7 - Death of a Dean

by Hazel Holt

  “Poor Joan,” David said. “Incredibly enough, she seems to adore him, always saying how marvelous he is. And he treats her like some sort of slave. Quite extraordinary!”

  “Oh, some women are born doormats! So, if Francis is a washout we’ll have to think of something else. Actually, if it would help, I could lend you a couple of thousand ...”

  “No, dear, absolutely not,” David said firmly. “It’s sweet of you and I’m deeply touched and grateful, but I really couldn’t.”

  “But that’s what friends are for,” I protested.

  “You are an angel to think of it,” he said warmly, “and if it was just a couple of thousand I’d say thank you very much, because I know you’re offering it as a true friend, bless you. But I’m afraid I need an awful lot more than that.”

  “Well, remember it’s there if you want it.”

  “I’ll remember. Of course, if only poor old Nana would pop off it would solve all my problems, but she looks like outliving us all.”

  “Yes, I saw her in Boots the other day,” I said, “and I must admit she did look pretty spry.”

  “Oh well,” David said glumly, “I’ll just have to rob a bank or something—I’m sure, after all those years playing Inspector Ivor, I should know enough about police procedure to avoid being caught.”

  “Better not,” I replied. “You know you couldn’t resist giving a performance, right over the top, and you’d be recognized immediately.”

  “I expect you’re right. Oh well, I’d better have another go at Leo. A couple of good commercials could put me right.”

  “Yes, of course. Good luck.”

  But we both knew that that possibility was very remote indeed.

  Chapter 3

  Actually, I ran into Francis’s wife, Joan, the very next day at a bring-and-buy sale run by the Friends of Culminster Cathedral. I was more or less shanghaied into going by my friend Anthea, who is very into church affairs.

  “You needn’t bring,” she said briskly, “but you can buy.”

  We went in her car, laden with homemade cakes, pots of jam and rooted cuttings, which was a nuisance because it meant I was dependent on her for transport and would have to stay to the bitter end, with no chance of slipping away quietly halfway through.

  Culminster is a pleasant town—a city, I suppose, since it has a cathedral. Its prosperity was founded on the wool trade and the rich merchants left a legacy of many fine Georgian houses and civic buildings. There is also a small but very beautiful assembly room, where the daughters of those merchants showed off their finery and hunted for husbands at subscription balls. This is where the sale was being held. As we went in, the astonishing volume of noise produced by a number of (mainly) female voices assaulted my ears and I could hardly hear what Anthea was saying.

  “I said,” she repeated, “I’ll go and take these things over to Beryl—she’s got the stall set up already. You go and have a wander around. I’ll see you later for a cup of coffee.”

  I set off to do my duty. I bought a pot of homemade lemon curd (something I always find too fiddly to make myself), a slightly lopsided ginger cake and a small camellia in a pot. I was just trying to accommodate these items safely in my shopping bag when I was aware of someone standing beside me trying to attract my attention. It was Joan Beaumont.

  “Oh, hello, Joan,” I said. “Lovely to see you—it’s been ages.”

  “Oh, Sheila,” she said, her soft voice difficult to hear in the general hubbub, “I’d be so grateful for a word, if you can spare the time.”

  She sounded really quite agitated and I wondered what on earth she wanted.

  “Look,” I said, “I can’t hear a thing in this noise, let’s go and have a cup of coffee.”

  I led the way into a small room leading off the main hall where tables and chairs were laid out and a long trestle with plates of small cakes, cups and saucers and the ubiquitous urn from which a large woman in a hat was dispensing coffee.

  “I’ll get them,” I said, putting my shopping bag down on one of the chairs. “Would you like a cake or anything?”

  “Oh, no thank you, Sheila, just coffee will be lovely.”

  I was unable to resist the temptation of a slice of caramel-covered shortbread. Unfortunately, it was very brittle and pieces flew all over the table when I tried to attack it with a fork.

