III

Death of a Geographer

AFTER FIXING UP our room at the hotel there was just about time to find a library. I wanted to consult the Admiralty’s Arctic Pilot, but the reference section of the public library I went to didn’t have it. The librarian explained that pilot books were a bit too specialised for them, and he recommended the library of the Museum of Cartography. I didn’t want to go back to the museum so I asked if there was anywhere nearer, and he suggested the School of Geography which, he said, had a library for students, though he didn’t know if they’d permit a casual visitor to use it. I decided to have a go, talked nicely to a young woman in the office who rang through to the librarian. She was helpful, and found me Volume III of the Arctic Pilot, which covers Baffin Bay. I could get the Pilot in London, but I needed to have a quick look at it. The historical notes which are such a splendid feature of the Admiralty’s pilot books confirmed what Dr Mitchell had told me of the importance of William Baffin’s discoveries. I found one point of particular interest – the curious existence in the far north of a considerable body of navigable open water known to the old whaling fleets as the North Water. The reasons for the existence of this open stretch in an area of ferocious ice apparently remain obscure. Beyond telling me that ‘more than one possible explanation has been suggested’ the Pilot did not enlighten me, contenting himself with saying that I could expect to reach open water north of about the 75th parallel and continue sailing northward until I found myself blocked by the fast ice of Smith Sound, that desolate channel running between Greenland and Ellesmere Island to the Arctic Ocean and ultimately the North Pole. Interesting as this was, it seemed scarcely relevant to the disappearance of Dr Braunschweig and the Baffin Map.

*

Ruth’s special field is geophysical mathematics, the complex mathematical relationships of the earth movements that produce earthquakes and in their time have thrown up mountains and formed continents.^* According to Ruth they still do, although her timescale for the movement of continental land masses makes it unlikely that any of us will live to explore Atlantis. Earthquakes, however, are another matter, and seismic prediction is an important branch of her studies, which are also useful to geologists in the oil industry. I was so glad to see her that I was more concerned with the beauty she added to that lovely summer evening than with the geological processes of a few million years ago that formed Cambridge for us to meet in. Looking at her over dinner I wondered what made her so different from Ingrid Mitchell. Both were outstandingly able women with a mastery of abstruse subjects, yet Ruth was feminine and lovable where in some indefinable way Ingrid Mitchell was not. Or perhaps the difference was in me – I found Ruth the dearest of companions and infinitely comforting to be with, whereas on the whole I thought I shared the inspector’s view of Dr Mitchell. Some men, though, might find her very attractive.

After dinner we went for a long walk along the Cam, the scent of cut lawns and flowers in the college gardens adding to the magic of Ruth’s presence. I told her the whole story, and while one part of me was being a reporter another was wondering what her keen analytical mind would make of the extraordinary sequence of events. Mathematics is partly a search for patterns, partly an understanding of them – perhaps that is one reason why so many people who are good at maths (including Ruth) are particularly drawn to Bach’s music. But what pattern could she find here? There must be a pattern of some sort, but so many pieces were missing that there seemed no way of putting it together.

One of Ruth’s special qualities is the rare one of listening to other people. She let me talk without interrupting until I came to the inspector’s remark that he knew nothing of any domestic problems in the late Dr Jackson’s life.

‘If Dr Mitchell is as intelligent as you make out and she said he had domestic problems then I’d believe her rather than the inspector or the evidence at the inquest,’ she said.

‘I agree. I’m going to see Mrs Jackson tomorrow. I rang her from the police station. She’s off work this week because she hurt her ankle. She teaches history, but she’s also got a qualification in physical education and it seems she helps out from time to time in the gym. Anyway, she twisted her ankle or something, and she’ll be at home tomorrow and can see me in the morning.’

We were walking hand in hand, and Ruth gave my hand a small squeeze. ‘I ought to know you, Peter. Your Dr Mitchell said another funny thing – when she told you that her amber beads came from Baffin Bay.’

‘It was just a chance remark. She was rather pleased, I think, that I’d noticed the necklace.’

