II

An Amber Necklace

IT WAS MISERABLY little to go on; what was worse, I couldn’t even get on with it. I suppose I could have gone straight off to Cambridge, but by the time I got there it would be late at night, and since we were not disclosing the disappearance of Dr Braunschweig there seemed no adequate reason to get the Curator of the museum out of bed. The immediate problem was to get through the evening. My old rooms in the Temple were still furnished, but there was no food in the place, and it was too late to shop. I didn’t feel much like eating, so I went to a pub and stood myself a large whisky and a sandwich. I enjoyed the whisky considerably more than the sandwich. Before going to the Temple I rang Sir Edmund to see if anything had come in. My hopes rose when he said yes, there was news of a sort. We didn’t want to discuss the case on the phone so I said I’d call in.

*

‘Have you eaten anything since lunch?’ he asked when I arrived.

‘Yes. I’m all right, thank you.’

‘What exactly have you eaten?’

‘That’s my business. You generally have some decent malt. I could use a drink if you like.’

‘Surely.’ He poured me a generous measure of one of my favourite brands of straight malt whisky, poured one for himself, and said, ‘How did you get on with Sir Anthony?’

‘Well enough, I think. He answered everything I asked him, but I’m less sure if he told me everything he knew about Dr Braunschweig. He may have felt that there was no reason for going into things I hadn’t asked about. He struck me as a very cagey sort – but perhaps that’s an occupational habit of the chairmen of oil companies. What’s the news that you have?’

‘Hamburg police have been on to say that Dr Braunschweig’s yacht is also missing.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past the oil company to have removed her to back up their story that he’s gone off on a cruise.’

‘The police thought of that. The company says not.’

‘That makes it more interesting. What kind of a boat is she, and where was she kept?’

‘She’s quite big – a fifty-foot steel ketch. She had a mooring at a yacht club. The moorings for the bigger boats are some distance from the clubhouse, and the club runs a launch for members to get to their boats. Inquiries have had to be discreet, but as far as the police know Dr Braunschweig did not use the club launch. That doesn’t mean much, because owners often take their own dinghies. Dinghies are coming and going all the time, and no one – at least, no one that Hamburg police have come across so far – remembers seeing Dr Braunschweig go out in the past few days.’

‘What’s his boat called?’

‘Apfel.’

‘Curious name for a boat. But why not? The apple is one of the finest fruits of the earth – he may have regarded her as the fruit of his own industry. He seems to be very fond of her. How old is she?’

‘Newish. She was launched just over a year ago, and Dr Braunschweig gave a big party at the club.’

‘Why didn’t the chairman tell me about it? I suppose he thought it of no importance – maybe it isn’t. But I wish he’d given me a more rounded picture of Dr Braunschweig.’

‘Not everyone realises the value of detail.’

‘You’d have thought the chairman of Universal Oil would. Perhaps he thinks so big that there’s no room in his mind for detail. Anyway, the new boat and the party for her give me a slightly more real impression of the man. And a fifty-foot steel ketch can go anywhere. If they haven’t already done so, you might ask the Hamburg police to go a bit more thoroughly into the question of dinghies.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if you have a fifty-foot boat drawing seven or eight feet moored off a yacht club you have got to get from her as well as to her. She will have a dinghy of her own carried on board, and if you use that it will be moored near the club. If no one went out to Apfel in the club launch, then her own dinghy was presumably used. But that implies that last time Dr Braunschweig came ashore he came in Apfel’s dinghy, which means that it should have been at the yacht club since Apfel last came in. If Apfel’s dinghy is still at the club, then either Dr Braunschweig or whoever sailed off in the ketch did go out in the launch in spite of what the police inquiries so far show, or they went in some other small boat, perhaps from somewhere else altogether. Hamburg police must have people who know about sailing. I don’t know who’s handling the Braunschweig affair – he may know a lot about anarchist politics and not much about boats. We want to find out everything we possibly can about exact movements relating to Apfel – how long had she been at her mooring since she last went out, what sort of dinghy does she have, when was anything last seen of it? And still more questions – what is her auxiliary engine, how much fuel can she carry, does anybody know when she last fuelled? Has other shipping been asked to look out for her?’

