The Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides) (17 page)

‘And in his moment of despair,' said Morley, ‘he fetched a bell-rope, climbed up on a table, onto a chair, tied the bell-rope into a noose, looped it around the beam, kicked the chair away, and hanged himself? Quite a moment, wouldn't it be? Not so much a moment, in fact, as a short episode, which implies not only premeditation but also—'

‘I might get myself another drink, actually,' I said, unable to bear the scrutiny of the other – now once again silent – customers any longer.

‘Good idea,' said Morley.

‘Good idea,' I agreed, getting up.

‘I smoked marijuana once, you know, Sefton,' he continued, ‘through a hookah, in Afghanistan. Herat. Wore a turban. It's not all it's cracked up to be. Either the turban or the marijuana.' He would often throw these googlies into conversation. It was best to ignore them, I found, though the darts-players were clearly having trouble doing so, staring at this white-haired, middle-aged, moustached man as though he had escaped from a lunatic asylum.

‘Another pint of—'

‘The old aqua vitae,' he said. ‘Yes. Wouldn't that be lovely?' And he pulled out a notebook and began writing.

‘Does anyone commit suicide on impulse, as it were?' he continued, on my return, tapping his notebook, which was now covered with furious little notes and diagrams. Fortunately, the novelty of having a one-time turban-wearing, marijuana-smoking autodidact among them seemed to have worn off, and men had returned to their conversations, their darts and their shove-halfpenny.

‘I'm sure they do,' I said.

‘Young people, perhaps. Adolescents. Young Werther and what have you. But a grown man, Sefton? And a vicar, at that. With an eternal perspective? Hardly.'

I took a restoring sip of my beer, and chose not to answer, which was always the best course in such circumstances, I found, since after a few moments Morley was always prepared to pick up a ball and run with it alone.

‘So, what do you think, Sefton, reasons for suicide?'

‘Erm.'

‘If we had to draw up a shortlist. Number one reason?'

‘Erm …'

‘Number one. Mental or physical infirmity. Can't say at the moment about the physical infirmity – he seemed a fine specimen, but we'll have to wait for the results of the autopsy to confirm. No one has mentioned the reverend being doolally, have they?'

‘No, not to me,' I said.

‘Me neither,' said Morley. ‘One might have expected Mrs Snatchfold to have mentioned it, if he was crazy?'

‘Yes.'

‘So that rather rules that out. Which leaves us with our number two reason for anyone committing suicide. Which would be?'

‘Sorrow?'

‘Precisely! Yes. But sorrow over what exactly?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Loss? Mourning? Grief, as we know, abides by its own peculiar timetable; but it seems unlikely, I think. What do you think?'

‘Erm …'

‘He may of course have been in some sort of practical discomfort. Financial distress, possibly. Debt? A gambler? In which case someone locally would be able to tell us. Which leaves us a long list of other reasons for sorrow, including perhaps remorse, shame, fear of punishment – God's or otherwise – despair due to unrequited love, thwarted ambition—'

‘Quite a lot of possibilities.'

‘Exactly, Sefton. Which means it's probably the wrong question to ask. Too many answers: wrong question. So, let's work on the basis of what we do know rather than what we don't, shall we? Let's imagine, just for a moment, Sefton. Let's put ourselves in the role of the poor departed reverend. This man who decides to kill himself in his own church.'

One of the darts-players scored a triple top, to much celebration.

‘Bravo!' said Morley, joining in, and then continuing without a break. ‘Let's just think about it for a moment, Sefton. The life of a country priest.' He pointed to a diagram in his notebook: a series of circles and letters, and noughts and crosses, like a set of primitive pictograms or strange celestial symbols. ‘Here he is. The reverend.' He pointed to a small black cross inside a large black circle. ‘Now, what does a reverend do, on a daily basis?'

‘Preaches?'

‘Yes, of course, he preaches. Though weekly, we might assume, rather than daily. But, you're right of course, he does preach. Hence …' He pointed to a line that led from the large black circle to a smaller circle containing a capital P. ‘Anything else?'

‘He visits the sick?'

‘Again, yes,' and he traced his pen along another line out towards another circle containing the letter S. ‘He does indeed. Chum to the weak, and what have you. But what is most important about the role of the priest, town or country, in the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church?'

‘I don't know, Mr Morley.' My mind sometimes wandered when Morley was pursuing a theory, adumbrating a theme, or sketching.

‘The sacerdotal role, is it not?' He drew a circle around all the other circles, creating a kind of wheel with spokes. ‘The priest is set apart from the community, Sefton. Everything that represents worldliness – the love of pleasure, of art, of ourselves. The priest is supposed to be essentially different from us.' He drew half a dozen small arrows attempting to penetrate the large circle.

‘I see.' I had absolutely no idea what was the point of the diagram now.

‘He's a symbol, isn't he?'

‘I suppose.'

He took a long draught of his water.

‘So, the point?'

‘It's just an illustration, Sefton, to help us think.'

‘Right.'

He tore the page from his notebook and fashioned it into a small dart.

‘Now, Sefton. Watch.' He squinted. ‘On the oche!' he said and leaned back, and then promptly threw his little dart straight into the heart of the fire, where it burst into flame. ‘One hundred and eighty!' he cried. The darts-players responded with a polite round of applause. Morley bowed in his seat and took a couple of celebratory twists of his moustache. ‘You're a city person, Sefton, aren't you?'

