Death in Holy Orders

by P. D. James

  “When he refused to hand over a second consecrated wafer, did you attempt blackmail?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Did you even by implication suggest that he was now in your power, that you had information that could get him expelled from the college, ruining his chances of ever being ordained ?”

  “No!” she said vehemently.

  “No, I didn’t. What the hell would be the use? It would compromise Eric for one thing and, for another, those priests would believe him, not me. I wasn’t in a position to blackmail him.”

  “You think he realized that?”

  “How the hell do I know what he thought? He was half crazy, that’s all I know. Look, you’re supposed to be investigating the murder of Crampton. Ronald’s death had nothing to do with this case. How could it have?”

  “I suggest you leave me to decide what has or has not to do with this case. What happened when Ronald Treeves came to St. John’s Cottage on the night before he died ?”

  She sat there in sullen silence. Dalgliesh said, “You and your brother have already withheld information vital to this investigation. If we’d been told on Sunday morning what we’ve now learned, someone might have been under arrest. If neither you nor your brother had anything to do with Archdeacon Crampton’s death, I suggest you answer my questions honestly and truthfully. What happened when Ronald Treeves came to St. John’s Cottage on that Friday night?”

  “I was there already. I’d come down from London for the weekend. I didn’t know he was going to call. And he had absolutely no right to walk into the cottage like he did. OK, we’ve got used to leaving doors open, but the cottage is supposed to be Eric’s home. He came barging upstairs, and if you must know, found Eric and me in bed. He just stood in the doorway and stared. He looked crazy, absolutely crazy. And then he started spitting out ridiculous accusations. I can’t really remember what he said. I suppose it could have been funny, but actually it was rather frightening. It was like being ranted at by a lunatic. No, that’s the wrong word. It wasn’t a rant. He didn’t shout or scream, he hardly raised his voice. That’s what made it rather terrifying. Eric and I were naked which put us at a bit of a disadvantage. We just sat up in bed and stared at him while that high voice went on and on. God, it was weird. D’you know, he’d actually thought I was going to marry him. Me, a parson’s wife! He was mad. He looked crazy and he was crazy.”

  She told it with a puzzled incredulity as if confiding to a friend over a drink in a bar.

  Dalgliesh said, “You seduced him and he thought you loved him. He gave you a consecrated wafer because you asked and he could refuse you nothing. He knew precisely what it was he had done. And then he saw that there never had been love, that he had been used. The next day he killed himself. Miss Surtees, do you in any way feel responsible for that death?”

  She cried vehemently, “No I don’t! I never told him I loved him. It wasn’t my fault if he thought I did. And I don’t believe he killed himself. It was an accident. That’s what the jury found and that’s what I believe.”

  Dalgliesh said quietly, “I don’t think it is, you know. I think you know very well what drove Ronald Treeves to his death.”

  “Even if I do that doesn’t make me responsible. And what the hell did he think he was doing, barging in like that and rushing upstairs as if he owned the place. And now I suppose you’ll tell Father Sebastian and get Eric thrown out of the cottage.”

  Dalgliesh said, “No, I shall not tell Father Sebastian. You and your brother have put yourselves in considerable peril. I can’t impress on you too strongly that what you’ve told me must remain secret. All of it.”

  She said ungraciously, “All right. We’re not going to speak, why should we? And I don’t see why I should feel guilty about Ronald or about the Archdeacon. We didn’t kill him. But we thought you’d be ready enough to think we did if you got a chance. Those priests are sacrosanct, aren’t they? I suggest you start looking at their motives instead of picking on us. And I didn’t think it would matter, not telling you about Eric going to the church. I thought one of the students had killed the Archdeacon and he’d confess anyway. That’s what they go in for, isn’t it, confessions? I’m not going to be made to feel guilty. I’m not cruel and I’m not callous. I was sorry for Ronald. I didn’t bully him into giving me that wafer. I asked him, and in the end he agreed. And I didn’t have sex with him to get the wafer. OK, that was part of it, but it wasn’t the whole. I did it because I was sorry for him and because I was bored, and maybe for other reasons which you wouldn’t understand and would disapprove of if you did.”

