The Unburied

by Charles Palliser

  ‘Indeed I would!’

  We established ourselves at the desk.

  ‘I think you’ll be interested to know’, he said, ‘that I’ve found its source.’

  ‘Its source?’ I stared at him in amazement.

  ‘When we looked at the manuscript this morning, I thought something about it was familiar.’

  ‘You mentioned a tiresome device for which the writer had a weakness but you did not specify it.’

  ‘Using the superlative excessively. I was sure I had encountered it before and then I remembered this.’ He picked up and opened a book that was lying on the desk. ‘It’s the Vita Constantini, which, as you probably know, is the life of a Frankish saint of the tenth century that was written in the eleventh.’

  ‘But how can it be the source if it’s a century or two later than Grimbald?’

  ‘Bear with me for a moment, Dr Courtine, if you will. I’ll start reading a few sentences before the crucial point in the text, and I should explain that the author is talking about how bravely Saint Constantine stood up to the rulers of his age.’ He read the text in Latin, translating every few phrases: ‘King Hagebart showed little respect for men of the Church, as his conduct in regard to the learned Bishop Gregorius, the martyr, illustrated very clearly.’

  ‘Doctissimus and apertissime!’ I exclaimed. ‘There are two of your detestable superlatives.’

  ‘And in the same sentence!’ he added with a shudder. ‘And now here is the interesting sentence: Because as a boy the king had been a pupil of Bishop Gregorius when the learned old man taught the sons and nephews of the old king, Hagebart’s father, he did not bury him with honour or even decency as he should have done in the case of such a learned and holy man.’

  He looked at me in triumph.

  I gazed back. ‘What is so significant, Dr Locard?’

  ‘The ellipsis.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

  ‘It does not make sense that the king did not bury his old tutor with dignity because he had been his pupil.’

  ‘You’re right. Unless, of course, one takes a peculiarly dark view of the relationship between teacher and student.’

  He went on without noticing my joke: ‘But if we insert the folio you discovered into the text in the middle of this puzzling sentence, we find that at both points the newly discovered sentences make perfect sense. And now the account of the bishop’s death illustrates the point the author is making. So the first sentence of the manuscript you found this morning should read: Because as a boy the king had been a pupil of Bishop Gregorius when the learned old man taught the sons and nephews of the old king, Hagebart’s father, the king and the martyr were once close friends. And the final sentence should be: Moreover, he had so little respect for the slain bishop that he did not bury him with honour or even decency as he should have done in the case of such a learned and holy man.’

  When I had read it again a few times and thought about it, I had to concede that he was right.

  ‘Somebody removed the page you found from the manuscript containing the Vita Constantini,’ Dr Locard said. ‘And by chance or design, it happened to be the sole copy of the Vita that survived, which is why the story has dropped out of that text leaving only a nonsensical sentence to show that something is missing.’

  I tried to hide my disappointment. ‘I congratulate you upon a magnificent piece of scholarship, Dr Locard.’

  ‘Moreover,’ he went on as if he had not heard or as if my compliment was not worth noticing, ‘I have found an additional piece of evidence in support of that interpretation. The events described at that point in the Vita Constantini took place in 968. Now I’ve looked through various annals relating to that period and in the Chronicon de Ostberg have found this entry for that date: “To the great dismay of all men, the sun fled from the sky for several minutes a little after noon on the twenty-second day of December of this year.”’

  He looked up in delight.

  ‘Yes, that’s conclusive,’ I said. ‘Then I suppose it’s certain that Leofranc tore this page out of the Frankish manuscript and used it as the source of his Life.’

  ‘Rewriting it in order to glorify Alfred and Wulflac,’ he added.

