Mortal Spoils

by D M Greenwood

  ‘We could stretch to a new roof,’ the Archdeacon admitted.

  ‘And a phone,’ Theodora bargained despairingly.

  The Archdeacon did a calculation. ‘You’re on.’

  It was the best she could hope for. She knew the Archdeacon relied on her putting the place in order and then moving on to a new living. She hoped, God willing, that she might disappoint him.

  So here she was, two months and a new roof later. Monday was her day off. She’d spent a lot of time and money on paint and Teepol. Furniture, no stick of which she possessed, would not be her first concern. There was no hurry. The religious life was, she was sure, a stripped one; it meant not collecting or possessing. She looked forward to discovering what was necessary. So far she’d accumulated a futon and an old portable black and white TV, the gift of Geoffrey’s wife, Oenone.

  ‘Geoffrey never has time to look at it and I’m not too keen on the content,’ she said, apparently feeling that some explanation was needed for her generosity.

  It was company, Theodora felt, as she wrestled with the Belling and a tin of beans, even though reception was not too strong owing to the cranes.

  ‘Finally, tonight, the Archbishop of York today met the Archimandrite of Azbarnah at the headquarters of the Church of England, Ecclesia Place, Westminster. Our reporter, Archie Douglas, talks to us now …’

  Theodora put her head round the door of the scullery and gazed towards the flickering image. She remembered Archie as a selfconfident PPE man from Teddy Hall. He’d got a bit thicker ten years on but the confidence still clung to him like a halo. For his interview from Westminster he was wearing designer battle fatigues and a cravat into which was pushed like a tiepin his tiny microphone. The Scottish accent which at Oxford he’d cultivated had slipped away in the course of time.

  ‘… the Church of England … failure of its attempts to reunite itself with either the Methodists or the Roman Catholics is now looking around for allies from amongst other branches of the Christian Church. Some unkind souls might say that in reaching a concordat, as they call it, with the Archimandrite of Azbarnah, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel … an obscure country of which we know little … a branch of Orthodoxy midway between Greek and Bulgarian … not clear what the C of E hopes to gain from the relationship. What the Azbarnahis would get, on the other hand, is fairly obvious. Stronger links with the UK whether political, cultural, or even religious, may help this economically backward country in its quest to enter the Common Market. The Archimandrite, a politically controversial figure whose role under the former communist regime of President Kursola was, to say the least, equivocal … The Archbishop of York who signed the pact from the Church of England’s side told us …’

  The picture panned to a shot of the Archbishop and Archimandrite seated in the front hall of Ecclesia Place. Theodora recognised the reception desk and rubber plant in the background. The Archimandrite looked well-protected by a bulletproof black robe and a strong growth of beard. He sat very upright, his arms folded, his legs crossed. He was rather younger than his title suggested but he had a physical presence and a stern, concentrated gaze. The Archbishop next to him was gazing steadily at a different camera with the expression of one who has never seen a TV camera before.

  ‘Archbishop,’ the reporter sprang up terrier-like at the tall figure of the cleric, ‘can you tell us what the terms of the agreement with the Azbarnahi Church are?’

  The Archbishop continued to gaze into the wrong camera. It showed his fine bony profile and strong triangular eyebrows.

  He cleared his throat and said mildly, ‘The Church prays constantly for the reunification of Christendom and for the mending of the broken vessel. This is particularly true of our sister churches so long in the wilderness of communist Europe. Our agreement today with our brothers in the Azbarnahi Orthodox Church is one small step towards that end.’

  Theodora wondered whether he had heard the question. The vowels, the prose rhythms were those of a Cambridge scholar refined during a lifetime of prayer and theological debate. They made no contact with Archie’s more robust concerns.

  ‘Archbishop, I understand the Diet, the general assembly, the parliament, if you like, of the Church of England will have to confirm this concordat when it meets in a month’s time. Will you be recommending them to do that?’

  The Archbishop looked startled in an understated sort of way, as though this was a move of high politics which had escaped him. ‘Oh, I think so. Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Clearly this wasn’t in any script the Archbishop had been briefed with. ‘Er, well, as I said, the benefits to both our communities.’