‘I’ve never heard of amber coming from the Arctic. It’s fossilised resin, and it comes originally from trees. Most of the world’s amber has been found round the Baltic, whose shores were thickly forested in the right geological period. It has cropped up in other places, but the Baltic is the main home of amber. Either she was trying to mislead you, or she was wrong, or the Arctic was forested in a way we don’t know anything about.’

‘Or it was populated by a race of traders we don’t know anything about. I wonder Ruth, I wonder . . .’

Typically she didn’t ask me what had come into my mind and we walked on in silence for some minutes. Then I said, ‘I don’t think she was trying to mislead me. My impression was that she was proud of her amber, pleased that I’d noticed it, and made her remark without thinking of anything except that it was interesting. But you’ve made me think. All along I’ve been racking my brains to try to find some point of contact between the modern oil industry and a map drawn over three centuries ago. The amber may have nothing to do with it, but you’ve given me a sort of amber light. Dr Braunschweig is or was an expert in oil distribution – could old William Baffin have recorded something on his map that might produce some new ideas on Arctic navigation? If so, it could be important to an oil company. There’s oil in the Arctic all right, but the main fields found so far seem to be in Alaska, which is about the worst possible place for shipping oil to Europe or the eastern seaboard of America. If there were a practicable North-West Passage it would be different. If Dr Mitchell is right, old Baffin’s original discoveries seem to have been largely forgotten for a couple of centuries. Could there have been some more discoveries that haven’t been remembered yet? If so, is there anyone who’d so much want them to remain undiscovered that they’d go to the length of kidnapping Dr Braunschweig to try to get hold of the map? But again if so, why has the map disappeared? No, it doesn’t make sense.’

‘It makes a sort of sense, Peter. There could be two or three organisations not knowing what the other’s doing, or working against each other.’

‘I suppose there could be . . . But this is more your field, Ruth. Can anything have happened to the earth’s surface in the Arctic that we don’t know about?’

She laughed. ‘All sorts of things have happened in the Arctic, and we probably know about less than one per cent of them. The shape of the globe has changed from time to time, and the North Pole has shifted about all over the place – or at least it seems quite likely to have done so. The magnetic pole does shift, as you know from elementary navigation, though that is a rather different matter. If there’s anything in the theory of change in the crustal shape of the globe – and there probably is – then there would have been big climatic changes with the shifting of the poles and what is now the Arctic Ocean might have been like the Mediterranean. But all this would have been millions of years ago – you’re talking of three centuries. I don’t think Baffin’s Arctic could have been much different from ours.’

‘No, but he might have found things that we don’t know about. Do you know anything about what’s called the North Water in Baffin Bay?’

‘Oh, Peter, I’m a mathematician, not a geographer. I have to know a bit about ocean floors because they’re concerned in earth movements, and I know a little about major ocean currents, but not much. As a matter of fact I have heard of your North Water because it’s a curious exception to normal ice formation in the polar region. As far as I know nobody’s ever found a satisfactory explanation for such a considerable area of water so far north remaining more or less ice-free, but it’s not really in my field and I’ve never gone into it.’

‘Could you find somebody who has?’

‘I daresay. The geographers at your museum are on the doorstep, but I suppose you don’t want to talk to them.’

‘No.’

‘Well, it would be easier in Oxford, then. I know the Reader in Oceanography, Jeremy Vaughan – he’s a fellow of our college. When do we go back to Oxford?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve got to see this woman tomorrow morning, and what happens next depends on what turns up, here, in London or in Hamburg. I wish you’d come with me to see Mrs Jackson.’

‘If I thought it would help of course I’d come. But I feel that I’d be offputting rather than a help. It’s not going to be easy for her to talk about her husband – and you’re not bad at being nice to people, Peter.’

