The Discourtesy of Death

by William Brodrick

  With an oath, uttered in French, Anselm moved onto ‘the hidden Larkwood years’ and the ‘quiet eruption of unreported forensic activity’. Each investigation was explored in some detail, culminating in a hymn of admiration. To give it prominence Bede cleared his voice:

  ‘“After the closure of each case, this reticent sleuth returned to Larkwood, refusing interviews, disdaining praise. But justice had been done in places beyond the reach of the law. He resumes a quiet life tending bees. To this day he repudiates any—”’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘It only gets better. Try this—’

  ‘Belt up.’

  They were quiet for a moment while Anselm chewed his lip. The call from the Sunday Times had come without warning. Having pieced together some old and scattered headlines, a journalist with an eye for the unusual had glimpsed the larger canvas. He’d called wanting an interview. In the nicest possible way, Anselm had declined to oblige, following which he’d assumed the matter had died a quiet death. He hadn’t imagined that the journalist might contact key witnesses, let alone examine his life prior to Larkwood. There was one small mercy.

  ‘Thank God he didn’t speak to one of my old clients.’

  ‘On reflection, perhaps you were right,’ came Bede, purring once more.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Nietzsche.’

  Bede turned the page ceremonially as if it were a revered text. The chubby finger tapped a name in the article’s concluding paragraph.

  ‘Mitch Robson.’ Anselm murmured the name.

  The insurance man who’d run a jazz club. The trumpet player who’d tweaked the rules of harmony. His two acquittals at the Old Bailey on charges of theft were memorable high points in Anselm’s career. A man of good character had been scandalously blamed for the slipshod accounting system of a ruthless employer. The lambent phrases (used twice) returned to Anselm’s mind. In a fancy, he glimpsed the jury’s indignation. He’d passed it on like an infection.

  ‘Don’t be churlish,’ scolded Bede in reply. ‘He speaks movingly of your gifts … your high character.’ The archivist paused to salt the wound. ‘You were close once, it seems.’

  Anselm snatched the paper. He couldn’t bear the commentary any longer. He read on, with growing dismay:

  Despite this double vindication, Mr Robson remains aggrieved. ‘The law doesn’t always mesh with reality,’ he explains at home, an old pleasure wherry moored on the Lark. ‘One moment you’re driving on the right side of the road, and the next you’re in court battling to put your life back together. Thankfully, I knew Anselm. He winkled some justice out of the system.’ Mr Robson is not surprised that his one-time advocate became a monk, or that the monk then returned to the quest for justice. ‘He’s somewhere between this world and the next. That’s why he sees a little bit further than everyone else. That’s why anyone in a hopeless situation should give him a call. There’s no one quite like him.’ Mr Robson is right. And surely that makes this reclusive monk one of the more unusual detectives in England.

  Give him a call? thought Anselm in disbelief. I’m not free to do anything. He appraised his brother monk, seeking sympathy and a recognition that things had got out of hand.

  ‘C’mon, Bede, this makes me into something I’m not.’

  ‘Undeniably.’

  ‘Let’s put it where it belongs.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘In the bin.’

  ‘Nope.’ Bede rose and carefully folded up the paper. ‘No can do,’ he said, locking it beneath one chunky arm. ‘This is history. My job is to preserve it for the instruction of future generations. A cautionary tale, perhaps.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like you, frankly,’ whispered Anselm. ‘I do my best, you know, for the sake of the Kingdom, but I’ve always thought there’s something … Vichy about you. You’re an ally of dark powers. Just wait till your name appears in print.’

  ‘That day will never dawn.’ The archivist had reached the door. He turned and gave the newspaper a reproving slap with the back of his hand. ‘Like most of us at Larkwood, I keep out of the public eye. It’s called being a monk.’

