7 - Death of a Dean

by Hazel Holt

  “It’s Francis ...” I suddenly realized that she was crying. “He died in the night.”

  “Oh, Joan, I am sorry! What was it? I mean, how? Was it a heart attack?”

  “We don’t know, the doctor’s not certain .... It’s all been so awful. I’m so sorry to ring you at this hour, but I’ve been up all night ...”

  “For goodness sake! That doesn’t matter at all. I was up anyway. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Yes, well ...” There was a pause while I heard Joan blowing her nose and she continued more composedly. “He wasn’t really himself when he got back from Evensong—vague almost, and that’s not Francis, as you know. He went into his study and I didn’t see him for a bit, because he doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s working. About seven-thirty I tapped on the door and called out that dinner was ready, but he didn’t reply. I waited a good fifteen minutes in case he was in the middle of something he wanted to finish, you know, and then I went into the study and found him ... The tears threatened to return but she went on. “He’d collapsed onto the floor, he must have fallen from his chair. I didn’t know what to do, so I called for Mary and she said his pulse was very faint, but he was alive.”

  “Oh, Joan, how dreadful for you!”

  “Mary phoned the doctor and he came round straight away,” Joan went on, wound up now and intent on telling her story. “Then the ambulance came and took Francis to the hospital—Mary and I went too. Dr. Marlow was very kind, he took us in his car. He said Francis was in a coma, whatever that means—I don’t know much about such things. But, when we got to the hospital Francis was dead. Dead on arrival, is what they said. I suppose he died in the ambulance .... They were such nice men, the ambulance men, I’m sure they did everything they could ...”

  “I’m so very sorry. It must have been a terrible time for you. I’m so glad you’ve got the children with you.”

  “Mary’s been wonderful—I really don’t know what I’d have done without her, she’s been a tower of strength.”

  “And Adrian too, I’m sure.”

  “Adrian?” Joan’s voice broke. “Oh Sheila, it was quite dreadful! He wasn’t in for dinner so when all this happened just Mary and I were there. And then, when Dr. Marlow drove us back from the hospital, Adrian had just got in. I told him what had happened and—oh, I shall never forget it!—he broke down completely, sobbing, really hysterical, it was quite frightening. Thank goodness Dr. Marlow was there—he quietened him down and gave him some sort of sedative—he’s still asleep.”

  “Poor Adrian!” I said. “I suppose it was the shock—he’s always been very highly strung.”

  “Yes.” Joan sounded subdued. “But it was so violent. I do hope ...”

  She paused and I said as bracingly as I could, “Well, I’m sure Mary is a great comfort to you. I wonder,” I went on tentatively, “did they say at the hospital what Francis died of?”

  “No, they didn’t seem sure. Dr. Marlow says that because it was a sudden death there’ll have to be a postmortem. I really don’t like the idea of that, and I know Francis would have been very angry, but he says it’s the law and we have to.”

  “Oh dear, how distressing for you.”

  “Anyway,” Joan said, “I thought I’d better tell David. Actually,” she hesitated, “would you mind telling him—after yesterday, it’s a bit embarrassing.”

  “Of course I will. I’m sure David will be very upset. He really isn’t a quarrelsome sort of person—well, you know that—but Francis was being so difficult ...” I broke off, aware that I was speaking ill of the dead. “Look,” I said, “would you like me to come over? Is there anything I can do?”

  “Oh, Sheila, could you? It would be such a comfort. And, well, if David would care to come I’d like to see him. I do understand about yesterday—please tell him that.”

  “Thank you, Joan, I know that’ll mean a lot to him. Right, then, we’ll be over later this morning. Now, look, have you had anything to eat?”

  “No, I ...”

  “I thought not. You’ve got to have something or you’ll be no use to anyone,” I said briskly. “Go and make yourself some toast and a cup of coffee, and put some brandy in it!”

