Blood Brotherhood (16 page)

Croft caught Brother Hamish's eyes in the middle of their travels, but got nothing from them, except an indefinable
suggestion of shiftiness. He felt Brother Hamish had been expecting the question.

‘Nothing whatsoever. We do not talk of such things unless any brother particularly wishes to do so. Some few do — some to excess now and then — but most of us prefer not to.'

‘Why?'

‘We have given up all that,' said Brother Hamish, his eyes diving to the floor again. ‘Our minds are on other things.'

‘Would you say,' said Croft experimentally, ‘that most people came here as a result of some experience in the world — some disillusioning or tragic experience, perhaps?'

‘Oh, no,' said Brother Hamish, wringing his hands, and now definitely wriggling. ‘No, I wouldn't say that. I believe that most of us have always been interested in religion, and that we have found our vocation gradually — sometimes quite young, sometimes after living in the world for a time.'

‘That's how most people get to come here, is it?'

‘I would guess so,' said Brother Hamish carefully.

Croft decided to shift the questioning. ‘There were three of you attending the symposium, weren't there?'

‘That's right. We always send along what you might call a token force to these things, to show interest. Father Anselm suggested I might go along because I had worked at one time in a dockland settlement. Personally I find these things break my routine in a rather unfortunate way, but still, the discussions were most interesting.'

‘And then there was — ' Croft consulted his list — ‘Brother Jonathan. I'll talk to him, of course, but perhaps you could tell me what his reason was for attending.'

‘I'm afraid you won't get a great deal out of talking to him,' said Brother Hamish. Why did Croft get the impression that there was a note of concern in his voice? ‘He's very old, and — not to put too fine a point on it — nearly senile.'

‘An odd choice, surely?'

‘Not really, Inspector, when you understand our little Community.' Brother Hamish leaned forward, and his watery, restless eyes seemed to ooze sincerity. ‘He is our oldest member, and greatly honoured by us all for that reason alone. He has been here more than forty years. In his time he has been a man with a very good brain. He was a schoolmaster at a highly respected school — very highly respected. Of course he is conscious that his brain is not what it was, but he does make very great efforts to keep contact with things. We thought it would please him to be asked to go along to the discussions. We thought it would make him feel useful and wanted.'

‘I see. It sounds a very kindly idea. What about Brother Dominic, then?'

‘Oh, it was natural that he should go along. He almost always did. He had the best brain of all of us — apart from Father Anselm, of course.'

‘Ah, I see. Then he was clever.'

‘Intelligent would be the word I'd use,' said Brother Hamish, with a darted glance from the floor to Croft.

‘How did this — intelligence show itself? You seem to have so little contact with each other that I wonder on what basis you make a judgment of that kind.'

‘That's very easy, Inspector,' said Brother Hamish. ‘You will understand that we have all entirely renounced the world. When we do talk among ourselves it is almost entirely on spiritual matters. When we have crises, they are crises of belief, and in that case, of course we go to each other for help. In these circumstances one can judge immediately the quality of a man's intelligence. It is at such times that it shows. Brother Dominic's was formidable. In discussion there was no one to touch him. In quelling nagging doubts he had superb authority. The Community will miss him sadly.'

It was an impressive tribute. Was it the whole truth? Croft regretted that he continued to find Brother Hamish
a less than impressive witness.

• • •

The evening at this time of year was usually the pleasantest time of day at St Botolph's, and in some ways the most beautiful. The heat of the scorching July days declined into a pleasant warmth, and the moors plumped themselves in the mellow evening light. It was one of those summers that doesn't happen in England, except in the romantic poets. After dinner that same evening Ernest Clayton — rather pleased, perhaps, that the Bishop now needed him less — took a brisk walk to the farthest limits of the walls, and then made his way back around but within them, thinking of the murder, and weighing the possibilities as to whether the symposium delegates or one of the members of the Community was to be considered the most likely murderer.

He went over in his mind the various members of the group. Who would have had the sheer nerve to do such a horrendous thing? Not the Bishop, surely? And would Philip Lambton? Of the others, all, probably, would possess the physical strength, granted Dominic was asleep when he was attacked. On the other hand, Randi Paulsen would have had to move the wardrobe from her door — hardly possible without being heard. Discarding her, he let his mind play over the other suspects, and from them to the anonymous mass of brothers.

As far as the physical set-up of the murder was concerned, he felt sure that the Inspector would consider the most likely culprit to be one of the group. On the other hand, psychologically it must surely seem more likely that the murderer was one of Brother Dominic's fellow monks. Contemplating this latter possibility, he put himself in the Inspector's shoes and asked himself a question: if one of the other brothers wanted to murder Brother Dominic, would he be most likely to do it at a time when the Community had guests in some number, or when the brothers were on their own? He came to the conclusion that if the
murder was to come out into the open and be investigated in the normal way, it would be better to do it when there were guests. On the other hand, if it could be hushed up within the Community, then it would be better to do it when they were alone.

He immediately dismissed this last thought. The situation did not arise. The murder
had
been done when there were guests. He had no reason to accuse Father Anselm of being capable of hushing up a murder in the Community.

And yet he did think Father Anselm capable of hushing up a murder.

He remembered the Bishop's account of his conversation with Father Anselm on that terrifying night. He wondered why the more he thought of Father Anselm the less he —

And then he saw the figure again. Clayton was by now nearly back to the main building, and he had just turned a corner in the outside wall. Previously concealed, he could now be seen, and see. And between him and the large wooden barn stood the figure he had seen and been puzzled by the day before the murder. Here he was again, hooded, robed, sandalled.

For a few seconds he was speechless, and in that second the figure disappeared into the barn. Speeding his steps to a gentle run, Ernest Clayton rapidly gained the barn, and flung open the door. It took him some seconds for his eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom.

