Murder in a Cathedral

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘Not difficult if a friend who has come to visit you, and whom you’re trying to persuade to become a member of your chapter, expresses a desire to see Westonbury in the moonlight from the top of the tower. Up went Cooper and Johns, over the edge went Cooper and down came Johns. Unfortunately for him, when he was almost at the bottom of the stairs, Plutarch came bounding up.’

  Amiss laughed. ‘Sorry, but it is grimly comic if you consider the state of mind of the two as they collided. In one corner we have an unusually hungry Plutarch, who had just spotted that the door separating her from the kestrel’s store of goodies was open, salivating at the thought of what might await her at the top of the stairs. In the other we have a murderer hastening to kill a second brother in Christ and get the hell out of Westonbury. I’m surprised they both came out alive.’

  ‘Johns’s face and hands are in a very, very nasty mess and two of his earrings had been pulled out, leaving nasty wounds. Plutarch is unquestionably not a cat one would wish to meet on a narrow, dark staircase.’

  The baroness wrinkled her forehead. ‘Why didn’t the idiot throw her in the river to hide the evidence?’

  ‘I suspect he wasn’t thinking very clearly by then. Must have been close to blind panic. And in great pain. Remember he was an amateur at burglary and murder and probably lacked your criminal instincts.

  ‘He fetched the equipment he needed from his car and stashed it in St Dumbert’s Chapel, went to Davage’s house, made him write his suicide note—presumably by threatening to hurt him—and took him over to the cathedral where he fed him whisky laced heavily with sleeping tablets. He insists Davage became unconscious as soon as he got to the chapel. Johns tied him to a chair with several rounds of cotton thread, which is as effective as string or rope but can be guaranteed not to survive a fire, put Davage’s fingerprints on the petrol can, doused him with its contents, set fire to him and ran for home.’

  ‘Was Tilly not involved?’

  ‘Apparently not. She persuaded him it would be too risky for her to leave the deanery, since she was so instantly recognizable.’

  ‘I suppose it was quite clever of them to work out such a foolproof method,’ said the baroness grudgingly.

  Pooley shook his head. ‘Not foolproof at all. I won’t go into details or I’ll put David and Robert off dinner, but even when a body is incinerated to the extent that Davage’s was, the contents of the stomach are preserved. A bit like a potato that you cook in a fire. That’s how we knew he was much too heavily drugged to have been able to do the deed himself.’

  ‘That’s quite enough, Ellis. We take your word for it.’

  ‘So the pathologist reported that he must have been unconscious when the fire started.’

  Very hesitantly, the bishop leaned towards Pooley. ‘I don’t want to be materialistic, Ellis, but is there any trace of those of our treasures that are still missing?’

  ‘I think we’ve recovered the lot. Johns was so badly marked he didn’t want to go out, and he had not had a chance before then to find a hiding place or a reliable fence. The top of his wardrobe is crammed full of rings, reliquaries and other odds and ends.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Happy ending, then,’ said the baroness, standing up.

  ‘Except for Jeremy, the dean, Cecil, Tilly and the Rev. Bev,’ said Amiss.

  ‘And nearly Plutarch,’ added the bishop.

  ‘Stop being so pedantic. You know what I mean. Come on, then. It’s almost eight and I’m starving.’ As she reached the door she turned and observed carelessly. ‘I think I bought too much food. Shall I ask that child Alice to join us for dinner?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Pooley.

  Epilogue

  Amiss looked about him nervously. ‘I don’t like the look of this place. Why have you taken us to a back street in Southall to what looks like a fifth-rate Indian restaurant. It’s got to be that they serve something really, really horrible that cannot be found in salubrious establishments in the West End.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s not for the squeamish.’

  ‘Curse you, Jack, I am squeamish.’

  ‘It’s time you learned to be less so. I’m giving you two a treat. There is nowhere, but nowhere, in the United Kingdom to touch this place for fish-head curry.’

  Amiss and Pooley looked at each other.

  ‘Red-hot fish-head curry, of course.’

  ‘What else have they got?’ asked Amiss faintly.

  ‘You’re not going to be feeble, are you? What’s the point of coming here if you’re not going to eat their speciality?’

  ‘I don’t even want to look at their speciality. Christ, I can’t even eat whitebait, because their little eyes put me off. And they’re disguised in batter.’

  ‘Ellis, are you a pathetic wimp like your friend?’

  Pooley stiffened his shoulders. ‘Certainly not. Do your worst.’

  ‘There you are, Robert. Ellis is an embodiment of the courage and determination acquired on the playing fields of Eton.’

