Depths of Deceit (19 page)

What was the matter with her? Her husband would be back that evening. She gave her whole attention once more to
The
Sleeper.

Catherine Lane, cobbled and narrow, dozed in the strong late morning sun. Mr Gold’s shop was closed and barred, and there was nobody about. Nobody, that is, except the stately, bearded figure of Sergeant Kenwright, who was standing guard at the narrow entrance to Miller’s Alley.

In the derelict and doomed Miller’s Court beyond, Arnold Box stood on the broken flags and surveyed the back wall of Hatchard’s Furniture Repository. Nothing had changed since he’d first seen it on the day of the murders. The stout door, with its three mortise locks, was undisturbed. Whatever may have happened there during the past few weeks, no one had gained entrance to the building through that door. A discreet examination of the front entrance in Catherine Lane had shown him that the locks there were stiff and free of oil.

This building, so Superintendent Mackharness had discovered, belonged to a company called The North-Eastern Storage Association, with an address in Sunderland. That company was ultimately owned by Professor Roderick Ainsworth. Had he used this building as a workshop, in which he had secretly assembled the five pieces of ancient stone from which he had concocted his fraudulent altar of Mithras? It seemed more than likely.

He would have needed an accomplice – no, that was too strong a word. He’d merely need a not very imaginative workman to assist him. Hadn’t he shown a slide in which such a man had appeared? ‘The indispensable Ruddock’, he’d called him, ‘now dead, alas!’ Yes, no doubt the late Mr Ruddock had done the necessary heavy work for his master.

Arnold Box looked at his companions, Sergeant Knollys, silent and grim, a tempered steel cold chisel in one hand, and a compact steel hammer in the other; PC Gully, the local constable from ‘G’ Division, who had summoned them there on 16 August to
investigate 
the death of Gregory Walsh; Sergeant Kenwright, who had just joined them from Miller’s Lane; and Percy Phelps, the council engineer, who would guide them through whatever labyrinth faced them beneath the floor of Hatchard’s Furniture Repository. He had brought with him from Spring Gardens two powerful paraffin lanterns as his contribution to the coming search.

The time for talk and speculation was over. Only by breaching the guarded privacy of this enigmatic building would the full truth of Ainsworth’s imposture be known. He turned to Sergeant Knollys.

‘Break off the locks,’ he said, and the massively strong sergeant began his assault upon the doors.

Their voices echoed in the vast warehouse. It was very clean, and well swept, but entirely empty. Light poured in from a number of skylights, and the atmosphere was warm and without any hint of the sinister. They had closed the doors, and secured them with a bolt.

‘Remind me, PC Gully,’ said Box, ‘what did that old man tell you – the old man who once lived out there in Miller’s Court?’

‘Sir, he said that he remembered a pile of packing-cases being brought into the warehouse through the rear doors, soon after the discovery of the Clerkenwell Treasure. Other things went in, too: bags of cement, pots of paint, and so on. This old gaffer reckoned that the owners were going to do a bit of decoration.’

‘I suppose they were, in a way, PC Gully,’ said Box. ‘But the man who brought those packing-cases in here was bent on
decorating
the truth, not the walls.’

Percy Phelps had crossed to a low door set into the left-hand wall of the warehouse. His voice came as a hollow echo across the empty floor.

‘Mr Box,’ said Phelps, ‘this is the staircase leading down to the basement.’ Box saw the young man produce a folded plan from his pocket, and shake it open impatiently.

‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘the basement floor is six feet lower, and there’s a decent iron staircase here. Isn’t it time we went down?’

Yes, thought Box, it’s time enough to plumb the depths – the depths of deceit which had led to the murders of two innocent men. Ainsworth’s star had set.

‘Will you take the lead, Mr Phelps?’ said Box. ‘Sergeant Kenwright, light those lanterns, and make sure they’re burning at full power. I think it’ll be very dark where we’re going.’

They left the ground floor of the bright warehouse, and followed Phelps down a spiral staircase which brought them into the basement of the building, the floor of which had once formed the nave of old St Catherine’s Church. The lanterns were very powerful, but they failed to penetrate the dark farther limits of the vast space. Phelps had commandeered Sergeant Kenwright, and Box watched the two men walk away in a pool of lantern light. Presently, Kenwright called out, and his voice came as a muffled echo through the chill gloom.

