And all its crooked members, thought Theodora. ‘Charles didn’t care for Ian and Ian did not care for Charles,’ she said. ‘That’s not a motive for murder.’
‘I need not remind you that I appointed Canon Wheeler to his canonry here.’
It would need the mind of a priest, Theodora thought, to make a connection between that remark and what they were talking about: Wheeler was a priest, so the Bishop would support him; Caretaker wasn’t so he wouldn’t. She made one last try.
‘Bishop, Ian is in difficulties and needs our,’ she took a breath, ‘your, support.’
The Bishop regarded her steadily giving no trace of having heard her. Theodora pressed on.
‘I wonder if you knew that Canon Wheeler was in financial difficulties?’
The Bishop gave a slight sigh of impatience. ‘I hardly think it proper for you to speculate on Canon Wheeler’s private affairs.’
Theodora stiffened at this cruelty. ‘The quarrel between Canon Wheeler and Ian was that Ian had discovered that there were funds missing from the appeals account. Ian felt that Canon Wheeler could help him to clear the matter up.’
‘I fail to understand you.’
‘Canon Wheeler had been transferring appeals funds to his own account.’
‘I find such a suggestion preposterous.’
‘What Canon Wheeler was doing, apparently,’ Theodora continued feigning calmness, ‘was transferring amounts from one account to another. Only bits got left off in the course of the transference. It was only possible, Ian says, because we haven’t had a full-time appeals secretary since Canon Wheeler dismissed the last man. And of course the Comptroller, as you know, recently died and the diocesan secretary has a sabbatical.’ She paused and then resumed. ‘It is possible, too, that Charles felt that what he was doing was obtaining a loan from the Church rather than actually stealing.’ That, thought, Theodora, had been Miss Coldharbour’s line when she had questioned her.
‘Supposing that Caretaker is right, which I do not suppose to be the case, why should Charles do such a thing?’
‘He had,’ said Theodora carefully, ‘rather a lot of calls on his resources.’
‘Hardly more than the rest of us,’ said the Bishop bitterly. Theodora had noticed this general attitude of senior clergy of drawing away their skirts when the vulgarity of money raised its head. Theodora restrained herself from pointing out to the Bishop that Canon Wheeler had lived like a nineteenth-century cleric. He had kept a considerable establishment, entertained in London as well as in Medewich. In his dress, his table, his cellar and his diversions, he had striven to recommend himself in every possible way as a candidate for a bishopric. Instead she said, ‘He had two households to support.’
‘I hardly think a cottage on the Cumbermound estate would be an excessive drain on his resources.’
‘Canon Wheeler supported a wife in Glasgow.’
For a second what might have been pain registered on the Bishop’s face. The saurian eyes glittered as they raked Theodora up and down. ‘I understood Canon Wheeler to be unmarried.’
‘He married when he was twenty two, a year before he came south and some six years before he entered the priesthood.’
‘You have proof?’
‘Yes,’ said Theodora bleakly.
‘Yes, I suppose so. But why not admit the marriage? We are not a celibate priesthood. I suppose he was married?’
‘Yes. He was married in a Glasgow registry office, his wife being a Roman Catholic’
‘That’s no bar. Rather the contrary nowadays,’ said the Bishop regretfully.
‘I understand,’ said Theodora, hating herself for saying this, ‘that Mrs Wheeler is not a woman who seeks the limelight. She has simple tastes.’ Mrs Gaskell would have done better Theodora thought. She also thought how much more comfortable she’d feel if she could sit down.
‘You mean Wheeler didn’t think her presentable,’ snapped the Bishop suddenly. ‘That’s absolute nonsense,’ he added, ‘these days.’
Theodora thought about it and decided that it had to be done. The Bishop wasn’t more self-deluding than many men but he certainly wasn’t less so. Moreover, his snobbery was renowned beyond the boundaries of the diocese. He had, too, been in office for a long time. It narrowed, thought Theodora sadly, their sympathies as well as their perspective. ‘Not such great nonsense for anyone ambitious for the highest offices in the Church, as I think Canon Wheeler might have been,’ she finally said.
