Death in Holy Orders

by P. D. James

  Dalgliesh turned to Surtees: “When does the Sole Bay Gazette come out?”

  “Every Thursday. I don’t usually read it until the weekend.”

  “So the paper you used was probably the one from the previous week.” He turned to Karen and said, “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful’ and saw again in her eyes that swift appraising glance.

  They followed him to the door. As he turned at the gate he saw them standing close together watching, as it seemed, until they could be sure he had actually left. Then simultaneously they turned and the door closed behind them.

  After his solitary dinner at the Crown in Southwold, Dalgliesh had planned to return to St. Anselm’s in time to attend Compline. But the meal, which was too excellent to be hurried, took longer than expected and by the time he had got back and parked the Jaguar, the service had started. He waited in his rooms until a beam of light fell over the courtyard and he saw that the south door of the church had been opened and the small congregation was coming out. He made his way to the sacristy door where Father Sebastian finally emerged and turned to lock up behind him.

  Dalgliesh said, “May we speak, Father? Or would you prefer it to wait until tomorrow?”

  He knew that it was the practice at St. Anselm’s for the college to keep silence after Compline, but the Warden replied, “Will it take long, Commander?”

  “I hope not, Father.”

  “Then now, if you wish. Shall we go to my study?”

  Once there the Warden took his seat behind the desk and motioned Dalgliesh to a chair before him. This was to be no comfortable chat in the low chairs before the fire. The Warden had no intention of beginning the conversation or of asking Dalgliesh what conclusions, if any, he had reached about Ronald Treeves’s death. Instead he waited in a silence which, although not unfriendly, gave the impression that he was exercising patience.

  Dalgliesh said, “Father Martin has shown me Mrs. Munroe’s diary. Ronald Treeves seems to have spent more time with her than one might expect and it was, of course, she who found the body. That makes any reference to him in her diary important. I am thinking particularly of the last entry, the one she wrote on the day she died. You didn’t take it seriously, the evidence that she had discovered a secret and was worried by it?”

  Father Sebastian said, “Evidence? What a forensic word, Commander. I did take it seriously because it was obviously serious for her. I had misgivings about our reading a private diary, but as

  Father Martin had encouraged her to keep it, he was interested to see what she had written. Perhaps it was a natural curiosity, although I can’t help feeling that the diary should have been destroyed unread. The facts, however, seem to be plain. Margaret Munroe was an intelligent, sensible woman. She discovered something which worried her, confided in the person concerned and was satisfied. Whatever the explanation she was given, it put her mind at rest. Nothing would have been gained and much harm done if I had started probing. You’re not suggesting that I should have called the college together and asked whether any of them had a secret which they had shared with Mrs. Munroe? I preferred to take her written word that the explanation she was given had made no further action necessary.”

  Dalgliesh said, “Ronald Treeves seems to have been something of a loner, Father. Did you like him?”

  It was a dangerously provocative question, but Father Sebastian took it unflinchingly. Watching him, Dalgliesh thought that he detected a slight hardening of the handsome face, but he couldn’t be certain.

  The Warden’s answer, when it came, might have held an implied rebuke but his voice betrayed no resentment.

  “In my relations with the ordinands I don’t concern myself with questions of liking or disliking, nor would it be proper to do so. Favouritism, or perceived favouritism, is particularly dangerous in a small community. Ronald was a singularly charm less young man, but since when has charm been a Christian virtue?”

  “But you did concern yourself with the question of whether he was happy here?”

  “It is not the business of St. Anselm’s to promote private happiness. I would have concerned myself had I thought that he was unhappy. We take our pastoral responsibility for students very seriously. Ronald neither sought help nor gave any indication that he was in need of it. That doesn’t exclude my own culpability. Ronald’s religion was important to him and he was deeply committed to his vocation. He would have had no doubt that suicide is a grave sin. The act could not have been impulsive; there was that half-mile walk to the mere, the trudge along the shore. If he killed himself it could only have been because he was in despair. I should have known this about any student and I didn’t.”

