Every Deadly Sin

by D M Greenwood

Frederika Bottomley, driving along the same road which Bishop Peake had traversed eight hours previously, likewise reviewed her career. She was finished. She’d decided that. This accident, manslaughter, murder, whatever it was, would be her last case. She had written her resignation and 1 September would see her free or on the scrapheap or whatever. She’d done thirty years in the force. As she watched the road unwind in front of her and remarked the pleasure of driving, she thought, I owe the force all the skills I’ve got. It’s taught me everything I know: how to drive, how to write, how to speak, how to think. Was she grateful or not? At any event, the mark of the force was upon her. It would be interesting to see if there was anything more to her than what the force had issued her with. She’d need to discover that.

  She’d given herself utterly, ardently to the work. It’d been a hell of a struggle to stop being a WPC. She’d had to batter and push all the way. Nobody wanted her to succeed. Her family had been appalled at her choice of career. Her dad, a sergeant in the West Riding force for forty-one years, had told her, ‘They won’t want you, love. Just like you don’t get men nursing, so you won’t find women getting on in the force. You’ll get hurt and not just by the villains.’ Well, he’d been wrong, had Dad. Or partly. She had a friend who was a male nurse and people had stopped being surprised at him a decade ago. But the force was different, more resistant to change.

  The radio-telephone on the dashboard showed signs of interrupting her thinking. She put a large heavy hand on it and it ceased to wheeze. She’d made Detective Inspector and she’d done it by being very persistent, and very loud and very thorough. She’d done her prep. on the clerical folks for example, as far as she could anyway. About the place itself, she’d have to do some finding out. She’d had to be quicker off the mark than her male colleagues and she’d been better at passing exams. But it had been a struggle. The top brass had resented it. They’d used every weapon to marginalise or patronise or downright bully her out of her rights. Scope for talent, that was all she’d ever wanted. If she’d been no good, she’d have left earlier or, more like, never started. But she was good, she knew that. They couldn’t destroy her deep certainty that she knew what she was about. Why were they so bloody frightened all the time? She’d never got used to how scared they were. Anything new that they couldn’t control or predict and the courage ebbed from them – and they reacted accordingly.

  Why had she wanted to spend her life dipping into other people’s when they were at their lowest, their worst point? Matt the nurse had asked her when she first met him ‘I can do something to help. Good nursing can save people’s lives.’ ‘So can good policing,’ she’d answered. ‘People in a society like ours, in any society, have a right to safety and a spot of fair play.’ But she’d answered by rote. Over the last few years she’d begun to doubt whether the desperate, the feckless or simply greedy could be contained. As she grew older and more senior every case she met seemed to be more complex than merely legal measures could deal with. Policing didn’t change people’s fundamental nature. She wondered if anything could do that.

  If she’d lost her faith, it was time to get out while she was still ahead of the game. The pension was reasonable. At forty-eight she could still offer the world something. She’d have more time for life with Matt the nurse. She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes and she’d be there. She’d been surprised how ambition had drained out of her over the last twelve months since her transfer to the Wormald division. Perhaps it was the country air. Or possibly the type of crime. It was slower, she had to admit. Farmers fiddling the taxes, poachers after deer, a bit of drug-running and the usual car theft. But not like Leeds. Less racial tension, less violence. So a bit of proper crime would make a welcome change, nice thing to go out on.

  She swerved round the corner for the last turn to Rest and noticed in her noticing way the black tyre marks on the grey road surface and the pool of oil on the verge. Somebody’d had a spot of bother then. She put her foot down and raced on. Mustn’t keep the clients waiting, dead or alive.

  A final burst of speed brought her to the brow of the hill overlooking the valley of St Sylvan’s. She slowed and took it all in. High up on the edge of the forest she could just glimpse the pediment of Broadcourt. Below that another stretch of forest and then one road in and one road out. Otherwise it would be approachable only on foot or by Range Rover or, of course, nowadays by mountain bike. It looked like paradise. The late afternoon sun caught the toy tower of the chapel. The old farmhouse and huddle of more modern buildings with the enclosed garden formed a graceful composition in the middle distance. A flag, at half-mast she noticed, waved over the guesthouse. Wasn’t there meant to be a pond or a spring or something, she’d heard, a holy spring? Where would that be? And what did they use it for? And who came? What did they do there apart, that was, from killing each other? The silence of the place came up and hit her as she leaned out of the window to check the notice-board. ‘St Sylvan’s at Rest, Pilgrimage Centre and Retreat House’, it said, whatever that might be, God help.

