The Ely Testament

by Philip Gooden

  Mr and Mrs Lye and their few servants were in the congregation, as were the more respectable or devout members of the community. Sitting in a pew near the brazier at the back was an individual whom Eames did not recognize. Sometimes there were unfamiliar faces at Sunday services but they were usually visiting relations at one of the Upper Fen households and were sitting in company. This man was by himself. At several points in his sermon, Eames noticed the man nodding in agreement.

  Once the service was over, Eames more or less forgot about the stranger. He attended to the placing of the new tombstone over the grave of Ada Baxter, the tombstone for which Gabriel Parr had been carving the final flourishes on the previous day. Mrs Baxter’s husband and her sons and her aunt and other kin, as well as some casual bystanders, looked on while the sexton and his son, Davey, removed the simple wooden cross marking the woman’s grave and lugged the stone into position. The lettering and the sculptural detail of the anchor were admired.

  Once the tombstone was firmly planted in the soil, and some fresh flowers placed at its foot, the Reverend Eames cleared his throat as a signal for a respectful silence and uttered a prayer. He might have said more but, although Mr Baxter dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief and one of her sons sniffed very audibly, the rest of the little crowd seemed eager to leave. The entertainment for the day, which consisted of watching the Parrs manhandle a gravestone into place, was over.

  Eames was about to walk back to the parsonage, when Gabriel Parr approached him.

  ‘Begging your pardon, Reverend, but there is a man who’s been waiting to speak to you.’

  The sexton gestured towards the lych-gate. Eames turned and saw, lurking in the shadow of the gate, the individual who’d been sitting by himself at the back of the church. He sighed. He said something about the meal that was waiting for him.

  ‘He said it was urgent,’ said Parr, before shrugging and turning away himself. It was up to the parson what to do next.

  Eames recalled the way the man nodded in agreement during his sermon. His style of dress had not suggested that he was a mere labourer wearing Sunday clothes. For these reasons, and out of simple curiosity, the clergyman went towards the lych-gate. As soon as he got closer, he regretted it. The man’s clothes might have been decent enough but they were stained and streaked with some chalky substance. Also, he had an unprepossessing look, wrinkle-faced and with large teeth.

  Yet, within a couple of minutes of this individual beginning to speak, George Eames was all attention. A few more minutes and he reached a state of amazement and outrage.

  It was more than an hour before he returned to the parsonage. The food that was waiting for him was burnt and dried-up but it did not matter because the cleric had lost his appetite. There followed an uncomfortable period while Eames berated Hannah the maid for lending a key to a stranger. The girl’s incomprehension, then her tears and repeated denials finally convinced Eames that she genuinely didn’t know what he was talking about. Then he summoned Mrs Walters for questioning – or rather asked if he could have a word with her – and that normally stolid housekeeper grew flustered. In other circumstances, Eames might have been glad to see this reaction since much of the time he felt under Mrs Walters’ thumb. But now he only wanted to establish what had happened.

  ‘He seemed a very honest gentleman,’ said Mrs Walters, stressing the last word. ‘Very smooth and—’

  ‘Glib, I expect is the word you want, Mrs Walters.’

  It wasn’t the word she wanted but Mrs Walters did not contradict her employer as she would usually have done. Instead she said, ‘He knows Mrs Lye in the big house. A distant family member, I think.’

  Eames said nothing so Mrs Walters ploughed on, ‘He represents a Society called . . . let me see . . . it is called, yes, the Society for the Protection of Rural Treasures. I remember it now because the first letters of some of the words spell out another word, which is SPORT. The gentleman pointed that out himself, made a little joke out of it. Yes, Society for the Protection of Rural Treasures. SPORT for short.’

  Eames still said nothing. His earlier outrage had been replaced by cold fury, directed not at his housekeeper but at the man who’d had the impudence to come up with that name. Deliberate and brazen, a gesture almost as insulting as the sign whose wording he could not forget (‘It is a wise child that knows its own father’).