*

I’ve never been a good sleeper, and I owe most of the education I’ve managed to achieve to the books I’ve read in the small hours. That night I couldn’t read with Ruth curled up beside me because the light would have bothered her, and my mind went on trying to make some sort of pattern out of the bewildering case we were landed with. What, if anything, could be called facts? Dr Braunschweig had disappeared – at least he wasn’t at home and he’d not turned up at his office. His boat also seemed to have disappeared. The chairman of Universal Oil had had a letter suggesting that Dr Braunschweig had been kidnapped, and demanding a ransom in the form of a seventeenth-century map of part of the Arctic. Even if the authorities and the oil company were prepared to meet the demand the ransom could not be paid, because the map could not be found. It had been in the Cambridge Museum of Cartography for around two hundred years, and for most of that time nobody had taken much notice of it. As a map it was unique and had a considerable money value, though how that value could be realised was hard to see. Probably it didn’t matter, because money didn’t seem to come into it – if Dr Braunschweig had been kidnapped, and if his kidnappers wanted money, it would have been easier to demand a few million pounds from the oil company.

Why should anybody want the map so much? It had been on exhibition in Hamburg, so if the kidnapping was a Hamburg affair one or other of the kidnappers could have seen the map. Or it might be the other way round – somebody in Hamburg could have seen the map and thought up the kidnapping in order to get hold of it. The Curator’s belief that it had gone astray somewhere inside the museum seemed mere wishful thinking. It could have been stolen in transit, but that would not have been easy, and it seemed more likely that it had been taken after it had been returned to the museum. When? In the evening after Dr Jackson’s secretary had gone home and he was working late? That would imply that it had been taken by Dr Jackson himself, for if it had been stolen by anyone else Dr Jackson would have found the map-case empty and would surely have reported it at once. But there was no reason to suppose that Dr Jackson had had anything to do with it. He might equally well have unpacked the map and put it away in its proper place. A few days later he was dead. Then came a gap of about three months before Dr Mitchell was appointed to succeed him, and then a gap of another couple of months before the visiting American scholar wanted the map and it could not be found. The map could have been taken at any time during those months. With the Curator’s almost hostile attitude to police inquiries Inspector Richards had been handicapped from the start, but Dr Mitchell thought that the map had been stolen and she had not tried to put any obstacles in his way. That he had found nothing suspicious about any of the staff was not conclusive, but he was an experienced detective and it indicated that there was nothing suspicious to find. Yet he himself believed a crime to have been committed. With police resources strained and the scope for inquiries limited by the Curator’s attitude, he had concentrated on Dr Mitchell herself and on what he could learn about her predecessor: that was reasonable, because whoever was in charge of the department had most opportunity of removing, or conniving at the removal of, a map belonging to it. There was slight evidence that Dr Jackson had been living up to the limit of his means, but millions of respectable citizens do that. He was depressed about something, but his widow’s account of things and the doctor’s clinical judgement that such depression was not uncommon among academics around Dr Jackson’s age tallied well enough, and certainly there was nothing so far to invalidate the coroner’s finding that his death was an accident. Well, I should soon be seeing his widow, and it was pointless to speculate on what she might be able to tell me. With that I managed to doze off, and slept until nearly seven.

*

Ruth had been invited to deliver the Granage Lectures at Cambridge in the autumn, and she wanted to discuss one or two details with the university people. She went off soon after nine thirty. My appointment with Mrs Jackson was not until eleven. I rang Sir Edmund. Nothing that seemed important had come in, but he had answers to some of my questions about Dr Braunschweig’s yacht. ‘He disappeared on June 1 and the ransom note was delivered to Sir Anthony Brotherton in London on June 5,’ Sir Edmund said. ‘Hamburg police discovered that the yacht was missing on June 2, but it wasn’t necessarily significant until the ransom note turned up. His staff had been told that he’d gone off on a cruise, and for all the police knew at the time it was just possible that he had. They were chiefly concerned in trying to trace his car, and didn’t begin serious inquiries about the yacht until they learned of the ransom note on the morning of the fifth. They were – they still are – hampered by the need for secrecy. People’s memories about when they last saw a yacht at a mooring are vague at the best of times. However, the police think they have established that she was definitely there on the first, and not there on the morning of the second. Before that they can’t be certain, but they think that she’d been lying at her mooring for about a fortnight, since she came back from a weekend cruise. She has two dinghies – a ten-foot clinker-built tender and an inflatable rubber dinghy. Neither is at the yacht club, and there’s no reliable information on when they were last seen there. As for going ashore from the last cruise, Frau Braunschweig thinks they didn’t take their own dinghy, but used the yacht club tender. She says she can’t swear to it because they’ve been out in the boat so often, but she thinks she’s right about the club boat because she remembers they had to wait a bit after signalling for it. Your questions about fuel are more difficult. The boat has a high-grade diesel auxiliary, but except for going in and out of port he doesn’t use the engine much, and takes a pride in manoeuvring under sail – doubtless you will understand that, Peter. Frau Braunschweig can’t say for certain when the boat was last fuelled, but thinks that it may have been before the weekend cruise in May. She says the engine was used hardly at all on that cruise, so if the tanks were full then they’d be nearly full now. Assuming an average of around six knots she carries enough fuel for about two hundred miles – not a great range, but she’s a sailing boat. She was designed specially for Dr Braunschweig, and he didn’t want to give up space to fuel tanks.’