  One by one the little group of pilgrims assembled in the library were summoned to the dining-room next door by the ginger-haired sergeant. The Bishop went first and did not return. A little later the door of his car slammed loudly and the engine roared. There was a crunch of gravel and then silence. The Archdeacon plodded off and likewise did not return.

  ‘Rather like being in the Ark,’ said Canon Beagle as he set off in response to his name, bowling down the corridor. Fifteen minutes later he returned to share his experience with the rest.

  ‘It’s a bit like discovering God is a woman.’ He was clearly in shock.

  ‘I can’t see why they can’t send a proper crew or team or whatever they have. I suppose to the police the Church doesn’t count nowadays.’ Clutton Brock felt the insult. He glanced first at Martha Broad and then at Theodora, as though police policy on the employment of female labour might be their fault.

  Theodora gathered the police inspector was a woman.

  ‘Has she any clues?’ Mrs Lemming asked. She lingered on the word as though it were not part of her normal vocabulary.

  ‘Well, she wasn’t sharing them with me if she had.’

  ‘What did she ask?’ Mrs Clutton Brock’s question was unexpected, at least to Theodora. Mrs Clutton Brock evinced so little interest in her fellow human beings that any curiosity was remarkable. They all seemed brighter. Perhaps it needed a death to sharpen them into life.

  ‘The thrust of her questioning was twofold.’ Canon Beagle appeared to be enjoying himself. ‘She wanted to know what I knew of Ruth, her background and so on and then she wanted to know where I was between three and five this afternoon.’

  ‘And what did you tell her about Ruth?’ Miss Broad asked. Did she, Theodora wondered, know Ruth? The Broads were the big lay family in the district. They might well know something of the servants at the retreat house. Was the house perhaps on their land? She realised there was a great deal she didn’t know. But then, she thought, why should I be interested? It’s the police’s job to get to this, not mine.

  ‘I could tell them very little about Ruth, Miss Broad. Would it be that you could help them in that department?’ Canon Beagle’s tone made Theodora wonder if he was being disingenuous.

  ‘Miss Swallow worked for us at Broadcourt for a number of years when she was in her teens. The Swallows were one of the estate families.’

  Estate families, Theodora thought. It’s feudal. Do people still go from village cottages to big houses as servants? Perhaps only females in remote areas, during times of recession.

  ‘She came here just before Augustine Bellaire died,’ Miss Broad said. ‘In fact, I think she nursed him through his last illness.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Clutton Brock. ‘That’s right, she did.’

  Martha Broad turned in her chair to fix her eye on Mrs Clutton Brock. ‘Have we met before?’ she asked, more county family than priest.

  ‘It’s p
ossible,’ Mrs Clutton Brock was no one’s second in coolness.

  ‘And where were you between the hours of three and five this afternoon?’ Mrs Lemming turned to Canon Beagle as inexorably as a QC. The murder, its drama, had touched a well of energy and curiosity. Something tremendous and terrible had happened and she was not to blame. Perhaps it might be her turn to do some blaming. It would make a change.

  ‘From three to four I slept in my room. From four to five I went for a spin round the estate,’ answered the Canon equably.

  ‘See anything untoward?’ Mrs Lemming pressed him.

  ‘Not a thing.’ The Canon was emphatic.

  Martha Broad got up suddenly and made as if to go out. Then she sat down again. ‘I do hope someone has told Ruth’s aunt. She’d be her nearest relation.’ She turned to Theodora as though some explanation was necessary. ‘Her aunt keeps the village shop. She’s a very remarkable woman, Mrs Turk. She’s entirely selftaught. Literature …’ She trailed off as though the subject were beyond her.