  Anselm stared out of the window. He could see fresh green treetops behind the blue slate of Saint Hildegard’s where the apples were pressed and the mash recycled into a hideous chutney reserved for communal consumption. Bells rang, punctuating moments of importance, but Anselm didn’t move. His mind meandered through remembered conversations. He picked his way over the rubble of another life, listening intently to guarded disclosures. At one point he groaned out loud, wryly noting the curious symmetry between his former life as a barrister and his present existence as a monk: so much of what he’d been told lay protected by a solemn promise of confidentiality. He could never repeat anything he’d heard until it was already public knowledge; he couldn’t voice any previous suspicions until they’d been openly confirmed. His role as a listener was a kind of prison, shared with the person who’d sought his counsel. After an hour or so, he left the library and went to his cell. He had letters to write, beginning with a few ill-chosen words for Roddy Kemble and ending up with a salvo to the editor of the Sunday Times to the effect that the hidden life is best left hidden.

  2

  The first letter arrived for Anselm’s attention on Tuesday morning. Three more came on Wednesday. Eight on Thursday. Twenty-six on Friday. By the following Monday, Sylvester – Larkwood’s frail Doorkeeper – had been obliged to fill an old shoebox, obtained for that purpose and stored in the nearby mail room. He glowered at Anselm when he appeared, all sheepish, to collect the morning’s intake.

  ‘I’ve got better things to do than heave that lot around.’

  ‘I didn’t write them, Lantern Bearer; I merely receive them.’

  ‘I can’t hold the fort and fool around in reserve. There are external lines, internal lines, buttons and switches. What am I to do if one of the phones rings?’

  ‘What you normally do, with that same, touching patience.’

  Sylvester sniffed, nodding at a vacant chair. Larkwood’s receptionist was one of the community’s founding fathers, a thatcher who’d helped restore the ruin donated to a group of winsome ascetics after the Great War. The oral tradition regarding his contribution to the English Gilbertine revival was unequivocal: he’d talked twice as much as he’d thatched. The written account was mercifully threadbare, largely because Bede hadn’t yet turned up with his files and folders.

  ‘No one writes to me any more,’ he moaned.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Pushing daisies, the lot of ’em.’

  ‘Too busy, I suppose.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  Anselm took the shoebox.

  ‘You’re the last of your kind,’ he said, sincerely. ‘A scout among cubs.’

  Like Merlin, Sylvester youthened with age. It was impossible to judge his years. His flimsy hair was gossamer white, his bones protruding and somehow soft.

  ‘What do they all want, anyway?’ The old man peered at the sealed envelopes with the same curiosity that sent him on tiptoe to any closed door.

  ‘Help I can’t give,’ replied Anselm, wondering if today’s requests would be any different. ‘So far, I’ve been asked to find a cat, contact the dead, tackle the Chinese on Tibet … you wouldn’t believe the range of things that blight people’s lives. Thanks to a throwaway line in that article, the friendless and cornered think I’m some kind of magician. A link between earth and heaven. What can I do?’

  ‘Go to the Prior.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just remembered. He wants to see you. And don’t forget Baden-Powell: “Be prepared.” He’s got the Moses-eye.’

  Which was Sylvester’s way of saying the Prior had that sharp look of vigilance that appeared when he feared someone might go astray: in the instant case – Anselm surmised – through a venture into self-engendered public acclaim.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for this,’ muttered Anselm, rising. ‘He thinks I’ve h
ad a hand in that blasted article. He thinks I might take it seriously … that I might even dance around my own image and likeness. I’d better explain.’

  Anselm set off for the Prior’s study. When he reached the arched door to the cloister, he swung around to face the old scout: ‘If I’m not back in half an hour send out Peewee Patrol.’

