The Ely Testament (24 page)

‘So you already know about the Ely murder?' said Tom.

‘Oh yes, I have been alerted by my old friend Ashley. Telegrams have been flying to and fro. Also the matter is reported in the Cambridge papers this morning and no doubt in the London ones as well. Not much is said in the papers, apart from the names of the deceased and the detecting officer, and the location of the crime. If we give the press time, though, they'll begin to work up their theories and point their fingers.'

‘Otherwise known as making things up and starting rumours,' said Helen.

‘Dear me, yes,' said Jubb. ‘You have got the measure of the fourth estate, Mrs Ansell. Though it's not surprising, I suppose, since you have one foot in the trade. Ha, I nearly said, one foot in the grave. That wouldn't have done, not at all. Have you met that interesting gentleman again, by the way? Mr Arnett, wasn't it? The editor who has a way with language.'

‘I haven't seen him,' said Helen. ‘To tell you the truth, I've almost forgotten my commission for
The New Moon
. There have been other things on my mind.'

‘Mr Jubb,' said Tom, ‘you have something to tell us about the murder?'

‘Not exactly about the murder. But about the murderee, if that is a legitimate word, Mrs Ansell.'

‘It is now, Mr Jubb.'

‘I am able to provide you with a story about Charles Tomlinson. It may tell you what kind of person he is – or was. You see, he was once involved in a scandalous event here in the city, in the university itself, which resulted in his having to leave his college before his time.'

‘He was sent down?' said Tom.

‘I believe he left of his own accord before that could happen. Went abroad. He had turned into a bit of a black sheep among his family.'

Tom and Helen exchanged looks. What had some long-forgotten student scandal to do with a murder the day before?

‘It was about fifteen or more years ago. You may remember – no, of course, you probably do not remember, you are too young – but anyway there was much debate in learned circles about whether mankind was descended from the apes.'

‘There is still debate,' said Tom.

‘I thought it was settled,' said Helen. ‘We are all the children of monkeys, at several removes of course.'

She said it to tease, thought Tom, but he was slightly taken aback by her directness. So was John Jubb, who said, ‘Well, it may be so. Cleverer people than I have said it is so. Yet clever men, and even clever women, are not always right. Myself, I hold no particular view.'

‘What has this to with Charles Tomlinson?' said Tom.

‘These arguments were at their height when Mr Tomlinson was a student at Cambridge. He was part of a circle of young men who thought of themselves as being very much in the forefront of opinion, especially if that opinion was likely to be shocking or upsetting to tradition. Among his friends was an individual at the same college who was planning to take holy orders. I believe that the debates, the arguments, between Tomlinson and this friend were especially keen and lively. Tomlinson held that mankind was descended from the apes and he ridiculed the church for preaching otherwise, while this person held out against him. Then, for some reason, their friendship went sour. As a consequence, Tomlinson did something which . . . well, if one was being charitable, one could describe what he did as a joke, a practical joke played on the intending cleric.'

Mr Jubb paused. Tom and Helen gazed at him expectantly.

‘From somewhere Mr Tomlinson obtained a stuffed monkey. He waited until his friend was out one day and then he placed the monkey in that gentleman's room with a mocking sign hanging around the creature's neck. I believe that the sign read, “It is a wise child that knows its own father”.'

Tom's instinct was to laugh but he managed to control it. Helen's hand flew to her mouth, but he could not tell whether it was a gesture of shock or stifled amusement. John Jubb shook his head.

‘After all these years, I know it sounds like a malicious prank, no more. But at the time it provoked outrage. The victim of Tomlinson's joke was very badly affected. The college authorities were horrified. Charles Tomlinson's reputation was already dubious as far as they were concerned, and this monkey business set the seal on their determination to have done with him. As I say, if he hadn't left of his own accord, he would have been sent down. In fact, he was only permitted to stay at the university for as long as he did because of his connections. He comes from a family of local clerics.'

‘That could explain his animosity towards the church.'

‘I suppose it might, Mrs Ansell. The idea hadn't occurred to me.'

