Idol Bones

by D M Greenwood

  ‘Am I right in thinking, Canon, you had a common interest with the dean in church history?’ Spruce’s tone was smooth and inviting. Only the most obtuse would have supposed that he had changed the subject.

  ‘Well, the dean was hardly a scholar, of course.’ Riddable’s tone was hearty and relieved. He clearly felt he’d made a safe landing.

  ‘But you had resumed scholarly work yourself recently after something of a gap?’

  ‘One never really gives up those sorts of interests, Inspector. I’m sure you find that yourself.’

  Since Spruce had no scholarly activity which would have claimed the attention of Canon Riddable, he could only interpret this extraordinary remark as a wish to make amends, to include him in as one of the chaps.

  ‘I understand you recently sent an article to the Church History Review.’

  Riddable seemed to find nothing extraordinary in the Inspector knowing this. He probably assumed, Spruce thought, that the entire world was awaiting his next publication with bated breath.

  ‘They invited me to put together a short paper for them and I felt it was the least I could do. They’re always desperate for stuff, you know. Though of course they have very high standards.’

  Make up your mind, Spruce thought. Either they take anything or they don’t.

  ‘Did you ever discuss your scholarly work, your articles, with the dean?’ Spruce inquired.

  ‘I doubt if Vincent would have been able to follow the drift. Some of the material’s very technical.’

  ‘So there was no question of the dean’s having vetted the article for CHR or of your having discussed the work with him?’

  Riddable laughed heartily. ‘Absolutely not, Inspector.’

  Spruce reckoned he’d got all he was likely to. ‘You’ve been more helpful than you might think,’ he said with a sudden unnerving wide smile to Riddable. Then to make his day he added, ‘I’ll be in touch with you again very soon.’

  ‘I had to come down pretty heavily on that policeman,’ Riddable told his wife at lunch. ‘He needed a kick in the pants, which I was very happy to give him.’ He chewed his fish finger thoughtfully. Then, feeling perhaps that Mrs Riddable had not seized his point, he added, ‘I’ll have to see his chief constable about him. I’ve known Ronnie for years, of course.’

  He sometimes told Mrs Riddable facts of which she was already aware. It seemed to make them more factual if he told her them again.

  ‘I shot him down in flames,’ he went on complacently. ‘As you know, I shoot from the hip.’ His temper was restoring as he talked and chewed. ‘I shot him down in flames and rode off into the sunset.’ He concluded, new made over.

  Stella stared into the candle flame and then let her eye travel beyond it. The Hollowmen and their guests were gathered for their evening. They were twelve in all. The members of the community had washed and changed, taken off their shoes and assembled in the kitchen Nissen hut, Stella’s and Fresh’s. They sat in a circle, some cross-legged, some on the slatted stools which Oliver had constructed. On a low round table in their midst a single tall candle burned.

  Besides Oliver and herself there were Mr and Mrs Bean, Erica Millhaven and her tall guest Theodora Braithwaite, Sean and Kevin and their probation officer, a fair diminutive Scot called Gavin, Kevin’s current girl, an Afro-Caribbean called Jewel, and Miriam and Matthew Rosen, accountants both and early supporters of the enterprises at the Hollow.

  The daylight, after hanging around for a bit as though not quite knowing what to do with itself, had by seven o’clock in early March faded. Through the uncurtained window Stella could see the arc lamps of the railway and the encroaching building site. The evening was mild. The smell of damp earth came in through the open door and near at hand a blackbird experimented with his spring calls. Stella’s fears, first about the guiltridden past, then about the future, food, (would it be all right, would there be enough?) came to her as they regularly did at this moment. But now after three years she was strong enough to catch them as they came and watch them as they dropped away into limbo. She brought her gaze back to the candle flame and let out her breath. In these small nightly pockets of calm and silence she knew she was safe: silence saved, weather saved, friends saved.

  Erica Millhaven stared into the flame. Through it she saw Oliver and Stella sitting side by side on the other side of the bare room, their heads close together and silhouetted like a double cameo. Beyond them in the darkness near the walls she could distinguish the dignified faces of the ancient dead, her friends, her witnesses. Her eye returned to the centre of the flame and she saw within it with equanimity her own death.