‘I’ll do what I can for your first questions, Peter – your habit of messing about in boats has come in useful before, and what seems obvious to you is not always so clear to people without your specialised interests. But the alerting of other shipping is not easy – we could only say that Apfel was believed stolen, and that would make nonsense of the story that Dr Braunschweig has gone off for a cruise in her. Unless the German police are forced to make a statement I think they’re right to keep quiet.’

‘I’m with you there – I’ve often thought that a lot of terrorism is simply kept going by publicity. There can’t be any general alert for Apfel at the moment. But it would help to have even a rough idea of where she is or may be heading.’

*

Sir Edmund is inclined to be scathing about my preference either for not bothering about lunch, or being content with a sandwich, a habit which he considers uncivilised. This is not out of concern for my dietary welfare but because lunch to him is an important means of keeping up with his vast range of semi-official, semi-social, contacts. To me it is more of a nuisance – I hate lunches that go on for two or three hours, however fascinating the conversation. I enjoy food at what I regard as the right times, and one of them is breakfast. With so much else in our society breakfast standards are, alas, declining, but there is one honourable exception – the breakfasts you can still get in restaurant cars on British Rail. There was a restaurant car on my early train to Cambridge, and I thoroughly enjoyed my meal. The train was not crowded and I had a table to myself. You don’t actually need space for thinking in, but sometimes it helps. I had a lot to think about.

Half of me wanted to be on the way to Hamburg instead of Cambridge. That Dr Braunschweig’s fifty-foot ketch should be missing as well as the man himself seemed to me highly significant – but significant of what? I wanted to know much more about the boat, about the club and the conditions in which she was kept, but it was hard to see what bearing this might have on his disappearance. And although there were lots of questions that I wanted to ask, I do not speak German at all fluently, and it seemed wiser to leave the questioning to the Hamburg police while I got on with things at Cambridge. But what was I to get on with? Seddon’s report on the missing Baffin Map was about as thorough as it could be, and while I could go over the ground again with the Cambridge police it didn’t seem likely that they could tell me anything we didn’t know already. The museum did not seem much more hopeful. The Cambridge CID had talked both to Dr Wilding, the Curator, and to the new Keeper of Arctic Maps, Dr Ingrid Mitchell: what could they add to me? Of course, I should be asking different questions: when the loss of the map was reported to the Cambridge police nobody had any idea of the bizarre circumstances which now surrounded it. And I should have to be careful not to give the museum people any inkling of those circumstances. Somehow I’d got to find out what conceivable interest a seventeenth-century map could have to a political terror group in Germany – that is, if they were a terror group. And what had happened to the map?

*

The Museum of Cartography is a beautiful early eighteenth-century building tucked in at the back of St John’s College. There is no formal link between college and museum, but many St John’s men have been distinguished in exploration, and by tradition the college provides one of the trustees for the museum, the college having offered land for the building when a later benefactor added to the original grant from the Hudson’s Bay Company, to enable the collection of maps to be properly housed. The entrance and courtyard remain as they were when the museum was built, but considerable extensions have been added. The museum has been fortunate in its architects, or perhaps there is something in the Cambridge air that makes for academic beauty by its river (unlike Oxford, which used the Thames for gasworks). On that early summer morning I felt that the ugly business which had brought me to Cambridge had an incongruously lovely setting.

Seddon’s notes told me that Dr Wilding had been Curator for twenty-eight years, and that he would have retired this year had there not been difficulty in finding a successor, a professorship of geography and a senior post in the Map Room at the British Museum having unexpectedly become vacant at the same time. My appointment was for ten o’clock, and I reported a couple of minutes before the hour. An attendant conducted me to the Curator’s secretary, who took me into a high, light room overlooking the river which had been the Curator’s office since the place was built. Dr Wilding was a picture-book example of the benign elderly scholar. ‘It is good of you to come,’ he said as he rose to greet me. ‘I fear we cannot help you much, but if you will tell me what you want I shall do everything in my power to assist.’

‘You should have been told that my business concerns the Baffin Map.’

‘Ah, yes, of course. I fear I grow forgetful. Alas, the Baffin Map is unaccountably astray.’

