The Black Seraphim (10 page)

Melchester Cricket Club – Batting Cup

and, underneath, the year followed by the name

Leonard Masters.

He was saved trouble by the small man with the bent nose, who had moved up behind him. He said, “Pity we had to rough ‘em up, wannit?”

“I was thinking the same,” said James.

“Gotter think of Len’s feelings. Comes in here sometimes himself. Wooden want everyone to know he’d been pushed for money.”

“Then these
are
Masters’ cricket cups?”

“That’s right. Nice pieces of silver. Worth more if they hadn’t had all that writing on them, of course.”

Mr Garnett had walked over with Peter and Roger. He said, “You admiring my new flower vases, sir. I bought ‘em from Alf Carney here. I expect he swindled me. He swindles most people.”

Mr Carney accepted this as a compliment. He said, “I was telling this gentleman . . . You come from the Close, don’t you? Then you’d know Len Masters, of course. I was telling him how I bought them.”

Light was beginning to dawn.

“At your stall in the market?”

“That’s right. Poor old Len. Came sidling up with the cups in a suitcase and slid ‘em out as if he’d stolen ‘em. I said, ‘No need to be ashamed, old friend. Better men than you’ve popped their family silver.’ I gave him a fair price for ‘em.”

“How much?” said Mr Garnett.

“Well—”

“Half as much as you sold them to me for, I don’t mind betting.”

“You see how it is,” said Mr Carney. “You’re as bad as the police. Give a dog a bad name and kick him every time he barks.”

“I think it’s time we had some more beer,” said Roger firmly.

Later, as they were walking home, he said, “I feel rather bad about this. It seems to be one of the things you have to accept in a cathedral organisation, that its employees are inadequately paid.”

“And take the balance in sanctity,” suggested Peter.

“That may be right if you’re talking about the clergy. I’m talking about the lay staff. Vergers are only commissionaires, and you wouldn’t get a commissionaire in an office block for twice what we pay Masters. If we’d paid him a bit more, he wouldn’t have had to sell those cups. It must have been terribly embarrassing for him, too. I remember once, when I was more than usually hard up, I tried to pawn a gold watch I’d inherited from my godfather. It took me half an hour to work up my courage even to go into the shop.”

“It’s worse than embarrassing in this case,” said James. “Of course, you don’t know about Rosa Pilcher—”

Roger listened in silence. At the end he said, “We’ll have to tell someone about this.”

“Better not be you,” said Peter. “They’ll want to know where you met this Carney character.”

“I don’t mind doing it,” said James. “But who do I tell?”

They had almost reached the outskirts of the Close before Roger and Peter spoke, almost simultaneously. Roger said, “Tell the Dean.” Peter said, “Have a word with Brookes first.”

By this time it was past eleven and the Close gate was shut. This did not worry them. There were a number of recognised methods of entry. They made off down the road which skirted the north wall, climbed over a gate into the premises of a nursery garden, over a fence at the far end and out into Fletcher’s Piece. They sat down on the riverbank opposite the school building, removed their shoes and socks and rolled up their trousers.

Roger said, “This is a bit tricky. Why don’t you come down to the college? It’s a lot easier down there.”

“It’s quite all right,” said Peter, stepping into the brown water which was chuckling along under the moon, “provided you know where to put your feet.”

As he said this, he put a foot in the wrong place and sat down.

“I see what you mean,” said James. “Why not try the other crossing?”

“In view of the fact,” said Peter – he was sitting up to his waist in the water and seemed quite happy – “in view of the fact that I couldn’t possibly get any wetter, I think I’ll push on.”

“I’m getting too old for midnight bathing,” said James. “We’ll use the easy way.”

They negotiated the lower crossing without difficulty, climbed the wall into the garden of the Theological College and sat down on a seat, alongside a summerhouse, to dry their legs with their handkerchiefs and resume their socks and shoes. It took James back, more vividly than anything had done yet.

“Was it really six years ago when I did this last?” he said. “It seems more like six weeks.”

