by Guy N Smith
“You mean he walked in there, made sure that nobody was looking, and tucked it under his raincoat. Then he surreptitiously slipped the supervisor a handful of notes on the way out?”
“You’re being flippant,” she snapped. “No, not quite like that, but he phoned up one morning, said he’d like to buy the painting and would they have it wrapped up for him to collect.”
“A lot of people would do that, even for a still life painting.”
“Except that he slunk into the gallery, pretended to be viewing the exhibition until the place was empty, and then he made a beeline for the desk, his cheque already made out, grabbed the parcel, and virtually ran out into the street. Apparently, so Miss Jeavons tells me, his face was as red as a beetroot.”
“He probably just collects artwork.” Frame returned to his newspaper. “Just as Corms’s wife might have a legitimate reason for calling on friend Norman. Perhaps she’s doing secretarial work for him. You ladies have got too much time on your hands and you’ve got dirty minds.”
“You’re impossible, Rupert.”
“Maybe. Where’s Adrian?”
“I’m not sure.” Her voice trembled. “Somewhere in town with his mates, I guess. Smoking pot or getting drunk with Michael Corms. Or starting a fight. Doubtless the police will give us an update on his movements. Oh, Rupert, if only you’d spend more time with Adrian instead of with Bach and Mendelssohn.”
“Teenagers don’t want their father hanging around with them.”
“Young boys do. That’s the root of Adrian’s trouble, Rupert, he never had a father because you were always practising or rehearsing or whatever. That’s why he’s like he is now!” Her voice rose to a shrill crescendo.
“Perhaps now you can see why I don’t stay at home more.” Rupert Frame rose to his feet, tossed his paper to one side. “Maybe it’s the same for Michael Corms—who knows? I’m going to the Cathedral, I’ll see you later.”
“I’ll be asleep in bed,” she called after him. “And I wouldn’t miss you if you never came home!”
Which, Rupert Frame thought as he let himself out of the front door, was not a nice thing for a wife to say to her husband. Suppose he had a sudden heart attack and dropped dead? She would regret those words for the rest of her life.
But he wasn’t going to have a heart attack. The Festival was getting closer daily, they could not manage without him. Nevertheless, he experienced a twinge of guilt; Philippa was right, he had not been the best of fathers to their wayward son.
* * *
Rupert Frame was far from happy with his performance. Even in a locked and empty cathedral, his main critic was present. Himself. And he was a perfectionist.
Tonight he could not seem to get into the necessary mood. He had struggled for over an hour with Messiaen’s set of nine meditations of La Nativité du Seigneur. They eluded him, his mood failed to harmonise with them.
He took a breather, leaned on the balcony looking down the nave towards the west doors. Rows of pews, in the shadows one could almost imagine that they were filled with a discerning audience. Not a congregation; there was a difference. Faceless forms that sat in silence, did not applaud his performance, because that was forbidden in the Cathedral. Heads that should have nodded their approval remained motionless.
You are stupid, he told himself, there is nobody out there. Just shadows. And tombs and monuments to the long dead.
Everybody here except himself was dead.
He was edgy. Frightened. Each night the fear came to plague him, but still he came back here.
There was nobody there except the dead.
He took a deep breath, thought that he might be getting one of his rare asthma attacks. If so, it would pass, they were only mild. A kind of shallow breathing when you fought to fill your lungs. It was stuffy in here.
He tried to remember whom the duty Verger was tonight. He did not think it was Needes; it was probably Lumby. Lumby was a likeable fool; not very intelligent, but he managed to do the job. A big man, overweight, always smiling with a set of buck teeth. Your classic fool: if there was anything to trip over, Lumby would fall over it. He tried to balance a pile of hymn books, tiptoed with gargantuan steps that echoed throughout this vast place, dropped the lot with a clatter. Homer chided him, bullied him, but Lumby still grinned.
Rupert was sure that Lumby was on night duty; if he really wanted to know, he only had to walk down to the desk by the west doors and check the roster in Homer’s notebook. But it didn’t really matter.
