Death in Holy Orders (11 page)

T
he four sets of accommodation for guests had been named by Miss Arbuthnot after the four doctors of the Western Church: Gregory, Augustine, Jerome and Ambrose. After this theological conceit, and the decision that the four cottages for staff should be called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, inspiration had apparently faltered, and the sets for the students were less imaginatively but more conveniently identified by numbers in the north and south cloisters.

Father Martin said, “You used to be in Jerome when you were here as a boy. Perhaps you remember. It’s our one double now, so the bed should be comfortable. It’s the second along from the church. I’ve no key for you, I’m afraid. We never have had keys to the guest-rooms. Everything is safe here. If you do have any papers you feel should be locked away, Miss Ramsey will look after them. She will be here at nine o’clock on Monday. I hope you’ll be comfortable, Adam. As you see, the sets have been refurbished since your last visit.”

They had indeed. Where before the sitting-room had been a cosy, over-crowded repository for odd items of furniture which looked as if they were the rejects of the parish jumble sale, it was now as starkly functional as a student’s study. Nothing here was superfluous; unfussy and conventional modernity had replaced individuality. There was a table with drawers, which could also serve as a desk, set before the window, which gave a view westward over the scrubland; two easy chairs, one on each side of the gas fire; a low table and a bookcase. To the right of the fireplace was a cupboard with a Formica top holding a tray with an electric kettle, a teapot and two cups and saucers.

Father Martin said, “There’s a small refrigerator in that cupboard and Mrs. Pilbeam will put in a pint of milk each day. As you will see when you go upstairs, we’ve installed a shower in what was part of the bedroom. You’ll remember that when you were here last you had to walk along the cloisters and use one of the bathrooms in the main house.”

Dalgliesh did remember. It had been one of the pleasures of his stay to walk out in his dressing-gown into the morning air, a towel round his shoulders, either to the bathroom or to walk the half-mile to the bathing hut for a pre-breakfast swim. The small modern shower was a poor substitute.

Father Martin said, “I’ll wait for you here while you unpack if I may. There are two things I want to show you.”

The bedroom was as simply furnished as the room beneath. There was a double wooden bed with a bedside table and reading lamp, a fitted cupboard, another bookcase and an easy chair. Dalgliesh unzipped his travelling bag and hung up the one suit he had thought it necessary to bring. After a brief wash he rejoined Father Martin, who was standing at the window looking out over the headland. As Dalgliesh entered, Father Martin took a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his cloak.

He said, “I have something you left here when you were fourteen. I didn’t send it on because I wasn’t sure whether you’d be happy to know that I’d seen it, but I’ve kept it and perhaps you’d now like it back. It’s four lines of verse. I suppose you could call it a poem.”

And that, thought Dalgliesh, was an unlikely supposition. He suppressed a groan and took the paper held out to him. What youthful indiscretion, embarrassment or pretension was now to be resurrected from the past to his discomfort? The sight of the handwriting, familiar and yet strange and to his eyes, despite the careful calligraphy, a little tentative and unformed, jolted him back over the years more strongly than an old photograph, because it was more personal. It was difficult to believe that the boyish hand which had moved over this quarter-sheet of paper was the same as the hand that now held it.

He read the lines silently.

It brought back another memory, one which was common in his childhood: his father taking a burial service, the richness of the clods of earth heaped beside the bright green of artificial grass, a few wreaths, the wind billowing his father’s surplice, the smell of flowers. Those lines, he remembered, had been written after the burial of an only child. He remembered, too, that he had worried over the adjective in its last line, thinking the two vowel sounds were too similar yet unable to find a suitable substitute.

Father Martin said, “I thought they were remarkable lines for a fourteen-year-old. Unless you want them back I should like to keep them.”

Dalgliesh nodded and handed over the paper silently. Father Martin folded it back in his pocket with something of the satisfaction of a child.

Dalgliesh said, “There was something else you wanted to show me.”

“Yes indeed. Perhaps we could sit down.”