‘I know – we have been informed of that by the police. I am concerned with the grant of export licences for works of art, and my department has been approached by a reputable dealer who wants to know if we would grant an export licence were he able to acquire the map from you. Apparently an American university has approached him in the matter.’

‘I am not surprised. But you have no problem because we would not sell the map.’

‘I am sure you would not. But you will understand that the disappearance of the map makes inquiries about a possible export licence for it of considerable interest.’

‘Yes, yes. It is all most distressing. Shall we have the police here again?’

‘That may not be necessary. I thought it best to call on you myself so that you can give me whatever facts you have at first hand.’

‘It is considerate of you.’ He looked at my card. ‘I see that your name is Blair. We had a Blair once on the staff of the museum. He was an expert on early Arab maritime maps. No relation, I suppose? No, people never are.’

‘I understand that the map was lent to the university of Hamburg for an exhibition there, and that as far as you know it was returned.’

‘Yes. The university authorities behaved most responsibly in the matter. We lent them several of our maps. They were collected by a member of their staff. Dr Steinberg travelled with the maps to Hamburg, and he travelled back here with them when they were returned.’

‘You checked them with him?’

‘Yes. Or rather, I checked the number of packages against a list of the maps we had lent. I did not myself open them – we have an expert staff of packers and map handlers – but as Dr Steinberg accompanied the maps personally they must have returned.’

‘Were they insured?’

‘Yes – the university of Hamburg paid the premium.’

‘Have you claimed on the insurance?’

‘No. I have seen no reason to, because I am sure that the map is somewhere in our building.’

‘Yet you reported its disappearance to the police.’

‘In confidence. I should add that this was partly at the insistence of Ingrid – that is, Dr Mitchell, the Keeper of Arctic Maps. Dr Mitchell is a – er – quite stern young woman. She is most able, of course. Doubtless you will meet her.’

‘Do you ever sell maps from your collection?’

‘It is a matter for the trustees, though naturally they are guided by my advice. Yes, we do sell items from time to time. Like all museums we suffer from lack of space, and sometimes it is necessary to dispose of items of secondary importance to make room for additions to our collection.’

‘You would not regard the Baffin Map as of secondary importance?’

‘Indeed, no. It is not in my own field but it is unique of its kind. I am more directly concerned with early maps of Asia. You may have come across my book, The Asiatic Sources of Eratosthenes.’

‘Surely it is still the definitive work.’ He almost purred with pleasure.

‘You are generous to say so, but yes, I think it remains the leading authority for the period. Much good work is coming out of American universities nowadays, but on the sources of Eratosthenes I feel that we are still in the lead. Are you interested in the special problems of his location of the Caspian?’

He would have been delighted to discuss Eratosthenes all day, but it seemed unlikely that this would cast any light on the missing Baffin Map. I felt that time was slipping through my fingers. ‘Would it be possible for me to see Dr Mitchell?’ I asked.

‘Certainly. But you are so well-informed about Eratosthenes that I should like to pursue certain matters with you.’

‘I shall look forward to it. But we are being pressed for a decision on the Baffin Map and there are some points I should like to clear up with Dr Mitchell.’

‘What a nuisance!’ He lifted a telephone. ‘Janet, could you see if Dr Mitchell is free, and if so could you take Mr Blair to her?’ A minute or two later his secretary came into the room. ‘Dr Mitchell is free. Shall I take Mr Blair now?’

‘Do you feel that you must go at once?’ Dr Wilding asked hopefully.

‘I fear so.’

He sighed. ‘It has been a pleasure to meet you. It is not every day one comes across such interest in the cartography of the third century BC.’

*

I left the Curator in something approaching despair. Obviously he knew little about the Baffin Map and cared less. His attitude to its disappearance seemed deplorable, but he lived in a world of his own. Whatever his eminence as a scholar, he was clearly long past his job as an administrator, and for the sake of the museum I hoped that his retirement might not be long postponed. As we walked through the long corridors of the museum, making our way to the newer buildings at the back, I hoped that Dr Mitchell might live nearer to reality.

She did – embarrassingly close, I felt, when the secretary introduced me and left. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, looking at my card. ‘I have never heard of you. What do you wish to see me about?’