  Dalgliesh said, “The suicide of the young and healthy is always mysterious. They die and no one knows why. Perhaps even they wouldn’t have been able to explain.”

  The Warden said, “I was not asking for your absolution, Commander. I was merely setting out the facts.”

  There was a silence. Dalgliesh’s next question was equally stark but it had to be asked. He wondered whether he was being too direct, even tactless, in his questioning but he judged that Father Sebastian would welcome directness and despise tact. More was understood between them than was being spoken.

  He said, “I was wondering who would benefit if the college were closed.”

  “I would, among others. But I think that any questions of that kind could more properly be answered by our lawyers. Stannard, Fox and Perronet have served the college since its inception and Paul Perronet is at present a trustee. Their office is in Norwich. He could tell you something of our history, if you’re interested. I know that he does work occasionally on Saturday mornings. Would you like me to make an appointment? I’ll see if I can get him at home.”

  “That would be helpful, Father.”

  The Warden stretched out his hand to the telephone on his desk. He had no need to check the number. After he had pressed down the digits there was a short pause, then he said, “Paul? It’s Sebastian Morell. I’m ringing from my office. I have with me Commander Dalgliesh. You remember we spoke on Thursday night about his visit? He has a number of questions about the college that I would be glad if you would answer … Yes, anything he asks. There’s nothing you need withhold … That’s good of you, Paul. I’ll hand you over.”

  Without speaking, he passed the receiver to Dalgliesh. A deep voice said, “Paul Perronet here. I shall be in my office tomorrow morning. I have an appointment at ten, but if you can come early, say nine o’clock, that should give us time enough. I’ll be here from eight-thirty. Father Sebastian will give you the address. We’re very close to the cathedral. I’ll see you at nine o’clock then. Just so.”

  When Dalgliesh had regained his seat, the Warden said, “Is there anything else tonight?”

  “It would be helpful, Father, if I could have a sight of Margaret Munroe’s staff record, if you still have it.”

  “It would of course have been confidential were she still with us.

  As she is dead, I can see no objection. Miss Ramsey keeps it in a locked cabinet next door. I’ll fetch it for you.”

  He went out, and Dalgliesh could hear the rasp of the steel cabinet drawer. Within seconds the Warden was back and handed over a stiff manila folder. He didn’t enquire what possible relevance Mrs. Munroe’s file could have to the tragedy of Ronald Treeves’s death and Dalgliesh thought he knew why. He recognized in Father Sebastian an experienced tactician who wouldn’t ask a question if he judged the reply would be either un forthcoming or unwelcome. He had promised co-operation and would give it, but he would store up each of Dalgliesh’s intrusive and unwelcome requests until the opportune moment came to point out how much had been demanded, how small the justification and how ineffective the result. No one would be more adept at luring his adversaries on to ground they could not legitimately defend.

  Now he said, “Do you wish to take the file away, Commander?”

  ‘For the night, Father. I’ll return it tomorrow.”
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br />   “Then if there is nothing else for the present, I’ll say good-night.”

  He rose and opened the door for Dalgliesh. It could have been a gesture of politeness. To Dalgliesh it smacked more of a headmaster ensuring that a recalcitrant parent was finally taking himself off.

  The door to the south cloister was open. Pilbeam had not yet locked up for the night. The courtyard, lit only by the dim wall lights along the cloisters, was very dark and only two of the students’ rooms, both in the south cloister, showed even a chink of light. As he turned towards Jerome, he saw that two figures were standing together outside the door of Ambrose. One he had been introduced to at tea and the pale head shining under the wall light was unmistakable. The other was a woman. Hearing his footsteps she turned towards him and as he reached his door their eyes met and for a second held as if in mutual amazement. The light fell on a face of grave and astounding beauty, and he experienced an emotion that now came rarely, a physical jolt of astonishment and affirmation.

