Death in Holy Orders

by P. D. James

  Kate asked, “Did Miss Arbuthnot die alone?”

  “No patient dies alone here, Inspector. Certainly she had no relations, but a priest, a Revd Hubert Johnson, saw her at her request before she died.”

  Kate said, “Would it be possible to speak to him, Miss Whetstone?”

  Miss Whetstone said drily, “That, I’m afraid, is beyond the capacity even of the Metropolitan Police. He was a patient here at the time, receiving a temporary period of care, and died here two years later.”

  “So there’s no one now who has any personal memory of Mrs. Munroe’s life twelve years ago?”

  “Shirley Legge is our longest-serving staff member. We don’t have a high turnover but the work does make very special demands and we take the view that it’s probably wise for nurses to have a change from terminal cases from time to time. I think she’s the only nurse who was here twelve years ago although I would have to check. Frankly, Inspector, I haven’t the time. You could certainly have a word with Mrs. Legge. I think she’s on duty.”

  Kate said, “I’m afraid we’re being something of a nuisance but it would be helpful to see her. Thank you.”

  Again Miss Whetstone disappeared leaving the two records on her desk. Kate’s first impulse was to take a look at them, but something stopped her. Partly it was her belief that Miss Whetstone had been honest with them and that there was nothing more to be learned, and partly a realization that their every movement was visible through the glass partition. Why antagonize Miss Whetstone now? It wouldn’t help the inquiry.

  The Matron returned five minutes later with a sharp-featured middle-aged woman whom she introduced as Mrs. Shirley Legge. Mrs. Legge wasted no time.

  “Matron says you’re asking about Margaret Munroe. Afraid I can’t help you. I did know her but not all that well. She didn’t go in for close friendships. I remember she was a widow and had this son who’d won a scholarship to some public school or other, I can’t remember which. He was keen on going into the Army and I think they were paying for him at university before he took a commission. Something like that anyway. I’m sorry to hear she’s dead. I think there-were only the two of them so it’ll be tough on the son.”

  Kate said, “The son died before her. Killed in Northern Ireland.”

  “That would have been hard for her. I don’t suppose she cared much about dying herself after that happened. The boy was her life. Sorry I can’t be more helpful. If anything important did happen to her while she was here, she didn’t tell me. You could try Mildred Fawcett.” She turned to Miss Whetstone.

  “You remember Mildred,

  Miss Whetstone? She retired shortly after you arrived. She knew Margaret Munroe. I think they trained together at the old Westminster Hospital. Might be worth having a word.”

  Kate said, “Miss Whetstone, are you likely to have her address on record?”

  It was Shirley Legge who answered.

  “No need to bother. I can tell you that. We still exchange Christmas cards. And she’s got the kind of address that sticks in the memory. It’s a cottage just outside Medgrave off the A6, Clippety-Clop Cottage. I think there used to be farm horses stabled nearby.”

  So here at last they had struck lucky. Mildred Fawcett might well have retired to a cottage in Cornwall or to the North-East. Instead Clippety-Clop Cottage was directly on their road to St. Anselm’s. Kate thanked Miss Whetstone and Shirley Legge for their help and asked if they could have a look at the local telephone directory. Here again they were lucky. Miss Fawcett’s number was listed.

  A wooden box on the counter of the reception desk was labelled “Flowers Fund’ and Kate folded and slipped in a five-pound note. She doubted whether this was legitimate expenditure of police funds, and she wasn’t sure whether the gesture had been one of generosity or a small superstitious offering to fate.

  Back in the car, their seat-belts fastened, Kate rang Clippety-Clop Cottage but got no reply. She said, “I’d better report on progress or the lack of it.”

  The conversation was brief. Putting down the telephone, she said, “We see Mildred Fawcett as planned, if we can reach her. Then he wants us back as quickly as possible. The pathologist has just left.”

  “Did AD say how it happened? Was it an accident?”

  “Too early to tell, but that’s what it looks like. And if it wasn’t, how the hell can we prove it?”

