Day of Vengeance: Dorothy Martin investigates murder in the cathedral (A Dorothy Martin Mystery) (13 page)

The choir, made up traditionally of boys and men, was excellent; so was the organist. In fact, the service was so lovely in every way that I waited for the sermon with great apprehension. Was this going to be the weak spot?

‘My brothers and sisters in Christ,’ he began, ‘we have come together, friend and stranger, in this beautiful and holy place to worship Almighty God, he who made us, sustains us, redeems us. We have heard the comforting words from the Gospel of John, words that are often read at a funeral: “Let not your hearts be troubled, trust in God, trust also in me.”

‘But we come here to this cathedral church from many places, from many different religious traditions. Many of you – perhaps most of you – are members of this cathedral parish, and indeed I see many familiar faces. I also see unfamiliar ones. Some of you may have come this afternoon to hear our wonderful music and bask in the beauties of our church. Some have come out of curiosity. Some may be seeking respite from troubled lives. Some have come because you’ve been sightseeing and your feet hurt.’

There was a little ripple of laughter at that.

‘Not all of you are Christians. Not all of you are believers of any sort. What I want to say to all of you is that God doesn’t care why you’re here. Let me repeat that. God doesn’t care
why
you came to church today! He cares
that
you’re here. He cares that you are, for a little time, a captive audience, so to speak. Here he can reach out to you in a special way. Our form of worship is designed to help people feel the presence of God, and, of course, he uses the music and the beauty and the solemnity to touch you.

‘So I want to warn you, all of you – Christians and non-Christians and those who aren’t quite sure what you believe – I want to warn you all that God is, in fact, reaching out to you, and he is quite relentless about it. He’s going to use every means at his disposal to draw you into his love. If you’re trying to run away from him, my friend, as most of us do from time to time, I have to tell you that you’ve come to the wrong place. There is never a time or place when he isn’t at your side, urging you to know him better, to commit yourself to his way, but this time and place is especially hazardous to anyone trying to avoid him. So if you want to escape his net, I’d advise you to leave right now. Another few minutes, and it might be too late.’

He paused, and silence filled the great sunlit space. Then a titter or two began to run through the congregation. No one now would dare to get up, even if they desperately needed to use the loo! Clever, I thought, and Alan passed the same thought to me with a little smile.

‘Ah. Well, then, you can never say you’ve not been given fair warning.’ He leaned forward in the pulpit and grasped the sides. ‘You may think me facetious, my friends, and I will admit the charge, to an extent. Perhaps the way I have phrased my message is not as serious as it might be. But the message itself is perfectly true. Our loving God, our God who loved us to the point of dying on the cross, is never going to give up on us. He keeps on urging us to follow in his way, to love our neighbours and seek to help them. If you are trying to escape that necessity, again you have come to the wrong place. We here in this cathedral are keenly committed to helping our neighbours in every way, to feeding them, clothing them, and showing them God’s love, and a portion of our offering today will be dedicated to those efforts.

‘Our Lord is present to us in a special way in his church, but he is always, everywhere, with us. When we reject him, when we turn away from his love, he keeps on loving us and seeking to bring us closer to him. When at last we find him, it is because he has, all along, been searching for us. The parents in this congregation will know that, if one of your children is lost, you will move heaven and earth to find that child and bring it back home. So much more will our heavenly father try to bring us home to him.

‘So, my advice to you this morning – my urgent plea, in fact – is to stop running. I absolutely promise you that when you do, you will find a mansion prepared for you, a haven where you may rest and stop worrying. That’s what he promised us, and he keeps his promises.

‘And now unto God the Father …’

‘The Hound of Heaven,’ I said to Alan as we were having tea at Rotherford’s fanciest hotel, Watson waiting sadly outside. He accepts the fact that he cannot go everywhere with us, but he doesn’t understand.

‘I was reminded,’ said Alan, ‘of C. S. Lewis writing about “the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet”. It is indeed, in some ways, a frightening idea, though I’ve never heard a parson approach it quite that way before.’

‘He’s a good preacher. Short, sweet, clear. In fact, he’s a good man altogether. I do like Mr Robinson, but Dean Smith is the best of the lot.’

‘I agree, but there’s no guarantee the committee will.’ He grimaced. ‘Let’s talk about something else. What would you like to do for the rest of the afternoon?’

