Murder in Advent

by David Williams

  ‘And there’s no reason why he should?’ When they reached the living room she went back to the kitchen.

  He moved across to the stack of records beside her record-player. ‘Told you, I’ve no idea. Maybe the Dean will get at him.’ He looked strained. ‘Where’s the Fourth Brandenburg?’

  ‘There somewhere. Do we have to have the Fourth again?’

  ‘No. Which would you like?’

  ‘Put the Third on, then,’ she called. It was what had first endeared him to her: he did whatever she wanted – that and his heavenly voice, and his good looks, and his harmless conceits and remarkable contentment. Three years earlier, before she came to Litchester, she’d ended a torrid affair with a thrusting, ambitious man about as different from this one as it was possible to be – a man who had chosen her. She had gone to enormous pains choosing Gerard for herself.

  ‘It’ll mean the choir school folding, probably. That’ll be half my job gone. There won’t be the money for the organ. Donald Welt’s pretty depressed.’ He put the record on the player. ‘D’you think they’ll keep me on?’

  ‘Being here is what you want, isn’t it?’ She had appeared around the kitchen door. ‘Singing the services? Running the choir? Teaching the school? Really what you want?’

  ‘I feel it’s my vocation, yes. I don’t believe I’d fit nearly so well running a parish, for instance. Yes, what I want is here. Not very ambitious. D’you think I’m right?’

  ‘I’m sure you are. Don’t worry, darling. I still believe things will come right.’ And she meant it – above all, to keep her future husband and the father of her children contented.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Could mean my resignation.’ The bearded jaw dropped after he had spoken, but the face he made was one of only mild concern.

  ‘Your what, dear?’ Ursula Brastow had heard her husband well enough: simply she wasn’t ready with an answer. He couldn’t mean her to treat the matter lightly . . . not after . . . not possibly.

  Canon Brastow cleared his throat – or tried to, ‘Sorry, it’s quite painful. Resignation,’ he repeated. ‘If we should agree to sell the Magna Carta.’ He swallowed more of the hot soup. ‘The principle involved would be too big to shirk. And if my view wasn’t accepted. I’ve been thinking, it’d make it difficult to carry on as Treasurer.’

  ‘I understand.’ He couldn’t compromise? She bit her lip on the thought and didn’t utter the question.

  Ursula was a small, round, and normally balanced woman – but recently she had been in the grip of an acute depression: the pills had been meant to cure her, except now her doctor wanted her to see an analyst. She hadn’t told Clive.

  She had met her husband in West Africa – in the mission field. She had been a nurse. It had been a sound match. People had said they made a fine team. And when they’d come back to England the future had looked every bit as fulfilling.

  Her background had been quite different from his – not nearly such a good educational grounding. She hadn’t had much to fall back on now the boys had gone.

  There were two sons. One had just been ordained, the other was a medical student. She missed them. She was four years older than Clive – which had never mattered, until this year. Now it was one of the silly little things that seemed to be building barriers between them in her mind. She was just fifty-three.

  ‘It’d be over a million pounds, you see? That’s more than it’s insured for even now. I told you about that, didn’t I?’ He watched her nodded reply then went on. ‘Conscience surely demands the money would have to go where there’s no other source of help. It’s too easy for us – getting it this way. In fairness, that’s why Ewart Jones has been against selling at all. So far.’

  ‘But the vote is still expected to be against selling,’ she offered limply. Why did she feel so inadequate – even now after what she’d done? ‘More soup, dear?’ She had made the soup herself: that was somehow a comfort.

  It was a few minutes before seven. They always had supper early, and in the kitchen. Their meals were usually frugal and, unlike this evening, often shared with less fortunate people.

  ‘Thanks. It’s good. Is it cauliflower cheese I smell next? Don’t know how you do these things in the time.’ She had come in after him. She had told him she’d been out but he’d been preoccupied at the time and forgotten where.

  ‘Made it before I went out.’ She showed eager pleasure at the compliment.