  ‘Pshaw!’ said Amiss. ‘More an embodiment of the misplaced macho bravado acquired in the police canteen, if you ask me. Me, I value moral courage, so I don’t mind telling you I want a meal that consists of ingredients I won’t feel ill contemplating, cooked in a sauce which won’t take the roof off my mouth and give me the runs for a fortnight. Is that too much to ask?’

  She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. ‘Sometimes I don’t know why I hang about with you. I might be better off with a real man like Ellis.’

  ‘Thank you for the compliment, Jack, but I think you would probably find me falling short in some other respects. I lack Robert’s essential…flexibility.’

  She nodded. ‘H’mm! You have a point, I suppose. He’s probably easier to push around.’ She clicked her fingers and a waiter materialized. ‘My friend and I will have the fish-head curry. Give him’—she pointed disparagingly at Amiss—‘something suitable for cowards.’

  ‘No fish heads,’ said Amiss firmly. ‘Nothing hot.’

  ‘Mutton?’ asked the waiter.

  ‘That’ll be fine.’

  ‘Madras?’

  ‘Too hot.’

  ‘Korma it must be then, I suppose.’ The waiter shook his head. ‘You can get that anywhere. Why do you come here and not have the fish-head vindaloo?’

  Amiss maintained a frosty silence.

  ‘Bring us plenty of beer,’ said the baroness.

  The waiter, who seemed to know her well, returned within two minutes carrying three jugs, which a couple of minutes later were augmented by a vast tureen which he placed in the centre of the table. A large bowl of rice followed, along with three plates, two of which were lined with leaves. Finally, with a contemptuous gesture, the waiter placed a nondescript container of something brown and harmless-looking beside Amiss.

  The baroness tossed her leaves aside. ‘In Kuala Lumpur this is served on a bed of banana leaves: regrettably in this joint they use plastic. Now, Ellis, pay attention. You will find that when the eyes are white and popping out, the fish heads are perfectly cooked. Dive in.’

  The next fifteen minutes consisted mostly of the sound of teeth cracking on fish craniums, loud excavations within the tureen and intermittent cries of joy as the baroness found particularly succulent morsels, which, she insisted on explaining to Amiss, were usually to be found around the eyes, cheeks and gills.

  Amiss did his utmost to block out either the sight of his companions’ dinner or the information he preferred to be without. He took great pleasure from seeing Pooley having frequently to mop sweat from his face.

  When at last the baroness finished, she wiped her mouth, emitted a large belch and threw down her napkin. ‘So how was yours?’

  ‘All right, thank you. Nothing special.’

  ‘That’s because they have contempt for those who come along and demand sheep’s balls rather than fish heads.’

  ‘Jack, I wasn’t eating sheep’s balls, was I?’

  ‘Quite p
ossibly. How would I know? Mutton covers a multitude.’

  Pooley began to choke. ‘Drink some more beer,’ instructed the baroness. He took a vast gulp, stopped choking and burped.

  ‘That’s more like it.’

  ‘Pleasant, Ellis?’ asked Amiss.

  ‘It tastes very good indeed once you get over the initial shock. Thank you, Jack. This has indeed been an experience which I will not easily forget.’

  She beamed. ‘I like people to eat properly. There is more to life than cucumber sandwiches and China tea.’ She waved a hand at the nearest waiter and shouted, ‘Beer.’

  ‘Speaking of cucumber sandwiches takes me back to Middle England. What news from the close, Robert?’

  ‘Trustrum finally came clean with me yesterday over an unprecedented third glass of sherry. Apparently Tilly just turned up at his house the evening Jeremy died, explained that she wanted him to do what she told him and said if he didn’t she’d accuse him of attempted rape. He panicked and capitulated immediately. He’s followed too many stories of men being dragged through the courts on unsubstantiated charges of sexual harassment to doubt that his life could become a misery.’

  ‘Blimey!’ exclaimed the baroness. ‘You’ve got to hand it to her. I don’t know that I’d have thought of such a simple method of getting my own way.’

  ‘I doubt if you’d be able to carry it off quite as convincingly as Tilly,’ said Amiss. ‘Otherwise, David labours on conscientiously doing things he hates, and Fedden-Jones, Trustrum and Alice try to keep the cathedral running while waiting for a new dean.’

  ‘I thought Alice was looking much happier when I was down last weekend,’ said Pooley.

  ‘She’s in good form, but she’s not cut out to be an administrator.’

  ‘Well, she’s not going to be one for much longer,’ said the baroness. ‘I sorted her out this morning. She’s going to become chaplain to St Martha’s, with a part-time curacy in the seediest part of Cambridge. That should keep her busy and happy.’

  ‘Congratulations, Jack.’

  ‘And David’s going to resign and take up a St Martha’s Fellowship in Philosophy.’

