Death in Holy Orders (10 page)

Dalgliesh and Father Martin passed from the dimness of the house into the cloister, and the faint but pervasive smell of High Anglican academe gave way to fresh air and the sunlit silent courtyard. Dalgliesh experienced, as he had as a boy, the sense of moving back in time. Here, red-brick-embellished Victoriana was replaced by stone simplicity. The cloisters with their narrow and slender pillars ran round the three sides of the cobbled courtyard. They were paved with York stone, behind which a row of identical oak doors led to the two-storey student accommodation. The four apartments for visitors faced the west front of the main building and were separated from the church wall by a wrought-iron gate behind which could be glimpsed the empty acres of pale scrubland and the richer green of the far fields of sugar beet. In the middle of the courtyard a mature horse-chestnut was already showing its autumnal decrepitude. From the foot of the gnarled trunk, from which sections of bark were breaking away like scabs, small branches had sprouted, the young leaves as green and tender as the first shoots of spring. Above them the huge boughs were hung with
yellow and brown, and the dead leaves lay curled on the cobbles as dried and brittle as mummified fingers among the polished mahogany of the fallen chestnuts.

Some things, thought Dalgliesh, were new to him in this long-remembered scene, among them surely the rows of unadorned but elegantly shaped terra-cotta pots at the foot of the pillars. They must have made a brave show in summer, but now the distorted stems of the geraniums were woody and the few remaining flowers only a puny reminder of past glories. And surely the fuchsia climbing so vigorously over the west-facing wall of the house had been planted since his time. It was still heavy with flowers, but the leaves were already fading and the fallen petals lay in drifts like spilt blood.

Father Martin said, “We’ll go in through the sacristy door.”

He drew out a large key-ring from the pocket of his cassock. “I’m afraid it takes me a little time to find the right keys. I know I ought to know them by now, but there are so many of them, and I’m afraid I shall never get used to the security system. It’s set to give us a whole minute before we have to punch in the four digits, but the bleep is so low that now I can hardly hear it. Father Sebastian dislikes loud noise, particularly in the church. If the alarm is set off, it makes a terrifying jangle in the main building.”

“Shall I do it for you, Father?”

“Oh, no thank you, Adam. No. I’ll manage. I never have difficulty in remembering the number, because it’s the year Miss Arbuthnot founded the college, 1861.”

And that, thought Dalgliesh, was a number that might easily occur to the mind of a prospective intruder.

The sacristy was larger than Dalgliesh remembered and obviously served as vestry, cloakroom and office. To the left of the door leading into the church was a row of coat-hooks. Another wall was occupied with ceiling-high fitted cupboards for vestments. There were two upright wooden chairs and a small sink with a draining-board beside a cupboard whose Formica top held an electric kettle and a cafetière. Two large tins of white paint and a small one of black, with brushes in a jam jar at their side, were neatly stacked against the wall. To the left of the door and under one of the two windows was a large desk
fitted with drawers and holding a silver cross. Above it was a wall-mounted safe. Seeing Dalgliesh’s eyes on it, Father Martin said, “Father Sebastian had the safe installed to hold our seventeenth-century silver chalices and paten. They were bequeathed to the college by Miss Arbuthnot and are very fine. Previously, because of their value, they were kept in the bank, but Father Sebastian felt that they should be used and I think he was right.”

Beside the desk was a row of framed sepia photographs, nearly all of them old, some obviously dating back to the early days of the college. Dalgliesh, interested in old photographs, moved over to look at them. One, he thought, must be of Miss Arbuthnot. She was flanked by two priests, each in cassock and biretta, both taller than herself. To Dalgliesh’s fleeting but intense scrutiny there was no doubt which was the dominant personality. So far from seeming diminished by the black clerical austerity of her custodians, Miss Arbuthnot stood perfectly at ease, fingers loosely clasped over the folds of her skirt. Her clothes were simple but expensive; even in a photograph it was possible to see the sheen of the high-buttoned silk blouse with its leg-of-mutton sleeves and the richness of the skirt. She wore no jewellery except for a cameo brooch at her neck and a single pendant cross. Beneath the strong upward sweep of hair, which looked very fair, the face was heart-shaped, the eyes with their steady gaze wide-spaced under straight and darker brows. Dalgliesh wondered what she would have looked like if ever this slightly intimidating seriousness had broken into laughter. It was, he thought, the photograph of a beautiful woman who took no joy in her beauty and who had looked elsewhere for the gratifications of power.

