The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (36 page)

Doctor Ingleby ate quietly and thoughtfully. When his plate was quite clean, he laid down his knife and fork in the careful manner of a man who’d just completed a complex surgical procedure. He wiped his mouth on a paper serviette and said, ‘I filled in the certificate of death. I did so knowing that what I wrote was false. I knew it wasn’t cancer. I’m at the very centre of this tragedy. I won’t keep that kind of secret on my conscience.’

Doctor Ingleby reached inside his green overcoat and withdrew an envelope from a pocket. Handing it to Anselm he said, ‘This is my confession. Take it to the police. It’s your right, after all you’ve done for Jenny. It’s also your duty. After that, be at peace. I’m the one who must walk alone down the long wide road, not you.’

The meal and the conversation were over. The monk and the doctor packed up the hamper, folded down the table and snapped shut the canvas chairs. They didn’t speak again until they’d reached Doctor Ingleby’s Sunbeam Singer Chamois.

‘Goodbye, Father,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Give me the rest of today to sort out my affairs, will you? I don’t want the police to come and find my flowerbeds in a mess. There’ll be pictures in the paper and I’d like everything to be in order.’ He sighed, leaning on the car door. ‘I’ve spent over forty years in medical practice … in the surgery … at patients’ houses … at the hospice. And do you know, after all that, what’s best and true of me lies in a garden shed. Odd, isn’t it?’

On the way to Martlesham Anselm and Mitch were silent. In effect they were delivering the bomb that would blow apart the Henderson and Goodwin families, their myths and best intentions. Anselm had feared the responsibility of this moment and now he was simply a messenger.

‘I didn’t expect to see you so soon,’ said Olivia, when Anselm entered her office.

‘Me neither.’

‘You’ve solved your case?’

‘No, I’ve come with a letter.’

‘Another?’

‘This one, I imagine, is the last.’

Olivia opened the envelope with the nail of her thumb and withdrew Dr Ingleby’s confession. She read it quietly showing no emotion.

‘What’s a moonshadow?’ she asked, looking up.

‘Cancer.’

She reached for a black overcoat. ‘I think I’d better ask him a few questions.’

Doctor Ingleby lived off the Barking Road, south of Needham Market. His house was modern and small. Ribbed mauve tiling with skylights capped walls that framed an abundance of glass. He was evidently a man who liked the light. Huge windows looked onto a large garden of shrubs and flowers enclosed by a high, trimmed hedge. To one side lay a tended vegetable patch, neatly banked and furrowed with sections covered over by sheets of black plastic. Like Anselm, the doctor had prepared for winter. Muffled voices from inside the house drifted over the lawns and gravel driveway … music … something operatic. A window was open. Reaching the front door, Olivia pressed a white buzzer.

No reply.

She pressed again.

Still no reply. Just two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, rising slowly like a great wave.

Olivia tried the door and found it wasn’t locked. She pushed it open with a long, steady finger…

The hallway was covered with a rich cherry-red carpet, the deep pile running right up the stairs to a small landing. Though it was mid-morning, the lights were on. A large painting of two majestic elephants dominated one wall.

‘Doctor Ingleby?’

Olivia had called out but there was no response. The wave of song was opening out, arching towards the shore. The picture buzzed lightly against the wall.

‘It’s the end of
Norma
,’ said Olivia, her features hard and enquiring. ‘Callas, Corelli and Zaccaria…’

She walked slowly down the corridor into the sitting room, emerging with a shake of the head. Same for the kitchen. They stood at the base of the stairs, looking up towards the empty landing and the source of the music.

‘It’s the final scene,’ explained Olivia in a monotone. She raised her voice – ‘Doctor Ingleby.’

Her tone had been insistent. Anselm called out, too, following Olivia up the stairs as the music grew louder. He traced the voices to a door, pushed it open and found Doctor Ingleby’s study. Framed cartoons of doctor jokes. Laden shelves from floor to ceiling – journals, textbooks, novels and papers leaning right and left to make a vast herringbone. Cardboard boxes instead of filing cabinets. A tidy roll-top desk and a cup of unfinished cocoa. A carved pipe on a stand. Several burned matches in a stone ashtray. Framed photographs of the doctor and a woman. An ergonomic chair. A CD player on a side table. A rich, heavy smell that could only be called brown.

