A Dead Man Out of Mind (11 page)

Now he sighed, looking at the telephone. Chatting on the phone, probably with Lucy Kingsley, on a morning when she knew that he had important calls to make. There were days when he entertained the fleeting notion that it would have been preferable to have remained a bachelor.

A moment later, however, Emily tapped on his study door and came in with a tray of coffee and biscuits for his mid-morning sustenance. ‘I thought you'd be about ready for this,' she said.

Gabriel gave her a perfunctory smile. ‘Thanks.'

Sensing his irritation, she hesitated by the door. ‘Is everything all right?'

‘Who were you talking to on the phone?' he replied elliptically.

It was Emily's turn to sigh. ‘Dolly Topping.'

He made an involuntary face. ‘Dreadful woman. Why ever were you talking to her? Didn't you talk to her yesterday, at that awful women's meeting?'

‘It would be more accurate to say that
she
was talking to
me
,' Emily corrected him. ‘On both occasions.'

‘About the horrors of having a woman curate, no doubt.' Gabriel raised his eyebrows cynically. ‘Foisted on them by some evil diocesan functionary like a bishop or even an archdeacon.'

Emily gave a dry laugh. ‘The subject did come up, I believe. But that wasn't why she rang me this morning, as a matter of fact.'

Taking a sip of his coffee, he looked at her enquiringly. ‘Yes?'

‘It was something to do with the silver at St Margaret's,' she amplified. ‘I didn't follow it very well, but apparently the churchwardens are hoping to sell some of the church silver, and they've just found out that it's very valuable.'

‘Valuable?'

‘Apparently so. Worth over a hundred thousand pounds, Norman told her.'

Gabriel frowned. ‘They can't just sell it, you know. They'll have to apply for a faculty, and I'm not so sure they'll get it.' He put his coffee cup down with a decisive thump. ‘Why haven't I been informed about this?'

Shrugging, Emily interpreted the latter as a rhetorical question. ‘I thought you might be interested.'

As she slipped out of the door, Gabriel flashed her a genuine smile of gratitude. Wives could be very useful sometimes, he reflected wryly, finishing his coffee. But whatever were those churchwardens up to? The Venerable Gabriel Neville, Archdeacon of Kensington, resolved to find out.

CHAPTER 8

    
I have considered the days of old: and the years that are past.

Psalm 77.5

The voice on the loud-speaker was as muffled and incomprehensible as always, though in these days of customer service the announcements of delayed or cancelled trains were no longer stated baldly, but were couched in terms of feigned regret. ‘We apologise for [crackle, spit, mumble, crackle],' David heard as he waited on the northbound Piccadilly line platform at the South Kensington tube station. He sighed; from experience he was able to decipher the garble, and the bottom line was that he would be late for work.

‘Mr Middleton-Brown?' ventured a tentative voice.

David turned to see Stanley Everitt beside him on the platform. ‘Oh, hello.'

‘Did you understand what they said?' In his right hand he clutched a carrier bag; with his left he gestured vaguely into the air.

David's laugh was without humour. ‘The usual. Security alert – that's London Transport-speak for yet another IRA bomb threat – at Gloucester Road has caused unavoidable delays to northbound service on the Piccadilly Line. They apologise for any inconvenience, rhubarb, rhubarb.' He looked up at the moving light display, which merely announced that no smoking was permitted on the London Underground. ‘They're not even listing the next train. It could be a long wait.'

‘Oh, dear.' Everitt tucked his carrier bag under his arm to facilitate his characteristic, if unconscious, hand-wringing. ‘Did you know that there's been a bomb at Victoria Station this morning? I went there first, and it's all cordoned off, so I came here instead.'

In just a few months of living in London, David had become accustomed to such things. ‘Was it serious, do you know?'

Everitt's voice dropped to a lugubrious whisper. ‘I heard that one or possibly two people had been killed. Terrible.'