  Canon Beagle soothed, ‘I think it’s taken care of. I heard Angus asking the constable to do something with his mobile phone.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Lemming, ‘I at least know what I was doing between three and five this afternoon.’ She looked round challengingly as though this might not always be the case. ‘I was by the well working up my sketch.’

  Mrs Clutton Brock looked up. ‘But that’s just the time, just the place when the girl was …’

  ‘Until four-ish,’ Mrs Lemming went on, ‘then I went to find Miss Braithwaite. We had a very interesting conversation this morning.’ She turned to Theodora to invite her collusion. ‘I did so want to continue it. So I sought her out in the garden. But you weren’t there.’ She turned to Theodora. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I may have been in the chapel,’ Theodora admitted.

  ‘For two hours?’ Mrs Lemming was incredulous.

  ‘Yes,’ said Theodora. Had the woman no notion of what the religious life entailed? Possibly life with Norman had not led her down that path.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Lemming, checked for a moment. ‘And where were you two then?’ She fixed her watery eye on the Clutton Brocks.

  ‘I always practise after lunch if at all possible.’ It was Mrs Clutton Brock who answered.

  ‘Practise?’

  ‘The cello.’

  ‘And you?’ Mrs Lemming transferred her interrogation to Mr Clutton Brock.

  Really, thought Miss Broad with exasperation, the woman is shameless. What business was it of hers? What were the police for? She surely wasn’t suggesting the Clutton Brocks had been ranging the domain bent on the murder of poor Ruth?

  But Mrs Lemming had been sustained through a long dull marriage by curiosity. Now she had something to be curious about.

  ‘I am my wife’s severest critic,’ said Mr Clutton Brock. ‘She would not have achieved the eminence she has today without my efforts.’

  Theodora looked across at them. They were seated on the sofa side by side but with a distance between them. Both sat bolt upright. Theodora searched her memory.

  As though divining her thoughts, Mrs Clutton Brock said, ‘I work under my own name, Lavinia Strong.’

  Theodora placed her: middle-ranking quartet player, nineteenthcentury stuff, some recent recording, mostly on the festival circuit. A travelling existence.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Lemming, ‘that leaves Angus and the Bishop’s party. I suppose none of you slipped out for a moment?’ she enquired of Miss Broad conversationally.

  ‘No,’ said Miss Broad. ‘And I don’t think we should go on like this. It’s tasteless and not our job. The police will see to it.’

  ‘But someone killed Ruth Swallow.’ Mrs Lemming was undaunted. She’d coped with tougher opposition than the Revd the Hon. Martha Broad.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be one of us,’ snapped Miss Broad. ‘There are all sorts of people who might have wandered through this place. It’s very open. Indeed, that’s just the point of a place of pilgrimage.’

  ‘But what would have been their motive?’ Mrs Lemming was undeterred. ‘We need to keep that in mind, don’t we?’

  ‘We shan’t know that until we know the killer,’ said Mrs Clutton Brock.

  ‘Ruth Swallow was pregnant,’ said Mrs Lemming, playing her trump card.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Mrs Clutton Brock asked. ‘I understood she wasn’t married and the “Mrs” was an honorific title.’

  ‘Who was the father?’ Mr Clutton Brock joined in.

  ‘Tom Bough, of course.’ Mrs Lemming was triumphant.

  ‘How do you know?’ Miss Broad was less than pleased that an outsider should know more about the pilgrimage centre staff than she did. Really the woman was insufferable.

  ‘I heard him talking to Guy,’ Mrs Lemming answered without shame.

  For a moment it looked as though Miss Broad would point out the iniquity of listening to other people’s private conversations. Then she thought better of it.

  ‘Where is Guy?’ asked Canon Beagle.

  ‘He never came back after Angus had asked him to ring the police,’ answered Mr Clutton Brock.

  Theodora had a wild feeling of their being in a game of Cluedo, only the body and the death and the loss were real. She badly wanted to get away and shake off this atmosphere of theatricality. She opened the door and stepped into the hall. From the library she heard the Scottish murmur of Angus answering questions. The grey-haired constable was standing, feet splayed, hands behind his back, in front of the hall door. As she approached he shook his head. ‘Sorry, Miss. No one leaves until the Inspector’s taken their statement.’

