The Black Seraphim

by Michael Gilbert

  “From which I gather that you’re reviving the supermarket affair.”

  “Right.”

  “And Mrs Piper, I seem to recall, is the old lady who had the only remaining shop. Where do I find her?”

  “She used the compensation money to open another little shop. On the other side of the road outside Bishop’s Gate. Then you will help? That’s very sporting of you.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said James.

  Bill evidently took this as signifying assent. He said, “That’s splendid. I’ve got to dash.” He sprinted off down the path and James heard his motorcycle roaring into life. He then began to wonder just what he had undertaken and how he could set about it. He needed a plausible excuse for calling, and a reason for discussing their private financial affairs with one old lady he hardly knew and another he did not know at all.

  He tried out some possible openings.

  “I must apologise for presuming on such a slight acquaintance—” or perhaps, “Money, I know, is an embarrassing topic—”

  He was still thinking about this when there was a knock on the door. When he opened it, he found Mrs Henn-Christie standing there. She said, “I do hope you’ll excuse me for presuming on having met you socially, Dr Scotland, but I’m worried and I think you may be able to help me.”

  “Come in.”

  “Thank you. You’re sure I’m not interrupting something?”

  “Not a bit. Won’t you sit down?”

  “I’d have gone to Dr McHarg, but I’m certain he’d have been off-putting. He’s so—what should I say?—abrupt.”

  “He has got a certain Scottish brusqueness. But I’m sure he’d listen sympathetically to anything you told him. After all, he is your doctor and there’s some ethical difficulty—”

  Mrs Henn-Christie was not to be diverted. She said, “This isn’t a medical problem. And it isn’t my problem. It’s Canon Maude. He thinks he’s going mad.”

  James was lacking in experience, but he had been a doctor long enough not to say anything silly. He said, “Are you sure?”

  “Not sure that he is, no. But sure that he thinks he is. He told me so.”

  “I should say that’s an encouraging sign.”

  “Oh, why?”

  “There are two things to remember about people who really are insane. The first is that they have no idea about it themselves. In the ordinary way when someone says, ‘I think I’m going mad,’ he means that he finds himself forgetting things he ought to remember or behaving illogically. If he really was mad, he wouldn’t have noticed anything wrong.”

  “I suppose not,” said Mrs Henn-Christie doubtfully. “What’s the other thing?”

  “That’s even simpler. A madman is no longer capable of doing his job properly. You’ve seen Canon Maude in Cathedral. Does he still seem to be functioning all right?”

  “Yes. I suppose he is. He took Evensong yesterday and he did it all right. We never get a large congregation at weekday services, so we all sit up in the Choir and I should certainly have noticed if there’d been anything wrong. In fact, I remember thinking that he read the lesson rather better than usual. It was the one about Elijah slaying four hundred and fifty of the prophets of Baal by the brook Kishon.”

  The thought brought a glint into Mrs Henn-Christie’s eye. James seized the opportunity deftly. He said, “I often think it’s a pity we can’t use such direct methods with the prophets of Baal today. You were telling me at tea about that man Gloag—”

  Five minutes later he had the whole story.

  “Two thousand pounds was his first offer. Can you believe it? Well, I mayn’t know a lot about land values, but I wasn’t falling for that. I had a word with Henry Brookes. I wanted him to handle it for me. He’d sold his practice, but I knew he kept an eye on the market and at least he’s honest. He said, ‘Don’t take a penny less than five thousand.’”

  “And that’s what you got?”

  “In the end. Of course, it turned out to be worth a great deal more, but I’m not blaming Henry for that. He didn’t know the traffic was going to be diverted. That’s what made all the difference.”

  “Did it occur to you to consult your solicitor?”

  “No. Ought I to have done?”

  “I imagine he’s a local man. He’d have his ear to the ground.”

  Mrs Henn-Christie thought about this. She said, “If I’d gone to anyone, it would have been Elliot Macindoe. He’s good, but he’s expensive. I didn’t see any reason to involve him. It was just a matter of fixing the price and being paid the money.”