  Theodora kept her eye steadily on the flame. The silence filled her. The questions which had occupied her over the last two days fell away to be dealt with at the proper time. Now all that mattered was to find in the light of the candle silence, stillness, peace.

  At eight o’clock the chimes of the cathedral clock drifted across suburb and marsh to the Hollow. One by one, as though reluctant to break the peace which silence had induced, the twelve began to stir. The legs of older members realigned themselves with their bodies none too nimbly. The lurcher bitch, who had been lying doggo in the shadow beside the boiler, rose, stretched, yawned and showed a lot of pink tongue and very white teeth. Stella went to the oven, Kevin stoked the boiler. Jewel carried bread to the table. Mr Bean collared Matt Rosen and talked about the wholesale price of timber. The conversation rose in volume, became general and cheerful. Goodwill was apparent.

  They ate companionably. There was no sense of strain. No one patronised or chivvied or boasted. They were ordinary people who were glad to have been quiet with each other, who had done an honourable day’s work, who had helped to grow at least some of the food they ate. Theodora, a connoisseur of the varieties of religious life, was reminded of some of the meals she had eaten in Africa with Africans.The Hollowmen were not, she noted, vegetarian. The casseroled meat was, if she was not mistaken, kid. The spinach, Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes came straight from the allotment. The cheese was light goat’s and the dessert of nuts and apple was flavoured with their own honey. Fruits of the earth, she thought, and work of human hands.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stella in answer to Theodora’s compliments, ‘living here helps us to live slowly. We can attend to details and processes without being overwhelmed by them. We can afford to wait for things to germinate. But then we couldn’t any of us live fast. We don’t live in Nissen huts surrounded by goats and chickens because we could live in semis with garages and rockeries. We couldn’t. We aren’t normal people.’

  Theodora looked at the plain steel dish holding the last of the dessert. ‘Why did you leave the milk and honey offering in front of the Janus?’ she asked on a sudden intuition.

  Stella blushed. ‘Partly gratitude. I felt him a kindred spirit. He won’t fit into the present world either. And then, of course, we, Oliver and I, felt we need all the help we can get.’

  ‘The office blocks?’

  ‘Yes. The chapter seems set on letting them go ahead.’

  Matt Rosen leaned across. ‘Never say die. The Examiner’s doing us proud at the moment.’ He turned to Oliver. ‘It was a flattering profile of you in the “Life Style” series.’

  Oliver smiled his beautiful smile. ‘Late recognition. But of course it doesn’t in the end matter if they move us on and we have to start again. The farm is there to show people that something can always come out of nothing.’

  ‘I thought the attack on the chapter in today’s edition was pertinent.’ Gavin the Scot rolled his ‘rs’ and relished as only a presbyterian could the troubles of the English established episcopal Church.

  ‘Do you know who writes them?’ pursued Mrs Bean glancing at Canon Millhaven.

  Erica extracted a kid bone fastidiously from her teeth and placed it on the side of her plate. ‘You are right to infer inside knowledge, Mrs Bean, I’m sure.’

  ‘You reckon someone done the dirt on them in the cathe
dral?’ Jewel’s gentle voice was full of genuine interest and entirely without malice.

  ‘It’s nice none of them seems to know what’s to be done about the Janus, isn’t it?’ Miriam Rosen said.

  Oliver grinned. ‘Mark my words, before very long, chapter will be paying someone to take it away. I think they believe I put it there as a curse on them.’

  ‘They don’t seem to be picking up the dean’s killer so quick,’ was Kevin’s contribution. He seemed pleased at the lack of police competence. But no one seemed to want to pursue the question of the dean’s killer.

  Finally they parted before midnight and Canon Millhaven drove Theodora back to the cathedral.

  ‘“All sorts and conditions of men”’, said Canon Millhaven in her elliptical way as they parked the car outside the Archgate.

  ‘Action unites, belief divides,’ said Theodora who could play this sort of game on and on. ‘Work and food, the fundamentals of salvation,’ she added.

  ‘A terrible indictment of theology,’ the canon answered with genuine pleasure.

