Holy Disorders

by Edmund Crispin

  ‘You’re looking at my pet.’ Garbin rose from his chair as they came in, his tall, sombre form towering over the desk. ‘An unusual fancy, some people think. But he came to me quite by chance.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  Garbin motioned them to chairs. ‘A foreign sailor with a tragic history sold him to me some two years ago. He is supposed to speak, I think, but I have never heard him do so. He is not’ – Garbin paused – ‘a companionable creature, I admit. Sometimes I find his presence actually depressing. I have given him every chance to escape, but he displays only apathy.’ He stretched out a hand to stroke the bird’s feathers. It pecked at him.

  Fen, however, plainly was not moved by this recital. ‘We’ve come to talk about Butler’s death,’ he said firmly. ‘There are some odd features about it, and I’m conducting a sort of unofficial investigation of my own.’ His eye strayed to the bird, and then hastily withdrew. ‘I don’t know if you’d care to cooperate?’

  Disconcertingly, Garbin regarded him in silence for a moment. Then he shifted in his chair, to indicate that he was about to speak. ‘Do you think it wise,’ he asked in his deep, slow voice, ‘to pry into these things? Surely the responsible authorities are capable of dealing with it.’

  ‘Possibly.’ Fen’s admission was reluctant. ‘But I should hesitate to rely on them.’

  ‘I know you regard this sort of thing as a sport, Mr Fen. Frankly, I cannot do so. The death of a man seems to me the poorest excuse for a display of personal ability. You will forgive my speaking so frankly.’

  Fen regarded him thoughtfully. ‘And you will allow me the same liberty, I’m sure. I shall say that the murder of a man is so serious a business that it concerns everyone who can possibly help in any way, and particularly those who, like myself, have had some experience of these things.’

  Garbin raised an eyebrow. ‘Your own vanity is not implicated in any way?’

  Fen gestured impatiently. ‘One’s vanity is implicated in everything, as Rochefoucauld pointed out. Action from pure motives simply does not exist.’

  ‘There are degrees of purity, none the less.’

  Fen stood up. ‘There seems little point in continuing this conversation.’

  ‘Please, please.’ Garbin waved a hand. ‘If I was offensive, I apologize. You must remember that I belong to a generation, and a calling, whose standards are strict. Rochefoucauld was not a Christian. Christianity maintains that for a man to act from wholly disinterested motives is possible. Take that away, and the whole fabric of Christian morality falls apart.’

  ‘You did not consider it a disinterested action when Butler stole your ideas?’

  ‘The inquisition has begun, I see,’ said Garbin drily. ‘No, naturally I did not. But it was forgivable, because Butler was no scholar – he hadn’t the temperament. A poseur must plagiarize, or he can produce nothing.’

  ‘That’s a harsh judgement, surely?’

  ‘Perhaps so. God forbid that I should judge anyone. I should have said that – well, that what Butler undertook was beyond his capacities. His sail was too big for his boat.’

  ‘Still, you considered his thefts morally reprehensible?’

  ‘Naturally.’ Garbin smiled slightly. ‘But surely you’re not here to hold an inquiry into my moral standards. I bore him no lasting resentment, if that’s what you mean.’

  The raven rose from the desk, and with a whirring of wings that sounded like a berserk mowing-machine, flew and perched on the bust above the door. Fen and Geoffrey eyed it in fascination. ‘A literary fowl,’ Fen murmured; then returned with somewhat of an effort to the matter in hand.

  ‘Mainly,’ he said, ‘one wants to know about movements during yesterday.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Garbin put the tips of his fingers together. ‘At six o’clock, the time when poor Brooks was killed, I was alone here. Lenore was out to dinner and bridge –’

  ‘Who?’ The word burst from Geoffrey before he could stop himself.

  ‘Lenore – my wife. So I have no alibi for that time. Between ten and a quarter past –’

  Fen interrupted. ‘How about between nine and ten?’

  The question evidently surprised Garbin as much as it did Geoffrey; he hesitated, slightly but visibly, before replying. ‘I left the clergy-house shortly before nine, after Butler had announced his intention of going up to the cathedral. I went for a walk along the cliffs.’

