The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (34 page)

Over the following week, Anselm found himself in a state of near paralysis. Each day he’d waited for the phone to ring – for Sylvester to struggle with the list of extensions and buttons and flashing lights – hoping that the Goodwins and Peter Henderson had gathered privately and decided to take what Emma had called the wide road to hell. But no call had come. They’d left Anselm to make his own decision. And, in truth, he didn’t know what to do. The aim of the meeting had been to secure the cooperation of the entire family before involving Olivia Manning. And none had been forthcoming, which placed Anselm as the outsider threatening to wreck their chosen fragile peace. Left alone and shuffling in the cloister, Anselm inevitably had to examine whether the Wikipedia route was, in fact, the road to a lasting, deeper reconciliation; whether it was morally necessary, regardless of the views of the main actors; whether the claims of the law could ever be laid quietly to one side. The questions were of fundamental importance because it was a basic tenet of Anselm’s thinking that (generally speaking) half-truths lead to half-measures – of peace, fulfilment, happiness and so on – which, showing up what is lacking, produce the lingering taste of disappointment, while acceptance of the truth in its entirety leads (in time) to the full portion, simply prepared. The relationship was exponential. There were, of course, exceptions to the rule. The trick – the very difficult trick – was picking which truths to leave in the cupboard. As a rule of thumb, murder wasn’t one of them.

The primordial question that troubled Anselm, however, was this: can a twelve-year-old kill someone and just turn the page? Bolstered by understanding adults and the confidence that he’d fulfilled his mother’s deepest wish, could he get on with an ordinary life? Or was there some primitive need to render a public account? If so – and Anselm thought there was – Emma’s attempt to share her grandson’s burden in secret was profoundly misguided. More. In the long run it wouldn’t work. So, from one perspective, Anselm was sure about what he ought to do.

Nonetheless, he couldn’t make the move. He couldn’t pick up the phone to Olivia Manning. His mind sent the signal but his hand wouldn’t react. He couldn’t even open his mouth and confide in the Prior, though a brief conversation had taken place after a Chapter meeting.

‘Are you all right?’

‘The danger has passed. Truly.’

The Prior had searched Anselm’s face.

‘Do we need to chat about this?’

‘We do, but not just yet.’

Anselm didn’t want to ‘go to the end of his concerns’ – to use the Prior’s customary phrase – because that would involve revealing the conspiracy to murder Peter Henderson, a development that would almost certainly compel the Prior to call Olivia Manning himself, an outcome that Anselm wanted to postpone if not avoid entirely. An inquiry into Michael’s attempt to shoot Peter would lead ineluctably to Anselm’s presence in Polstead and his investigation into Jennifer Henderson’s death. Which would flush out Timothy’s secret. And while such an upshot was consistent with Anselm’s desire to ventilate the truth in its entirety, it would have been obtained without the consent or cooperation of the two families at the heart of the conflict – elements that were necessary for any future reconciliation. As Doctor Ingleby had remarked, they were, for once, talking to one another. Astonishingly, despite the Browning and all it represented, there was a faint chance of lasting compromise … which would be blown the moment Olivia Manning walked through the door. And among the many things that Timothy didn’t need to know just yet was the fact that his grandparents had tried to kill his father. That was one for the cupboard.

‘Come to me when you’re ready,’ the Prior had said.

‘I will.’

‘And the greater question?’

He’d meant the investigation.

‘I’m contemplating havoc and wondering how to avoid it.’

The conversation had almost ended there because the Prior had scurried off a few steps but then he’d suddenly stopped and scurried back.

‘Everyone’s talking about homemade bombs,’ he’d said, as if the Vatican had issued a controversial encyclical. ‘My thoughts are these: an unstable compound is going to blow up anyway. At which point, you might as well get on with it: trigger the blast and face the consequences.’

With that piece of advice, he’d scurried off again.

Anselm had gone to see Mitch. They’d sipped beer on deck. They’d spoken of Vincent Cooper, the melancholy man who’d lost the woman he loved and found himself involved – he’d thought – in her killing. There’d been nothing to run away from.

‘I take it you didn’t find him,’ said Anselm.

‘No.’

‘You left the message with the estate agents?’

‘Yes.’

The message being that he needn’t sell his property or leave the country since ‘matters had been resolved’.

‘How resolved?’ Mitch had asked, opening another beer. He’d waited a week and he was still none the wiser.

