Holy Disorders

by Edmund Crispin

  ‘I filled it this morning, and I think I overdid it.’ Geoffrey shook the lighter; quantities of fluid splashed on to the floor. ‘I’ll give it one more try.’

  The resultant sheet of flame nearly took their faces off. And it was as the tall man was dubiously approaching it with his cigarette that the other thing happened.

  There were leading off from the bar three doors which gave access to small private rooms where it was possible for a few people to drink in relative privacy. From behind one of these, unnerving sounds were suddenly heard – tremendous crashes, over-turning of furniture, curses, grunts, and the noise of rapid movement and heavy breathing; then renewed crashes. The bar listened and gaped in stupefaction. Then the man who had asked Geoffrey for a light strode with an air of authority to the door and flung it open. Geoffrey followed him. The others crowded behind.

  At first nothing could be seen but a small room with the furniture somewhat disarranged. From an angle, however, sounds of intense activity could be heard, and someone swearing in several languages. Geoffrey and the tall man went in. The crowd behind them stood goggle-eyed with hushed expectancy.

  The bagarre, when discovered, was not precisely what had been expected. On his knees in a corner was a tall, lanky man. In one hand he held a large glass of whisky, in the other a walking-stick, with which he prodded at some small, mobile object hovering above the floor. This was shortly revealed to be a common housefly, avoiding the attacks with ease and evident enjoyment. How long this scene might have continued it is impossible to say. But the fly, tiring of the amusement, presently took wing and prepared to depart. Its assailant, plainly maddened by this unexpected manoeuvre, aimed the contents of his glass at it, and missed. The fly flew at top speed towards his nose, made impact, went into reverse, and then with what even to the unimaginative was manifestly a shriek of delight, made off through the window.

  The man climbed tranquilly to his feet, dusting his knees in a conventional manner. Dark hair, ineffectually plastered down with water, stuck out in spikes from the back of his head. His cheeks glowed like apples, giving evidence of an almost intolerable health and high spirits. Despite the warmth of the evening, he was muffled in an enormous raincoat, and had on an extraordinary hat.

  ‘Good God!’ said Geoffrey with deep feeling.

  Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, gazed placidly about him. ‘The trouble about flies,’ he said without preliminary, ‘is that they never learn. You’d think that if you were as small as that, and landed on an animate object of immense size which heaved and banged and shouted at you, you’d go away and shut yourself up in a cupboard for ever. But not flies. They just circle round and come back again. It’s the same with windows. Generations of flies have batted themselves silly against windows without ever discovering that you can’t get through them.’

  The inhabitants of the bar had returned with indifference to their former stations. The tall man who had asked Geoffrey for a light said to Fen:

  ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere, sir. No one seemed to know what had become of you.’

  Fen nodded vaguely. ‘Inspector Garratt, isn’t it? More about Brooks?’

  Geoffrey, suppressing his annoyance with difficulty, said: ‘And I’m Geoffrey Vintner.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Fen.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to welcome me?’

  ‘Oh? Oh?’ said Fen. ‘And what can I do for you?’

  ‘You asked me down here to play the services.’

  ‘Oh, did I? Did I?’ said Fen. ‘I thought I’d asked old Raikes, from St Christopher’s. Not that he’d have been any good,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘He’s been bedridden for years.’

  Geoffrey sat down, speechless with fury. ‘To think I came all the way down here, getting myself attacked three times on the way –’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’ asked the Inspector, turning to him sharply.

  ‘Attacked.’

  Fen groaned. ‘More complication. And I came down here for a peaceful holiday. Well, let’s get some drinks and have it all out,’

  They had it all out. First the Inspector, who gave a bare outline of the facts about Brooks’ murder, as Geoffrey had heard them, and then Geoffrey, who gave a much less bare – in fact, a somewhat embroidered – account of the attacks on himself. He felt this to be justified by the unsatisfactory, and essentially unconvincing, nature of these attacks. Even so, they didn’t seem greatly to perturb Fen and the Inspector, which annoyed Geoffrey considerably.

  ‘I shall help,’ said Fen in a determined manner when Geoffrey finally fell silent.