  ‘You overheard the arrangement Butler made to meet Peace up at the cathedral?’

  ‘I could hardly avoid it. I fancy everyone did.’

  ‘May I ask what was said at the meeting?’

  ‘I hardly think that concerns the death of Butler in any way.’

  ‘As you please. But did Butler by any chance say he had definite knowledge about the death of Brooks?’

  ‘Since you ask – no.’

  Fen nodded. ‘It might have been necessary,’ he said, half to himself. ‘But that depends on the exact time the police guard left…I must find out.’

  On its perch, the raven ruffled its feathers again. The branch of a tree growing outside the window scraped against the panes. Fen succumbed suddenly to the obsessing temptation.

  ‘Surely,’ he said – ‘surely that is someone at your window lattice?’

  Garbin glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’s the tree. I am always meaning to have it cut down. It makes the room very dark.’ Plainly the allusion was lost on him. Geoffrey retired discreetly behind a handkerchief, and went red in the face.

  ‘May I ask how long your walk lasted?’ With manifest difficulty Fen had got back to the subject.

  ‘Until about ten-thirty. When I arrived back here I made myself some cocoa, and sat reading by the fire.’

  ‘And each separate dying ember,’ said Geoffrey, ‘wrought its ghost upon the floor.’

  Garbin looked at him in mild surprise. ‘Exactly so. Shortly after eleven Spitshuker came in and gave me the news. We talked for some time.’

  Fen sighed. ‘Thank you. You’re being kinder than your first words suggested. I wonder if, after all, you aren’t anxious to get this thing cleared up?’

  A shadow of evasiveness passed over Garbin’s face. ‘Anxious. Most certainly I shall help the law in any way I can. But I cannot disguise from myself the fact that someone – that one of us who are connected with the cathedral must be implicated.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘It is a question of keys, is it not?’

  ‘Ah, yes. I understand that virtually everyone had a key to the cathedral grounds.’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘It seems pointless for people to have a key to the grounds, and not to the cathedral itself.’

  ‘Not at all. Suppose I had arranged to meet someone at the cathedral.’ Garbin paused. ‘As Butler arranged to meet Peace. I should unlock the gate into the grounds, and lock it again after me, to keep out…intruders. Then I should go up to the cathedral and unlock the door there. Anyone following me up there would thus require a key to the grounds, but not a key to the cathedral itself.’

  ‘That seems clear enough. Peace, I suppose, must have had a key to the grounds last night. I wonder whose he borrowed?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you there.’

  ‘And possibly Josephine as well.’

  ‘Josephine Butler?’ Garbin’s voice was guarded.

  ‘She took a false message to the police on duty at the cathedral. But what time are the grounds locked?’

  ‘At seven sharp. The sexton sees to it. There are only the north and south gates and that into the clergy-house garden.’

  ‘Is it absolutely impossible to get into the grounds otherwise than by the gates?’

  Garbin shrugged. ‘Not impossible, no. Anyone who wished could manage it quite easily. The locking is chiefly a moral preventive.’

  ‘Ah, of course. To prevent the incontinent young from necking publicly on the cathedral hill.’

  Garbin made a gesture of impatience and stoo
d up. This abrupt movement disturbed the raven, which emitted a hoarse, dyspeptic croak and began flying agitatedly about the room. Garbin beat at it ineffectually with his hands. Eventually it settled on the window-sill.

  ‘I must apologize,’ said Garbin, ‘for my pet.’

  ‘Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven from the night’s Plutonian shore.’

  Garbin stared in bewilderment. ‘A little picturesquely put, perhaps. And now, if there’s nothing more –’

  ‘One more thing. Are you interested in music?’

  Garbin smiled wryly. ‘I know little or nothing about it; and care less. It always seems to me that it plays far too large a part in our services: there are occasions when the worship of God degenerates into an organized concert.’ He bowed slightly to Geoffrey. ‘Please don’t think me ungracious. And now, is there anything else?’

  ‘Is there,’ said Geoffrey, ‘is there balm in Gilead?’

