resembling the Isle of Wight, it was, beyond all doubt, the same image, and painted on to the same piece of stone, that he had first seen in the Mithraeum at Clerkenwell.