The Gentle Art of Murder

by Jeanne M. Dams

  Jane lifted her hands in an elaborate shrug. ‘Only know what I’m told.’

  I was reminded of Will Rogers, who reputedly only knew what he read in the papers. ‘All right, what are you told about William Braithwaite?’

  ‘Got an expensive wife. Isn’t faithful to her. Expensive tastes, too. New car. New house. Travels. First-class swine.’

  Translating from Jane’s always moderate language, I could imagine several more pungent terms.

  ‘Heard his paintings aren’t selling as well. Might need to retrench.’

  ‘That’s very useful, Jane. He might be in financial difficulties?’

  Again the shrug.

  ‘Very well. Anything about the rest of the staff?’

  ‘Well-liked, even if they are artistic. Lot of sympathy for Thomas.’

  Alan looked at me questioningly.

  ‘Matt Thomas, the printmaker whose partner was killed.’

  ‘Nice chap,’ said Jane. ‘No excuse.’

  No. There never is any excuse for mindless violence. I didn’t even want to think about it. I wondered if Jeremy Sayers, the Cathedral organist, could supply any more insights about Matt and the tragedy. Jeremy’s gay and in a long-term relationship, and in a small place like Sherebury, he would certainly have known of Matt and his partner.

  ‘Don’t know much about the rest. Try to find out.’ Jane stood. ‘Can’t say I’m weeping over Chandler’s death. Not a good man.’

  And that, from Jane, was equivalent to calling him several highly unprintable names.

  TEN

  ‘Some useful pointers there,’ said Alan as we walked back across the garden.

  ‘Nothing to follow up on immediately, though.’

  ‘Except Chandler’s academic credentials. They sound ever so slightly dodgy to me. I shall suggest that Derek track them down.’

  ‘And I’m going to go over and ask Jeremy what he knows about Matt and his partner, Phil. He’d know. The gay community isn’t that big in Sherebury.’

  ‘Good idea. I’ll see you when I see you, then. Oh, and I meant to say. Pettifer’s going to send one of his men over this afternoon to take a look at our water problem. He wasn’t very encouraging. Said it might mean replacing the lot.’

  ‘Oh, good grief, and they’ll have to be custom-made to match the originals, and they’ll cost a fortune. Why in the world did I ever want to live in a four-hundred-year-old listed building?’

  ‘Because you love it, dear heart. Off you go.’

  He went into the house and I made off across the close to the Cathedral.

  I’ve always thought of it as the ‘Cathedral’, capital C. It isn’t just a building, it’s a living presence, a benevolent giant watching over Sherebury. The bells are its voice, chiming out the hours and joyously pealing on Sundays and special occasions, raising a glorious cacophony on the eight venerable bells that have praised God for time out of mind.

  Only two bells were ringing as I crossed the grass, and as I approached the south door they stopped and the hour chimed. Three o’clock. Drat. I hadn’t noticed that it was time for Evensong. No speaking to Jeremy now. I could sit in the back of the church and listen till the service was over, or perhaps the verger would let me linger in the choir transept. There was a convenient tomb I could lean on.

  The verger, fortunately, was one I knew well. ‘A bit late, Mrs Martin,’ he whispered. The procession had just entered, the choir singing lustily.

  ‘I know. May I stay here?’

  ‘Mind you don’t let the tourists see you,’ he said with a chuckle, and moved back down the aisle to ward some of them off. Touring the Cathedral is not allowed during a service, because the noise would interfere with worship.

  I was content to lean on Lady Annabel, beloved wife of Sir Jonathan Brinton, whose eight children knelt at her side in unlikely proportion, having probably contributed to her death at age thirty-two in 1753. The children were a bit knobbly. I shifted my position slightly as the choir launched into a beautiful setting of the psalm for the day.

  English cathedral choirs are known throughout the world for their superb musicianship, and the unique sound of the boy soprano voice lends an ethereal quality. No matter how well I know that the boys are anything but little angels, are indeed a torment to their director, I am wafted straight to heaven when they sing.

  Much of the service is spoken, not sung, however, and I was getting a bit tired of Lady Annabel and her progeny by the time the presiding canon pronounced the final blessing and Jeremy took up a lively voluntary.