  There was nothing else to be said. She was frightened but she was not ashamed. Nothing he could have said would have made her feel responsible for Ronald Treeves’s death. He thought now of the desperation which had driven Treeves to that appalling end. He had been faced with the stark choice of staying on at St. Anselm’s with the constant threat of betrayal and the tormenting knowledge of what he’d done, or confessing to Father Sebastian with the almost certainty that he would have to return home to his father as a failure. Dalgliesh wondered what Father Sebastian would have said and done. Father Martin would, he thought, have shown mercy. He was less sure about Father Sebastian. But even if mercy had been shown, how could Treeves have stayed on with the humiliating knowledge that he was there on probation?

  At last he let her go. He felt a profound pity and an anger which seemed directed against something deeper and less identifiable than Karen Surtees and her insensitivities. But what right had he to feel anger? She could claim her own kind of morality. If you promised to provide a consecrated wafer you didn’t cheat. If you were an investigative journalist you took the job seriously, conscientious even in deceit. There had been no meeting of minds, there never could be. It was for her inconceivable that anyone would kill himself for a small disc of flour and water. For her the sex had been little more than a relief from boredom, the satisfying power of initiation, a new experience, the lightly taken exchange of pleasure. To take it more seriously led at best to jealousy, demands, recriminations and mess; at worse to a mouth choked with sand. And hadn’t he in his solitary years separated his sexual life from commitment, even if he had been more fastidious and prudent in his choice of partner and more sensitive to the hurt of others? He wondered what he would say to Sir Aired; probably merely that an open verdict would have been more logical than one of accidental death but that there was no evidence of foul play. But there had been foul play.

  He would keep Ronald’s secret. The boy had left no suicide note. There was no way of knowing whether in those last seconds and too late, he might have changed his mind. If he had died because he couldn’t bear his father to know the truth it wasn’t for him, Dalgliesh, to reveal it now.

  He became conscious of the prolonged silence and of Kate sitting beside him wondering why he didn’t speak. He was aware of her contained impatience.

  He said, “Right. We’re getting somewhere at last. We’ve found the missing key. That means that Cain did, after all, go back into the college and return the one he used. And now we find that brown cloak.”

  Kate said, her voice echoing his thoughts, “If it still exists to be found.”

  Dalgliesh called Piers and Robbins into the interview room and put them in the picture. He said, “You checked all the cloaks, brown and black?”

  It was Kate who replied.

  “Yes sir. Now that Treeves is dead there are nineteen students in residence and nineteen cloaks. Fifteen students are absent and all except one, who went home to celebrate his mother’s birthday and wedding anniversary, have taken their cloaks. That means there should have been five in the cloakroom when we checked, and there were. They’ve all been examined pretty carefully and so have the cloaks of the priests.”

  “Do the cloaks have name tabs? I didn’t look when I first checked on them.”

  It was Piers who replied.

  “All of them. Apparently they’re the only clothes that do.
I suppose it’s because they’re identical except for size. There’s no cloak in college without a name tab.”

  They had no way at present of knowing whether the killer had actually worn the cloak during the murderous attack. It was possible even that there had been a third person waiting in the church when the Archdeacon arrived, someone whom Surtees hadn’t glimpsed. But now that they knew that a cloak had been worn, and almost certainly by the killer, all five cloaks, although apparently clean, would have to be scientifically examined by the lab for minute traces of blood, hairs or fibres. But what about the twentieth cloak? Was it possible that it had been overlooked when Ronald Treeves’s clothes were bundled up for return to his family after his death?

  Dalgliesh thought back to the interview with Sir Aired at New Scotland Yard. Sir Alred’s chauffeur had been sent with another driver to collect the Porsche and had taken the parcel of clothes back to London with him. But had it contained a cloak? He tried to force memory into recollection. There had been a mention, surely, of a suit, shoes and certainly a cassock, but had he mentioned a brown cloak?