  “Oh, I don’t think I could do that. But I will make some breakfast. Mary will want something when she wakes up. Poor girl, she’s still sleeping. She was absolutely exhausted, but I couldn’t go to bed, it seemed wrong somehow.”

  “You go and get that coffee,” I said, “and we’ll see you later.”

  I didn’t wake David, there seemed no point, time enough to tell him when he came down.

  “Francis? Dead? Oh God, how awful! If only I’d kept my mouth shut one more time!” David was genuinely upset. “After all these years! Poor Joan, she must be in a state. How is she coping?”

  “Reasonably well, considering, and Mary’s apparently turned up trumps. Which is just as well, since Adrian’s being a broken reed.” I told David what Joan had told me about his collapse.

  “Poor lad,” David said sympathetically, “it must have been absolute hell being Francis’s son and Adrian always was a feeble creature.”

  “I told Joan I’d go over later this morning,” I said, “and she said if you felt like going too, she’d be glad to see you.”

  “Ah,” David grimaced, “to be absolutely honest, I don’t want to—but if you think it would make Joan feel better, then of course I will.”

  I smiled at him affectionately. “If you could bear it, then I think she would be pleased—the family rallying round, as it were,” I said.

  We sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and not saying anything. After a while I said, “Well, now you really will be able to sell the house. I know it’s not the way you would have wanted it to happen, but it really does seem that your troubles are over—I can’t think of anything that could go wrong now.”

  “No,” David said. “I wouldn’t have wished Francis dead, in spite of everything, but, since it’s happened, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit to a feeling of relief. No, apart from the world coming to an end, or something over the top like that, I think it’s going to be all right.”

  When we arrived at the deanery Joan was quite calm, though her eyes were still red and I felt she was holding onto her composure with difficulty. She was wearing a black dress—I suppose clergy wives need to have some sort of mourning by them for funereal occasions. She greeted David affectionately and he gave her a brotherly hug and sat beside her on the sofa listening attentively while she went over again the events of the night. After a while Mary came in.

  “Oh, hello, Sheila, Uncle David, it was good of you to come.”

  The difference in her attitude and, indeed, her appearance was dramatic. The timid, sullen girl had gone, transformed into an assured, almost brisk young woman in a navy suit. Even her hair, today let loose from the restraining hair grips, seemed softer and more becoming.

  “Mary, I’m so sorry,” I said, taking her hand, “it must have been a dreadful night for you both. Now, is there anything practical we can do?”

  “Not really, thank you all the same,” she replied. “But until they’ve established the cause of death we can’t do much about the formalities.”

  “The bishop has been so kind,” Joan said. “Of course Mary rang up his chaplain first thing this morning. And the bishop rang me back straight away. He said that we must take all the time we want, looking about, you know.”

  “Looking about?” I echoed.

  “For a house,” Joan said.

  “The deanery goes with the job,” Mary said wryly. “Tied accommodation.”

  “Oh, goodness, how dreadful for you!” I exclaimed. “What will you do? Will you stay in Culminster?”

  “I shall move in with Fay at the stables,” Mary said. “It’s what I’ve always wanted. And, most fortunately, there’s a nice cottage for sale almost next door that Mother and Adrian can buy.”

  I was slightly taken aback by the briskness of her r
esponse, with her father so recently dead. I looked at Joan, wondering how she would take this management of her life, but she seemed perfectly happy to leave everything to Mary. I suppose she was so used to having no control over her own life that she would have been lost without someone to tell her what to do.

  “And how’s Adrian this morning?” I asked.

  “Poor boy,” Joan’s face clouded with anxiety, “he’s still in bed. This has really upset him—he’s very shaken.”

  Mary gave a faint exclamation of impatience and I suddenly realized that, under that repressed exterior, there was something of her father. Certainly, although she didn’t have his good looks, there was in this new Mary a kind of physical resemblance in the way she moved and in certain facial expressions. I wondered if Joan might be exchanging one sort of domination for another, though I was confident that Mary was a naturally kinder person than Francis.

