Blood Brotherhood (11 page)

Plunkett was not willing to leave the i's undotted. ‘You get overcome by the thirst for blood,' he said, his voice still dangerously excited.

‘I don't know,' said the Bishop. ‘I suppose so. The killing was always done by a tribal warrior. In . . . what you would call a trance. I have never been a warrior, but I fear I
must have gone into such a trance last night.'

‘It's happened before?'

‘Yes, once. It didn't get out, of course. And in my own country it would not have been considered . . . so extraordinary. But here . . .'

‘And you remember nothing?'

‘No, nothing,' said the Bishop, hanging his head.

‘Not killing the lamb?'

‘No.'

Inspector Plunkett leaned forward. ‘Not killing Denis Crowther, known here as Brother Dominic?'

The Bishop started, and looked him straight in the eye for the first time. ‘I beg your pardon?'

‘This . . . Brother Dominic. Last night he was butchered. Carved up. Have you forgotten that too?'

The Bishop of Mitabezi drew himself up. He had at his command a very considerable dignity of manner, and a great deal of it returned to him now. His fleshy but impressive body stiffened against the wall, and he looked hard and direct at Chief Inspector Plunkett.

‘You forget that I am a Christian,' he said.

• • •

The Bishop of Peckham, in the period of waiting for Chief Inspector Plunkett to interview him, loafed around the buildings and grounds of St Botolph's, a picture of misery and uncertainty. Several people tried to speak to him, but they got little more than grunts in reply. He went into the chapel and prayed for a while, but while his words flew up his thoughts remained below. To be more specific, he was disturbed by the presence of Simeon Fleishman, apparently also offering up supplications to his non-denominational creator, but in fact letting his eyes dart everywhere around the magnificently austere chapel. So the Bishop gained singularly little peace of mind from the exercise, and resumed his loafing, his eyes also, gaunt from lack of sleep and haunted by the sights of last night, roving everywhere in search of comfort and reassurance.

Finally it was Ernest Clayton who took pity on him. He had an old-fashioned belief in the healing power of nature, and in the notion of ‘getting things off your chest'. He took the Bishop by the arm and said: ‘Come on — let's go for a walk on the moors.'

The Bishop let himself be taken with only the mildest of protests: ‘You don't think the Inspector will want me? He said alphabetical order, didn't he? Do you think I will be F for Forde or P for Peckham?'

‘Whichever you are,' said Clayton, ‘there'll be time for you to have a walk. I should be first — at least, after Father Anselm, if he hasn't talked to him yet. But I don't imagine there'll be any harm done if we get out of alphabetical order. We'll stay within the grounds, and the walk will do us both good.'

They walked out of the Great Hall, the Bishop flinching at the sight of the door-handle, with its blood and fingerprint powder, through the kitchen garden and out on to the moors. Conversation did not flourish at first, and the Bishop did little more than punctuate Clayton's observations with such responses as ‘appalling', ‘dreadful thing', ‘shocking', and so on. But when eventually they got out into the open, and trod the narrow path through the purple heather, Clayton finally said: ‘Would you like to tell me all about it?'

The Bishop took a deep breath, as if it was the first of really fresh air for hours, and said: ‘Yes, I would. I must tell someone, or — goodness me! — I shall burst!'

And so it all came out. The being woken in the small hours. Father Anselm's overbearing manner, and the nightmare trip to view the bloody remains of Brother Dominic. Then the horror piling on horror, as in a Eurovision Song Contest: the Bishop of Mitabezi's ghastly chant and blood-dripping hands, the call to the police, and the final discovery of the slaughtered lamb. Out here in the open, with the grouse fluttering plumply from clump to clump, the story gained an added air of improbability, of a trumpery
piece of gothic horror. If it had not been for the police, and the bloody door-handle, the Bishop might have expected Ernest Clayton to tell him that it was all a nightmare, and that he must have eaten something at dinner that disagreed with him.

But at the end of the recital Clayton merely shook his head: ‘Absolutely fantastic,' he said. ‘It seems to me quite admirable that you kept your head.'