  James agreed with her, uttered a few more comforting words about Canon Maude and went in search of Mrs Piper. He found her in the room behind her small shop and she needed neither excuse nor encouragement.

  “That Gloag,” she said, “he must have thought I was soft in the head.”

  She did not look soft. She looked cheerful and spry.

  “You’d hardly credit it, but he came right into the shop – not this one, the shop I had in Station Road – forty years I’d been there – and offered me two hundred pounds to clear out. Slapped it down on the counter, just as if he’d been buying twenty cigarettes.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “What did I say? I said, ‘You must be joking.’ He said he wasn’t joking. The place was going to be pulled down and two hundred pounds was better than nothing at all. I told him he was wasting his time. When he saw I meant what I said, he raised the price a bit. Creeping up, like, by fifty and a hundred pounds a time until he got to five hundred. ‘That’s my last offer,’ he said, banging his fist on the counter. Quite angry he was by this time and shouting. ‘I’m staying here until you accept it.’ He’d brought a bit of paper with him he wanted me to sign. ‘You’re not staying here,’ I said. ‘This is a shop and unless you’re planning to buy a box of boiled sweets or maybe a packet of Gold Flake, there’s only one place for you and that’s out in the street.’ ‘I’m not going until you sign,’ he said, ‘not if I have to stay here all day. Let’s make it five hundred and fifty.’ Well, luckily, my son was home on leave. He’s a physical instructor in the Army. He’d heard the shouting and banging and came in from the back room and said, ‘What’s up, Ma?’ And I said, ‘I asked this gentleman, quite polite, to leave the shop and he won’t go.’ ‘Oh, won’t he?’ says my son, looking him up and down. That was all he said. ‘Oh, won’t he?’”

  Mrs Piper gave a throaty chuckle as she recalled the scene.

  “And he went.”

  “With his tail between his legs. But, of course, that wasn’t the end of it. He started writing letters. I didn’t answer them. I took them round to Mr Macindoe.”

  “That’d be Elliot Macindoe?”

  “That’s right. Porter, Pallance and Macindoe. They look after the Cathedral business. A very nice firm. Mr Macindoe said, ‘You’ve got him over a barrel, Mrs Piper. You leave it to me.’ A bit later he came to see me. Right into the shop. A very nice gentleman, Mr Macindoe. He said, ‘What’d you say to four thousand pounds? It’d be enough to buy you the lease of a little property in East Street, behind the Cathedral, and pay your moving expenses and something over.’ ‘You handle it for me, Mr Macindoe,’ I said, ‘and then I know it’ll be done proper.’ And so it was.”

  James thanked Mrs Piper warmly, admired a photograph of her son, who looked capable of dealing with any number of Gloags, bought a packet of cigarettes and walked back to the Close. As he walked, he was doing sums. If the Gloag gang paid £5,000 for the freehold and £4,000 to the redoubtable Mrs Piper and maybe another £1,000 in expenses, that involved an outlay of £10,000. Nothing, really, split between a group of businessmen. If they sold the plot, as rumour had it, to the supermarket for a figure near £100,000, that would have given them an ample float for their next venture, Fletcher’s Piece. And every inducement to push ahead with it. Success breeds success.

  By this time he had reached the Close and was walking up the broad path which ran between t
he school playing field and the flank of the Cathedral. The single bell had started tolling for morning service. A file of choristers in their cloaks and square black caps swung out of the school building and across into the diagonal path leading to the north door. They stared steadily ahead of themselves. James watched them until the porch had swallowed them. Here came Canon Humphrey, hurrying from the West Canonry, to take the service, followed by a group of theological students from the college and two old ladies. A normal weekday congregation.

  Two hawks were circling the base of the spire, volplaning down the wind currents set up by the mass of the building.

  James was watching them so closely that he nearly collided with Amanda, who said severely, “Birdwatching. At your age.”

  “Aren’t hawks lovely?”

