The readings provided, if not an answer, at least a comfort. One was from Romans, St. Paul at his most triumphant and reassuring: “. . . neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers . . . shall be able to separate us from the love of God . . .”
With those rolling cadences in my ears and Jane walking in sturdy silence beside me, I reached home in safety and fell into bed without another thought.
I
WAS IN
the middle of a very large breakfast, having eaten almost nothing the day before, when Alan called.
“Good morning, Dorothy. How is Esmeralda?”
Bless his heart! “Drunk as a skunk, but improving, they tell me. I saw her yesterday afternoon; you would have arrested her on the spot for public intoxication.”
“You sound somewhat improved, as well.”
“Yes, thank you. Have you found out anything?”
“There’s been some progress. Will you be at home this afternoon? I’d like to fill you in.”
“Any time, I have no plans.”
After breakfast, seized with energy, I scurried about the house, tidying up, sweeping away masses of cat hair that would soon, I hoped, be replaced. Alan was right; I did feel better. Was it just a good night’s sleep, I wondered as I vigorously scrubbed the kitchen floor. I hadn’t felt this ambitious in weeks. It certainly couldn’t be the weather, which was of that variety known to the romantic novelists as “lowering.”
It wasn’t until I sank down for a tea break that I identified the source of my animation.
I was angry.
In fact, I was furious.
The fine fury kept me warm all the way to the vet’s office. All the same, I kept my wits about me as I marched through the narrow streets. They were crowded, and my heart beat a little faster every time someone jostled me, although I told myself not to be silly. This was Sherebury, not New York. I wasn’t apt to be mugged in broad daylight on the High Street. No, the menace (I didn’t try to pretend there was no menace) would strike more subtly, in the isolated dark, when I was alone.
Emmy seemed a little less uncoordinated; she licked my hand before swaying back into her stupor. This time I got to see Mr. Douglas.
“Aye, she’ll do,” he said briefly, showing me the back of his hand, bright with four parallel red lines. “Defended herself when I last examined her. She can go home tomorrow.” He lowered his voice. “Ye’ll be careful?”
I assured him that I would, indeed, be careful, and went home with a light step. I was getting my Emmy back!
I invited myself to Jane’s for lunch. She was alone, for which I was grateful.
“Sorry to hear about Esmeralda, Dorothy,” she said gruffly as she set out bread and cheese and various party leftovers. I didn’t ask how she had heard; the Sherebury grapevine was at it again.
“She’s coming home tomorrow, though. I just saw her, and she’s well enough to scratch the doctor, poor man. But Jane,”—my hands had tightened into fists; I relaxed them—“whoever did this is going to get what’s coming to him!”
She nodded soberly. “Worse when it’s an animal, isn’t it?”
“Every time. I suppose that’s all wrong. It ought to be more important that two men have been killed. It
is
more important, of course. But there are reasons why people kill people—not excuses, but reasons, motives. When it’s an innocent animal that never harmed anyone—” My hands clenched again; I changed the subject. “Where’s Nigel?”
“Off hunting out a place to live. The dean gave him his job back, and a rise in pay, and he’s as pleased as a dog with two tails.”
“Jane, that’s wonderful! But you’ll miss him.”
She shrugged. “Needs his independence. Have everything you need there?”
With mouth full, I nodded. She sat down and helped herself to some salad.
“What’re you doing about it?”
“Not much yet. Alan Nesbitt is coming over this afternoon to tell me what he’s found out, or I guess what his men have found out. I keep forgetting he doesn’t go around investigating things himself. Jane, I—I have an awful feeling it’s George Chambers.”
“Mmm.” She chewed slowly, thinking. “If Billings found out about his fancying the students, you mean.”
“Yes. What do you think?”
“Don’t know. Nesbitt will find out.”
“That’s exactly why I can’t do anything until I talk to him. But I’ve more or less run out of other suspects. At least neither Jeremy Sayers nor Archibald Pettifer could have set the fire; they were both here the whole time. And it must have been the same person, don’t you think?”
“Likely. Could be anybody.”
With that we were back where we started more than a week before.
When Alan showed up at my door the cathedral change ringers were at their weekly practice, and with thick clouds almost touching the bell tower, the racket was even louder than usual.
