Depths of Deceit (8 page)

‘I would, ma’am, thank you very much. I hope that you and I will meet here again sometime. Meanwhile, let me thank you for what you’ve told me today about this cult of Mithras and its adherents. It’s given me a lot of food for thought.’

Louise watched her friends’ cab turning the corner out of the avenue, and then went back into the house. She sidled her way past her bicycle, which stood in the narrow hall, leaning
precariously
against the banisters. It was a symbol of her independence. This was
her
house, and she was its sole mistress.

In the front room, Ethel was already clearing away the tea things.

‘There are some sandwiches left over, miss,’ she said, ‘and the teapot’s half full.’

‘Well, you’d better take everything out to the kitchen, where you can consume the sandwiches and drink the tea.’

Ethel smiled, but said nothing. She knew what the answer would be to her question. The missus was very kind, as well as being very beautiful. Although it was not her place to think such things, she sometimes felt that Miss Whittaker regarded her as a younger sister. They’d had many a quiet giggle together when Mr Box first started to call, pretending that he wanted help with his cases, when all the time he just wanted to admire missus, and make friends with her! Missus would look lovely in a white brocade wedding-gown, and a bouquet of orange-blossom. Oh, well. Best wait and see what happened….

Ethel picked up the tea tray, and went out into the kitchen.

Inspector Box and Sergeant Knollys followed Sergeant Kenwright through the tunnel-like passage that would take them from Box’s office to the drill hall. It was early on the Saturday morning following Box’s visit to Louise Whittaker.

As always, Kenwright warned Box to ‘mind his head’. It was all very well, thought Box, to work all day in the company of two giants without having to be reminded of their superior stature. He obediently lowered his head, though in practice there was not the slightest need to do so. Sergeant Knollys smiled to himself.

The drill hall was a dim, forlorn place, a repository for trestle tables and folding chairs, and a few old deal tables. There had been talk since the eighties of piping gas into it from the adjacent office, but nothing ever came of it, and the walls were lined with ledges upon which stood a series of little smoky oil lamps, which glowed dimly at night. In daytime, though, a good deal of light found its way obliquely into the room through a row of small windows set high in the outer walls.

As Box emerged from the tunnel, his attention was immediately arrested by a vast painting of the reredos in the Clerkenwell Mithraeum. It had been meticulously copied on to a number of large gummed sheets of art paper, and pinned to a board leaning against the end wall. The morning sunlight fell across it, bringing out the immense skill of the copyist, and the delicacy of the colouring, done in chalks: sepia, umber, sienna, and pallid green.

‘Sergeant Kenwright,’ said Box, ‘that’s a wonderful piece of work! It gave me quite a shock, seeing it glowing there at the end of the room. How did you contrive to make it so real?’

Sergeant Kenwright blushed with pleasure. Really, he thought, everything he did in this quaint old backwater of the Metropolitan Police was appreciated and applauded. But it was all Mr Box’s doing. He was only thirty-five or thirty-six, but he had the knack of finding out a man’s talents, and using them creatively. He’d never met a police officer like him before, or a detective sergeant like Jack Knollys, for that matter. It was lovely at the Rents.

‘Well, sir, I measured the original, and it was roughly eight feet high and seven feet wide. I’ve made my drawing six feet square, and reduced the image accordingly. There are ten big sheets of paper there, all gummed together, and to produce the actual picture, I made thirty smaller drawings at the site. I’m glad you like it, sir.’

It was like being in the Mithraeum again, thought Box. Kenwright’s beautiful chalk drawing had the same power to create unease, to give him the impression of an atrocity suspended in time, and of a tranquil slayer-deity, forever slaughtering a bull. This was the god Mithras. Did he still have his devotees in the Age of Steam? Miss Westerham had hinted at the possibility, though she’d been too wise a lady to make any kind of positive assertion.

He drew nearer to the drawing, and saw that Kenwright had divided it with fine white chalked lines into five irregular segments. He had affixed a paper label to each segment, numbering them clearly from 1 to 5.

‘What’s the significance of these numbers, Sergeant Kenwright?’ asked Box.

‘Well, sir, the reredos seems to have been assembled from five separate pieces, which have been cemented together. You can see the irregular edges of those pieces if you get up close to the work with a lantern. I expect it must have been broken at some time, sir, and then put together again. You have to look closely to see the joins, but they’re there, right enough.’

