Heberden's Seat

by Douglas Clark

  “Very well indeed. I’m sure Mr Green will bear me out and he is famous for his memory. Almost total recall.”

  “True,” said Green, with no false modesty.

  Canning continued.

  “Being an intelligent woman, I believe she sought a reason for her disquiet and failed to do so. I also believe she recognised that the weapon of fixing the price he should bid that he had offered her, with such apparent magnanimity, was a dangerous one. Fix the bid too high and she would beggar them; fix it too low and she would lose the man because, despite his laughter, even I could see that Melada was so desirous of owning the church that he would regard with distaste anybody who prevented his acquiring it were this to happen.”

  “You think that was the root cause of her unease?”

  “Not the root cause.” He paused. “Mr Masters, you must understand that I am interpreting what I heard. Interpolating my own thoughts, if you like. I could be entirely wrong.”

  “We shall, of course, bear that in mind, Mr Canning. But we feel we ought to hear everything you have to say. When a case is thrust upon us, literally out of the blue, we have to probe and listen and then, finally, sift what we have learned. With too little to work on, we get stuck. At least, if there is too much, we are never short of lines along which to enquire.”

  Green grunted his agreement and lit another cigarette. Canning glanced across at his wife for her approval before continuing.

  “I would have said that well-read and intelligent though she obviously was, Happy was not extremely imaginative. I put her down as a level-headed type, rather placid in thought, who would take very few, if any, mental leaps in the dark. What I mean is that I believe she could write a first-class factual essay in her subject, but she could never have fathomed the reasons for actions and then propounded them as a tenable theory. I think flights of fancy were beyond her. She was not whimsical. I would say she had never been susceptible to any psychic or spiritual influence and yet my impression at the time was that she could foresee that for Melada to attempt to buy the church would be a disaster. She certainly tried to tell him so, but he laughed and told her she had the last word in that she could tell him what to bid next day.”

  “Next day?”

  Canning nodded. “Happy was surprised, but he said he intended to go into Lincoln first thing because there was no point in waiting. Then she asked—finally—what he intended to use it for as they certainly couldn’t live in it. His answer was that he proposed to turn it into a studio to hire out by the week or month for people who wanted to get away from it all for a bit, to paint or write or just for a holiday.

  “She said he’d get no takers for a church with a graveyard round it, but he laughingly told her he wouldn’t leave it like it was. He said there were thousands of things to do. Rooms to be made, graves to be moved. . . .”

  “At that point she said, ‘Don’t, Johnny. Please don’t.’ But he simply asked her if she were scared. She replied that yes, she was scared, and when he asked her what of, she said she didn’t know and that was what scared her. She again demanded to know why he was so dead-set on acquiring an empty old church in the middle of nowhere and he replied by asking why she was so keen to stop him.

  “Her reply was that the answer to his question was easy. She literally just didn’t want to buy trouble. But he hadn’t answered her question and she continued to insist on knowing why he wanted the church.”

  “Did she ever get a reply?” asked Masters.

  “He laughed and said: ‘Don’t ask me. I just want it.’ She asked: ‘Like a child wants a toy?’ and he replied: ‘If you like.’ At that, she said he would tire of it in no time at all and they would be left with an unwanted church on their hands, but he still persisted in saying he wanted it. She again asked him for what purpose he wanted it, but he still didn’t reply. At length she asked if he had some reason for wanting the church that he wasn’t revealing to her. A dishonest one, perhaps. He denied this, but I think she got near the mark when she asked: ‘Kinky, then?’ It seemed to me that his mood altered for the worse at that point, and he gestured to her to keep quiet. She took the hint, but she had the final word.”

  “Which was?”

  “‘If you buy that church for the purpose I think you want it for, Johnny Melada, I’ll kill you.’”

  There was a short silence after Canning had finished. Then Masters said: “I see now why you were so reticent, vicar. You thought that by telling us this, you would be pointing an accusing finger at the young woman, Happy.”

  “Yes,” said Canning miserably. “Isn’t that just what I’ve done?”

  “I can’t give you an answer. Maybe yes, maybe no. Ask yourself whether a slightly built young woman could somehow murder two fully grown men and then dispose of their bodies. If you think it is possible for her physically to do this, then you may feel that you have pointed a finger at her. If not, then you haven’t. We have been more than interested in your account, and I have no doubt your impressions will be extremely useful, but in the end, we shall deal with only proveable facts.”

  Canning sighed with relief. He had given no proveable facts.

  *

  As they left the vicarage, Green said to Webb, “Didn’t you check to see if either of those two jokers had a record?”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Webb. “I suppose I should have done, but I haven’t got round to it. Not that I’ve had much time since yesterday afternoon. That’s not my excuse, though.”

  “No? What is?”

  “First, because I suppose I’d always look to see if somebody I thought was a criminal had a record, but it wouldn’t usually occur to me to check on a victim.”

  “I see what you mean. But it doesn’t always work that way, laddie. Villains get chopped as often as honest people.”

  “Not in the sticks. Not usually, at any rate.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. And if that’s the first reason, I suppose there’s a second?”

