Idol Bones

by D M Greenwood

  ‘You sound as though you have experience of it?’ Theodora’s tone was so gentle in inquiry of this kind that there was no question of its seeming impertinent.

  ‘I’ve known bits of it.’ Stella was lulled by Theodora’s whole presence. She’d forgotten what it might be like to talk to people, as she put it, of her own kind: the need not to explain, the certainty of being understood, the nuance which need not be elaborated. ‘In fact I knew the dean, the late dean, slightly.’

  They approached the far end of the Hollow where there was a paddock enclosing four fierce-looking Soay sheep, their dark woollen coats knotted and entwined with wisps of hay from the manger.

  ‘They’re a good breed to have with children in an urban area,’ Stella said in her tour guide’s voice. ‘They’re not afraid of children and they chase dogs. Mrs Bean’s teaching one or two of the special needs children to card and spin the wool.’

  ‘He seems to have been not much liked,’ Theodora returned to the subject which had left neither of their minds.

  ‘Vincent Stream lacked moral courage,’ said Stella incisively.‘He wanted to satisfy convention rather than virtue.’

  Theodora was about to pursue the topic. She wanted to hear more. She felt Stella’s reservations might contain information which could help towards solving his murder. From the far end of the Hollow could be heard the shrill voices of a multitude of children.

  ‘Would a lack of moral courage lead to his being murdered,’ she inquired.

  Stella looked towards the sheep. ‘It might,’ she said. ‘It just might.’ The noise of the school party swelled in the background.

  Stella turned to her, as though she had reached some decision. ‘Come back and see me when these have gone. Come tomorrow. Come early and stay to supper with the rest of us.’

  Theodora could hope for no more. She unwound her legs from the lurcher’s who had taken a fancy to her and strode back to the main entrance to the Hollow, swimming against a tide of excited children and harassed teachers.

  ‘Your very good health, Miss Braithwaite,’ said the young man formally, holding Theodora’s sherry appreciatively between his fingers. Theodora watched him lean back in her armchair in the flat and saw how he liked being taken for himself and not as a role; what would it be, pupil, verger?

  ‘May I congratulate you on a really excellent article in this quarter’s Church History Review?’ Nick began with pleasant courtesy. ‘It really was a model of what such things ought to be.’

  Theodora warmed to the youth. ‘I gather that’s going to be your line of country.’

  Nick looked both modest and smug at the same time. ‘Well, the nineteenth century isn’t my period of course. I rather thought I might specialise in European mediaeval. They made such beautiful things and it would fit into the milieu of Oxford, wouldn’t you say?’ He smiled his charming smile.

  Theodora agreed that it would. ‘I’ve spent part of the day with Canon Millhaven,’ she said by way of temptation.

  ‘She’s dire, isn’t she?’ Nick asked with enjoyment. ‘When I was in choir school she used to come in once a week and teach us scripture. She was always on about blood as the foundation of religion. We did the goriest bits of the OT with her. Then she switched to pagan religion, with which she was clearly entirely at home. I forget whether she actually claimed it or whether we made it up about her, that Eric the Red was her ancestor. She’s got a good deal dottier of late, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Well, I’ve nothing really to measure her against. This is my first meeting with her. What does she do?’

  ‘She’s been around a long time. She goes back to before the time when she-deacons were fashionable. Way back when she did all the things the church ought to do. Cared for the sick and sorry, taught the children and visited the hospitals. It may have been a bit like being visited by a vampire. Then, when she-deacons became the flavour of the month, she was well placed to train them. So she did. Bishop Ronald liked the idea of a corps of Valkyries marching up and down the diocese, so he rather let her have her head. In the end, when they passed the Measure in ’92, he gave her a residentiary canonry, partly to annoy chauvinists like Trevor Riddable.’

  ‘I’ve met Mrs Riddable,’ Theodora said. For a moment she thought Nick was going to say she too was dire. But he resisted the temptation so she pressed on. ‘What’s Canon Riddable like? I haven’t met him yet.’

  Nick looked down his elegant nose.

  ‘Violent,’ he said finally.