“You’ll find,” said a voice from the darkness of the summerhouse, “that time moves even more quickly as you grow older. Dr Scotland, isn’t it?”

At the first word Roger had vanished, slipping off up the grass path toward the college. James, having been identified, thought it more dignified to stand his ground.

“An unexpected pleasure,” continued the voice, which he now recognised as belonging to Canon Lister. “No doubt you waded across the river as an alternative to rousing Mullins from his virtuous slumbers?”

“My recollection, sir, was that Mullins had no objection to being roused if you recompensed him adequately. When I was here last, the price was ten pence up to midnight and twenty pence thereafter, but I believe that it has now doubled, or even trebled.”

“It is the age of inflation. Why not sit down for a few minutes? I find this corner of the garden particularly attractive on a fine summer night. Sidney Smith, do you remember, said that
his
idea of heaven was eating
pâté de foie gras
to the sound of trumpets. A little vulgar? You agree. Now,
my
idea of heaven is sitting in a garden on a summer evening listening to the sound of running water.”

The air was heady with the stored smell of wallflowers and night-scented stock.

“It’s really peaceful,” said James. “And I must apologise for interrupting you.”

“Peaceful,” said Canon Lister wistfully. “Yes. A few moments of peace are very precious. They say that the onlooker sees most of the game. It’s not a very happy game that’s being played here at the moment, Doctor. It will not have taken you long to detect that.”

“No,” said James. It was clear that the Canon needed a confidant. It was a perfect night. He was happy to oblige him.

“But you mustn’t make the mistake of supposing that what we have here is a simple case of the good against the bad. It’s more complex than that. It’s a case of two different versions of the good in conflict with each other. Raymond Pawle has done more for the Cathedral foundation in the two years he has been here than his predecessor did in twenty years. I will give you an example. Do you know what I mean by an ecclesiastical trust?”

“More or less. But rather less than more.”

“Some benefactor leaves money to the Cathedral. But attaches strings to it. The money must be kept separate and used for specific purposes. The capital is in the hands of trustees. There were a number of these trusts in existence. They seemed to produce surprisingly little income. The Archdeacon started by investigating them. In two cases the reason was inefficiency, in one case something close to fraud. A local solicitor was involved. He had so arranged matters that nine-tenths of the income went to him, as administrator. It took the threat of a lawsuit to clear it up. When he had cleansed those Augean stables, he turned his attention to our own affairs. He started by reorganising the finances of the school and gave poor Lawrence Consett a rough passage. After that—” James could detect that Canon Lister was smiling “—he turned the searchlight onto the Theological College. I employ an admirable accountant. No blood was spilled. His next objective, no doubt, will be the general Cathedral accounts. I expect he’ll tread on a few toes there, too.”

“Couldn’t these investigations be carried out without causing offense? I don’t mean that dishonest solicitor you were talking about. Clearly, he had to use a big stick on him. But in the other cases—”

“If you are blessed, or cursed, with an analytical mind and are faced with a problem, you tend to overlook personal considerations. I expect you find much the same thing in your own case.”

“In my case?”

“I understood that you were a forensic pathologist. That means, does it not, that you have to give evidence in court of your findings in the laboratory?”

“Not much of our work is done in the laboratory, actually. That’s the field of the scientist and the chemist. Our job starts at the scene of the crime and usually finishes in the mortuary.”

“But you have to apply scientific reasoning to your investigations?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“And do you never find that that is difficult? I mean, applying logic and reason to the most illogical and unreasonable of all actions: the killing of one human being by another.”

“We only have to find out how the victim died. Not why he was killed.”

“But discovery of the method must have some bearing on the motive. You cannot entirely exclude the human factor.”

“In what way?”

There was a moment of silence before Canon Lister spoke again. He said: “Suppose that your examination of the scientific evidence made it fairly plain both how a murder had been committed and by whom. And suppose you found yourself sympathising with the murderer. Would you let your personal feelings influence your findings?”

“I would try not to let them do so.”

“Then you regard scientific truth as sacrosanct?”

“In its own sphere, yes. You must strive to arrive at the truth.”