Excellent, thought Box. What a pity it was that Scotland Yard had no place like this, a forensic laboratory, a dedicated
workshop
…. There was nothing like that, though, of course, there were many specialists on call to perform certain tasks for a fee.

What was that other drawing, pinned to the edge of the main display?

It was a charcoal drawing of a man in a merchant sailor’s jacket with a peaked cap pulled well over his eyes. You could see the impression of a beard, and Kenwright had managed to convey a furtiveness in the man’s movements. He was carrying a carpet bag.

‘Well done, again, Sergeant! I’m sure that’s what our mysterious traveller must look like. I wonder who he is? He’s been sighted in Carshalton, then in Croydon. What is he? Some kind of messenger for this secret cult? Come on, let’s all get back to the office, and we’ll brew a pot of coffee.’

There was no water in the kettle, and Sergeant Knollys went out to fill it from a tap in the ablutions. Box produced some matches, and lit a gas-ring standing in the hearth. It coughed and hiccuped for a moment, and then settled itself into a steady flame.

Box looked thoughtfully at the massive bearded clerk sergeant, who was busy retrieving a number of chipped mugs from a cupboard beside the fireplace. What was he thinking?

‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘what’s your opinion of all this Mithras business? These sacrifices, hints in the press about secret
worshippers
, and so on? What’s your own private opinion?’

‘Well, sir, I don’t like to believe anything of that sort goes on at all. Murder is murder, no matter how you disguise it. We can’t ignore the evidence, of course, but it might be as well to look beyond the evidence at times in order to see the sober reality. Dress it up as fancy as you wish, sir, murder is still murder.’

‘It certainly is, Sergeant, and no amount of ancient rituals will make it anything else. I’ve been thinking of that man in the merchant navy jacket – the man who’s always seen carrying a huge carpet bag. I want you to go to Clerkenwell this afternoon, Sergeant Kenwright. Talk to the shopkeepers in Priory Gate Street and Catherine Lane. They may have started to remember things about last Tuesday – the fatal fourteenth. Ask around; who knows, you may come up with something.’

Mr Isaac Gold, the aptly named goldsmith and wholesale jeweller, stood at the front door of his premises in Catherine Lane, watching the giant, bearded police sergeant walking slowly over the hot cobbles. He’d be on his way back to that heathen temple in Priory Gate Street. That spade beard of his was magnificent, far
superior to his own. But then, you couldn’t have everything in this life.

He didn’t suppose that the sergeant was as rich as he was. He’d been in the district on and off for a week, now, sometimes carrying a heavy leather satchel. He didn’t look like your regular beat sergeant. Mr Manassas at number 45 reckoned he was some kind of special officer from Scotland Yard. Here he was now, crossing the road. Better put yourself in his way.

‘Good morning, Sergeant,’ cried Mr Gold. ‘We’ve not met before, but I’ve seen you about. Gold’s my name, and gold’s my business. This is my workshop.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Gold,’ said the sergeant. ‘My name’s Kenwright. Sergeant Kenwright. Can I help you?’

‘Well, it might be that I can help
you
, come to that,’ said Mr Gold. ‘I didn’t fancy telling the constable who does this beat – PC Gully, he’s called. Do you know him? Whatever you tell him, the answer’s always the same: “Don’t you worry about it, Mr Gold. We’ll look into it.” But they never do. When those dratted boys got over my backyard wall—’

‘And you fancy you can help me, Mr Gold?’ said Sergeant Kenwright. This man, he thought, is a cheerful, gossipy kind of cove, but if he isn’t stopped, he’d go on talking forever. A bit like that Mr Newton, the optician, at number 14. Amiable, but a
chatterbox
.

‘It was on the very morning that the poor young man was murdered in that heathen temple round the corner,’ said Mr Gold. ‘It was about half-past seven, or maybe a quarter to eight— So, we should stand here and melt in the sun? Step into the shop, Sergeant. It’s cool and shady in there.’

