Blood Brotherhood (14 page)

‘Well, our streets would be a lot more dirty if we hadn't the coloured immigrants to sweep them,' he said feebly.

‘Huh,' spat out Plunkett, not likely to be mollified by such scraps of liberal leavings. ‘They're the litter I'd like to see removed.'

‘And I don't know how our hospitals would manage,' said the Bishop, feeling he ought to add: ‘Count your blessings.'

‘And what do you think those damned blackies are doing in the hospitals. Eh?' yelled Plunkett, his voice rising as he became uncontrollably gripped by all his various hysterias. ‘Injecting us with poisons known only to them. They're filling us with drugs to debilitate us. Weaken our resolve to rule! Make us lose our grip! You can see it happening, bit by bit, every day.'

‘Inspector Plunkett,' said the Bishop, with some dignity, ‘I kept my patience during your investigation of my religious opinions, totally irrelevant though I found it to the matter in hand. I see no reason whatsoever why I should waste my time listening to your peculiarly nasty racial prejudices, or being put into the dock about something which I have not an atom of control over and which has no conceivable relevance to the investigation you are supposed to be making.'

Plunkett's face took on an expression of infinite cunning. ‘Him upstairs,' he said, ‘he's a darkie. Right?'

‘He is coloured,' admitted the Bishop. ‘But he is not an immigrant.'

‘He's a bishop of your church,' said Plunkett triumphantly.

‘No doubt, but I do not see the relevance of that to the present case.'

‘You're the enemy within, you see, and he's the enemy without. You're one of the ones sapping away our fibre. You're spreading doubt and irreligion. And he's one of the ones just waiting to take over.' He bared his fangs in a horrible snarl. ‘Do you know what I foresee for this country in a few years' time?'

The Bishop took a deep breath.

‘The River Tiber flowing with much blood,' said he and Plunkett in unison. It was all too much. The Bishop rose, inclined his head, and made for the door.

• • •

The Bishop of Peckham was momentarily exhilarated by his decisive action in walking out of Father Anselm's office, which Plunkett's presence had somehow transformed in his mind into something resembling Alberich's cave. But the feeling did not last. The decisive action had to be followed up by further decisive action — the removal of Plunkett. And, as so often at crisis moments of this kind, the Bishop's resolve turned to jelly. He was really the sort of bishop Elizabeth I liked to deal with.

His instinct was, as had become a habit recently, to consult with Ernest Clayton. He pottered around the grounds and buildings of the Community in search of him, and finally found him in the room which they had used for their few symposium sessions. He was talking to Simeon P. Fleishman, but at the Bishop's approach the American evaporated, in so far as it was possible for so substantial a figure to do so.

‘What do you make of our Simeon?' asked the Bishop, so as not to bring out his problems too immediately and appear too dependent.

‘A clerical crook?' hazarded Clayton, who knew perfectly well what the Bishop really wanted to talk about. ‘To be perfectly honest, I can't make him out. Outside of matters
of finance he seems irredeemably stupid. Even with our present shortage of clergymen he'd never get to theological college here. One wonders what on earth his sermons would be like. Probably something like Denis Healey's, I suppose. But what about you? How did it go?'

‘Dreadful, dreadful,' said the Bishop. ‘A long inquisition concerning my various heresies, done in a very unpleasant manner — almost as if he were a reporter for one of the sensational Sundays. Then he veered round on to coloured immigration, I forget how, and somehow I seemed to be responsible for that too. I'm the “enemy within”, whatever he may mean by that.'

‘And about the case itself?'

‘Nothing. Less than nothing. He didn't seem in the least interested. I'm afraid I'm forced to agree with you. The man is completely off his head.'

‘Then he must be removed,' said the Reverend Clayton briskly.

‘You think so?' said the Bishop nervously.

‘How else will the thing ever be cleared up, and us let out of this place? If we don't get a competent man on the job, it will hang around us like a dirty smell, and people will be gossiping about it behind our backs for years to come.'

The Bishop seemed to hear his hopes of an Archbishopric evaporate into the blue with a flap of angel's wings. ‘You're right,' he said. ‘What do you suggest?'

‘Well, we could start by finding out who the Chief Constable is,' said Ernest Clayton. ‘Surely in your position you usually find you can go to the top?'

