Death in Holy Orders (30 page)

Kate buckled herself into the seat beside him after a brief greeting and for the first few miles didn’t speak, but he could sense her excitement as he knew she sensed his. He liked her and he respected her, but their professional relationship wasn’t without its occasional small jags of resentment, irritation or competition. But this was something they shared, this surge of adrenalin at the beginning of a murder inquiry. He had sometimes wondered whether this almost visceral thrill wasn’t uncomfortably close to blood-lust; certainly it held something of a blood sport.

After they had left Docklands behind them, Kate said, “All right, put me in the picture. You read theology at Oxford. You must know something about this place.”

The fact that he had once read theology at Oxford was one of the few things about him she did know, and it had never ceased to intrigue her. Sometimes he could imagine that she believed he had gained some special insight or esoteric knowledge which gave him an advantage when it came to the consideration of motive and the infinite vicissitudes of the human heart. She would occasionally say, “What use is theology? Tell me that. You chose to spend three years on it. I mean, you must have felt you would gain something from it, something useful or important.” He doubted whether she had believed him when he had said that choosing theology had given him a better chance of a place at Oxford than opting for the history which he would have preferred. He didn’t tell her, either, what it was he had chiefly gained: a fascination with the complexity of the intellectual bastions which men could construct to withstand the tides of disbelief. His own disbelief had remained unshaken, but he had never regretted those three years.

Now he said, “I know something about St. Anselm’s, but not a lot. I had a friend who went on there after his degree, but we lost touch. I’ve seen photographs of the place. It’s an immense Victorian mansion on one of the bleakest parts of the East Coast. There are a number of myths which have grown up around it. Like most myths they’re probably partly true. It’s High Church—Prayer Book Catholic maybe—I’m not really sure—with some fancy Roman additions—strong on theology, opposed to practically everything that’s happened in Anglicanism
in the last fifty years—and you haven’t a chance of getting in without a first-class degree. But I’m told the food is very good.”

Kate said, “I doubt we’ll get the chance to eat it. So it’s élitist, the college?”

“You could say that, but then, so is Manchester United.”

“Did you think of going there?”

“No, because I didn’t read theology with a view to going into the Church. Anyway, they wouldn’t have had me. I didn’t get a good enough degree. The Warden tends to be particular. He’s an authority on Richard Hooker. All right, don’t ask, he was a sixteenth-century divine. You can take it from me that anyone who has written the definitive work on Hooker is no intellectual slouch. We could have trouble with the Reverend Dr. Sebastian Morell.”

“And the victim? Did AD say anything about him?”

“Only that he’s an Archdeacon Crampton and was found dead in the church.”

“And what’s an archdeacon?”

“A kind of Rottweiler of the Church. He—or it can be a she—looks after Church property, inducts parish priests. Archdeacons have charge of a number of parishes and visit them once a year. The spiritual equivalent of HM Inspector of Constabulary.”

Kate said, “So it’s going to be one of those self-contained cases with all the suspects under one roof and us having to pussyfoot around to avoid private calls to the Commissioner or complaints from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Why us anyway?”

“AD didn’t talk for long. You know how he is. Anyway, he wanted us to get on the road. Apparently a DI from Suffolk was a visitor in the college last night. The Chief Constable apparently agrees that it would be inadvisable for them to take the case.”

Kate didn’t question further, but Piers had the strong impression that she resented that he had taken the first call. She was, in fact, senior to him in terms of service, although she had never made an issue of it. He wondered whether he should point out that AD had saved time by ringing him first, since he had the faster car and would be driving, but decided against it.

As he expected, they overtook Robbins on the Colchester bypass. Piers knew that, had Kate been driving, they would have slackened speed to enable the team to arrive together. His response was to wave at Robbins and press down his foot on the accelerator.