I was using one of my private visiting cards, with my address in the Temple, and which gives simply my name without any military rank. It was the best I could do at short notice. I felt instinctively that vague stories about export licences would not go down well with this sharp young woman and decided to give her an edited version of the truth. ‘I take it this room is secure?’ I said.

‘What on earth do you mean?’ She was still standing at her desk as she had got up to receive me, and she seemed, understandably, a bit startled. She was quite an attractive young woman, I thought, in her early thirties, with a good figure, a slight hardness in her appearance redeemed by widely spaced, intelligent eyes. She was wearing an amber necklace, the beads of an unusually deep reddish colour that suited her dark hair with a hint of red in it, and her clear skin.

I handed her my official warrant from the Department. ‘You will see that I am an officer of the Police Liaison Department of the Home Office,’ I said. ‘I am not myself a policeman, but naturally I work in close association with the police. If you are at all suspicious of me ring New Scotland Yard and ask for Assistant Commissioner Seddon. He will vouch for me, and if you put through the call yourself there can be no doubt that you are speaking to the Metropolitan Police.’

‘I don’t doubt you. I don’t know what you want.’ She sat down. She didn’t invite me to sit, but there was a chair in front of the desk and I took it. ‘My visit concerns the Baffin Map,’ I said. ‘You must know all about its disappearance – indeed, I understand that it was you who pressed the Curator to call in the police.’

‘I did.’

‘It has come to the knowledge of one of our embassies – I’m afraid I am not at liberty to say more – that the Baffin Map, or rather a map purporting to show Baffin’s discoveries in the Arctic, is being discreetly offered for sale. It may be a fake, it may be a legitimate copy of your map, or it may be the original stolen from the museum. Because the diplomatic service is involved we have been called in, and it is my job to see if we can help the embassy to recover the map – if it is your map. I have, of course, a full report of the inquiries made by the Cambridge police – regrettably they do not take us very far. You will understand that the diplomatic side of the matter is delicate, and that is why I am concerned that nothing we say can be overheard.’

She ignored this, and as I didn’t think it at all likely that anybody was listening in I let it go at that. What she did say rather surprised me. ‘What are they asking for it?’ she said.

‘I understand it is in the region of a quarter of a million pounds.’

‘Then it is undoubtedly our map. Is the embassy going to buy it?’

‘Hardly – ambassadors have no funds for buying stolen property. It is more a question of seeing whether the police in the country concerned can act. How can you be so sure that it is your map?’

‘The price, for one thing. No one is going to pay so much without being sure of what he is buying, and inks and paper used in map-making can be dated accurately nowadays by scientific analysis. That seems to me to rule out a fake. Has your embassy seen the map?’

‘No. A member of the embassy staff may be permitted to see it, and that is why it is so important to have your views on what to look for in deciding whether it is your map.’

‘Couldn’t I see it myself? I could travel anywhere at short notice.’

‘Obviously that would be the best thing, but I’m afraid it’s out of the question. If crime is involved it will be major international crime, and we must assume that those concerned will know all about you. For the moment it must be left to the embassy staff to handle things.’

‘It seems most unsatisfactory, but I suppose you have a point. What do you want to know about the map?’

‘I have the description of it from the catalogue of the museum. I want to know what makes it specially important.’

She considered for a moment. Then she asked, ‘Are you familiar with the history of Arctic exploration?’

‘Not very.’

