Depths of Deceit (16 page)

‘Would that priest have been the Reverend Father Brooks, of Highgate?'

‘So you know him? Then I expect you know what I mean by irregularities?'

‘I do, sir. And if you will confide to me your thoughts about the Mithraeum, I believe I can tell you something that is almost certainly unknown to you. What made you think that the Clerkenwell Mithraeum was not all that it seemed?'

Sir Charles Wayneflete settled himself back in his chair, and motioned towards the little table drawn up to the fireplace. His old friend the major rose, and mixed him a whisky and soda, which he placed into his hand. Sir Charles sipped the drink slowly, at the same time fixing his eyes on Box. Eventually, he spoke.

‘There was never the slightest suggestion in the academic
journals
of a Roman temple in Clerkenwell, Box, but there
was
talk of a Roman grain store that had been preserved somewhere in the neighbourhood. It had been mentioned in an eleventh-century manuscript kept at a place called Morpeth, and there were
fragmentary
references to it in a collection of thirteenth-century merchants' correspondence preserved in Dr Lewis's Library at Lambeth.

‘I wondered whether Ainsworth had not stumbled upon that grain store at the time that he discovered the Clerkenwell Treasure, and saw possibilities in its future exploitation. It would have been like him, you see. He is an expert archaeologist, but he has the soul of a charlatan.'

‘And how would he have exploited that place, sir?' asked Box. ‘What do you think he did? All this is in complete confidence. This conversation will not be written up in my notebook, or that of Sergeant Knollys.'

‘I'm glad to hear it,' said the old baronet drily. ‘I think Ainsworth must have contrived to assemble a collection of quite genuine pieces of Roman sculpture and incorporated them into something resembling a pagan altar. I remember how he claimed
to have found various artefacts – coins, and so on – and that he was careful to have them validated by unimpeachable experts. I don't doubt their validity, but where did they come from? I couldn't fathom how he got all that stuff down there into the old Roman vault, but once it was open briefly to the public, I saw one way of finding out if the whole thing was a fraud or not.'

‘The mortar between the pieces.'

‘Ah! You know about that? Well, of course you do. Yes, the mortar. I hit upon the idea of secretly procuring samples of the mortar between the fragments, and then hiring an expert in such matters to analyse them. The results, I am convinced, would have been conclusive. The next thing I did—'

‘Would you pause there, if you please, Sir Charles,' said Box, holding up a hand. ‘Let me see if I can piece together from my own thoughts and certain knowledge what you did. First, you told your secretary Crale to go to the Mithraeum at some early time in the morning, and take scrapings from between the separate pieces from which the reredos was created. This would have been in early July.'

‘Quite right, Inspector! How clever of you!'

‘Crale did as he was bid, and returned with four samples—'

‘
Three
samples. It was I who added a fourth one, scraped from an old wall in my rear garden here in Lowndes Square. That was a sort of private test, you see. I wondered what an analytical chemist would have made of it. Anyway, Crale brought back those samples, and I added my fourth sample to the collection. Then I wrote to a professional man who had been of great service to me over twenty years ago in determining the age of some stone
footings
which I had unearthed at a dig in Essex. Damn it, man, you'll know who I'm talking about. It was Mr Abraham Barnes, who was recently slaughtered in his own house at Carshalton. His murder was disguised as a ritual sacrifice, wasn't it? What rot! I can imagine who did it, right enough—'

‘Charles!'

‘Oh, don't worry, Josh, I'll not risk slander over such a serious matter. Anyway, Inspector, I sent off those samples to Mr Barnes, knowing that he had a great interest in cement and its history. I didn't tell him why I wanted the work done, you understand. I told him that it was part of an intellectual exercise.'

Sir Charles Wayneflete sighed, and shook his head rather mournfully.

‘And then, Box,' he said, ‘I heard nothing from Barnes, and when I read of his death in the papers, I took fright. Cause and effect, you know. I assume that he didn't live long enough to undertake my commission, and that his executors would dispose of the samples as something poor Barnes had just hoarded out of curiosity. I don't suppose I'll ever know what became of those scrapings. Damn me, what a mess it all is! I should have left well alone— What's this you're showing me? Good God!'

