Martin Edwards - The Hanging Wood

‘Alfred Hopes was a snob, then?’

Micah Bridge coloured, and Daniel realised he’d struck a nerve. The principal’s academic elitism was as snobbish as Alfred Hopes’ condescension about class. ‘You might say so, but at least he wasn’t ruled by profit-and-loss accounts and balance sheets. But why do you ask?’

Daniel waved the question away, realising he didn’t have a sensible answer. He’d become lost in a maze, taking one wrong turning after another in trying to make sense of the fates of Orla and Aslan. Time to start thinking like a historian again. Gathering all the scraps of evidence, seeing if they contradicted assumptions he’d already made. How often had he preached to students the importance of asking the right questions? He believed with a passion that understanding history helped you to make sense of the present, and so it must be with murder. The reasons for the deaths were rooted in the past, he was sure of it. Ask the right questions about what happened twenty years ago, and he’d find the right answers.

A squeal of brakes made him swivel round. An open-top sports car was screeching to a halt at the end of the drive. Fleur Madsen was hunched behind the wheel, dark glasses masking her eyes. The wind had tangled her hair; he’d never before seen her looking a fraction short of elegance personified. The principal, looking as though the arrival of his chair of trustees was all he needed to make his misery complete, dragged himself forward to greet her.

With a wave to Fleur and a nod to his sister, Daniel opened one of the double doors and came face-to-face with Sham Madsen, admiring her reflection in a compact mirror.

‘Didn’t expect to see you today, Daniel!’ Her eyes opened very wide. He thought she’d overdone the mascara. ‘Or you, Louise! Have you heard the dreadful news?’

‘I don’t know any details.’

‘Apparently,’ Sham lowered her voice, as if imparting a state secret, ‘poor Aslan’s head was bashed in and he was dumped in a slurry tank. Yuck, can you imagine? Dad is worried sick about Mike Hinds. He wants to make sure he has the best defence.’

‘Why? Does he think Hinds is guilty?’

‘No, I’m not saying that, but it stands to reason the police think so. What if Aslan turned up at Lane End and demanded money? Old Mike would go apeshit.’

‘Killing his own son would be a bit of an overreaction, wouldn’t it?’ Louise asked.

Sham made a throat-slitting gesture. ‘Hey, you don’t know Mike.’

‘What was Aslan researching on Friday morning?’ Daniel asked.

She frowned. ‘Search me.’

He’d do better to search the archives instead, but before he could head off for the library, Fleur trotted through the door, Micah Bridge trailing in her wake. She had taken off the sunglasses; her eyes lacked their usual sparkle and her make-up didn’t disguise the pallor of her cheeks. She was wearing a plain white blouse and black trousers, and an expression as severe as her outfit. As they exchanged greetings and shock-horror exclamations about Aslan Sheikh’s death, he remembered Aslan describing her as a cougar. Had she flirted with him? Or even gone further? Today, for sure, she wasn’t in flirtatious mood.

‘What brings you two here on a Sunday?’ she asked. Unspoken was the rider: I didn’t have you down as a rubbernecking sensation-seeker.

‘The day before he died,’ Daniel said, ‘Aslan checked something out in the library. I was curious about what it might be.’

Fleur looked at him in bewilderment. He’d never before noticed the faint worry lines around her eyes. ‘I simply cannot imagine.’

If she was feigning ignorance, she didn’t merely look a little like Audrey Hepburn, she was a better actor. Yet Daniel was gripped by a conviction that she could help him to unlock the mystery, even if she didn’t know where to find the key. He was tempted to cross-examine her. But did she really want the truth to come out?

His mind was made up by the roar of a car racing down the drive outside. Micah Bridge glanced through the open door and winced.

‘It seems that the first journalists have arrived.’

Sham said, ‘Are you sure they aren’t just Friends of the Library?’

‘These men do not look as if they have ever read a book in their lives.’

‘Ouch.’ Fleur raised her eyebrows. ‘Micah, I’ve never once heard you say anything bitchy before. You must be stressed. We all are, of course, but we must put on a brave face with outsiders. What happened to Aslan and Orla is nothing to do with their work at St Herbert’s.’

‘We’d better leave you to it.’ Seizing his chance, Daniel beckoned his sister to follow him down the corridor.

‘What exactly are you looking for in these archives, then?’ Louise asked as soon as they had closed the doors of the Old Library behind them.

He contrived an expression so inscrutable that she couldn’t resist the urge to giggle.

‘I want to find out about Castor and Pollux.’

* * *

It took less than thirty minutes for Daniel to trace what he was after. He spent another ten at his favourite desk, gazing at the yellowed sheets he’d borrowed from the archive downstairs, turning what he had discovered over in his mind. Testing hypotheses, in the way he’d once taught to students new to deductive reasoning, searching for answers that were not only valid but sound. After browsing for a while through the crammed bookshelves, Louise came up to join him, but soon she became bored by his reverie, and started drumming her fingers against the iron railing. She’d never been afraid to bring him back down to earth.

‘So was that a eureka moment, or not?’

He leant back in his chair. ‘You bet.’

‘Go on, then. Surprise me.’

‘John Everett Millais was a regular visitor to Keswick as guest of the Hopes family,’ Daniel said. ‘According to Sir Milo Hopes’ memoir, Millais repaid their hospitality by making them a present of this painting.’

He pointed to an old photograph of a painting in a heavy gilt frame similar to others they had seen at Mockbeggar Hall. Two labradors with huge brown eyes stood side by side, as if awaiting a command. The sunlit turrets, seen through the trees behind them, made the Hall seem like a palace from a fairy tale. Daniel suspected Millais had dashed the painting off as a thank you; he’d sought to convey the dogs’ unyielding loyalty and fidelity, yet the effect was cloying and sentimental, so that the picture was a long way short of a masterpiece. Hadn’t William Morris dismissed his fellow Pre-Raphaelite as an artist bought and sold and thrown away ? He’d overdone the hasty hack work, and this was an example. But Morris’s sneer meant nothing to Milo Hopes, who wrote in his memoir that he would always owe a debt to his distinguished guest for immortalising his beloved animals, and vowed that Millais’ gift should always have a place of honour in Mockbeggar Hall.

The painting bore a caption so blurred it was barely legible.

Castor and Pollux .

‘Well, well,’ Louise murmured. ‘Go on, break it to me gently. What on earth connects a Victorian painting of family pets with Aslan Sheikh?’

Daniel lifted a lined sheet covered in tiny copperplate. ‘Milo Hopes loved his labradors. In his writings, he gives the impression they meant much more to him than his servants. Eventually, first Castor, and then Pollux, died at ripe old ages, and he established a graveyard in the Hall grounds. That’s where they were buried, and it became a family tradition for the Hopes’ dogs to be laid to rest alongside, with headstones recording their names and dates.’

‘Aaaaagh!’ Louise couldn’t contain her frustration. ‘Come on, Daniel, enough of the history, what’s the link with the here and now?’