by P. D. James
“Yeah, that’s all right then.”
Dalgliesh said:
“You’re fond of her?”
“She’s all right. She wants lookin’ after, mind you. She’s daft. She hasn’t got the sense she was born with. I keep an eye on her, like.”
“I think she relies on you. It was lucky you were together when you found the bodies. It must have been horrible for her.”
“Turned her up proper. She don’t like blood, you see. That’s why she won’t have a coloured TV. She makes out she can’t afford it. That’s daft. She’s always buying flowers for that BVM.”
“BVM?” said Dalgliesh, his mind scurrying after some unrecognized make of car.
“That statue in the church. The lady in blue with the candles in front of her. They’re called BVMs. She’s always puttin’ flowers there and lightin’ candles. Ten pee, they are. Five pee for the small ones.”
His eyes shifted as if he had been lured onto dangerous ground. He added quickly:
“I reckon she won’t have a coloured TV ’cause she don’t like the colour of blood.”
Dalgliesh said:
“I think you’re probably right. You’ve been very helpful to us, Darren. And you’re quite sure that you didn’t go into that room, either of you?”
“Naw, I told yer. I was behind ’er all the time.” But the question had been unwelcome and for the first time some of his cockiness seemed to have been drained from him. He slumped back in his seat and stared resentfully through the windscreen.
Dalgliesh went back into the church and found Massingham.
“I want you to go home with Darren. I’ve a feeling there’s something he’s keeping back. It might not be important, but it would be helpful to have you there when he talks to his parents. You’ve got brothers, you know about small boys.”
Massingham said, “You want me to go now, sir?”
“Obviously.”
Dalgliesh knew that the order was unwelcome. Massingham hated to leave a scene of crime even temporarily while the body was still there, and he would go the more unwillingly because Kate Miskin, back now from Campden Hill Square, was to stay. But if he had to go he would go alone. He ordered the police driver out of the car with unusual curtness and drove off at a speed which suggested that Darren was about to enjoy a gratifyingly exciting ride.
Dalgliesh passed through the grille door into the body of the church, turning to close it gently behind him. But even so the soft clang rang sharply in the silence and echoed around him as he made his way down the nave. Behind him out of sight, but always present to the mind, was the apparatus of his trade: lights, cameras, equipment, a busy silence broken only by voices unhushed and confident in the presence of death. But here, guarded by the elegant whorls and bars of wrought iron, was another world as yet uncontaminated. The smell of incense strengthened and he saw ahead a haze of gold where the gleaming mosaics of the apse stained the air and the great figure of Christ in glory, his wounded hands stretched out, glared down the nave with cavernous eyes. Two more of the nave lights had been switched on, but the church was still dim compared with the harsh glare of the arc lights trained on the scene, and it took him a minute to locate Father Barnes, a dark shape at the end of the first row of chairs under the pulpit. He walked up to him, aware of the ring of his feet on the tiled floor, wondering whether they sounded as portentous to the priest as they did to him.
Father Barnes was sitting bolt upright on his chair, his eyes staring ahead at the gleaming curve of the apse, his body taut and contracted, like that of a patient expecting pain, willing himself to endure. He didn’t turn his head as Dalgliesh approached. He had obviously been summoned in a hurry. His face was unshaved and the hands, rigidly clamped together in his lap, were grubby, as if he had gone to bed unwashed. The cassock, whose long black lines etiolated still further his lean body, was old and stained with what looked like gravy. One spot he had tried ineffectively to rub away. His black shoes were unpolished, the leather cracked at the sides, the toes scuffed into greyness. There came from him a smell, half musty, half disagreeably sweet, of old clothes and incense, overlaid with stale sweat, a smell which was a pitiable amalgam of failure and fear. As Dalgliesh eased his long limbs in the adjoining chair and rested his arm along its back, it seemed to him that his body encompassed and, by its own calm presence, gently eased a core of fear and tension in his companion, so strong that it was almost palpable. He felt a sudden compunction. The man would, of course, have come fasting to the first Mass of the day. He would be craving hot coffee and food. Normally someone at or near the scene would be brewing tea, but Dalgliesh had no intention of using the washroom even to boil a kettle until the scene-of-crime officer had done his work.
