Nine Lessons

by Nicola Upson

  Crouch smiled. ‘Perhaps, although the roll of honour might persuade you that your first instinct was the correct one. The college suffered the most appalling losses. I know we weren’t the only ones, but when you see the names laid out like that, it makes you wonder.’ He glanced at his watch, then pointed towards the altar. ‘The Memorial Chapel is in the south-east corner. Do you mind if I leave you to look on your own? There are some things I need to attend to before the end of the day.’

  ‘No, of course not. And thank you for your help—I appreciate it.’

  ‘Not at all.’ The bursar walked away, leaving Penrose alone with the vastness of the chapel. He walked up the nave, below the great organ and past the screen which divided the ante-chapel from the choir stalls, unsettled by the profound emptiness of a place which he had only ever known as part of a congregation. The two side chapels were invisible until he was nearly at the altar, and after the overwhelming beauty of the main building, the small, sparse Memorial Chapel was strangely restful. As Crouch had intimated, the college’s contribution to that fated generation was significant, almost unbearably so; the names of the dead covered an entire wall and included graduates, undergraduates, choral scholars, college servants and soldiers who had been boy choristers, running, Penrose guessed, to two hundred or more. The engraving was as scrupulously egalitarian as the sacrifice, and yet two names stood out: Rupert Brooke, who was listed among the Fellows, and whose poetry and tragic death from blood poisoning had made him a national hero; and Ferenc Békássy, another poet—a Hungarian—whose work Penrose knew and who was remembered here as the sole name engraved under the heading ‘Pensioner’. He looked at the inscription, which sat conspicuously apart on the adjacent wall, wondering how much of a dilemma it had been for the college to include a Kingsman who had died fighting against the allies, and admiring them for their decision.

  He went through the lists that the bursar had given him, and crossed off three of the lay clerks whose names appeared on the wall. The choral scholars, it seemed, had been luckier: only Jeremy Bairstow appeared on the roll of honour, leaving him one man to trace from scratch if necessary. Satisfied that he had done all he could, he put the sheets of paper back in his pocket and turned to go, only to find that he had company. A man in his early fifties was standing just outside the door to the side chapel, apparently unsure of whether or not to interrupt. ‘I don’t want to disturb you, Chief Inspector,’ he said, although the dog collar suggested that it was Penrose who was the intruder, ‘but Lawrence told me you were here, and why. What a terrible thing to happen. I’m so sorry.’ Perhaps he was fooled by the collar or by the voice, which was rich and warm, but to Penrose the words sounded genuine rather than political. ‘I’m Dean here,’ he added, holding out his hand. ‘Eric Milner-White.’

  Penrose introduced himself, although it was obvious that the bursar had beaten him to it. ‘You’re not disturbing me at all,’ he said. ‘Do you have a few minutes to talk?’

  ‘Of course. Lawrence said you were asking about Monty, and I never need much encouragement on that subject. I owe him such a lot. We can go to my rooms if you prefer? It might be more hospitable than a draughty chapel.’

  ‘I don’t mind staying here, if that’s all right?’

  ‘Perfectly. We’ve got a while before people start arriving for evensong.’ He offered Penrose one of the chairs that ran along the wall and sat down himself.

  ‘I gather it was Dr James who encouraged you to take the post?’

  ‘That’s right. He was one of the main reasons for my coming back here, then he left shortly after I accepted. I could cheerfully have throttled the man.’

  ‘You’ve been here a long time, though—you must have forgiven him.’

  ‘Of course I did. It was impossible to stay angry with Monty for long. He was one of the most good-natured men I’d ever met.’ He nodded towards the roll of honour and spoke more seriously. ‘I think this is why, you know. He couldn’t bear Cambridge without its youth. He thrived on young company, and we’d lost so much. He always blamed his departure on the politics of the college, and of course he loved Eton, too—it was where he’d started out, after all. But I think the truth was simply that Cambridge after the war was too painful—and sadness didn’t suit him.’

  ‘You were here before the war, though, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. First as an undergraduate, then as chaplain.’

  ‘Did you know any of these men well?’

  He handed over the list and the Dean took some time to read through the names, but eventually shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid not. We met at the services here, of course, and sometimes at dinner or drinks—but I wouldn’t have remembered them if you hadn’t prompted me. Except for Robert Moorcroft, and that’s only because he still comes here regularly. I wouldn’t choose him as a friend.’

  The tone surprised Penrose as much as the words; until now, there had been a gentleness to Milner-White’s demeanour. ‘You don’t like him?’

  ‘My colleagues wouldn’t thank me for saying so because he’s a very generous donor to the college—but no, I don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s an arrogant bully—you can see it in the way he behaves at table—and those are qualities I despise. There are a few like that in every year group, and they rarely grow out of it. I imagine he was exactly the same as a young man.’

  ‘But you don’t know that?’

  ‘No.’ He gave Penrose a self-deprecating smile. ‘I’m afraid it’s based on a little observation and a healthy dose of irrational prejudice.’

