Ritual Murder (17 page)

Ugh!

With no desire to make a closer inspection Jurnet came back to his starting point, and remarked in an offhand way, “I suppose he was blackmailing you, too?”

“What you mean,
too?
” Harbridge's relief was undisguised.

“Don't worry. You weren't the only one Arthur tried it on with.” Jurnet sat down on one of the chairs lined up facing the little altar. He patted the seat next to him. “Sit down and tell me all about it.”

The verger preferred to stand. He began, “I can't think how you found out—”

“I didn't,” Jurnet admitted. “Once I realized what kind of game little Arthur was playing, it didn't take much to work it out. Something to do with that fire, was it?”

A spasm twisted the verger's face.

“The nasty little that! Said the reason I didn't answer the bell and open the gate for the fire engine was because I'd been drinking and because I was in bed with his Ma.” His voice rose in a horrified astonishment, as if he still could hardly comprehend that such a suggestion had indeed been made. “His own Ma!”

“He was after money, of course?”

“Wanted me to fork out for some special kind of easel he wanted, and some other stuff to do with his painting. I was too bowled over to take in the details. An' once I took them in—” the man's fists clenched until the knuckles showed white—“it was all I could do not to wring his scrawny little neck then an' there.” He took a deep breath and relaxed. “He said if I didn't cough up he was going to write to the Dean an' tell him all about it.”

“And did you—cough up?”

The amused pity in the verger's face was answer enough.

“Only to be expected,” Harbridge conceded, “living out in the city, an' doing the job you do. Here in the Close—” he spoke without embarrassment—“we live closer to God. I often think that's why it's called that. It don't mean we're any holier than folks outside the gates, or any less sinners. Just closer, somehow—to His judgment seat and His everlasting mercy.”

“I take it,” responded Jurnet, cool to the presumption that the Close possessed something denied to his beloved Angleby as a whole, “that what you're saying, in your own peculiar way, is that you didn't give Arthur a brass farthing?”

“Give 'im! I told him, go ahead an' see what good it'll do you. Write your bleeding letter and see what happens!”

“And what did happen?” It was the first time in their acquaintance, Jurnet noted with interest, that the man had used anything approaching an expletive. “What did Dr Carver say?”

“Better ask him! Never said nothing to me. Never heard another word from that day to this.”

“And you never once asked the boy: ‘Look here, did you or didn't you write to the Dean?'”

“Wouldn't lower myself. Bad enough I had to see him, day in, day out, trotting along in his cassock, looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. And when he sang solo!” The verger shook his head, and ended, with a simplicity that Jurnet found unanswerable: “Makes you wonder, don't it, how the Lord could cause such a cracked bell to ring so true?”

“Did you know that Mrs Cossey has a lodger?”

The verger looked pleased.

“I been telling her ever since Vince died! But she never would. She was afraid the neighbours might get the wrong idea.”

“Ideas or not, she's got one now.”

“Not before time. Always said, criminal to let that nice little room go begging when she could do with the extra. So long as your conscience is clear, I said, and you choose carefully who you take in, the neighbours can think what they like.”

“Do you happen to know a scrap merchant name of Joe Fisher?”

“You mean down by the river?” Jurnet nodded, and angry astonishment flooded into the verger's face. “She's never taken in
that
riff-raff?” Jurnet nodded again, and the man exclaimed: “What she want to go an' do that for?”

“I suppose she decided the extra money would come in handy, like you said. And as to choosing carefully, it surely depends on what you're choosing
for?
”

“A respectable chap, that's what I told'er! Regular pay and habits.”

“Ah! But that'd be your choice, not Sandra's. From what you've told me about Vince, I reckon she likes a man to have a bit of the devil in him.”

“But he's already got a wife down there in that caravan, soft in the head,
and
a kid!”

“You're as bad as the neighbours.”

“All the same—” in retreat, albeit unwillingly— “that no-good! She should have thought of Arthur—”

“Perhaps that's exactly what she was doing. Extra money for Arthur to get his easel with, and his paints and such.”

