Murder in Advent

by David Williams

  ‘Was in the cathedral. He smelled fire. Opened the door. The flames and smoke rushed out.’

  ‘And blew him over?’

  ‘That’s about it. He got back, though, and shut the door. They’re saying already he saved the cathedral.’

  ‘By containing the fire, of course. Good thinking. And Mr Pounder . . .’

  ‘Is the problem. Dad wasn’t sure he was in there. Couldn’t get in to look in any case. Except now he wishes he could have. Somehow.’

  ‘Was Mr Pounder usually there at – what time was it?’

  ‘Bit after seven-fifteen. No. He used to open the Old Library for half an hour at five-thirty. For any visitors after evensong. Usually there aren’t any. Not this time of year. But he’d been doing it like for ever. Matter of pride, I suppose.’

  ‘Despite the cold.’ Now the little Jack Russell’s head had emerged through the crook of Treasure’s arm.

  ‘That’s right. Anyhow, his job was to lock the library at six, check everything else in the cathedral was locked, then go round with a handbell.’

  ‘A handbell?’

  ‘Wakes up anyone asleep in a dark corner at closing time.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He was supposed to leave the building by six-fifteen. The police take responsibility for security then.’

  ‘So your father could reasonably suppose Mr Pounder had left?’

  ‘Except the door Dad used to get in wasn’t locked. Mr Pounder should have locked it behind him. Dad thought he’d forgotten. He’d been forgetting plenty of things lately.’

  Treasure nodded. ‘And you’re sure the Magna Carta’s lost?’

  ‘Along with everything else, like the chained books. I think everything was insured.’

  ‘Was it a big chained library?’

  ‘Quite small. Only one combined bookcase and reading desk. Restored fourteenth-century original. And a few big manuscript books attached to it by chains. About a dozen. Not valuable. It was just to show what a medieval chained library looked like.’

  ‘The Litchester chained library used to be quite big, I thought?’

  ‘Never as big as Hereford. The one here was broken up. Most of the best books, the ones used for research, they’ve been rebound. They’re in the New Library. In the cloisters.’

  ‘That’s a blessing. I wonder if . . .’

  ‘Sorry. You are staying at the Red Dragon?’ the girl interrupted. They had passed through a tangle of narrow one-way streets lined with shops ablaze with light and Christmas displays. Now they had emerged at the top end of the wider but also one-way Bridge Street.

  ‘Yes. It’s on the right over there, isn’t it? Years since I was here. Still a lot of activity, I see.’

  There were a great many vehicles parked along the street, including a BBC Television outside-broadcast van. A crowd of several hundred people was gathered behind police-controlled barriers at the entrance to the cathedral close lower down and on the other side of the street from the hotel. Beyond, the west end of the great edifice was illuminated inside and out. The outline of the nave and central tower were also clearly definable against the sky and over the top of the low street buildings.

  ‘You should have seen it an hour ago,’ Miss Jones commented as they drew up outside the long, Georgian and rendered façade of the Red Dragon.

  ‘D’you suppose I’ll be allowed in the close?’

  ‘You will if you’re with me. I live there. Want me to wait while you check in? You’d better do that now. They’re going to be full tonight.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He paused before getting out, studying the cathedral. Jingles, now sitting on his lap, gave the appearance of doing the same but looked back at him alertly from time to time. ‘Tragic about your Mr Pounder, but I’d think what you were saying is right. Your father probably saved the building. The priceless building. Why was he in there?’

  She switched off the engine. ‘When they asked him, he couldn’t remember.’

  ‘Act of God, maybe?’

  She didn’t reply.

  Chapter Five

  Chief Officer Olley, in charge of the now departed fire tenders, blew his nose sharply. Like the rest of Olley, the nose was remarkably large and robust, making a seemingly appropriate appendage for one whose professional activities involved the detecting of volatile emissions.

  ‘Isolated bit of the building, you see? Would have been a lot worse in any other part,’ he said, looking from Treasure to Miles Nutkin and then to Percy Bliter, who nodded knowingly. The four were standing in the cathedral close in front of the north porch. Several other knots of concerned people were close by, as well as numbers of bored policemen.

