The Black Seraphim

by Michael Gilbert

  “I suppose not.” Fisher sounded depressed. It was a two-horse race between the Times and the Journal, and the Journal had been slipping a little. He said, “Our figures were down again last week.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Bill. “I think I’m on to something that will give us a real shot in the arm. Nothing to do with the quarrels in the Close. That sort of thing became a dead letter when the Archdeacon died. This is live stuff. Piping hot.”

  Fisher looked at his young subordinate suspiciously. He said, “Whose toes are you planning to tread on now?”

  “Several people,” said Bill, “and all of them eminent in the life of this city.”

  On Monday morning Valentine Laporte, Chief Constable of Melchester, woke with severe toothache. Good woman that she was, his wife ordered him to stay in bed, brought him a warm bottle to lay against his cheek, a cup of coffee and some milky porridge and made an appointment with the dentist for ten thirty.

  By half past eleven, feeling much happier and minus one molar, Laporte was at his desk. The first thing he saw was a note, timed nine o’clock: “Dr Gadney rang”. A second note, timed 10.45 a.m, said: “Dr Gadney rang again”.

  Who the devil was Dr Gadney? Well, if he wanted him all that badly, no doubt he would ring a third time.

  Some of his euphoria had diminished by now. The remainder disappeared when he recognised the handwriting on the envelope on top of the pile.

  This was the third letter he had had in the past week from Miss Pilcher. The first two had been complaints about his police officers, who had treated her discourteously. This one was less easy to understand. It seemed to suggest that things had been going on in the Close which the police ought to investigate; things which had led to the death of Archdeacon Pawle; things which the ecclesiastical establishment was trying to cover up.

  “A mischievous woman,” decided Laporte. “If she doesn’t watch out, she’ll land herself with a thumping suit for libel.” It was at this point that he spotted the official-looking envelope carrying the superscription of the Home Office Central Research Establishment at Aldermaston. He opened it and extracted the two documents which it contained.

  The first was a letter from the director, Dr Gadney, addressed to him personally. It said:

  “Dear Chief Constable. Since you ought to have this report soonest, I am sending it by hand of messenger. Further analysis of the material submitted to us will, of course, be necessary, but I feel you should have the results of our preliminary examination at once so that you may decide what steps ought to be taken in the light of the information disclosed.”

  With one eye on the clock, Laporte dropped the letter, grabbed the report and started to race through the opening paragraphs.

  “Since we had not been informed that the results of the examination were needed urgently, it was dealt with in normal rotation—”

  Naturally, no one had told them it was urgent. No one had known.

  “It was unfortunate that the contents of the stomach and the oesophagus were not available to us. We should have supposed that it would have been the usual practice—”

  Skip that bit.

  “Sections of the liver and kidneys were macerated, extracted with chloroform and analysed by thin-layer chromatography.”

  Bottom of page. Turn over.

  Laporte read the next few lines, put down the report, leafed through the telephone directory and dialled a number.

  After what seemed an intolerable pause, a polite voice said: “This is the South Melset Crematorium. Can I help you?”

  Laporte said, “Chief Constable here. You had a cremation fixed for midday. If it hasn’t taken place, it must be stopped.”

  “The cremation has had to be postponed,” said the polite voice. “Apparently Dr McHarg was unwilling to sign the death certificate.”

  Laporte said, “Thank you.” He picked up the internal telephone and dialled Superintendent Bracher’s number. He found that he was sweating.

  While he was waiting for Bracher to arrive, his eye fell on the letter from Rosa Pilcher. He had put it into a tray labelled filing, no further action. He took it out and dropped it into another tray labelled follow up.

  Fifteen

  “Well,” said Leo Sandeman, “and what are we supposed to make of that? Cremation postponed. Inquest next Thursday.”

  Driffield said, “There are all sorts of rumours floating round. The police are supposed to be prosecuting inquiries. But no one seems to know quite what the inquiries are.”

  “I know what one of them is,” said Grant Adey. “They’re visiting chemists’ shops and gardening shops. I had that from—well, as he was bound to secrecy, perhaps I won’t mention his name.”

  “Chemists and gardeners,” said Driffield thoughtfully.

  “Suggest something to the journalistic mind?”

  “A faint smell of something fishy about the Archdeacon’s death? If there’s any real evidence, the inquest should be worth listening to.”

  “Standing room only, I imagine,” said Sandeman.

  “Do you chaps realise,” said Gloag, speaking for the first time, “that if someone—” he boggled at the word “murdered” “—if someone was responsible for the Archdeacon’s death, there’s a strong possibility that it was done to stop us?”

  The thought had been in all their minds. Now that it was out in the open, they looked at it critically. Grant Adey said, “We see what you mean, Gerry, but if it’s true – and it does seem wildly improbable – then the only person who could logically have been responsible for this is the Dean.”

  “In the ordinary way,” said Sandeman, “one could hardly contemplate such an idea. But the Dean isn’t an ordinary man.”

  “I did manage to have a quick word with Bracher,” said Driffield, “but he was playing his cards close to his chest.”

