Well, anyway, thought Julia, she couldn’t be worse at waiting than she was at typing, so she’d asked what the rate of pay was. For once Miss Coldharbour had looked uncomfortable and said she’d have to ask Canon Wheeler, from which Julia had inferred that they had hoped to get her for free. The idea that she’d give up a precious Friday evening for the pleasure of obliging Canon Wheeler for his beaux yeux was a myth she was happy to dispel. They settled on ten pounds for four hours work, eight to twelve. ‘But Canon Wheeler would be obliged if you could attend a little earlier to get a head start,’ said Miss Coldharbour. Could she manage seven?
The doorbell pealed and Julia shot upstairs from the basement, flung herself through the green baize door and then walked slowly and decorously across the black and white tiled hall. The actress in her thought this could be fun after all.
Canon Wheeler’s was the first and largest of the block of three houses which constituted Canons’ Court. Unlike most clergy houses, which had either too little furniture in them for reasons of poverty or too much from the wrong sort of inheritance, Canon Wheeler’s had just the right amount in the right places. Much of it, Julia had discovered in her inaugural tour, was what Michael had taught her to call good. That is to say it had been made in England between the years 1700 and 1840. It occurred to her to wonder where the money came from to support the style. He probably, she thought, came from a wealthy family.
Julia fell in behind the butler, a handsome auburn–haired Irishman with hands like a conjuror’s, whose knowing dexterity she had admired in the kitchen. What he did during the day she did not know but, he’d told them, it was quite possible to be out four nights a week as a hired butler. And you could see and hear enough during them four nights to live by blackmail the rest of the week, he’d said. Julia appreciated his staginess and felt secure in his obvious competence.
The Earl was first in. He was a small, neat, humorous man.
‘Hello, seen you before haven’t I?’ he said as he handed his coat to McGee.
‘I’ve had that honour, me lord,’ murmured the Irishman suavely.
‘Ah, well,’ his lordship said, ‘you haven’t shot me in the kneecaps yet.’
‘Not yet, me lord.’ McGee piloted him upstairs to the drawing room, leaving Julia to cope with the next bell which came immediately.
The Dean smiled at her kindly, ‘Hello, Julia isn’t it? Doing a bit extra?’
Julia smiled back at him with affection. ‘May I take your coat?’ She found it difficult to say ‘Sir’, but her manner was perfectly deferential. As she went to the cloakroom with the Dean’s coat McGee returned to field the Archdeacon with whom he appeared to share a joke, something about kneecapping.
Julia was about to descend to the kitchen when the bell pealed again. She calculated. The Bishop. She waited to see if McGee would make it back from the drawing room then, fearful lest he should have to ring a second time, she opened the door.
Her eye lighted first on the Bishop’s purple vest, then on his pectoral cross of slim, dull, old silver. His face was in shadow, half turned away from her, looking back towards his Cathedral. His left hand, bent with arthritis, curved over a stick on which he leant so heavily as to give him the appearance of physical deformity. He turned slowly towards her. His large square face with small prune–coloured eyes scanned her without wavering. ‘There’ll be rain later,’ he said as she stepped back to give him passage. With relief she saw McGee descend to her rescue and she slipped into the background as he deftly took the Bishop’s coat.
It had been decided sherry would be handled by McGee, supper by them both, port by McGee and coffee by them both. Julia, therefore, slipped down to the kitchen. It was large, commodious and beautifully fitted out. The two dégagé ladies, who traded very successfully under the name ‘Plain and Fancy’ at the dinner parties of the bourgeoisie of Medewich and the surrounding county, were working with that synchronised proficiency of totally competent professionals. How nice, thought Julia, to be so excellent at something. Loading the tray with avocado mousse she decided she really should make an effort to get herself some skills. She was no good as a typist.