  Far from confirming the authenticity of Grimbald’s Life, my discovery had virtually proved that Leofranc had invented it. And had cast grave doubt on the existence of Wulflac. Dr Locard had destroyed my hopes of bringing about a fundamental re-assessment of Alfred, and had done it as a mere amateur. I felt humiliated. I told myself I was as good a historian as he, even though he had apparently read everything in my subject and had an astonishing memory and linguistic gifts. He seemed to me to be a mere logic-chopper, a destroyer rather than a creator who was so cold and logical and lacking in imagination that he missed the spirit of the past. And he was repulsively calm in his moment of triumph. As I looked at him I believe I almost hated him at that instant for not savouring his victory over me. It was as if he was so far above me that it gave him no pleasure to have crushed me so comprehensively. My one consolation was that what had looked like an account of Alfred’s deceitful and cowardly conduct was now proved to have nothing to do with him. There was one important question that remained to be resolved.

  ‘What are your intentions with regard to publication, Dr Locard?’

  ‘This is so important that the world of scholarship should know of it as soon as possible. It virtually proves that the whole of Grimbald is to be rejected as a source. Ideally what is needed is a scholarly edition of the manuscript together with the related sources. A series of volumes, in fact.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agreed excitedly. ‘But such an undertaking would be prohibitively expensive even for one of the university presses.’

  ‘The manuscript was found in this Library where it had lain for nearly eight hundred years,’ he said with the calm passion of an archivist. ‘Leofranc was the bishop here. I would like to see the Dean and Chapter support such a project. The Annales Thurcastrienses.’

  I stared at him in amazement. ‘Is that possible?’

  He gazed at me speculatively. ‘It might be. At present the Foundation has a number of demands upon its resources, but if that should change then certain funds would become available.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Such an edition would require’, I said cautiously, ‘a scholar with a profound knowledge of the period and the sources.’

  ‘It would need a Director to supervise it – who could well be an Oxford or Cambridge Fellow since he would not be required to be in Thurchester very often as he would have one or more assistants working here. You are one of the three or four best qualified scholars in this field, and since it was largely by your efforts that the manuscript was found, you are the obvious choice. It would not be my decision alone, of course. And it’s possible to conceive of circumstances in which the decision would be taken out of my hands by the Dean and the rest of the Chapter.’

  ‘Circumstances?’ I ventured.

  He gazed at me thoughtfully. ‘I will speak frankly. Everything depends on the trial of Perkins and its implications for the bequest to the Foundation.’

  ‘Has anything further transpired?’

  ‘A woman claiming to be Stonex’s sister has telegraphed to Thorrold from Yorkshire.’

  ‘Is it certain that she is who she claims to be?’

  ‘That will, of course, be looked into, but it seems so. She has worked as a housekeeper in Harrogate for many years but has recently suffered a stroke which has incapacitated her.’

  ‘So the Foundation will lose the bequest?’

  ‘Unless it can be proved that the will was destroyed against the wishes of the testator. Your testimony that he was searching for it is crucial, Dr Courtine. Thorrold assures me that all that is required is evidence that Mr Stonex mentioned the will in a way which gave no impression that he intended to cancel it. In that case, it could be reinstituted from the draft which he has fortunately located.’


  ‘Fickling will continue to deny that the incident with the clockcase occurred.’

  ‘After his performance this afternoon, he is discredited as a witness.’

  ‘He was certainly lying about his own involvement. The persons responsible must be brought to justice.’

  ‘Your theory about a brother ...’

  ‘I realize I was wrong. He never existed.’

  He looked at me in surprise. ‘Then you accept that Perkins was paid by the sister to murder the old man and find the will?’

  ‘In that case,’ I replied, avoiding his question, ‘who hired him on her behalf if she is in Yorkshire?’

  ‘Never mind about that,’ he said abruptly. He seemed to realize how rudely he had spoken and said, choosing his words with care: ‘What I mean is that the investigation of that issue should be left to the proper authorities who are Thorrold and the police. They may be relied upon to do what is required. It would be most injudicious of you to involve yourself in it any further, Dr Courtine. If you begin to make accusations against Fickling there is certain to be some disagreeableness and everyone will suffer. You in particular as a friend of his.’

  ‘Our friendship is over. He is not the man he was when I knew him at Cambridge. Then he was upright and decent. Except that he used to go on what he called his “rantipoles” – drinking sessions that lasted several days – which I suppose have led him to his present condition.’