  Together they strode across the turf of the close, two tall women in accord with each other, not needing to explain. As they approached the centre of the close the Janus reared up yet taller than Theodora remembered it. They paused for a moment as though in homage, then from round the scaffold base three small figures suddenly emerged. They were skipping, hopping, jumping, in an abandoned dance, hands waving above their heads in triumph or mockery.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Canon, ‘there’s hope for those young Riddables yet.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Malign Influences

  The fax was springy and slippery to the touch. In the cold morning air it smelt unfamiliarly chemical. It lay on the study table waiting for Theodora to attend to it. It must have come after she had set out for the Hollow yesterday evening for it had been waiting for her on her return. Too tired to look at it, she had retired to bed. At four she had risen, unable to sleep after the excitements of the day. She drew back the heavy curtains, pressed her nose to the cold glass and gazed at the double towers of the cathedral. She apprehended rather than saw the building rising out of its demented traffic and reflected on its clergy, dead and alive, jockeying and unamiable. She contemplated the Janus, charged, if the reactions of Stella and the Riddable children were anything to go by, with antique, ambiguous power. She thought of the Hollow with its ordinary ethic of work and its exceptional strength of silence and shared stillness. Here were three focuses of religious life. Were they complementary or opposed? Her heart, her loyalty lay, of course, with the cathedral but the other two were neglected at our peril, she thought.

  What was it young Nick had said? ‘No one loves anybody here.’ That was true enough, but lack of love didn’t usually lead to murder. Only in this case it had done. Where had the hatred sufficient to kill the dean come from?

  She pulled the fax towards her and read what Geoffrey had written. ‘Knight was a couple of years behind me at school and not in my house.’ (Really, Theodora thought, these niceties of male acquaintance are not relevant.) ‘Younger son of a North Riding baronet, Tristram Evelyn Knight. House colours for squash, school colours for sprint.’ (Theodora clicked her tongue in impatience.) ‘Left in his penultimate year under a cloud.’ (Theodora thought how very much Geoffrey would have enjoyed having the opportunity to write that phrase.) ‘There was some scandal about a boy who was later found with his wrists slashed. Joined RN as a rating. Later heard of at a refuge for alcoholics, St Crispin’s in Wapping.’

  Theodora stopped short. Surely she had heard the name earlier tonight. ‘Come early,’ Stella had said. ‘Come before supper.’ So Theodora had walked out along the straight marsh road under a low grey sky from which, as the light began to fade, warm drizzle had begun to fall. She had crossed the railway tracks and entered the Hollow. Stella was in one of the back sheds ladling out concentrates for the milking goats. The last of the school parties was wending its way to the coach down the gravel path which criss-crossed the sea of mud. Theodora and she had walked to the large goat pen with the lurcher bitch in attendance amiably chivvying the freely ranging hens. There they had fed the herd of black and white British Alpines and the odd long-haired Nubian. Theodora scratched their bony heads between their horns and smelt their goaty smell. Their hard yellow eyes had gazed insolently back at her.

  ‘They’re a good animal to have for city children to learn on,’ Stella had said. ‘There’s no give in them. They don’t care a toss. They can’t be played with and they aren’t toys. Children learn fairly quickly to be respectful.’

  ‘Why do you think contact with animals makes us better as human beings would you say?’ Theodora had inquired.

  ‘Perspective. Shows us our place. Not ultimately the most important thing in the world.’

  ‘Perhaps we should have one or two in the close,’ Theodora mused.

  ‘One of the young Riddables comes here every now and then. The middle boy, Tim, I think it is. He’d be a good goat herd,’

  ‘“The chapter wouldn’t like it”,’ Theodora quoted.

  ‘Theirs the loss.’