  The choirboys filed past me, their impatience curbed by the stately pace of the verger leading them out. The choir men followed, then the clergy, and then Jeremy concluded with a final flourish and came down from the organ loft and out into the aisle where I lurked.

  ‘Dorothy! I didn’t see you in there.’

  ‘I got here too late. Actually I hadn’t realized it was time for Evensong. I wanted to talk to you. Do you have a few minutes?’

  ‘I do, in fact. Christopher’s busy at the uni, with the new term just beginning, and won’t be home until quite late, so I’m on my lonesome the rest of the day.’

  ‘In that case, why don’t you come over as soon as you’ve divested – that sounds like a stock transaction. Disrobed? Even worse. Anyway, when you’ve got out of your vestments, come and have some tea with us.’

  ‘You’re sleuthing again, aren’t you? That art teacher?’

  ‘Come and find out.’

  I’d barely had time to switch on the kettle and put some muffins in the toaster when Jeremy was knocking at the door, which was open. ‘Come on in,’ I called from the kitchen, ‘and tell me what you’d like to eat.’

  ‘Oh, some lovely cucumber sandwiches and perhaps an eclair or two would do nicely.’

  ‘“I’m sorry, sir. There were no cucumbers in the market. Not even for ready money.”’

  He laughed and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Bread and butter, then?’

  ‘With perhaps even a bit of jam.’ I buttered the toasted muffins, made the tea and rummaged in the cupboard for a jar of homemade marmalade I’d bought at the last church fête and a pan of brownies I’d made the day before. If I do say so, I make excellent brownies.

  Alan came to join us, and we settled down to enjoy our tea and far more carbohydrates than I needed in a week.

  ‘Right,’ said Jeremy briskly, ‘now you want me to tell you all I know, and all Christopher knows, about the Art College Murder.’

  ‘You’re making it sound like the title of a thriller,’ Alan objected. ‘Nancy Drew, perhaps.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I objected. ‘Nobody was ever murdered in a Nancy Drew. They were written for children, remember. Nancy nearly bought it at least twice in every book, but she always foiled the villains by her combination of a clever mind with an intrepid spirit and amazing athletic abilities. Trust me. I read every one of them when I was young.’

  ‘That,’ said Alan drily, ‘may help explain your present taste in literature and activity.’

  I gave him an evil look. ‘What I really wanted to ask, Jeremy, is what you know about Matt Thomas, the printmaker at the college, and his partner.’

  Well, that darkened the atmosphere. Jeremy put his muffin back on the plate. ‘Poor Matt! We all felt dreadful for him. Well, not quite all. There are bigots in the gay community, too, and a few had been spiteful about Phil all along. But when that frightful thing happened, anyone who hadn’t thought Phil was quite the thing had the sense to keep quiet about it.’

  ‘Do you think the attack was mostly on account of his race or his lifestyle?’ I asked.

  ‘Equal parts of both, I’d say, with drink to set the match to the fuse. My friends are just a teensy bit upset that no one has ever been arrested for it.’

  ‘Bigotry exists in the police force, too, I’m sorry to say,’ said Alan heavily. ‘But to be fair, it’s nearly impossible to pin down responsibility for the actions of a mob. No one will talk, or if they d
o, they claim they can’t remember exactly what happened.’

  ‘Which may be true, Alan. You know how confused things can get in the middle of a crowd. You can’t see properly over everyone’s heads. Well, maybe you can, but people of ordinary size can’t. And there’s noise, and lots of things happening at once. And I’m not even talking about a riot, just something like the Christmas sales in London, or a football game.’

  ‘Our sort of football game,’ Alan retorted, ‘can be indistinguishable from a riot. I don’t know about your American ones. But I take your point.’

  ‘Jeremy, how is Matt dealing with it? I saw him today, and he seemed to be okay as long as we talked about art. But then he told me about Phil, and how horribly Chandler had been treating him, and he … well, he sort of fell apart.’

  ‘I don’t know him well. Christopher knows him better, though the Wolfson lot don’t mix that much with the rest of the university staff.’