  Joan produced coffee and we sat around talking—more about Mary’s plans for the stables and her new life, I noted, than about Francis’s death. I thought how furious he would have been not to be the center of attention at such a time.

  “Mother will need to make an offer for the cottage fairly soon,” Mary was saying, “because I know there have been a few inquiries about it and it would be so perfect ...”

  The phone rang and she got up to answer it.

  “Well!” I said, instinctively using an equestrian metaphor after all the horsey talk there had been, “Mary does seem to have taken the reins into her own hands.”

  “Yes,” Joan said, “she’s been marvelous. I don’t know how I’d have coped without her.”

  Once a doormat, I thought, and, catching David’s eye and his faint smile, I saw that he felt the same.

  “How will Adrian feel about moving out there?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll think it’s for the best,” Joan said eagerly. “He can easily come into Culminster to work every day—it’s quite a short drive—and I think the country air will do him good.”

  Mary came back into the room. Her face was expressionless but, from her demeanor, it was obvious that she had important news.

  “That was the police,” she said. “They say that Father died from morphine poisoning.”

  Chapter 9

  “But that’s impossible!”

  Joan’s cry voiced the thoughts of us all.

  “But surely ...” I began.

  “But he wasn’t taking anything—only his indigestion mixture, nothing else!” Joan said in some agitation. “I would have known if he was!”

  “Well, the inspector is coming round to talk to us about it now,” Mary said.

  “The police! Oh no, Francis would hate that! And what will the bishop say?”

  “Well,” Mary said bluntly, “the bishop will just have to lump it.”

  Joan gave a faint cry of distress at this revolutionary statement and Mary continued more softly, “I’m sure he’ll be very sympathetic, Mother, he’s a nice man. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s in the hands of the police now.”

  “Perhaps we’d better go,” I said. “We’ll be in the way.”

  “No, please stay,” Joan pleaded, and I could see that she would be grateful for the sort of buffer (against the masterfulness of her daughter as well as the intrusion of the police) that a sympathetic female friend of her own generation could provide.

  “Perhaps there’s been some mistake,” Joan went on hopefully. “I mean, they may have got the results of the postmortem mixed up with someone else.”

  No one commented on this unlikely possibility and we sat in silence for a while, trying to take in this extraordinary turn of events.

  Joan turned to her daughter.

  “Did your father say anything to you about having seen a doctor?”

  “No, but then he wouldn’t, would he? The only conversation we had these days was about me not working hard enough at that stupid exam, or some other criticism.” Mary’s voice was harsh and I saw Joan shrink back at the tone.

  “He only wanted what was best for you, dear,” she said pleadingly. “He was so looking forward to you taking over the cathedral archive, and you know you liked working there.”

  Mary received this remark in a silence that was more eloquent than any reply.

  The front doorbell rang and Mary went to answer it.

  “This is Inspector Hosegood,” she said, ushering him into the drawing room, “of the Culminster CID.”

  “CID!” Joan exclaimed.

  “Nothing for you to worry about,” the inspector said, “it’s just that in—er—unusual circumstances like this we have to make inquiries. Just routine.”

  Inspector Hosegood looked more like a farmer than a detective. He was a large, burly man wearing a battered Barbour jacket, a checked shirt and corduroy trousers. He had a high color and his face had that weather-beaten look that comes from spending some time out of doors. His close-cropped fair hair was sprinkled with gray, his manner was relaxed and friendly and he spoke with a distinct West Country burr, which I found somehow comforting.

  “Just a few routine inquiries,” he repeated reassuringly.

  “Yes ... Oh, please excuse me. This is my daughter Mary and this is my husband’s brother, David Beaumont, and this is my friend Sheila Malory, who very kindly came over ...”

  “Good morning.” Inspector Hosegood gave a slight nod in the general direction of the company. “Now, Mrs. Beaumont, if we could have a few words?”