‘Dreadful,' David agreed automatically. His mind was occupied with wishing that the train would come, to deliver him from this tiresome man. His contact with Everitt had been slight, but the man, with his nervous mannerisms, his peevish negativism and his cadaverous appearance, made him uncomfortable. In fact, he realised, the feelings elicited by the Administrator were rather similar to those he felt in the presence of the sacristan, albeit for completely different reasons.

‘Do you take this line every day?' Everitt asked after a moment.

‘Yes. My office is in the City. Lincoln's Inn.'

‘I'm very lucky, really – I can walk to work. St Jude's is just round the corner from where I live, and St Margaret's isn't far at all. Of course I only go there one day a week, generally. That's all it really requires to keep things ticking over there. St Margaret's used to be a much more active parish, of course, in the old days. Very high, it's always been, but that sort of thing used to be more popular than it is now. Father Keble Smythe is a proper Catholic, of course, but he knows when to trim his sails. St Jude's requires a much more moderate approach. I've always preferred St Margaret's, myself.'

David gazed at the display, willing it to flash up the next train. ‘I met your new curate yesterday,' he said, without thinking.

At least it stemmed the flow of self-important stream-of-consciousness; Stanley Everitt sucked in his breath, looking as though he'd just bitten into a lemon. ‘Her.'

‘You've met her?'

‘Yes, of course. As the Administrator I was one of the first to meet her, naturally.'

‘She seems very nice,' David stated, aware that he wasn't making himself very popular.

‘Oh, I have nothing against her
personally
.' Everitt raised a hand to smooth the strands of hair across the crown of his head. ‘I just don't understand what the Church is about, going against two thousand years of tradition. When there are so many qualified
men
who'd like to be ordained,' he added with a significant nod.

In an instant, David understood; Everitt's objections were not so much theological as the result of hurt pride and thwarted ambition. ‘You'd like to be ordained?' he hazarded.

‘Well, yes,' admitted the Administrator with some reluctance. ‘I have put myself forward for ordination. I do feel that I have a real call to the priesthood, a true vocation. With my administrative skills, and my interest in all things spiritual . . . Well.'

‘What happened?'

The sour-lemon expression intensified. ‘I was turned down by the Board of Ministry. Three times. It's all right for
some
,' he added in a burst of bitterness. ‘The first batch of women – just because they're women, they don't have to go to a selection conference. Different rules apply. It's just not fair.'

With relief, David saw on the display that the next train would be arriving in two minutes. It was bound to be crowded; perhaps he'd be able to lose Stanley Everitt and be spared travelling into the City with him. ‘Ah. Our train should be here soon,' he declared.

The call from Martin Bairstow came later that morning, when David had barely had a chance to catch up with his post and to deal with the inevitable consequences of his lateness by rescheduling a few missed appointments. ‘The Archdeacon wants to see us,' Bairstow announced. ‘This afternoon.'

His heart – or was it his stomach? – gave a quite unexpected lurch. ‘The Archdeacon? But why?'

Bairstow sounded distinctly unamused. ‘He's got the wind up. Someone has told him about the silver – that we want to sell it, and that it's probably worth a lot of money.'

‘Who would have told him?'

‘He wouldn't say, and I can't imagine who would have done it, after the Vicar specifically mentioned that we should keep it to ourselves for the time being. But he had his facts right, and I couldn't very well deny it.'

David's first guilty thought, quickly dismissed, was that Lucy might have told Emily; he digested the information in silence for a moment. ‘He's asked for a meeting, you say?'

‘Yes. He wants the churchwardens to come and see him this afternoon, at three.'

‘Me, as well?'

‘I told him that we'd be bringing our solicitor.'

‘Are you sure that you wouldn't do just as well without me?' David asked faintly.

‘Nonsense,' was the robust reply. ‘Bringing our solicitor along will show him that we can't be intimidated, that we mean business.'

‘But . . .'

‘I'll come to your office to collect you at half-past two,' Bairstow stated in a tone that would brook no argument, a tone that he had often used to great effect in his business dealings. ‘See you then.'

David put the phone down.

The Archdeacon. Gabe.

This afternoon.

