Holy Disorders

by Edmund Crispin

  Geoffrey gazed uncomprehendingly. ‘The what?’

  Fen turned to him. ‘Of course. You don’t know the cathedral well. The organ-loft is high up over the Decani choir-stalls, on the south side of the chancel. From it a narrow gallery runs west, towards the nave, as far as the big column where the south transept begins; it can’t be entered from that end. There are only two ways into it: first, from the organ-loft, an entrance which has been bricked up since the eighteenth century; and second, by a spiral staircase which leads down to a small room and then to an outside door, also walled up. In the small room lies the body of John Thurston, Bishop from 1688 to 1705, and the last of the witch-hunters – hence the name of the gallery above it. So apart from hauling down a lot of brick and plaster there’s no way in except over the edge of the gallery.’ He turned to the Inspector. ‘I suppose the brick and plaster hadn’t been tampered with?’

  The Inspector shook his head; an indefinable sense of uneasiness was growing within him. ‘That was one of the likeliest places. No, it hadn’t been touched – and it’s quite impossible to disguise the traces of a thing like that if anyone’s looking for it. Not that it wouldn’t be fairly easy to burrow through that brick partition from the organ-loft: it’s thin, and it looks as if it was pretty hastily put up in the first place. But as to this rope business. I admit no one could get up and down from that gallery except by a rope – there’s that padlocked wall tomb of St Ephraim underneath, and it doesn’t project, so there’s no foothold anywhere; nor on the columns at either side – they’re slippery as glass. But how are you going to get your rope attached in the first place, before you begin climbing up it?’

  Fen snorted contemptuously, and gulped his whisky. ‘This is filthy stuff,’ he said; and then: ‘An expert lassoist with a light hemp rope could do it easily. There’s a row of crockets or something, along the gallery rail.’

  ‘But when you’ve got down again,’ the Inspector persisted, ‘you have to leave the rope hanging there, where someone will notice it.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Fen. ‘Not if your rope’s long enough to allow a double length of it to reach the ground. You make a special sort of knot,’ he said vaguely, ‘and you climb down one strand, and then when you reach the bottom you pull the other, and it all comes undone.’ He sat back in a pleased manner.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Inspector suspiciously, ‘and what is this knot, may I ask?’

  ‘It’s called the Hook, Line, and Sinker.’

  ‘Why is it called that?’

  ‘Because,’ said Fen placidly, ‘the reader has to swallow it.’fn1

  ‘But what I want to know is,’ Geoffrey burst out, unable to contain himself any longer: ‘what are all these people doing shinning up and down ropes? We’re no nearer to that than we were before.’

  ‘Wires,’ said Fen gnomically. He got up and began wandering about the room, apparently inspecting its decorations. ‘We must go over to the cathedral in a minute and visit, somehow or other, the Bishop’s Gallery.’ He looked at the Inspector. ‘That can be arranged? It’s annoying,’ he added balefully, ‘because I was going to make a particularly interesting experiment with moths this evening –’ He interrupted himself and addressed Geoffrey. ‘That reminds me: did you bring me a butterfly-net?’

  Geoffrey nodded, hatred spontaneously arising within him at the memory of that implement. ‘It’s at the clergy-house,’ he said. ‘Seventeen and six,’ he added. Fen ignored this.

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ said the Inspector, ‘and that’s the murder of Brooks. Atropine again – through the mouth this time, of course. Criminal carelessness.’ His face darkened. ‘I think it’s obvious that none of the hospital people was implicated, and that it was put in the medicine when it was left in the hall.’

  Fen looked up from his aimless circumambulations. ‘That’s funny. It sounds like the merest chance…’

  ‘Nothing of the kind, sir. The nurse in charge of the dispensary is the scatter-brained kind, and she’d talked about Brooks – talked to every single person who came to inquire after him, I should think. Half Tolnbridge must have known he got that stuff every half-hour, regular as Fate. Just as she was wheeling it into the hall, a bell went – the bell of one of the private rooms she was in charge of – and she went off to answer it. She found the patient sound asleep and no one else in the room. By the time she got back, of course, the damage was done.’

  Fen groaned. ‘Oh, my ears and whiskers!’ he said. ‘Adventurous, eh? No one was seen about?’