Memory of the church came back to him with the smell of incense and candle smoke. They moved down the northern aisle and Father Martin said, “You’d like, of course, to see the
Doom
again.”

The
Doom
could be illumined by a light fixed to a nearby pillar. Father Martin lifted his arm and the tenebrous, indecipherable scene sprang into life. They were facing a vivid depiction of the Last Judgement, painted on wood, the whole shaped in a half-moon with a diameter of about twelve feet. At the head
was the seated figure of Christ in glory, holding out his wounded hands over the drama below. The central figure was obviously St. Michael. He was holding a heavy sword in his right hand and, in his left, dangling scales in which he was weighing the souls of the righteous and the unrighteous. To his left, the Devil, with scaly tail and grinning lascivious jaws, the personification of horror, prepared to claim his prize. The virtuous lifted pale hands in prayer, the damned were a squirming mass of black pot-bellied, open-mouthed hermaphrodites. Beside them a group of lesser devils with pitchforks and chains were busily shoving their victims into the jaws of an immense fish with teeth like a row of swords. To the left, heaven was depicted as a castellated hotel with an angel as door-keeper welcoming in the naked souls. St. Peter, in cope and triple tiara, was receiving the more important of the blessed. All were naked but still wearing the accoutrements of rank: a cardinal in his scarlet hat, a bishop in his mitre, a king and queen both crowned. There was, thought Dalgliesh, little democracy about this medieval vision of heaven. All the blessed, to his eyes, wore expressions of pious boredom; the damned were considerably more lively, more defiant than regretful, as they were plunged feet-first down the fish’s throat. One, indeed, larger than the rest, was resisting his fate and making what looked like a finger-to-nose gesture of contempt towards the figure of St. Michael. The
Doom
, originally more prominently displayed, was designed to terrify medieval congregations into virtue and social conformity literally through the fear of hell. Now it was viewed by interested academics or by modern visitors for whom the fear of hell no longer had power, and who sought heaven in this world, not in the next.

As they stood regarding it together, Father Martin said, “Of course it’s a remarkable
Doom
, probably one of the best in the country, but I can’t help wishing we could put it somewhere else. It probably dates from about 1480. I don’t know whether you’ve seen the Wenhaston
Doom
. This is so like it that it must have been painted by the same monk from Blythburgh. While theirs was left outside for some years and has been restored, ours is far more in its original condition. We were lucky. It was discovered in the 1930s in a two-storeyed barn near Wisset,
where it was used to partition a room, so it’s been in the dry probably since the 1800s.”

Father Martin switched off the light and prattled on happily. “We had a very early circular tower standing by itself—you may know the one at Bramfield—but that has long since gone. This was a seven-sacrament font, but as you can see, little of the carving remains. Legend has it that the font was dredged up from the sea in a great storm in the late 1700s. We don’t know, of course, whether it was originally here or belongs to one of the drowned churches. Many centuries are represented here. As you see, we still have four seventeenth-century box pews.”

Despite their age, it was the Victorians who came to mind when Dalgliesh saw box pews. Here the squire and his family could sit in wood-enclosed privacy, unseen by the rest of the congregation and hardly viewed from the pulpit. He pictured them closeted together and wondered whether they took with them cushions and rugs or provided themselves with sandwiches, drinks and perhaps even a discreetly covered book to alleviate the hours of abstinence and the tedium of the sermon. As a boy his mind had been much exercised with wondering what the squire would do if he suffered from a weak bladder. How could he, or indeed the rest of the congregation, sit through the two services on Sacrament Sunday, through long sermons or when the Litany was said or sung? Was it perhaps usual to have a chamber pot tucked away under the wooden seat?