  “The pigeons don’t think so. You haven’t forgotten that we’re going for a walk this afternoon. Half past two start.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten,” said James.

  He hadn’t forgotten. He had been thinking about it a good deal.

  The next person he met was Dora Brookes, coming through the High Street Gate encumbered with the results of her shopping. He relieved her of one of the bags and fell in beside her. She said, “I like to do most of the week’s shopping on Thursday if I can. By Friday the shops are beginning to get crowded, and on Saturdays, of course, they’re impossible. It’s very kind of you. I do hope I’m not taking you out of your way.”

  “I haven’t got a way,” said James. “I’m a drone, not a worke”Henry was telling me that you’d been overdoing things and had been ordered to have a lay-off. I only wish I could get him to do the same. When he had his estate agent business – particularly toward the end, when things were all going wrong – I got very worried about him. He was smoking too much and he used to come home in the evenings looking like nothing on earth and collapse into a chair. I had to coax him to eat a bit of supper and pack him off to bed. Not that it did much good, because he used to lie awake half the night. He didn’t tell me how serious things were, because he didn’t want to worry me. Bless the man, if he’d told me, it would have been much easier for both of us. Then, about two years ago it was, Gloag came along with his offer. It wasn’t very generous, but it cleared off the old debts and let him get out just the right side of the ledger. And when I was wondering what we were going to live on, this job came along and I thought all our troubles were over.” Mrs Brookes laughed, but not bitterly. “And so they were, for a time. There now, I’ve taken you right out of your way. Would you care to come in and have a cup of coffee?”

  James said he would like to do this. It was not that he was fond of coffee, but he thought that anything he could learn about the troubles in the Close might be valuable and Mrs Brookes was clearly itching to talk.

  As soon as they were settled down with their coffee, she went on from exactly the point at which she had left off. “First it was Archdeacon Henn-Christie dying. Henry never had any trouble with him. ‘He does his job, I do mine,’ he used to say. Then Dean Lupton retiring. He died soon after. All within two or three months. And there we were, all of a sudden, in a real old tangle.” Mrs Brookes spread her hands as though she was demonstrating a piece of knitting that had gone astray. “We got Dean Forrest and Archdeacon Pawle. Mind you, I’m not saying that one’s all wrong and the other all right. They’re both strong-minded men. Left to themselves, they might get on quite well. It was having them both here together that was so difficult. And it won’t be any easier now that Tom Lister has gone. They both respected him. There’s to be a Chapter tomorrow to rearrange the duties until they can get a replacement.”

  James had been thinking about this. He said, “Who does elect the Canons?”

  “The Canons Residentiary? They’re appointed by the Queen.”

  “No doubt. But don’t tell me she has a little notebook and opens it and says, ‘We must give Canon Buggins a turn at Melchester.’”

  Mrs Brookes laughed and said, “I don’t entirely understand it myself, but I believe it’s the Dean who puts up the names to some committee in London and they advise the Queen.”

  “The Dean does it? Not the Bishop?”

  “Certainly not the Bishop. He never interferes in Cathedral matters. Anyway, he’s in Australia.”

  “But it’s not something that’s done quickly.”

  “When Canon Carstairs died, it was six months before we got Canon Humphrey.”

  “I see,” said James thoughtfully. “Not like the Army.”

  “Not a bit like the Army. We’ve been talking so much you’ve let your coffee get cold. I’ll get you another cup.”

  Eight

  “It’s the sort of England I used to dream about when we were in India,” said Amanda. “Green fields and bosomy trees and little villages hidden among them with the church spire peeping out like a giraffe in a pampas clump.”

  From where they were sitting, on the top of Helmet Down, a fair slice of southern England was spread below them. Not dramatic, thought James, but old and tidy and secure.

  “It looks peaceful,” he said. “But I expect that underneath the surface all the basic passions are running hot. Progressives against conservatives, men against women, the old against the young.”

  “Talking about running hot,” said Amanda, “I thought you were going to blow up on that last uphill stretch. You can’t be fit. It must be all that desk work. Didn’t you get any exercise at all?”