  Robbins said, “The fourth death.”

  “All right, Sergeant, I can count.”

  She drove carefully out of the drive but once on the road increased her speed. Miss Betterton’s death was unsettling in more ways than its initial impact of shock. Kate wasn’t unusual in needing to feel that the police, once on the job, were in command. An investigation might go well or ill, but it was they who questioned, probed, dissected, assessed, decided on strategy and held the cords of control. But there was something about the Crampton murder, an anxiety subtle and unvoiced, which had lain at the back of her mind almost from the beginning but which until now she hadn’t faced. It was the realization that the power might lie elsewhere, that despite Dalgliesh’s intelligence and experience there was another mind at work equally intelligent and with a different experience. She feared that the control, which once lost could never be regained, might already have slipped from their hands. She was impatient to be back at St. Anselm’s as soon as possible. In the mean time it was pointless to speculate; so far their journey had produced nothing that was new.

  She said, “Sorry I was so short. There’s no point in discussing it until we have more facts. For now we concentrate on finishing the job in hand.”

  Robbins said, “If we’re on a wild goose chase, at least they’re flying in the right direction.”

  Once they approached Medgrave, Kate slowed down almost to a crawl; more time would be lost by missing the cottage than by driving slowly. She said, “You look to the left, I’ll take the right. We could always ask but I’d rather not. I don’t want to advertise our visit.”

  It wasn’t necessary to ask. As they approached the village she saw a neat brick and tile cottage standing some forty feet back from the green verge on a slight rise of the road. A white board on the gate bore the nanje in carefully painted bold black letters, CLIPPETY-CLOP COTTAGE. It had a central porch with the date, 1893, carved in stone above it and two identical bow windows on the ground floor with a line of three above. The paintwork was a shiny white, the window-panes glittered and the flagstones leading to the front door were free of weeds. The immediate impression was of order and comfort. There was room to park on the verge and they moved up the path to an iron knocker in the shape of a horseshoe. There was no reply.

  Kate said, “Probably out, but it’s worth going round the back.”

  The early drizzle had ceased and although the air was still sharp the day had lightened and there were threads of barely discernible blue in the eastern sky. A stone path to the left of the house led to an unlocked gate and into the garden. Kate, born and bred in the inner city, knew little of gardening, but she could see at once that an enthusiast had been at work. The spacing of the trees and shrubs, the careful design of the beds and the neat vegetable patch at the end showed that Miss Fawcett was an expert. The slight rise of the ground meant too that she had a view. The autumn landscape stretched untrammelled in all its varied greens, golds and browns under the wide East Anglian sky.

  A woman, hoe in hand, bending over one of the beds, rose as they approached and came towards them. She was tall and gypsy-like, with a brown face, deeply wrinkled, and black hair hardly touched with grey combed tightly back and fastened at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a long woollen skirt with an apron of sacking over it with a wide central pocket, heavy shoes and gardening gloves. She seemed neither surprised nor disconcerted to see them.

  Kate introduced herself and Sergeant Robbins, showed her identification and repeated the essentials of what she had previously said to Miss Whetstone. She added, “They weren’t able to help at the hospice, but Mrs
. Shirley Legge said that you were there twelve years ago and knew Mrs. Munroe. We found your number and did try to telephone, but there was no reply.”

  “I expect I was at the bottom of the garden. Friends tell me I should have a mobile, but that’s the last thing I want. They’re an abomination. I’ve given up travelling by train until they introduce mobile-free compartments.”

  Unlike Miss Whetstone, she asked no questions. One might imagine, thought Kate, that visits from two officers of the Metropolitan Police were a regular occurrence. She gazed at Kate steadily, then said, “You’d better come in and I’ll see if I can help.”

  They were led through a brick-floored pantry with a deep stone sink under the window and fitted bookshelves and cupboards along the opposite wall. There was a smell of moist earth and apples, with a trace of paraffin. The room was obviously used partly as a tool-shed and storeroom. Kate’s eyes took in a box of apples, on the shelf, onions threaded on a string, swathes of twine, buckets, a curled garden hose on a hook and a rack of garden tools, all clean. Miss Fawcett took off her apron and shoes and preceded them bare-footed into the sitting-room.

