The Black Seraphim (28 page)

The others considered it. They were none of them enthusiastic about the idea of imprisoning a leading churchman. At the back of their minds were old ideas of sanctuary and clerical immunity. The shadow of the Cathedral loomed over them.

“If we do see Brookes,” said Laporte, “we shall have to tell him most of the truth. That this evidence we’re looking for is the last link in the chain. To put the matter bluntly, that by preventing us from getting it, the Dean is protecting a particularly unpleasant and unscrupulous murderer.”

“Name her, you mean?”

“I don’t think we can go as far as that. But, short of putting a name to the suspect, we’ll have to put our cards on the table. Then he can take back a message to the Dean which he can’t misunderstand: Either he helps us or we pull him in.”

“I agree with that,” said Adey. “But what if he says no?”

The Chief Constable looked at his watch. He said, “This has got to be finished tonight. The weather will be a help. There won’t be too many people about. We’ll reconvene at eight o’clock, gentlemen.”

The down train reached Melchester at six o’clock, fifty minutes late and spouting water like a whale. What might have been a tedious journey had been enlivened for James by the presence of Lady Fallingford, who had also been up to London. She had a copy of the Dean’s circular. She had approved of it strongly and had said so.

“It’ll keep that nasty creature Brasher or Brayford or whatever he calls himself away from darlings like Claribel Henn-Christie, who couldn’t say boo to a goose. It’s lucky for him he hasn’t tried his third-degree tactics on
me
.”

James said, “He can’t keep the police out forever.”

“Not forever. But for a good long time. Then everyone will be able to say: ‘Oh, that’s so long ago, I’ve forgotten all about it.’”

“I hope you’re right. It was a pretty risky step.”

Lady Fallingford gave a throaty chuckle and said, “He’s a man who likes taking risks. From what I’ve heard, he’s spent most of his life taking them.”

When the train drew into Melchester, there was a rush for the ticket hall, led by two men in dirty raincoats. The ones who were first out grabbed the three taxis which serviced the station. Almost everyone else decided to wait for their return. Only a few brave spirits fancied stepping out into the unrelenting downpour. James and Lady Fallingford took their places on the end of the long bench in the ticket hall. Counting the numbers ahead of them, he reckoned that they might have to wait for a third or fourth relay.

The taxis had come back once and picked up a second load of passengers when Bill Williams arrived on his motorcycle. He had defied the weather in a complete suit of black rubber and came in off the forecourt dripping water, like a diver emerging from the sea.

He said, “James! Just the man I wanted.” He gestured toward the door of the inner waiting room. James got up and followed him, shutting the door behind him. There was no one else there.

Bill said, “Just when I needed you, you have to go gallivanting up to the metropolis. Things have been moving down here, I can tell you. And they’re coming to a head tonight. That article in the
Guardian
was the last straw.”

“I didn’t think the authorities would like it.”

“They’re hopping mad. They’re going to present the Dean with an ultimatum: Either he lifts his ban or they pull him in.”

“Arrest him?”

“Right.”

“On what charge?”

“Obstruction, or something of the sort.”

“Because of that circular he sent round? Lady Fallingford showed it to me in the train. A bit drastic, but not entirely unreasonable.”

“They’re prepared to argue about that in court. If it gets that far. They don’t think it will. They think that when it comes to the point, he’ll give in. Though, personally, I rather doubt it.”

James thought about it. He said, “How do you know about all this?”

Bill said, “If I tell you, in strict confidence, that one of our girls has got a bosom friend – and, incidentally, what a bosom, but never mind about that – who’s a typist at the police station, you can imagine that we’re kept pretty well in the picture.”

“I often wondered how the press got its information. But there’s still one thing I don’t see. You said, just when you needed
me.
How do I come into this?”

Bill got up, opened the door and looked out. He said, “It’ll be ten minutes before you can move. I can see that I started at the wrong place.” He shut the door, came back and sat down. “The fact is, old Fisher’s promised me a Wednesday extra.”

“A Wednesday extra?”