While the old baronet was talking, Box had produced the old photograph that Mrs Warwick Newman had given him during his visit to Melton Castra.

‘So I was right!' cried Wayneflete. ‘The fellow assembled various obscure pieces of genuine Roman work, cemented them together, and set them up in that old Roman grain store. I wonder where he got that head of Mithras? And the other pieces, come to that. And how did he put them all together without anyone seeing him?'

‘I don't know, sir,' said Box, ‘though I mean to find out. And now, here's something else that will please you. These four packets contain the samples that you sent to Mr Barnes. He in turn sent them to a man called Bonner, who analysed them, and returned them on 23 July. For some reason, Mr Barnes delayed sending the results to you, and he died before he could do so. But as you can see, Mr Bonner, the chemist, inscribed each envelope with a brief description.'

‘So he has!' cried the old baronet. ‘Really, Inspector, you've excelled yourself in this business. Let's see what they say.
“Definitely Ancient Roman. Lime, Sand, Water.” That was the first sample, which Crale told me he'd scraped from between two slabs of stone near the base of the reredos. “Modern, i.e. this century” – Crale told me that that was taken from around the section containing the head of Mithras that you've just shown me.

‘“Definitely Ancient Roman”: Crale scraped that from between two of the dressed stones constituting the right-hand wall of the vault. That confirms my belief that the vault itself is indubitably Roman. And finally, “Not Roman, Probably 17th century.” That was the sample which I scraped from my garden wall here, in Lowndes Square. I know for a fact that it was built just after 1605. So there you have it, Mr Box. Professor Roderick Ainsworth's Mithraeum is a monstrous fraud!

‘It's very interesting, you know,' he continued. ‘Although Ainsworth's reredos was made up of separate fragments, some of the fragments themselves must have been damaged and repaired in antiquity. I refer to the two slabs of stone near the base of the monument. The mortar joining them together was indubitably Roman. A fascinating puzzle, Inspector!'

Major Baverstock, who had made no attempt to join in the conversation, suddenly asked a question.

‘What will you do now, Mr Box? This business is bound to cause a great scandal.'

‘Well, sir,' said Box, ‘this kind of academic fraud is not strictly a crime, unless the perpetrator profits from it financially. Academic reputations are not my concern. What
does
concern me is murder, and the motives for murder. So I have a few more
questions
to ask, and then Sergeant Knollys here will have something to say.'

Box turned once more to Sir Charles Wayneflete.

‘Will you tell me, sir, when Mr Crale left your employ? Did you dismiss him?'

Box saw how Sir Charles Wayneflete glanced uneasily at his old
friend Major Baverstock. Perhaps the two men had disagreed over the fate of Sir Charles's secretary.

‘I received a letter,' said Sir Charles, ‘saying that Crale had been pawning things of mine at a shop in the City Road, and that he'd done the same kind of thing when working for a previous employer. The letter mentioned some of the items – an old silver cruet, a couple of Meissen figurines. It was signed “A
Well-wisher
”.'

‘An anonymous letter…. What did you do about it, sir?' asked Box.

‘Mrs Craddock looked for those things, and found that they were, indeed, missing. I confronted Crale with the letter, but he denied all knowledge of the thefts. He was very calm and
dignified
about it, I must say, and he tendered his resignation with immediate effect. That was on the 28 July. He left the house the same day, and wrote a brief note on the following Monday to tell me that he'd accepted employment in the household of Professor Ainsworth.'

Poor old gentleman, thought Box, He's not wise to the sinister tricks that men like Crale can play. What he'd just heard was a prime example of the Footman Tanner imposture. This was a wheeze for leaving one employer in order to carry all his secrets to another, who'd pay well for them. You got yourself dismissed for a crime that you'd never committed, in order to take up a post with a man who wasn't too meticulous about the truth.

‘If you get your housekeeper to search more thoroughly, sir,' he said, ‘I think you'll find that those little treasures of yours are still in the house. Crale would have hidden them, and arranged for that letter to be sent, so that he'd have a decent excuse to leave your service. It's an old wheeze, sir, as we say in the trade.'