‘At least you’re honest.’ She gave me a rather thin smile, but it was a smile. As if she were lecturing to first year undergraduates she went on, ‘Elizabethan seamen were firmly convinced of the existence of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the riches of the east, and sixteenth-century capitalists, including the Queen herself, fully realised the commercial advantages of finding such a route. There were also local resources to be exploited in fish and furs. Martin Frobisher got as far as what is now called Baffin Island in 1576 and thought he had found gold, though the “gold-bearing” rocks he brought back were found to contain only iron pyrites. In the later sixteenth century John Davis, after whom the Davis Strait between Greenland and Baffin Island is named, added considerably to knowledge of the Arctic, and in spite of the severe ice he met remained hopeful that a passage leading to the Pacific could be found. In 1610 Henry Hudson discovered Hudson’s Bay, a vast expanse of water which he thought was open sea. The voyage ended disastrously in a mutiny which led to Hudson’s death, but some of the mutineers got back to England with reports of his great discovery – which incidentally saved them from the gallows by exciting so much interest. William Baffin followed Hudson’s exploration and after several voyages got remarkably far north in the bay that bears his name. In 1615–16 he discovered Lancaster Sound, Jones Sound and Smith Sound, all of great importance in later Arctic exploration. For the next two centuries, however, the capitalist world had other things to think about and Baffin’s discoveries were largely forgotten – partly because he was thought to have brought back no map. The Hudson’s Bay Company found so much profit in exploiting Arctic Canada that it saw no point in pushing northwards to the wastes of Baffin Bay. Baffin’s importance as an explorer was rediscovered in the nineteenth century, when the Royal Navy after the Napoleonic wars turned its attention to the Arctic and the search for a North-West Passage. Baffin’s map turned out to be remarkably accurate.’

‘But you say he brought back no map.’

‘I said that he was thought to have brought back no map. That is the point. The map now known as Baffin’s did not come to light until 1776, a hundred and fifty years after his last Arctic voyage. It was found among the papers of a great-great-nephew, whose daughter married a Fellow of the Royal Society interested in geography. She gave the map to the museum, which forgot about it until the Navy sent Parry to the Arctic in 1819. The interest aroused by Parry’s voyage awakened interest in Baffin’s map, and its importance was recognised.’

‘You believe the map to be genuine?’

‘There can be little doubt. There were no other voyages from which it could have derived. It is signed “William Baffin” in a form which corresponds to Baffin’s known signature.’

‘Your catalogue says that a particular feature of the map is its use of coloured tints to indicate depths. Isn’t that unusual for the period?’

‘Yes, that is one of the things that make the map unique – and so valuable. It is a beautiful piece of work, and, as I said, surprisingly accurate.’

‘Have you got a copy that I could see?’

‘No – I don’t think there are any copies. Wait a minute, though – there was a small photograph of it in the catalogue of the Hamburg exhibition. They sent us some, and I think I’ve still got some in this drawer. Yes – you can keep this if you like. While I think of it, there’s another photograph in Mornington’s Arctic Exploration, but his book was published about forty years ago. It was a standard work of its time, but is now out of date. I can vaguely recall a photograph of the map, but I doubt if it’s as good as the one in the catalogue.’

I studied the reproduction she gave me. It was small, and in black and white, but it showed Baffin Bay clearly enough, and what I took to be the coast of Ellesmere Island. ‘He got very far north,’ I said.

‘Yes. He was a remarkable navigator in ice.’

‘You reported to the Curator that the map was missing. How long did you wait before telling him?’

‘One day – half a day, really. We had given research facilities to Dr Longworth, of the United States Institute of Arctic Navigation, and he wanted to consult the map. The assistant who would normally have brought it to him went to the cabinet it should have been in, and it wasn’t there. She told me at once – it was lateish in the afternoon, about four thirty. I thought that it had probably been misplaced after its return from the Hamburg exhibition, and I organised a search for it first thing next morning. When it hadn’t turned up by noon I reported to Dr Wilding.’

‘He still seems convinced that the map is mislaid and not really missing.’

‘That’s because he wants to think so. He’s due to retire soon, and he doesn’t want any sort of cloud over his retirement. He objected strongly to calling in the police.’

‘But you did call in the police.’

‘Of course we did – I went to see them myself, and then they came here, and Dr Wilding had to see them.’

‘What do you think has happened to the map?’

‘Well, your story confirms what I think. It’s obviously been stolen, and my own view is that it was stolen on the way back from Hamburg.’

‘The maps were escorted by Dr Steinberg.’

‘He travelled with a number of map cases – that is all he can really say about it. If you are right in thinking that some international gang of thieves is at work they could easily have somebody working for them at an airport, or in the baggage hold of an aircraft.’

‘I understand it was all before your time. Wouldn’t your predecessor have found out at once if the map was not among those returned from Hamburg?’

She thought about this. ‘In the ordinary way, yes,’ she said, ‘but Charles – I knew Charles Jackson well – was ill at the time, and he may just have assumed that the map had been put back by the staff.’