  ‘He has fallen under a bad influence. He is notorious in the town. He has been picked up from the gutter and carried home many times. And his friendship with Slattery has occasioned gossip of a deeply unpleasant nature.’ He hesitated and then said: ‘They have had several drunken quarrels in public and on one occasion he apparently tried to kill Slattery. Let us say no more on that topic.’

  At that moment there was a knock at the door and the servant-girl reappeared. ‘The mistress says dinner is ready, sir. She is waiting for you in the dining-room.’

  ‘Gracious heavens! Is it as late as that!’ He turned to me: ‘I do apologize. How very discourteous of me. I meant to take you into the drawing-room to meet my wife.’

  As we left the room I reminded him that I had already had the pleasure of meeting Mrs Locard. He led the way to the dining-room – a spacious room at the front of the house – and we found his wife waiting for us there.

  ‘Robert has been so busy in the last few days that I’ve seen very little of him,’ she said to me with a smile as we shook hands.

  ‘Ah yes,’ I said. ‘On top of everything else, there has been the business of the body in the memorial.’

  ‘And what do you think is the truth of that matter?’ she asked.

  Dr Locard was talking to the maid about the serving of the first course. ‘Your husband has very ingeniously explained that the body must be that of Canon Burgoyne who was killed by the Cathedral Mason, Gambrill, because he was about to denounce him for murder.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ her husband said, turning from his discussion of soup and its temperature.

  I flushed. ‘I thought you said so this morning when we discussed it.’

  ‘I evidently failed to make myself entirely clear,’ he said with a careful courtesy that I found more offensive than bluntness would have been. ‘I said I believed that Gambrill thought that Burgoyne was about to make a public exposure of his murder of Limbrick’s father. But I don’t believe that that was really what Burgoyne was about to denounce.’

  ‘How complicated,’ Mrs Locard murmured, smiling at me.

  ‘But the inscription on the wall of the New Deanery’, I began, ‘suggests that Gambrill ...’

  ‘The inscription!’ he exclaimed. ‘The inscription has nothing to do with the murder of Burgoyne. It was not put there until 1660 and it refers to the murder of Freeth.’

  ‘Does it? It’s very hard to understand what it does refer to.’

  Dr Locard said: ‘It is ambiguously worded because it was erected at a time when the Burgoynes were still powerful. It was put there by the canons, principally Champniss, the Sacrist.’

  ‘He was the eyewitness whose evidence Pepperdine heard more than twenty years later. I didn’t realize he was the Sacrist. But you can’t mean that he was the man who was humiliated by Burgoyne and Gambrill and had a nervous collapse? He must have been long dead by then?’

  ‘Indeed I do mean him. Rather surprisingly, he survived most of the other canons. He had been a loyal friend of Freeth and was bitterly upset by his death and so the inscription was, in effect, an accusation of murder against the Burgoyne family.’

  ‘And was he right?’

  ‘After the Siege the officer who was in command of the town and therefore in some sense responsible for Freeth’s death ...’

  ‘Forgive me for interrupting,’ I said, ‘but I know this story.’

  ‘Then you know that the officer was Willoughby Burgoyne, the Treasurer’s nephew, and you will understand why the canons held him responsible.’

  I nodded. But of course I was astounded at that piece of information. In that case the explanation I had heard yesterday afternoon was untrue: the officer in charge had not acted in cold blood to save the town but to avenge a family wrong. I remembered how close Champniss had come, in Pepperdine’s account, to accusing the officer of having murdered Freeth. Even after the defeat of the Roundheads, it would have been dangerous to have denounced a family as powerful as the Burgoynes. It was plausible, then, that the canons might have made the veiled accusation contained in the ambiguous words of the inscription.

  There was a momentary silence while the servant cleared away the soup-plates.

  ‘Then who was Burgoyne about to denounce if it was not Gambrill?’ I asked.

  The Librarian smiled enigmatically. ‘Do you remember that one of the singing-boys died during the Great Storm?’ I nodded. ‘He was Gambrill’s nephew.’