“You must be joking!” the verger exclaimed in derisive contradiction. “Oh, I'm not saying she didn't look after the boy—always dressed decent and plenty of food on the table. But 50p a week was all he ever got by way of pocket money—
when
he got it. Anything Sandra has over from the housekeeping goes straight into the Building Society. Evenings, she'll sit with that passbook on her knees like it was the family Bible. Anything Arthur wanted over 50p he had to earn himself or whistle for it.”

Jurnet asked: “What's the going rate for a paper round these days? More'n it was when I did one myself as a kid, that's for sure. But enough to fit up a proper artist's studio? To run to a bike with seven speeds? Enough to buy glass marbles at 35p a time, and splash 'em around like there was no tomorrow?”

The verger said: “Whatever it is, Sandra took the best part for his food an' clothing. You'll have to keep asking around, won't you? All I can say is, he never got nothing out of me.”

The chapel was stuffy, with a frowst of disinfectant which seemed to mask rather than eliminate an undercurrent of something less salubrious. Harbridge, with the air of daring a refusal, said, “I've got to be getting back to my job.” The detective, who was more sensitive to bad smells than was convenient to one who, in the course of the working day, was often called upon to poke his nose into malodorous places, remarked, “You could do worse than make a start here. Pity those windows don't open.”

The verger, his housekeeping in question, looked distressed.

“It's this blessed floor! Tufa, they call it. Only chapel in England paved with it, so I've heard, and no prizes for knowing why. Sops up everything like a sponge, an' then keeps it hanging about inside it like it can't bear to let it go.”

“Wonder you don't shut the place up for a bit and give it a proper fumigation.”

The verger jerked his head in the direction of the tomb.

“He's the one says it has to be open. The ol' Bishop. And what he says goes. When you've done as much for the cathedral as he has, I reckon you've got a right to call the tune. One of the terms of the FitzAlain Bequest says the FitzAlain chapel has to be kept open in perpetuity.”

Jurnet took another look at the Bishop. Not the plump cleric serene on his stone pillow, but his
alter ego
, the skeleton in the lower berth.

“Perpetuity's a long time. What do you do when Old Bony down there needs a wash and brush-up?”

“The grille behind the head's made to lift out. He gets a proper spring-clean every November 6th, Founder's Day.”

The tomb rested, not on the tufa itself, but a few inches below it, in a shallow pit which seemed to have been hallowed out to receive the sarcophagus. A gully, finished off with a simple beading, separated the tomb from the surrounding pavement.

Jurnet peered down into the narrow space, bent and picked something up. Held it out on the palm of his hand without a word.

The man looked at it uncertainly: uncertainty that turned to annoyance when the detective first set the tiny object down carefully upon the Bishop's chest, and then, in a few swift steps, was at the head of the tomb, down on his knees, and tugging at the metal grille with all his strength.

“Not like that! You'll have it in pieces! Lever it out gentle!”

Jurnet, still saying nothing, obeyed instructions. The grille lifted easily from its anchorage.

Seen from behind, the skeleton's cranium looked formidable, a carapace to house a brain of size and power. To have provided such a lordly receptacle with a pillow would have been an insult, and the sculptor had had the good taste not to do so.

But someone else had.

Jurnet reached in and removed the bundle wedged under the skull. He brought it out carefully, and swivelling round on the floor, unrolled what he had found: a boy's blazer, trousers, and socks wrapped round a bloody knife and a pair of buckled shoes. Not until he had lifted the shoes clear of the enveloping cloth did he realize what he had found beside: up-ended first the left shoe, then the right, and watched with reluctant fascination as, out of the second, something sticky and abominable slowly emerged, and slid with horrid deliberation down to the heel.

Jurnet got to his feet, leaving Arthur Cossey's clothes and what had once been his penis where they lay. He went round to the side of the tomb again; took out a small polythene bag, teased open the edges, and into it dropped with care the wheaten-coloured sliver he had picked up from the floor.

“Did you know—” he asked of the man who stood, his face the colour of ashes, one hand to his mouth— “did you know he'd rather eat sugar crispies than sweets any day?”