  Christopher taught English literature, specializing in very early works in Middle English. I stood in awe of him. I’ve never been able to read Chaucer except in translation.

  ‘I’ve heard, though,’ Jeremy went on, ‘that Matt is extremely depressed. As you gathered, he turns to art for solace, and with Chandler pulling the rug out from under his funding, and treating him like dirt into the bargain, his closest friends have begun to watch him pretty closely.’

  ‘Suicide watch, you mean?’ asked Alan sharply.

  ‘We-ell …’ Jeremy wriggled uncomfortably. ‘Perhaps not quite that serious, but they’re worried that he might do something … reckless, let’s say.’

  Alan leaned toward him. ‘As reckless as throwing his boss down a lift shaft?’

  Jeremy sighed. ‘I have no idea. I just don’t know him well enough, really. I’ll ask Christopher. For what it’s worth, I’ve had the impression that Matt’s too sunk in his own misery to do anything more decisive than choose which wood to carve for his next print. He’s quite good at woodcuts, by the way, did you know?’

  ‘Quite good! Jeremy, he could give Dürer a run for his money.’

  Alan cocked a sceptical eyebrow.

  ‘Truly!’ I insisted. ‘You wait till you see them. Intricate, delicate, powerful … you just wait.’

  Alan shook his head. ‘And this is the man Chandler wanted to restrict to computer-generated prints. Dorothy, I think I’d like a little whisky instead of this tea.’

  So of course that led to everyone having a drink, after which we invited Jeremy to supper, most of which he cooked. He’s a superb cook, the sort who can walk into someone else’s kitchen, find a little of this and some of that, and turn it all into a marvellous meal.

  When he’d gone home and Alan and I had cleaned up the kitchen, we sat around the fire, for the evening had turned chilly. Watson snoozed at my feet and the cats chose a lap each and purred themselves to sleep. The humans sipped a little sherry and talked about John Chandler and Matt Thomas.

  ‘That poor man. I’m worried about him, Alan. If his friends think he might be suicidal, no matter how Jeremy tried to gloss it over, he just may be. And apart from any humane considerations, it would be a dreadful loss to art. If he’s this good at thirty or so, one can only dream of what he could still do. That’s one reason I feel it’s urgent that we help the police about this all we can.’

  ‘And if he’s the murderer? He has one of the best motives.’

  ‘I know, but I’m still convinced he had nothing to do with it. You’ve not seen his work, but I have. You know art reveals an enormous amount about the artist. You take a look at those woodcuts and then tell me if the man who created them could do murder.’

  ‘I’ll do that, but I remain unconvinced. If he’s devoted to his art, and knows he’s good, and knew Chandler was virtually shutting him down … I don’t know, Dorothy.’

  ‘I’m trying to get a feeling for what made Chandler tick,’ I mused after a long silence. ‘Why would he gather a group of talented artists and teachers around him and then frustrate them at every turn?’

  ‘Is that what he did? Gather them, that is? Or were they already there when he was plumped down in the midst of them?’

  I tried to search my memory. ‘I don’t think Jane mentioned anything about it, and I can’t recall what the rest of the college staff said.’

  ‘One more thing to look into,’ said Alan drowsily.

  ‘I don’t know that it makes a whole lot of difference, one way or another. The point is that he was perverting the whole notion of art, of creativity. I suppose it would make him even more cruel if he had brought them there with rosy promises, and then proceeded to cut them off at the knees. But why? And why give that ass William Braithwaite free rein, when for my money he’s the least talented, and for anybody’s money the most obnoxious, of the lot?’

  It was a more-or-less rhetorical question, but I looked at Alan for his reaction.

  His reaction was a light snore.

  I carefully removed Emmy from my lap, which she did not appreciate, poked the fire to extinguish it, spread an afghan over Alan, and went to bed.