‘A proper attitude, and nice to see it in an oil man,’ I said.

‘Well, I don’t know that it gets you anywhere, but you wanted the information.’

‘Nothing gets anywhere at the moment. The whole of this case is navigating in dense fog – and without a compass or a lead-line.’

I told Sir Edmund that I’d ring him again after I’d seen Mrs Jackson, and probably come back to London in the afternoon. Unless something new turned up I thought I’d probably go on to Hamburg.

*

I had half an hour or so to wait before I needed to get a taxi to go to Mrs Jackson, so I walked into Clare Gardens and found an entrancing little sunken lawn to sit on. I wanted to concentrate on what I was going to say to Mrs Jackson, but I kept thinking about Dr Braunschweig and his yacht. There was nothing to indicate that he was with her, but somebody had taken her from her mooring. Could she have been taken off singlehanded? Probably, but to take a fifty-foot ketch from a crowded mooring singlehanded implied someone with a good deal of experience, and it seemed more likely that at least two people were involved. How had they got out to her? Her own dinghies were not at the yacht club, which fitted Frau Braunschweig’s recollection that Apfel’s party had gone ashore from her last cruise in the club launch. If so, then the dinghies were probably still on board. I had no idea of Apfel’s deck arrangement, but there would be room for a ten-foot tender and a rubber dinghy on a fifty-foot boat. I doubted whether there would be comfortable room for a third dinghy. What had happened to the dinghy that must have gone out to Apfel to put on board whoever sailed her away? She might be towing it, but a towed dinghy is a nuisance, particularly if the towing yacht has only a minimal crew. A simpler explanation was that somebody had stayed in the dinghy and taken it back ashore. Assuming that two people had been put on board to handle Apfel that meant three people in the dinghy, and someone may have noticed a dinghy with three up in the vicinity of the moorings on June 1 or 2. If there hadn’t been anyone left to take away the dinghy it might have been cast off and abandoned as soon as Apfel was safely out of sight from the club – if so, an abandoned dinghy ought to have been washed up somewhere.

*

The Jackson house was Victorian and detached, and it must have had at least six bedrooms. There were signs of neglect – the woodwork needed painting, and the big garden was overgrown and untidy, with weeds in the drive and a lawn beginning to look like a hayfield. Mrs Jackson’s first words on opening the door were to apologise for the lawn. ‘I was going to cut it last weekend, but I couldn’t,’ she said. Her left ankle was in plaster and she was using crutches. When I thanked her for agreeing to see me in spite of her injury she laughed. ‘It’s not nearly so bad as it looks. They think I may have broken a small bone, but it doesn’t hurt now, and I can get around all right. The main trouble is that I can’t drive. If I can find somebody to take me in I shall be back at school next week. I get frightfully bored being on my own. But you don’t want to talk about me. I’ve no idea what you’ve come about, and I probably shan’t be able to help in any way, but do come in. Would you like a cup of coffee?’

I accepted the coffee, followed her into the kitchen and filled the kettle for her. ‘You seem to be house-trained,’ she said.

