“Right. Am I going to have to revise my opinion about you as a suspect?”
I looked at him sharply, but his expression was entirely amiable, so far as I could tell. “No, I didn’t kill the man, although from what Jane tells me, I was one of the few people in Sherebury who never wanted to. She sounds as if she’d like to award a medal to whoever did it.”
“And can you tell me who that might be, while you’re busy deducing?”
“Jane thinks . . . but I really have no idea. None.” I closed my mouth firmly, although of course the horse was already well out of the barn.
“Ah, and what does Jane think? She’s an astute lady, as her burglary incident gave me good reason to know. I’d be very interested.”
I found it hard to meet his keen eye. “She doesn’t know either.”
He just looked at me, benignly.
“Oh, all right, you’d think I’d have learned to keep my mouth shut at my age. Jane thinks you’re likely to suspect . . . someone she’s sure didn’t do it. And if you want to know any more you’re going to have to ask her. I won’t say another word.”
“I see.” He looked at me with no trace of a smile, now, on his face. “Mrs.—Dorothy. I do hope you fully realize what it is you’re involved in.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only that this isn’t a trivial matter. I understand your instinct to shield the innocent. Very laudable. But murderers are dangerous. It’s amazing how people forget that basic fact. It doesn’t do to protect a murderer, even when you’re sure you have the best of motives. If young Nigel Evans—oh, it’s easy enough to see who you’re talking about—if he killed Canon Billings, he’s a ruthless young thug who doesn’t deserve your sympathy, or Jane’s, for one moment.”
There was a little silence. “And if he didn’t?” I finally murmured.
“Then he has nothing to worry about. We’re not infallible, Dorothy, but we make very few mistakes with this sort of thing. But please don’t lose sight of the essential point. Which is that, as the finder of the body, you could be in danger.”
“But I don’t know anything I haven’t told you, believe me.”
“I know that. But does the murderer? You see, whoever he is, or she, of course—may I stick to one pronoun for simplicity?—he’s not in his right mind just now. I don’t mean he’s certifiably mad, simply that when a person murders, for whatever immediate cause, it boils down to one reason in the end: He thinks there is no other choice. He’s in a corner with only one way out. Then, once he’s done it, he finds himself in another corner, being pushed even harder. And anyone who has no options left is dangerous, because it doesn’t matter what he does—he thinks nothing can make things worse. Desperation used to be viewed as the ultimate sin, you know. I’m not sure there isn’t something in that, if only because of what a desperate person can do.”
“Here endeth the lesson?” I said a trifle shakily, after a pause.
Either that piece of flippancy irritated him, or else he was embarrassed. Or perhaps he had accomplished what he came for and was tired of my company. At any rate he stood up and began to shrug into his coat. “Quite right. I should leave the preaching to the parsons.” He put out his hand and shook mine, formally. “Thank you for far more time than I intended to take, Dorothy. Good night. Lock your door.”
With that he was gone. I obediently locked the door, feeling a little blank. The cathedral clock struck the nine strokes of the hour, sounding, to my overheated imagination, a little like a knell.
“M
Y TEXT IS
taken from the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. . . . Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now abideth these three, faith, hope, and charity; but the greatest of these is charity.’”
Sunday morning, the ten o’clock Eucharist. Only two days after Christmas, and the congregation had dropped to normal levels, fitting comfortably into the choir. The clergy, I thought, must find the contrast depressing. Certainly the dean, standing at the brass lectern, looked far from happy, though goodness knows there were plenty of other reasons for distress. The poor man seemed to have lost both height and weight, and there were pouches under his eyes. I settled myself for his sermon.
“St. Paul’s essay on love is one of the most familiar and most beloved passages from all his writings. Although I have given you a longer text than usual, I have not quoted the essay in full, as many of you know; in fact, I daresay many of you know the entire chapter by heart.
“But do you, indeed? You know the words, but have you taken to your hearts their meaning? Dearly beloved, there is in this small community, perhaps in this very cathedral parish, at least one who has not. We pray in the Litany to be delivered from ‘envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.’ Here among us these dreadful sins have struck with dreadful force in the sin and crime of murder.”
The word hung there in a dead silence. The usual rustles stopped; for a moment no one seemed to breathe.
For many of us it wasn’t entirely unexpected. The dean was not a man to ignore the disagreeable or try to paper it over. The tourists here and there, however, looked as if they were getting a good deal more than they’d bargained for. We were all in for an uncomfortable interval, certainly. Would it be, for one among us, much worse than that?
I hastily dismissed that speculation and concentrated firmly on the dean, who leaned earnestly over the lectern.
“It had been my intention to speak to you this morning, as I always do at this time of the year, about the glory of this Christmas season and the wonder that we celebrate each December. And indeed we must not lose sight of that glory, that wonder, in the midst of our great trouble. But the terrible event that has befallen us has made it necessary that I depart from the seasonal and speak for a little of more somber things. It is not my business here to deal with the fact of murder. That is terrible enough. It is a frightening, a devastating thought, that a canon of this cathedral could be struck down in his own church. But many of us have been thinking of this horror and little else, I suspect, for two days, and it is no intent of mine to dwell on it. I urge you, rather, to think about the sins in each one of us that, unchecked, can lead to such an act as murder. We may never know precisely why Canon Billings died. But we can think about the two powerful and terrible sins that certainly led to the act, and that tempt all of us: the sins of pride and despair.”
I was startled to hear the chief constable’s thoughts in the mouth of the dean; my nerves tightened another notch.
“You might think at first that these two sins have little to do with one another, that, indeed, they are directly opposed. Surely pride is an exaggerated idea of one’s own importance and powers, while despair is the feeling of powerlessness, the notion that one can do nothing about a terrible problem. But they have their root in a common idea, the idea that one’s own goals and aims and desires come first. All murderers, I am told by the experts, have one common motivation, no matter how complex the issues may seem: They want something, and some person stands between them and their desire, so that person must be removed.”