  ‘Was that a coincidence?’ I remembered that Dr Locard had hinted that the boy was murdered. ‘Are you suggesting that he was murdered by Burgoyne?’

  ‘How can I know what happened that night? I can only conjecture and you can do that as well as I. Probably better.’

  If Burgoyne had killed the boy he must have had a motive. A powerful one. What could it have been? Suddenly I realized what Locard had been hinting at.

  I glanced at Mrs Locard who was arranging something with the servant. ‘I think I understand whom it was that Burgoyne was about to denounce.’

  He nodded. At that moment his wife turned back to us and said: ‘I beg your pardon, Dr Courtine. You were saying that the poor canon was murdered by the Mason. But in that case, who killed him?’

  ‘A very good question,’ I said.

  ‘Limbrick,’ Dr Locard said. ‘The Mason’s deputy.’ Seeing my sceptical expression he demanded: ‘If there was no second man with him, how did Gambrill lift the slab into place that sealed Burgoyne into his living tomb?’

  I shrugged my shoulders: ‘Could even two men have done that?’

  ‘With the aid of the pulley that was waiting on the scaffolding for that purpose, it was perfectly possible. The slab was balanced by lead weights so that they could let it slowly descend while guiding it into the right position.’

  ‘Even two men would have had difficulty,’ I murmured.

  ‘Have you a better explanation, Dr Courtine?’ he said with a thin smile.

  ‘I can do no more than venture a hypothesis. I believe I can imagine what happened that night ...’

  ‘We should invent nothing beyond the given facts,’ the Librarian interrupted. ‘On the evidence we have it must have happened like this: when Burgoyne collected the key and went into the Cathedral that night, Gambrill and Limbrick followed him. They attacked him, knocked him unconscious and perhaps thought they had killed him. They then lifted him up onto the scaffold, pushed him into the memorial, and sealed it with the slab.’

  ‘A task which five or six men would have found difficult,’ I interpolated. His hypothesis se
emed far more fanciful than my own.

  Dr Locard nodded to acknowledge that he had heard, but was paying no attention to, my objection. ‘Limbrick then murdered Gambrill by bringing the scaffold down on top of him.’

  ‘Why did they remove Burgoyne’s outer garments and why did Gambrill put them on?’

  ‘That is a minor detail.’

  ‘A truly convincing account would explain everything.’

  As he rose to carve the roast beef which the servant had laid on the table, my host said: ‘That is an unrealistic hope and, if I may say so, a strange one to be expressed by a historian.’

  I smarted at the remark but reflected that my revenge would lie in finding evidence that he was wrong. His logic-chopping failed to take account of the element of the unknown and for that one needed imagination.

  I managed a smile. ‘There we have two quite opposite approaches. In my view, the true test of a hypothesis is that it explains even the anomalies. It’s not difficult to produce one that roughly accounts for the main features of any given mystery. But if that is at the expense of ignoring the recalcitrant elements, then such a hypothesis cannot be regarded as a sufficient explanation.’

  ‘Then what would satisfy your requirements, Dr Courtine?’

  ‘A narrative which though bizarre in some of its elements – accounts for every anomaly. And the creation of such a narrative often requires the exercise of the imagination.’

  Dr Locard pursed his lips in distaste. ‘That is not the role of a historian.’

  ‘But the alternative is an act of destruction which is just as crucial. Where there are conflicts or absurdities they are dismissed as the products of misunderstanding or dishonesty. But it must frequently be the case that there is some circumstance or motive which is missing from the historical record and which would account for the apparent inconsistencies. All I am arguing is that the historian should try to find the missing piece of the puzzle.’

  ‘I can’t agree. The historian has an obligation to stay with the known facts rather than dream up phantasms from his own imagination. In the case we are discussing, we know that Limbrick had a reason to hate Gambrill and that he later married his widow. That is enough to accept the simple and obvious explanation that the two men killed Burgoyne and then Limbrick murdered his employer. It would be illogical – if not absolutely perverse – not to accept it.’