We took Watson for a long walk. We prudently changed into don’t-matter clothes and Wellies, in case he took a notion to jump into the water after the ducks.

There can, for me, be nothing closer to Paradise than an English spring afternoon. Robert Browning had it right. April, when the weather behaves itself, is heavenly. The air is warm in the sun, but not too hot, and fragrant with the indescribable freshness of new growth and damp earth. Birdsong is everywhere, and the very ripples of streams sound like joyous laughter.

We were content to amble, saying nothing, with Watson snuffling happily along in a world of delightful sights and smells. He apparently remembered his encounter with the swan, for he kept well away from the waterfowl, only pausing now and then to sit and look at them with longing.

We saw the pair of swans, with their trail of just-hatched cygnets. If there’s anything more graceful than a swan in the water, I don’t know what it is. Nor anything sillier than any water bird on land. Their legs and feet weren’t made for walking.

We rounded a bend of the river and there, over the trees, rose the spire of Rotherford Cathedral, floating like something in a fairy tale. ‘Not Septimus Harding, after all,’ I said. ‘Just as gentle, just as kind, but with more backbone.’

‘I, for one, look forward to meeting him tomorrow morning.’

Dean Smith had arranged for us to meet at the Deanery, which was one of the beautiful old houses near the cathedral.
His wife opened the door and greeted us warmly. She was exactly the sort of wife I’d expected him to have – around fifty, with hair greying around the temples and a pair of twinkly blue eyes. She had, I thought, been a raving beauty in her youth, and she was still very attractive, with an enviable figure.

‘Do please come in! You’ll be Mr Nesbitt and Mrs Martin, and I’m Emily Smith. Will you have some coffee?’

‘We never turn down coffee. Thank you.’ Then I wondered if I’d been too hasty. English coffee varies pretty widely, from heaven-sent to what my family used to call ‘damaged water’.

She led us into the pleasant, chintz-covered front room, where two other couples were already sitting. ‘We invited some of our parishioners,’ she said. ‘As this was to be an informal, get-to-know-one-another sort of session, we thought you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ said Alan. ‘Delighted.’

‘Well, then, let me introduce Mr and Mrs Stewart. Mr Stewart is, as one might suppose, from Edinburgh, and is one of our churchwardens. You know that St Martha’s is also a parish church? Mrs Stewart is one of the leading lights in Rotherford’s WI. And this is Mr Cho, our organist and choirmaster, and head of our choir school, and Mrs Loften, who manages our cathedral gift shop. And you all know that these people are Mr Nesbitt and his wife Mrs Martin, who are here to talk to us about the appointment of the new Bishop of Sherebury. James will be along any moment; there was a sudden crisis about arrangements for the mission trip.’ She spoke as though sudden crises were a regular feature of cathedral life, as, indeed, I imagined they were.

‘Here I am, my dear. I’m so very sorry to have kept you all waiting. Emily, have you introduced everyone?’

‘Yes, don’t worry. I’m just going to get coffee.’ She slipped out of the room, smiling kindly at her husband as she left.

I was wrong. This wasn’t
Barchester Towers.
It was
The Nine Tailors
, and I was in the home of Mr and Mrs Venables.

‘Now then. We are at your disposal, sir. And lady! What would you like to know?’

‘Actually, we simply wanted to get to know you. As I explained, I’m not here officially representing the commission. The formal interviews will come later. I’m afraid I don’t know how much later. They would ordinarily have begun some time ago. The commission is meeting next week to decide what to do in the face of the recent tragedy.’

‘And just what are the police doing about that, I’d like to know!’ said the leading light of the Women’s Institute belligerently. ‘It’s been over two weeks now, and no one’s been charged!’

‘I know very little about it,’ said Alan patiently. ‘I’ve been retired for a good many years now, so not much news comes my way. I believe, though, that the police have not yet determined whether the dean might not have met with an accident.’

‘Hmph! I’d have thought they’d be able to tell a simple thing like that straight off!’

‘One would think so, certainly. There may be complicating factors I’m unaware of.’

‘But you came here to learn about us, not we about you,’ said Mrs Smith, entering with a tray of coffee things, which she set down on a low table, proceeding to pour the coffee. ‘Alice, do tell us how the gift shop’s coming along. I know I saw a big crowd in there the other day.’