“Whew!” Alan whistled once he was inside, with the sound muffled a bit. “How do you keep your sanity?”
“I’ve gotten used to it. I rather like it, to tell the truth, except when I’ve got a headache. Would you like some tea?”
“No, thanks, I’ve only just finished lunch, and I’ve a meeting in half an hour. I thought you’d want to be brought up to date, and the telephone is a trifle public.”
“Well, sit down, anyway. It may be your one chance to sit in this house without getting yourself upholstered in cat hair.”
“Indeed.” He settled in my biggest chair and tented his fingers. “I have, as in the classic American joke, some good news for you, and some bad news.”
“All right, I’ll bite. What’s the good news?”
“I hope you’ll think it good news that we have, at least provisionally, eliminated George Chambers’s motive.”
Whatever I had expected, it wasn’t that. “But I saw for myself—”
“I don’t doubt what you saw, and you’re quite right. Everything my men have gathered supports the view that Chambers is a confirmed womanizer. But we also interviewed Mrs. Chambers, separately, of course.”
“And?”
“And she knows all about it. Has for years.”
“But—I can’t imagine her putting up with—”
“I didn’t talk to her myself. But my DCI is a very competent chap with quite an understanding of psychology. He gained the impression that Mrs. Chambers views her husband with a kind of affectionate mockery and considers his affairs to be essentially harmless. She discussed the matter quite openly; there was no doubt that she knows, and, more to the point, that Chambers knows she knows.”
“But—” I ran my fingers through my hair. “But then nothing makes sense. Why did somebody try to kill my cat, if it wasn’t George putting me off the scent? Why—what did George say?”
“That’s quite interesting. The DCI says he was distinctly nervous, but not about the sex involvement. John told me Chambers was terrified when he walked into his office. He tried to put the man at ease by talking a bit about the book—it was scattered about everywhere—but it didn’t help. The moment they got on the subject of the women, Chambers relaxed. John left feeling he should have asked something else, but he couldn’t think what.”
“Then I give up. No, I don’t, but I don’t know where to go from here. Does George have an alibi for earlier on New Year’s Eve, the fire?”
“He says he was working on the book until he came to the party, where we both saw him. No one to verify the earlier time. The arson man says, with a very slow fuse, he might have had time to touch it off and still get home and back to the party before the flames started. Same thing for Christmas Eve, and for Saturday night when the trap was set for Esmeralda; working on the book, no witnesses. Pettifer and Sayers, we both know, have alibis for New Year’s Eve, and Sayers for most of Christmas Eve—oh, yes, we’ve had our eye on them, too. Young Evans seems pretty well out of it, so far as we can verify his Christmas Eve story, and we never seriously considered the Endicotts; they’re far too busy at night to be up to much mischief.”
“So we’re out of suspects.”
“That, of course, is the bad news. We may not be precisely ‘out of’ them, but the best ones are looking less and less likely. And that means, Dorothy, that you will have to be even more on your guard; it could be anyone. I suppose it’s no good asking you again to give it up?”
“No good at all. I’m sorry, Alan, but I love Emmy and I can’t let someone hurt her without doing something about it. I don’t expect you to agree with me.”
He sighed. “I had a dog once, a year or two after Helen died. A beautiful golden retriever. Someone shot it while I was investigating a big robbeiy, I never knew for certain who. I haven’t owned an animal since, but I do understand. Please take care.”
The bells were still ringing gaily when he left.
So we were back where we started. No, worse; we had eliminated a lot of possibilities and knew less than nothing.
Hercule Poirot always says the solution to the crime lies with the victim. Find out enough about the character and activities of the murderee and it will inevitably lead to the murderer. Well, I’d found out a lot about Billings’s character and it hadn’t led anywhere useful. As to his activity—drat! I had forgotten to ask Alan if he had found out anything about Billings’s unfinished work. I mulled over what Charles Lambert had said that day at the British Museum. It was odd, really, that Billings should have been so cagey about his work. It didn’t seem characteristic.
Poirot always jumped on the uncharacteristic.
All right, why had Billings been so secretive? Did he think someone would steal his work? Nonsense; what would it have mattered if someone did? He wasn’t an academic caught in the “publish or perish” syndrome.