  During a moment of shared reflection the Prior had once declared that Anselm would always be freed from his monastic routine to help people who’d fallen between the cracks on the pavement to justice. The promise was, however, grounded upon three unspoken principles. First, an element of secrecy, in that Anselm was expected to work behind the scenes and without public acknowledgement; second, any such release would be the exception rather than the rule; and third, the kind of case he’d be allowed to accept belonged to a limited class: grave matters that touched upon the community or, by extension, people known to it. Such conditions kept Anselm firmly lodged in the cloister rather than the world. It did not take a Desert Father to recognise that the Sunday Times article had offended the first of these principles. Anselm had become a household name, if only for Sunday morning, but that was bad enough. The Moses-eye had grown increasingly troubled throughout the week following publication and Anselm, drawing up a chair, knew exactly what the Prior was going to say.

  ‘I tried to put him off,’ began Anselm. ‘It’s the last thing I expected to happen, but you can’t stop these people. They’ve got to find something to fill out the paper. They chose my past.’

  The Prior, lodged behind his desk, adjusted round, cheap glasses. They were almost alone. To one side stood a headless statue that had been unearthed by a plough in Saint Leonard’s Field. Old parts of monastic history were forever turning up like this – smashed decoration, sections of pillars, capitals: the waste of a once violent, reforming zeal. The figure seemed to watch with a patience acquired over centuries.

  ‘And now I’m receiving letters from people who need a solicitor, the police or a doctor,’ continued Anselm. ‘They’re from decent folk who think I can do something these others can’t. And, of course, it’s just not possible. I appreciate that. It’s not my place in life. It’s not Larkwood’s, either. I’ll be telling them all that they need to understand the limits of—’

  ‘A letter came for me, too,’ interjected the Prior, the Glasgow grain shining through the Suffolk sheen. He held up an envelope. ‘They can’t go to a solicitor. They can’t call the police. It’s too late for a doctor. They think you can help them. I understand why. I’m minded to agree.’

  Anselm took a mental step backwards.

  ‘You’re not vexed about the article?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The attention it’s attracted?’

  ‘No.’

  Anselm lifted the shoebox into view. ‘The requests for help?’

  ‘No, though Tibet will have to wait.’

  The Prior pushed back his chair and walked to a window overlooking the cloister Garth. His voice was uncharacteristically ponderous, as if he were speaking to the generations of monks who’d come and gone, shuffling beneath the arches down below. Anselm listened, like Sylvester at a door.

  ‘I’ve been brooding on something I’d never thought possible,’ said the Prior. ‘It’s about the very identity of this monastery. Larkwood doesn’t exist for itself or any number of pilgrims. We provide a place where anyone at all can look clearly – at themselves and the circumstances they’ve left behind. They discover a kind of flickering light.’ He paused significantly. ‘There are many who might never come here. I’d like you to take that flame beyond the enclosure wall.’

  Anselm sensed the Prior had much more to say; that he’d been turning over the mulch in his mind and come to a decision with implications beyond the request in the letter on his desk. Anselm listened with subdued anticipation.

  ‘There comes a time in a monk’s life, Anselm, when he can go back to the world he left while somehow remaining apart and different. He’s travelled that most difficult of journeys. He’s become something of a recollected man, a sort of birdwatcher attuned to the mysterious forest of the human heart. He returns to the familiar as a kind of stranger; an outsider within the ordinary. He can enter deeply into what he once knew, only deeper than before. He can see things to which he was once blind. He can hear things to which he was once deaf. And, most importantly of all, he hasn’t the faintest idea that he hears or sees anything in a way different to before. He just finds himself bemused in a place he once recognised without complication. But it’s that … being puzzled which permits him to probe the hearts of men and women, seeing what they would hide, even from themselves. He has an eye for the bright and the dark, for he has seen the light and shadows in himself, and not turned away.’

  This was considerably worse than the Sunday Times. Anselm shifted uncomfortably. Something didn’t feel quite right.

  ‘Of course,’ continued the Prior, ‘this is a journey you have yet to travel.’

  Anselm made a thin smile.

