Blood Brotherhood (12 page)

To such a mind it is particularly frustrating to be confronted by another which seems unwilling, or possibly unable, to go at a matter straight, keep steadfast to a track, get to the heart of the problem. At first Ernest Clayton tried to believe that there was a hidden design behind the strangely random nature of Chief Inspector Plunkett's questions, or perhaps that he was trying shock tactics. But he found it impossible to cling to that belief as the interview became more and more disorganized. Any idea of subtly planting ideas in Plunkett's mind, superintending their growth, and cheering from the pathway as they burst into flower as if their progress had nothing to do with him had to be abandoned early in the interview. Plunkett was rude, opinionated to the point of obsession, and only at intervals
seemed to be interested in conducting a murder investigation.

For what he was really interested in was ‘all this', and by ‘all this' he did not mean (like the Nancy Mitford character) the outward, visible and comforting signs of wealth and rank. He meant monks, sandals, robes, compline, wholemeal bread, incense — the whole neo-medieval caboodle. And when he spoke of it, a look came into his eyes that Ernest Clayton could only describe as obsessive.

‘What do they think they're playing at? Eh?' he would say, his eyes straying to the simple, elegant crucifix on the cupboard in Father Anselm's study. ‘Look at that. Doesn't it make you want to spit? But I suppose you approve? Eh? Tell me where you stand.' And he leaned forward and fixed Ernest Clayton with his rat's eyes, his disgusting mouth open as if to catch evidence of Popish leanings.

Luckily at this point they were interrupted by Inspector Croft, who in his silent way padded over to the desk and handed Plunkett a piece of paper.

‘The report on the blood samples, sir,' he murmured. Plunkett glanced at it, seemed inclined to crumple it up, but finally pushed it aside with a grunt. He seemed to want to get back to his inquisition of Ernest Clayton, but Croft remained standing there.

‘What would you suggest I do now, sir?' he asked quietly.

‘Use your initiative. Go and see what you can find at the barn,' said Plunkett, unaware of any contradiction in what he said. Ernest Clayton thought he saw Croft's eyebrows raise themselves a fraction of an inch, but he merely withdrew silently.

Plunkett, reminded of the murder, seemed to be wrenching his mind back to the business in hand. Ernest Clayton — who had been finding it increasingly difficult to hold his temper under the sort of questioning he would hardly allow his bishop to put him through, let alone a layman — helped the process on its way by a question prompted by Plunkett's last command.

‘You mentioned the barn,' he said. ‘Does that mean you haven't ruled out the Bishop of Mitabezi?'

‘Eh?' said Plunkett fiercely. Then he went on: ‘Oh, no, the black is out. Well, not out, exactly. Still, there's no evidence. You know what he'd been doing, don't you?' The tongue slicked around the lips. ‘Killing a lamb!'

‘Yes, I had heard,' said Ernest Clayton. So great was the antagonism the Chief Inspector was arousing in him that for one moment he felt like rushing in with a defence of the practice.

‘Have you ever heard anything like it? Eh? But I'd believe anything of them. He'd have killed this Denis Crowther soon as look at him if the fancy had taken him.'

‘But you don't think he did.'

Plunkett screwed up his face resentfully. ‘There's no more evidence against him than any of you others. All the blood on him was animal. The knife had only been used on the lamb.'

‘It hardly seems likely he did it in a trance, then,' said Clayton.

‘No, maybe not. Could have done it earlier though, then gone into his little fit and gone rampaging after more blood. Could be you're all lucky to be alive.' His eyes lit up at the thought of all that blood, but then he shook his head regretfully. ‘No evidence though. I suppose you didn't see any sign of hostility towards this Denis Crowther from any of the other delegates, as you call yourselves?'

‘No,' said Clayton. ‘But remember — we'd been here so short a time. We barely knew him.'

‘So you say,' said Plunkett.

‘If there were any animosities it would be most likely to be from one of the other brothers,' said Clayton.

‘Right,' said Plunkett. ‘I'd like to have investigated them. I'd have found out a thing or two, never you worry. But they were locked in their wing all night. They're out of it.'