  “The obvious one. If Melada has a record, I’m surprised I haven’t heard about it.”

  “Nuts,” said Green, getting into the car. “We’re always having to get on to CRO to check on villains in the Smoke. We can’t remember everybody’s petty details.”

  “This is a sparsely populated area, and fraud doesn’t sound petty to me.” Webb started the car and had moved off before remembering to ask Masters where he’d like to go.

  “To the diocesan office in Lincoln, please,” said Masters. “I’d like to check up on Melada’s transactions and to collect the spare keys of the church which are held there, according to Canning. Whilst we’re there, Mr Webb, check with the Lincoln people about Melada’s record. See if they know anything about him or Belton which we ought to know.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  Green was never sufficiently at ease in a car to snooze, though Masters would have loved to doze in the heat of the mid-afternoon even though he had comparatively little to drink and, for so big a man, a relatively light lunch. He supposed that listening closely to two lengthy sermons from Canning in one day might be cause for slumber. But Green was not prepared to let him rest.

  “Wonder how those sergeants are getting on?” he asked as the car went down a leafy lane which, though wide enough for two vehicles, still seemed too narrow for comfort.

  “I imagine it will depend on how busy the vet is. If he’s operating out of makeshift premises and every dog owner for miles around is calling in because little Bonzo has got sun stroke. . . .”

  “He does a lot more large animal work than pets,” said Webb.

  “Horse doctor, is he?” asked Green.

  “Horses, cattle, pigs. ’Course he does run surgeries for pets. That’s what puts the jam on the bread and butter.”

  “What’s his name?” asked Masters.

  “Marchant,” replied Webb.

  “Any other vets in the area?”

  “A fair sprinkling. There has to be in rural areas like this. Animals can’t wait
for attention if they’re sick any more than humans can. Losses come expensive to farmers.”

  “Does it matter how many there are about?” asked Green grumpily.

  “Perhaps not. But if Marchant finds any difficulty in telling Reed and Berger exactly what he had in his surgery cum dispensary, perhaps they could get some idea by calling on a neighbouring vet and looking at his stocks and equipment.”

  Green grunted his agreement, and the car started to run into the outskirts of Lincoln. Now that the hedgerows were not as high they could see the huge square towers of the cathedral rising impressively from its hill. “The Raf bomber squadrons used to use that as a collecting mark during the last struggle,” said Green. “When there was a thousand bomber raid on, the first of them had to get up into the air quite a while before the last ones in the wave. They circled Lincoln cathedral while they waited to form up. It showed up, even at night, you see. And I bet they were damned glad to see it when they were coming back, too.”

  Webb added: “These parts were one big airfield,” and then fell silent as he negotiated the city traffic. A few minutes later he dropped them at the diocesan office and went off to the local police station.

  The secretary of the Diocesan Redundant Churches Committee was a retired Brigadier called Alton who, to supplement his pension, had taken a job on the accounting side of the see’s secretariat. His office was small and smelt of dust, though it appeared clean enough, as though the Brigadier had it ready for inspection at any time. Masters guessed that the smell came from dust that was ingrained, having lain undisturbed for decades on papers and shelves before Alton had moved in and given the place a spring clean.

  “Melada?” said the Brigadier. “Remember him well. Jovial type. Always laughing. Felt myself that it wasn’t good nature as much as something he couldn’t help. Like a nervous tic. But he seemed decent enough and pretty clever, I thought.”

  “We found his body—dead—buried in the churchyard of St John the Divine in Oakby.”

  “You did what?” The Brigadier stared up at Masters. “Here, sit down, Superintendent. And you, Mr Green. Smoke if you want to. Found his body there, did you?”

  “You knew he was dead?” asked Masters.

  “Missing. His little missus came in here asking if I’d seen him or had any dealings with him in the few days before she came.”

  “And had you?”

  “Not in that period. Before then I had.”

  “What about telling us all about it?”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “Come on, Brigadier,” said Green. “Report in full. From the moment you first saw him to the last bit of business you did with him. Particularly as the business was to do with St John’s, wasn’t it?”

  “Entirely.”

  “And that’s where he’s been found, dead and buried. And as dead men don’t bury themselves, we’ve got to have information so’s we can discover who did him the courtesy of putting him underground.”

  “In that case, I’ll give you the facts.”

  “We wouldn’t mind a few impressions, too,” observed Green. “When relevant. How did he strike you—that sort of thing.”

  “Understood. When he came in here, that first morning, I’d have said he was a bit shamefaced—though you might not have believed it by his laughing demeanour—at arriving to offer only two thousand pounds for the church. He obviously half expected me to send him packing with a flea in his ear.”

  “Which you didn’t?”

  “Of course not. When you’ve got umpteen purpose built buildings on your hands, all in out of the way places and no longer being used for the purpose for which they were built, what do you do? I’ll tell you. You sit and wait for somebody to come and buy them. But the years pass, and nobody does come. So you don’t turn your nose up if a chap bowls in and offers a ludicrously low sum. You can sell some of the urban churches, of course, for warehouses and the like. In fact one has been turned into an electrical power sub-station and several into theatres and concert halls. But that’s by the way. Nobody wants a warehouse or a theatre in the back of beyond, without water, light and heat. So, as I say, when somebody like Melada comes along and offers—well, not exactly peanuts, but certainly a sum less than munificent by today’s standards—we grab at it.”

