Clerical Errors

by D M Greenwood

  Julia didn’t but didn’t like to say so. ‘Do you think you can do it with drugs?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Theodora and Dhani together.

  ‘Always refuse sedatives,’ added Dhani. Julia smiled.

  They moved from the galley to the main living area of the wherry. This had clearly been modernised. Bunks ran down the side and a cabin table marched down its centre. The ceiling, which was, of course, the deck, was so low that Theodora had to stoop. The whole area smelt of polish and resin. The light supplementing that from the small portholes came from a central paraffin lantern. In the middle of the table was an earthenware bowl of cow parsley and larkspur.

  There was a second clattering of footsteps and Ian appeared, his tall figure framed in the sliding door. The smell accompanying him suggested he’d brought fresh coffee beans. Dhani took them from him, smiling.

  They ate the hors d’oeuvres of eggs and mushrooms, then a vegetable stew of beans and aubergines, onions and tomatoes with a green salad. They finished with a dessert of nuts, honey and apple. Theodora, Ian and Julia drank the white wine followed by coffee. Dhani drank water followed by herb tea. There had been no grace but before they ate Julia noticed a moment’s silence had descended. It was certainly as ceremonious in its way as Canon Wheeler’s dinner party the previous night but no one was drunk, no one on edge, no one competed with another. The reined–in impatience which so often emanated from Ian was absent, Theodora’s gravitas mitigated and Julia’s social nervousness sedated. Dhani presided and served at the same time. Julia compared the food of the two parties and decided unhappily that she liked both the dish–of–herbs meal of this evening and also the elaborate deliciousness of avocado mousse, sole and boeuf en croûte of the previous day. There’s no hope for me, she thought. She lacked discrimination.

  About the company, however, Julia was in no doubt as to her preference. They were, she realised, respectful to each other and kind, as to valued equals. Their backgrounds were diverse but their perspectives similar. There were no servants.

  When they had finished eating, Dhani turned to Theodora and as though commencing a liturgy inquired, ‘Has the moment come?’

  Julia was aware of something which had been planned beforehand yet it did not discomfort her. The quietness of the long cabin room, the dim lighting and the remains of the shared supper, all contributed to the feeling of a ritual being celebrated. Theodora glanced round at Ian and Julia and answered composedly, ‘Yes. I think the moment has indeed come.’ She focussed her gaze on Julia. ‘I feel we should try to talk about the happenings of the last few days. There are forces loose here, types of evil, which are corrupting our energies. These are outside us but also within us. We need to bring them into the light and recognise them so that we may dispatch them.’

  Julia nodded, slightly bemused, yet accepting. Theodora turned to Dhani, who replied, ‘We need therefore to talk truthfully about what we feel as well as what we have witnessed. That is always the first step.’

  Theodora then looked at Ian. He, in turn, picked up the theme. ‘We can’t replicate the police investigation and solve Paul Gray’s murder. But I’m sure there’s a landscape of emotions which forms the background to murder which is quite as important as the foreground of material events.’

  Julia’s heart was suddenly moved within her. What these people have in common, she thought, is the ability to use words like ‘truth’ and ‘evil’ without embarrassment or meretriciousness. They were completely serious moral beings living in a world where such terms usually had no content. They could have told you what they meant by them and they gave them a currency in terms of their own conduct. They weren’t out to impress or wield power. They weren’t like anyone that Julia had ever met before. The casual or predatory affections and competitive ambition which had characterised her acquaintances at Cambridge were of another and lesser world. If anyone could help her, Julia thought, these could.

  ‘Julia,’ Theodora said, ‘since the affair began with you, would you like to lead off? It does not matter that we already know to some extent what has happened to you. Tell us again in the words you choose. Nothing,’ she added reassuringly, ‘nothing is irrelevant. Nothing will bore us. Fear not.’ She smiled. ‘Breathe it out on to us.’

  Julia was silent for a moment. There were things she had not told them. Yet she had not been required to tell them: they had not asked. Now she was clearly being given the opportunity. ‘I wonder if I might begin with my family,’ she said. ‘It would give me some sort of starting point.’