Kenwright followed the jeweller into the premises of Gold & Company. Although it was on the shady side of the lane, the place glittered and gleamed with a thousand flashes of gold. Cases of rings and other jewellery lined the shelves behind the counter. There was no silverware, or items of glass and crystal, such as is
found in most jewellers’ shops. Everything, everywhere, was gleaming gold.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Gold, stroking his beard, ‘it was about a quarter to eight on the day of the murder— Did you say you were getting married? Do you have a daughter or a niece who’s getting married? Come here for the rings. Don’t go anywhere else. For you there will be a discount. Everything here’s twenty-two carat—’

‘And what did you see, Mr Gold? Or what did you hear?’

‘It was a man, Sergeant; a stranger; someone I’d never seen round here before. He came walking quickly round the corner from Priory Gate Street – hurrying, you know, taking little nervous steps, as though he was trying not to be noticed. Hurrying, but pretending
not
to hurry, if you see what I mean. He was a big, burly man, much of your build, Sergeant. He had a beard of sorts, but not as magnificent as yours or mine, and a cap with a glazed peak pulled well down over his eyes. He was wearing one of those workmen’s jackets – like a seaman’s jacket – and was carrying a heavy carpet bag.’

‘And what did he do, this bearded man?’

‘Well, that’s just it, Sergeant. I watched him hurrying furtively along the lane, and then I turned away for a moment to check that the counter door was unlocked. When I looked out of the door again, the man had disappeared. I couldn’t imagine where he’d got to.’

‘He couldn’t have gone into the optician’s shop, could he? Greensands’ old shop at number 14?’

‘Well, he could have, I suppose. That new man hadn’t moved in at that time, and the front window was broken. But why should he want to go there? Of course, he might have crossed the road again, and disappeared down Miller’s Alley at the side of the furniture emporium next door. Whatever he did, Sergeant, I thought you should know.’

8

A Born Performer

E
xeter Hall, venue for rousing political meetings, religious rallies and stirring concerts, was not so much a building as an attitude of mind. In the early forties it had been the centre of the anti-slavery campaign, after which it became a focus for
societies
concerned with the supposedly oppressed nationalities of the Empire. To be ‘Exeter Hall’ was to be somewhere to the left of the Liberal Party.

Box and Knollys were nearly an hour late for Professor Ainsworth’s evening lecture. They had both spent the day at the Old Bailey, where they had been required to attend as witnesses at the opening of the trial of the Balantyne brothers, forgers and murderers. In the event, they had not been called that day, but late in the afternoon they had been summoned to the office of the attorney general to countersign a number of depositions.

By the time Box and Knollys approached the impressive but sooty Corinthian façade of Exeter Hall, it was after eight o’clock in the evening, and the sun was beginning to disappear behind the roof-tops, although, even in its decline, it was able to burnish the waters of the Thames with a coppery sheen. The bases of the columns flanking the entrance were plastered with posters announcing the lecture that was to be given that evening, under the aegis of the Artisans’ Improvement League.

The uniformed official at the door of the lower hall was inclined to be officious. The professor had been speaking for nearly an hour. At that very moment lantern slides were being shown, and the lights had been turned down…. Police officers? Very well, then. They could mount the stairs and sit in the gallery.

The lower hall was packed with row upon row of earnest young men and women sitting on cane-backed chairs. Box and Knollys sat down unobtrusively in the right-hand gallery, and surveyed the scene. They were prepared to be interested in what remained of the lecture, but they had really come to observe the man who was delivering it.

At the front of the hall was a high, raised platform, surrounded by elaborately ornate gilded railings. There was a long bench, covered with books and papers, above which rose a rotating blackboard. A steady stream of brilliant light shone across the hall from the rear of the balcony, where an assistant was operating a magic lantern. The gaslights had been turned down to a glimmer.

Standing in the beam of light was a tall, bearded man with abundant curling hair and bright, almost fierce eyes. Box looked at him. Here was a man who smiled easily, a man who stood poised and in full command of his attentive audience. They had tiptoed into the gallery in a brief interlude between slides. When he spoke, his voice held power and authority, but it was a friendly,
endearing voice, as though this magnetic personality was talking to old and valued friends.

Ainsworth had noticed their entrance, and had glanced upwards very briefly before giving his whole attention once more to the audience. By sheer force of habit, Box produced his
notebook
, and recorded in shorthand most of what the professor said.

‘So, ladies and gentlemen, the long-awaited moment had come. We levered up the final paving stone from what had been the cellar of a demolished workman’s cottage at half past eleven on the morning of the seventh of May 1893. You can imagine, friends, how thrilled and awed we were.’