  ‘Could he be violent, do you think?’

  The Dean hesitated, clearly aware that his answer might have serious repercussions. ‘I’ve never known him to be physically violent,’ he said cautiously, ‘but neither could I say that I believed him incapable of it, if pushed.’

  ‘And you don’t recall any animosity between Laxborough and Moorcroft during their time here? Or Laxborough and anyone else for that matter?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t. It was a very long time ago, but my recollection of those years is one of the calm before the storm.’ He glanced at the wall opposite. ‘Perhaps I just want to remember it in that way because of what came afterwards, but it was an innocent time, and a happy one.’

  The answer didn’t help Penrose but neither did it surprise him. The Dean’s memories might be coloured by nostalgia and self-deception, but so were his own. That was the trouble with trying to be honest about life before the war: all the petty jealousies, disputes and acts of spite which could so easily escalate into something more serious had been washed away by a far greater evil until it was difficult to remember how much they had hurt at the time. Thwarted again by a lack of information, Penrose began to wonder if he should go back to the drawing board with Laxborough’s death and look for another line of enquiry altogether. ‘People must have come to you for advice and guidance when you were chaplain,’ he said, trying one more question before conceding defeat. ‘Do you remember anything at all unusual from those years?’

  ‘You might have to be a bit more specific.’

  Penrose smiled, acknowledging his own vagueness. ‘I wish I could be. I suppose I mean any upsets that were out of the ordinary. Anyone whose behaviour was out of character. Anything that disturbed the peace of college life.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. The confidences that most people shared with me were more self-centred—doubts over their work, loneliness away from home, and the occasional bouts of bullying, as I mentioned. I imagine you’ve heard a lot more confessions than I have, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Then I won’t take up any more of your time.’

  He stood to go but Milner-White remained seated, staring thoughtfully out of the window towards the fountain in the Front Court. ‘There was one thing, now you mention it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if it’s relevant to you, or how you would even go about determining whether it is or not because I can’t tell you very much, but Lawrence sa
id it was 1913 that interested you?’ Penrose nodded. ‘Monty was troubled that Christmas. It was the only year I ever knew him not to finish a new story in time to read to his friends. He read an old one instead—the one about the Punch and Judy men. None of us minded because it’s one of his finest, but it was unusual and he was distracted even in the reading of that.’

  ‘Did you ask him what was wrong?’

  ‘Yes. He said he was worried about somebody, but he wouldn’t tell me who it was. Then he asked me if I would counsel the person concerned if he could persuade him to confide in me. I assumed it was an undergraduate, and of course I agreed, but no one ever came forward. Monty obviously couldn’t persuade him to share what was distressing him, and the issue wasn’t raised again. To be honest, I haven’t given it another thought until now.’

  ‘Could it have been Stephen Laxborough?’ Penrose asked, thinking about the quotation found with the body.

  The Dean shrugged. ‘It could have been anyone. I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘And did Dr James have much to do with the choir?’

  ‘Oh yes. He was Dean for several years, and then—as now—everything to do with the chapel came under his jurisdiction—the building, the services, the college school. It was always more than duty, though. He loved this place. I can still recall one morning when I was an undergraduate—he showed a group of us in here and brought to life the stained glass of each of the windows in turn. No one told a story like Monty, whether it was one of his own or borrowed from the Bible.’ He looked up again at the Memorial Chapel windows, and Penrose imagined that he could hear his mentor’s voice as if it were yesterday. ‘And he was kind, Chief Inspector. People saw that instinctively, whether he was auditioning nervous young choristers or inventing Christmas entertainments to stop the boys from missing their families during the holiday. They have to stay up for the services, obviously, and he always used to devise a play for their amusement which he’d put on at the ADC Theatre with some of the other Fellows. He wrote one of his ghost stories for them, too, I believe.’

  ‘Oh? Which one?’

  ‘I think it was “A School Story”—the spirits of two children taking revenge on an evil schoolmaster. And he presented a copy of his first collection to the college school as soon as it was published. His association with the choristers brought him a great deal of joy—and they were devoted to him. They trusted him, I suppose, and I have to say—if I had something to confess, I’d happily lay the burden at Monty’s door.’

  Through the open side chapel door, Penrose could see that someone had begun to light the candles for evensong. ‘Did you go to Dr James’s funeral?’ he asked, knowing that the meeting would soon be brought to an end.

  ‘No, sadly. I had business here which couldn’t be avoided, but we held a memorial service for him in the chapel. And speaking of services . . .’

  ‘Yes, of course. I must let you get on.’

  ‘Thank you, but please feel free to get in touch if you think of anything else. Will you stay for evensong?’

  ‘I wish I could, but I have to get back to London.’ The Dean walked back down the nave with him, and Penrose took the opportunity to ask him something of personal interest. ‘The bursar told me that you were responsible for introducing the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols to Cambridge—did you have any idea that it would become the moment that starts everyone’s Christmas?’

