Death in Holy Orders

by P. D. James

  Mrs. Pilbeam had three sons, now widely scattered, and Emma guessed that she enjoyed those weekly sessions with the young as much as the ordinands welcomed the relief from the masculine austerity of their daily routine. Like them, Emma took comfort from Mrs. Pilbeam’s maternal but unsentimental affection. She wondered whether Father Sebastian altogether approved of her joining in these informal get-tog ethers She had no doubt that he knew; little that went on in college escaped Father Sebastian’s notice.

  This afternoon there were only the three students present. Peter Buckhurst, still convalescent from glandular fever, was resting in his room.

  Emma was curled among the cushions of a wicker chair to the right of the fireplace, with Raphael’s long legs stretched out from the opposite chair. Henry had spread a section of the Saturday edition of The Times over one end of the table while at the other Stephen was being given a cookery lesson by Mrs. Pilbeam. His north-country mother, in the immaculate terraced house in which he had been brought up, believed that sons should not be expected to help with the housework; so had her own mother believed and her mother before her. But Stephen, while at Oxford, had become engaged to a brilliant young geneticist with more egalitarian, less accommodating views. This afternoon, with the encouragement of Mrs. Pilbeam and the occasional criticisms of his fellow ordinands, he was tackling pastry-making and was now rubbing a mixture of lard and butter into the flour.

  Mrs. Pilbeam remonstrated, “Not like that, Mr. Stephen. Use your fingers gently, lift up your hands, and let the mixture trickle down into the bowl. That way it collects plenty of air.”

  “But I feel a right Charlie.”

  Henry said, “You look a right Charlie! If your Alison could see you now she’d have grave doubts about your ability to father the two brilliant children you’re no doubt planning for.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” said Stephen, and gave a happy reminiscent smile.

  “That still looks a funny colour. Why don’t you go to the supermarket? They sell perfectly good pastry from the freezer.”

  “There’s nothing like home-made pastry, Mr. Henry. Don’t discourage him. Now that looks about right. Start adding the cold water. No, don’t reach for the jug. It has to go in a spoonful at a time.”

  Stephen said, “I had quite a good recipe for chicken casserole when I had digs at Oxford. You just buy pieces of chicken from the supermarket, then add a tin of mushroom soup. Or you can have tomato, any soup really. It always comes out all right. Is this done, Mrs. P?”

  Mrs. Pilbeam peered into the bowl where the dough had finally been formed into a glistening lump.

  “We’ll be doing casseroles next week. Looks quite good. Now we’ll wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge to rest.”

  “Why does it want to rest? I’m the one who’s exhausted! Does it always go that colour? It looks kind of dingy.”

  Raphael roused himself and said, “Where’s the sleuth?”

  It was Henry who answered, eyes still on his paper.

  “Not in until dinner apparently. I saw him driving off immediately after breakfast. I must say I saw him go with some relief. He isn’t exactly a comfortable presence about the place.”

  Stephen asked, “What can he possibly hope to discover? He can’t reopen the inquest. Or can he? Can you have a second inquest on a cremated body?”

  Henry looked up, said “I imagine not without difficulty. Ask Dalgliesh, he’s the expert,” and returned to The Times.

  Stephen went to the sink to wash the flour from his hands. He said, “I’ve a bit of a conscience about Ronald. We didn’t take much trouble over him, did we?”

  “Trouble? Were we expected to take trouble? St. Anselm’s isn’t a prep school.” Raphael’s voice assumed a high pedantic half-whine. ‘“This is young Treeves, Arbuthnot, he’ll be in your dormitory. Keep an eye on him, will you. Show him the ropes.” Perhaps Ronald thought he was back at school, that awful habit he had of labelling everything. Name tabs on all his clothes, sticky labels on everything else. What did he think we were going to do, steal from him?”

  Henry said, “Every sudden death produces predictable emotions: shock, grief, anger, guilt. We’ve got over the shock, we didn’t feel much grief and we’ve no reason to feel angry. That leaves guilt. There’s going to be a boring uniformity about our next confessions. Father Beeding will get tired of hearing the name Ronald Treeves.”