  ‘Which benefits?’

  ‘The healing of separation. The ecumenical venture,’ he plucked from the air and then limped to a halt.

  He’s been told it would be a good idea but hasn’t been told why, Theodora thought. The word ‘ecumenical’ usually stopped any opposition in debate within the Church; the Archbishop naturally felt it ought to do so outside it. He looked miffed.

  Pity Archie doesn’t know the hidden agenda, Theodora grinned at the face on the screen. The undeclared intention, presumably, was that if the C of E got in good with the Orthodox Church, if and when the Orthodox linked up with the Roman Catholics the C of E would be taken on board with them. Perhaps the Archbishop didn’t think that way. Or perhaps he had never asked himself the more searching question as to why the linking of systems, bureaucracies, which sprang from such different soils as England and Eastern Europe without a linking of hearts and sympathies first, should be worth pursuing.

  ‘Europe,’ the Archbishop was saying desperately, ‘our new or, perhaps I might say, our renewal of the idea of Christendom through the Common Market.’

  Theodora blushed for him. She’d no idea she was supposed to have signed up to a particular political agenda when she’d joined the Church. Tough on all those Christians who had a different political stance. Really, had not bishops problems enough at home without pretending to be world figures with a political agenda? A bit of local shepherding wouldn’t come amiss.

  Archie seemed to think he had demonstrated the fatuity of Anglican thinking sufficiently. He turned towards the Archimandrite.

  ‘Archimandrite, what do you hope to get out of this agreement?’

  ‘Money,’ said the Archimandrite, gazing un-blinkingly into the right camera.

  Even Archie was set back by such honesty. ‘Money?’

  ‘We need a big lot of money to fight holy war against infidel.’

  ‘Infidel?’

  It was rather nice to see Archie outclassed by this heavyweight, Theodora thought. Hadn’t done his prep on this one.

  ‘The Muslim. He beats our breasts, he hammers our gate, yes.’

  Archie had had enough. ‘Thank you, Archimandrite, thank you, Archbishop. This is Archie Douglas, News at Ten, returning you …’

  Theodora took a moment to realise that the ringing sound proceeded from her own room and not the TV set. Where had the Archdeacon concealed his telephone?

  ‘Hello,’ said a voice she didn’t recognise. ‘Hello, is that Miss Braithwaite?’

  Theodora conceded.

  ‘My name’s Tom Logg. You don’t know me but we have a mutual contact, Nick Squires. We did a course together last year, “Gender Tension in Micro Institutions”. He spoke very highly of you. I’ve got a problem and I wondered if I could come round and share it with you.’ The voice was estuary English but pleasant though worried.

  ‘How on earth did you get my number?’

  ‘Crockford for your vicar, who then gave me yours.’

  ‘It’s rather late.’

  ‘I’m in a fix. I really do need some specialist help.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Come round. Do you know the way?’

  ‘No. I’ll be coming from Ecclesia Place.’

  ‘Betterhouse Bridge and turn right or Albert Bridge and turn left. Keep to th
e river. St Sylvester’s church spire unmistakable. Then left-handed at the British Sailor, right into Jenkins Wharf, Ferry Steps Lane and left into the Stowage. It’s a cul-de-sac. I’m number one. The inhabited one, just. I’ll leave the front door open.’

  Tom was there in twenty-five minutes. He lashed his bike to the railings and stumbled up the unlit stairs to the flat.

  Theodora rose from the floor to her full height of six foot one. Tom was about on a level. He shook her hand vigorously and sat down without further ado cross-legged on the floor.

  ‘Very nice pad you’ve got here,’ he said without irony. ‘I do like the smell of Rentokil.’

  Theodora warmed to him. ‘It promises well,’ she agreed. ‘You said something about a problem.’

  Tom paused, took out his organiser as though it was a snuffbox and tapped the keys. ‘I’ve problematised it,’ he said by way of explanation. He blinked at the tiny lighted screen, cleared his throat and embarked.

