The Black Seraphim

by Michael Gilbert

  Fortunately, the delay had not been long. An AA patrol had come past and had got to work with an air pump, observed by the doctors with the close interest of professionals watching another professional at work.

  “A pity you couldn’t deal with your patient like that,” said Dr Leigh. “We shall be a bit late, but I expect they’ll wait for us.”

  They arrived at the exact moment that Dr McHarg was quitting the stand. Dr Gadney stepped into his place and was introduced to the jury, who looked gratified at meeting such an eminent medical authority.

  “We have your report,” said the Coroner. “It is a rather technical document and the jury might like a clarification of some points in it. Also we thought that you might want to elaborate on it.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Dr Gadney. “I would welcome the opportunity of adding something to my report. Particularly since, with the kind assistance of Dr Leigh from the Poisons Unit at New Cross, we have been able to make a further examination of the samples supplied to us and have some additional information which you may consider relevant.”

  James, who knew what was coming, was reminded of an expert diver poised on the high board, calculating the precise parabola of his flight, the exact moment to launch himself.

  But Dr Gadney was not quite ready to jump. First he explained, in simple terms, how the chromatograph worked, throwing up different peaks on the graph which could then be identified by spectrometry. The jury seemed to be following it all right.

  “We were puzzled,” he said, “by a small peak which eluted—I’m sorry—I mean, which appeared toward the end of the trace. It was only the exceptional capability of Dr Leigh’s new apparatus which showed it at all. However, having spotted it, we were able to identify it without too much difficulty. It was menthol.”

  There was a long pause. Then the Coroner said, “That was a curious thing to find, Dr Gadney. What did you make of it?”

  “It was a real puzzler. You appreciate, sir, that if the nicotine had come from a pharmacist, or even from some chemical compound like a weedkiller, it certainly would not have been mixed with menthol. So one was forced to look for some other source for the nicotine. It then occurred to us that it might have been obtained by mashing and distilling a number of what are called menthol cigarettes. This seemed quite a promising theory. When we looked into the matter further and succeeded in isolating traces of coteinine and nitrites, both indicating the presence of tobacco, the theory seemed not only possible but very probable indeed.”

  “That is a very interesting idea, Doctor. I have, of course, seen so-called menthol cigarettes advertised. Do they actually contain menthol?”

  “Yes, sir. We were able to consult a colleague who is associated with one of the big tobacco groups. He told us that the menthol is either in the wrapping or in the filter. Less often in the tobacco itself. The manufacturers are careful to avoid any medical claims for their product. They simply describe the cigarettes as ‘menthol cool’. But it became widely believed that they alleviated catarrh and other afflictions of the throat. Singers and speakers liked them for that reason. Also an idea got about that they were less likely to cause lung cancer than normal cigarettes. I do not know whether there was any truth in that, but it no doubt assisted their sales. They were particularly popular with women.”

  The Coroner thought about this. He said, “You spoke of distilling, Doctor. Would that be a very complex process?”

  “Not in the least. You could do it, at a pinch, with ordinary kitchen equipment. In fact, I believe they sell simple distilling sets to schoolboys. You’d just boil the tobacco mash and distil off the vapour. Nothing to it. You’d get about two milligrams of nicotine from each cigarette. A lethal dose is usually calculated to be between forty and sixty milligrams. So, say twenty to thirty cigarettes.”

  James was observing the reactions of the jury. They looked disappointed and, he thought, resentful. It was as though they had imagined they were being presented with one problem to which they could see a straightforward and satisfactory answer and were suddenly faced with a different problem altogether.

  The Coroner said, “Is that all that you wished to tell us, Doctor?”

  “That is all that we have been able to detect, for the moment, from the samples submitted to us. We are still examining them.”

  The Coroner turned to Superintendent Bracher.

  “In the light of what we have learned this morning, I imagine that the police would like a chance to conduct further inquiries.”

  Bracher nodded bleakly.

  “In that case, I will adjourn the hearing for fifteen days.” He looked at his calendar. “No. That will bring us to a Saturday. I had better say, until Monday fortnight. If the police require more time, we can always have a further adjournment. And, members of the jury, I think you agree that what we have heard demonstrates the advisability of all of us keeping open minds until the whole of the evidence is in front of us.”

  “All rise,” said the coroner’s officer.

  Nineteen

  “Well,” said Laporte sourly, “so where do we go from here?” It was Monday morning and he was feeling in a Monday morning mood.

  Superintendent Bracher said, “These damn doctors. You can’t trust them. First they say one thing, then they say something different.”

  He had dumped down a loose-leaf binder on the Chief Constable’s desk. It contained copies of reports and notes of interviews. It was already over a hundred pages thick.

  He said, “I got a list from the secretary of the Friends – the people who were invited to that lunch do. Nearly two hundred. I pushed it round all the tobacconists in the area and got some names of people on the list they remembered who’d bought menthol cigarettes off ‘em. Mostly women, like the doctor said. Mrs Consett, Mrs Henn-Christie, Lady Fallingford, Rosa Pilcher and the organist—what’s his name?—Paul Wren. They’re all from the Close. Then there’s Mrs Maggs, Mrs Truelove, Mrs Fisher and Mrs Gilborne.”