“Whoever it hurts?”

“Yes. Whoever it hurts.”

“And you really think that human problems can be solved like an equation in algebra?”

“I think,” said James, “with respect, that non-scientists have a very odd idea of how scientists actually work. It isn’t an algebraic process at all. In some ways it isn’t even a logical process. A scientist starts by making a presumption. Then he tries to disprove it. He considers every possible alternative explanation, and as he discards them, one by one, the shape of what is left begins to appear.”

“That means that when you start on an inquiry, you can see the end, but you don’t know by what path you’re going to arrive at it.”

“Not exactly. You do follow a sort of path. Hacking down the brambles which block it, and diving up dozens of side paths until they peter out and force you back to your original track.”

“And at the end of it all?”

“At the end you hope to arrive at a small piece of firm ground. A trustworthy point of departure for further exploration.”

“As long as you don’t arrive at an imposing-looking building labelled ‘The Pavilion of Truth’ and when you go through the door you find it’s one of those constructions on a film lot, all front and no back, there’s nothing behind it at all. You step out onto a piece of wasteland, full of nettles and rusty tins and the messes left by passing dogs.”

There was so much bitterness in Canon Lister’s voice that James felt unable to say anything. He suddenly felt very tired. The Canon must have sensed this because he said, in his former cheerful voice, “Forgive me. You would rather be in bed than listening to the views of a tiresome old man. It has been a pleasure to talk to someone with such intelligent prejudices. Sleep well.”

As James rose to go, the Canon added, “If you happen to see Roger Blakeway, set his mind at rest. I entirely failed to identify him. That’s an example, you see, of personal consideration diluting the purity of truth.”

As James padded away up the grass path, he could hear Canon Lister chuckling to himself.

On Thursday morning James went around to see Henry Brookes. He had to have a word with him anyway, since the dilatory Furbank had announced his return and Friday was to be his last night at the school cottage.

The Chapter Clerk’s mind seemed to be on other things. He said, “Well, I’m very glad to hear that Masters is clear of suspicion. The whole thing was a storm in a teacup and I’ll tell the Dean. But he’s got a lot to cope with just now. Of course, you won’t have heard. Canon Lister passed away last night.”

James found himself staring at Brookes, his face stiff with surprise. He said, “Last night?”

“It may have been in the early hours of this morning. One of the students found him, in the summerhouse.”

“But—” said James. “Good Lord!”

“You sound surprised? He was eighty-four.”

“But I was with him last night. It must have been after midnight when I left him. I never realised—”

He was trying to adjust himself to the thought that someone who had been talking to him in such a friendly and sensible way a few hours before should now be—where? What had he found at the end of
his
path?

Brookes said, “It’s always a shock when someone goes suddenly like that. Did he seem to be himself?”

“Completely. I’d no idea there was anything wrong. If I had, I might have persuaded him to come indoors.”

“Do you suppose he’d have been any happier dying in his bed?”

“No,” said James. “I don’t.” He was thinking of the smell of the flowers and the sound of the running water.

“You’d better have a word with Dr McHarg.”

James was passing the college as the doctor came out. They sat together on one of the benches opposite the west front of the Cathedral, under the gaze of the twelve stone apostles, while James recounted what had happened on the previous evening.

Dr McHarg was not a great talker. He listened in silence, only interjecting an occasional grunt which seemed equally to express surprise or sympathy. At the end he said, “The exact time of death is of no great signeeficance in this case, but I should surmise that he died at about the turn of the night. Say, one o’clock in the morning.”

“Of heart failure?”

“Cardiac arrest will no doubt be what is stated on his death certificate. If I was to be pairfectly honest, I should put ‘of old age’. Old men are like cars. When they have run their appointed mileage, they stop.”

“Did he have any idea that this might be going to happen?”

“It could be. He called me in a few days ago. I knew there was nothing I could do, and he knew it too. We talked about roses.” The doctor added, “It was fortunate he did call me in, though. It means I can sign his certificate without any nonsensical autopsy.”