‘I say,' he said feebly. Then he saw that directly opposite him was another door, and it was swinging on its hinges. He sped over and threw it open.

Two or three hundred yards away, speeding round the wall of the monks' dormitory wing like a dark angel, was his man. There was no chance of getting hold of him now. But that last glimpse had made Ernest Clayton quite sure who it was he had seen.

It was the corrupted cherub to whom he had given a lift in his car.

A
FTER COMPLINE
Ernest Clayton and the Bishop got together, and talked late into the night. The subject admitted of an infinity of interpretations, and the Bishop seemed inclined to procrastinate. The first thing Clayton had to do was to convince him that something must be very wrong indeed at the Community of St Botolph's.

‘But there is nothing intrinsically suspicious in a young man you knew in the outside world turning up as a monk here,' said the Bishop of Peckham with a sort of wheedle in his voice.

‘You don't know the young man,' said Clayton. ‘He has vile manners, foul language and an obscenely twisted mind.'

‘ “The wind bloweth where it listeth”,' said the Bishop tentatively.

‘The only thing blowing in this young sprig is a strong current of hot air,' said Clayton firmly.

‘That's often the type who
do
get religion all of a sudden,' said the Bishop sadly. ‘The Church is one of the last professions where people feel obliged to listen to your opinions, however boring and ludicrous they are, and I suppose that's why.'

‘True in general,' said Clayton, ‘but not at St Botolph's. If we are to believe Father Anselm, ninety per cent of the day is spent in silence, which wouldn't suit this little lad one bit. The point really is this: I gave this boy a lift when I was on my way up here. That was one day before I first saw him within the Community's walls. When I spoke to him he said nothing about coming here, though he was talking to a clergyman, and talking about religion (or what he imagines to be religion). He said he was coming to
Hickley, but no more than that. Whenever I have seen him here, he has immediately panicked and vanished. Why?'

The Bishop pondered. ‘No reason suggests itself,' he said.

‘He is dressed as an ordinary brother,' said Clayton, ‘but I have never seen him eating with the rest.'

‘You could be mistaken there,' said the Bishop. ‘When they're all together they look like one indistinguishable mass of humanity. Like Chinese, you know, only one mustn't say so. It's only when you come to talk to them individually that you come to start noticing individual characteristics.'

‘That's true,' said Clayton. ‘Perhaps I should try to get a closer look at breakfast time. But even if he is with them, it won't alter the main point as I see it.'

‘And — er — what is that?' asked the Bishop, plainly with a degree of apprehension.

‘That there is more going on in this monastery than meets the eye.'

There was a silence of some seconds. The Bishop had known that Clayton must be thinking along these lines, and he was himself beginning to find some such conclusion irresistible. It was, nevertheless, as unwelcome a conclusion as could well be. He had already resigned himself to the fact that for some time to come he would be, in popular estimation, the Bishop involved in ‘that murder case at the monastery'. He had, in fact, already settled it in his mind that it would be well for the present Archbishop not to resign at seventy, but to soldier on for a few years longer, so completely did he see his chances as having been ditched for the immediate future. But more pessimistic than this a cheery soul like the Bishop could not willingly be. And if, in addition to the murder, he were involved in the uncovering of something fishy at St Botolph's (and however pure his motives and however above reproach his conduct in the affair, his merely being involved would be enough for at least one of the newspapers for whom he was a
bête noire
) then he would be forced to say goodbye to his chances for ever. Even the headlines that would come to be written
made him blush to the very lobes of his ears to think of. He was beginning to regret more and more the over-close relationship he had formed with Ernest Clayton since the murder. If only he had managed to stand on his own two feet.

‘I see,' he said.

That's the first hurdle over, said Ernest Clayton to himself. Aloud he said: ‘Of course this is part of a larger pattern. Tell me, do you completely trust Father Anselm?'

‘I'm not in the habit of going around mistrusting people,' complained the Bishop, half-way between a whine and a bluster. ‘He is the superior of this order, he was appointed by Leeds, and I don't go around expecting that people will turn out to be . . .' He expired into silence, and then he said: ‘Well, no. I can't say I do.'

‘Neither do I,' said Clayton firmly. ‘So the next question is, what do we do?'

The answer that presented itself to the Bishop's mind was ‘nothing', but he felt that it had to be skilfully wrapped up. ‘The important thing,' he said, ‘is to avoid scandal to the Church.'

He means ‘do nothing', said Clayton to himself. Aloud he said: ‘These days that's next to impossible. And more often than not trying to avoid scandal only brings it down in double quantity on your head. Think of Watergate.'

‘I do not see that the cases are remotely comparable,' said the Bishop stiffly, obviously not relishing the implied comparison with the unfortunate Richard (at least he'd
had
the Presidency, he said to himself, and I never have).

‘I don't intend any comparison,' said Clayton. ‘I merely wanted to point to the difficulties involved in keeping the lid on a thing like this. Say there is something going on here. Say you get rid of three or four of the brothers, and perhaps shift Father Anselm. You sit back and thank your stars how easily the whole thing has sorted itself out. Then the brothers begin to talk. Have you noticed what terrible blabbermouths ex-nuns and monks are? They're worse
than de-frocked priests. And they seem to think that release from their vows of silence releases them from any obligation towards common sense too. Mark my words, once outside these walls, they'd head like homing pigeons for Fleet Street, and the next thing you knew, all the gory details would be splashed on the front page of the
Sun.'

The Bishop was beginning to think Clayton was a very uncomfortable companion. Of course what he said was true, but nobody likes having the comforting lies they have fed themselves with dashed so brutally from their lips. ‘The important thing is to keep the Church's hands as clean as possible,' he said.

‘Amen to that,' said Clayton. ‘Now, how do you suggest we should proceed?'