  He said to Kate, “Get Sir Aired for me. He gave me a card with his home address and phone number before he left the Yard. You’ll find it on the file. I imagine he’s unlikely to be there at this time, but someone will be. Tell them I have to speak to him personally and that it’s urgent.”

  He had expected difficulty. Sir Aired wasn’t a man to be readily accessible by telephone and there was always the possibility that he wasn’t in the country. But they were lucky. The man who answered the telephone at his home, although reluctantly convinced of the urgency, gave the number of Sir Alred’s Mayfair office. Here they were answered by the usual upper-class unaccommodating voice. Sir Aired was in a meeting. Dalgliesh said that he must be fetched. Could the Commander please wait? The delay was unlikely to be for more than three-quarters of an hour. Dalgliesh said that he was unable to wait even for three-quarters of a minute. The voice said, “Will you hold on, please.”

  Within less than a minute Sir Aired was on the phone. The strong authoritarian voice came over unworried but with a note of controlled impatience.

  “Commander Dalgliesh? I was expecting to hear from you but hardly in the middle of a conference. If you’ve any news I’d rather hear it later. I take it this affair at St. Anselm’s is related to my son’s death?”

  Dalgliesh said, “There’s no evidence to suggest that at present. I’ll get in touch with you about the inquest verdict as soon as I’ve completed my investigations. In the mean time murder has priority. I wanted to ask you about your son’s clothes. I remember your telling me that they were returned to you. Were you present when the parcel was opened?”

  “Not when it was opened but shortly afterwards. It isn’t something I’d normally have taken an interest in but my housekeeper, who dealt with it, wanted to consult me. I told her to take the clothes to Oxfam but the suit was the same size as her son wore and she asked me whether I would be happy if she gave it to him. She was also worried about the cassock. She didn’t think that would be any use to Oxfam and wondered if she ought to send it back. I told her that, as they’d got rid of it, they’d hardly be interested in seeing it returned and that she could dispose of it in any way that occurred to her. I think it was put into the dustbin. Is that all?”

  “And the cloak, a brown cloak?”

  “There was no cloak.”

  “You can be sure of that, Sir Aired ?”

  “No, of course I can’t. I didn’t open the parcel. But if there had been a cloak it’s likely Mrs. Mellors would have mentioned it, asked me what I wanted done with it. As far as I remember she brought in the whole parcel to me. The clothes were still in the brown paper, the string partly wrapped round. I can see no reason why she should have removed the cloak. I take it that all this is relevant to your enquiries?”

  “Very relevant, Sir Aired. Thank you for your help. Can I reach Mrs. Mellors at your house?”

  The voice had grown impatient.

  “I’ve no idea. I don’t control my servants’ movements. She does live in so I imagine she can be contacted. Good day, Commander.”

  They were fortunate, too, with the return call to the Holland Park house. The same male voice answered the telephone but said that he would put through the call to the housekeeper’s flat.

  Mrs. Mellors, once assured that Dalgliesh had spoken to Sir Aired and was ringing with his approval, took this on trust and merely said that, yes, she had been the one to open the parcel of Mr. Ronald’s clothes when they were returned from St. Anselm’s and had made a list of the contents. There had been no brown cloak. Sir Aired had kindly given permission for her to take the suit. The rest of the items had been taken by one of the staff to the Oxfam shop at Notting Hill Gate. The cassock she had thrown away. She had thought that it was a pity to waste the material, but she couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to wear it.

  She added, somewhat surprisingly for a woman whose confident voice and intelligent responses had sounded rational, “The cassock was found by his body, wasn’t it? I’m not sure I would’ve liked to wear it. There was something rather sinister about it, I thought. I did wonder whether to cut off the buttons they could have come in useful but I didn’t like to touch it. To tell you the truth, I was glad to see it go into the bin.”