  There was plenty of light from regular and auxiliary sources to show the extent of the outside damage.

  The square porch jutted out some twenty feet from the north aisle of the nave. At ground level on three sides it presented squat, semi-circular entrance arches decorated with dogtooth carvings above scalloped capitals. At the second level those openings were matched by pairs of round-headed windows. Heavy stepped buttresses supported the extension at the two leading corners. The roof was out of sight behind a straight cornice.

  The lower storey looked untouched by the fire, but above there was a great deal of scorching to the stone-work. Some of the windows had had their lattices of tiny diamond-shaped panes shattered. Where the glass in them remained it was cracked and blackened.

  ‘It’s a wooden roof?’ This was Treasure. Fifteen minutes earlier he had been introduced to Nutkin by Glynis Jones, who had left them together. Since then – shepherded by the Chapter Clerk – he had been inside the cathedral and met the people he was with now. He had also been introduced to the Dean and his wife, to Canon Brastow, Mr Smithson-Bows the diocesan architect, and numbers of other cathedral dignitaries. Some had clearly been lingering at the scene more because they would have felt guilty at quitting it than because there was anything for them still to see or do that night.

  ‘Roof is wood under lead, yes,’ said the fireman. ‘Another few minutes it would have gone up properly. Good thing the floor’s flagstone.’

  ‘But there was a good deal of wood in the room?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Treasure.’ It was Bliter who answered. ‘Most of the fittings.’ He glanced at Nutkin as though seeking permission to continue. ‘We’d never have allowed paraffin near the area. Not if we’d known.’

  ‘And the smoke-detector system? I gather . . .’

  ‘Covers the whole building except the crypt and the Old Library, I’m afraid,’ Nutkin put in. ‘At the time it was installed those responsible had to make some savings.’ He shook his head to indicate he hadn’t been one of the cost-cutting band.

  ‘False economy, of course,’ said Olley.

  ‘Your predecessor had to approve it.’ Bliter sounded sure of his ground.

  ‘Sometimes we have to countenance things like that,’ answered the officer, putting the emphasis on the longest word. ‘Likely there was no alternative. If there wasn’t enough money. Half a warning system being better than none at all.’

  ‘I wonder if the insurers took the same view,’ injected Treasure, who happened to be chairman of a very large insurance company.

  ‘They’re entirely satisfied with our security arrangements,’ affirmed the Cathedral Administrator. ‘They know human observers usually beat mechanical ones every time.’

  The confidence in this comment was somewhat undermined by the questioning glance Chief Officer Olley directed at the charred Old Library, and before he observed: ‘They’ll have an inspector here in the morning, no doubt.’

  ‘Meantime the structure’s safe?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Treasure,’ the fireman confirmed. ‘No need for shoring up or anything like that, Mr Smithson-Bows said.’

  ‘He’s arranging for the roof timbers to be properly examined in the morning. It’s likely there’ll have to be scaffolding when they’re made good.’ This was Bliter in an ebullient tone of voice meant to impress tha
t he was looking ahead with confidence.

  Treasure shook his head. ‘Curious no one spotted the fire from the outside earlier.’

  ‘Very few people about after six,’ said Nutkin promptly.

  ‘Paraffin can burn very dirty,’ Olley observed. ‘Could have blacked up those windows pretty fast.’

  ‘And you think Mr Pounder knocked over the heater?’

  ‘The Magna Carta display case as well possibly,’ the fireman replied. ‘It’s a small area. All those wooden fitments, and a bit of carpet where it could do the most harm. Acted like a wick. Be up to the official enquiry to decide, of course, but that’s what likely happened. Pounder was lying right by the heater – and the Dean’s mace.’

  ‘Why would he have taken the mace up there?’

  ‘He shouldn’t, Mr Treasure.’ This was Nutkin. ‘He was supposed only to carry it in procession in front of the Dean.’

  ‘He liked to show it off. As an extra exhibit when he was in charge of the Old Library,’ offered Bliter.

  ‘Another of his private arrangements,’ said the Chapter Clerk stiffly.

  ‘Like the paraffin heater.’ Olley frowned as he spoke. ‘Beats me no one knew about that. Probably kept it in the cupboard up there. Wooden cupboard. What’s left of it. Where we found the empty paraffin-can. Unbelievable.’