‘Dr Jackson’s death seems to have been particularly sad.’

‘Yes. He was the world’s leading expert on Arctic geography, and he had years of important work ahead of him. But he had some domestic problems and they affected his health. I had the greatest admiration for him. He supervised my thesis for my Ph.D. – I was working on climatic change in Alaska and the Bering Straits and he was a university lecturer in geography before he became Arctic Keeper at the museum.’

‘Did you expect to get his job?’

‘That seems to me an impertinent question. I’d been working in Charles Jackson’s field and all I can say is that it seemed reasonable that the trustees should invite me to succeed him.’

‘I’m sorry if I have upset you – I’m simply trying to get as accurate a picture as I can of the circumstances.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘I have taken up a lot of your time, and you have been very patient. If I may, I’ll report directly to you as soon as I have news of any developments.’

That mollified her. ‘You must forgive me. Charles Jackson was my friend, and I am still shocked by his death. You must do your job as you think fit. I can only wish you luck.’

‘Thank you.’ I got up to go. ‘May I say that the amber necklace you are wearing is an exceptionally beautiful piece?’

She laughed, but she was pleased. ‘It’s exceptionally interesting amber. It came from the area we’ve been talking about – from the shores of Baffin Bay.’

*

The Chief Superintendent at Cambridge was clearly impressed by whatever Sir Edmund Pusey had told him about me, but I cannot say that he received me with any noticeable enthusiasm. ‘We’re not at all sure that it is our case, or even that there is a case,’ he said. ‘We’ve put in a lot of police time with nothing to show for it. I can understand your anxiety for the German businessman, and of course we’re at your disposal for any help we can give, but I should say that the case properly belongs to Hamburg. However, you’d better have a word with the officer who actually handled our inquiries – Detective Inspector Richards. I’ve asked him to stand by. I must ask you to excuse me though. I’ve got to attend a meeting of the Traffic Committee at three o’clock.’

I was not sorry to be left with the inspector on my own. He was youngish and obviously intelligent, and he looked rather anxious. ‘I can’t help feeling that we must have slipped up in some way,’ he said. ‘I did everything I could think of, but it wasn’t exactly helpful to have the Curator insisting that the map was probably not lost, anyway.’

‘I’ve read your report, and it seems to me masterly,’ I said. ‘Please don’t think that I’m here to pick holes in anything you’ve done. What we’ve got to do now is to consider all the personalities involved and see if we can find any link with Hamburg, or the oil company. You knew nothing of that at the time, and you couldn’t have done more than you did.’

He brightened a little. ‘I don’t have many dealings with top brass, if you’ll pardon the expression, sir. But I’ve heard of one or two things that your Department has done, and I’m proud to be working with you.’

A pleasant-looking girl came in with tea and a plate of cucumber sandwiches – she must have had everything ready in advance. ‘The Chief Superintendent likes cucumber sandwiches, but as you know he’s had to go out. So I wondered if you might like them, they’re all fresh,’ she said. I thanked her. The inspector poured out tea, and we each took a sandwich. The slight informality of tea and sandwiches made things easier for us. ‘I’d like to go back to the situation at the museum before the map was reported missing,’ I said. ‘Did the rather sudden death of the Arctic man, Dr Charles Jackson, strike you as at all suspicious?’

‘Yes, sir, it did, and I went into it as thoroughly as I could. It made quite a story in the local papers when it happened because of his reputation as a scholar, though of course nobody knew anything about the map at the time. There was an inquest because he died of an overdose of drugs, but he was being treated by a doctor for depression and they were properly prescribed. The evidence at the inquest provided a reasonable explanation of how he came to take the overdose, and in the circumstances there couldn’t have been any other verdict than accidental death. When I was making inquiries about the map I went into all the evidence at the inquest, and had a long talk with the sergeant who’d handled things. He thought everything was in order.’

‘Did Dr Jackson leave any family?’

‘Yes, sir, a widow and a daughter around fourteen. The girl is being educated at a boarding school, and the sergeant thought that the widow would find it rather difficult to manage. They were buying a house on a mortgage. The widow has a job as a school teacher, but her salary won’t go far with the mortgage and school fees to meet.’