She watched a flush spread over the parchment face as the significance of her remark went home, surprised to find how little pity she had for the Bishop as she went in deeper. She thought of all the people whose lives Wheeler had made miserable by his rough arrogance, his pleasure in humiliating, his enjoyment of silly small persecutions. He was your placeman she thought. You picked him and put him there and supported him. Your values infected him. Wheeler was terrified of departing from them or failing to meet them. The responsibility for Charles Wheeler is partly yours. He kept bad company.
It was almost as if the Bishop had read her thoughts. ‘He could always have come to me,’ he said, as though defending himself. ‘He should have come to me. I’d have helped.’
Charles was totally insecure morally, socially, intellectually and spiritually, were the words that sprang into Theodora’s head but she modified them into, ‘I think Canon Wheeler lacked confidence in himself and so did not, perhaps, at all points entirely trust his colleagues’ opinion of him.’
‘Faith,’ announced the Bishop, whether in summary of Wheeler’s lack or as a first-person exhortation, Theodora did not know.
‘What connection does all this have with his death?’ The Bishop’s voice had that slightly nasal bray which afflicted him when he had preached on too many occasions in a single day.
‘I hope you will believe,’ said Theodora formally, ‘that I offer you this information not simply to accuse Canon Wheeler. The point is that in two areas of his life Canon Wheeler was doing something out of role, things certain to generate their own tensions. They would bring him enemies and contacts which were far more likely to provide motives for violence, even murder, than any mere office feuding.’ As she said this Theodora was aware of a certain disingenuousness in her utterance. The bullying of hapless subordinates was one of a piece with depriving his wife of her proper place in society and with taking other people’s money to further his own ambitious showiness. But she let it rest.
The Bishop was clearly beginning to tire. His hands, like an old woman’s, were tapping restlessly on the arms of his chair. At that point the telephone rang. There was a minute’s pause whilst, presumably, the secretary in the office next door fielded the call. Theodora moved her weight from her right foot to her left, reclasped her sweating hands behind her and fixed her eye on the Cathedral tower outside the Bishop’s window. Finally, the buzzer rasped on the internal telephone on the Bishop’s desk. The Bishop fixed it with his eye, lifted his gaze to Theodora and dropped it back to the telephone.
Theodora stepped forward to the desk and lifted the receiver. ‘Bishop’s office. Theodora Braithwaite here.’
After a moment she raised her eyes to the Bishop and said, ‘It’s Superintendent Frost of Medewich CID. He is with Mr Caretaker in Canon Wheeler’s office. He wonders whether he could have a word with you. Should he come to you or would you find it possible to step across to St Manicus house?’
The Bishop glared at Theodora with perfect unfriendliness. At last, with some difficulty, he rose from his chair and reached for his stick. Theodora murmured into the telephone, ‘The Bishop will be with you shortly, Superintendent.’
With a smile that had much warmth in it she opened the door for him.
Inspector Tallboy’s heavies were just considering the problem of collapsing Ian Caretaker into the squad car outside the diocesan office when the Superintendent’s seven-year-old Ford swerved to a halt in front of it. There was a pause before the Superintendent got out. Tallboy, who had ap
peared on the steps of the office, hurried forward to greet his superior, in his eagerness pushing his face into the open window of the Ford.
‘Good morning, sir. We’ve just made the arrest.’
‘I feared you would have,’ said Frost dourly.
Tallboy’s heart sank, remembering Caretaker’s remarks about his career. Suddenly he felt the real unfairness of the world crowd in on him. ‘But you said …’ His voice was like a schoolboy’s, high with indignant self-justification.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Frost testily. ‘New information. We had a call from the girl, Miss Smith, and her chap, Mr Tambiah. What they had to tell us casts a rather different light on things. We’ve also got Jefferson but not yet Markham. I really can’t think why people, especially Mr Caretaker, didn’t come clean long ago.’ He fixed his codfish eye on Tallboy. ‘You couldn’t help it, I’m sure,’ he said unkindly.