  Dhani nodded at her. She continued.

  ‘My father was an English chemist. Through his work he came to Australia, where he married my mother, an Australian. I was born in England and lived here until I was seven, then we returned to Australia. I don’t think my parents were entirely happy together. My father was killed in a car crash when I was twelve. My mother, out of guilt, perhaps, became addicted to tranquillisers and drink. She was dead within five years. I had a little money from my father’s will, administered by his British solicitors. I came to my father’s cousins in England and went to live in Wolverhampton. While I was at the local Further Education College I met Michael. I’d never met anyone so ambitious and as single–minded. He wanted to do Natural Sciences at Cambridge, worked terribly hard and got in. He invited me to go and live with him and I did. We were happy for about nine months and miserable for another six. I watched him growing out of me. I didn’t have his scientific interests. I had no foundation of my own from which to develop. I could do him no good. I couldn’t further his career in any way or extend his mind. I seemed to have no value for him and it began to feel like a kind of death. We ended up hating each other. In desperation I took a typing course and moved fifty miles down the road to here, to the first job which would have me. What I mean is,’ Julia stumbled, ‘perhaps my inglorious life story isn’t relevant to what we’re supposed to be doing here. But I, too, feel without place – so I can identify with Paul Gray. I know he didn’t fit into his parish as well as he would have liked. I don’t fit in anywhere either. I feel as much a severed head as he is. I’d like … I’d like his murderers found. I want to know why they did it and especially why they did what they did with the head … It’s not exactly revenge I want, but I’d like things evened up. A balance restored.’

  Julia stopped and then added in a quick toneless voice, ‘The actual facts you already know. On the day of my interview for that job, I found a woman, Mrs Thrigg, in hysterics in the St Manicus chapel, beside the font. In the font she had found the head of the priest.’ She paused drew breath and battled on. ‘A week later, while employed as a servant to Canon Wheeler, I … the dog … my … the arm of the corpse of Paul, of the priest, was brought into Canon Wheeler’s kitchen by the black dog.’ This time she stopped in earnest. She realised what a relief it was to have formulated that simple statement and how, having done so, the power of it to horrify her was already lessening. ‘That’s all,’ she concluded.

  Theodora said gently after a pause, ‘Have you told us everything?’

  ‘No,’ said Julia, ‘I haven’t.’

  Theodora prompted her, ‘The priest.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Julia after a moment. ‘The reason I chose to come here for a job was because I thought I had relations here. Paul Gray was a second cousin.’

  Theodora murmured, ‘I’m so very sorry. How appalling for you. When did you first realise?’

  ‘When I first saw the head in the font it just looked familiar – I couldn’t sort out why. Then I saw the photographs in the newspapers, and I was still unsure. I last saw my cousin when I was seven and he was seventeen. But his looks were distinctive and very much of my father’s family. He was red haired, grey eyed, thin faced. I thought him very handsome when I was seven. He was also kind, I mean to me, at that age.’ Julia bent her head to conceal the tears which she could no longer restrain. ‘I sent to my Wolverhampton cousins for confirmation. I know now that it was him.’

/>   There was silence, eventually broken by Caretaker. ‘It’s the severing of the head and placing it in the font which is so brutal, isn’t it? A sportive horror.’

  Theodora nodded. ‘Would you say, Ian, that the Church could produce someone capable of an act of that kind? Are we to look within the Church for those kind of murderous emotions?’

  Ian reflected. ‘The Church is certainly capable of hurting people deeply. At times it seems as though it may have been evolved to do just that.’ He looked across at Theodora as though seeking permission to continue.

  ‘You spoke of a moral landscape for murder,’ she said, ‘Could you expand on that for us?’