‘Not really – you don’t need much training to fill a kettle for somebody who’s walking on crutches, particularly when you’re going to share the coffee.’

‘Do you mind if we have it in the kitchen?’

‘Not a bit. You’ve made it a most attractive room.’ Originally it had been a kitchen and scullery; now the scullery part had sink, cooker and refrigerator, and the rest of the old kitchen was furnished as a dining-cum-sitting room. We sat at a nice pine table. ‘My daughter’s away at school, and when I’m on my own this is my living room,’ she explained. ‘I let as much as I can of the rest of the house, mostly to students. It would be better not to have students because there wouldn’t be the bother of vacations, but Charles and I both wanted to help students if we could – that’s one of the reasons we got such a big house. The rent from letting rooms helped to pay the mortgage, and when Charles was alive it was nice to have the place to ourselves in the vacations. It’s different now, but I still haven’t sorted myself out properly. And I still don’t know why you’ve come, or even who you really are, apart from the fact that you have something to do with museums.’

‘I don’t have much to do with museums as such. As I explained when I telephoned yesterday I belong to a small government department that’s concerned with antiquities, and we’re interested in an old map that was in your late husband’s keeping.’

‘But surely they can tell you all about it at the museum?’

She was alert and intelligent. She must have been considerably younger than her husband, no more than in her early forties, and she was, or could have been if she bothered a bit more about her appearance, distinctly attractive. I had to make a quick decision. ‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘that the map, which is a valuable one, is missing.’

She looked suddenly rather haggard. ‘Isn’t that a matter for the police?’ she said.

‘Yes. I was at Cambridge police station when I telephoned you.’

‘Then you’re just a policeman, and all that talk about a department of antiquities was a lie to get me to see you without suspecting anything. It’s damned unfair. I’ve never liked it when students call policemen pigs, but now I think they’re right.’

‘It’s not as simple as that. I am from the Home Office and I am not a policeman, although as you may know the Home Office is the ministry responsible for the police. I have told you no untruth. I should like your help in trying to discover what is the truth about this missing map, but if you are in any doubt of my credentials please ring Cambridge police and ask for the Chief Superintendent. I should prefer you to be satisfied about me before I say anything more.’

She looked even more haggard. My impression was that although she was worried about something she was not worried about the map. She was sitting across the table from me, her coffee untouched. Suddenly she put her head in her hands and broke down sobbing. After a minute or two she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to telephone about you. Either I trust you or I don’t, and I think I’m going to trust you.’

‘It might even make you feel better.’

‘You’re not unperceptive, are you? I’ve been living with all this for months, and there’s been absolutely nobody I could talk to.’

‘Your daughter’s too young?’

‘Susan’s only just fourteen. She adored her father, and I don’t want anything to hurt her memory of him. Besides, I don’t know – I’ve never known.’

‘You suspect that his death was not an accident?’

‘I don’t know what I suspect. I only know that Charles changed suddenly. It was about a year ago. I can’t explain it properly – you have to live with somebody to notice changes in behaviour. It was a lot of little things. Charles always worked hard, but he loved what he was doing, and he was an optimistic, cheerful person. He always enjoyed breakfast – suddenly he didn’t want any breakfast. He took to coming home late, and often he didn’t want any dinner when he did come home. We started having rows – we’d never had any sort of rows before. We’ve always had to worry about money, wanting to send Susan away to school, paying to keep Charles’s old mother in a home, but we never used to have rows about it. Then I spent a few pounds on material to make some new curtains and Charles was furious – scarcely spoke to me for two days. It was then that I got seriously worried about him, and persuaded him to see a doctor. I wish I hadn’t.’

‘You didn’t tell any of this to the police?’

‘How could I? Charles was dead – it could have been suicide, which would have been awful for Susan to live with. There wasn’t any doubt that Charles was suffering from a clinically diagnosed depression – the doctor helped there. I answered all the police questions, but I couldn’t tell them of the things that worried me, because I wasn’t even sure of what they were.’

‘Did you suspect that another woman might have been involved?’