  ‘Good,’ said the Inspector. ‘The Yard warned us we shouldn’t be able to stop you.’ Fen glared. ‘I think they still remember that business at Caxton’s Folly, before the war.’ ‘Ah,’ put in Fen complacently. ‘Caxton’s Folly. That was a case, if you like.’ A thought suddenly disturbed him. ‘The Yard?’ he added abruptly. ‘You haven’t handed over to them?’

  The Inspector sighed. ‘We haven’t made much progress on our own, sir. And the death of Brooks this afternoon has made things worse, not better. Oh, we’ve questioned everyone within reach, you can be sure of that – though not a second time, of course, since Brooks was killed. That remains to be done.’ He nodded gloomily, as a general surveying a peculiarly unsuitable terrain before battle. ‘But what’s the use? We don’t even know what sort of questions to ask. Brooks hadn’t an enemy in the world – our only pointer is this improbable something he seems to have seen. So – the Chief Constable got on to the Yard. I believe they were going to send down one of their best men – fellow called Appleby –’

  ‘Appleby! Appleby!’ howled Fen indignantly. ‘What do they want with Appleby when I’m here?’ He calmed down slightly. ‘I admit,’ he said, ‘that he’s very good – very good,’ he ended gloomily. ‘But I don’t see –’

  With an effort, Geoffrey leaned forward, hoping thereby to produce an appearance of emphasis. ‘My dear Gervase: surely in a matter as serious as murder, anyone who can help –’

  ‘Don’t preach at me,’ said Fen peevishly.

  ‘Well, we have a free hand for a day or so,’ continued the Inspector, regardless of interruptions. ‘If we can’t discover something by then, it’ll have to be the Yard.’

  ‘Of course we can discover something,’ said Fen magnificently. He paused in some perplexity. ‘But what? The thing divides itself into three problems, doesn’t it? First, the attacks on Geoffrey here; second, the attack on Brooks in the cathedral; and third, the murder of Brooks. We might do worse than to take them separately and see what we can make of each.’ He considered. ‘You, Geoffrey, were attacked by three different people – all pretty certainly hired thugs. I wonder what happened to the fellow in the store? Do you think there’s any chance of his having got away?’ He turned to the Inspector. ‘You haven’t heard anything, I suppose?’

  The Inspector shook his head. ‘No reason why the London people should think it had anything to do with us. But I can ring up and find out.’ He made a note on a grubby envelope.

  ‘So much for that,’ said Fen. ‘Not much use trying to trace the other two men. What happened to the case that was dropped on you, Geoffrey?’

  ‘It was left in the train, I think. Yes, I’m sure it was.’

  ‘There might be prints,’ said the Inspector. ‘The man who tried to do you in was probably an old lag we’ve got on record somewhere. Not that I expect it’d do much good if we did pick him up. He wouldn’t know much about it. Still, I’ll try and get hold of the case. Routine, you know. “The police may not have the dash and brilliance of the amateur investigator, but it is only by their patient and methodical investigation of the smallest details that the criminal etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”’ He fished out his envelope and made another note on it. ‘The 5.43 in here, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Then there were the two threatening letters,’ Fen went on. ‘Any idea as to why anyone should want to
stop you coming here?’

  ‘I think,’ said Geoffrey, brazenly plagiarizing, ‘that the whole thing was probably a blind to conceal the real reason for the attack on Brooks – to concentrate our attention on the fact that it was organists who were being attacked –’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Fen interposed rudely. ‘You don’t go to all that elaborate trouble just to cover up.’ He was prone to slightly out-of-date Americanisms. ‘Why not the obvious explanation – that they didn’t want anyone playing the organ for two or three days?’