  ‘The focus of my own emotions,’ said Ian, ‘is not, as I think Julia’s is, my family, whom I have always been fortunate enough to be able to take for granted, but rather is it the Church, about which I’m unduly passionate. While I was at Cambridge, I began to follow a rule of life which I hoped would prepare me for the priesthood. When, later, I joined the Civil Service, I found it hard to follow that rule since I was constantly required to lie. I resigned and went to stay with Dhani’s family in Thailand. While I was there, I went for a time to a sangha, a Buddhist religious community. It would have been very easy for me to stay there for the rest of my life. Their rule is perfect and effective at the practical level, but I could see no way of passing its benefits on, of helping or involving others. I wanted salvation, you see, for all. It will be apparent to you that I have, in my way, the largest ambitions. Almost indeed, Messianic ones.’

  Theodora nodded. This was entirely typical of Ian, she felt. From these huge ambitions came both his weaknesses and his strengths. The clergy sensed it too, she suspected and, feeling the lack of a matching religious passion in themselves, edged nervously away from him. ‘When I returned to England,’ he continued, ‘I asked Bishop Thomas to recommend me for ordination to the priesthood. He had known my father for many years. He said that he would. I was not, however, accepted by the Board of Ministry. Instead I came to work as a layman at the diocesan office.’

  Ian stopped, and Theodora said gently, ‘I know you’re passionate about the Church, Ian, and I know you were deeply hurt by its rejection of you. But are there things nearer home, in our own diocese, which might help us to understand the murder of a priest?’

  Ian resumed. ‘When I had been here about six months I became aware of certain tensions both in the diocese and amongst the Cathedral clergy, the Chapter. It was not just the usual enmities and silly Trollopian rivalries of a narrow society living very much in each other’s pockets. Nor was it the traditional and risible gaps between the spiritual duties of the clergy and their worldly preoccupations. It seemed to me that there was some quite palpable fear, some terror, almost, loose amongst them.’

  ‘Whom is that terror affecting, do you think?’ Theodora asked quietly.

  ‘The Archdeacon is unreasonably frightened much of the time. I think, too, that Charles Wheeler’s bullying arrogance is a defence against some fear that he cannot face. But most of all I am aware of it in connection with the Bishop. It’s not just that he has withdrawn from the business of running a diocese, or that he walks abroad a great deal at night but is scarcely seen during the day, or that he often won’t accept phone calls. It is much more that he seems to be playing games. He sets the clergy against each other in rivalry for his favours. He selects “sons” – Gray was one such – and seems to seek the psychological satisfactions of their gratitude and deference. Whether this fits into the pattern of circumstances which brought about Gray’s death, I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ve wondered about the implications of the placing of the head in the font,’ Theodora said thoughtfully, ‘and what you say about the possibility of its being a symbolic gesture. It mocks by its obscenity. I wonder whether whoever did it was making a gesture in the direction of the Bishop, as if to say “This is your beloved son”.’

  ‘There is one further matter,’ Ian went on. ‘Each year, I have to prepare the accounts of our department’s affairs for the Diocesan Secretary. For the past two years I’ve felt that there was something odd in some of the accounts. This year I’m nearly certain that there’s been some money, not too much – about five thousand pounds – taken out of the system. I haven’t mentioned this to anyone and I’m not sure whether I’ve got enough evidence to make a case yet. But my feeling is that someone has had their hands in the till. Again, I don’t know if this has any bearing on the murder of Paul Gray, but it does seem to me to be a part of the general atmosphere of corruption and decay.’

  Caretaker came to an end. Theodora allowed him a few moments and then she said, gently, ‘There is, is there not, one further element? Between you and the Bishop?’

  Ian paused before answering and then said, ‘I knew the Bishop’s son, Thomas junior. Dhani and I both did. He was a year above me at school and at Cambridge. He was heavily into drugs by the time he left school and carried on at Cambridge.’ Ian’s voice was laden with pain. ‘I think I know the reason for his death and I think I could have stopped it. I also think Bishop Thomas knows this and does not, cannot, forgive me, as I do not forgive myself.’

  He stopped talking. The tiny river sounds came in through the open hatches. The light had quite gone now and they were bound together in the glow which came from the lantern above their heads.