Kate had put her head back and appeared to be dozing. Glancing at the strong, good-looking face, he thought about their relationship. It had changed in the last two years, since the publication of the Macpherson Report. Although he knew little about her life, he did know that she was illegitimate and had been brought up by a grandmother in the bleakest of inner-city areas and at the top of a high-rise building. Blacks had been her neighbours and her friends at school. To be told that she was a member of a Force where racism was institutionalized had filled her with a passionate resentment which he now realized had changed her whole attitude to her job. Politically far more sophisticated than she, and more cynical, he had tried to inject some calm into their heated discussions.

She had demanded, “Given this report, would you join the Met if you were black?”

“No, but nor would I if I were white. But I have joined, and I don’t see why Macpherson should drive me out of my job.”

He knew where he wanted that job to take him, to a senior post in the anti-terrorist branch. That was where the opportunities now lay. In the mean time he was happy where he was, in a prestigious squad with a demanding boss he respected and enough excitement and variety to keep boredom at bay.

Kate said, “Is that what they wanted, then? To discourage blacks from joining and drive out decent non-racist officers?”

“For God’s sake, Kate, let it rest. You’re getting to be a bore.”

“The report says that an act is racist if the victim perceives it as such. I perceive this report as racist—racist against me as a white officer. So where do I go to complain?”

“You could try the race-relations people, but I doubt you’ll get any joy. Speak to AD about it.”

He didn’t know whether she had, but at least she was still in the job. He knew that he worked now with a different Kate. She was still conscientious, still hard-working, still dedicated to the
task in hand. She would never let the team down. But something had gone: the belief that policing was a personal vocation as well as a public service and that you owed it more than hard work and dedication. He used to find this personal commitment in her over-romantic and naïve; now he realized how much he missed it. At least, he told himself, the Macpherson Report had destroyed for ever her over-deferential respect for the Bench.

By eight-thirty they were passing through the village of Wrentham, still wrapped in an early-morning calm which seemed the more peaceful because hedges and trees showed the dilapidations of a night’s storm which had hardly touched London. Kate quickened into awareness to consult her map and watch for the Ballard’s Mere turning. Piers slackened speed.

He said, “AD said it would be easy to miss. Look out for a large decaying ash on the right and a couple of flint cottages opposite.”

The ash, with its heavy cladding of ivy, was unmissable, but as they turned into the road, which was little more than a lane, one glance showed clearly what had happened. A large bough of the tree had been torn from the trunk and now lay along the grass verge, looking in the growing light as bleached and smooth as a bone. From it sprouted dead branches like gnarled fingers. The main trunk showed the great wound where the branch had been torn away, and the road, now passable, was still strewn with the debris of the fall: curls of ivy, twigs and a scatter of green and yellow leaves.

There were lights in the windows of both cottages. Piers drew to the side and hooted. Within seconds the figure of a stout middle-aged woman came down the garden path. She had a pleasant wind-tanned face under an unruly bush of hair and wore a brightly flowered overall over what looked like layers of wool. Kate opened the window.

Piers leaned across and said, “Good morning. You’ve had a spot of trouble here.”

“Come down she did at ten o’clock, right on the hour. It were the storm, you see. A real blow we had last night. Lucky we heard the fall—not that you could miss it for the noise she made. My husband was afraid there’d be an accident, so he put out red warning lights both sides. Then, come morning, my
Brian and Mr. Daniels from next door got the tractor and pulled her off the road. Not that many folk come this way except to visit the fathers and the students at the college. Still, we thought better not wait for the council to move it.”

Kate asked, “When did you clear the road, Mrs.…?”

“Finch. Mrs. Finch. At half-past six. It were still dark, but Brian wanted to get it done before they was off to work.”

Kate said, “Lucky for us. It was very kind of you, thank you. So no one could have got past by car in either direction between ten o’clock last night and half-past six this morning?”

“That’s right, miss. There’s only been a gentleman on a motorcycle—going to the college, no doubt. There’s nowhere else to go on this road. He’s not back yet.”

“And no one else has driven past?”

“Not that I saw, and I usually do see, the kitchen being at the front.”