Anselm had hesitated, and then said, ‘Timothy killed his mother. The family want to keep it quiet. They’ve left me to decide what I do with what I know.’

Mitch had dropped the beer cap on the deck. Together they’d watched it roll off like a penny, teeter and fall.

‘What are you going to do?’ Mitch had said, an age later, showing Anselm he was immeasurably glad that the decision wasn’t his to make; that playing second fiddle had distinct advantages.

‘Have another beer.’

‘And then what?’

Anselm had to make his choice. Timothy was demonstrably sharp-minded and angry, and Anselm couldn’t imagine him accepting changed toppings on the waffle for much longer. He needed professional help. He had a conscience. And whatever the state of its development, exposing what Timothy had done as a ‘compassionate error’ – to put it mildly – would actually bring about the shaping element that Emma had complained was missing. Or would it destroy him?

‘And then what?’ Anselm had repeated, confounded. ‘I wait.’

‘What for?’

‘God knows. It’s a Gilbertine thing. When you’re in a hole you just sit tight and wait for a light to come on.’

When despondent, Anselm sought distraction with Larkwood’s Doorkeeper, the erstwhile leader of Peewee Patrol. Simply being in his presence was enough to place anxiety at a distance. Things fell into perspective even though he might say nothing to ease a troubled mind.

‘Hail, Leaping Wolf,’ said Anselm.

‘What’s up with you?’

‘I’m under siege.’

The old scout pointed to a chair at the side of his desk. He’d lost his belt again, because a length of electric cable had been tied around his waist. A tartan blanket lay across his bony legs, his heavily booted feet sticking out as if they belonged to a Jarrow marcher.

‘Baden-Powell lasted two hundred and seventeen days,’ he sighed.

It didn’t seem possible. While others might draw comfort from the storm on Lake Galilee, the Watchman turned to the Siege of Mafeking.

‘He was outnumbered,’ observed Sylvester. ‘But he didn’t give up. He’d just been promoted, like you. I shook his hand, you know. At Olympia. He told me the Boers were—’

‘Sylvester,’ interjected Anselm, despairing, ‘what would you do if you were on the trail to Mafeking with an important message about peace, and you hadn’t lost your way, but you were beginning to doubt where you were going?’

There was a small pause while Leaping Wolf placed himself among the Legion of Frontiersmen. The heat seemed to beat down on his bare head. He was grimacing pluck and determination.

‘I’d find a friendly Zulu.’

‘A Zulu?’

‘Yes. Someone not involved in the fight but who knew the way. Someone who’d been there before.’

Another pause followed this somewhat novel suggestion – Baden-Powell was unlikely to have many friends among the Zulus – and then Anselm said, ‘Would you pass me the phone?’

Blinking at his sudden return to rural England, and probably disorientated by Anselm’s slightly agitated manner, Sylvester hooked his walking stick around one of the receivers and dragged it across the table.

‘Thanks, Arrow of Light,’ murmured Anselm. ‘You deserve a medal with clasp and bar.’

Anselm rang the nearest person he knew to a friendly Zulu in the Henderson–Goodwin War. Oddly enough, the friend had already tried to call Larkwood but the message hadn’t got through. Siege conditions, joked Anselm. They agreed to meet in what remained of the Chapter House of Leiston Abbey. The room set aside for big decisions. ‘A place where everyone has the right to speak honestly without fear of condemnation, without fear of being quoted afterwards, and without pressure to conform to the will of the majority.’ It was the Zulu’s idea. He’d remembered Anselm’s description word for word.

Doctor Ingleby had brought a collapsible picnic table, two folding chairs and a wicker hamper. He’d placed the table in the centre of the Chapter House and laid it with a cloth, plates, glasses, cutlery and a bottle of claret. He’d procured a quiche, tinned corn and potato salad. Still in his long green coat, he rose to greet Anselm, as if he were welcoming the monk into his home. They were quite alone. The sky was overcast so the shadows on the lawn were barely noticeable. From where Anselm was sitting he could see the ruins of the south transept and the Lady Chapel. The air was perfectly still.

‘I don’t think you and I have been entirely honest with each other,’ said Doctor Ingleby, with his melancholy smile, pouring Anselm a glass of wine. ‘So I thought we might have another conversation. And what better meeting place than here, beneath the sky where men once spoke without fear.’