Again Father Martin slipped a hand into his deep cloak pocket. He brought out what looked like a child’s exercise book rolled up and bound with a rubber band. Smoothing it out on his lap and folding his hands over it as if he were protecting it, he said, “Before we go to the beach I’d like you to read this. It’s self-explanatory. The woman who wrote it died of a heart attack on the evening of the final entry. It may have no significance whatsoever for Ronald’s death. I’ve shown it to Father Sebastian and that’s his view. He thinks it can safely be ignored. It could mean nothing, but it worries me. I thought it would be a good idea to show it to you here, where we have no chance of being interrupted. The two entries I’d like you to read are the first and the last.”

He handed over the book and sat in silence until Dalgliesh had read it. Dalgliesh asked, “How did you come by it, Father?”

“I looked for it and found it. Margaret Munroe was found dead in her cottage by Mrs. Pilbeam at six-fifteen on Friday, 13 October. She was on her way to the college and was surprised to see a light on so early in St. Matthew’s Cottage. After Dr. Metcalf—he’s the general practitioner who looks after us at St. Anselm’s—had seen the body and it had been removed, I thought about my suggestion that Margaret should write an account of finding Ronald and wondered whether in fact she had done so. I found this under her stack of writing-paper in the drawer of a small wooden desk she had in her cottage. There had been no serious attempt to conceal it.”

“And as far as you can tell no one else knows of this diary’s existence?”

“No one except Father Sebastian. I’m sure Margaret wouldn’t have confided even in Mrs. Pilbeam, who was the member of staff closest to her. And there was no sign that a search had been made of the cottage. The body looked perfectly peaceful when I was called. She was just sitting in her chair with her knitting in her lap.”

“And you have no idea what she’s referring to?”

“None. It must have been something she saw or heard on the day of Ronald’s death which sparked off memory, that and Eric Surtees’s gift of leeks. He’s a handyman here, helping Reg Pilbeam. But, of course, you know that from the diary. I can’t think what it could have been.”

“Was her death unexpected?”

“Not really. She’d had a serious heart condition for some years. Dr. Metcalf and the consultant she saw in Ipswich both discussed with her the possibility of a heart transplant, but she was adamant that she didn’t want an operation of any kind. She said that scarce resources should be used on the young and on parents bringing up children. I don’t think Margaret cared very much whether she lived or died after her son was killed. She wasn’t morbid about it, it was just that she wasn’t enough attached to life to fight for it.”

Dalgliesh said, “I’d like to keep this diary, if I may. Father Sebastian may be right, it could be totally without significance, but it’s an interesting document if one is considering the circumstances of Ronald Treeves’s death.”

He put the exercise book away in his briefcase, shut it and set the combination lock. They sat for another half-minute in silence. It seemed to Dalgliesh that the air between them was heavy with unspoken fears, half-formed suspicions, a general sense of unease. Ronald Treeves had died mysteriously, and a week later the woman who had found his body, and who had subsequently discovered a secret which she felt was important, was herself dead. It could be no more than a coincidence. There was so far no evidence of foul play, and he shared what he guessed was Father Martin’s reluctance to hear those words spoken aloud.

Dalgliesh said, “Did you find the verdict of the inquest surprising?”

“A little surprising. I would have expected an open verdict. But the thought that Ronald could have killed himself, and by an act so appalling, is one we here can hardly bear to let into our minds.”

“What sort of a boy was he? Was he happy here?”

“I’m not sure that he was, although I don’t think any other theological college would have suited him better. He was intelligent and hard-working but singularly lacking in charm, poor boy. He was curiously judgemental for someone young. I would have said he combined a certain insecurity with considerable self-satisfaction. He had no particular friends—not that particular friendships are encouraged—and I think he may have been lonely. But there was nothing in his work or his life here to suggest despair or that he was tempted to the grievous sin of self-destruction. Of course, if he did kill himself, then we must be in some way to blame. We should have seen that he was suffering. But then, he gave no indication.”

“And you were happy about his vocation?”