‘Unless one of them stayed behind in the main building,' said Ernest Clayton insinuatingly.

‘Quite,' said Plunkett, not listening. ‘So it's got to be one of you, or this Father Anselm. Have you ever heard the like, though? Locked in at night, like criminals? It's like something out of the Spanish Inquisition.'

The whole conversation was like that.

• • •

The Bishop of Peckham was talking to Stewart Phipps when Ernest Clayton emerged from his interview with the Law. They were standing near High Table in the Great Hall, and the sun, streaming through the high stained-glass window, bathed them in strange colours and geometric shadows. They appeared not transfigured, though, but deep in depressed conversation, and Clayton guessed that the Bishop, once his tongue had been loosened, was regaling the whole symposium one by one with the history of his night of horror. He went over towards them.

‘Were you grilled?' said the Bishop in a sprightly way. Ernest Clayton had noticed that he seemed always to have a good effect on him, and that he brightened up as soon as he saw him.

‘In a way,' said Clayton. ‘I had to give an account of my religious position, more especially my attitude towards incense, confession, and I don't know what.'

‘But what about the murder?'

‘Well, in among all the rest he asked a few questions — more or less at random, or so it seemed to me. He asked whether there was any unpleasantness involving Brother Dominic and any of us. He asked whether there had been anything noteworthy happen the evening before. Oh, yes, and then just before I went he asked what I was doing last night. When I said I was sleeping, he snarled and said, “A likely story.” I think by then he must have decided that my religious inclinations were much too high for me to be trusted.'

‘He sounds a bully,' said Stewart Phipps. ‘He looked like one.'

‘I think he is,' said Ernest Clayton.

‘Like all the police — a Fascist at heart.'

‘It's not a word I like to use,' said Ernest Clayton to Stewart Phipps's surprise — it was a word
he
was using all the time. ‘To me the frightening thing about him is partly his incompetence — if it's left up to him this thing will never be cleared up — and partly that I think — well, I don't want to be a scaremonger, but his state of mind seemed to me not so far from madness.'

‘Goodness me!' said the Bishop, opening his eyes wide. ‘That's putting it strongly, isn't it?'

‘You must be as used to the signs as I am,' said Ernest Clayton. ‘Not that we see as much of it now as twenty or thirty years ago. There's more football mania these days than religious mania. But to me, that's what it looked like.'

‘Religious mania!' said Stewart Phipps, his face creasing into a bitter expression that was really no pleasanter than Plunkett's. ‘A murdered monk, a blood-stained bishop, and to cap it all, a policeman with religious mania.'

They all looked at each other. None of them said so, but it seemed to each one of them that the combination of all three elements seemed uniquely designed to capture the imagination of the Sunday paper news hounds.

‘Of course, Methodism is very strong in this district,' said the Bishop. ‘There are some extraordinary stories from the eighteenth century.'

‘Are you implying that Methodists are all religious maniacs?' asked Stewart Phipps, with that same twisted smile. He seemed to have the art of making the Bishop lose his sang-froid: he opened and closed his mouth, positively wriggled with embarrassment, and said: ‘No, no. Goodness me, what an idea. I merely meant that he sounded like some extreme fundamentalist. Some little evangelical splinter-group or other. There were many such in the nineteenth century, and there are lots of them still going strong in the villages around here.'

‘You know the area?' asked Ernest Clayton.

‘I'm a trustee of the Brontë Society,' said the Bishop.
‘Now, the point is, what are we to do?'

‘We may have to revise our strategy,' said Clayton. ‘This thing can't drag on for ever. The newspapers will make a meal of us. We may be forced to complain higher up.'

‘Well, don't rush it,' said Stewart Phipps. ‘There may be an article for
Tribune
in this.'

• • •

The effect of Inspector Plunkett on the other members of the symposium was to create bewilderment, which in its turn led to alarm and despondency. Bente Frøystad, meeting Ernest Clayton in the kitchen garden, took a great breath of air into her lungs, and then said: ‘I need fresh air — after
that.'

‘It's not very nice, is it?'