  “You won’t get anything out of Bert,” said Adey. “If you’re looking for news, why not go to the fountainhead? Not just the purveyor of news. You might say the creator of it. Sweet Rosa Pilcher.”

  Driffield said, “I think you might have something there, Grant.”

  James had planned to go back to London at the end of that week. Since it was now clear that he might be called to give evidence at the inquest on the following Thursday, he had decided to extend his stay for a further week. The Medical Registrar, when consulted on the telephone, had encouraged him to do so. He said, “I hope you’re not working, James. It’s meant to be a holiday, remember.”

  James had answered evasively and had made his way around to the school. He found Julia in the drawing room and explained what he had in mind. He said, “It looks as if I may be hanging around here for another ten days waiting for the inquest. Peter was telling me that Alan’s ankle still isn’t strong enough for him to take walks or games and I wondered if I could lend a hand.”

  “I’m sure that’d be helpful,” said Julia and after a pause, “I suppose you have to give evidence if they call you.”

  James thought that she sounded worried. Or perhaps worried was too strong a word. But her mind was clearly on other things than school routine.

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. “I was with the Archdeacon when he died. I imagine they’re bound to ask me about that.”

  “I suppose that’s right.” A distant bell sounded. Julia said, with evident relief, “That’s first break. Lawrence will be here in a moment.”

  An uncomfortable silence ensued. To break it, James wandered over to the triangular corner cupboard and inspected a pair of cups and saucers. He said, “I didn’t know you were a collector. Henry Brookes has a pair of bowls which might be part of the same set.”

  “It’s Lawrence. He’s always had a thing about famille rose.” She seemed to welcome the change of subject. “I know the bowls you mean. They were in Burtonshaw’s window for a week and every day I was plucking up courage to go in and ask how much they’d cost. I guessed the price would be fairly steep, because they were a perfect pair, but it was going t
o be a special present for Lawrence’s fortieth birthday. The very day I made up my mind to take the plunge, they were gone. Henry had nipped in ahead of me.”

  “That’s life,” said James. At this moment Lawrence came bustling in. He received James’ offer with enthusiasm. He said, “I’d been relying on Len Masters helping us out. He’s done so in the past when Cathedral duties permitted. But now it seems that he’s leaving us.”

  “That’s news,” said Julia sharply. “Where’s he going? And why?”

  “He’s been offered a job, dear. As junior cricket professional at Worcester. Apparently they’ve been after him for some time. Why he should suddenly have decided to take the job, I don’t know. Unless all these police inquiries have upset him.”

  Julia started to say, “I didn’t know he’d been—” and then changed her mind. She said, “Anyway, it’ll be a step up for him. I’m certain the Chapter were underpaying him.”

  James, remembering the sad episode of the silver cups, agreed that finance might be one of the reasons for Masters’ decision. But he had a feeling that there might have been other considerations involved. Something was going on that he did not understand.

  As he was walking down the passage on his way out, a door opened, Penny appeared, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into an empty classroom. She said, “Now who was right?”

  James said, “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t try to get out of it. I told you the Archdeacon had been poisoned and you scoffed.”

  “Did I scoff?”

  “Certainly you scoffed. Loudly.”

  “If I remember rightly, what you said was that the boys were saying that the Dean had poisoned him.”

  “Right.”

  “And what makes you think that there’s any more truth in that absurd idea now than there was before?”

  “If there isn’t any truth in it, why are the police questioning people who were in the marquee that afternoon?”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “Stop making enigmatic remarks. What do you see?”

  “I see why your mother was thinking of other things when I was talking to her just now. Have the police been at her?”

  “She was grilled,” said Penny, putting as much heartless relish into the word as if she had been an English soldier describing the fate of Joan of Arc.

  “Why her particularly?”

  “Don’t you remember? She was one of the people serving out the coffee. She and Amanda and Dora Brookes.”

  “But that’s absurd,” said James. “What earthly reason could your mother have for poisoning the Archdeacon?”

  “To be fair,” said Penny, “I don’t think they thought she did it. But they thought she’d have been well placed to spot the person who did. It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not interesting,” said James angrily. “It’s disgusting.”

  “Well, if you think that, you shouldn’t have started it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone says that if it hadn’t been for you, whoever did it would have got away with it.”

  “My dear,” said Lady Fallingford. “Tell me everything.”

  “I did say I wouldn’t discuss it with anyone,” said Mrs Henn-Christie miserably.

  “I’m not just anyone.”

  “If you promise not to tell anyone else.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  To show how sealed they were, Lady Fallingford pressed her lips together tightly.

  “Well, it was this policeman.”

  “The nasty one with frizzy hair?”

  “No. A younger one. A sergeant, I think. He arrived just after lunch and stayed for hours – well, it seemed like hours.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Asking questions and writing down all the answers. I told him I didn’t know anything. It was no use. He just went on asking and writing.”

  “Asking what?” said Lady Fallingford. She spoke bracingly because she saw that her old friend was really upset.

  “About that lunch in the tent last Saturday.”

  “You mean when we were in the Deanery garden.”