  ‘That’s silly.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Fen irritably. ‘Look here. It’s pretty obvious that Brooks saw something in that cathedral which incriminated somebody. Suppose it was somehow connected with the organ. Brooks sees it, they know he’s seen it, and they try to bump him off.’ (Here Geoffrey gave a feeble moan of protest.) ‘Well and good. They imagine they’ve succeeded, and that they’re safe. Then next morning they get a nasty shock when they find that Brooks is still alive, and quite capable of blowing the works.’ (Geoffrey moaned again.) ‘So they make a second attempt, and this time they succeed. But they realize everyone will know by now that there’s something of importance hidden in the cathedral (if Brooks had been found dead, no one need have guessed), and they want to get it away. Difficulty the first: the cathedral is well guarded’ – Fen glanced at the Inspector, who nodded – ‘and no unauthorized person can get in except when it’s open for services. Difficulty the second: they want to get at the organ-loft, or thereabouts, and that, despite the demise of Brooks, will during services be occupied – by one Geoffrey Vintner, quite publicly summoned for the purpose. Moral: put Mr Vintner out of action, and keep the organ-loft clear.’

  ‘It sounds plausible,’ said the Inspector. ‘In fact, it’s the only explanation I can think of.’ (‘You didn’t think of it,’ muttered Fen. ‘I did.’) ‘But’ – he shrugged helplessly – ‘what is this mysterious something?’

  ‘Presumably you’ve had the place searched?’

  ‘It’s been searched all right,’ said the Inspector grimly. ‘No results, of course – but then, we’d no idea what we were looking for. We did look in the works of the organ’ – (‘Works,’ said Geoffrey faintly) – ‘but…well, there was nothing that we could see.’

  ‘Tombs?’ suggested Fen.

  ‘We didn’t open them, of course. But then neither, one imagines, did Brooks.’

  Geoffrey intervened. ‘You say no unauthorized person has been able to get in, except at service times, since Brooks was found. Presumably that wouldn’t include the clergy?’

  ‘The gentlemen in Holy Orders? No, sir, But you can be sure that whenever they had occasion to go in, we kept an unobtrusive eye on them.’

  ‘Since the cathedral is under suspicion,’ said Fen, ‘presumably its sutlers are under suspicion as well.’

  ‘Exactly, sir. And that makes it more difficult. It’s very awkward, having to try and pry into a canon.’ The bizarre effect of his phraseology startled the Inspector, and he was silent for a moment. ‘Well, what now?’

  ‘The second problem,’ said Fen, ‘is the attack on Brooks in the cathedral. Any leads?’

  ‘Pretty well nothing. He was knocked out and given an injection of atropine – intravenally, in the left forearm.’

  Fen interrupted: ‘I thought atropine was a soporific.’

  ‘No, it’s an irritant – aphrodisiac – no, not that; what’s the word I want?’

  ‘Was it a fatal dose?’ Fen asked.

  ‘A fifth of a grain. It should have been fatal, but the action of these drugs still isn’t properly understood. A sixteenth of a grain’s generally given as the maximum safe dose. They diagnosed it pretty soon – lack of perspiration and saliva, and so on – and treated him with tannic acid, morphine, ether, caffein – everything they had. He would have recovered.’ The Inspector’s voice was for a moment oddly shaken; Geoffrey suddenly realized the heavy responsibility of the man, and saw that it had told on him.

  ‘You didn’t find the hypodermic, of course?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It could be quite small?’

  ‘That would depend on the solution. Atropine sulphate’s soluble in the proportions one to three in ninety per cent alcohol; one to five hundred in water. But even so, it could have been tiny.’

  Fen mused, fidgeting slightly and shuffling his feet; he finished his whisky and pressed a plainly inoperative bell to summon more. ‘An odd method of murder. Gunshot, of course, would be too noisy – but a knife…or strangulation, or –? Messy, all of them. A woman’s crime, perhaps. Or a man with a womanish mind.’ He pressed the bell again; it fell off the wall with a clatter. He regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, and then turned to the Inspector. ‘Would atropine be difficult to get?’

  ‘I suppose so. Don’t really know.’

  ‘If you’re an inspector,’ said Fen, ‘what do you inspect? Tickets?’ He laughed uproariously. The others regarded him coldly. When he had finished, the Inspector said: ‘If you got it at a chemist’s, it would have to go on the poison register, of course. As far as the local chemists are concerned, we’ve been into all that already, and there’s nothing in the least suspicious. We can’t investigate every poison-book in the country, and besides, I’m pretty sure we’re not dealing with a complete lunatic – not in that sense, anyway,’ he added reflectively. ‘No, there’s nothing to be got from that angle, I’m certain. The knock Brooks got on the head was the usual blunt instrument, one supposes – scientifically placed, to require the minimum of strength; the whole thing suggests medical knowledge. Incidentally, it suggests premeditation as well. People don’t go about carrying loaded hypodermics the way they do guns.’