  It spoke to Kate of a self-contained and solitary life. There was one high-backed armchair in front of the fire with an angled lamp on a table to the left, and another table on the right holding a pile of books. A round table in front of the window was set for one person and the remaining three chairs had been pushed back against the wall. A large ginger cat was curled, plump as a cushion, on a low button-backed chair. At their entry he raised a ferocious head, gazed fixedly at them then, affronted, descended from the chair and lumbered out to the pantry. They heard the click of a cat-flap. Kate thought she had never seen an uglier cat.

  Miss Fawcett pulled out two straight-backed chairs, then went to a cupboard fitted in the alcove to the left of the fireplace. She said, “I don’t know whether I can help you, but if something important did happen to Margaret Munroe when we were both nursing at the hospice, I probably mentioned it in my diary. My father insisted that we keep diaries as children and the habit has stuck. It’s rather like insisting on prayers before bed; once begun in childhood, there’s an obligation to conscience to keep going, however disagreeable. You said twelve years ago. That would bring us to 1988.”

  She settled down in the chair before the fire and picked up what looked like a child’s exercise book.

  Kate said, “Do you remember whether you nursed a Miss Clara Arbuthnot when you worked at Ashcombe House?”

  If Miss Fawcett thought the sudden mention of Clara Arbuthnot odd she didn’t say so. She said, “I remember Miss Arbuthnot. I was the nurse chiefly responsible for her care from the day of her admission until she died five weeks later.”

  She took her spectacle-case from her skirt pocket and turned over the pages of the diary. It took a little time to find the right week; as Kate had feared, Miss Fawcett’s interest was caught by other entries. Kate wondered if she was being deliberately slow. After a minute she sat silently reading, then pressed both hands over the entry. Once again Kate experienced her keen intelligent gaze.

  She said, “There’s a mention here both of Clara Arbuthnot and Margaret Munroe. I find myself in some difficulty. I promised secrecy at the time and I see no reason now to break my word.”

  Kate thought before speaking, then she said, “The information you have there may be crucial to us for other reasons than an ordinand’s apparent suicide. It really is important that we know what you have written, and know as soon as possible. Clara Arbuthnot and Margaret Munroe are both dead. Do you think they would wish you to remain silent if it’s a matter of helping justice ?”

  Miss Fawcett got to her feet. She said, “Will you please take a walk in the garden for a few minutes. I’ll knock on the window when I want you back. I need to think about this on my own.”

  They left her still standing. Outside they walked shoulder to shoulder to the far end of the garden and stayed looking out over the scarred fields. Kate was tormented with impatience. She said, “That diary was only a few feet away. All I needed was a quick glance. And what do we do if she won’t say anything more? OK, there’s always a subpoena if the case goes to court, but how do we know that the diary’s relevant? It’s probably an entry describing how she and Munroe went to Frinton and had sex under the pier.”

  Robbins said, “There isn’t a pier at Frinton.”

  “And Miss Arbuthnot was dying. Oh well, we’d better stroll back. I don’t want to miss the knock on the window.”

  When it came they went back into the sitting-room quietly, anxious not to betray impatience.

  Miss Fawcett said, “I have your word that the information you seek is necessary to your present investigation and that, if it proves irrelevant, no note will be taken of what I say.”

  Kate said, “We can’t tell, Miss Fawcett, whether it will be relevant or not. If it is, then of course it will have to come out, possibly even in evidence. I can’t give any assurances, I can only ask you to help.”

  Miss Fawcett said, “Thank you for your honesty. As it happens you are fortunate. My grandfather was a chief constable and I am one of that generation sadly decreasing who still trust the police. I’m prepared to tell you what I know, and also to hand over the diary, if the information is useful.”

  Kate judged that further argument was unnecessary and might be counter-productive. She simply said ‘thank you’, and waited.