  ‘I wondered if you and your colleagues might like some tea?’ Theodora asked innocently.

  The constable’s ears pricked. ‘That’s right kind of you, Miss, if it wasn’t too much bother.’

  Theodora turned on her heel and made off down the corridor towards the kitchen. She had just reached the door when she heard her name called. The ginger-haired sergeant was holding a list. He had surprisingly donned a pair of steel-rimmed glasses in order to read it. It gave him a scholarly air at odds with the rest of him.

  ‘Reverend Braithwaite? You’re next.’

  The dining-room had been rearranged to make it into an interview room. The light was behind the Inspector, the table was between them. Miss Bottomley was plain of face and plain of manner but the voice was low, northern, deliberate. The voice of someone prepared to take a lot of pains, to take all the time in the world.

  ‘Miss Braithwaite? Now, put me right. Am I correct in thinking you’re a priest?’

  Theodora hated to disappoint but, ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I’m a deacon.’

  ‘I’m flummoxed,’ said the Inspector. But she didn’t look it.

  ‘It’s sort of one below. As sergeant to inspector.’

  ‘Right. But clergy at all events?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ve had’, the Inspector consulted her list, ‘a bishop, an archdeacon – new one on me that – and an incumbent. I think I’m getting the hang of it but I could do with a bit of help from an expert.’ She looked at Theodora to see if the flattery would have any effect. Theodora moved not a muscle. ‘Women can’t be priests. Yes?’

  ‘No. They can be. You’ve got one to come. Miss Broad’s in priests’ orders.’

  ‘The Reverend the Honourable?’

  ‘So I believe.’

  ‘So why not you?’

  Theodora wasn’t going to go into all that. ‘I’m hanging on as I am for a bit.’

  The Inspector agreed to let that one go. ‘Well now Miss Braithwaite, my difficulty is that I’m a bit lost with all this clergy stuff. Frankly I don’t know the systems, how it all functions, and I can’t fit Ruth Swallow in.’

  Theodora gave no help so the Inspector tried again. ‘What I mean is, if you could give me any background information about the place or the people, it might mak
e our work a lot easier.’

  Theodora thought, she’s floundering; she’s out of her depth.

  ‘To be honest,’ Inspector Bottomley went on, ‘I’m a bit out of my depth here. Have you, for example, formed any impression of the dead woman? What she was like, what her habits and character were, which might help us find out why someone might wish to kill her?’

  ‘No,’ Theodora answered. ‘She seemed on the one occasion I saw her and Tom together to be relaxed, happy.’ Theodora hesitated and thought of the kitchen with its workbox and waiting meal. ‘She seemed suited to where she was and what she was doing.’

  ‘Suited, eh?’

  ‘I can’t explain. She wasn’t agitated, just, well, at ease. However, I know nothing of her background. Perhaps Miss Broad might be able to help you there. The Broads are the leading laymen round here. I gather she worked for them for some time.’

  ‘You didn’t know Miss Swallow when she was in Bradford doing some kind of course?’

  ‘No, why should I?’

  ‘You seem to have got around a bit; Oxford, Africa, South London. I looked you up.’

  ‘Well I haven’t ever got as far as Bradford.’ So much, Theodora thought, for all that disingenuous stuff about not knowing how the clerical systems worked. Inspector Bottomley must have got at least as far as Crockford.

  ‘You didn’t know Mr Bough?’

  ‘He drove us up. Apart from that, no.’ Theodora wasn’t going to dispense hearsay about Ruth and Mr Bough.

  ‘You haven’t been here before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And between the hours of three and five this afternoon you were where?’

  Theodora provided her information. Inspector Bottomley seemed to find it less surprising than had Mrs Lemming.

  ‘Anyone able to verify that?’

  ‘No one at all,’ said Theodora tranquilly. ‘I was quite alone.’

  ‘During your time here you haven’t seen any strangers? Anyone not of the retreat?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Bishop Peake mentioned he’d seen a travellers’ van,’ Inspector Bottomley glanced at her notes. His actual words had been, ‘I’m sure I need not tell you where to look for your killers, Inspector. I had to be very firm with them over one or two matters myself.’