  Intrigued, Emma asked, “Don’t the priests at St. Anselm’s hear your confessions?”

  Henry laughed.

  “Good Lord, no. We may be incestuous but we’re not as incestuous as that. A priest comes twice a term from Framlingham.” He had finished with his paper and now folded it carefully.

  “Talking of Ronald, did I tell you that I saw him on the Friday evening before he died ?”

  Raphael said, “No, you didn’t. Saw him where?”

  “Leaving the piggery.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “How do I know? Scratching the pigs’ backs, I suppose. Actually, I

  thought he was distressed, for a moment even crying. I don’t think he saw me. He blundered past me onto the headland.”

  “Did you say anything about this to the police?”

  “No, I didn’t say anything to anyone. All the police asked me -with, I thought, a crashing lack of tact was whether I thought Ronald had any reason to kill himself. Leaving the piggery the night before, even in a state of distress, would hardly warrant sticking your head under a ton of sand. And I couldn’t be certain what I’d seen. He almost brushed against me but it was dark. I could have imagined it. Eric said nothing presumably, or it would’ve been brought out at the inquest. Anyway Ronald was seen later that evening by Mr. Gregory who said that he was all right during his Greek lesson.”

  Stephen said, “It was odd though, wasn’t it?”

  “Odder in retrospect than it seemed at the time. I can’t get it out of my mind. And Ronald does rather hang about the place, doesn’t he? Sometimes he seems more physically present, more real, than he was when he was alive.”

  There was a silence. Emma hadn’t spoken. She looked across at Henry and wished, as she often did, that she had some clue to his character. She remembered a conversation with Raphael soon after Henry had joined the college.

  “Henry puzzles me, doesn’t he you?”

  She had said, “You all puzzle me.”

  “That’s good. We don’t want to be transparent. Besides, you puzzle us. But Henry what’s he doing here ?”

  “Much the same as you, I imagine.”

  “If I earned half a million clear each year with the prospect of another million bonus for good behaviour every Christmas, I doubt I’d want to give it up for seventeen thousand a year if you’re lucky, and not even a decent vicarage any longer. They’ve been sold off to yuppie families with a taste for Victorian architecture. All we’ll get is some ghastly semi with parking space for the second-hand Fiesta. Remember that uncomfortable passage in St. Luke, the rich young man turning away sorrowful because he had great possessions? I can see myself in him all right. Luckily I’m poor and a bastard. Do you think God has arranged that we’re never faced with temptations that He knows perfectly well He hasn’t given us the strength to resist?”

  Emma had said, “The history of the twentieth century hardly supports that thesis.”

  “Perhaps I’ll put the idea to Father Sebastian, suggest I might work it up into a sermon. On second thoughts, perhaps not.”

  Raphael’s voice recalled her to the present. He said, “Ronald was a bit of a drag on your course, wasn’t he? The careful preparation so that he could think of intelligent questions to ask, all that assiduous scribbling. He was probably taking down useful passages for future sermons. There’s nothing like an infusion of verse to raise the mediocre to the memorable, especially if the congregation doesn’t realize that you’re quoting.”

  Emma said, “I did sometimes wonder why he came. The seminars are voluntary, aren’t they
?”

  Raphael gave a hoarse, half ironic, half mirthful laugh; it jarred on Emma.

  “Yes, my dear, absolutely. It’s just that in this place voluntary doesn’t quite mean the same as it does elsewhere. Let’s say some behaviour is more acceptable than others.”

  “Oh dear. And I thought you all came because you enjoy the poetry.”

  Stephen said, “We do enjoy the poetry. The trouble is that there are only twenty of us. That means that we’re always under scrutiny. The priests can’t help it, it’s a question of numbers. That’s why the Church thinks that sixty is about the right size for a theological college and the Church is right. The Archdeacon has a point when he says we’re too small.”

  Raphael said crossly, “Oh the Archdeacon. Do we have to talk about him?”

  “All right, we won’t. He’s an odd mixture though, isn’t he? Admittedly the Church of England is four different churches, not one, but where exactly does he fit in? He’s not a clap-happy. He’s a Bible evangelical, yet he accepts women priests. He’s always saying that we must change to serve the new century, but he’s hardly representative of liberal theology, and he’s uncompromising on divorce and abortion.”