  ‘What?’ said Theodora, genuinely surprised by the young man’s tone which was without banter.

  ‘Well, all suppressed, mostly. But he’s an absolute thug. He too taught at the King’s School for a time. History, of a sort. In those days, before the ’88 Act,’ Nick was all modern historian, ‘you could beat boys and he did. A parent complained and there was the threat of a court case. The bishop leaned a bit and the charge was dropped. But he has a temper and doesn’t see why, as a residentiary canon, he should be expected to restrain it. Don’t ever take his parking space. He parks behind you so you can’t get out and goes in for verbal abuse when you return.’

  Theodora sighed.

  ‘It’s a weedy garden, Miss Braithwaite. Nobody loves anybody else round here.’

  ‘But the suffragan’s all right, isn’t he?’ Theodora was forced to suggest. His kindness to her at the dean’s party was fresh in her mind.

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s a gent. But it’s not enough. Not by a long chalk.’ Nick brooded for a moment on the inadequacy of gentility in the modern world.

  ‘Archdeacon Gold?’ Theodora insinuated gently.

  ‘Good with engines. Hopeless with anything else. In fact he’s seriously stupid.’ Nick, enthroned in his Magdalen history scholarship, went on. ‘Two abstract nouns in a sentence plus a double negative flummoxes him. Joined up writing never mind joined up thinking is quite beyond him. He picks up phrases from other people and strings them together and hopes they mean something. His political cronies from the Council run rings round him. He’s desperate to plug the fabric fund’s debt by selling off the Hollow land. Only to do that profitably he’s got to have planning permission from the council. So he spends a lot of time toadying to oafs like Brian Brace. Not an edifying spectacle.’ Nick managed to convey fastidious moral distaste.

  ‘I gather the Examiner’s not in favour of that deal.’

  ‘I think the Examiner’s quarrel with the cathedral clergy is actually rather more far-ranging.’ Nick was judicious. ‘The Examiner feels itself to be a champion of democracy and open government. The chapter isn’t a type of rational, democratic system. It’s simply a bastion of privilege. They’re appointed on hearsay and supported unconditionally. They have a sinecure for life to live like nineteenth-century gentlemen. They’re not scholars, their administration is done for them by laymen. They’re too grand to do anything round the parishes. So they fill their diaries with smart ephemera and call themselves overworked. No wonder they get fractious and wander off down evil paths. They really ought to abolish the canons’ freehold and make them all apply for their posts on five-year contracts. Then you might get some competence.’

  Theodora rather liked the vigour of this. She thought it boded well for Nick’s future career as an historian. However, since she had been familiar with cathedrals from her infancy it didn’t add to her knowledge and so she brought him back to the matter in hand.

  ‘They all seem a bit thrown by the Janus,’ Theodora offered.

  Nick returned to the fray with enjoyment. ‘Don’t they just? Isn’t he splendid. He is so handsome, don’t you think? You’d think they’d want to embrace him. Nothing like him’s been found anywhere else in England. I had a very interesting conversation with Dunch. He wants the chapter to give him to his father’s collection.’

  ‘Which is where?’

  ‘Part, I suspect the best part, he keeps at his house, Quecourt Manor. It’s about ten miles out. Very splendid eighteenth century. Small with a joky fro
nt put on by Wyatt. I got in once with the Bow Antiquarian Soc. I was a bit too young to appreciate the finer points but I could see the quality. The rest of the collection’s in the city museum in Watergate.’

  ‘What will chapter do with it?’

  ‘God knows. It’s becoming a sort of touchstone of attitudes, have you noticed? The city people like him. But the chapter really can’t cope. I suppose all those bones remind them of mortality about which they do not care to think. Gold wants him sold to pay off the cathedral’s debts or else to make him into a raree show for the same purpose. Riddable wants him consigned to hell, which he probably thinks of as a geographical area roughly thirty foot below ground. I expect the suffragan thinks he should grace a gentleman’s collection.’

  ‘And the dean? What would he have wanted to do with him?’

  ‘Well, who knows now?’ Nick was suddenly sobered.

  ‘What about the vergers?’ Theodora inquired. ‘Tristram Knight, for example.’