  ‘One. I’m new in post as assistant to the CSD, Canon Clutch, working out of Ecclesia Place. Two. I was in charge of the arrangements for the visit of the Archimandrite and Archbishop of York this p.m. Three. An hour before the Archs arrived, I was checking the area around the conference room when I found a bishop.’ Tom stopped.

  Theodora raised an eyebrow. ‘There would be lots about?’ she hazarded.

  ‘No, this one was out of place. I mean he shouldn’t have been there. I mean he was dead.’

  Theodora thought about this. She saw it might be inconvenient. ‘They didn’t mention it on News at Ten,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, you saw that. No, well, they wouldn’t. You see, I hid the body.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I lost my head. I couldn’t think what to do. I mean it’s not as though the training courses cater for things like this. There he was, dead as mutton, where he shouldn’t have been. If I’d told the CSD we might have had to cancel the visit and then where would the C of E have been?’

  Much where it had been for the last four hundred years, Theodora reflected. But it seemed unkind to say so to this troubled boy. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I rolled him in a carpet. Well, more a rug. You see, we’ve got the builders in. The room off the conference hall, the Turnbull Chamber, is full of decorators’ clobber and bits of furniture. So I dragged him in there and rolled him in a rug and left him there.’

  ‘Chancy,’ said Theodora. ‘What had you in mind to do with him?’

  ‘In so far as I’d analysed the situation,’ Tom answered, ‘I reckoned I could put him back after the Archs left and find him again and then call the police.’

  ‘Unwise,’ Theodora opined, reviewing what she knew of police procedure and forensic medicine. ‘So what stopped you?

  ‘The Archs were due to meet CSD at four for tea, then they were to go to the conference room with their support staff and do the final bit of talking, sign the concordat thing, and be all ready to go about seven. Interviews in the hall with the TV. All done and dusted by eight.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well. For a start, the Archimandrite was late. We took the Archbishop down to the conference room and stood about a bit. Then he started wandering around, looking at the portraits and talking about his own time at the Place. Seems he was there twenty years ago when he was making a name for himself in Mission and Unity. He was making jokes about how easy it was to get lost in the place. Then he said something about “there used to be a short cut to the number two staircase via the Turnbull Chamber, which was very handy if you wanted to make the refectory ahead of the crowd for the tea break”. Then he opened the adjoining door.’

  ‘You mean, it was a door to the Turnbull Chamber where you’d stowed the body?’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘A nasty moment.’

  ‘You can say that again. He went in and looked around. The staircase door was opposite him, and between him and it was a lot of builders’ stuff, scaffold boards and paint tins and such like and also the roll of carpet.’ Tom was sweating at the memory. ‘I was right behind him, of course, but I couldn’t think of any way of actually stopping him. I imagine rugger tackling an archbishop might be some sort of criminal offence.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised,’ Theodora agreed.

  ‘Anyway, he was so near the rug he was practically tripping over it. He looked down at it and then he said something like “That’s really rather fine, isn’t it? Bukhara, wouldn’t you say? When we were in Nepal we had a matching pair. I wonder what the pattern is.”’

  Tom stopped, gathered himself together. ‘Then he unrolled the rug.’

  Theodora was rather enjoying all this. ‘And tipped out your body?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No body. Nothing. He took a corner of the rug and shook it out. Then he said, “It’s a fine example of a tree of life. Look at all those animals and birds woven into the branches.”’ Tom trailed off.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘The Archimandrite was announced and we all trooped back to the conference hall.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘As soon as they’d all gone and the coast was clear, about eightthirty, I went back to the Turnbull Chamber to have a look. There was nothing there. I searched every room on the corridor and as many of the others as I could open. There wasn’t a sign of a body anywhere.’

  ‘And no one’s reported a bishop missing?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘I don’t know what on earth to do. I’m almost inclined to think I imagined the whole thing, only …’

  ‘Only what?’

  ‘When I went back to the Turnbull Chamber, I found this.’ Tom fumbled in his pocket and extended his open palm to Theodora.

  A plain silver cross about four inches by four inches glinted in the light of her single electric bulb. She took it up and examined it. It was a Byzantine cross, very heavy with a ring at the top which had been strained apart. It had no hallmark and looked in some indefinable way ancient.