‘I'm not
quite
sure that I did,' said the Bishop mournfully. Then he perked up a little. ‘But perhaps I seemed to behave worse than I did only in comparison with Father Anselm. There's a nerve of steel, goodness me, yes! It was as though nothing could surprise him. He took it all without a moment's flinching or hesitation.'

‘I see,' said Ernest Clayton.

‘But I — couldn't,' said the Bishop of Peckham. But again, he brightened up. ‘Still, when all is said and done, I didn't absolutely
mis
behave. I didn't
funk.'

‘I expect there are plenty of us who would have done just that,' said the Reverend Clayton encouragingly. ‘One never knows in advance how one is going to behave in a totally unexpected situation. One thing puzzles me a little: I don't see why Father Anselm decided to involve you at all.'

‘Well, he felt he had to consult me, you see — since I am the unofficial leader of the symposium.'

‘Yes — I can see that Brother Dominic was a member of the symposium, or at any rate, that he was attending the sessions. But first and foremost after all, he was a member of the Community. And as far as I can see this is mainly a Community affair. Some grudge or personal tension that had built up. Quite dreadful, of course, in a religious order — but still, not unnatural, in the circumstances: it is just this sort of set-up where things get out of proportion.'

‘I'm afraid it's not as simple as that,' said the Bishop. ‘You see, the main block of the buildings is locked off at
night from the wing where the rest of the Community sleeps. Brother Dominic and Father Anselm sleep in the main part, but otherwise there's only the guest-rooms upstairs. You can see why I had to be involved — the murderer must be one of our party, either the poor Bishop of Mitabezi, or one of the others. That's why he called me in.'

‘I see,' said Ernest Clayton again, in a voice even more studiously non-committal.

‘Of course, it could have been Father Anselm,' said the Bishop. ‘I think he sleeps more or less next door. But as he said — in that austere way of his . . . rather terrifying, really — as he said, as far as
he
is concerned, it must be one of us.'

‘Yes, I take the point,' said Ernest Clayton cautiously. He turned over in his mind the various possible reasons for Father Anselm having drawn the Bishop into the affair. Then he decided to come a little further into the open.

‘Did Father Anselm explain how he came to go to Brother Dominic's cell in the middle of the night?' he asked.

The Bishop opened his mouth in a spontaneous gesture of surprise. ‘Goodness me, I never thought of that. You mean, how did he come to find the body at all? But it's hardly something I could have asked him straight out, is it?'

‘It's something
someone
should ask him,' said Clayton. ‘I hope my first impressions of that policeman were wrong.'

‘He hardly seems — sympathetic,' said the Bishop.

‘He can be as unsympathetic as he likes, so long as he's competent. The trouble is, I don't feel sure — having watched his performance this morning — that he's that. However, I may be entirely wrong.'

‘The terrible thing is—thinking it must be one of us,' said the Bishop, nervously wringing his hands, as he did when people came to him with their sexual problems. ‘Not because I
like
all the delegates, because, well, frankly . . .' He let his voice fade into an eloquent silence which made his opinion plainer than words could. ‘But still, I am in a
way the leader of the symposium, and the thought that we have come to this little Community and brought
murder
into it . . . And
such
a murder too,' he added, his hands fluttering at the memory of the slashed body on the bed, and the blood. ‘You see, in a way Father Anselm is quite right: I
am
responsible.'

Ernest Clayton thought it time to reveal to the Bishop that he had had the wool pulled over his eyes, if that was, indeed, precisely the nature of the process.

‘This business of the locked door to the brothers' dormitory wing,' he said. ‘Shouldn't we look into the arguments there a little more closely? Now, assuming we accept Father Anselm's word on this, and assuming he did in fact lock the door last night at the usual time (whenever that may be), what guarantee does he have that none of the brothers was hidden in the main building at the time he locked it?'

The Bishop stared at him. ‘You mean . . . ?'

‘And remained in the main building all night. How does he know there was no one?'

‘I've no idea,' said the Bishop. ‘Could he have searched, perhaps?'