‘True,' murmured the Bishop complacently, and followed Clayton out of the meeting-room, through the dim cloisters, and out into the sunlit expanse of the Great Hall.

‘I thought so,' said Ernest Clayton, looking towards the main door, where Sergeant Forsyte was posted, looking hefty and useless and bored. ‘See what you can get out of him.'

The Bishop was quite unsure of the manner he should adopt to Sergeant Forsyte, though he needn't have worried, for the good sergeant had more than an inkling of what was on his mind, and a limitless desire to help. ‘I'm awfully sorry to trouble you, Sergeant,' said the Bishop, dancing from foot to foot in his embarrassment, ‘but I wonder if you could — in short — if you could tell me the name of the Chief Constable of the Riding?'

‘Certainly, sir,' said the good sergeant, who didn't know how to address a bishop, but oozed servility instead. ‘It's Sir Henry Abbotsford, of Kirkby-le-Dale.'

The Bishop skipped gleefully back to Ernest Clayton. ‘It's Harry Abbotsford,' he said. ‘I met him at one of the Brontë Society do's — the trip to Scarborough on the Anne Brontë one hundred and fiftieth Anniversary, I think. What a stroke of luck!'

‘Then you must get on to him,' said Ernest Clayton.

The Bishop, fired with conspiratorial zeal, jumped to find Sergeant Forsyte suddenly at his elbow.

‘The phone number is Kirkby-le-Dale three five six nothing,' said the Sergeant levelly, looking straight into the Bishop's eyes.

‘Oh, thank you, thank you,' said the Bishop to his retreating figure. ‘Much obliged.'

‘Right,' said Ernest Clayton. And then they both stopped in their tracks.

‘Where do I phone from?' said the Bishop helplessly. ‘The only phone I've seen is in Father Anselm's room.'

‘Oh, dear,' said Ernest Clayton, ‘I'm sure that's the only one. How stupid of us not to have thought of that. I suppose I could drive you into Hickley.'

‘I don't like the idea of that,' said the Bishop. ‘They might not let us out — and it would look as if we were running away.'

They both thought for a moment.

‘Peckham,' said Clayton thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if you were the last. There's no one after you alphabetically. It
could be he's left his office — though heaven knows what he might be planning to do next.'

They skulked along the cloisters and ducked into the semi-darkness, watched by the benevolent eye of Sergeant Forsyte. As luck would have it, they were no sooner in the murk of the corridors than they heard the sound of a door being opened. Standing quite still in the long shadow (the Bishop thought that perhaps last night someone had done exactly the same thing, in exactly the same spot, and the thought nearly set his teeth chattering) they saw Chief Inspector Plunkett emerging from Father Anselm's office, his suspicious little eyes darting everywhere. After a moment of indecision, he started off down the little passageway leading to the chapel.

‘Now,' whispered Ernest Clayton. ‘Kirkby-le-Dale three five six nothing. I'll keep watch at the corner, and I'll cough twice if he comes out of the chapel.'

The Bishop darted into Father Anselm's office, and a moment later Ernest Clayton heard him riffling through the telephone directory for the dialling code.

It was early afternoon, and the Chief Constable had just risen from his after-lunch nap. Such a situation did not normally find him in his best humour, but he dearly loved a Lord, and a bishop was the next best thing. So he my-Lorded him with great geniality, and listened to his story.

‘Of course I realize,' said the Bishop in a low, earnest voice, terrified lest Alberich should return to his cave and clobber him with a Nibelung's hammer, ‘that a complaint at this stage may seem very premature. But when the man arrived his manner seemed strange, and in the course of the day it has become stranger and stranger. I must say that many of us feel that he is quite literally mad.'

‘In what way mad?' asked the Chief Constable, perhaps wondering whether Plunkett was wandering round in white satin, distributing flowers.

‘He's spent his entire time asking us about our religious views, and shouting and snarling at us if he doesn't approve
of them. He's made no investigation whatsoever of the case, as far as I can see. And he's absolutely obsessed about colour.'

‘Colour?' said the Chief Constable, seeming to take more notice.