  “That’s right. He wanted to know all about it. Who was there and where they were standing and what they ate and drank.”

  “And of course you couldn’t tell him. You’ve always had a rotten memory.”

  “That’s just what I told him. I said I’ve got a very bad memory and anyway I’m not a noticing sort of person.”

  “But it didn’t stop him?”

  “My dear, it was like water off a duck’s back. He simply went on and on. The thing he seemed particularly interested in was the coffee. He wanted to know who’d been serving it and who’d been handing it out and things like that. I said I’d got my back to the coffee table and was talking to the Dean. If he wanted to know about it, why didn’t he ask the Dean? He didn’t take a blind bit of notice.”

  “The man’s impossible.”

  “When I’d told him six times over that I couldn’t tell him anything and he’d written it down six times, I lost my temper. I said: ‘You’ve got no right to pester me, and if there’s any more of it, I’m going straight to the Dean to complain.’ He didn’t like that. He muttered something about only doing his duty and stumped off.”

  “Do you think he’ll be after me next?”

  “Certain to be.”

  “I shan’t be able to tell him much more than you did.” Lady Fallingford seemed to be reflecting. “Actually, I wasn’t near the table where they were serving the coffee out and I was listening to Canon Maude’s mother. She was talking about his roses. There’s been a lot of black spot in all our gardens this year.” She was a shrewd old lady and a lot more practical than her friend. She said, “It’s beginning to look as if they thought someone put something in the Archdeacon’s coffee, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t, Constantia,” said Mrs Henn-Christie faintly.

  The little car had been driven off the road, down a track that led to the riverbank. The coming of darkness had added an agreeable sense of intimacy to the boy and girl who were sitting together on the back seat. Philip had his right arm round Lucy Pomfret and his hand was lying passively on her right breast. She had her head tilted up toward him and he could see, in the dim light reflected off the river, that her eyes were wet.

  “He’s a beast,” she said. “An utter beast. Why did he have to do such a beastly thing?”

  “It was really silly,” said Philip. “Just because I happened to be in the Lion that Sunday evening with Bill and Peter and that young doctor, and Gloag came in with Sandeman, and there was a bit of a turn-up which nearly ended in a fight. I suppose he assumed I was one of their gang, and the next thing I knew was I’d got the boot.”

  “How could he?”

  “It did seem a pretty bloody thing to do.”

  “And it means you’ll have to go away.”

  “I’ve been offered this job up in London. A chap I was at school with wangled it. It seemed the only thing to do.”

  Philip tightened his arm around the girl and they sat for a bit, locked together, thinking about the unfairness of life. Lucy said, “Isn’t there anything you can do to get back at him? He’s so horrible.”

  “Horrible to you?”

  “Not to me. Goodness, no. If there was anything like that, I wouldn’t stop there for a moment, I can tell you. Just nasty. I’m sure he’s the sort of man who has books of dirty photographs hidden away and takes them out and gloats over them when everyone else has gone home and—ugh.”

  “That’s a thought,” said Philip. “Let’s get hold of them and give them to Bill and he can publish some of them in the Journal. Artistic works discovered in the desk of one of our leading estate agents.”

  “He wouldn’t keep them in the desk. They’d be in his private safe. The one he keeps all his fiddles in.”

  “Fiddles?”

  “Tax fiddles. Swindles. Dirty tricks.”

&
nbsp; “They might be even more interesting than dirty pictures,” said Philip thoughtfully. “The trouble is I’m no good at picking locks.”

  “You wouldn’t have to pick the lock. I know where he keeps the key.”

  “You do?” Philip sat up. “Where? How did you find out?”

  “There’s a secret drawer in his desk. And I found out because he left it a wee bit open one morning and I spotted it. And when he was away I fiddled about with it and found out how it worked. There are wooden roses above the pillars on each side of the space at the back of the desk. If you turn the one on the right, you can pull out the whole pillar. It’s a sort of upright drawer, if you see what I mean.”

  “I see exactly what you mean,” said Philip. He sounded interested. “But you’d have to open the desk first.”

  “No difficulty. The lock doesn’t catch. You just have to give the lid a tug and it comes open. Would you like me to have a look?”

  “No,” said Philip firmly. “If anyone’s going to burgle Gerry Gloag’s safe, it’s going to be me. I’m in trouble anyway. You’re not. But I’ll have a word with Bill first.”

  He lay back again and Lucy lay back with him. The thought that they might be able to do something disagreeable to Gloag had excited them both.

  Bill Williams listened to what Philip had to say. They were alone in the private bar of the Black Lion.

  He said, “I take it you’d have no difficulty in getting into the office after hours.”

  “None at all. Most of us have got our own keys to the side door.”

  “Would Gloag’s office be locked?”

  “Yes. But Lucy will lend me her key. She’s got one in case she gets there first in the morning. Couldn’t be easier, really, could it?”

  Bill took a long pull at his beer before answering. He said, “Gloag’s a vindictive beast. If you got caught, he’d run you in for burglary.”

  “’Tisn’t burglary. I’m not stealing anything. Just looking at some papers.”

  “Breaking and entering, then.”