‘Sir, there are some half-used sacks of cement here, and a
workbench
. And there are two massive fragments of stone, with images carved on them. Perhaps they were pieces that wouldn’t fit in to the final design.’

Box and the others had reached the spot where Kenwright stood, and looked down on what they were convinced was the evidence of Professor Ainsworth’s engagement in an appalling fraud – appalling in its own right as a betrayal of scholarly integrity, and appalling because it had led to the violent murder of two innocent men.

‘It’s unbelievable, sir,’ whispered Knollys. ‘And it was this paltry fraud that led to murder. Do you think that man Crale was an accessory?’

‘I let him believe I did, Sergeant,’ Box replied, ‘but I never really thought so. You see, Professor Ainsworth is too honourable a man to implicate a subordinate in a capital crime. I know it sounds paradoxical, Jack, but I think it’s true enough.’

‘Inspector!’ Percy Phelps’s voice came from somewhere in the darkness beyond the circle of lantern light. ‘Here’s the flagstone! The flagstone covering the entrance to the vaults of old St Catherine’s Church. There are metal rings let into its surface. Get your two massive sergeants to raise it, and I’ll guide you down.’

The stone flag rose easily. Knollys and Kenwright pulled it bodily to one side of the black pit that yawned beneath it. There was a stout wooden ladder lying against the wall of the
warehouse
, which was evidently used to gain access to the vault. They lowered it cautiously until it came to rest on a hidden pavement below. The burly Kenwright made as it to climb down
immediately
, but Percy Phelps placed a restraining hand on his arm.

‘Just a brief word of warning, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘This cellar floor is safe enough, but once we descend into the old vaults of St Catherine’s Church, we’ll find ourselves in a world of empty, abandoned chambers, and decaying brick sewers. Tread carefully, and be ruled by me, because I know where all these ancient places lie with respect to the roads above.’

Percy Phelps stepped on to the ladder, and cautiously descended the six feet that took him to the floor of the vault. The others followed him, the two sergeants carrying the blazing lanterns. A cellar beneath a cellar…. It was not a pleasant place to be, thought Box, twelve feet below ground level, where the topsoil gave way to the binding London clay, and they were dependent upon paraffin lanterns for illumination. The air smelt damp, and the stone walls were dank with moisture. Somewhere near them they could hear the running of water along a hidden conduit.

‘This was the major burial vault of the old church before the Great Fire,’ Phelps told them. ‘All the human remains were removed when the site was levelled in 1668, and buried
elsewhere
.’

Percy Phelps stood still, squinting at his folding plan by the light of the lanterns, while the police officers searched the ancient crypt. They found a neatly folded tarpaulin, and a number of
paint-brushes
standing stiffly in an earthenware pot. There was also a wooden box containing candles and an old-fashioned tinder-box.

‘Mr Box,’ said Phelps, ‘here is the door leading to the Roman vault. It’s an ancient thing in its own right – oak, I’d say,
strengthened
with iron bands. It’s medieval, of course: the clergy of St Catherine’s would have used the old Roman chamber as an extra burial vault. Shall I open it? If my plan’s correct, there will be a short passageway leading directly into the Mithraeum.’

‘He must have arranged some kind of false wall at the back of the chamber,’ said Box, half to himself. ‘A kind of secret panel…. Yes, Mr Phelps. Open it, by all means. Let’s explore this business to the end.’

Phelps put his hand to the catch, and pushed open the door. They had just time to glimpse a short tunnel stretching ahead into the darkness when the pavement of the vault began to tremble, and a noise like a fast-approaching roll of thunder was heard. Phelps shouted a warning, and they rushed as a man towards the ladder that would take them up to the basement of the repository. There came a sudden scream of collapsing masonry, and a tornado of dust-laden air rushed at them from the tunnel that Phelps had exposed.

Half blinded, they scrambled up the ladder and into the empty basement. In less than a minute they had climbed the iron
staircase
, and were safe in the vast, sunlit warehouse, which rapidly filled with a kind of hot acrid mist. They heard shouts coming from Miller’s Alley, and the shouts were followed by a frantic hammering on the bolted rear doors.

