Death in Holy Orders (17 page)

The Warden said, “I was not asking for your absolution, Commander. I was merely setting out the facts.”

There was a silence. Dalgliesh’s next question was equally stark, but it had to be asked. He wondered whether he was being too direct, even tactless, in his questioning, but he judged that Father Sebastian would welcome directness and despise tact. More was understood between them than was being spoken.

He said, “I was wondering who would benefit if the college were closed.”

“I would, among others. But I think that any questions of that kind could more properly be answered by our lawyers. Stannard, Fox and Perronet have served the college since its inception and Paul Perronet is at present a trustee. Their office is in Norwich. He could tell you something of our history, if you’re interested. I know that he does work occasionally on Saturday mornings. Would you like me to make an appointment? I’ll see if I can get him at home.”

“That would be helpful, Father.”

The Warden stretched out his hand to the telephone on his desk. He had no need to check the number. After he had pressed down the digits there was a short pause, then he said, “Paul? It’s Sebastian Morell. I’m ringing from my office. I have with me Commander Dalgliesh. You remember we spoke last
night about his visit? He has a number of questions about the college that I would be glad if you would answer.… Yes, anything he asks. There’s nothing you need withhold.… That’s good of you, Paul. I’ll hand you over.”

Without speaking, he passed the receiver to Dalgliesh. A deep voice said, “Paul Perronet here. I shall be in my office tomorrow morning. I have an appointment at ten, but if you can come early, say nine o’clock, that should give us time enough. I’ll be here from eight-thirty. Father Sebastian will give you the address. We’re very close to the cathedral. I’ll see you at nine o’clock, then. Just so.”

When Dalgliesh had regained his seat, the Warden said, “Is there anything else tonight?”

“It would be helpful, Father, if I could have a sight of Margaret Munroe’s staff record, if you still have it.”

“It would of course have been confidential were she still with us. As she is dead, I can see no objection. Miss Ramsey keeps it in a locked cabinet next door. I’ll fetch it for you.”

He went out, and Dalgliesh could hear the rasp of the steel cabinet drawer. Within seconds the Warden was back and handed over a stiff manila folder. He didn’t inquire what possible relevance Mrs. Munroe’s file could have to the tragedy of Ronald Treeves’s death, and Dalgliesh thought he knew why. He recognized in Father Sebastian an experienced tactician who wouldn’t ask a question if he judged the reply would be either unforthcoming or unwelcome. He had promised cooperation and would give it, but he would store up each of Dalgliesh’s intrusive and unwelcome requests until the opportune moment came to point out how much had been demanded, how small the justification and how ineffective the result. No one would be more adept at luring his adversaries onto ground they could not legitimately defend.

Now he said, “Do you wish to take the file away, Commander?”

“For the night, Father. I’ll return it tomorrow.”

“Then if there is nothing else for the present, I’ll say good night.”

He rose and opened the door for Dalgliesh. It could have
been a gesture of politeness. To Dalgliesh it smacked more of a headmaster ensuring that a recalcitrant parent was finally taking himself off.

The door to the south cloister was open. Pilbeam had not yet locked up for the night. The courtyard, lit only by the dim wall-lights along the cloisters, was very dark, and only two of the students’ rooms, both in the south cloister, showed even a chink of light. As he turned towards Jerome, he saw that two figures were standing together outside the door of Ambrose. One he had been introduced to at tea, and the pale head shining under the wall light was unmistakable. The other was a woman. Hearing his footsteps, she turned towards him and as he reached his door their eyes met and for a second held as if in mutual amazement. The light fell on a face of grave and astounding beauty, and he experienced an emotion that now came rarely, a physical jolt of astonishment and affirmation.

Raphael said, “I don’t think you’ve met. Emma, this is Commander Dalgliesh, who has come all the way from Scotland Yard to tell us how Ronald died. Commander, meet Dr. Emma Lavenham, who arrives from Cambridge three times a year to civilize us. After virtuously attending Compline, we decided, quite separately, to walk out and look at the stars. We met at the edge of the cliff. Now, like a good host, I’m seeing her back to her rooms. Good night, Emma.”

His voice and stance were proprietorial and Dalgliesh sensed her slight withdrawal. She said, “I was perfectly capable of finding my own way back. But thank you, Raphael.”