  The house, though not immense, they considered too big for the two of them. They had roughly arranged it so that the big basement was available as a temporary flat for the homeless or for refugees. It was empty at the moment, and people never seemed to stay in it for long, no matter how desperate they were when they arrived. The Brastows reasoned that the space wasn’t ideal for the purpose – nor did they have the authority and the money to make it so with structural alterations. At worst they felt what they had arranged set an example. Their dining room was lent to a famine relief charity as a regional office.

  ‘The Dean’s working hard on Ewart Jones. He may still come round to selling. And I can’t possibly vote against. All that money for a useless artefact.’ He shrugged. ‘It’d be mad to turn it down.’

  ‘The cathedral needs money, of course.’ After she’d said it she wished she hadn’t. He was Treasurer: he knew the facts better than anyone. His unguarded facial reaction she interpreted properly as irritation at her stupidity: he corrected it quickly but too late.

  ‘The Finance Committee’s plan for a Cathedral Appeal still stands.’ He poured himself some water. ‘Ewart Jones supports it. We’d be aiming for three million. I think we’d get it, too. The Dean’s doubtful. Ewart believes we ought to use professional fund-raisers for that. Wouldn’t be surprised if Algy Merit thinks the same.’

  ‘Don’t professionals charge a lot?’

  ‘About ten per cent of what they raise. There’d be a fee at the start. Non returnable. Ewart says it’s only ten per cent of money we wouldn’t otherwise have. It’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘But you don’t approve?’

  ‘No.’ He frowned. ‘Not for a totally logical reason. Makes me feel uncomfortable. Like this wretched throat. In any case, all that’s for future debate. The Magna Carta decision’s on us tomorrow.’

  ‘And Mr Treasure from London? You said . . .’

  ‘Is against selling. So far as we know. He could change his mind.’

  She hoped not: not after what she’d done. There were times in the day when the pills she took gave her courage enough for anything: now wasn’t one of those times. A dreadful apprehension was clawing through her.

  At ten past seven Canon Jones left his house for the second time since he had come in after evensong. He was wearing an overcoat – and concealed beneath it, across his chest, he was holding an oversized soft-leather document-case.

  ‘Shan’t be long, Nancy,’ he’d called to his wife, who was busy in the kitchen. ‘Note to deliver in the close.’

  ‘Thought you’d done that,’ she answered.

  ‘This is another one.’

  ‘All right. Dinner is half an hour. Glynis should be home by then.’

  The note in his hand was for the Dean and could easily have waited until morning. He dropped it into the Deanery letter box as he passed, then hurried onwards. He adjusted the set of the case under his coat while humming the tune of ‘Ding, Dong, Merrily on High’ which had been in his mind since he heard the choir practising it with the other Christmas music that morning.

  The close seemed conveniently deserted. Most of the populace of this very provincial English town would be indoors having supper or watching television.

  As he approached the east end of the cathedral he debated whether it was worth the diversion to use the cloister door when his destination was the Old Library over the north porch. But when it came to it discretion won, and he turned left, then right again, to follow the path that rounded the side of the Lady Chapel and then led to the south
transept. It wouldn’t do to chance being seen as he went in.

  He had no misgivings about his plan. No doubt it was impetuous – but he’d always been that. Just as certainly it would wake people up to their obligations. So it was risky. St Paul had taken diverse risks in good causes: the saint had also been a small man.

  He turned right on entering the lamplit, covered cloister. The door which led into the south transept of the cathedral was before him in shadow. It marked the end of the eastern arcade of Abbot’s Cloister quadrangle. He glanced back briefly. There was no one in sight as he went for the heavy key in his coat pocket. From habit, at the same time, he tried the door – lifting the ancient ironwork latch and pushing, in the fairly certain knowledge the door was locked. But it opened.

  The Canon shook his head. Mr Pounder was supposed to lock the door behind him at six-fifteen. It wasn’t the first time there’d been evidence the old fellow was getting beyond it. Of course, someone else with a key could have come in since the Dean’s verger had gone home. In that case, though, the door should still have been locked from one side or the other – depending on whether the other person was still in the building or not.