He rapped sharply on the bench, and a new slide was pulled through the gate of the lantern. A dramatic black and white image appeared on the screen. It showed a burly workman in dungarees standing awkwardly beside Professor Ainsworth. The man was still leaning on the adze with which he had prised up the slab.

An adze…. They came easily to hand in this case. A fearsome weapon indeed, and used against Gregory Walsh and Abraham Barnes to deadly effect.

‘There you can see Ruddock, my foreman – now dead, alas! – resting for a moment after his exertions…. And there’s the big paving stone that he’s leant against the remains of the brick
foundations
of the demolished cottage that stood on the site. And now—’

He tapped sharply once more on the lecture bench, and another image appeared.

‘Here, you can see the pit yawning at our feet! There seemed to be no original entrance to the Mithraeum remaining. That’s me, steadying myself, as I prepare to descend the long ladder that Ruddock has lowered down to the floor of the vault. Quite dramatic, isn’t it?’

Tap, tap, on the bench.

‘The next photograph was taken by magnesium flash, much later that day. I had descended the ladder into pitch darkness, and
after I had found my bearings, the indispensable Ruddock lowered down a powerful reflector lantern on a chain. This is what I saw, by its brilliant light.’

Box drew in his breath involuntarily as, once again, he was confronted by the great image of Mithras slaying the bull. He had first seen it while he was huddled over the dead body of a young man with honey in his mouth. Later, it had appeared in the drill hall at King James’s Rents, brought to life on paper by the skills of Sergeant Kenwright. And here it was again, in black and white, glowing on the great screen, projected in a stream of silvery light by the magic lantern.

‘Mithras, sacrificing a bull,’ said the professor, standing back from the screen to look at the image. ‘A curious thing to see, ladies and gentlemen – a god sacrificing to another god, probably to the Unconquerable Sun, whose feast day was the twenty-fifth of December.’ Another sharp tap on the bench.

‘And now, you will see a series of five specially-produced slides illustrating some of the other finds that the lantern – and our careful searches – revealed that day in the underground temple of Mithras. This, perhaps, is the most amazing of all: a headless skeleton, that had once been stored in a leather bag. Ah! You gasp! Isn’t it dramatic? It was almost certainly a sacrifice of some sort, some kind of offering. It was confirmed as dating from about
AD
160 by Dr Andrew McKinley of St Andrews.

‘Next – a corroded sword blade, with the name Maximus scratched on it. I wonder who he was? And now, this Roman cup, which has been proved to be of bronze. It looks dirty and
undistinguished
– but here, in the next slide, you can see it glowing after it was cleaned by an expert in such things at the British Museum.

‘Here’s a Roman coin, which we can date to
AD
130. It was found at the base of the great reredos, where it seems to have been pushed half beneath the foundation. And finally, this fine belt buckle, again of bronze, which would have formed part of the uniform of a Roman foot-soldier. I like to think that some
worshipper had brought it there as a simple offering, over
one-and
-a-half millennia ago.’

Tap, tap on the bench. Another slide was pushed through the gate.

‘And here we all are, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the professor, ‘the intrepid band of excavators, lined up, as it were, to take a bow. There’s me, with Ruddock beside me, there’s Mr Thompson, the site overseer, and my colleague Dr Alan Cooper of King’s College. Yes, we’re taking our bow, hopeful that it will be received not with brickbats but applause.’

There was a roar of laughter from the audience, and the
enthusiastic
clapping echoed to the roof. Professor Ainsworth’s delight was obviously unfeigned. Box watched him as he stood in front of the bench, smiling and bowing. When the applause died down, and the magic lantern had been extinguished, the professor addressed his audience once more.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘thank you very much for those signs of your approbation. I hope that you realize how grateful I am that you are so interested in and appreciative of what we’ve shown you. A lecture is only successful if the audience are kindled by it to absorb its base of knowledge – and that’s what I feel you good folk have done tonight.

‘And now it’s time for questions. We have half an hour in hand, and I hope you’ll ask me as many questions as will comfortably fill that time. Now, who’ll set the ball rolling?’

A fair-haired young man sitting near the front of the hall stood up.