He’d just been to Greece. Corinth, the dean had said. Did that have anything to do with it? Could he—oh, good grief, could he have stolen something from the museum in Corinth to work on here? That would urge discretion, all right, but it didn’t sound likely.
Corinth. Corinthians. St. Paul. The Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Peter was going to be jealous.
Oh, dear God in heaven.
I suddenly saw it all, and I was scared stiff.
Confirmation. I needed confirmation. My hands shook as I reached for the phone.
I got the British Museum on the first try, but it took me forever to reach Charles Lambert. I was told it was not their policy to call readers to the telephone, and I finally had to say I was secretary to the chief constable of Sherebury. I hoped Alan would forgive me.
“Hello, Charles? Thank God! It’s Dorothy Martin. Listen, Charles, this is terribly important. What was the book Jonathan Billings wanted to take away from you that day? Remember, the one you told me about?”
“I don’t recall the name, Dorothy. I can look it up. Why, what’s the matter?” He was infuriatingly calm.
“Never mind, what was it about?”
This time his answer came promptly. “The Dead Sea Scrolls—the methods they used to unroll and preserve them. Are you going to tell me what this is about?”
“Yes, but not now.
Thank you
, Charles!”
My second call was to Jane. “Jane, I can’t explain now, but exactly what is George’s book about?”
“The lost letter to the Corinthians, of course. St. Paul’s other letter. You knew that; George talks about nothing else. He thinks he’s proved it never existed.”
Yes, I’d known it, but I’d never really listened. Well, there was my confirmation.
I changed into dark clothes and an old pair of what I still call sneakers, the better to do a spot of burglary. I was still struggling into my coat and hat as I headed out the door for the cathedral.
It never even occurred to me to call Alan.
I
T HAD TO
be there, I told myself as I raced through the Close. It had to be. It couldn’t have burned up in the canon’s house. Oh, please, God, let it be there!
Had the police searched the cathedral library? Probably. They were very thorough. But they wouldn’t have known what they were looking for. Besides, did they read ancient Greek?
The library would be locked, of course. I would have to think of some reason to get in. Or, no, Nigel had his job back. He would be there, if he’d finished his flat hunting. Good, he could help me look.
But he wasn’t there. I was out of breath by the time I reached the gloomy corner of the far transept, where the library dwelled in what used to be the chapter house. I tried to quiet my gasps; I felt strongly the need for caution, without being quite sure why.
The door was shut, but unlocked. Easing up the old iron latch cautiously, I pushed the heavy oak door open to the smallest possible slit I could get through. For a wonder, the hinges didn’t creak. My heart beat so hard I could hear it; I hoped my arteries were in good shape. Too late now to wish I’d eaten fewer tea cakes in my lifetime. I closed the door behind me, leaned back against its firm panels, and took a deep breath.
The vast circular room was supported by a single central pillar. Bookcases stretching nearly to the lofty fan-vaulted ceiling lined the walls and pushed, spokelike, from the walls toward the center of the room, allowing only narrow aisles for access. Around the central pillar, desks and catalogue chests were set in a ring. The room was shadowy on even the brightest of days, the light from high windows losing heart amid all those dark surfaces. On this gloomy winter day the whole room brooded in obscurity. I considered finding the light switch and rejected the idea. Gloom suited my purposes nicely.
Where was I to start? He could have put it anywhere. A scroll to begin with, it would probably be flattened out now and sealed between sheets of glass or plastic. It could be anywhere among all these thousands of books.
Helplessly I looked about me. The big desk, the obvious place to start, looked depressingly clean, as though it had been tidied after Billings’s death.
Well, I had to begin somewhere. And I didn’t have all the time in the world. Someone might come in at any moment, and what I intended to do was almost certainly illegal. Praying for privacy, I tiptoed to the desk.
It was the movement that caught my eye. Deep in one shadowed recess between rows of shelves, a form raised a hand and took a flat folder from a shelf. As I watched, suddenly frozen as still as the marble pillar, the hooded monk glanced through the contents and replaced the folder on the shelf. The figure moved again, stooped to a lower shelf deep in the corner, and picked up something that shimmered a little with sullen light.