However, she balanced the tray with sufficient expertise and edged up the narrow back stairs to the ground–floor dining room. As Julia began to work the room, she realised that the house had been designed and built for just this sort of occasion: it was planned for servants to run. From everyone’s point of view it was a pleasure. There was no need to take food through the hall. The back stairs landed you outside a second, invisible, dining–room door in the white–painted wooden panelling. Julia observed the difference between the grand front staircase and the back one, with its mahogany broken banisters and its dangerously warped risers. It was serviceable however. There would be no smell of food in the hall as the guests descended from the drawing room, just that pleasant pot–pourri and beeswax smell of a well maintained household. Julia surveyed the dining room with approval. The table drew the eye like an altar. The silver, Victorian and heavy to the hand, gleamed on the cream linen cloth. The Dean’s orchids, sent in earlier in the day, were displayed in the centre.
Sherry took three–quarters of an hour and, as the Cathedral clock was chiming the three–quarter, there came the sound of the drawingroom door opening. McGee, who had come downstairs to test the quality of the sherry while Mrs Quickly, the plumper of the two cooks, stood at the back door fervently pulling on a cigarette, leaped to his feet, pulled at his black tie and took the back stairs two at a time. He and Julia were rigidly in place before Canon Wheeler held the door open for the Bishop.
Wheeler, who in the past had been unprepared for much in life, was not leaving placement to chance. The guests were seated strictly in order of precedence. Wheeler himself took the head of the table with the Bishop on his right and the Archdeacon next to him. On Wheeler’s left was the Earl and next to him the Dean. Before they sat down there was a moment’s pause. McGee, who had clearly been primed, did not move and Julia took her cue from him. The Bishop said grace in a Latin form which Julia thought she recognised from Trinity High Table. Then, like a film which had been frozen and re–started, they went to work.
The conversation was of ailments. Prostates, bypasses, hip replacements and renal surgery swung to and fro across the table. God help us, thought Julia, used, at least in conversation, to the best. Surely they could do better than this? They’d be on to central heating systems next. Then she realised how old they all were – Canon Wheeler was the youngest man at the table.
With the fish, the Archdeacon started on Cathedral heating systems he had known with special reference to the antipodes. But Lord Cumbermound had clearly had enough. He’d come for an evening’s entertainment and, though the food was good, he’d reckoned on stronger meat. With the shamelessness of the truly selfish man who has never really had to consider another’s feelings he stopped the Archdeacon dead and, taking his fork from his fish, said, ‘What about Gray?’
There was a pause. The Archdeacon was not a man of agile mind. His thoughts were still with hot air versus hot water down under.
‘What?’ he said helplessly.
‘Where’s the body?’ asked his lordship with relish.
‘I think we’ve all been rather turning our minds away from that one,’ brayed Canon Wheeler, embarrassedly eyeing the unfortunate arrival of the boeuf en croûte. He hoped he was expressing the Bishop’s sentiments.
‘Pretty poor, losing the body,’ pursued the Earl censoriously.
‘We didn’t lose it,’ said his cousin the Dean, with irritation. ‘We never had it. I mean …’ He failed to complete his sentence. Really, George was a tasteless oaf at times. They were here to divert the Old Man from thoughts of death, not to rub his nose in them. Forty years ago he’d have kicked his cousin under the table.
‘What you need is a decent pack of hounds,’ said Cumbermound undeterred. Julia cleared the fish plates and McGee changed from Chablis to Margaux. ‘Probably do better with beagl
es than with fox hounds in a small area like this. Fox hounds get all over the place if you’re not careful.’ Julia thought he made the hounds sound like lice. ‘They’d find it for you fast enough,’ he went on, either not noticing or not caring about the embarrassment of his host. Julia was unsure whether it was the moment to serve the beef or not but she did so nonetheless. Any unfortunate associations they’d just have to cope with.
The Bishop came to the rescue. ‘Would you care to be hunted like game after your death, George?’ he remarked dryly.
Delighted to get some response at last, Lord Cumbermound grinned his evil grin. ‘Wouldn’t mind hunting the brutes who did it,’ he said. ‘Sacrilege, isn’t it? Cutting off a man’s head. Used to do it to traitors. Seventh Earl put a foot wrong under Henry the Eighth and ended up that way.’
Julia looked at the present Earl’s neatly barbered head and immaculate dress shirt collar with interest.
