The Archivist Read online

  ‘Maureen Hindle,’ he said, and a great wave of relief swept through his body like a shot of strong alcohol.

  ‘The guide who gave me the inventory?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ Sam said. ‘How extraordinary. Why would she do this?’

  BS took a deep breath to compose himself before he embarked on his saga. ‘The earl has never seen fit to let me have a permanent assistant,’ he began, ‘so I used to recruit helpers over the winter on a more casual basis.’ He paused again. He wanted to make sure that he laid out the sequence of events accurately so that Sam could get a true sense of escalation and understand how he had ended up in this bind. ‘You may or may not have heard that Maureen Hindle had a horrible accident a few years ago.’

  ‘No. I didn’t know that. What sort of accident?’

  ‘She trapped her finger in one of the locking bars in the state rooms.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘I found her, helped her, and for whatever reason, asked her to help me out that winter. I think I felt sorry for her, but I quickly realised I had made an error.’

  ‘Why?

  He leaned back in his chair and knitted his fingers across his stomach. ‘She wasn’t discreet enough.’

  ‘Discreet?’

  ‘Not like that,’ he said quickly. ‘I have access to all sorts of things concerning His Lordship’s personal life, and she couldn’t be trusted.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Sam. ‘But I suppose we’re all inclined to gossip.’

  ‘That wasn’t the complete reason.’ The palliative rush of confession was waning and the room was beginning to feel stuffy, close. ‘There was something – how can I put it? – Something arch about her.’

  ‘Arch?’ Sam paused. ‘Well, in the short time I’ve been here, I haven’t noticed anything playful like that about her. She strikes me as a rather unfulfilled woman – distant, bitter even.’

  ‘Ah, there’s the rub. She has very low self-esteem. She once described herself to me as ‘lumpy’. I think she has lived a life of regret. She feels life has dealt with her badly.’

  ‘It sounds as if the two of you were close.’

  ‘Not at all,’ BS said. ‘I only know this because over the winter she confided in me’ (he thought of Maureen heavy on his shoulder, her face turned away), ‘probably too much’ (he thought of Maureen crying). ‘I would certainly not have taken advantage of such a confidence, but I got the impression ...’ BS paused again to organise his thoughts, ‘... I felt that she was – how shall I put it? Trailing the bait.’

  ‘Trailing the bait? You mean she had designs on you?’ BS thought Sam was about to laugh.

  ‘Probably not as strong as that,’ he said, feeling an unwelcome warmth moving up from his neck. ‘Anyway, the following winter I asked someone else to help me, ostensibly because I needed some documents translated, and Mrs Falkender – ’

  ‘Our northern guide?’

  ‘Precisely. Mrs Falkender took over until you arrived. And, at the risk of paying a clumsy compliment, both of you epitomise everything Maureen Hindle is not.’

  Sam sighed. ‘But this ...’ She indicated the letters spread on the table in front of her. ‘Surely this is a pretty extreme response?’

  ‘Not for someone like her,’ BS said. ‘She was already deliberately spreading pricks of rumour that I had unceremoniously got rid of Donna because you were arriving even though she stopped working for me last year. I carefully raised this with Donna and she was vehement that she had told me of her intention to go back to guiding at the end of last season, long before we even knew an exhibition was being planned.’

  Sam picked up her handbag, drew her own letter from it and placed it on the table with the others. ‘If you’re right,’ she said, ‘what do you plan to do next? There’s very little hard evidence here.’

  ‘I have a meeting with the CEO at four today. I will lay the salient pieces of information before him and recommend that Maureen Hindle be dropped from the rota with immediate effect.’

  ‘Get her sacked, you mean?’

  ‘That’s not the way we do things here at Duntisbourne.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘The guides aren’t on contracts. They are dismissed at the end of each season, and then invited to apply again the following year.’

  ‘Why?’

  BS sensed disapproval and was annoyed. ‘It’s the way it’s always been done. It keeps things flexible.’