  After a while Theodora said, ‘My own contribution here will be more circumstantial. If we want to find out who killed Paul Gray, and why, we need to focus both on his character and on the parish in which he served. My impression is that just before his death Paul Gray was under some sort of pressure. As you know I visited his widow last week and she seemed to hint at pressure coming from two areas: the youth leader Jefferson and Canon Wheeler. She was not precise as to the nature of Gray’s relationship with either. After I had seen her, I visited the church and found on the altar a candle bearing the arms of the Cathedral on its base. As Ian knows these candles are provided for the Cathedral’s use alone. They are expensive. Their numbers are known and supposedly accounted for by the vergers. Later, when I visited the vice–chairman of the PCC, who is also the vicar’s warden, he could give me no explanation of why the candle was there. But he did allow me to examine it and bring it away with me. I showed it to you this morning Ian. I think we are agreed, are we not, that it may be connected with the one which you and Julia found in the asylum out–buildings?’

  Theodora pressed on, ‘What the vicar’s warden also told me was that Paul had become more and more involved with the Youth Club and, in particular, with Jefferson, who had worked with him at Narborough. Jefferson is one of those people upon whom Church youth groups seem often to depend. He has contacts, access to halls, knew where there were vans for hire, cheap sports equipment, that sort of thing. I get the impression that the warden was impressed without actually liking the man. He said he was good particularly with the tough boys. “Charismatic” was the word he first used and later withdrew – apparently on the grounds that Jefferson’s personality, while it is undoubtedly attractive to teenagers, isn’t particularly pleasant. His last remark to me was that if there was any jiggery–pokery about candles he wouldn’t be at all surprised if Jefferson didn’t have a hand in it. I really don’t know, and the man certainly wasn’t telling, whether he had any hard evidence at all to connect Jefferson with the theft, if it was a theft, of candles from the Cathedral. And, if it was stolen, why should Paul Gray connive, if he did connive, by using it in his church?’

  ‘Is the candle at Paul’s church connected with the one Julia and I found at the asylum out–house? I mean they both had the Cathedral arms on them. What do you think, Dhani?’ asked Ian turning to his friend.

  ‘I wonder if perhaps there is some possibility of black magic which needed Cathedral candles.’

  ‘And would there be a connection, then, between the magic ritual and the murder of Paul, and placing his head in a font?’ asked Julia.

  ‘I suppose Jefferson could
be connected with a magic ritual which made use of Cathedral candles,’ Ian said speculatively.

  ‘Jefferson was on Canon Wheeler’s hit list,’ Julia said suddenly. Theodora raised a questioning eyebrow and Julia told Dhani and Theodora about the list of five names on the sheets which had fallen from Canon Wheeler’s copy of Crockford.

  ‘So we have five names on that list,’ said Dhani. ‘Paul Gray, Ian, Jefferson, Williams the verger, and Markham, the son of Cumbermound – your acquaintance Ian. What is their connection with each other and with Wheeler and with the murder and the two candles?’

  ‘Could Wheeler be involved with selling candles for use in black magic?’ asked Julia.

  ‘Oh come,’ Theodora murmured.

  ‘Wheeler certainly knew or suspected something about candles since he’s been questioning Williams about them,’ said Ian, recalling his unsatisfactory conversation with the Verger. ‘Though of course he might just have been making routine checks. Williams would certainly have access to candles,’ he continued. ‘I wonder if the line of candle leaks might not be from Williams to Jefferson to Paul. The question would then be: who knew how much en route? It seems a bit unlikely that Paul would use candles which he would know he had no right to use or that he would actually be involved in magic practices.’

  ‘Though Canon Wheeler apparently thought he had something on Paul. Enough to make his life a misery,’ Dhani said.

  ‘It sounds as though Wheeler was pursuing his old course of the row over the youth club at Narborough and trying to make out Paul’s part was more dishonourable than the Archdeacon and the Bishop said it was. “A Bishop’s favourite” were the words Wheeler wrote on the Crockford list,’ Theodora pointed out.

  ‘What can we do?’ asked Julia, suddenly tired. ‘I can’t believe that Paul was a black magician. I don’t really care if he was a homosexual – though I’d rather his taste were for adults. And I don’t want to think he was mean enough to pick up stolen candles from a crooked verger.’