  ‘People did know about it.’ The firm statement came from immediately behind the group, which was arranged in a semicircle. The tone was guttural, the accent local and uncultured. The speaker was a dark thickset man, middle-aged and middle height. He was wearing a short topcoat with leather patchings.

  ‘Good evening, Jakes,’ said Bliter brusquely in the tone of a noble grudgingly acknowledging a serf. ‘Very sorry about your father-in-law,’ he conceded further, but made no attempt at introductions.

  ‘You the Mr Jakes married to Mr Pounder’s daughter?’ enquired Olley.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Mr Jakes is head cathedral gardener,’ Nutkin vouchsafed to Treasure.

  ‘You say people knew about the paraffin stove, Mr Jakes?’ This was Olley again.

  ‘Of course they did. Stands to reason. Couldn’t go through without seeing it.’

  ‘Visitors,’ said Bliter in a final sort of way.

  ‘And others. Staff.’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. It was never reported to me.’ The Administrator was now more addressing the Chapter Clerk than the head gardener.

  ‘Felt the cold something terrible, he did. More this year. Wouldn’t take in an electric fire, though. Wouldn’t use the cathedral power. He was that honest. I told him he shouldn’t be using paraffin.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, Mr Jakes,’ said Nutkin.

  ‘My wife’s that cut up. He lived with us. The old man.’ For some reason Jakes was putting his points to Treasure. ‘The wife says he most probably had a heart attack. Fell on the stove.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ said Olley and blew his nose again.

  ‘Know soon enough. When they’ve done the post-mortem. But it’s not right he gets all the blame, though. That’s what the wife says, and I agree with her. He had permission for that stove.’

  ‘Who from?’ asked the fireman.

  ‘Not for me to say,’ Jakes answered, looked hard at Treasure, hesitated, then swung about and stumped off.

  The Honourable Mrs Margaret Elizabeth Hitt, the Dean’s wife, was approaching sixty with dignity and serenity. The daughter of a viscount – hence the courtesy title – she had the features and bearing of a true aristocrat with the height to augment both. In her day she had been a beauty – and might have been a celebrated debutante had she been at all attracted to charades. Instead she had graduated in English and married a blind clergyman after concluding she needed him more than he needed her. Subsequently she had applied boundless energies to being an exceptional wife, mother and universal aunt, as well as a formidable church-woman, a noted writer of historical fiction and a still useful tennis-player.

  ‘More coffee, Mr Treasure?’ she encouraged, ‘it’s decaffeinated.’

  ‘Thank you, it’s very good coffee.’ Treasure leant across with his cup from a chintzy armchair beside the fireplace. The Dean was opposite him, and Mrs Hitt was on the sofa facing the log fire.

  The high-ceilinged, long and well-proportioned drawing room was furnished with a great deal of style but also with an eye to the practicalities. There were some fine antique pieces and a number of good pictures. A Bechstein grand piano dominated one end of the room. Treasure accepted that the absence of occasional rugs and the relative absence of bric-à-brac, small tables, fragile lamps and other lightweight impedimenta was a mild concession to the Dean’s blindness – but only after Hitt himself had called attention to the fact. ‘No bull-traps in this room,’ he had remarked as they entered ten minutes earlier: there was no hesitation, either, in the way the cleric moved about here.

  ‘Your room all right at the hotel?’

  ‘Seems fine, Dean. I only stopped to undo my bag.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘Eh . . . three-twenty.’

  ‘One of the best,’ the other man confirmed. ‘Third floor at the back. Renovated last year. No outside noise. Away from an indescribably noisy lift, and next to the fire escape. Whole place is a charming death-trap, of course. But, then, you can’t have everything.’

  Mrs Hitt smiled. ‘It’s not that bad. We know it well because we put a lot of people up there. This house looks large but it isn’t. Only one decent guest-room and an antiquated bathroom some way off. Even so, you’ll have the option to stay next time, now you know the worst.’

  ‘Thank you. With no Magna Carta I’m afraid I shall have even less reason for visiting Litchester than I had before.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad you decided to drop in now,’ Hitt observed pointedly. He had invited Treasure to do so when they had met in the close. ‘Good to know where you’d have stood over the Magna Carta sale.’