‘Yes. Born and bred in London.'

‘Can you imagine for a moment, then, living somewhere like this?' He swept his arm wide, almost knocking our drinks to the floor.

‘Well …'

‘And every day you'd have to meet the same people. The same people in your place of work. The same people in the pub. Our darts-playing friends here …' Our darts-playing friends glanced over. ‘Day in, Sefton, day out. Week in, week out. Year in, year out. People you might not like. And who might not like you. And yet you can't leave, Sefton. You can't go anywhere. Because your role as parish priest is to serve them. All of them.' He threw his arms wide again, once more narrowly missing our drinks. ‘And in return, Sefton, they are expected to respect you, to look up to you, to see you as a representative if not of Christ exactly, then at least of the Church, and for you to express and uphold its values, and yet and yet and yet' – a final arm fling, which fortunately I saw coming, and had snatched away our glasses – ‘they see you every day, conducting your duties in the same way we all conduct our duties, which is to say inconsistently and incompletely. They see your failings and your petty grievances and faults. Might not the temptation eventually be …'

I placed the drinks safely back down on the table. ‘To kill yourself?' I said.

‘Wrong!' cried Morley, this time finally throwing his arm wide enough and quickly enough to knock both our glasses successfully to the floor. The unmistakable sound, first, of breaking beer glasses; second, of the absolute silence following the breaking of beer glasses; and third, and finally, of the fulsome barmaid, on uncertain heels, hurrying to resolve the breaking of beer glasses. And then … the equally unmistakable sound of Morley, continuing on.

‘
Terra es, terram ibis
,' he said.

‘Sorry, sir?' said the barmaid.

‘Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.'

‘If you say so, sir.'

‘I really am terribly sorry. I have an awful habit of talking with my hands, I'm afraid. A touch too much of the old
Schwärmerei
, eh?'

‘I'm sure it is, sir. But not to worry,' said the barmaid of boundless tolerance, who was bending over to pick up the larger shards of glass from the floor, and mopping at the beer and water with a dishcloth. ‘We'll have this cleared up in a moment, sir.'

I got down on my hands and knees to help, not least because the barmaid's heels and clothes rather inhibited her free movement. She was dressed primarily for display purposes.

‘Don't you be troubling yourself with that, sir.'

‘Nonsense,' I said. ‘It's the least I could do.'

‘Mind your fingers.'

‘I will,' I said. And for a moment – something to do with the light, the woman, the smell of beer – I was back in a bar in Barcelona where there was a banner up outside: ‘Las Brigades Internacionales, We Welcome You'.

Between us we made a pretty good job of clearing up, and the bar chatter gradually resumed.

‘I'll help you get rid of this,' I said, my hands cupping broken glass.

‘There's no need,' said the barmaid.

‘It's fine,' I said. ‘I need to get us both another drink anyway.'

‘
Ubi mel ibi apes
, eh, Sefton?' said Morley.

‘Is he foreign, your friend?' whispered the barmaid as we walked to the bar with all the sharp little pieces.

‘He's just … eccentric,' I said.

‘All right, Lizzie?' asked the barman, as we dropped the broken glass into a bucket behind the bar.

‘We're fine, John.'

‘Can't you keep your friend under control?' said the barman.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I mean, no. Not really, no, I'm afraid he's …'

‘He's harmless,' said the barmaid. ‘Leave him alone, John.' She straightened up and faced me, cocking her head to one side. ‘You're staying in the hotel?'

‘Yes, we are. Just for a night or two.'

‘Well, we'll see lots of you in here then, I hope. You make a nice change.'

‘Indeed,' I said.

‘The temptation, Sefton,' continued Morley, once I had brought us fresh drinks and settled down again, ‘would not be to kill oneself, surely, but to kill them, would it not?'

‘What?' By this stage all I wanted was to drink my beer quietly and get to bed.

‘Does it seem so strange?'

‘I'm sorry, Mr Morley, I can't quite seem to understand what it is you're suggesting.'

‘I'm not suggesting anything, Sefton. I'm simply remarking on the obvious fact that anyone and everyone might at some time be tempted to kill themselves. Or indeed others. Your experience in Spain would bear that out, would it not?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Do you know Durkheim?'

‘No, I'm afraid not. Not personally no.' I had no idea who he was talking about.

‘German. Cranky. Beard, etcetera. But useful distinctions between types of suicides. We are assuming that the reverend's is an act of egoistic suicide, self-directed, an act of self-harm. But what if it's not? What if it's a suicide aimed specifically at others? An aggressive suicide, if you like? What if the question is not, why would the reverend want to kill himself, but rather why would the reverend want to kill others?'

‘No. I'm sorry, I don't follow.'

‘Put yourself in the sacerdotal shoes for a moment, Sefton. Try imagining yourself as a vicar in a small Norfolk village, squeezed into the reverend's shoes – four-eyelet tan brogues, were they not? With rubber cleated soles? Cordovan leather, possibly.'

‘I didn't notice,' I said.

‘Doesn't matter,' said Morley. ‘Not literally, metaphorically I mean, of course. So how do they fit? Eh? The good reverend's shoes?'

‘A bit uncomfortable,' I admitted.

‘Indeed. Tight fit, isn't it? Tell me, do you really hate anyone, Sefton?'