Death in Holy Orders (38 page)

“No, I never feel that. I want all murderers caught. I’m not sure I know what ought to happen to them afterwards, but even if one feels empathy for them—perhaps even sympathy—I still want them caught.”

“But you don’t want to take too active a part in the catching?”

“I don’t want to hurt the innocent.”

“Ah,” he said, “but you can’t help it. Dalgliesh can’t help it. That’s what a murder investigation always does, it hurts the innocent. Which particular innocent have you in mind?”

“I’d rather not say.”

There was a silence, then she said, “I don’t know why I’m bothering you with this. I suppose I needed to talk to someone who isn’t really part of the college.”

He said, “You’re talking to me because I’m not important to you. You’re not attracted to me sexually. You’re content to be here because nothing we say to each other will change the relationship between us; there’s nothing to be changed. You think I’m intelligent, honest, unshockable and that you can trust me. All that is true. And, incidentally, you don’t believe I murdered Crampton. You’re perfectly right, I didn’t. He made virtually no impact on me when he was alive and he makes even less now he’s dead. I admit to a natural curiosity about who killed him, but that’s as far as it goes. And I should like to know how he died, but you’re not going to tell me and I shan’t invite a rebuff by asking. But, of course, I’m involved. We all are. Dalgliesh hasn’t sent for me yet, but I don’t deceive myself that it’s because I’m low on his list of suspects.”

“So what will you say when he does?”

“I shall answer his questions honestly. I shan’t lie. If I’m asked for an opinion I shall give it with extreme care. I shan’t theorize and I shan’t volunteer information I’m not asked for. I
certainly shan’t attempt to do the police’s work for them; they’re paid enough, God knows. And I’ll remember that I can always add to what I’ve told them, but words once spoken can’t be recalled. That’s what I plan to do. When Dalgliesh or his minions condescend to call, I’ll probably be too arrogant or too inquisitive to take my own advice. Is that helpful?”

Emma said, “So you’re saying, Don’t lie but don’t tell them more than you need. Wait until you’re asked and then answer truthfully.”

“More or less.”

She asked a question that she had wanted to ask since their first meeting. It was odd that today seemed the right time. “You’re not in sympathy with St. Anselm’s, are you? Is that because you’re not a believer yourself, or because you don’t think they are either?”

“Oh, they believe all right. It’s just that what they believe has become irrelevant. I don’t mean the moral teaching: the Judaeo-Christian heritage has created Western civilization and we should be grateful to it. But the Church they serve is dying. When I look at the
Doom
I try to have some understanding of what it meant to fifteenth-century men and women. If life is hard and short and full of pain, you need the hope of heaven; if there is no effective law, you need the deterrent of hell. The Church gave them comfort and light and pictures and stories and the hope of everlasting life. The twenty-first century has other compensations. Football for one. There you have ritual, colour, drama, the sense of belonging; football has its high priests, even its martyrs. And then there’s shopping, art and music, travel, alcohol, drugs. We all have our own resources for staving off those two horrors of human life, boredom and the knowledge that we die. And now—God help us—there’s the Internet. Pornography at the touch of a few keys. If you want to find a paedophile ring or discover how to make a bomb to blow up people you disagree with, it’s all there for you. Plus, of course, a bottomless mine of other information, some of it even accurate.”

Emma said, “But when all these things fail, even the music, the poetry, the art?”

“Then, my dear, I shall turn to science. If my end promises
to be unpleasant, I shall rely on morphine and the compassion of my doctor. Or perhaps I shall swim out to sea and take my last look at the sky.”

Emma asked, “Why do you stay here? Why did you take this job in the first place?”

“Because I enjoy teaching ancient Greek to intelligent young men. Why are you an academic?”

“Because I enjoy teaching English literature to intelligent young men and women. That’s a partial answer. I do sometimes wonder where exactly I’m going. It would be good to do original creative work rather than analyse the creativity of others.”