She didn’t answer for some time. Then she said, ‘Yes, I think I did, sometimes. But it would have been totally unlike Charles – I mean, he might have fallen in love with somebody else, but if so he would have told me. At least, the old Charles would, but then everything was out of character in that horrible last year.’

‘Did you go to the party the night before he died?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid I rather encouraged him to go. I felt it was good for him to go out as much as possible.’

‘Do you remember who was there?’

‘It was the usual sort of Cambridge party, given by a geography lecturer called Jack Eastman who was going to a professorship in the States. We knew him well. Several of the museum staff were there, including Ingrid Mitchell who got Charles’s job – of course she wasn’t at the museum then, she had a tutorial fellowship, and geography was her subject. It was quite a crowded party. Deliberately I didn’t stay with Charles – I wanted him to get out of himself and talk to other people. There was some food, and a lot to drink – it wasn’t a dinner party, you just helped yourself to food and ate it where you could. About eleven o’clock I looked for Charles to go home and I was horrified to find him nearly drunk. Ingrid Mitchell was looking after him, and she helped me to get him out to the car so that people wouldn’t notice too much. Then she came home in the car with me, and helped me to get Charles into the house, and put him to bed. I was so thankful to get Charles to bed that I didn’t think about his pills – if I had thought I’d probably have felt that he was too far gone to bother about them. They were on a table by his bed, and he normally took two. The doctor thinks he must have taken his usual two, and then forgotten he’d taken them and had some more, probably several more. I ought to have taken them away, but I didn’t.’

‘Have you always had separate rooms?’

‘No. It was all part of his illness, or what I call his illness. He took to not being able to sleep, and he’d want to read, or get up and work half the night. So I moved out into what had been our spare room. It was quite friendly – he agreed that it was better for him to be on his own.’

‘If it’s not too painful for you, could I see the room?’

‘Why not?’

She got up and led me out of the kitchen back into the hall by which we’d entered. ‘Susan’s bedroom is on the first floor, but Charles and I lived on the ground floor,’ she explained. ‘I told you we let some of the other rooms. This was Charles’s room. Originally I think it was a music room. It opens on to the garden, and as you can see it’s a nice room.’

It was. There were french windows leading to the garden, and other windows to each side of them, so that the whole room was full of light. For all that it had a sort of musty feel about it. ‘You don’t use it now?’ I asked.

‘I haven’t since Charles died. I suppose I could let it, or move back into it myself, but I just haven’t wanted to.’

‘So it’s much the same now as it was then?’

‘Pretty much. I’ve taken away clothes and things, but I haven’t moved any furniture.’

A double bed stood against the wall facing the french windows. The room was big enough not to seem cluttered. A table with a reading lamp was beside the bed, and in one corner stood a big desk, also with its own light. The wall by the desk was lined with bookshelves, and there was a bookcase against one of the other walls. There were a couple of armchairs and two or three attractive prints. There was no washbasin – apart from the bed it was a study rather than a bedroom.

‘Did he take his pills with water?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I always put out a glass of water for him. The police took away the glass, and there were only his own fingerprints on it.’

I walked over to the french windows and looked out at the untidy garden. Even with the long-haired lawn and the weed-filled flower beds it was a pleasant outlook. At the bottom of the french windows an edge of carpet had become untacked. ‘Do you keep the french windows locked?’ I asked.

‘They are now. They weren’t then. Sometimes when he was having a particularly bad night Charles would wander round the garden.’

Something caught my eye in a fold of the loose bit of carpet. I picked it up – it was an amber bead.

‘Is this yours?’

She took it from me and studied it. ‘No, I’ve never seen it before. It may have been there for ages – I’m afraid I haven’t cleaned out the place very thoroughly.’ She did not seem much interested.

‘May I keep it for the moment?’

‘You can have it if you like.’

‘Thank you. Can I finish my coffee?’

‘It will be cold. I’ll make some more.’

‘Please don’t bother. I rather like cold coffee. The coffee doesn’t matter, anyway. I just want to talk to you for a few minutes more.’

‘And you’d be happier in the kitchen?’ She spoke almost brightly.