  It didn’t suit Ewart Jones’s purpose for someone else to be in the cathedral. He stepped inside and listened in the darkness. The silence seemed complete. He locked the door behind him quietly, preparing to go forward in the nearly pitch darkness with less immediate confidence than he had watched the blind Dean exercise hundreds of times over the same route.

  The windows in aisle, triforium and clerestory provided little illumination at first. He had not intended using lights for fear of attracting attention from outside: this would also now help to establish if he really was alone.

  He moved in a straight northerly course from the door towards the crossing beneath the great central tower, as his sight began to acclimatise. He looked to the right as he passed the top of the south choir aisle. The clergy, choir and vergers’ vestries were there, but there were no lights coming from any of them. The organ loft on the far side of the choir was also in darkness. And these were all the parts of the building most likely to be visited after normal hours by people with keys. It seemed he was alone – and that Mr Pounder had been careless about locking up.

  After the crossing, he moved down the centre of the stone-flagged nave between the rows of chairs he could still only scarcely distinguish, and marking his way by the great rose window in the west front. He turned right opposite the north door.

  There were two spiral staircases leading to the Old Library above the great porch: they were enclosed in stone turrets on either side of the porch doors inside the cathedral. There was no access from outside. The upstairs area housed what was left of the old chained library as well as the Litchester Magna Carta. Visitors ascended by the right-hand staircase and came down by the left after walking past the exhibits – and always under the eye of a volunteer official cathedral guide or one of the vergers. On Mondays to Thursdays after evensong Mr Pounder did the supervising there from five-thirty to six. Later he locked the turret doors at the top of the stairways and, after ensuring the building was empty, locked the cathedral itself, leaving through the cloisters.

  Canon Jones reached for the key as he still half-felt his way to the turret on the left, then began mounting the steep stairs. It wasn’t surprising Pounder was failing in the job, he ruminated. The fellow was too old for these stairs to begin with.

  It was as he was trying to find the keyhole in the blackness that he sensed danger: smelt it. The door opened backwards on to the wide landing step, but he’d forgotten that. He had started by pushing inwards on it but it hadn’t yielded. Then he tried to hurry with the unlocking except the key seemed not to affect anything.

  ‘Mr Pounder, are you in there?’ he cried at the top of his voice while wrestling with the key and a dreadful premonition. He knew the question was stupid. Why should Pounder still be there – behind a locked door? ‘Don’t worry, I’m coming,’ he persisted. And now he really was alarmed, capable of mouthing any comforting inanity. ‘I’m coming, Mr Pounder.’

  It was as he shouted the last reassurance that his hand fell on the latch and he realised his error. He lifted the latch. Immediately the door flew back and propelled Canon Jones down the stairs like a bullet from a gun.

  It was two hours later when Mark Treasure alighted from the train at Litchester’s imposing, red-brick and distinctly Victorian railway station. There was only one other passenger getting off – a small man in a hurry and a bowler hat. There was no one getting on.

  The banker had travelled all the way in the dining car. There he had been the sole customer, waited on by an over-attentive staff maniacally anxious to please and to preserve a still surviving member of an evidently dying breed.

  There were a few – a very few – other people still on the train, he noticed, as he strode past four carriages on his way to the platform exit. Some would be Shrewsbury and others for Chester. It seemed British Rail was about to reroute this train – via busy Wolverhampton instead of sleepy Litchester. The chief steward had been predicting the event through four courses. The new service was expected to have a refreshment bar and not a dining car. ‘There’s not the quality of traveller any more, sir,’ had been the pointed complaint, while narrowed eyes had been fixed on Treasure’s calculating of the tip. The chief steward had repeated the lament later, and more wistfully, as part of a deeply respectful farewell address incorporating heartfelt best wishes for Christmas.

  ‘You’re Mr Mark Treasure?’ asked the girl. The question came more with the assurance of an already verified statement. Not to have been Mr Mark Treasure, he felt, would have been a serious shortcoming on his part. The man in the bowler hat had gone through the ticket barrier ahead of him without being quizzed.