“Just a double sheet. To come out tomorrow. It’s not something we do very often. It’s too damned expensive. Overtime for the printers and no advertising. But we make it up in goodwill and publicity. The first time we did it, I’m told, was when the Kaiser’s War was thoughtless enough to start itself on a Tuesday.”

“And this one is going to be about the Dean’s arrest?”

“That would be part of it. But it wouldn’t be worth an extra by itself. For one thing, we couldn’t beat the national press on it. There were men from the
Mirror
and the
Express
on the train with you.”

“Were they the two men who trod on everyone’s toes getting to the door and grabbed the first taxis?”

“That sounds like them,” said Bill with a grin. “Pushful lads. No doubt they’ll pick up the story and it will be in their papers tomorrow. So we’ve got to do better than that.
And we can.
Because we’ve got the other half of the story and they haven’t. But if I’m going to write it, I’ve got to be on the spot tonight, and that’s where you can help me.”

James was going to say that he didn’t see why he should involve himself, but changed his mind at the last moment. This new development had opened up a number of possibilities, some of them disturbing.

He said, “Help you? How?”

“I expect I can get into the Close. Though it’s not going to be too easy. The river’s over its banks already. But once I’m there, I’ll have to have somewhere to work from. I’ve written a lot of the story – the background and that sort of stuff – but the part that matters will have to be dictated directly from the battlefront. I could base myself on the school cottage, all right. Alan and Peter wouldn’t have objected to that, I’m sure. But it hasn’t got a telephone. So I had this idea. You’re staying with Henry Brookes. He’s a broad-minded sort of chap. Why couldn’t I do the whole thing from his house?”

James was now not only alarmed, he was angry. He said, “I see no reason why Brookes should help you to crucify the Dean in your bloody paper.”

Bill looked astonished and hurt. He said, “I’m not explaining this very well. We’re not going to crucify the Dean. We’re on his side. We’re going to help him.”

“You think publicity is going to help him?”

“The right sort of publicity.”

“Are you serious?”

“No fooling. Totally serious. What we’re going to suggest is that the police are taking this outrageous step in order to discredit the Dean
before he discredits them.
A typical fascist ploy. If someone’s in a position to hurt you, blacken his character first. Then no one will believe anything he says.”

“And how exactly is the Dean going to discredit the police?”

“By publishing the fact that a leading policeman, Detective Superintendent Bracher, was one of the parties to the supermarket swindle.”

“Can he do that?”

Bill looked a bit embarrassed. He said, “He can’t, not at the moment. But
we
can. And once the truth’s out, it’ll be easy enough to suggest that the Dean knew about it all along.”

“I see,” said James. He knew enough about newspaper tactics to realise that what Bill had said was plausible. He said, “You’ll have to have some definite proof.”

Bill had been unzipping the front of his waterproof jacket. Now he brought out a pouch, opened it and laid four pieces of paper on the table. James could see that they were blown-up photographs of what looked like cheque stubs.

“The originals are safely locked in the bank,” said Bill. “But these will show you that we mean business. Four payments of twenty thousand pounds each, made two years ago by Gloag to his partners in crime. Because the supermarket deal
was
a crime. Aren’t they beautiful? Two members of the Council, both with inside knowledge of the new ring road. The press represented by Arthur Driffield of the
Melset Times
– I think that was what finally persuaded my boss to go ahead with the extra – and last, but by no means least, H.C.B, for Herbert Charles Bracher.”

James carried the fourth photograph over to the window. He stood there for a long minute, looking at it. Then he said, “You’ll have to cancel your extra. You can’t use this.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve made a very common mistake: You saw what you wanted to see. You knew that Bracher was a crony of the other three and you hoped he’d be involved. If you looked at this without any preconceived ideas, you’d have seen that the middle initial isn’t C. It doesn’t really even look like C. It’s G.”

Bill looked from the photograph to James and back again to the photograph. The expression on his face was one part dawning realisation and two parts horror.

Lady Fallingford put her head around the door and said, “Our taxi’s coming up.”