  There was a pause while they listened to the sound of goats dealing with concentrates. ‘You asked about the dean,’ Stella said hesitantly. ‘I knew him, ten years ago just after I was married. Johnny, my husband, and I lived in Camden. I hadn’t had Thomas, my son, then. I was looking for good works. There was a refuge for alcoholics in Wapping called St Crispin’s. It abutted on to some church land. Two of the inmates were diagnosed as HIV positive. The trustees met the same week and the refuge was closed within twenty-four hours. They didn’t know too much about AIDs at that time; it was early days. Anyway, they reacted like seventeenth-century mayors at the time of the plague. Everything was sealed up and fumigated. I don’t know what on earth good they thought that would do. I managed to track down the chair of the trustees. It was Vincent Stream. At first he wouldn’t see me. He said he’d nothing to say to the press. I pointed out that I wasn’t press and that I’d worked at the refuge for three years as a volunteer. He clearly had no idea who worked there. I begged him to give the refuge a breathing space. There were these dozen men homeless and vulnerable. I asked him to delay or at least to rehouse. He practically bundled me out of his nice house. Probably thought I was infectious. Anyway he wouldn’t rescind the order to close. We got up a head of steam locally but by that time the inmates were scattered. Later when the national press got hold of it he’d changed his tale to say that the arrangement for the closure of the house had been made a long time ago and that the inmates and helpers had been informed and the church needed the sale of the land to clear off past debts.’

  Stella stopped. Theodora considered the tale. It rang true. A frightened, conventional and ignorant man had panicked. It wouldn’t be the first time the church authorities had failed in charity and common sense. It certainly explained Stella’s earlier remarks about the dean’s lacking moral courage. There seemed nothing more to say on the topic. Theodora asked the obvious question. ‘What happened to your own family?’

  ‘I killed them.’ Stella touched her scar. ‘No, well, obviously not quite that. I was responsible for their death. I was driving them both in the car round the M25. I lost control. We went through the central barrier. The ambulance couldn’t get through because of the traffic. It was after that I came here. Erica Millhaven arranged it.’

  That was what Stella had told her.

  Theodora fingered Geoffrey’s fax. So that was where she had met the name of St Crispin. Was there anything more than a coincidence in Tristram Knight having been at St Crispin’s? Had he been an inmate or a helper? Was he there when the dean had turfed them out and closed the building down?

  She looked at her watch. In an hour it would be time for the early Eucharist and then her meeting with Spruce to go through the dean’s effects. She’d discuss it with him.

  The mouse fixed her eye on the crumb of Stilton. ‘Come on,’ said Tim gently
. ‘Don’t you like Stilton? I know it’s a bit strong but it’s all we had.’ The mouse continued to turn her sharp profile towards him as though weighing up his trustworthiness. Tim was aware he was being judged. He withdrew his hand. At once the mouse flicked her tail, scuttled forward and hoovered up the cheese in one startling movement. Then she plopped down between the scaffold boards and disappeared from view. Tim let out his breath. He felt lightheaded with humility and gratitude. ‘Oh, thank you so much,’ he breathed.

  High above him the bell began to toll for the early Eucharist. Very cautiously he shuffled backwards. The scaffold planks were rough and splintery to his hands and knees. The canvas flapped in the wind. He pulled a piece aside, grasped a scaffold pole, braced his foot against the earthen side of the hole and pulled himself up from the cavity from which the Janus had been recovered three days ago.

  ‘Boo,’ said his brother with delight. Gratifyingly Tim jumped. ‘You aren’t supposed to be out alone,’ he said to restore status.

  ‘Well I’m not. I’m with you. What have you got in the cavern?’

  It was not that Tim did not trust his brother, he told himself, but Ben didn’t always seem to know what he was saying and to whom. At ten he himself had already developed the habit of keeping his own counsel.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said preparing to move off towards the Precentory.

  ‘I know what you’ve got down there.’ His brother galloped beside him. ‘You’ve got the dean’s murderer.’

  Tim stopped. He was old enough to know you didn’t joke about such matters. ‘No I haven’t. Don’t be silly. Don’t let Daddy hear you say things like that or you know what will happen.’

  Ben ceased to walk beside his brother and began to circle him, chopping his hand up and down. Then he began walking backwards and in consequence collided with Theodora who was walking forward. He picked himself up, was too embarrassed to make any apology and instead chose to continue the conversation with his brother.

  ‘What if Daddy killed the dean,’ Ben’s high childish tone carried across the close. Theodora stopped and swung round.