  Mrs Walters must have taken his continued silence for agreement for she continued, ‘He said that he was the secretary of the Society. He said they were particularly concerned about old country churches. He described them as our real rural treasures. I ask you, Mr Eames, what could be more respectable than that?’

  ‘I doubt that such a society exists, Mrs Walters. And if it does, that gentleman, as you call him, is most certainly not the secretary of it.’

  ‘I wasn’t to know. He came one day when you were out and so you weren’t here to be referred to for advice, Mr Eames. He only wanted to borrow the keys for a short time.’

  ‘Including the key to the crypt.’

  ‘I don’t know. He took a bunch of keys for the church. He returned them later. No harm done.’

  There was no point in prolonging the session. Eames dismissed Mrs Walters with an angry wave of the hand. For some time he strode from side to side in his study, at each turn envisaging the cunning of Tomlinson’s actions. Taking care to visit the parsonage when the incumbent was out, using his ‘smooth’ style to get Mrs Walters to hand over the bunch of keys, having a free run at the church and in particular at the crypt, making a copy of the key (Reverend Eames wasn’t sure how this was done but he rather thought a wax tablet was involved) before handing the bunch back to Mrs Walters, all the while pretending to be the secretary of the Society for the Protection of Rural Treasures. SPORT for short. Yes, Charles Tomlinson was still sporting with him, George Eames, after all these years.

  Before returning to the parsonage to confront the female servants, Eames had gone down to the crypt with Eric Fort, the man who’d been waiting for him after the morning service. The door was not locked, which tended to confirm the other’s story. On the ground was a bag containing a chisel and crowbar and assorted implements, another confirmation. The two men did not go very far inside since, without a light, not much would be visible. But Fort was able to describe the inner chamber and the coffins in enough detail to convince Eames that he’d indeed been in there with Tomlinson as he claimed. As for the rest of the story, about breaking down a section of an internal wall to gain access to another chamber (of which Eames was unaware), about Tomlinson’s scrambling through by himself in quest of whatever lay on the far side, well, all that might have seemed far-fetched, but by now Eames was inclined to believe his old friend was capable of anything, however implausible or apparently purposeless.

  Eric Fort spoke as if he had taken part in the enterprise under some sort of duress. Now he was acting like a repentant sinner. He wished he’d never got involved with Charles Tomlinson. He said that he hadn’t been himself since the recent death of his wife. That late event had knocked him over, had turned him upside down. He was acting in ways that he wouldn’t have acted, perhaps, if she’d still been alive.

  The realization had come to him most forcibly when he was left in the dark and among the coffins on one side of the broken-down wall while Mr Tomlinson was fossicking about – that was the man’s word, fossicking – on the other. Fort understood then that, whatever they were doing, it was wrong. No, he had no idea what Tomlinson was searching for underground. Had he found anything? Eames asked. Did he emerge from the inner crypt with an item? Nothing, said Fort, except a lot of dust and foul language.

  Presumably frustrated in his search, Tomlinson left the crypt and left Eric Fort too. Fort didn’t know where he’d gone, and didn’t care either. Unfamiliar with the road back to Ely and not willing to risk it in the dark, he spent the night underground. It was a wretched night, but not on account of the dead lying around. The presence of the dead did not fright
en him, not in the least. But he vowed to have nothing more to do with Charles Tomlinson. Why, if he saw that ‘gentleman’ again, there was no telling what he would say . . . even what he might do . . .

  Then on the Sunday he attended the morning service at St Ethelwine’s, despite his ragged state and his dirty, crumpled clothing. He listened intently to Reverend Eames’ words and he thought of his life, and decided to do a little better in future. It was a modest ambition. Listening to this, George Eames experienced a touch of pity for Eric Fort, even of fellow feeling. Here was another victim of the wiles of Charles Tomlinson. Although Fort participated in a criminal act by breaking into the church, he had not gained anything by it. Indeed, he seemed properly remorseful. Eames left him to his conscience and returned to the parsonage, where he confronted Hannah and then Mrs Walters. It did not occur to the vicar of St Ethelwine’s to go ‘fossicking’ about in the crypt himself. He was not much interested in what Tomlinson was looking for down there. Anyway, whatever it was, the would-be thief had not found it. Eames decided the time had come to confront his old friend and enemy. That man was guilty of a crime for which he could be exposed and hauled up in front of the magistrates. It would be some small revenge for the event of many years before, the humiliation of which had come back to Eames in its full force ever since he glimpsed Tomlinson outside Phoenix House, busy taking his leave of Mrs Lye.