“Negative,” said Bracher. “Total negative.”

“All right,” said Laporte. “That means we go ahead. The first thing we decide is how we’re going to get into the Close.” He turned to Terry. “I understand we’ve had a bit of a setback there.”

“The thing is,” said Terry, “during the war the gates had to be kept open so that fire engines and rescue crews could get in if needed. Which, luckily, they weren’t. However, when the war was over, we somehow forgot to give our set of keys back. Maybe we thought they’d come in useful. Of course, they’re only keys to the wicket gates. The main gate’s barred or bolted on the inside.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Adey. “Go in through the wicket and open the main gate.”

“It would be all right,” said Terry, who came from Devonshire and liked to deploy facts slowly, “only when we tried them, they didn’t work. They must have changed the locks sometime.”

“Crafty,” said Bracher. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the Dean did that.”

“All right,” said Laporte. “We go in over the river.”

“Difficult,” said Terry, “and dangerous. By last reports, it was two foot over its banks and running like a millrace.”

Adey said, “If it’s just a question of putting your men over the wall at some quiet spot, we could lend you one of those hoists. The sort of thing we use for servicing the overhead street lamps.”

Laporte thought about it. He had a sudden vision of one of his policemen poised in a metal bucket on the end of a long expanding arm. He said, “No. I’d like to keep this as simple as possible. All we need is a couple of twelve-foot ladders from the Fire Brigade.”

“No difficulty,” said Adey. “No need to turn out a fire engine. They can be carried on a tender.”

“Right. We run the tender up to the River Gate. The road there’s a dead end. Tell the driver to take the tender about twenty yards along and stop. Then one of the police cars backs in after it, blocking the entrance. The second one stands by. As soon as the cars are in position, run one of the ladders up. There’s a line of barbed wire on top of the wall. You’ll need wire cutters. As soon as the wire’s clear, haul the second ladder over the top and put it down inside.” He looked at the plan. “That should mean that the first men over are just inside the gate. They remove the bars, undo the bolts and open it.”

“Suppose they’ve got some sort of guard on it.”

“If they try to stop you opening the gate,” said Terry, “you can deal with them as you think necessary. It’s only the bloody clerics we’ve got to handle with kid gloves.”

The Chief Constable nodded. The last thing he wanted was to have anyone hurt, but he had got well past the point where he was going to stand any nonsense from people like young Ernie.

“Once the gate’s open, both cars drive in. One goes up to the front door of the Deanery, the other one stays outside the gate as a rear guard.”

Terry noticed that the Chief Constable had started to talk like a soldier. Normally, this irritated him, but on this occasion there was some comfort in it. What was proposed seemed more a military than a police operation.

“As soon as you’ve secured the Dean, drive out with him. Then reverse the process. Bolt and bar the gate, get back over the wall, remove the ladders and return to base.”

“Timing?”

“The later we go, the less people will be about. But we don’t want to drag the old boy out of bed. H-hour ten-thirty. That should be about right.”

At ten o’clock James was sitting with Dora Brookes in the drawing room listening to the wireless. Henry had retired to his room immediately after supper. It had been a silent meal. Dora was tackling her faithful piece of embroidery, but James could tell that her mind was on other things. He had started to read, but could make no sense of the words and had given up.

“Persistent rain in the south and west,” said the wireless, “has already caused serious flooding in many towns, including Salisbury, where the water is already invading the Close, and to a lesser extent in Melchester and at Romsey Abbey. Meteorological experts have pointed out that the contra-effluxion of air currents has produced conditions very similar to those that prevailed in Florence in November 1966, though it is to be hoped that the damage in this case will not be on anything approaching a similar scale.”

James wondered why experts on the wireless should always say things like “the contra-effluxion of air currents” when they meant winds blowing in opposite directions. Dora bundled up her sewing and said, “I’d better go up and see if Henry wants anything.”

James stood up too, switched off the wireless, then returned to his seat and sat in silence. Even the drumming of the rain was shut out by the heavy casements and the thick old-fashioned curtains.