‘Clever.’
‘Oh, I guarantee it works.’
Jude’s brown eyes were sparkling. ‘Do you really reckon, Laurence, that you could find out something useful at the County Records Office?’
‘I should think so.’ He indicated the papers on the table. ‘Given this lot as a starting point.’
‘But what would you be looking for?’ asked Carole.
‘That’s the beauty of academic research – you never know. You always find the best bits when you’re looking for something else. Some people never find what they’re looking for. Very distinguished academic careers have been built on the foundation of never having found anything at all.’
‘When are you going then? Tomorrow?’
‘Maybe, Carole.’ Laurence Hawker exchanged a look with Jude. ‘If you’re free to take me there . . .’
‘I think I could probably manage that.’
He sighed helplessly. ‘I’ve never been very good with public transport.’
Honestly, Carole thought, he is so lazy. Never lifts a finger. Seems prepared for Jude to do everything for him. And she just seems to accept it all. Where’s her spine? Where’s her feminist solidarity?
‘Are you going to come too?’ asked Jude.
‘No, I’d better not. Marla Teischbaum knows me. She’d think we were up to something if she saw me round the County Records Office. No, I’m going to get on to Gina.’
‘Find out if we can have a snoop round the Bracketts Priest’s Hole?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Right.’ Jude tapped her chin thoughtfully. ‘So where do we stand on suspects for the murder of Sheila Cartwright?’
Carole felt a slight resentment that Laurence Hawker seemed now to be included in their deliberations. But it wasn’t as great a resentment as it would have been an hour earlier. He had definitely proved himself to have skills that would be useful to them.
So, putting her reservations on one side, she enumerated, ‘Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, Mervyn Hunter, Gina Locke, Belinda Chadleigh, possibly Marla Teischbaum, if she stayed around Bracketts that evening . . . and I suppose George Ferris could be in the frame too, because I don’t know how soon he left after the Emergency Trustees’ Meeting.’
‘Right.’ Jude nodded. ‘And the police’s prime suspect seemed to have shifted from being Graham Chadleigh-Bewes to Mervyn Hunter.’
‘We don’t know that. We’re guessing.’
‘Yes. As ever. I think it’s really mean the way the police don’t keep us informed about the progress of their investigations.’
‘’Twas ever thus, Jude,’ said Laurence, ironically sympathetic. ‘Keeping the amateurs informed has never been high on the police’s priorities.’
‘Presumably, now they’ve got Mervyn Hunter, they’ve stopped questioning Graham Chadleigh-Bewes?’
‘Who knows, Carole?’
‘I’ll ask Gina when I get in touch with her. She’s got her ear closer to the ground.’
‘And you said she’s convinced that Graham had killed Sheila Cartwright?’
‘That’s certainly what she wanted me to think. But who knows . . . she may have had a hidden agenda of her own.’
Jude nodded ruefully. ‘That’s the trouble. All the suspects seem to have hidden agendas.’
‘Almost by definition,’ drawled Laurence Hawker.
‘What?’
‘Well, come on, no self-respecting murderer’s going to have an overt agenda, is he? Otherwise you’d know whodunnit straight away.’
The West Sussex County Records Office was in Chichester, at the end of West Street which contained the Cathedral. An old building had been refurbished and considerably extended to house a wide range of local archives.
Their cab dropped them directly outside. They were later than intended, round eleven-thirty. Laurence had had another minor bout of bleeding just before they’d first intended to leave, which had delayed them about an hour. Jude and he walked into the Reception Area of the Records Office. She carried a shapeless straw basket; he had his soft Italian laptop case under his arm. Jude was worried about how much effort each step seemed to cost him, and about the rasp of his breath when he wasn’t even coughing. Laurence, though, behaved as ever. In spite of coughing up blood, he’d breakfasted on whisky, and been smoking continuously since Jude woke up that morning. In fact, since he was now getting very little sleep, he’d probably smoked through most of the night too.
‘They won’t let you smoke in there – that’s for certain,’ said Jude, gesturing through the glass to the Reading Room.
‘I know,’ Laurence wheezed. ‘Bloody uncivilized country we live in. I’m just going to check if she’s in there, while I suck down a few more precious lungfuls of smoke . . . assuming, of course, one is allowed to do that even in here.’
The frosty look from the woman behind the Reception desk suggested that one wasn’t. Jude wandered across towards her, browsing through the various leaflets and local publications on display. Laurence meanwhile was surreptitiously comparing the people he could see through the glass at desks in the Reading Room with the printout in his hand. He’d downloaded a lot of information about Professor Marla Teischbaum, including a photograph which looked more like a glamour shot than an academic’s ID picture.
Jude was actually making a purchase from the suspicious-looking woman at the Reception desk when she heard Laurence wheezing towards her.
‘What are you getting?’
She showed him. How To Get The Best From The Facilities Of The County Records Office, by George Ferris. ‘Might come in useful.’
‘I can’t think where.’
‘Here, I would imagine.’
‘Are you suggesting, Jude, that I don’t know my way around a Records Office?’
‘No, I wouldn’t dare.’
‘Glad to hear it. The academic life may not bring much in the way of practical benefits, but it does make one a dab hand round libraries and archives.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ said Jude as she took her change and moved away from the desk.
She heard the rasp of Laurence’s breath close against her ear as he murmured, ‘Got a winner straight away. She’s in there.’
‘Marla Teischbaum?’ He nodded. ‘What are you going to do – go straight up and congratulate her on her Festschrift?’
‘Not immediately, no. Start a bit of research of my own . . . and maybe peer over her shoulder and see what she’s digging into.’
‘OK. You’re the academic, Laurence. And who am I – another academic?’
‘By no means. You are my Research Assistant.’
‘I seem to recall you using that description quite a lot back in Prague. For those pretty young students who were so essential to your work when you went off to conferences.’
‘Oh yes.’ He smiled fondly, without a scintilla of guilt in his expression. ‘You’re joining a very distinguished list, you know, Jude.’
‘And do I get the same bonuses all the other Research Assistants used to get?’
‘If you play your cards right –’ he winked ‘– you might be in with a chance.’
But his pose of the Great Seducer was destroyed by another bout of coughing. He waited until it had passed, then immediately screwed his cigarette back into his mouth for the final drag. The woman at the Reception desk approved of him even less.
The cool of the air conditioning hit them as soon as they walked into the Reading Room. Also in the air was the vague mustiness of old documents. One or other – possibly both – brought on a renewed spasm of coughing from Laurence. At the end he panted, ‘Can’t take this for long. Twenty minutes top-weight, then I’ll have to go out for another cigarette.’