  Henry said, “He’s a Victorian throw-back. When he’s here I feel I’m in a Trollope novel, except that the roles have got reversed. Father Sebastian ought to be Archdeacon Grantly with Crampton playing Slope.”

  Stephen said, “No, not Slope. Slope was a hypocrite. The Archdeacon is at least sincere.”

  Raphael said, “Oh he’s sincere all right. Hitler was sincere. Genghis Khan was sincere. Every tyrant’s sincere.”

  Stephen said mildly, “He’s not a tyrant in his parish. Actually, I think he’s a good parish priest. Don’t forget I spent a week’s secondment there last Easter. They like him. They even like his sermons. As one of the churchwardens said, “He knows what he believes and he gives it to us straight. And there’s not a person in this parish in grief or need who hasn’t been grateful to him.” We see him at his worst; he’s a different man when he’s here.”

  Raphael said, “He pursued a fellow-priest and got him jailed. Is that Christian charity? He hates Father Sebastian; so much for brotherly love. And he hates this place and all it stands for. He’s trying to get St. Anselm’s closed.”

  Henry said, “And Father Sebastian is working to keep it open. I know where my money is.”

  “I’m not so sure. Ronald’s death didn’t help.”

  “The Church can’t close down a theological college because one of the students gets himself killed. Anyway, he’s due to go after breakfast on Sunday. Apparently he’s needed back in the parish. Only two more meals to get through. You’d better behave yourself, Raphael.”

  “I’ve had a finger-wagging from Father Sebastian. I shall attempt to exercise impressive control.”

  “And if you fail, you’ll apologize to the Archdeacon before he leaves in the morning?”

  “Oh no,” said Raphael.

  “I’ve a feeling no one will be apologizing to the Archdeacon in the morning.”

  Ten minutes later, the ordinands had left for tea in the students’ sitting-room. Mrs. Pilbeam said, “You look tired, Miss. Stay and have a bite of tea with me if you like. Now that you are cosy it would be more peaceful.”

  “I’d like that, Mrs. P, thank you.”

  Mrs. Pilbeam drew up a low table beside her and placed on it a large cup of tea and a buttered scone with jam. How good it was, thought Emma, to be sitting in peace and with another woman, hearing the creak of the wicker chair as Mrs. Pilbeam settled herself, smelling the warm buttery scones and watching the blue flames of the fire.

  She wished that they hadn’t spoken about Ronald Treeves. She didn’t realize how much that still-mysterious death could overshadow the college. And not only that death. Mrs. Munroe had died naturally, peacefully, had perhaps been glad to go, but it was an added weight of loss in a small community where death’s depredations would never go unnoticed. And Henry was right; one always felt guilt. She wished she had taken more trouble with Ronald, had been kinder and more patient. The mental picture of him half-stumbling from Surtees’s cottage was a burr in the mind not easily to be shaken off.

  And now there was the Archdeacon. Raphael’s dislike of him was becoming obsessive. And it was more than dislike. There had been hatred in his voice; it wasn’t an emotion she had expected to find at St. Anselm’s. She realized how much she had come to rely on these visits to the college. Familiar words from the Prayer Book floated into her mind. That peace which the world cannot give. But the peace had been broken in that image of a boy gasping open mouthed for air and finding only the killing sand. And St. Anselm’s was part of the world. The students might be ordinands and their teachers priests, but they were still men. The college might stand in defiant symbolic isolation between the sea and the acres of unpopulated headland, but the life within its walls was intense, tightly controlled, claustrophobic. What emotions might not flourish in that hothouse atmosphere?

  And what of Raphael, brought up motherless in this seclusive world, escaping only to the equally masculine and controlled life of prep and public school? Did he really have a vocation or was he paying back an old debt in the only way he knew how? She found herself for the first time mentally criticizing the priests. Surely it should have occurred to them that Raphael should be trained at some other college. She had thought of Father Sebastian and Father Martin as possessing wisdom and goodness hardly comprehensible to those, like herself, who found in organized religion a structure for moral striving rather than the final repository of revealed truth. But she returned always to the same uncomfortable thought: the priests were still only men.