  “Who the hell are they?”

  “Just people. I know old Maggs. He owns the big ironmonger’s shop in the Market Square. Mrs Fisher’s the wife of Edwin Fisher.”

  “The chap who runs the Journal?”

  “Right. And Mrs Gilborne . . .” Bracher paused for a moment. “You remember Gilborne, sir?”

  “I think I do. Isn’t he the solicitor who nearly got into trouble over some Cathedral funds he was handling? It was the Archdeacon who showed him up.”

  The two men stared at the list. Laporte said, “It doesn’t get us much further, does it?”

  Bracher said, “I’m told that Dean Forrest and his daughter are both non-smokers. Of course, that doesn’t prove anything. I suppose that either of them could have gone up to London and bought menthol cigarettes there.”

  “It’s possible,” said Laporte. But he didn’t sound as though he believed it.

  “If you ask me, sir, we shan’t get anywhere until people are prepared to start talking. Someone who was there must have seen something.”

  “Some of them did,” said Laporte. “You never want to underestimate the strength of the S.P.A.C.”

  “That’s a new one on me, sir.”

  “The S.P.A.C,” said Laporte, “is the Society for the Protection of Angelic Choristers. I imagine that every cathedral has one. Ours was in particularly good form over the weekend. I’ve had fourteen letters sent to me personally. Here’s a list of the people who sent them. You can add them to your file. They all say more or less the same thing. They were served with coffee by one or other of those two boys. They add that they themselves were standing in a group, nowhere near the Archdeacon. Between them they had the boys under their eye the whole time and would be prepared one and all to go into the witness box and repeat, on oath, what they’ve spelled out in those letters. Now, what do you make of that?”

  Bracher cast an eye down the list. Some of the names were very well known to him indeed. He said, “Put that crowd in the box, sir, and no one’s going to bel
ieve a word of Rosa’s little story.”

  “It goes a bit further than that, doesn’t it? They aren’t the sort of people who are going to commit perjury.”

  “No.”

  “Then that means that what they say is true and that Rosa wasn’t just mistaken. She was lying. Lying publicly. Rather a dangerous thing to do, don’t you think?”

  “She was trying to shift the blame onto young Amanda. She loathes her and her father.”

  “Agreed,” said Laporte. “But who was she shifting it from?”

  While Bracher was thinking about this, he went on: “I’ve heard a lot of ideas lately about why different people would want to kill the Archdeacon. There’s Driffield’s theory. He’s got a bee in his bonnet about disputes in the Chapter. And there’s young Len Masters and that business of the silver cups – we know all about that. And I did hear there was some story about the organist, Wren, and the Archdeacon trying to sack him. But in my book none of these add up to a real motive for murder.”

  Bracher said, “I’d agree about Wren and Masters. And if it was anyone but Dean Forrest, I’d agree about that, too. But with a man like him you can’t be sure. He’s—well, sometimes he’s hardly human.”

  “But I can think of a real motive for murder,” said Laporte gently. “What about forty thousand pounds?”

  Bracher said, “Yes.” And, after a pause, again, “Yes.”

  “It’s obvious when you come to think of it. Rosa had the motive. And the means. She was one of the people who bought menthol cigarettes. She had the run of the Archdeacon’s kitchen to brew the stuff up. And she was in charge of the coffee. I was puzzled when I heard about that fourth jug on the serving table. If there were three servers, why did they want four jugs?”

  “Answer being, I suppose, that Rosa had fixed it that way so that she could organise a special cup for the Archdeacon.” Bracher was thinking it out slowly, visualising, as policemen tended to do, how it would appear to a jury. He said, “If we could find someone who actually saw her handing the cup to the Archdeacon—”

  “Or handing it to someone to hand to him.”

  “Right. Then I think we’d be justified in pulling her in. We must get the people who were near that table to start talking. It’s only the Dean who’s stopping them.”

  “I’m arranging to have a word with the legal boys in London about that,” said Laporte. “I don’t want to start a shooting war with the Church, but if that’s the only way to get at the truth, then, by God, that’s the way we’ll have to do it.”

  “It was fantastic,” said Amanda. “It was gorgeous. It was terrific. Poor old Bert Bracher. Did you see his face?”

  “He took it hard,” said James.

  “I thought he was going to burst into tears. He had the whole thing sewn up and it exploded right in his face. And now he doesn’t know what to do next. I hear they’ve been round all the tobacconists asking who buys menthol cigarettes. Dozens of people, I should think. There was a great craze for them, I remember, about the time we first got here. And another thing, that nasty little plan of Rosa’s has backfired. A lot of people, I know, have told the police those boys didn’t go near the Archdeacon. They were dishing out coffee right over on the other side of the tent. Well, I could have told them that myself.”

  “I suppose,” said James cautiously, “that you haven’t got any idea—I mean, you were fairly well placed to see what was going on.”

  “You’re forgetting what a scrum it was. Look—when did you last go to a tea party?”

  “The last tea party I went to . . . That must have been at Lady Fallingford’s, soon after I arrived.”

