He gestured to the backview of a tall figure in elegant linen suit and neat copper-beech hair, bent forward over documents, and gave Jude a meaningful wink.
‘What are we going to do?’ she murmured.
‘What do you think? Research.’
Instinct and long experience with libraries pointed out to him exactly the right person to ask and the right material to ask for. He gestured Jude to a chair and drew out of his leather bag the photocopies he’d taken from Carole’s house.
‘You’d better have a look at these, get up to date,’ he breathed at her.
‘Why?’ asked Jude, with slight irritation.
‘Because that’s what Research Assistants do.’ He turned to leave.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Have a smoke while they fetch our stuff.’ And he went out to antagonize the woman at Reception even more.
Jude read through the photocopied material he’d left her. She found it engrossing. Old documents always moved her. She could sense the characters of the people who had written them, feel the strong but invisible link between her own time and the moment when the pen had first marked the pages.
The volumes Laurence had ordered were soon delivered to the desk and, seeing their arrival through the glass, he came back in, once again coughing at the assault of the air conditioning. To Jude as he came towards her he now looked impossibly thin.
‘One thing this tells us,’ he murmured as he sat beside her, ‘is that Marla Teischbaum’s well ahead of us.’
‘Sorry?’ Jude whispered back.
‘This stuff is to check the date Esmond’s father actually took possession of Bracketts. She’s already done that.’ He looked speculatively across to the neatly coiffed woman the other side of the Reading Room. ‘I wonder what she’s on to now.’
The documents Laurence had ordered were bound copies of Land Registry documents, photocopied Parish Registers and census forms. They all confirmed his conjecture. Felix Chadleigh had moved into Bracketts and written his celebratory diary entry on 12 November 1916.
With practised skill, Laurence Hawker removed his laptop from its leather case, started it up and began to key in information. Jude was intrigued to see he had already opened files named ‘Bracketts’, ‘Chadleigh Family’ and ‘Esmond Chadleigh’. Maybe that’s what he had been doing, as well as smoking, during his long, sleepless night.
He was certainly absorbed. Jude hadn’t seen him working for a long time, since Prague in fact, and she was reminded what an indissoluble link there was between the man and his studies. Women might come and go in Laurence Hawker’s life; his real passion would always be his work. If Jude had recognized that fact earlier, she might have accepted with more equanimity his diversions with the series of ‘Research Assistants’. No one woman would ever possess Laurence Hawker.
She once again felt a strong urge to argue with him in favour of treatment. Maybe there was no dominant reason in his personal life to keep fighting, but to be able to continue with his work for longer . . . Even as she had the idea, she rejected it. Laurence Hawker’s life was his, to dispose of as he saw fit.
He was so caught up in what he was typing that he didn’t see the newcomer in the Reading Room. Though unprepossessing, short and bearded, the man moved with assurance, on his own patch and wanting everyone to be aware of the fact. His arrival had an immediate effect on one of the County Records staff, who greeted him sycophantically and introduced him to a younger colleague. ‘You haven’t met George Ferris, have you?’
That’s handy, thought Jude. Another suspect.
The younger colleague was suitably appreciative of the honour bestowed by introduction to the former Assistant County Librarian. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You wrote How To Get The Best From The Facilities Of The County Records Office.’
They were the right words. The Hobbit-face beamed. Jude found herself idly wondering whether, beneath the thick grey socks and stout brown walking shoes, there was hair on the top of George Ferris’s feet.
After a little more condescending badinage, the great man brought the librarian-talk to an end. ‘Someone I’ve got to see,’ he said, with a man-of-the-world wink.
Jude tapped Laurence’s arm and they both watched George Ferris move across towards Professor Marla Teischbaum. There was something of a turkey-strut in his walk; he got a charge from knowing an attractive – even exotic – younger woman.
‘I was wondering, Marla,’ Jude and Laurence heard him say, ‘whether I could lure you out for a spot of lunch . . .?’
Chapter Thirty-Four
George Ferris’s luring proved effective. Leaving the documents she was working on open on her desk, Marla Teischbaum scooped up the elegant leather bag by her side, and the two of them left the Reading Room. As they walked out, the Tolkien imagery seemed reinforced; he was a rustic bumpkin from the Shire, she some elegant, exotic creature from an elfin master-race.
Jude looked across at Laurence, mouthing, ‘What do we do?’
‘You follow them,’ he whispered back.
‘And you?’
‘I’ll try and get a peek at what she’s been researching.’
Jude nodded and, gathering up her straw basket, moved towards the Reception area. Through the glass she could see George Ferris lingering there, waiting. Marla must have gone off to tidy herself up in the Ladies. Jude showed great interest in a framed map of eighteenth-century Sussex boundaries.
Her conjecture proved correct. Professor Marla Teischbaum emerged a moment later, patting her recently brushed chestnut hair with satisfaction. Jude remembered Carole saying something about the woman being in love with herself, and particularly with her hair.
She gave the ill-matched pair a moment to get out of the Records Office, and then slowly, almost lackadaisically, followed.
It wasn’t a difficult tailing job. In the bright October sunshine, which pierced the threatening clouds of autumn, George Ferris and Marla Teischbaum walked along West Street towards the Cathedral. But they didn’t go far, soon crossing the road and entering the first available pub, rather imaginatively named ‘The Cathedral’. Jude wondered whether Marla had insisted on lunching close by so that she could return quickly to her studies; or, more likely, that the pub had been George’s regular in the days when he had worked for West Sussex Libraries.
There were enough people in the Cathedral at half past twelve for Jude’s entrance to be inconspicuous. From the bar she located her quarries at a table in the window. Marla had a glass of sparkling mineral water, George Ferris a pint ‘in a jug’ from which he drank with much elaborate beard-wiping. He’d used the word ‘lunch’, so Jude reckoned she was safe to order herself. An unashamed lover of fry-ups, she went for the All-Day Breakfast, and took her glass of white wine over to a table near theirs. Neither had met her before, so, with her back to them, Jude felt suitably invisible.
But to make her ear-wigging less blatant, she needed something to read. She riffled through the options in her straw basket. The recently purchased How To Get The Best From The Facilities Of The County Records Office would be far too much of a giveaway, as would the copy of Esmond Chadleigh’s Vases of Dead Flowers, which Laurence had asked her to carry for him.
The thought of Laurence made her realize that he didn’t know where she was, and so would be unable to join her. No great problem, though. He was less of a lunch-eater than ever, and, if he didn’t come into the Cathedral by chance, there were plenty of other places in Chichester where he could top up his whisky intake. Besides, his clothes and coughing made Laurence Hawker a much more conspicuous figure than Jude; his presence might inhibit the conversation at the adjacent table.