Winter of Discontent (6 page)
“Come in, Derek. I’m really glad to see you! And you look awfully cold. Would you like some coffee, and have you had breakfast?”
“Yes, I would, and no, I haven’t.”
So I made more toast and boiled another couple of eggs while Alan told him my theory.
Derek, bless his heart, took it seriously. “You may have something there. I ought to have thought of it, but I didn’t. The planning office has a map of the old tunnels. Suppose I go and fetch it and meet you at the museum.”
We were very near the shortest, darkest day of the year. I shivered in the foggy predawn gloom as I waited for Alan to get the car out of our minute garage.
“Not propitious weather,” he commented when I got into the car.
“No.” I pulled my woolly orange hat down over my ears and wished I were in California, or Spain, or my own front parlor. Anywhere warm.
I was still shivering when we reached the museum. The car hadn’t had time to heat up. “I hope the place is open,” I said as I got out. “It’s so early. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Young Walter must be at work already,” said Alan, trying the front door. “It’s unlocked.”
There were no lights in the front hall, but of course the museum wasn’t officially open yet. Perhaps Walter had left them off on purpose, or a lightbulb had burned out. We felt our way up the half flight of stairs to the museum entrance.
There were no lights on there, either. A streetlight outside one of the windows did little to dispel the inky blackness of the room. “Alan,” I whispered, clutching his arm. I’d thought I’d overcome my childhood fear of the dark, but I didn’t like this.
Alan put his hand over my arm and moved cautiously forward. “I’ll find a light. Walter must be working upstairs. I think there’s a lamp on Bill’s desk—oh!”
“What? What is it? Alan?”
He took a step back, pulling me with him. “Stay there. Don’t move.”
“Alan, you’re scaring me! What is it?”
“I don’t know yet. We have to have light. I’m going to let go your hand, but
don’t move.”
don’t move.”
I stood as one petrified while Alan very cautiously moved away from me. I heard him patting what I thought was Bill’s desk, and then there was a click, and a dim lamp cast a circle of light around the desk.
I gasped.
Walter Tubbs lay slumped across Bill’s desk, and something was very wrong with the back of his head.
“DON’T TOUCH HIM. DON’T MOVE.” ALAN’S VOICE HAD OVERTONES I had never heard before. This was Chief Constable Nesbitt, not my husband. I stayed where I was and concentrated on keeping my breakfast where I had put it.
Alan, moving with a catlike lightness surprising in so large a man, stepped over to Walter and put two fingers on the side of his neck.
“He’s alive,” Alan said quietly. “Only just, I think. I’ll ring for help, but I’m afraid we’ll have to compromise the scene somewhat. The boy needs immediate attention.” Quickly he went through the ABCs of first aid—clear the airway, check for breathing and circulation—and then picked up the phone and dialed 999.
It seemed hours before the ambulance and Derek arrived, almost simultaneously. I didn’t wait to be asked to leave. Much as I wanted to help, I realized I would only be in the way. These people knew what they were doing, and would do everything they could for Walter. My business was to keep from destroying evidence, and I could do that best somewhere else.
But where? Back in the car? Alan had the keys, and he was busy helping.
My eyes lit on a table just inside the museum door. A small book lay on it, a dusty, tattered paperback with the words “Medieval Sherebury” on it. I looked more closely. Could this have been something Walter had found?
No, probably not. When I adjusted my bifocals, I saw that there was a stamped marking: “Sherebury Planning Commission.” And in small print under the title were the words “A Plan of the Roman and Medieval Tunnel System.”
This must be the book Derek had brought with him! Without an instant’s hesitation I picked it up and carried it out of the room.
Derek and his crew had turned on lights as they came in. I leaned against the stair rail in the foyer of the museum and squinted at the map. The light out here was dim and the print in the book was faded, but I persevered.
The book, or pamphlet really, was like a tiny atlas, dividing the city of Sherebury into eight sections, with a detailed, large-scale map of each. The tunnel system and its entrances were marked in what must once have been bright red ink. It had faded to a dirty yellow, but I could make out, barely, the tunnel that ran right under the Town Hall. At the bottom of the page was some tiny print. I fumbled in my purse for the small flashlight I always carry and turned it on the book.
Ah! There it was, the entry numbered 7: “Town Hall. Entrance in northwest corner of cellar. Covered by paneling, with latch.”
I made my creaky, arthritic way down to the cellar.
It was a real cellar, originally a wine cellar, probably. One story below the basement level of the building, it was accessible by a rather nasty, cobwebby enclosed staircase. I had been there once before on a tour of the building, and I didn’t relish the thought of going down again. I cannot bring myself to like spiders or any reminder of their presence.