Frost got out of the Ford and signalled to the two waiting PCs who released Ian’s arms and abandoned the struggle to fit him neatly into a space for which he was patently too tall. The Superintendent strolled in leisurely fashion across to the squad car and, leaning his elbow companionably on it, gazed up into Ian’s face several inches above his own.
‘Good morning, Mr Caretaker,’ he said genially. ‘And a very pleasant one it is too.’ He gestured in the direction of the scudding and overcast sky. Caretaker glowered at him.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, indeed. I wondered,’ he began elaborately, ‘if you could possibly spare us a moment of your valuable time.’ Ian was not disposed to help him out.
‘I thought I was under arrest.’
The Superintendent stroked his chin and ran his forefinger across the neat bristle of his moustache, a parody of the gesture of thinking. ‘Well, I suppose, technically. However, one or two things have cropped up fairly recently. Failure in communication.’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of Tallboy as though he were a species of out-of-order field telephone.
‘It would,’ he said winningly, ‘help us an awful lot if you could forget the arrest bit and join us in a little informal discussion.’
‘I’d like a solicitor,’ said Ian unforgivingly.
‘Round a table, as it were,’ wheedled the Superintendent. ‘We wouldn’t want a short-hand writer. In fact there wouldn’t be anyone else but me.’
Ian hesitated.
‘You, I imagine, might well like the Dean and the Archdeacon here and perhaps,’ he added, as though offering a special treat to a recalcitrant child at a tea table, ‘in time, the Bishop and Miss Braithwaite?’
Where?’ said Ian.
‘I think,’ said Frost, disguising his relief, ‘Canon Wheeler’s office would be appropriate.’
Frost marched, apparently without a tremor, to Wheeler’s chair and moved it slightly to one side. As he did so he glanced at the Masaccio copy and sucked his teeth appreciatively. ‘Lovely brushwork, very skilful copy, wouldn’t you say, Dean?’
The Dean nodded curtly. He looked tired after his night’s exertions. He was sure no good would be coming to the Church in the near future.
Ian took his usual bentwood chair in front of Canon Wheeler’s desk and leaned back. His head ached from last night’s fighting. He felt stiff all over and his longing for coffee was extreme. But, he told himself, there was now light at the end of the tunnel. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘it would save time if the Bishop and Miss Braithwaite were here.’
‘Ah, yes, of course.’ Frost was all compliance. He picked up the telephone.
They all gazed at the ceiling or out of the window or at the appalling picture of Marsyas. It felt like the end of the world, thought Ian. At last the sound of the Bishop’s stick could be heard on the stairs and the door opened. Everyone rose. The Bishop greeted no one and Frost was obviously not going to offer him his chair. Theodora and the Archdeacon came in together, wheeling another armchair forward and placing it opposite Frost.
‘Well now,’ said Frost, when they were all seated. ‘I understand Miss Smith and Mr Tambiah are safe, and the information they have is with me. It has some light to throw on certain parties concerned with the events of the last fortnight. However, I think, Mr Caretaker, it falls to you to start us off, since you are especially concerned with the death of Canon Wheeler.’
‘I’m not sure how much you know,’ said Ian to Frost. ‘Would you like to start by asking questions and I’ll do my best to answer them as fully as possible?’ His tone to Frost had softened. The man was no longer a bully exercising power, a superior claiming rank.
‘I wonder if we could get Canon Wheeler out of the way first. Could you put us straight about the events of the morning of his murder? Monday morning. Yesterday morning, in fact, though I’m sure it seems a long time ago to you. You came into the office earlier than usual?’
‘Yes, I was in by eight.’
‘Why?’
‘I had a difficult interview with Canon Wheeler ahead and I wanted to have all the facts prepared before confronting him.’
‘These facts concerned his use of certain Cathedral funds?’
‘Yes.’
‘When you came in at eight, you went straight to your office?’
Ian hesitated. But there was no longer any point in trying to conceal the fact which had probably led to his arrest. Best let everything come out and trust to Theodora to provide the missing bits. ‘No,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I entered by the back door which leads straight from the car park and came up the backstairs to the first-floor landing. Then I went into Canon Wheeler’s room.’
‘Why?’