  ‘Plenty of people were seen about. It was during visiting hours.’

  ‘It mightn’t have been Brooks’ medicine at all. But I suppose they didn’t mind about a little thing like that.’

  (Another sentence came back to Geoffrey’s mind: ‘They can afford to waste lives like water.’)

  Fen resumed his wanderings, the Inspector his logomachy. ‘All the people who might possibly be connected with it – all the cathedral people, that is – I shall have to interview this evening: Miss Butler, Dr Butler, Dr Garbin, Dr Spitshuker, Mr Dutton, Sir John Dallow, Mr Savernake, now that he’s back…’ He reeled off the list with the melancholy relish of a Satanist enumerating the circles of inferno. ‘But nothing will come of it,’ he said, suddenly abandoning all pretence and relapsing into a pathetic despair, ‘nothing at all.’

  ‘Come, come,’ said Geoffrey mechanically.

  ‘I’d be obliged, sir,’ said the Inspector, pulling himself together slightly and addressing Fen, ‘if you’d take a look at the cathedral, and the Bishop’s Gallery, while I’m seeing all these people. We shall have to get permission from the Precentor to get into the Gallery, but I hope there won’t be any difficulty about that. I can give you a note to the men in charge, and they’ll help you in every way you need.’

  Fen nodded, and finished his drink. They all rose, the Inspector sighing, and Geoffrey feeling slightly hazy and adventurous with alcohol.

  ‘Well,’ said the Inspector, ‘we’re not quite as much in the dark as we were, though it’s still mostly conjecture. Now we’ll see what there really is in this infernal Gallery.’

  This, however, they were destined never to do.

  6

  Murder in the Cathedral

  To-night it doth inherit

  The vasty hall of death.

  ARNOLD

  They walked back from the Whale and Coffin to the clergy-house. Now it was ten to ten and a twilight haze was dusting the roofs of the town, a twilight mist softening the lines of the headland towards Tolnmouth and driving argent channels among the scattered white houses which hung on the low distant bank on the other side of the estuary. The melancholy crying of the gulls was almost silent. The sky, as if in a parting flourish before the onslaught of darkness, was the palest, most fragile blue. The curious inexplicable stillness of evening was in the air – a stillness broken only by the cawing of a flock of rooks returning to their nests at the tops of a group of fir-trees. Dominating the town stood the cathedral, its spire raised proudly to heaven.

  Geoffrey was limping badly; his bruise, he felt convinced, had grown to considerable dimensions by now, and a second, more formidable stiffness had set in. Moreover, matters were not improved by the speed at which Fen walked; he strode along at a great and unnecessary rate, talking incessantly about insects, cathedrals, crime, and Oxford University, and complaining impartially and slanderously (his normal manifestation of high spirits) about the conduct of the war, his personal comfort, the ingratitude of his contemporaries, and the quality of certain proprietary brands of whisky. None the less, Geoffrey was happier than he had been all day. Fen had been found; something of the mystery had been cleared up; and he (Geoffrey) was in all probability the object of incidental and not special malice. He thought suddenly of a way in which the subject by inversion and the subject by diminution could be combined, and sang happily under his breath until even Fen, who was in the middle of some depressing tale about the habits of the common dung-beetle,
was driven to comment on it. The Inspector walked for the most part in silence, plainly not listening to Fen, but inserting purposeless monosyllabic comments whenever a suitable opening occurred, like matches thrown upon the body of a stream.

  They had not gone far before they met Fielding, on his way back from pottering, the bottoms of his trousers slightly stained with sea-water. He greeted them dejectedly, seeming still to be much afflicted by the heat, and was introduced to Fen and the Inspector.

  (‘Not,’ said Fen before anyone could stop him, ‘the author of Tom Jones?’)

  As they walked on, Geoffrey put Fielding au fait with the situation, as far as he was able, and Fielding’s dejection grew. Such mental inadequacy as he had displayed, his expression implied, boded ill for his hypothetical future as a secret agent. He was however slightly consoled on recognizing that he had not known all the necessary facts.

  ‘Things seem a bit clearer,’ he said to Geoffrey. His brow was puckered with anxiety. ‘What do you think one ought to do now?’

  Geoffrey sketchily indicated what plans were afoot, and he nodded.