‘Do you know that she was left badly off?’

‘Yes, sir. I happen to know the managing clerk in the solicitor’s office which dealt with Dr Jackson’s will. Of course he shouldn’t really have told me anything, and I didn’t ask him to go into details, but he did confirm that Dr Jackson left very little, and being only fifty-two when he died there’s not much in the way of pension.’

‘Does the widow know that the map is missing?’

‘I can’t say, sir. You see, with the Curator insisting that we must treat everything in confidence and not let out that there was any concern about the map I felt I couldn’t very well ask her about it. I was interested in Dr Jackson’s financial circumstances to see if he could have had any possible motive for trying to sell the map. There’s not the slightest evidence against him, but I went into motive because if anybody had taken the map from the museum he’d have been best placed to do it, or to help somebody else to do it. He had the big mortgage and his daughter at a fee-paying school, but he earned a good salary and he added to it by lecturing. I should say he lived up to his income, but he didn’t seem to be extravagant and I could find no evidence of secret gambling debts, or anything else.’

‘Why was he depressed? His successor, Dr Mitchell, said that he had domestic problems. What were they?’

The inspector looked worried again. ‘That’s new to me, sir. Nothing about domestic trouble came out at the inquest. His widow said that he began to get depressed about a year ago because he felt that the quality of his lectures was falling off. She thought that he was working too hard, suggested that they should take a holiday, tried all the normal ways to jolly him along. It didn’t work, and after a bit she persuaded him to see a doctor. The doctor said it was a type of depression not uncommon in academic men in middle age. He treated him with a fairly new type of tranquillising drug that he had found successful with other patients, and he thought that he was responding well. The overdose alone might not have killed him – he died from a combination of the overdose and alcohol. He and his wife had been to a farewell party for a college lecturer who was going to be a professor in America, and there was evidence that Dr Jackson drank a considerable quantity of gin.’

‘That was unusual for him?’

‘So it seemed, sir. He liked a drink, but the sergeant found nothing to indicate heavy drinking. The doctor said that a sudden turning to alcohol if it happened to be available was typical of his sort of depression.’

‘Funny that Dr Mitchell talked about domestic problems. But she seems to have known him well from her student days – she had actually been a student of his before he got the museum job. She may have used the phrase loosely, and not meant what is ordinarily understood by it. What do we know of her background?’

‘She wasn’t easy to interview, sir – she’d answer questions civilly enough, but she didn’t volunteer anything about herself. My feeling was that the Curator was a bit afraid of her, and if so I’d understand it. But the main facts of her life seem straightforward. She was a student at Bristol, and by all accounts a brilliant one. She took a Ph.D. here at Cambridge, and then she got a teaching fellowship at one of the women’s colleges. I’d say she was respected rather than liked. I talked to various people at the college, and they all seemed to think that she had a fair contempt for most other people, particularly for women’s colleges. But there’s no denying her ability. Her own special field is polar geography, and her colleagues thought it quite natural that she should be appointed to succeed Dr Jackson.’

‘She’s quite attractive. I wonder why she’s never married.’

The inspector’s worried look had gone again, and he laughed. ‘Well, I wouldn’t like to be married to her, sir,’ he said.

‘The world’s a bit hard sometimes on women of outstanding ability, but I can see what you mean. Where does she live?’

‘Nice little cottage out towards Cherry Hinton. Looks after herself inside, but employs an old chap as a gardener three days a week. I put a man on to watching the place for a while, but we’re short-staffed as always, and I couldn’t justify keeping up a watch. She doesn’t have much to do with her neighbours, though they all say she’s civil enough. She entertains a bit in the evenings and at weekends, rather fancies herself as a cook, or so it’s said. Guests mostly cars with local registrations, so they’re probably academic friends of one sort or another. All highly respectable. Apart from opportunity there’s not a scrap of evidence to suggest that she knows anything about the map, and making the Curator call us in as she did rather points the other way.’

‘Know anything about her family?’

‘Only from the most elementary inquiries. She seems to be an only child. Parents still alive – father’s a doctor in Nottingham, and well thought of, according to the local police.’

‘You’ve been extraordinarily thorough. What about the rest of the staff?’