Mrs Loften smiled and accepted coffee from our hostess. ‘That would have been just before Easter, I should imagine. There’s always a run on cards and gifts then. And, of course, we have that new CD of the choir that’s attracting a good bit of attention. Do you like music, either of you?’

‘We both do,’ I answered, ‘and we thought the choir was lovely at Evensong yesterday. I didn’t know the anthem, but I loved it.’

All eyes turned to Mr Cho, who came as near to a blush as his complexion would allow. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.

‘He won’t tell you, so I will,’ said Mrs Smith. ‘He wrote it, especially for us. And it’s to be sung at King’s this summer!’

‘King’s College? That is an honour! Congratulations, Mr Cho.’ Alan stood and held out his hand to the musician, who took it with a slight bow and retired to the farthest corner, as if to efface himself.

‘We think our choir is at least as fine as theirs,’ said Mr Stewart, with robustly rolled Rs. ‘Their voices fill our church, though it’s a wee bit bigger than yon college chapel.’

‘Yes,’ said Dean Smith, ‘we’re very proud of our choir. And it’s all Mr Cho’s work. The choir was in a sorry state when he came here ten years ago. The choir school had been allowed to fall into disuse, but he got it back up and running, and it wasn’t long before the school’s reputation began to be known.’

‘Hmph,’ said Mrs Stewart. That appeared to be a favourite word, if one could call a grunt a word. ‘It had a reputation before, and not the good sort. That’s what killed it – that and a poor excuse for a headmaster. It was Dean Smith got it up and running again, and don’t let him tell you anything different! His appeals for scholarship funds, the grants he brought in for putting the building to rights and hiring staff, his scouring the country for the best musician to head the school –
that’s
what put it on its feet again!’ She favoured the room with a glare that might have scorched the curtains.

‘Now, now, Mrs Stewart, you exaggerate.’ The dean looked embarrassed. The rest of us couldn’t think of anything to say, but Mr Cho rose out of his corner chair and bowed to us all.

‘It is true what the lady says,’ he said in his precise English. ‘I could not have come here without Mr Dean’s help. He is a very great lover of church music and a very good man. I am deeply indebted to him.’

He bowed again and sat down, leaving even Mrs Stewart speechless.

W
e had to leave early in the morning, because Rotherford was no longer served by a frequent rail service. When British Rail was privatized, back the 1990s, a lot of small stations were closed or suffered greatly reduced schedules. Rotherford Station probably remained open only because of the cathedral, but, as it was well out of easy London commuting range, trains were infrequent. If we’d missed the earliest one, it would have meant waiting another two hours, and we were all eager to get back home. We made it by the skin of our teeth, and then had to do the journey across London, with luggage and dog, at the height of the rush hour (which I have always thought is ludicrously misnamed).

‘I’m absolutely in Dean Smith’s corner now,’ I said while we were stopped in a traffic tangle near Hyde Park Corner. ‘He’s the perfect man for the job. So I’m glad Mr Robinson doesn’t want it, and I hope to heaven Walter manages to get the goods on Lovelace. That would put him out of the running for sure.’

‘I wish Walter would get in touch. I’d like to stop and see him, but it’s impossible with the dog and all.’

Watson looked up at that and whined slightly. ‘Dog’ is one of the words he knows, and he hadn’t quite liked Alan’s tone of voice when he uttered it. Alan patted him absently, but his mind was in the coffers of St Barnabas’ church.

The train to Sherebury was delayed again, so it was early afternoon when we arrived, finally, at Sherebury Station. To our surprise, Jane was waiting for us. We had told her when we expected to be back, but hadn’t asked her to meet us.

‘We have our car here, Jane,’ said Alan. ‘I’m sorry you went to the trouble … No, it’s something else, isn’t it?’

‘Not the cats?’ I said anxiously.

‘Cats are fine. It’s Walter.’

‘What about Walter?’ asked Alan sharply.

‘Missing.’

We left our car at the station so Jane could drive us home and talk on the way. ‘Sue called,’ she began. ‘Wanted to know if Walter was here. Said no, hadn’t seen or heard from him. No phone call, no email. Left in the morning to go to the BM. Still working there, unpaid, till his job comes through. Left there at noon to see Sue. Didn’t show up. Didn’t phone.’