Because the organist was afraid to walk down the aisle with all those people watching him. Even if they weren’t there, he did not want to draw attention to himself.
You’re not a proper father, Rupert. You neglected your son when he needed you most. Shut up, Pip, you’re the last person I need here.
He returned to the organ, consulted his watch by the small strip light. 9.45. He wasn’t going home yet. Why should he? Michael Corms would be getting steadily drunk whilst his wife was being unfaithful to him. Drinkwater would be entertaining choirboys in his dowdy flat. Clay would be gazing lustfully upon his nude painting; why didn’t he save himself the money and go buy a soft porn mag from the top shelf in the newsagents? And Feiffer would be busy writing letters of complaint to the Dean and Chapter and walking down to the bottom of the Close to post them.
Adrian would probably be in custody on a drugs, drink or assault charge. Which was yet another reason for not going home.
And what was Philippa doing? Rupert had never given much thought to what she did whilst he was out. It was intriguing because he didn’t really know what she did in the evenings. She might even be having an affair, like Corms’s wife.
The organist almost burst into laughter at the idea. Oh Jesus, I’d love to see her, to see if she had the guts to go with another man. Her sharp mouth shaping up for a kiss, her sagging breasts being fondled, her straight legs with their thick ankles stretched wide. She’s probably still got her ankle socks on; she kept a pair to wear in bed on winter nights.
The crazy vision came and went; he found he could breathe easier afterwards. Light relief, the relaxing of tension. He would not have minded if she had a lover because it might have made her normal. It’s your fault that Adrian’s like he is, Pip, not mine. Because you were always trying to make him something he wasn’t. You’re a hypocrite.
I’m what I am, and nothing will change that, I’m married to my organ, I’ll stay with it all night if I want. Yes, I’ll have an affair with it.
You’ve been having an affair with it for years, Rupert. Like Herbert Poppleton did. And look what happened to him.
Rupert glanced along the balcony towards the top of the steps. There was nobody there. Or rather, it was too dark to see anybody if they were there.
He gave up on Messiaen. Bach was more suited to his present mood. He began to play Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
That was better, decidedly better. He could almost find the mood. Almost, but not quite. He was too edgy.
He thought somebody coughed down below, but he could not be sure because the organ strains had not quite died away, lingered up in the roof. When they were finally gone, only silence remained. And that was worse.
“Is that you, Lumby?” A whisper that travelled down past the choir stalls and into the presbytery, faded away in the Lady Chapel.
There was no answer.
Lumby was slightly deaf, Rupert vaguely remembered. The other probably had not heard. Or it might be Homer creeping around like a ghoul again. The Head Verger would not reply—he would slink up the steps and onto the balcony, keep to the shadows. Then he would cough so that you jumped. I’m sorry, sir, did I startle you?
“Homer?”
Again, no answer. Rupert found himself listening for stealthy footfalls, but he heard none.
It was time to be going home. No, damn it, it wasn’t. Corms would still be drinking, the assistant organist’s wife would be fornicating, and Feiffer would be on his tenth let
ter of the evening. Adrian would be in a police cell. And Philippa might just be committing adultery.
Rupert didn’t want to spoil that.
Somebody was coming up the steps to the organ loft.
Rupert heard them this time, he didn’t imagine it. A scuffing of shoe leather, a rustle of loose clothing.
He wanted to shout out, ‘Who’s there? Is that you, Homer?’ but the words would not come. Inside his head, La Nativité du Seigneur suddenly came right and he wondered why he had had trouble with it before.
There was a shape on the balcony that looked vaguely like a man. It might have been a carved statue that had moved out of place; in the deep gloom it could have been anything or nothing.
Frame froze at the organ. His hands wanted to play; his legs were suddenly too weak to run. He asked again if it was Homer, but the question remained inside his head, the words jammed in his throat. He could smell his own sweat.