It looked for a moment as if he were about to take her hand, but she said a firm “Good night,” which seemed to embrace them both, and went quickly into her sitting-room.

Raphael said, “The stars were disappointing. Good night, Commander. I hope you have everything you need.” He turned and strode briskly across the cobbles of the courtyard to his room in the north cloister.

For some reason which he found difficult to explain, Dalgliesh felt irritated. Raphael Arbuthnot was a facetious young man who was undoubtedly too handsome for his own good. Presumably he was a descendant of the Arbuthnot who had
founded St. Anselm’s. If so, how much was he likely to inherit if the college were forced to close?

Resolutely he settled at the desk and opened Mrs. Munroe’s file, sifting through each of the papers. She had come to St. Anselm’s on 1 May 1994 from Ashcombe House, a hospice outside Norwich. St. Anselm’s had advertised both in the
Church Times
and in a local paper for a resident woman to be in charge of the linen and to help generally with the housekeeping. Mrs. Munroe’s heart condition had recently been diagnosed, and her letter of application stated that nursing had become too heavy for her and that she was looking for a residential post with lighter duties. Her references from the Matron of the hospice had been good, though not over-enthusiastic. Mrs. Munroe, who had taken up her post on 1 June 1988, had been a conscientious and dedicated nurse, but was perhaps a little too reserved in her relationships with others. Nursing the dying had become both physically and mentally too exhausting for her, but the hospice thought she would be able to undertake some light nursing responsibilities at a college of healthy young men and would be happy to do so in addition to being in charge of the linen. Once arrived, it seemed that she was seldom absent. There were very few applications to Father Sebastian for leave, and it seemed that she preferred to spend holidays in her cottage, where she was joined by her only child, an army officer. The general impression gained from the file was of a conscientious, hard-working, essentially private woman with few interests outside her son. There was a note on the file that he had been killed eighteen months after her arrival at St. Anselm’s.

He put the file in the desk drawer, showered and went to bed. Clicking off the light, he tried to compose himself for sleep, but the preoccupations of the day refused to be banished. He was standing again on the beach with Father Martin. He saw in imagination that brown cloak and cassock as precisely folded as if the boy had been packing for a journey, and perhaps that is how he had seen it. Had he really taken them off to clamber up a few yards of unstable sand layered with stones and precariously held together with clumps of grassy earth? And why
make the attempt? What, if anything, did he hope to reach, to discover? This was a stretch of coast where from time to time parts of long-buried skeletons would appear under the sand or in the cliff face, washed up generations ago from the drowned graveyards now lying a mile away under the sea. But nothing had been apparent to any of those at the scene. Even if Treeves had glimpsed the smooth curve of a skull or the end of a long bone jutting from the sand, why would he have found it necessary to take off his cassock and cloak before attempting to reach it? To Dalgliesh’s mind there had been something more significant in that neatly folded pile of clothes. Hadn’t it been a deliberate, almost ceremonial, laying aside of a life, of a vocation, perhaps even of a faith?

From thoughts of that dreadful death his mind, torn between pity, curiosity and conjecture, turned to Margaret Munroe’s diary. He had read the paragraphs of the final entry so often that he could have recited them by heart. She had discovered a secret so important that she couldn’t bring herself to record it except obliquely. She had spoken to the person most concerned, and within hours of that disclosure she was dead. Given the state of her heart, that death could have happened at any time. Perhaps it had been hastened by anxiety, the need to confront the implications of her discovery. But it could have been a convenient death for someone. And how easy such a murder would be. An elderly woman with a weak heart alone in her cottage, a local doctor who had seen her regularly and would have no difficulty in giving a death certificate. And why, if she was wearing the spectacles she used for watching television, had her knitting been in her lap? And if she had been watching a programme when she died, who had turned off the set? All these oddities could, of course, be explained. It was the end of the day and she was tired. Even if more evidence came to light—and what evidence could there be?—there was little hope of solving the mystery now. Like Ronald Treeves, she had been cremated. It struck him that St. Anselm’s was oddly prompt in disposing of its dead, but that was unfair. Both Sir Alred and Mrs. Munroe’s sister had cut the college out of the obsequies.