‘Well, a sergeant and I between us have interviewed all of them, and there’s nothing against any of them. Most of them, even the typists, have been there some time – jobs at the museum are reckoned good to have.’

‘Yet you yourself are not satisfied.’

‘No, sir, I’m not. I’d like to put in more time on the case, but with so little to go on, and the Curator’s insistence that the map is probably not lost anyway, I can’t justify it.’

‘He could be right.’

‘Of course he could, but in common sense I don’t think he is, nor does Dr Mitchell. It’s all very well to say that the map’s only been misplaced, but where has it been misplaced? There’s a staff of people called map handlers, and when a map is lent for some exhibition outside the museum the handlers are responsible for packing it in a specially made case. The cases are all labelled with the catalogue number of the map inside. When cases come back from an exhibition they go to the Chief Map Handler – he’s a kind of Head Porter – and he sees that they go back to the department they came from. Once there, it is for the Keeper of that particular department to decide whether the map goes into one of his own cabinets, or is taken away for storage. There are air-conditioned storage rooms in the new buildings where maps that are not likely to be wanted very often are kept. The Chief Map Handler took the case labelled with the catalogue number of the Baffin Map to the Arctic Room himself. He knew that it normally lived in the department, but it was for the Keeper – it was Dr Jackson then – to decide, so he left it there without unpacking it. That seems to be quite normal. If they don’t get any special instructions they go round next day to collect the empty case. That’s what happened this time. The case was left in the Arctic Room, and next day one of the handlers collected it empty from Dr Jackson’s secretary. She says that she assumed that Dr Jackson had put away the map himself. He never said anything to her about it, but there was no particular reason why he should. Dr Jackson often stayed after she’d gone home – you’ll recall his widow saying that he was overworking – and the secretary just thought that he’d dealt with the map after she’d gone.’

‘All the handlers can say is that the case was empty when they took it back. There’s no proof that the map was ever in the case.’

‘No, sir, but that’s where the university of Hamburg comes in. They say that all the maps were packed under the supervision of a representative of the insurers, and there’s a signed list of all the cases, with their contents.’

‘So either the map was put back in its proper place by Dr Jackson and was taken some time afterwards, or Dr Jackson took it away himself.’

‘That’s about it, sir, with such evidence as there is in favour of Dr Jackson – I mean, in favour of his innocence.’

‘What does the Curator think can have happened?’

‘He’s just vague, sir, because he doesn’t want anything to have happened. He says that they’ve got tens of thousands of maps, and it must have been put in the wrong place somewhere.’

‘But surely they’ve looked?’

‘Of course they have. All the other maps that came back from Hamburg have been checked, and they are all in the right places. It’s just possible that the map may have found its way into what they call Unclassified Storage.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The old cellars, sir – they’re full of boxes and bundles of maps, hundreds and hundreds of them. Mostly they are not important maps, and they’re being gradually sorted out. It’s a job that’s been going on for years, but nobody does much to get on with it. Dr Wilding says that it’s one of the things that his successor will have to do. I think he’s convinced himself that one day the Baffin Map will turn up, and it’s no use worrying about it.’

‘You think he’s wrong?’

‘Well, he knows the museum much better than I do, and if that’s what he thinks, that’s it. If the map has got into the Unclassified Collection it could be years before anybody comes across it. But unless Dr Jackson suddenly went mad or something I don’t see any way in which it could have got into the cellars. Mostly they’re just left locked and nobody goes there much.’

‘So how do things stand as far as you are concerned?’

‘Just an unclosed file, sir. The new information you’ve brought makes it look like a serious crime, and I’ve been told to act on your instructions. But on the information we have there doesn’t seem much more that I can do.’

*

I liked Inspector Richards, and felt that we were lucky to have him at the Cambridge end. I wanted to call on Dr Jackson’s widow before leaving Cambridge, and thought that I might as well stay in Cambridge for the moment. I phoned Ruth to tell her that I seemed likely to be stuck for a day or two. ‘In that case, Peter, I think I’ll drive over tonight and join you,’ she said. ‘There are several small things I want to do in Cambridge, and at least we’ll be together. Get a room for us, and let’s meet at the University Hotel for dinner. I should be there soon after seven.’