  ‘Afraid so,’ he answered genially while considering his dark, petite interrogator. She was standing on the platform just in front of the ticket collector and his booth. He guessed she was in her early twenties. She was pert, alert, very pretty, with Cupid’s-bow lips, a turned-up nose and an antipodean accent. She was wearing a thick-knit sweater with a deep halter collar, a tweed skirt, wool stockings and brogues – in shades of brown – and a long white scarf draped not turned about her neck. The small white terrier dog on the end of the lead in her left hand was already sniffing at Treasure’s shoes.

  ‘I’m Glynis Jones. Glad to know you, Mr Treasure.’ The right hand stopped pulling on the scarf and got presented for shaking on the end of a very straight arm. ‘My dog’s called Jingles. She’s a Jack Russell and very friendly.’ The animal looked up at the mention of her name, head on one side, then went back to licking a toecap as earnest of the advertised good nature.

  Treasure’s forehead wrinkled. ‘So you’ll be . . . Canon Jones’s daughter?’ After shaking hands he bent down to pat Jingles. The animal snapped at him then, reputation in tatters, retreated behind Miss Jones, the bell on the dog collar emitting a worried accompaniment.

  ‘Bit nervous with strangers. She’ll get used to you. Smart of you to figure who I was.’ The girl dipped her chin self-consciously.

  ‘It was my turn. And not too difficult.’ Miss Gaunt, his secretary, had provided short biographies and family details on all members of the Chapter. ‘Good of you to meet me.’ He presented his ticket for clipping.

  ‘Mummy and I thought someone should. Everybody else is pretty occupied. There’s been an accident. And a fire. Earlier this evening. At the cathedral.’ She had led him through the barrier and out on the huge, brick-paved station yard. ‘Station’s on the edge of town. There’s never more than one taxi meets this train. You might have missed it.’

  ‘I seem to have done just that.’ They both watched the other passenger get into a Ford on the otherwise empty cab-rank. ‘About the accident and the fire – anyone hurt?’

  ‘My dad. He’s OK,’ she added quickly. ‘Mr Pounder, the Dean’s verger, I’m afraid he’s dead. In the fire. It was pretty disastro
us. In every way. Your journey’s probably been a waste of time, too. Like to get in?’ She unlocked the nearside door of a green, soft-top Suzuki four-wheel drive with a somewhat military appearance. Jingles, released, leapt smartly on to the front passenger-seat. There was a momentary pitting of wills before Treasure, who liked dogs, succeeded in banishing this one to the rear seat along with his bag. He examined the car’s interior with a look of tolerant interest.

  The girl noted the appraisal. ‘I’m a farm secretary. This buggy gets me anywhere. Care to have the roof down?’

  ‘Thank you, no. Not unless we’re called to battle stations. Please go on about the cathedral.’

  She strapped herself into the driving seat and started the motor. ‘The Old Library caught fire. Dad discovered it. Got blown down some steps in the process. Thinks he was knocked out. For a moment. Still raised the alarm. They stopped the fire spreading. Old Library’s pretty burnt. Except they saved the roof. Timbers badly charred.’ Matching her staccato phrases, she moved the car off with a lurch.’

  ‘The Old Library? That’s above the porch, isn’t it? Where the Magna Carta’s kept? Was it damaged?’

  ‘Burnt to a cinder. And the chained library books. Mr Pounder was in there. He was a very old man.’ At the end of the yard she turned the car to the right into a wide thoroughfare. It was only sparsely built-up but the lights of the town centre showed a quarter of a mile ahead.

  ‘Do they know how it started?’

  ‘Pretty certainly. Mr Pounder was using a paraffin-stove heater. Old-fashioned kind. He shouldn’t have had it. He felt the cold a lot.’

  ‘And it tipped over?’

  ‘That’s the likeliest explanation.’

  ‘Wonder why he didn’t get out? Raise the alarm?’

  ‘Could have tripped and fallen. Maybe fell over the stove. He was laid out on the floor when they found him. Pretty charred.’

  He heard her swallow after the last phrase. He was also conscious of Jingles’s nose pushing a way from the rear under the arm of his sheepskin coat. ‘And your father?’