  ‘Very good,’ he said, apparently feeling that some comment was required of him. ‘But who’s at the bottom of it all? That’s what we’ve got to find out.’

  Geoffrey, who was only too ready to out-Watson Watson in this respect, made noises of dissent. ‘The best thing we can do,’ he stated dogmatically, ‘is to keep out of the way and not ask imbecile questions. There are two people in charge of this thing already. And God help the law,’ he added with feeling, ‘if people like us are ever landed with enforcing it.’

  ‘I think I’d be rather good at it,’ said Fielding staunchly. A pause. ‘Geoffrey?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Do you think either of these people could help me to get into the Secret Service?’

  ‘Good heavens! Are you still nagging about that? You’re unfitted, I tell you, unfitted –’

  ‘I don’t see why I’m any more unfitted than anyone else. You don’t realize my position.’

  ‘I realize it perfectly well. You’re a Romantic gone wrong – you’re mad…The Secret Service isn’t all guns and beautiful spies and codes, you know,’ continued Geoffrey severely, who knew nothing at all about it. ‘It’s just routine and office work and’ – his imagination hastily came to the rescue – ‘hanging about in pubs listening to soldiers.’ (‘Why?’ said Fielding.) ‘You’ll be saying there are spies here next – in Tolnbridge…’

  ‘…And that’s another thing,’ the Inspector was saying complainingly on Geoffrey’s left. ‘There are spies here – enemy agents. Bits of information have been leaking out – nothing important, fortunately, but still, symptomatic…’

  Happily Fielding did not hear this. Geoffrey paused long enough to digest the monstrous intelligence and verify the seriousness of the Inspector before hastily diverting the conversation to other channels. Fen paid little attention. Mindful of his hobby, he had begun peering in shrubs and bushes in search of insects.

  ‘How were the rocks?’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Barbed wire,’ answered Fielding gloomily. ‘It gets caught in everything. I don’t see that that’s going to hold up an invasion very long, either.’ He paused in momentary perplexity. ‘Did you discover anything about the burning of the manuscript by that child?’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Geoffrey, startled. ‘No, I didn’t. But I don’t suppose that’s got anything to do with it.’

  Fielding shook his head; from the gravity of his expression, it was clear that he regarded the incident as of the last importance. Also, it had been overlooked by the powers that were. He put it away in his mind with the naïve hopefulness of an investor who keeps worthless stock in the hope that it may one day make him immensely wealthy. ‘You saw the landlord?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t there.’

  Fielding looked at him with mild reproach. ‘You’ve been drinking all this time.’

  ‘Certainly I have been drinking,’ said Geoffrey with the imagined stateliness which alcohol induces.

  ‘…lays its eggs in a sort of milk-white bubble which refracts the head,’ Fen was saying. ‘Then about May the bubble bursts…’

  ‘By the way, sir,’ said the Inspector abruptly, ‘we never went into that matter about the tomb – you know, the slab of the tomb that had been moved.’

  ‘Oh, my fur and whiskers!’ exclaimed Fen. ‘Nor we did. Did Brooks mean that old reprobate Thurston’s tomb, do you suppose? But you said the brickwork hadn’t been touched, and there isn’t a slab, anyway. Slab. Slab…’ He flicked his fingers. ‘Got it! It must be that enormous wall-tomb of St Ephraim, right under the Bishop’s Gallery. That’s the only one that hasn’t been plastered in – it’s got six big padlocks to hold it in position instead. I suppose the keys are somewhere or other.’ He pondered. ‘But I wonder why –? M’m. A try-out for a hiding-place, possibly. Perhaps Brooks saw one of the padlocks loose – unpleasantly like Count Magnus. We must try and locate those keys, Garratt, and have a look at the tomb.’

  ‘All I can say is this,’ said the Inspector aggressively, as though he were being accused of something, ‘nothing had been touched that I could see, and certainly none of the tombs that were plastered up.’ A thought struck him. ‘Perhaps he was raving after all,’ he added gloomily.