  A wind was rising. She could hear it now as a soft irregular boom hardly distinguishable from the louder boom of the sea.

  Mrs. Pilbeam said, “We’re due for a high wind but I doubt we’ll get the worst of it before morning. Still, the night will be rough enough, I reckon.”

  They drank their tea in silence, then Mrs. Pilbeam said, “They’re good lads, you know, all of them.”

  “Yes,” said Emma, “I know they are.” And it seemed to her that it was she who was doing the comforting.

  Father Sebastian didn’t enjoy afternoon tea. He never ate cake and took the view that scones and sandwiches only spoiled his dinner. He thought it right to put in an appearance at four o’clock when there were guests but usually only stayed long enough to drink his two cups of Earl Grey with lemon and welcome any new arrivals. This Saturday he had left the greetings to Father Martin, but at ten minutes past four thought it would be courteous to put in an appearance. But he was only half-way down the stairs when he was met by the Archdeacon rushing up towards him.

  “Morell, I need to speak to you. In your office, please.”

  And now what? thought Father Sebastian wearily as he mounted the stairs behind the Archdeacon. Crampton took the stairs two at a time and, once outside the office, seemed about to crash unceremoniously through the door. Father Sebastian, entering more quietly, invited him to take one of the chairs in front of the fire but was ignored, and the two men stood facing each other so closely that Father Sebastian could smell the taint of sourness on the other’s breath. He found himself forced to meet the glare of two blazing eyes and was instantly and uncomfortably aware of every detail of Crampton’s face: the two black hairs in the left nostril, the angry patches of red high on each cheekbone, and a crumb of what looked like buttered scone adhering to the edge of the mouth. He stood and watched while the Archdeacon took control of himself.

  When Crampton spoke he was calmer, but the menace in his voice was unmistakable.

  “What is that police officer doing here? Who invited him?”

  “Commander Dalgliesh? I thought I explained…”

  “Not Dalgliesh. Yarwood. Roger Yarwood.”

  Father Sebastian said calmly, “Like yourself, Mr. Yarwood is a guest. He is a detective inspector of the Suffolk Constabulary and is taki
ng a week’s leave.”

  “Was that your idea, to have him here ?”

  “He’s an occasional visitor, and a welcome one. At present he’s on sick-leave. He wrote to ask if he could stay for a week. We like him and are glad to have him.”

  “Yarwood was the police officer who investigated my wife’s death. Are you seriously telling me that you didn’t know?”

  “How could I know, Archdeacon? How could any of us know? It wasn’t something he would speak about. He comes here to get away from his work. I can see that it’s distressing for you to find him here and I am sorry it should have happened. Obviously his presence brings back very unhappy memories. But it’s an extraordinary coincidence, no more. They happen every day. Inspector Yarwood transferred to Suffolk from the Metropolitan Police five years ago, I believe. It must have been shortly after your wife’s death.”

  Father Sebastian avoided using the word suicide, but he knew that it hung unspoken between them. The tragedy of the Archdeacon’s first wife was well-known in clerical circles, as inevitably it would be.

  The Archdeacon said, “He must leave, of course. I’m not prepared to sit at dinner with him.”

  Father Sebastian was torn between a sympathy that was genuine even if not strong enough to discomfort him, and a more personal emotion. He said, “I’m not prepared to tell him to go. As I have said, he’s a guest here. Whatever memories he brings to mind for you, surely it’s possible for two adult men to sit at the same dinner-table without provoking outrage.”

  “Outrage?”

  “I find the word appropriate. Why should you be so angry, Archdeacon ? Yarwood was doing his job. It wasn’t personal between you.”

  “He made it personal from the first moment he appeared in the vicarage. That man more or less accused me of murder. He came day after day, even when I was at my most grieving and vulnerable, pestering me with questions, querying every little detail of my marriage, personal matters that were nothing to do with him, nothing! After the inquest and the verdict I complained to the Met. I would have gone to the Police Complaints Authority but I hardly expected them to take it seriously and by then I was trying to put it behind me. But the Met did set up an inquiry and admitted that Yarwood had perhaps been over-zealous.”