  Eames knew from Eric Fort that Tomlinson was staying in Ely. In a small place, it would not take long to track him down and confront him. As he rode towards the city, he felt within him that righteous anger which had formed one of the themes of his sermon that morning. Charles Tomlinson was about to encounter the wrath of George Eames . . .

  There were at least two other people who had reasons to hate Charles Tomlinson and who would not have objected to seeing him dead. As it happened, they were married to each other. On the Sunday afternoon of Tomlinson’s death, they were not together and so were not able to provide mutual alibis. Each was engaged on his or her own activity.

  Cyrus Chase was locked away in the workshop at the bottom of the garden of his house in Prickwillow Road. He remembered the time he had been in here with Tomlinson and the keen interest which Tomlinson took in his coffin, the novelty coffin as his visitor termed it. For Chase, the coffin remained a work of art. Not because of its appearance which was, frankly, unappealing on account of the leather tubes that protruded from it like giant worms and the metal gantries at the head. No, it was a work of art because it was useful, rather as his father’s Chase Coupler had been useful.

  Alone in his workshop, Chase tinged the bell, recalling Tomlinson’s facetious gesture and comment (‘You rang, sir?’). He spun the Chase cockerel, unable to forget Tomlinson’s brazen theft of his idea, a theft which he discovered from reading Mute’s notes in Funereal Matters (‘this gentleman’s device involves a familiar farmyard fowl’). He had already written an indignant letter to Willow & Son, but writing indignant letters did not do much to soothe his anger. Beyond all the coffin business, Cyrus thought of Bella’s partiality for Tomlinson, and of his wife’s interest in that man. Were there ever so many reasons to hate an individual as he hated Charles Tomlinson?

  In normal circumstances Cyrus Chase might have passed a pleasant few hours in his workshop, tinkering with his devices and dreaming of the fame that surely awaited him. But he had no appetite for any of that. Instead he paced about the workshop, which he did not leave in the course of the afternoon. Or so he would later tell Inspector Stephen Francis.

  On the same Sunday afternoon, Bella Chase was out and about in Ely, attending Evensong in the cathedral, or so she said. Naturally, the service proceeded despite the discovery of Tomlinson’s body on Palace Green. Most of the worshippers were unaware of the drama taking place outside. Perhaps Bella attended the service – if she did attend it – in order to try to suppress the jealous feelings that bubbled up inside her whenever she thought of Tomlinson together with Mrs Lye. And she thought of them often. The almost murderous impulse she’d felt when gazing at the carving knife in the pawnshop window in Cambridge had not gone away.

  According to her own account, the one that she gave to Inspector Francis, Bella left the cathedral after Evensong and returned home still unaware of all the activity on the Green. She did not see anyone she knew at the service. No one noticed her presence either. Bella did not meet her husband until supper. It was an almost silent meal. From some comment he made, she gathered he had spent much of the day in his workshop. He understood that she had been to the cathedral service. Charles Tomlinson was not mentioned. Certainly, neither husband nor wife gave the slightest indication of knowing that their one-time friend was dead.

  A Visit to the Doctor

  The names of Cyrus and Bella Chase came to Inspector Francis’ notice because he was by now almost convinced that Ernest Lye had nothing to do with the murder, and so was starting to cast round in other directions for a potential killer. From talking to Mr Salter, his brother-in-law and the manager at the Lion Hotel, he learned something of the methodical way Tomlinson had made acquaintances there. It was almost as if he was setting out to cultivate the more important or useful citizens of Ely.