  ‘It was a change of mind, Mr Treasure?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Hitt. Bit academic now, of course.’ He took a sip of the brandy he had accepted with the first cup of coffee.

  ‘Not entirely. Gives the sellers the moral ascendancy,’ said the Dean.

  ‘That’s you and Canon Brastow.’

  ‘The Treasurer and me, yes. Algy Merit and Ewart Jones —’

  ‘The Chancellor and the Precentor?’

  ‘That’s right. They were against selling. Now, of course, it’s simply a matter of what we do with the insurance money.’

  ‘Rather less than £1.1 million the sale would have brought.’

  ‘At a million? Not that much less.’

  Treasure frowned. ‘I understood from Nutkin it was insured for five hundred thousand.’

  ‘It was till four weeks ago. After the American offer hardened we increased it to a million. When they put all that money on call, and made tomorrow the deadline.’

  ‘Did Nutkin know about the insurance?’

  ‘No reason why he shouldn’t have.’ The Dean paused to reflect. ‘On the other hand, perhaps he didn’t. It was something Clive Brastow and I decided on here one morning. Window-dressing in a way.’

  ‘You mean if the bidder put a seven-figure valuation on the thing you felt you should, too?’

  ‘Something of the kind, yes. I remember Clive rang Percy Miter at the Chapter House. Told him to fix it with our broker. Small matter at the time. Small premium.’

  ‘Small premium?’

  ‘For the period involved, I imagine. We both of us assumed the sale would go through in a matter of weeks. Seemed inefficient not to have the cover right. In case of accidents. I think it was Clive’s idea. One of his better ones.’

  ‘He’ll still make problems on what’s to be done with the money. Has it earmarked for Third World relief.’ This was Margaret Hitt. ‘Curious. He simply won’t recognise the cathedral needs relieving.’ She smiled and then recited, ‘“Let no one try to say the flesh is more important than old st
ones. It’s a false analogy. Administrative sophistry. Like saying St Paul’s is less valuable than a cure for cancer.”’ She paused. ‘Isn’t that terribly true?’

  ‘Yes. Who said it?’ asked the banker. ‘No, let me guess. John Betjeman, I expect.’ He was pleased by her affirming nod.

  ‘Wrote it, not said it. In a letter to a friend of ours. About the fate of Norwich churches. He wasn’t knocking the need for cancer cures, of course. Only begging for a right perspective.’

  ‘Certainly applies here,’ offered the Dean with spirit. ‘Clive Brastow’s a very saintly person,’ said Mrs Hitt. ‘So is Ursula, his wife.’

  Treasure made as if to say something but hesitated. Gilbert Hitt got in before him with: ‘Estimable pair. Yes, saintly probably. Which makes them the very devil to live with sometimes.’ He sniffed. ‘Now I’ve shocked Treasure, I expect.’

  ‘Not at all, Dean. Since there’s been an accident, though . . .’

  ‘I agree we should all be grateful for Clive’s perspicacity. Been thinking that all evening.’

  ‘Can you overrule him on how the money’s used?’

  ‘Won’t be necessary. Algy Merit and Ewart Jones were simply against the sale of the Magna Carta. They’ll have no inhibitions about the right way to use insurance money.’

  ‘Neither should I, although I don’t come into it any more.’ This was Treasure. ‘It seems the responsibilities of the vicar’s warden at the church of Great St Agnes have been utterly discharged by the fire.’ He swirled the brandy in his glass before adding, ‘I suppose I could propose we buy another Magna Carta with the money.’

  A look of horror appeared on the Dean’s face. ‘You won’t, of course?’

  ‘Mr Treasure’s joking,’ his wife put in.

  ‘And if I weren’t it wouldn’t matter. There wouldn’t be an early exemplification for sale at any price. They’re pretty rare.’

  ‘We might find a fake,’ offered the other man unexpectedly. ‘In theory we’d be in the right place. I remember Pounder saying years ago they produced them by the yard here. In the seventeenth century.’ His expression saddened. ‘Poor old Pounder. I’ll miss him dreadfully.’