  They rounded a bend in the road, by an evil-looking tobacconist’s. Two soldiers sat on the running-board of an Army lorry, smoking and staring with sad absorption at the tarmac. Two shop-girls in short skirts passed by on the other side, giggling and casting œillades after the manner of their kind. The soldiers made sounds jocosely expressive of lustful attention. The girls shrieked with nervous excitement and made off. The Inspector sighed. Fen made futile attempts to put a grasshopper into a match-box. In the distance Frances appeared, a model of beauty, walking towards them. Geoffrey, too, sighed: that lithe perfection of grace could not be for him. Her hair shone a deeper, richer black in the evening light.

  ‘Is the meeting over yet?’ Geoffrey asked when she had joined them.

  ‘Ages ago,’ she said lightly. ‘They’ve all gone – most of them, anyway.’ She did a tiny pirouette in the road.

  ‘You seem happy,’ Geoffrey ventured.

  ‘I’m excited.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I shouldn’t be, I suppose, with all these awful things happening.’ She looked at him a little shyly. ‘It’s nice seeing new people – you know. Why did you want to know if the meeting was over?’

  ‘I must see your father about what I’ve got to play, and when, and where I’m going to see the choir, and try the organ, and –’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, business. Well, you won’t catch Daddy at the clergy-house. I can tell you that. He went off up to the cathedral as soon as the meeting was over, half an hour ago at least.’

  Geoffrey intercepted a swift glance which passed between Fen and the Inspector. ‘Do you know what he intended doing, miss?’ asked the Inspector.

  The girl’s face clouded. ‘He said – he said no one could get to know what happened to Brooks unless they did as he did, and stayed in the cathedral alone.’ She hesitated. ‘It seems silly.’

  ‘It will do no good, miss, if that’s what you mean,’ the Inspector pontificated vaguely. ‘Nor, I suppose, will it do any harm. The clergy-house key arrived back safely, I take it?’

  Frances nodded. ‘Sir John brought it just after dinner.’ She turned to Fen. ‘Are you going to be in tonight?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fen gloomily, as though this was the most offensive thing he had ever heard. ‘I was going to make a most interesting experiment with moths, but apparently that won’t be possible now.’

  ‘You don’t want supper or anything? Are you going back to the clergy-house now? I’m a bit anxious about Daddy – that was why I came to meet you.’

  ‘We’re going to the clergy-house,’ said Fen, ‘to leave the Inspector, who’s got some questions to ask about people’s movements this
afternoon. While he’s doing that, Geoffrey and I are going up to the cathedral to have a rather particular look round – and incidentally, to see your father, as you say he’s there.’

  ‘I shall be glad of that,’ said Frances a little shamefacedly. ‘I’m just a tiny bit frightened about his being there alone. After what’s happened…Oh, I suppose I’m making too much of it.’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, he’s wearing a four-leaf clover for luck, so it ought to be all right.’

  ‘He’ll be safe enough, miss,’ said the Inspector automatically. ‘My men are still on guard there, you know. There’s nothing much can happen to him, I fancy.’ He whistled a few notes, tunelessly and without spirit.

  They turned in at the clergy-house gates, traversed the wilderness of unflowering shrubs, and entered by the front door. In the hall they found Canon Spitshuker, small, plump, and excitable as ever, struggling into a raincoat and carolling the Benedicite to himself. ‘Frances, my dear,’ he called out as they entered, ‘you will, I fear, find the house empty, the revellers gone. I alone remain – except, of course’ – he fluttered his hands excitedly – ‘the good Dutton, who has retired to his room with a copy of The Anatomy of Melancholy and some tablets of luminal. Hardly the most inspiriting reading for a nervous subject, I should have said, but perhaps it has a quietening effect on some people. And how are the insects, Gervase? The Bishop, I think, will not readily forgive you that last débâcle.’ He paused, and his face clouded as he glanced at the Inspector. ‘Strange: I was almost forgetting…poor Brooks…No doubt you will be wanting any assistance we can give you, Inspector, over this new…development.’

  The Inspector nodded. ‘If you please, sir. It’s a matter of routine, you understand, more than anything else. Were you in a hurry to be getting home?’

  ‘No, no. I can stop as long as you wish. No commitments, except for my hot milk and rum before bed.’ Spitshuker began struggling out of his raincoat again, ineffectually aided by Geoffrey; he emerged from it eventually with the suddenness of a cork from a bottle, and stood gasping slightly.