  “Yes, of course ...”

  “Take the inspector into the study, Mother,” Mary suggested.

  “Your father’s study? Oh no, I couldn’t do that! We’ll go into the dining room.”

  I saw the inspector react to this.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Inspector?” Mary asked. “Oh, dear, I should have offered ...’’Joan said.

  “That would be very nice, Miss Beaumont, thank you, if it’s no trouble.”

  They all three went out of the room and David and I looked at each other.

  “Morphine! Francis!” I exclaimed. “Surely there wasn’t anything wrong with him? I mean, you have to be pretty ill to have morphine, don’t you? You don’t think ... it couldn’t be drugs, could it?”

  “Francis! Taking drugs! It couldn’t be!” David said firmly. “Anyway, is morphine that sort of drug? Do you take it like that?”

  “I don’t know. One is so ignorant about things.”

  “Well, even if you can, I can’t believe Francis would.”

  “No, I suppose not. It’s all very peculiar. Poor Joan! Francis dying was upsetting enough, but if there are suspicious circumstances—isn’t that what they call it?—then I hate to think how she’ll cope.”

  “She won’t have to. Mary’s obviously determined to run the whole show. Would you have believed!”

  “I know, isn’t it extraordinary! A complete transformation! I’d never have thought it possible. When she was at the stables she was different, of course, but this! Perhaps she’s always been like this inside and Francis’s death has sort of released her.”

  “Just as well, in the circumstances. I have a feeling Joan is going to need all the help she can get in the next few weeks.”

  Mary came back into the room then so we couldn’t pursue this fascinating line of thought anymore.

  “He seems a pleasant man,” I said, “the inspector. Not intimidating at all.”

  “Yes, very pleasant,” Mary responded vaguely. “He says,” she continued, “that there’ll have to be an autopsy.”

  “Oh dear, how distressing for your mother,” I said sympathetically.

  “Yes. I wonder what they’ll find?”

  Joan came in. “The inspector’s gone,” she said. “He says he will be coming back to tell me what they find .... He was a nice man, he quite understood how difficult it is—the bishop and everything.”

  “Well now,” I said. “Is there anything we can do? Otherwise we should really be getting back to Tavi
scombe.”

  “There is one thing, Sheila,” Joan said. “I would like to go on with the auction. Will you help me? I know Francis would have wished us to.”

  “The auction?” I said in some surprise. “Why yes, if you want me to, of course I will.”

  “I’d have thought the last thing Joan would have wanted at a time like this would be that auction thing,” David said as we drove back.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I replied. “One final thing she could do for Francis, perhaps. Actually, I’ve done most of the groundwork, it just needs a few final arrangements. Joan won’t have to do much, just enough to make it look as if she’s running the show.”

  “Aren’t you efficient!”

  “Years of hard-won experience! Oh dear, I wonder how she’ll manage, though? After all these years being a doormat to Francis and putting up with his bad temper, do you think she feels free at last, her own person?”

  “I doubt it. People like that are only really happy when they’re being bullied by someone.”

  “I wonder,” I said thoughtfully. “She may have hated him for all we know and be glad he’s dead. There’ve been moments when I felt a sort of seething resentment under all that submissiveness. Anyway, do we ever really understand other people? Look at Mary and what an extraordinary transformation there was there!”

  “Well, she’s young and the young are more flexible than we are. I wonder if Joan really wants to live in that cottage Mary’s got lined up for her. And what about Adrian?”

  “Oh he’s been so conditioned to obedience by his father,” I said, “that I doubt if he has the ability to question anything anymore.”

  “You don’t think he’ll be all strong and positive now, like Mary.”

  “Hardly, since he seems to have gone completely to pieces—still in bed when we were there, Joan said. No help at all.” I gingerly overtook a tractor with a large and unstable load of silage and continued, “I wonder what they’ll find at the autopsy? I suppose they’ll be able to tell when Francis took the morphine and what sort it was.”