This time, however, the cobwebs were less bothersome. Oh, a few were in evidence, but they didn’t brush my face in that disgusting, shivery manner. Either someone had been doing some housekeeping down here, or someone else had passed here very recently.
I quickened my pace.
I remembered that the cellar itself was rather splendid, more like the crypt of a cathedral. It was really cellars: several large though low-ceilinged rooms with Gothic-arched roof and stone walls and floors. The wine racks that had originally lined the walls had been removed, but the oak paneling behind them had not. The paneling covered the walls from floor almost to ceiling, and amazingly had not warped very much over the centuries, as I recalled. The cellar, unlike many of its kind, was remarkably dry.
I remembered a good many odds and ends had been stored here the last time I was down. Now, as I discovered when I found the switch to the single dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, the room was nearly bare except for dust.
Now to find the northwest corner.
Yes, but which northwest corner? In this room, or another? And for that matter, which way was northwest? I’ve never been wonderful about directions, even aboveground. In a place where there are no windows I’m lost. I cast my glance and the beam of my flashlight rather helplessly around the room I was in. It had five sides, rather than four, and every corner looked exactly like every other.
Wait, though. Were those footprints in the dust?
The dust had certainly been disturbed in what looked like a path from where I stood to one of the corners. It was hard to tell by the feeble light whether I was seeing footprints or not, but the hairs on the back of my neck twitched uncomfortably, and I felt my mouth going dry.
I hadn’t even told Alan where I was going.
I should have turned tail right then, I suppose. I almost did. The police were right upstairs, after all. Let them take it from here. I didn’t like this place. My claustrophobia was reaching out its clutching, suffocating tentacles, and my nerves were stretched taut.
But the police were dealing with a boy who was badly hurt and might die. If Bill was down here, hurt, and I delayed long enough to climb several steep flights of stairs, he might die, too. I could just take a look. I was on my guard, after all. And no one would be lurking down here, surely.
I wasn’t convinced, though. My feet moved most unwillingly toward the corner. If a mouse or, horrors, a rat had appeared I would have screamed the place down. The flashlight in my hand trembled as I played the light over the paneling, trying to see some sort of secret spring.
It turned out to be not very secret. The paneling was carved in rectangles, not anything fancy like linen-fold, and a bottom corner of one rectangle had a square cut out of it, about four by four inches. I put my hand into the recess, trying hard not to think about spiders, and found a metal ring that turned.
The section of paneling opened with a creak of rusty hinges that sounded like every horror movie I’d ever seen. I gripped my flashlight until my knuckles were white, gulped once, and called into the black hole, “Bill?”
No sound came out. I cleared my throat and tried again, but I couldn’t hear any reply over the pounding of my heart.
This was ridiculous. I had either to muster the courage to go into that awful, black place, or hightail it upstairs and get help. Taking several long, deep breaths, and trying to hold my flashlight steady, I crept forward.
The cobwebs were very much in evidence here. I stuck my hand out as far in front of me as I could, moving the flashlight in circles to brush them from the ceiling, before I went very far. Then I shone the light on the floor, in case there were stairs in that blackness.
The first thing I saw was another flashlight, lying on the stone floor a few feet inside the doorway.
The next thing was a foot.
My breath came in shallow gasps. I wondered briefly what a heart attack felt like, but the thought passed out of my mind instantly. With the utmost reluctance I moved the beam of the flashlight to play on the face of the man on the floor.
On Bill’s face.
That broke my fear. Sorrow and pity washed over me in a rush, wiping out any other feeling. I knelt stiffly on the hard flagstones and put my hand to his face. “Bill?” I whispered.
But the touch had told me that Bill would not answer. The cellar was cold, but not that cold. Bill’s face held the chill, not of a cold room, but of the grave.
I knelt a moment longer and said a prayer for Bill, and for Jane, and then slowly got to my feet. I knew I must not disturb the scene any more than I already had, but I needed to try to make sense of this dreadful thing. I could see no visible injury to Bill. There was no blood on the floor, nothing except dust, scuffed by his feet and mine. If there were any other footprints, they were beyond my discerning. His hands—I looked more closely, shining my flashlight on them. They showed no signs of a struggle, no broken fingernails that I could see, no scratches. His right hand lay partly under his body and—
yes!
There was something in it! A piece of paper?
yes!
There was something in it! A piece of paper?
I took one step forward, and then stepped back. No. This was a matter for the police. It was time, and past time, to go and get them. And then my job was to tell Jane.