  ‘A pectoral cross,’ said Theodora. ‘His?’

  ‘Yes. He had it on when I moved him.’

  ‘You do realise,’ Theodora said, ‘that the easiest explanation for all this is that your body wasn’t dead.’ Indeed, it had not seemed to her from the start of Tom’s tale that there was any other possibility.

  ‘He was dead all right.’ Tom was vehement. There was no pulse or breath and the eyes didn’t move when I picked him up.’

  It was the detail about the eyes which brought Theodora up short. Up to then it had been just an after-dinner tale, quite funny but not believable. Now as she imagined the unseeing open eyes of the dead man, she took hold of the reality.

  ‘Have you any idea how he died?’

  ‘You mean, was it natural or had someone killed him?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘When I first set eyes on the body, I assumed he’d had a heart attack or something. But if his body has been moved, concealed, wouldn’t that suggest unnatural causes?’

  ‘It might not. You moved him and concealed him but you didn’t, presumably, kill him?’ Theodora fixed the youth with her own honest eye.

  Tom flushed. ‘No, I didn’t kill him. I was an absolute fool. I see that now. I lost my head. I shouldn’t have touched him. I should just have rung the police and told Canon Clutch. But I couldn’t face the pandemonium that would have caused.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I wonder what on earth to do. I can’t go to Canon Clutch now. And I can’t go to the police without a body. Naturally I thought of you.’

  ‘Naturally?’

  ‘Well, I know you know Ecclesia Place. I’ve seen you in the library there. You are clergy and know the systems. And Nick Squires seemed to think you were very … capable.’

  Theodora sighed. She’d frequently suffered from this impression which she apparently engendered in the minds of total strangers. It was late. She was tired after her day’s c
leaning and decorating. She had to get up in time to serve for her vicar at the eight o’clock Mass in the morning at St Sylvester’s.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘we’d better go back to the Place and see what we can find.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Place

  The bench outside Ecclesia Place was not much sought after. Maggie mostly had the patch to herself except in very fine weather. Certainly at night she could usually count on peace. As the midnight chimes of Big Ben came down the wind, she was able to spread her copies of the Church Times out on the bench to prevent the draught between the slats without having to share with anyone. Such freedom she counted a blessing. Indeed it was her chief reason for living (as she put it to herself) tough. She had parked her shopping trolley at the end she’d selected for her head and tied it with a length of dog lead to the bench. She took off her brown belted gaberdine and extracted from the trolley a bright red woollen pullover. This she put on as her nightgown and then put her gaberdine back on. She was vested.

  She looked down at her feet for a moment to see which way they were pointing and so get her bearings. Then she seated herself and ruminatively picked her teeth with a matchstick. The niceties of her toilette completed, she was ready to retire. She contemplated prayer. She’d been taught, as a child, to say, ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on.’ But of late years, after, as she put it, her trouble, she noticed that if she prayed for this blessing, she was very rarely visited by the dream she most wanted. That dream was a dream of Eden. Her dream was detailed and greatly desirable. It comprised bright green fields and a very clear pebbly stream which she was able to gaze into while the sun warmed her back. Just out of her dream sight, there was someone who protected her. She never saw her but she knew she was there. It was a good dream, in fact, but in order to get it you had to pick your teeth first and then not pray. So tonight Maggie didn’t. Instead she thought of her family. Today she’d invented an uncle to entertain old Jo and a nephew for young Tracy. She’d done the uncle before so she’d not had to invent so much; it was more a matter of pacing over old ground. But the nephew promised well; she’d rather liked the nephew, what she’d seen of him, and Tracy, poor kid, had taken to him. She’d invented a son once but sons were hard work. People expected you to know so much about them and you had to be consistent. They couldn’t have red hair one minute and black the next. Keeping track of their ages was difficult too. And then people wanted to know why sons didn’t come and help you out now and again. She’d always had to ship them off to Australia to stop them having to come to her aid. Sons tied you into the world, sons did. So in the end she’d stopped inventing them and stuck to nephews instead.