  Raphael said, ‘I don’t think you’ve met. Emma, this is Commander Dalgliesh who has come all the way from Scotland Yard to tell us how Ronald died. Commander, meet Dr. Emma Lavenham who arrives from Cambridge three times a year to civilize us. After virtuously attending Compline we decided, quite separately, to walk out and look at the stars. We met at the edge of the cliff. Now,

  like a good host, I’m seeing her back to her rooms. Good-night, Emma.”

  His voice and stance were proprietorial and Dalgliesh sensed her slight withdrawal. She said, “I was perfectly capable of finding my own way back. But thank you, Raphael.”

  It looked for a moment as if he were about to take her hand, but she said a firm “Good-night’, which seemed to embrace them both, and went quickly into her sitting-room.

  Raphael said, “The stars were disappointing. Good-night, Commander. I hope you have everything you need.” He turned and strode briskly across the cobbles of the courtyard to his room in the north cloister.

  For some reason which he found difficult to explain, Dalgliesh felt irritated. Raphael Arbuthnot was a facetious young man who was undoubtedly too handsome for his own good. Presumably he was a descendant of the Arbuthnot who had founded St. Anselm’s. If so, how much was he likely to inherit if the college were forced to close ?

  Resolutely he settled at the desk and opened Mrs. Munroe’s file, sifting through each of the papers. She had come to St. Anselm’s on i May 1994 from Ashcombe House, a hospice outside Norwich. St. Anselm’s had advertised both in the Church Times and in a local paper for a resident woman to be in charge of the linen and to help generally with the housekeeping. Mrs. Munroe’s heart condition had recently been diagnosed and her letter of application stated that nursing had become too heavy for her and that she was looking for a residential post with lighter duties. Her references from the matron of the hospice had been good, though not over-enthusiastic. Mrs. Munroe, who had taken up her post on i June 1988, had been a conscientious and dedicated nurse, but was perhaps a little too reserved in her relationships with others. Nursing the dying had become both physically and mentally too exhausting for her, but the hospice thought she would be able to undertake some light nursing responsibilities at a college of healthy young men and would be happy to do so in addition to being in charge of the linen. Once arrived, it seemed that she was seldom absent. There were very few applications to Father Sebastian for leave and it seemed that she preferred to spend holidays in her cottage where she was joined by her only child, an army officer. The general impression gained from the file was of a conscientious, hard-working, essentially private woman with few interests outside her son. There was a note on the file that he had been killed eighteen months after her arrival at St. Anselm’s.

  He put the file in the desk drawer, showered and went to bed. Clicking off the light he tried to compose himself for sleep, but the preoccupations of the day refused to be banished. He was standing again on the beach with Father Martin. He saw in imagination that brown cloak and cassock as precisely folded as if the boy had been packing for a journey, and perhaps that is how he had seen it. Had he really taken them off to clamber up a few yards of unstable sand layered with stones and precariously held together with clumps of grassy earth? And why make the attempt? What if anything did he hope to reach, to discover? This was a stretch of coast where from time to time parts of long-buried skeletons would appear under the sand or in the cliff face, washed up generations ago from the drowned graveyards now lying a mile away under the sea. But nothing had been apparent to any of those at the scene. Even if Treeves had glimpsed the smooth curve of a skull or the end of a long bone jutting from the sand, why would he have found it necessary to take off his cassock and cloak before attempting to reach it? To Dalgliesh’s mind there had been something more significant in that neatly-folded pile of clothes. Hadn’t it been a deliberate, almost ceremonial, laying aside of a life, of a vocation, perhaps even of a faith?