Whoever it was moved closer, seemed to shuffle, always keeping to the shadows. An indeterminable shape: if it was tall, it stooped; if it was short, it stretched up, stood on the balls of its feet. Faceless, sexless, a being that might not even have been human.
Now it was within reach, but it did not stretch out a hand. It just stood there watching. If it had eyes with which to see.
“It is you, isn’t it, Homer?” The words came out at last, belated and shaking.
Of course it was Homer. It had to be; it could not be anybody else. Homer was always creeping about the Cathedral, watching. Coughing meaningfully.
The other cleared his throat.
“I’m just leaving, Homer. I’m going home this very minute.” Just in case you think I’m staying.
Rupert Frame stood up. His legs almost crumpled under him, he had to hold on to the organ for support. He felt suddenly faint; fear and the constriction of the blood in his legs caused him to lose his balance. He fell backwards, sat on the organ, thighs wide and defenceless.
A sudden rush of piped music, an expellation that might have been Messiaen or Bach being released in a tuneless roar that drowned his screams as the knife blade plunged deep into his soft flesh.
The attacker gouged and slashed until he was finished. Then, almost lovingly, he cleaned the bloodied blade on a strip of torn trouser and calmly retraced his steps down below.
His footsteps echoed as he walked towards the north transept and let himself out into the balmy night.
7
Ford had long learned by experience that one should let a case like this roll. In the early stages you went with the flow, let routine procedures take their course. You kept an open mind, did not jump to conclusions. You didn’t try to tell anybody how to do their job even if you thought they were doing it wrong; you kept your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut. If you had any hunches, you shelved them, played them later when the dust had settled.
Detective Sergeant Jason Ford always had the feeling that he was a marked man with the CID, something that might have bordered on a persecution complex if he had not kept it under control. He would always be remembered as an ex-vice squad man, his sideways move to the CID security regarded as a demotion. Because he had not ‘made it,’ he’d had his ass kicked out all the way down to Rykneld Street. Because you never got credit below the rank of Chief Inspector; that had been Ford’s mistake, he had, and still was, paying the price for it.
That had been back in the days when Dawson was Chief of Vice. Ford had trusted Dawson—another mistake. When you played a gut feeling, closed the rulebook, you put everything on the line. If you were wrong, they used you as a scapegoat. If you were right … Dawson had still used him, moved him to save embarrassment. The credit went to the department, the top man.
“You’d better work on the Frame case.” Detective Chief Inspector Borman handed Ford a file. “Privately, we’re linking it to the Poppleton murder, but that’s confidential at the moment.”
Jason Ford nodded. He detected an echo of Detective Chief Superintendent Anson’s Directive: Borman was only one more in the pecking order. It was widely rumoured that the chief inspector had his sights on the top job, which made him a dangerous man when you were subordinate to him.
Ford flicked through the file; there was a day’s reading here. All routine, but you had to ensure that you did not waste time going over ground already covered. A list of interviews already conducted; all negative.
“Take it and study it, Sergeant. Don’t waste time browsing it here.”
Ford was small and stocky, his ruddy complexion added to his lived-in features; aggressive if the need arose, a man of few words otherwise. His eyes never revealed his thoughts. His dark hair was cropped short and at 39 it was difficult to guess his age accurately, give or take five years either way.
His dedication to duty had not lessened even after the Black Mantis case when Dawson had had him transferred to CID; they could have put him back in uniform. At least he’d got a wife out of that investigation: WPC Brenda Braithwaite. Things might have been different without her. Now she was out of the force and he was still in it. He was not one to dwell on the past, what might or might not have been.
“I’ll crack on,” he stood up, met Borman’s gaze and held it until the other averted his eyes.
“Best of luck, Sergeant.” For us, not for you. “I’ll leave it to you how you tackle it.” So that we have somebody to blame if anything goes wrong.
“I’ll start at the roots.” Ford’s voice was low, scarcely audible. In case you think I’ve gone to Malvern for the bracing air and the spa water.