‘Ainsworth?
Dead
?
It’s not possible!’

Arnold Box had found Sir Charles Wayneflete sitting on one side of the chess table in the study of his house in Lowndes Square. Major Baverstock, looking particularly pugnacious as he fought a losing battle against his opponent, seemed to freeze in surprise, one of his green malachite bishops still held in his right hand.

‘He is dead, Sir Charles,’ said Box. ‘He was in the Clerkenwell Mithraeum this morning, engaged upon some private business of his own, when the whole site collapsed, burying him under tons of earth and masonry. He must have died instantly.’

‘And you came here to tell me? Why did you do that, Mr Box? I’m more sorry than I can say. He and I were no friends, God knows, but I would never have wished that fate upon him.’

‘Best thing that could have happened, Charles.’ Major Baverstock had finally relinquished his bishop, and was watching his old friend with interest. ‘Don’t forget that Mr Box here had proved Ainsworth to be a double murderer. He’s lucky to have gone that way, though I expect the inspector is vexed that he’s cheated the gallows.’

‘Professor Ainsworth was never charged, Major,’ said Box. ‘But the warrants were already prepared, and I would have taken him up this coming Monday. As to why I came straight away to you, Sir Charles, it was because I feel you were mightily abused by Ainsworth, who publicly belittled your standing as a scholar in order to gloss over his own failings. I think he resented your honesty, and his constant sniping at your reputation may in the end have undermined your own self-confidence. Also, of course, he may have attempted to do you an injury. So I came here straight away to tell you that you can now breathe freely.’

Sir Charles glanced briefly at the chessboard, made as though to move a piece, and then thought better of it.

‘That was very civil of you, Mr Box, and I thank you. Did you know that I’m selling the lease of this place, and moving out to a new house in Chiswick? Old Josh there – Major Baverstock – has persuaded me to make a fresh start. I’m minded to write a
scholarly
monograph on the Clerkenwell Treasure in collaboration with Father Brooks, with the idea of restoring its academic integrity. Oh, I’ll give Ainsworth his due, but I’ll set the record straight about those chalices.’

‘I did a little research myself, sir,’ said Box. ‘At least, I asked a
scholarly friend of mine, Miss Louise Whittaker, to undertake it for me. Professor Ainsworth said that he’d found out about the existence of the Mithraeum in a old manuscript called – I have it recorded here, in my notebook – Cotton Augustus Extra B vii. He said that the original had been destroyed in a fire, and that he’d bought a transcript of it at Sotheby’s. He crowned his tale by declaring that this transcript was in turn destroyed by a fire in his own house.’

‘And what did your friend find out?’

‘She found out that Sotheby’s had never sold such a manuscript, and that, in fact, no manuscript of that name had ever existed. The so-called “Mithraeum”, sir, was based upon an elaborate and impudent lie.’

‘Well, well,’ said Sir Charles Wayneflete, ‘it’s a wicked world, Inspector. Ainsworth was a greater rogue than I thought. Maybe Josh is right, and it’s all for the best.’

His hand hovered over the chessboard for a few seconds, and then executed a series of rapid moves. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, ‘perhaps it’s all for the best. Check! And also mate!’

Superintendent Mackharness finished reading a report that he had picked up from his desk, and then looked at his audience. Box and Knollys waited to see what he would have to say about the previous Saturday’s dramatic conclusion to the business of the Clerkenwell Mithraeum. It was the morning of Monday, 3 September.

‘It would appear from this brief report from Superintendent Hunt, of “G”,’ he said, ‘which was kindly brought to me here at the Rents this morning, that Professor Roderick Ainsworth entered the Mithraeum from Priory Gate Street at the very moment that you and your colleagues had chosen to push open that subterranean door. We shall never know why he went to that place on Saturday, or what particular action it was that caused the sudden and total collapse of the site. However, when the body was
finally unearthed, its right hand was found to be clutching a length of thin rope that was attached to the base of a splintered baulk of timber, one of several that had been used to support the ceiling of the chamber.’

Mackharness put down the report on his desk, and sighed.

‘You’d been warned by Mr Phelps that the area was dangerous, and that cave-ins were likely,’ he said, looking at Box. ‘But in view of what I’ve just told you, I don’t suppose you will see this sudden collapse as an accident?’