  Nick cheered up, didn’t say no to an offer of more sherry and shot his cuffs up his long wrists. ‘Tris is all for him, of course. Tris is the best thing that’s happened round here for ages.’

  ‘Do I take it he got you your present post?’ Theodora hazarded.

  ‘Yes. Well. Yes. As a matter of fact he did. I mean I have this year before I go up. I do need cash quite badly. I very much want to go to the Midi for the Romanesque and I’m not the building site brickie type.’

  Theodora looked at Nick’s long fine boned hands and pale thin face and agreed.

  ‘So eight months as a sub sub sub verger seemed ideal. He’s been very kind to me.’ There was emotion in his tone. ‘Of course I more or less know the form from my choirboy years. But he showed me the ropes, kept me from the grosser errors. He’s frightfully good fun too. I mean genuinely witty.’

  Theodora noticed that Nick’s sophistication seemed to have deserted him. He was, she surmised, in love.

  ‘What’s his background? He seems a cut above verger.’

  ‘Oh we take all sorts.’ Nick was laughing. ‘I honestly don’t know where he comes from or about his private life either. He’s very close. He …’ Nick stopped suddenly.

  Theodora raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I mean he doesn’t talk about his family or anything but he did once … Well we used to play Rugby at rugby and one morning I called for him at his lodgings and wound round a parcel of laundry was an old Rugbeian tie. Of course it might not have been his.’

  ‘You didn’t ask?’

  ‘Good heavens no.’

  Theodora warmed to the lad.

  ‘What about the dean’s murder?’ Theodora again sought the direct approach. Since Nick seemed to be willing to be indiscreet on everything else, he might be prepared to say a word here too. But he was suddenly wary.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Have you theories about who might want to kill him?’

  Nick adjusted his long legs from stretched to bent, lowered the rest of the sherry down himself and stood up.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said suddenly much younger than his previous conversation might suggest. ‘I said I’d stand in for Dennis at the Rotary Eucharist this evening. I must fly, if you’ll forgive me.’

  Theodora ran the glasses under the tap. Had the list of suspects lengthened? Nick had been quite good value on gossip but how far was he accurate? He clearly had strong likes and dislikes. He disliked Riddable, but then he’d only known him as a schoolboy and probably one who might have been rather difficult to contain. And what about Erica Millhaven? Was she really as dotty as Nick implied? She hesitated a moment on her return to the sitting room. It was a quarter past seven. Spruce would be here to compare notes at eight. She needed to get her thoughts in order and perhaps down on paper before they met. However there was one last job before the end of the day. She dialled the familiar London number.

  ‘Geoffrey? Hello.Yes, I’m quite all right.You? Yes.Yes I know the nationals are running dead dean features all over the place. Yes, well only to be expected really. Look, could you do me a favour? A man called Tristram Knight. He was at your old school. About your age. Perhaps a bit younger. It might help to know the odd detail about his career.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Strange Gods

  ‘A chapter,’ said Theodora glancing at Inspector Spruce across the polished mahogany surface of the sitting-room table, ‘is the three or four clergy, called residentiary canons, plus a dean, who are responsible for running a cathedral.’

  Spruce looked attentive. ‘Who are they answerable to?’ ‘No one. And they’re not trained and once in office they’re practically irremovable and it’s not always too obvious how they got their posts. It works through the patronage system.’

  ‘So how do they spend their time?’

  ‘In recent years,’ Theodora was launched on a familiar path, ‘their role has become unclear. Many cathedrals were originally monastic foundations. Monks were responsible for continuous worship in the cathedral, for scholarly activity, for looking after pilgrims and offering the church’s hospitality to the needy. After the reformation, secular institutions took over many of their tasks. In the modern world cathedrals are faced with having to maintain very expensive buildings in a society where formal religious observance is no longer the norm. Chapters nowadays have to discover or invent what cathedrals are for. Some, like Salisbury, have gone for tourism, others have become museums, concert halls or conference and exhibition centres. Others again hold endless special services for different interest groups on the understanding that that links them with modern life. They’ve lost confidence in their ability to fulfil their original function.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Bringing people into God’s presence by the regular, prayerful celebration of a glorious liturgy, praying in public.’

