Death in Holy Orders (25 page)

The nightmare was always the same. Rupert had been dragged back to the camp the night before and now the prisoners were lined up to watch his beheading. After what had been done to him, the boy could hardly walk to the appointed place and sank to his knees as if with relief. But he made a last effort and managed to raise his head before the blade swung down. For two seconds the head remained in place, then slowly it toppled and the great red fountain spurted out like a last celebration of life. This was the image which night after night Father Martin endured.

On waking, he was tortured always by the same questions. Why had Rupert tried to escape when he must have known it
was suicide? Why hadn’t he confided his purpose? Worst of all, why hadn’t he himself stepped forward in protest before the blade fell, tried with his frail strength to seize it from the guard, and died with his friend? The love he had felt for Rupert, requited but unconsummated, had been the only love of his life. All else had been the exercise of a general benevolence or the practice of loving kindness. Despite the moments of joy, some even of a rare spiritual happiness, he carried always the darkness of that betrayal. He had no right to be alive. But there was one place where he could always find peace and he sought it now.

He took his bunch of keys from the bedside table, shuffled over to the hook on the door and took down his old cardigan with the patches of leather on the elbows, which he wore in winter under his cloak. He put the cloak over it, quietly opened the door and made his way down the stairs.

He needed no torch; a low light from a single bulb burned on each landing, and the spiral staircase to the floor below, always a hazard, was kept well lit by the use of wall-mounted lights. There was a lull in the storm. The silence of the house was absolute, the muted moaning of the wind emphasizing an internal calm more portentous than the mere absence of human sounds. It was difficult to believe that there were sleepers behind the closed doors, that this silent air had ever echoed to the sound of hurrying feet and strong male voices, or that the heavy oak front door had not been closed and bolted for generations.

In the hall a single red light at the foot of the Virgin and Child cast a glow over the smiling face of the mother and touched with pink the chubby outstretched arms of the Christ child. Wood was quickened into living flesh. He passed on his silent slippered feet across the hall and into the cloakroom. The row of brown cloaks were the first evidence of the house’s occupation; they seemed to hang like forlorn relics of a long-dead generation. He could hear the wind very clearly now, and as he unlocked the door into the north cloister it rose suddenly into renewed fury.

To his surprise, the light over the back door was off, as was the row of low-powered lights along the cloister. But when he stretched out his hand and pressed down the switch, they came
on and he could see that the stone floor was thick with leaves. Even as he closed the door behind him, another gust shook the great tree and sent the drift of leaves around its trunk bowling and scurrying about his feet. They swirled about him like a flock of brown birds, pecked gently against his cheek and lay weightless as feathers on the shoulders of his cloak.

He scrunched his way to the door of the sacristy. It took a little time under the final light to identify the two keys and let himself in. He switched on the light beside the door, then punched out the code to silence the low insistent ringing of the alarm system and went through into the body of the church. The switch for the two rows of ceiling lights over the nave was to his right, and he put out his hand to press it down, then saw with a small shock of surprise but no anxiety that the spotlight which illuminated the
Doom
was on, so that the west end of the church was bathed in its reflected glow. Without switching on the nave lights, he moved along the north wall, his shadow moving with him on the stone.

Then he reached the
Doom
and stood transfixed at the horror that lay sprawled at his feet. The blood hadn’t gone away. It was here, in the very place in which he was seeking sanctuary, as red as in his nightmare, not rising like a strong feathered fountain but spread in blotches and rivulets over the stone floor. The stream was no longer moving but seemed to quiver and become viscous as he gazed. The nightmare hadn’t ended. He was still trapped in a place of horror, but one which he couldn’t now escape by waking. That or he was mad. He shut his eyes and prayed, “Dear God, help me.” Then his conscious mind took hold and he opened his eyes and willed himself to look again.

His senses, unable to apprehend the whole scene in the enormity of its horror, were registering it by slow degrees, detail by detail. The smashed skull; the Archdeacon’s spectacles lying a little apart but unbroken; the two brass candlesticks placed one on each side of the body as if in an act of sacrilegious contempt; the Archdeacon’s hands stretched out, seeming to clutch at the stones but looking whiter, more delicate, than his hands had looked in life; the purple padded dressing-gown stiffening with his blood. Finally Father Martin raised his eyes to the
Doom
. The dancing devil in the front of the picture now wore
spectacles, a moustache and a short beard, and his right arm had been elongated in a gesture of vulgar defiance. At the foot of the
Doom
was a small tin of black paint with a brush lying neatly over the lid.