‘Coloured people. He practically foams at the mouth when they're mentioned. For some reason he seems to think I'm personally responsible for letting them into the country, though beyond the odd remark on
Any Questions?
I don't recall that I ever — '

‘Oh, dear, that's bad,' said the Chief Constable. ‘We're having to be very careful about anything of that kind. We've had very strict directions from the HO.'

‘And of course the Bishop of Mitabezi is here.'

‘Oh, good lord, a coloured bishop,' said Sir Henry in disgust. ‘Well, look, I'll get on to this, and if — '

But Sir Henry was interrupted by a noise which even he, in Kirkby-le-Dale, couldn't fail to register. The Bishop, so much closer, practically jumped out of his gaiters. It was a thunderous clang of metal, and it reverberated around the narrow corridors, and was speedily followed by further, lesser clangs, all of which left their little shivers of noise behind them, as if they were part of an acoustics experiment.

‘One moment, Sir Henry,' said the Bishop in his normal voice, and scooted for the door. His intention was to make for the open, but at the end of the corridor he saw Ernest Clayton, who beckoned.

‘Come on,' he said, and the two went hurrying down the long dark passage which led to the chapel, Clayton keeping a comfortable lead. The door was open, and they stood in the doorway, incredulously watching the figure inside.

Chief Inspector Plunkett was standing to one side of the chapel, his hands on his hips, apparently contemplating his handiwork with satisfaction. He was at the entrance to a tiny side-chapel, hardly more than a box, with a William
Morrisy stained-glass window. The plate from the altar of this chapel had been hurled to the floor, and the altar cloth dragged after it. A heavy candlestick was still rolling in a sea-sick manner down the side-aisle, and as they watched he reached for a statue of St Botolph, in a small niche.

‘Idolatry!' barked the Inspector, to the heavy oak rafters. ‘Confounded, damnable idolatry!' And he hurled the statue to the ground.

Then, doing a sharp, right-angled turn, he strode in his military way towards the high altar.

‘We must stop him,' whispered Ernest Clayton urgently to the Bishop. But they made no move, whether from understandable doubts of their own capacity to hold the madman, or from a desire to see him struck by celestial lightning for his sacrilege perhaps neither of them quite knew. Reaching the altar, and uttering meaningless little grunts of hatred and contempt, Plunkett seized the massive silver pieces one by one and, casting them down with a certain sense of theatre, sent them crashing and hopping down the altar steps and across the chapel floor. He seized the Sanctus lamp, but was prevented by its chains from hurling it to the floor. Instead a superb brass crucifix fell victim to his Cromwellian zeal. The pieces rang out richly and impressively, and the Inspector sent them on their way with more incomprehensible cries, this time of triumph, presumably over popery.

Finally, hearing sounds from the other end of the corridor which they thought might be Father Anselm, the Bishop and Ernest Clayton decided they could remain quiescent no longer. They advanced purposefully across the chapel just as Plunkett seized the last of the pieces on the altar, a heavy candlestick, and began sending both it and the altar cloth skidding across the chapel floor.

But, progressing up the wide central aisle, the Bishop and Clayton found themselves confronting not just the heavy candlestick, which rolled towards them like distant thunder, but also a lesser object, which skimmed out of
the altar cloth and across the floor at them. It scraped the candlestick with a metallic shriek, and finally landed up not far from the door, in which now stood framed the figure of the head of the Community of St Botolph's. The three clerics stood looking at the object.

It was a long, sturdy, deadly-looking knife, and its blade was brown with blood.

It looked as if Inspector Plunkett had found a clue at last.

T
HE DOWNFALL OF
Plunkett was done cleanly and speedily — it resembled the whirlwind denouement of farce rather than the long-drawn-out catastrophe of tragedy. At a glance from Ernest Clayton the Bishop had scooted out of the chapel, leaving Clayton to guard the knife from the attentions of both Father Anselm and Inspector Plunkett. Regaining the phone he gave a hurried, urgent account of Plunkett's desecration of the chapel, and Sir Henry Abbotsford emitted a howl of anguish. Within twenty minutes Chief Inspector Plunkett was walking towards the gates of the Community, flanked on either side by a policeman of inferior rank: to all appearances he was simply going about his ordinary business, but it was noticeable how close his two supporters kept to him. Within half an hour his former deputy was in charge of the investigations, and had taken over Father Anselm's study.