Murder in the Museum. Simon Brett

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ face of the earth, literally blown to smithereens. That was why his brother’s famous poem carried such emotional impact. ‘Threnody for the Lost’ was a powerful evocation of bereavement, particularly the pain of the mourner left with nothing tangible to mourn.

      No grave, no lichened tombstone, graven plaque,

      No yew-treed cross beneath its cloak of moss,

      No sense but absence, unforgiving dark,

      The stretching void that is eternal loss.

      No one of Carole Seddon’s generation could have got through school without having learned those lines, and the revival of interest in the Great War towards the end of the twentieth century had ensured that the name of Esmond Chadleigh was not forgotten.

      But, as was being made clear at the Board of Trustees meeting that autumn afternoon, though his name was familiar, it was not familiar enough. The teetering finances of Bracketts required the profile of Esmond Chadleigh to be a lot higher than it currently was. Without a substantial injection of cash, closure of the estate as a heritage site was a very real possibility.

      Gina Locke spelled out the reality in typically uncompromising style. ‘Unless something happens, Bracketts might be closing at the end of October for the last time.’

      Gina was mid- to late thirties, slight and dark, but with undeniable charisma. Carole had met her at a dinner party in the nearby town of Fedborough, and been immediately taken by the enthusiasm with which she talked about her new job as Director of Bracketts. It was that enthusiasm which had carried Carole into her current position as a Trustee, and which made her feel guilty for her recent thoughts of escaping the role. (But then a suspicion that was hardening into a reality made her feel less guilty. She was increasingly certain that she’d been taken on board – and indeed on to the Board at Bracketts – to provide more support for Gina Locke’s personal agenda. If the Director thought she was going to get subservience from Carole Seddon, she couldn’t have been more wrong.)

      ‘Aren’t you being a little bit alarmist there?’ The languid voice that challenged Gina Locke’s pessimism belonged to Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, one of the two Trustees who were blood relatives of Esmond Chadleigh. He was the great man’s grandson. Chubby, in his fifties, with a round body which threatened to spill out of the chair in which it sat, Graham Chadleigh-Bewes had one of those faces whose babyishness is only accentuated by the advance of wrinkles and the retreat of hair. His permanent expression was one of mild pique, as though someone else had just appropriated a treat he had been promising himself. Apparently he had had some minor literary career of his own, but most of his energies were now focused on perpetuating the image of his grandfather.

      The other Trustee from the Chadleigh family was Graham’s Aunt Belinda, the younger of Esmond’s daughters. (Her sister Sonia, Graham’s mother, had died of a brain tumour in 1976.) Though not yet seventy, Belinda Chadleigh behaved as though she were a lot older. She never failed to attend the Trustees’ Meetings, but always failed to make much impression once she was there. She was a few lines behind the general discussion and on the rare occasions she spoke it was usually to clarify something she had misunderstood. Once she had had the point spelled out to her, the unchanging vagueness in her bleached blue eyes suggested that the explanation had left her none the wiser.

      ‘I don’t think I’m being alarmist,’ Gina Locke replied coolly to Graham Chadleigh-Bewes’ interruption. ‘I think I’m being realistic.’

      Lord Beniston cleared his throat testily, unwilling to have even that amount of conversation not conducted through the chair. ‘It would be useful, Gina, if you could give the Trustees a quick overview of the current state of Bracketts’ finances.’

      ‘Exactly what I was about to do.’

      This reply, though not overtly rude, still didn’t contain the amount of deference Lord Beniston would have liked. He harrumphed again and said, ‘Let’s hear the worst then.’

      ‘Right.’ Gina Locke picked up a sheaf of papers in front of her. ‘You’ve all been circulated copies of the last six months’ accounts, which I think are self-explanatory. If there are any details you’d like to pick up on, I’m more than happy to give you fuller information.’ She allowed a short pause, but no one filled it with any enquiry. ‘Basically, as you’ll see, there is a worrying shortfall between income and expenditure.’

      ‘Couldn’t a lot of that be put down to the foot-and-mouth epidemic? Keeping the visitors away?’ The new voice was marinated in Cheltenham Ladies College and money. It belonged to Josie Freeman, whose husband John had started a very successful car-parts franchising operation in the late nineteen-eighties. His shrewdly calculated marriage had been the first step in a gentrification process which had recently been crowned by an OBE ‘for services to industry’. Josie brought to their partnership the class her husband lacked, and by way of gratitude he passed on to her the responsibility of channelling a part of his considerable income into the kind of good causes suitable to the status towards which he aspired.

      Her acceptance of a Trusteeship at Bracketts was a part of that process. Josie Freeman had access to a whole group of equally well-groomed and well-blonded wives of the wealthy, just the kind of essential fund-raising contacts that Carole Seddon lacked. Because of her status, Josie was constantly approached by the outstretched begging-bowls of heritage sites, theatres, hospitals, hospices, animal charities and a thousand-and-one other worthy causes. The skill with which she selected those to whom the Freeman endorsement should be granted or withheld, and her masterly control of her calendar of charitable events, would have qualified her for a diplomatic posting in the most volatile of the world’s trouble-spots.

      ‘Foot-and-mouth had an effect,’ Gina Locke replied crisply, ‘as it did all over the heritage industry, but it only exacerbated problems which were already established here at Bracketts. A place like this can never be kept going by the money from visitor ticket sales alone.’

      ‘It used to be,’ said Graham Chadleigh-Bewes with some petulance. ‘When it was just run as a family concern. Before management experts were brought in.’

      Gina ignored the implied criticism in his emphasis. She was too shrewd an operator to get diverted into minor squabbles. ‘Bracketts was a much smaller operation then. And staffed almost entirely by Volunteers. Now that it’s a real business with professional staff, obviously the outgoings are much greater.’

      ‘But what about the atmosphere of the place?’ asked Esmond Chadleigh’s grandson, in the mumble of a resentful schoolboy wanting to be heard by his friends but not the teacher.

      Again Gina didn’t let it get to her. The Trustees’ Meetings every couple of months were just part of the Director’s job, a boring part perhaps, but something she had to get through. If she was polite, kept her temper and made sure that the Trustees could never complain that they didn’t have enough information, then she could soon get back to running Bracketts the way she wanted.

      ‘So,’ demanded Lord Beniston with the aristocratic conviction that there must be an answer to everything, ‘where are we going to get the money from? I’ve forgotten, what’s the state of play with the Lottery?’

      ‘Come to the end of the road there, I’m afraid. After all that work we put into the application, the answer came back last month and it was a no.’

      ‘What was a no?’ asked Belinda Chadleigh, picking up on the word and making a random entrance into the discussion.

      ‘The Lottery.’

      ‘Ah, СКАЧАТЬ