  “Oh, bother the thing,” I said. “I’ll just have to eat it with my fingers! Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”

  Joan took a nervous sip of her coffee.

  “We’re having a rather grand auction in aid of the Cathedral Restoration Fund,” she said, “and I’m afraid I’ve got to organize it.”

  “Oh, hard luck,” I exclaimed. “I had to do ours for the Red Cross in Taviscombe and that was only a very small affair. A big one for the cathedral must be really horrendous!”

  “I didn’t want to do it at all, but being the dean’s wife, people expect one,” she said earnestly. “I’m not very good at getting people to do things and I keep making such awful muddles and Francis gets so angry ...”

  “Yes, well,” I said, wiping the caramel off my fingers with a tissue, “it’s really hard work and you need a lot of help from other people. I was frightfully lucky—everyone rallied around splendidly, collecting items to be auctioned and so on. And we had Tom Benson to do the actual sale—he’s our local auctioneer, very jolly, full of jokes. He was terrific at getting the bidding up. We made a couple of thousand pounds, far more than we expected.”

  “Yes, Anthea was telling me what a great success it was. So I wondered ...” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yes?”

  “I wondered if you could possibly give me a hand with ours—since you know how it should be done. It would be such a help and I’d be so grateful ....”

  She looked up at me with the kind of appealing look in her sad brown eyes that I can never resist in my spaniel, Tess.

  Knowing perfectly well the aggravation I was letting myself in for, I heard my voice saying, “Yes, of course I will. I’d be delighted.”

  “Oh, Sheila, that’s so kind. I wonder ... do you think you could come over one day next week—the time’s going on—and have a talk about it? Come to tea.”

  I got my diary out. “Let me see. Would Tuesday be any use?”

  “Oh yes, yes, that would be lovely. Francis is always in for tea on Tuesdays and I know he’d love to see you.”

  The thought of tea with Francis Beaumont—especially after his shabby treatment of David—was definitely not an inducement, but I murmured something polite and, after a little desultory conversation, Joan suddenly remembered that, as the dean’s wife, she was due to draw the winning raffle ticket for the usual bottle of Bristol Cream sherry and went away.

  I sat for a while over another cup of coffee thinking how awful it must be to be married to Francis, especially for a little mouselike creature like Joan. Even after all these years, she still seemed to be as ineffectual as ever in what must be the very demanding role of the dean’s wife. And I can’t imagine that Francis is very supportive—or patient, even. It’s not as if the children were any help, being similarly mouselike themselves. It would take a really strong-minded person to stand up to Francis—even David, I know, finds him pretty daunting. I very much hoped that, since I was now committed to helping with this wretched auction, Francis would not be too closely involved in it.

  Anthea broke into these thoughts.

  “Oh, there you are! Can you come and lend a hand? Beryl has to go now to pick up her grandchildren from school and there’s still quite a bit left on the stall.”

  I knew I’d regret my impulsive offer to help Joan and by the evening I was cursing myself for being a weak-minded idiot. I said as much to my son Michael, who was oiling his cricket bat, which he had laid down on the worktop in the kitchen, thus impeding my attempts to get supper.

  “As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew it was a stupid thing to have done,” I said, reac
hing past him to get the corn flour out of a cupboard. “Darling, do you have to do that here?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want me getting oil all over the dining table,” he said defensively, “and I’ve got to lay it down flat. Anyway, you surely won’t have to do that much, will you? Surely, all those excellent women who hang around the deanery because of Francis will do the actual work. You’ll only have to help poor old Joan organize things.”

  “It never works out like that,” I said, remembering other times when I’d got myself involved in someone else’s fundraising. “There’s always a muddle, no one knows who’s responsible for what, so guess who ends up doing the whole thing single-handed.”

  “I’m sure it’s a very good cause,” Michael said provocatively.

  “The good cause is trying to rescue that poor woman from the ill temper of her dreadful husband,” I said with some asperity. “It’s not Culminster Cathedral’s roof I’m worried about, it’s Joan Beaumont’s sanity!”