The meeting was held in the station on Market Hill, in a room of whose very existence Jurnet had been unaware. A bit of architectural left-overs, too big for a broom closet, too small for anything else. It contained some metal chairs and a round table which was undoubtedly the reason for the Superintendent's choice of venue. At a round table no one was above the salt, no one below: all equal, like King Arthur and his Knights of Old. This typical example of the Superintendent's exquisite consideration for the feelings of his inferiors made Jurnet want to puke.

Sergeant Ellers took in the lay-out at a glance.

“Where's Guinevere?” he inquired cheerfully, scarcely bothering to keep his voice down.

“What's that, Jack?” The Superintendent had already seated himself. In front of him, a virgin notepad and a gold pen of distinguished pedigree proclaimed where power lay as loudly as the Mace before the Speaker of the House.

“Cosy den in here,” Ellers translated shamelessly. “Sir.”

“A bit on the small side.” The Superintendent smiled impartially at the four men ranged hesitantly round the dingy walls. “Sit down, you chaps. You're making me uncomfortable.”

The police officers seated themselves, the Superintendent looking on benevolently. He knew how hard it was for men who had been out in the world, using their own initiative in what was, when you came down to it, a damn rum business altogether, to be summoned at the snap of an authoritarian finger back into a rigidly structured society where every dot over the i, every cross of the t, had to be accounted for in triplicate.

Let them take their time. It needed, as he knew from experience, only the briefest period of readjustment before the initial disorientation gave way to the blessed relief of being home among one's own kind, among brothers with whom problems could be shared, or on to whom, with a bit of luck, they might even be unloaded.

When he judged the moment right the Superintendent began without introduction.

“Professor Pargeter has identified the knife as one in use at the excavation, and customarily left lying on the table at the end of the day's work. Examination shows the blade and handle to have been wiped clean of fingerprints. So—we have the weapon with which the mutilations were done. Which, I am sorry to say, gets us very little farther.”

Jack Ellers spoke up: “At least, unless it was one of those Ulf-diggers themselves, it shows the murderer didn't arrive kitted out for the job. For murder perhaps, but not the embroidery. The Little St Ulf bit could have been a sudden inspiration, come to him on the spur of the moment.”

“Hm.” The Superintendent pursed his lips discontentedly. Then, “And the Bishop's tomb, Ben. I can't see that gets us much forrarder, either.”

“If you say so, sir.” Jurnet nodded agreement, and proceeded to disagree exactly as if the words had never been uttered; a habit of his which he would have been astonished to discover irked the Superintendent every bit as much as any of the Superintendent's little idiosyncrasies annoyed
him
“Dr Colton says that the boy was killed between 6.45 and 8.15. My guess is that it has to be earlier than 8, because I reckon the killer would want to get rid of the clothes without wasting a minute and by 7.45 people were already arriving for the Communion service.”

Sid Hale, long-faced and melancholy, wanted to know, “What time does the cathedral open officially?”

“Our information is that the vergers take it in turn to open up—one week on, one week off. Sunday, it should have been Mr Quest, the head verger, only his daughter's ill, and Harbridge stood in for him. Apparently, the drill is to come in at 6.30 and unlock the Bishop's Postern—that's the traditional bit so the Bishop can get in soon as he has a mind to; then at 7 on the dot the verger undoes the south transept door to let the cleaners in. They don't work on Sundays, but it seems to have become a habit to open up at 7 anyway. At 7.30 he unlocks the West Door—or rather, the little door at the side of it—and the doors into the cloister, and that's it.” Jurnet paused and corrected himself. “Not all of it. Professor Pargeter and his helpers each have keys to the Bishop's Postern and so, theoretically, could come and go at any hour of the day or night. Mr Amos, who's in charge of the choir, can also get into the cathedral any time he fancies, from the Song School. On top of that, the cathedral keys are kept in the vestry, in the south transept—except that the verger on duty for the week takes the key of the South Door home with him at night, otherwise how's he going to get in next day in the first place?”