  ‘Well, if it’s meant to make getting rid of people easier, it doesn’t. All the guides have the same statutory employment rights as any other employee.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  Sam laughed at him and shook her head. ‘I’m telling you, you can’t just sack her.’

  BS leant back into his chair and puffed out his cheeks before he closed his eyes and rested his hands the top of his stomach. When did women get so pugnacious? There was a time when his team of female staff positively quaked as he bore down the corridors of the Cathedral School. Back in the sixties they knew their place. There were a couple of argumentative ones, women’s rights and all that, but he learnt early on how to goad them into making fools of themselves by losing their temper. He opened his eyes and met Sam’s gaze. ‘I won’t be sacking her,’ he said. ‘She will be dropped from the rota, that is all.’

  ‘It amounts to the same thing. She could make a lot of trouble for you.’

  ‘Hasn’t she already?’ he said, waving an impatient hand over the letters.

  ‘If it’s her.’

  ‘Of course it’s her. Look at the language.’ He stirred the letters around and pulled one out from the bottom of the pile. ‘Look: ‘Beyond unfair!’ It’s written right here. The number of times I’ve heard her say that.’

  ‘I understand, I really do, how difficult this is. But your suspicions are all circumstantial. You could be imagining connections that aren’t here.’

  ‘No, no, because outside that lies my quite profound awareness of things such as motive, nature of personality, factual knowledge of malice in at least some areas.’

  ‘In which case, you need to be one hundred per cent certain that these are from Maureen Hindle because if she feels she has been unfairly dismissed, it sounds to me as if she is just the type of person to make things extremely difficult for both you and the Hall.’

  BS knew Sam’s heart was in the right place, but he had been here for years and knew how things were done. Guides were getting dropped from the rota all the time for the weakest of reasons and he had never heard of a single instance when one of them came back with an accusation of unfair dismissal. It just wasn’t done.

  ‘I thank you for your excellent advice,’ he said, gathering up the letters to return them to his rucksack, ‘but you must let me handle things my way.’ He was aware that Sam was watching him with an air of resignation, but something roused her and she stood up and shot a hand forward over the table towards his bag. He clutched it to him squeezing the mouth closed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I just want mine back,’ and her hand pushed into the opening. BS swung it away from her, putting his broad back between them and hugging the rucksack to him. He felt a flash of anger – or was it panic?

  ‘I’ll find it,’ he said over his shoulder, drawing it out and handing it back to her. She took it with a smile, but her eyes betrayed an undertone of suspicion.

  - 20 -

  Max had found it hard to sleep all weekend and Sunday night was no different. At two in the morning he gave up trying to sleep and went downstairs to scan his bookshelves for a book he knew he had read a number of years ago about the Valley of the Kings, which he thought he should revisit in case he was asked about the Bomford Collection at the Hall. Having found it, he went back to bed and read until five when he eventually slipped off into a restless sleep. His radio alarm clicked on Radio 4 at seven but he continued to snooze and his dreams merged with the news bulletins of the day. He finally woke with a start from a deep sleep, dragged
himself up through the syrup and staggering down to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. He listened to the news and fancied that he had had a premonition not only about an air crash in the Urals, but also about a wave of ‘flu that was going to sweep across Europe that winter. Then he realised it was Mullins who had told him he had the vaccination in his fridge, and that he hadn’t seen Mullins since he left Christchurch School in 1974 and Mullins’ ears had been as large as those of Anubis when he showed Max the enormous golden syringe he was going to use to vaccinate his bottom, and that in fact none of it was a premonition – it had all been a dream.

  ‘Bull shit,’ he muttered as he lit his first cigarette of the day.

  The weather was bright and cold, and as he left his cottage Max felt the stirring of spring. Some years ago a kindly neighbour had tucked some daffodil bulbs into the bank beside his drive, and the breeze was knocking their heads against one another in a jaunty dance. The day got brighter still when he arrived at the Hall and saw Sam’s magnificent motor parking behind his. He wandered over to her car and held the door open for her.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘You’re well wrapped up.’