  “You mean you accepted his bid on the spot?”

  “I accepted his bid, but I couldn’t sell him the church on the spot. The bid had to be sent to the Church Commissioners in Millbank.”

  “What would they do?”

  “Jib at it. When you’re sitting in the middle of London where prices are astronomical, it takes a great deal of mind adjustment to accept that anybody who offers two thousand pounds for a church and two acres of ground is serious.”

  “So Melada was unlikely to get his church?”

  “That’s what he thought when I told him much the same as I’ve told you. But I told him not to be too despondent. I explained I wanted to clear my books so I undertook to write ’em a letter which—after they’d come up for air—would paint the real picture.”

  “Did Melada offer cash?”

  “Oh, yes. Mortgages aren’t easily come by for dilapidated churches.”

  “Did he tell you what use he intended to put it to?”

  “I insisted on knowing that, because we sometimes get a bit sniffy about handing over former consecrated premises for what we think to be unsuitable purposes. We tend to favour museums, libraries, theatres and the like. The arts, as it were.”

  “What were his plans?”

  The Brigadier leaned forward and took a large envelope from one of the drawers in his desk. “The fellow was something of a draughtsman. He had come prepared with a couple of pen and wash sketches of his proposals. He said he proposed to convert it to a studio for artists, writers or pop-group rehearsals. I was a bit shattered by that last, but as he explained the church is totally isolated and so he would be doing the community a service. Mind you, I don’t think community service was uppermost in his mind. Some of these leading groups will pay the earth for the hire of a retreat for a week or two while they work on perfecting their horrors. But what he said was more or less in line with what the committee consider suitable uses.”

  “Are those his sketches?”

  “Yes. He left them with me to support his case.” The Brigadier took two pieces of drawing paper from the envelope, and laid them on the desk for Masters and Green to see. “They impressed me, and I told him so.”

  “Very good,” agreed Masters, “especially as he had only seen the church for the first time the afternoon before.”

  “Have you been inside St John’s?” asked the Brigadier.

  “Not yet. The key in the village is missing. As I understand you have a spare here, I’d like to borrow it.”

  “That’s easy. But why is the one from the village pub missing?”

  “Because the man who last borrowed it is away from home and presumably has it with him. At any rate he hasn’t returned it.”

  “I see. I’ll look into it. Now these sketches. Would you like me to describe them, seeing you’re unfamiliar with the terrain?”

  “Please do.”

  “This one is a view from the south-west corner, from just to the left of the south door. You see Melada sketched in a balcony running the whole length of the opposite wall. There are no pillars in the church, so he has placed upright wooden beams to support it. Notice how it cuts across the windows at the point where they start to arch. By doing that he gets natural light on both ground floor and balcony. Of course the balcony is railed, but you see between the windows he has put bookcases and sofas. Below the balcony is the proposed dining area: see, he has a refectory table end-on to the wall and two halves of a pew—sawn ends hard up against the wall, as dining seats.”

  Masters picked up the sketch for a closer view. The Brigadier said: “There was to be another balcony above the head of the viewer. To take two bedrooms. Access was to be from the balcony above the chance
l.”

  It was all there. A flight of stairs leading up from the chancel steps to the chancel balcony. The front three or four feet of this were curtained off to provide a landing running both ways to the side balconies. Behind the partially opened curtain was the deep recess room which ran back to the east window.

  “Bathroom?” asked Masters.

  “In the chancel behind the stairs.”

  “Kitchen?”

  “You’re looking straight at it. In the robing vestry straight opposite you. Next to the dining-room area and next to the bathroom to save on plumbing and drains.”

  “And very close to the well in the churchyard.”

  “Quite. Close to the water supply.”

  The rest of the ground floor was given over to the living area. Melada had sketched in sofas, rugs, large pottery vases and a coffee table.

  “Impressive,” murmured Masters. He took up the second sketch. “This one, I take it, is looking west from the chancel steps.”

  “Roughly. From the south end of the steps, just under the pulpit.”

  Melada had made it look attractive. Green, looking over Masters’ shoulder, said: “I can see now why he wanted to have it. For quick sketches these have been done with as much loving care as if. . . .”

  “As if what?” asked the Brigadier.

  “I was going to say as if he’d intended staying there for life,” replied Green. “I should have said for ever.”

  Nobody commented. Masters returned to his inspection of the second sketch. The chief interest was centred on the ringing chamber which was simply the rectangular space below the tower. There was a step up to it—a platform which protruded like a tongue into the centre aisle, on the end of which stood the font. Melada had proposed a balcony here, too, of exactly the same shape as the tongue. To reach it, he had proposed an upright ladder with tubular handgrips. The flight was anchored to the tongue at the bottom and the balcony at the top. Up above was a child’s bedroom. Down below, he had sketched in a seat which ran round the three walls of the ringing chamber and placed a small rug to occupy what remained of the floor.

  “He’d decided to keep the west door closed?”