  “Were there a lot of people there?”

  “No. Ten at the most.”

  “And can you remember who handed Mrs Henn-Christie her cup of tea?”

  “Well—no. I don’t think I can.”

  “There you are, then. We were dishing out coffee to a couple of hundred people and trying to do it in about five minutes flat.”

  “All the same, I should have thought someone would have remembered. If they’re all questioned—”

  “They won’t answer questions.”

  “Because of your father?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He won’t get away with it. It’s a direct challenge to the authority of the State.”

  “So what can they do?”

  “I’m not sure. But no one fights dirtier than the establishment when it’s up against it.”

  “If it comes to dirty fighting,” said Amanda happily, “I guess Daddy can teach them a thing or two.”

  They were on their way, in Amanda’s car, to play squash. James thought he had never seen Amanda so happy. She was bubbling over with high spirits. Part of it was relief, no doubt. But another part of it was the simple pleasure of seeing the civil authority make a fool of itself.

  He said, “Anyway, it proves that I was right and you were wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “Surely you can’t have forgotten. What you said when we were on that walk. About scientists prying into matters they ought to leave alone and coming up with the wrong answers. They came up with the right answer this time.”

  This was rash of him. Amanda said, “You’ve got it all wrong, Buster. What I said was that scientists never know when they’ve reached the place where they ought to stop. Well, you’ve reached it now, haven’t you?”

  “I doubt if there’s much more information to be extracted from those samples.”

  “Right. So you stop.”

  “Your father wouldn’t agree with you. He said: ‘When once you have put your hand to the plow, turn not back.’”

  “Exactly,” said Amanda triumphantly. “But when you’ve reached the end of the last furrow, you’ve got to stop. You don’t want to start plowing up the road.”

  “Have it your own way,” said James amicably.

  When they got onto the court, the standard of their squash was found to have declined. They were neither of them thinking about the game. They were thinking about each other. After twenty minutes of indecisive play, James gave it up. He dropped his racquet and put one arm round Amanda. He could feel her body excitingly warm under the thin cotton singlet. Amanda said, “Ouch.” Not in an offended sort of way, but as though she had put a hand on something unexpectedly hot or cold.

  The next moment they were on the floor.

  “I’ve never been so surprised in my life,” said Major Mortleman. “I was up in the gallery and I came along to see if the court was empty and there they were, damn it, rolling about on the floor like a couple of copulating grass snakes.”

  “Do you mean,” said Brigadier Anstruther, “that they were actually—”

  “No. I don’t think they were actually—”

  “Oh, well, then, I suppose it’s not too bad.”

  “It’s a bloody disgrace. Isn’t her father a dean or something?”

  “That’s right. Rather an unusual man.”

  “Rather an unusual girl, I should say. You simply can’t do things like that in a squash court.”

  James had managed to get both arms around Amanda and this was making driving difficult. She said, “It’s no good, my sweet. Let’s wait until we’re married and can do it properly in bed.”

  “Nowadays people don’t bother to wait until they’re married. That’s old-fashioned.”

  “I’m an old-fashioned girl,” said Amanda. “By the way, did you notice, when we were in the court – I thought I saw a face looking down at us.”

  “Imagination,” said James.

  As they were approaching Brookes’ gate, he said, “Oughtn’t we to tell your father?”

  “Of course. But not right now. He’s been in rather an odd mood since the inquest.”

  “I should have thought he was deeply relieved.”

  “You can never tell with Daddy. He was a bit—I don’t know—a bit like he was after that business with the Gangas.”

  James thought abou
t this, but could make nothing of it. His mind was on the future, not the past. When, after a prolonged goodbye, he got into the drawing room, he sank back into one of the Chapter Clerk’s old armchairs and allowed his eye to wander around the comfortable well-lived-in room. He and Amanda would put together such a room. There would be old furniture and pictures in heavy gold frames on the walls and china in cabinets. It would be some time before he could afford anything as fine as the famille rose bowls on the mantelshelf.

  He remembered admiring them before and got up to examine them. They were the same pattern as Julia Consett’s cups and saucers. Almost certainly they had once been part of the same set. No wonder she had wanted the bowls. A true collector’s instinct.

  James found his mind wandering down strange tracks. He remembered what he had said to Tom Lister in that conversation in the garden on the night the Canon had died. It was the analogy of the scientist moving down obscure weed-encumbered paths in his unending search for the truth.

  When Dora Brookes came in and switched on the light, she said, “Goodness. I’d no idea you were here. You must have gone to sleep.”

  “I think I did doze off.”

  “Supper will be ready in ten minutes.”

  “Not for me, I’m afraid,” said James. “I’ve got to go out.”

  This was literally true. He had got to go out. The thought of sitting still and making conversation was suddenly intolerable. He needed to think. He had got to be alone and he had got to be on the move.

  If he had been asked afterward, he could not have said where his walk took him. Certainly he went a good way out of the town. At one moment he found himself on a bridge over the railway and sat on the stone coping, swinging his legs. Far away down the line he could hear the noise of trucks shunting, and he guessed from this that the fine weather was ending and that rain was on its way.