  ‘You’ve only just taken to the road. But I’ve been persuaded that in certain circumstances, it is right to learn en route.’ The Prior turned from the window, smiling indulgence and the natural worry of a father. ‘You’ve always been a lawyer in a habit; a man of two worlds. It’s only right that you should serve them both, and sooner rather than later. So I’ve decided to formalise things, for the benefit of people who’d never come to Larkwood but would turn to you when all other doors are closed. Henceforth you are at liberty to accept cases from anyone who contacts you, subject, of course, to the exercise of sound judgement. I’ll try and help in that regard. You must always give priority to those on the margins of hope.’

  Anselm didn’t know what to say. For a man bound to monastic life the decision was momentous with significant repercussions. The exception had just become the rule.

  The Prior returned to his desk and took the letter out of its envelope. ‘Do you need time to reflect upon what I’m asking or a shove to get on with it?’

  ‘Is there a middle road? Something vague and indecisive?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll take the shove.’

  3

  Without further ceremony, the Prior handed the letter to Anselm. There was no address, no name and no date. The author had used a typewriter. Anselm angled the page to the light, reading under his breath.

  Father Prior,

  I read with interest the article about Father Anselm. As it happens, I’ve followed his career wondering, on occasion, why his services were not more widely available and why his clients were only friends or those with a special connection to his past. What of those who are strangers to your world? People on the margins of hope? People with nowhere to turn because no one would believe them? Are they to be forgotten?

  ‘That’s an interesting point,’ observed Anselm. He’d also noted that phrase about hope; it had burned Larkwood’s protector.

  ‘I know,’ replied the Prior, still feeling the heat.

  Anselm continued to read:

  I write on behalf of Jennifer Henderson. When she was alive she made no cry for help because she didn’t see the danger. Neither did I. Nor did anyone else. We didn’t read the signs properly. Now it’s too late. She’s dead. There’s no point in going to the police because there’s no evidence, and without evidence there’s no suspect and no crime. So I come to you speaking for her. Find out what really happened on the day she died. Her husband knows only too well. That’s why he snapped in Manchester and ended up in prison. You’ve got two weeks before he’s released. What does the future hold? It’s obvious: he’ll snap again. Only this time he might just take his own life. Why not help him, for the sake of the living and the dead? Why not extend Larkwood’s reach?

  That was the end of the letter. Anselm turned the page, looking in vain for some stray clue to the writer’s identity.

  ‘You know who the husband is, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘It’s Peter Henderson, the ph
ilosopher from Cambridge, the celebrity commentator. Always on television and the radio. Question Time and the Moral Maze. Did you follow the case?’

  ‘No more than anyone else.’

  Anselm thought for a while.

  ‘I met her once … years back. She was in hospital having some routine tests. I was filling in for the chaplain. I told you when I got back … don’t you remember?’

  The Prior didn’t. But that was no great surprise. His memory was strangely selective, favouring the details that everyone else tended to forget. Anselm made a forgiving sigh and then read the letter once more. Looking up, he said:

  ‘Is this why you’ve extended my mandate? This plea on behalf of the forgotten?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Prior gave a self-reproving laugh. ‘It was Mr Robson who first set me thinking, when he spoke out for the hopeless. And then I received the letter … from someone I’ve never met and who, like Mr Robson, doesn’t know our ways. But from that place of unknowing they raised the most important question of all: the scope and nature of Larkwood’s reach. Isn’t it strange: if you’d asked me yourself to be released without restriction, I’d have said, “No”. It took a vindicated man and a stranger to show me that the time for change was upon us both.’

  There was nothing more to be said. The decision had been made. Anselm had already embarked upon a changed life. As if nudged to start work, he examined the author’s phrasing.

  ‘This is an allegation of murder.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Only the word itself isn’t used.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘Which means they’re not sure.’

  ‘Yet sure enough to write in the first place.’

  ‘They suspect Peter Henderson but they don’t accuse him. Which means they’re not sure of that either. They’re a disturbed bystander who can’t make sense of a woman’s dying. They can’t accept that no one’s to blame.’

  They were quiet, watching each other, and then the Prior leaned on his desk, fingers knitted.