The doctor urged Anselm to help himself. He produced salt and pepper from his pockets, details he’d almost forgotten about.

‘We both know things that we’ve kept to ourselves,’ he said, laying them down. ‘We both held our tongues while Peter and Emma did the talking. Shall we speak plainly? If either of us is to decide what to do – freely and without pressure to conform – then I think we need to … open our hearts to one another.’

Anselm nodded cautiously. While appreciating that Doctor Ingleby had signed a false death certificate, Anselm hadn’t considered where that now left the doctor. He, too, had a decision to make. Did he inform the police or not? The wide and narrow roads lay before him. Timothy’s fate was in his hands as much as it was in Anselm’s.

‘May I propose one condition?’ asked Doctor Ingleby.

‘Which is?’

‘We promise never to repeat what the other has said.’

‘Unless you confess to a crime.’

‘Agreed. And I’ll make one further exception. In the days to come, should you wish, you can speak to your Prior. He is, I imagine, a kind of father.’

Anselm was surprised by the unusual concession. It moved him, too.

‘Who begins?’

‘I will,’ volunteered Doctor Ingleby, magnanimously. ‘I’m under the moonshadow.’

Doctor Ingleby had been diagnosed just after Jenny. Cigarettes during the sixties, cigars through the seventies, and a pipe starting in the eighties, right up until the X-ray found shadows on his lungs. He’d been an occasional user, in fact, the shift in method reflecting his advancing years and a romantic idea of style and burgeoning gravitas. Happily the initial treatment, though aggressive, had bought back time.

‘But that was later, of course,’ said Doctor Ingleby. ‘When Peter asked me to look after Jenny, I was still tugging on my pipe.’

In fact, he’d been wafting matches over a bowl of rich tobacco from the Dordogne while Peter had been explaining his reasons for seeking help.

‘I’m not entirely naive,’ he said. ‘Peter had already told me that Jenny was suicidal so it rather begged the question as to why he’d come to me. One of the side-effects of desperation is that you lose tact. You can’t conceal what you’re thinking because all the internal walls are falling down. I knew what Peter was thinking. I ought to have been insulted but I’ve come to tolerate being misunderstood.’

‘So why accept?’

‘To protect Jenny.’

Knowing Peter’s moral beliefs, his intellectual bravery, and bearing in mind Jenny’s extreme condition, Doctor Ingleby feared they might embark upon some ill-judged enterprise. Not everyone wants to take their life when the lights go out on life. Some people find a way. And it takes time and endurance. He’d known many patients who’d been surprised to find that the dark tunnel had an end. That they could look out from their condition upon a sunlit garden once more. So Doctor Ingleby had agreed to come to Polstead, intending to monitor this particular patient very carefully indeed.

‘Everything Peter recollected was true,’ confirmed the doctor, tasting his wine. ‘Jenny’s depression receded and she became, in part, resigned. Calmer’ – he laughed affectionately, placing his glass back on the table – ‘and more honest. She didn’t want to exploit any presumed flexibility in my principles, so she asked me outright … poetically.’

‘Asked what?’

Doctor Ingleby recalled the words as if he were citing Wordsworth on daffodils. ‘She said: “Given a choice, I’d like to wander along and suddenly stumble upon death … without planning or mental preparation … simply turn a corner and then die, as if I’d found a flower in a forest.” She wasn’t at ease with that dreadful mask. She knew Peter could never use it. She looked at me for a very long time as if saying, “Could you arrange that for me?” because we both knew that she wouldn’t be wandering anywhere. That she had no choices left and would never stumble again.’

In keeping with the ‘poetic’ nature of the request, Doctor Ingleby had made no reply. He’d smoothed his understanding into the skin of her hand. Long years of medical practice had taught him to say only what was necessary. She’d taken consolation in his silence because he’d not gone the route of so many others: explaining that her life had immense value; that depression had shifting shades; that light could come as unexpectedly as a flower in the forest.

‘The conversation changed our relationship,’ said Doctor Ingleby. ‘There was a new warmth. Peter had tried to shuffle me into position, which showed how little he understood my approach to death and dying, whereas Jenny – unknown to him – had simply made an honest appeal, respecting that I’m a doctor subject to professional guidelines and the law; and that I, too, had a right to make a choice rather than be ambushed by circumstances. She never raised the matter again.’