  He also learned that Tomlinson’s position in the hotel was slightly irregular, not so much from anything that Salter said but from reading between the lines. Tomlinson was being provided with accommodation on special terms because, it seemed, the housekeeper had an understanding with him and, in turn, Salter had an understanding with the housekeeper. The ‘understanding’ was not explicitly stated but it was hinted at in response to Francis’ question about how a man with few apparent means could afford his frequent stays at the Lion. At this point Mr Salter became evasive. Francis had the impression of an invisible thread linking Tomlinson to the housekeeper to his brother-in-law, a thread none of them had wanted to break. He didn’t mention any of this to his wife. She believed her brother was something of a paragon.

  Among Tomlinson’s connections in the city, Cyrus Chase’s name was mentioned. Francis had also heard from the owner of a High Street glove shop, Mrs Johnson, that Chase’s wife, Bella, had recently made urgent enquries in her shop concerning Tomlinson and Mrs Lye. Mrs Johnson knew more than she let on to Bella but she instinctively preferred to keep her customers’ affairs private. Her suspicions had been roused by something odd in Bella Chase’s manner – that story about the diary hadn’t convinced her, not for a moment. Normally she would have kept her suspicions and speculations to herself. But everything changed when it came to murder. This was why Mrs Johnson had been among Inspector Francis’ visitors on the day following Tomlinson’s demise.

  So the circle of those who might want to do away with Charles Tomlinson widened. Francis began to write notes on them, on Mr and Mrs Lye, on Mr and Mrs Chase. Nothing amounted to very much yet, apart from the circumstantial evidence against Lye. But even this started to look shaky when the Inspector received a note from the local doctor who, at Francis’ request, examined the body. The note which he sent by way of a brief report surprised the Inspector. Like everyone else, Francis had assumed from a superficial look over the corpse that Tomlinson died of what Constable Parr termed ‘a frenzied attack’, probably carried out with a knife. That is, there were wounds to the face and a quantity of blood on the clothes on the upper part of his body suggesting severe wounds in that region as well. But Dr Wallace’s note indicated otherwise.

  The Inspector went to see Wallace in his consulting room in Fore Hill. The doctor was a young man, not yet married and settled down with wife and children. Perhaps because of his age, he did not have a large number of patients. Yet Francis occasionally asked for his professional opinion precisely because he was young and less stuck in his ways. He doubted the doctor would stay in the city for long. Wallace was pleased to see the Inspector and asked him to sit down.

  ‘If I understand you correctly, Doctor, Mr Tomlinson did not die of his visible wounds,’ Francis began. Wallace’s note was a
bsolutely clear on this point but Francis wanted verbal confirmation. He learned much more from seeing and hearing people than reading statements or reports.

  ‘In my opinion he did not. There was a severe laceration across his forehead here –’ Dr Wallace traced a long diagonal line from his hairline to his right eyebrow – ‘and this produced much of the blood that the witnesses saw. There are plenty of blood vessels near the surface of the body in this region, and to the non-medical eye even quite slight damage can take on the appearance of a major wound. In addition, there were a couple of minor lacerations on his left cheek. There was nothing more in the area of the head.’

  ‘But elsewhere . . .?’

  ‘He suffered a bad gash, quite a deep one, across the palm of his right hand,’ said Doctor Wallace, holding up the same hand in illustration. ‘It is very likely that, with this wounded hand, he instinctively touched his face and the upper part of his clothing. All this would have added to the general sanguinary impression.’

  ‘These wounds to Mr Tomlinson’s head and hand, they could have been produced by a knife?’

  ‘Almost certainly they were caused by a knife or some sharp implement. And they were inflicted while he was still alive, hence the freely flowing blood.’

  ‘It is not difficult to see what happened.’

  ‘No,’ said Dr Wallace. ‘Mr Tomlinson was assailed by an individual with a knife. He saw him coming—’

  ‘Or saw her,’ interrupted the Inspector.

  ‘Or her, yes. It may seem unlikely it was a woman but they are as capable of wielding a knife as a man would be.’