Father Martin took his time before replying. “Father Sebastian was, but I wonder whether he may not have been influenced by Ronald’s academic record. He wasn’t as clever as he thought he was, but he was clever. I had my doubts. It seemed to me that Ronald was desperate to impress his father. Obviously he couldn’t measure up in his father’s world, but he could choose a career which would offer no possible comparison. And with the priesthood, particularly the Catholic priesthood,
there’s always the temptation of power. Once ordained, he would be able to pronounce absolution. That at least is something his father couldn’t do. I have not said this to anyone else and I could be wrong. When his application was considered I felt I was in some difficulty. It is never easy for a Warden to have his predecessor still in college. This was a matter on which I didn’t feel it right to oppose Father Sebastian.”

But it was with a sense of deepening if illogical unease that Dalgliesh heard Father Martin say, “And now I expect you would like to see where he died.”

E
ric Surtees left St. John’s Cottage by the back door and walked between his neat rows of autumn vegetables to commune with his pigs. Lily, Marigold, Daisy and Myrtle came galumphing across to him in a squealing mass and raised their pink snouts to sniff his coming. Whatever his mood, a visit to his self-built piggery and its railed enclosure could meet his need. But today, as he leaned over and scratched Myrtle’s back, nothing could lift the weight of anxiety that lay like a physical load on his shoulders.

His half-sister, Karen, was due to arrive in time for tea. Usually she drove from London every third weekend, and, whatever the weather, those two days always remained sunlit in his memory and warmed and lightened the weeks between. In the last four years she had changed his life. He couldn’t now imagine his life without her. Normally her coming this weekend would be a bonus; she had been with him only the Sunday before. But he knew that she was coming because she had something to ask of him, a request to make which he had refused the previous week and knew that he must somehow find the strength to refuse again.

Leaning over the fence of the pigsty, he thought back over the last four years, about himself and Karen. The relationship hadn’t at first been propitious. He had been twenty-six when they met; she was three years younger, and for the first ten years of her life her existence had been unknown to him and his mother. His father, a travelling representative for a large publishing conglomerate, had successfully run two establishments until, after ten years, the financial and physical strain and the complications of the balancing act had become too much for
him and he had thrown in his lot with his mistress and departed. Neither Eric nor his mother had been particularly sorry to see him go; there was nothing she enjoyed more than a grievance, and her husband had now handed her one which kept her in a state of happy indignation and fierce battling for the final ten years of her life. She fought, but unsuccessfully, to own the London house, insisted on having custody of the only child (there was no battle there), and conducted a long and acrimonious dispute about the allocation of income. Eric had never seen his father again.

The four-storey house was part of a Victorian terrace near the Oval underground station. After his mother’s protracted death from Alzheimer’s disease, he stayed on alone, having been informed by his father’s solicitor that he could continue to do so rent-free until his father died. Four years ago a massive heart attack killed him instantly while on the road, and Eric discovered that the house had been left jointly to him and his half-sister.

He had seen her for the first time at his father’s funeral. The event—it could hardly be dignified by a more ceremonial name—had taken place at a North London crematorium without benefit of clergy, indeed without benefit of mourners except for himself and Karen and two representatives of the firm. The disposal had taken only minutes.

Coming out of the crematorium, his half-sister had said without preamble, “That’s how Dad wanted it. He never went in for religion. He didn’t want any flowers and he didn’t want any mourners. We’ll have to talk about the house, but not now. I have an urgent appointment at the office. It hasn’t been easy to get off.”

She hadn’t invited him to drive back with her and he went home alone to the empty house. But next day she had called. He vividly remembered opening the door. She was wearing, as she had at the funeral, tight black leather trousers, a baggy red sweater and high-heeled boots. Her hair looked spiky, as if it had been brilliantined, and there was a glittering stud in the left of her nose. Her appearance was conventionally
outré
but he found to his surprise that he rather liked the way she looked. They moved into the rarely used front room without speaking
and she looked round with an appraising, then dismissive glance at the leavings of his mother’s life, the cumbersome furniture which he had never bothered to replace, the dusty curtains hung with the pattern towards the street, the mantel-shelf crowded with gaudy ornaments brought back from his mother’s holidays in Spain.