‘Can I ask how you know all these things?' said Tom. ‘After all, the business with the monkey happened a long time ago, and it doesn't sound like the kind of affair that anyone would want spread about.'

‘It was not. But the Reverend Gordon Coffer, who has one of the Cambridge parishes, is also one of our oldest clients at Teague and Bennett. He is a cousin to Tomlinson and the father of Mrs Lye. I remember the original scandal. Like the rest of the family, the Reverend Coffer was angry and displeased but at the same time I always thought he had a bit of a soft spot for his reprobate cousin. He talked about the business in our office, he consulted one of our partners. I remember it still. You see, the whole story is stored inside here.'

The solicitors' clerk tapped his forehead. Tom was reminded of their own clerk, Jack Ashley, who was able to recall every client and case, it seemed, for the last forty years.

‘There is more to say,' said John Jubb. ‘You're familiar with Crockford's Clerical Directory, I hope? It is an invaluable work of reference.'

‘I know it,' said Tom, who supposed that there could not be a legal firm in the land which did not have a couple of Crockford's on its shelves. For Helen's benefit, he said, ‘Crockford's lists all the English benefices and the names of the incumbents.'

‘And the Welsh and Irish ones,' added Jubb. ‘As I said, the fellow student made fun of by Charles Tomlinson was deeply hurt by his behaviour, humiliated too. Nevertheless, he persisted in his intention of entering the church. His name is George Eames. I have tracked him down with the aid of Crockford's. It turns out that he has not moved far since he has a living just outside Ely.'

Tom guessed what was coming next but kept quiet. Mr Jubb was so evidently enjoying his story and his detective work.

‘It is in the village of Upper Fen.'

‘Isn't that where the Lyes live, where Phoenix House is?' said Helen.

‘And where I met Mr Tomlinson,' said Tom.

‘The question is, Mr Ansell, whether George Eames and Charles Tomlinson met there again after all those years . . .'

‘. . . and what happened if they did,' said Helen.

Some Other Suspects

W
hatever Helen's speculations, George Eames and Charles Tomlinson had never actually met in the village of Upper Fen. On one occasion the cleric glimpsed Tomlinson while he was walking towards Phoenix House and hid in the shrubbery to avoid an encounter with his old friend and nemesis. But the perpetual curate knew of Tomlinson's status with the Lyes, and was fearful that at some point they must inevitably meet.

On the Sunday morning of the day on which Tomlinson was murdered in Ely, George Eames officiated at the morning service at St Ethelwine's. The church was one place where he thought himself safe from the risk of seeing Tomlinson, unless the man had undergone some sort of Damascene conversion. Eames delivered the sermon which he had saved from the flames of the fire and, as planned, he alluded to the subject of righteous anger, taking his cue from the Ephesians verse:
Be ye angry and sin not
. He was glad to see his housemaid Hannah looking contrite. This almost compensated for the fact that Gabriel Parr had lit a brazier at the back of the church to keep the worst of the chill out of the air. Eames did not altogether approve of braziers in churches. Or rather, he valued the bracing effect of discomfort.

Mr and Mrs Lye and their few servants were in the congregation, as were the more respectable or devout members of the community. Sitting in a pew near the brazier at the back was an individual whom Eames did not recognize. Sometimes there were unfamiliar faces at Sunday services but they were usually visiting relations at one of the Upper Fen households and were sitting in company. This man was by himself. At several points in his sermon, Eames noticed the man nodding in agreement.

Once the service was over, Eames more or less forgot about the stranger. He attended to the placing of the new tombstone over the grave of Ada Baxter, the tombstone for which Gabriel Parr had been carving the final flourishes on the previous day. Mrs Baxter's husband and her sons and her aunt and other kin, as well as some casual bystanders, looked on while the sexton and his son, Davey, removed the simple wooden cross marking the woman's grave and lugged the stone into position. The lettering and the sculptural detail of the anchor were admired.

Once the tombstone was firmly planted in the soil, and some fresh flowers placed at its foot, the Reverend Eames cleared his throat as a signal for a respectful silence and uttered a prayer. He might have said more but, although Mr Baxter dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief and one of her sons sniffed very audibly, the rest of the little crowd seemed eager to leave. The entertainment for the day, which consisted of watching the Parrs manhandle a gravestone into place, was over.