It seemed to me that I had been gone for hours, but in fact only a
few
minutes had passed since I left the main room of the museum. No one had missed me. They had taken Walter away, to the hospital, I hoped. The room was a scene of intense, but controlled, activity. Men and women with cameras and measuring tapes and small plastic bags made careful rounds. Lights had been set up, illuminating the scene with a dazzling glare. Alan stood off to one side, conferring with Derek. I wanted to rush to him for comfort, but I knew I mustn’t trample over the crime scene any more than I already had. I stood in the doorway and waved, and when I caught his eye, I beckoned to him.
few
minutes had passed since I left the main room of the museum. No one had missed me. They had taken Walter away, to the hospital, I hoped. The room was a scene of intense, but controlled, activity. Men and women with cameras and measuring tapes and small plastic bags made careful rounds. Lights had been set up, illuminating the scene with a dazzling glare. Alan stood off to one side, conferring with Derek. I wanted to rush to him for comfort, but I knew I mustn’t trample over the crime scene any more than I already had. I stood in the doorway and waved, and when I caught his eye, I beckoned to him.
He came to me at once. “What’s wrong?”
He has always been able to read my face. “I’ve found Bill,” I said, and the tone of my voice told him the rest.
“Derek,” said Alan. His voice was quiet but commanding. I think that for a moment he truly forgot that he wasn’t Derek’s boss anymore. Derek forgot, too. At least he moved to Alan with alacrity and the air, if not the actual gesture, of a salute.
“We have a serious complication, Derek. Tell him, Dorothy.”
I told him. I think I was crying by that time, but it didn’t matter. Alan had put a comforting arm around my shoulders, and I was able to be coherent.
“You’re certain he’s dead?” asked Derek.
I nodded, shivering. I didn’t want to talk about why I was sure. “I left the door open. You won’t have any trouble finding him. And I didn’t go in any farther than I had to. I really did have to, Alan. He might have been alive. I know I might have disturbed something, but—”
“Hush, love. It’s all right. We’ll take over now.”
“Don’t leave me!” It was almost a wail. The instant it was out of my mouth I would have given anything to take it back. Was this any way for a policeman’s wife to act? Where was my much vaunted independence?
Alan tightened his hold. “I won’t. Don’t worry. It’s all right,” he repeated.
I swallowed. “I don’t mean to keep you from what you have to do, but I want to know—well, I guess I want to know how Walter is.” That was a sop to my pride, of course, but I really was worried about him. At least I had been before my discovery of Bill overshadowed other concerns.
“There’s nothing I need do here. Derek has everything under control. I’m a supernumerary anyway. Nothing quite as bad as an old general who won’t quit, eh, Derek?”
“Not at all, sir. You know we’re always happy for your help, but perhaps your place now is with your wife.” He was being very formal, and very careful of Alan’s feelings.
“Oh, get on with it, man!” He gave Derek an apologetic half smile, and led me to a bench on the landing. “Now, as to young Walter. He’s not good, I’m afraid. They won’t know exactly the extent of his injuries until they take a good look, at the hospital.”
I shuddered. “The back of his head looked awful.”
“Yes, he was hit pretty hard. His skull was cracked, I think. But actually that may be all to the good. There’ll be swelling, and that crack may allow the skull enough movement that the pressure on the brain won’t cause too much damage. If not, they may have to open up the crack, or open the cranium elsewhere to relieve the pressure. That’s the real danger.”
“Will he have permanent brain damage?”
“I don’t know, love. Nobody knows yet. If they can minimize the swelling, there’s apparently a pretty good chance for recovery, but the ambulance crew thought he’d been lying unconscious for quite a long time. That could be bad.”
I nodded. It helped to think about Walter and not about poor Bill. “He said he was coming to the museum today to prepare for a meeting with some of the donors. I suppose he could have stayed late last night, working.”
Alan frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, the meeting, the appointment, had been made with Bill, of course. Walter said it was set for a few days from now. He didn’t say exactly when. And Walter couldn’t figure out who all was coming, but he thought he ought to turn up, in case some of the people—whoever was coming—hadn’t heard Bill was missing and kept the appointment. And Walter’s a conscientious boy, if not terribly bright. He probably wanted to try to find out who was coming, learn a little about them, or what they had given, or something. Bill’s filing system isn‘t—wasn’t—oh, dear! I don’t know how to talk about him.”
“I know, love, I know. It’s a bad thing. Did you get any impression about how Bill died?”
“Alan, there wasn’t a mark on him. Not that I could see, anyway. I’d swear he died a natural death. But what on earth was he doing burrowing around down there in the tunnel?”
“We may never know, Dorothy. The only thing I know for certain right now is that something very odd is going on around this museum, and I intend to find out what. I didn’t know Bill well, but Jane is a friend, and poor Walter is just a kid. They don’t deserve this.”
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