“Caught up in the thicket of the academic jungle? I’ve taken good care to avoid all that. This place suits me admirably. I’ve enough private money to ensure that I don’t need to work full-time. I’ve a life in London—not one the fathers here would approve of—but I like the stimulus of contrast. I also need peace, peace to write and peace to think. I get it here. I’m never troubled with visitors. I fend people off with the excuse that I’ve only one bedroom. I can eat in college when I feel like it and be assured of excellent food, wines which are always drinkable and occasionally memorable, and conversation which is often stimulating and seldom boring. I enjoy solitary walking, and the desolation of this coast suits me. I get free accommodation and my keep, and the college pays a derisory stipend for teaching of a standard which they would otherwise find it difficult to attract or to afford. This murderer will put a stop to all that. I’m beginning seriously to resent him.”

“What is so horrible is the knowledge that it could be someone here, someone we know.”

“An inside job, as our dear police would say. It has to be, hasn’t it? Come on, Emma, you’re not a coward. Face the truth. What thief is going to drive in the dark and on a stormy night to a remote church which he could hardly have expected to find open in the hope of breaking into the offerings box and collecting a few dud coins? And the circle of suspects isn’t exactly large. You’re out, my dear. Of course, arriving first on the scene is always suspicious in detective fiction—to which, I may say, the priests here are addicted—but I think you can take it that
you’re in the clear. That leaves the four ordinands who were in college last night, and seven others: the Pilbeams, Surtees and his sister, Yarwood, Stannard and myself. I suppose even Dalgliesh doesn’t seriously suspect any of our fathers-in-God, although he’s probably keeping them in mind, particularly if he remembers his Pascal. ‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.’ ”

Emma didn’t want to discuss the priests. She said quietly, “Surely we can eliminate the Pilbeams?”

“Unlikely murderers, I admit, but then, so are we all. But it would distress me to think of so good a cook serving a life sentence. All right, delete the Pilbeams.”

Emma was about to say that the four ordinands could surely be eliminated too, but something held her back. She was afraid of what she might hear. Instead she said, “And surely you’re not a suspect? You had no reason to hate the Archdeacon. In fact, his murder could settle the question of closing St. Anselm’s. Isn’t that the last thing you want?”

“It was coming anyway. The marvel is that the place has lasted so long. But you’re right, I had no reason to wish Crampton dead. If I were capable of killing anyone—which I’m not except in self-defence—it would more probably be Sebastian Morell.”

“Father Sebastian? Why?”

“An old grudge. He stopped me becoming a Fellow of All Souls. It isn’t important now but it mattered at the time. Oh dear me yes, it certainly mattered. He had just written a vicious review of my latest book with a barely concealed hint that I’d been guilty of plagiarism. I hadn’t. It was one of those unlikely coincidences of phrases and ideas which can occur. But the scandal didn’t help.”

“How horrible.”

“Not really. It happens, you must know that. It’s every writer’s nightmare.”

“But why did he give you this job? He can’t have forgotten.”

“He’s never mentioned it. It’s possible that he has forgotten. It was important to me at the time, but evidently not important to him. Even if he remembered when I applied for the job, I
doubt whether it would have worried him, not when it came to getting an excellent teacher for St. Anselm’s and getting him cheap.”

Emma didn’t reply. Looking down on her bent head, Gregory said, “Have some more coffee, then you can tell me the latest Cambridge gossip.”

W
hen Dalgliesh rang to ask George Gregory to come to St. Matthew’s Cottage, Gregory said, “I had hoped that I might be interviewed here. I’m expecting a phone call from my agent and she has this number. I have an intense dislike of mobile telephones.”

A business call on a Sunday seemed to Dalgliesh unlikely. As if sensing his scepticism, Gregory added, “I’m supposed to meet her for lunch in London tomorrow, at the Ivy. I’d rather assumed that this won’t now be possible, or if possible not convenient. I’ve tried to reach her but without success. I’ve left a message on her answerphone asking her to ring me. Obviously, if I can’t get a message to her today or early tomorrow, I’ll have to go to London. I take it there’s no objection.”