The dean took off his glasses and continued with slow emphasis, looking searchingly at his congregation as he spoke.
“You may be saying to yourselves, as I have said to myself, that you would never harbor the idea of taking a life, and I hope and trust that we tell ourselves the truth. But do you not see that the lack of charity, in Paul’s sense, the lack of long-suffering and hope and endurance, and the presence of charity’s opposites, conceit, envy, self-seeking, are what lead to the valuation of self over others—indeed, the love of self more than God? The moment you decide your goals are more important than your neighbor’s, and his must therefore give way, you have taken the first step on a road that may lead to destruction.”
Whew! One could almost hear the low whistles; certainly a brow here and there was being mopped. Did everyone else feel as irrationally guilty as I did? I was in a good position to watch reactions to this strong stuff, but they weren’t informative. I didn’t see Nigel anywhere. Jane, sitting surrounded by her kids, appeared to be thinking about something else. George Chambers, typically, wasn’t there; Alice’s face was set in that expressionless mask the well-bred English find so useful for hiding feelings. So were most of the others I could see. If the mask had stiffened into anything more sinister in any particular case, I couldn’t tell. The tourists’ eyes were fixed firmly on the fan vaulting and their minds, I suspected, just as firmly removed from the scene.
My own mind wandered as the familiar words of St. Paul echoed through it. I could hear the rest of the chapter, too . . .
for now we see through a glass, darkly
. . . if there was ever a description of my state of mind, that was it. A lot of his words fit, in fact, as a description of what I should be and wasn’t. I was certainly not long-suffering. I was very easily provoked indeed, and ready to endure very little. Puffed up, well . . . I had a sudden vision of George’s face, literally puffed up and purple as he went on and on about Nigel. Oh, Paul knew what he was talking about, all right, when it came to human nature. I sighed, resettled my hat, and tried once more to listen. The dean had veered aside from his theme to a discourse about Paul himself.
“He was, of course, a masterful man, and one whose past life left him with no illusions about sin. And the church at Corinth gave him great cause for concern. The epistles we so value today are, we think, but a small sample of the chiding letters he so often had to write as he moved about the Mediterranean, hearing news in one place or another about the new churches he had left behind.”
I remembered I had been told in a long-ago Sunday-school class that there was probably a third letter to the Corinthians in the New Testament for the first few centuries, but that it had been lost or stolen or suppressed or something. Where was it? I wondered. Had it ever really existed? Speculating, I missed most of the dean’s observations about the young churches, but I surfaced again at the sound of a familiar name.
“. . . Canon Billings, whose memorial service will be held on Tuesday at two o’clock. I bid your prayers for him.
“And now unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed all might and power, all dominion and majesty, world without end, amen.”
I followed the rest of the service mechanically. I do like to be challenged and stimulated from the pulpit, but there was such a thing as
too
topical a message. I had come to church hoping for a healthy dose of serenity and reassurance, but even here, the world had nosed its ugly way in. Oh, well, religion was never meant to be an escape from life, just a way of dealing with it.
Mr. Wallingford, I noticed with amusement and some exasperation, was making the most of the situation. His shocked, mournful gaze as he took up the collection shook loose from the tourists a good deal of folding money. With the smallest bank note at five pounds these days, the take must have been considerable. How upset the dean would be if he realized the way the verger was using the tragedy!
It was a little odd, come to think of it, that Mr. Wallingford was presiding. The main service of a Sunday was Mr. Swansworthy’s responsibility as head verger. But he was inclined to dyspepsia; perhaps he’d had too much Christmas. Certainly Wallingford was glorying in his importance. I watched him strut to the altar rail with the collection and was vividly reminded of the money changers in the temple.
Tea and coffee are served in the old scriptorium after the major Sunday services. As I stood at the end of the serving line I found myself next to Jeremy Sayers, the organist/choirmaster, whom I had met once or twice. “Lovely service, Mr. Sayers. The choir was marvelous, as always.”
He bowed slightly, graciously, his fair hair falling into his eyes. “Madam. The sermon was a bit disconcerting, however, don’t you think? I very nearly stood up and shouted that I had done it. I’ve always had a suggestible nature, you know. And there was something in all that guilt hanging about in the air . . .”
“Well, they do say confession is good for the soul, but in this case perhaps you were wise to forbear,” I replied in the same spirit. Conversation with this man, I remembered, had a tendency to wander off into fantasy.
“You have
no
idea,” he continued as we reached the serving table, “how truly delighted I am that the man is safely dead. I shall play that memorial service next week with the greatest glee, I can’t
tell
you. Coffee?”
“Tea, thanks, if there’s any without milk.”
“From the look of it,” he said, surveying suspiciously the cups full of dubious liquid, “you’d be safer with all the additives possible. However, it’s your digestion.”
I found a table in the corner with the last two empty chairs in the room. “Shall we sit here? There’s one bun left, do you want to split it?”
He shuddered, holding up crossed hands in the manner of one warding off vampires as he slid his slender form onto the chair.
“So I gather you didn’t like Canon Billings?” I said through a mouthful of slightly stale pastry.
“I doubt,” he said, dramatically dropping his voice half an octave, “there are three people who liked him in Sherebury. In England. In the universe. ‘I did not love thee, Dr. Fell,’ but the reason why I know perfectly well.”
“Why?” I asked, and held my breath. There was no reason on earth why he should answer.
Mr. Sayers, however, seemed perfectly willing to talk about it. “My dear Mrs. Martin, you are surely the only person in the parish who doesn’t know that the canon hated my music. He was hell-bent on getting me sacked.”