  Fen hastily retired to make a close examination of one of the bookcases. ‘I see you have here’ – he hesitated, and went on in a weak, quavering voice – ‘many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.’

  It was at this point that the interview really got out of hand. Geoffrey was hardly able to contain himself, and Fen was scarcely better. The gravity and incomprehension of Garbin made matters worse. What he thought was going on it is impossible to say; perhaps he fancied Fen and Geoffrey to be engaged in some recondite form of retaliation for his earlier outspokenness. At all events he said nothing. Hasty farewells were made. At the door Fen turned to look at the raven again.

  ‘Take thy beak,’ he said, ‘from out my heart, thy form from off my door.’

  ‘His eyes,’ said Geoffrey, ‘have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.’ Then they went out, in some haste. At the front door, Fen recovered himself sufficiently to ask Garbin one more question.

  ‘Do you know the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I have no great use for verses.’

  ‘Not his poem, The Raven?’

  ‘Ah. There’s a poem about a raven, is there? Is it good? I know nothing about these things.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Fen with the utmost gravity. ‘You would find much in it to interest you. Good morning.’

  9

  Three Suspects and a Witch

  I’m not taken

  With a cob-swan or a high-mounting bull,

  As foolish Leda and Europa were;

  But the bright gold, with Danaë.

  JONSON

  ‘Poor Brooks,’ said Fen as they walked towards Butler’s house. ‘He seems to have rather faded out of the inquiry. But there’s much less to get hold of in his case than there is in Butler’s.’

  ‘Didn’t you think it rather odd that Spitshuker should have cleared up the cathedral without consulting the police?’

  ‘Possibly. Or possibly not. It depends on certain medical technicalities which I don’t know about.’

  The sun was hotter now, but a light cooling breeze had sprung up. A cathedral town, Geoffrey thought, is a delightful place – the most perfect practical combination of church and laity in existence. Here one was comfortably lapped about with the tradition and actuality of worship; here, also, one’s small vices and peccadilloes drew an added zest from their surroundings. It occurred to him to ask what Fen was doing in Tolnbridge.

  ‘I came here,’ said Fen sourly, ‘to see the Dean, who used to be at Oxford with me. He is not here – scandalously inconsiderate. But I suppose he’ll be back pretty quickly now. I shall have to go in a few days – term starts early next month, and I’ve got to lecture on William Dunbar.’ He sighed. ‘I feel lost out of Oxford.’

  ‘You don’t look lost.’

  ‘I wonder what sort of a term it’s going to be. The undergraduates get more moronic every passing moment. But I believe Robert Warner’s new play is to be on locally. In the meantime, I’m getting nothing done about insects. I shall go into this shop and buy a book on them.’

  This did not take long. ‘Insects!’ said Fen loudly to an assistant, waving his hand impartially at customers and staff. He was found a tattered copy of Fabre’s Social Life in the Insect World.

  In the street they met Fielding wandering vaguely about in pursuit, doubtless, of some private delusive phantom of heroism. He had been reflecting on the case in all its aspects, he told them, but had come to no satisfactory conclusion. They gave him an account of what had turned up since the previous night, but it was evident that he was not enlightened by it. He expressed a vague determination to think things over, and to make what headway he could with the landlord of the Whale and Coffin. Plainly he resented being excluded from the morning’s interviews, but, as Fen said, with more forcefulness than tact, it was bad enough having one useless person hanging about all the time, without adding another. Fielding departed on his indefinite mission, which resolved itself in practice into his playing darts in a public bar.

  Butler’s house proved to be a substantial overgrown affair sprouting little valueless wings, outhouses, and potting-sheds over a large and untidy garden. At the gate Fen and Geoffrey met the Inspector, a sad and lonely figure plodding with pathetic hopefulness from one interview to another. He regarded them warily, wondering, it was evident, whether they were getting on better than he was. It was like one of those treasure hunts, Geoffrey thought, in which you have to hide the clues again after looking at them, and then, when someone else appears on the scene, put up an elaborate smoke-screen of nescience.