  Geoffrey proffered an idea at this point, without much confidence. ‘Perhaps Brooks already knew that something was going on, and they knew he knew, and decided to silence him once and for all after the choir-practice.’

  Fen nodded approval. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Means? Motive? Opportunity?’

  ‘Motive,’ said the Inspector heavily. ‘Can we define a little?’ As it was evident that both Geoffrey and Fen were ready to define a great deal, and the question had been only rhetorically intended, he hastened to add: ‘The only clue we have is Brooks’ ravings – when he was found by the Verger opening the church in the morning –’ He stopped abruptly. ‘By the way, you’d like to question the Verger, I suppose?’

  ‘No,’ said Fen.

  ‘Ah,’ the Inspector replied unhappily. ‘Well, then. He said a good deal then, and later, when we got him to the hospital, and we got most of it down. A lot of it obviously had nothing to do with the matter in hand – he had some fancies, I can tell you, about that shameless hussy Helen Dukes in the Post Office –’

  ‘Post Office, Post Office,’ said Fen. ‘What are we listening to a lot of stuff about the Post Office for?’

  ‘And then naturally there were worries about the cathedral music,’ the Inspector went on unperturbed, ‘uppermost in his mind. It seems there’d been a quarrel with the Cantoris Bass over a solo – but that hardly seems to be a motive.’

  Fen heaved his long, lanky body irritably about in his chair, and fidgeted more than ever. ‘When are we going to get to the point?’ he grumbled.

  ‘Finally, there’s the few things he said about the cathedral itself. They seemed to cost him a lot of pain and fright, but they don’t amount to much. You remember that passage in The Moonstone where What’s-his-name fills in the blanks of the old doctor’s ravings to make a piece of beautifully grammatical English? Never seemed plausible to me: delirium doesn’t work like that. The one flaw, I always think, in an otherwise excellent novel, though as detective writing I consider it’s greatly overrated, like Poe’s stories –’

  ‘Oh, get on,’ said Fen. ‘What did Brooks say, anyway?’

  The Inspector paused; then he took another envelope from his pocket. ‘Why, sir, this was the burden of it.’ He read aloud:

  ‘Wires
. Man hanging – rope. Slab of tomb moved.’

  There was a brief silence. Geoffrey remembered the circumstances in which he had first heard those words; they affected him hardly less now. ‘An empty cathedral isn’t a good place to be in all night’ – even for the unimaginative. He remembered some words read in a story long ago: ‘In his unenlightened days he had read of meetings in such places which even now would hardly bear thinking of.’ And even if, as it seemed, the encounter had been material, in such surroundings it might well have shaken a man of strong nerves. This Geoffrey said.

  Fen nodded. He appeared unexpectedly gloomy, but those who knew him well would have recognized this as a sign that certain things were becoming clear to him. He said nothing, but collected their glasses, and after a further glance at the offending bell-push, departed to get another round of drinks. Returning, he banged the glasses down on the table, sat down heavily, and said: ‘Well?’

  The Inspector shrugged. ‘Night thoughts…’ he murmured dubiously.

  Fen drew in his breath sharply. ‘It is always my fate,’ he said, ‘to be involved with literary policemen…’ He waved his glass in a perfunctory and graceless toast, took a large mouthful of whisky, choked slightly, and went on in tones of bitter complaint: ‘Why does no one ever take things literally…wires, radio, electricity’ – he glared at the defunct apparatus on the floor – ‘bell-pushes? Hanging man – rope: men can hang from rope otherwise than by the neck; they can climb up and down it with definite and possibly criminal purposes in view. Slab of tomb moved: active or passive? Moved of its own accord, or had been moved?’ He paused. ‘It seems fairly plain as far as it goes. And what part of the cathedral is inaccessible except by climbing a rope – no staircase?’

  The Inspector’s eyes shone with sudden comprehension; he half rose. Fen nodded.

  ‘Exactly. The Bishop’s Gallery.’