  ‘Good God!’ said Pooley. ‘Isn’t that an abrogation of responsibility?’

  ‘Balls, Ellis. He’s giving up what he’s bad at and going back to what he’s good at.’

  ‘Can he live on that?’

  ‘Cornelia had made several clever investments that can be converted into an adequate pension. Besides which, he’ll be able to live on his wife’s money. She’s got oodles.’

  Amiss and Pooley exclaimed so loudly that three waiters came rushing over; the baroness waved them away.

  ‘He’s going to marry Alice. I’ve told them to get on with it. The girl’s in her mid-thirties and wants to breed. David had some scruples because it isn’t even a year since Cornelia died, but I told him she would have agreed with me. And she would.’

  ‘But…but…but…Alice marrying David! Dammit, he’s more than twenty years older than her.’

  ‘She’ll love that. She’ll be able to look after him. Yes, I know you wanted her to marry Ellis, but that would never have done.’

  Pooley directed a startled look at Amiss. ‘You wanted her to marry me?’

  ‘Well, I thought it might be a good idea. Didn’t you like her?’

  ‘I liked her. But I was never attracted by her.’

  ‘Nor her by Ellis, Robert. I’m surprised you couldn’t see that. It was David she looked at meltingly. Besides, Ellis and she would have been ill-matched. She needs someone inadequate. His self-sufficiency would have broken her heart.’

  Amiss shook his head in bewilderment. ‘How did I miss what was going on between her and David?’

  ‘Because you were fixated on Alice and Ellis. I’ve been plotting this from the very beginning. The breakthrough came this morning, apparently, when she beat him at tennis for the first time and he was unable to restrain himself from kissing her. One thing led to another and you not being there to tell, they rang me up. He was babbling Betjeman at me: “Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,/The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy.”’

  ‘I suppose I’m delighted, really,’ said Amiss. ‘I didn’t know how he was going to get on without me. I’ll have to leave in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’

  ‘Apart from moving in with Rachel, I’ve actually got a good chance of a job I like the sound of. Don’t ask me about it: I’m superstitious.’

  The baroness took a mighty gulp of beer. ‘Now there’s just one more matter to dispose of. Ellis, why are you avoiding Mary Lou?’

  Pooley looked horrified. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know very well what I mean.’

  ‘Mary Lou kindly invited me to dinner when she was in London last month. It was very pleasant.’

  ‘Balls. She said the sexual electricity was flashing between you, but you suddenly made an excuse about having an early start the next morning and rushed away. Since then you keep being too busy to see her.’

  ‘Really, Jack, this is an unwarrantable intrusion into my private affairs.’

  ‘Bollocks. This is all because you’re being high-minded because she’s had affairs with Robert and with me, isn’t it? You don’t want to upset either of us.’

  Pooley sat up straight like a little boy who has decided to own up. ‘Very well, then. There is quite a lot in what you say. I suppose I could have sorted things out with Robert, but frankly, I draw the line at sharing a lover with you.’

  ‘If you’d given her the opportunity, she’d have told you that’s all been over for ages. It’s just that I enjoy teasing Robert about it. Mary Lou and I had a fling, but we both thought it a bit much for the mistress and the bursar to be having it off. Noblesse oblige and all that.

  ‘We’re just allies and comrades now—and whatever my faults, I’m not a dog in the manger. Mary Lou is essentially hetero. What she needs is a good man.’

  Amiss was looking dazed. ‘I know I’m self-evidently bad at this, but Ellis and Mary Lou wouldn’t have occurred to me as a likely pair.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Robert, contemplate your friend. What took him out of the background from which he comes?’

  ‘His romanticism, I suppose.’

  ‘And what does he need above all else in a woman?’

  Amiss thought for a moment. ‘Someone who will make him lose control.’

  ‘Don’t you think the bold and gorgeous Mary Lou fits the bill rather more than that nice Wasp, Alice Wolpurtstone?’

  Amiss took the mobile out of his pocket. ‘I brought this with me to return to you, Jack.’ He handed it across the table to Pooley. ‘Take it outside,’ he said, ‘press three and ask for Dr Denslow.’

  Scarlet-faced, Pooley hurried out of the restaurant.

  More from this Author

  For other books, upcoming author events, or more information please go to:

  www.poisonedpenpress.com/ruth-dudley-edwards

  Contact Us

  To receive a free catalog of Poisoned Pen Press titles, please contact us in one of the following ways:

  Phone: 1-800-421-3976

  Facsimile: 1-480-949-1707

  Email: info@poisonedpenpress.com

  Website: www.poisonedpenpress.com

  Poisoned Pen Press

  6962 E. First Ave. Ste. 103

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251