Dalgliesh said, “I can see none at present. I would prefer everyone at St. Anselm’s to remain here at least until the first part of the investigation is over.”

“I’ve no wish to run away, I assure you. Quite the reverse. It’s not every day one experiences vicariously the excitement of murder.”

Dalgliesh said, “I don’t think Miss Lavenham shares your pleasure in the experience.”

“Of course not, poor girl. But then, she’s seen the body. Without that visual impact of horror, murder is surely an atavistic
frisson
, more Agatha Christie than real. I know that imagined terror is supposed to be more potent than reality, but I can’t believe that’s true of murder. Surely no one who actually sees a murdered body can ever erase it from the mind. You’ll come over, then? Thank you.”

Gregory’s comment had been brutally insensitive but he
hadn’t been altogether wrong. It had been as a raw detective recently appointed to the CID and kneeling beside the body of that first never-to-be-forgotten victim that Dalgliesh had first experienced, in a rush of shock, outrage and pity, murder’s destructive power. He wondered how Emma Lavenham was coping, whether there was something he could or ought to do to help her. Probably not. She might well see any attempt as either an intrusion or condescension. There was no one at St. Anselm’s to whom she could talk freely about what she had seen in the church except Father Martin, and he, poor man, was more likely to need comfort and support than to be able to give it. She could, of course, leave and take her secret with her, but she wasn’t a woman to run away. Why, without knowing her, was he so sure of that? Resolutely he put the problem of Emma temporarily out of mind and applied himself to the task in hand.

He was happy enough to see Gregory in St. Luke’s Cottage. He had no intention of interviewing the ordinands in their own rooms or at their convenience; it was appropriate, expedient and time-saving that they should come to him. But on his own ground Gregory would be more at ease, and suspects at ease were more likely to let down their guard. He could learn far more about his witness from an unobtrusive scrutiny of his rooms than from a dozen direct questions. Books, pictures, the arrangement of artefacts sometimes provided more revealing testimony than words.

As Dalgliesh and Kate followed Gregory into the left-hand sitting-room, he was struck again by the individuality of the three occupied cottages, from the Pilbeams’ cheerful domestic comfort, Surtees’s carefully ordered workroom with its smell of wood, turpentine and animal food, to this, obviously the living space of an academic and one almost obsessively tidy. The cottage had been adapted to serve Gregory’s two dominant interests, classical literature and music. The whole of the front room had been fitted with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, except above the ornate Victorian fireplace, where he had hung a print of Piranesi’s
Arch of Constantine
. It was clearly important to Gregory that the height of the shelves should be designed to accommodate precisely the size of the books—a foible which Dalgliesh shared—and the impression was of a
room clad in the ordered richness of softly gleaming gold and brown leather. A plain oak desk holding a computer and a functional office chair stood beneath the window, which was uncurtained but fitted with a slatted wooden blind.

They passed through an open doorway into the extension. It was chiefly of glass and stretched the whole length of the cottage. This was Gregory’s sitting-room, furnished with light but comfortable wicker chairs and a sofa, a drinks table and a larger circular table at the far end piled high with books and magazines. Even these were orderly, arranged, it would seem, according to size. The glass roof and sides were fitted with sun blinds, which in the summer, Dalgliesh thought, would be essential. Even now the south-facing room was comfortably warm. Outside stretched the bleak scrubland and a distant view of the treetops round the mere and, to the east, the great grey sweep of the North Sea.

The low chairs were not conducive to a police interrogation, but no other seating was available. Gregory’s chair faced south, and he leaned back against the headrest and stretched out his long legs like a clubman perfectly at ease.

Dalgliesh began with questions to which he already knew the answers from his perusal of the personal files. Gregory’s had been far less informative than those of the ordinands. The first document, a letter from Keble College, Oxford, had made plain by what means he had come to St. Anselm’s. Dalgliesh, who had almost total recall of the written word, had no difficulty in remembering it.