Father Martin staggered forward and dropped to his knees beside the Archdeacon’s head. He tried to pray but the words wouldn’t come. Suddenly he needed to see other human beings, to hear human feet and human noises, to know the comfort of human companionship. Without thinking clearly, he staggered to the west of the church and gave one vigorous tug on the bell pull. The bell sang out as sweetly as ever, but seeming to his ears clamorous in its dread.

Then he went to the south door and, with trembling hands, managed at last to draw back the heavy iron bolts. The wind rushed in, bringing with it a few torn leaves. He left it ajar and walked, more strongly and firmly now, back to the body. There were words he had to say, and now he found the strength to say them.

He was still on his knees, the edge of his cloak trailing in the blood, when he heard footsteps and then a woman’s voice. Emma knelt beside him and put her arms round his shoulders. He felt the soft brush of her hair against his cheek and could smell her sweet, delicately scented skin driving from his mind the metallic smell of the blood. He could feel her tremble but her voice was calm. She said, “Come away, Father, come away now. It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t all right. It was never going to be all right again.

He tried to look up at her but couldn’t raise his head; only his lips could move. He whispered, “Oh God, what have we done, what have we done?” And then he felt her arms tighten in terror. Behind them the great south door was creaking wider open.

D
algliesh usually had little difficulty in getting to sleep, even in an unfamiliar bed. Years of working as a detective had inured his body to the discomforts of a variety of couches and, provided he had a bedside light or a torch for the brief period of reading which was necessary for him before sleep came, his mind could usually let go of the day as easily as did his tired limbs. Tonight was different. His room was propitious for sleep: the bed was comfortable without being soft, the bedside lamp was at the right height for reading, the bedclothes were adequate. But he took up his copy of Seamus Heaney’s translation of
Beowulf
and read the first five pages with a dogged persistence, as if this were a prescribed nightly ritual instead of a long-awaited pleasure. But soon the poetry took hold, and he read steadily until eleven o’clock, then switched off the lamp and composed himself for sleep.

But tonight it didn’t come. That welcome moment eluded him when the mind slips free of the burden of consciousness and sinks unafraid into its little diurnal death. Perhaps it was the fury of the wind keeping him awake. Normally he liked to lie in bed and fall asleep to the sound of a storm, but this storm was different. There would be a lull in the wind, a brief period of total anticipatory peace, followed by a low moaning, rising into a howling like a chorus of demented demons. In these crescendos he could hear the great horse-chestnut groaning and had a sudden vision of snapping boughs, of the scarred trunk toppling, first as if reluctant and then in a terrifying plunge to thrust its upper branches through the bedroom window. And—always a vibrant accompaniment to the tumult of the wind—he could hear the pounding of the sea. It seemed
impossible that anything living could stand up to this assault of wind and water.

In a period of calm he switched on the bedside light and looked at his watch. He was surprised to see that it was 5:35. So he must have slept—or at least dozed—for over six hours. He was beginning to wonder whether the storm had really spent its force when the moaning began again, and rose to another howling crescendo. In the lull that followed, his ears caught a different sound, and one so familiar from childhood that he recognized it instantly: the peal of a church bell. It was a single peal, clear and sweet. For a second only, he wondered if the sound was the remnant of some half-forgotten dream. Then reality took hold. He had been fully awake. He knew what he had heard. He listened intently but there was no further peal.

He acted swiftly. By long habit he never went to bed without carefully placing to hand the items he might need in an emergency. He pulled on his dressing-gown, rejected slippers in favour of shoes, and took a torch, heavy as a weapon, from his bedside table.