‘Sir,’ he said, in a voice that could just be heard by Box and Knollys from their position in the gallery, ‘I’ve read your account of how you discovered the Clerkenwell Treasure by following a trail through old manuscripts, and suchlike. Did you do
something
similar when you set out to find the Mithraeum, or did you just stumble upon it by chance?’

‘Stumble, young man? That’s hardly the word to describe how an archaeologist goes about things!’

Professor Ainsworth’s laugh was so evidently good-humoured that several members of the audience caught his mood, and chuckled as the blushing questioner sat down.

‘It’s a good question,’ the professor continued, ‘but if I’m to answer it, I’ll have to tell you a dramatic story that began in the eighteenth century, and ended in my house at Epsom in October last year.’ He made a show of consulting his watch. ‘It’ll add ten minutes to the proceedings, I’m afraid. Do you want to hear it?’

To cries of ‘Yes, yes!’ from the audience, Professor Ainsworth took up a position at the very edge of the platform, with his hands on the gilded rail, leaning slightly forward, as though to draw his listeners into an intimate circle.

‘Three hundred years or more ago, ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘there lived a man called Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. He was an antiquarian and bibliophile and, by the time that he died at the age of sixty, in 1631, he had amassed a splendid collection of books, manuscripts, coins and medallions. He was able to acquire many important books that had been plundered from monastery libraries during the Reformation—Has anyone here ever heard of
Beowulf
?’

A number of arms were raised, and the professor nodded in satisfaction. This man, thought Box, is a born performer. He’s loving every minute of this lecture.

‘Well, one of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton’s treasures was the
original
Anglo-Saxon manuscript of
Beowulf.
Sir Robert’s grandson left most of this unique library to the nation. It’s in the British Museum Library now, but it was originally housed first at Essex House in the Strand, and then at Ashburnham House in Westminster. Do you want me to continue?’

‘Yes, yes!’ from the audience.

‘On the twenty-third of October 1731, a great fire broke out in Ashburnham House, and a quarter of the collection was either destroyed or damaged. Fortunately, copies had been made of some of these manuscripts, many years before the fire, notably by a man
called Elphinstone, and it was he who had copied a certain Cottonian manuscript – a single sheet of vellum known as Cotton Augustus Extra B vii – which perished in the fire. Written in Latin, it was a letter from the Abbot of Ealing, dated 1511, hinting at the existence of a Mithraeum in the vicinity of the Church of St Catherine in Clerkenwell.

‘Now, I had heard rumours years ago of the existence of this copy by Elphinstone, and I used various agents to track it down. It was found in the library of an obscure country gentleman, who, when he heard of its importance, promptly insisted on sending it to Sotheby’s for auction. To cut a long story short, I went to that auction, and outbid everybody else. It was the hints given in that transcript of the old abbot’s letter that sent me back to Clerkenwell, spade in hand!’

Once again, the hall erupted into laughter. Ainsworth held up a restraining hand.

‘And now for the final irony of this tale,’ he said. ‘Last October, a small fire broke out in the library of my house in Epsom. It was soon extinguished by my own staff, but a whole shelf of books and papers had been destroyed. The cause of the fire was never ascertained. Yes, friends, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, Elphinstone’s precious transcript perished in that fire – a curious irony indeed! How fortunate it was that I, too, had made a pen-and-ink transcript of the transcript! And now, are there any more questions? We have about ten minutes left.’

A number of hands were raised, Box’s among them. He had recalled Sergeant Kenwright’s impressive drawing, and that
recollection
determined him to ask a question. After responding to a few requests for archaeological facts, the professor pointed to Box in the gallery.

‘Sir,’ said Box, ‘I believe that the reredos in Clerkenwell depicting Mithras has been reassembled from a number of pieces. Was it in pieces when you discovered it?’

‘I wonder where you acquired that piece of information, my friend?’ asked the professor, smiling. ‘When I discovered the reredos, it was standing complete, just as you’ve seen it tonight in the lantern-slide. But it had certainly been damaged – and badly damaged – in antiquity. It may be that an earthquake had occurred, or a subterranean landslip, either of which could have shattered the monument. Or perhaps it was deliberately smashed by zealots of another faith. Certainly, the Christians of those early centuries of our era were no friends to Mithraism. Whatever the truth of the matter, the reredos had been fully restored to use in antiquity.’