“Up to you.” Borman returned to a bulky file on his desk, only putting on his glasses after the door had closed behind Ford.
* * *
It was scorching hot in Malvern. Like it was everywhere else this summer. Which might have induced lethargy in anybody else but Jason Ford.
He checked with Inspector Coleorton, it was only courtesy when you were off your own patch; Poppleton was Malvern’s pigeon, but he could be Lichfield’s, too.
Ford had no trouble finding the murder scene; there were a group of sightseers there, a family of two generations and a loud-mouthed teenager who might have been the daughter’s boyfriend. They had been poking about in the undergrowth, maybe looking for souvenirs. If there had been anything to find, Scene of Crime would have found it first. Ghouls came here most days; the mutilation had made the front page of the tabloids.
“That’s where they found the bugger.” The youth slashed at some gorse with a stick he had broken off a tree. “Just there, I recognise it from the picture in the papers. Blimey, whoever did it has to be a sicko, he’d cut off the old boy’s …”
“Malcolm!” the auburn-haired girl interrupted him, glanced in the direction of her parents.
“I thought we were going on up to the Roman Camp.” A tall, grey-haired man attempted to create a diversion.
”Yes, I’d like to go there,” a woman with a squeaky voice added. “This place gives me the creeps. Oh, there’s somebody else coming now. Why on earth anybody should want to see the place where a man was murdered beats me.”
“Good afternoon.” Ford gave a taciturn smile; he was not in the habit of engaging in idle banter with strangers. Except in the course of business. “I take it this is the place, then?”
“Too right it is!” There was a leer on the other’s acne-covered features, his narrowed eyes sized up Ford. “But there’s ‘undreds bin ‘ere before us, you only got to see ‘ow the undergrowth’s trampled down to know that. You won’t find anything, we’ve already looked.”
“He has,” the older woman put in quickly.
“Wonder what they wanted to do that to an old guy for,” Ford remarked casually. Everybody’s opinion counted. Sometimes, not very often, out of the mouths of thickos came forth inspiration.
“’E was an organist, weren’t ‘e?”
“I believe he was, now that you come to mention it.”
“Played religious music and the like.”
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“I guess so.”
“Well, that’s why ‘e was done, it’s common sense, ain’t it?”
“Because people don’t like religious organ music?” Ford’s eyebrows were raised. “I read that only two percent of the population go to church these days.”
“The fanatics all go. They ‘ave to. You take these foreigners with their musks, or whatever they call ‘em. And if anybody offends ‘em, then they put the sentence of death on ‘im and the poor guy goes into hiding, in fear of ‘is life.”
“I see.” Ford nodded with as much solemnity as he could muster. “Except that the murdered man was a Church of England organist, played in a cathedral.”
“So what? The bigger you are, the more you offend. You take it from me, mister, ‘e’d fell foul of someone, offended ‘em. ‘E thought ‘e could ‘ide away out ’ere in the country but they found ‘im, did for ‘im. I mean, it weren’t no ordinary murder, was it? They cut ‘is whatsit off to symbolise their own religion.”
“Maybe they were eunuchs,” Ford suggested.
“You-whats?”
“Never mind.” Ford sauntered away. It was an interesting theory, far-fetched as it was. Every religion had its maniacs.
Ford had seen all he needed to see; the murder scene was firmly etched in his photographic memory. It might or might not serve a purpose, but he liked to know just where Herbert Poppleton had died.
* * *
“Did you get on with Mr Frame?”
Ford leaned on the railings by the Minster Pool, watched the ducks squabbling over a floating crust of soggy bread. He barely glanced at the boy by his side, fifteen-year-olds reacted in different ways to police questioning; you had to put them at their ease, gain their confidence. He could not have achieved that within the school precincts.
“He was all right so long as you did your best.” Dick Pritchard-Williams screwed up his freckled face. “Muck about and he’d give you what for. He was neurotic, but I suppose that was because of his own son. Adrian was an embarrassment to his parents.”