  ‘That front door is the coldest place on earth, I swear to God. How’s that exhibition of yours shaping up?’

  ‘Slowly,’ Sam said. She went around to the boot of the car but before opening it, she hesitated and turned to him. ‘I haven’t said thank you for rescuing me the other night.’

  ‘Indeed you haven’t, but as it was such a pleasure, I’m not sure you really need to.’

  ‘If you’re not rushing back home straight after work, perhaps you’d like to come up to the flat for a quick drink. I’ve just been into town,’ she opened the boot, ‘and I’m all stocked up,’ and she lifted up a couple of carrier bags which clanked.

  Max stood stock still in front of her. ‘Could life get any sweeter?’ he said expansively. She smiled. Max liked it when Sam smiled. ‘What time would you like to see me?’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure. What’s the earliest one can legitimately have a drink?’

  ‘I like six o’clock, and it’s six o’clock somewhere in the world even now.’

  ‘Come after work. I’ll be back there from five onwards.’

  Sam peeled off towards her flat and Max felt an extra shiver of comfort when he entered the Hall through the coke hole, heard the throaty roar of the huge steam boilers and smelt the sharp tang of fuel oil. The heating was on. Today was shaping up extremely well. He bounded up the stairs to the guides’ room two at a time and burst in through the door, issuing a cheery welcome to his colleagues. It was met by a mumble of hellos. Major Frodsham was sitting in the comfortable chair studying his fingernails and Weenie was stirring a cup of tea by the kettle. Noel looked up from the back of the room, raised an eyebrow at Max and nodded over towards Maureen Hindle, who was standing at the side of Bunty’s desk, staring down at the diary. The atmosphere was fissile.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do about it,’ Bunty said. ‘You are not down to work today.’

  ‘I always work on a Monday. We drove back through the night so that I could be here for work this morning.’

  ‘You’re not down.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Maureen, I don’t know.’ Bunty sounded exasperated. ‘Take it up with the office. We’ve got our full quota for today.’

  Maureen pulled the diary away from Bunty and spun it round to face her. ‘What’s she down there for?’ she said, stabbing at the page with a finger.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sam Westbrook.’

  Max felt a jolt of irritation. He didn’t care for Maureen’s tone of voice, and no one was going to criticise Sam in his presence.

  ‘Take it up with the office,’ Bunty repeated.

  ‘She’s not a guide. She’s not even a guide. Why is that woman down on the rota if she’s not a guide? Beyond unfair! It’s completely beyond unfair.’

  Bunty sighed and turned in her chair to face Maureen. ‘You will have to take it up with the office. All I know is that we work to a limited budget. It’s possible that BS Moreton felt that now we have Sam Westbrook here, we can’t justify an extra person on a Monday.’

  ‘BS Moreton?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Oh, I should have guessed. Trust him to stick his oar in. He’s got his favourites, you know, and obviously I’m no longer one of them. How dare he get busy with the rota! It’s none of his business. And what’s he doing putting her forward as a guide? He knows she’s not a guide. Why has he had her put down? What’s she going to do?’

  ‘Maureen! Calm yourself. My hands are tied. BS is management, I’m not and what he says goes. Perhaps they think she can cover security if we’re stuck because she’s here in the building anyway.’

  ‘She’s on a salary. A great big fat salary. And you’re telling me that on top of that she’s going to be paid by the hour for sitting on security? Do you think she’s going to do that? Sit in the indigo library with a radio? It’s preposterous. She doesn’t need the money, I do. This is beyond unfair. I’m not going home, you know – they can’t get rid of me just like that.’

  ‘That’s up to you. But don’t think you can fill out a time sheet and expect to get paid for today.’

  ‘What about the rest of the week?’ and Maureen began to flick feverishly through the diary. ‘I’m not in at all! I’m not in for the whole of April or May. Is Sam Westbrook still going to be here in May? I thought she’d be finished by then. What’s going on here?’