‘Ugh,' she said. ‘Only the look. I knew Englishmen had bad teeth, but his are almost obscene.'

‘What did he ask you about?'

‘All sorts of things — including lots I hadn't expected to be asked about. I had to give him a lecture on the Norwegian Church, with precise details of the services.'

‘Do you think he took it in?'

‘I don't know. He seemed to perk up when I told him Randi Paulsen belongs to the more evangelical wing.'

‘Oh, she does, does she? I thought she seemed a bit —
low.'

‘She's low all right. And, as you will have observed, anti drink, drugs, sex, Catholics, abroad, dancing — you name it, she's against it.'

‘I thought that sort of religion was only to be found in the depths of Scotland these days.'

‘No, no. We have more than our share. I'm sure Randi will be able to satisfy him on the anti-ritualistic side too. In fact, I can see them having a fine old time getting down to fundamentals.'

‘And meanwhile — '

‘Exactly. Now what gives? Is the man mad? If he's not, what point is there in all this nonsense he's been asking me
about? And if he is, what are you going to do about it?'

She stood there, frank, sturdy and incredulous, her big blue eyes looking directly to him for illumination. Ernest Clayton wished he could say something inspiring, or at least comforting, because he liked the situation perhaps even less than she did.

‘All good questions,' he said. ‘Wait until the interviews are over, and then we'll have to decide something. I'm sure the Bishop must have contacts who could do something about getting this man Plunkett removed.'

‘It's the funniest thing, really,' said Bente Frøystad, her handsome face bursting into a delicious smile, ‘when you think of the traditional idea of the English bobby, and then think of the man in there. I wasn't expecting anything like that, I assure you!'

‘You didn't have any contacts with the police when you were here as an au pair, then?' asked Ernest Clayton.

‘None at all,' said Bente Frøystad, looking straight at him once more with her beautiful blue eyes, which now twinkled, as if to say, ‘Has the little man got ambitions to play detective?'

Bente Frøystad, it occurred to Ernest Clayton, took everything in, and gave very little away.

• • •

The impressions Philip Lambton had formed of the Inspector seemed no more favourable.

‘We didn't seem to be talking on the same wave-length at all,' he said. ‘Of course, we couldn't talk about my movements last night for ever, because I didn't
have
any: when I get my head on the pillow I'm out like a light. But he didn't even ask. The only time in the whole interview when we sort of came together was when we got to talking about this ritual slaughter thing.'

‘Yes, I had rather gathered he finds that pretty interesting,' said Ernest Clayton.

‘Yes, well — in a disgusting sort of way he does,' said Philip Lambton, his naïve face crinkling up into an expression
of distaste. ‘Now, I find it interesting from lots of points of view, too: I mean, we tend to standardize the ritual side of Christianity, don't we — in fact, we really neglect the theatrical elements almost entirely, sometimes. But here are these new Christian communities in the emerging countries, marrying the old rituals of their — but that's by the way. The point is, the only side this man was interested in was the blood and horror side.'

‘Well, that's understandable enough, in view of what he's supposed to be investigating.'

‘Yes, but he didn't have to lick his lips so often. And then, there was something so
racial
about his whole attitude.'

‘Yes — that came out when he talked to me as well. In fact, the man seems to be a psychological mess.'

‘Well, one doesn't want to be uncharitable, but that
was
my impression, I must say. And meanwhile the murder of Brother Dominic seems to go by the board.'

‘Precisely,' said Ernest Clayton.

‘And though one didn't actually
like
the poor chap . . .'

‘No, he wasn't someone one could warm to, was he?'

‘Not at all,' said Philip Lambton, without a shred of personal feeling. ‘You know, I work a lot among young people, and I get so much pleasure from it because I find them all so open, so forthcoming. I do wish people would see this, and foster it, instead of concentrating on the
minor
things the whole time, don't you?'

‘Er, yes,' said Ernest Clayton carefully. ‘But certainly Brother Dominic was an exception, wasn't he?'

‘Oh, very much so. Of course, he wasn't quite the generation I was thinking of. I imagine he must have been twenty-seven or so.'