  ELEVEN

  Sometime after I’d gone to sleep, Alan came up and joined me. He barely woke me, but it must have been then that my dreams, which had been vaguely pleasant, changed to the uneasy ‘mission unfulfilled’ sort. I didn’t remember the details in the morning, but they involved tasks that couldn’t be completed because I hadn’t the right tools or couldn’t find the work site or whatever, or journeys that went nowhere because the road was closed or there was a flood in the way or I kept getting lost. I finally woke about five with a jerk, sitting straight up in bed and crying ‘No!’ and of course waking Alan.

  He soothed me and went back to sleep. I tried, but after turning over and punching my pillow several times, I gave it up. I’d wakened Watson, anyway, who decided it was time to go out, and the cats, who were certain it was time to be fed.

  Five a.m. is not my favourite time of day. I dealt with the animals, who were quite literally bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (except for Sam, who is mostly Siamese and has a slim, elegant tail that bushes only when she’s furious), made myself coffee, and sat and brooded.

  The list of suspects in Chandler’s murder seemed extremely limited. He had to have been killed after the end of last term, which was in early July. I hadn’t heard whether he went on his trip to Greece, but it didn’t seem likely. He surely wouldn’t go just for a week or two, not when he had a six-week break, and if he’d been gone longer and got back only a little while before term started, the body.… I swallowed. The autopsy would have revealed that.

  So assume he died shortly after that unfortunate staff meeting. How shortly? If it was that same day, all the full-time staff and presumably some of the students would still be around. When, I wondered, had he planned to leave for Greece?

  Well, Derek would find out all that. Watson whined outside the kitchen door; I let him in and gave him breakfast, which he wolfed down. He’s learned that if he leaves any of his food, the cats will either eat it or scatter it all over the floor. His kibble comes in fairly big chunks, and they make wonderful cat toys.

  Watson burped loudly and settled on his cushion for a nice little nap. I poured another cup of coffee and went back to my ruminating.

  Four full-time staff. Three if you discount William, who was a rat but had no apparent motive. Four again, though, if you add in the secretary whose name I’d forgotten. She could have come back to plead with him, ask to be reinstated. He would have been flint-hearted, of course, and she could have lost her composure and lunged for him. And if the elevator shaft was open, for some reason …

  It wouldn’t work. A woman would have had a dreadful time hauling that body around. And why would the shaft be open?

  Maybe someone was working on it. Gillian said it was ‘wonky’. It was left open for the workmen and Chandler stumbled and fell through …

  That wouldn’t work, either. He wasn’t killed by the fall. And if workmen had been
around they would have done something about it.

  Blast it all, what did kill the miserable man?

  ‘I’m sure we’ll know, sooner or later.’ Alan came into the room and gave me a peck on the cheek.

  ‘Oh, was I talking to myself?’

  ‘And apparently with little satisfaction. Have you had breakfast?’

  ‘No, just coffee. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I came down and fretted.’ I craned my head around to see the kitchen clock. ‘You’re up early.’

  ‘I rather thought I’d like to go to Early Service.’

  ‘Oh! I’d forgotten it was Sunday. That’s a good idea, Early Service.’

  ‘Then you’d best get yourself moving, darling. I’ve showered; I’ll organize breakfast.’

  Alan not only can cook, he does. Frequently. Every woman’s dream.

  When I got down he’d made a fresh pot of coffee and was just finishing scrambled eggs. ‘There’s cinnamon toast in the oven keeping nice and warm for you. Comfort food, to cheer you up.’ The dear man hates cinnamon toast, or any hot-buttered toast. Toast for him is served in a little rack to make sure it gets cold as soon as possible, and is then spread with nice cold butter and marmalade. But he indulges my peculiar American tastes, and even remembers, sometimes, to put ice in my cold drinks.

  The bells began as we were clearing away, so we hurried a little through the misty morning and made it to our regular seats in the choir stalls just as the bells stopped.

  There is no music at the early Eucharist. I love our superb choir, but there are times when the simple solemnity of the lovely old Book of Common Prayer is exactly what I need. Then, too, there is profound peace in a place where God has been worshipped for centuries. Whatever cares and woes have been brought to this place in the past hundreds of years are cured now, their sufferers at rest in the churchyard, or in heaven, depending on one’s beliefs. Certainly they are in distress no more. The short years of a human lifetime are as nothing compared to the enduring stones of the great church.