He said:
“I won’t keep you long, Father. There are just a few questions and we’ll let you go back to the vicarage. This must have been a horrible shock for you.”
Father Barnes still didn’t look at him. He said in a low voice:
“A shock. Yes, it was a shock. I shouldn’t have let him have the key. I don’t know really why I did. It isn’t easy to explain.” The voice was unexpected. It was low, with an agreeable trace of huskiness and with a hint of more power than the frail body would suggest—not an educated voice, but one on which education had imposed a discipline which hadn’t quite obliterated the provincial, probably East Anglian, accent of childhood. He turned now to Dalgliesh and said again:
“They’ll say I’m responsible. I shouldn’t have let him have the key. I’m to blame.”
Dalgliesh said:
“You aren’t responsible. You know that perfectly well and so will they.” The ubiquitous, frightening, judgemental “they.” He thought, but did not say, that murder provided its own dreadful excitement for those who neither mourned nor were directly concerned and that people were commonly indulgent to those who helped provide the entertainment. Father Barnes would be surprised—agreeably or otherwise—by the size of next Sunday’s congregation. He said:
“Could we start at the beginning? When did you first meet Sir Paul Berowne?”
“Last Monday, just over a week ago. He called at the vicarage at about half past two and asked if he could see the church. He’d come here first and found he couldn’t get in. We’d like to keep the church open all the time, but you know how it is today. Vandals, people trying to break open the offertory box, stealing the candles. There’s a note in the north porch saying that the key is at the vicarage.”
“I suppose he didn’t say what he was doing in Paddington?”
“Yes, he did, actually. He said that an old friend was in St. Mary’s Hospital and he’d been to see him. But the patient was having treatment and couldn’t see visitors, so he had an hour to spare. He said he’d always wanted to see St. Matthew’s.”
So that was how it had started. Berowne’s life, like that of all busy men, was dominated by the clock. He had set aside an hour to visit an old friend. The hour had become unexpectedly available for a private indulgence. He was known to be interested in Victorian architecture. However fantastic the labyrinth into which that impulse had led him, his first visit to St. Matthew’s at least had had the comforting stamp of normality and reason.
Dalgliesh said:
“Did you offer to accompany him?”
“Yes, I offered, but he said not to trouble. I didn’t press it. I thought he might want to be alone.” So, Father Barnes was not without sensitivity. Dalgliesh said:
“So you gave him the key. Which key?”
“The spare one. There are only three to the south porch. Miss Wharton has one and I keep the other two at the vicarage. There are two keys on each ring, one to the south door and a smaller key which opens the door in the grille. If Mr. Capstick or Mr. Pool want a key—they’re our two churchwardens—they come to the vicarage. It’s quite close, you see. There’s only one key to the main north door. I always keep that in my study. I never lend it out in case it gets lost. It’s too heavy, anyway, for ge
neral use. I told Sir Paul that he would find a booklet describing the church in the bookstand. It was written by Father Collins and we’ve always meant to revise it. It’s over there on the table by the north porch. We only charge three pence.” He turned his head painfully, like an arthritic patient, as if inviting Dalgliesh to buy a copy. The gesture was pathetic and rather appealing. He went on:
“I think he must have taken one because two days later I found a five-pound note in the box. Most people just put in three pence.”
“Did he tell you who he was?”
“He said his name was Paul Berowne. I’m afraid it didn’t mean anything to me at the time. He didn’t say he was an MP or a baronet, nothing like that. Of course, after he’d resigned I knew who he was. It was in the papers and on the television.”
Again there was a pause. Dalgliesh waited. After a few seconds the voice began again, stronger now and more resolute.