‘Well, I'm damned! Did you hear that, Josh? So that villain Crale will have told Ainsworth all about my attempts to prove his precious Mithraeum to be a fraud. He'd have known all about poor Barnes—'

‘Yes, sir, he'd have known all about Mr Barnes, and all about Mr Gregory Walsh, too. I can see that you're about to draw some very unpleasant conclusions, but I'd beg you not to give voice to them. Leave those conclusions to the police. I want you to listen now to what Sergeant Knollys has to say.'

Box glanced at his sergeant, who drew a notebook from his pocket, and opened it. As Knollys spoke to the old baronet, he refreshed his memory from time to time by glancing at a closely written page of notes.

‘Sir Charles,' Knollys began, ‘this man Crale, while he was still in your employ, commissioned Mr Gregory Walsh to secure samples of paint or pigment from the reredos in the Clerkenwell Mithraeum. Did he do so at your instigation?'

‘Yes, that's right, Sergeant. I was vexed at having to wait so long for Abraham Barnes to return the analysed samples of mortar, and decided to look into the matter of the pigments used on that monument. I told Crale to find someone suitable to
undertake
the work, and to engage him as though the commission were his instead of mine. He found this young man Walsh, and arranged for him to go to the Mithraeum on Thursday, 26 July, at a time when I knew that Ainsworth would be engaged elsewhere.'

‘And did you ever receive the results of that commission, sir?' asked Knollys.

‘No, Sergeant, I did not. In the event, I received
nothing,
either from this man Walsh or Abraham Barnes. And then, on the
fourteenth
August, both men were murdered…. I drew some very sinister conclusions, looked to my own safety, and decided to forget the whole business. But your visit today had shown that I was right in believing Ainsworth to be a charlatan.'

There was little more to be said, and some minutes later Box and Knollys took leave of Sir Charles Wayneflete. Major Baverstock accompanied them into the hall, and himself opened the front door. Box detained him for a moment, by placing a hand on his arm.

‘Major,' he said, ‘I think that Sir Charles Wayneflete is in very real danger, and I intend to place a police guard on this house night and day until this murderous business is finished. Would you undertake to tell him that?'

‘I will, Inspector, and I'll say at once how relieved I am. He might be titled, but he's quite powerless and without influential friends. Consider this Ainsworth business for a moment: who would believe anything that Charles said against the popular idol? They'd say it was sour grapes, jealousy – or, worse still, senility. That's why he's kept silence for so long. He's supposed to be an amateur, but for all that he's a very exact scholar, who's admired in the more informed university circles.'

The untidy, rather neglected old soldier glanced around the gaunt, faded hall of the house with honest distaste.

‘You know, Mr Box,' he said, lowering his voice, ‘Mrs Craddock and I are hatching a plot to get poor Charles out of this place. I've a little put by, and if he would sell the lease of this house, and some of those awful antiquities of his, we could buy one of those snug little cottages they're building out at Chiswick. They call them cottages, you know, but they're really gentlemen's bijou residences. The three of us could live there in comfort.'

‘I wish you well in that project, Major Baverstock,' said Box. ‘Sir Charles might not have powerful friends, but he's certainly got a very loyal one – I mean you, sir! And now he's got another friend, one that I think has more power than Professor Ainsworth could successfully resist.'

‘And what powerful friend is that, Mr Box?'

‘Scotland Yard,' Box replied.

He and Knollys shook hands with the major, and stepped out into Lowndes Square.

‘Sergeant,' said Box, as the two men walked out of the square in the direction of Hyde Park, ‘when that man Crale arranged for Walsh to go to the Mithraeum on the 26 July, he'd already been lured away from his employer by Ainsworth. He pulled the
Footman Tanner wheeze on the 28th, and by the following Monday he was working for Ainsworth. I bet you anything that Crale cancelled that appointment for the 26th, and told poor Walsh to turn up on the 14 August instead—'

‘The very day,' said Knollys, ‘that the good professor was due to entrain for Edinburgh. So we could say that Ainsworth conspired with Crale to lure Gregory Walsh to his death. Perhaps Crale was used in some way in the Carshalton murder, too.'