The great wave of song rose high and then, with a sort of devastating delight, collapsed into silence … and then Callas was on her own …
Deh! Non volerli vittime del mio fatale errore …
the song had begun again. Doctor Ingleby had switched on the
REPEAT
button. The music would go on for ever.

Turning around, Anselm saw Olivia, serious and knowing. She stepped back into the corridor and Anselm followed her to the bathroom. He didn’t enter. He kept his distance one step behind Mitch. All he could see was Doctor Ingleby’s serene, bloodless face. He was lying in the bath, his white flesh in shocking contrast to the crimson water.

An ambulance was called. The forensic people came. Police tape was strung across the entrance to the property and the house. There’d be an investigation to rule out foul play. And it would be thorough. By the time they’d finished, the detectives would know more about Doctor Ingleby than anyone else. For the time being, all they had was a statement from the nearest neighbour attracted to the scene by the sudden activity next door. Doctor Ingleby had spent the afternoon on his knees in the garden. Raking. Weeding. Cutting back. Jobs for late summer and spring … not autumn.

‘What were they singing about?’ asked Anselm.

‘She’s asking forgiveness for having betrayed the gods, crying for her children … sacrificing her life to save the man she loves.’

‘What did the first line mean?’

‘Don’t let them be victims of my fatal error.’

They were standing some distance from the house by a blue gardening shed. The door was yellow and the windows were blocked by drawn yellow curtains. From afar they could hear the crackle of radios and the crunch of gravel underfoot. This is where the music ended. Olivia handed Doctor Ingleby’s letter to Anselm. He read it holding the paper with trembling hands.

I’ve been under the moonshadow now for two years.

It’s growing stronger and stronger. I walk along these lanes under its strange revealing light. Nothing looks the same any more. Everything is painfully beautiful. Many would stay and look for as long as they can, but I’m ready to close my eyes. I’ve seen enough. I’ve made a choice.

I’ve been involved in such choosing only once before in my life. A patient who couldn’t act for herself turned to me for help. I listened. She wanted death to come as a surprise, like finding a flower in a forest.

Jennifer Henderson died from an injection of insulin administered between the toes during a medical examination. She felt nothing and was not aware of what I was doing.

I acted alone and without the unwitting assistance or knowledge of anyone. I make this known now because I understand that doubts have arisen in the family over the manner of her dying.

To those who cannot understand Jenny’s decision or my actions I ask them to at least remember her autonomy and my acceptance of all responsibility.

Anselm raised his eyes. An aeroplane was drawing a faint, silent line across the blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight.

‘Well,’ said Olivia, not quite from on high, but like a senior officer might regard a junior colleague. ‘We now know that Jennifer Henderson didn’t die of cancer. Nigel was right all along. So was your correspondent. So were you, because I’m sure you followed a hunch. And now the family knows it was suicide.’

There was a very faint tone of enquiry in Olivia’s voice. Not quite, ‘Are you sure it was worth it?’ so much as ‘Wasn’t it easier for the family to accept beforehand?’ She couldn’t utter the question, of course, because a crime had been uncovered. She was as troubled as Anselm by the tension at the heart of any investigation – will the outcome lead to necessary closure or will it open worse, unforeseen distress? – but she evidently couldn’t help wondering if life would be a lot easier all round if certain stones in the garden had been left unturned.

‘Hopefully, Peter Henderson can start afresh,’ said Anselm, as if giving Olivia his justification. ‘No one’s accusing him any more.’

Mitch drove Anselm back to Larkwood. Norma’s final plea kept ringing in Anselm’s ears. He saw the homely study. He saw the face in the bath. He saw the chalk line being drawn across the sky.

‘You did the right thing,’ Mitch said, fervently, unsure that Anselm was listening. ‘If you’d thrown that letter away, the letter to your Prior, Peter Henderson would be dead now. You saved his life. You brought the family to the negotiating table and they walked out as one. Even though they were heading for a cover-up, they know what it feels like to be on the same side for once. It’s a start. Who knows where that might lead?’