“I suppose he was away about an hour, perhaps less. Then he returned the key. He said he would like to sleep that night in the Little Vestry. Of course he didn’t know it was called that. He said in the small room with the bed. The bed has been there since Father Collins’s time, in the war. He used to sleep in the church during air raids so that he could put out the fire bombs. We’ve never taken it away. It’s useful if people feel ill during services or if I want to rest before midnight Mass. It doesn’t take up much room. It’s only a narrow collapsible bed. Well, you’ve seen it.”
“Yes. Did he give any reason?”
“No. He made it sound quite an ordinary request and I didn’t like to ask why. He wasn’t a man you could cross-question. I did say what about sheets, a pillowcase. He said he’d bring anything he needed.”
He had brought one double sheet and had slept in it, doubled over. Otherwise he had used the existing old army blanket folded beneath him and on top the blanket of multicoloured woollen squares. The pillowcase on what was obviously a chair cushion was also presumably his.
Dalgliesh asked:
“Did he take the key away with him then or call back for it that night?”
“He called back for it. That must have been about eight o’clock or a little earlier. He was standing at the door of the vicarage carrying a grip. I don’t think he came by car. I didn’t see one. I gave him the key. I didn’t see him again until next morning.”
“Tell me about the next morning.”
“I used the south door as usual. It was locked. The door to the Little Vestry was open and I could see that he wasn’t there. The bed was made up very tidily. Everything was tidy. There was a sheet and a pillowcase folded on top. I looked through the grille into the church. The lights weren’t on, but I could just see him. He was sitting in this row, a little further along. I went into the vestry and robed for the Mass, then through the grille door into the church. When he saw that Mass was to be in the Lady Chapel he moved across and sat in the back row. He didn’t speak. No one else was there. It wasn’t Miss Wharton’s morning and Mr. Capstick, who likes to come to the nine-thirty Mass, had influenza. There were just the two of us. When I’d finished the first prayer and turned to face him, I saw that he was kneeling. He took Communion. Afterwards, we walked together to the Little Vestry. He handed me back the key, thanked me, picked up his grip and left.”
“And that was all on that first occasion?”
Father Barnes turned and looked at him. In the dimness of the church his face looked lifeless. Dalgliesh saw in his eyes a mixture of entreaty, resolution and pain. There was something he feared to say yet needed to confide. Dalgliesh waited. He was used to waiting. At last Father Barnes spoke.
“No, there is something. When he lifted his hands and I placed the wafer in his palms—I thought I saw—” He paused, then went on: “There were marks, wounds. I thought I saw stigmata.”
Dalgliesh fixed his eyes on the pulpit. The painted figure of a Pre-Raphaelite angel carrying a single lily, its yellow hair crimped under the wide halo, looked back at him with its bland, uncurious gaze. He asked:
“On his palms?”
“No. On his wrists. He was wearing a shirt and a pullover. The cuff’s were a little loose. They slipped back. That’s when I saw.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No, only you.”
For a full minute neither of them spoke. In all his career as a detective Dalgliesh couldn’t remember a piece of information from a witness more unwelcome and—there was no other word—more shocking. His mind busied itself with images of what this news could do to his investigation if it ever became public: the newspaper headlines; the half-amused speculation of the cynics; the crowds of sightseers—the superstitious, the credulous, the genuine believers, thronging the church in search of … what? A thrill, a new cult, hope, certainty? But his distaste went deeper than irritation at an unwelcome complication to his enquiry, at the bizarre intrusion of irrationality into a job so firmly rooted in the search for evidence which would stand up in court, documented, demonstrable, real. He was shaken, almost physically, by an emotion far stronger than distaste and one of which he was half-ashamed; it seemed to him both ignoble and in itself hardly more rational than the event itself. What he was feeling was a revulsion amounting almost to outrage. He said:
“I think you should continue to say nothing. It isn’t relevant to Sir Paul’s death. It isn’t even necessary to include it in your statement. If you do feel the need to confide in anyone, tell your bishop.”