  Milner-White smiled. ‘No, and I think the BBC might claim most of the credit for that. But I did know we needed something different that year. Everyone in the congregation had been touched by the war, and I thought that the Christmas Eve Service should acknowledge that somehow. And Monty had a hand in it, you know, even though he’d left by then. He was great friends with Edward Benson, who went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury—but when Benson was the Bishop of Truro, he devised a series of nine lessons interspersed with popular carols to get his parishioners into the church and out of the public houses.’

  ‘That sounds about right,’ Penrose said, laughing. ‘I’m from Cornwall myself, so I understand exactly where he was coming from. How interesting, though—I had no idea that something so important all over the world was inspired by the West Country’s weakness for ale.’

  ‘You can be rightly proud of your heritage. But Monty knew the service well and he showed it to me. I devised some changes to make it more coherent and added the Bidding Prayer, written in a language that I knew would strike a chord with those who had lost a husband or a brother or a son. We’ve kept it to this day.’

  ‘Remind me how it goes.’

  ‘“Let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom in the Lord Jesus we are for ever one.”’

  ‘It’s very powerful,’ Penrose said, struck by the quiet sincerity with which the words were delivered.

  ‘It’s very simple. I seem to remember that was what we all longed for when we came back. Simplicity.’

  ‘And not much chance of that now, judging by the state of affairs in Europe.’ Penrose looked back down the length of the chapel, noting the way that the candlelight softened the forbidding dark wood and cast dancing shadows onto the floor. ‘Thank you, Reverend. It’s been a pleasure, as well as a great help.’

  He walked back across the court to King’s Parade, wishing he had time to enjoy the evening service and the beauty of the music, but he had stayed much longer than intended and his plans to call in on Josephine would also now have to wait. The sooner he could contact the remaining choral scholars, the sooner he would either learn something to his advantage or be able to rule out the connection altogether. There was a large antiquarian bookshop in St Edward’s Passage, next to the Arts Theatre, and the owner was taking in crates from outside, ready to close for the day. His window held a fine collection of special editions, but it was the modestly bound book in the top left-hand corner which caught Penrose’s eye, a collected volume of M. R. James’s ghost stories. ‘Am I too late to buy that?’ he asked, pointing to the book he wanted.

  ‘No, you’re not too late. Good time of year for it, too, with the nights closing in.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ Inside, the shop was gloriously untidy and Penrose could happily have lost himself for hours among the overstocked shelves. He waited while the book was fetched from the window and paid for it at the counter, hoping that his fifteen shillings might just buy him something more significant than a ghostly chill by a roaring fire.

  8

  ‘I’ve got something here that’ll interest you, sir,’ Fallowfield said, with his usual cursory knock at Penrose’s office door. ‘It’s about the vicar on the list.’

  ‘Giles Shorter?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Penrose. ‘I’m glad you’re having more luck than I am.’ After the formalities of Laxborough’s inquest were over, he and his sergeant had divided the list of former choral singers in half and set about contacting each of them in turn. So far, his own shortlist of names was proving particularly unfruitful: Simon Westbury was on holiday and not expected back in chambers for another week; Richard Swayne hadn’t responded to either of the messages left for him at the Home Office; and to add insult to injury, Rufus Carrington—now a medieval scholar at Oxford—was at present halfway through a six-month research sabbatical at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, barely a hundred yards down the road from where Penrose had been just two days before. Any good news that Fallowfield had to offer was more than welcome.

  ‘Well, as we found Laxborough’s body in a churchyard, I thought I’d start with the vicar . . .’

  ‘There’s some sort of logic to that, I suppose.’

  ‘. . . so I phoned the vicarage in Finchingfield and asked his housekeeper if I could make an appointment to see him.’

  ‘And?’

  Fallowfield paused, and Penrose could see that he was quiet
ly excited about something. ‘That’s going to be a bit difficult, as it turns out. The Reverend Shorter died a couple of months back.’

  ‘Giles Shorter is dead?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t get your hopes up until we’ve had a look. The verdict was accidental death, and it certainly sounds like an accident—no agonising final moments or strange bits of paper as far as I can tell.’

  ‘So what happened to him?’

  ‘He fell down the stairs and broke his neck.’

  ‘So it might not have been an accident.’

  Fallowfield grinned. ‘I thought you might say something like that. Worth checking out, don’t you think?’

  ‘Bloody right it is. The woman you spoke to—was she there when it happened?’

  ‘No—she lives in the village. She came in one morning at her usual time and found him lying at the bottom of the stairway. She thinks he must have stumbled in the dark.’

  ‘How very convenient,’ Penrose said. ‘Am I reading too much into this, Bill?’

  Fallowfield shrugged. ‘Not from where I’m standing, sir. Laxborough’s murder and the business with Angerhale Priory might be a coincidence, but two suspicious deaths from that same group of boys in as many months? We’ll have to prove that this one is suspicious, of course, and God knows how we’ll do that. But not to put too fine a point on it—what else have we got to go on?’