Doctor Ingleby had asked exactly the same question. He’d sat throughout Emma’s crystal-clear presentation of the wide road and the narrow road and he’d said nothing. Both roads led to a kind of hell, in fact, because each of them resulted from Timothy’s shocking action; his shocking implementation of what his father simply couldn’t do. The doctor had smiled at Anselm, knowing the answer to his own question.

‘Look at what this means,’ urged Mitch, slowing down, looking more at Anselm than the road. ‘It means that Timothy didn’t kill his mother. It means the weight he’s been carrying since his mother’s death has
gone
. It means the weight carried by Emma since his confession has
gone
. It means the weight she was asking everyone to share has
gone
. It means Peter Henderson doesn’t have to lift another brick. The crisis facing that family has completely
disappeared.
They can look back and say
it wasn’t even there.
It’s all been a colossal
misunderstanding
. All they’re left with now is the usual knockabout stuff – you know, attempted murder, mutual detestation, unremitting hostility to what the other person thinks and stands for … they’re just your average middle-class family from the Home Counties.’

Anselm didn’t laugh. He was meditating on Doctor Ingleby’s letter. According to his confession, he’d killed Jenny believing that he was fulfilling an explicit request from a patient to her clinician. But he’d said
nothing
of the sort when Emma disclosed Timothy’s secret. He’d just sat there, watching and listening. He could have explained, there and then, that Jenny was already dead when Timothy had entered the room … but he hadn’t done. He’d gone home to reflect. He’d made no such admission to Anselm in the Chapter Room, where, a week later, they’d met to speak honestly and without fear of condemnation. On the contrary, far from disclosing his role in an assisted suicide, he’d made a very different confession: that he’d become Jenny’s doctor so as to
protect
her – from Peter and from herself. And yet, even as he poured the wine – with some ceremony – Doctor Ingleby had
already
decided to cut open his wrists. Why? Because of the moonshadow? Absolutely not. Anselm was in no doubt: nothing could have prompted Doctor Ingleby to take his life – at this particular moment – save for what he’d heard in the threshing room: that Timothy had killed his mother.

‘Anselm, this is
good news
,’ urged Mitch, pulling into a lay-by. ‘You solved a case where there was no crime, no suspect and no evidence. You went out into the dark without a torch. And you’ve come back after giving Timothy a completely different future – the one that his grandparents were prepared to kill for … and you landed that in the bag at the cost of the truth. What’s wrong with that?’

Anselm reached over and pressed the indicator down, signalling that they’d better get back on the road. In his mind he listened to Callas, Corelli and Zaccaria sing desperately about forgiveness and sacrifice. But Anselm was deeply troubled. He doubted the letter. Had Doctor Ingleby in fact killed Jenny? Or had he entrusted Anselm with a secret narrative: the meaning to the song.

Anselm listened with stunned dismay.

A telephone call had eventually come from a representative of the Henderson and Goodwin families. They’d been informed of Doctor Ingleby’s letter. Collectively, and with unanimity, they’d agreed that Nigel should contact Anselm. Would he speak to Timothy and explain that he hadn’t, in fact, killed his mother? The illusion of responsibility would have to be dispelled delicately, ideally by an outsider, someone not involved in the tangled family history. And who better than Anselm, a concerned party who already commanded Timothy’s complete confidence?

‘Yes,’ replied Anselm, barely hearing his own voice.

‘Thank you.’

‘With one proviso. You agree to meet me with Michael.’

‘He won’t agree.’

‘Then make him.’

Arrangements were made and Anselm put the telephone down.

In a daze he ambled out of the monastery to a bench that faced the old abbey ruin. Sylvester couldn’t help with this one. The Boer War held no parallels. He was on his own.

And he was mildly indignant. He was, after all, the contemptible swords into ploughshares man. Now that the moral crisis had miraculously disappeared, they could wheel him in like Francis of Assisi so he could talk to the birds. There was one ironic consolation: Jenny’s last wish had been fulfilled. Anselm was now at the heart of her family, his mission to bring peace and reconciliation where there had previously been war and resentment. But even that well of comfort was poisoned. He was to begin his intervention with Timothy. And he would tell him without equivocation that Doctor Ingleby had killed his mother. Only, he wasn’t sure.

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