  ‘Why?’ Spruce asked.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why have they lost confidence in worship?’

  Theodora sighed. ‘Many reasons. It’s partly to do with how we see causality in a scientifically orientated world. In such a world, prayer, which doesn’t conform to scientific rules, looks odd. And to pray in public convincingly, you have to work at private prayer and that is the most enormous effort. It requires great self-discipline and it’s utterly without worldly reward. No wonder the clergy prefer going in for polities or commerce.’

  ‘Which way has Bow St Aelfric chapter chosen to go to justify its existence?’

  ‘I rather think they are, as is often the case, divided. The new dean quite properly in my view had in mind to go for liturgy with some trimmings. The canons, Riddable and Archdeacon Gold may not have agreed with him. The bishop suffragan has up to now held the ring. It’s called a difference in churchmanship. The dean, suffragan and perhaps Canon Millhaven are in the Catholic tradition, the other two from the evangelical wing.’

  Spruce clearly didn’t want to go into this one. ‘Are there any motives for murder in a set-up like that?’

  ‘What are the motives for murder?’

  ‘Fear, anger, greed, hatred.’

  ‘An Old Testament list.’

  ‘Contemporary vices.’

  ‘So the inquiry has to be via motive?’

  ‘In the end, of course. But initially it’s opportunity we have to look at.’ Spruce was incisive. He shook out the computer list on to the table. ‘We checked the arrival time home of everyone who attended the dean’s party.

  ‘But it need not have been anyone who attended the party,’ Theodora objected.

  ‘True. But if it was an outsider, there’s the difficulty about gates. The Archgate, which is after all the only way into the close, is closed at this time of year after Evensong, about six-thirty. On Shrove Tuesday it was left open until all the dean’s guests had come, then the second verger, what’s he called?’

  ‘Dennis, Dennis Noble,’ Theodora supplied.

  ‘Right. Dennis locked it as he left at eight-thirty. It was unlocked a
gain when the dean’s guests began to leave round about a quarter to midnight. By the way,’ Spruce broke off, ‘why all this heavy gaoling stuff?’

  ‘The Ecclesiastical Insurance Office has started putting up the premiums of cathedrals which don’t take their security seriously. We have to guard our worldly treasures.’

  ‘So anyone who wanted to get into the close that evening by the Archgate would have to have either come in before eight-thirty or after about eleven-forty-five as the dean’s guests were leaving. If they came in about eight and they weren’t attending the party they would have to conceal themselves for four hours and then find a way out again after the murder.’

  ‘When was the gate locked again after the guests had left?’

  ‘The sub verger, Nick Squires, locked it when the last guest had gone, he says about five past midnight.’

  ‘How about entry through one of the close houses which has a front door on to the street?’

  ‘Actually they regard their front door as the one giving on to the close and speak of their back doors as the street doors.’ Spruce was pleased with this piece of intelligence which he’d gleaned in the course of his inquiries amongst the clergy. ‘An interesting clue perhaps to clergy attitudes?’ He cocked an inquiring eye at Theodora.

  She refused to rise. ‘Well, how many do have back street doors?’ Theodora asked.

  ‘Only the Precentory and Canon Millhaven’s Archgate rooms. The cathedral office doesn’t nor do these buildings, that is, your flat nor the Deanery itself and nor does the choir school. We’ve checked both the buildings which do have street doors, and there’s no sign of forced entry.’

  ‘How about key holders?’

  ‘Surprisingly few. Every house has a single key to the main, the Archgate. Keys to the doors on to the street are, naturally, in the keeping of those who live in those houses with street doors. That means that the Precentory and Canon Millhaven both have a key each for the Archgate and keys to their street doors. In addition the archdeacon has an Archgate key and there’s one kept by the vergers in their office. You, and now I, have a key to this building which has, however, no street door. The choir school head keeps his Archgate key on his person and there are no others. The cathedral office is locked at five-thirty and the cleaners come in in the morning at seven when the vergers have opened the Archgate.’