And now they were walking up the aisle towards the altar. Father Martin moved to a pillar behind the pulpit and put up his hand to a switch. Immediately the gloom of the church seemed to deepen into a darkness as, with dramatic suddenness, the painting glowed into life and colour. The figures of the Virgin and St. Joseph, fixed in their silent adoration for over five hundred years, seemed for a moment to float away from the wood on which they were painted to hang like a trembling vision on the still air. The Virgin had been painted against a background of intricate brocade in gold and brown which in its richness emphasized her simplicity and vulnerability. She was seated on a low stool with the naked Christ child resting on a white cloth on her lap. Her face was a pale and perfect oval, the mouth
tender under a narrow nose, the heavily lidded eyes under thinly arched brows fixed on the child with an expression of resigned wonder. From a high smooth forehead the strands of crimped auburn hair fell over her blue mantle to the delicate hands and fingers barely touching in prayer. The child gazed up at her with both arms raised, as if foreshadowing the crucifixion. St. Joseph, red-coated, was seated to the right in the painting, a prematurely aged, half-sleeping custodian, heavily leaning on a stick.

For a moment Dalgliesh and Father Martin stood in silence. Father Martin didn’t speak until he had turned off the light. Dalgliesh wondered whether he had been inhibited from mundane conversation while the painting was working its magic.

Now he said, “The experts seem to agree that it’s a genuine Rogier van der Weyden, probably painted between 1440 and 1445. The other two panels probably showed saints with portraits of the donor and his family.”

Dalgliesh asked, “What is its provenance?”

“Miss Arbuthnot gave it to the college the year after we were founded. She intended it as an altar-piece and we have never considered having it anywhere else. It was my predecessor, Father Nicholas Warburg, who called in the experts. He was very interested in paintings, particularly Netherlands Renaissance, and had a natural curiosity to know whether it was genuine. In the document which accompanied the gift, Miss Arbuthnot merely described it as part of an altar triptych showing St. Mary and St. Joseph, possibly attributable to Rogier van der Weyden. I can’t help feeling that it would be better if we’d left it like that. We could just enjoy the painting without being obsessed with its safety.”

“How did Miss Arbuthnot acquire it?”

“Oh, by purchase. A landed family was disposing of some of its art treasures to help keep the estate going. That kind of thing. I don’t think Miss Arbuthnot paid very highly for it. There was the doubt about the attribution and, even if genuine, this particular painter wasn’t as well known or as highly regarded in the 1860s as he is today. It’s a responsibility, of course. I know that the Archdeacon feels very strongly that it ought to be moved.”

“Moved where?”

“To a cathedral, perhaps, where greater security would be possible. Perhaps even to a gallery or a museum. I believe he has even suggested to Father Sebastian that it should be sold.”

Dalgliesh said, “And the money given to the poor?”

“Well, to the Church. His other argument is that more people should have a chance to enjoy it. Why should a small remote theological college add this to our other privileges?”

There was a note of bitterness in Father Martin’s voice. Dalgliesh didn’t speak, and after a pause his companion, as if feeling that he may have gone too far, went on.

“These are valid arguments. Perhaps we ought to take account of them, but it’s difficult to visualize the church without the altar-piece. It was given by Miss Arbuthnot to be placed above the altar in this church, and I think we should strongly resist any suggestion that it should be moved. I could willingly part with the
Doom
, but not with this.”

But as they turned away, Dalgliesh’s mind was busy with more secular considerations. It hadn’t taken Sir Alred’s words about the vulnerability of the college to remind him how uncertain its future must be. What long-term future was there for the college, its ethos out of sympathy with the prevailing views of the Church, educating only twenty students, occupying this remote and inaccessible site? If its future was now in balance, the mysterious death of Ronald Treeves might be the one factor that tipped the scales. And if the college closed, what happened to the van der Weyden, to the other expensive objects bequeathed to it by Miss Arbuthnot, to the building itself? Remembering that photograph, it was difficult to believe that she hadn’t, however reluctantly, envisaged this possibility and made provision for it. One returned, as always, to the central question: who benefits? He would like to have asked Father Martin, but decided it would be both tactless and, in this place, inappropriate. But the question would have to be asked.