  ‘Talk to the office,’ Bunty said. ‘I beg you, talk to the office. I can’t do anything to help you.’

  ‘I’ve brought my lunch and everything.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Oh, come on now, Maureen. Don’t cry.’

  Maureen waved away Roger Hogg-Smythe, who had come forward to comfort her. She pulled a creased handkerchief out from the sleeve of her cardigan and pressed it into the corners of her eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said in a little voice and another sob rose up and shook her. Bunty got to her feet and led her by her shoulders over to the wide windowsill and sat her down. She patted her hand and said, not unkindly, ‘You can pull yourself together, Maureen. That’s what you can do.’ Bunty dropped her voice, but Max heard her add, ‘Don’t make an exhibition of yourself. Keep the tears for later. I’m sure it’ll all be sorted out.’ This advice made Maureen lose control of her mouth, which twisted and stretched into a gape of misery. Max glanced at Noel who, with the merest flicker of expression, encouraged him to join him in a quick exit from the guides’ room.

  The two men came to rest by the closed front door. ‘That, my friend,’ Noel said, ‘was shaping up to become a simply extraordinary exhibition of emotion. A ridiculous carry-on for a woman of her age.’

  ‘Seemed a bit extreme.’

  ‘Showing off, that’s all it is. Completely unnecessary.’

  ‘How are you and Sam getting on with the exhibition?’ Max asked. He was bored with Maureen Hindle’s problems. He much preferred talking about Sam.

  ‘Slowly.’

  ‘That’s just what Sam said.’

  Noel peered beadily at him. ‘Attractive woman, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a feeling, old chap, that our otherwise perfect friendship has been compromised somewhat by envy.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to be working in my stead on the exhibition with Sam?’

  ‘I have something better to look forward to. She has invited me to join her this evening for an after-work drink at her flat.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Noel flashed his eyes and added, ‘You’re a sly old dog, Max.’

  ‘I take exception to every single word of that, Noel – sly, dog and old.’ Noel raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘And I wish I could brag that those lewd and lascivious thoughts that you harbour in some blackened corner of your overactive imagination are correct.’

&
nbsp; ‘A slow-burning fuse then?’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s even lit.’

  The day had started bright and cold and by lunchtime the fragile clouds began to melt and patches of brilliant azure appeared. Max walked out on to the steps and looked up at the afternoon sky which was high and blue, thin clouds up in the stratosphere whipped into feathered horsetails. The wind had shifted round to the west and a warm, gentle breeze blew across the estate where the branches of the bare trees bulged with the potency of approaching spring. The buds of the horse chestnut trees were glistening, poised to flop out their first leaves like limp green gloves. By the afternoon the crowds had thinned, and as the day approached four o’clock the Hall was all but deserted.

  There was no last tour. Max left the Hall promptly at five, but before making his way over to Sam’s flat he slipped out into the courtyard for a cigarette. His favourite spot was near the wishing well, where he could tuck himself behind the plinth of a statue of a Greek gladiator energetically defending himself from an invisible foe using his invisible shield. Tonight, as Max gazed up at him and drew deeply on his cigarette, he noticed a strategically placed trunk of a tree disappearing behind the warrior. He circled around the figure trying to work out where this strengthening bough ended, and came to the conclusion that it was lodged firmly between the man’s buttocks. His study was disrupted by a late visitor returning from the gardens to his car, who frowned at him as he passed. Max chuckled to himself, tossed his cigarette down the well, popped a strong mint into his mouth, and set off for Sam’s flat.

  ‘This is kind of you,’ Max called through to the kitchen. He stood at the window looking out over the park as evening descended.

  ‘Not at all,’ Sam said, coming back into the sitting room with a glass of wine and a beer. ‘A thank you which is long overdue. Things have been a bit hectic.’ She handed him the bottle of beer. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a glass?’ He shook his head and she sat down at the end of the sofa and tucked her legs underneath her. He decided to be bold and took his place at the other end.