‘Odd he didn't mention it, if so. And in any case, the corridors around Brother Dominic's room are dark at the best of times. Darker still at night, no doubt. Anyone could have hidden there at the time he locked up. And a resident brother would know them like the back of his hand, so the darkness would be no problem. Come to that, he could have hidden in the Great Hall, or in the chapel.'

‘I don't
think
there was anyone in the Great Hall, not when we were there,' said the Bishop.

‘The chapel would be better,' said Ernest Clayton. ‘More hiding places. In any case,
after
the murder, the murderer could very easily have gone out. The door to the Great Hall is locked from the inside.'

‘Of course,' said the Bishop.

‘And that raises another possibility,' said Ernest Clayton, pursuing his argument remorselessly, and leaving the usually
agile-minded Bishop of Peckham panting behind him: ‘How did the Bishop of Mitabezi get out of the main building?'

‘Well, of course, he must have unlocked the door from the inside, as you just suggested the murderer could have done, when he went out to do . . . what he
did
do,' said the Bishop.

‘Precisely. But when? At what time did he go out? And how long was the door open?'

‘Goodness me,' said the Bishop. ‘None of this occurred to me. You're quite a detective!'

Ernest Clayton forbore to say that he was only detective enough to see the obvious fact that the wily Bishop had been the victim of a confidence trick, in which his reason, already upset by the sights he had seen, had been deceived by the speed with which the cards were flashed before his eyes. He merely said: ‘The fact is, from the time the Bishop went out (and we don't know when that was) until the time the police came, the door was open, and anyone could come in or go out. It would be worth finding out how easy it is to get out of the brothers' dormitory wing. Of course, the fact remains that the most
likely
murderer may be one of us. Nevertheless, if we ignore the physical circumstances of the murder, and look merely at the general set-up and the psychological probabilities, then the most likely murderer would surely be one of his fellows in the Community.'

‘You're quite right,' said the Bishop.

‘That being so, the business of how long the main door was unlocked, and whether anyone was hidden in the main building at the time of locking up, becomes important.'

‘You think we should go straight along to the police and put these things to them, do you?' said the Bishop hopefully.

Ernest Clayton thought for a moment. ‘No, I'm not sure we ought to do that,' he said. ‘It would look as if we were trying to get ourselves out of a hole. And as if we were
trying to teach them their business. What, frankly, was your impression of the Chief Inspector?'

The Bishop shook his head, and something of his old impishness of manner returned to him. ‘A chief scout who has let his position go to his head?' he suggested.

‘I suspect that may be putting it mildly,' said the Reverend Clayton. ‘Certainly he didn't look as if he would take kindly to being told his business. My own feeling is that, for the moment, we should only bring these points up if the subject occurs naturally in the interview.'

‘You could be right,' said the Bishop. ‘As modestly as possible, is that the idea?'

‘Exactly: casually and tentatively. Of course, if the man is worth his salt he will have seen through the argument — if in fact it has been put to him at all.'

‘From what he said to the brothers, I should think it has,' said the Bishop. ‘And it sounded as if he's swallowed it.'

‘You're right, I'd forgotten that. Well, we'll see. Perhaps he'll be sharper than he looks. At any rate we'd better be getting back so we can find out.'

They were nearly at the farthest wall of the enclosed part of the moor. As they turned to walk back to the distant buildings, Ernest Clayton couldn't help congratulating himself on the change he had wrought in the Bishop's demeanour. There was a spring in the step, a jauntiness in the set of the shoulders, an expression of something near confidence on his face. It was as if he had been given a celestial pick-me-up.

I
N SPITE OF
the spirit of jaunty optimism which he had managed to foster in the Bishop of Peckham, the Reverend Clayton's own emotional barometer dropped dangerously low in the next few hours. Though he had hitherto had no conscious ambition to play detective, Ernest Clayton had a logical and tidy mind. The information which he had so far gleaned about the occurrences of the night before had been neatly catalogued and cross-referenced in his brain, where also were stored a few cards with possible hints for the future — they had little arrows on them, leading to words with question-marks after them. Such habits of mind had been fostered by, and had been of inestimable use in, the succession of muddles, misunderstandings and petty crimes which had formed the stuff of his parish administration over the last twenty-five years.