Eames was about to walk back to the parsonage, when Gabriel Parr approached him.

‘Begging your pardon, Reverend, but there is a man who's been waiting to speak to you.'

The sexton gestured towards the lych-gate. Eames turned and saw, lurking in the shadow of the gate, the individual who'd been sitting by himself at the back of the church. He sighed. He said something about the meal that was waiting for him.

‘He said it was urgent,' said Parr, before shrugging and turning away himself. It was up to the parson what to do next.

Eames recalled the way the man nodded in agreement during his sermon. His style of dress had not suggested that he was a mere labourer wearing Sunday clothes. For these reasons, and out of simple curiosity, the clergyman went towards the lych-gate. As soon as he got closer, he regretted it. The man's clothes might have been decent enough but they were stained and streaked with some chalky substance. Also, he had an unprepossessing look, wrinkle-faced and with large teeth.

Yet, within a couple of minutes of this individual beginning to speak, George Eames was all attention. A few more minutes and he reached a state of amazement and outrage.

It was more than an hour before he returned to the parsonage. The food that was waiting for him was burnt and dried-up but it did not matter because the cleric had lost his appetite. There followed an uncomfortable period while Eames berated Hannah the maid for lending a key to a stranger. The girl's incomprehension, then her tears and repeated denials finally convinced Eames that she genuinely didn't know what he was talking about. Then he summoned Mrs Walters for questioning – or rather asked if he could have a word with her – and that normally stolid housekeeper grew flustered. In other circumstances, Eames might have been glad to see this reaction since much of the time he felt under Mrs Walters' thumb. But now he only wanted to establish what had happened.

‘He seemed a very honest gentleman,' said Mrs Walters, stressing the last word. ‘Very smooth and—'

‘Glib, I expect is the word you want, Mrs Walters.'

It wasn't the word she wanted but Mrs Walters did not contradict her employer as she would usually have done. Instead she said, ‘He knows Mrs Lye in the big house. A distant family member, I think.'

Eames said nothing so Mrs Walters ploughed on, ‘He represents a Society called . . . let me see . . . it is called, yes, the Society for the Protection of Rural Treasures. I remember it now because the first letters of some of the words spell out another word, which is SPORT. The gentleman pointed that out himself, made a little joke out of it. Yes, Society for the Protection of Rural Treasures. SPORT for short.'

Eames still said nothing. His earlier outrage had been replaced by cold fury, directed not at his housekeeper but at the man who'd had the impudence to come up with that name. Deliberate and brazen, a gesture almost as insulting as the sign whose wording he could not forget (‘It is a wise child that knows its own father').

Mrs Walters must have taken his continued silence for agreement for she continued, ‘He said that he was the secretary of the Society. He said they were particularly concerned about old country churches. He described them as our real rural treasures. I ask you, Mr Eames, what could be more respectable than that?'

‘I doubt that such a society exists, Mrs Walters. And if it does, that gentleman, as you call him, is most certainly not the secretary of it.'

‘I wasn't to know. He came one day when you were out and so you weren't here to be referred to for advice, Mr Eames. He only wanted to borrow the keys for a short time.'

‘Including the key to the crypt.'

‘I don't know. He took a bunch of keys for the church. He returned them later. No harm done.'

There was no point in prolonging the session. Eames dismissed Mrs Walters with an angry wave of the hand. For some time he strode from side to side in his study, at each turn envisaging the cunning of Tomlinson's actions. Taking care to visit the parsonage when the incumbent was out, using his ‘smooth' style to get Mrs Walters to hand over the bunch of keys, having a free run at the church and in particular at the crypt, making a copy of the key (Reverend Eames wasn't sure how this was done but he rather thought a wax tablet was involved) before handing the bunch back to Mrs Walters, all the while pretending to be the secretary of the Society for the Protection of Rural Treasures. SPORT for short. Yes, Charles Tomlinson was still sporting with him, George Eames, after all these years.