‘I knew that somewhere Wheeler kept a file of his monetary transactions which would provide me with proof of his having had his hand in the till. And a motive for his actions.’
‘So you thought it permissible to enter and search your superior’s room while he was out and ferret amongst his private papers?’ said the Dean with immense distaste.
Ian blushed. All that he had feared, all that had kept him from broaching matters earlier, had come to pass and the result had been just as he expected: he had lost the Dean’s respect. The fact that Wheeler himself had not scrupled to search his colleagues’ rooms or that he might be guilty of fraud, did not for a moment excuse Ian’s conduct in the Dean’s gentlemanly eyes.
‘How did you know such information might be found in his room?’ the Superintendent asked in a neutral tone.
Theodora entered the conversation like a well-practised relay runner, suavely taking up the baton from the unhappy Ian. ‘The information came, I think I am right in saying’ – she glanced at Ian for confirmation – ‘from Miss Coldharbour, whom, I gather, you saw on Sunday night after the Medewich and Markham Agricultural Show.’
Ian nodded. ‘Yes. I went to see her after Julia and I had found the number plate of Paul Gray’s car in the stables at Cumbermound.’
‘Why should you suppose that Miss Coldharbour would know about Gray’s number plate?’ asked Frost judiciously.
‘I didn’t. I thought that Geoffrey Markham knew about the number plate and I further supposed that Markham’s connection with Gray would mean drugs.’ He glanced at the Bishop. ‘I’d found such a connection to hold in the past.’
Frost nodded. ‘Your connection was correct. What we have learnt from Mr Tambiah and Miss Smith suggests that Markham was bringing in large quantities of drugs from Holland in his boat, the Merlin. They were hidden in the bases of candles specially marked with the diocesan arms. These were being distributed by Jefferson.’
The Archdeacon frowned. ‘I would never have supposed it of Jefferson. We had a word with him, of course, after the affair at Narborough and I formed the impression that he was a remarkably upright man. Someone with a real, if rather narrow, moral concern.’
Frost nodded in agreement. ‘We’ve had an opportunity to question Jefferson and he is indeed a very odd sort of man. He’s not interested in money. One of the things he does in the course of his youth training sessions is
to institute his own private merit badge for character development. It’s part of a healthy mind in healthy body approach. He teaches combat techniques for the body and exposes them to the temptation of taking drugs to develop moral stamina. If they fall to the temptation they’ve failed. They aren’t competent to deal with life, in Jefferson’s opinion. It’s so bizarre that no one quite believed it when he tried it the first time round in Narborough. Hence the difficulty of pinning witnesses down and making out a case against him. Normal vice we can deal with; abnormal virtue is rather beyond us.’ Frost folded his arms and looked towards Ian again. The Bishop too turned his stony gaze on Ian.
Ian pressed on. ‘We knew, I mean Theodora and Julia and Dhani and I knew, that Canon Wheeler had a list of people on whom he was keeping a sort of file. Julia found it,’ Ian said defensively to the Dean, ‘by accident when she was waiting at the dinner party at Canon Wheeler’s last Friday night. The names on the list were Gray, Markham, Williams, Jefferson and my own. I’ve puzzled over the connections which might exist between them. The problem is, we don’t know when the list was made, the only thing I think we have in common is that we might all in our different ways have been able to afford Wheeler some of his particular sort of sport.’
‘Sport,’ said the Dean sharply.
‘He was a bully. He liked inspiring fear. If I’m honest I feared him. It’s irrational, as these things are, but I did. I think it’s possible the list was nothing more than Wheeler’s game book.’
The Bishop looked with distaste at Ian who, however, continued. ‘When I heard Markham’s name was on the list, I began to recall his past history. I wondered what the relationship was between Wheeler and Markham. I wondered whether Wheeler was implicated in the drugs ring. After all, he had a cottage on the Cumbermound estate. I thought the person who knew most about Canon Wheeler and his finances was Rosamund Coldharbour. If Wheeler was supplementing his income either by running drugs or blackmailing someone else for running them, she’d know. So I went to see her. I think Theodora knows what I found.’
Clerical Errors Page 18