  From thoughts of that dreadful death his mind, torn between pity, curiosity and conjecture, turned to Margaret Munroe’s diary. He had read the paragraphs of the final entry so often that he could have recited them by heart. She had discovered a secret so important that she couldn’t bring herself to record it except obliquely. She had spoken to the person most concerned, and within hours of that disclosure she was dead. Given the state of her heart, that death could have happened at any time. Perhaps it had been hastened by anxiety, the need to confront the implications of her discovery. But it could have been a convenient death for someone. And how easy such a murder would be. An elderly woman with a weak heart alone in her cottage, a local doctor who had seen her regularly and would have no difficulty in giving a death certificate. And why, if she was wearing the spectacles she used for watching television, had her knitting been in her lap? And if she had been watching a programme when she died, who had turned off the set? All these oddities could, of course, be explained. It was the end of the day and she was tired. Even if more evidence came to light and what evidence could there be? there was little hope of solving the mystery now. Like Ronald Treeves she had been cremated. It struck him that St. Anselm’s was oddly prompt in disposing of its dead, but that was unfair. Both Sir Aired and Mrs. Munroe’s sister had cut the college out of the obsequies.

  He wished he had actually seen Treeves’s body. It was always unsatisfactory to have evidence at second hand and no photographs had been taken of the scene. But the accounts had been clear enough, and what they pointed to was suicide. But why? Treeves would have seen the act as a sin, a mortal sin. What could have been strong enough to drive him to such a horrific end ?

  Any visitor to an historic county town or city quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses in the centre are invariably the offices of lawyers. Messrs Stannard, Fox & Perronet were no exception. The firm was housed within walking distance of the cathedral in an elegant Georgian house separated from the pavement by a narrow band of cobbles. The gleaming front door with its lion’s-head knocker, the glistening paintwork, the windows unsmudged by city grime reflected the frail morning sunlight, and the immaculate net curtains all proclaimed the respectability, prosperity and exclusiveness of the firm. In the reception office, which had obviously once been part of a larger, finely-proportioned front room, a fresh-faced girl looked up from her magazine and greeted Dalgliesh in a pleasant Norfolk accent.

  “Commander Dalgliesh, isn’t it? Mr. Perronet is expecting you. He said to ask you to go straight up. It’s the first floor at the front. His PA doesn’t come in on Saturdays, there’s only the two of us, but I could easily make you coffee if you’d like it.”

  Smiling, Dalgliesh thanked her, declined the offer and made his way up the stairs between framed photographs of previous members of the firm.

  The man who was waiting for him at the door of his office and moved forward was older than his voice on the telephone had suggested, certainly in his late fifties. He was over six feet tall, bony, with
a long jaw, mild grey eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles, and straw-coloured hair which lay in lank strands across a high forehead. It was the face of a comedian rather than of a lawyer. He was formally dressed in a dark pin-stripe suit, obviously old but extremely well cut, its orthodoxy belied by a shirt with a broad blue stripe and a pink bow-tie with blue spots. It was as if he were aware of some discordance of personality or an eccentricity which he was at pains to cultivate.

  The room into which Dalgliesh was led was much as he had expected. The desk was Georgian and clear of paper or filing trays. There was an oil painting, no doubt of one of the founding fathers,

  above the elegant marble fireplace, and the water-colour landscapes, carefully aligned, were good enough to be by Cotman, and probably were.

  “You won’t take coffee? Very wise. Too early. I go out for mine at about eleven. A stroll up to St. Mary Mancroft. Gives me a chance to get out of the office. I hope this chair isn’t too low. No? Take the other if you prefer. Father Sebastian has asked me to answer any questions you care to ask about St. Anselm’s. Just so. Of course, if this were an official police inquiry I should have a duty as well as a wish to co-operate.”

  The mildness of his grey eyes was deceptive. They could be searching. Dalgliesh said, “Hardly an official inquiry. My position is ambiguous. I expect Father Sebastian has told you that Sir Aired Treeves is unhappy about the verdict at the inquest on his son. He’s asked the Met to make a preliminary investigation to see if there’s a case for taking the matter further. I was due to be in the county and I know something of St. Anselm’s, so it seemed expedient and economical for me to make this visit. Of course, if there is any suggestion of a criminal case the matter will become official and pass into the hands of the Suffolk Constabulary.”