  “Oh well, you managed the Red Cross auction okay,” Michael said.

  “Yes, but that was only a little affair—this’ll be on a much larger scale and lots more people involved, not to mention horrible Francis breathing down one’s neck! Oh, bother! This parsley sauce is developing lumps—hand me that whisk, will you.”

  Tuesday was a lovely day, warm and sunny but with a pleasant breeze, the sort of early English summer’s day when the countryside looks so spectacularly lovely that you wonder why anyone would ever want to go abroad—until it’s followed next day by a biting wind and torrential rain. Culminster Cathedral close, though small, is really beautiful, with honey-colored Georgian houses, some already festooned with great loops of mauve wisteria, set back from the cobbled road beyond close-cut grass verges. The deanery is large and imposing, three stories high and topped with a classical pediment. I wondered what on earth they used all that space for, since even Francis wouldn’t have living-in servants to occupy those attics. I parked rather nervously in the small carriage sweep in front of the house and made my way up the short flight of steps to the heavy front door, with its lovely shell-shaped fanlight. Fortunately, there was a doorbell, since no ordinary human being would be capable of using the great brass knocker.

  Joan herself answered the door. She was wearing an afternoon dress of some sort of silky material with a paisley design in maroon and navy tied with a large bow at the neck, and looking exactly like a clergy wife in a play.

  “Oh, Sheila,” she said, “how good of you ...”

  She seemed even more flustered on her own home ground than she had been at the assembly rooms, presumably because of the immediate presence of Francis.

  “We always have tea in the drawing room on Tuesdays when Francis is at home,” she said and led the way up the elegant curving staircase to the drawing room, which looked out over the close to the cathedral beyond. It was a handsome room, splendidly decorated, and no money had been spared to achieve an effect of taste and distinction. The furniture was antique (mostly Joan’s, I believe) and beautifully kept, the carpets and curtains (obviously expensive) were just slightly faded so there was no jarring note of newness, and the pictures on the walls were mostly portraits or eighteenth-century oil paintings of classical landscapes. It was a lovely room, but all just a little too perfect for comfort. One couldn’t have lived in it—well, I couldn’t, and I had the feeling that Joan wasn’t really happy in these formal surroundings. Francis, though, obviously saw them as a suitable background to his personality and position.

  I became aware that the room had an occupant. Slumped in one of the chintz-covered armchairs was a young woman. She was large and rather lumpish, her appearance not helped by an unflattering tweed skirt with a cream-colored silk blouse already coming untucked from the waistband. Her dark hair was pulled back behind her ears with a couple of hair grips and she wore no makeup.

  “You remember Mary,” Joan said.

  “Of course I do,” I said, moving over toward her.

  “Though I haven’t seen you and Adrian for ages.” I held out my hand and she rose awkwardly from her chair to shake it and then stood there uncertainly, seeming not to know what to do next. Feeling a faint flicker of sympathy for Francis, saddled with a terminally shy wife and an unprepossessing daughter, I sat down in the chair next to hers.

  “And how’s the library work going?” I asked.

  She sat back heavily in the chair again and said, “Oh, it’s all right.”

  There was a pause and then I went on rather desperately, “Are you still at Culminster Public Library?”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  I always find it so difficult when people put a stopper on any conversational opening, like someone biting off a thread, and was just casting around for some other innocuous topic when the door opened and Francis came in. There are certain people who, on entering a room, seem to diminish everyone already in it. Francis is like that. It’s not just his physical presence, though he is tall and well built and, I suppose, rather handsome. I’ve never been quite sure exactly what the word charismatic means, but I have a suspicion that it might well be used to describe Francis.

  “Sheila!” he said, advancing toward me, hand outstretched. “How very good of you to come!”

  His voice, although not as beautiful as David’s nor as finely tuned, had the same deep timbre and resonance, which he used to great effect in cathedral services.