Leaving the apartment in darkness and guided only by the torch, he closed the front door quietly behind him, and stepped into a sudden gusting wind and a flurry of leaves which whirled round his head like a flock of frantic birds. The row of low-powered wall lights along both the north and south cloisters were sufficient only to outline the slender pillars and cast an eerie glow over the paving stones. The great house was in darkness, and he saw no lights from any window except in Ambrose, next door, where he knew Emma was sleeping. Running past without pausing to call out to her, he felt a clutch of fear. A faint slit of light showed that the great south door of the church was ajar. The oak groaned on its hinges as he pushed it open, then closed it behind him.

For a few seconds, no more, he stood transfixed by the tableau before him. There was no obstacle between him and the
Doom
and he saw it framed by two stone pillars, so brightly lit that the faded colours seemed to glow with an unimagined newly painted richness. The shock of its black defacement paled before the greater enormity at his feet. The sprawled figure of the Archdeacon lay prone before it as if in an extremity
of worship. Two heavy brass candlesticks stood ceremoniously, one on each side of his head. The pool of blood was surely more lusciously red than any human blood. Even the two human figures looked unreal: the white-haired priest in his spreading black cloak, kneeling and almost embracing the body, and the girl crouched beside him with an arm round his shoulder. For a moment, disorientated, he could almost imagine that the black devils had sprung from the
Doom
and were dancing round her head.

At the sound of the door she turned her head, then was instantly upright and ran towards him.

“Thank God you’ve come.”

She clutched at him and he knew, as he put his arms round her and felt the trembling of her body, that the gesture was an instinctive impulse of relief.

She broke free at once and said, “It’s Father Martin. I can’t make him move.”

Father Martin’s left arm, stretched over Crampton’s body, had its palm planted in the pool of blood. Putting down his torch, Dalgliesh placed his hand on the priest’s shoulder and said gently, “It’s Adam, Father. Come away now. I’m here. It’s all right.”

But of course it wasn’t all right. Even as he spoke the anodyne words, their falsity jarred.

Father Martin didn’t move and the shoulder under Dalgliesh’s touch was stiff as if locked in rigor mortis. Dalgliesh said again, more strongly: “Let go, Father. You must come away now. There’s nothing you can do here.”

And this time, as if the words had at last reached him, Father Martin allowed himself to be helped to his feet. He looked at his bloodied hand with a kind of childish wonder, then wiped it down the side of his cloak. And that, thought Dalgliesh, will complicate the examination for blood. Compassion for his companions was overlaid with more urgent preoccupations: the imperative to preserve the scene from contamination as far as possible, and the need to ensure that the method of murder was kept secret. If the south door had as usual been bolted, the killer must have come in from the sacristy and through the north cloister. Gently, and with Emma supporting the priest on his
right side, he led Father Martin towards the row of chairs nearest the door.

He settled them both down and said to Emma, “Wait here for a few minutes. I won’t be long. I’ll bolt the south door and go out through the sacristy. I’ll lock it after me. Don’t let anyone in.”

He turned to Father Martin: “Can you hear me, Father?”

Father Martin looked up for the first time and their eyes met. The pain and horror were almost more than Dalgliesh could bear to meet.

“Yes, yes. I’m all right. I’m so sorry, Adam. I’ve behaved badly. I’m all right now.”

He was very far from all right, but at least he seemed able to take in what was being said.

Dalgliesh said, “There’s one thing I have to say now. I’m sorry if it sounds insensitive, the wrong time to ask, but it is important. Don’t tell anyone what you have seen this morning. No one. Do you both understand that?”

They murmured a low assent, then Father Martin said more clearly, “We understand.”

Dalgliesh was turning to go when Emma said, “He isn’t still here, is he? He isn’t hiding somewhere in the church?”

“He won’t be here, but I’m going to look now.”

He was unwilling to put on any more lights. Apparently only he and Emma had been woken by the church bell. The last thing he wanted was other people crowding the scene. He returned to the south door and shot its great iron bolt. Torch in hand, he made a swift but methodical examination of the church, as much for her satisfaction as his. Long experience had shown him almost immediately that this was no very recent death. He opened the gates to the two box pews and swept the torch over the seats, then knelt and looked beneath them. And here was a find. Someone had occupied the second pew. A portion of the seat was free of dust, and when he knelt and shone the torch in the deep recess beneath it, it was apparent that someone had crouched there.