  Miss Fawcett said, “I’ve been thinking while you were in the garden. You told me that this visit arises from the death of a student at St. Anselm’s College. You also said that there was no suggestion that Margaret Munroe was involved in that death except when she found the body. But there has to be more to it than that, doesn’t there? You wouldn’t be here, a detective inspector and a sergeant, unless there was suspicion of foul play. This is a murder inquiry, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Kate, ‘it is. We are part of a team investigating the murder of Archdeacon Crampton at St. Anselm’s College. There may be absolutely no link with Mrs. Munroe’s diary entry, but it’s something we have to check. I expect you know about the Archdeacon’s death.”

  “No,” said Miss Fawcett, “I don’t know. I very seldom buy a daily newspaper and I’ve no television. Murder makes a difference. There’s an entry in my diary for 27 April 1988 and it does concern Mrs. Munroe. My problem is that at the time we both promised secrecy.”

  Kate said, “Miss Fawcett, could I please see the entry?”

  “I don’t think it would be very illuminating if you did. I wrote down few of the details. But I remember more than I’ve recorded here. I think I have a duty to tell you, although I doubt whether it has anything to do with your inquiry, and I have your assurance that, if it isn’t, the matter will be taken no further.”

  Kate said, “We can promise you that.”

  Miss Fawcett sat stiffly upright, her palms pressed against the open pages of the diary as if to shield them from prying eyes. She said, “In April 19881 was nursing terminally ill patients at Ashcombe House. This, of course, you already know. One of my patients told me that she wished to marry before she died, but that her intention and the ceremony were to be kept secret. She asked me to be a witness. I agreed. It wasn’t my place to ask questions and I asked none. This was a wish expressed by a patient of whom I had become fond, and whom I knew had little time left to live. The surprise was that she had the strength for the ceremony. It was arranged by archbishop’s licence and took place at midday on the twenty-seventh at the small church, St. Osyth’s at Clampstoke-Lacey, outside Norwich. The priest was The Revd Hubert Johnson whom my patient had met at the hospice. I didn’t see the bridegroom until he arrived by car to collect the patient and myself, ostensibly for a country drive. Father Hubert was to find a second witness but failed to do so. I can’t now remember what went wrong. As we were leaving the hospice I saw Margaret Munroe. She was just leaving after her interview with the matron for a nursing post. It was, in fact, at my suggestion tha
t she had applied. I knew that I could rely on her absolute discretion. We trained together at the old Westminster Hospital in London although she was, of course, considerably younger than myself. I was a late entry to nursing after a brief academic career. My father was strongly opposed to my choice of profession and I had to wait until he died before I could apply for training. The wedding ceremony took place and the patient and I returned to the hospice. She seemed much happier and more at peace in those last days, but neither she nor I spoke again of the marriage. So much happened during my years at the hospice that I doubt whether I would have recalled it without this entry if I hadn’t had an earlier enquiry. Seeing the written words, even without a name, brought it back with astonishing clarity. It was a beautiful day; I remember the graveyard at St. Osyth’s was yellow with daffodils and we came out of the porch into sunshine.”

  Kate said, “Was the patient Clara Arbuthnot?”

  Miss Fawcett looked at her.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “And the bridegroom?”

  “I’ve no idea. I can’t recall his face or his name, and I doubt whether Margaret would’ve been able to help if she’d been alive.”

  Kate said, “But she would have signed the marriage certificate as a witness and surely names would have been mentioned.”

  “I imagine they would. But there was no particular reason why she should remember. After all, at a church wedding only Christian names are used during the service.” She paused and then said, “I have to confess that I haven’t been entirely open with you. I wanted time to think, to consider how much, if anything, I should reveal. I had no need to consult the diary before answering your question. I had looked up that date before. On Thursday 12 October Margaret Munroe telephoned me from a call box in Lowestoft. She asked me the name of the bride and I told her. I couldn’t give her the name of the groom. It isn’t recorded in my diary and, if I ever knew it, it’s long since forgotten.”