  “It’s nice to be here,” I said conventionally.

  “Splendid, splendid. Tea, I think. Joan, perhaps you would be good enough to ring for Mrs. Fletcher.”

  Joan took up her position by the table ladened with fine china and delicious-looking food (tiny sandwiches, scones and three sorts of cake) and Mrs. Fletcher, a robust little woman in a flowered apron, brought in a great silver teapot and hot-water jug. Also on the tray was a medicine glass, half full of a white, milky liquid that she passed to Francis.

  “Poor Francis suffers dreadfully from indigestion,” Joan said, following my gaze. “The doctor says he has to take this special mixture before every meal.”

  Her earnest tone invested this small medical chore with an almost ritual significance.

  Francis drained the glass and replaced it on the tray.

  “Mary,” he said, casting a stern look in his daughter’s direction, “please assist your mother.”

  Mary got to her feet and passed cups and plates, proffering sandwiches and cake with her usual lack of manual dexterity.

  “I was delighted,” Francis said, dropping several lumps of sugar into his tea and stirring it with a finely engraved silver teaspoon, “to learn from Joan that you are to help us with our auction. I heard from Anthea what a success you made of the one at Taviscombe. In fact,” he went on, “it would probably be better if you took over the whole thing from Joan, who would, I am sure, be the first to admit that she is not particularly gifted in that direction.”

  This was said coldly and with no mitigating smile. I looked at Joan, who had flushed, but who said earnestly, “It’s quite true, Sheila, I’m really hopeless at organizing things—even after all these years!”

  “I’m sure that’s not so!” I exclaimed, not because I believed it, but because I couldn’t bear to see Francis putting down his wife in this way. “Anyway, I couldn’t possibly take over such a big event officially. I mean, I haven’t any real connection with the cathedral—I’m not even a Friend, hardly even a casual acquaintance!”

  Francis gave a little wintry smile in recognition of what he perceived to be a joke and said, “I hardly think that is relevant. You live in the diocese, after all.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “But think how many splendid ladies here in Culminster would be offended if someone from outside came and took over. Think of the umbrage that would be taken! No, Francis, I’ll be delighted to give Joan any help I can, but it must still be seen to be her show.”

  Francis regarded me coolly. Obviously, he was not used to having his wishes
set aside. After a moment he must have decided that, since he’d get my services anyway, he’d overlook this insubordination.

  “As you wish, Sheila,” he said. “We will be grateful for any assistance you can give. It will be a highly prestigious event. We have already received offers of many important pieces—furniture, pictures, jewelry and so forth. Sir Edward Clifford has promised us a very fine armoire, French, I believe, and Lady Felicity Gibbon is sending, among other things, a valuable diamond brooch that belonged to her grandmother.”

  “Have you got an auctioneer yet?” I asked.

  “No,” Joan said. “Well, there was an idea that Colonel Whipple might do it, but he’s in hospital with his hip so we’re in a bit of a fix ...” She looked at her husband and her voice trailed away.

  “Only I’ve just had an idea,” I went on. “We might persuade James Benson. You know he used to be at Sotheby’s before he retired. And, if he did agree, we could make it like one of their evening auctions—evening dress, perhaps, but certainly formal, with glasses of wine and so forth.”

  I could see the idea appealed to Francis—he obviously fancied himself at the center of a rather grand social occasion.

  “And if people are all dressed up,” I said, “they’re much more likely to spend a lot of money!”

  Francis gave a nod of approval. “An excellent idea, Sheila. But will you be able to persuade Mr. Benson to do this for us?”

  “Oh yes. He’s an absolute poppet,” I said, deliberately using a phrase I knew would irritate Francis, “and he was a great friend of Peter.”

  “A very useful contact,” Francis said.

  “An old friend,” I said firmly.

  “An evening occasion,” Francis went on, ignoring my interruption, “yes, I think that would be very suitable.”