They thanked her again, said their goodbyes and moved off. Glancing back, Kate could see Mrs. Finch watching them for a few seconds before relatching the gate and waddling off up the garden path.

Piers said, “One motorcycle and he hasn’t returned. Could’ve been the pathologist, although you’d expect him to come by car. Well, we’ve got some news for AD. If this road is the only access …”

Kate had her eyes on the map. “Which it is, for vehicles anyway. Then any murderer from outside the college must have arrived before ten p.m. and can’t yet have left, not by road anyway. An inside job?”

Piers said, “That’s the impression I got from AD.”

The question of access to the headland was so important that Kate was about to say that it was surprising AD hadn’t already sent someone to question Mrs. Finch. But then she remembered. Until she and Piers arrived, who at St. Anselm’s could he have sent?

The narrow road was deserted. It was lower than the surrounding fields and edged with bushes, so that it was with a shock of surprise and pleasure that Kate saw suddenly the great crinkled greyness of the North Sea. To the north a Victorian mansion bulked large against the sky.

As they approached, Kate said, “Good Lord, what a monstrosity! Who would have thought of building a house like that literally within yards of the sea?”

“No one. When it was built it wouldn’t have been within yards of the sea.”

She said, “You can’t possibly admire it.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It has a certain confidence.”

A motorcyclist was approaching and roared past. Kate said, “Presumably that was the forensic pathologist.”

Piers slowed down as they drove between two ruined pillars of red brick to where Dalgliesh was waiting.

S
t. Matthew’s Cottage would hardly have provided sufficient or suitable accommodation for a wide-spreading investigation, but Dalgliesh judged that it was adequate for the task in hand. There was no suitable police accommodation within miles, and the bringing of caravans onto the headland would have been an illogical and expensive expedient. But being in college had its problems, including where they were to eat; in any human emergency or distress, from murder to bereavement, people still had to be fed and found beds. He recollected how, after his father’s death, his mother’s concern about how the Norfolk rectory could accommodate all the overnight guests expected, their foibles about what they could or could not eat, and what food should be provided for the whole of the parish had blunted at least temporarily the edge of grief. Sergeant Robbins was already coping with present problems, telephoning a list of hotels suggested by Father Sebastian to book accommodation for himself, Kate and Piers and the three scene-of-crime officers. Dalgliesh would remain in his guest set.

The cottage was the most unusual incident room of his career. Mrs. Munroe’s sister, in removing every physical trace of occupation, had left the cottage so denuded of character that the very air was tasteless. The two small ground-floor rooms were furnished with obvious rejects from the guest sets, conventionally placed but producing only an atmosphere of dreary expedience. In the sitting-room to the left of the door, a bentwood armchair with a faded patchwork cushion and a low slatted chair with a foot-rest had been placed on each side of the small Victorian grate. In the centre of the room was a square oak table with four chairs; two others were set against the wall. A small
bookcase to the left of the fireplace held only a leather-covered Bible and a copy of
Through the Looking-Glass
. The right-hand room looked slightly more inviting, with a smaller table set against the wall, two mahogany chairs with bulbous legs, a shabby sofa and a matching armchair. The two upstairs rooms were empty. Dalgliesh judged that the sitting-room could best serve as an office and for interviews, with the opposite room as a waiting-room, while one of the bedrooms, fitted with a telephone socket and an adequate number of electric points, could house the computer which the Suffolk Police had already provided.

The question of food had been settled. Dalgliesh baulked at the thought of joining the community for dinner. His presence would, he thought, inhibit even Father Sebastian’s conversational powers. The Warden had extended an invitation, but had hardly expected it to be accepted. Dalgliesh would take his evening meal elsewhere. But it had been agreed that the college would provide soup and sandwiches or a ploughman’s lunch at one o’clock for all the team. The question of payment had been tactfully ignored for the present by both parties, but the situation was not without a touch of the bizarre. Dalgliesh wondered whether this might prove to be the first murder case in which the killer had provided accommodation and free food for the investigating officer.