  “There wasn’t time for much. I used to play a little squash.”

  “Fine. There’s an Army court we’ve got the use of. We could have a game.”

  “I haven’t got any clothes. Or a racquet.”

  “Don’t be feeble. Peter can lend you the clothes. You’re about the same size.”

  “You’ll be too good for me.”

  “Then you’ll get a lot of exercise, won’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” said James. He was changing his mind about Amanda. He had thought she was thin. Now he realised that thin wasn’t the right word. Thinness implied weakness. There was nothing weak about her. She had led him up that last steep bit like a chamois. There was strength in the shoulders too.

  What was the expression people used about boxers? That they’d strip well. He was certain she would strip well.

  “Why is it,” said Amanda, “that doctors look at you as though you were a prime piece of beef hanging up in a butcher’s shop?”

  “Sorry. Professional interest in the human frame,” said James. “Actually, I was admiring that jersey you’re wearing.”

  It was a pale blue sweatshirt embroidered in front with the words NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY.

  “I stole it from my brother. He’s the real athlete of the family. Low hurdles. An international prospect—”

  “Is that how he got to Northwestern?”

  “Certainly. We could never have afforded it otherwise. He got what’s called an athletics grant. English universities don’t approve of that sort of thing. I can’t see why. They give people scholarships because they’re brainy and hope they’ll bring credit on the university by writing learned theses and things. Why shouldn’t you bring just as much credit by jumping farther or running faster than anyone else in the world?”

  “The Ancient Greeks would have approved of that. Was your father an athlete too?”

  “The thing he was really good at was fencing.”

  “He would have been a difficult man to beat,” agreed James. He visualised the Dean as a young man, tall, with strong arms and wrists, ruthlessly dedicated to finding and exploiting the weak spots in an opponent’s technique. He said, “You promised to tell me the real story of what happened to your father in his last mission in Africa.”

  There was a pause, measured in minutes more than in seconds, before Amanda said, “Did I?”

  This was followed by another long pause.

  “It’s not a very nice story. You’re not easily shocked, are you?”

  “Not easily,” said James, b
ut as he said it, he was conscious of a feeling of disquiet.

  “Then don’t interrupt me. And don’t look at me. Our mission was on the plateau between the Ilubabor and the Keta Mountains, near the boundary line between Abyssinia and the Southern Sudan. The nearest town was Jimma, about eighty miles away, and from there to Addis Ababa was another hundred miles by quite a good road. Our supplies used to come up from there. When we first arrived, I thought it was the nicest place we’d been in. It was February and everything was green. Mimosa and pine trees and giant sycamores and all sorts of fruit trees – oranges and peaches and tamarinds and figs. The people of the plateau were friendly and a lot more sympathetic than some of the ones we’d lived among before, in Central Africa and India. After all, they’d been Christians longer than we had. It was a primitive sort of Christianity, but it gave Father a basis to work on. There was a nice convert called Jobo who helped with the services, and three or four servants. One of them was quite a good cook. I was sixteen at the time and had a pony which I rode when we visited the villages. It all seemed too good to be true. I think our first hint of trouble was when Jobo told us about our predecessors. We’d known, in a general way, that there’d been two missionaries there before us and that one of them had died and the second had left rather quickly. What we didn’t know was that the first one had committed suicide. Not in any dramatic sort of way. He just wandered off into the hills in mid-June – that’s the hottest of the hot weather – without any water or food or even a hat on his head and after a time he lay down and died. The natives found what the foxes had left of him. They’re not like English foxes. They’re grey and nearly twice as big. More like wolves, really. We used to hear them barking at night. The second man stood it for about six months and then came back to Addis and advised them to abandon the mission. He had been told about men who came across the border from the Sudan and terrorised the villagers. Gangas, the villagers called them. At the first hint of them they’d abandon the village and hide out in the hills until they’d gone. Father took all this with a pinch of salt. We’d been in dangerous places before and the dangers had mostly proved to be exaggerated. It would have been better if he had listened.”