  After he had thanked her and put down the receiver, Dalgliesh said, “So what happened to the cloak and where is it now? The first step is to speak to the person who parcelled up the clothes. Father Martin told me that it was done by Father John Betterton.”

  In front of the great stone fireplace in the library Emma was giving her second seminar. As with the first, she had little hope of distracting the thoughts of her small group of students from the other more grimly sober activities which were being carried on around them. Commander Dalgliesh hadn’t yet given permission for the reopening and re hallowing services which Father Sebastian had planned. The scene of crime officers were still on the job, arriving each morning in a sinister little van which someone must have driven from London for their use, and which was parked outside the front entrance in defiance of Father Peregrine’s objections. Commander Dalgliesh and his two detective inspectors still pursued their mysterious inquiries and the lights burned late at night in St. Matthew’s Cottage.

  The students had been forbidden by Father Sebastian to discuss the murder; in his words, ‘to connive in evil and aggravate distress by ill-informed and speculative gossip’. He could hardly have expected the prohibition to be observed and Emma wasn’t sure that it had been helpful. Certainly the speculation was discreet and spasmodic rather than general or prolonged, but the fact that it had been forbidden only added guilt to the weight of anxiety and tension. Open discussion, she felt, would have been better. As Raphael said, “Having the police in the house is like being invaded by mice; even when you don’t see or hear them you know they’re there.”

  The death of Miss Betterton had added little to the weight of distress. It was no more than a second but softer blow on nerves already anaesthetized by horror. The community, having accepted that the death was accidental, tried to distance it from the horror of the Archdeacon’s murder. Miss Betterton had been rarely seen by the ordinands and only Raphael genuinely mourned for her. But even he seemed to have gained some kind of balance since yesterday, a precarious equilibrium between withdrawal into his private world and flashes of hard acerbity. Since that moment of talk on the headland, Emma hadn’t seen him alone. She was glad. He wasn’t easy to be with.

  There was the seminar room at the back of the house on the second floor, but Emma had chosen to use the library. She told herself that it was more convenient to have the books she might need for reference close at hand, but knew that there was a less rational explanation for her choice. The seminar room was too claustrophobic, in atmosphere if not in size. However frightening the presence of the police, it was more bearable to be at the heart of the house than closeted on the second floor, iso
lated from activity which it was less traumatic to hear than to imagine.

  Last night she had slept, and slept well. Security locks to the guest sets had been fitted and the keys handed over. She was grateful to be sleeping in Jerome rather than next to the church with that dominant and obscurely threatening window, but only Henry Bloxham had mentioned the change. She had overheard him speaking to Stephen.

  “I understand that Dalgliesh asked to change sets so that he can be next to the church. What is he expecting, the murderer to return to the scene of the crime? D’you think he sits up all night watching from the window?” No one had spoken of it to her.

  Occasionally on her visits to St. Anselm’s one or more of the priests, if not otherwise occupied, would sit in at a seminar, always first asking her permission. They never spoke, nor did she ever feel that she was being assessed. Today the four ordinands were joined by Father John Betterton. As usual, Father Peregrine was silently at work at his desk at the far end of the library, seemingly impervious to their presence. A small fire had been lit in the grate, more for comfort than for additional heat, and they sat round it in low chairs, except for Peter Buckhurst; he had chosen a high-back and sat upright and silent, his pale hands resting on the text as if he were reading Braille.

  This term Emma had planned that they should read and discuss the poetry of George Herbert. Today, rejecting the ease of familiarity for a more demanding poem, she had chosen The Quidditie. Henry had just finished reading aloud the last verse.

  It is no office, art, or news, Nor the Exchange, or busie Hall; But it is that which while I use I am with thee, and Most take all.

  There was a silence, then Stephen Morby asked, “What does “quidditie” mean?”

  Emma said, “What a thing is; its essence.”

  “And the final words, “I am with thee, and most take all”? It sounds like a misprint, but it obviously isn’t. I mean, we’d expect the word “must”, not “most”.”