He looked at his desk diary for the afternoon's entries: only one appointment, at half-past three, for a consultation about revising a will.

Gabe.

He went out to find his secretary. ‘Would you mind ringing Wing Commander Fitzjames and rescheduling him for next week? Something important has just come up.'

Mrs Simmons looked disapproving, but nodded and reached for the phone.

David returned to his desk and picked up the pad on which he was drafting a complicated brief; several times he read over what he had written, but the words didn't register.

Gabe. This afternoon. In just a few hours.

He wasn't sure that he was ready to see Gabe again. He hadn't seen him for over a year, not since before Gabe had become Archdeacon. They had parted on good terms, as friends, with their painful misunderstandings laid to rest, but they hadn't met again. David was convinced that his feelings about Gabe had been resolved – of course they had: Lucy was all that mattered to him now – but he still wasn't sure that he wanted to see him, to stir up what was for him a closed chapter of his life.

There had been occasional opportunities to see Gabe over the last year and a half, at various social occasions, but he had always managed to find some reason to avoid him. He told himself that it was out of consideration for Lucy's feelings. After all, she had never liked Gabriel Neville much, even when he was no more than the husband of her best friend. She'd been upset when David had confessed to her the history of his relationship with Gabe, which had ended suddenly and painfully almost twelve years ago when Gabe had disappeared from his life and then married Emily. Lucy's reactions had been complex, dominated by indignation at Gabriel's heartless behaviour, whatever its justification, and by compassion for David's suffering. David and Lucy hadn't really talked about it since, both of them preferring to put it behind them and to get on with building their own relationship; but by unspoken consent they had avoided social contact with the Nevilles. Lucy continued to see Emily, if somewhat less frequently than before, and her affection for her was unchanged, but she had no desire to see Gabriel.

Neither, David realised now, did he. There was Lucy and her feelings to consider, yes, but was he also afraid of his own reactions? Was he afraid that all those years of love could not so easily be dismissed, and that seeing Gabe again would bring it all back? In spite of Lucy, and in spite of his love for her? It was unthinkable, and yet it had to be faced. How would he feel, when he saw Gabe again this afternoon?

At least David knew what was coming; Gabriel hadn't the least warning of the encounter. Before either of the churchwardens had a chance to make introductions, Gabriel blurted out, ‘David!'

‘Oh, you've met, have you?' Martin Bairstow surmised, raising his eyebrows.

David had the advantage, but still it was perhaps surprising, given their respective characters, that he was the one who replied first. ‘Yes, the Archdeacon and I go back a long way,' he said with an easy smile, stretching out his hand. ‘How are you, Gabriel?'

Gabriel was grateful; it gave him an instant to regain his composure. He shook the proffered hand. ‘Very well, thank you. And you?'

‘Never better.'

It was true: David had never looked better, Gabriel realised with a small pang. The happiness he'd obviously found with Lucy had given him an air of contentment that became him well; the puffiness under his eyes that Gabriel remembered from their last meeting had subsided, leaving only the attractive laugh-lines at their corners, and he looked as fit and healthy as a well-fed cat.

David, returning his scrutiny, marvelled that he could do so without the least trace of self-consciousness. It was so strange, he thought in the split second as their eyes met. Once not so long ago Gabriel's very presence had had the power to reduce him to a quivering jelly. Now he saw him merely as a good-looking man, much like any other good-looking man who was past the bloom of youth. What a relief it was. ‘How are Emily and the children?' he enquired calmly.

‘Oh, they're fine.' Gabriel hesitated for a fraction of a second. ‘And how is Lucy?'

David's smile lit his whole face. ‘She's wonderful.'

And that was all. It had taken no more than a few seconds altogether, yet they both knew that the balance of power in their relationship had been altered for ever.

Gabriel turned to the churchwardens. ‘Now, gentlemen. What is this that I hear about some silver?'

CHAPTER 9

    
O what great troubles and adversities hast thou shewed me! and yet didst thou turn and refresh me: yea, and broughtest me from the deep of the earth again.