He wished he had actually seen Treeves’s body. It was always
unsatisfactory to have evidence at second hand, and no photographs had been taken of the scene. But the accounts had been clear enough, and what they pointed to was suicide. But why? Treeves would have seen the act as a sin, a mortal sin. What could have been strong enough to drive him to such a horrific end?

A
ny visitor to an historic county town or city quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses in the centre are invariably the offices of lawyers. Messrs. Stannard, Fox and Perronet were no exception. The firm was housed within walking distance of the cathedral in an elegant Georgian house separated from the pavement by a narrow band of cobbles. The gleaming front door with its lion’s-head knocker, the glistening paintwork, the windows unsmudged by city grime, reflected the frail morning sunlight, and the immaculate net curtains all proclaimed the respectability, prosperity and exclusiveness of the firm. In the reception office, which had obviously once been part of a larger, finely proportioned front room, a fresh-faced girl looked up from her magazine and greeted Dalgliesh in a pleasant Norfolk accent.

“Commander Dalgliesh, isn’t it? Mr. Perronet is expecting you. He said to ask you to go straight up. It’s the first floor, at the front. His PA doesn’t come in on Saturdays, there’s only the two of us, but I could easily make you coffee if you’d like it.”

Smiling, Dalgliesh thanked her, declined the offer and made his way up the stairs between framed photographs of previous members of the firm.

The man who was waiting for him at the door of his office and moved forward was older than his voice on the telephone had suggested, certainly in his late fifties. He was over six feet tall, bony, with a long jaw, mild grey eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles, and straw-coloured hair which lay in lank strands across a high forehead. It was the face of a comedian rather than of a lawyer. He was formally dressed in a dark pin-stripe suit, obviously old but extremely well cut, its orthodoxy belied
by a shirt with a broad blue stripe and a pink bow-tie with blue spots. It was as if he were aware of some discordance of personality or an eccentricity which he was at pains to cultivate.

The room into which Dalgliesh was led was much as he had expected. The desk was Georgian and clear of paper or filing trays. There was an oil painting, no doubt of one of the founding fathers, above the elegant marble fireplace, and the water-colour landscapes, carefully aligned, were good enough to be by Cotman, and probably were.

“You won’t take coffee? Very wise. Too early. I go out for mine at about eleven. A stroll up to St. Mary Mancroft. Gives me a chance to get out of the office. I hope this chair isn’t too low. No? Take the other if you prefer. Father Sebastian has asked me to answer any questions you care to ask about St. Anselm’s. Just so. Of course, if this were an official police inquiry, I should have a duty as well as a wish to co-operate.”

The mildness of his grey eyes was deceptive. They could be searching. Dalgliesh said, “Hardly an official inquiry. My position is ambiguous. I expect Father Sebastian has told you that Sir Alred Treeves is unhappy about the verdict at the inquest on his son. He’s asked the Met to make a preliminary investigation to see if there’s a case for taking the matter further. I was due to be in the county and I know something of St. Anselm’s, so it seemed expedient and economical for me to make this visit. Of course, if there is any suggestion of a criminal case, the matter will become official and pass into the hands of the Suffolk Constabulary.”

Paul Perronet said, “Dissatisfied with the verdict, is he? I should have thought it would have come as something of a relief.”

“He thought the evidence for accidental death was inconclusive.”

“So it may have been, but there was no evidence of anything else. An open verdict might have been more appropriate.”

Dalgliesh said, “Coming at a difficult time for the college, the publicity must have been unwelcome.”

“Just so, but the tragedy was handled with great discretion. Father Sebastian is skilled in these matters. And St. Anselm’s certainly has had worse publicity. There was the homosexual
scandal in 1923, when the priest lecturer in Church history—one Father Cuthbert—fell passionately in love with one of the ordinands and they were discovered by the Warden
in flagrante delicto
. They cycled off together on Father Cuthbert’s tandem bicycle to Felixstowe Docks and freedom, having, I presume, changed from their cassocks into Victorian knickerbockers. An engaging picture, I always think. And then there was a more serious scandal in 1932, when the then Warden converted to Rome and took half the teaching staff and a third of the ordinands with him. That must have sent Agnes Arbuthnot reeling in her grave! But it’s true that this latest publicity comes at an unfortunate time. Just so.”