  ‘We’re getting on fine,’ said Fen, with deliberate malice. ‘The problem is practically solved. How are things with you?’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said the Inspector, ‘I can’t get anything that’s any use out of anybody. What is the good of fussing away about motive and opportunity and so on when you can’t even make out how the thing was done? But I shouldn’t be standing here talking to you about it.’

  ‘Has the Yard arrived? How silly that sounds! But it’s grammatical.’

  ‘It should be here after lunch some time.’ The Inspector was gloomy. ‘Then, thank God, I can shelve the responsibility for this thing.’

  ‘Inspector, Inspector,’ said Fen waggishly. ‘Is that a right attitude?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. But if you were as mixed-up as I am at the moment you wouldn’t stand there carping.’

  ‘Carping?’ said Fen, offended. ‘Who’s carping? Carping,’ he added with more warmth, ‘your grandmother. I was trying to find out if anything new had turned up, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, nothing has, except the details of why Mr Peace went to meet Dr Butler at the cathedral. And those I cannot give you. That Josephine kid’s as obstinate as ever – still says it was a policeman gave her that message. She’s given about three contradictory accounts of when and where and how he gave it her, but on the central fact she won’t budge. I don’t like the look of her, either – nasty feverish gleam in her eye. Mrs Butler’s no help – she hardly exists. She’s about as likely to know anything about the murder as you are to have climbed Mount Everest.’

  ‘I have climbed Mount Everest.’

  ‘That’s a lie. Nobody has. You’d say anything for the sake of an effect, wouldn’t you? Savernake’s no use, either.’

  ‘Is he there too?’

  ‘Staying in the house before he goes back to his parish. But I don’t think he’s got anything to do with it. For one thing, he was in London the night Brooks was attacked. I’ve checked on him and Peace and Mrs Garbin, and as far as one can possibly tell, they really were there. Incidentally, I’ve also made inquiries round the hospital, to see if any of the front line of suspects turned up there about six yesterday, but it was hopeless. And I’ve discovered it’s quite easy to get into the hospital by a back way, without anyone in the world seeing you.’

  ‘Ah,’ Fen was thoughtful. ‘One thing I wanted to ask: do you know exactly what time the police left the cathedral last night?’

  ‘As it hap
pens, I do. The joltheads had just enough sense left to make a note of it. It was five to nine.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Why,’ said the Inspector with dispiriting jocosity, ‘are you involving the Deity in this affair?’

  ‘Because if the time had been much earlier all my theories would have gone to Hades.’

  ‘You have theories?’ The Inspector made it sound like a disease.

  ‘Many theories, my good, my sweet Inspector. A whole – what is the collective noun for theories? A gaggle of geese, a giggle of girls, a noise of boys – of course: a thought of theories.’ Fen beamed with enthusiasm. ‘That’s it: a thought. Alliterative and expressive: shifting, insubstantial, delusive as a thought.’ He paused, overcome by this display. ‘And in return for your information, I’ll give you some advice.’

  ‘No one ever took any harm from listening to advice.’

  ‘Don’t platitudinize. I want you, as soon as the coast is clear, to make a thorough search of Peace’s room.’

  The Inspector gaped in astonishment. ‘Peace’s room? And what in heaven’s name am I supposed to search for?’

  Fen reflected. ‘The clergy-house key to the cathedral, perhaps. Oh, and a hypodermic, and a phial of atropine solution. I think that will be enough. You ought to find them all there.’

  ‘God pity us,’ said the Inspector, genuinely impressed. ‘If you’re having me on I’ll put you in gaol.’ He turned to go back through the gate.

  ‘Not now. Let us get our bit of nagging over first.’

  ‘But there’s no time to waste. He may move them.’

  ‘We’ll keep him occupied and see to it that he doesn’t.’

  ‘No, I must go back now.’

  ‘Really, Inspector, if I’d known you were going to be such a nuisance I should never have told you. You haven’t got a search warrant, anyway.’

  ‘No,’ said the Inspector with a wink, ‘but we’ll risk that, I think.’

  ‘If you go one step up that path I shall warn everybody in the house that you’re proposing to make a burglarious and illegal entry, and we’ll all get together and throw you out.’