Father Barnes said simply:
“I shan’t tell anyone else. I think I did have a need to speak about it, to share it. I’ve told you.”
Dalgliesh said:
“The church was dimly lit. You said the lights weren’t on. You were fasting. You could have imagined it. Or it could have been a trick of the light. And you saw the marks only for a couple of seconds when he lifted his palms to receive the Host. You could have been mistaken.”
He thought: Who am I trying to reassure, him or me?
And then came the question which against reason he had to ask:
“How did he look? Different? Changed?”
The priest shook his head, then said, with great sadness:
“You don’t understand. I wouldn’t have recognized it, the difference, even if it had been there.” Then he seemed to recover himself. He went on resolutely:
“Whatever it was I saw, if it was there, it didn’t last long. And it’s not so very unusual. It has been known before. The mind works on the body in strange ways; an intense experience, a powerful dream. And as you say, the light was very dim.”
So Father Barnes didn’t want to believe it either. He was arguing it away. Well that, thought Dalgliesh wryly, was better than a note in the parish magazine, a telephone call to the daily papers or a sermon next Sunday on the phenomenon of stigmata and the inscrutable wisdom of Providence. He was interested to find that they shared the same distrust, perhaps the same revulsion. Later there would be a time and a place to consider why this was so. But now there were more immediate concerns. Whatever had brought Berowne again to that vestry, it had been a human hand, his or another’s, which had wielded that razor. He said:
“What about yesterday night? When did he ask you if he could come back?”
“In the morning. He rang shortly after nine. I said I’d be in any time after six that evening and he came for the key precisely on the hour.”
“Are you sure of the time, Father?”
“Oh yes, I was watching the six o’clock news. It had only just started when he rang the bell.”
“And again, no explanation?”
“No. He was carrying the same grip. I think he came by bus or underground or walked. I didn’t see a car. I handed him the key at the door, the same key. He thanked me and left. I didn’t come to the church last night, I had no reason to. The next I knew was when the boy came for me and told me that there were two dead bodies in the Little Vestry. You know the rest.”
Dalgliesh said:
“Tell me about Harry Mack.”
The change of subject was obviously welcome, and Father Barnes was voluble on the subject of Harry. Poor Harry was a problem for St. Matthew’s. For some reason, no one knew why, he had for the last four months taken to sleeping in the south porch. He usually bedded down on newspapers and covered himself with an old blanket which he sometimes left in the porch, ready for the next night, and sometimes took away, rolled into a long wad and tied around his stomach with string. Father Barnes, when he found the blanket, hadn’t liked to remove it. After all, it was Harry’s only covering. But it wasn’t really convenient to have the porch used as a shelter or as a storage for Harry’s odd and rather smelly belongings. The Parochial Church Council had actually discussed whether they ought to install railings and a gate, but that had seemed uncharitable, and there were more important things to spend their money on. They had difficulty in meeting their diocesan quota as it was. They had all tried to help Harry, but he wasn’t easy. He was known at the Wayfarers’ Refuge in Cosway Street in St. Marylebone, an excellent place, where he usually got a midday meal and medical attention for minor ailments when he needed it. He was a little too fond of drink and would occasionally get into fights. St. Matthew’s had liaised with the refuge about Harry, but they hadn’t known what to suggest. They had tried to persuade Harry to have a bed in their dormitory, but he wouldn’t agree. He couldn’t bear the intimate contact with other people. He wouldn’t even eat his dinner at the refuge. He’d put it between slabs of bread, then take it away to eat in the streets. The porch was his place, snug, south-facing, out of public view.
Dalgliesh said:
“So he’s not likely to have knocked on the door yesterday evening and asked Sir Paul to let him in.”
“Oh no, Harry wouldn’t have done that.”
But somehow he had got in. Perhaps he’d already settled down under his blanket when Berowne arrived. Berowne had asked him in out of the cold to share his meal. But how had he persuaded Harry? He asked Father Barnes what he thought.