‘How can it be sacrilege, if it was done to traitors? It must have been legal,’ said the Archdeacon, who had just caught up with the conversation.
‘Sacrilege, then, to leave it in the font in the Cathedral. Wouldn’t that be right, eh, Canon?’ The Earl turned to his host almost belligerently, almost, indeed, as though he didn’t much care for him.
Wheeler’s fine face flushed with annoyance and he laughed. His voice was impressive, the accent almost a drawl, ‘My own view would be that the notion of sacrilege belongs rather to superstition than religion in our age.’
The Bishop cut him short. Having appointed him, he saw no reason to have to listen to him. ‘The head is traditionally the receptacle of a man’s spirit. The sacrilege lies in the desire on the part of the murderer to mutilate what we understand to be in some sense the image of God. We cannot doubt the intention of such a one to mock our normal human relationships and diminish the value which we properly accord to each other. It is not magic or superstition which is at the heart of the sacrilege so much as morality.’ He stopped and toyed with his glass. It seemed he was more moved than he meant to be.
This just won’t do, the Dean thought desperately. They’d have to try much harder than this. He wracked his brain. Nothing came. ‘Georgina sends you her love, George,’ he remarked in despair. ‘She said she hopes to see you at your show on Sunday.’
Lord Cumbermound was quite prepared to be diverted, for a bit anyway, with thoughts of his handsome cousin. ‘Jolly good. I rather gather Geoffrey, my youngest, has got a nice mare showing. Not that that means he’ll turn up himself. Never know where he is these days. Bringing that boy of yours, are you?’ The Dean’s youngest son was twenty–two. ‘Shocking rider. Rides like a policeman. Four holes too long.’
Wheeler, who did not understand the joke, prudently smiled. The Bishop and the Dean who did, laughed. Julia, who had done a fair amount of riding in Australia, chuckled to herself. She wished instantly that she had not. Wheeler glanced at her. Cumbermound noticed her grin and the flush which succeeded it.
‘Ride a bit do you?’ he inquired encouragingly.
‘A little,’ she murmured, passing the broccoli.
‘Good for the health and the figure,’ said the Earl appreciatively.
‘You and Miss Smith can go now, McGee,’ said Wheeler curtly, addressing himself only to McGee. ‘I’ll ring when I want you.’
‘Spoiling an old man’s pleasure, Canon?’ Julia heard Cumbermound say to Wheeler before the door closed behind them. ‘Are you by any chance prudish?’
Not so much prudish, thought Julia, as snobbish.
In the kitchen the two cooks were preparing to depart. Once the meat was served, they reckoned the underlings could be trusted to deal with pudding and dessert.
‘Sent out of the room were you?’ drawled the thinner of the two. Her tone was educated, mocking: she didn’t see herself as a servant because she wasn’t one. Julia wondered what exactly she herself was.
‘It’s usually a bad sign,’ continued the plump Mrs Quickly as she swung her headscarf over her head. ‘With the county, it’s usually smut. With the townies, corrupt business or politics.’
‘And which of those,’ said McGee, who clearly had a relationship with her, ‘would you think the Bishop and the Canon and the Dean and the Archdeacon are pleasuring themselves with?’
‘It does seem a bit unlikely,’ admitted Mrs Quickly. ‘However, given Lord Cumbermound, it could well be all three.’ She took a fistful of napkins in one hand and a basket of empty baking dishes in the other, allowed McGee to open the back door for her and, with her slim companion, was gone.
It was another hour before they were called back. The crème brûlée was served without mishap. Julia kept her eyes clear of both Lord Cumbermound and Canon Wheeler and, leaving McGee to clear the table for port and dessert, she went upstairs to the drawing–room to remove the sherry glasses and set out coffee. She paused to admire the proportions and appointments of the room. Did fine feathers make fine birds? Smaller than Wheeler’s office in St Manicus house, with three windows instead of four, in daylight the room commanded an excellent view of the river and the backs of the other two houses of Canons’ Court. With its low ceiling, bookcases at both ends and plain greymarble chimney piece, the room combined comfort and dignity.