‘A bit, yes. I don’t want to hurt you more than I have to.’

‘You’re not hurting me now – you’re making me rather interested. I still don’t know who you are, but I said I’d trust you, and I’m not going back on that.’

I found it easier to talk in the kitchen than in that room with its dreadful memories. But the room raised several questions.

‘When you and Dr Mitchell brought your husband home, did you get him into the house by the door, or by the french window?’

‘The window. After we’d got him out of the car Ingrid Mitchell kept him standing up while I ran in and opened the window, so we could get him directly into his room.’

‘Dr Mitchell came home with you in your car. How did she herself get back?’

‘Her own car was parked near the party. After we’d got Charles safely to bed I drove her back to where her car was parked. I thought it was all right to leave Charles, and I wasn’t away long.’

‘But there was a time when your husband was alone in the house. About how long, do you think?’

She passed her hand across her forehead. ‘It’s horrible to think back to it all, and it’s hard to remember things exactly. I had to drive back into Cambridge, but I came home as soon as I’d dropped Ingrid Mitchell by her car. I may have been away about twenty-five minutes.’

‘Did you leave the french window locked after you had put your husband to bed?’

‘I can’t say for certain, but I think probably not. I can’t remember locking it.’

I changed the subject. ‘Did you know much about your husband’s work?’ I asked.

‘Yes – at least I did before his illness. One of the changes in him was that he stopped telling me about his work. Before that we more or less worked together. We were quite a good partnership, you see, he was a geographer and I’m a historian. I mean, I’ve got a history degree and I teach history, though I’m not really a historian in Charles’s class as a geographer. But I could understand what he was doing, and sometimes I could help him a bit.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘He was interested in climatic change in the Arctic. It’s a highly specialised subject, and I think I could say he was one of the world’s top authorities on it. Now his book will never be published. Dr Mitchell has taken over his work and I expect she will edit the papers that Charles left. I’d like to do it myself, but I’m not good enough. It’s all immensely complicated, but in the old days when Charles talked to me about it I found it fascinating.’

‘When you say climatic change, do you mean over historical time?’

‘Partly. There’s one theory that the climate in southern Greenland a thousand years ago was slightly milder than it is now, and that this encouraged Norse settlement from Iceland. The settlements disappeared around the fourteenth century, and some people think that this was because the climate got severe again. But all this is rather marginal. Charles was concerned with the fundamental geography of the Arctic, possible movements of the Pole with changes in the earth’s crust, and the consequences in terms of climate. These are changes over millions of years. I’m not up to the maths and physics involved.’

‘Where are your husband’s papers now?’

‘At the museum. We both made wills soon after we were married, leaving everything to each other. Charles never changed his will, so the papers are mine, and I control the copyright. But I know he’d have wanted his work to go on, and I can’t carry it on. Dr Mitchell and the museum people can. When it comes to publication I suppose I shall be consulted, but that’s probably a long time ahead. Sometimes I think that perhaps Susan will follow her father – she’s got his sort of mind, I think. But she’s only fourteen.’

‘I hope she does. And if she’s proud of her father I think she can be equally proud of you.’

‘What do you mean?’

I got up to go. ‘Precisely what I said – that your daughter can be very proud of both her parents. There’s a great deal that I don’t know, but I can assure you of one thing – there is not even a possibility that your husband committed suicide.’

‘If only I could believe that!’

‘You can. I can’t explain any more now because I don’t know, but I think you may find that what you call his illness was wholly creditable to him.’

‘You’re an extraordinary person. I’m glad I talked to you. Shall I see you again?’

‘I hope so. I can’t say when I shall have more to tell you, and it may take time, but I promise to come back as soon as I can.’

She smiled. ‘Well, you’ve given me something to look forward to. Since Charles’s illness I haven’t looked forward to anything except with dread.’

I walked back to the hotel. I had much to think about. There was remarkable new evidence in what Mrs Jackson had told me, which meant that Charles Jackson could not possibly have taken his own life. And what was to be made of the amber bead now in my pocket?

* See Death in the Caribbean