Julia cleared the glasses from round the room and prepared to set out the coffee on the drum table beside the chief armchair. Before she could set out the cups she had to remove a large heavy book – Crockford – which occupied the centre of the table. She picked it up, misjudged its weight and it fell to the floor with a thud. Five sheets of paper fanned themselves out round her feet. In nervous haste she was bending to retrieve them when her eye caught the name at the top of the first: P. Gray. She gazed at it for a moment. Then she skimmed the familiar awful writing. Underneath the name was what seemed to be a short biography or curriculum vitae. Under that, however, were two headings underlined. One read ‘Certainly’ and the other ‘Probably’. Under the first heading were listed:
1 Knows Sgt Jefferson.
2 Narborough – parent trouble.
Under the second head was listed:
1 Bent
2 Bishop’s favourite.
There was nothing else on that sheet.
Julia gathered up the others. She found she was sweating and her breathing had quickened. She heard the sound of voices coming up the stairs. She had time to do no more than read the names on the other four sheets. Hell, she ought to have been downstairs by now. She didn’t want to be caught up here or to have to pass whoever it was on the stairs. She pushed the papers back into the large Crockford and looked round the room, realising there ought to be a servants’ stair to the first floor continuing the one running from the ground floor to the basement. She strode to the panelling, searched, found and stepped through on to the dilapidated back staircase landing, just as the Bishop and Lord Cumbermound were entering the room. As she began hastily to descend the rickety stairs she heard Lord Cumbermound say, ‘You’re quite right, Thomas, not to let women into the priesthood. Because’ – his speech slurred a fraction – ‘I’m going to tell you a story I heard the other day which I couldn’t possibly tell you if you had a lady Archdeacon.’
Emerging from the back staircase into the kitchen, Julia found McGee ferrying the remains from the dining room, downing in quick succession the remnants of the Chablis and the dregs of the Margaux.
‘Five bottles of each drunk,’ he said in admiration. ‘And a pretty penny that must have set the good Canon back. Come on now, Miss Julie, sit you down and have a glass. You’ve been on your feet all evening.’
‘So have you,’ said Julia as she took the proffered glass. And indeed he had. He’d worked hard, smoothly, with humour and enjoyment, thought Julia with sudden distaste, so that five old men could get drunk with ceremony.
They sat down with a glass each before making the final assault on the stacking of the dishwasher ready for Mrs Thrigg in the morning. Outside Julia could hear the patter of rain drops on the
back path. It must have started earlier, she thought, absently recalling the Bishop’s first words. Then, through the rain, she heard a scratching sound, followed by a sharp, impatient bark. There was a count of three, then the same bark again, like a bell tolling.
Julia grinned. ‘I think the Dean’s dog has called to fetch him home.’
She went to the back door and opened it. Sitting outside, difficult to see because she was a black dog, was the Dean’s labrador bitch, water from her dark coat dripping and glittering in the kitchen light. The dog had her head thrown back ready to deliver another bark but when she saw Julia she rolled her navy–blue eye in its white socket and smiled. With a gesture which reminded Julia of someone searching their pockets for change, she picked up the present which she had brought to welcome the Dean. Julia was about to let her in when she saw what she had in her mouth. Her cry brought McGee to her side.
‘Oh God,’ said Julia, ‘Oh God.’
CHAPTER SIX
A Dish of Herbs
Julia lay on her bed in her attic room. She could see the asylum to the north through her open window. The grey weather of the night before had continued and the rain kept sweeping in through it. Julia would not shut the window but sweated and shivered by turns. She had again refused sedatives from a doctor after endless police questioning in Canon Wheeler’s elegant dining room the previous night. The body of Paul Gray had been removed from the Dean’s compost heap. The entire area had been roped off and there appeared to be policemen every ten yards. Julia, stunned but dry–eyed, had given her statement to the police. She had been followed by McGee, Lord Cumbermound, the Bishop, the Archdeacon and Wheeler. The Dean had gone last and, she judged, been gone the longest. It was three thirty in the morning before they were all allowed to depart. This time Julia had not refused the lift from the police car. Once home, she was surprised to find she slept soundly but woke about noon with the appearance of fever.
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